by Steve Rzasa
He was dead.
Cope swore. “I sure as all that’s hallowed am not going to run off.”
“Then I’m with you, flyboy.” Daisy’s voice shook, but her expression carried no hint of hesitation.
Cope led her into the clearing.
• • •
Sergeant Taube dragged Keysor over to Beam. The mayor-general’s trouser knees were ripped and muddied. Taube held his gun to Keysor’s temple.
“Surrender your men, Mayor-General, and I promise your death will be as painless as I can manage,” Beam said coolly.
Keysor’s mouth worked. Winch wondered if he’d say something heroic, inspiring, or just something everyone would regret. Was he thinking of Troy? Of Jesca?
Keysor spat onto Beam’s shoes.
Beam considered the spittle as if he were confused what it was. Then he sighed deeply. He raised his hand.
Mayor-General Keysor levitated a good six feet off the clearing.
Colonel Cuthbert swore.
Maddy leaned in. “Now it’s my turn to tell you to hold fire, Colonel.” She had a hand on Cuthbert’s rifle.
“I’m offering a simple choice. Lay down your arms.” Beam’s voiced echoed around the clearing. “Join our regime. You’ll serve a new Perch, a stronger Perch fit for a new order of prosperity and security under my hand. Resist, and I will kill every one of you. We’ll take your wives as our own and your children as our servants. They’ll forget you. But they will never forget this day.”
Silence greeted his request. Winch could see the soldiers exchanging glances, and his father-in-law Hobarth fidgeting with his rifle.
Not a man put down his gun. And Maddy only sneered.
“We’ll see you blamed to Avernus first, Beam.” Cope stormed into their midst. Before anyone could react he was at Winch’s side, with Daisy standing next to them both.
“You do like making yourself known, don’t you?” Winch couldn’t resist the jab, even in this situation. But he was immensely glad to see his brother.
Cope grinned. He held his gun ready. “Anything to impress.”
“Nice to see you made the party, Copernicus.” Maddy slapped Cope on the back.
Cuthbert took advantage to yank his rifle free of Maddy’s grasp. He aimed it at Beam. Guns on both sides of the clearing clattered as men aimed at each other.
“You! Put down the mayor-general or by the Consuls, you’ll have my lead in your eye!” Cuthbert shouted.
“You threaten me with death?” Beam hissed.
“I threaten whatever you like. While you interpret all possible meanings of my threat, I’ll shoot you like a stag-moose clean through your brain plate,” Cuthbert snapped.
Beam laughed sharply. “Do you see, Winchell Sark? These are the ones to whom you’d have me show mercy. Consuls. Powerless fairytales. I will show no mercy. There is no mercy. There is only life and the power to end it, to grasp it in the palm of your hand. That is the power of the cythraul. That is the power they’ve ceded to me. You cannot fathom what I have become.”
“No,” Winch said. “The Allfather is the only true power in this realm. And none can control Him. All you have is an illusion.”
“Illusion? The deaths today, are they an illusion? The power I wield against you, is it a figment of an overripe imagination?”
Hallowed Sepyr, be with me. Do not leave my side. Winch exhaled. “Death is not the end-all. There is a life beyond that the Exaltson has prepared for us, a home for all time for those He calls His children.”
Beam laughed again. “So naïve. So certain of that madman’s ravings.”
That tore it. “The Exaltson is my master, and you will not profane Him!”
“I will profane whomever and whatever—”
“No. You won’t. Not another blamed word.” Winch turned and looked at them all—at Cope and Daisy, at Maddy and Colonel Cuthbert, at Hobarth and the Picksborough volunteers, and at the Perch militia. “We are free men and women. Be it Perch or Picksborough or anywhere on either side of these mountains, we stand together here. All Galderica will know your treachery, Beam. We choose to serve Perch. And I will always serve Thel and His Exaltson. Never you. Never.”
Beam was silent. His fingers flexed on his right hand. His left still held Keysor aloft. Whether the man was dead or alive, winch knew not. His body was certainly immobilized.
“Put him down, Beam.”
Beam turned his hand. Keysor flew out toward them. Maddy and Cuthbert dropped their guns, and stretched out their arms. Keysor fell into them like a barrel of apples dumped off a cart. Winch didn’t breathe.
Cuthbert got himself out from under the others. He checked Keysor’s pulse and put his head to his chest. “He’s alive.”
Beam took long, slow steps into the clearing. Cope raised his gun but Beam gestured sharply. The gun went spinning off toward the road. Cope clutched his hand, and gritted his teeth in pain.
Beam stood on his own, fifty feet from them. He stared straight at Winch. Whether it was the clouds looming overhead or the cold wind bearing down through the clearing that chilled him, or whether it was the complete silence in the forest, Winch didn’t know.
“Your death will be the first. And the most rewarding,” Beam said softly. “Even more so than those pests Oneyear Hines and Jesca Keysor. Oh, yes, I enjoyed their deaths immensely.”
Cope flinched beside Winch. Daisy held on to his arm, and Winch kept his own elbow on Cope’s chest.
“Oh, come now, don’t be so distraught.” Beam pulled something red from his pocket. “I brought this just for you.” He threw it on the ground.
Winch’s insides churned.
It was a lock of red hair.
Cope swore. He nearly broke from Daisy’s grasp. “Let me go!”
“No. I won’t,” Daisy said. “Don’t be a fool.”
Cope looked like he’d been slapped.
“Don’t take the bait,” Winch said.
Cope glowered. “I’m itching to do a mite more than take bait.”
Eight of the Peace Branch men stepped forward with Beam. They were young and old, bearded and clean shaven, all manner of men. But they all wore the same haunted, gaunt expression. Deep circles under their eyes made their faces look almost skeletal.
Beam raised his hands, as did the other cythramancers.
“Bring down your wrath on these!” Beam cried out. “Show them your might!”
He called out words that Winch found unpronounceable in a deep, sonorous tone that shook the very ground on which they stood. Blue and purple streaks of light flickered around Beam’s hands and those of the other cythramancers. The flickers grew into what resembled tongues of flame. They grew steadily larger, joining into one long wavering wall of something so palpable Winch was drawn to touch it.
But he kept his hands by his sides. Though the edges of this field were roiling with light of the deepest hues of blue and violet, the center was so dark it was almost opaque. The cythramancers behind it were mere shadows.
“Fire!” Cuthbert roared.
The Perch militia fired relentlessly at the field of darkness. Bullets ricocheted at wild angles. The surface of the darkness flickered and roiled. Beam smiled even more broadly. Cuthbert scowled. He fired his rifle to no avail.
Maddy spat in the dirt. “Blame it all, Winch, what are we gonna do?”
Winch considered the wall of energy before them, the bullets careening off it. He turned to Maddy, and the rest of the people gathered with them. “The only thing I know to do,” he said loudly, to be heard over the gunfire, “is to pray. The Allfather’s the only one who can save us, if it be His will. If not, there are worse things than dying.”
But would He bother? The question tortured Winch. Come now. He failed you so many times before. Why would now be any different?
Winch grimaced. He had no argument. Instead the words from the pamphlets written by Vaughn Markwater, the Writ of Thel recorded through the voice of Ifan, spoke to him: “Count on Thel. And
count also on me. I’m the only light there is. The only road to follow. The only veracity.”
I believe it. Winch bowed his head to pray. He quietly pressed five fingers to his forehead, to his throat, and to his chest.
He was not alone. A few men here and there shouldered their weapons and clasped hands together in supplication. One got down on his knees. And another pair bowed their heads. Maddy’s mouth started moving, but she kept her eyes wide open.
“Blame it all!” Cuthbert stalked over to one. He jabbed the man in the side with his rifle’s stock. “Keep firing. Pick up your weapon!”
“Allfather, yours is the only true power,” Winch said aloud. “Thank you for the gift of your Exaltson, the Redeemer of mankind. Forgive us all our wrongs and misdeeds. Let us by our deaths be of service to you. Have mercy on those who heed you.”
He caught glimpse of Cope standing there, arms stock still, eyes wide with—fear? Disbelief? Who knew? He put a hand on Cope’s shoulder.
Cope nodded curtly and flashed him a tight grin. Daisy held his hand. Cope’s grip was white-knuckled.
“You bargain with a being who doesn’t exist!” Beam shouted.
The dark energy leapt at them. Cuthbert and his militia kept up their gunfire. The bullets stopped nothing.
Winch closed his eyes. His only regret, that he wasn’t able to hold Lysanne and his children in his arms one last time. He’d see them, eventually in eternity, and the believers lost this side of the Unfading Lands.
I am ready, Allfather. Take me to your arms.
Heat and cold buffeted him simultaneously. He heard a strange crashing sound, like the scraping of rock against rock in a landslide. And a rumble deeper, stronger than the worst avalanche he’d seen shook his body to its very bones.
A hand shook his shoulder frantically. “Winch. Winch! You have to see!” Cope hissed. He sounded scared stiff.
Winch opened his eyes. “Great skies above.”
Light of the most dazzling and pure white and gold he’dnever seen spread out before him, only a handful of feet away. It was pleasingly warm, like the summer breezes down Wright Valley. Wispy edges reached up as high as the trees, and half again as high. And the whole glowing, blazing light storm made a fine wall between the Perch soldiers and the Trestleway militia.
The dark energy of the cythramancers pounded and skittered along the front. It was far less black, but somehow even more sinister, from this side of the light. Winch peered at it, and gasped. He could see shapes. Like bodies. They swirled around each other in the light. A moan like an ill wind crept through the barrier.
“I’ve never… It’s so…” Cope choked up. He had tears in the corners of his eyes. “It looks like…wings.”
He was right. Winch took a step back and got the distinct impression he was gawking at a pair of mighty, massive wings.
“This cannot be.” Beam’s voice pierced the crackling of the barrier, and the moaning of the dark field. His eyes were still black, as Winch could see through the now dimming dark force. “You can’t do this.”
“Only Thel does this,” Maddy said softly. “He is the One.”
“No. Not possible. It’s not possible.”
“Everything is possible through the Allfather.” Winch felt strangely sorry for this man who’d been so corrupted by darkness you could see it in his eyes. What kind of pain must he be in? “Beam, listen to me. Are you afraid?”
Beam made no reply. He stood stock still.
“You don’t have to be. Call unto the Allfather. Seek His mercy. And he’ll open the door for you.” Winch gestured at Maddy and at the few soldiers who prayed. “As He did for all of us.”
“I…it can’t be…” The darkness faded a bit from his eyes. Winch couldn’t make out his expression, but whatever it was, Beam obscured it by covering his face with his hands.
“Captain Beam.” Winch reached out to the murderer of so many. The man who’d killed Jesca and Oneyear.
Somebody had to hold out that hand.
Beam faltered. Whatever sadness Winch had seen or imagined was vanished. In its place was a sneer and eyes of pitch-black. “Weakness. I need strength!”
He held up his hands again.
“No!” Winch cried.
Another dark field, smaller and sharper, lashed out. It hammered into the first field. Screams, horrifying shrieks, rippled outward. The golden light increased in intensity.
And the black energy pounded backward off the light. Straight for the cythramancers.
The sudden fear on their faces was evident to Winch.
Beam in particular looked terribly shaken. But he stood his ground. As if he could somehow push back the otherworldly forces headed his way. “No! You’ve betrayed me!” he shouted. “Why did you forsake me?”
The dark energy surged over the cythramancers. They screamed, but the sounds were instantly cut off. In that moment, Winch saw their bodies glow a deep, burning red. What had once been flesh and blood and bone took on the hue of embers in the stove.
They burst into sparks that rapidly smoldered.
Only their clothing remained. It fluttered to the ground in the wake of the energy, like leaves discarded from trees.
The rest of the Trestleway forces cried out. Some dropped their weapons and ran. The energy wave hit them, and Winch felt anguish at the thought that all these men, no different from him, would die too.
But the wave bowled them over, like a strong wind among the valley grasses. Men, weapons, and branters went tumbling. The motorwagons down on the Ridge Road were knocked against each other with harsh clangs. One toppled ingloriously onto its side.
Once the wave passed, silence descended on the clearing again. Tree branches rustled in the wake of the disturbance. The Trestleway men slowly picked themselves up, clambering off the dirt.
A raindrop fell on Winch’s head. The drops came faster until it was a full-on shower. Through the rain, he could see enemy aeroplanes flying swiftly away down the valley, pursued by planes of silver and blue. Perch colors.
Colonel Cuthbert reacted faster than anyone. “Secure the area!” He sprinted forward, and did not stop until his rifle barrel rested at Sergeant Taube’s chest.
Perch and Picksborough riflemen ran to join him. They put the Trestleway soldiers, most of whom had dropped their weapons, in their sights. Maddy and her fellows hurried down the hill toward the armored motorwagons.
Cuthbert nudged Taube’s chest with his rifle. “Surrender your forces.”
Taube didn’t look to Winch in any condition to argue. His face was pale, his hands shook, and his general appearance was disheveled. It may have had to do with the several empty suits of black coats and white shirts that lay in crumpled forms around him. “It…it only took them? The cythramancers?” he whispered.
Cuthbert prodded him again.
Taube’s face slackened. “We surrender. Men, lay down your arms if you haven’t already. Someone send a runner to the units at the rear.”
“Odds are, they’ve reckoned what’s happened already,” Cuthbert said.
Taube picked up his pistol and handed it, stock first, to Cuthbert.
Winch let loose a shaky breath.
Trestleway guns all around clattered to the clearing. Men in their tan uniforms raised their hands either over their heads or straight for the sky. Ragged cheers went up among the Perch and Picksborough soldiers.
Hobarth Brownrigg came forward with Keysor leaning on him for support. Cuthbert saluted sharply with the hand holding Taube’s gun. “Victory, sir.” Cuthbert offered Keysor the gun.
Keysor took it. He stared at the weapon blankly. “I don’t deserve this. None of us do. Save one.”
He pushed off from Hobarth’s arm. Hobarth reached for him but Keysor staggered away. He came right for Winch and Cope.
“You keep this, Winch.” He pressed the gun into Winch’s hand. Keysor’s face was weary, but he managed a half-smile. “Keep it in memory of Jesca, and Oneyear, and Troy, and all those who died
to stop this. You have done Perch a great service today. I will never forget it. And give your Allfather my thanks.”
“I…I will.” Winch’s throat tightened. He still could not fathom what had happened. He walked past Keysor, over to the spot where the cythramancers had made their last stand. Nothing left now but a scorched patch of dirt and grass. Black coats, black vests and trousers, a handful of hats, white shirts, and red ties. They stood out like wildflowers among the moss and rocks.
Bootsteps crunched beside him. Cope stood, eyes squinting into the sky. “It will put out the fires from the dirigibles. And I don’t think those Free Flier planes will be much a bother. Look.”
A group of twelve planes swept into the valley amidst the running dogfight around the dirigibles. Winch couldn’t make out their numerals from here, but the colors were white and green. “Naxothrace?”
“Atta boys.” Cope grinned.
“Then it’s really over.”
Cope knelt and dug in the dirt. He brushed a finger over the lock of Jesca’s hair. “Yes. It is.” He put it in the hole he’d dug, and he covered it with dirt.
There was something else red nearby. Cope picked up Beam’s tie. He glanced at Winch. “Not a trophy. A reminder that what I saw here today was…real.”
Winch’s eyes burned with tears. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”
“Same here, Big Brother.” Cope pulled him into a hug. Winch felt Cope’s tears on his shoulder. “Same here.”
Sunday
Winch sat beside Lysanne in the waiting area of the mayor-general’s office at City Hall. He held her hand. He didn’t think he’d ever held it more tightly.
Lysanne smiled at him. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Are you well?”
“Better than I’ve ever been,” Winch said. “And blessed to have you by my side.” He kissed her back.
“Huh. Well that’s just stomach-turning.” Cope said on the other side of Lysanne. He bent forward to grin at Winch. “How’s about when you’re both done nauseating me I get a kiss too?”
“Sorry, Cope, not feeling up to it,” Winch said solemnly.
