Witchy Eye

by D. J. Butler

  I have said, Ye are gods, said the Psalmist.

  Was that a message for Ezekiel, too, as his dreams were? Was it as a god that Ezekiel ran through the forests of the New World in his dream, battling Appalachee angels of fire? All of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Surely, a god need not fear death. Nor need a god fear failure; perhaps the Psalmist only congratulated Ezekiel on his work in the service of God, and promised success. And yet the Psalmist warned the gods that they should die like men.

  What gods were these?

  No, Ezekiel thought. Ye shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil. That was in the Bible too, but it was a lie in the mouth of the serpent, it was false Ophidian doctrine. God was god and man was man and the only bridge between them was God’s grace, which was not for all of the children of Eve and which could not be had by any of the Soulless, the Children of the Serpent.

  Ezekiel frowned. Whatever it was he had dreamed of being in his forest-running, Appalachee-battling dreams, it wasn’t a god.

  On the highway they had ridden two abreast, out the Charlotte Pike Gate in a light drizzle of cold rain. At the turn-off to Calhoun Mountain—a faint path indicated to them by an old man passing by with two oxen yoked to a dilapidated wagon, but only after payment of a gold sovereign—they had been forced by the narrower path to collapse into a single file.

  Ezekiel no longer had his compass of the day before, nor all the materials to recreate it—he bit back his tongue from cursing Obadiah again—but he knew the way to Calhoun Mountain now, and he knew the Elector was hiding Mad Hannah’s Hell-spawned, Ophidian child.

  The Elector would be made to give her up.

  Ezekiel rode first, and he abandoned his anonymity of the day before in favor of the black and white tabard with the hammer and nail emblazoned on its chest. The insignia marked him as a priest, or, as he preferred to think of himself, a knight, riding to holy war under the banner of St. Martin. Martin Luther himself had given it its military character. After he dethroned the tyrant Cetes from the Lord Mayoralty of Wittenberg, he had created the Order, appointed its first Father-General, and directed it to act in defense of the children of Eve.

  God had given dominion over the earth to Adam and Eve and therefore to their children, the Book of Genesis clearly taught. That meant, as St. Martin had clarified in his Ninety-Five Theses, that it was an unnatural and unholy inversion of God’s design for any child of Eve to be ruled by any creature other than another child of Eve. The Soulless could not be allowed to rule over the Souled, and so the first and irrevocable mandate of every member of the Order everywhere was to remove the so-called Firstborn from positions of dominion. St. Martin would not have them rule, in the church or in the palace.

  Even when Penn blood coursed in their veins.

  Especially when they were Penns.

  Ezekiel had the blight-faced little abomination holed up now, and he felt great satisfaction at the prospect of her imminent capture. And if she moved again, his dreams would tell him.

  They rode up the ridge through the soft rustle of drifting leaves, Obadiah occasionally bursting into snatches of whistled tune and then each time cutting himself off; Ezekiel recognized the songs as lewd ones. Obadiah was a brute and an infidel pagan, but he was useful—he ran errands and he was dependable muscle when force was called for.

  He also stood as constant evidence to Ezekiel of the Fall, and of the imperfection of the children of Eve. He fought for them not because they were more virtuous or more noble than the Eldritch, but because that was the commandment of Ezekiel’s God.

  Also, Obadiah’s presence reminded Ezekiel that even Christendom held many souls yet to come to Christ.

  The Blues were more disciplined than Obadiah; they knew they were in territory that was in hostile hands, if not in the hands of outright enemies, and they rode in silence, watching the woods.

  At the top of the ridge, they reached the mouth of a narrow canyon that cut up through the crown of the hill and led, the ox-driver had said, to the homes on the top of Calhoun Mountain; Ezekiel reined in his horse.

  Ten Appalachee men in long hunting shirts, fringed jackets, and floppy hats lounged about the mouth of the canyon. More stood in the canyon and others likely lurked at the top. Ezekiel searched for the faces of Shadrach Calhoun and the other men who had ambushed him in the woods, laughing as they forced him to recite scripture and undress, but didn’t see them.

  He shook his head; he was not here to avenge his own harms, however egregious they were. Ezekiel closed his eyes and tried to remember last night’s dreams—he didn’t think he’d seen this place. Presumably the spot where he would catch the girl was further up.

  Captain Berkeley eased up to Ezekiel’s side. “Be wary of these highlanders, Parson. They dress themselves like vagrants, but they are famous shots, and they are not arranged so casually as they may appear.”

  It irritated Ezekiel to be called parson, which was not his title, since he was not a parish priest, and which was instead a deliberately barbed reminder that Berkeley was indifferent to his authority. Still, he looked again and saw Berkeley was right; each of the Appalachee men held a long rifle and many had a second close to hand, or a pistol tucked into a belt. All appeared to lie casually and relaxed, but each sat on or beside some boulder, stump, or crack that could provide cover from return fire.

  “I see,” he murmured. The heretic traitor Thalanes had done a despicable thing in concealing Mad Hannah’s child, but he had hidden her well and in a place that was stoutly defended. Ezekiel was duly impressed. Impressed, but not daunted.

  He was a paladin, and he rode under the banner of a crusade.

  Ezekiel moved forward a few feet, to try to give the Blues behind him room to come up, but there was no clearing at the foot of the canyon, and most of the dragoons continued to sit in the saddle in single file. This also left them in a tactical position that was less than ideal, since it would force them to attack the defile one at a time, if this meeting came to blows.

  “Be wary,” Captain Berkeley repeated. “God’s will no doubt shall come to pass, but there’s no need for us to tempt fate with imprudence.”

  Ezekiel nodded, then cleared his throat and politely removed his tall black hat to address the Calhouns.

  “Git the hell off my land!” one of the Calhouns snapped.

  Ezekiel focused on the speaker. He was an old man, standing about halfway up the draw, with a cragged face under a blaze of snow-white hair. He wore all black and had just one arm. He was the only one of the Appalachee men who appeared to be without a weapon.

  “Pardon me?” Ezekiel called.

  “Youins are foreigners, armed and trespassin’! I repeat myself, git the hell off my land afore I decide to exercise my natural liberties and eject you by the seat of your too-tight britches!”

  Ezekiel wasn’t surprised to find that the crackers weren’t predisposed to cooperate. That was fine with him; he had come prepared to cajole and bully.

  “You must be the Elector Calhoun!” Ezekiel called. “I’m Father Ezekiel Angleton of the Order of St. Martin, confessor to His Imperial Majesty Thomas Penn. This is Captain Sir Daniel Berkeley of the Imperial House Light Dragoons, and those are the dragoons themselves on the trail behind me.”

  “The only man I e’er called ‘father’ is buried on this here mountain, you jackanapes!” Calhoun shouted back. “Your precious St. Martin was a robber, a lecher, and a drunk, and as far that poltroon’s rank goes, I am, as it happens, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Calhoun of the First Appalachee Volunteers.

  “I stood tall against Wallenstein’s Germans and Algonks in fifty-five and sixty, when I don’t reckon either one of you was even born! Hell, for that matter, I don’t reckon you’s born when I fought Washington and Pontiac in sixty-three, and if you’s alive when I personally drove the Spanish out of Natchez in seventy-nine, then you must a been tiny little shits, still wipin’ your noses and your asses on your m
ammas’ frilly skirts!”

  Ezekiel realized he’d backed his horse away a step under the verbal onslaught. He urged the beast forward again.

  “I have an Imperial Warrant,” he called, “for the arrest of a girl name Sarah Penn. You may know her as Sarah Calhoun. We aren’t actively seeking trouble, and expect to receive your assistance in locating Miss Calhoun.”

  “Iffen you reckon I’m fixin’ to surrender to you fellers anybody at all as goes by the last name of Calhoun, you can jest piss right off and die!”

  “Even if the girl isn’t really a Calhoun?” Ezekiel called.

  The Elector ignored his question. “As to your havin’ an imperial warrant, I b’lieve you’ll find you left the highway several miles back—this is Calhoun land, and your warrant ain’t worth the breath it’d take you to read it!”

  Ezekiel frowned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He knew he was in no position to mount an actual attack here, but he’d expected the Blues to have more weight as a threat than they appeared to have.

  “Easy, Father,” Berkeley warned him, and it almost warmed Ezekiel’s heart to hear his proper form of address in the captain’s mouth. “If we are to fight these men, we must choose a better battleground. This is terrible positioning, and the cards do not favor us today.”

  The cards? Ezekiel sighed.

  “Technically the warrant is, of course, only executable on Imperial land, you’re correct, and the emperor respects your liberties,” he called to the Elector, trying to mollify him before the hammer blow. He was lying; the emperor acted off Imperial land as often as he could get away with it. That was what the Imperial Foresters were for, and the Philadelphia Blues, and that didn’t even begin to take into account the Pacification of the Ohio. “Of course, he’s also your emperor, and he expects that in return for his acknowledgement of your liberties, you’ll cooperate with the exercise of his power. Give us the child Sarah, and there’s no need for any violence.”

  The craggy face broke open in wild, high-pitched laughter that drew hearty chuckles from the other Calhoun men and went on too long, leaving Ezekiel feeling nervous. Abruptly, the laughter stopped—

  the Elector raised his one arm above his head—

  every Calhoun rifleman suddenly pulled up his gun, and a bristling briar patch of firearms stared down at Ezekiel Angleton and the Blues.

  “You forget yourself, Angleton!” the Elector shouted. “I don’t need no civics instruction from a whelp like you, I was there in eighty-four! I signed the Compact myself with the one arm George Washington left me, and I know good and damn well exactly what the Imperial nonsense is all about!”

  “Blazes, Parson,” Captain Berkeley muttered. “What are you thinking?”

  “I didn’t sign the Compact to take John Penn as my king, you ignoramus! I signed it to tell him iffen he ever got too big for his britches, we’d throw him on out and elect us someone new! As for Thomas Penn, Hell, I voted against that Chaldee numbskull!”

  “Are you repudiating your emperor?” The constitutional talk left Ezekiel irritated, especially in light of the assault he’d suffered the night before. “Are you telling me you plan to invoke an election?”

  “As to expectations,” Calhoun shouted again, “yours and little Tommy Penn’s, you can expect that when I lower my arm, every one of my boys is gonna shoot you. You can expect that some of youins’ll escape, and you can expect that some of us’ll likely die in the return fire. But you can be damned sure that St. Martin Luther’ll end the day down one father, and the emperor down one cap’n.”

  Ezekiel gnashed his teeth. His horse fretted beneath him and he jammed his hat back onto his head.

  “Take all the time you want to chew it over,” the Elector called. “Only recognize that I ain’t got no Aaron up here to prop my one arm up, and these wild-eyed sons of Jacob’d be more’n happy to shoot themselves a few Amalekites!”

  “About face!” Captain Berkeley called. “We’re finished here!” he snapped, and pushed past Obadiah to lead his men back down the ridge.

  Ezekiel took one long look at the Calhoun riflemen and the mountain above them. He felt anger, but he wasn’t discouraged. Somewhere up there, he knew he would encounter Sarah Calhoun and her young highland friend, and he expected to defeat them. He only needed to understand what the dream-fire was, and then he would be prepared for battle.

  Laughter from the ravine followed him down as he pushed his horse to catch up to Captain Berkeley.

  “Captain,” he began, attracting the man’s attention by calling over his shoulder, “thank you for your wise counsel and support. Let’s discuss the possibilities of laying siege to this mountain.”

  * * *

  Cal held the spoonful of moonshine with a pinch of gunpowder in it in his left hand. In his right he held the Elector’s rifle, primed and cocked but not loaded. He brought the firing pan of the rifle close to the spoon and angled the gun to direct the sparks.

  “What are you doing?” Thalanes leaned over Cal’s shoulder.

  Sarah was content to sit a couple of paces away and not too close to the still, in case anything exploded.

  Cal squeezed the trigger.

  Poomf!

  The sparks lit the gunpowder and the moonshine both, and Cal was suddenly holding a spoonful of blue flame. “I’m jest proofin’ the moonshine.” He held up the burning spoon. “See? Burnin’ blue, moonshine’s true.”

  He shook the blazing alcohol out onto the cave floor and toed sand over it to snuff out the flame.

  “I thought you were New Light, like your cousins,” the little monk said.

  Cal put the spoon away. “Jest ’cause I’m New Light don’t mean I can’t know how to proof moonshine.”

  The three of them were in the Crooked Man’s Cave, where they had spent the last hours of the night. It was a shallow depression in the limestone, no more than five or six of Calvin’s paces deep. There were dirty blankets in the corner, some obscene chalk sketches on the stone, and a rough bit of wood sculpture in the back that looked vaguely like an ugly old man with a hunched back and twisted legs. Under the sculpture lay bits of tobacco ash and shattered glass that might be the remains of sacrifices.

  And there was a still, consisting mostly of a copper pot and a wooden barrel, with a couple of glass bottles’ worth of genuine corn likker that Cal had just judged to be good.

  “So I guess you’ll bring along the moonshine,” Thalanes concluded.

  “Yeah, I reckon I will.” Cal tapped the cork back into the bottle and slid the bottle into his pack. “Iffen we don’t want to drink it ourselves, somebody else will, and we can always trade. Lessen you’ve got a problem with that.”

  “Don’t you feel like it’s theft?” Thalanes asked.

  Cal shook his head. “This cave is on Calhoun land, and this still is a Calhoun still, and besides, I done these boys plenty of favors when they needed them. Now I reckon they can do me one.”

  “Ain’t you gonna tell us where we’re a-goin’?” Sarah asked. “I don’t reckon you’re fixin’ to live the rest of your life in some cracker pagan temple cave.”

  “Aren’t. You should practice your Penn’s English,” Thalanes advised her. “Not only will people take you more seriously, outside of Appalachee, but you’ll be less conspicuous.”

  “Ain’t that somethin’ of a contradiction?” Sarah defied him.

  “Nothin’ wrong with the word ain’t,” Calvin grumbled.

  Thalanes hummed cheerfully.

  The three of them had slipped down Calhoun Mountain in the rainy night, carrying packs of necessaries, wrapped in wool coats (even the monk had borrowed one), and shod in walking shoes—moccasins, in fact, Indian-style but stitched by the nimble fingers of Calhoun women.

  There had been Imperial soldiers on the track, on the highway and in the woods, men with long blue cloaks and blue tricorner hats, but after rubbing a little dirt on each of their cheeks the monk had whispered “oculos obscuro” and advised them to wa
lk casually and quietly past. None of the soldiers batted an eyelash. Sarah felt like laughing out loud as she passed within five feet of two guards standing on the edge of the Charlotte Pike, directly in front of them, and they continued their empty men’s talk about horses and women the entire time.

  The men were the Philadelphia Blues, Thalanes had explained as they walked, the Imperial House Light Dragoons. The emperor’s personal elite military unit, his bodyguard, the men who undertook his most sensitive errands. When her father had been the Imperial Consort, they had ridden with him. Sarah had felt uneasy just thinking about it.

  Calvin had brought the three of them to the Crooked Man’s Cave, where they’d gotten a few hours of sleep and acquired some moonshine. Now, in the gray of the morning, they shouldered their packs again.

  “Farewell, cave,” Thalanes said as they stepped out. “You’ve been good to us, despite your occupant.”

  Cal shrugged. “In these hills, the line between a haint and a saint can git so fine you don’t even see it.”

  Sarah’s pack held a little clothing and a bedroll, and she carried a gift from the Elector in the shape of a new walking staff, with a crisp, delicate horse’s head carved into the top of it. “White ash,” he had said to her in his gruffest voice at their parting. “It’s good against evil spirits.”

  “The horse for fast travel?” she had asked.

  He’d nodded. “And for the knight on the chessboard, who jumps o’er his enemies without stoppin’.”