The Celtic Mirror

by Louis Phillippi

  Morgan’s team drew the middle watch and he was proud of the men under his command. His three native soldiers had climbed trees that overlooked the forest trails and had blended invisibly with the foliage. They had garlanded their weapons with freshly cut vines and had smeared their faces with dirt and soot. They are learning, Morgan thought, but they’ve got a hell of a lot more to learn, he admitted soberly. He hoped to keep them alive long enough for them to learn there lessons well.

  Greenfeld, because of his injury, had taken a ground position and had buried himself deep in the underbrush that bordered the trail. Had he not known their positions earlier, Morgan would not have been able to find the men except by accident. He knew the enemy would never see the Celtic watchers, and the jungle tracks were busy with the passages of the seekers who saw little.

  Morgan knew late in his team’s watch, however, that the enemy had located its missing patrol. The Vik response was elephantine and, to Morgan, entirely ludicrous. Ineffective patrols swarmed the trails near the Celtic position, firing bolts at phantoms. Overhead an airship plied an aimless course in search of the unknown enemy, dropping explosives into the forest—far enough away not to endanger either friendly forces or the sought-after enemy. The pattern made Morgan laugh like America’s former enemy must have done at the massive and aimless B-52 bomb strikes in the jungle during the Vietnam War and at the well-fed, technologically superior American troops.

  It was not until some American “advisors” finally stepped off the easy trails and discarded some of their shiny hardware that they became effective. It was not until some had stepped all the way down to the enemy’s level and had discarded some of their shiny ideals as well that they became feared—branded as barbarians and murderers by their enemies and some of their own liberal countrymen—those whose lives and right to protest were being protected.

  Well, the Viks are already confirmed barbarians and murderers, Morgan mused. God help us if they decide to become effective. If they do, will the Council’s new resolve turn to ashes? Crap! That would be a politician’s trademark, all right. Some people never learn the reality that freedom can’t be won or maintained by offering the other cheek to the enemy. Someday you run out of cheeks.

  Things might be going to hell back home, he thought, but I am going to help draw the line in this world. He polished the last red stain from his knife, sheathed it and settled in, daring another patrol to get lost in his sector.

  With the onset of darkness, the enemy left the jungle to the insurgents as if knowing, perhaps from bitter experience, that the night world belonged to the rebel.

  “If the Viks are afraid of the dark,” Morgan told Connach as the forest grew quiet again, “they can be beaten.”

  “Then let us haunt their dreams and become their nightmares.”

  Then as Connach left to gather in his hidden outposts, Morgan was left in a midnight clearing with Greenfeld.

  “How’s the arm?”

  Greenfeld snorted. “Not too bad, considering the whole damned liberation army fell on it.” His wit and good humor had survived the assaults upon his body. A mesh splint, woven by the young Druid Chaplain, immobilized the limb yet allowed air to circulate and Greenfeld to scratch. According to Greenfeld, the priest had applied a vegetable paste to the area of the break and had prayed to one of his gods.

  “I still don’t believe in this goyische mumbo-gumbo, but the cast got hard and the pain stopped immediately. I don’t know if I’m in the presence of good or evil half the time. It’s a good thing I’m not orthodox, that’s all I can say.”

  Morgan touched Greenfeld on his good arm. “David?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’ve been here longer than I have. What do you make of them?”

  “The Celts?” Morgan heard him slap at an invisible insect.

  “Yes. Except for this gang of cutthroats we hang around with . . . maybe a few others as well . . . most of them would rather close their eyes and hope that the Viks will go away.”

  Greenfeld merely grunted in response.

  “When I was about to leave for my first tour in the Philippines,” Morgan said quietly, “I ran into a crowd of Berkeley anti-war demonstrators. Unfortunately, I was wearing my uniform that afternoon. Things got pretty rough. At that time I couldn’t understand their apparent hatred and cowardice. When I got back home, I could. Fighting an endless campaign against a shadowy enemy that looks just like the civilian population does not make for a popular war. Yet Americans lined up trying to enlist during World War Two, and the armed forces couldn’t begin to process all the volunteers trying to join up after the destruction of the Twin Towers. Our shores, our lives were threatened then. Same thing applies here, right? Only I don’t see any swamped recruiting offices. Have these people lost their instincts for survival?”

  Greenfeld cleared his throat. Morgan imagined him mopping his brow—choosing his words with care.

  “You’re right, up to a point, Kerry. Only this is not the second decade of the War on Terrorism to them. It is, in fact, World War Two, and World War Three has already been fought. Let me draw you another parallel, one that is a little closer to the actual situation here. This is a highly moral people. They rip the hell out of the Third Commandment, but they are still moral.

  “We Americans consider ourselves to be morally superior to other peoples, or at least we used to. Over one hundred forty thousand civilians died when the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs were dropped from American planes long before you were born. Americans flagellated themselves and the military machine for over forty years because of that decision.” He paused for breath. “These people are not just Sunday believers, but are practicing, deeply religious pacifists who rejected the lessons of their newest god for a short time.

  “They violently took up the sword in their own defense. In their own defense, mind you. As a result, over half of this world’s population was annihilated and the Earth was wrenched from its orbit.

  “How do you begin to tell people like that ‘enough’? How many years are needed to erase the memory of that guilt? No, they’ve got to stop doing penance for that before they can fight again.”

  “Thanks, Greenfeld,” Connach’s voice came from behind Morgan. The tall man’s approach had been noiseless. “You’ve expressed the reasons for my frustration as clearly…no, more clearly than I ever could have done. Let’s hope our cousins in Caerwent have given up penance, eh?”

  In a more businesslike tone, he gave the order to move out. “All right, gentlemen. Chulainn’s team will lead. Aircrew will take the rear.”

  Morgan shrugged into his pack and stood up, then reached down and caught Greenfeld’s uninjured arm, pulling him to his feet.

  Greenfeld grunted his thanks. The muted creak and jingle of harness joined the night sounds of the forest as the men in black prepared to penetrate to the enemy’s heart.

  Morgan led his team to the edge of the forest without encountering any sign of the enemy although a large, cat-like creature paced them for nearly a kilometer before apparently losing interest in the man-beasts. Morgan was relieved. Predators in the rain forests he once knew had killed careless troops.

  Morgan blinked his eyes against the dark. He wished he could see as well as the cat that had been pacing them. He would love to settle for the night vision unit carried by his point man. They, at least, rendered the tunnel-dark trail passable. The lightweight monoculars were vast improvements over the bulky night observation devices used by night snipers in the old Vietnam War. The rest of the team members were forced to walk almost blindly, following a tiny luminous dot affixed to the waistband of each man’s tunic. The dots revealed nothing of the trail. The incautious toes of boots discovered rocks and roots.

  Then, after what seemed to be an interminable period, his point man halted and whistled softly for Morgan to join him at the head of the file. Behind them lay safety and concealment; ahead were gently rolling farmlands, featureless except for an isolated tree line and the rar
e farmhouse thrown into the dim relief by the glow of distant lights from Caerwent.

  Connach found Morgan. “We have only a few hours until dawn,” he said. “Near that tree line ahead is one of the main roads to the city. It’s bordered on both sides by drainage ditches. If a Vik patrol happens along, I’m counting you to get Greenfeld into one of the ditches any way you can. He will not be allowed to become a burden. I hope I’m understood.”

  Morgan said nothing for a moment, and then grunted his assent. He spat on the ground, angry that the responsibility for Greenfeld’s life had just been handed to him. “Thanks for the confidence, Ian,” he murmured, with heavy irony. “What do you want me to kill him with if he doesn’t jump, knife or bare hands?”

  “Kerry ….”

  “Forget it.” He tried to concentrate on the commando’s immediate task—getting to Caerwent. “What about traffic on these country roads at night?” he asked, burying the thought of a dead Greenfeld beneath the business of survival for all.

  “Anything that moves on this road at night will be, no doubt, filled with armed men,” Connach answered. He called to the other leaders. “We’ll cross this field and reassemble at that tree line ahead. Lothians, Aircrew, Team Three. Kirkpatrick, your crew has the Mirror. From now on, the Mirror will be set to self-detonate in fifty segmenti unless it’s set for an additional time period. It takes two keys to set.”

  He handed Kirkpatrick a long, pointed object that hung on a chain. “I’ll wear one of these around my neck. The other will be carried by whichever team member carries the Mirror. If either key-bearer is killed, someone must recover the key. If recovery is impossible, the survivor will bend his own key out of shape. The metal is quite soft. If that happens, everyone is to get the hell away from the Mirror. Let the Viks have it. Encourage the Viks to take it. They break a hell of a lot easier than an airship.”

  A captured Mirror would never be a smashing Vik success, Morgan thought. It would only be smashing.

  “Lothians. Move out!”

  With that terse command, Connach and the surviving members of the Chulainn’s team silently glided from the protective jungle fringe and in a widespread skirmish pattern, picked their way across the deeply furrowed field. Five segmenti later, Kirkpatrick’s team set out in a similar manner. Two crewmen carried the Mirror between them because of the uncertain footing in the soft earth. The pilot, sidearm drawn, led the way to the tree line.

  Morgan watched the trailing airman merge with the skyline, and then made a quiet whistle. An asthmatic owl answered from the darkness—Greenfeld. Morgan stepped onto the soft, plowed earth, so picturesque in Kodachrome and in daylight, but yet so difficult to walk across at night. It would also leave a signature as plain as a confession that twelve men had passed out of the forest at that spot. Their boot prints would be pointing toward Caerwent like the centerline of an Arizona highway. Once the skirmish pattern was set, Morgan could not distinctly see his men. He knew where they were by the faint sounds of their passage and by Greenfeld’s labored breathing. Twice Morgan stumbled, turning his ankle in the loose soil. He was hampered by Greenfeld’s M-16, and its banana magazine dug into his side as he lurched over the furrows.

  When he reached the firmer ground near the tree line and stepped into the concealment of the ancient trunks, a twig snapped to his right.

  In one motion, he unslung the rifle and dropped. He slipped the safety off and waited. He could see little.

  “Morgan, that you?”

  “Christ, Kirkpatrick, you could get wasted coming up on a man in the dark like that.” Morgan got to his feet more slowly than he had gotten down.

  “Sorry. See what we’ve got here.”

  Morgan followed the pilot’s luminous dot and ducked under the ground-sweeping branches of the largest tree. There, face faintly illuminated by a masked glowlight, was a man, wide-eyed with terror, his arms tightly lashed behind his back with a leather thong that bit into his flesh. He was dressed as a peasant and wore a loose-fitting, knee-length tunic of a homespun material. His feet were caked with the rich mud that Morgan had fought through.

  The face betrayed him to be no mere Free State farmer. Short-cropped blond hair shone in the muted light over pale eyes. It was no Celtic face. He was the first Mercian that Morgan had ever seen face to face.

  Patrick pressed the business end of a crossbow bolt against the frightened man’s throat. Morgan saw that it hurt the prisoner to swallow, which he did often.

  “Where’d you find that one?” Morgan asked, fascinated by the man’s wild, staring eyes, somehow feeling sorry for this prisoner—the enemy.

  Patrick motioned with the crossbow. “He came creeping through the trees with this iron-thrower in his hands. A proper guerrilla fighter he was.”

  The warriors chuckled at Patrick’s joke. It sounded to Morgan more like the snarling of dogs.

  “Unfortunately for him,” Patrick explained, “he ran into the Lord Connach.”

  “The question,” interjected Connach, “is not how we acquired him, but what we do with him.”

  “Easy,” Chulainn whispered. He slid his long dagger from its sheath and held it so that the Mercian could follow it with his eyes.

  The prisoner’s features contorted as he watched the blade with eyes in which all hope had died. His jaw worked but nothing except odd, strangled sounds issued from his throat. Then, as if he was able to sort out the proper sequence of neural connections required, he screamed. The damned-soul shriek was smothered by Patrick’s hand.

  Chulainn moved closer with his blade.

  “Schree wider . . . un’ staarb!” Connach threatened. “Scream again . . . and die!”

  It was a thoroughly disgusted Morgan who stepped forward and removed Patrick’s restraining hand and shoved the Lothian steel aside. “The man can’t tell us anything like that.” He looked into the prisoner’s eyes and spat a single word in German, “Sprich!” Even when spoken compassionately, the word emerged as a command.

  The man spoke.

  “In the name of the gods,” he cried, in accented but flawless Pan-Celtic. “Don’t kill me! I am a follower of the Druid truths!” He bobbed his chin to his chest. “Look! Look!”

  Morgan, anxious to keep his bloody-minded companions away from the Mercian, reached into the man’s tunic and seized a heavy gold chain and pulled it free. In his hand lay the four-spoked wheel of the Druids. It was worn down on the back from long use. It was no hastily fabricated prop. Morgan let it fall to lie upon the prisoner’s heaving chest without comment. It could possibly be the prisoner’s Get Out of Jail Card if Connach had any mercy for innocents, even if they were Mercian innocents.

  The man, unaware that Morgan had decided to see that he lived, began to speak rapidly, obviously fearing that he might die if he once stopped. “I am only a farmer. I live over there with my wife and father-in-law.” He gestured with his head toward the low shape of a farmhouse that grew out of the shadows a hundred paces from the copse of trees. “I . . . I thought you might be more of the Governor-General’s men. They often cross my fields and damage my plantings. I was going to . . . to speak with their commander, try to bribe him maybe so he’d keep them off my land.”

  “Your land?” Connach hissed. “Dirty Vik colonist, aren’t you?” He spat in the man’s face.

  The prisoner jerked as if shot. Spittle hung in his blond mustache and dripped ropily onto his quivering mouth and chin. He made no move to wipe his face on his shoulder.

  “I am a colonist as you say, but I am no warrior Vik. I am by birth a Mercian, but my wife is one of your people. For her sake, I have learned to worship your gods.”

  Connach studied the man in silence for several seconds. During that time no man spoke or moved. In the field they had just recently crossed, a small animal shrieked as a night hunter met with success.

  “Farmer, how do you move your crops to market?” Connach asked, breaking the silence at last.

  Morgan relaxed. By asking that kind of ques
tion, he knew that Connach had decided to let the Mercian live for the moment. The rest would depend upon the Mercian himself—like Greenfeld.

  The Mercian studied Connach’s face as if looking for visible signs of softening. The High Chief’s features might have been concrete for all the mercy they reflected. Whatever comfort the colonist drew from them, Morgan knew, could only have been imagined, manufactured out of desperation.

  “I pull them myself with a steam tractor.”

  “Are the goods ever searched when you enter the city?”

  “Not very carefully. One of the bogentragers at the gate is well known to me. I usually bring him a measure of kief flowers and leaves, and he passes me right through. Since Thorkell has forbidden the use of kief among his troops, a discreet supplier is too valuable to harass.” The farmer’s lips actually accomplished a smile.

  “Hmm, how about the quadrirails? Are they guarded?” Morgan watched as Connach paced in his excited manner, apparently pleased by his good fortune. He bent and wiped the saliva from his prisoner’s lips with the hem of his tunic. The Mercian gave him a look of dog-like gratefulness.

  Morgan knew now that the man would not now lie to his new master.

  “The cars are not usually guarded, but the platforms always are. Two soldiers posted at each stop.”

  “Do you possess a farspeaker at the farmhouse?”

  “Yes, Lord. Our overseers have permitted us that. There are few places to call, however, in these times,” he added.

  “Let’s go.” Connach pulled the man to his feet. “Take us to your dwelling.” When the prisoner hesitated, Connach reassured him. “Don’t worry. As long as you cooperate with us, neither you nor your wife will come to any harm. Now lead!”

  The group trekked across the still dark field that separated the grove from the farmhouse. Morgan and Connach supported the bound man while the remainder of the commandos spread out in a rough skirmish pattern again. A light shone through a window, and Morgan could hear a woman inside humming to herself. The humming stopped when gravel crunched underfoot. The plank door was flung open and a rectangle of yellow light spilled upon the Mercian and his escort.