The Call of Earth: 2 (Homecoming) (10 page)

“So that wasn’t love,” said Plod. “God honors you for your sacrifice, then, I’m sure!” Plod laughed again, and for good fellowship Moozh also joined in.

They were still laughing when there came a scratching at the tent, and Plod leapt to open it. The intercessor came in first, which was his duty—and an expression of his faith in God, since the intercessor always left himself available to be stabbed in the back, if God did not protect him. Then a stranger came in. Moozh had no memory of ever having seen the man before. By his garb he was a soldier of a fine city; by his body he was a soft soldier, a gate guard rather than a fighting man; by his familiar nod, Moozh knew that this must be the Basilican soldier, and he must indeed have spoken with him, and left the conversation on friendly terms.

The intercessor sat first, and then Moozh; only then could the others take their places.

“Let me see your blade,” Moozh said to the Basilican soldier. “I want to see what kind of steel you have in Basilica.”

Warily the Basilican arose from his seat, watching Plod all the while. Vaguely Moozh remembered Plod with a blade at the Basilican’s throat; no wonder the man was wary now! With two fingers the man drew his short sword from its sheath, and handed it, hilt first, to Moozh.

It was a city sword, for close work, not a great hewing sword for the battlefield. Moozh tested the blade against the skin of his own arm, cutting only slightly, but enough to draw a line of blood. The man winced to see it. Soft. Soft.

“I’ve thought about what you said, sir,” the Basilican said.

Ah. So I gave him something to think about.

“And I can see that my city needs your help. But who am I to ask for it, or even to know what help would be right or sufficient? I’m only a gate guard; it’s only the
sheerest chance that I got caught up in these great affairs.”

“You love your city, don’t you?” asked Moozh, for now he knew what he must have told the man. I
am
sharp enough even on my bad days, Moozh thought with some satisfaction. Sharp enough to lay God-proof plans.

“Yes, I do.” Tears had suddenly come to the man’s eyes. “Forgive me, but someone else asked me that, just before I left Basilica. Now I know by this omen that you are a true servant of the Oversoul, and I can trust you.”

Moozh gazed steadily into the man’s eyes, to show him that trust was appropriate indeed.

“Come to Basilica, sir. Come with an army. Restore order in the streets, and drive out the mercenaries. Then the women of Basilica will have no more fear.”

Moozh nodded wisely. “An eloquent and noble request, which in my heart I long to fulfil. But I am a servant of the Imperator, and you must explain the situation in your city to the intercessor here, who is the eyes and ears and heart of the Imperator in our camp.” As he spoke, Moozh rose to his feet, facing the intercessor, and bowed. Behind him he could hear Plod and the Basilican soldier also standing and bowing.

Surely Plod is clever enough to know what I plan to do, thought Moozh with a thrill of fear. Surely his knife is even now out of its sheath, to be buried in my back. Surely he knows that if he does not do this, the Basilican blade I hold in my hands will snake out and take his head clean off his shoulders as I rise.

But Plod was not that clever, and so in a moment his blood gouted and spattered across the tent as his body
collapsed, his head flopping about on the end of the half-severed spine.

Moozh’s blow had been so quick, so smooth, that neither the Basilican nor the intercessor quite understood how Plod came to be so abruptly dead. That gave Moozh plenty of time to drive the Basilican blade upward under the intercessor’s ribs, finding his heart before the intercessor could speak a word or even raise himself from his chair.

The Moozh turned to the trembling Basilican.

“What is your name, soldier?”

“Smelost, sir. As I told you. I’ve lied about nothing, sir.”

“I know you haven’t. Neither have I. These men were determined to stop me from coming to the aid of your city. That’s why I brought them here together. If you wanted me to help you, I had to kill them first.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

“No, not whatever I say. Only the truth, Smelost. These men were both spies set to watch every move I made, to hear every word I spoke, and judge my loyalty to the Imperator constantly. This one”—he pointed at Plod—“interpreted a dream I had as a sign of disloyalty, and told the intercessor. It would only have been a matter of time before they reported me and I lost my command, and then who would have come to save Basilica?”

“But how will you explain their deaths?” asked Smelost.

Moozh said nothing

Smelost waited. Then he looked again at the bodies. “I see,” he said. “The blade that killed them was mine.”

“How much do you love your city?” asked Moozh.

“With all my heart.”

“More than life?” asked Moozh.

Gravely Smelost nodded. There was fear in his eyes, but he did not tremble.

“If my soldiers think I killed Plod and the intercessor, they will tear me to pieces. But if they think—no, if they
know
that
you
did it, and I killed you for it— then they will follow me in righteous indignation. I’ll tell them that you were one of the mercenaries. I will besmirch your name. I will say you were a traitor to Basilica, trying to prevent me from going to the city’s aid. But because they believe those lies about you, they will follow me there and we will save your city.”

Smelost smiled. “It seems that my fate is to be thought a worse traitor the better I serve my city.”

“It is a terrible day when a man must choose between being thought loyal, and being loyal in fact, but that day has come to you.”

“Tell me what to do.”

Moozh almost wept with admiration for the courage and honor of the man, as he explained the simple play they would put on. If I did not serve a higher cause, thought Moozh, I would be too ashamed to deceive a man of such honor as yourself. But for the sake of Pravo Gollossa I will do any terrible thing.

A moment later, in a lull in the windstorm, Moozh and Smelost both began to bellow, and Moozh let out a high scream that witnesses would later swear was the death cry of the intercessor. Then, as soldiers stumbled out of their tents, they saw Smelost, already bleeding from a wound in his thigh, lurch from the general’s tent, carrying a short sword dripping with blood. “For Gaballufix! Death to the Imperator!”

The name of Gaballufix meant nothing to the Gorayni soldiers, though soon enough it would be rich with meaning. What they cared about was the latter
part of Smelost’s shout—death to the Imperator. No one could say such a thing in a Gorayni camp without being flayed alive.

Before anyone could reach him, though, the general himself staggered from the tent, bleeding from his arm and holding his head where he must have been struck a blow. The general—the great Vozmuzhalnoy Vozmozhno, called Moozh whenever they thought he could not hear—held a battle-ax in his left arm—his left, not his right!—and struck downward into the base of the assassin’s neck, cleaving him to the heart. He should not have done it; everyone knew he should have let the man be taken and tortured to punish him. But then, to their horror, the general sank to his knees—the general with ice in his veins instead of blood—he sank to his knees and wept bitterly, crying out from the depths of his soul, “Plodorodnuy, my friend, my heart, my life! Ah, Plod! Ah, Plod, God should have taken me and left you!”

It was a grief both glorious and terrible to behold, and without speaking a word openly about it, the soldiers who heard his keening resolved to tell no one of his blasphemous suggestion that perhaps God might have ordered the world improperly. When they entered the tent they understood perfectly why Moozh had forgotten himself and killed the assassin with his own hand, for how could any mortal man see his dearest friend and the intercessor both so cruelly murdered, and still contain his rage?

Soon the story spread through the camp that Moozh was taking a thousand fierce soldiers with him on a forced march through the mountains, to take the city of Basilica and destroy the party of Gaballufix, a group of men so daring and treacherous that they had dared to send an assassin against the general of the Gorayni. Too
bad for them that God so dearly loved the Gorayni that he would not permit their Moozh to be slain by treachery. Instead God had caused Moozh’s heart to be filled with righteous wrath, and Basilica would soon know what it meant to have God and the Gorayni as their overlords.

The camels had all gathered under the shade of the large palm fronds that Wetchik and his sons had woven into a roof between a group of four large trees near the stream. Elemak envied them—the shade was good there, the stream was cool, and they could catch the breeze, so the air was never as stuffy as it was inside the tents. He was done with his work for the morning, and now there was nothing useful to do during the heat of the day. Let Father and Nafai and Issib drip their sweat all over each other as they huddled around the Index of the Oversoul in Father’s tent. What did the Oversoul know? It was just a computer—Nafai himself said that, in his adolescent fanatic piety—so why should Elemak bother with a conversation with a machine? It had a vast library of information . . . so what? Elemak was done with school.

So he sat in the hot shade of the southern cliff, knowing
that he would have at most an hour of rest before the sun rose high enough that the shade would disappear, and he would have to move. That didn’t really bother Elemak—in fact, on his caravans he had counted on that to awaken him, so that he didn’t sleep overlong during the day when they rested at oases. What made him so angry that he felt it like a pain in his stomach all the time was the fact that it was all so useless. They were not traveling, they were merely waiting here in the desert—and for what? For nothing. The Oversoul said that Basilica would be destroyed, that the world of Harmony was going to collapse in war and terror. It was laughably unlikely that any such thing would happen. The world had gone forty million years without being devastated by war. Now, for the first time, two great empires were on the verge of collision, and the Oversoul was treating it as if it were some cosmic event.

I could have understood leaving Basilica, he told himself, if we had taken our fortune with us and gone to another city and started over. What was vital in the plant trade was the knowledge inside Father’s and my heads, not the buildings or the hired workers. We could have been rich. Instead we’re here in the desert, we lost our entire fortune to my half-brother Gaballufix, and now Nafai has murdered
him
and we can never go back to Basilica again, or if we did, we’d be poor so why bother?

Except that even poverty in Basilica would be better than this meaningless waiting out here in the desert, in this miserable little valley that barely supported the troop of baboons downstream of them. Even now he could hear them barking and hooting. Beasts that couldn’t decide whether to be men or dogs. That’s exactly what we are now, only we didn’t even have the
sense to bring mates with us when we left, so we can’t even form a reasonable tribe.

Despite the arrhythmic noises of the baboons and the occasional snorting of the camels, Elemak soon slept. He woke moments later, or so it felt; he could feel the burning heat of the sun on his clothing, so he assumed that the sun had wakened him. But no, it was something else; there was a shadow moving near him. With his eyes closed he thought of where his knife was and remembered how the ground was near him. Then, with a sudden rush of movement, he was on his feet, his long knife in his hand, squinting in the bright sunlight to see where his enemy was.

“It’s only me!” squeaked Zdorab.

Elemak put away his knife in disgust. “You don’t come up silently when a man is asleep in the desert. You can get yourself killed that way. I assumed you were a robber.”

“But I wasn’t all that quiet,” said Zdorab reasonably. “In fact, you were noisy yourself. Dreaming, I expect.”

That bothered Elemak, that he had not slept silently. But now that Zdorab mentioned it, he remembered that he
had
dreamed, and he remembered the dream with remarkable clarity. In fact he had never had such a clear dream, not that he remembered, anyway, and it made him think. “What was I saying?” asked Elemak.

“I don’t know,” said Zdorab. “It was more of a mumble. I came up here because your father asked to see you. I wouldn’t have disturbed you otherwise.”

It was true. Zdorab was the consummate servant, invisible most of the time, but always ready to help—even when he was completely incompetent, which was usually the case here in the desert, where the skills of a treasurer were quite useless. “Thanks,” said Elemak. “I’ll come in a minute.”

Zdorab waited for just a moment—that hesitation that all good servants acquired sooner or later, that single moment in which the master could think of something else to tell before they left. Then he was gone, shambling clumsily down the shale slope and then across the dry stony soil to Wetchik’s tent.

Elemak pulled up his desert robe and peed out in the open, where the sun would evaporate his urine in moments, before too many flies could gather. Then he headed for the stream, took a drink in his cupped hand, splashed water into his face and over his head, and only then made his way to where Father and all the others were waiting.

“Well,” said Elemak as he entered. “Have you learned everything the Oversoul has to teach you?”

Nafai glared at him with his typical look of disapproval. Someday Elemak knew he’d have to give Nafai the beating of his life, just to teach him not to get that expression on his face, at least not toward Elemak. He had tried to give him that beating once before, and he had learned that
next
time he’d have to do it away from Issib’s chair, so the Oversoul couldn’t take control of it and interfere. But for now there was nothing to be gained by letting Nafai’s snottiness get under his skin; so Elemak pretended not to notice.