“Kommander, this is King Wodan of the Black Valley, a nation far north of here. We have come to see the holy land of Srila. We did not come here meaning to cross your border. We had no idea that you were here.”
“You are armed,” Won Po said simply.
“Of course we are. We have made a long and dangerous journey to be here. But we do not come to fight you.”
“They say you use the name of Die Engelen. How do you do this?”
“I tell you I have met them. Three of them.”
The radio crackled strangely. “Lay down arms!”
Angered that the person in charge seemed as mindlessly aggressive as his underling, Wodan lowered his sword. “Valliers don’t walk around unarmed,” he said slowly. “If you have any way to speak to your war gods, go and ask them about Wodan.”
“One moment, thank you please,” Kommander Won Po said gruffly.
The field was quiet. Wodan waited for one moment, then another, then grew impatient and angry. On a whim he stood and faced the field of stone. Three red-armored men huddled around a machinegun nearby. Seeing him, they drew their heads back comically, their slitted eyes wide with alarm. He tore the cape from his sword and let it drop, then hopped on top of the squat stone and laid the shining sword across his lap as he sat down. He glared at the fighters and they oiled and loaded the machinegun so that they would not have to look at him.
The radio buzzed, then Kommander Won Po said, “San Ktari soldiers will escort you down mountain into valley. You, Wodan, meet with me and sign truce treaty. You will not make trouble! Srila is now in territory of San Ktari. You abide our rule!”
“That’s fine, Kommander,” said Wodan. “We won’t mess with you as long as you do the same. But you need to understand that my people aren’t accustomed to being pushed around.”
“Ah!” said Won Po, then there was silence.
Wodan hopped down from his perch, then made his way toward Yarek’s position. A line of red-armored soldiers approached, rifle barrels held down but fingers close to triggers. As they drew near, a Vallier sniper in a gray cloak stood up from his perch among gray stones, and the foreign soldiers hissed in alarm. They stared at one another.
“Escort,” said Yarek, spitting to the side. “Yellow bastards are going to escort us.”
One Ranger looked about to make sure that his king and the general were out of earshot, then said to his companion, “You better believe I’m gonna mess with these sumbitches.”
***
Under blue skies and a gentle wind the Valliers made their way down the path, surrounded by soldiers from San Ktari who eyed them with mistrust and resentment. Wodan watched them closely. All were shorter than the average Vallier and had a similar racial makeup of pale skin, dark hair, and slanted eyes. Only a few of the soldiers had dark complexions. Their armor was of uniform appearance, plates of red-painted metal woven into dyed red leather. Most troops wore gray undergarments and scarves while the officers wore black scarves and hats.
No blood was drawn, but neither side hid their dislike of the other. Vallier dogmen often “accidentally” bumped or jostled their escorts, and many roughneck civilians seemed to mistake San Ktari boots for tobacco spittoons. The Ktari soldiers held to their orders of non-violent escort, but often slipped into old habits they had developed from dealing with prisoners. They spat out curses and threats in their strange, harsh-sounding language, and more than a few stared in numb horror, unable to comprehend the unbelievable paradox that armed men who were not Imperial soldiers were, somehow, not being fired upon until they were dead. The red banner and black circle hung over many points along the path, stabbing into the blue sky and fluttering like a twisting knife.
Wodan’s counselors stuck together near the front of the train. Haginar was content to ride on Magog’s shoulders.
“Look at these pups,” said Naarwulf. “If we were matched in numbers, we could kick them around like sheep!”
“Zachariah,” said Yarek, who had long been silent. “You’ve been to San Ktari.”
Zachariah nodded. “The maps you might have seen, even if exaggerated, can only begin to capture the scope of their power. Their territories are vast. It’s hard for our side of the world to imagine the East. Most of you are used to city-states practically cut off from one another, but in the East there are other nations even greater than Hargis was before it fell. But all of those great nations live in fear of San Ktari.”
“Strange,” said Yarek, “that their cities stay connected any better than Pontius or Sunport. Don’t they have flesh demons to worry about?”
“Of course,” said Zachariah. “I’m sure their trading companies are constantly experimenting with sacrifices and rituals that will appease the demons and allow their caravans to pass. We did the same thing in Hargis. Demons have to eat to survive just like anything else, but they’re so fickle that-”
“Your people used human sacrifices?” said Yarek, lips curled in disgust.
Zachariah shrugged. “As far as I know, only criminals were used.”
“As far as you know.”
“What I want to know,” said Wodan, “is how San Ktari was able to accrue so much power without the demons challenging them.”
Zachariah nodded. “It’s a mystery. They’re strong enough that they can afford to constantly fight with their neighbors. I know they worship gods of war… always have, but now they have these Engels. The people attribute a lot of their power to them. I’ve met that asshole Matthias myself.”
“I wouldn’t call them gods,” said Wodan. “They act no different from normal humans. Matthias threatened to kill me a few years ago.”
“King?” said Naarwulf, eyes wide.
Wodan smiled. “I threw a fit and he left me alone.”
“I’ve heard Entertainers speak of them,” said Magog. “Are they human, then, or what?”
Yarek eyed Wodan for a moment, then looked away.
“I don’t know that much about San Ktari, not really,” said Zachariah. “But when I was trying to get help for Pontius against Khan Vito, I saw enough of the Empire to know that its culture is based on obedience to authority.”
“It’s like that anywhere,” said Naarwulf.
“No, not like this. What they’ve done to people over there would make any Pontius politician blush. Everyone is polite and smiling and more than happy to help anyone with a badge or a uniform or a fancy hat. A little different from the Valley, isn’t it?” Zachariah turned aside and, as if to himself, he added, “I wonder what effect suppressing the human drive toward individuation has on dreams.”
“So their military is in charge of everything?” said Yarek.
Zachariah turned to face Yarek. “Even their officers bent over when Matthias walked in the room.” He smiled and added, “But that’s about all the ‘intel’ I could gather from the inside of a dungeon, so take it for what it’s worth.”
Without a second thought they threw a diplomat into a dungeon, thought Wodan. They’re that confident in their power, their superiority.
His thoughts turned to Matthias. When he first met him, he had liked him quite a bit. He was young then, quick-witted and full of jokes, his fingers always working away at some little project. The threat Matthias had given him a year later seemed unreal. He was grateful that Matthias had released Zachariah from prison, but according to Zachariah, the Engel had been cold and distant, like an annoyed brat simply following through with a chore so that he could move on to something else. Wodan greatly wanted to see Matthias again, especially since he himself had changed. But he was also afraid to see someone who might be physically similar to himself.
“Wodan,” said Yarek, “I don’t understand exactly why these guys are giving us hard looks instead of killing us, but I know that your relationship to their… uh, their war gods had something, or everything, to do with the cease-fire command. They outnumber us out here, and I’m sure it’s asses and elbows with these guys in Srila. Whatever you’re doing...” Ya
rek laid his yellow eyes on him, then said, “Just remember our situation here, will you?”
Wodan nodded. On a ledge far above, they saw two San Ktari special forces soldiers in dull crimson armor with black undergarments. Unlike the other soldiers, their faces were hidden behind leering, demonic masks. The men eyed them coldly, completely unreadable. He wondered what had shaped those two men, and if there was anything human that remained behind the masks.
***
The sun was lost behind gray clouds when they came to the Upper Valley and the Srilan village called Temple Grounds. The air was cool and crisp and the valley was surprisingly lush. The ground was sopping wet, every path was choked with mud, and the trees were not nearly as tall and proud as in the Black Valley, but compared to the bleak landscape on the far side of the mountains the Upper Valley was a paradise. The outskirts of Temple Grounds were filled with rickety, wooden huts often built on stilts and connected by walkways. They saw people dressed in simple woven garments highlighted by colored tassels and beadwork. The people smiled and greeted the newcomers warmly, and an old woman ran up to them smiling and wringing a chicken’s neck in either hand. Wodan noted that they did not beg for money despite living in abject poverty. He saw people cooking, and a few men hauling wood, but otherwise hardly anyone was working, even in the middle of the day. No one stood guard and no alarms were raised. The most dangerous thing they encountered was a group of San Ktari soldiers attempting to build a guard tower on a hill of slippery mud. The Valliers laughed as an officer upbraided his men with a high-pitched shriek that did not pause even when he slipped and nearly fell.
Wodan noticed that the racial makeup of the Srilans varied greatly, just as in Haven. Many villagers had the slanted eyes and dark hair typical of their San Ktari captors, though their skin was often darker. There were red-haired people, as in Hargis, as well as pale-skinned people as in Pontius, brown-skinned people like the primitives around the Black Valley, and even men and women with nearly black skin, as could be seen in Sunport and Haven. They passed through densely populated areas where the children ran wild and followed them, laughing at their winter clothes, and Wodan noticed that the neighborhoods they passed through did not seem racially segregated as in Haven. Women picked up children of different colors and scolded them before sending them on their way.
They came to the center of Temple Grounds and Wodan realized the village was far larger than he’d assumed. The muddy, filthy streets were alive; the people did not seem to understand that they had been conquered. Icons of strange gods were everywhere, all in wild, garish colors that contrasted with the gray sky. But most intense of all was the sound, the constant hum and wild, shrill punctuations as dozens of different religions were given voice by men and women chanting from rooftops or on the roadside. Among stalls selling tapestries and beadwork and even fingerbones of saints Wodan saw men and women speaking to groups of people about the most bizarre subjects imaginable. He saw one man speaking intently about the different layers and divisions of the mind, its interaction with the soul and the spinal column, and the danger of the ego mistaking itself for the thing behind the mask. He saw another man, a stinking bearded beast who looked no different from a Pontius drug addict, tell a sizable audience about the divine sex magic that he had discovered. Wodan was surprised to see icons and blue-painted nuns devoted to the Redeemer, the hunted and slain god that Wodan remembered hearing about in Haven. Just when the blue nuns passed, a line of men who had devoted themselves to the Redeemer’s Mother passed by carrying wooden cutouts that, from certain angles, showed the Mother piecing together the body of her son. Wodan leaned out into the street and realized that every member of the divine family had its place in what could only be a parade.
Wodan continued on with a few others. He saw a large building of rotten wood filled with orphans looking down at them, laughing or shrieking. Directly behind the building, men and older orphans piled up the remains of corpses and stood with arms crossed watching as the bodies were slowly burned in a stinking pyre. Totems and banners and buildings covered with strange icons went on without end; among the various designs, the flags from Ktari seemed like afterthoughts, patterns that repeated because they lacked the imagination of their neighbors. Wodan saw no signs of money or wealth, but he also saw no sign of anxiety concerning money or wealth.
They passed by a particularly dour looking temple with black flags draped across its walls, and men in black aprons shuffled about. A set of heavy tools jangled about on one man’s hips.
“Are those Smiths?” said Wodan, shocked.
“They’re called Wrights,” said Zachariah. “Srila’s version of the Smiths.”
Wodan had come to accept that this strange place had many things to teach him, but now he felt that the first lesson was an insult. “Are those bastards all over the world?”
“You’re surprised?” Zachariah thought for a moment, then said, “You and Yarek have never quite grasped the taboo against machinery. Everybody wants a shortcut, a machine to make life easier, but we’ve been trained to avoid unwanted attention, so we have to… skirt around the process. In Hargis we had the Forgers. In Sunport it’s the Censors.”
“What about in San Ktari?”
“No idea.” Zachariah eyed their Ktari escorts, then said, “At one time I would have theorized that the censorship of ideas had been internalized over the course of generations. But look at them now! You can’t exist in an endless state of war with your neighbors for hundreds of years and then suddenly expand out of control without some kind of technological lever. Something has unleashed these people, and I doubt it’s as simple as their version of the Smiths packing their bags and going on vacation.”
They came to a wide, flat avenue of stone devoid of buildings. Many people who sat in prayer or quiet conversation suddenly stopped to watch the newcomers, each garish and alien in the others’ eyes. But there were also many monks in orange robes with shaved heads, and they did not seem to notice the Valliers but only continued their meditations. Wide stone steps led in a twisting path up to a lonely, massive temple in a high aerie of gray rock. The distant temple was the same color as the mountain, and Wodan wondered if he might not have seen it at all if it weren’t for the fluttering flags that marked the path. But now that he had seen it, he could not look away. Unlike the wild chaos on the periphery, the temple, which was surely the center of power in Srila, was forbidding and austere.
Two unarmed dogmen in blue robes stood as sentries at the base of the winding stairway. Wodan approached, and Yarek moved to join him.
“Hello,” said Wodan. “We’re pilgrims from the Black Valley. What is this place?”
“This is the Temple of the Summons,” said one dogman, staring ahead. “It is the most holy center of the holy land of Srila.”
“May we enter?”
“High Priest Globulus knows you are here,” said the other dogman. “He will call for you when the time comes.”
High Priest Globulus? thought Wodan. He quickly turned about and was relieved to see that Zachariah was gone. The man who inspired Khan Vito to slaughter the world… is a priest? No, more than that, it sounds like he’s in charge of this place. I can’t imagine what Zachariah will think of this!
As he looked around, he saw several groups of armed San Ktari soldiers stalking around the pilgrims, looking for trouble. He turned back to the guards. “How long has Ktari been here?”
The first dogman hummed for a long time, then said, “Days, only. They are nothing.”
“Nothing?”
The second dogman said, “Many times in our history, men with weapons have come to conquer the holy land. One cannot force one’s way through the door that enters the holy land. They are in the holy land, but they still can’t find the holy land. They are nothing.”
Wodan could feel Yarek’s discomfort. “Looks to me like they’re here,” he said under his breath.
“Let’s go make sure they don’t cause any trouble,” said Wodan. He an
d Yarek left the guards and made their way back to the wide stone avenue. He was distracted by the sight of a tall man in gray robes, a gray hood, and a heavy gray sash that could not hold back a gray beard. The gray Srilan stared at him. Before Wodan could react, he heard a Ktari soldier scream at a group of Valliers.
“What’s going on?” said Wodan.
“You give up guns,” said the soldier. “Now!”
“You didn’t think to try to disarm us earlier?” said Yarek. “Forget it. It’s too late for that.”
As the small soldier’s face froze and changed from dark red to deep purple, Wodan felt he had to defuse the situation or else the man would explode. “Go back to your leader, your officer or whatever, and tell him that the Valliers mean no disrespect, but they also won’t be taking orders from anyone from San Ktari. If he doesn’t like that, we’ll take it up with our friends – the Engels.”
The soldier screwed up his face as if preparing to spit. “Kommander Won Po send for you when he ready,” he said, then turned and walked away. A Vallier pushed him as he left, but the soldier ignored it and continued on. Wodan thought to chastise the man, but when other Valliers laughed at the spectacle, he decided his people needed the release of tension. Just like everyone else, Wodan was already fed up with the shrill, posturing, red-armored bullies.
The gray clouds became a roof of coal with nightfall and the Valliers made fires in the wide avenue, around which many pilgrims gathered. Yarek tried to discuss possible stratagems against the Ktari conquerors with Naarwulf, but the old dogman was too overcome with the culmination of his journey, and could not focus his attention on Yarek. Zachariah had taken the news of Globulus’s position as High Priest with complete disinterest, which made Wodan worry; Zachariah and Jarl discussed what the great Temple of the Summons might contain, but Wodan did not join the conversation. A strange feeling had taken him, and he spent a long time staring into the fire.
Many pilgrims sat with him in the circle. Wodan felt eyes on him; glancing, he saw the tall gray-clad man, and he knew that he was being studied on the sly. Wodan turned away. Just then an orange robed monk passed by, and Wodan touched his sleeve. The orange robe stopped and leaned in politely.
Demonworld Book 6: The Love of Tyrants Page 15