My headache was clearing up and the assorted aches and pains in my body had largely faded by the time I reached the heart of the secure area where the Shadowed Hand guarded Prophetess. I was even pretty steady on my feet. The side of my face didn’t hurt any less, but I imagined that would be true for a long time. Maybe as long as I lived, which might not be very long at all.
Sam greeted me with a chorus of high-pitched barks. They reawakened the throbbing in my skull.
“Could you maybe give me a break today, dog?” I muttered. She trotted up and butted me with her nose. “Okay, yeah, I’m glad to see you too.”
Ten soldiers surrounded Tess’ tent. Half of them held lit torches even though it was broad daylight, the other half held carbines. I approved. Prophetess had survived one assault from the Darkness and might even be somehow immune to it, but it was better not to take any chances.
Furat came up behind Sam. “How you feeling, Minos?”
“How do I look?”
“That bad?”
“Yeah, pretty much. How many did we lose on that hill?”
The big man sighed. “Midnight Owl didn’t make it. River Mist is leading the clan now. They’ve got seven more dead and one who’s gonna be called ‘lefty’ from now on. Those guys got right in between Prophetess and Yoshana when you went down. It wasn’t a healthy place to be, but they kept her alive.”
I hadn’t exchanged many words with the clansmen from the Sorrows. They were quiet people. But Owl had been a good man. He would have died leading from the front. I sighed. “Who else didn’t make it?”
“None of your Shadowed Hand guys bought the farm. They got Prophetess down off the hill. They made it up there fast, but not as fast as the Hidden Moon Clan. Fast enough to be useful, not fast enough to do any of the dying.” He showed me a crooked smile. “You trained ’em right. And three dead from the soldiers on guard up there from the beginning. Another four that aren’t going to be fighting any time soon, if ever.”
“And on the front?”
“So far fire discipline’s been good on both sides. Trading dirty looks but nothing else. At least as far as I know. I’ve been back here where you put me. That scary adjutant of yours could tell you more.”
He meant Railes. Furat was by far the larger man, and plenty dangerous in a fight, but Railes was a killer through and through. The skull on the side of his face was a declaration of intention, not just a piece of deviant art.
“Thanks. That’s about what I needed for now. I’m going to talk to Tess.” I ruffled Sam’s fur. “Good girl. I heard she went up with the Hidden Moon Clan. I guess she gets along with them now?”
Furat gave me a strange look. “Well now, sure. That’s not a problem anymore.”
I thought I was missing a piece of the conversation, but patted him on the shoulder and moved on.
“That Prophetess really is something,” Furat said behind me. “I can see why you did it. Picking her side, I mean.”
“Yep. I should have listened to her on this one.” It seemed petty when lives had been lost, but the words came out anyway. “Now I’m never going to hear the end of it.”
Entering the presence of the living saint. The undisputed prophet of the Lord. The woman who had faced Yoshana’s wrath and lived. I should have been awed, humbled, reverent. I found myself mostly feeling cranky.
My head hurt.
Cat was with her, of course. The paleo glared at me. When Tess had pushed her way into the group going up the hill, I hadn’t let Cat join us. She’d been angry about it at the time. She looked angrier now, even though she probably would have died up there. If she decided to make her displeasure known in a physical way, I was going to lose that fight.
I looked from one woman to the other. I couldn’t read Tess’ face. A series of emotions bubbled up in me. I couldn’t catalog them, but none were pleasant. A half dozen waspish, defensive comments died before they reached my lips. In the end, exhaustion won out.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “You were right. I was wrong.”
The tall woman came forward and folded me into a hug. “Yes. You were.”
She let that sit for a moment, then added, “Nobody had any better ideas.”
Her arms were still around me. I said, “I didn’t think she could beat a Hellguard one on one. I got Seven killed and nearly got you killed.”
I took her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “How did you live?”
She shrugged. “Faith.”
A miracle reduced to one word. A farm girl had resisted an attack that had ripped a three hundred year old genetically engineered warrior’s cells apart. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. What do you want me to say? I believed that God wouldn’t let her hurt me, and he didn’t.”
I shook my head and regretted it again. Aggravated by the pain, I snapped, “Faith doesn’t win battles. Not against something like Yoshana.”
Tess smiled sadly and stepped away from me. “Of course it does. Faith cast the Darkness out of you, but you still don’t believe. Even Thomas believed when he stuck his hand into God’s wounds. How much proof do you need? Put it in terms you’ll understand, Minos. If the Darkness is controlled by the will, why wouldn’t faith be able to turn it aside? You’ve said yourself the battle is won in your enemy’s mind - but before that it has to be won in your own.”
“That’s -” I stopped. I was going to say that wasn’t the way the Darkness worked. That control of psycho-reactive autonomous nano technology wasn’t determined by mystical belief in a divine power, and neither was the outcome of a war. But Seven was dead, and Prophetess was alive. I wasn’t in a strong position to argue.
I did anyway. “It’s still a good thing we have the Hidden Moon Clan. The way I hear it, if it hadn’t been for them - and the Darkness - you wouldn’t have gotten out of there alive.”
Prophetess looked down, and when she met my eyes again, there were tears in hers. “Eight of them died with that filth in them. I can only pray God’s infinite mercy takes them to heaven anyway. And thank God the rest let me free them afterward.”
“Let you free -” My headache came flooding back with crushing force. “You mean you cast the Darkness out of them?”
She nodded. “They were easier than you. There was less in them. And I think they wanted it gone more than you did.”
“That - that was the only edge we had left! You saw how effective it made them, and you got rid of it?”
She flared back, “You’d ask them to give their souls for your military advantage? That’s disgusting.”
“I didn’t put it in them! But with it there, we’d be idiots not to use it. So I guess we’re idiots now. Dammit, Tess, you put me in charge of the military and that was a military decision. You couldn’t have waited three days until the battle was over before you went and messed with my troops?”
Her voice was calmer than mine, but no less angry. “I put you in charge of the military, but God called me to save souls. You can’t ask someone else to do what you wouldn’t do yourself. If it was wrong for the Darkness to be in you, how could it be right to be in them? They’re not things, or tools, or weapons, Minos. They’re people. Like you said Seven was. I’m just sorry I didn’t get it out of all of them before the fight. And out of him.”
As if she could have exorcised a Hellguard. As if he would have let her. I said, “If you’d done that, you might have died up there.”
“Maybe. One day I’ll die. We all will. My life on this earth isn’t worth anyone’s eternal damnation.”
I glanced at Cat. To Tess I said, “You’re surrounded by people who’ll kill for you. Who’ve killed before and will do it again. War isn’t a game. If you fight, you fight to win.”
She nodded. “Yes. God set me this task. But you don’t win if you become what you’re fighting.”
I shuddered, remembering the words of a man long dead. He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze l
ong into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
We all danced on the edge of that abyss, Yoshana’s troops and mine. There was a reason the Overlord used the Canticles of Holy Mary to motivate her troops. Faith was as important to her as it was to Prophetess. Her partisans truly believed they were the righteous.
Dee had seen it more clearly than I did. If we were going to have any hope of surviving the coming battle, I was going to need the occultist’s help to appeal to faith more effectively than the Overlord did.
“I need to talk to Dee,” I said. “I - I’m glad you’re all right.”
A half-formed plan ricocheted inside the walls of my aching head. I turned to go.
“You need to rest, Minos,” Prophetess snapped. “You’re hurt, and tired, and you look like hell.”
“I wasn’t that attractive to start with,” I muttered, “unless you’ve got a thing for gray skin, black eyes, and white hair. The big scar just makes me look dashing. Doesn’t it?”
“You look like hell, Minos,” she repeated. “You’re hardly in shape to think clearly, much less plan strategy. You need to go back to your tent and sleep for a day.”
“If I go back to my tent and sleep for a day, I’m never going to wake up, and neither is anyone else. I know my record hasn’t been great so far, but I’m the only supreme commander we’ve got. I need to get back to supreme commanding.”
Railes was waiting for me outside. He was breathing hard, which was what happened any time he exerted himself. I’d spent the winter worried that he’d get pneumonia and die of the injury to his lung. I thought about that every time I heard him wheezing. Part of me wished he’d retire from the army, but there was no chance he would. And a bigger part of me needed him too much to want him to go.
“Boss, you look like hell,” he said, unknowingly parroting Tess. A pretty damning statement coming from a guy with no right ear and a skull tattooed over half his face.
“Yeah, and you sound like hell,” I retorted. “We make a great pair. I’m not going to look any better tomorrow, and you’re not going to sound any better. So what’s the front look like, and where’s Dee?”
He grinned. “In that order? Yoshana’s spread her wings to flank us. She’s anchored on the woods to our left and right.”
Where I hadn’t let Lago position our troops. Now we were partially enveloped. I still thought we were better off not being infiltrated through the trees. “Did Lago dig in any more on the flanks?”
“Yeah, he’s got the end companies in square, and barricades all around behind us. It’ll slow them down if they come that way. Of course, it wreaks havoc with our line of retreat.”
Retreat would be at the top of everyone’s mind, facing an Overlord and outnumbered two to one. Making a break for Our Lady under the cover of darkness wasn’t the worst idea out there. Getting Tess out was even more tempting. Between the Shadowed Hand, the Monolith rangers, and what was left of the Hidden Moon Clan - even without the Darkness - we had a company-sized escort with serious woodcraft. They should be able to escape.
“How’s morale?” I asked.
“Surprisingly good, considering our general and his demon champion got their asses kicked. The troops like having a prophet who can face the Darkness and live. And to be honest, I’m not sure the Monolith guys were ever totally sold on you anyway.”
“You’re great for the self-esteem, you know that? Where’s Dee?”
“Top of the hill, boss.”
Of course he was.
For years I’d carried a katana shirasaya, without a hand guard and in a simple wooden scabbard so it resembled a walking stick. This was the first time I’d really needed to use it that way. I was wheezing worse than Railes by the time the two of us reached the hilltop.
“Don’t you have troops to be watching?” I growled at the captain. I didn’t need to be forcibly reminded that I now both looked and sounded worse than he did.
“I can see ’em just fine from up here.”
Was he afraid I’d keel over, or that I’d go running off to do something stupid like challenge Yoshana to another duel? I supposed either worry was fair. I was tempted to snap something sarcastic at him, but I didn’t have so many friends that I wanted to annoy one of the few I had.
The day was cloudy but still bright. The view from the height was impressive. In the distance, rolling grasslands stretched into infinity, interrupted by stretches of forest. This had probably been farm country in the Last Days, but with the Fall it had returned to nature.
Closer by the vista was dominated by the armies massed around us - my own behind, Yoshana’s in front. It was disturbing how much larger hers was. Each was laid out in a semicircle centered on the hill. As Railes had said, the enemy flanks slightly overlapped ours, and battle would inevitably start on the wings. For the centers to meet, they would have to storm the hill, which for the moment Yoshana had left to us.
Both groups favored white tabards, ours emblazoned with the circle of roses and spines adopted from Prophetess’ Order of Thorns, the Overlord’s with the golden double halberd of the Darkness Radiant. It was going to be hard telling friend from foe if it came to a melee.
Doctor John Dee wore no uniform at all. The occultist still looked like an animated scarecrow, a tall, gangly man in loose clothes that looked like rags even when they were clean.
Not that I was in a position to talk. I was still wearing the traveling gear I’d taken into the Sorrows. It had been laundered in the two weeks we’d been waiting for Yoshana’s arrival, but that could only accomplish so much. Falling down the hill hadn’t helped. Dirty, wounded, ragged, and gasping, I must have looked like something that had crawled out of a shallow grave.
“Minos!” Dee cried happily. He was always happy to see me, whether I was in favor or a pariah. He was a loudmouthed braggart who could talk the ear off a deaf mule, and at the same time an unrepentant coward. There had been a time when he might have been my only friend in the world.
He clapped me on both shoulders and ran his eyes appraisingly up and down my body. “You look like hell.”
“That’s the consensus.”
I looked past him. There was quite a bit of movement in Yoshana’s camp, although it looked more like drills than preparation for an assault. “What are our friends up to down there?”
“They’ve been quite active since the duel yesterday. BlackShield Lago believes their officers are keeping them busy to get their minds off the fact that Yoshana was unable to kill Prophetess.”
“Yeah. Prophetess surviving was about the only thing that went according to plan yesterday.”
Dee said, “Yes. A defeat for utilitarianism, I must say.”
I knew I was going to regret it, but I asked anyway. “What do you mean?”
His eyebrows went up, then he launched into full lecture. “Well, most simply, utilitarianism is the philosophy that the ends justify the means. Although more precisely that would simply be consequentialism, as utilitarianism also requires maximizing the good, however defined, for the greatest number -”
“I know what utilitarianism is. What do you mean that yesterday was a defeat for it?” I braced for another torrent of words. I should have just told him to shut up. Tess was right - I still wasn’t thinking clearly.
He shrugged. “You believed that using an evil - the Darkness - to defeat another evil would be the most effective course. But in point of fact, your champion was defeated, and Yoshana was thwarted instead by Prophetess.”
“That’s idiotic. Seven didn’t lose because I was morally wrong. He lost because Yoshana was stronger. If I’d had two Hellguards, she’d be a puddle of goo, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And Prophetess didn’t win, she survived, and only because she was saved by a bunch of other people who are infected with the Darkness. Or were until she decided it would be a good idea to exorcise them right before a battle.”
The occultist smiled. “I believe you’re missing the larger point. When your only measure of
success is the military outcome, victory is decided only on the battlefield. When the righteousness of your cause and methods are also measures of success, victory can be achieved even in defeat. Two and a half millennia of Christian martyrs attest to that point.”
Prophetess had said something similar when we’d first faced Yoshana at Stephensburg and lived to tell about it. It was a powerful argument, or at least it had gained us dozens of new adherents. I scowled at Dee. “If I were cynical, I’d say your argument’s no less utilitarian than mine, you’re just bringing in the second order consequences of the means being used. It’s not that the means matter in themselves, it’s that using good means is more likely to get you a good outcome because people perceive you as a good person.”
Dee’s smile widened. “Just so. Although that’s not what Prophetess or Aquinas would say. They would say that right action is its own justification and reward. The more interesting question from your perspective is what Yoshana’s troops think.”
“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He was beaming now. “Excellent! I knew you would eventually come to see the value of philosophy in all human endeavor, including war. Perhaps the blow to your head did you good.”
I was tempted to see if a blow to the head would do him good, but I had come looking for the irritating windbag’s advice. I laid out the problem. “Both sides are on their back foot now. We lost the duel, but Yoshana couldn’t finish off an unarmed farm girl. I understand the morale impact on her troops, but I don’t know what to do with it. They’re well trained, and she’s got a bunch of her veterans in the mix. They won’t break if we attack, and I’m not sure our morale is much better than theirs - we did lose the duel. I see a head to head fight as a clear loss for us. We might pull off a retreat if we make a break for it tonight, but that puts us back in the box we were in before, waiting for Yoshana to march on Our Lady.”
The occultist sucked his teeth, then smiled slyly and said, “I think you’re focused on the wrong enemy. When you want to slay a serpent, you strike off its head.”
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 68