Half a Savage - Part 2

"Sir!" A black-clad trooper was jogging back along the column towards them, moving at an easy lope. He fell into step beside the officers, pulling off his helmet to reveal a flushed young face. "Section Leader's compliments, sir, and it looks like we've got company up ahead."

"Hostile?" The Commissar frowned.

"Don't think so, sir. But the Section Leader says you'd best take a look."

The two officers exchanged a glance and quickened their pace.

At the head of the column, their guide stopped them, gesturing for silence. The Section Leader was crouched in a clump of ferns at the edge of the cleft a few feet further on. He beckoned for them to join him, grinning broadly, and handed the Commissar a night-viewer, pointing towards a flicker in the distance.

Imperturbable as ever, the Commissar scanned the scene thoroughly, raised an eyebrow, and passed the viewer across to his subordinate without a word. The latter could barely repress an incredulous chuckle. "Looks as if they've sent a welcoming committee out for us, sir!"

"Some kind of religious ceremony, I fancy... yes, I think we've been spotted. I imagine they heard us coming in. No doubt this performance is in honour of the great gods from over the sea — or wherever the local pantheon can fit us in." He sighed. "Primitives... so disappointingly predictable. I suppose we'd better go and disillusion them." A thin smile. "That is, after all, why we are here."

o~o~o~o~o~o

They came out of the night, like black statues moving faceless in the dark. Behind him, the semicircle of priests wavered and broke. It was one thing to fear the end of the world; even for the bravest, to see that destruction incarnated and closing in was too much to bear. The words of the ritual of supplication broke and died in Movo's own throat. If this was the gods' answer — then his plea had utterly failed... and the gods had truly deserted them.

The creatures moved silently in to surround them, black hide loose and creasing with each movement, eyeless heads gleaming in the torchlight. Movo swallowed behind the mask, his own face frozen in a struggle to show no fear. He could sense the others retreating step by step into a tight group at his back. Elaya's hand sought for his own, and he gripped it tightly, waiting for the end. There was a dreadful moment's pause. Somebody — he never knew who — whimpered.

It was as if a spell had shattered. Uamec sprang forward, and Ithalpa and others of the Kin at his heels, spears raised, and the air filled with war-cries, suddenly unbearably loud, as if to wipe out the memory of fear. The first spear flew...

It seemed to the High Priest, afterwards, that even then they had all more than half-expected the weapon to pass through the dark figure like smoke, or to be turned aside in a burst of flame. But it did not.

The spear struck its target in the thigh, with an impact that drove the creature to its knees, gasping out a sound that was all too clearly animal pain. For a second, the whole world seemed to pause. And then the air was full of flying fire.

Uamec fell back heavily against the Lord, his spear dropping from one hand and head lolling horribly, charred beyond recognition. Other men were screaming on the ground, their bronzed flesh seared and bubbling. All around, the faceless warriors were raising their weapons to the level again, ready to wreak destruction on all who remained; to inflict terrible revenge for the attack on one of their number...

"No!" Movo spread his arms, unthinking, in a futile attempt to shield his people, and closed his eyes, flinching instinctively from the coming blast. "No..."

"No!" A human voice, echoing his own so sharply that for a moment he thought he had dreamed it. "Hold your fire!"

In the moment's silence that followed, he distinctly heard a child sobbing.

"Ro..." Elaya's voice was a whisper of disbelief. She went down on one knee to gather in their son, shielding his face against her breast, burying her own face in his hair. "Oh, Ro..."

Still stunned, Movo turned from them, slowly. Saw the boy Porah who should have been watching over Ro in the caves standing there ashen-white among the other priests, the young face tear-streaked and blind with horror. He supposed he should be angry; but he could feel nothing. Nothing seemed to matter any more.

Instead he turned back, towards the encircling warriors... and saw the black ranks begin to part. A man walked forward. Two men.

Dull-coloured cloth was stretched around their limbs like a second skin, and their faces and hands showed ghostly-pale in the torchlight; but for all that, they were human. The foremost of the two held his hands spread out, palm upwards, in token that he was unarmed. He glanced around the circle, frowning.

"Hold your fire!"

"Are these—" The words died away with a croak, as if stiff with disuse. Movo swallowed past the thickness in his throat and tried again. "Are these... your creatures?"

"Creatures?" The other blinked, then shook his head with a slight smile, gesturing to the nearest black warrior. The arms reached up, loose hide draping about the shoulders like some strange, stiff cloth, and took hold of its head. There was a moment's struggle — and then the entire headpiece came off as if it were some ritual mask. The face that was revealed bore a dark hood, framing a short, grizzled fuzz of close-clipped hair — and it was studying the High Priest with a very human expression of wary curiosity that was almost identical to his own.

"Not creatures, but men. Soldiers. Warriors obedient to command." Thin lips tightened. "I regret the recent incident, believe me — but even soldiers under orders will defend themselves if attacked."

"One of your men was wounded — twenty of mine are dead." Movo held his voice steady this time with an effort. "Who are you? What are you?"

"We are the Federation." The younger of the two spoke for the first time, taking a pace forward to face the High Priest as an equal. "And we have come to bring this planet back to civilisation — with or without your help. The choice is yours."

o~o~o~o~o~o

Ro buried his face in his mother's robe until all he could hear was the quick rasp of air that was Elaya's fight for breath. He couldn't shut out the sight of the tall heroes of the Kin burning — charred and burning, like blackened logs. And his father, High Priest, Lord of the Caves, wise and powerful beyond belief — his father had done nothing to stop them.

No lightning had come from the skies. The earth had not risen up at his right hand, and the mountains had not stooped to his left. He had stood there, in all his robes and priestly power — and in the middle of the sacrifice, when the faith of his people was at its peak, the strangers had come. They had taken away all his majesty and all his pride, and left him only to beg at their feet like a cowering child before his father's hearth.

Hidden in his mother's arms, Ro sobbed for more than just his fear and hurt; he wept for the shattering of his idol, and for shame.

After a long time, he felt hands on his shoulders, pulling him free. The boy wriggled indignantly; but his mother had begun to cough, and he knew better than to stay clinging on.

The torches were guttering, but the voices of the men beyond still cut in sharp insistence across his father's stubborn syllables. He wiped one hand across his tear-stained face defiantly, and found himself staring up at Porah. The other boy's face looked white and sick, as if he had just been whipped. Ro flinched. "I'm sorry, Porah — I never meant to get you into trouble—"

"Trouble?" Porah spat out the word as though to strike the child across the face, and Ro shrank back. It was as if the young priest had forgotten all his duties to him — forgotten whose son he was speaking to...

"Are you too much of a baby to understand, Ro? What did you think you were going to see out here? The great Lord Movo putting the black demons to flight with one magic dart from his own lips? Your precious father holding up the sky in case it fell on our heads?"

Porah's own face was tear-streaked, and He no longer seemed to care who might pay heed.

"This is war — these are the people out of the old stories. They're everything our mothers used to frighten us with over the winter fires — they can melt the rock and see from afar, fly through the air and speak across the years. They've come back — and they want war.

"They want us to march over the mountains and conquer our cousins. And it won't stop there. They're going to use your father, Ro — they're going to use him to rule the whole world." He choked back an angry, frightened sob. "And if he says 'No' again... I think they're going to kill us all."