Ian McDonald - Brasyl

Feathers waving upon the bloody hillside. Blood and buff and a shining sword.

“Araujo!” Falcon called through the clatter of war. “Now you shall have your contest.”

The colonial officer ran to meet him as Falcon threw down his second, looted sword. Abruptly Araujo pulled up, whipped a pistol out of his sash of office. And Caixa was there between Falcon and the ball. A discharge, a gust of smoke, and Caixa went tumbling headlong. French, Portuguese, lingua geral, Iguapá — Falcon’s shouts were incoherent. Caixa rose unsteadily to her feet, then grinned and opened her left hand to show her bloody stigmata where the ball had passed through.

“Kill him, husband!”

Araujo flung the useless pistol at Falcon, who deftly sidestepped. Falcon spread his hand in invitation, then dropped into the stance. Araujo saluted and returned the attitude. A new round of mortar fire howled down onto the hilltop, but nothing remained there but shattered flesh and wood. Falcon feinted, then attacked. Araujo, for all his European airs, was no practitioner of the Art of Defense. In five moves Falcon had sent his blade whirling away across the red earth and the Portuguese captain found a sword-point at his chest.

“Senhor, as a fidalgo to a fidalgo, I cast myself on your mercy.”

“Senhor, alas, I am no fidalgo,” Falcon said, and ran him cleanly through in one lunge.

A tumult from downslope; Falcon glanced up from cleaning his sword on Araujo’s coat to see the great cross of Nossa Senhora de Todos os Mundos teetering madly in the center of a ring of Portuguese indio-conscripts. Zemba leaped and whirled, his spear and hide shield dashing and darting. Men fell, men reeled away bloody and ripped, but every moment more piled in. Falcon ran, sword ready. He could feel Caixa at his back, her wounded hand bound in Araujo’s neckcloth, her spear held underhand to stab up into an enemy’s bowels. Terrible, wondrous woman. The cross wavered, the cross went down, then Zemba snatched it up again, clutched against the back of his tattered shield.

Falcon threw himself into the circle of soldiers, cut and cut again. Zemba gave a cry, arched backward, and went down on his knees in the water, blood gouting from his severed hamstrings. His face wore a look of immeasurable sadness and wonder.

“Get them out of here, lead them, we are done for here,” he gasped, and flung the cross on its pole like a javelin. Ribbon and streamers fluttered in the train of the Lady of All Worlds; then Caixa’s bloody hand reached up and caught it.

Zemba smiled, eyes wet with tears. An auxiliary in a tanga and infantryman’s jacket stabbed with his spear. The blade point burst from Zemba’s throat and he fell forward into the flood, still smiling.

A pillar of smoke and fire stood over Cidade Maravilhosa, a sign for leagues up and down the Rio do Ouro. Again the great guns of the Nossa Senhora da Varzea fired. Quinn and Waitacá paddled steadily, stealthily, by root and branch. Quinn had glassed the basilica from the cover of a felled tree half a league downstream; Gonçalvesthought the mortar crews-Portuguese gunners with Guabirú loaders-sufficient garrison. The east end of the basilica was undefended, and the flying buttresses and baroqueries afforded ample concealment. Waitacá and Quinn handed along the basilica’s waterline to the cable eye they had agreed wordlessly from telescope-distance as the best entrance. Waitacá seized the mooring cable, slung his legs up, and climbed it like a golden sloth. Quinn’s sword jammed momentarily on the narrow eyelet; a rattle and he was inside, in the reeking, oozy gloom of the stern bowser.

“Free the slaves before anything,” Quinn said. “You will be able to easily overpower the mortar batteries.”

Waitacá dipped his head and drew his steel knife. He knew the rest by heart. Cut the anchor lines, then take the galley slaves to attack the rear of Gonçalves’s army.

I have given you the task most difficult , Quinn thought. Mine is the task most necessary . Boys’ voices from the lavabo; chalice and paten were being cleansed for the celebratory Mass. Black on black, Quinn spirited past.

Quinn was prepared for the spiritual assault of Nossa Senhora da Varzea, yet his attuned, attenuated senses reeled as if from a physical blow. He walked down the center of the nave, heaven on his left hand, damnation on his right, judgment all around. Christ spread his arms wide across the titanic choir screen. His thorn-pierced heart stood open. Quinn freed his sword. Beyond the choir stalls a shaft of light fell on the altar, the crucified Amazonian Christ’s head crowned with strange sufferings. Before the stellar glow of the Lady of the Flood Forest a figure in simple black knelt. The thunder of mortars beat the basilica like a drum. The Lady’s dress of lights quivered; debris shook loose from the ceiling and fell in a snow of gold and Marian blue. Quinn strode up the choir, sword held low by his side.

“Would you murder me in my own cathedral, like St. Thomas à Becket?”

“I am the admonitory of Father de Magalhães, and I command you in the name of Christ to submit to my authority.”

“I recall I refused you, as I refuse you again now.”

“Silence. Enough of this. You will return with me to our Order in Salvador.”

“The Order in Salvador. Yes. Some of us, however, are called to a higher service.”

Gonçalves rose to his feet and turned to his admonisher. The Lady of the Flood Forest seemed to embrace him in her cope of verdure. “Still you persist in this, you ridiculous little man.”

“Then I must compel you,” Quinn said, and lifted his sword to let its blade catch the many lights of the reredos.

“You will not find me unprepared.” Father Diego swept back his surplice to show the basket-hilted Spanish sword buckled at his side.

“In God’s house,” Quinn said, backing away from the treacheries of altar and choir stalls to the open nave.

“Come now, everywhere is God’s house. If it is meet and right in that pigsty you call a city, that Capitan de Araujo is reducing to dust, then it is equally so here.” Gonçalvescocked his headáthat strange, infuriating bird-motion — at a sudden clamor of voices, shots, and steel from outside. His eyes widened with rage.

“Your former slaves, spiking your artillery,” Quinn said. “Come now, no more delay. Let us try it here, your master against mine, Leon against Toledo.”

He ran into the open nave. With a cry like a hunting bird, Gonçalvescast off his confining surplice and drew his sword. He flew at Quinn, blade dancing in a flickering flurry of cuts that caught the Mair off guard and drove him back across the floor, halfway to the narthex. Grunting with exertion Quinn formed a defense and beat Gonçalvesback almost to the choir screen. The two men parted, saluted, circled each other, blinded with sweat in the stifling heat of the basilica.

And to it again. A crashing rally across the front of the roodscreen, Quinn driving, scoring a tear on Gonçalves’s side, Gonçalvesrecovering and pressing Quinn back, trading the nick for a cut along Quinn’s hairline — an unseen, unstoppable cut he had just managed to roll beneath, that would surely have taken the top of his skull. Quinn felt the floor move under him, saw the uncertainty reflected in Father Diego’s thin, boyish face.

“The mooring lines are cut,” he panted. “We are adrift.” They both felt the basilica turn in the stream, captive of the ebbing waters. With a cry in Irish Quinn launched himself at Gonçalves; a jetée with mass and brute power behind it. Gonçalves slapped his spearing sword away; Quinn went sprawling and the Spaniard was on him, Quinn saving himself only by an instinctual block that struck sparks from both blades. He regained his feet but was at once driven hard against the base of the pulpit. Again Quinn rallied, and the two Jesuits dueled back and forth along the line of the side chapels. But it was clear to Quinn, with a chill clench in his testicles, that he had exerted himself too far on the destruction of the dam and the pursuit of Nossa Senhora da Varzea. His advantage in size and strength was used up, and in the pure way of the sword Diego Gonçalves was master.