Carnifex

18/8/469 AC, Jebel Ansar, Pashtia

There was no warning.

One moment the air in the high Pashtun pass was calm and cool with the morning's late summer breeze. Trees, tall evergreens from forests never harvested, swayed and danced in the gathering sun. Standing atop a high rock overlooking the dusty valley the muezzin called the faithful to prayer. "Allahu Akbar; Allahu Akbar." God is great. God is great. Come to prayer. Prayer is better than sleep. God is great.

With the muezzin's call, the women stopped cooking breakfast for the holy warriors gathered in the camp and—like their menfolk—knelt, facing generally East-North-East. The warriors and children for whom those women cooked likewise abased themselves in the direction of Makkah al Jedidah. Their compassed prayer rugs showed the direction. Their heavy assault rifles and less common heavier weapons skewed those compasses, too. Yet the Beneficent, the Merciful, the Almighty would understand that a mujahad might be off a few degrees in the direction of his devotions. The thought did count for something, after all.

As the people abased themselves before their God, humbly and faithfully, smoke from hundreds of campfires passed on the breeze, carrying savory aromas to the noses of all the hungry fugitives in the camp.

It was a moment of peace before the first of the artillery shells began to lay their minefields to the south.

* * *

Even before the coming of the shells, Abdul Aziz felt no peace. He ignored the morning call to prayer as he ignored the sounds and smells of the camp, as he ignored his own murmuring stomach—slated to be full for the first time in days from the largesse stockpiled in a nearby cave against the day of need.

Abdul's eyes wandered seeking those other eyes he felt, he knew, were on himself, his comrades and their families. Damned Pashtun mercenaries. Sell their souls and their God for a little pay, the chance to loot and rape.

But the Pashtun were as they were; nothing could change them, nothing ever had. Il hamdu l'illah. To God be the praise. Said differently; what could one do?

Finally, reluctantly, Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb, turned to his neglected prayers. In them, he began to find a moment's inner peace before returning to his wife, Khalifa—even now preparing the morning meal—and their children.

The next moment, as Khalifa—prayers likewise finished—added a bit of seasoning to the hummus, peace ended. First came the freight train rattle of artillery shells inbound. These exploded, apparently harmlessly, to the north, near and around the exit from the karez. The shells made only dull bangs in comparison to their usual crescendo.

The shells were never intended to explode, per se. Instead, small charges pushed off the shells' bases, causing them to release their cargo. The cargo, small things—thirty-six per shell—and shaped like pieces of cheesecake, fell to ground but did no apparent harm.

Other shells, mixed high explosive and ICM— Improved Conventional Munitions—began to pepper the camp. The high explosive went off on or above the ground. It fragmented the thick steel walls of the shells—they had to be thick to withstand the stresses of firing and the spin imparted by rifled cannon tubes—sending hot, razor-sharp shards whizzing through the camp. Limbs were ripped off, bellies opened, bones shattered. Women and children, and even a few men, began to scream, some in fright, others in pain.

The ICM was more subtle, to the extent that blood, fire, and death can ever be subtle. They were somewhat like the other shells, the ones that had kicked off their base plates sending apparently harmless cargo down. Instead of cheesecake-slice shaped mines, however, the ICM sent little bomblets, eighty-eight per shell, to rain down on the inhabitants of the camp. Also unlike the mines, the ICM bomblets exploded on touching down, sending small fragments and bits of serrated wire to drench the area with pain and death.

At the first explosion Khalifa shrieked something incoherent. Her face was visible and, normally, it had its attractions, kindness not least among them. Her children froze at the shriek and at the look of stark terror on their mother's face. She grabbed the nearest of them, then ran a few steps and grabbed the other by one arm. Children half-carried and half-dragged, Khalifa sprinted for something, anything, that would shelter her and—more importantly—them from the blasts. Khalifa felt like she and her children were targets already, though actually the artillery was directed at possible and likely sites for the defenders to have posted men with guided anti-aircraft weapons or—unlikely but possible, given the hasty and difficult flight of the last few days—heavy machine guns capable of engaging aircraft.

Those first shells lifted after a few disconcerting volleys. In the main, they had done their work well. Half a dozen light surface to air missile launchers had been posted on likely high ground. The artillery smashed them, turning the men who carried them into bloody pulp. Likewise did one heavy machine gun—it was tripod mounted but the low tripod rendered it unsuitable for anti-aircraft work—go up in fire and smoke.

The Pashtun mercenaries were clever, skilled, and persistent. Little had escaped their notice.

The artillery was followed within seconds by the malevolent whine of a dozen assault aircraft, in two waves of six, hugging the eastern ridge as they crossed it before plunging down to spit death and flame among the denizens of the camp. Rockets, cannon and machine gun fire raked out with hundreds—and in the case of the aerial machine guns, thousands—of rounds.

If the artillery had induced fear, the aerial attack created instantaneous bedlam. People ran confused in all direction. Women screamed, children cried, and men called to the Almighty for aid. Those same men, stumbling and cursing, fumbled for weapons even as the first six aircraft began their passes, harvesting before them the broken bodies of many score.

Once over the eastern side of the camp the first six attack planes released a dozen canisters of napalm, two each, one from each wing. These tumbled down from hardpoints put on the heavily modified crop dusters. The canisters hit the ground then split, broke open, and ignited. Long tongues of fierce orange flame licked for hundreds of yards through the camp, scouring their paths free of life. The pilots aimed, insofar as they could, for groups of armed men. Still, the target area was confusing and the aircraft moved fast. Warriors died, yes, but along with them women and children twisted and shrieked and were turned to writhing human torches before being reduced to charcoal and ash.

The morning smells suddenly changed from savory to sickening as cooked human meat added its contribution to the air.

The first wave split off into two "vics" of three, one veering north, one south, to come around for another pass each from those directions. The Turbo-Finches, the modified crop dusters, could turn on a drachma.

The camp now alerted, the second wave took some fire as it made its strafe. No matter, the aircraft were armored against small arms and even had a chance against heavy machine gun fire. They were also less vulnerable to shoulder fired anti-aircraft rockets than either helicopters or high performance jets. Carrying a lethal load, they were flown by men in whose hearts hate battled for dominance with the desire to be done, to finish this, to go home. These fresh, rearing warhorses had many times proven their worth in the brutal and bitter campaign.

This the second wave demonstrated as they swooped across at a higher level than the first. Not bothering to use their machine guns, cannon or rockets, they each released an aerodynamic cylinder from underneath before giving their engines full throttle and racing away. The cylinders fell a distance then, with a pop, broke open and kicked out three smaller cylinders and a number of glowing sparklers.

The smaller cylinders burst at a predetermined height, spreading an inflammable aerosol.

* * *

The searing tongues of napalm flame heating her face, Khalifa twisted her head and body searching frantically for the sign of a refuge. The two children now in her arms screamed and cried. Like mindless animals they twisted, trying to escape her grasp. She held them all the tighter; so tight the children could feel her own heart beating frantically beneath her breast.

Which way to turn? Which way to turn? Already Khalifa could hear the steady whop-whop-whop of the helicopters fast approaching. This was the merciless enemy who hunted without either giving rest or, apparently, taking it. She did not know what they would do to her in the event she was captured. The ignorance was worse than knowledge might have been. She had to escape somehow; her and the children.

And then Khalifa heard a faint series of tiny explosions overhead. She looked upward and to the east . . .

* * *

Proximity fused, the thermobaric cylinders fell to a preset distance above the ground before splitting and then detonating. Their aerosol clouds spread outward rapidly, mixing with the air and growing to touch upon each other. In a short time, a moment, one finger of one cloud touched a sparkler.

* * *

Khalifa was not one of the lucky ones, those directly under the blast. They died quickly, having barely a chance to voice an unheard scream before the near-nuclear explosion obliterated them.

Instead, she and her children stood at the periphery. She felt her children torn from her grasp as she and they were picked up and thrown. Khalifa could not see them because the intense heat had burned away her face and eyes along with most of the skin on the front side of her body.

High pressure air pounded her internal organs and, forcing its way into her lungs, expanded and tore them.

Briefly Khalifa flew through the air on the leading edge of the blast wave, a human tracer trailing flame. A violent stop against a large rock broke her spine—a small mercy as at least the pain from her lower body went away with the break. Then again, with ruptured organs and lungs, and a body flash-burned, the mercy was small indeed.

Then the vacuum struck as the air rushed back in to fill the space it had occupied before the blast. Khalifa felt it ripping the air through her mouth. She felt her lungs loosen away from the inside of her chest. She, along with others who had survived so far, was pulled inward even faster than she had been thrown away.

* * *

Racing back to the encampment, Abdul Aziz caught sight of the first half dozen Shturmoviks—some of the mujahadin still used the term they had picked up during the Volgan occupation of two decades before— sweeping across. Uselessly and fruitlessly, he fired his rifle at them as they passed overhead. Looking desperately between the swaths of flame left in their wake, Aziz caught sight of his family, still standing safe between flaming strips.

Even as he watched helplessly, his family was blasted to ruin by the second wave.

He mouthed a soundless, "Nooo."

Then Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb turned and ran.

* * *

Above and at a distance from the perimeter of the camp's smoking ruins helicopters rotored in and landed. From their bellies they began discharging troops. Some dropped off sling loads of artillery and ammunition. Some dropped off other loads of supplies.

Among those landing troops, one helicopter was distinguished by virtue of having discharged only a few men. One of these was Carrera. His face was mostly covered against the wind and the sun. A clear area had been left open, however, revealing eyes that glowed when the angle to the rising sun was just right. Sometimes, so swore both enemies and friends, the eyes glowed on their own.

The eyes glowed now. Through them the Carrera watched calmly as the heavy mortar crews struggled to manhandle the guns out of the helicopters and into firing position. He watched for a few moments before, satisfied, he turned his attention elsewhere.

Below the hill on which he stood, some fifteen hundred meters from the camp, one of his infantry cohorts spread out to sweep across. Largely ineffective fire fell among them, bullets half spent shooting little demons of dust into the air. The advance went on regardless.

Carrera lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The magnified gaze swept across the camp where some hundreds of the enemy tried to slow down or stop his onslaught. Past them, so he saw, more hundreds of women and children—and some few spiritless men—crawled, walked and ran from the carnage.

His sweeping gaze touched upon a child of indeterminate sex, tugging at the half carbonized corpse of what was probably its mother. My children's mother was burned to death and yours warbled with glee, he thought, without any trace of emotion . . . he could not afford emotion, not now. Still, little one, I am sorry for you.

Further on, near the edge of the artillery-laid minefield, men, women and children who had sought that route for safety lay along an irregular line. It was much too far for Carrera to make out any details. His mind supplied them even so. You are not so broken as my own babies were when they were murdered.

Carrera's thoughts were interrupted by the soft padding of footsteps behind him. He recognized their source. Few walked with such near perfect quiet as his prized chief of his almost equally prized Pashtun scouts.

"Subadar Masood?" he said without turning.

"Sir!" exclaimed the senior Pashtun Scout, springing to attention near his side. A smile briefly crossed the subadar's seamed, craggy face. You, alone of all men, can hear me coming, he thought.

"The Scouts? All paths east and west?"

"Sealed tighter than a houri's hole, sir."

"Very good. I want as many prisoners as possible. Rewards are offered."

"Yes, sir. So my men have been told."

* * *

In the much colder air above the high pass breath gathered to frost a gray-shot beard. Hard they came, those puffs of air, pumped from struggling, bellowing lungs. They burst outward to form little horizontal pines before settling to and disappearing against the ubiquitous ice and snow.

Hard pumped the heart beneath the lungs, forcing warmth to freezing limbs, forcing blood to a brain straining to make sense of disaster.

Close to the ground, seeking to make himself invisible—one with the snow and the ice—the fugitive Abdul Aziz huddled. His eyes and ears quested for some route of escape, some way to survive to carry on the fight and avenge his family and his cause. Nothing looked very promising. Nothing sounded so, either.

In the cold, still air sound carried very well. The fugitive's ears caught easily the irregular sound of shots and screams. The fugitive cursed his enemies, then let fall a single tear which froze on his face before it had descended much more than an inch.

Ahead, the steady whop-whop-whop of helicopters told of escape routes being systematically cut off. Unseen, far above, the harsh drone of the Shturmoviks and the cursed infidels' gunships swept along, hunting for any who might have escaped the camp. Behind, the baying of dogs, hunting dogs with the sharpest of noses, told of other fugitives being tracked through the snow, ice and rock. From all around, at odd times, came shouts of triumph as some mercenary, apostate Pashtun Scout dragged a cowering man, woman, or child from a hiding place.

Despair crowded the fugitive's heart and mind; despair at loss, despair at ruin.

The thought of his own wife and children, now forever lost, was almost more than he could bear. "They'll pay. By the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah, I swear they will pay for this," muttered the fugitive to himself.

The pitiless ice made no answer.

* * *

Havaldar Mohammad Kamal didn't answer either; though he heard. He pointed to one of his grinning men, then to another, and made a slight finger motion in the direction from which the sound had come.

The scouts glanced at each other. A wordless plan formed between them. Carrera would pay bounties for live prisoners. They'd take this one alive if they could.

Silently the two designated scouts began to creep forward and around. The military arts their prey had learned only partially, they had grown up with.