by Angels
“What’s that? You see it? Down over there, past the rocks.”
I looked where he said—he couldn’t point, having one hand tangled in my coat and the other holding on to the crutch—and made out a squirming mass, indistinct in the twilight.
“It looks like a bunch of beached fish to me.”
“Come on!” He set off at a swifter pace, still holding on to my coat; when his crutch-tip came out of the sand it spurted a dribble of sand to the rear. I was dragged after him, and yanked to a stop when he stopped. We were ten or twenty feet from the squirming things. I blinked a few times before I saw them clearly: they had a fish’s body and tail, but then a small torso grew out, with thin arms and a tiny head.
“They’ve blundered ashore,” said Uncle Bernard. “We have to be quick. Haldan, run back to the house; bring the shovel and the big club, the one with the blue ring. And light the lantern, and bring it too. Hurry!”
I wanted to ask him why, but I had started becoming a man, and since I already guessed at the answer, I held my tongue. I obeyed him, ran to the house and back, carrying the two heavy long-handled implements under one arm and the lantern by the opposite hand. My uncle was waiting for me, some distance farther back from the living things. He carefully approached them, set the lantern on a rock, and beckoned to me.
In the light it became clear they were mermaids. They were about a handspan in length. Their skin was pale purple, their hair brownish green. They noticed the light, and they began to give voice, with reedy cries. They might have been washed ashore by a wave more powerful than others, had been left scattered over a strip of sand perhaps forty feet wide, stretching between a tidal pool and an outcrop of rocks.
Uncle Bernard handed me the shovel. “You take this,” he said, “it’s longer. Do as I do: keep a good distance from them. And be sure to strike at least twice: you’re not as strong as I am.”
He went around the rock then, and to the edge of the shoal. When they could see him clearly, they began to speak. All of them at once, so at first it was an unintelligible soft clamour. Uncle Bernard held on tightly to his crutch, leaned forward and brought down his club on the nearest mermaid. It smashed her head open in one blow; the little body convulsed, then lay still. The other mermaids kept up their babble, their voices now seeming to supplicate. Uncle Bernard killed two more, then looked back at me.
“Come on, boy. Don’t be afraid. Just stand at my side and be careful. Come on! Are you a man or a little child, eh?”
So I moved forward then, and raised the heavy shovel high and swung it down at a mermaid. I broke her body under the metal blade; when I raised it again, I could see the mess of blood staining the mermaid’s face, oozing from her crushed ribcage through the torn flesh.
“Be careful!” my uncle said, panting from his latest blow. “Don’t listen to them. Don’t pay attention to what they say. When there’s fewer left, you can understand them, so don’t listen.”
His club rose and fell, hard. I struggled with the shovel’s weight and could only manage a fourth or so of my uncle’s kill rate. There were nearly a hundred—so I suppose in retrospect—in the beached shoal. To the boy I was, the slaughter seemed to go on and on for hours, although it must not have lasted more than ten minutes in reality.
When there were only a dozen or so mermaids left, their voices—all alike, all with the exact same pitch and intonations—became easier to disentangle. And finally I could understand their words.
They said: “Oh please, kind sir, spare me. Oh please, sir, get me back to the water. Let me live, oh let me live.”
Uncle Bernard had told me not to listen, but I was ten years old, and they had a little girl’s voice, and I had never killed anything that spoke before. And so when my shovel came down and I heard the mermaid cry out for an instant before the blood filled her throat and silenced her, I grew cold to the marrow of my bones. Sweat ran down my back; my stomach clenched as if I were going to vomit.
Uncle Bernard and I were no longer side by side; we had missed some mermaids at one edge of the shoal, and he had limped over there, twenty or thirty feet away, to finish the job. He had his back to me. My shovel struck again, but I had rotated it involuntarily, and this time the edge came down and cut into the next mermaid’s head. Her face broke in two and her brains dripped out of her skull.
At this I lost my nerve. There was one mermaid left at my feet, pleading for her life. I didn’t have the strength to resist. Uncle Bernard was finishing his part of the job; the wet thudding of his club was cutting off the remaining frail voices one by one. I couldn’t throw the mermaid back into the sea; the water was much too far off: Uncle Bernard would see me doing it. Instead I dug into the sand beneath her with the bloodstained blade of the shovel, scooped her up, and carried her a dozen paces to the right, into the shallow tidal pool. I dumped her there, and instantly, as I had hoped, she fell silent. I strode back as nonchalantly as I could, started whacking the one whose head I had already cut open.
Only when I’d beaten her to a pulp did I dare raise my eyes from my work; I saw Uncle Bernard looking at me with that expression of mingled discomfort and pride. “Come here, boy,” he said.
He had seen me. He must have seen me. He’d fish the mermaid out of the pool, kill her with his club, then turn it on me; maybe break a bone or two, to teach me to be a man—and I knew that I would have deserved it. Yet I was still under the mermaid’s spell and I didn’t really care.
But to my surprise he just hugged me and slapped my back in praise, though hard enough to knock out my breath. “You’re a good boy, Haldan. We got all of them, eh? I’ll tell your ma, and she’ll tell your dad, they’ll both be proud of you, eh?”
We walked back to his house, and all the way he leaned on me more than on the crutch; in hindsight, it’s obvious his wounded foot hurt him badly, but to my naïve ten-year-old self it seemed a mark of praise and trust—of which I knew myself unworthy.
They gave me the Silver Claw after the debacle at Quinzach. That felt just the same. Getting a mark of trust and praise I felt I didn’t deserve. With the same underlying anger at the stupidity of those above me. They didn’t know, didn’t understand. How it was, how it had been.
Aboard the aerostat, we could all pretend to be heroes already. A full company of heroes, in our black leathers, with our shiny weapons. We could feel our skin taut with the spells and blessings of our wizards all wrapped around us. How could we lose, with that much magic about us?
Our section of the gondola had two small windows; it was night and the troop hold was plunged in gloom. Some of the men had wasted their glow-spell to cast greenish pools of phosphorescent light around them. They were fools to expend magic before combat, yet the glow did bring us all closer, infused us with the awe and mystery of our task. How could we not be heroes?
I sat by one of the windows, which looked down and starboard. This was my first major raid. I’d graduated from War College two years before, after a long apprenticeship. I had been trained in Ærial Infantry, which actually involved commando missions more than anything else. I’d flown missions throughout the Laethlin border war, and seen action in the skirmish with Holgart, but those were minor engagements. We’d sold our services to Melgrion for their war with Carheil, and this at last was serious business. I was so scared that I was constantly on the verge of shitting my pants.
The aerostat flew above the Pthal chain. There was a heavy cloud cover beneath us, and the ground was invisible. From time to time we could hear deep resonant detonations as the Carhellian forces fired off spells into the sky, blindly. The aerostat was shielded with tripled absence spells, and we’d been assured there was no way we could be found. Yet an hour before we’d heard the usual hollow boom followed immediately by another one, much sharper and much, much louder. I’d seen an orange glow reflected on the clouds; it came from behind us. I had craned my neck, trying to see in a direction the window did not allow me. At thi
s angle, the glass distorted sight, smeared light into featureless curtains. But then our aerostat had shifted heading briefly; for a few seconds I’d got a clear view of what lay behind us, before we changed course again and it vanished from my sight. One of our sister aerostats had been hit by a spell, perhaps through nothing more than sheer misfortune. Despite all its protections, some of its bladders had been set aflame; it had nearly blown itself apart when the lifting gas had detonated. What was left of it was a twisted hulk, plunging toward the clouds and the ground below, like a torch thrown from the sky. Ammunition both magical and alchemical was being set off all over the remains of the gondola. Flashes of searing light crackled all along its length; demon shapes flickered around the falling wreckage, impressions of twisted wings and elongated horns, like something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, or in the pit of nightmares.
Then our aerostat had recovered its previous heading, and the sight had been taken away. It had been enough, those few seconds, to demoralize me. I huddled in the gloom, flinching when I heard the spell-cannons going off. Behind me, in a pool of greenish light, six men played dice, bleeding off dribbles of their combat-luck to influence the fall of the ivory cubes.
Out of an initial force of twelve, ten aerostats made it through the Pthal and reached the main engagement areas. We were intended to support the Melgrians, by raiding behind enemy lines. The aerostats were supposed to allow us to fly with impunity over the terrain and set down where we wanted.
Intelligence had not known about the aerial defences Carheil had put up. None of those clumsy, overpowered cannons that had thudded at us through the passes: these were flying units.
I never learned where they were bred, or from what stock. Certainly, these couldn’t have been demons created by a spell: they were too numerous by far. They were six-limbed, with both bat wings and arms. Their tails, whiplike coils of muscle, added a seventh.
We’d barely spotted them before they were swarming us. In a way they were far less dangerous than the cannons had been; it took whole minutes of concentrated attack on their part to even begin to tear at the aerostat’s envelope. The slight problem was that they could neither be avoided nor repelled. Our ship did try, blasting away with its heavy ordnance, bringing down mere handfuls of the assailants, while dozens more of them made it to the envelope and began worrying at the seams.
No one was dicing or joking anymore. We’d seen the gargoyles fly toward us, but now we could neither see nor hear them. We knew they were up above, steadily destroying us.
The aerostat dove brutally then. I thought this might be a bid to unseat the assailants, though it seems clear to me now that it was because the crew had panicked and were expecting to crash in short order. The drop siren began to warble and hatches were opened.
We were much too high for a drop; our slowfalls couldn’t be expected to support us long enough to reach the ground unharmed from this height. Yet a half-dozen of my section were thrown out of the drop hatches, falling to their deaths. Then the man in front of me—I was eighth in line, and if his brain hadn’t thawed, I probably would have obediently killed myself—took out his sidearm, held it under our lieutenant’s nose, and said that he’d rather be executed for disobeying orders than smash his skull open a thousand feet below.
Everyone froze; my skin crawled, a formication I knew and had felt before, triggered by a ward-spell activating at the imminence of violence. The lieutenant spoke in a quiet voice: “Put that away, Dremlin.”
“Fuck your shit-born mother,” Dremlin began, and then one of the gargoyles erupted through the drop-hatch, coiled its tail around his head, and tore away his face.
I was credited later with having killed that first gargoyle, though I’m pretty sure it was someone else’s shot that actually did it in—but that man died along with a third of us, so I did not bother trying to give him the credit. What does it matter anyway? Half a hundred more of the gargoyles came in through the hatches, bullets and blades flew through the air, spells discharged, men and beasts screamed; when it was over, thirty men lay dead or wounded on the floor of the gondola, several of them slain by their own side. The lieutenant—I cannot recall his name—was nowhere to be seen; he had fallen through the hatch. For some reason, I have never been able to stop wondering whether he was pulled out by an enemy, or tripped and fell in the turmoil of battle, or if someone actually pushed him in revenge. As if that, too, mattered at all.
The aerostat was listing severely to port by the time we’d repulsed the attack; it had dived swiftly through the thinning clouds and we were now barely in drop range. Through the open hatch, I could see pinpoints of light ahead of our path: it seemed we were about to reach our objective after all.
Throughout it all, the drop-siren had been sounding; now it cut off with a squawk as the frame trembled beneath our feet. We began losing altitude even faster. Two men were banging at the forward bulkhead, as if they hoped to break through into the crew compartment and regain control of the craft. One of the wounded was trying to scream through a throat full of blood.
For a few minutes, our officers tried to restore cohesion; some of us saw to the wounded, and two of the worst-off were quietly dispatched. Xavier, whom I’d grown to like and almost admire at War College, was curled up into a ball in a corner, whimpering and shaking; no amount of prodding could snap him out of it. We’d all, to a man, refused the bravery charms we’d been offered, knowing full well they tended to make men suicidally reckless; now I found myself wishing we had accepted.
An aerostat is not like a plane, always on the verge of plummeting to destruction; though we all soon realized our craft was going to crash, we had enough time to make an orderly exit. A good thing, too, as there were still quite a few gargoyles about, and they flew at the first of our men who dropped. We were prepared for this and provided covering spellfire; the gargoyles presently flew away, and the remainder of our unit dropped. I was among the last to go—I’d been working on Xavier, but fruitlessly.
“Haldan!” the centurion called. “Come on.”
“I can’t leave him here. He’ll die in the crash.”
The centurion came up to us, grabbed Xavier about the waist, and dragged him to the hatch, ignoring my protestations. Then he belted him across the mouth, hard enough to trigger Xavier’s ward-spells, and pushed him out of the hatch. I expected him to scream, to call out a name; but he remained mute, or if he cried out, the wind took away his voice: he fell in silence, and the night swallowed him.
“Your turn now, Haldan,” the centurion said. Perhaps because I felt all too strongly that Dremlin’s rebellion had saved my life, I had been about to rage at the centurion, to challenge him even—but in that instant I saw the callous wisdom of his actions; and after all, I had spent years training to obey. I clenched my fists—as always, the left one trembled—and I let myself fall through the hatch.
Come morning, I returned alone to that stretch of shore. The night before, Uncle Bernard had insisted we celebrate our accomplishment with “just a tot of rum.” He had heated up leftover coffee for me and added a drop or three from his flask; by the time we’d done celebrating, he’d drained the flask and was slumped on the table, drooling and twitching. He was still in the same position when I got up at dawn. I left him snoring and ran to the beach.
I might have had trouble finding the exact spot again, but the scavengers were still at work: some jet-black kelvaws and a pair of atthroes were quarrelling over what was left of the corpses. They took wing as I approached. The tiny mermaid still swam in the shallow tidal pool where I had carried her.
I knelt by the pool, forgetting in that moment the smell of death in my nostrils. The mermaid saw me, and her head broke the surface. She smiled, her mouth no wider than my thumb. I smiled back. She giggled—a silvery tinkling— and dove back under the surface. She swirled around the pool, her tail beating strongly, as if she were dancing. I thought she must be hungry. What could I bring her t
o eat? And then I realized how foolish I was being. Come high tide, she should be able to escape the pool. And if she somehow stayed put, how would I know how to keep her fed? Might as well try putting her in a bowl, bringing her home, and asking my mother if I could keep her.
I leaned over the pool. “Hey!” I called to the mermaid, waving my hand at her. Then I lightly slapped the surface; this brought her up immediately. Her torso rose completely into the air. I remember noticing, without any prurience, that she was not shaped like a child at all: her full breasts bore proportionately huge nipples.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m going to put you back into the sea, all right? I’ll just pick you up and carry you; it’s not far now, the tide has turned. Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.” I reached out my hands; she looked at me, still smiling, and let herself be held.
I rose to my feet, marvelling at the feel of a living thing cradled in my grasp; the small amount of water that I had scooped up along with her sloshed in my cupped hands and seeped between my fingers. Then she twisted, jackknifed her body around my thumb, and drove the twin prongs at the base of her tail into the back of my hand.
It was pure reflex that threw her away from me; for a whole minute I was an animal, driven only by pain, though some small corner of my mind remained detached and observant, wondering at all that happened. I fell to the sand and rolled around, howling, my right hand clutching the left. Years later, I learned at War College that this is instinct commanding the wound be gripped shut so it will not leak precious blood; but it also serves well to prevent the spread of poison through the bloodstream. It is the only way I have ever approached religious awe, when I ponder that we hold in our very flesh knowledge of how to preserve it.