Jackson granted their request for free passage, but balked at their request to bring in their own paid mercenaries. He insisted that only U.S. troops would operate on Florida soil. They’d traveled overland to Fort Lonesome, where they were given command of three hundred soldiers, the men all either veterans or seasoned frontiersmen. They were not likely to drop from fever or exhaustion like the raw recruits who came to Florida for the first time and wilted in the heat. It was better than Simon expected.
He and Max were joined by Carlos and Aznar. They each carried a flask of the Water with them. Simon believed the four of them would be worth at least a dozen Seminole lives each.
They had been marching for five days since leaving the fort. They were currently camped barely a dozen miles from where they’d started.
The trail was difficult enough on its own: a winding track between the trees, too narrow and choked with roots for horses, occasionally leading through swamp and quicksand, clouded with swarms of biting flies.
But the Seminoles made it worse. Soldiers at the back of the line would vanish if they stepped off the trail to piss. Arrows flew from nowhere when the company would sit down to eat and make camp. They were attacked at night by screaming ghosts who ran past their sentries, slashing with knives and axes and firing rifles before they disappeared back into the darkness.
The troops Jackson had granted Simon were now sleepless, hungry, and frayed at the edges. They fought among themselves and took every order from the Spaniards with a reluctance that bordered on outright defiance.
They were losing, Simon realized, and they hadn’t even had a real battle yet.
That was not to say they hadn’t had some small successes. Last night they had managed to capture one of the Seminole raiders. He’d taken a bullet to the leg and was unable to flee with his fellow warriors.
They gave him to Aznar.
Simon checked the sun in the sky. Almost noon. Time to see what was left of the raider.
“See to the men, and have them begin breaking camp,” Simon told Max. “Find Carlos. We’re going to move soon.”
Max nodded and left, while Simon gestured to Deckard, a veteran infantryman who’d been assigned to them as master sergeant. Deckard fell in step behind him, and they walked away from the camp.
Simon had no doubts where Deckard’s real loyalties lay, but he was competent, and the other men would listen to him when they pretended not to hear Simon or the others. He’d proven crucial in keeping the march going.
But he was openly skeptical of their quest. “There ain’t no witch,” he’d said repeatedly. “Just a story the savages are telling to keep us scared.”
He didn’t have much faith in Aznar’s ability to get answers from the Seminole, either. “You can’t get one of them to talk,” he said. “They don’t feel pain the way white men do.”
“All men feel pain,” Simon said.
“We’ve captured them before. We’ve put questions to them, too, sharp questions,” he said. “Not a one of them broke before he died.”
They found the place where Aznar had set up to do his work. It wasn’t too difficult. You could hear the screams.
Aznar stood over the Seminole warrior, drenched in blood up to his elbows and chin. It looked, at first glance, like a hunter had skinned a deer for meat and left the job half-finished. Aznar had flayed the Seminole open down to the breastbone, his skin pinned back with nails to the tree where he was bound. The warrior must have sampled the Water at some point; there was no way he could be breathing otherwise.
“God Almighty,” Deckard said, and turned away.
Aznar smiled at the soldier. “Oh, it would take more than this to get His attention,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Simon rubbed his eyes. He was too tired for this. “Aznar, stop trying to frighten the men. It’s becoming annoying.”
Aznar’s smile faded, but only a little. In truth, he was becoming more frightening every day. As time went on, they were all changing, little by little, like stones being eroded under a stream. Simon supposed it was inevitable. They’d all had to give up certain beliefs as they remained alive while everyone around them died. They had all been forced to adjust, and to discard the habits that might have given them comfort as they navigated their new, eternal lives.
But Aznar seemed overjoyed to throw away any pretense to his former morality. He had grown to be the most vicious of all of them in a fight, secure in the knowledge that there was no wound that his enemy could inflict that wouldn’t vanish with a sip of the Water. He acted without restraint, even when in public, even when restraint was necessary to keep normal men from guessing what they were. Some days Simon feared he was the only thing keeping Aznar from murdering and raping in the streets in broad daylight.
Still, he couldn’t deny that Aznar’s savagery had its uses. The Indian was broken. Simon could see it in his eyes. There was still contempt, still some defiance, but it would have taken inhuman reserve to remain silent while Aznar peeled back his flesh and showed him his own insides.
“He says they have a thousand warriors,” Aznar said. “By which I take to mean they have perhaps a hundred.”
“A hundred men who cannot die is still a formidable number,” Simon reminded him.
“Oh, they die.” Aznar stuck his knife deep into the Seminole’s flesh. The man screamed, a hoarse and ragged sound. “Eventually.”
“Stop,” Simon said. “I want to know more.”
Aznar sighed. “As you wish.” He withdrew the knife. He listens to me now, Simon thought, but sooner or later, he’ll want to turn that knife on me.
Simon shoved it aside. There would be time for Aznar later. There was always more time later.
Right now, he spoke to the Seminole in his own tongue. “The Witch,” he said. “Where is she?”
Deckard muttered, “Maybe sometime you’ll tell me how you learned to talk like a Seminole when you lived in Spain.”
Simon shushed him, and turned back to the warrior. “Answer me truly, and I’ll put an end to the pain. I swear it.”
That brought a rasping laugh to the Seminole’s lips. “I’ve heard promises from your kind before,” he said. “I know what they’re worth.”
“I’m not one of the men who broke the treaties with you. I only want the Water.”
“She said you would say that.”
Simon tried to keep the hope out of his voice. “The Witch. So you have seen her.”
“She’s no witch. She is our Mother. And she has returned to wipe you from our lands.”
Simon shook his head. Maybe the Seminole believed that. But he knew Shako could not. There were too many settlers, too many white men, too many guns, and more arriving every day. The United States was ever hungry for more land, more space, more territory. Shako couldn’t hold them back from this meager swamp any more than she could roll back the sea. And she had to know it. All she was trying to do now was keep Simon from the Water.
“She’s using you,” Simon said. “She cannot stop us. All she wants to do is keep the Water for herself. Are you willing to die to keep her young?”
The Seminole tried to spit at Simon, but he’d been bled almost dry.
“I know who you are,” he said. “And you are a liar.”
“If you know who I am, then you know I will kill you.”
“I’ve already been dead. I’m not afraid.” His eyes were clouding. He didn’t have much more time.
“Tell me where she is,” Simon snapped, his patience at an end. He could have restored the Indian with one sip from his flask, but he suspected he’d need every drop for himself soon.
The Seminole lifted his head as much as he could. He smiled, although it was more like a grimace of pain.
“You won’t have to look for her much longer,” he said, his voice almost gone. “She’s coming for you.”
/> Then he rasped out one last breath and died.
SIMON WALKED THE SHORT distance from the camp to the spot where Aznar did his work. Aznar had his own tent. It made everyone breathe a bit easier to keep him at a distance. He seemed to like it better as well.
Simon carried two plates of the stuff the soldiers called supper. Ordinarily, this would have been taken to Aznar by the lowest-ranked man in the company. But Simon wanted to talk to Aznar. It seemed as if it had been decades since they had really talked. Perhaps it had been. He never liked Aznar, and they had not grown closer over time.
He worried he’d let things slip for too long with the former priest.
Aznar sat on the dirt by his tent in front of a small campfire. “Simon,” he said, by way of greeting. He didn’t bother to hide his surprise or his annoyance. Things like courtesy tended to evaporate after so many years together. Anything but basic honesty was exhausting over the long run. “What an honor. To have our august leader serve me himself.”
Simon dropped the tin plate on the dirt next to the spot where Aznar sat.
“No one else was willing to come out here,” he said. “The stink is too much.”
He sat down across the fire, holding his own plate.
“It’s not the smell,” Aznar said, digging in to his food. “They’re terrified of us, you know.”
Simon thought of the casualties they’d taken so far, and the bloody fighting they had to do for every step of progress. “The Seminoles? Then they do a good job hiding their fear.”
“I didn’t mean the savages. I meant the soldiers. Living this close, for this long . . . We can’t hide what we are. We go on marching when they’re ready to drop. We don’t get sick like they do. Our wounds heal while theirs fester. They know we’re not like them. We scare them.”
“We’re foreigners. They don’t like our accents. They don’t like our looks. They don’t like us. They don’t suspect.”
“Don’t fool yourself. They know, even if they can’t bring themselves to put it into words. We’ve left them behind, and they hate us for it.”
“As long as they follow us. That’s enough.”
“They should be frightened of us, Simon. It’s the smartest thing they could do. We will replace them. We’re their death, whether they know it or not.”
Simon looked at the gutted corpse, still roped to the tree, then back at Aznar, who ate his dinner as if sitting by a garden. He thought of a dozen ways to begin, discarded them all. Again, basic honesty was so much less tiring. He simply asked the question that was on his mind.
“What in the name of God happened to you, Juan?”
Aznar laughed, almost choked, then managed to swallow. “God has nothing to do with us, Simon. Not anymore. If He ever did.”
“You would have called me a blasphemer for saying that once.”
“You never would have listened,” Aznar said. “You always hated me. Admit it.”
Simon shrugged. He’d had a long time to learn to accept himself. He looked back on the man he was before he found the Water with the affection one might have for a wayward child. There was so much he simply didn’t understand back then.
But Aznar was right: he’d never had cause to reconsider his initial judgment of the former priest. He saw someone who was never willing to risk his own life but was fearless with the lives of others, someone who would stand in judgment without knowledge or understanding, someone who spent the unearned credit given to him by the Church; someone who saw God’s power as his own.
He didn’t see the point of admitting this to Aznar, however. What he needed to know now was if one of his lieutenants was sliding fully into madness.
“Well. That was a long time ago. And I think we’ve both lost any right to judge the other by now.”
“You think so?” Aznar’s face turned dark. He continued eating, but now he looked more like a dog, ready to snarl at anyone near its food. “You still think you’re better than I am.” It wasn’t a question.
“If I hate you so much, Juan, why have I kept you alive all these years?”
“You know the answer to that. At first you needed all the hands you could get. Then, later, you feared the others would rebel if you cut me off.”
“And now?”
“Now I am too valuable to you. I do the things you won’t dirty your own hands with,” Aznar said. “I’m a resource. A weapon. Nothing less, nothing more.”
Simon didn’t see much point in denying it.
“You were always wrong about me, you know,” Aznar said. “I believed. I believed in God.”
There was such sudden passion, such pain, in Aznar’s voice that Simon was caught short. “What?”
“Is it that hard for you to conceive that you might have been wrong? You did not share my faith. So you assumed I was lying to myself in my robes.”
Simon felt as if something shifted, all around him. Perhaps Aznar had a point. He had never considered that the young, sour-faced priest, all those years ago, might have been sincere.
“Did you ever consider how hard it was for me? I believed, Simon. I wanted to serve. I wanted to be a soldier, but that role, in my family, went to my brother. So I did what I could. I saw death everywhere. And still I believed: life everlasting, beyond this one, to those who were worthy. To those who would open themselves to the glory of God. It was never easy for me. I doubted. I lusted. I hated. But I had faith. Faith is never easy, Simon. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Faith is believing when everything in the world says you are wrong. Faith is designed by God to be tested. I believed. I had faith. And then you robbed me of it.”
“You blame me for your lack of faith?”
Aznar laughed. He seemed delighted by Simon’s lack of comprehension. “Who else? You took me to some pagan altar, and you sacrificed me. Humiliated me. Beat me. I thought I would die there. And I comforted myself with this thought: At last my pain is over. At last I will know God. I knew, Simon. I knew I was going to see our Father in Heaven. And then you gave me the Water.”
Aznar paused. He was quiet for a long moment. “I thought that God would provide me life everlasting. Instead, it was you.”
There was another long silence.
“Do you want me to apologize?” Simon finally asked.
Aznar seemed to shake off the silence, along with whatever thoughts haunted his eyes. The old gleam of malice returned. “For giving me all this?” He gestured all around them. “You must be joking. You freed me, Simon. From everything. From belief, from faith, from God. From Heaven and Hell. It took years, but eventually I learned. There are no rewards or punishments waiting for us. We broke the Covenant. I believed we were meant to suffer, to return to the dust, but that’s not true anymore, is it? We can do whatever we want.”
“As long as we get more of the Water,” Simon said.
Aznar nodded. “True. I admit it would be quite a shock to find myself standing in front of Saint Peter at the gates after all this time.”
“I thought you didn’t believe anymore.”
“I would hate to be proven wrong.”
“You fear God won’t forgive you?”
Aznar smiled. “I’ve done everything I can to earn His contempt. If there are unforgivable sins, I committed them. We both did, the moment we drank the Water. Of course, you drank it first.”
“You can tell God I led you into temptation.”
“That answer didn’t work for Eve, did it? No, Simon. I have to rely on this being our only world. And the Water. I have nothing else. We have nothing else. Just survival. And whatever amusement falls our way.”
He sopped up the last of his gravy with the hardtack roll that served as bread out here. Simon’s dinner was still untouched.
“That’s not true,” Simon said. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to argue with Aznar, only that he did. “I still
believe in the perfectibility of this world. This is why I still fight. I have not lost my faith. Perhaps mine was always stronger.”
Aznar looked bored. “Perhaps your illusions simply take longer to die. Once your mind is set, it’s like stone. That’s a terrible habit for men who live as long as we do. It’s going to cost you someday.”
This was trying Simon’s patience. “So why do you go on, Juan? Why bother? What keeps you going, if you truly have no faith anymore?”
“Why, I follow you, Simon. It’s been entertaining so far. Isn’t that enough?”
Simon stood up then. Aznar was still laughing as he walked away.
CHAPTER 25
SIMON STARTED TO recognize the signs about a mile from the cave. It had been quiet the last night. No more raids. No more harassment on the trail. No lost soldiers.
It seemed as if a whole new forest of trees and saw grass had grown in the years since his last visit. But Simon could see that many others had beaten a path in the same direction, widening the trail enough for horses, making it easy traveling. There were burn marks in the grass from cooking fires and areas where the vegetation had been hacked to pieces.
The Seminoles themselves were gone. It was like she’d left her house with the door open for him. He was being drawn in deeper, he knew. He ordered Max and Deckard to the rear, in case the attack came from behind them.
“You think it’s a trap?” Deckard asked.
“Of course it’s a trap,” Max and Simon both said, almost simultaneously. They grinned sourly at each other. She had left them no choice but to spring it. They wanted the Water. There was only one way to go: forward.
The troops fell silent as they marched along the trail. No more talking or jokes or even complaining. They all listened to the sounds of the insects buzzing and the chatter and squawking of the birds.
We are lined up like ducklings, Simon thought. The Seminoles could break their column in a dozen places with an ambush.
The cave was almost in sight now. He saw the rise of the small hill that hid the rock, the beginnings of bare earth in the grass where the vegetation had been worn down by the presence of hundreds of others.
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