The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [116]
So did Oglethorpe. The lightninglike bolt jagged into the next cannon and then straight on to the next, and the men manning them danced the Saint Vitus dance and died.
Someone kicked him in the back, and for an instant he was angry with Tomochichi—why had his friend struck him so? But then the two of them fell, and when he rolled over, he saw that a bullet had gone all the way through the Yamacraw chief ‘s belly to hit him in the back. The old man reached out and gripped his arm and moved his lips, but Oglethorpe could not, of course, hear anything. He noted absently that they were surrounded by men now, and also that three fingers from his own left hand were missing.
Shielding Tomochichi's body with his own, he turned to face his doom with eyes open.
“We have to get him out of there,” Franklin said. “Most of what we need is in the hold.”
“It's too late,” Adrienne murmured, looking down at the vortices rising toward them. “They've released the mines.”
“Mines?”
“The Russians took a page from your book, Mr. Franklin,” she answered. “The mines are spheres, such as those which lift the airships. They rise under their own power, bearing explosives with them. These have probably been taught to seek the emanations of your aegis.”
“I have a countermeasure for that,” Franklin grunted, “but it's up there with Sterne.”
“We have less than a minute, I would guess.”
“Why not just use the exorcister?”
Adrienne shook her head again. “If they start to fall, they detonate. As I understand your device, its range is too short, for the explosive is hydrogen.”
Vasilisa cut in. “Can't you stop them, Adrienne? You know the art of unmaking those spheres.”
“Certainly. But I need malakim servants, of which I have none.” She continued to watch death rise toward them.
“Red Shoes?” Franklin shouted. “Red Shoes?”
The Indian sat, rather stupidly, as his woman, Grief, wrapped bandages around his head.
“I—” he said, looking confused. Then his eyes focused. “I can help. Mademoiselle, do you think you might control my shadowchildren, as you did the malakim?”
“I can try.”
“Take them, then. I give them to you.”
She turned the sight of her manus oculatus toward the Indian, saw his shadowchildren around him. They were simpler than the malakim. They had a certain furious quality to them, like distilled anger. She reached for them, prodding them with the aetherial reach of her fingers, learning them.
“I can see ‘em.” Robert grunted. “Little red dots, gettin’ bigger.”
Teach them, she heard Red Shoes say, through his children. Or help me teach them.
When the malakim spoke, it was always in her own voice. Now, as Red Shoes spoke through his shadowchildren, it was still in her voice, which was somehow even stranger.
Adrienne read the patterns of affinities in the rising spheres, then made the corrections to dissolve them, and laid it all out. Her own malakim would have understood—but the Indian did not know much mathematics. Would it appear to him in some form he could understand?
It did, and it came back to her. For him it was like taste or smell—a sensation with many layers of complexity. And he would teach this to his shadowchildren—
“Real close now,” Robert said.
And then they had it. The shadowchildren dropped like little hawks, dragging talons of force through the spheres, unmaking them. The malakim inside sighed free, and the bombs, no longer held aloft, fell. But not far, and then the sky was white-hot flame, and the Lightning bucked like a skiff on rough seas.
And just behind the bombs came a swarm of malakim, eagles tearing into those little hawks, and she and Red Shoes were suddenly caught in an otherworld war of a very different sort. And behind it all, she could feel the strength of her son growing, the line between them tightening, a Jacob's ladder for his servants to climb.
And there were more bombs on the way now.