by M. C. Planck
If only he could use the same magic on himself. Outwardly he appeared a clockwork doll of destruction, a metal-scaled windup toy with a scything blade. But the steel was only skin-deep; inwardly, he quivered like a sponge.
He went into each battle terrified of the surprise or ambush that would kill him, lain by whatever new shaman had emerged from the shadow of the high rank he had killed. He left each battle exhausted with the trembling rage every slave hut and cooking pit bone pile ignited inside him. Emotionally he tried to become a machine that dispensed vengeance without reflection. It worked, for a while.
Eventually his analytic mind reasserted itself. The facts that flickered around his consciousness thickened until he could not ignore them. Wandering through a defeated camp, overseeing his men as they dispatched the wounded and took heads, he stumbled across a scene his tattered denial could no longer mask.
One of his soldiers held a hissing, spitting dog-thing, smaller than usual. The man laughed as it snapped and bit at him, displaying the antics of the creature for the amusement of a small group of soldiers who watched him with mixed expressions.
Christopher, disgusted at this petty cruelty, strode over and cuffed the man behind the ear with a mailed fist. The man staggered, dropping the doglike animal to flop a few feet away but unable to flee on its broken legs.
“Just kill the damn thing,” he growled. Drawing his sword, he raised to strike, when motion caught the corner of his eye.
An ulvenman lying close by, wounded but not yet dead, stretched out a paw and whimpered. But not for mercy or vengeance; its attention was not upon Christopher. The ulvenman was reaching for the dog.
In that moment truth came crashing in, flooding over the barriers of his rage and drowning righteous fire in cold, sad horror. The world tilted and spun, although nothing moved at all, and in an instant the scene before him was cast anew, though nothing had changed.
The dog-sized creatures were not animals. They were children. The ulvenman before him was not just a vicious, man-eating beast. It was a mother.
His sword slipped from his paralyzed hands and fell to the earth.
The soldier, rendered insensitive either by constant battle or Christopher’s lax discipline, grumbled.
“Just a bit of sport, sir. You didn’t have to hit me unawares.”
Christopher’s rage boiled over, escaping from him in hyperventilating bursts of breath.
Someone else, not so foolish, moved quietly into view, shielding the soldier. Christopher could not make out his face through the red flare in his vision. Christopher stepped over to one of the silent, gaping watchers and forcefully took his rifle. He spun on his heel, stepped over the dying ulvenman, and leveled the barrel at its head. It ignored him, staring only at the pup. He pulled the trigger with all of the mercy left in his body.
Automatically he broke open the rifle, ignoring the blood spattered across his legs. Someone, somewhere, said something he could not hear through the blood pounding in his ears.
“We are not savages!” Christopher screamed in response. Or perhaps in denial. “We must kill, but we do not torture!”
The interloper stood up from where he had knelt over the pup. The small creature was still, its throat slashed in barbaric mercy. Christopher recognized the man’s face. Karl, severe and grim.
Karl turned to the soldier, advanced with the bloody knife, and slashed the stripes from the man’s shoulders. He knocked the rifle out of his hands, letting it fall discarded to the ground.
“You are dismissed,” Karl said.
Shocked, the soldier looked over his shoulder to the hostile swampland. He opened his mouth to argue, but Christopher cut him off.
“Get out! Get the dark out of my army, you filthy animal. Go!”
The soldier stepped back, pressed by the gale force of Christopher’s anger. “But—”
Christopher turned to the soldier whose rifle he had taken. “Give me another round.”
Silence descended over the camp. The soldier dared to glance aside, no doubt looking to Karl for help. What he saw could not have comforted him. Slowly, clumsily, he began to extract a paper cartridge from the box at his hip.
“It takes twelve seconds to load a rifle,” Karl said to the doomed fool, his tone jarringly conversational. “I suggest you begin running now.”
“But—”
Karl shrugged.
The man bolted, running for the tree line, sobbing and cursing.
Christopher fumbled with the gun. He didn’t have a lot of practice loading them. He hardly ever touched one. And something was wrong with his eyes; the world was blurred into broad swatches of color, all detail gone, though the ugliness still remained.
He stopped, closed his eyes, and concentrated on breathing. When he was calmer, he opened his eyes and finished charging the weapon. Looking up from his task, he saw no sign of the target of his ire. Wordlessly he handed the rifle back to the man he had taken it from.
He collected his sword from the ground and walked away with it in hand, unable to trust himself to any more complex action. There was no danger of accidental damage from the bared blade; his men kept their distance.
His anger protected him the remainder of the day, on the long march back to their fort, while he dismounted and stabled his horse, even through a tasteless dinner. Only after the sun had long sunk and the jungle made its night music did righteousness desert him. He sent for Karl, intent on reversing the doom he had meted out.
Karl refused him.
“No,” the young soldier said. “You cannot change your mind now. It would destroy all discipline. What soldier would obey a hard order if they thought you might rescind it but given a little time?”
“He’ll die,” Christopher said. “Sending him out alone and unarmed into that swamp is a death sentence.” A permanent one, since the body would likely never be found.
Karl shrugged, the same movement he had made in answer to the miscreant’s argument.
“It was my fault,” Christopher argued. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
“You are wrong,” Karl said. “They need to love you, but they must also fear you.”
“It has to stop. That kind of behavior cannot be tolerated. They can’t do that, Karl. I can’t let them.”
“I assure you, Colonel. You will not see such mischief again.”
Something in Karl’s choice of words troubled Christopher.
“I won’t see it . . . not that it won’t happen? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Karl almost shrugged again, but Christopher’s piercing glare would not be evaded.
“Soldiers are creatures of violence,” Karl said. “They necessarily deal in pain and death.”
“Hardly any of them are soldiers,” Christopher objected. “They’re just farm boys with guns.”
“Farmers are hardly any more gentle. To scratch a living out of tears and dirt leaves little in the way of sympathy. The cow that nursed your infant child is sent to the butcher the first day her milk fails.
“And you must remember,” Karl added before Christopher could respond, “they are from a White county, but they are not White. Many find your doctrine almost as incomprehensible as that of the Black.”
The vast bulk of Christopher’s army was Green. Karl himself was Blue. Only the priests had to be White; there could be as few as seven people in the entire army who would put any intrinsic value on the rights of others, particularly when those others weren’t human.
“But I can’t allow it.” Regardless of the morality of his men, he was the one in charge.
“You do not allow it. You do everything in your power to prevent it. Nonetheless, it may occur. And I will deal with it before you find out.”
“You’ll tell me, then?” Christopher asked, but Karl wasn’t nodding in agreement. “How many other times has this already happened?”
“You ask, so I can refuse. But do not order me to tell you, because I will not. If the men see that I tattle ever
y event to you, then they will stop telling me. And at least one of us has to know what is actually going on.”
“Wait a minute,” Christopher said. “I can’t do this. I can’t sit here, knowing that I don’t know what crimes my men are committing, and go on as if nothing were wrong.”
“Then disband the army,” Karl barked.
Christopher gawked at him, surprised by the harshness of his tone.
“I can’t do that, either,” Christopher sighed. His moral duty to the slaves of the ulvenmen was only one of many reasons.
“The cynic says, ‘White won’t stay White long on a battlefield,’” Karl said. “But I and the men will do everything in our power to prove it wrong. We will shield you from the blood and bile with our bodies and our souls. Because you are our only hope. Your purity is the shelter that covers our kith and kin. Your dream of utopia is the only dream we have.”
It wasn’t utopia he was after. Even Christopher wasn’t that optimistic. All he wanted was to make things better, not perfect. But from the perspective of the peasants, the luxuries and rights common Americans took for granted was a fairy tale. From the perspective of oppressed serfs like Torme had been, it was even less believable.
“Is it your dream too?” he asked Karl. “Do you think we can make a better world?”
Karl almost smiled. “I believe you believe it.”
At the next ulvenman camp Christopher annoyed his soldiers by ordering them to hold their fire. His new rank had given him new magic, and now he could cast the spell that Krellyan had used to talk to him when he had first stumbled through the Saint’s door. For a brief time he could extend his magical grasp of language to cover all spoken tongues. It was not as useful an effect as one might suppose, since the entire Kingdom spoke the same language except when casting spells.
But in this case it allowed him to treat with the ulvenmen. He dismounted and walked forward while Royal snuffled in loud disapproval. He suspected the rest of the army felt the same way, but apparently they had better manners than the horse.
The howls and barks from the camp ahead of him resolved into words and sentences. The transformation was not particularly enlightening: mostly the ulvenmen seemed to be working themselves into a battle frenzy by trash-talking. “I kill many and feast on brains!” and that kind of thing.
“Attention!” he shouted. Or at least he tried to; what came out was a short, savage bark. When it had no effect, he moved closer and shouted louder.
Finally an ulvenman stuck its head out from around a hut and answered him. “Be silent, man-pup. The warriors are speaking.”
Not quite the response he expected, but he soldiered on. “I have come to speak to the warriors. Instruct them to attend to my words.” The spell translated his meaning into the appropriate idiom for his audience, which in the ulvenman case seemed both formal and blunt.
The ulvenman laughed at him. “You will be eaten first for your presumption.” Its head disappeared back behind the hut, and after a moment the noise from the camp subsided into a conversation Christopher could not overhear.
A few more ulvenman heads popped out, inspected him, and disappeared again, followed by urgent whispering.
“Ahem,” Christopher said.
The sounds of a brief struggle, and the ulvenman was shoved into view again. Like a dog it tried to turn tail and run, only to be blocked by a harsh bark.
Reluctantly the ulvenman faced Christopher. “The warriors wish you to instruct me with your words. I will then carry your words to the warriors.”
“Tell the warriors to come out and speak to me directly.”
The ulvenman stood patiently, scratching its ear with a long-fingered paw.
“Why do you not do as I request?” Christopher demanded.
“Is that the entirety of your words?” it asked.
“No, of course not. I wish to deliver my words directly to the warriors.”
The ulvenman suddenly flopped down on its haunches to scratch more vigorously at its ear with its larger, stubby-toed foot. When it was satisfied it stood up and addressed Christopher again.
“The warriors wish you to instruct me with your words.”
Christopher growled in his throat. The spell did not need to translate this universal sign of exasperation. The ulvenman grimaced, which on its long snout came out more like a hyena’s smile.
“Understand, you are over there, but the warriors are over here. If you came over here then you would be closer than the warriors, and I would do what you say.”
“You could come over here,” Christopher said.
Another hyena smile.
“That is not a good idea.”
Christopher could tell that other ulvenmen were watching him. He could feel the pressure of their gaze, peeking out from the straw-and-mud huts and possibly even the long grass.
“Tell the warriors blarrguuhhhh,” he said. It didn’t come out as intended because halfway through his sentence someone shot him in the throat with an arrow, neatly bypassing all of his magical, heavy armor.
A larger, more impressive ulvenman stood up from the grass, bow in hand. “The god-man is silenced!” it shouted. “Attack!”
It was most disturbing. Although the arrow did not threaten his life, thanks to his tael, it still prevented him from speaking in any intelligible manner. He could taste blood and iron in the back of his throat every time he exhaled a breath. As ulvenmen burst out from the huts and up from the grass, he marveled at how close they had crept during the brief conversation.
Then he began to feel fear. He was out in front of his army, alone, on foot, and unable to cast spells. The monsters could quite conceivably overwhelm him and pull him down. If they dragged him into their camp, they could gnaw on him till his tael failed and then quite possibly eat him before his army could rescue his corpse. Or, worse, throw him into the fire.
The ulvenman he had been talking to was dancing with glee at his predicament. When it caught him staring, it threw back its head and barked in mocking laughter.
Then somebody shot it.
From behind Christopher came the sound of thunder, followed by a rolling cloud of sulfurous stench. Ulvenmen fell before him, but not all of them died. Christopher tore the arrow from his throat, his tael blocking the agonizing pain that would have dropped him like a sack of potatoes and sealing the gash in his arteries that would have bled him out in seconds, but he still could not speak. The flesh was intact but not entirely functional.
Automatically he tried to cast a healing spell. But that required speaking. He started running instead, turning his back on the ulvenmen and lumbering through the grass. He didn’t have to outrun the ulvenmen. He just had to give his army time to reload.
He didn’t quite make it. Something plowed into his back, and he went facedown into the dirt. Claws scrabbled at his neck for a moment while he struggled ineffectually. He had not cast the strength spell before this battle. Now he was pinned underneath several hundred pounds of rabid dog-man.
The claws stopped grasping, and Christopher’s danger was reduced to ignominious suffocation. Before that sorry fate claimed him, the dead weight was dragged free.
Gregor extended his hand and helped Christopher to his feet. The knight-priest touched Christopher’s throat and cast a minor healing.
“Thank you,” Christopher said, trying not to be too humiliated.
“It was a good effort.” Gregor patted Christopher on the shoulder. “I don’t know that I would have been so trusting, but that’s why I’m not head of our Church. I’m learning from you. Now pray tell me the lesson is over.”
Christopher thought of the cooking pits, and what he was likely to find inside this camp.
“It is for today,” he said, and drew his sword.
Another camp, another day, and again Christopher tried to parley, but this time he did it from atop his horse with bared blade.
“Send out your slaves!” he demanded. The ulvenmen barked at him, so he had a cannon blow up a
hut.
There was a commotion in the camp, but the ulvenmen didn’t swarm out and attack immediately.
“And if they do send out their slaves, then what?” Torme asked him.
“I don’t know,” Christopher said. “Do you have any ideas?” Gregor and Torme were servants of Marcius, too. They should be figuring this stuff out as much as he was.
Torme looked over his shoulder to the rear lines where the young priestesses waited to begin their healing. “I begin to see the attraction of the pacifism of the Bright Lady,” he said.
Disa and the other priestesses had refused to even discuss the issue with Christopher. “The hand that wields the blade must choose the cut,” she had told him. “This is between you and your Patron.”
Christopher didn’t rebuke Torme. He felt a similar regret. But once he had picked up a sword, there had never seemed to be a chance to lay it down.
An ulvenman sauntered out of the camp bearing a large sack. Christopher held up his hand to still his army’s impulse to shoot everything that moved. The ulvenman didn’t walk in a very straight line, but eventually it got within a few yards of Christopher.
“That’s close enough,” Christopher said. “But I don’t want tribute. I want your slaves.”
The ulvenman nodded vigorously and upended the sack.
Human heads rolled onto the ground, bloody and fresh.
Christopher’s horror was blocked by sheer confoundedness. Out of simple shock he said, “Where is the rest of them?”
“We brought you the heads, undrained, as you demanded,” the ulvenman said, clearly irritated at his question. “But there is no sense in wasting good meat.”
Utterly defeated, Christopher banged his head on his horse’s thick neck.
“Colonel?” said Karl, looking for instruction. Christopher waved his free hand at the direction of the camp. This was sufficient for the army, and gunfire began in earnest.
Once the artillery realized they did not have to worry about collateral damage, they systematically obliterated every structure in the camp before the infantry advanced. Consequently this camp had cost the army not even a single casualty, which pleased Karl immensely.