The ancient fortress city of Meknes was a dead end. Syfax found the empty stage coach at a hotel in an older part of town and the driver at the hotel restaurant said, with her mouth full of her very late supper, that she had no idea where any of her passengers had gone. Syfax gave the hotel manager a long, tired look before walking into the street, mounting his rented horse, and trotting back out onto the road to Arafez.
With Meknes a mere twinkle of gaslight in the distance behind him, the major reined in his horse at the top of a hill to stare at the long dark road ahead. Clouds hid the moon, but he guessed it was past midnight. There were no other travelers, mounted or otherwise, at least none that he could see or hear. The road itself was marred by irregular shallow depressions and the deeper ruts made by wagon wheels. But he could hear no engines, no horses, and no padding feet out in the night. Only the wind in the pines and the creaking echoes of the cicadas filled the mountain forest.
His new boots pinched his toes and his heels and stabbed at his arches. They were, without question, the most hateful boots in the entire world. They hadn’t seemed nearly so bad when he paid for them six hours ago in Khemisset.
One day I’m going to write a book about this case, about how I ended up walking across the entire country, alone, destroying my aching feet, to find an old woman with a lightning rod in her hand. I’ll have to make it sound funnier, though.
After an hour on the road to Arafez, he was convinced that he would see no one until he reached the city. There were no houses either near the road or farther out in the woods, and not a flicker of firelight to be seen. The forest walled him in with towering alders and elms that reached across the road to each other far overhead, obscuring the clouds and any hope of starlight. The droning of the cicadas rose and fell as though the forest itself was breathing, loudly, through its mouth. Little else seemed to be awake or even alive. The occasional rustle in the bushes or distant crack of a breaking branch always came suddenly in the quiet.
A low whistle drew his eyes sharply to the right.
Syfax paused. The whistle was too steady and too subtle to be a bird, too solitary and too near to be a monkey. He peered into the shadows on all sides and saw nothing, heard nothing. Instinct drew his hand back to his hip, but it found only an empty holster. Reaching down farther, he yanked his hunting knife out of his boot and then nudged his horse to continue down the middle of the road.
The men stepped out of the leafy shadows calmly and casually, one of them mostly concerned with brushing the dirt off his knees. All of them wore dark scarves wrapped across their mouths and noses. Seeing no guns or blades in their hands, Syfax grinned as he reined up and rested his knife on the pommel of his saddle. “Can I help you fellas?”
One of them, as nondescript as any other, answered in a soft, almost reluctant voice. “Your money, all you have. Jewelry, watch, knife. Anything and everything, on the ground, right now. The horse, too. We don’t want to hurt you. Just leave it all right there, and go.”
“Hey!” A second one leaned toward the first. “He doesn’t even have a saddle bag!” And he made a jerk of his head back toward the woods, and then glanced at the others and repeated the gesture.
“No, wait.” The first one extended an open hand toward Syfax. “Please, anything you have. We just need some food. Please?”
“Who are you guys?” Syfax tried to catch a bit more detail of them in the shadows, something about their hair or clothes, anything at all. Too dark, but who cares? These poor idiots have no idea what they’re doing. “Help me out here. Are you beggars or bandits? I can’t tell.”
“We’re just travelers,” the second one said, fading back just a little more into the darkness. “We’re just trying to get to the border.”
“Don’t tell him anything!” A third one threw his arms up in the air. “How stupid are you? No one’s supposed to know!”
“Why?” The major kept his eyes darting among them, waiting for the first attack, but most of the nine men stayed at least four or five yards away, hands in pockets, eyes on the ground. The first one’s calm, the second one’s scared, and the third one’s angry. The rest just look tired. “Who are you running from? The law?”
“He’s a damned Redcoat!” Scared Man hissed, slinking even farther away. “Look at the coat. He’s the law.”
Calm Man edged forward a bit to look at him. “You’re a marshal?”
“Major Syfax Zidane.”
“Oh, that’s just perfect!” Angry Man kicked a stone across the road and shoved the fellow beside him. “A Redcoat!”
“Where’s your partner?” Scared Man’s voice shook as his footsteps drifted into the brush beside the road. “Marshals always go in twos. Where is she? Where’s the other one?”
“I’m alone.” Syfax slowly opened his coat. “No gun. And I don’t wanna hurt any of you guys, unless you do something stupid. I’m just riding through.”
“Don’t you believe it.” Angry Man grabbed Calm Man’s arm. “He’s one of them. He works for them. He’ll have the police on us in no time if we let him go!”
A general mumbling broke out among them as the men expressed their varying levels of discomfort with being anywhere near an officer of the law. Some of them stepped away, but most just shuffled and wavered in place and looked to Calm Man for a decision. He glanced around himself and cleared his throat. “You really don’t have any money? Nothing at all?”
“Sorry. Spent it all on this horse, and I need her to get to Arafez. You’re not eating her.”
Calm Man hesitated, glancing back toward the darkness where Scared Man had vanished. “Then I guess we’re going to have to tie you up. We can’t let you go and tell the police about us. We’ll leave you in the road so someone will find you tomorrow after we’re gone. You’ll be all right.” He cleared his throat and motioned at the others. “Go on, tie him up.”
For a moment, none of them moved. Then Angry Man stepped forward and the others began moving, arms raised to grab the marshal. Syfax paused, wondering what clever thing he might say to stop this before it started. They were obviously divided, nervous, unwilling, inexperienced. But they were shuffling forward and some of them had rocks in their hands.
A good marshal would know what to say to play them against each other, to get information from them, to control the situation. And as he groped for an idea, Syfax suddenly realized: This is why I’m stuck at major. This is why the marshals don’t know what to do with me. I’m not a good marshal.
He frowned as his ego swirled downward, but the dark moment brought yet another revelation into focus, and he grinned.
But I am a good soldier.
Syfax rolled out of the saddle and brought his fist down on the closest head. He grabbed the stunned man’s shirt and hurled him into the two men on the right. With his knife held blade down in his right hand, Syfax bulled into the closing knot of men and rocks and sticks. There was a brief second of fear, a cold panic in the back of his mind as he felt, really felt, that he was hopelessly outnumbered and utterly alone. But it was only a second. A hot wave of wild rage roared up his spine and down his arms, and he smashed his knife-hand into face after face. The rocks and sticks wailed on his back and legs, and bony hands bit into his arms, but Syfax just kept lunging back and forth, left and right, throwing men off balance all around as he went on shattering noses, splitting lips, and knocking out teeth. And with almost every blow, the blade of his knife sliced a shallow cut across a brow here and a cheek there.
Within half a minute, every bandit’s face was painted in blood and a broken chorus of frightened wails rose over the marshal’s roaring battle cries and the panicked whinnies of the horse in their midst.
“Oh God, my eye! My eye!”
“My nose! I can’t breathe!”
“I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!”
Syfax shoved the last man down to the ground and surveyed his handiwork. Nine men sitting with hands pressed to their faces, or crawling away from the road, or staggering into the woods. He waited a moment to catch his own breath and wipe his knife clean on a nearby bandit’s shirt, and then Syfax said, “Oh, shut up, you big babies. You’re all fine. They’re just little cuts. No one’s dying, no one’s lost any eyes. And no one’s head is sliced open. Just settle down.”
It took a few moments for the moaning and hyperventilating to subside as the men calmed down enough to inspect the wounds on each other’s faces and pronounce them all superficial.
“Yeah, that’s a little trick I picked up from a gal in Carthage. You cut up the face and everybody panics. You can’t see how bad you’re hurt, and lots of blood in your eyes.” He exhaled and sheathed his knife, suddenly feeling much less pleased with himself. Stupid dirty trick.
To his left, one of the men was sobbing and muttering over and over, “I thought I was going to die, I thought I was going to die.”
“Come on, guys, no one’s dying. You’re all gonna be fine, and hopefully a little wiser in how you go about fund raising.” Syfax thumbed his nose and crossed his arms, waiting.
“You bastard.” Angry Man was on his feet, blood smeared across his forehead and down the side of his face. He raised his fists and slid forward gracefully on the balls of his feet, rocking lightly on his toes. Syfax shrugged. The bandit punched, the marshal parried, he punched again and Syfax caught his wrist, yanked him off balance and landed two sharp blows to his ribs. The bandit grunted and spun, kicking him in the stomach, but Syfax hugged the foot and pulled back, yanking him off balance again and dropping him to the ground. As Angry Man scrambled to stand, Syfax swept one crooked leg out from under him and shot his fist down into the man’s jaw. Angry Man’s head snapped to the side and he fell flat on his back, his head rolling.
Syfax took a step back, breathing long and slow, listening to the heavy pounding of blood in his ears. His calloused knuckles ached, but not much.
Angry Man slowly got to his feet, staggering up inch by inch. “See!” He spat in the dirt and rubbed his jaw. “Like I was saying! They don’t teach any of that fancy stuff to the grunts. Only the officers. And why? The officers aren’t on the front lines, are they? No, they teach the grunts to fight the enemy, and they teach the officers to fight the grunts. To keep us in line. To keep us down!”
He leapt at Syfax, fist cocked to deliver the blow with his full body weight as he descended. Syfax stepped forward inside the attack and shot the heel of his palm straight up under the man’s chin. The bandit’s head snapped back and he dropped out of the air in a pile of trembling arms and legs.
But Angry Man got up again, faster this time, his eyes wild and breathing labored. He was shaking, his legs threatening to twist out from under him. “What are you all waiting for?!” His voice was a pathetic hybrid of a gasp and a croak. “Get him!” No one moved.
Angry Man raised his fists again and staggered forward. Syfax started to tighten his own fist, but the bandit had nothing left. The major took a quick step to the side and gently shoved the man into the horse. He flopped to the ground, unconscious.
Syfax stood over the man for a moment, his hands still raised and ready, his chest heaving, his heart pounding, his breath thundering through his teeth, but the man stayed down. Syfax dropped his hands and stepped back, and waited for his own body to settle. As his pulse slowed the heat rippling across his skin faded, leaving behind only a cold sweat between his skin and the cool night air. He looked around and saw Calm Man leaning against a tree at the edge of the road, a thin red line slashed down his cheek. “I think we’re done now. What do you think?”
Syfax nodded. “We’re done.”
The men withdrew into a cluster around and behind Calm Man, including the dazed and bleeding Angry Man, who hung on the shoulders of his comrades.
“So you’re all on the run?” Syfax grabbed his horse’s reins and patted the nervous animal’s jaw gently. “What did you do?”
“We did what we were supposed to do. We did everything right.” Calm Man’s shoulders slumped and he dabbed at the cut on his cheek with the end of his scarf. “We got jobs, we got married, we rented apartments, and we had children.”
“But?”
“But all the factories want longer hours, and lower wages, and every day someone loses a finger, or worse. The rent goes up, the food at the market gets worse. We get sick, we get hurt. Every day, everything gets a little worse. So we’re done with it. We’re leaving. Some of us have family in Numidia. They can help us get started out there, farming.”
“You’re leaving? Just like that? A bunch of young, strong fellas can’t balance the books, can’t put a little more time in at work, so you just dump your families and run all the way to Numidia to play farmer?” Syfax spat in the dirt. “You’re pathetic, all of you.”
Calm Man limped forward a few steps, his leg stiff but his back straight and Syfax saw the iron glare in the man’s eyes as he snapped, “Sixteen hours in the godforsaken factories, every day! Sweating to death, surrounded on all sides by huge metal monsters that will tear your arms off if you dare to stretch your aching back. And it’s never enough! We had three families together in one flat, and still we couldn’t put bread on the table! Is that pathetic enough for you? Yes, we’re pathetic, we’re all pathetic, every one of us, slaving away and starving, watching our families starving. Our children starving. It is pathetic. That’s exactly the word, thank you for that. Pathetic!” He stopped to breathe, his chest heaving, sweat pouring down his face. Suddenly his features twisted in anger again. “And we didn’t abandon anyone! Our families are all right down there, waiting for us.” He pointed off into the woods.
Syfax blinked, slowly absorbing the man’s words, painting himself a mental portrait of the conditions he described, wondering how much of it was just angry, youthful exaggeration and self-pity. After a long moment, he decided: Very little. “Show me.”
“Show you?” Calm Man glanced back at the woods. “Oh, you don’t believe me. Yes, then, by all means, come and see for yourself, Redcoat.” He stomped off into the woods, trampling fallen limbs and small bushes with a noisy crackling and snapping. The other men filtered after him, glancing nervously at the major.
Syfax followed them, carefully picking his way in the dark, feeling each step with his toes crushed in his too-small boots. After a few minutes tramping downhill away from the road, he reached a small clearing where the men stood beside their wives holding their children, bony little scarecrows in threadbare rags staring up with wide, white eyes in the dark. There must have been more than forty of them all together.
Syfax stared. All he could do at first was stare. And they stared back, some in terror, some in misery, and even a few in hope. “You don’t have any food at all?” He asked softly, his eye locking momentarily with those of a little girl clinging to her mother’s neck.
“Enough for tomorrow, maybe.” It was a young woman who answered, short and slight, with close cropped hair. She rose to her feet beside the Calm Man and handed him a small boy, whom he held close to his chest. “We didn’t have much to sell for money for food in Port Chellah. It’s been slow going. We’ve been walking for two days now. I don’t know how much farther it is to the border.”
Two days? It’s only taken me twelve hours to get here from Chellah. Syfax tried to speak, but an ache seized his throat and the words stuck. How far to the eastern border beyond the Atlas Mountains? Five or six days for a healthy man, but for this bunch? Two weeks? More? “Far. It’s a long way still from here.”
The woman nodded. “We’ll make it.”
No, Syfax thought, you won’t. “Maybe you don’t have to go that far. Maybe you can find better work in Arafez. Or even back in Meknes. You could be farmers right here in Marrakesh, if that’s what you want. You don’t have to leave the country to find work.”
“Yes, we do.” The woman reached back to hold her man’s hand. “This place is killing us. All of us. We can’t do this anymore. We can’t be here anymore. Even if we could be fishers and farmers, our children would end up in the factories some day, somehow. They’ll run off to the city to get rich, and they’ll die in some accident, alone, forgotten. We’ve seen it happen to our friends, to their children. It doesn’t matter what we do, what we say. Sooner or later, the city kills everyone.”
The major scanned the crowd of faces in the darkness, dappled by the deeper shadows of the leaves waving in the wind overhead. He said, “There’s always the army. The army was good to me.” They began to groan and mutter. “No, listen to me. My father worked the docks in Tingis all his life. We had nothing, but when I joined the army I got everything I needed. A home, a job, a future. You could have that, your children could have that.” His words were drowned in more muttering and vague curses against the army, and they battered about old stories of military experiments, expeditions lost deep in the Europan wastes, men and women slaughtered on the Songhai hills alone and forgotten because war had not been officially declared. “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way,” Syfax said to no one in particular. “But for your children’s sake, I’m asking you, don’t try to reach the border. Not on foot. It’s too far.”
“So you say.” Angry Man was awake and alert, wiping the blood from his face and leaning against a tree. “Why should we believe you?”
“Because I don’t want these kids to starve to death, you fucking idiot.” The words made the ache in his throat even worse as he glanced about at those children scattered around him, huddled in the dark forest. “Because there has to be some other way, a better way, for all of you. Think about it. You can’t get to Numidia on grit and will power. You need food and water. With no food you’ll be dead in a week, and with no water you’ll be dead in half that time. If you step up the pace you’ll get to Arafez tomorrow. I hear they’ve got plenty to give folks who’ve lost their jobs and their homes. The temples will give you food. You can stay there a few weeks at least, work on the road crews or the rail crews, and save up some food. And better shoes. You have to try. For the kids.”
The young woman looked sharply at the little boy clinging to his father’s chest. “Maybe.”
Syfax took a long, deep breath, wondering what else there was to say. He couldn’t think. His muscles were sore and a few dozen fresh bruises all over his body were starting to throb. His eyelids were growing heavy and the long road to Arafez still lay before him. “I need to go. I won’t send any police looking for you. Just don’t try to rob anyone. And think about Arafez. It’s only a little way up the road. You can get what you need there.”
A few voices muttered and a few heads nodded. Syfax took several steps, backing away from the grim congregation in the dark grove. As he passed a short woman holding hands with two tiny girls, he had a sudden urge to grab the children and carry them all the way to the city himself, to put them into the hands of someone, anyone, who could feed them. And their mother. And their friends. If there had only been one or two, he would have done it without discussion, without even thinking. But forty?
Long years on the Songhai border had taught him not to play the numbers game. Not to calculate. Not to weigh two evils against each other. Just do your duty. He trudged past the two tiny girls and found his horse where he left her at the edge of the road. He mounted, gave one last look at the trees hiding two score beggars and starving children, and he rode away.