"I was just stupid, mule headed," answered Rustam. "It signifies nothing."
Abdul Rahman, who had been a junior drill instructor when Rustam had first been gathered to the janissaries, barely suppressed a snort. "You were the most mule headed, if not the most stupid. As you are among the most faithful now, if not the most clever. I think we'll give this boy the same chance I gave you."
Rocking his head from side to side, making the crescent decoration on his neck swing, Rustam reluctantly and doubtfully agreed. "Oh, all right. Have it your own way. And I suppose it isn't as if we had a better candidate."
"No, and with the American Empire almost done tidying up their perimeter, I have no doubt it will be our turn soon enough, certainly within the lifetime of the boys."
"Is the ordu scheduled to move to the Atlantic Wall when the boys are ready in six years?"
"I don't know," Abdul Rahman answered. "And who really plans anyway? Who even can plan. We'll go wherever the will of the Almighty sends us, east or west or south."
"South? Greeks? Serbs? I hate the Greeks and Serbs," Rustam said with a noticeable shudder. He'd been on the Balkans Front for some years and found too many comrades staked out, castrated and with their eyes gouged out. War was endemic around the borders of the Dar al Islam and the Dar al Harb, the House of Submission and the House of War. But in the Balkans it wasn't just endemic, it was virulent.
"Not a lot of quarter given or received with either of them," Abdul Rahman agreed, a little sadly. "Not a lot of quarter given or received by anybody anymore."
Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 13 Rajab, 1531 AH
(4 July, 2107)
There was little in the way of fun and games anymore, not with Besma living in terror of the beatings al Khalifa would administer to Petra for the slightest failings of either of them. It was all Besma could do to keep her promise to Hans to teach Petra to read. And she couldn't let her stepmother see that, either, lest she decide that was a sufficient excuse to beat Petra again.
There was something deeply sick, Besma thought, about the look on al Khalifa's face when she took her whip or a switch or a belt to Petra's back and rear. She was enjoying it, yes, that much was clear. But there was something more, too, something Besma didn't understand and perhaps didn't want to. She found the slack lips, the glassy eyes, and the heavy breathing sufficiently frightening in themselves without delving into whatever thoughts and feelings lay behind those external symptoms.
"School will start for me soon," Besma announced, as she and Petra practiced Petra's reading by a flashlight hidden under the covers of Besma's bed. "I'll be gone most of every day. I'm frightened of leaving you alone with al Khalifa."
Petra didn't say anything but began to chew her lip nervously. "Please don't," she begged. "I'll do anything . . . carry your books for you . . . anything. But that woman will hurt me every day; I know she will."
"I know. I'm terrified of it, too. But I don't know what to do about it."
Petra began to rock and softly to cry. "I'm just a poor slave girl," she whimpered. "Why does she hate me?"
Besma shook her head. "I don't even think you exist for her," she said. "It's me the bitch hates. She'd much rather have me stretched over the table with my skirt up, but she doesn't dare."
"Your father's a good man," Petra said, still crying. "Can't he help? He helped me before."
"My father is a good man," Besma agreed, putting one arm around Petra and using the hand on the other to gather the slave girl's head into her shoulder. She rested her own cheek on the top of Petra's head. "But he is also a pious one and the law gives the management of the household to the woman. He would never interfere. Oh, he might beat al Khalifa himself if she ever gave him cause, but she never does. If he calls for her she will come even if she's in the kitchen making bread. And she lets him plow her as he will; I've heard them."
"Plow her?"
"I'll explain when you're older. Now stop crying and get back to your reading."
Mindanao, Philippine Islands, 4 July, 2107
The Philippine Scout, in this case a genuine tracker and not a mere infantryman, read the signs by the charred corpse. The scout—he went by Aguinaldo—was perhaps forty, though the years, the sun and the rain had aged him beyond those years. He had probably been an Imperial retainer since youth. His English was, in any case, quite good though he still had some of his native accent.
Some of what there was to see was obvious: the single bullets in the power packs that had rendered two suits helpless, the scraps of armor chiseled apart . . . the tripod under which one soldier had apparently been roasted with his belly down towards the coals.