The Lantern of God

by John Dalmas

  Nodding, the man patted the belt pouch where he carried his fire auger and punk. "Shall I make a flame to light them?"

  "Not now. Do you see the big round wooden things piled on the bank?" Vessto asked, pointing. "And the square ones?"

  "Yes."

  "They hold a powerful magic the enemy uses. If we set them on fire, we will do him great harm. And also if we set fire to the big canoes tied at the bank. You two go that way along the shore, until there are no more of the piles. Then, with fire arrows, set fire to the last one, and to the others as you come back." He turned. "You three go to the other end and do the same thing.

  "And when you shoot the piles, shoot them from a distance. That's important. Otherwise the magic may kill you. Also, be sure you kill any more sentries you see."

  He took the match pot from his pouch. "I will give you some magic fire sticks. You can make fire quickly with them, like this."

  Kneeling, Vessto struck a match on a piece of rubble; it flared. The warriors hissed, inhaling through their teeth; the squad leader put out his hand for some. Vessto gave him half; the warriors divided them and left.

  After a moment's consultation, the Cadriio brothers followed the northbound three, keeping to cover as much as possible. Twice they paused while a warrior shot a sentry. When they'd reached what seemed to be the northernmost of the tied-up boats, the brothers stopped while the warriors went on. Vessto took a keg from the pile there, and squatting, dropped it into the nearest boat, a fishing boat. He did this to every boat for some two hundred yards along the wharf. Beyond that the boats were only a widely scattered few. Meanwhile Eltrienn trickled a train of lamp oil from pile to pile southward till he ran out. The warriors would have to take care of the piles farther south. He'd hoped to do the same from pile to boat, but ran out of oil more quickly than he'd expected.

  They met where they'd started. "Is there any oil left?" Vessto asked.

  "No. I used it all."

  At that moment, someone shouted from a block or more up the street. Bullets cracked round them then, and they heard rifle shots. Both Cadriios sprinted off to their right. "Get as far from the wharf as you can!" Vessto shouted, and Eltrienn slanted for the next street.

  Vessto didn't follow. Instead he darted out on the dock, knelt, scratched several matches in a bunch, flinching at the sharp burn they gave his fingers. By their sudden light he saw the oil train, and dropped the matches onto it. It flared at once, the flames beginning to crawl in both directions, quickening. Then he sprinted to the edge of the wharf and dove far out, surfaced swimming, and started toward mid-channel.

  There was an enormous explosion, well off to the south, followed in a few seconds by one off to the north. The shock was almost stunning, far worse than he'd imagined, and those were the end piles, perhaps three hundred yards away!

  Now he discovered how fast he could swim, which was remarkably fast for a man wearing pants and shirt. He'd lost his moccasins.

  He'd had more time than he'd thought; when he was a hundred yards out, he looked back. Flames were licking over the tops of the first two piles. He turned and began to swim outward again, got perhaps twenty yards farther when the two piles exploded almost simultaneously. The sound shocked the breath out of him, seemed to drive him down, underwater. He came up and kept swimming. After fifteen seconds or so there was another explosion, less powerful, and he looked back again. One of the box piles, he thought. Fine debris burned all over that part of the wharf, and three boats had begun burning. Another stack of kegs went up then, a great towering pillar of fire topped by a red cloud, and another followed, a distance to the south.

  He turned south then, swimming slowly now on his side, saving his strength. A boat blew up. Intermittent explosions rocked the waterfront for some minutes, and when he finally angled toward shore, southward well beyond the city wall, the only fires he could see were a couple of burning boats. They'd been shielded from the shattering blasts by the ruined wharf, and presumably set afire by debris.

  * * *

  Eltrienn had gone north through streets and narrow alleyways, picking his way over rubble, worried far more about pursuit than explosion. He'd gotten two blocks away when the first pile blew, well off to the south. Its violence shocked him, and he speeded to a trot, scrambling rather than climbing now over the rubble piles. He'd gotten more than another block away when the center piles blew, the sound beating him to his knees. After that his ears registered nothing for a bit, and it was several seconds before he got up and ran.

  Five blocks from the waterfront, he turned north and worked his way parallel to the wharf, barely pausing now when another stack blew, jubilant at what they'd done. When the explosions seemed finally over, the silence was awesome. There was no longer even the sound of distant gunfire.

  Finally the city's north wall showed ahead. He scouted it from a block away, saw a gate closed and guarded. He went back to the waterfront then and took to the river, bypassing the wall.

  * * *

  Great Liilia, early in her fourth quarter, was well up when Eltrienn found his way to the barbarian camp, to where his gear should lie near the road. The only warriors he saw awake were sentries who watched him into camp.

  He sought around till he found his gear—his and Vessto's—but Vessto wasn't there. He wondered if his brother had been killed, then decided he hadn't. He was sure he'd know it somehow, if he had been. The world would feel different. Killed Many was there though, asleep; he wasn't sure what would become of the army if its great chief was killed.

  After stripping off his wet things and spreading them to dry somewhat, he rolled up in his light blanket of yennsa pelts and went to sleep.

  * * *

  Dawn was paling the eastern sky when he awoke chilled. Vessto knelt naked nearby, spreading his clothes. "Vessto," murmured Eltrienn, "where were you?"

  His brother finished what he was doing, then squatted beside him.

  "After I lit the oil," Vessto whispered, "I jumped in the water. Then I swam south awhile and came ashore. I got messed up in a terrible marsh there—the Hasannu River has a delta, you know—and right now I'm tired. How did the army do?"

  "I don't know. They were sleeping when I got here."

  Vessto grunted and rolled up in his blanket next to his brother.

  "I'm going to suggest to Killed Many that he head back east," Eltrienn said. "Leave the Almites and Gorballis to fight it out. If he gets east far enough, he can pillage his way back to the mountains, and get home with enough loot and stories to please every warrior with him.

  "But if he decides to stay around here, he'll be sitting between this army of Gorballis and the Gorrbian armies from the south and north. And if he does that, if he stays, you and I'll leave. Steal a boat along the river and ride her down to the ocean, coast southward, row at night and hide by day. Till we find something better, with a sail."

  "Sounds doable," Vessto said, then lay quiet a minute. "But we won't have to. Killed Many'll have his army on its way home about two hours from now. That's the last thing he thought about before he went to sleep. It's going to be a long day's march for me, on so little rest."

  Neither spoke for a minute, and Vessto was almost asleep when Eltrienn murmured: "You know, I've enjoyed this mission, including tonight. But I'll be glad to get back to Theedalit. I think I'll find a lady I like and get married. I sort of have one in mind."

  Vessto said nothing.

  "How about you?" Eltrienn asked.

  "I'll stay with Killed Many and see what interesting changes I can start among the tribes."

  Eltrienn didn't know how to answer that, and in another minute his brother was breathing in the slow, shallow cadence of sleep. He closed his own eyes and followed Vessto's example.

  Seventy-Six

  Interview with an Imperial clerical employee, published in the Shautler Province underground bulletin, The Objective Informer, Issue 4.

  X: . . ..Yes, I'd say that characterizes the general situation rather well.


  OI: How did it start? We've heard all kinds of rumors of course, but you were on the inside, so to speak.

  X: Let's say I was on the outer edge of the inside. My familiarity with it began with a rumor. Supposedly word had leaked from the Imperial Security Bureau—the ISB of all things! And to be more specific, from the Department of Armed Forces. The entire fleet, every ship, was said to have been sunk in a droid harbor, and the report supposedly sent on a wireless taken ashore from the flagship before she sank.

  Actually it was almost more than hearsay, in that I have a friend who swore he saw the message himself before it was taken down. You see, ISB headquarters has one of the new teletypes that print out messages as they come in through the ether. Supposedly someone smuggled the printed message out of the wireless center—on ISB paper—and posted it on an employee bulletin board, from which it soon disappeared. One story has it that it eventually was given to the underground in Larvis Royal.

  Still, it could have been a rumor, a simple lie. I didn't see the teletype myself, so I can't vouch for it. In fact, at the time I really didn't believe my friend; the story was just too hard to accept.

  OI: But it's what started the disorders?

  X: Not directly, but ultimately yes. Initial credence was low. I mean . . . Every ship? Come now! But it didn't end there. It was the first in a supposed series of leaks, although that was the only message said to have been smuggled out in the original. Others were said to have been seen in the original by an army intelligence officer who had no chance to steal them. He's said to have memorized them as best he could and to have written them down later at home. Supposedly the someone was a Major Blenum, who'd then delivered the messages to the underground and gone into hiding.

  These other messages, rumored or actual, carried the story further. One had it that most of the munitions for the expeditionary force had gone down with the fleet. Then supposedly men had dived down to the sunken ships—the harbor is shallow—gotten the hatches open, and set grapples onto powder barrels and shell and ammunition cases. The idea being to salvage all that they could. They'd made a fair start on the task when thousands of wild droids supposedly breached the army's defense lines around the droid capital by night and rampaged through the city setting fires.

  So the story went. They set fire to the wharf and the entire waterfront—and the munitions stacked there blew sky high, destroying the salvage boats as well. The next to last message in this supposed series said that the army had driven the droids from the city, but that there still was fighting in the outskirts. The last said that a reinforced droid army had fought its way back into the city, that the imperial army was critically low on munitions, and that some units had mutinied in order to surrender.

  Of course, anyone with a little basic understanding and a good imagination could have written those. And it would seem to me—there may be something I am missing here—if seems to me that they could also have been wirelessed in not from the army across the ocean, but by some underground operation a mile away.

  OI: But the population of the capital was reading or hearing about all this?

  X: I don't know how many people actually read about it. In the underground reports, that is. Clearly though, enough people read about it to spread the stories widely, give them broad currency. I don't know what the stories may have been like after they'd been passed along orally enough times, but they could hardly have been much worse than I heard. Or than I read.

  Naturally, the government tried ignoring the leaked reports, rumors, or what have you, for a week or more. But when it got to be the talk of the streets, they commented to the extent of denying it all. The whole thing was a hoax, they said, and this denial was in the paper and on the public boards. Their version was that the fleet was standing off the droid coast, monitoring the progress of the military campaign ashore by wireless. And that it all was going nicely, thank you. There'd been no messages of the type rumored, and there was no Major Blenum in the ISB.

  Most people were predisposed to believe the government version, on me simple basis that the underground chronically spreads lies. As some underground organizations do, routinely, at least on the Island of the Emperor. Of course, so does the government. I think we all knew that. But it was more comfortable to believe the government than the underground.

  Up to a point. The government's statement went beyond that point, because most people knew there was a Major Blenum in military intelligence, or there very recently had been, at any rate. He'd been publicly decorated less than a year earlier, by the emperor himself, for inventing the teletype; it had been played up very big in the paper. So the government reply gave these reports, or rumors—these stories—a certain odor of veracity, you see.

  Then a man wearing the uniform and insignia of a captain in military intelligence stood up on the rim of a fountain in Emperors' Park at noon, when a lot of people were sitting about eating their lunches, and he began to shout that the rumors were true. That he personally had seen two of the teletypes. And then . . . then a policeman went up to him and cut him down with his saber where he stood.

  It was a shocking thing to see, and scores or hundreds of people saw it. Including myself. It proved nothing, of course, but that one act probably quadrupled the percentage of people who believed the stories. And several people who'd seen it, including the friend I was eating with, claimed they knew the man personally, that he really was a captain in military intelligence, a Captain Margrin, or Margrun.

  And of course, the subject matter was one of strong public concern. A great number of people, including, I'm sure, many here on Shautler, had relatives and friends in the expeditionary force. And beyond that, a lot of merchant seamen had been impressed to sail the fleet. Taxes had been raised sharply, as you very well know, taxes that already were quite severe.

  So now there began to be impromptu gatherings in the streets, people listening to speakers against the chancellor and even, I'm told, against the emperor! Nothing all that big, you understand, but it seemed quite shocking that such things could happen right in the capital city, and the police were kept busy hurrying about breaking them up. And breaking heads in the bargain. Many people though, perhaps most, said good enough for them, that such lawlessness should be crushed in the bud.

  OI: So what caused things to escalate into large-scale rioting?

  X: When the police began cracking down on small public gatherings, the "trouble makers," as many people called them, turned to slinging rocks through government windows at night and ambushing policemen on patrol, that sort of thing. And after several policemen were killed, in a single night at that, martial law was proclaimed. Some people were accused and arrested, and a mass execution was held on a platform in Government Square. Your readers know about that, of course.

  But it didn't work quite the way it was intended. Some of the crowd began shouting "down with the chancellor! Down with the chancellor!", and it spread. Mounted police rode in to break it up. But the day was chilly and rainy, and some people had come prepared with jointed javelins concealed in their raincapes and began spearing the police kaabors and the policemen themselves. So the police pulled out their repeating pistols and began to shoot, some perhaps into the air but some into the crowd. I know that's true because I was working extra-time and watched it all from my office window. The crowd panicked then, and a considerable number were trampled to death.

  Next, of course, a curfew was invoked, and a Public Urgent Bulletin was distributed by the Postal Bureau that all businesses and government offices would be closed the next day. Except Security offices; that went without saying. And the curfew would be in force twenty five hours a day until otherwise officially indicated!

  OI: An around the clock curfew!

  X: That's right. But it didn't really happen that way, because "otherwise indicated" came the next morning, when the palace bells began to toll. And when Government Square had all the people it could hold, which is about three hundred thousand, the emperor spoke from a
balcony. He said the chancellor had been set down, that the emperor himself would operate the government, and that there'd be an investigation.

  There was a shot then, and the emperor fell. That started a genuine stampede, and apparently a lot of people were killed. Afterward it was rumored that the emperor was dead. Then the vice chancellor called the army in to clear the streets of all gatherings, and keep them clear. And a roundup was undertaken of everyone suspected of hostility to the government.

  At least hundreds were arrested—thousands seems far likelier—taken from their homes and put into compounds. Afterward a dusk to dawn curfew was invoked, and nobody worked much. The waggoners stopped carting anything but food into the capital, and not much of that. There were ships set fire to in Larvis Harbor. Buildings were burned, whole neighborhoods. People seemed actually to have gone quite mad. And because I was known to my neighbors as an employee in the————Bureau, it seemed well to take my vacation time and remove myself and my family from Larvis Royal. That's what it's come to.