by Dave Duncan
Julian realized he was starting to lose his temper, which was the worst way to deal with stonewalling. “You’re heading for Tharg? You’re going to knock the chip off Zath’s shoulder, aren’t you? Where the hell are you going to get the mana from?”
Exeter hit that one for six. He turned his head and flashed a smile at his tormentor. “From the Filoby Testament, of course.”
Julian said, “What?”
“The prophecy itself has mana, old man. Haven’t you realized that yet? It takes a ton of mana to prophesy—so where does it go?”
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“Into the words! Every time the prophecy is vindicated by events, it collects more mana from all the people who know about it. Zath’s been trying since before we were born to break the chain. He fails every time, and every time the prophecy grows stronger.”
Julian stepped in a pothole and stumbled into a leather shield, which helpfully thumped him back to the vertical again.
“That’s bizarre! I never heard that theory before. Who told you that?”
“Thought it up by myself,” Exeter said with a shrug.
“I don’t believe it!”
“I’m not sure I do, actually. But perhaps Zath does? I thought there was at least a fifty-fifty chance he’d come after me right at the start—nip me in the bud in Joalvale with donner und blitzen and fiery whips. He didn’t. So perhaps he’s learned his lesson.”
“He’ll just let all those things happen, you mean? Let the play be acted out? Hell’s bells, man, the finale is his own death!”
Exeter chuckled. “Which means that he won’t have dared do a foreseeing of his own. Did you know that, old man? Foreseeing your own death is fatal. He may have had someone else do it for him, of course. No, I’m sure he’ll fight at the end. Now he knows I’m coming for him. He knows I have allies, but he doesn’t know how many or who, and he’ll want to know that for settling scores later if he wins. He may try another jab or two, but I do believe he’ll save his strength for the final innings.”
The idea of the Filoby Testament as a sort of active participant did make a wildly improbable sort of sense. Julian himself had postulated that Exeter might have seen something nobody else had. Was this it? More important, would it deter Ursula from meddling?
“That valley?” Exeter was pointing a long, gray-sleeved arm at the hills that now loomed over them, surprisingly close again. “Shuujooby’s at the mouth of that.”
“You’ve reconnoitered the whole route, haven’t you? That’s what you’ve been doing these last two years?”
Exeter just smiled.
31
Where the river emptied out of the hills to feed the lakes and marshland, its course was almost a mile wide. At that time of year it was all sand, brilliant white quartz, with only a few silver pools and shallow braids holding water, and nothing flowing except an invisible, tangible torrent of air, the breath of the mountains pouring out of the gorge to blow grit in men’s eyes. The only relief from the glaring whiteness was a speckle of shadow under isolated dead trees, stark bleached skeletons.
The trail ended on the northern bank at a rickety jetty and a couple of stranded ferryboats. The celebrated metropolis of Shuujooby was a cluster of driftwood hovels cowering low in the long, rank grass, each hoarding a snowy drift of sand on its leeward side. About a score of ragged villagers stood gaping at the Liberator’s crusade going by. They must have been puzzled by the pilgrims who had already passed and dwindled to specks in the distance, trooping over the shining white desert to reach the designated stopping place. The War-band with their spears and shields were an even greater wonder, and there were hundreds of followers to come yet.
The far bank was a faint green line of brush and woodland, before which stood the remains of the temple, half buried in the sands of the floodplain. Even at that distance, Julian could see that it had been picked clean, as if by giant vultures. Every stone must be burnished smooth, and few seemed to be standing in their original positions. It would have been built on a node, though, and the virtuality would remain. A whopper of a node, Exeter had called it.
He had gone forward to rejoin Dommi, so Julian was alone again. He did not mind, for he had much to think about. Ursula would certainly try to block Exeter’s revolution. Julian found that he was hunting for arguments to stop her, so he must want it to continue. Why? Could he really believe that it had any chance of success? It seemed horribly like a children’s crusade, a massacre of innocents. Whatever damage it was going to do to the Church of the Undivided was probably inevitable now. Whether the heretic sect was smitten by Zath in Thargvale or just discredited and dispersed when Ursula betwitched its leader, the Pentatheon and their traditional religion would be seen to have triumphed.
That was a very cynical attitude! At the rate Exeter was going, he would have gathered a huge following by the time he reached Thargvale. Better, surely, to abandon a few hundred people here than let thousands be slain there? Unless Julian could convince himself that the circus held some reasonable chance of success, he would never convince Ursula—and should not even try.
Ignoring Shuujooby and the watching Shuujoobyites, the Warband arrived at the riverbank and the jetty. The lead warriors jumped down from the spiny grass to the white plain. Exeter and Dommi followed, then Julian himself slithered after them in a shower of hot sand. As he recovered his balance, he saw Ursula a hundred yards or so off to his right, beyond the hamlet. For a moment he felt a strange reluctance to speak with her. He had sworn not to warn Exeter and then broken his word.
She saw him and waved. She ran down the bank, wheeling her arms for balance, and then stood waiting. He slipped neatly between two of the Nagians and started to run. If anyone tried to follow and was called back by Exeter, the wind stole away the words. He staggered and stumbled in the soft sand, his aching feet reminding him how far he had walked that day.
As he drew close, he saw that she was barefoot, clutching her shoes in one hand; the other held her wide-brimmed hat in place against the mischief of the wind. She was wearing a white dress of the flimsy Nextdoorian fabric the Service called cotton, although its fibers came from a tuber. Her arms were bare and the billowing of the material revealed her ankles and half her shins. It also displayed the curves of her hips and thighs and breasts, the unusual width of her shoulders. He had never heard of such a garment in the Vales, but he would not complain about it. She looked for all the world like a girl playing on a beach at Blackpool or Frinton, and must feel like that, also, for she was laughing as she watched his labored approach, her face flushed by the wind.
Instinctively he reached up to remove his hat and remembered that it was a turban. Good Lord! Kiss a woman with his hat on?
He did. She folded into his embrace and returned the kiss willingly, thumping her shoes against his flank in a one-armed hug. Then she applied her other arm as well, and in seconds the wind stole her hat. She swore. He broke loose and ran to catch it, noting that the Warband was tramping along in the same order as before, heading for the distant ruins. Had Exeter observed the meeting and drawn the appropriate conclusions? No matter—Dommi would certainly have told him how the land lay.
Julian brought back the hat and kissed her again.
“Mm! Walking must agree with you,” she said breathlessly.
“Actually, I was dead on my feet until I saw you.” And now he wasn’t. Ursula Newton intoxicated him.
He exchanged the hat for her shoes, which he held in the crook of his right arm. Hand in hand, they plodded over the riverbed, heading for the rains. He could think of no reasonable excuse not to.
“Those Zulus are Nagians, I suppose?” she said.
“Right on. His old comrades from the Lemond campaign.”
“And how is General Exeter?”
“As well as can be expected.” He was lying already.
Ursula glanced up at him quizzically. Her eyes were hazel with tiny golden flecks in them. “Did you discover the argument
that will convince him to stop this madness?”
He hoped he had found an argument to stop her. “Not really. I—We really had no chance for thorough discussion.”
She made no comment. The brim of her hat concealed her expression.
“Remember that night at the Pinkneys’?” he said. “I suggested that Exeter might have seen something the rest of us had missed?”
“Do tell.” She sounded skeptical already.
“Well, he’s got an interesting theory that the Filoby Testament itself may be a reservoir of mana. We know it was an accident; we know it drained Garward so he almost died of it. Mana certainly went into its making. Exeter thinks that every time it’s been proved right, it’s grown stronger.”
“You believe this?”
“I don’t know. I think we ought to get back to Prof Rawlinson on the subject before we take any action.” Hearing no wild cheers of agreement, Julian pressed on. “I was sent out to reconnoiter, remember. We’re scouts, not an assault party.”
He was a scout. Ursula might think of herself otherwise.
“Fiddlesticks! It’s enough to send Prof into delirium. You honestly think that a prophecy can somehow take on a life of its own and then gather strength from its own success? You’re anthropomorphizing an idea!”
“I’m not the first to do that, old girl. A faith is an idea, and lots of faiths have been anthro-whatever-you-said. Religions and nation-states are ideas.” Then Julian thought of something else. If he wasn’t convincing Ursula, he was at least beginning to convince himself. “Look at it this way—if Zath had never tried to invalidate the Filoby Testament, then a lot of things wouldn’t have happened. D’you see? Such as Exeter’s return Home. That wouldn’t disprove anything, because the prophecy gives no dates or order. As far as the world’s concerned, those things just wouldn’t have happened yet, see? But Zath meddled and they did happen, and everyone says, ‘Oo! There goes the Filoby thing again, ain’t it wonderful?’ People talk. Its reputation gets boosted. Fame is a source of mana—you’ve got to admit that.”
“Pull the other one! Trafalgar Square’s famous. You think it’s got mana?”
“It may,” Julian protested. “It makes me feel pretty proud to see old Horatio up there on his bally chimney. It’s at least got virtuality.” Was virtuality in places the same as mana in people? Did a place gain virtuality from worship as people gained mana? That was an intriguing idea, by George! When he got home to Olympus, he wouldn’t just ask Prof about it; he’d work it all out in a paper and present it for discussion. But the problem at the moment was Ursula. “Besides, mana doesn’t obey the laws of logic. Nor does charisma. Or nodes or portals.”
“Or Captain Smedley.”
They were halfway across already. The Warband had almost reached the temple, trailing a snake of pilgrims in its wake. The broken walls and stark, tilted columns were a pale yellow stain on the whiteness of the sand. Julian thought of streaky yolk in a fried egg and realized that he was hungry.
The Nagians might keep visitors away from the Liberator until he had delivered his promised sermon. He doubted they could stop Ursula from gate-crashing if she wanted to.
“What else did you learn?” she asked, not looking up.
“Not much. Well…he has allies. Astina and Irepit have been helping him. Apparently he had an audience with Visek.”
Now she tilted her head and her eyes glinted angrily. “Is this common knowledge?” She had seen the asp in the basket already.
“Some of it,” he admitted.
“And how does he rationalize consorting with demons?”
“Um, you’ll have to ask him. Look, darling, just promise me that you won’t do anything hasty, because—”
“I won’t promise a blasted thing!”
“Dammit, Ursula, it’s dangerous!”
“What is?”
“Tampering with the prophecy! Zath’s been trying for years. All he ever managed to do was kill a lot of innocent bystanders—Exeter’s parents, Julius Creighton, poor old Bagpipe…. You’re likely to get your own fingers burned if you start meddling. All I’m asking is that you—Oh, Hell!”
Never mind Ursula. A column of lancers on moas was pouring down the far bank and across the sand, heading for the Liberator and his Warband. There were at least a hundred of them.
32
Back in 1916, on leave in London, Julian had visited a moving-pictures theater. This was just like that. There the screen had been canvas, here it was a glare of sunlit sand, but he saw the same black-and-white images—jerky, silent, and hard to make out, varnished in the same unreality. Only the thundering pipe organ was missing.
Moas stood ten or twelve feet high. They were bigger than ostriches and even faster, which meant they made a terrestrial horse seem like an arthritic Shetland pony. A man on a moa’s back was out of reach of a foot soldier and his fifteen-foot lance was tipped with a triangular blade of razor-sharp steel. In full charge, he moved at around fifty miles an hour, a bloody near impossible target for bow or javelin.
This was a charge. Riding three abreast with pennants waving, the column swept across the riverbed like an express train, undulating over the low dunes and ridges. A cloud of dust from the hooves floated away in the wind, adding to the train illusion. The three files began to spread out, opening like talons, bearing death to all in their path.
Julian stood rooted. The Warband was sprinting to the temple—a man with solid rock at his back would be a harder target, although he would have little room to handle his own weapon. Within the ruins, the lancers would lose their advantage of speed, but not that of height, and moas were as nimble as men at dodging and cornering. The odds were five or six to one anyway. Two files were moving to encircle the temple. The third was heading for the long rope of pilgrims, which began to disintegrate as the prudent took to their heels, fleeing back toward Shuujooby. The procession became a rout.
“This should be an interesting test of Mr. Exeter’s abilities,” Ursula remarked acidly.
That broke the spell. Julian almost screamed as he realized their peril. He and Ursula were just standing there, two isolated onlookers in the middle of the empty field of sand. They could never be mistaken for ragged Shuujoobian peasants, so they would be assumed to be Liberator supporters. They were sitting ducks. He dropped Ursula’s shoes, grabbed her wrist, and began to run. She must have come to the same conclusion at the same instant, for she did not resist.
Running in the hot, soft sand was pure nightmare. The hamlet seemed a million miles away, and it would provide no real cover anyway. The moas would move on the grass as easily as on the riverbed. Julian could not recall how far beyond Shuujooby the edge of the swamp was—he just knew that it was too far, so running was useless. No matter, they had no alternative. The shell burst of pilgrims was throwing fragments in their direction, a few agile youngsters overtaking them. So now they were within the fleeing mob itself, part of a designated target.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a long shadow hurtle over the sand. He turned his head in time to see a boy die—a lad of about fourteen, a brown, skinny adolescent flailing his long legs, floundering as fast as he could through the powdery sand. The moa flashed in from behind him and past him and was gone before his corpse even hit the ground, hosing a crimson jet. The lance blade had severed the kid’s neck. One of the flashing hoofs struck the falling head and hurled it in a long arc like a soccer ball. There was no sound at all.
The moa spun around ninety degrees and accelerated straight for Julian and Ursula without missing a stride. Mount and rider seemed to explode out of the distance, from small to huge in an instant, filling the sky. Julian pushed Ursula behind him. He caught a brief glimpse of the trooper crouched alongside his mount’s long neck: bronze helmet, leather tunic, shiny boots in stirrups. He saw the moa’s yellow eyes and teeth and the froth around its bit, saw human eyes slitted and teeth bared as their owner aimed his bloodstained lance straight at Julian’s chest.
S
hells and bombs he had survived, bullets and poison gas, and he was going to be stuck like a pig by this medieval nightmare, this anachronistic cowboy. He closed his eyes.
He felt the wind of the beast’s passing; he caught a whiff of its animal scent. Hot sand sprayed against his shins.
He opened his eyes and looked around. The lancer had just caught an elderly, silver-haired woman. His blade took her in the back, lifting her bodily off the ground like a rag, then cutting loose through meat and bone. The body dropped free and the rider changed direction slightly, aiming at another target.
Julian peered at Ursula’s chalky face. His mouth felt drier than the sand. “You did that?” he croaked.
She nodded.
“Thanks!” He wrapped a shaky arm around her shoulders, and she huddled in tight against him. Most of the fleeing peasants had been run down now. The last few were being skewered as they tried to scramble up the sandy bank. Some had taken refuge under the jetty, but the troopers had seen them.
There was still activity at the temple. There the butchery had not been so easy. Several dead moas lay in clear view and more wheeled around riderless. That would be the Nagians’ work, of course, but spears were shorter than lances; they would have had to throw their spears. Even if you were good enough to hit such a target, what could you do for an encore?
The numbers had been impossible from the start. Even if every Nagian managed to kill one lancer, he would then be left with no weapon except a knife, facing three or four more. How many civilian pilgrims had gone to the temple ahead of them? A hundred? Two? Julian could see people scrambling up the walls in search of shelter, swarming ants. He supposed that the troopers would now draw their swords and go after them on foot. Exeter would certainly be dead, of course—prime target. Dommi was in there somewhere, poor sod.
He stood with Ursula on a white desert blotched with corpses. He supposed they should be moving, but shock had addled his wits. He couldn’t decide what to do, which way to go.