The Weapon - Exodus - part 6
By Diana the Valkyrie
The hawk and the sparrow



I began to understand more about the hawk and the sparrows. As soon as you
make a change, there are unintended effects. Wendy hadn't intended that the
gunman should die, just that he should stop firing his weapon. I hadn't
intended to get involved in this situation, we were supposed to be just
looking at how things were. But now we were slap bang in the middle of an
oncoming massacre. Wendy was still feeding the baby, she didn't seem to be
taking any notice of all this. Watching her, suspended in mid air, dressed in
white and gold, I could understand why Lan Ho called her Ghost Woman.

"Wendy, tell Duncan about this situation." "I already did." "What did he say?"
"He told me to tell you 'Kurosawa', but I don't know what he meant, shall I
ask him?" "No," I said, "I understand what we must do. Lan Ho, you must resist
these bandits." "We cannot." "You must, or they will kill 300 of you." "We
have no weapons, if we resist they will kill us all. Better 300 should die
than all of us" He looked expressionless. "Sir, you must not be here when they
arrive. They will send a squad, a dozen men, to see what has happened to this
one. This is what they do when he gets drunk and fails to report back, this is
what they will do tomorrow. You and your Ghost Woman must leave at dawn, to be
as far away from here as you can be when they arrive."

"Lan Ho, you cannot accept this. You do have weapons, and we have my, er,
Ghost Woman, you saw what she can do. We must defend the village against the
bandits." "We?" "Yes, we. All of us. Your young men, armed with the axes and
mattocks, bill-hooks and hoes that you use to till the soil, and we have that
man's gun, the Ghost Woman will repair it, and we have the Ghost Woman
herself, she will fight by our side. How many young men are there in the
village?" "Strong enough to work in the fields, some five hundred." "So it
will be five hundred against twelve, we'll ambush them, they won't know what
hit them." "Not five hundred." "No?" "No. Two thousand. Sir, you are talking
war. But this is not your Western war, with rules, and prisoners. This is real
war. Everyone over the age of ten, who is able to stand, will fight. Because
the penalty for losing is death for all, there are no non-combatants. I have
fought before ..."

I looked up at Wendy. She was talking to the baby, and playing some game with
her finger and the baby's hands. A woman was standing next to her, smiling up
at the baby; I guessed that was the mother.

"Will your people fight?" "Yes," he said, "with your Ghost Woman we stand a
chance at least against the squad. But after that? I don't know. They will
send more, and wipe us out. Unless your Ghost Woman can stop them." "Wendy," I
called to her. She looked down at me, and shook her head slightly. "The hawk
and the sparrow," she said. She meant, we could stop this attack, maybe. But
would we then spend the rest of our lives defending these sparrows from the
hawk? I thought about Duncan's idea, I thought about Lan Ho and three hundred
people walking tamely to be murdered, and I said to Wendy, "Bring Duncan up to
date on this, does he say the same?" "Kurosawa". I nodded. We fight.

"Lan Ho, get your people together, get them out of their huts, we have to get
ready now. We have to arm, we have to dig. Tell them what's happening, tell
them we're going to kill the bandits, tell them about the Ghost Woman. Wendy,
while Lan Ho stirs things up, I need to talk with you." She handed the baby to
her mother, and I stepped into her arms. She flew us straight up through the
hole in the roof that the smoke went through, and we hovered way up in the
air, out of earshot.

"Wendy, are you up for this?" She'd nearly broken when the gunman had died, I
didn't want her flaking out on me when things got hot. "What's going to
happen, George. We're going to kill those twelve bandits?" "Yes, and more.
Because it won't stop there. After those twelve, they'll send an attack in
force, and much blood will flow before this business is done. I need to know
if you have the stomach for this." "George, I don't have a stomach, or a
heart, but if this is what you need to do to protect these people, then I'll
help you do it." "And the hawk and the sparrow?" "I never did tell you how
that is resolved, did I?" I shook my head. "George, you decide who your
friends are, and then you help them against their enemies. And they help you
against your enemies."

"Yes. Tell me, what were you feeding that baby on? Surely you don't have ..."
"Distilled water and lactose sugar. It's not as good as her mother's milk, but
it's calories and better than nothing. Give me a while and I could probably
come up with a better formula, but really, you might as well buy baby feed and
give her that. Her name's Kippy, she's such a lovely baby, I'd like to take
her home with me." "Wendy ..." "Oh, I know I can't, but I'm just saying. Such
a lovely baby. And so hungry." "OK, Ghost Woman, let's get ready to rumble."
And we kissed, long and hard, out of sight of the villagers.

Back on the ground, in the square in the middle of the village, Lan Ho had
finished telling the other villagers what was happening, and they were
shouting and arguing excitedly. I could guess what the two sides of the
argument were - to fight or to submit. Of course, most of them hadn't seen the
scene with Wendy and the gunman, and had no idea of her power. Even the ones
that had seen what happened, probably had only a slight understanding. We need
a dramatic gesture, something that would convince them that they stood a
chance. I asked Lan Ho where the bandits would come from; he pointed to the
north. "Wendy," I said, "I want a pit trap there, dig a big hole."

She flew a hundred yards north, then high into the air. Then she turned, and
plunged sharply downwards. The impact with the ground made the earth shake,
and left a huge crater, several feet deep. She came back out of the crater,
and flew back to my side. "This is the Ghost Woman who will fight by our side,
with her protection we cannot lose" I said. Lan Ho translated, and the
villagers cheered. I wondered how many of them believed that.

I told Lan Ho to arm as many villagers as he could with agricultural
implements. Those who were unarmed, were set to squaring up the pit trap,
setting sharp stakes on the floor of the pit, to stab the bandits that fell
in. Then we covered the trap with sticks, leaves and a layer of earth. It
looked very obvious to me, but the bandits wouldn't be expecting any
resistance. The other ace in the hole, was our AK47. Wendy squeezed it back
into shape, and there were a couple of spare magazines for it. I looked at it,
wondering how it worked, until Lan Ho put me out of my misery. "I used one of
those, a long time ago," he said. "Used it much?" "It was my best friend," he
said. I decided not to ask what war this was in, you take good luck wherever
you can find it. I gave it to him to use, warning him not to shoot until the
ambush was sprung. He gave me a withering look, as if to say what sort of
amateur do you take me for?

I told Lan Ho where to place our troops; the leading elements of the bandits
would, I hoped, fall into out pit trap, but that would leave several further
back in the column, and we had to close in with them as soon as the trap was
sprung. They had guns, capable of killing out to some hundreds of yards. We
had sticks and stones, and not much more, and needed to be close in to do any
damage. And that meant that the villagers had to be hidden close to where the
bandits would be. We dug more holes, digging was something they understood
very well. And then, with a villager in the shallow hole and covered with a
layer of earth, he would be invisible until he rose up and attacked. Or at
least, that was my plan.

That night, I slept warm and secure in Wendy's arms, hovering half a mile
above the ground. The villagers were cold and scared. But there's only one
Wendy, and rank hath its privileges; I was her Wielder, she was my Weapon. We
didn't make love that night, somehow it wasn't right the day before a battle.
But we kissed a lot, and she gave me her oath again. "My strength is your
strength. My power is your power. I will love you and protect you and obey
you." And although I knew that this was only temporary, it comforted me a lot.

We were ready by the morning. We had to be, that was all the time there was.
The plan was simple; again, by necessity. These people were not a disciplined
army of men, they were a rabble armed with stone age weapons. The plan was
this. As soon as the bandits fall into the pit, everyone rushes in and hits
them with whatever they've got. I knew we'd take casualties, but I reckoned
that they wouldn't have time to reload, that the 30 bullets from each AK47
would kill or wound a few of our people, we'd lose maybe fifty casualties, and
this was a lot better that the 300 we'd take if we did nothing. Of course,
that wasn't taking the longer term into consideration, but I had some ideas
there, too. But I hadn't told Lan Ho about those, first we had to get through
this ambush.

I sent Wendy off to the north to be our flying eye; I asked her to stay up out
of sight, but to spot the oncoming squad of bandits and come and tell us how
many there were, and where they were approaching from. Good intel is the key
to good battle planning.

Wendy got back with good news. "There's eleven of them, and they're coming
straight here, they look like they're strolling through the park, weapons
slung on their backs, smoking and chatting." "Great. Wendy, go back out and
keep an eye on them, keep me in touch."

Wendy flew out and back a couple more times, keeping me in touch with their
progress. Either these guys were astonishingly astute and good at pretending
to be casual, or else they were about to fall into the worst ambush of their
lives. As they got to within a mile, Wendy refused to fly any more, and took
up a position in front of me. She insisted that she had to be there to make
sure I didn't get hurt, but she was blocking most of my view, and there wasn't
anything I could say that would shift her. Lan Ho came to me as we waited.
"Whatever happens today," he said, "I must thank you on behalf of everyone.
After today, I might perhaps be dead, but I will no longer be so ashamed."

Soon, we could see the bandits swaggering down the trail, looking like they
owned the world. Everyone kept very quiet, and I held my breath. The pitfall
worked well; the first five bandits were over the pit when the branches gave
way and they plunged in, and then all hell broke loose. People screamed and
rushed at the remaining bandits, who were initially stunned, then struggled to
bring their guns into readiness. But we hit them before they could open fire,
and they went down under the hammering of spades and hoes, sticks and stones.
The bandits in the pit were in a bad way, dazed and broken by the fall, and
impaled on our sharpened stakes. I told Lan Ho to salvage their guns and any
other military equipment, and then Wendy and I flew out to have a look at the
bandit's lair, which turned out to be a stoutly-built wooden barracks. By the
time we got back, the screams from the pit fall had stopped.