“We hear you!”
“Don’t be afraid!” he told them in parting, and galloped back to the fore.
He had been in battles before, in New Mexico and for a long year in Missouri during Price’s Raid. He knew that the advantage always went to the defenders. But the phantom Castilians were tramping out to meet them, when they could have remained behind the walls of Red House. It wasn’t the best strategy, although they did have the high ground. The strength of numbers went to the army of Don Amadeo, but only by a half dozen or so, and their Indians were not soldiers. If they doubled their march, they might be able to clear the ridge and meet them on even ground at least.
The flaming mane of the spirit horsewhipped in an astral wind and the Rider let it rear on its hind legs. It seemed to anticipate the battle. Though a construct, it was not a dead thing, but the amalgam of the spirits of a courageous line of war horses descended from the very first animals brought to this country by the Spaniards of Amadeo’s day. This, Misquamacus had told him.
He moved ahead of the army, and gradually eased the horse into a run, letting it cut the distance between himself and the enemy in two, clattering easily up a broken draw and bringing it to a stop about fifty feet from their advancing line. He peered at the spirits of the caballeros, trying to gauge their power.
They were not the strapping youths he had seen through the eyes of Amadeo. The corrupting influence of whatever dark powers Mauricio and his extraterrestrial mistress had employed to anchor them to this world was evident. They were undying wraiths, pale and drawn figures in rusted cuirasses and moth eaten pantaloons marching in rotten boots. They saw through eyeless hollows in their weathered faces and gripped their swords in skeletal hands. But their frail appearance didn’t fool him. He knew the physical signs of corruption did not belie the power he could feel emanating from them like stove heat. They were imbued with some mystical enhancement. They did not shamble, but walked briskly in militaristic fashion.
The corrupted Indians at their backs were dark and loping creatures, made ape-like and barbaric by the strange forces to which they had surrendered. They dragged their weapons behind them, clubs and axes.
As the Castilians drew closer, several freed pistols from their faded sashes. The marchers paused and rippled with unnatural fire and puffs of hellish red smoke. The projectiles that zipped toward him glowed like blue coals and came with uncanny accuracy from a distance they should not have been able to accomplish. He ducked as one of the hissing balls nearly creased his skull. More gifts from Mauricio.
He urged the fire horse to unleash its supernatural speed and cut across the ridgeline, trading fire with the marchers with his own mystic pistol to buy the ghost army of Amadeo some time as they ascended the meager trail. Then with a shock, one of the hell bullets pierced the neck of his fire stallion, disrupting its cohesion. Without a cry, the mount disappeared, its aether dispersed. The Rider found himself crashing to the ground.
It was not painful of course, but jarring. He picked himself up and was nearly struck by another bullet. He was not sure what the effect of these weapons would be on him. His teachers had always warned him of the danger in sustaining shock to the spirit form, as a corresponding trauma to the physical system was not unheard of. His encounter in the Yenne Velt with Sheardown had born this out. As above, so below. He hugged the ground between the two advancing armies, and crawled toward the edge of the ridge where Amadeo’s spirits ascended the slope.
Back in the Rider’s protective circle in the real world, the white onager shook its head, startled by the jolt its till-then still master had suddenly given, like a sleeper nearly jerking awake.
Its nostrils flared briefly to smell the blood that ran down the Rider’s arms from fresh cuts in his elbows, such as one might sustain from a bad fall.
Then its ears pricked up, attentive to the sound it had come to know coming from somewhere out in the gathering dark.
The warning rattle and hiss of the creatures that had found its master.
* * * *
Piishi emerged from the trees and reached the top of the ridge, unaware of the vast drama about to play out on the silent ground all around him. He cradled his rifle and crept through the clearing toward the dark blocky shadows of Red House, every sense wide open to the slightest rustle or scuttle. The emerging stars cast a pale light on the rocky ground, and splashed the tops of the trees with silver.
Far beneath the foundation of Red House, something stirred at the light touch of his foot on soil.
Piishi felt the quick tremble in the earth beneath his feet and danced aside as the earth burst open in great clots of dirt and stone and a stench like a corpse pile blew out. Pale, tangled branches punched up out of the ground and splayed outward. A forest of sickly, tuber like growths rapidly sprouted all around Red House.
Then the pale trees began to move.
They bent double and whipped about as though in the midst of a storm, lashing animatedly out at him with ropy tendrils that slashed at his skin and tore his clothes. He dodged nimbly, avoiding the blindly snaking limbs as he backed toward the lip of the ridge, levering bullets blindly. One of the thick limbs swung across the ground and caught his ankles, flinging him off his feet and sending his Winchester clattering off down the mountainside. He tumbled backwards down the slope and slid for a few feet before he managed to turn and catch a jutting stone with his hand. He looked up and saw the flailing tree things whipping about medusa-like, groping for him like a nest of blind, baby adders.
He shuddered in terror at the shapes against the sky. He was struck by the surreal vision of the far off stars overhead, and the notion filled him with dread that the whisperings of the old men were true and this thing he now faced was no demon of the earth but some monster that had swum to this world across the oily waters of the night from some terrible island in the sky.
He crouched in the hollow of the rock and felt for his bow, thanking Usen silently that it had not broken. He unslung it and shoved one of the star arrows under his arm, fumbling with his quartz stone and knife, as the tuber things swept the ridge above him, showering him with dirt and loose stone.
* * * *
In the Yenne Velt, the Rider rose up one knee and traded fire with the Castilians. Despite the range and power of their muzzleloaders, it seemed they were still bound by the limitations of their weapons’ rate of fire. He blasted one of the Spaniards as he packed the barrel of his pistol and saw the ghostly armored figure dissipate as his horse had. At least he knew the mystic properties of his Volcanic pistol still affected these wraiths.
The first of Amadeo’s men, one of the Moorish swordsmen, gained the ridge and came running. The Castilian shades turned their fire from the Rider to this dauntless soul, and the others as they came behind him. The first spirit was caught up in the withering blue fire and seemed to disperse like a pile of windblown leaves without a scream.
They had no time for a second volley as Amadeo’s army tore over the ridge and across the clearing, discharging their own weapons as they ran (dropping a few of the enemy Indians and one more Castillian).
The Rider stood and ran with the onrushing wave of Papagos, hearing and feeling the clash as Amadeo and his Moors met the armored nobles up ahead. Silver sabers whistled and struck, rattling against ancient helm and cuirass and seeking astral flesh.
The Rider had never imagined such violence could be possible in this realm. Yet he heard the screams of the ghosts as they fought and were wounded, and he saw the wide-eyed fear in the men he ran with. This was unlike any battle he had been in. There was no rush of blood through the limbs, no thudding in the chest. He was beyond such sensations. He felt even more outside himself. It was unreal to him. Yet it was real to the spirits around him. He knew he was seeing a manifestation of the meeting of impossible celestial wills, but he had no time to speculate as to how these poor ghosts, like Norse dead could wage war and feel pain. In a minute he would be in the fight himself.
With knife in
one hand and pistol in the other, he raised his arms and yelled above the din of the fight:
“Now!”
The Papagos split right and left behind the fighting Moors and flowed around their flanks, but were stymied by the enemy Indians who spread out to meet them, and locked their advance with smashing blows and animal yells.
The Rider gave pause. The Moors feinted and struck, but were steadily falling before their armored opponents. He glimpsed the helm of Don Amadeo as one of the Castilians bashed it off the silver, bloodied scalp of its owner with a savage punch from the basket hilt of his sword. He aimed over the jostling bodies and fired, taking the top of the wraith’s head off before it pierced the staggered caballero.
The right hand flank of Papagos was buckling before the wall of Indian battlers, hooting ecstatic cries of bloodlust. The Rider rushed for the front, shouldering through, hacking and jabbing out at the enemy with his anointed cold iron Bowie. Wherever the swept point connected, there a phantom ceased to be.
The Rider’s efforts seemed to inspire the Papagos, and several wrestled the weapons of their attackers away and turned them on the owners.
The Rider allowed the Indians to pass him and turned to survey the rest of the line. The left flank was holding and starting to drive the corrupted Indians back, but the strong point of their host, Amadeo and his Moors, was dwindling.
As he watched, the chief among the Moors, a broad shouldered man with a curved, heavy edged sword no doubt forged in his homeland beat down one of the Castilians and turned to parry the thin blade of another only to be stabbed in the back as the first wraith who had fallen beneath his powerful attacks sprung up again. The man’s spirit blazed brightly for a moment and then went the way of the others, burning up into nothingness.
The Rider saw three more of the damned Castilians had risen up despite their mortal wounds and renewed their attacks. Only the two he destroyed with his pistol had not returned to the fight. The Moors fought a hopeless skirmish.
He started to work his way back to the roiling center.
* * * *
The Cold One that sprung from the dark onto the onager’s thick neck found itself flung heavily to the ground. Before it could register its surprise the onager spun with surprising alacrity and kicked its brains from its head.
The second had already slithered to strike the Rider’s still form, but the donkey’s jaws clamped down hard on the back of its neck, popping vertebrae. The onager gave a quick thrash of its great head and hurled the jerking creature back into the dark where it twisted and clawed as it died.
The remaining four hissed and rattled their displeasure, but kept out of the firelight, circling in the shadows with newfound respect for the solitary beast. The animal flicked its tail and shook the blood of their brother from its lips, mane bristling, heavy hooves pawing the dirt nervously.
Still its master didn’t move.
* * * *
Piishi poised at the brim of one of the foul smelling cracks in the earth and drew back on his bow. He launched a fiery star arrow into the knot of quivering tubers. There was a gibbering clamor from somewhere beneath his feet and the tentacles retracted as if stung. Whether it was the fire or the star symbol on the arrowhead that caused the thing pain he didn’t know, but he drove the lashing roots back underground with two more fiery arrows.
He spun and transfixed a seeking extremity with a fourth arrow and it recoiled and lurched away, shaking like a finger trying to extricate a biting vermin. He drew and fired as fast as he could pull the star arrows from his carcage and light them with the burning rag hanging from between his teeth. He arced them up and sent them sizzling down into the holes broken in the earth, ceasing the advance of the deadly trees.
Something attached itself to his ankle and pulled his feet out from under him. He landed hard on his back and in a moment the stinking tubers encircled his wrists and ankles and drew his limbs tight. He felt sure he would be pulled to bloody pieces, but he was yanked up bodily into the air of a sudden and born by the rough roots toward the broken walls of Red House.
There on the wall, awaiting him was a dark, many horned figure he knew to be The Black Goat Man.
His coarse hair was wet and plastered to his misshapen form as though he was newborn. His oversized head was crowned with two sets of black, twisted horns, and two more sprouted from below the line of his jaw giving him the appearance of some terrible, petrified blossom.
He was naked, but only his arms and feverish yellow eyes remained manlike. The rest was wholly animal, with tapering haunches hung with stringy hair and ending in black hooves. His gnarled hands were clasped appraisingly behind his back and he stank like a putrid thing.
* * * *
Mauricio shivered in the naked air. He had not ventured this long from the womb of his mistress in ages. The desert wind seemed biting to him compared to her warmth.
He looked out on the empty clearing. Besides the waving tendrils poking through the ground, there was no disturbance. There was no sign that in the Unknown Country, a great battle was being fought, and won, by his eternal servants. They were the transfigured shades of those savages that in their desperation called out to Shub-Niggurath for mercy and been granted a dark boon and perpetual service in the ranks of Her phantom garrison.
Chaksusa’s gambit had failed. His army of pitiful ghosts would be disbanded, and he would bathe in the blood of this, his lone champion. A wily, but ineffectual little savage. He had stung his Lady and like an offending insect, and must now be swatted.
But as his Lady bore the struggling animal towards him, he felt the death of the Cold Ones somewhere down the mountain, and the loss of some of his caballeros in the Unknown Country.
One more remained. The one She had whispered of. The walker between worlds. It was he that threatened to turn the tide.
He regarded the Indian bound in the grasp of his Mistress.
Tilting back his head, he drew in a deep gulp of air, outstretched his arms, and exhaled. A black breath expelled from his lungs and spread out like smoke from a stack, blotting out the stars and the waning moon.
Piishi watched with bugging eyes as the black cloud rolled over him. He felt his lungs burning as if filled with boiling water. His eyes seemed to leak blood and his head swam. He fought the grip of the monster, but with the stinking breath of the Black Goat Man he could not contend. His gorge rose, and his ears pounded and his head lolled limp. The last thing he saw was the black smoke still pouring from the Goat Man flowing like fog down the wall, across the ground and cascading down the mountainside.
* * * *
The Rider blasted another of the caballeros to nothingness, but the others retreated behind a screen of savage spirits that pressed his own army and fought to reach him.
Then Don Amadeo was at his side, lunging with his blade at the groping hands of the enemy ghosts.
“An ill wind is upon us!” Amadeo yelled. “Look!”
The Rider glanced in the direction indicated and saw a pale green smoke rolling across the battlefield like an evil fog. He could not understand what he was looking at, but he sought its source, and saw it was Red House. Some weapon of Mauricio or his benefactress. Yet even now it flowed around the ankles of the combatants and seemed to have no effect.
He looked up at the few clouds in the red sky with its black stars and black bow of a moon. These weird hues he had grown accustomed to in his excursions to the Yenne Velt—they were shadows cast by the real world. Then this fog must be occurring in the real world as well. It was not intended to affect the outcome of the battle.
He peered hard at Red House, and saw black trees shuddering about its base, and more, in the midst of the dark forest a flickering silver light such as he had seen before. It was a human soul as it appeared in this echo world, a bright beacon. But it was failing.
He knew it must be Piishi. He had been captured, and now Mauricio had sent out this fog to find him.
“I have to go,” he said to Amadeo.
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Amadeo looked at him.
“If you leave us we will be destroyed.”
“This fight can’t be won here,” the Rider said. “Hold out as long as you can.”
He withdrew himself, and the clatter and screams of the battle died away with the echoing protests of Amadeo. The stark mirror world was sucked away in his inward rush, as if it were the checkered pattern on a tablecloth pulled out from under a place setting.
His consciousness was drawn back swiftly on a silvery umbilical of will to his waiting body, and he plunged through the top of his skull, slamming back into his physical form like a man leaping into a saddle. His eyes snapped open and he saw the glittering reptilian eyes shining beyond the firelight.
The onager nudged him anxiously.
He shrugged past its head and pulled the grey green Star-Stone of Mnar from his coat pocket and held it aloft in one trembling fist, his skin prickling as it reawakened.
The old Hindu’s dying words repeated themselves in his mind.
“SHAMBLAPARN!” he croaked.
He felt a thrumming within his palm, as if he held a hatching egg. A flash of white light burst forth from the center of the stone, projecting the glyph outward, with a sound like a lightning crack. The star and eye seal lanced into the dark and fell full upon the chest of one of the lurking Cold Ones. The hissing creature looked for a moment like a wild thing caught in the spot of a midnight hunter’s light, reptilian eyes shining like colored glass. Then it erupted into a figure of living fire and was gone in a puff of ash, like wind scattering a pile of dry leaves. The stone shook in his hand and emitted an expanding pulse of white brilliance. The light washed out the orange of the dim campfire. It flung back the shadows on the surrounding trees and instantly burned up the rolling black fog filling the dark heavens. It shrunk the irises of the onager and flared in the faces of the three remaining Cold Ones poised to strike at the edge of his camp.
Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name Page 19
