Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (8 page)

The soldiers were muttering, shaking
their heads, looking nervously at each other. The Rider saw Jacobi’s astral
body strolling away from the dead man, smiling.

“What the hell is going on?” Milton
exclaimed as he pressed cotton to the dead man’s bloody head wound.

Mandrell, the sickly private the
Rider was covering with the Spencer, suddenly turned and leered at him, bug
eyed and grinning.

“
Ich
warte auf dich, Reiter
.”

He turned and broke from the Rider’s
grasp, and ran full tilt at the stone wall of the guardhouse. He collided with
it face first with a bone crunching thud, leaving a bloody smudge on the wall.

Mandrell collapsed on his back, his
nose smashed, teeth and blood dribbling from his ruined mouth, eyes fluttering
in his head.

Jacobi’s astral form sat up from the
unconscious young man. He stood slowly and made a show of brushing at his
sleeves, then extended his arms outward in a gesture of exaggerated
expectation. He mouthed the words again, ‘
Ich
warte auf dich, Reiter
.’

“You won’t have to wait much longer,”
the Rider promised.

“What happened?” Kabede pressed.

Through his lenses, the Rider
watched Jacobi mosey over to the line of men. He stopped before each one, as if
inspecting them, and looked back at the Rider, leering ominously.

“He’s goading me. Threatening to
kill more.”

“He is baiting you,” Kabede warned.

“I know, but what can I do?”

Jacobi put his etheric pistol to the
forehead of a young trooper and pulled the trigger. There was a brilliant red
flash from the muzzle and the man physically jolted. In the
Yenne Velt
, a great blue wound opened in
the soldier’s head, spilling light, and Jacobi dove right in, his form
contorting and shrinking to conform to the other man’s proportions.

The Rider could see him, like a faint
outline superimposed on the trooper. The man blinked his eyes, shook his head,
and assumed Jacobi’s malevolent expression. He looked around at his comrades.

“No!” the Rider shouted. He pointed
at the corporal. “Restrain that man.”

It was too late. The trooper put his
side arm to the back of the head of the man in front of him and blew a wide
furrow through the top half of his skull. As the dead man sank to his knees,
his face a mass of blood, the men on either side of the trooper grabbed his
arms. One of them was Lieutenant Cord, who stared at the offending man in
disbelief.

The trooper didn’t struggle, but
threw back his head and giggled ecstatically.

“
Wie
viele männer, Reiter?Wie viele?“

How many more men indeed? The Rider
bit his lip.

Quincannon came rushing up, the
Rider’s gun belt over one shoulder, Kabede’s
shofar
under his arm.

“My God, what is happening?” Manx
stammered.

“Give them their stuff, Quincannon!”
Belden shouted.

The corporal came over to Kabede and
the Rider and held out their weapons and gear.

The Rider snatched his belt and
buckled it hastily on.

Kabede took his
shofar.

“You should prepare.”

“There’s no time,” the Rider
snapped.

No time for protective circles, no
time for ecstatic chants or consecrations. The Rider could slip easily into the
Yenne Velt
, but he would not be at
his full strength.

“Go then,” Kabede said, clapping him
on the shoulder. “Remember, today the soul is doubled.”

The Rider nodded, and with a heave
of his breath, his eyes rolled up and he fell forward into Kabede’s arms.

“Jesus!” said Belden. “Is he—”

“No,” said Kabede, pulling him back
into the guardhouse.

Taking advantage of Belden’s
distraction, Manx broke away from him and ducked behind Weeks.

“Shoot them down!” Manx yelled.

Weeks grinned and raised his pistol.
Belden backed away, his own pistol up, but Doctor Milton slapped Weeks’ hand
down.

“Belay that, sergeant.”

“What the hell are you doing,
Tobias?” Manx hollered. “You are a goddamned doctor. You are not in command
here.”

“Something’s going on here,” Milton
reasoned. “Something I can’t explain.”

“He’s right sir,” Cord chimed in,
struggling with the bucking trooper who had just murdered the man in front of
him. “Look.”

The man in question stopped
struggling, and he nodded his head emphatically, staring in the direction of
the man the African was dragging away.

“Ja.
Ja. Komm. Komm.
”

Then he jolted, stiff as a board,
just as he had just before he’d killed his comrade, and fell limp in their
arms.

“You recognize that voice?” Cord
said shrilly. “
Do you
?”

Manx shook his head, grinned, and
waved him off.

“You’re crazy.”

“No, he’s right!” Milton said. “My
God…it was that German who came here a week ago. You spoke to him at length,
Manx. It’s him.”

Belden turned away from Weeks and
Manx and the rest and ducked into the guardhouse, where Kabede had propped the
Rider’s seemingly lifeless body against the far wall of the hall.

“What’s going on? What can we do?”

Kabede stood.

“Stay with him. Protect him. And get
me a horse, and five of your best riders, with poles, about a meter and a half
long, if possible.”

“Where are you going?”

“I need the staff.”

Then he was gone.

The Rider’s body fell away into
Kabede’s arms, but his astral form remained standing in the swirling colors of
the
Yenne Velt
.

The Rider watched only for a moment
as Kabede dragged his body away.

He could still perceive the doings
and sounds of the material world as echoes and silver shadows around him. He
turned to where Cord and another man held the possessed corporal between them,
and saw Jacobi inhabiting his body, leering.

They saw each other in the same
moment.

“Yes. Yes. Come, come!” Jacobi
screamed, no longer in German, but in the universal telepathic language of the
Yenne Velt
.

The Rider drew his Volcanic pistol
and fired into the center of the corporal’s chest. The blue-white etheric blast
did nothing to the possessed man, but Jacobi was blown clear of his body and
fell sprawling a few feet behind.

The Rider levered his pistol and
stalked toward him, passing unnoticed through the crowd of soldiers and Belden.

Jacobi scrambled to his feet,
stunned, but mainly unhurt. A possessing body was a like a suit of armor to a
spirit. But now Jacobi was without that armor.

Killing Jacobi here wouldn’t lead
him to the others—to DeKorte and LeBouclier. Nor to Adon. It wouldn’t stop the
undead from overrunning them.

“Why’d you do it, Sword?” he said,
using Jacobi’s alias for the moment. “Why did you trade your life for your
soul?”

“I wasn’t coerced into The Creed,
Rider. When Adon came to Berlin, it wasn’t my life he offered me.”

“The Creed. Is that what Adon’s
calling his bunch? What did he offer then?” He knew the answer.

Jacobi grinned and got slowly to his
feet. The Rider tensed, but Jacobi’s pistol was in its holster. It was not a
Volcanic as he’d first thought. It was lighter, thinner, more elegant.

“Godhood, Rider. In a world without
your God.”

“
My
God now, is it? I see you traded in your namesake.” The Rider nodded to Jacobi’s
armament.

Jacobi looked down at his pistol.

“The sword? Yes, it became
impractical. I took a page from your book, Rider.”

Ironic, the Rider thought,
considering he had gotten the idea for a mystic pistol from his encounter with
Jacobi.

“Perhaps you could settle an
argument for me,” Jacobi said. “Why did you choose the Volcanic? Such a slow,
clumsy weapon.”

“The surface area. I couldn’t fit
twenty two seals on a revolver.”

Jacobi smiled thinly.

“Just as I thought. Those pistols
are quite hard to obtain, you know, even here. I had to settle for this,” he
said, gesturing to his own gun. “A Venditti.”

The Rider motioned with his pistol
barrel, implicit.

“Hands,” he warned.

Jacobi held his hands out as before,
placating. “And so what happens now?”

“Where’s Adon?”

“Who’s the black you’re traveling
with?” Jacobi countered in answer.

“No one,” said the Rider. “Just a
man I met on the trail.”

“Just a man who came to your aide
against three bounty hunters,” said Jacobi, irritated. “Just a man who passed
through
Sheol
at your side and lived.
Just a man who held Lilith’s brats at bay with a shepherd’s staff. Who is he?
Someone we missed? Not one of the Sons of the Essenes surely. Some kind of
arel
hedge wizard?”

“Where’s Adon?” the Rider repeated.

“Give us the scroll you carry.”

“Why? What is it? What does Adon
want with it?”

“The scroll, Rider. Or every man
dies.”

“You’ll kill them all anyway. Maybe
I’ll give this scroll of yours to the fire.”

“I don’t think so. You want to know
what it is too badly.”

“The years have blunted my curiosity.”

“Then,” Jacobi sighed, “you had
better
shoot
.”

With a flick of his outstretched
wrist, a small silvery pistol jumped into his hand, propelled by some
accordion-like mechanism up his sleeve.

The Rider felt a hornet sting in his
right bicep, and fell back firing.

Belden winced as his unconscious
friend’s right arm began to spontaneously leak blood like some kind of
miraculous spring, spreading out across the dark sleeve.

He reached under the coat, traced a
shallow wound in the upper arm, and came back with blood on his fingertips.
When had this happened? He hadn’t had the wound when Kabede set him down.

Belden got to his feet and turned to
go outside when two privates dragged in the unconscious trooper who had killed
the last man and dumped him into the far cell, slamming the door shut behind
him.

“Easy with that man!” Belden
enjoined.

“Easy my ass!” said one of the
privates, then stiffened a little when he saw it was Belden. “I’m sorry, sir,
but he murdered Jaffray for no reason.” He cast a glance at the man in the
cell. “He can rot in there.”

Belden watched the two men touch the
brims of their hats and exit. If somebody didn’t do something soon, these men
would be at each other’s throats. The murderer in question, Private Bigelow,
had been well-liked. Now the men were ready to lynch him.

He rushed outside.

Kabede had hoisted himself onto a
bay horse, his staff now in hand, and the men Belden had selected to help him
were turning in place on their mounts like poor knights, clothes poles tucked under
their arms like makeshift lances.

Weeks had a hold of Kabede’s bridle
and Manx was yelling up at him as the private who had locked up Bigelow
approached and handed him back the guardhouse keys.

“Get down off that horse.”

“Let me go, you fool!” Kabede yelled
down to Weeks.

Weeks cocked his pistol and cursing,
angled it up at Kabede.

Belden forgot about Joe for the
moment and hurried over, laying Sunderland’s gun upside the back of Weeks’
thick skull. The sergeant’s legs wobbled and he fell on his face.

Belden kicked his pistol away.

“Quincannon!” yelled Manx. “Shoot
Mister Belden down. Now!”

Quincannon looked down the barrel of
his pistol at Belden, but as soon as their eyes met his own flitted away from
the former sergeant major’s withering look. He lowered the muzzle again.

Manx snarled at Quincannon in
frustration. “Mister Cord. I want these men under arrest again.”

Cord shook his head.

“No, sir.”

“Right,” Manx said, folding his
arms. “You’re out of your mind, Belden, if you think I’m going to let some wild
nigger out of the desert get on a horse and command my troops.”

“They can help, Manx. You want to
see more of your troops bite down on their own guns?”

The men gathered around murmured.
Manx said nothing, just coughed and dabbed at his perpetually runny nose. He
stalked off, kicking the dirt in frustration.

Belden looked up at Kabede. “All
yours.”

Kabede nodded, and held up his
staff.

“Three men ride counterclockwise
around the perimeter, the other three, clockwise. Drag your staves along the
ground like this,” he said, scraping the earth with the sharp point of his rod.
“I need an unbroken circle drawn around the post. Understand? It must be
unbroken.”