"Oh, doubledog f.u.c.k me!"

"It was onlyone goat! I was thirteen! I was drunk! It was a bet!" Father Ferani triggered a burst from the minigun. The helo was banking to the side over a shattered group on a hilltop. There were a few alive, though, and that couldn't be born.

"You're still a goat f.u.c.ker," Father Devlich screamed over the guitars. The helo flattened out, nearly at ground level, and began continuous fire to the front. But to the sides there were Chechens, many of them looking towards him, open mouthed in surprise at the sudden attack from the rear. He just aimed the gun and held down the trigger, watching rows of the fedayeen tumble away from the laser-like fire. "What is thatd.a.m.nedmusic ?"

"Yeah, well I reallydid f.u.c.k your mother!" Father Ferani shouted. The group in front of him was looking at him stunned but he didn't care. f.u.c.king Islamic goat... Send them all to the All Father. "And she screamed louder than that f.u.c.king singer!"

"At least I've never f.u.c.ked a goat!" Devlich shouted back, finding another cl.u.s.ter to scythe down. "You know, I've always wanted to ask..." He fired again, cutting down a fedayeen who was screaming down the hill, dropping his weapon and stripping off his ammo vest. "And it's not like she can understand us.

So, just between a couple of Elders... What was it like?"

"You know," Ferani shouted, sweeping the gun across a cl.u.s.ter of fedayeen trying to escape over the side of the gulley, "I don't honestly remember."

"You think you'd remember something like f.u.c.king a goat," Father Devlich said as the bird banked up and over. This timehe was the one still looking at the battlefield and he found another group, this one trying to take cover and keep fighting. They weren't going to fight any more. Not churned to red b.u.t.ter.

"It was along time ago," Father Ferani said. He was looking at sky, gripping the spades of the gun and hanging nearly straight down. The sun was already behind the mountains and the slight clouds that had come in in the afternoon caught the light in waterfalls of pink. "And I hadn't had s.e.x before."

"You popped your cherry on agoat ?" They were banking away from the battlefield, now. He hoped this stupid b.i.t.c.h wasn't going home already. He had plenty of bullets left.

"I remember its a.s.s was hairy," Father Ferani said, musingly. "I remember thinking its a.s.s was very hairy."

"It's a.s.s WAS HAIRY?" Father Devlich screamed, laughing so hard he had to stop firing. "It'sa.s.s was hairy ." He triggered the gun and waggled it back and forth, not really firing at anything; there wasn't anything worth firing at in sight. It was just that he wanted to giggle til he got that bad pain in his chest.

Oh, no, there was a group to fire at. Hey, more red f.u.c.king Chechens on the ground. "It's a.s.s was hairy."

"What can I say," Father Ferani replied. "Then Ireally popped my cherry on your mother."

"You keepsaying that," Father Devlich said, shaking his head. Good, they were headed back towards the fight. Not that there was much fight left in the Chechens.

"It was spring festival, the same year," Father Ferani said, lost in memory. Not so lost that he didn't fire at a group of the fedayeen that had cl.u.s.tered on the back side of a hill, away from the former battlefield.

They scattered, leaving three bodies on the ground. "I think she felt sorry for me that everyone was teasing me about f.u.c.king a goat."

"You areso lying," Father Devlich said. He didn't even have anything to fire at.f.u.c.k .

"Nope," Father Ferani said. "Sorry, Gregor. I really did bed Martya. It was in a bed of tigerberry bushes on a night with a crescent moon. And, Gregor, do the sums." A large group was forming up in the ravine to the side of the ridge and he fired at them, working the gatling gun across the group. Tracers came drifting up through the air towards the Hind, the first fire they'd taken. "You're..." He grunted and stopped firing.

"Youhave to be lying," Father Devlich said, furiously. Now there were some running Chechens in view.

He fired, missed, fired again. "I amnot ..." Something made him look behind him.

Father Ferani was hanging from the harness the black mechanic had had them wear. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and back. There were three large, red, holes in his back and Father Devlich could see right into the mess inside his body.

Father Devlich turned back to look out the window of the helicopter. A group of screaming fedayeen was running towards the north and he clamped down on the trigger of the gun, tumbling them to the ground. He continued to fire into the bodies, churning them to red mush, until they were out of sight.

"Oh double dog f.u.c.k me,"Adams said, running forward. Mike was on his back with about a million screaming Chechens still around him.Adams just fired up the whole area as a round from Shota dropped off to his right, blowing pieces of fedayeen all over the battlefield.

But the fedayeen didn't seem to care about the fallen Keldara. Mike's berserker charge had shaken them, the continuously firing M-60s had them wavering, the rounds from Shota were terrifying them and the tunnel of dead, not to mention the windrows to either side from the door guns, broke them.

They were turning and running back down the hill. And the Keldara, their Kildar apparently dead on the field, weren't about to letone of them survive. They gave a cry like a hundred hungry tigers and charged forward, guns firing into unprotected backs, axes sweeping down on necks and over it all the hammer of the drums...

Mike shook his head and rolled to his feet, groaning. There was no moment of "where am I?" He knew exactly where he was, still on that d.a.m.ned hill. The last few moments were pretty much a blur, but he knew right where he was, even if he couldn't remember how he got there. And there was still firing going on around him; the battle wasn't over.

No,he thought to himself,it's pretty much done.

He could see where Shota's rounds had landed, the sprawled circles of dead Chechens. He could see the windrows were the machine gun teams had pushed forward, laying down that incredible barrage the new 60s were capable of. But the part that really got him was the f.u.c.kinghole churned right up the middle, stopping... well, more or less where he was standing. He could remember that, the sight of those rounds marching towards him. He hadn't realized that Nielson had scroungedthat much firepower for the Hind. And where in the f.u.c.k had those speakers come from? The valley was still ringing with the song even as the Keldara pressed forward, harrying the Chechens from defeat into rout.

The Hind was helping in that, sweeping back and forth, breaking up any pockets of resistance and now segueing into another song, something about dragons. The combination of the firepower at the trenches, the Hind and Shota had not just broken the Chechens, it has slaughtered them. If there weren't three thousand dead on this battlefield, he'd be very surprised.

The other Hind was coming in for dust-off as the sky turned pink washed with violet. They held this battlefield, but Mike was well aware that there was one more battle to be done on this day.

He tried to push himself up and realized his right handreally hurt. Reallyreally hurt. Holding it up he saw that the skin of the palm had been stripped off and it looked as if a couple of the fingers and the thumb were dislocated. So much for usingthat hand for a while. h.e.l.l, he hurt all over, pains starting to pop up across his whole body. Then the chest decided to report. Pain. Big pain. Chest. That was bad.

He looked down at thehole in his body armor. It was smoking. Using his left hand, he undid his battle harness and armor then reached under it and pulled out the still smoldering tracer, wincing a little at the heat. Hmph. 7.62x51. Same kind the Hind had in its gatling guns. It was horribly distorted from something.

Looking around he spotted his axe. The head, anyway, which was bent in half and had ahole in it.

"Adams, call in the dogs," Mike said, keying his throat mike while still lying on his back. He stopped to get some wind. His chestreally hurt. He was pretty sure the sternum was cracked. And he could tell he was bleeding from a couple of spots. But he'd bled before and nothing seemed critical except his hand.

He'd live. "Vanner, get ahold of that armed Hind and tell them to conserve some ammunition. We've still got to get through the pa.s.s..." He reached over with his left hand and grabbed his thumb, pulling it out and popping it back into position. Then he did the same with his forefinger, middle finger and pinkie.

Right hand...call it fifty percent functional. Needed to get a bandage on it. Plug a couple of holes. Good enough.

He rolled to his left and got up on one knee, picked up a blood-covered AK, then straightened up, swaying on his feet.

Now to go kill the f.u.c.kers in the pa.s.s...

Above him, the ravens soared...

"AER KELDAR!".

Haza had fought just about everyone on earth at one point or another. He had mostly fought Americans but there were other Pashtun tribes, the Uzbeks and Turks of theNorthern Alliance . He had fought beside and against Somalis and animalist Christians in Sudan. He had fought the Israelis and the Ghurkas.

The British SAS commandoes and American Delta force. He had fought Spetznaz, Rangers and SEALs.

But if he survived this he was going to quit fightinganyone . For the trench had suddenly filled with women, big women, big blonde and brunette and red-headed women, screaming a terrible battlecry and swinging AXES for Allah's sake!

They had come in on top of the d.a.m.ned mortars. He had glimpsed one blown backwards in a spray of blood and guts, hit by one of her own rounds. More were spouting wounds from shrapnel. They didn't seem to care. They didn't seem to feel. They were wide-eyed and screaming in skirts and bright blouses, shooting AKs from their left hand and swinging those axes in their right.

They had dropped on the fedayeen before most of them had realized the mortars stopped, dropped into the trench hacking and screaming in a berserker rage that made the most Allah enraptured fedayeen look like a child having a tantrum.

They had dropped in like ravens from the sky and began hacking and shooting. Some of them had shot each other but even that did not seem to stop them.

The fedayeen had not had a chance. They were still trying to recover from being effectively and relentlessly mortared when these screaming harpies dropped on them and began slashing and hacking until the trench was a river of blood.

The axes made terrible wounds, cutting off limbs, slashing necks, crushing heads.

Haza had shot one, point blank, blocked one of the axes then felt another sink into his shoulder. The AK dropped from his nerveless hands and suddenly he was on his back with an old woman, red dripping axe in hand, looking down at him.

"You are the commander, yes?" the woman said in badly accented Arabic. "Feel glad. You are being honored."

The woman dropped to sink both knees in his abdomen and Haza tried to wrench upwards. But three wide-eyed women were pinning his arms and legs. The fourth, a little slip of a red headed girl he should have been able to toss off, had his arm in a bar-lock and was watching quite calmly out of the deepest blue eyes...

"It is said we eat our dead. Not true." The woman raised the axe and chopped downwards, splitting his sternum. Chopped again, working her way from throat downward to get through all of the big bone.

The fedayeen screamed in pain and tried to writhe away but he was effectively pinned and couldn't escape. The women holding him down knew what they were doing, acted as if they had done it...before.

"The men, they are so besotted of the Father of All," the horrible old woman said, reaching down and ripping his chest apart. "But the women, oh we women know who holds the power. Power of life, power of death, the breath of the crops and the wind in the trees." A knife came out and descended.

The last thing Haza saw was the horrible woman raising his still beating heart and dribbling his blood into her mouth.

"Ay Sibelus!" the woman shrieked, holding the heart to the sky. "Bring back the spring!"

Captain Guerrin stood up on the ridgeline as the line limped towards him. Bodies on stretchers carried by men in battle armor and women in blood-splattered smocks. Men with women, too wounded to walk, over their backs. Men carrying the bodies of dead comrades. Smoke-stained and blood-drenched. But they were all there, every dead Keldara, man and woman. Some of the men carrying multiple weapons and still helping to lug the heavy mortars.

"First Sergeant, get the stretchers," Guerrin snapped. "h.e.l.l, get the whole company. These people are going home if we have to carry them on our backs."

Epilogue.

Mike stood before the ma.s.sive dun of the Keldara, head bowed, as the light wind from the north ruffled his hair.

The entire tribe stood behind him, more than half wearing bandages. That was, the whole of the tribe that was not in the hospital inTbilisi or the much more modern and capableLandscheinHospital inGermany .

The worst casualties, those who had lost limbs or eyes, the ones with really serious damage, were inGermany undergoing reconstructive surgery. The survivors.

Those for whom no surgeon could do anything lay on the ground in front of the dun. Twenty-one bodies, the ones that were even vaguely viewable dressed in their finest clothes, weapons by their sides, axe in one hand and a bundle of mistletoe in the other. Five were covered with sheets. Including Gretchen. He'd had to look, too. G.o.dd.a.m.n him he'd had tolook !

Twenty-one bodies. Fifteen male, including Father Ferani and, f.u.c.k, Sawn. Kiril, Gretchen... Six girls, Gretchen and five more from the battle in the f.u.c.kingpa.s.s . The f.u.c.king girls of the Keldara. The f.u.c.king girls had broken them out. Broken the defenses in the pa.s.s he had chosen to avoid, to go to ground, rather than a.s.sault. He couldn't imagine ever taking another, Rite of Cardane or no. They were now,all , his troops. You didn't f.u.c.k your troops.

He'd always known the favoritism reasons against fraternization. What n.o.body ever mentioned was having yoursoul ripped out of your body when you hit the perfect storm. It counted as the two-fer from h.e.l.l when you fell in love with thefiancee of one of your troops-Rule one: do not screw the dependents of subordinates-then said fiancee got blown away by a f.u.c.king 12.7-Rule Two: do not fall in love with anyone you are in command of who is liable to get splattered all over a helicopter.

He'd lost friends before, he'd lost comrades before, he'd lostKeldara before.

But he could not face losing Gretchen. He wanted to scream. He wanted to throw himself on that broken body and howl like a mad dog. He felt as if he was going mad, that he finally understood the madness of grief of King Lear, the repeating images that his brain simply would not stop showing him.

Flashing legs and golden hair and blue eyes that haunted his dreams. He felt as if at any moment he would scream to the skies, beggingG.o.d to bring her back.

But he couldn't. All he could do was stand, as calmly as possible, and watch her be sealed away in a f.u.c.king tomb.

He wanted to lie by the side of his wife and his bride. But he couldn't. Because she wasn't, never could be. And because of the people behind him.

They were so few, now. Yes, they had broken the Chechens, broken them good and hard. The Georgian military was advancing in the Pansiki, virtually unopposed. The Russians were pressing forward from the north, catching the remaining formed Chechen groups in a pincer.

But there were a billion f.u.c.king Chechens. He'd kill every f.u.c.king one, drop smallpox on them, nuke them to f.u.c.king ashes, if he could just have one of those brave f.u.c.king girls back, if he could raise Sawn from the dead. If he could share one more beer with Father Ferani.

If he could have one more moment, just to look in her eyes, with Gretchen.

He'd kill the wholeworld for that one more moment.

Anastasia, wearing a thin blue dress far too cool for the day, stood with the girls of his harem, just behind him and to his left. Katya was among them though he wasn't sure that was quite right. He thought she probably belonged with the staff, now. He also wasn't sure what had happened to the girl during the mission but she was...changed. Oh, she still had that hard side, but he'd actually seen her donice things for the other girls in the house. n.o.body was sure the change was going to hold, but he wasn't sweating having her at his back anymore.

Most of the Fathers were behind him and to his right. Including the new "Father Ferani", a relative youngster in his early fifties. In a line behind them were the Mothers. Mother Lenka was right there with them. He wasn't sure what that boded, but he could feel it boding something.

Then the team leaders spread in an arc behind him. Yosif, his head still bandaged and one eye covered by an eye-patch. Vil with a bandage around his arm and leg. Pavel, unscratched and clearly unsure about that. Gregoriya Kulcyanov, the replacement for Sawn. Tall, slim and blonde, Mike kept wanting to call him Sawn. Did they change the name of the team? f.u.c.k. Dmitri Makanee, in place for Oleg. The best doctors in the f.u.c.king world hadn't been able to save his knee. They were promising miracles for a replacement, but the bottomline was that his top team leader was now going to be missing a leg. For Mike, it was like missing an arm. His left, maybe,Adams being his right. Last, Padrek Ferani, also apparently unscathed. But his eyes were dark. Team Padrek, the best of their technicians, had taken the worst losses of any of the teams on the mission. They were going to miss that braintrust. Badly.

Then the staff. Nielson in his Army dress blues.Adams , just about covered in bandages from the final a.s.sault, wearing Keldara camo, and the two pilots, standing side by side.

They wore their flight suits and the new patches that had mysteriously appeared in their quarters only that day.

The short one, Bathlick, wore a patch on her right breast of a flaming dragon, breathing fire down towards the ground. Banked in a tight angle, the dragon's tail was pointed forward and shooting out what looked very like a laser beam. The ground below was littered with small figures that might have been bodies might have been bunkers.

The taller,Wilson , wore a patch of a woman riding a winged horse. The woman had a wounded soldier cradled in her left arm and a sword that looked very much like a yellow light saber held above her head.

The figure was not in armor, she wore only a smoke-stained flight-suit. She was not blonde with plaited hair, but brunette, her hair streaming out from beneath a pilot's battered helmet. But it was unquestionably a Valkyrie, one whose face and figure looked very like the wearer.

The patches were, just as unquestionably, hand embroidered.

Also standing there, not quite sure of himself, was Dr. Arensky.Marina had chosen to remain inRussia but, with Mike's permission, Dr. Arensky had asked to stay in the valley. He was, besides being a microbiologist, a trained physician. He had helped, immensely, with the recovering Keldara.

Then the rest of the Keldara, the team members mingling unconcernedly with the girls who had fought in the Pa.s.s. It seemed that there was no end to the wounds. But there were a lot of hands being held, too.

Father Kulcyanov stepped forward and raised his hands.

"Father of All, the Far-Seeing, Lord of Ravens, raise these warriors, these Sons and Daughters of Tigers, these right hands of Fir, to your home. Let the Valkyr come for them and carry them across the shining bridge to the Halls..."

Mike tuned it out, looking at the f.u.c.king tombs the dead were going to be laid in. He didn't know where the rocks had come from. Maybe the Keldara kept several dozen slabs of granite around just in case their Kildar really f.u.c.ked up. The slabs had been set up in a partial circle at the base of the dun, twenty-one small chambers, flush into the base, awaiting the bodies to be placed within. Closing slabs were laid before each of the chambers, the bodies resting on them in all their finery. On the completion of the ceremony of Going the bodies would be placed in them, the chambers closed and covered in turf.

Finally, Father Kulcyanov finished the invocation and the team leaders stepped forward. Together with the Fathers, they slid the bodies into the tombs then more of the young men stepped forward, closing the chambers and beginning to cover them in earth.

The Keldara could dig like motherf.u.c.kers.

When the chambers were covered, the turf placed on them and the whole business done, the Keldara began to break up, quietly. There was no sobbing from grieving mothers but n.o.body was exactly partying. Later, maybe. Mike, personally, was planning on drowning himself in beer.