Stiletto

  Ernst and Gerd were a little surprised that they weren’t immediately invited to Madrid to receive the kingdom’s highest honors or at least asked to see if they couldn’t do something about the king’s multiple disorders, but they shrugged. The promise of unbelievably lavish (if somewhat vague) rewards was sufficient incentive.

  Overnight, the Broederschap’s priorities shifted from general research to offensive applications. They were tasked with producing soldiers who could shrug off musket balls (or cannonballs, for that matter) without breaking stride. Soldiers who could build an empire.

  The scientists set to work with a will. They had, of course, already done some exploration in this arena. The brotherhood’s estates were guarded by the world’s most terrifying watchdogs, and any ruffian who laid hands on one of their modified guards would have really regretted it—in the few moments before he was torn into little pieces. However, now the project consumed all their attention. The governor-general provided men, the sort of men who were willing to go under the knife, and the saw, and the chisel, and then spend several days in a sarcophagus of slime in exchange for might and future wealth. A general was appointed, a professional killer from outside the Broederschap whose loyalty to the governor-general was unquestioned and who had been promised unbelievably lavish rewards of his own.

  In their workshops, Ernst and Gerd’s fleshwrights created troops who would be unstoppable.

  Each soldier was unique, a bespoke warrior equipped with living armaments. The troops were designed to operate in all conditions and to withstand all known weapons. Above all, they were designed to terrify, with all the artistry and cunning that the Broederschap could muster. An army of nightmares, led by a monstrous general whose new modifications gave him the appearance of having crawled out of hell.

  This was strength that positively cried out to be used (especially after the labor of creating them had been so incredibly expensive), but the Grafters were still cautious, and, above all, they were scientists. They needed a proving ground, a contained area in which to test their strength. And so the Broederschap turned its eyes across the North Sea to the British Isles, with the avaricious blessing of Carlos de Aragón de Gurrea, who saw this as the ideal place from which to launch a conquest.

  In 1677, the army of the Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen marched out of the waters of the British Channel onto the shores of the Isle of Wight. Van Suchtlen and de Leeuwen were present, but only as observers—it had been made very clear to them that the general appointed by Carlos de Aragón de Gurrea was in command. And so, mounted on creatures that might once have been horses, the cousins observed as the invading warriors brushed away the musket fire of the English soldiers stationed there. Then, at a signal from their commander, the Grafter troops briskly slaughtered their opponents and set about conquering the island. Against such an army, no earthly force could stand.

  It turned out, however, that the British Isles possessed some forces that were decidedly unearthly.

  The first the invaders knew of these forces was a man who stood in the middle of the road as they marched to Newport. A hunchback, empty-handed, barefoot, and clothed in crude homespun, he watched their approach not with fear but rather with pursed lips and an unflinching gaze. He held up a hand as they drew near, and the general at the head of the column called for a halt.

  “Move aside,” growled the general.

  “I am here to deliver an ultimatum,” said the hunchback. “If you cease your advance, you may live. This invasion is over.”

  “Vermoord hem,” said the general. Murder him. The two huge soldiers flanking the general stepped forward. One carried serrated swords coated with venom that seeped down the jagged blades from glands in his hands. The other had a carapace like a beetle’s and bore a giant war hammer covered in the same poisonous substance.

  The hunchback stepped back and clenched his fists, and a curious thrumming reverberated through the air. Midstride, the two monstrous fighters fell to their knees and clutched at their stomachs. Before the stupefied gaze of their comrades, their torsos began to crumple in on themselves. The soldiers screamed briefly before their voices strangled off into nauseating wet gurgles. The chitin on one and the steel armor on the other cracked and were retracted into their bodies as they collapsed. No one made a sound as the two were compressed. What remained were two rough nuggets of flesh and armor, each about the size of a human head.

  “So, you s—” began the man.

  “Maak hem af!” shouted the general, and the rest of the troops rushed forward. The hunchback was swiftly engulfed and cut down.

  Later, after they’d set up camp, eager Broederschap alchemists dissected the man’s corpse and, much to their bewilderment, found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Every element of his frame was bog standard, unremarkable. His brain was not particularly interesting. His blood was tediously unoriginal. There were certainly no signs he’d received any modifications such as the Grafters had performed. Even his spine, they reported disappointedly, was textbook for a hunchback.

  When they gingerly chiseled open the dense little ingots that had once been two of their comrades, the alchemists could not find anything to explain why the men had suddenly imploded. There were no chemicals, toxins, or mechanics. It appeared that every fiber of the warriors’ bodies had suddenly felt the need to occupy the same space. That evening, when they made a report to Ernst, Gerd, and the general, the scholars gave a long, awkward description before calling the whole event “an inexplicable phenomenon.”

  “And what does that mean?” asked the general.

  “It means they don’t know what happened,” said Gerd sourly.

  “But how can they not know? What if there are more?”

  “It is troubling.” Ernst shrugged. “But one thing we do know is that they can die.”

  That night, there were more inexplicable phenomena. As a group of soldiers warmed themselves around a fire, the flames suddenly flared up and then leapt from the wood. They enveloped a warrior and could not be smothered or extinguished until he had died through a combination of burns and strangulation.

  Then one of the scientists was found dead in his tent. A hurried autopsy revealed that every drop of water in his body had been transmuted into a coarse white powder that his colleagues identified with some bewilderment as talc.

  As word got around the camp that night, the men began to feel decidedly ill at ease. Most of them were not sophisticated folk, and their understanding of their own augmentations and modifications was far from complete. They had been assured that not only was it all based on science and natural philosophy but it was reversible, and the power they had received had been enough to outweigh their concerns. The stuff with the fire and those men shriveling down on themselves, however, was worrying. It didn’t make any sense.

  The next day, as dawn broke, the invaders met the inexplicable phenomena on the field of battle.

  When they came, they were not regimented troops marching in formation. They were not even a horde of hunchbacks. Instead, bewilderingly, it was as if a random selection of the populace had spontaneously decided that it was a nice day to attack an army of monsters. Out of the morning mist came men and women of all ages and social classes. They were dressed in clothes that would not have drawn a second glance on any European street.

  The people were so unremarkable that for a few moments, the invaders did not react. Then a man in the black robes and mortarboard of an academic stepped forward from the small crowd. He ran his hand across a long pistol and wordlessly raised it at the invaders. A glowing torrent of molten metal burst out of the barrel of the weapon and screamed with the voice of a woman as it jetted across the field to engulf a soldier.

  And the first battle commenced.

  It was utterly chaotic and utterly hideous. The Broederschap troops’ feet thundered on the turf and many of them vaulted high into the air to land in the midst of their enemies like mortar bombs. Their enemies struck back, some wi
th conventional weapons and some with . . . not. Waves of force smashed out against the Grafters. Liquids and fumes spread and did harm. Twice, explosions blossomed on the field, sending fire and pressure washing out and devastating nearby fighters. These were all the more terrifying because they had no accompanying sound.

  Their adversaries appeared to have been endowed with terrifying, inexplicable abilities according to no discernible rhyme or reason. A periwigged gentleman, gorgeous in lace and velvet, bounded toward the enhanced troops on all fours while razor-sharp tusks erupted out of his jaws. Meanwhile, the outthrust finger of a fat laundress puffing along through the wet grass caused a Broederschap soldier to turn on the comrade at his side and hack him to pieces.

  The battle went on for over an hour until, to the surprise of the invaders, their attackers suddenly withdrew back into the fog. A couple of the troops, caught up in the frenzy of the battle, pursued them, but after fire flared momentarily within the cloud and a charred head came rolling out, no one else felt like following.

  The field looked even worse than a post-combat battlefield usually did. There were corpses from both sides scattered across it, but none of the crows circling overhead appeared interested. All the bodies were gathered up. The brotherhood dead were harvested for any useful organs or appendages. The injured were repaired briskly, in some cases receiving the still-warm anatomy of their fallen comrades.

  The British corpses were examined carefully. A few of the bodies showed unusual characteristics—a set of tripled pupils here, a polished mandible there; some unexpected orifices scattered the length of one man’s spine. There was not, however, any sign that these characteristics had been added by human hands.

  While the graafs, the scientists, and the general talked in low tones in a pavilion, the soldiers muttered amongst themselves. It was obvious that the scholars didn’t have any idea what gave these British people their powers. But it wasn’t natural, was it? A man could understand the concept of popping some extra muscles into a person, or even sewing on a tougher skin. You could wrap your mind around the idea.

  But what enabled a gaunt old woman to punch her bare hand through steel armor and tear out both of a soldier’s hearts? And that young boy, hardly old enough to be in breeches, whom they’d all seen hovering in the air above the battlefield and dropping grenadoes. How could such things be possible?

  In a time of faith, the answer was obvious: Demons. Deals with the devil. Black magic. By the end of the day, a name had been given to the British monsters.

  Gruwels.

  Abominations.

  There was no question of abandoning the invasion. The Broederschap had suffered some losses, true, but they had won the battle. They still vastly outnumbered the Gruwels, and if they could subdue the Isle of Wight, then the rest of the British Isles lay before them for the taking. And from there, who knew? The government had not shared its plans, but the potential for wealth and power was plain to see.

  But first they would need to be strategic.

  “Rather than proceeding directly to Newport,” said the general, “let us be unpredictable. Our troops’ speed and endurance mean that we can take as circuitous a route as we like. Let the Gruwels exhaust themselves chasing us. Our goal is to take it all, so wherever we go, it is profit to us.”

  And so that night the Broederschap soldiers activated the modifications in their brains that relieved them of the need to sleep. Their rods, cones, cubes, and tetrahedrons changed gears, their pupils dilated as wide as they could go, and the army sprinted off, not in the direction of Newport but toward the southwest. They took a couple of villages, detoured around the town of Yarmouth (just to confuse), and dashed into the island’s center to fall upon a particularly prosperous farm and feast on its cattle and the thatch of its farmhouse (the troops having been modified to live off the land). Their movements were random and erratic, preventing any possible ambushes. Further conflict was inevitable, that was certain, but it would not be on the Gruwels’ terms.

  Two days later, the Gruwels fell upon them in some fields on the northwestern coast. There were more of the monsters, many more, and there were significant differences this time. For one thing, they were now arrayed in regular ranks. The columns were sometimes broken up to allow for a single hulking individual’s whiplashing tentacles or a perfectly cylindrical column of indigo smoke that kept its position in the formation. But overall, they were far more organized.

  The two armies regarded each other levelly for a moment, came to a decision, and then all hell broke loose.

  It was bewildering, nauseating, disorienting warfare. Storm clouds gathered, although it was not clear if this was the work of the Gruwels or just the traditional cussedness of English weather, and combat played out in mud and rain. Swords clashed against swords and shattered on inhuman skin. Musket balls were snatched out of the air and sent hurtling back at their firers. Flames were projected across the battlefield, flashing the raindrops into steam.

  There was no respite. The Grafter warriors did not need to sleep or eat. They fought into the night, the Gruwels lighting torches while the Grafters’ vision showed the landscape clearly in shades of gray and orange.

  Both armies were equipped with a myriad of unique abilities, and if the Gruwels did not appear to be bound by the laws of science, well, it was still damn difficult for them to kill a Grafter soldier. A limb torn off might give him pause, but he was likely to pick it up and use it to bludgeon his opponent to death. Being set on fire simply meant shedding a layer of cuticle from one’s epidermis. Mortal wounds weren’t.

  The conflict continued through days and nights, with the Gruwel forces ebbing and surging as their soldiers were relieved and withdrew, presumably to snatch what sleep they could. The battle moved about as one side or the other gave way or pressed forward. They fought in meadows, and in marshland, and in the forests. Farms and villages were engulfed by battles, and civilians were cut down in the combat.

  As the fighting continued, the Broederschap began to identify certain individuals. They learned to dread the presence of the girl whose long red hair floated about as if she were underwater and who could dive into the soil and emerge on the other side of the field, perfectly clean and calm, to put a blade in a man’s back. They loathed the leper who let loose plagues upon them. And most hated of all were the three men and the woman who seemed to be acting generals for the Gruwel army. Early on, they became the targets of the Grafter attacks, the brotherhood taking the same approach to warfare that they took to a rogue experimental tortoise: that if you cut off the heads, the body would die. Through a concerted onslaught, with the Broederschap enduring painful losses, the woman and two of the men were killed.

  The remaining general, however, seemed able to dodge every attack. No matter where a gun was fired, or a saber slashed, or venom spat, he managed to evade it perfectly. Eventually, through the shouted orders that crossed the battlefield, the invaders learned that he was called Crimson Rook Perry.

  As the fighting wore on, it became increasingly apparent to Ernst and Gerd that the Broederschap could not win. It might take a dozen Gruwel deaths to kill a Grafter soldier, but some British demons—like Perry—also seemed capable of tearing through multiple invaders without pausing. The Grafters were outnumbered and outmatched. Slowly but surely, their forces were whittled down.

  Their commander, however, was unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of losing. Whether it was the might that came from his implants, his avarice for the promised rewards, or some orders from his master the governor-general that he dared not disobey, he refused to yield. Instead, to the massive distaste of the cousins and over their objections, he turned to the tactics of atrocity. Under his direction, his soldiers carried out grotesque outrages against their enemies. He thought that the strategic use of depravity and brutality would break the will of the Gruwels.

  He could not have been more wrong.

  After seventeen days of continuous conflict characterized by monstrous bar
barism on the part of the invaders, scores of soldiers and hundreds of civilians were dead, and only a handful of Grafters were left. From a hilltop, Graafs Ernst and Gerd watched as the Gruwel army closed around the remaining invaders clustered in the valley below. The cousins’ eyes zoomed in, and they saw each of their warriors fall in turn. Finally, the only Broederschap soldier left was the commander, a hulking black-carapaced shape surrounded by enemies.

  “Well, this should be interesting,” said Ernst.

  “How long do you think he’ll last?” asked Gerd. Two Gruwels launched themselves at the warrior. Despite his size, he moved with dizzying swiftness and plucked the attackers out of the air to slam them down on the ground. A burst of musket fire erupted, and the reports echoed up to the ears of the noblemen. They could see the sparks as the balls ricocheted off him, but he did not fall or even hesitate.

  “Very difficult to say,” said Ernst. “He really does represent the apogee of our craft.”

  “I should hope so,” replied Gerd. “After all the time and mon—good God!” Before their eyes, a wave of fire smashed out of the crowd and hit the general. As it faded, they saw him step forward unscathed to tear a Gruwel in half. “Perhaps we should have made all the soldiers like him.”

  “Yes, and bankrupted the kingdom,” said Ernst. “Still, he is very good.” In point of fact, for all his loathsome character, the commander was an outstanding warrior, and his Grafter enhancements seemed to have made him unbeatable. They watched for many minutes as he plowed his way through his assailants. He’d already killed over a dozen and showed no sign of slowing down. Then Crimson Rook Perry stepped up.

  “Is he drawing a pistol?” asked Gerd.