Turnings of the Wheel

As the Penitents rode into Enoch, Grant noticed a shift in Yuya’s mood. Per his usual, he was quiet, but usually that meant an observant sort of quiet, especially in a strange place like this ruined city. He was the sort to be constantly casting his glance to or fro, or to speak just enough to be properly considered part of a conversation, even if he wasn't contributing much to it. Now, however, he seemed to be turned inward, some errant thought putting him not quite into a black mood, but certainly an unsettled one.

“Yuya? What’s eating you, kemosabe?”

“Hm? Oh, the Lugowoman just reminded me how I was, when I first got here. Delusions of becoming some kind of big hero.”

“Hey man, you killed a friggin’ wendigo. That’s some hero shit if I ever saw it.”

“A what?”

“Well, that’s what it reminded me of, at least. Evil spirit from the folklore of the native tribes up around Washington, Oregon, that area. Possesses people who commit cannibalism, turns them into these grotesque corpse-monsters with an aura of freezing cold. Typically, in movies and online horror stories and stuff, I see ‘em with a big set of elk antlers, but that might be a modern addition, not sure. If that ain’t what that thing was exactly, it’s close enough.”

“Well, I had a whole lot of help. But okay, maybe the hero part wasn’t a complete delusion. The real one was thinking it would be fun the whole way through, or easy even for a moment. The battle with the Bekhites was thrilling, in its own way, but terrifying even before their… wendigo showed up. The weeks I spent getting to the point I had the bare minimum strength, skill and grit to survive it kind of sucked. If I were never crucified again, it would be too soon.”

“Well, you’re doing great, considering you were just some skinny computer nerd when you got here. I kinda cheated, knowing my way around bows and horses and roughing it before I got here. Hell, I even had a gun, at least for my first run-in.”

“If Iona’s had anything to say about it, there’s nothing wrong with cheating a little.”

At the head of their column, a rider approached Abutai at a gallop. A woman, Grant realized– extremely tall, her silhouette made androgynous by lamellar armor, but with a pleasant face, once she removed her masked helmet that flaked with dried blood. She reined her horse in hard, still slamming into the Bayut prince with enough force to rock him nearly out of his saddle as they embraced. Abutai was not short, but gosh, she really did tower over him.

“I take it your father succeeded, heart of my heart?”

She lingered in his arms a good while, then shrugged as they came apart. “The Bekhites are crippled in the north, but they still have herds and warbands all over the south, and their khatun escaped. I saw her guard heading south with my own eyes; if I had a few more riders, we could have chased the bitch down then and there, but we were outnumbered with no close support from the main army. You should have let me bring Iona and Piran.”

“They would have slowed you down.”

“I know, I know. She’s still more used to a boat than a horse, and he complains about getting old whenever he has to ride at a gallop for more than a couple li. But honestly, I think the old man puts it on a little, just because it gets under your skin.”

“I hope I am not so… vocal, in thirty years. By the way, I found a pair of Penitents.”

She leaned down and kissed him. “If you weren’t his favorite son-in-law before…” Peering over his head, she searched the horsemen. Iona nodded at Grant and Yuya, and Abutai’s wife rode over to them, looking them up and down appraisingly with eyes that reminded Grant of his aunt's favorite merlot. “And where do you two come from?”

“Earth, good lady.” Grant lifted his helmet to tip it, the motion nowhere near as smooth as he seemed to intend.

“I knew that. You have the look of the Mediterranean about you, or perhaps New Spain. Tell me, is the United States of America still the uncontested hegemon of your world, or have other states risen to fill the power vacuum left by the Soviet Union?”

“Uh, well… how old is your information?”

“While some of my knowledge may be older, the grand-scale politics, I learned from a Penitent who arrived here a little over thirty years ago. Russian man, Penitent of Greed, I think he was some sort of mercenary or arms merchant in your world.”

“Right… America's still the biggest and baddest, economically and militarily, but China's exploded onto the scene as an economic powerhouse since then, and Russia, despite losing its Communist trappings, clearly has ambitions to reassert its old sphere of influence. I served in the American navy, and well, the bigger concern for us than enemies abroad, in and of themselves, was weakness and infighting at home. We had a sense that we as a fighting force, for all our ships and funding, had gone a little soft with complacency, and the recruiters all seemed a little desperate when we signed on. On paper, it was the Soviets’ ideology that collapsed and ours that survived, but we're starting to fracture and splinter in our political thought, with all camps fixing more to use the state as a bludgeon against their enemies than as a shield for the rights of citizens. My country might come out of it fine, maybe still a great power or maybe not, or some other Penitent thirty years from now might tell me I got out while the getting out was good.”

Nearby in their riding column, Gotai shifted in his saddle. “Lugo has acted out this same story dozens of times. Whether the reigning dynasty collapses or recovers, whether the culture comes out unchanged or fundamentally transformed, always seems to historians hundreds of years later like it should have been more obvious than it was in the moment.”

“But I forget myself, Penitent,” this towering warrior-princess said, “this is exactly the sort of discussion my father will wish to have; we should not go deeper into this subject just yet. Once you have pitched your tents and washed off the dust of the road, I will bring you to him.”

“We'd be right happy to meet him. But who is your father? The khan of some other tribe besides the Bayut?”

She seemed taken aback at the question. “It has been awhile since I've spoken with a Penitent, hasn't it? I should have introduced myself forthwith. I am Naamah, daughter of Cain. Welcome to Enoch. The Khan of Khans will see you when the sun touches the Turquoise Throne.”