Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (39 page)

The
Rider craned his neck

The
air filled with wheeling birds.
Big black vultures, tiny
sparrows, even hawks and eagles.
He knew what they were, just as he knew
the protective circle wouldn’t save him.

The
old man was cackling. He threw up the bar and swung the door open, riding it
outside.

“Come
in! Come in! Here’s the one you want!”

As
if homing, the cloud of birds pivoted and poured down. Apparently they had not
been able to dive down into the courtyard despite its open roof. Whatever magic
inhabited the torreón acted like a clear, impassable dome. But when the hermit
opened the door, the birds flew down in a body, like a pack of sharks toward a
cloud of blood.

The
beating of their wings and their shrill cries filled the air. The hermit was
sorely surprised to find the creatures striking wildly at the first living
thing they reached, and soon he was covered from head to toe in pecking birds.
A gigantic condor hung from his back and its ugly head rose and fell again and
again, coming away each time with greater scraps of bloody flesh from his neck.
He screamed as crows plucked out his eyes and nightjars wriggled into the
sockets up to their tail feathers. His wailing mouth filed with finches, and
tecolotes buried their faces in the porticos of his ears.

For
the moment, his body blocked the opening as he fell from the heavy door and
stumbled against the frame.

Under
one of his flailing arms, the Rider saw the two animals tethered outside, also
covered with feathery assailants.

He
tried to aim, but it was no use. He couldn’t hope to shoot the birds off. He
heard the animals bray and watched them kick and crow hop madly about. Maybe it
was best to shoot them.

Kabede
shook his arm, spoiling his aim yet again.

“My saddlebag!”
Kabede yelled above the tremendous shock of
the wings. “Here! Hold the staff before you! Pray!”

The
Rider felt the Rod of Aaron thrust into his hands, felt the power coursing
through it. It was warm, like the Star-Stone of Mnar, but with a different kind
of heat. The Stone had warmed his hands, any part of his skin which it touched.
This feeling began at his hands, but seemed to spread up his arms and into his
chest and down at last to his feet. As he stood taking this in, Kabede left his
side.

The
African drew his scarf across his face and went to the door. He shoved past the
flailing hermit, who fell to his knees and then to his hands. The birds were
bottlenecked with him in the narrow doorway. As soon as they were done picking
him apart, they would flood the courtyard.

Kabede
flailed and tore at the birds outside, and the Rider heard him cry out.

When
he appeared again in the doorway, he was covered in bird excrement and blood
flowed from tiny cuts about his hands and face. He stumbled over the old man’s
body, his arm in one of the saddlebags from his own donkey, up to the elbow.

He
rushed past the Rider without speaking, staggering towards the hermit’s fire.
As he reached it, the bag fell away, and there was a heavy old book in his
hand.

Then
the birds left the old man with a collective screech of triumph. They surged
into the courtyard and the Rider batted them aside as best he could with the
staff. Wherever its knotted head connected, the birds burst into a momentary
flame and vanished. But there were too many. Soon a veritable tornado of
feather and talons filled the torreón and drew in an every tightening circle
around the Rider. He hunched up his shoulders and sank to his knees, hugging
the staff, and he felt talons and beaks dart in and nip at his flesh. It was
Tip Top all over again. He cried out in fear.

Then
the fire flared in the corner of the courtyard. He heard the door slam shut,
and Kabede was at his side, grabbing the staff with one hand and hoisting him
up with the other.

“Stand
up, Rider! Stand up!” he bellowed.

The
Rider stood. The birds still wheeled in the courtyard, but before his eyes they
transformed into what they were; gibbering imps and deformed chimerae, buzzing
things half insect half—but wait!

He
was seeing them—as they truly were!

He
touched the blue glass spectacles with their mystic seals, the fifth and
thirty-sixth seals of Solomon.

He
watched as the vile things all around him attempted to dive in but were
repelled. They withdrew and attacked again and again, but could not quite bring
themselves to touch him. They collided in mid air in their confusion.

The
Rider raised his
Volcanic
pistol and fired into the
lot of them.

Where
his bullets struck, the ruahim blew apart.

His
powers were back. Somehow, beyond reason or hope, they were back.

“Come
on!” Kabede called, and he scaled the ladder to the next level of the torreón.

The
Rider followed, bewildered. He shot again and again into the midst of the
demons, and felt an immense pleasure every time one of their
number
shrieked in agony and dissolved.

They
climbed to the lip of the torreón and turned inward.

Below
them, the ruahim shrieked and rammed like trapped animals against the stone
walls.

They
were trapped, he realized. Kabede had closed and barred the door, and those
that tried to rise through the open air were repelled back downwards by the
same invisible force that had kept them out.

There
was no time to ask what had happened, and anyway, no talk could be heard above
the wailing of the trapped demons. There must have been hundreds flitting about
like disturbed bats down below.

Some
flew up to their level, but could not rise above the edge of the walls. These
Kabede struck deftly with the staff. They disintegrated.

The
rest, the Rider killed. For months these things had hounded him across two
territories. They had befouled his food and water and done HaShem only knew
what to him to keep him from sleep. The only real rest he’d had in months had
come from physical unconsciousness. They had worried his every step, strangled
him slowly, to the point of starvation at last.

He
lost track of the number of shots he fired down into them, somewhere around a
hundred and eighty nine. It was a one-sided slaughter, like killing cattle in a
trench.

His
hand was numb and throbbing, his knuckles sore from levering the Volcanic by
the time the torreón was still.

Nothing
physically remained of Lilith’s demons other than tufts of feathers, which
floated and swirled across the ground. The silence itself, the lack of
maleficent presence was like a monument itself in its portent. He knew how this
would enrage Lilith and her daughters, just as he knew tonight he would be able
to sleep, truly sleep, for the first time in many months. He felt his belly
growl with hunger, and was content to know that he could fill it when he
wished. For a while after the slaughter was finished, he sat facing the
courtyard, his legs dangling in space like a child’s.

Then
he went down to Kabede.

The
African had gone to see about their animals. His donkey was missing an eye and
had to have his ear sewn back on. Kabede was finishing this operation when the
Rider rejoined him.

The
onager waited nearby, placidly chewing feed. As always, he was untouched.

“What
is the nature of that beast?” Kabede asked when the Rider walked up.

“What?”

“Your animal.
Where did you ever acquire it?”

“In
Jerusalem,” the Rider said. “But listen, tell me. What did you do?”

“I
told you I was the keeper of the Book of Life for our Order.”

“Yes.”

“In
it, just as in the Heavenly Book of Life, all the names of all the members of
our Order are written.
Their true names.
Including yours.”

“Yes…”

Kabede
went to his saddlebag and took out the book the Rider had seen him retrieve
earlier. He ran his hand over the embossed cover lovingly.

“I
though of what I said to you last night. About your parents, and the shinnui
shem
.”

The
Rider thought about it, and a smile broke across his face as he understood.

“You
changed my name. To restore my powers, you changed my true name.”

Kabede
opened the book, flipped through it, and then turned it around to show him. One
of the pages had been torn out.

The
Rider’s smile fell.

“But…”

“Yes,”
Kabede said. “I’m sorry. There was no time. I tore out the page with your name
on it and I threw it into the fire.”

“Then,”
said the Rider slowly, “then I have no name. And a man whose name doesn’t
appear in the heavenly Book of Life by Yom Kippur…”

“…will
die in a year’s time,” Kabede finished. His eyes flitted over the Rider’s
shoulder briefly.

The
Rider turned, and observed on the ground his long shadow…headless. It was a
sure sign of impending death.

“You’ve
killed me,” the Rider said quietly.

“Rider!”

The
Rider and Kabede both stiffened.

The
voice was commanding and deep. It echoed out across the valley.

“Can
you hear me, Rider?” it called again. The voice was European.
German, maybe.

They
raced back up the torreón ladders to the lip and stood. They trotted anxiously
in opposite directions around the top until they met in the center, looking
back across the desert toward the hills in the direction of Escopeta, from
which they’d come.

The
ridge overlooking the desert (he could see the outline of the tree under which
he’d slept the night before) was lined with silent figures. Thirty or more
stood completely still

Kabede
reached into his tunic and produced a retractable spyglass. He opened it and
peered through.

“Ah!
There you are!” called the voice.

Kabede’s
mouth fell open.

“DeKorte,”
he whispered.

The
Rider took the spyglass from Kabede’s hands and looked himself. The light was
fading, but he could just make out some of the men on the ridge. He recognized
a few of them from the café in Escopeta.
Bounty hunters,
then.
But wait, there were women among them too…then his gaze fell upon
the speaker. He was a tall, black coated man, very pale. Two men stood on
either side of him, similarly garbed. He had no idea who they were.

“Who
is he?” the Rider asked.

“You
would know him as Het Bot.”

The
Rider lowered the spyglass and looked at Kabede.

“Het
Bot?
From the Amsterdam enclave?”

Kabede
nodded.

“The greatest of the Dutch Sons of the Essenes.”

But
if he was alive, then he wasn’t one of their
Order
anymore. That made him one of Adon’s men.

“There
are two others with him,” the Rider said, putting the spyglass to his eye
again.

“I
saw them. I think they are Jacobi of Berlin and Gans of Owernah. Das
Schwert,
and Le Bouclier.”

Das
Schwert had been one of the German riders sent to investigate the disappearance
of the San Francisco enclave. The Rider had encountered him there upon his
return from the war. They had fought that time. He was very good.

“I
know their names. We can defeat them.”

“In
the Yenne Velt, sure,” said the Rider. “But what about them?” he indicated the
gathering of people with a sweep of his hand. “They’ve got a lot of men…”

The
Rider stopped himself, and peered closely at the men and women gathered there.
There was something wrong with them.
All of them.
The
light was fading so fast…

“Are
you looking, Rider?” called DeKorte. “I know you are. Watch! I want you to see
this!”

The
Rider turned his attention back to DeKorte in time to see the man gesture one
black gloved hand to his right.

Immediately
the entire line of men and women took one step forward in perfect unison

Right off the edge of the ridge.

The
Rider was reminded briefly of the
Falls
of the Damned
through Lucifer’s window. The people tumbled and fell without a sound, bouncing
off the rocks, sliding over the precipices and twisting through space before
smashing to the desert floor, some thirty feet below their starting point. The
people behind them advanced at the same time like lemmings, heedless of the
fate of their predecessors. They fell down the slope into the valley as well,
piling up below in a cloud of dust.

The
Rider heard Kabede’s breath suck in through his teeth.

Only
the three Riders remained on the ridge.