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genetics have to check out."
"Get on with it, then," Dagor growled, though the Breedmaster
outranked him, Scowling, Grima stalked out of the delivery room. Dagor
shouted for a servant to see to the twins.
Back in the laboratory where only he was allowed to go, Grima frowned as he
ran his checks. The babies' blood clotted Soldier-fast, that was certain. The
rest of his test had to be more indirect. Some -
too many - reagents were not changing color as they should when they found
Soldier genes.
But almost all his reagents were old. For some, his predecessors had found
equivalents brewed from
Haven's' plant life. For most, there were none. And so he made do with tiny
driblets of the chemicals the last shipment from the Citadel had brought,
hoping the driblets were enough to react to genes whose presence they were
suppose to mark, hoping also that the complex chemicals had not decayed too
much over the decades.
His frown deepened. If the reagents told the truth - if - these two twins were
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marginal Soldiers at best.
He suspected some of the chemicals were too far gone to be useful
any more, but what were his suspicions against the hard evidence of the
test tubes?
"Marginal, marginal, marginal," he said under his breath. That meant the
decision lay in his hands. He enjoyed the strength accruing to him from this
power of life and death, but with power went risks. Chief
Assault Leader Dagor, for instance, was up and coming, and would not take
kindly to having two of his children ordered set out for stobor.
On the other hand, Brigade Leader Azog, Warlord of Angband Base, had been
looking askance at the rising young Chief Assault Leader lately. Subordinates
with too much ambition could be dangerous;
every senior officer knew that.
Grima pondered, rubbing his chin. Breedmasters, by the nature of things, had
to be conservative;
conserving genes was their job. Given the choice between displeasing Dagor and
displeasing Brigade
Leader Azog, Grima hesitated only a moment.
"There is no choice," he told the hard-faced Chief Assault Leader a few
minutes later. There was a choice, he knew, but he had already made it. He
spoke so not to salve his own conscience but Dagor's anger. "The newborns do
not meet our standards. They must be exposed."
Badri wept helplessly. Dagor soothed her as best he could, which was none too
well: "They have only cattle genes in them. They could never serve the Base,
serve the Race, as they must."
"They are my children!" Badri screamed. She clawed at his face. He
seized her wrist with the thoughtless, automatic speed his enhanced
reflexes gave him. She wept louder, turned her nails against her own cheeks.
Dagor offered the only promise he could: "Maybe some woman of the cattle will
take them in."
Badri stared, hope wild in her eyes. Better than she, Dagor knew how forlorn
it was. Stobor, cliff lions, and cold claimed exposed babies, not
cattle women. But every Base's exposure ground was unpatrolled, to give
each mother the chance to think her infant might be the lucky one, rescued by
people instead of death.
Dagor had once thought that weakness: simple euthanasia of unacceptable
infants would have been quicker and cleaner. Now he saw for himself the wisdom
of the scheme. Even Soldiers had to be able to live at peace with their women.
Second cycle night at Angband Base: black and freezing, with neither Byers'
Sun nor Cat's Eye in the sky for light and warmth. Two tiny voices cried in
the frigid darkness. Both were weaker than they had
been an hour before. Soon both would be still forever, unless . . .
Kisirja came stumbling, drawn by the sound, but not drawn enough to
dare show a torch. Aye, Saurons were not known to shoot at skulkers on the
exposure ground, but no one on Haven ever felt easy putting Saurons and mercy
in the same thought.
Kisirja stooped by the abandoned infants, scooped one up in firewalker-fur
gloves, pressed it against her. Warmth and softness made the baby quiet. "Mine
now," Kisirja crooned. "Mine." She held it inside her sheepskin coat.
Then she reached for the second baby. Her gloved hand touched another glove.
She gasped and jerked backwards, snatching for the knife that hung from her
belt. The sudden motion made the baby she had taken squall in protest. "Who
are you?" she whispered harshly to the other shape in the blackness.
"What do you want?"
A ghost of a chuckle answered her, and a woman's voice using her own
Turkic speech, though strangely accented: "The same as you, child of the
steppe. The Bandari hate the Saurons no less than you, but we need their genes
if we ever hope to meet them on equal terms. And there are two babes here, so
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we need not even fight. Go in peace."
"Allah and the spirits grant you the same, haBandari," Kisirja said. She knew
nothing but relief that they could share. The Bandari were farmers, a couple
of valleys over, but they were also warriors. She hadn't heard this one
approach, while she'd made enough noise on the exposure ground to
wake a gorged tamerlane.
The other baby quieted as the Bandari woman picked it up. Somewhere not
far away, a stobor started yowling, then another and another, until a whole
pack was at cry. Kisirja hurried toward her muskylope, which was tethered
to a Finnegan's fig out of sight of Angband Base.
If the Bandari woman had a mount, it was nowhere near Kisirja's. She untied
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