by John F. Carr
A vast cloud of gray smoke towered over Tarr-Hostigos, blotting out the whole castle and slowly swallowing the hillside below it. The top of the cloud was already several thousand feet high, spreading into something dreadfully like a fission bomb’s mushroom. Sirna lived a moment with the nightmare that Kalvan had done the impossible, taking his time-line from a poor grade of gunpowder to fission bombs in four years.
Then she remembered there had been no pre-explosion lightning flash of gamma ray radiation, and she breathed more easily. Sirna watched as the mushroom shape started to blur; the top of the cloud was simply spreading in a breeze not felt here in the lee of the hills.
Ptosphes had given himself and the last of his men over to a quick death, destroying Tarr-Hostigos and more of his enemies than anyone would ever know.
Sirna wanted to weep, scream, pound her fists against something. For a moment she even wanted to die herself. There had to be something wrong with her, if she was still alive with so much death around her. The battle, the flight, her surgery at Menandra’s, Roxthar’s Investigation, and now the storming of Tarr-Hostigos--dead men and women and children were everywhere.
Sirna didn’t die. She didn’t even have hysterics. Instead she gripped the porch railing until she knew she could stand without help. Around her Hostigos Town awoke from a stunned silence into a hideous din of bawled orders, howling dogs, shrieking women and children, horses neighing or galloping wildly about in panic and an occasional pistol shot.
Menandra was standing in the doorway when Sirna turned. “Better come in quick, girl,” she said. “The soldiers who lost comrades up there-- they’ll be wanting someone’s blood for it. Can’t keep it from being yours if you stand out there.”
Sirna followed the older woman inside. She wasn’t afraid of death itself. After today she never would be again. Ptosphes had shown her that death could sometimes be your best friend.
He’d also shown her that there were good and bad ways to die. No, not good and bad. That implied a simple moral distinction. If there was anything simple about death, Sirna hadn’t seen it.
Wise and foolish ways? Better, but still an oversimplification.
Useful and useless? Yes. That wasn’t a universally sound way of distinguishing kinds of death, but there probably wasn’t any such thing. It certainly made sense here.
Staying outside to be shot or raped by soldiers mad with rage or wine would be a useless death. She wouldn’t risk it. What she would do another time, she would decide when that time came.
A phrase from one of Scholar Danthor Dras’ seminar lectures came back to her:
The only universal rule of outtime work is that there are no universal rules.
II
Soton cursed Roxthar and his stubbornness that was costing the Grand Host so many lives. A quarter to a third of the storming party was inside Tarr-Hostigos, swarming over it like bees. Both courtyards were littered with bodies, most of them Styphoni. Clouds of smoke wreathed the keep, but before they rose Soton had seen, even from his distant post, the savage struggle to enter it.
Why in the name of all the gods hadn’t Phidestros held back, instead of closing the breach? True, it was such reckless abandon that had built Phidestros’ reputation at the Battle of Phyrax, when he and his Iron Band had made a suicidal ride to join the battle after the calamity of Chothros Heights. Soton had even ordered him not to fight; if only had the rash commander listened, then there would have been someone to go down and put matters in order.
Instead Phidestros was wounded--badly, the tales ran. Small loss, with the last defenders of Hostigos dying even now and Kalvan fleeing toward the Saltless Seas. If Phidestros were going to make a habit of such follies, perhaps it would be best if he stormed Regwarn’s Caverns the next time. If he didn’t, Soton would make him wish he had!
The smoke around the keep eddied. Soton turned to summon a messenger.
He never completed the turn. Instead, something as invisible as the air but as hard as stone flung him to his knees. Thunder swelled until it seemed that someone was beating on his helmet with his own warhammer. Three Knights flew off the hill, along with a shower of rocks. Soton knew he cried out at that sight, but couldn’t hear his own voice.
He lay, gripping the rocky ground as closely as he ever gripped a woman, until it stopped shaking. Then he rose to his knees, and when they did not betray him, to his feet.
The air was filled with acrid smoke and fine ash. Looking toward Tarr-Hostigos, he saw only a vast swirling cloud of smoke. Somewhere in that smoke was the entire storming party--one man in six of the Grand Host’s strength.
One of the Knights was shrieking. “It’s the Daemon Kalvan! He’s come to save his people! Great Styphon, save us!”
Soton smashed his gauntleted fist into the Knight’s face. The man fell as if poleaxed. Soton didn’t know what he was really smiting, the Knight or his own fear.
Slowly, the air around what had been Tarr-Hostigos cleared. The slopes around it were alive with men, thousands of them, all streaming away from the castle. Soton let out a deep breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.
Another quarter-candle showed him what was left, of Tarr-Hostigos. The keep was only a pile of smoking rubble, the towers had mostly lost their tops, and the walls looked to have been chewed by monsters. How many of the Grand Host lay there under the fallen stone or in fragments strewn across the hillside? The Grand Host would be far less grand by the time they were all counted--of that Soton was sure.
Yet this should not have been a surprise. Desperate men will take desperate measures. Who had more experience fighting the desperate than Soton, Grand Master of the Zarthani Knights?
Soton smashed his fist against his armored thigh, insensible to the pain.
“Roxthar!” he shrieked. “Investigator, you will pay for this! By Styphon’s Wheel, I swear it!”
III
Verkan Vall finished lighting his pipe with a Kalvan’s Time-Line silver and ivory inlaid tinderbox, then turned back to the data screen and its display of information on one Khalid ib’n Hussein. The second cousin of a minor Palestinian prince assassinated five years earlier on his subsector branch, Khalid was putting together a Mideastern superstate that included just about every Islamic nation except Turkey and Iran.
As this new Islamic Caliphate emerged on Fourth Level Europo-American, Hartley Belt its pro-Western leanings seemed to be toppling the balance between Communism, that strange atheistic quasi-religion, and the so-called Free World. In what direction was the question, since India had just fallen to an internal Communist takeover. Another case of the inherent instability of the entire Europo-American, Hispano Columbian Subsector.
Verkan made a note to send out some investigators to see if the Mideast had ‘accidentally’ acquired a transtemporal hitchhiker like his friend Kalvan. And send out a team to see if they could track this Khalid on adjacent Subsectors in case he proved to be another John F. Kennedy. One of the problems with transtemporal history was that it was always easier to spot the important historical turning points after the damage was done! There was that Paracop chief two thousand years ago, who hadn’t paid any attention to an anonymous carpenter’s son until the religion his death launched was already shaking whole subsectors to the foundations.
The red light on Verkan’s horseshoe desk lit up, announcing an important visitor.
Verkan looked up to see Kostran Garth enter. Kostran’s face was red from exertion, his breath came short as if he’d been running, and he was holding out a data-storage wafer in one hand.
“What is it?”
“This just arrived from the Hostigos spy-eye. I scanned it briefly--Dalla had it red-flagged--and I knew you’d want to see it right away.”
From the look on Kostran’s face, Verkan knew the wafer did not contain good news; only bad news ever traveled that fast. Verkan slipped the wafer into his viewer and watched the wall visiplate light up.
The views began with a sky-eye scan of Hostigos and
the surrounding Princedoms, from an altitude that made them all look deceptively peaceful. The next shots were close-ups of Tarr-Hostigos. Verkan sighed with relief; at least he wasn’t going to watch Kalvan and his remaining soldiers caught like fish in a net. Without noticing, he began to rub the spot where he’d taken that musket ball to the chest.
The camera panned in closer, suggesting manual control of the cameras {remember to commend Dalia, who was running things back in Harphax City, for that precaution). A human wave was approaching the beleaguered castle; almost the whole Styphoni host seemed to be on the move; closer still, and Verkan saw whole units going down under Hostigi shells and musketry.
Verkan sped up the fast-forward. Whatever was coming, he wanted to get it over with.
The attackers poured into the castle like ants over leftover dog food. Muzzle flashes showed that the keep still had some live defenders. Were Ptosphes and Harmakros among them--Ptosphes who’d refused to leave his home, and Captain-General Harmakros, still worth any three men with two legs?
Suddenly everything vanished in a cloud of smoke. Verkan held his breath until the smoke began to clear. Slowly Tarr-Hostigos reappeared-- or what had been Tarr-Hostigos.
A few of the walls still stood, battered and leaning. Otherwise Ptosphes’ seat was a pile of smoking rubble. Verkan saw where one aircar-sized chunk of stone had crushed an entire company of Styphoni. The slopes around the castle were covered with more Styphoni--lying still, crawling, stumbling, a few lucky enough to be able to run.
Verkan’s fist slammed down on his desk. “By Dralm, Ptosphes did it!”
“What?”
“The old man did what even Kalvan couldn’t do. He stopped the Grand Host in its tracks! Look at that mess! The bastards must have taken five, maybe ten thousand casualties. That, my friend, is no longer a Grand Host. By the time Soton and Phidestros sort things out, Kalvan will be safe in Grefftscharrer territory.”
Verkan rummaged a flask of Ermut’s Best and two cups out of a drawer. “A toast, Kostran. A toast to the memory of a valiant Prince and his last and greatest victory!”
Kostran gagged at the taste of the brandy, but he was smiling as he said, “To Prince Ptosphes!”
FORTY-ONE
Considering the Hostigi resistance, the three thousand casualties taken in entering Tarr-Hostigos surprised no one. From the stories brought in during the day with the wounded, Sirna concluded that another ten to twelve thousand must have been casualties of the keep’s explosion. That made roughly fifteen thousand casualties. More than half were dead, and half the wounded wouldn’t fight again this year if at all. Sirna would have liked more accurate figures, but she was relieved to know that she could go on doing a University outtime observer’s work even in the middle of a battle.
It would be embarrassing if she ever returned home and had to confess that she hadn’t taken advantage of her ‘unique’ opportunity to observe historically significant Fourth Level events. It would probably cost her that doctorate!
Sirna told herself this over and over again, to keep some grip on her sanity, as the wounded poured into the Gull’s Nest. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think of Home Time Line since the day she woke up in Menandra’s back bedroom. Somewhat to her surprise it helped.
Having some extra hands helped even more. More of the lightly wounded men turned to changing bandages or helping comrades to the privies. Menandra rolled up her sleeves and went to work setting bones, a skill she’d acquired in her younger days from cleaning up after tavern brawls in Agrys City. She also turned out all of her girls who could be trusted to know a clean bandage from a dirty one, which was a larger number than Sirna had expected.
Another of Scholar Dras’ bits of wisdom kept running through Sirna’s mind: “The danger of paratemporal contamination doesn’t come from the stupidity of lower-level people. It comes from the fact that they’re inherently just about as smart as we are. Once they’ve been shown that something is possible, you would be surprised how fast they can pick it up and even start filling in gaps on their own.”
Sirna knew that the problem-solving abilities of outtimers would never surprise her again.
By the time the western sky turned an appropriately bloody color, the flow of fresh wounded had stopped. A little later the sky darkened and rain began to fall. The crash of thunder resounded inside the Gull’s Nest, reminding Sirna of Soton’s guns. She trudged through the house on feet that felt shod in lead boots, checking splints and dressings she hadn’t put on herself.
In the pouring rain outside she heard shouts and screams. Men, drunk or avenging dead comrades or simply celebrating being alive when they’d expected to be dead, were sacking Hostigos Town. The hard-eyed mercenary guards from the Iron Band kept the noise and the noisemakers safely outside.
At least she didn’t hear the sinister crackling of flames she’d heard the night the Royal Foundry was sacked. The Styphoni weren’t going to burn the town as long as they needed its roofs over their heads.
Sirna felt like a deer that’d somehow managed to be adopted by a pack of wolves. The Captain-General’s men would protect her against all the other packs as long as she did what they expected. But that didn’t make her a wolf. Somehow it was no longer hard to take for granted a situation she would have found unbelievably degrading two years ago. Not hard at all, when she listened to the screams outside.
She was changing the bandages on the stump of a man’s arm when someone banged on the door to the street, loud enough to be heard over the din outside and the cries of the wounded inside. One of the house women looked through the peephole. Then she unbarred the door and jumped aside, with a look on her face that brought every fit man in the room to his feet.
Two of Styphon’s Own Guardsmen strode in, their red cloaks flapping dramatically. Behind them came a tall man in a white robe. Two more of Styphon’s Red Hand followed their white-robed charge inside, and then stood flanking the door. Sirna saw hostile glances flicking over the Guardsmen’s clean clothing and silvered armor.
At least Holy Investigator Roxthar looked as if he’d worked today, and worked hard. His long hollow-cheeked face was coated with dust and soot and his robes were bloodstained and frayed. He reminded Sirna of a Fourth Level Christian representation of the Devil.
For a moment she wondered if Kalvan was the only cross-time hitchhiker on Styphon’s House Subsector. Then she remembered the file on the Kalvan Control Time-Line equivalents to the major Archpriests. On one group of time-lines, possibly the beginning of a new paratime belt, Arch-priest Roxthar was purging Styphon’s House almost as spectacularly as he was here. On several others he’d died mysteriously, doubtless courtesy of one of Archpriest Anaxthenes’ handy little vials. On the rest Roxthar was ignored, or shunned by the rest of the Inner Circle.
Phidestros struggled to a sitting position and raised a hand in greeting. “Welcome, Your Holiness. Today Galzar’s Hall is filled to bursting, but the first and vilest of the Daemon’s nests has at last been burned out.”
Roxthar nodded, as though acknowledging a remark about the weather, and then looked around the room. His nostrils flared.
“So this den of flesh-selling has served as the Captain-General’s nest. I wondered why we had so often lacked your esteemed company at the Palace.”
From the Grand Captain-General’s face, Sirna knew his patience was strained nearly to the breaking point.
“I must admit, Your Holiness, that I much prefer the cries of honest passion in this house to the constant uproar in former Prince Ptosphes’ Palace basement. No offense meant, of course. Let Styphon’s Will Be Done!”
Roxthar’s face paled. “Do not presume, Captain-General, or you may yet find yourself enjoying the hospitality of my Investigators.”
“I also suspect they might find a soldier too much work, after so many women and children.”
Roxthar’s gray eyes turned into steel ball bearings. “Enough of this babble. We have the God of Gods to serve toda
y. The Daemon Kalvan has fled, with the remnants of his host. The land he left behind is tainted with the evil he wrought; the servants of his devils lurk everywhere. Let the Investigation of Styphon finish its work, then we can attend to lesser duties.”
It was just as well Roxthar didn’t smile. If he had, Sirna knew she would have laughed out loud, hoping to wake up on the other side of the abyss between her and the sane reality of Home Time Line, where people didn’t blow up castles in wars over non-existent gods. Instead she bit her lip and unwound the last strip of bandage, then stood up to take the sterilized fresh dressing from the soldier holding the basin.
The movement drew Roxthar’s eyes. Sirna felt their hard, unclean gaze on her all the time she was binding on the dressing, emptying the water into the slop bucket and putting the old bandages into the empty basin to be returned to the cauldrons boiling in the kitchen. She was proud that her hands didn’t tremble once.
At last there was nothing more to do except stand up and face the Investigator. He was now smiling, an expression to which his gaunt features hardly lent themselves. Sirna decided that she much preferred him expressionless.
“Those bandages have been boiled to drive out the fester-devils, have they not?”
“That is so, Your Holiness.” Sirna was relieved that she’d kept all traces of a tremor out of her voice.
“That is knowledge given by the servant of demons, Kalvan, you know.”
You’re not afraid of death anymore, Sirna reminded herself. Besides, Roxthar won’t spare a heretic even if she goes down on the floor and kisses his feet. Do as you please and at least you can hope to go out with dignity, like Ptosphes.
“That is so, Your Holiness. Yet the new compounding of fireseed was also brought by Kalvan. With the blessing of Styphon’s holy priests, the new fireseed has been used in the guns of Styphon’s Grand Host to smite Styphon’s enemies. Is it not possible that the knowledge of smiting the fester-devils may also be used to aid Styphon’s cause?”