Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

The Preacher himself was standing beside the gun, talking to Janus. Behind them waited the Seventh Company of the First Battalion. Marcus recognized the big corporal who’d been imprisoned with them in Adrecht’s tents, and resisted giving the man a wave.

“You’d get more force if you hit it straight on,” Janus was saying. “And those doors can’t be solid stone, or they’d be too heavy to move. There’s no room for a counterweight.”

“No disrespect, sir, but I’ve seen some clever counterweights,” said the Preacher. “Besides, if they are light, it won’t matter how we hit them. And if we get a rebound, I sure don’t want it coming right back at us.” He patted the cannon fondly. “Besides, by the grace of the Lord and the Ministry of War, we’ve no shortage of roundshot. If we don’t break through the first time, we’ll just have to try again.”

“I suppose you know your business.” Janus looked back at Marcus. “You’ve warned the men?”

“I sent Lieutenant Warus, sir.” Unexpected cannon fire had a way of producing unpredictable results, and with the Colonials dispersed through the little oasis town Marcus didn’t want to take a chance on someone panicking.

“Excellent.” Janus took two long strides back from the gun. “You may fire at your pleasure, Captain Vahkerson.”

The Preacher looked at the three cannoneers standing beside the piece, who gave him a thumbs-up. He nodded, and they fell back from the gun, one of them holding the end of a length of lanyard.

Janus retreated as well and, somewhat to Marcus’ surprise, jammed his hands over his ears. This undignified but prudent example rippled down the chain of command as first Marcus and then the men of the Seventh standing behind him followed suit. Marcus didn’t hear the Preacher give the order to fire, but he saw the cannoneer give a sharp jerk on the lanyard, and a moment later the world went white.

• • •

The “oasis” was little more than a spring, in truth, issuing from a crack in the side of a rocky hill that rose out of the endless wastes of the Great Desol like a granite whale. Where the steady trickle of water had once soaked away into the thirsty ground, the Desoltai had built a stone-walled pool, shaded with horsehides to keep off the worst of the sun. Around it was a village, if it could be dignified with the name. It consisted of a wide-open space around the pool, surrounded by a scattering of huts built of stone and scraps of wood and roofed with more hides. Even these must have represented a significant investment for the Desoltai. There were no trees in the Desol, so every piece of timber would have been transported on horseback from the valley of the Tsel.

Whatever noncombatants had inhabited the village had plenty of warning of the Colonials’ approach, and the Vordanai had found the buildings stripped of everything a man could carry. A wide corral stank with still-fresh horse droppings, but there were no animals to be seen. Marcus had been frankly glad to hear it. Given the state of their supplies, burdening the column with a few hundred captive civilians would have brought on some choices he didn’t like to contemplate.

Beside the spring, where the hill had crumbled into something approaching a sheer cliff, the rock was carved into what must once have been a spectacular bas-relief. That it was ancient was obvious by the weathering. Human figures had eroded to blank-faced mannequins, arms raised in prayer or war or missing entirely. There were dozens of them, stretching for yards on either side of the crack where the spring emerged. Between them the remains of pillars could still be discerned, and in a few spots where a crevice had provided shelter from the wind the original delicate carvings of leaves and foliage were visible.

In the center of the ancient work of art was a pair of doors, twice the height of a man and cut from the same yellow-brown stone as the hillside. They had once been carved as well, but the centuries had weathered them nearly flat. More important, at least to Janus, it was obvious from the wide scrapes in the sandy soil that they had been opened recently. So while the rest of the regiment had been set to hauling water from the pool and searching the town, one company of infantry and one of the Preacher’s guns had been quietly commandeered to effect an entry. The men had spent the better part of an hour straining at the door with lines and makeshift crowbars, to no effect, so Janus had decided on more drastic measures.

• • •

Even with his ears covered, the blast of the cannon filled the world. Close up, it wasn’t the bass roar he was used to, but a monstrous crescendo that rattled his teeth and shifted things uncomfortably in his guts. His next breath reeked of powder. When he opened his eyes tentatively, he saw a ragged cloud of smoke drifting upward from the gun’s muzzle. Beyond, barely twenty paces away, were the doors of the temple. Marcus couldn’t imagine anything resisting the shot at that distance. It seemed as though it would have torn a hole in the mountain itself.

It certainly had done a number on the doors. The Preacher had aimed for the crack between the pair, and his aim had been impeccable, as had Janus’ logic. The stone surface was revealed as a thin facade, no more than an inch thick, supported by a wooden frame. The ball had punched clean through, smashing an irregular hole in the stonework and sending a spiderweb of cracks across the rest of the surface. As Marcus watched, a snapped-off section buckled and fell with a sound like someone dropping a tray full of crockery. Other pieces followed, one by one, until only the lower half of the doors and a few scraps around the hinges remained intact. A cloud of dust billowed up from the pile of stone fragments at the base.

“Well laid, Captain,” Janus said, when the chorus of destruction had come to an end. “I think no further shots will be required.”

“At your service, Colonel,” the Preacher said, and saluted. “Shall I send for my teams?”

“Indeed.” Janus looked thoughtfully at the dark opening. Sunlight cutting through the dust cloud illuminated only a narrow square of cut-stone floor, the air ablaze with dancing motes. Beyond that, the blackness was complete. He turned to the infantry, who were cautiously lowering their hands from their ears. “Corporal! Clear this mess out of the way, if you would?”

“Yessir!” the corporal snapped, throwing a sharp salute. A team of rankers was soon at work tossing the chunks of rubble aside, while others levered the wrecked wooden structure of the door out of the way. As the Preacher’s artillery mounts arrived to drag his gun back to the camp, Janus turned to Marcus.

“You seem like a man with something on his mind, Captain,” he said.

“Just thinking, sir,” Marcus said. “If there’s anyone in there, that just about rang the front bell for them. They’ll be ready for us.”

“True. But without access to the spring, they couldn’t hope to conceal any significant force.”

Marcus lowered his voice. “What about that thing that came for you in Ashe-Katarion?”

“The demon may try to stop us,” Janus acknowledged. “But we demonstrated there that it is not invincible. Formidable as an assassin, certainly, but a full company should see it off.”

“And you think you’ll find your Thousand Names here?”

“I’m certain of it,” Janus said. “We know they moved it this far, and they had no way to take it any farther. We’ve searched the rest of the town-not that it offers much of a hiding place. There’s nowhere else it can be. Ergo, it must be here.”

Marcus nodded. Looking into the dark entryway gave him a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he’d had the same feeling in Ashe-Katarion, when the search had led to a dead end. Nerves, he told himself. It’s just nerves.