Gawain, page 8
A double handful of trucks waited below her, parked in a loose double line facing southwest and almost pointed directly at her. Except that none of the men were looking this way.
Thirty men, give or take. They were moving around in something of a mob, and she was still some distance away. Too far to pick up any sound, with the breeze blowing across left to right, so she had to follow the gestures and body language of the men.
All of them were men. Few wore any face coverings and beards were everywhere.
Two seemed to be arguing. Not, not that powerful. Discussing?
The others had not crystallized into camps yet, but lingered around them in a loose circle.
Ah.
Challenge.
Dehkordi was dead. The mob had been broken and everyone here presumed that she had captured and likely executed everyone back at that lake bed, because they did not understand honor.
These men followed no rules of warfare save strength.
Gawain had been the strongest of Arthur’s knights.
The discussion was growing animated now. Hands pointed hither and yon. Profanities were probably bouncing off foreheads.
Yasmin centered a targeting laser at the closest truck. Eight hundred meters and change. They had picked a bad spot to laager, down in something of a deep wadi that allowed dangerous predators to climb out on a limb overhead and spy on them.
Perhaps pounce on them if she chose.
The body language of the discussion got more rigid. Almost ritualistic.
Yasmin wracked her brains for a moment and then realized that they had fallen back on the most ancient of solutions.
The two strongest would duel for leadership.
She wondered if it would be pistols or knives.
These men had an atavistic look to them, even as they carried rifles and drove modern trucks.
Sure enough, the two at the center divested themselves of firearms now as the others began to mark out a fighting arena more oval than round, but obvious enough.
Each of the contenders stripped their outer robes as well. Risky, as they heat was still excessive right now, but it would begin to cool quickly. Others brought them jerry cans and the two men drank water for hydration now.
As entertainment value, there was not much greater than watching two men enter a space where only one would be allowed to survive. But she wasn’t here to watch them elect a replacement to Dehkordi and continue their rampage across the wastelands. That would solve nothing.
Yasmin needed to end these men. Permanently.
All eyes were on the battlefield now, as the two contenders stepped in, standing at the far ends of that oval with knives Yasmin rated as perhaps sixty centimeters long. More than a man needed as a tool.
Less than a samurai would bear into battle.
Bushi.
Ronin.
Fools.
Yasmin slipped over the ridge quickly and began to walk, trusting that the low sun on the horizon would obscure her. It seemed to work, as nobody suddenly turned her direction, pointing at her and setting off a mad dash for the guns.
Two dazzlers. Two autocannon. If the former weren’t powered up right now, she could probably destroy them before anyone could bring them on line. Autocannon simply required a hand on a trigger, so she would kill those gunners first.
Gawain picked up sound now. Men yelling curses and threats.
The audience, egging the two champions on, oblivious to the death stalking them as the sun continued to slide towards the sand. If she was only walking, an American Excalibur did not make much noise. It was the effort of slamming steel boots into the ground and digging in with toes while running that made a racket.
Six hundred meters.
Two men circled one another like expert knife fighters. Yasmin studied them a little, but mostly kept her eyes on the crowd, waiting for the moment she needed to break into a run so she could finish the four dangerous trucks.
The two men were well matched, which made sense. Probably both lieutenants of Dehkordi before she had killed the man. Both men that the others respected and would follow, but neither willing to just cede to the other.
Five hundred meters.
The noise was growing. Ardashir had spoken of the difference between a mere crowd and that moment when it transformed into a mob. The witnesses to death over there had become mob-like, possessed of a single nervous system and dozens of eyes, all feasting on the display of martial prowess.
Four hundred meters.
Yasmin had not bothered tracking the two fighters as individuals, as they were both of a height and build that spoke of greater caloric intake than average. Most people in the Sayyida’s camp had been slender, verging on scrawny, but that was the woman making sure that everyone had enough food, even when it got tight.
Adding the survivors would stretch things even more. She feared that someone might have to try their luck with fifty-year-old American MREs.
At least Behrooz had excess flour stored against not finding anyone on his journey. If they stayed for a time, perhaps he would donate some to the cause.
As King, she would not order it. Ardashir had always reminded her that a leader did not give orders that an underling might not obey, lest the chain of trust be irreparably broken.
You convinced your followers that a course of action was the best one, but did not whip them into taking it.
Three hundred meters.
Still, no one saw her. Gawain was down on the flat now, where he might be mistaken as a man walking closer until you saw something to give his seven meters height scale.
The two men slashed at one another, but neither was tired enough to make a mistake. She admired their form, rough and crude as it was. These men knew how to brawl, but had never sat seiza on a dojo floor under Ardashir Shir-Del’s watchful and judging eyes.
They had no technique. That could be good, as well as bad.
Two hundred meters.
Why had she not opened fire, on the group or the vehicles? Or simply charged them?
Yasmin was close enough that she could reach the trucks before the men could, removed a bit for their battle. Their entertainment.
She could start destroying autocannon from here. Or be atop the dazzlers and shatter them with her own dazzler or even a closed fist if she chose.
The battle was drawing to a climax now. Both men were rolling on the sand, changing dominance position as each struggled to keep the other’s knife from ending it. The mob around them had gone mad for blood, screaming incoherently with lust and joy.
One hundred meters.
Someone died. Even with her height advantage, Yasmin could only tell that victory was achieved by the way the sound died off and heads came upright. The mob died and was replaced by a group of thirty-some men, moving to congratulate their new leader. Possibly to swear fealty.
Or whatever ronin did when the bandits proclaimed a new chief.
She kept walking, amazed at how amateur these men had become, not even bothering to post a single guard.
Heads turned her direction now as the ominous echo of her footsteps reached them. Eyes got huge. Mouths fell open in shock that a terrible, iron djinn had just appeared in their midst.
Again.
A few made to move.
Yasmin put a dazzler shot into the ground about midway between the men and their trucks, causing an eruption of glassy soil and a dull whump of sound she felt even through Gawain’s toes.
She kept walking.
They might even think to swarm her like dogs on a bear, but it would be more like guppies attacking a shark if they did. Perhaps they understood that, because every man over there froze, save one.
The newly crowned bandit chief took a few steps away from the men he had just claimed and stared at her.
“You escaped me yesterday,” Yasmin announced on the outside speakers. “And the day before. You will not escape me now.”
Dead silence. Perhaps the silence of death, as Gawain had stopped walking now and only the wind and the racing patter of men’s hearts filled the air.
“What do you want?” the man demanded. “Why haven’t you already killed us? Or destroyed the trucks, which would be the same thing?”
Yasmin guessed him to be in his early forties, from the tone of his voice and the way his beard was starting to show gray on the chin. Old for a bandit. Smart enough to understand that just by killing the trucks she could kill the men who rode them.
And why hadn’t she killed them all?
Yasmin had set out this morning to end the threat to the Sayyida and all the others in this region by hunting down and destroying the ronin bandits responsible. Just a few shots right now and they would be helpless. A few more and they would feed any vultures that survived.
Why hadn’t she killed them?
“Can you be saved?” Yasmin asked now.
Outside, they would not hear the voice of a young woman. She had tweaked the systems some as she approached. The Japanese systems would modulate everything she said into a robotic sort of voice for that reason. All of the machines sounded alike to someone standing nearby, since they had radios that let them chatter on secured lines.
“Why would we want you to?” the man snarled. “We are the kings of this desert.”
“Not anymore,” Yasmin replied simply. “I am your king now. The ones that surrendered to me yesterday are already learning a new life that doesn’t involve marauding on people. Those who cannot will join Dehkordi in hell.”
That created a stir among the followers, because the rest were merely followers. Panicked dogs that had fled when the battle turned against them. Only a few were leaders. One was dead on the sands behind this group. Another stood before them like a worthwhile foe. As though mere flesh would stop a 3” dazzler at this range.
“What, you would challenge me for leadership?” the man laughed.
“Are any of you worth saving when I win?” Yasmin asked coldly.
The leader sobered quickly. The followers stirred uncomfortably.
They had caught her words. When she won. When this man was dead at her feet. That she would be the only one standing. The others realized it.
They were all followers, but at the same time, she could see them turning into soldiers. Violence and hardship were necessary things for a soldier to endure, and these men had experience at it.
If she broke them now, perhaps the Sayyida could put them to use.
As long as that woman didn’t get the notion to begin conquering her own neighbors and becoming a threat to the Persia Yasmin intended to build.
“I cannot fight a machine,” the leader yelled at her.
“Have you any honor?” Yasmin countered. “I will meet you in the circle and contest this thing with you, if the rest of you will abide. If you have any honor remaining.”
More stirring. Yes, these men saw themselves as warriors. Fallen samurai, perhaps, rather than mere bandits. Perhaps Dehkordi had fired them with dreams of conquest. They were the grand and ancient Persian Deghans in their own minds, inheritors of an victorious martial tradition that had threatened Imperial Rome at its peak.
The stirring became a rumbling, and the leader over there felt his control of those men slip.
Honor, after all, cut with both blades. Katana had only the leading edge, but Excalibur had been a longsword edged on both sides and pointed to kill. Ardashir had taught her to fight with every kind of blade, from shiv to longsword, tulwar, yagathan, or katana.
“We will meet in the circle,” the leader said sourly now. “Remove Karsh. He will have a companion when we bury him.”
Yasmin nodded. Burial rights were a useful way to bind a small community. That they practiced them, even simple things as simple as a cairn, spoke of these ronin as perhaps having a spark of value left.
In her mind, she could hear Ardashir’s disdain.
He would have just shattered all the trucks now and left these men to perish in the desert, considering it an improvement to the species. Yasmin had far greater needs.
Too many people had fled north when they still could. None had returned later that she was aware of, so who had won those wars for Central Asia and the Kazhak steppes was as yet unknown.
She would deal with them on some distant tomorrow, after Persia was reborn.
The group of men moved back to the fighting circle and removed the one apparently known as Karsh, placing his corpse to one side with some level of dignity.
Yasmin wondered if this was the stupidest possible thing she could do right now, but all things engendered risk. They might kill her. They might bow to her.
There were not enough survivors on the Iranian plateau to rebuild all of civilization if she killed everyone she encountered.
Insh’Allah.
Yasmin locked Gawain and set up a location ping that ibn Rustah would be able to detect. She opened the clamshell rear and left her rifle, taking only a long knife and her canteen with her as she climbed down Gawain’s back and moved to face these men.
Like at home, Yasmin was as tall as most of these men. Leaner, without some of the muscles, but Ardashir had trained her that muscles tended to slow people down, not speed them up.
They had rifles, knives, and mass.
All she had was training.
And certainty that this was a righteous cause. She would be king.
It was just necessary to survive this stupidity she had chosen for herself.
The group was pulled back, providing her an alley into the fighting ring. The leader was on her right, at the far end of the oval, so she moved left. They faced each other for a long moment before she took a long drink of her cold tea and then set the canteen down.
Yasmin had no intention of fight barechested, as the other man did, but she slipped from her outer robes now piling them to one side and leaving her in only a chemise and a T-shirt.
Yelps of surprise greeted her. A hand descended on her shoulder.
“You’re a girl,” one of them started to say, but the echo of girl came as he landed on his face in the dirt.
A second man moved to grab her and she punched him as hard as she could in the center of his stomach, folding him in two rather than aiming a little higher or lower and just killing the man outright.
She rose again, scowling at the shocked faces around her.
“I am your king,” she announced in a voice like Death herself come to claim all their souls.
Followers, they blinked. A few even nodded.
None moved to touch her now. The next one would be dead before he hit sand.
Yasmin turned to the man who was only currently the leader of his band.
“You may kneel to me now and I will spare you,” she said. “Otherwise, you will be buried with Karsh when I am done.”
She turned to the crowd and saw it threatening to turn back into a mob.
“YOU WILL ALL KNEEL!” Her voice rang out across the desert harshly, loud enough that nearby rock faces echoed it back. “NOW!”
Two were already down, just trying to breathe. Another, the closest if she moved to killing all of them, dropped now. Not seiza, but close enough to satisfy her.
Yasmin studied the man beyond that as if sizing him up for the blade. He staggered a half step backwards and joined the first down.
Others joined them, until she and the leader were the only two still on their feet.
Mobs do not form when people are orderly and self-conscious, Ardashir chuckled in her mind, another in a long line of lessons about more than just how to move on a dojo floor. They must taste chaos first. Taste fire and blood.
Kneeling, they had no chaos. Browbeaten, they could not catch fire.
Now, she just had to win.
If she lost, they would do terrible things to her body before killing her, but Gawain would remain proof against them until Behrooz found him.
But she needed these men, for reasons that were still hazy even in her own mind.
Yasmin studied the knife the man held. Noted the professional grip, low and to one side, with the blade horizontal to slide between ribs or slash side to side. Forefinger and thumb, with the other three merely guiding it as the man fought, his left hand open and flexing to grab any advantage.
Her blade was not as long, but she had left her training sword aboard Gawain. These men were not ready to encounter kendo. Or even bushido. Aikido had been a veritable surprise to the first two.
They locked eyes and she could see the man reassessing things.
“You are young,” he said in a voice she could only hear because the others had fallen entirely silent. “Would you make a good mate for me?”
“No,” Yasmin replied. “There is another man far better than you, but I can find you a good woman, if you chose to follow me.”
“Follow you?” he said with disdain. “You are a child.”
“I will be the King of Persia,” Yasmin announced, like telling them the time. “This is your last chance to serve me. Otherwise, I will kill you and take your band with me when I leave.”
Never watch the face of a competent killer. He can lie with his eyes.
Ardashir had pounded that into her time and again. Hands lie as well, but feet and hearts do not lie on the dojo floor or the battle ground.
The man advanced, shuffling rapidly on flat feet, but keeping his weight centered.
She considered matching the man, mimicking his style and defeating him that way, but she had already cowed the others, so she did not need to make this a theatrical performance.
She moved to her left, into his blade side. Most people did not train for that sort of thing, relying, like even Gawain, on a shield to protect their left as they circled one another counter-clockwise.
Ardashir fought with both hands equally, so Yasmin did as well.
His shuffle got awkward as he had to pivot his left foot against the grain he had been expecting.
Still, trained killer. Competent, as proven by the body of Karsh growing cool nearby.
She ignored his eyes and tried to lie with her own, but his gaze seemed locked on her chest. Whether her small breasts distracted the man or he was just studying her sternum as she was doing to him, Yasmin could not say. Instead, she shuffled forward just enough to entice a slash.
