Branch laughed. “Such a sinner are you, Colonel. You shall burn for a long time.”
Fire crouched, reaching a hand toward Rathfield, but looked up at his former charge. “Rufus, this is not like you. What has happened?”
Branch pulled back and smiled easily. “The tablets held the secret. Tell him. Tell them.”
Stone nodded. “It’s true, all has been revealed. God has granted us the gifts denied us when we left the garden. It is as you preached, Ezekiel.” The man raised a finger and wrote on the air. Golden sigils hung there, twinkling as if made of stardust, then slowly vanished. Owen could make nothing of them, but he’d seen them before, on the walls of the outpost.
As the sigils drained away, a plant sprouted beneath them. It looked for all intents to be a sunflower, with a blossom eight inches across. It grew to waist height in less than a minute’s time, and the flower opened. The blossom appeared very much like cauliflower, but golden-brown on the surface. It smelled for all the world of cinnamon.
“You see, as it was said in the Good Book: Manna, given to us through this Godly gift. These tablets that the Steward has translated were put here for us, so we can lead people to God.”
Fire, instead of rising, went down to his other knee. He clasped his hands in prayer. “Father Almighty, please forgive these Your children…”
“Silence! Blasphemy will not be tolerated.” Branch thrust a finger at Fire. “Clap him in irons and hitch him to the Post of Shame.”
Two men stepped forward, pulled on leather gloves, and dragged Fire toward the center of the green. A stout post had been sunk into the middle of it, and a pair of manacles bound to it by a short length of chain. Fire neither struggled nor protested his treatment. Once secured, he went to his knees again, and the short chains raised his arms to an obviously uncomfortable height.
Owen and Nathaniel exchanged glances. If they attacked now and managed to kill Branch, they still would have three dozen adults to deal with. Not only would the expedition end right there, but whatever had transformed the people of Happy Valley would be free to continue working.
Nathaniel raised his rifle’s muzzle to the sky. “You serious ’bout that trial, Rufus?”
Branch scratched over his ear and a clump of hair came away. He looked at it for a moment, puzzled, as if he didn’t know what it was. Then he cast it aside and stroked the tablet again. “Yes. A trial. Exactly. I will summon those who will judge you. If you run, Fire will die.”
Makepeace bent down to help Rathfield to his feet. “And what if we recant our heresy and accept fellowship and communion here in Happy Valley?”
Rufus looked Makepeace up and down, then snorted. “There may be mercy granted. Go to the workshop. Await the summoning.”
Nathaniel led the way to the workshop. It didn’t appear as if Rathfield would be able to climb the ladder into the hayloft, so Owen gathered a length of rope and hitched it to a chain and hook. He opened the loft door to thread it through the pulley, but the Colonel had recovered enough to make the trip himself. They positioned him by the loft door so he could watch the green and report if anything unusual was happening.
Owen crouched with the others two-dozen feet away. “Suggestions?”
Nathaniel nodded. “I got me a plan.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Well, Kamiskwa, the second it gets dark, you’re going to light on out of here.”
“I am not abandoning you.”
Nathaniel clapped the Shedashee on the shoulders. “I ain’t sending you off to save your life. It’s to save many lives. Did you notice that the workshop here, and near all the houses I could see, they had themselves paper nailed up on the doors. Got that fancy writing that Stone made on ’em?”
Kamiskwa nodded. “I take some of those and get them to Prince Vlad?”
“You got the best chance of any of us to do that.”
Owen’s eyes narrowed. “Once he’s gone, they’ll kill the rest of us.”
“I ’spect, but see, Rufus Branch, he ain’t never really got the best of me. He couldn’t never beat me fair and square, so he went to poison and all. I don’t got me no idea what’s going on here, but he’ll jump at the chance to break me his own self.”
“You saw what he did to Rathfield. Breaking you is not going to take long.”
“Now Captain, I reckoned you had more faith in me than that.” Nathaniel smiled. “Rufus, he’s playing by some rules here, and I reckon offering a benediction will be part of them. Makepeace, do you reckon you could offer some Scriptural comments to mount our defense for heresy?”
“Iffen you think there is going to be a trial.”
“I think there will. He still needs the congregation. If he didn’t, he’d gone and kilt us right off.”
Rathfield shifted his position by the loft door. “People going into the Temple. All of them.”
Owen walked over and watched. The people weren’t just walking to the meeting house, they were streaming toward it, like ants on the edge of a leaf. Fathers leading mothers, children following behind in descending order of height. Owen couldn’t help but imagine that was how the people in Piety had moved before they were attacked.
He looked down at Rathfield, whose eyes still focused distantly, and whose lower lip trembled. “What happened, Colonel?”
“It got inside my mind. Everything, it knows everything.” He stared up with haunted eyes and gripped Owen’s forearm tightly. “Even things I never wanted to remember.”
As the people continued making their way to the Temple, Rufus Branch emerged from it wearing a long robe belted narrowly at the waist. He carried both tablets beneath his left arm.
Owen turned. “Something strange going on with Branch.”
Nathaniel crossed to the door, crouching between Owen and Rathfield. “Kamiskwa, get ready. Almost dark enough.”
The new Steward approached the post and said something to Fire, then threw his head back and laughed. He began walking a slow circle around him, and faint snatches of melody made its way to the loft. As Branch began singing louder, the discordant notes and odd phrases made Owen’s flesh crawl. Even more eerily, as the volume increased, the song appeared as a black ribbon of sigils trimmed in gold, rising from Rufus’ mouth as steam might from a winter’s-night conversation. They swirled into the sky, evaporating slowly and mingling with the gloom.
Owen pointed toward the meeting house. “I can’t see beyond it. There’s a black fog.”
Makepeace grunted. “More like shadow done froze over.”
Kamiskwa, over by the workshop’s side door, called out. “It’s around the barn. I can’t open the door.”
Nathaniel retreated from the window and fetched his rifle. He crouched again and sighted down the barrel. “Hundred and ten yards, give or take.”
Makepeace nodded. “I reckon you can hit him, but killing him’s another matter.”
As if he had heard the remark, Rufus stopped singing and turned toward the workshop. He ran a hand back through his hair as if to smooth it, but instead harvested great swaths instead. He let the hair float in the air for a moment before beginning his approach.
His voice boomed. “I know you too well, Nathaniel Woods. This is why I have taken the precaution of summoning the fog. You would have sent your friend away, but the mist will kill him.”
“That doesn’t sound like Rufus Branch to me.” Owen shook his head. “Too precise.”
Kamiskwa, who had joined them, shrugged. “Fire did say he taught him to read and write.”
“Different from making speeches, though.”
Nathaniel stood. “Well, whatever or whoever, I ain’t about to be crouching here like some mouse.” He descended the ladder and threw open the workshop door. The others, save for Rathfield, followed from the workshop and took a stand beside him with the workshop’s narrow wall at their backs. “I thought we was getting a trial, Rufus.”
“Change of plans. Earlier I thought that would be useful, but I can see, now, i
t is of little use.” Rufus smoothed away the last of the hair on the right side of his head. “From you I need something else. A verification. And, I believe, that will require a demonstration on my part.”
Rufus had closed within forty yards. He crooked his right index finger. The nail had grown out into a proper talon, which he played over the surface of the tablet. He traced one of the glyphs, an angular one, then flicked with the nail. The glyph came up off the tablet, flying up swiftly, then lazily descending like an autumn leaf.
It burned red.
Rufus caught it on his open palm and allowed the color to pool there. He rocked his hand forward and back. The redness congealed into a plum-size ball, shot through with gold lightning. Some of the bolts emerged to link his fingers with a sizzling web, and the ball rose at the heart of it. He flexed his fingers, letting the web slip from them, and the ball hovered, bathing his pallid face with a bloody glow.
“There is, in this world, power unimagined.”
He brushed the ball away as casually as one might swat at dandelion fluff. The ball circled once, caught in the vortex of air his hand had created, then arced up and back toward the meeting house. Owen lost sight of it for a heartbeat, then it exploded beside the door, washing it in a sheet of flame. Before he could open his mouth to shout a warning, flames licked up to the roof.
And despite the sound and light, no one within shouted or screamed, nor made any attempt to escape.
Owen’s mouth hung open. “Are you insane?”
Before Rufus could answer, Nathaniel raised his rifle and dropped his thumb to the firestone. Thunder cracked. At that range, there was no way Nathaniel could miss. Smoke blew back over them, but instead of revealing a dead Steward, they found themselves looking at Rufus rolling the bullet around in his palm, much as he had the glyph.
“As I said, power unimagined. Freezing a bullet in the air, plucking it from where it hovered, that is as nothing.” Rufus idly examined his talons in the fire’s glow. “I wish to understand how you will greet my return.”
Nathaniel levered his reloaded rifle breech closed again. “I can give you another demonstration.”
“Not you, my friend, but all of you.” Rufus raised a hand. “I said a verification.”
Owen’s eyes tightened. “What would you be verifying?”
“I saw what lurked in your cowering friend’s mind. I have visions of Fort Cuivre and Anvil Lake. I know how hard you fight.” The hand fell. “Now I wish to know how you will fight this.”
Bat-winged creatures boiled out of the darkness. Smaller than men, but not by much, more slender and lighter as befitted a flying creature, they streamed in from the sides and down from the gloom. Their tiny eyes burned scarlet, and jagged mother-of-pearl teeth flashed. They bore no weapons save for those teeth and the sharp claws on their feet and hands.
Without thinking Owen thrust his rifle into one’s face and triggered a spell. The bullet blew through the creature’s brains and sent another tumbling back through the air. He clubbed a third with his rifle butt and brained a fourth with the barrel. The steel appeared to do more harm, making its flesh bubble and blister. He shifted it to his left hand and drew his steel tomahawk, laying about him with both as quickly as he could.
Makepeace roared, smashing them with a rifle in one hand and snatching them out of the air with the other. He grabbed one by the throat and its wings closed around his hand, knuckles showing through the grey membrane. Bones crackled and the dead thing fell away, but Makepeace bled from where it had bitten and clawed him.
Kamiskwa’s warclub made short work of the creatures. It seemed as if the weapon had been designed to crush their brittle bones and slice through their wings. One clung to his long braid, so the warrior whipped his head back and flung the beast hard against the workshop doors.
Nathaniel, too, fought as if the devil had opened the gates to Hell and demons had poured forth. Tomahawk and knife flashed. Dark blood splashed through the night. Ebon bodies littered the ground, twitching and grasping, each creature chancing a last scratch or bite.
So many of them to fight. None of them had inflicted a deep wound, but the scratches stung and the bites wept. The woman who had escaped from Piety had not been subject to one swift attack, but to a series of slow and deliberate attacks. Though Owen fought against a horde of the creatures, no single wound could match any of hers, and taken in the aggregate, they had done less damage.
The sheer weight of the assault, however, forced Owen back, foot by foot. He slashed high and low, kicking creatures away, but could not regain lost ground. Wings wrapped his face and shoulders, blinding him. Things bit at his neck and ears. He’d tear them off, gaining a moment to orient himself, and then they would descend again.
Then he tripped, the leather rustling of their wings accompanying his fall. To stay down was to die, but bloody mud gave his feet no purchase. The demons pounced, piling onto his legs, grabbing his arms and spreading them wide.
Behind him, Makepeace had been backed against the workshop. The demons covered him in a living gray coat. Kamiskwa had likewise fallen and had been buried beneath a writhing gray carpet. Nathaniel lay slumped at the base of the workshop wall, his face a mask of blood.
Rufus strode through the carnage and laughed. “So, I see. This will be easier than I imagined. But time to end this now.”
A sudden shriek from above caused the Steward to look up. There, wide-eyed and clearly insane with terror, Ian Rathfield leaped from the workshop loft. He landed on both feet and staggered—Owen thought certain he’d heard a bone break—but it mattered not at all. In his hand, Ian bore the steel chain with which Owen had thought to haul him into the loft, and he whirled it above his head.
The chain’s deadly arc swept demons from the air. The heavy hook on its end dashed out brains. Roaring at the top of his lungs, making a sound no human throat was ever meant to utter, Rathfield drove forward and wrapped the chain around Rufus’ chest. He trapped the left arm there, warping the tablets. And yet, even as his attack crumpled the Steward, Rufus thrust his right hand toward Ian, and a glowing purple sigil flew from his palm.
The arcane symbol struck Ian in the forehead with the force of a hammer, denting his skull. The man dropped into a heap. One of the demons landed before him, wings spread, clawed hands raised high, ready to finish the work the magick had begun.
And behind it, backlit by the burning Temple, a bat-winged leviathan descended from the sky.
Chapter Twenty-eight
16 May 1767
Happy Valley
Postsylvania, Mystria
Mugwump snatched the demon up in his mouth and spat it, broken and limp, toward a clump of the creatures covering something on the ground. The demon steamed, the dragon’s saliva already consuming it. The others screeched and pulled back, smeared mucus already burning holes in their wings. The dragon’s tail flicked left and right, snapping demons into clouds of black blood and bone splinters.
Prince Vlad, clinging to the saddle with frostbitten fingers, hunched forward as Mugwump spun. The dragon bit things in half, shaking his head as a terrier might shake a rat, and wetness spattered the Prince. Vlad didn’t really care what it was, since it was warmer than he. He dearly wished they were closer to the fire—at least until he realized it was a building.
Then Mugwump launched himself into the air again, up into a black fog that hid the ground, visibly reducing the burning building to a tiny spark. Right wing went up, left down. Mugwump rolled through the sky, flying after the bat-winged creatures. He hissed savagely, a sound the Prince had heard at Anvil Lake, but this time saliva jetted out in a mist. The demons caught in it curled up and dropped from sight. Vlad marveled, never having suspected the dragon of having such a weapon.
Mugwump pumped his wings and twisted again sharply in pursuit. He looped up and over as he chased after a particularly good flier. Prince Vlad vomited. He coughed and retched, doubling over both frozen and miserable, holding on for dear life and wishing
he might fall to his death and end the torture. He had no idea where he was, why Mugwump had stopped responding to commands, what the demons were, or why Mugwump seemed so intent on, and skilled at, killing them.
Then one landed on Vlad’s back, cloaking him in its wings. It chittered as it lunged for his neck, its fetid breath hot against exposed flesh. Its clawed hands grabbed his shoulders tightly, and toe talons found purchase on his thighs.
Vlad snapped his head back, driving his skull into the creature’s face. Bones broke, and a part of the Prince’s brain catalogued that fact. It made sense that the creature’s bones would be light, even hollow, like a bird’s. To confirm that, he grabbed its ankles and squeezed. More bones popped and the creature thrashed. He reached up and back, grabbing it by the wings, then pulled it forward and smashed its spine against the saddle horn.
For a heartbeat he contemplated keeping it as a specimen, but contemptuously tossed it aside. As it fell, Mugwump looked back and hooted triumphantly.
Then he rolled again and dropped from the sky, leaving Prince Vlad’s stomach somewhere above the clouds. The dragon’s sharp descent pierced the black fog, but it had already begun to dissipate. Wings flared and Mugwump landed softly, snorting and hissing more deadly mist.
A man came running over, remaining well clear of Mugwump’s wings and tail. “Highness, what are you doing here?”
It took Prince Vlad a moment to recognize him beneath the blood. “I could ask you the same, Owen. Is this Postsylvania?”
“So the locals say.”
Kamiskwa came trotting over, a young girl clutched in one arm, his bloody warclub in his other hand. “Becca was never called to the Temple. She hid. As the demons scattered, one entered the house she was in. She screamed. I thought Rufus might have slunk off in that direction, so I went looking and found her instead.”
Mugwump raised his muzzle and sniffed. He roared a challenge.
The Altashee smiled. “Then I leave her to you, Mugwump, and I shall continue seeking signs of our enemy.”
Prince Vlad invoked the spell and spun the left-hand wheel. The dragon responded by turning toward a large barnlike building in front of which Nathaniel and Makepeace crouched over a man. “Is that Colonel Rathfield?”
Of Limited Loyalty: The Second Book of the Crown Colonies Page 22