And they would know that they were not the masters of this land. Perhaps a few of them capable of greater thought would realize that their Khan was not truly master of any of them. Nilem smiled in the dark, running the thought over and over in her mind. There was simply no way out.
Only a minute ago, thought Nilem, he thought he was a god. But now he, and others, will see that he’s only a small, weak, pathetic little…
“Why, of course!” said Wodan. “You don’t need me to tell you that, do you, boy?”
There was dreadful silence in the clearing.
“I just assumed that some others were getting around to it,” said Wodan, laughing. “Yes, yes, built up a fire! The biggest this valley’s ever seen!”
“Are y-you, I mean, well,” said Jago, looking at Nilem with quick glances. “I mean, danger, and all, and demons, and-”
“This place is our home now,” said Wodan. “And you can’t have a home without a warm fire to sit around, now, can you?”
Chapter Seven
The Room Without Rabbits
Virgil didn’t come with us because he’s stubborn, Wodan thought. He’s staked his claim in Pontius, and he won’t leave no matter what. But Miss Oliver’s different. She instantly saw through my leadership of the dogmen.
She knew it was a sham.
Wodan sat under a tree heavy with rain trickling down from a dark, early morning sky. He could see men and dogmen gathered around breakfast fires, yawning and making jokes. He could hear experienced metal workers gathering equipment and loading pack animals in preparation for the two-day journey to the mines in the north.
The clans had not sent anyone to challenge Wodan since they had come out of the wasteland. Wodan kept the dogmen busy with patrols. The warriors seemed happy enough hunting game and attacking the larger strain of ghoul that inhabited the woods, but he knew that it was becoming routine. Days had passed gathering wood and constructing the fort, but the flesh demons that he knew were out there, somewhere, had not yet attacked. It was inevitable that the dogs would turn on him soon; boredom and the hunger for drama would not let them do otherwise.
Wodan would have preferred to wait until the fort and its walls were complete, and their home base was secure, before branching out and attempting to secure the long-abandoned mines. He would have to trust that loyal Naarwulf could handle the routine of building the fort, protecting the humans, and dispensing justice until his return.
Wodan heard someone clear their throat, then saw Yarek standing nearby. Hard, yellow eyes stared back at him through the morning gloom.
“Magog’s as ready as they’ll ever be,” said Yarek.
Of the twelve tribes of dogmen that left Hargis, only six survived the desert crossing and the battle against Pontius. Wodan had decided that the entire tribe of Magog would accompany them into the north. Naarwulf had explained to him, at length, about the natures of the various tribes; Wodan chose Magog at random because he could see little difference between the tribal aggregates of clans.
“Are the women ready?” said Wodan.
“No. I don’t know what they’re doing. They could hold us up and make this a three-day journey if-”
“Get the dogmen moving, then,” said Wodan, rising. “Get scouts in front and on either side. Try not to use any bullets, if you can help it. I’ll find the women.”
Yarek nodded and disappeared into the mist.
* * *
The Khan and his people and a host of Magogs marched through the forest, stripping trees of fruit as they went. Scouts left and returned, scratching marks in trees and reporting little. The two slave brides rode on a palanquin carried by six sturdy dogmen. Freyja whittled on her latest bow, a long bow of red wood intended for Wodan, and that she claimed would be her magnum opus. Wodan still carried no weapons and said that he would wait until her gift was complete. Nilem stayed busy brushing wood shavings off the palanquin as she scowled at Freyja and her untidy work area.
At midday, a band of dogmen scouts ran among them, whooping and thumping their chests. They tossed a white ball back and forth. When a tall dog held it high overhead to keep it from another, Wodan could see that it had dead, black eye sockets sunk into mottled gray flesh.
“You, scout!” said Wodan. “Where did that head come from?”
“Khan,” said the scout, bowing slightly. “Camp of ghouls, that way. We killed them all!”
Yarek came up beside Wodan. “Looks like we missed the action,” he said. Wodan turned to nod and noticed Jarl leaning against the palanquin, his face pale and fish-like as he gulped down a torrent of vomit.
“Scout, take us there,” said Wodan, tapping Yarek’s shoulder. Yarek signaled to a group of Reavers.
“Wodan,” said Zach, striding up with a bow hanging at his side. “Do you want me to…?”
“No, stay here. I want you and Freyja to keep everyone heading north!”
Zach averted his eyes, but Freyja shouted, “Right!” as she lowered the red bow and stared ahead.
Wodan, Yarek, and a few Reavers followed the team of dogmen, who beamed with pride and pointed out various landmarks that they could have used to their advantage if the battle against the ghouls had gone sour. The rumble of the tramping horde sunk behind them. Wodan smelled death ahead.
They came to a clearing choked with flies. White limbs laid in a tangled mess of black sludge and shining intestines. Wodan and Yarek walked into the stinking swamp while the dogmen hung back, suddenly quiet, as if in awe of their own handiwork. Wodan prodded a muscular arm with his foot. Again, the ghouls were far larger than he remembered.
“You can tell the blood’s fresh,” said Yarek, “but some of these limbs already look rotten. Smells like they’ve been dead for a week.”
“They smell like this when they’re alive, too,” said Wodan. “They’re diseased. It’s some kind of necrosis. I don’t know how they’re getting bigger. They seemed to be in awful shape when I saw them over a year ago.”
Yarek pointed to another corpse. Wodan stared, then finally distinguished it from the others. The corpse was that of a deer, its torso hollowed out, one leg pointing upward stiffly.
“What of it?” said Wodan.
“They eat meat,” said Yarek, “but there’s no evidence of fire.”
“... You’re right.”
Wodan found a stack of tree limbs near a fallen trunk that was obviously used for a seat. He lifted the branches away and found several thin strips of bark, pale on one side, with designs traced in red clay and some kind of sap.
“Look at this,” said Wodan.
Yarek knelt beside him. The things were pictures. They saw images of humanoids, crooked stick figures with spears and frowns. Another image showed some large animal, a thing they hunted. Then another picture similar to the first. Yet another image showed what might be an angry-looking tree with oppressive black branches.
“Gods,” said Wodan. “I can’t believe it. They make art.”
“Looks like something a serial killer would have made when he was a kid.”
“What kind of artist would make something and then hide it from his brothers?” Wodan let the ugly things drop into the mud. “They make art, but not fire. They’ve got… fragments of a culture. They’re like shadows of what it is to be human.” Wodan thought for a while, then added, “My first time in the valley, the ghouls acted cowardly at first. But later they seemed possessed. They fought until dead, completely unmindful of their own safety.”
“Possessed?” said Yarek. “I don’t know about that. Then again, I’ve not gotten any reports of any of them ever running from a fight, even if outnumbered.”
“If something is controlling them, it probably doesn’t care about their artistic sensibilities. Only their ability to fight and kill.”
Yarek nodded slightly. “Any commander in charge of idiots and gold-brickers would love to be able to turn his men into a bunch of streamlined robots. To just take all the personal nonsense and wipe it away. You know?”<
br />
Wodan reached down and propped up one of the sad pictures. He was repulsed by Yarek’s statement. But when he looked over at their scouts and saw one swiftly put another in a headlock while the others leaped up and began cheering, he decided that he could not believe that Yarek was completely wrong.
* * *
Forty Years Ago
Didi perched over his computer monitor, cutting and pasting and rewriting the virtual model of the blueprint of the new being. Childriss either paced about behind him, scratching his head and grinding his teeth, or leaned over his friend’s shoulder and pushed his head to the side so that he could make suggestions. They were utterly alone in their work, and not only because of the instability of their moral grounds; the light of the monitor revealed an unbroken stream of text, the four letters of guanine, cytosine, thiamine, and adenine, that spelled out life’s beginning, life’s changes, and life’s end, most of which was completely beyond the understanding of Haven’s scientific elite. As Didi scanned through various sections of the code, a barrage of his own notes flashed on either side of the screen.
The hypothetical being was monstrously complex. No section of the blueprint could be neatly separated, labeled, modified, and reinserted; too many sections were interconnected with too many other sections. Many sections appeared completely worthless, inactive remnants of previous manifestations of life; some could be safely removed, one less variable to worry about, but other snatches of seemingly worthless code, once removed, proved ruinous to the new life. Many stillborn post-rabbits attested to this.
Still, they had been able to fill Didi’s dark chamber with a host of new post-rabbit species. Rabbits capable of breathing underwater, rabbits that survived on woods chips and paper rather than vegetable matter, even rabbits of incredible strength that could tear through their cages, and that could have escaped and driven other animals to extinction if their eyes were not painfully sensitive to light.
Now the dark room was still, empty, absent of life. All of the new species had been gassed and incinerated.
Didi and Childriss had moved on to other lifeforms.
* * *
They trudged through the deep, dark woods until they came to foothills bathed in light. One dogman tripped over a giant nest of insects and fell, cursing, as a thousand or more things like butterflies flew up in a rainbow cloud. The advance guard scanned cold black hills and shivering streams as the butterflies landed on their shoulders and the muzzles of their guns. The hissing echo of icy water drifted over the face of the black hills. They stared at the square caverns dug long ago by pioneers long since dead, the entrances covered in shadow. A few decrepit earth moving machines sat frozen and covered in rust.
The dogs crouched low as they advanced, teeth grinding in feral anticipation. Wodan caught the eyes of pack leaders, pointed to openings within the stone passes, and the dogs loped ahead, splashing through streams and leaping from step to step. Tall Chris Kenny broke from the horde, climbed a tall rock that stood alone within a wide stream, and slowly assembled the great rifle of the Hargis kings. A few Reavers entered the largest entrance, guns held ready, dropping flares that sat spitting on the cold, wet earth.
Wodan, Zach, and Yarek entered the largest hall of black stone. Behind them came a train of former Hargis soldiers equipped with bows to preserve their modern ammunition. Wodan dreaded the dark place. He had already been there once, had lost friends, had fought devils in a confrontation that seemed more like a nightmare than reality, and had spent hours trudging through darkness carrying the weight of someone far larger than himself. The light from the entrance faded behind them, and the light from their flares did not seem strong enough to illuminate the walls of the black tomb.
“Keep all helm functions off,” Yarek whispered. “Save those batteries.” The Reavers nodded curtly.
They found side passages that were dug by hand, cramped and supported by aging wooden beams. Some passages were jammed with carts filled with rocky debris, coal, or lumps of what could only be unprocessed iron. None were overturned or disturbed in any way.
“Once the men were killed or chased off,” said Wodan, “the demons left it as it was. They’re beasts with no sense that any of this is worthwhile.”
Zach looked into the dark emptiness hiding at the end of a long passage. “A demon’s body is his art,” he said.
They explored the dark tunnels, weapons always held ready. Map makers followed behind while prospectors whispered to one another, pointing to exposed, glittering veins. While it was difficult to count time in the darkness, Wodan could tell that there were far more man-made tunnels than he had previously suspected. He knew it must mean that the humans who had come before them had spent a considerable amount of time in the valley. It meant, also, that the flesh demons had patiently bided their time before they attacked.
We must be sure to never lower our guard, he thought. I’m counting on the fact that most of the demons are far away, gathering into armies like the one that attacked Hargis.
Occasionally they heard noises in the distance, growling and strange footfalls – only to encounter other men or dogmen approaching from side passages. This happened more and more often until eventually the pioneers filled the dark tunnels. They began to relax. The wealth of the earth seemed to be theirs without a fight.
Wodan and the others came to an unfinished tunnel. It branched off suddenly into a natural cavern. They slipped through the crack and studied the chamber. The air felt moist, even a little warm. Yarek pointed suddenly, stiffened, and Wodan saw the thing: A downward-sloping, circular tunnel. Zach threw his torch down the tunnel. The light bounced downward, then continued rolling, never finding rest. The long tunnel descended into darkness forever, and a creeping fear slid into Wodan’s gut.
“There’s no carts, buckets, tools, lamps… nothing down there,” said Yarek. “That can only mean one thing.”
Wodan stared into the darkness. He could not shake the thought that if their enemy came from such a darkness, from a place of endless night that could not be touched by anything human, then they could never hope to sustain any fire or light among themselves for any length of time.
“We blow up this chamber,” said Wodan. “Run and fetch the explosives, however much we need. Seal this chamber up forever.”
They had a meager supply of dynamite which could be used in the creation of new tunnels, but none argued against the sealing of the demonic entrance. Several men scurried away to bring the charges. The others remained still, and Wodan saw that their faces were frozen in primal fear. Wodan turned to Zach. His face alone carried some strange lust, a desire for exploration no matter the price. While they waited for the men to return, Wodan was tortured by the idea that his friend would ask if he could explore the tunnel before it was destroyed.
A long time passed, then the others returned with boxes of dynamite.
“Khan,” said one, “they’s some manner of disturbance by the entrance.”
“You heard something?” said Wodan.
“No, but I saw a lot of dogs runnin’ that way. I did hear one say somethin’ about a fight, or somethin’ like that.”
Wodan ran before the man finished, and the others followed.
An attack! thought Wodan. They’re here! The demons have made their move!
Lights bounced frantically behind him. He could feel his body swelling under the wolfskin cloak, hungry for movement, for bloody resolution.
The night outside was torn by the sound of berserker howling and the blasting of guns. All was chaos. Wodan skidded to a stop and saw white forms descending down the side of a black hill.
Wodan immediately understood that the attackers – about two dozen large ghouls armed with spears – were no real threat. A dozen more already lay dead. A massive force of dogmen stood on the flatland below, or in packs on the hills, firing round after round, barely taking the time to aim. The ghouls were wide-eyed, possessed by some kind of battle-rage and completely unmindful of their own safet
y. One leaped from a high ledge, was blasted to pieces in midair, and splashed down in a great shower of intestines that steamed on the cold stone.
“Stop firing!” Yarek shrieked. “Save your ammo!”
One dog jerked backward and clutched at his head, victim of a ricocheted bullet, and his brothers caught him as he fell. One of his brothers pulled a heavy machinegun from its mounted position, swore vengeance, and poured hundreds of rounds into a handful of ghouls already stumbling from fatal wounds.
Wodan knew that there was no way to stop the massacre, the waste of precious ammunition, while the dogs were frenzied. The last of the ghouls fell in a shower of black blood, most of them dead before they hit the ground. As the dogs cheered in victory, and even fired a few celebratory rounds into the air, Yarek stomped about in a screaming rage.
Wodan felt eyes on him, then saw Chris Kenny smoking calmly on his lonely perch. “So this is what the end of the world looks like,” said Chris. “Just a bunch of morons screaming at each other.”
* * *
Khan Wodan walked through the forest late that night, the stars blotted out by light-eating branches. His trail was lit by a broken line of dogs holding torches aloft, and some whispered, “This way, Khan...” or “... Khan, it is over here,” and Wodan stared ahead, and knew full well what he would find: A dreary place that he had escaped long, long ago.
A leaning hut stood in a clearing. It was surrounded by dogmen bearing torches, and one whispered that a witch hid inside and waited to strike dead the first man who entered. Wodan raised a hand to silence them.
The door to the hut fit unevenly on its frame. Wodan grasped it at the top, tore it free, and laid it on the ground. He took a torch and entered.
Demonworld Book 5: Lords of the Black Valley (Demonworld series) Page 9