Then the Cutters were stopping, pulling their horses up so sharply that some of them reared or crashed in a neighing tangle into their neighbors. Bows dropped from nerveless hands. One stood and fired into the air, but a shaft streaked down from behind Rudi's head and went crack into his armor, the gray fletching of the Mackenzie clothyard shaft blossoming against the red-brown leather. As he slid from the saddle his mates wheeled and fled, only the cursing of an officer trying in vain to rally them.
Silence filled the air, along with a vast creaking. Slowly, slowly Rudi turned his head to see the Curtis LeMay ris ing further from behind the ridge, a hundred yards in the sky. That was close enough to see the faces-Edain, his half sisters, Frederick Thurston, Father Ignatius.
"Where-" he began.
Two of the crew slid down from the fore and aft of the gondola, planted anchors against solid rock, and winches squealed. Soon his friends and kinfolk were around him.
"What took you so long?" Rudi mock-scolded. Then his face grew serious. "The others?"
"No sign," Ritva said, and her sister nodded somberly. "There were enemy approaching the rendezvous."
Which means someone was captured, and talked, Rudi thought grimly.
He turned to Ignatius. "It's a luck bearer you've been for me, my friend," he said formally, bowing his head a little.
"God's will," the other man said.
"And Hers," Rudi added with a grin. That died as he looked at the others.
"It's a good deal of work we have to do," he said.
"I have to let everyone know how my father died," Frederick Thurston said; his young face looked somber, and more like his father's.
"And we have the others to find," Edain added; Garbh pressed her flank against him and whined, looking up at his head.
Rudi's eyes turned eastward. "And all that's part of something larger," he said softly. "The quest we started on, and that cannot stop either. Because-"
Then he staggered, pressing his hands to his head. Cold! So cold!
"Like fire," he muttered aloud, and then: "Lord and Lady!"
It was a matter of minutes before he was aware of hands guiding him to the ground and leaning him back against a boulder; a sharp scent of sagebrush rose as his brigandine crushed the herb against a rock. The mouth of a canteen touched his lips, and he drank eagerly, choked a little, swallowed more. The hard metallic taste of the lukewarm water was delightful as no mountain stream had ever been.
"What is it?" Ritva said sharply, going down on one knee. Blue eyes met gray green.
She suspects something, he thought. I wish I could make it clear to her, that I do.
"What's happened?" her sister repeated.
"I don't know," Rudi said softly. "But it's something terrible."
Epilogue
Siege Lines,
Sword Of The Prophet Twin Falls,
Idaho/New Deseret
July 22, CY23/2021 A.D.
Sethaz screamed and fell to his knees, hammering his fists on the sides of his head. The generals of the Sword of the Prophet stumbled back in horror as the endless wailing shriek grated at their ears; even the unmoving sentries facing outward around the open leaves of the command tent stirred, until an underofficer's bark brought them back to statue-stillness.
Veins stood out in the face of the Prophet's chosen son, and after a moment twin trickles of blood ran down his face from the corners of his eyes. He screamed again, and this time it turned into a howl like a hunting wolf, ending in a squeal and a long panting.
"Water," he croaked at last. "Water."
General Walker sprang forward to offer it, and Sethaz grabbed eagerly, then forced himself to drink more slowly.
"Brandy," he said in a voice like rust flaking off old iron.
The generals looked at one another, and then one pro duced a silver flask. Sethaz took two swallows, coughed, stood, handed it back, and looked around the circle of hard scarred faces.
"All is well, Light bearers," he said, and smiled.
A few of them blinked, though none showed obvious fear. Cowards didn't achieve high rank in Corwin's armies.
Sethaz's voice grew stronger, though it might never fully recover from that scream. He could feel the strength in it now, and he marveled as the dark wave of it flowed out through the lifestreams about it.
"Are you all right, my lord?" Walker asked cautiously; thoughts were moving behind his eyes, weighing and considering.
"I am gifted with many bright and fair lifestreams," Sethaz said. "The Prophet has left his mortal shell and Ascended to join the Masters."
This time there were bitten off exclamations. The news had been expected, but not this way. Now several did show fear. Sethaz's lips showed his teeth, and more of them looked afraid.
"I am the Prophet now."
"Ah… the enshrining…"
His hand moved in a gesture. "The Ascended Ones have made me Prophet; what do I need of men's ceremonies?"
His voice rang in the warm air, cutting through the brabble of camp and siege. Not far away a trebuchet cut loose, the great cage of rocks at the short end of the lever falling, slowly at first, then with gathering speed. The long arm whipped up into the sky; the quarter ton stone in the sling at its end broke free at the top of the arch, tumbling towards the breach in the walls of Twin Falls.
"But They require action of us."
He drew his shete and pointed it, slicing through their objections: "Cut! Cut!"
They looked at one another one more time. Walker drew his weapon as well.
"Cut!" he called, then screamed orders.
Trumpets and drums bellowed, and men scrambled to mass for the assault. Sethaz's banner went forward with them.
"Cut! Cut! CUT! "
The new Prophet climbed slowly to the dais at the front of the Mormon church-they called it a Stake Center. Bright arterial blood spattered the russet plates and scutes of his armor, and his face. It clotted thickly along his right arm, and on the blade of his shete, dropping on the dark polished wood and making the soles of his boots slightly tacky, an iron scent under the growing waft of smoke from the fires outside, and the fear sweat within. When he rested his elbows on the lectern, more ruby drops fell from the broad curved blade.
The great room was crowded: the Cutters of his per sonal guard facing in, and a mob of the inhabitants-the more important of them, or the more important ones that were still alive. Some of them were barely so, held up by their families and seeping yet more blood through rough bandages. A few children cried, but mostly the interior of the temple was a gloom through which went silence and rustlings. Firelight flickered through the colored glass of the windows where pioneers dug and angels sang.
A chorus of screams from outside went on and on, like one great shout of terror and agony mixed with bestial triumph; and that was song enough for him.
Sethaz smiled. A woman in the first row screamed at the sight, and the expression grew until teeth showed. When he spoke, his voice echoed clearly to the limits of the crowd.
" I am the Scourge of God. If you had not sinned greatly, He would not have delivered you into my hands."
A moan went through them. He pointed with the sword to the woman who'd screamed, and spoke to the guard commander at the foot of the stairs.
"Set that one aside for me, Captain. And ten men at random to spread the word; let them see the others die, and then take their eyes. Kill the rest."
The blades of the guard troopers rose as one, and fire light broke ruddy off the edged metal. A huge guttural shout of: "Cut! Cut! Cut!" almost overrode the screams.
Almost, but not quite.