your neck, along with your silver dove and iron pomegranate.' Symbols from the earliest days of the Chaldarean faith-in metals the Night most despised.
Hecht rooted beneath his shirt and brought out his symbolic disguise. A gold ring hung between the pomegranate and dove. 'Where did that come from?'
The Ninth Unknown was disinclined to waste time reeducating him. The old man touched his left temple. He remembered.
'Put the ring on.'
'Uh?'
'Pick a finger. Any finger. The one that it fits tightest. Put it on. Then put this on behind it.' Februaren extended a gaudy silver thing encrusted with small gems.
Hecht fumbled the gold band a couple times getting it off the chain and onto the middle finger of his left hand. It felt like the damned thing was trying to get away. Cloven Februaren helped herd it, then forced the garish bauble on after it.
'That's your safety lock. It won't come off till I release it. So the other will stay where you need it until I do.'
Hecht did what he was told, thinking the ring could still get away. If it could get his finger amputated. He asked, 'Why are we doing this?'
'We're denying the Night the focus that Rudenes Schneidel and er-Rashal have tried to give it. The nearer it comes to you the more distracted it will get. Distracted? That's not quite right. But I'm too tired to find the perfect word.'
'You seem chipper enough to keep me awake all night.'
'You've done what I came to get you to do. You have the ring on. You still wear the amulet. I can fade away and you can get back to wasting your life on sleep. All before these dedicated boys of yours can wake up and be terrified because they almost did something that might have put you at risk.'
What in the name of the Adversary did he mean by that?
The old man touched him again.
Sleep came instantly.
Sleep ended, sudden as the man in black's sword stroke, slain by the bark of falcons.
Waking with mind fuzzy, Piper Hecht tried to recall the name of the goddess of sleep. That seemed terribly important for a dozen seconds. Until he understood. That was not thunder, never heard up here anyway, but the crude speech of weapons designed to thwart the Will of the Night.
Drago Prosek and his henchmen were on the job, as alert and ready as they had been told to be.
The Captain-General shook off the slut sleep and got his feet under him. With the assistance of lifeguards who insisted they had to be right there beside his rude mattress even while he was unconscious. The same lifeguards who had failed to notice the earlier visit of the Ninth Unknown.
Sobering realization. They could be circumvented easily.
The moon was almost full. It splashed Arn Bedu with ghost light. And made it possible to see Drago Prosek's crews doing their cleanup while most of the Patriarchal force watched and babbled in awe.
The egg the falconeers came up with beggared the one found after the destruction of the bogon in Esther's Wood, a seeming eternity ago. What had died here, tonight, must have been a minor god. Eliminated quickly and efficiently by men just doing their jobs, using munitions designed for the task.
This was why the Night dreaded Piper Hecht. Destroying Instrumentalities was about to become no more special than any other death stroke.
Whole new realms of warfare would open up once men understood that they could butcher one another's gods.
The night lighted up when an immense flash appeared against the base of Arn Bedu's northwest mural tower. A roar like all the thunder in the world at once followed a moment later. That was so loud it deadened the ear. There was no hearing the crash and grind of stone as the tower and nearby wall surrendered to gravity and came down, but it felt like an earthquake.
Nearly a ton of new, refined, more potent firepowder had been packed into the mine under that tower. The fuse trail had been lit off by sentries with orders to do so whenever Rudenes Schneidel tried to use the Night against the besiegers.
The Captain-General stared up at the moonlighted pillar of dust leaning westward above the wreckage. He wished that he had had storm troops ready to go while the rubble was stabilizing.
Troops did push into Arn Bedu soon. Many carried portable firepowder weapons, after the fashion of the capture of the Duke of Clearenza. But this time the men were armed against the Night. Their attack was disorganized but they did know what needed doing.
Titus Consent asked, 'Any idea how much this is costing?'
Hecht said, 'I can't imagine. But I see ordinary guys like you and me grinning from ear to ear because we just murdered a midget god of some kind and we're about to take a fortress that's been considered invincible forever. And we hardly had to work at either one. Because we knew what we wanted to do and we worked hard to make sure everything was ready to make it happen when an opportunity popped up.'
Exhaustion claimed Hecht before the sun rose. He left Arn Bedu to the mercies of his associates. His preparations had proven out. His veterans had done their work completely indifferent to the Will of the Night.
Hecht began to think that even he now had an inkling why he had gained the enmity of the Night.
He was sound asleep before his messengers reached the camp of his allies. They offered King Peter's partisans the opportunity to complete the capture of the pagan fortress.
That assault might be costly despite the horrible shocks already suffered by Am Bedu's defenders.
The most shaken and enfeebled of those proved to be the dreaded sorcerer Rudenes Schneidel himself. The man offered no resistance whatsoever when discovered.
Hecht's lifeguards convinced him that it would be politic to appear in full ceremonial dress to recognize his allies for having successfully cleansed Arn Bedu.
The Mountain passed him with a prisoner in tow, a man bound and gagged in a way that made it clear he was important, powerful, and dangerous. The man's face was locked into an expression of utter, possibly eternal disbelief. This could not be happening!
Iskandar, Shake Malik, and Count Hercule had conquered their disbelief. Publicly. But they kept glancing at Hecht as though certain he must be more than what they could see, or that another shoe had yet to fall. He wanted to yell at them. He had not done anything special. His sappers had packed firepowder in under the wall. Drago Prosek's falconeers had overcome those Night things that tried to interfere with God's soldiers.
The same weapons lubricated the assault.
Arn Bedu's defenders were dead or captured. Including even Rudenes Schneidel, whom Hecht had not expected to see in the flesh, ever. He had assumed the man would escape in the final confusion, as er-Rashal had done when al-Khazen's defense fell apart.
Titus Consent murmured, 'Things have changed again. Reality definitely shifted when that wall came down.'
Hecht understood. This time he saw the future as he had not after destroying the bogon in Esther's Wood.
It should have taken months more, if not years, to reduce Arn Bedu. He had brought it down in days once his new firepowder and weapons arrived.
No fortress would be invulnerable ever again.
It would take time, though. He knew. People did not like change.
He started up the mountainside.
Madouc demanded, 'Where are you going?'
'Up there to look around.'
'You think you're suddenly safe?'
'I'm hoping.' He glanced toward where an argument simmered between the Mountain, Iskander, and Count Hercule. Each wanted Schneidel. Hecht said, 'See that Nassim gets the prize.'
'What?'
'A random thought. The chief of that band from Calzir. He came here because Schneidel was behind his son's
