Carnifex

27/8/466 AC, Sharan, Pashtia

With the relative positions they were in, Terra Nova's three moons cast shadowless light. Cautiously, not least because of the lack of shadow, Noorzad the one-eyed crept forward. Another man might have been nervous. Another man's heart might have pounded. Noorzad was ice.

He was followed by seventy-seven of his men, most of them, unlike their chief, at least apprehensive. This was only a large fraction of the force Noorzad commanded. The rest of his company had stayed behind, guarding the pass through which the group would escape after completing their mission. That pass led to theoretically enemy—but, at least along the tribal lands by the border, in fact, allied—Kashmir, a state caught up in internal conflict between Salafism, more moderate versions of Islam, secular democracy and secular fascism.

In some ways, and while it certainly irked Noorzad and his followers to have only half-hearted support from Kashmir, and even that only from certain elements acting unofficially, overall the arrangement had this much going for it: the boundlessly evil infidel, the despised Federated States of Columbia and their Tauran lackeys and Balboan mercenaries, were content with Kashmir's shadowy status and never crossed over the border openly in order to avoid embarrassing their "allies."

The infiltrating guerillas of the Salafi Ikhwan—based, trained and supplied from the Kashmiri side of the border—felt no such restraint.

"Restraint," Noorzad muttered, as softly as a butterfly landing on silk. "We'll show them some restraint."

A regular army unit would probably not have had its leader on point. Sometimes, too, Noorzad felt comfortable ordering one of his platoons to lead out. In action, though, a leader of the Pashtun in war had little choice but to go first, and to leave last. There was no other way to gain and keep the respect of the men who followed him. They were, after all, Pashtun, the freest men on this world. Even the Arabs in the company, volunteers from far-off lands, were no different in that. They followed where they would, and no one could make them do otherwise.

There were a lot more Arabs, Noorzad knew, ever since the war to free their lands had gone so badly against the faithful in Sumer. Their fighters killed, their support chains betrayed; the Arabs no longer even had a decent way into Sumer, let alone a way to prosper and succeed there. So instead they came—eyes all aglow with the hope and expectation of martyrdom—to where there was still a chance, to where their brethren still fought with some success. They came to Kashmir and then to Pashtia, or sometimes to Pashtia directly.

There was a glow ahead, as if from a small fire. Noorzad stiffened, his eyes searching and his keen nose sniffing for signs of the enemy. Satisfied that the enemy were neither dangerously close nor expecting him, he continued forward to a low, rock-strewn ridge between the source of the glow and the column he led. The guerilla leader stooped lower as he closed on the ridge. A few meters from it he got to his belly and crawled forward, still as soft and silent as a kitten's breath.

It had been a fire, wonder of wonders. In similar circumstances Noorzad's men would have gone cold, eaten cold food, rather than reveal their positions like that. The Tauran troops—he could see they had Tauran vehicles in the glow from the fire—had been spoiled, it seemed, by no contact this far into Pashtia in years.

That was about to change.

Carefully, Noorzad counted his enemies. Six vehicles, all soft skinned. Thirty-eight men, near enough . . . soft hearted and weak as are all the Tauran infidels. Fools do not even keep their weapons to hand. Am I some soft woman that they should not fear me? As carefully as he had counted the enemy, he marked firing and assault positions in his mind.

Still careful, still as quiet as a cat, the guerrilla leader backed off from the ridge and, in hushed tones, issued last minute instructions to his chief subordinates.

Noorzad pointed with a finger at a tall, aesthetic-looking fighter. "Suleiman, take your RGLs"—rocket grenade launchers—"that way. There's a rock outcropping and some low bushes. They're progressivines, I think." The progressivines were one of those few species, like the tranzitree, the bolshiberry, and the septic-mouthed antania, or moonbat, that the Noahs, the unknown others who had seeded Terra Nova with life from Old Earth, had set down, possibly to interfere with the development of intelligent life on the new world.

"You can engage the whole encampment from there," Noorzad continued. "Remember, concentrate on the vehicle with the most antennae first. We don't want them calling for artillery or air support. Your signal to open fire will be when I fire. The signal that the assault is beginning is 'Allahu Akbar.'"

Suleiman nodded—he rarely spoke much—and turned to collect his seventeen men and eight RGLs. These were every one that the company owned. Noorzad waited until that part of his column was underway before laying a hand on the shoulder of his next subordinate, Malakzay. To this one, in charge of all three of the company's machine guns, he gave similar instructions, differing only in that the low ridge Noorzad had just vacated was to be their firing position.

As Malakzay and his gunners and their assistants began to creep forward as quietly as their chief had crept back, Noorzad went and picked up the remainder of his organization, the forty-four rifleman that we would lead personally. He led them back, then down into a draw that led almost to the enemy encampment. From there the men crept forward in single file, behind their leader. No sentry barred the way.

Stinking amateurs, Noorzad cursed. Hardly worth the bother of killing.

At what he judged was a distance of about one hundred and twenty meters from the edge of the encampment, Noorzad halted. There was a substantial boulder, half the height of a man, perched precariously on the lip of the draw. It was this, as much as the nearness of the enemy, which caused the guerilla to stop. From there he sent half his men left, the other half right. They, like their leader, crept on cat feet.

Noorzad himself stayed in the draw until the last of the men had gone out to form the assault line and the word, "Ready," had come whispered back. Then he, too, silently scrambled up and posted himself, crouched low, behind the boulder.

Risking a peek out, Noorzad saw that his enemy had heard and seen nothing. Just pitiful, he subvocalized. Tsk. He gave a last look left and right, just to confirm that his men really were ready. Then he drew his own rifle to his shoulder, drew a bead on a silhouette outlined by the fire and began to squeeze the trigger.

The shot came as a surprise, as most good shots do. Noorzad's surprise was as nothing though, compared to the surprise of the Taurans when eight rockets streaked from the darkness and caused three of their wheeled vehicles, including the command vehicle, to explode in flame. To this surprise was added the shock of several score, then several hundred, tracers ranging through their camp as the guerilla machine guns joined in within half a second after the first rocket.

Watching from his boulder, Noorzad saw the enemy knocked on their asses by exploding RGL rounds and sliced down by the searching machine guns. One target, in particular, drew a smile from the way it danced as two guns chopped at it from slightly different directions.

Satisfied after a minute's steady firing, and by the lack of any return fire, Noorzad stood and in a voice that carried even over machine guns and rocket launchers shouted "Allahu Akbar! Kill the infidels!"

On command his men stood up and began running forward, firing from the hip as their fathers and uncles had learned to do during the Volgan invasion and occupation of their land almost a generation before. Still there was no return fire. Indeed, as Noorzad drew closer he heard the wailing of women, infidel women he was certain, coming from the enemy camp.

His men must have heard it, too, as they slowed their fire and picked up the pace.

The camp's denizens were not soldiers. Rather, they appeared to be civilians, about two thirds men and the remainder women. Nor were they all dead. Many screamed and moaned. A few seemed to be begging for help. The pleas cut off one by one as Noorzad's followers killed the men. They seemed less eager to kill the women, though some of those were shot as well.

Malakzay arrived at the burning encampment leading his band of gunners. "What do we do with them?" he asked. "What were they?"

"Non-Governmental Organization types, I think," answered Noorzad. "Hand wringers and bleeding hearts. Kill the men; they're just infidel dogs. As to what we do with the women?" He smiled. "Fuck 'em. Then kill the ones who look like they won't make the march back. The rest we can sell back in Kashmir. Might raise enough to get a few more heavy weapons."

"But first we can fuck them?" Malakzay asked again, the eagerness in his voice palpable.

In answer, Noorzad raised his voice to carry to all his band. "As the Prophet commanded, 'Go and take a slave girl.' These women are your fields; plow them as you will."