Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  Fascinated, Tamuka watched as the heart emerged from the body. It was shattered, pierced by a hole bigger than his thumb. A thin trickle of blackening blood oozed out of the bullet hole and the severed aorta as Sarg drew it out, cupping it in his hands.He held the bloody offering up, holding it aloft, the already decaying blood running down his wrists, staining his golden robes.

  “Go now, oh heart of our Qar Qarth Jubadi, go now to join the heart of thy sire and his sires before him. Go now to rest in the ashes of what they were.”

  Lowering his hands, he put Jubadi’s heart into the urn, a thin plume of dust rising up out of the receptacle, coating his hands. The dust of two hundred hearts, of all the Qar Qarths who had ever ridden, was now enriched by yet one more.

  An acolyte now handed a silver cup to Sarg, and he scooped the cup into the open hole in Jubadi’s chest and brought it out, full of the black blood of the Qar Qarth. He raised the cup to his lips and partook of its contents, then held the cup over the urn and let the dregs pour into the urn.

  “Go now, oh blood of our Qar Qarth Jubadi, go now to join the blood of your sires. For as their blood coursed through your veins in life, now shall your blood mingle with theirs in death.”

  Dipping the cup into the chest, he drew it back out again, filled to the brim with dark congealing blood. An acolyte stepped forward, took the cup with hands wrapped in a golden cloth, and stepped back into the shadows.

  Another acolyte wrapped Sarg’s hands in a fresh cloth of gold. Sarg replaced the lid of the urn and resealed it. Reverently he picked the urn up and held it above Jubadi. Hulagar, who had stood motionless throughout, removed his hand from Jubadi’s eyes.

  “Soul of the ka of Jubadi Qar Qarth, see now that your heart shall always be with thy people. See now that your heart shall ride with us forever. Soul of the ka of Jubadi, now prepare thyself for thy journey.”

  Lowering the urn, Sarg bowed to the body, then stepped down from the dais and put the urn back into the ark, pulling the lid shut behind it.

  Tamuka looked over at Hulagar.

  “We should go now,” he whispered.

  Hulagar nodded and then went down, kissing Jubadi on the forehead.

  “I will join you at the end of the thirty days, my friend,” Hulagar whispered, “and then we shall ride together one more time.”

  Tamuka, placing his hand upon Hulagar’s shoulder, led him out of the yurt, following Sarg, while behind them the corpse washers started upon the thirty-day ritual of preparing the body of Jubadi. The ten thousand incantations of the sacred journey would be tattooed upon his shaved body, once the washers were done with their preserving baths, which would prevent the body from corrupting. On the night of the twenty-ninth day, Jubadi would again be dressed in the ceremonial armor of his rank for the final ride.

  As they stepped out of the yurt, Tamuka looked eastward. The first sliver of the morning sun cut the far horizon, reflecting off the lake which stretched out beyond the dam above Suzdal. Vuka stood there, surrounded by his guards. Sarg turned to the acolyte who had followed him and took the golden cup, then approached Vuka. The new Qar Qarth hesitated.

  “Kneel,” Sarg commanded, “kneel in the presence of the blood.”

  The companies of the silent ones, as if guided by a single hand, prostrated themselves upon the ground, while far out across the plains beyond the city of Suzdal, by the tens of thousand, the Merki warriors who had gathered about the yurt during the night went down upon the ground. To Tamuka it looked as if a vast open plain of high summer grass had, in an instant, been flattened by an unfelt wind, the only sound the rustling of their armor and the clattering of their weapons as they dropped upon their faces, arms placed over their heads.

  Vuka went down slowly to his knees, and Tamuka stepped past Sarg to kneel by the new Qar Qarth’s side.

  “Thus from father to son, across the endless generations of the Merki,” Sarg announced, his thin reedy voice drifting high in the morning air.

  Sarg nodded to one of his acolytes, who stepped forward with drawn blade. Vuka hesitantly extended his right arm, tunic sleeve rolled up to reveal the knotted muscles and matted hair. He watched the blade, nervously licking his lips, unable to control the flinch as the dagger flashed down, striking across his forearm. Fresh blood welled out. Sarg bent over, holding the cup underneath the wound, allowing the blood of the son to mingle with that of the father. The shaman nodded his approval, and Vuka let his arm drop, wincing at the flood of pain.

  Sarg held the cup before Vuka. The young Qar Qarth slowly leaned forward and sipped of its contents, choking on the curdled blood and his own fresh blood as it went down his throat. Sarg next turned to Tamuka.

  “Protector of the Qar Qarth, possessor of the hidden spirit of the tu, drink now of the ka of the warrior Qar Qarths.”

  Tamuka leaned forward, drinking in turn.

  “You are bound to him as brother, as guard, as guide,” Sarg said, and there was a cold emphasis on the words “guard” and “guide.”

  Sarg now turned back to Vuka, held the cup on high, and inverted it over Vuka’s head, the blood running down across his face. Then, turning in a tight circle, he flicked the remaining drops out to the four winds.

  “You are now Qar Qarth in name,” Sarg announced, “and when mourning is done you shall be Qar Qarth in deed. When the war is completed you shall be Qar Qarth by law.”

  Vuka came to his feet and looked at Sarg, as if unsure. The old shaman nodded and turned away. Vuka lowered his gaze to Tamuka and extended the arm still dripping blood from the ceremonial wound. Tamuka reached into his kit bag and drew out a simple unadorned silk cloth, the same as all warriors carried for the dressing of wounds. The cloth was frayed and stained. Vuka looked at it and drew back slightly.

  “Should not the cloth be of gold?” Vuka asked.

  “At Orki your father’s ceremonial wound was dressed by Hulagar with a torn banner,” Tamuka replied softly. “I thought it fitting that you should be dressed as well with a strip of your father’s battle standard, since you are Qar Qarth now in time of war.”

  Vuka looked over at Hulagar for confirmation. The old shield-bearer nodded his approval.

  “Then dress my wound,” Vuka said coldly.

  Tamuka took a strip of the cloth, cut it into a pad, pressed it into the wound, and then bound it tightly in place. As he dressed the wound he looked straight into Vuka’s eyes. The Qar Qarth held his gaze, his suspicion evident. Finished, Tamuka remained kneeling until Vuka finally nodded, after a long pause, for his shield-bearer to arise. Tamuka stood up.

  He looked over at Hulagar, who, besides Sarg, was the only one of all the Merki to remain standing throughout. Across the open fields around the city of Suzdal, Merki warriors by the tens of thousands remained prostrated. A smile flickered across Vuka’s features, and he nodded to a trumpeter of the silent ones. The warrior arose, and lifting up a great narga, he sounded the long call. As if rising up out of the ground, the umens of warriors came to their feet, the fields echoing with the rattling of their armor and accouterments. On out across the fields they rose, they stood, on up to the river road. Like a vast ripple of life the Merki came to their feet up across the long miles of the road, to the Ford, across the Neiper, down along the tracks back to where battle had firstbeen joined, and on into the steppes, where by the hundreds of the thousands the long lines of yurts waited to make their slow passage through the forest and into the land of the Rus.

  There was no sound, though, other than the rustling of the weapons of war. An eerie silence prevailed. All speech was forbidden during the days of mourning, except for those commands and conversations that were essential for survival, and for war.

  Vuka looked out across the multitude that he now commanded, a wolflike grin lit his features. Unsheathing his sword, he held it aloft. Scores of thousands of scimitars flashed upward in reply, catching the blood-red sun of dawn, reflecting the ruby light, rippling and shimmering as if the earth had become steel and har
dened blood.

  Still holding his blade aloft, Vuka went to his mount and swung up into the saddle. Kicking the stallion into a gallop, he raced down the hill, away from the funeral tent of his father, his guards racing to follow him.

  Hulagar came up to Tamuka’s side.

  “His father did not receive a salute until the smoke of his sire’s pyre had ascended to the heavens,” Tamuka said coldly.

  “You will have to teach him better,” Hulagar replied.

  “You had better to work with,” Tamuka said, his voice sad.

  “The blood is the blood, and we are bound to serve it.”

  “Let us hope the blood improves by the time we ride to war again,” Tamuka replied.

  Hulagar looked over at him, sensing a riddle.

  Tamuka, not giving him time to ask, swung up onto his mount, and reining it about, cantered away from the death yurt.

  Though it was the time of mourning, still the usual routines of living had to be followed—horses groomed and let out to graze; weapons attended to, especially after the soaking storm that had swept through in the middle of the night; rations eaten, though cold with the extinguishing of the horde fires.

  Alone, Tamuka made his way down through the encampment of the guards, the silent ones. To his left was the great city of the Rus, Suzdal, as silent and empty as the camps.

  Accursed place, he thought coldly, pausing for a moment to gaze upon its spires, wooden domes, and towering log structures. He let his gaze drop to the fortification lines surrounding the city. The outer line of high earthen ramparts were dotted with Merki warriors, some on guard, others, curious, walking along the walls or gingerly moving through the open field of pitfalls, hidden traps, and brush entanglements.

  Costly, but we could have taken it, Tamuka thought, studying the layout of the works, his mind already working along the lines of logic that the new weapons had created. Forward bastions to provide flanking fire along the walls, each bastion an individual fortress to hold even if there was a breakthrough.

  We’ll need plans drawn, he realized. If they did this here, they undoubtedly are doing the same thing elsewhere, wherever it is that they finally decide to turn and make their stand. They’ll follow the same pattern yet again, and this therefore is worth studying.

  Except for along the iron rails, mobility is their weakest point, he mused, pausing to look at the line of track coming out of the city. An open battle will be death the moment their flank has been turned, or a breakthrough effected. We have to catch them outside of their earthen forts, in the open, flanks exposed, and then it will be their finish. Or else we must pin them to a front and smash through the center.

  The fact that he was thinking with his ka, the warrior spirit, troubled him not at all. The last Qar Qarth had taken war as his domain, and Hulagar did not trouble himself with its nuances and subtleties, other than for his direct concern of protecting his Qar Qarth. Was Vuka even aware of all that a study of these forts might reveal? He gave a snort of disdain. The fool was most likely in his yurt, drinking and lying with the concubine of the moment, brazenly ignoring even the most basic of strictures of mourning.

  Tamuka spat disdainfully, and turning away from the city, he continued on across the field. Knots of warriors rose as he passed by, whispering at the sight of the shield-bearer, no longer of the heir, but of the Qar Qarth. He silently nodded his salute, then spurred his mount into a loping gallop.

  Crossing the fields where, unknown to him, regiments of the new army of Rus had learned their drill under Union taskmasters, he edged his way back up across a sloping hill studded with towering pines, which filled the air with their bracing scent. The sights, the smells, were so alien to him, so disquieting. Where was the open steppe, where the undulating hills, the vast open stretches, the ever-arching sky above?

  As he crested the slope, half a dozen great mounds were before him, the grass rich, growing high, the tops of the mounds surmounted with tattered banners that fluttered forlornly in the early-morning breeze. It was a cold place; even the sunlight seemed pale, a place of death. He reined in hard, his horse fighting against the bit, rearing slightly.

  He started to turn away from this place, and then he saw him, sitting alone against the slope of one of the mounds, which was already starting to be covered with a sprinkling of young saplings.

  He nudged his horse forward. The Tugar looked up at his approach and with a nod of his head beckoned for him to dismount and sit by his side.

  Tamuka swung down from his mount and approached. The look on his newfound companion’s face filled him with a dark emptiness, a vastness of pain, which for an instant washed away the contempt that he usually held for the Qar Qarth of a dead race.

  “You mourn your Qar Qarth,” Muzta said, his voice touched with irony, “and the Qar Qarth of the Tugars sits alone mourning his people.”

  Tamuka looked about at the great mounds, each more than twice his height and fifty or more paces across. Through the high blades of grass and the chest-high saplings he saw shards of white, bones rising up out of the earth, here a leg, bleached ribs, bits of metal, a rusted sword, a rotting lance, the half-covered face of a grinning skull.

  “All our vanities, all our pride,” Muzta sighed, his gaze fixed as if on some unseen place. “Here rest all my umens, the final blood of all our ancestors. Here sits their Qar Qarth, cursed to outlive them.”

  He paused.

  “Cursed to be the lackey of the Merki.”

  There was no rancor in his voice, only the straightforward admission of fact.

  And he is nothing but our lackey, Tamuka thought with contempt. Reduced to sitting at our tables. Jubadi, perhaps out of some strange affection for an old foe, had acknowledged him in a way as an equal. Vuka would not be so generous.

  Yet even in his contempt the bonds of race still held.

  “Can you not hate them for what they have done to you, to us?” Tamuka asked, nodding back across the fields to the city, as if in those empty streets the hated foe still lingered. “Can you not see that all of them, all of them across this entire world, should die, if we are to live?”

  “The cattle?” Muzta said, laughing softly and shaking his head. “They, I fear, will outlive us all. We brought them here, through the gates that our sires created when once we walked between the stars. We gave them the lands, encouraged them to breed, fed off them, allowed them to become the creators of all that we own, our weapons, our adornments, our yurts, the very sustenance of our bellies. Kill them? Kill ourselves is what you are saying.”

  “Are you of the blood?” Tamuka snarled. “Eighteen of your proudest umens rest here,” and he pointed to the ground.

  Muzta nodded, looking about at the mounds.

  “You need not tell me what rests here, Merki.”

  “And what do you wish done?”

  “I plan to survive, to have what is left of my people survive,” Muzta said quietly as if finally revealing a hidden truth.

  So we’re all playing riddles, Tamuka thought with an inner smile, I to Hulagar and Vuka, Muzta to me, speaking the truth and yet the others not even realizing it.

  “How do you plan this survival, Muzta Qar Qarth?”

  The Tugar smiled innocently and with creaking joints came to his feet. He gave a low whistle. From behind one of the mounds his horse appeared, nickering a response and trotting toward its master like a loyal dog.

  “Let’s ride from this place,” Muzta said, his tone almost that of command.

  The two mounted and trotted away from the barrows without a backward glance, heading north, down the slope. Reaching the rail line that led to the factories at the base of the Vina Dam, they turned onto the track, following it as it cut across the side of the hill, dropping down into a hollow filled with sweet-scented pines and then back up again. As they rode, Muzta fell into a reminiscence of his first seeing one of the Yankee trains on this track, racing back into the city, pursued by his riders, one of whom attempted to joust with the machi
ne and lost. Around a gentle curve through a scattering of trees, they dropped back down the slope and into the vast clearing below the dam.

  The sides of the hill were still scarred from when the dam had burst years before, scoured clean straight down to the bedrock. Muzta paused for a moment, looking at the bare rock, understanding how it was thus carved. His heart felt like ice, remembering the sound of the advancing wave as it crashed into the city. The cries of exultation had been drowned in an instant, his army disappearing into the swirling night. He remembered, and closed his eyes and then rode on.

  The vale below the dam was littered with the waste and wreckage of industry. Slag heaps of cinder, which filled the air with a faint metallic and sulfurous smell, were piled high. The grass grew in ragged tufts, sticking up between twisted hunks of cast-off metal, the blades gray with cinder dust. The long brick buildings of the foundries, casting shops, forges, powder mills, rail sheds, engine sheds, and shot works were all empty now, yet in his mind’s eye Tamuka could imagine the bustle, the clearing reverberating with metallic clanging, the thousands of cattle voices, the smoke, the stench of their labors and sweat.

  This is the future of their world, if we allow it, Tamuka thought. Valleys of smoke and stench, fiery plumes of dust soaring to the everlasting heavens, the shrieking and whirling of their engines, the clanging of their hammers and forges reverberating about the world—the sound of hooves, of the horde on its endless ride, becoming still, until it would be merely the whisper of a remembered breeze.

  “By our ancestors,” Muzta sighed, “what use is martial valor against these engines?”

  Tamuka did not reply, not willing to admit his agreement.

  He edged his mount off the rail bed, cutting across the several hundred yards of clearing which was crossed with nearly a score of parallel tracks. His horse shied toward an engine water tank, which was dripping with moisture, the ground beneath it puddled. He let the horse wander over, easing his reins as it lowered its head to drink, Muzta’s mount joining him. Atop the tower a windmill creaked with the gently freshening breeze, the pump arm rising and falling, groaning softly. He knew that such a device drew water out of the ground, but how it worked—that was a mystery.