The Shadows of God (7 page)

“James is your rightful king,” he said weakly.

“I once would have agreed with you,” Oglethorpe said mildly, “as well you know. But that was before he forsook God and took Lucifer and the damned Russians as his bosom companions. Now only two sorts of men serve him —the evil and the foolish. Which are you, Mar? Evil I will not tolerate. I have the head of your pet witch in a bag. My Indian friends wish to burn the evil from you, slowly, with all the craft of their kind. But if you are merely foolish, you can make amends. You can set things right.”

“May I have some brandy?”

Oglethorpe laughed. “Yes, and you may have some brandy.”

“No — I meant—now, I meant…”

“I know you did. You may have it. Will it be one cordial of many to come or your last drink before dying?”

“You are no gentleman, sir, and your father would be ashamed.”

“My father is dead, and his estates are ash. Answer my question.”

The earl dropped his head. “Curse me for an old man,” he muttered, “but do not give me to the savages. I’m tired of this place, weary of this war. I will tell you what you wish to know. Only do not give me over to them.”

And Oglethorpe smiled as he might at a wayward child.

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

“You have my word. Serve me as I wish, and you will be quite safe. Joseph, bring him some brandy, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mar gulped at it when it was in his hands. “I heard you were dead, you know,”

Mar said, after a moment. “We had reports that your army had been crushed.”

“I don’t doubt it. I put those reports out myself.”

“Eh? But General Simmon’s command — ”

“Quite destroyed. But I found one of his field aetherschreibers, and thus sent word back to Charles Town and your false king of a… different outcome. I’m sure they’re onto the trick by now, but now they don’t know where I am. Even with their flying corvettes, they must have some idea where to look, and they have none.” He raised his glass. “But they will. Nairne is at Fort Montgomery.”

“Yes.”

“And you have laid siege to it.”

“I have.”

“And how does that proceed?”

“Not well, thus far, but—” Mar stopped quite quickly.

“I did say everything,” Oglethorpe reminded him gently. “Vex me in the slightest, I said.”

“I sent for reinforcements,” Mar admitted.

“Are they coming on foot or in the flying ships?”

“Neither.”

“Boats, then, up the Altamaha? Come, sir, do not make me guess.”

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“Boats, yes. The underwater boats the Moscovados brought.”

“Oh, yes. Franklin told me about those. I have not seen one with my own eyes.

But I think I shall. How many men do you have at the siege?”

“Five hundred men and fifty taloi.”

“Fifty taloi.” Five hundred men was a lot, considering he had only fifty-four.

The taloi were automatons, made of alchemical stuff and inhabited by demons.

At close range they could be dealt with, for the wizard Franklin had supplied him with a depneumifier—his men called it a devil gun—that could strip the demons from their artificial bodies. But the redcoats had learned that much and used the taloi as mobile artillery; and in that capacity they were still very much a danger.

“How many men do you suppose Nairne has?”

“I have guessed two hundred. But the women and even the children have been seen firing muskets.”

So Nairne probably had fewer actual soldiers than Mar thought.

“When will the amphibian boats arrive?”

Mar took a long, deep breath. “By morning,” he murmured.

“How many?”

“Four, each with fifty troops.”

“Two hundred more men. Seven hundred men, four gunboats, fifty taloi.

Anything else?”

“No. Fort Marlborough would spare me no more.”

“Ah. So they hold the Altamaha sound. Thank you for that, too, Mar.”

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I have fifty-four men,
Oglethorpe thought. Then he smiled. Fifty-four men and an idea. He had won with less.

4.

Big Mile

Red Shoes brushed his fingers along the drying stalks of the corn hedging the trail. He let his gaze wander up the breadth of the fields that dotted the small prairie to the forested hills beyond, where plumes of smoke coiled cloudward.

“I feel like the ghost of myself,” he told the woman by his side.

“Why?” she asked, her dark eyes turning this way and that, perhaps trying to see what he saw.

“Because I’m home. Home is the only place that can put flesh on the bones of memory. The smell is different, somehow, the light. It reminds me of who I was when I was five, and twelve. And before I left the last time. All my old selves, all dead men, following me as ghosts.”

She didn’t comment on his recitation but focused on the pragmatic. “This is your village?”

“It is. Kowi Chito.”

“ ”Big Panther‘?“ she translated. Choctaw was still a new language for her, this beautiful and formidable woman of the high plains who called herself Grief.

He shook his head.
“Kowi
also means ”a distance.“ What the French call a THE SHADOWS OF GOD

league. We named the village that because it is a league to walk around it. At least, that’s what they say now. My great-granduncle once told me it was a lie.”

“Why lie about the name of a town?”

“There is a place a few days nearer the rising sun. It is a town of the dead now, almost forgotten, covered in trees. I went there once to seek visions. But once, in the Ancient Times, it was the most powerful town in all the land. Larger than even the cities of the Europeans, perhaps. A place of great warriors and magic makers. The people bred their children to the spirits, and grew stronger still. Finally they became so proud that they neglected the sacred fire, the eye of Hashtali, whose other eye is the Sun. Some say they even tried to kill Hashtali. I don’t know how much is true. I only know that most of them are dead now. What my uncle told me is that some of them didn’t die but settled here, and these were the people of the Panther god. He said people are too timid to talk about that now.”

“Why?”

“The Panther people were sorcerers, powerful, terrible—wicked. That sort of thing runs in the blood. Our town is the chiefest in the Choctaw nation. Some might claim we made ourselves so with witchcraft.” He smiled sardonically.

“That story must be true,” Grief said softly, “for surely you must be the greatest sorcerer there ever was.”

“Hopaye,
in my language,” he said. “Grief, my people can’t know how great my power has become. Not right away. Maybe never. They remember me as a formidable shaman; and many were suspicious of me even then, because power can always be used for good or ill. If they knew I had the might of the Antler Serpent in my blood, they might try to kill me. If they kill me, I can’t save them.”

“Are they worth saving?”

“They are my people. That question isn’t worth asking, as you ought to know.”

“I suppose.” Her voice grew chilly. Her own people had been slain by the army THE SHADOWS OF GOD

of the Sun Boy, whose scouts they had managed to escape only because of Red Shoes’ newfound power. Soon, the Choctaw would face the same foe.

“Though it’s different,” Grief continued, “I lost my own kin —my mother, my brothers and sisters, my uncles. It’s them I mourn.”

“It
is
different,” he admitted. “The Choctaw are not all kin. They aren’t even all one people, not really. But they
could
be. They must be.”

“And what will I do?”

He stopped and touched her cheek, felt the blood beneath it, smelled it; and for a moment he saw her only with the cold eyes of the serpent, a
thing
like any other, another hated human being to be destroyed.

But then he saw her with eyes of Red Shoes, who loved her.

“You are with me,” he said. “You are part of me. As long as you want a place by my side, it is yours.”

She touched his face in turn. “You used to frighten me,” she said. “I can see the spirit you swallowed. It is still there, a poison in you. But I do not fear it any longer.”

“You should. I do. But I will not let it harm you, Grief.”

“I know. You may destroy the world — ”

“Only to rebuild it as it should be. And I have not decided to do that.”

“Yes. I was saying you may destroy the world, but I truly believe I am safe with you. A strange thing.”

“Everything is strange. And I — ”

An arrow thunked into Red Shoes’ back. He heard the nearby twang of the bow, this hiss of the shaft on a corn leaf, and was already dodging. Not quickly enough. He didn’t feel any pain, just impact, but that was the way it was with THE SHADOWS OF GOD

arrows. A dull shock, like someone thumping you. He yanked his ax from his belt as he whirled, gathering his shadowchildren around him. He shouldn’t have relaxed, not even here, not with the Sun Boy and his scalped men searching for him.

“I got him!” someone whooped, and a chorus of shrieks went up in the corn.

Grief had drawn her
kraftpistole
—though it was empty of charges.

Someone in the corn started singing the war song. Red Shoes looked down.

The arrow was a blunt piece of cane, lying harmless on the black earth.

A boy leapt out onto the path, his face smeared with red and black clay. He held a toy war club carved from a branch.

“Got you, Uncle!” the boy shouted. “Now your scalp is mine! My name shall be He-Killed-a-Wizard!”

“Chula?”

“Welcome home, Uncle.”

Red Shoes sighed and placed his ax back in his belt. “That was foolish, Chula. I might have killed you.”

“You never even heard me!”

“That’s true. That—” He broke off, remembering himself as a boy. He smiled.

“That was good, actually. I always said you would be a great warrior. Now I see some proof of it.”

“They said you were coming!” Chula said. “The old men foretold it. They said you were coming to lead us to war! Is it true?”

Red Shoes looked at the boy. No boy, really, but a lithe young man of fifteen, eager for war. But for the Choctaw, war usually meant a raid, two or three deaths, a scalp for a trophy and then months of bragging.

It did not mean facing an army as large as a plague of locusts, an army with THE SHADOWS OF GOD

artillery and airships, whose numbers were so great that the whole Choctaw nation could disappear into them like of drop of water into a sea.

And so it was with some pain he saw the joy on Chula’s face when he said,

“Yes, that is so.”

The boy whooped and shook his toy war club, and out in the corn, his friends answered.

“Are you coming to Mother’s house?” Chula asked, when he had started the war song again, forgotten the last part, and broken it off.

“If I’m welcome there.”

“Mother said you were.”

“Then come along,” he said, mussing his nephew’s hair.

“Who is she?” Chula asked, gesturing at Grief.

“My wife,” Red Shoes replied.

“Your wife,” his sister said, voice flat. “You never took a Choctaw woman, and yet now you bring this—what
is
she?”

“Awahi, a tribe far out on the high plains.”

His sister scowled, ruining what was usually a pretty face. “And where will you live? In her house on the plains? Has she any property? Do you expect to move in with me, or take a Choctaw wife, one with a house?”

Red Shoes smiled. “It’s good to see you, Speckled Corn, little sister.”

She hesitated. She had probably sworn not to forgive him this time, for leaving for so long. She had done it before, in front of witnesses.

As before, she broke it. She threw herself into his arms, weeping. “Where have you been? Why do you do this? My boys need their uncle. Since our brother THE SHADOWS OF GOD

died, and mother, who is there?”

“I’m sorry, little sister. You know how it is. I must do what Hashtali has allotted me.”

“You should do what a man is supposed to do. Hunt. Teach his nephews to hunt. Why did you have to be born this way?”

“Someone must. Without a few like me, what defense would we have against the accursed beings? Especially now.”

“Yes.” She stepped back and wiped at her eyes. “I’ve heard the talk. So has Chula.” Her voice softened. “What are you going to tell the old men, Red Shoes? What will you tell Minko Chito?”

“They already know what I’m going to say.”

“If they do, they don’t like it. There was some talk of killing you before you reached town. Did you know that? They tried to keep it from me, but if a flea speaks in this town, I hear it.”

“Who wants me dead?”

“Bloody Child and his friends, of course. But the Holata Red agreed, and the Mortar. Why, Brother? What do you have to say that could make them so fearful?”

“That which comes is very bad. Worse than the smallpox, the black cough, worse than a five-year drought. It is the worst thing we have ever faced, and I imagine there are those trying not to face it.”

“Don’t go with them when they come for you. They may kill you yet. They may try to lull you into relaxing.”

“Don’t worry about me, little sister.”

“Who else will?”

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

“I have a wife for that now.”

Speckled Corn glanced out the low, narrow doorway of her house to where Grief stood on the bare ground before it. A number of people had stopped to stare at the stranger, some merely curious, others with undisguised hostility.

“She doesn’t look right,” Speckled Corn complained.

“Nevertheless, she is my wife.”

His sister nodded, then set her jaw and walked outside. “Why are all of you staring at my house and my guests?” she shouted. “This is my brother’s wife, and she is welcome here, and it is no one’s business until I say it is. Now go, all of you!”

They went, some grumbling, most averting their eyes, knowing they had been rude.

But all of them had something to gossip about now. By nightfall, every Choctaw house and village within walking distance would know that the sorcerer had returned with a foreign witch wife.

“Home.” He sighed to himself.