by Guy Haley
“They got stone walls, and armed men to keep the armies of the dead away, and the dragon in the woods keeps the armies of the living away too,” she said. “The lord there was granted the land by the angels themselves, for his services against the traitor-emperor. We’ll be safe there.” Truth be told, I don’t really know why we left. Sometimes a person gets desperate enough, or is scared enough, to grasp at any straw. After losing two husbands I don’t think my mom could stand to stay in New Karlsville any longer.
A few days later old Walter passed us on the road. He’d been through the village, seen what happened. He offered us a ride to Charleston. But you saw what happened to him.
Willy’s screams haunt me to this day. If you think that I was brave in that battle, but scared and jumpy afterward in this story, you’d be right. Now you know why.
I came up out of my dreams screaming, arms flailing, trying to push a dead man away that wasn’t there. My mom had her arms around me, but I was so scared I was slapping at her face.
“Shhh, shhh! Abney! It’s Mom, shh, it’s your mother.”
She was always there for me, my mom. She came out of that church and buried a knife in the head of that man trying to eat me. She was there for me again. She held me a long time. Me, who only a few weeks gone thought himself well past the need of his mother’s comforting.
After a long while, my mom got me to lie back down and I quit my bawling. She was asleep quick. I couldn’t. Some time later, my eyes were drawn by a movement in the sky.
A group of the stars moved, swiftly coming in from the east, bright white. Not stars, I thought sleepily. Angels’ Eyes, keeping watch over us all, just like Preacher Relnik used to say.
I felt better. I fell asleep again, knowing that God could see me.
A Knight of Atlantis
MORNING BROUGHT CLOUDS OF mosquitoes that bit and worried at us while we packed up. Not much was said; Mom and me were quiet and scared of what lay ahead, and Quinn didn’t speak without being spoken to. The sun showed us hills over the river a couple of hundred feet high. I wanted to get up there, away from the river and the swamp on the plain. After coming off the bridge, the railroad followed the river, running on the north shore toward Point Pleasant. The emperor had wanted to open up the port there as a rival to Huntingdon. It didn’t happen that way. Once the war was won, the angels of Pittsburgh turned on him for his sins, and Huntingdon kept its hold on all the trade. The whole north section of the line had fallen into ruin.
There’d been a small town at the far end of the bridge. The whole thing had been burned down to black stumps. Charcoal don’t rot. If it weren’t for the fireweed growing thick in each building shell you’d think it all happened yesterday.
Winfield has a name that suggests a town back in the Gone Before. You couldn’t tell. Past the sorry remains of the recent town, swampy woodland came right to the water’s edge, old trees overhanging the water as hoary and broad-girthed as if they’d been there forever.
The bridge that end was scaly black, scorched by fires hotter than I can imagine. The rails had a heat bloom on them where they weren’t rusty.
“The dragon did this,” said Mom. “The emperor made his war on Ohio with the angels’ blessing, and built his railroad to do it. But then he turned from their light, so they cast him down and set the dragon on the land and forbade anyone from settling here.”
There was a sort of breathy exultation to her, like she was carried away by the righteousness of it. Looking back on it now, I think my mom was looking for certainty in our lives, and you don’t get much more certain than the judgment of the angels.
“It’s more complicated than that,” said Quinn.
“How do you mean, Mr. Quinn? The emperor overstepped his earthly authority, and he was punished for it. Amen to that.”
“I mean there were two cities involved in that fight, Columbus versus Pittsburgh, angel versus angel. The emperor played a dangerous game getting between them. That’s what I mean.”
“The angels of Columbus were corrupted by the foulness of the Earth, the emperor started with noble intentions but was tainted by his war against them. What you say is blasphemy!”
Quinn clucked his tongue. “That it may be, but it’s also the truth.”
I looked at my mom. Walter had said that the army of the dead that killed my kin were part of the angels’ wrath on Virginia. We’d had nothing to do with the war, and it was inconceivably long ago to a twelve-year-old boy, so that troubled me. I was brought up to believe in the infallibility of angels, that they came down to Earth to set mankind back on the path God intended. But I was getting older, and stories of the war didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t know what to believe.
And Mom, she was acting weird that day, jumpy and argumentative. We were all nervous. Even Quinn; there was a tension to him. He rode his horse, so we were walking by the pony. Quinn said he needed to be ready and that he’d stand a better chance mounted. He didn’t say against what, but we knew he meant the dragon. He put all his armor on, and had assembled a long lance from sections he pulled out of a leather tube on Clemente. The things that poor beast had to bear.
There was no sound of life near the shore. The rumble of the river rushing over the mess of concrete from the Gone Before stopped being peaceful and became a menacing growl. Every time a fish flipped itself out of the water we jumped. Rumor held that the dragon was often seen near the water.
We went quiet as we could, Mom and me holding the pony’s reins. More for our comfort than his need to be led, quick breathing as we jogged to the hills over the river plain. The swamp made us keep to the raised causeway of the Emperor’s Railroad. Weeds and brush grew up out of the ballast between the sleepers. With no trees over our heads, we were exposed. It wasn’t far from bank to hillside, but it seemed miles.
Quinn raised his hand. We stopped dead in our tracks. My mom’s hand found mine. Quinn rode onto the railroad’s edge, and I saw why we’d halted.
The way was blocked by a dead engine made all of metal. Its upper part was melted to bubbled slag, the cylinder to the front was bashed in and ripped wide open. The entire machine was scabbed a uniform red by rust. But even completely wrecked, the engine remained seated on the rails. All eight wheels sat immovably atop their metal path, defiant as an animal caught in its den.
“This is one reason why the dragon came,” said Quinn quietly.
“A steam engine!” I said. I’d seen one or two. Several in Charleston. “I’ve never seen one with wheels.”
Mom shushed me. She went pale looking on that slaughtered machine. “It is against God,” she said. “This is not a wholesome place.”
“This kind pulls trains instead of horses,” said Quinn. “The ones you see in the chartered towns are fixed. Those pump, make electricity, heat, drive workshops. But in the times before, they used them to pull trains.”
“Why’d he make it?” I asked.
Quinn shrugged. “The war.” He left it at that, didn’t explain any more.
I imagined the dragon unleashed by the angels, all scales and fire and wings. In my mind’s eye I saw it ripping into the engine, breaking it to pieces like that, melting the steel with its breath.
“If the angels sent the dragon to destroy this, and they overthrew their friend,” I said, “why do they allow engines in places like Charleston?”
Quinn looked back over his shoulder at me. “Sometimes the angels change their minds, you’d be well to remember that.”
A bird croaked off in the brush. The forest was unusually silent.
“We should be on our way. Dragons lair close to where they are set. They’re made that way.” Quinn kicked his horse on, passing by the wrecked engine on the slope of the railroad’s bed. The brush was thick there, and it was tough getting past. I slipped on something, and I looked down to see my foot on a grayed bone. Noticing one, suddenly I saw lots of them, like they were leaping out of the earth all around the wreck. My eyes slid to the swamp, I knew what I wa
s going to see there, skeletons half-visible in the murky water, plates of rusty armor all around them.
I fixed my eyes on Quinn’s horse, and didn’t look down again.
The railroad curved round to follow the Kanawha and we left it. The hillside rose up in front of us. Quinn clicked at his horse, urging it off the railbed and through a pool of black water. Parsifal surged through, snorting as he came up on the slope of the hill. Black muck caked him up to the haunches. Quinn turned him round and he waited as me and my mom crossed, dragging Clemente behind us. He didn’t like that water. Mosquitoes bit at us relentlessly, the day was thick and damp and we were sweating miserably.
The hills beckoned. There was no road there, we were cutting directly through the woods. It was hot, hard walking. All the while we were straining for sounds of the dragon, but there wasn’t any sign of it.
There’s a certain irony in life, all our days is shot right through with it. Turns out we were worrying about the dragon, when we should have been worrying about the dead.
At the top of the hill the air lost its humidity. A fresh wind dried our sweat. I was ripped by thorns and stung by plants. I itched from a dozen mosquito bites, but I was still alive, and for that I was thankful.
“We’ll stop here for a little while, get our breath.”
“Is that wise, Mr. Quinn?” said my mom.
“No sign of the dragon,” he said. “If it was coming, then it’d be here by now. We need to eat. Drink some water. We need our strength up, we don’t want to linger here.”
We sat on a rock. There was a break in the trees that afforded us a view back down the river. In the distance you could see the smokes of Charleston rising up into the sky. So much effort to travel such a short distance.
Quinn moved his swords so that he could sit, and fished a piece of jerky out of a pouch, then offered the bag to us. I was hungry, and stuffed some into my mouth.
“Chew it, Abney!” my mom scolded. She passed me a water flask.
“We crest this ridge, then down the other side. There’s a valley on the north that leads down into a bigger one. We follow that. Winfort’s ten miles north of here. If we’re lucky, we’ll be there by the time it gets dark,” He took another piece of jerky and chewed it slowly.
“I do hope so, Mr. Quinn,” said my mother. “I do not wish to expose Abney to another night camping rough, especially in an area such as this.” She stood up. “Now if you excuse me, I must relieve myself.”
She left the clearing. I wish I’d stopped her. I’ve wished that every single day since.
Quinn looked at me. “How are you bearing up?”
I shrugged. “I’m okay,” I said.
“Your mom tells me you’re brave. That you helped defend your town.”
I shrugged again. I couldn’t hold his eye. I didn’t feel very brave. I hadn’t ever since I’d watched Willy being torn to pieces in front of me.
“How old are you, boy?”
“Twelve.” I felt about six, small and impotent.
“Well, that sounds brave to me.”
“Why are you always so down on the angels?” I asked. “You are their servant. Don’t they get mad at you?”
He swallowed his jerky. “Yeah, they get mad with me. But I don’t lie about them. Some things are too serious to lie about. And I swore an oath to be truthful, as much as I can.”
“An oath to the angels?”
He nodded.
“But you’re still down on them. They are the right hand of God upon the Earth. You’re gonna burn in hell for what you say about them, mister. The angels know everything, and they speak your sins into the ear of the Lord.”
“Your preacher tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“You believe him?”
“Yes.”
Quinn sighed and shifted his position on the rock. “Son, the angels aren’t all they’re said to be. When I was made a knight by them, I felt like you do. All the word of the Lord and the will of the Lord. I was proud. I was glad to be their instrument. But I found that their promises aren’t good. I’ve been through a lot, all because of the angels.” He paused. “I fought in the wars of the emperor. On the Virginia-Pittsburgh side. I saw things in that war no man should see.”
“I’ve seen bad things.”
“Yeah, well. You have. Truth is, when you see so much death and suffering, you begin to question why it’s done, and in whose name. When I saw angels fighting angels, what the hell was I supposed to think?”
He was deadly serious.
“If they’re both of God, why are they fighting? If both sides are good? The emperor asked these questions too. Pittsburgh used him to fight their war, and when they were done with him, they cast him down. They call it the emperor’s war, truth is, the emperor’s war was a war between the angels of Columbus and the angels of Pittsburgh. You hear what your momma says about the Columbus angels, that they were tainted by their time on Earth.”
“Everyone knows that!”
Quinn inclined his head. “Maybe they do. But do you think the men who fought for Ohio believed their angels to be fallen, or did they think those of Pittsburgh were the ones turned to evil?”
I stayed silent.
“Same with the emperor. All of Virginia and more besides allied to the Pittsburgh angels, he was on the side of good, so far as the story gets told now.”
“He was evil. He betrayed the angels after they helped him win.”
“He was a man,” said Quinn. “He was vainglorious and ambitious and wanted power, but I believe he wanted it to make the lot of people better. The more he learnt, the more he questioned. What we’re told has it the wrong way about. He helped the Pittsburgh angels, and they supported him for it at first. Then he pushed too far. Things like that steam locomotive down in the valley. He went too far in using the old knowledge. So they killed him, set a plague of unliving loose on Virginia, and put the dragon here. Some say the dragon’s here to keep the peace between the east and west. But the Emperor’s Punishment is a weapon of terror, a thing meant to keep us scared.”
Quinn was angry about this, there wasn’t a flicker of it on his face, but his eyes, usually so cool, they were burning.
“But, why? Why did he do it?”
Quinn kicked his leg out in front of himself. “You go into any group of people, you’ll see them complaining about this and that, how such a thing could be done another way. Every man ever born thinks he knows how to save the world, but most of them sit on their hands. The emperor tried to do something about it.”
We sat a while, listened to the wind sighing in the trees, the surprisingly hard clatter of dead leaves falling to the forest floor.
“Did you meet the emperor?”
“Yeah, yeah I did. He was a man like any other, clearer sighted, maybe. Clever. Too clever.” He looked me deep in the eye. “And I met angels too.”
I had a sudden and fearful apprehension. I stood up and backed away.
“This is a test. You’re not a knight.”
Quinn watched me with his eyebrows raised, curious as to what I’d do next.
“I am a knight. And I did meet the angels.”
“Then why don’t you wear a badge?”
He looked at the floor. Another pause. “That’s my choice. Way I see it, no matter what the angels intended for us knights or how they used us, I took oaths that I believed in, and I failed one of those oaths. The way I see it, I don’t deserve to wear the badge of my mortal lord, not until I put things right.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Without looking at me, he undid a clasp on his hauberk and pulled out a smooth rectangle of metal, about an eighth of an inch thick and big as Quinn’s palm.
“This is my seal,” he said. “I don’t show it, because when I do the eyes of the Dreaming Cities are drawn to me. Here,” he shrugged. “It don’t matter none.”
“I saw the lights in the sky.”
“Did you, now? Well, you know they’re watchin
g already, see what I’m going to do, so it makes no difference if I show you this or not.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the metal. Quinn was battered and filthy, but the seal was made of adamant, the angels’ metal, and had no flaw. I thought for a moment it was a forgery, a clever mockery made of silver, then the sun caught it just so.
An image leapt from the seal, tiny but perfect and solid looking as you or I. A cowled angel with a bowed head standing over a city of spires set in a sapphire sea. Four miniature tall ships appeared. They were perfect in every detail, with flea-sized men clambering in their rigging. The sails snapped open and the ships sailed the air around the angel. The angel spread its wings out behind ships and city. I gaped at it, this perfect picture swimming on thin air. The mark of a knight, the mark of the angels.
Quinn spoke with a clear voice. “I am a knight of the Dreaming City of Atlantis, sanctioned by the angels there. This is their seal, and my authority.”
The angel looked up, its face lost in blue shadow. Its hands rose slowly to the cowl, and made to pull it back. A sense of foreboding took me. I was afraid to see its face.
Quinn closed his fingers over the badge and the picture froze and faded away. I looked from the seal to his face and back again.
“An angel,” I said. “A real angel.”
“Son,” he said. “The angels. They’re not—”
He never got the chance to finish. A shrill scream cut the air.
“Mom!” I took off in the direction of the cry.
“Wait!” Quinn was after me, his mail jangling. His falchion rasped from its scabbard.
My mom wasn’t far away, in a hollow bordered by young oaks. A lone dead man grappled with her. She had her arms crossed, braced against its neck to keep away the teeth snapping at her face. Its hands groped at her forearms, trying to tug them apart.
Her overdress was off, but her undergarments and petticoat were in place. It must’ve caught her just as she was finishing up.
The thing was wearing armor, not much different to Quinn’s but so rusty as to be brown from head to foot. Incredibly, it still had a helmet on. Such details you notice at a time like that. How long had it been wandering around the woods, a dead man armored for a war two decades over? In places the leather was rotted through, and some of the plates hung off it, clacking dully as the zombie thrust itself against my mother. A foul smell came off it. Stepping into that hollow was to immerse yourself in its stench, it filled the space as surely as water.