“Good thinking!” said Remington. “With both those guys up there, it can see in all directions at once. But how did you plug Leopold in without me?”
“I have no idea,” said Jacob, staggering backwards. “I thought I’d check to see if he’d fit, but as soon as his bones touched the harness the whole thing lurched to its feet. Then it grabbed Etienne and plugged him in itself. It would appear that it’s making its own connections now!”
“Mahmoud, old boy!” roared Leopold, his sunken eyes flashing twenty feet above the ground. Twisting his body in its harness, he swallowed the merchant in shadow. “So pleased you could make it,” he said, his every word veined with hysterical glee. “I gather from your luggage that you’ve decided to take the trip down Bazakh way! Tell my city to expect me, won’t you? I should arrive not long after you: all of me!” He shrieked with laughter, and every joint below him shook in sympathy, pressing him to new heights of hilarity.
“But of course, of course I will, my friend!” said Mahmoud, stowing his watches in his waistcoat as quickly as his trembling hand allowed. “But look at how late we’ve stayed, and with such a long trip ahead of us. Farewell, Mr. Eclair and friends: on behalf of Mahmoud’s, may your swords serve you well.
“Boys!” he cried, but the eight warriors who hadn’t fled refused to budge. They saluted the creature instead, barking out their allegiance in Plains-Deadish, and Mahmoud, cutting his losses, hobbled away without them, his backpack wiggling furiously as he dwindled.
“Last Man Standing, is that what they’re calling it?” said Jacob. “Of course. What else could it be called by someone who’s spent his afterlife hearing about a single man destined to conquer the Plains of War?”
“Now,” said Leopold, sweeping his eyes over the hundred and forty-four swords shining in his hands, “let us cut a swath through the Plains, and through the minds of its denizens as well! You lot,” he shouted down to the company, “try and keep up, eh? I want to see what these legs can do!” Beneath him, the Last Man Standing reared up and swung around in a great circle, pointing Leopold’s face toward the south. He let out as mighty a roar as his single throat could manage and pounded forward, circled by the squawking crow. As the rest of the company, joined by Mahmoud’s Guard, staggered ahead, Etienne gazed back at them over a seething wall of flesh, his lips pulled back from teeth so tightly clenched they cracked.
Since the Last Man’s legs were twice the length of a normal man’s, it moved at a clip that terrified the scattered souls in the Shallow End, as well as the company that lagged behind, for whom it was all too easy to imagine Leopold charging into the scrimmage and forgetting them in frenzy. However, as soon as that dark cloud of combat was near, the Last Man thrust its forelegs down and skidded to a stop, giving the company a chance to catch up.
Mahmoud’s Guard stomped in lines of six on either side of the company, whom they seemed to revere as the creators of their hero. Thus protected, Remington and Jacob were able to focus their attention on keeping up with their companions, both of whom were loosing an increasingly barbaric series of yawps that seemed to begin and end at exactly the same moment.
“Whoa,” said Remington after the loudest of these tandem screams. “Do you think they’re all right up there?”
“Let’s hope they’re just getting into character,” Jacob replied, but his unease was growing.
“Ah, Jacob,” screamed Leopold as they approached, “you can’t imagine what fun this is!” He swiveled his head toward the scrimmage, rubbing his swords together in eagerness. “And that was a mere appetizer. Now, my lovelies, let us feast!”
“Leo, can you see what I see?” said Etienne.
“Very nearly,” said Leopold, “but the beast can see it perfectly!”
Without further discussion, the Last Man Standing thundered into the dust, followed by the Guardsmen, their blades and voices raised in fealty, and behind them the company, whose backs were pressed together in grim recollection of their last trek through the scrimmage. As he glanced ahead, however, Jacob’s fear dissipated into awe as the accuracy of the creature’s hundred-and-forty-four swords became apparent. It was sweeping its massive hands through clutches of warriors, carving through masses of bodies with ease. The company had no trouble following through the wide and gore-strewn path that the creature created, hearing everywhere amongst the human rubble the shout, “Last Man!”
“We’re near White Gate now, Jacob,” cried Etienne when he spotted the company in their wake, the giant hands below him shaking parts of men from their bladed fingers. “When we arrive, you must get me down; the lines are blurring in here, Jacob, do you understand?”
But before Jacob could reply, the Last Man Standing burst through the far side of the scrimmage, leading the company into the muted light of day, through which they stared at the bone-pale Southern Rim, where a cleft as slight as a hairline fracture was carved, concealing a long, crooked hallway in its shadow.
“The White Gate!” said Leopold, and the Last Man thundered toward it, the swords around its legs shaking like bangles.
The company, still terrified by the sounds of the scrimmage, clambered after the Last Man, stumbling and dragging one another up again. As they approached the crooked shadow in the Rim, Leopold called, “White City today, Dead City tomorrow, and then all the underworld shall be mine!” As the crow wheeled above, he shifted his vantage to the north, planning to repeat this promise in the direction of Lethe, and so Etienne was turned to see the dark mass of the Horde rushing out of the cleft in the Rim, crashing against the Last Man’s flanks.
“It’s them!” he cried, and then a pole was launched like a javelin straight through his mouth. As its sharpened end shot through the back of his skull, the three heads skewered on it slammed against his: Clay, Desi, and Gork were now jammed against him like olives on a toothpick, laughing and hollering as if the greatest moment of eternity had arrived.
Etienne screamed, and a great arm swept up and yanked the pole from his mouth, tossing it at Jacob’s side.
“You traitorous balls of bone!” shouted Jacob. “You gave up our destination to these savages?”
“Come on, man, how much fun you think we get to have out here?” said Clay.
“All is fair in the love of war,” said Desiderata.
“Mash!” said Gork.
Remington said nothing, but focused his attention on the crow, who was patiently feeding its vision to the boy. Adam and Eve, watching the action through Remington, stood tensed, waiting for an opening. With a few orders barked from their midst, the Horde surrounded the Last Man Standing, taking care to block the rest of the company from reaching White Gate.
Circling the Last Man’s feet, the Hordesmen attacked, first singly, to test the strength and speed of their curious foe, and then, following orders uttered from various points in their ranks, in joint strikes: five warriors at once lashed out and were repelled. The Horde kept up their assault, methodically and precisely, until they’d located the weak points in the field of vision established by Etienne and Leopold’s twisting heads, whereupon two warriors broke through the Last Man’s defenses, each cleaving a minor arm from its knees.
Leopold roared in irritation and began spinning the Last Man around like a top, knocking two dozen Hordesmen to the earth, where they suffered nothing more than dust in their joints. Nor were the Last Man’s precision strikes any more effective, for the Hordesmen either parried with their oversized weapons or took the hits directly, shedding a few inconsequential bones on impact, which they gathered up and fit back into their bodies like puzzle-pieces while their fellows provided cover.
“Leopold,” said Etienne over his shoulder, “we won’t take them with brute force.”
“What in hell did we build a brute for, then?” cried Leopold, trying in vain to stomp a Hordesman beneath a four-soled foot.
“Listen! There are two things I noticed when we met the Horde. First, all their most effective moves are choreographed. Second, the only
one of them who fell apart when she was struck was swinging her blade at the time.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning,” said Etienne, parrying five blows at once, “that we have to take their attacks until we’ve learned their moves, then strike when they’re in the middle of a long one. They’re skeletons, so every joint that isn’t lashed together is held by will alone. If we hit them when that will is focused, they’ll fall apart!”
At that moment, the Horde gave Etienne the opportunity to demonstrate, as the pike-bearer and his partner the swordsman initiated the same maneuver that had sent the stone-thrower flying. The pike-bearer leaped atop his partner’s shoulders while a third man stood before them, ready to act as the fulcrum—but this time, as the pike lunged to strike the Last Man in the foot, a great arm shot out and sprayed the pike-bearer’s bones into the Rim. As his jabbering skull rebounded, Etienne crushed it beneath one foot, provoking the Horde to pummel the Last Man’s midriff with a complex and increasingly furious series of maneuvers, causing a slow wave of body parts to fall.
This escalation, while it won the Horde a few limbs from the Last Man’s lower regions, exhausted their repertoire of maneuvers in a more expedient and methodical fashion than Etienne had dared to hope for.
“They’re repeating themselves,” shrieked Leopold. “They’re repeating themselves!”
“At last,” growled Etienne. “The small one feints. The large one leaps. The two behind spin over and smash. We’ve seen it all. We know their maneuvers now. We know them. We know them!”
“He doesn’t sound good,” said Remington.
Jacob shivered: Etienne’s voice had retaken the ragged timbre of his first coherent moments in the cave. “We know them,” he was chanting, “we know them.”
Leopold joined the refrain. Together, they roared, “We know them. We know them. We know them! The Last Man Standing knows them in our bones!”
“Our?” said Remington.
“We’ve made a mistake,” said Jacob. “We’ve got to get them out of there as soon as we can. Their minds are being assimilated by the creature’s will!”
In a single rhythm, the two men loosed a grand, unhinged cackle as the body below them set about dismantling their opponents with a synergy that was startling to behold, picking apart every recycled attack with the four gigantic arms it had heretofore held over the fray. Bones sprayed in shards and clusters from the Hordesmen, and the tiny bands of metal that once held their joints together rolled and clattered underfoot.
The Last Man’s twin-throated voice was raised in victory, but even as it howled, the little reaper, who had not yet been dismantled, ran toward it from a distance of several yards, tossing herself to the ground at the last moment and skidding between two of its massive legs.
“This is it,” shouted Remington, and the crow dove into the great cavity inside the Last Man’s body in time to see the little reaper climbing up its innards. Cursing, she locked her legs in place around two torsos and started hacking with two push-daggers at a column of spines. The crow heard the Last Man shriek as four of its legs went limp at once, sending its body listing to one side, and before the remnants of the Horde began to cheer, the reaper launched herself to the next column and set to work.
“Get ready,” said Remington, but Adam and Eve were already in motion. As Mahmoud’s Guard sprung into motion, distracting the remaining Hordesmen with their bellowing attack, the headless duo tossed themselves under the Last Man’s legs, sliding out of Remington’s field of vision and into the crow’s. Astride the creature’s second spinal column, the little reaper glanced down at them in surprise, a mistake from which she would never recover, for in the moment it took her to admit that she was being attacked by two decapitated opponents, they had already overtaken her.
While the reaper struck with both daggers at Adam’s arms, Eve brought two balled fists down on her back with such force that her skeleton burst. Adam, though his arms were cut to the bone, tossed reaper-pieces through the holes hacked out of the Last Man’s body. Before the reaper’s stained little skull succumbed to hack-shock, her conquerors climbed through one of these openings into the Plains, where the Last Man Standing was bashing the last few Hordesmen into rattling bits.
While the bones were being scattered, Jacob strode toward the shadow of White Gate, slipping into a crevice so narrow that he could not fully spread his arms. He walked down that crooked hall alone, trying to ignore the sounds coming from atop the creature, needing urgently to be the first of the company to see White City.
This was his moment. Whatever Leopold and Etienne were suffering could be fixed, but Jacob had waited too long to delay his triumph. He plunged deeper, following the swaying and twisting of the path until it ended abruptly in a massive slab of white stone. Laying his hands on its unyielding face, he grunted in irritation, then shrugged off his knapsack, hoping to find a tool that would aid in his ascent.
Before he’d opened its flap he saw the ropes tumbling down the walls. In moments, they were taut with the white-headed, dark-robed weight of debtors. Jacob held up his hands, his jaw working silently as scores of them swarmed the hallway. A gabbling gang peered down from the Rim, where dozens, hundreds, thousands of debt-stamped skulls were amassed high above the Plains, stretching as far as the eye could see, every one of them staring at Jacob.
Staggering back against the Gate, he glimpsed a dark skull among the white ones. It was the compact form of the Leather Masker, rattling a pair of dice in one gloved hand.
Jacob screamed for help, thinking that at any moment the Last Man Standing would grind these soft bodies into paste, for these were no Plainsmen, only unarmed debtors. Then he heard the twinned bellow of Leopold and Etienne, and the thunder of the Last Man’s bulk slamming against the mouth of the crevice, which was far too narrow to let that body through.
“It isn’t me,” he blurted in desperation. “I’m not the one you’re looking for. I’ve stolen nothing from you; it was—”
But the debtors had already pinned Jacob’s back against the Gate and yanked his corduroy trousers down. A cheer went up when Leopold’s cock sprang up below his belly. Jacob, whose limbs went as limp as they had when he’d been bisected, was trussed up and hauled on the end of a rope to the top of the Rim, where the mass of debtors passed him hand over hand, away from the tall Gate of White City.
III
CHAPTER TWELVE
In the Box
The thousands of debtors who lined the Rim in two tidy rows tossed Jacob’s hog-tied body southward like a sack of cargo toward a ship. As their skulls flashed past he wondered whether he’d join them in indenture, or if the Magnate had something even less palatable in mind. Leopold’s crimes were surely grievous enough to earn disintegration.
Regardless, they couldn’t very well punish Jacob for his partner’s transgressions. He’d explain, and they’d see that he was an innocent.
But as he prepared the story in his mind, it occurred to him that he’d known full well where the watches had come from when they’d been traded for his monster’s armaments, and the theft hadn’t bothered him then.
The guilt was his, after all. Treason halved was still treason.
A strange noise tore him from his thoughts, a polyphonic bark rippling through the ranks of debtors, whipping past him before he could comprehend it. The debtors were speaking almost in unison, passing a message from the Torn Curtain to White Gate in some unfamiliar dialect of Deadish.
He stared over the flat top of the Rim, finding that his peculiar mode of transportation granted him lurching glimpses into the desert beyond the Plains, where a dust storm roiled, wider than his eyes could take in.
The debtors around him remained hidden from the eyes of the Plainsmen as they’d hidden from the company, by keeping away from the Rim’s inner edge. They had eyes on the floor of the Plains, though: Jacob was tossed past a debtor lying on his belly, peering down at the floor of the Plains through a telescope, his head camouflaged by
a dusty blanket.
They must have dozens of spies up here, he thought as he spotted another. They were keeping watch for the Last Man Standing.
Hope kindled in his heart, for the company could pass easily through the Torn Curtain and overtake his captors long before they reached Dead City.
But the Masker knew as much. Why, then, was he transporting his prisoner so openly?
A second message passed through the debtors, traveling in the opposite direction this time, a single phrase leaping from one throat to the next in the same thoughtless, reflexive way they were heaving his body, moving more quickly by mouth than he could be passed by hand.
It’s like a disciplined game of telephone, he thought, and then he was hurled face-first off the edge of the Rim.
He broke his fall on a scaffold outside of the Torn Curtain, made of warped, wine-dark wood connected by ladders of rope, rubber, and chain. Its surfaces, like the desert below, swarmed with debtors.
Four of them surrounded Jacob. He stared through their legs at the sloping desert rock to the north, where hundreds of thousands of skulls snaked past the horizon.
“All this for a handful of watches?” he said as he was rolled onto his back.
“Don’t know much about the Masker, do ya?” said one of the four.
“Them’s the crown jewels you stole,” said another, holding Jacob down with her foot while the others unfolded a bed-sheet. “King’s got to chase his jewels.”
“Whate’er the price,” said the third, tying the corners of the sheet onto bamboo poles driven into the platform.
“Such is the weight of sovereignty,” said the last, arranging the sheet like a tent around them.
They huddled together to inspect him, drawing so close that their skulls knocked together. Jacob recoiled in irrational fear as their skulls grinned down over the corrupted flesh of their throats.
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