Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’.

  10

  The cohort was no mere detachment of bodyguards assigned to protect Lord Guyuk ur Grymm. They would die to a daemon protecting him, of course, but they were also a fighting force in their own right – just like Lord Guyuk remained a warrior as well as the commandant of Her Majesty’s most elite forces. And so they emerged upon the feeble human host and overwhelmed it in moments.

  The Way Master opened his portal far enough from the target that the Lieutenants Grymm were able to deploy their war bands for an encircling manoeuvre before the humans knew what was happening. There were few if any of the calfling soldier clan here and the Grymm swarmed the field with great ferocity and speed. They flowed through the hard, strange, angular landscape as if they had trained since the nest for it. Sliveen scouts assaulted high points where they might direct fire and movement while also watching for the approach of any main-force enemy factions.

  Guyuk was gratified to see that at least some of the cattle knew their place and marinated themselves in bodily pastes and juices upon comprehending the danger which had found them. They screamed and howled and tried, most ineffectually, to flee. It was an excellent palliative to the despondency which had threatened to overtake him of late. While it was hardly necessary, he drew his great war cleaver, Vier’s Bane, and set about with an economy of violence dictated by the inconvenient necessity of sparing most of the wretched creatures. Compt’n ur Threshrend was adamant about that. He evinced no faith in even the Grymm to separate the useful from the useless in the heat of slaughter, so best to slaughter as few as possible.

  It made for an admirable and undeniable logic. Even so, the lord commander had to revel, if only for a moment, in the meaty bite of his great blade as it cleaved asunder a dark-skinned, rotund calfling, waddling away as fast as its stumpy little legs would carry it. The screams of the cattle were pleasing, but lost for the most part beneath the battle roar of his thrall. To be fair, one of the prey did make a nuisance of himself, producing a tiny handheld weapon – one of the guns Compt’n had spent so long explaining to the lord commander – and firing it, wildly, inaccurately, but nonetheless with some effect. The noise of its discharge was outsized for such a ludicrously small contrivance, yet one of the tiny war shots hammered into Guyuk’s shield and managed to stagger him. Just slightly, but there was no denying the impact. He saw another shot hit a Sergeant Grymm of Pike. Having no shield behind which to shelter, the sergeant took the blow square upon his bone cage. Bright white sparks flew from his chain mail, which disintegrated around the entry wound.

  And enter it did, the tiny shot punching through good strong mail and twice boiled grosswyrm leather. It did not kill, or even drop the sergeant, but the force spun him around and arrested his charge, delaying for a second the ultimate demise of the upstart calfling. He died, screaming on the end of the warrior’s pike, as was only appropriate.

  There was a short interlude of violence, and all resistance collapsed.

  Little pride was to be had in the victory, Guyuk told himself as he used the edge of his great round shield to carve one of the last fleeing humans in two. The shield’s iron edge was chamfered to a quarter-claw thickness. Keen enough to slice through boiled wulfin-hide armour when wielded by a strong arm, well trained to the task. Used in such a fashion upon the unprotected bodies of the calflings, it was a spectacularly gruesome kill. Bloodwine and sweetmeats fairly exploded from the fragile bag of thin skin, painting the lord commander in hot gore.

  Not a killing to sing about, or record in the scrolls, but it did afford an opportunity to practise one’s self-denial. His head reeled with hunger, and long tendrils of acidic drool swung from his fangs. Not one morsel did he take from the quarry, though. Nor did any of his guard. They encircled their prey, as identified by the Superiorae, crushed all resistance with swift resolve, then stayed their claws and blades.

  The cohort had emerged many leagues from the centre of the metropolis where the human champion and his thrall were heavily engaged by the diversionary attacks of Compt’n ur Threshrend. Still, the incredible scale of this settlement was of an order to daunt even the strongest mind. Was it so great that even a regiment might not fully invest it? Guyuk pondered this as a form of meditation to still his rumbling stomachs. He hawked a thick gob of digestive phlegm to the unnaturally level ground. From where he stood, the whole of the sky seemed filled with the towers of humanity. Projects, the Threshrend called them, and the word seemed freighted with a dark significance. These man-made ranges were indeed the project of a malign and terrible power. Even as Guyuk looked upon them he saw the small flashes of light and fire which he knew to be the tale-bearers of the human’s ranged weaponry; the guns of the calflings, such as he had just encountered. There was no sense of massed and coordinated fire, but the occasional streak of magick light – of the cursed ‘tracer’ rounds – indicated that the attention of the armsmen was focused on the war bands which even now rampaged through these Projects a league’s distance moonwise.

  ‘Secure the prisoners,’ he ordered. ‘Do not damage them.’

  Sergeants Grymm and their thrall hurried to his bidding. Again, Guyuk was pleased with the discipline and forbearance of his warriors. Were this a cohort of Hunn he had no doubt the ambush would have been a slaughter pit, with all of the calflings torn apart and every inferior Hunn drunk on their juices. Perhaps even the officers. His warriors Grymm, however, did not so much as raise a mailed fist to the terrified prisoners, in spite of the frustrations which attended the herding of them into some sort of order. They managed to make themselves understood with basic gestures and the occasional snarled word or two of abuse, even though none of the calflings understood the Olde Tongue. Guyuk doubted their ignorance mattered much when all he required of them was to gather in a bunch where they might be given their instructions. A cleaver banged on a shield. A pike used to create a barrier. These were enough.

  ‘Nice work, boss.’

  The Threshrend Superiorae appeared, holding a severed limb from which he stripped the meat by drawing the long bone through his blurring fang tracks. It was a disturbing thing to watch, threshrendum at their repast – all whirring fangs and flying scraps.

  ‘It was simple work, Superiorae,’ said Guyuk, plucking the flayed limb from Compt’n ur Threshrend’s claws. ‘And you complicate it by feeding your face while my warriors practise self-abnegation.’

  ‘Threshy’s gotta eat,’ said the tiny empath, completely without remorse or shame. ‘I can’t think on no empty stomachs. And this next bit is where Threshy needs to be thinking like a motherfucker.’

  Guyuk tossed the leg away, putting all of his many frustrations into the throw. The bone flew some distance and hit one of the larger human chariots with a bang. A prisoner screamed, the high-pitched shriek becoming a moan which fell away when the creature fainted with fright. The prisoners, a score of them on a quick headcount, huddled close together under the yellow glow illuminating the staging area in which a number of beastless chariots stood idle. Guyuk had learned not to flinch from the artificial lamplight of the human world, which, unlike sunlight, posed no dangers to his kind. He could not help his immediate inborn reaction however, and his hide crawled in revulsion under the lamplight. It did not improve his mood.

  ‘Be about your responsibilities then, Superiorae. We are a good few leagues from the Dave here. But I’m sure you would not wish to contend with him or any main-force human military faction which might deploy.’

  ‘I’m on it, boss,’ said Compt’n ur Threshrend, his spirits obviously lifted by the fresh kill he’d just enjoyed. ‘Lemme at ’em.’

  *

  ‘Hi. I’m Threshy, but you can call me Master.’

  As great as the shock of ambush had been, the survivors of the attack were still capable of surprise. Stripping the leg meat from one of them like a southern fried drumstick had the desired effect. It freaked them the fuck out. Speaking to the captives in their own language g
ave them something to hold on to in their witless terror. He was to be feared, but unlike the giant, hulking beasts around him, he was different, if only in being able to communicate. In that one, special way he offered deliverance, perhaps even salvation.

  The car lot on the edge of the Bronx, or what the soul once known as Compt’n thought of as the Bronx, sat next to some sort of bullshit community college. The main building was painted with rainbows, the internationally recognised symbol of being totally fucking lame. Compt’n knew it. Trev’r knew it. Even the roiling stew of minds he’d sucked out of the captured Navy SEALs back in Omaha knew it. Except for one dude, whose sister had been an artist or something. He didn’t mind rainbows. The fucking sissie.

  ‘So, who’s the segment producer tonight?’ Threshy asked.

  He knew his fang tracks and monster chops weren’t best suited for mouthing human words but he thought he did a pretty good job of it. Even if he sounded a little like a drunk doing a Sean Connery impression.

  Sho, whoosh shegment prodoosher tonight?

  The calfling known as Compt’n had been familiar with the jargon of media, having courted soft coverage of his academic output for many years, especially when his work with the military on the Human Terrain System burned so many bridges back to the world of academe. Unlike the dumb medieval brutes in Guyuk’s cohort, unlike the lord commander for that matter, he did not find himself in an unfamiliar, alien world when they’d emerged from the UnderRealms. They came up, as planned, right on top of an outside broadcast unit covering a couple of war band attacks on the housing projects at the northern end of the city.

  Compt’n knew of the WYNY broadcast truck from the Threshrend Majorae which had seen it earlier, without knowing what it had seen. The van sat in the car park of the college a safe distance across 3rd Avenue from the shit brown vertical slums. Or it had been a safe distance, when the only danger was from the war bands currently tearing through those slums. In one of the strange, recursive echoes that came from having consumed more than half a dozen human minds and all of their associated memories, the projects were oddly familiar to Compt’n ur Threshrend. Not because he had ever laid eyestalks on them before tonight, but because they’d been used as art assets in Grand Theft Auto IV, a video game Trevor Candly had played obsessively before thresh had sucked out his brains – and sucked in the memories of the phantom digital New York all but burned into that poor quality grey matter.

  ‘Fuckin’ awesome game,’ said Threshy to himself, someone else’s nostalgia getting the better of him. ‘So, like I said. Who’s gonna do Threshy a solid, and save their worthless fuckin’ lives tonight?’

  The huddled survivors of the lightning raid didn’t rush to collaborate. Not because they were bravely resisting his offer to sell out, but because they were still too terrified to speak.

  ‘Okay. I get it,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s kinda freaked out right now. I totally understand y’all losing your shit and everything. You probably figured my homies and me, we’re gonna torture you and eat you and stuff . . .’

  He let that hang, watching them cower, making sure they understood. From the way they did some extra cowering he figured they got his drift.

  ‘And we will totally do that . . .’

  Zing! A few screams. Some cursing. One guy even fell to his knees and started begging which was both funny and awesome.

  ‘Unless . . .’

  And he paused again, holding up his hooked claws.

  ‘Unless somebody mans up and tells me who is producing for WYNY tonight?’

  He jerked a claw back in the direction of the news van, just in case some of the slower kiddies needed hand puppets to make it all clear to them.

  Somebody, a woman Threshy thought, said something, but mixed in with all the moaning and crying and caterwauling it was hard to tell.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You ate him!’ a woman said, her face an abject fright mask. She’d been crying – was still crying – and her cheeks were stained with running eyeliner.

  ‘Oh,’ said Threshy. ‘That guy? Oops. My bad.’

  Guyuk, who stood a short distance behind him, draped in entrails and painted with blood, glowered down on the prisoners. He stepped up beside Threshy and the terrified captives recoiled as one.

  ‘Do they resist, Superiorae?’ the lord commander growled. ‘Shall we make an example of one?’

  ‘No. No resistance here, dude. Just a lot of peeps filling their pants is all. Chill out. Let me work my monster mojo, okay?’

  Guyuk skinned dark, ragged lips back from his fangs. It probably wasn’t helping to calm down the cattle, but Compt’n ur Threshrend decided to go with it.

  ‘So, who was that spoke up just then? A smart motherfucker doesn’t want to get eaten by my bro here, I bet.’ He indicated the horrifying figure of the lord commander looming behind him.

  A skinny white woman put up a very shaky hand. She wore jeans and some sort of photographer’s vest, the pockets full of batteries and cables and shit, looked like.

  ‘Hey! Props to you, bitch. You gots more balls than all these ugly-ass monsters put together. You get to live.’

  Her face contorted into a grimace some way between a nervous tic, a sick and weakly grin and a horrified wince. Some of her fellow prisoners, thinking they’d just lost their lives through timid silence, suddenly threw up their hands, raising their voices, offering to help.

  ‘Whoa, back the fuck up,’ said Threshy. ‘She definitely gets to live.’ He pointed at the skinny woman. ‘And y’all maybe gets to live if she does good.’

  Were it possible, the woman’s pallid features lost even more colour as she understood the weight of responsibility that had just landed on her.

  ‘Come on down, darlin’,’ said Threshy, beckoning her with one of his fore-claws. If he were a true Threshrend Superiorae he would have been able to reach out and twiddle her fucking dials like a master DJ, damping down her fear, amping up her calm. Or the other way around, if that worked for him. But the tiny thresh he had once been had never had a chance to grow into those skills, not fully, and so Compt’n ur Threshrend had to make do with cunning and another form of mind game.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, in as gentle and encouraging a fashion as a daemon hell toad with a forest of eyestalks and chainsaws for teeth could manage. ‘Come on over here. I’m not going to eat you. Just your friends if you don’t help me out.’

  The woman faltered at that.

  ‘Come on. What’s your name, sweetheart?’

  ‘Polly,’ she answered, her voice quavering. ‘P-Polly Farrell.’

  Threshy was sorely tempted to mock her little stutter, the habits of Trev’r nearly outweighing the needs and judgment of Compt’n. But in the end, the will of Compt’n ur Threshrend was enough to overpower the strength of that initial Trev’r imprint.

  ‘So, Polly. Y’all look like a photographer or some shit like that? Is that your thing?’

  She shook her head, so violently it seemed in danger of coming loose.

  ‘N-no. I’m just the intern. They got me to carry all this for them.’

  Her hands fluttered over the bulging pockets of the vest.

  ‘Okay, that sucks for you. Being an intern, I mean. Lotsa work. No pay, right?’

  She nodded, a little more self-contained now and obviously taken with his knowledge of intern lore, in spite of her terror.

  ‘Yeah. Where I come from, you know, Hell, we call that slavery. It’s hell popular down there.’ He grinned at his own joke. ‘See what I did there?’

  But if he meant to set Polly at ease with the quip, the sight of his fang tracks, encrusted with gore, did not help. She started shuddering.

  ‘Whoa, sorry. Bad joke. Okay. So, Polly. This is like really fucking important to me, and to this ugly mountain-sized motherfucker behind me.’

  Polly Farrell risked a glance up at the towering figure of Lord Guyuk ur Grymm, but shied away from the awful vision.

  ‘Dude,’ Threshy stage whispere
d back over his shoulder in the Olde Tongue. ‘Dude, you’re freaking her out with the entrails and shit. Think you could, like, clean up those bowels you got hanging off of you? That’d be golden. And maybe practise your line, for your cameo later.’

  Guyuk growled, but used his cleaver to flick off the heaviest strands of intestine and viscera.

  ‘Are we golden now, Threshrend?’ he asked in a tone of voice that implied they’d better be.

  ‘As Kanye. Thanks. So, Polly,’ he said, changing back to English as he refocused on the intern. ‘Here’s the thing. I need to negotiate with the mucky mucks. You know, your leaders and shit. But every time we try and talk with them, they drop a fucking bomb on us. Soooo . . . I figure, since I don’t have like a Twitter account or a blog or anything because, you know . . . typing . . .’ He held up his bloodied claws and wiggled the hooked talons at the ends. ‘I figured maybe we could just, you know, go on TV or some shit. Could you help us with that? Could be a promotion in it for you. Maybe you might even get paid or something, and I would totally not fucking eat you as well.’

  Threshy leaned in as if to impart a secret and he saw her mustering every reserve of courage she possessed not to rear back. Good for you, he thought. You hardcore biatch.

  ‘I won’t even eat your friends over there,’ he whispered. ‘If you can help out. Do you think you can help out?’

  She threw a desperate, almost despairing glance back at the small circle of captives. Some called out.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What’s it saying?’

  Others had fallen into a fugue state, staring hopelessly into the distance.

  ‘I . . . I’d need the camera guy. And the sound guy,’ said Polly.

  Threshy sucked air in through his fang tracks.

  ‘Man, I hope nobody ate them.’