Orion in the Dying Time o-3

by Ben Bova

  He made a deep sigh. “But what other lands are there for my men?”

  His question brought a smile to my lips. “I know a place, my lord, where open grassland stretches for as far as a man can ride in a whole year. A place of great cats with sabers for teeth and other beasts, even more ferocious.”

  Subotai’s eyes widened and the warriors around him stirred.

  “There are few people in this land, so few that you could ride for weeks without seeing anyone.”

  “We would not have to fight?”

  “You will have to fight,” I said. “The land is ruled not by men, but by monsters such as no man has ever seen before.”

  “Monsters?” blurted one of the warriors. “What kind of monsters?”

  “Have you seen them yourself?”

  “Are you spinning tales to try to frighten us, man of the west?”

  Subotai hushed them with an impatient gesture.

  I replied, “I have been there, my lords, and seen this land and the monsters who rule it. They are fierce and powerful and hideous.”

  I spent the next hour describing Set and his Shaydanian clones, and the dinosaurs that he had brought from the Mesozoic.

  “What you speak of,” said Subotai at last, “sounds much like the djinn of the Persians or the tsan goblins that the people of the high mountains fear.”

  “They are to be feared, that is true enough,” I said. “And they have great powers. But they are neither ghosts nor goblins. They are as mortal as you or I. I myself have killed them with little more than a spear or a knife.”

  Subotai sank back on his silken cushions, deep in thought. The others drank and held out their goblets for more wine. I drank, too. And waited.

  Finally Subotai asked me, “Can you lead us to this land?”

  “Yes, my lord Subotai.”

  “I would see these monsters for myself.”

  “I can take you there.”

  “How soon? How long a journey is it?”

  Suddenly I realized that I was talking myself into a double-edged trap. To bring Subotai or any of the Mongols back to the Neolithic, I would have to reveal to them powers that would convince them that I was a sorcerer. The Mongols did not deal kindly with sorcerers: usually they put them to the sword, or killed them more slowly.

  And once in the Neolithic they might very well take one look at Set’s reptilians and decide that they were supernatural creatures. Although the Mongols feared no human, the sight of the Shaydanians might terrify them.

  “My lord Subotai,” I answered carefully, “the land I speak of cannot be reached on horseback. I can take you there tomorrow morning, if you desire it, but the journey will seem very strange to you.”

  He cast me a sidelong glance. “Speak more plainly, Orion.”

  The others hunched forward, more curiosity on their faces than fear.

  “You know that I come from a far land,” I said.

  “From beyond the sea that stretches to the sky,” Subotai said, recalling what I had told him years before.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “In my land people travel in very strange ways. They do not need horses. They can go across far mountains and seas in the blink of an eye.”

  “Witchcraft!” snapped one of the warriors.

  “No,” I said. “Merely a swifter way to travel.”

  “Like the magic carpets that the storytellers of Baghdad speak of?” asked Subotai.

  I grabbed at that idea. “Indeed, my lord, very much like that.”

  His brows rose a centimeter. “I had always thought such tales to be nothing more than children’s nonsense.”

  Bowing my head slightly to show some humility, I replied, “Children’s nonsense sometimes becomes reality, my lord. You yourself have accomplished deeds that would have seemed impossible to your grandfathers.”

  He made that sighing noise again, almost a snort. The others remained silent.

  “Very well,” said Subotai. “Tomorrow morning you will take me to this strange land you describe. Me, and my personal guard.”

  “How many men will that be?” I asked.

  Subotai smiled. “A thousand. With their horses and weapons.”

  The warrior sitting next to Subotai on his left said without humor, “You will need a large carpet, Orion.”

  The others burst into laughter. Subotai grinned, then looking at the surprise on my face, began to roar. The joke was on me. The others lolled back on the cushions and howled until tears ran down their cheeks. I laughed, too. Mongols do not laugh at sorcerers and witchcraft. As long as they were guffawing they were not afraid of me. As long as they did not fear me they would not try to knife me in my back.

  Chapter 35

  One of Subotai’s tough, battle-scarred veterans led me to a stall in the loft of the church where a few blankets and pillows had been put together to make a serviceable bed. I slept soundly, without dreams.

  The sun shone weakly through tattered scudding gray clouds the next morning. The rain had stopped but the streets of Kiev were rivers of gooey gray-brown mud.

  Subotai’s quartermaster had apparently spent the night hunting up equipment taken as spoils from the Muscovites big enough for me to wear. Obviously nothing made for the Mongols themselves would fit me.

  I came down to the nave of the converted church decked in a chain-mail shirt, leather trousers, and boots that felt a little too snug but warm. A curved scimitar of Damascus steel hung at my side, its hilt sparkling with precious gems. The faithful old iron dagger that Odysseus had given me was now tucked into my belt.

  A red-haired slave led me out into the watery sunlight, where a pair of Mongol warriors waited on their ponies. They held a third horse, slightly bigger than the other two, for me. Without a word we rode through the muddy streets and past the gate that I had entered the night before.

  Out beyond the city wall waited Subotai’s personal guard, a thousand hardened warriors who had beaten every army hurled against them from the Great Wall of China to the shores of the Danube River. Mounted on tough little ponies, grouped in precise military formations of tens and hundreds, each warrior was accompanied by two or three more horses and all the equipment he would need for battle.

  At the head of the formation Subotai’s magnificent white stallion pranced as impatiently as the great general himself must have felt.

  “Orion!” he called as I approached. “We are ready to move.”

  It was a command and a challenge. I knew I had to translate the entire mass of them through spacetime, but I feared to attempt doing it as abruptly as I myself moved through the continuum.

  So, playacting a bit, I squinted up at the weak sun, turned slightly in my creaking saddle, and pointed roughly northward.

  “That is the way, my lord Subotai.”

  He gave a guttural order to the warrior riding next to him and the entire formation wheeled around and followed us at a slow pace.

  I led them into the dismal dark woods that began a bare half mile from the city’s walls. Concentrating with an intensity I had never known before, I uttered a silent plea for help to Anya as I tried to focus all the energy I could tap for the translation through spacetime.

  The woods grew misty. A soft gray billowing fog rose from the ground and wrapped us in its chill tendrils. Our mounts trotted ahead slowly, Subotai at my side, his bodyguards behind me, close enough to slice me to ribbons at the slightest provocation. The fog grew thicker, blanketing sound as well as sight. I could hear the muffled tread of the horse’s hooves in the muddy ground, an occasional snort, the jangle of a sword hilt against a steel buckle.

  I ignored all distractions. I even ignored Subotai himself as I gathered my mental strength and forced the entire group of us across the continuum. I felt the familiar moment of utter cold, but it was over almost before it began.

  I realized that I had squeezed my eyes shut. Opening them, I saw that we were still in a forest. But the mist was dissolving, evaporating. The ground beneath us was firm and dry. The
sunlight filtering through the tall leafy trees was strong and bright.

  We were now in the forest of Paradise, I realized, riding north by east toward the edge of the woods. The time was the early Neolithic. This was the place and the time where Set had determined to make his stand: to wipe out the human race while it was still small and weak, to wreak vengeance upon me and the Creators for destroying his home world, to seize the planet Earth and make it his own forever.

  I glanced at Subotai. He rode his pony quietly, his face impassive. But his eyes were darting everywhere. He knew we were no longer in the chill, dank land of the Muscovites. The sun was warm, even under the magnificent trees. He was noting every tree, every rock, every tiny animal that darted through the underbrush. He was building up a map inside his head as we rode through this land that was completely new to him.

  At last he asked me, “You say there are no other men here?”

  “There are a few scattered tribes, my lord. But they are small and weak. They possess no weapons except crude wooden spears and bows that have not the range of the Mongol bow.”

  “And few women, also?”

  “Very few, I fear.”

  He grunted. “And the monsters? How are they armed?”

  “They use giant lizards to do their fighting for them—dragons bigger than ten horses, with sharp claws and ferocious teeth.”

  “Animals,” Subotai muttered.

  I corrected, “Animals that are controlled by the minds of their masters, so that they fight with intelligence and courage.”

  He fell silent at that.

  For most of the day we rode through the forest, the Mongol warriors behind us filtering through the trees as silently as wraiths. There was no pause for a meal, we chewed dried meat and drank water from our canteens while in the saddle.

  It was nearly sundown when we reached the edge of the forest and saw the endless expanse of grass stretching out beyond the horizon.

  Subotai actually grinned. He nosed his pony out from under the trees and rode a hundred yards or so onto the grassy plain.

  “How far does this land extend?” he called back to me.

  Making a quick mental calculation, I shouted back, “About the same as the distance between Baghdad and Karakorum!”

  He gave a wild shout and spurred his mount into a gallop. His bodyguards, startled, went yowling and charging after him, leaving me sitting in my saddle, staring at the unusual sight of Mongols whooping like boys wild with joyful exhilaration.

  Then I saw a pterosaur gliding against the bright blue sky, high above.

  “I welcome your return, Orion.” Set’s cold voice rang inside my head. “You have brought more noisy monkeys to annoy me, I see. Good. Slaughtering them will please me very much.”

  I clamped down on my thoughts. The less Set knew about who these men were, the better. I had to fight him in the time and place of his choosing, but whatever element of surprise I could hold on to was vital to me.

  Subotai returned at a trot after nearly half an hour of hard joyriding, his normally doughty face split by a wide grin.

  “You have done well, Orion. This land is like the Gobi in springtime.”

  “It is like this all year round,” I said. In a few thousand years it would become the most arid desert on Earth, as the ice sheets covering Europe in this era retreated and the nourishing rains moved north with them. But for now, for as long as Subotai and his sons and his sons’ sons lived, the grass would be green and abundant.

  “We must bring the rest of the army here, and our families with their yurts and herds,” Subotai said enthusiastically. “Then we can deal with these demons and dragons of yours.”

  I was about to agree when I spotted the lumpy brown shape of a four-legged sauropod on the horizon.

  Pointing, I said, “There is one of the beasts. It is not a fighting dragon, but it can be dangerous.”

  Subotai immediately spurred his horse into a charge toward the sauropod. A dozen of his guard charged out after him. I urged my mount into a gallop, too, and we all dashed for the hump-backed brown and dun dinosaur as it plodded slowly away from us. I felt the wind in my face and the straining muscles of my pony beneath me; it was exhilarating.

  As we neared the sauropod, its head turned on its long, snaky neck to look at us. I realized that Set was using the beast as a scout, examining us through the reptile’s eyes. I could sense him hissing with his equivalent of amused laughter.

  The animal lumbered off toward a small rise in the land, little more than a grassy knoll where some thick berry bushes grew.

  “Be careful!” I shouted to Subotai over the pounding of our horses’ hooves. “There may be others.”

  He was already unlimbering the compact double-curved bow that had been slung across his back, his horse’s reins clamped in his grinning teeth. The other Mongols were also fitting arrows to their bows without slowing their charge in the slightest.

  I got the strong mental impression of Shaydanians hiding in those bushes and behind the knoll. Mounted on dragons. I kicked my horse into a harder gallop and tried to catch up with the impetuous Subotai.

  The sauropod reached the rise of the knoll and, instead of climbing it or going around it, turned to face us. It made a screeching, whistling hoot and raised itself up on its hind legs, its head rearing more than forty feet above us, the talons of its forefeet glinting viciously in the sunlight.

  Subotai let loose an arrow that struck the beast squarely in its exposed chest. It screamed and lunged toward him. Subotai’s horse panicked and reared up. A lesser man would have been thrown from his saddle, but Subotai, practically born on horseback, held his seat.

  A dozen more arrows flew at the monster, striking its chest, belly, neck. I was close enough to hear the solid chunking thud each missile made as it penetrated the reptile’s scales. My sword was in my hand and I drove my horse to Subotai’s side, ready to protect him as he regained control of his mount.

  Then the trap was sprung. From both sides of the knoll half a dozen fighting dragons sprang, with Shaydanians mounted on their backs, guiding them. All the horses panicked at the sight of these fierce, terrifying carnosaurs dashing toward them. Several of the men were thrown. My own horse bucked and reared, wanting desperately to get away from the sharp teeth and claws of these ferocious monsters.

  I controlled my mount mentally, blocking out the vision of the dreadful devils as I drove it headlong into the nearest of the carnosaurs. My one thought was to protect Subotai. Already dragons were crunching some of the downed men in their voracious jaws, their screams rising over the dragons’ hissing snarls.

  From behind me I heard an enormous deep roar, like a giant enraged lion, and the ground-shaking thunder of thousands of horses’ hooves. Subotai’s entire guard was charging out of the woods toward the beasts that threatened their lord.

  My senses went into hyperdrive as I charged my poor terrified pony straight toward the claws of the nearest carnosaur. I saw bubbles of saliva between its saber-sharp teeth, saw its slitted reptilian eyes turn away from Subotai toward me, saw the Shaydanian mounted on its back focusing his attention on me also.

  The carnosaur swung one mighty clawed hand at me. I slid off my saddle and dropped to the ground, sword firmly in my hand. The carnosaur’s claws lifted my pony entirely off the ground, gouging huge spurting furrows along its flank, and threw it screaming through the air.

  I saw all this happen in slow motion, as if watching a dream. Before the dinosaur finished its clawing kill of my pony I ducked low and leaped between its hind legs, ramming my scimitar into its groin with every bit of strength in me.

  Then I saw the Shaydanian topple from the screeching carnosaur’s back, an arrow in his chest. Before he hit the ground I glanced over my shoulder to see Subotai already nocking another arrow, reins still in his teeth, lips pulled back in what might have been a grin or a grimace.

  The carnosaur started to topple upon me and I had to skip quickly away as it floundered to the gro
und with a bone-shaking thump. My sword was still buried in its groin, so I dashed to the crushed bloody remains of one of the Mongols and picked up the bow he had dropped in the final instant of his life.

  By now the rest of Subotai’s thousand were in arrow’s range and all the carnosaurs were under relentless attack. The Mongols are brave, but not foolhardy. Their first goal was to rescue their leader, Subotai. Once they saw that he was out of trouble they hung back away from the enemy and attacked with arrows.

  Quickly, methodically they picked off the Shaydanians mounted atop the dragons. The carnosaurs themselves were another matter. Too big to be more than annoyed by the Mongols’ arrows, they dashed at their tormentors, who galloped off a safe distance before returning to the attack. It was like a bullfight, with the huge monsters being bled until their strength and courage lay pooling on the grass.

  As they fired at the milling, screeching carnosaurs I jumped atop one of the riderless horses and followed Subotai as he rejoined his men. He had never let go his grip on his bow, and he was firing at the beasts even as he rode away from them, turning in his saddle to let an arrow fly while his pony galloped toward the rest of the warriors.

  The poor outnumbered beasts tried to escape but the Mongols showed no more mercy than fear. They pursued the carnosaurs, pumping more arrows into them until the animals slowed, gasping and hissing, and turned to face their tormentors.

  Then came the coup de grace: Mongol lancers charged the weakened, slowed carnosaurs on their sinewy little ponies, a dozen scarred dark-skinned St. Georges spitting a dozen very real hissing, writhing dragons on their spears.

  I rode back to retrieve my sword as Subotai trotted back to the carcasses by the knoll and got off his pony to examine the bodies of the slain Shaydanians.

  “They do look like the tsan goblins that the men of the high mountains speak of,” he said.

  I looked down at the dead body of one of Set’s clones. Its reptile’s eyes were open, staring coldly. Its reddish scales were smeared with blood where three arrows protruded from its flesh. Its clawed hands and feet were stilled forever, yet they still looked dangerous, frightening.