Choosers of the Slain

Chapter Twenty

“Okay, you are officially nuts,” Adams said as Mike pulled the caique up on the rock-strewn shore of the cove.

Finding the right place for the ceremony had turned out to be the toughest job; coves along the Adriatic that were landable at all tended to have villas. As did this one, the difference being that the owners weren’t home.

Most of the Keldara were gathered on the shore. Endar had been loaded on a bier made of four different woods while the two slavers still rested in the plastic bags that, along with liberal addition of dry ice, had kept the smell down for the last week.

“First the wood,” Mike said. “You got the kerosene?”

“Of course I have the kerosene,” Adams snapped. “And this is going to be visible for miles!”

“By the time anybody gets to the boat, they’re going to be toast,” Mike replied. “Everybody checked out.”

“I even paid the bill.”

“Sawn.”

“Yes, Kildar,” the Keldara team leader said, stepping forward.

“The wood is to be loaded by Tenghiz and Padrec,” Mike said, stepping back. “Then the bodies by Slavic and his team. His weapons are to be laid by Rusudani. You will take the position of Priest of the All Father and sing him to sea.”

“Yes, Kildar,” Sawn said, nodding.

“Before we begin, I will explain,” Mike said, stepping onto the moonlit beach. All lights had been left behind in the vans along with a small security detachment composed mostly of the trainers. “The translation of the song of the wanderers shows that your tribe came, long ago, from among the ranks of seafaring warriors. It was their tradition to send their great warriors who had died in battle to sea. They would shove a specially made boat into the sea and set it afire. We’re going to drive this one out to sea and then set it on fire with Beslan, his weapons and his dead foes. I cannot bring Beslan back to the valley. This is the best choice I can think of.”

“We understand, Kildar,” Sawn replied, nodding. “It is said that even in the days of the Tsar a few of the dead each year, especially the Family seniors, would be burned on the pyre. This is a rite we accept. Thank you.”

“Like I said, best I can do,” Mike answered shrugging. “Lets get started.”

Sawn wasn’t the best singer among the Keldara, but he was pretty good. And he’d heard the words of the funeral rite, the Keldara funeral rite, enough times to be able to repeat them. Mike wasn’t sure what language they were in; it certainly wasn’t Georgian and he suspected it wasn’t Celtic like the song of the wanderers. The latter was sung each spring by the best voice in the tribe. At the last ceremony McKenzie, the former SAS NCO, had been able to partially translate it as an epic about a wandering group of fighters that had come from the far north and been captured and enslaved, then forced to defend an inhospitable fortress on the edges of the empire. The clues in the song were clear to Mike, who had wondered about some of the oddities of the Keldara and the caravanserai.

The original Keldara had been a group of Norse, and apparently Scot, warriors that had made their way down through the Mediterranean until they encountered the Byzantine Empire. Since they were clearly related to the guards of the Byzantine Emperors, the Varangian guard, they were grouped with a small team of actual Varangians and sent to guard the caravanserai, which at the time was a lucrative income generator on the Silk Road.

Since that time, with influxes of succeeding waves of invaders, their fortunes had fallen even further, leaving them as mere farmers in a lost mountain valley. But the warrior core remained and had been brought out by the training of the American and British soldiers Mike had brought in.

Now, the circle closed. The latest Keldara dead, like their forebearers of old, would be sent out to sea on a wooden boat with the bodies of his foes at his feet and his weapons piled at his head.

It was a hell of a lot better than being dumped in an unmarked grave. And since Mike intended to take the boat to damned near the horizon before lighting it off, there was little chance anyone would notice. Or, given the area, care.

Of course, they’d pulled the ammo. They were going to need it.