Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  With a sudden curse he remembered the dagger that Ma’elKoth had magicked for him, that still rode his hip in its leather sheath. He drew the knife; the green light from within the blade was faint, barely visible in the glow from his lamp. As he swung it around at arm’s length, he found that it only barely brightened—while pointing diagonally up and away.

  “Bastard,” he muttered. “Bastard. He’s already been here.”

  His boys should have left some sign of which way they’d gone. He couldn’t just follow the dagger, not down here. As he circled the chamber, he passed the mouth of the well—the vertical shaft where the net had been—and from its mouth breathed the smell of shit and rich metallic blood.

  Berne let his eyes drift closed as he stood at the rim of the well. He didn’t have to look down there to know what he’d see: the piled bodies of his four Cats.

  But if they were dead, whose lamp threw that light he’d seen?

  He spun, trying to whirl away from the well’s mouth, but it was already too late.

  He got no warning at all. No scrape of boots, no breath of breeze, nothing except silent and invisible hands striking his back at his center of balance while an invisible tether held his ankles. Before he could understand what was happening, he found himself falling headfirst down the well, tumbling as he bounced from wall to wall, crashing into the yielding cold-meat bodies of his men.

  Light flared in the chamber above him, and five heads became visible as men above peered down the shaft at him.

  Slowly, Berne disentangled himself from the nerveless clasping limbs of the corpses, picked himself up, and made a show of brushing dirt and blood from his clothing, all the while digging his feet around to find stable footing on the stone below the bodies.

  “I am Abbal Paslava,” said one of the men above. “Men call me the Spellbinder. I thought you might be interested to know who has killed you, Berne.”

  Berne bent his neck to look up at him and nodded with an expression of professional appreciation. “Good trap, Abbal Paslava the Spellbinder. Nicely done, indeed. Now I expect those men with you will be shooting me with crossbows, or dropping rocks on my head, or something like that.” Berne chuckled warmly. “This was Caine’s idea, wasn’t it?”

  “Why yes, in fact, it was,” Paslava said with a broad malicious smile. “He told us of your magickal enhancements, and he decided that this would be the best way to kill you, to draw you down here into the caverns where your magick will not function. Not your strength, not your invulnerability, and most especially: not Kosall. With a griffinstone pulled from the net your men so thoughtfully kept watch over for us, I have more than enough power down here to slaughter you.”

  “A good trap,” Berne repeated. “He’s smarter than I thought he was. But there’s something Caine doesn’t know.”

  “Mmm,” Paslava hummed judiciously. “Caine said you would try to bargain for your life. What information do you have that could possibly be of greater value to us than your death?”

  “Information?” Berne laughed out loud. “I’ll give you information,” he said, as he reached back over his shoulder and drew Kosall.

  Once the blade cleared the scabbard, he took its hilt, and Kosall whined to tooth-grinding life.

  Paslava’s eyes bulged.

  Berne grinned and waved up at him with the humming blade. “You’re not the only one with a griffinstone.”

  Paslava shouted, “Shoot! Shoot him now!” but before the Knights of Cant with him could bring their bows to bear, Berne bent his knees and sprang out of the well with a single leap. The Knights all ducked as he shot upward like a quarrel from a crossbow’s slot. He arced high over one ducking Knight and split the man’s skull from base to crown with a single backhanded swipe of Kosall.

  He somersaulted in the air and landed gracefully poised. The dead Knight collapsed slowly to his knees, then tumbled forward into the well behind him.

  He turned and leveled the blade at Paslava while the other Knights scrambled back and went for their swords.

  “Come on, then,” he said cheerfully. “Fight or run. You’re dead just the same. I don’t have all day.”

  Berne did not consider himself an intellectual, or even an intelligent man; he preferred to leave thinking to men who were good at it, like Ma’elKoth or Toa-Sytell. Nonetheless, a question of the sort that he generally didn’t bother to consider sparked within his brain as he killed first one, then another of the terrified Knights of Cant. By the time he casually, rather distractedly slaughtered the third, this question had acquired real significance: it was a puzzler, and he suspected that its answer was somehow vital in a way he could not, yet, understand.

  So it was that when he pounced on the fleeing Paslava and sliced the thaumaturge’s leg off precisely through the middle of his knee joint—so that Paslava tumbled to the ground in a screeching spray of blood, skidding his jetting stump along the jagged limestone—Berne did not finish him immediately.

  Instead, he seized the thaumaturge by the thigh on his half leg, his strengthened grip cutting into the muscle until the arterial spray of blood diminished to a trickle. He lifted Paslava into the air, head downward to keep his blood pressure up so the wounded man wouldn’t faint.

  Holding him out at arm’s length, Berne frowned into the Spellbinder’s upside-down eyes. “So tell me, before you die,” Berne said slowly, with a growing premonition that things were somehow going hideously wrong, “exactly how Caine knew I’d be coming down here to get that net.”

  10

  WELL BEFORE NOON, Victory Stadium was full, dangerously full. A close-packed sweating mass of humanity squatted on stone benches and crouched in the aisles. Some stood in knots around the closest man with a jug. Many struggled in disorganized masses at the doors of the grandstand pissoirs.

  The Imperial official in charge of the stadium, himself sweating and wringing his hands, told the Commandant of the constables to shut the gates. Then he turned to kneel in front of the small icon of Ma’elKoth that stood in the corner of his office to pray that there wouldn’t be a riot.

  When the constables swung closed the public gates, the crowds outside recoiled upon themselves like worms encountering hot brick; a ripple passed outward from the stadium to the farthest reaches of Games Way and the street that joined it, Long Way, as people began to reverse direction to fight back against the press of bodies behind them.

  A reinforced cavalry brigade began driving the commoners off Nobles’ Way and away from Kings’ Bridge: soon Ma’elKoth himself would travel this road.

  11

  HIGH ABOVE THE city in the Iron Room, Pallas Ril had paid little attention to the Household Knights that draped a linen shift over her and transferred her manacles from the altar to a jointed frame of oak—no more attention than she had paid to Lamorak’s single miserable plea for forgiveness. They were bound identically under the thoughtful supervision of Ma’elKoth himself. A silver net had been tied over Pallas and her frame entire; this had at last captured her attention, as the twisting lace of Flow vanished from her mindview. Now when she looked upon Ma’elKoth, she saw only a man of great size and surpassing beauty, instead of the godlike whirlwind of power that had stood at the altar’s side for two days.

  Cut off from the Flow, she tumbled out of mindview and groaned weakly at the pain that chewed at her.

  The Household Knights carried the frames upon which she and Lamorak were bound as though they were stretchers, down and down and down the endless flights of stairs to the front courtyard of the Colhari Palace. There a huge processional was being organized—hundreds upon hundreds of Knights and musicians and acrobats, pretty girls with garlands of fresh flowers, strong young men with baskets of sweets and pastries to throw to the crowds. The centerpiece of the parade was an enormous open wagon. It was hung with flowers until its frame could not be seen, and upon it were bolted a pair of freestanding iron racks. The jointed frames upon which Pallas and Lamorak were bound were swiftly unfolded into wide X shapes a
nd hung upright upon the racks.

  Being vertical for the first time in two days caused Pallas to nearly black out; as her vision dimmed and the scene swam in the brilliant sunlight, she saw Ma’elKoth leap lightly from the ground to the center of the wagon. The paraders around him, the Knights, everyone present in the courtyard or looking down from the windows cheered—a happy racket that he acknowledged with a sweeping bow and a grin that brought more cheers and applause.

  Even without mindview, Pallas could see how he fed on their love, how it elevated him far above the concerns of mortality. His doubts and grim determination of this morning had vanished without a trace; here in the presence of his Children, Ma’elKoth rivaled the sun itself, all power and supernal beauty.

  She looked over at Lamorak, at his battered body crucified like her own, his eyes closed on his private misery. She looked down at herself, at the linen shift that was already showing crimson stains of the blood that leaked through the crusted bandage around her chest, then again at Ma’elKoth, who now waved for the gates to be thrown back. She tried to summon mindview, to recover some of the serenity that had sustained her in the Iron Room, but the pain in her wrists and ankles, the agony of drawing each breath into her punctured lung, the tumult around her, all combined to prevent her from reaching that sanctuary.

  She was alone, without even the faintest beat of life’s song to comfort her.

  The gates swung wide, and Ma’elKoth’s face seemed to cast a dazzling light of its own. The waiting crowd outside answered his appearance with a full-throated roar.

  12

  HIGH IN THE stands within the stadium, the King of Cant looked down. Over a thousand Subjects of Cant were seeded through this crowd—every man, woman, and youth of them armed. They would fall upon the Grey Cats like an avalanche. Even now, as he sat with his palms pressed together between his trembling knees, the Faces were spreading through Old Town, taking strategic positions to cover a retreat, if a retreat became necessary. It wouldn’t, though: this Majesty knew beyond doubt.

  There would be no retreat.

  By nightfall, he would hold this city in his hand, ready to deliver it to Toa-Sytell—in return for, ah, certain considerations . . .

  The tremor in his knees and the fluttering in his guts, these had nothing to do with fear: they were pure anticipation. Only one thing troubled him as he squinted upward to check the near-vertical angle of the rising sun.

  Where in fuck is Paslava? He should have been here half an hour ago. If he’s not around to do his crowd-control stuff, a lot of people are going to get hurt.

  From outside, far beyond the walls of the stadium, he heard the voice of crowds that roared like an approaching hurricane.

  13

  TOA-SYTELL MET THE parade at the south end of Kings’ Bridge. A handful of King’s Eyes forced a path for him through the crowds, and the Emperor paused in his joyous acceptance of his Children’s adulation long enough to wave him aboard the wagon. He clambered up and stood close to Ma’elKoth’s side, yelling at the top of his lungs to be heard over the crowd that Caine was nowhere to be found. Every person who’d entered the stadium had been searched, and every man who answered Caine’s general description had been detained. Toa-Sytell himself had looked over the detainees, and Caine was not among them. Caine had not entered the stadium, and there was no way he could get in, now that the gates were sealed.

  Ma’elKoth bent his neck to look down on his Duke. Sudden silence surrounded them, though Toa-Sytell could see that the crowd lining the streets still shouted as lustily as ever.

  The Emperor smiled and said gently, “You misspeak. You mean to say: Caine has not entered the stadium since your search began. Mark Me: he will be there.”

  14

  “ALL RIGHT ALL right allright allright,” Arturo Kollberg muttered, chewing the words around the ends of his nail-bitten fingertips, still in his mouth. His heart beat double march time against his ribs, and blood sang in his ears. His face felt swollen, bloated with the pressure inside his brain, and it glowed with the same malignant flush of rose as the fist button of the emergency transfer switch.

  After two swift glances, one over each shoulder, back at the impassive mirror masks of the soapies, he again faced forward and checked Caine’s telemetry as it scrolled across the darkened POV screen.

  “All right,” he said again. “He’s awake. He’s moving. He’s making a move. Start the feed.”

  15

  EVEN THE SMALL-MARKET, ethnic-language channels buried in the non-English-speaking backwaters of the world carried Jed Clear-lake’s summation of the tale; their poor advertising revenues did not give them the funds necessary to carry the live feed itself, but they could go this far. They would break into their programming at intervals with whatever updates became available.

  Clearlake’s summary was a model of clarity; other broadcasters could only helplessly envy his characteristic blend of emotional intensity and suave good nature, his air of being on the inside, of being a player.

  “Now, after this message, we’ll return with Caine: Live!”

  The following message was from the Studio itself, sixty seconds of opportunistic self-promotion, worldwide and free. Their slogan, Adventures Unlimited: When you need to be somebody else faded slowly from screens around the world; then the feed began.

  And the world ground to a halt.

  Foot traffic was gridlocked in Times Square as shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrians stared up at the ring of Jumbotrons. Tokyo was in a similar state; London, Johannesburg, Kabul, New Delhi . . . Those citizens fortunate enough to be carrying handscreens stopped in their tracks to watch, and all the others rushed to their homes, to taverns, to storefronts where at least they could look at the pictures. Trading on the commodities and stock exchanges was suspended; air traffic was maintained only in the computer-directed slavelanes.

  Nearly every breathless human being on Earth heard Caine’s Soliloquy:

  *Seems like I spend most of my life climbing up out of other peoples’ shit.*

  16

  THE TOILET SEAT makes a dimly backlit ring above me as I clamber up the side of the shaft, get my hands on it, and quickly chin myself to get a look around. The latrine is empty, as I expected it would be; the Eyes who searched this place were too fastidious to climb down into the shaft—it figures that they wouldn’t spend more time here than absolutely necessary.

  I push the seat up and pull myself out of the toilet. It’s a struggle not to groan out loud when every single one of my injuries acutely reminds me of its presence—from the fever that’s scratching my eyeballs all the way down to the bone bruise that stiffens my right knee.

  Tyshalle’s Bloody Axe, I’m a wreck. Spending a few hours sleeping in petrified shit at the bottom of a latrine shaft didn’t really agree with me.

  Could have been worse: if Ma’elKoth hadn’t banned gladiators, there might have been guys using this shitter while I was down there.

  Daylight leaks in through the vents at the joining of wall and ceiling, and the rising thunder of the crowd’s roar tells me that Ma’elKoth will be coming through the outside gates anytime now.

  Those vents up there perforate the arena wall. The gladiator latrine is right next to the glory hole, to handle the nervous bladders and spastic sphincters of men walking out to die. I spend a nervous moment myself when I go to the doorless arch and peer out into the glory hole itself.

  It’s empty, thankfully, and dark—an iron door closes it off from the gated shaft that leads to the arena—and I go back to the vents, jump up, and chin myself to look out. I don’t have to worry about making noise; with twenty thousand Ma’elKoth fanatics howling over my head, I could set off a bomb in here and attract less attention than a fart in a brothel.

  The arena wall’s about three feet thick here; I wriggle headfirst into one of the vents to get a decent view. I have to struggle to hold down some incipient claustrophobia—I can feel the weight of the stone an inch above the back of my head, and my el
bows brush stone on either side. I’m in black shadow cast by the noonday sun, invisible.

  The mouth of the vent frames the golden glare of sun off sand. Across the arena the bright holiday clothes of the spectators—shoulder to shoulder in the stands—make a splintered mosaic of random color that shifts and ripples like a patchwork flag.

  I spend one more moment looking out at the crowd. Some of them are nervous, some seem angry, some of them look sincerely happy.

  A lot of them will be dead within the hour.

  My field of view no doubt includes any number of Grey Cats in mufti and probably more than a handful of disguised Subjects of Cant. I’m not worried about them; they’re all here to fight.

  I wonder, though, if any of the civilians out there had a premonition, a queasy feeling about coming here today. I wonder how many won’t be surprised when the shit explodes, how many will feel only a sickening stomach-drop of recognition, how many will die with I knew I should have stayed home echoing in their heads.

  I wonder how many homes will echo with keening for the dead tonight.

  Y’know, if the situation was opposite, if someone I loved died because some guy did what I’m about to do, I wouldn’t rest until I’d hunted that man down and killed him with my own hands.

  But: if I could buy Pallas’ life with the deaths of every man, woman, and child in this stadium, I’d do it. Cheap at twice the price. Even so, I’d be inclined to haggle—in fact, today I’m gonna drive a hard fucking bargain.

  Maybe I’m getting thrifty in my old age.

  The roar that rocks the stadium notches up another five decibels or so, cutting short my seesaw of second thoughts.

  Ma’elKoth has arrived.

  He’s brought a whole parade, hundreds of revelers in holiday costume; they come dancing onto the sand, casting sweets and coins up into the grandstands as they circle the arena, urging the crowd to join them in the singing of Ma’elKoth’s anthem, “King of Kings.” There are a few pretty girls among them, but most of them seem to be men—not young men, either. I can pick out weathered creases beneath the holiday face paint, and behind the smiles are the cold eyes of career soldiers, veteran killers.