by Ari Marmell
Were the idols themselves living, or were they the masks of more horrific entities in the caves beyond? Was the Charred Council truly three, or merely a single being with multiple faces? Not even the Council’s own Riders could do more than guess.
“War …” It came from the center effigy, booming enough that even the Horseman almost staggered. The shifting of tectonic plates, given throat and tongue to declare its deepest fury, might have come near to producing such a sound.
He bowed his head within the crimson hood, sufficient to show respect, but never could it be mistaken for submission. “You sent for me?” His own voice was hard, that of a man used to the shouts and calls of battle.
“We find ourselves presented with a rare opportunity. We have chosen you to exploit it.”
“I’m listening.”
“Your eldest brother currently walks the realms at our behest.” This time, it was the head on the right that spoke, in a voice almost indistinguishable from the first. “He looks into a matter that may or may not prove a trifle.”
War nodded. “What is it that he—?”
“Irrelevant!” That from the center head once again. “Death’s precise purpose has no bearing on you! What matters is this …”
Now the leftmost took its turn. “Our informants have alerted us that, in the midst of the event that we sent Death to investigate, the angel Abaddon was grievously injured. His recovery progresses slowly, and it may be some time before he returns to the White City—or to his fullest strength.”
Those rugged features now curled in a fearsome scowl. “If you are about to ask me to slaughter an injured foe—”
“We do not ask, Horseman! We never ask. You would be wise to remember that.”
“However”—now the rightmost head—“as it happens, you misunderstand our purpose. It is not Abaddon’s weakness, but his absence from the White City, of which you will take advantage.
“The pacts and treaties that we have enforced between Heaven and Hell are young still. Factions on both sides probe at their limits, seeing how far they can test us. A war between Above and Below is never far from igniting—a war in which we would have to intervene, and which would obliterate worlds and threaten the Balance before its end.”
I wonder, sometimes, if Creation is worthy of our efforts to save it. But War was wise enough not to speak such thoughts aloud before the Council. What he said, instead, was, “Yes, I understand.”
“Many on both sides hold that such a war is inevitable, even desirable, and take steps to prepare. Abaddon is such a one. He has constructed a weapon of terrific power, an explosive device that harms only demons! It emits hallowed energies, and even its fragments and shrapnel are specially blessed.
“A ‘sacrament bomb,’ if you will.”
War was nodding. “And you worry that Abaddon will use this bomb to start a war.”
“His emissaries have offered endless assurances that the weapon is to be a deterrent only. Yet we cannot trust the angels’ word, not when the device would prove utterly devastating against an unprepared foe.”
Yet again the heads traded off; the one on the left now spoke. “Too, there is the likelihood that, should Hell become aware of the sacrament bomb, they would launch a strike of their own, in an effort to capture or eliminate the weapon before it could be turned against them.”
“You want it destroyed.”
“Yes. Given time, we can work magics through the ethers of Creation to prevent Abaddon from re-creating the device, but the one he has already built would still pose a threat.”
War drew himself up, arms crossed over his massive chest. “Stealth and sabotage?” he spat. “Surely any one of my brethren would be more appropriate for that than I. Even if Death is occupied, Fury or—”
“Again you misunderstand us! There is to be no stealth. We desire to send a message, one that neither Heaven nor Hell can possibly misconstrue. The lords and generals of both armies must know that further research in these directions is unacceptable, and will be met with the most dire consequences!
“Do not sneak, Horseman. Do not hide. Your mandate is to travel directly and openly to the stronghold in which Abaddon has hidden the sacrament bomb; our spies have provided its location.
“And you are to go through anything and anyone that stands in your way!”
For the first time since he’d arrived in the Charred Council’s domain—indeed, for the first time in years—War felt himself smile.
CHAPTER FIVE
STUPID. UNBELIEVABLY STUPID.”
Though her words were accusatory, even petulant, Belisatra’s tone was flat and cold as a frozen lake. Only the fingers of her left hand, drumming a chiming beat on her armored thigh, gave any further indication of her exasperation.
They left smears of semi-congealed blood, those fingertips—the only remaining trace of recent, distasteful experimentations.
Her companion sat by the worktable, slumped bonelessly in a rickety chair that was clearly not long for this world, and old enough that it probably looked forward to going. In his lap, Black Mercy lay like a sodden lump of flesh—too grotesque to keep, too morbidly fascinating to throw away.
The triple cylinders turned constantly beneath his restless fingers. Click. Click.
Click.
“It was worth the risk,” he said finally.
Belisatra glared at his hunched shoulders, as he seemed determined not to turn and face her directly.
“Worth the risk?” The ice in her voice was now sharp enough to draw blood. “You compromised our entire effort! The White City knows of our interest in Eden, now. They’ve seen some of our best soldiers in action, and for what? My pets came nowhere near to reaching the gate, let alone breaking—”
He had trouble hearing her, absorbing the meaning of her words only several long breaths after she spoke them. For centuries, he’d had so little room in his soul for anything beyond bitter regret and simmering fury, at what had been done to him and to … to others. He was accustomed to that; perhaps even found some comfort in it. But now, something was stoking those fires, something new. His memories felt smothered in a stifling caul, the world around him tinged a venomous purple by the putrid hatred bubbling up through the cracks between his thoughts.
Only the deadweight of the pistol felt real, only Black Mercy looked stable in the center of his wavering vision.
Click. Click.
“I saw an opening, and I took it,” he said slowly, cutting the Maker off in midstream. “The knowledge we might have gained, to say nothing of more tangible prizes, made it worth the gamble.
“Yes, we lost, but consider what we’ve learned. Your drones are of little use against angels, save in great numbers, but your myrmidons are far more effective. We know now what sorts of tactics the White City is likely to employ in its defensive bastions. And we know that the Charred Council has, as yet, no notion of what we’re after.”
“And just how do you figure that?” Belisatra asked.
“Because Eden was guarded only by angels, not by any of the Horsemen.”
“Hmm. Fair, but we can’t count on that lasting. And Heaven will certainly have reinforced the garden’s defenders at this point. We’ve lost our shot.”
“Our shot at Eden, yes. But only temporarily. And besides, Eden was never our only option.”
“True, but—”
The fever was actually squeezing him, reaching out with great tendrils so it might crush his mind to its breast and feel his thoughts burning. He’d begun to sweat across his forehead, his neck …
But not his hands. His hands were steady, cool, comfortable on Black Mercy’s grip.
“Enough for now!” He refrained from shouting, not out of any desire to remain diplomatic with his ally but simply because he lacked the energy to both remember the meaning of the words and spit them with any real vehemence. “I believe you have some constructs to replace before our next attempt, don’t you?”
Belisatra grumbled something uninte
lligible and swept from the room, the heavy steel of her armor adding its own metallic voice as she vanished down the corridor. Behind her, her ally remained beside the table and its scattered tools, sagging in his chair, fixated wholly on the only thing remaining in his sight, in his mind, perhaps even in his soul.
Click.
THE SNOW WAS THE BROWN-GREEN OF MARSH WATER, rather than traditional white or even slushy gray. It even smelled vaguely stagnant, not that there were many creatures around to notice. It fell in thick flurries, some of which seemed to ride their own individual winds that spun in utter disregard for the weather patterns mere paces away. Everywhere it fell it froze almost instantly into ice, painting abstract patterns of dull hue across the landscape.
And it fell so swiftly that Death, who had crouched in this particular spot for only a few moments, was already half buried and otherwise coming to resemble just another small geological feature of the terrain.
He lurked low on the slope of a mountain so astoundingly massive that it was impossible, from any distance, to view both the base and the summit at once. Several protrusions of stone jutted from the slopes, a few of them large enough to qualify as mountains in their own right. And this was but one of an entire range, forming a wall in the world—and creating steep valleys and gorges where so many Nephilim and so many demons had fallen, long and long ago.
Jagged rock, eternal winter, and a surface of ice some hundreds or even thousands of hands in depth. This was all that the ancient battle had left of the fields of Kothysos.
Within those valleys, swarming across floors of ice and snowy slopes, were those six-limbed beasts of stone of which the departed angel had told him. Hordes upon hordes of them, transforming all Kothysos into one enormous anthill of industry. That they were, indeed, scavenging the ancient battlefield, Death could have no doubt. Their forelimbs were transformed into digging tools, shovels and picks for the most part, save when they hauled something from the ice. These, whether the tiniest object or an entire demonic corpse, long preserved by the cold, they then carried off to some central assembly point the Horseman had not yet discovered.
He had not yet seen any trace of the stone-and-brass warriors, nor any sign of a living mind directing the lesser automatons. The things seemed relatively unobservant as well as unintelligent; so long as he remained on the slopes high above, and let the snow do most of the work, remaining concealed ought to be simple enough.
“Ready?” he asked, his voice almost lost to the falling snow and cracking ice.
Dust, who was currently little more than a puffy ball of disheveled black feathers huddled beneath the Horseman’s chest, replied with an ugly look and single resigned squawk.
“A little cold won’t hurt you.” And then, “Fascinating. I didn’t know a beak could scowl like that.”
It was a slow and frustrating, if not particularly difficult, journey. The snow was thick enough, and Death silent enough, that none of the constructs below came close to spotting him. The treacherous terrain impeded his progress only slightly, and this far down the slopes, the rocky protrusions were usually near enough for the Horseman to leap successfully from mountainside to mountainside.
No, the difficulty arose when moving among those mountains that didn’t stand near enough to one another to allow for an easy crossing. Death did, despite his supernatural strength and agility, have limits to how far he could jump. In these instances, when the only option was climbing to ground level and crossing through the small valleys, the Horseman was forced to scuttle around to the far side of the slopes and work his way behind the laboring constructs.
Not even a sizable group of the things would pose him much of a danger, but battling a few meant risking the attention of all. And that would prove, at the very least, inconvenient.
Until, after arduous hours of painstaking progress trailing the encumbered drones back to their central repository, stealth finally ceased to be an option.
Tucked into a smaller valley that formed a tributary off the main chasm, a perfect circle—roughly thrice Death’s height in diameter—had been melted into the permafrost. Whatever had occurred here had happened some time ago, and much of the hollow had already filled in with fresh ice and snow, but the outline remained clearly visible. Death would have guessed, even without his extraordinary senses, that he was looking at the remains of a gate between realms. The fact that he could feel the weakness in the walls of reality, a fresh scab over a wound in the world, merely confirmed that assessment.
Beside the remnants of the gate, a hill of snow bulged like a blister from the ice. It, too, was clearly fresh. Death watched one of the stone constructs approach with a lump of something—he could not, from here, make out what it might be—and place it on the hillside, where it was swiftly covered up.
As he’d suspected, then. This was where the diggers were storing whatever it was they chipped from the permafrost.
The stockpile was only lightly guarded—suspiciously so, in fact. While new drones appeared every few minutes, in order to deliver their payloads, they departed just as swiftly. Only a contingent of five remained nearby at all times, winding in a complex patrol around and around the “hill.”
Death considered the situation for some time, again allowing the snow to blanket him. Were the enemy—whoever they might be—truly so overconfident, so foolish, as to assume the operation here would never be troubled? Had they overextended themselves, stretching their resources too thin?
Or …
Given the depth to which they’d already delved into the ice, the relatively small prizes they delivered to the stockpile, the length of time between discoveries, perhaps the operation was almost complete. He’d known they must have been here for some while before the invasion of Eden—otherwise, they’d not have had time to unearth Affliction, not when the Nephilim themselves had been unable to locate the sword—but he hadn’t realized how long.
The stockpile wasn’t guarded well because the enemy had already retrieved whatever prizes they expected to find, and moved the bulk of their efforts elsewhere. The remainder was just meticulousness, in case they’d missed something.
So he was far too late to stop them from accomplishing their goals, at least here on the fields of Kothysos. But Death would be damned to the depths of the Abyss if he’d leave without finding out what the enemy were after.
And still he hoped—would, perhaps, have prayed, had he any remnants of faith left to him—that he was wrong.
All of which meant that he had to get a look at whatever it was that lay hidden beneath the snowy mound below.
Death had no way of telling how long it would be before the next constructs arrived. They appeared, not at set intervals, but whenever they had unearthed something of worth to deliver. Still, a few moments, at least, usually passed between arrivals; all he could do was to time the patrol of the five who lingered, and hope.
Two drones appeared, made their deliveries, wandered off once more; three of the patrolling constructs were positioned near enough to one another … And it was time.
From a jutting outcrop of frost-slick stone, Harvester spinning in lazy circles, Death leapt.
He landed hard on the middle of the three guards, crushing it deep into the snow and ice. The impact alone might have been sufficient to shatter the magics that animated it, but Death was never to know. He’d landed in a crouch, not merely on his feet, but on his left hand—a hand that clutched half of Harvester, now formed into an impossibly thick and long-bladed knife that punched through the rock as easily as flesh. The runes scribed across the drone’s body flared brightly and died.
Even as he landed, Death leaned to the right and thrust with his second weapon, currently in the form of a long, narrow spear. It, too, blasted through the carapace, this time of the construct to the right. The wound itself was narrow, not sufficient to kill instantly.
The thickening of the haft, and the blade punching through the construct from within as Death allowed the two weapons to meld
back into a single scythe, were sufficient.
The last of the three, to Death’s other side, had only just turned to face him when the Horseman swung Harvester overhead, right to left, the dead drone still impaled upon the blade. It crashed into its target, slicing stone, and both bodies cracked into scores of lifeless chunks.
Three down, and the snow kicked up at Death’s landing hadn’t yet settled back to earth.
The last pair of drones, the two that had not been standing just beside the others, instantly split off in opposite directions. One moved toward the intruder at a rapid charge, while the other scurried off behind the nearest stone outcropping—whether to work its way around and attack from behind or to fetch reinforcements, Death couldn’t know.
A quick mental call, and then Death’s left fist shot outward. Again Harvester had split, as swiftly as its wielder could think it, now forming the familiar pair of smaller scythes. One spun from the Horseman’s hand, whistling as it flew, and two of the charging drone’s legs fell from its body at the blade’s kiss. It tumbled hard, sending up a puff of snow. It shuddered, struggling to drag itself forward with its arms and its one remaining pair of legs …
The scythe flew from beneath its bulk to merge once more with its other half, meeting Death in midair as his second leap carried him from the carapace of one drone to the side of another. Harvester was now a square-headed maul, a hammer so oversized it was almost—almost—comical.
Although the wounded creature crushed beneath its bulk, shattered into granules and tiny chunks that were swiftly buried by the swirling snows, probably wouldn’t have thought so.
A sepulchral wail arose from nearby, and only Death recognized the sound for what it was. The fifth and final construct hurtled back into view, trailing tiny slivers of stone. It landed on its back, legs thrashing, exposing a pair of hoof-shaped impressions gouged into its chest. It might easily have flipped itself over with its arms, had Death not casually brought the maul down once more, pulverizing the thing.