The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  "I can't take the credit for the thought, but if the words reach you, my child, then I'm doing my job."

  He sighed. "I find this place both strange and familiar. It is interesting, and it makes me long for Mt. Angel. Marvelous are the works of God-"

  "-but none so marvelous as humankind," Mathilda finished. "Thanks, Father. I'd better get back to Rudi now. He overdoes it if he's not watched."

  "Thanks for the help, Fred. It's mad I'd go, gibbering and running into the woods waving my arms and crowing like a rooster, if I didn't get away from the women for a while. Well-meaning darlings that they are, my sisters and Mathilda both, the blessings of the Mother upon them."

  Frederick Thurston nodded and took a sip of the chicory. He'd grown up calling it coffee, just like everyone else in the interior, though traders from the coast reached Boise a bit more often than they did this far into the Rockies, and the real bean wasn't to be had at Ford's Khyentse Cowboy Bar and Grill for any price.

  Right now it was crowded here; Ranchers in from the long valley round about, farmers from the foothills, militiamen in from patrolling on skis, enough to combine with the big fieldstone fireplace to make it comfortably warm. The air was thick with the scents of frying potatoes and grilling meat, of rawhide boots drying by the fire and sheepskin coats steaming on their pegs by the door and beer and fruit-brandy, and someone had put a cup of it in front of an image in a niche he supposed must be Khyentse.

  The owner paused by their table: "Everything OK?" he said.

  "Mr. Ford, it's like a breath of home, so it is," Rudi said with that easy charm Fred envied. "The monastery is a splendid place, sure, but-"

  The innkeeper grinned. "And I make my living off the 'but,' " he said, and passed on.

  He was a lean gray man who must have been striking once, and the staff in stables and kitchen were mostly his children and grandchildren; Fred remembered someone saying the owner had built the place with his own hands.

  It sort of reminds me of the time I managed to get away and do that bar crawl with that guard corporal, Jerry, he thought reminiscently-it had been just after his sixteenth birthday.

  God, I thought Mom was going to have a cow! Particularly when she heard about the girls. I'm glad Dad didn't ream the guy out too badly.

  His father had looked like he was halfway between being angry and laughing, fighting to keep the grin off his face as the course of the evening's dissipation was revealed, right down to the women's underwear found in their possession.

  Not that his father had been one to coddle the children He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, almost gasping as he saw that final glimpse again, Martin bending over Dad and No! he thought. I can't go on reliving that! I'm headed the other way and Martin can keep.

  Instead he reached for his cup. Something clinked, and he saw Rudi Mackenzie pouring from a silver flask into it; he upended the oblong shape and shook the last drops free.

  "There, that's the last of the Dun Juniper brandy. My friend Terry Martins Mackenzie makes it, and well he learned the art from his father, who was a brewmaster and distiller of note."

  "Hey, I can't take the last of it!" Fred said.

  "It's Yule, or nearly, the which is close to my birthday. The season for gifts-and you look as if you need it more than I."

  The brown-skinned young man sipped. It did mellow the harsh taste of the toasted chicory root, even more than the cream he'd laced it with.

  "Yeah, you don't look like you're going to fold up and blow away anymore," he said.

  Though you still look like shit, frankly, he added to himself. Or like a ghost of yourself.

  He had trouble connecting the figure before him with the blood-spattered warrior who'd gone striding through the Cutter camp to rescue his friends like a God of War with men dead and crippled in his wake. Rudi Mackenzie was still far too thin, the flesh tight on his strong bones, and there were lines of strain around his blue-green eyes that hadn't been there before. Only the thick red-gold hair that fell to his shoulders was as it had been before. That and his smile.

  "I'm feeling much better," the Mackenzie tanist said, with a flash of white teeth. "Which is to say, as if I'm only at death's door, not halfway through the Gate, screaming as my fingernails tear out while I grip the posts, sure."

  "How's the shoulder?" Fred asked.

  He'd be most concerned with his sword arm, in the other's place. "I'm practicing more sword work with my left hand," Rudi said matter-of-factly.

  Then he shrugged at Fred's wince. "It's not so bad; I'm ambidextrous anyway."

  "Really?"

  "Nearly. Slightly. It's important to keep a positive attitude, my mother always told me."

  They shared a chuckle, and Rudi went on: "And the strength is coming back, slowly; I'll have enough in the right arm for shield work, and enough control. It's the range of motion I'm having problems with, though the exercises the monks have me doing help."

  "They've certainly got some good weapons instructors here," Fred said. "I've been learning a lot… and I had the best trainers in Boise."

  He shook his head. "Sort of odd to think of Buddhists having a military school."

  "Well, a lot of the followers of the Old Religion also had qualms about war training back before the Change, from what the oldsters say at times. But the survivors didn't," Rudi said. "From what the Rimpoche 's told me, there were monks of half a dozen different schools here when the day came, and some of them had always walked the Warrior's Way."

  Fred frowned. "You know, it's odd… but in a way, Abbot Dorje reminds me of my father. Which is odd because they're nothing at all alike-Dad went to church sometimes, but he was never religious, really."

  A waitress turned up with their food; a loaf of brown bread, butter, a platter of plump aromatic sausages hot and steaming and sputtering juices from cracks in their skins, beets with herbs, cabbage, some strong-tasting boiled green that looked like spinach but wasn't, glistening slices of pan-fried potatoes. Weather like this gave you an appetite; he spooned some mustard onto the side of his plate, butter onto the cabbage, and dug in. Rudi did likewise, eating more slowly, as if he had to decide to take each mouthful.

  "Well, they're both men who gave everything to what they did-and gave everything to their people," the clansman said after a moment. "Sure, and the Rimpoche reminds me of my mother, but that's a more obvious comparison."

  "Dad talked about a government of laws and not of men a lot," Frederick said. "But you know… I've been thinking as we travel, it means a lot what sort of men you have ruling. If they're the wrong people, no matter how good the laws are, they don't do much."

  Rudi nodded. "Though good laws can restrain a bad ruler, somewhat, depending of course on the customs of the folk and the badness of the man.

  "Or woman," he added after a moment, obviously thinking of someone and just as obviously not wanting to say who.

  Mathilda's mother, Fred thought. Who frightens everyone. Even Dad was cautious about her-everyone wanted him to fight Portland over the Palouse, but he agreed to split it with her. But Mathilda's wonderful!

  He blushed, and had the uncomfortable feeling that Rudi had followed his thoughts and was amused by them.

  Hell, friends have a right to laugh at each other. We've fought side by side, and we are friends. And we've got stuff in common, too. We grew up around rulers. That's something that most of us in this bunch have, and it's… different… to have people who really understand around.

  The waitress came back with two mugs of hot cider, pungent with something that smelled of berries. She put Rudi's down and gave him a motherly pat. The glance she gave Fred was anything but; he blushed and reached for some of the bread to mop his plate and ignored her disappointed sigh.

  "If you're called to rule, you just have to do the best you can," Rudi said.

  "But you need something to guide you," Fred said earnestly, the woman's smile as forgotten as the hunk of barley bread in his hand. "You need… something more than ju
st finding money to pay the soldiers and keep the irrigation canals going and patrols to catch bandits."

  "That you do," Rudi said. "Men are ruled by the visions inside their heads as much as by swords or castles or tax gatherers. Sure, and those laws your father mentioned, if they're to be anything at all it's a dream in the hearts of men, not just words on a page."

  He sighed and watched the sway of their waitress' hips as she took the empty tray back to the kitchens.

  "Not even the Foam-Born Cyprian with a rope tied to it, not right now, ochone, the sorrow and the pity," he murmured to himself, and then turned his eyes back to Fred. "A king is not just a war leader, or a head clerk. He's also a priest, he is; a priest of those Mysteries his people reverence, whatever they call them. And his lady a priestess."

  The late dawn of Christmas Eve came bright and cold after a week of storms. Father Ignatius stopped at the top of the ridge and looked down over the roofs of the Chenrezi Monastery, the town below, the mist of driven snow that swirled along the surface of the frozen lake at the mountain's foot, and the distant ruins of a pre-Change settlement. The sky was bleakly clear from the mountain fangs eastward to those behind him; the one gilded with bright sunrise until he had to squint into them, the other still turning from night dark to ruddy pink, but otherwise bone white against cobalt blue.

  So simple, so elegant, so… pure, Ignatius thought, inhaling air that smelled of nothing but itself and a little pine.

  God is the greatest of artists! How good of Him to give us this world, and the chance to imitate Him by bettering it.

  Wryly: If only we did not mar it, and ourselves, so often!

  Then the sun rose a little more, and the light was like diamond on the fresh snow, with only a hint of green from the pine trees ahead. He climbed steadily towards them, eyes wide as the crystals sparkled and flew free to glitter in plumes from the branches. His head felt a little light-he'd been fasting for the past day or two, and had taken only a little bread and milk this morning. The light powder was knee-deep, but he had good stout laced boots lined with fleece, and quilted trousers of local make.

  After a moment he found the place he wanted, a little clearing with a view down the mountainside and a convenient stump where a lodgepole pine had been pushed over by some storm. Snow hid the trunk, but the splintered base was thigh-high. He drew his sword and drove the point downward into the wood, so that the cross-hilt shape stood black against the sun, and looped his rosary and crucifix about it so that the cross clinked against the steel.

  Then he knelt and began to pray, hands folded before him. The familiar words and gestures quieted his mind-which was one of their purposes. Some corner of his mind remembered what Abbot Dmwoski had said to the novices of his class once:

  Silent prayer is the highest form. But God gives us a set of steps for a reason-and you must tread every one of them to reach the heights. Better to stay on a step where you can keep your footing until you are ready, than climb too fast and fall. The Adversary can corrupt even prayer, if your pride gives him an opening.

  "High is heaven, and holy," he murmured at last, his eyes on the mountain peaks and dazzled by the sun. "Lord, I seek to do Your will. Have I chosen rightly? Subdue my rebellious heart, Lord, which is full of fear and murmuring. I hear rumors of war in the West, of a great battle where my brothers of the Order defended Your Church and Your people from the minions of the Adversary. I have seen diabolism abroad in the land. Where does my duty truly lie? Free me of doubt, I beg. Make me Your instrument!"

  Silence stretched like a plucked harp string, and the light poured down the mountains opposite like wine. He stopped the straining of his mind, seeking only to listen.

  "Do not fear, brave miles of Christ," a soft voice said, a woman's voice, quiet but with an undertone like a chorus of trumpets. "For He is ever with you."

  A shadow fell across him as the one who'd spoken approached, lit by the rising sun. He blinked his eyes in surprise as they adjusted; he'd come here for solitude, and if anyone else was near he would have expected a woodsman or a ski patrol. Then he could see her. It was a woman of…

  I cannot say if she is young or old, or simply ageless, he thought, his mouth going dry. No "Who are you?" he whispered.

  She was dressed in a simple belted robe of undyed wool, honestly made but the sort of homespun a peasant's wife would wear, or a village craftsman's, and her hands were work-worn. A long blue mantle rested across her head and shoulders, thrown over one shoulder to frame her features and the waving black hair. The face beneath it was olive-skinned, with a firm curve of nose and great dark eyes that reminded him of the Byzantine mosaics Abbot Dmwoski loved; a Jewish face, kindly and wise and a little sad. Her feet pressed the snow in sandals of goatskin, and a breath of warmer air came with her-air scented with lavender and thyme, a hint of sunny, dusty hillsides and hamlet fires of olive twigs and vine clippings.

  "Under my father's roof, they called me the wished-for child. Miriam, in the tongue of my people."

  Then he met her eyes, and cried out, throwing up a hand.

  So bright, so bright! Like fire!

  Like staring into the heart of some great star, burning in the vastness of space, like the sudden shock of being plunged into its furnace heart and transmuted as elements combined and died. Yet there was no pain in it, only a warmth that penetrated to every atom of his being, as if all that he was shone with it. The Light was knowledge; of his self, that showed him every mistake and sin and ignoble failing that had gone into him… yet the light was still there, and had always been, would always be.

  And yet she was the peasant woman he had seen, arms stretched a little toward him with the callused palms of her hands upturned.

  "Do not be afraid, Karl Bergfried," she said again, using his baptismal name, and the tenderness in her voice was as overwhelming as the light. "You who have been Father in the spirit to my Son's children."

  "Lady," he choked, the hand he had put between them slowly dropping to clasp his other, caught between terror and a rush of joy that was like all his homecomings at once, together with what he'd felt when he first raised the Host as a priest. "Lady-"

  I am awake, he thought. I am more awake than I have ever been.

  Every particle of snow, every roughness of bark or breath of air upon his skin seemed to glow. Time passed in a drumbeat of seconds, sounding as if its hooves would shake loose the mountains and break the sky, as if the stuff of existence itself creaked at the strain.

  I am more myself than ever before, but I am faded to a shadow and the world is an image cast upon silver glass!

  "Lady of Sorrows, Queen of Angels," he said, and tears ran down his cheeks, startlingly cold against the flushed skin. "I am not worthy-a miracle-"

  Her lips curved. "And yet my Son's blood was shed for you, child of Eve," she said, the smile taking away the chiding. "And have you not been the instrument of miracle, the earthly bread and wine becoming His blood and flesh in your hands? Have you not granted forgiveness in His name?"

  Ignatius nodded. "What must I do?" he whispered.

  "You will be tested beyond what you can bear, unless you throw yourself upon Him and His love. In them is strength beyond all the deceits and wickedness you have seen; strength to put them behind you."

  "Do I do right to follow the Princess?" he said.

  "To whom did you promise obedience, under God?"

  "To the head of my Order, and through him to the princes of the Church and the Holy Father."

  The blue-mantled head nodded. "Humanity has suffered the fire from the sky, a punishment greater than the Deluge," she said. "But even in the Father's anger there is always mercy. And my Son is thrifty; He uses what is to hand. The young woman your earthly superior entrusted to your care also serves His purposes; guard her then in the trials she will face, with sword and counsel of the world and of the Spirit. In service to her you serve me, and through me the Most High. You shall be my knight, Karl Bergfried!"

  She rest
ed one hand on the cross-hilt of his sword; the other reached out and touched him gently on the brow, and the universe dissolved in song.

  TheScourgeofGod

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WEST OF PENDLETON, EASTERN OREGON

  SEPTEMBER 15, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD

  "Right face!" Martin Thurston shouted, as the Portlander knights loomed up again out of the dust to the northward; he'd learned their trumpet calls today. "Hold hard, the fighting Sixth! Prepare to receive cavalry!"

  The battalion turned front and snapped its shields up as the Boisean tubae screamed, a motion like the bristling of a hawk's feathers.

  "Oooo-rah!" the long guttural shout went up, as the soldiers of the Republic braced for contact. "USA! USA!"

  "Haro! Portland! Holy Mary for Portland!" answered them from behind the couched lances and painted shields.

  Even then, the war cry irritated him. They were fighting for their respective rulers, not for the putative mother of a hypothetical God. Though he supposed Sandra, the bitch! just didn't compare as a battle shout.

  Centurions stalked between the ranks, and the optios in the rear braced their brass-tipped staffs against men's backs, firming the line and giving that little extra sense of solidity in the chaos and whirling terror that were a foot-soldier's view of combat. Pila jutted out between the locked shields, and the first rank knelt to brace the butts against the hard gritty soil.

  Seconds later the lances struck, slamming through the hard plywood and sheet-steel with huge crack! sounds, bowling men over or punching through their body armor. Shafts cracked across, pinwheeling up in fragments through the mist of powdered soil. More pila arched forward over the front rank's heads, and men pushed forward to take the place of the fallen, punching at the metal-clad heads of the horses with the bosses and steel-rimmed edges of their great curved shields, stabbing with their swords, trying to swarm the horsemen under now that they were halted. Men and horses alike were armored animals who cursed and struggled and bled and screamed, killed and died, blind with sweat and blood and the dirt churned up by the hooves and boots all the long day, voices croaking with thirst.