“Are you all right, my lord?” Walker asked cautiously; thoughts were moving behind his eyes, weighing and considering.
“I am gifted with many bright and fair lifestreams,” Sethaz said. “The Prophet has left his mortal shell and Ascended to join the Masters.”
This time there were bitten off exclamations. The news had been expected, but not this way. Now several did show fear. Sethaz’s lips showed his teeth, and more of them looked afraid.
“I am the Prophet now.”
“Ah . . . the enshrining . . .”
His hand moved in a gesture. “The Ascended Ones have made me Prophet; what do I need of men’s ceremonies?”
His voice rang in the warm air, cutting through the brabble of camp and siege. Not far away a trebuchet cut loose, the great cage of rocks at the short end of the lever falling, slowly at first, then with gathering speed. The long arm whipped up into the sky; the quarter ton stone in the sling at its end broke free at the top of the arch, tumbling towards the breach in the walls of Twin Falls.
“But They require action of us.”
He drew his shete and pointed it, slicing through their objections: “Cut! Cut!”
They looked at one another one more time. Walker drew his weapon as well.
“Cut!” he called, then screamed orders.
Trumpets and drums bellowed, and men scrambled to mass for the assault. Sethaz’s banner went forward with them.
“Cut! Cut! CUT!”
* * * *
The new Prophet climbed slowly to the dais at the front of the Mormon church—they called it a Stake Center. Bright arterial blood spattered the russet plates and scutes of his armor, and his face. It clotted thickly along his right arm, and on the blade of his shete, dropping on the dark polished wood and making the soles of his boots slightly tacky, an iron scent under the growing waft of smoke from the fires outside, and the fear sweat within. When he rested his elbows on the lectern, more ruby drops fell from the broad curved blade.
The great room was crowded: the Cutters of his per sonal guard facing in, and a mob of the inhabitants—the more important of them, or the more important ones that were still alive. Some of them were barely so, held up by their families and seeping yet more blood through rough bandages. A few children cried, but mostly the interior of the temple was a gloom through which went silence and rustlings. Firelight flickered through the colored glass of the windows where pioneers dug and angels sang.
A chorus of screams from outside went on and on, like one great shout of terror and agony mixed with bestial triumph; and that was song enough for him.
Sethaz smiled. A woman in the first row screamed at the sight, and the expression grew until teeth showed. When he spoke, his voice echoed clearly to the limits of the crowd.
“I am the Scourge of God. If you had not sinned greatly, He would not have delivered you into my hands.”
A moan went through them. He pointed with the sword to the woman who’d screamed, and spoke to the guard commander at the foot of the stairs.
“Set that one aside for me, Captain. And ten men at random to spread the word; let them see the others die, and then take their eyes. Kill the rest.”
The blades of the guard troopers rose as one, and fire light broke ruddy off the edged metal. A huge guttural shout of: “Cut! Cut! Cut!” almost overrode the screams.
Almost, but not quite.
S. M. Stirling, The Sunrise Lands
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