Shining Steel Read online

  “John, we can't get up the stairs. There are five or six of them up there. We're going to burn them out."

  John glanced back at the window. Neither the swordsman nor the machine gun barrel was visible. He would have preferred to have captured the gun intact, but that appeared to be impossible.

  “All right,” he said, “but try to keep it from spreading. I want this town as a base, not a ruin. If you can take anybody alive, take them, and don't hurt them more than you have to. I want to know where they got that thing. And once the gun's out of the way, go house-to-house; take all the prisoners you can, burn out anyone who gives you trouble, but keep enough standing for us to use."

  “Aye, Captain.” Habakkuk raised his right hand in salute, then vanished back through the doorway.

  John watched the window, sword ready, but saw no further activity there. A moment later the smell of smoke reached his nostrils, and shortly after that his men came spilling out the doorway, coughing, swords bare in their hands. One blade was spattered with red, and only three men emerged where four had gone in.

  He turned his horse, keeping one eye on the window. He heard renewed shouting inside as the defenders struggled to put out the fire. No sign of life showed at the window.

  A few moments later the first two staggered out the door, choking and gasping. John's men were waiting, swords drawn; the villagers threw down their weapons and surrendered, to no one's surprise. This was not the first time John had seen smoke take the fight out of men.

  A third villager emerged and was taken, but after him came a long moment of near-silence. The smoke pouring from the door grew thicker, and thin streamers began to leak from the upper story.

  Finally, a fourth defender dashed out, sword ready, and not willing to give in easily. Two warriors pursued him, leaving John astride and Habakkuk afoot to watch the door and guard the three prisoners.

  John shifted his grip on his sword; he was certain that the fleeing enemy was a diversion.

  Sure enough, a few seconds later another man emerged. He swung immediately to the side and engaged Habakkuk, while behind him a sixth villager appeared, lugging a long, heavy metal thing. John spurred his horse and clouted this last man with his sword. The villager managed to duck at the last instant, but the blade gouged his scalp and he fell, dropping his burden-the machine gun, John was certain. One end was identical with the barrel that had protruded from the window; though the rest of the mechanism bore little resemblance to an ordinary gun or rifle, John had no doubt what it was.

  Flames were licking at the doorframe; the defenders had waited until the last possible minute before making their break. John was sure that any who might remain within the house were doomed.

  The three who had surrendered, upon seeing their comrades putting up a fight, attempted to join in, grabbing at Habakkuk from behind; John urged his mount forward again, trampling over the downed gunbearer to get at them, his sword flashing in the sun.

  More of John's warriors, hearing the combat and seeing the smoke, were emerging from wherever they had fled, and in moments three of the six villagers were dead, another seriously wounded, and the remaining two captive. A horse's hoof had caved in the gunbearer's skull, and John saw, to his disgust, that the machine gun had been broken open somehow in the melee, scattering small bits of metal in the street.

  “The machine gun is ours!” Habakkuk cried, and more of the invading cavalry reappeared. “Take the village, house by house!"

  John did not bother to confirm the order; the men were obeying without his command. He stared down at the scattered fragments with regret. He had no mechanics with him. If the gun could be repaired at all, it could not be done here. Even the belt of ammunition, spilling from a box at one side, was of no immediate use; he could tell at a glance that the shells were far too large to fit the rifles his men carried. Eventually, of course, the gunpowder could be salvaged and used in ordinary cartridges-in fact, the ammunition belt probably contained a fortune in gunpowder. Perhaps a gun could be improvised that could use the shells.

  A woman's scream distracted him; he looked up to see three of his men dragging her from her house, her skirts already torn away and blood running from a cut on her head.

  “Keep them alive!” he shouted, “Take prisoners! I'll flog any man who kills an unarmed villager!"

  One of the three men grinned at him and signalled an acknowledgement. “Yes, sir, Captain,” he called. “We won't kill her, we'll just pass her on!"

  “You do that,” John replied. He glanced down at the pieces of the gun. “We need to know where they got this thing.” He grimaced with distaste. A machine gun-obviously valuable, perhaps an irreplaceable historical relic, maybe brought on one of the founding ships all the way from Earth itself, and now broken.

  He cared more for its value as an artifact than as a weapon; this gun was a piece of Godsworld's history. As dangerous a weapon as it might be it was not to his liking, killing indiscriminately at a distance. He preferred more personal weapons. He wiped the blood from his sword, holding it up so that the blade gleamed bright in the sun.

  Give him steel, he thought, shining steel, not the dull lead and brass of bullets.

  Chapter Two

  “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."-Matthew 7:7

  ****

  John looked at the little group in disgust. Out of perhaps as many as two hundred villagers, only two dozen had been fit to question by the time his men had finally calmed down. He saw just five warriors; the rest were evenly divided between men too old to fight and women of various ages.

  Many others were still alive, of course-virtually all the children had survived, and most of the women. John disapproved of interrogating children, and few women were fit to question after a night of beatings and gang rape. Most of the men in the village had insisted on fighting to the death.

  “J'sevyu, friends,” he announced. “We are good Christians, and mean you no harm; we ask your forgiveness for the violence done to you in the rage of battle, but we're fighting for the True Word and can't allow anyone to stand in our way.” He looked at the faces of the captives. Their expressions covered a wide range, from fury to sullen resignation, from dull apathy to intense interest. He had seen such faces before, but they never failed to fascinate him. He tried, as he had tried before, to decide what he himself would feel in such a position, but as always, he simply could not imagine ever being a defeated prisoner. He told himself that in a hopeless situation such as that the villagers had faced, he would have surrendered quickly-after all, he who surrenders lives to fight again, and fighting on against impossible odds would be suicide, and suicide is a mortal sin. Surrender would be the only reasonable thing to do in such a position. Still, he absolutely could not conceive of what he would feel when he had actually done so. As yet, he had never faced such a situation.

  “I'm sure you all know what will happen to you now; you'll be taken back to our homeland, where you'll be put to work and taught the way of the People of the True Word and Flesh. When you've accepted the True Word into your hearts, you'll join us as free and equal partners in the crusade to bring enlightenment to those who, even here on Godsworld, have strayed from the only true path to God's kingdom. I know that right now you're all hurt, you're suffering the deaths of your loved ones and the loss of your homes, you're probably full of hate for my men and for me, but I'm asking you to rise above that hurt and that hatred, to accept what's happened and to accept the True Word that we bring you. I'm no preacher, I'm not an Elder; I'm just a soldier. I can't teach you the way. But I can tell you that ours is the one true path, and that you can follow it with us. It'll help if you cooperate with us now, if you forgive as much as you can of what we've had to do to bring you your eventual salvation, if you can put aside your mistaken loyalties of the past and answer our questions as best you can."

  Few of the expressions changed. He had expected that. He had made such speeches before, a
nd only the youngest ever seemed moved by them. He smothered a sigh of disappointment. The aftermath of a battle was always depressing. He loved the careful planning, the preparation, and the chaos of the actual fighting, but when it came time to divvy up loot, bury the dead, and deal with the defeated enemy he invariably found himself hating every minute of it.

  “All right, then, we're going to be taking you in one by one and asking a few simple questions. No harm will come to any of you, so long as somebody answers our questions. Those of you who refuse to answer-well, we'll note it down, and I can't say for sure what will happen if nobody answers us. Let's just see how it goes. You,” he said, pointing to an old man in the front row. “You first. Hab?"

  Habakkuk nodded, and led the man out of the room. They had taken over what appeared to be an inn as their base of operations; John had made his speech in the common room, and interrogations were to be carried out in the kitchen. Several carving knives had been neatly laid out on a side table; neither John nor any of his men intended to use them, but simply having them visible there would be a powerful threat.

  John signalled to the men guarding the rest of the prisoners, then followed his lieutenant and his captive into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. Those few guards had been chosen as being the least-exhausted, least-battered of the invading company, but his last glimpse of them was not reassuring; two were leaning back against the wall, swords hanging down loosely.

  In the kitchen Habakkuk had already seated the old man on the hard stone-capped stool they had selected earlier. “Well, mister,” he said, “what's your name?"

  “Joseph Walker-in-the-Valley,” the old man replied. “And that's the last of your darned questions I'm going to answer."

  “No need to be like that; we aren't planning to hurt anybody. At least, not anyone around here. We're at war with those heathen filth who call themselves the Chosen of the Holy Ghost; can you tell us anything about them? Any of them been around here lately?"

  “I don't plan to answer that."

  Habakkuk looked up at John, then glanced over at the display of knives. He shrugged.

  “Whatever you like, Mr. Walker. So you don't know anything about the Chosen."

  “Didn't say that."

  “Do you know something, then?"

  “Won't tell you."

  The conversation went on in that vein; after a minute or so Habakkuk switched topics, and began asking about the machine gun.

  “Caught you with your pants down, didn't we?” Walker-in-the-Valley gloated.

  Habakkuk shrugged again. “Didn't do you any good, though, did it?” He waved at the heavy closed door and the table of knives. “You're here just the same. Wherever you folks found that gun, you might just as well have left it there."

  “Who says we found it?"

  “Well, if someone sold it to you and told you it would protect you, you got swindled. You tell us where you got it, and we'll see about putting it right."

  “Won't tell you."

  Habakkuk sighed, and continued.

  After about fifteen minutes, Joseph Walker-in-the-Valley had refused to say anything about the Chosen, the machine gun, the village leaders (if any), even the weather. With a final frustrated sigh, Habakkuk noted this down and dragged the old man back to the common room.

  “This one stays,” he called to the guards. Then he pointed at random at another prisoner. “You next, please; come on back."

  John had watched the whole thing silently. He watched the second interview, with a warrior named Luke Bathed-in-Blood, just as silently, and the third, and the fourth. None of them yielded any useful information. The village leaders were dead, according to two of the prisoners, but John and Habakkuk had already expected that-heretic leaders usually fought to the death, since they knew they would be executed anyway for leading their people astray. Nobody admitted to knowing anything about the Chosen other than that they were there, and on the verge of war with the People of the True Word and Flesh. Both groups being heretics, as they saw it, the villagers hadn't paid much attention.

  Nobody was saying anything about the machine-gun. That subject alone brought either silence or refusal from every prisoner.

  Every prisoner, that is, until a young woman who gave her name as Miriam Humble-Before-God.

  “Where was that machine-gun found?” Habakkuk asked, after a few preliminary questions.

  “It wasn't found anywhere!” Miriam spat back.

  Habakkuk stared at her coldly; John suppressed his reaction, forcing himself to remain silent.

  “Then where did it come from, if it wasn't found somewhere?"

  “The elders bought it, of course-and if they'd had any brains they'd have bought more weapons with it, and shot all of you, instead of just a few!"

  “A few?” Habakkuk stared at her, quietly enraged. “Thirty-one of our men and twenty-six horses were killed by that infernal weapon, and more were wounded."

  “They deserved it, attacking a neutral village!"

  “There are no neutrals, only the People of the True Word and the heretics.” He was in control of himself again. “Where did they buy it? Were there other weapons for sale?"

  “They bought it in Little St. Peter, I heard."

  “Where is that?"

  Miriam stared at him in surprise. “Don't you know?"

  “Just tell me where it is."

  “I don't know; I'm just a village woman, I don't travel. Somewhere east of here, I guess."

  Habakkuk glanced at John; he nodded slightly. “All right,” Habakkuk continued. “They bought the machine gun in Little St. Peter. Where did the people in Little St. Peter get it? Did anyone say? Did they find an ancient cache, or was someone hoarding this one gun?"

  “They bought it from the People of Heaven, of course; it's not ancient."

  “Oh?"

  “Heck, no! You think we'd trust our lives to some rusty antique? That machine-gun was brand-new!"

  “And your village elders bought this brand-new machine-gun from the folks in Little St. Peter, and they bought it from the People of Heaven?"

  “That's what I heard."

  “So where did the People of Heaven come by it, then?"

  “They built it, I'd reckon-and they've built plenty more, I'm sure, and when you go up against them you'll get your heads shot off, just the way you deserve!"

  Habakkuk glanced at John, then at the display of knives, then back at the woman. “You think they built it?"

  “Somebody must have, and from what I've heard, the People of Heaven are the ones to do it."

  Habakkuk leaned back on his chair. “And just what have you heard?"

  The woman was suddenly quiet. “Not much."

  “How much?"

  “Really, not much; just that the People of Heaven are running a protectorate, with maybe twenty or thirty villages signed up in some kind of a pact without any conversions or tithes that I've heard of, and that they've got the guns and other stuff to make it work."

  “Where'd you hear this?"

  Defensive, Miriam said, “Well, the elders were thinking about joining, maybe; I heard my daddy talking, that's all."

  “Your daddy was one of the elders?"

  “Until one of your men cut his throat, he was."

  “He wanted to join this protectorate?"

  “I didn't say that; he voted against it. The others were all for it, said look how well Little St. Peter's doing, but Daddy thought we were just fine the way we were, and he didn't trust the People of Heaven. He thought we could get along fine as we always had, didn't think anyone would ever bother us.” Her voice broke. “I guess he was wrong.” She snuffled, all her earlier defiant appearance gone.

  Habakkuk looked at John again.

  He, in turn, looked at the girl. She was about twenty, he judged, of medium height and pleasantly plump, with soft brown hair that was currently dirty and tangled; a large bruise covered one cheek. She had apparently not escaped the soldiers’ attentions, but all in all
did not seem to have suffered excessively. “Is that all you know about the People of Heaven?” John asked.

  “That's all."

  “How long have they been running this protectorate thing?"

  “I don't know; a year or two, I guess."

  “You ever hear about them, Hab?"

  “Not that I recollect,” Habakkuk replied.

  John had in fact heard of them vaguely; one of the Elders had said something when preparing this expedition, though did not remember exactly who it had been. The People of Heaven had recently appeared on the scene in the southeastern hills, down toward Judah; nobody seemed to know their heritage exactly, so the Elders of the True Word and Flesh assumed they were a new group, gathered by a new false prophet who had somehow won adherents to his particular brand of heresy without any claim to birthright ministry. Such false prophets had arisen from time to time in the history of Godsworld; usually their cults fell apart as soon as the leader died.

  The People of the True Word and Flesh had no quarrel with the People of Heaven, so far as John knew-other than the fact that, like all groups except his own, the People of Heaven were heretics, fallen from the True Path-but for his own part he disliked protectorates. The idea of villages and towns banding together as a mere business arrangement, without sharing one faith and without proving their value in battle, seemed wrong, somehow. A nation was meant to be a single people, united in their beliefs, and who had tested the strength of those beliefs against their enemies. God promised the final victory to the righteous-but how could the righteous triumph if their enemies banded together against them? And a league or protectorate could not possibly all be righteous, if its people were not in accord with one another.

  Of course, most protectorates and alliances fell apart quickly enough; the stronger ally would absorb the weaker, or the client states would betray the protector or rebel against him. John saw the workings of God in such events. The mighty shall be cast down, he thought, so that the People of the True Word and Flesh may triumph.