Warlock. Part 15

The grounds immediately below the castle walls burst with a bright orange flame as the implosion charges went off. Rapidly, the center of each spot was cored with a black blossom. The blossom spread, eating the fire, and left only the smoldering destruction, the slag of melted aircraft behind. The houses below were not on fire and appeared to be mostly undamaged.

'Fire three,' Richter ordered. 'And s.h.i.+ft your sight fractionally this time, at discretion.'

'Aye, sir.'

The firing tubes whoofed again.

Again: three white trails; silence in the guidance deck black and silent night; color and noise; the black blossoms, the consumed explosion, the rubble!

'Raise your tubes another degree,' Richter directed Crowler. 'We'll fire two rounds of three sh.e.l.ls, then raise another degree. Then again until we have leveled everything on that slope.'

The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth sh.e.l.ls struck the castle of Jerry Matabain, blew through the great stone walls and turned mortar and granite into component atoms which rose upward from the implosion areas in gusts of thick, gray ash. Men had run onto the ramparts, armed with hand guns and grenades, but could not find their enemy. The next three sh.e.l.ls turned those men to gray ash, and made the summit of that hill as bare of life as it might have been upon the dawn of creation. If Jerry Matabain was in the castle, as was likely, there was no way he could possibly have escaped that holocaust.

In the guidance deck, cheers rose from the men. They began chanting songs of a patriotic nature, slapping one another upon the back. For the first time since they had begun this long journey, there was genuine belly laughter. Not just chuckles, not just polite t.i.tters, but guffawing pleasure in what had suddenly happened to the man whom all of them had come to loathe since their youth, the tyrant Jerry Matabain.

The Shaker rejoiced with the rest of them, although with a deal less heartiness. It had not seemed to occur to them, as it had to the sorcerer, that men had died under their hands just now. And not only men, but the wives and children of the castle staff and soldiers, innocent victims of a war they had not made.

Richter had wine broken out, and goblets were soon filled with the purple fluid.

The Shaker speculated on the impersonal war and what this new way of battle would mean to the world. Killing at long distance made killing so much more acceptable. It dehumanized the enemy, turned them into 'things' rather than people, targets rather than men and women and children. Now, the Shaker realized why the Oragonian pilot who had killed so many Darklanders near the bamboo field could slaughter so ruthlessly and still call himself a human being. From his height in the silver craft, he was killing small, scurrying creatures, not other men. How much better for the world if war could be maintained on a personal level, when the soldier wielding only knives and arrows was forced to watch the blood gouting from his victims. If men were made to see the charred skin and the lopped heads, the shattered limbs and ripped bodies of their enemy, there would be fewer men-on every side of the issue-willing to take up arms. But now long-distance death had been resurrected, and the world could look forward to more of this. War would again become impersonal; man would play around with his weapons until he did again what he had done before: involve himself in a battle which he could never win, either against himself or other races in the distant reaches of the stars. How much better to suffer guilt for a lifetime over the indirect death of your mother than to slaughter tens of thousands and never understand the depth of your degeneration!

'Now south!' Richter was saying. 'Well see what we can do at the Darkland port cities along the way, now occupied by Oragonians. But our chief mission will be to enter the fjord and dock by Summerdown. We can give the General support and help him retake the lands that are ours!'

'And you, Shaker,' Richter said. He gathered Mace and Gregor beside the magician. 'Three fine comrades on a terrible journey. We will never lose touch when this is finished, hey?'

'We won't,' Sandow agreed.

Already, the sorcerer had begun to speculate that the shattered cities beyond the Cloud Range might hold some bit of information, some train of knowledge which would help to stem the tide of war. As of this moment, Sandow saw war stretching infinitely onward, far into the future-until there would be one great war again, followed by another Blank when history would be lost and men would have to work back from disaster with simple tools and simple understanding. But he was no longer as much of a pessimist as he had been even moments ago. Perhaps there was a way to change the course of events this time. He was an esper, after all. Perhaps there was some way to discover how to amplify his power, to enlarge it. If such a force of sorcerers should band together in the cause of peace, all yet could be saved. And in the course of whatever the future held, Solvon Richter might prove to be an invaluable ally. True, now he did not see the horror of this distant murder. But one day he would. And he would remember Shaker Sandow and he would be there, wondering what he might do to help.

'When the tide has turned in this battle and Oragonia is driven back, I'll see to it that you are returned to the east, to spend your time in the scientific study of those ancient fragments. It should not be long. I think the war can be won in less than weeks now that we have cut off their link to the modern weapons in the eastern city.'

'I would prefer to rest some months before returning there,' Sandow said to Richter.

'What? You, the sorcerer with the hunger for knowledge that drove him to risk his life? Now that it is safe to study there, you prefer staying home?'

Sandow smiled, thinking of Perdune. The winters between the mountains are magnificent, Commander Richter. The snows eventually sweep across the roofs, and we Perdunians are forced to remain within our houses lest we freeze in the fierce winds of winter. We must amuse ourselves with our families, with games of cards, with the making of jewelry and other such pastimes. Yet there is something to be said for the quietude, something quite unexplainable. You must have lived the winter in Perdune to understand it.' He paused for a moment, as if reluctant to speak the last words, then went on: 'And I fear that winters like this, in Perdune, are few. Soon, there will be ways to clear the snow, ways of keeping warm and safe in even those inhospitable months. And we will embrace these things and call them progress and pretend that we are losing nothing.'

Richter looked perplexed. But Mace was smiling sadly. The giant understood exactly what his master had said. Sandow realized that Mace also had grasped the significance of these sophisticated weapons which had been used this night Gregor's face was partially possessed by a look of incomprehension. But only partially. He too was beginning to understand what the future must be, though he would require a few more weeks of worrying at all he had learned on this trek.

The darkness of ignorance had been speared by light. Knowledge and light lay ahead. But in the background, the forces of darkness built their strength, flexed their muscles and waited for the right moment to strike. In the years to come, the slim sorcerer would have to wage his own war-against war and ignorance. And after him, Gregor too.

'But now,' Shaker Sandow said, taking the arms of his two sons, 'let us sleep for just a little while.'