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Karina pulled off her helmet and dropped it to the ground. “It was too damn easy,” she whispered.
Alexander waited, saying nothing.
“When Kawalski shot that first one in the wagon,” Karina said, “then you got the one on the ground, I just went on automatic.”
Alexander patted her shoulder.
“Sarge, I’ve never killed anyone before.”
“I know.”
“How can it be so easy? These guys were no match for our guns. Why didn’t I just try to wing them instead of blowing them away?”
“Karina—”
“Where the hell are we?” Karina asked. “And what’s happening to us? I thought this was just some elaborate show until that bandit sliced the woman’s arm and real blood spurted out. Then that foot-soldier had his gut sliced open. Have we dropped into some surreal nightmare?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to us, but you reacted just as you were supposed to. All our training has been exactly for this sort of attack. You don’t have time to analyze, consider options, or aim for the knee instead of the heart. Less than three seconds passed between Kawalski’s first shot and your first kill. You are the perfect soldier, not a tenderhearted woman, at least not on the battlefield. That’s what this weird place suddenly became, a battlefield. And guess who won the battle? The best armed and the best trained fighting force in the world. If we hadn’t opened fire, those bandits would have come after us with their swords and spears after they finished off these other people.”
Karina lifted her head and wiped her cheek. “Thanks, Sarge. You’re right. The soldier in me did take over, but now I’m back, trying to sort things out.”
“Hey, Sarge,” Kawalski said on the comm. “I need help with this woman’s arm wound.”
“Coming.” Alexander stood and held out his hand to Karina.
She pulled herself up. “I’ll go.” She picked up her rifle and helmet, gave Alexander a quick hug, then ran toward the last wagon.
“I’ve never killed anyone either,” he whispered, “until today.”
“You did good, Sarge,” Private Lorelei Fusilier said on the comm.
“Shit,” Alexander said. “I always forget that damn comm is on.”
“Yeah, Sarge,” Sparks said. “You did us all some good.”
“All right, cut the chatter. We’re in a whole new ballgame now, so let’s check things out very carefully. And stay on your toes. In the heat of battle, we chose sides; now we’ll see if we picked the right one.”
Chapter Four
Karina knelt beside a foot-soldier, working on a bloody gash in his thigh. The sword had gone all the way through, but if she could clean out the wound and stanch the flow of blood, he should recover.
Lying on the ground and propped up on his elbows, the injured man watched her. The other foot-soldiers went about collecting weapons from the battlefield, and she could hear them dispatching the wounded attackers—cutting their throats or running swords through their hearts. It was barbaric, sickening, and it made her angry, but there was nothing she could do about it; so, she just tried to shut out the sounds as she worked.
She finished stitching up the wound and reached for the GelSpray liquid bandage, but before she could apply it to the wound, the man screamed as a sword came down, piercing his heart.
“You stupid son-of-a-bitch!” She jumped to her feet, shoving the foot-soldier away. “You just stabbed one of your own men.”
He stumbled backward but held onto his sword, pulling it from the man’s body. Karina looked down at the man who’d been stabbed; his mouth gaped open, working in a silent, feeble cry for help as his wide eyes stared at the sky. Then his eyes closed and his body went limp.
“I could have saved him, you ignorant fool.”
The soldier laughed and took a step toward her, his bloody sword pointing at her stomach.
“I got a bead on his forehead, Karina,” Kawalski said over the comm. “Just give me the word, and I’ll blow his brains out.”
“I got my sights on his heart,” Joaquin said.
“And I got his jugular vein,” Lorelei Fusilier said.
“No,” Karina said. “This bitch is all mine.”
“Sukal!” a woman shouted from behind Karina.
The man looked past Karina, then back at her, still with that leering grin on his face.
Karina couldn’t see who the woman was—she had to keep her eyes on his. “What happened to your teeth, Sukal?” she asked. “Someone kick them out for you?”
Sukal flourished his sword like a cobra weaving a hypnotic spell in front of its mesmerized victim.
“Unless you want to eat that sword, you better get it out of my face.”
He lunged forward. She ducked, spun around, and hit his wrist with the edge of her hand, shoving his sword aside. Sukal used the momentum of the moving sword to swing it around and bring it back toward her, aiming for her neck.
Karina dropped to the ground, rolled, and scissored his ankles. He fell hard but was quickly on his feet.
She was up, too, taking a defensive stance, ready for his next attack.
He came at her, going for her heart.
She faked to the side, drawing his sword, but switched the opposite way and landed a jab to his eye.
Sukal stumbled but stuck his sword in the dirt to steady himself. He gripped the weapon with both hands, lifted it over his head, and, bellowing like an enraged bull, ran at her.
Karina brought up her left knee and twisted sideways while thrusting her foot forward in a karate kick that landed her size-nine combat boot in his solar plexus.
Sukal doubled over, dropping the sword. He then fell to his knees, clutching his stomach as he tried to force air back into his lungs.
Karina stared at the gasping man for a moment, then looked to see who was behind her. It was the dark-haired woman they’d seen on one of the elephants. She came striding toward Karina and Sukal, obviously very angry, and stopped in front of Sukal, with her feet spread apart and fists on her hips. She spoke rapidly, gesturing toward the dead man. Karina didn’t need an interpreter to know she was chewing Sukal out for killing the wounded man.
Sukal was beginning to breathe again, but he remained on his knees, looking at the ground. He didn’t appear at all repentant; probably just waiting for her to finish yelling at him.
The woman vented her anger, then bent down, grabbed Sukal’s sword, and threw it as far as she could. She added one more insult that ended with a word that sounded like, “Kusbeyaw!” Then she smiled at Karina.
The word might have meant “idiot,” “dumbass,” or “shithead,” but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t a flattering comment.
“Hello,” Karina said.
The woman said something, and when she realized Karina didn’t understand, she touched two fingers to her lips, then to her breast, and pointed to Karina.
“It’s okay.” Karina watched Sukal slink away. “I got in a good kick on that kusbeyaw.”
The woman chuckled, then began to speak, but she was interrupted by the tall officer, the one with the scarlet cape. He was twenty yards away, and he motioned for the woman to come to him. She touched Karina’s arm, smiled, then went to the officer.
Karina gazed around the battlefield. The wagon train’s soldiers had collected all the weapons and valuables from the attackers. The women and children went about stripping the dead men’s clothing, which didn’t look like much; ragged animal hides for the most part.
“I guess, in this place, everything has some value.”
“It seems so,” Kady said. “Good job on that asshole, Sukal. I never saw anyone so surprised in my life as he was when your foot hit him in the gut.”
“Yeah, that felt good. But if I hadn’t put him down, I think that elephant girl would have. She was pissed.”
“I wonder what she said to you.”
“I think she was trying to say she was sorry for Sukal killing the guy I was working on. The wound was pretty bad, but I think he would have recovered.”
“Ballentine,” Sergeant Alexander said on the comm. “You and Kawalski stand guard on the weapons crate. I’m going to take a walk toward the back of this column to see how much longer it is.”
“Right, Sarge,” Karina said.
Sarge looked at the soldier standing next to him. “Sharakova,” he said, “fall in with me.”
“Copy.” Sharakova swung her rifle over her shoulder.
“Good work on that cretin, Ballentine,” Sarge said. “I hope you never get that mad at me.”
“Hooyah!” Kawalski said. He was echoed by several others.
Chapter Five
After Alexander and Sharakova returned from their walk of inspection, the platoon carried the weapons container into the edge of the woods, where they built two campfires and broke out the MREs.
“While we’re eating,” Alexander said, “keep your helmets on and your weapons handy. Before dark, we’ll set up a perimeter and rotate on guard duty. We’ll do it by twos all night. Now, let’s talk about what we’ve seen and heard today.”
“Who were those people?” Kady asked.
“Which ones?” Alexander asked.
“The attackers.”
“I don’t know who they were,” Autumn said, “but they were vicious.”
“And nasty,” Kady said. “With those bearskin robes, they looked like buffalo dogs.”
“Yeah,” Lori said, “buffalo dogs is about right.”
“Look at that,” Kawalski said. “These people are still going by. How many more are there, Sarge?”
“We walked for about a half-mile,” Alexander said. “Behind this group of men, there’s a huge herd of horses and cattle. Behind that comes the camp followers. There are women, children, old people, and numerous sutlers with their wagons full of wears. Behind them are a lot of ragtag people. It’s like a whole city on the move.”
“I wonder where they’re going,” Kady said.
“It seems to me,” Alexander said, “they’re going in the general direction of that big river we saw. Beyond that, I have no idea.”
“Hey,” Private Lorelei Fusilier said, holding up one of the MRE packaged meals. “Anybody got menu seven?”
“Yeah,” Ransom said. “Meatloaf.”
“You got Butter Buds?”
“Maybe. What you got to trade?”
“Green hot sauce.”
Everyone laughed.
“Good luck trading off that crap,” Karina said.
“You got menu twenty,” Kawalski said, “right, Fusilier?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you got Cherry Blueberry Cobbler.”
“No, I ate that first.”
“Here, Fusilier,” Alexander said, “take my Butter Buds. I hate those things.”
“Thanks, Sarge. You want my green hot sauce?”
“No, you can keep that. Anybody got a guess as to how many soldiers are in this army?”
“Thousands,” Joaquin said.
“I bet there’s more than ten thousand,” Kady said.
“And about thirty elephants.”
Karina had finished her food, and now she tapped away on her iPad.
“Here come the camp followers,” Kawalski said.
As the women and children walked by, many of them spoke to Alexander’s soldiers, and some of the children waved. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits, even though they’d probably been walking all day.
The soldiers of the Seventh couldn’t understand the language, but they returned the greetings.
“You know what I think?” Kawalski said.
“What?” Alexander took a bite of SPAM.
