Of course we visited the shepherd's field well before the appointed time of sundown. But Rouddim wasn't there yet, so our surprise visit ended up being just a brief walk to familiarize ourselves with the place. We would return at sunset, hoping he would meet us there as promised. Hoping there was no catch to this appointment.
We left Cheriss hidden up in a tree overlooking the field, just in case. She would watch for our target's arrival and comm us when she saw him. That way, we might even get this over with before sundown.
Thayer and I, in the meantime, waited at the speeder and took turns sleeping like the dead, each while the other kept lookout. At least that was the plan. What actually happened was, Thayer took first watch, I slept like the dead, he let me sleep longer than agreed, "Because you looked so peaceful and I'm not tired, anyway," and he finally woke me just in time for an early supper. Grumpy because he hadn't slept but much refreshed because I had, I forgave him after a few minutes' pouting and joined him in a meal of kebabs from a street vendor. He made me laugh with his stories of Mendellia's colorful history, while I chewed thoughtfully, wondering, not for the first time, if my fiancé ever slept.
We picked up another kebab for Cheriss, comming her to let her know we were on our way out of the city. She reported that Rouddim still hadn't shown up, but it was some time yet till sundown. We continued on our way, for what else could we do? If he failed to make the rendezvous, it was just another dead end--no loss to us, as things stood now. A chance worth taking.
It was a pleasant evening. We took our time walking through Bethlehem. Even after more than a day and a half spent in each other's constant company, there was yet so much to say--nearly a year and a half worth of catching up. We went at this as earnestly as we'd been doing ever since yesterday morning in Jerusalem--saying as much with each look and touch as with words.
Thus it was that the ambush took us so completely by surprise. One minute Thayer was telling me about one of the more inspired practical jokes that my wingmate, with the Dictator's reluctant help, had pulled on a certain group of Councillors some months before Operation Arrakis; in the next, red light was streaking past, around and above us, and my beloved was crying out in pain and surprise as a blaster bolt extinguished itself in his leg.
I caught at him as he stumbled, landing gingerly on his good knee, already bringing his blaster up. "Stay behind me!" he ordered as he began returning fire.
I would have laughed with bemusement, were I not too busy fumbling for my own blaster. "Shouldn't that be the other way around? You're the one who's hurt!" I knelt near him, nonetheless, to add my shots to his. Our attackers were only barely visible, on down the street, taking cover in doorways and behind some of the closely built buildings lining the narrow street. I could see at least two that Thayer's shots had already taken out of the fight. "Who are they?" I wondered aloud.
"All I can tell," he answered, scooting out in front of me again, careful not to put his weight on the injured leg, "is that they're shooting to kill."
I thought about that for the space of some five or six more shots, then asked: "Are they?"
"Those aren't stun bolts, love!"
"Then they must not be very good shots, Thayer -- unless they really meant to kill you by shooting at your ankles at the start of this. Either their aim leaves much to be desired, or they want us alive."
"Ever the optimist," he sighed.
We had -- or probably Thayer had -- hit one more of the enemy, but now those who remained were being more cautious, keeping to their cover and only peeking out for the occasional shot at us. Consequently, though we had more trouble finding targets, the flurry of red light washing over us was abating somewhat. Thayer and I took that opportunity to escape. He kept his blaster trained behind us, his shots so well aimed even now that our pursuers were obliged still to keep their heads down, while I helped him stand and draped his arm across my shoulders to support him. "Can you walk?" I asked.
"I think," he said, his voice strained, "it were better we should run."
We ran. If it may be called such. Somehow -- very limpingly -- we got out of that street and into another, narrower than the first. Thayer kept up a general sort of cover fire behind us, but running on only one good leg inevitably threw off his aim, so it was not long before our pursuers dared to show themselves again, and blaster bolts were once more flying both ways. We kept running.
Many winding streets and alleys later, we found a moment's respite by ducking through a little shop into the alley behind it, then running back the way we had come along this alley -- theoretically, this should put us parallel to our pursuers and bring us around behind them, but one could never be sure; parallelism was a concept yet to be introduced to Bethlehem's twisting streets. We never quite ended up behind our enemies, but we did end up somewhere where they, as far as we could tell, weren't; no more blaster bolts found us as we crept into the space between two small apartment buildings and leaned against the wall for a much-needed rest.
Once I'd caught my breath, I knelt to look at Thayer's leg, wishing desperately that our team medic weren't still unconscious in the Red Home's med bay. Even with what I remembered of the basic first-aid training I'd had at one time or another in the Batcave, I couldn't think what to do first. Tears of panic stung at my eyes as Thayer gingerly lowered himself to sit.
Fortunately for him, he was thinking more clearly than I. "Here," he said, shrugging out of his touristy shirt to tear a strip of the brightly embroidered cloth from it. "Bandages."
It took us only a few minutes to manage a makeshift tourniquet and bandages for the wound -- a relatively clean blaster shot just above his left ankle. In that time the air around us remained clear of blaster fire, but we knew we couldn't stay here. They had found us once before, and it seemed only a matter of time before they would find us again, as long as we stayed within the town. We had to either get clear of the town -- back to the speeder, perhaps, in which Thayer's injury wouldn't slow us down any longer -- or else we had to clear away the pursuers.
Thayer wasn't going anywhere fast; our first run had taken a lot out of him, and he was recovering now more slowly than I was. And it would be a very long run back to the speeder.
We needed help. "Cheriss," I remembered, pulling out my comlink. "How fast do you think she could get here?"
But we would never know. I tried three times to raise our Agent Blade, with no luck. "Why doesn't she answer?" I tried to keep cool, tried to keep the worry out of my voice.
Thayer caught on. "She can take care of herself, you know," he reassured me. "Perhaps Rouddim is near and so she's turned her comlink off lest he hear it."
"I hope so," I said. "We're in trouble enough ourselves. Maybe at least she can get to Rouddim, if we can't."
He nodded thoughtfully, looking somber. "They'll be here soon --" he began.
I bent to kiss him, interrupting what he had started to say.
"What's that for?" he asked when we parted.
"To say I love you," I whispered, "and I'm sorry it has to end this way, but at least we're together, and dying together's better than --"
His eyes sparked with amusement. "Hush," he stopped me. "Leave talk of dying for them that hunt us." He raised his eyes to the buildings around us. "You can still climb?"
"I can," I frowned, "I think. But what about you?"
"I won't need to."
"Thayer, I'm not leaving you --"
"No," he chuckled. And outlined his plan.
~
High above Bethlehem's narrow streets, I lay in wait, trying to keep my thoughts on what was to come and free from worry for my beloved.
Our attackers arrived at last, rather later than we had judged they would. I waited -- waited -- now! At just the moment before they must come in sight of Thayer's hiding place, I leapt from mine, already firing my blaster even as I rose into view.
Naturally, the ten men -- ten! Sweet heavens, where'd they all come from? I'd have sworn there weren't half that many left when we ran from their ambush -- in the street below all turned as one to see where the fire was coming from. As soon as they had spotted me up on the roof, I started moving. Back the way they had come -- away from Thayer -- I made my way along the rooftops, firing nonstop. I dodged as they fired back, but I never ducked for long before peeking out to return fire again. I think I may have even hit one or two of them with my wild shots.
But that soon became impossible to tell for sure, because as soon as their attention was sufficiently fixed on hunting me down, Thayer went to work. Have I mentioned what a remarkable marksman my fiancé is? From his hiding place in the alley he fired barely ten shots, and all ten men were down before most of them even knew he was there.
I scurried down from my rooftops and ran to him, and for a long moment we just held each other close in relief.
"Are you well?" he asked, drawing back to look me over.
"Perfect. Alive." I grinned. "Nice shooting."
"I had to get them before their fire could catch up with you," he said quietly.
~
There remained the question of who the men were who'd attacked us, and why. I left Thayer propped against a wall, blaster at the ready, to cover me as I walked among the bodies. I had no reason to doubt that the effects of our stun blasts would last at least long enough for me to carry out my inspection, but Thayer wasn't so confident. Tense and alert, he watched as I reached the first of our attackers and carefully turned him over, going through his pockets, looking for anything to identify him. There was nothing, however thoroughly I searched, nor on the second man either.
"Be quick," Thayer advised as I moved to the third. "Stunning doesn't *always* last the full ten minutes, you know. That's just the maximum. Some wake up sooner --"
I nodded, adjusting myself to a briefer, less thorough search; but even as I turned back to the unconscious man at my feet, a hint of movement to my left drew my eye.
Nothing was moving any longer when I turned for a better look. Cautiously I turned back to the body before me, prepared to search him . . .
And then it hit me. Looking around, my eyes confirmed my intuition: these men didn't belong here, they looked as badly out of place in the middle east as I did -- as badly out of place as a blaster pistol on Terra, for that matter. I couldn't quite place their national origins from their appearances; but remembering Ajax's unfamiliar accent last night, I wondered if that was because no nation on Terra ever had claimed these men.
That was why, when I looked to my left again, my intuition jarred at the sight of one man lying there, olive-skinned, sporting a thick mustache, dressed in unremarkable street clothes like his comrades, but with the additional touch of a keffiyeh. If these men in general didn't belong in Bethlehem, the one with the keffiyeh sure didn't belong with these men, because he looked as native as anyone I'd seen in Israel.
He lay as still as all the rest -- until he felt the tip of my blaster against his cheek. Then he most definitely flinched.
"Okay," I said gruffly, hoping he'd understand English (but he must have spoken Basic among this group, mustn't he?), "enough playing dead. Up with you."
He stirred, I thought. A moment later I revised my evaluation to "quivered", considering the panic in his voice as he cried out, "Do not shoot!"
I advised him that, so long as he was standing up nice and slow with his hands in plain sight, I would have no cause to. He hastened to comply, looking around nervously at his fallen comrades.
"It is a mistake, all a mistake . . ." he mumbled to himself.
" 'Scuse me?"
He jumped at the sound of my voice, his eyes, wide with fright, focusing on my blaster. "Please! You would not kill me too?" I gathered that it was taking all his willpower to not stare again at the bodies on the ground.
I decided against correcting his assumption as to their status (apparently in his time with this gang he'd not yet learned of the existence of the stun setting on a blaster; this came as no great surprise). Trying to bring into my voice some hint of the regal weight I knew it must someday command as I took my place at Thayer's side, I answered, "Cooperate and you will be spared."
"Yes, oh! yes, of course!" he gibbered, looking alternately stunned (though not in the manner of his comrades) and relieved. "By all means. You are gracious." It would be hard not to be merciful in the face of such fear and fawning.
"Well," I said, gesturing to an alarmed Thayer that it was all right, I was in no danger (or no more than usual), "first off, who're you? And secondly, who're they?" He cringed as I gestured with my blaster- free hand toward the fallen.
"I am called Khalil," he answered quickly. "These men -- curse them! - - are your enemies, and so they are my enemies, as well."
"Easy to say when they're not hearing you," I said. "The thought is appreciated, Khalil, but you're switching sides a bit too readily for my liking. Makes me wonder how much it'd take for you to switch back to theirs again. Now, who exactly are they, and how did you come to be with them?"
He sighed. "It is my curse, ma'am -- the burden of knowledge."
"Exactly what knowledge?" Was I going to have to drag the whole story out of him the way Thayer would haggle with a trader?
"Of ways and journeys," he said, "of the roads of Palestine, of the towns and the villages. I was their guide."
"And who's they?" I had a suspicion: "Who hired you?"
Was it possible that a greater fear could fill his eyes than that of my blaster? "I . . . I do not like to speak of him, ma'am. I do not like to remember. . . ."
I frowned and waved the blaster a mite nearer his face to jog his memory. "A man of darkness," the words burst from him in one long rush, "clothed in shadows, commanding fear, commanding sorrows. Wonders he works, the people hold him in awe, they do what he wills, and he has not even to say what he wills, he makes his will known here," he tapped his forehead, "in our own secret thoughts."
"Is all that his name?" I joked.
Khalil looked abashed. "I never learned his name, ma'am. Oh, ma'am!" His fear grew even greater. "He will know what I have told you! He will come for me! As he sent these for one who left his service, he will know I have betrayed him, and he will send more like them!"
"I think we can arrange some sort of witness protection program," I sighed. "Wait, though -- who'd he send this group for?"
"A thief," Khalil told me solemnly. "A man who defied the master's will for his own profit. M'allim Rouddim -- may that dog's line be cursed to a thousand generations!"
"That's nice, but if it's Rouddim they're looking for, why were they shooting at us?"
"You ought to know that," a voice interrupted -- a familiar voice, a vocal swagger. I swirled to meet the sound and saw a familiar face: our old friend Ajax, standing up from amidst his stunned lackeys, with his blaster in the familiar position of aiming straight for me. So this would be the second time in as many days he'd awakened from being stunned by us. He didn't look too pleased about it. "I don't know who you really are -- you don't shoot like any of Rouddim's ordinary clients, that's for sure -- but we can't take a chance on you getting to him before us. Khalil, take her out."
Khalil looked pained. "But, sayyid . . ."
Ajax turned red. "I said, take her out!"
"Sorry," interrupted a more blessedly familiar voice at my side. "She's my lady. No one takes her out anywhere but me." Thayer punctuated his words with the third stun blast Ajax had yet had from us.
The surprise on my face at the Dictator's timely approach nearly outweighed the alarm on Khalil's. "You're walking?" I asked the obvious.
"Only just." Thayer's voice was strained; I reached for him, to help hold him up. "Bec, we mustn't stay here longer. The rest of them will wake up soon. Once they do, I don't think I'll be walking fast enough to evade the whole lot."
I nodded. "Then let's go."
"What about him?" Thayer gestured to the cringing Khalil. Khalil seemed to have taken a quick dislike to my fiancé, but his fear remained the stronger instinct.
"He's coming with us," I decided. Thayer's expression asked if that was really necessary. "He may be useful," I said. "He was their guide, but I guess he's on the run from their Boss now for having helped us. And besides -- Sci will want to question him."
With the addition of a bit of rope binding Khalil's hands at the small of his back, Thayer accepted these arguments. Even so, as we left the scene of our counter-ambush and hurried through the darkening streets to find the shepherd's field, he kept his blaster close to hand and one bright eye on our prisoner.