Mobius

by Garon Whited

  “You want to encourage the worship of their gods so their gods will leave the blood-sucking vampire demon-monster alone?”

  “It’s kind of counterintuitive, I grant you.”

  “No, really?”

  “Hey, this benefits you!” I argued. “If you get this deal off the ground, I go back to being an avatar instead of a demon and lose a whole Empire of potential enemies!”

  “You’re not wrong,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure you’re right, either.”

  “All I’m sure of is, if I do nothing, I’ll keep getting crusaders and assassins. My other option is to destroy all the Temples.”

  “Possibly,” he mused. “How small can you make a nuke?”

  “That’s not the goddam point!”

  “Ah,” he replied, blinking a bit. “Touchy subject?”

  I snarled at him. He nodded.

  “I apologize. I shouldn’t joke.”

  I put my face in my hands and scrubbed briskly for a moment. The little one started crying. Cursing softly, I picked her up and bounced her a little while glaring at my altar ego.

  “I’m not happy about having to do it in the first place,” I reminded him, quietly. “I’m planning to alter the past—now the future—and risk some sort of wacko paradox problem to make it never happen. So when you casually suggest nuking my problems, it pushes my buttons. I can think of it and shy away from it, but when you do it, it feels like you’re pushing for it. All right?”

  “I’m sorry. All right. And I’ll see what I can do with the proto-gods up here as far as creating a pantheon and making us all a part of it. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thank you. And I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  “You had reason. It’s okay. But I do have a question for you.”

  “What is it?” I sighed.

  “Do you really think you can stay here long enough for a jihad to be a problem?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’ve got problems with your people, right? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the flavor coming off them as they revere you and fear you in the same thought. Add to it problems with the kustoni to the left of you, Temples to the right of you, and everyone trying to volley and thunder. Give me six months, a year at the outside, and you can go to the kustoni as the living avatar and high priest of the Lord of Shadows. Right now? Not a chance. You definitely can’t go hang out in the Empire. And as for the valley, how’s that looking?”

  “First of all, shut up. Second, go away.”

  “I’m sorry,” he told me, sincerely. “I mean it. But you’re in danger of sitting on your volcano while the tremors get worse and worse, all the while thinking they’re not too bad today because they aren’t much worse than the ones yesterday.”

  I collapsed his face into sand again and tried to ignore what he said. I wound up feeding the baby and watching over the Bridgefort battlefield. Nobody tried a nighttime attack. I also looked around the valley, checking for the infiltrators Leisel mentioned. There were three different groups of them, presumably saboteurs, but they were either dead, being transported to Bridgefort or—one group—pinned down in a narrow cave, unable to get out but difficult to remove.

  Since the little person was sleeping again, I made sure the baby monitor spell was working, locked and enspelled the door, went down to the barn, and rode out to the cave. They had two lanterns keeping the cave mouth lit, so it was easy to find.

  We didn’t appear out of the dark. I made a point of approaching with a hovering light over me, illuminating the darkened woods for their benefit, if not mine. I did my best to be smiling and friendly and to greet everyone in a sincere and heartfelt fashion. The warriors greeted me in return, respectfully, but were more wary than friendly. Still, I’ve seen worse when the boss is being friendly while the employees are concerned about their jobs.

  I went into the cave, tendrils out and writhing forward before me. I didn’t kill anyone, just drained their vitality to a low ebb and dragged their unconscious forms out into the open air. Six bodies, three trips, no problem.

  The leader of the squad saluted with the up-and-out rotating gesture and thanked me for my help while his men cut their throats. Apparently, Leisel didn’t want the infiltrators alive, which suited me. I simply didn’t realize she’d given the order.

  Sadly, nobody warned me they were about to cut throats. I was busy talking to their captain while the rest simply carried out their orders. The first I knew of it was when the hot, coppery smell of blood hit the air, followed momentarily by the feel of it crawling over my boot tops.

  I suppose I could have jumped up, run away, pretended to surprise and terror, but to what end? Instead, I stood there, resigned, while the blood pumped out of the bodies and hurried over to me. Let them watch. So what? It’s going to be that kind of night, obviously. Screw it.

  When the last drops vanished, I mounted up without a word and went back to the keep.

  Tauta, 3rd Day of Lorinskir

  I’ve been thinking about what my altar ego said. Maybe he has a point. Maybe this isn’t the place for me. Or, more correctly, maybe it’s no longer a place for me. Maybe I ruined this place for myself. Whether I ruined it for everyone else is an open question, but it’s getting too complicated for me to live here, much less get to the work I want to do.

  I could have put more effort into finding a non-Earth universe, I suppose. There are a lot of things I could have done differently once I got here, too—and probably should have done differently. Maybe this is my mulligan. Or would that be Rethven? I haven’t had a lot of different worlds where I try to blend in for the long term. This could be a good example of how not to do it.

  Or maybe blending in with alien cultures isn’t my forté.

  All right, fine. Maybe I’ll go away and lurk in an Earth timeline until I can nail down the perfect non-Earth universe to sit in while I watch the timelines go by. I have plenty of things to occupy my time besides coping with two civilizations, one religion, a heretic movement, and a protestant valley.

  Crap. I have a baby to deal with. Well, there are foster families and orphanages on most Earth worlds. Surely I can find a decent home for… Hmm. Where does one find a good home for what is, potentially, a soulless monster-child? I mean, it looks normal, both to my physical inspection and Vamp-O-Vision™. How do I prove it isn’t a soulless monster?

  Why the hell do the locals think that, anyway?

  All right, maybe I’m not foisting off the potentially-monstrous baby on an unsuspecting foster family. I can hire a damn sitter and still get stuff done. Maybe she’ll be human enough for daycare. Preschool. Whatever it is people do with small children. Or I can find a foster family and still hang around, watching for signs she’s the monster everyone here thinks she is. There’s an idea.

  This is the revenge of fate, sticking me with a child because I was such a failure with my own kids. I want a word with the Norns. I do not appreciate this. I’ve had enough character-building experiences. I’m all leveled up, thank you. Can I please be left alone?

  Of course not. I have some goddam destiny to fulfil and a paradox to negotiate.

  I want to hit something.

  Instead of hitting something, I practiced some deep breathing, slowly went through the motions of sixteen lethal strikes, played with a baby, and watched the ongoing Battle for Bridgefort.

  The loss of the wizards hit them pretty hard. They spent most of the morning filling every container they had from the mountain stream near their campsite. Maybe I should reroute that to deny any future attackers ready access to water. I left it in the first place because I was thinking of caravans, not crusaders. Dang it, balancing commerce and warfare is a political thing and I hate politics.

  They also spent a good portion of the morning praying. The priests were out ministering to the faithful and trying to bandage morale. Judging from the looks on their faces, the priests were either honestly faithful about the righteousness of their cause or excellent con men. Maybe
I should look at them more closely some evening.

  Morale needed bandaging. From my sky-based vantage point, I detected movement. No less than twenty individuals had deserted the force and were working their way through the terrain, avoiding the road, headed east. Half of them were wounded, generally in the left forearm. I suspect they didn’t feel like enduring another hailstorm of bodkin points.

  About midmorning, the remaining forces resumed hammering on the ram, adding more roof. They definitely didn’t like having buckets full of oil splattered across and over their frontal protection. The ram was still open at the rear, though, to allow for the swing.

  They took an early lunch and rolled out.

  The Bridgefort defenders hadn’t been idle, either. During the night, Leisel ordered all the lamp oil, cooking grease, and other flammables brought up from the villages. She also lowered some men on ropes, sending them out to gather the crossbow quarrels lying on the bridge—a fraction of the ones fired, what with the ravine below and the ones still stuck in attackers. Still, no point in wasting them.

  I wondered why she sent so many. There were over a dozen who did nothing but move down toward the other end of the bridge and form a shield wall, two shields high. Nobody was attacking. My first thought was it was a safety measure. If someone did decide to send out a probing force, the shield wall would give the rest time to retreat. Then the shield-bearers could withdraw under cover from the crossbowmen.

  They the rest of the force also loosened some of the peg-corks in the bridge walls without removing them. The remaining logs the crusaders laid down were flipped over, sawn most of the way through, and replaced. When they finished, the men caught ropes, walked carefully across the drawbridge supports, and were hoisted up again.

  I caught on as they packed up and retreated into Bridgefort. Maybe the shield wall was there to deter or delay an attack. I think, though, with a lack of scrying for the enemy, the shields were there to block vision. The enemy sentries reported activity on the bridge, but they couldn’t tell what was actually happening. Seeing buckets of crossbow bolts being lifted up was obvious, but the cork-loosening and the log-sawing were less apparent.

  In the morning, the ram ground forward as crusaders heaved on it, shoving it around the bend. Ahead of them, squads with shields and new bridge-logs advanced. They’d learned. The leading row was made of shields, all overlapping, and held with both hands rather than worn on the arm. Bolts still penetrated, but most of them failed to injure anyone. A few penetrated to hit hands. Once in a great while, one went completely through, hit scale armor, and bounced.

  None of the men in these formations were First, so their shields, while enchanted, were merely strengthened. The magic made sheet metal laminated over wood tough enough to routinely survive battles. They weren’t prepared against a great deal of force all concentrated on a pinpoint. I’m a bit surprised any of the bolts penetrated completely, but those bodkin points were impressive.

  The second row carried their log, interspersed with shields held high over it. These were the few warriors with more money, or more interest in spending it on expensive enchantments. These shields had deflection enchantments, and given the angle of the shot, tended to divert the bolts behind them. Since these shields defended the logs, they came last, so there was no one to wound behind them. It was an effective way to move forward and lay down the logs with minimum casualties—well, fewer casualties than yesterday. They didn’t hurry, exactly, but they went slowly enough to get the new maneuver right. Every squad had its wounded, but every squad laid down a log and retreated in good order, with everyone leaving under their own power.

  Smart enemies annoy me, but Leisel is pretty smart, herself.

  With their wooden bridge restored—or apparently so—the ram started its run across the stone portion. Rather than waste crossbow bolts on it, baskets of rocks were already in place all along the parapet. They were irregular, ugly stones, not smooth round ones, and I wondered why there were also piles of short, split firewood. The defenders threw the wooden blocks and stones, hammering at the shields of the ram, trying to loosen or dislodge them to open up the interior to other attacks. Some of these bounced and landed in front of the ram, occasionally forcing them to stop and clear the wheels, but most of them landed to either side.

  The ram reached the wooden bridge and the lead wagons of its frame started over them. The timbers held for a moment, but the fire-weakened and half-sawn-through logs crackled and split, finally snapping. The front wheels of the two lead wagons crunched through, smacking their axles into broken wood and the stone drawbridge supports. The whole ram came to a jarring halt as the four lead wheels effectively hit a massive pothole and stopped.

  The defenders, on signal, started flinging oil-soaked wooden blocks over the ram to have them bounce and clatter on the stone bridge behind it. Several of the loosened corks popped as more flammable liquid poured out. In moments, the stuck ram was standing in a pool of fire. Behind it, wooden chocks, also on fire, blocked it from backing through yet more flames—assuming they could get the front wheels of the structure up over the edge again.

  Shouted commands to back the ram were obeyed, at first, and they heaved, trying to get it to move, but Leisel wasn’t done.

  During the night, they manually lifted the counterweights for the drawbridge. Now they released the bridge and a line of burly men shoved on it, pushing the massive, twenty-by-twenty section of timbers outward. It tilted, gaining speed, and slammed into the front of the ram’s covering, cracking the lumber of the relatively thin frontal doors. The impact broke one to hang askew, as well as crunching the frame over the ram and dislodging several shields. They dropped the counterweights and cranked the winches, yanking the drawbridge vertical again, while crossbowmen fired into the openings and bucket men sluiced more oil onto and into the ram.

  With the wheels stuck, arrows coming in, fire all around and spreading underfoot, and fresh waves of flame pouring in the front, and a constant hail of steel-tipped death raining in, morale failed. Men ran. And they took even more casualties from the towers.

  The ram burned where it was and people on the walls occasionally threw more wood on the fire, keeping it going. It blocked further attacks for the day.

  I called Leisel, let her know I wanted to talk, and waited for her convenience. It’s a busy job, but she got back to me fairly quickly. Her image rippled into view on my main mirror.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Have everyone try to rest,” I told her. “If the crusaders don’t start packing up for a retreat today, we’ll attack them tonight and finish them off.”

  “Sir, even if we catch them by surprise, even with so many of them wounded they still outnumber us at least five-to-one.”

  “I know. I feel confident we can take them.”

  “But—”

  “Have a hundred of the best swordsmen ready to follow me into battle,” I added. Whatever she was about to say, she checked it.

  “Follow? You’re going to fight?”

  “Tonight, I’m going murdering. The rest of them will go fighting. Aside from my personal collection of combatants, make sure we’ve got all the ammunition we can carry for everyone else. They’ll be advancing into contact with the enemy to shoot them, but they may be forced to switch to melee. You can never tell exactly how it’s going to go.”

  “If I may make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  We discussed my plan in greater detail and she had a lot of good ideas.

  The crusaders did not pack up to leave. I watched a heated pantomime between Berenor and the priests. From the look of it, the priests were insisting and overriding their general. He eventually threw up his hands and let them have their way.

  They started building a new ram. I wondered if they had a replacement for the magical ram-tip they lost in the fire. Probably not, but a sufficiently heavy tree trunk and some iron straps would do. Not quickly, but eventually.

  Looking farther back,
I spied a small caravan setting out from Sarashda. Judging by the contents of the wagons, I was pretty sure it was headed to resupply the crusaders. It also had fifty more warriors, presumably fresh-hired for guard duty and reinforcement. A boxy, mobile-home type wagon also accompanied the caravan, complete with wizard. It amused me to see five wagons loaded with spare wheels.

  I was in no mood to deal with crap, and all of this was rapidly becoming crap. I waited for sunset, cleaned up, fed the little person, and called downstairs for someone. An armored lady answered my summons.

  “Good evening. This is mine,” I pointed to the little person, now sleeping on my bed. “I want it alive and unharmed. Do you have any problem with that?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Let me be clear: I will be angry if anything at all happens to it. It is to be guarded continuously from anyone and everyone until I return. Am I clear?”

  “Clear!”

  From the hard glints in her spirit, I believed her. There was a sincere determination in there. Whether she liked the idea or not, I impressed on her my orders and the seriousness involved. Hell, high water, nuclear waste, hordes of ants—she would carry out her orders. Nothing was touching the child but me. Period. Full stop.

  “Questions?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Good. There’s a bottle on the nightstand if she wakes up. Try to let her sleep.”

  I went up to the workroom and through a brute-force gate.

  The relief caravan was parked for the night, horses unhitched and hobbled, with a pair of sentries watching over the camp. Their campfires were burning low, but not yet down to coals. This is not good for one’s night vision, which helped me get close to the camp. Tendrils of invisible darkness coiled out, slithered into a sentry, and leeched him of his vitality. He was already seated on a keg, leaning back against a wagon, so he made no noise as he passed into unconsciousness. The other sentry was scarcely worse. He collapsed in stages—knees first, and then toppling—and made almost no noise.