Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  Kal, illuminated for a brief instant by a flash of lightning, looked down at Andrew, as if hoping to hear more. Andrew looked up at him in silence, as if imploring him not to force out yet another admission, at least not now.

  The intensity of the storm seemed to rise to another crescendo, with gusts of icy wind driving the rain out nearly horizontal to the ground.

  “Goddammit, Andrew,” Emil finally growled, breaking the silence, “I didn’t save you from typhoid just to have you die now from pneumonia. For heaven’s sake get into this car so we can get moving.”

  “We’d best get moving,” Kal said, and forcing a sad smile, he nodded to Andrew and went back inside.

  Andrew looked over at Pat.

  “It’ll be all the way to the Sangros, to the gates of Roum, and most likely beyond,” Pat said, his voice sharp and cold.

  “Most likely,” Andrew said.

  “A splendid little war we’ve got here,” Pat said. “One for the history books to be sure.”

  “Care to ride out with us?” Andrew asked, not able to respond to the bluntness of Pat’s remarks.

  “My staffs on the other train, and besides I want to ride out of here with my own boys. I’ll see you at headquarters in Kev come morning.”

  Pat drew up to salute, but Andrew stopped him, reaching out to grasp his hand.

  “You did well today, Pat. The way you handled the rear guard saved all of us. It was masterful, like Pap Thomas at Chickamauga.”

  Pat for once did not react to a compliment in his usual way. He looked straight into Andrew’s eyes, his gaze serious.

  “You know, Andrew, before, back in the beginning, it was mostly a game. You did the thinking, I did the fighting. Hard-drinking, head-bashing mick.”

  His voice dropped.

  “Now, I mean with Hans gone…” He hesitated, fumbling for words. “It’s just I want you to know, whatever you need done, I’m there for you, Andrew Lawrence Keane. Whatever it takes, I’m there for you, God bless ya, whatever you need.”

  Andrew, surprised, hesitated, unable to let go of Pat’s hand. He squeezed it fiercely, wordlessly nodding his thanks. Pat stepped back, saluted, and then disappeared into the driving storm.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Emil said. “At the age of forty he’s finally grown up.”

  Andrew nodded, allowing a smile to trace his features.

  “A Sherman for your Grant,” Emil continued.

  “We called Grant a butcher,” Andrew said, looking over at Emil.

  Emil said nothing, sensing a rebuke.

  Andrew looked back down the siding. Another form was visible beside the orderly who had stood in the distance, discreetly out of hearing yet close enough to respond if wanted. Kathleen stepped away from the orderly and came up to join him.

  “Just what the hell are you doing out here in this?” Andrew asked, slightly exasperated. He had to go around in this driving storm, but he wasn’t amused that his wife would choose to do so as well.

  “Trying to sort out those who will die if we don’t get them on board this train,” she replied, while reaching up to take off his glasses and then vainly attempting to dry them on the hem of her soaked dress. “I put that old couple and their six grandchildren in our berth. We’ve got a dozen more in our car—your staff agreed to stand for the rest of the trip.”

  He wanted to protest—the boys of his staff needed to get some rest—but he could imagine the rain-drenched refugees now huddling in his command car. He’d sooner walk himself than ask them to leave.

  “That’s why I love you,” he finally said, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead while she put his thoroughly smeared glasses back on.

  Extending his hand, he helped her to board the back of the train, and Emil reached down to steady him as he followed her up the slippery steps.

  “Get this train moving,” Emil shouted, leaning over the side of the back platform.

  The brakeman, who had stood back with the orderly, unhooded his smoking lantern, held, it aloft, and waved it back and forth as he ran up forward toward the engine. Seconds later the high shriek of the whistle sounded, drowned out momentarily by a rolling peal of thunder.

  The train lurched beneath Andrew’s feet. Slowly gaining speed, it edged through the station. On the neighboring track, Pat’s train stood out, highlighted by sputtering torches and the crackling flashes of lightning, the open flatcars crowded with troops, even the tops of the boxcars covered with rain-soaked men. It was a dismal sight, made even more pathetic by the even less fortunate refugees who were strung out along the track, many of them still moving eastward through the night.

  “The only thing half so melancholy as a battle lost is a battle won,” Emil said.

  “Wellington, if I remember my history,” Andrew replied.

  Emil nodded.

  “Wellington never saw anything like this, though,” Emil replied.

  “Wellington never lost as badly as we have,” Andrew said, “not even in Spain.”

  “Well, you got us the time we need,” Emil said, trying to sound cheerful.

  “At what price?” Andrew whispered.

  “You mean Yuri, poor soul,” Emil replied. “He was a dead man the moment the Mekri first made him a pet twenty years ago. You gave him a chance for an honorable end, and he embraced it. Don’t blame yourself for his sacrifice.”

  “It’s not his sacrifice that’ll haunt me, good doctor,” Andrew replied, his voice stiff and distant.

  “Then what is it?” Emil asked, drawing closer, sensing a darkness that was a torture burning within his friend’s soul.

  “The Merki pets,” Andrew replied after a long moment of anguished silence. “The Cartha prisoners, all those like Yuri who traveled with the horde.”

  “What about them?”

  “A hundred thousand or more at the least, along with maybe another fifty thousand Cartha prisoners who are still alive,” Andrew said, looking straight back to the west as if he could almost see them.

  Emil waited, afraid to ask.

  “When they bury Jubadi, every last one of them will be sacrificed. Yuri told me that was the custom. I brought us thirty days of time, and one hundred and fifty thousand people will die because of what I just did.”

  “Does Hamilcar know?” Emil asked.

  “He soon will,” Andrew replied.

  “God help him.”

  “God help him,” Andrew whispered, “and God forgive me, because I doubt if anyone else will.”

  Kathleen, trembling with emotion, put her arms around Andrew, wishing she could think of a soothing answer, knowing that reminding him that the prisoners were doomed anyhow would not be enough. She buried her head against his empty sleeve and for the first time in years began to cry.

  Andrew, barely aware of her presence, watched as the station gradually disappeared into the darkness of the storm.

  “My friend, it is late.”

  Hulagar did not move at the touch of Tamuka’s hand upon his shoulder.

  “You don’t need to be here for this,” Tamuka said.

  Hulagar did not reply.

  Tamuka, shield-bearer of the Qar Qarth Vuka du Jubadi, moved to Hulagar’s side and knelt down. All was silent outside, except for the rhythmic beating of the great drums, timed to the tempo of a beating heart, which would roll continuously until, at the end of thirty days, Jubadi was at last sent upon his journey to the everlasting heavens. Tonight, the first of the thirty days, was the night of silent mourning, the great quiet, for this was the night when the ancestors floated through the camps, drawn by the silence. There had been no farewell chant to the evening sun, no songs of the name singers, no boasting tales rising upon the coils of ten thousand camp fires. This was the night the ancestors stirred, noticing the silence, and thus came to gather about the yurt of Jubadi Qar Qarth.

  The vast golden yurt was dark, except for a single lamp hanging in the center of the tent, its flicker of flame casting a pale light upon the naked body of Jubadi, on
ce Qar Qarth of the Merki horde.

  All fires in all the camp circles of the horde had been extinguished, except for the single lamp of mourning. From its thin tapering flame the pyre would be ignited, and the smoke of that conflagration would carry upon it the soul of Jubadi. And when that fire had at last consumed the mortal remains of Jubadi, only then would the new Qar Qarth distribute the power of fire back to his people. From that funeral pyre all fires would be lit, and they would burn until in his time Vuka Qar Qarth rode the pillar of smoke to the heavens.

  Tamuka looked over at his old friend, his guide, his first teacher of the ways of the shield-bearer. There was no need to ask—he could look into this one’s soul and know. Hulagar sat in silent torment, though there was not one among all the horde who would ever blame him. Yet Hulagar would torture himself nevertheless, and Tamuka could understand. For was not a shield-bearer, before all else, what his title of rank implied? Was he not protector to the Qar Qarth, carrier of the bronze shield, ever ready to place himself between his Qar Qarth and the dangers of this world? And now Jubadi was dead, and his shield-bearer had lived beyond him.

  As if sensing the probing of thoughts, Hulagar looked over at him.

  I should have realized it all, Hulagar’s thoughts whispered back.

  “You could not have realized,” Tamuka replied. “The silent ones had swept the area. We did not know a weapon capable of striking from such a great distance existed.”

  Hulagar stirred, shifting at last after the long night of kneeling motionless before the body of his Qarth, his friend.

  “But I sensed it,” he said, “and you sensed it as well.”

  There was the hint of accusation in his voice.

  “What do you mean?” Tamuka asked.

  “It was your pet that was found with the weapon. The one you claim was sent to kill the Yankee leader Keane. And instead he comes back to strike down the light of our peoples. What is it that you do know, Tamuka Shield-Bearer?”

  “You are overwrought, my friend,” Tamuka said, his voice conveying anguish for his friend’s pain, ignoring the implications of what had finally been said.

  “There will be many to question you in the days to come,” Hulagar said, and he shifted, still on his knees, turning to face Tamuka. He gazed into Tamuka’s eyes, searching, looking for answers, and yet not wishing to know if what he suspected was true.

  “Tell me,” Hulagar whispered, and he rested his hands on Tamuka’s shoulders, gently holding him in a fatherly fashion and looking straight into his eyes.

  Tamuka returned his gaze unblinking.

  “There is nothing to tell,” Tamuka said. “Jubadi knew of my plan, as did you. The pet Yuri was sent to kill Keane. Keane with some devil power turned him back upon us. The evil spirits that guide and protect Keane are stronger even than the powers of our ancestors to protect us. It is an ill omen. Their power has taken our Qar Qarth from us,” and he nodded toward the cold form upon the dais.

  Hulagar looked away from Tamuka, gazing upon Jubadi, and his eyes clouded.

  “Forgive me, my friend,” Hulagar sighed, and then he looked back upon Tamuka. “And forgive me for questioning you. I had to know.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Tamuka replied, his voice filled with warmth and understanding.

  Hulagar let his hands drop and lowered his gaze, not noticing the momentary shift in Tamuka’s expression.

  “It was evil spirits, as you say.”

  Tamuka looked over his shoulder. Sarg, shaman of the Qar Qarth, reader of the signs, stood in the entryway to the yurt, dimly silhouetted by the approaching dawn.

  “Is it already time?” Hulagar asked.

  Tamuka nodded, feeling a genuine flicker of pain at the anguish in Hulagar’s voice.

  “The light grows,” Sarg replied, and as he spoke, those who accompanied him drew back the flaps of the yurt to reveal the acolytes and the guards, who stood as they had remained through the long night. Beyond them he could see the dim outline of the city of cattle against the deep purple of the western sky, the Great Wheel of stars beyond hanging low in the heavens.

  “Just a brief moment more,” Hulagar sighed, and Sarg nodded.

  The joints of his knees cracking, Hulagar came to his feet. Attempting to force a smile, he ascended the dais and stood before the body, looking down upon the still features. The smile flickered, and Tamuka could again sense the thoughts—the memory of two youths, riding across the steppe, laughter echoing, the joy of childhood in all its exuberance, unmindful of so much to come, uncomprehending that all such moments last but for a moment.

  He reached out, brushing back the mane of hair, tinged with the first streaks of gray which would now never go to white.

  “Sword in hand he died, as did his sire, and his grandsire before him,” Sarg intoned. “No one of us may ask for a better death.”

  “Death from an unseen hand, a cattle hand, not matching blade against blade in the joy of battle, was not a good death,” Hulagar replied, and Sarg fell silent.

  How it has all changed, Tamuka thought to himself. How those beasts have taken that from us, for there is no honor, no proving, in such fighting, such dying. That is why they must all die, that is the ultimate truth that Jubadi would not face. Every last cattle upon the entire world must die if we are to live. Before the cattle had even risen up in their defiance, already we had become their slaves, bound to them, to what they created, to the very meat they gave us. If we are to survive we must eliminate them all, and that is why Jubadi died, had to die, for he in the end wished to fight them in but half measures.

  Yet those thoughts were gone from him as he watched Hulagar, who stood above the body of his fallen friend. This was the last moment of their being alone, the shield-bearer keeping the first silent vigil before the corpse preparers started their long ritual. Never again on this world would the two be alone, as they had been so many times across the two and a half circlings of their journey together.

  Sarg interrupted with a low cough, and Tamuka looked over at him. It was getting brighter out; the first step had to be completed before the breaking of dawn. He came to his feet and with lowered head and averted gaze stepped up onto the dais.

  “It is time, my friend.”

  Hulagar nodded.

  “You know, you don’t have to be here for the beginning.”

  “I was just remembering the night we were lost in the storm. How I dug the cave in the snow, killed my own horse, my first mount, and pulled its body over the entrance to give us warmth.”

  Hulagar looked over at Tamuka.

  “You know in repayment he gave me a thousand horses, on the day he became Qar Qarth.”

  “I know.”

  “I loved that foolish horse, yet I did not hesitate.”

  He paused and looked over at Tamuka. “Would you do the same for Vuka?”

  Tamuka did not reply.

  Hulagar hesitated a moment. “You will be shield- bearer to the Qar Qarth. You must love him as I loved him.”

  Tamuka was silent.

  Hulagar looked back at Jubadi. “No, I’ll stay,” Hulagar sighed. “I never left him before, and I will not now.”

  Tamuka looked over at Sarg and nodded.

  The shaman came forward, the dozen acolytes behind him. Intoning the first chant of the long passage of the journeying soul, he stepped up beside Jubadi and started the reciting of the lineage, the two hundred and seven names of the Qar Qarths, starting with Grish, who first led his people out of the mountains of Nom Barkth and started the great never-ending ride about the world of Valdennia. The names rattled forth, Hulagar’s lips moving in silent unison, and as the shaman spoke, the silent ones, the tongueless guardians of the Qar Qarth and the sacred treasures of the Merki horde, filed into the tent, bearing a golden ark, which rested upon the shoulders of a dozen warriors.

  Fascinated, Tamuka watched as the guards placed the ark at the foot of the dais and with heads bowed withdrew. As Sarg reached the last naming o
f the lineage, two assistants came forward with a golden cloth. He held his arms out, and they draped it across his hands. Turning away from Jubadi, he stepped down from the dais, and with hands covered by the sacred cloth he unlatched the ark and opened it. All lowered their gaze. Tamuka, with head bowed, watched with a sidelong gaze as Sarg reached into the ark and drew out a silver urn, which rested heavy in his trembling hands.

  Turning, Sarg again mounted the dais, holding the heavy weight of the urn forward, his arms knotted with the strain, and placed it beside the body of the Qar Qarth.

  Grasping the top of the urn, he ever so slowly lifted the lid, and a faint sickly-sweet smell wafted out. All were silent.

  Sarg held his hands out again, and the two acolytes stepped up, removing the golden cloth from his hands. Another assistant came forward bearing a silver case, which he laid beside the urn. Sarg reached down, opened the case, and drew forth a blunt trowel-shaped dagger, its heavy blade and razor-sharp edge glinting in the light of early dawn. The shaman lifted his gaze heavenward, and there was an expectant hush.

  A young shaman stepped forward, hand raised, but Hulagar stopped him, nodding for him to withdraw, and leaning forward, he extended his own hand to cover the unseeing eyes of Jubadi so that his soul would not see.

  Sarg watched him and then nodded his approval.

  He held the dagger up and grasped its hilt with both hands. With a lightning-like strike the dagger plunged down, slamming into Jubadi’s chest. The blade entered next to his sternum, cutting in alongside the puckered bullet hole in Jubadi’s chest, the place where the bullet had stolen out of his body, taking his life with it.

  Sarg turned the blade sharply, and Tamuka winced as the Qar Qarth’s ribs cracked open. Sarg twisted the blade again, slicing a circle around the heart, and seconds later he turned the blade yet again, scooping it down deep into Jubadi’s body and drawing the heart out.