Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  Just because I was born to wealth and power.

  “Damn you,” Margaret’s anger was a balloon filling her chest and stomach.

  Ares seemed to feast on her rage, and he smiled, “You’ll have one child before you’re too old. One chance at this. If Townsend survives today, perhaps he can be the father. If he falls, I could always be persuaded to provide my services.”

  “Damn you!” Margaret shrieked, her left arm lifted high, hammering down into Ares’ chest, hitting hard enough to numb her nerves, no different from punching a tree or slapping a tank carapace.

  With his right hand, Ares pulled Margaret close to him once more.

  Margaret knew on some level what would come next. She knew this would hurt.

  Ares punched Margaret in the stomach.

  Tons, perhaps hundreds of tons, hammered into her skin, and she knew the damage was very real. Her spine shattered, her ribs snapped, crumpled, and peeled back. Her pelvis disintegrated, and intestines spilled free of the gaping punctures that emptied her stomach. It was agony beyond description, far above the pain of being shot or stabbed. Even the flames of Amihan Lopez were nothing compared the sudden fury of this savage malady. If she could have killed herself at this moment, Margaret would have, just to free herself, to depart her body of screaming nerves, the very meat that powered her, a betrayer.

  Somewhere in this pain, Margaret’s body died. It couldn’t help but to do so under the weight of such physical trauma. Somewhere in her death she was flying, weightless, tossed asunder like a broken toy that no longer served a purpose.

  In that moment of death, Margaret was also reborn.

  Her body was pulling itself back together, unfolding bones and growing marrow, tugging and pulling tendons tight, unfurling yards of blood veins. Somewhere in that reconstruction, the parts of her that had been wounded were mended. She could feel it.

  Margaret didn’t know how long it hurt, or how long she slept. She didn’t know if she was dwelling in the moment between seconds, or if she was bleeding to death and being reborn in her own time. She stopped understanding pain, her own existence, and simply ceased to be aware, passing beyond sleep, into a reality that had never been documented.

  8:22am April 16th, 39 Veilfall

  Manteca Reach, California

  “Is you a witch?”

  The voice belonged to a child. When Margaret turned to face him, he couldn’t have been older than five or six. His hair was blonde mixed with platinum and had been slicked down against his head with whispers of rain. His eyes were dark blue, and he bore a scratch at his cheek. The kind of wound likely inflicted by learning a lesson.

  “Yeah,” Margaret croaked, her voice sounded like a series of twigs snapping rhythmically with her syllables.

  “We suppos’d to report a witch. A one-arm witch, no-slack.” The boy answered, stumbling across the phrase one-arm. It came out a syrupy mumble. He wore woolen packs over his shoulders, crossing at his narrow chest, each loaded with brass casings, soaked at their bellies with moisture and mud, hugging his burlap pants.

  “I guess you’d best help me up,” Margaret stuttered for a second, rolling to her right side. The stones at her ribs pressed past broken ceramic plate, making her wince, “because you just found a one-arm witch.”

  The boy agreed, dutifully holding her wrist with both hands as she brought her weight up and off saturated earth. Her ankle buzzed with sharp ache. She glanced down at the armor around her abdomen and pelvis. The corset was still intact, but she could see where bullets had struck. If any one of those rounds had slipped between plates, she’d easily be dead by now.

  There was no evidence of the wound, the impact, gifted by Ares.

  Was that real? Is that how my mind processed it?

  It seemed real. So literal in pain, a string tugged and pulled along a rotten, old sweater. When she pulled her hand from the little boy’s fingers, she pressed at her stomach, between the corset bones and her armor.

  “You going to have a baby?” The child asked her.

  Margaret had paid no attention when she touched the little brassboy. Nor had she listened to his mind, but now she took a step back in both wonder and shock. He couldn’t have known what she was thinking, it had to just be a logic bridge.

  Probably.

  “What’s your name, brassboy?” Margaret asked, coughing. Her throat was defiantly dry, despite clothes being soaked to the skin as she shivered.

  “Poul,” the boy nodded, his voice small.

  Margaret looked away from his blue eyes and brass bags, up and over the battlefield remains. A flood of black and sooty smoke promised fires. It looked like most of the larger armored vanguard were wrecked, painted an ugly shade of night in scorches.

  The bodies, however, the bodies seemed to go on forever.

  The chill and rain had kept rot close to the ground, but if the sun darted out to warm the ocean of carcasses it would surely raise a foul odor. For now it only smelled like blood, cold and copper, sharp and stinging, mixed with the loose bowels and bladders where men had fallen in heaps. Tangled, frozen in moments of unadulterated violence. Knives clutched in blackened knuckles, twisted fingers on throats, eyeless rage caught in death. It reminded Margaret of the white caps that she’d seen in Aphrodite’s eyes after the first night with Townsend.

  There was also pooled gold. Lumps of yellow metal, clinging to the mud, or melted across skeletons, exposing rib cages and spinal columns.

  So, Eris had been real.

  “Poul,” Margaret didn’t look at the brassboy, “what army do you serve?”

  “3rd Army, ma’am.” The boy replied.

  Margaret closed her eyes and tilted her head back so that mist would stroke her face.

  At the very least, we won.

  Ares had been right, of course. A battle of this magnitude, without witches, was a slaughter. As her adulation over the victory grew, so too did her sorrow. There was no way to count the dead, and she wondered how many faces would she recognize? How many other Daniel Hasgards would look back at her, their chests opened and engorged, trailing their intestines, clawing until their fingers broke and their nails tore free?

  Fuck, Margaret laughed and her knees shuddered, what about Townsend?

  He was the allied commander, Maul and Owens units had placed themselves under his jurisdiction. It was unlikely that he’d been fighting at the very front lines, but in the wake of the endless carnage she now witnessed, anything was possible.

  Her voice stilled a frantic giggle, the closest she might know of fear, and Margaret looked back to the brassboy, “Can you lead me to 3rd Army’s command?”

  The boy seemed perplexed. A brassboy would have no clue about army command.

  “I can try?” The answer came out as a question, “But, no-slack on brass, I gots more pick up, ma’am.”

  Margaret considered assuming control of the boy’s mind, then decided against it. He was young and she could take the extra moment to convince him.

  “Take me to the one who told you, about a one-arm witch. Then you can return to picking up brass, yeah?”

  Little Poul seemed to find this more satisfying, “Yeah.”

  Running a hand across her face, Margaret sloughed off mud and dried cruor. She also pressed at lumps around her eye and temple, even her jaw, face swollen. She wondered how many days had passed since she’d shot her brother in the face.

  Margaret did her best to not trip over the dead. The uniforms and armor mottled up in shades of black and ashen gray, coated in scorch and varied shades of erubescent. Under coats of butchery, they all seemed the same. One after another, a twin to the next. If she stopped to study one, or two, she could tell them apart, some were taller, others wore beards or had green eyes, but at a glance it was simply a carpet of death.

  The closer to the active camps, the more bodies had been drug away, stacked and sorted for burning or burial. Rifles had been collected, forming vertical piles, jagged edges where bayonets protruded. Plate c
arriers, armor, and helmets were also stripped, forming smaller pyramids.

  Older brassboys sorted the dead, looking for unspent ammunition, supplies, and food to be collected. A few of them were girls, like Erin, wet hair pulled back, quick fingers drawing out pockets and unlacing boots. Some of these soldiers would have notes or letters, to be consigned to their loved ones, wrapped around a single coin. Payment for the brassboy who located it and saw it delivered beyond death.

  This was, Margaret always believed, one of the most important jobs of a brassboy. Collecting memories, ghosts of the fallen. Those letters were normally handed off to flywheels and runners, mercenaries and freebooters, of various ages who specialized in deliveries at great distance. Some had no taste for war, others were simply too feeble of body or mind to become infantry. A hundred opportunities awaited them between city-states, harbingers of information.

  Deeper, canvas tents had been placed around old plastic tables arranged as a brassboy hub. Older teenagers organized and directed their operations here. The one who Poul introduced her to was a man-grown, easily twenty or twenty-one years old, his chin peppered in a charade of beard, lips chapped and eyes watering.

  “Bossboy,” Poul said, pointing at Margaret with narrow fingers, blackened by powder residue, “I found a one-arm witch.”

  Smacking at chew tobacco, the older bossboy glared at Margaret in nervous disdain. He was afraid of her. Something crawled at the back of his mind, like the shadow of spiders caught in candlelight. Without a touch, or diving deeper, she’d never have imagined what caused this, but it made him hesitant near any inclined person.

  “No-slack here, pity-pity,” he said, looking away from Margaret, back to Poul, “Break bulk, and quick with it. Eat, yeah? Eat and no-slack.”

  The brassboy gave a weird half-salute, as serious as the grave; “No-slack!”

  Looking away from little Poul, the bossboy spat a wad of brown chew, “Lady Mayhem. We’s ordered to seek you, no-slack. We’s told it was a-number-one, highest priority.” The older lad raised his hand, fingers flat, well above his own head, rising on tiptoes to demonstrate the importance of his orders.

  “Who ordered it, bossboy? A-number-one priority?”

  “Cap’n Raises,” the bossboy stumbled over the name Reyes, and Margaret heaved a sigh of relief, for any to notice. That was at least one that had survived the meat grinder.

  Margaret’s smile was genuine, “Escort me to Captain Reyes, please.”

  The bossboy nodded, clapping his hands together twice and gesturing with his chin to follow him. Further north, away from pustulant smoke. Margaret did her best to ignore that smell, to not wrinkle her nose or cup her face with a dingy palm. It wasn’t the same as fresh skin and muscle ablaze, but it was close enough that her memories threaten to capsize against rising tambour of anxiety.

  What if Townsend was killed?

  It was strange to consider. Would she be able to live her remaining years, happily, in the absence of the only person who had not only understood, but accepted her? Could she replace him? Or would they just be a warm body pressed against her back and buttocks when she slept, a smile at breakfast, an even tone reading books to her? The winged horror of Eris and the strength of Ares couldn’t teach her fear. But, with each step, she knew something like terror. It forced her throat closed, labored her breathing and hissed at her ears like a venomous serpent.

  Is this fear? Or some kind of new love? Margaret was illiterate to the answer.

  Maul soldiers limped past her on crutches made of broken rifles. Wrapped in beige and red bandages, stained dark in the rain, threatening to turn putrid. Men screamed in medical tents, howling, pleading and praying to the gods as their wounds were closed or limbs amputated. Agony flowed around Margaret like flood water, broken pieces of dreams drifting by her mind, each one a question.

  How will I make a wage, no legs at all?

  Will she still love me, will she still think me handsome?

  I was right handed. How will I write? I can’t write with my left hand!

  That very last one cut deepest for Margaret. She’d not even tried to bring pen to paper, and she wondered if she’d ever offer herself up to that foul humiliation. She could imagine scrambling with the weaker wrist, unable to grip quill, forming ugly and misshapen words, unwanted and unloved, a stillborn child at her fingers.

  The thought disgusted Margaret.

  When they finally found Captain Reyes, he ignored the brassboy and embraced Margaret like a lost lover, pulling her up, off the ground. Her back cracked under the strength of his arms, where armor plates separated.

  “We really thought you were dead, Lady,” Reyes placed Margaret down, back on her feet, where the mud was firm. She had run the back of her hand across the Captain’s neck, gritty with soil and salt, she didn’t want to wait, she didn’t care to ask the officer.

  Townsend was still alive, Margaret thought, slipping through Captain Reyes’ memories, wandering around early morning when all fighting finally ceased. Townsend’s armor was spattered in ink and blood, his helmet gone, still wearing his headset and microphone like the one Margaret had lost. His eyes were heavy, and his brow beaded with furor and dread. He smelled like an ashtray, chain smoking, his hands quivering from adrenaline and something close to anger. Reyes was talking in the memory, his teeth clicking as he spoke, but Margaret paid little heed. She simply watched the big General nod in sullen loathing, moving in and out of lantern shadow.

  He thinks I’m dead, Margaret realized, in horror.

  He didn’t suffer her immunity to fear, all the muscles in his face clenched and twisted as emotions crossed his eyes. He was the king of a black day. Somewhere beyond the duties he’d resigned himself to, was a man who believed a very small woman, who he loved, had fallen in his black day.

  “I’m sorry,” Margaret shook her head, withdrawing from the memory, leaving Captain Reyes to rest in his mind, alone, “I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry I wasn’t on the front lines, and I’m sorry you fought without a witch.”

  Reyes pursed his lips, eyes focusing far away, “No one survived the front lines. No one. We assumed you’d fallen in the crossfire when you didn’t pick up on radio.”

  The look Reyes offered to only the gods, told Margaret a multitude of details. The carnage of this fight wasn’t something Reyes could wrap his mind around. Not yet. Just as Margaret had her own demons to tame, Captain Reyes would one day need to domesticate the horror he’d just taken part in.

  “The 1st Army?” Margaret questioned, her voice trailing off.

  “Dead. To the man. They wouldn’t surrender. Or run. Dead, to the last man.”

  Ares hadn’t lied. “They will not run or retreat, it will be a symphony of death not seen by your kind since the world was two-thousand years younger.”

  I can send Townsend a message that I’m safe, Margaret had work to do now.

  “Nothing to be done. Fetch me a brassboy who can help with my armor. I’ll attend the wounded.”

  Captain Reyes didn’t respond right away. His dark eyes fell off a ledge that Margaret couldn’t see or sense. When he regained composure, he lifted one dirty hand to his jaw, running a palm against stubble so thick that she could hear sandpaper scratch.

  “Lady, I can’t really allow that. Not this time.”

  Rankled, Margaret withdrew, body pulling away from the Captain and mind recoiling, “No one allows me to do anything, Commander.”

  Reyes shook his head, fast, dragging his gaze across the mud at Margaret’s bare toes, crusted and stained black, “No, no, Lady. That’s not how I meant it. I know you’ve always tended the wounded, the dying. But, this is different. General Townsend and Lord Owens have both summoned for you. If we found you alive. Townsend left express orders that you be brought to northern command immediately.”

  In his terror of displeasing Lady Mayhem, Captain Reyes let slip something that she should have already known. He doesn’t see me as a battlewitch anymore. He doesn’t
see me as mistress of the 3rd Army.

  “Because I’m not. Not anymore.” Margaret whispered the reply, her eyes closing.

  “Lady?” Reyes answered her, tensely.

  Margaret shook off the notion like a bad dream. She was left with a mouth of cotton and the lonely, disconnected sense of no longer belonging.

  “It’s fine. Take me to the command post.”

  Somewhere in their walk, between the flapping tents of the wounded and the guarded fortifications of field command, Lady Mayhem blew away in the wind.

  She was a dry and dangerous tumbleweed whose time was now past, caught in flurry and gust, a memory to be held by anyone who witnessed her.

  Only Duchess Margaret of the Bay Area Reach remained.

  11:44pm December 4th, 39 Veilfall

  Santa Cruz, California

  “We’re here, Duchess.”

  Margaret couldn’t see her driver in the dark. Her name was Bixby and she was the daughter of Townsend’s steward. A tall woman with bony knees, elbows, and a clavicle that extended itself unnaturally far from her chest. When she laughed it sounded like a pigeon dying, but her eyes were just a bit too big for her face, the same as Margaret, and she found this endearing.

  “Turn off the lights,” Margaret answered.

  The road had twisted up and around the proper reach of Santa Cruz. Asphalt had been eaten away by rain and time, crumbling in chunks down moist mountain soil, riddled with weeds and wildflowers. Back the way they had come, the road crossed a pre-Collapse cemetery, surrounded by a well-kept fence of wooden pickets, wound in dark ivy. Stones near the center looked to be easily two centuries old, while recent burials swept out beyond the central bounds. The further they drove, the darker it became. A young moon was swallowed by thick clouds, heavy with rain, and scented in ozone. The forest opened up for them, and quickly closed with weighted canopies, fluttering in a breeze and sprinkling the 4x4’s cracked windshield with droplets of water.