The Judge of Ages
The Warlock said, “Call me Mickey. It’s shorter.”
The dull and benumbed face did not change, but there was a note of anger and astonishment in the voice then: “So! He did give you a nickname, eh? And now you are ready to defy me and die for him. Why? You find his hillbilly hospitality, American swell-headedness, and Yankee crudeness so charming?”
Menelaus muttered, “Hey! Texan. Ain’t no damn Yankee.”
The cold voice from the pale face said to Mickey, “The tiny changes you have made to your cellular and neural constitution to allow you to control Moreaus; or turn fat cells instantly to muscle mass, when you need strength, or nutriment, when you are fasting, and turn them back to totipotent fat cells again—it is a clever system for an amateur! You have so much flesh to spare that you can even let a dog bite your blubbery arse, and turn the fat in its mouth into rabies-bearing toxins, and turn other fat cells immediately to the wound to replace the lost mass, and the next day, no one will even see a scar. And you smile as men mock you for your obesity, because what they think is overindulgence is actually your arsenal. But such tricks are child’s play compared to what I offer. I am willing to give you power, secret and hermetic knowledge, power over life and death. Why do you turn to him over me?”
Mickey said, “You can give me power, Great and August and Darkest Master of the World, for the world is yours to give. But the Judge of Ages can give me hope, for hope rests in the future ages yet to be, and the future is his to give.”
“Bah! Clover—what say you? Each man who has served me, I have granted a thousand years, to work his will as he will. Return to my service, and I will grant you twice and more that I grant any man.”
Oenoe shook her head and lowered her lashes, but did not part her lips, and would not look at Rada Lwa, nor speak to Exarchel.
And since the talking boxes translated this, Mickey the Witch said, “Great and August and Darkest Master of the World! You are a superior form of being to me, posthuman and beyond life and death, a pure spirit in a machine! You are like a god of the upper world who eats ambrosia and drinks nectar and does not die. But men who live in the middle earth above the netherworld and below the heavens, we men who eat bread and drink wine and die, at times it is given us to know what you cannot.
“Such a time is now. I know this: The Swan Princess Rania fled your embrace and cleaves to the Judge of Ages because of the beautiful unreason of hope that burns in him. You seek safety in servitude, and therefore have the soul of a slave, because you have no hope.”
2. Second Versus Second
No change touched the white and masklike face, but now the voice grew cool and still. It was not trembling and raging with anger, no, but the anger was so great that, like the spoke of a wheel spinning so fast that it turns invisible, the hints of all emotion left the voice, and the stillness of a vast and inhuman wrath filled that absence.
“On to our final business! Since you have rendered me unable to continue our duel, Montrose, due to, well, call it hysterical blindness, therefore I call my Second to stand in my place. I assume you are objecting on some legal technicality that there is a battle going on between dogs and Witches only a few yards away? But I cannot hear your words, so we can disregard these niceties. I am not as honor-bound as my flesh and blood half. I merely want you killed.
“But the proceedings will not be interrupted! I have established an effect which will work through the nerve cluster gates the foolish Blue Men have so thoughtfully installed in everyone’s nervous system, so that this part of the chamber will be a blind spot to everyone fighting and dying yonder. Naturally, I prepared something more subtle than merely radio waves to trigger it, and not so easily blocked. No one standing off this dais can see or hear anyone on it. It is based on a similar principle to the trick you played on me—I trust you see the humor. Behold: here is my champion.”
The ventilation hummed, and the clouds of poison parted. Up the corridor of clear air strode Alpha Yuen, still wearing a bandage over one eye, and still with the named weapon Arroglint writhing and shimmering in his hand.
The cool, mesmeric voice of Exarchel drawled, “Ah, of course, let me not overlook to mention. In addition to the prisoners and spies and saboteurs against the Tombs you gathered here, there are also those of this category: Chimerae and others who are angered that the Judge of Ages saw fit to destroy their civilization, and who have vowed to find and slay you.”
Yuen, almost casually, flexed his whip. “Ah, race enemies!” he said, his one eye hot and unwinking with steadfast hate. “A Witch who tried to strangle us in our cradle, and a Nymph who did poison us in our dotage. Yours is no part of this, under-creatures.”
Yuen twisted his wrist. The whip elongated suddenly, at one blow striking Mickey painfully in the face, cutting him, and Oenoe in the buttocks and upper legs. Both were thrown by the force of the blow to the ground, and their limbs jerked and trembled as if with a potent electric shock. Oenoe lay draped in soft curves on the floor, Mickey as a heap of sagging bulk: both were breathing but unable to rise.
Menelaus looked at the young, strong, deadly half-animal man, and then looked down at his own maimed and bleeding feet and burned legs. He had lost his pistols and his cloak of tent material.
Menelaus said in Chimerical, “Alpha Yuen. Um. Good to see you again. Listen, I do not have my rock, and I am feeling a little under the weather right now, so maybe was can postpone this until—how does Sunday after next sound?”
Yuen did not pause to answer, but flicked his weapon into the shape of a spear, and drove it toward the chest and heart of Menelaus. Menelaus could out-think the Chimera, but could not match his reaction time. He jerked his body down, so that the tip of the spear entered the fleshy part of his shoulder rather than piercing him through the heart. A galvanic shock threw him flopping to the ground. As he fell, the spear tip brushed past his throat, and would have neatly sliced his jugular, except that this was one of the spots Mickey had inexpertly slathered with anti-burn cream, which had hardened into a thick and stiff integument, which happened to be thick enough not to part under the scalpel-fine stroke of the spearblade.
“Your rock!” screamed Yuen. “The bit of common stone you used, first, to mock our ancient and solemn practice of naming inhabited weapons, so that we will be ennobled to think of honor more long-lasting and more dignified than our own; and, second, that you used to draw down the scorn of Lady Ivinia on us! Her words have burned in my brain every second, waking and dreaming, since that hateful moment! If he can slay the foe with a stone, it were shame indeed should higher men and better armed do less.”
“You still fretting and fussing about a little dressing-down from some officer’s wife who ain’t even your regular chain of command? Plague and damnation, but you are downright petty, ain’t you, Yuen?”
Yuen struck him with the metal whip hard enough to roll him down one and two stairs of the dais, so that now Menelaus came to rest facedown near the powered barding shaped like a metal horse. Menelaus, struggling, his face drawn, heaved himself up to a half-kneeling position, but his arms trembled and his elbows shook.
Yuen sneered, “No, you will have no weapon, rock-bearer, named or unnamed; for this is not a duel, nor even an execution. I do not consider you human. This is to be a slaughter. You cannot defeat me twice. This time, there is no cleverness of dangling rope, no cunning words. You are out of tricks.”
“Smells of hell, Yuen! I got one trick left. And here he comes.”
Out from the curtain of poisonous cloud now strolled Soorm the Hormagaunt, his nostrils pinched shut, licking the cakes of blood off his fur with the longer of his two tongues, and using his other tongue to wipe his mismatched eyeballs free of lachrymal agents, so the black gas did not blind him.
Once inside the clean air, he opened his nostrils and drew in a deep breath.
Rada Lwa, on the throne, raised one of the pistols. Soorm held up a webbed hand and shouted, “Nobilissimus, if you please!”
 
; The voice from the mouth of Rada Lwa said, “I am tickled you recall my old title, Marsyas! You can detect the traffic volume entering and leaving this body, and so you know it is I. Clever.”
Soorm said, “As sole remaining affiliate of the Special Advocacy of the World Concordat, are you not my Advocate now? May I speak? I claim the gentle right!”
The voice of the Machine said, “Since I never formally abdicated any of those positions or titles, it would be small-souled indeed of us now to repudiate the obligations of the title. I grant you leave to address us. Utter your petition.”
“As the Second for the challenged party, I serve notice that he is wounded in the feet and legs, and is unable to proceed. Therefore I take his place in the lists. He had no weapons in his hands: I will continue for him under the same disadvantage.” And so saying, Soorm stepped between Yuen and Menelaus.
Rada Lwa’s hand put down the pistol. “That is also clever. Had Reyes y Pastor not betrayed the Table Round, you would, even now, as his squire, be found worthy of his place. So, proceed! However the scene plays out, as long as Menelaus Montrose is dead at the finale, I am content. Yuen, if you please?”
The telescopic rod struck Soorm in chest, and the spearpoint tore fur and flesh, but bounced off the hardened bone integument hidden like a bulletproof vest beneath a coat; nor did the jolt of electrical force do anything but make the Hormagaunt laugh. Soorm jumped forward, swift as a bear, and whirled and drove at Yuen with his scorpion tail.
Yuen was fleeter of foot than Soorm, a cheetah to a bear. So the young man merely danced aside, and struck Soorm in the anus when he attacked with his tail, drawing blood. Soorm kicked like a mule, and his foot would have broken a wooden beam had it landed, and the spur on his foot would have severed a silk scarf floating in midair had it made contact. But Yuen merely skipped aside, folded his weapon to a short baton, and struck Soorm on his exposed knee. On the backstroke the baton opened into a cutting blade which would have hamstrung that leg, had Soorm’s hamstrings been in their accustomed place. Instead the blade tip scraped bone, drawing more blood but doing no real harm.
Yuen backpedaled, and switched targets. He lashed his whip over Soorm, past the streamlined, sea lion head, and drove the sharpened tip at Menelaus, who was beyond.
Menelaus, as if he had anticipated the location of the incoming blade perfectly, caught it in his hand before it could stab him, but the electric shocks froze his muscles, and the whip end curled twice and thrice around his wrist and forearm, throwing him to the ground hard enough to break bone. His right arm snapped and was useless.
Soorm roared and grabbed at the whip, which spun over and under him out of his grasp like a grotesque mockery of a jump rope, while the far end of the metal whip continued to twist the broken arm bones of Menelaus further and further out of place, meanwhile burning him with shocks.
The midsection of the metal whip writhed, and threw a loop around the head of Soorm, lassoing him at the neck, snapping shut like a garrote. A breathing hole like the vent of a dolphin hidden between the shoulder blades of Soorm now opened, blowing and gasping, and at the same time, his streamlined head pulled itself down between his shoulders like the head of tortoise in an impossible contortion of muscles where there should have been no muscles. Since the planes of his neck were larger than the width of his jaw, and since he had grown boney plates under his fur around his throat like a gorget, the strangling noose simply slipped up along the earless slope of his skull and over the tip of his nose. The electrical jolt Yuen flashed at him Soorm absorbed into his Sach’s organ and electric eel receptors. But when Yuen jerked the body of Menelaus toward him, Soorm was struck from behind in the legs, and both men fell down again, and a loop of the whip entwined their midsections as they rolled and fell. The whip loops tied them together in an ungainly heap.
Yuen laughed without smiling.
The tip of the whip rose up like a hooded cobra, sharpened into a dagger point, and drove in. It struck the hand of Soorm, who had placed his great webbed hand over the chest above the heart of Menelaus to protect it. The snakelike whip head drew back, yanking the bleeding webbed claw of Soorm back with it by means of barbs through the wound, and another loop of whip snared the mighty wrist and held it back. The knifeblade, buzzing, darted back down, now that the target of the heart was free of obstruction …
At that moment came a noise from the suit of powered horse armor, which was behind Yuen.
The long skirts of the armor stirred, and the rump section of the armor folded out, revealing a large empty cavity within, a place of straps and tubes and pads meant to form a cocoon around the body of a steed trained to use cybernetics. Instead there was inside a smaller body. A dark, grinning, sly-eyed blond-haired man with braid-covered overalls, now sadly torn. In his hand was a short, hooked hoof-knife from the saddlebag.
Larz silently and swiftly jumped from behind at Yuen, who slid gracefully to one side, retracting the whip (sending Menelaus and Soorm spinning, but releasing them from the metal coils) and lashing it over his back without looking, to smash the legs of Larz as if with a flail, thus to break them both and to topple him prone; and in a smooth continuation of the same motion, Yuen brought his whip down in its stiffened spear-shape and threw it into Larz, pinning him to the floor panels. The serpentine passed just under his ribs, through lung tissue, intestine, and kidney, and out his back near his spine. Then jolts of electricity made Larz spasm and jerk, which made the hole penetrating his intestines tear even larger.
Yuen grimaced, his one eye glittering. The buzzing burning grew greater, and Larz convulsed like a man in an electric chair. “The death must be slow, slow! You dare above your station, to handle the sacred Named weapon of the Extet Clan!”
Then Soorm let out a loud blatt of flatulence.
Yuen looked up, more shocked than angry at the crudeness of the noise. Soorm had regained his feet, and was holding one paw before his muzzle, and was biting on his thumb—a gesture whose meaning Yuen did not know.
“’Scuze me!” Burped Soorm. “Must have been someone I ate. Say, Yuen! But isn’t killing that Donor pointlessly cruel? Not to mention a waste of good organ stock if you kill ’em with shocks. You want the heart to be reusable. Judge of Ages! Tell him what I just said.”
In gasps of pain, Menelaus repeated it.
Yuen measured the distance between himself and Soorm. Soorm was just out of whip range, and it was too far for Soorm, even with his powerful legs, to leap. Behind Soorm, Menelaus, on his knees, and using only one hand, was crawling up the dais toward the throne, where Rada Lwa sat, pale face still dead and dull; but now the rest of the body was strangely motionless, as if the albino saw and heard nothing.
Yuen saw no threat. The painful one-handed crawl was glacially slow. Yuen could throw Arroglint as a javelin into Menelaus, or merely walk over and kick him to death. Soorm could not move fast enough to prevent Yuen from dancing around him and killing Menelaus.
He turned the matter over in his mind. There was no reason not to linger over the death of Kine Larz, and slay Menelaus at his leisure. He returned to his entertainment of sending electric shocks into the face and groin of Larz, and kicking the broken legs to break them in more places, and grind the bone ends together.
Yuen said, “Anubis, or Judge of Ages, or whatever your name is, tell this freakish abomination I will deal with him soon enough! I need no words from him.”
Menelaus, coughing in agony, did not translate the comment. The tone of voice was clear.
Soorm sidled closer, head hunkered down, shark-toothed mouth grinning, scorpion tail lashing. Yuen pouted, because now he had to leave aside Larz and see to this slow beast.
Yuen put one foot on the neck of Larz and readied his weapon, shifting it to a formation called hook-and-ball, where the midsection was pliant, but the grip curled into a heavy knot of metal, and the foible sharpened itself into a cruel hooked sickle. Yuen assumed the traditional first stance for this form, hook before him and ball whirli
ng as a circle of steel above his head. Such was the splendor and terror of his face and form, so graceful was he, and so dreadful in his war-fury, that he could have been the idol of a young war god sprung to life.
Soorm stopped, took a step back, stretched, yawned, and then slouched. He sat on the ground. While Yuen looked on in puzzled disbelief, Soorm picked his nostril with a clawed pinky, and then he burped so loudly (opening his fanged mouth wide enough that both tongues could be seen, and a web of saliva hanging between then) that even from several feet away, Yuen smelled it. Soorm then flicked the snotty drip from his nose so it landed on Yuen’s hand. Yuen dared not release his grip to wipe the offensive fleck away, but he said, “For that insult, you shall die!”
Soorm spoke in an easy, conversational tone, “Alpha Yuen, I am wowed. An army of men like you, armed with weapons like that—no wonder you took over the world! You are a really good fighter. Quick on your feet and everything. Good design on your biotechnology. Except for your microscopic pore defenses against neurotoxins. Do you have anything to block your skin and mucus membrane receptors? You know, little teeny tiny machines that mate to molecules based on their shape, and prevent really tiny deadly biological materials from entering your system, and sending false signals to your brain, heart, other organs, telling them to shut down? No, I guess not. That would be something that is, what, maybe two thousand years more advanced than anything you culls with your stabby weapons you have to hold in your hands could dream of? Weapons you can see with your brother-loving naked eye? Hah! What’s the matter? Do you feel a little faint?”