Small Gods

‘They don’t want philosophy. They want a reason to move against the Church! Now! Vorbis is dead, the Cenobiarch is gaga, the hierarchy are busy stabbing one another in the back. The Citadel is like a big rotten plum.’

‘Still a few wasps in it, though,’ said Urn. ‘You said you’ve only got a tenth of the army.’

‘But they’re free men,’ said Simony. ‘Free in their heads. They’ll be fighting for more than fifty cents a day.’

Urn looked down at his hands. He often did that when he was uncertain about anything, as if they were the only things he was sure of in all the world.

‘They’ll get the odds down to three to one before the rest know what’s happening,’ said Simony grimly. ‘Did you talk to the blacksmith?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you do it?’

‘I … think so. It wasn’t what I …’

‘They tortured his father. Just for having a horse-shoe hanging up in his forge, when everyone knows that smiths have to have their little rituals. And they took his son off into the army. But he’s got a lot of helpers. They’ll work through the night. All you have to do is tell them what you want.’

‘I’ve made some sketches …’

‘Good,’ said Simony. ‘Listen, Urn. The Church is run by people like Vorbis. That’s how it all works. Millions of people have died for — for nothing but lies. We can stop all that—’

Didactylos had stopped talking.

‘He’s muffed it,’ said Simony. ‘He could have done anything with them. And he just told them a lot of facts. You can’t inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol.’

They left the temple just before sundown. The lion had crawled into the shade of some rocks, but stood up unsteadily to watch them go.

‘It’ll track us,’ moaned Om. ‘They do that. For miles and miles.’

‘We’ll survive.’

‘I wish I had your confidence.’

‘Ah, but I have a God to have faith in.’

‘There’ll be no more ruined temples.’

‘There’ll be something else.’

‘And not even snake to eat.’

‘But I walk with my God.’

‘Not as a snack, though. And you’re walking the wrong way, too.’

‘No. I’m still heading away from the coast.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘How far can a lion go with a spear wound like that in him?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Everything.’

And, half an hour later, a black shadowy line on the silver moonlit desert, there were the tracks.

‘The soldiers came this way. We just have to follow the tracks back. If we head where they’ve come from, we’ll get where we’re going.’

‘We’ll never do it!’

‘We’re travelling light.’

‘Oh, yeah. They were burdened by all the food and water they had to carry,’ said Om bitterly. ‘How lucky for us we haven’t got any.’

Brutha glanced at Vorbis. He was walking unaided now, provided that you gently turned him around whenever you needed to change direction.

But even Om had to admit that the tracks were some comfort. In a way they were alive, in the same way that an echo is alive. People had been this way, not long ago. There were other people in the world. Someone, somewhere, was surviving.

Or not. After an hour or so they came across a mound beside the track. There was a helmet atop it, and a sword stuck in the sand.

‘A lot of soldiers died to get here quickly,’ said Brutha.

Whoever had taken enough time to bury their dead had also drawn a symbol in the sand of the mound. Brutha half-expected it to be a turtle, but the desert wind had not quite eroded the crude shape of a pair of horns.

‘I don’t understand that,’ said Om. ‘They don’t really believe I exist, but they go and put something like that on a grave.’

‘It’s hard to explain. I think it’s because they believe they exist,’ said Brutha. ‘It’s because they’re people, and so was he.’

He pulled the sword out of the sand.

‘What do you want that for?’

‘Might be useful.’

‘Against who?’

‘Might be useful.’

An hour later the lion, who was limping after Brutha, also arrived at the grave. It had lived in the desert for sixteen years, and the reason it had lived so long was that it had not died, and it had not died because it never wasted handy protein. It dug.

Humans have always wasted handy protein ever since they started wondering who had lived in it.

But, on the whole, there are worse places to be buried than inside a lion.

There were snakes and lizards on the rock islands. They were probably very nourishing and every one was, in its own way, a taste explosion.

There was no more water.

But there were plants … more or less. They looked like groups of stones, except where a few had put up a central flower spike that was a brilliant pink and purple in the dawn light.

‘Where do they get the water from?’

‘Fossil seas.’

‘Water that’s turned to stone?’

‘No. Water that sank down thousands of years ago. Right down in the bedrock.’

‘Can you dig down to it?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

Brutha glanced from the flower to the nearest rock island.

‘Honey,’ he said.

‘What?’

The bees had a nest high on the side of a spire of rock. The buzzing could be heard from ground level. There was no possible way up.

‘Nice try,’ said Om.