Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (32 page)

Its madness was reflected in
Misquamacus’ eyes. Whatever he truly was, whether he was Faustus’ brother or
not, he followed this thing now. He had been infected by its madness. It had
played him like a flute.

It loved such trickery. It had
delved below human minds since they had existed. It had played fools even of
devils and angels.

How did Piishi and the Rider know
this?

It told them, of course. It was
telling them. Just as Shub-Niggurath’s mind had raked its psychic talons
telepathically across their own beneath Red House, so too was Nyarlathotep
doing now.

Perhaps it projected a different
message into every man and woman standing there, but to the Rider and Piishi,
it brimmed with gloating arrogance.

It gave them another name, different
from the ones Misquamacus had spluttered at it. One the ancient shaman didn’t
even know. One it was positively bursting to tell them.

Adam Belial.

Adam Belial, the false angel that
Lucifer claimed had infiltrated the ranks of Heaven and corrupted the greatest
of the archangels, inducing him to hopeless rebellion with prodding suggestions
and seductive influence.

In a manner of thinking, Adam Belial
was the grandfather of all demons. But he was no demon, no former angel.

Nyarlathotep. An insane Outer God.

This thing had set the First
Rebellion in motion. It had engineered a further split among the forces of the
Fallen fifteen years ago, commanding the worst, the most unrepentant demons
against Lucifer and the demons of hell in a failed attempt to wrest control of
Gehenna from its appointed custodians. It had spun the world toward the Hour of
Incursion and unwittingly initiated the bloody War Between the States.

It just wanted them to know that, if
not everything, before it devoured them.

Misquamacus rose to his feet.

“Like the white man’s black engines,
it needs only fuel.”

The Rider/Piishi looked about then,
and in the golden light, still kneeling among the dead Mexicans, he saw the old
caballero
. He had ceased his
laughter, and was now screaming over and over, unreasoning tears streaking his
old face, maddened by whatever truth Nyarlathotep was thrusting into his mind.

Misquamacus regarded him for a
moment as if he knew him, then stretched out his arm to him, palm upwards. With
a gesture of his fingers, the old man grew rigid, his arms and legs curling. In
another instant his heart exploded from his chest and flew into Misquamacus’
palm. He fell like an empty sack to the ground.

Misquamacus held the throbbing heart
over his head, and the Dark Man’s head twitched. The heart flew into the air,
as if magnetically attracted to the great golden statue’s chest, and slid
neatly into one of the empty receptacles.

“The sacrifice of the enemy is made.
Now who will give?” Misquamacus called. “Who will give so that our weapon can
live?”

One by one, from each of the bands
already under Misquamacus’ influence, a single bloody volunteer lay his stained
weapons on the ground and stood, head bowed, and stepped forward with his arms
outspread. A Pawnee, one of the Navajo skinwalkers, even one of the transformed
Tonkawas and a great gray furred Ishak crept forward in the manner of cowering
dogs, on all fours, their great ears laid back, noses to the ground.

Misquamacus held out both hands and
took their hearts two at a time and gave them to the great golden statue.
Nyarlathotep seemed to swell with each sacrifice, growing a few inches in stature
as each body fell. When the two wolf things were squirming on their backs,
steam rising from their open chests, Misquamacus turned to the Apache.

“And now, who among the Apache will
give?”

The Rider/Piishi held his breath.

None of the Apache moved.

Goyaałé shook his head.

“Usen does not care for the petty
quarrels of men,” he said. “So I think maybe he is greater than your god,
Misquamacus.”

Misquamacus held out his bloody
hands in a gesture of beseeching.

“My brothers, you have not seen the
future as I have. We will be a conquered people. We will die a slow death among
a cold white world of machines.”

“Nobody here doubts your power,”
said Vittorio. “It may be you are right. If that is so, we will live well while
we live. When death comes, we will walk out to meet it and die as Apache.”

There were calls of agreement among
the Chi’hine at their leader’s words. They grew faintly stronger.

“If we die, let it be by the hands
of men, not as slaves to an evil spirit,” Naiche called out, and his Chokonen
followers unanimously agreed, adding their voices to those of the Chi’hine.

The giant Juh made as if to speak,
and Goyaałé went to his side to interpret, but Juh waved him off.

The massive chief put his great hand
on Goyaałé’s shoulder and spoke in slow, measured words, fighting a
stutter.

“W-what Juh has t-t-t-to say, he
will say himself. Muh-muh-muh-Mis-kwa-m-macus w-w-w-ould save the Apache’s
lives and k-k-k-k-kill their souls. The Nuh-nuh-nuh-Nedni will fight to
k-k-k-keep both as long as they can.”

Juh’s people erupted into ecstatic
cheering, as bolstered by their leader’s voice as by his words. The Rider felt
a tear well up and run down Piishi’s cheek. Moses too had been a stammerer.

Misquamacus looked at last to Goyaałé.

Goyaałé, called by the Mexicans
Geronimo, who had been as Aaron to Juh’s Moses, folded his arms.

“If you ask me, it is better to ride
on an ass that carries me home than a horse that throws me,” he said. Then he
raised his arms and shouted. “What say the Bedonkohe?”

All the Apache raised their weapons
and roared and yipped their agreement. It resounded off the wall of gold, the
voice of a people who would not be led to death on a leash.

Misquamacus lowered his dripping
hands, a note of sorrow in his shadowed face.

Then the Rider/Piishi felt himself
grabbed from behind.

It was Inya, the leader of the
clanless Apache.

“Here is an Apache heart for the
god, Misquamacus,” he called, pressing a knife to Piishi’s throat.

Then, just as suddenly as he had
rose and seized Piishi, something large and heavy fell out of the dark sky and
landed with a wet crunch on the top of Inya’s head. The Rider felt hot blood
and brains spew out of Inya’s nose onto Piishi’s shoulders, felt his last
surprised breath puff out on the back of his neck as his grip slackened and he
sank to his knees.

The Rider/Piishi looked down. A
great stone had smashed Inya’s skull, and now protruded from the ruins of the
top of his head, as if God himself had dropped it from heaven squarely on the
outlaw.

The Rider/Piishi looked up for the
source.

Misquamacus saw them at the same
time, a row of colorful figures on the rocky lip of the canyon overlooking the
basin.

All of them turned as a white and
blue-clad figure with dark skin in the midst of the interlopers raised a ram’s
horn to his lips and blew a colossal blast that filled the basin. Then he
raised a wooden staff with a sling pouch dangling from its end over his head
and declared in a booming voice;

“WHO IS ON THE LORD’S SIDE?”

These were the words the Rider
heard. But simultaneously, he understood the figure, who was clearly Kabede,
speaking in Piishi’s tongue, in which he said, “WHO IS ON USEN’S SIDE?”

He also knew through Piishi, that
the five figures flanking Kabede on the rocks with elaborate headdresses,
painted bodies, faceless masks, and each with a pair of shining short swords
were the Gan. The Mountain Spirits Piishi had seen fall upon the
vaqueros.

“The
Gan have come to fight for us,”
Piishi thought.

The entire assembly stared at the
newcomers in apparent shock. The prostrating followers of Misquamacus lifted
their heads and looked back over their shoulders. Even Misquamacus, even
Nyarlathotep regarded them with naked awe.

As if in answer to Kabede, Lozen the
Chi’hine warrior woman drew out the Rider’s knife from her belt and flung it
over the heads of the worshipers. It flipped end over end, heavy as it was, and
landed with a wet thunk in the center of Misquamacus’ chest.

Misquamacus sighed and staggered as
blood ran down his belly. He glared at Lozen, standing defiantly.

“Bitch,” he muttered, blood
trickling from between his lips.

He pointed at her.

“Kill them,” he ordered. Then he
pointed up at Kabede and the figures on the rocks. “Kill them all!”

Misquamacus’ army sprang almost as
one to their feet.

Kabede took the Rod of Aaron in one
hand, held it back over his shoulder, and brandished the sharpened end of it
like a spear. Then he flung it down.

It whistled over all their heads,
and landed with a smashing sound in the mirror face of Nyarlathotep.

The creature reared back and
screamed, a sound like rusty nails dragged across glass.

The wolf men of the Ishaks and the
Tonkawas were the fastest. They sprang toward the rocks and bounded up the
sheer stone, claws scrabbling, digging into the rock like pitons. Bloody Jaw
and Moon Cloud led the charge, baying madly. They raced on all fours straight
up at Kabede. In response, the five Gans leapt as one from the rocks and came
down full force on the wolf men, tumbling all the way back down with them,
powerful, painted legs wrapped around their lupine necks, hacking and hewing
into them with their short swords with no regard for their own safety. Blood
flew into the air.

Kabede looked in wonder and
confusion, then began to climb down.

“He
doesn’t see them,”
the Rider thought in wonder.
“Kabede doesn’t see The Gan.”

“
No
,”
said Piishi. “
He looks with a white man’s
eyes.”

The Pawnee and the outlaw Apache
took up their weapons and rushed Vittorio and the others. A few shots were
fired, but the fighting was soon too close. Again clubs and axes rose and fell
and screams were heard, but not the pitiful wailing of slaughtered victims.
These were the war cries and death calls of warriors clashing. The unarmed
reservation bands fought with their hands and belt knives, and soon had
captured weapons which they turned on their enemies.

Slim Ghost and his skinwalkers alone
did not join the battle. They gathered into a circle and faced each other.
Words were muttered, which the Rider/Piishi could not discern. Soon they too
were transforming, each man in his own way. Some grew tall, their limbs
elongating, swelling with muscle and hair and bursting from their clothes. But
they were not werewolves, like the Ishaks and the Tonkawas. They resembled
ape-like perversities of men now, every tooth jagged as no animal’s maw was,
and yet their bulging yellow eyes remained cunning and full of their former
malevolent intelligence. They turned as one outward, and fished in their magic
bags for dark implements.

Whatever they were about to do, the
Rider knew they had to be stopped before they completed it. But there were
other threats. Misquamacus staggered, but pulled the big Bowie knife out of his
chest and let it fall.

He drew out his rhombus again and
began to twirl it in a strange pattern, mumbling at the night sky.

Nyarlathotep had been dealt a
grievous blow by Kabede, and his physical form seemed to be deteriorating. He
was sinking back into the ground, the sand painting in which he stood distorting,
turning into a dripping mud, a sinkhole. But the staff was sinking with him,
sliding into some space behind his shattered face.

Something in what the old shaman was
doing was reacting with the form of Nyarlathotep. The black, stinking smoke
that had been leaking out from around the glass face was pouring out of the
hole the staff had opened now, and it seemed to be drawn into Misquamacus’
rhombus like a cyclone, the smoke twisting and funneling up into the sky.

“He
calls something else
,” Piishi guessed.

“You
may be right,”
the Rider thought.
“The
skinwalkers or the staff?”

“We
have no weapon
,” Piishi reasoned.

“The
staff then.”

The Rider/Piishi ran through the
battle, ducking blows and suffering accidental slashes from the preoccupied
combatants. The baying of the Ishaks and the Tonkawas had gone from a snarling
in the air to a howling and yelping as of a pack of hound dogs sustaining a
beating from an irate master. The Gans were doing their part, no doubt. Then he
heard a rifle crashing in rapid succession, and he knew Kabede had reached the
bottom of the rock wall and was blasting away with his chain rifle. Hopefully
Belden’s shooting lessons would pay off.

Finally they burst from the fray and
reached the base of the stone upon which Misquamacus had climbed once more to
summon his new threat.

Nyarlathotep was waist high, its
melting head tilted back. The end of the Rod of Aaron was only just visible in
its face now, sinking not into the earth, but into some void behind its face.