by D. P. Prior
Quincy said the Ant-Man was just a nickname fashioned to terrorise the people of Malfen into meeting his demands—the usual sort of things: protection and extortion.
Quincy’s source had been the journal of some gold-digging chancer called Noris Bellosh who’d spent a year and a day in Qlippoth before falling into Shent’s hands. Bellosh had served Shent for almost a decade and he believed the Ant-Man knew more about Qlippoth than anyone alive. Shent, he said, had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the geography of the nightmare lands pieced together from the agonised testimonies of his victims. Bellosh had claimed Shent literally was an ant-human hybrid, but Quincy attributed that to the man’s sensationalism. Bellosh had been offered a small fortune for publication of his journal but hadn’t lived to capitalise on it. He’d eaten poisoned walnut and date bread—his favourite repast—and the journal had disappeared. Quincy had bought it from a man named Albert in one of New Jerusalem’s flea markets.
Silas shook his head. It had started as a playful quest. He had rummaged around in libraries, visited the most ancient sites of New Jerusalem. He’d spoken with wizards and even flown on a mysterious air-raft with the mad mage, Magwitch, looking for the ancient portals that Blightey’s grimoire stated existed between the worlds. All a wild goose chase, Silas had concluded, but still the book urged him on.
Finding out about Blightey had proven more or less impossible. As Silas had learned from the diary portions of the book, Blightey was not from Aethir. He came from a place called London, so he claimed. From what Silas could gather from the later entries, the place had subsequently changed names many times. Blightey had later ruled the country of Verusia, where he’d fought valiantly against the despotism of an evil Empire known as ‘Nousia.’ At some point, Blightey had trodden the paths of the Abyss and he’d eventually emerged from one of the gorges of Gehenna into the land of Qlippoth. He’d left his staff there, planted in the loam of nightmares to await the coming of someone Blightey called The Worthy.
Throughout all his research, Silas had been sceptical; but nevertheless, the more he learned, the more he wanted to know. He studied assiduously, and if he didn’t read through the brittle pages of the grimoire until his head was ready to burst, he couldn’t sleep. He thought of little else, and whenever he was deprived of the chance to dip into the tome he’d find himself irascible, bordering on frantic.
“Well?” Nils’s nagging voice cut through the fug of Silas’ pensiveness. “I can’t stand here all day. I got you to Malfen; now you need to keep your side of the deal.”
Silas sighed and started to weave his hands through the air when he spotted something off to the left at the foot of the slope.
A few hundred yards out from the town wall, the blackness pooled in a circle.
“What’s that?” Silas asked, pointing.
Nils took a step forward and yelped as he slid on the scree. The slope shifted behind him and he was caught in a great tide of slate and rock that carried him all the way to the bottom.
Silas trudged down after him, surfing the scree in fits and starts, flapping his arms for balance. He hopped off at the foot of the slope and offered a hand up to Nils.
“Great!” said Nils. “Shogging great! Now I’ve gotta climb—”
Silas held up a hand for silence as something emerged from the circle of blackness. It was the size of a horse, but with a segmented body and thin articulated legs. Antennae twitched upon a bulbous head and twin eyes the size of saucers shone cyan in the pale moonlight.
“What is it?” Nils fumbled with his sword and tried to back up the slope. The way the scree slid under his feet it may as well have been a waterfall.
Another creature darted from the aperture, mandibles clacking like shears. Silas’ heart thumped in his chest as scores more poured forth and scuttled towards them.
“Ants,” he said with as much awe as fear.
Nils was looking frantically to left and right but there was nowhere to run. Silas put a calming hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s just hope the stories are true this time,” he said. “For if there are giant ants, maybe there’s also an ant-man to command them.”
The ants were so close that Silas could hear the clicking of their mandibles. They stopped mere inches away, their antennae twitching, front legs pawing the air. Nils was trembling so much Silas thought the lad was going to faint.
Behind the wall of ants, two men approached. Moonlight glinted from the blades of twin daggers the smaller man carried. The other, a big man with a hooked nose, brandished a long knife and swished a net before him. The ants parted to let them through and the small man spoke.
“Trying to sneak in under cover of darkness?”
“Absolutely not,” said Silas in his most innocent voice.
“Shut it!” the man snarled. “We ain’t stupid here, whatever you civilised types might reckon. And we ain’t rude neither, are we Venn?”
The man with the net flashed a crooked smile.
“No, we’re most hospitable, Carl. That’s why we came to greet you.”
Silas didn’t like the look in Venn’s eyes: it was calculating and full of threat, like a crocodile poking its head above the surface of a swamp. He reached into the depths of his mind clutching for some strand of magic he could use.
“You the Ant-Man?” Nils asked in a tremulous voice.
Carl laughed, a ghastly guttural sound.
“No, I ain’t the Ant-Man, boy, and neither’s Venn here.”
Silas closed in on a black misty thread at the edges of his awareness and let its puissance start to blossom.
“That,” said Carl, turning to look over his shoulder, “is the Ant-Man.”
Silas froze at the sight lumbering towards them. He hardly noticed the burgeoning magic slip from his grasp and disperse back into emptiness.
A hulking man lurched past Venn and Carl. Only it wasn’t a man. It stood on legs that bent backwards, with spines jutting from the shins. The torso was a thick carapace like a black breastplate, and the cuneate head was dominated by the same saucer-like eyes and clacking mandibles the ants had. Knotted muscular arms—human arms—folded over the chitinous chest.
“Shent?” Silas whispered.
With a rush of air Venn’s net smothered Silas and something heavy crashed into his skull. As he was buried in blackness he heard pleading, as if it came from a fading dream.
“Please! I brought him to you. I’m your friend.”
Nils, thought Silas as awareness left him. You little—
***
Each stroke of the razor sent a black tousle to the mound of hair on the floorboards, through which rodents as tame as house cats scampered and gambolled. Besides the scraping of the blade, the breathing of the barber, the only other sound was the squeaking of valves on the oil lamps as a boy killed their flame. A hooded lantern hung above the barber’s head throwing grotesque shadows across the shop—a twisted demon with a great sword that hacked the scalp of a squatting aberration.
“Beard as well, d’you say?”
“Aye,” mumbled Nameless through the mummifying strictures of his depression.
The shadow demon hesitated, its sword held aloft for the killing blow.
“Just want to be sure,” the barber said. “Don’t get many dwarves in here. In fact, you’re the first.”
The barber came round the front holding the razor beside his ear, the shadows fleeing before him.
“Sure you’re comfy? I can get Davy to fetch a box to rest your feet on.”
“No.” Nameless’ voice was little more than a rasp. He tried to focus on the barber but it was like squinting through a long, dark tunnel. With the effort it would have taken for him to climb out of a hot tub on a cold day, Nameless willed himself beyond his cloying memories and forced his attention back into the world.
The barber had a hard face: wrinkles like scars, red and angry; eyes narrow and darting—the sort always seeking an opportunity. The way he held the blade was at once
effeminate and clinical. His stance was both sloppy and poised, conveying weakness with a rumour of violence. As he slipped back behind, Nameless imagined the razor nicking his throat and felt the plaster of his face crack into a smile.
“D’you get much call for barbers in Arx Gravis?” said the barber. The blade glided down one cheek and came to rest by the jugular.
“Not much call for anything in Arx Gravis these days.” Nameless watched a rat scamper across the floor. “Place is empty. It’s a city of ghosts.”
“Get away!” The blade scraped below Nameless’ chin, the barber flicking hair from it with a snap of the wrist.
“News must travel slowly in Malfen,” said Nameless.
“Don’t travel at all, if you ask me. Not much call for it. We got more than one foot in Qlippoth and that works well enough for most. Reckon Malkuthians can go shog themselves, no offence meant.”
Nameless’ face grew weary of smiling. He drew in his brows as a dark mass of memories bubbled up from his gut.
“I’m no longer Malkuthian.”
The barber stepped back in front wiping the blade on his apron. “Think I know what you mean.” His eyes glinted like fool’s gold, his face unnaturally long and pallid in the lantern-light. “Guess that’s how we all feel. Nobody comes to Malfen ’less they have to. What you do?” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Kill someone?”
Nameless shut his eyes, letting the wave of faces wash over him, hearing their cries, seeing the condemnation in their eyes. His muscles stiffened, his hands gripping the chair so tightly the wood began to creak.
The barber seemed to get the message and resumed his scraping, until finally he stood back and held a mirror before Nameless’ face.
“Smooth as a baby’s…Well, you get my meaning.”
Hairless. Like an egg—pale and shiny. Nameless had never seen his face like this—naked, square-jawed and grim; etched with deep grooves swimming with shadow. His brows looked heavier, like the crags of Gehenna. Maybe it was the dim light, but his brown eyes seemed black, pooling with sin.
Nameless pushed out of the chair and peered through the gloom for his rucksack.
“Over there,” the barber pointed. “Oops, seems you left it open. Now what’ve we got here?”
He bent down and pulled Shader’s Libram from the pack, thumbing through the pages like a connoisseur. Recognising it for what it was, he dropped it like he would have done a putrid carcass and rubbed his hands on his apron.
“What the Abyss is a dwarf doing with a Libram?”
Nameless grabbed him by the collar and rammed his head into the wall. The barber squawked, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
“Friend gave it to me, laddie. Reckon it’s between me and him, don’t you?”
He fished about in the barber’s apron pocket until he was met with the clinking of coins. He made a fist around the money and raised it to the barber’s face.
“You got anything else of mine, laddie?”
“Insurance.” The barber cringed, sliding down the wall and slumping to the floor. “In case you didn’t pay.”
Nameless glowered as if he were about to strike. The barber squealed and raised his arms in defence.
“Far as I’m concerned,” said Nameless, “a man should be given what he deserves.” He pocketed the coins and scowled about the room. “Now where’s my shogging axe?”
The barber whimpered and gestured with one hand while shielding his eyes with the other. “Mercy!” he pleaded in a voice like a eunuch’s.
“Like that’s your middle name.”
Nameless snatched up his axe, shouldered his pack and booted the door open.
“Not forgetting anything, am I?” Nameless paused in the doorway, fingers drumming against the haft of his axe.
“Uh?”
“Nothing I owe you?”
“Uh, no.”
“Good. Can’t be too sure these days. Memory’s not what it used to be. It’s a shogging inconvenience when you can’t even recall your own name.”
He strode from the shop into the damp streets of Malfen—and straight into two of the most vicious faces he’d seen this side of Gehenna.
“Shent wants to see you,” said a hook-nosed scoundrel brandishing a long knife and sweeping a net before his feet. The man was tanned and muscular, towering above Nameless. He was naked from the waist up, save for leather pauldrons strapped to his shoulders.
“You a fighter?” said Nameless.
“We both are,” said the other man, dropping into a crouch and drawing twin daggers. He was lithe and sullen-looking, eyes like slits spitting venom. “P’raps you’ve heard of us: Carl the Cat’s Claw,” he gave a little bow, “and that there,” he indicated hook-nose, “is Venn the Ripper.”
Nameless shook his head as he studied the two of them, rubbed at his jaw and clicked his tongue.
“No, not ringing any bells, laddie. Suppose I could’ve forgotten. I was just saying to what’s-his-name in the barber’s thingy that I can’t even recollect my own—”
The door opened behind Nameless and he cast his eyes over his shoulder to see the barber looming in the doorway bashing a club against the palm of his hand.
“Not so tough now, are you?” the barber sneered as the Cat’s Claw and the Ripper closed in.
“One moment, lads,” Nameless held up a hand. “A question before we all commit ourselves.”
“What?” snapped Venn, the veins on his forearm sticking up where he gripped his knife too tight.
“Well I was wondering,” Nameless turned half towards the barber as if including him in the exchange, “if our friend here has an epithet to match your own.”
The barber looked blankly from Venn to Carl.
“No?” said Nameless. “What’s your name then?” He glanced at the sign above the door: Roger’s Cuts. “Shame. I can just see it now—three tombstones: ‘Here lie Venn the Ripper, Carl the Cat’s Claw and…Roger.’ Doesn’t quite have the same panache.”
“Ain’t gonna be no tombstones, baldy,” said Venn. “Unless you don’t come with us. Shent ain’t playing. No one comes to Malfen without going through him.”
Nameless did his best to stifle a laugh. He was starting to enjoy himself. He’d been wondering if the black mood was ever going to lift.
“You make him sound like a bowel, which I suppose he is in a sense, when you consider the cess-pool he lords it over.”
There was a whisper of movement to his right and before he’d had chance to really register it, Nameless’ axe crunched satisfyingly against something pulpy and pliant. Pink-stained teeth clattered from the blade. The axe-head was lodged firmly in the barber’s mouth, half way to the back of his head. Nameless looked over his shoulder at Venn and Carl and gave an apologetic shrug. The barber’s knees buckled as Nameless wrenched the axe free and he fell like a sack of rotten apples.
Carl advanced, licking his lips and weaving his daggers through the air. Venn put a hand on his shoulder, his net trailing like a cloak of cobwebs.
“What’s it going to be lads?” Nameless hefted his axe and gave them his widest toothy grin. “If it’s a fight you want, I’d suggest a little more commitment. All that sweating and creeping tells me more than you’d want me to know, and the hand on the shoulder thing is a dead give-away.”
Venn removed his hand and squared up to Nameless.
“You gonna come?”
“If you’ll lead the way. Shent’s the top man here, is he?”
A sly look passed between Carl and Venn.
“You could say that,” said the Cat’s Claw.
“In a manner of speaking.” The Ripper gave the slightest of winks.
“Good,” said Nameless. “Then show me the sights. This way?” He started down the street.
“Just follow,” said Venn striding in front and leaving Carl to bring up the rear.
Venn led them past terraces of crumbling buildings with threadbare shutters and boarded up doorways. Refuse spilled into the road
, gathering in piles through which ragged people scavenged.
They took a left turn into a narrow alleyway heaped with carrion—some of it human. There was a stench like rotting vegetables mingled with bad eggs and ordure. Nameless gagged and struggled for breath. Carl tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his mouth and nose, but Venn seemed quite unaffected by the smell and walked through the carcasses with the assurance of a man well at home.
The alleyway took them to a sprawl of streets where balconies hung overhead blocking out the ruddy light filtering through the smog. A crash from above, followed by screaming, tightened Nameless’ grip on his axe but he showed no alarm lest his company took any confidence from it.
Venn’s pace quickened as they came upon a sheer gradient wending downwards beneath an arch and continuing into the gloom. Shadowy figures haunted the doorways as they descended the cobbled road, sometimes stepping towards them before retreating at a wave from Venn or Carl.
“See what it means to have a name here?” the Cat’s Claw whispered in Nameless’ ear. “Not just a given name, if you get my drift, but a reputation.”
“This Shent we’re off to see,” Nameless kept his voice strident and cheerful, “Does he have such a name?” He already knew the answer, but he thought one of them might say more, reveal something of the truth of Shent’s nature.
“That he does,” laughed Carl. “Likes to be known as the Ant-Man of Malfen.”
“It has a certain ring to it,” said Nameless.
Venn flashed a malign glare over his shoulder. “It’s a name to be feared.”
“Indeed,” Nameless looked about in an exaggerated manner, his gaze returned by the hungry eyes of rats watching from the gutter.
“What is it?” asked Venn through clenched teeth.