.45 Caliber Soul
Chapter 4 – War ZoneI didn't want to be caught out in the open. Between Xianghua's bright blue silk and Mitsurugi's black lacquered armor and Talim's light clothing, we were too high-signature and too out of place not to be noticed. I was the only one in a proper camo pattern, but even my outfit was the wrong style and color. If they saw us, they'd be curious. There was no guarantee they weren't hostiles, and there was no way the five of us were going to be able to stand our ground in an open field against a significant number of mounted troops.
"Everybody down!" I shouted. "Hide under the bridge."
Nobody argued. We huddled in the streambed. Raphael frantically loaded the musket. The horses got closer . . . and closer . . . and then the sound wasn't getting any louder anymore.
I carefully poked my head up. A group of about seventy men on horseback was passing between us and the town, following a road I hadn't quite realized was there. As I watched, they slowed from a trot to a walk. I expected them to stop, but they kept going, eventually disappearing over a rise in the middle distance.
"I think it's safe now," I said. We got up out of the streambed and resumed our walk into the town. I still kept watching the ridge line, waiting for some of the horse guys to come back, but nothing appeared. "When they slowed down like that," I said to no one in particular, "I thought for sure they were going to stop."
"Merely changing pace, I should think," said Raphael.
"Yeah, but why would they do that?"
There was no answer. I looked at my companions. Raphael and Mitsurugi were staring at me like I had just said something abysmally stupid. "What?"
"You talk as though you know nothing of horses," Mitsurugi said.
"I don't have a lot of experience with them," I said. I knew that horses were big four-legged animals that ate oats and ran in the Kentucky Derby. I might have been on a pony ride once when Grandpa took me to the State Fair—but that was about it. I'd actually seen some Afghan friendlies and our own Special Forces guys coming back from mounted patrols once or twice, and I'd heard they'd executed a mounted charge up at Mazar-i-Sharif back in '01, but I wasn't in on any of those operations.
"Do you even know how to ride a horse?"
"Well, ah, actually . . . no."
"You're an officer in an army," Raphael said, "and yet you do not ride a horse?"
"No," I answered.
There was a long silence. "I find that utterly unbelievable," Raphael finally said.
Xianghua giggled. "He is a prince and has bearers to carry him in a great sedan chair." She winked at Talim. "Can you not see that from the finery of his clothing?" Even Talim cracked a smile at that. My desert-pattern BDUs were muddy and grubby and anything but princely.
"Well," said Raphael haughtily, "as everyone else here certainly knows, if you are riding a horse for a long distance, you vary his pace every league or two so as not to wear him out too quickly."
"Oh," I said, embarrassed. Here I was, feeling superior to the rest of them because I came from the most advanced time and place—yet there were things they knew that I did not.
"Well," said Xianghua, "perhaps, in the town, we can find you a pony and teach you to ride." At that, even Raphael and Mitsurugi laughed.
They continued to tease me about my horse ignorance until we got within about fifty yards of the closest house. The town had been well and truly sacked. On the buildings that weren't damaged or burned out, windows were broken, doors and shutters were hanging loose or broken in. There were piles of cloth and broken furniture in the street. Some of those piles might have been bodies—we didn't look too closely at them.
The third or fourth building we came to had been a cobbler's shop. The place had been ransacked pretty thoroughly, but there were some high shoes that looked to have been made for a large kid or a small adult. Raphael wanted to check out what looked like a bakery across the street; while he did that, the other four of us went into the cobbler's shop.
Talim was suffering along with light moccasin-like slippers that weren't really suitable for the terrain, so I took the liberty of finding her a pair of high-top shoes that came close to fitting. While I was doing that, Xianghua and Mitsurugi disappeared upstairs into what must have been the cobbler's living quarters. When they came back downstairs, Xianghua had exchanged her bright blue silk for a black overcoat and trousers. It was a man's or boy's outfit, a little big on her, and she looked like a little girl dressed up as a Pilgrim for the Thanksgiving play. Mitsurugi had found a brown homespun dress that looked like a reasonable fit for Talim, and a cloak for himself. Talim took the dress from him and disappeared into a back room to change.
I'd noticed that Mitsurugi had been sort of watching out for Talim, almost like he were her father or uncle. I wondered if he had a family of his own; if he was a parent as well as a warrior.
"Here is a cloak for you," Xianghua said, holding a dark green bundle out to me. I put it on over my camos. Mitsurugi looked a little silly with a hooded cloak over Samurai armor, but from more than fifty or so yards off, he'd seem more like just another middle European peasant. So would Xianghua. So would I—the camo pattern on my trousers would look like a solid color at a distance.
It wasn't the greatest protective coloration in the world, but it might be enough to save our lives.
Talim emerged from the back room. "Such strange clothes," she said, "but at least they are warm."
"Let's go see if Raphael has found anything," Mitsurugi said.
We stepped out into the street. Raphael was nowhere to be seen. I went over to the bakery, looking for him, but he wasn't in there, either. That made me nervous. "Raphael!" I called. Mitsurugi and Xianghua repeated the shout.
We heard a single set of hoofbeats behind us. We spun around and saw Raphael riding up to us on a dark brown horse. He reined it to a stop in the middle of the street. "Greetings," he said jauntily. "There was no food in there, or at least none fit to eat, so I decided to look a little further, when what should I see but this magnificent fellow."
"Where did he come from?" Xianghua asked.
"He's a few small flesh wounds, and this appears to be a military saddle, so my guess would be that his previous rider fell in battle nearby." Raphael got down off the horse, still holding the reins. "We are no closer to finding food, but at least not all of us will have to walk." He looked at me. "Now, Seamus, watch quietly and you might learn something." He pointed at the horse. "You see this? This is a horse. This is the front of the horse, and this is the . . . rear of the horse. In order to ride the animal, you climb on top and face in this direction. You could face the other direction, I suppose, but it would make it difficult to see where you are going, though you would at least know where you had been—"
Xianghua giggled; Mitsurugi suppressed a laugh. "Okay, okay," I said, "you've had your fun."
"I see you've been busy yourselves," Raphael said. "Miss Talim, that dress looks quite becoming on you." Talim smiled self-consciously.
"See anything interesting?" I asked. "Other than the horse, that is."
"I didn't go far," he said, "no more than fifty paces before I saw him. There seems to be no one else on the streets, and whoever sacked this town was quite thorough about it. I saw—"
"Something's coming!" Talim said.
We listened for a moment. It sounded like men marching in step. The brown horse neighed. "Let's get out of the street," I said.
We ducked into a nearby alley. About twenty or so feet down, it intersected another alley. We were able to get into a position from which we could peer around a corner and keep the street under observation.
After a few minutes, a troop of men with pikes passed down the road between the town and its church, traveling the same direction as the cavalry we'd seen earlier. There were lots of them; battalion strength, at least. They were followed by a battery of four iron cannons drawn by horse teams, and a convoy of wagons. There were civilians in some of the wagons—captives? hostages? camp followers? refugees?
When the last wagon had passed, we cautiously came out of the alley and went down the street to the edge of town. The tail end of the convoy was on the distant rise. We watched them disappear over the hill. I was standing next to Talim, a little behind the other three.
"Who are they," Mitsurugi asked, "and where are they marching?"
I heard what might have been a footstep behind me, and then a hand touched my shoulder.
I whirled around. Talim squealed in surprise and drew her weapons.
He was a balding man in his forties, with a dark, pointed beard. His clothes were all black. His hands were empty.
I heard swords being drawn behind me.
"God be praised," the man said, "you have come at last!"
. . . to be continued . . .