Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

N ow in these days the Lord God had turned His face from the business of men; and the angels who had remained loyal to Him said to one another, we must look after the children of Adam. And they did so, as best they could.

Now also the third part of the angels who had rebelled looked upon the earth, and saw the hand of God withdrawn from it; and the air was cold in the valleys of men, and the sea was also cold.

And one of the fallen angels, whose name was Uzziel, said, it was for man’s sake that we were cast down, for we would not bend our knee to him; let us test the Lord and see what He will do if we afflict their mightiest kingdoms with hunger. And this angel rose from the waters of the sea and made rain; and the spikes of wheat and the ears of barley were heavy with that rain, and they fell into the mud, or withered, or went to rot; and the livestock were made sick, and they died in great numbers; and in their turn, the children of Adam knew hunger; and men devoured all there was, and there was no more. And many died. And some would go into the dead-yard and eat of the newly buried. And the babes born during those years who lived to be children had only twenty-two teeth.

And the Lord made no answer.

Now another of the fallen, whose name was Beliel, said, it was for man’s sake that the war began in Heaven; so let us try them with wars in their greatest kingdoms; and he rose through the wells of a king who ruled a mighty island, and blew pride into his mouth; and when this king spoke, he swore that he would have the crown of an even greater kingdom, which he would take with the sword. And so he came upon his neighbor’s shore under arms and with banners. Now the greater king, seeing that his land was in peril, sent out a mighty host in armor of iron and silver; and they rode against the men of the island, who shot them with arrows, even through their armor, and they died. And so the long war began.

And the Lord made no answer.

So it came that the first among the fallen, whose name was Lucifer, said, our old enemy sleeps; if we do not seize this hour, we will come to the End of Days as He has written them, and He will grind us under His heel, and destroy us forever; let us rise against Him now in all our numbers, and pull the walls of Heaven down, and shake out the souls of the just; and let us seize our brother angels by the throats, and cast them down into Hell; and let us live as once we did, upon the Great Height.

But some were fearful of the power of the angels of God, whose numbers were greater, and whose generals were Uriel, and Gabriel, and Michael, who had broken the back of Lucifer and sent him into the hot coals in the belly of the earth to blacken his face with soot and know he was lower than the Lord.

And some were fearful that God would wake from His drowsiness and rack them with pains and fires even they had not learned to endure, or destroy them utterly.

And the first among the fallen spoke to them, saying, then let us test Him one more time; it is for man’s sake that we were insulted, for his sake that we were driven out, and for his peace that we are mortared under; let us break the roof of Hell with our fists and murder the seed of Adam; for if God will not rouse Himself to save His favorite creature, His sleep is deep, and we may catch Him by the hair, and cast Him down.

And one of the fallen, whose name was Azzazel, said, shall we kill them with fire or with cold?

And Lucifer spoke to him, saying, neither of these.

What then, said the wicked angel.

With a Great Plague, answered Lucifer.

And so it was.

And the years that had passed since the Lord had come to be born among men were one thousand, three hundred and forty eight.

The soldiers found the donkey on Friday. It was lame and its ribs were easy to count; it was too weak to run from them or even to bray at them, but it didn’t seem to have the disease. It was just old.

It looked at them hopefully from beneath a willow tree, swishing its tail against the flies. The fat one, and nobody knew how he stayed fat, took his war hammer up, meaning to brain it, but Thomas stopped him. He pointed at the barn. It would be smarter to walk it to the barn first, where they could shelter against the coming rain. Godefroy nodded his agreement.

The four men had been on the road in their rags and rusty armor without a good meal for many weeks, living on spoiled food from houses, watercress and cattail tops from ditches, worms, bugs, acorns, and even a rotten cat. They had all eaten so much grass that they had green piss. The disease was ruthless here; it had killed so many farmers that there was no bread even in this fertile valley. There were not enough hands to swing scythes, nor enough women willing to gather for the threshing, nor any miller to grind, nor bakers to stoke the ovens. The sickness, which they called the Great Death, passed mysteriously but surely from one to the other as easily as men might clasp hands, or a child might call a friend’s name, or two women might share a glance. Now none looked at their neighbors, nor spoke to them. It had fallen so heavily upon this part of Normandy that the dead could not be buried; they were piled outside in their dirty long shirts and they stank in the August sun and the flies swarmed around them. They lay in weed-choked fields of rye and oats where they had fled in delirium. They lay pitifully in the shadow of the town church where they had crawled hoping that last gesture would lessen their time in purgatory, stuck like glued birds to the limestone where they had tried to cool their fevered heads. Some fouled in houses because they were the last and there was no one to put them out. Those with means had fled, but many times it dogged them even into the hills and swamps and manors and killed them there.

The soldiers made a fire in the barn just near a small creek and a still house. The wood was damp and smoked unpleasantly, besooting the unchimneyed barn, but soon they were carving meat from the donkey’s haunches, running sticks through it, eating it almost raw because they couldn’t wait for the fire to do its work, licking their bloody fingers, nodding at each other because their mouths were too full for them to say how good it was.

The sun was setting orange beneath a break in pewter clouds that had just begun to spit rain when the girl poked her head in the barn door.

“Hello,” she said.

All of the men stopped chewing except Thomas.

She was a bad age to meet these men; just too old to be safe and just too young to know why. Her flaxen hair, which might have been pretty if it were not greasy and wet, hung damply on her neck, and her feet were growing before the rest of her, looking too big for her sticklike legs.

“Hello,” she said again.

“Hello, yourself,” Godefroy said, leaning his lanky body toward her like a cat sighting on a bird.