The Archon's Assassin

by D. P. Prior

  Nameless upended his axe and rested both hands on the haft. He gave a slight nod of respect for the giant’s honesty. No shame in admitting fear; it’s what you did next that mattered. The poor shogger had hidden away for centuries; probably didn’t even know Gandaw was dead, his soulless reign at an end. Sartis was no different to the dwarves cowering at the foot of the ravine, too afraid to act in case they got it wrong. And what Sartis had done to his own people… Nameless could relate to that. To his mind, the giant deserved an answer.

  “I am”—was once?—“a dwarf, a discard of Sektis Gandaw. My people, too, have suffered.” He neglected to say, “at my hands”; already, shadowy fingers were tugging at the edges of his awareness. Stating his guilt aloud would only have tightened their hold, allowed them to drag him into the abyss of despair once more opening up within him. “This helm is both a curse and a blessing. Without it… Without it, I have no defense against the Deceiver.” And yet here he was taking the first step to having it removed. He couldn’t deny he wanted it off more than anything he could imagine; but at the same time, what if Aristodeus was wrong? What if there was no remedy for what the black axe had done to him?

  Sartis nodded knowingly, then dabbed away the drying magma on his face to reveal perfectly restored flesh. “I rue the day his son made me a gift of these gauntlets.”

  “The Demiurgos?” Ludo snapped his glasses off and looked from Sartis to Galen. “The Demiurgos’s son?”

  “Aye, the god of Aethir,” Sartis said amid a billow of soot.

  Albert made an attempt to regain center-stage. “The Cynocephalus, you mean? He gave you his gauntlets, so you could fight Gandaw?”

  The giant laughed, a sound like a landslide, or the threat of distant thunder.

  “The dog-head sees threats everywhere, not just from Gandaw. Most, he dreams into existence. He is the victim of his own nightmares. For a time, he viewed my people, the Jötunn, as his greatest menace.”

  Ludo thrust his forefinger to his lips, brow knitting in concentration. “God of Aethir… No, no, that won’t do.”

  “Excellency,” Galen chided, but Ludo waved him away.

  “Creator, yes,” Ludo went on, as if working it out for himself, “but not the Creator, eh? Not the Concealed of the Concealed, the Ancient of Days, the Lord we call Ain.”

  Sartis frowned, his eyebrows slanted jags of lightning. Either he had no idea what Ludo was talking about, or he’d heard something like it before and dismissed it as gobbledygook. Nameless was sure Thumil would have been in his element, debating with this priest, but the giant was having none of it.

  “Powerful beyond all reckoning is the Cynocephalus. All Aethir owes its existence to him, but even so, he came to me in the semblance of weakness, tiny, like you—no more than a loping baboon with the head of a dog or a jackal. In such a guise of humility, he offered me these gauntlets, the strength to best the combined might of the Jötunn.”

  “Clearing the way for Gandaw,” Albert said. “Which is what I was trying to say earlier.” He shot Nameless a withering stare.

  Sartis inclined his head. “My people were once mighty, but they posed no threat to the Cynocephalus. He did not see it that way. He is a pitiful god, afraid his own creations seek to consume him. He desired only that they be removed, and in return, I was to have dominion over the world. It was a hollow promise, and you are right,” he said to Albert. “Gandaw filled the void left by the Jötunn.”

  Ekyls tried to slink from the chamber unnoticed, but the giant’s beard was a cascading curtain of fire filling the doorway. Ekyls’ skin reddened and grew slick. At first, he was pressed back by the scorching heat, but then he covered his eyes with an arm and lunged for a gap. He might have made it, if he hadn’t slipped in his own pooling sweat.

  Sartis flicked him back inside like an annoying insect, and he hit the far wall with a thud.

  With slow deliberation, the giant turned his blazing eyes on Albert, as if he’d decided upon the choicest delicacy.

  Albert inched away, until he tripped over the mule and fell on his arse. He scrabbled up quicker than a fat man should have been able to move. His cheek twitched, and his chin quivered as he tried to speak, but the words refused him.

  Fear did that to a man. Nameless had seen it time and again in the Ravine Guard. He’d seen it when he’d returned from Gehenna with the black axe, too—on the faces of his former comrades, in the looks of unbridled horror he’d drawn when he’d begun to slaughter. He started to step between Albert and the giant; raised his axe.

  “You are a cook, you say, fat one?” Sartis said.

  Nameless held his breath; stayed his hand.

  Albert gave a delicate cough into his fist and seemed to reset himself. It was a masterful switch, almost as if he sensed an opening and instantly changed modes to take advantage of it. “Not just a cook, Lord Sartis: a chef. The greatest who has ever lived, I think.” When Sartis didn’t respond, he added, “On Earth, I was a pupil of the magnificent—”

  “Earth?” Sartis rumbled, and the chamber shook. “The dread world that spawned the Technocrat?”

  The sound drew an answering moan from Ekyls, who pushed himself up on to all-fours, rolling his head and blinking his eyes into focus.

  “Oh, he was just the dregs,” Albert said, mopping at his perspiring forehead with a handkerchief. “What you have to understand about Earth is the quality of the livestock, the traditions of its cuisines. You’ve not lived until you’ve tasted my coq au vin served with an appetizer of potage crème d’asperges.”

  Nameless didn’t have a clue what that was, but something about Albert’s gusto, the way he closed his eyes and sniffed the air as if breathing in the most delicate aromas, set his mouth salivating. It hadn’t done that for as long as he could remember. At least not since Aristodeus had been tube-feeding him. He put a hand over his stomach as it growled.

  “What are these words?” Sartis asked. “Demon-speak? Magic?” Something about his expression said he didn’t know whether to be angry or intrigued.

  “You’ve not eaten Gallic before?” Albert said with a theatrical gape. He turned to the others, as if they would share in his astonishment.

  Ekyls made it to his feet but swayed precariously. He put out an arm to steady himself on the wall.

  Nameless merely shrugged. Before he could say he’d never heard of it, Albert pressed on.

  “This,”—he indicated the chamber—“won’t do. It’s an oven, yes?”

  Sartis gave the barest of nods, and steam plumed from the corner of his mouth.

  “Won’t do at all,” Albert said. “Cooking isn’t just about setting things on fire, you know. It’s an art, a vocation. Now,” he went on, as if he were no longer on the menu, “might I suggest a starter, one at which I excel.” He gestured toward the dead mule, and Nameless had the feeling this was about revenge for poor Quintus landing him on his arse only moments ago. “Once your palate is primed, I will prepare the entree”—he indicated everyone else—“in a most exquisite sauce.”

  Nameless knew he shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but it hit him like a punch between the eyes. The conniving shogger would kill his own mother if it benefited him in some way. Probably already had. And to think, Nameless had been about to step in and face the giant to protect him.

  Sartis’s tongue flicked around his lips, forked and sizzling like sautéed beef. He reached into the chamber and picked up the mule.

  Nameless had half a mind to wipe the self-satisfied smirk from Albert’s face. Ekyls looked to be considering something even worse.

  Albert followed the giant’s hand out of the room, turning to nod curtly to his companions before the door clanged shut behind him. A bolt squeaked and snapped back in place with the finality of the grave.

  “The ruddy scoundrel!” Galen said. His face was black with soot, whiskers singed and smoldering. “Knew from the first he was a blackguard.”

  Ludo nodded impatiently, as if he were thinking about some
thing else. He might just as well have buried his head in the sand as bury it in that shogging book of his. The only way they were getting out of this alive was through action, not reading, or thinking, or denying what was happening outside the cozy confines of his skull.

  “Sartis thinks Gandaw’s still alive,” Nameless said. The poor shogger must’ve been too scared to leave his volcano hideaway. Mind, it was probably the only reason the giant had survived; the only reason he’d not been experimented on like that sorry-looking dragon Nameless and Shader had found in the laboratories beneath the Perfect Peak. Interesting, though, how a creature as big as Sartis had evaded the Technocrat all these years. And the goblins, too, although they’d always been slippery little buggers, and as cunning as the homunculi, in their own way.

  Ludo, sucked in his cheeks and peered over the top of his glasses. “What do you suppose he’ll do if he finds it’s safe to come out?”

  Nameless snorted at that. “If it’s speculation you’re after, laddie, you’re asking the wrong person.” He sat down and inspected the damage to his axe. The blade that had struck Sartis was cooling but looked like melted wax. The other was fine, just needed honing.

  He rolled his head as far as the helm would allow. His traps were tighter than Rugbeard’s clutch on a wineskin—gods of Arnoch rest his soul—and the muscles around his shoulder blade felt like mangled laundry. Placing the axe on the floor of the oven, he tried to shrug out of his hauberk, but it wasn’t happening. Someone came up behind him and helped him off with it.

  “You must be sweltering,” Ludo said. “I’ve half a mind to remove my cassock, but Galen would probably report me. Mind you, if Sartis took one look at my cachexic torso, I’d probably be off the menu.”

  Nameless gave a wry chuckle. “Aye. Either that, or he’d toss you in the stock as giblets.”

  The chainmail sloughed onto the floor with the sound of heavy rain on a tin roof, and he dumped the linen gambeson on top of it. He rubbed the sweat from his skin and stretched his aching muscles. The scarolite helm seemed to close in around his face. Felt like it was shrinking, compressing his skull, denying him breath. He shut his eyes and gasped in air. Shudders racked his frame, and his hands began to shake. He raised them to the sides of the helm, gave it a twist, just in case.

  He heard the crack of knees as Ludo squatted beside him. Nameless forced himself outward, opened his eyes. By balling his fingers into fists, he was able to stop the trembling.

  Ludo’s cheeks were sunken, slightly jaundiced. He looked little better than a corpse, although his eyes held a glint of mirth. He was watching Nameless with a look that may have been concern, may have been curiosity.

  “Thanks, laddie,” Nameless said, “for helping me out of the armor.”

  Across the oven, Galen harrumphed.

  A thin-lipped grin split Ludo’s face, the crow’s feet around his eyes deepening, as if gouged with a knife.

  “I used to be chaplain to the Elect. It’s not all prayers and homilies, you know.” For a moment, he stared off into some imaginary distance. With a barely suppressed shudder, he said, “Not out on the battlefield.”

  Galen muttered beneath his mustache and set about examining the ruin of his trumpet-weapon.

  “Old habits and all that.” Ludo flicked a look Galen’s way and shrugged. “Met a lot of good men—and a few bad. All a long time ago.” He took off his glasses and wiped them, chuckled to himself and sat.

  Nameless was in no mood for conversation. He was in no mood for company, but choice was a scarce commodity when you were shut in an oversized oven with the rest of the main course. His muscles were stiff as stone, the veins feeding them silted-up streams. The rumbling of his stomach had quieted to a background groan, like it had given up; like it knew the only sustenance his body would get was by way of a tube. With a sudden burst of anger, he slammed the side of the great helm with his fist. Ludo didn’t even react. He may have guessed what Nameless was feeling. Might even have expected this.

  Galen, though, was up in an instant, hand on his saber hilt. Ludo waved him off, and he slowly sank back down to his haunches.

  Ekyls growled something unintelligible and proceeded to head-butt the iron wall, again and again and again. Either it was the savage’s way of rebalancing his brain from where Sartis had flicked him back inside, or he was feeling the same claustrophobic desperation Nameless got from being stuck inside the great helm.

  The more he crashed his head against the wall, the louder Ekyls’ growled and shrieked and screamed. And then Nameless understood: the savage was making himself angry, raising himself to a heightened state, ready for action. Nameless had done it himself on many an occasion. Maybe not with the same ferocity, but he’d always used pain to shift his mood from depression to anger. He needed it now; needed some way to shake off the doldrums. If they didn’t act, and act soon, Sartis would fire up the oven, and they’d be toast. Unless Albert got his way, of course. In which case, they could look forward to being marinated, filleted, and diced into bite-sized cubes.

  He rolled to his front and pumped out some press-ups, hoping Ludo would take the hint and leave him alone.

  He didn’t.

  “Used to be athletic myself, you know,” Ludo said. “Trained with the troops when I could. Don’t have the energy these days.”

  Galen handed Ludo a hunk of bread, chewing noisily on a piece himself.

  Ludo took it between his thumb and forefinger, as if holding a soiled rag.

  Nameless began to launch out of each press-up, clapping in between.

  Ludo shifted onto his side, resting on his elbow. He discreetly dropped the bread to the floor.

  “Good days.” Ludo sighed. “Not entirely happy, but good. Full of purpose.”

  Ekyls fell away from the wall. His forehead was a pulpy mess. Bloody tracks ran down his face and were starting to ooze onto his chest. He looked better for it, though, and something like a malicious leer carved a gouge across his face. It froze in place as his legs turned to jelly, and he collapsed in a heap.

  Nameless put one arm behind his back and continued to press out reps, muscles straining, sweat pouring off him. The effort was the next best thing to pain. If such a thing existed, it was healthy pain, the sort that drove his inner darkness back into the corners. He even felt compelled to throw out a few words to Ludo.

  “No point dwelling on what’s past, as my brother Lucius would say. Now’s the only thing that’s real.”

  “Your brother was quite right,” Ludo said. “Although I wonder what the present would be, had one acted differently in the past.”

  “Regrets?” Nameless grunted as he shifted hands, the repetitions growing slow and hard. Ekyls was breathing, wasn’t he? It was hard to tell in the dim light.

  “Oh no, not really.” Ludo was whimsical. “But it would be dishonest to say I didn’t miss the old days. It all gets so much duller with each promotion. The life of an adeptus is a far cry from that of a simple priest.”

  Nameless paused. “It was that way with me. With the power—” The words dissolved into nothingness before he could finish what he was going to say. Something about how the black axe had made him feel: indomitable, but afraid. Afraid of the merest threat, the oldest of friends. Not only had it been terrifying, to the point that he’d doused it with rage, but it had also been… dull. Dull and so, so lonely.

  “Promotion, power,” Ludo said. “It’s all the same, if you want it. Not saying that I did. These things just come to you in the Templum. You put your head down and get on with it. Always felt a bit of a fraud as an adeptus, like I should know things I didn’t, feel more, be bolder.”

  Nameless stood and dropped into a squat, pushing through his heels until he came upright again.

  Galen picked up Ludo’s discarded bread, dusted it off, and bit into it. He spoke as he chewed.

  “Pretty bold thing you did that got us exiled. Bold but ruddy scandalous, and wasted effort, if you ask me.”

  Ludo tutted and
sighed, as if he’d answered the accusation a thousand times. “We are evangelists, Galen, not exiles.”

  “Sent from Earth to proselytize?” Nameless asked. He doubted they’d have much success. Aethir was a hard world and a cruel one. Galen might adapt, but Ludo… He’d quickly end up the corpse he already looked. Nameless pulled on the gambeson and hefted the hauberk. Shogging thing felt like it weighed a ton after all those press-ups.

  Ludo stood to help him. “Yes and no,” he said. “A bit of both, really. Galen is perhaps a bit negative in his assessment, but he’s also mostly right.”

  “So, laddie, your mission here is a punishment?”

  Ludo coughed into his hand. “Well, in a manner of speaking. But there are always two sides—”

  “His Eminence thought he’d carry sway with the Judiciary; get one of the old boys released.”

  “Which, indeed, I did. I only wish there was more I could have done, but it’s a fine line between obedience and conscience.”

  Galen threw his weapon aside in disgust. “Useless piece of rubbish. Blunderbuss, they call it. Reckon they should have stopped at blunder.” He turned his bullish head toward Nameless. “Too much free-will in the Templum, I say. Has been since Ipsissimus Theodore. But it won’t last long. Silvanus is reeling them in, ruddy liberals.”

  “Shader is certainly no liberal.” Ludo glanced at Nameless, looking for support, or perhaps gauging his reaction.

  “Craven, then.” Galen said.

  It took a moment for the name to register, and when it did, Nameless felt the loss of that brief friendship like a chasm opening up within him.

  Shader had chosen to return to Earth after stopping the Unweaving. He’d made choices no man should have to make, taken the hard path when Nameless had pushed for the only one he knew: the way of violence, and if that failed, heap on a whole load more. But Shader had been right: it was his surrender, his refusal to keep answering power with power that had broken the deadlock with Sektis Gandaw, and freed the Archon’s sword to do what came naturally to it.