Justin Allen

“They’re break­ing through.” Nader pointed at a knot of sav­ages. They looked nearly human, but fought like ani­mals. One long-limbed female – she car­ried the sharp end of a bro­ken pike, gleaned no doubt from one of the bod­ies — wounded three men before a spear caught her in the neck. Blood splat­tered over the lines three men deep.

“This is hor­ri­ble,” Shamash screamed. As a priest, he’d seen a lot of pain. A lot of death. He’d seen women per­ish in child­birth, babies suf­fer­ing from the pox. Shamash had even given the final bless­ing to a man killed in a street fight. But none of those com­pared to the sights and sounds of battle.

“It’ll only get worse,” Nader replied.

“How?”

“It just will.”

Another shock, even more intense than the first, blasted through the lines. A few of the men were knocked down. Shamash would have gone sprawl­ing as well, but Nader caught him.

“We have to force them back,” Nader said.

“What should I do?”

Nader pointed at the man in front of him. “Push with every­thing you’ve got.”

“Push? What for?”

“With any luck it’ll start the whole army mov­ing for­ward. Doesn’t take much to begin a coun­ter­at­tack, just one or two brave men.”

Reluc­tantly, Shamash did as he was told.

At first, noth­ing hap­pened. A bit more jostling per­haps, but lit­tle else. He pushed harder, until the man he was shov­ing let out a pained grunt, and still noth­ing. It was like try­ing to punch a hole through stone with noth­ing but your fin­gers for tools. Then, just as he was about to give up, Shamash felt the whole col­umn slip for­ward. It was only a tiny shift, not enough for him to take a step or even change his foot­ing, but it was a start.

“I think it’s work­ing,” he shouted.

“Push!”

Shamash felt the next jolt almost imme­di­ately. Before long he was tak­ing actual strides. The coun­ter­at­tack had begun.

It reminded him of an avalanche he’d seen once, years before. A del­e­ga­tion of priests was on pil­grim­age to the tem­ple at Ham­mis­han, and Kil­imon had cho­sen Shamash to accom­pany them. He was only a novice at the time, barely fif­teen years old. They’d hiked for the bet­ter part of a week, the last two days in high moun­tain canyons. It was the morn­ing of their last day, and Shamash was gath­er­ing wood to cook the por­ridge when he hap­pened to see a rock tum­bling down the oppo­site side of the gorge. Halfway to the bot­tom it struck a shelf of larger stones. Instantly, the whole moun­tain was tear­ing itself to pieces. Shamash remem­bered stand­ing there, arms loaded with sticks, mar­veling at the absurd power. Whole trees were torn up. Boul­ders the size of houses split in two.

Look­ing back on it, Shamash had no doubt that the avalanche had been the work of gods, demon­strat­ing the lim­it­less­ness of their pow­ers. They had imbued a sin­gle stone with force enough to destroy an entire moun­tain. Shamash won­dered if he were being used sim­i­larly. Maybe Moloch was using him to push His fol­low­ers into the teeth of bat­tle. If so, Shamash reflected, they could not be defeated. This war would be won, and would serve for­ever as proof of His majesty. It was a thought Shamash would momen­tar­ily come to repent.

He was still push­ing — head down — when the air around him was sud­denly swept away. It felt as though the sun had ceased to shine. He gasped. With­out think­ing, Shamash had pushed his way directly into the heart of the dust cloud.

“What now?” He looked for Nader, but couldn’t see him any­where. The urge to vomit was almost over­whelm­ing. He fell back a few steps and tried to wipe the ash out of his eyes. Other sol­diers did like­wise. If any­one were still push­ing, Shamash couldn’t tell. Already their coun­ter­at­tack had fallen apart.

In his con­fu­sion, Shamash stum­bled over a dead sav­age. He squinted, but still couldn’t make out whether it was male or female. “Where should I go?” he screamed. He didn’t expect an answer.

From Slaves of the Shinar

The Over­look Press 2007

© Justin Allen