Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

Mugwump instead turned right, toward the setting sun.

Vlad reinvoked the spell and worked the left wheel. He looked ahead and was pretty sure he could see the left disk rattling away, but he couldn’t quite be certain. Then he tried the right wheel, but again no response. Instead the dragon began to climb, his wings beating urgently.

Vlad began to shiver.

It wasn’t just from the cold.

16 May 1767 Happy Valley Postsylvania, Mystria

Nathaniel lowered his canteen and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Ain’t more than couple hours now. We’ll be there well afore dusk.”

“Right, very good, Woods.” Rathfield stood in the center of the trail, leaning on his musket. “This will give us several hours of daylight for the people of Happy Valley to pack up as much as they can. Won’t be much-wagons won’t make it through the mountains.”

The Steward looked up from the rock upon which he perched. “My people are not leaving, Colonel.”

“Do you not understand the gravity of the situation, Steward Fire?” Rathfield pointed off in the direction where he thought Piety lay. Nathaniel didn’t correct him. “Do you want the people of Happy Valley to end up like that?”

“It has nothing to do with what I desire, Colonel. It is what God demands of me and my people.” The older man stared down at empty and calloused hands. “God brought the flood to destroy wickedness. He brought the plagues to free His people. He destroyed sinful cities with cleansing fire. He sacrificed His Son to save all of us. If He was willing to do all that, how can I, as His servant, shy from willingness to do the same?”

Nathaniel drank again, wishing the canteen contained whiskey. There was no mistaking the sincerity in the Steward’s voice, but his surrendering to what he saw as God’s plan didn’t make any sense to Nathaniel. He’d always believed in the saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” Makepeace had once told him that the saying wasn’t in the Good Book, and Nathaniel reckoned it should have been added.

Rathfield smiled. “I understand your thinking, Steward. I respect it. But what if God is testing you? What if He is asking you to sacrifice your people the way He asked Abram to sacrifice his son?”

“I know He is testing me, Colonel. He has showed me many things, many terrible things. It is more than a man can bear-save for his faith in God. So, perhaps I am cast as Abram, or perhaps my lot is that of Job.” Fire looked toward the heavens. “Either does not matter because the moral of each Scripture is that faith will sustain us through the most horrible of trials. Our reward for faith is to abide with God forever in Heaven.”

Nathaniel stoppered his canteen. “I ain’t of a mind to say you’re wrong, Steward, and I don’t know enough Scripture to tell if you’re right. But I seem to remember-and you can correct me-that the Good Lord hisself said that the children should come unto Him on account of they was innocent. I cain’t see anybody what loves children that much wanting to happen to them what happened to the children in Piety.”

“You must understand, Mr. Woods, that God challenges us so we reaffirm our faith in Him.”

Nathaniel frowned. “Now, see, that is something I don’t reckon I can figure out. You clearly is a pious man, doing His work, gathering up people that believe in Him, and He goes and slaughters a bunch of them to test your faith? Ain’t that like having a sweetheart that goes out a-walking with another man, then comes back and asks if you believe her when she says she is chaste? Once you do, she goes out walking again, but this time they hold hands. How far would you let her test you? Would you wait until you found them naked and under the sheets, and would you believe when she says she’s chaste?”

The Steward opened his hands. “The mind of God is not knowable to man.”

“I hear you say that, but they’s an awful, terrible, powerful lot of preachers who claim they do know what God is thinking. They don’t skimp on giving you a piece of His mind when they get to preachifying.”

Rathfield raised a hand. “You tread perilously close to blasphemy, Woods.”

“I is not neither.” Nathaniel shook his head. “I reckon religion can give you peace on account of it tells you that there’s a reason things happen, terrible things, horrible things. When the good ones happen, you’re happy with God; when the bad ones happen, you just count it up as something God don’t think you need to understand at that moment.”

Kamiskwa raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps my brother would get to the point of his discussion.”

“I reckon I might, thank you, Kamiskwa.” Nathaniel pointed his rifle off toward Happy Valley. “You don’t know if God intends to kill them people, or if He’ll tell you it was just a test at the last moment. From the stories you mentioned previous, odds are four to one that blood is going to be shed. Seems to me there was some Scripture stories about great leaders, bringing their people out of the wilderness, to a promised land. Ain’t it possible that’s how God is leaning?”

“Woods, that will be quite enough!”

The Steward focused distantly for a moment, then hung his head. “You may well be right, Mr. Woods. I allowed myself to succumb to the sin of pride. I elevated the trials I shall face above those of the people who have put their trust in me. That I need to be strong for them, and strong to face these trials, this is an even greater test than I imagined. I am blessed that your insight revealed to me more of His plan.”

Nathaniel nodded once. The Steward still wasn’t grasping the seriousness of what they faced, but at least he now allowed as how not everyone should be given up to death. As long as Fire held open the door that some might survive, they might be able to evacuate the settlement and get people back over the mountains.

As they shouldered their packs again, Rathfield took off in the lead. Makepeace walked with the Steward, shouldering his pack and sharing some prayers. Kamiskwa watched their back trail, leaving Owen and Nathaniel walking together.

Owen glanced at him. “Do you honestly think he’d let them all die?”

“Being as how he’s more worried about their souls than he is their mortal remains, I don’t reckon he’s seeing death as quite the tragedy we do. Tragedy or not, long as I’m breathing, ain’t no way Becca Green’s going to the Lord, even if He comes down and invites her to Him. I reckon if He weren’t keen on being tacked to a tree and having a spear poked into his side, He surely ain’t going to like a bullet punching him dead center.”

Surprise widened Owen’s eyes. “You seem to bear God some animosity, Nathaniel.”

“It ain’t I got a hate-on for Him. It’s more I got a hate-on for his followers.”

“Like Makepeace?”

“Nope. Makepeace, he goes and prays good times and bad. Sometimes he does what he oughten’t to do, but he’s sorry and sincere about it and fair good at seeing it don’t happen again for a good long time.” Nathaniel nodded. “He weren’t always like that, but come his meeting with the Good Lord and that bear, he’s been sincere since.”

“I can’t argue with you there, only having known him since. But you’re telling it right.” Owen climbed up a steep set of rocks, then offered Nathaniel a hand. “But what do you think of God? Do you believe?”

Nathaniel took his hand and pulled himself up. “You really want to know the answer?”

“I believe I do.”

Nathaniel swept a hand out over the panorama of the wooded valley below and the hills that defined it. “I look at all this and I know men see the hand of the Creator there. You got your God; Kamiskwa and the Shedashee, they got theirs. I reckon other people gots themselves gods, ’cepting the Ryngians who seem a mite confused and awful willing to take the Lord’s name in vain even though they don’t believe. And all them Creators get credit for the same thing, but they all has themselves a set of rules ’bout what a body can and cannot do. And the one thing all them rules have in common is that they tend to benefit whosoever is the one telling everyone else what them rules is.”