SNAFU: Black Ops

THE CLASH OF CYMBALS Richard Lee Byers

Grunting and straining, Crusaders pushed the creaking siege tower across the beach toward the seaward walls of Lisbon. John could have ridden inside the belfry, where it was arguably safer. But he preferred to be outside. It made it easier to see what was going on. If a Moorish arrow found him, so be it.

Such arrows flew from the battlements in profusion. But the archers and crossbowmen at the top of the belfry shot back to deadly effect, and the tower was still making headway. Perhaps, John thought, it would make it all the way to the wall.

Maybe he should go inside it after all. If he climbed to the top, squeezing his way through the men packed inside, he could be one of the first to scramble across onto the wall-walk and engage the Moors blade to blade.

He was still considering it when someone yelled, “They’re coming!”

John peered around the cover provided by the tower. The enemy must have opened a sally port. Moorish fighters were charging across the sand.

Two Crusaders started forward to meet them. “Wait!” John barked. If his fellow guards abandoned the cover the belfry afforded prematurely, they’d simply give the bowmen on the wall a chance to target them.

The pushers stopped pushing and readied their weapons. Soldiers jumped from the opening at the base of the belfry. Then the first Moors rushed swarming around the siege engine.

Bellowing, a Moor jabbed a spear at John. He caught the attack on his shield, stepped, and slashed his foe across the face with his sword. The Moor reeled backward.

John didn’t have a chance to determine whether he’d harmed the man grievously enough to take him out of the fight, because already, a Moor with a scimitar was cutting at his flank. His shield was on the other side of his body, but he swayed backward, and the curved blade flashed inches shy of his ribs. He feinted high, cut to the knee, and his adversary fell. He pivoted and found another.

For a while thereafter, he expected the enemy to overwhelm his fellow defenders of the tower and himself. Despite their best efforts, the soldiers jammed inside the belfry just weren’t able to emerge fast enough, and so, by bringing superior numbers to bear, the Moors should carry the day.

John regretted the deaths of the brave men who would fall beside him but had no fear of his own demise. Soon he’d see Elizabeth again.

As it turned out, though, he’d been mistaken. Fighting like madmen, the Crusaders held, until eventually — John didn’t know how long the battle had lasted — officers or sergeants among the enemy bellowed orders. Then the Moors retreated.

The Crusaders were exhausted, but not too exhausted to croak out taunts and cheers. A freckled youth with a snub nose, one of the men John had likely saved from an arrow, gasped, “We won!”

John sighed. “Not really.” He waved his dulled, bloody sword at the hissing, breaking waves of the Atlantic.

The other man eyed him quizzically. “I don’t understand.”

“The tide’s coming in. It will cut us off from the wall. The enemy held us long enough.”

Once the officers in charge realized that was so, there was nothing to do but trudge back to camp. The freckled youth looked so disconsolate that John clapped him on the shoulder.

“Cheer up,” he said. “We’ll get another chance tomorrow.”

“He will,” said a voice that hadn’t quite finished changing. “You might not.”

John turned to face a gangly adolescent a year or two younger than his companion with the freckles.

“Sir Oliver wants to see you,” the squire said.

Stooped, wrinkled and silver-haired, Sir Oliver looked too old for war. He should have been drowsing before his hearth with his grandchildren playing around his chair. But his narrowed blue eyes and scowl still bespoke martial ferocity, or perhaps merely dissatisfaction with what he saw when he regarded John from behind a desk heaped with maps and other sheets of parchment.

“You don’t look like a saint,” the old man growled at length.

“I’m not,” John replied.

“Yet I’m told,” Sir Oliver said, “you led the band that killed the sorcerer in the hills to the north.”

“That’s true.”

Shortly after the Crusaders’ arrival, sickness had broken out. In and of itself, that was only to be expected. But the physicians failed to recognize this particular malady, it seemed to spread with unnatural speed, and when a rumor went round that an old Moorish warlock had laid a curse on the Christians, they sent a patrol to see if it was so.

If it was, it should be easy enough to deal with him. Though a nobleman as well as a wizard, he dwelled in an unfortified, essentially indefensible manor house with a mere handful of retainers. But, when the patrol camped beside the road a mile or two shy of their destination, an eerie moaning sounded from all sides. Balls of blue light drifted among the trees, and shadows crept and slithered in the gloom. One man fell, thrashing in a seizure. Others fled shrieking into the night.

When the members of the patrol found another the following morning, most balked at the prospect of proceeding with their mission. John, however, volunteered to go forward, and, rather to his surprise, three others offered to accompany him. Together, they breached the sorcerer’s home, killed the guards, and beheaded the scholar himself. Then, upon returning to camp, they learned the sickness had run its course.

“How were you able to manage it?” Sir Oliver asked.

“The sorcerer’s weapon was fear,” John said. “If you didn’t give in to it…” he shrugged.

Indeed, there were moments when he suspected the so-called warlock hadn’t wielded any true magic at all, that the sickness had simply been sickness, and the phantasmal phenomena, trickery. But his friends took pride in having overcome the power of Satan, and it seemed kinder to keep his doubts to himself.

“Well,” Sir Oliver said, “however you did it, your superiors took note of the fact that we have men capable of overcoming witchcraft and the Devil’s wiles. Apparently we need such men again.”

“How so?”

“It’s slow going breaking into the city with belfries and stone-throwers. So we’re trying a mine as well. Unfortunately, the sappers believe that from time to time, they sense a hostile something watching them as they work. These are experienced diggers, mind you, not prone to panic simply from being underground. A priest went down to exorcise the presence but, according to the miners, failed, which makes the situation that much more frightening. Still, the sappers are willing to continue, but only if the four men who killed the sorcerer are down in the tunnel to protect them.”

Aboveground, John was certain, the sunlit day was frantic and noisy, with thousands of his fellow Crusaders milling between the ships drawn up on the shore and the siege lines. Some were sawing and hammering, building a new ram and rolling towers to replace the ones the Moors had burned. Some operated the trebuchets that hurled stone after stone to crash against the city walls. Perhaps others howled in outrage as the enemies manning the battlements defiled crosses with their spit and piss. Calling to one another, still more foraged in the fruit orchards, vineyards, and olive groves outside the city.

Belowground, though, everything was dark and quiet. Only yellow lantern glow contended with the eternal night, and only the crunch of pick and spade biting into earth and the rumble of the barrows carrying the dislodged dirt away disturbed the silence.

John had found he liked it better in the mine, the grime and the dust that stung his eyes notwithstanding. No one had sensed the sinister lurking presence in the two days since he and his comrades had joined the sappers, and in the phantom’s absence, it was peaceful down here, or perhaps numbing was the better term. His grief still ached, but less persistently than before.

Understandably, the sappers didn’t share his fondness for their current environs or the labor required to push ahead. But, reassured by the presence of their new protectors and the seeming cessation of ghostly visitations, they worked hard anyway, some out of devotion to their holy cause and others because they expected a handsome reward should their efforts prove instrumental in the fall of the city.

Currently at the head of the crew, broad-shouldered, black-bearded Amadour swung his pick. As one of the wizard killers, he wasn’t required to lend a hand with the digging but perhaps, proud as he was of his considerable strength, would have felt unmanly had he not. The resulting impact made an unexpected rasp, as though he’d struck something harder than packed earth. He swung thrice more, producing the same noise every time and pattering like falling pebbles an instant later.

The Norman picked up a lantern to examine the spot he’d been battering. “I’m hitting brick,” he said.

John advanced and saw Amadour was right. Their tunneling had indeed fetched up against a brick wall. He peered through the face-sized breach his fellow miner had made. Some sort of man-made passage or cellar lay beyond.

Among his companions, the discovery was cause for excitement. They jabbered to one another and, each eager to look through the hole, crowded forward in the close quarters of the mine.

The purpose of a mine was often to bring down a castle or city wall. King Afonso, however, had directed the sappers to dig a longer tunnel that would enable Crusaders to come up well inside Lisbon and attack by surprise. By the looks of things, the miners might well have succeeded.

John tried to share in the general enthusiasm. Inwardly, though, he felt dismay that his days in the soothing darkness might have reached an end. Scowling, he told himself his feelings didn’t matter, only his duty.

“All right,” he said, “let’s find out exactly what this is.” He held out his hand, and one of the miners gave him a pick.

Working together, he and Amadour smashed away enough brick for a man to squirm through the hole. A brick-lined tunnel ran away at right angles to the mine.

Amadour peered through the opening, then grinned, revealing the gap in his front teeth that was the result of an altercation with an even bigger soldier from the German camp. “Still no sign of witches and such” he said, his tone a gibe at the sappers who’d imagined such creatures skulking about. “We just need to find a way to sneak up into the city.”

“And hope the Moors haven’t already come down,” John replied.

The sappers had started digging their mine far back from the city wall. With luck, that had prevented the enemy from discerning what was happening, but it would be unwise to count on it. Sometimes a defending army set out bowls of water to warn of miners, and tremors in the earth agitated the contents. Or someone could have noticed surface soil shifting when the burrowing beneath disturbed it.

If the Moors did know what was happening, the brick tunnels would be a good place to wait in ambush. They wouldn’t even need to countermine.

“Well,” John said. “we ‘protectors’ are here. You miners might as well get some actual use out of us. I’ll scout ahead, and the rest of you wait here.” He set down the pick, stooped to retrieve the lantern he’d used before, and Amadour took hold of the shoulder.

“You don’t mean to go alone,” the big Norman said.

“If the Moors are lying in wait,” said John, “a lone scout has some chance of spotting the ambush and retreating undetected. This whole crew certainly could not.”

“A smaller group makes sense,” Amadour said, “but it’s reckless for one lone man to go. It needs to be the four of us, just like it was before.” He lowered his voice. “However you’re feeling, you know I’m right.”

John drew breath for an angry retort but then thought better of it. He wished he’d never gotten drunk and told his friend how Elizabeth had died of a fever two weeks before what was to be their wedding day, and disliked the Norman referring to it even obliquely. Still, the big man had a point.

“Very well,” he said. “You, Pascal, and Colm will go with me. Everyone else, wait here. If you see a company of Moors coming, run.”

The four Crusaders slipped into the brick passage. John and Colm carried lanterns, Amadour had held on to his pick, and Pascal had borrowed a shovel, just in case further digging was required after all. Everyone wore a sword, though no one excavating a tunnel burdened himself with mail or a shield.

Discerning no reason to prefer one direction over the other, John arbitrarily led his companions to the right. As he stalked along, he counted his steps and bade himself commit any turns to memory. That should facilitate the scouts’ eventual return to their companions and even give him some crude notion of where he was in relation to the enemy city overhead.

For a time, there was nothing to see but lantern-shine sliding over brickwork and the darkness ahead endlessly slipping from its grasp. Despite the need to stay vigilant, the gloom and the quiet lulled him. Perhaps, now that the air was free of grit and there was no need to pound and scrape through hard-packed earth for every inch of progress, it eased him even more than before.

Until, faintly, metal clashed, a shivery sound that took a moment to dwindle away to nothing. John jerked as though the noise had startled him from a doze, and around him, his companions did the same. The lanterns swung at the ends of their handles and set shadows rocking as though laughing at the men who cast them.

“What was that?” whispered Pascal, peering about. He was as short and scrawny as Amadour, his fellow Norman, was tall and burly, and had a knack for mending damaged gear that made his comrades prize him. He’d been a tinker before the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux inspired him to take the cross.

“Somebody in armor?” asked Colm. He was rawboned and lantern-jawed, his shock of hair the yellow of straw and his skin waxy pale where the dirt of mining didn’t darken them.

“I don’t think so,” John replied. It hadn’t sounded like the clink of mail or even the clatter that might result from some lummox dropping a shield. It had been more like the clash of a cymbal, peculiar as that seemed. “Whatever it was, it didn’t sound especially close. We’ll keep moving. Just stay alert.”

As they prowled onward, though, John found it difficult to follow his own order. Perhaps because of the River Tagus flowing nearby, the air was dank, but paradoxically, it affected him like the warmth in a stuffy room. His eyelids drooped, and his limbs grew heavy.

At some point, the cymbal — if that was what it was — resumed its clashing. For a moment, that seemed ominous, but the sound was still soft and likely no closer than before. It was even possible John and his companions were moving away from the source, in which case, it would be foolish to become alarmed.

The cymbal sounded half a dozen times, long enough for him to start pacing in time to the beat. When it fell silent again, the sudden absence made him stumble.

Later, the lantern light washed over the ghost of a child floating partway up the wall. The apparition jolted John out of his dulled complacency. Snatching for his sword, he squinted in an effort to determine if he was truly seeing what he thought he was. His companions exclaimed and recoiled.

Then Pascal laughed a shaky laugh.

Amadour turned to him. “What’s funny?”

The scrawny tinker grinned. “If you lot weren’t a pack of wretched sinners, maybe you’d recognize the Virgin when you see her.”

Or if we had eyes as keen as yours, thought John, for the thing he’d taken for a pale phantom was in fact a white stone statue of a female figure set in an alcove in the wall.

A sensible man, or a leader concerned with fulfilling his responsibilities, should be glad it had startled him out of the half-stupor that had crept over him. Still, John felt the ache of loss, as though something precious had slipped from his hand

He advanced to examine the statue, and his companions followed. Despite Pascal’s initial impression, the figure wasn’t an image of Mary after all. Pregnant and enthroned, the woman the sculptor had depicted wore a crown made of towers and clasped a horn overflowing with fruit and flowers in her lap. A lion gazed up at her like an adoring hound.

“Shit,” Pascal said. He actually sounded upset, as though the statue had played a cruel prank on him.

“Is it an idol the Moors worship?” asked Colm.

“Perhaps,” said John. None of them knew much about the enemy’s faith except that it was false and pernicious. “But Lisbon is an old city. She could be some pagan goddess from Roman times.”

“Moorish or pagan,” Pascal said, “it makes no difference.” He lifted his spade and aimed it at the statue’s face.

“No!” snapped John.

The little Norman glowered. “Why not?”

John had reacted by instinct. It took thought a moment to catch up. When it did, he discovered he feared it would be bad luck to disrespect the statue. Besides, he simply didn’t want to see it disfigured.

None of that would sway Pascal. Fortunately, there was a more rational consideration as well: “If you smash the figure, and there are Moors nearby, they might hear.”

“But they didn’t hear us knock a hole in the wall?” Pascal replied.

“We’ve walked a ways since then,” Amadour said. “Anyway, you need to follow orders.”

Pascal made a disgusted spitting sound, but he also lowered the shovel.

Colm ran his hand over his temple and the top of his head, smearing the dirt that clung there. “Speaking of noise,” he said, “I heard the metal sound again a while back. I… I don’t know why I didn’t say anything before.”

“I heard it, too,” said John. “I think we all did. It just didn’t bother us this time.”

“What is it?” Colm asked.

“Definitely not Moors lying in wait,” John said. “They wouldn’t make a racket if they wanted to ambush us.”

The lanky Englishman grunted. “I suppose that’s something to be thankful for, but I still don’t like it.”

“Nor do I,” Amadour said, “and we’ve been exploring for a while. Let’s head back.”

John’s immediate reaction was that this too was a bad idea, or if not that, an unpalatable one. “Somewhere, there has to be a stairway up or some sort of access to the city.”

“Maybe,” Amadour said, “but if we’re no longer worried about stumbling into a Moorish ambush, the fastest way to find such a thing is to get the whole crew searching.”

John realized that was true. “Fine,” he sighed. “We’ll fetch the others.”

As they made their way back, the cymbal clashed out eleven beats. There were more strokes every time it called. John imagined that the miners’ intrusion kept troubling something’s slumber and that with every disturbance it was getting closer to waking.

That wasn’t exactly how things felt, though. With dazed passivity once more overtaking him, it was more like the sleeper still slumbered soundly and dreamed a dream that was swallowing him and his companions.

The miners passed a second goddess statue, then a third, and sometime after that, he lost count. John smiled drowsily to imagine all the labor it would have taken for Pascal to defile each and every one of them.

That reflection stirred another. When the thought came into focus, he felt a stab of fear. “Stop!” he said.

Blinking, casting about, the others once again appeared to be waking from befuddlements of their own. “What’s wrong?” Amadour asked.

“The idol Pascal wanted to destroy,” John said, “was the first one we came to. Now, we’re passing others. That means we aren’t really retracing our steps. We’re lost.”

“I thought you were leading us!” said Colm.

“I meant to,” John said. “I paced off distances and noted the turns going in.” Or at least he had at first. He now realized that at some point he’d forgotten the necessity. “But heading back… I don’t know. I suppose I assumed one of you knew the way back and I simply followed along.”

Amadour shook his head. “Something, maybe bad air, is turning us into sleepwalkers.”

“Then when we get back to the mine,” John said, “and fresher air, we’ll be all right.” It would only encourage panic to point out that, whatever else stagnant, poison air could do, it couldn’t strike a cymbal.

“How will we get back?” Colm asked.

“Easily,” John said, squaring his shoulders. Up until now, with his taciturn melancholy, he likely hadn’t inspired a great deal of confidence as a leader, but that needed to change. “If a man in a maze goes right every time he comes to a fork, he inevitably finds his way out.” Somebody had told him that once. He couldn’t remember who, but he hoped it was true.

Once they put his rudimentary plan into practice, he kept hoping to round a corner and spy the opening into the mine or, barring that, a passage free of crowned goddesses. The latter might at least be a sign he and his companions were traveling in the right direction. But in each new tunnel, white faces smiled from out of the murk. Stone lips seemed to quirk as the lantern-shine kissed them.

Still, at least belated anxiety was shielding the miners from stupefying influences lurking in the air or anywhere else. No matter what else befell them, they wouldn’t lose their wits again.

Or so John assured himself. Then the cymbal resumed its clashing and this time didn’t stop after several beats.

Fearing its influence, he placed the looping handle of his lantern around his elbow. The flame inside was uncomfortably hot in proximity to his body, but the repositioning enabled him to use both hands to stop his ears.

That failed to muffle the clashing. Before, he’d never managed to determine in which direction the metallic beats originated. Now he wondered if they arose inside his head as much as any place else.

He was again striding in time to the rhythm. He struggled to alter his pace, but it was difficult. As soon as he shifted his concentration elsewhere, his marching feet resumed the tempo.

He tried stopping, standing still, and the beats tugged at him. He doubted he could resist for long, and besides, pace by pace, Amadour, Pascal, and Colm were striding ahead of him. He couldn’t let them disappear into the dark without him.

He trotted, caught up, and they turned their terrified faces in his direction. “Sing!” he shouted. “Drown it out!”

“Oh splendor of God’s glory bright,” Pascal caterwauled, “Who bringest forth the light from Light—“

Naturally, the pious little tinker had chosen a hymn, and perhaps, in this extremity, he had the right idea. John, Amadour and Colm joined in.

Unfortunately, the hymn didn’t drown out the cymbal, nor, they discovered, could they resist singing in time to the beat. A few lines in, a flute shrilled, its melody unrelated to that of the sacred music and as dominant and corruptive as the metallic rhythm. It made it impossible to stick to the hymn’s original tune, and John struggled to fit the lyrics to the new one.

Not for long, though. New words welled up inside his head, and even though he didn’t understand the language, they supplanted the verses he’d known since childhood.

John strained to stop singing, but his voice proved as recalcitrant as his feet, and then, somehow, understanding flowered. He’d come on Crusade seeking only peace, but more was possible. Cybele could grant him ecstasy. He need only accept it.

Acceptance meant giving in to the intoxication of the Magna Mater’s music, and, despite their initial resistance, that was what John’s companions were doing. Marching gave way to capering, whirling dancing. Amadour tripped Pascal with his pick and howled with laughter when the small man staggered and nearly fell. Colm drew his dagger and sliced gashes in his cheeks.

They were all bewitched, John realized. It was his duty to break the spell, but how could he muster the resolve when, after two years of mourning, his misery was finally falling away? Striving to resist the magic for his comrades’ sake, he sought to recall the hardships and close calls he and the others had shared, the kindness they’d shown putting up with his sullenness, but another skirl of piping smeared the memories into a meaningless blur.

Bare to the waist now, his face a bloody mess, Colm slashed his chest. Amadour tore open his shirt.

John still couldn’t find it in himself to care, not enough to stop singing and dancing and intervene. He still knew who Colm, Amadour, and Pascal were, but any bonds of affection or obligation were burning away in the fire of a greater devotion.

Indeed, he realized, every part of him that fretted or sorrowed was burning away. For a few dancing steps, he was grateful, and then he recognized the cost.

As it was with his fellow soldiers, so too must it be with Elizabeth. He might still remember her sly smile and teasing, her green eyes and way with dogs and horses, but they’d no longer evoke evens a wisp of feeling, painful or otherwise. Henceforth, all his love would belong to the Mountain Mother.

Back in York and in the days since, he’d believed his grief unbearable, but it was preferable to the alternative. He’d rather suffer for the rest of his days than become a creature who no longer loved Elizabeth or cherished the time they’d had together.

He contrived to dance clumsily, entangled his feet, and fell. Amadour, Pascal, and Colm capered obliviously onward into the dark.

John pounded his forehead against the floor. It hurt, but that was all to the good. Each jolt diminished the music’s power. Eventually he stopped singing and felt no urge to start anew or to dance, either.

Rubbing his throbbing brow, he rose and took stock. His lantern was still alight and intact despite his deliberate tumble. He hadn’t cast away his sword in the midst of his delirium. So all that was as he needed it to be. Now he had to hope that, without witchcraft guiding him, he could nonetheless locate his companions.

He stalked onward, and Cybele smiled from her alcoves over and over again. Then the music changed, the wild dance giving way to something slow and solemn.

Quickening his pace, he came to a spot where the passage he’d been traversing intersected another. Yellow light glowed at the end of the length of tunnel on the right, and after a moment, Amadour, naked now, gashed and bleeding like Colm, appeared amid the glow. The big Norman had his back to John and seemed to be paying close attention to whatever was happening in front of him.

John set down his lantern and crept along the passage. He had no idea if it was even possible to sneak up on the power that had beguiled the others, but since Amadour was inadvertently providing cover, he might as well try.

The scent of frankincense tinged the air and, with each step John took, a bit more of the chamber at the end of the tunnel came into view. The source of the amber glow was Colm’s lantern, set aside like his own. The light gleamed on a ten-foot-tall version of the statues in the alcoves with an altar positioned in front of it. No flautist or percussionist was in evidence. Maybe ghosts were playing the music.

But by the time John slipped up to the doorway, all three of his friends, all completely naked now, were visible. Colm stood before the altar with a curved dagger in one hand. John gasped when he spied what the entranced man held in the other.

He shouted, “Stop!” Bulled his way past Amadour, sprinted toward Colm, but failed to reach him in time. Smiling, the pale man turned away from the altar and proffered his severed testicles for his companions to see. Blood fell between his legs and spattered on the floor.

John bellowed, “Wake up!” His men looked back at him with no sign of comprehension.

Then the music swelled, and Cybele’s power erupted inside his head, once more offering the bestial joy that was her gift. Spurning the enticement, he remembered how Elizabeth had bestowed affectionate little touches during the course of conversation with virtually everyone — it had made him jealous until he realized it was just her way — the raucous laugh her mother had deplored as unladylike, how she’d fussily brushed his hair into place with her fingertips when it needed combing, and drank deep of the anguish attendant upon her loss. The intoxication of the Great Mother’s touch receded like a wave that had crashed against rock but failed to break it.

He looked up at the statue, “This is where your worshippers came to be initiated.” He knew that as he’d known the goddess’s name. “But we didn’t mean to come here, and we don’t want to sacrifice to you. Please, forgive us for trespassing and let us go.”

For a moment, nothing more happened. Then, clutching his mutilated crotch, Colm tottered away from the altar, and Amadour and Pascal started forward to take his place. The now-bloody dagger waited atop the stone.

John scrambled in front of Pascal, slapped him, and then backhanded him. “Think about Jesus!” he screamed in the small man’s face. “Think about the Virgin! They don’t want us to geld ourselves to glorify a pagan devil!”

The little tinker blinked. He looked like he was waking up, but John couldn’t linger to find out. He lunged after Amadour and grabbed him by the forearm a pace shy of the altar.

“You don’t want to hurt yourself, either,” John said. “Step away—“

Amadour whirled, wrenching himself free of his friend’s grip in the process. A moment ago, he, like Colm and Pascal, had moved with a dreamlike stateliness, but now he punched at John’s face with the speed of a seasoned brawler.

The punch smashed into John’s nose and rocked him backward. Amadour sprang at him, hooked a leg behind his, dumped him on the floor, and dropped on top of him. The big man seized hold of his friend’s neck and squeezed.

John pulled on Amadour’s forearms and beat and at his face. Neither tactic loosened the Norman’s grip. John’s throat hurt, and pressure mushroomed inside his head.

Then something clanged, and Amadour’s fingers slackened. Grasping the shovel he’d formerly set aside, Pascal hit his fellow Norman over the head a second time. Amadour pitched forward.

John rolled the unconscious man off him. “Thank you,” he wheezed.

Pascal scowled as if to indicate this was no time for chatter. “We have to get out of here before anything else happens!”

His fear of further peril seemed eminently reasonable. At the moment, John didn’t feel Cybele’s power attacking his mind anew, but the flute-and-cymbal music persisted.

“Get dressed,” he said. “We’ll carry Amadour and Colm.” Or drag them if that was the best they could manage.

Pascal hesitated. “Is there a point to taking Colm?”

John turned. At some point, his fellow Englishman’s legs had given out entirely. Head drooping, he now sat on the floor in a considerable pool of blood.

Once upon a time, other worshippers must have tended the newly made eunuchs, priests or physicians who knew how to stanch the bleeding. In the absence of such treatment, could Colm survive? Assuming his sanity returned, would he even want to?

John pushed such thoughts away. “We have to try.” He moved toward Colm, and the music changed, from slow solemnity to something jabbing and discordant.

It sounded angry, furious, and that was likely as Cybele intended. It was one thing, barely tolerable, perhaps, for John himself to refuse her blessing. When he presumed to rob her of other worshippers, especially one already initiate, his manhood sacrificed by his own hand, he committed an unforgivable affront.

Colm snapped his head up. Formerly blue, his glaring eyes were now as golden as the lantern light.

He roared, and his teeth grew points. His face projected into a snout and jaws, and his head broadened. Actually, John realized, the mutilated man’s entire lanky frame was putting on mass, but the head was enlarging even in relation to the shoulders that supported it.

“Jesus, help us!” Pascal crossed himself.

Colm’s hair rippled longer, surrounding his head in a shaggy ruff. Tawny fur sprouted across his body. Manifestly no longer weakened by his castration or other self-inflicted wounds, he sprang up on feet that now resembled paws. A long tail with a tuft of hair on the end lashed behind him.

John retreated and jerked his sword from his scabbard. Pascal hesitated, perhaps considering whether to take the time to retrieve his own blade or simply summoning up his courage. Then he screamed and rushed the lion man with his shovel extended like a spear.

The thing that once was Colm sidestepped and grabbed the spade just behind the head. He swung it, and Pascal lost his grip on it, reeled and fell. The lion man gathered himself to spring.

Bellowing to distract Colm, John charged and cut. The creature retreated just far enough for the sword to flash by an inch short of target, then whipped a stubby-fingered hand equipped with hooked claws at his attacker’s extended arm. John jerked the limb back just in time to keep it from being shredded.

At once, the lion man advanced and clawed with the other hand. John sprang back and slashed. The stop-cut sliced fingers loose and sent them tumbling.

That maiming stroke would have balked many a normal man. Colm, however, didn’t pause for an instant. He kept coming so fast and relentlessly that, even though John gave ground, it was difficult to shift the sword into position for another cut.

Instead of retreating straight backward, John shifted to one side, then the other. Colm compensated quickly, but the second maneuver finally opened up the distance for a proper forceful cut.

John struck at the lion man’s head. Colm’s hand shot out and caught the blade just shy of the target. He ripped the sword from John’s grip and flung it clattering away.

Now, surely, he had two wounded hands, but the new injury didn’t balk him, either. Rather, he lunged.

John retreated, and his lower body banged against something hard. He fell across the altar. Flinging blood, furry hands hammered down on his shoulders to anchor him in place. Colm opened his jaws wide and bent down. With his prey disarmed and pinned, he moved slower than before. Maybe he or, more likely, the Magna Mater, wished to savor the moment.

John turned his head. The sacrificial dagger still lay beside him on the block of stone. He grabbed it and stabbed the lion man in the chest.

Colm jerked upright. The motion yanked the knife from the puncture it had made, and blood sprayed out over John. The creature toppled over backward.

Panting, shaking, John wished he could lie still and collect himself, but he didn’t dare. For all he knew, Cybele was already unleashing some new horror. His imagination suggested her huge statue rising from its throne and the stone lion at her feet turning its head in his direction.

But when he scrambled to his feet, nothing like that was happening. Instead, the piping and clashing died away.

Perhaps Cybele was only the ghost of a goddess, starved to death when her worship ceased, and she’d now exhausted her limited strength. If so, he intended to be gone before she recovered it.

Pascal drew himself to his feet. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t more help. When I fell, it knocked the wind out of me.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Amadour would have killed me if not for you. Let’s get him out of here.”

With their minds clear, the tunnels proved less labyrinthine than they’d seemed before. Once they were far enough from the shrine that John was reasonably sure no malevolent power was pursuing them, his thoughts strayed as they always did, countless times every day and night, to Elizabeth.

Remembering was painful, but for the first time since her death, not purely so. He’d always miss her, but perhaps a day would come when grief would no longer overshadow everything else in life. Hitherto, such an idea would have felt disloyal and contemptible, but truly, it was only what she would have wished for him herself.

After a time, to the relief of his weary back and limbs and surely Pascal’s too, Amadour roused sufficiently to shuffle along on his own two feet. Eventually the big man asked, “Where’s Colm?”

“Dead,” Pascal said.

“Shit. Are we going back to the others?”

“Yes,” said John. After which they and their fellows would smear the support timbers with pitch, set them on fire, and collapse the mine. King Afonso could find another way to take the city.