The Crystal Empire (14 page)

Ilse glanced at Helga, as if for support. The woman dozed now, her face still turned toward the window. When his mother turned back, there were terror and wonderment in her eyes.

“He’s dead, Sedrich, by your own hand. D’you not remember?”

“Yes. Now I do.”

Sedrich crossed the few paces between himself and his mother. He bent, kissing her upon her graying hair. He turned for the door, taking naught save the dagger he still carried, stopping to lift
Murderer
from its pegs. Who had returned it to its place, he wondered.

He tucked the small blade into his belt, slung the scabbard of the greatsword across his back, slanted for a left-hand draw. He didn’t know how he’d wield his father’s sword. It had been too much for him, in truth, even before he was a cripple.

Ilse rushed to wrap a bearskin robe about him. Her eyes held an a
p
peal she knew was useless and would not utter again.

Sedrich paused in the doorway. “Aught I wanted, Mother—aught Frae wished for—was to be left alone. Oln Woeck wouldn’t grant us e’en this. Nor will he in the future, do I know him.

“Revenge? Vengeance? I’ll give you a promise, Mother, strike a ba
r
gain. For in all the world, you’re aught I’ve left of what I love. Likewise I’m aught that remains of what you had. So certain am I that I know Oln Woeck, so sure am I that, even with all that’s come to pass he cannot rest till one of us is dead or has submitted, that, for the peace of your mind I’ll make you this pledge: I’ll not take Oln Woeck’s life till he comes to me, offering it.”

A long speech, it was, for the young son of the blacksmith Sedrich Owaldsohn, even longer for the man he’d been forced, overnight, to b
e
come.

No further word passed between them.

Wind had swept the front garden clean of snow, heaping it against the picketing which surrounded it. At the end of the stone-flagged path, where it joined the village road, old Klem caught up with Sedrich, whi
s
tling in fierce supplication, wagging his tail.

He’d not be left behind.

Why not, thought Sedrich, why not let the old dog spend his last days as he wishes? ’Tis more than was given Frae and me!

He rubbed the dog’s great head between the ears, thinking for the first time since regaining consciousness about the living Frae—not the pale mound of ashes, clay, and dust back there upon his mother’s blood-soaked table, but the living, breathing being whom he’d loved. Even through the furry pelt he wore, the wind was bitter cold—yet not enough to cool the roiling blackness deep inside him.

Frae would have agreed with his mother, he thought, begging him to set aside this dark lust for revenge, approving of the promise—of the ba
r
gain—he’d made.

Klem following, he left the pathway for the road, heading not south toward vengeance, but westward to oblivion.

**

“In the alternation of night and day, and what God has created in the heavens and the earth—surely there are signs...
”
—
The
Holy Koran,
Sura X,
Jonah

“And the king said, ‘I saw in a dream seven fat kine, and seven lean ones devouring them; likewise seven green ears of corn and seven withered. My counselors, pronounce to me upon my dream, if you are expounders of dreams.’

‘A hotchpotch of nightmares!’ they said. ‘We know nothing of the interpr
e
tation of nightmares.’

Then said the one who had been delivered, remembering after a time, ‘I will myself tell you its interpretation....’”—
The Koran
, Sura XII

As if its own teeth were not enough, a mountain wind whipped sand into her face.

When her eyes ceased watering, her first thought was for her wea
p
on
—
a re
f
lex born of bitter experience. It had been conceived for harsh treatment, but there were limits. Their Enemy
—
whose weapon it had been only a few days before
—
was not the most exacting of manufactu
r
ers. Perhaps this was why he had come to steal from her people.

At this moment, his objective was limited: to clear them from a str
a
tegic area. His ultimate goal, destruction of their homes, of the food they ate, the s
o
ciety they defended, could be accomplished piecemeal. He had discovered
—
as he shipped his dead home tho
u
sand by thousand
—
that he could not achieve it overnight.

Pulling a rag-wrapped finger from the trigger-guard, she flipped a catch, tipping out a long, curved magazine. She drew the operation ha
n
dle back until she could see a ca
r
tridge
—
one of fifteen she had left.

The bolt moved with a gritty sound.

Hers was an older weapon, of a decent caliber
—
not one of the little ones their En
e
my had brought in later. This made her happy, although ammunition was becoming harder to obtain. When her people had ca
p
tured enough new weapons, their Enemy would, in probability, begin importing a third, then a fourth.
Laa thaghthaam,
no matter. Weapons were easy enough to come by
—
take them from the dead Enemy.

In the beginning, they had rejoiced at the childish ease with which these last could be produced, not thinking of endless numbers of slave-soldiers brought each day into their country to replace them. Now it was becoming clear that their Enemy would bury them beneath a mountain of his own conscripted dead if that was what it took to gain an u
p
per hand. This sort of suicidal warfare was difficult for her people
—
slaves only to their God
—
to comprehend.

And counteract.

Today they would try again, her people. Information from the cap
i
tal
—
relayed to them from one the Enemy believed reliable
—
was that he would be pushing many trucks through these hills, laden with supplies for a forthcoming winter offensive. Winter was a good time for their E
n
emy. Her people, limited to foot-travel, were bogged down by weather so bad it was renowned the world over. He could fly high above it or burrow through upon cleated treads.

These trucks would be making for a supply depot, high in the mou
n
tains, well protected. They would travel behind a column of tanks, fo
l
lowed by a
r
mored troop carriers.

Overhead, mechanical birds of prey patrolled a barren sky.

They were not omnipotent birds, however. It was difficult for them to fly as high as the peaks to which her people climbed, from which they unleashed their own fury upon the vulnerable backs of the helicopters. Their Enemy knew that the machines which pr
o
tected his column needed protection themselves.

Thus, to these peaks he would send his best fighters
—
in flying m
a
chines straining at the limit of their capabilities
—
who would occupy advantageous positions until the supply column had passed, then jump to the next series of peaks, until the heavy-laden trucks had reached their destination.

This time, thanks to their man in the capital, her people would be u
p
on the peaks to meet them, while others of her kind, far below, filled the front of the column with stolen rockets, its rear with sliding rocks star
t
ed into motion by explosives already planted
—
and its middle with bla
z
ing death.

This winter, their Enemy would starve.

There was a shout. Someone heard a thud-thud-thud of an Enemy warship as it clawed itself peakward. She huddled between two rocks, waiting.

The noise grew louder.

Of a sudden, fluttering aircraft noise was replaced by an explosion as a helicopter fired rockets into their position, scattering flaming death. Had their man betrayed them, or was he himself betrayed? Screams, hurried footfalls, inevitable confusion. The Enemy was among them, wearing masks, spraying bullets. She turned, saw an old friend fall, a
n
other neighbor writhing upon the ground, his belly torn open. Not a whimper did he utter. He had been a weaver of carpets.

A bullet spanged off rock beside her.

Then she was up, returning shot for shot in measured cadence, using her remaining ammunition. An Enemy soldier, said to be of the best his country had to offer, fell, spil
l
ing his guts upon the same ground where partisan blood was running like a mountain freshet.

Another fell, and another.

Out of ammunition, she seized up one of the new weapons. With no place to hide, it was a matter of fight or die. Conscripts seemed to prefer the latter. Their mountaintop battlefield grew emptier while a handful of her neighbors still stood to hold it. The hel
i
copter, unable to hover long at this altitude, had departed, stranding its former passengers, senten
c
ing them to death.

It would be back. By then she, with her people, would be gone.

At last their final Enemy
—
at least in this place, at this time
—
was dead.

With others, she began gathering up weapons of the Enemy. These new ones were lighter. She could carry four where she had managed three before. Down she climbed with her remaining comrades, from flat-topped peaks into a steep, brush-choked ravine which spilled itself into a barren, boulder-tumbled valley where they would, for a time, be safe. Dried branches crackled, snatching at her head-scarf.

Safe.

Again a thud-thud-thud, this time overhead.

She screamed, threw up her arms in futile reflex as slow-rolling flying-machine wheels passed within touching distance. Tossing all but two ca
p
tured weapons aside, she held their triggers back until they emptied the
m
selves into its belly.

It did not notice.

She heard a plopping, hissing noise. A yellow fog, fanned by bac
k
wash of the depar
t
ing helicopter, spread among them. She tried to run but found that her full skirt had become entangled in a sharp-thorned shrub. Too late, she knew that village tales she had heard were true.

Deadly vapor reached her. She felt it burn her eyes, the insides of her mouth and nostrils. Blisters formed upon the backs of her hands. As blackness descended about her, she heard a comrade call to her, “Ay
e
sha! Ayesha!”

2

As usual, she woke up screaming in the palace of her father. “Ay
e
sha! Ayesha!” a voice from her dreams continued. “
Manlayagh,
all is well, my child, be hush!”

The voice was softer now, empty of the despairing panic which her dream had given it. It was still a voice of someone she loved well.

“David?”

Her own voice was very different, a little one, that of a ten-year-old child, small for her age.

“
Nanam,
Princess, it is I. Sit up a moment. See a firm familiar world about you. You have had another of your dreams.”

Strong, articulate hands lifted her, propped her up with plump, colo
r
ful silken pillows. These same hands rearranged her golden brocade coverlet across her, brushing away sheer lavender bedcurtains in which she had become entangled. Through the pointed arch of a nearby wi
n
dow she heard nightwatchmen calling.

Other hands turned a gilded valve inset beside a door, bringing ga
s
lights up until Ayesha could see a concerned look becloud dark eyes, behind thick lenses, in a thin, dark-bearded face she knew belonged to her favorite tutor, David Shulieman, rabbi, scholar, counselor to her f
a
ther. Behind him, framed in the doorway like a formal portrait-of-state, stood Marya, one her less favorite nurses.

Rabbi David should not have been here, in family quarters, at this hour. Such was unseemly. Some recent wives of her father were quite orthodox and old-fashioned, yearning for the ancient niceties of purdah. Either there had been some trouble—requiring his presence and a
d
vice—or there would be.