by Mary Gentle
When she looked over her shoulder, it was to see him finishing reloading the arquebus. Rickard’s white face stared, appalled; Rochester, shouting orders to the command staff, had not noticed what happened on his blind side; Dickon de Vere was nodding to himself.
“Do it,” the Italian said, “or I will finish what she began. I saw the Wild Machines at Carthage, madonna. I am scared enough to kill you.”
A wave of pressure went through her. She swayed, moving away from Florian’s body, facing him. Tears had cut white channels through the powder-black of his face; she saw it clearly in the torch’s light. He bit at his lip. He stood some ten, eleven feet away; far enough – if his arquebus missed fire – to draw his falchion before she could get to him.
He’s serious, she thought. And he’s right.
Ash smiled.
“Yeah, I got something I can do. I didn’t know it until now. You’re a persuasive man, Angeli.”
“I am a frightened man,” he repeated, steadily. “If you die now, there will still be a chance for us to wage war and destroy the Wild Machines. We would have time. Madonna, what can you do? Can you resist their force?”
Another wave of weakness: deep in mind and body.
She grinned at him.
“They control me. I can’t stop this. I can’t do anything,” Ash said. “Except – I can talk to them. I can still do that.”
She walked a few feet to the overgrown fallen altar. The torch illuminated the stonework, the carved lions at the four corners, and, on the front panel, the Boar under the Tree. She knelt down in the trodden snow.
“Why?” she said aloud. “Why are you doing this to us?”
The voices in her head, multiple and cold, braided themselves into a single inhuman voice:
‘IT MUST BE. WE HAVE KNOWN FOR LONGER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE THAT IT MUST BE.’
A sorrow pierced her.
Not her own, she realised in shock; not a human sorrow. Bleak, implacable grieving.
“Why must it be?”
‘WE HAVE NO CHOICE, WE HAVE LABOURED THROUGH AEONS FOR THIS ACT. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY BUT THIS.’
“Yeah. Right. Just because you want to wipe us out,” Ash said. Her tone was sardonic. Her face dripped tears. She felt Antonio Angelotti’s fingers gripping her pauldron, where he stood behind her.
“It’s bad war,” she said. “That’s all it is. Bad war. You just want to wipe us out.”
‘YES.’
Pressure grows in her mind, the impetus to an act she cannot deny.
“Why?”
‘WHAT IS IT TO YOU, LITTLE SHADOW?’
“You want to wipe everything out,” she said. “Everything. As if we’d never been, that’s what you said. As if there’d never been anything but you, from the beginning of time.”
‘MORE HAS GONE INTO THIS THAN YOU CAN KNOW, IT IS TIME, BURGUNDY DIES. IT IS—’
“I will know.”
Ash listened. She wrenched: mind, soul, body; fell forward across the snow-covered stones, tasting blood in her mouth.
She realised that she was not being resisted.
‘WE SORROW FOR YOU.’ The voices of the Wild Machines clamoured in her inner hearing, ‘BUT WE HAVE SEEN WHAT YOU BECOME.’
Bewildered, Ash said, “What?”
They sing in her head, sorrowful voices, the great demons of hell mourning:
‘FOR FIVE THOUSAND YEARS, WE GREW, MINDS, BECOMING BRIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. WE SENSED YOUR WEAK FORCE, DEDUCED WHAT WE COULD, FROM GUNDOBAD, WE LEARNED THE WORLD—’
“I just bet you did,” Ash muttered sourly, on a mouth full of blood and snow. She was simultaneously aware of Angelotti standing over her, falchion in hand, the rest standing back as the noise from the line-fight shrieked closer to the chapel; aware of every muscle tensing as she flinched at the fighting; and of the voices thundering inside her head.
‘WE HAVE COMMUNICATED FOR CENTURIES, WATCHED YOU FOR LONGER, AND WE HAVE CALCULATED—’
‘SWIFTER THAN THOUGHT, SWIFTER THAN A MAN’S MIND—’
‘AND FOR CENTURY UPON CENTURY—’
‘CALCULATED WHAT YOU WILL BECOME.’
They speak together, as one:
‘YOU WILL BECOME DEMONS.’
“I’ve seen war, and I’ve done war,” Ash said flatly, getting herself back up on to hands and knees. “I don’t think I need to believe in demons. Not given what men do – what I do. That doesn’t give you any right to wipe us out!”
‘WHAT YOU HAVE DONE IS NOTHING, ALL THE ATROCITIES OF WAR, FOR CENTURIES, ARE AS NOTHING TO WHAT YOU WILL BECOME.’
Kneeling back, tears dripping down her face, in bitter cold, in darkness, she cannot help a hysterical hilarity creeping into her mind. I’m arguing with demons at the end of the world. Arguing! Shit.
She said, “Worse weapons, maybe—”
‘YOU CHANGE THE WORLD,’ soft voices sang in her mind, lamenting. ‘GUNDOBAD. YOU. EACH MAN HAS HIS BURDEN OF GRACE. YES, WE OURSELVES HAVE BRED THE RACE TO PRODUCE YOU, BUT WE HAVE ONLY DONE FIRST WHAT YOUR RACE WOULD HAVE DONE IN TIME. THERE WILL BE MANY ASHES IN YOUR FUTURE.’
Bewildered, breath coming hard in her throat, she forced out: “I don’t – understand.”
‘YOU WERE BRED TO BE A WEAPON. STRONG: STRONG ENOUGH TO MAKE UNREAL THIS WORLD. THERE WILL BE MORE, BRED LIKE YOU, WE HAVE FORESEEN IT. IT IS INEVITABLE. AND THE WEAPONS WILL BE USED – UNTIL AT LAST, THERE WILL BE NOTHING SOLID. WE WILL NOT EXIST. THE MANY SPECIES OF THE WORLD WILL NOT EXIST. THERE WILL BE ONLY MAN, THE MIRACLE-WORKER, RENDING THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE UNTIL IT TATTERS. CHANGING HIMSELF, TOO. UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING STABLE, WHOLE OR REAL; ONLY MIRACLE UPON MIRACLE, CHANGE UPON CHANGE, AN ENDLESS, CHAOTIC FLOW.’
Colder than the snow she knelt in, Ash said, “More wonder-workers…”
‘IN THE END, YOU WILL ALL BE WONDER-WORKERS, YOU WILL BREED YOURSELF INTO IT. WE HAVE RUN THE SIMULATIONS A BILLION, BILLION TIMES: IT IS WHAT WILL BE. THERE IS NO WAY TO PREVENT IT EXCEPT BY PREVENTING YOU. WE WILL WIPE OUT HUMANITY, MAKE IT AS IF IT HAD NEVER EXISTED, SO THAT THE UNIVERSE WILL REMAIN COHERENT AND WHOLE.’
VII
It entered her mind complete: words processed so rapidly that her understanding was not verbal: was an intact apprehension of a world which may flow, slide, mutate, morph into multiple realities, none with any more stability than any other. Until pattern itself is lost, structure unstructured; geometry and symmetry lost. And there is no mind with any continuous self, that cannot be changed, by a friend, or enemy, or a momentary impulse of despair.
“That’s why?” Ash found herself shaking, dizzy. Fear shook her pulse. “That’s why. What – just destroy us? Is that it?”
‘YOU ARE OUR WEAPON, WE WILL CHANNEL THE SUN’S POWER INTO YOU, NOW.’
‘GIVE YOU ALL POSSIBILITY, ALL PROBABILITY THAT EVER HAS BEEN—’
‘ROOT OUT YOUR PEOPLE, WHEREVER IT HAS BEEN POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO BE, MAKE IT DIFFERENT, IMPOSSIBLE—’
‘COLLAPSE THE BIRTH OF YOUR KIND INTO IMPOSSIBILITY—’
‘MAKE HUMANITY AS IF IT HAD NEVER BEEN.’
It sears into her: knowledge she does not want, would rather not know.
“I just thought you wanted to wipe us out because you wanted to be the only ones!”
‘IF YOUR SPECIES SURVIVES, THEN EVERYTHING ELSE WILL DIE – WORSE THAN DIE, IT WILL CHANGE, CHANGE AGAIN; BECOME UNRECOGNISABLE.’
“I thought—”
The screaming clamour of the outside world penetrates. Her eyes fly open: she sees the legs of men running past, across the circle of blood-soaked snow in the torch’s light; hears the shouted orders; smells urine, snow, mud; hears a scream—
A man falls down beside her. Angelotti. He is grabbing at his thigh. Arterial blood spouting up in a perfect arc.
“Shit!” Her hands are thick with blood, trying to grab him, stem the flow.
‘LITTLE WARRIOR, YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE MIRACLE WARS.’
“I don’t want to see any wars!” She leans her weight down. Antonio
Angelotti looks up at her with shocked eyes. A broad shoulder intervenes: Richard Faversham, yanking bandages into place; cloth welling red – femoral artery cut? Or just muscle-tissue slashed, up to the groin? But so much blood, so fast—
‘WE WILL GIVE YOU WHAT GIFT WE CAN. YOU MUST DIE, IN THE CHANGE THAT YOU NOW MAKE. BUT WE WILL GIVE YOU THE POWER OF OUR CALCULATION. MAKE, FOR YOURSELF, A NEW PAST.’
“But I won’t exist!” She is still staring at Angelotti: the woman-soft skin of his filthy face smoothing out. “You want everything of us to go, that’s what your change will do!”
‘YOU MUST EXIST, FOR THIS MIRACLE TO BE.’
The voices in her head soften:
‘THERE MUST BE A HUMAN HISTORY, FOR YOU TO HAVE BEEN BORN TO DO THIS. IT WILL BECOME A GHOST-HISTORY, AS ALL YOUR RACE VANISH AND BECOME IMPOSSIBLE. YET – THAT GHOST-HISTORY MAY BE ANYTHING YOU CHOOSE.’
“I don’t understand!”
‘WE WILL GIVE YOU THE POWER TO CHOOSES IT, YOUR NEW GHOST-PAST, AS YOU PERFORM OUR MIRACLE. ADJUST THE THINGS THAT WERE: MAKE A NEW THING THAT HAS BEEN. YOU WILL DIE IN THIS INSTANT WITH THE REST, BUT YOU WILL HAVE LIVED A DIFFERENT LIFE. ILLUSORY, MERELY PROBABLE, BUT IT MAY – WE HOPE IT MAY – BRING YOU AN INSTANT’S PEACE BEFORE NON-EXISTENCE.’
There is a pressure in her chest. The morning of the fifth of January 1477 is black. Men scream and die in this darkness. The cold bites. The pressure grows; she grabs at her head, wrenching the strap and buckle of her helmet, ripping it off, until she can grab at her skull with her hands—
‘ALL WE NEED IS YOU, OUR WEAPON, YOU BREEDING, THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT YOUR LIFE AS A WARRIOR THAT WE NEED. WE LISTENED TO THE MIND THAT CAME TO INHABIT THE MACHINA REI MILITARIS, YOUR “GODFREY MAXIMILLIAN”. WE KNOW YOU, THROUGH HIM. WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR MIRACLE NOW, AND CHANGE THE WORLD, YOU MAY MAKE IT SO THAT YOU HAD LOVING PARENTS, A FAMILY. SO THAT YOU WERE CARED FOR. SO THAT NO ABANDONMENT HAPPENED – IT IS NOTHING TO US: YOU WILL STILL BE ABLE TO DO WHAT WE NEED YOU TO DO.’
The pressure on her chest is memory.
A man’s big hand, pressing her down. Adult knees pushing her legs apart. A ripping pain that cores out from the inside of her: a child’s genitals torn, spoiled.
Tears spilled down her face. “Not twice. Not to me. Not twice—”
‘WE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE KIND, YOU COULD HAVE BEEN BORN TO THOSE WHO WOULD CARE FOR YOU. MEMBERS OF YOUR SPECIES OFTEN ARE. YOU MAY CHANGE THESE THINGS WITH OUR CONSENT. OBLITERATE RAPE, HUNGER, FEAR. THEN, WHEN YOU DIE, IT WILL BE IN THE MOMENT OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THAT LOVE.’
Under her hands, Antonio Angelotti sighed. She felt him die. Her blood-gloved hands reached out, touching his hair, closing the blue-veined lids of his oval eyes. She smelled the stink of his bowels and bladder relaxing. Richard Faversham lifted his shaky tenor, sung blessing all but inaudible over the shouting.
Ash said, “I won’t change it.”
There is sorrow, confusion, regret in her mind; some of it hers, most of it theirs.
“Whatever I am,” she said, “whatever happened to me, this is what I am. I won’t change it. Not for a ghost-love. I have—”
She strokes Angelotti’s hair.
“I have had love.”
She stands, stepping back, letting Richard Faversham touch oil to the dead man’s forehead. The freezing, bitter wind dries the tears on her face. This time she does not try to put sorrow away: looks out of the dazzle of the torchlight at the ruined walls, the men hacking at granite war-machines – Robert Anselm swinging an axe that scores a line of golden sparks from a granite limb, Ludmilla Rostovnaya dropping her bow, hauling out her blade-heavy falchion and chopping; John Burren and Giovanni Petro shoulder-to-shoulder beside her. Confusion, darkness; and the eyeless heads of golems dazzle in the last torchlight.
Ash walked quite calmly back to where Richard Faversham, under the ruined wall by the altar, held Florian del Guiz in his arms. Rickard stumbled at her back.
‘IN THE FUTURE WE HAVE CALCULATED, ALL WILL CHANGE, THERE WILL BE NO SELF YOU CAN RELY ON, NO IDENTITY THAT LASTS FROM DAY TO DAY. AND YOU WILL SPREAD THAT CHAOS TO A UNIVERSE BIGGER THAT YOU CAN YET CONCEIVE.’
“Here they come!”
In the morning dark, she cannot see half the crowd; can only hear a wave of yelling come up the slope, glimpse a few men’s backs. Two or three billmen stumbled backward into the ruined chapel building. A riderless horse – a Janissary’s mare – caught her as it stumbled, broken-legged, across the rubble.
“Ash!”
Rickard. Dragging her. She gets up on her knees and a dozen or more men pound over the snow and rubble, past her, on into darkness.
“A Lion!”
The battle-cry is shrill above her, ends in a shriek. She rolled, came upright in a clatter of steel plate and padding; swung round looking for her banner—
In a split second, she saw the banner falling, Rickard’s hands going up to his head, a Visigoth spearman sprawled backwards over the wall, mail hauberk ripped, Ned Mowlett striking down twice with a bastard sword; leaping off the snow-covered masonry and vanishing—
The Lion Azure banner tipped into the snow. Ash saw a jagged, thick splinter jutting out of Rickard’s helmet. A spear-point has hit, glanced off, the shaft shattering at the collar, and a white, razor-sharp fragment of wood sticks out of the sallet’s eye-slot.
Blood welled up in the torchlight, gushing, blackening the wood. Rickard’s hands scrabbled at the steel. He fell over backwards, screaming behind the helmet, arching, lying still.
“Rickard!”
She stood. Looked down.
“I … yes. If I could, if I lived, now – I’d change that. Go back and wipe out— people will do it. You’re right. For whatever reason – people will use God’s grace, if they have it. If a miracle can bring someone back from death—”
‘AND THEN, THERE IS NO END TO CHANGE.’
“No.” She is cold, from hands to feet, from heart to soul; chill with more than the blackness and the massacre a few feet away. The torchlight glimmers on yellow silk, a blue lion: Thomas Rochester, face bleeding, hauling the banner up again. She stumbles on numb feet the tiny distance between herself and the snow-covered wall where Florian lies. Richard Faversham is gone.
‘IT IS TIME, NOW.’
Caught between grief and nightmare, between this slaughter and the revelation of the future, she is dumb.
It is dark.
She kneels beside Florian, awkward in her armour. The woman’s breath still moves her chest.
Desperation in her voice, she pleads: “Why change everything? Why not—” She fumbles for Florian’s hand. There is another fallen body, momentarily left behind the tide of fighting: it may be the Faris, it may be another of her men.
Anselm will hold them here, she thought, and de Vere will win it. Or not. Nothing I can do about that. About this—
Her mind works, as in panic emergencies it has always worked; it is the one thing above all else that qualifies her for what she does.
“Why change everything? Why not change one thing?” Ash demands. “What you bred, in me, for a wonder-worker – take it out. Take that out of us! Leave us what we are, but take that away.”
Their lament is strong in her mind.
‘WE HAVE CONSIDERED IT. YET WHAT AROSE AS A SPONTANEOUS MUTATION MAY ARISE AGAIN. OR YOU MAY, IN CENTURIES TO COME, DEVISE SOME DEVICE TO MAKE MIRACLES FOR YOU. AND WHAT DO WE HAVE THEN, TO PREVENT YOU? YOU WILL BE GONE, THERE WILL BE NO WONDER-WORKERS, AND WE ARE ONLY STONE – VOICELESS, IMMOBILE, THINKING STONE.’
“You don’t have to wipe us out—”
‘WE HAVE BRED A WEAPON, AND WHEN YOU ARE USED, ASH, THERE CAN NEVER BE ANOTHER WEAPON FOR US TO USE. BECAUSE YOUR RACE WILL NEVER HAVE EXISTED. WHAT WE DO, WE MUST DO NOW. WE BEAR NO HATRED FOR YOU, ONLY FOR WHAT YOUR SPECIES WILL DO – AND YOU WILL DO IT. BUT WE WILL PREVENT IT, NOW. FORGIVE US.’
“I’ll do something,” Ash muttered.
Her mind races. Their linked pressure dazzles her, she feels the blood
tingling in her veins, and something in the shared depth of her soul begin to move. She senses her mind expand; realises that it is their immense, vast intelligence that begins to merge with her. She perceives a vast cognitive power.
“I can do this,” Ash said baldly. “Listen to me. I can take the wonder-workers out of history. Take miracles out of us, now and in the past. Take out the capacity. You can hold all of human history in your minds for me – all the past – and I can do it.”
She holds the warm body of Florian in her arms. The woman is still breathing. In appalled realisation, before they can respond, she says aloud:
“But Florian has to die before I can do this. Before this change.”
‘IT IS OUR SORROW, TOO.’
“No,” Ash says. “No.”
There is confusion among the inhuman multiple voices:
‘YOU CANNOT DENY US.’
“You don’t understand,” Ash said. “I don’t lose.”
The morning of the fifth of January is as black as midnight without a moon. Maybe no more than half an hour since Frederick of Hapsburg’s troops made their attack? Do they fight on, in the unnatural pitch-darkness? Men shout, scream, yell contradictory orders. Or is it just the golems: mindless, brutal killing machines, that don’t see where she kneels behind the wall, everyone else running or dead?
“I don’t lose,” Ash repeated. “You bred me for what I am. You need me to be a fighter, whether you know it or not. I can take the decision to sacrifice other people. It’s what I do. But I do it through choice, when it’s necessary.”
‘YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.’
A very weak voice said, “I never liked cities. Nasty unhealthy places. Do I have the flux?”
Florian’s eyes were open. She seemed unfocused. Her speech came as a bare whisper, blue lips moving only a fraction.
“Someone … should kill you. If I order it.”
The weight of the woman across her knees kept Ash still. She said, gently, “You won’t.”
“I – fucking will. Don’t you realise I love you, you stupid girl? But I will do this. Nothing else left.”
Ash cupped her hand and laid it against Florian’s cheek. “I will not die and I will not lose.”