The Will to Battle Read online

  Eudorus grinned. “I’m hoping for at least fifty-fifty odds of survival, but—”

  “No.” The Great Soldier had no time for flippancy. “If you fight for me you’ll die. Why do you want that?”

  Eudorus paused as gravity set in. “Mycroft expl—”

  “Mycroft could talk a fox into skinning itself.” The famous runner spared me a fast glance. “Ignoring Mycroft, why do you want to fight, and kill, and die for me?”

  “I…” If Eudorus had had an answer, the words died unwinged in his throat as he endured great Achilles’s glare.

  “You Servicers are protected,” Achilles reminded us, rising to his feet. “You’re neutral, more Hive-less even than the Hiveless. You know how to forage and feed yourselves, and no side expects you to participate in this at all. Keep your heads down and you’ll survive if anyone does. Why choose death?” The hero fixed his glare on face after face, the question keen in his eyes as he tested all: Why die for this? For me?

  A few of the Servicers managed to meet his eyes at least, but even the oldest of them, wise Phoenix, struggled to voice an answer.

  In the hush, those of us with half an ear still on the broadcast heard as Speaker Jin and her weary allies in the Senate marshaled calm enough to call the vote. Ockham Prospero Saneer would have his terra ignota, one-thirty-eight to sixty-two, no veto. The hate-hot eyes of Cookie and her opposition scanned the ranks, jumping from bull’s-eye to bull’s-eye, counting enemies.

  Menestius: “I’m willing … to risk my life … in this…” one Servicer ventured, screwing up her courage, “because I’m not so coward as to hide when the world needs saving.”

  Achilles: “You should be. Hades is no perfumed paradise, if it exists for you at all.”

  Menestius: “Some causes are worth it.”

  Achilles: “You think mine is?”

  Menestius: “Yes. You want to end the war.”

  Achilles: “Everyone wants to end the war.”

  Outis: “But you don’t want anything else.”

  Achilles: “I want many things. Believe me, I want many, many things.”

  Outis: “But, unlike everyone else in our era, given a choice between two plans in which Plan A has an eighty percent chance of preserving the Hive system and a one percent chance of exterminating the human race, and Plan B would almost certainly destroy the Hives but would definitely save the human race, you wouldn’t pause to think about plan A, would you? You’d put humanity’s safety first, whatever it meant for any side or faction.”

  Achilles: “… True…”

  Menestius: “Exactly! You aren’t biased by our times. You aren’t feeling violated by O.S. You don’t have a Hive to protect. You weren’t raised to hero-worship Thomas Carlyle and Romanova. This might end in anarchy, or dictatorship, or the return of geographic nations, but however it ends it needs to end with humanity surviving. None of us can face that choice without being distracted by the temptation to preserve the world order we’ve grown up in. You can.”

  Achilles: A long pause. “True. But what about all of you? I won’t trust anyone with mixed loyalty to guard my back. Think carefully, each of you: will you genuinely follow me, obey me absolutely, even against the world order you’ve grown up in? Will you generally serve whatever side I take? Wholeheartedly? I could decide to join the Masons and make them masters of this world, or I could decide to wipe their Empire off the face of the Earth. Following me means accepting either path, any path, and dying for whatever side I take. Will you do this?”

  Menestius: “Yes.”

  Achilles: “Why trust me that much? What if I exploit that trust? What if I use you to make myself Emperor of half the world, and then throw you away?”

  Phoenix: “You would never do that.”

  Achilles: “You’ve only known me ten days.”

  Phoenix: “We’ve known Homer a lot longer, and from Homer we know how much you hate war.” Old Phoenix choked up saying it. “You don’t want to rule, you want to live. You wouldn’t fight for selfish reasons, only when there’s no other choice. Most of us believe you are what Mycroft claims, Achilles. You may be the greatest soldier who ever lived, or didn’t live, but even you need an army at your back to win a war. You need us. Why are you trying to convince us not to fight for you?”

  The hero paused, and I wondered briefly whether he was listening once more to the Senate. Now our law’s great scales were weighing two fates for the Humanists: give them a second chance to defend their actions and revise their ways? Or issue an immediate demand that the Humanists dissolve and become Graylaws, or else be expelled en masse from the Alliance, and made in one stroke all Earth’s enemies. The problem and its banter were enough to distract me—child of this era as I am—but I doubt the son of sea-nymph Thetis heard a word of it; when Achilles’s mind strays, it strays far.

  “How many of you are there?” he asked at last.

  The assembled captains reviewed each other. “You mean Servicers total, or just those that want to follow you?”

  “Both.”

  Old Phoenix answered. “There are just under two million Servicers in the world right now. Last tally about a hundred thousand are ready to take up arms for you. Another five hundred thousand definitely don’t want to. The rest are undecided, but I suspect a lot will join up once there’s something more formal to join.”

  “A hundred thousand already.” Achilles’s hands shook. That frightened me. His shock was natural enough—the fifty ships Achilles brought to Troy from Phthia, with fifty men in each, had been a mighty force in the days when all Greek states together could not boast a million souls. The thousand ships that Helen launched brought fifty thousand men to Agamemnon’s call, and now I handed Achilles twice that force, all scavenged from the criminal caste our law had thrown away. The King of the Myrmidons, Homer’s Achilles, should indeed have trembled at a number with six digits, but not my Major. He should have memories of the World Wars, of fleets of iron massing vast as cities, of soldiers in their millions bloodying Europe’s shores. He should have memories of space ships, and of billions. Had those versions of the Major faded so much already? Was the script which Bridger’s dying fantasy set for this world so fixed on Troy?

  “This world’s too big,” Achilles said at last, looking to me as if it were my fault. Perhaps it was. “A hundred … five hundred … divided by…” He counted on his fingers. “A hundred a day will take about a month.”

  I smiled. “To meet them all?”

  He did not return my smile. “To have their oaths. I won’t have a soldier at my back who isn’t mine by oath. Would you?”

  He did not press me to answer.

  “They could take it in batches, I suppose,” he half mumbled, his mind still slowed by math.

  “Do you have a specific oath in mind?” Outis asked first. “I’ve been drafting—”

  “Nothing complex,” Achilles answered. “Just ‘I swear by all I hold inviolable that I renounce all other ties, and from this day shall live, and fight, and kill, and die only for Achilles.’ Will you swear that?”

  They would and did, our convict captains, each hesitating just long enough to prove that they thought hard about the words before they spoke them. They had expected him to make some such demand. I had told them how, in ancient days, a soldier’s loyalty was sworn, not to his state or homeland, but to his general. The great conquests—and tyrannies—of early history were enabled by that personal bond of command, which made armies flexible, able to switch sides, even switch wars, when their commanders willed. With this war’s chasm opening before us, many-sided, we needed that again. The fourteen Servicers I brought today were not mere friends or chance companions, but the leaders of we who are allowed no leaders, elected by charisma and notoriety to represent the others in this first meeting with our chosen commander.

  “Not you, Mycroft.”

  He would not let me take the oath. Nor could I have, reader. Too many ties.

  In lulls between the oaths we lear
ned that Fate had spared the Humanists, that day at least. Fifty-one Senators voted to dissolve the Hive then and there, but one hundred and forty-nine voted to give the Humanists a second chance. Only fools were shocked. Cornel MASON commands sixty-one votes and, despite paternal rage, Cornel MASON still dreamed of peace. “The motion fails.”

  Menestius: “What’s next, sir?”

  Achilles: “Next we build a training camp. You’re not an army yet.”

  Eudorus: “We’ve been training.”

  Achilles: “I’m about to punch you in the face.”

  Eudorus: “What?”

  Achilles: “You say you’ve been training. I’m about to punch you in the face. Block.”

  Eudorus: “Okay. Readyyykkhgghhhh!”

  Even my eyes did not see the blow, just blood’s brightness as the proud young Servicer crumpled from fighting posture to a fetal curl.

  Achilles flexed his fist. “We build a training camp, deep in the woods, somewhere untraceable. Mycroft, find a place.”

  “Already found.”

  I got a fast, questioning glare, but Achilles did not ask whether I had anticipated his need, or whether I kept a ready inventory of abandoned places for my own purposes. “Assemble your best hundred there, then. Three weeks with them, then they split into groups and each group trains another hundred. If the world survives that long.”

  The others mustered brave smiles. “We look forward to working with you, sir.”

  “It won’t be me who trains you. I’ll come by when I can, but I have Hive leaders to deal with, and battle plans to make.”

  “Then who…”

  Child-bright wonder lit the Servicers’ faces as Prince Patroclus clambered from Achilles’s pocket.

  So, as my companions asked eager questions of Earth’s second-greatest soldier, I settled back to watch the last emergency vote of the now-calming Senate. Greenpeace Mitsubishi Madhur Mudali’s motion passed, again one-forty-nine to fifty-one, and proud Jin Im-Jin handed down the Senatorial Consult to the Seven Hive Council, giving the Humanists, the European Union, the Mitsubishi, and the teetering Cousins one month to prepare proposals for reforming their governments, or else face the Senate’s wrath. A firm date. What would our makeshift army not have given for a firm date for the war? To know how fast to train, when to move our goods and weapons, how much quality to sacrifice for speed? One certain prophecy in wartime is worth a thousand times the treasures haughty Agamemnon laid so long ago at great Achilles’ feet.

  And now we have that prophecy. My chronicle will reach it soon, the day of resolution when my first, best Master, in His Inhuman Wisdom, ended, in one blow, the storm of doubt and hope that had assailed us, planting in their place the certainty of war. As I write these words we have forty-four days until the Will to Battle turns to Battle. No doubt, no constant watch for smoke on the horizon. Forty-four days.

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  Lex Prohibit—The Law Forbids

  Written July 22–23, 2454

  Events of April 14

  Romanova

  “I saw what I saw. J.E.D.D. Mason—Jehovah Mason—came back from the dead. It’s fact. The public can’t avoid discussing it, whatever the law may say. Here, play the tape again.”

  “Yes, play it again.”

  “We’ve played it twenty times.”

  “Is it true that not even the Censor’s database can identify the child who flies in out of nowhere, with the flying sandals?”

  “Hermes’s sandals.”

  “Careful.”

  “Yes, it’s true, no success identifying the child so far.”

  “There! There’s a flicker on the tape for a couple seconds, surrounding J.E.D.D. Mason. You see it?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen the glow.”

  “It’s residue from whatever visual distortion they used to fake the injury. It has to be. The whole thing is an elaborate fake!”

  “That’s one theory.”

  “What do you think it is, then?”

  “Do you want an honest answer?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think it’s God. Don’t all of you?”

  The faces of the sensayers who crowded the benches turned as pale as the statues of past Heads of the Conclave, whose portraits lined the courtyard around them, just as long ago in true Rome monuments to past Head Vestal Virgins had stood eternal vigil around their sanctum. It was too beautiful a day for even secret councils to resist the call of April kissed by sun. The Conclave members, and the Minor Senators who had joined them for the day’s debate, had chosen the courtyard for this meeting, where spring’s first waterlilies graced the pond with crowns of color, while high above the winds chased skeins of cloud along the Tibernovus toward the sea.

  “Starting without me?”

  “J-Julia!”

  It was she, Julia Doria-Pamphili, not yet a statue but the living imperatrix, who strode into the citadel whence her pseudopriestly legions govern the omnipresent, silent kingdom of theology. Today she wore not only her slim black-and-purple sensayer’s scarf of velvet and satin, which twined about her shoulders like a serpent, but her full robes, the puffed and rustling archaism of academia, which strikes our eye as mad, but made sense in the arcane days when universities were born, and the surest proof of membership in Earth’s elite was still that one could afford to waste two yards of cloth on sleeves. Julia did not close the robe, of course, but let it flutter open, baring at the front her suit of sheer black silk, its custom tailoring proclaiming her membership in Earth’s elite today.

  “Julia, but … you were arrested!”

  “You’ve never heard of bail?”

  Julia’s dark eyes smiled, but she ran her fingers along the coil of her black hair too. I knew that gesture from times she has lost games, or learned of plans falling through. A bitter sign. He is neither fool nor green, our Papadelias, the unwilling but devoted Commissioner General of Romanova’s law. Papa knew Julia’s resources: her family fortune, her ties with Madame and Dominic, the web of craven parishioners Dominic taught her to snare. With zealots ready to throw their fortunes at her feet, her resources were infinitely grander than her wealth on paper, so any bail amount a judge would consider reasonable, Julia could raise and discard without a second thought: a million, ten. No financial tether, then, could keep deadly Julia from slipping away and making her next appearance in a broadcast at her beloved Sniper’s side. But Papa is Greek, and Greece knows Rome, and the Doria-Pamphili line could not be more Roman had they laid Julius Caesar on the pyre themselves. Papa had asked Sciarra Colonna, Duke-Prince of Paliano and Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne, to post Julia’s bail, a mere twenty grand—pocket change to a Colonna prince, but as iron a leash for Julia as one could wish for. They do not die easily, these ancient families. With centuries of intermarriages, rival cardinals, old feuds, and coats of arms with papal keys above them hanging side by side in palaces older than bail itself, Julia would not dishonor the Colonna bash’ for all the gold in Troy.

  “Julia,” one of the braver Conclave members ventured, “with all that’s happened we haven’t started the process to remove you from office, but given the charges aga—”

  “I took the liberty of inviting some guests,” she interrupted. “Jehovah, please, come in—no need to linger in the doorway.”

  All froze upon seeing the Addressee. His head was bandaged, not from Sniper’s bullet but from Science, whose tests had cut His flesh deep, seeking the miracle’s residue. His suit of antique black had always been a mourning suit, His protest against His Peer’s creation Death, but it felt different now that concrete tragedies made so many wear black with Him. He Who Visits from Another Universe can never be said to change expression, nor is there much alteration to the bearing of the flesh that He inhabits so distantly, as a puppeteer inhabits his marionette. Yet somehow the flush of spring and sun awakened an energy in the limbs of His youthful earthly body—Jehovah’s Peer, Who governs Nature, bade her grant His Guest the full flower of the hum
an form, however little He might use it.

  “I hesitate to enter Another’s sanctum,” He said as He crossed the Conclave’s threshold, “but I am relevant.”

  For three breaths, no one could do more than stare.

  “Yes,” one sensayer found strength to answer. “Yes, you are relevant. Thank you for making the time to come.”

  “What is more important?” No one could face His pure black stare and think the question was rhetorical.

  “Nothing,” they agreed.

  Julia smiled. “I asked Jehovah to come, in case some of you had questions. It should make certain decisions easier.”

  The others nodded stunned thanks, and raised no protest as Julia took her seat as Conclave Head. Her smile was all victory as she fingered the new pin she wore upon her breast, Quarriman’s bull’s-eye O.S. sigil. Only a day had passed since Quarriman created it, but the sign was already common on the streets, and even two here in the Conclave wore it. But it felt different on Julia, pinned beside the temporary clip-on chest monitor which oversaw her new heart. Had you forgotten Sniper’s second shot? After it fled the Forum, with Dominic still clinging rabid to the car, the living doll stopped at the jail in Antwerp and fired a second bullet through the window and clear through Julia’s heart. She had a new heart now, fully artificial, thumping coldly on within her cold chest. I have seen many strange species of courage in my years, but one of the strangest was this, to pin above her still-raw wound the bull’s-eye invitation: shoot me again, my love, if your cause demands it.

  “I will answer anything you ask,” Jehovah offered, “excepting matters on which one of My Earthly offices requires silence.”

  Several of the sensayers blinked as they reviewed the imperial gray armband which held the insignia of His many offices. The crisis and its power vacuums had promoted Him: no longer merely a European Parliamentary Counsel but a European Council Counsel; no longer a Humanist Bailiff but Deputy to the Humanist Attorney General; no longer a Clerk of the Cousins’ Chief Counsel’s Office but an Advising Member of the Board. It takes a rare mind in such days to forget Jehovah’s part in earthly politics; here sat many who can.