Then it burst apart as well.
Shadows floated at the core of whirling metal and shredded fabric: snapping sharp-jawed inchoate forms circled by spinning silver bands which might have been light, or else metal thinned translucent. The shadows strained, sprouted tentacles and pincers and long clawed arms, became steel and stone and mirror bright, but could not burst free.
“Please excuse my delay,” a woman said behind her. She recognized Elayne Kevarian’s voice before she turned and saw her there, standing outside the open door to her room. The Craftswoman wore a white bathrobe, and her hair was wet. Glyphs glowed on her bare wrists and fingers and brow. She held one hand before her, finger tracing slow circles in the air, in time with the turning silver bands. “I was in the shower.”
“It’s okay,” Mina said, dimly, because she had to say something. “Thank you.”
Elayne snapped her fingers twice. The shadows trapped in silver changed once more, to crystal, and shattered. Falling shards sublimated to steam. The metal bits, too, fell, but these did not disappear. They struck carpet with the soft patter of spring rain.
“What is going on here?” Elayne asked, but Mina did not hear her.
Caleb lay at her feet. Blood seeped from his scars, and striped his bathrobe from inside. Mina pressed the robe against him with her hands, but the blood kept coming. Caleb coughed wetly.
“He needs a hospital,” Elayne said, and Caleb hovered over the carpet as if he’d been raised on a stretcher. “I’ll call us a cab.”
* * *
“Two more Couatl down.”
“Gods’ balls.” The King in Red pounded the side of the vision well with his fist, and ground his teeth. “What the hells is happening down there?”
Beneath the water, fires still burned, and Chakal Square convulsed in pain. But the tempo of the convulsions had changed, radiating from the battleground by the fountain to the camps beyond. A light shone amid the tents.
“Hostages secure,” the dreamer said. “Team Seven lifting off. Carrying a few members of Team Three, whose mount just went down.”
“Get out of there,” Chimalli said. “Fast, and fly high.” The vision well flashed once more, and the image zoomed toward the light: their Couatl outlined in green, and the invader, the newcomer, a moving white dot, humaniform and mountainous when he stood still long enough for them to see. “Sir, we’re losing Couatl fast. And people. Five down.”
“We can’t pull back now.”
“Sir, with all due respect. We didn’t plan this mission as a battle. We wanted to get in, cause chaos, get out. We’ve hit their leaders. We have the hostages. The longer we stay—”
“If we don’t kill Temoc, all we’ve done tonight is worthless.”
“We planned a surgical strike. We didn’t expect to fight the God Wars over again. We pull out now, we tell everyone that we did what we went there to do, we rescued some people and some Wardens got hurt doing it. It’s a win. The city will see it that way. Whatever Temoc’s doing, we haven’t put a scratch on him yet. You’re throwing good people away.” My people, he didn’t say. My people, who did not go into this equipped to fight gods and their anointed. My people, who are dying. “Pull back. Reevaluate.”
“We should press our victory.”
“This isn’t a victory anymore. Now it’s a draw we can dress up as a win. You’re on tilt, sir. Keep going and you’ll have a rout on your hands, and not the good kind.”
“Four-six and Four-seven down. Team Four holding altitude.”
“Think it through.” Please.
Kopil growled. The vision well swept closer to the battle, until the dreamers writhed with agony and a single form filled the water: a light-riven silhouette, a weapon dressed up like a man. A Warden ran against him, a squaddie from Fisherman’s Vale Chimalli had met in passing twice, what was the man’s name? Temoc struck him so fast the dreamer could not capture the speed of it, and he collapsed.
“Sir,” Chimalli said.
Green light glinted off the King in Red’s crown. The room was quiet. The others had stopped talking, stopped breathing even.
“Warden down,” a dreamer said.
“Fine.” Kopil’s voice was soft and sharp. “Fine. Call them back. Call them all back. Mission complete.”
“All squads,” Chimalli said. “Take flight.”
* * *
Temoc did not understand the cheers at first. He was finishing a fistfight on a Couatl’s surging back: a Warden swung a club at his face and he took the club away, dislocated the man’s arm, punched his neck twice, broke some ribs with a kick, and knocked him off the Couatl. The Couatl’s wings surged, taking flight, beautiful pinions flared—even at night the feathers sparkled, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires extruded to airy thinness. He considered breaking the wings, decided against it. These were still the gods’ birds, even if perverted by Craftsmen’s hands. These were the gods’ birds, and he had killed too many today.
The Couatl was ten feet already in the air and climbing, a corkscrew toward the clouds. He stepped off and fell to land in a clearing where tents once stood. Everywhere around him he heard the roar of human voices, and spun, searching for the new threat.
At last he realized there was no threat. His people were shouting for joy.
He looked skyward. Couatl flew north. They bore captives and casualties, but they were leaving.
He had won. They had won.
At what cost?
A sudden touch on his back, getting old, too far gone to hear someone sneaking up behind him in a crowd. He spun, fast, smooth, catch the hand and twist back, follow the arm’s line up to throat, grip the trachea between forefinger and thumb—
When his eyes caught up with the rest of him, he realized he was choking Chel. He released her arm and stood back, hands raised between them. “Chel! Gods, I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said, hoarse, “that’s fine, I didn’t need that throat for anything anyway.”
She was bloody. A bruise covered her cheek. Her shirt was torn and there were sooty handprints on her face. Blood trickled from burst stitches. Blood on her chest, too, though that wasn’t hers. He could tell. The smell was wrong.
In one hand she held a crossbow, Warden make, no quarrels left. Her breath came slow and deep. Again the crowd roared, a wave of sound that buoyed her up. Her thin lips broke into a smile.
“We won,” he said.
She nodded. “They’re pulling back. The camp’s safe for now. Wardens even pulled back from the barricades. Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to us.”
“No,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “How are the rest?”
“I can’t,” she started, decided against finishing. Took his arm. “You need to see.”
She led him through the wreckage of the tents, through embers, flame, and smoke, past bodies smashed like kindling. Moans rose from the dying. The camp smelled of salt and sickeningly of pork.
The Major lay amid the burning tents.
Others stood around him, and their presence was a relief: Bill Kemal was there and Kapania, Bill breaking open a crate of bandages as Kapania applied salve. Temoc recognized the red-arm beside the Major, though he did not know the man’s name. Each looked up, over, to Temoc in his or her own time. But they did not greet him like they would have two days ago, as a friend and colleague. There was awe in them. They looked at him as if he was more than a man who had abandoned his family. They looked at him as if he was something good, or failing that, something great.
He knelt beside the Major.
The armor was torn in many places. The first would have been enough: a Couatl’s claw pierced the sheet metal over his stomach into the belly below. What damage the claw inflicted, the torn metal made worse, its edges grinding into meat. But the Major had fought on: punctures in his breastplate from crossbow damage, more buckling from the blows of superhuman fists. His sword arm lay at an almost-right angle. Behind his visor, his eyes twinkled red in firel
ight. The armor did not reflect as it had before. Because of the blood.
But still he breathed.
“Temoc.” That not-quite-human voice. “Temoc.”
“Hello,” he said. He did not know the dying man’s name, and could not ask it now. “I came back.”
“Thank you.”
Temoc wanted to thank him in turn. Many ways the Major could have said “I told you so,” many tirades he might have delivered against soldiers who deserted their posts in wartime. But such words would have served Temoc more than the Major, and Temoc’s needs did not matter now. “You’re welcome.”
“The camp?”
“Safe,” he said.
“They’ll be back. Stronger. Not just Wardens. The King in Red will come.”
“We’ll stop him.”
“You need—” He coughed, wetly, a drowning man’s cough. “You need strength.”
“The gods are with us.”
“The gods.” Another cough. “The gods aren’t enough. As they are. Sleeping.”
“They helped us fight off the Wardens.”
“You need more. You know I’m right.”
He was. Kneeling, as the battle-rush receded, Temoc felt more tired than he had in years. He might win another battle like this one, but the King in Red would not repeat himself. Not when he learned Temoc had joined the resistance in Dresediel Lex. The Craftsman would crush Chakal Square with his full weight. “That’s why we need you. Let me get this armor off. I can heal you. We’ll face them together.”
“You don’t need me. The people will follow you.”
“I’m just one man.”
“That’s why.” He nodded. “You need the gods. Awake. You need them strong. You need them fed.”
“No,” Temoc said.
“It is the only way.”
“We left that path. The people—”
“The people don’t care about theology. They are passion and fear and anger and they need gods to fuel that passion, soothe that fear, stoke that anger.” The Major grabbed Temoc’s arm in one gauntleted fist, and squeezed. The plates of his fingers tugged at Temoc’s shirt, and the blood on his hands left a stain among the other stains. “And I’m almost gone anyway.”
“I can save you.”
“For a day or two, until I die. But you can do better. You can make me mean something.”
Blasphemy even to propose it. Well. Not blasphemy. The gods demanded sacrifice. But for twenty years Temoc had taught another way, preached sacrifice in the living body. To feed the gods and live as the modern world could still permit.
But he had come to defend a people the modern world would not allow to live much longer. He set himself against the King in Red as surely as he had decades before, when he fought the Craftsmen in the skies above Dresediel Lex. And tonight he had pledged his son to the gods’ service in the old way, with scars and blood and sacred rites.
Had he lied to himself all these years, thinking he could walk any other path? Thinking he could build peace with the King in Red, that all things true and good in Quechal life could survive when the pyramids became office buildings and old calendars gave way to new?
“Not tonight,” he said. “There is no eclipse. The gods will not receive a sacrifice out of cycle.”
He knew the excuse was feeble before he spoke, before the Major laughed. “The gods have not fed for forty years. They will forgive what they must, to eat.”
“This will turn them all against us. The whole city.”
“They’re against us already.”
“I can’t.”
“Temoc.”
“We have come so far.” Head bent near the Major’s helm, he barely had the voice to speak.
“Give me my death.”
Knives in the dark. She’d screamed at him. His son, bleeding, on the bed. And then how many dead in the last few hours? He’d strangled Couatl with his bare hands, in the air. Battle joined already.
They stirred within him, beneath him, around and above.
Is he right?
No answer came that he could hear. Pride even to ask the question. We know the gods’ will through our deeds.
The Major’s breath grew heavy. Death pressed down on him. “Soon, now.”
Temoc slid his hands under the man’s back. The metal was sticky with blood. He lifted, and found the Major lighter than he’d thought. Metal plates clanked as Temoc cradled the living body. A groan escaped the Major, so soft he could barely hear.
“Temoc?” Bill Kemal, kneeling. “What’s happening?”
“He has asked for his end,” Temoc said. “I will grant it to him.”
He understood. Blanched, and stared at Temoc as if seeing him for the first time, or seeing for the first time what he’d been all along.
Temoc turned to Chel. “Summon them.”
“Who?”
“Everyone.”
51
“All forces withdrawn,” the dreamer said. “Groups one, two, three, five, eight confirmed safe. Recovering to secured positions. Awaiting orders.”
“That’s the last of them,” Chimalli said. “We’re done here.”
“You may go,” the King in Red replied. “If you wish. I want to see how this plays out.”
“We’ll have options for tomorrow’s assault on your desk by four in the morning.”
The skeleton peered into the vision well. “Temoc’s carrying the Major to the prayer mats.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Chimalli said. “The Major’s shown no religious inclination before.”
The King in Red did not respond.
“I’m in favor of the stun option myself,” Chimalli ventured. “There are health risks, but we can neutralize the crowd with minimal risk to our people. And it’s memorable. Everyone in Chakal Square will know that if they work within the system they’ll be protected, and if they try to fight, they’ll just look foolish. They’ll realize protest is a gift we allow them, not a power they hold. And we’ll foster a reputation for resolving dangerous situations gently.” No response. He kept going, in hope. “We could let most of the people go—jail the leaders, try them. Everyone else wakes up at home in bed.”
“Captain,” the King in Red replied. “Please shut up. And watch.”
“Sir?”
One skeletal finger pointed down into the water. Chimalli knew he must have been mistaken, too much coffee, too long in that dim foul-smelling room, but he thought he saw the finger shake. “They are making our decision for us.”
* * *
Temoc lay the Major upon the makeshift altar.
Smoke rose and fire burned. Heat bloomed on his skin. He was not a weapon now. Only a priest, with a job to do.
The thousands gathered to watch. Wounded, seared, broken, blind with exhaustion, they knelt on the grass mats, or nearby.
Not all came. Some manned barricades, some doused fires, rebuilt the shattered camp. But many. Chel stood beside him. The altar strained beneath the Major’s weight, of armor and flesh.
The Major had not spoken since Temoc set him down. His breath came faster.
Temoc spoke the gods’ words.
“Qet Sea-Lord, Ixchitli Sun-Shaper
The Twins gave of themselves when the sun their father died
Yes, they gave of themselves—suckled serpents on their blood
Suckling serpents they became the world
Becoming the world they became a bridge
A bridge—between man and god
A bridge—between our world and the next
Two united, each informing each
Blood for blood, hunger for hunger,
Thirst for thirst repaid.”
And on the litany rolled, words first heard in youth and spoken so many times since, words that came easy to his lips yet fell heavily from them to strike the air like an immense bell’s clapper.
The people watched. He felt their faith, their fear, saw it even when he closed his eyes, a sea of green he could inhale, make part of
himself, and offer as he offered this sacrifice, this willing human being, to the powers that made them all.
The Major’s terror grew as he faced death. No matter that he had begged for it. He was still afraid, and Temoc was still the man who held the knife.
He lifted it: not the black glass blade reserved for sacrifice on Quechaltan and for the making of new Eagle Knights. He had found a blade of simple steel. It would serve. This was no great altar, sanctified by generations, but each altar took its first blood sometime.
He’d denied that truth for so long.
Few in the audience could understand the High Quechal prayer. Few ever had, even in the old days, when hundreds of thousands gathered to see the death that made the sun live again.
“The gods ask us all to give according to our strengths,” he said in Kathic. “And we fortunate few are called to give our hearts.”
He bent over the Major, who lay prone and still. Unconscious, Temoc thought, until he heard the man’s voice: “Don’t let them see me.”
“I will not,” he replied.
Temoc gripped the Major’s breastplate and tore the steel. The gods gave him strength. The armor opened for him like flower petals, rising to obscure the Major’s body.
She wore a thick leather shirt under the makeshift armor, but that could not hide her as the metal had. Temoc said nothing—only hesitated as he cut the leather out of the way. But the Major caught him again by the hand, strong in her, his, last breath. “Do it.”
He raised the knife.
He heard Chel breathe beside him, heard nothing else in the silence. His arm trembled above his head. He shifted grip on the knife, pommel down.
He struck fast. The breastbone broke, as needed. There was no scream. Muscles in the Major’s throat corded, strangling his cry.
Gods stirred. Faces pressed through the world’s gauze, endless eyes watching him. Mouths, open, hungry. He knew their names, he knew each tooth. They waited for their child to offer them a gift. No matter that he was an unworthy priest, that the gift itself could not match their radiance. Time was a single scream, a single breath. Gods and men trembled on the edge of a knife, a single drop now tumbling toward eternity as the blade swept down, and blood wept, and divine eyes opened, and the whole world sighed at once and was, as ever, saved.
Last First Snow Page 26
