The Sea Peoples(32)
They crowded around her to read the headlines.
CZAR’S BOMBARDMENT SUBMERSIBLES OFF THE COAST! ONE EXCLAIMED. WAR AT ANY MOMENT! UPRISING IN SUANEE, SPECIAL ACTION GROUPS SENT IN!
Pip began to read the print below in a murmur: “From our correspondent in the Capitol . . . which is apparently Yhtril, DC . . . District of Carcosa . . . Eternal Emperor Castaigne proclaims that in this time of crisis, all loyal subjects must come together and make sacrifices for the nation.”
She stopped, and her brows went up, and he could see her throat work as she swallowed and continued:
“He proclaims that one’s own children are the most desirable sacrificial burnt offering, though self-immolation in the Lethal Torment Chambers is acceptable. All patriotic Americans must kneel in servile adoration and worship before Divine Uoht and glut His hunger, that He may intercede for us with the King in Yellow and send the Pallid Mask against our enemies as He has before.”
They paused. “I really don’t think we want to stop here,” she said. “As you said . . . not a good place, eh, what?”
“I never thought we’d agree on so much, girl,” Thora said with a taut grin.
“Deor?”
“This is a past. Not ours, I think. Or the image of a past that might have been, or in some cycle of the greater worlds once was. The ideal to which that which rules here aspires, or something close to it. And for which it needs Prince John.”
“So, which way, oath-brother?” Thora said, and the others nodded.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
“This way,” he said. “The feeling of the Prince is stronger here.”
So is the fear, he did not add aloud. We’re growing closer to whatever it is that creates and sustains this place.
They walked down the street, and turned onto another. That was a much broader highway, at least a hundred paces across. The sidewalks were broad too, laid in patterns of colored brick, with a double row of trees clipped into rectangular shapes on each. The buildings were all seven stories and faced with faded white stone, with a common cornice line but a pleasing variety of form and detail. Most of the ground floors were broad brightly-lit shop windows.
It would all have looked much more pleasing if several of the lamp-posts hadn’t had ropes flung over them and nooses holding bodies dangling and slowly turning as they hung swollen-faced and bulge-eyed. The pedestrians ignored them, faces tight with fear, or occasionally paused to spit and laugh.
Toa’s head snapped up. “Something bad coming . . . hear those voices?”
Deor listened. Savage shouting and pounding feet, but not those of battle. Pip turned an enquiring face to Toa, but the scop answered first, memories taking him back to a place of fear and flight, and whitewash peeling from blank walls along narrow streets. Thora pulling his arm across her shoulders as he staggered reeling with blood running down his face, the sword naked in her other hand, and their desperate panting breaths loud in the alien night.
He answered: “That’s a mob, the snarl of a hunting mob, and it’s coming our way.”
Thora nodded, her lips narrowed to bloodlessness at her own recollections. There were a fair number of people ahead of them, and they were turning to look at the noise as well. Most of them ignored it, walking quickly towards wherever they were going. A few pointed and called out, mostly wooping wordless cries. Others laughed and put hands beside their necks and jerked them upward, miming strangulation with heads to one side and lolling tongue and eyes.
A figure burst through the spectators. It was a man with blood running down his bearded heavy-featured olive face, matting one of the long curls trained into his hair before his ears to the side of his face. He wore a version of the male costume that seemed to be standard here, but darker and with a longer coat.
Despair flooded his face as he saw Deor and his party standing in his way. He tried to halt, windmilling his arms, and a broad-brimmed black hat fell off his head as he stumbled and began to fall. He spoke then, in a choked whisper, words Deor had heard before and understood:
“Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eh.ad!”
Toa caught him easily, one huge fist knotting in the shabby black coat and whirling him around behind the Maori’s massive back. Deor caught what was almost a throw and found the man was lighter than he would have thought, skin and bone beneath the heavy cloth, smelling of blood and old sweat. What had looked like bulk of body was parcels beneath the coat, parcels wrapped in paper from the way they crackled.
“Quiet!” the scop snapped. “Behind me!”
He found the heavy pistol from the shoulder-holster was in his hand; it was the same impulse that would have drawn his sword, but transmuted.
As our clothes were, Deor thought.
And thought of One who was also patient and cunning and bided His time. He grinned, a fighting snarl.
Thora had also drawn her pistol, and then hesitated and looked at it.
“Oath-sister!” he said. “Don’t think about it, just use it as you would your blade.”
Pip and Toa poised, cane and wrench ready in their hands.
Other figures pushed through the crowd on the sidewalk. Some where men and women in ordinary street dress for this time and place, carrying baseball bats and a knotted hangman’s rope, and a can of liquid that smelled like the rock-oil they used for lanterns in some places. Leading them were two in yellow robes, with blank masks like a sketch of a face strapped across their visages. Another similarly masked was in front, but wore only a twist of yellow rags around his loins, and carried a seven-tailed whip whose strands were tipped with sharp-edged beads of pale gold. Blood dripped from them, and from his own back and sides where he’d lashed himself.