Carnifex

6/8/469 AC, The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Lands

The truth was that the Salafis were fairly rotten soldiers, as the term "soldier" was understood over most of the globe. Hopeless marksmen, most of them, their rifles were ordinarily little more than noisemakers. Hopeless, they were too, on the battle line. A culture that values family above all things in this life cannot produce military units where nonblood-related men must generally trust in, even love, one another enough to make them risk death for their comrades. And it took a very rare leader—Mohammad had been one such; to a lesser degree Sada, back in Sumer, was another—to get them to rise above that.

On the other hand, unlike any number of military skills and values, patrolling was something that did come more or less naturally to most of the Salafis. Oh, the softly raised city boys of Kashmir and Yithrab were fairly hopeless, at first (even they could be taught, eventually, though). But the desert Bedu and the hill runners of Pashtia? They grew up with the possibility of having their little encampments raided at any time for livestock and women. They grew up, from earliest boyhood, with the idea of walking around outside their camp's perimeter at night to catch any such raid, or scouts for a raid.

Those Salafis went out every night through gaps in the wire and mines around the camp to make sure there were no unfriendly strangers waiting in the darkness. Some of them even stayed out days at a time, carefully and nervously walking the hills and valleys around the base.

Perhaps they'd grown a little slack, what with all the months and years in the Base and never a sign of the enemy nearby. But a "little slack," for a Bedu or a Pashtun securing his immediate home, wasn't really all that slack. It might have been slack enough, for example, to miss a small hide, well camouflaged, on a hillside. To miss men entering and exiting that hide? To miss men exiting that hide every night?

* * *

Sevilla was both furious and frightened. The idiot signifer was out again, having taken three men with him this time. What the young fool expected to find out there was beyond the sergeant. Briefly, he considered sending a burst message to higher to get someone to order the signifer to stay put. This seemed disloyal, though, and the Legion stressed loyalty to immediate higher authority.

The sergeant stiffened when he heard the rustle of rock below. Hands tightening on his rifle, a standard model, he flipped down his monocle and used the rifle to peer out from the hide. He relaxed again, as much as one could relax on a long range detached mission in enemy territory with an idjit for a leader, anyway, when he made out Somoza's familiar shape in the darkness.

Muttering a curse under his breath, Sevilla lifted the overhead net carefully and only enough to allow the patrol to re-enter the hide. In a whisper the signifer passed on what they had found. This was, as the sergeant expected, precisely nothing.

I'm getting too old for this shit, thought the twenty-seven year old Sevilla. Maybe it's time to go back to my home tercio, the Third Infantry. They might—probably would—stick me in the recon platoon and have me doing the same basic shit, but at least I wouldn't be out here eighty fucking miles from help. Besides, line cohort recon platoons are almost always led by centurions. Better, way better, than having my balls in a shavetail's hands.

The overhead net rustled suddenly as something hit it from above. Sevilla looked up for an instant, saw a glowing spark, and pulled his head down under his protecting hands while shouting, "Grenade!"

* * *

Grenades were fairly high tech items, pricey and of limited shelf life, to boot. There were some in the Base's deep bunkers, of course, even many. But they were rarely issued, the mujahadin preferring to make their own. One typical "grenade" consisted of a one pound block of TNT, dipped in glue and then rolled in small ball bearings, BBs, repeatedly until a decent amount of shrapnel had been built up. Into the fuse well of the TNT was placed a non-electric blasting cap with a short bit of fuse, the fuse connected to a pull igniter, and the whole thing heavily duct-taped to keep it both together and waterproof. Some of the grenades were fitted with a piece of rope tied around to allow a much longer toss. In a pinch, and much like an industrially made hand grenade, the thing could be turned into a booby trap or mine with minimal effort.

Of course, such an assembly was heavier than a grenade, a lot heavier. On the other hand, what with having many times the explosive and shrapnel it was just the thing for taking out a bunker or trench.

Or a hide.

* * *

The leader of the mujahadin patrol hadn't been certain, at first, that it even was enemy. After so long without a contact he'd begun to believe that the crusaders and their mercenaries had given up on the Base. Who could be out here, then? Probably it was only another patrol like his own. Or maybe some herders got lost. Or . . .

"No . . . it's the infidels," he whispered to his men once he caught sight of the distinctive silhouette of a Helvetian-style helmet. "Come. We'll follow."

They almost lost sight of the crusaders several times. The mujahadin were confused by the fact that the hide was nowhere one would reasonably expect an observation post to be, thus the route the infidels followed was nothing like the route they would have expected. They were persistent, however, and their persistence was rewarded when, unexpectedly, one of the enemy stood a little too high before crouching down to slither into the hillside.

The leader of the patrol had no idea how many men might have gone below. He only had five of his own with him. Best to be safe then.

Spreading his men out in a line above the hide, he took from a small bag slung around his neck one of the homemade grenades. He motioned two of his men to do likewise. Each unwound the roughly meter-long cord tied around their devices.

"All together now," the leader whispered. "Pull together, spin together, throw together. Ready . . . . pull."

There was the small sound of three spring-driven firing pins being released and the only slightly louder pops of the pins hitting the primers. All three fuses caught immediately. The men whirled their charges by the cords and released them at about the same time. They sailed through the air silently to land either in or around the spot where the crusaders had been seen to enter the earth.

All three grenadiers hurled themselves to the ground and waited for the explosions. There was only one brief cry from the enemy before the bombs went off. The five men of the mujahadin patrol began to fire as soon as the last of the home-made grenades had exploded, then charged forward still spraying the ground to their front. There was no return fire.