The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1

"Carcassone doesn't fly anything over the Boukasset," Rasile said. Lamartiere blinked in surprise to hear so throaty and pleasant a voice coming from the rat-faced civilian. "If they do, Maury shoots them down. Or de Laburat does it himself."

Marie stepped forward. "Look, you don't belong here!" she said harshly to Lamartiere. "We'll give you water, and you can have food, too. I suppose you'll like the taste even better because you're snatching it out of the mouths of widows and orphans, won't you? But take your tank and your war away from us—or die, that would be fine. That would be even better!"

"Marie," Father Blenis said. His tone was sharper than Lamartiere had heard from him previously, though it was still mild after the rasping anger of the others who'd been speaking. "Mr. Lamartiere has come as a distressed traveler. You can see how tired he is. The Blessed Catherine has never turned such folk away in the past, as you well know."

"He's a soldier!" she said. "He came in a tank!"

"We won't let him bring weapons within the walls," Blenis replied. With the gentle humor Lamartiere was learning to recognize, he added, "Especially his tank. But he and his companion are welcome to the hospitality we offer to anyone passing by."

Houses two and three stories high were built around the interior of the shrine. The rooms had external staircases and windows opening onto the central courtyard where an herb garden grew. Lamartiere could see two well copings and, at the upper end of the courtyard, a stone trough into which water trickled from an ancient bronze pipe.

Several younger women holding infants stood in the doorways, watching the group around the winch. All of them had the same worn look that Lamartiere had noticed in Marie. A woman alone—and worse, a woman with small children—would have had a tough time crossing a wasteland ruled by rival gangs. There were, quite literally, fates worse than death, because the dead didn't wake from a screaming nightmare before every dawn.

The basket was tight against the pulley. Pietro still held the crank, possibly because nobody'd told him to do otherwise. Someone shouted from below. Pietro looked at Louise, who snapped, "Yes, yes, bring the next one up. For God's sake!"

"Louise?" Blenis said.

The woman grimaced. She might have been attractive once, but the glint of her eyes was a worse disfigurement than the old scar on her right cheek. "Sorry, Father," she said. "I'll watch my language."

Lamartiere tried to stand. He didn't belong in a place where people worried about taking the name of God in vain.

"Look, the hell with you," he said. He was furious because of frustration at his inability to accomplish anything he could feel good about. "We'll go, just get us water."

The world went white. Lamartiere was lying on the stone battlements. He didn't remember how he got there. "We'll leave you alone," he tried to whisper.

"Marie, make a bed for Mr. Lamartiere here," Father Blenis murmured through the buzzing white blur. "Later on we can consider the future."

Lamartiere awoke to see Father Blenis rearranging a slatted screen so that the lowering sun didn't fall on the sleeper's face. The rattle and flickering light had brought Lamartiere up from the depths to which exhaustion had plunged him. Near the winch a young woman nursed her infant while an older child played at her feet.

"Oh God, help me," Lamartiere groaned. There was nothing blasphemous in the words. His every muscle ached and his head throbbed in tune with his heartbeat, though the haloes of light framing objects settled back to normal vision after a few moments.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," Blenis said. "Can you drink something, or. . . ?"

"Please," Lamartiere said. He sat up, ignoring the pain because he had to get moving. He had no traumatic injury, just the cumulative effects of a day and a half spent as a component of a tank.

Hoodoo's metal, seals, and insulation became worn in the course of service. A bearing in Number 7 drive fan would be repacked if the vehicle were in Brione for depot maintenance, and the lip of the skirts needed recontouring if not replacement.

The crew needed downtime also, but they wouldn't have gotten it in the field any more than the tank itself would. Heth and Stegner would have gone on until the mission was accomplished or something irretrievably broke.

Lamartiere was in the same situation, except that by now he was quite certain his mission—defeat of the Carcassone government—could never be accomplished. The only question was whether he or Hoodoo fell to ruin first.

Father Blenis held out a gourd cup. Lamartiere took it from the old man and drank unaided. The contents were milk, not water; goat's milk, he supposed, since he'd seen goats scrambling about the hillsides nearby. It was hard to imagine that the Boukasset had enough vegetation even for goats. No doubt they, like the shrine's human residents, had simple tastes.