by Mick Farren
As the two of them had neared the vast area of the camp, the Virginia woods and fields that had so far been the backdrop to Argo’s adventure had given way to a landscape that was more akin to a derelict tract of hell. The road they traveled had crossed the still-scorched earth of a battlefield from the combat of two years earlier, acres of ground where the subsequent growth of nettles, brambles, and incongruously bright poppies had yet to disguise the half-collapsed trenches, the shell craters, the corroded hulks of burned-out steam tanks, juggernauts, and battle wagons, and the rusted barbed-wire entanglements where the fragments of the skeletons of both men and horses, and ragged pennants of faded flags and uniforms, remained like time-defying relics. Along the same road, they encountered more modern horrors, and their horses snorted at the bloated and flyblown bodies of men, presumably deserters, rotting on crosses and gibbets, either hung or crucified, and left on exhibition as a warning to those who still lived. Many of the decayed cadavers wore crudely painted signs around their necks. Deserter, Defeatist, Heretic, Thief, Coward, Sodomite, and Spy. He had seen and heard all of these words in Thakenham, but the last one chilled him. At the very least, he was a spy himself. The camp itself was much as Argo had expected it, with lines of drab tents and sour-faced uniformed men in constant motion, although nothing had quite prepared him for the stench and the all-pervasive mud that was being increasingly churned to the consistency of a thick and disgusting porridge by the mass of infantry and ordnance on the move. Slide and Argo were repeatedly forced to halt their horses and wait while large cannon were dragged past by a combination of men and mules, all headed in the direction of the river. The second time this had happened, Argo had glanced at Slide. “These are the final preparations, aren’t they?”
And Slide had confirmed the thought with a nod. “You got that right. The guys across the Potomac better be bracing themselves.”
For one who claimed he had never been in the Mosul camp before, Slide navigated unerringly, although, of course, Argo had no idea to where exactly he was navigating. They did, however, seem to be making for the higher ground, which at least meant they were leaving behind the worst of the mud. They reached a section of the camp where the bivouacs were larger and looked more comfortable and the traffic on the street was considerably less than on the thoroughfares where the guns were being moved. Slid halted and sniffed the air. “Do you smell something?”
Argo looked at him as though he was crazy. “Over all this stink?”
“Concentrate, lad.”
Argo tried again. “Goats, maybe?
Slide smiled. “That’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
JESAMINE
Jesamine and Cordelia, swathed in long kaftans and with veils in place, followed the same route that Jesamine had taken on the two previous occasions when she had visited with T’saya, but this time they found it blocked by a Zhaithan checkpoint. “Oh, shit.”
Cordelia looked at her sharply. “What?”
“I usually go up that street, but the fucking Zhaithan have it blocked off, and they’re checking everyone’s papers.”
“But you’ve got the go-everywhere pass.”
“But you haven’t, and I don’t know how well it’s going to hold up for the both of us. In fact, I don’t know how well it’s going to hold up for me, now the Zhaithan seem to have a beef with Phaall.”
“So what do we do?”
Jesamine pursed her lips in annoyance. “I guess we have to take the long way round.”
“How long’s the long way?”
“Long enough. You’re going to get a guided tour of the Mosul military.”
Cordelia sighed. “I’ve more than seen the Mosul military, thank you.”
“Well, girl, you’re going to see some more. I’m not chancing the checkpoint.”
As she spoke, two mounted Zhaithan in the black and red uniforms of the elite rode up the roadblock and were waved through without having to produce identification of any kind. Cordelia felt an odd tremor pass through her, but then she was distracted by Jesamine, who spat angrily. “Bastards. With one of those uniforms you can get away with anything.”
Cordelia regarded her curiously. “You hate them that much?”
Jesamine nodded. “And you’ll come to hate them, too. They are extremely easy to hate when you know that your life can be snuffed out like a candle at their very whim.”
Cordelia shook her head. “No, I won’t learn to hate them. I won’t be here that long. I’ll either get out, or I’ll die.”
Jesamine gave her new friend a long look but said nothing. She knew Cordelia meant what she said but wondered how long her determination would last. “We’d better go. We’re going to attract attention standing here like this.”
The detour took them out of the officer’s quarter and deep into the section of the enlisted men, where the mud was thicker and the smell was worse and they found themselves subjected to catcalls and shouted obscenities each time they passed a group of men with no underofficer to shut them up. After years in which to become accustomed to such behavior, Jesamine was able to ignore the suggestion, lewdness, and insult, but, even with her face veiled, she could see that Cordelia was stiffening with suppressed anger.
The detour also took them past the camp’s main parade ground, a large open area in the approximate center of the camp that was used for mass assemblies and religious gatherings but, for the most part, was usually empty except for one or two drill formations or perhaps a group of cavalry officers playing a pickup game of polo on its flat expanse. Thus Jesamine was surprised to find—on this day that, to her, had so far seemed no different from any other—the large open square a hive of activity. Engineers, carpenters, and other specialist craftsmen were hard at work, with their efforts concentrated on two half-finished structures at either end of the field, while prisoners from the stockade, in their distinctive convict stripes, were busy with brooms and rakes cleaning the entire space.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Cordelia stopped and looked around. “This isn’t usual?”
Jesamine shook her head. “The hell it is.”
“Then what’s going on? What are those things that they’re building?”
Cordelia had pointed to the nearest construction, and that was the easy answer. “It’s the Ziggurat.”
“What’s the Ziggurat?”
“It’s…” Maybe not so easy. How the hell did you explain something that you had grown up with to a stranger? “It’s like a pyramid, only a bit more complicated. It’s a religious thing, a copy of the Great Ziggurat in the Holy City. When it’s finished, the Flame will be lit at the very top. It’s supposed to find favor in the eyes of Ignir and Aksura. By the look of the base, that one is going to be maybe fifty or sixty feet high and hold a lot of people in its cages, so whatever’s happening here is going to be important.”
Cordelia pointed to the structure at the other end of the field. “And what’s that thing? It looks like some sort of stage or platform.”
Jesamine hesitated. “You really want to know?”
“Of course I want to know. Why shouldn’t I want to know?”
“That stage, as you call it, will be a gallows, a multiple gallows capable of hanging twenty men at once. Or twenty women.”
Cordelia’s face was hidden, but Jesamine could see her body grow even more rigid than it had been when the grunts had been yelling at them, and when she spoke, her voice was strained and formal. “And who are the ones to be killed?”
Jesamine could only shrug. “It hardly matters. In addition to encouraging the living to behave, mass executions are also supposed to find favor in the eyes of Ignir and Aksura, so pretty much anyone will do.”
A squad of men was unloading wood from a horse-drawn wagon, but, at the sight of the two women, they stopped what they were doing and stared. An underofficer yelled at Jesamine and Cordelia. “Come on, girls, move along. Stop distracting my boys. We’ve got enough to do before tonight.”
“What’s happening tonight? Is the shooting about to start?”
“You didn’t hear? Where have you girls been?”
“We’ve been a little busy.”
The underofficer permitted himself a knowing leer. “I can imagine you have.”
“So what didn’t we hear?”
“That he’s coming.”
“He?”
“Hassan is coming. May his name be blessed. So get lost, okay? We’ve got work to do in a hurry, or we may find ourselves on the gallows instead of just building it.”
Jesamine did not have to be told to get lost. She wanted to be away from the parade ground with all haste, and Cordelia seemed to be in shock and needed to be led away equally fast. She took Cordelia by the arm and began walking away at a brisk pace. Three Mamalukes in white capes galloped across the parade ground and reined to a stop by the men building the Ziggurat. At the sound of the hoofbeats, Cordelia looked round, and Jesamine felt a sudden desperation radiating from her, and, for the first time ever, she heard fear in Cordelia’s voice. “Why are they doing all this? It’s horrible.”
Jesamine tried to find a tone that was somewhere between stern and comforting. “It’s how the Mosul ask their gods for a victory. Men will die, the Flame will burn, and…”
“And?”
“The whole Army of the Americas, Mosul, Mamaluke, and Teuton alike, will go completely out of its mind.”
“What?”
“Listen, I don’t want to talk about it. Not here. Not now. Let’s get on. This makes our seeing T’saya even more crucial.”
ARGO
Argo did not exactly know what he had expected, but he knew it wasn’t the tilted-over wood and tarpaper shack, with the smoke rising from a tin chimney, that Slide had just pointed out as their destination. “Are you joking?”
Slide laughed from behind the chain mail mask as he urged his horse forward. “Don’t judge everything by the outer appearance, boy. If I did that, would I be riding here with you?”
Even the horses seemed disconcerted as they were reined to a halt in front of the hovel with its reek of cooking and air of long-term dilapidation. They snorted and jerked their heads as though such a slum was beneath their equine dignity. Slide dismounted and looped the charger’s reins over a low picket fence that surrounded an orderly, if small and sooty, vegetable patch and herb garden. Argo did the same and then followed Slide to the door of the shanty. Slide pushed the door open, revealing the space inside to be cramped and chaotic, and, in their flowing capes and tall, spiked helmets, Slide and Argo seemed to fill the place as they stepped inside and the old African woman who was its only inhabitant turned from her stove and stared at them as though they were a vision of death itself. For a moment she stood as though paralyzed, and then, in an unbelievably fast lunge, she came up with a long and wickedly sharp kitchen knife. Argo’s first thought was that the woman was about to stab Slide, but then he saw that her intention was to take her own life. Slide, however, moved like lightning and grabbed her wrist. “Hold up there, old woman. All is not as you imagine.”
With his free hand, he removed his helmet, and the action brought a gasp of furious recognition from the woman, followed by a furious outburst. “You bastard! You dirty demon bastard! You all but gave me a double-damned heart attack. Since when did you join the Zhaithan elite, Mr. Yancey Slide?”
“Just borrowing the clothes, Mother T’saya. My friend and I took the former owners unaware while they were making the beast.”
Despite her anger, the woman called T’saya grinned. “I always told you the boys in black weren’t as chaste as they liked to pretend.”
“And, to our good fortune, you were proved right.”
“So what did you do with the buggering bastards once you’d deprived them of their finery?”
Slide shrugged and smiled, almost coyly. “We killed them.”
Argo noted that Slide had included him in the credit for the deed. T’saya nodded approvingly. “Then you’re still of some use.”
Slide then looked to Argo. “Take off that damned helmet and say hello to Mother T’saya, Argo Weaver. She is a great deal more than she appears.”
“I’m not your mother, Yancey Slide, and I’ll thank you not to address me as such.”
Argo extended a hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, T’saya.”
T’saya looked him up and down before she accepted his hand, but then she held it longer than would have been normal for a mere greeting. “You’re Argo Weaver?”
“That’s right.”
She turned to Slide. “And he’s one of them?”
Slide nodded. “He’s one of the Four, as far as we can tell. So far he’s passed every test and conformed to every prediction.”
“Has he now?” T’saya sat down at her small table and reached for a bottle of deep green liquid. “I think I need a drink after your little surprise.”
While T’saya recovered from her shock, Slide took the time for a moment of gourmet curiosity. He lifted the lid of a pot on the stove and sniffed the contents. “Goat?”
T’saya poured three fingers of green liquid into a glass. “Best goat this side of the ocean.”
“Still hiding among the Mamalukes and doing the cooking?”
T’saya nodded. “It’s worked for almost two years.”
“It won’t work for much longer.”
“The hell you say.”
Slide replaced the lid and turned to the business at hand. “You’d better make that a fast shot, old woman. We don’t have much time.”
“Time for what, Yancey Slide? Are we going somewhere I don’t know about?”
“Things are speeding up.”
T’saya sighed and shook her head. “I could be getting too old for this.”
“You knew you’d have to emerge sooner or later.”
“You want to tell me something, Yancey Slide? You want to tell me why every time I have dealings with you I find myself on the run?”
“Stop complaining, lady. Just look on me as the harbinger of change. Your goat business is at an end. This camp will be breaking up. They’ve sent in one of Hassan’s doubles, so the Mosul are going across the river any day, and we have to round up the other three of the Four and hightail it to Albany ahead of them.”
“What makes you think I have any intention of going to Albany? You know how I feel about Albany.”
“Get over it, girl. The old king’s been dead for more than two years.”
“Jack Kennedy’s still fit enough, though, and prime minister into the bargain.”
“You loved Jack Kennedy, old woman.”
“So did a lot more.”
“I won’t deny that.”
“So maybe that’s why I don’t want to leave my goats and go back there.”
“Albany is your only hope now. Your goats are history.”
T’saya tipped back half of the glass. “I’m just a harmless old cook. My Mamalukes will protect me.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You’re back in the game, and if that hasn’t been detected by the Ministry of Virtue already, it soon will be. It’s Albany or the Zhaithan.”
“What makes you think I’m back in the game, Yancey Slide?”
“Cut the crap, T’saya. This is Yancey you’re talking to. Poor me a shot of that green, and let’s get out of here.”
“It’ll cost you one of your cigars.”
“How do you know I have cigars?”
“Are you ever without them?”
Slide reached inside his stolen tunic and handed T’saya a cigar. “I wouldn’t have this if one of our departed Zhaithan hadn’t been carrying a box with him in his saddlebags.”
“Something always provides. Even if it’s the enemy.”
Slide kindled a fire at the end of his right index finger. T’saya put the cigar in her mouth and leaned forward to take a light from the flame with one eyebrow raised. “Still with the demon party tricks?”
The sound of pa
ssing riders came from outside the hut, and Argo looked round anxiously. “Shouldn’t we be having this conversation on the move, instead of sitting in here?”
T’saya slowly dragged on the cigar, bringing the lighted end to glowing life. “Don’t rush your elders, boy. The Zhaithan aren’t coming for me yet.” She poured Slide a double shot from the bottle. “So we have three of the Four accounted for, and we know they’re all in this forsaken place?”
Slide lit a cigar for himself. “You’ve contacted the two girls?”
“I started the girl Jesamine down the path, and then she found the other one, the highborn from Albany.”
Argo placed his helmet on the table, wondering if T’saya was going to offer him a drink. “The Lady Cordelia Blakeney?”
T’saya reached for a glass, filled it, and pushed it towards Argo just as though she had read his mind. In his case, though, she shook in two or three drops of an oily liquid as what he assumed was extra flavoring, something she hadn’t done for either herself or Slide. “Is that her name? Well, whoever she is and whatever she is, the two girls bonded last night in the old, old manner. They may not have known it at first, and they may be having trouble accepting it right now, but they’re in the place.”
Slide picked up a jar of herbs, held it up, and examined the contents. “Bonded, did they? In the old manner?”