Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (13 page)

The judge slammed his gavel down repeatedly as she spoke. “Silence, Ensign. Outbursts like this will not be tolerated.”

“I don’t give a shit what will be tolerated. You are listening to that idiot over there,” she said, standing and pointing at Asad, “and you are ignoring everything that matters. You don’t have to tolerate me. What you have to do is stop letting the facts get in the way of the truth. The Prosperions aren’t the enemy. You need to look and think. This whole thing is stupid.”

“Ensign Pewter, I understand you are under a great deal of stress right now, but you will sit down and come to order, or I will leave your defense to your attorney in your absence, and you will have no say at all.”

“As if you’re going to listen anyway.” But she sat down. She at least had to try.

The judge looked back to Commander Adair. “Carry on.”

“I have nothing else, Your Honor. Further questioning would be pointless. She is obviously hostile and protecting the enemy. I move for verdict and sentencing. Every moment she breathes brings us closer to an inside attack by Altin Meade and the Prosperion War Queen. Possibly right here in this courtroom. Meade can strike at any moment.”

“That’s right, he can,” spat Orli. “But he’s not going to. If you’d stop trying to fucking railroad me here, I could explain why he is not your enemy.”

“Ensign, this is your last warning.”

“No. Fuck you and your warning. You need to listen. Stop this goddamn circus and listen. This is all a mistake. And you are going to make it worse.”

Commander Adair made a big showman’s sigh and looked impatiently to the judge. The judge for a moment looked relieved, as if he’d finally gotten an anticipated opportunity, but then he put his stern judge face back on.

“Take her away,” he said to the Marines stationed nearest the doors. Two of them came forward and grabbed her by the arms, dragging her up over the railing and yanking her out of the witness stand.

“Just listen to me, goddamn it,” she shouted at them as they dragged her toward the doors. She twisted and tried to yank herself free. “Let me go, you morons. I’m trying to save your lives too.”

Orli was still shouting as they dragged her out of the courtroom, her cries and profanities echoing down the corridor beyond the doors, heard dully through them by everyone in the room for a long, awkward half minute before the proceedings could finally carry on.

Angela did her best to defend Orli after that, trying to prove Orli’s innocence through various legal technicalities, but the result was inevitable. The best she could do was buy Orli time. All told, she went on for just over an hour, padding her closing arguments as best she could, but that was it, an hour and a few minutes more. And within moments after she closed her statements, Orli was pronounced guilty on all charges and sentenced to death by lethal injection, a sentence to be carried out “immediately,” which in legal parlance meant that there be no delays and that the reports and processing be expedited. When the judge gave the verdict and sentence, so clearly prepared in advance as it had been, so clearly in absence of consideration for anything Angela had said, all the young attorney could do was shake her head and leave. Her efforts had bought Orli nothing, though it came as no surprise.

When she returned to Orli’s cell, she was allowed only five minutes with her client. The guards wouldn’t even leave the room. One of them, a thick-necked fellow built like a six-foot stack of steel plates unfastened the ball gag and pulled it roughly out of her mouth. “Five minutes,” he repeated. “And if she says one word of magic, anything that might work to contact the enemy, she’s done.” He stepped back and watched, like his partner, gun level and trained on the prisoner.

Angela could not hide her frustration for what Orli had done. “Congratulations,” she said in her irritation. “You managed to get your time,
our
time, nearly cut in half. You just cussed away half your life.” Her jaw worked back and forth visibly as she paced the tiny room. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do now, not with so little time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Orli said trying to keep fear at bay. “Altin will come for me.”

Apparently that was enough to get the ball gag jammed back into her mouth, for the moment she spoke Altin’s name, the burly Marine stepped into her and shoved it manfully back in place. He cinched the straps down so tightly they dug into her skin at the hinge of her jaw, and the buckles cut into the back of her head. When it was done, he turned back to the diminutive attorney who was staring wide-eyed at the rough treatment her client had just received.

“You need to leave now,” the Marine demanded.

“I’ll have you up on charges for this,” she said. “My client still has rights, you know.”

“Well, she won’t be needing them for long. Now get out, or you’ll get the same.”

The Marine pushed Angela out with the muzzle of his weapon, and the door closed on Orli’s protests, muffling them to nearly nothing in the lawyer’s ears. She listened anyway as the guards escorted her down the hall, trying to make out the words, reaching for them as one might reach for the hand of someone who has slipped and is falling forever away. She wished she could at least do Orli the last courtesy of listening to her, that one final bit of humanity, to hear what she had to say, even if most of it sounded like threats and profanity. She would have liked to have at least done that.

Chapter 10

G
romf watched the dark figures leaping and stomping before the fire and did not hide the curl of his upper lip. Let Warlord see the length of his tooth at this. These were the old ways, the ways taught by the old gods who had led the clans to shame. It was the old renewal dance, and they believed it a hopeful thing, hope for new beginnings. Youngling warriors reached for a first fistful of female flesh, the women all twice as old as the stupid youths, with their rigid eagerness jutting and apparent for all to see. The women mocked them, kicked dirt at them, leapt wildly about the fire in gleaming nudity, tormenting the younglings with the power of their jumps, the motion of their soft tissues with each cavort, jiggling taunts above golden light that glinted from skin stretched taut over powerful abdomens, broad backs and exquisitely muscled limbs. The light playing on such sumptuousness burned across the shadow spaces of the dance and sent fits of quivering into young and untried loins. And so the younglings groped and growled, spoke words of carnal intent and prowess that were laughable and naive. The ritual was primitive and old, and it made Gromf feel ashamed, for it seemed to him a ceremony of nothing but the lack of Discipline.

But there was no chance that Warlord would gauge the nature of Gromf’s thoughts, for Warlord watched with a great snaggle of teeth. He threw the gnawed-clean rib of a wolf at one of the dancers, striking the youngling in the back of the head. The youngling paid no more attention to the blow than he had any of the others, the rain of bones and soggy greens that fell upon the dance, no more concern than he had for the smoke rising from the fire into the night.

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik, sitting beside Gromf, however, did notice the disgust on the face of his newly chosen apprentice, the victor of the contest for the yellow stone. The old shaman nodded privately to himself, glad that Gromf understood the new ways well enough to despise the old. There were still those who did not. And Gromf was a northern orc. That was good too. An omen, perhaps, of God’s favor.

“I see you find no joy in the ceremony,” he said. “It is a tribute to your glory.”

“There is no glory in the shame of seasons too numerous to count.”

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik nodded, revealing the gaps in his own natural weaponry, the emptiness. He had spent his life in service of the old gods, but it was he who the new god had found and first spoken to. “I am pleased it was you, Gromf,” he said after a time. “The winner needed to be someone like you.”

A youngling fell for the tricks of a woman crawling upon her hands and knees, gnashing her teeth temptingly as she waggled her tattooed buttocks at him. He ran to her, shoving two others down, and made to mount her. When she spun and threw him into the fire, he screamed and howled, and Gromf had to wait for him to roll out of the flames and extinguish himself in the dirt, his cries making it impossible to speak to the elder shaman for a time. The woman’s coarse laughter echoed from the surrounding cliffs, rising on the tide of laughter coming from everyone else around. Gromf had to wait for the wave of that to pass as well.

“Why do you fear it, old one?” he finally asked.

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik leaned back and studied Gromf, his lined green face seeming faded in the firelight. Dancers passed in front of the fire, throwing darkness, fleeting shadows, across the severity of his broad countenance, like the blinking of time. He considered hiding the truth, what little he knew, from today’s victor, but decided he would not. He would trust in God’s judgment in this.

“It is not fear,” he said after a time. “It is caution, which is a thing of Discipline. We do not know how it works. It is God Stone. It will help us take our rightful place on Prosperion. God has said it will be so.”

“Does Warlord know you speak such things?”

“He does.”

“Then he is weak. He should have pulled out your tongue.”

“He should have. But he did not. For he has, at least for now, faith in Discipline. Why else would he hold back an army that is over a hundred thousand strong? How could he have grown such a force?”

Gromf nodded across the heaped food at the scene that continued to unfold around the fire, the dance of beginning. “But he does not believe in the one God. His Discipline will fail. It will fail when we need it most.”

“It is possible,” admitted Kazuk-Hal-Mandik.

“The enemy’s spear is thrown,” insisted Gromf. “Warlord must dodge, duck or lift his shield. He must choose, or we will all be struck the death of his indecision.”

“Your Discipline must include faith in your leaders, Gromf. Warlord did not get his seat by stupidity.”

Gromf nodded. This was true.

Laughter rose again, a guttural rush like the sound of several hundred boars startled all at once. The burned youngling was crabbing backwards on hands and feet, moving away from the approach of the woman who had thrown him into the fire. She slapped at him, punched the flaccidity that pain had brought upon him, as she mocked his impotence. “I see you do not want me anymore,” she taunted over the laughter of the crowd.

“Would you like to speak to God?” Kazuk-Hal-Mandik asked after a time.

Gromf turned to face him, his eyes narrowing as he fixed the ancient shaman with a doubtful stare. “It is not so easy as that.”

“It is,” said the warlock, sipping water from the bowl of an abalone shell. “But there is one thing you must tell me first.”

“And that is?” said Gromf, knowing well what was coming next.

“You must tell me what you learned of the God Stone.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then God will choose another.”

“And what of you? You will simply watch me take the stone away? Leave its power to me? There is no Discipline in that.”

“You underestimate God, Gromf, because you have only seen him in your heart. I have seen him with my eyes. As you might if you choose to walk this path with me. As you will tonight. That is up to you. But do not believe he has no power to get what is his from us. He sees us and knows what we do. You do not take the stone from me. You do not take it from Warlord. You take the stone from him. And that is your choice. I cannot tell you what is right.”

Gromf watched as one of the younglings pinned a woman over a rock. The burly youth wrenched her arms behind her back, her wrists crushed together in one huge, powerful hand. His free hand pressed her head against the rock as he took his victory, his thrusts accompanied by triumphant barks which were echoed by the crowd. Even the subdued woman joined, though the sound was muted by the pressure of his hand upon her jaw and the angle of her face jammed against the rock.

Gromf let his gaze move from the first of the evening’s victors to the assemblage watching, the open mouths, the hoisted fists, the shouts and grunts of primal revelry. How could they ever beat the humans like this? It seemed unachievable. Humans were organized and patient. They thought and thought and thought. They hid their desires carefully. Somehow they all did. Or at least most of them. Enough of them to take and hold everything. Meanwhile, his people were still doing this. The things they had always done. The ways of strength without mind. No Discipline. They would never defeat the humans in this way. If they were going to win, they would need something else. Something like the favor of a god.

“I will tell you what I know,” Gromf said at last. He lifted a leg over the log upon which he sat, riding it in the way humans rode on horses, the way even a few of his people did now—when they could be made not to eat the beasts the moment they were caught. “I will tell you everything. And then you will take me to see God.”

Kazuk-Hal-Mandik nodded. “It is agreed.”

Gromf did not need much time to explain what he knew of the God Stone to Kazuk-Hal-Mandik because, in truth, he knew very little. He explained how the mana became thin and moved easily, like water rather than like honey. That is what Gromf knew. He also knew, or at least gauged by what he had seen from the
doh-ruek
who had teleported himself into a wall, and from the numbers of orcs who had briefly ascended to the top of the mountain of dead bodies only to explode or vanish or simply fall down dead for reasons that could not be explained, that magic could go very wrong with the stone. These things Kazuk-Hal-Mandik had also seen.