Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel

By Edward M. Erdelac

Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel

Copyright © 2019 by Edward M. Erdelac. All rights reserved.

Previously published as Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel, Damnation Books,

December 1st, 2011.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or fictitious recreations of

actual historical persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not

intended by the authors unless otherwise specified. This book or any portion thereof may not

be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of

the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Editor: Tim Marquitz

Cover Illustration: Juri Umagami

Interior Illustrations: M Wayne Miller

Cover Design: STK•Kreations

Worldwide Rights

Created in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

IX: The Long Sabbath

X: The War Prophet

XI: The Mules of the Mazzikim

XII: The Man Called Other

XIII: The Fire King Triumphant

Lexicon

Also By Edward M. Erdelac

Novels

Buff Tea

Coyote’s Trail

Terovolas

Andersonville

Monstrumführer

Mindbreaker (in Bond Unknown)

Perennial (in Humanity 2.0)

The Knight With Two Swords

The Merkabah Rider Series

High Planes Drifter

The Mensch With No Name

Have Glyphs Will Travel

Once Upon A Time In The Weird West

Collections

With Sword And Pistol

Angler In Darkness

To Adonai and my family, and to the fan club.

Thanks to the boundlessly imaginative and talented Jeff Carter, who is always ready with a bucket of creative turpentine whenever I paint myself into a corner.

Y un agradecimiento muy especial para Mario Alberto Escamilla por la traducción.

I pride myself on adhering to actual historical timeline, but in this volume I have necessarily taken some liberties in history both real and imagined. It’s likely that Josephine Marcus had already left Tombstone well before May 26, 1882, but I thought she and The Rider ought to get to say their goodbyes.

Introduction

Thanks for picking up this reissue of the third and penultimate volume of Merkabah Rider.

Last time I said I’d talk about another writer who greatly inspired The Merkabah Rider series. Of course I’m talking about Howard Phillips Lovecraft, without whom the Rider would have no central antagonists, and his master Adon, no great allies.

I came to appreciate Lovecraft by a very circuitous route. Though I was steeped in D&D and a slew of other RPG’s in high school, I never had the opportunity to play Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu or stumble across his writing (though I’ve recently experienced the game – thanks, HPLHS). I grew nominally aware of Lovecraft through Cthulhu imagery and jokey Lovecraft-derived sayings and tropes in gaming culture.

I think the first story of his I ever read was Imprisoned with The Pharaohs, the one he co-authored with Harry Houdini (what a thrill that must have been for a young writer! Incidentally, my great uncle told me my grandfather was once selected out of an audience at Navy Pier to handcuff Houdini during one of his stage shows when he was a kid. Completely irrelevant factoid, but it's one of those anecdotes I always tell when Houdini comes up), in a collection called The Tomb and Others. I don’t recall what the follow up story I read was, but whatever it was, I guess it didn’t impress me, because I kept the collection on the shelf a number of years.

The book that really brought his ideas home to me was Lin Carter’s Lovecraft: A Look Behind The Cthulhu Mythos, which was a beat up old paperback I got a hold of somewhere with lots of twisty, aquatic dragon-like shapes on the cover. Carter’s book gave an intriguing overview of the Mythos which, up until then, I had assumed to be vaguely occult, sort of fictional, knock-off demonology. Around the same time I had amused myself at a tedious job reading about ancient astronauts and outer intelligences. It was when I realized via Carter that the ‘gods’ of Lovecraft were more akin to extra-dimensional primordial forces and advanced alien races than traditional infernal beings that Lovecraft clicked with me and I started going through his catalog.

When I prepare to write a story, I know it’s working because a myriad of unrelated things begin to connect. I think I read Carter’s book a little after I had conjured the image of a Hasidic man on a horse of fire, so something was aligning.  The Rider was originally just going to be a Van Helsing type character operating with a Jewish spiritual view, only a little different from the slew of nominally Christian monster hunters who have been published through the years.

I had necessarily picked up a stack of Jewish folklore, culture, and reference books in preparation, and reading through one of them, Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis’ Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticsm (a book I’ve mentioned before, but which deserves mentioning again and again), I came across several entries which got my wheels turning, and in which my Lovecraft-soaked brain saw obvious Mythos connections. Specifically, I became of aware of the notion that students of Jewish mysticism were forbidden from studying the state of existence that existed before Creation (the Olam ha-Tohu, or World of Chaos), which, like in a lot of religions and creation narratives, was sometimes said to be a place of roiling chaos and darkness. This conjured up ideas of forbidden books and occult knowledge better left unknown.

As in Greek and Sumerian mythology, the idea of titanic beings of chaos that existed prior to proper Creation was not unknown in Jewish thought either. Dennis’ entry on Rahav recalled a cosmic sea monster whom God had killed and flung into the depths of the ocean for refusing to aide in Creation. There was also the story of the Foundation Stone from which the earth was made, and how it capped the floodwaters that God had unleashed in Noah’s time to destroy the world, and a tale of how David had dislodged it and let them loose again briefly. These stories of Cthulhu-like beings and bumbling magicians all felt like they could be interpreted through the lens of Lovecraft with minimal tweaking.

I then began to feel that the story of the Rider could be something more in the writing than just adventure stories of obscure folklore. I couldn’t think of a Mythos story I’d read where Judeo-Christianity and its relation to the Outer Gods had been addressed in any significant way. Lovecraft writers understandably steer towards an atheistic worldview as the crux of the Mythos is man’s hopelessness in the face of an ambivalently hostile universe, but the omission has always felt glaring to me. The real rush for me then, came in reconciling the two somehow. Specifically, in tackling that question, which became the central question of the Rider’s character; how does the truth of a Lovecraftian universe affect a man of faith and is that universe, laid bare of all dogma and pretension, still worth fighting for?

That question is addressed once and for all in the next book, of course.

Here the Rider steadily comes to his lowest point in the series. This is the bit that breaks the minds of most Lovecraftian protagonists. At least he’s not alone. I guess that’s the best most people can hope for.

Until next time,

-EME 6/9/2019

The Long Sabbath

The Rider and Kabede had been pursued for four days across barren sand and blasted rock. In that time, they hardly dared to stop for more than a few minutes, and then only when the animals demanded it.

On the second day, Kabede’s donkey refused to budge and they left it behind. Kabede hung his goods on either end of the Rod of Aaron, and put it across his shoulders. The Rider’s onager, however, proceeded with commendable resolve, more than The Rider himself could muster.

It seemed foolish not to take turns riding the animal, particularly because The Rider was still in a greatly weakened state, but he obstinately adhered to his Essenic vow against burdening the beast until he collapsed on the morning of the third day. Kabede lifted him bodily onto the onager’s back. From then on, The Rider sagged on the hard, rolling shoulders of the animal, and Kabede led them on foot.

The Rider wasn’t quite as bad off physically as he had been after their first meeting. The scant two days of oblivious rest beneath the protection of the Staff of Aaron, free of Lilith’s nightmares and nursed on hot broth and clean water had helped him some. His triumph over her gibbering minions at the torreón had in turn succored his flagging spirit. Yet, he was only human, and even Kabede, who was in perfect health, was showing the strain of their flight.

At first they had gone with some speed, and The Rider estimated the horde of walking dead had fallen a day behind them. They did not increase their pace, though the three black clad riders on horseback who patiently drove the mob like a herd of cattle could have easily broke from their grisly herd and overtaken them at any time. Instead the traitorous riders patiently maintained their easy lope at the rear of the crowd, sleepless as nighthawks, never changing speed.

On the third day, Kabede, looking through the telescoping spyglass, swore to The Rider that the number of their shuffling pursuers had doubled.

Later that day The Rider and Kabede passed a tiny ranchero on the edge of the desert, nestled at the foot of a narrow mountain pass.

That was when they saw why. They had steered towards it, thinking to mount a defense there, but the one called DeKorte split from the group on horseback and went ahead, skirting them by a few miles and then cutting in. He rode in like a bolt of lightning and they watched helplessly from afar as he slaughtered the Mexican family there, his gun cracking clearly across the distance, cutting down a woman on the porch, a skinny boy at the well, and a man who came running out of the stable. Through the spyglass they watched him swing down from the saddle of his white horse and disappear into the house. His pistol snapped a few more times. They could not tell what he did to the bodies, but he spent a few minutes over each of the corpses in the yard, and then mounted and rode back to his ‘herd.’

In a matter of moments three adults and a brood of four teetering children slowly, mechanically rose and followed him, joining the animated dead of Escopeta and the Lord only knew what others they had gathered to them.

Jeroen DeKorte was formerly of the Amsterdam enclave of the Sons of the Essenes. The Rider had known him by reputation as Het Bot, the name the man had chosen, as all Merkabah Riders did, to confound hostile spirits. It meant ‘The Bone,’ and was a reference to the one indestructible bone all men were said to have in their bodies, the luz, from which it was said Ha-Shem would resurrect the body for its new life in the world to come, like a tree from a lowly acorn.

The French rider, Alain Gans, was called Le Bouclier, ‘The Buckler.’ Neither The Rider nor Kabede knew much about him other than his name and that he was once of the Owernah enclave in Alsaice.

The last renegade The Rider knew personally, or rather, he had known him prior to his betrayal. Upon The Rider’s return to San Francisco after the War Between the States, he had been one of the two German riders who had confronted and attacked him, believing him responsible for the destruction of the American enclave. He was known in German as Das Schwert, or ‘The Sword.’ Kabede, who as the secret keeper of the Order’s Book of Life knew all their true names, said his name was Pinchas Jacobi, late of the Berlin Enclave.

Jacobi had nearly killed The Rider on their first meeting. He was fast, and not prone to discourse. Jacobi had dealt him a wicked wound with a mystical iron short sword that had nearly dislodged The Rider’s soul from his body, and had rendered him delirious almost the entire journey from San Francisco to Ein Gedi. That encounter had given The Rider the idea of weaponizing his own talismans in the golden Volcanic pistol he now carried.

Only the intervention of Jacobi’s brother rider, a soft voiced man called The Dove had saved him. The Dove had nursed him on the journey, and stayed Jacobi from killing him. The Dove was dead now, probably at the hands of Adon, maybe even Jacobi himself.

Adon’s crime begat more crimes. Murder upon murder. Heaps of bodies. But it was The Rider who shouldered the guilt. Everywhere he went the killing hands of Adon’s plot sought him, and crushed the guilty and the innocent alike.

This multitude of dead shambling along behind them, driving them into the deepest part of the desert, forcing them to keep clear of all human contact, was like the embodied shades of all the deaths The Rider had caused by his own failures; his failure to recognize Adon’s treacherous nature, his failure in leading Adon to the secret enclaves of the Order, and his chief failure in not being able to find his former teacher and put an end to him.

In the early morning light of this, their fourth day, they had come to the far edge of the desert valley, and reached an old rutted road that wound up another pass through the mountains—the only other gap they had seen in the impenetrable ring of sky assailing stone that encircled the hellish Valle del Torreón.

Having no other recourse, Kabede led them onto the road and up the incline as The Rider dozed on the onager’s back.

The Rider daydreamed, or rather, he reminisced, his mind wandering back through the years to the war, something he had not given much thought to in a long time. Maybe it was the rhythm of the riding, something he had not felt beneath him in the years since he had renewed his Essenic vows.

He recalled his stuffy woolen sack coat and Gideon, the palomino that had carried him through the thunder and the gun smoke at Westport, and Mine Creek. He daydreamed of clinking tack and creaking saddle leather, the snapping of Gideon’s creamy mane on his knuckles as he bent low to use his twitching ears as a sight for his Remington, the heaving of the horse’s golden flanks against the insides of his knees and the final buck in his gun hand as a ballyhooing rebel fell off the back of his onrushing sorrel and tumbled behind, one boot tangled in the taut stirrup.

To ride had been a glorious thing then, and though he was ashamed to think of it now, the rapidity with which he had learned to kill from the saddle had emboldened him in his youth. He had taken to it quite well. His aptitude had increased his sense of self-worth, turning him from a strange, nebbish pariah among his hard and mainly Christian comrades to a respected soldier.

Dick Belden had called him a natural born yellow leg.

He found himself smiling, not for the soldier he had been, but in thinking of the friend he’d had. Corporal Dick Belden of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, who had taught him to ride and pitch a stone with equal mastery.

He realized the familiar piping that wended in his ears was not a dream.

He sat bolt upright when he heard the brisk rattle of a military drum accompanying it, and rubbed his eyes and strained to focus on the music.

The words came into his mind:

Poor old soldier, poor old soldier. If ever I ‘list for a soldier again, The devil shall be my sergeant.

It was the Rogue’s March, the tune played as a disgraced soldier was drummed out of the service.

They were halfway up the mountainside now, where the incline leveled into a series of wide, flat shelves and a ridge overlooking the valley. They were passing a small cemetery ringed with stacked stones when he abandoned his memories. He could see adobe buildings further up the trail, and sod houses with thatch roofs. All were arranged around an area swept bare of stone and construction, but for one weathered pole that stood twenty feet against the sky. A faded red white and blue banner hung there, limp as a rag put out haphazardly to dry.

It was a military outpost. Small, probably not even a full- fledged fort, but definitely manned.

Kabede looked back at him, his dark eyes sad. We’ve got to turn back, The Rider croaked, for they had not spoken much in the past week.

The animal must rest, Kabede said. We must rest. The Rider’s shoulders sagged with fatigue and the burden of knowing they must involve whoever they met in the death struggle they were about to enact. But these were soldiers. Surely if they must stand beside someone, this was better than holing up in some poor family’s house. Fighting was their occupation, after all. This was what he told himself as Kabede turned back to the road and pulled the onager along. But of course, fighters or not, this was no fight of theirs, and who knew what they were up against for that matter. The Rider had faced reanimated corpses before, but he had no idea what the capabilities of Adon’s riders were. What dark magic did they now command? With what boon had Adon enticed them away from the Sons of the Essenes? He catalogued his own abilities, knowing they shared his and Kabede’s training. They could attack them in the Yenne Velt, at the very least. They could forcibly possess the physical form of anyone they chose. Further, the undead army could disrupt his and Kabede’s countermeasures in the astral realm simply by occupying their physical attention in this one.

His heart sank in his chest. Already he regretted having taken Kabede with him. How many of these soldiers would die for their visit?

As they reached the landing and the outskirts of the post, they saw the lines of men in blue wool lined up on the dismal parade ground. There weren’t many. Maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty. Not even a full battalion.

Kicking up dust, their rifles and belts rattling, came a detail of four men, driving a fifth in clinking chains, his head bowed before them. The Rider saw a huge, hard muscled sergeant with a dark beard, a thin, stiff moving officer in a kepi and havelock, and a pair of trooper-musicians. The slim, long fingered fifer was excellent, capturing the tune’s ridiculous marriage of gaiety and melancholy, like a cheery sun struggling to shine through murky clouds. The drummer was less so. He lost the rhythm at regular intervals, as if he could not reconcile his drumming and marching. Indeed, his drumming sounded like a drunkard having trouble negotiating a flight of stairs, always stopping and starting.

The man driven before them was in his patchy long red underwear and cavalry boots, the iron chains around his ankles forcing him to adopt a demeaning half-shuffle. His shoulders sagged with the weight of the links that bound his wrists before him. His head had been clumsily shaved in the traditional punitive manner, but he retained thick eyebrows, more like an actor’s greasepaint than real hair.

There was something familiar to The Rider about those prodigious eyebrows.

No one took any notice of The Rider or Kabede until the detail reached what was presumably the boundary of the post. Here they slowed to a surprised stop, finding the two men and the onager waiting for them.

The big sergeant directly behind the prisoner was poised to deliver the literal boot to the unfortunate’s ass flap when he noticed them and ground his foot firmly into the earth again. Around the same time, the fifer stopped and the lieutenant’s lips parted in silent question.

Up close, the lieutenant was quite a sight. He was a youngish man with startling green eyes and a shock of short orange hair just visible beneath the white havelock hanging from the back of his cap. His pale skin was yellow and purple around the right side of his face, one eye nearly swollen shut. The furrow of a cut marred his mashed lip, a thin little gully filled with crusted blood, just beneath his drooping rusty mustache.

The drummer, so intent on his duty that the tip of his pink tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth, childlike, was the last to become aware of their presence, and only stopped his clumsy rat-a-tatting when the fifer elbowed him.

The prisoner regarded the newcomers first with surprise, then with a half-lidded interest, and finally with shock again when his eyes fell on The Rider.

The Rider sighed and eased himself off the onager’s back. He was quite used to being stared at. From a distance, his drab black garb was unremarkable, but up close, when men saw his payot curls, beard, and the fringes of his tallit, he often gave them pause. Still, he had supposed the outlandish Oriental garb of Kabede would have deflected attention, as striking a figure as the Ethiopian was in his white burnoose.

The Rider opened his mouth to address the officer, but the prisoner cut him off.

Rider, said the man. You’re just in time to see me off.

It was The Rider’s turn to register shock. Who could possibly know him here? His first thought was of the reward posted for his capture, and for the return of the ancient scroll in the case strapped on the cantle of the onager’s pack saddle—the one he had taken from the body of one of Adon’s pupils, Dr. Sheardown. The fight with Sheardown and Lilith’s half-demonic gunmen, the shedim, had wound up destroying the desert watering hole settlement of Varruga Tanks and saddled him with the blame. Varruga Tanks had come to be known as a massacre, and he had gone down as the perpetrator, with no greater person than the territorial governor of New Mexico issuing a reward for his head.

If I can recognize you under all that hair, you old demon-puncher, can’t you recollect an old friend who’s lost all his? the man said, his grim face splitting in an infectious smile. His thick eyebrows leapt meaningfully, and The Rider nearly staggered at the coincidence, for here stood Dick Belden, whom he had been thinking of only moments before and had last seen when he’d mustered out at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas nearly seventeen years ago.

Belden, he allowed cautiously.

His first thought was to touch his gun. This had to be some trick of Adon’s riders, or of Lilith. This was some demon in the shape of Belden, or some terrible, unguessed creature that had masked itself with a pleasing face.

But The Rider had on his Solomonic spectacles. There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of the men before him.

You know this man? Kabede said at his side, the wariness evident in his voice.

The Rider opened his mouth to answer, but in the instant of hesitation the big sergeant shoved past Belden and interposed himself.

What the hell is this? he demanded in a deep voice. Who’re you?

Sergeant Joe Rider, Second Colorado Cavalry, said Belden, behind the big man’s back. This man was chasin’ Sibley with me while you were beatin’ on half-starved Rebs for their wedding rings at Camp Douglas, you fuckin’ tub of piss.

Joe Rider was the name The Rider enlisted under at Canon City, when he and his best friend Abe Lillard had left San Francisco together. He’d answered to it for three years. It was funny to hear it spoken now, after so long.

Shut up, you, the sergeant snarled, whirling on Belden and cocking one gigantic mitt back to deliver what looked to be a shuddering backhand.

Don’t, The Rider ordered, with all the authority he could muster in his weakened voice.

The sergeant stiffened and turned back. Now the sorry looking 2nd lieutenant stepped out from behind the prisoner.

What’s going on here, Sergeant Weeks?

Visitors, sir. Look t’ be civilians, but this one claims to be a soldier.

Former, The Rider said. Rider’s my name, sir. This is my traveling companion, Kabede.

Belden says he knows him, said Weeks, sourly.

The lieutenant’s eyes flared, and he looked to Belden.

Relax. Just a funny coincidence, lieutenant, drawled Belden. I ain’t plotting a grand escape or anything. You’re rousting me anyway.

The Rider was dumbstruck. How could this be possible? Could this really be the same man who had been his friend since they’d met at Apache Canyon? Was this the same man who had taught him to ride and pitch stones like David? He reflected for a moment how strange his life had truly become, when he could more readily believe in a plotting malevolent creature from another plane of existence than the happy, coincidental reappearance of an old friend.

He had often said he had no old friends, of course, but Dick Belden was one. They had saved each other’s lives a few times, and been through hell on horseback together.

Dick, what’s happening here? Belden shrugged. The lieutenant cleared his throat. As soon as these proceedings have finished, I’ll take you men to see Colonel Manx, the lieutenant mumbled through necessarily clenched teeth, his words slurring on the ‘esses.’ In the mean- time, you can state your business to me.

And who are you, sir?

Lieutenant Cord.

Lieutenant, The Rider said. You’d better think twice about going ahead with these proceedings. You’re going to need every able man you’ve got tomorrow.

What’re you talking about?

It’d be easier to show you.

The Rider motioned to Kabede for the spyglass, and the tall Ethiopian snapped it open and held it out.

The Rider extended it and turned. It didn’t take long to spot the sizable dust cloud rolling across the chalk white desert. He focused on it, and held it out to the young lieutenant.

Take a look. Cord limped up and took the spyglass from The Rider. What is it? Belden asked as he peered at the cloud of dust moving slowly across the valley floor like a great thing burrowing beneath the sand, obscured entirely.

Shut up, growled Weeks. Good Lord, Cord muttered. Is it...Indians? There was a strange hint of excitement in his voice.

The Rider didn’t answer, but he caught Belden’s eyes and shook his head.

Weeks stood beside the lieutenant and squinted his dark eyes. After a moment he sneered.

So what? Buncha Mex cattle stampedin.’ Probably one of them chilishitters down there farted an’ spooked ‘em.

You mean the people that live on the rancho down along the edge of the desert? The Rider said.

’Who else? said Weeks.

They’re dead, said Kabede. They’re all dead.

Cord lowered the spyglass, the spaces between his yellow and purple flesh noticeably paler.

Weeks cleared his throat at the officer’s side.

Lieutenant, you don’t put Belden here out on his ass, the colonel’s gonna have yours.

Bullshit, Cord, Belden said, stepping closer to speak in the man’s other ear. Forget what’s between us for a minute. Whatever’s comin,’ you think you and Portis can rally these men? You think they’re gonna listen to Manx? We’ve got to deal with this. You all can kick me down the hill afterwards.

Maybe, said Cord, still staring at the slow moving cloud, and wetting his lips, Maybe we should go get the colonel.

Weeks frowned and didn’t move until Lieutenant Cord looked up at him meaningfully. His frown deepened.

Take the prisoner back to the guardhouse, sergeant.

Weeks straightened slightly and executed a lazy salute.

Yessir, he said.

He swapped an angry glance for Belden’s smug look of triumph, then wheeled on the fifer and drummer and barked at them;

Well go on, take him.

Belden smiled back at The Rider as the fifer and drummer took him by the elbows.

The Rider couldn’t help but grin back.

See you soon, Belden said, raising up his hands to salute, as they led him away across the parade ground. The Rider noticed the knuckles of both hands were raw and scabbed over.

Alright you two, let’s go see the colonel. Lieutenant Cord turned and went back at a limping quick step, his sabre rattling against his stiff leg.

The Rider and Kabede followed Cord past the lines of confused looking soldiers, who were looking agape from Belden’s detail to them.

Dismissed. Dismissed! Cord shouted offhandedly as he stalked past, headed for the biggest sod house on the grounds. Out front was a crudely cut plank sign that read:

Lieutenant Colonel R.W. Manx, Post Commander 11th Cavalry, Camp Eckfeldt

If we get out of this, you ought to think about dressing more conservatively, The Rider said, watching the eyes of the men on Kabede in his billowing white robes. You sort of stand out, don’t you?

And you don’t? Kabede replied.

The Rider shrugged.

Eh, maybe a little.

Before they reached the two steps leading down into the rude structure, all earth and thatch, a black haired man sporting a neatly trimmed Van Dyke, stepped outside, buttoning his clean uniform coat. He had a pair of snow white doeskin gauntlets draped over his belt, and his leather braces hung in loops at his sides. Like Lieutenant Cord, he appeared a bit worse for wear, though his ailments appeared to be internal. He was dabbing his nose with a pocket handkerchief when he appeared. There was a crust of dried blood about his nostrils when his hand came away. Likewise, his eyes were deeply ringed and swollen, as though he were fighting a bad cold, or had not been sleeping.

What the hell’s going on out here, Mister Cord? Is that your idea of a proper dismissal? he stopped short at the sight of The Rider and Kabede, his bright blue eyes narrowing. Who are these men?

Sir, The Rider began, securing the onager to a hitching post. Joe Rider, sir. Formerly of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry.

Rider... the colonel sniffled, not offering his hand or a salute.

Kabede, said Kabede, bowing his head slightly and setting his burdens down beside the onager. He slid the staff out from the bindle loops and leaned on it.

The colonel’s puffy eyes lingered for a noticeable span of time on Kabede. His expression showed bemusement at his wild dress and the carved staff.

Kabede. Your attire...where can it possibly be in fashion, I wonder?

He’s African, sir, The Rider said.

How fascinating. I’ve met plenty of Africans, the colonel said. But never one from Africa. Gentlemen, I’m Colonel Manx. Won’t you step inside? Mister Cord, run and fetch Sergeant Weeks and Corporal Quincannon will you?

Sir, there’s something I think you should take a look at, said Cord.

It’ll wait, lieutenant. I think—

Thinking isn’t really in your line is it, Mister Cord? said Manx. He fixed him with a watery eyed glare. Weeks. And Quincannon. On the double, if you please.

Cord pursed his battered lips and saluted. Yes, sir. He turned smartly and went off across the parade ground again.

Manx gestured for them to step inside first, and they did, descending into the cool earthen structure.

The inside was neat and well maintained, but retained an air of impermanence. Kabede had to stoop to keep from upsetting his head wrap on the low timbers. Manx’s desk was chipped and weather-beaten, with a chair that didn’t match, and a stack of faded regulation manuals under one of the legs. The fine feathered writing quill on it was as out of place as a Louis XVI table in a pig farmer’s shack. A cheesecloth curtain barely separated his office from a simple cot, porcelain washbasin, and shaving mirror. A picture of President Hayes had apparently been unsuccessfully nailed to the earthen wall several times judging by the holes, and now sat propped on a crudely dug ledge, flanked by a faded little Napoleonic artillery crew made of lead.

It was as if the occupant was trying to will an importance to the place it just didn’t have.

There was also a faint, rank smell in the air, as of illness. The Rider wondered if the colonel were a consumptive.

We don’t get many civilian visitors to Camp Eckfeldt, Manx said as he settled into the creaky chair.

Eckfeldt. That was amusing. It was like eckveldt, a Yiddish word that meant ‘the end of the Earth.’

The Rider looked about. There was no place to sit.

Obviously we’re quite a small outpost.

Manx snuffled a bit, and blew his nose into his handkerchief twice, then tucked it quickly away. Now, where on Earth did you two come from? Aside from Africa.

We crossed the Valle del Torreón, The Rider said.

On foot?

Yes. There’s a little town on the far side—

Escopeta, said Manx with a visible curl of distaste to his lip. I would hardly call it a town. More of a nest, really.

The palm of his hand slammed down on the desk suddenly, and when he turned it over, a cockroach lay twitching. He flicked it away into a dark corner of the room to die, and ran his hand down his trouser leg.

Damned things. Scorpions, tarantulas, all these I can abide, even understand. But I’ll never sympathize with a damned cockroach. Filthy things. They get in the coffee, the sugar, leave their little black spoor like pepper all over everything. You find them everywhere. Anywhere there’s people, even out here in the middle of nowhere, where trails...dissolve in the...emptiness.

The colonel let his words trail off and leaned forward, pulling open one of the drawers with a squeaky groan.

Can I offer you something?

Maybe later, said The Rider.

There’s not much time, Colonel.

No? said Manx, leaning in, rummaging, not looking up.

We were pursued across the desert, said The Rider.

From Escopeta?

The Rider paused. Yes.

Well, he sniffled, as he reached for something, I would expect that, being as Escopeta’s almost entirely populated by shiftless assassins and bounty killers.

The Rider took a step back from the desk, hearing the sounds of boots crunching closer in the dust outside.

Sir?

Manx sat up again in his chair. There was a Schofield revolver in his hand, cocked and pointed.

I mean a wanted fugitive like you must have found himself pretty popular there, Mister Maizel.

Kabede instantly jolted into a fighting stance, but The Rider gripped his arm, preventing him from completing his motion.

Kabede, he warned.

The Falashan’s eyes met his, and The Rider shook his head.

Weeks was in the doorway, a grizzled, unshaven corporal, presumably the aforementioned Quincannon, behind him, and Lieutenant Cord standing behind them both. Quincannon and Weeks had their pistols out. Any further movement of Kabede’s staff would touch off a firing squad.

Precision timing as always, sergeant. Corporal Quincannon, disarm these men, said Manx, still covering them both. A thin rivulet of blood leaked from his left nostril, but he evidently didn’t notice.

Quincannon stepped forward, dropping his pistol into its flap holster. He knocked the Rod of Aaron to the floor and jerked Kabede’s curved knife from his belt and tossed it aside.

When he moved to The Rider, he paused, glancing at his eyes, and then looked to Weeks for reassurance.

Go on, Quincannon, Weeks said. He ain’t so fast me or the colonel can’t blow a window in his skull.

Quincannon nodded and undid The Rider’s tooled belt with his golden Volcanic pistol and engraved Bowie knife. He threw the belt over his shoulder and patted The Rider down briefly, whistling at the amount of medallions he found strung about him. When he was through, he stepped away.

Manx had discovered his nosebleed and hastily ducked out of sight, cleaning it with his handkerchief again. He made a point of going through his drawer again, and emerged with a cigarillo and a folded handbill. He smoothed the poster out on the desk. Manx turned it so The Rider could read the type, though he didn’t need to.

The Killer Jew of Varruga Tanks, Manx read. He leaned back in his chair and bit the end off the cigarillo, spitting it into a tarnished spittoon that resounded hollowly.

I didn’t think the Army concerned itself with civilian law, The Rider said.

About a week back some men stopped by on their way to Escopeta. He tapped the poster with the end of the cigarillo. They left this behind.

What men? asked Kabede suddenly. A German? A Frenchman?

Foreigners, to be sure, Manx nodded, striking a match and lighting his smoke. You know them?

Kabede looked at The Rider. DeKorte, he said.

They wanted you pretty badly, said the colonel.

It’s not how you think, said The Rider. All of Escopeta’s bearing down on this post. Don’t ask me why—

I don’t wonder why, said Manx. I think we can deal with a lot of saddle tramps and bushwhackers. Can’t we, sergeant? he said to Weeks.

Yessir, Weeks said, smiling, as Quincannon went to his side and drew his pistol again.

These aren’t normal people, Colonel. They’ve been...altered.

What are you talking about?

Changed, The Rider said. Just take my word, there’s an army marching on your position right now, and nothing can stop them. Nothing except maybe myself and my friend here.

You’ve a fairly high estimation of your abilities, Manx smirked.

I’m serious, Colonel. You’ve got to mount a defense. They’re barely a day behind us. They’re forty, maybe eighty strong. They’re fanatical—

Poppycock, the colonel stated, blowing smoke and watching it curl across the ceiling. I don’t think the denizens of Escopeta could be roused to piss if their houses were on fire let alone cross the desert and attack a military outpost to get at one man. Not that pissing would help any. The amount of whiskey they imbibe, it would probably make it worse. He chuckled to himself.

Quincannon snickered. Weeks smiled. Besides, there aren’t thirty men in that place. We’re not talking about just the men. We’re talking about every man, woman, and child between there and this post. Every rancho, every hacienda, every Indian band....

You talk as if the whole valley were rising up against us, Manx said.

Lieutenant Cord cleared his throat.

Uh, sir? There does appear to be a large force of some kind moving across the valley. They’re definitely headed in our direction.

Manx’s detached cool faltered a little, and once more his nose bled, so quickly he had to catch it with his sleeve.

What? he said, muffled by his arm.

It’s just the Mexes movin’ their cattle, sir, said Weeks.

I don’t know about any army, said Cord, but it could be hostile Indians.

It’s not Indians, The Rider said.

Indians, Manx said, his eyes suddenly alight. Really?

Cattle, I say, Weeks said dryly.

Manx settled back in his chair, wiping his nose.

You’re probably right, sergeant, sighed Manx. But in case you’re not, Mister Cord, have Lieutenant Portis take Jeffries and lead an exploratory patrol out. I want them to determine just what it is down there and if it’s a threat.

You don’t need a patrol, The Rider said. I already told you it’s a threat. They’re coming for us, and they’ll tear this post apart to get us.

Manx waved him off.

Sergeant Weeks, Corporal Quincannon, take these two to the guardhouse. In the morning we’ll send a dispatch to let the sheriff know we’ve done his job.

Your patrol won’t come back, The Rider warned as Quincannon reached out and took him by the elbow again. He pulled away from the man’s weak grip. Not as you’d know them, anyway.

Weeks flourished his pistol.

Let’s go, war hero, said Weeks.

The Rider shook his head and stormed out, so that Quincannon could barely keep up.

A private waited outside, and Weeks motioned for him to take charge of The Rider’s onager. The Rider watched as the trooper led the animal away to the stable, the precious scroll case bouncing on the cantle.

Kabede was soon at his side. "At least we will be able to pass the Sanba adma’I," he said.

The Rider looked at him.

It will fortify us for what is to come, Kabede said.

The Rider knew Kabede was right. Observing the Sabbath would only strengthen their spiritual defense. But the deep down truth was, The Rider was disinclined to do so. Why should he honor the Lord? He had seen much in the past few months that was vile and base in the Creator’s universe. He knew the old answer to the question why Ha-Shem permitted evil to exist...yet this was boundless, alien evil beyond the ability of mankind to affect. It infested Creation