Orion in the Dying Time o-3

by Ben Bova

  “They are not human,” I said, “but they are mortal. They die just as a man does, and their blood is as red as ours.”

  Subotai looked at me; then past me to where his men were laying out the bodies of the slain Mongols side by side.

  “Five killed,” he muttered. “How many of these dragons does the enemy possess?”

  “Hundreds, at least,” I said, watching the Mongol warriors as they tore branches from the bushes around the knoll and began to build a makeshift funeral pyre.

  Thinking of Set’s core tap that gave him the energy to leap backward in time, I added, “He can probably get more to make up his losses in battle.”

  Subotai nodded. “And his city is fortified.”

  “Yes. The walls are higher than five men standing on each other’s shoulders.”

  “This skirmish,” said Subotai, “was merely the enemy commander’s attempt to determine how many men we have, and what kind of fighters we are. When none of his scouts return home, he will know the second, but not the first.”

  I bowed my head. He had military wisdom, but he could not realize that Set had witnessed this fight, seeing us through the eyes of his clones.

  “You must go back and bring the rest of the army here,” Subotai decided. “And do it quickly, Orion, before the enemy realizes that we are only a thousand men—minus five.”

  “I will do it this night, my lord Subotai.”

  “Good,” he grunted.

  I was about to turn away when he reached up and clasped me on the shoulder. “I saw you charge into that beast when my mount was bucking. You protected me when I was most vulnerable. That took courage, friend Orion.”

  “It seemed the wisest thing to do, my lord.”

  He smiled. This gray-bearded Mongol general, his hair braided, his face still shining with the sweat of battle, this man who had conquered cities and slain thousands, smiled up at me as a father might.

  “Such wisdom—and courage—deserve a reward. What would you have of me, man of the west?”

  “You have already rewarded me, my lord.”

  His dark eyes widened slightly. “Already? How so?”

  “You have called me friend. That is reward enough for me.”

  He chuckled softly, nodded, and took me to the tent his men had pitched for him. As the sun went down we shared a meal of dried meat and fermented mare’s milk, then stood side by side as the funeral pyre was lit and the bodies of the slain Mongols properly sent on their way to heaven.

  I held my face immobile, knowing that the abode of the gods was nothing more than a beautiful dead city in the far future, a city that the gods had abandoned in fear for their lives. There were no gods to protect or defend us, I knew. We had no one to rely on except ourselves.

  “Now,” Subotai said to me as the last embers of the pyre glowed against the night’s darkness, “bring me the rest of my army.”

  I bowed and walked off a way from the camp. Moving the entire army and all their families and camp followers would not be easy. Perhaps I could not do it without aid from Anya or the other Creators. But I would try.

  I closed my eyes and willed myself back to the bleak city of wooden huts and mud hovels. Nothing happened.

  I concentrated harder. Still no result.

  Throwing my head back, I stared up at the stars. Sheol glimmered weakly, a poor dulled reflection of its former strength. And I realized that Set had blocked my way through the continuum, just as he blocked Anya when we had first come to this time and place.

  He had trapped me here, with Subotai and barely a thousand warriors.

  I heard his hissing laughter in my mind. I had led Subotai into a trap. Set intended to keep us here and slaughter us down to the last man.

  Chapter 36

  I could not face Subotai. He had followed me on faith, believing that I would lead him to a land where he and his people could live in peace once they had conquered the aliens who controlled the area. He had trusted me and called me friend. How could I tell him that I had led him into a deadly trap?

  This was my doing, my fault. I could not look upon the battle-hardened face of my Mongol general again until I had corrected the situation. Or died trying.

  I had learned one thing of supreme importance from Set. Energy is the key to all powers. Cut off the source of his energy and your enemy becomes helpless. Set’s source of energy was the core tap that reached down to the molten heart of Earth. I had to reach it and somehow destroy it.

  The tap was deep inside Set’s fortress, which lay more than a day’s march from where Subotai’s troops had camped for the night. I had to get there, and quickly, before Set unleashed an attack upon Subotai that would slaughter all the Mongols.

  But I was cut off from my energy source. Set had put a barrier between me and the heavens that prevented me from utilizing the energy streaming in from the sun and stars. Was this shield merely a bubble that covered the immediate region around me, or had he wrapped the entire planet in a shimmering curtain that blocked the energy streaming earthward from the stars?

  It made no difference. The fact was that I was cut off from the energies that would allow me to fight Set. There was only one thing to do: reach his own core tap and either destroy it or use it against him.

  There was no way that I could accomplish anything in this one night. I took a horse from the Mongols’ makeshift corral and rode toward the northeast and Set’s fortress. I only hoped that I could reach it before the devil launched an annihilating attack upon Subotai.

  The sun rose dim and hazy, a weak pale phantom of its usual glory. Set’s shield was incredibly strong, I realized. Pterosaurs were already crisscrossing the watery gray sky. They could not miss seeing me riding alone across the wide plain of grass.

  I wondered what Subotai was thinking of me. Probably he was not alarmed yet, thinking that I had returned to Muscovy and was making preparations for bringing the rest of his army to him. I hated to think that he would believe I had betrayed him. I did not fear his anger or punishment, but I felt miserable at the thought that he might feel I had broken his trust.

  Despite the wan appearance of the sun, the day became quite hot. Set’s shield was selective, allowing the longer wavelengths of sunlight to reach the ground and heat it. I knew that if I had the proper instruments with me, they would show that none of the higher-energy wavelengths were penetrating the shield. Nor were any energetic cosmic particles getting through, I was certain.

  Late in the afternoon a trio of Shaydanians mounted on fighting dragons appeared out of the shimmering heat haze, heading directly for me. The pterosaurs had done their job. I was to be killed or captured and brought before Set once again.

  For the first time since I had known them, these Shaydanians bore weapons. They each carried oddly convoluted lengths of bright metal strapped across their backs. Once they spotted me they unslung the devices and, clutching them in both hands like rifles, urged their two-legged carnosaurs into a trotting pace.

  I slid off my mount and shooed it away from me. I had already sacrificed one pony to the carnosaurs. That was enough. Idly I thought that I must be acquiring some of the Mongols’ reverence for horses.

  As the carnosaur-mounted devils approached me I focused my consciousness on the nearest of the three, reaching into his mind for a brief moment. The rifles, with their bulbous metallic blisters and needle-slim muzzles, projected streams of fire, like a small flamethrower. Set realized that he could no longer rely on fangs and claws to deal with the Mongols; he needed weapons. What more terrifying weapon than a flamethrower, especially coming from a reptilian that already had the Mongols worried that they were facing supernatural demons?

  I saw something else in the Shaydanian’s mind during that fleeting instant: they were not under orders to take me alive. Set had no intention of taking further chances with me. These three clones of his were going to kill me, here and now.

  My senses shifted into hyperdrive immediately and the scene slowed as if time were s
tretching like a piece of warm taffy. The three Shaydanians lifted their rifles to their shoulders, aiming at me through diamond-shaped crystal sights. I saw their taloned fingers tightening on the curved triggers.

  As they aimed at me their attention was shifted momentarily from guiding their mounts. The fierce two-legged carnosaurs, directed mentally by their riders, continued to trot toward me. But their tiny brains were not under the firm control of the Shaydanians, for one fleeting moment.

  Desperately I sent a lance of red-hot mental energy into those three dinosaurs’ brains. They screeched and reared to their full height, throwing two of the Shaydanians to the ground and forcing the third to drop his rifle and clutch at his mount’s hide with both clawed hands.

  All this I saw in slow motion. Even as the two thrown Shaydanians were falling toward the ground, I ran and dove full-length for the rifle that was spiraling through midair. I grabbed it before it touched the grass. As my fingers tightened around it I heard the thumps of the two riders hitting the ground hard.

  The dinosaurs were still hissing, the two freed of their riders galloping off away from us. The third, though, was under his rider’s control once again and heading straight for me.

  I rolled away from a stamping clawed foot that would have crushed me under the carnosaur’s weight and fired from the hip at its rider. The stream of flame sliced him in two across midtorso. As his severed body slipped bloodily from the dinosaur’s back, the beast wheeled and came at me, massive head bent low, cavernous mouth gaping, lined with saw-edged teeth the size of my scimitar.

  I pulled the rifle’s trigger as hard as I could while dodging sideways. The stream poured flame down its gullet and slashed down the length of its thick neck. It hit the ground with a tremendous thud, literally shaking the earth, bellowing like a runaway steam locomotive to the very last.

  I looked up. The two other Shaydanians were scrambling for the rifles they had dropped. I fired at the nearer of them and he toppled over dead. But when I turned to the third of them, my rifle did not respond. It was empty, its fuel depleted.

  The Shaydanian had reached his own rifle and was picking it up from the grass. I threw my useless weapon at him and charged after it, drawing my scimitar from its scabbard. The rifle hit him like a club, knocking him down again on his rump. Before he could train his own rifle on me I was close enough to kick it out of his hands.

  He glowered at me through his red slitted reptilian eyes and scrambled to his feet. Hissing, he advanced on me, clawed hands reaching out. I slashed at him with the scimitar once. He raised an arm to block the blow, but I swung the blade under and then lunged at him. The point penetrated the scales of his chest and went completely through him. With a final hiss of death agony he collapsed and, sliding off my blade, fell to the bloodstained ground.

  Immediately I projected a mental image at Set. I sent him a scene that showed two of his clones lying dead on the bloody grass but the third standing over my own burned corpse. With every ounce of cunning in me, I presented myself mentally as one of Set’s clones, and the body at my feet as my own.

  “You have done well, my son,” came Set’s mental voice. “Return now with the corpse so that I may examine it.”

  I mentally called one of the carnosaurs back to me and mounted it for the trip back to the fortress by the Nile. Had Set truly believed the false message I had sent him? Or was he merely drawing me to his fortress so he could dispose of me more easily?

  There was only one way to find out. I headed the dinosaur toward the fortress, concentrating every moment on my phony image so that even the pterosaurs scouting high overhead would “see” what I wanted them to, and report it back to Set.

  It was nightfall by the time I reached the garden by the Nile. The fortress was a short ride away. I would reach it in darkness, which suited me well. I knew there was no chance of my keeping up my deception once inside Set’s walls—if Set had been deceived at all.

  The sky was utterly black and starless, as dark as the deepest pit of hell as I rode the carnosaur up to the curving fortress wall. The faint phosphorescent glow of the wall itself was the only hint of light in that night made frighteningly black by Set’s energy shield. Not an insect buzzed, not a frog peeped or an owl hooted. The murky shadows were as silent as Set’s reptilians themselves. The night was eerily, unnaturally still, as if Set was mentally controlling even the wind and the flow of the Nile.

  Climbing from the back of my mount to the top of its thickly boned head, I reached as high as I could along the wall. My hands fell short of its top, but the surface of the wall was not perfectly smooth. Like the shell of an egg, there was a slight, almost microscopic roughness to it. Not much, but perhaps enough to climb with. And the wall curved inward. Yanking off my Muscovite boots, I clambered barefoot along the slippery curved surface while directing the dinosaur to go on the gate alone.

  Several times my precarious footing on the egg-smooth wall faltered and I almost slid back down to the ground. I had to consciously prevent my hands and feet from sweating and becoming slippery. At last, after what seemed like an hour of painfully slow climbing, I reached the top of the wall and slid myself flat on my belly across its edge.

  I could feel the energy humming from deep within the fortress. It made the wall vibrate. The eggshell-like material was warm, not from the day’s sunshine but from the energy pulsating from below. Now my task was to reach the source of that energy, the core tap at the heart of this fortress.

  I quickly realized I was not alone on the wall’s narrow top. Peering into the darkness, I saw nothing ahead of me. Turning around to look behind, my guts twisted in sudden fear. One of those enormous dead-white snakes was slithering toward me, its beady eyes glowering red hatred, its jaws already open, its fangs already dripping venom.

  “Did you think you could trick me, foolish ape?” Set’s voice in my head sent a shiver through me. “Did you really believe that your monkey’s mind could be superior to mine? Welcome to my fortress, Orion. For the final time!”

  If ever my body went into hyperdrive, it was at that instant. I rolled over on my back and kicked my legs over my feet like an acrobat to end up standing on the balls of my feet even as the huge snake sprang at me.

  Its first strike fell short because I was no longer where it had expected me to be. But it immediately drew itself together, coiling for another strike as I drew my scimitar from its scabbard. The snake’s immense body was thicker than my arm and at least twenty feet long. It hissed and reared back in slow motion, then struck at me again.

  This time I was ready. With a two-handed swing I slashed its head from its body and saw it go sailing off slowly into the darkness below. Its decapitated body hit me in the chest, smearing blood on me and staggering me backward several steps. For long moments the headless serpent writhed and twitched while my senses returned to normal and my breathing slowed down.

  “How many can you fight, simian?” Set taunted me. “I have an unending source of creatures to do my bidding. How long will your strength last against my legions?”

  For a second or two I stood there in the darkness, seeing nothing but the faint glow of the phosphorescent wall’s top curving off into the gloom like a softly lighted highway. More snakes were on their way, I knew. And squads of Shaydanians armed with flame rifles or more. All under Set’s mental control.

  I searched my memory to ascertain exactly where along the wall I stood in relation to the gate. Then I dashed off in the other direction.

  I heard bodies stirring in the circular courtyard below. Probably Set’s clones rousing themselves to come after me. He had fighting dragons penned down there, too. And sauropods. And human slaves.

  All under his control. But could he control them all at the same time?

  I reached the spot where I remembered the pterosaurs’ roost to be and leaped down into the darkness. Sure enough, I landed only a few feet below in the midst of the sleeping winged lizards. They hissed and squawked and flapped their huge cla
wed wings as I swung my sword wildly among them, driving them into the air.

  With one hand I grabbed the clawed feet of a pterosaur as it launched itself off their roosting platform. I was far too heavy for it to support and we sank, the beast screaming and flapping madly, to the hard-packed earth below. I let go of my animate parachute once I saw the ground below me. I hit with a jarring thump and rolled over, the pterosaur disappeared into the shadows, flapping and wailing like a banshee.

  Confusion. I had lost the element of surprise; indeed, I had never had it. But I could cause confusion there in the courtyard. Let’s see how firm Set’s control is over all his menagerie, I said to myself.

  The carnosaurs and sauropods were stomping and hissing in their pens, as if angry at being awakened by the squawking of the pterosaurs. Good! In the dimness of the unlit courtyard I dashed for the carnosaur pens, throwing a mental projection of pain at them as I raced through the shadows.

  Their answering screeches was music to my ears. A Shaydanian suddenly appeared out of the darkness before me, flamethrower in his hands. I swung my scimitar overhand, crunching through collarbone and ribs, slicing him open from neck to gut. With my left hand I grabbed his rifle as he fell.

  Sheathing my bloody sword, I turned and fired a bolt of flame at the carnosaurs’ pens. That panicked them and they smashed through the railings, screeching wildly. A similar blast of flame turned the normally placid sauropods into a maddened herd of thundering brutes that likewise broke free of their enclosures and stampeded across the courtyard.

  Total confusion swept the courtyard. Chaos reigned as the Shaydanians stopped trying to find me in their sudden rush to get out of the paths of the frightened dinosaurs that were dashing every which way.

  I ran to the barred inner gate where the human slaves were kept and kicked it open. It was totally dark in there, and with the screeching and roaring from the courtyard I would not have been able to hear a brass band playing. I took a step inside and tottered on empty air, tried to recover, and found myself staggering ludicrously down a steep set of stairs into total darkness.