The Last Mission Of The Seventh Cavalry. Charley Brindley

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      It took twenty minutes for the hay carts to roll by. They were followed by two columns of men, all of whom wore short tunics of different colors and styles, with protective skirts of thick leather strips. Most were bare to the waist, and all were muscular and heavily scarred. They carried shields of elephant hide. Their double-edged swords were about two feet in length and slightly curved.

      “Tough looking soldiers,” Karina said.

      “Yes,” Kady said. “Are those scars for real?”

      “Hey, Sarge,” Joaquin said.

      “Yeah?”

      “Have you noticed none of these people have the slightest fear of our weapons?”

      “Yeah,” Alexander said as he watched the men walk by.

      The soldiers numbered about two hundred, and they were followed by another company of fighters, but these were on horseback.

      “They must be filming a movie somewhere up ahead,” Kady said.

      “If they are,” Kawalski said, “they sure got a bunch of ugly actors.”

      They saw more than five hundred mounted soldiers, who were followed by a small band of men on foot, wearing white tunics that looked like togas.

      Behind the men in white came another baggage train. The two-wheeled carts were filled with large earthen jars, slabs of raw meat, and two wagonloads of squealing pigs.

      A horse and rider came galloping from the front of the column, on the opposite side of the trail from the platoon.

      “He’s in a hurry,” Karina said.

      “Yeah, and no stirrups,” Lojab said. “How does he stay in the saddle?”

      “I don’t know, but that guy must be six-foot-six.”

      “Probably. And check out that costume.”

      The man wore an engraved bronze breastplate, metal helmet with red animal hair on top, a scarlet cloak, and fancy sandals, with leather laces wrapped around his ankles. And a leopard skin covering his saddle.

      A dozen children jogged along the side of the trail, passing the wagon train. They wore short sarongs made of a rough tan fabric extending to their knees. Except for one of them, they were bare above the waist and dark-skinned, but not black. They carried bulging goatskin bags, with straps over their shoulders. Each one held a wooden bowl in his hand. The bowls were attached to their wrists by a length of leather.

      One of the boys spotted Alexander’s platoon and came running to them. He stopped in front of Karina and tilted his goatskin to fill his bowl with a clear liquid. With his head bowed low, and using both hands, he held out the bowl to Karina.

      “Thank you.” She took the bowl and lifted it toward her lips.

      “Hold on,” Alexander said.

      “What?” Karina asked.

      “You don’t know what that is.”

      “It looks like water, Sarge.”

      Alexander came over to her, dipped his finger into the bowl, then touched it to his tongue. He smacked his lips. “All right, take a small sip.”

      “Not after you stuck your finger in it.” She grinned at him. “Kidding.” She took a sip, then drank half the bowl. “Thank you, very much,” she said, then handed the bowl back to the boy.

      He took the bowl but still wouldn’t look at her; instead, he kept his eyes on the ground at her feet.

      When the other children saw Karina drink from the bowl, four of them, three boys and the one girl in the group, hurried over to serve water to the rest of the platoon. All of them kept their heads bowed, never looking at the soldiers’ faces.

      The girl, who appeared to be about nine years old, held out her bowl of water to Sparks.

      “Thank you.” Sparks drank the water and handed the bowl back to her.

      She peeked up at him, but when he smiled, she jerked her head back down.

      Someone in the line of march shouted, and all the children held out their hands, politely waiting for their bowls to be returned. When each boy got his bowl, he ran to his place in line on the trail.

      The girl ran to take her place behind the boy who’d served water to Karina. He glanced back at Karina, and when she waved to him, he lifted his hand but caught himself and turned to trot along the trail.

      A large herd of sheep came by, bleating and baaing. Four boys and their dogs kept them on the trail. One of the dogs—a large black animal with one chewed-off ear—stopped to bark at the platoon, but then he lost interest and ran to catch up.

      “You know what I think?” Kady asked.

      “Nobody cares what you think, Scarface,” Lojab said.

      “What, Sharakova?” Alexander glanced from Lojab to Kady.

      The one-inch scar running up and over the middle of Kady’s nose darkened with her quickened pulse. But rather than let her disfigurement dampen her spirit, she used it to embolden her attitude. She gave Lojab a look that could wilt crabgrass.

      “Blow this, Low Job,” she said, then gave him the finger and spoke to Alexander. “This is a reenactment.”

      “Of what?” Alexander ran two fingers across his upper lip, erasing a tiny smile.

      “I don’t know, but remember those PBS shows where the men dressed up in Civil War uniforms and lined up to shoot blanks at each other?”

      “Yeah.”

      “That was a reenactment of a Civil War battle. These people are doing a reenactment.”

      “Maybe.”

      “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get it right,” Karina said.

      “Get what right?” Lojab asked. “Some kind of medieval migration?”

      “If it’s a reenactment,” Joaquin said, “where’s all the tourists with their cameras? Where’s the TV crews? The politicians taking credit for everything?”

      “Yeah,” Alexander said, “where are the cameras? Hey, Sparks,” he said into his communicator, “where’s your whirlysplat?”

      “You mean the Dragonfly?” Private Richard ‘Sparks’ McAlister asked.

      “Yeah.”

      “In her suitcase.”

      “How high can she fly?”

      “Four or five thousand feet. Why?”

      “Send her up to see how far we are from that Registan Desert, “Alexander said. “As much as I’d love to hang around here and watch the show, we still have a mission to accomplish.”

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