Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  The surviving friars fell back individually, winding through the streets and alleys toward the Courthouse, harassing the riflemen at every opportunity. They, too, had done their job well.

  2

  Early encounters between Ankhanan citizenry and the advancing elements of the Social Police 82nd Force Suppression, Unit were bloody. So many voices shouted in the streets that even the fluent Westerling commands and curses of the irregulars went unheeded, and the various companies of the 82nd were forced to resort to nonverbal means of clearing their respective paths.

  On Earth, the hammer of automatic rifle fire aimed over the head is universally understood, but Ankhanan citizens, inexperienced with chemically propelled projectile weapons, could not interpret the loud but apparently harmless noise and flashes coming from these odd broken-crossbow-like devices. By lowering their point of aim a few degrees, the Social Police undertook to educate them.

  But each lesson sufficed only upon those near enough to see the blood spurting from shattered limbs and riddled torsos, and to smell the voided bowels; thus, the lesson was regularly repeated as the Social Police advanced. Through the streets and along the gutters, blood and oil swirled red and black, immiscible, tracing fractal geometries of turbulence.

  It was one of the irregulars who suggested the use of concus sion grenades. This was more successful; not only does the airburst of such a device resemble a mage's fireball closely enough to send magick-leery Ankhanans diving for cover, these devices are so loud and so bright as to trigger the human animal's instinctive panic response: run and hide.

  The 82nd now made better time.

  The various companies converged, following the lead of one or more irregulars, each of whom carried some variety of seeking item: graven crystals and divining wands, runestaves and silver stilettos, needles that swung on balance points, pendula of crystal, copper, gold, and iron.

  Some of these items were sensitive enough to trace the path of Kosall back to the mountains; some were sensitive enough to indicate the location of every hand that had ever touched its hilt. These items had been tuned, detuned, and retuned to filter out the mutilated barge that had been the blade's home, the rocks where it had rested on the river's bed, the headless corpse of a man who had once borne it, now buried in the potter's field southwest of the Cathedral of the Assumption.

  Now, the seeking items all pointed toward the Courthouse.

  3

  Only Morgan Company—approaching from the southwest, through the stately homes of the South Bank—encountered resistance from the Ankhanan Army. When they reached the foot of Kings' Bridge, a mailed officer ordered them to halt; his order was backed up by a triple row of shoulder-to-shoulder pikemen supported by archers farther up the bridge's arch.

  Invisible fingers poked dozens, then hundreds, of sudden holes in breastplates and helms, making a rattle like a bucket of stones emptied onto a griddle. Bloody wads of flesh burst from the Ankhanans as they danced to a clattered half rhythm of rifle fire. The survivors chose to allow Morgan Company to pass without further interference.

  Once in Old Town, however, their progress became much more dangerous, as they came under magickal fire from a small contingent of friars who were somewhat more successful at keeping themselves under cover. Slowly, mechanically inexorable, Morgan Company beat back their attackers.

  Morgan Company was the first unit to reach the Courthouse. Riflemen methodically began to disperse the crowds while the irregulars loudly announced that Kings' Bridge was now open, which produced a tidal surge toward the east and south. A hastily assembled column of Ankhanan in fantry was scattered by two grenades and several well-aimed bursts that shredded their standard and their officers. The panic of fleeing men-at-arms was sufficient to awaken the caution of the other infantry columns; their commanders decided to delay engagement with these invaders until the situation could be investigated.

  Shortly, the survivors of Bauer Company suppressed the flames of Knights' Bridge with foam spewed from handheld canisters and marched across. No one challenged them.

  The Social Police owned Ten Street, and the balance of the 82nd was mere minutes away.

  Those friars who had been cut off on their retreat toward the Courthouse now slipped away into the flame-smeared night, descending the mucker shafts alongside each public pissoir. At the bottom, they were met by the Folk who had waited below, and were led swiftly through the caverns.

  4

  Despite the urgings of caution from the irregulars attached to his command, the 82nd's brigadier ordered a standard attack.

  Initially, all went as expected. A handheld launcher lobbed a shaped sticky-charge across Ten Street; the charge flattened against the Courthouse's bronze double doors, and three seconds later detonated with a resounding whang! that blew the doors into twisted hunks of fist-sized shrapnel.

  It also managed to ignite the black oil that painted the building, and set the Courthouse on fire. Antipersonnel grenades arced up through the flames to explode above the roof.

  Several canisters of airborne nerve agent sailed through the doorway, to finish up whatever hostiles the shrapnel may have missed. Chemically propelled grapnels shot toward the roof from the street, the Old Town wall behind, and the roof of the nearby Ankhanan officers' quarters. While their power-reels would not work in Overworld conditions, these soldiers were in superb physical condition, and teeth on their gloves meshed with the toothed cords to provide an effortless slip-proof grip. Hand over hand, they walked up the Courthouse wall at the speed of a moderate trot, while below fifty riflemen rushed the atrium.

  This might have worked as a surprise attack; but the Social Police were part of the field of power that was the blind god, and Raithe of Ankhana could feel their every step.

  They never had a chance.

  The first hint that this operation may not go smoothly was the empty atrium itself. The riflemen found no bodies, no blood—only a stone floor littered with chunks of bronze, spent and flattened slugs, and chips of rock. The white vapor that served as a visual marker for the nerve agent hung in the air, swirling slowly; it had not dispersed farther into the Courthouse, nor did it eddy back toward the blown-open doorway.

  The second hint was somewhat more dramatic.

  As the riflemen who had reached the roof gathered themselves into order and approached the access stairs, some of the more sensitive among them noted a vibration—like a subaural hum—that seemed to come through their boots. Before they could call others' attention to this, the stone beneath their feet softened, and sagged, then bellied downward like an overloaded trampoline, sweeping the whole group off their feet into a muddled pile at the bottom; the stone then ruptured and dumped them in an unceremonious tangle on the floor of a small room below. The roof continued to collapse, pouring into the room like mud down a funnel.

  As this mud fell upon the riflemen and oozed under and around them, the humming rose in both pitch and volume as the four stonebender rockmagi sang the mud back into stone once more. None of the riflemen managed to stand up before the the stone closed over their faces; they barely had time to scream.

  The riflemen in the atrium found all the doors to be closed, and sealed, by some invisible force that prevented them from even getting their hands within a span of the handles. Further, they found the blown-open doorway to be sealed by a similar force. The same inlay of silver wire that rendered them resistant to many forms of magick also rendered most magick quite invisible; they could not see the Shields that trapped them.

  Most primals can make light: it's a simple enough conversion of Flow. As they become more skilled, they can make light in specific colors, from indigo far down into the reds; a mere extension of this ability enables them to produce electromagnetic radiation at a substantially lower frequency: that of microwaves.

  Coherent beams of microwaves heated several earthenware pots that had been looted from the Courthouse's commissary. Within these pots was lamp oil. As the lamp oil boiled, it released a con
siderable amount of aromatic volatiles into the Shield-sealed atrium. The riflemen, wearing self-contained breathing apparatuses to protect them from the nerve agent, had no warning at all before the team of microwave-producing primals turned their attentions to a small piece of wood that lay on the floor near the center of the atrium. The wood caught, sparked the oil vapor, and turned the atrium into a homemade, crude—but effective—fuel-air bomb.

  Bits and pieces of the riflemen returned to the street riding a shattering blast of flame.

  Having kept, as any good commander would, men in place to observe the results of his probing attack, the brigadier now decided it was time to enlist local aid. He instructed his irregulars to approach the officers of the encircling Ankhanan Army under flag of truce.

  He needed troops who had more experience with magick: troops who had thaumaturges of their own.

  5

  For the tabernacle: a Mylar dome tent of stainless white, standing in the fireglow of the Financial Court, stretched over gracefully arched poles of black graphite fiber.

  For the congregation: the commanders of the Ankhanan army, met under flag of truce with Artan officers.

  For the priest: an Artan adept stripped of armor and cloaked in cloth of gold, a bishop's vestments from the Church of the Beloved Children of Ma'elKoth.

  Within the tabernacle, the congregation knelt, for God was among them.

  Taller than the moon, He stood upon a sapphire sky, and the stars played about His shoulders. His face was the sun: blindness threatened any impertinent stare. His voice thrummed in their blood; it spoke with their heartbeats; it was the voice of life itself.

  LIVE EACH FOR ALL, His voice told them. EACH OF YOU BELONGS TO ALL OF YOU. LOVE EACH OTHER, AND AWAIT MY RETURN.

  And His voice told each of them, severally and together: THOU ART MY OWN BELOVED CHILD; IN THEE I AM WELL PLEASED.

  Within the tabernacle, Ankhanan commanders embraced officers of the Artan force that had invaded their city, that had slaughtered their men and the citizens those men had been sworn to defend. They received Artan embraces in return without shame; were they not, in truth, Children of the same Father?

  Were they not brothers?

  6

  A sheet of flame fills the window—the oil on the outside of the Courthouse still burns merrily—but one of the two feys sitting on clerks' stools has enough of a Shield going that the heat's no worse than the sunshine on a summer afternoon.

  The window's tiny, not much bigger than a wallscreen. This drab little clerks' chamber is grey and airless, and I can imagine the drab little grey and airless men and women who have occupied it over the centuries, hunched over the copying table, the only music in their hearts the scritch-scratch-scritch of ink nibs on vellum.

  Are people like that born soulless?

  Christ, I hope so.

  Otherwise, it'd be even worse.

  We all have our chairs gathered around the window, despite the heat. For a long time, we sit and stare out into the flames.

  It's what the fey on the other stool is doing that makes for such an interesting view.

  Its name translates roughly as firesight; within the flames are red-gold shapes of buildings and soldiers and sundry weapons, from longbows to machine pistols; sometimes I can even see the Courthouse from the outside. It's a hell of a lot more efficient for reconnaisance than taking a physical look around; the last guy to stick his head above a windowsill took a bullet through the eye.

  Say what you want about the Social Police, but don't ever try to tell me those fuckers can't shoot.

  They don't seem too organized out there just yet; the fire shows me a lot of Ankhanan garrison troops holding off to either side of Soapy's perimeter, but they don't look like they're about to start killing each other. There's a couple squads on the wall already, too, and it looks like they've got RPGs on Two Tower as well as on the Knights' Bridge gatehouse.

  Deliann's eyes open emptily, and he stares through the ceiling. He has to maintain mindview to keep our little game of Chicken going; he's holding himself in contact with the river. He lies on the writing table along one wall, Kosall across his lap. The same two feys who cleaned up my legs had tried to work on his, but when they put their hands on that abscess, black oil like from Raithe's hand came bubbling out and burned the living shit out of them; now they're downstairs getting healing of their own.

  "Raithe?" I say.

  "It's working," he answers. "The Social Police have made an alliance with the army."

  "And?"

  "Yes," he murmurs. "He's coming."

  I nod. "Everybody here knows which he we're talking about, right?" The grim looks I get from one and all tell me that seven years haven't done any harm to Ma'elKoth's reputation.

  I lean back in my chair and fold my fingers over my stomach, and a contented sigh completes my portrait of confidence. I meet their eyes one at a time: Raithe, Orbek, t'Passe, Dinnie the Serpent, and they all stare back, waiting, clearly calmed by my assurance. It's a fraud, but they don't know that: I'm showing them exactly who they need to see right now, and they're eating it up. "So," I start slowly, "here we are: in a natural castle closer to perfect than any in the history of warfare."

  They favor me with the patiently blank stare people use while they're waiting for the punchline.

  I'm pretty sure they won't be disappointed.

  "Think about it," I tell them. "The Courthouse facade is our outer bailey. The inner offices and rooms are our killing ground—they have to come through there to get at us. With primals and rockmagi and a couple hours to prepare? Those poor bastards'll never know what hit them. Our keep is the Donjon: the only access to our position is down a single flight of stairs cut into the rock. But we have sally ports everywhere: every goddamn public pissoir in Ankhana, and not a few of the private ones. Through the Shaft sump, we can get into the caverns, out any pissoir—or two, or five—and hit the enemy anywhere in the city, with no warning at all. The Folk here have spent days underground already, fighting this Caverns War of yours. If they try to pursue us down through the caverns, we can fuck them till they never walk straight again.

  "Between the primals, the rockmagi, and the human adepts, we have the greatest concentration of magickal power on this side of the God's Teeth. We have blooded fighters from the Pit, and we have over a hundred fully armed Monastics. Plus all the weapons and armor from the Donjon armory, food from the commissary, water from the Pit

  "We have everything we need to hold these fuckers off for a long, long time—and to chop them up every time they come for us. We can stand a long, bloody, expensive siege here, and still probably get away through the caverns when things finally go bad. I couldn't have set this up better if I'd planned it for years."

  T'Passe nods. "A passive defense is a losing defense. To make this work, we should hit them now, before they're in battle order."

  "No," I tell her. "Let's not."

  "No?"

  "No. We're not gonna fight them."

  She looks at me like I'm crazy. "Why not?"

  "These guys aren't the enemy. They just work for him."

  "So? They are his soldiers."

  "Yeah. But he has more. A lot more. We could kill a million of them, it wouldn't hurt him. It wouldn't give him a fucking itch."

  "Then what are we doing here?" she asks. "Why aren't we running away?"

  I fall back on good of reliable Sun Tzu. "The essence of victory is the unexpected. To win without fighting is the greatest skill."

  Cryptic Chinese shit doesn't, apparently, go down too well with t'Passe. "What exactly do you have in mind?" she says sarcastically. "Surrender?"

  "Well, sort of. Yeah. We're gonna surrender."

  Now everybody looks at me like I'm crazy.

  I nod. "Yes, we are."

  7

  Just more than an hour before dawn, the flames that had enclosed the Courthouse finally flickered low enough that the 82nd could begin their final assault, in concert with the Ankha
nan Thaumaturgic Corps. The brigadier turned to the commander of the city's Southwest Garrison—as the ranking Ankhanan officer present—and offered him the honor of giving the order himself.

  Before the commander could speak, brilliant white light burst from every window of the Courthouse, and a voice great enough to make the streets tremble beneath their feet demanded, in the name of the Ascended Ma'elKoth, that they withhold their hand.

  A moment later, Patriarch Toa-Sytell stepped through the shattered gap where the Courthouse doors had once been.

  "Rejoice!" he proclaimed. "I am saved, and the traitors taken! A new day dawns upon Ankhana! Rejoice!"

  In the confusions of spontaneous celebration that followed, the Social Police had some difficulty, initially, determining what had happened. The story, as they eventually pieced it together, was this: The Patriarch had been kidnapped by a rogue Monastic, one Raithe of Ankhana. This Monastic had held the Patriarch hostage, to drive away the Eyes of God, while his confederates arrived from the embassy. Then, they had all descended to the Donjon to free the prisoners.

  But the threat to the Patriarch had been their fundamental miscalculation. Even the oppressed former denizens of Alientown had too much patriotism in their hearts to sanction such an act; they had poured up from their hiding places in the caverns below the city to slay the prisoners, capture the Monastics, and seize the two ringleaders, Raithe and Caine.

  The brigadier did not find this tale fully satisfying. First, there were not nearly enough corpses. Well over a thousand human beings had been in the Pit; he suspected that the vast majority of them had somehow escaped the slaughter, perhaps through the caverns themselves, though he received sincere assurances from the subhumans that this was impossible.