Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (22 page)

Then Piishi took a cord from around
his neck and pulled a small, flat piece of wood from his shirt. He handed it to
the Rider.

The Rider held it up. It was a lath,
bearing an identical yellow lightning design and a dancing figure on both
sides.

“What is it?”

“A
tzi-daltai,
” said Piishi. “The wood was split by lightning. With
it, you can never be lost, and the spirits will know you are a friend.”

“We should get moving,” Faustus
announced, pulling himself up onto the driver’s bench.

The Rider looked around and saw
Belden loping over on the back of a sorrel horse, leading an Appaloosa behind.

“Boots and saddles, boys. I picked
out horses for you two.”

“I don’t ride anymore, Dick,” the
Rider said apologetically.

“What?”

“I took an oath. Kabede too.”

“What? I seen you ride!” Belden said
to Kabede as he came over.

“When lives are in danger we are
commanded to break our oaths.”

“Well hell,” Belden said, looking
back at the two horses strung behind his own. “I’ll just about die of boredom
waitin’ on you two. Don’t that count? How about the Indian?”

“He’ll be riding inside,” Faustus
said. “The Mexicans don’t take kindly to Apaches. The Americans either.”

The Rider grinned.

“Sorry, Dick.”

He climbed up on the porch of the
vardo himself.

“Lemme get this straight,” Belden
said, watching in disbelief as Kabede mounted the step behind him. “You two can’t
ride on a horse’s back but you can lounge about in that palatial rig? What’s
the workaround here?”

“Nothing in our oaths about camels,”
the Rider said, smiling.

“Actually, we are only forbidden
from burdening an animal’s back with our weight,” Kabede explained.

“Jewdoo,” Belden said, shaking his
head and rolling his eyes. He spurred his horse and loped across the parade
ground. “No goddamned bacon, no goddamned horses…” he muttered to himself. But
the rest of what he said was lost.

They slowly turned the wagon and
circled the post. The Rider thought of all the dead beneath the ground. The
population of the post cemetery had grown ten times. They’d had to knock part
of the little stone wall down and build it back up several feet behind its
original foundation. Camp Eckfeldt was quiet and empty, dead like everything
else in the Valle del Torreon now. Even the ghosts had departed, after a brief,
painless exorcism that morning. It would sit out a crumbling, silent watch over
nothing till the buildings finally tumbled down and the plank board grave
markers blew over or were washed away into the valley. Surely when the supply
train showed up and reported its abandonment, the army would never bother to
occupy it again. As Belden had said, it was just some bookkeeper’s oversight,
corrected by the onslaught of the Creed and DeKorte’s undead army. No one would
ever know what had really happened.

Belden had dismounted, and was at
the hitching post in front of the silent commander’s office busily whittling at
it with the point of a pocketknife.

“What’re you doing, Dick?” the Rider
asked, craning his neck to see as they rolled past.

“Just some finishing touches. Figure
I got to leave some kinda explanation for my replacement,” Belden said,
chuckling darkly.

He climbed into his saddle and geed
the horse in line with the big coach.

Carved on the hitching post in big
block letters was the word ‘CROATOAN.’

For five days they rode comfortably
south. They took turns driving the vardo, except for Piishi, who always
remained inside. They spoke little of the task at hand. The plan had already
been established, and there was not much more to say on the matter.

Belden retired in the vardo each
night, winding down with a round of cards. He even taught Kabede and Piishi to
play. Only Faustus was a better hand than he was, but no one had any money, so
the appeal of the game was short-lived.

Belden was brought up to speed on
their mission in Mexico, and took it all in stride, though one morning he waved
the Rider aside.

“You sure you trust the Apache, Joe?
How do you know he’s not gonna give you up once you’re up in those mountains?”

“I trust Piishi more than I trust
the old man.”

“Yeah, I got that. What’s his story?”

“I don’t really know, Dick. You
know, you don’t have to stay with us. You can go your own way.”

“Kabede told me who you’re up
against, and what.”

The Rider said nothing. The man had
been told, but did he really believe there were things besides God and the
Devil vying for the world?

“He also says you’re not sure what
side you’re on anymore.”

The Rider stared at him. How could
he possibly understand?

“Y’know, in the war there were times
I wasn’t sure I was on the right side, bein’ a Tennessean and all,” Belden
began.

“This is a little more serious than
where you born, Dick,” the Rider said.

“Yeah, I know. That’s what you told
me back then too.”

“Kabede told you everything?”

“Yeah. Well, he better have.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I guess.”

“All of it?”

Dick shrugged, and the Rider studied
his face. How could he take it all so nonchalantly? In the war Belden had seen
shedim
bushwhackers and other horrors,
and he had come to believe what the Rider told him, that the war was being
waged not just by north and south, but by Heaven and Hell. Now, if he truly
knew everything, then he knew there had been a third faction. Rebel demons,
allied with…what? Primordial beings beyond all understanding. And yet here he
stood, sipping coffee brewed by an old man who claimed to come from another
universe, going into Mexico to face something he couldn’t possibly imagine.

“Then you should know,” said the
Rider. “You don’t want to get into a fight next to somebody who isn’t sure
about the cause.”

“We didn’t all believe in the cause
back then either, Joe. Hell, there were men among us who were ready to up and
quit once they made the war about Negroes. But most of us stayed because by
that time we weren’t fightin’ to preserve the Union anymore. We were fightin’
for the man on either side of us, to make sure that each of us got home. So
when you get to feelin’ you don’t know what you’re fightin’ for, you take a
look at who’s fightin’ with you, and that’s how you decide what’s right, and
whether or not to go on.”

The Rider looked long and hard at
Dick Belden. Did he dare risk the man getting involved? He would be in over his
head.

“You can leave anytime you want,” he
said again.

“So I keep hearin’,” Belden said,
grinning. “Maybe after we’ve saved the goddamned world…and others besides.”

Belden smacked the Rider’s chest
with the back of his hand, just as he’d always done.

The Rider shook his head.

Lord
spare him
, he prayed.

Kabede spoke very little on the
journey. It was plain he did not care to match notes with Faustus, and whenever
the old man tried to broach the subject of the Hour of the Incursion, and what
they knew about it, the Ethiopian turned to the shuttered window.

The Rider was more forthcoming.

“I don’t see what use Adon has for
Samael,” the Rider said. “You speak of the Angel of Death as being Adon’s most
powerful ally, but from what Lucifer said, he’s only able to interact with the
newly dead for as long as it takes to usher them into Sheol. What possible help
can he be?”

“I don’t know myself,” Faustus
admitted. “From what you say, Adon has ensured the loyalty of the Queen of
Demons by promising to free him. He is a wild card. We have no idea if he will
even want to join the Old Ones if freed, or if they know. How can they even
communicate with him? But if he does, your legends tell of him laying waste to
cities with his sword. The Sixteen Sided Sword of the Almighty will be the only
weapon we have to match him.”

“Only we don’t have it yet,” said
the Rider.

On the morning of the sixth day they
sighted a company of cavalry coming up the road, and were hailed.

Belden, understandably nervous as he
was technically a deserter in a blue coat and riding a horse with the US brand,
reined in close to the vardo and pulled his hat brim low.

The camels, true to Faustus’ word,
caused a major ruckus with the cavalry troop’s mounts, and it looked as if the
annoyed troopers were going to wave them on when the chief civilian scout
riding out front, a German in his thirties with a prodigious black beard and an
angular boy with a wispy mustache in tow, called out to Belden around a wad of
tobacco.

“Hello there, Dick Belden.”

Belden set his hat back on his head
and forced a grin.

“Hello, Seiber,” he said through his
teeth.

The captain of the command, a stocky
fellow with a neat, thick mustache eased his jittery horse forward and eyed
Belden and then the vardo and its camel team. He turned and motioned for the
rest of the troop to retreat a short distance to keep their ponies from
bucking.

The Rider was sitting on the front
porch with Faustus.

“Captain Chaffee,” Seiber said,
pausing to spit a jet of brown juice on the ground, “this is Sergeant Major
Dick Belden from Camp Eckfeldt.”

“Formerly,” Belden corrected him.

“Oh
ja
? I hadn’t heard you got out.”

“Where are you headed, Mister
Belden?” Chaffee interrupted.

“Uh,” Belden began, looking back at
his strange companions, “well sir, we’re headed down to Mexico to…”

Faustus doffed his hat.

“To peddle our wares among the
sufferin’ peons south of the border, Captain. Faustus Montague, purveyor of
charms, wards, and bodyguards. Dickie here’s my nephew.”

Chaffee frowned behind his mustache
and looked from the old man back to Belden, who had cringed at the appellation ‘Dickie.’

“You say he’s from Eckfeldt, Seiber?”

The scout nodded.

“What outfit is that again?”

“Eleventh Cavalry,” Seiber replied. “Colonel
Manx’s command.”

“Eleventh. I didn’t know we had an
eleventh cavalry,” he said, smirking.

Seiber and the boy guffawed, and
Belden slowly joined in, a little unsure.

“Who’re you?” the captain said,
directing the question at the Rider.

“Rider, sir,” the Rider replied.

“My assistant,” Faustus explained.

Captain Caffee looked him up and
down, frowning at his dress.

“What are you, Pennsylvania Dutch?”

“Jewish, sir.”

Chaffee raised his eyebrows, but
shrugged and turned his attention back to Faustus.

“Just what is it exactly you intend
to peddle down in Mexico, Mister Montague?” Chaffee said, stretching his booted
legs and shrugging in the saddle. “Your wares, they wouldn’t be rifles, would
they?”

“Certainly not!”

“You know it’s illegal to sell guns
to the Apache,” Chaffee went on. “On either side of the border.”

“It’s the furthest thing from my
mind, captain. I assure you.”

The Rider was suddenly very keenly
aware of Piishi riding in the back of the wagon. Until a moment ago, Kabede or
Piishi or both of them had been moving around back there, closing cabinets or
simply walking across the floor to listen at the shuttered windows.

“We’re investigating reports of a
lot of Indian movement down along the border.”

“Well,” said Belden. “We haven’t
seen any Indians, sir.”

“Who’s in the back?” Chaffee asked
directly.

“No one important, Captain,” Faustus
said. “Just a Negro I employ in my medicine show.”

“Call him out here.”

Faustus nodded in dignified
acquiescence.

“Mister Kabede!”

After a moment, the porch door swung
open and Kabede, in his white and blue-trimmed burnoose, crouched there in the
doorway.

Chaffee’s eyes lit on the man, and
behind him, several of the mounted troopers craned their heads to look in
wonder at his striking regalia.

“Alright,” Chaffee said after a
minute, apparently satisfied that no man would keep such strange company who
was not what he said he was. “However, my advice to you is to turn around and
head for Tucson. If the Apache don’t kill you, the Mexicans will for that fancy
carriage.”

“Thank you for your concern,
captain, but we’re not afraid of Mexicans or Indians. I have my nephew to
protect me,” Faustus said.

“Ah,” Seiber said, grinning a
stained grin and ejecting another stream of tobacco juice that plopped wetly on
the road. “The only Indians you ever beat you drank under the table, Dickie.”