Pathspace: The Space of Paths (15 page)

“No,” said Xander, twisting the end caps off
his staff and stowed them in a pocket of his cloak. A bass hum, or
a deep whistle, came from the staff. “I keep telling myself I won't
do this again,” he muttered.

“Sir?” said Timothy. “Do what?”

Before Tim could stop him, Xander leaped off
the roof.

He coughed as the wind shifted. “Was that
really necessary?”

Brutus tossed the torch aside and gazed out
over the burning field. “Sometimes you have to send a message,” he
said.

Jeffrey closed his eyes, trying to escape
the images of the four bodies in the burning farmhouse. “Even if
there is no one left alive to hear it?”

Brutus grinned. “Oh, it'll be heard. Just
not by them. The next time we come through here the locals will be
more cooperative.”

The others were returning to the tethered
horses. Jeffrey didn't meet their eyes.
Is this the way an army
operates? Are these the men I really want to lead?
“We're
barely over the border,” he said. “Aren't you alienating the same
people who will be farming for Texas, once we capture the
land?”

Brutus turned and lit a cigarette from the
flames of the house. “Don't be stupid,” he said. “We'll be moving
our own people in. He took a drag and pulled his gloves on before
slipping his horses' reins from the hitching post. Tugging on an
arrow buried in his saddlebag, he freed the shaft, inspected the
point to see it had not reached the flesh of his mount, then broke
it and threw the pieces into the inferno the house had become. “And
I don't like being shot at by farmers.”

Jeffrey swallowed and swung back onto his
own horse. Was this really just a scouting expedition? Brutus
seemed to be drawing attention to himself, as if the commander was
itching to start the war before the Honcho had intended. Or was he
just following orders Jeffrey didn't know about?

He rode up alongside Brutus. “What is it you
know that I don't? The way you're operating. You could provoke a
retaliation from Rado before my father has the fuel he needs for
his new army machines. Why stir up trouble this early?”

Brutus barked a laugh at that. “Hah! Rado
will be afraid to move against us. What you don't seem to know is
their population is lower than ours. Their
Governor
is
reluctant to risk her men until a full-scale battle is
unavoidable.”

Jeffrey scratched his chin. “How can you be
so sure of that? That they have fewer people than us? You've hardly
been there to count them, have you?”

Brutus took his last drag on the cigarette
and flicked it into the burning field as they rode back to the main
road. “No,” he said, exhaling. “But I know someone who has, more or
less.” He turned to grin at the Runt. “We have an informer in her
Court,” he informed Jeffrey. “We know a lot more about them than
they know about us.”

Jeffrey halted in amazement. A traitor? What
could the Honcho offer such a person that the Governor of Rado
could not match? She had gold mines!

I am here to learn,
he thought.
What can I learn from this? That to some people, there are
things even more valuable than gold.

The question remained, though: how had his
father found and recruited such a person?

He did not speak to Brutus again until they
stopped for lunch.

They rode off the main highway and into a
stand of trees by a small lake. Jeffrey found he wasn't very
hungry, and would have been content to lunch on jerky, but the
other men did not share his lack of appetite. They tied their
horses to the trees and set off downhill to the lake to shoot some
ducks they had spotted from the road while he kindled a fire.

While he chipped at the flint with a piece
of steel, striking sparks into the tinder, he reflected on what he
had witnessed so far. It was obvious that Brutus had an agenda
other than simple scouting. Perhaps more than one. It might be that
he was merely trying to provoke the locals into attacking them so
that he would have an excuse to kill, but that seemed too
simplistic. The commander was not a fool, to endanger his men
simply for his own enjoyment.

Was that crack about the Governor of Rado
not being willing to risk her men casually a message to him? Was
Brutus saying that he had to get used to thinking of the mission as
more important then his men? Or was it something else? Finally the
tinder caught, and he nursed the little flames with twigs and
gradually larger sticks until he had a recent fire going.

A deep humming startled him out of his
reverie. He leaped to his feet and scanned the surrounding forest.
He didn't see anything, but a gust of wind surprised him, because
the day had been a calm one. He cupped a hand to his ear, but the
humming was gone. Should he go and investigate the anomaly? It
didn't sound like any animal he was familiar with. If it were some
kind of predator, a fire should keep it from approaching, he
reasoned, and fed more wood to the hungry flames.

Soon he had a roaring fire going, and was
running out of wood. While he was debating with himself whether he
should gather more, the others returned with a brace of ducks.

“Did you hear anything strange while you
were hunting?” Jeffrey asked Brutus.

The older man appeared amused. “No. Did
something spook you?”

“I wouldn't put it that way. But I did hear
something, a deep sound. I would have thought it was an animal
growl, except that it lasted so long before it stopped.”

Brutus removed his hat. His red hair glinted
in the morning light as he swatted a mosquito that had landed on
his forehead, near a small scar over his left eyebrow. “Well, I
wouldn't worry about it,” he said, after a while. “Things are going
well, all things considered. We're getting fresh air, fresh food,
and pissing off the locals.”

Dead people don't get angry,
he
thought. But this was not his command. So he said nothing, just
stared into the commander's grinning face and promised himself that
he would take it up with his father when they returned to
Dallas.

While the others busied themselves plucking
the duck feathers to set aside for arrow fletching and readying the
birds for cooking, Jeffrey hiked a little ways through the trees
toward the lake to answer a call of nature. He passed an odd little
place where the grass was flattened, all lying down pointing away
from a point in the center of a clearing. He'd never seen anything
like it. That made two anomalies in one morning.

At the lake's edge he sat on a rock and let
his mind drift. The morning was still cool, and there was still
hardly any wind. Among the weeds in the shallows, a spider scuttled
about, walking on the surface of the still water. He wished he were
the spider, with nothing to worry about except the occasional
fish.

There had been no need to burn that little
farm, or kill the family. It was true, of course, that they might
have starved, anyway, once their crops were gone and their horses
confiscated.
Stolen, you mean,
he thought, correcting
himself.
You can't confiscate the livestock of people in a
different country.
And what Brutus's men had done to the women
before they killed the farmer and his family sickened him.
And
all I did was watch
. His eyes burned with the memory of it. The
memory of the commander's cruel sneering face and the trembling in
his own arms as he stood there powerless to stop it.

He had been looking forward to ruling the
Empire for the material benefits it would bring him, the wine,
food, coaches and lands, and of course all the women who would be
lining up for his favor, hoping to become the new Honchessa. But
now he was seeing a better reason to be in charge: so that men like
Brutus would not be.

Wearily, he forced himself to rise and
trudge back uphill to the trees.

The ducks were roasting on sticks over the
coals of the fire when he got there. Brutus was rolling a
cigarette, looking as if he were the kind of guy who could kill a
family before breakfast and sleep soundly at night. How can I take
much more of this, without calling him out in front of his men? He
was sure that the man would do his best to keep his own men alive.
But maybe Brutus wanted a confrontation, wanted it all nice and
legal so he could kill Jeffrey and claim the justification of
self-defense. It might be difficult for the Honcho to do anything
about it if his own son had started the fight that led to his
unfortunate demise. He'd have his suspicions, but a legal duel in
front of witnesses? He'd look weak if he did nothing and unjust if
he did anything.

And with the Heir gone, who would be next in
line for the throne? Might it not be his most senior Commander?
Suddenly Jeffrey was recalled the words of Cardinal Esperanza:
things change
.

None of them noticed the stranger until he
was on the edge of the clearing.

“Good morning, gentlemen. Are you enjoying
Raul's ducks?”

Jeffrey jerked his head up,m as startled as
the rest of them. The man was not tall, and he was old, in clothes
as gray as his beard. He walked with a staff that was a good two
feet taller than him.

Brutus stood and flicked his cigarette into
the fire. “Maybe we are,” he said.

The old man regarded him. “I wasn't aware
Raul had friends over the border in Texas,” he said. He glanced at
the men, sitting around the fire in their uniforms. “But I suppose
one can't have too many friends these days, after what happened to
the Ferreros down the road. I couldn't help noticing the smoke.
Looks like their farm burned down. Would you happen to know
anything about that?”

Brutus smiled. It was not a pretty sight. “I
might,” he said, “but what business is it of yours?”

You're a spider on the lake, old man,
thought Jeffrey. If I were you I wouldn't make waves or draw
attention to yourself. The fish are watching you.

The old man didn't seem to hear the threat
in Brutus's voice. “Well, now,” he said. “Gus Ferrero and his folks
are citizens of Rado.” His eyes narrowed. “Or were. So am I, and I
must admit I'm fast becoming a
concerned
citizen. If their
bodies are in that fire, as I suspect, then I'm afraid you, sir,
might be in serious trouble.”

Brutus laughed at that and picked up his
crossbow. “You're the one in trouble, old man, if you're not gone
in five seconds. Beat it while I'm still amused.”

“
I'm
not
amused,” said the stranger.

Things began happening all at once.

The old man had been standing there with his
left hand grasping his staff. He turned to his left as the bolt
from Brutus's crossbow flashed past him, reached up with his right
hand, and whipped the staff around in a circle to his right,
felling the man nearest him who was still in the process of
standing up. Then he whipped it back to the left, knocking another
man off his feet, jammed one end of the staff into the fire then
pulled the fire end out and behind him, aiming the other end at
Brutus, who was reloading. A jet of ashes and coals erupted from
the staff and flew at the commander, who cursed and stumbled back,
dropping the crossbow. Then the stranger pulled the business end up
toward him, whipping the back up to catch a third man across the
neck.

“Get that asshole!” Brutus snarled, batting
at his burning uniform.

Back the staff went into the fire as the
fellow reloaded it for another blazing volley at the commander,
keeping him off-balance and unable to retrieve his crossbow. Then
the staff whipped around and felled two more men in sickening thuds
that hurt Jeffrey to even hear. The man vaulted over the fire,
using his staff for leverage and simultaneously loading it yet
again with coals and ash, then swung it at Brutus again.

To his credit, Brutus managed to duck the
first swing. But the staff reversed and cracked him alongside his
head on the back swing, then belched fire at the man to Brutus's
left, who yelped and backpedaled. Brutus fell heavily to the ground
and lay there groaning while the stranger finished off two more
men, leaving only himself and Jeffrey still standing.

The man jammed the base of his staff in the
fire again and pointed the business end at Jeffrey. “Unless you're
stupid too,” he said, “I'd advise you to get some rope from their
saddlebags and tie these men up. Might be a while before the
Governor's men arrive.”

Aria scooted backwards down the ventilation
duct. The conversation she'd just heard was still echoing in her
ears.

“We have a bit of a situation,” Xander had
said. “I managed to capture the scouting party. In a couple of
hours they should be be here.”

“How did you get back before them?” the
Governor asked.

“I have my little ways,” said Xander. “But
we still have a problem. Before I encountered them, they burned Gus
Ferrero's farm and killed his family. There was probably rape
involved.” He paused. “By the time I arrived, the farmhouse was on
fire, and beginning to collapse. So they was no opportunity to
examine the remains to ascertain the particulars. None of the
family survived, so the only witnesses are the soldiers
themselves.”

“I see,” said the Governor. Her tone was not
pleasant. “So what then is the problem?”

“Their officer is one of the Honcho's senior
commanders,” said Xander. “A large and dangerous man. I don't see
how he could be innocent, given that he was in charge. He claims to
have been fired upon, but we both know he probably provoked that by
killing farm animals or preparing to fire the fields.. It is
possible, however, that not all of them men agreed with his orders,
but felt powerless to stop what was done.”