Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  He counted to fifteen and capped the lens. He unlatched the camera and started to move the third one into place.

  “Company’s coming!” Feyodor shouted.

  Jack looked up to see half a dozen Merki aerosteamers rising up from the hills near Fort Lincoln, coming up from the south, moving fast on the gradually building westerly breeze. The ship surged again for a moment, rising on another upsweeping bubble of air, the stench of slaughter so thick that he started to gag again.

  A loud hum hissed past, and from a wood-crested hill half a mile away he saw the puff of smoke of an artillery piece. The round missed, and he hoped that when it plunged to earth it would smash into the swarm below.

  There was a sprinkling of smoke puffs eddying up from below, individual Merki firing their muskets straight up. He could see several small holes in the bag up forward. They weren’t enough to cause a problem, but a six- or nine-pound artillery round might make getting back to Kev, two hundred miles to the east, an iffy thing, even with a growing tail wind. Fuel had been hidden away for him fifty miles east of Vazima, which they would need coming back, but it would be the loss of hydrogen that would make all the difference. The ship was near to overload as is, with the weight of the three cameras, weapons, and kerosene.

  The bastards must have built sheds down somewhere near Fort Lincoln, moving their base up from the far side of the Shenandoah hills. If I only hadthe edge on altitude, he thought, we could venture a run south to try to scout it out, see if close -enough to the river or the sea it might be worth trying to mount a raiding party from Bullfinch’s marines. Not today—too much has already been done to us today, he thought coldly, just by witnessing the madness below.

  He steadied the camera, locking it into its frame, and tilted it, pointing it straight down at the frenzy. He uncapped the lens, counted this time to twenty, and then recapped.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Feyodor shouted. “They might have stripped their ships for speed— we don’t know what they’ve done in the last thirty days.”

  “They’re not that goddam smart,” Jack shouted, not believing what he was saying. His rage was ready to explode. The hysterical screams of the men, women, and children below were like a pulsing thunder. He looked, horrified, at the hill drenched in red, the naked headless bodies, tens of thousands of them being dragged off in every direction. The air was filled with the smoke of thousands of fires, Merki dancing about the flames, and over each fire a body, or parts of a body, turned on a spit. Many of them were looking up, some shaking their fists, others beckoning for the ship to come down, others waving human arms, limbs, torsos, in mocking defiance.

  Jack unslung the Sharps carbine by his side, and leaning out of the basket he started to shoot into the crowd. On the third shot he saw a bullet strike its mark. The crowd below swayed, drawing back from the hit. But the frenzy of killing around the pit continued.

  Raising his aim slightly, he started to shoot into the butchering area, unable to miss. He saw a flash of light, a reflection of the noonday sun striking on something below—a circular bronze shield.

  Resting the carbine on the side of the basket, he drew a careful bead and fired. The shield turned.

  “You bastards!”

  He could not even hear his own voice, was not even aware that he had been chanting the same phrase over and over in hysteria.

  A crack snapped through the basket and splinters of wicker flew into his face, the musket ball cutting into the balloon straight overhead.

  The near miss brought him to his senses, and again he heard Feyodor.

  “Turn us! Turn us now!”

  Jack looked up, squinting, suddenly aware the entire world seemed to have taken on a blood-red haze, as if he were staring down a long tunnel. His heart was racing, his mouth dry and sour with vomit, his breath heaving.

  Shaking, he looked around, as if coming out of a dream. The Merki aerosteamers were spreading out, coming up on the empty city of Suzdal. He pushed the rudder hard over, and he heard Feyodor sigh with relief as the ship started to turn.

  “Pour on the fire and close the balloon exhaust vent,” Jack shouted, and Feyodor opened the fuel line full wide while Jack pulled the throttle all the way back. As Yankee Clipper II went through its ponderous wide turn, he looked back down at the slaughter pen, still filled with tens of thousands, many of them looking up, reaching up with beseeching hands, as if he were a god who could somehow swoop down and sweep them to safety.

  Tears streaming down his face, he fixed his gaze straight ahead, and pointing the ship eastward he started to race back toward Kev, and safety.

  The dark wall of a shadow raced out across the fields, the sun disappearing behind the high anvil-shaped clouds that were marching out of the southwest, their black-green bases wreathed with forks of lightning.

  Tamuka turned to face the storm. The late-afternoon sun was gone, and the temperature was falling rapidly as the first cold gusts of wind swirled up. It was a good omen, that the fire of heaven was touching down to the world of mortals, drawing into its heart the spirit of Jubadi, and of Hulagar.

  He flexed his right hand again. It was still numb, and the bruise on his knuckles was sore and swollen. The shield had taken the glancing blow of the bullet fired from the cloud machine; the bullet had scored its burnished surface, the impact snapping through him. He had silently raged at the perfidy of such an act, a sacrilege, and beyond that the damage to the shield of his office, which Hulagar had carried for over a circling, and polished each night with loving diligence. It was now marred, a long furrow denting the outer side. There was not even a cattle smith who could work it back to perfection—that one’s head was most likely in the pit by now. The thought had troubled him. They had killed all their pets, all the Cartha prisoners, except for a small handful which had been moved far to the rear on the other side of the river, those who could forge guns and tend to the cloud fliers and those few with skills too valuable to waste, or owned by individuals with enough power to gain them exception. Only one cattle who was here today would live to see the end of it, and that was for a reason. But the rest? In the past it had been simple enough—after the death of a Qar Qarth the next place where they wintered would provide all the replacements necessary. Vuka would do such a thing—he would not.

  The slaughter was nearly finished. New butchers were now at work, replacing those who had taken over late in the morning from those who had started at dawn. The air was so thick with blood that he felt as if he would choke on its rich cloying scent.

  The entire grave was now filled with cattle heads, well over a hundred thousand, so that the butchers were now throwing them atop the growing pile that spilled out over the sides. Blood flowed in rivulets down the hill; all were covered with it, bright red from head to foot. The vast frenzy had worn down, for more than a hundred thousand cattle bodies were now turning on spits, being consumed in a surfeit of gorging. The countryside for miles around was cloaked in the smoke of thousands of fires, the smoke now curling away eastward, driven on the winds of the approaching storm, eastward to where Keane waited.

  Silently, Tamuka walked about the great mound of heads, taking grim satisfaction from the lifeless eyes, the tormented features, the blood-matted hair, old and young down to infants, men, women, fair-skinned from the land of the Norse, dark from the Constan and Cartha, black from the Zimba, flatfaced and narrow-eyed from the Chin and Nippo, from all the endless steppe upon which the Merki roamed.

  The last of the victims were being dragged up, the pen emptying at last, the victims strangely silent, most likely numbed, he realized, their primitive souls already dead from fear. The last thousand were soon a hundred and a moment later only a score. Unsheathing his sword, he went up to them, watching as the last were dispatched until only two were left.

  He had one of them, an old man, dragged before him.

  “So you are the last cattle,” Tamuka said, his voice harsh, mocking.

  The old man, a Constan pet, look
ed at him unflinchingly.

  “You will never kill all of us,” the cattle hissed. “Kill ten million of us and still Keane will defeat you.”

  The old man pursed his lips and spat into Tamuka’s face.

  With a scream of rage, Tamuka’s sword arched up and snapped down, cutting off the cattle’s defiant laugh. The head rolled on the red-drenched pavement, its blood spraying him. Picking up the head, he threw it to the top of the mound, where it came to rest, the open eyes looking back at him.

  Tamuka, breathing heavily, looked around at the butchers, who stood as if dazed, their breath ragged and sharp, blood dripping from their armor, the air now strangely still.

  “Cut its heart and liver out. I want them for dinner,” Tamuka snapped and walked away.

  To one side he saw the single remaining cattle. This one had not been told that he would be spared—that was part of his plan for eventually breaking him. Now he was the only one left of the prisoners from the cattle army defeated in the first attack of the war. The man stood silent, features drawn, ashen, head still bandaged from the blow that had almost killed him. Tamuka could sense that this cattle was finally realizing that he would live to see the next day.

  The man stood there, watching with wary eyes, his blue Yankee jacket splattered with blood. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plug of the tobacco that the cattle took such disgusting delight in chewing and bit into it, his jaws working slowly.

  “I’m letting you live for now,” Tamuka said.

  The Yankee said nothing, only chewing, spitting on the ground, watching him with a cold gaze.

  “I’m dead already,” he said, “so the hell with you.”

  Tamuka felt a flicker of rage and was tempted to beckon for the man to be thrown in with the others.

  The Yankee smiled, his gray beard crinkling up.“Go on and kill me if it’ll make you feel better, I don’t give a good goddam. Andrew will kick your ass to hell, and I’ll be there to greet you.”

  Afraid that his rage would take over, that it would spoil his plan, Tamuka turned and stalked away, not seeing the tears of rage and sickened horror in Sergeant Major Hans Schuder’s eyes.

  It was getting dark. Low clouds raced across the sky overhead, and the steady rumble of thunder filled the air. Tamuka walked back to the east side of the hill, his boots squishing over the blood-soaked paving stones. The last of the people quietly moved away from the hill, dragging their meals. So great had been the slaughter that thousands of cattle bodies, the less appetizing choices, littered the sides of the hill in great mounds.

  A waste of good meat. It’ll spoil in the rain, he thought coldly, if not gutted and hung tonight.

  He stood alone, oblivious to the small retinue of silent ones who now stood watchfully over him, a distinction he had not known before, but was now part of his life as shield-bearer to the Qar Qarth.

  He reached into his kit bag, pulled out a strip of cloth, wiped his blade clean, and resheathed it.

  “Vuka calls for you,”

  Tamuka turned to see Sarg, leaning heavily on his staff, standing behind him, his thin body silhouetted by the great mound of heads.

  Tamuka nodded and said nothing.

  “The fever grows worse again,” Sarg said, his voice filled with concern.

  “It will break.”

  “I’m not sure. The smell of the arm… it smells of death.”

  “We ride tomorrow,” Tamuka said. “Twenty-two umens in the first wave. As Qar Qarth, he must go with them. We have delayed thirty days, and each day makes them stronger. We cannot give them one day more.”

  “I know that,” Sarg said. “A palanquin can carry him, but it would be best if he stayed in his yurt.”

  “I’ve seen Jubadi hurt far worse and still go into a battle,” Tamuka replied coldly. “His son should do no less.”

  “You as shield-bearer should be the one counseling that the army wait until the Qar Qarth can ride,” Sarg said.

  Tamuka looked back at him and nodded.

  “Shaman, there is a war to be fought. We cannot retreat back through the forest. We must sweep forward and get food. Otherwise the entire horde will begin to starve. This is not the open steppe of the south, or our own lands. This is Tugar realm, and the Tugar horde was but a third our size. It could support them, but it cannot support us unless we push beyond the Roum and move out into open grazing land. We are hemmed in here between the sea and the forest.”

  “You speak like a warrior filled with the spirit of his ka, and not the tu of the shield-bearer.”

  “It is my tu that speaks, for the good of the clans, from the power of my spirit walking that not even you, Sarg, can see with.”

  The shaman bristled slightly.

  Tamuka stepped up to him, putting a soothing hand on his shoulder.

  “I do not mean to insult you. I need your help if the Merki are to survive.”

  “And Vuka, is he not Merki?”

  “I speak of all the Merki. Shaman, if you could but know where my tu has led me. I think in your heart you’ve agreed with my counsel.”

  “The cattle must be destroyed,” Sarg finally agreed.

  “We move tomorrow. That is the word of Vuka.”

  “Of Tamuka who moves to become Qar Qarth.”

  Tamuka fixed Sarg with his gaze, blinking only when a flash of lightning forked out of the clouds, striking the hills behind him, the thunder washing over them with a crackling roar.

  “You dare to suggest such a thing?”

  “It was you who dressed his wound, which now reeks of corruption,” Sarg replied.

  “Are you accusing me?”

  “No one accuses you.” Sarg drew closer. “If any dared to, there would be chaos, the Merki horde splintering into warring factions, as it was in the beginning before we became one. Not even I would voice such a challenge.”

  Tamuka nodded, watching Sarg closely.

  “But if he should die without issue, you would rule until the council of Qarths selected a new line to rule. For two hundred circlings it has been his lineage that ruled us all, and Vuka is all that is left.”

  “Is he even one of the blood?” Tamuka whispered, his words almost drowned out by the thunder. He was barely able to say out loud what only Hulagar would truly have known.

  Sarg remained silent.

  “I have heard that the cattle now even know ways of tending wounds so that they do not ooze the green fluid that all our wounds have always shown.”

  “Should we fetch a Yankee shaman then to tend him?” Tamuka asked sarcastically.

  “No. But it does indicate something to me of what is happening here.”

  Tamuka shook his head, shivering as a cold gust swirled around them. The first heavy drops of rain splattered about him, streaking the blood on his armor, stirring the congealing blood on the paving stones.

  A crack of lightning snapped overhead, causing him to flinch, blinding him momentarily. Blinking, he lowered his gaze, looking back at Sarg and the great pyramid of skulls behind him, which glowed with an unearthly blue light from the sheets of lightning that raged in the heavens above.

  “Tomorrow we ride,” Tamuka hissed, and turning, he walked back to the yurt of the Qar Qarth.

  Chapter 5

  It was almost too easy, and the fact made him nervous.

  Hamilcar Baca, his way blocked by the cheering throngs, pushed slowly through the main square of Cartha, his guards swarmed under by the mad crush. There was a time when the mere attempt of a commoner to come up and touch him would have resulted in the man’s death, or at the least the loss of his hand. Too much had changed to even consider that now. Today was a day of liberation, the sound of fighting still reverberating in the suburbs of the city as the Merki umen which had occupied Cartha retreated out into the open steppe.

  The attack had gone as planned. After leaving Suzdal with the ironclad ship, he had returned to the settlements of his former army now living on the coastal territory of the Rus. Using every ga
lley in their possession, they had traveled southward, leaving their families behind. It was a precarious situation. Many of the men had moved their families north, throwing their lot in with the Rus, and now the families were left behind again, to wait for a return. There had been no move, at least, from Andrew to try to take the galleys back, and though he now hated the Yankees more than ever, at least they had behaved honorably on that account, though if they had not there would have been a fight. Many of the people left behind were now caught in the retreat to Roum.

  With the ironclad ship in the lead and nearly seventy galleys bearing close to fourteen thousand men, he had moved down the east coast of the Inland Sea and then cut straight back in on Cartha, landing on the docks in the hour before dawn. He had taken heavy casualties at first, and nearly a dozen of the galleys had been shattered by Merki artillery. The tide finally turned, however, when the populace rose up in support. The slaughter in the great square had been fearful, but the Merki had broken. If there had been more than one umen guarding the city, however, it would have been far different.

  The question was, though, now that he had the city, what he would do with it. Already he could see that nearly half the people were gone, dead to the Merki occupation. The countryside beyond was occupied, and the minimal food supplies had been taken by the Merki to support the campaign in the north. His country had been raped by the Merki, thanks to the rebellion of the Rus and the Roum. His people had died by the tens of thousands laboring in the mines and in the factories to build the machines. Rather than an occupation of one winter, the horde had stayed now for over two and taken everything of value. If one umen had stayed in the city to guard the factories, there had to be several others still to the south keeping watch on the Bantag, and they would come straight back here.

  He had none of the new weapons—the Yankees had made sure that all such things were in the hands of their own. Now that he had started a rebellion, just what the hell was he going to do with it?