TEXT: BattleCorps
  BIENDIEU
  Annie Reed
  
  BattleCorps
  Biendieu • Page 
  Montag Caves, Northern Continent 
  Farhome 
  The Periphery 
  3 August 2989
  Thunder exploded in a cloudless sky and shook the walls of 
  our tribe’s sleep cave. Dirt rained down on the sleepers huddled 
  around the few coals still glowing in the firepit. The very ground 
  seemed to tremble beneath us as if a great lézard de tonnerre had 
  come to attack us in our home while we slept. 
  The other women screamed and their children wailed as the 
  night sky outside burned brighter than midday. Kathé, my precious 
  child, clutched my arm and buried her head between my breasts. 
  I trembled but did not scream. I held Kathé and comforted her as 
  I sniffed the air for the smell of burning leaves. How close was the 
  fire? Would we have to flee from the smoke and flames?  I smelled 
  only the heavy damp of night air and the fear of my people. 
  No fire. There was no fire.
  What was this strange thunder and light?
  Even as the other women of the tribe looked to me, I looked to 
  the likeness of Biendieu I had painted on the cave wall behind 
  the pallet where Kathé and I slept. Biendieu would save us from 
  whatever lit the sky, as he had saved us many times in the past. 
  Our tribe was worshipful. We wore his symbol on our bodies; the 
  women bore the children of his warriors. We kept his shrine safe 
  from the beasts of this land that would destroy it.
  Mautre, the warrior who had last claimed me and put the seed of 
  Kathé in my belly, ran to me, his torch held high. His eyes seemed 
  wild, and this more than the trembling of the ground and the steady 
  rumbling noise frightened me. I had never see Mautre afraid. He is 
  the strongest warrior of our tribe. I have seen him on the hunt, and 
  I have seen him fight over possession of me. He has never shown 
  fear. Until now.
  He signaled me to follow him. Kathé cried as I untangled her fin-
  gers from the straps of my leather tunique. I kissed the top of her 
  head and tried to smile for her.
  “Maman will be back soon,” I told her. “Ma fille précieuse.”
  I left her on our sleep pallet for Biendieu to protect.
  
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  I had faith in Biendieu. He had chosen me from all our tribe to 
  paint his image and the images of the beasts of the hunt and the 
  fruits of the land. My place among our people was to paint these 
  things so our tribe would prosper. Biendieu would protect his peo-
  ple. Even in the face of Mautre’s fear, I believed. 
  I followed Mautre to the mouth of our sleep cave. Other warriors 
  of the tribe cowered inside the cave’s entrance, hiding behind the 
  boulders that narrowed the opening and protected us from the 
  largest of the terrible beasts that hunt us as surely as we hunt their 
  smaller kin. The warriors’ fear unmanned them. They looked to 
  Mautre for leadership just as I did. 
  Mautre took my hand to lead me outside. Strange light danced 
  across the rocky face of the mountain outside the cave, as if all the 
  torches I had ever seen in my life flickered in the sky at one time. 
  Mautre raised his own torch over our heads, and I saw it.
  Shiny like the surface of water in the still air of early morning, 
  the thing that turned night into bright day passed across the sky 
  overhead. Fire erupted beneath it, long flames that trailed smoke 
  darker and thicker than any fire that had ever raged through the 
  dense jungle at the base of the mountain where we lived.
  As I watched, the thing hovered just over the jagged peak above 
  us, moving slowly toward the jungle in the valley below. Its size 
  was beyond my understanding. It seemed as if a second moon 
  was falling from the sky but was taking great care where it landed. 
  I heard bellows from the jungle, saw the tops of trees bend and 
  sway as the beasts fled from the strange sound and light. Even the 
  mightiest creatures of the land were afraid of this new thing that 
  had come to our world.
  “What is it?” Mautre asked me. 
  I shook my head without looking at him, unable to tear my sight 
  away from the gleaming surface of a moon that wasn’t a moon. 
  “You must know. Biendieu speaks to you.” He shook my arm. 
  “Ask him.”
  Biendieu speaks to me through the images I paint. I am his as 
  much as I am Mautre’s. I have tried to ask things of Biendieu. 
  When my boy child burned with fever and would not eat, I begged 
  Biendieu for mercy. Biendieu gave me Kathé after my boy’s spirit 
  fled his body, but Biendieu did not speak to me.  He has never an-
  swered me. 
  
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  Mautre’s need was intense, and for his sake I tried again. 
  Biendieu’s voice remained silent. I chose to believe it was because 
  Biendieu knew our tribe had nothing to fear. Surely if this thing 
  came to harm us, Biendieu would send us a way to protect our-
  selves.
  We stood at the mouth of the cave, Mautre and I, watching as the 
  thing dropped lower and lower until it reached the tops of the dark 
  carpet of jungle trees a half-day’s walk away. Even at that distance, 
  we could hear it roar as the fires beneath it burned brighter. The 
  trees beneath it caught fire. It dropped down on them, extinguish-
  ing the flames as it destroyed any life that remained beneath its 
  massive bulk.
  Mautre looked at me, spoke to me with his hand of his intention 
  to go closer to the strange object. “I must know if it threatens us, 
  chere,” he said. His eyes were still wide with fear, but his gaze also 
  held determination. 
  I looked at the other warriors huddled like children behind their 
  stone guardians. None would go with Mautre, and he would not 
  make them. 
  I would go.
  I told Mautre this with my hands. He shook his head violently, 
  reminding me of Kathé crouched on our sleep pallet. His hands 
  flashed with the speed of his anger.
  “Biendieu will protect me,” I said. 
  “You are a fool.”
  I turned at the sound of Henré’s raspy voice. Bent with age and 
  leaning on his walking stick, Henré raised one hand and pointed 
  with a misshapen finger at the place where the thing had landed. 
  “Biendieu will not protect you if you go there,” he said. “Do you 
  not recognize it?”
  “Do you know what it is?” Mautre asked Henré much as he had 
  asked me earlier.
  I saw Henré’s son lurking in the shadows behind him, listening. 
  Just as I am the vessel through whom Biendieu speaks to our tribe, 
  the history of our tribe lives on through Henré’s stories. His son 
  will take his place after Henré’s spirit leaves his body, just as I hope 
  Biendieu will speak to Kathé after my spirit has left this world. 
  
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  “It carries invaders from other worlds,” Henré said, the strength 
  of conviction in his ancient voice making his body tremble. “They 
  bring evil to our land. They will corrupt us, turn us away from 
  Biendieu and the traditions of our tribe.”
  Beings from other worlds? Our history tells us that our tribe has 
  not always lived on this world. Biendieu brought us here from an-
  other place to live in this land where no others like ourselves had 
  ever been. In Henré’s stories, the tribes of Biendieu escaped the 
  old world in order to save their spirits.
  “Then Biendieu will protect us from them,” I said.
  “Imbécile,” Henré said again. “You do not listen to the histo-
  ries I tell. Biendieu gave all his scattered tribes this world as our 
  own to keep to his ways. To take only what we need from the 
  land. To live in harmony with all his creatures even if they seek 
  to harm us, for it is their nature to hunt us as it is our nature to 
  hunt them.”
  Henré’s voice became stronger as he spoke. I felt a burning an-
  ger start low in my belly. Biendieu spoke through me, not Henré. 
  “Naturiste,” Henré said. “That is the name Biendieu gave us. If 
  we forsake his ways, he will turn his back on us.”
  “Biendieu expects us to live in harmony with all creatures on our 
  world,” I said. “This includes creatures that come to this world 
  from other places, does it not?”
  Henré glared at me with his old man’s eyes. His face was scarred, 
  his white hair and beard long and thin. I hoped Mautre would have 
  as much fire in him when he reached Henré’s age. I prayed to 
  Biendieu that Mautre would still want me when my hair was white 
  and my hands too bent and misshapen to paint Biendieu’s im-
  age. Mautre’s seed had planted no more children in my belly after 
  Kathé. Any other warrior would have cast me aside to fend for 
  myself and my child.
  “Créatures mauvaises,” Henré said. With his hand, he spoke of an 
  evil that smiled as it corrupted. “That is what waits in the jungle. 
  That is what has come to our world.”
  “I am not a man who hides,” Mautre said. “I will not cower in 
  darkness. If evil has come to corrupt us, I will fight it.”
  In that moment I loved Mautre as I had loved no other man.
  
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  “Biendieu would not want us to hide,” I said. I took Mautre’s hand 
  in mine.
  Henré shook his head at us “Imbéciles.”
  Henré shuffled back into the cave. His son turned to follow, not 
  before he looked fearfully toward the jungle. Henré had planted 
  the fear of whatever had come to our world in his son’s heart. For 
  the first time I wondered if Henré’s fear had been passed down 
  to him from his father and his grandfather before him. Had fear 
  clouded the histories Henré told us? Had Biendieu truly wanted 
  his people to fear beings from other worlds? I did not think so.
  The same fear Henré felt swept through the tribe. Mautre spoke 
  to his frightened warriors, his gestures wide, emphatique, his dark 
  hair wild about his strong face.  I heard whispers among the wom-
  en, caught brief gestures and signals of panic. Children began to 
  cry again, and Kathé ran to me, calling “Maman! Maman!” and 
  clutched me tight. I comforted my daughter, held her, told her I 
  would return with stories of all I had seen. I gave her dried fruit 
  to eat and kissed her. I did not cry as I left her. I would see her 
  again.
  When Mautre and I began the long climb down the mountain 
  from our sleep cave, only four warriors came with us. The sky 
  was brightening with the coming of day, and we left our torches 
  behind. 
  Halfway down the mountain, I turned to look at the rock ledge 
  outside the entrance to the cave. Henré’s son had come out to 
  watch us. I used my hands to tell him to take care of his father, to 
  take care of the tribe. He nodded at me and raised his hand in a 
  gesture of good luck, then disappeared back inside the cave.
  I did not venture into the jungle often, and only then to find the 
  plants and clay I used to paint images on the cave walls. This day 
  with Mautre and his warriors, I went farther into the jungle than I 
  had ever gone in my life. 
  As we walked, the ground gave way from the rocky soil near 
  the base of our mountain to the soft, sucking mud of a riverbank. 
  Forcing my feet to move through it made my body ache and 
  slowed me, and the warriors slowed their pace. Not once did they 
  suggest I return to the sleep cave.
  In the distance, I heard the roars and yowls of striped cats with 
  their long, pointed teeth and claws as sharp as the points of the 
  
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  Biendieu • Page 
  warriors’ spears, and I heard the death screams of the cats’ prey. 
  Birds flew and screeched in the high, leafy branches of the trees 
  over our heads. The constant buzz of insects filled my head with 
  noise, and the putrid odor of a great lézard’s long-dead kill filled 
  my nose.  
  We were far from the safety of the sleep cave. If I did not have 
  such faith in Biendieu, I would have questioned my decision to 
  come with the warriors. I felt exposed in this vast jungle, where 
  I could see nothing but green trees and smell nothing but death 
  and decay around me. I longed to hold Kathé in my arms.
  As the day lengthened, the beasts of the jungle became languid 
  with the heat. I strained to hear any sounds of a great lézard pass-
  ing but I heard only the low grunts and calls of the lézards who eat 
  jungle plants. Mautre pointed out one such young lézard to me 
  as we passed quietly so not to attract the attention of its maman. 
  Had Mautre and his warriors been hunting, the lézard would have 
  made a good kill. Its meat would have fed the tribe for many days. 
  We left it eating beside a pool of water. 
  The light had dimmed with the coming night by the time we 
  neared the place where the great thing from the sky had landed. 
  We smelled the stench of charred trees and rotting things long 
  buried beneath the jungle’s muddy ground stirred to the surface 
  when the thing fell to the earth. Mautre put up his hand, signaled 
  for us to be still.
  That is when I felt it. The trembling of the ground that told us a 
  great lézard de tonnerre was near.
  I felt fear then. We cannot kill a lézard de tonnerre. It stands taller 
  than five of our warriors should they stand on each other’s shoul-
  ders. It can shred a man with teeth longer than the bones of my 
  legs. It can run on two legs faster than a man, and our warriors’ 
  spears are nothing but an annoyance to it. To be caught in the 
  open by a lézard de tonnerre means death.
  Mautre pushed me behind the thick trunk of a marais tree. I saw 
  the other warriors seek shelter. Mautre covered me with his body, 
  his spear held at the ready. The muddy ground beneath my feet 
  trembled again and again, and now I heard the beast’s great roar. 
  I closed my eyes and covered my ears lest I cry out my fear. 
  Trees crashed to the ground as the lézard de tonnerre burst into 
  the place where we hid. I opened my eyes in time to see the beast 
  lunge forward and catch one of the warriors in its great mouth. 
  
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  Biendieu • Page 
  The man screamed as he was lifted into the air. I watched him 
  spear the lézard de tonnerre’s neck, but then the lézard bit down 
  and the man was no more. 
  I screamed. 
  The beast turned its giant head toward where I crouched in fear. 
  I babbled incoherent prayers to Biendieu, pleading for our safety. 
  Mautre stepped forward between me and the beast even as 
  the lézard de tonnerre opened its mouth and roared. The foul 
  stench of its breath washed over us. I knew I was going to die. 
  My arms ached with the thought that I would never hold Kathé 
  again.
  The ground shook beneath me then as it never has before. I heard 
  a great crashing of many trees and a sound I have never heard – a 
  whoosh and hum that filled my head. Red-tinged lightning speared 
  through the trees and struck the lézard de tonnerre in its side. It 
  screamed in pain and turned toward its attacker. More bolts of 
  lightning struck it. It staggered under the onslaught. I smelled its 
  burning flesh.
  With one last gasping roar, the lézard de tonnerre fell to the 
  ground. Mud and broken trees and rotting leaves splashed us 
  where we hid. We waited, but the lézard lay still. It was dead and 
  we still lived.
  Biendieu had answered my prayers. He had spoken to me as 
  surely as if his voice had sounded in my head.
  I grasped Mautre’s hand and he pulled me to my feet. The re-
  maining warriors had approached the lézard de tonnerre, poking it 
  with their spears to assure themselves it was truly dead. We froze 
  as the ground shook again and a great shadow fell over us.
  The warriors dropped their spears and fell to their knees, their 
  heads bent, hands clasped in supplication. Mautre gripped my 
  hand painfully and pulled me to him as we both looked at the be-
  ing that had killed the lézard de tonnerre.
  He towered over us, his shining head squat on broad shoulders 
  that rose above the tallest jungle tree. He had two arms and walked 
  on two legs like a man, but his legs were thick columns of metal 
  that gleamed like the walls of his shrine. His arms did not end in 
  five-fingered hands, but in fists of metal that clutched what I knew 
  to be weapons.
  
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  Biendieu • Page 
  I did not fear this being as the warriors did. I had painted his im-
  age on the walls of our cave, engraved his likeness on the skin of 
  the people of our tribe. We have kept his shrine for untold genera-
  tions, waiting for the day of his return. I have prayed to him. At 
  long last, he has answered my prayers by returning to his people.
  Henré was wrong. Biendieu did not want us to remain cowering 
  in our sleep cave. He wanted us to come out and greet him.
  I have looked upon my god.
  Biendieu has returned.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/BattleTech [multi]/EXTRA/Novels/Battlecorps Novels/Biendieu - Annie Reed.pdf