The Wolf Age (47 page)

"God Avenger," swore Morlock.

Death and Mercy symbolically shielded themselves from the name of this alien god.

Morlock felt a brief respite, though he didn't understand why. He held his course, straight on the tail of the fleeing airship. If nothing else, he had broken the air attack on the outlier settlement. And there was still a chance he could ram the other airship. It all depended on what happened when they flew over the city.

The jagged rising outline of Wuruyaaria swelled on his view-board. Morlock's neck was sore from bending back and looking up, but he didn't want to take his eyes off the thing. If the other airship turned port or starboard it would have to strike against the course of the wind and would lose speed. That would be his chance to gain on it.

The other airship flew over the werewolf city without turning. Either its port was further north, or they didn't want to risk losing headway.

Mount Dhaarnaiarnon loomed beyond the mesas and cliffs of Wuruyaaria. The moon-clock did not show on the view-board, presumably because it wasn't relevant to navigation. But the ragged edge of the volcano's crater was unmistakable.

The other airship flew on into the rolling hills north of Mount Dhaarnaiarnon. Morlock was sure now that he had them running scared.

War manifested himself as a shadow in the shape of a sword. The other gods greeted him with polite symbology.

Morlock became more uneasy, though he did not know why.

The two airships flew on into the dying north. The storm behind them had faded. Even the gods were silent.

In the quiet, Morlock heard a voice speaking an angry command outside the airship.

The werewolf crew of the gondola were obviously making a bid to regain control of the airship.

Morlock coldly considered his options.

He could use the moonstone to attack the werewolves with impulse light. But he would lose speed that way; the other airship would have a chance to change course and escape. He didn't want that.

He examined the barrel containing the moonstone. He found, as he expected, that there were mirror-bright slats that could be used to cover the lenses.

With the moonstone entirely cocooned in mirrors, its impulse forces would be perfectly balanced. It would no more keep the ship aloft than an ordinary stone would.

Morlock dropped the mirror slats over the lenses. The great chamber of the airship went dark and seemed to deflate.

"No!" screamed the monstrous steersman in the sudden dark. "We'll all be killed!"

Morlock put his right shoulder against the barrel holding the moonstone and pushed. There was a long slow moment when nothing gave-then a splintering crack and the barrel fell off the platform to the floor of the great chamber.

Morlock jumped after it, not using the wings to slow his fall.

At that, his fall was almost too slow. The steersman had floundered around the platform's base and was doing something to the barrel.

Morlock drew his sword and stabbed the steersman several times. It fled, shrieking.

Morlock hooked his wooden glove onto a handhold on the barrel and clamped it tight. Then he stabbed with his sword at the fabric under his feet, sawing away at it.

Soon a jagged tear opened up. He sheathed his sword, pushed the barrel through the opening, and fell with it into the night.

The whole airship was sagging downward in the air; Morlock found himself suspended in midair between the collapsing airship and the gondola below. The cables around him were dense with distorted werewolf shapes, all screaming in anger or panic as they felt their craft failing.

Morlock flipped open one of the lens covers.

The impulse light from the moonstone dragged him, dangling from his wooden glove, away from the falling airship on a wild course into the empty night.

He tried to steady himself by grabbing the other side of the barrel with his right hand. But the radiant impulse light blinded him; he could see nothing in the darkness. One time he almost smashed into the ground, saving himself at the last moment by going into a sickening tumble. By pure chance he came out of it headed upward rather than downward.

He scrabbled desperately at the lens controls to try to diminish his speed, but the barrel was simply not intended to be dirigible by itself; he could not set a course, and every moment he held onto it he risked being smashed against the ground or some obstruction.

He released the clamp from his wooden glove. The barrel spun away, flashing into the darkness.

Morlock scrabbled to get his wooden glove fixed in the grip for his left wing, then gripped the other wing with his right hand. He went into a glide, found the horizon, aimed himself away from the ground, and started pumping his wings with arms and legs.

When he knew he was stable and some distance away from the ground, he looked around to take his bearings.

Not so very far away, he saw the other airship, coming around to the aid of its ruined sister. There was light coming from the ports of its gondola, but he didn't see archers or burning arrows. No doubt they were on the other side, looking out for survivors from the ship Morlock had destroyed. No one seemed to be looking his way.

He was tired, very tired. But he was not dead yet, and this seemed like too good a chance to pass up. He banked into an intercepting course.

The surviving airship was sinking slowly toward the ground. In the dark woodlands Morlock saw glimmers of fire: the ruin of the first ship's gondola, perhaps.

Morlock flew straight on without dropping. By the time he reached the surviving airship, he was just over its motive chamber. He landed atop it. Balancing carefully, he drew his glass sword and drove it deep into the fabric, and again, slashing with the bitter blade until the rift was large enough for him to enter.

This chamber was the twin to the other airship, right down to the distorted steersman on the moonstone platform. The steersman was aware of him, and swung the bright lens about to try and strike him with impulse light. But the carriage of the barrel was not designed to tilt so far. Morlock flew directly to the platform.

"Stand aside," Morlock said. "I won't hurt you if I don't have to. Your light can't hurt me, anyway."

"You've already hurt me!" shouted the steersman. "If he finds out that you learned about impulse clouds from me-"

Morlock turned curiously toward the steersman.

"That was a slip, wasn't it?" said the steersman ruefully, in quite a different sort of voice.

"Yes."

"Two such similar simulacra, facing similar challenges in such a short space of time," the steersman's mouth mused. "I'm not surprised I got confused. But I wonder if that was really it. I've been wanting to talk to you for some time, Morlock."

"Who are you?"

"Krecking ghosts. Do I need to tell you? I'm Ulugarriu."

Morlock bent his head back to look at the view-board, then adjusted his course upward and southward. When the ship was headed straight back toward Wuruyaaria in the teeth of the wind, he levelled off again.

"I heard you didn't talk much," the steersman complained. "But it seems to me you're being petulant."

"I'm in the middle of something."

"You're in the middle of the biggest time-wasting mistake a male can commit. There is more at stake here than a single life, a few lives, a thousand lives, an election, a city. You are in greater danger than you can imagine walking amidst powers that you don't understand."

"I'm in the middle of something," Morlock said, adjusting the height of the airship again and cranking the forward speed to maximum. "Send me a message, if you want to arrange a meeting in person. I will not deal with a simulacrum."

"And I'm supposed to let you within sword's reach of me, so you can split me like beef liver with Tyrfing? Not on your flat greasy ape-nose. We'll talk on my terms, because what I have to say you need to hear."

Morlock grabbed the steersman simulacrum by its elbow and stepped off the platform, dragging the other with him. The simulacrum hit the floor first, since Morlock was held up by the levity of his wings. When he reached the floor, he drew his sword and slashed a hole in the fabric.

"You're making a mistake," the steersman simulacrum repeated in a resigned voice.

Morlock stuffed him through the hole and out into the night. He heard the body strike the gondola on its way to earth.

Satisfied, he sheathed the sword and flew back up to the moonstone platform.

The werewolf crew would come for him presently, but he had a plan to deal with them. If his plan failed he would have to improvise, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. The crew would remember what had happened to the other airship when the crew attacked, and that would slow them down some. It gave him time, perhaps enough ...

In the view-board, the cratered peak of Dhaarnaiarnon lay dead center and growing.

The dark bird who was Mercy signified, "The knowledge that Ulugarriu operates through simulacra has disrupted my visualizations."

The swordlike shadow indicated agreement with Mercy.

The indistinct dark cloud that was Death signified nothing.

"My manifested senses perceived the simulacrum as if it were alive," Mercy persisted.

War agreed.

The indistinct dark cloud that was Death signified nothing.

"If there are multiple entities in or around the city who are, in fact, extensions of Ulugarriu," Mercy persisted, "there is a pattern to events that we do not grasp. It will clash with patterns we do grasp, and the results are beyond prediction."

"There is no pattern to events," Death signified. "Or: only one."

"The inevitability of death?"

"Yes."

War indicated boredom with this oft-repeated pattern of symbology.

"You lesser gods," Death replied, "have the luxury of boredom, change, variety. You hold sway in a mortal's life for an hour, a day, a year, some stretch of time. Then they relinquish you, and you them. But I impinge on a mortal's life once, when they become me and I become them. And then they are not, forever. And I go on, forever."

"Or they escape to a place where we can no longer torture them," signified Mercy, "forever. That's my hope."

"Hope," repeated Death, and signified amusement. She ceased to be manifest.

"Wisdom thinks she is frightened," signified Mercy. She would have preferred to discuss this with Wisdom himself, but her visualizations were growing quite tangled and she could not envision a time/space locus in which they would both be manifest.

War signified that boasting often went hand in hand with fear. Both were part of his sphere, so he was well acquainted with them.

"Why did you accept apotheosis, War?" Mercy asked. "I wanted to do good, and be a part of the good that people do. Maybe I have done some of that. But it has made me more and more aware of the power of evil. Why did you become a god?"

War signified that his answer would play out in events.

The airship was now closing on the peak of Dhaarnaiarnon. Morlock kept a close eye on the view-board. He dropped the level of flight lower, and then still lower. For his purpose, too low was better than not low enough.

The airship shuddered with impact. There was a tearing, grinding sound from below, and forward movement stopped. Morlock braced the wheel with his body to keep the ship on course. Abruptly, the ship was flying free again.

Morlock spun the wheel to aim the ship toward the outlier settlement and cranked down the intensity of the impulse light, diminishing the craft's speed. Then he risked jumping down to the chamber floor and peering through the rift.

He was passing over the smoke lights of Wuruyaaria, and could see clearly that the gondola was gone. A few wooden fragments swung from stray cables, but he seemed to have no passengers. He flew back up to the moonstone platform and steered for his cave, beyond the shoulder of Wuruyaaria.

"I don't understand," Mercy said then. "This is why you became a god?"

War signified that he didn't understand how she could not understand. Two men had pitted their lives against a greater, better-armed force to defend those they loved. They had risked much and lost much. Their skill and daring had won a great victory.

"One man, really," Mercy said.

War disagreed. If it were not for Rokhlenu, Morlock would have slept through the attack in a drunken stupor. He displayed the visualization to her.

Mercy was forced to acknowledge this truth. "But many died for that victory," she pointed out.

War observed that more would have died if the outlier settlement had burned to the ground. Mercy for the airship crews was death for the outliers.

"I know," Mercy replied. It was the sort of paradox which made her the weakest of the Strange Gods and War one of the strongest.

War ceased to manifest himself. Mercy, too, departed for another spacetime locus.

Morlock's heart felt relief at the absence of Strange Gods, although he had not been aware of their presence. He dropped the height of the airship almost to ground level and reduced the impulse light until the airship slowed almost to a walking speed. He drifted past the entrance to his cave to the silver-laden waste fields over the hill's shoulder. He set the airship down there, diminishing the intensity of the lens-foci and completely closing the irises.

The fabric skin of the ship sagged from its skeletal framework. Morlock hauled the barrel containing the moonstone off its disk and threw it down to the ground. He jumped down after it and rolled it downslope until he reached the curtain of fabric at the chamber wall. He slashed through it with the ease of practice, though by now he was very weary, and trundled the moonstone barrel through the opening into the warm humid night air, dragging it all the way back to his cave. There it was as safe as he could make it.

Hlupnafenglu and Hrutnefdhu were not in his cave, which he found disappointing, but also something of a relief. He bent over to pick up the bowl of wine he had set down on the cave floor before he had left. He sat down then, wearily but carefully, so that he would not spill the wine. Then he drank the wine.