The Nightmare Stacks

by Charles Stross

  This matter of ley line arrangement is of considerable interest to All-Highest’s staff. Once they secure control of the far end of the shadow road, the Host’s magi can, with some effort, move it around the local ley line endpoints. And ley lines are vital for logistic support and mobility, for they are the Morningstar Empire’s chief form of long-range transport, permitting the rapid movement of armor, infantry, and provisions without risk of interdiction by enemy forces. The usual problem with using a ley line to move troops through enemy territory is that unless the enemy are smoking poppy juice, they’ll notice the sudden drain in mana in the middle of their stronghold and smash the anchor stone, thereby consigning the unfortunate expeditionary forces to perdition. (Spies and assassins are one thing, heavy cavalry battalions are another.) But if the anchor stone is surreptitiously moved to a defensible forward location, the Host can pour through and attack across the last few dozen leagues by conventional means, taking the enemy by surprise. And this suggests a plan to All-Highest.

  First, the magi will carry the shadow road anchor to the ley line node by the abandoned underground fort. Then they’ll shuffle it out of the enemy city, to the limestone outcropping. At which point the Host can pour through and marshal in strength, under the watchful eyes of Airborne Strike Command.

  It is decided early on that the first aerial reconnaissance sorties will cautiously skirt the city-hive itself, hidden by terrain and distance from the air defenses that sweep the skies around the enemy palace. These early flights will seek to confirm the substance of Agent First’s report. If confirmation is forthcoming, Highest Liege of Airborne Strike Command will obtain local air superiority above the limestone outcropping, then the Host’s heavy armor and forward reconnaissance units will pour through and strike en masse at the enemy city, traveling over land, using the ley line for energy and communications once they reach the outskirts.

  The worst case All-Highest envisages is that the armored spearhead will draw the defending forces out from wherever they’re hiding. (If fate smiles upon him, the cavalry strike will take the enemy completely by surprise and roll through their defenses, taking the palace.) Meanwhile, while the enemy are distracted a smaller force of combat magi will seize the unsecured ley line terminating on the river by the enemy citadel. The plan is to penetrate its perimeter wards by treachery, kill the sorcerer queen within, grab her empire’s controlling geasa, and add them to All-Highest’s string. Next stop: planetary domination.

  It’s a desperate plan with many imponderables, but to the Host these are desperate times. They’re running perilously low on food for the cavalry mounts; they can’t return to hibernation under hill, and the oracles all predict a fate four point two degrees worse than death if they try to retake the surface territories of the Morningstar Empire. The probability of a successful outcome in this venture is far from certain, but the oracles all agree that the enemy witch queen will not triumph over All-Highest. (So there’s that.)

  Days pass.

  The four remaining Assassins of Spies and Liars, bound now directly by the will of All-Highest, travel the shadow road unsummoned by their leader. It is their privilege to escort a pair of forward assault geomancers, whose job it is to seize the anchor of the shadow road and relocate it to the marshaling point, then fuse it to the local ley lines.

  In the upper caverns of the redoubt the slave-technicians of Airborne Strike prepare two firewyrms for service. Bringing the dragons to combat readiness is a painstaking business. Rather than slumbering in envenomated sorcerous suspended animation while their human riders slept away the years, the siliceous organisms—distant relatives of the war basilisks that provide the Host with heavy fire support—have been encouraged to binge on fluorspar and rock salt, then placed in a powerful summoning grid to sever them from the passage of time. The beasts are quiescent and relatively harmless while in a digestive torpor, and the ground crew are well-trained: few slaves lose limbs this time round as they fettle and irrigate the wyrms. Meanwhile, their riders awaken in their cocoons. Less disposable members of the ground crew prepare the mission plans and retrieve munitions from the deep storage bunkers.

  Finally, the riders and their passengers—the magi of Airborne Strike Command—are briefed, and the dragons are delicately prodded and chivvied towards the tunnel leading to the road to Urükheim, waiting for the all-clear.

  The dragons travel in convoy with their forward ground crew, behind a double lance of light cavalry, their gold-chased wrought-iron armor burnished to a refulgent gleam. Helmet plumes nod gracefully as their mounts high-step onto the road between the worlds. Following at a safe distance, the steady thudding hoofbeats of a tactical air defense group rumbles in their wake, ready to protect the forward base from insurgents.

  The full might of the Host of Air and Darkness is still working up to operational readiness, but Airborne Strike and Forward Reconnaissance are about to sweep the ground around Malham Cove clear of urük, preparing the staging area for the invasion force.

  * * *

  Alex is alone in his cramped, windowless office, writing up his report on the Armouries in a vain attempt to settle his free-floating unease, when the source of the anxiety he’s been holding at bay all morning reveals itself to him. Comprehension is heralded by a familiar SOS ringtone.

  Alex stares at his phone. It’s Mum. For a couple of seconds he stares at it, half-intending to let it ring through to voice mail: but he’s self-aware enough to recognize the futility of attempting to delay the inevitable. He finally picks up, guts churning. She’s going to ask him the Question again, isn’t she? Only this time . . . “Hi, Mum?”

  “Hello, dear! Are you busy right now?”

  Alex’s eyes swivel furtively, a habit ingrained through long experience of sharing offices and cubicle space with others. “I’m at work, Mum.” Honesty compels him to add: “But I’m alone right now.”

  “Oh good! I can never tell whether you’re on night shift or terribly busy or—” And she’s off, into a three-minute monologue about family friends he hasn’t seen since he was in school, about his father’s sciatica, and about Aunt Emmy’s creaking knees and his sister’s exam results. Terminating abruptly in: “—but you are in Leeds this weekend?”

  A moment’s hesitation and he’s lost: “Yes, Mum.”

  “Marvelous! Then it’s settled, you’re definitely coming for dinner on Saturday. What is she called, by the way?”

  Oh fuck. “I haven’t asked her.”

  “You haven’t asked her name? Alex!”

  “No, I mean”—Alex scrambles for a diplomatic way to admit that he’s completely forgotten about the dinner on Saturday, and that he has made alternative plans for the evening, if he can barely remember what they are—“I haven’t asked her to dinner.”

  “Well, Alex Mansfield Schwartz, you can fix that right away!” His phone buzzes like an angry wasp. “Tell her she’d be ever so welcome, really, it’s no trouble whatsoever to feed another head—” He translates mentally: Are you trying to hide her from us? Is there something wrong with her?

  It’s getting worse by the moment. “No, Mum, honest! It’s just I’m not sure we’re on meeting-the-folks terms yet,” he says. “I don’t want to take things too fast—”

  “What’s she called?”

  He stifles a sigh. “She’s called Cassie.”

  “And what’s she like?”

  “She’s a final year student at Leeds Met,” he says reluctantly, trying not to pass ammunition to the enemy. He saw what happened when Aunt Emmy’s daughter Patsy got engaged to a rather damp solicitor from Wakefield: it wasn’t pretty. Mum is all fired up to stage-manage a dream wedding that will put right all the perceived wrongs Gran inflicted on her own nuptials (and lay to rest forever her sense of mild insecurity relative to her older sister). It’s only a matter of time before either he or Sarah get to draw the short straw. Exposing Cassie to Mum on a second date is
almost certain to ensure that there won’t ever be a third date. “Listen, Mum, I think she has other plans for the weekend—”

  “Well ask her anyway, won’t you? Just for me?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he says. “I’ll definitely see if it’s possible.”

  And there he submits to another ten minutes of chirpy monologuing about the weather, his deplorable haircut (Alex’s hair is always deplorable), whether he and Cassie are going to dress up for dinner, and a promise that as they’re all grown-ups now there will be wine with the meal.

  Finally he’s had enough. It takes him a couple of minutes more to get a word in edgeways: “Mum, I’m at work—”

  “Oh, I quite forgot! Well, not to worry. Remember what I said? Ask Cassie to come along? I’m sure we’ll get on like a house on fire!”

  Visions of shrieking and jumping out of upper-floor windows dance in his mind’s eye. “Yes, Mum. Bye . . .”

  Alex puts his phone down with a shudder then shoves it to the far side of his desk, like the corpse of a particularly large cockroach. He stares vacantly at his computer. His fingers, poised over the keyboard, make minute twitching motions, but no words appear on the screen. His body is present but his mind is far away.

  Mum expects to meet the Girlfriend. This has been made clear in no uncertain terms. Worse, Sarah expects him to show up and support her, with or without partner. There was something fishy about little sister’s call the previous week. (Is she concealing an agenda of her own?) In any case the prospect of introducing Cassie to his family so early in the getting-to-know-you game is excruciating. They’re like the anti–Addams Family; if Cassie has any sense she’ll take to her heels and not stop running until she hits the North Sea.

  But then he remembers something else. Cassie is heading off to Whitby the weekend after next, isn’t she? For the goth festival. And Cassie is—if he’s not making a wild error of judgment—something of a goth. She’ll be in her natural habitat there, with a bunch of party-animal thespians and a superabundance of sexy creatures of the night for her to throw herself at if she is inclined to forget about him. And he’ll be stuck in Leeds, tied down by work.

  “Oh God,” he moans quietly, “I’m screwed.” Cassie expects to see him on Saturday. Dragging her along to meet the potential parents-in-law might be a scary big deal and a good way of ensuring that it’s the last time he’ll see her. But if he goes to dinner and doesn’t bring her along, or if he blows off Mum’s arrangements, both Mum and Sarah will be pissed off at him. And if he doesn’t see her on Saturday he may not get another chance before she goes traipsing off to Whitby for a week, at which point he can be certain she’ll forget him.

  What’s a boy to do?

  * * *

  The morning after her date with her nerdishly cute prince of darkness, Cassie is scheduled for a lecture at nine o’clock. She blows it off because life’s too short and anyway the world is going to end in about two weeks’ time, when the Second Heavy Cavalry Brigade rumbles into town accompanied by skies that rain wyrmfire and the death spells of combat magi. If she’s lucky she’ll have a chance to find out whether the goth festival is as much fun as everyone says it is before that happens. But first, she has to arrange another date with cute boy, identify his weaknesses, conquer him, and use him to get her inside the fortified palace on Quarry Hill. Only then will her father’s geas allow her to turn her ingenuity to more urgent priorities—such as saving herself from her stepmother’s murderous attention, partying with cute boy, and performing in Dracula at Whitby.

  This is all very bothersome. Over the course of her weeks in Urükheim, Agent First has discovered that the architecture is ugly, the road traffic offensive to the eye, and most of the fashions are unsightly—but it is surprisingly relaxing to wake up in the morning knowing that one’s day will not be taken up by avoiding assassins and enslaving new minions for the greater glory of All-Highest. The urük obsession with money, which she can obtain in any reasonable quantity by snapping her fingers and asking for it, makes life easy. Her studies are trivial but absorbing and enjoyable, the flowers are blooming, the skies are curiously lacking in barrel-bodied bat-winged horrors hunting human prey, and Alex has agreed to take her out on Saturday. Life would be good, if only the world wasn’t about to end.

  But she can’t do anything about that, so there’s no point worrying.

  Around lunchtime Cassie’s phone vibrates. Agent First pokes at it warily. These things work on some sort of eldritch urük craft, mana-free and alien: scrying crystals powered by the chemical properties of matter and stored lightning, rather than clean and simple magic. Over the past few weeks she has become accustomed to using them, but they still confound her from time to time. Now she sees that her phone has received a message, from Alex. She begins to smile as she reads it, then her face freezes in puzzlement.

  Saturday: really sorry but I promised my parents I’d do dinner with them. Can I come to Whitby with you instead?

  Agent First shakes her head. This is wrong. Incompatible with her orders. She must gain access to the enemy palace and breach its protective wards before the strike force deploys. She can see no better way to do this than by suborning a magus who works there, and the only blood-mage of her acquaintance in this world seems to be trying to back out of their date . . . this cannot be. And so she rapidly thumb-types her reply.

  I’d love to meet your parents! On condition you come to meet mine some time. Yes you can come to Whitby with me too afterwards? :-)

  Alex replies barely five minutes later:

  Yes to both Qs. But Sis is introducing her boy to parents for 1st time. Mum wants grandchildren. Cld be awkward.

  Agent First’s initial grin of triumph fades to a frown as she tries to understand the hidden meaning behind the message. She’s unclear on the significance of the comment about grandchildren, and she didn’t know Alex had a sister, but it is becoming clear that his family might be relevant to her mission. A mother and a father—she suppresses a brief flash of envy—who want their children to attend a family audience? Are Alex’s parents members of the occult elite who rule the secret Britannic world-empire from the shadows? She briefly contemplates the mirror-image problem. If she were Alex, tasked with intelligence-gathering among the Host, she’d definitely need to meet All-Highest, especially in the role of his child’s chosen consort. Need, of course, not being the same thing as want. Meetings with powerful enemy sorcerers are fraught with danger at the best of times. But if Alex’s sibling plans to introduce her chosen one at the same time, then there is an opportunity for diversion, and evaluating Alex’s parents is clearly an important milestone.

  I don’t think so. Your sis will take heat. Let me come. We can have fun afterward!

  It takes a while for Alex to reply. Agent First nervously suppresses the twitchy urge to pick up the phone and let Cassie talk to him, just to hear his voice and reassure herself that she hasn’t caused offense. But then, just as she’s really beginning to worry, he replies:

  OK. But don’t say I didn’t warn you! Mum can be a bit overwhelming at times. PS: Want me to pick you up?

  Cassie sends him her address book card, then pauses.

  What shld I wear?

  What indeed. She is accustomed to audiences with her parents, and the elaborate etiquette of hierarchy that infuses the People leaves her clear on the honors due to various grades of liege, all the way up to the Empress-All-Highest (albeit in the twilight days before the fallen moon). But knowing the sumptuary laws and rules for carrying edged weapons in the presence of royalty at home is no help in this situation, and Alex’s reply gives scant guidance:

  Mum asked me to dress up but this is just dinner with the folks: plz don’t make a big deal of it or I’ll die, just wear something fancy but not over the top.

  At this point Agent First runs straight into Cassie’s awareness that men of a certain age and gender orientation are actively discoura
ged from paying too much attention to their appearance.

  YesYes!!! Pick me up at 6:30! I’ll be waiting.

  She sends the final text and resists the urge to bang her forehead on the table. Dinner with the folks could mean anything because Cassiopeia Brewer’s bubblehead memories contain no record of ever attending a formal dinner with a partner’s parents. Just a vague apprehension that it’s a big, possibly irrevocable, step (not that this means anything in the run-up to the end of the world). Wear something fancy could mean anything, too. Cassie’s school held a prom dance for the sixth form—a recent import, she remembers—but Cassie went full gothic, dyed her hair crimson, and punked out her school uniform. Somehow Agent First suspects this would be inappropriate. Nor can she rely on her glamour, if Alex’s parents are thaumaturges as powerful as their offspring. She briefly considers not wearing anything at all, but it’s too early in the year and it still gets chilly at night, and anyway, the urük have lots of tiresome body taboos.

  Oh well. She doesn’t have any lectures to attend until four and the weather’s nice: she might as well go to college and raid the theatrical wardrobe for something fancy to wear to the end of the world.