9: The Iron Temple (15 page)

“Couldn’t be, could it?” Pirr’tu asked.

“No,” John agreed. The Bousim commander who John had fought in Gisa had only reached Yep’pasa a few hours before them. This army had obviously been gathering for some time.

“The wine seller swears he saw ushiri’im in the camp as well.” Pirr’tu closed his eyes for a moment. “If they do come for Gisa, it’ll be a massacre.”

“I can’t think of any city that would hold out against godhammers.” John remembered seeing the huge mortars in Vundomu. The walls protecting most northern cities had been built before artillery assaults would have been a consideration. They would come crumbling down after a few blasts.

Something had to be done to stop them. For an instant John considered what he could do, here and now. He tried to imagine how he would destroy an entire army. He pictured himself charging, not dozens of riders but a thousand men. Countless bullets shredding his body. Mortars ripping away his limbs. Rifter or not, he couldn’t see how he could survive. How would he control the unspeakable rage that such intense injury would summon? A sick fear gripped John as he tried to make himself accept the idea of challenging the Bousim army. He couldn’t.

He suddenly wished he could catch even a glimpse of Ravishan. He wanted to know that Ravishan was safe. John thought that if he could just know that much, then perhaps he could summon the courage to take on the Bousim forces. It was something Ravishan would do. John concentrated on the rugged land and cold winds. He felt miles of earth, wild forests, and sprawling low-walled villages—but not Ravishan.

Both John and Pirr’tu stood in silence with their own troubled thoughts as the wind whipped over them.

“I don’t think there’s anything more we can do here. We should get word back to Lafi’shir,” Pirr’tu said at last. He swung up into his tahldi’s saddle. John simply nodded and mounted his own tahldi. He felt like a coward.

As they rode west he struggled to find the determination to turn back and ride against the Bousim army. But with each passing mile the idea became more and more impossible. He knew he wouldn’t do it. He simply had to accept that. But when they crossed the Oran’dur Bridge, John realized that there was something he could do to slow the army, if not stop it.

“Pirr’tu,” John called. “Take my tahldi and ride ahead, will you?” John swung down from his mount’s back. “I want to try something, but I’m not certain of how it will work out.”

Pirr’tu briefly looked like he might ask for more details, but something in John’s expression must have warned him not to bother. He took the reins of John’s tahldi and rode farther along the road.

 John had never destroyed anything as large as the Oran’dur Bridge before. As he placed his hands against a stone railing, the mass of the bridge filled his mind. Its supports and stones spread deep into the walls of the riverbank. John ripped through its structure. The bridge jerked and then huge cracks split through it. Iron supports and masonry crashed into the water below. The ground shuddered as the cracks spread from the center of the bridge out to the land. A massive wall of the riverbank shattered. The ground under John’s feet collapsed and he lunged back to keep from being swept into the rushing waters. Fissures of crumbling stone chased his steps as he sprinted from the riverbank. They slowed after twenty feet and stopped completely by the time he reached Pirr’tu.

 John caught his breath and then looked back. Behind him stretched thirty feet of pitted, broken road and then a sudden drop to the river. Black, burned stone jutted from the riverbank on the opposite side.

“I thought you might not make it for a moment there.” Pirr’tu’s black beard stood out starkly against his suddenly pale face. He stared at the blackened crater in the road.

“It didn’t go exactly as I planned, but at least the Bousim troops won’t be crossing the Oran’dur River anytime soon,” John replied.

“No, they won’t,” Pirr’tu said. He studied John.

“What?” John asked.

“It’s just hard to imagine how one man does so much,” Pirr’tu said. “I saw it with my own eyes, but still…” Pirr’tu shook his head and John let the subject drop. He climbed into his saddle and they continued riding back towards Gisa. They cut through swathes of forest, riding fast but not so hard that they would exhaust the tahldi.

They made camp in the gloaming, taking shelter beneath a stand of pines. Pirr’tu normally kept up a rambling conversation, but tonight he was quiet. He and John shared dried goat meat and hard taye cakes. They wrapped themselves in their saddle blankets and huddled next to their tahldi. John waited to hear Pirr’tu’s breathing slow into the rhythm of sleep, but instead Pirr’tu pushed himself up onto his elbows. He peered through the dusky shadows at John.

“I’ve known a lot of witches,” Pirr’tu said. “My sister Kansa is a witch and so was my first grandmother, Hirran.”

“It runs in families,” John said. Pirr’tu looked irritated and John guessed that his response wasn’t what Pirr’tu was after.

“I’ve never known one of them that could do what you do. Not Saimura, not even Ji, I don’t think.”

“Maybe not, but they can all do things I can’t do,” John replied.

 Pirr’tu didn’t say anything. The silence stretched until John decided that the conversation was probably over. John closed his eyes. A comforting warmth floated up to him from deep in the earth.

“It’s hard to see the kind of damage you do and still think of you as a man like me or Lafi’shir,” Pirr’tu said.

John wasn’t sure how to respond. Briefly he wondered if he should simply feign sleep.

“Do you know what I mean?” Pirr’tu asked and John realized that he wasn’t going to get out of the conversation easily.

“I think I do,” John said. “I felt the same way about the ushiri’im at first. They seemed inhumanly powerful.”

“Then you killed one. I bet they don’t seem so powerful to you now,” Pirr’tu commented.

John thought about Pirr’tu’s comment. He tried to guess just what it was that Pirr’tu was trying to say.

“No matter how much power we have, we’re still all just people,” John said. Pirr’tu seemed to think about this for a while.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Pirr’tu said at last. “Your shit still stinks as bad as anybody else’s.”

“Some days it’s worse than most people’s,” John agreed.

“Yeah.” Pirr’tu laughed. “Redroot stew sure doesn’t agree with you.”

John just gave a disgusted grunt at the memory. It had only been two days ago and he still wasn’t feeling his best.

“I have no idea how you stomached that stuff,” John said.

“I had double helpings.” Pirr’tu sounded pleased. “It’s not my fault that you have a sensitive constitution.” Pirr’tu yawned and curled up in his blanket. A few minutes later his breathing dropped into the slow rhythm of sleep.

John wondered briefly at having his humanity confirmed by a bout of diarrhea. He supposed it demonstrated that he, like Pirr’tu, was vulnerable and awkward at times. It kept him from seeming too powerful to comprehend or befriend. For the first time John felt a strange kind of affection for his own weaknesses.

The next morning when Pirr’tu accused him of farting all night long John didn’t bother to tell him that it had been the tahldi. Three days later, when they stopped at the Crossroads Hostel to feed and rest their tahldi, Pirr’tu pointed out that the serving girls were offering bowls of redroot stew. John told him to enjoy himself and then returned to the stable to tend the tahldi. Pirr’tu usually discovered more news when he was alone, in any case. He could gossip with men and flirt with women unencumbered by John’s silent presence.

 John ate strips of dried goat meat and brushed the tahldi down. While the tahldi contentedly chewed their feed, John relaxed on a tack bench. He let his thoughts reach out for a trace of Ravishan.

 His senses rushed southwest over the Stone Hills and down into the valley at the foot of Vundomu. White expanses of snow spread out beneath the dark mass of the huge fortress. Dozens of kahlirash’im raced towards Vundomu. Their tahldi gasped and sweat poured down the animals’ hides despite the snow. Suddenly John realized that Ravishan rode among them. He clenched his tahldi’s reins tightly and stole a quick look behind him.

Hundreds of other riders charged after the kahlirash’im. Many were Bousim rashan’im, but some wore the colors of other gaun’im. There were ushvun’im as well, dressed in the Payshmura gray and armed with swords and pikes.

John saw the bursts of smoke as the Bousim rashan’im fired their rifles. Two of the kahlirash’im’s tahldi collapsed. One of the fallen riders pulled himself to his feet, only to crumple into the snow as a bullet ripped through his head.

Suddenly Ravishan dropped into the Gray Space. An instant later he burst out almost under a Bousim rashan’s tahldi. Ravishan swung his arms out and John felt the Gray Space tear as Ravishan wrenched open an immense Unseen Edge. Dozens of tahldi reared and fell as the edge of the Gray Space severed their legs and ripped through their bodies. Blood sprayed across the snow.

Ravishan hurled himself back into the Gray Space an instant later, only to emerge again in the midst of the pursuing riders. He slaughtered dozens at a time and yet it hardly seemed to make a difference. Hundreds more riders charged down from the northern hills. They filled the snowy fields with their brilliant colors.

John could see the exhaustion in Ravishan’s movements. He burst from the Gray Space, killed, and disappeared again, but each time he was a little slower. Each time the hooves of the tahldi came closer to crushing him. More gashes opened on his arms, chest, and back, with each passage through the Gray Space.

“Stop,” John whispered.

But Ravishan continued his assault. He surged out of the Gray Space. Blood poured from a cut across his forehead. His skin looked deathly pale. For an instant he seemed to hang in the air above a rider. He swung his hand out, tore through an ushvun’s throat, and then fell. He slammed into a tahldi’s back. The animal reared, throwing him like a rag doll.

“NO!” John shouted.

Ravishan snapped the Gray Space open and was gone.

John watched the continuing charge of riders. The kahlilrash’im reached the walls of Vundomu, but the Bousim rashan’im were nearly on top of them. Heavy guns fired from the fortress walls.

 Then John’s vision lurched west. Fields and hills whipped past until he reached a small stone house. Inside, John watched Ravishan emerge from the Gray Space and collapse a few feet from Ji and her students.

“Jath’ibaye?” John felt Pirr’tu’s hand on his shoulder and his senses returned instantly to the stable.

“Are you all right? You were just standing there and suddenly you yelled,” Pirr’tu said.

“I saw something,” John said. His heart still hammered in his chest. He glanced past Pirr’tu to see if his shout had brought any of the grooms. Only John’s big tahldi returned his gaze. He supposed a man shouting in a stable wasn’t that unusual.

“I saw a force of kahlirash’im being pursued by an army of rashan’im. It looked like the Bousim were laying siege to Vundomu.” John kept his voice low. “I think that those soldiers at Yep’pasa are being gathered for an assault on Vundomu.”

Pirr’tu simply nodded.

“That would make sense with the news I just heard,” Pirr’tu said. “I spoke with a carter just now. He says he’s almost out of iron from repairing all the Bousim wagons that have passed through town in the last few weeks. They sounded like artillery wagons, I think. Anyway, he heard one of the rashan’im’s commanders comment that they were going to bring the kahlirash’im back into the fold.”

“Maybe Gisa wasn’t the only city where they killed ushman’im,” John said.

“Shit,” Pirr’tu muttered. “This is getting big.”

John gazed at the bales of hay and weathered wood of the stable walls. The tahldi in their stalls made soft noises to each other. The still air and quiet felt utterly at odds with the vision John had witnessed.

 “I saw Ravishan riding with the kahlirash’im.” John’s voice trembled slightly. It seemed like important information and yet the vision had affected him so personally that he felt almost exposed mentioning it to Pirr’tu.

“Was he all right?” Pirr’tu asked.

“I think so,” John replied. “He fought the rashan’im back for a while.”

“Ji must have sent him, don’t you think?” Pirr’tu asked.

“Probably.” John remembered that Ravishan had retreated to Ji’s care. She had to know what was happening.

“We’d better get back to Lafi’shir,” Pirr’tu said. “He’ll know what we need to do.”

John saddled his tahldi while Pirr’tu packed more strips of dried meat into their meager supplies. A few minutes later they left the hostel and its promise of a warm meal. They rode through the day and into the night. The full moon and white reflective snow lit the road. John willed the clouds back from the sky, and as they rode, a wild wind swirled around them. Miles passed and the ragged eastern terrain steadily grew more fertile. Sharp outcroppings of stone softened into rolling hills. When they reached the Hearthstone Hostel, the third bell of morning sounded softly from beyond Gisa’s walls.

Saimura and Tai’yu had arrived a day earlier. Their news only confirmed what John had suspected. The kahlirash’im had rebelled against the Payshmura. They had sent out men to ten different cities to free witches and execute ushman’im. In retaliation, the Payshmura had called upon all the gaun’im to crush the traitors in Vundomu.

“Sabir wanted a distraction for his actions in the south.” Pirr’tu shook his head. “The gaun’im sending their armies north should give him an opening.”

“Yes, but it’s not going to be easy on any of us in the north,” Tai’yu replied.

“No, the southern roads are already a mess,” Saimura said. “There are troops everywhere. People in the towns are terrified. Some of the rashan’im are raiding farms for food and supplies.”

John poured water into the washbasin and quickly rinsed his face and neck. Both he and Pirr’tu stank of sweat and tahldi, but they hadn’t bothered with baths. Pirr’tu took the bread Tai’yu offered him and ate quickly.

“Have you heard anything from Lafi’shir?” Pirr’tu asked.