Of Limited Loyalty cc-2

by Michael A. Stackpole

  “Do you not understand the gravity of the situation, Steward Fire?” Rathfield pointed off in the direction where he thought Piety lay. Nathaniel didn’t correct him. “Do you want the people of Happy Valley to end up like that?”

  “It has nothing to do with what I desire, Colonel. It is what God demands of me and my people.” The older man stared down at empty and calloused hands. “God brought the flood to destroy wickedness. He brought the plagues to free His people. He destroyed sinful cities with cleansing fire. He sacrificed His Son to save all of us. If He was willing to do all that, how can I, as His servant, shy from willingness to do the same?”

  Nathaniel drank again, wishing the canteen contained whiskey. There was no mistaking the sincerity in the Steward’s voice, but his surrendering to what he saw as God’s plan didn’t make any sense to Nathaniel. He’d always believed in the saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” Makepeace had once told him that the saying wasn’t in the Good Book, and Nathaniel reckoned it should have been added.

  Rathfield smiled. “I understand your thinking, Steward. I respect it. But what if God is testing you? What if He is asking you to sacrifice your people the way He asked Abram to sacrifice his son?”

  “I know He is testing me, Colonel. He has showed me many things, many terrible things. It is more than a man can bear-save for his faith in God. So, perhaps I am cast as Abram, or perhaps my lot is that of Job.” Fire looked toward the heavens. “Either does not matter because the moral of each Scripture is that faith will sustain us through the most horrible of trials. Our reward for faith is to abide with God forever in Heaven.”

  Nathaniel stoppered his canteen. “I ain’t of a mind to say you’re wrong, Steward, and I don’t know enough Scripture to tell if you’re right. But I seem to remember-and you can correct me-that the Good Lord hisself said that the children should come unto Him on account of they was innocent. I cain’t see anybody what loves children that much wanting to happen to them what happened to the children in Piety.”

  “You must understand, Mr. Woods, that God challenges us so we reaffirm our faith in Him.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “Now, see, that is something I don’t reckon I can figure out. You clearly is a pious man, doing His work, gathering up people that believe in Him, and He goes and slaughters a bunch of them to test your faith? Ain’t that like having a sweetheart that goes out a-walking with another man, then comes back and asks if you believe her when she says she is chaste? Once you do, she goes out walking again, but this time they hold hands. How far would you let her test you? Would you wait until you found them naked and under the sheets, and would you believe when she says she’s chaste?”

  The Steward opened his hands. “The mind of God is not knowable to man.”

  “I hear you say that, but they’s an awful, terrible, powerful lot of preachers who claim they do know what God is thinking. They don’t skimp on giving you a piece of His mind when they get to preachifying.”

  Rathfield raised a hand. “You tread perilously close to blasphemy, Woods.”

  “I is not neither.” Nathaniel shook his head. “I reckon religion can give you peace on account of it tells you that there’s a reason things happen, terrible things, horrible things. When the good ones happen, you’re happy with God; when the bad ones happen, you just count it up as something God don’t think you need to understand at that moment.”

  Kamiskwa raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps my brother would get to the point of his discussion.”

  “I reckon I might, thank you, Kamiskwa.” Nathaniel pointed his rifle off toward Happy Valley. “You don’t know if God intends to kill them people, or if He’ll tell you it was just a test at the last moment. From the stories you mentioned previous, odds are four to one that blood is going to be shed. Seems to me there was some Scripture stories about great leaders, bringing their people out of the wilderness, to a promised land. Ain’t it possible that’s how God is leaning?”

  “Woods, that will be quite enough!”

  The Steward focused distantly for a moment, then hung his head. “You may well be right, Mr. Woods. I allowed myself to succumb to the sin of pride. I elevated the trials I shall face above those of the people who have put their trust in me. That I need to be strong for them, and strong to face these trials, this is an even greater test than I imagined. I am blessed that your insight revealed to me more of His plan.”

  Nathaniel nodded once. The Steward still wasn’t grasping the seriousness of what they faced, but at least he now allowed as how not everyone should be given up to death. As long as Fire held open the door that some might survive, they might be able to evacuate the settlement and get people back over the mountains.

  As they shouldered their packs again, Rathfield took off in the lead. Makepeace walked with the Steward, shouldering his pack and sharing some prayers. Kamiskwa watched their back trail, leaving Owen and Nathaniel walking together.

  Owen glanced at him. “Do you honestly think he’d let them all die?”

  “Being as how he’s more worried about their souls than he is their mortal remains, I don’t reckon he’s seeing death as quite the tragedy we do. Tragedy or not, long as I’m breathing, ain’t no way Becca Green’s going to the Lord, even if He comes down and invites her to Him. I reckon if He weren’t keen on being tacked to a tree and having a spear poked into his side, He surely ain’t going to like a bullet punching him dead center.”

  Surprise widened Owen’s eyes. “You seem to bear God some animosity, Nathaniel.”

  “It ain’t I got a hate-on for Him. It’s more I got a hate-on for his followers.”

  “Like Makepeace?”

  “Nope. Makepeace, he goes and prays good times and bad. Sometimes he does what he oughten’t to do, but he’s sorry and sincere about it and fair good at seeing it don’t happen again for a good long time.” Nathaniel nodded. “He weren’t always like that, but come his meeting with the Good Lord and that bear, he’s been sincere since.”

  “I can’t argue with you there, only having known him since. But you’re telling it right.” Owen climbed up a steep set of rocks, then offered Nathaniel a hand. “But what do you think of God? Do you believe?”

  Nathaniel took his hand and pulled himself up. “You really want to know the answer?”

  “I believe I do.”

  Nathaniel swept a hand out over the panorama of the wooded valley below and the hills that defined it. “I look at all this and I know men see the hand of the Creator there. You got your God; Kamiskwa and the Shedashee, they got theirs. I reckon other people gots themselves gods, ’cepting the Ryngians who seem a mite confused and awful willing to take the Lord’s name in vain even though they don’t believe. And all them Creators get credit for the same thing, but they all has themselves a set of rules ’bout what a body can and cannot do. And the one thing all them rules have in common is that they tend to benefit whosoever is the one telling everyone else what them rules is.”

  “I can’t deny your point there.”

  Nathaniel patted Owen on the shoulder and they started walking again. “So I got to wondering not iffen there was a God, but whether or not any of them people got it right. It would be as if we done heard a big cat calling in the night, and we found pawprints, and we found a tooth, and we brung it all back to Prince Vlad. Now he’d go on and tell us how big the cat was, what it ate and so forth but, being a wise man, he wouldn’t tell us what color it was, or that it had wings and horns and two heads.”

  “But holy men are doing just that?”

  “’Xactly so.” Nathaniel nodded. “So I might allow as how there is a God. I might even go so far as to say that some things, like the Golden Rule and the whole ‘Thou shalt not murder,’ sounds like things a God might want us to be doing. Beyond that, I reckon men is inventing more than they ought to.”

  “So you don’t think God let the people of Piety die?”

  “Tain’t that. I don’t think He wanted them to die.” Nathaniel shook his head.
“I don’t reckon any Creator what worked so hard to create beauty and life would make it part of a plan to have folks die hard and evil like that. You think he wanted them to die?”

  “I really try not to fathom the mind of God.”

  Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “Your turn, Captain Strake. You believe in God?”

  Owen ducked beneath a pine branch. “I’m afraid the God I believe in is a bit more capricious and nasty than the one you accept. Put it down to being raised in a family where we had our own Church and would sit up front at services, yet where my uncles, father, and grandfather would indulge themselves in cruel ways. And credit it to what I’ve seen on battlefields, where men pray for God to end their suffering. So simple a thing for Him to grant, and yet it always seemed that he who prayed the most devoutly, suffered the longest.”

  Nathaniel’s thoughts flew back to Fort Cuivre and the aftermath of the battle at Anvil Lake. Shot and sword, bullet and bludgeon, the weapons of war had rendered men unrecognizable. Some did pray as they died, others wept, and still more cried out for mothers and wives living an ocean away. While he understood the injuries, and understood the desire for comfort, he’d never taken the time to fit that carnage into any theological context. Those battles had been Man’s creation and weren’t something for which he could imagine any god wanting credit.

  “Almost sounds to me, Captain, that you’re leaning toward thinking there ain’t no God.”

  “I probably would think that, save for something you touched upon earlier. Loving or cruel, capricious or calculating, God being in Heaven means there is a reason for everything.” Owen sighed. “I might not understand it, but knowing there is a reason is a lot more comforting than believing there isn’t. And if God does exist, maybe, just maybe, the next prayer He answers will be mine.”

  Nathaniel leaped over a marshy stretch of trail. “I reckon this, Owen. Iffen God’s going to be answer any prayers, like as not they’ll be from someone like you.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “My hunch is this: iffen you was dying and in a powerful lot of pain, you wouldn’t be praying for comfort for yourself, but for your daughter and wife. I reckon most of the others miss that. The Good Lord, if the tales be true, done sacrificed Hisself for others. Praying for yourself kinda mocks all that, don’t it?”

  “I imagine there are Scriptural scholars who would debate that point, but I agree.” Owen laughed. “And I do pray for Miranda, every night.”

  Nathaniel noticed that Owen hadn’t said he prayed for his wife, and that didn’t surprise him. Nathaniel found her as welcome as a case of carbuncles. The woman seemed to be mean for the sake of being mean, and took a special dislike to anything or anyone that inspired her husband to remain in Mystria. He’d just as soon see the backside of her on a ship sailing toward dawn, but it wasn’t his place to say anything in that regard, so he held his tongue.

  The party topped the last rise about two hours before the sun would set. The settlement appeared normal, with people going about their normal tasks. It wasn’t until they started down toward the meeting house that Nathaniel noted that the herders hadn’t come to greet them but, instead, followed them at greater than gunshot range.

  Rathfield appeared not to notice. “When we reach the town, you’ll have to give the order, Steward, to get everyone out. They should pack food. We will have ample water.”

  “You worry too much, Colonel.” The Steward, as if revived by having returned home, smiled. “God will provide for us. Not a mouth shall go hungry on our way.”

  People gathered on the trail into Happy Valley, men in front, women behind, two dozen of the former and all of their wives. One stepped forward. “Ezekiel Fire, you are welcome to rejoin the community. The Steward awaits you in the Temple.”

  Fire stopped a pace beyond the party. “Deacon Stone, I am the Steward.”

  “No, Ezekiel. God came to us in a vision, all of us. He said you had been tested and tempted and corrupted by these men.” Stone opened his arms, turning his hands palm up to the sky. The others aped his posture and raised their faces to the heavens. “Salvation is still open to you, Ezekiel. So the Steward has said.”

  Nathaniel stepped up. “I don’t reckon I need to be asking who this new Steward is, do I? Where is he? The meeting house, what you’s calling the Temple now?”

  Stone stared at Nathaniel. “You are not welcome here. If you step into the precincts of Happy Valley, you will not be spared.”

  Nathaniel leveled his rifle at the man’s gut. “I’m a mite more worried about your safety than mine right at the moment, Deacon Stone. Now, you gonna take me to Rufus Branch, or am I going to be asking your widows for directions?”

  “Put up your gun, Nathaniel.” The men and women of Happy Valley parted down the middle as if a human curtain. “You can’t harm them, but the reverse is not true.”

  Nathaniel recognized the voice more by the venom in it than the tone or timbre. A man came forward, but had it not been for the voice, he never would have known the figure to be Rufus Branch. While the man had retained his height, he had become skeletally thin. Color had leeched from his hair and it had fallen out in patches, as if he had the mange. His eyes had become larger and much darker. He clutched a golden tablet to his chest.

  “We will not deny you entry, Nathaniel. It is all part of the plan.” Rufus caressed the tablet. “You are meant to be here, so I am told. We shall put you on trial for heresy, and then we will watch you die.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  16 May 1767 Happy Valley Postsylvania, Mystria

  Ian Rathfield shouldered his way past Owen and got between the mob and Ezekiel Fire. “I think this has gone far enough.”

  Rufus Branch hissed at him in sibilant tones that sent a shiver down Owen’s spine. “You have no authority here.”

  “In the name of the Queen, and the sovereign and Almighty God who put her on the throne, I am the authority here.” Rathfield stood tall, thrusting a finger at Branch. “You’ll answer to my authority immediately.”

  Branch’s right hand snaked out, grabbing Ian’s wrist. “I answer to no man.”

  Rathfield made to tug his wrist free, but couldn’t. Back when Branch had been thickly muscled, Owen would have allowed it possible that Rathfield might not break his grip. But he’s wasted away, in just days, how can he…? Branch twisted his hand ever so slightly, and the larger man went to his knees. They locked gazes, then Rathfield shuddered and sagged. When Branch released him, he curled up on the ground, hugging himself with quaking arms.

  Branch laughed. “Such a sinner are you, Colonel. You shall burn for a long time.”

  Fire crouched, reaching a hand toward Rathfield, but looked up at his former charge. “Rufus, this is not like you. What has happened?”

  Branch pulled back and smiled easily. “The tablets held the secret. Tell him. Tell them.”

  Stone nodded. “It’s true, all has been revealed. God has granted us the gifts denied us when we left the garden. It is as you preached, Ezekiel.” The man raised a finger and wrote on the air. Golden sigils hung there, twinkling as if made of stardust, then slowly vanished. Owen could make nothing of them, but he’d seen them before, on the walls of the outpost.

  As the sigils drained away, a plant sprouted beneath them. It looked for all intents to be a sunflower, with a blossom eight inches across. It grew to waist height in less than a minute’s time, and the flower opened. The blossom appeared very much like cauliflower, but golden-brown on the surface. It smelled for all the world of cinnamon.

  “You see, as it was said in the Good Book: Manna, given to us through this Godly gift. These tablets that the Steward has translated were put here for us, so we can lead people to God.”

  Fire, instead of rising, went down to his other knee. He clasped his hands in prayer. “Father Almighty, please forgive these Your children…”

  “Silence! Blasphemy will not be tolerated.” Branch thrust a finger at Fire. “Clap him in irons an
d hitch him to the Post of Shame.”

  Two men stepped forward, pulled on leather gloves, and dragged Fire toward the center of the green. A stout post had been sunk into the middle of it, and a pair of manacles bound to it by a short length of chain. Fire neither struggled nor protested his treatment. Once secured, he went to his knees again, and the short chains raised his arms to an obviously uncomfortable height.

  Owen and Nathaniel exchanged glances. If they attacked now and managed to kill Branch, they still would have three dozen adults to deal with. Not only would the expedition end right there, but whatever had transformed the people of Happy Valley would be free to continue working.

  Nathaniel raised his rifle’s muzzle to the sky. “You serious ’bout that trial, Rufus?”

  Branch scratched over his ear and a clump of hair came away. He looked at it for a moment, puzzled, as if he didn’t know what it was. Then he cast it aside and stroked the tablet again. “Yes. A trial. Exactly. I will summon those who will judge you. If you run, Fire will die.”

  Makepeace bent down to help Rathfield to his feet. “And what if we recant our heresy and accept fellowship and communion here in Happy Valley?”

  Rufus looked Makepeace up and down, then snorted. “There may be mercy granted. Go to the workshop. Await the summoning.”

  Nathaniel led the way to the workshop. It didn’t appear as if Rathfield would be able to climb the ladder into the hayloft, so Owen gathered a length of rope and hitched it to a chain and hook. He opened the loft door to thread it through the pulley, but the Colonel had recovered enough to make the trip himself. They positioned him by the loft door so he could watch the green and report if anything unusual was happening.

  Owen crouched with the others two-dozen feet away. “Suggestions?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “I got me a plan.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Well, Kamiskwa, the second it gets dark, you’re going to light on out of here.”