When news of the war finally came, it came from the rear. Texark cavalry had descended mysteriously out of nowhere to fall upon the Wilddog families in the west. They were dressed like motherless ones, and they made a great slaughter of the Weejus women and their breeding stock, the messenger said. At one family compound—that of Wetok Enar—there was a complete massacre, apparently to eliminate witnesses, but two daughters nevertheless survived, and one described a cavalry colonel with a wooden nose and long hair that covered his ears. The other, Potear Wetok, lived long enough to name her former husband, Colonel Esitt-of-Wetok Loyte, as the commander of the troop of Texark marauders. She had watched them shoot her whole family before he, full of hate, personally shot her in the lower spine so that her death was slow.
The Texarki seemed to know just which horses to kill among the breeding stock in order to ruin every Weejus as a breeder. Between murderous raids on family encampments the marauders were observed doing something to the Nomad cattle whenever they had made camp for the night.
When all this was reported to Brownpony, the Pope became sad but was not surprised. He looked at Hawken Irrikawa and said, “Your Majesty was right. They were Texarki you encountered in the north, although I’m surprised they made it that far west without encountering the Wilddog.”
He turned to Sharf Oxsho and said, “You’ll have to take care of it.” To Blacktooth, it sounded like neither a command nor a suggestion, but simply an observation about Oxsho’s fate, or perhaps his own.
Sharf Oxsho called together the Wilddog warriors who had not ridden on ahead with the skirmishers. “There is a difference between being a shepherd to the Lord’s sheep and a cowherd to Christ’s wild cattle,” Brownpony said mildly, as he watched a fourth of his army prepare to advance to the rear. He sent the Wilddog messenger on eastward to report the raids to the Lord Høngan Ösle.
Three days later Høngan returned to confer with the Pope and Wooshin. He brought no news from the east. No Texark patrols had been encountered, and even the motherless bandits were staying clear of the hordes as they advanced in battle array. The Grasshopper sharf had sent patrols toward Texark, but they had not yet returned when Høngin left the skirmish line to come here.
They took a census of the forces remaining to them after the homeward departure of Oxsho and his warriors. Their strength had diminished by a quarter. All leaders conferred, and were joined in conference by the spook commander from the secretive train to the south. There could be no change in the master plan. The strongest force would be directed southeast toward Hannegan City, as before, and only the force of the assault on the “protectors” of New Rome would be diminished.
But tonight the Pope determined that for a few hours, at least, there would be no more talk of war. Since leaving New Jerusalem, the same group of people always gathered around the Pope after supper on the trail. The summer nights were hot, and everyone sat well back from the fire, but close enough to hear and be heard. In the beginning the cardinals had wanted to say Compline at this time of evening, followed by religious silence. But the Pope objected to this as an imposition on non-Christian Nomad leaders who were part of his court, and he called this his “Curia Noctis,” and encouraged the telling of stories. Tonight, he had determined that the subject would be saints and holy men, although anything but talk of war might be permitted.
Because Holy Madness was still with him, he sent for Cardinal Blacktooth to join them at the fire. The monk was too weak to walk alone. Axe gave him a shoulder to lean on, but at last carried him on his back to the Pope’s vicinity.
“Where is your red hat?” Brownpony demanded.
“It was stolen by a holy man, Holy Father,” said Blacktooth.
“Really? Who’s the holy man, Your Eminence?”
“Your predecessor, Holy Father.”
“You have been visited by Amen Specklebird, Brother St. George?”
“He comes to see me every fourth day.”
“If so, he should have cured you. Tell him we need miracles to canonize.”
“I don’t think he wants to be made a saint.”
“Why, Blacktooth! Nobody makes a saint. He is already a saint, or he isn’t And that is up to us to decide.”
“Of course, Holy Father.”
“Well, make him give you your hat back. Don’t come back here without it.”
Blacktooth confided in Wooshin. “Tomorrow is my crazy day. I already feel queer. Don’t let me do anything disgraceful.”
Some of the cardinals seemed to be dozing. There was a long silence at first. The Pope looked at Wooshin. The Axe cleared his throat, then offered a few words to open the session. “I admire the saints. You may not think so, Lords and Eminent Fathers, because I myself am not religious, but my people do honor holy men, and one of them was called Butsa. When he had squeezed his way out from his mother’s gateway at birth, he stood erect. He pointed upward with one hand, down with the other, and said, ‘Sky above, ground below, and I alone am the honored guest.’”
Ombroz laughed. “Every squealing baby says that before I baptize it. That’s exactly what the kid’s howling about. He is all too much the honored guest.”
Sitting cross-legged, Axe smiled as if his point was made. He closed his eyes and became a sixteen-foot golden body, weighing seventeen tons. Then he vanished and became a blade of grass. Blacktooth noticed that Pope Amen I, having come earlier than expected, was standing in the fringes of the firelight. He had stopped there to piss. Having retucked his long black member into his robes, he slowly approached the fire—but he cautioned Nimmy by touching a finger to his quiet smile. It was plain that nobody else could see him. Blacktooth could even smell him, and he smelled like death.
Made nervous by the smiling Specklebird spirit, Blacktooth broke the silence.
“Saint Leibowitz spoke at birth too, you know,” said the monk. “He stuck his head out of the birth canal and asked the midwife, ‘Now what?’”
“The midwife answered, ‘For ninety-nine years, a great waste.’”
“Ag!” It was a low grunt from the Axe.
“Saint Isaac said, ‘Begone!’”
“She vanished. He lived ninety-nine years, you know.”
The Pope smiled wryly. “Saint Leibowitz had the Devil for a midwife, then? Does this story come from the basement of Leibowitz Abbey?”
“You can find strange legends down there, Holy Father,” Blacktooth admitted. “The earliest ‘Life of Saint Leibowitz’ was anonymous. A man could be hanged for writing a book. We have no bylines from those decades. But that’s not the only story that connects Leibowitz with the Devil.”
“Tell another,” said the Pope.
“I can’t, really. Did you ever hear of Faust, Holy Father?”
“I think not.”
“It’s about a pact with the Devil. We have only pieces of the story. I can’t tell you why the Venerable Boedullus thought Faust was Leibowitz.”
“Didn’t the simpletons think he made a pact with the Devil?”
“Yes, but the Venerable Boedullus was no simpleton.”
Amen II laughed. The word “simpleton” had come to be a polite form of address, and Nimmy had just asserted that Boedullus was no gentleman.
“I mean, he was not a Simplifier, who thought the Devil inspired all books except Scripture.”
“And the Venerable Boedullus didn’t think so?”
The questions were making Blacktooth dizzy. He watched Pope Amen II, who slowly and in a serpentine manner was becoming the sixteen-foot golden body of the idol Baal. Blacktooth after a moment of dizzy indecision lurched up to smash the Pope idol, until Wooshin objected. They took him to the hoodlum wagon bloody but unbowed, and they helped Bitten Dog tie him down. It was another day of the plague, and the war that disappeared only at the Curia Noctis.