War World X: Takeover (46 page)

From where I was, I could only see in one direction and it didn’t seem like a good idea to pop out. Besides, one of us needed to be here and hold the armory with its rifles. Back in the main room, I saw the older woman opening the armory door. The pregnant girl had put on a pair of pants from a dead Kazakh and was buckling on his pistol belt. I could see a ladder fastened to a wall, and a trapdoor above it in the roof. From the roof I’d be able to see around. But first I needed to see the armory and get a rifle. I couldn’t hit much with a pistol except up close; with a rifle I could reach out.

In the armory were rifle racks, one of them almost full. I took one, an obsolete military model and checked to see if the magazine was full. It was. I took two spare magazines from an open box, put them in a deep pocket in my Kazakh cloak, and went back out of the armory. The pregnant girl was standing by the inner door with a pistol in her hand, as if waiting for someone to come in from outside. I called to her to be careful, to kill only Kazakhs.

Then I went to the ladder and climbed it. The trapdoor opened below the roof ridge on the side away from most of the buildings. I could hear some shouting but no shooting, and crawled to the ridge on my belly. From there I could see across the buildings and into the horse pasture on the far side. One of the herdsmen on shift was just sitting on his horse about four hundred meters away about as far as I could make him out by dimday. He seemed to be looking in my direction. There should have been another one, but I couldn’t see him.

That’s when I heard three shots below, in the bunkhouse, two of them almost at the same time. I stayed where I was, hoping that the women would take care of things down there. There was more shooting from a building near the horse stable. A Kazakh ran out, around the corner of the door and waited, pistol in hand, as if he thought someone might follow him out. I raised my rifle and aimed as well as I could, given the distance and the light. Then I squeezed off a single round, and he fell. No one shot at me, and it occurred to me that if a Kazakh saw me, he might not be sure I wasn’t another Kazakh.

Another one came trotting toward the bunkhouse, half-bent over, also holding his pistol. There was another advantage for us: Except for herdsmen on shift, probably none of them had a rifle with him. I shot him down, too, and someone shot twice in my direction, someone I hadn’t seen. One bullet hit sod near my face and threw dirt on me, so I crawled back and rolled to my right a couple of meters, then moved back up just enough to over and see someone running from a shed and into cover behind another one.

It looked as if he was going to get around behind me. For just a second I thought about going back down through the trapdoor, but what good could I be there? I needed to be where I could find targets. So I stayed where I was. If someone did get around behind me, he wouldn’t be able to see me from close up because of the eaves, and maybe he couldn’t shoot well with a pistol.

One place I couldn’t see at all was the ground close in front of the bunkhouse. Then I heard more shooting from inside. Right after that a window broke, as if someone wanted to get in that way. I knew the windows were double paned, because there was a sash at the outer end of the window hole and another one at the inner end. They’d be hard to crawl through. Then there was a shot from somewhere across the way, and I heard a yell of pain from in front, by the window. It had to be Cody that shot him—Cody with what I had thought might be a broken arm.

Right after that there were three quick shots from behind me, pretty far away—rifle shots, I thought. I didn’t hear any bullets hit. From the corner of my eye I saw someone run from a building toward the Kazakh I’d shot near the stable. I didn’t think it was a Kazakh; it was someone without a cap, someone baldheaded. He bent as he reached the Kazakh, just long enough to pull off his pistol belt and pick up his gun, then he shouted something and ran inside. I decided he must be one of the Latvians.

What happened next might have been from someone seeing my breath puff in the chilly air. There was a short burst of rifle fire, and one or more bullets hit just in front of me. One went through the sod, hit the flex below and glanced back up through the sod again to knock off the Kazakh cap I was wearing. Then I heard feet trotting as if coming to the bunkhouse from in front, so I rolled over the top, and with someone shooting at me again, I slid down the other side feet first, to drop off the edge. It wasn’t a long drop, less than two meters. My feet hadn’t hit the ground yet when I saw the two Kazakhs, and when I landed, I emptied half a magazine in their direction. They both fell, and I ran to the outer door of the bunkhouse, hearing more shooting and the dull thud of slugs hitting sod-covered flex.

I was in the cloakroom, panting as if I’d run a hundred meters, before I remembered the women. I called to them in English. “It’s me! The American.” But I still didn’t try to go through the inner door. Instead I did some quick mental arithmetic. I’d killed a Kazakh in the cow pasture. Then Cody and I had shot six more inside. And I’d shot one near the stable and two just out front. And Cody’d shot at least one other. That made eleven, eleven of, say, sixteen. And there’d been other shooting. How many were left? Had the women killed any?

So I called out, “How many from outside did you women kill?” The answer came in Russian: “One.” So there shouldn’t be more than four Kazakhs left, it seemed to me. Just then there was more shooting outside, and I stood beside the door, listening for whatever would tell me anything. After awhile I heard someone, Janis, call out in English. “Indian!”

I answered without showing myself: “Yes?”

“I killed two, and I don’t know where there are any more. Some of my friends have guns now. What should we do next?”

“What about the herdsmen with the horses?”

“We just shot one of them. I don’t know about the other.”

That might have been the one who’d been shooting at me. “Get his rifle,” I called.

“We already did.”

Janis said he’d killed two and then they’d shot a horse herder, unless Janis had counted the herder as one of the two. There could hardly be more than two Kazakhs left to fight here—maybe none at all. I’d just told myself that when there was a shot from inside the bunkhouse, then screaming, and more shots. I went inside to see. It was the pregnant girl that was screaming, lying on the floor, while the other woman was swearing—it sounded like swearing—and emptying her pistol at a window in the other side of the bunkhouse.

I turned and ran out, around the corner of the bunkhouse, then around the back corner. Behind, crouched below a window but looking right at me, was a Kazakh. I don’t think he knew what was happening, even then; he probably thought it was all a slave uprising. If he’d shot right away, he could have killed me. Instead I killed him with another short burst.

I stood there panting and shaking for a minute, till my mind started to work again. Then I replaced the magazine in my rifle. Was there another Kazakh? Or had we shot them all?

I went back to a front corner of the bunkhouse and called out in Navajo: “Cody! Are you all right?”

He called back to me from somewhere. “All right except for one arm. It may be broken. The blacksmith hit me with a hammer.”

Another voice called in Navajo. It was Arnold, the man I gave the rifle to in the cow pasture. “Boulet! Where are the Kazakhs?”

“Most of them are dead,” I called back. “Shot, anyway.

“Maybe all of them. Have you seen any?”

“Just one. He’s dead now. He rode past me without seeing me. It was impossible to miss.”

“Janis!” I called in English. “I think we’ve got them all. Lets be careful not to shoot each other now. But keep an eye open, in case one of them is still running around.

Actually there were four still alive, all of them wounded and out of action. We dragged them into the bunkhouse to leave them there.

We had thirty-six horses and about eighty cattle. Yaks. I was only a fair horseman, but four of the five Navajos, all but one who grew up in Flagstaff, were pretty good and had herded livestock before. Four Latvians said they wanted to come with us. Another had been killed, and the pregnant girl had been shot in the chest. She’d gone into premature labor from the shock, and her breath came in and out of the bullet hole, making bloody bubbles that smelled bad. I was pretty sure she’d die soon and so was she. The older woman said she’d stay with her. I think she probably killed the wounded with her butcher knife, after we left. She really hated them.

None of the other four Latvians—one a pregnant woman—had ever ridden a horse. The Kazakh ponies were well trained, but thought that whoever was on their backs should know how to ride. Also, the Latvians didn’t know how to control them, so the ponies took advantage of them, giving them trouble. Finally Cody made them double up, two to a horse. They saddled the ponies up and also made less for us to keep track of. It would be up to the Latvians to stay with or follow us.

We all had guns now, a rifle and two pistols each. We also put a saddle or pack saddle on all the spare horses. Three of the Navajos knew how to load a pack saddle; they loaded the spare rifles and pistols, and all the ammunition boxes and swords, on pack horses. Also we filled the waterbags and canteens we found there. Then, with Navajos running the show, we headed east, driving the cattle ahead of us. The spare horses trailed behind, tied in a string.

We went slowly. We didn’t know how these cattle would act if we hurried them, and with Cody injured, and two of us not as skilled on horseback as we needed to be, there were only three men qualified to handle the herd. We’d traveled as fast earlier on foot.

There was time to think about the fight. How had we won at so little cost? The Kazakh’s had outnumbered us and had many more weapons. But they had suspected nothing. Even after we began attacking them, they didn’t know what was happening; probably they thought they faced only their slaves. It wasn’t warrior skills that won for us, or virtue, although their own evil treatment of their slaves had allowed us to attack them and win.

If we had fought them in other circumstances, it would have been different. The Kazakhs had a reputation as a tough people, and those who went with the herds almost born on horseback. I remembered reading about the Kazakhs who wanted to be colonists: they were traditional herdsmen from the dry steppes around Lake Balgash. Probably they’d grown up in the saddle. I also remembered my reading on biogeography: wolf packs still ranged there; the herdsmen had probably grown up with guns, too.

Reading about them, I’d felt affinity with them. They had wanted to continue their way of life in freedom. Now I knew them and didn’t like them anymore.

When we came to the big water hole where we’d separated from Frank Begay and his five men, Cat’s Eye was swollen, gibbous and dim-day seemed about as light as a stormy day in Minnesota. I had not ridden for almost two Earth-years before and my buttocks were sore from the saddle.

We’d had water to drink, from canteens, but we stopped to let the animals drink. One of my men rode eastward on the trail, the direction that Frank and the others had taken, to see if he could find any sign that they’d returned before us. Then he came back, shouting that at the edge of vision, in that direction, he’d seen dust raised by animals. Either a herd was being hurried, or some Kazakhs were coming fast on horseback.

I took charge again at once, and told the men to get the herd moving toward the canyon. “Get them started, I said, “and drive them at a run! Get the pack horses there too! Nelson may need the guns.”

The three skilled Navajos began at once; the rest of us helped as well as we could. Even the Latvians tried. They’d been keeping their seats better than at the beginning, but now, as we began to hurry, and to harry the cattle into a gallop, one of the Latvians fell off his horse, and the others seemed likely to. One of them, the baldheaded man, shouted in their own language, and they stopped their horses. All but one, the pregnant woman, got off with their weapons. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the other three lie down behind bushes. Their ponies stood by till one of the Latvians got up and charged at them, shouting. Then the ponies wheeled and started after the rest of us.

It seemed that the Latvians were going to sell their lives to kill some of their ex-masters. It wasn’t easy to ride away from them, but we had to get the herds, the cattle and horses, to Nelson Tsinajini, so he could drive them down the canyon to the people. We’d sell our lives afterward, if we had to.

As the herd began to gallop, they raised a cloud of dust. The Kazakhs would notice, and come after us. Probably they’d seen Frank and his men scouting their camp, and killed or caught them. None of Frank’s people had more than a knife. Maybe the Kazakhs had even made one of them tell.

I dropped back a little and to the east, out of our dust cloud, to see better. I could make out the dust cloud the Navajo had seen, maybe a kilometer away now, or a little more. The horses would run faster than cattle; the Kazakhs would gain on us if they wanted to. And as they saw our direction, they could cut the angle and save distance.

I hurried and caught up with the others. Cody, riding with his one good arm, was leading the horse string past the cattle, with one of the other men harrying them from behind, to get the extra guns to Nelson. Behind me I heard gunfire, and for a minute I didn’t know what it meant. They hadn’t come to the Latvians yet. Then I realized: the Kazakhs had had prisoners with them, some of Frank’s men, probably tied onto horses. And the prisoners were slowing them up, so they were dumping them off and shooting them.

How far had it been from the canyon break to the big pool? More than an hour and a half on foot through bunch grass and dwarf shrubs; seven or eight kilometers. Could we get there before we were caught? Surely the horses would, and the rifles, but would the cattle, and those who were driving them? I heard another flurry of shooting that quickly, increased. The Latvians! How many Kazakhs would they kill, the three of them? Would the Kazakhs stay long enough to kill them all, or were they exchanging shots in passing, hardly slowing? Did they know how important a few minutes were for us?