Heirs of Empire

“These i

A brilliant ray of light speared from her massive finger.

Tamman tightened as the fighter’s main battery locked onto the laser designator within that beam. He took one more second, making himself double-check his readings. God, it was going to be close. They’d never counted on some idiot being gutsy enough to come to meet Sandy’s holo image!

The ray of light touched the ground, and twenty thousand voices cried out in terror as a massive trench scored itself across the valley, wider than a tall man’s height and thrice as deep. Dirt and dust vomited upward as the very bedrock exploded, and Father Uriad flew backward like a toy.

The raw smell of rock dust choked nose and throat, and it was too much. The Guardsmen screamed and turned as one. Sentries cast aside weapons. Artillerists abandoned their guns. Cooks threw down their ladles. Anything that might slow a man was hurled away, and the Temple Guard of Malagor stampeded into the night in howling madness.

The ray of light died, and the blue-and-gold shape turned from the shattered hosts of Mother Church to face Father Stomald’s people.

The young priest drove himself to his feet, standing atop the rampart to face the angel he’d tried to slay, and the burning splendor of her eyes swept over him. He felt his followers’ fear against his back, yet awe and reverence held them in their places, and the angel smiled gently.

“I will come among you,” she told them, “in a form less frightening. Await me.”

And the majestic shape of light and glory vanished.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Father Stomald sat down to the supper on the camp table with a groan. He hadn’t expected to be alive to eat it, and he was tired enough to wonder if it was worth the bother. Just organizing the unexpected booty abandoned by the Guard had been exhausting, yet Tibold was right. The dispersal of one army was no guarantee of victory, and those weapons were priceless. Besides, the Guard might regain enough courage to reclaim them if they weren’t collected.

But at least deciding what to do with pikes and muskets was fairly simple. Other problems were less so—like the more than four thousand Guardsmen who’d trickled back and begged to join “the Angels’ Army” as wonder overcame terror. Stomald had welcomed them, but Tibold insisted no newcomer, however welcome, be accepted unquestioningly. It was only a matter of time before the Church attempted to infiltrate spies in the guise of converts, and he preferred to establish the rules now.

Stomald saw his point, but discussing what to do had taken hours. For now, Tibold had four thousand new laborers; as they proved their sincerity, they would be integrated into his units—with, Tibold had observed dryly, non-Guardsmen on either side to help suppress any temptation to treason.

Yet all such questions, while important and real, had been secondary to most of Stomald’s people. God’s own messengers had intervened for them, and if Malagorans were too pragmatic to let joy interfere with tasks they knew must be performed, they went about those tasks with spontaneous hymns. And Stomald, as shepherd of a vaster flock than he’d ever anticipated, had been deeply involved in pla

All of which meant he’d had little enough time to breathe, much less eat.

Now he mopped up the last of the shemaq stew and slumped on his camp stool with a sigh. He could hear the noises of the camp, but his tent stood on a small rise, isolated from the others by the traditional privacy of the clergy. That isolation bothered him, yet the ability to think and pray uninterrupted was a priceless treasure whose value to a leader he was coming to appreciate.

He raised his head, gazing past the tied-back flap at the staff-hung lantern just outside. More lanterns and torches twinkled in the narrow valley below him, and he heard the lowing of the hundreds of nioharqs the Guard had abandoned. There were fewer branahlks—the speedy saddle beasts had been in high demand as the Church’s warriors fled—but the nioharqs, more than man-high at the shoulder, would be invaluable when it came to moving their camp. And—

His thoughts chopped off, and he lunged to his feet as the air before him suddenly wavered like heat above a flame. Then it solidified, and he gazed upon the angel who had saved his people.

Sean and Tamman waited outside the tent inside their portable stealth fields. The trip across the camp had been … interesting, since people don’t avoid things they can’t see. Sandy had almost been squashed by a freight wagon, and her expression as she nipped aside had been priceless.

Sean had pla

But that was for the future, and right now he tried not to laugh at the priest’s expression when Sandy suddenly materialized in front of him.

Stomald’s jaw dropped, and then he fell to his knees before the angel. He signed God’s starburst while his own inadequacy suffused him, coupled with a soaring joy that, inadequate as he was, God had seen fit to touch him with His Finger, and held his breath as he awaited some sign of her will.

“Stand up, Stomald,” a soft voice said in the Holy Tongue. He stared at the floor of his tent, then rose tremblingly. “Look at me,” the angel said, and he raised his eyes to her face. “That’s better.”

The angel crossed his tent and sat in one of his camp chairs, and he watched her in silence. She moved with easy grace, and she was even smaller than he’d thought on that terrible night. Her head was little higher than his shoulder when she stood, but there was nothing fragile about her tiny form.

Brown hair gleamed under the lantern light, cut short as a man’s but in an indefinably feminine style. Her clean-cut mouth was firm, yet he felt oddly certain those lips were meant to smile. Her triangular face was built of huge eyes, high cheekbones, and a determined chin that lacked the beauty of the angel Tibold’s huntsmen had wounded yet radiated strength and purpose.

She returned his gaze calmly, and he cleared his throat and fiddled with his starburst, trying to think. But what did a man say to God’s messenger? Good evening? How are you? Do you think it will rain?

He had no idea, and the angel’s eyes twinkled. Yet it was a kindly twinkle, and she took pity on his tongue-tied silence.

“I said I would visit you.” Her voice was deep for a woman’s, but without the thunder of her wrath it was sweet and soft, and his pulse slowed.

“You honor us, Holiness,” he managed, and the angel shook her head.

” ‘Holiness’ is a priestly title, and I am but a visitor from a distant land.”

“Then … then by what title shall I address you?”

“None,” she said simply, “but my name is Sandy.”