Doom's Break

by Christopher Rowley

  More cold water splashed over him, to the guffaws of the young Red Tops. The muscular pair who wielded the mallets were grinning broadly. These two really loved their work.

  They were good at it, too. Heuze was pretty sure he'd never use his right hand again. It was already a purple pancake, coated in crusted blood. The nails were gone, and the joints were swollen grotesquely, flattened by the pounding of the mallets.

  The pain? Ah, the pain—Heuze had come to know all about pain and its various levels. He flexed his left hand, which was still recognizable as a human hand. The pain from the broken bones was excruciating, but he hardly winced anymore. He'd felt far worse.

  At least, he told himself, they hadn't done a thing to his remaining foot. Why, he didn't know, but he was thankful for it with the thanks of a man with one leg amputated already.

  They had taken away his peg leg, of course. And used it to break his fingers the first time round. Oh, they'd enjoyed that. The Red Tops knew who he was; they knew his reputation. The word had gotten back to Shasht about how Admiral Heuze had broken the priests of the colony and put the Gold Tops to the sword. The Red Tops had been castrated and sold down into slavery. Oh, yes, they knew all about him.

  The Gold Top arrived. The Red Tops fell silent and assumed their positions. One on either side of him to seize him and shove his head in a bucket or pull his ears or slap him rhythmically on the cheeks, whatever the Gold Top indicated. The pair with the mallets leaned their weapons on their shoulders, and a third pair behind them would join in for those occasions when the Gold Top wanted them to kick the admiral in the crotch and belly.

  Muambwi Gold Top sat delicately on the stool, ready to begin. This one was a skeletal fellow, with a long horse's face and cheekbones sticking up under the skin. Heuze longed for the chance to get in one punch, one solid punch, even with his broken hands.

  "Admiral Heuze, I hope you will answer promptly and truthfully today. We have much ground to cover, and I would like to get this over with."

  Heuze tried to speak, and coughed through his dry throat a moment or two. Muambwi waited, eyes expectant. Finally, Heuze managed, "Yeah, let's get it over with."

  It was hard talking normally when your cheeks and lips were as swollen as his. When your nose was broken and some of your teeth had been knocked out. His broken nose felt enormous on his face.

  "Good, then we're agreed."

  Muambwi opened a folder made of stiff parchment. "Admiral Heuze, you said yesterday that you were ordered recently to send four ships south. You said you did not know why the ships were sent."

  "Yes," said Heuze in a dull voice.

  "I will repeat a question from yesterday. Four ships were sent. Where were they sent?"

  "Not my orders. I received sealed orders that I gave to the captains concerned. I was not told anything more than that."

  He was sticking to his story. First lesson about lying: Never budge from your first line of deceit.

  "Who had sealed these orders?"

  "The Emperor."

  Heuze intended to take the secret of the ships' destination to his grave. Let them tear his heart out of his chest, he would never tell them where those fornicating ships were going.

  "What does this seal look like?"

  "A capital letter A impressed in the wax."

  "Is the letter enclosed in a circle?"

  "No."

  Muambwi paused, riffled through the sheets of paper inside the folder. "So, the ships were chosen by the Emperor?"

  "Yes."

  "And what was your role supposed to be in this?"

  "I don't really have a role. As I said, I passed on sealed orders. I am merely a servant of the Emperor, as is lawful and just."

  Muambwi's eyebrows came together for a moment. "The Emperor sits in Shasht and is named Norgeeben the Second. There is no Emperor here."

  Heuze stared doggedly into the dark eyes of Muambwi Gold Top. "So you say. But I am not in Shasht. I am on the other side of the world, and I do not know what is truly happening in Shasht. But I do know that the Emperor Aeswiren is here. I merely obey orders from the Emperor Aeswiren."

  "You dissemble! You think you can deceive us?"

  Muambwi made a cutting motion with one hand. Instantly, the pair of Red Tops kneeling on either side of Heuze began slapping him hard across the face. Heuze felt his head rock back and forth for what seemed an eternity while his cheeks stung and his head rang like a bell. He'd already taken too many beatings like this and soon it felt as if his head was about to fall off his shoulders and roll along the floor.

  At last it stopped. His head sagged, and he struggled to breathe. His ears were ringing. His already swollen cheeks stung as if they'd been opened with a razor and bathed in acid.

  "Now, Admiral Heuze, tell me no more lies!"

  Muambwi sounded as if he had enjoyed the last couple of minutes.

  "The fugitive, the so-called Emperor Aeswiren, is no longer blessed with the authority given by the Great God. The true Emperor is Norgeeben, who sits the throne in Shasht."

  "Whatever you say," said Heuze with difficulty.

  "Correct. So, tell me again what you thought your role was in this matter of these ships that were sent south."

  "Very little, really. I just handed them the orders sent me."

  Muambwi pursed his lips and studied Heuze for a long time. "What were the names of these officers?"

  "Captain Low of Fierce, Captain Herrigs of Flying Spume, Captain Dace of Auger, Captain Brisbask of frigate Sunset."

  The Gold Top was writing the names in the folder. Heuze felt a momentary triumph. He was sure now that the four ships he'd send south had not been intercepted by the enemy fleet. Otherwise they'd know well enough who they had.

  He gritted his teeth. It was even more important that he steer the enemy away from the truth.

  "All right, Admiral, we'll go along with this little effort at deception you're making. We'll ask you where you think these ships are being sent, not where you know they're being sent."

  Heuze shrugged and winced as he hurt both hands, still trapped in the stocks.

  "I suppose they're going to Mauste. We have built our main base there. Perhaps you have seen it yourself?"

  "Perhaps." The Gold Top suddenly became aware that Heuze was winkling out information from him. His eyebrows came together angrily.

  "Admiral, you fail to understand the tenuousness of your position. If you fail to satisfy the questioning, you will be given to the Great God."

  Heuze blinked then laughed mordantly. "What are you saying? That I won't be given to the Great God if I satisfy you? Are you saying that the tradition of centuries will be forgotten in my case and I'll go free? Are you trying to pull my leg? Hah, pull the other one, it's still got a foot!"

  Muambwi's face contorted with anger and then resumed its normal look of haughty insolence. "It won't have a foot for very long if you keep that attitude."

  "Look, I'll come clean with you, if you come clean with me. You're going to kill me no matter what you say. I know that, you fornicating sodomite!"

  Muambwi's brows collided once more beneath the gleaming crown of gold paint. He made a chopping gesture. The Red Tops who did the kicking jumped forward and put their feet into Heuze's crotch and belly a few times.

  When they'd finished, Heuze vomited weakly, blood and spittle dripping down on the ruins of his shirt and trousers.

  Muambwi Gold Top leaned forward once more. "Admiral, you will save yourself much discomfort by remembering your place and speaking to Questioners with respect."

  "Yes, yes, of course, foolish of me—"

  Heuze didn't complete the rest, not wanting those mallets to come into play again.

  As the questioning continued, Heuze found his mind wandering at times, and he could scarcely remember what they were asking him about from one minute to the next. He tried to fashion credible answers, but he knew he wasn't convincing them of anything.

  Muambwi was replaced by Chushi
Gold Top. Chushi was a thick-necked fellow with a bulbous nose. Chushi was even more unpleasantly small-minded than Muambwi.

  "Hello, Chushi," said Heuze through broken teeth and swollen lips. "I bet my nose is even bigger than yours today."

  "Be silent, slave of He Who Eats!"

  Chushi was not pleased. Muambwi had been unable to wring more than the captains' names from Heuze, who had babbled for hours about all sorts of things but not the information they sought: the destination of those ships.

  The mallets rained down on Heuze's hands. He screamed. He roared. He howled. He bled. Eventually he was silent, no matter what they did. Even when they put hot irons to his flesh, he opened his mouth but no sound came forth.

  They threw cold water on him to no effect. In disgust they left him, and he slept.

  When next he awoke, it was to be summarily dragged from the stocks and up the steps to the quarterdeck. Officers were there. No faces that were familiar to him. All looked at his battered state with dismay. The pride of the navy was being besmirched by this treatment of an admiral, and worse yet, the admiral had brought it on himself.

  No fault of mine, boys, he wanted to shout, but his voice no longer served him. It wasn't what I wanted to happen, he would have added.

  Ropes were attached to his wrists, and he was hauled up to hang below a yardarm. Sails billowed above him, as the ship was making good progress under a breeze from astern. Despite everything, Heuze felt a certain renewal from just looking on the sea. He had spent most of his life at sea, and on such a fine day, with such a useful wind, he could not help but feel that elemental bond with the waves that he had always felt.

  Why they'd hung him up like this he had no idea. It hurt like hell, of course, but it made a change from the foulness down below, being slapped around by the sodomistic Red Tops. He craned his head down and studied the quarterdeck from a position he'd never looked down from before.

  He saw no sign of Captain Pukh. He hoped Pukh had dived overboard or something. He didn't want to think of his old friend Pukh being taken by the Red Tops because of a stupid mistake of his. There was no sign of any of his own officers. All had been replaced.

  Damn, it was all his own fault. Even with an enemy fleet so close at hand he had neglected to set a good enough watch. To be taken as he'd been was more than stupid—it was humiliating.

  He looked up as a shadow fell over him.

  Streaming up from the southwest were dark clouds. Peculiar clouds, shaped like daggers, and so dark they looked like ink spilled across the sky. One after the other they slid across, leaving narrow strips of blue in between, until at last they all joined together and the sky became a black vault, utterly blocking out the sun.

  Heuze had never seen anything like this in all his years at sea. Everything had gone cold. A sudden flash of purple-tinged lightning flared in the west, and a heavy boom rocked the ship.

  Accompanying the dark came a chill wind that brought with it a premonition of horror. Heuze trembled in the cold breeze while uncontrollable fear spread through every man onboard. They were nought but rabbits in a field, pursued by swift beasts with mouths of fire.

  The fear mounted, growing stronger and wilder with each passing second. Beneath him he could hear shouts and incoherent shrieking. Men ran here and there like brainless dolts.

  Heuze felt his own mind slip its moorings. Whether his eyes were opened or shut, he experienced a terrifying hallucination.

  Enormous creatures, pink-skinned, like men but without heads, surfaced around the ship. With arms that ended in huge nests of struggling tentacles, things that looked like worms writhing on a frying pan, they stood above the water. They had legs as mighty as the towers on the walls of Shasht.

  Their huge mouths opened, and they bellowed something unknowable to the sky. The tentacles writhed and revealed that they were tipped with mouths filled with sharp teeth. The tentacles swung toward Heuze. The vision changed in an instant. A gold flash blasted through his eyes, and then he saw into a dark, necrotic vision. Rotting faces drifted slowly down from the sky like ghastly snow. Skulls piled up on the surface of the sea, floating in great drifts. The sun had gone black. Heuze's mother emerged from the skulls and held her arms out to him.

  Heuze wept. He would have liked to go to her arms, but he couldn't move. In the next moment, she was blown away in the winds, torn to pieces, shriveled and then gone.

  His father's face appeared. A cold man with dark eyes, he had sent Heuze to sea at the age of thirteen. The father frowned, and a shaft of cold passed through Heuze. Then the father faded.

  There was a curious implosion of sound.

  The enormous manlike things were gone. The ship floated on a sea of blood. White worms the size of whales coursed through the blood. A terrible sense of desolation rose up. All was lost, all was ruined.

  Heuze felt overwhelmed, crushed, broken inside. The darkness pervaded everything, and consciousness became blotted out completely.

  How long he hung there, lost in the shades of terror, he never knew, but when he came back to himself, he found a scene of panic down below. He was still swinging from the yardarm, and the ship had drifted perilously close to the rocky shore.

  Just three hundred feet away the waves were slamming into the rocks. The cliff towered above them, a dirty white mountain of chalk.

  Officers were bellowing orders. Feet thundered up the stairs.

  The sun shone once more, but the world of darkness lay just behind them. When he looked back, he could see that the edge between the two was clear and hard. Away to the south beneath the black cloud there was just the darkness and an occasional distant flash of purple lightning.

  The vast white cliff swung slowly before his eyes as the ship came about. All hands were in the rigging. Sails were furled and unfurled with frantic speed.

  Voices continued to bellow orders, but the ship was no longer drifting toward the rocks. The ship was changing course, moving back out into the bay, although one outlying spire of rock was still in their way.

  Slowly, rigging creaked as the sails caught the wind. The great ship swung her nose past the rock, and then they were sliding through the waves just fifty feet from doom. Seabirds lifted off the top of the rock with harsh cries.

  Ahead, Heuze could see other ships, a great mass of them moving around the chalk headland. Here was the enemy fleet, and ahead was the site where they were going to land their army.

  And behind the ship lay the grim, eerie darkness blanketing the world.

  —|—

  Thru Gillo was hurrying up Bear Hill from Warkeen when he first noticed the strange black clouds forming in the southeast. He was carrying yet another reply from Aeswiren to yet another message from Toshak. Being Toshak's messenger to the Emperor was harder work than it had ever been now that the two generals were within five miles of each other.

  At times Thru wondered if it wouldn't have been better to just have the two headquarters together in the village, instead of having Toshak on Bear Hill just north of the river and Aeswiren on South Hill on the other side. Certainly that would have made it easier on Thru's boots, which were falling apart again.

  Yet, he also understood that keeping the two armies apart was a good idea. The alliance between mot and Man was a very young and tender shoot. Every time he passed through the perimeter of Aeswiren's army and found himself surrounded by men, Thru felt a certain oppression. By instinct his hand strayed to his sword hilt when he caught hard glances directed his way, and as he passed by, he often heard muttered curses and insults. Many men clearly hated the folk of the Land, just as the folk of the Land hated the men.

  When next Thru looked up, he saw that the black clouds had slithered farther up the sky. He hurried his footsteps. He'd missed lunch, but he still had hopes of finding something to eat at the headquarters cook fire. If there was bad weather coming in, he'd rather be in the cook tent than out here in the open.

  The path up the hill and over to Cormorant Rock had suffered fro
m the passage of Toshak's army. The ground was cut up with ruts, the bushes and trees hemmed back to let the wagons through. The pathway was almost an analogy for the Land itself, torn and beaten ever since the men first arrived.

  A shadow fell over him as he crested the hill. Toshak's tents were just ahead. He glanced up and saw the clouds had spread right up the sky. They were like long fingers, each separated by a narrow band of blue sky, but the blue was being squeezed out as more and more of the flat, opaque blackness flowed up from the south.

  The clouds rolled on. The light was dimmed and then virtually obliterated by the time he reached camp, delivered Aeswiren's message to the headquarters tent, and got across to the cook fire.

  "Got anything left?" he said as he poked into the various pots and cauldrons.

  "Oh ho, back for seconds, are you?" said the cook, an older mor missing her right eye. Her fur was whitening at the tips on top of her shoulders and the back of her head.

  "No, I wasn't here for lunch."

  "Well, in that case, here, take some porridge and some bushpod cake."

  She slopped a ladle of porridge into a bowl for him.

  "Here, eat it quick. Looks like we've got bad weather coming in. I'll want to close the flaps tight."

  "Thanks."

  "Odd-looking storm. I've never seen anything like it."

  It was very strange. The black fingers had passed on, and the whole sky had gone dark. The sudden flash of purple lightning away in the south dazzled them. After a few moments a heavy boom rolled over their heads.

  Thru felt his fur standing up. More lightning flickered out to sea.

  "Ooh, this is going to be nasty," said the cookmor.

  Thru knew in his bones that sorcery was at work here. He'd seen their terrible enemy. He'd witnessed the demonic dance that summoned the pyluk from the hills. Now it seemed this warlock could summon a storm at his whim.