Martyr (The Martyr Trilogy) by N.P. Beckwith

have angered your god.”
     
    “Oh,
you think?” she said.  “I told you to listen.”
     
    “I
did!  I mean, at first.  But he was being incredibly vague, and I have so many
very specific questions.  Don’t I have the right to know why I am here, and
what is being asked of me?”
     
    “You’re
right,” she said.  “You do, of course.  All of this happened so fast, we are
all still trying to figure out how to react to your presence here.  And this is
so hard for me, especially.  Don’t you realize…no, of course you don’t. 
Ta…Justin.  It’s painful for me to even look at you…I…  I’m sorry, I really
am.  You can’t be expected to understand.  But it’s also not fair to deprive
you of knowledge this way.” She began to bring her mount to a slow trot.  “So
at the risk of my own emotional well-being…”  With a flick of both her wrists,
the creature assumed the dismounting stance once again.  “I think it’s time for
a little history lesson.”  She muttered something to the animal then.  It
sounded something like, “Muur-puurrha”, but it came from deep in Reya’s
throat. 
     
    At
first I only heard a sort of hum, like the sound heard while walking under
high-voltage power lines.  Then I thought I saw little sparkling lights before
my eyes.  No, not before my eyes precisely, but between the many prongs of our
mount’s antlers.  Thousands of tiny sparks, and a crackling sound joined the
hum.  Then, it seemed as though the air between us and the animal began to
shimmer and take on a different aspect.  A sphere roughly two meters in
diameter hovered in the air before us, essentially green with forms moving
within.  Suddenly I had a nauseous feeling, of a rapid change in perspective as
if accelerating toward that sphere.  It grew to envelop me, and then there was
no more Reya or beast, only the emerald of a dew-sprinkled hillside. 
     
    From
uphill to my left, dozens of men and women rushed down the slope.  They were
dressed much like the people of Reya’s camp, in soiled and well-worn clothes
and scraps of makeshift armor.  They carried melee weapons of equally mundane
origin: garden rakes, pruning shears, sharpened handles of push-brooms and
mops…I even thought I saw a hockey stick in one pair of hands.  I directed my
view downward and to my right, and saw that they advanced upon a mass of
figures that held their position at the base of the hill.  These others were
noticeably better equipped, wearing uniform, darkly-colored outfits with only a
splash of crimson at the left shoulder.  They all brandished the same sort of
bladed staffs.  At a shouted command from somewhere unseen, these soldiers
assumed a series of neat rows and positioned their weapons to meet the
onrushing horde.
     
    For
a series of breathless moments, the troops to my left appeared to be frozen in
the instant before the inevitable clash with the army below.  Then motion and
volume returned in force; the shouts of individual combatants pierced by the
spine-shattering screech of steel-on-steel, the sickly-hollow thud of blunted
tool against poorly-protected skull.  Wave after wave of hapless and
ill-prepared troops flung themselves down the hillside, and most of them met a
speedy end at the tips of the enemy’s weapons.  Occasionally someone would
breach the enemy line for a moment, and the thick line of dark soldiers would
realign itself, new members pouring into the gaps.  The effect was like a
great, thick, dark serpent healing itself after each insult, repositioning
scales to cover areas of exposed flesh.  Or like rows of shark’s teeth, new
ones quickly pushed forward to replace those lost or damaged. 
     
    I
heard a shout from high above to my left, and squinted in the brilliant
sunlight to see the form of a great white steed and its rider high on the
hilltop.  The valkyrie that issued the shout was Reya, and at a command she was
flanked on either side by two neat rows of