The Beginning of Sorrows

by Gilbert, Morris

  The answer was hidden in the enigma of the man himself, General Tor von Eisenhalt. Raised by his father and tutors, well-traveled, sophisticated, erudite—and rugged, mystical, and ruthless. He was a man who could be stern, passionate, humorous, vicious, and seemingly comfortable with any one of them. At times he ran hot and cold, both extremes ruled and shaped, it seemed, by a cruelty that was curiously impersonal.

  Tor von Eisenhalt and his father, Count Gerade von Eisenhalt, and their fathers before them, were ancient Prussian nobility, the last of the Junkers, sons of the supermen of the Reichswehr. The Eisenhalt noblemen, with their vast estates and Balkan battlements, had ruled for centuries in the mist-shrouded, mystical lands east of the Elbe. Even in the dark years of the last century, after the last great war, when Eastern Germany had been ruled by the barbaric Soviets, the Eisenhalts had emerged unscathed, seemingly untouched by time and circumstance.

  He is extraordinary, but he is just a man, Major Stettin thought nervously as the general again caressed his pistol. But something about Tor . . . what is it? Is it the ringing voice, the compelling authority he carries so easily . . . or is it something in his eyes, something rarely seen in mortal men? A core, a spirit of fearlessness, no, more than that—of disdain, arrogant disdain of fear . . . of death?

  The weary major settled down more comfortably in the hard seat of the armored car, casting furtive glances at his commandant. Behind them the sergeant manning the cannon stood, his face blank, his youthful eyes staring far away into nothingness.

  Neither of them had occasion for last words.

  Close-range weapons fire, so fast the sound was a continuous noisome hum rather than a rattle, sundered the cooling twilight air. Major Stettin did not even have time to think, never knew he was dying. The 4.7 mm rounds from Qaddar’s stolen German rifle pierced his heart, then his throat, and his mind had died before the blood stopped pumping from his torn jugular.

  The sergeant had time to jerk the heavy gun around to aim at the Syrian soldier who stood above them on the low ridge. But Qaddar was still firing hot bullets from the massive 80-round magazine; the twenty-year-old rifleman died within seconds as a train of bullets moved upward stitching him from gut to face, the last bullet entering into his right eye and shredding his brain.

  Tor von Eisenhalt suddenly exploded. With one smooth, catlike motion, he leaped from the still-moving Vulcan. He ran and he fired his beloved Luger.

  He had no awareness, no conscious thought—only fury. He saw nothing but an enemy, a faceless, meaningless thing whose only reason for existence was to be killed. His vision was filtered with glaring crimson light. His ears heard nothing but the slow explosions from his ancient pistol. He was without breastplate or armor, as wild as a wolf or dog; he had embraced and become one of Odin’s most feared warriors, the Berserksgangr.

  Tor von Eisenhalt ceased to exist. Even this—the strong legs pumping up the hill, his hand, unshaken, holding the old pistol steady at eye level, the heart rhythmically pumping blood to give iron to his muscles—even this body no longer belonged to him. He was filled with a wild and magical frenzy; he no longer belonged to himself, and he embraced the other, Wode of the Wild Hunt, the gleeful animal fury, with savage joy. Nothing could stand the force of the Berserkirs. In them and through them, forces were unleashed that only magic, secret and dark, and ancient sorcery, could evoke.

  One bullet burned its way along von Eisenhalt’s neck, another struck the side of his belt, but did not touch his skin. He heard the slugs as they screamed by and at the same time he emptied his Luger, standing full upright and tall, running at full speed.

  He smashed into Qaddar, who was standing, frozen with horror, his hands shaking and weak, staring at the maddened savage who was descending on him with such fury. Tor von Eisenhalt, disdaining the impersonal kill of a bullet, smashed him in the face with the butt of the Luger. Qaddar fell backward, uttering one garbled scream. Then Tor von Eisenhalt, with brutal joy, killed him, beat him to death, with his bare hands.

  Staggering to his feet, Eisenhalt stood, breathing hard, his face as cragged as ancient runes, his eyes like bellowed coals. Slowly the red haze lifted from his eyes, and the shroud of savagery from his mind.

  I’m alive, he mused, with a certain slowness as his reasoning righted itself. I’m not even in pain . . . How could I have walked through forty, maybe fifty rounds of G12 rifle fire?

  Looking down at his chest, Eisenhalt saw two holes in his gray tunic. He stared, bemused, meditative. I have been shot. Finally the thought filtered down deep into his consciousness. With hands that were not entirely steady, he opened his tunic and ripped his shirt aside.

  There were two large bullet holes in the tunic, the rims of the holes blackened and burned. There were two bullet holes in his white shirt, also with burned edges. There were two red marks on his chest, directly corresponding to the trail left in his tunic and his shirt.

  Eisenhalt knew the striking power of a G12 assault rifle. It could drive the 4.7 mm slugs through a lightly armored tank.

  Again, within the space of only a few minutes—or was it eternity?— something changed in General Tor von Eisenhalt. He remembered the dreams he had, of which he spoke to no man; dreams, like his ancestor, Bismarck, of Weltanschaung, blood and iron. He was, in that eternal moment, visited by thoughts of love and other, darker beings and tools and weapons—not of the frail human body—but of the darkest secrets of the spirit. He recalled his visions of ancient and mysterious Wode, of whom he only half jested, and the Wild Hunters. He remembered his obsession with Fenrir, the ravaging wolf who bit off the hand of Tyr and the killer and eater of Odin. He remembered how he had chosen the wolf as his ensign, his standard. He stared with fierce triumph at the broken, bleeding body of the man at his feet, and brought to mind the killing lust of the Berserksgangr that had lived in his mind, sucked his air, quickened his blood . . .

  And now he knew why all of these things were visited on him.

  As Wode the Wild Hunter, as Fenrir the ravager, as the Berserkirs, he killed men, and neither fire nor steel could prevail against him. His enemies were struck blind and deaf in battle, as were the enemies of the Beserkirs, their limbs paralyzed with fear. As with Fenrir the wolf, no man-made weapon could prevail against him. And as with Wode the Wild Hunter, he breathed the love of war, of death and fire and blood, into the hearts of men.

  But Tor von Eisenhalt stared again at the red marks on his chest, already fading. He was more than even the most ancient ones. He had more than they, he could have more power than any man, or even powerful ancient deities, could have.

  For now he knew; Tor von Eisenhalt would not die.

  “I cannot die,” he said to the corpse at his feet. It was an oddly calm and sure tone for such an insane declaration.

  The last arrow of the dying sun shot over him, heated him, dyed him a crimson as lurid as the blood-soaked thing at his feet.

  Tor, unafraid, looked straight into the sun, his arctic blue-gray eyes wide and harsh.

  He heard the voice clearly, and at first he thought it was his father’s voice, clear and commanding, but then again, he knew it was not his father, Gerade. Then, with a sort of gibbering gladness of recognition, Tor knew: It was his spiritual father, the father of darkness and of death, and hell followed with him. Tor von Eisenhalt fell to his knees and embraced them both.

  He heard the chant three times before he fell to the ground, senseless, biting his tongue, black blood oozing from his forehead and bubbling from his mouth and his nose. It was a sound not made of blood and muscle and tissue, but of fire and earth and air:

  “Night is coming.”

  “Night is coming.”

  “Night is coming . . .”

  FIVE

  THE TWELVE-INCH-THICK TITANIUM steel elevator door slid upward quickly and silently, and all twelve commissars in Level One of SS Biome Lab XJ2197 jumped to attention.

  Alia Silverthorne marched into the circular room, flanked by her two bod
yguards. She gave the fist-pound-heart salute to the men and women standing stiffly, and they relaxed a bit, but not much; she was, after all, the third commissar and their supreme field commander. Aside from that, she was a woman that didn’t appreciate military interference in her biosphere, and her unexpected arrival presented a possibly sticky situation.

  “My Commissar—” began the unfortunate woman who was lead commissar on this shift. This was her first week at XJ2197, her first shift lead, and her first meeting with Alia Silverthorne. Her name was Bennie Mays, and she thought that it was just her luck. She was standing in the middle of a circular console in the center of the round room, and couldn’t get to Commissar Silverthorne in time.

  Alia, still striding quickly to the lab elevator, tossed over her shoulder impatiently, “Yes?”

  Commissar Mays hurried to intercept Alia, stammering uncomfortably, “My Commissar, perhaps you would care to use the north elevators? I believe these are occupied.”

  Alia stared at the woman, who happened to be taller than she was, although Commissar Mays was making a valiant effort to appear shorter. “What are you talking about, Commissar”—she glanced at the silver name patch—“Mays?”

  Commissar Mays swallowed hard. “I—I—”

  But it was too late. The elevator made the soft neutral chime alert, and the door disappeared upward. Alia turned to see two “brass monkeys”—high-ranking military men—standing in the roomy mirrored cubicle, along with six aides.

  Everyone froze in an odd tableau. The two generals, one two-star and one four-star, stared at Alia. Alia stared at them. Commissar Mays stared at the floor. Alia’s two bodyguards stared neutrally at the back of Alia’s head, which was a full foot below their eye level.

  Alia didn’t move to allow the military men to step out, and they didn’t move to allow her to step in.

  Impasse.

  “Good afternoon, General, sir, General, sir,” Alia said in a frosty voice.

  “Good afternoon, Commissar Silverthorne,” the four-star said with equal coolness.

  The holographic insignia on her beret and on her left shoulder— a leaping jaguar—clearly denoted her rank. They were supposed to call her “My Commissar,” the title address used for the chief commissar and all second and third commissars. Secretly Alia thought the personal form was a little melodramatic, but at this moment she felt outraged that the brass monkey hadn’t accorded her the same greeting of professional courtesy she had accorded them. Alia’s temper rose a few degrees higher as her voice grew colder.

  “If you and your men are finished riding in it, may I use my elevator, General?”

  “Of course. Please excuse us, ma’am,” he said with exaggerated deference, as he and the rest of the men brushed by her. She stood unmoving.

  She didn’t enter the elevator until all of them had cleared out. Then she took two marching steps, whirled, planted her feet solidly apart, and crossed her arms. The two bodyguards stood facing her on each side.

  The elevator had no buttons, no panels, no controls. All four walls and the ceiling were mirrored, and the floor was of white tile. “Red,” she growled. They had no sensation of movement, of falling, because of the air hydraulics, but still Alia felt a familiar stifling feeling that made her lungs compress slightly. She only felt this way when entering this lab. She knew the schematics of XJ2197 very well, and it was shaped exactly like an enormous bottle with a very thin neck sunk into the ground. Perhaps that was why it gave her slight claustrophobia—not the fact that it was so far underground, but because there was only one way out. No soldier likes those odds, and in spite of her conscious disgust with anything military, Alia Silverthorne was wrought just like a soldier.

  They reached Red Level in a few seconds, and Alia hurried to Niklas’s lab without comment to her bodyguards. She was still uncomfortable with twenty-four-hour guards, as this had only been instituted for all high commissars last month. The second commissar of the Fifth Directorate had died mysteriously at a Diversionary Facility in Virginia, and the rumor was that he’d been assassinated. An even darker rumor was that he’d been assassinated by a militant religious group hiding out in the Smoky Mountains, and the Sixth Directorate had no idea that they even existed, much less where and who they were. The Sixth Directorate had doubled the contingent of commissars in the area, and were combing the mountains. If there was even one dunkhead (so called because of some of the Christian groups’ odd rituals of dunking people underwater as a sort of rite of passage, as Alia understood it) in Virginia or any of the surrounding states, they’d find them.

  All this had taken place shortly after she’d last seen Niklas, and she’d combed the files of the three thousand men and women under her command to select her team of personal guards. The corner of her firm mouth twitched. Niklas would be surprised, and a very small part of Alia hoped he would be jealous. She’d picked the eight most handsome commissars she could find as her constant companions. Might as well have something pleasing to look at if they were going to be in her face all day and night. Alia really didn’t know whether they would be good guards or not, and she didn’t care. She was her own best defense against anything.

  She stood in front of the shiny steel door to Niklas’s lab and said, “Access Silverthorne.”

  Incredibly, the door was unmoved.

  “Access Silverthorne,” Alia said loudly.

  It still didn’t move.

  With quick, impatient movements, Alia pulled a hair-thin wire that was laced around her right ear to position it in front of her mouth, pushed a single button on the flat SATphone on her belt, and waited. Niklas didn’t pick up the phone, so she pushed another button and said with great deliberation, “Niklas, I’m standing outside the door. It won’t do you any good to hide, I’ll just use the TC override.” The third commissar could open any Cyclops II–controlled access in their entire biome.

  The door slid open.

  Niklas didn’t look up as she came in. As an affectation, Niklas still wore white lab coats, actually made of real cotton instead of the Tyvek coveralls that everyone else in the lab wore. Now his coat, usually immaculately cleaned and pressed, was wrinkled and stained. His long hair was unkempt, and his eyes were bloodshot. Sitting in front of a complicated apparatus that he called a Genome Cross Analysis Tabulator and Alia called the Hairy Spider, he looked up and said dully, “Hello, Alia. I’m really busy right now, as I’m certain you can see, now that you’ve broken into my lab.”

  Alia wanted to retort angrily, but she felt her temper oozing down into a sort of warm puddle, as it always did with him. “Niklas, you look ill. What’s the matter? I’m sorry I interrupted you, but—you’ve completely forgotten, haven’t you? We’re supposed to be going to Perdido Key for the weekend.”

  “I forgot,” he said absently, tweaking one of Hairy Spider’s antennae expertly and staring into an eyepiece. “I’m busy.”

  “So I see.” He hadn’t even noticed the bodyguards. She turned and said quietly, “Leave us.” They disappeared out the silent door, which would open automatically to let people out but not in. She turned back to watch Niklas uncertainly, frustrated at how off-balance he could make her feel. No other man—no other person— could unsettle her as he could.

  Tentatively she said, “I’d like to stay for a while, maybe have a coffee with you. Couldn’t you take a short break and at least say hello?”

  “And then good-bye?” he asked pointedly without looking up.

  She sighed. “Maybe, if I can’t talk you into coming to the Key with me. Eighty-two degrees and sunny today, Niklas.”

  There was a long silence as he stayed perfectly motionless, his eye still pasted to the slender tube. “Sunny? No rain?” he finally asked in a neutral voice.

  “No rain there, or anywhere near, the Key.”

  Another long silence, then: “I need to work. I’ve got a big problem here.”

  Alia took a moment to gauge whether Niklas really wanted her to wheedle him, or whether he m
eant what he said. She decided that he was serious, because he sounded regretful. He really did want to go to the Special Diversionary Facility at Perdido Key, Florida. The six condos set aside were sumptuous, and were nowhere near the DF’s for the general public. The special DF’s were limited to second and third commissars and second and chief ministers of the directorates. Even Niklas, influential and well-respected scientist that he was, couldn’t go to the special DF’s. As if to reinforce her musings, and his decision, he muttered to himself, “No, no, I’ve got to fix this, I’ve got to figure this out.”

  “Then I think I’ll stay the night,” Alia said with elaborate casualness. “You’ve got to stop playing with your bugs sometime.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said carelessly. “But I don’t know how late I’ll be working.”

  “It’s all right,” she said rather lamely, upbraiding herself for not saying something like: It’s my lab, my biome, and you may not work for me but I could order you, as third commissar, caretaker of the Shortgrass Steppe Biome and all its facilities—including human assets—to cease and desist working right now until you are rested.

  Instead she said, despising the pleading note in her voice, “How about if I make us some hot tea? I’ll go get some real honey and cream from the kitchen, none of that fake stuff in ugly little foil packets. It’ll refresh you, the caffeine and sugar lift, I mean.”

  He looked up in surprise. Alia rarely offered to do anything at all like this for anyone, even him. “That sounds good, love of my life,” he said, suddenly wishing very much for a break and someone to talk to.

  Niklas had been surprised how much he’d missed Zoan in the last month, since he’d disappeared. It had been a shock when Niklas realized how he’d gotten into the habit of talking to the young man—or at least, talking out loud to himself when Zoan was in the room. Zoan, of course, never responded in any way and couldn’t have comprehended one phrase of one sentence concerning Niklas Kesteven’s work. Still, Niklas had found that the amusing exercise had come to be sort of an outlet for him, a mind-cleaner-and-straightener, to talk to Zoan. And it just wasn’t the same, talking out loud to himself, though Niklas had tried it repeatedly.