Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  Thomas yanked out his sword.

  The impossible gash in the thing’s head smoked.

  It staggered back from the table, shaking furiously, like a wet dog.

  It was growing larger, popping its armor.

  Screams from the courtyard behind him.

  Cardinals struggled to stand up, but some were too paralyzed with fear to move and weighed the shared benches down.

  “Shoot him!” the new cardinal screamed, pointing at Thomas.

  Now a crossbowman stepped forward.

  Cheeked his weapon and triggered it with a flat but potent whack audible even through the chaos of crowd and devils.

  The bolt shot true.

  It struck Thomas in the chest, and he staggered back, stunned.

  His cowl fell away.

  Another bolt flew from farther down the table; this one clipped his neck, but got no cords.

  The first one, though.

  He looked down at the goose-feather fletching where the quarrel stood from the dimple in the comte’s armor, the dimple Thomas’s final axe-blow had made in their fight by the stream. It would have clanked off otherwise, for such was the art of the Milanese at curving and hammering their armor.

  Dead dead I’m dead now

  “Thomas!” the crossbowman said desperately. “I’ve killed you!”

  Thomas saw his drooping eye.

  “Jacquot?”

  “Jesus Christ, forgive me,” Jacquot said.

  The old cardinal near him disliked his words so much he unhinged his jaw and bit Jacquot’s face, dragging the skin from it and leaving his lidless eyes staring in disbelief.

  Blood all over the young cardinal, his silk gloves.

  Jacquot fell.

  Thomas did not fall, though he expected to.

  Through the bone the point tickling the heart I feel it

  Panic in the courtyard.

  It seemed everyone shouted or screamed at once.

  People fled, running for the gates.

  I can’t I can’t I can’t

  Thomas gathered strength in his mighty thighs and leapt up on the cardinals’ table. Cardinal Cyriac grew larger. Blood on his face like a dog at the stag. Growing new eyes. Growing bird’s legs beneath his robes.

  Thomas ran past this monstrosity and made for the pope.

  The thing that had been Cardinal Cyriac reached for him with one of its hands, snagging the sleeve of his left hand.

  He turned and lopped the hand from it.

  It screamed in rage.

  The girl’s blood hurt it.

  Three more loping steps to the pope’s cathedra.

  Almost there.

  The pontiff in orange stood with his hands out, magnificent, smiling.

  Thomas’s legs pumped.

  Something awful behind him, the smell of sour milk and burning.

  If he stopped, if he slowed, it would break his neck from behind.

  The smoke from the braziers in his eyes.

  ARE YOU SURE?

  Yes.

  Are you?

  His sword fell and struck the pope’s miter, cleaving the three crowns, and cleaving the head.

  The crowd screamed in outrage.

  His sword went all the way to the chin and the man’s eyes rolled back white and dead, the wound smoking. The arms, though. One of them (not an arm so much as a fly’s limb) grabbed the sword by the blade and yanked it. It spun in the air and away, over the walls of the courtyard. Thomas saw it for an instant, moonlight on it.

  You’ll never hold a sword again

  Another head was growing from where the first one had split.

  A wicked seraph.

  A fly’s head, but golden.

  Baal’Zebuth.

  One of the fallen.

  A biting fly.

  Shrieks of fear and horror.

  The spear!

  He pulled the spear out of its sheath.

  The thing that had been the pope slapped him now with the arm that was still a man’s arm.

  Not in the face.

  In the chest.

  It hurt.

  The peeled head smiled in its two halves.

  Dizzy.

  Intomyheart!!! but i can still do this ican still

  He blew out of his nose, bloody now.

  This is what i’m for i do this i drive it home i’m strong

  strong please

  He hammered down the spear in his fist with all his might, his hips in it.

  It moved so fast.

  It was as though it wavered in the air.

  He missed.

  Then something irresistible grabbed his arm.

  Jerked it behind him, the pain dazzling.

  Ripped it off.

  His arm off still gripping the spearhead.

  He looked around and saw it.

  The other devil had it.

  The lionish one, his wound almost gone.

  i never had a chance did i

  DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE ARE

  ONLY ONE IS OLDER

  ONLY ONE IS STRONGER

  AND HE HAS LEFT YOU TO US

  I’LL SHOW YOU

  YOUR HEART HAS TWELVE BEATS LEFT

  TRY TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO WATCH THIS

  Delphine saw Thomas run for the false pope and her hands went to her mouth. She wanted to run toward him, help him, save him, but she knew she would never reach him. Could not stand against them. She kept her place near Pope Clement, holding his hand to strengthen him. He was shaking, but he did not run.

  Delphine screamed with hope and joy when she saw her Thomas cleave the wicked one’s head,

  So strong he’s so strong

  but the nature of her scream changed as the thing in the orange robes changed. She screamed Thomas’s name over and over again and fell to her knees watching his arm ripped from him, watching him fall on the table like a pile of laundry, then roll onto the flagstones.

  Dead.

  She screamed, “NO!”

  She screamed, “PLEASE!”

  They came.

  She begged her Father in Heaven in Latin, then in Hebrew, then in Aramaic to stop them, but they came.

  Six wings, six wings, and two wings.

  Twelve-eyed thing, Fly-headed-thing, Lion-thing.

  Tall enough now to look in second-floor windows.

  They stank and a noise came from them, and heat.

  Everything they walked past or over began to smolder.

  They were coming toward her, toward Clement. One latched onto the brickwork of the palace and flung it over on a group of knights who had moved forward to fight, finishing some of them; the devils waded into the remainder, throwing them aside, treading on them, killing them like blind puppies.

  Getting closer.

  Clement’s shield bearers began to fall away and run.

  Not Delphine.

  The twelve-eyed one, its mouth an O of fire, held its regrown hand over a dead man clutching a spear; the corpse jerked to his feet, his head lolling on a broken neck and his tongue out. The dead man now convulsed and threw his spear where the devil pointed.

  At Clement.

  The throw was true, but Delphine threw herself in front of it.

  It went through her, into her abdomen, through her viscera, out the other side.

  The worst pain she had ever felt.

  Behind her, men grabbed the pope and ran with him for the palace.

  She fell, bleeding so fast she could hear it spatter.

  The twelve-eyed one picked the dying girl up by one arm like a poppet while the other two came near.

  Careful not to get her blood on it.

  The moon, blood red over them, wheeled madly as she dangled.

  God, the stink of them.

  Those twelve eyes drilling into her face.

  The fiery hole singeing her hair, her gown, blistering her face.

  WHAT ARE YOU WE’LL FIND OUT NOW

  For the first time she knew the answer.

  She smiled. />
  She looked sleepily at it, almost gone.

  You know what I am.

  OH.

  THAT.

  The lion-faced one used the knight’s arm like a pick.

  The fist still holding the spear.

  THEN YOU SHOULD REMEMBER THIS.

  It whipped the knight’s arm, driving the spear into her side.

  She clenched her teeth, still smiling.

  It bit her legs off and flung her into the middle of the courtyard.

  And she died.

  FORTY

  Of the Coming of the Host

  Robert Hanicotte shook his head.

  His mind was going.

  His silk gloves were spattered with blood.

  He crawled under the tables and ran for the gates, but he found himself pushed back as those who had tried to get out the gates now flooded back in.

  An abomination chasing them.

  So that’s what was in the Jewish quarter.

  A surge of corpses squeezed into the courtyard, not separately; they moved as one thing. Once inside, it re-formed itself. Four legs, or three, at its pleasure, composed entirely of stacked corpses. It moved around the courtyard gathering up fleeing people with its horrid mouth. It was fast. Human ribs as teeth. A light in the middle of it its sentience. When the bodies that formed the ends of its legs wore out, it left them behind and newer ones moved down, upside down, their arms clutching at whatever it wanted clutched at, their backs and chests taking its weight, unmindful of their broken necks. It fed found bodies into itself, or killed living ones. All manner of dead seethed in its frame; Jews and Christians, soldiers and midwives, the clothed and the nude; even a woman with a stag’s head turned in the top of a limb, waiting her turn to be moved to the end to clutch at others and bear weight.

  Robert’s screaming turned into laughter.

  Oh this is good this is really good Hell is here and here is its cavalry!

  Off to his left, devils the size of towers killed soldiers.

  He would almost prefer to face them than this living desecration.

  No. I must run! I must live!

  He ran with others, trying to get into the chapel, but the door was barred. Stone angels and devils looked impassively from the arch.

  He was pressed in, smothering.

  He turned to see where it was.

  It stood alone in the courtyard, near what remained of the girl. The girl from the vineyards. She really was holy, then.

  It picked her up, meaning to assimilate her.

  That was a mistake.

  Her goodness was lethal to it.

  As soon as its inverted limb-corpses wrapped the nubs of their arms around her, those corpses fell away, as did all the others in that limb.

  It was unraveling.

  The light in the middle of it went out.

  It toppled, gratefully.

  Its dead all sighed at once, released.

  Just another pile of dead in a dying world God had left behind.

  And then.

  And then.

  A light came from the girl.

  It shone into the sky, up and up, as warm and heartbreaking as the first finger of dawn.

  She split down the middle and the light got bigger.

  A wing came from her.

  It was not hers.

  It came through her.

  An angel of God was born into the world.

  Her blood on its wing.

  The devils tried to stop it. They screamed their mind-killing scream, they flung blocks of rubble that would have sunk warships at it. They closed with it, the three of them, biting and lashing, desperate to block the gate by killing it.

  They could not.

  The glowing one absorbed their blows, but did not strike back at them.

  It did wrestle them back, though, to make room for the others.

  It was one of the strongest.

  Zephon

  Muscled and without need of muscle, ancient and exuberantly youthful, full again of the heat of stars and the patience of pushing mountains.

  It shone its warm, moonish light all over the courtyard.

  The horrid noise that broke minds was itself broken.

  Another came.

  Uriel

  Its name in Robert’s head as beautiful as a lost lover’s name.

  The light in the courtyard of honor redoubled.

  Tripled as another birthed itself through the girl’s ruined body.

  And another.

  And another.

  The most perfect one yet, larger than the others and bearing a sword too bright to look at, a shard of the sun, now flew up and perched on the tower of the angels, the tower topped with a chapel.

  The chapel named for it.

  St. Michel

  Robert could not see it where it landed, but he saw it fly brilliantly past on white eagle’s wings the size of sails, prisms in its wake, prisms of new colors that made the old ones look gray.

  Michael I’m seeing the archangel Michael.

  It sang from its place on the roof, and it was the most beautiful thing Robert had ever heard. Now those who had survived in the courtyard made a noise of relief and thanks, a hoarse shout that lay beyond the power of words to contain. Some clasped hands and knelt, crying; some embraced one another.

  And still the angels came, a host of them.

  Their light casting wild shadows.

  And yet the people were not safe.

  The Archangel Michael, breaker of Lucifer’s back, swooped down at the lion-faced devil, who feared it so that he flew blindly into the top floor of the great chapel, toppling the building and its wall on those pressed against its door.

  On Robert Hanicotte.

  Darkness and pressure.

  The uncompromising weight of stone.

  A noise like a squeal escaped him.

  This was it.

  Something had his hair.

  A hand squeezed his as his life left him.

  He thought it was Matthieu’s.

  I’m sorry, Robert-of-the-bushes.

  I’m sorry.

  The light of them was so bright it made a wildly careening amber day of sorts all over the city. Maître de Chauliac watched what he could of it from the windows of the pope’s study, the pope himself raving that this was his fault, ordering his ermines burned. Ha! Who could carry all of them, enough of them to carpet the palace, and what would they be burned with? The candles, hearth, and brazier were out, so the men and women in this room huddled together in panting near-darkness, striped at times by lights from outside swinging as though on pendulums. The doctor ordered his men to keep the pontiff here, in this smallish room in the Tower of Angels. The singing from the roof had given him the idea that it, at least, might not fall.

  A horrible noise came from the direction of Villeneuve, across the river. He could not see from his angle, and he was glad. He looked out the window, trying to control his breathing.

  The spectacle he beheld was less a battle after all, and more an ineluctable pushing back of darkness, the habit of the sun, the birthright of light. More devils came, streaking down like stones on fire, trying to hold this earthly redoubt since the war in Heaven had soured. In their anger and impotence, they ruined the cities of Avignon, Villeneuve, and Carpentras, and killed men in the thousands, but their position against the angels was hopeless. They raged and bit at beings so calm, beautiful, and deliberate that it seemed they and the devils occupied two entirely different realities. One scene stayed with de Chauliac forever, obsessing him, even though, mercifully, the rest would blur; he saw a devil with wide black wings gripped by two angels, who drove it down and seemed to speak in its ears as they fell; they hit the bend of the Rhône, sending up a great, illuminated plume of water visible from Orange.

  Two angels and a devil had tumbled into the water.

  Three angels came up.

  Forgiveness, then, was possible even for the worst.

  FORTY-ONE

  Of
the Knight’s Death, and of the Judgment

  Thomas went to his knees. The world swam with black. He knew he was dying, that unmooring feeling came again, and still he tried to see where the girl was, if she was safe. He could not see past the devils, their wings fanned out behind them, though he knew they were killing. Making more like him. Dead men. Ruined bodies. His vision failed him and a curtain of blackness fell; he felt the bricks of the courtyard flat beneath him now, his face on them. Cold. He smelled the stink of the wicked angels, brutal and nauseating. He listened for his heartbeat but heard only silence in his chest. His arm was off, that he remembered, but he could not feel any of his limbs. He had the impression that his stomach emptied itself through his mouth, but he was not breathing, so he had no fear of choking. Then he felt his bowels and bladder voiding. Then he ejaculated, barely feeling it, his body’s final, muted pleasure. Images and words came to him in an urgent jumble, inside his head but louder than the sound of shrill madness that rose up outside, a sound that he had heard before, but now it was distant, receding, unimportant.

  That’s how the poor bastards sing

  He smiled at that, or thought he did, but he was beyond the power to move any part of himself, even the tiny muscles that pulled his mouth. His hearing winked out, leaving only thoughts.

  Is this it?

  When does even this stop?

  Is this how it was for the ones I killed?

  Something in him broke free, and he got his vision back. He saw himself as if from above in a spreading pool of blood. His eyes, which he had thought were closed, were not.

  I’m old, he thought. When did I get old?

  Blood in my white beard.

  Vomit under it.

  I’m ugly.

  He wanted to touch his face but had nothing to touch it with.

  He wanted to lift his vision to see what was happening in the courtyard, he wanted to see the girl.

  YOU CAN FORGET THAT

  YOU’RE OURS

  And the courtyard melted away as if it had never been.

  “They destroyed my body. God made it, not them, and they destroyed it. What right did they have?”

  “You might have asked that question yourself. You’ve destroyed a body or two.”