Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (17 page)

He lifted it to his eyes, turned it
over, and felt the tiny symbol carved into it. The same as on the parchment in
the dead woman’s mouth.

He grimaced, and stuck it between
his own teeth, mentally asking forgiveness for having to resort to this.

He turned and faced the things.

“Stop!”

The liquid sound of their movement
ceased. The hulking wreck of Gershom froze. Even the commotion at the post,
which had been constant in the background, the hammering of hands on barricaded
doors, the plaintive moans. It all ceased.

He worked the bone about in his
mouth, thinking. It was awful. It tasted of dust and was still wet and smooth
from DeKorte’s saliva.

“What’d you do, Joe?” Belden said,
incredulous. “Why ain’t they killin’ us?”

The Rider stooped and retrieved the
spice box and the candle.

“Have you got a match?”

Belden shook his head.

“No.”

“Never mind,” said the Rider. He
went to a nearby grave marker that had caught the brunt of one of the blasts
and held the wick of the candle against a small flame still clinging to life
there.

It caught, and he set the candle
aright in the soft earth.

There was no wine. It would have to
do.

He put the box under his nose and
inhaled the scent of the cloves within. “
Barukh
ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha-olam, bo’re minei b’samim,”
he intoned. It
was the
Havdala
blessing over the
spices.

He lay the box aside and stared at
the light of the braided Havdala candle.

“Blessed are you, Adonai our God,
Ruler of the universe, Creator of the fire’s light.”

Then he knelt before the sputtering
candle, and turned his hands, staring at the light in his fingernails.
Satisfied that he could tell nail from flesh, he reflected on the Midrash which
told how Adam had lamented being expelled from the Garden, and saw that he was
in darkness. The Lord had caused life-giving fire to spring from his
fingernails.

“Blessed are You, Lord, our God,
King of the universe, Who distinguishes between the sacred and the profane,
between light and dark, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day
and the six days of labor. Blessed are You, Lord, Who distinguishes between the
sacred and the profane.”

As he finished the words of the
final blessing, he saw the light flare upon his fingernails, as if ten stars
had come to rest there.

Belden took a step back.

The finger bone in the Rider’s mouth
turned to ash and crumbled from his lips, leaving a bitter taste. He spat.

The remains of Gershom sagged,
slumped, and finally fell to the ground.

On the parade ground, Kabede had
been fighting his way through the dead with Hale clinging to his side, dropping
the creatures with every touch of the Rod until suddenly they had all of them
stopped in place. Moments later they fell in unison like an army of marionettes
whose disgusted puppeteer had cut their strings and left them.

The staff throbbed in Kabede’s fist
momentarily, and he turned toward the cemetery where he observed a flash of
brief, brilliant light in the night.

Then all was quiet, but for the last
of the soldiers cautiously emerging from where they’d barricaded themselves in.

The garrison of Camp Eckfeldt now
consisted of exactly five enlisted men, leaving the farrier, Hale, the
senior-most private, in command.

In the light of day, at first sight
of the potpourri of dead littering the post, he promptly decided to abandon the
post.

Already vultures from all around the
valley had descended on the place, and it seemed as if they would make a home
here.

The Rider and Kabede resolved to
remain behind and bury as many of the dead as they could identify. It was a
thankless and disgusting labor that would take days.

For their part however, they felt
the burden of obligation to every corpse on the ground. Had they not steered
through this valley, none of them would have been there.

“I’ll help,” Belden sighed, though
it pained him to say, more even than the grazed shoulder. “As much as you
figure you owe them, I guess I owe you. For savin’ us and more.”

“No one would’ve needed saving if
not for us,” said the Rider. For him the heavy regret of Varruga Tanks was
compounded now.

“That’s just one way of thinking,
Joe,” Belden said.

“What other way do you see it?”

“These people died, sure. But we got
two of those bastards. And if only three of ‘em can do this kinda damage then
two out of three ain’t bad. Not even half.”

Gans and Jacobi were dead, yes. But
DeKorte, possibly the worst of them, had escaped. Probably Weeks’ dynamite had
caused him to inadvertently lose his magic bone in the dark. Fearing a loss of
control, he had fled into the dark, likely back to Adon with the news of their
failure.

The Rider’s immediate instinct was
to track DeKorte, follow him to Adon, but he was tired. So tired. He couldn’t
bring himself to suggest it.

First they caught as many of the horses
as they could. Not surprisingly, the Rider found his onager lingering very near
the stables, the ancient scroll still secure in the parfleche on its saddle.

“That mule of yours is loyal as a
dog,” Belden exclaimed, when he saw the Rider leading the shaggy animal back.

“It’s an onager, Dick,” the Rider
answered. “We’ve been through a lot together.” He scratched between the beast’s
ears and it nickered appreciatively. “Haven’t we?”

“Well I don’t guess anybody else
would want it,” Belden muttered, curling his lip at the shabby looking
monstrosity with the mostly missing ear.

Hale and the other troopers cut a
few ponies out for themselves, packed them with provisions, and said their
goodbyes.

“Looks like we got the run of this
place for awhile now,” Belden observed as they watched Hale and the others make
their way down the trail. “I don’t think any of those boys’ll be reporting
this.”

“What about you?” the Rider asked. “No
evidence of a court martial now. That means you’re still a sergeant major. You
could report it all yourself.”

“I don’t guess I want to be the one
doing that either,” Belden admitted. “No, I think the Army and me are through.”

“So, now what will you do with the
rest of your life?” Kabede asked.

“That’s a good question,” was all Belden
said.

They reburied Gershom’s remains
first in the post cemetery, and this time Kabede said the
Kaddish
over the grave.

“If this boy’s body was used by the
Creed, then that proves that Adon is in league with Lilith and her
shedim
,” Kabede observed.

“Yes,” the Rider agreed. “Lucifer
didn’t lie.”

“Not about that at least,” Kabede
said cautiously.

They worked through the days,
digging and toting corpses, scraping remains into shallow holes and beating
back buzzards. At the end of it, it would take more than a
mikvah
to cleanse the dirt of it all from their souls.

Kabede realized this when the time
came to bury Gans.

“I’ll take care of it,” the Rider
volunteered.

He went to the guardhouse where Gans
had been left suspended in the congealed insect guts. He took no shovel or
tools.

“Let us help you!” Belden called. “You’re
gonna need somethin’ to get him off the ceiling.”

But the Rider waved them both off.

“He’s punishing himself pretty hard,
ain’t he?” Belden said to Kabede, as they watched him go inside. By now they
had broken up the wood of the collapsed buildings and were busy fashioning
markers for the men of the garrison. The zombie fragments they had pushed into
a mass grave and marked as ‘Unknown Civilians.’

“Yes,” Kabede said. “He blames himself
for a great deal.”

“This Adon fella he’s after. It
sounds like killin’ him’s the right thing to do. But do you think it’ll be
enough to put it all right for Joe?”

Kabede looked at Belden. “I don’t
know.”

Moments later, the Rider came out of
the guardhouse, Gans’ repeating rifle in his hand.

He tossed it to Kabede as he got
close.

“We’re going to teach you to shoot,”
he said, and walked past them to the barracks without another word.

“What about Gans?” Kabede asked.

Then he saw the smoke billowing from
the open doorway, and the first of the tongues of fire stretching out of the
barred windows, lapping thirstily at the cool morning air.

Crack-crack-crack-crack
went the chain rifle in Kabede’s hands, and three of the four empty DuPont
tins arranged on the rocks jumped in the air and clattered to the ground.

“You’re getting better,” Dick Belden
said to the Ethiopian as he set the French repeater down.

Since their encounter with three of
Adon’s Creed, the Rider had taken the time to tutor Kabede in extraplanar
fighting, both of them attempting the same three dimensional movements in the
Yenne Velt
Jacobi had used. Those
lessons were mainly exercises in willpower. It was Dick Belden who had been
giving him a foundation in actual physical marksmanship. He had never even held
a rifle prior to his instruction.

“Stones?” Kabede asked with a bright
grin.

“Awright, sure,” Belden said. He
reached down and picked up a wedge-shaped stone. He was a champion rock
thrower. Kabede much admired his prowess. In fact, he was a decent man for a
dohone.

Belden tossed the stone in the air a
few times, watching it turn end over end, then hurled it without warning. The
stone smashed with pinpoint accuracy into the base of the can and sent it
flipping three times up in the air. It landed miraculously aright on the rock,
dented, but otherwise as if it hadn’t been touched.

“Shiiit,” Belden chuckled.

Kabede laughed.

“Let me show you how we do that back
in my country,” Kabede said. He picked up the Rod of Aaron which had been stuck
point down in the dirt beside him, and fished in his robes for something.

“Where’s your country again, Kabede?
Africa?”

“In Africa, yes. Ethiopia.”

“But you’re a Jew.”

“My people are Bet Y’srael,
descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.”

He produced a braided sling and
leather pocket, ran it through a small hole in the head of the staff and tied
it off.

“Does that make you some kinda
royalty?”

“No,” Kabede laughed.

The sling affixed to the staff, he
scanned the ground, found a rock about the size of his fist, and cradled it in
the sling pocket.

He took the staff in both hands, put
it to his shoulder, and lunged.

The big rock arced high into the
air. When it came down, it smashed the can flat.

Belden whistled.

“Well you’re sure a prince at that.
Hey let me try.!”

He reached for the staff, but Kabede
frowned and held it from him.

“What’s the idea?” Belden scowled. “I
only wanna try it.”

“Forgive me please, Dick,” Kabede
said. “But this staff is not for you.”

“Not for me? That old
ju-ju
stick?”

“Please. You don’t understand,”
Kabede said. He drove the pointed end of the staff into the dirt and stepped
back. “Go ahead. Take it.”

Belden eyed Kabede weirdly, then
reached out to pluck the staff out of the earth. It didn’t budge. He grunted
with effort, tried two hands. Nothing.

“I don’t get it,” Belden said.

“I told you,” Kabede said.

“Jewish hoodoo,” Belden scoffed,
shaking his head, but eyeing the strangely carved staff with new respect.

“Hoodoo?” came the Rider’s voice.

He was walking over in his white
shirtsleeves, the gaggle of medallions and wards draped around his neck
twinkling in the noonday sun, a rifle boot under his arm. His black trousers
were tucked into a pair of brand new cavalry boots taken from the stores. He
wasn’t the pale scarecrow he had been when he’d first arrived at Camp Eckfeldt.
Four weeks in the sun with all the provisions he wanted had done him good,
filled out the hollow spaces on his cheeks.

“Yeah,” Belden said grinning at the
sight of his old friend. “I call it Jewdoo.”

The Rider smiled. Belden was
recovering too. His shoulder was unbound, and his hair and beard, shorn in
preparation for a military discharge that had never happened, had begun to grow
back. It was not the wild bushy growth it had been in their days with the 2nd
Colorado Cavalry, but he no longer looked like a criminal. He had taken his
pick of civilian clothes from what had been left behind at the post, as well.
His red and white striped blouse had belonged to the late Lieutenant Colonel
Manx. His nankeen trousers had been a private’s. Only the light colored planter’s
hat and the blue wool sack coat, now stripped of its sergeant major’s chevrons,
were his.