by Unknown
'And for God's sake,' she added, 'stop arsing about and finish those wedding rings for Silke and Mirron. They were due weeks ago.'
'Nag,' he chided her gently.
'Idler,' she retorted. Their marriage litany.
He held his last kiss long against her still-warm lips until he felt them turn cold and hard, and even then he lingered in the hope that the Midas Scorpion’s poison might somehow continue into him, but it wasn’t that merciful.
Finally he made himself look at her.
All the romantic clichés had been made true: her hair was spun gold, each strand finer than anything human technology would ever be able to produce; her eyes, diamond orbs with sapphire irises; her teeth, pearls. It was a death the horror of which could only be truly appreciated by a craftsman such as himself, which had presumably been the point. Mary had been the target right from the start. The Old Guard were never going to kill the goose that designed and built the golden egg, so to speak, but neither were they beyond committing such a stunning and esoteric act of cruelty as this to remind him of where his loyalties lay.
Make the most beautiful thing you can think of.
Right at that very moment the most beautiful thing he could think of was vengeance against the men who had done this.
He gathered his tools and set to work.
***
Wayland found them drinking in the cellar bar of the Old Crown Inn in Deritend, no more than a shadow’s shrug from the bustle of Digbeth but for all intents and purposes in another world entirely. It had been preserved as a pub since the seventeenth century like an insect in amber; the Old Guard were protective of tradition, and often violently so. It had belonged to them ever since the Civil War, when they’d helped Prince Rupert massacre the city for daring to defy the Crown. Its walls and floor were dark with the stains of beer, time, and ancient blood.
There were fewer than he’d expected – only two – and a mismatched pair at that. Or it could simply have been the incongruity of seeing them in twenty-first century clothing. A business suit and polished Italian shoes sat oddly with a scuffed biker jacket and studded boots. The only thing that they had in common was the amount of gold that they wore: in rings, earrings, and noserings; bracelets, necklets, amulets and torcs; on zippers and fob chains and the wing-tips of shirt collars.
‘You look like a pair of blinged up Reservoir Dogs wannabes,’ he laughed, taking a seat at their table uninvited. ‘But then subtlety never really was your strong suit, was it?’
‘Hwī sprecest þū cnihta tungan?’ scowled the elder.
‘Oh you know how it is, Osweald, one tries to stay current. Up to speed. At the cutting edge – no pun intended. Or maybe you don’t know. A craftsman has to move with the times if he wants to be the best.’
‘Ān þurfon fyrnan cræftas þīne,’ retorted the younger.
‘Yes, well the “skills of old” come with a modern price tag, Ceneric,’ he shot back. ‘So let’s drop the whole Beowulf act, shall we?’
‘As you wish,’ said Osweald. ‘It is regrettable that you were not so prepared to sit and talk business earlier. A certain amount of unpleasantness might have been avoided.’
‘I daresay you’d have found some excuse to let that particular little bit of unpleasantness off the leash sooner or later.’ He could see the truth of this in their faces. For all the superficial differences between the two men there was that same desire to hurt – distilled from centuries of killing for a cause long-forgotten – in the shared blue of their eyes, as if they’d been chipped from the same glacier. It amazed him that they would imagine he was still prepared to sit down and talk business after what they’d done to Mary, but he supposed that the violent enforcement of hierarchy was so much a part of their nature that they never stopped to question his motives for a second. They had imposed their will on him and he had acquiesced. Nothing else mattered to them. ‘She didn’t have to die,’ he added, surprised at how calm his voice sounded.
‘Of course she did,’ Osweald replied, sounding disappointed. ‘Or did you think that you could take a woman two hundred years out of her time and there not be a price to pay? We’ve given you leeway to watch this failed experiment of an industrial revolution come to its sad, inevitable end, and now it’s time for you to fulfil the oaths of allegiance which you swore.’
‘Those were made in another age, and under duress.’
Ceneric slammed his fist onto the table. ‘You raped our liege-lord’s wife,’ he snarled, ‘and made the skulls of his sons into goblets. And you call us monsters?’ Osweald laid a hand on his younger and more hot-headed companion’s arm, and he subsided.
Whelan winced. ‘And in the centuries since then I have done nothing but atone.’
‘Oh yes,’ the older man said caustically. ‘You have taught them steam, electricity, and atomic technology, Wayland, and their profit on’t is that they have learned how to text. How proud you must be.’
‘Very well then, my lords,’ he replied, in what he hoped was a convincing pretence of submission. ‘What do you require that I fashion for you?’
Ceneric produced from the inside of his biker jacket a cloth bundle which he carefully unwrapped on the table. Inside gleamed more gold, remnants of a sword whose blade had probably rusted away centuries before the Norman invasion. The items were intricately patterned in garnets and gold filigree: two hilt plates in the form of a pair of snarling wolf’s heads, and a pommel-cap fashioned as a raven’s claw. Whelan turned them over gently, appreciatively.
‘Pretty,’ he admitted.
‘Not your work,’ Ceneric pointed out.
‘No, but I could put maybe three names to the one whose work it is. And not long out of the ground, either. Do the Staffordshire Hoard people know that these are missing?’
Osweald hmphed. ‘Those grave robbers are not even aware of their existence; they have more than enough to keep them distracted. All the really important pieces are safely in their rightful owner’s hands.’
Which meant that the younger one, Ceneric, had awoken quite recently, Whelan thought. A few days? Weeks, at most. Who was he before then? Did he even remember who he’d been before the consciousness of an Old Guard had surfaced in his mind? More importantly, what had awoken him? ‘Presumably you want me to reforge the blade. It should be simple enough.’
‘With a few minor modifications.’ Osweald unfolded a piece of paper and pushed it across the table. Whelan examined the design and read the runes written there with sudden and mounting alarm.
‘There’s only one use for such a blade,’ he said, his voice sharp with accusation.
Neither of the Old Guard deigned to reply.
‘You mean to start a war against the Danaan?’
‘We mean to crush them before it even gets that far,’ said Osweald. ‘But the signs of its coming are everywhere already. Your civilisation is on its knees, Wayland. The Church declines and is replaced by nothing, at best, or else people buy trinkets which they worship as the source of all wisdom and happiness, and meanwhile the Danaan are moving in to re-settle parts of the cities abandoned by mortals. The garden of our island has been left untended for too long, and in its vacant spaces the weeds are beginning to grow again.’
‘How very poetic,’ Whelan replied, unimpressed. ‘But it’s going to take more than just the two of you to stop them.’
‘More of us are awakening with each passing year,’ said Ceneric proudly. ‘More so than even in the last war. We are reclaiming our ancient hoards, and we will cleanse this island of the curse of modernity using the arms which you will reforge for us in the ancient way, as you swore to do.’
Whelan looked at the design again. ‘It will take time,’ he said eventually.
Osweald drained the rest of his pint and stood. ‘Well then, at least you have less to distract you now.’
***
He was escorted back to his workshop, and from that point on there was not a minute of the day when he was not watched by agents of the Ol
d Guard. They were parked permanently across the road; they wandered in, posing as visitors whenever real customers came in to browse; they opened his mail, inspected his deliveries, and took away his rubbish. They helpfully supplied the equipment needed to convert his jewellery workshop into a forge capable of producing the kind of blades they demanded. There was a handful of blacksmiths still operating in the area which he could have used instead, but he liked his little shop and the Old Guard seemed prepared to indulge him. He especially liked the network of ancient cellars and tunnels over which his shop was built, and into which he could escape whenever he liked. When he was sure that the Old Guard had become too complacent to notice, Whelan slipped out to Silke and Mirron’s camp at Longbridge.
He hadn’t been down this way in years, and for good reason.
He’d been so proud of it, once upon a time. There’d been a car factory here since 1905, which over the years had made Austins, MGs and Rovers – with a couple of brief pauses for war when they’d churned out munitions and tank parts – and around it had sprung up proud communities of workers and their families who knew the virtue of what they could make with their hands. Wayland’s people. Now it was nothing more than a seventy-acre plain of crushed rubble surrounded by development hoardings which made bright, empty promises for the future.
At the end of the site furthest from the new development – wedged into a secluded triangle of overgrown wasteland between the rears of residential cul-de-sacs on one side, allotments over a disused access road on the other, and the wide expanse of pulverised brick ahead – was a collection of travellers’ caravans: sleek, white modern things parked behind gleaming Beemers and Mercs. The community was bustling with life; kids chased each other, the men either had their heads under car bonnets or else stood around smoking and offering advice, and the women busied themselves with the endless tasks of keeping all of this clean and organised.
Whelan was quickly spotted, greeted with laughter and amiable obscenities and offers of food – which he declined as politely as he could – and eventually taken to Silke and Mirron’s caravan. Mirron was on his back underneath, doing something to the electrics, but he slid out when he heard Whelan arrive and stood to shake hands.
‘Uncle John, always a pleasure,’ he smiled. He was tall and raven-haired, and Whelan could well understand how Silke had fallen for him. It was much the same reason that Mary had fallen for Whelan himself, though Mirron was even less human than he was. He wondered if Silke knew. But Mary had said that her kin had been wedding and bedding the Danaan since before even iron had come to these islands, and that it was none of their business, so he would abide by that.
‘Not this time, I’m afraid,’ he answered.
Mirron’s smile faded. ‘I know. We heard. We’re sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you, but that’s not why I’m here.’
‘The wedding, then? ‘
‘Not that either, but rest assured you’ll have the rings on time all the same. I’ve come to warn you: the Old Guard know you’re here. They’re planning to drive you out – preferably with a great deal of bloodshed. You need to move.’
Mirron grinned, and it made Whelan shiver. He imagined that grin had been the last thing many a mortal had seen on many a battlefield in the youth of the world. ‘Thank you, Uncle John,’ he replied, ‘but it’s all under control. We’re anticipating trouble.’
‘I just bet you are. I’m not worried about you lot. It’s the ordinary folk with you that I’m worried about. People like Silke and the other wives and husbands who haven’t got a clue what they’ve let themselves in for. Not to mention the children. What about them?’
Mirron’s smile faded. ‘You think we’re unconcerned about the safety of our own children?’
‘How can you be so…’
‘Smith,’ Mirron interrupted, drawing himself up higher and letting just a hint of his Elder form shine through to dazzle and silence Whelan. 'For Mary’s sake you are loved and honoured amongst us, but we have had this conversation before and I do not mean to have it again. After centuries of the quick folk pushing us further and further into the wild and forcing us to live like beggars, they now find themselves unable to manage their own cities. Well, so be it. The wild is coming back, and we are coming back with it. Do not try to stand between us and our children’s future, no matter how noble your intentions.’
Then the caravan door opened and Silke tumbled out. She flung her arms around Whelan’s neck and buried her face in his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle John. I’m so, so sorry.’
He said nothing, but put his arms slowly around her. It pained him, almost physically, how much she was like Mary, despite the dozens of generations between them.
‘You’re going to stay here and have supper with us,’ she announced.
‘Yes,’ added Mirron. ‘We insist.’
‘You’re too kind.’ Whelan shook his head. ‘But I have work which I must get back to.’
‘You mistake me,’ Mirron replied with an edge to his voice. ‘That wasn’t an invitation.’ Whelan, noticing how many large men there were suddenly around him, sighed and hung his head, weary at the stupid inevitability of it. ‘The Old Guard are moving against us, you say? I can well imagine what work it is that you must get back to. If they haven’t yet approached you to arm them, they soon will. Am I supposed to simply let you leave here and go back to forging the weapons that they'll use against us?'
Silke frowned at him. 'Mirron? What are you talking about? This is my uncle!'
'Shall we show her?' Whelan asked him coldly. 'Since you're so concerned for your people's safety, shall we show them our true faces and let them choose their peril with open eyes?'
'Don't be dense, Uncle John,' she reproached. 'Of course I know exactly what he is.'
'Knowing and seeing are entirely different things,' he pointed out.
'Yes, but I don't need to see you to know that you'd never do that, would you? You'd never do anything to harm us, right? Right, Uncle John?'
He squirmed under the intensity of her child-like trust.
'Go on, John Wayland Smith,' taunted her Danaan lover. 'Show her your true face. You know, the one that betrays everybody he meets.'
'Do you think I want to work for them? They killed my wife, for God's sake!' he protested, knowing that she'd never understand and hating the note of pleading in his voice that begged for her understanding all the same. 'But I swore oaths. It's the most ancient of laws; an oath-breaker is cursed above all outcasts. I can't just...'
But she turned from him in disgust, and Mirron’s men dragged him away.
'You don't have to do this, you know,' he said. 'I could easily have sent a messenger instead; you could always consider the possibility of actually bloody trusting me.'
Mirron laughed. 'Trust you? Mortals may have made you a god but you're still just another one of the quick folk to us, Wayland.'
They locked him in a storage trailer on the outskirts of the camp: a cold, cramped steel box filled with toiletry supplies, mouldy tarpaulins and ancient camping gas bottles. Its security was purely physical; they hadn't even set the simplest of wards on it, so arrogant were they in their power and dismissive of him as nothing more than a doddering, sentimental old fool. As bad as the Old Guard. But still, he'd had to give them a chance – he owed that much to Mary’s kin.
He waited until nightfall.
The Midas scorpion unclasped itself from around his upper arm, where it had lain hidden under his sleeve all day, and scuttled towards the trailer door. It raised its tail and struck at the bare metal. There had been enough venom left in that single drop for him to re-engineer so that instead of the door being transformed into something precious it began to corrode catastrophically. Rust bloomed, thickening into large scabs which crumbled away, and within moments the entire rear of the trailer simply fell apart, allowing Whelan to escape unmolested into the darkness.
***
As he completed his work for both the Old Guard a
nd the Danaan over the subsequent weeks he was aware, on the periphery of his attention, of news reports about escalating tensions at the Longbridge camp. Concerned residents raised petitions. Outraged editorials were written by newspapers looking for the next bandwagon to jump on. Legal challenges were issued and contested while demonstrators marched and an army of bailiffs and police laid siege. This didn't alarm him; he knew that the Old Guard wouldn't move against the Danaan until Ceneric had his new sword.
And in the meantime what was left of Mary grew smaller and smaller as he continued to make the most beautiful revenge he could think of from her.
There was never any question of fobbing them off. The sword was delivered on time, because there were laws which were deeper and stronger than family, and presented to the self-appointed guardians of humanity in a ceremony full of much swearing and renewing of oaths with blood and fire.
Ceneric turned the weapon over in his hands, admiring the way that the flames gleamed along its blade and flashed from the intricate patterning of gold and garnet inlays – gold which, unknown to him, had come from her hair, and stones which had come from her flesh.
‘You’ve surpassed yourself, Smith,’ he breathed.
‘Wait until you’ve drawn blood with it, first,’ Whelan replied.
He left soon afterwards, knowing that the bloodletting would follow swiftly, and wanting to make his second delivery before it happened.
It was easy to slip past blind mortal eyes in the cordon of riot police, bailiffs and bulldozers readying themselves for battle; less simple to find Silke alone, since the Danaan camp was also on high alert, but he found her standing a watch at their makeshift barricade and managed to take advantage of her utter astonishment to draw her aside.
‘Uncle John? What are you doing here?’
‘I came to give you your wedding present,’ he said, reaching into the small rucksack he’d brought with him and holding out to her the ring he’d designed. It was the same gold as Mary’s hair, encircled with sapphires which were the same blue as her eyes. They glittered in the strobing light of police cars.