Wielding a Red Sword (23 page)

Rapture, having made a genuine effort to find a place for herself in the mortal world, had found one. She was to be a part-time consultant on Indian Culture for the University of Kilvarough. Luna, when asked, had been of considerable help, and Rapture was pleased. She was well qualified for this position, as she spoke both English and the languages of several Indian Kingdoms and was excellently versed in the conventions and artifacts of them. The money she would earn would enable her to pay a nominal rental for her stay at Luna’s house, which gave her a sense of independence that she had never enjoyed before.

Thanatos, true to his word, brought her to and from the Castle of War each day. At first she had been leery of the skeletal figure, but acquaintance with Luna had reassured her. “Zane,” Luna had told her—that was the name she called Thanatos—“is not really the Grim Reaper. He is an ordinary man with a difficult job and a great deal of compassion.”

Compassion. It was, in its way, a magic word. A dependent person valued that quality in others. So she came
to respect Thanatos, without being any more thrilled by the nature of his employment than she was with Mym’s.

And that employment was a continuing wedge between them. Rapture did not argue the case or make demands on him, but he could feel the tension in her whenever the subject of his work came up. He learned not to tell her of the details of his day’s work, because that made her uncomfortable, and she grew cold without being conscious of it. Their lovemaking became awkward. Yet what could he do? He had reservations of his own about his office, but had thrashed it out with himself and concluded that his best course was to stick with it. It was ironic that the same office that had enabled him to rescue himself and Rapture from the heartbreak that had awaited them in the mortal realm was now inexorably separating them.

There came a night when Rapture did not appear. It seemed that there was a special late seminar at the University that required her presence, so it was easier to stay over at Luna’s so that she would not be late the following morning. She would see him the next evening.

This was all clear and sensible—but Mym did not like being alone at night. Out of sorts, he walked again in the garden.

There was Lila, of course. “I think you are ready for a concubine,” she said. “Give me leave to enter your premises, and I will serve in any manner you desire.”

Mym looked at her. She was garbed in a slightly iridescent, slightly luminescent, slightly translucent robe that enhanced a figure he knew was crafted in Hell. Her face was classic in its perfection, and her lustrous hair flowed down across her shoulders like a midnight river of silk.

But he had seen—and possessed—beautiful women before and he still distrusted the motives of the creatures of Satan. He did not want any of them having access to his Incarnation premises. “You,” he said shortly, again able to speak without stuttering in this region. “You were the one who gave Rapture notions of independence!”

Lila’s eyes widened innocently. “Why, we talked, and she inquired about the ways of western women,” she protested. “I told her nothing that was not true.”

“Such as the relationship between Luna and Orb?”

“They are both good women.”

“And you are not.”

“And I am not,” she agreed.

“You told Rapture that you were in Hell on a ‘bum rap.’ I am sure that’s not true.”

“She misunderstood. I was speaking of another. I am a demoness. I never had a mortal existence. But for that reason, I lack the modesty of true spirits. I can provide you with the kinkiest types of passion that a decent woman would never—”

Angry, he caught her by the arm, not certain what to do with her. She came readily in close, the musky perfume of her body manifesting. “You may hit me if you wish,” she murmured. “Or whatever else may please you. Anything at all …”

He cast her loose. “Nothing about you pleases me!” he snapped, turned about, and stomped back toward the Castle.

“Each lie you tell,” she called dulcetly after him, “brings you closer to Satan, the Father of Lies.”

He ignored that gibe. But as he returned to his solitary room and tried to settle down for sleep, the barb returned to haunt him.
Five Rings
had advised him not to think dishonestly, but he
had
lied, for Lila’s body, if not her nature, pleased him quite well. And actually her nature, her willingness to be with him and to serve his needs, was also quite tempting. He was not looking for a wife, just a concubine; why hadn’t he taken her?

Because of what Lachesis had said about Satan. If Satan had really conspired to deprive Mym first of Orb, and then of Rapture—the second plot foiled only by Mym’s accession as Mars—then Mym wanted no further association with the Incarnation of Evil. Indeed, Satan had been using his agent Lila to subvert Rapture’s mind, putting female-suffrage notions in her head; he was glad he had gotten her away from Lila. Was he now to be with Lila himself? Obviously not.

Finally he slept—and dreamed that Lila had come to his bed, her flesh quivering lusciously. He woke, angry, and found himself alone. And could not get to sleep again.

* * *

The next action requiring his attention was in Cush, a kingdom in Africa. It seemed that a tribe of Nubians in its northern section were rebelling and that the government was using its troops to combat this uprising.

Of course it was more complicated than that, because Mars did not need to supervise every battle personally, any more than Thanatos needed to supervise every death personally. It was only when something special was happening that he had to attend. Wars and battles were going on continually in scattered regions of the world; if they ever all stopped at one time, Mym would be retired.

“So what’s the situation, this time?” he asked Conquest as they rode to the site.

“Interesting that you should say ‘this time,’ ” the white-cloaked Incarnation replied. “It does seem to involve time, though we aren’t sure how.”

The subsidiary Incarnations never seemed to have full information; Mym realized that that was probably one reason they
were
subsidiary. It would be up to him, again, to ascertain the precise situation and decide what action should be taken. If it really involved time, he would have to consult with Chronos.

They came down to Earth and galloped across the hot terrain. The earth was sere and barren; there had been a bad drought, destroying the crops. What a time to fight a war!

They arrived at the site. The battle was about to begin; the government troops were converging on a rebel site. There were mounds and trenches around the village, so it was evidently defended. But there was no sign of anything unusual.

“I will investigate,” Mym said. He dismounted and strode across to the village perimeter.

He stepped down into the first defensive emplacement he saw and phased in to the man there. The initial confusion was milder and shorter than before; he was learning how to minimize this, as he gained experience. In just a few minutes he identified reasonably well with the man and could understand what the man heard in his own language, though it was foreign to Mym himself.

This man had been a small farmer, doing not well but
adequately, back in the years when the weather was better and the crops grew satisfactorily. Then the government had been taken over by the Communists and American aid had stopped and the drought had come, making it impossible to farm effectively. This man’s farm had not made its quotas and had been expropriated; rather than serve as a laborer on what he had once owned, he had joined the opposition. Many others had done the same. But the same government that said it lacked the resources to hire magic for rainmaking to save the crops seemed to have plenty of resources to send troops to harass the common folk who tried to stand up for their rights.

The only weapon this man had was a spear, while the soldiers had rifles. He was hungry, while they were well fed. But he knew he was right, while they were wrong, and he had nothing left to lose. His children had starved to death, and his wife had died of dysentery. He had survived only because, as part of the rebellion, he had been in a position to capture and pillage a government outpost. He had carried two pounds of grain back to his wife, only to discover that the weeks he had been in the field had been too long, and she was dead. Friends had taken care of the disposition of the body, and for that much he was grateful. He had seen what dysentery did to others—the pain, the vomiting, the blood-suffused diarrhea. The thought of seeing his wife like that, and of being unable to help her—no, it was better that he had been spared that.

But the troops that were to come at him! He would glory in
their
blood! He hoped to take several with him before he died. He knew that their bullets would make holes in his body, but he also knew that the first shot was seldom immediately fatal. He steeled himself to keep going, no matter what the pain, until he could ram his spearpoint into the eye of the enemy, and into the eye of a second if he could, and a third. Whatever he could manage before he dropped, that would be good enough. He knew that on either side of him his companions in the defense of their common soil were similarly determined. Their last supplies of food had been exhausted the day before, despite fractional rations; honorable death was all that remained.

Now the first soldier appeared, a head bobbing near the ground, coming toward him. If only he had a gun, he could put a bullet through it now, if he had a bullet. If he knew how to work a gun.

The bobbing head was joined by another and a third. They were coming rapidly; now they were almost upon the trench. The man braced himself for his final effort, offering up a prayer for the souls of his dead wife and children and for his own.

A stone flew from the right, striking the lead soldier on the shoulder. The hit was a nuisance, no more, but the soldier turned to fire at the source—and didn’t watch where his feet were going. As a result, he stumbled right into the trench, issuing a cry of dismay as he fell.

This was so unexpected that the defender did not know what to do. He squatted there, staring at the soldier. The soldier, disheveled but not hurt, hauled his face out of the dirt and brought his rifle around.

Mym acted. He lifted the spear and jammed it in the soldier’s exposed ear, hard. The point broke off, for it was a flimsy, homemade weapon, but the effort sufficed; the soldier gave one hoarse scream and collapsed, blood welling out around the wound.

Mym stepped forward and caught the rifle. His experienced eye identified it as of obsolescent design, of such ancient vintage as to suggest the Czarist Empire, but serviceable nonetheless. He whipped it about and fired it at the next soldier coming at the trench, holing his heart. The soldier plunged, dead, into the trench. A third one appeared, and Mym put a bullet up his nose.

Then he stood and peered out across the field. More soldiers were coming, but the defensive farmers were giving a decent account of themselves and causing the soldiers to move with greater caution. “Take their rifles!” Mym called to the trenches to either side of him, forcing his thought through the brain and mouth of his host. “Get the ammunition from the bodies! Quickly! We can hold them off!” And he shot another soldier, by way of example.

“But we don’t know how to use them!” one farmer protested.

“I have figured it out!” Mym responded. “Come singly to my trench, and I will show you. It’s not hard and it’s better than dying! There may be food—rations—on some of those bodies!”

Food! That thought cut through to the deepest need of the hungry farmers. One scrambled to join Mym, who got out new ammunition, set up his rifle, showed the man the trigger, and gave it to him. “Bring it back here when it’s empty,” he said; it was too complicated to explain the loading mechanism.

In this manner they soon formed a formidable cell of resistance that expanded as more rifles came on-line. The farmers were terrible shots, but the fact that there was return fire caused the soldiers to lose courage, and they began a disorderly retreat. The farmers were winning the day!

Then, abruptly, it happened. The battlefield froze. No one moved. Even the bullets became anchored in air.

Mym looked about with confusion. He had not stilled the battle! How had this come about?

Obviously this was the reason he had been brought here—someone else was using a supernatural method to stop the battle. And that party was the enemy, for now he saw a helicopter flying away. It was above the battlefield, evidently too high to be affected by the stasis. Perhaps it had dropped a time bomb, freezing time.

Mym phased out of his host, for he had to be able to move. He was not affected by the stasis, because he was an Incarnation, but his host was. He touched the Sword. “Chr-Chronos,” he said, his stutter back now that he was using his own vocal equipment.

Chronos appeared, sailing down from the sky, holding his glowing Hourglass aloft. He landed beside Mym. “You have a problem, Mars?”

“When an aspect of death was used without Thanatos’ approval, he objected,” Mym sang. “Now an aspect of time is being used without my approval; is it with yours? If so, I must inquire why you choose to interfere in my business.”

“I would not interfere,” Chronos said somewhat stiffly. “I assumed it was your stasis. I have no memory of such violation.”

“This is the first time it has happened,” Mym sang.

“My memory is of your future,” Chronos reminded him.

Oh. “And this has not happened henceforth? It must be a fluke.”

“Hardly. The supernatural is not incurred as a fluke. Some mortal has discovered how to interfere with time.” And, indeed, Chronos was angry, now.

“Can you discover who has done this and eliminate it?” Mym asked. “That way, you will have no memory of it because it never happens again.”

“That will be an awful chore,” Chronos grumbled. “I can deal with the discoverer of the stasis effect when I identify him, but that’s a needle in a haystack.”

“You can’t just trace the time bomb itself back to its origin?”