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                                 Chapter Thirty

   Sean MacIntyre stood with Sandy and frowned down at the relief map. Tibold
   and a dozen other officers stood around respectfully, watching him and
   "the Angel Sandy" study the map, and the absolute confidence in their eyes
   made him want to scream at them.

   The Battle of Yortown lay one of the local "five-days" in the past. The
   Angels' Army had advanced a hundred and thirty kilometers in that time,
   but now High-Captain Ortak's entrenched position lay squarely in its path,
   and try as he might, Sean saw no way around it. In fact, he'd come to the
   conclusion Tibold had offered from the first: the only way around was
   through, and that was the reason for his frown.

   Sean's army had every advantage in an open field battle. The Yortown loot
   had included twenty-six thousand joharns, enough for Sean to convert all
   fifty-eight thousand of his men into musketeers and send several thousand
   to the force covering the Thirgan Gap in the west to boot, and Brashan had
   shifted Israel to the mountains directly above Yortown to decrease cutter
   transit time to the battleship. The Narhani's machine shop modules had
   increased their modification rate to forty-five hundred rifles (with
   bayonet rings) a night, and the Malagoran gunsmiths were adding almost a
   thousand a day more on their own, now that "the angels" had taught them
   about rifling benches. Unfortunately, over half Sean's army had been
   trained as pikemen, and the new men were still learning which end the
   bullet came out of.

   Even so, his troops were fleeter of foot and had incomparably more
   firepower than any other Pardalian army. The new, standardized rifle
   regiments he and Tibold had organized could kill their enemies from five
   or six times smoothbore range, and the absence of polearms made them far
   more mobile. Even the best pikemen were less than nimble trailing
   five-meter pikes, and his rifle-armed infantry could dance rings around
   the Guard's ponderous phalanxes. Coupled with its higher rate of fire, the
   Angels' Army could cut four or five times its own number to pieces in a
   mobile engagement.

   Unhappily, High-Captain Ortak knew it. He was well supplied with
   artillery, since Lord Marshal Rokas had known the cramped terrain at
   Yortown would reduce his guns' efficiency and left many of them with his
   rearguard, and reinforcements had come forward, but less than half his
   roughly eighty thousand men were actually armed. Less than twelve thousand
   were musketeers, and he dared not face the Angels' Army in the open. But
   short of arms or not, his men still outnumbered Sean's by almost forty
   percent, and all those unarmed men had been busy with mattocks. The
   earthworks he'd thrown up at Erastor closed the Keldark Valley north of
   the Mortan, and he clearly had no intention of venturing beyond them. Nor
   could any army go around them. The Mortan was unfordable for over ninety
   kilometers upstream or down from Erastor, and the terrain south of the
   river was so boggy not even nioharqs could drag artillery or wagons
   through it.

   In many respects, Erastor was a stronger defensive position even than
   Yortown, and Sean and Tibold had considered meeting Rokas there. In the
   end, they'd decided in favor of Yortown because its terrain had let Sean
   set his ambush, but for a simple holding engagement, Erastor would
   actually have been better. There were no open flanks between the Erastor
   Spur and the river, which left an opponent with superior numbers-or
   mobility-no openings. He had to attack head-on, and if Ortak refused to
   come out, Sean would have to go in after him . . . which meant the Guard's
   outnumbered and outranged musketeers could hunker down behind their
   parapets until Sean's men entered their range. The Guard's morale had to
   be shaken by what had happened at Yortown, while the Angels' Army's morale
   had soared in inverse proportion, and Sean knew his troops could take
   Erastor. It was the cost of taking it that terrified him.

   He frowned more deeply at the map and once more castigated himself for not
   pushing on more quickly. He'd taken five days to march a distance a
   Pardalian army could have done in three if it was pushed, and the
   consequences promised to be grim. If he'd crowded the routed Host harder,
   he might have bounced Ortak out of Erastor before the high-captain dug in,
   and telling himself his troops had been exhausted by the Yortown fighting
   made him feel no better. He should have gotten them on the way with the
   next dawn, however tired, not wasted two whole days burying the dead and
   collecting the Host's cast away weapons, and he swore at himself for
   delaying.

   He wanted to swear at Tibold, as well, for letting him, but that wouldn't
   have been fair. The ex-Guardsman was a product of the military tradition
   which had evolved after the Schismatic Wars, and Pardalian wars were
   fought for territory. Ideally, battles were avoided in favor of efforts to
   outmaneuver an opponent, and campaigns were characterized by intricate,
   almost formal march and countermarch until they climaxed in equally formal
   engagements or sieges for vital fortresses. The Napoleonic doctrine of
   pursuing a beaten foe to annihilation was foreign to local military
   thought. It shouldn't have been, given the mobility nioharqs bestowed, but
   it was, and a crushing victory like Yortown would have brought most wars
   to a screeching conclusion as the defeated side treated for terms. Not
   this time. High Priest Vroxhan and the Inner Circle might not have the
   least idea what Sean and his marooned friends were truly after, but they'd
   realized they were fighting for their very survival. Worse, they were
   fighting, as they saw it, for their souls. Oh, it was obvious they'd
   become firmly attached to their secular power, but they also saw no
   distinction between "God's Will" and the Temple's domination of Pardal.
   Under the circumstances, there were-could be-no acceptable "terms" for
   them short of the "heretics' " utter destruction, and they were mobilizing
   their reserves. Within another two weeks, at most three, thousands of
   fresh troops would be marching into Erastor. Somehow he had to crush the
   Erastor position before those reinforcements arrived, and his soul cringed
   at the thought of the casualties his men would suffer because he'd screwed
   up.

   His frown at the map became a glare. He knew, intellectually, that there
   wasn't always a clever answer, but he was also young. Centuries older than
   he'd been before Yortown, but still young enough to believe there ought to
   be an answer, if he were only smart enough to see it.

   A hand touched his elbow, and he turned his head to see Sandy looking up
   at him. Her face was no longer the haunted mask it had been the first
   night after Yortown, but, as for all of Israel's crew, the slaughter of
   that day had left its mark upon her. Her eyes had learned to twinkle once
   more, yet there was less brashness behind them. No less confidence,
   perhaps, but a deeper awareness of the horrible cost reality could exact.
   Now those eyes met his searchingly, the question in them plain, and he
   sighed.

   "I don't see an answer," he said in English. "They've put in too solid a
   roadblock, and it's my own damned fault."

   "Oh, shush!" she said in the same language, squeezing his elbow harder.
   "We're all getting on-the-job training, and the last thing we need is for
   you to kick yourself for things you can't change. Seems to me you did a
   pretty fair job at Yortown, and you've got a lot more to work with now."

   "Sure I do." He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. His officers
   might not understand English, but they could recognize emotional
   overtones, and there was no sense shaking their confidence.
   "Unfortunately," he went on in a determinedly lighter tone, "the bad guys
   have more to work with, too. Not in numbers, but in position." He waved at
   the fifteen kilometers of earthworks linking the stony Erastor Spur to the
   river. "We surprised Rokas by doing something he knew was impossible, but
   Ortak has a much better idea of our capabilities, and he's dug in to deny
   us all our advantages. We can take him out with a frontal assault, but
   we'll lose thousands, and I just can't convince myself it's worth it,
   Sandy. Not just so we can get hold of a computer!"

   "It's not just to get us to the computer!" she said fiercely, then
   smoothed her own tone as a few officers stirred in surprise. She shook her
   head and went on more calmly. "It's life and death for all these people,
   Sean-you know that."

   "Yeah? And whose fault is that?" he growled.

   "Ours," she said unflinchingly. "Mine, if you want to be specific. But
   it's something we blundered into, not something we did on purpose, and if
   we started all this, then we have to finish it."

   Sean closed his eyes and tasted the bitterness of knowing she was right.
   It was a conversation they'd had often enough, and rehashing it now would
   achieve nothing. Besides, he liked the Malagorans. Even if he'd borne no
   responsibility for their predicament, he still would have wanted to help
   them.

   "I know," he said finally. He opened his eyes and smiled crookedly, then
   patted the hand on his elbow. "And it's no more your fault than it is mine
   or Tamman's or Brashan's-even Harry's. It's just knowing how many of them
   are going to get killed because I didn't push hard enough." She started to
   open her mouth, but he shook his head. "Oh, you're right. People make
   mistakes while they learn. I know that. I only wish my mistakes could be
   made somewhere that didn't get people killed."

   "You can only do the best you can do." Her voice was so gentle he longed
   to take her in his arms, but God only knew how his officers would react if
   he started going around hugging an "angel"!

   He actually felt his mouth quirk a smile at the thought, and he folded his
   hands behind him again and walked slowly around the table, studying the
   relief map from all angles. If only there were a way to use his mobility!
   Someone-he thought it had been Nathan Bedford Forrest-had once said war
   was a matter of "getting there firstest with the mostest," not absolute
   numbers, and the one true weakness of Ortak's position was its size. He
   had fifteen kilometers of frontage-more, with the salients built into his
   earthworks-and that gave him barely two thousand armed men per kilometer
   even if he withheld no reserve at all. Of course, he had another thirty or
   forty thousand he could send in to pick up the weapons of their fallen
   comrades, but even so he was stretched thin. If Sean could break his front
   anywhere, and get behind his works, he could sweep them like a broom. But
   there was no way he could-

   He paused suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. He stood absolutely still,
   staring down at the map while his mind raced, and then he began to smile.

   "Sean? Sean?" Sandy had to call him twice before he looked up with a jerk.
   "What is it?" she asked, and his smile took on a harder, fiercer cast.

   "I've been going at this wrong," he said. "I've been thinking about how
   Ortak has us blocked, and what I should have been thinking about is how
   he's trapped himself."

   "Trapped?" she asked blankly, and he waved Tibold closer and pointed at
   the map.

   "Could infantry get through these swamps?" he asked in Pardalian, and it
   was the ex-Guardsman's turn to frown down at the map.

   "Not pikes," he said after a moment, "but you might be able to get
   musketeers through." He cocked his head, comparing the exquisitely
   detailed map the angels had provided to all the ones he'd ever seen
   before, then tapped the southern edge of the swamp with a blunt
   forefinger. "I always thought the bad ground was wider than that down
   along the south face of the valley," he said slowly. "We could probably
   get a column across this narrow bit in, oh, ten or twelve hours. Not with
   guns or pikes, though, Lord Sean. There's no bottom to most of this swamp.
   You might get a few chagors through, but arlaks would sink to the axles in
   no time. And even after you get through the swamp, the ground's still soft
   enough between there and the river to slow you."

   "Would Ortak expect us to try anything like that?" Sean asked, and Tibold
   shook his head quickly.

   "He's got the same maps we had before you and the ang-" The ex-Guardsman
   bit the word off as he remembered how Lord Sean and the angels kept trying
   to get people not to call them that. For a moment his face felt hot, but
   then he grinned up at his towering young commander. "He's got the same
   maps we always had before. Besides, no Guard captain would even consider
   leaving his pikes and guns behind."

   "That's what I hoped you'd say," Sean murmured, and his brain whirred as
   he estimated times and distances. The Mortan was the better part of three
   unfordable kilometers wide above and below Erastor, but it could be forded
   at Malz, a farm town ninety-odd klicks below its junction with the Erastor
   River. If he moved back west, out of sight of Ortak's lines, and threw
   together enough rafts . . . Or, for that matter, could his engineers knock
   together proper bridges? He considered the thought for a moment, then
   shook his head. No, that would take a good two or three days, and if this
   was going to work at all, he didn't have two or three days to waste.

   "All right, Tibold," he said. "Here's what we'll do. First . . ."

                                     * * *

   High-Captain Ortak stood in his entrenchments' central bastion and stared
   west. Drizzling rain drew a gray veil across the Keldark Valley, limiting
   his vision, but he knew what was out there and breathed a silent thanks
   for his enemies' lack of initiative. Every day that passed without attack
   not only helped the morale of his battered force but brought its
   desperately needed relief one day closer.

   He strained his eyes, trying to make out details of the earthworks the
   heretics had thrown up to face his own. Part of him shuddered every time
   he thought of the cost of taking that position once the Holy Host had
   reinforced and resumed the offensive, but not even that could shake his
   gratitude. He knew how thin-stretched he was, and if the heretics had been
   willing to throw a column straight at him anywhere-

   He shivered, and not because of the rain. He disliked having to stand with
   a river at his back, but the Erastor was fordable for most of its length.
   If he had to, he could fall back across it, though he'd have to abandon
   what remained of his baggage, and this was the best-probably the
   only-point at which to stop an army from the west. Conscripted laborers
   were building another position in his rear at Baricon, but Baricon was
   better suited to resisting attacks from the east. No, he had to hold the
   heretics here if he meant to keep them out of Keldark, and if they ever
   got loose in the duchy their freedom of maneuver would increase a
   hundredfold. After what they'd done to Lord Marshal Rokas at Yortown, that
   was enough to strike a chill in the stoutest heart.

   He wrapped his cloak about himself and pursed his lips in thought. The
   semaphore chain across Malagor had been cut, but it continued to operate
   east of him, and the Temple's dispatches were less panicky than they had
   been. The secular lords were being slow to muster, but the Guard had
   stripped its garrisons throughout the eastern kingdoms to the bone, and
   fifty thousand men were on their way to him. Better yet, the first trains
   of replacement weapons had begun coming in. There were less of them than
   he would have liked, especially given what the heretics had captured at
   Yortown, but he'd already received eight thousand pikes and over five
   hundred joharns. If the reports from Yortown were right, the heretics had
   found some way to give joharns and malagors the range of rifles, which
   suggested final casualties would be atrocious even if the Guard managed to
   rearm every man, but that should be less of a factor defending entrenched
   positions than in the open field. They were going to have to find some
   reply to the heretics' weight of fire in the future, and Ortak was already
   considering ways to increase the ratio of firearms to pikes, but for the
   moment he had a stopper in the bottle and the heretics seemed unwilling to
   take the losses to remove it.

   He sighed and shook himself. The light was going, and he had more than
   enough paperwork waiting to keep him up half the night. At least his
   quarters in Erastor were better than a tent in the field, he told himself,
   and smiled wryly as he turned and called for his branahlk.

                                     * * *

   Sean MacIntyre dismounted and wiped rain from his face. He could have used
   his implants to stay dry, but that would have felt unfair to his troops,
   which was probably silly but didn't change his feelings. He smiled at his
   own perversity and scratched his branahlk's snout, listening to its soft
   whistle of pleasure, and tried to hide his worry as the sodden column
   squelched past.

   It was taking longer than planned, and the rain was heavier than Israel's
   meteorological remotes had predicted. The cold front pushing down the
   valley had met a warm front out of Sanku and Keldark, and Brashan's latest
   forecast warned of at least twenty hours of hard rain, probably with
   thunderstorms. They would make the ground still softer and the going
   harder, and they were also going to deepen the fords at Malz, but at least
   it didn't look as if the Mortan would reach critical depths. Or, he
   thought grimly, not yet.

   Tibold splashed up on his own branahlk and drew up beside him.

   "Captain Juahl's reached the bivouac area, Lord Sean." The ex-Guardsman's
   tone made Sean crook an eyebrow, and Tibold sighed. "It's under a handspan
   of water, My Lord."

   "Great." Sean closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then flipped his fold
   com up to Sandy's hovering cutter. "Got a problem down here," he
   subvocalized. "Our bivouac site's underwater."

   "Damn. Hang on a sec," she replied, and brought up her sensors, berating
   herself for not having checked sooner. She frowned in concentration over
   her neural feed as she swept the area ahead of the column, then her eyes
   brightened. "Okay. If you push on another six klicks, the ground rises to
   the south."

   "Firewood?" he asked hopefully.

   " 'Fraid not," she replied, and he sighed.

   "Thanks anyway." He turned to Tibold. "Tell Juahl he'll find higher ground
   if he bears a bit south and keeps moving for another hour or so."

   "At once, Lord Sean." Tibold didn't even ask how his commander knew that;
   he simply turned his branahlk and splashed off into the gathering gloom,
   and Sean leaned back against his own mount and sighed.

   He had twenty-five thousand men marching through mud towards fords which
   ought to be passable when they arrived, and he was beginning to wonder if
   he'd been so clever after all. Pardal's days were long, and on good roads
   (and Pardalian roads would have made any Roman emperor die of jealousy),
   infantry routinely made fifty kilometers a day in fair weather. Marching
   cross-country in the rain, even through open terrain, they were doing well
   to make thirty pushing hard, and they hadn't even reached the swamps yet.
   The men were in better spirits than he would have believed possible under
   the circumstances, but they'd marched for three grueling days, mostly in
   the rain and with no hot meals. Even for someone with full enhancement,
   this march was no pleasure jaunt; for the unenhanced, it was
   unadulterated, exhausting misery, and they were barely halfway to the
   fords.

   He flicked his mind back over the latest reports from their stealthed
   remotes. Ortak was receiving fresh weapons, but any additional
   reinforcements were still at least twelve days away. Even allowing for his
   column's slower than estimated progress, Sean should be back north of the
   Mortan within another four days, but he was grimly aware of the risk he
   was running. The valley's peasants had been moved out by the Holy Host on
   its way in, and the Temple's troops had already accounted for everything
   that could be foraged from the abandoned farms. Pack nioharqs had
   accompanied them this far, but they'd have to be sent home once the column
   reached the swamp. From there, Sean's infantry would have to pack all of
   their supplies-including ammunition-on their backs, and that gave them no
   more than a week's food. Which meant that if his plan to surprise Ortak
   didn't work, he was going to find himself with twenty-five thousand
   starving men trapped between Erastor and the Guard reinforcements.

   At least Ortak was cooperating so far. The high-captain "knew" the terrain
   south of the river was impassable, and he was too short of armed men to
   spare many from his prepared positions. He had pickets east of the
   Erastor, but they were fairly close to the bridges. It was still a bit
   hard to adjust to a pre-technic society's limitations, and despite
   everything, Sean felt vaguely exposed. His column was barely fifty air
   kilometers from Ortak's position, and it was hard to believe Ortak had no
   suspicion of what he was up to, yet the high-captain's deployments and the
   reports of Sandy's eavesdropping remotes all confirmed that he didn't.

   The thought drew a wet chuckle from Sean. Miserable as he and his troops
   might be, they had the most deadly weapon known to man: surprise. And at
   least if he screwed up, it wouldn't be because the Guard had surprised
   him.

   He gave his branahlk another scratch, then swung back into the saddle and
   trotted forward along the column.

                                     * * *

   Father Stomald stepped into the command tent and paused. The Angel Harry
   stood alone, staring down at the map and unaware of his presence, and her
   shoulders were tight.

   The young priest hesitated. Part of him was loath to disturb her, but
   another part urged him to step closer. An angel needed no mortal's
   comfort, yet Stomald was guiltily aware that he was coming less and less
   to think of her as he ought.

   The angels had fallen into a division of their duties which was too
   natural to have been planned, and the Angel Harry's share of those duties
   had brought her into almost constant contact with Stomald. The fighting of
   the war in which they were all trapped was the task of Lord Sean and Lord
   Tamman, but ministering to its consequences was Stomald's task. It was he
   who had begun it, whatever his intent, and it was he who must bear the
   weight of caring for its victims. He accepted that, for it was but an
   extension of his priestly duties, and his own faith would have driven him
   to shoulder that weight even if he could somehow have avoided it. But he
   was not alone before the harsh demands of his responsibilities, for as
   Lord Sean and Lord Tamman had Tibold and the Angel Sandy, Stomald had the
   Angel Harry. However grim the burden he faced, however terrible the cost
   war and its horrors exacted, she was always there, always willing to give
   him of her own strength and catch him when he stumbled. And that, he
   thought, was why he had come to feel these things he should not-must
   not-feel.

   Yet knowing what he should not do and stopping himself from doing it were
   two very different things. She seemed so young, and she was different from
   the Angel Sandy. She was . . . softer, somehow. Gentler. The Angel Sandy
   cared deeply-no one who'd seen her face the night after Yortown could
   doubt that-yet she had a talmahk's fierceness the Angel Harry lacked. No
   one could ever call either angel weak, but the Angel Sandy and Lord Sean
   were kindred souls who threw off uncertainty like a too-small garment
   whenever it touched them. Their eyes were always on the next battle, the
   next challenge, yet it was the Angel Harry to whom those in trouble
   instinctively turned, as if they, as Stomald, sensed the compassion at her
   heart. Any angel must, of course, be special, but Stomald had seen how
   even the most hardened trooper's eyes followed the Angel Harry. The army
   would have followed Lord Sean or the Angel Sandy or Lord Tamman against
   Hell itself, but the Angel Harry owned their hearts.

   As she did Stomald's, and yet . . .

   The priest sighed, and his eyes darkened as he admitted the truth. His
   love for the Angel Harry was wrong, for it was not what a man should dare
   to feel for one of God's holy messengers.

   She heard his soft exhalation and turned, and he was shocked by the tears
   in her one good eye. She wiped them as quickly as she'd turned, but he'd
   seen them, and before he remembered what she was, he reached out to her.

   He froze, hand extended, shocked by his own temerity. What was he
   thinking? She was an angel, not simply the beautiful young woman she
   appeared. Had he not learned to rely upon her strength? To turn to her for
   comfort when his own weariness and the sorrow of so much death pressed
   upon him? How dared he reach out to comfort her?

   But he saw no anger in her eye, and his heart soared with curiously aching
   joy as she took his hand. She squeezed it and turned her head to look back
   down at the map table, and Stomald stood there, holding her hand, and
   confused emotions washed through him. It felt so right, so natural, to
   stand with her, as if this were the place he was meant to be, yet guilt
   flawed his contentment. He was aware of her beauty, of her wonderful blend
   of strength and gentleness, and he longed, more than he'd ever longed for
   anything other than to serve God Himself, for this moment to last forever.

   "What is it?" he asked finally, and the depth of concern in his voice
   surprised even him.

   "I'm just-" She paused, then gave her head a little shake. "I'm just
   worried about Sean," she said softly. "The way the river's rising, how far
   they still have to go, the odds when they get there . . ." She drew a deep
   breath and looked at him with a wan smile. "Silly of me, isn't it?"

   "Not silly," Stomald disagreed. "You worry because you care."

   "Maybe." She still held his hand, but her other hand ran a finger down the
   line of Lord Sean's march, and her voice was low. "I feel so guilty
   sometimes, Stomald. Guilty for worrying so much more about Sean than
   anyone else, and for having caused all this. It's my fault, you know."

   Stomald flinched, and self-loathing filled him as he recognized his own
   jealousy. He was jealous of her concern for Lord Sean! The sheer impiety
   of his emotions frightened him, but then the rest of what she'd said
   penetrated, and he shook off his preoccupation with his own feelings.

   "You didn't cause this. It was our fault for laying impious hands upon
   you." He hung his head. "It was my fault, not yours, My Lady."

   "No it wasn't!" she said so sharply he looked up, dismayed by her anger.
   Her single eye bored into him, and she shook her head fiercely. "Don't
   ever think that, Stomald! You did what your Church had taught you to do,
   and-" She paused again, biting her lip, then nodded to herself. "And
   there's more happening here than you know even yet," she added with quiet
   bitterness.

   Stomald blinked at her, touched to the heart once more by her readiness to
   forgive the man who'd almost burned her alive, yet confused by her words.
   She was an angel, with an angel's ability to know things no mortal could,
   yet her voice suggested she'd meant more than that. Perplexity filled him,
   and he reached for the first thing that crossed his mind.

   "You care deeply for Lord Sean, don't you, My Lady?" he asked, and could
   have bitten off his tongue in the instant. The question cut too close to
   his own forbidden longings, and he waited for her anger, but she only
   nodded.

   "Yes," she said softly. "I care for them all, but especially for Sean."

   "I see," he said, and the dagger turning in his heart betrayed him. He
   heard the pain in his own voice and tried to turn and flee, but her
   fingers tightened about his, stronger than steel yet gentle, trapping him
   without harming him, and against his will, his gaze met hers.

   "Stomald, I-" she said, then shook her head and said something else. She
   spoke to herself, in her own language, the one she spoke to the Angel
   Sandy and their champions. Stomald couldn't understand her words, but he
   recognized a curious finality, an edge of decision, and his heart hammered
   as she drew him over to a stool. He sat upon it at her gesture,
   uncomfortable, as always, at sitting in her presence, and she drew a deep,
   deep breath.

   "I do care for Sean, very much," she told him. "He's my brother."

   "Your-?" Stomald gaped at her, trying to understand, but his mind refused
   to work. He'd speculated, dreamed, hoped, yet he'd never quite dared
   believe. Lord Sean was mortal, however he might have been touched by God,
   yet if he was her brother, if mortal blood could mingle with the angels',
   then-

   "It's time you knew the truth," she said quietly.

   "The . . . the truth?" he repeated, and she nodded.

   "There's a reason Sandy and I have tried to insist that you not treat us
   as angels, Stomald. You see, we aren't."

   "Aren't?" he parroted numbly. "Aren't . . . aren't what, My Lady?"

   "Angels." She sighed, and her expression shocked him. She was staring at
   him, her remaining eye soft, as if she feared his reaction, but he could
   only stare back. Not angels? That was . . . it was preposterous! Of course
   they were angels! That was why he'd preached their message to his people
   and the reason Mother Church had loosed Holy War upon them! They had to be
   angels!

   "But-" The word came out hoarse and shaking, and he wrapped his arms about
   himself as if against a freezing wind. "But you are angels. The miracles
   you've worked to save us, your raiment-the things we've all seen Lord Sean
   and Lord Tamman do at your bidding-!"

   "Aren't miracles at all," she said in that same soft voice, as if pleading
   for his understanding. "They're-oh, how can I make you understand?" She
   turned away, folding her arms below her breasts, and her spine was ramrod
   stiff. "We . . . can do many things you can't," she said finally, "but
   we're mortal, Stomald. All of us. We simply have tools, skills, you don't,
   yet if you had those tools, you could do anything you've seen us do and
   more."

   "You're . . . mortal?" he whispered, and even through the whirlwind
   confusion uprooting all his certainty, he felt a sudden, soaring joy.

   "Yes," she said softly. "Forgive me, please. I . . . I never meant to
   deceive you, never meant-" She broke off, shoulders shaking, and his heart
   twisted as he realized she was weeping. "We never wanted any of this to
   happen, Stomald." Her lovely voice was choked and thick. "We only . . . we
   only wanted to get home, and then I ran into Tibold, and he shot me and
   brought me back to Cragsend, and somehow it all-"

   She shook her head fiercely, and turned back to face him.

   "Please, Stomald. Please believe we never, ever, meant to hurt anyone. Not
   you, not your people, not even the Inner Circle. It just . . . happened,
   and we couldn't let the Church destroy you for something we'd caused!"

   "Get home?" Stomald rose from the stool and crossed to stand directly
   before her, staring into her tear-streaked face, and she nodded.
   "Home . . .  where?" he asked hesitantly.

   "Out there." She pointed at the sky invisible beyond the roof of the tent,
   and for just an instant sheer horror filled the priest. The stars! She was
   from the stars, and the Writ said only the demons who had cast Man from
   the firmament-

   Sick panic choked him. Had he done the very thing the Inner Circle charged
   him with? Had he given his allegiance to the Great Demons who sought only
   the destruction of all God's works?

   But then, as quickly as it had come, the terror passed, for it was
   madness. Whatever else she might be, the Angel Harry-or whoever she truly
   was-was no demon. He'd seen too much of her pain among the wounded and
   dying, too much gentleness and compassion, to believe that. And the Writ
   itself said no demon, greater or lesser, could speak the Holy Tongue, yet
   she spoke it to him every day! All his life, Stomald had been taught the
   inviolability of the Writ, but now he faced a truth almost more terrifying
   than the possibility that she might actually be a demon, for if she came
   from the stars, the Writ said she must be a demon, and yet the Writ also
   proved she couldn't be one.

   He felt the cornerstone of his life turning under his feet like wet,
   treacherous sand, and fear washed through him. But even as that fear
   sought to suck him under, he clung to his faith in her. Angel or no, he
   trusted her. More than trusted, he admitted to himself. He loved her.

   "Tell me," he begged, and she stepped forward. She rested her hands on his
   shoulders and gazed into his face, and he felt his fear ease as her
   fingers squeezed gently.

   "I will. I'll tell you everything. Some of it will be hard to understand,
   maybe even impossible-at first, at least-but I swear it's true, Stomald.
   Will you trust me enough to believe me?"

   "Of course," he said simply, and the absolute certainty in his tone was
   distantly surprising even to him.

   "Thank you," she said softly, then drew a deep breath. "The first thing
   you have to understand," she said more briskly, "is what happened-not just
   here on Pardal, but out there, as well-" her head jerked at the tent roof
   once more "sixteen thousand of your years ago."

                                     * * *

   It took hours. Stomald lost count of how many times he had to stop her for
   fuller explanation, and his brain spun at the tale she told him. It was
   madness, impossible, anathema to everything he'd ever been taught . . . 
   and he believed every word. He had no choice, and a raging sense of wonder
   mingled with shock and the agonizing destruction of so much certainty.

   "  . . . so that's the size of it, Stomald," she said finally. They sat on
   facing stools, and the candles had burned low in the lanterns set about
   the tent. "We never meant to harm anyone, never meant to deceive anyone.
   We tried to tell you Sandy and I weren't angels, but none of you seemed
   able to believe it, and if we'd insisted and shattered your cohesion when
   the Church was determined to kill you all because of something we'd
   started-" She shrugged unhappily, and he nodded slowly.

   "Yes, I can see that." He rubbed his thighs, then licked his lips and
   managed a strained smile. "I always wondered why you and the An-why you
   and Sandy insisted that we not call you 'angel' when we spoke to you."

   "Can . . . can you forgive us?" she asked quietly. "We never wanted to
   insult your beliefs or use your faith against you. Truly we didn't."

   "Forgive you?" He smiled more naturally and shook his head. "There's
   nothing to forgive, My Lady. You are who you are and the truth is the
   truth, and if the Writ is wrong, perhaps you are God's messengers. From
   what you say, this world has spent thousands upon thousands of years blind
   to the truth and living in fear of an evil that no longer exists, and
   surely God can send whomever He wishes to show us the truth!"

   "Then . . . you're not angry with us?"

   "Angry, My Lady?" He shook his head harder. "There are many parts of your
   tale I don't understand, but Lady Sandy was right. Once events had been
   set in motion, I and all who followed me would have been destroyed by
   Mother Church without your aid. How could I be angry at you for saving my
   people? And if the Writ is wrong, then the bishops and high-priests must
   learn to accept that, as well. No, Lady Harry. I don't say all our people
   could accept what you've told me. But the day will come when they can, and
   will, know the truth, and when they are once more free to travel the stars
   without fear of demons and damnation, they will no more be angry with you
   than I could ever be."

   "Stomald," she said softly, "you're a remarkable man."

   "I'm only a village under-priest," he objected, uncomfortable and yet
   filled with joy by the glow in her eye. "Beside you, I'm an ignorant child
   playing in the mud on the bank of a tiny stream."

   "No, you're not. The only difference between us is education and access to
   knowledge your world denied you, and I grew up with those things. You
   didn't, and if our positions were reversed, I doubt I could have accepted
   the truth the way you have."

   "Accepted, My Lady?" He laughed. "I'm still trying to believe this isn't
   all a dream!"

   "No, you're not," she repeated with a smile, "and that's what makes you so
   remarkable." Her smile turned suddenly into a grin. "I always wondered how
   Dad really felt when Dahak started explaining the truth about human
   history to him. Now I know how Dahak must've felt making the explanation!"

   "I should like to meet this 'Dahak' one day," Stomald said wistfully.

   "You will," she assured him. "I can hardly wait to take you home and
   introduce you to Mom and Dad, as well!"

   "Take . . . ?" He blinked at her, then stiffened as she reached out and
   cupped the side of his face in those steel-strong, moth-gentle fingers.

   "Of course, Stomald," she said very, very softly. "Why do you think I
   wanted to tell you the truth?"

   He stared at her in disbelief, and then she leaned forward and kissed him.

    

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                                                                       Framed