"What is that?""New G.o.d," Trindai answered.
Heinrich stared at him. Superst.i.tious fool! He stared up at the sky again, shut down his sensors and raised his visor. Star going nova? No, wrong universe. There is only one star in this one. The rest are gates just like the one to home. He shivered despite the night being warmer than any he"d experienced since a dragon had teleported him and his entire command to the insanity in Belgera. Dragon! Maybe they have G.o.ds as well, what do I know?
"Hundred years last time." Trindai grimaced and waved for Elizabeth to slow down. "You see the rail road from here. We walk."
Heinrich looked out into the dark. For a moment he was tempted to turn on night vision, but he"d be d.a.m.ned if someone old enough to be his father should see better in the dark. There!
"Thank the ride."
Heinrich bowed and let Trindai"s men debark before ordering Sergeant Chang to kick the engines into action again. One more month, he thought. Too close for my taste. Idiot woman! He glared at the sleeper tubes on the hovercraft. Bring a civilian grade reactor to a fire fight What were you thinking?
"I should thank you for shoving us the way home," he said instead. They had never needed any showing, but he wasn"t about to tell the old colonel, no, general now, that. He probably knew anyway. Heinrich grinned at the thought. He liked the old man. They could speak, even with both aliens absent and the strange mind effects they used to make interpreters unnecessary. Trindai"s English was poor, but not poor enough to make conversation impossible.
Trindai nodded and turned to his men. He voiced an order and more than a few soldiers laughed as they fell into two rows. Heinrich recognized the word for horse so the gist of the command was abundantly clear to him.
Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Can"t recall seeing them walking much. He gave his exoskeleton an appreciative clap hard enough to send a metallic ringing out in the darkness and grinned at the soldiers as they prepared to march away.
They grinned back and one shouted something at him. It was probably obscene enough it didn"t need a translation.
He stood in the almost night watching Trindai march away with his soldiers. It was a strange feeling listening to them singing and then that singing faded away and the only sound remaining was the whining of the hovercraft.
Something had happened. New G.o.d or not, and he had a machine with a reactor heading for critical that needed skilled technicians as soon as possible. Launch port then. He let training and machine take over, and within moments he rumbled east in his body walker, almost the way they had come. Elizabeth Chang drove the vehicle some distance behind him.
An hour, give or take some, and he would come full circle. He wondered if they had noticed the new star at the launch port. Of course they had.
#
Trindai marched along with his men. As the new star above them slowly faded, so did the singing. Now only the thumping of riding boots against hard stone and the occasional cursing when someone fell out of rhythm disturbed the silence.
He would see dawn break before they reached the gates. Until then only the Vimarin Highway under his feet and an eerie night filled with wonder.
Something had tugged at him when night became day for a few moments. Something deep inside that wanted to crawl out. You have the spark, Gring had said. He could feel it. Only a spark. It would never truly awaken, Gring had promised as much, but with a new-born G.o.d bathing the lands with power even a spark was enough. He felt the need to fill himself with forbidden magic, to move it along invisible lines and mould it into something he could comprehend.
He could see why pract.i.tioners of magic went to such lengths to master it. How come it would take a khraga to unlock this part of his humanity? Even if it took a G.o.d to make him fully believe what she had said.
He grunted, kicked a pebble from the road and marched on. That way lay danger, and it had nothing to do with the highway they walked. In all probability a couple of his own men still felt the fire in their hearts. That all of them had sensed the sudden burst of power there was no doubt about. Even the outworlders had been stunned by the force of it—they had almost crashed through a fence and into a newly sown field when Wagon-master Chang let their vehicle run free.
Trindai let his thoughts wander. From misgivings about the chaos that was sure to hold Verd in a firm grip to the equally certain appearances of priests, clerics, monks and holy men. Hordes of pilgrims would crowd the roads within eightdays. Old temples washed clean of a lifetime"s neglect filling with believers joyous and fearful, and somewhere, someone would rally followers to a holy cause. It always happened; from Chen to Gaz. News of those events always found ways to travel.
A holy cause. Those had an ugly tendency to grow into crusades, and from there the road to mayhem was too short by far. He shuddered. Old enough to have spoken with people who have lived through the Erkateren Madness.
That thought sp.a.w.ned another. One of three thousand imperial soldiers spearheading the largest caravan ever seen. An invasion in all but name. He"d have the b.a.l.l.s of whoever came up with that insane idea, and then he would twist, hard.
Clouds clinging to the ground rolled in from Verd and hid the stars. Darkness and damp followed in turn, and Trindai hugged his clothes closer. His mind wandered from lessons of a Holy Inquisition of long past, how they were sent from Verd itself to hunt down heretics after World War. How those heretics had come to include anyone who openly spoke of G.o.ds, and how in the end the Inquisition turned on their old masters. If unholy horrors were still unleashed on hard-working men and women after all heretics were slain, then truly any use of inhuman powers were surely heretic.
Two hundred years ago. It took fifty to root out the evil in their midst, and the horrors were banished. Rejoice! But they weren"t, were they? The Erkateren Madness. They had to swell their ranks with anyone willing to put on the yellow and green. The Free Inquisition.
Trindai grunted in disgust. He despised the undisciplined thugs who mostly hara.s.sed decent farmers out of sheer boredom when they couldn"t find a foreigner to kill who hadn"t been any closer to forbidden magic than watching it. Complaints from Kordar, complaints from Erkateren, Ri Khi, Kastari and even Ira. Killing traders from Ira had been especially stupid. Maybe that small city state was a haven for mages of all kinds, but it was also the only power with a fleet strong enough to divert the raiders. Not a ship, not one single ship had made the voyage to the Sea of the Mother and back after Ira finally tired of excuses and apologies and withdrew their coastal patrols along the Midland sh.o.r.es.
As dawn broke he still couldn"t see the city walls ahead. The fog was too dense. The rail road beside the highway was clearly visible though, as were the people who scrambled up the road when they marched by. Once again an escort. Not for a caravan, but for men and women finding strength in numbers and the bright uniforms of his command, torn and dirty as they were. All were headed for Verd, to find answers, or enlightenment, or simply to celebrate.
From the capital, a low murmur. A rumbling in the morning. Verd had awoken to a new morning, and he knew he was listening to thousands upon thousands of voices asking what kind of a day a new G.o.d would bring.