Empire from the Ashes

Chapter Thirty

Sean MacIntyre stood with Sandy and frowned down at the relief map. Tibold and a dozen other officers stood around respectfully, watching him and "the Angel Sandy" study the map, and the absolute confidence in their eyes made him want to scream at them.

The Battle of Yortown lay one of the local "five-days" in the past. The Angels' Army had advanced a hundred and thirty kilometers in that time, but now High-Captain Ortak's entrenched position lay squarely in its path, and try as he might, Sean saw no way around it. In fact, he'd come to the conclusion Tibold had offered from the first: the only way around was through, and that was the reason for his frown.

Sean's army had every advantage in an open field battle. The Yortown loot had included twenty-six thousand joharns, enough for Sean to convert all fifty-eight thousand of his men into musketeers and send several thousand to the force covering the Thirgan Gap in the west to boot, and Brashan had shifted Israel to the mountains directly above Yortown to decrease cutter transit time to the battleship. The Narhani's machine shop modules had increased their modification rate to forty-five hundred rifles (with bayonet rings) a night, and the Malagoran gunsmiths were adding almost a thousand a day more on their own, now that "the angels" had taught them about rifling benches. Unfortunately, over half Sean's army had been trained as pikemen, and the new men were still learning which end the bullet came out of.

Even so, his troops were fleeter of foot and had incomparably more firepower than any other Pardalian army. The new, standardized rifle regiments he and Tibold had organized could kill their enemies from five or six times smoothbore range, and the absence of polearms made them far more mobile. Even the best pikemen were less than nimble trailing five-meter pikes, and his rifle-armed infantry could dance rings around the Guard's ponderous phalanxes. Coupled with its higher rate of fire, the Angels' Army could cut four or five times its own number to pieces in a mobile engagement.

Unhappily, High-Captain Ortak knew it. He was well supplied with artillery, since Lord Marshal Rokas had known the cramped terrain at Yortown would reduce his guns' efficiency and left many of them with his rearguard, and reinforcements had come forward, but less than half his roughly eighty thousand men were actually armed. Less than twelve thousand were musketeers, and he dared not face the Angels' Army in the open. But short of arms or not, his men still outnumbered Sean's by almost forty percent, and all those unarmed men had been busy with mattocks. The earthworks he'd thrown up at Erastor closed the Keldark Valley north of the Mortan, and he clearly had no intention of venturing beyond them. Nor could any army go around them. The Mortan was unfordable for over ninety kilometers upstream or down from Erastor, and the terrain south of the river was so boggy not even nioharqs could drag artillery or wagons through it.

In many respects, Erastor was a stronger defensive position even than Yortown, and Sean and Tibold had considered meeting Rokas there. In the end, they'd decided in favor of Yortown because its terrain had let Sean set his ambush, but for a simple holding engagement, Erastor would actually have been better. There were no open flanks between the Erastor Spur and the river, which left an opponent with superior numbers—or mobility—no openings. He had to attack head-on, and if Ortak refused to come out, Sean would have to go in after him... which meant the Guard's outnumbered and outranged musketeers could hunker down behind their parapets until Sean's men entered their range. The Guard's morale had to be shaken by what had happened at Yortown, while the Angels' Army's morale had soared in inverse proportion, and Sean knew his troops could take Erastor. It was the cost of taking it that terrified him.

He frowned more deeply at the map and once more castigated himself for not pushing on more quickly. He'd taken five days to march a distance a Pardalian army could have done in three if it was pushed, and the consequences promised to be grim. If he'd crowded the routed Host harder, he might have bounced Ortak out of Erastor before the high-captain dug in, and telling himself his troops had been exhausted by the Yortown fighting made him feel no better. He should have gotten them on the way with the next dawn, however tired, not wasted two whole days burying the dead and collecting the Host's cast away weapons, and he swore at himself for delaying.

He wanted to swear at Tibold, as well, for letting him, but that wouldn't have been fair. The ex-Guardsman was a product of the military tradition which had evolved after the Schismatic Wars, and Pardalian wars were fought for territory. Ideally, battles were avoided in favor of efforts to outmaneuver an opponent, and campaigns were characterized by intricate, almost formal march and countermarch until they climaxed in equally formal engagements or sieges for vital fortresses. The Napoleonic doctrine of pursuing a beaten foe to annihilation was foreign to local military thought. It shouldn't have been, given the mobility nioharqs bestowed, but it was, and a crushing victory like Yortown would have brought most wars to a screeching conclusion as the defeated side treated for terms. Not this time. High Priest Vroxhan and the Inner Circle might not have the least idea what Sean and his marooned friends were truly after, but they'd realized they were fighting for their very survival. Worse, they were fighting, as they saw it, for their souls. Oh, it was obvious they'd become firmly attached to their secular power, but they also saw no distinction between "God's Will" and the Temple's domination of Pardal. Under the circumstances, there were—could be—no acceptable "terms" for them short of the "heretics' " utter destruction, and they were mobilizing their reserves. Within another two weeks, at most three, thousands of fresh troops would be marching into Erastor. Somehow he had to crush the Erastor position before those reinforcements arrived, and his soul cringed at the thought of the casualties his men would suffer because he'd screwed up.

His frown at the map became a glare. He knew, intellectually, that there wasn't always a clever answer, but he was also young. Centuries older than he'd been before Yortown, but still young enough to believe there ought to be an answer, if he were only smart enough to see it.

A hand touched his elbow, and he turned his head to see Sandy looking up at him. Her face was no longer the haunted mask it had been the first night after Yortown, but, as for all of Israel's crew, the slaughter of that day had left its mark upon her. Her eyes had learned to twinkle once more, yet there was less brashness behind them. No less confidence, perhaps, but a deeper awareness of the horrible cost reality could exact. Now those eyes met his searchingly, the question in them plain, and he sighed.

"I don't see an answer," he said in English. "They've put in too solid a roadblock, and it's my own damned fault."

"Oh, shush!" she said in the same language, squeezing his elbow harder. "We're all getting on-the-job training, and the last thing we need is for you to kick yourself for things you can't change. Seems to me you did a pretty fair job at Yortown, and you've got a lot more to work with now."

"Sure I do." He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. His officers might not understand English, but they could recognize emotional overtones, and there was no sense shaking their confidence. "Unfortunately," he went on in a determinedly lighter tone, "the bad guys have more to work with, too. Not in numbers, but in position." He waved at the fifteen kilometers of earthworks linking the stony Erastor Spur to the river. "We surprised Rokas by doing something he knew was impossible, but Ortak has a much better idea of our capabilities, and he's dug in to deny us all our advantages. We can take him out with a frontal assault, but we'll lose thousands, and I just can't convince myself it's worth it, Sandy. Not just so we can get hold of a computer!"

"It's not just to get us to the computer!" she said fiercely, then smoothed her own tone as a few officers stirred in surprise. She shook her head and went on more calmly. "It's life and death for all these people, Sean—you know that."

"Yeah? And whose fault is that?" he growled.

"Ours," she said unflinchingly. "Mine, if you want to be specific. But it's something we blundered into, not something we did on purpose, and if we started all this, then we have to finish it."

Sean closed his eyes and tasted the bitterness of knowing she was right. It was a conversation they'd had often enough, and rehashing it now would achieve nothing. Besides, he liked the Malagorans. Even if he'd borne no responsibility for their predicament, he still would have wanted to help them.

"I know," he said finally. He opened his eyes and smiled crookedly, then patted the hand on his elbow. "And it's no more your fault than it is mine or Tamman's or Brashan's—even Harry's. It's just knowing how many of them are going to get killed because I didn't push hard enough." She started to open her mouth, but he shook his head. "Oh, you're right. People make mistakes while they learn. I know that. I only wish my mistakes could be made somewhere that didn't get people killed."

"You can only do the best you can do." Her voice was so gentle he longed to take her in his arms, but God only knew how his officers would react if he started going around hugging an "angel"!

He actually felt his mouth quirk a smile at the thought, and he folded his hands behind him again and walked slowly around the table, studying the relief map from all angles. If only there were a way to use his mobility! Someone—he thought it had been Nathan Bedford Forrest—had once said war was a matter of "getting there firstest with the mostest," not absolute numbers, and the one true weakness of Ortak's position was its size. He had fifteen kilometers of frontage—more, with the salients built into his earthworks—and that gave him barely two thousand armed men per kilometer even if he withheld no reserve at all. Of course, he had another thirty or forty thousand he could send in to pick up the weapons of their fallen comrades, but even so he was stretched thin. If Sean could break his front anywhere, and get behind his works, he could sweep them like a broom. But there was no way he could—

He paused suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. He stood absolutely still, staring down at the map while his mind raced, and then he began to smile.

"Sean? Sean?" Sandy had to call him twice before he looked up with a jerk. "What is it?" she asked, and his smile took on a harder, fiercer cast.

"I've been going at this wrong," he said. "I've been thinking about how Ortak has us blocked, and what I should have been thinking about is how he's trapped himself."

"Trapped?" she asked blankly, and he waved Tibold closer and pointed at the map.

"Could infantry get through these swamps?" he asked in Pardalian, and it was the ex-Guardsman's turn to frown down at the map.

"Not pikes," he said after a moment, "but you might be able to get musketeers through." He cocked his head, comparing the exquisitely detailed map the angels had provided to all the ones he'd ever seen before, then tapped the southern edge of the swamp with a blunt forefinger. "I always thought the bad ground was wider than that down along the south face of the valley," he said slowly. "We could probably get a column across this narrow bit in, oh, ten or twelve hours. Not with guns or pikes, though, Lord Sean. There's no bottom to most of this swamp. You might get a few chagors through, but arlaks would sink to the axles in no time. And even after you get through the swamp, the ground's still soft enough between there and the river to slow you."

"Would Ortak expect us to try anything like that?" Sean asked, and Tibold shook his head quickly.

"He's got the same maps we had before you and the ang—" The ex-Guardsman bit the word off as he remembered how Lord Sean and the angels kept trying to get people not to call them that. For a moment his face felt hot, but then he grinned up at his towering young commander. "He's got the same maps we always had before. Besides, no Guard captain would even consider leaving his pikes and guns behind."

"That's what I hoped you'd say," Sean murmured, and his brain whirred as he estimated times and distances. The Mortan was the better part of three unfordable kilometers wide above and below Erastor, but it could be forded at Malz, a farm town ninety-odd klicks below its junction with the Erastor River. If he moved back west, out of sight of Ortak's lines, and threw together enough rafts... Or, for that matter, could his engineers knock together proper bridges? He considered the thought for a moment, then shook his head. No, that would take a good two or three days, and if this was going to work at all, he didn't have two or three days to waste.

"All right, Tibold," he said. "Here's what we'll do. First..."

High-Captain Ortak stood in his entrenchments' central bastion and stared west. Drizzling rain drew a gray veil across the Keldark Valley, limiting his vision, but he knew what was out there and breathed a silent thanks for his enemies' lack of initiative. Every day that passed without attack not only helped the morale of his battered force but brought its desperately needed relief one day closer.

He strained his eyes, trying to make out details of the earthworks the heretics had thrown up to face his own. Part of him shuddered every time he thought of the cost of taking that position once the Holy Host had reinforced and resumed the offensive, but not even that could shake his gratitude. He knew how thin-stretched he was, and if the heretics had been willing to throw a column straight at him anywhere—

He shivered, and not because of the rain. He disliked having to stand with a river at his back, but the Erastor was fordable for most of its length. If he had to, he could fall back across it, though he'd have to abandon what remained of his baggage, and this was the best—probably the only—point at which to stop an army from the west. Conscripted laborers were building another position in his rear at Baricon, but Baricon was better suited to resisting attacks from the east. No, he had to hold the heretics here if he meant to keep them out of Keldark, and if they ever got loose in the duchy their freedom of maneuver would increase a hundredfold. After what they'd done to Lord Marshal Rokas at Yortown, that was enough to strike a chill in the stoutest heart.

He wrapped his cloak about himself and pursed his lips in thought. The semaphore chain across Malagor had been cut, but it continued to operate east of him, and the Temple's dispatches were less panicky than they had been. The secular lords were being slow to muster, but the Guard had stripped its garrisons throughout the eastern kingdoms to the bone, and fifty thousand men were on their way to him. Better yet, the first trains of replacement weapons had begun coming in. There were less of them than he would have liked, especially given what the heretics had captured at Yortown, but he'd already received eight thousand pikes and over five hundred joharns. If the reports from Yortown were right, the heretics had found some way to give joharns and malagors the range of rifles, which suggested final casualties would be atrocious even if the Guard managed to rearm every man, but that should be less of a factor defending entrenched positions than in the open field. They were going to have to find some reply to the heretics' weight of fire in the future, and Ortak was already considering ways to increase the ratio of firearms to pikes, but for the moment he had a stopper in the bottle and the heretics seemed unwilling to take the losses to remove it.

He sighed and shook himself. The light was going, and he had more than enough paperwork waiting to keep him up half the night. At least his quarters in Erastor were better than a tent in the field, he told himself, and smiled wryly as he turned and called for his branahlk.

Sean MacIntyre dismounted and wiped rain from his face. He could have used his implants to stay dry, but that would have felt unfair to his troops, which was probably silly but didn't change his feelings. He smiled at his own perversity and scratched his branahlk's snout, listening to its soft whistle of pleasure, and tried to hide his worry as the sodden column squelched past.

It was taking longer than planned, and the rain was heavier than Israel's meteorological remotes had predicted. The cold front pushing down the valley had met a warm front out of Sanku and Keldark, and Brashan's latest forecast warned of at least twenty hours of hard rain, probably with thunderstorms. They would make the ground still softer and the going harder, and they were also going to deepen the fords at Malz, but at least it didn't look as if the Mortan would reach critical depths. Or, he thought grimly, not yet.

Tibold splashed up on his own branahlk and drew up beside him.

"Captain Juahl's reached the bivouac area, Lord Sean." The ex-Guardsman's tone made Sean crook an eyebrow, and Tibold sighed. "It's under a handspan of water, My Lord."

"Great." Sean closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then flipped his fold com up to Sandy's hovering cutter. "Got a problem down here," he subvocalized. "Our bivouac site's underwater."

"Damn. Hang on a sec," she replied, and brought up her sensors, berating herself for not having checked sooner. She frowned in concentration over her neural feed as she swept the area ahead of the column, then her eyes brightened. "Okay. If you push on another six klicks, the ground rises to the south."

"Firewood?" he asked hopefully.

" 'Fraid not," she replied, and he sighed.

"Thanks anyway." He turned to Tibold. "Tell Juahl he'll find higher ground if he bears a bit south and keeps moving for another hour or so."

"At once, Lord Sean." Tibold didn't even ask how his commander knew that; he simply turned his branahlk and splashed off into the gathering gloom, and Sean leaned back against his own mount and sighed.

He had twenty-five thousand men marching through mud towards fords which ought to be passable when they arrived, and he was beginning to wonder if he'd been so clever after all. Pardal's days were long, and on good roads (and Pardalian roads would have made any Roman emperor die of jealousy), infantry routinely made fifty kilometers a day in fair weather. Marching cross-country in the rain, even through open terrain, they were doing well to make thirty pushing hard, and they hadn't even reached the swamps yet. The men were in better spirits than he would have believed possible under the circumstances, but they'd marched for three grueling days, mostly in the rain and with no hot meals. Even for someone with full enhancement, this march was no pleasure jaunt; for the unenhanced, it was unadulterated, exhausting misery, and they were barely halfway to the fords.

He flicked his mind back over the latest reports from their stealthed remotes. Ortak was receiving fresh weapons, but any additional reinforcements were still at least twelve days away. Even allowing for his column's slower than estimated progress, Sean should be back north of the Mortan within another four days, but he was grimly aware of the risk he was running. The valley's peasants had been moved out by the Holy Host on its way in, and the Temple's troops had already accounted for everything that could be foraged from the abandoned farms. Pack nioharqs had accompanied them this far, but they'd have to be sent home once the column reached the swamp. From there, Sean's infantry would have to pack all of their supplies—including ammunition—on their backs, and that gave them no more than a week's food. Which meant that if his plan to surprise Ortak didn't work, he was going to find himself with twenty-five thousand starving men trapped between Erastor and the Guard reinforcements.

At least Ortak was cooperating so far. The high-captain "knew" the terrain south of the river was impassable, and he was too short of armed men to spare many from his prepared positions. He had pickets east of the Erastor, but they were fairly close to the bridges. It was still a bit hard to adjust to a pre-technic society's limitations, and despite everything, Sean felt vaguely exposed. His column was barely fifty air kilometers from Ortak's position, and it was hard to believe Ortak had no suspicion of what he was up to, yet the high-captain's deployments and the reports of Sandy's eavesdropping remotes all confirmed that he didn't.

The thought drew a wet chuckle from Sean. Miserable as he and his troops might be, they had the most deadly weapon known to man: surprise. And at least if he screwed up, it wouldn't be because the Guard had surprised him.

He gave his branahlk another scratch, then swung back into the saddle and trotted forward along the column.

Father Stomald stepped into the command tent and paused. The Angel Harry stood alone, staring down at the map and unaware of his presence, and her shoulders were tight.

The young priest hesitated. Part of him was loath to disturb her, but another part urged him to step closer. An angel needed no mortal's comfort, yet Stomald was guiltily aware that he was coming less and less to think of her as he ought.

The angels had fallen into a division of their duties which was too natural to have been planned, and the Angel Harry's share of those duties had brought her into almost constant contact with Stomald. The fighting of the war in which they were all trapped was the task of Lord Sean and Lord Tamman, but ministering to its consequences was Stomald's task. It was he who had begun it, whatever his intent, and it was he who must bear the weight of caring for its victims. He accepted that, for it was but an extension of his priestly duties, and his own faith would have driven him to shoulder that weight even if he could somehow have avoided it. But he was not alone before the harsh demands of his responsibilities, for as Lord Sean and Lord Tamman had Tibold and the Angel Sandy, Stomald had the Angel Harry. However grim the burden he faced, however terrible the cost war and its horrors exacted, she was always there, always willing to give him of her own strength and catch him when he stumbled. And that, he thought, was why he had come to feel these things he should not—must not—feel.

Yet knowing what he should not do and stopping himself from doing it were two very different things. She seemed so young, and she was different from the Angel Sandy. She was... softer, somehow. Gentler. The Angel Sandy cared deeply—no one who'd seen her face the night after Yortown could doubt that—yet she had a talmahk's fierceness the Angel Harry lacked. No one could ever call either angel weak, but the Angel Sandy and Lord Sean were kindred souls who threw off uncertainty like a too-small garment whenever it touched them. Their eyes were always on the next battle, the next challenge, yet it was the Angel Harry to whom those in trouble instinctively turned, as if they, as Stomald, sensed the compassion at her heart. Any angel must, of course, be special, but Stomald had seen how even the most hardened trooper's eyes followed the Angel Harry. The army would have followed Lord Sean or the Angel Sandy or Lord Tamman against Hell itself, but the Angel Harry owned their hearts.

As she did Stomald's, and yet...

The priest sighed, and his eyes darkened as he admitted the truth. His love for the Angel Harry was wrong, for it was not what a man should dare to feel for one of God's holy messengers.

She heard his soft exhalation and turned, and he was shocked by the tears in her one good eye. She wiped them as quickly as she'd turned, but he'd seen them, and before he remembered what she was, he reached out to her.

He froze, hand extended, shocked by his own temerity. What was he thinking? She was an angel, not simply the beautiful young woman she appeared. Had he not learned to rely upon her strength? To turn to her for comfort when his own weariness and the sorrow of so much death pressed upon him? How dared he reach out to comfort her?

But he saw no anger in her eye, and his heart soared with curiously aching joy as she took his hand. She squeezed it and turned her head to look back down at the map table, and Stomald stood there, holding her hand, and confused emotions washed through him. It felt so right, so natural, to stand with her, as if this were the place he was meant to be, yet guilt flawed his contentment. He was aware of her beauty, of her wonderful blend of strength and gentleness, and he longed, more than he'd ever longed for anything other than to serve God Himself, for this moment to last forever.

"What is it?" he asked finally, and the depth of concern in his voice surprised even him.

"I'm just—" She paused, then gave her head a little shake. "I'm just worried about Sean," she said softly. "The way the river's rising, how far they still have to go, the odds when they get there..." She drew a deep breath and looked at him with a wan smile. "Silly of me, isn't it?"

"Not silly," Stomald disagreed. "You worry because you care."

"Maybe." She still held his hand, but her other hand ran a finger down the line of Lord Sean's march, and her voice was low. "I feel so guilty sometimes, Stomald. Guilty for worrying so much more about Sean than anyone else, and for having caused all this. It's my fault, you know."

Stomald flinched, and self-loathing filled him as he recognized his own jealousy. He was jealous of her concern for Lord Sean! The sheer impiety of his emotions frightened him, but then the rest of what she'd said penetrated, and he shook off his preoccupation with his own feelings.

"You didn't cause this. It was our fault for laying impious hands upon you." He hung his head. "It was my fault, not yours, My Lady."

"No it wasn't!" she said so sharply he looked up, dismayed by her anger. Her single eye bored into him, and she shook her head fiercely. "Don't ever think that, Stomald! You did what your Church had taught you to do, and—" She paused again, biting her lip, then nodded to herself. "And there's more happening here than you know even yet," she added with quiet bitterness.

Stomald blinked at her, touched to the heart once more by her readiness to forgive the man who'd almost burned her alive, yet confused by her words. She was an angel, with an angel's ability to know things no mortal could, yet her voice suggested she'd meant more than that. Perplexity filled him, and he reached for the first thing that crossed his mind.

"You care deeply for Lord Sean, don't you, My Lady?" he asked, and could have bitten off his tongue in the instant. The question cut too close to his own forbidden longings, and he waited for her anger, but she only nodded.

"Yes," she said softly. "I care for them all, but especially for Sean."

"I see," he said, and the dagger turning in his heart betrayed him. He heard the pain in his own voice and tried to turn and flee, but her fingers tightened about his, stronger than steel yet gentle, trapping him without harming him, and against his will, his gaze met hers.

"Stomald, I—" she said, then shook her head and said something else. She spoke to herself, in her own language, the one she spoke to the Angel Sandy and their champions. Stomald couldn't understand her words, but he recognized a curious finality, an edge of decision, and his heart hammered as she drew him over to a stool. He sat upon it at her gesture, uncomfortable, as always, at sitting in her presence, and she drew a deep, deep breath.

"I do care for Sean, very much," she told him. "He's my brother."

"Your—?" Stomald gaped at her, trying to understand, but his mind refused to work. He'd speculated, dreamed, hoped, yet he'd never quite dared believe. Lord Sean was mortal, however he might have been touched by God, yet if he was her brother, if mortal blood could mingle with the angels', then—

"It's time you knew the truth," she said quietly.

"The... the truth?" he repeated, and she nodded.

"There's a reason Sandy and I have tried to insist that you not treat us as angels, Stomald. You see, we aren't."

"Aren't?" he parroted numbly. "Aren't... aren't what, My Lady?"

"Angels." She sighed, and her expression shocked him. She was staring at him, her remaining eye soft, as if she feared his reaction, but he could only stare back. Not angels? That was... it was preposterous! Of course they were angels! That was why he'd preached their message to his people and the reason Mother Church had loosed Holy War upon them! They had to be angels!

"But—" The word came out hoarse and shaking, and he wrapped his arms about himself as if against a freezing wind. "But you are angels. The miracles you've worked to save us, your raiment—the things we've all seen Lord Sean and Lord Tamman do at your bidding—!"

"Aren't miracles at all," she said in that same soft voice, as if pleading for his understanding. "They're—oh, how can I make you understand?" She turned away, folding her arms below her breasts, and her spine was ramrod stiff. "We... can do many things you can't," she said finally, "but we're mortal, Stomald. All of us. We simply have tools, skills, you don't, yet if you had those tools, you could do anything you've seen us do and more."

"You're... mortal?" he whispered, and even through the whirlwind confusion uprooting all his certainty, he felt a sudden, soaring joy.

"Yes," she said softly. "Forgive me, please. I... I never meant to deceive you, never meant—" She broke off, shoulders shaking, and his heart twisted as he realized she was weeping. "We never wanted any of this to happen, Stomald." Her lovely voice was choked and thick. "We only... we only wanted to get home, and then I ran into Tibold, and he shot me and brought me back to Cragsend, and somehow it all—"

She shook her head fiercely, and turned back to face him.

"Please, Stomald. Please believe we never, ever, meant to hurt anyone. Not you, not your people, not even the Inner Circle. It just... happened, and we couldn't let the Church destroy you for something we'd caused!"

"Get home?" Stomald rose from the stool and crossed to stand directly before her, staring into her tear-streaked face, and she nodded. "Home... where?" he asked hesitantly.

"Out there." She pointed at the sky invisible beyond the roof of the tent, and for just an instant sheer horror filled the priest. The stars! She was from the stars, and the Writ said only the demons who had cast Man from the firmament—

Sick panic choked him. Had he done the very thing the Inner Circle charged him with? Had he given his allegiance to the Great Demons who sought only the destruction of all God's works?

But then, as quickly as it had come, the terror passed, for it was madness. Whatever else she might be, the Angel Harry—or whoever she truly was—was no demon. He'd seen too much of her pain among the wounded and dying, too much gentleness and compassion, to believe that. And the Writ itself said no demon, greater or lesser, could speak the Holy Tongue, yet she spoke it to him every day! All his life, Stomald had been taught the inviolability of the Writ, but now he faced a truth almost more terrifying than the possibility that she might actually be a demon, for if she came from the stars, the Writ said she must be a demon, and yet the Writ also proved she couldn't be one.

He felt the cornerstone of his life turning under his feet like wet, treacherous sand, and fear washed through him. But even as that fear sought to suck him under, he clung to his faith in her. Angel or no, he trusted her. More than trusted, he admitted to himself. He loved her.

"Tell me," he begged, and she stepped forward. She rested her hands on his shoulders and gazed into his face, and he felt his fear ease as her fingers squeezed gently.

"I will. I'll tell you everything. Some of it will be hard to understand, maybe even impossible—at first, at least—but I swear it's true, Stomald. Will you trust me enough to believe me?"

"Of course," he said simply, and the absolute certainty in his tone was distantly surprising even to him.

"Thank you," she said softly, then drew a deep breath. "The first thing you have to understand," she said more briskly, "is what happened—not just here on Pardal, but out there, as well—" her head jerked at the tent roof once more "sixteen thousand of your years ago."

It took hours. Stomald lost count of how many times he had to stop her for fuller explanation, and his brain spun at the tale she told him. It was madness, impossible, anathema to everything he'd ever been taught... and he believed every word. He had no choice, and a raging sense of wonder mingled with shock and the agonizing destruction of so much certainty.

" ... so that's the size of it, Stomald," she said finally. They sat on facing stools, and the candles had burned low in the lanterns set about the tent. "We never meant to harm anyone, never meant to deceive anyone. We tried to tell you Sandy and I weren't angels, but none of you seemed able to believe it, and if we'd insisted and shattered your cohesion when the Church was determined to kill you all because of something we'd started—" She shrugged unhappily, and he nodded slowly.

"Yes, I can see that." He rubbed his thighs, then licked his lips and managed a strained smile. "I always wondered why you and the An—why you and Sandy insisted that we not call you 'angel' when we spoke to you."

"Can... can you forgive us?" she asked quietly. "We never wanted to insult your beliefs or use your faith against you. Truly we didn't."

"Forgive you?" He smiled more naturally and shook his head. "There's nothing to forgive, My Lady. You are who you are and the truth is the truth, and if the Writ is wrong, perhaps you are God's messengers. From what you say, this world has spent thousands upon thousands of years blind to the truth and living in fear of an evil that no longer exists, and surely God can send whomever He wishes to show us the truth!"

"Then... you're not angry with us?"

"Angry, My Lady?" He shook his head harder. "There are many parts of your tale I don't understand, but Lady Sandy was right. Once events had been set in motion, I and all who followed me would have been destroyed by Mother Church without your aid. How could I be angry at you for saving my people? And if the Writ is wrong, then the bishops and high-priests must learn to accept that, as well. No, Lady Harry. I don't say all our people could accept what you've told me. But the day will come when they can, and will, know the truth, and when they are once more free to travel the stars without fear of demons and damnation, they will no more be angry with you than I could ever be."

"Stomald," she said softly, "you're a remarkable man."

"I'm only a village under-priest," he objected, uncomfortable and yet filled with joy by the glow in her eye. "Beside you, I'm an ignorant child playing in the mud on the bank of a tiny stream."

"No, you're not. The only difference between us is education and access to knowledge your world denied you, and I grew up with those things. You didn't, and if our positions were reversed, I doubt I could have accepted the truth the way you have."

"Accepted, My Lady?" He laughed. "I'm still trying to believe this isn't all a dream!"

"No, you're not," she repeated with a smile, "and that's what makes you so remarkable." Her smile turned suddenly into a grin. "I always wondered how Dad really felt when Dahak started explaining the truth about human history to him. Now I know how Dahak must've felt making the explanation!"

"I should like to meet this 'Dahak' one day," Stomald said wistfully.

"You will," she assured him. "I can hardly wait to take you home and introduce you to Mom and Dad, as well!"

"Take... ?" He blinked at her, then stiffened as she reached out and cupped the side of his face in those steel-strong, moth-gentle fingers.

"Of course, Stomald," she said very, very softly. "Why do you think I wanted to tell you the truth?"

He stared at her in disbelief, and then she leaned forward and kissed him.