Carnifex

Camp San Lorenzo

"What is it, Alena?" Fernandez asked. "Worried for your brother and your husband?"

"I am," the girl admitted. "But that's not it. I am missing something and I don't have a clue of what."

"Maybe it's only nerves."

"No," Alena insisted. "I know nerves and I know when there's a truth staring at me from nose length away. This is the latter. Why can't I see it?"

To that Fernandez had no answer. He operated off of hard evidence, not the half mystical insights of this Pashtian witch-girl, however damnably effective those insights might sometimes be.

* * *

His father had told him to pack his rucksack—and little Hamilcar was very proud that he'd been issued the very same model the legionaries carried—and to report to Fernandez. He'd packed himself, though his father's driver had taken him to Fernandez's office in the main headquarters building. Gaining entrance was no problem; the troops were used to Ham having the run of the place.

Besides, he knew better than to ever mentiona word of what went on there, not even in the thrice weekly electronic letters his father insisted he send to his mother.

Half carrying and half dragging the rucksack behind him—"Dig your own hole; carry your own roll," his father insisted—Ham stumbled in the direction of Fernandez's voice, saying, "Maybe it's only nerves."

* * *

Alena heard a small sound, something like an oversized mouse scurrying, and looked towards it. A small boy, bowed under the weight of a rucksack bigger than he was, staggered and stumbled towards Fernandez. She started to smile and then looked again at the boy's face. She'd seen that face before . . . somewhere . . .

"Iskander, our Lord," she whispered, before dropping to her knees and then placing her face and palms to the floor.