Free Strength of Stones by Greg Bear Page B

Different masters controlled her actions. Her stiff, knotted hair crackled in the heat.
    Another party of soldiers passed by. She was like a ghost, lurching into the thin breeze, arms held out. Somewhere behind her was the empty water sack and the last of the crumbs. Her clay necklace lay under the bush where she'd slept. The soldiers watched her with mixed fear and disgust, then went south to join their army. Rifle fire echoed across the river plain.
    By nightfall she was sitting under cottonwood trees and drinking from a shallow spring. She was sure she had entered the first stage of Paradise. Still, the men said that in Paradise women served, and she didn't like that idea. _Ifrits_ did not serve. They were mean as scorpions when crossed.
    In the morning she ate a few shreds of grass and nuts dug from a seed-pod, which made her faintly ill. By afternoon, following an overgrown dirt path, she found a Habiru village. It had been burned to the ground and the stone walls knocked over, probably by evil giants. The village overlooked the plain and from its southern end she had a good view of the two river beds and Akkabar. Holding her nose against the lingering smell of dead flesh, she looked back at her home and squinted. Smoke was rising from the center of the town. A grey mass of specks surrounded the mud and stone walls. In an hour, the pillar of smoke was black and tall. "I really _am_ an _ifrit_," she murmured. "Soldiers rub the walls and out I pour in a cloud of soot, to sit in the hills and laugh."
    She left the dead Habiru village and followed the road to a high grassland beyond, swatting at the insects which clung to her bare, peeling arms. Her strength was rapidly fading. She managed to keep walking until her feet struck clear, glass pavement. Her legs still kicked after she fell.
    An hour passed and she lay motionless under the stars, eyes closed, lulled by a pleasant hum. Something beautiful was near. She opened her eyes and pulled a final moment of reason from her reserves. She was on her back, nearly dead. Beyond her feet was a tall, intricate arch, polished and green, glowing with its own light and exhaling a warm wind.
    Perhaps she was already dead. She was on the perimeter of a living city. The pavement around her should have bristled into an impenetrable barricade, keeping all humans out. Then her reason slipped away and she sang weakly to herself, until strong mandibles closed around her legs and shoulders and she was taken through the arch, into the pale underwater luminosity.
    Durragon the Apostate, commander of three thousand Chasers and a handful of Expolitan grumblers, felt a vague regret about the smoking Moslem town. He kicked aside a pile of rags filled with bloody meat and stood in the middle of the ruin, eyes half-closed, trying to think. The smell was awful. The Chasers were marvelous scrappers but no good at restraint. Still, they were the only thing between him and anonymity. They obeyed his orders with a kind of reverence, if only because he could kill any two of them in combat, and had. But it didn't make much sense, economically speaking, to let them continue. It was time to risk their contempt and demand discretion in the looting.
    He put his hand on the bare, scabbed shoulder of his left-flank runner, Breetod, and spoke into his ear. "Take the three torchers into the market. I'm not happy with this, not happy at all. We could have lived here a while. Now even the grain stores are burned."
    Breetod's face fell into unhappy creases, but he ran off to carry out the orders. Durragon took out his pistol and loaded it thoughtfully. He walked through the rubble to where the market had been, sidestepping the charred bodies.
    The three torchers stood by the jagged black heaps of the market stalls, hands folded, grinning nervously. One of them took a step forward and was restrained by Breetod.
    "Dis we, no' try t' -- "
    "Quiet," Durragon said softly. His stomach twisted. He didn't like this at all, but