James Maxey - Dragonseed

Of course, dying by their side had never worried him. Dying at their hands was what kept him awake at night.

The crowd drew back even further as Ragnar marched within a yard of the well. He glared up at Burke, studying him closely. The prophet's beefy hands squeezed tightly around the cross.

A thick vein beside the prophet's left eyebrow pulsed strongly enough that Burke could count the big man's heartbeats. Ragnar's mouth opened. Burke braced himself, certain that he was about to be condemned as a witch or a devil.

Instead, the prophet asked in a voice that was little more than a whisper, "Are you dead?"

Thorny glanced up at Burke, his eyebrows raised. The question had taken him by surprise as well.

Before Burke could answer, Ragnar continued, eying Jeremiah. "This was the boy sick with yellow-mouth."

Jeremiah nodded. "I'm not sick anymore," he said.

The hairy man studied Vance's face, then Thorny's.

"These were the men who fled town," he said, quietly. "You perished in the explosion."

Now Jeremiah, Vance, and even Poocher were looking to Burke to see what he would say next. Only Anza didn't look at him; she kept her eyes fixed firmly on the Mighty Men with the guns. For the moment, Burke felt bulletproof.

He shook his head. "We aren't dead," he said, firmly, making certain the crowd heard his words. "I know I could play upon your superstitions and claim we're specters, or angels. I could claim it was God who healed our wounds and gave us wings of silver. But these are all lies. I'm a man who values truth.

"Our presence here has nothing to do with gods or magic. The wings that hold me in the air are machines, better machines than I know how to build. Jeremiah's yellow-mouth was fixed by machines, tiny ones, smaller than I can design. Vance can see because of them; Anza can talk. Thorny had lost most of his teeth over the years. Smile for the crowd, Thorny." Thorny gave a broad grin to the men who stood before him, displaying his restored choppers.

Ragnar's face twisted into a snarl. "Witchcraft explains all these things."

"Witchcraft explains a lot of things," said Burke, again speaking loudly enough for the crowd to hear. "It can explain how black powder ignites and pushes lead balls from an iron tube. You can explain how fire changes some rocks into metals by chalking it up as magic. And if you need to understand why crops sometimes fail, or why some men die in battle and others don't, or why plague besieges a city, it doesn't take a lot of thought. You can explain it all as the will of God."

He swept his gaze across the crowd, at the countless eyes fixed upon him. "All of these explanations have one thing in common," he said. "They're wrong."

"Blasphemer!" Ragnar barked. His knuckles turned white as he gripped his cross more tightly. He looked coiled to spring.

Anza shifted her stance, maintaining her look of casual readiness. Ragnar glared at her. "I do not fear your daughter," the prophet growled.

Joab and Adino lifted their guns to their shoulders, taking aim. Burke crossed his arms and patiently waited for Ragnar to make his move.

The prophet's eyes smoldered like droplets of molten steel. "Fly away," Ragnar said. "You are five against thousands."

Burke wondered who he wasn't counting. The pig? Jeremiah? It was time to find out if the prophet's math was fundamentally flawed.

"Perhaps it's the four of you against thousands," said Burke.

The prophet's mouth twitched.

Burked looked at the crowd. "I'm not here to take command of this fort by violence. I didn't come here for revenge against Ragnar, or to inspire you with wonderful words of how your struggle is part of God's plan. I'm here to offer to lead you in a struggle that's far more selfish in nature. I want to one day plant a garden on land I've plowed without some dragon king claiming the harvest. I want my grandchildren to live in a world where they won't be sold as slaves or hunted as prey. I want freedom. I'm willing to die by your side to earn it."

Ragnar looked at the crowd. His voice boomed like thunder: "Do not listen to this devil! Freedom is not the cause! We do not make war for land or riches! We fight for a greater glory! We are created in God's image, and the wrath of God is great and righteous! We struggle against serpents! We are the light in a world of darkness! Together, we will drive the dragons into the sea! Remember the Free City! Remember the Free City!"

As always, the utterance of these words was followed immediately by their repetition. Yet, it wasn't the crowd that cried out the words: it was the echo of Ragnar's own voice bouncing from the stone wall of the foundry behind Burke.

The crowd was silent. Some men watched Ragnar carefully, even fearfully. Some looked at Burke with the same fearful eyes. Others looked at the ground, as if they wished they were someplace else.

"You heard the man. He offers you wrath. He offers you a holy struggle. He offers you the promise of a wise and knowing God who will bring you victory in battle." Burke slowly shook his head. "If you follow me, no higher power will guide us. If we have a hope of winning, it will be because we go to war with better weapons and better tactics than our enemies. I was miserly with my knowledge before. Now, I vow to teach all I know to anyone who listens. I cannot offer you a god. I can only give you machines. The choice is yours."

"This isn't a democracy!" Ragnar snapped.

Stonewall placed his hand on the prophet's hairy shoulder. The holy man jerked his head toward his bodyguard. "Respectfully, sir," said Stonewall, his voice calm, almost gentle, "why isn't it?"

VULPINE HIMSELF HAD surveyed the fort and witnessed the winged men who stood near the well. He even spotted the pig. Though he kept his distance, he was certain the boy with wings was Jeremiah. He didn't know what to make of this. The timing was right; the boy could be dead by now. But he wasn't quite ready to accept the validity of human mythology regarding the afterlife. He was certain there was a logical explanation for the newcomers' wings. He was confident he could solve the mystery if he could examine their corpses.

It looked as if the entire population of the rebels had massed around the central square. They were, he thought, a wretched looking lot, standing around with hunched shoulders and sagging heads. No doubt few men wanted to look up when the roofs were thick with corpses.

Thus, when the council of war was called, there was little time wasted in debate.

These men were bent. It was time to break them.

He stood by Sagen at the northern catapults as the sun inched higher in the sky. There was a pile of human bodies in various stages of decay nearby. The smell should have been horrible; save for buzzards and insects, there were no beasts that found the stench of rotten flesh appealing. Yet, Vulpine had been in the presence of so many corpses over the years, he was surprised to find that he barely noticed the odor. It was like the restorative tea he drank each morning; he'd grown so accustomed to the scent he sometimes forgot that others might find it unpleasant.

Beside the corpse pile was a larger heap of rusted scrap metal, salvaged from the gleaner mounds. Vulpine went to this mound and picked up a short shaft of iron about an inch in diameter. He couldn't begin to guess its former purpose. No matter. It was shrapnel now.

"Have you ever thought much about the year?" asked Vulpine. Sagen looked bewildered by the question. "Why do we number the years as we do? The earth is incomprehensibly older than eleven centuries. Do you ever contemplate the empires that rose and fell and vanished with barely a trace?"

"Occasionally, sir."

Vulpine dropped the scrap of iron and picked up a much bigger, heavier piece. It was an open box with rounded corners, mostly white, about two feet wide and a foot deep; the steel at its core was coated by a thin glaze of ceramic to protect it from rust. The glaze had failed. There was a hole in the bottom he could have stuck his snout through, and bubbles along the rim showed that the iron beneath the glaze had succumbed to rust in numerous spots. Still, it was a hefty object, mostly intact despite having been buried in the ground for centuries.