The horrors of Gehenna erupted into a directed fury all around them. Even the bodies of the damned were flung howling at them by the tartaruchi slingers who cast them back and forth across the gulf of hell for sport. These human bullets splattered against the walls of hell, bursting apart.
The two men made for the doorway at the base of the torreón, and passed into the winding stairwell just as some massive pursuer wedged into the too small aperture behind them. It roared in resounding frustration.
The Rider kept in Kabede’s luminous wake. All his concentration was on maintaining his celestial vehicle, though every conscious thought warred against this end. He pushed aside worry over Nehema, disgust at his part in Lucifer’s war and all he had seen, and fear that his body was already dying above, whether from full on assault by Lilith’s demons or a keen edged blade in the hands of the hermit. He must believe he had a body to return to, or else hopelessness would send him crashing back down these stairs.
Up the stair they went, ascending at a dizzying speed, spinning, whirling. What had seemed like a laboriously cautious and nerve wracking journey (how long ago? It was difficult to gauge the passage of time outside of the body, which was in some ways a natural timepiece) before now flew by with harrowing alacrity.
Then suddenly there was a burst of light and sound as he collided with his own body like an arrowhead driving home into flesh.
The familiar sensations returned, and his knotted stomach heaved. He vomited the broth Kabede fed him into the pentacle in the sand.
Kabede sank forward beside him. It had been an exhausting journey, and even the younger man was fatigued.
The Rider remembered the token then and felt for it. It was gone. He drew his pistol and rose unsteadily to one knee.
The old hermit sat in a corner tending a blazing fire and smiling. He held his fist over the flames, and as the Rider watched, he opened his fingers. The rosette token seemed to fall as if through water, slowly, end over end. As soon as it touched the flames, it flared brightly and crumbled to ash.
The Rider lurched forward and levered his pistol. He would have killed the old man had Kabede not hooked his fingers into the back of his pistol belt and jerked him back. He had no strength to resist.
As it was, the old man fled the fire and ran to the door of the torreón.
“Stay in the circle!” Kabede groaned. He was looking at the reddening sky overhead.
The Rider craned his neck
The air filled with wheeling birds. Big black vultures, tiny sparrows, even hawks and eagles. He knew what they were, just as he knew the protective circle wouldn’t save him.
The old man was cackling. He threw up the bar and swung the door open, riding it outside.
“Come in! Come in! Here’s the one you want!”
As if homing, the cloud of birds pivoted and poured down. Apparently they had not been able to dive down into the courtyard despite its open roof. Whatever magic inhabited the torreón acted like a clear, impassable dome. But when the hermit opened the door, the birds flew down in a body, like a pack of sharks toward a cloud of blood.
The beating of their wings and their shrill cries filled the air. The hermit was sorely surprised to find the creatures striking wildly at the first living thing they reached, and soon he was covered from head to toe in pecking birds. A gigantic condor hung from his back and its ugly head rose and fell again and again, coming away each time with greater scraps of bloody flesh from his neck. He screamed as crows plucked out his eyes and nightjars wriggled into the sockets up to their tail feathers. His wailing mouth filed with finches, and tecolotes buried their faces in the porticos of his ears.
For the moment, his body blocked the opening as he fell from the heavy door and stumbled against the frame.
Under one of his flailing arms, the Rider saw the two animals tethered outside, also covered with feathery assailants.
He tried to aim, but it was no use. He couldn’t hope to shoot the birds off. He heard the animals bray and watched them kick and crow hop madly about. Maybe it was best to shoot them.
Kabede shook his arm, spoiling his aim yet again.
“My saddlebag!” Kabede yelled above the tremendous shock of the wings. “Here! Hold the staff before you! Pray!”
The Rider felt the Rod of Aaron thrust into his hands, felt the power coursing through it. It was warm, like the Star-Stone of Mnar, but with a different kind of heat. The Stone had warmed his hands, any part of his skin which it touched. This feeling began at his hands, but seemed to spread up his arms and into his chest and down at last to his feet. As he stood taking this in, Kabede left his side.
The African drew his scarf across his face and went to the door. He shoved past the flailing hermit, who fell to his knees and then to his hands. The birds were bottlenecked with him in the narrow doorway. As soon as they were done picking him apart, they would flood the courtyard.
Kabede flailed and tore at the birds outside, and the Rider heard him cry out.
When he appeared again in the doorway, he was covered in bird excrement and blood flowed from tiny cuts about his hands and face. He stumbled over the old man’s body, his arm in one of the saddlebags from his own donkey, up to the elbow.
He rushed past the Rider without speaking, staggering towards the hermit’s fire. As he reached it, the bag fell away, and there was a heavy old book in his hand.
Then the birds left the old man with a collective screech of triumph. They surged into the courtyard and the Rider batted them aside as best he could with the staff. Wherever its knotted head connected, the birds burst into a momentary flame and vanished. But there were too many. Soon a veritable tornado of feather and talons filled the torreón and drew in an every tightening circle around the Rider. He hunched up his shoulders and sank to his knees, hugging the staff, and he felt talons and beaks dart in and nip at his flesh. It was Tip Top all over again. He cried out in fear.
Then the fire flared in the corner of the courtyard. He heard the door slam shut, and Kabede was at his side, grabbing the staff with one hand and hoisting him up with the other.
“Stand up, Rider! Stand up!” he bellowed.
The Rider stood. The birds still wheeled in the courtyard, but before his eyes they transformed into what they were; gibbering imps and deformed chimerae, buzzing things half insect half—but wait!
He was seeing them—as they truly were!
He touched the blue glass spectacles with their mystic seals, the fifth and thirty-sixth seals of Solomon.
He watched as the vile things all around him attempted to dive in but were repelled. They withdrew and attacked again and again, but could not quite bring themselves to touch him. They collided in mid air in their confusion.
The Rider raised his Volcanic pistol and fired into the lot of them.
Where his bullets struck, the ruahim blew apart.
His powers were back. Somehow, beyond reason or hope, they were back.
“Come on!” Kabede called, and he scaled the ladder to the next level of the torreón.
The Rider followed, bewildered. He shot again and again into the midst of the demons, and felt an immense pleasure every time one of their number shrieked in agony and dissolved.
They climbed to the lip of the torreón and turned inward.
Below them, the ruahim shrieked and rammed like trapped animals against the stone walls.
They were trapped, he realized. Kabede had closed and barred the door, and those that tried to rise through the open air were repelled back downwards by the same invisible force that had kept them out.
There was no time to ask what had happened, and anyway, no talk could be heard above the wailing of the trapped demons. There must have been hundreds flitting about like disturbed bats down below.
Some flew up to their level, but could not rise above the edge of the walls. These Kabede struck deftly with the staff. They disintegrated.
The rest, the Rider killed. For months these things had hounded him acro
ss two territories. They had befouled his food and water and done HaShem only knew what to him to keep him from sleep. The only real rest he’d had in months had come from physical unconsciousness. They had worried his every step, strangled him slowly, to the point of starvation at last.
He lost track of the number of shots he fired down into them, somewhere around a hundred and eighty nine. It was a one-sided slaughter, like killing cattle in a trench.
His hand was numb and throbbing, his knuckles sore from levering the Volcanic by the time the torreón was still.
Nothing physically remained of Lilith’s demons other than tufts of feathers, which floated and swirled across the ground. The silence itself, the lack of maleficent presence was like a monument itself in its portent. He knew how this would enrage Lilith and her daughters, just as he knew tonight he would be able to sleep, truly sleep, for the first time in many months. He felt his belly growl with hunger, and was content to know that he could fill it when he wished. For a while after the slaughter was finished, he sat facing the courtyard, his legs dangling in space like a child’s.
Then he went down to Kabede.
The African had gone to see about their animals. His donkey was missing an eye and had to have his ear sewn back on. Kabede was finishing this operation when the Rider rejoined him.
The onager waited nearby, placidly chewing feed. As always, he was untouched.
“What is the nature of that beast?” Kabede asked when the Rider walked up.
“What?”
“Your animal. Where did you ever acquire it?”
“In Jerusalem,” the Rider said. “But listen, tell me. What did you do?”
“I told you I was the keeper of the Book of Life for our Order.”
“Yes.”
“In it, just as in the Heavenly Book of Life, all the names of all the members of our Order are written. Their true names. Including yours.”
“Yes…”
Kabede went to his saddlebag and took out the book the Rider had seen him retrieve earlier. He ran his hand over the embossed cover lovingly.
“I though of what I said to you last night. About your parents, and the shinnui shem.”
The Rider thought about it, and a smile broke across his face as he understood.
“You changed my name. To restore my powers, you changed my true name.”
Kabede opened the book, flipped through it, and then turned it around to show him. One of the pages had been torn out.
The Rider’s smile fell.
“But…”
“Yes,” Kabede said. “I’m sorry. There was no time. I tore out the page with your name on it and I threw it into the fire.”
“Then,” said the Rider slowly, “then I have no name. And a man whose name doesn’t appear in the heavenly Book of Life by Yom Kippur…”
“…will die in a year’s time,” Kabede finished. His eyes flitted over the Rider’s shoulder briefly.
The Rider turned, and observed on the ground his long shadow…headless. It was a sure sign of impending death.
“You’ve killed me,” the Rider said quietly.
“Rider!”
The Rider and Kabede both stiffened.
The voice was commanding and deep. It echoed out across the valley.
“Can you hear me, Rider?” it called again. The voice was European. German, maybe.
They raced back up the torreón ladders to the lip and stood. They trotted anxiously in opposite directions around the top until they met in the center, looking back across the desert toward the hills in the direction of Escopeta, from which they’d come.
The ridge overlooking the desert (he could see the outline of the tree under which he’d slept the night before) was lined with silent figures. Thirty or more stood completely still
Kabede reached into his tunic and produced a retractable spyglass. He opened it and peered through.
“Ah! There you are!” called the voice.
Kabede’s mouth fell open.
“DeKorte,” he whispered.
The Rider took the spyglass from Kabede’s hands and looked himself. The light was fading, but he could just make out some of the men on the ridge. He recognized a few of them from the café in Escopeta. Bounty hunters, then. But wait, there were women among them too…then his gaze fell upon the speaker. He was a tall, black coated man, very pale. Two men stood on either side of him, similarly garbed. He had no idea who they were.
“Who is he?” the Rider asked.
“You would know him as Het Bot.”
The Rider lowered the spyglass and looked at Kabede.
“Het Bot? From the Amsterdam enclave?”
Kabede nodded.
“The greatest of the Dutch Sons of the Essenes.”
But if he was alive, then he wasn’t one of their Order anymore. That made him one of Adon’s men.
“There are two others with him,” the Rider said, putting the spyglass to his eye again.
“I saw them. I think they are Jacobi of Berlin and Gans of Owernah. Das Schwert, and Le Bouclier.”
Das Schwert had been one of the German riders sent to investigate the disappearance of the San Francisco enclave. The Rider had encountered him there upon his return from the war. They had fought that time. He was very good.
“I know their names. We can defeat them.”
“In the Yenne Velt, sure,” said the Rider. “But what about them?” he indicated the gathering of people with a sweep of his hand. “They’ve got a lot of men…”
The Rider stopped himself, and peered closely at the men and women gathered there. There was something wrong with them. All of them. The light was fading so fast…
“Are you looking, Rider?” called DeKorte. “I know you are. Watch! I want you to see this!”
The Rider turned his attention back to DeKorte in time to see the man gesture one black gloved hand to his right.
Immediately the entire line of men and women took one step forward in perfect unison
Right off the edge of the ridge.
The Rider was reminded briefly of the Falls of the Damned through Lucifer’s window. The people tumbled and fell without a sound, bouncing off the rocks, sliding over the precipices and twisting through space before smashing to the desert floor, some thirty feet below their starting point. The people behind them advanced at the same time like lemmings, heedless of the fate of their predecessors. They fell down the slope into the valley as well, piling up below in a cloud of dust.
The Rider heard Kabede’s breath suck in through his teeth.
Only the three Riders remained on the ridge.
DeKorte was looking right at him through a pair of glinting field glasses. Could he see anything? He was practically staring right into the setting sun.
What was the purpose of this heinous display of power? Somehow they had convinced all of Escopeta to die by suicide. Was it a sick message from them to keep to the wilderness, away from bystanders? The Rider indeed felt a wave of nausea at the deaths he had unwittingly perpetrated just by stopping in the town. A haven for criminals it might have been, but…
“Look!” Kabede whispered in a frightened tone.
The Rider looked at Kabede, followed his gaze, and put the spyglass to his eye once more.
The dust from the human avalanche was settling, and dozens of shapes were rising and moving out of the cloud at a slow, shuffling gait.
The Rider watched in stark horror as the men and women of Escopeta came titubating across the sand. They bore sure signs of their fall. Arms hung useless, some limped on broken legs, others dragged themselves on their bellies. Not one of them that had fallen failed to rise and continue their march.
“What will you do now, Rider? Will you stay and fight it out, or run?” DeKorte called.
“We cannot kill them,” Kabede said at his side. “They’re just people.”
The Rider watched through the spyglass as the figures shuffled closer. An orange ray of the setting sun behind them passed in som
e way through a gap in the stony hills at the edge of the desert and shined for a brief instant on them. The Rider saw drawn faces, some of them bloody. He saw the little man who had tried to take him in, along with his two friends, the Mexican and the tall, skinny fellow. The Mexican’s face was completely torn away, and the tall skinny one had the marks of bullet holes in his face. The lance of light sank behind the hills then, and the desert grew blue and dim.
Still, the shambling shadows came.
“They’re dead already,” the Rider said, handing Kabede his spyglass and going to the onager. He was so very tired and hungry. But sleep wouldn’t come. Not tonight.
“What do we do?”
The Rider threw his packsaddle on the onager and quickly drew the cinches tight. The torreón wouldn’t keep out a mob, and behind them, DeKorte and the other riders would come. He had expended nearly all the physical ammunition he had destroying the ruahim, and Kabede had only the staff. Powerful it was, but could they face forty attackers at close range?
“We’ve got to run,” he said. “Let’s go.”
To his credit, Kabede needed no further argument. He threw his blanket and pack saddle over his one-eyed burro and gathered up his things. The Rider reflected briefly that he was a good man to have at your side in hell. It was not an unwelcome feeling, having someone to fight alongside. He thought again of the boy Gershom, younger than Kabede. He thought of how that partnership had ended. He wanted to tell Kabede to split off from him, to run in another direction, but he didn’t. His selfishness didn’t allow him. He wanted a companion, at prayer and at war. He had been too long alone. He cursed himself for this sin, knowing full well it would probably end in death, but kept silent anyway.
He drew the onager out of the doorway of the torreón and led him west, nose towards the blue ridges in the far distance.
Kabede stopped to close the torreón door, then fell in step behind him.
Their pursuers came on, but were slow. They could outdistance them, but could they maintain the lead? The Rider had a feeling these things would not get winded. He thanked HaShem that it was night at least, and the sun was not overhead. Perhaps they could lose them in the dark.
Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name Page 27
