Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (27 page)

The
Black Goat Man deployed his forces and turned like a thing preparing for birth.

* * * *

The Rider watched the horde of luminous marchers descending toward them.
He saw the ancient arms and the shine of Spanish helms among the vanguard, so
like Don Amadeo’s behind him.

He
heard the Spanish lord hiss, and glanced back from atop his fiery mount to see
a similar fire in the old man’s eyes.

“Traitors,”
he said, and several of his black manservants nodded and drew their sabers or
primed their ghostly muzzleloaders. “But who are these others?”

The
Rider saw hunched, naked forms among the mailed figures, and these were armed
with clubs and spears. He could only guess as to their identity, but they were
surely the spirits of men aboriginal to these lands.

The
Rider took out his pistol. He was uncertain as to what was about to happen.
While he had fought in the Yenne Velt before, he had never participated in a
full-scale battle between spirits. The Castilians marched in an orderly
fashion, as they must have been used to in life. The Indians at the back were
staggered in their advance and looked eager to break ranks.

The
Indians of their own host milled uncertainly at the rear. Most were unarmed.
They had not been warriors in life.

The
Rider spurred his horse to the rear and addressed these. He knew they
understood, for the curse of Babel did not apply on this plane.

“Fall
in behind Don Amadeo and his men. The enemy will come like an arrow with the
Spaniards as the point. Don Amadeo will be a shield to you. When they meet the
enemy, spread around them like the jaws of a bear and close around them. Do you
understand?”

The
Indians looked at each other and then slowly they began to nod and one called
out:

“We
hear you!”

“Don’t
be afraid!” he told them in parting, and galloped back to the fore.

He
had been in battles before, in New Mexico and for a long year in Missouri
during Price’s Raid. He knew that the advantage always went to the defenders.
But the phantom Castilians were tramping out to meet them, when they could have
remained behind the walls of Red House. It wasn’t the best strategy, although
they did have the high ground. The strength of numbers went to the army of Don
Amadeo, but only by a half dozen or so, and their Indians were not soldiers. If
they doubled their march, they might be able to clear the ridge and meet them
on even ground at least.

The
flaming mane of the spirit horsewhipped in an astral wind and the Rider let it
rear on its hind legs. It seemed to anticipate the battle. Though a construct,
it was not a dead thing, but the amalgam of the spirits of a courageous line of
war horses descended from the very first animals brought to this country by the
Spaniards of Amadeo’s day. This, Misquamacus had told him.

He
moved ahead of the army, and gradually eased the horse into a run, letting it
cut the distance between himself and the enemy in two, clattering easily up a
broken draw and bringing it to a stop about fifty feet from their advancing
line. He peered at the spirits of the caballeros, trying to gauge their power.

They
were not the strapping youths he had seen through the eyes of Amadeo. The
corrupting influence of whatever dark powers Mauricio and his extraterrestrial
mistress had employed to anchor them to this world was evident. They were
undying wraiths, pale and drawn figures in rusted cuirasses and moth eaten
pantaloons marching in rotten boots. They saw through eyeless hollows in their
weathered faces and gripped their swords in skeletal hands. But their frail
appearance didn’t fool him. He knew the physical signs of corruption did not
belie the power he could feel emanating from them like stove heat. They were
imbued with some mystical enhancement. They did not shamble, but walked briskly
in militaristic fashion.

The
corrupted Indians at their backs were dark and loping creatures, made ape-like
and barbaric by the strange forces to which they had surrendered. They dragged
their weapons behind them, clubs and axes.

As
the Castilians drew closer, several freed pistols from their faded sashes. The
marchers paused and rippled with unnatural fire and puffs of hellish red smoke.
The projectiles that zipped toward him glowed like blue coals and came with
uncanny accuracy from a distance they should not have been able to accomplish.
He ducked as one of the hissing balls nearly creased his skull. More gifts from
Mauricio.

He
urged the fire horse to unleash its supernatural speed and cut across the
ridgeline, trading fire with the marchers with his own mystic pistol to buy the
ghost army of Amadeo some time as they ascended the meager trail. Then with a
shock, one of the hell bullets pierced the neck of his fire stallion,
disrupting its cohesion. Without a cry, the mount disappeared, its aether
dispersed. The Rider found himself crashing to the ground.

It
was not painful of course, but jarring. He picked himself up and was nearly
struck by another bullet. He was not sure what the effect of these weapons
would be on him. His teachers had always warned him of the danger in sustaining
shock to the spirit form, as a corresponding trauma to the physical system was
not unheard of. His encounter in the Yenne Velt with Sheardown had born this
out.
As above, so below.
He hugged the ground between
the two advancing armies, and crawled toward the edge of the ridge where
Amadeo’s spirits ascended the slope.

Back
in the Rider’s protective circle in the real world, the white onager shook its
head, startled by the jolt its till-then still master had suddenly given, like
a sleeper nearly jerking awake.

Its
nostrils flared briefly to smell the blood that ran down the Rider’s arms from
fresh cuts in his elbows, such as one might sustain from a bad fall.

Then
its ears pricked up, attentive to the sound it had come to know coming from
somewhere out in the gathering dark.

The
warning rattle
and hiss of the creatures that had
found its master.

* * *
*

Piishi emerged from the trees and reached the top of the ridge, unaware
of the vast drama about to play out on the silent ground all around him. He
cradled his rifle and crept through the clearing toward the dark blocky shadows
of Red House, every sense wide open to the slightest rustle or scuttle. The
emerging stars cast a pale light on the rocky ground, and splashed the tops of
the trees with silver.

Far
beneath the foundation of Red House, something stirred at the light touch of
his foot on soil.

Piishi
felt the quick tremble in the earth beneath his feet and danced aside as the
earth burst open in great clots of dirt and stone and a stench like a corpse
pile blew out. Pale, tangled branches punched up out of the ground and splayed
outward. A forest of sickly, tuber like growths rapidly sprouted all around Red
House.

Then
the pale trees began to move.

They
bent double and whipped about as though in the midst of a storm, lashing
animatedly out at him with ropy tendrils that slashed at his skin and tore his
clothes. He dodged nimbly, avoiding the blindly snaking limbs as he backed
toward the lip of the ridge, levering bullets blindly. One of the thick limbs
swung across the ground and caught his ankles, flinging him off his feet and
sending his Winchester clattering off down the mountainside. He tumbled
backwards down the slope and slid for a few feet before he managed to turn and
catch a jutting stone with his hand. He looked up and saw the flailing tree
things whipping about medusa-like, groping for him like a nest of blind, baby
adders.

He
shuddered in terror at the shapes against the sky. He was struck by the surreal
vision of the far off stars overhead, and the notion filled him with dread that
the whisperings of the old men were true and this thing he now faced was no
demon of the earth but some monster that had swum to this world across the oily
waters of the night from some terrible island in the sky.

He
crouched in the hollow of the rock and felt for his bow, thanking Usen silently
that it had not broken. He unslung it and shoved one of the star arrows under
his arm, fumbling with his quartz stone and knife, as the tuber things swept
the ridge above him, showering him with dirt and loose stone.

* * *
*

In the Yenne Velt, the Rider rose up one knee and traded fire with the
Castilians. Despite the range and power of their muzzleloaders, it seemed they
were still bound by the limitations of their weapons’ rate of fire. He blasted
one of the Spaniards as he packed the barrel of his pistol and saw the ghostly
armored figure dissipate as his horse had. At least he knew the mystic
properties of his
Volcanic
pistol still affected these
wraiths.

The
first of Amadeo’s men, one of the Moorish swordsmen, gained the ridge and came
running. The Castilian shades turned their fire from the Rider to this
dauntless
soul,
and the others as they came behind
him. The first spirit was caught up in the withering blue fire and seemed to
disperse like a pile of windblown leaves without a scream.

They
had no time for a second volley as Amadeo’s army tore over the ridge and across
the clearing, discharging their own weapons as they ran (dropping a few of the
enemy Indians and one more Castillian).

The
Rider stood and ran with the onrushing wave of Papagos, hearing and feeling the
clash as Amadeo and his Moors met the armored nobles up ahead. Silver sabers
whistled and struck, rattling against ancient helm and cuirass and seeking
astral flesh.

The
Rider had never imagined such violence could be possible in this realm. Yet he
heard the screams of the ghosts as they fought and were wounded, and he saw the
wide-eyed fear in the men he ran with. This was unlike any battle he had been
in. There was no rush of blood through the limbs, no thudding in the chest. He
was beyond such sensations. He felt even more outside himself. It was unreal to
him. Yet it was real to the spirits around him. He knew he was seeing a
manifestation of the meeting of impossible celestial wills, but he had no time
to speculate as to how these poor ghosts, like Norse dead could wage war and
feel pain. In a minute he would be in the fight himself.

With
knife in one hand and pistol in the other, he raised his arms and yelled above
the din of the fight:

“Now!”

The
Papagos split right and left behind the fighting Moors and flowed around their
flanks, but were stymied by the enemy Indians who spread out to meet them, and
locked their advance with smashing blows and animal yells.

The
Rider gave pause. The Moors feinted and struck, but were steadily falling
before their armored opponents. He glimpsed the helm of Don Amadeo as one of
the Castilians bashed it off the silver, bloodied scalp of its owner with a
savage punch from the basket hilt of his sword. He aimed over the jostling
bodies and fired, taking the top of the wraith’s head off before it pierced the
staggered caballero.

The
right hand flank of Papagos was buckling before the wall of Indian battlers,
hooting ecstatic cries of bloodlust. The Rider rushed for the front,
shouldering through, hacking and jabbing out at the enemy with his anointed
cold iron Bowie. Wherever the swept point connected, there a phantom ceased to
be.

The
Rider’s efforts seemed to inspire the Papagos, and several wrestled the weapons
of their attackers away and turned them on the owners.

The
Rider allowed the Indians to pass him and turned to survey the rest of the
line. The left flank was holding and starting to drive the corrupted Indians
back, but the strong point of their host, Amadeo and his Moors, was dwindling.

As
he watched, the chief among the Moors, a broad shouldered man with a curved,
heavy edged sword no doubt forged in his homeland beat down one of the
Castilians and turned to parry the thin blade of another only to be stabbed in
the back as the first wraith
who
had fallen beneath
his powerful attacks sprung up again. The man’s spirit blazed brightly for a
moment and then went the way of the others, burning up into nothingness.

The
Rider saw three more of the damned Castilians had risen up despite their mortal
wounds and renewed their attacks. Only the two he destroyed with his pistol had
not returned to the fight. The Moors fought a hopeless skirmish.

He
started to work his way back to the roiling center.

* * *
*

The Cold One that sprung from the dark onto the onager’s thick neck
found itself flung heavily to the ground. Before it could register its surprise
the onager spun with surprising alacrity and kicked its brains from its head.

The
second had already slithered to strike the Rider’s still form, but the donkey’s
jaws clamped down hard on the back of its neck, popping vertebrae. The onager
gave a quick thrash of its great head and hurled the jerking creature back into
the dark where it twisted and clawed as it died.