Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 (85 page)

CHAPTER
27

The
air
was
bitter
in
the
uplands
that
marked
the
border
between the
two
major
sections
of
Harmony's
largest
continent,
where
Rukh Tamani's
Command
was
snowbound
in
the
variform
conifer
forest just
below
the
pass
known
as
the
High
Walk.

It
was
not
that
her
followers
were
completely
unable
to
move through
the
snow
between
the
trees;
but
they
were
exhausted,
having
been
harried
from
shelter
to
haven
for
months
by
a
seemingly energized
Militia.

Tired,
they
were
nonetheless
able
and
willing
to
move.
But
Rukh knew
that
her
people—now
numbering
less
than
sixty—needed
to rest.
This
seemed
like
a
good
time
to
take
that
rest,
since
the
snow that
had
fallen
in
the
mountains
for
the
past
day
and
a
half
had
covered
their
tracks.

If
they
did
not
move,
they
would
make
no
new
tracks.

Armed
opposition
had
been
Rukh's
way
of
life
since
her
childhood
ended
in
terror
and
death;
opposition,
at
first,
to
the
hypocritical
religious
tyranny
of
Harmony's
governing
cliques,
and,
later,
to the
insidious
persuasions
of
the
Belial-spawn,
who
had
come
to control
that
government—those
called
the
Others
on
the
rest
of
the Younger
Worlds.

Unlike
many
of
those
in
her
Command—and
unlike
most
of those
Harmonyites
who,
though
not
in
open
rebellion,
nonetheless secretly
sympathized
with
anyone
courageous
enough
to
take
up arms—Rukh
had
no
dreams
of
a
life
of
peace,
nor
any
illusions
about the
likelihood
of
living
to
some
older
age.
Yet
she
was
not
unhappy at
all,
and
could
frequently
be
observed,
in
less
pensive
moments, with
a
quiet,
soft
smile
on
her
dark,
and
strikingly
beautiful,
face.

She
knew
some
had
compared
her
beauty
to
that
of
one
or
another
of
the
queens
captured
in
onyx
in
Old
Earth's
ancient
land
of Egypt,
that
land
so
often
mentioned
in
the
Bible.
The
idea
neither pleased
nor
displeased
her,
for
she
knew
that
whatever
beauty
she had,
had
been
a
gift
from
her
God,
and
was
not
of
her
earning.

The
beauty
was
an
ephemeral
thing,
and
could
be
taken
from her
in
an
instant.
Her
mother
had
been
beautiful,
too;
but
Rukh
had seen
her
mother's
body
burned
and
torn,
and
knew
that
beauty meant
little.

The
one
thing
she
possessed
that
was
hers
alone
was
her
soul; and
while
it
could
never
be
taken
from
her,
she
had
given
it
willingly
to
her
God.
And
since
that
day
on
which
she
had
dedicated her
soul,
and
all
its
worldly
trappings—possessions,
body
and mind—to
her
God,
she
had
never
been
afraid.

It
seemed
so
clear,
to
her,
that
she
wondered
at
times
why
other people
were
afraid—of
injury,
or
of
death.
No
foe
could
reach
into or
damage
her
soul;
it
was
God's,
and
He
was
beyond
fear
or
death. Whatever
might
be
done
to
the
body
was
a
transient
thing,
that would
pass
and
be
forgotten
in
what
would
be,
in
God's
time,
only the
shortest
of
instants.

She
wondered
why
more
people
did
not
reach
out
to
their
God, to
trade
their
cares
for
peace
and
joy.
Occasionally
she
had
succeeded
in
telling
them,
in
showing
them,
that
road;
but
it
seemed
it was
her
work
that
reached
people
most
easily,
most
surely
...
as
if words,
so
easy
to
use,
were
also
so
easy
to
forget.

Still
a
young
woman,
she
had
already
put
many
long
years
into carrying
out
her
task.
There
had
been
great
successes,
that
confounded
the
enemies
of
God
and
drove
their
slave-soldiers
back
in confusion
and
despair—successes
that
made
her
name
one
that rang
for
those
who
still
had
the
clarity
of
purpose
to
fight
for
the Lord.

In
odd
moments
she
wondered
if
that
was
truly
her
purpose
in life.
However,
she
was
not
much
given
to
ponderings
on
purposes, and
was
content
to
wait
for
God's
plan
to
be
revealed
to
her,
so
that she
could
follow
it.

Usually,
that
plan
seemed
to
be
just
to
keep
her
Command
alive and
functioning;
and
moving
it
about
to
give
hope
to
the
Lord's
people
.
..
and,
once
in
a
while,
to
take
advantage
of
some
opportunity
to
cripple
the
forces
of
their
enemy,
by
belying
their
blasphemous
claim
to
be
themselves
doing
the
Lord's
work.

Such
an
opportunity
had
come
her
way
a
few
years
ago,
when God
had
led
her
to
allow
the
young
Earthman,
Hal
Mayne,
to
join her
Command.
The
youngster
had
made
no
pretense
of
being
of their
faith,
yet
he
seemed
to
her
to
have
a
comparable
strength
of moral
purpose.

For
all
that
Hal
Mayne
appeared,
physically,
to
be
tall,
strong
and rugged,
she
had
seen,
in
that
first
meeting,
that
he
was
still
a
boy, still
open
and
trusting,
even
naive—and
one
who
had
been
badly hurt
inside.
But
the
Earthman
had
proven
to
have
iron
inside
him also;
few
others
had
ever
dared
to
stand
up
to
her
now
much
missed Lieutenant,
James
Child-of-God.

In
the
end
Hal
Mayne
had
saved
her
Command,
by
disobeying her
orders
and
stealing
the
explosive
materials
they
had
been guarding
as
they
fled
from
the
Militia,
moving
them
to
where
they could
be
used.

No
longer
burdened
by
those
materials,
the
Command
had
been set
free
to
vanish
into
the
rugged
countryside,
finally
evading
the Militia
pressing
them.
After
that,
they
had
been
able
to
re-form
and use
those
materials
to
badly
damage
the
great
Core
Tap
project
near the
city
of
Ahruma.

She
had
not
seen
Hal
Mayne
since
he
left
the
Command,
but
she had
learned
that
his
actions,
in
saving
both
her
Command
and
the explosives,
had
caused
him
to
be
captured
and
imprisoned.

She
had
carried
out
the
Lord's
mission,
though;
and
afterward found
out
that
Hal
had
been
able
to
escape
from
the
Militia.
She did
not
know
where
he
had
gone.