Hegira

The short, stocky Ibisian general motioned for his aides to step up to the balcony. “Look closely,” he told them as they stood next to the Mediwevan deputato. “Here's true barbarism.”

Below the balcony, a parade of penitents filled the rain-slicked streets.

“These are ascetics from Monta Ignazio, General Sulay,” the deputato stuttered. His teeth were chattering. He had never been closer to his country's savage, unwelcome guests than he was now.

The methane lanterns in the room hissed.

“They whip themselves,” Bar-Woten said. He was a lean, well-muscled man in his middle thirties, with one gray eye and a black patch. His nose hooked sharply.

The penitents had gathered from leagues around for the night march through Mediweva's capital, Madreghb. Men, women, and children dressed in brown sacks, black and white clerical robes, or the red of deacons and priests swung leather cats against their backs, the strands weighted to age and devotion. Beneath cloth tatters their flesh was raw as ground meat.

“This is religious inspiration!” Sulay rasped. “The Heisos Kristos of Mediweva demands that they poison their bodies with infection to see His visions. Absorb this and learn from it. We've met with many peoples and their religions, but none is more amazing than this.”

Bar-Woten watched with distaste and finally turned away. His eye caught the deputato's, and he winked at the thin official. “Not to my style,” he explained. “I grow faint at the sight of blood.” The deputato laughed nervously, then lapsed back to respectful silence.

Sulay stepped back from the balcony, shaking his head and fingering his pistol's holster strap. “I'd like to visit your library now.” The deputato nodded and led him away. Bar-Woten stayed behind to watch the penitents flogging themselves. Their moans bothered him like a boil under his armored vest. They were ecstatic. The ecstasy of visions. “Barthel!” he called. His servant appeared, grinning and dressed in splendid red silks.

“I think I could like living here,” Barthel said, fanning his arms out. “It's cool and the clothes are beautiful.”

“What can you tell me about Kristians?”

“My country had a few, Bey. But I am of the Momad persuasion myself, as you understand, and we avoid intercourse with the unfaithful. Except for yourself, sir, who shine like the light...”

“'Shines,'” Bar-Woten corrected. “Your lessons in Mediwevan are slipping.” He had chosen Barthel from a group of captured children fifteen years before in the now desolate land of Khem. The armies of Sulay, Bar-Woten among them, were responsible for that desolation. But Barthel showed no memory of the slaughter. He knew only those things he was required to know, and the rest seemed to sink in his memory like plum stones in a pond. He was a cheerful lad.

“Bey, I could tell you tales my mother told me, but some are very crazy. You might not believe. This Heisos Kristos — or Yesu as we knew him — is mentioned in all the Obelisks I have ever known, and his story is always the same.”

“Which is food for the argument that all Obelisks have the same words engraved on them.”

“Certainly. I believe that is part of Momad's divine doctrine, as his word is mentioned on all, the faithful must acknowledge that, and — ”

“Why do they beat themselves for this Heisos?”

“It gives them strength to deny the attractions of the world, Bey. By punishing themselves they hope to distract their attentions from Hegira and focus them on Paradise, or Heaven, which is what their Yesu — surely a great prophet— desired and preached them to do.”

“But Yesu never lived on Hegira.”

“No. It is dogma that no person mentioned on the Obelisks ever lived on Hegira. They were the First-born, Bey.”

Bar-Woten nodded and stared up into the night. Soon an orange fire dove would rise like a distant flare, signaling the ninth hour of dark, and the sky would begin to turn purple. In a half hour it would be morning blue. The streets would be empty of pedestrians as Mediwevan law had decreed for five hundred years. The wagons and steam vehicles would travel from the fields and lakefronts, and the capital would come alive with day-life: markets and buyers, bookdealers and street historians, all wholesome services for a fee. Bar-Woten enjoyed this city and its peculiarities. He even felt a mixed affection for the crazy penitents.

“I can tell you very little about Yesu, Bey,” Barthel said to indicate he had not been dismissed. Bar-Woten waved his hand, and the boy vanished with a rustle of robes.

He was glad not enough of Sulay's armies was left to destroy Mediweva. In their twenty-year March the armies had dwindled from two million to ten thousand. They could still rely on their reputation to achieve diplomatic victories, and on occasion a few hills topped by lines of the remaining soldiers could persuade reluctant leaders, but the March was over.

They had crossed fifty thousand kilometers, the regions of five Obelisks, and yet spanned only twenty-three degrees of Hegira's curve. The survivors of Sulay's March knew the immensity of Hegira as no others had known before them. For two years now, since the last of their geographers and geometers had finished their reports, Bar-Woten had marched in fear not of man — he had killed at least two thousand men, and they did not haunt him — but of the world on which he lived.

That evening Sulay called Bar-Woten to the library. The Ibisian left Barthel in their quarters and walked down the cool stone hallways of the capital palace, looking up at the frescoes crumbling in the dimly lit vaults. The sense of age oppressed him tonight. So many years, so much time to do evil things … layers and layers of human pressure bearing down on him like miles of rock.

The frescoes showed scenes of war taken from Obelisk texts. Bar-Woten felt the painter's lack of firsthand experience acutely, both proud and revolted by his own knowledge. Shaking his head and grimacing, he entered the door to the library.

The musty smell of paper and ink and old leather bindings hung heavy in the still air. The oxygen seemed to have been sucked out by years of rotting pulp. He restrained an impulse to choke. A middle-aged, balding librarian guided him through long, winding stacks and stopped, pointing with a knobby ink-stained finger calloused on the first knuckle.

Sulay sat on a stool, a large book spread across his lap. His gray hair and bald spot shone in the tier of oil lamps set beside him. Bar-Woten noted the pump-action fire extinguisher hung on a fixture.

“Young Bear-killer,” Sulay said, looking up. Bar-Woten bowed slightly.

“The general needs his rest,” he said solicitously.

Sulay ignored him. “The Mediwevans have ascended a little higher than we have,” he said, thumbing the pages. “Better balloons, I imagine. More texts, more advances, but they haven't seen fit to apply their new knowledge, not yet. Many odd things as the texts go higher.” Sulay closed the book carefully and placed it on a small folding table. “I could spend my whole life in libraries. Much less exciting than the March, eh?”

Bar-Woten nodded. Sulay's demeanor changed considerably when he was among books. Bar-Woten wasn't sure he approved, though something in himself was attracted to the endless shelves. “Less strenuous at least,” he said.

“These people know us as soldiers, murderers, plunderers,” Sulay said. “No doubt we've done enough of that. But they will never appreciate us as scholars. Yet what we could tell them! They know very little of Hegira, but a great deal of the Obelisks. I know very little of the Obelisks . . . and I wish I knew more. But...” He sighed. “My time is at an end, Bear-killer.”

Bar-Woten respected the old man's lengthy silence. At last Sulay lifted his head, and there were tears on his cheeks. “Never enough time. Never enough. The March is over. They aren't very good at fighting here in Mediweva, but they far outnumber us, and our ruses aren't working any more. My audiences with the Holy Pontiff have been more and more strained. An old soldier's instincts warn me. . . . He will swat us like a buzzing wasp. Our reputation travels before us, even in the insular countries. We have not been circumspect.” Sulay looked Bar-Woten steadily in the eye. The old general's pupils were large, absorbing. “You will go on.”

“Not without you, General.”

“Without me, without your fellow soldiers, however you must. You'll finish the March. We didn't journey to kill and loot, but try telling that to an army of Ibisians ...” Sulay put his hand on the book. “That's my commission to you. If anyone will survive, you will. Go now, or very soon.”

Bar-Woten nodded.

“Go and find what I wanted to find.”

“Yes, General.”

“You would do that even if I didn't tell you, wouldn't you?”

“Yes.”

Sulay picked up the book again and opened it.

“It isn't safe here, General,” Bar-Woten said. “They can come from both directions and pen you in.”

Sulay didn't react.

“General?”

The old man dismissed Bar-Woten with a gesture. He turned and walked through the stacks, fists clenched.

The morning of their ninth day in Madreghb brought clouded skies and a pale drizzle that turned the capital into a fairytale province. The richly carved walls of the Duomo and the Middle Sacristy attracted Bar-Woten and dazzled Barthel as they walked alone through the city. Wearing his dress whites and a windbreaker, and according Barthel the same privilege, he ignored the damp and studied the architecture.

The courtyard of learned debate drew him as sugar draws an ant. Here scholars, readers, and Obelisk students gathered with then" practical counterparts — engineers, geometers, and theologicians. They debated loudly over a narrow roadway separating then: bleachers, below an aqueduct carrying water from the southern branch of the Ub. Cars and trucks hissed between them irregularly. The white drizzle beaded and dripped from the debaters' black leather cloaks, pooling on the wooden planks that ran the length of the stone seats.

Barthel was amused. “They discuss the teachings of Yesu,” he whispered in an aside to Bar-Woten. He nodded and listened more closely. They stood on a walkway bridge mounted on one side of the aqueduct. Water rushed to its appointments behind them, splattered with occasional raindrops.

One theologician kept his dignity and calm amidst the ruckus. He commanded a fine voice and his wit was incisive. They listened for a while, then moved on. Bar-Woten frowned as they left the aqueduct. Had Heisos, or Yesu, been a firm warrior with words or a debater of pedantries?

The weather worsened. Lunching in a smoky wooden parlor-house with glass windows slacked by age, they watched the drizzle thicken into rain, much as the grease of a lamb congealed on their plates. “I change my mind about the cold; it is unpleasant,” Barthel said, drawing his jacket collar tight around his ears. “I often wish the Bey had chosen to reside in Khem, where it is usually warm.” Bar-Woten nodded.

The day would soon collapse into dark. He didn't enjoy the thought of walking after dark to the capital square and the Nocturne, essentially unarmed. It was unhealthy.

They set out just before the dimming began. At this season the days were ten hours long and the nights fourteen. The weather promised to be foul in the dark. The wind nipped and curled around their backs, making their eyes sting. Cats scampered in a wet tide from one alley into another, yowling miserably. Bar-Woten saw why as they passed the alley — a rain gutter edging the roof of the inn had broken, turning a dry corner into the base of a cascade.

“It would be good to take shelter,” Barthel said from under his jacket. The boy's eyebrows, bushy at the best of times, now knitted to form a solid ragged streak across his brow. His dark brown eyes were slitted against the raindrops.

Bar-Woten shielded his good eye and looked at the entrance to the hostel. He knew instinctively it would be a vermin paradise. But he distrusted wet weather in strange countries. Enough diseases had plagued him in similar conditions to make him wary.

“Wait,” Barthel said, peering back into the alley where the cats had lodged. The cascade had subsided to a trickle. Something moved at the back. It was shapeless, larger than a man. Barthel stepped backward and Bar-Woten's neck hair rose.

He wiped his eye with the knuckle of his thumb. The shape was nothing monstrous after all. A man was struggling under a pile of wet papers and rags, weak and unpromising labor at best. The Ibisian's first thought was to leave well enough alone — this possible plague victim was no friend to a visitor without immunity. But the man was not sick with plague; he was weak from blood loss. They approached him cautiously. Bar-Woten crouched next to the pile.

The man was a penitent. His whip was still hooked to his belt, lashes tangled in his scraped and bruised legs. But this young fellow was no priest or professional ascetic. He was barely twenty and nearly dead. His back wounds had festered enough to give him fever visions sufficient for a lifetime. Now he was unconscious. Bar-Woten called for Barthel to help and together they picked him up by the arms and legs. “We'll take him to the hostel,” he said.