Outlanders 37 Rim of the World, page 2
He said, "I don't like surprises, Kane. That is why you and your feringhi friends are in this unfortunate predicament. I thought that might have occurred to you by now."
The man spoke with the clear, concise enunciation of the upper-class British. Whether his mode of speech was an affectation, as was his very Anglo-Saxon surname, or he was an Englishman in exile he had not explained.
"It definitely occurred to rile," rumbled Grant, straining against his bonds. "More than once."
"Me, too," Brigid Baptiste said sourly. "At least three times."
"Silence, woman," Entwhistle spit. "You befoul this holy spot with your very presence, let alone your voice."
Brigid exchanged a quick questioning glance with
Grant and he shook his head slightly, indicating that she should do as the sheikh ordered, at least for the moment. Both she and Grant stood between tall wooden posts driven deep into the ground. Their arms were raised at the shoulder, their wrists lashed tightly to crossbars fitting into Y-shaped notches atop the posts.
The guttering firelight gleamed on Grant's coffee- brown face. Standing four inches over six feet tall, his musculature was heavy, accentuated by exceptionally broad shoulders. His short-cropped hair was touched with gray at the temples, but it didn't show in the gunfighter's mustache that swept out fiercely around both sides of his tight-lipped mouth.
His face displayed no particular emotion, but his brown eyes were black with repressed rage. Grant's right pant leg was dark with blood that had oozed from a bullet wound in the meat of his upper thigh. The injury was more unsightly than critical, a bruised bleeding gash.
Brigid Baptiste wasn't hurt, but the expression on her face registered a degree of inner pain, one that derived from self-anger. She felt responsible for leading her two friends into the ambush that had resulted in their capture.
A tall woman with a fair complexion and big eyes the color of polished jade, Brigid's high forehead gave the impression of a probing intellect, whereas her full underlip hinted at an appreciation of the sensual. Her mane of red-gold hair fell down her back in a long, sunset-colored braid to the base of her spine. Her delicate features had a set, almost feline cast to them.
Like Grant and Kane, she wore tricolor desert-camouflage BDUs, although the lightweight field jacket had been ripped from her by the clansmen. The military-gray T-shirt beneath only accentuated her willowy, full-breasted figure and her bare arms rippled with toned muscle.
The BDUs were departures from the skintight black shadow suits they usually preferred to wear on dark-territory missions, but Lakesh had suggested such clothing would make them appear less sinister to the Bedouin tribes people—and in Brigid's case, a little less revealing and therefore not quite as offensive to Muslims. Diplomacy, turning potential enemies into allies against the spreading reign of the overlords, had become the paramount tactic of Cerberus over the past year. Lessons in how to deal with foreign cultures and religions took the place of weapons instruction and other training.
Over the past three years, Brigid Baptiste and former Cobaltville Magistrates Grant and Kane had tramped through jungles, ruined cities, over mountains, across deserts and they found strange cultures everywhere, often bizarre recreations of societies that had vanished long before the nukecaust.
Due in part to her eidetic memory, Brigid spoke a dozen languages and could get along in a score of dialects, but knowing the native tongues of many different cultures and lands was only a small part of her work. Aside from her command of languages, Brigid had made history and geopolitics abiding interests in a world that was changing rapidly.
She and all the personnel of Cerberus, over half a world away atop a mountain peak in Montana, had devoted themselves to changing the nuke-scarred planet into something better. At least that was her earnest hope. To turn hope into reality meant respecting the often alien behavior patterns of a vast number of ancient religions, legends, myths and taboos.
Now the concept of violating a religious taboo seemed so irrelevant as to be ridiculous. Sheikh Suliedor Entwhistle had sprung the treacherous attack without warning. One moment, the outlanders were engaged in friendly conversation with Entwhistle and his men about a campfire—and in the next instant, guns blazed and the clansmen rushed in from all directions, bowling them over.
A rifle barrel used as a bludgeon slammed hard into Kane's back and he went down on his knees, his Sin Eater stuttering in his hand. The bullets kicked up sand in little plumes, intersected with the fire and sent sparks and embers exploding in all directions like miniature novas.
Grant fired a triburst with his own Sin Eater at a white burnoose and the face framed within it vanished in a red mass of splintered bone and punctured flesh.
Kane struggled to his feet and started to fire again, then checked his finger on the trigger stud. Into a patch of moonlight emerged Brigid with two men crowding close to her, heavy jambiya blades in their hands.
One of the men grabbed for Brigid and her TP-9 autopistol came from beneath her jacket. A single shot blew away the man's right kneecap. As he fell, screaming and plucking at his maimed leg, the other Arab turned and ran away, squalling in fear, overwhelmed by the sight of a mere woman dispatching a male warrior so quickly and efficiently.
The metal-reinforced butt of a rifle slammed into Kane's left rib cage and sent him sprawling, knocking the wind from his lungs. As he tried to struggle to his knees he saw Suliedor Entwhistle standing over him with the weapon in his hands and he saw his own features reflected in the sheikh's mirrored sunglasses.
He heard a sharp report and a brief outcry from Grant, more anger than pain. He glimpsed the big man fall, clutching at his thigh. Immediately he was surrounded by three men, hammering at him with the stocks of their rifles.
"Enough!" Brigid cried, throwing her pistol toward the fire. "Pashita watta!"
Kane reluctantly holstered his own weapon and raised his hands. Howling with delight, the Bedouin ran forward to seize them. In the process of turning over his Sin Eater, Kane struck Suliedor Entwhistle with an open left hand and then spit in his face.
Brigid grasped Kane's strategy of slapping the chieftain with his "unclean" hand and spitting on him—he meant to force the man into single combat, since such insults could only be expunged from his honor by personally killing the aggressor. For Entwhistle to simply order Kane's execution was tantamount to an admission of cowardice on his part. If he failed to accept the challenge and redress Kane's insult, then his position as sheikh would no longer be secure.
At least, that was the code of the Bedouin desert warrior as contained in the Cerberus database. With a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, Kane realized adjustments had been made to the code after Suliedor appointed his own, much younger champion to answer to the challenge in his stead. None of the clansmen objected to the substitution of Yusef for their sheikh. Instead, they appeared very happy about it, if for nothing else but to see the looks of dismay on the faces of three outlander infidels.
"Yusef!" Suliedor barked impatiently, then spoke in a rapid-fire dialect. "Imshi ta'al feringhi!"
Instantly, Yusef bounded at Kane as if shot from a cannon.
Chapter 2
Yusef dived in low, throwing himself down to pivot swiftly on his left hand, the knife in his right lashing out toward the tendons at the back of Kane's left knee. Kane leaped straight up, and the man's blade shaved a little curl from the sole of his boot.
Kane stomped down as he landed, hoping to break Yusef's hand, but the muscular bedouin was an eye blink too fast. He rolled backward and came smoothly to his feet, then plunged forward, the jambiya raised high, arcing up, then down, the polished blade flashing in the moonlight.
Kane dived in under his swinging arm, trying for a crippling slash through Yusef's Achilles tendons. The Arab danced away, stabbing downward, and Kane felt the knife point rip across the back of his shoulders. Tucking and rolling, he came up on his toes as Yusef wheeled around, hacking with the blade.
Still off balance, Kane clumsily jerked his combat knife up in a defensive gesture. The blades met with a loud clash of steel against steel and a brief flare of sparks at the impact point. Kane winced as a streak of pain zigzagged through his metacarpals and up his right arm. He staggered backward, his hand losing almost all feeling. His fingers lost their grip on the Nylex handle of the knife and it slipped from his grasp.
At the same time, Yusef cried out in pain and dismay as his jambiya dropped from numbed fingers. Baffled, surprised and not a little frightened by their unexpected disarmament, the two men stared at each other in silent surmise. The Arab's eyes were feral, narrowed. Both Kane and Yusef reassessed their situations, then simultaneously closed in on each other. The clansmen lifted their voices in ululating howls of bloodthirsty delight.
Yusef launched a roundhouse kick, and Kane dodged away, but the heel of the man's left boot clubbed against his hip. A new wave of pain joined the throbbing in his right hand and wrist. Even as he stumbled backward, he caught Yusef's ankle and dragged the bedouin with him. Kane swung him around in a semicircle, released him and slammed him face-first against an outcropping, but Yusef managed to cushion the collision with his forearms.
As he whirled around, Kane met him with a triple- hammer blow, the side of his left fist beating in a fast, furious rhythm on Yusef's midriff. The Arab grunted, but continued lunging for him. Kane ducked between his arms and glided behind him.
Yusef wheeled around and Kane pistoned his left fist forward in two short, jabbing blows that rocked the younger man's head back and split his lower lip. Blood started trickling from his nostrils.
A growl of fury humming in his bull throat, Yusef swung at Kane's face with two knotted fists. Kane dodged back and then sidled in. Tingling sensation returned to his right hand, and he delivered a right hook to the man's diaphragm. Yusef responded with a lightning-swift left cross. Kane shunted aside the fist driving toward his jaw and chopped with the edge of his stiffened hand at the base of Yusef's corded throat.
Although the heel of his hand rebounded from the thick mass of muscle there, Yusef uttered a choking cry and half staggered away in a tangle-footed back-pedal, massaging his neck. The moonlight glinted for an instant from his eyes, and Kane glimpsed a mixture of respect and fear gleaming there.
As Kane figured, Yusef had grown accustomed to allowing his size, strength and most likely his reputation to intimidate opponents. Facing a skilled martial artist like Kane was a completely new and even frightening experience for him. Kane's trained reactions and speed offset his adversary's massive build and greater strength.
Yusef definitely possessed ability, but Kane had lived longer and harder and faced a more diverse set of challenges as both a Magistrate and an exile. He knew far more about the rudiments of pitting talon against fang when the situation was strictly kill or be killed with no niceties about the means. He had fought for his life many times in his far-ranging career as both Magistrate and insurrectionist, and he knew every trick of close- quarters fighting, especially the dirty ones.
Kane also knew when he had been manipulated into playing a rigged game. Regardless of who won the trial by combat, he and his friends would be the losers unless he figured out how to change the rules. He hoped he could find a way to do it. He deliberately didn't look in the direction of Brigid and Grant.
The two men circled the campsite, a slow, shuffling orbit about the cookfire. Kane managed to keep the rocks at his back, but the light shed by the full Moon was almost as bright as day so little refuge lay in the shadows.
Yusef launched a sudden spin-kick at Kane's head. Kane had been expecting it, even hoping for it. Rather than move into the arc and latch on to the Arab's leg as his instincts urged him, he evaded it and slapped the man's foot as it whistled past, forcing him to turn a complete, clumsy circle.
Yusef staggered as he regained his footing, the expression on his face registering embarrassment. Kane smiled at him thinly, condescendingly, but made no move. Magistrate doctrine taught never to be defensive when any opportunity presented itself to go on the attack, but Kane had learned painful lessons in his post-Mag years about the importance of impulse control.
"Yusef!" Suliedor snarled. "Don't ease up on him, you lazy git! Wear him down! Qawam bilajal!"
The young man threw the sheikh an angry glare, then obeyed, closing in on Kane, kicking, punching, pounding. Kane stood his ground, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, parrying and blocking the driving blows of his opponent with his legs, forearms and hands. It wasn't easy, but he maintained a slightly mocking smile as if Yusef were a child swatting at him in a tantrum, despite the fact the man's fists felt like blocks of unfinished oak. He called on all the hard-won experience that had saved him so often in the past.
Magistrate martial-arts training borrowed shamelessly from every source—from tae kwon do to savate to bushidokan. The style was down-and-dirty, focusing primarily on the aspects of offence rather than defense, but Kane restrained his impulses to react with killing blows. A single teisho punch to the young man's nose would end the combat decisively, but Kane didn't want to kill him—at least not yet.
Yusef's breath came in labored rasps and his face grew pinched from exertion and frustrated fury. Panting, he doubled his efforts, pummeling wildly. One of his fists crashed through Kane's guard and pounded solidly into his stomach.
Air whistled out of his lungs, but he managed to keep from doubling over. Kane stabbed out with a left-handed thumb-and-forefinger thrust to Yusef's throat, but not hard enough to crush his larynx. He jabbed the nerve clump just above the base of his neck.
Yusef stumbled backward, coughing, snarling and wheezing. He strained to suck in air, his hand clutching reflexively at his throat. His left foot came down on the handle of his jambiya knife and he lost his balance, collapsing to one knee.
Kane swept around him as swiftly as El Borak, the desert wind. He slid one arm up to lock beneath the man's chin, his hand grasping his other forearm to complete the vice to jam Yusef's head hard against his right shoulder. The hammerlock was a killing hold if carried through. The bedouin cursed breathlessly.
Kane drove a foot into the back of Yusef's right knee and his leg buckled. Only Kane's grip kept him erect.
Over the man's agonzied, strangulated gasps, Kane heard the faint creak of strained vertebrae.
Into Yusef's ear, he whispered, "I know you can understand me...it's not necessary for you to die."
In a guttural grunt, Yusef replied, "I won't surrender, you filthy feringhi—"
The insult died as Kane tightened his right forearm against the younger man's windpipe. Yusef struggled, biting at air. "Don't be an asshole," Kane grated. "You don't want to die, your old man doesn't want you to die. You don't even have to formally give up. Just quit."
Yusef clawed at his arms, trying to prise away the flesh-and-blood vice strangling him. Kane bore down remorselessly, damning and admiring the young man's pride. With the base of his thumb he applied steady pressure against Yusef's carotid artery and the man's struggles weakened.
Blinking back the sweat dripping into his eyes, Kane glanced over at Suliedor Entwhistle. His eyes still masked by the mirrored lenses, he gazed at him expressionlessly, but his fists were clenched so tightly the knuckles stood out in stark relief, almost as if they were about to split the skin.
Kane suddenly released his grip and sprang back. Yusef, gagging and gasping, fell face first to the ground. Reaching down, Kane snatched up the jambiya knife and whipped the blade down in an overhand, decapitating loop. At the last micro-instant, he checked the movement and lightly placed the curved edge against the back of Yusef's neck.
Staring levelly at Suliedor, Kane demanded, "Do you accept your son's defeat as your own?"
Suliedor Entwhistle stiffened, eyes fixed on Yusef as he struggled to draw air into his lungs. "How did you know he was my son?"
Kane smiled crookedly. "You wouldn't let just anybody avenge my insult. I figured a traditionalist like you would make it a matter of family honor."
The sheikh shrugged as if the matter was of little importance. "He did not yield, outlander."
"But he's beaten anyway," Kane snapped, pressing down with the knife. The razored edge sank slightly into the flesh and a trickle of blood oozed around it. Yusef drew in his breath through clenched teeth. "Do you prefer him dead? If your honor, your code demands it, I can finish the job and behead him. That's still the preferred method of execution hereabouts, I understand. What will it take to satisfy you?"
Suliedor hesitated, then gestured behind him at Grant and Brigid. Several clansmen turned, aiming their rifles at the two people. Between bared, discolored teeth, he hissed, "I can have these two sods killed and spare you—how about that? That might satisfy me."
"I've got a better idea," Kane retorted. "I'll let Yusef live and you let all of us go. That way everybody stays alive and happy."
Enwhistle shook his head. "You will invade the holy Djebel Kif, the abode of the jinn and the afreet. I cannot allow that."
"This was all a misunderstanding," Kane declared. "We have no intention of invading any part of your land."
"It is not my land," Suliedor shot back, "but that of the old gods. We were warned you might appear. Three of you, perhaps more, seeking entrance to the ancient crucible of creation."
Kane scowled at him. "Who did the warning?" "That is not your concern, feringhi."
"I think I can guess," Kane replied. "An overdressed snake-face who talks all big about doom and bowing and yielding, right?"
The sheikh's face locked in a tight, hard mask of anger. "You blaspheme!"
"Fluently," said Kane dryly.
For a long, stretched-out tick of time, Kane and Suliedor Entwhistle stared at each other in silent surmise. The only sound was the crackle of firewood. Then, an electronic trilling, rising-and-falling warble, cut through the night. Brigid Baptiste jerked in surprised reaction to the signal of her transcomm.
