Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (2 page)

Kicking up dust, their rifles and
belts rattling, came a detail of four men, driving a fifth in clinking chains,
his head bowed before them. The Rider saw a huge, muscled sergeant with a dark
beard, a thin, stiff moving officer in a kepi and havelock, and a pair of
trooper-musicians. The slim, long fingered fifer was excellent, capturing the
tune’s ridiculous marriage of gaiety and melancholy, like a cheery sun
struggling to shine through murky clouds. The drummer was less so. He lost the
rhythm at regular intervals, as if he could not reconcile his drumming and
marching. Indeed, his drumming sounded like a drunkard having trouble
negotiating a flight of stairs, always stopping and starting.

The man before them was in his patchy
long red underwear and cavalry boots, the iron chains around his ankles forcing
him to adopt a demeaning half-shuffle. His shoulders sagged with the weight of
the links that bound his wrists before him. His head had been clumsily shaved
in the traditional punitive manner, but he retained thick eyebrows, more like
an actor’s greasepaint than real hair.

There was something familiar to the
Rider about those prodigious eyebrows.

No one took any notice of the Rider
or Kabede until the detail reached what was presumably the boundary of the
post. Here they slowed to a surprised stop, finding the two men and the onager
waiting for them.

The big sergeant directly behind the
prisoner was poised to deliver the literal boot to the unfortunate’s ass flap
when he noticed them and ground his foot firmly into the earth again. Around
the same time, the fifer stopped and the lieutenant’s lips parted in silent
question.

Up close, the lieutenant was quite a
sight. He was a youngish man with startling green eyes and a shock of short
orange hair just visible beneath the white havelock hanging from the back of
his cap. His pale skin was yellow and purple around the right side of his face,
one eye nearly swollen shut. The furrow of a cut marred his mashed lip, a thin
little gully filled with crusted blood, just beneath his drooping rusty
mustache.

The drummer, so intent on his duty
that the tip of his pink tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth, was the
last to become aware of their presence, and only stopped his clumsy
rat-a-tatting when the fifer elbowed him.

The prisoner regarded the newcomers
first with surprise, then with a half-lidded interest, and finally with shock
again when his eyes fell on the Rider.

The Rider sighed and eased himself
off the onager’s back. He was quite used to being stared at. From a distance,
his drab black garb was unremarkable, but up close, when men saw his
payot
curls, beard, and the fringes of
his
tallit
, he often gave them pause.
Still, he had supposed the outlandish Oriental garb of Kabede would have
deflected attention, as striking a figure as the Ethiopian was in his white
burnoose.

He opened his mouth to address the
officer, but the prisoner cut him off.

“Rider,” said the man. “You’re just
in time to see me off.”

It was the Rider’s turn to register
shock. Who could possibly know him here? His first thought was of the reward
posted for his capture, and for the return of the ancient scroll in the case
strapped on the cantle of the onager’s pack saddle—the one he had taken from
the body of one of Adon’s pupils, Dr. Sheardown. The fight with Sheardown and
Lilith’s half-demonic gunmen, the
shedim
,
had wound up destroying the desert watering hole settlement of Varruga Tanks
and saddled him with the blame. Varruga Tanks had come to be known as a
massacre, and he had gone down as the perpetrator, with no greater person than
the territorial governor of New Mexico issuing a reward for his head.

“If I can recognize you under all
that hair, you old demonpuncher, can’t you recollect an old friend who’s lost
all his?” the man said, his grim face splitting in an infectious smile. His
thick eyebrows leapt meaningfully, and the Rider nearly staggered at the
coincidence, for here stood Dick Belden, whom he had been thinking of only
moments before and had last seen when he’d mustered out at Ft. Leavenworth,
Kansas fifteen years ago.

“Belden,” he allowed cautiously. His
first thought was to touch his gun. This had to be some trick of Adon’s riders,
or of Lilith. This was some demon in the shape of Belden, or some terrible,
unguessed creature that had masked itself with a pleasing face.

But the Rider had on his Solomonic
spectacles. There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of the men before
him.

“You know this man?” Kabede said at
his side, the wariness evident in his voice.

The Rider opened his mouth to
answer, but in the instant of hesitation the big sergeant shoved past Belden
and interposed himself.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded
in a deep voice. “Who’re you?”

“Sergeant Joe Rider, Second Colorado
Cavalry,” said Belden, behind the big man’s back. “This man was chasin’ Sibley
with me while you were beatin’ on half-starved Rebs for their wedding rings at
Camp Douglas, you fuckin’ tub of piss.”

Joe Rider was the name the Rider
enlisted under at Canon City, when he and his best friend Abe Lillard had left
San Francisco together. He’d answered to it for three years. It was funny to
hear it spoken now, after so long.

“Shut up, you,” the sergeant
snarled, whirling on Belden and cocking one gigantic mitt back to deliver what
looked to be a shuddering backhand.

“
Don’t
,”
the Rider ordered, with all the authority he could muster in his weakened
voice.

The sergeant stiffened and turned
back.

Now the sorry looking 2nd lieutenant
stepped out from behind the prisoner.

“What’s going on here, Sergeant
Weeks?”

“Visitors, sir. Look t’ be
civilians, but this one claims to be a soldier.”

“Former,” the Rider said. “Rider’s
my name, sir. This is my traveling companion, Kabede.”

“Belden says he knows him,” said
Weeks, sourly.

The lieutenant’s eyes flared, and he
looked to Belden.

“Just a funny coincidence,
lieutenant,” drawled Belden. “I ain’t plotting a grand escape or anything. You’re
rousting me anyway.”

The Rider was disbelieving. How
could this be possible? Could this really be the same man who had been his
friend since they’d met at Apache Canyon? Was this the same man who had taught
him to ride and pitch stones like David? He reflected for a moment how strange
his life had truly become, when he could more readily believe in a plotting
malevolent creature from another plane of existence than the happy,
coincidental reappearance of an old friend.

He had often said he had no old
friends, of course, but Dick Belden was one. They had saved each other’s lives
a few times, and been through hell on horseback together.

“Dick, what’s happening here?”

Belden shrugged.

The lieutenant cleared his throat.

“As soon as these proceedings have
finished, I’ll take you men to see Colonel Manx,” the lieutenant mumbled
through necessarily clenched teeth, his words slurring on the ‘esses.’ “In the
meantime, you can state your business to me.”

“And who are you, sir?”

“Lieutenant Cord.”

“Lieutenant,” the Rider said. “You’d
better think twice about going ahead with these proceedings. You’re going to
need every able man you’ve got in about a day.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“It’d be easier to show you.”

The Rider motioned to Kabede for the
spyglass, and the tall African snapped it open and held it out.

The Rider extended it and turned. It
didn’t take long to spot the sizable dust cloud rolling across the chalk white
desert. He focused on it, and held it out to the young lieutenant.

“Take a look.”

Cord limped up and took the spyglass
from the Rider.

“What is it?” Belden asked as he
peered at the cloud of dust moving slowly across the valley floor like a great
thing burrowing beneath the sand, obscured entirely.

“Shut up,” growled Weeks.

“Good Lord,” Cord muttered. “Is it…Indians?”

The Rider didn’t answer, but he
caught Belden’s eyes and shook his head.

Weeks stood beside the lieutenant
and squinted his dark eyes. After a moment he sneered. “So what? Buncha Mex
cattle stampedin.’ Probably one of them chilishitters down there farted an’
spooked ‘em.”

“You mean the people that live on
the rancho down along the edge of the desert?” the Rider said.

“’Who else?” said Weeks.

“They’re dead,” said Kabede. “They’re
all dead.”

Cord lowered the spyglass, the
spaces between his yellow and purple flesh noticeably paler.

Weeks cleared his throat at the
officer’s side.

“Lieutenant, you don’t put Belden
here out on his ass, the colonel’s gonna have yours.”

“Bullshit, Cord,” Belden said,
stepping closer to speak in the man’s other ear. “Forget what’s between us for
a minute. Whatever’s comin,’ you think you and Portis can rally these men? You
think they’re gonna listen to Manx? We’ve got to deal with this. You can kick
me down the hill afterwards.”

“Maybe,” said Cord, still staring at
the slow moving cloud, and wetting his lips, “Maybe we should go get the
colonel.”

Weeks frowned and didn’t move until
Lieutenant Cord looked up at him meaningfully. His frown deepened.

“Take the prisoner back to the
guardhouse, sergeant.”

Weeks straightened slightly and
executed a lazy salute.

“Yessir,” he said. He swapped an
angry glance for Belden’s smug look of triumph, then wheeled on the fifer and
drummer and barked at them;

“Well go on, take him.”

Belden smiled back at the Rider as
the fifer and drummer took him by the elbows.

The Rider couldn’t help but grin
back.

“See you soon,” Belden said, raising
up his hands to salute, as they led him away across the parade ground. The
Rider noticed the knuckles of both hands were raw and scabbed over.

“Alright you two, let’s go see the colonel.”

Lieutenant Cord turned and went back
at a limping quick step, his saber rattling against his stiff leg.

The Rider and Kabede followed Cord
past the lines of confused looking soldiers, who were looking agape from Belden’s
detail to them.

“Dismissed. Dismissed!” Cord shouted
offhandedly as he stalked past, headed for the biggest sod house on the
grounds, which displayed a crudely cut plank sign that read:

Lieutenant Colonel R.W. Manx, Post Commander

11th Cavalry, Camp Eckfeldt

“If we get out of this, you ought to
think about dressing more conservatively,” the Rider said, watching the eyes of
the men on the tall African in billowing white. “You sort of stand out, don’t
you?”

“And you don’t?” Kabede replied.

The Rider shrugged.

“Eh, maybe a little.”

Before they reached the two steps
leading down into the sparse structure, all earth and thatch, a black haired
young man, sporting a neatly trimmed Van Dyke, stepped outside, buttoning his
clean uniform coat. He had a pair of snow white doeskin gauntlets draped over
his belt, and his leather braces hung in loops at his sides. Like Lieutenant
Cord, he appeared a bit worse for wear, though his ailments appeared to be
internal. He was dabbing his nose with a pocket handkerchief when he appeared.
There was a crust of dried blood about his nostrils when his hand came away.
Likewise, his eyes were deeply ringed and swollen, as though he were fighting a
bad cold, or had not been sleeping.

“What the hell’s going on out here,
Mister Cord? Is that your idea of a proper dismissal?” he stopped short at the
sight of the Rider and Kabede, his bright blue eyes narrowing. “Who are these
men?”

“Sir,” the Rider began, securing the
onager to a hitching post. “Joe Rider, sir. Formerly of the 2nd Colorado
Cavalry.”

“Rider…” the colonel sniffled, not
offering his hand or a salute.

“Kabede,” said Kabede, bowing his
head slightly and setting his burdens down beside the onager. He slid the staff
out from the bindle loops and leaned on it.

The colonel’s puffy eyes lingered
for a noticeable span of time on the tall African. His expression showed
bemusement at his wild dress and the carved staff.

“Kabede. Your attire…where can it
possibly be in fashion, I wonder?”

“He’s African, sir,” the Rider said.

“How fascinating. I’ve met plenty of
Africans,” the colonel said. “But never one from Africa. Gentlemen, I’m Colonel
Manx. Won’t you step inside? Mister Cord, run and fetch Sergeant Weeks and
Corporal Quincannon will you?”

“Sir, there’s something I think you
should take a look at,” said Cord.