Easy to Be a God, page 36
“I am Hen Ra-Yan, the god coming from the dark abyss, where the suns pale and the stars fade out. From now on, you have to worship me, as the Spirits of the Mountains, the Plains, and the Waters already do. I defeated Kored and Thub, but haven’t broken their discs as they did with Yabha, so that they are able to bestow life-giving warmth upon you. Presently, I’ll make Blueblooded go away beyond the Adal Vin, and leave all the lands on this side of the queen of rivers to the clans, where the Warriors of the Bone, to my glory, will again become more numerous than the stars. No one will ever take these plains from you; they will remain yours till the end of time.
“But I forbid you to enter the Gurds’ grounds without their consent. My sacred lightnings will incinerate anyone who breaks the covenant established by me. I am the one who gives and takes life, thus don’t you dare make any offerings of prisoners or nestlings. From now on, the only sacrifices I will accept will be the kotors of the dead and the zregs of the hunted beasts. And now I urge you to depart immediately and put your weapons away.”
At the same time Gurds were absorbing a squeal. It was reaching every soldier and every commander, including the sampo-sithu. However, the words intended for them sounded very different.
“My name is Henryan Darski, I am a human, an intelligent being belonging to another highly developed race, inhabiting distant star systems. I came to you in peace, but when I’ve seen your actions, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I have powers your scientists haven’t yet dreamed of. I tame the suns, I annihilate the planets, I bring whole races to ruin. I will defeat your armies with a single flick of my finger, I will make barren the fields you sow with a single breath, I will crush all the circles that you have built since the beginning of time with a single look. I will do it without hesitation if you don’t obey my orders! Hear, therefore, what my will is:
“You will depart to the other side of the Adal Vin, and you will stay there forever. From now on, the longest river of Suhurta will be an impassable border for you and for the Warriors of the Bone. You have my word that no Suhur touches the southern bank with his claws if you don’t allow him. I will burn to ashes every warrior who opposes me, and I won’t leave a single bone of him that could end up in the clan’s totem. If you don’t listen to me, I will ban you from Suhurta for good, and then I will lead the countless clans to the fertile plains of Gurdu’dihan so that they can turn it into desert. Go away immediately, and you will be spared.”
After these words, strange lightnings began to shoot from the cloudless sky. They struck the water, turning it into steam, hit the ground on both riverbanks away from the armies gathered on them, plowing huge craters and stirring up fires. The sampo-sithu, belonging to the greatest sages of his race, realized immediately that Gurds couldn’t compete with the giants who came from the stars. He also knew that the members of the Supreme Council would share his opinion when they received the detailed reports.
The conquest ended on that day by that river, but not the way it had been planned in the main circle of Gurdu’dihan. The Warriors of the Bone were already retreating to their settlements. Takeli’toko, having no choice, gave the order to retreat and began the long march toward the Adal Vin, so as not to draw the wrath of Humankind on himself.
Both sides won this war, although the absent creator of their success didn’t doubt that it would be a long time before Suhurs and Gurds came to terms with the new reality. Until then—or until people returned to Xan 4—the peace on the planet would be kept by combat satellites, and hundreds of nanocameras connected to them, observing from a low orbit whether both races complied with the conditions of the truce.
The new God was going to make sure that His words weren’t treated as just an idle threat.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Rest assured that Nike Stachursky and Henryan Darski will meet again in further installments of The Fields of Long-Forgotten Battles, and all the subplots will closely entwine eventually. Look out for Book Two in the series. Escape from Paradise is coming soon to a bookstore near you!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I simply can’t help myself and must thank several people who have made the impossible possible.
Dear Reader, you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands, and you wouldn’t have an appetite for more if it weren’t for the great SF masters—Kevin J. Anderson, Jack Campbell, Nancy Kress, late lamented Mike Resnick, and David Weber—who all were kind enough to read Easy to Be a God, made helpful comments and praised my work. Thank you, Kevin, Jack, Nancy, Mike, and David!
David French, let me express my appreciation for your craft and talent. My original work very much benefited from your skills, especially in creating neologisms which are essential in science fiction. I have no doubt that clone-of-a-bitch will become a part of the vernacular.
Also, I am immensely grateful to MaryJane Stricklin for her positive opinion on Book One of the series, my two eagle-eyed proofreaders: Aysha Rehm and Angela Grant, for an excellent job they’ve done, Marie Whittaker’s for her commitment throughout the whole book production process, Michelle Corsillo for making it happen, and Kevin J. Anderson for his favor and mentorship along the way. Last but not least, I’d like to thank Rebecca Moesta, the good spirit of WordFire Press. Thank you all for the one in a million chance. You’ve given Nike and Henryan a second life, which is more than I could hope for.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert J. Szmidt is a novelist, translator, and a former editor in chief of the following monthly magazines: Video Business, PlayStation Plus, Science Fiction, and Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror—all of which appeared between 1992–2012.
He made his literary debut in the 1980s, then his career path veered into other areas and yet he has never forgotten his roots. At the turn of the century, he went back to writing and founded his by now cult Science Fiction magazine, thus initiating a revival of interest in Polish SF.
He has published more than twenty novels, a few novellas, and over twenty short stories. He’s also made an appearance in a number of anthologies.
A wiz at post-apocalyptic fiction, he is—not without grounds—called the Destroyer of Worlds.
In The Apocalypse According to Sir John, first published in 2003 and in response to its significant popularity reprinted multiple times since, Robert J. Szmidt foretold the Ukraine crisis and its likely consequences.
His other post-apocalyptic fiction works include a novel titled Solitariness of the Angel of Doom, which was written well before McCarthy’s The Road, but in the same vein; its action takes place in the USA and tells the story of the last man on Earth.
In 2015, he revisited the topic of a zombie apocalypse in The Rats of Wroclaw: Chaos. This book is in the vein of Max Brooks’s World War Z; however, Robert J. Szmidt has created totally new zombies, different from George A. Romero’s and Danny Boyle’s. Book 2 of this series—The Rats of Wroclaw: Prison Bars—was published on January 30, 2019, and The Rats of Wrocław: Hospital on July 31, 2019. A 13-episode audio series, with many movie stars, has been created, based on The Rats of Wrocław: Chaos, and it was nominated to EMPiK’s Bestseller Award as one of just five bestselling titles in 2019. Full length audiobooks of The Rats of Wrocław: Prison Bars and The Rats of Wrocław: Hospital were released in January 2022. Book One (The Rats of Wroclaw: Chaos) is going to be published in South Korea in 2023.
His flagship series is a five-part space opera, a huge bestseller in Poland: The Fields of Long-Forgotten Battles, which comprises the following books: Easy to Be a God, Escape from Paradise, Edge of Extinction, Victory or Death, and Asgard’s Last Mission. Due to its huge popularity, the series is continued with further installments: Per Aspera ad Astra (2020) and Pre-emptive Strike (2022.)
He has also written a trilogy for the Metro2033 Universe project set up by Dmitry Glukhovsky: The Abyss, The Tower, and Riese (Book One has been translated into Russian and Hungarian and published both in Russia and Hungary; Book Two is to be released in both languages soon.)
Robert J. Szmidt has traveled widely, crossed three oceans, and visited five continents. He is a prolific translator with a dozen video games as well as almost one hundred books under his belt.
He created two science fiction awards and founded a website (www.fantastykapolska.pl) offering free access to the library counting nearly one thousand Polish SF novels, novellas, and short stories, not unlike Baen.com.
Robert has Austrian and French roots. His paternal great-grandfather was the director of the Warsaw-Vienna Railway at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. His maternal great-grandparents lived near Albi, a well-known town in the south of France.
He is married and lives with his wife in the bucolic region of Poland called the Polish Jurassic Highland, at 1,600 feet above the sea level, where he can admire elegant ammonites in his back yard. He says, “When you commune with the past on a regular basis, you must have your mind on the future—for anyway, a hundred fifty million years is no more than the blink of an eye.”
IF YOU LIKED …
IF YOU LIKED EASY TO BE A GOD, YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY:
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Devils & Black Sheep, A Novel of Wild Space
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Selected Stories: Science Fiction, Volume 1
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OTHER WORDFIRE PRESS TITLES BY ROBERT J. SZMIDT
Escape From Paradise
Edge of Extinction
Victory or Death
Asgard’s Last Mission
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Our list of other WordFire Press authors and titles is always growing. To find out more and to shop our selection of titles, visit us at:
wordfirepress.com
Robert J. Szmidt, Easy to Be a God
