In seconds the horsemen were all down, dead or dying. The Leader snapped a command, and his six remaining Fighters ran back to the copse to await his next order. Careful not to burn himself, the Leader went about the area of the fight setting fire to the grass. Then he raced to the copse, led his Fighters to a nearby streamlet, and followed it back into the hills.
Hetman Bulba heeled his pony to a gallop and began shouting as soon as he saw the fighting, but the fight was over before he’d covered much more than fifty meters. He looked about and saw a score of men converging on him or on the fight. He hoped they reached it before the fire spread so they could get the wounded and the dead away from the flames. Whether they did or not, he needed them to go with him in pursuit of the bandits. His pony faltered and almost fell when a brilliant flash flared up in the burning grass, but he managed to keep control of the animal so it retained its balance. More flares went up, so fast he couldn’t get an exact count, but more than half a dozen.
The fire spread rapidly after the flashes.
The Senior Master allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction at the chaos growing around the grass fire, then spoke into his communicator. Two kilometers distant, another Leader led twenty Fighters in an attack against the Earthmen working the fields. Once they killed the workers, the Leader fired the ripening grain. At the same time, a Master and thirty Fighters triggered an ambush on a band of horsemen speeding to the first attack. When those horsemen were dead, the Master fired the grass in which their bodies and those of several Fighters lay. Another Master with a Leader and forty Fighters assaulted the settlement. They killed half of the Earthmen and fired the church and priest house, then withdrew.
The Senior Master granted himself another slight smile when he received the reports. So far he’d committed fewer than half of his force and suffered no more than twenty dead. Fifty or more of the nomads were cremated in the fires. Phase one of the raid was complete. Now to wait for the strictures, then commit phase two, in which the Yar host of the Kzakh would die.
At the same time, a thousand kilometers away, another farming community was attacked by a force of two hundred. This attack was also in two phases, with a pause between them. Three hundred Skinks attacked a mining community in yet a third remote location. The miners fought valiantly enough to cancel the pause between the two phases, but to no avail. Like the farmers, the miners all died most horribly. Skinks rampaged through a mountain monastery and destroyed sacred relics and tomes, a loss many felt was greater than the lives of the monks. Isolated homesteads were leveled in so many locations, it would be a month before the full extent of the slaughter was known. The Army of the Lord outpost in a provincial town was massacred. That massacre was followed by almost complete slaughter of the citizens. The town was burned to the ground.
“What do you mean, we’re going planetside?” PFC MacIlargie demanded. “We’re going back to Camp Ellis.”
“I mean we get aboard the Dragons and go ‘high speed on a rocky road,’ that’s what I mean,” Corporal Linsman said.
“Back down to Kingdom?”
“Back down to Kingdom.”
Corporal Doyle looked around the squad. They’d started with ten Marines. Now there were seven—and four of the seven were hobbled by wounds. How could they go back? And the rest of the platoon wasn’t in any better shape. The whole company was pretty badly shot up. Why were they going back?
Corporal Kerr looked uncomfortable but said nothing and checked his men—mostly Doyle; Schultz didn’t need much checking. Schultz seemed to be his normal, quietly ready self on the verge of a planetfall.
Corporal Chan closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered Waygone, where all the Skinks had been in one place. He’d hoped that was true this time as well. It looked like he thought wrong. He gathered himself and asked PFC Longfellow, his lone remaining man, how his wound felt.
“Good enough, I guess,” Longfellow said. It hurt like hell, but he wasn’t about to say so, not when others had been wounded so much worse.
Linsman looked at Kerr. “You’re number one now, you know.”
Kerr nodded. He was next in line to take over as acting squad leader if Linsman was killed or badly wounded.
Linsman looked at Chan and said, “You take MacIlargie.”
“What?” MacIlargie yelped. “What’s the matter, don’t you like me anymore?”
“I never did like you.” He looked at him. “I’m acting squad leader. That leaves you as the only man left in the fire team. Chan’s shorthanded. Go with him.”
MacIlargie swore. Well, at least if he was with Chan, two members of that fire team were all right—neither he nor the corporal had been wounded. In Kerr’s fire team only Doyle was whole, and he wasn’t all that much use on a good day.
The Marines were somber as they boarded the Dragons waiting in the Essays for the return planetside.
Archbishop General Lambsblood glowered at the oncoming Dragons. He’d hoped the Marines had destroyed the demons. Instead, they’d merely crushed one coven. How many more were out there? There hadn’t been enough Marines to begin with; now there were fewer. His own Soldiers of the Lord, numerous as they were, were no match for the demons. The Marine commander had to call for reinforcements, call for an entire army. All he could hope for was that the Army of the Lord and these few Confederation Marines could survive until that army arrived. If Brigadier Sturgeon hadn’t already requested the reinforcements . . . Lambsblood sighed. If he hadn’t, they were all damned. He didn’t even glance at Ambassador Spears or Chief-of-Staff Carlisle, who stood talking next to him.
The lead Dragons pulled up. Brigadier Sturgeon was one of the first Marines out. He marched directly to the trio.
“Mister Ambassador, General . . .” He nodded at Carlisle. “My operations people are already working on the information you provided. As soon as my squadron is operational, my infantrymen will search for the enemy near these strikes.” He took two sheets of paper from Lieutenant Quaticatl and handed them to Lambsblood and Spears.
Spears merely glanced at the paper and handed it to Carlisle. Lambsblood shook with barely restrained fury.
“Ted”—Spears’s voice was strained—“this is no good. They hit too many places simultaneously. There must be too many of them. You don’t have enough Marines to find them all.”
A corner of Sturgeon’s mouth twitched in what could have been the beginning of a smile. “I hope the Skink commander agrees with you. An awful lot of opposition commanders over the centuries who thought that way found out the hard way they were wrong.”
Lambsblood couldn’t hold back any longer. “You fool!” he erupted. “Hubris! Do you know the word? The arrogance that goes before a fall. I only have partial reports, but a rough tally indicates that there were at least—let me emphasize that, at least—ten thousand demons involved in those monstrous attacks. Ten thousand! How many Marines do you have left? Nine hundred? They have weapons that can kill your aircraft and armor before they even know there’s a threat. They have weapons they can use against your infantry at a greater range than your infantry weapons can effectively fire. How long do you think your Marines can hold out against them?”
“General,” Sturgeon replied in a calm voice, “we don’t have to go against all ten thousand at once. The reports indicate they are widely dispersed. My Marines can find them and defeat them in detail.”
Lambsblood snorted. “This,” he shook the sheet of paper, “tells me you plan to strike in five different locations. They will defeat you in detail.”
“Not today they won’t.”
Quaticatl leaned forward to whisper to Sturgeon. Sturgeon listened, then said briskly, “General, Mr. Ambassador, if you will excuse me, my squadron is ready. I have a FIST to fight.” He walked rapidly to the command post, which was already set up.
CHAPTER
* * *
TWENTY
“Mr. Ambassador? Mr. Ambassador?”
“Huh?” Jay Benjamin Spears started awake
to find his station chief gently shaking his shoulder. Spears wiped a thin rivulet of spittle out of his beard and sat upright in his chair. An old-fashioned book lay facedown in his lap. “Damn!” he muttered, picking it up. “Never lay a book down like that, Prentiss, ruins the spine.”
Prentiss Carlisle smiled. He was getting used to Spears’s eccentricities, one of which was that for relaxation he read old books, really old books, printed on paper and bound between covers, the pages woven into “signatures,” as Spears called them. Carlisle learned quickly not to call the pages “pages,” but instead “leaves,” and he knew from Spears’s lectures that leaves had two sides, “recto” and “verso.” “It is slovenly to call them ‘pages,’ my dear Prentiss,” Spears had commented one night after several beers.
“You should’ve been a librarian, Mr. Ambassador,” Carlisle said.
“Eh? And missed this life of adventure?”
It was obvious to Carlisle that Spears had wanted to go with Brigadier Sturgeon but declined because he thought his duty as a diplomat required him to remain behind in Interstellar City. But now something interesting had come up. “Sir, an urgent message from the naval ship in orbit. Seems—”
“Prentiss, you should read this volume. Very interesting!” Spears handed his station chief a leather-bound book. “It’s hideously rare, although only a twentieth-century facsimile of the original edition of 1692.”
“Twentieth century?” Carlislie asked. Carefully, he picked up the book and opened it to the title page. Spears had told him that “title page” was correct, not “title leaf.” Carlisle had decided he’d never understand the arcane nomenclature of printed books. “The Wonders of the Invisible World,” he read, “by Cotton Mather.” He read on silently. “Yes, I’ve heard of those witchcraft trials and this Mather. He was a clergyman, wasn’t he? One of the prosecutors?”
Spears took the book back and placed it gently on a side table. “No, he was an explicator of the whole affair. I am reading this, Prentiss, to get a better idea of what motivates the City of God sect, the neo-Puritans. They hearken back to their seventeenth century roots, you know, especially the Puritans of seventeenth-century New England America. They fascinate me, and of all the sects represented here on Kingdom, I think they are the most interesting and possibly the most sincere. What’s the message, Prentiss?”
Back to business. “It’s from the captain of the navy vessel in orbit, sir. For the past several days they’ve observed through their string-of-pearls sort of a one-way, um, ‘migration’ from several of the larger towns into the vicinity of the Achor Marshes along the Sea of Gerizim.”
“ ‘Migration,’ did you say?”
“Yessir. There’s been no traffic in the opposite direction.”
“Ah. Which cities are involved?”
Carlisle consulted the reader he held in one hand. “New Salem, New Dedham, New Stoneham . . .”
Spears perked up immediately. Now here was something interesting! “Those towns belong to the City of God,” he said, holding out his hand for the reader. He scanned the message. “And he reports much traffic toward Gerizim but none coming back? Has anyone attempted to contact the people in those towns?”
“Well, no, sir. I’d have asked the brigadier to dispatch a drone but he’s on the other side of the world and, well, I didn’t want to share this just now with the Council. Not until we’d had a chance to evaluate what’s going on.”
“Excellent! Very good judgment, Prentiss.” Spears stood up and began pacing, hands behind his back. “Well, Prentiss, that’s the question: What the hell is going on?”
“Some kind of religious retreat, perhaps?”
Spears snorted. “Neither of us has been at our posts very long, Prentiss, but one thing you should know about the City of God, they don’t have ‘retreats,’ religious holidays, ‘feast’ days, none of that. They live simple, dress simple, and look simple. Some ungenerous souls who do not understand them say they think simple too. If these people are moving, there’s a reason, and it’s long-term, not for the goddamned weekend. Well, New Salem is about a hundred kilometers south southwest of here. Get a car.”
“Er, a car, sir?”
“Yes, Prentiss, a car. We’re going to New Salem. We are going to use the oldest method of intelligence gathering known to spying, otherwise called ‘diplomacy.’ If anybody’s still there, we’ll just ask them what’s up. If not, we’ll look around, maybe follow their trail. Come on, come on, Prentiss, there are still six hours to sundown.”
“But, sir, it could be, uh, dangerous? I mean, there are these terrible attacks going on, and who knows what’s brewing among the sects? We could very well wind up in the middle of some internecine feud . . .” Carlisle’s voice trailed off. He looked helplessly at Spears.
Spears nodded once. “You’re quite right, Prentiss, of course. How shortsighted of me. Get a car and some guns. I’m driving.”
Consort Brattle blew a strand of loose hair out of her face and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The packing was almost complete. She straightened up. The Brattles did not own much, aside from the furnishings inside their home, most of which they were leaving behind in New Salem, but still, the storage compartment of their landcar was already packed full. Fortunately, the livestock had all been taken on before, in the care of the village’s unmarried men. And the harvest was done for this year, so if the stay at Gerizim turned out to be a long one, they would have food and could get in a new planting before the next growing season.
“Comfort?” she called to her twenty-year-old daughter.
“Yes, Mother?”
“Take this box of your father’s reading crystals to the car, would you? Where’s Samuel?” Samuel Brattle was her fourteen-year-old son, an obedient lad but sometimes easily distracted. The whole idea of moving the village to the Sea of Gerizim had been distracting enough to everyone in New Salem, but especially the boys around Samuel’s age, none of whom could wait to get under way. Besides, during the trip and for many days afterward there’d be no school. But for the adults in New Salem the move was troublesome. The Ministers of the City of God expected new persecutions, and had convinced the sect’s individual congregations that moving to the remote shores of Lake Gerizim and consolidating their population would offer them better protection.
“Sam is saying good-bye to the neighbors,” Comfort replied. Dutifully, she took the box of crystals from her mother and started for the landcar.
The Brattles would be the last family to leave New Salem. Zechariah, Consort’s husband, as mayor of New Salem had the responsibility of making sure the village was clear and everything left behind secured against the inhabitants’ eventual return. He and Samuel would go to each house before leaving, to make sure all the doors and windows were secured. Once the current emergency was over, the Ministers had promised, they would return to their homes, so each house was ordered to be safely locked and all the chattels that could not be transported to the camp along the Sea of Gerizim safely stored away inside them.
“Consort,” Zechariah called from the stairs leading to the upper floor where the sleeping compartments were, “call in the children. We must seek a blessing before we leave.” Zechariah Brattle was a big man, well over six feet tall, but sinewy, not an ounce of fat on his large-boned frame. New Salem was a farming community, and although the City of God believed in using whatever technology was available to earn their bread, farming on Kingdom was laborious and hard, and Zechariah Brattle’s lean, rock-hard muscles reflected a lifetime in the fields. But he was a gentle and peaceable man.
Some calling brought Samuel inside, and the four of them stood in the sparsely furnished living room.
Zechariah raised a big hand over his family. “Loved ones, we Brattles have lived in New Salem for over two hundred years. We have worked hard and lived well off our labor and we have kept faith with the Lord. Our labors have been rewarded and we have been protected. But the world is in turmoil today. The Ministers fear we sh
all be attacked. Wars have come to Kingdom before, but now the Ministers fear persecution, and that is why we must leave our homes. But I have met with wonderful things this day.” He beamed down at his wife and children. “In the forenoon, while I was at prayer, pleading the sacrifice of my Lord Jesus Christ for my family, I began to feel the blessed breezes of a particular faith, blowing from Heaven upon my mind. I began to see the clear road before us—led on, as the Children of Israel in olden times were led on by the same good Hand that bestowed life and blessings upon us and our brethren. Samuel! Are you listening? Pay attention now.”
Zechariah smiled down at his son and went on: “Whereupon, I begged of the Lord that He would by His good Spirit incline me to exemplary courage in our journey and permit us again to obtain such favor as to have the good things with us, as in our former circumstances. Let us pray:
“The Tabernacles of the Just
The Voice of joy afford,
And of Salvation, strongly works
The right hand of the Lord,
We shall not die, but live, and shall
The Works of God declare.
The Lord did sorely chasten us,
But us from Death did spare.
“Amen.”
“Father, will those Marines come here after we’re gone?” Samuel asked.
Zechariah looked askance at his son. The boy was bright, good at his studies, but his fascination with military subjects and adventure stories was a trifle worrying to his father, who was afraid the boy was subject to frivolity. “I know we are leaving in only a few minutes, Samuel, but yesterday Master Roxbury gave you an assignment. Is it finished?”
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