Shining Steel

Chapter Two

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."-Matthew 7:7

John looked at the little group in disgust. Out of perhaps as many as two hundred villagers, only two dozen had been fit to question by the time his men had finally calmed down. He saw just five warriors; the rest were evenly divided between men too old to fight and women of various ages.

Many others were still alive, of course-virtually all the children had survived, and most of the women. John disapproved of interrogating children, and few women were fit to question after a night of beatings and gang rape. Most of the men in the village had insisted on fighting to the death.

“J'sevyu, friends,” he a

“I'm sure you all know what will happen to you now; you'll be taken back to our homeland, where you'll be put to work and taught the way of the People of the True Word and Flesh. When you've accepted the True Word into your hearts, you'll join us as free and equal partners in the crusade to bring enlightenment to those who, even here on Godsworld, have strayed from the only true path to God's kingdom. I know that right now you're all hurt, you're suffering the deaths of your loved ones and the loss of your homes, you're probably full of hate for my men and for me, but I'm asking you to rise above that hurt and that hatred, to accept what's happened and to accept the True Word that we bring you. I'm no preacher, I'm not an Elder; I'm just a soldier. I can't teach you the way. But I can tell you that ours is the one true path, and that you can follow it with us. It'll help if you cooperate with us now, if you forgive as much as you can of what we've had to do to bring you your eventual salvation, if you can put aside your mistaken loyalties of the past and answer our questions as best you can."

Few of the expressions changed. He had expected that. He had made such speeches before, and only the youngest ever seemed moved by them. He smothered a sigh of disappointment. The aftermath of a battle was always depressing. He loved the careful pla

“All right, then, we're going to be taking you in one by one and asking a few simple questions. No harm will come to any of you, so long as somebody answers our questions. Those of you who refuse to answer-well, we'll note it down, and I can't say for sure what will happen if nobody answers us. Let's just see how it goes. You,” he said, pointing to an old man in the front row. “You first. Hab?"

Habakkuk nodded, and led the man out of the room. They had taken over what appeared to be an i

John signalled to the men guarding the rest of the prisoners, then followed his lieutenant and his captive into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. Those few guards had been chosen as being the least-exhausted, least-battered of the invading company, but his last glimpse of them was not reassuring; two were leaning back against the wall, swords hanging down loosely.

In the kitchen Habakkuk had already seated the old man on the hard stone-capped stool they had selected earlier. “Well, mister,” he said, “what's your name?"

“Joseph Walker-in-the-Valley,” the old man replied. “And that's the last of your darned questions I'm going to answer."

“No need to be like that; we aren't pla

“I don't plan to answer that."

Habakkuk looked up at John, then glanced over at the display of knives. He shrugged.

“Whatever you like, Mr. Walker. So you don't know anything about the Chosen."

“Didn't say that."

“Do you know something, then?"

“Won't tell you."

The conversation went on in that vein; after a minute or so Habakkuk switched topics, and began asking about the machine gun.

“Caught you with your pants down, didn't we?” Walker-in-the-Valley gloated.

Habakkuk shrugged again. “Didn't do you any good, though, did it?” He waved at the heavy closed door and the table of knives. “You're here just the same. Wherever you folks found that gun, you might just as well have left it there."

“Who says we found it?"

“Well, if someone sold it to you and told you it would protect you, you got swindled. You tell us where you got it, and we'll see about putting it right."

“Won't tell you."

Habakkuk sighed, and continued.

After about fifteen minutes, Joseph Walker-in-the-Valley had refused to say anything about the Chosen, the machine gun, the village leaders (if any), even the weather. With a final frustrated sigh, Habakkuk noted this down and dragged the old man back to the common room.

“This one stays,” he called to the guards. Then he pointed at random at another prisoner. “You next, please; come on back."

John had watched the whole thing silently. He watched the second interview, with a warrior named Luke Bathed-in-Blood, just as silently, and the third, and the fourth. None of them yielded any useful information. The village leaders were dead, according to two of the prisoners, but John and Habakkuk had already expected that-heretic leaders usually fought to the death, since they knew they would be executed anyway for leading their people astray. Nobody admitted to knowing anything about the Chosen other than that they were there, and on the verge of war with the People of the True Word and Flesh. Both groups being heretics, as they saw it, the villagers hadn't paid much attention.

Nobody was saying anything about the machine-gun. That subject alone brought either silence or refusal from every prisoner.

Every prisoner, that is, until a young woman who gave her name as Miriam Humble-Before-God.

“Where was that machine-gun found?” Habakkuk asked, after a few preliminary questions.

“It wasn't found anywhere!” Miriam spat back.

Habakkuk stared at her coldly; John suppressed his reaction, forcing himself to remain silent.

“Then where did it come from, if it wasn't found somewhere?"

“The elders bought it, of course-and if they'd had any brains they'd have bought more weapons with it, and shot all of you, instead of just a few!"