Greyblade

by Andrew Hindle

  “Let’s see,” Greyblade said, and they both looked up. Six metres above their heads, outlined by Greyblade’s sensors, there was a small square opening into a vertical shaft, and thick iron staples forming a ladder. The rope and climbing rig the humans had used to rappel down was still hanging on the lowest rung, but out of reach. Probably controlled by a remote device among the soldiers’ gear. “Reckon you can make it, old timer?” he asked idly.

  Gabriel snorted, and with a papery boom of his wings was abruptly hanging from the shaft opening. In a trice he’d folded his wings and vanished up into the access, hands and feet working in wiry synchrony.

  “Ready when you are,” his gruff voice echoed down, “old timer.”

  Greyblade chuckled, bent his knees and leapt.

  He caught the lowest rung one-handed and pulled himself up to grasp the next. The staples grated a little in the ancient concrete, but held his weight. Hand over hand and then step by step he pulled himself up, until he pushed out and into a crouch on the dusty floor of a long-abandoned transport chute. It was a tunnel, a dark rail running down the middle in great cracked segments similar to the ancient magnetic shuttle he’d ridden down the Eden Road. He looked back and forth along it, then down at the drainage or maintenance shaft they’d just climbed.

  “It’s this way,” Gabriel began to stump away along the tunnel. Greyblade shrugged and followed.

  They hadn’t gone far before Greyblade detected a life sign ahead.

  “Someone coming,” he said quietly. “Alone. Unarmed,” he paused. “Or armed with something outside my scope.”

  “I know,” Gabriel replied, “don’t worry, she’s friendly,” he grinned again. “And probably packing artillery you can’t detect.”

  After a few minutes, the gentle glow of a phosphorescent lamp filled the ancient tunnel and a single human figure appeared at its centre. She was small, almost as squat as Gabriel and even more solidly-built, and wore a frayed dark-blue coverall with a logo on the breast. Greyblade’s helmet dutifully identified the logo as TrollCage Storage, a long-abandoned Meganesian storage and handling subsidiary of – surprise surprise – Synfoss Incorporated. And technically owned and operated by Mercibald Fagin, the elusive Demon missing, presumed fled or destroyed, since the lifting of the veil.

  “Hello,” the woman said in cheerful Old Meganesian-accented Xidh. Always such a relaxed and reassuring accent. “Does my file mention that I’ve worked for the TrollCage for seventeen years without ever seeing a Demon?” she went on. “I’ve only overseen three actual long-term storage setups, come to think of it. It’s not what you’d call a demanding job.”

  Greyblade turned his visor minutely towards Gabriel.

  “The TrollCage people are friendly,” Gabriel reiterated, “if a bit weird. Most of the friendlies among the Vanning population are a bit odd.”

  “At least we don’t have to shave our foreheads,” she retorted. “Hi Gabe.”

  “Ludi,” Gabriel grunted. “Greyblade, this is Paraludi Aptidocles. Ludi, Sir Greyblade, formerly of the Ladyhawk.”

  “Pleasure, Sir Knight,” Ludi said, and actually bobbed a tiny curtsey. She didn’t seem all that serious about it, though. “The people of the Sacred City of Vanning thank you for your service,” Greyblade nodded politely, and Ludi looked around. “And speaking of the people,” she went on, “we should probably get back to the warehouse before the powers that be start to wonder where their attack dogs went – or the dogs wake up,” she half-turned and ushered them along the tunnel. “Get that soul out of its battery casing while we’re at it.”

  “I get the feeling that Ludi knows a bit more about us than we know about her,” Greyblade said as they shifted back into an easy jog. He pitched his voice politely so their guide could also hear that he was talking about her.

  “Then my play-acting paid off,” she said over her shoulder cheerfully.

  “Ludi is … insighted,” Gabriel said. “It’s not full-blown telepathy, precognition or anything like that, but it’s also more or less unrelated to the priestly gifts.”

  “We think it’s an emergent compensation method,” Ludi said, “a response to our environment. The soul power and waste seeping into the bedrock is interacting with parts of our brains that might otherwise have given us one or another of those gifts, and leaving us with this stunted excuse for head-explodey powers instead.”

  “Head-explodey powers are overrated,” Gabriel said. “It sounds fun until you realise how much shrapnel there is in a skull.”

  “Isn’t that when it gets fun?” Greyblade asked.

  “I sometimes just … know how things go,” Ludi said. “Especially where souls are concerned. I knew the team I followed down here were knocked out instead of killed, and I know Gabe came back up here with a full cell in his pocket instead of being happy to see me.”

  “As well as being happy to see you,” Gabriel protested. Ludi laughed.

  “And I could tell you were running a deep background check on me and my beloved employers,” she added to Greyblade, “although that’s more common sense than insight. We work for the enemy, because everybody does. But we work in a branch that has never really been the centre of corporate attention. Which is good, because your friends are really conspicuous.”

  “You’re sheltering the Ogres,” Greyblade said, as it all fell into place.

  “Yep,” Ludi said, “although that makes them sound more like poor helpless asylum seekers than you’d probably agree is appropriate.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And before you ask, yes, I am Sabine Aptidocles’s sister,” Ludi went on.

  “Ah,” Greyblade nodded, “the author-slash-historian. The name was familiar but I hadn’t bothered checking.”

  “She wrote The Last War of Independence 2580–2585 in ‘02,” Ludi said, “and it wasn’t exactly complimentary of the human condition. She was forced into hiding and so was the rest of her family. I drifted around until I ended up in the Sacred City, along with all the other trash that just wants to disappear.”

  “I prefer her earlier works, like The Veiled Earth,” Greyblade said.

  Ludi puffed a laugh. The tunnel was sloping now, their jog becoming a gentle climb. “She never could keep her judgements in check. I don’t even know where she is most of the time these days. Osrai is responsible for keeping her family hidden, and Gabriel here helps. The Milkies really want to talk to her over some of the case studies she did.”

  “Is that why you didn’t go to Heaven?” Greyblade asked. “Too many Milkies guarding the stairs?”

  Ludi chuckled again. “No, they’re crazy but harmless. The truth is, I’m on too many other lists,” she said carelessly. “Osrai could get me there, but … this is my home, Sir Knight. Children run away from home. Adults…” she laughed a laugh of astonishing bitterness. “Adults suffocate on the smoke while trying to salvage just one more precious family heirloom from the burning wreckage.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Speaking of being on lists,” Ludi went on brightly, “I’d suggest we get you drunk and back into Dumblertown as soon as possible.”

  “Drunk?” Greyblade echoed.

  “Your name has popped up as having been involved in the operations that took place tonight,” Ludi said. “Osrai’s managing it and the Drake will keep an eye on the rest, but … it seems like someone was interested in your arrival, and they’ve been watching Gabe as well, as much as it’s possible to do so. And even if they don’t know the full extent of the Drake’s network, they know it’s a front, so they’re going to be paying attention to the Drake’s club, as well as Gabriel’s place. Watching for any sign you’re causing trouble.”

  “I guess breaching the alien quarter boundaries would count,” Greyblade said. They reached a maintenance staircase – reassuringly, the back-trail of the soldiers continued along the broken transport line, suggesting Ludi had cut in from an unknown access point – and started up.

  “Yeah,” Ludi said. “But t
hey already pegged you as a potential troublemaker when you arrived. Your rank, training, history … just your identity itself makes you an undesirable element down here,” she grinned and clapped him on the back as he passed her and began ascending the stairs. “So obviously we’re going to help you as much as we can.”

  “I didn’t get the impression they were really all that interested in me when I passed through the checkpoints,” Greyblade remarked. “I suppose that was intentional.”

  “Well, let’s not give the transit police too much credit,” Ludi advised. “Chances are they really weren’t interested. But all that data ultimately filters through to someone who is.”

  Greyblade looked around. “I guess you’ll have to make a new tunnel,” he said.

  “Probably,” Ludi replied carelessly. “Another curve a few hundred metres up to intersect another storm drain. They’ll never find it, unless they bring gear down to locate more pockets. And even then…”

  Ludi led the way up some stairs and through some abandoned chambers of dusty electronics and maintenance gear evidently left behind when the transport system was closed.

  “And why drunk?” Greyblade prompted.

  “Well, they’re going to be wondering where you went,” Ludi replied. “Osrai will put together a nice untidy pub crawl trail for you, with plenty of semi-legal back rooms and contraband alley-diversions. It’ll explain why you went into the Drake but then fetched up elsewhere, with no idea what happened in there or any memory of the raid. You left before it kicked off.”

  “And a bit of tolerable lawlessness, in service of my fond memories of lost glory and old campaigns, will allay their suspicions about anything else I might be doing,” Greyblade said appreciatively. “Which I guess just leaves us with the question of how you’re going to get me drunk.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we have something lying around,” Ludi said blithely.

  “Ogre liquor hurts my teeth,” Greyblade warned.

  “A keg of old Synfoss will probably do it,” Gabriel suggested.

  “Gabriel, please,” Greyblade protested. “I have my reputation to consider.”

  “What reputation you have will only be enhanced by this,” Ludi said.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ludi shrugged, stopping at the foot of another metal staircase. “The Burning Knights of Brutan the Warrior were known merrymakers.”

  “We were?”

  “Oh yes,” Ludi said, preceding them up the stairs. “Perverts, too.”

  “Hold on,” Greyblade said over the top of Gabriel’s attempts to silence the woman. He pushed past the Archangel and touched her arm, and they stopped in the middle of the staircase. She was two steps up, so they were almost face-to-visor. “What?”

  “The Burning Knights had dark and filthy appetites,” Ludi said, “which was why they were always the weapon of last resort for the Pinians. Their passions could only be met on the battlefield, and in peacetime they were notorious predators on the civilian population. Wolves among the sheep.”

  “Well metaphors aside, the only thing a Burning Knight has ever wanted to do with a sheep in peacetime is cook and eat it,” Greyblade said, turning and favouring Gabriel with a pointed tilt of his visor. Gabriel grimaced. “That’s basically it during wartime too, come to think of it,” he went on. “Anything else you think I should know about human opinion of the Burning Knights,” he inquired, “before I say ‘fuck all of them’ and go home?”

  “Oh get moving,” Gabriel gave Greyblade a little shove. “As if anything was going to stop you squaring off against Karl the Bloody-Handed.”

  “Karl the what?” Ludi squeaked.

  “Oh,” Greyblade said mildly, “did your insight not tell you that?”

  Ludi laughed, but it sounded a little hysterical.

  They passed through another dusty utilities chamber, this one sporting a large, ancient pipe and locking wheel on one side. Then Ludi led them up another set of stairs, and Greyblade was actually slightly surprised to find himself stepping out into the muggy late-night-early-morning air of another poorly-maintained street. If his sensors hadn’t been keeping him informed of their depth and approximate location, he would have been thoroughly turned around by now.

  “So this is Vanning,” he said, looking about. The street was much like the one on which Gabriel lived in Dumblertown, if slightly less built-up and more commercial-industrial. The door they’d emerged from – a plain metal affair with a stencilled sequence of numbers and a Vanning city emblem in faded paint – was stuck between two abandoned repair shops. They seemed to offer maintenance and spare parts for electronic entertainment systems and vehicles, respectively, that must have been decades out of vogue.

  “The Sacred City,” Gabriel agreed in a low voice as he stumped past them and Ludi shut the door with a rattle.

  “It’s nice,” Greyblade said mildly.

  “Yeah yeah.”

  “Is it safe for us to be on the streets?” Greyblade asked, although his helmet was assuring him there were no immediately noticeable organic observers in the surrounding buildings, and the only inorganic ones were as outdated as the machinery in the nearby shop window. “I’m quite conspicuous.”

  “It’s safe enough,” Gabriel replied. “We’re not going far.”

  Ludi led them along the street, around a corner and into a broad stretch of cracked pavement in front of a large, nondescript warehouse. The sun-bleached sign above its corrugated loading door was the same as the one on Ludi’s coverall.

  “TrollCage Storage,” Greyblade read unnecessarily, out of appreciation for the company tagline that was printed beneath the name. “‘In the Belly of the Beast’. I like it,” he turned to Gabriel. “Less than two hours until sun-up,” he reported quietly, as if the Archangel didn’t know. “Will you be … ?”

  “It’s fine,” Gabriel said. “I told you, most of the Sacred City is consecrated. That includes the warehouse.”

  Ludi started across the cracked pavement, which was still radiating heat from the previous day. While Old Meganesia’s climate had softened since Earth’s emergence from exile as a ballworld, the landmass was still very much the sun’s stomping ground most of the year. The actual orbital patterns and attitude shifts were a complex series of equations … and now that he knew a bit more about what was going on under Earth’s skin, Greyblade couldn’t help but feel distinctly uncomfortable about that seething warmth no matter how natural his sensors told him it was.

  He hurriedly joined the human and the Archangel at the smaller personnel access door. The top and sides of its metal frame, he couldn’t help but notice, were dented and battered in patterns he found immediately and endearingly familiar. They were the dents made by large, careless hominids with poor memories for how low and narrow standard doorways were.

  “Welcome to Ogrehome,” Ludi said, and pushed the door open.

  IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

  Greyblade had been half-expecting the warehouse to be cold, but it wasn’t much cooler than outside. He stepped in and looked around.

  The interior of the TrollCage warehouse was well-ordered but crowded, neat wide rows of wooden and metal crates rising from the small open entrance space but none of the rows reaching more than head-height. The ceiling, skylights just beginning to show the faintest pre-dawn light, was also fixed with big phosphorescent blocks that lit up the boxes with a yellowish illumination that was warm and far more pleasant than most of the phosphos he’d seen since arriving on Earth. The walls were lined with shelves for smaller items but they were almost entirely unoccupied, and if it weren’t for a thin layer of dust-retardant chemical that told him they’d been there a decade or more, Greyblade would have assumed the objects were brand new.

  “What’s in all the boxes?” he asked.

  “The TrollCage takes pride in protecting the privacy of its customers,” Ludi recited lazily, not looking up from the door she was rattling and jerking behind them. “Plus it’s mostly junk. Da
mn it,” she kicked the door back into place and pulled a bolt across. “There. Head on through, make yourselves at home and I’ll warm up the Exorcist.”

  “The Exorcist?” Greyblade glanced at Gabriel, who was already loping away into a broad aisle between the stacks.

  “It’s what they call the soul extraction and venting equipment,” Gabriel said with a disdainful snort. “Where’s Galatine?” his voice echoed from walls and ceiling, and Greyblade’s visor considerately laid a faint outline of him against the crates based on the Archangel’s triangulated location.

  “He’s probably asleep in the loft,” Ludi replied, passing Greyblade and beckoning him along another aisle. “It is still only four in the morning.”

  Greyblade looked up in the direction she’d glanced and saw that the rear wall of the warehouse, perpendicular to the aisles, had a metal staircase ascending to a cobbled-together-looking level built into the wall and ceiling. This, he assumed, was the loft.

  “We appreciate you coming to meet us,” Greyblade started, when he was interrupted by a rattling crash with overtones of musical jingle from somewhere beyond the crates and down below, followed by a familiar and beloved roar.

  “You cheaty fuck!”

  Greyblade laughed, surprised at the depth and purity of his joy. “I know that voice.”

  “They’re playing air hockey,” Ludi revealed. “Magna built them an industrial table they haven’t managed to smash yet. She still makes them leave their clubs resting against the wall when they play, though. Just to be safe,” she led him to the end of the aisle where Gabriel was already waiting at the base of the left staircase. Where the metal frame met the floor, Greyblade now saw, it continued on down into the concrete foundation. Ludi veered off and headed along the rear wall where two more doors were set beneath the staircase. “Exorcist,” she added, pointing to the first. “When you’re ready.”

  “Who there?” the massive voice rumbled from the basement.

  “I’ll go first,” Gabriel grinned, and flashed away down the stairs.