Shadows, стр. 23
“Sergeant, leave six men with me and take the rest forward as planned.”
Although never having fought in a military unit before, Riidono had fought in plenty of life-or-death battles. Without hesitation, he named six men to join Cutter, who deployed them along both sides of the bridge, their guns trained on the fleeing citizens. It wasn’t a second too soon.
There were knots of women, tightly packed, at a distance of about thirty yards. At a cry, they all fell to the ground, revealing several men with rifles trained on Cutter’s group.
“Fire!” Cutter cried and squeezed the trigger of his Thompson. Holding the weapon firm, he put three rounds into a stocky man who was slow to aim, and knocked him backward. Holding the trigger down, he emptied the magazine into the other three militiamen as rounds from his platoon ripped into them. Screaming women scooped up crying children and fled in all directions, but no more shots came their way.
He turned around and spotted two militiamen running down the riverbank, too far away for his sub-machine gun. Two more lay in the mud near the river, one groaning and rolling in pain. That’s when he noticed one of his own men hanging half over the bridge, face down. Blood soaked the back of his face wraps. When his friends pulled him back onto the stone, Cutter saw a bullet hole over his right eye. Images of dead men flashed through his mind, Americans from his platoon and other units, Germans, French civilians; death was death, and it didn’t care who you were. Now he’d gotten another man killed.
In that moment, though, something changed inside him. Although a volunteer for the US Army, he’d never wanted to bring death to anyone. But that seemed to be his destiny, and if it was, then he’d kill, and if somebody shot him while he stood in the open, then so be that, too.
After instructing his men to join Sergeant Riidono, he descended onto the river flats and stalked toward the wounded militiaman, his boots sucking up and dropping clumps of mud. Stinging insects swarmed his face, so he pulled the covering over his nose and shaded his eyes from the glare of sunlight off the stagnant water.
The wounded man saw him coming and reached for his weapon, clawing in the pebbles and mud for a rifle too far away to reach. Blood stained the front of his robe, a shade of red brighter than the dark maroon of his face paint. Seeing he couldn’t get his rifle, the man dragged himself toward the water, leaving a smear of blood on the shore.
He got within three feet of the river when Cutter stepped on the back of his right leg, near the ankle. Standing on the joint, Cutter heard bones snap and the man screamed in pain. Using the toe of his boot, Cutter rolled the man onto his back and stuck the gun barrel against his forehead.
“Don’t kill him!” cried a voice from behind.
Craning his neck, Cutter spotted Riidono trotting toward him, leading three other men. Squinting against the sunlight, he waited while the sergeant inspected the dead men wearing the same paint. Moments later Riidono joined him.
“These are J’Stull,” he said. “Men of the satrap.”
“Do you know that because of their paint?”
Riidono nodded. The dying J’Stull—and he clearly was dying—held up his hands, pleading. But whether he was pleading for help or a quick death Cutter couldn’t say. The man tried to speak, but coughed blood after every breath, and while Cutter spoke the local language fluently, he didn’t know it well enough to make out the garbled words.
“Yes, that is their color. Do you see the two small blue dots over his left eye? That is the mark of his standing.”
“Is he important?”
“In your army he would be an officer. Not a high officer, but not a common soldier, either.”
“Like me.” Cutter pressed harder on the gun. “Ask him where they took your healer.”
“I am unsure if he knows, Lieutenant.”
“You’ll never know unless you ask, and make it snappy, this guy won’t last much longer.”
The sergeant’s eyes reflected his thoughts. Riidono didn’t ask what snappy meant, or why Cutter wanted him to interrogate the prisoner. After asking if the J’Stull soldier knew of an important woman brought captive to the city, the man surprised Riidono by answering yes, he had heard about it from a friend who went on the raid.
“They took her somewhere into the tunnels; he doesn’t know where.”
“Is he holding out on us?”
“I believe him, if that is what you mean. He knows death is near and fears condemnation of his spirit.”
“Ask him about important people who might be in the city.”
Riidono did so and had to lean close to hear the response. Coughing out the words, he sprayed the sergeant’s face with his blood, until his breath weakened too much for it to do more than bubble on his lips. The rise and fall of his chest slowed and finally stopped.
“It was difficult to understand his words, but, if I heard correctly, there are three men of importance he knows about. One he names Waornaak, who he described as an important militia leader who beats women. Another is a militia leader named Zeesar, who is also the F’ahdn’s yuzbazzi. He said Zeesar skulks about the city listening to conversations for the F’ahdn, or so he believed. The last is Yukannak, the silci for the satrap, which means he speaks for the satrap. We will know him by his elaborate gold and silver paint.”
“Why gold and silver?”
“They are hard to obtain and cost much.”
Even after the man died, Cutter continued to stare at