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Serials - parts and parts.

Countdown to Armageddon, Episode Six

Written by Edward M. Lerner

WEST-CENTRAL FRANCIA, 732

The fallen covered hills and plain for as far as the eye could see. The moans of the wounded and dying echoed everywhere. The best that a wounded Saracen could hope for was a speedy dispatch.

Jackals and vultures and human scavengers swarmed over the corpses, each seeking his own form of booty. There were far too many dead to bury; black smoke and the sickeningly sweet smell of burning human flesh rose from the funeral pyres to profane the sky. The stench, the cries, the sights . . . this was surely as close to Purgatory as it was possible to come.

And so, this being the Dark Ages, the Frankish priests prepared to celebrate a mass of thanksgiving.

The one impediment to the solemn service had been deciding where to hold it. The nearest church of any size was at the monastery of St. Martin in Tours, but that had been thoroughly desecrated and sacked just days earlier. Its sacred relics and beautiful golden decorations, and those of countless hundreds of other churches, lay jumbled somewhere in the enormous wagon train just captured from the invaders.

With uncharacteristic rapidity, the priests and nobles agreed: The ceremony would be held near the enemy’s abandoned camp, amid the recaptured holy pieces themselves. There were no alternatives. A feast of celebration would be prepared from the enemy’s supplies.

The observance would be held that evening as an extension of vespers. Word filtered out. Slowly, the victorious army began to assemble. As afternoon shadows lengthened, cavalry companies galloped toward the site of the service. They crowded around the improvised altar; as full-blooded Franks, they gave no thought to the peasant infantry plodding along behind them. The nobles had places reserved for themselves at the very front of the gathering crowd.

****

Harry and Terrence had examined thousands of bodies: stabbed, hacked, burned, trampled, gnawed by scavengers. It was like hell on Earth.

They did not find Faisel.

At a loss how to proceed, they watched in awe as the victorious army gathered in its tens of thousands.

The Saracens had encamped in a beautiful grassy valley: a natural amphitheater. Karl’s men now covered its slopes. In the center of the valley, priests scurried about, tending to last-minute details.

Harry and Terrence observed from the crest of one of the hills that delimited the vale. All the nobility of Western Europe was gathered in this one spot. Terrence thought: Oh, for a camera with a telephoto lens.

Terrence froze. Could it be? He sifted through the facts and circumstances of the recent campaign, rummaged through what little he knew about their nemesis, desperately seeking a flaw in his reasoning.

He found none.

“Harry?”

“Hmm.” It was an answering grunt, not yet attention. His friend was rapt in the incredible scene.

“Harry! What’s always been the big question about Faisel’s plans?”

“For me, it’s always been how he planned to deliver the nuke. Horses make lousy strategic delivery systems.” Bowen gestured at the victorious forces below. “Be glad the bastard never found an answer either.”

In the heart of the valley, the wagon train was surrounded by warriors. Terrence shivered. “What if he has?

“What if it’s hidden down there?”

****

Schooled by years of banditry, Salah-ad-Din and his most trusted men slipped through the enemy countryside unseen by Firanji patrols. Like the Green Berets, he thought ironically. They sneaked through the forest, ever closer to the abandoned camp of their own defeated army, the army now running for Iberia and the shelter of the tall Pyrenees. But this was all according to plan.

It was best that Allah’s army be far away when he actuated the small radio transmitter in his pocket.

****

Terrence plowed downhill through the crowd, Bowen in pursuit, talking as they ran. They couldn’t cause a panic by speaking in English. Warriors, jostled and shoved, cursed angrily, but they knew better than to misuse Karl’s strangely favored outland friends.

“This year is the centennial of Muhammad’s death. Think of it! How will the Islamic world respond to the apocalyptic destruction of Christendom’s greatest army? To that army and the nobility of half a continent vanishing in a blinding flash and a mushroom cloud that towers to the heavens? To the incomprehensible plague of fallout? To the lingering death, for countless years after, of anyone who dares to visit here?”

“But where do we begin to look?”

Terrence wasn’t done explaining. “I know now why Faisel has been terrorizing Europe for the last few years, making himself, and all Saracens, hated.”

Harry had figured it out, too. “To draw that many more Christian forces into the battle. That’s also why at the last he attacked Aquitainia and drove Odo over to Karl. Faisel wanted all of the area’s leaders killed at once.”

“Right.”

They fell silent for a while, saving their breath for the downhill dash. Harry, in a sudden premonition, saw the multitudes all around as the legions of the damned, dead without yet knowing it. It made his skin crawl. Could they possibly locate the bomb in time among the hundreds of wagons?

Because if they didn’t find it, surely they, and Karl’s army, and everything that any of them had ever held dear, were doomed.

****

Salah-ad-Din settled back against the trunk of the sturdy pine that he had just climbed. The tree grew from a tall hill no more than eighty meters back from the rim of the natural valley into which the condemned army streamed.

They were antlike at his feet; none more so than the nobles gathered at the center of the clearing. The foolish priests of a false god scurried all about, performing their misguided tasks. Well, they also had their part to play today.

The murmur of the army, now rising, now falling, mesmerized him. Nothing could be heard over the noise of the many thousands, nothing short of the voice of God.

Which, the terrorist smiled, would soon speak.

****

Bertchramm cursed as someone tried to shove past him. The leaders had gathered hours ago; whoever this was had not the rank for a position on the valley floor. He turned to see who had such nerve and lack of sense.

“Boy, am I glad to see you!”

The strange wording didn’t discomfit Bertchramm, but Harry’s sudden appearance did. “You should not be here. You know that this area is—”

Harry cut him off. “Do you remember the campfire demonstration we gave Karl after saving Bertha?” The mention of Bertchramm’s indebtedness was intentional. There was no time for lengthy explanations.

Nor did Bertchramm demand any. “What can I do?”

“Salah-ad-Din’s magical weapon is here. Gather a few trusted men and have each of them gather a few more. All the captured wagons, even the food wagons, must be searched quickly but thoroughly for any large object out of the ordinary.” Harry held out his hands to show how bulky the homemade bomb must certainly be. “At least this big. But anything suspicious that is found must not be touched. We do not know what will set off the bomb.”

Harry looked worriedly over his shoulder at he knew not what. Here in the clearing at the bottom of the valley, he felt as exposed as a goldfish in a bowl. Shooting fish in a barrel—the phrase, unbidden and unwelcome, came to him.

“And for God’s sake, don’t let anyone see what they’re doing.”

****

Hours sitting immobile in the tall tree were beginning to paralyze Salah-ad-Din’s legs. His hand in his pocket idly fingered the control as he waited. Still, although the Firanji army had been fully assembled for a while, although he could have destroyed these infidels at any time, he waited. A moment of high drama would come, and he would know it when he saw it. Soon . . .

In the anthill of the damned, the mass, at long last, had begun.

****

Bertchramm organized the search with all his characteristic Frankish efficiency, then returned to wait with Harry and Terrence. The warrior seemed, if it were possible, more nervous than his companions. He answered slowly, reluctantly, when Harry finally asked why. “It’s not only Saracens who will place a meaning on this great magic.”

“What do you mean?”

Bertchramm stared incredulously. “Have you never seen a trial by ordeal or by combat?”

Harry shuddered: He had.

The standard means of Frankish “justice” was trial by compurgation. This was essentially the testimony of character witnesses. The more serious the accusation, the more witnesses were needed. If the accused had too few witnesses—seventy-two for murder trials, for example—God’s guidance was sought. In a trial by ordeal, the accused might be forced to grasp a red-hot iron, or to plunge his bare arm into boiling water to retrieve a submerged object. God, it was believed, protected the innocent from harm.

Trial by combat operated on the same premise: God would surely grant victory to the justly aggrieved party, whether that be the truly injured or the falsely accused.

“Of course I have,” Harry said. “What do trials have to do with our situation?”

“After two years among us, you still do not think like a Frank.” Bertchramm studied the discreet search now under way. He hesitated, as though expressing his fears would make them real. Perhaps that was exactly what he dreaded. Finally, he sighed, and asked his own question. “Why do you think that we use such techniques to settle accusations?”

Barbarism, Harry thought, an answer he kept to himself. You’ll grow out of it.

Terrence broke the awkward silence. “The possibility of trial by combat, with the risk of God’s intervention, keeps false allegations to a minimum.”

“True, but that’s like saying that a lack of money causes poverty. It misses the point.” The warlord looked again, in desperate hope, at his men digging through and prodding at everything in the wagons.

“We believe that God intervenes in the outcome of every event. If He were to visit a catastrophe such as you have described, if our victory were to meet such Divine punishment, how many of our surviving people would assume that God must indeed be this Allah?”

****

One by one, Bertchramm’s searchers returned. To a man, they reported nothing out of the ordinary. Bertchramm ignored the occasional glint of gold from deep within folds of fabric. Sticky fingers were the least of their worries.

Could I be wrong? Terrence wondered.

It was hard to imagine they had overlooked something the size and weight of the bomb. Terrence slumped to the ground, perplexed. It made so much sense that the nuke would be here. “So where is the damned thing?”

“Let me think.” Harry had sat down earlier. He seemed to be following the mass with uncharacteristic attentiveness. Perhaps there were no atheists at Ground Zero.

“Think about what?”

“The altar.” Harry stared at that object for what seemed forever. “What would you call that color?”

A corner of the improvised altar was just barely visible beneath the cloth draped over it. Staring into the setting sun didn’t help Terrence’s color sense. “Silver? No, not quite. Grey?”

“Yes, and a very particular shade of gray at that. It goes with the size and shape.”

Terrence looked again, this time in a twenty-first-century frame of mind. Mentally he stood the box on end, colored it entirely in the dreary hue that peeked out from under the altar cloth.

“Bloody hell,” he marveled aloud. “It’s a bloomin’ office storage cabinet, in standard office grey.”

****

The Christian hymns swelled to a crescendo; the valley gathered up the sound, focused it, and sent it soaring skyward. In his own way, Salah-ad-Din also exulted in the sound. Soon, he thought. Soon.

An almost electric silence came over the landscape. The officiating priest said something that the Arab, from his distant perch, could not make out. The army, however, responded with heartfelt sincerity. “Karl Martel. Karl Martel. Karl Martel. Karl Martel!” The ground seemed to shake with their shouts. “Karl Martel, the Hammer of God!”

Salah-ad-Din lifted his eyes to the sky, to the glorious sunset that Allah had painted across the heavens. As he prayed, he took from his pocket the small radio transmitter. He unlocked its safety and extended its telescoping antenna.

Soon, indeed, these infidels would experience the hammer of God.

****

A great army filled the valley. Its shouts were almost deafening.

They cheered for the man who had led them to an almost miraculous victory. Scant centuries earlier, as Rome was falling, men had cried out similar words, but in fear. Those cries had named Attila the Hun as the Scourge of God.

A sunbeam broke through the thin cloud cover to illuminate the priests and the altar. At this further proof of God’s favor, the multitudes redoubled their efforts. “Karl Martel! Karl Martel, the Hammer of God!”

There was no way Harry could make himself understood.

To the core of his being, Harry knew he had no time to spare. He leapt to his feet and ran. Dagger in his right hand, he swept everything off the altar with his left. The altar cloth slid to the ground.

Terrence and Bertchramm tried to hold back enraged priests and nobles. Only Frankish reticence to unsheathe their swords at a mass, however improvised the surroundings, saved any of them.

Harry forced the tip of his knife between the locked doors of the drab cabinet. His friends crashed and bumped into him. He tried to ignore them, ignore everything. Even if he were right, he might not live long enough to do anything about it. He pried—and the blade snapped.

The army’s shouts had turned angry.

Cursing, Harry forced the broken dagger between the cabinet doors. He heaved. The stub of the blade took the strain; with metallic pings, something inside broke and the latch sagged. Harry flung open the doors.

What could only be Faisel’s atomic bomb sat inside.

****

Salah-ad-Din exulted to Allah as the doomed infidels cried out their final, mistaken words. “La Ilaha illa-l-Lah,” he sang out in answer. There is no God whatsoever but God. “Muhammadun rasulu-l-Lah.” Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

Below him, almost unheard in his fervor, the Christians kept shouting. “Karl Martel, the Hammer of God!”

One last time he would recite the opening chapter of the Koran. His fingertip suspended over the button that would send him to heaven, and these infidels to perdition, he recited from memory:

“Praise be to God, Lord of the universe,

the Merciful, the Compassionate,

Ruler on the day of judgment.

Thee alone we worship; Thee alone we ask for aid.

Guide us on the straight path,

The path of those whom Thou has favored,

not of those against whom Thou are wrathful,

nor of those . . .”

Lost in his devotion, he did not hear hesitation in the Frankish cheers, nor the roar of anger that took its place.

Not immediately.

He gazed one last time over the panorama at his feet. In horror he saw people were fighting over the cabinet from his lab that had so amusingly been used for their idolatrous altar.

Faisel was so shocked that he almost forgot the device in his hands. Those devils who had pursued him, then escaped from his camp . . . even now they hoped to stop him. His fingers turned white from the pressure with which he clutched the radio transmitter.

Allah would understand why he had not the time to finish his prayers. Carefully, he aimed the antenna and stabbed his finger downward toward the large red button.

****

Into the stunned hush between paeans to Karl and outcries of rage, Terrence screamed, “It’s the bomb!”

Few understood—but the major domus did. At Karl’s command, his bodyguards rushed to Harry’s aid.

Men swarmed, howling, fervid to avenge blasphemy.

Battered and bruised, Harry tried to concentrate on the bomb. Only wires and a massive amount of what he assumed to be plastique for the trigger were visible. This wouldn’t be a precise, controlled implosion, he thought. Lots of the plutonium would be vaporized and scattered, poisoning this area for millennia. That was probably by intent.

No point of vulnerability suggested itself.

With a grunt, he turned over the bomb, almost dropping it as a fist grazed his head. Aha! An electronics module.

He goggled at a radio receiver wired to the thin plastic tube of a magnetic reed relay. He couldn’t spot the batteries that had to be there. They must be beneath the circuit board.

Where was that damned broken dagger? There, beside his knee. He groped for