Wielding a Red Sword

by Piers Anthony

  Mym gave up the struggle and withdrew. He had possessed a hundred different and lovely young women in his life as a prince, but had raped none. He refused to share a body engaged in such an act.

  Now he stood beside the man and woman, watching the commencement of the rape. He was angry.

  He touched his Sword. Suddenly he was solid. He reached out and grasped the thug's collar and hauled him back. But the man was heavier than Mym, and this pull was not enough.

  Mym touched his Sword again. If the instrument could make him solid, it could make him stronger! He reached out a second time, caught the collar, and made a terrific exertion.

  The man was lifted back and away, and hurled at the opposite wall. He collapsed to the floor, unconscious. It was as if a giant had thrown him!

  Curious despite the situation, Mym turned and struck the wall with his fist. His fist punched right through it.

  He had indeed become more solid! Ordinary matter was now of a lesser density, so that his flesh had the relative mass of a sledgehammer, and his force was magnified many times. No wonder the thug had flown!

  The woman was staring right through him. Mym remained invisible; she had no notion what had saved her. Then she recovered her wits and scrambled up and away, simultaneously hauling her halter back into place.

  The thug had been right about one thing; she was an attractive woman. But now Mym had to attend to the other members of the Death Squad, to prevent them from killing the wealthy farmer.

  He looked through the house, but saw only the woman, hiding behind the stove. The farmer must already be outside.

  But when he went outside, he found the three other Squad members waiting. The farmer had not emerged.

  The woman must have been alone. That intelligence was really fouled up!

  Then Mym heard something. It was a kind of scuffling down the drive leading to the house. Something was coming. More killers from the government?

  He summoned his horse with a thought, and the animal appeared. Mym mounted, and the horse staggered.

  Oh. That extra mass. He touched the Sword and willed himself back to masslessness. The horse relaxed.

  They galloped toward the new sound. In moments they spied the source and paused, astonished.

  It was a troop of ghastly people shambling along. Their eyes were staring, their mouths hung open, and drool fell across their chins. Their hair was wild, their clothing haphazard. Their arms and legs moved as if operated by marionette strings, jerking up and forward and slapping down. Each one of them seemed about to collapse, but somehow did not.

  These were not ordinary people! They were zombies! What were they doing here, roused from their ground?

  From the ground? There was that theme again!

  Mym watched as the zombie troop shuffled along toward the farmhouse. The members of the Death Squad saw them and yelled. The leader staggered out, still woozy from his fall. The zombies continued without pause.

  This could not be coincidence! The woman must have summoned the zombies when she phoned. But that explained only part of the mystery of this occasion. Where had the zombies come from, and how had the woman known about them? Where was the man of the house? Why had he left his lovely wife unprotected?

  Shots were fired. The zombies proceeded without pause. The Death Squad members fired again, taking better aim—but still there was no visible effect. They were baffled.

  Now the woman appeared in the doorway. She yelled at the zombies and pointed to the Death Squad members.

  The zombies understood. They pursued the men.

  Too late, the men realized what they were up against. They tried to scramble away, but the zombies surrounded them. Dangling hands flopped against the men, and slack jaws worked. The attack was inefficient, but it was apparent that the zombies felt no pain, so that nothing the men could do to them had any effect. Each of the men was soon buried under a clumsy mass of bodies, and slobbering mouths labored to bite at living flesh.

  Mym might have interfered, but found he had no inclination. He knew firsthand the evil of the Death Squad members; they were not worth saving. Also, he had no desire to make physical contact with the zombies, who were about as repulsive as creatures of human form could be. He realized now that they were not refugees from a graveyard, for none of their flesh was rotting and there was no earth on them; rather, they were like almost total idiots.

  Another horse galloped down from the sky. At first Mym thought it was one of his own companions, but then he realized that the color of the horse did not match those he knew. It wasn't any color; it was pale, though the rider was caped in black. Certainly it was supernatural, however.

  The horse landed and trotted to him. Now Mym saw the skull-features of Thanatos, the Incarnation of Death. "What are you doing here, Mars?" Thanatos called.

  "I think I am supervising a battle," Mym returned in singsong. "Of precisely what nature, I hardly know."

  "Of an illicit nature!" Thanatos said. "Those are zombies!"

  "I had come to that conclusion," Mym agreed. "But they seem to be serving a good cause."

  Thanatos was obviously agitated. "Do you know what a zombie is?"

  "An undead," Mym replied. "We have them in India, too, though I have never seen them fight a battle before."

  "A zombie is a living man whose soul has been removed."

  "Yes, I suppose so, since life departs with the soul. If the mortal body does not lie still, it is called a zombie."

  "But these bodies have not been killed!" Thanatos said. "They are not on my schedule."

  "They are evidently on mine," Mym sang. "They are doing a necessary job, summoned in defense of that young woman."

  "You may organize a battle as you choose," Thanatos said, his bone-jaw grim. "But you may not impinge on my prerogatives. You may not interfere with the souls of mortals before their deaths."

  "I don't know how these zombies came to be," Mym sang. "But if they are what it takes to set matters straight, I'm amenable."

  "If you do not eliminate the zombies, I will!" Thanatos said angrily.

  This sounded like a challenge, and Mym was not in the mood to be challenged on his own turf. Evidently Thanatos represented the Ground, but that did not give him leave to interfere with Fire. "Show me how to make a zombie, and perhaps I will know how to eliminate one," he sang.

  "Like this!" Thanatos said, and reached his skeletal hand into Mym's body. The fingers passed right through his flesh, which wasn't surprising while he was insubstantial. But then they caught on something within him and pulled on it, and he was abruptly in mortal agony.

  Thanatos had grasped his soul and was pulling it from his body!

  Mym reacted involuntarily. He stepped into Thanatos, overlapping him, and exerted his will to take over the other man's mind. That transferred some of his agony to the host—to Thanatos.

  Thanatos immediately let go of Mym's soul, as now he could only hurt himself. Mym stepped out of the body.

  They looked at each other. "Incarnations should not quarrel with each other," Thanatos said after a moment.

  "Agreed," Mym sang. He knew he should not have reacted so imperiously and was glad to accept the truce. The Way of the Warrior was a resolute acceptance of death. Here he had Death literally before him and should have accepted Death's concern. "But if only you can draw out the soul from a living body, how did these zombies come to be? Certainly I did not create them."

  "We had better find out."

  "The young woman summoned them; perhaps she can answer."

  They went to the woman, and Thanatos spoke to her. "You must inform us how the zombies came about," he said.

  The woman seemed startled, as if she hadn't realized that anyone was near. She started to turn to face the cloaked figure.

  "Do not look at me," Thanatos said quickly. She hesitated, then spoke in Spanish. Mym, now disassociated from the thug host, was unable to understand it, but Thanatos did.

  "I am the Incarnation of Death," Thanatos
replied to her. "But I have not come for you, only to discover the truth about the zombies."

  She spoke again, with some force.

  "The Death Squad thug tried to rape you?" Thanatos asked. He was speaking in English, yet the woman seemed to hear him in Spanish. Mym wondered how that was accomplished, but knew that matter was not worth pursuing at the moment.

  The woman spoke again.

  "So you asked the guerrilla connection to send help, but you did not know the nature of what would come," Thanatos said, and the woman nodded.

  "Give me that number that you called," Thanatos said.

  She protested; it was a secret she could not divulge.

  "Look at me, now," Thanatos said.

  The woman turned to stare into his face. She quailed, then spoke a number.

  "Thank you," Thanatos said. He gestured to Mym, and they went into the house.

  Thanatos picked up the phone and dialed the number. When the connection was made, Thanatos turned to his fine pale horse. "Mortis, orient on that location," he said. Then he hung up the phone.

  They went back outside. The zombies were still working on the thugs, and the woman was watching with a certain horrified pleasure. It was not every woman who got such a chance to see an attempted rape and murder so obnoxiously punished.

  They mounted their steeds. "To that location," Thanatos told his horse.

  The animal took off. Mym's own mount followed. They galloped swiftly through the air. Soon they came down in a small jungle clearing and trotted to an isolated cabin.

  This was the place, all right: a number of zombies shuffled about. A trainer was instructing them, evidently teaching them how to walk without falling and how to follow a road. A truck was parked, hidden under a tree—the primary transportation for the zombies. "They drove them to the vicinity of the farm, then pointed them toward it," Mym said. "That must have been all that was necessary."

  "Yes. But my concern is with the crafting of them." They dismounted and walked to the cabin. It was closed, its windows boarded, so they walked through the wall to enter.

  A man was inside, using mortar and pestle to work up a white paste. That was all.

  Thanatos manifested before him. "Look at me, Mortal."

  The man looked up—and stiffened. He recognized Death.

  Thanatos questioned him, and Mym picked up the essence; the man had been seeking a better way to purify cocaine and had stumbled upon a savage variation. This product affected the subject so deeply that he passed right through a trance state into somnambulance, and could not be aroused. His body lived, but his mind was almost entirely gone.

  Thus, the zombies—living people deprived of their souls, proceeding without personal volition, doomed to degenerate shortly from neglect. Hence the connection with the Incarnation of Pestilence; in days, those bodies would be riddled with disease, the prey of flies and worms.

  Certainly this related to War, for these zombies were being used to oppose the Death Squads. In fact, the woman's husband, the man the Squad had come to assassinate, was involved with this project; when he had gotten news that he was to be hit, naturally he had arranged to test the zombies in action. His brave wife had remained at the house to alert him when the Squad arrived. She had been supposed to phone him and hide in the attic, but the premature break-in of the Squad leader had cut off her escape. The zombies would have wrapped things up anyway, but only Mym's intercession had spared her from rape and possibly murder before their arrival.

  However, Mym realized that it was the development of the zombies that had brought him here, so perhaps that was not coincidence. Nevertheless, there was no question that it also overlapped the office of Death, since people were being killed, and in a manner that was supposed to be reserved for Thanatos. They were going to have to work this out.

  Where did they get the people to de-soul by means of this drug? From captive government troops. It made perfect sense, to the guerrillas and to Mym, who had just seen how the government operated. But it didn't make sense to Thanatos. "If mortals learn how to handle souls, there will be no end of mischief," he declared. "This knowledge must be abolished."

  Mym thought of the way the zombies had shuffled into battle and concluded that Thanatos was correct. Killing was bad enough, but de-souling would give unscrupulous people a motive for more of it. They would generate armies of zombies, and no person would be safe. It would transform war, making it uglier than it already was, because the killing would be done before the battles ever started.

  "But how can knowledge be abolished?" he sang.

  "We shall have to get help," Thanatos decided. "Chronos could do it."

  Because Chronos controlled time, Mym realized. He could tilt his Hourglass and cause time to freeze, and—No, that wouldn't work. Both Mars and Thanatos had the ability to freeze scenes—but the scenes resumed unchanged later. Chronos would have to run time actually backwards to undo the discovery of the drug. That would complicate the world in other ways. "There must be an easier way," he sang. "Maybe Gaea—"

  "Yes, Gaea would be best," Thanatos agreed. "She knows how to do things with least disruption. I will summon her." He lifted the heavy black watch he carried to his face and spoke into it as if it were a microphone. "Gaea."

  Mist coalesced, thickening and forming into ghostly, then solid, shape. Mym, still conscious of Five Rings, recognized this as the manifestation of Wind—or Air. Musashi also called it Tradition.

  "I was waiting for your call," the voice of Gaea said, slightly before her appearance was complete.

  "We have knowledge to eliminate," Thanatos said.

  Gaea frowned "To eliminate!" she exclaimed. "Since when have you become regressive? Satan thrives on ignorance."

  "I shall explain," Thanatos said.

  Mym heard something outside. He signaled the others that he would investigate while they clarified the issue and walked through the wall.

  Military trucks were pulling up. What was this? More victims for de-souling being brought in? The Incarnations were taking action none too soon!

  "The government!" the trainer of the zombies cried.

  The first truck screeched to a stop, and soldiers piled out of the back. "Take them alive!" an officer called.

  The trainer and the zombies fought as well as they were able, but in minutes all were captive, for the government forces were overwhelming. "Spread out!" the officer cried. Mym wasn't sure whether he was speaking English, or whether Spanish was becoming intelligible now. "Secure all property! Destroy nothing!"

  They were after the secret of making zombies! They must have traced the zombie-truck back to its source and mounted a mission to capture both the site and its personnel.

  Mym stepped back into the building. "The government is coming after the secret!" he exclaimed in singsong.

  "Too soon!" Thanatos said. "We have not yet decided on a way to abolish it."

  Gaea smiled. "Perhaps we can delay them somewhat," she said. She stepped to and through the wall. Mym and Thanatos followed.

  Outside, the government troops were combing through the jungle and the clearing, hundreds strong, poking at the ground with bayonets. Before long the line would intersect the cabin. There did not seem to be any way to stop it.

  "I think fire is best," Gaea said. She raised her hands, her fingers spread, and jags of electricity radiated from them. The jags touched the ground—and fire erupted. It spread between the points of its origin, formed a line, and swept toward the troops.

  The soldiers were quick to realize their peril. "Fire!" they cried. "They've torched it!"

  "Beat it out!" the officer cried. "Save that shack!"

  But the troops were demoralized by the fire. They retreated from it.

  Gaea turned about. More current flared from her hands. The cabin burst into flame.

  "But the man inside!" Mym sang.

  Gaea shrugged. "Rescue him, then."

  Mym strode through the flames and the wall, feeling neither. The man inside was
standing, alarmed. Mym caught him by the arm, then touched the Sword.

  The two of them flew up, through the roof, and into the sky. The man's mouth hung open; he could not believe this was happening. Mym brought them down beside Gaea and Thanatos.

  The woman turned to the man. "Who besides you knows the secret for making the drug?" she asked.

  "N-no one!" the man said, his knees seeming to weaken.

  A streamer of mist poured from Gaea's right hand. Snakelike, it slid toward the man's head, and into it. "No one," she repeated.

  The man's expression changed. "I—have forgotten how!" he said.

  "And you will never remember or rediscover it," Gaea said. "Now depart, before the troops apprehend you."

  "But—but the fire—"

  "Will not touch you," she finished.

  The man walked, neared the line of fire that enclosed the cabin, and walked through it. He was magically protected—for the moment. Soon he was out of sight.

  The officer had succeeded in restoring some discipline in the troops, and they were now attacking the fire with shovels, beating it out. A gap was forming in the fireline.

  "With the material and equipment destroyed by fire and the memory of its process gone, they will not be able to fathom the secret," Gaea said. She fuzzed, became vapor, and dissipated.

  Mym exchanged a glance with Thanatos. "It seems our problem has been solved," Thanatos said. "I have no further interest in the proceedings." He made a signal, and his pale horse appeared at his side.

  "Wait!" Mym sang. "Your friend Luna—did you know that I once loved her cousin?"

  Thanatos paused. "I did not know. I have not met her cousin, but I understand she is easy to love."

  "Now I love Rapture—and I don't like the influence that Satan is having on her. I want her to be more with Luna, a better influence. But she—she fears any contact I might have with Luna, because of her similarity to Orb—"

  Thanatos smiled. "I will deliver Rapture between Luna's estate and your castle," he said.

  Mym grasped his bony hand. "I thank you, Thanatos! If I can ever repay the favor—"

  "We Incarnations must help each other to oppose Satan," he said. "When I help you, I help myself, for now you will oppose Satan's designs on Luna."