Starfist: Lazarus Rising (18 page)

No threats, no promises, he beguiles her most artfully.
That
is the challenge I am looking for in my consort, Herten.

"Go out and find me a woman who hates me, Herten, and I will do the rest!"

CHAPTER 13

She had survived for weeks now on the edible aquatic plants and invertebrate creatures she'd found in the streams and bogs as she worked her way gradually southward. She'd been left for dead as her people evacuated the underground bunker in panic. Stunned by an exploding bomb, she awoke to find herself completely alone and defenseless in that hostile alien landscape. Since then she'd traveled mostly at night, and lay quietly in the water during the daylight hours, using her gills to breathe. She had conducted some forays onto land in the night, to reconnoiter, and once had been sent scuttling back into the water by the sudden flashing and banging of weapons. Otherwise, she encountered no threats on her silent odyssey. She had no idea if any of the other True People had survived the final assault on their refuge.

Bred to serve her masters, she knew nothing of the world where she was lost and abandoned, neither of its climate nor of the sentient creatures who inhabited it, except that they had defeated her people and, she assumed, were hunting her kind to death.

Her own survival was of no importance to her. It was the female's duty to sacrifice her life, without question, without remorse, when called upon to do so. But her condition was worsening each day. Soon she would have no choice but to stop, seek refuge, and rest.

Toward dawn one morning after many days travel, she found a streamlet emptying into a creek. It looked inviting. The streamlet was protected on both sides by high limestone walls and was heavily vegetated, so it would be protected from the weather and inquisitive eyes. Near where it emptied into the creek it became marshy and overgrown with water plants, an ideal spot to take refuge. The creek flowed slowly south, a full meter in depth, offering her both cover and forage. She would stay there for a while. She burrowed deep into the comforting mud and rested.

Later in the night she froze in terror at noises coming from farther up the small canyon. The noisy creatures did not come down to where she lay hidden, and as the sky began to lighten, they left. An acrid smell came to her along the surface of the water flowing nearby. She guessed it was the result of the creatures' vacating their bowels into the streamlet. It soon dissipated, and as the sun climbed higher, she was at last all alone and undisturbed in the little delta at the canyon mouth. She burrowed into the mud and lay on her side with her arms stretched out before her so that only the gill slits under one arm projected, slightly, above the mud's surface.

She sighed. Her fate was in the hands of the gods. She had no choice but to stay where she was. Her time had come. She could not leave until her child had been birthed.

"The growing season is well-advanced, Charles. We have to get in some crops and later prepare for the harvest or we won't have food for ourselves or feed for our cattle. We have to take a chance and start farming in the daylight."

"I understand, Zechariah. As long as our people remain alert while they're exposed and go to ground if anything is spotted—well, we have no choice, we'll have to chance it. I'll cut back a bit on the training, and we can adjust the watch schedules to give the farmers a break. It's been weeks now since Emwanna came here, and so far no alarm. Maybe we'll be left alone. Maybe the Army of the Lord and those monsters are too busy fighting it out."

"Damn them both," Zechariah muttered.

"Zechariah, today I'll take some of the women down to the draw and let them dry-fire our weapons. And another thing. We've been on constant alert now for weeks, and the edge is beginning to wear off our alertness. Nobody's fault, but you can't stay a hundred percent alert all the time."

"I know. Some of the watchers are beginning to doze off on duty."

"So let's cut back on the watches. Let's maintain full watch at night but keep only one station during the day. We can put someone up on that ridge to the north of town where he'll have a 360-degree surveillance arc. Releasing the daytime watch shifts will also give you more help in the fields. We want to be sure when they're out there in the open that they remain alert for any threat. If something does develop and they can't make it back here, they should go to ground and stay there." Zechariah nodded in agreement. "And one final thing," Charles continued. "I'll also take Spencer Maynard to assist. Spencer's turning into a good soldier."

Zechariah smiled. "He's infatuated with Comfort, you know."

"Infatuation? Yeah, lot of that going around." Charles grinned. "Zechariah, I have no designs on your daughter—"

"I know, I know." But Zechariah Brattle also knew he would not object to having Charles as his son-in-law.

"Speaking of Comfort, Zechariah, let me take her with us today too. She's experienced on the shot rifle and can teach the other women how it operates. It'll give her back some of her confidence. You know, Zechariah, I
had
to relieve her of her duties after she deserted her post that night on watch."

"I would not have asked you to be my military deputy, Charles, if I didn't have every confidence in your ability. I have supported all your decisions because they were the right ones. Very well, then. Today I will work in my own fields. I'll give orders for those who stay in the village to keep movement outside to a minimum."

When Charles had conducted an inventory of the ammunition supply for the shot rifles, he'd found they had only a hundred rounds per weapon. That did not leave much for practice. He had designated four reliable men as alternate riflemen, in case he or Amen Judah became casualties or couldn't use the rifles for some other reason.

He'd allowed the four men five rounds each for live fire exercises, just enough to familiarize them with the weapons' operation in actual firing. Everyone else in New Salem, men and women and children over the age of twelve, were taught the weapons drill in dry-fire exercises.

As to the two acid-throwers, as near as anyone could figure, the tanks were more than half full of liquid. But since nobody knew how much of the stuff the tanks held or how quickly they'd be depleted in actual use, Charles had decided that except for occasional testing to see if they still worked, they would not practice with them. The men who'd taken them from the enemy dead were allowed to keep the devices.

Charles merely assigned each an alternate to train with the primaries.

How to arm the remaining men and women was a question unanswerable until Zechariah came up with the solution: spears and bows and arrows. "The Israelites of old used them with great effectiveness," he argued, "and as children we all played with light bows and arrows, so construction is not beyond our capability. There's a tree that grows in this vicinity whose wood is ideal for shaping bows, and we have plenty of sheet metal for arrowheads and light plastic we can use for fletching."

They made the bowstrings of ultrastrong filaments found in the abandoned electrical shop. Under Zechariah's instruction—since Charles knew nothing about bows and arrows—even the smallest person on the defense force proved capable of burying an arrowhead in a tree trunk from a distance of a hundred meters. They also made well-balanced spears a trained man could throw with accuracy and make deadly impact from a distance of nearly fifty meters.

"These are weapons made for close-quarter fighting," Charles remarked, "effective enough when backed up by the acid-throwers and our three firearms in an ambush situation, providing the enemy gives us a chance to ambush him. But if we come under a serious, concerted attack, our best defense will be in flight through the caves."

Charles had been in the caves often enough to know the main passages, but he was unfamiliar with the myriad grottoes and side tunnels that honeycombed the vast complex. In fact, despite nearly two centuries of visiting the caves, the people of New Salem had never bothered to map them accurately, and some areas remained unexplored. Even so, as an emergency escape route from the village, the caves were ideal. No enemy could track the refugees through them, and even with their slight firepower, the people of New Salem could easily defend themselves against pursuers long enough to be well-hidden within the caverns' depths.

The fort Charles had constructed in the canyon was more a series of traps, obstacles, and defensive positions blocking the north end of the canyon than a structure designed to withstand a siege. He had trained the villagers to defend the approaches to the caves from those defensive positions. The lighter weapons—bows and spears—would be closer to the town, and the more deadly weapons at the rear of the complex, so as an infiltrator progressed into them, the resistance would become stronger and take longer to overcome. The men in the forward positions were trained to fall back through the strong points behind them.

The maneuvers were designed to delay an enemy, not to stop him; to give the villagers enough time to get into the caves and disperse.

But Charles felt they had already drilled enough in the defensive mode. The day was hot and oppressive, especially under the heavy tree cover, and most of the people were tired, so he called for a long break after lunch.

"Spence, you and Comfort stay with the group here. Rest or resume training, as you see fit, but Colleen and I are going exploring for a while."

Comfort made a wry face, but Spencer grinned widely. He couldn't think of anything more pleasant than an afternoon around Comfort.

"Don't you worry, Charles," Hannah Flood said, "I'll keep my eye on these two so they don't do their own explorations." She winked at Charles, telling him she didn't believe that he and the redhead were going to do any personal exploring. But Comfort glared after the pair as they clambered up a short slope into the mouth of one of the openings.

Just inside the mouth of the cave entrance, Charles and Colleen paused to rest.

Both had recovered from the ordeal of their trek from the prison pens, but neither had yet completely recovered their endurance. "Being laid up so long and sick on top of that knocked the stuffing out of me," Charles remarked, wiping perspiration off his brow.

"Me too," Colleen agreed. She popped a glow ball. The cave there was ten meters high, the floor covered with a thick layer of dust in which could be seen the occasional footprints no doubt made by generations of New Salem's youth. The ceiling and walls were stained black from years of campfires. A thin cloud of fine dust rose about their knees as they trudged farther back into the cave. After a few meters the floor rose and the going got tougher as they picked their way slowly over centuries of rock falls from the roof above them. Their footfalls echoed hollowly as the tunnel widened into a vast cavern.

Several side tunnels led off from the chamber. Arrows pointing the correct way had been chiseled into the walls. "Let's take this one," Charles said, and led Colleen into a branching tunnel that was clearly off the main path. She followed him in, breathing heavily, and put her hand on his shoulder. The tunnel widened after a few meters. "Let's rest here for a bit. Cool, isn't it?"

She seated herself beside him on a rock ledge. "We've been through a lot together, Charles," she said.

"Yep. You're a good soldier, Colleen." He sighed and stretched out his legs.

"Is that
all
I am to you, Charles?" She put the glow ball on a rock projecting out from the opposite wall. It cast a mellow orange glow over them.

"That's a lot."

She moved closer to him. He put his arm around her shoulders. They sat silently.

"Goddamn," Charles whispered at last.

"Charles..." At first the stones on the floor stuck painfully into Colleen's back but after a few moments she didn't notice them anymore. They forgot everything—where they were, what they'd been through, their worries about the future, and even their frustration at not being able to remember much of their former lives.

Suddenly Colleen gasped. Frantically, she extricated herself from under Charles and scuttled up against the wall. She drew her knees tightly to her chest, eyes firmly closed, and began to scream.

"Jesus! What is it?" Charles asked.

Colleen pointed to the wall behind him. Charles whirled and stared. In the dim light projected by the glow ball, a tiny, lizardlike creature clung to the wall, head up, huge eyes staring at the pair of humans on the tunnel floor.

"It's only one of those crawly things, Colleen. It's harmless."

"I—I remember now, Charles, I remember!"
She broke into tears and began to shake violently.

Charles moved to her, put his arms around her and held her head close to his chest, murmuring soothing words. Gradually, her shaking subsided and Colleen began to get control of herself. The little creature scuttled up the wall and disappeared in the shadows above them.

"That little thing reminded me of
them
," she said. "I'm sorry, Charles, but... but..."

she shook her head sorrowfully.

"Tell me about it." He held her tight.

The devils attacked the convent in the early morning hours, before matins, she told him. The nuns shrieked in fear as they were dragged from their cells. The devils lined up the terrified women, who were shivering half naked in the courtyard, and examined each roughly. When the Mother Superior tried to intervene, a devil sprayed her with acid. As she flopped about in agony, her flesh dissolving, the nuns begged God to save them, and meanwhile the creatures' inspection continued. Then Colleen was dragged out of the lineup—she could never figure out why, unless it was because of her red hair—and the other women were liberally doused with acid and left where they lay, their dissolving flesh staining the flagstones. Two other nuns hid themselves in the septic pool beneath an outbuilding adjacent to the living quarters.

The devils took Colleen with them when they left.

"I was a novice in the Order of St. Sulpicia," Colleen continued. "My name is Colleen Starbuck; my confirmation name was Helena. I was elated to be giving myself body and soul to Christ. Now that's all over with. I can never go back there."