by Chris Walley
Frankie tapped Merral’s arm and together they slid down below the crest of the hill.
“Well, it’s there,” Frankie said in low, awed tones, and Merral knew that he had, in his own way, felt the same arresting intrusion of reality.
“Did you expect something else?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Frankie answered, and Merral could make out his shrugging his shoulders. “I suppose, sir, that’s the thing about this business. I’ve given up knowing what to expect. I was concerned, I suppose, that it might have gone. To have been a bad dream.”
“No, it’s there. But that may be the bad dream.”
“Yeah. So it’s as we planned then, sir?” Merral identified disquiet in the voice. “It looks awful big. To try and blast that front leg and maybe get a hole in the ramp doorway?”
“Yes,” Merral answered, sounding more confident than he felt. “We can do it. That’s what Perena preferred. Her argument was that we were more likely to disable the ship by concentrating on the front. I think she was also worried that there might be fuel at the rear.”
Frankie seemed to chew on that. “Yeah, sir. It makes sense. Right; I’ll make sure we keep a continuous watch on the ship from here. Get us an optic fiber communications link down to the sled. What watch do you want, sir?”
“Me? I’ll take the last hour before dawn. I need to be here to watch the diplomatic team approach anyway.”
“Yeah, I worry about them,” Frankie said in a sad voice. “I feel they are going to be in trouble.”
“Yes, I think so too. And I think they know it. I think they are the bravest of the lot of us.”
“True. Anyway, Captain, if it suits you, let’s go and get the cable set up to here. Then you can go and snatch some sleep.”
Down by the sled, Merral settled down on a more or less flat spot, put his cutter gun within reach, rolled himself in a thermal blanket, and tried to switch his mind off.
Despite his tiredness, he found sleep elusive. The cold, pebbly ground and the inadequate blanket were factors in keeping him awake, but what ultimately kept sleep at bay were the wild swings of emotion he felt. He struggled against the near certainty of a battle and the unnerving possibility that, in the darkness, a sheet-dragon creature circled above them. To seek relief, Merral turned his mind to warm thoughts of Anya and again felt excited that she cared for him and that he cared for her. Yet from that peak of exhilaration, he would soon slide into guilty feelings about Isabella, and then the fear would return. Eventually sleep came, only to be broken after what seemed mere seconds by a gentle shaking and Philip Matakala’s apologetic voice in his ear asking him to wake up.
Stiffly, Merral pulled himself to his feet, yawning and rubbing his face, aware he was covered in a cold dew. His watch told him it was almost five. Now, an hour before dawn, the dark of the western sky was already becoming lighter.
Philip had prepared him a cup of coffee, and Merral gratefully drank it and ate some biscuits. Then putting his armored jacket and the goggles back on, he picked up his gun and walked slowly back down the stream valley. Ahead he could easily make out the figure of the watching soldier on the ridge, the circuitry of his goggles painting his warm body orange against the cold blue of the ground. Carefully, Merral climbed to the summit of the mound and crawled forward to get alongside the man who, hearing his footsteps, turned toward him as he approached.
“Morning,” Merral said quietly.
“Morning, sir. Good to see you. Very good.” Merral recognized who it was and noted the relief in the voice of Lorrin Venn.
“See anything, Lorrin?”
“No, sir, but I feel it.” Merral sensed him shudder. “Nasty-looking ship. Gives me the creeps.” Merral found it hard to remember the bubbly young man whom he had first met and realized that he hadn’t heard Lorrin whistle at any time during the night.
“Wish you were back working in Isterrane?”
There was a faint pause. “I won’t say, sir, that in the last hour, the idea hasn’t come to me,” Lorrin answered; then Merral felt he smiled. “But I asked for this. I asked you to get me in on this. And I’ll stick with it. . . .”
“That’s the spirit, Lorrin. I can’t say I’m very happy about it.”
“Yes. Well, I suppose back in Isterrane it all seemed . . . well, exciting. Like a sort of grand sports event. Know what I mean, sir? I couldn’t miss it, could I?”
“No, I guess you couldn’t,” Merral replied.
“I’ve been thinking about this. I mean this is the—I don’t know—strangest event in the history of the Assembly. This is history in the making. And when it gets talked about in the future, I want to be able to say, ‘I was there.’ Yet I’m still a bit scared, sir.”
“I don’t blame you, Lorrin. The key thing is, I suppose, to do what you have to do. That’s what I tell myself.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
Merral suddenly felt sorry for Lorrin. “I know you will. Now, any signs of life?”
“I think they vented steam a few minutes ago. A cloud of something warm, but otherwise it’s quiet. I thought I saw something move around just now below the ship, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“Nothing on this side then. No birds or bats?”
“No, sir,” Lorrin said with just a hint of hesitation. “But I find your eyes play tricks after a while.”
“In what way?” Merral asked, feeling that something lay behind his words.
“Well . . . I thought I heard footsteps earlier. Lee Rodwen was with me and he agreed. But there was no sign of anything. Or anybody. But we felt, well . . . watched.”
Unsettled by his words, Merral glanced around with the night goggles but saw nothing but cold ground and a gnarled pine tree to his left.
After dismissing Lorrin, Merral stared again at the ship for several minutes but saw nothing new. He found the silence odd; it was a strange and tense quietness, as if some colossal storm was brewing. He slid his goggles up and squinted into the darkness with his unaided eyesight. Above him, the stars were glowing. In the sky ahead, the pure blackness of night was now turning into shades of indigo, and above the jagged horizon the stars were fading out. Indeed, by straining his eyes, Merral could make out the silhouettes of the eastern Rim Ranges standing black against the purpling sky. Wreathes of mist drifted this way and that in the slight westerly breeze.
Merral slid the goggles back down and examined the ship again with the scope. There was no sign of activity. He gave up looking and concentrated on listening, stretching his senses as far as he could, swinging his head this way and that. He wondered whether Lorrin and Lee had really heard anything. Or had it simply been their imaginations?
He listened carefully, but all he could hear was the faint rustling of the breeze in the branches on the solitary pine tree nearby and the feeble gurgle of water in the stream behind. There was no sound of animal life: no birds, not even the buzz of an insect. Merral felt ill at ease.
Then he looked again at the distant ship and felt suddenly almost overwhelmed by its power and menace. In contrast to that machine, his own force for the initial attack seemed pathetic; a mere sixty men, mostly dragged from college studies barely days ago, with almost every piece of equipment improvised from quarrying, farming, or forestry. True, they had courage and dedication, and Merral knew he could rely on them to do their best, but what he had seemed so puny. Our only real asset is surprise, and even that might have been compromised. . . . Surely, we are like a bunch of village children suddenly thrown into playing a Team-Ball game against the Isterrane champions.
As Merral stared across the still, dark waters of Lake Fallambet Five and considered the sheer inadequacy of his forces, he slipped into silent prayer. Yet, here and now, it seemed that prayer was not easy. Merral was able to say the words in his mind, but as he tried to pray for the day ahead, words were all that they seemed to be. Irritatingly, Anya’s form and face seemed to teasingly pop up into his prayers and distract him with guilt and des
ire. Finally he ended his praying, feeling that there was no answer.
As he considered the situation, Merral felt himself drifting toward self-pity and even anger. Here he was, on the verge of awesome events and about to lead men to possible—even probable—death, and badly in need of God’s support. Yet instead, he had silence. Say something, Lord! But the silence only continued.
Suddenly Merral heard the tiniest of noises off to the right. He knew with certainty that another man had joined him. He felt a spasm of irritation that he had been so absorbed in his own struggles that he had missed his arrival. Merral swung his head round but, to his surprise, the goggles showed only the cold ground and the single forlorn pine.
I must have imagined it.
As he looked back across the lake to the ship, there was another slight sound from his right. It was as if one of the men was adjusting his position on the ground. Mistrustful now of his goggles, Merral slid them up and peered into the darkness toward where he had heard the sound.
He stopped breathing.
A mere arm’s length away from him, a large, dark shape was lying on the ground.
Slowly, taking strained breaths and aware that his hands were shaking, Merral put the goggles back over his eyes. To his surprise, he could make out no form there and no hint of any heat source disturbing the uniform chill blueness of the ground. Alarm threatening to flood his mind, Merral slid the goggles up again and stared to his right. Were his senses playing tricks on him?
The shape was still there and Merral peered at it. He shivered, certain now that something was lying next to him—something the size and shape of a man.
The dark form next to him stirred, and abruptly Merral felt under a gaze that seemed to go right through him. Suddenly he felt terribly exposed, as if he was being examined. An almost irresistible urge to run and hide descended on him.
In the silence the figure spoke. “Man, a time has passed. The war deepens.”
“I’m sorry,” Merral replied, hearing his voice wobbling with fear. “I can’t remember your name.”
Even as he spoke, he knew what he heard was not the voice of any man he knew. Indeed, he realized, with a strange and chilling certainty, the voice was not human. It was in one way characterless and neutral, and yet in another it had an extraordinary and unassailable authority.
“You do not know my name.”
Merral’s throat was suddenly dry. “I mean,” he said, swallowing nervously, “you, er, are one of my men?”
“One of your men? In no sense.”
The words held a rebuke.
“Then who are you?” Merral asked, his hand inching toward his gun. Perhaps, he thought, the enemy was already among them. His fingers closed around the stock. “Who are you?” he repeated.
The voice broke the silence. “Man, you are right to be concerned. I have come as the representative of the King.”
Merral felt that the word King reverberated strangely, as if it had its own special resonance.
Before Merral could answer, the voice spoke again. “The King who was, and is, and is to come. The one who was slain as a Lamb and rules as a Lion. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes,” quavered Merral, realizing that whatever this creature was, it was not an enemy. He felt at once relieved, chastened, and terrified. “But—but, who are you?” he asked.
There was another pause. “I am an envoy. I am sent to you from the Highest.”
Suddenly it came to Merral in a flash of comprehension that this had to be the strange being who, only hours before the Gate was destroyed, had appeared to Perena.
“You—you are the one who spoke to Perena Lewitz? the one who warned her about the Gate?”
Slowly, and with only the faintest rustling sound, the dark form seemed to rise up from the ground and stand upright, obscuring the waning stars. Merral peered up at the figure, knowing with a hard certainty that the being that stood before him was gazing down at him with stern, cold, invisible eyes. He suddenly felt small and exposed, as if he were a mouse under an eagle’s gaze.
“I did,” the voice said.
Merral sensed, with a deepening fear, the head move as if to stare more closely at him. He cringed. I ought to thank him. I owe him my life.
“Man, whom do you serve?” the voice asked suddenly, its tone cutting and sharp.
“The King, of course,” Merral answered. “It goes without saying. I bear his badge.”
In the darkness, he reached out to his shoulder and touched the embossed Lamb and Stars emblem on his armored jacket.
The voice spoke again. “Nothing goes without saying. It never did. And least of all now, with the enemy unchained.”
The blackness that marked the figure’s head seemed to bend accusingly over him. “So you are his servant?”
“Er, yes. Yes, of course,” Merral answered, shivering and wondering why he sounded so guilty.
“So you obey him in all matters?”
The word all seemed somehow to have a universal feel to it, as if there was nothing it did not include. Merral felt a new stab of discomfort, as if somewhere, some raw nerve in his soul was being probed.
“Why, yes,” he answered, desperately wishing that the conversation might move on to other subjects.
“In all matters, Man?” Merral found the coolly knowing tone to the voice profoundly unnerving.
“Well, yes . . . ,” Merral answered slowly, aware of something like acid eating into his mind and etching around thoughts of Isabella and Anya.
“So there is nothing that has happened this night of which you are ashamed?”
There was a terrible ring to the words, and Merral quailed at them. He felt as if a spotlight had illuminated the innermost parts of his life.
“Well, I . . . I suppose I may have . . . made an error of judgment.”
The only answer was a strange and terrible silence in which Merral felt he had to speak. “I was confused,” he said, almost spluttering his words, feeling his face flush. “It’s, well, been an awful time. Awful.”
“Man, did I ask for your excuses?”
“No . . .” Merral fell silent.
“You broke a promise.”
“But that . . . ,” Merral hesitated, feeling transfixed by the invisible gaze of this visitor. “Well, you see, Isabella extracted it from me. . . .”
“And what has that do with breaking a promise?”
“Ah, things have been changing in Ynysmant. It has been very hard.”
There was a heavy silence before the dark figure spoke again.
“I was sent on the basis that you wanted help. Is that still the case?” Now the words seemed to have a ring of impatience in them.
Suddenly, Merral felt a surge of defiance. He had to resist. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I must say that she manipulated me.”
“Really?” There was a strange weariness in the voice. “Your first ancestor used a similar excuse. In the beginning.”
“Well, I do feel that Isabella—”
“Man, I was sent to deal with Merral D’Avanos. Not any Isabella.”
Merral suddenly felt that being apologetic might be more profitable. This terrible figure had to be placated. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “What must I do?”
“Man, you must resolve to repair the wrongs you have done. The commitment you made must stand until it is ended—if it is to be ended—by agreement between you. You must also explain the true situation to the one you lied to and encouraged unfairly. And apologize. And apologizing, I must remind you, is not the same as making excuses.”
It suddenly occurred to Merral that both actions were horribly unattractive. “Look, is this important, I mean, right now? Really important?”
There was a sound like an angry intake of breath. “Of course!” The words were charged with displeasure. “Do not add folly to dishonesty. You have invoked the King’s help this day of battle because of his covenant agreement with his people. At the heart of all covenants lies obedience an
d faithfulness. Yet in these last few hours you have despised both of these in your own life.”
From nowhere came the wild thought that he couldn’t let Anya go. I must fight for her. “But—”
“Enough, Man!” The envoy said, and his dark form loomed over Merral so that the voice almost seemed to buffet him physically. “Choose. If you wish to fight these things in your strength, then you may do so.” Merral, pressing himself against the ground, found the pause before the voice spoke again as menacing as any words. “But I warn you, you will not win. Not against these foes.”
Suddenly the voice sounded as if it was retreating into the distance. “Or if you do win, it will be such a victory that men and women will wish until the end of time that you had lost.”
Merral sensed the figure seemed less substantial now, as if it were merely smoke or mist.
“Which will it be, Man?” asked the quieter, fainter voice. He could see a star now where the figure had stood, as if the envoy was fading away.
His mind buffeted by a tumult of emotions, Merral hesitated, unable to choose between his fears and his desires.
“Decide,” the voice said, but now it was a drained echo coming from a vast distance. Where the envoy’s figure had been, more and more stars were becoming visible.
Suddenly a great and awful fear came into Merral’s mind, a terror of an unspeakable darkness and grief. In the fear, he saw that there was only one way forward.
“Please! I’m sorry. I choose the right way,” he cried, and this time he was aware his contrition was genuine. “I am truly sorry and I repent. I will try to sort out things with Anya and Isabella.”
“Try?” The voice was nearer now and the figure more solid. Stars vanished. “That is inadequate, Man. Do. Make things right whatever it costs you. And watch yourself, Merral D’Avanos. The enemy delights in using a man against himself.” The voice seemed to resonate strangely. “He seeks your ruin. For him, there are more satisfying and useful ways for your destruction than fire, sword, or tooth.”
