Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (9 page)

The other cavalrymen looked at each
other, doubtful.

“Do you understand?” Kabede repeated.

“Answer him!” Belden ordered.

They each nodded, and some murmured
in the affirmative.

“When you’ve ridden around and met
again, go ten feet in and inscribe a second circle. Go now!” Kabede yelled.

The riders spurred their horses and
set out to do their task.

“Meet me in the center when you’ve
finished,” he called after them.

Kabede wheeled about.

Belden squatted by the body of
Davies, and plucked up Kabede’s curved knife from the corpse’s belt.

“Hey, Kabede.”

Kabede glanced back, and caught the
gilded knife as Belden tossed it to him.

“What’re you going to do?”

Kabede tucked the knife into his
sash.

“All that I can. You must trust me.
What of the Rider?”

“Bleeding,” Belden said. “I don’t
see how—”

“Tend to him. If he dies, more will
follow him.”

Kabede slapped the rump of his horse
with the rod and went galloping off like some wild Arabian Nights fairytale.

Belden felt a hand on his sleeve and
turned to see Cord standing there.

“What if we order the men to disarm?”
the battered lieutenant suggested. “It might buy them some time, if…if it
happens again.”

“That’s a good idea,” Belden
conceded. “Start with Weeks. When he wakes up he’ll shoot me if he has a gun.
See if you can get the rest of them to go for it. And try to keep an eye on
Manx.”

Cord nodded.

“I’ll try to get them all back in
their barracks too.”

“No, best leave them out in the open
where everybody can see everybody.”

“Alright.” Cord half turned, and
Belden went to look for Milton, but the lieutenant called to him. “Belden.”

“What?”

“I’m…sorry…for that boy that died.”

“That’s good to know,” Belden said.
He meant it. Cord might not be the stupid sycophant he’d taken him for.

Cord went off to wrangle Manx.

Belden found Doc Milton kneeling
over the unconscious Weeks, fanning himself with his hat.

“How’s he?”

“As if you cared,” Milton grinned. “He’ll
be alright.” He rose, and coughed into his sleeve.

“
You
alright?”

“Some kind of fever or a flu. I’m
not sure what.”

“Probably caught it from Manx,”
Belden said.

“Could be.”

“I’ve got a patient for you take a
look at, Doc,” Belden said, walking toward the guardhouse.

Milton replaced his hat

“That’s what I’m here for.”

In the
Yenne Velt
, mystic blasts of blue-white and scarlet streaked back
and forth as the two astral combatants traded shots. There was no cover to
preserve them, only their own quickness. They were not more than eighteen or
nineteen feet apart at any given moment, and were firing wildly, Jacobi with
his Venditti pistol and the Rider with his Volcanic.

Scant seconds had passed, but to the
Rider the fight seemed eternal. He did not know what the nature of Jacobi’s
magic was. It seemed to be based on the same practices of the Essenes, but
somehow negative in nature. The color of his weapon’s discharges was one
indication of this—it was the same crimson hue as the lightning the Canaanite
Hayim Cardin had been able to summon from his fingertips. If it was some kind
of Outer God magic, who knew what it would do to him?

Sheardown had employed the same
tools, and had disrupted his ethereal horse. At least he knew his own shooting
wasn’t in vain, unless Jacobi knew some form of protection Sheardown hadn’t.
The Rider had dispatched Sheardown in the
Yenne
Velt
, but only after his body had died in the material world. He still wasn’t
sure what the effect of his weapon would be on an astral form. It was designed
to disrupt the focused will of a spirit, and thus destabilize it. On human
souls it had the power to stun their consciousness, allowing him to pass into
and possess physical forms, just as Jacobi had been doing. But he had only
fought one other astral traveler in the
Yenne
Velt
with his Volcanic, and the question hadn’t been answered in that
instance.

Astral bodies weren’t subject to the
same physical limitations as their material counterparts of course. With
training they could react somewhat faster than thought, as the mechanism of
muscles and synapses were no longer in play to slow down the progression from
intent to action. It was possible to dodge gunfire here, as they were both
doing. The relative slowness of their lever action pistols helped.

Jacobi was amazingly skilled. He was
a ferocious opponent, feinting and diving and executing impossible ballet-like
aerial leaps as he skipped between the Rider’s attacks. It was an intimidating
display of power. He seemed to be giving his etheric form over to the buffeting
astral winds that always blew in this realm. These currents were strong, and
could tear an untrained will apart. It took years of training just to be able
to stand and remain in the
Yenne Velt
.
But Jacobi seemed to be
riding
the
winds.

It was an incredibly dangerous
undertaking, almost as dangerous as his forced suicides had been. The Rider
wondered if it was something Adon had taught him. The last time they’d fought,
years ago, Jacobi had been just as formidable but not nearly so reckless.

The Rider had never faced an enemy
in this manner, one who had embraced the lack of physical constraints in the
Yenne Velt
to such a degree. Jacobi’s
acrobatics were something the Rider himself had never considered attempting.

The Rider, for the most part,
remained grounded. Jacobi’s antics were impressive to see, yes, but
impractical. There was a haughtiness to him that the Rider had only glimpsed in
their first encounter. Now Jacobi wore it like a garish coat. He laughed as he
dodged out of the way of the Rider’s shots, and taunted him with derisive
laughter as he somersaulted through the air like a monkey. He was blindingly
fast, impossible to hit, but arrogant and overconfident. He buzzed around the
Rider like an annoying insect, flying in the ear but withholding its sting.

It was as though Jacobi were simply
playing with him. He returned fire, but not with the single-mindedness with
which he avoided being hit. His attacks were almost afterthoughts. He was
buying time. But for what? The Rider needed to end this.

“You’re old and slow, Rider!” Jacobi
laughed during a lull in the shooting.

His arrogance had increased hand in
hand with his ability.

One of Jacobi’s blasts seared his
cheek.

Milton and Belden watched as a new
fissure opened in the unconscious man’s cheek and began to ooze blood.

Milton slapped a bit of cotton to
it.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,”
he said hoarsely.

“How you doin,’ Doc?” Belden asked.
Now that he was closer to Milton, the man looked like hell. He was pale and
sweaty, with great rings under his eyes and the same bloodshot eyes and blood
encrusted nostrils as Manx. His quip about Milton having caught some bug from
Manx had been in jest, but they really did look to have the same ailment.

“I don’t know,” Milton said. “I
haven’t been sleeping. Been getting these nosebleeds. And my throat, very raw.”
He coughed pointedly, as if the mention of it intensified his sickness.

“Maybe you should get back to your
bunk,” Belden suggested.

“What about him?” he said, gesturing
to Joe. “I’ve never seen a man in such a state. It’s like he’s awake but…absent.
He doesn’t respond to any physical stimulus. Even his autonomic responses are
dead. But he’s breathing. And these wounds…I just don’t see any reason for
them.”

“He’ll just have to keep, Doc,”
Belden shrugged. “I’ve known this man for a long time. If he says he knows what
he’s about, I guess he does.”

Milton rose, a little unsteadily, Belden
noticed.

“Call me then, if he worsens. I’ll
do what I can, but all I can say is if any more bleeding occurs, just staunch
it as best you can.”

Belden nodded.

“I’m going to see to the other
wounded men, then I’m going to retire.”

“Alright, Doc.”

“It’s good to have you back in some
capacity, Dick,” Milton smiled thinly. “Even for a little while.” His eyes were
fluttering.

“Thanks. Get some rest.”

Belden turned back to Joe as Doc
Milton left the guardhouse. Outside, he could hear Manx’s voice. If there weren’t
some sort of results soon, he’d have the troops’ attention again and that would
be it for Belden, Joe, and Kabede, maybe Lieutenant Cord too, if he kept on
their side. As it was, the boys were on the verge of panic. As far as they
knew, any one of them might up and murder his friend for no reason at all. Cord’s
idea of taking their weapons away was a good one. This way no innocuous gesture
would be misconstrued. Checking a load could easily lead to a shooting at the
rate they were going.

Meanwhile Joe Rider was somewhere
else. He surely wasn’t here. On long camps at night they had lain awake during
the war, and Joe had talked of the spirit and how it, and not the fragile body,
was the abode of a man’s consciousness. He’d told Belden these things to keep
him lucid. Often the terror of an impending battle had threatened to send him
raving and running all at once. The spirit never died, Joe assured him. Flesh
could be torn and fall away, the bones would dry up and blow to dust, but what
made a man a man would have long moved on by then. Belden had guessed then that
was the secret of his friend’s bravery. They’d seen a lot of death during the
war. A lot of men blown to dust. He had heard such words from chaplains and
preachers many times, but something in the way Joe had told it had always given
him comfort. Joe had never said ‘I think this is how it is’—not out loud and
not by way of tone. Joe seemed to speak from experience.

Then later, the things they’d seen
together;bushwhackers that were tickled to giggling by twelve gauge buck but
melted to a bubbling mess when blasted with plain rock salt;hoodoo queens
trafficking in dead soldiers, trailing the armies like buzzards, picking over
the battlefields in the night to pluck the eyes from the slain for use in their
deviltry. Belden had seen them himself, loading up bodies and carting them off
to some cave, where they were sewn up and sold off and made to work until they
rotted. All these horrors and more had pointed him back to Joe’s words in the
dark night, and given him comfort. For if these dark hoodoos and fiends from
hell could exist, then it followed that the spirit Joe talked of must also.

So, Belden leaned against the wall
and watched his friend. He would watch him like a friend watches a neighbor’s
house till they returned.

One thing was for sure. Wherever Joe
Rider had gone, whatever he’d been up to in the past fifteen years, it showed
on his face. Up close, his skin was a trellis of miniscule crisscrossed scars,
as if he’d run through the walls of a greenhouse or been bit near to pieces by
vermin. Inspecting the cut on his arm, he’d found evidence of past knife and
bullet wounds too, scars he knew for a fact had not come from their time in the
army.

Whatever he had gone through, he had
come out the other side. If anybody could save the men from whatever weird
happening was causing them to shoot each other, it was Joe Rider.

Kabede met the six cavalrymen in the
center of the parade ground after they’d finished tracing a circle around the
post. All of their horses were covered in foam, their flanks heaving.

“All finished?” he asked.

They nodded.

“There can be no breaks in the
circles. Are you absolutely sure?”

They nodded again.

“Alright. Two of you draw a line
from this point to the edge of the inner circle, headed north. You two do the
same headed west, and you two draw a line to the east. I’ll head south.”

This would make a cross, completing
the gigantic Third Seal of Solomon he had been busily inscribing all over the
post as the soldiers had drawn the circle. It was not as exact as he would have
liked, but if successful (and he hoped using the Rod of Aaron as a stencil
would count for something), no spirit would be able to pass in or out of it
when it was completed.

He gave his heels to the horse and
dragged the point of the Rod of Aaron behind as the other troopers did the same
in their respective directions. What would have taken most of the day for a
single man to accomplish would hopefully be completed in a matter of minutes.

In the meantime he did not know how
the Rider was faring. It was time to find out.

After he completed his portion of
the seal, Kabede swung down from his horse.

He went to his knees and laid the
staff across them. His eyes fluttered in his head, and he slumped over.

To the watching soldiers, he
appeared to have passed out.