A Warrior's Sacrifice (23 page)

"We're here to prevent the slaughter and torture of our fellow Humans," Corwin said, matching the cold and dismissive tone of the Guard General.

She snorted, blue forked tongue tasting the air before her. "I have read your laws. I know your customs. The same rules that prevent you from showing your Benefactors homage prevents these," she gestured to the staked children behind her, "from falling under protection from unjust treatment. They are outside the Intergalactic Alliance Laws."

"What makes you think they know anything? They are just children," Corwin said.

"They traded with the enemy. They listen. They know."

"They are too young to have gone into the field with their families…"

"Do not speak lies to me, Human. I know the Quisling methodology." She turned to reenter the protective circle and called over her shoulder. "I have the backing of the IGA. Attack any of us and you will find your entire species indentured to us as servants instead of prodigal adoptees."

She paused at her line of soldiers. "Keep them back," she said and kept walking.

Corwin's jaw worked as he thought. He knew the laws. They were drilled into every citizen of the Republic. An attack on an official IGA representative constituted an act of war. His finger twitched towards the trigger.

"To sacrifice the whole of Humanity for the sake of these six does not make sense," Kai said.

Corwin growled but stowed his weapons; the others did too.

The Guard General paced before the prisoners, taloned hands clasped behind her back. She stopped before the elder of the two brothers and with a quick step crossed the distance. One hand took him by the hair, claws scraping deep gouges into his scalp. She twisted his head back, exposing his neck, and in a flash a dagger was in her hand, the edge scraping young skin.

"Where is the Choxen base?"

To his credit, he didn't cry out in surprise or fear. His younger brother, seeing the danger, cried all the louder.

Through force of will, Corwin kept himself in check, though his hands clenched in rhythm with his working jaw.

"Your lives mean nothing to me!" She gnashed her teeth in the boy's face, spittle covering one cheek. "Tell me!"

The boy made the mistake of glancing at his younger brother. It was just a momentary thing, caused not by fear of his own death but what it might mean for his younger sibling.

The Guard General's lips pulled back revealing all her hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. She let go and the boy sagged against the stake, relieved for a moment until he realized that he'd given away his secret. Horror swept across his face.

The Guard General's eyes dilated, and her head and neck swayed side to side like an Earth cobra as she found her opening. She cooed to the crying child — as best a reptile could coo — which caused the little boy to wail harder. He shied away and screamed for his brother in shrill, infant Quisling patois, "Bada! Bada! Lep! Lep!"
Brother! Brother! Help! Help!

The Guard General gently untied the infant's bindings. Turning so that she could see the reaction of the older boy, she snatched the child into the air by one small arm. His shoulder cracked, and he screamed in pain, head lolling on a weak and fatigued neck. The elder brother went white, despite his dark skin.

"Tell me what I want to know!"

Still the boy said nothing, even as his brother screamed, held aloft by an alien arm.

The Car-karniss pulled the knife from her belt, rotating it so the wicked blade flashed. "Last chance."

"Stop!" Corwin shouted. His mouth worked without his control. "Let me speak to them first!" He felt disconnected, a wraith floating above a still-warm corpse.

The Car-karniss stepped forward to bar his way, but the Guard General hissed, and they let him pass. She turned to face Corwin, the bawling infant still clutched in her clawed hand.

"You think you can make them talk? With words?" Her laugh was a clearing throat and a wheeze.

She held the child out, and Corwin scooped him into his armored arms, careful, so careful not to crush his tiny form. With a quick movement of his free hand, he popped the shoulder back into place. The infant went limp in his grasp, fainting from pain and fear and exhaustion.

Reaching up, Corwin removed his insectoid helmet and set it on the ground beside him. No two Quisling families spoke the same dialect, but it was easy to make the leap to understanding. "Creap aceelasie intotaal."
The aliens will kill you all.

The Quislings were surprised at first, unsure what to make of this obvious Republic soldier who spoke their language like a native.

"Wud de siemantatum? Siem in montaeeta," said the eldest of them, a girl.
Why should we answer? We are Grunt food anyway.

"Bay."
No.
"Sie in Humanikka combinerta, ay e."
You all will join the Republic, like I did.

They stiffened, and one of them sniffed. "Du en Badeclanger? Wud Badeclang?"
You are a 'Body Trader'? What family?

"Badeclang Shura."

They sucked in a collective breath; the Shuras were known for their ferocity among the Badeclang. "Wud du en Humanikka montaform livoni?" asked the elder brother.
Why do you reside in Republic armor?

Before Corwin could answer, one of the other children spoke up. "En tratiatori! En tratiatori in Badeclang." They all mumbled the same word, Tratiatori: —
Traitor
. A traitor to their people and their way of life, and as far as they knew, the only way of life.

Corwin felt himself shriveling in the heat of the children's scorn, witnessed his raw, emotional self retreat back behind the wall that Phae had so recently shattered. Here was a people very much like his own, yet they called him a traitor, and behind him, Maharatha that called him the same. There was no place for him to go.

"You have failed," the Guard General hissed. "Give it to me. The infant. Give it here."

Despite the stoniness that filled his heart, Corwin could not relinquish the child he held. The alien, through callousness of heart and blade, would kill him; she might waste all the orphans' lives attempting to find out something they wouldn't provide.

"No," Corwin said as he took his helmet from the ground and placed it over his head. "Give me the knife, and I'll get your answers." The voice projected from his helmet was mechanical now, a machine. Machines had no feelings. The infant bawled to fitful wakefulness, crying out from fear of the awful alien that now clutched him.

Corwin steeled himself for the task ahead.

He lifted the child by both feet, the boy wriggling his arms and legs as he shrieked. "You brought this upon yourselves." With a quick motion, Corwin drew the blade across the boy's chubby calf, the infant shrieking in response. A streak of blood, bright and vibrant despite the boy's dark skin, beaded and dripped down into his screaming face.

"Antatum. Fas," Corwin said.
Answers. Now.

The elder brother's face was white, but he stayed quiet.

Corwin slashed the infant's leg again. "Antatum."

Still they balked. This time Corwin drew the blade vertically down the leg in a ten-centimeter gash.

"Hal! Hal!" the brother cried.
Stop! Stop!

"Hal!" shouted another of the children. "Bay antatum in tratiatori."
Stop! Don't give any information to the traitor.

The brother's glare threw daggers, and the rest of the Quislings kept quiet. The boy's mouth worked until he clenched his teeth and shook his head.

Corwin raised the infant high over his head again. The scene was too much to bear: a lizard with talon and tail, snouted face with lips pulled back into a savage, snarling grin; and an armored figure, vaguely Human, with a pointed and insect-like helmet and blank visor holding a cut and bleeding child above his head, knife poised at the boy's scalp.

"E gibba E antatum," the elder brother said at last, head hanging in defeat.
I'll give you the information that you asked for.

With a hiss and a nostril flare, the Guard General commanded her troops to cut the older boy loose. One of her soldiers threw him over her shoulder and jogged away with the others.

The Quisling children, now untied, made no move to escape. They knew now that this tratiatori would kill them without a second's thought — he had carved up the most innocent of them, after all.

On a secure line, Corwin spoke to his Void. "Phae, Kai, take them back to the jail." They did as they were bidden, and if they cringed a little when he spoke their names, he didn't notice, and even if he had, he wouldn't have cared. "Chahal, help me."

The infant had grown pale from blood loss. Corwin threw the knife away and slid the infant into the crook of his left arm, careful to cradle the lolling head. He debated doing anything at all; he still had that drifting, out-of-body feeling, and knew that the infant's death would be meaningless in his current wraith-like state.

And yet…

Chahal jogged over, medigel and hypodermic gun in hand. She scanned the infant with her helmet even as she applied the medigel to the largest of his wounds.

"Heartbeat's low. Wickt, Corwin, he's lost a lot of blood. We need a transfusion, or he's going to die."

"Fine. Take him to the Inquest agents, they'll have the facilities."

Stowing her medical supplies, Chahal took the child into one arm and took Corwin by the elbow. "We're
both
going."

She pulled him onward, and he didn't fight her — couldn't even if he wanted to. She controlled his body, his mind still distant, separate, and ethereal. A gust of wind could have pushed him along.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The medical tent was a simple retractable awning pulled from the side of a square and unimpressive truck. White, aseptic cloth formed the external walls and divided the entire enclosure into a recovery ward and operating room. A knife wound victim from the previous day's capture of the city lay sprawled out on the operating room table, the attending Medic in the middle of reapplying medigel to lacerated flesh.

The Maharatha burst into the tent, bypassing several other wounded soldiers awaiting their turn with the Medic.

She was good, as any Oniwabanshu Medic had to be, and she didn't flinch despite her surprise. She responded with a glare and a frown, taking in the bleeding infant and Corwin's blood-stained armor with a glance. She went back to work.

"Ma'am," Chahal said, "we need your services…"

"What you need is to get out of my O.R."

Even Chahal bristled at her tone, but here again was that nebulous Oniwabanshu line. "Ma'am, it's an infant." Chahal's voice was cold.

"That this one took a knife to." She indicated Corwin with a thrust of her chin. "Besides, it's one of the Quislings I looked at earlier. They don't get anymore of my time or the Republic's resources. Get out."

The finality of her glare ushered them from the tent with as much speed as they'd arrived. Chahal didn't fight the dismissal, for if she needed her own healing at some point, she wanted to get it. "Stay here," she said, thrusting the unconscious child into Corwin's arms, and went back into the Medical tent.

Corwin didn't bother to look down; he didn't want to see.

Chahal returned with an arterial faucet, hollow tube, and collection bag. She took the child from Corwin again and laid him down onto the soft earth. "Take your helmet off," she said as she scrolled through the bio readings she'd taken before.

Corwin did as he was bidden, though he remained stoic, impassive, detached, even as he watched the child's breathing slow.

A pinch at his neck caused Corwin to jerk his hand up, and he clashed with Chahal's gauntleted hands. She was ready for him and pulled his hand away with augmented strength.

"Listen." She stuck her featureless visor into Corwin's stony face. "We need a blood transfusion, and you two are a match. Chill the wickt out and hold still. Got it?"

Corwin grimaced as the device Chahal had placed onto his neck came alive and
wriggled
into and through his skin until it found the artery and punched its way in. Chahal attached the tube and bag and opened the faucet wide.

The faucet monitored blood flow and oxygen levels so as not to take too much blood and starve Corwin's brain, but the instant the faucet began draining blood, he felt lightheaded.

Corwin stared at the fading child on the ground. When Chahal had collected enough blood, she closed the faucet and removed it from his neck. She took a new faucet and repeated the procedure, this time at the infant's femoral artery, and reversed the flow of blood.

Drained, Corwin slumped to a sitting position, forehead resting on his own armored hands, elbows braced against his knees.

The other two Maharatha jogged up, helmets tucked under their arms. "The kids are…" Kai glanced in Corwin's direction, "safe."

Chahal sat back on her heels and blew out a sigh. "He's going to make it. Heart rate is rising to normal; BP back up. He'll be all right." She knocked Corwin on the leg. "You hear that? He'll be fine."