Wielding a Red Sword (36 page)

He resumed the hauling, now being more careful where he set his feet. His breath was short as he labored, and he was sweating, but he made progress. Again he wondered idly about the physiological effects here in the spirit realm; had he not known where he was, he would have had no way to tell that he was not in the mortal realm. To a spirit, the spirit world seemed just as tangible as the physical world did to a mortal.

They came in above the fire-rapids, launched the canoe, and paddled on upstream. In due course they reached the fourth encampment and made the connection. Then all they had to do was proceed on back down the River of Fire.

Dusk was at hand as they reached the foul Acheron again; instead of entering it, they landed the canoe and made camp at the fringe of the fire zone. There was nothing to drink except some of the firewater, and nothing to eat except tubers they were able to scrounge from the scorched soil. But they stuck the tubers on the ends of long sticks and toasted them at the fire on the river; the tubers were edible if not enjoyable. The firewater did not properly slacken their thirst, but it soon caused them to cease to worry about the matter. They talked, laughed, rolled together, and decided it was time to get serious about sex … and discovered they could not. The firewater had not only inflamed their desire, it had made one or the other of them impotent. Ligeia found that hilarious, but Mym suspected that in the morning, when he was sober, he would not be laughing. Unrequited lust—trust Hell to be the place for that sort of experience!

Indeed, when the morning came, he was not laughing. His body ached from the exertions of the prior day, and his head felt as if he had soaked it overnight in the stench-water
of the Acheron. Ligeia seemed little better off; her beauty was now overlaid by grime and fatigue. “Oh, my clothing!” she fussed. “No one would take me for a princess now!”

“True,” Mym muttered. “They would take you for a woman.”

She glanced at him. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No. I never really cared for princesses, but I have known some fine women.” Actually that was a confusion, perhaps spawned by his hangover. He did care for princesses, and needed one to share his life. But at the moment he really craved a woman of the nature of Orb, who had brought him up when he had been low and loved him without questioning his nature. Ligeia was both princess and woman—but the woman aspect was becoming more important to him.

“Oh.” She considered for a moment. “But don’t you prefer pretty women?”

“Second only to caring ones.”

“You
are
making fun of me!”

“Come read my mind.” He took her hand and drew her in to him. She came, making only token resistance. He phased in to her—and discovered a kind of tinder that ignited explosively as it encountered the developing flame of his emotion. There was a dialogue, occurring in an instant; parsed into its components it might have been rendered like this:

“But I’m not ready to love!” she protested.

“You don’t need to,” he responded. “I’m on the rebound.”

“This sort of thing is supposed to take time!”

“We’ll give it time.”

“Too late! I’m already raging with desire!”

“That’s
my
desire!”

“Not any more!”

They disengaged and looked at each other. “I’m not sure we should have done that,” Mym said.

“I’m not sure we should be doing this,” she replied.

“Be doing what?”

“What we couldn’t do last night.” She began removing her clothing.

Mym realized that they had no secrets from each other. It did make sense to complete what they had started in their minds. On the prior night it would have been largely wasted in their besotted state, but now they could appreciate it to its full extent with their minds clear.

He removed his own clothing. “Afterwards, we can wash up in firewater,” he remarked.

That set her off again, laughing. Her whole body jiggled with her mirth.

There was a sound from the river. Mym looked up—and saw a great fiery shape emerging from the water. “What’s that?” he asked, alarmed.

Ligeia looked. “The Fireman!” she shrieked.

“The what?”

“The denizen of the River of Fire! I thought he was a myth! We must flee!”

“I’ll fight him!” Mym said, getting to his feet.

“You can’t!” she protested. “He burns everything!”

Mym faced the emerging monster and reached for the Red Sword. But of course the Sword was gone, along with the rest of his clothing. Gone? He had never brought it into Hell! He had no weapon.

The Fireman pointed at a small tree. A jet of flame came from his hand, and the tree burst into fire. The Fireman pointed at the river; the jet touched it, and the water boiled into a cloud of vapor. The Fireman pointed at Mym.

Mym snatched up his cloak and dodged to the side. The ground where he had been standing jumped as if struck by a bomb, and smoke roiled up.

“Flee!” Ligeia cried, terrified.

Mym concluded that this was good advice. He grabbed her hand and fled.

They ran to the shore of the Acheron, and the Fireman did not pursue them there. He hovered for a moment where they had camped, then marched back into the Phlegethon.

When they returned to their campsite, they found only slag and ashes. Their clothing and the canoe had been destroyed. The only other survivor was the snake.

They stood there. “Maybe we shouldn’t have,” Ligeia said.

“We
didn’t
.” Mym reminded her.

“Well, we were going to.”

But now the mood was gone. It would have to wait for another time.

They resumed their trip, walking carefully in their bare feet. Fortunately, Ligeia said, their next and final stop was not far ahead. They proceeded to the juncture of the rivers and walked along the bank of the Acheron; in an hour or so came to the merger with the greatest of all Hell’s rivers, the Styx. It was so vast as to seem like an ocean in itself, and its waters were inky black and seemed deep beyond imagination. Out across its somber surface, near the horizon, strange waves developed, as if some massive and sinister creature swam below. Mym would not have wanted to take a canoe out there!

In another hour they reached the encampment of the final group. There were women here—indeed, it seemed to be an Amazon community—and they looked at Mym appraisingly, as if judging whether his flesh would be better for soup or for pot roast. But Ligeia spoke up, telling them that Mym was Mars, the Incarnation of War, and needed to meet with their leader privately. They were impressed, for they were warlike women, and soon Mym was closeted with the head Amazon. He explained in a few words, then phased in with her.

“Lovely!” she exclaimed as they disengaged. “You may count on us.”

The Amazons provided them with clothing and a tent to stay in and fed them well. “We shall coordinate the signals,” their leader assured Mym. “Give us a day, while you rest.”

Then Mym and Ligeia retired to their tent, at last having the chance to do what they wished without intrusion—and found themselves both so tired that they simply flopped on the fragrant straw and slept.

 
16
 
REVOLT

In the morning things were ready. Mym and Ligeia and the snake emerged from the tent to find the Amazons in full combat dress. Each stood tall and proud with her bow and quiver of arrows, her left breast full and perfectly molded, her right breast absent. The right one was, of course, burned off in childhood, so that it never developed and thus could never interfere with the drawing of the bowstring. “But we have two problems,” Diana, the Amazon leader, said. “First, we lack efficient means of travel. Only the demons can use the front routes, and the back routes, as you know, are slow and treacherous. Since it is necessary for you to be at all the key sites—”

“What is the second problem?” Mym asked.

“There is a demon spy among us.”

“Don’t hurt the snake!” Ligeia exclaimed. “It has done us no harm!”

“Except to report of your whereabouts every night,” Diana said.

“We knew its mission,” Mym said. “We saw to it that it did not know our actual plan.”

“Still, now that plan must be revealed, and surprise is of the essence. That demon must be abolished.”

“It’s not a demon, it’s a snake,” Ligeia protested. “The soul of an animal.”

“How do you know?”

“It got cold. A demon would not have been affected.”

Mym glanced at the snake, startled. It was true; demons had no vulnerability to extremes of temperature, as they had to function in all the climes that made souls suffer. Yet, that being the case—

“It must still be a spy,” Diana said. “We must hack it to pieces, so that it can not report on our activity.”

“But you can’t kill a soul,” Mym said.

“But we can do the equivalent,” she said. “When we do to it what would be the killing of a mortal, it becomes nonfunctional for a day, just as the demons do. That is all the time we need.”

“But we can’t even be sure it
is
a spy,” Ligeia said. “It’s just a snake Satan used to gag me, and then it stayed with us. Maybe it had no choice.”

“I can settle this,” Mym said. “I will phase in to it.” He approached the snake and put his hand on its body. The snake did not try to avoid him.

In a moment he knew two things, and one of them astonished him. The snake was a spy for Satan—and the snake did not want to be. It had spied because it knew that Satan would have put it into perpetual torture if it did not cooperate. So it had reported each night to a demon who came to meet it. But it wished there were some other choice. When Ligeia had warmed it, it had been grateful to her, for no other creature had shown it such consideration during its life or its Afterlife. But it had had no way to escape its assignment.

But now you have a way,
Mym thought to it.
Join the revolt
.

The snake was amazed.
You would have me
?

The revolt is open to anyone or anything who shares its precepts
.

Then I join it
.

Will other animals join it
? Mym inquired.

If they knew they would be accepted and rewarded as the human souls are
.

Mym disengaged. “The snake will join us, if we will accept it. Other animals may do the same. Do you see what this means?”

“The animals—will join us?” Diana asked incredulously. “Even the hellhounds?”

“We can but inquire,” Mym said. “It is a risk of betrayal, but if successful—”

“You are the leader, Mars,” Diana said. “If you are ready to take that risk—”

“I believe I am. I believe the snake speaks for its kind and perhaps for others. If we offer them the same terms—”

Diana shrugged. “Then we shall not protest.”

Mym phased in to the snake again. He thought the terms to it.
Bring those animals who accept this here
, he concluded.

The snake slithered away. “Now we wait,” Mym said.

It was a painful process, waiting until the animals responded. But the benefit could be critical. Hours passed.

Then two hellhounds bounded toward the camp. The Amazons raised their bows, arrows nocked. Hellhounds were hard to put out of business, because they were so large and tough, but arrows through the eyes and paws could do it.