The Given Sacrifice c-7

by S. M. Stirling

  Rudi strode along beside Fred Thurston, about three-quarters of the way along the column of Boisean troops in his friend’s service; the Dúnedain and the detachment of the High King’s Archers brought up the rear amid the baggage carts, giving a fair imitation of the varied auxiliaries that accompanied the Boisean army’s heavy infantry, at least with the streets so dark.

  “This is the loudest clandestine approach I’ve ever made, that it is,” Rudi observed.

  “Yeah, it’s not every day you try to sneak up on someone with most of a battalion in close order, while blowing a trumpet,” Fred agreed.

  Rudi breathed deeply; they were both being elaborately casual, not least to fool themselves into dismissing the possibility of dying in the next few minutes, which was a useful trick. Courage in combat was mostly training and sheer animal reflex. It was much harder to walk towards a fight than it was to fight it, because that required a continuous effort of the soul.

  Be as you wish to seem, an ancient had said. It was good advice. Because acting brave and being so are very much the same thing.

  Two long blocks wasn’t very far, though they’d mustered on West Myrtle so that they could do a right wheel onto South Capitol and not look as if they’d popped up from under the earth. . which of course they had done. It was working well so far. Who could imagine so many men appearing within walls so strong and closely guarded?

  Unless someone detected the movement when we came over the river. . in which case we’d all be dead because they would have fired up the searchlights and catapults. So far, so good.

  “Wellman is going to be very useful here,” the last of the Thurston sons said. “It’s a hell of a lot better than fighting our way up the escalade stairs of some random section of the riverwall, and we’ll lose a hell of a lot less men in the assault force if they can come through a gate. Not as much time under fire on the approach.”

  “That’s if this works as smoothly as Wellman hopes, of course.”

  “He has the password of the day, and the gate commander will recognize him.”

  “Sure, and he’d recognize you, Fred,” Rudi observed.

  “Oh, go ahead, joke about it.”

  Fred wasn’t at the head essentially because of his appearance. Every second street corner still had ragged posters of his father Lawrence and elder brother Martin side by side in armor, both holding their helmets in the crook of an arm as they stared heroically into a space occupied by a shining, waving flag, with the elder’s hand on the younger’s shoulder as if to push him forward into that radiant future. The family resemblance was striking; they were all three handsome men, in a commanding sort of fashion different from Rudi’s own sharp-cut features.

  Martin Thurston had started the poster campaign as soon as he took power, trading on his sire’s popularity in a way his father had never tolerated; the first time Rudi had been through Boise there had been plenty of posters, but they’d all been of personified abstractions-symbols of Work or Patriotism or whatever. And apart from Fred’s individual looks, his part-African coloring and cast of features were a little uncommon in Boise, enough to attract a fatal second glance even with the cheekpieces and overhanging brow-ridge of the Boisean helmet hiding most of his face.

  In this city that shade of skin would scream exiled prince.

  The inner gate didn’t have a drawbridge or portcullis; the original builders hadn’t been too worried about attack from within. It did have sheer massiveness, a rectangle of welded steel girders as wide as the street and three times a man’s height mounted on dozens of old railroad-car wheels built into its lower edge and running on a strip set into the pavement. It didn’t swing in or out, but slid instead into or out of the solid bulk of the flanking towers. The road to the bridges ran through the gate, through the thickness of the fort in a passageway like an arched tunnel, and into another slab of metal just as huge at the eastern wall; that did have a drawbridge just beyond it. The tunnel had murder-holes in the upper curve to give anyone who somehow got through the solid metal a very hot greeting-literally so, since they could pump streams of burning napalm down. The granite-faced concrete meant that nothing within could catch fire.

  Except the flesh of an attacker, and blackened brass spouts above the portals showed where more flame could be pumped down onto the road outside the gate too. The gate was blazoned across its width with the stylized eagle that Boise used as its main symbol, and the raptor eye seemed to regard them with a ferocious watchfulness.

  Peace between us, Eagle Spirit, Rudi thought. I come as Your friend, to aid Your people.

  Even with good high-geared winches, moving the main gate wasn’t something you’d want to do more often than you must. A more human-scaled door stood to one side in the right-hand tower; it was small only by comparison to the gate, being wide enough for two men to pass abreast when it was open. Like the gate it slid sideways rather than swinging on hinges, locking snugly into a matching slot on the left side, which made it immensely strong; it would be easier to knock a hole through the concrete than beat it in.

  Wellman’s voice barked an order and the century commanders and noncoms repeated it:

  “Vexillia-”

  “Century-”

  The warning command rang out, combined with a two-note call from the trumpet.

  “-halt!”

  A crash and stamp as the troops slammed down their right heels and the steel-shot butts of the pilae. They were as still as so many statutes afterwards, to a degree that had always seemed a bit unnatural to Rudi-he approved of discipline, of course, but there was something a little inhuman when you took it to this level. He’d once seen a housefly walk over the eyeball of a Boisean soldier, on guard outside Fred’s tent, and the man had only blinked, slowly.

  A slit window beside the postern door opened and someone looked out.

  “Who goes there?” a sharp voice asked. “Advance and be recognized.”

  “Vexillia of the Fourth, reporting to carry out relief,” Wellman’s voice said. “Cap. . Centurion Wellman, commanding.”

  Lawrence Thurston had modeled much of Boise’s rebuilt military on that of Rome, but he’d kept the old American Army ranks. His parricide son had started replacing them before he died at Rudi’s hand in the Horse Heaven Hills, but intelligence said the change was still superficial. Fred, of course, had restored the old terms in his forces. As he said, he didn’t have a man-crush on Julius Caesar and the traditional system was just better than calling everyone a centurion.

  The voices dropped as they exchanged the sign and countersign, then the man inside almost yelped:

  “We didn’t get any orders about that!” the voice said, sounding a bit more natural in its startlement.

  “Well, I did,” Wellman snarled. “Look, is Major. . Goddammit, Senior Centurion Betjeman there?”

  “Yes, sir,” the voice said. “But he’s asleep. . ”

  “Well, then, wake him up! Or open the God-damned postern so I can deliver this detachment and get back to work! Tell him Cap. . Centurion Wellman is here. Move it, straight-leg!”

  There was a tense wait, and then the postern rumbled open, showing the serrated edge on one side that locked into saw-shaped holes when closed. An officer stood there, impeccably turned out except that the morning’s stubble was still on his cheeks, and Wellman saluted and handed over a packet of documents. They’d been modified from ones already in Wellman’s possession, by a Dúnedain who was an artist in such matters. They wouldn’t take close scrutiny, but then they probably wouldn’t have to.

  “Wellman, what the hell’s going on? Where’s Gianelli? You’re not in the Fourth’s chain of command. Hell, you’re not even a Regular.”

  “Sir, don’t I know it, and I haven’t the faintest. I just got the order by runner to show up at Fort Boise and march this detachment here-something about enemy movement on the west bank of the river.”

  The other officer rubbed at his eyes; Rudi’s experience of war was that you went through most of it
with your brain fogged from inadequate or interrupted sleep, or both. Particularly at those moments you most needed to be keenly alert.

  “Yeah, we have been seeing some of that, but I hoped it was the usual feinting, marching men back and forth in view to keep us guessing,” the man said. “What’s going on over east?”

  “Some incendiaries from their trebuchets aimed at the fort, and they’re pushing zigzag saps forward to get catapults closer to the wall. Straight-out Vauban. And they’re building more wheeled siege towers. I didn’t have time to observe much. You know how it is right now-”

  “Screwed,” Betjeman said. “All right, it’s irregular, but I’m glad to see the troops. It doesn’t feel right here. They’re going to try something, I can smell it, but we’ve got no air reconnaissance at all.”

  I hope we don’t have to kill this one, Rudi thought.

  It was illogical, but somehow you minded more if a man was good at his trade. War was a filthy business, but the qualities someone needed to do it really well were fine ones. The man seemed to be brave, stubborn, and to have an animal nose for trouble.

  This Betjeman could be a pillar of the realm, him and his children and children’s children.

  He and Fred made a smart right face and marched to the side of the road, as if in response to some order. Other commands were being barked out; file after eight-man file of men began trotting forward, through the postern and up the spiral stairs towards the ramparts. Rudi closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. He could feel the men, in a way-they were part of Montival, part of the great living organism that stretched from the single-celled things that dwelt in the deep crevasses of Earth and fed on its heat to the golden eagles balancing the wind high above. Himself and Mathilda not the heads of it exactly. . not so much the rulers as a. . focus, or an embodiment.

  But of the High Seeker, nothing. Perhaps a coldness, an absence, but even that was weirdly nonspecific. As if the man’s presence-and the things that somehow used him as a portal into the world of matter they hated-was simply not inscribed in the story of existence as everything else was.

  For this war is but a single chapter in the story of how the universe is to unfold. Two rival versions of that, each seeking to overwrite the other, throughout all the cycles of the world, to make the other as if it had never been. . never even been imagined to be.

  He and Fred were most of the way to the postern when the gate officer’s voice rose:

  “Wait a minute, I know that man! He was in the Third Brigade, they all got taken at the Horse Heaven Hills, their Eagle and all! You, soldier-guard, guard turn out the-”

  There was the sound of a blow and a grunt, but even for an expert it was very difficult to quickly disable a man in armor with your hands if you hadn’t taken him by surprise. They sprinted through the door, the moving column crowding over to make room. The tubae snarled and blatted again: at the double-quick and the entire snake of troops stepped up to two strides a second, a steady jog trot, without missing a beat.

  The door through the thickness of the wall opened into a wide space, the walls bare concrete with square beams inset and the ceiling twelve feet up. The walls held racks for spears where they weren’t staircases, the throwing pilae that Boise’s infantry used, and between them the big curved oval shields. Wellman was shaking his hand and cursing; Betjeman had his own blade out and was backing away with a group of half a dozen around him. Fred’s soldiers continued their controlled rush up into the interior of the fortress, moving like a single multi-legged iron centipede to seize the key points-the gate hydraulics, the napalm system, the heliograph station on the tallest tower, and the interior doors that could cut the fort off from the walls on either side.

  Formal discipline was a wonderful thing; they were all doing the job they’d been detailed to do, and leaving anything else to the people who were presumably tasked with it. It was an attitude that made them like a single weapon moving to its commander’s will on a battlefield. Sometimes there were drawbacks.

  “Sergeant Dawkins, fall out three files!” Fred barked. “Envelop!”

  The noncom pivoted as if the command had played directly on his nervous system. Twenty-four men followed him, their shields snapping up until they were held just below the eyes. The files slid past each other like sheets of oiled steel in a machine, one facing the little knot of men directly, the two on the flanks angling forward slightly to flank them.

  “Pilae-ready!”

  Two dozen heavy man-high ironshod javelins cocked back on brawny arms, moving like the bristling feathers on the crest of a bird. They weren’t long distance weapons, but they didn’t have to be here. It was a big room, but only a room. Rudi cast a glance backward. The eyes visible over the shield-rims differed-shades of blue, mostly, or hazel or black-but they were each as impersonal as a stamping-mill or the long narrow pyramid-points of the spears themselves, waiting for the word of command. It was as frightening as any physical threat he’d ever seen, in a short but eventful life.

  Betjeman glared defiance. Rudi drew the Sword. Cool fire flooded him, as it always did when he wielded the gift of the Powers in battle; as if he were a God himself, some thing that commanded sky and sea and the flicker of the lightning and strode laughing through the storm.

  “Leave this to me,” he said, stepping forward, drawing his dirk with his right hand, the one he used for his shield at other times.

  The Boisean officer glared at him. Then something changed in his face. First dawning recognition, a silent movement of the lips in a holy shit. Then the pupils of his eyes flared wide, until the greenish iris shrank to a thread hardly dividing black and white. The man vanished, leaving an alien and incarnate Purpose. He gave a guttural roar, a shocking sound, and charged.

  Rudi pivoted as he did. The Sword licked out, and the point touched the side of the man’s leg just above the knee. The wound was trifling, and so cleanly cut that it took an instant before the blood welled. The man went down as if poleaxed; then he curled around himself and buried his face in his hands, weeping. After a moment he raised his face.

  “I don’t. . I don’t remember. . where am I?” His eyes darted around, his own now but bewildered. “This is West Gate Main. . what day is it?”

  “He’s been keeping bad company, whether he knew it or not,” Rudi said grimly to Fred.

  Then to the subordinates still clustered with their weapons up: “Throw down! Throw down, and I promise you your lives. Tend to this man, he’s had a bit of a shock.”

  Steel clattered on the concrete pavement, and the three files moved forward. There was no unnecessary roughness in the way they disarmed the men and put them under guard; they were countrymen and essentially in the same army, with accidents of location mostly determining who was on what side. He saw relief on their faces, the expression of men who’d been prepared to die for honor’s sake but realized they didn’t need to.

  One of Betjeman’s men went down to a knee beside him, taking him gently by the shoulder: “Sir? Sir, do you recognize me?”

  “Of course I bloody-what’s going on?”

  Edain and the High King’s Archers poured into the room as the last of the Boiseans climbed upward; he was sweating and swearing under his breath at being separated from his charge. Most of the Dúnedain followed.

  “Let’s be about it,” Rudi said.

  Alleyne Loring nodded. “I’ll go for the emergency trip controls.”

  The gates were usually opened by high-geared winches, and that took a modest number of hands but a fair amount of time. They could be opened or slammed shut much more quickly by a system of hydraulic cylinders and dropping weights, though resetting them was a long process.

  Hordle jerked a thumb at a device of levers and springs two of his followers were carrying by the handles set into its square base, with a finned dart the length of a man’s forearm standing up from its center.

  “I’ll get this to a parapet.” A beaming grin. “Won’t they be gobsmacked when it goes off f
rom the gate’ouse!”

  The dart contained a color-coded flare and a spring-deployed parachute; it would loft up several hundred feet and signal where they’d achieved a foothold. They’d expected to take a stretch of wall, drop climbing ropes, and hold long enough for storming parties to get through the killing ground and come up to reinforce them. This was much better. .

  If it works, Rudi thought.

  Aloud: “And I’ll go for the High Seeker, who’s their last hope of stopping us now.”

  • • •

  They found him twenty minutes later, on the crest of a high rampart, just as the dawn-light cleared the mountains to the east and spilled across the world in a tide of fresh wind and clarity. The flare floated in a speck of eye-hurting brightness, trailing smoke red and white as it sank towards the river.

  “Back, back. . oh, Goddammit!” Fred shouted as they pounded up the last flight of stairs and rounded the crouching shape of a turntable-mounted catapult.

  A man sprawled dead over a pyramid-shaped pile of cast-steel round shot. Knots of combat sprawled over the top of the square tower, Boisean scutum and short sword against the long curved shetes of a few remaining easterners. That fight was ending quickly.

  But two of his troopers had thrown their pilae and then rushed the man in the red robe, uncovered as the last of his followers fell. He flicked the weapons out of the air with two slapping motions of his hands. One of the Boiseans came in crouched, shield up and blade lunging in the economical gutting upstroke. The red-robe’s hand slapped down and bone broke in the man’s wrist with a crackle audible ten feet away. His shriek of unbelieving pain mingled with his partner’s bark of:

  “USA! USA!”