Storm Surge

by Taylor Anderson

  He continued gazing at the statues—the closest he would likely ever come to seeing any pope with his own eyes. Each held the painted and bejeweled skull of its inspiration in the left hand. One day, the present Messiah would be so honored, but even then his near-perfect likeness would remain behind a mask; the artist—and only person besides his successor to view him since his selection—would be slain in a joyful celebration. But for now, the Messiah was very much alive, and Don Hernan’s gaze shifted to the silky red curtain he remained behind, and he knelt.

  Fires flickered beyond the drape and Don Hernan could see silhouettes. From them he knew the Emperor of the World wore a large, elaborate headdress, but despite the effect of the shadows, he was clearly a small, spare man, with considerable nervous energy. His projected image was always moving, actually pacing, and was followed by more naked attendants like those at the entrance, except these had been blinded as well. They kept pace with him by clinging to his flowing robe. Their sacrifice was rewarded by his presence, and it was their privilege to anticipate his every desire and ensure he never touched anything but the ornate throne he sat upon, the goblets they brought to his lips, the food they placed in his mouth, or human flesh. They were his reward for service.

  Don Hernan understood the principle; only constant contact with the living could keep their Messiah rooted in this life, and the sensuous nature of that contact represented a bribe of sorts. Without it, his spirit might quickly flee to the even greater pleasures awaiting him in the afterlife. Deep down, Don Hernan couldn’t help it; he so wanted to be pope someday! Sadly, despite his obvious worth and almost unique relationship with the Messiah compared to other Blood Cardinals, his chance for that may have fled with the escape of Fred Reynolds and his pet . . . creature. He sighed, and spread his skinny arms wide in a pose of supplication.

  “My dear Don Hernan!” the Messiah slurred. He was kept in a state of continuous inebriation with wine and drugs, but unlike some of his predecessors, he managed to maintain his energy and intellect in spite of that. Don Hernan had served four popes—the lure of the afterlife was great—but he admired and feared this one most for his ability to keep his mind in this world. “What news of your misguided protégé and his familiar?”

  Instinctively, Don Hernan glanced at the entrance to ensure no guards had appeared there waiting for the command to take him away. “I was misled,” he confessed humbly. “In my hubris, I did not imagine it possible for anyone to endure the High Cleansing and retain such impure, treacherous thoughts. I was wrong. Clearly, some are infused with such evil that even the High Cleansing is not sufficient to wash it away. I must reevaluate my procedures. Few are even allowed such an opportunity as I extended to my protégé—as I admit I hoped he was—but now I will be even more selective.”

  “You were deceived by the purest evil,” agreed the slow voice, “but though I know you are crushed, not all was in vain. You learned much about our enemy.”

  “Indeed,” Don Hernan agreed, brightening slightly. “Some information must now be suspect, of course, but not all. The ‘American’ enemy that joined the New Britain heretics against us are little different from them in some ways, and I spent enough time in the isles as our”—he smiled—“ambassador to know considerably more about them than they do about us. Their notions regarding the value of lesser lives still gives me pause.” He shook his head. “It is so bizarre as to border on the insane. And their attachment to their animal allies . . .” He rolled his eyes. “Incomprehensible! Still, the fact remains that, deluded as they are, their beliefs are sincere and intractable. They do dislike heavy casualties, and they do apparently consider the lives of their animal helpers nearly as dear as their own. We can use that, I think.”

  “But we have lost the Galápagos to them, and your conquest of their continental colonies was thwarted,” the pope said dreamily, swirling to continue pacing. It was not an accusation, just a statement of fact.

  “True. They may even attack our own Holy Lands, but that may work to our advantage in the end, as long as none who witness such a desecration are allowed to tell of it. Our supply lines will be short, theirs impossibly long, and our troops and the Holy Land itself will swallow their armies like small morsels.” He hesitated. “I would wish we could match their newer weapons, particularly their flying machines. The small dragons perform well to a point, but are difficult to train, and the enemy has devised defenses.”

  “You were confident before that your evil protégé would provide us with flying machines of our own. Did he not?”

  “He did—to a point. I do not believe he was as good at building them as flying them. The examples he provided are different in subtle ways from the one he used, and I do not trust them. Even if the design is sound, he never finished training our warriors in their use. We have a start—he could not prevent that—but perfecting the machines and their use will take time. The project will continue, but we must redouble our efforts to train the small dragons, in the meantime.”

  His Supreme Holiness stopped moving and continued gravely. “Only two matters remain. First, there is this other enemy that plagues our foes—these Grik. What do you make of them?”

  “Other animals, Holiness,” Don Hernan replied. “More savage and numerous than our foes, but little more intelligent than dragons.” He thought back. “Now I consider on it, the traitor revealed their existence during his initial cleansing, perhaps in a stupor. He likely didn’t deny them later only because I already knew of them. In retrospect, he cannot have wanted me to know of them.”

  “But what do you think of them? Can we use them as we do the small dragons?”

  “Perhaps,” Don Hernan hedged. “According to the traitor, they are so far west that we can likely more easily find them, and perhaps catch some to evaluate, by sailing east across to Africa. Apparently, that is their home. But even Reynolds did not know if they extend as far as its western coast.”

  “Our expeditions there over the ages have not reported them,” brooded the Pope.

  “True, but such trips are costly and wasteful. Only a providential aspect of their nature protects us from the greatfish in our Pacific sea. They are not as . . . temperate in the seas to the east. It is difficult enough to maintain contact with our island possessions and keep a war fleet in the Atlantic, and we have not sent a mission to that dark land for nearly a hundred years.”

  The Emperor of the World was silent, considering. His thoughts often took time to form, but when they did they were usually astute. Astute or not, they carried the weight of a commandment from God, and that was another reason Don Hernan admired this pope.

  “We must meet these creatures,” the Pope said at last. “Use them if we can.”

  “I will commission an expedition at once, Holiness.” Don Hernan paused. “It will be risky, as I said, and our colonies may be vulnerable for a time, particularly if we redeploy the greater part of our eastern fleet the enemy cannot even suspect exists. That fleet should overwhelm him, regardless of his tricks, but an expedition will strip our reserves.”

  “It cannot be helped, and should not be too risky. The eastern fleet protects only against Los Diablos del Norte, and they should never even know it is gone. Besides, they would never dare provoke us again. They know they exist only at our sufferance.”

  “As you command, Your Holiness.”

  “One thing more.”

  “Yes, Your Holiness?”

  The Messiah’s tone changed to one of outrage. “You must destroy the traitor, wherever he has gone. You brought him here, to this place, to meet me!” he sighed. “I understood your intention and blessed your plan for him, but even I could not divine his secret evil! How could anyone not be lured to the True Faith by my sublime presence? Such evil has never been known. In any event, he knows where I am and has learned of certain of the tools we use to control the people. He must be silenced.”

  “That is already being done,” Don Hernan fervently assured. “I know who helped him; there
can be no doubt it was a faction of the Jaguar Idolaters, and I know where they take him. He must cross El Paso del Fuego, and I have dispatched an entire regiment of Blood Drinker Cavalry to stop him. He will not escape.”

  “Very good, Don Hernan. You might yet succeed me one day, when I am called to my reward. Perhaps you may even be chosen as the one to perform my elevation when the time comes.”

  “I am not worthy,” Don Hernan protested, lowering his face to the stone floor.

  “Of course not,” agreed the Emperor of the World, “not yet. But your test is at hand.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  ////// In the wilderness of the Holy Dominion,

  west of New Granada

  A s usual, a dense fog lay heavy in the wood as the sun rose, unseen, above the forest. The scent of invisible wood smoke was thick, and Fred Reynolds blinked sticky eyelids and rolled to a sitting position against a monolithic tree. He had a scratchy, burlaplike blanket now, in addition to his filthy robes, and it helped a little in the predawn chill; enough that he’d even slept through the swarms of mosquitoes that always came with the dawn. He yawned and scratched new welts on his arms as he blinked again and looked around. The soft sounds of the awakening camp were all around him: chuffing horses, quiet voices that carried amazingly far, the snap of twigs as other fires were made.

  To his astonishment, he suddenly realized Kari-Faask was crouched before him near a small fire, roasting a pair of what resembled squirrels with long, meaty tails. She looked up at him and grinned, brandishing the steaming carcasses on the iron spit.

  “If you sleeped much longer, I’d have ate both these myself,” she chided quietly.

  “Kari!” Fred exclaimed, louder than intended. He looked quickly around. “What’re you doing here? If they catch you, we’ll both be in for it!”

  Kari shook her head. “Nah. They ain’t worried ’bout me—or you—no more. I tole ’em we wouldn’t run off. Besides”—she gestured around—“where’d we go? I also tole ’em you’re my friend and I will run off, now I’m fit, first chance I get, if they keep keepin’ us apart.” She blinked curiosity. “They really don’t want me to do that. Say they need me for somethin’.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what, but I promised I’d do it, long as they leave us alone.”

  “You shouldn’t have promised that, Kari,” Fred said lowly. “I don’t know what they’ve got in mind, but they’re weird, creepy ducks. For all I know, they might . . .” he stopped himself. “Maybe they’re not as bad as Doms—I hope!—but if you’d seen what I’ve seen, you might not trust anybody anymore.”

  “I seen a lot, Fred. Maybe different from you, but probably just as bad,” she answered quietly, swishing her tail. “I thought I’d lost you to the goddaamn Doms, an’ I lost hope,” she admitted. “But I didn’t lose you! I was wrong to think so. Weak. I just didn’t hold my hope long enough, an’ I won’t never do that again.” She lowered the spit back toward the fire. “You saved me. Maybe these weirdos helped, but you was gonna do it sooner or later wifout them if you had to. I know that now. I trust you,” Kari said firmly. “In the air, in the water, here—anywhere.” She blinked thoughtfully. “An’ I trust my promise to Cap-i-taan Reddy an’ the Navy. Compared to that, any promise I made to these fellas is no stronger than them you had to make to that goddaamn Don Hernaan!” She gestured again with the spit. “I’ll do what I can for these fellas if it makes sense. I don’t think they wanna eat me or nothin’. But if it don’t make sense, we’ll haul our asses!”

  Fred snorted. “Atta girl!” he murmured approvingly.

  “Good morning!” said Captain Anson, approaching with a wooden bowl in his hand. He tossed Fred a skin that sloshed when he caught it. “Wine,” he explained, “or what passes for such hereabouts. Vile stuff, but rather refreshing when you get used to it. Mind if I join you?”

  “Suit yourself,” Fred answered, uncorking the wineskin and taking a tentative sip. “Gha!” he said, but drank some more. Anson sat on a log beyond the little fire and turned his attention to the bowl, sipping the steaming broth between pauses to blow across it. Kari glanced at him occasionally, blinking wariness, and finally pulled one of the roasted creatures off the spit and handed it to Fred.

  “Ow!” Fred chirped, handling his food gingerly. “Hot!” He blew on it and took a bite. “Pretty good, though. Tastes like chicken.”

  Kari giggled. She’d eaten chicken in Scapa Flow and thought it tasted like akka birds.

  “We call those ‘squeakies’ where I come from,” Anson said, then glanced up quickly.

  “Squeakies, huh?” Fred pounced. “I don’t remember any ‘squeakies’ in the Empire.”

  Anson waved it away. “I guess you didn’t spend much time in the colonies, up north.”

  “No,” Fred admitted, still suspicious. “No, we didn’t. Never ate anything there.” He nodded at Kari. “Our plane got knocked down and we got captured before we ever had a chance. Are you saying that’s where you’re from?”

  Anson grinned. “No. But if that’s what you want to think, it will suffice for now.”

  “Well . . . why the big mystery? You haven’t told me squat. You’ve got to be convinced by now that we’re allies! We’re helping the damn Empire!”

  “But does that truly make us allies?” Anson asked cryptically. “I wonder.” He shook his head and looked at Kari. “I heard about your tantrum. Quite impressive. You must really like this young man. Are all your people so devoted to their human friends?”

  “We are—if they really our friends,” Kari replied defiantly.

  “Well said,” Anson granted. He emptied his bowl and looked back the way he’d come. “We’ll be moving soon,” he predicted. “We’ve far to go for many days yet, but there’s a village on the coast where we should be welcome.”

  “The coast?” Fred asked.

  “Yes—in a manner of speaking. You’ll see when we get there. As I told you before, El Paso del Fuego is a most impressive sight, and one the Doms have fanatically guarded. When you gaze upon it, you’ll have the sense of a coastline where there shouldn’t be one! And the other aspects—the fuego!” He smiled.

  “About that,” Fred said, “I don’t get that part. What’s it mean?”

  “You will . . .” Anson stopped, looked around. The horses, tied to a picket line between several trees, were staring intently into the misty woods.

  “What?”

  “Silence!”

  Something about the size and shape of an emu suddenly bolted out of the mist. Reynolds had glimpsed the things several times and been assured they were timid, harmless creatures in spite of a formidable array of small, needle-sharp teeth. Apparently they subsisted on bugs and small animals. Their tails were long and whip-thin, and they were covered with a thick coat of colorful but otherwise very emulike feathers. Because they were so timid, however, they usually bolted from view, and he hadn’t seen one up close before. This one was obviously running scared as well, but wasn’t watching where it was going. Large eyes in a small head at the end of a long, skinny neck stared behind it as it ran and it collided with one of their escorts.

  Man and animal tumbled to the damp, ferny needles. With a horrified squawk, the thing leaped to its feet and scampered on, perhaps a little drunkenly. The man gasped, recovering his breath, and started to rise. Another “emusaurus,” as Fred spontaneously dubbed them, raced through the camp, then another. The horses squealed, rearing and tugging at the line. They weren’t afraid of the things, but instinctively knew that if anything was running from something, they probably should as well. More emusauruses stampeded past, perhaps twenty in all, before a horseman galloped into view. He was one of theirs, probably a picket who’d been on watch.

  “Doms!” he hissed, loud enough for all to hear, then carried on unintelligibly as far as Fred was concerned, pointing urgently back the way he’d come and gesturing around as he spoke.

  “What?” Fred demanded of Anson.

  “Doms,
as you heard. Blood Drinkers! Many of them. Closing in on three sides,” Anson snapped grimly. “To the horses! No, leave the blanket. There’s no time!”

  A musket thumped dully in the humid air, then another. Two natives raced up and grabbed Kari, dragging her toward the horses.

  “No, goddamn it!” Fred cried, knocking one man aside and pulling on Kari’s arm. “She goes with me!”

  Another musket popped and was answered by a ragged volley. The mist was thinning slightly and muzzle flashes could be seen. Balls vrooped past and bark exploded from trees. A man screamed. The other native snarled at Fred and pulled a dagger from a rope belt. Kari kicked him savagely in the crotch, and when he doubled over, slammed her foot hard against the side of his head. He went down like a stone, senseless or dead.

  “Well,” Anson said simply. Fred and Kari looked and saw him return a large pistol to a flap holster at his side, and at the same time it occurred to Fred that it was a revolver of some kind, he also had to wonder who he’d been prepared to shoot. “I suppose she does go with you, or rather, us.” Anson snapped at the other native, who’d also drawn a knife, and with a searching gaze, the man ran for a horse. “Quickly now, unless you wish to be guests of the Doms once more. I do assure you they’ll be even less hospitable than before!”

  Shouted commands echoed in the trees, and another volley crackled. A sound like hornets sped all around them, and horses and men screamed shrilly. Musket balls ricocheted or exited bodies with warbling moans. Fred, Kari, and Anson sprang to the backs of three nervous horses probably being held for Kari and the two natives sent to get her. It didn’t matter to the holders who mounted now, as long as one was Kari, and they immediately raced away to fight or flee. Other muskets were firing now, from a slightly different direction, and one native stumbled and fell on his face.