Lord Owens opened his mouth to speak, squinting, then began a calmer parlance.
“You need to relieve Harvester of my sister’s corpse, and return her body to my mother for burial. Otherwise, you can expect no land, no title, and no Modus Vivendi.”
For his part, Lord Owens maintained a steady demeanor. She could feel his pulse racing like the wind that beat Margaret’s tent, but he kept his expression blank.
“Eric,” Margaret had never offered her brother his due appellation, and Eric Owens would enjoy a similar experience, “You knew when you came to my tent that you’d have no leverage. You can’t threaten or intimidate me. What do you hope for?”
Very clearly, Margaret’s imagination filled with Lord Owens’ hands wrapped around her throat, squeezing, harder and harder, until his muscles twitched with exhaustion and her face turned a shade of dusk. He was projecting the image as loudly as a gunshot.
“We helped you. My mother called you friend. Yet, my sister’s body now contains one of the most ruinous witches who ever lived. You know that Dread Harvester used to talk through her victims, right? She butchered anyone who came to San Francisco, and made puppets of them.”
Margaret frowned in reply, “I think she didn’t have a jaw to speak with.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that she crippled my mother for life.” Lord Owens answered in a snap, his anger peeking through curtains, a curious child.
Margaret leaned forward, lifting her feet off the wooden hassock, “Your mother was never my friend. I wanted to believe she was, I liked pretending that maybe she was my mother. But she’s not, she’s the Heart of House Owens, and she’ll do anything to preserve her family and her city. Amihan woke me from that delusion of loyalty. Don’t tower over me, fantasize after my death, and pretend all you ever wanted was good and shiny things for little Lady Mayhem. You sent me to Modus Vivendi to die.”
For a moment Margaret thought that Lord Owens might lunge forward, his neck tensed, and she could hear the weight of his thoughts as he considered what it would take to kill a battlewitch. Margaret only grinned, gesturing with her left hand, as if San Francisco was a piece of armor that rested near her, “Witches who served Aurora Cuttersark since her father’s death would simply just throw up their hands to follow me? After I murdered her? You knew they’d turn on me, and you knew they’d kill me. Modus Vivendi would belong to you.”
When Eric Owens replied, his voice dripped vitriol, “I think, these last few months, I underestimated you.”
Margaret shrugged, for his benefit alone, “I’ve never been stupid, Eric. If you assumed I was, you’ll be ill-suited as Heart. Dread Harvester will control Modus Vivendi on my behalf, you’ll give me the Bay Area Reach, and the title of Duchess. You’ll need to work with me, and you’ll need to find a way to calm your mother. Small price to pay for the restoration of House Owens.”
What are you hoping for? Margaret had already won this argument, or any version of it that Eric Owens could have brought.
“Even if I consent, my mother will find a way to kill Dread Harvester,” Lord Owens turned away from Margaret, eyes groping the tent interior, tan and green canvas, waterproofed and odious with cooked fat, reminiscent of stale bacon.
“That’s Aubriana’s problem, not mine.”
It didn’t offend Margaret to be so clearly filled with the vision of her own violent demise. Under other circumstances she might have found it deeply erotic. However, Lord Owens couldn’t leave her tent with a false sense of safety in that fantasy, “Major Grace commanded one-third of General Townsend’s forces. When he took Santa Rosa and named himself king, he positioned himself to threaten Stockton. What do you think my 3rd Army will do if I’m dead? What do you think the Maul will do? Your mother’s golden city won’t just fall, they’ll burn it down fighting with each other.”
Decades will pass before the Owens Army can rebuild, Margaret thought, smile spreading across her cheeks. Just as Lord Owens had subjected her to a reverie of strangulation, Margaret now offered the visage of Stockton drowning in blackened smoke behind her noble walls.
“What do you want?” Eric Owens asked, his back still turned.
I want my arm back, Margaret thought, and offered a chuckle. “I want only what I was promised. I’m not here to extort you, I’m here to retire. I’ve been good to my word, I’ve killed Amy Lopez, as well as your sister. In a few hours I’ll kill my brother, too. You will be Heart one day, and I’m more than happy to leave real responsibility to you.”
Ramona’s words girded Margaret’s mind, “Magic doesn’t serve my father, he serves magic. His dream to unify North America is a joke, maps don’t matter anymore.”
Ramona Lopez had taught her aunt much more than just the nature of betrayal. As much as it felt like a beetle clawing its way up Margaret’s throat, she had to admit that the young woman was correct. After Maggi Lopez had weaponized magic, the chimerical concept of nations had already begun to obsolesce.
Lord Owens turned away from the undulating canvas, his eyes falling short of Margaret’s, and his jaw tensing, “You’ve only killed one of your three.”
One? Margaret genuinely didn’t understand, “I killed Amy and Aurora.”
A smirk crossed Eric Owens’ smooth face, “That’s why you thought I was here to achieve something? I’m here because your promises are in doubt.”
Margaret stood, left arm pressing her up, corset laces falling, leather tapping and skipping on the chair, “I put two rounds in Amy’s chest. Her blood was in my mouth. You and your mother saw the body. Amihan Lopez is dead.”
The look Lord Owens delivered was like sand across Margaret’s eyelids, but she could smell nothing like deception. She knew her face was flushing, her cheeks warm, and her chest tight. “She’s not. Our scouts saw her with Emperor Lopez a few hours ago.”
Margaret’s nails were pressed into palms, and she realized she was holding her breath so that Lord Owens wouldn’t see her exhale hard.
That’s what he wanted, Margaret realized, for us to be equals in this.
“Please leave me, Eric,” was all she said.
“Of course, Lady Mayhem,” Lord Owens offered up the honorific with ease and tidy respect, “I’ll see you on the line.”
Alone, Margaret returned to her seat, hand covering her mouth.
She could no longer hear the flogging wind or smell cooked fat, boiled leather, and the grease of steel. She was lost in the final moments she’d shared with Amy, her face covered in liquid charcoal, the wound Townsend had placed on her neck swelling up, black as the oil that coated her eyeballs.
“...I give you my love, my worship.”
Could a god return her to life?
“Fucking Lopez twins.”
Margaret spit on the bice carpet, before summoning Leena to return, her voice shrill and furious. The corset laces needed to be finished, along with mounts for the tasset and cuisse.
Quickly, Margaret had somewhere to be.
12:08pm April 15th, 39 Veilfall
Manteca Reach, California
The valley sky reminded Margaret of Aphrodite’s eyes.
Layered in mare’s tail, clouds moved faster than was wholly natural, curling and billowing waves on a great ocean. Angry as any sea storm, it created an unsettling landscape, with Owens’ farms splayed before a briny deep in the heavens above. The air smelled like moist soil, ozone, and the cool mist of tempest waiting at the precipice, eager to pounce and lay liquid upon the soft earth below.
“Mayhem Actual, check, check.” Margaret spoke into her headset, elastic band across her forehead, microphone pressed close to her lips like a ripe plum waiting to be slurped up whole.
“Check, check, loud and clear Mayhem Actual.” The response in her ears was ragged, a distorted voice that could have been anyone on channel command.
Margaret handed Badger her helmet, “Help me with the chin straps, please.”
Just like at the Battle of Stockton, Badger wore interceptor armor
, heavy gear, an antique from a bygone era. Throat, groin, and bicep protection tattered and dusty from years of wear. Round impacts on his ceramic plate had been stitched up in tan and black thread.
Standing at the center of such a large army, there was a din that resonated off the ground, reflecting back thousands of minds locked in one central mantle, a collective vibration of fear, clammy with excitement, pawing, and clawing at nerves. Her right eye twitched beyond any control she could afford, a physical symptom of being drawn down deep into the mires of anticipation. It tugged at her bare toes, pressed on her lips and demanded her attention like a starving animal or hungry lover.
Badger didn’t reply, he simply accepted Margaret’s high profile, ballistic helmet, and secured it on her head. Her auburn-red hair was slicked back with engine grease, and Badger snapped up the straps which held the helmet in place. He was a cool spring pond, undisturbed, in the wake of 3rd Army’s anxiety.
“I hope you’se got the 2nd Army right,” Badger wrapped his knuckles on her helmet to make sure it was secure.
Margaret smiled, the handprint on her face dark silver and steel without direct sunlight to ignite the blue and green of her Tilapia flesh, “I’m more worried about Plague Dog. We didn’t equip to take on a fire eater today.”
Badger’s disjointed grin looked like an angry possum’s rectum, “With permission, boss, I’ll unload a magazine in her face.”
Margaret had already enjoyed her personal revenge in Stockton, condemning Amy to the horrors of the Collapse. It didn’t matter to her now, “Permission granted.”
Badger cackled, laying a hand at the back of Margaret’s neck and crouching down. He smacked her helmet into his own, the ballistic material cracking loudly, “The world would be a piss-poor place if you’se got those tits burned off.”
One of them already got burned off.
Margaret’s grin was more of a leer, and when Badger released her, she turned to grab her horse’s reins. A mustang, painted in hues of cherry and tan, she had once been wild in northern Nevada. Now, she was saddled and wearing her own light armor. She towered over Margaret with raw strength that defied imagination, an old world tale, a monster returned to life, impossibly tangible. Badger helped her mount the animal, and much to Margaret’s surprise, he did not use this opportunity to grope at her buttocks, either out of respect for General Townsend, or some newfound propriety incurred from a head trauma.
Respect for Townsend, Margaret thought.
Once squarely settled in the saddle, Margaret began to erect barriers.
Bare skin on her finger tips stroked at the mustang’s mane and hide, coarse and warm under her flesh. She stepped a part of herself into the animal’s mind. The horse didn’t think like a person, she was more connected with her instincts and the same senses that Margaret had been gifted at birth. Much like her mistress, she was comfortable at the rattle and din of an army. It was the storm that set her disquiet, an unnatural thing that didn’t belong in this world, and Margaret offered calm, just as she would a person. It was easier with animals, no doubt or hissing noise to get in the way. Simply the clay of urge and desire to be molded.
Once the connection was made, Margaret slid her fingers away from the mustang and exhaled slowly, part of her mind watching through a second set of eyes. Commanding her horse forward only required the simplest breath of will. It was no different than stepping forward with her own feet, and the mustang was happy to oblige, aware that Margaret would keep her safe.
“I’m behind you’se, boss,” Badger shouted, mounting his own steed at her flank.
Margaret would need to ride through 3rd Army lines to reach the front, facing east on the far side of Manteca Reach. The land here was incredibly flat, farms being ground up and pressed down by thousands of soldiers, vehicles, horses, and heavy armor. Without any kind of cover or variations in the terrain, the 3rd Army had been arranged behind narrow company columns with the largest tanks as vanguard. Those monsters would block the worst incoming fire, each row of men no more than twelve feet wide, shoulder to shoulder, with technicals and armed 4x4s abreast. It was an imperfect formation, and the men at line’s edge knew their lives would be forfeited by any leaden breach. Cavalry companies set up on north and south flanks reported directly to General Townsend, while his senior staff kept direct command over their primary columns.
The allied center was all Maul armor and mechanized infantry, flanked by the weaker, less experienced Owens army. The Maul felt like a granite core, unmovable, a thing of ancient solidity around which soldiers could form, layer by layer, supreme in their confidence at foundations where they stood. Of the Maul’s collective focus, Margaret could not have been more impressed, and a part of her found their discipline titillating.
Had I these men at my back in the last decade, Margaret thought desirously. She also wondered if Sammy, the bull of a man from San Francisco, had joined his brothers here.
As Margaret’s mustang strode down the hammered and creased dirt, she passed by company commanders, also on horseback. Each one nodding as she passed. They wore a mottled combination of plate armor or simple leather, a few bound up in linothorax. She knew some by name, others by reputation, but none were strangers. They had shared much with her over the years, may it be drink, foxhole, or bed.
Captain Drake’s company would have been lost in Nebraska, pinned down under mortars, if she had not arrived with her fireteam to press back on the enemy.
Captain Murashige had been trapped behind enemy lines in the block-to-block fighting during the Battle of Denver. With no radio to call for help, he and his men would have died without Margaret’s rescue.
Before he was promoted, Captain Reyes was the sole survivor of an annihilated unit crossing into Saint Louis. Despite her exhaustion, Margaret had pulled him back to the Antecedent lines under fire.
None of them had forgotten the decades, or campaigns. When Townsend had called upon the 3rd Army to support their battlewitch one last time, they had answered.
They lowered their heads for her now, dropping to one knee. Quiet was expanding across the ranks. Margaret felt like a scythe weaving through barley, the anxious din of their minds cooling, finding a center soundlessly. This wasn’t just her barriers, it was a shadow she cast, the confidence she offered, a testament to faith in one small witch.
This was the last time she’d ride to the front as Lady Mayhem. The last time she’d hear the quiet traipse and bite at her flanks, young pups eager to earn her affection. This was the last time she’d breathe the bitter carbon of a thousand idling engines mixed with sour alfalfa and horse shit. This was the last time she’d see the dust rise and fall like keys on a piano, companies moved and arranged, Sarn’ts shouting orders, and men moving as one fluid entity. This was the last time she’d watch the guidons raise, one by one, a mess of color and waving fabric. This was the last time she’d ride past monstrous armored vehicles, lead vanguard, their tan and green plate pockmarked, chewed and chipped from a hundred battles since the Collapse, diesel turbines spooling and whining like tortured animals and midnight banshees; old world magic cranking alive under the doctors of gear and oil.
This was the last time she’d ever sit quite so high, her spine arched, her misshapen shoulders rolled back in pride.
At the front, the 3rd Army’s line, formed north to south, was nearly perfect. Heavy tank cannons protruding the ledge, elderly roots hanging off a cliff face. Glancing to her left and right it looked that the 3rd Army and Maul were spread down a road berm, an old highway that had been ground down and broken up years before, now a smooth mottle of gravel and dirt that was battered flat. Wagons and trucks would haul crops into the central of Manteca and indentured servants would likely keep the highway maintained through any rain-heavy months.
Margaret glanced over to Badger as his horse strode up next to her own. His mount was larger and mottled in shades of cream and tan, a long mane of blonde hair under crownpiece and browband.
“What are you
going to do with yourself, after today?”
Badger wrinkled up his nose, and shook his head abruptly, “Never much think ahead of today. You’se oughta’ know that.”
Margaret did know that, “I won’t have much need for a fireteam.”
“Probably, I’ll join the 3rd,” Badger reached over his shoulder, pulling at the sling for his rifle so that it would rest at his right leg. It was painted in a mottled biscuit, chipped and scraped, matte black underneath, “there’ll always be need for men like me. Shitkickers, who only exist to fuck up everyone else’s day.”
If she’d still owned her right arm, Margaret would have reached out, and laid a hand on Badger’s shoulder. He was a drowning pool, waiting to consume anyone foolish enough to step near, “I think you should go to San Francisco. I think Aubriana Harvester could use a man of your shitkicking talents.”
Badger looked away from the road, poking his tongue at intact cheek, “Dunno, boss. I never much liked fat girls. At least when we ride together, you’se make me look good. I’m at least seventy-five-percent sexier just standing close to you’se.”
Margaret cracked up, laughing. So did her horse, with gusted winnie, although the mustang couldn’t have known why.
Facing her forces, their own idling engines choking the horizon in a veil of onyx smoke, was the 1st Army. To the north, with a diagonal line, was the 2nd Army. A combined mass of easily double that of the allied House Owens forces at Margaret’s rear. In all her life she’d never seen this many Antecedent troops gathered in one place, against each other, or shoulder by shoulder. It was a site full of both awe and alarm.
Her composure regained, Margaret glanced up at the undulating sky, a spatter of rain stroking her face and eyes, “We better get going. It’ll rain soon.”
The 3rd Amy Captains prepare for war, by SapFire
12:41pm April 15th, 39 Veilfall
Mayhem Page 37