Kindling (Flame of Evil)

by Mick Farren

  Bonnie interrupted. “He doesn’t like to be called ‘kid.’”

  The Ranger inclined his head. “I’m sorry.” They shook hands, and the Ranger corrected himself. “Glad to meet you, Argo Weaver.”

  Up close, Argo saw that Captain Jeb Hooker was a tall, lean man in his early thirties, with large, capable hands, close-cropped sandy hair, a week’s growth of beard, and the kind of eyes that seemed permanently narrowed below a just-as-permanently furrowed brow. He was dressed in a forest green tunic with a high hussar’s collar and two vertical rows of unshined military buttons. On one shoulder he wore the bars of a captain, and on the other the Rangers’ insignia with its half-moon emblem and the motto We Own The Night. Around his waist was a broad military belt that supported a sheathed, saw-edged Jones knife and a small cache of Mills’ bombs. A heavy revolver hung in a shoulder holster beneath the open tunic, under his left arm, while a bandolier of blue and copper shotgun shells was draped across his chest. The hilt of a second, smaller knife protruded from the top of one of his high hunter’s boots. Although Argo had never seen a human being so loaded for destruction, the Ranger greeted Argo so warmly that he briefly stopped feeling like the new kid in the neighborhood who knew nothing. “I don’t mind being called ‘kid.’ It’s just that Bonnie does it too much.”

  Hooker laughed and nodded. “Yeah, that one’s got herself an attitude, all right. We learned that the last time she was with us.”

  Slide curtly broke up the pleasantries. “Let’s take the party inside before the whole forest knows we’re here.”

  Hooker gestured to the two Rangers still in the rocks. “Billy, Conrad, you’re still on watch. Stay alert, you hear?”

  “We got it covered, Captain. Don’t worry about us.”

  “Come in and tell us when the rain starts.”

  “We’ll do that.”

  Slide followed the Ranger captain to a dark space in the rocky outcrop and ducked into it, vanishing from sight in what had looked, up to the instant of his entry, like nothing more than rather deep shadow. The captain followed him, but, instead of going into the hidden entrance, he stood to one side and ushered Bonnie and Argo to go first. “Watch your step there. It’s kind of uneven, and the rock surface is slick in places, but it broadens out farther back, and then you get to the light.”

  Argo followed Bonnie into the space and found himself feeling his way forward in total darkness. Then, up ahead, Slide moved a heavy canvas sheet to one side, and he saw the orange glow of an oil lamp. Slide beckoned to the two of them to hurry. “We don’t want the light leaking out and giving this place away.”

  Beyond the canvas that served as not only a highly serviceable blackout drape, but also as a protection against the chill of the night air, the narrow passage widened out into a sizeable cave. As Hooker replaced the drape, Argo looked around in wonder. The Rangers had created a functionally cozy hideout and hidden base for themselves and their operations deep in enemy territory, and, as their motto claimed, they really did seem to own the night. Argo let out a low but awed whistle. “This place is amazing.”

  Bonnie nodded. “I doubt even a Seeker could find it.”

  “What’s a Seeker?”

  “Just hope you never find out.”

  By a mental headcount, Argo saw that six Rangers currently occupied the cave, plus the two who stood guard outside. He, Slide, and Bonnie made the number up to eleven, and, if the sentries returned, the cave would approach being uncomfortably crowded. Some rudimentary furniture had been installed, two mattresses that had been dumped on the rock-and-dirt floor, along with an incongruous easy chair and a kitchen table on which stood cooking utensils and a small kerosene stove. All presumably had been scavenged from some ruined or abandoned building near the cave. By far the majority of the space in the cave was given over to the storage of supplies. Ammunition boxes and cases of canned military rations were stacked in an approximately organized fashion against the cave walls, along with a two-and-a-half-inch mortar and a portable, tripod-mounted version of the famous and fast-firing Bergman gun. Argo looked at the Bergman gun with interest. He had never seen one before, but he had heard tell of them. The Bergman gun had, according to even the legends of the occupied territories, done much to even the odds when the Albany forces had held the numerically superior Mosul at the Potomac, and its rapid-fire capability had gone on to help maintain the ensuing standoff.

  The oil lamp that provided all of the shadowy light in the cave stood on top of one of the highest stacks of boxes. Argo wondered how the Rangers had dragged so much stuff there right under the noses of the Mosul. Had they been dropped from some kind of flying machine? The six men in the cave were all variations on Jeb Hooker: different shapes, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds, but they seemed to have the same calm, hard-bitten confidence of their leader, and, like their leader, not one had shaved in a week or ten days. They all either wore the same forest green tunics with the Albany Ranger insignia or had stripped down to boots, pants, and faded, red flannel undershirts. All had shotguns, carbines, or pistols close to hand, and if they were taken by the Mosul, they would go down as soldiers, not bandits or spies, fully armed and wearing the proud symbols of their regiment. Argo had never seen men like them before. His father, as he remembered him, had been brave, but the cause his father had rallied to would prove lost in a matter of weeks. Jackvance Weaver and the tens of thousands like him had been carried along by patriotic fervor and very little else, hardly knowing the ultimate consequences of their actions.

  These Rangers knew exactly what they were doing and had plainly evaluated what the outcome might be. They had no illusions that any gods or goddesses were on their side or looking out for them. They had no illusions that right would always eventually conquer might, or good would prevail over evil. They put their faith in weapons, tactics, and the element of surprise, rather than the righteousness of their cause. They were killers, and as killers, they had sacrificed a part of their humanity to defend humanity itself. In return, they had gained a calm and a confidence that enabled them to do their work with a grim and methodic precision. Argo had seen Mosul killers, and they were in no way the same as these Rangers. The Mosul killed because they could, because they relished the sense of power that came with acts of slaughter. The Rangers relished nothing, except perhaps their sense of comradeship and that, in the risks they took and their destruction of the enemy they fought, they served and preserved some semblance of civilization even though they might employ the techniques of savages in the process. Argo could scarcely believe that he was among such people.

  The Rangers all knew Bonnie, and Hooker proceeded to introduce Argo. “Lads, this is Argo Weaver. Argo, this is Barnabas.”

  Barnabas was a short, dark man with a full beard and the look of a perpetual malcontent who had only found himself a sense of purpose by enlisting in the Rangers. He nodded. “How you doing, kid?”

  Hooker continued. “Penhaligon and Cartwright.”

  Penhaligon and Cartwright looked like two farm boys, but case-hardened by a ruthless process of training. They said nothing.

  “That’s Steuben on the mattress, and the one in the chair is Madden.”

  “Hey there, Argo Weaver, pull up an ammunition box and sit down.” Steuben had broad shoulders, a bullet head, and bright blue eyes. Argo would later learn that he was the humorist of the outfit. Madden was skinny and withdrawn, with blond hair and beard and a black bandanna wrapped around his head. He simply nodded and went on working on the edge of his Ranger-issue Jones knife with a small whetstone. In the civilian world, he would probably have been deemed crazy and dangerous, but, as with Barnabas, enlistment in the Rangers had provided him with a home and a method that made his madness an asset. Argo accepted the invite and sat on an ammunition box that placed him beside Slide and Bonnie. He again looked around the cave and commented to no one in particular. “You guys seem fixed to stay here for a while.”

  It was Steuben who responded. “You know what we say i
n the Rangers? Hold the position until you’ve won, you’re dead, or you’re ordered out.”

  After Steuben’s remark, no one in the cave spoke for a long time. The Rangers had no need to fill the silence with unnecessary conversation. They seemed totally attuned to the idea that their lives were lived in moments of violent and frenzied action that punctuated long, numb periods of protracted waiting. When they had nothing to occupy them, it was almost as if they could slow down their internal perception of time. Argo, on the other hand, had no such capacity for silence, and too many mysteries nagged for him to remain quiet. After holding his peace for as long as possible, Argo turned to Slide and spoke in a low voice. “Would it be appropriate to talk now?”

  “Do I detect a hint of sarcasm, young Weaver?”

  “Maybe an understandable impatience.”

  “And what are you so impatient to talk about?”

  “Perhaps about this ‘Four’ you’ve mentioned, and why you think I might be one of them.”

  Slide, in turn, looked at Bonnie. “You want to field that one? It was your information that set all this in motion in the first place.”

  Although the Rangers made no comment, every eye was now on Bonnie, who slowly nodded. Even she seemed in step with the Rangers’ ability to wait. “I was wondering when you were going to get round to that.”

  Argo shrugged, maybe intimidated, but not silenced. “I’d like to know what I might be a part of. Surely it’s only fair to fill me in.”

  Bonnie took a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. No one has really figured out the complete picture, but I can tell you the story so far, for what it’s worth.”

  The Rangers seemed, without actually moving, to draw closer. If nothing else, it would be an entertainment for them. Bonnie looked at them a little apprehensively, but started anyway. “It all began with an aboriginal wisewoman called Miramichi, a windwalker who runs communications between the Appalachians and Albany and Ranger groups like you guys. For maybe a couple of months past, Miramichi had been having these dreams about four young people who were somehow connected, but very separate. At first she said nothing. The dreams were too fleeting, too insubstantial and lacking in definition and detail, and she had also learned the hard way how resistant you military sons of bitches are to matters of the Other Side.”

  She paused to look round at the Rangers. Tough as they were, they looked away or stared down at their boots. Argo felt as though he had come in on a long-standing disagreement and did not quite understand. “Would someone like to tell me what this is all about? The Mosul have no problem reconciling this world and the other. You don’t live long under the Zhaithan if you don’t grasp that fact as fast as you can.”

  Steuben spread his hands, defending both himself and his comrades. “What can we tell you, kid? We were trained in the material world, and we fight in the material world. Where we come from, the Other Side is Goddess stuff.”

  Bonnie was outraged. “Goddess stuff?”

  Steuben moved quickly to head her off. “Hey, hey, we don’t not believe. We know the signs are all there. We’ve seen the Seekers and the Mothmen and the Dark Things, and we know all about the Mosul conjurers. Maybe we should have been trained in the Arts from bootcamp, but we weren’t. We’re just grunts who got so good at our trade with gun and knife that they made us specialists. We ain’t comfortable around the wiggy shit. It ain’t our business, and we try to keep a distance from it.”

  Bonnie’s mouth was set in a stubborn line. “Yeah, well, we can’t all fight completely in the mortal world, can we? Some of us aren’t given the choice.” She looked at Slide. “And what do these material Rangers think you are, Yancey? What tidy piece of denial enables them to live with your wiggy shit and makes this alliance between you and them possible?”

  Slide had been sitting on the cave floor with his long, spider-skinny legs folded in front of him in a meditative posture and his back to the cave wall, but he had slid down the wall when Bonnie had started arguing with the Rangers, making himself as small as possible, and with his hat tilted so far forward over his eyes, his visible face was reduced to a jutting cigar and part of an unshaven chin. Even his voice sounded muffled. “Go on with the story, Bonnie. You won’t reform these heathen materialists this night, or for many nights to come.”

  Argo saw what was going on in the cave. The Rangers might be fearless and very capable slayers in the real world, but in the places where reality faltered, they became uneasy. He hoped it wasn’t a too-human oversight that would cost them dear sometime in the future. Maybe that was why Slide was with them. To even the balance between the real and unreal. But Argo wasn’t overly interested in the argument. He wanted to hear the tale of what they thought he was, and he said so. “Yeah, go on with the story, Bonnie. If it affects me, don’t I have a right to hear it?”

  Steuben made nice. “Yeah, come on, Bonnie, tell the story.”

  Bonnie stared angrily down at the floor, but finally looked up with a scowl. “Okay, okay, for the kid, I’ll tell the story, but you bastards better start figuring this ‘wiggy shit’ into your fucking calculations pretty fast or you’ll be served on toast when you run into Dark Things for real. Word is that, because Hassan can’t match our technology and firepower, he wants such overwhelming numbers that he’s even putting the Dark Things and the Mothmen into the field, like he did at Richmond.”

  While the Rangers looked uneasily at each other, like men faced with a fact they were pretending to ignore, Steuben tried to joke Bonnie out of her attitude by getting down on his knees. “Just tell the story, Bonnie, and stop busting our balls. I’m fucking begging you.”

  Bonnie sighed. “Okay, okay. Like I said, at first Miramichi had nothing more than vague feelings, and faces in dreams. She knew that there were four young people, all around your age, Argo Weaver, or perhaps a little older, who had a very unusual mutual empathy.”

  Argo frowned. “Mutual empathy.”

  Bonnie nodded. “Miramichi called it a takla. We have no comparable word for it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither really do we.”

  Penhaligon, the Ranger with the farm-boy face, had one boot and sock off and was inspecting his foot. “There used to be a story that if Albany was ever in mortal danger, four magicians or wisemen would come.”

  Cartwright, the other farm-boy Ranger, spat in the dirt. “There used to be a story that if Albany was ever in mortal danger, Henry Morgan’s drum would start beating all by itself, but I don’t hear nothing.”

  Argo was now so confused that he looked to Yancey Slide for enlightenment, but Slide said nothing, and so Bonnie continued. “Then exactly thirteen days ago, Miramichi had a much more fully formed vision. The four became the Four, and the Four were coming together. Two boys and two girls, and they would very soon find each other in the realm of the Mosul, and, when they found each other, they would play a crucial part in the overthrow of the empire of Hassan IX.”

  Cartwright looked at Penhaligon. “So you got your four magicians, boy.”

  Penhaligon was about to come out with a retort, but Hooker’s scowl shut him up. Jeb Hooker, after firmly keeping out of the Goddess stuff– wiggy shit argument, was now taking an interest. “And this time the woman Miramichi reported the vision?”

  “She told a few of us in Communications, and a report went to Albany. Luckily, someone in Dunbar’s office was bright enough to take it seriously, and we were ordered to pursue it. Meanwhile, Miramichi had already conducted a seeking ritual and found that Argo was wandering aimlessly about in the forest, and she could only assume, since she was intensely aware of his presence, that he must be one of the Four from the previous dreams.”

  Hooker looked thoughtfully at Argo and then back at Bonnie. “And this Miramichi sent you out to reel him in?”

  Bonnie looked at Hooker a little curiously. “Yeah, I was sent out to get him. I did a night-ritual in which we chewed the mushrooms and danced the feathers, and she showed
me where he would be and how certain conditions would need to be fulfilled. And then Slide was contacted, and his part was to bring us here.”

  Steuben raised an eyebrow. “These certain conditions? What were they all about?”

  Bonnie regarded the company joker through bleakly narrowed eyes. “You don’t need to know.”

  Slide filled in Steuben’s blank. “She fucked him. She was young Weaver’s first. She took his virginity.”

  The Rangers guffawed loudly, and Argo wished the ground would swallow him. Steuben leered. “Same old Bonnie.”

  Bonnie glared at the Rangers. “Fuck you all.”

  Only Hooker was not joining in the general merriment and actually seemed to be waiting for it to subside so he could ask some questions of his own. “Miramichi was told that the Four were ‘to play a crucial part in the overthrow of the empire of Hassan IX’?”

  Bonnie nodded. “That’s correct.”

  “Was she told whether this role would be positive or negative?”

  Argo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I’m sorry, Captain Hooker, but I’m on the run from the Mosul, and if you don’t…”

  Bonnie cut him off. “Shut up, Argo. I know where Jeb’s going with this. It’s right that he should. He has to protect Albany, and he has to protect his men.” She faced Hooker. “Miramichi was led strongly to believe that the influence of the Four would be a positive one. Of course, we had to consider the reverse. It would have been criminally stupid not to, and Miramichi is neither criminal nor stupid. It was decided that if Argo should turn out to be a Zhaithan asset, it would still be better to have him under our physical control.”