The Rider was placed in the far cell, Kabede in the one closest to the door. Each of the cells was windowless. Light came from a single solitary aperture about two hand spans wide in the middle of the opposite wall and whatever managed to seep through the picket door.
“Brought you some company, Sarge,” Weeks said to Belden as he and the trooper on duty placed each man in their cells and locked the doors.
“Mighty white of you, Weeks,” Belden said.
“I don’t expect you’ll entertain them long,” said Weeks. “Once the colonel’s settled down about them Mexican cattle, I’ll be puttin’ my boot to your ass so hard it’ll wind up between your shoulder blades.”
“Be looking forward to that,” Belden said.
Weeks grunted in answer and went outside with Quincannon and the trooper. The picket door closed and the bar fell across it. They sat in the dim as the sentry outside whistled ”Old Joe Clark.”
“Well,” said Belden after a bit. “If nobody’s said it yet, welcome to Camp Eckfeldt.”
“Your commanding officer gave us quite a welcome,” the Rider said, leaning through the bars to speak to his unseen friend.
“He’s not my commanding officer,” Belden corrected him. “Not anymore.”
“I saw. How did that all come about, Dick?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Manx and I don’t share the same perspective on discipline, I’m afraid. The man’s a goddamn martinet. Remember what General Ford used to say? ‘You can tell an officer’s worth by the stripes on his horse.’ If he could, Manx would flay a bugler to the bone for blowing a bum note at reveille.”
“It’s a good thing they outlawed flogging then,” said the Rider, “or your drummer would’ve been beaten to death long ago.”
Belden chuckled.
“Ah, you heard our Trooper Hutch? He’s a piss poor percussionist, I’ll grant, but I’d rather have him drum me out than John Lincoln Clem. His problem is nobody can stand to let him practice. He loves that drum, though. The man’s got this little candle he keeps in his kit, but never lights—just keeps it to wax the threading.”
Belden settled to the floor by the sound of him, and put his head back against the wall.
“Manx just doesn’t understand his post. He was aide-de-camp to some general all through the war, never saw any action. Now he wants medals, so he pestered some poor bastard day and night for a command smack dab in the middle of the great big Indian Wars. But his higher up got the better of him in the end, assigned him to a nowhere outpost of no military significance. This place has held the camp designation for four years. Four years. The War Department established it to guard a railroad route that never came. Surveyors moved the route forty miles in another direction. Found a better source of water. Got to keep those big black engines steaming, you know. Railroad left, most of the settlers and the speculators who’d been anticipating the route, they all left. Hell, even the hostiles left. Who’d fight over a patch of sand like this? But, due to some clerical oversight, Camp Eckfeldt stayed. When I got here, the last commanding officer, Colonel Kliegg, he spelled it out for me pretty plain.
“An outpost like this,” he said, “the well-being of the enlisted men is the primary concern of the officers, commissioned and non-commissioned alike.”
“See, Kliegg understood. In a place like this, men go crazy if you’re not careful. They shoot each other or themselves. They got to have an outlet. Drillin’ don’t work. You get a man all geed up, if there’s nothin’ to fight on the end of it, they start into each other. Since there were no women available, Kliegg called on my particular expertise.”
“What expertise is that?” the Rider asked.
“Moonshine,” Belden snickered. “Like Sherman said, ‘the glory of war is all moonshine.’ Old Kliegg had himself a helluva time with some local whiskey peddlers. They’d jacked up the going prices on busthead so high he was having difficulty keeping the men wet. But, you know, my pa taught me how to build and run a still when I was knee high to a grasshopper. So, my first duty as sergeant major was to make Camp Eckfeldt self-sufficient.” He laughed and slapped his leg. “Old Kliegg put me through for a commendation on the sly. Ah, he was a good old soldier.”
Belden was quiet for a moment.
“What happened to him?” the Rider asked, settling on the floor himself, back to back with his old comrade except for the adobe wall between them.
“He was a champion drunkard himself. Pickled his liver, I expect. I found him in his cot one morning when he didn’t turn out for reveille. Then they sent us Manx.”
The Rider watched a roach crawl up the wall.
“Why did you beat up Lieutenant Cord?”
“Manx tell you that?”
“I saw your knuckles.”
“Well, the first and second lieutenants, Portis and Cord, they never cared much for Kliegg’s ways. Manx was more their type. They just about jumped for joy when he showed up. First thing Manx did was call me in and order me to bust up the still. Then he had Weeks and Quincannon and me drag all the whiskey barrels to the parade ground and assemble the men. He said somethin’ like…oh yeah—Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune. Took an axe to the whole stock. Sand drank up the lot.
“Then he started into drillin’ the boys. Marched ‘em around, took ‘em to task for every spit and polish bit of minute bullshit he could find. Then came the patrols. We hadn’t had regular patrols in the four years I’d been under Kliegg. Nobody comes around here. Sometimes the Mexicans down at the edge of the valley have trouble with their neighbors, or rustlers passin’ through, then we mount up, sure. But his patrols turned into expeditions. Some trooper made off with an extra sack of sugar in the night, Manx blamed it on Indians or Mexican thieves, led punitive squads down into the valley and rousted the little ranchitos and the Yaqui villages, busted up that cafe in Escopeta one time. Pissed off all our neighbors, is all he did. God forbid he ever came across a band of real hostiles.
“The boys started gettin’ mean under him. They needed something, so I rebuilt the still in one of the picket storehouses. It was stupid of me really, to trust a buncha dumb kids to keep quiet. Cord found out, and he figured he’d butter up to Manx with his discovery, but he had to do it big, so he set the damn still on fire. All that pressure, and the alcohol…it burned real hot. Fire nearly reached the armory. All that dynamite left over from clearing this place…I don’t like to think what could’ve happened. As it was, it burned up a lot of the outbuildings. We had a trooper, a Polack named Skonicki. He got caught up in it. Burned all his hair and most of his hide off. Burned him so bad you couldn’t tell his coat from his flesh. He just laid there cryin’ and tremblin,’ begging for somebody to go to his bunk and bring him his rosary.
“So, that’s when Cord walks up and says, “None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t rebuilt that damned still, Sergeant.”
“I don’t know what come over me after that. I kept hearin’ that boy gaspin’ in my ears. Weeks laid a carbine upside my head to get me off of Cord.
“You know, Manx wanted to have me shot. He said we were in war time. Doc Milton, that’s our surgeon, said he’d do everything he could to bring Manx up on charges if they shot me. I guess he saved my life; what’s left of it.”
“What do you mean, what’s left of it?” It was Kabede who asked that.
“I mean, I been in the Army for fifteen years. All I got that’s mine is my saddle and my boots and twenty-five dollars tucked in my sock. I don’t even have a horse for the saddle. Before you two showed up I was thinkin’ about walkin’ down to a hacienda on the east end of the valley. There’s a fat Mexican gal there does our washin’ sometimes, who favors me now and again with a smile. Past that, I’ve got no plans for the rest of my life.”
The Rider thought on Belden’s words. The rest of their lives could be quite finite indeed if they didn’t find a way out of course, but beyond even the impending attack by Adon’s riders, he’d thought now and again about life after he
found Adon. Like Belden, he had little in the way of possessions or skills even, outside of his mystic training. What use was that when you came down to it? He was thirty-five years-old, and still living the life of a transient. How long could it go on?
Then of course, how much time was allotted to him now? According to what he believed, only a single year. He had spent the past ten years looking towards something. Had the years without fulfillment taken their toll upon him at last? He felt as if incessantly looking to a future of violence, he had neglected all the peaceful moments of his existence.
What if in the end, he did kill Adon? Would it even stop the doom of the Hour of Incursion? What could one man really do to aide or defy the Great Old Ones?
Outside, there was a commotion of horses and the tinkling of harnesses and gear. They observed shadows moving across the picket door.
“That must be the patrol the colonel ordered,” Kabede observed.
“That fool,” said the Rider. “They won’t come back.”
“Why not?” Belden asked. “What’s comin’ Joe? What’s this flapdoodle about you bein’ responsible for a massacre?”
“I was there,” the Rider said. “But I wasn’t responsible.”
“I figured as much. Now, what about those three who’re are after you?”
Belden was no babe in the woods when it came to the preternatural undercurrent of the world. He’d experienced it firsthand alongside the Rider a few times during the war. The first time the Rider had ever fought shedim they had been Missouri bushwhackers, and Belden had been right there beside him. But Belden didn’t know everything.
“You know, I saw ‘em when they were here,” Belden went on. “Three of ‘em. Odd bunch. One was a Dutchman, and he spoke for the other two. Didn’t have a lick of hair between them. Not even eyebrows.”
The Rider wondered at that. Some deliberate statement on their part, or a side-effect of whatever powers they were calling on?
“That is strange,” Kabede remarked. “What else do you remember about them?”
“Well, we took them for pilgrims or something at first,” said Belden. “They were strung with more medallions and doodads than a penitente come Easter. Actually, they spent two days here.”
“They did?” said the Rider sharply.
“Yeah. One of ‘em was sick. Doc Milton tended to him. Manx hit it off with the Dutchman. He claims some German on his mother’s side, I guess, and they talked about…well, whatever Germans talk about.”
“Do you mean…DeKorte, or Jacobi?” asked Kabede.
“When Americans say ‘Dutchman’ they usually mean German,” the Rider explained. It was a colloquialism that had taken him some getting used to in his youth.
“Shvurt, or Shvert, was the name of the one that Manx took a shine to,” Belden confirmed. “He gave Manx your wanted poster. I didn’t know it was you at first. The beard and all. Milton said the one he doctored was called…LeBook-lee-yay? A Frenchman. I never heard the others’ name. They’re not just bounty hunters, are they?” he pressed.
“No,” the Rider said. “It’s hard to say what they are.”
“Old friends?” Belden ventured. “Pardon me for sayin,’ but you look to share the same flare for bijouterie. You always carried a couple lucky charms when I knew you, but you’ve picked up a lot more since.”
“I need more luck these days,” the Rider said absently. “What was the matter with Le Bouclier, the one the surgeon saw?”
“Twisted ankle. His horse threw him, they said. And that ain’t all. They had a corpse with ‘em.”
“A corpse?”
“Yep,” Belden affirmed. “Their comrade in arms. They said they’d come across your camp and you’d killed him.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, he sure smelled dead. They buried him in the post cemetery.”
“Why would they do that?” the Rider wondered aloud.
“They did it themselves too. Wouldn’t let nobody else attend to it. They said it was agin their religion.”
“I think we should probably dig up that corpse,” said Kabede.
“Yes,” said the Rider. “Where’s the post cemetery?”
“You passed it on the way up. It’s easy to miss. There ain’t but six graves, including the stranger’s. You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Belden asked. “I’ve seen some strange things in your company, ‘member. I learned a long time ago not to discount your explanations. But something tells me rock salt and demonpunching ain’t going to be enough for this bunch. Am I right?”
“The trouble is,” said the Rider, “we don’t really know what they’re capable of, or what their weaknesses are. These aren’t like the shedim bushwhackers you and I fought.”
“Well that’s a relief, anyway,” said Belden.
“No it’s not, Dick. They could be far worse. For one thing, they can project themselves into another man’s body, wear him around like a suit.”
“Jesus. What else?”
“They have an army of walking dead at their command,” said Kabede.
“Walking dead?”
“All of Escopeta at least. Maybe every man, woman, and child in the vicinity,” said the Rider. “We saw them fall en masse down a mountain and get up on broken legs. They’re slow, but they don’t feel pain.”
“Anything else?” Belden chuckled nervously.
“Maybe,” said the Rider. “These men are in league with the darkest powers I’ve ever run across.”
“What are they, devil worshipers?”
“Worse than devil worshipers.”
“Oh, come on,” Belden cracked. “What’s worse than a devil worshiper?”
“What’s worse than the devil?” the Rider said in answer.
“You tell me,” Belden said.
“I can’t, Dick,” the Rider said.
How to explain The Great Old Ones? They were entirely outside of Belden’s experience. They were outside of the Rider’s own. He couldn’t fathom them now, and he had encountered one personally. Best to leave them out, best to concentrate on the here and how.
“Jesus,” said Belden, serious. “I never heard you scared, Joe. Not like this.”
“I am. I am scared.”
“Igzee’abaihier is with us, Rider,” said Kabede. “Who can be against?”
“Is He? I wonder.”
“Where’d you ever pick him up?” Belden interrupted.
“He picked me up.”
“It is nearly sundown,” said Kabede. “Mr. Belden, I wonder, do you have any influence with the guard?”
“Let’s find out. Trooper Davies!” Belden shouted.
“Yes sir!” came the reply beyond the door, and immediately there was a fumbling as the guard threw up the heavy bar.
“I’d say so,” Belden said.
“I wonder if my green bag could be brought to me,” Kabede said. “They may search it if they wish. There are no weapons.”
The door swung open, and a youngish private stood in the doorway, looking abashed at having just opened the guardhouse door at the command of its occupant.
“Uh,” he began, “Sergeant, I already got you a pair of pants. I don’t know as I—”
“It’s alright, Davies. I’m not gonna ask you to let us out or pass me a file or anything. The man in the cell next to me had a green bag on his person. Do me one last favor and bring it back here.”
Davies shook his head. “I don’t think I can do that, sir.”
“You can search it all you like. Nothing in there but…” Belden trailed off.
“Candles,” said Kabede. “Some bread. A tin of herring and a flask of wine.”
“There you go,” said Belden. “Come on soldier, you can spare your sarge one last celebration before he’s booted down the hill, can’t you?”
Kabede went to the bars and pressed his face between them.
“You saw the knife I had on my belt? You can have it if you bring me those things.”
Davies shuffled his fee
t a bit. “I’ll see if I can get it.”
He didn’t look at them, but closed the door and slid the bar back into place.
Belden sighed and settled back down.
“Where loyalty falters, common greed prevails,” he said. “What do you need all that stuff for? I mean, if it’s a candlelit dinner party you’re throwing me, I’m flattered, but they’ll come around with better chow in a little while.”
“We are not permitted to eat anything that isn’t kosher,” Kabede explained.
“What say?”
“Conforming to Jewish dietary laws,” the Rider said. Then, to Kabede, “When I was in the Army, sometimes I let some of the commandments slip.”
“In addition, it will be Sanba adma’I in an hour,” Kabede continued.
“The what?” said Belden.
“Sabbath,” said the Rider.
“Sabbath?” said Belden. “It’s Friday.”
“Hebrew Sabbath is Friday evening until Saturday evening,” the Rider explained.
“No shit,” said Belden. “So, will you be holdin’ mass or something?”
“It is not usually permitted for a dohone to observe the Sanba adma’I,” Kabede said.
“A what?” The Rider and Belden said together.
“A Christian,” Kabede said stiffly.
“Well, it doesn’t look like you have much of a choice, bucko,” said Belden.
“No,” said Kabede. “I suppose not.” He sighed. “The Lord will have to forgive us.”
“I’m sure He will,” said the Rider. “On the Sabbath, Dick, we forgo all work, and emulate the world to come. A world of peace and harmony.”
“I don’t know how long your peace and harmony is going to last you if that bunch that’s after you is as close as you say,” said Belden.
“They will not attack during Sanba adma’I,” Kabede said, not a trace of doubt in his voice.
“Don’t be too sure,” said the Rider. “If they’re animating the dead it’s not as if they’re shomrei shabbos. And their powers are outside anything you’ve ever encountered.”
“The soul is doubled during Sanba adma’I,” said Kabede. “We are at our strongest. They can’t possibly touch us.”
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 3