The Last Pilgrims (4 page)

Gareth had been brought to
the Wall homestead after the farmer—actually an Aztlani spy named
Ronald Getz—had attacked him in the pub. Getz’s bloody death during
an attempt to stop him from reporting the pending attack on the
Vallenses, had shocked the community, and it was still the main
topic of conversation among the Vallensian people.

He was still not sure
exactly where he stood among these plain people, but he was glad to
be alive, and to be able to move forward with his personal
mission.

“Good afternoon, Assassin,” Phillip greeted
him jokingly.

When exactly Phillip had
entered the room, Gareth could not say.
I
hate it when he does that!

“Peace be unto you, Ghost,” Gareth
responded, showing exaggerated irritation with Phillip’s manner of
entry by spitting out the word ‘ghost’ with emphatic, but almost
playful derision. He knew that Phillip hated the name ‘ghost’ as
much as he himself hated being called ‘assassin’.

“One day, perhaps when you deign to get out
of your invalid’s bed, you and I can work out our nicknames in the
yard, with swords, like peaceful gentlemen,” Phillip retorted,
smiling.

“I would never fight you,
Phillip. I’m told that you never lose a fight, you can walk between
the raindrops, you never leave footprints, and you cannot be
killed. Only a fool would engage in swordplay with a
spectre.”

“I’m afraid,” Phillip
said, rolling his eyes, “that both my prowess and my constitution
are highly exaggerated.”

“They say the infection got into my blood,
which is why my recovery has been a bit delayed,” Gareth changed
the subject, “but I can tell you that there are worse places and
worse ways to spend a summer. The Vallensian peasant food is
fabulous, and the beer mugs are bottomless. Who would have known?
I’ve gained twenty pounds while almost dying of an infection from a
knife wound.”

“A scratch, really—nothing
to cause a grown man to spend a week in bed,” Phillip
replied.

The militia leader was
obviously enjoying himself, so he continued. “I’ve had at least two
dozen such nicks and I cannot recall a single one that even made me
sleepy. You are a strong young man; you should have bounced back in
no time at all.”

“Well, Ghost, I am clearly not the man you
are, but then, neither are you. Still, they do tell me that I’m
healing and getting stronger.”

Gareth prodded the knife wound gingerly,
testing the area with his fingertips. He noticed that, almost
imperceptibly, Phillip showed some satisfaction that he was
improving. He sensed from his many conversations with the militia
leader over the past week that Phillip was somehow ashamed or angry
with himself that he had not moved fast enough to prevent his
prisoner from being harmed while in his custody. Maybe that was why
he visited so often.

“If Vallensian hospitality and food have
anything to do with it, I’ll be fit enough for hanging in no
time.”

“Sadly, they’d not have
you hang. They’d have you as a pet dog, curled up on the hearth,
nibbling at their dainties from a bowl. They are pacifists,
remember.” Phillip stroked his long, graying beard, looking out of
the window as if in deep thought. “As for me, Assassin, I cannot
decide whether I would rather see you hanged, run through with a
sword, impaled on a pike, or made into a eunuch so you can fetch me
beer and apples.”

“I can tell that you are growing fond of me,
Ghost.”

“Maybe I am. Now, enough fun. We need to
talk.”

Gareth had become accustomed to daily
sparring with Phillip. Sometimes Phillip would spend most of the
day with him. Still, he knew that the battle of tongues was just a
prelude and that the militia leader inevitably wanted more
intelligence from him about Aztlan, El Paso, and the Duke.All light
jesting aside, he knew that his future would be decided as soon as
he was well enough to walk. There were those who still did not
believe him. They didn’t believe that he wasn’t a spy, and that he
had actually come to warn them and encourage them to defend
themselves. Some folk saw his manner and means of arrival as
suspicious, and he really couldn’t blame them for those suspicions.
They rightfully wondered why he had not just walked up and
announced that he was a traitor to Aztlan, and that he had critical
information for the militia and Jonathan.

It is true, Gareth thought, that any number
of things in his seemingly complicated plan could have ruined his
opportunity to warn Jonathan and the Vallenses. He could have been
captured or killed by the Ghost’s militia as he made his way toward
Bethany. Confident in his abilities and training, Gareth did not
see this as likely as some apparently did.

Some Vallensian folks said
that his stunt with the arrow could easily have been missed
altogether or mistaken by Jonathan. If Jonathan had not decoded the
message in his mind fast enough; if the pastor had not indicated to
Phillip that the post rider was the real target; if Phillip had not
noticed that the arrow was from an Aztlani quiver, then the
militiamen men might have immediately killed him when they caught
up with him as he waited for them by the creek.
True
, Gareth thought.
Any of those things might have
happened
. But what alternative was there?
His goal was not just to warn the enemies of Aztlan. His goal was
not even to be believed by Jonathan. His goal was
to be trusted
, because
that was the only way that he was ever going to accomplish his own
private objectives.

To ride up to the Ghost’s militiamen and
claim to be a traitor to Aztlan would just as likely have gotten
him killed. In Aztlan, it was said that Phillip’s ghostmen
generally shot first and asked questions later. The militias were
suspicious and paranoid, and—according to some—that is what keeps
them alive. The militia might trust information that they extracted
from a captured enemy, but they were very unlikely to trust
information freely given by an Aztlani traitor.

So… what if he had snuck
through the militia lines, and had gotten to Jonathan without being
intercepted? That certainly seemed like the most obvious option; in
fact, it was the one he had pondered the most, as he rode over the
many hundreds of miles eastward from El Paso. Maybe Jonathan and
the Vallensian people would have believed him. They might even have
heeded his warning, but they would never trust him, and he would
never have gotten to meet Phillip at all. Aztlani refugees didn’t
get an audience with the Ghost merely by calling for it.

Certainly, he never would
have gotten Jonathan and Phillip in the same room, which had been
the real coup, considering his goal. Phillip would have reckoned it
as a trap. Many Aztlani refugees had found a home among the
Vallenses, but building trust with the plain people of Central
Texas took time. His assailant, the spy Ronald Getz, had apparently
been living and farming among them for years. The
real
message that Gareth
needed to deliver was urgent. He didn’t have years to build up
trust.

Yes, his plan was risky,
and probably full of holes. At best, there was a 40% probability
that it would come off right. Still, it was worth the risk, given
that he needed an opportunity to get Phillip and Jonathan together.
He saw no other way to accomplish it. It was believed in El Paso
and in New Rome that Phillip and Jonathan had not spoken in
years—in fact, the Aztlanis wanted the two rebels to stay estranged
more than they wanted just about anything else. Above all, then,
Gareth wanted to rekindle the relationship between Phillip and
Jonathan.

Even if he had failed, Phillip would have
eventually learned of the Duke’s plan, but weeks and maybe months
of preparation time would have been lost.

Yes. It had been worth the
risk. Jonathan was a good man with a spectacularly sharp and
curious mind and he had pierced through the cloud of confusion and
correctly interpreted Gareth’s intentions. Phillip, though he was
still cautious, had, at the very least, determined that—regardless
of his intentions—an assassin was valuable for gathering new
intelligence. Exposing Getz as the spy had been a painful bonus
that had earned Gareth a reprieve in Phillip’s eyes—at least for
now.

“Quit staring out of the window you assassin
dog,” Phillip snarled, “I need answers from you!”

“What could you possibly still want to
know?”

“For a good part of the last week, you’ve
been rather delirious from your feigned infection. I’ve humored you
because you are weak and obviously addle-brained. But now I want to
go back over some things again.”

He sighed deeply, rolling
his eyes in exasperation. The game continued. Phillip mixed up his
questions, changing directions randomly, asking about various facts
of which he already had perfect knowledge, trying to trip him up,
or catch him in a lie. The interview was peppered with well-planned
diversionary questions, often followed by long stares and a nodding
head designed to keep Gareth talking.

“We’ve had a rolling guerilla war with the
Duke for many years. Why has he decided to engage in a full-scale
attack now?” Phillip asked.

“He is being pressured by
the King who has some intentions on moving his borders eastward but
cannot do so as long as a huge chunk of Central and Eastern Texas
remain either ungovernable because of militia activity, or in the
hands of the Vallenses. The Vallensian people reject his authority
along with that of the Church. There are even rumors that the
Vallensian colonies in the Piney Woods have signed a treaty with
the Duke of Jackson in the former Mississippi.”

Phillip pulled up a wooden chair and sat
next to Gareth’s bed. “I guess I just don’t see much here that is
new or surprising. Why the change? What is the plan?”

“You have to understand that the King has
both a dream and a nightmare. If you understand those two things,
the rest of this is easy,” Gareth said.

“Then talk to me; explain those royal dreams
and nightmares.”

He rose up in the bed,
propping himself up against the headboard. The sounds of cicadas,
katydids, and birds drifted in on a warm breeze. He reached down
and took a long drink from his ever-present mug of beer.

“The dream is simple,” he
said, wiping foam from his mustache, “the Duke of Louisiana is a
very religious man, and he has fully embraced the faith of New
Rome. He is secretly allied with Aztlan, even though he is
nominally under the authority of the King of the South States. He
is also very ambitious.

“Aztlan and Louisiana have you in what could
become a very effective vice, and they intend to squeeze at any
moment. The King dreams of uniting the entire South of what was
once the United States into a single Southern Kingdom.”

Phillip shook his head. “Considering that
there are tens of thousands of us who will never submit to New
Rome, it is a problematic dream at best. In addition, we could rely
on the support of the King of the South States, who is friendly to,
or at least tolerant of, our religion and overtly hostile to the
beast that is Aztlan,” Phillip said.

“Now, we get to the
nightmare,” Gareth continued, pointing towards his own head to
emphasize the point. “The King’s bed is drenched with night sweats
when he envisions two very scary possibilities. The first is that
the King of the South States, with all of his ample resources,
might come to the aid of the Vallenses. The other… actually the
more frightening of the two possibilities, is that Jonathan Wall
will cast off his reckless and defeatist pacifism and join you in a
rebellion against Aztlan.”

With that, he drew closer
to Phillip. There was excitement in his voice and a sparkle in his
eyes as he spoke.

“Jonathan is the key. With one word, he
could unite the whole world against Aztlan. He is admired or feared
everywhere, even in New Rome. It is most probable that the King of
the South States will not move, even on the Vallenses’ behalf,
unless Jonathan Wall agrees to fight.”

He sank back against the
headboard, clearly exhausted by the interrogation. “I cannot say
that all is lost if you cannot convince Jonathan to join you,
but…,” he let the thought linger, as if to suggest that the danger
is unspeakable.

“Jonathan will never
fight. This I know,” Phillip said softly. “We waste time speaking
of it, because it isn’t going to happen. If you don’t know that,
then you don’t know Jonathan. We have to plan to make war with
Aztlan without him.”

Silence fell on the room,
as the Ghost and the Assassin pondered on all the possibilities… if
only Jonathan would fight. Before long, Phillip shook his head as
if he was shaking off the remnants of doubt, or cleansing himself
of his wishful thinking.

“Let’s talk about Aztlan. How many soldiers
is the Duke bringing and how long until they get here? Which way
will they come, and what arms will they carry? Sit back up you
assassin dog, and tell me what you know!” He was deliberately harsh
in addressing Gareth, as if scared of becoming too friendly with
him.

“They will most likely
come up the remnants of the road that used to be called Interstate
10, at least as far as the trading post in Ozona. They’ll stay
south, and won’t try any direct route across the badlands. They
know that the militia is in control out there. From Ozona, or
possibly Sonora, they will turn northeast and stage in San
Angelo.

“Up until now, San Angelo
has really been a border town between the desert badlands and the
beginnings of the ‘ungovernable’ lands in Central Texas and
eastward. I would say that the Duke plans to carry out a
devastating attack, using as many as five-hundred to over a
thousand soldiers, hoping to wipe out any militia units he
encounters along the way. Then he’ll try to march east, killing and
burning as he goes, destroying villages and hamlets until he gets
to Bethany, which is considered the capital of the
rebellion.”