No Other Gods (4 page)

I was late to my usual spot at the table. Livia looked up at me as I sat, her eyes questioning, but I was in no mood to share. As the food was served and our cups filled, I stood again, looking each man and woman at my table in the eye. Raising my mug, I summoned them in a toast.

             
“To us. To the finest warriors in this hall of the gods. The finest warriors in the universe. To us — long may we prevail.”

             
Everyone stood, raised their own mugs, and drank. It seemed a solemn occasion to me, knowing of Hermes’ words, the test that he would put me to, and with Rast’s threats still fresh. The others seemed to understand somehow, without me saying it, that this was a special occasion, a special meal we shared — perhaps even our last supper together — and each of us took extra care to enjoy and fully experience it.

             
Livia put her head close to mine. Her eyes met my, searching, wondering, and slowly she began to speak.

             
“What has happened, Geno? You seem so different today. Everything seems so different today.” Her hand found mine under the table, warm, comforting.

             
I spoke quietly, for her ears alone. I was not ready to share this with the others, even Kin.

             
“This morning I woke first. While everyone else was still sleeping, I met with Hermes. He took me out of this place, to the city of the gods, and he spoke about a choosing, and a test to come.”

             
Her eyes searched mine, looking for more, trying to understand.

             
“I don’t really know anything else. I don’t really know why we’re here and what we’re doing. Although … Hermes did say it was a school of a sort. Or a boot camp. I think we’re being prepared for something, and our next battle will be the last before … graduation.”

             
I did not say what I really meant, which was that not only would our next battle be the last … it would also be the worst. But her eyes seemed to understand. And the hand that rested briefly on mine promised her support in the test to come.

             
I raised my voice, addressed the whole table. Locked eyes with Kin, seeing that his usual grin disappeared at my serious tone.

             
“Something different is coming. Something new — something difficult. I don’t know if we will face it alone or together. But prepare. Be ready. I think we will need to be stronger and fight harder than ever before.”

             
As we all looked around the table at each other, I could see that all of us felt the same way: eager to face this new challenge together, as a cohort, for the first time. Warriors at other tables turned to ours, staring, sensing something different, something special, as we remained almost frozen, building our resolve. Then, down deep and almost inaudible, one of us said the words we were waiting for.

             
“Long may we prevail.”

             
We repeated them as one, and as if it was a spell or magical incantation, Hermes began to appear.

             
The smoky coiling mists drift away along the floor and through our legs as Hermes appeared, double man-sized, at the front of the hall.

             
“Every warrior in this hall has fought thousands of battles against your comrades. Tomorrow’s will be the last.” He paused for a moment as shocked whispers and gasps rose from the assembled men and women.

             
“You have fought, and you have died. Most of you, that is.” He paused again with a small smile and nod that might, or might not, have been directed my way. I glanced around and caught Rast and his crew looking at me. They at least had taken Lord Hermes’ words as referring to me, and I was willing to bet just about anything that their desire to kill me in the forthcoming battle has just gone up more than a few notches.

             
“But no more! You have been in school — you have been learning, and you have been growing. You are now the most dangerous warriors in existence with the weapons of any time or place.”

             
“This last test — your final examination — will determine what roles we give you … what work will fall to each of you. Be ready. Be strong.”

             
Customarily, without farewell, Hermes began to depart. Before he fully disappeared, however, I could swear he inclined his head in my direction, caught my eye, and pointing to his head, whispered,
be smart
.

             
I shook my own head, trying to make all the recent revelations and surprises fit into a coherent pattern, as the excited murmur of men and women about to embark on a new adventure rose around us. Before we could drift off and lose each other, however, I caught the eyes of all my tablemates. Helo looked up, and Tonia smiled.

             
“Together,” I whispered.

             
We found each others’ hands under the table and held on as the fog took us and twisted us away.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

              - Winston Churchill

I had always been one of the first to wake. Today it would save my life, and the lives of my friends.

              I opened my eyes, fighting the drowsiness that we always felt at the start of a fight day. The first thing I saw was my own arm, pillowing my head on short grass. Blue, again. The second thing I saw — more felt than saw — was the short stock of a semiautomatic rifle. So: early modern era weapons.

             
Raising my head, I pulled myself to my knees, glanced around blearily, and began blinking rapidly in shock. There were only nine other soldiers dressed in blue around me, all from my table in the hall, all from my cohort. This had never happened before: either so few, or all from my table.

             
But that was only the first shock.

             
Rising to my feet I scanned farther. What I saw chilled my bones. We were, the ten of us, in the middle of the red army … an army that was starting to wake up. Surrounding us were hundreds of reds, even now starting to shift, starting to move.

             
Physically wrenching myself out of the dual drugs of sleep and surprise, I went from friend to friend among my cohort, quietly slapping the faces of my comrades. Our only chance was rapid flight. Kin grabbed Jaca, who was still drowsy, and slung him over his shoulder, and I helped Livia, supporting her until she fully woke. We gathered ourselves and whatever gear we could and quietly picked our way through the still-sleeping reds. As we went, I whispered to the cohort to grab any loose weapons — late 20
th
century submachine guns littered the ground — and extra clips of ammunition.

             
Only when we were several hundred meters (and increasing) from the red army did we start to talk, still in low voices.

             
“I don’t understand,” Jaca said slowly. “It makes no sense. We have never before woken in sight of an opposing army. No army has ever before been so outnumbered. And to wake up surrounded ...”

             
His voice trailed off in disbelief and it was plain that all of us shared his thoughts and none of us had any better idea what might be happening.

             
“Ten against four hundreds! What kind of chance do we have? This is not a fair fight!” Livia said, upset and angry.

             
I had no better questions, nor any answers to hers. But I knew one thing: there was always a chance, if we could possibly find it. And I would never give up while there was even a fool’s hope of winning.

             
“Our first priority is to increase the distance between us and the reds,” I said. “Let’s focus on that now.”

So we quietly and carefully continued to make ground. By luck or design, we had left the red army on fairly rocky ground on the west side of the field. Even if the reds knew that we had woken up in their midst, tracking us would not be easy. But I was also counting on the reds to assume that, their large numbers aside, today would be like any other fight day. Essentially, to assume that the opposing force would be walking to meet them … not running from certain annihilation. The natural confusion and woolly-headedness of waking on fight day would help. Every minute now we were farther from them, and for half the time now we had been moving uphill, away from the most obvious battlefields below.

             
The grassy valley below was long but narrow — only a few klicks wide at best. On either side of the valley, rolling hills dotted with trees rose to wilder-looking mountains in the distance. White and no green spotted the rocky tops of those far peaks. We had woken at one end of the valley — the west end. Our current path, if you could call it that, led up into the hills and toward the mountains.

             
We paused for a brief rest and food on a ridge that promised some kind of view of the valley below.

             
“They’ll likely assume that we woke at the other end of the valley,” mused Kin. “They probably think we’re marching west, toward them. Ten against four hundreds!”

             
“I think you’re right,” I said. “And ten or not, I know how we can defeat them.” I called them close as they looked at me, wonderingly, with the first glimpses of hope mingled with amazement. And, to be honest, a whole lot of doubt.

“The answer is simple,” I announced, rather grandly. Perhaps too grandly, as a heckler immediately popped his head up.

             
“To what question? Whether we’ll die standing or die running?” A few smiles and groans greeting Kin’s effort. At least it was good to see that we hadn’t lost all our spirit.

             
“The question is: how can we win?” I answered.

             
The smiles grew a little fixed and more amazed as they heard this. The odds were rather obviously not just stacked against us … they were actively hunting us down. I started by listing the obvious, which most of us never usually considered, since in normal battles we just woke, walked, and fought.

             
“Let’s list the points. First of all, we’ve never before been this outnumbered. Second, we’ve never woken within sight of the enemy — never mind right in the middle of their army. Third, we’ve always run
towards
battle, never away from it. And fourth, battle has always, always, always been consummated on the first day.”

             
I let them stew on it for a bit. I had already been considering these, almost since waking, and I was quite sure that within them were the seeds of victory. And the rest of the cohort was bound to see that eventually.

             
“Just imagine,” I continued. “Just imagine that you are down there. You’ve woken up in numbers like never before. Put yourself in their heads. When you first wake, you’re ecstatic because it’s going to be the easiest battle ever. Then you start wondering … why are there so many of us? And you remember that Hermes said something about a final test — are we going to meet someone … or something … new?”

             
“Someone will take charge, probably Rast. He’ll wonder too, but the most obvious thing to do is to treat today like any other day, until he knows for sure it’s different. So he’ll march to the far end of the valley, where, on any other battle day, we’d be marching towards him.”

             
Jaca and Helo stared at each other, still puzzled.

             
But Kin was catching on. “And we’ll let him march all that way, won’t we G?”

             
“Exactly. And can you imagine what will happen when he reaches the end — and we are not there? Even more, can you imagine how those men will feel when battle has not been joined today … and the nighttime comes, but there is no s.Leep? No pod? No pick-up, and no feasting in the hall tomorrow?

             
“They will panic,” said Livia, starting to smile.

             
“Precisely. And meanwhile, we will prepare.”

             
We immediately set to work. The list of needs was immense: shelter, food, water, and intimate understanding of the field of battle which would be our home for perhaps a week or longer … and in which we had to defeat a force forty times our size.

             
After quickly dividing the tasks, Livia and I left to scout the reds. We needed to understand as much as we could about the terrain. Of premier importance were gullies and lookouts and natural choke points where a small force could reasonably fend off a larger force for a time … and safely withdraw when presented with overwhelming force. Just as important were places for surprise attacks or traps. We would adopt the posture of wildly outmatched military forces for millennia: we would become guerrillas.

             
Before slowly picking our way down the valley, we needed to confirm that the reds had in fact marched east to the far end of the valley. Crawling out to the very precipice of the ridge we were on, we strained our eyes for any glimpses of movement on the valley floor.

             
The valley stretched west to east, long and narrow — perhaps 20 klicks or more. It was late morning, and the sun was still fairly low in the sky. The valley was a idyllic, even bucolic setting: birds twittered from tree to tree, eagles circled in the sky, a few clouds scudded above us. We had seen evidence of deer on the way up, and it was obvious that animal life abounded: squirrels, mice, moles. That meant there were probably some larger predators as well.

             
We gazed down on the valley floor.

             
“Look,” said Livia, nudging my arm.

             
I followed her finger. Little could be seen below but differing shades of green: trees, grasses, bushes. But we had been well taught: we were searching for patterns that did not match, things that were not natural. And there was something out of the ordinary — a smudge half-way up the valley toward the east, raising a small cloud of dust. There they were.

             
Livia laughed. “Halfway up the valley? 10-15 klicks away, maybe. Hope they’re getting tired doing all that marching.”

             
I smiled too, and then we descended the ridge and continued our search for territorial tactical advantages.