Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  Now again he looked in the mirror, and the image that returned his glare was Caine.

  I am strong. I am relentless. I am inescapable.

  The knots of worry that had tied themselves into his guts slowly uncoiled and fell away; pain and resentment eased down from his shoulders and rolled off his back. He grunted a grim chuckle at the cold freedom he now felt. Hari Michaelson’s problems, his weaknesses and insecurities, his whole claustrophobic life, would be left behind here on Earth.

  He let Shanna’s image boil to the surface of his consciousness. If she was alive, he would save her. If she was not, he would avenge her. Life is simple. Life is good.

  I am invincible. I am the Blade of Tyshalle.

  I am Caine.

  4

  IN THE TECHBOOTH, Arturo Kollberg licked his lips and rubbed his hands together. Not only was every first-hander berth filled, he had already fielded overnight requests from the Studios in New York, London, Seoul, and New Delhi for satellite simulcasts.

  This Adventure had taken on a life of its own, before Caine could even enter the Studio. This would be bigger than he’d dreamed. While techs throughout the Studio ran down their flat-voiced checklists, Kollberg hummed to himself and imagined the titles he might attach to this. Against the Empire? No, too common. Perhaps Seven Days in Ankhana—but that would only work if Pallas lived that long. For Love of Pallas Ril—now that, that had a nice ring to it, in an old-fashioned, slightly overripe sort of way.

  The smile this brought was still on his lips as a tech’s colorless monotone reported that the satellite links checked out perfectly. He pushed himself to his feet and headed for the green room.

  5

  IN HIS PRIVATE box, Businessman Marc Vilo gave one last sidelong glance at Shermaya Dole—of the Leisure Doles of Kauai, the phrase rolled warmly inside his head—at her torso, at least. Her head was already concealed beneath the induction helmet, and her hips were covered by the privacy shield of the simichair’s comfort hookups. He’d decided she was really very attractive, in a fleshy sort of way, and he figured on tearing off a piece of that before the two of them left his box. He’d gotten a tremendous amount of ass in this room; it almost never failed—first-handing Caine always made them horny. A little jazz, a little jizz, and she just might sponsor him on an upcaste to Leisure. He smiled as he pulled down his own induction helmet.

  6

  OUTSIDE, THE MURMUR of the undercaste mob was joined by the low-voiced growl of the long black ground-effect limo that swung up the curving drive. The murmur rose, peaking toward orgasm as Security pressed the mob back from the gate, clearing a path. The limo settled, and the crowd sighed. Actors almost always flew directly in to the Studio’s landing pad; they almost always dodged the crowds and hurried directly from the landing pad to the Studio’s green room; almost all of them did.

  Except Caine.

  Every person in the crowd knew his story, the story of the street kid from the Mission District. He was one of them—they believed—and he never forgot where he came from, he never forgot his people, as the Studio marketing flacks relentlessly reminded them. The Studio chauffeur sprang from the front, but the passenger door of the limo opened before he could get his hand there; Laborers open their own doors. The crowd held its breath as Caine climbed into view.

  He stood beside the limousine, his back to the gate, surveying the crowd in its sudden silence. They saw what they believed to be lines of worry in his face; many of them nudged each other to point out what seemed to be added grey in his hair and beard.

  His stillness held them, and the moment stretched until even the coupes of the last arriving Leisurefolk seemed to pause in their swooping flight. Then his back straightened and his eyes flashed; his teeth gleamed through a smile that held neither joy nor humor.

  He slowly raised his knotted fist to them in a gesture older than the Colosseum of Rome.

  The crowd went wild.

  7

  CAINE STRODE INTO the gaping maw of the gate, and its iron jaws clanged shut behind him.

  God’s bloody balls, he thought as he walked toward the main doors. I hate that shit.

  At the Overworld-normal vault, similar to but vastly larger than the one at the Abbey, he was issued the six silver coins that were Caine’s cash reserve.

  Kollberg met him in the green room. Two red-suited secmen stood at attention by the door. “Nice, ah, timing on the crowd out there.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “About our, hmm, little disagreement last night—I understand that you’re under a great deal of stress. As far as the subscribers, well, we’ll wait and see, shall we? If it doesn’t turn out to be a, mm, problem, we can forget all about it.”

  Caine looked at the pair of secmen, their faces masked by the smoked shields of their helmets. “Yeah. I can see that you’ve forgotten already.”

  Kollberg harrumphed nervously. “Just a last-minute note or two. Feel free to investigate Pallas’ disappearance a little before you go after Ma’elKoth, to make it look good. No one is to know your actual mission. And, ah—” He coughed into his hand. “—about Lamorak. If he’s not dead—if, for example, he was captured—you are under no circumstances to attempt a rescue.”

  “I’m sure Karl appreciates your concern.”

  “Think about it from our point of view. You are a vastly more bankable star; it would be frankly, ah, silly to endanger yourself for the sake of a man whose audiences have been dropping for three years, and they were never large to begin with. However, if you have an opportunity to recover his thoughtmitter without, ah, undue risk, go ahead. We’re all interested to find out how the Long Form works, and you’d be in line for a percentage of its cube rentals.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He pointed at the clock. “Five minutes.”

  “Oh, yes, well, mm, break a leg.”

  He nodded. “Probably several.”

  8

  IN THE CAVEA, the lights dimmed and the mountain scene of the helmet test pattern faded from the techs’ screens. A soundless shadow passed through the ranks of reclining firsthand berths, the figures they held made faceless by the blank ceramic shields of the induction helmets. The shadow mounted the steps of the ziggurat transfer platform and crossed to its geometric center. The massive overhead bank of the stage lights known as sunbeams flared to life, perfectly framed to the platform’s edge.

  Caine stood, motionless, in the stark white glare.

  9

  ONCE AGAIN IN the techbooth, Arturo Kollberg moistened his already-wet lips. My masterpiece, he thought. “Engage thought-mitter.”

  A tech stroked a sensor, and the wide, domed screen at one end of the techbooth flickered on, showing the rising rows of firsthand berths through Caine’s eyes.

  “Engaged.”

  Another tech frowned at his monitor and reported an unusually high number of adrenal reactions to the sensory-deprivation sequence. Kollberg himself adjusted the neurochem feed and then thumbed the microphone sensor.

  “Leisurefolk and Investors,” he intoned, his words echoing through the Cavea and into the aural sensors of induction helmets around the world, “Businessfolk, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am Administrator Arturo Kollberg, Chairman of the San Francisco Studio. On behalf of the entire Studio System, I welcome you to the birth of this extraordinary Adventure. And now—brought to you by Vilo Intercontinental, We Carry the World for You—I give you the Blade of Tyshalle, the Right Hand of Death Himself . . .”

  A long, pregnant pause.

  “Caine!”

  With his own hand, Kollberg stabbed the switch that fed the holoview from the Cavea into thousands of induction helmets. The sigh that went up was like the first breath of a hurricane. Kollberg flicked the mike to inactive.

  “Establish transfer link.”

  Beneath the Studio the powerplant hummed. Techs glared at readouts with total concentration. “Established. We’ve got an alley in the Warrens. Clear.”

  “Good. Whenever he’s
ready, then.” Kollberg patted the tech on the shoulder and left the booth, heading for his own box.

  10

  ON THE TRANSFER platform, Caine stood with the focused stillness that implies the capacity for instant violence. He held this stillness for a long breath before he spoke.

  “I don’t have any high words for you,” he said slowly. “She’s my wife, that’s all. I’m going to hunt down any bastard who even thought about doing her harm, and I’m gonna hurt him till he dies like a dog in the street. I hope you have fun.”

  His hands folded into fists of stone. “I know I will.”

  He lifted his eyes to the glass panel that fronted the techbooth high above.

  “Let’s do this thing.”

  11

  ARTURO KOLLBERG SNUGGED his head against the gelpack in his simichair. The helmet automatically covered his head, and the preset adjustment instantly matched his field patterns. He breathed out a long sigh of perfect contentment.

  He honestly believed he was going to enjoy this.

  12

  AN ALLEY TAKES shape around me. Daylight. Smells—heavy spice, curry and green chilies, water-soaked charcoal, dung, rotting flesh . . . To my left there’s a weather-bleached wooden bin against the wall, piled high with body parts that are mostly human, some ogrillo or troll: rat-chewed legs, arms with fingerless hands, sections of rib or pelvis: leftover scraps from the business alongside, the Zombie Rent-to-Own. I know this alley; I’m in the Warrens, near the Kingdom of Cant’s border with the Face.

  I should say, near where the border was, the last time I was in town, almost two years ago. The politics of territory in the Warrens are fluid, to say the least; in the absence of any outright turf wars between the various and several Warrengangs, borders are even more imaginary here than they are in the wider world. Borders in the Warrens are mainly an expression of where, street to street and house to house, members of a particular Warrengang can do business without getting themselves killed by the neighboring gang.

  Which isn’t so different, really, from the wider world with its nations and principalities, treaties and surveyors. We’re honest about it, here; that’s all.

  An enormous slack-jawed dog, filthy brown coat patched with mange, creeps tentatively toward me, keeping to the morning shadows along the wall. I step politely back to let it pass; damn Warrendogs carry diseases I haven’t even heard of. It looks me over with its one good eye—the other’s webbed with milky cataract—while it considers its options.

  My fingers tingle with adrenaline as I raise my fists.

  This is the best thing about being Caine, by far the best: this almost sexual rush of perfect confidence, the conviction that I’m the toughest kid on the block. On any block.

  “You want a piece of this, pooch?” I say, showing my teeth. “Come and get it, you wormy sack of shit.”

  I speak in Westerling without hesitation; the Studio-conditioned blocks on my voice wouldn’t let me speak English even if I wanted to.

  The dog decides I’m too much trouble and passes me by for the easier meal at the used-parts bin. Big damn dog, shoulder as high as my ribcage. The severed arms and legs in the bin squirm and press themselves blindly away in their imitation of life as the dog roots into them. A low moaning comes from deep within the pile; some lazy mucker must have left a head attached to a torso. Or maybe there’s a live one in there—a bum snuggled in for the warmth of the decaying flesh around him, or a victim of one of the Warrens’ countless daily muggings. I chuckle, and shrug.

  Time to get to work.

  I stroll out of the alley toward the heart of the Kingdom of Cant, into the bazaar that surrounds the ancient, crumbling hulk of the Brass Stadium. The sun is brighter here—a richer yellow—and the sky is more deeply blue; the clouds are more full and whiter, and the breeze that pushes them carries a faint undernote of green and growing things. It’s a beautiful day; I can barely whiff the shit trodden into the well-churned muck that passes for a street, and the flies, swarming in blue-shimmering thunderheads over the heaps of random trash, sparkle like gemstones.

  I weave between the pushcarts and the tentstalls, smilingly refusing steaming chunks of river trout and nets of fruit cunningly displayed to hide the wormtracks and blotches of mold, ignoring vendors of charms and amulets, avoiding rug dealers and pot sellers. This is my ground; I worked this city and the surrounding provinces for the first ten years of my career.

  I’ve come home.

  On walls, here and there, I see the Simon Jester graffito, very much as it was described in the book Shanna stole it from: an oval for a face, a stylized pair of devil’s horns, and a simple curved line to make his crooked grin.

  None of the beggars look familiar, and I don’t see any Knights; where the fuck is everybody? I stop at a stall half-shadowed by the towering, smoke-etched limestone curve of the stadium wall.

  The sweating vendor bends over the handle of a spit that holds legs of mutton over a bed of red-black coals. “Leg of lamb, hot mutton,” he calls dispiritedly. “Fresh this morning, worm free. Leg of lamb—”

  “Hey, Lum,” I say. “You look a little down this morning. Something wrong?”

  He looks at me, and the heatflush drains out of his face. A second or two later he remembers to try to smile, but it doesn’t last.

  “Caine?” His voice squeaks a little. “I don’t know nothin’ about it, Caine. Swear on my balls, I don’t!”

  I reach into the stall and casually hook one of the cooling shanks that hang from the guy ropes. “You don’t know nothin’about what?”

  He leans toward me and lowers his voice. “Don’t play with me, here, Caine . . . My woman’s got the fever, y’know, and my boy—Terl, you remember?—he’s off with the Dungers, could be dead, I don’t know.” He’s trembling now, casting furtive glances at my expressionless eyes. “I can’t take any more trouble right now, all right? I don’t know you, I haven’t seen you, all right? Just walk.”

  “Well,” I say flatly. “Aren’t you friendly?”

  “Please, Caine, I swear—” He flicks sweaty glances at the oblivious crowd around us. “If you get taken, I don’t want you thinkin’it was me turned you in.”

  “Taken,” I murmur. Well, well, well. I bite a chunk out of the mutton. It’s tough as an old boot. I chew on it to give myself time to think this over, and before I can swallow it I feel someone coming up too close behind my left shoulder.

  “Trouble, Lum?” the someone says. “This guy giving you hard times?”

  Lum shakes his head, wide-eyed. I’ve got the newcomer in my peripheral vision now: black scuffed boots, red cotton breeches, the bottom edge of a knee-length chain shirt painted black, and a scarred but young-looking hand resting on the hilt of a scabbarded broadsword. One of the Knights of Cant. Finally. He’ll have a partner nearby—they always travel in pairs.

  I tongue the mutton into my cheek and say, “Just passing time. Don’t get pissy.”

  The Knight grunts a laugh. “That’s a kinda fresh answer, there, dinky. I’m gonna have to levy an insolence tax. Five nobles. Pay up.”

  I wink at Lum, then spin like I’m delivering a backfist. The mutton shank catches the Knight behind the ear and bends him over. I forehand the meat into his nose; blood spurts, and he goes straight and then over backward to measure his length in the mud. Lum gasps and disappears behind his grill, and the thick traffic of passersby transforms into a curious crowd.

  I take another bite of mutton while the Knight shakes his head and tries to get up. His blood improves the flavor.

  “Here’s a hint, big fella,” I tell him in a friendly way. “Don’t charge what you can’t collect. Makes you look bad. You lose the respect of the crowd.”

  His partner charges toward us through the chattering press. I smile and wave to him, and he scabbards his sword.

  “Sorry, Caine. New kid. You understand.”

  “Not a problem. Tommie, isn’t it? Yeah, from the Underground Tap. How’s business?”


  He grins, pleased that I remember him. “Yeah, shit, I’m all right. You know you’re hot?”

  “I’m hearing that word. What price?”

  “Two hundred. In gold.”

  I swallow the second chunk of mutton with difficulty. “A lot of money.”

  The kid finally gets himself to his feet and is trying to draw. Tommie clouts him on that same swelling ear. “Stop it, y’fool. This here is Caine, all right? He’s an honorary Baron of Cant. Even if you live through drawing on him, which you won’t, His Majesty’d have your balls for lunch.”

  The kid decides he’s got better things to do with his hands.

  “Speaking of that,” I say, “I need to talk to the King.”

  Tommie looks at me, his eyes suddenly clouded. “He’s busy right now.”

  “It’s life or death, Tommie.”

  He stares into the distance while he imagines various reactions, weighing the King’s anger at being interrupted against the debt the King might still feel he owes me. A bruptly he makes up his mind.

  “All right. Follow me.”

  “Hey, Lum? It’s all over,” I say. He pokes his head up from behind the grill, and I toss him one of my silver nobles. I’m not a thief. “Your mutton’s shit, by the way. Keep the change.”

  He blinks. “Uh, thanks . . . I guess.”

  Tommie leads me off around the curve of the stadium. The kid follows, pinching his nose shut with a crusted handkerchief. We stroll out of the bazaar and into the narrow winding alleyways that give the Warrens its name. I can get only the most occasional glimpse of the sun, but I don’t need it to know what direction we’re going: toward the triple border of the Kingdom, the Face, and the Rathole.

  The real business in the Warrens takes place in the heart of each gang’s turf; the borders are too vulnerable, too susceptible to suddenly lethal accidents and casual arson. Each border comprises at least a couple of blocks of no-man’s-land, sometimes five or six, whose unfortunate residents are usually forced to pay off both sides. The triple borders—there are four of them; the Kingdom of Cant holds the center of the Warrens, around the stadium—are the poorest patches of bottom-feeding scum in the poorest part of Ankhana. Often the only shelter is the shell of a burned-out tenement. Many of the residents sleep on the street.