Golden Heart (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles) (10 page)

Chapter Ten

In which the first war for Cibola begins

Lazarus’s troubled dreams kept him asleep longer than his comrades. When he finally woke, he found Vasquez and Hok’ee shoveling down a breakfast of pine nuts and cold fish as if they were in a great hurry. Outside the window he could hear the Cibolans chattering and calling from one end of the village to the other.

“The clan is preparing for war,” Vasquez explained. “They say a great force has landed in the west not far from where we set down. I’m betting Reynolds has found the
Azrael
and knows we’re here.”

“Preparing for war?” Lazarus asked, astounded. “We must stop them! They’ll be obliterated!”

“Love to agree with you, but you heard them last night. They won’t accept anything less than an honorable death. We’re going to head out with the first scouting party and assess their advance. The forests will slow the Confeds down, especially if they’ve got mechanicals. Good thing I brought a telescope from the
Azrael
. It’ll come in handy and no doubt impress our friends.”

Lazarus crammed down some nuts and fish and washed it down with water from a clay jug. They emerged from the pueblo to see that a thick mist had cloaked the treetops below them like a carpet of cotton. Warriors were assembling in units to descend the cliff and into the mist. They carried clubs embedded with sharpened chunks of obsidian, and Lazarus realized that the Cibolans did not use iron or any other metal. They were so cut off from the rest of the American tribes that they still fashioned tools and weapons from stone.

The scouting party set out and descended the steep slope into the forest. They followed the feet of the red cliffs as they curved around to the south, towards the location where the
Azrael
had crashed. When they neared it their leader held up his hand for halt, and all crouched down with an efficiency that would have made Lazarus’s old drill instructor blush with pride.

Hands gripped weapons tightly as they crept forward. The pines grew thick on the slopes and screened them from view.

“That fella must have the eyes of a hawk to see anything,” said Vasquez. “Either that or he’s just fooling around. Let’s see what he thinks of my telescope.” The bandit shambled forward on his haunches to the leader’s side and snapped open his telescope. All eyes were upon him as he peered through this strange contraption. He passed it to the leader to have a look.

The effect was comical. The leader nearly toppled backwards at having the view suddenly explode in his eye, and he almost cast the thing away as an evil object. But the usefulness of such an item quickly became apparent to him and he held on to it, scrambling further up the slope to get a less obstructed view.

“I think you can say goodbye to your telescope,” said Lazarus, once Vasquez returned to his side.

“He can have it. These poor bastards are going to need every trick in the book if they are to stand a chance against what lies beyond those trees.”

“Oh?”

“Reynolds is there, alright. I didn’t see him but there’s enough of his war machinery down there. They’ve had to cut down plenty of trees to make space for it all. Three dirigibles, an army of Mecha-warriors, not to mention regular infantry all polishing their rifles. They’ve got digging machines, explosives, steam-powered tree harvesters; the works. They could level this valley with all that junk.”

Hok’ee grumbled something in Navajo, and Lazarus needed no translation. “Damn that sod,” he agreed.

Lazarus was pleased to find that not even the Cibolans were reckless enough to take on the invaders with just a scouting party, and soon they were heading back up the ridge towards the village. Their news was received in severe silence. Their world was under attack and something had to be done. The warriors started preparing en masse for battle.

“While the warriors head down into the valley to fight Reynolds,” Hok’ee explained, “Tohotavo and Kokoharu will escort the women, the children and the elderly to the northern city. I have spoken with him and we are to help them.”

Lazarus glanced over to where Kokoharu was helping another woman lift an elderly man onto a bearer of branches. “The going will be slow,” he said. “Must we descend into the forests?”

“No. The way lies along the mountain ridge. It will not take more than a day to reach the northern city. But the going will be single file in some parts.”

“How many of these cities are there, Hok’ee?”

“Four for each direction of the compass, and three down in the valley representing up, down and center. Seven in total. Seven cities for the seven directions in the spiritualism of the pueblo peoples.”

With the number seven ringing in his ears, Lazarus went to help Kokoharu in the preparation of more elderly and sick for the journey and together, through the use of sign language, they worked out a system for travelling. If they were to be going single file, he mimed to her, then they must be as efficient as possible and stay close together so nobody straggled. She agreed.

There came a great wailing from outside, and they went to the doorway to look. The warriors were setting out, accompanied by the cries and blessings of their women and children. The faces of the warriors had been rubbed with the ground paste from the flower the Spanish call ‘yerba del manso’ and designs in black iron and manganese ore covered their bodies, done by the hand of Tohotavo as a blessing and protection against harm. To Lazarus they already looked like ghosts as they marched off to their fate, and he had to turn away from the door and busy himself to avoid looking on their ashen faces.

Vasquez and Hok’ee were busy carrying food and supplies from the storage huts and preparing them for transport. The Cibolans possessed no mules or other pack animals, and so all supplies had to be carried by the strongest of the refugees. Lazarus went to find them to discuss who should carry the elderly and who the supplies. He found Vasquez at the foot of a ladder, conversing with a Cibolan in a similar system of gesturing and pointing.

“Where’s Hok’ee?” he asked Vasquez.

“Isn’t he with you?”

“No, I thought he was helping you with the supplies.”

“Haven’t seen him in a while.”

Lazarus was aware of Kokoharu standing behind him. He turned and saw her face beset with worry. She had evidently understood their concern. “Do you know where he has gone, Kokoharu?” he asked her.

She turned and took off at a run, making for one end of the village. Lazarus ran after her and heard her asking questions of many women. Some shrugged, some shook their heads, while others nodded and pointed at the trail of dust left by the tramping feet of the recently departed warriors. Lazarus did not require Kokoharu’s dismayed words and gestures to understand what had happened.

“He did what?” exclaimed Vasquez when Lazarus informed him.

“I can’t understand it either,” said Lazarus. “Hok’ee always seemed to me to be the most logical and brutally realistic of men. Why he felt the need to join these people on their suicide mission is beyond me.”

“You don’t know him like I do. Everything he does he does out of passion. Passion rules his life and logic occasionally goes down the can. He feels a kinship with these people—stronger than I can explain to you. It’s so strong he’s decided to die with them.”

“Are we too late to catch up with him and change his mind?”

“We might catch up with him, but it’s the changing of his mind that’s likely to present a problem.”

They went to Tohotavo. They let Kokoharu explain the situation and then Lazarus, in a series of mimes and hand gestures, explained their plan. The old priest seemed reluctant. He spoke in a slow voice, and Lazarus imagined that he was voicing concerns that should the two of them go tearing after their friend they would be leaving two less people to carry supplies and wounded to the northern city.

But it was Kokoharu who convinced him. She was so upset at Hok’ee’s actions that tears threatened to run down her cheeks. But she held them in check, speaking respectfully to her mentor, eventually winning him around. Lazarus had no idea what she said, but it must have been something powerful. Tohotavo nodded sagely and made some hand motions to bless all three of them. Kokoharu, it seemed, was to be their guide in catching up with the warriors.

They struggled to keep up with her lithe form as it leaped through the forests, ducking branches and hopping over fallen trunks. The carpet of pine needles dampened the sound of their running. Lazarus thought then that it would be easy for the two armies to stumble over one another and hoped that the Cibolans were also aware of this possibility.

There came the sound of gunfire up ahead, and he recognized the booming of Golgotha rifles and the
pump-pump-pump
of Jerichos. They were near the river that fell into the rock pool where the hunting party had found them the day previously.

“For God’s sake, slow down!” he cried out, knowing that it was futile. Not only did Kokoharu not understand English, but she was possessed by a demon as she led them closer and closer to the battle.

“We’re going to run right out into the crossfire if we’re not careful!” warned Vasquez.

But their lack of faith in their guide was unwarranted, as Kokoharu slid to a sudden halt at an outcropping of pines that hung above the rushing river. Here, screened by the trees, they could see the battle without being seen themselves.

The river was the border between two sides. On their side the Cibolans were massed, hooting war-cries and occasionally darting into the waters to fire a volley of arrows at the enemy. These missiles either fell short or bounced harmlessly off the iron armor of the mechanicals that stomped about on the other side, ripping the air with bursts of Jericho fire.

Lazarus could see Eototu, his most prized warriors clustered around him, preparing to make a charge across the river. Hok’ee wasn’t with them.

“They’re fools to try it!” he said.

“Rage makes men foolish,” said Vasquez. “And Hok’ee has more than his share of rage. I wouldn’t doubt that in his mind his hatred of Reynolds and the C.S.A. trumps all the rest of it.”

“All the rest of what?”

“Never mind. I’m mighty glad this little wildcat here was prepared to take us to him. I just can’t let him throw his life away like this.”

“Yes, I think she has taken quite a liking to our friend.”

They watched with sickened hearts as Eototu led the charge into the river. The water slowed them down, and gunfire from the opposite bank tore into their ranks. Soon the river ran red and only half of the warriors emerged on the other side, scrambling up the bank and continuing towards the enemy.

Eototu, for the moment, remained alive, and Lazarus saw the look in his daughter’s eyes. She mourned for him as the Cibolans vanished into the trees to engage the enemy. She brushed a single tear away from her eye, as if accepting that this was the fate that was written for her father.

They climbed down to the riverbank and followed it along, as more and more warriors splashed across, inspired by their chief’s courageous lead. Further downstream they found another battle had already taken place, which must have preceded Eototu’s wild charge. Between ten and fifteen Cibolan warriors had attacked a squad of infantry that had attempted to cross the river in the wake of one of their mechanicals. The great iron warrior was face down in the river with a war club embedded in its spinal column, the blood of its organic pilot flowing away in pink tendrils, steam billowing up from its dampened furnace. Standing over it, wrestling the Jericho gun from its arm, was Hok’ee.

His comrades were whooping and yelling in the ecstasy of slaughter as they tore apart the Confederate troops who, now without their mechanical companion, were all but naked in the face of the ferocious warriors. Their Enfield rifles were useless at such close range and, although some were able to get a few shots off with their revolvers, they fell beneath the pounding of the reddened war clubs.

Hok’ee had succeeded in detaching the Jericho gun from the fallen mechanical and had fitted it to his own arm. The Cibolans went wild as he let off an experimental burst and cheered uproariously.

As they waded through the river towards him, Kokoharu let forth a blistering volley of words in her language which momentarily stunned the folk-hero in the making. Vasquez threw a wink at Lazarus. “I think Hok’ee just got read the riot act by a woman! Hey, Hok’ee! You gonna take on Reynold’s whole army with that thing?”

Hok’ee glared at his friend and shouted something in Navajo. He would stoop to no white man’s tongue now that vengeance was within his reach.

“We ain’t going back without you, pal,” Vasquez responded. “It’s death for all of us here or life for all of us back there. You decide.”

Something else decided for all of them as a round from an Enfield tore through the breast of one of the warriors standing near Hok’ee. The shot had been meant for him and he whirled, decimating a thicket on the far bank with three short bursts from his Jericho. A Confederate slumped out of the thicket, his face and body a ruin of bloody holes and torn flesh. More rifle shots cracked out. Lazarus drew his Starblazer and searched for cover as Hok’ee and his warriors stormed the bank.

Up to their chests in the cold mountain river and with their backs to a boulder around which the water flowed, Lazarus, Vasquez and Kokoharu peeped out to see the Cibolans entering the trees, and heard the burst of Hok’ee’s gun and several Confederate rifles.