Ben Bova - Orion in the Dying Time

I had no response to that.

“I took on human form as a whim, at first,” Anya confessed. “I found it exciting to share a life with you, to feel the blood thundering through my body, to love and laugh and fight—even to bleed. But always I knew that I could escape if it became necessary. I never faced the ultimate test, true death. When Set held me in his power, when I knew that I would die forever, that I would cease to be, I felt real fear for the first time. I panicked and ran. I abandoned you to save myself.”

“I thought I hated you for that,” I told her. “And yet I love you still.”

“I am not worthy of your love, Orion.”

Smiling, I replied, “Yet you have my love, Anya. Now and forever. Throughout all time, all space, all the universes of the continuum, I love you.”

It was true. I loved her and forgave her completely. I did this of my own will; no one was manipulating me. This was not a response that the Golden One had built into my conditioning. I truly loved Anya, despite what she had done. Perhaps, in a strange way, I loved her in part because she had experienced the ultimate fear that all humans must face. None of the other Creators had shown the courage even to try.

“And I love you, my darling,” she said, her voice growing faint.

“But where are you?”

“The Creators have fled. When they saw that Set could attack them here, in our own sanctuary, they abandoned the Earth altogether and fled for their lives.”

“Will you return to me?” I asked.

“The other Creators fear Set so much! They thought that destroying Sheol would put an end to him, but now they realize he is firmly entrenched on Earth. Only you can stop him, Orion. The Creators are depending entirely on you.”

“But I can’t do it alone!” I called to her diminishing voice. I could feel her presence fading, dwindling, the statue losing its living warmth, returning to pure marble.

“You must use your own resources, Orion,” Anya’s voice whispered to me. “The Creators are too afraid to face him themselves.”

“Will you return to me?” I repeated.

“I will try.” Fainter still.

“I need you!”

“When you need me most, I will be there for you, Orion.” Her voice was softer than the sighing of an owl’s wing. “When you need me most, my love.”

I was alone in the empty main square again, staring at the cold marble statue of Athena.

Alone. The Creators expected me to face Set and his minions without them, without even their help.

Feeling drained, exhausted, I went to the marble steps of the Parthenon and sat down, my head sunk in my hands. From across the square the giant golden Buddha smiled placidly at me.

For the first time in all my lives I was facing a situation where my strength by itself was of practically no value. I had to use my mind, the powers of thought, to find a way to defeat Set. He overpowered me physically, that I knew from painful experience. He had an army of Shaydanians at his clawed fingertips and legions of dinosaurs under his control.

I had my body and my wits. Nothing more.

The Buddha statue seemed to be watching me, its smile friendly and benign.

“It’s all well and good for you to preach desirelessness,” I grumbled aloud to the gold-leafed wood. “But I have desires. I have needs. And what I need most is an army—”

My voice stopped in midsentence.

I knew where there was an army. A victorious army that had swept from the Gobi Desert to the banks of the Danube River. The army of Subotai, greatest of the Mongol generals who conquered most of the world for Genghis Khan.

Rising to my feet, I mentally gathered the energy to project myself into the thirteenth century of the Christian era, to the time when the Mongol Empire stretched from the coast of China to the plain of Hungary. I had been there before. I had assassinated their high khan, Ogotai, the son of Genghis Khan. A man who had befriended me.

The city of the Creators disappeared as I passed through the cryogenic cold of a transition through spacetime. For an instant I was bodiless in the utterly black void of the continuum. Then I was standing on a cold windswept prairie, heavy gray storm clouds thickening overhead. There was not a tree in sight, but in the distance I could make out the ragged silhouette of a walled city against the darkening clouds.

I headed for the city. It began to rain, a cold driving rain mixed with wet sleet. I pulled my lion pelt around my torso and shut down the peripheral circulation in my capillaries as much as I dared to keep my body heat inside me. Head down, shoulders forward, I bulled my way through the icy rain as the ground beneath my feet turned to slick gooey mud.

The city was not burning, which meant either that Subotai’s army was besieging it or had already captured it. I thought the latter because I saw no signs of a camp, no great horse corrals or mounted warriors on picket patrols.

It was fully dark by the time I reached the city gate. The wall was nothing more than a rough palisade of pointed logs dug into what was fast becoming a sea of mud. The gate was a crude affair of planks with spaces between them for shooting arrows through.

It was open. A good sign. No fighting was going on or expected.

A half-dozen Mongol warriors stood in the shelter of the gate’s overhanging parapet, a small fire crackling fitfully beneath a makeshift board that only partially protected it from the pelting rain.

The Mongols were wiry, battle-scarred veterans. Yet without their ponies they looked small, almost as small as children. Deadly children, though. Each of them wore a chain-mail vest and a conical steel helmet. They carried curved sabers and daggers at their belts. I saw their inevitable bows and quivers full of arrows resting against the planks of the half-open gate.

One of them stepped out to challenge me.

“Halt!” he commanded. “Who are you and what’s your business here?”

“I am Orion, a friend of the lord Subotai. I have come from Karakorum with a message from the High Khan.”

The tough warrior’s eyes narrowed. “The nobles have elected a new High Khan to replace Ogotai?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Kubilai and the others are gathering at Karakorum to make their choice. My message concerns other matters.”

He eyed my dripping lion’s pelt and I realized he had never seen a saber-tooth before. But he showed no other sign of curiosity as he demanded, “What proof have you of your words?”

I made myself smile. “Send a messenger to Subotai and tell him that Orion is here to see him. Describe me to him and he will be glad to see me.”

He looked me up and down. Among the Mongols my size was little short of phenomenal. And Subotai knew of my abilities as a fighter. I hoped that no word had reached him from Karakorum that I had murdered the High Khan Ogotai.

The warrior dispatched one of his men to carry my message to Subotai, then grudgingly allowed me to share the meager warmth of their fire, out of the cold rain.

“That’s a fine pelt you are wearing,” said one of the other guards.

“I killed the beast a long time ago,” I replied.

They told me that this city was the capital of the Muscovites. I remembered that Subotai had been eager to learn all that I could tell him about the black-earth region of the Ukraine, and the steppes of Russia that led into the plains of Poland and, beyond the Carpathian mountains, into Hungary and the heartland of Europe.

By the time the messenger returned, my back felt as if it were coated with ice even though my face and hands were reasonably warm. A pair of other warriors came with the messenger, decked in shining armor cuirasses and polished helmets, jewels in their sword hilts. With hardly a word they took me through the mud streets of the city of the Muscovites to the quarters of Subotai.