There Will Be War Volume VIII, page 39
Ptosphes had given himself and the last of his men over to a quick death, destroying Tarr-Hostigos and more of his enemies than anyone would ever know.
Sirna wanted to weep, scream, pound her fists against something. For a moment she even wanted to die herself. There had to be something wrong with her, if she was still alive with so much death around her. The battle, the flight, her surgery at Menandra’s, Roxthar’s Investigation, and now the storming of Tarr-Hostigos—dead men (and women, and children) were everywhere.
Sirna didn’t die. She didn’t even have hysterics. Instead she gripped the porch railing until she knew she could stand without help. Around her Hostigos Town awoke from a stunned silence into a hideous din of bawled orders, howling dogs, shrieking women and children, horses neighing or galloping wildly about in panic, and an occasional pistol shot.
Menandra was standing in the doorway when Sirna turned. “Better come in quick, girl,” she said. “The soldiers who lost comrades up there—they’ll be wanting someone’s blood for it. Can’t keep it from being yours if you stand out there.”
Sirna followed the older woman inside. She wasn’t afraid of death itself. After today she never would be again. Ptosphes had shown her that death could sometimes be your best friend.
He’d also shown her that there were good and bad ways to die. No, not good and bad. That implied a simple moral distinction. If there was anything simple about death, Sirna hadn’t seen it.
Wise and foolish ways? Better, but still an oversimplification.
Useful and useless? Yes. That wasn’t a universally sound way of distinguishing kinds of death, but there probably wasn’t any such thing. It certainly made sense here.
Staying outside to be shot or raped by soldiers mad with rage or wine would be a useless death. She wouldn’t risk it. What she would do another time, she would decide when that time came.
A phrase from one of Scholar Danthor Dras’s seminar lectures came back to her:
The only universal rule of outtime work is that there are no universal rules.
II
Soton cursed the Hostigi and their stubbornness that was costing the Grand Host so many lives. Half the storming party was inside Tarr-Hostigos, swarming over it like bees. Both courtyards were littered with bodies, most of them Styphoni. Clouds of smoke wreathed the keep, but before they rose Soton had seen even from his distant post the savage struggle to enter it.
Why in the name of all the gods hadn’t Phidestros kept back, instead of closing the breach? Then there would have been someone to go down and put matters in order.
Instead Phidestros was wounded—badly, the tales ran. Small loss, with the last defenders of Hostigos dying even now and Kalvan fleeing toward the Trygath. If Phidestros was going to make a habit of such follies, perhaps it would be best if he stormed Hadron’s Caverns the next time. If he didn’t, Soton would make him wish he had!
The smoke around the keep eddied. Soton turned, to summon a messenger.
He never completed the turn. Instead something as invisible as the air but as hard as stone flung him to his knees. Thunder swelled until it seemed that someone was beating on his helmet with his own warhammer. Three Knights flew off the ledge, along with a shower of rocks. Soton knew he cried out at that sight, but couldn’t hear his own voice.
He lay, gripping the ground as closely as he ever gripped a woman, until it stopped shaking. Then he rose to his knees, and when they did not betray him, to his feet.
The air was filled with acrid smoke and fine ash. Looking toward
Tarr-Hostigos, he saw only a vast swirling cloud of smoke. Somewhere in that smoke was the entire storming party—one man in three of the Grand Host’s strength.
One of the Knights was shrieking. “It’s the Demon Kalvan! He’s come to save his people! Great Styphon, save us!”
Soton smashed his gauntleted fist into the Knight’s face. The man fell as if poleaxed. Soton didn’t know what he was really smiting, the Knight or his own fear.
Slowly the air around what had been Tarr-Hostigos cleared. The slopes around it were alive with men, thousands of them all streaming away from the castle. Soton let out a deep breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.
Another quarter-candle showed him what was left of Tarr-Hostigos. The keep was only a pile of smoking rubble, the towers had mostly lost their tops, and the walls looked to have been chewed by monsters. How many of the Grand Host lay there under the fallen stone or in fragments strewn across the hillside? The Grand Host would be far less grand by the time they were all counted, Soton was sure.
Yet—this should not have been a surprise. Desperate men will take desperate measures. Who had more experience fighting the desperate than Soton, Grand Master of the Zarthani Knights?
Soton smashed his fist against his armored thigh, insensible to the pain.
“Kalvan!” he shrieked. “Kalvan, you will pay for this! By Styphon’s Wheel, I swear it!”
III
Verkan Vall finished lighting his pipe with a Kalvan’s Time-Line silver and ivory inlaid tinderbox, then turned back to the data screen and its display of information on one Khalid ib’n Hussein. The second cousin of a minor Palestinian prince assassinated five years earlier—on his subsector branch—Khalid was putting together a Mideastern superstate that included just about every Moslem nation except Turkey and Libya.
As this new Islamic Caliphate emerged, on most of its time-lines its pro-Western leanings seemed to be toppling the balance between Communism, that strange atheistic religion, and the so-called Free World. Another case of the inherent instability of the entire Europe-American, Hispano-Columbian Subsector!
Verkan made a note to send out some investigator to see if the Mideast had acquired some transtemporal hitchhiker like his friend Kalvan. One of the problems with transtemporal history was that it was always easier to spot the important historical turning points after the damage was done! There was that Paracop chief two thousand years ago, who hadn’t paid any attention to an anonymous carpenter’s son until the religion his death launched was already shaking whole subsectors to the foundations—The red light on Verkan’s desk lit up, announcing an important visitor. Verkan looked up to see Kostran Garth enter. The man’s face was red from exertion, his breath came short as if he’d been running, and he was holding out a data-storage wafer in one hand.
“What is it?”
“This just arrived from the surveillance satellite on Kalvan’s time-line. I scanned it briefly—Dalla had it red-flagged—and I knew you’d want to see it right away.”
From the look on Kostran’s face, Verkan knew the wafer wasn’t good news; only bad news ever traveled that fast. Verkan slipped the wafer into his viewer and watched the screen light up.
The views began with a satellite’s-eye scan of Hostigos and the surrounding Princedoms, from an altitude that made them all look deceptively peaceful. The next shots were close-ups of Tarr-Hostigos. Verkan sighed with relief; at least he wasn’t going to see Kalvan and his remaining soldiers caught like fish in a net.
The camera panned in closer, suggesting manned control of the cameras (remember to commend Dalla for that precaution). A human wave was approaching the beleaguered castle; almost the whole Styphoni host seemed to be on the move. Closer still, and Verkan saw whole units going down under Hostigi shells and musketry.
Verkan sped up the fast-forward. Whatever was coming, he wanted to get it over with.
The attackers poured into the castle like ants over leftover dog food. Muzzle flashes showed that the keep still had some live defenders. Were Ptosphes and Harmakros among them—Ptosphes, who’d refused to leave his home, and Captain-General Harmakros, still worth any three men with two legs?
Suddenly everything vanished in a cloud of smoke. Verkan held his breath until the smoke began to clear. Slowly Tarr-Hostigos reappeared—or what had been Tarr-Hostigos.
Half the walls still stood, battered and leaning. Otherwise Ptosphes’s seat was a pile of smoking rubble. Verkan saw where one aircar-sized chunk of stone had crushed an entire company of Styphoni. The slopes around the castle were covered with more Styphoni—lying still, crawling, stumbling, a few lucky enough to be able to run.
Verkan’s fist slammed down on his desk. “By Dralm, Ptosphes did it!”
“What?”
“He did what even Kalvan couldn’t do. He stopped the Grand Host in its tracks! Look at that mess! The bastards must have taken five, ten thousand casualties. That, my friend, is no longer a Grand Host. It’s hardly even an army! By the time Soton and Phidestros sort things out, Kalvan will be safe in Greftscharr.”
Verkan rummaged a flask of Ermut’s Best and two cups out of a drawer. “A toast, Kostran. A toast to the memory of a valiant Prince and his last and greatest victory!”
Kostran gagged at the taste of the brandy, but he was smiling as he said, “To Prince Ptosphes!”
IV
Considering the Hostigi resistance, the two thousand casualties taken in entering Tarr-Hostigos surprised no one. From the stories brought in during the day with the wounded, Sirna concluded that another eight thousand at least must have been casualties of the great explosion. That made ten thousand casualties. Almost half were dead, and half the wounded wouldn’t fight again this year if at all. Sirna would have liked more accurate figures, but she was relieved to know that she could go on doing a University outtime observer’s work even in the middle of a battle.
It would be embarrassing if she ever returned home and had to confess that she hadn’t taken advantage of her “unique” opportunity to observe historically significant Fourth Level events. It would probably cost her that doctorate!
Sirna told herself this over and over again, to keep some grip on her sanity, as the wounded poured into the Gull’s Nest. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think of First Level since the day she woke up in Menandra’s back bedroom. Somewhat to her surprise it helped.
Having some extra hands helped even more. More of the lightly wounded men turned to changing bandages or helping comrades to the privies. Menandra rolled up her sleeves and went to work setting bones, a skill she’d acquired in her younger days from cleaning up after tavern brawls in Agrys City. She also turned out all of her girls who could be trusted to know a clean bandage from a dirty one, which was more than Sirna had expected.
Another of Scholar Dras’s bits of wisdom kept running through Sirna’s mind:
“The danger of paratemporal contamination doesn’t come from the stupidity of lower-level people. It comes from the fact that they’re inherently just about as smart as we are. Once they’ve been shown that something is possible, you would be surprised how fast they can pick it up and even start filling in gaps on their own.”
Sirna knew that would never surprise her again.
By the time the western sky turned an appropriately bloody color, the flow of fresh wounded had stopped. Sirna trudged through the house on feet that felt shod in lead boots, checking splints and dressings she hadn’t put on herself.
In the twilight outside she heard shouts and screams. Men, drunk or avenging dead comrades or simply celebrating being alive when they’d expected to be dead, were sacking Hostigos Town. The hard-eyed mercenary guards from the Iron Band kept the noise and the noisemakers safely outside.
At least she didn’t hear the sinister crackling of flames, as she had during Rylla’s campaign in Phaxos. The Styphoni weren’t going to burn the town as long as they needed its roofs over their heads.
Sirna felt like a deer who’d somehow managed to be adopted by a pack of wolves. The Captain-General’s men would protect her against all the other packs as long as she did what they expected. But that didn’t make her a wolf. Somehow it was no longer hard to take for granted a situation she would have found unbelievably degrading two years ago. Not hard at all, when she listened to the screams outside.
She was changing the bandages on the stump of a man’s arm when someone banged on the door to the street, loud enough to be heard over the din outside and the cries of the wounded inside. One of the house women looked through the peephole. Then she unbarred the door and jumped aside, with a look on her face that brought every fit man in the room to his feet.
Two of Styphon’s Guardsmen strode in, their red cloaks flapping dramatically. Two more followed their white-robed charge inside, then stood flanking the door. Sirna saw hostile glances flicking over the Red Hands’ clean clothing and silvered armor.
At least Holy Investigator Roxthar looked as if he’d worked today, and worked hard. His long hollow-cheeked face was coated with dust and soot and his robes were bloodstained and frayed. He reminded Sirna of a Fourth Level Judeo-Christian representation of the Devil.
For a moment she wondered if Kalvan was the only cross-time hitchhiker around. Then she remembered the file on the control time-line equivalents to the major Archpriests. On one other time-line Roxthar was purging Styphon’s House almost as spectacularly as he was here. On several others he’d died mysteriously, doubtless courtesy of one of Archpriest Anaxthenes’s handy little vials.
Phidestros struggled to a sitting position and raised a hand in greeting. “Welcome, Your Sanctity. Today Hadron’s Hall is filled to the bursting, but the first and vilest of the demons’ nests has at last been burned out.”
Roxthar nodded, as though acknowledging a remark about the weather, then looked around the room. His nostrils flared.
“So this den of flesh-selling has served as the Captain-General’s nest. I wondered why we had so often lacked your esteemed company at the Palace.”
From the Captain-General’s face, Sirna knew his patience was strained nearly to the breaking point.
“I must admit, Your Sanctity, that I much prefer the cries of honest passion in this house to the constant uproar at the Palace. No offense meant, of course. Let Styphon’s Will Be Done!”
Roxthar’s face paled. “Do not presume, Captain-General, or you may yet find yourself enjoying the hospitality of my Investigators.”
“They might find a soldier too much work, after so many women and children.”
Roxthar’s gray eyes turned into steel ball bearings. “Enough of this babble. We have the God of Gods to serve today. The Daemon Kalvan has fled, with the remnants of his host. The land he left behind is tainted with the evil he wrought, and the servants of his demons lurk everywhere. Let the Investigation of Styphon finish its work, then we can attend to lesser duties.”
It was just as well Roxthar didn’t smile. If he had, Sirna knew she would have laughed out loud, hoping to wake up on the other side of the abyss between her and the sane reality of Home Time-Line, where people didn’t blow up castles in wars over non-existent gods. Instead she bit her lip and unwound the last strip of bandage, then stood up to take the sterilized fresh dressing from the soldier holding the basin.
The movement drew Roxthar’s eyes. Sirna felt their hard, unclean gaze on her all the time she was binding on the dressing, emptying the water into the slop bucket, and putting the old bandages into the empty basin to be returned to the cauldrons boiling in the kitchen. She was proud that her hands didn’t tremble once.
At last there was nothing more to do except stand up and face the Investigator. He was now smiling, an expression to which his gaunt features hardly lent themselves. Sirna decided that she much preferred him expressionless.
“Those bandages have been boiled to drive out the fester-demons, have they not?”
“That is so, Your Sanctity.” Sirna was relieved that she’d kept all traces of a tremor out of her voice.
“That is knowledge given by the servant of demons, Kalvan, you know.”
You’re not afraid of death anymore, Sirna reminded herself. Besides, Roxthar won’t spare a heretic even if she goes down on the floor and kisses his feet. Do as you please and at least you can hope to go out with dignity, like Ptosphes.
“That is so, Your Sanctity. Yet the new compounding of fireseed was also brought by Kalvan. With the blessing of Styphon’s holy priests, the new fireseed has been used in the guns of Styphon’s Grand Host, to smite Styphon’s enemies. Is it not possible that the knowledge of smiting the fester-demons may also be used to aid Styphon’s cause?”
Roxthar’s vices did not include being at a loss for words. “This may be so. Yet I see no priests of Styphon’s House here, to bless your work so that it may drive out demons instead of letting them in. Also, it is too soon to tell what may come of this day’s work. Not all demons leap forth at the wave of their servants’ hands. Some bide their time.”
If it weren’t that her life was at stake, Sirna would have believed this conversation about demons and their servants totally absurd. “In your own words, Your Sanctity—that may be so. Yet I have been healing the men of the Iron Band since the siege began. In all of them, the wounds are cleaner than they would have been without my work. Ask the Captain-General or the men themselves!
“As for there being no priest here—today there were many wounded and few hands to heal them. Should I have let men who shed their blood for Styphon die, their wounds stinking and festering, because there is no priest to bless work that I know is wholesome and good? If I did that, then you would have good cause to bring me before the Investigation. I think what I have done is good service to the God of Gods, and I will pray for his blessing, and also for his mercy on you if you falsely accuse me.”
She knew that the last sentences must have been audible on the streets outside, from the way the door guards were looking behind them. Roxthar’s smile froze, then he shrugged.
“As Styphon wills it. I only know what I must do in his service, and also pray for his mercy if I misjudge what that is. You must come with us before the Investigation, and hope that witnesses may be found in your behalf.”
Sirna knew that her last moment was close at hand, and also that she was going to spend it as a woman of this time-line rather than as a scholar of First Level. Her right hand was at waist level, closing around the hilt of a non-existent dagger, and she’d shifted her footing to open the distance between her and Roxthar. One of the Red Hands stepped forward—
