The sun was getting low in the sky, its light diffused by thin, white clouds, as the powerful machine turned against its disk and skimmed the water, steam shooting from its curving exhausts. The prow was in the glaring shape of a hawk; its rotors turned slowly as the jointed wings beat with relentless rhythm. It had no roundels and was by all appearances an Empire ship. We did not raise our own flag but came to a halt as we watched the thing circling us. There was no way we could find cover against its guns now. We hoped they wouldn’t waste fuel or ammunition on people they couldn’t identify.
“Damn!” cursed Oona, looking out and up. “And München not fifty miles from here!” She looked back at the woods. She knew we couldn’t make it. Even if we got there, the ornithopter could burn us out of the forest.
“We’d better keep going,” she ordered. “The town’s our best cover. But don’t go too fast or they’ll know we’re enemies.” At that, the dark bulk of the clanking flying machine flew over again, steam and cinders spewing from those exhausts. Oona smiled and waved at it as it passed so low we could see the mask and goggles of its pilot glaring down at us, the heavy heart of its engine pumping. The ground vibrated as it went over. I held my ears.
Then it was gone, back the way we had come. We picked up speed and entered into the relative safety of a ruined house. That terrible stink of ash and death was everywhere. Nothing was alive. No paper or cloth had survived, so there was no record of what had happened. Just another passing victim of Granbretan’s efforts to bring order to a world it found disorderly and therefore threatening.
“They know we’re here,” said Oona. “So there’s no point in trying to hide at this stage. Lord Renyard, get out of sight as soon as you can. The rest of you look as if you’re setting up camp. If they see we think they’re no threat, they might assume we’re at least neutral!”
The massive, clattering, hissing thing was overhead again, blotting out the sky. Oona waved a second time. This time she was answered by a burst of flame from a turret. The flame splashed against a nearby wall. The air was filled with the smell of burning kerosene.
“Flame cannon,” said Lord Renyard, who automatically lifted me behind him with his powerful paws.
“We’re sitting ducks,” said Lieutenant Fromental. From the depths of a voluminous overcoat he produced a pistol. We had no long-range weapons with which to retaliate.
“It’s almost as if they were tracking us and picked the best place to ambush us,” said Prince Lobkowitz, checking a revolver of his own. “Klosterheim was in Mirenburg! He was able to get word to this aviator!”
“But he won’t want to risk killing me, will he?” I pointed out. “Not if they want me alive.”
It was a good argument, they all agreed. The Kakatanawa prepared their spears and bows. Their expressions told me that if there was any way of destroying a steel ornithopter with those weapons, they would find it!
At Oona’s instructions the Kakatanawa formed a tight circle around me, their war boards used like a Greek shield-wall. Then we watched as the ship took another turn about and again came in low—even lower this time than the last—its huge clawed feet dragging the water and setting up a wake which lapped at the town’s remaining pier. I felt horribly sick. The craft made a third turn and seemed to be preparing to land on the water. I thought it was bound to sink, but maybe it was wide enough and boat-shaped enough to float. Water hissed all around it, and steam shrieked as it spewed from the vents. Then, almost on cue, two more Dark Empire ships came thundering over the horizon, and Oona gave the order to seek any cover we could!
We darted desperately through the ruins. From ahead came a sudden blinding flash. The two aircraft were dropping bombs on us!
Some of the horses were better trained than others and held steady, but most of them bolted, threatening to drag the carriages to destruction. Oona yelled for her men to cut the traces, letting the horses run from the explosions. It probably saved their lives.
More bombs. All around us blazed the same white, blinding light. None of us could see anymore. There was an acrid stink, and my throat began to burn and my eyes water. I blundered on through the confusion. There was shouting and clanking of arms and armor, jingling horse gear, the guttural voices of the Kakatanawa and the Dark Empire pilots yelling through the flares.
In the confusion I lost contact with the others. Now I was really scared and started calling for Oona. I could hear her somewhere nearby. I knew that if I stayed where I was, I might be better off, but it was very hard to do in all that chaos. When I grew dizzy and found it hard to keep my balance I began to realize that they weren’t just using flares. There was something else in those bombs: poison gas.
I tripped. I fell. I tried to get up. I became dizzier. I lost all sense of whether I was rising or falling. From my knees I looked up. Was the brilliant mist clearing? I heard sounds, saw shadows moving. I tried to rise, but I was even weaker. I saw huge, black eyes, a snarling muzzle.
And then I passed out.
PART THREE
THE WHITE WOLF’S SON
Near six foot tall was Lord Rennard,
All dressed in silk and lace,
Walk’d he prowde into the farmer’s yarde
Filled with cunning courtesy and grace.
—“THE BALLAD OF LORD FOXXE"
Coll. Henty, Ballads of Love and War, 1892
From corners four rode our bold heroes
No self or selfish meaning to their muse
To meet again in Mirrensburg
Strong justice there to choose.
—HENSHE, THE GREAT BATTLE OF MIRRENSBURG,
1605
Wheldrake’s tr., 1900
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Across the Silver Bridge that spanned thirty miles of sea came the hordes of the Dark Empire, pigs and wolves, vultures and dogs, mantises and frogs, with armour of strange design and weapons of obscene purpose. And imprisoned in his Globe of Thorns, curled like a foetus in the fluid that preserved his immortality, drifted the great King Huon, all his present helplessness symbolised by his situation. Hatred alone sustained him as he schemed the punishment he would bring upon those who refused the gift of his logic, of his sublime justice. But why could he not contrive to manipulate them as he manipulated the rest of the world? Did some counterforce aid them, perhaps control them in ways he could not? This latter thought the mighty King Emperor refused to tolerate.
—THE HIGH HISTORY OF THE RUNESTAFF
Tr. Glogaeur
I FELT TERRIBLE when I woke up and realized that I was aboard one of the Dark Empire aircraft. The whole thing shuddered and shouted as the metal wings beat at the air and the rotors labored to help keep us aloft. Inside, the ship was much noisier than outside, and the stink of whatever chemicals fired the boilers was very powerful. I found I was not tied up but just very stiff from lying in the cramped space behind one of the pilots’ seats. Two pilots and, I supposed, a gunner and a navigator shared the cockpit. When the unmasked “navigator” turned to look at me, I wasn’t surprised to see Klosterheim.
He sported the air of a man who had seen all his schemes and plans reach fruition. How much had our recent actions actually been manipulated by him and Gaynor? And not only our actions, of course, for there were many players in this game. More, probably, than we knew. Klosterheim and Gaynor had tricked Monsieur Zodiac into pursuing them. Rid of him, at least for the moment, they let us escape from the safety of Mirenburg, then pounced. Surely Prince Yaroslaf hadn’t been in league with them! Yet at that moment everything stank of treachery to me.
Where were my friends? Had they been killed? There wasn’t room for anyone else in the plane’s cabin. Lieutenant Fromental wouldn’t have been able to get in at all.
I felt sick.
I felt awful. Not just physically, from the fumes and cramp, but mentally as well. I wanted to vomit, but if I was going to throw up, it would be, if I could manage it, all over one of my captors. I didn’t say anything, in case I sounded too feeble
, but I glared into Klosterheim’s eyes and was rewarded with a sense of endless vacuum, as if the entire multiversal void were encompassed within that gaunt, unhappy creature. Strangely, I felt a kind of sympathy for him. What must it be like to live with that emptiness?
By now I’d picked up a bit of his history from my friends. If he wasn’t immortal, he had lived for a very long time and survived more than one experience of death, unless, as Prince Lobkowitz had told me, he had an avatar in a number of multiversal realms, who knowingly carried on the agenda of his dead selves. Was that what immortality might be? Not one body living forever, but one personality living through hundreds or millions of versions of the same body? Herr Klosterheim had seen scheme after scheme fail. He had been defeated more than once by those who Prince Lobkowitz had referred to as being on “our side.” Indeed, defeat of one sort or another was almost all he had experienced. Why didn’t he give up?
I think he read something of this in my eyes, for he turned away, muttering and snarling to himself. The ornithopter banked sharply, and for a moment I thought I wasn’t going to be able to keep from throwing up. Then I sank into unconsciousness again.
When I next woke we were on the ground. I was alone. The engines had stopped. I heard distant voices and looked up to see a crow mask peering down at me. I stared back. I tried to hear what was going on outside the cockpit. Klosterheim was talking to someone in the guttural tones of Granbretan, a strange mixture of French and English. I wondered if, at some point, the French had conquered England again and left this language as their heritage. Or was I hearing Norman English from a world where William the Conqueror’s speech had come to dominate Anglo-Saxon rather than compromise with it?
Then Klosterheim and the others came clambering back in. I think we had stopped to refuel.
“What did you do with my friends?” I asked him. I was hoarse. My eyes still burned. I don’t think he even understood my words. He settled himself in his seat as the canopy closed and the pilot began to get the machine’s steam up. The rotors whirred, and the wings began beating as we lumbered up into the air.
After a few minutes in flight the ornithopter banked suddenly, its wings laboring, and I caught the flash of something that could only be the sea, and a wide silver arc which might have been a bridge. I think it was dawn. As the light increased, my eyes hurt even more. Whatever they had gassed us with was powerful stuff.
I think the altitude had something to do with my dizziness, because I soon passed out again, still feeling sick and still determined to vomit, if I could, on Herr Klosterheim.
If this was his last chance to gain whatever it was he wanted, he deserved it, given the cleverness of his deceptions. But needless to say, his success didn’t bode at all well for me.
The journey had already taken more than a day, I guessed. I woke and passed out again intermittently. I did have the momentary satisfaction finally of throwing up over someone’s boots, and by their dull, cracked blackness I have a fairly good idea they belonged to Herr Klosterheim. Of course, given his history, it couldn’t be the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
The last time I woke up, someone or something was lifting me out of the narrow space behind the pilots’ seats. I felt fresh air slap me in the face. I opened my eyes, shaking my head as if I’d surfaced in water. It was dark again but a substantially different kind of darkness. I felt it all around me, populated, unquiet and encroaching. I glimpsed slimy greens and browns, ocher and murky blue, shadows which revealed cruel, mad eyes full of suppressed glee. I had a strong impression of flames billowing black-grey smoke. Suddenly there was a gushing roar, and I was blinded by a light again, though this was a vivid red and yellow flame, almost healthy in comparison to the other.
I heard more oddly accented voices. Klosterheim replied in the same dialect. Grunts, snuffles, barks and growls sounded as if we were in some sort of menagerie. I realized the animal noises came from various masked people who surrounded me, looking down at me. A hand stroked my body, and I shuddered.
A brazen-headed wolf spoke. A familiar voice. “She must not be harmed.”
That, at least, was reassuring.
“Until the time is ready,” the same wolf added. “She must stay a virgin or she’s no use to us at all. The Stone is ours. Our friend has brought us the cups as a sign of his good faith. She’ll bring us the Sword, and the boy will bring us the Staff. But only if we are careful to follow every aspect of the ritual. Blood for blood, cup for cup. The law of like to like …”
“Bah! That’s mere superstition. Her only use is as bait for the albino and his pack.” A high-pitched, unfamiliar yap. They spoke a form of English which was becoming easier to understand.
“They won’t take the bait.” That was Gaynor von Minct. I knew his voice well. “They’ll have guessed what we’re up to.” Cynical, brutal, bleak, its tone mocked his companions. “No, there has to be more to the child’s power.”
“Let us first discover if the worm attracts the fish.” Another voice I didn’t recognize at all, like the sharp hiss of dry leaves. “If it does not, we shall investigate the nature of the worm.”
“Do as you will.” The voice came closer. I opened my eyes and looked into the face of a huge cobra, its stylized mouth open as if to strike, its fangs at least a foot long, its crystalline eyes winking and sparking in the darkness, its metallic scales flashing bright green and red. “Awake, is it, little worm?” This last to me.
“Bugger off,” I shouted. It was the strongest swearword I knew at the time. “You can’t hurt me—”
“Oh, but we can, little worm.” The cobra drew back, threatening to strike me. “We can. It is only our restraint that saves you sweet, exquisite pain. For you have come to the capital of the world’s pain, the land of perpetual torment, where your kind is privileged to know the very rarest of agonies. We possess a special vocation for turning pain into pleasure and pleasure into pain. And we shall turn your courage into the most abject cowardice, believe me.”
He was trying to frighten me, I think, but there wasn’t any real need. I was already so terrified, a false calm had settled over me. It made me appear braver than I was, because I laughed, and the cobra reared back again, raising a green-gauntleted hand, then letting it drop to his side.
“We must not hurt her,” Klosterheim said urgently, “not yet. Not yet.”
“There’s no entertainment in frightening children.” A woman’s voice. I looked for the speaker. A bird in steel, gold and rare gems; a stylized heron. “Your triumph is unseemly, gentlemen.”
“My lady,” returned the cobra, “we are, of course, your servants in this matter. She shall be placed in your charge, as Baron Meliadus has ordered. However, if she fails to bring us our prey, you understand that she will become our property …”
“Naturally. I assure you I have more slaves of her age and sex than I can afford. The war effort has forced us all to make sacrifices.”
“Sacrifices,” repeated the cobra. I expected to see a forked tongue come flicking out of that gaping mouth. He savored the word.
“These days, dear Baron Bous-Junge, it is our duty to make as many as possible,” said the woman. She sounded quite young. Her voice had a cool, mocking edge to it. I think I was more afraid of her than of the others.
They were all wary of her, I could tell. I guessed she was more powerful than the rest of them. I was probably in Granbretan, but of course in those days I knew nothing of their social structure. I had heard that King Huon was hideous and that Baron Meliadus, his chancellor, was ambitiously cruel. Baron Bous-Junge was some sort of court alchemist. Details of their lives were sparse on the Continent. Few of our kind who crossed the Silver Bridge from Karlye to the city they called Deau Vere ever came back to speak of what they had seen.
Intellectually I knew all this, of course, and I seemed to have reached a point where I couldn’t feel any more fear, although there was plenty to be afraid of.
I began to see more details in the gl
oom. The room had a low, domed roof and smelled of something rotten around its edges. In a brazier suspended from the ceiling by brass chains, incense burned with a faint glow. Judging by the waft of musky air, it had only recently been lit. Outlines of armored, beast-masked figures moved around the walls and congregated near the door. The swirl of colors came from the walls, which were made of glass. As I got more used to them I realized we were inside an aquarium. What I was seeing through the glass was liquid and the shadows of water creatures. I thought I glimpsed a mermaid, or something that might have been a shark with arms. I guessed they were genetic experiments or maybe clones gone wrong. What I hadn’t realized was that this was also to be my prison cell!
Von Minct and the others began to talk among themselves. They dropped their voices so I couldn’t hear. I felt they were talking in code. But why would they be doing that here, in their own capital city?
How many elaborate plots, I wondered, were being hatched in Londra? I had the sense that they relished scheming, in spite of the risks! Some people are like that. I was pretty much the exact opposite. I liked everything straightforward and aboveboard, but I suspected that I was going to have to learn a bit of cunning quickly if I had even the slightest chance of surviving. I was probably on my own now, since I couldn’t see that Klosterheim and company would have left Oona, Lobkowitz, Lord Renyard and the rest alive. Monsieur Zodiac had gone off on a wild-goose chase, and everyone else was simply too busy fighting their own particular battles to have much time for me.
I was puzzled why I wasn’t grieving the loss of my friends. In the past I had been upset by a lot less. I suspect when your own life is at stake, you’re inclined to defer emotional outbursts until you can afford them.
I didn’t want to look too closely into the aquarium. I slept again, and when I woke up my eyes had adjusted so that I could simply sit in the middle of that strange, domed room and look at the water swirling and churning with what appeared to be a merman, with a great fishy tail where his feet should be. He put his odd, grey-green face to the glass and peered at me blankly without attempting any kind of communication. When I rose and walked towards him, he darted off. Something with huge teeth and brilliant eyes replaced him in a flash, and I recoiled. I decided to stay in the center of the room and watch. I sat on the floor, although there were plenty of chairs. The chairs were carved with even more grotesque creatures than I saw in the aquarium. I actually felt slightly more secure on the floor. I also had a feeling that it wasn’t only the merman watching me, though what those people thought they could learn from me, I wasn’t altogether sure!