The Sea Peoples(91)

“Alan!” he said, tilting it to read it by the light of moon and stars . . . which were suddenly overhead. “Alan Thurston!”

He was no fool, and noticed how the others froze; specifically, how Deor and John and Thora did. Pip and Toa looked almost as puzzled as he.

“Do you know me?” the man—Alan—said.

Deor said cautiously: “The ruling House of the United States of Boise is named Thurston,” he said. “And . . . you could be of that kin.”

John looked at him and mentally stepped back to analyze. He could be, by his looks, he decided.

Back in the ancient world, those who were visibly descended from the folk of Africa below the Sahara had been called black. Old Lawrence Thurston, the first General-President of Boise, had been one such, as well as an officer in the old American army; so had the first Count of Molalla, whose grandson Sir Droyn was a liege knight of órlaith’s and a good sort, though a bit of a prig in John’s opinion.

Lawrence Thurston’s wife, though, had been of a stock mostly European in blood, and so had the wives of his sons Martin and Frederick; the distinctions of the old world meant little in modern times, as opposed to more realistic and well-grounded concerns like your faith, clan, tribe, city-state, family allegiances or ties of lordship. John had known Frederick Thurston’s children all his life—they were much of an age with him, and their father was a close friend and comrade-in-arms of his parents from the Quest of the Lady’s Sword, as well as ruler of a major member-realm of the High Kingdom.

Alan Thurston, on the other hand, he knew only by his name and that of his mother, Juliet, widow of the dead traitor Martin.

“If you’re one of those Thurstons, your uncle Frederick is General-President of Boise,” John said.

Pip gave him a sharp glance from under her bowler hat; she’d heard the unspoken complications he’d left out. Alan—it was good to have a name for him—grinned.

“Well—” he began happily.

“Hsst!” Toa said, his full-featured face probing the area around them.

John stopped letting the familiar and for once oh-so-welcome weight of the armor distract him and looked around. What he saw was a roadway stretching into the distance, under starlight that was somehow wrong, and a vague reddish background glow that came from everywhere and nowhere. The roadway was pockmarked and gashed by years of untended weather, but also crowded with boxy automobiles and motor-trucks.

So were the immediate verges, and they’d all been struck by some monstrous blow of fire and blast from the rear; some looked almost melted. Thorny scrub grew over many, and over the bleached, charred skeletons of dead trees about. He thought he could see the roofless snags of a farmhouse and barn in the middle distance.

The air smelled dry and dusty, with an odor of rust and old, old rot, wind soughed through the scrub, and things skittered through the underbrush. Otherwise there was a profound, tense quiet. No birds, and not even many of the buzzing and chirping insects.

“This is what happened after the last place we were?” he asked.

My head hurts trying to figure this out, he thought. Give me the waking world any day! There, all you have to worry about is evil magic and things like the Sword of the Lady and the Grasscutter.

“Not exactly,” Deor said. “Or I think not wholly. This is part of the dream of the thing we fight—the King in Yellow. His memory of all his victories and triumphs. It feels . . . stronger than the last time we came past, to reach you, my Prince. As if that King wakes, and wakes in anger.”

John stopped in mid-reply as Toa wheeled about again. There was a creaking metallic sound, rusty metal moving on metal, then squealing as joints long melded together broke free.

“Move!” Deor said, and led the way, Saxon broadsword naked in his hand and Hraefnbeorg’s raven on his shield.

And Odhinn’s bird, John thought uneasily. Not a comfortable ally, the Lord of the Gallows whose daughters reap men on the bloody field so that they may fight again at Ragnarok. I’m bound for a different destination . . . hopefully.

His lips moved in prayer as he trotted along beside the scop:

“Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto pr?sidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princeps militi? c?lestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude. Amen.”

The words were comforting in the language of the liturgy or in common English:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the Adversary . . .

“Amen,” Pip echoed him.

He glanced at her, slightly surprised, and she grinned in the dimness and shrugged.

“I’m Catholic too, sweetie—Anglican Rite. Not overly pious, but there’s no doubt whose help we need now, is there?”

Behind them Toa gave a yell and lashed out with his great spear, sweeping it in a half-circle that ended in a thudding and a dry crunching sound.

Just ahead of them John saw movement behind the dusty, cobwebbed darkness of a car’s window.

“What’s happening?” he yelled; the smell of ancient rot was stronger.

“Draugur!” Deor said. “Aptrgangr, again-walkers, hungry for the blood and flesh of the living.”

I had to ask! John’s mind gibbered at him.