Orphan's Triumph

THIRTY-FIVE

THE CLANS OF BREN cremate their dead on pyramidal pyres of gathered wood, and the time of Ord’s funeral was dictated by the hour at which a pyre of a size appropriate to the departed’s station was completed.

Bassin the First, himself, as a comrade in arms of the departed, would place the last log on Ord’s pyre.

Bassin ruled a kingdom divided against itself, plains hunters and desert nomads against the worldly Marini, and, within Marin itself, abolitionists against slave holders. And none of the clans were crazy about having us neocolonial motherworlders on their soil. But Ord had fought shoulder to shoulder with them all when we had all made common cause and expelled the Slugs from Bren after thirty thousand years.

Therefore, over the next three days, Tassini Scouts carried janga wood from the Tassin desert, Casuni warriors brought scrub oak from the Stone Hills, and Bassin dispatched his royal barge upriver to gather magnolia from the base of the Falls of the Marin. Only when all that had been completed did Ord’s funeral begin, on a clear, cold night in the center of our landing field.

The full White Moon lit the field so that the moon’s light reflected off Earth troops’ Eternad armor. It also reflected off the breastplates of mounted Casuni warriors on reined-in duckbills and off the delicate swords of Tassini Scouts mounted on twitching, ostrichlike wobbleheads. Crowds of civilian freemen and freewomen gathered, too, attracted by the spectacle.

Meanwhile, preparations to retake the Red Moon from the Slugs advanced. I had slept three hours each of the last three nights. I could have slept longer. My staff, the Marini, the Zoomies, and most of all the landing troops had forged and practiced a plan that I believed would succeed. We would retake the Red Moon, we would seek out the Slugs’ home, and we would win the war. Ord had seemed to think that we would, and Ord had never been wrong.

The Red Moon rose above the horizon and silhouetted the fifty-foot-high pyramid that Bassin now climbed. After Bassin placed the last log, actually a ceremonial stick, Ord’s catafalque was borne to the pyramid’s top by a joint honor guard, then set ablaze.

I stood alongside Jude, both of us left of, and a pace behind, Bassin. A Marini band piped a dirge.

Jude whispered, “How are you doing, Jason?”

I shrugged. “I spent these last few days with him. Soldiers don’t usually get to see death coming. I thought we’d talk about things that mattered. Things we hadn’t said. But mostly we watched war movies and told stories. Sometimes we laughed.” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

The Red Moon, still befogged by the Slug fleet that kept us from it, had risen so high now that its disk intersected the roiling smoke plume that had been Ord.

In the civilian crowd, a murmur rose.

I shot Bassin a glance.

He leaned toward Jude and me and whispered, “It’s nothing. If a warrior’s smoke crosses his enemy’s path before battle, it’s bad luck.”

I whispered, “Sure. It means he’s already dead.”

The dirge ended.

Jude said, “Huh?”

I stared where my godson was staring, up at the Red Moon, which seemed smaller.

The Red Moon shrank in the sky, from basketball-size to melon-size.

The murmur spread to the Casuni and Tassini ranks, then to the more worldly Marini soldiers, and finally to my troops.

Overhead, the Red Moon, our key to victory, had become as tiny as a crimson pea.

Then it winked out altogether.

Now the Tassini and Casuni pointed and shouted. Their mounts pranced and snorted.

Within the old city, miles from us, an alarm bell sounded, then another, then more, until the night echoed with them.

Bassin muttered, “This is impossible.”

I shook my head slowly as I stared at the night sky of Bren, which for the first time in human experience held only one moon. “Expect the worst from the gods of war and they will seldom disappoint you.”