The boy froze. He was a boy; he had not been hardened to the reality of his own complete impotence. He had thought that somehow things would turn out all right, if he just did the best he could and obeyed orders. Now he knew that was not true. The realization paralyzed him.
The sounds of the slaughter became loud in the boy's ears. Not all of the victims of the shells were dead, but many were dying. Scattered anguished exclamations projected from the over-all noise.
"My foot—it's hanging by a flap of skin!"
"I can't seel My eyes—my eyes are all blood!"
"Where did those intestines come from? Allah preserve me—they're minel"
"My friend—his shoulder is gone—and half his head."
The boys, stunned, simply did not know what to make of the horrendous carnage; they were reacting like sightseers, in these first moments of horror. But very soon they would get down to the serious business of bleeding to death. The charge had been broken, but still the shells came.
Mym, with his training in the military arts and his experience as a commander, automatically analyzed the pattern of the detonating shells. There were five big guns oriented on this region, and they were firing sequentially so that it was possible to judge the approximate locations of the forthcoming blasts. One was due for this spot in a few seconds.
Mym extended his will and took over the boy's paralyzed muscles. He had not realized he could do this; perhaps he could not, had the boy been operative, but under this immediate pressure, he did. He plunged directly forward, getting as far away from the critical location as he could.
The shell landed behind him. The blast of it half lifted him, throwing him forward.
In that moment he spied an Incarnation. He knew it was one, because he saw a large spider slide in from some celestially anchored thread and convert to a middle-aged woman whose eyes were fixed on him.
He willed the Sword to still the scene. The action of the battle froze, with boys locked in place in mid-stride, and pieces of boys paused in mid-air.
"Mars, whatever are you doing?" the woman demanded.
"Who are you?" he demanded in return, using his necessary singsong.
"I am Lachesis."
"Ah, Lakshmi, Goddess of Fortune," he agreed.
"What?"
He smiled. "There seem to be parallels between your mythology and ours. I recognize your nature."
"But I am only one aspect of three," she said, nonplused. She wavered and was replaced by a beautiful young oriental woman, then by an old negroid woman.
Then she was back to her original form.
"Yes, Lakshmi has an aspect for each of Vishnu's incarnations, to be his consort in each. When she manifests with only two of her four arms, she is the most beautiful of women."
The lovely oriental reappeared, intrigued. "Oh?"
Then the original Lachesis reasserted herself. "Stop this nonsense! I'm not part of your pantheon! I am the Incarnation of Fate, whose threads govern the lives of mortals."
"Those lives are ending," Mym pointed out. "No one can govern them now."
"All human events are arranged by Fate," Lachesis said firmly. "Like the tide, I will have my way." The tide. Something connected in Mym's mind. "W-Water!" he exclaimed.
"What?"
"In the organization of the book. Five Rings, one of the five major strategies is based on water. But we five Incarnations may relate to this framework. War is Fire; Fate is Water."
"Perhaps," she said, nonplused. "I will debate theology with you some other time. Right now I must have an answer. Just what do you think you're doing here?"
Mym was still a bit bemused by this abrupt encounter with the occidental Fate with the spider web. "I am trying to manage this battle," he sang.
"By using children!"
"One must work with the resources one has," he sang uncomfortably. "I don't like this, but it seems to be necessary."
"I have very little concern for what you may consider to be necessary," Lachesis said severely. He could see that, though she was past her physical prime, she had the underlying structure of a supremely beautiful woman. It would have been interesting to have seen her in her youth. "You are using children in war and, while I recognize that you have certain prerogatives, this use is not something I am prepared to tolerate."
Mym did not like the use of children in war himself, but this put him on the defensive. "Exactly what business is this of yours. Fate?" he demanded.
"It is my business to handle the Threads of Life, Mars," she repeated with some asperity. "In my several Aspects, I spin them, I measure them, and I cut them to proper length. When you put them into a suicidal war and kill them off wholesale, you are disrupting the pattern I am setting up. I can not sit idly in my Abode while you shear off those early threads!"
There was something about Lachesis that seemed familiar, though he could not identify it. He was sure he had not encountered her before. He had been bothered the same way about Luna. "But war is my business, and these are soldiers."
"Lives are my business, and these are children!"
"Why didn't you route these young threads elsewhere, then?" he demanded, still bothered by the feeling that he should know her from somewhere. "This situation was in the making long before I assumed this office. I don't like it, but I must make the best of it. I see no better way than to complete this battle and try to send the survivors home with honor."
"With honor!" she exclaimed, outraged. "What honor is there in pointless death?"
"This boy I am studying now is earning his own support and that of his mother in the only way available to him," Mym sang. "He is serving his nation. There is no other way for him. He must do what he has to do, or worse evil will befall him and his companions. I regret this situation deeply, but if this battle could be made to disappear, it would not bring back this boy's father or his brothers, or provide food or shelter for him. I am trying to discover how to minimize the ill effect of this battle and this war, but the situation is complex, and simplistic protests by the uninformed will not accomplish anything useful."
"Simplistic protests!" she exclaimed furiously. Now, in her wrath, she seemed more than ever familiar. Her fair hair, the bones of her face... "Uninformed?! You can't talk to me like that! I am Fate!"
"I don't care if you're Devi herself! This is my business."
"I don't have to put up with this," she said. She shimmered, became the large spider, and disappeared.
Mym was about to free the stasis and permit the battle to resume, when Lachesis reappeared. This time she had a woman with her.
Mym stared. It was Rapture!
Rapture stared about her, appalled. "The blood!" she cried. "Where am I?"
"You are on the site of Mars' business," Lachesis said. "I thought you'd like to join him at work."
"She doesn't belong here!" Mym cried.
"Oh?" Fate inquired. "She is a mortal, and the thread of her life is subject to my manipulation. I thought it appropriate to allow her to participate in your activity. When this battle of children resumes, she will be among them."
Mym was stricken. Rapture would be killed in short order, and, even if he managed to rescue her from the carnage, her mind would be profoundly affected. "Take her back!" he cried.
"Are you ready to deal. Mars?" Lachesis demanded sternly.
This was coercion, but he was vulnerable to it. "Yes," he sang grimly.
Fate shimmered, changed, and vanished with Rapture. In a moment she reappeared, alone. "I arranged for a similar scene to appear on the television program she was watching," she said. "Later, she will believe that it was only a bad daydream sponsored by that program." Her gaze oriented on him. "Now I expect you to abate this war forthwith, so as to give me opportunity to route the children out of it."
"I would prefer to have the children out of it!" he exclaimed. "But I haven't found any way!"
"Then we shall find a way," she said. "Right now."
"These children are here because
Persia needs them for its war effort," he said.
"I really don't see the point in war, anyway."
"It is a product of the natural tensions and inequities of society," he explained. "Without war, there would be no redress for certain wrongs. War is only harmful when it is poorly managed."
"Oh, pooh!" she snorted. "That sounds like something Satan would say."
That set Mym back. Satan had said it. "Have you any strategy in mind to alleviate this battle or this war?"
"Surely it is the result of some misunderstanding," she said. "If we can ascertain what that misunderstanding is, and clarify it, the need for combat should be eliminated. What started it?"
"Babylonia's misunderstanding about Persia's ability and will to defend its territory," Mym sang grimly.
She frowned. "Babylonia is a bit out of my regular territory; but from all I understand, it is no shining example of decency. But then, neither is Persia. It was an awful mess, extricating the captive threads of over a hundred western hostages from that country. A pox on both their houses."
"Why are you so eager to save their children, then?"
"I could say that it is because some of those children are mine, holding western beliefs in their secret hearts. That, certainly, is what first alerted me to this problem and brought me here. But once I saw the full horror of it, I knew I had to act to protect all those children; I don't care what their beliefs are. They don't deserve to die in a stupid war fashioned by fanatic adults. I don't care how complicated it is, those children have to be saved."
Mym discovered that he was coming to like this woman's attitude. He had never had much to do with children, but certainly they represented any nation's hope for the future. "I agree that the children are not responsible for this war," he sang. "I would prefer to see those who cause wars have to serve on the front lines."
Lachesis laughed. And suddenly he placed that nagging recognition: he had known someone who laughed like that! "That would end this war in a hurry, wouldn't it!"
"Are you from Ireland?" Mym asked.
She glanced at him, surprised. "This Aspect is. Of course, now I serve a wider clientele. Why do you ask?"
"I knew a woman from Ireland, a beautiful and good woman, and your hair, your face—I think in youth you must have looked very much like her."
"I have come to distrust coincidence, since assuming this office," she said. "Did Satan have a hand in your ascension?"
"He helped eliminate the former Mars, if that's what you mean. But he didn't have any hand in my actual selection."
"Are you sure? Why were you ready for this office, at the appropriate time?"
"I had been denied my fiancee, owing to an abrupt change of political circumstance, and—" He broke off.
"Does Satan dabble in politics?"
"Does a fish breathe water?" She fixed her gaze intently on him. "That woman you knew—did she sing?"
Mym spread his hands. "I never heard more beautiful music. She had a little harp—"
"Orb!"
"Orb," he agreed. "You know her?"
"I am her mother."
Mym was stunned. Now the hair, features, accent, and laugh all came clear—like mother, like daughter. But what an amazing coincidence, that he should encounter the mother of his former lover!
Coincidence? "You said you distrust coincidence," he sang. "Because you arrange much of what to mortals appears to be coincidence. Do others do the same?"
"They shouldn't, but one does."
"Satan."
"Satan," she agreed. "I very much think he has been interfering again. What reason could he have had to want you in this office?"
"Apart from my inexperience that he might take advantage of, I can think of none."
"But you know my daughter."
"I loved your daughter. But circumstances forced our separation, and now I love Rapture. This was no design of mine, or fault in Orb; it—" He shrugged. "It happened."
"And Orb loved you?"
"Yes. But she knew why I had to leave her, and I think by now she has made her own life. She was—is a wonderful person."
"Is it possible that Satan was jealous of you?"
Mym broke into a stuttering laugh. "For what possible reason?"
"Because my daughter loved you."
That sobered him. "Satan—has an interest in Orb?"
Lachesis pursed her lips. "Possibly, in his devious fashion. Satan—well, he once expressed interest in me, when I was young and attractive. I was said by some to be the most beautiful woman of my generation, and males are attracted to that sort of thing. Orb is not far off that standard and she inherited that phenomenal musical talent from her father's side of the family. Satan tried to prevent her from getting her harp, and her cousin Luna from—"
"Luna!"
"My granddaughter."
"Your—! But—"
She smiled. "I bore Luna's father in my youth, and Orb later. It is complicated. We raised the two girls together, and they were like sisters. Now—"
"But Luna does not resemble Orb! Both are beautiful women, but the manner, the bones, the hair—" But he knew as he spoke that the two did resemble each other, and that was the undefined thing he had been aware of in Luna.
Luna dyed her hair brown and adopted different ways. That, too, is complicated to explain. At any rate, Luna is slated to balk Satan's grand design to assume greater power on Earth, and Satan has been laboring mightily to eliminate her. But she is protected by Thanatos, so he must be roundabout. Orb, however, is not so protected, so he may have mischief in mind for her, to put pressure on me and on Luna. And—I dislike saying this—he may have a certain personal interest in Orb, because it seems he is partial to that type of woman. That might be a ruse, of course. At any rate, if any of this conjecture of mine is true, Satan might resent whatever man Orb took an interest in and act to eliminate that man."
Mym was appalled. "Could—could Satan arrange to have a prince killed?"
"Surely so. Satan can arrange evil for any person not protected by another Incarnation."
"It was my brother's untimely death that caused my separation from Orb," Mym sang, shaking with shock and anger. "He was to be Rajah: when he died, I had to assume that office. So I was denied Orb and given Rapture, against my will. The circumstances of my love for—"
"No mystery," Lachesis said. "Rapture is lovely."
"And you were going to kill her!" he sang, suddenly enraged at her.
"No. It was a bluff to make my point."
"You made it! I would not allow Rapture to be hurt."
"And Orb—if Satan threatened her, now—?"
Mym spread his hands. "I did not lose my feeling for her, when I came to love Rapture. I—would be vulnerable."
"Well, don't worry. I am watching Orb's thread. Satan can not interfere directly with it without alerting me, and if I can't protect her, the other Incarnations will help me. Satan knows that. I suspect that it was the other way around; he was trying to use you to hurt her. I wasn't watching your thread, and certainly not your brother's thread."
"And Satan was pretending to be my friend!" Mym gritted.
"He does that. Never trust him; he always has some devious scheme brewing."
"But—once he had taken me away from Orb—why would he try to separate me also from Rapture?"
"To make you angry enough to qualify for the office of the Incarnation of War."
"But why would he want me in that office? I could not do him much mischief before, but now—" Mym considered, and realized that he didn't know how he might harm Satan. "Surely I am, or will be, more of a threat to him now, as an Incarnation."
"One would think so. But of course you weren't supposed to know about his machinations in your life—if, indeed, we have conjectured correctly. Only our meeting here has clarified that."
"He had to know I would in time recognize the mother of the woman I once loved!"
She sighed. "Yes, I suppose so. I suspect that we have not yet
properly fathomed Satan's mischief. We must be alert for it. Satan never exerts himself without bad reason." She smiled briefly. "But we have drifted from the topic. How can we abate this battle or this war?"
"By putting the one who started it on the front line," Mym sang. "We had agreed on that."
She considered. "I had thought we were joking. But now I wonder. Why not put that man here?"
"Because it would be murder. You don't approve of that."
"And you do?"
"I would call it an execution. If the life of that one guilty man could cause the lives of the remaining children to be spared, I would gladly destroy him."
She grimaced. "Then I leave it in your hands." She converted to her spider form and vanished.
So quickly! Yet they had come to an agreement, and if she, like many of her sex, lacked the stomach for what was necessary, it made sense to leave it in the hands of one who could handle it.
Mym withdrew from the boy and mounted his horse, leaving the battle frozen. They galloped across the terrain of Babylonia, seeking the palace of the ruler of the nation. This took time—but it didn't matter, for the battle was not operative. Mym located the man and, without ceremony, set a hand on his shoulder. This brought the man into Mym's magic frame; he disappeared from the eyes of mortals and was carried through the air, through the walls, and into the sky.
Mym set him down on the battlefield, directly in the path of the boy he had inhabited before. Then he released the stasis.
The battle resumed. The pieces of bodies completed their flights through the air and socked into the ground. The boy, boosted by the blast behind him, stumbled, caught his balance—and spied the gesticulating enemy before him.
The boy reacted automatically. He stopped, raised his rifle, sighted, and fired.
Whether his bullet scored was doubtful; good marksmanship was unlikely in such circumstance. But his action alerted the other boys of this region. They stopped, raised their rifles, and fired. Several bullets tore into the man, and he screamed and fell.
The boys charged up, saw the man's face, and exclaimed with amazement. They had seen that face before; it had been on posters used for hate training. They cried the name.