Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  Hulagar sighed, looking into Tamuka’s eyes.

  “I know what you did,” he whispered sadly. “And last night, as I walked one more time in the spirit of my tu I looked into your heart, and I know what you plan to do. And that, my friend, is what grieves me the most.”

  Tamuka was silent.

  “Vuka is not fit to be Qar Qarth,” Hulagar continued. “If there were another heir I would now counsel you to gather together the council of our clan and propose that he be killed. But there is no other heir, and thus he must be Qar Qarth until he has sired a son.”

  “His strength is weak,” Tamuka whispered. “It is countless the number of concubines he has lain with, and there has been no issue. It was almost the same with his father, who in thirty years bore but three sons,” and Tamuka, nodding toward the body before them, inwardly shocked that he would now say such a thing before Jubadi, fearing that his spirit would hear these words.

  “There have been ways around that,” Hulagar replied. “We both know that. But until such a quiet arrangement has been made, Vuka must be Qar Qarth.”

  Tamuka was silent. If need be, it would be his task to lie secretly with one of Vuka’s concubines to produce a son. He found the thought of Vuka’s then claiming the child as his own to be repulsive. For a brief instant he looked back at Vuka, wondering for the first time if Hulagar might not have been the father after all. Impossible—such shallowness could not come from such nobility of blood. But then what did that say of the blood of Jubadi?

  “I know what is in your heart, the truth of what you now consider doing, what might even now be happening with Vuka,” Hulagar said, his voice cold, “and that has broken my spirit as much as this,” and he nodded toward the corpse.

  “It was I who wished you to be my replacement.” He hesitated. “And now I regret it, but it is too late to act.”

  Tamuka felt no anger, only pain at his mentor’s words.

  “I suspect even this death,” Hulagar said.

  Tamuka found that he could not look into Hulagar’s eyes and slowly let his gaze drop.

  “As it is in this world, so in the next,” Tamuka finally replied, his voice full of pain and bitterness. “Pray in the afterworld that there is not a day when cattle spirits come even into the realm of our ancestors to make sport of them as they now do here.”

  “What will be will be,” Hulagar said sadly. “Perhaps I lived in the last generation that knew the joy of the endless ride across the broad steppes that encircle this world. If it is at an end, then it is at an end, and the fates have decreed it to be such.”

  The two stood in silence for a moment.

  “Bid me farewell,” Hulagar finally said.

  Tamuka looked back up, and his friend forced a sad distant smile.

  “I go to be with my friend,” Hulagar said, “and for you, Tamuka Shield-Bearer, when it is your day to lie down next to the pyre, let us hope that in the end you kept your trust as a shield-bearer, and then I shall greet you in friendship as well.”

  Hulagar leaned forward and embraced Tamuka around the shoulders. Tamuka felt his strength dropping away, and tears clouded his eyes.

  “Let us hope that you will greet me in an everlasting heaven free of cattle. I would sacrifice even our friendship to save that for you,” Tamuka whispered, his voice so soft that not even Hulagar could hear him.

  Hulagar, releasing his grip, stepped back, moved to the side of the pyre, and climbed up to sit at the feet of his Qar Qarth.

  Tamuka, bowing low, backed away to join Sarg, his tears splashing on the paving stones.

  The shaman turned and nodded. A dozen guards came down into the grave by means of one of the four sloping side trenches that formed paved ramps back up to the surface. Two of them led Jubadi’s mount, which balked and fought at its reins as it was pulled down the trench and brought to stand by Jubadi’s pyre. A guard came up beside the beast and with a backhand slash cut its throat. The horse collapsed to the ground, its blood spilling across the stones. The dozen guards now approached the silent guardians who had carried Jubadi, quickly lashed them to upright posts set in the ground around the pyre, and then cut their throats as well. Silent unto death, they sagged forward and died.

  Sarg now nodded to Vuka, and the two guards bearing the lamp came up to him. Taking the lamp, he stepped forward to where the funeral banner stood by Jubadi’s head.

  “Go now, spirit of my father, go now to paradise.”

  Vuka touched the lamp along the bottom of the banner. A curl of flame licked up along the black border.

  Tamuka, eyes still upon Hulagar, saw the fire ignite and felt again a flash of memory, Jubadi doing the same before Suzdal.

  Crouching low, Vuka touched the lamp into the kindling at the bottom of the pyre. Splinters of wood ignited, and within seconds their crackling echoed against the stone walls of the burial vault. Vuka inverted the lamp, letting the oil run out and spill into the fire, and then dropped it, stepped back, and without a backward glance started up the steps, the guards and Sarg following.

  Tamuka hesitated for a moment, looking at Hulagar, who, with a low keening voice, was singing his death chant. Bowing low, Tamuka turned away and went back up the steps.

  By the time he reached the top the kindling was fully ablaze, crackling and snapping, a coil of white smoke rising up. The fire spread, fanning out, curling the gold cloth of the bier; the banner at Jubadi’s head was a blazing torch. Through the rising shimmers of heat he saw Hulagar, his death chant now difficult to hear, drowned out by the screams of the cattle and the growing cries of the horde, which upon seeing the first coil of smoke knew that the spirit of Jubadi was at last ascending to the everlasting sky.

  Sarg turned away from the pyre and placed both hands upon Vuka’s shoulders.

  “Vuka, son of Jubadi, assume now the power of thy office. When the banner of peace again floats over the golden yurt, then you shall be fully invested as Qar Qarth before the council of all the clans of the Merki horde.”

  A shaman stepped forward, bearing Jubadi’s sword. Wincing with pain, Vuka reached out and took the blade and held it up. Tamuka, stepping behind Vuka, unslung his bronze shield and held it up as well, protecting Vuka’s right side.

  A roar of approval ascended from the multitude. Lowering his sword, Vuka then turned back to face the pyre. Tamuka looked down into the pit and quickly closed his eyes. The flames were leaping high around the body, and huddled in the middle of them, curling into a tight ball, he saw his friend.

  Tamuka wept unashamed.

  The coil of smoke rose heavenward, bearing the twin spirits of Qar Qarth and shield-bearer, ka and tu united. A shower of sparks snapped upward as the pyre finally collapsed in upon itself, the bodies consumed at last, the scent of burned flesh hanging heavy in the air, cloaking the hilltop in a dark gray wreath.

  At last he could bear to look again, but there was no longer anything to see, only the shimmers of white heat and the blackened bodies of the silent ones on the edge of the fire, but to him they mattered not.

  Sarg, watching intently, judged at last that Jubadi had been consumed and held his hand up as a signal. The nargas sounded again, and now the wailing of the cattle, which had quieted at the sight of the smoke and towering flames, grew loud again, a high bleating cry that filled Tamuka with a cold sense of joy.

  At the far end of the holding pen, several hundred yards away, half a thousand warriors lifted up the wooden fence that blocked in one side and started to move it ever so slowly forward, while other warriors pushed spear points through loopholes carved into the long wooden wall.

  Near the top of the hill a solid line of warriors half a dozen lines deep blocked off the open side of the pen, which reached almost to the top of the hill. The interior of the pen was divided into over a hundred narrow chutes, each one boarded up to a height of nearly ten feet, thus blocking the cattle into long thin lines, which prevented them from stampeding as one great crowd. Most of the warriors in the line held spears,
pointed straight out; others, however, were armed merely with ropes or whips. The herd of cattle surging back and forth within the chutes was gradually pushed forward. They were stripped naked, their hands already bound behind their backs to prevent any last feeble resistance.

  There had been a breakout of several thousand cattle four days before. Many of them had escaped into the woods and nearly ten thousand more had been killed before the rest were subdued. It had been an unpleasant waste, which Sarg had railed over, condemning the commander in charge to death for his mistake.

  The new commander had designed the pen to avoid another such mishap, and he stood to one side, watching anxiously.

  The first of the cattle were finally driven to the top of the hill. Warriors reached out, grabbing their victims, and within minutes after the first horn had sounded, hundreds were being dragged up to the funeral pit and the trenches cut into the four corners, the entire pit shimmering with a near-blinding heat.

  The butchers were waiting. Without fanfare the first ax rose and fell. A cattle head tumbled into the grave, a butcher holding the body up, the shower of blood cascading out from the still-twitching body, its blood hissing to steam on the stones below. The hair of the cattle head now resting in the pit burst into flames. The butcher stepped back, moved to the north side of the grave, and tossed the body down the steep slope of the hill, blood still squirting out of it in spasmodic jerks. The body had barely stopped rolling before someone raced out, picked it up, and, holding it aloft with a triumphal shout, bore it into the surging crowd.

  Another head fell in, and another, and within seconds it became a steady hail, mingled with showers of blood that hissed and steamed.

  A mad insane press worked at the edge of the grave, cattle being dragged up to the lip, some struggling, most shrieking, others walking numbly as if already dead. Blades flashed; bodies collapsed, were dragged away still streaming blood, and were tossed down the hill, where the crowd pushed and jostled. From the four access trenches that led into the pit, streams of blood started to race into the grave, boiling and hissing, heads rolling down the incline, piling up in a knot, then moving again, pushed in by the mass of heads from behind, the skin and hair wrinkling, coiling into plumes of smoke and fire.

  Tamuka watched with cold satisfaction as the severed heads started to pile up, rolling about on the hot stones, sizzling in their own blood, the air now filled with the stench of burned hair and frying blood.

  Sarg, watching intently, finally nodded, and a shaman stepped forward bearing a long pole, atop which was a tightly woven bundle of sticks soaked in oil. The shaman lowered the pole into the flames and then drew it back up, held it aloft, and handed it back to Vuka.

  A wild shout of exultation arose from the crowd. Vuka handed the torch to a heavily built warrior, who turned and started back down the hill. As if from nowhere, hundreds of torches suddenly appeared, the people reaching up to touch the sacred flame, which from this single source would reignite all the fires of the entire horde.

  The fire seemed to leap down the side of the hill; soon thousands and then tens of thousands of burning torches were waving. There was a distant booming, and Tamuka turned to look, where on the far hills a long line of guns was arrayed, their gunners touching off their pieces.

  Cattle shrieks rent the air, the frenzy of killing taking hold, the butchers not even waiting to get their victims to the edge of the pit or the access trenches, axes and scimitars rising and falling. Others were not cut at all, but rather were hurled bodily into the flames, so that they ran about the inside of the pit, screaming, writhing in agony on the hot coals, tripping on the heads that carpeted the stones, splashing in the boiling blood that in places was now ankle-deep.

  From executions taking place away from the pit, a steady shower of heads arched through the air to land in the pit, mingled now with arms, legs, the scent of blood triggering a frenzy. A mad howling echoed across the fields as those lucky enough to get a body pushed through the madness to bring their treasure back to their yurts for the ceremonial feast, while others not yet so lucky fought and struggled, scores of them dying in the mad stampede.

  A wall of guards surrounded Vuka, who swayed, on the point of collapse. Tamuka looked about, his eyes growing wide with rage and joy. A shrieking cattle, only half grown, which had somehow eluded its butcher came crawling past Tamuka. With a shout of joy Tamuka picked it up by its hair, severed the head from its body, and threw the head to where he believed Hulagar’s body lay. Consumed now with passion, he did not even bother to save the body. Raising it up, he drank the blood still flowing from the severed neck, and then he hurled the body into the pit.

  The crush around the grave was growing. A butcher, losing his balance when a male cattle lunged at him, tumbled into the pit, the cattle leaping after him. The two floundered around in the rising sea of boiling blood and piles of heads, screaming in rage at each other. Somehow the cattle got his hands free, grabbed the butcher’s sword, and smashed his skull in. In an instant the cattle was transfixed by half a dozen spears, fell, and disappeared into the churning chaos.

  The sun rose higher, the blood and cattle heads in the grave rising as well, the last of the flames winking out at last. Tamuka looked heavenward. The sun was reaching its zenith, and he wiped the sweat from his eyes. The air reeked of slaughter. The pens were still half full, and the slaughtering was now going on even inside the pens. The ground leading up to the grave was nearly impassable from the choke of bodies, and the stones paving the side of the hill were as slippery as ice from the scarlet river washing the side of the hill.

  Tamuka turned around to see that Vuka was gone, long since escorted back to what was now his yurt. Sarg too was gone. He alone was left. He looked up at the heavens as if somehow hoping to see his friend’s spirit.

  Instead there was something else—a cloud machine. He cursed with a shrill voice, waving his blade to the sky. Laughing at what the cattle above were now witnessing. Turning, he waded into the slaughter.

  “Merciful Kesus,” Feyodor whispered, crossing himself as he gazed down at the madness below.

  Jack Petracci, sick with rage, lowered his field glasses as if to blot out the image, but he knew that not until the final moment of his life could he ever erase from his nightmare thoughts what he was now seeing.

  Yankee Clipper II shifted slightly with the breeze, and with a light touch Jack edged the nose of the ship around, pushing the elevator forward slightly to drop down a bit lower.

  An eddy of wind washed around him, an updraft, and an instant later Jack leaned forward, vomiting from the stench rising up from below. He gasped for breath, drawing a slight moment of satisfaction from the knowledge that he was throwing up on the Merki, a thousand feet below. He leaned back, trying to suck in clean air, but the smell was all around him now, and he had a mad urge to tear his clothes off, fearing that somehow the stink would seep into his body, never to be washed out. Behind him he could hear Feyodor blubbering, alternating between weeping, praying, and cursing.

  “Shut the fucking hell up,” Jack roared, wanting to somehow lash out at anyone, anything, so overwhelming was the madness around him.

  He could see the insane frenzy. The entire horde was packed in a vast circle around the hill, the multitude swaying, pushing, screaming, their voices thundering even above the steady whine of the propeller behind his back.

  If only we had a thousand aerosteamers, he thought, a thousand, each of them loaded down with weapons, we could slaughter them wholesale, wipe the world clean of their murderous filth. He had a flash fantasy of a bomb, a bomb so powerful that it would scorch the earth clean of them in one blinding flash, a holy fire of purification.

  He felt a cracking whine.

  A bullet.

  “The bastards can fight again,” Feyodor shouted. “Take us back up!”

  “Not yet.”

  He reached between his legs, pulling up the box that Emil and Gates had prepared for him. Leaning forward, he set the box
into a frame built into the front of the pilot’s basket. He locked the box in place and tilted it forward, sighting along a simple notch sight.

  “Hold her steady!” Jack shouted.

  “Another bastard just shot at us!”

  Jack ignored him. Leaning forward, he uncapped the lens in the front of the box.

  “Hold still, you damn bastards.”

  He counted to ten and then capped it shut.

  One photograph down, two to go.

  He unsnapped the camera from the frame, lowered it into the basket by his feet, and pulled up the second one, setting it up to photograph the slaughter pit.

  It was Andrew who had first suggested the idea when Emil and Gates, the day before the staff meeting, had brought out their little miracle, the first cameras to be produced in Rus. The two of them had remembered the formula for Talbot’s method of dry photography. Gates had made the box, and Emil, with his small side business in spectacles, had fashioned the lens. It was Andrew, however, who had thought of this other purpose, as a means of reconnaissance, and beyond that as a historical record.

  “If ever we win this war and those barbarians are destroyed, I want it to be remembered what they did. Otherwise some damn fool might someday not believe it, or feel sorry somehow, the way you hear some idiots talking about the Aztecs,” he had snapped when Jack had raised an objection to the weight involved. Now Jack understood as he sighted the camera and uncapped the lens. He knew much of it would be blurred, the frenzied struggle of the Cartha prisoners and pets, but the pit, now over half full of skulls, might just be discernible if the image was magnified somehow.