The Shadows of God (19 page)

“I can’t die!” Chula said. “Not when we have Red Shoes, the greatest
hopaye
of all to make our war magic.” Then his face twisted in fear, as he thought of something. “Do you
see
it?” He gasped. “Do you see my death?”

“I see you growing old and honored,” Red Shoes said, “so long as you are as cautious as you are brave. Always use your head. Never use your bow until all of your powder is gone, and never use your war club until all of your arrows are gone. And when your war club breaks, throw yourself into the forest, hide, and fight another time.”

“Now you sound like one of the old men.”

“They are old for a reason, Chula. Stupid men die young. Maybe very young.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Good.”

Red Shoes saw the Sun Boy long before he saw the ships. He saw him as the old Wichita priest might have, a giant with legs like long, thin stilts, striding with his head almost as high as the Sun. Then again, when he blinked, he saw instead a tree of a thousand branches, and on each branch a hundred birds.

Each bird was a spirit. In some places a branch was swollen, like the pustules on trees from which certain kinds of beetles were born. Again, when he THE SHADOWS OF GOD

blinked, they were more like wombs, with tadpole things curled inside.

He wondered how the Sun Boy would perceive him. Just now, he saw nothing, Red Shoes was certain. All of Red Shoes’ strength went to hide himself, to hide his fellow Choctaw, and to watch.

When the first airships appeared, a few warriors had to be restrained from giving the war cry and shooting at them—but not as many as he feared. Terror of witchcraft made them sober, even the berserk
Hacho
warriors. They kept to the cover of the trees, where Red Shoes could draw
hoshonti,
the concealing cloud, over them.

As Red Shoes suspected, the Sun Boy and his army did not plan to ferry all the horsemen across in the flying ships—with all those skittish horses, that would take a long time. And why should they, when the flying ships made building a bridge so easy?

It was interesting to watch. First they used airships to draw long, heavy cables across to the eastern side of the river. Seeing this, once again, some warriors began edging toward the enemy.

“Restraint,” Red Shoes cautioned Minko Chito. “We might kill a few if we attack their airship when they land to attach the cables. But think how many more we shall kill if we let them start across the bridge and destroy it.”

“Surely they will notice us before that,” Minko Chito said. “Surely they will establish themselves on this side, with the airships to protect both ends of their bridge.”

“Surely. But it will do them no good. Tell the warriors to go back into the swamps. Convince them to wait.”

“It will be difficult. Now that they have seen the enemy, they want to blood themselves.”

“They will spill more blood and take more scalps if they do what I say,” Red Shoes assured him.

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Now the Sun Boy was a spider, spinning a great web, weaving lines of attractions and repulsions and threading spirits on the strands like beads, wheels within delicate wheels. Like a black sunrise, his web spread in the West, lazily spinning about the effulgent hole in the sky that was the Sun Boy.

Red Shoes fasted and chanted, let the snake grow sharp inside him, let the wings spread out on his back, took on the scent of the enemy; and when he was ready, he drifted up into the web and slipped in, to the heart of the Sun Boy’s strength, to his right hand. Unnoticed, unnamed. And there he began to steal and murder, to weaken strands, to prepare to slip the knife into the Sun Boy’s back.

Red Shoes was a weapon, yes—a thing made to kill. Not to kill the sun itself, but this false child of the Sun, this mockery of Hashtali.

All this he did with his shadow, and so powerful was he that he could slip back into his crawfish-clay human skin and instruct his people. He met with the Bone Men and with the shamans from the nearest and farthest corners of the Choctaw country. He learned their secret names and the scent of their shadowchildren so he would know them when the battle came. Some were legends. Bullet Arrives, who had killed more than thirty men in his days as a warrior, now in his seventieth year, slowly sinking into the underworld that would take him one day, but for the time being still commanding shadowchildren of great power. Hopaye Minko, who some said might be a witch, but no one wanted to question. Night Painted, who, though young, was once nearly as powerful as Red Shoes.

Now Red Shoes dwarfed all of them, of course. Now even Bullet Arrives must learn from him.

He also had to be careful, to continue to hide his true nature from them. After this was over, he might well have to kill them. Once the Sun Boy was dead, it would be Red Shoes who decided what the world would be.

He made love to Grief, and he walked with her, showing her the sorts of food and medicines that grew in his country, some the same and some very different from those she knew.

“I want to fight,” she told him one day.

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

“The warriors won’t like that,” he told her. “Men must separate themselves from the power of women before battle. Women are stronger, but different.

They can weaken a warrior.”

“I have no womanly things in me,” she said. “I only want to kill them that killed my family.”

“You felt womanly to me, just now.”

“Not in my spirit. You must know what is in my spirit. Besides, your women talk of battles they have joined in.”

He shrugged. “It
has
happened. Most often they yell and urge us on, but some have taken up arms in times past. Still, I would rather you guard me. My body will be vulnerable, when I battle the Sun Boy. I need someone to protect it.”

“You do not fear I will weaken you?”

He laughed. “Power can come from purity—from maintaining separation of things that ought to be separate. Male and female, under-earth and sky, fire and water. A warrior’s power flows from purity, from being clean. Mine comes from abomination, from mixing what ought not to be mixed. Like the boys who mixed squirrel brains and bird eggs and turtle eggs and ate them.”

“What became of them?”

“They became tie snakes, beings of great power.”

“Like you,” she said.

“Yes, like me.”

“Did you mix squirrel brains and bird eggs and turtle eggs?”

“I ate something more forbidden than that. But I do mix things. I make love to you, though I know I must fight soon. It gives me strength.”

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“Why don’t warriors gain power that way? You just said it weakens them.”

“Ah,” he said. “Because they are too attached to being human.”

She nodded. “I understand now. It’s not the army of the plain you fear, that you need a guard against. It’s your own people.”

He grinned. “You see why I need you. Yes. Bloody Child and his friends still talk against me. They might convince a few.”

“Why? Why do they hate you so?”

“Their uncle was a
hopaye,
like me, but he lost a fight with a spirit. He became a walking skin, and had to be slain. I killed him.”

“They think they have a feud with you.”

“The council said I was right to do what I did and forbade them to take revenge on me or my clan. But they aren’t satisfied with that. Will you guard me?”

“Yes.”

* * *

Red Shoes knew when he could restrain his people no longer. When the first of the great army began crossing the bridge, he let them strike. They attacked the grounded ship with musket and bow and war club, and the men unfortunate enough to be on the east bank of the river died feathered in shafts. Warriors dashed through bursting shells and withering fire, swarmed up the ropes that hung down from the sides of the ship. Many died, but not so many as to give the others pause. They took the ship and cut the; cables, and more than a hundred men and mounts fell into the remorseless Okahina River. Young warriors followed them down, slaying them in the shallows if they did not drown in the sucking depths or return to the western side.

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The enemy was not taken off guard for long. Artillery roared from across the river, firing randomly into the swamps and forest beyond. Airships began moving across, and smaller flyers shaped like giant leaves hummed overhead, dropping fire seeds that sprouted white-hot trees.

Red Shoes was oblivious of most of it. For him there was only the Sun Boy, almost in his grasp. He tore at the rotten fabric of the web, and sent out hornet swarms of shadowchildren, each made with a single purpose and ability—to collapse the red globes that kept the airships aloft. He sheared through the Sun Boy’s defenses, through Long Black Beings, through shields of underworld stuff. And as he fought, he sang, sang the song of the Nightland.

Adrienne leaned against the rail, breathing heavily, her wound now no more than a stitch in her side. No one spoke until Father Castillion crossed himself.

“Sweet Savior,” he murmured. “Preserve our souls.”

The rolling flat plains had given way to dense, ancient forests. Not the bluish evergreen timbers of the Russian taiga and western American forest they had flown over but the trees of the startling verdancy that Adrienne knew from her youth in France, a kind of green she had almost forgotten. It was strange that she must travel so many thousands of miles to feel nostalgia for the place of her birth, but sometimes the world was thus. Linne was delighted—he pointed to the forest as proof of his theory of climates.

“We’ve reached the latitude of France,” he said, “and thus this forest looks French. Oak and myrtle, I’ll wager.”

But the river had no counterpart—not in France, not anywhere in Europe. It could drink the Rhine, Rhone, and Danube and still be thirsty. Her maps labeled it variously River San Luis, Spirito Sancto, and Mississippi. Whatever its name, it was a monster.

And hovering above the river were the glowing pinpricks of airships, twenty of them. Around them, wheeling like great lazy birds, were the new flying machines of Swedenborg’s invention. And, visible only to Adrienne’s eyes, a thousand malakim.

Beneath all that, ants crossed the river in pea pods in a long string.

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From four of the ships, fire blazed. Cannon, discharging bright yellow; the sun-bright burst of Fahrenheit guns; and firedrakes vanishing into the forests beyond the river, reappearing as vast columns of smoke billowing to meet the sky.

“This will be quite a fight,” Hercule said. “Three ships against a score.”

“But someone is fighting them already,” Adrienne observed.

“It’s difficult to say with what effectiveness,” Hercule replied.

“Yes, but they fight scientifically—see?”

The globes attached to one of the airships suddenly flared from red to blue, and the entire ship ignited like a torch.

“Holy Mother of God,” Hercule grunted. “I hope they do not mistake us for the enemy. Can you tell who is winning?”

“A moment,” Adrienne replied, looking deeper into the aether.

Uriel was there, waiting, clearly agitated.

Strike now!
he said.
The Sun Boy is distracted. This is most unexpected. It is
your best chance.

What are they fighting
? Adrienne asked.

I’m not sure. Something strange. A man, yet not a man. A malakus, yet not a
malakus. Something dangerous to both.

Like the keres? Like my son?

Both. Neither. I don’t know. I am weary, weary of protecting us. Even with
the distraction, it takes everything I can manage to keep our enemies from
seeing us. Strike!

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What did you intend for me to do at this point?

We need your son. Or perhaps—
Again, hesitation.
Perhaps the other will do,
if he survives. You should try to reach him.

I want my son.

Good. Let us subdue him, then.

Can you tell which ship he is on?

Yes.

Then
bring the other ships down. All of them
.

Uriel paused for so long this time she thought he had either gone to obey her command or vanished so as to ignore it. But finally, his voice returned. She could see him now, as well, his many-winged form hovering between her and the battle.
No,
he said.
That would go too far. We would be discovered, and I
see now that you—we, rather—do not have the strength to reach him. Cross
the river, and we will add our
k
strength to their enemy.

What need to cross the river? We will help him from here. Bring down the
ships.

He doesn’t know us. He won’t understand we’re helping.

Bring down the ships, or I will order an attack anyway. I swear it to you.

You don’t know what you’re asking.

I don’t care what I’m asking.

Very well You will regret it.

And he flew toward the battle, drawing all of her legion of servants behind him.

“Hercule,” she said softly, her gaze fixed on the ships that held her son. “Order THE SHADOWS OF GOD

the advance.”

2

An Interesting Outcome

Don Pedro attacked first, bouncing in and darting his blade ferociously toward Sterne’s heart. For an instant, Franklin thought the duel was already over, but the sharp point came up an inch short. Sterne, completely unperturbed, snaked his own blade against the attacking one, bound it up, then exploded forward in a shallow lunge. Don Pedro leapt back and raised his blade back to guard.

“Shit!” Robert hissed. Franklin saw it too —a petal of red on Don Pedro’s sword arm, blooming quickly into a rose.

Sterne stepped back and lowered his guard. “First blood,” he said. “If your honor is satisfied now, I am willing.”

“A fair touch,” Don Pedro replied, “but a mosquito bite. Return to guard, sir.”