The Heretic

Scouts had seen enough of them before from the Land’s principle powder plant in Cascade.

Gunpowder. Kegs and kegs of it.

Excellent, said Center. The variable necessary for further calculation.

“Neh good,” said Kruso, shaking his head. “At all, neh good.”

“Let’s check the others,” Abel said.

He and Kruso ran to the other wagon and found that it too was laden with similar cargo. The lead cart had no barrels, however. In its bed were earthen urns that, when struck open with a rifle butt, were revealed to be full of barley grain. There was also a row of jugs the size of butter churns. Himmel was about to break one open when Abel motioned for him to hold up.

“Lamp oil and wine,” he said. “Let’s soak the tarps in the oil.”

A gunshot nearby. Then another.

“I thought you took all the wagon riders out with arrows,” Abel said.

“Might somebody tham missed.”

They skirted around the middle wagon and found Himmel near a Redlander male. The Blaskoye was gut-shot and attempting to crawl away. He trailed a steadily increasing length of gut behind him that was winding out from his body. Himmel stood on the trailing end of the man’s intestine, holding it in place. As he watched the other crawl, a horrible smile played over Himmel’s face.

“Bastard took a shot at me,” he muttered.

Kruso did not waste time speaking to Himmel, but jogged up to the Redlander. He quickly took the man’s head in his gnomelike hands, then, with a jerk, twisted and broke the Redlander’s neck. The man collapsed, kicked twice, and was dead.

Kruso strode back to Himmel, looked him straight in the eyes for a moment. The smile left Himmel’s face. “Nonsense is such,” Kruso said with a shake of his head, and turned away.

“Can we burn the wagons now?” Abel said.

They quickly went and did just that, dividing the wagons among them, with Abel taking the middle.

Himmel reloaded and fired a gun point-blank into the rear tarp, expecting the muzzle flash to catch fire to the lamp vapors that filled the air.

Nothing.

They tried again with Abel’s dragon. No fire.

Abel reached into his tunic pocket and retrieved his wooden box of matches. He thumbed it open and pulled out a lucifer.

Himmel backed away. He, like Abel, was not an initiate of Irisobrian. Unlike Abel, he was a Stasis literalist. “Nishterlaub,” Himmel said. “Neh good.”

Kruso shook his head. “Not nishterlaub. This lucifers myself made of cap and splinter. Nishterlaub it neh is.”

“Still,” said Himmel, “against edict. I don’t like it.”

We haven’t got time for argument. Do what you must, lad.

Abel struck the match upon the glued grain on the box lid. It sprang to life instantly, its acrid sulfurous fumes filling the air all about them. Kruso made very trustworthy matches.

“It ta thet corner set,” Kruso said, and Abel followed instructions. Within seconds, the tarp was ablaze.

They did the same for the other two wagons, with Himmel muttering of doom the whole time. When they were done, Kruso bent down, grabbed something, then stood up and handed what was in his hand to Abel.

He’d found Abel’s dropped rifle.

“Best quickly we go,” Kruso said.

Abel ran back for his dont, careful not to trip in the mess that was the Redlander girl’s splayed body, her blasted face now turned to rapidly drying slop upon the thirsty desert sand.

Abel mounted up, and the three rode away as quickly as they could. After they’d gone what Kruso estimated was a safe distance, the Scout signaled them to turn around for a final look.

The wagons were ablaze. They watched the flames crackle for a moment.

And then, in an enormous explosion, the rear wagon blew itself to splinters. The remaining daks collapsed in a twisted mass of dakflesh.

Some were killed outright. Some blew notes of agony through their horns. All were yoked together and could not flee into the Redlands to die.

They would die right here.

I wish I’d set them loose. I should have, maybe.

But the thought hadn’t occurred to him when he’d been back at the wagons. There hadn’t been time. Besides, he told himself, domesticated daks wouldn’t last long in the Redland wilds. Probably.

For a moment, he remembered the woman’s pleading face just before the ball struck her.

She’d have done the same to you, lad.

Then the other two wagons exploded one after the other in great black plumes of smoke, and, looking upon the scene in excitement and amazement, Abel felt every bit of regret fade away.

He’d done that. Him. Abel Dashian.

No regrets.

All he was left with was the firm resolution that next time he would hold on to his rifle no matter what.

6

“I won’t ask what you were thinking, because I believe I know the answer to that,” said Joab. “What I would like to know is what I’m going to tell the prelate to somehow keep you in the military.” Joab stopped walking, and Abel came to an abrupt halt beside him. His father eyed him. “Because with that kind of judgment, I frankly don’t know if you are officer material, son.”

Abel met his father’s gaze, but said nothing. He had the feeling that any reply he made would be the wrong one at this point.

“You do understand the seriousness of the situation?” Joab’s voice was low and intense-which Abel feared far more than his father’s shouts or curses.

“Yes, Father.”

They continued walking, Abel a half step behind his father.

One thing I hadn’t counted on, Raj continued, almost, it seemed, speaking to himself, when I had Center copy my mind and blast us both to the stars: having to go through puberty again and again and again.

After a few paces Joab began talking again, this time to himself. “The problem is that you not only defied me by going out there, you went against Stasis by using the lucifer that way. It’s not what you did, it’s how it looks.”

“I get it, Father.”

They made their way through the streets of Hestinga. Hestinga was only half the size of the capital, Lindron, but it had many of the same amenities and was considered a good posting by both priest and soldier. The centers of the thoroughfares were paved with Redland stone, and the gutters were swept at least once a week to clear out the collections of sewage, garbage, and dont and dak manure that piled up there in the interim.

Abel had been to villages that never got swept, where people lived on layer upon layer of their own garbage. Hestinga smelled like a bloomherb flower in comparison

Furthermore, once a year during floodtime, the lake filled to the point a bucket line was possible and the streets were actually washed down. This annual event didn’t even happen in Lindron.

The Hestinga buildings were not as grand as Lindron’s, however. Most were simple mud-brick structures with cut-hole windows that were closed with woven rush mats during the heat of the day. Glass was far less common here.