by D. J. Butler
“I’d a said fifty times fifty is a passel.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bill sat uneasily in the saddle.
The problem wasn’t his legs. They hurt, and after the blow they’d taken on the wall of Irra-Zostim, they might always hurt. Neither Sarah nor Cathy offered any promises to the contrary, and he asked for none.
He was a cripple.
Maybe, some day, he’d walk with a cane. For now, he rode or he leaned on a pair of crutches.
He told himself he wasn’t troubled by Jake’s departure, but that wasn’t true. Jake had left that morning early on foot, carrying a sack of coffee beans over which Sarah had waved the Orb of Etyles and muttered her speed-and-endurance spell. She had also chanted Latin over a schoolboy’s writing slate—procured by Uris from one of the village children for the price of an iron coin—then snapped it in half and given Jake one of the pieces.
Cathy had spoken private words with the Dutchman too, and Bill had the distinct feeling he wasn’t intended to hear them. He had enough chivalric grace to permit Cathy the secret, though he burned with curiosity.
Jake was the right choice to go find Nathaniel Elytharias Penn, but Bill found he’d come to depend on the queer Dutchman. It was Jake who had connected the markings on the Tarocks and the stones of Irra-Zostim and the shelves of the palace of life. It was Jake who had taught Bill to command the beastkind troop—and then the Firstborn, who took to the melodic commands quickly once Jake explained them.
Bill rested his hand on the Heron King’s horn, hanging at his side.
The beastkind added to his sense of unrest. The experiment with Ferpa had demonstrated that the magical oaths binding the beastfolk to Sarah—and presumably also the oaths binding the Firstborn to her service—were damaged by contact with silver. Enough silver would likely destroy them.
That made Sarah’s open treatment of the Firstborn seem more—Bill couldn’t decide. Foolish? Maybe. If she revealed her secrets and weaknesses to someone who could be converted into an enemy by the mere application of silver, then yes. But if Sarah’s revelations bound them beyond the duration of the oath?
Bill had many questions, and few answers.
Though if an oath bound by the Sevenfold Crown was an essential part of Cahokia’s constitution, it seemed odd that the application of silver should be enough to dissolve the oath. Bill grimaced and filed the thought away for later consideration.
Sarah had spent a week in the palace of life, talking with the priestess. She hadn’t told anyone—hadn’t told Bill, at any rate—what she had learned from the experience. She seemed to be learning the Firstborn’s language, and maybe other things. History? Ritual? Secrets?
Or Sarah was learning one of their languages, apparently. Bill had never realized there were several.
Languages were not his forte.
Cahokia itself didn’t trouble Bill; he had been there before. But the thought that they would now ride into the moundbuilder capitol, aiming to participate in some Christmas Day ritual in which the Cahokian goddess Wisdom might, or might not, select Sarah as Queen of Cahokia made Bill uncomfortable.
It also left him puzzled. Why would she not simply become queen, being her father’s eldest living child? Bill had always respected the kingship of his friend Kyres, but he was beginning to realize he had never truly understood it. The awareness of his own ignorance was unsettling.
Leaving the protective palisade walls of Irra-Zostim added to Bill’s discomfort. He rode with a large troop of soldiers now, and their three-times-daily regimen of training was making them adept at forming up, marching forward and back, shooting, reloading, setting spears to receive an enemy attack, and more.
But something had caused a horde of beastkind to charge the palisade wall. Bill had ridden the Missouri as well as the Great Plains, he’d seen reptilian beastkind in the deserts of Texia and New Spain whose mere appearance strained a normal man’s sanity. He’d never even heard of such a large group of them massed together, and he’d never seen such an attack. Feral beastkind were generally solitary. It was as if a pack of jaguars had charged the wall—such a thing was always possible in theory, but was simply not part of the ordinary behavior of the beasts.
Something was driving them. Something extraordinary.
Sarah was right. This was the beginning of the reign of Simon Sword.
Mercifully, beastkind had not again swarmed the palisade while they were at Irra-Zostim.
They traveled north toward Cahokia, two days’ ride away. The priestess again rode in her palanquin with the idiot Polite, but Uris and Yedera were now persuaded to mount horses, along with those of the Firstborn warriors who were becoming cavalrymen. Cal had been as much help as Jake with that part of the project, teaching the Ophidian soldiers how to picket a horse, what to feed it, and how to extract a pebble from an animal’s hoof, though Cal always demurred and stepped aside when it came time to talk about the mechanics of a charge, or how to fire a pistol while mounted.
Bill allowed each Ophidian soldier only three paper cartridges, keeping the blocky ammunition boxes strapped to the beastkind. He didn’t want the Firstborn to panic and start shooting from afar on horseback; he wanted them to charge with saber and spear, after musket fire and the beastkind had softened up an enemy.
Bill had lost track of the days, but he thought November was growing long in the tooth the day they rode out. That first evening, he planned to provision in a small crossroads town whose English name was Wartburg, and make camp beyond it in the forest. As alien as he still found the Cahokians, he had ridden their land, and remembered where there was good water and a sheltered valley out of sight of the highway.
But they had come to a stop in Wartburg, finding it burned to the ground.
“Wisdom’s name,” Alzbieta Torias said, surveying the smoking wreckage from her sedan chair.
“The granaries.” Uris seemed more interested in some smoldering wreckage at the edge of town than in the corpses strewn in front of him.
“Beastkind?” Sarah asked.
Bill was glad she considered the possibility, though he didn’t think beastfolk had done this. “I doubt it, Your Majesty. Calvin, would you please look at the damage with me and give me your professional view?” He levered himself carefully down the side of the gray, taking his crutches and handing Cathy the animal’s reins.
She looked lost in thought.
“As a cattle rustler?” Cal grinned.
“Yes,” Bill said. “Or a tracker, as you please.” He turned to Chikaak, who grinned disconcertingly, tongue hanging out his muzzle. The coyote-headed beastman had a coyote’s sense of smell and would be able to tell him much more about the wreckage, but Bill first wanted to confirm his hunch that children of Adam were to blame for the devastation.
Wartburg had mounds. They weren’t the conical stargazing ceremonial temples like Irra-Zostim and the Great Mound at Cahokia, but the lower mounds, multichambered, in which the Firstborn sometimes lived.
Bill had seen such a mound under construction once, in the Missouri but close into Cahokia where there were still passable roads. Kyres Elytharias had stayed in the region several weeks, riding after bandits and murderers and thieves by day and then presiding over their trials and punishments by torchlight. Over the weeks, a mound had come into being from nothing on the site of the court. The builders had begun by fabricating something that looked like a multichambered log home, single story, complete with peaked roof. Three long chambers connected by short hallways, and smaller chambers off the sides of each room. Three entrances, one at each end of the string of rooms and a third in the middle. The walls were tall, resulting in high ceilings with storage lofts above the ceilings and under the rooftops’ peaks.
Then they had covered the entire thing in dirt. The peaks of the rooftops, from twelve feet off the ground, had been sunk beneath three feet of dirt. The next year, passing through, Bill had seen a mound with three doors in the sides, new grass climbing up its lower slop
es, and beans, corns, and squash growing together in rows along the top.
What he saw now was mounds with their rooftop crops scorched by fire. Fire was why he doubted beastkind were the culprits—fire could be accidental, but as a weapon it was the weapon of ravagers who wished permanently to destroy, and not of wild animals.
The thatched wooden buildings of Wartburg were also burned. Bill could see little from the remains, and in his mind’s eye he tried to associate each smoking pit with his memory of a whole building in a thriving market town. There at the crossroads itself—a hotel and a church. The brick building, which had lost its roof and its floors to fire and now sat as a charred and smoking shell, had been a bank. The fourth—Bill couldn’t remember.
Bodies lay in the ruined buildings, and in the fields, and in the streets. From their clothing, many were Cahokian, clad in long tunics and winter cloaks. Others wore German embroidery. Bill saw a pair of dead men in Algonk-style leggings and blankets, their bodies perforated by multiple stab wounds.
Others appeared to have died by gunshot. Beastkind with muskets, like Sarah’s?
“This weren’t done by no beastkind,” Cal said, stalking across a field toward the woods.
Bill hobbled after him on his crutches. “Tell me what you’re seeing.”
“Horses,” Cal said. “The folks as done this rode away on horses. Lessen they’s all beastkind as have the bottom halves of horses.”
“Centaurs,” Bill said.
“Only in my experience, beastkind ain’t half that regular. They’re all different from each other, and ain’t none of ’em as straightforward as you’d think.”
“No centaurs,” Bill said. “Does the reign of Simon Sword bring madness to men, as well?”
Cal straightened and looked across the field, to where Sarah and Alzbieta conversed, horse by palanquin, surrounded by Sarah’s troop. “Why in Jerusalem would you ask me that?” he asked. “Iffen you think I got any insight at all into Simon Sword, you’ve got me wrong, Bill.”
Bill sighed. “I’m in over my head, too. And I’m only thinking out loud. We need more information about the men who did this.”
“Like hell we do. We need to git Sarah behind walls where she’s safe. Iffen it ain’t back to Irra-Zostim, it’s on to Cahokia. We git some of the same coffee-magic Jake got and do it double-time through the night.”
“Remember that this is Sarah’s kingdom,” Bill said. “This, right here. Wartburg. And it has been destroyed. Sarah has been wronged.”
Cal ground his teeth and kicked at the earth. “Some days I jest reckon Sarah’d be happier iffen none of this had e’er happened. If we’s still back in Nashville, growin’ and sellin’ tobacco, playin’ stupid tricks on preachers when they come to town.”
“We need more information. And you’re the man to get it, Cal,” Bill said.
“Am I?” Cal asked. “You sure you want to send away a workin’ rifle jest now?”
It was a fair question; Bill ignored it. “Take Chikaak. Stay out of sight. Follow the tracks back, and come tell me whatever you learn about the people…the men…who did this.”
His eyes and Cal’s met, and he knew Cal understood. Chikaak could track as well as Calvin, no doubt better, and he was a fierce and competent fighter.
Only the experiment with Ferpa had left Bill uncertain whether he could trust any of the beastkind, if push truly came to shove.
“How long do I follow, afore I turn around?”
“If you don’t catch them by dawn, come back. I would be sorry to lose your rifle.” Bill grinned. “And your tomahawk.”
“And the lariat.” Cal nodded. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“And don’t fight,” Bill said. “If there’s trouble, run. And if you have to choose between putting yourself in danger or giving the danger to Chikaak…don’t be a fool.”
“Right,” Cal agreed. “That sure sounds easy.”
* * *
“Alright, Chikaak,” Cal said. “Tell me what you’re seein’.”
“Smelling, mostly.” The beastman’s voice could sound like a yip or a growl, but it was never very far from the sounds a real coyote might make.
“Yeah. That’s what I meant.”
They walked briskly, Cal leading his horse by its reins. He’d have preferred not to have the animal along, since it was big and its occasional snorts might attract attention of scouts or watchmen, but he wanted to be able to flee quickly, and at a moment’s notice.
The marauders they were following left the obvious tracks of a large mounted party, earth shattered and branches torn off trees growing too close to the path. Cal could follow the tracks at a jogging pace even by the light of the sinking crescent moon, but he did want to know what the beastman detected.
“The warriors we’re following aren’t Ophidians,” Chikaak said. “Also, not beastkind, but you already realize that, or you wouldn’t have brought me along.”
Cal didn’t know whether to read that last comment as a shrewd guess, a wisecrack, or a pointed accusation, so he ignored. “How can you tell?”
“They smell of all the wrong foods. Also, they’re probably not Germans.”
“Food again?”
Chikaak yipped. “I smell liquor, but not beer.”
“A German could drink whisky.”
“Yes. But with this many men, I’d expect to smell more beer.”
“Well, I’m thinkin’ they ain’t Indians.”
“The boot prints,” Chikaak said. “And the horses are shoed.”
“Yeah, though that could be a trick.”
They had come, by Cal’s best guess, ten miles inland. They must catch up to the riders soon.
“You know a lot about the children of Adam,” he said to Chikaak. He spoke in low tones, but he felt he had to speak—too much silence made him feel he was alone with a wild animal. “I guess you’ve traveled.”
“I patrolled the Mississippi as a pup for my lord.”
“Simon Sword?”
“The Heron King. At the time, he was Peter Plowshare.”
“When you say patrolled…”
“I put down wild beastkind,” Chikaak said. “Most of my people who make it to your big cities are civilized. And sometimes I dealt with outlaw sons of Adam.”
“That sounds an awful lot like what they say about the King of Cahokia. The Lion of Missouri.”
“I’ve heard of the Lion,” Chikaak said. “Her Majesty’s father. I didn’t know him.”
“And now he’s Simon Sword, he ain’t keepin’ the wild beastkind in check anymore, is he?”
“Far from it.”
“How’s that make you feel?”
Chikaak looked into Cal’s face with whiteless coyote eyes. “When I haven’t eaten, I feel hungry. When I haven’t slept, I feel tired. When I’ve been wounded, I feel pain. But I don’t feel anything about the priorities of my former lord the Heron King, whether they be peaceful or warlike.”
Cal swallowed, his mouth dry.
They continued in silence awhile.
“Peter Plowshare,” Cal ventured. They neared the crest of a low ridge, bare of trees. “I always took him for a fairy tale, but it turns out he’s a regular king, with border patrols and everythin’.”
“The Heron King isn’t regular.” Chikaak laughed, a sharp bark. “Not in the sense you intend. Peter Plowshare builds. He trades with those who would trade with him, so there are merchants in the Ohio companies and among the Hansa who were well known at his court. But mostly, he builds walls.”
“To keep out the children of Adam?”
“To keep in his own children, once the throne passes to his son.”
“Simon Sword.” Cal considered carefully. Maybe he had an opportunity to understand some of the larger issues that had troubled him. “And iffen I’ve grasped this aright, Simon Sword and Peter Plowshare are the same person.”
“Yes,” Chikaak said. “And no. And yes.”
“Well, that sure clears things up.”
Chikaak laughed again.
“Why ain’t he part of the Empire, then?” Cal asked.
“You would have Simon Sword as an Elector under your Philadelphia Compact?”
Cal shrugged. “I ain’t sure how big his kingdom is, but maybe it’s big enough it could git more than one. Like Louisiana gits two, and it ain’t that big. Acadia gits three. Or take Pennsland.”
“Your Emperor’s holdings.”
“Yeah. The Pennslanders git seven, like this.” Cal sang.
Indians, Eldritch, Christian men
All were welcomed by William Penn
Pittsburgh has Electors two
And three from Philadelphi-oo
Newark and the Delaware make it seven
And old Will Penn has gone to Heaven
“You would have the Heron King approach the Emperor and ask to be granted Electors.”
“I b’lieve he’d have to approach the Electoral Assembly.” Cal was himself a little unsure of the details. “But I reckon he’d git three or four votes, at least. Might depend on how much he’s willin’ to pay in taxes. Hisself an Elector, and mebbe his bishops, or priests.”
“The Heron King has no priests,” Chikaak said.
“I don’t mean they gotta be Christian,” Cal said. “The German duchies get votes, and they ain’t Christian at all. The Crown Lands, too, and they’re about half, I reckon. And the Eldritch…Sarah’s folk…I ain’t exactly figured out what they are, but some of them seem to be Christian, and some don’t. Or it’s a Christianity like I ain’t e’er seen afore.”
“The Heron King has no priests of any kind,” Chikaak said. “You have no need of a priest when your god is present on his throne.”
They reached the crest of the ridge and Cal crouched lower out of instinct. On the other side, in a broad valley, lay a camp. It was too dark to see individuals, so Cal quickly began counting campfires.
“Though he does bestow the gift of prophesy on his minions from time to time.” Chikaak fell silent.
