The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (46 page)

“Then they not men!” Dragon-breath cackled like a
lunatic
as if to say that the conversation was over.

It wasn’t.

A’Nu-Ahki turned with eyes like searing coals. His voice was low and grim. “Take a good look, young ones. The gold our people give ‘for the poor’ to the Archon’s Alliance Fund goes to support these death-camp baronies. If the Archon that served just before Iyared had responded to the sons of Q’Enukki’s call for aid to these tribes, instead of spouting doctrinally correct but stupidly-applied platitudes about Qayin’s Curse, things might have been different. Even the Seer Clan failed to push that Archon
too hard
for the truth. Nothing we can say or do here today will help. My people have a share of the blame along with Sarvin Angrost’s!”

“Who’re you to talk blame, Ol’ Man?” Dragon-breath yelled. “You get to go back to yer palace in the west!”

A’Nu-Ahki remained diplomatically silent.

U’Sumi had long since gone beyond looking for someone to blame, whether it turned out to be the Basilisk, humanity, or E’Yahavah. He just absorbed the parade of nightmare images
,
and wondered if his inner struggle would illuminate any hint of divine purpose
,
or simply feed Shadow-mind another chunky morsel of his soul. A glance at T’Qinna reminded him that he still had a choice as to that.

That evening
,
they camped at the southern base of the great crater’s wall. Sulfurous stink from the slimy lake inside wafted over the rim and burned their nostrils all night.

Sarvin Angrost’s soldiers took leave of them at dawn.

“You not speak Yava to short-life spotties,” Dragon-breath reminded them after his uncle’s men departed.

A’Nu-Ahki replied,
“I think it behooves you to remember that I am the one paying yo
u
,
and not the other way around.
”

“You don’t wanta be alone in this land, Ol’ Man,” said the Guide.

U’Sumi smiled grimly when they both turned to face him at the cock of his rotary hand-cannon. “And you don’t want to speak to my father like that again, because I’ll drop you before you can even look surprised.” He trained his weapon on their guide’s chest
.
“Even if it means diverting south into Corsair country.”

Dragon-breath let out a hyena laugh, but said nothing more.

They turned almost due south across the gray dunes, moving just a few degrees to west, according to Yafutu’s lodestone compass; a small back-up model he had taken from the boat. Here the weeks became truly endless.

Nobody lived in the high dunes, and U’Sumi found it a relief to be away from people. However, the caustic dust blew more readily there
,
and none of them had adequate eye protection, not even Dragon-breath. Their guide seemed to take pride in how much of the
lung
-
burning sand he could ingest without coughing or dying. Fortunately
,
the winds died down at sunset, allowing them to take supper and rest on protective blankets.

A’Nu-Ahki assigned nightly watches and U’Sumi noticed that he wisely did not entrust Dragon-breath with a shift. As his father had given him the pre-dawn watch, he decided to get to sleep as early as possible.

U’Sumi
had troubled
dreams
peopled
by angry voices whispering in the dark, while Shadow-mind
beca
me a waking presence strong enough
that he
physically fe
lt it in the air around him
.

THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY
|
367

For I know, that oppression will exist and prevail on earth; that on earth great punishment shall in the end take place; and that there shall be a consummation of all iniquity, which shall be cut off from its root, and every fabric raised by it shall pass away. Iniquity, however, shall again be renewed, and consummated on earth. Every act of crime, and every act of oppression and impiety, shall be a second time embraced.

—
1 Enoch
90:6 (Ethiopic Manuscript)

THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY
|
367

Day of the Dragon

U’

Sumi awoke to a loud metallic click, with the touch of sharp steel against his face. The silent
gray-clad
figure
standing
over him did not have to tell him not to move. The auto-pike held to his head said
that much
.

As the hooded man motioned for him to rise, U’Sumi noticed another gray-cloaked figure holding a hand over Yafutu’s mouth.

Dragon-breath stood above A’Nu-Ahki, kicking him to get him up, while yet another
gray
-
clad marauder dragged T’Qinna to her feet. Taanyx lay silent with a small, nasty looking dart in her haunch. There was no blood. On closer inspection
,
U’Sumi saw that the cat’s breath came with regular, sleep-like ease.
Why keep the sphinx alive?
h
e
wondered.

With the camp taken, the man holding Yafutu released his mouth.

“I’m sorry!” cried the boy, who had been on watch. “I didn’t hear them coming. Dragon-breath was up. He kept talking to me!”

U’Sumi said,
“It’s not your fault, Yafutu
.
”

The young Outrigger still averted his eyes.

“Don’t worry, we go south still, Yava-man,” Dragon-breath said to A’Nu-Ahki, once he had him to his feet. “Only now I sell you to Corsairs. Get big rope of gold for boy and girl—sell good for tent sport. Even sphinx get good price for shrine pet in Zhri’Nikkor. Yes, kitty still alive—just take long nap, she will.
Maybe sell ‘tween-ager wit big mouth and big gun as janissary guard. Who knows? They might even pay for a croaking old seer.”

“He’s carryin’ quite a load!” said one of the gray cloaks, who spilled the money belts onto one of the blankets in a small pile of gold and silver ingots—the unspent proceeds from the
Amirdu’s
sale.

“Divvy it up
.
It be more than you deserve!”
Dragon-breath
shrieked with tortured animal laughter.

Dragon-breath gave his Corsair friends—for so they turned out to be—Shell-head to ride and forced A’Nu-Ahki’s party to plod through the dunes. This didn’t bother U’Sumi or his father, who had their old army footwear for protection. But for T’Qinna and Yafutu,
their feet
clad only in sandals, the caustic sands mingled with their sweat to bring excruciating irritation.

Taanyx they hoisted onto the pack unicorn, muzzled and hog-tied, and lashed her to the upper rack. U’Sumi surrendered his boots to T’Qinna, while he and his father took turns carrying Yafutu on their backs. Thi
ngs
soon slowed up, for T’Qinna could barely walk in knee-high boots several sizes too large and the men could not keep up while carrying their load. Finally, the Corsairs conceded to let Yafutu ride with them, while T’Qinna mounted the pack beast behind Dragon-breath and rode with Taanyx.

U’Sumi thanked E’Yahavah
for allowing her
to
be with
her sphinx. Not only that, but he got his boots back in time to keep his blistered feet from breaking open directly into the corrosive grit.

They marched this way nearly five weeks, tightly marshaling their water. The three Corsairs said little, taking the lead from their eldest
,
a sullen mottled half-giant named Blood-fang, whose head flattened to nothing just above his eyebrows;
as if
someone had punched
in his skull as a baby and he had never figured out that it should have killed him. Blood-fang’s red recessed eyes watched everything and told U’Sumi nothing. He was the only one beside Dragon-breath who gave any orders.

The remaining marauders, Gheri-boy and
Stench
, were younger than U’Sumi and all the more cocky because of it. They continually tormented Yafutu by shoving him back and forth between them on the long unicorn saddle. U’Sumi prayed they would
no
t subject the boy to what
he had experienced u
nder the Gates of the Setting Sun.

U’Sumi was even more afraid for T’Qinna. The first night of their captivity, she had whispered to him that she was going to offer herself to the raiders if they would release the others.

“No!” U’Sumi had hissed. “They mostly let you alone today.”

“The sun’s hot. We’ll be marching for weeks,” she
had
said. “They’ll only force me sooner or later! I’ve seen how they look at me. I’m sorry, but I’m no fit bride for you anyway! You should have a virgin. Nothing they make me do would be anything I haven’t already done.”

Except if they kill you,
he hadn’t said. U’Sumi’s world crumbled around him that first night. “
Under
-
world will take her too,”
whispered the Shadow-mind
only he could hear. It still whispered that. Yet somehow
,
he had stood firm in the debris around his private dragon’s hidden lair.

“I want no virgin!” he
ha
d told her. “I’ll have you or no one! If you go to them, I will immediately try to kill whoever touches you first
.
I will
end this whole bloody journey
! Everyone will die
.
Believe it
.
”

“But what about your prophetic destiny? You can’t just
…
”

He
ha
d said the words slowly, deliberately
:
“I don’t care.”

The horror in her eyes had told him that his message hit home. He needed her to be more afraid of him than of the Corsairs right now. It was cruel, but he saw no other way.
I have nothing left to lose but you,
he hadn’t said, but wished he could have. She’d quit that kind of talk after that.

As the weeks wore on, U’Sumi’s agitation over T’Qinna eased. Aside from nasty comments and occasional brush-by gropes, the Corsairs left her alone
,
as
they did Yafutu. From an overheard argument, he later learned that slave traders got more gold for virgins and checked carefully before buying. The bandits had no
way to know where she was from
and seemed to assume that a modestly dressed girl traveling with a seer must be a virgin. U’Sumi thanked
E’Yahavah
that they didn’t think to check, or more likely didn’t want to risk damaging what to look for in any struggle.

During the fifth week of their march, the landscape slowly became covered with thorny scrub again
,
and signs of
human
habitation reappeared. A rude path took shape
with
more frequent watering troughs. The ground grew hilly, with occasional thorn-encircled tent villages perched on rounded summits like tattered crowns on the gray skulls of mostly-buried giants.

Toward sunset on their thirty-eighth day of captivity, they traveled along a low ridge opposite one such community that sat on a hillock off to their left. A great stone bowl like a giant mortar and pestle lay in the sandy hollow below the path. A ring of crude pillars surrounded it
,
each with a set of manacles attached. Distant shrieks rose from the tent commune, their source hidden by the circle of thorns and huts.

Dragon-breath said,
“Gonna be stick-bone feast. Stop an’ watch?”

Blood-fang nodded and positioned Shell-head where he could best view the stone circle. Gheri-boy grinned toothlessly, while
Stench
broke out a skin of some kind of liquor and took a slug.

A procession of shadow people emerged from the village and marched toward the circle of pillars to the beat of a skin drum. They led a line of about twenty youngsters and mothers who carried malnourished infants. Skeleton men painted in death masques scrambled on ahead to light torches set on posts that overlooked the hollow. Slit-mouthed lipless women from the line wailed along with the infants that cried in their arms. Their noise reached the spectator’s hill
,
a discordant music from Underworld.

U’Sumi knew what was coming, but made no effort to turn away.

The villagers chained the struggling children to the pillars, while the mothers tenderly laid their babies inside the ring, on the shallow slab. Many kissed their infants and even some of the older children, before retreating.

U’Sumi felt T’Qinna grip his arm for support. Dragon-breath had let her dismount to be with her people.

“I’d hoped it was a lie,” she whispered.

He drew her close, so she could bury her eyes in his shoulder.

At the very lip of the ridge, A’Nu-Ahki clutched his mantle until his knuckles turned yellow. His head shook with violent helplessness.

Yafutu asked,
“What’s going on?”

T’Qinna said,
“Don’t watch!”

Dragon-breath cackled. “Yeah, don’ watch, lil’ boy—you might get look at real life an’ death, ‘stead of Yava-man dream stuff.”

Silently, U’Sumi called out to E’Yahavah for help. Yet it seemed that Shadow-mind snuffed out his thoughts as they left his skull and any attempt to voice them produced only a slurred noise in his throat.

The maddening drumbeat from the village poorly masked the children’s shrieks. The mothers and tribal elders drew back to the safety of their thorn-bordered compound to wait. The cockatrice packs of Nhod scavenged down from the hills only at night.

U’Sumi fixed his eyes on the children. His mind raced
with
answers that could only work in adolescent daydreams.
I’ve been given the power to defeat many foes
before.
Why not now? Where’s the battle gift now?

The spotted skull-baby faces gazed up at him with wide eyes that called down silent curses on him for his inaction.
What can I do?
For these people, e
very E’Yahavah-inspired word and deed
came
too little, too late. Only a final act of desperation could save them.
U’Sumi
tried to make one appear in his mind, while his heart withered in silent torment begging his God to fire up his terrible gift.
I
should
attack the nearest Corsair and
trust!

In a savage burst, he lunged past T’Qinna and knocked Gheri-boy off the saddle. Before the Corsairs could respond, he swung around into the driver’s spot, booting Blood-fang in the kidneys from his perch, as he shoved the unicorn’s head armor forward into a
downhill
charge. The speeding quasi-dragon rumbled into the circle of torches to trample and gore any cockatrice that tried to break in
…

Laughter from the Corsairs ended his
last
boyish fantasy.

It just wasn’t like that when the Terrible Gift came.
U’Sumi felt stupid and awkward for even dreaming. His real experiences had not felt daring or heroic—terror and a power beyond himself had carried him then. The desperation was thick enough. Yet he somehow knew that the berserker dance would not come this time, no matter how much he pleaded or how sure he was of the divine power behind it.

It both disturbed and comforted him to realize that the Gift was not some product of
his own
zeal
that U’Sumi could just work up
with
in himself. It came from elsewhere and served some other
greater
will.

What he didn’t know was why? What made this situation different? Had he done something wrong? He’d hardly needed to ask before—while he prayed his guts out now! His mind swung like a sickening pendulum to the extreme opposite end of his own moral spectrum so quickly that he nearly vomited.
What makes these children deserving of such an end and us so deserving of future rescue—assuming that’s still on the agenda?

“Nothing.”

The
grief-stricken
voice spoke in his head, but
U’Sumi
knew it was
n
o
t
Shadow-mind
.
This voice understood pain
far
too well.

U’Sumi wanted to prod this new presence with questions, but realized that just now it would be useless. For some reason he could not begin to understand or defend, the answer was simply,
“N
ot today
.”

Maybe if I take even a lame first step
of faith
, the Gift will kick in
…

“Not today, my friend.”

Dragon-breath
winked at him
while
he
pulled out
a
skin bag of grain spirits and deliberately exposed the automatic hand-cannon he had taken from U’Sumi as he yanked back his cloak.