The Savior

by David Drake

Where are they? Abel thought-spoke. Give me a direction!

  As stated, to the north-northeast, Center replied calmly.

  Thrice-damn it, Abel thought. How am I supposed to know which way is east in this black field?

  Churchill’s to your rear, man, and she’s in the west, said Raj’s deep voice. You’re facing east. Angle to your left.

  The others of the platoon had heard the sergeant’s cry. Several started up from their bedrolls and stood—and a couple got crossbow bolts in the back for their trouble. There was moaning and cursing all around.

  The fallen sergeant had rolled out of the fire, and it cast its light once again.

  “Sentries!” Abel called out to the edge of the darkness. “Keep your back to the flames!”

  He wondered if there was anyone out there to hear him. The ambushers may have taken the sentries out first. Or they may not have known about them. Abel found one of the wider paths leading away from the fire and crawled down it as fast as he could. After reaching the edge of camp, he turned to the platoon and called back. “Stay down and get your rifles.”

  He crawled several more paces into the waving barley. It was only then that he stood up, looked around quickly for any sight of the company sentries, and ducked back down. He crawled another few paces, then popped up again.

  There! The silhouette of a man not ten paces away. Could be an ambusher. Abel made his way toward the form as silently as possible. As he approached, he saw the man was facing out and staring into the darkness, moonlight silvering his shoulders. One of the armed sentries, then. Abel let out a low whistle, and the man turned.

  “Goldie approaching!” Abel called out in a low but clear voice.

  “W-who is it?”

  “Dashian,” Abel answered. The last thing he wanted to do was announce his rank to the darkness. He crawled closer.

  “P-password?” asked the frightened sentry.

  Abel had assigned the night’s password himself.

  “Carnadon Man,” he said in a rasping whisper. He didn’t want to give the call sign to the ambushers. Then he spoke louder. “Get down. You’re making yourself a target.”

  “Where are they?” the sentry said, and looked around wildly.

  “They’ll find you if you keep talking!” Abel said more loudly. “Get down, corpsman!”

  The sentry came to his senses quickly—he was a Guardian, after all. He sank to a knee beside Abel. And, despite his shakiness, the sentry did not fail to notice the command sash slung over Abel’s shoulder, although he couldn’t count the knots in the darkness.

  “What’s the plan, Colonel?”

  There’s an experienced soldier. He knows when in doubt to use the highest feasible rank.

  “Major,” Abel said. “First of all, don’t look back at the fire. Keep your night eyes. I’ll lead us to those bastards, but we need to get in the other pickets if we can.”

  “There’s a rally plan,” said the sentry. “But Staff Sergeant usually gives the order.”

  “Staff Sergeant is down,” said Abel. “Call those pickets to us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sentry stood up, put a thumb and forefinger together and placed them both in his mouth. He took a breath and blew hard and long. A piercing whistle erupted from the man, as loud as any sound Abel had heard coming from a human before. The sentry followed the long whistle with two shorter bursts. Then he quickly sank back down into the barley beside Abel.

  “They’ll know it’s me and where to look, sir,” he said. “I’m standing east quadrant.”

  Within moments, the other sentries were with them. Abel ordered them all down.

  A crunching noise coming from camp. Abel turned, trying to shield his eyes from the firelight. He needn’t have bothered. Human silhouettes blocked the light. Several of the men behind had found their weapons and were walking toward them through the barley.

  “Stay down, you dickless daks!” Abel shouted back at them. “That’s an order! Stay down until we—”

  Whiiisk!

  Another round of crossbow bolts.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Bolts met flesh. Flesh gave way.

  Screams in the night. A muffled cry of anguish. Then the rest of the approaching men quickly dropped on their own accord.

  They’re down, but they’ll still have itchy trigger fingers, Raj said. Gold on gold fire waiting to happen, and muzzle flash to blind everyone.

  “Mind your caps,” Abel shouted to them all. “Hammers down.”

  He turned back to the northeast and scouted the terrain ahead.

  Sonic spectrum separation complete, Center said. Running steps discernible. The ambushing group is moving away rapidly toward the rise in the direction you are facing.

  Abel gazed over the tops of the barley plants. There. A low hill. He’d seen it in the daylight and had briefly pondered why it was so much higher than the surrounding terrain—he’d deliberately kept his thoughts from Center in order not to receive a geology lesson. It was a pile of rocks about a fieldmarch high. He figured the stones had been cleared from this barley land over hundreds of years and piled up in a central midden.

  He stood up and spoke to the sentries. “It’s all right now. Get up. That low hill to the right of Levot—that’ll be their fallback point.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the sentry who had whistled. “Do you hear them, sir?”

  Abel turned to him. He couldn’t resist. “Don’t you? They might as well be a herd of daks,” said Abel.

  “Uh . . . no, sir.”

  Don’t tease the lad, Abel. There is nothing for him to hear.

  Abel put a hand to the sentry’s shoulder.

  “It’s just my Scout’s ear,” he said, giving the guy a smile to put him at ease. He turned to the other sentries. “We’ll doubletime for that hill. Echelon right, keep your sightlines. No verbal unless necessary.” He turned to one of the other sentries. “You, what’s your name?” He couldn’t see faces in the darkness except for brief flashes of the eyes, but the Guardian was sitting in a relaxed position and seemed less rattled than the others.

  “Corporal Messerschmidt, sir,” the sentry replied.

  A Cascader. Son of a Bruneberg tanner, if he had the right man.

  Correct. He was sent south from the Bruneberg selection program two years ago.

  “Messerschmidt, go back and get the platoon in order. You may be the closest thing we have to a working sergeant. Bring them up behind us.”

  “Yes, sir,” Messerschmidt replied. “I’ll see they behave like Goldies.” Without another word, the corporal made his way through the barley back toward camp.

  “Let’s go,” said Abel. “I’ll take point since I know where we’re going.”

  The three sentries got into position quickly.

  “Move out.”

  Abel swung his rifle back around his shoulder and drew his blunderbuss pistol. He trotted forward, the sentries trailing after him. This would also leave a trampled path in the barley as a path for the remainder of the platoon.

  Analysis of aerodynamic sonic signatures indicates an attacking group of six to eight armed men, said Center.

  They concentrated their fire, too, Raj put in. Shows organization. There’ll be command among them.

  Concur, Center said. Behavior indicates a trained unit.

  They’ll mow us down if we try to take them head-on. Better to flank them, Abel thought.

  Aye, agreed Raj.

  Incoming. Center broke in without inflection of alarm—or any emotion at all.

  “Down!” Abel called to the sentry nearest himself in a harsh whisper. The sentry passed the word along and then complied with the order.

  But the invisible clouds of bolts were not aimed at them.

  Another flurry passed over their heads. Mercifully, there was no round of screams to follow it.

  Wildfire at shadows. They can’t be that well trained, Abel thought. But we are. And Messerschmidt must have the platoon advancing low to the ground. Good.
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  Abel waited a moment more to be sure that there was no second wave of fire intended for suckers, then rose up and moved forward another hundred paces. They were nearing the base of the small rise. He signaled to the man behind him to break to the left. They cut diagonally toward the side of the rocky hillock and trotted another hundred paces.

  Grouped fire to the right, Center announced. Well away from our position, however.

  They hear the platoon out there. They don’t know we’re close, Abel thought.

  The ground sloped upward and the barley thinned. The soil underfoot became rocky.

  There is a natural alluvial rise beneath the rocky exterior in this place. The hillock is otherwise of human origin from field clearing, Center put in. Differential soil composition and weathering patterns puts the rise at approximately 10,250 Duisberg years old.

  Okay, Abel thought. Thanks for that. I don’t know how you figured it out but—

  I am able to make use of the contrast ratio between the cones and the rods in your eyes—light receptors—to make analytical calculations for the chemical compositions of the pebbles underfoot. It is a process similar to x-ray spectrum analysis used in physical chemistry—

  —but we have no time for this now, Abel thought. The one emotion, the one seemingly not entirely rational drive that Center possessed was an eagerness to share any and all information he had at any given moment. Abel supposed he couldn’t blame Center. Information was, after all, Center’s primary function and—if he could believe what he’d been told—Center’s very being. To expect Center to know when to shut up was like expecting a carnadon to know when it had eaten enough dakflesh.

  They came out of the barley and walked on loose stone. Abel moved his extended palm up and down in a wigwag signal for those behind him to tread as quietly as possible. The sentry behind him passed the order back. They climbed the hill for about twenty paces, and then Abel cut diagonally to his right. He called a halt and motioned for a weapons check. On more than one occasion in the Scouts, he had failed to put in a priming cap, or even to load his weapon, and might have gone into a firefight essentially unarmed had it not been for his captain reminding him to double-check. He thumbed back the hammer on his own pistol and was reassured to see the gleam of the cap on its fire nipple.

  He made a quick check and saw from moonlight glint that all the rifles had their bayonets fixed.

  “Hammers back. But quiet,” he whispered.

  Abel cocked the hammer slowly. The others did likewise with their rifles. Rifled barrels or no, these were single shot muzzle-loaded muskets. The first shots had to count. Even for Goldies, with their legendary thirty-blink reloads, getting off a second shot during a charge was unlikely.

  That was what the bayonets were for.

  Abel led the sentries forward at a trot.

  They came upon the group of ambushers from slightly behind the position of the attackers on the hill. When his group was ten or fifteen paces away, Abel signaled a halt. He motioned the sentries to move out of their staggered line and form up beside him. When the sentries had come up, the four of them stood and watched for a moment. The moonlight outlined the shapes of the attackers nicely. Several of the men were cranking their crossbows back. Another of them was standing slightly behind the group, his hands on his hips.

  There’s the captain, Raj said.

  Abel raised his pistol and drew a bead on the man. He knew when he fired he would be temporarily blinded by the flash. He might try closing his eyes, of course, but these weapons were hard enough to aim in daylight with eyes wide open and a steady hand. He would have to count on the flash having the same effect on his enemies as it did on his men and himself.

  “Fire!” This time it was not a harsh whisper, but a shouted command. Abel pulled the trigger on his pistol. Its bang was followed by the crackle of the other three muskets.

  The man with his hands on his hips crumpled to the ground. Two of the other silhouetted attackers did so as well. This was all he could make out until his pupils widened again.

  Three out of four shots on target, Abel thought. Not bad. But his men were Guardians, after all. You had to be able to shoot straight just to gain admittance.

  Abel tucked his pistol, still hot in the barrel, back into his belt. He momentarily considered swinging his rifle around and taking another shot, but instead drew his sword.

  “Ready,” he said.

  The sentries lowered their rifles to hip height, bayonets thrust forward and gleaming in the moonlight.

  “Charge!”

  With Abel in the lead, they rushed upon the remaining attackers at a downhill trot.

  Abel detected a moonlit glint to his left. It was a line of muskets leaning against man-sized stone upslope from him.

  They piled their rifles to the side while they got the crossbows ready. Too much equipment at one time would slow them down. And where are their donts?

  Hidden around the back of the hill, Center said.

  Abel quickly placed himself between the attackers and their muskets. The sentries rushed in. The nearest attacker turned at the sound of crunching sandals on gravel—and took a bayonet to the stomach.

  A man without a crossbow saw the onrushing sentries and cried out. “Arbalests right! No, to the right, thrice-damn you!” Abel thought he detected a Progar accent. The attempted re-aiming move was too quick. The bowmen were confused. Bow met bow with a clink, and some of the attackers dropped their weapons or got them tangled up with another’s.

  Metallic clinks instead of the clatter of wooden stocks.

  The moonlight played upon the weapons.

  Bronze and iron, Abel thought. They’re made of metal, except for the stock. Which meant the crossbows were outlawed by edict. They were nishterlaub, material used in a heretical manner as set down by the Law of Zentrum.

  Metal crossbows may as well have been blasphemy.

  Even though he understood what Zentrum truly was—an A.I. akin to Center—and knew that the Laws and Edicts of the Land were meant to suppress innovation and maintain an everlasting stasis, Abel couldn’t help feeling the crawling sensation in his gut that the sight of nishterlaub evoked.

  It had been pounded into him in a thousand Thursday school lessons, after all. Except for permitted weapons, it was forbidden to use metals in combination or for purposes beyond cook pots and knives. To do so was horrible. It was wrong. All technological artifacts must be used in a downgraded manner.

  “Nay, nay, forget it, forget it. To the donts,” called out the one who had before given the order to turn. “Fall back, you chunks of puke, fall back!”

  Definitely Progar—and rural at that.

  The attackers turned to run. There were perhaps ten of them still standing. And behind them—

  The rest of the Friday Company platoon rose up out of the barley. The click of fifteen muskets cocking froze the attackers in their tracks. Before they could think or move, Abel rushed forward. He grabbed the man who had called out orders and clotted him with the exposed hilt of his sword. The attacker fell to his knees, blood streaming down his face.

  “Surrender,” Abel called out. “Or die where you stand!”

  Slowly, the other men lowered their crossbows. There was something like a collective sigh of resignation that passed among them.

  Defeat.

  “Mercy,” said the man at Abel’s feet. “For the love of Zentrum, mercy.”

  He spoke with the thick accent of a man of Progar.

  Abel shook his head grimly. Mercy? That was the last thing the man was going to get.

  2

  He’d been right. The prisoners spoke in an extreme patois beyond even the normal Progar dialect. With concentration, it was comprehensible to a speaker of Landish, but never easy. Yet it was close enough to the Scoutish patois in which Abel was fluent that Abel could understand the captured men fully. Plus, he always had Center to fill in the gaps with his accurate grammatical extrapolation.

  Abel would rather have m
issed watching the excruciation of the prisoners, but since no one else in Third Brigade headquarters spoke Scoutish, he must be present as an interpreter during the interrogation.

  Also there was the fact that his best friend was the Third Brigade’s chief interrogator, and he wanted Abel there.

  As with all things having to do with the Guardian Corps, there was specialization and professionalism in the ranks, including specialist interrogation squads. The Third Brigade interpreters were led by Timon Athanaskew. Timon had started out as Abel’s great rival at the Academy.

  Law and Land, we hated one another.

  Timon was First Family on both sides, and he didn’t see anything wrong with using that fact to get his way when he could. Abel was only First Family on his mother’s side of the family, the Klopsaddles. His father was the highest military official in Treville District, but this didn’t obscure the fact that Joab Dashian came from a second-tier clan. Such a taint of common blood was enough to mark Abel as lower in status to one such as Timon Athanaskew.

  As Abel later came to know, Timon was not to blame for his attitude. Or at least not wholly to blame. He had been suckled on the idea that the blood of the ruling class ran in his veins. His brother, Reis, as stuck-up a prig as Abel had ever met, was a priest serving in the Tabernacle inner circle. Reis Athanaskew was a favorite of Abbot Goldfrank, the ruling cleric himself, it was said. The brothers had long planned to be High Priest of Zentrum and Commander of the Guardian Corps, respectively, one day. They considered themselves steward princes of the Land, answerable only to Zentrum.

  No matter how high he might rise, Abel would always be only a soldier to the Athanaskew brothers, answerable to the priesthood and high command. In other words, answerable to them.

  Abel had, at first, believed Timon just another First Family brat raised on privilege and useless when needed most. This was accentuated by Timon’s appearance. He was groomed down to the finest hair and always immaculately turned out in his uniform. Yet if he’d stopped to consider back then, Abel knew he would have realized this was impressive in itself considering that no servants were allowed to students at the Academy, no matter what status the students held in the outside world.