by Mick Farren
T’saya took the jar from him and put it back where he had found it. “You cannot expect better than that, now, can you, Yancey Slide?”
Slide threw back his drink in a single gulp. “And what of the fourth one, the other boy?”
T’saya refilled his glass. “He’s the hard one. It seems like he’s a soldier, and there are a hell of a lot of soldiers in the immediate vicinity.” She gestured to Argo. “Doesn’t he sense him?”
Slide took his cigar from his mouth. “Boys don’t have the same mutual sensitivity. Their prejudices are too entrenched.”
Argo sniffed the green liquid. It smelled foul, and, when he tentatively sipped it, the taste was as bad as the smell had promised. “So where are the girls?”
“Jesamine is the concubine of a Teuton colonel, an engineer that goes by the name of Phaall.”
“Phaall?”
“Right now she’s lodged in his quarters.”
“So we have a Teuton colonel to contend with if we want to get to them. I hope he’s fooled by these borrowed uniforms.”
“You don’t have to worry about Phaall. He’s away in the south looking at some crashed Norse airship.”
“And will the girls stay put so we can go and get them?”
T’saya puffed on her cigar. “Where would they go? If they went anywhere, they would only come here. More important than that, though, how the hell do you intend for us to cross the river? There’s more than a few who’ve died trying.”
Slide smiled the smile of a man who is one step ahead. “It’s covered. I came with a squad of Albany Rangers.”
“So you’re working for Albany full-time?”
“Albany’s the only viable ally in these times.”
“And where are these top-dog cutthroats?”
“Off about some dirty dog-work of their own. We have a rendezvous point with them and boats to cross the river. That’s one reason we can’t afford to linger. If we miss the rendezvous, they won’t wait for us.”
T’saya laughed. “I recall Jack Kennedy telling me something like that. What’s the other reason for all this haste?”
“You need another reason? Aside from that the Mosul assault could happen in as little as twenty-four hours?”
“I know you, Slide. I’ve never seen you so anxious to get away from a war.”
Slide took a deep breath. “I also suspect that Quadaron-Ahrach is on his way here with this double of Hassan they’re bringing in to whip up the troops.”
T’saya leaned back in her chair as though she was one step ahead of Slide. “Quadaron-Ahrach will be here sooner than you think.”
“You’ve located him?”
T’saya shook her head. “You know as well as I do that to locate Quadaron-Ahrach is to let him locate you right back. No, Yancey Slide. I know Quadaron-Ahrach is coming because Jeakqual-Ahrach is here already.”
“Who’s Jeakqual-Ahrach?” Argo had difficulty forming the words. He was feeling a little strange, and he could only suppose it was the drink going to his head after so little sleep. Not only did the hut seem to be filled with a haze of cigar smoke and the steam of cooking, but the haze was taking on some very peculiar and very vibrant colors. Both Slide and T’saya ignored him, however. Slide was frowning as though, for a change, there was something that he did not understand. “Why didn’t I sense her?”
“Because you’re a man.”
“But I’m not a man.”
“You are in that respect, demon.”
“Who is Jeakqual-Ahrach?”
Again Slide and T’saya ignored Argo. “If the sister’s here, the brother can’t be far behind.”
Argo repeated the question. “Who is Jeakqual-Ahrach?”
This time T’saya looked up and answered. “She is a poisoner and a torturer, a blackwitch and a bitch from hell.”
Slide picked up where T’saya had left off. “She is the sister of Quadaron-Ahrach.”
“She’s Zhaithan? A woman is Zhaithan?”
“This woman is a very important Zhaithan.”
Argo was shocked. “But a woman in the Zhaithan?”
“She’s not well publicized. In fact, she’s a rather well-kept secret, but that doesn’t diminish either her significance or her power.”
“But it goes against all that we were ever taught during the occupation. All those verses in the Yasma that they used to repeat over and over. ‘You may not suffer a witch to live,’ or ‘A woman will choose service or the fire, and she will hide her face from the displeasure of men.’”
T’saya filled in a third. “‘The disobedient woman is an abomination and shall be cursed and reviled.’”
Argo shook his head. Not only because the idea of a woman in the Zhaithan hierarchy was so alien, but because he was also having some difficulty seeing clearly. Colors were now drifting across his vision like bright clouds driven by a curling breeze. “And she is the sister of the High Zhaithan?”
Slide answered. “The rumors, such as they are, claim that Quadaron-Ahrach and Jeakqual-Ahrach have a particularly unique relationship, even in the perverse annals of human depravity.”
T’saya nodded. “And you have to go to some very rarified places even to hear those rumors.”
“It’s said they believe they are the incarnation of the twin gods Ignir and Aksura,” Slide said.
“Are they twins?”
“That has never been clear.”
Some unfocused but also highly unclean pictures were attempting to form in Argo’s mind. “And is she a hunchback, too?”
T’saya shook her head. “No, she isn’t a hunchback, but that’s about all that can be said for the elevated bitch.”
Slide held up a hand, calling a halt to the discussion of Jeakqual-Ahrach. “This is not the time for a history lesson. We are wasting time. We have to get out of here.”
T’saya stubbed out her half-smoked cigar and placed it carefully behind her ear. “If we have to find the fourth one, the other boy, the one that is a soldier, why can’t young Weaver here start by trying to reach him?”
Slide made a motion as though it was out of the question. “His powers aren’t that well developed.”
Argo could feel himself drifting. “I could maybe…”
Although obscene hints of weird, sexually twined twins crowded the periphery of his inner eye, a figure in Mosul drab, muddy and with a rifle on his shoulder, was now in the center of Argo’s vision, but before he could focus, Slide made a second dismissive gesture. “We’re just wasting time.”
T’saya came to Argo’s rescue. “I gave him a little something.”
“You did what?”
“I gave him something to ease his lack of sensitivity.”
Slide’s eyes bored into Argo. “You see anything, boy?”
“I … don’t know. It’s blurred. He’s frightened. And he’s hungry.”
Slide scowled impatiently. “That narrows it down to around ninety percent of the grunts in the camp.”
T’saya glared at Slide. “Give the kid a chance, damn you.” She reached out and grasped Argo by the wrist, and her voice took on a singsong cadence. “Concentrate, boy. Concentrate very hard. Concentrate on the boy who is a soldier.”
“I can’t see him.”
“Try, Argo.”
“I can’t see him, but…”
“Try.”
“But he needs direction. He’s lost and at a loss. I can maybe tell him a place to go, a place where we can find him. Except…”
“Except what?”
“Except I don’t know this place. I don’t know where to tell him to go.”
Slide was urgent. “Tell him, woman. Quickly. Tell Weaver some easy landmark.”
“The parade ground, Argo. Make him go to the parade ground.”
RAPHAEL
The tin spoon halted just an inch from Raphael’s mouth. He had been eating some compressed mess of meat and beans from an airtight can, hunched beside the gun that he had just helped haul to its emplacement by the river, spooning th
e food down as fast as he could, as though he was fearful that someone would take it away from him. For almost two hours he had slithered, strained, and sweated, moving the heavy howitzer through the mud of the camp, but at least the gunners had fed him at the end of it. Simply to fill his belly was a pure animal pleasure. He knew that the stuff from the can would weigh heavily on his guts later, and probably give him cramp and the runs, but he did not care. It seemed like a year or more since he had smelled, let alone tasted, food, and no guarantee was being offered that he would eat again any time soon. Then suddenly all thought of food and hunger ceased. The voice that sounded in his head was like a personal command from a deity.
The parade ground. I have to go the parade ground. I will find them if I go the parade ground. If I go the parade ground, I will find the Four.
Raphael slowly lowered the forgotten spoon. “What the fuck?”
He knew that he had no way to explain what had happened, and he did not waste time trying. He could not reach for so much as an implausible explanation, and the most flimsy excuses totally eluded him. He was hearing voices. That was the plain fact, and the order was so emphatic that he could not even dismiss it as a bout of madness. Madness did not come out of nowhere with such singular assurance. He glanced at the young Teuton who sat next to him eating with the same famished concentration that had been Raphael’s up to a moment before. The Teuton showed no signs of having heard anything. The commanding voice was in Raphael’s head alone.
The parade ground. I have to go the parade ground. I will find them if I go the parade ground. If I go the parade ground, I will find the Four.
Perhaps the strangest part was that the directive was phrased as though it came from himself. I will go to the parade ground. He gave the command to himself, as though two halves of his brain had divided, and one of those new telegraph lines was strung between the two halves. And what the hell was the Four? Why was the word so obviously capitalized, and why did the sound of it fill him with thrills of both excitement and fear? And why were the girls suddenly so clear in his inner eye? The one thing he did not for a moment dispute was that he would do as he was instructed. Or as he was instructing himself. He might have a thousand questions about the method of its delivery, but he had none about the order. He would go to the parade ground. He had deserted from Melchior’s squad for no better reason than that he knew he had to find the two girls from his dreams and drawings, and now voices in his head were telling him what to do. Were the girls part of this Four? Was he? He did not know. All he knew is that he would do it. The voice was telling him to go to the parade ground, and to the parade ground he would go.
“Are you going to eat that?”
Raphael was jerked back into the world of guns, the Mosul, and meat and beans. While they been hauling the gun across the camp, he and Pascal had been separated, but now, with the task complete, they were reunited. Raphael snapped impatiently. He might be receiving messages from the devil and have a split brain, but food was food. “Yes, of course I’m going to eat it. We’re starving, aren’t we?”
Pascal shrugged. “You looked like you didn’t want it.”
Raphael shoved in two spoonfuls of meat and beans and chewed hungrily. He suspected that the meat might well be old horse or worse, but that did not bother him. Pascal was getting on his nerves. Raphael had allowed the Frank to come with him on the spur of the moment, and only because he had thought company might mitigate his fear and he believed that two of them might be less conspicuous than just him on his own, but so far the boy had proved to be little more than a vacillating burden. Maybe, of course, it was Raphael’s own fault. He had not, after all, leveled with Pascal. He had led him to believe that he was deserting to save his hide and to escape the coming assault across the river, whereas in reality, if he could call it reality, he was following a wholly irrational impulse that he did not even understand himself, and, as an added plus, he was now doing the bidding of voices invisible.
“The underofficer in charge of the gun crew says that he’s cutting us loose, and we’re supposed to go back to our units.”
Raphael scraped around in the can for the last morsels of meat and beans. “He said that?”
“What he actually said was that we could fuck off back to wherever we came from.”
“And did he say what we were supposed to tell our own underofficers when they want to know why we’ve been missing for three or four hours and are probably posted as AWOL?”
“Some guy asked him that, and he said we should just explain what happened and there shouldn’t be any trouble.”
“And you believed him?”
“You don’t?”
Raphael dropped the now empty can on the ground but tucked the spoon in his pocket for future use. “It’s kind of easy to say. I mean, he got his bloody gun moved. That’s all he cares about. He could say anything just to get rid of us.”
Raphael stood up and looked around. The gun emplacement was one of about a dozen positioned along a line of low bluffs overlooking the river. The lines of Albany were less than a half mile away, and he could see the stone and concrete defensive walls, the pillboxes and blockhouses, the trenches, the lines of dragons teeth, the steel spikes sticking up from the water, and the entanglements of barbed wire. The formidable defenses forcibly brought home the reality of his situation. In what was now looking like just a few days, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of men were going to die crossing that river, and the odds were well on the side of he and Pascal being among them.
“So what do you want to do?”
Raphael picked up his rifle. It was crusted with mud from where he’d twice dropped it while moving the howitzer and probably would not fire without a good cleaning. “I don’t know, boy. As deserters, we’re not doing very well, are we? In fact, we’re a bit of a fuckup. We managed to get away for less than an hour before we found ourselves drafted into the artillery. And now that the artillery doesn’t want us any more, we have the choice of either going back and hoping that Melchior believes our story, or we start wandering aimlessly again, looking for a way out. As I see it, it doesn’t constitute much of a choice.”
Now Pascal was staring at the Mosul lines. “If only we could get across that fucking river.”
“You think the other side are going to welcome us? They probably have a solid stream of deserters, and they probably either shoot them or throw them in a cage somewhere.”
“For mercy’s sake, keep it down, will you? Someone might hear.”
Raphael knew that he was being unreasonable. The voice in his head had disturbed him more than he had initially realized. “Yeah, okay. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe we should go back. You know what I mean?”
“I’m far from sure about throwing ourselves on Melchior’s mercy.”
“You’ve got a better idea?”
Raphael shook his head and lied. “No.”
“So?”
Raphael slung his rifle over his shoulder. Maybe it had not been a lie. To go to the parade ground was hardly an idea. Just a mystery command. “Let’s get out of here, seeing as how they’ve fed us and now they don’t want us here anymore. Let’s head back into camp and talk about it on the way.”
Pascal still plainly leaned to the idea of going back to Melchior’s mercy. “One of the gunners told me, if we were going back into the main part of the camp, we should avoid the parade ground at all costs.”
“Why?” Raphael only just managed to conceal his surprise and concern. “What’s happening on the parade ground?”
“There are gallows and stuff being built for the arrival of Hassan. There are going to be mass executions.”
“Then we avoid the parade ground.”
Again Raphael was lying to Pascal. He had no intention of going back to the squad, and he was quite determined to reach the parade ground and see if he found the Four as promised, whoever they might be. If the discovery had to be in the middle of a mass execution, that was just too damned bad. And
what did it matter? In a day or so the Potomac would be blood red and the whole area a mass execution.
I will go to the parade ground.
ARGO
“The damned horses are eating my vegetables.”
Slide unhitched his mount from the fence. “You won’t need them again.”
T’saya hefted the bundle of things she had gathered up before leaving the cook shack for the last time. “I suppose not. It’s kind of hard to grasp. I suppose I never really expected to leave this place alive.”
Argo tried to follow suit, but his movements were awkward and uncoordinated. He was still seeing hallucinations from the concoction of herbs and alcohol that T’saya had fed him, and, in fact, now that he and Slide had replaced their Zhaithan helmets, the distortions caused by the chain mail mask made it very hard for him to see at all. He looked at the horse, wondering how he was going to mount it. “Perhaps T’saya should ride while I walk.”
T’saya looked at Argo like he was an idiot. “Now that would be really plausible, wouldn’t it? A high Zhaithan walking while a slave rides. To really act out the part, you should be dragging me along manacled and with a rope around my neck. The Zhaithan don’t lend their horses to old cook-women.”
Slide sighed and swung easily up into the saddle “Now I’m in the middle of the biggest enemy camp in the Americas, the heart of fucking darkness, and stuck with a heavily intoxicated teenager. Did you have to give him so much of that stuff?”
T’saya looked up at Slide as though she found his complaint completely unreasonable. “I actually gave him less than I gave Jesamine, the concubine girl. Seems the girls go in deeper but come out faster. I guess there’s no accounting for the metabolism of gender.”
After three tries, Argo managed to haul himself onto his horse but still swayed slightly in the saddle. Slide snorted. “He’s drug-addled.”
“He’ll come out of it. A little danger, and the resulting adrenaline will bring him round.”
“Danger is what we’re trying to avoid.”
T’saya sniffed contemptuously. “Like you were never drug-addled yourself, Yancey Slide?”
“Not in a situation like this.”
“Oh, no? What about that time in High Barbary when we were trying to give the slip to the R’zooli, and you were fucked-up on ghat and kif?”