“Of course. Whether sheep for herding or lambs for slaughter, people are wonderfully responsive.” Her sword gleams in the harsh sunlight. “And they are so easy to cut down.”
His teeth grind together. “They are not lambs.”
“No? Tell me, White—where is their precious Pope? Why does he remain silent when the footfalls of thirty thousand children shake this country’s very foundation? The Church could stop it,” she says, one confidant to another. “But it doesn’t. It doesn’t stop a similar movement happening even now in the Rhineland, with another shepherd boy leading thousands more children to the seaside. Why is that, White? Could it be that their religious leaders hope these toy soldiers will shame their rulers into yet another, proper crusade?”
Fury sears him, and it takes all of his control not to summon his Bow and let disease strike War’s bloody heart. “Another? There’s been a hundred years of crusades! And for what purpose? To claim a city?”
“Not just any city. A holy city. So say these humans—therefore, it must be true.” War jerks back on the reins, forcing her red steed to halt. Pausing to watch the children’s ongoing march, she says, “So many truths, these humans have, but only one world to fit them in. How can they not always be at the brink of war?”
“You’d drown the world in an ocean of blood,” he shouts, “and it still wouldn’t be enough for you.”
“Of course not. There will always be war.”
“Phaugh!” The Conqueror leans over and spits; where his saliva lands, the ground sizzles. “You’ve whispered to the boy, dazzled him with images of glory—coaxed him from his home, encouraged him to stir the souls of thirty thousand children and lead them to nothing but pain and death. And for no purpose other than war!”
“You complain of a century of warfare,” she says casually as she looks at thousands of children happily striding toward their doom, “and you forget that our domains cross. Warfare and disease are good bedfellows. Think of the sicknesses that embraced the Knights of the Cross: heat stroke, food poisoning, fevers, epidemics, spreading from soldier to soldier. Where I go, White, you follow.”
“I follow no one!”
“Is that what you think? How charming.”
“You twist things to make them fit your narrow worldview,” he snarls. “And worse, you pervert your station. Instead of moderating war, you have kept the crusades in motion for more than a century. A century! Now you’re leading these children to the battlefield. We are supposed to provide balance, not encourage their baser instincts!”
War turns to look at him from over her broad shoulder. Her face is hidden, but he can feel her glance stabbing through him. “Balance,” she says, turning the word into a curse. “You sound like Famine. Does the Black Rider speak for you now? Are you nothing more than a puppet?”
His nostrils flare; he feels something on his face blister and crack. “I am not the only one who adheres to her philosophy. When Death offered me the Crown years gone, he told me the same thing. Balance, Red. We are to balance the ills of humanity, not tip the scales.”
She laughs mockingly, and it’s the sound of fire cauterizing a bloody stump. “And you say that my worldview is narrow. Didn’t our Pale lord tell you our final purpose when he gave you your pretty crown?”
His good eye narrows, while his milky eye remains wide and shocked. “What purpose?”
He cannot see her mouth, but the smirk in her voice is all too clear. “Where is your philosophy now, White? Why aren’t you quoting your sweet Black’s words to me? Could it be that Death’s handmaiden knows more than you?”
He snorts, and mucus flies from his nose. “You talk but say nothing.”
“I say much,” she purrs. “I say to you now what our cold Pale lord said to me one moonless night when I warmed him with my passion: This world is ours to do with as we will, until the time comes when we Four shall ride.”
“We Four ride all the time,” he says, trying to ignore his sudden chill. “You speak nonsense.”
“We ride, certainly. But not together. Even when our paths cross, we never truly are together. That time will come, White. When this sorry world has reached its end—when our Pale lord has decided that the end is nigh—then we shall ride!” She hefts her sword high, and she shouts, “We Four together, War and Pestilence and Famine and Death, will split the world asunder! We will crush humanity and all manner of living things, slaughtering and infecting and starving them until this world is nothing more than a charnel house!”
His eyes have widened with her every word, and now he’s breathless. “No.”
War bellows her challenge to the heavens: “Our Pale lord will lead us in the greatest battle of all time! We are the Riders of the Apocalypse, and we herald the end of everything!”
His throat tight, he once again whispers his denial. “No.”
“You complain of this small sacrifice of children,” War says, lowering her sword. “Have you not considered that what we do now is a mercy, compared with what awaits them elsewise?”
The Conqueror slides off his steed and stumbles to the ground. His body shaking, his head spinning, he tries once more to insist that War is wrong, to say no, but his tongue is dead and his mouth is dead and the word sticks in his throat.
With a roar to crack the skies, War and her steed leap into the air, and they hover once more over her latest converts; beneath her, thousands upon thousands of children sing of triumphs to come.
The white steed bumps its muzzle against the White Rider’s back, but its Rider does not respond; War’s revelation has ripped away his ability to speak, to move, to do anything but watch, dumbstruck, as the children advance row by row—an army of them, a river of them, all enchanted with the possibility of succeeding where their elders have failed. Tears wind down his cheeks as the children’s call to battle spreads like an epidemic of the most sinister pox/
***
Billy barely made it out of the White before he doubled over and vomited. His body shook with spasms as he retched, trying to void himself of the sickness he’d witnessed.
We herald the end of everything.
When the heaving finally stopped, he sat back on his heels and closed his eyes, feeling heat flush his face and neck. Sweat popped on his brow, but it did nothing for the fever of truth searing his soul.
The White Rider was supposed to help end the world.
Billy Ballard was the White Rider. Therefore . . .
No. Impossible. He couldn’t.
War’s lying, he told himself. She has to be. No one actually wants the world to end. Not even War. Right?
Perhaps in answer, he heard the Pale Rider’s voice: Apocalypse is just a word, William.
But in his memory of the Greenwood and the archer Robert Hode, the Conqueror had been babbling about the end of the world.
Another memory, Billy’s own memory, shining as brightly as War’s sword gleaming in the sun:
Death told him, “End of the world or not, the Horsemen have a job to do.”
Billy replied, “Which is?”
“Why, preventing the end of the world, of course. And that’s why I need your help.”
Floating in the gray of nothingness, Billy groaned. It made no sense. He was supposed to find the Conqueror and bring him back to the real world. The Conqueror was convinced that he, the White Rider, would help bring about the end of everything. But Death had told him, Billy, that he needed Billy’s help finding the White Rider, who, like all Horsemen, had a job to do—namely, preventing the end of everything.
So had War been lying to the Conqueror all those years ago?
“So many truths, these humans have, but only one world to fit them in.”
What to believe?
Maybe he should do what the Conqueror had done: Keep the Bow and refuse to ride. Not like he had a horse, anyway (certainly not the huge white beast he’d never had a chance to ride after the Conqueror tricked him). A Horseman without a horse couldn’t ride. Keep the Bow, say all the r
ight things to Death—sure thing, I’ll shoot infected arrows at people, you bet—and then just go on with his life. Just because he had the Bow, that didn’t mean he needed to use it.
An image flashed in his mind: Eddie Glass, puking all over the floor. Another image, worse than seeing Eddie in regurgitation mode: Kurt, racing out of the cafeteria as his bowels threatened to let go, and then Joe, too overcome with illness to move from where he sat, staying in his seat and trying not to soil his pants as diarrhea and fever wrack his body.
With Eddie, Billy hadn’t understood what he’d been doing; he’d just reacted. But with Kurt and Joe, Billy had known what could happen, and never mind how he’d thrown the Bow away before going into the cafeteria. He’d known that he could summon the Bow, and he’d known what the Bow could do, if only he’d use it.
And he’d used it, all right.
But maybe, if he was really careful, he could manage. He was good at not acting on his feelings—hell, he was an expert on getting the snot beaten out of him with barely an arm up to protect his face—so maybe he could have the Bow and not use it.
Maybe—
Before he could think any further on that, the White leaped up at him, wrapped itself around him and dragged him down.
Chapter 15
Billy Struggled . . .
. . . against the tendrils of White pinning him and pulling him into itself, but it was no good; the White had him, and memories not his own sucked him in.
***
/the pox has ravaged his kingdom, indiscriminate of poor or rich or old or young. The healthy had suddenly been taken by a violent heat that started in the head and slowly worked its way down, transforming their eyes to embers, inflaming their throats and causing them to spew blood and reek of sickness.
And yet Mita, king of Phrygia, remains untouched.
He presses a clean linen cloth to his daughter’s lips to help quell her coughing. Lying on her sickbed, she’s in the throes of the great pestilence that has captured his land; he watches, helpless, as she struggles to breathe. The group of royal physicians trained in the works of Hippocrates and Galen had warned him that the time would come when her throat would close, and then nothing would allow the passage of air. Mita had dismissed them all, first individually and then as a group, when they, too, began coughing. Even so, many stayed, determined to perform their duties to the end. The last doctor to walk the halls of his palace had collapsed in a heap not two days gone; the last priest had died yesterday, his appeals to Apollo unanswered, save by the cold embrace of Thanatos.
Mita touches his daughter’s cheek, and he flinches from the heat he feels there. She’s burning up. His child is dying before his eyes, and there’s nothing he can do.
His kingdom is dying, and he’s powerless.
(Billy struggles but he’s powerless.)
On Mita’s brow, his crown threatens to crush him beneath its weight.
He squeezes his eyes closed and prays to the gods—all of them, any of them, whichever one will show mercy and be moved by his words. “Please,” he says, “tell me what to do.”
The answer comes like a whisper of wind: one word, one action, one request. Die.
Perhaps his daughter listens to the wind, because she takes one last strangled breath, and then she breathes no more.
Mita throws himself over her small body, screaming his rage and grief and impotence to Olympus and Tartarus and all places in between. His wails eventually give way to harsh, shuddering sobs that wrack his body and rip his soul. Only when his voice is hoarse and his tears are spent does he bow his head and pray for the safe passage of his daughter’s psyche to the Underworld, where she will drink from the river Lethe and forget her mortal life.
Forget the pain, he wishes for her, pressing her hand to his lips. Forget everything that has ever hurt you.
Forget me, the father who could not save you.
Mita places her hand gently across her chest, and he slowly rises. His heart is too heavy and his head is too thick, and barefoot he walks, stooped and broken, out of his daughter’s bed chamber. He cannot think; his body moves and his mind follows, nothing more than a quiet passenger. His steps are unsteady and his mind is blank, but still he walks, compelled by some unknown presence to leave the palace grounds and enter the sprawling city below. The wind kicks up, strong enough to blow Mita’s long black hair away from his face. He walks on, breathing in the perfume of sickness, all spoiled meat and feces and blood. Around him is the cacophony of panic: terrified citizens shuttering their windows and doors and hearts, turning away those already suffering with the plague, even as they beg the gods to forgive them, to show mercy, to spare their lives. Mita hears their words, but they are nothing more than noise, the buzzing of flies lighting on a carcass. If any of his subjects tries to stop him, he does not notice. He is blind; he is deaf. He is an impotent king of a diseased land.
He is lost.
When Mita comes to his senses, he is at the entrance of Apollo’s temple, deep in the center of Phrygia. Inside the doorway is a stone table—the god’s altar. On the slab is a metal dish, used for the sacred fire but now gone cold, and a curved dagger. Next to the table rests a jug. The priestess’s body is sprawled on the ground, her face swollen and discolored from the sickness that killed her. Other corpses litter the temple: the bodies of the devoted, whose prayers did nothing to stop the great pestilence from annihilating the kingdom. The temple smells of stale incense and despair.
And death, of course. And death.
Mita stares at the dagger on the altar, and with the clarity of an epiphany, he knows what he must do.
He has no proper sacrifice to offer; the shepherds are dead and dying, so none are tending their flocks. He himself is not proper, for instead of being freshly bathed and wearing the appropriate purple tunic, he is filthy and his chiton is stained. There are other missteps to the ritual of sacrifice as well: There had been no procession, led by a maiden carrying a basket filled with barley covering the sacrificial blade at the bottom. And the priestess is dead.
But he has a crown for the sacrifice, which is important, and there in the jug is holy water, which is necessary.
And he has flesh, as unworthy as it may be.
He strips off his dirty chiton and takes the jug in his hands. Naked save for his crown, he spills the contents of the jug over his head. The water hits him, and with it he is purified. So what that he has no barley to sprinkle? The gods will have to understand. He sets the jug back on the ground and takes up the dagger, and then he climbs atop the stone table.
Kneeling, Mita presses the tip of the blade to his bare chest. “Take me,” he begs, “and spare what remains of my kingdom. Let my blood be enough to appease, and to make right whatever it is that we have done wrong.” Closing his eyes, he hopes that his plea does not fall on empty ears. His fingers tighten around the handle, and he takes a deep breath, preparing himself for the end.
A cold grip catches his wrist.
“Hold, King Mita,” says a man’s voice. “I would have a word with you.”
Mita’s eyes snap open, and he sees a tall figure clothed in a coarse brown robe, his face hidden by a cowl. Mita is so stunned by the interruption that it doesn’t occur to him to reprimand the man for daring to touch a king.
“Before you spill your blood,” says the hooded man, “I have an offer for you.” His voice is oddly hollow, as if coming from some great distance.
“What could you possibly offer me?” Mita asks bitterly. “My daughter is dead. My kingdom is dying. I wear a crown, but it is sickness that reigns in Phrygia.”
“There is a different crown you could wear,” says the stranger, “one that would allow you to banish the sickness from your land. For a price.”
Something flutters in Mita’s chest, a mixture of hope and caution. He stares at the figure in the dark brown robe, and he frowns at the shadows beneath the stranger’s hood. “Let me see your face,” he says.
The stranger stiffens. �
�I come with an offer, and yet you make demands?”
“I don’t bargain with those who hide their face.” Mita wonders why he gives any reason at all. He is king; that he commands it should be enough. Beneath the stranger’s strong fingers, his wrist has gone numb.
Finally, the figure releases Mita’s arm. “Then look,” he says, and draws back his hood.
Mita looks, and his eyes widen and his mouth drops open and his breath catches in his throat. Before the horror truly sinks in, the stranger ripples, and now Mita is staring at a young man’s face. A shock of yellow hair crowns him; his skin is pale yet not sickly, even though his cheeks are sunken and the angles of his face are sharp. Only his eyes touch upon the truth: They are blue and yet bottomless, and they swirl with the secrets of the stars.
With that one look, Mita knows him, recognizes him for what he is: Thanatos. Not a god, but something older, something other. Something far more terrifying. It is the embodiment of death, masquerading as a human.
Mita quickly drops his gaze. His heartbeat thunders in his chest and ears and eyes, and a tremor settles in his hands, causing the sacrificial dagger to tremble. He’d been ready to die minutes ago, and yet now, with Death right in front of him, he suddenly very much wants to live.
“You know who I am.”
“Yes, Lord Thanatos,” Mita replies, his voice cracking.
A sound like the wind rustling dead leaves, and then: “I am no one’s lord, but you may call me by that title if it sets you at ease. Tell me, King Mita: Do you want to save your kingdom?”
Mita swallows thickly. Bargaining with one such as Thanatos is folly at best, but what choice does he have? “Yes, Lord.”
“Well then, we each have something the other wants. You want to save your land from pestilence, and I want a new Horseman.”
“You . . . wish me to be a soldier?”
“I wish nothing,” says Death, “and the role of War has long been cast. But I offer you a place as the White Rider of Apokalyptein.”
A pause, as Mita struggles to make sense of Death’s words, but he is at a loss. “The White Rider of Revelation? I don’t understand, Lord. What would be revealed?”
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