The Scourge of God

The gray-haired man reached into a pocket, brought out tobacco and papers, rolled himself a cigarette single-handed, then lit it with an ember he picked out with a twig. He handed it across the fire; the Mackenzie took it, and inhaled the smoke-he'd done the same before, visiting with the Three Tribes. For a flickering instant as he inhaled the harsh bite across his tongue the shape on the other side of the flames had a prick-eared, long-muzzled face, and two braids of hair beside it beneath the hat.

"Are you truly that One men named the Wanderer?" Rudi asked boldly.

He could feel his fear, but it was slightly distant, like the cold of the wind. And well might a man be afraid, to meet Him on a lonely mountainside. He was a god of death; the lord of poetry and craft who'd given the runes to men and established kingship, but also bringer of the red madness of battle, of everything that lifted humankind beyond themselves. His favorites got victory, but they died young, and often by treachery.

A puff of smoke. "What would your mother say?"

She'd answer a question with a question, some distant part of Rudi thought wryly. And if I complain, say that you can only truly learn the truth you find yourself. Aloud:

"That the forms the God wears… or the Goddess… are many.

And that they are true, not mere seemings or masks, but that they're not… not complete. As are the little gods and the spirits of the land, or the Fathers and Mothers of the animal kind. They speak to us as we need them, if we'll but listen. For how can a man tell all his mind to a child, or a god to a man?"

The other nodded. The great wolf raised its head and looked at him, then put its massive muzzle on its paws again.

"A wise woman, Lady Juniper, a very wise woman… and not least in knowing that what she knows isn't everything that is."

"You'll be talking to me in riddles and hints, then, I suppose, lord Wanderer?"

The eye pierced him. For a moment he felt transparent as glass, as if he could suddenly see his entire life-not in memory, but through an infinity of Rudis-stretching back like a great serpent to the moment of his birth… and his conception… and before. As if all time and possibility were an eternal now.

"Look, then," the Wanderer said. "If you can bear it."

For a moment the mountain about him stood stark and bare, only here and there a charred root exposed by the gullies cut by long-gone monsoon floods. Heat lay on it like a blanket, through air gray and clear and thick with the tears of boiling oceans. Then it changed and was green once more… but different, somehow; there was a wrongness to the way the trees were placed, a regularity that held patterns as complex as those you saw in a kaleidoscope, layer within layer. A rabbit hopped by…

… and silvery tendrils looped around it, thi

But not like that! he thought.

"Those were evil fates, lord Wanderer," he said. "And true ones, I'm thinking."

"Evil for more than men," came the reply. "Now, tell me, Son of the Bear. What would you do with a little child you saw ru

Rudi's mouth quirked. "Take it from her, lord Wanderer. Swat her backside so that she'd remember, if she were too young for words."

"And a child who took a lighter and burned down your mother's Hall and all its treasures, so that many were hurt?"

"The same, perhaps with a bit of a harder swat. And call in the heart-healers to find the source of her hurt, and I'd see that she was watched more carefully, and better taught."

Walker nodded. "You wouldn't kill her? Even if you thought she might do the same again, and all within would die?"

Rudi made a sign. "Lord and Lady bless, no!" he said in revulsion, and then wondered if he'd spoken too quickly. "What a thought! If it was necessary, we… I… would keep her guarded always."

"Some men… and some women… would have that thought. Some would act on it, and kill the child."

The single eye looked out into a world that was once again pines glimpsed through snow.

"And some would have joy in the thought; or inwardly thank the chance that gave them the argument that it was necessary."

"Lord Wanderer, I don't understand."

"You don't need to. Just remember this: the world"-somehow Rudi knew he meant more than merely Earth-"is shaped by mind. And the world in turn shapes the stuff of mind. And now a question for you: what is the symbol of Time itself?"

"An arrow?" Rudi asked.

The tall figure laughed. "A hero's answer, if I ever heard one! And I'm something of a co

He turned and took up the great spear, its head graven with the same symbols that glowed on the brooch of his blue-lined gray cloak. Then his arm went back, paused, whipped forward with the unstoppable certainty of a catapult. The spear disappeared into the snow in a blurred streak.

"Was that a straight cast?" Wanderer asked.

"Very straight, lord; and I wouldn't like to be in its way."

They paused, in a silence broken only by the whistle of the wind. The single gray eye watched him, a chill amusement in it. Something warned Rudi, perhaps a whistle of cloven air that wasn't part of the storm's music; he turned and jumped backwards with a yell, nearly stepping on the wolf's tail. The spear flashed past, smashing a sapling to splinters as it came, and then there was a deep hard smack as the Wanderer caught it. His long arm swayed back with the impact, and then he grounded the weapon and leaned on it, the head glinting above his head as the dark wind blew flecks of ice past into the night.

"That was a straight cast," Wanderer said. "But the line only seems straight because you can't see its full course. Draw it long enough and it meets itself, like Jormungandr."

"I don't understand!" Rudi said again, baffled.

"You don't need to… yet," the gray one said. "No man can harvest a field till it is ripe, but the seed must be planted. The heroes offer to me for luck and victory. But the Kings… they ask for wisdom, if they have any to begin with."

"I'd be glad of that," Rudi said; he felt like arguing, but… that wouldn't be wise at all.

"Would you? Then know this. Fact becomes history; history becomes legend; legend becomes myth. Myth turns again to the begi

Rudi blinked. He noticed the bracelet around one thick wrist, where the coat rode up; it was in the form of a snake, wrought of gold so finely that the scales were a manifold shiver that seemed to spin away in infinite sets.

Wanderer stepped closer. "Your friends are waiting for you, Artos, son of Bear and Raven," the tall gray-haired figure said. "Go!"

He clapped a hand to Rudi's back. The touch was white fire, and the Mackenzie stiffened as if existence shattered about him.

"I've got it!" he heard a voice say.

Gods and holy men, never a straight answer, he thought as he bit back a groan.

The white fire still ran in his veins; it narrowed down to a patch on his lower back, and he could hear the voice again. It was Father Ignatius.

"Holy Mary and every saint and God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be thanked. That was why!"

Shuddering, Rudi felt the sting as something swabbed at the wound, and a hand dropped a pus-stained bandage into a bucket. He could smell the sweetish odor of it, oily and with a hint of something like vinegar. Then real fire bathed it.