The Fall of the House of Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  When she was asked, she looked at Horst as if he were an idiot. He weathered it easily, inured from long exposure. ‘I din’t say they was killin’ the leeches. They talks wiv ’em. Give ’em bits of paper like them notices what they sticks on walls, too.’

  ‘Notices? The army is handing out pieces of paper to vampires? I know the British have a reputation for politeness, but surely that doesn’t extend to issuing vampires with cease-and-desist notices?’

  Horst listened as Minty spoke and relayed her words immediately. ‘She didn’t say they were British, either.’

  ‘What?’ Cabal rose to his feet. ‘She’s sure?’

  Minty was sure. She’d seen enough British soldiers and sailors in her neighbourhood to recognise the uniforms. The soldiers running around London wore different uniforms entirely; a dark grey ‘wiv red bits,’ said Minty, tapping her shoulders.

  Cabal’s expression grew astonished, but the astonishment was being eaten away by a growing dismay.

  ‘Dark grey with red epaulets?’ Horst shrugged. ‘Who’s that, then? The French? It would be typical of the French to take advantage of things if Britain is all of a mess like this, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It isn’t the French.’ Cabal’s voice was a harsh whisper.

  ‘Cabal!’ Leonie had taken position by the window to make sure they suffered no more incursions that night. ‘Over here!’

  There was a dull droning sound from outside, growing louder and very occasionally marked with a sharp cracking sound. They all crowded around the windows to look out and then, following Leonie Barrow’s cue, up.

  In the sky over Trafalgar Square, a great airborne vessel flew by at a stately pace. A huge, vaguely rectangular lozenge with four great flat mechanical housings mounted on pylons that thrust out of the port and starboard sides, fore and aft. Gun ports showed clearly over the hull, studding it regularly.

  ‘I’m not mistaken, am I, Cabal?’ Leonie’s whisper was as strained as Cabal’s. ‘That is what I think it is?’

  ‘It’s an aeroship!’ Horst’s voice was, by contrast, full of enthusiasm. ‘An aeroship! I’ve never seen one so close! Well, there was the Catullus, but that was an aeroboat, really. That thing is huge! Gosh!’

  ‘It’s not just an aeroship, Horst. Yes, I am very much afraid that you are right, Miss Barrow. It is the Princess Hortense, of unhappy memory.’

  * * *

  They allowed the Princess Hortense, or whatever it was called in this splinter of reality, to move on. The reason for its slow flight was clear now; it was monitoring the city. Once a searchlight stabbed into the metropolitan darkness and was followed a few seconds later by a rattle of machine-gun fire. They watched the tracer-laden stream of bullets lash an area near Horse Guards Parade. The searchlight scanned around a little after the fire ceased, then settled and tightened. Another burst of fire, and the searchlight was extinguished. The aeroship turned eastwards and travelled on following the line of the Thames until it was lost to their sight.

  ‘Mirkarvia,’ said Cabal. ‘Again. And yet…’ He looked at their little party, his gaze settling on each in turn until it reached Miss Smith, upon whom it tarried. ‘I begin to see it.’

  ‘See what, brother?’ asked Horst.

  ‘The pattern. I have been guilty of developing an incomplete and untested thesis; trusting to it simply because we have been pushed reluctantly and at speed between pillar and post from the instant we set foot upon these Five Ways to which Ratuth Slabuth alluded. I suspect I have allowed myself to fall under a misapprehension because of a pleasing coincidence.’

  ‘Right,’ said Horst. ‘Of course. I see.’

  ‘You do?’

  Horst shook his head.

  ‘You never start to surprise me, Horst. I am not prepared to postulate at present—’

  Horst nodded, supportive of the decision. ‘Good. There are ladies and a child present.’

  ‘—as to the basis of my suspicion. I would prefer more facts, although the few I have to hand already certainly point in a suggestive fashion.’

  Zarenyia smiled blandly as if daring anyone to make an obvious comment. When no one did, she said, ‘So we’re off on an adventure again, are we? Fact hunting, and derring-do, and ideally killing a few people. Proper people. These “deaders” Minty talks about will be soulless already, and where’s the nutritional value in that?’

  ‘You just … had half a dozen. You want more?’ Leonie looked at the spider-devil with horror.

  Zarenyia managed a contrite expression. ‘I’m afraid so, dear heart. I used a lot of the … ah, essence I took from those frightful men in growing back my legs and generally improving the state of my health. To be blunt, I’m still famished.’ There was an awkward silence. ‘Have I mentioned how much I like your hat? It looks lovely on you.’

  ‘What exactly are we looking for, Johannes?’ asked Miss Smith. ‘And, while I’m asking questions, why that very hard look you gave me earlier? Don’t you trust me all of a sudden?’

  ‘I value common cause over trust usually. But, in your case, you have my trust, too. You shouldn’t place too much significance upon my eye happening to linger upon you. Just something that occurred to me, and thinking of how we met in the great cemetery was the stimulus that started that particular train of thought.’

  ‘So there you go,’ said Zarenyia brightly. ‘Dear Johannes looked at you and was all stimulated. Happens to me simply all of the time.’

  ‘Not quite what I—’

  ‘Hush. Ladies like to be flattered.’

  Dear Johannes settled into an exasperated silence for a moment before remembering he’d been asked two questions.

  ‘To answer your first question, we must find some of these soldiers. We need to know what they know.’

  ‘Stalking soldiers. This sounds dangerous,’ said Leonie.

  Zarenyia smiled a not entirely pleasant smile. ‘Which is what makes it fun.’

  * * *

  If there is any better scout for moving through a city occupied by monsters and foreign troops than a ghost of a former citizen who is lent near invisibility by the former attribute and familiarity of the locale by the latter, they must be few in number. Certainly Minty—finding herself treated far more respectfully in death than she ever was in life—took on the role with enthusiasm and the sober mien of the young when graced with a vital undertaking. The rest of the party moved slowly, watching side streets, windows, and the sky in case the aeroship or another like it might return. It was this last consideration that had been used to dissuade Zarenyia from taking to the rooftops; if the crew of the aeroship had grown used to spotting and attacking individuals on the street from a height of perhaps two hundred feet, they were unlikely to have any trouble at all spotting a large spiderish woman skipping along the tops of the buildings.

  The plan was to find and investigate the area where the aeroship had opened fire, the reasoning being that there was only so much that could be done from the air, and that survivors would have sought refuge off the street as soon as the firing began. This would necessitate the deployment of ground troops to clear the surrounding buildings and declare the area secure. Cabal’s group would get there first with any luck and be waiting for the soldiers by the time they arrived. Assuming that troops were following in the aeroship’s slow progress, then they would be heading west to east. Cabal’s group would be approaching from the north, and arriving at the same time as a platoon or two of Mirkarvian soldiers did not seem very advantageous. Therefore, they determined to move slowly enough that they would get there second, but not so slowly that the troops would have moved on by the time they had arrived.

  ‘There’s an art to an ambush,’ said Zarenyia, and nobody else felt confident enough about it to argue.

  Her instincts were reliable, as was only reasonable given that she was—quite apart from being thoroughly charming and a very pleasant conversationalist—an ancient supernatural predator. Horse Guards Parade had definitely seen better days. The ubiqui
tous abandoned carts, cabs, and carriages dotted the area, the skeletons of the horses still in more traces than not. A hansom cab lay on its side, shattered by heavy machine-gun fire, leaving the naked wood exposed beneath the glossy black paint. By it a body lay, and around the body two men crouched, checking it, while a cordon of soldiers armed with repeating rifles in tactically sound positions protected the area. Cabal and his party would have blundered straight into the guards if Minty hadn’t turned a corner and run into one, and then directly through him. The soldier shuddered as if a chill breeze had caught him, but otherwise did not react.

  Minty took in the state of affairs in the parade, and then trotted back to report, this time taking the time to go around the soldier.

  ‘There’s about twelve blokes wiv big guns,’ Minty demonstrated by stretching her arms, ‘an’ a couple of blokes wiv little guns. Those two are ’avin’ a look at a deader. A proper dead deader. I fink that aeroship done for it. It was all full of ’oles and ever so ’orrible.’ This, she said gleefully.

  Cabal ruminated. ‘The Mirkarvian Army models itself on the Prussian, perhaps unsurprisingly. Twelve would be a Gruppe, with a couple of officers along. Five of us versus over a dozen soldiers. I am not sure that I like those odds.’

  ‘You’re right, Johannes.’ Horst started counting off points on his fingers. ‘We have a devil, we have a vampire, we have a witch, we have two heavily armed civilians, we have total surprise—’ He looked to his side as if listening. ‘—yes, a splendid point. We have a ghost. Those hapless swine with the rifles are the ones in trouble, Johannes.’

  Cabal considered, and then reconsidered. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Very well. A quick plan to isolate and neutralise them, bearing in mind that we must keep at least one alive to interrogate.’

  Everyone nodded, with one exception. Cabal sighed heavily; he now realised that the opportunity to plan had already gone. ‘Where is Madam Zarenyia?’ he asked, but expected no useful reply.

  * * *

  Private Trizlo was scanning the area to the west of Horse Guards Parade when he happened to notice that Private Ulchir was not at his position. He hadn’t liked the look of the buildings when they were directed there by the aeroship’s searchlight; too many places for things to hide. People, and worse than people. Every member of his Zug said out loud that the billet was an easy one, if boring. Every member was lying; he heard the sleeping whimpers and moans of men in nightmares. This city may have been conquered before a single Mirkarvian set foot on British soil, but there was nothing easy about the job they had to do. The capital had to be cleared; cleansed of every surviving Briton and every one of the monsters the strike against the city had created. It was an ugly way to make war, but the British had started it by refusing to give Mirkarvia carte blanche to do as it wished in its region. They should just have minded their own business when first Senza and then Poloruss fell. With all the troops these conquests brought into the Mirkarvian Empire and the powers Her Majesty possessed, it was a foregone conclusion what would happen. It wasn’t Mirkarvia’s fault it had. Destiny is like that.

  Still, this wasn’t good soldiering. It was little more than hunting vermin, but some of the vermin could bite back. Every Zug had bad stories about clearances that had gone wrong. Sometimes they even lost people.

  Trizlo looked around the clutter of pale stone buildings on either side of Whitehall. They could hide a dinosaur in this place, never mind a wight or a leech. Where the hell had Ulchir gone? This was just typical of him; wandering off without letting anyone know. He looked to Corporal Hesk to offer an exasperated glare. But Hesk was out of position, too.

  Hesk wanted to make sergeant, and so he was by the book. He would have to have a damn good reason before he would leave his post. What was going on here? The lieutenant and the medic were still searching around the shattered hansom cab. He hated to jump past reporting to his NCO, but Trizlo didn’t see what choice he had.

  He opened his mouth to draw breath to call to the lieutenant, but got no further. Out of nowhere, a man in a stylishly cut suit appeared before him. ‘Good evening,’ said the man, who doffed his hat, and then punched Trizlo unconscious before he could respond. Trizlo was caught as he fell and whisked out of sight. The Mirkarvian cordon continued to thin, minute by minute, by sundry means.

  By the time Lieutenant Skir and Medical Officer Borus finished their examination, their protective detail had entirely vanished.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ said Skir. His hand went straight to his holster, only to find it empty. ‘My gun!’

  Borus gaped at his commanding officer’s empty holster for a moment before remembering himself and going for his own gun. It, too, was absent. They looked around them in rising horror as they realised the desperate straits in which they found themselves. In doing so, they found that they were not quite alone.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said the man in the black suit and, inexplicably given the evening light, tinted glasses that seemed to bear amber lenses. ‘Your men are gone. Some are probably still breathing, but that can be altered very easily. If you value the remaining lives of those under your command, you would do well to mark my words carefully and answer immediately and truthfully any questions I might put to you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded Skir.

  ‘A bad start, Lieutenant,’ said the man. Skir noticed a distinct German accent. ‘You are surrounded, and I have your men. Well, most of them. A few eggs were broken in the making of this omelette. In short, you don’t ask questions for the duration of this encounter, only answer them. To demonstrate the principle, I shall start with an easy question. That question is, “Do you understand?”’

  Skir bridled, but swallowed his wrath. ‘I do.’

  ‘Good. Then here come the more complicated ones, beginning with … why is the Mirkarvian military in London at all?’

  * * *

  A much-depleted Gruppe made its way through the deserted streets of London. The only survivors from their run-in with a nest of wights—‘deaders’ was altogether too prosaic a term for the Mirkarvian military, and ‘zombies’ smacked of exoticism—they now numbered only three: the lieutenant, the medical officer, and one soldier, as well as two prisoners, both women. Of these two women, one was a tall redhead possessed of a subtle beauty almost supernatural in its intimation. She was dressed perfectly in a fashionable dress, seemed to regard being arrested by the occupation force as a very jolly sort of day out, and kept having to be reminded to keep her hands on her head. The other prisoner was shorter, hair as black as midnight, with a very pale complexion. She was dressed like a fashionable widow, and carried a battered black lace parasol in one hand while keeping the other hand on the back of her head in an apparent faint nod to prisoner protocols. The soldier keeping an eye on them had his hat pulled down hard, the peak hiding his face. He carried a non-issue pump-action shotgun, and his uniform was not a very good fit. Of the officers, the medic seemed happy with his lot, but the lieutenant was thin-lipped and tended to scowl at his fellow officer’s comments rather than answering them.

  They were heading west by southwest long the Mall; St James’s Park would have been the shorter and certainly more scenic route under normal circumstance, but in that unnatural night it was home to strange noises and movements in the undergrowth or, at least, stranger than is usual even for St James’s Park. Thus, they progressed up the Mall towards Buckingham Palace, late residence of Her Majesty before her unfortunate incident.

  As they approached, it was plain that it was not much of a residence these days, nor anything else but a burnt-out and exploded ruin. A wrathfulness had been practised upon it, and little was still habitable, the northern corner being the only major exception—now converted into a barracks to judge from all the soldierly activity occurring there. The new Queen of England and Wales, Scotland, the entirety of Ireland, all the little islands, and anything else she liked the look of had never intended to stay in as dull a heap as Buckingham Palace, and so she had had it reduced.
It was a nice situation, however, and an enjoyable view, so she had taken up residence en site.

  Johannes Cabal adjusted the stolen cap of his stolen uniform* and looked along the length of the Mall at the Red Queen’s present address. Above the blackened ruin of Buckingham Palace floated an aeroship, held in position by tethering cables running from great blocks of concrete emplaced around the palace grounds. The aeroship itself hovered perhaps eighty feet from the ground, and no obvious way of gaining entrance was visible.

  ‘Like a spider in her web,’ said Horst—the profoundly unconvincing medical officer—as the party halted to take in this new development.

  ‘Hardly,’ said Zarenyia. ‘She has style, though, this arch-enemy of yours.’

  ‘It’s sort of like the Catullus,’ continued Horst. ‘Her aeroyacht. Just much bigger.’

  It certainly didn’t look much like the blunt weapon represented by the vessel they had seen earlier. This ship had a distinct prow, and the lethal air of a raptor about it; a great steel hawk had settled upon the capital of its enemy and eaten—if not the heart—at least a kidney from the fresh corpse of a nation.

  ‘How on earth are we supposed to get aboard that?’ said Miss Barrow from beneath her ill-fitting cap.

  The plan Cabal had evolved involved nothing more complicated than getting by a checkpoint or two using their stolen uniforms and documents, but the unusual stationing of the Queen’s residence made that course seem naive and likely to end in a spectacular defeat that would doubtless take many of Orfilia Ninuka’s troops with them, but not Her Imperial Majesty herself.

  ‘I can get up one of those cables easily,’ said Zarenyia. ‘Easy-peasy. I’ll need all my legs out, but spiders and threads tend to get on rather well.’

  ‘And can you carry us all with you?’

  Zarenyia thought about it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s important, isn’t it?’