The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [122]
“Why?”
“So they could make you what you are.”
“I am the Sun Boy. I am the god of this world.”
“No, my little Nico, you are not.”
He frowned. “I don't know what to do. I'm supposed to kill you.”
“I know. You will do what you must, and I will love you no matter what. But I know this, and you know it, too, I think. The angels don't want you to know the truth. But they can't stop us, Nico, not if we work together. Remember how we were at the river, at the battle?”
“When you saved me,” he said. “You did save me, didn't you?”
“Nico, you saved me when you were born. Without you, I would have died. And died again, that night when I was stabbed. Me saving you— I am your mother. What else could I do?”
“I still don't like what you're doing,” Nico said.
“Do you know what I'm doing?”
“No. But I don't like it. You have to stop. If you don't stop, I will hurt you.”
“I love you, Nico.” She looked squarely at him, willing him to believe it, desperate that he should know.
“Stop.”
“I can't,” she said, her voice catching.
“Very well, then,” he said, now sounding cross. “But you will be sorry.”
He vanished. Reluctantly, Adrienne returned to her work.
“I see ‘em,” Robert muttered. “God, but there ain't many of ‘em. Like a brace of flies attacking a city.”
Franklin closed his eyes again. Lenka. He ought to go watch, but he couldn't.
“Damn, the stones on them,” Robert said again. “Look at that. I wish I was closer. Hell, I wish I was down there.”
“Can they win?”
“I don't see how—ah, Jesus, there they are at the guns, and still comin', half of ‘em must've—” He suddenly choked off, and Franklin understood his friend was crying.
“They're fightin'Armageddon, and here we sit.”
He seemed to have forgotten his own words of a moment before. Franklin could only nod.
Peter watched the guns grow closer, and he didn't care. He lifted the carbine, not to aim it but to brandish it in the air; and for a moment he felt like one of the untamed Cossacks he had watched his army cut down in the past.
He noticed, behind the guns, the green uniforms of his own troops— or those who had once been his—and that filled him with an almost limitless fury. “I am your tsar!” he bellowed, shaking the gun furiously. “I am Peter, son of Alexei, the emperor, the—” His words were drowned out by the first volley.
It was a sound like ice cracking in the Baltic, all at once, everywhere. He remembered Catherine, his empress and love. He remembered his son, who betrayed him and paid with his life. He remembered building ships, with his own two hands, in Holland; the taste of brandy, Tokay, and chocolate.
He remembered being a little boy, hiding in the Kremlin as the Strelitzi searched for him and his mother and brother. Hiding, cringing, afraid.
Never again. Never.
And then he suddenly understood—a hundred guns had fired at him, and he still sat his horse. He had won!
But no, the damned devil Charles was still in the saddle, too, though his chest was open in two places. In fact, the Swedish king gave a hoarse cry and fired his pistol.
Peter turned grimly back to the waiting guns, where something odd was happening. It looked like their enemies were fighting each other. They were! Russians were turning their sabers on Mongols and Indians.
The second volley crashed, and this time what felt like hot raindrops pattered all over his chest. Blue outlines surrounded everything, and the neck of his horse rushed up to meet him. By chance, his head turned to see that Charles was still mounted, though there was a gaping red hole where one of his eyes ought to have been.
That's when he noticed—the bastard had lashed himself in the saddle. When had he done that?
Peter's horse fell, but it hurt no more than diving onto a feather bed. He smelled salt, the wet metallic scent of the sea, and remembered the little boat he used to sail, imagining the day when he—when Russia—would have a real navy.
Somewhere, a storm must be coming. He heard the thunder. Or was that just