"Never fear!" interrupted Eddinray; "I shall fetch her!"
Scurrying for the lead, the knight slid backward for a second time, yanking Kat and me with him.
***
Harmony was alone when she came upon a child slouched against icy stone: a boy no more than four years old, hugging both arms over his head. "Do not cower, child," she said, softly. "Help has arrived."
The boy did not respond, so Harmony crouched to him and caressed his thin hair. "There, there. You are safe. No need for tears now."
The child grazed his tiny hand over Harmony's, and then faced her with tear-drops drying over his innocent cheeks.
"Harmony?" we hollered in the background. "Harmony?"
"I'm fine!" she replied, returning the boy's smile. "We both are!"
The child had no teeth in his mouth, and wore an odd smirk for an unusually long length of time. Harmony shrunk slightly as the boy tipped his head to one side, a protruding vain now bulging across his forehead. The angel glanced over her shoulder, and then all of a sudden was forced onto her wings as the boy throttled her neck, his strength far greater than that of an infant.
Once Harmony was flat on the rocks, the boy prodded each of his chubby hands inside her mouth, fidgeting them to fit. Harmony attempted to cry out, but his forcing flesh snuffed her sound. Terrified tears flowed from the angel's eyes; her fists hit out, her knees kicked and her wings flapped like trapped pigeons in their clasp, but the ghoul was too powerful.
What did have an affect on this evil was the long sword of Eddinray, lunging at last from the darkness. Violently he slashed, and the inhuman thing burst into a cloud of bats, a hundred flailing, squeaking, and biting rabid over the pair of them. They embraced, screaming until Kat's ravaging katana sent this fluttering plague out of the cave.
It was over, and with Harmony heaving and sobbing still, the tense eyed samurai scolded her. "Choke you stupid woman! Choke! Another lesson! Another fool!"
Furious, Eddinray stood from the traumatised young woman to poke his finger into Kat's chest.
"That is quite enough from you!" he yelled. "You sir, are a man of no honor and I shall see you in combat! Prepare yourself swine!"
Bumping his armored chest against Kat's, the samurai responded by simply pushing Eddinray to the rocks. "If you wish to die," he sneered, pointing his sword at Eddinray's neck; "it will be my pleasure."
Before a gaping mouthed Eddinray could respond, Harmony squeezed his palm. "Do not fight, Godwin,” she whispered. "You have already saved my life twice. Pray show the samurai mercy…"
Kat snorted, more amused than insulted.
"If that is your wish madam!" Eddinray huffed, unable to contain the pink appearing on his cheeks. "I shall spare the samurai's soul."
I was relieved to see Kat return the katana to his belt. "I also have something important to say!" he suddenly growled at us, blocking the way forward. "No-one disobeys me from this point onward! No one! No more! Peril waits beyond this cave — visible — invisible — and the safest place for all of you is behind my back. There is no good here, there is no compassion, there is no hope…and we will all have our chance to die."
As the haunting whispers returned in the rocks, we four stood as one. "The short samurai leads them. Four more! Spread the word! Four more!"
"One last thing," said Harmony, lowering her head and closing her eyes. "Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom his will commits us here. Ever this day be at our side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen."
Eddinray and I returned the Amen; the General Kat however, preferred silence before marching his troops off to battle.
21. The Dishonorable Many
The cave brought us to the muddy banks of a lake, and source of the foul stink. The placid water was congealed like week old gravy, and over it, I noticed over fifty arms reaching out of the murky sauce.
The semi-solid lake stretched as far as the eye could see to a lingering blanket of red fog. The sky overhead was a weird, rippling mirror of jelly, reflecting all us sinners underneath it. "Truly another world,” gawked Harmony.
Stepping foot on a muddy shore, we soon arrived at the marching men, a parade of soldiers as long as the lake itself. Millions, perhaps billions, and not one without a uniform or weapon. Harmony informed us that the diversity of this cue spanned the entire history of the Earth and other Planets. British redcoats soldiered behind modern day marines, whose khaki outfits could easily camouflage them in the woods or forests of the Distinct Earth. Scattered Roman legions followed those hollow faces and dull coloured uniforms of the Great War. The American, Russian and Chinese civil wars were represented, the French and American Revolutions too. Those of alien kind were varied in appearance, immeasurable in number, and spread indiscriminately amongst humans. There were loathsome looking creepy crawlies; a brutish race of walking tall Rhino; what can only be described as a bear having a conversation with a cricket half his size, and others with as many eyes as teeth. Those souls not soldiers sat a picture of melancholy, their spirits vanquished by a lingering bitterness in the air and heart.
We moved diligently passed and ever present along the shore was the chattering teeth and waggling tongues — strangers getting acquainted with neighbours, alien conversing with human, whilst others remained in solemn, regretful reflection.
"Called me out a cheat!" one complained to another. "Nobody calls me a cheat!"
"How do you think I feel mate," came the reply; "my missus fell down the stairs but they claim I pushed her!"
Through and around them we wandered. "How can they stand this wretched filth?" asked a disgusted Eddinray, pegging two fingers over his nostrils.
"More to the point," I said, "what are they waiting for?"
"Some wait to cross the lake,” answered Kat, always ahead. "Others, the soldiers, remain in step without motive, and without question."
"Do they eat?" I pried, careful not to touch them. "What can they eat?"
"Plenty to go around…” said Kat, with a straightforward kick at the glob by his boot.
Bombarded by the constant gripes of these damned, it was hard not to sympathize. None that we passed could possibly conceive why they deserved such torture; every one had justification why they should not be suffering here, how they did not deserve it.
"Think harder,” Kat said to one lamenting old man. Our leader then reminded us to have no pity, and that every soul who marched or lay hopeless in mud was here for a very good reason, the guilty secrets best kept to themselves.
There was a sudden outcry when two men broke free from their march. One wore a swastika armband over his dirty uniform; the other was dressed in an R.A.F officer's suit with all the stripes. Rolling on the mud, they swapped insults and punches, and Kat held his arm across us to prevent any intervention.
"Their business," he hissed, “is none of ours."
Their feud came to a savage conclusion. The Nazi sat atop the squiggling officer, grasped the nearest boulder and pummelled his fellow pugilists skull to squash; and as the victorious man recovered over his victim's disappearing chest, a tiny orb of light arose from that body. The Nazi and crowd paid no attention to this delicate star of plasma slipping into the mire; they had seen it too many times before.
***
A middle-aged woman stood solitary in the lake, up to her knees in the gravy. With a constipated expression and great panting breaths, she bent over then waft the water between her thighs.
"My baby!" she cried, hysterical. "Push! Push!"
Passing, we shunned her sight at the shore, but this only increased her howls for attention.
"Some towels young man!" she begged me. "I'm having a baby! A child, you hear!"
Harmony noticed a flat stomach on the confused woman and returned a queasy smile.
"Angel girl!" she continued. "Help deliver my baby! I cannot do this alone!"
"Do not stop,” Kat urged. "Move."
"Wait! Wait!" the woman pleaded. "Please don't leave me!"
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She let out a final, agonizing screech, before parting the sludge between her legs.
"Oh my God! Someone, someone has stolen my baby! My baby boy!"
Manic, she plunged herself into the sticky waters…and was never seen again.
Fights spilled more frequently out of the cue — commonplace and best ignored.
The mundane memories of my previous life were fading, but amongst the forsaken faces here, I saw one that I recognized from the old days. His name was Willie Castle, a down and out I'd pass on the streets, holding out his begging cup for loose change — he was a thief and convicted sex offender, and alive when I last laid eyes on him.
I hoped to avoid him now, but an exiled angel, a legend samurai and a glimmering knight tends to attract the eye. "Well, well, well!" he heckled. "Look who it is — Detective Fox! It is! Remember me, Fox? Over here! Oh, I see you! Don't think I don't!"
I stared ahead, purposely upping up the pace.
"You know that fellow?" asked Eddinray. "Seems to know you, doesn't he? Who is he?"
"Don't know him,” I answered, plain faced. "He's got it wrong."
We could walk fast but Castle could shout louder, and shout he did.
"Thought you were above the law, didn't you Fox? I read all about it! That's right, ignore me you murdering bastard! You're no better than me! I always knew it! Suffer in the shit you prick!"
"Don't know him,” I repeated, until his abuse was out of earshot.
Kat, Harmony and Eddinray did not pry into my past, but they were now suspicious.
***
The terrain sucked in our legs and there was no escaping the congestion of bodies. We four grouped close through this dire market of pushing and squabbling. Harmony politely excused herself to every soul she happened to graze, and Eddinray and I followed her angelic example. Kat, however, bulldozed the throng out of his way, thumping any mug he didn't like. At one low point, he tackled a dainty man to the dirt, and an agitated crowd responded. "What you playing at?" bellowed one, irate character. "Want trouble? I've got what you want right here you pussy!"
Despite the heightening threats of the crowd, Kat maintained his bull in a china shop approach. Harmony called for him to relax, but her appeals went in one ear and out the other.
"Hey you!" an angry voice suddenly announced. "I'm talking to you shit head!"
Kat stopped — not on the man's request — but for us to catch him up. As Kat waited, the owner of the voice stepped out from the layers of bunched stink. He was a gangly 8ft tall, with a hairy face smeared with shit, and fatty gut wobbling down from his bare chest.
"Let's go little man!" he jeered. "Try me on for size fucko!"
Harmony, Eddinray and I came behind this towering man, but his thick arms prevented our progress.
"Don't,” I warned him, but paying me no mind, the man continued to taunt Kat, and on matters like these, he is always happy to oblige.
The samurai approached with a sunken frown, and we companions closed our eyes to the bloody inevitable. The man threw the first punch, and our burly Kat made his second death look like the most elementary thing in the world. He ducked the swinging fist and struck the katana deep into this man's bowels. The sword was then removed with a length of curdled intestines tangled around the steel. Harmony held the vomit in her mouth as the impressed multitudes whispered news of a man with a talent for murder. From this point on, the crowd separated in droves from the short man with the shorter temper.
***
The fuss concluded at a pier, and ambivalent souls at the head of the cue stood still; none keen to stay, nor see more of Hell.
Docked at the end of this narrow wooden pier was our transportation across the lake: a raft slightly smaller than Eddinray's, which the knight was delighted to point out. A figure, covered from head to foot in a raggedy black cloth bent decrepitly on the bobbling craft, leaning all his weight on a trusty oar of solid oak.
"Who'sss next?" he asked, slithering.
Kat took clanking steps on old wood, and reaching the ferryman, he was not repulsed by this creature's appearance underneath that cloak. There was no skin on his face, no hair or a single blotch of blood, simply skeleton. Skeleton with joints connected by wrapping snakes like many elastic bands.
"Look who it isss!" the ferryman hissed, with relish. "The Kat. The Kat himssself!"
We others joined our friend and I was the one to ask. "Kat, have you met this thing before?"
"No,” replied the ferryman for him, a slim snake popping out of his eyeless socket and returning back through the mouth; "I misssed the Kat first time around. The Black Angelsss immediately cassst him to the deepessst dungeonsss of hell-fire. They dragged him there kicking and ssscreaming…"
"No more of me ferryman!" Kat returned. "You will push us across the lake!"
The ferryman cordially reached out a skeletal palm, expecting his fee,”If you cannot pay Kat, then it'sss the long way around, or freeze with the rest on the ssshore."
Kat did not pass payment; instead, he pressed his katana to the ferryman's snake and bone-ridden wrist.
"You will take us across," he said, simply, "no bones about it."
The ferryman's face receded like a tortoise into its shadowy shell, and when it emerged from the cloak, dozens of snake were stretched over the skull, forming muscles and a strange pair of leathery looking eyeballs. We recoiled, but Kat remained unmoved, and unimpressed.
"There mussst be payment,” insisted the ferryman. "No one has ever crossed thisss lake free of charge."
With a flick of his sword, Kat cut three snakes loose from the skeleton's wrist, then three more until there was but a lonely strand of serpent connecting the wrist to the hand. "Take us across ferryman," he warned; "or you'll never take another."
The ferryman's expressionless skull seemed bitterer than the air freezing those around us.
"Let'sss go…" he hissed, and after Kat's forceful prodding, we three gathered on-board the rickety raft.
"I do not like this!" said Eddinray. "On the record let that be known!"
The watching lot at the harbour looked afraid for us as the ferryman lowered his oar into the soup, and pushed us into a dead calm.
22. The Death of Kendo Katamuro
The ferryman, it seemed, had all eternity to spare, and he would take it pushing his raft through this mist, steaming like broth over the lake. Unsurprisingly, Eddinray was most talkative, his tales enthralling Harmony most of all. Who could forget his duel with three great knights who — to their cost — were not so great after all; or who hasn't read about his infamous rescue of the nun from the burning church? The gallant Eddinray saving both nun and church from the fire.
"I wish I was as fearless as you Godwin,” said Harmony. "But why aren't you in Heaven for such lofty deeds?"
Sitting back at the stern, the knight paused in pompous reflection. "I have long accepted that damnation is the price we heroes must pay. And as for being fearless, I will be candid with you madam, some men are born into the world with certain parts missing, be it manners, compassion, an arm or a leg and so on. Well I was born…with no fear."
"Oh my…" said Harmony.
"Indeed,” he continued. "And it will be my duty and pleasure to shield you from everything this hell has to offer. Witness the dent in my helmet,” he pointed it out, and the angel brightly bobbled her head. "Flung off the back of a flying horse whilst escaping the Leviathan itself! A mere spit of my adventures! A mere spit!"
"How then did you come to perish?” she asked. “Oh, do forgive my curiosity, that was most forward. Besides, you don't have to tell, I'll wager it was something terribly courageous!"
Eddinray took her hand and with a grin said, "The fashion of my premature death is one of considerable chivalry, which I cannot deny. Alas, I will spare you the particulars, for to hear those gruesome details would only strike terror into your soul. I shall say only this,” he whispered, leaning forward, “one knight's sword against fifty…is a nasty,
futile business." Eddinray then took a self-congratulatory breath of stinky air. "Are those wings a burden to you?" he asked. "They do appear exceedingly heavy, I must say."
"Light as a feather,” she replied, smiling. "Would you…care to have one?"
"One of your feathers?" he gulped, flustered, shy even. "Wouldn't that…harm you?"
"Not at all, and I only ask because angel feathers bring good fortune, can even be used to create certain spells, hence the wizard's interest in me. So I ask again, would you care for one?"
Eddinray sat upright and shuffled his backside toward her. "I would love one of your feathers, Harmony Valour."
Harmony Valour was therefore only too pleased to pinch one from her back and pass the lucky charm to Eddinray. He grazed it under his nose, closed his eyes then inhaled the flowery scent of a far off Heaven.
"Peaches,” he said, placing it inside his chest plate and over his own heart. "I am nude," he suddenly added, with a slant smirk; "under this armor. I am nude."
Unsure of the remark, Harmony turned unfavourably from him, and scrunching up his face, an embarrassed Eddinray bit down on his tongue.
During this, I gazed at our contemplative leader at the bow of the raft. Refusing to rest his legs or eyes, Kat was our watchman, de-constructing a fat layer of cloud we would soon enter. The ferryman also studied Kat like a crouching lion in the thicket, drooling over a wildebeest. "There wasss an inquiry about you Kat,” he said, lurking over his oar. "Many hundredsss of years ago I ferried across one…A man very keen to meet you."
We rest perked up our ears, but Kat remained unmoved. "He was alssso a sssamurai,” added the ferryman. "Jussst like you."
Kat was listening, but few could tell. "That'sss right," the ferryman tittered; "the black sssamurai! He isss looking for you Kat, and he will find you…"
Kat held a stoic squint ahead, recalling a memory — his last.
***
1568.
A cyclone uprooted trees, upended homes and destroyed the livelihood and lives of the people. Here, in this poverty stricken feudal village is where eighty warriors, distinguishable only by armors red and black, clashed.
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