Greyblade

by Andrew Hindle

  The Drake was not waiting for him, which was her usual habit when guests descended into her domain from the nightclub at least. Her absence was disconcerting, and the utter blackness of the cave was even more so. Galatine activated his pocket lantern and followed the tunnel around, down again, and out into the broad space where the HarvCorp beef processors could be heard rumbling away. From there, he picked out the passage that led to the main trove, and was finally able to switch off his lantern. The big crystal lights in the ceiling were muted, but enough to see by.

  The Drake was in Dragon-form, a great jagged serpentine heap lying in the valley between the mounds of communication equipment, as hot as the outside of an iron stove. Her back, scaly for the most part but horribly bare and vulnerable in places, was turned to him but he knew she was aware of his intrusion. You could not sneak up on a Dragon in its trove.

  Still, probably best not to leave it to chance.

  “Hello,” he called. “It’s me. Galatine.”

  The Drake vented a long, low, terrible growl. Galatine felt more heat radiating off the walls of the chamber and warming the air around him even further, but not intolerably. The growl was acceptance, but a warning of an extremely delicate and volatile mood. And when a Dragon was volatile, it wasn’t a figure of speech – it was a chemical reality.

  “Galatine the Gunsmith,” her voice echoed around the space like invisible fire. “Come and dig with me, awhile.”

  Hoping she didn’t actually intend to do any digging while he was in the same cave with her, Galatine crept in and started along the slowly-thickening whip of her tail. “What are we … digging for today?” he asked brightly.

  The Drake didn’t answer him, so he continued carefully up the inner edge of the crushed-electronics valley, past the Dragon’s great shimmering-hot flank. He stopped well within her periphery, making himself very conspicuous. He was used to dealing with Ogres, so making absolutely certain he wasn’t sneaking up on the deadly creature was second nature to him. Both Ogres and Dragons had very keen senses, of course … but again, it was better not to risk it. A man could survive being backhanded across a room by a startled Ogre – once – maybe. A Dragon was unlikely to give you that chance.

  He studied the screens that the Dragon was looking at. The usual mixture of cityscapes and aerial views, scrolling data feeds, shifting demographic representations.

  “I – we – Gabriel came by a few times,” he said, “to, uh, to make sure everything was working, and that it was all secure. We–”

  “Yes,” the Drake said. “I smelled the Archangel.”

  Galatine knew that talking about her imprisonment any further would be a bad idea. Whatever she’d been expecting of the authorities when they took her into custody – whatever any of them had been expecting – it had obviously taken a dark and terrible turn. She was allowing him to stand in her trove. That was more than enough. It was praise, and a sign of enduring friendship, that he didn’t feel he deserved.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out the data you and Sir Greyblade collated,” he persevered. “All the demographic and legal data. The cultural and historical and mass-behavioural markers pointing to Damorak involvement and–”

  “Yes?” the Dragon hissed.

  “None of it makes sense,” he said, pointing. “There are big problems related to our isolationism, and I’m absolutely certain the war had help getting started – from – from the Demon, or some other agents of the Darkings looking to make trouble for the Four Realms. It would be a new angle for them to try, maybe – although why they wouldn’t have tapped human fear and prejudice and tribalism a long time ago–”

  “They have tried,” the Drake said, “many times. Many times they were successful. But to enjoy this overlap of politics and paranoia, and the technology to enforce it…”

  Galatine nodded, smothering another stab of conscience. He had been pierced so many times by that old foe, it no longer even penetrated the scar tissue … and yet it hurt. “Yes,” he said, “there is definitely pollution from the guns, we can track that and it’s going to end in calamity. But the rest … look, you don’t need me to tell you humans are shitty animals, and we’ve lost our way without the Pinians to help us, but Damorak worship? A couple of swearwords and a dubious set of correlations doesn’t mean Karl has taken over Earth.”

  “You think the information lies, Galatine?” the Drake rumbled.

  “Maybe,” Galatine said, “maybe not. No,” he sighed immediately, “I don’t think it’s the information that’s lying to us. Maybe…”

  “Maybe the Burning Knight of Brutan the Warrior lies?”

  “That’s still something I’m trying to figure out,” Galatine admitted. The Burning Knights were difficult to read, because of all the propaganda and falsehoods that had been spread about them. He certainly didn’t think they were the shining and perfect bastions of nobility that knights of old were loved and revered as. They were – or had been – the backbone of the Pinian Brotherhood’s military, the elite, the shining public face.

  The Ogres were brute muscle; the Áea-folk from which the Knights were raised made formidable soldiers in their own right; the Gróbs provided numbers and technology and the endless resources of the Yatrodd planetary system; the Heaven-folk and Wudsoie and all the others contributed their might; and of course there had been the human priesthood, the terrible quasigods of Earth’s ancient and recent history. But the Burning Knights were the pinnacle of the Firstmade Brotherhood’s theocratic army in a way not even the Godfangs managed.

  And you didn’t win that many campaigns, get that sort of reputation, and hold that sort of position for so long by being noble and good all the time.

  Galatine needed to look no further than his own interaction with Greyblade to find the most dependable data he could hope for. One world-killer to another, I can hardly point fingers.

  “It doesn’t really matter at the moment,” he continued, “because getting the power network and the fountains, the relative field, all of that is going to be hard enough. But … it’s a bump in the road. Before I finalise the designs, I need to know exactly what we’re facing. If I build a trap for a Lapgod of Nnal and it turns out we’re up against a Demon and a couple of Damorak sociologists, it’s going to be like swatting a fly with a singularity grenade. It’ll take care of the fly alright, but–”

  Before he’d realised the great creature by his side was moving, she’d shifted and brought around one of her forelegs. Her gnarled claw wrapped around his body, trapping one arm by his side and leaving the other – with which he’d been pointing at a screen – waving futilely. The fingers, each longer and thicker than his leg, lifted him off the floor, and squeezed.

  He had expected her claw to be hot, but it was merely warm, the majority of the heat a comfortable radiating heat on the tiny scales on the inside of the digits. It was like a rough mosaic of sun-warmed tiles pressing his skin through his clothes. But more than anything, the massive talon was hard. Less like flesh, more like a machine made of stone. It pressed his chubby body fiercely.

  “Drake,” he gasped.

  “You will use your gift to help us,” the huge, fiery voice said, and Galatine’s rapidly-tunnelling vision saw the dark, jagged muzzle and the blazing yellow-orange eye slide into his field of view. “Will you not, Galatine the Gunsmith?”

  “Ye–” he lacked the breath to do anything but wheeze. The air carrying her words directly from her brimstone-flecked mouth was hot, a blast from a kiln. “Ye–”

  “You will not harm us. You will do what is right. You will undo what you have wrought and you will undo the works of your clever brothers and sisters. You will undo it all.”

  “Y–”

  “And when I need your help, when I need your brain, you will come here and you will help me dig,” the Drake was probably still hissing relatively quietly, but her voice was a roar in his ears.

  “…” he couldn’t even force a half-syllable from his throat.

 
; “You do not need to worry about this bump in the road, Galatine,” she went on. “I am looking at all of this data again. With … fresh eyes,” the enormous claw gave one final squeeze, and Galatine gasped out the final air in his lungs and felt his ribs creak, maybe even crack under his bruised flesh. She squeezed, and then let him go. He fell to his hands and knees on the surface of shattered electronic equipment, wheezing. It was as hot as desert sand.

  “I,” he finally managed to gasp, “I’m sorry, I didn’t – of course I’ll help–”

  “Good Intentions,” she said.

  “What – yes, we have good intentions,” Galatine rasped. “Of course we do.”

  “No,” the Drake said. She shifted, massive coils grinding against the trove, her foreclaw slipping back underneath her belly. Her head swung back up, eyes roving over the displays. “Go,” she said. “Ask the Archangel about Good Intentions. Go now.”

  Galatine counted himself lucky to have been told twice, and left. He walked, though. As quickly as he could, but walking.

  You didn’t run from a Dragon.

  GOOD INTENTIONS

  The TrollCagers had to wait another few interminable weeks before Gabriel deigned to make another appearance in Ogrehome. When he did, he was his usual grumpy self but at least didn’t evade their questions when they asked him where he’d been.

  Well, not much anyway. “I’ve been sacrificing my time and nerves to the cause,” he declared. “Hearings, depositions, inquiries, even an inquest – that’s different from an inquiry, by the way,” he added bitterly. “Different department.”

  “What are you talking about?” Magna asked.

  “In fact, the inquest had started out with the intention of putting me in front of a firing squad,” Gabriel went on, “and I’m not even exaggerating. I’ve had the same six-hour conversation eighteen times, and the same eighteen-hour conversation…” he grimaced. “Okay, one and a half times. But that was enough.”

  “Gabriel,” Athé appeared in the aisle. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing really,” Gabriel said. He sloped through to the kitchen, swung into a chair and shuffled his wings uncomfortably. “Sent out some feelers, planted some seeds. Got Kozura to agree to join us,” he concluded idly. Galatine, Magna, Ludi and Big Thundering Bjørn joined him in the small room. Athé and Philip also swooped in, just to fill the space to capacity.

  “Kozura?” Philip asked. “Municipal Representative Third Grade Agin?”

  “Oh, you heard about his promotion then,” Gabriel said.

  “You recruited one of the Archangelic court’s snakes?” Athé demanded.

  “No,” Gabriel said, and chuckled. “He kept his promise, came to Vanning with me … and stopped just inside the city limits. Told me he’d wait there until we got the sworn support of … another decisive asset,” he grinned, swung his long, leathery black feet onto the table, interlocked his hairy toes and cracked his toe-knuckles. “And I’m very close to getting that. I got Koz to agree to join us. Not to join us,” he raised a long finger. “Subtle difference.”

  “Even so–” Athé frowned.

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll all keep a close eye on him,” Gabriel said lazily. “Just keep in mind that anything he hears about will find its way back to the court.”

  “Okay, fine,” Galatine said, “now what about ‘good intentions’? The Drake said I should ask you about them.”

  “You’re spoiling all my surprises,” Gabriel complained.

  “Sorry.”

  “Good Intentions,” Gabriel said, “or, to give it its full name, the Good Intentions Refinery and Special Parts Manufactory. It’s on the Eden Road, abandoned when the Interdict was established. Built into the side of the second stair down. Between Earth and Hell. The road to Hell, you see.”

  “We get it,” Magna said. “Good Intentions. So it’s an abandoned factory.”

  “You wanted somewhere to make your fountains,” Gabriel said to Galatine, “and ship them up to Earth. This is it. It’s inside the Interdict, although it’s officially a Diabolic outpost, so technically it’s not even a violation of the Treaty.”

  “The fountains still need raw materials,” Galatine said, “and how are we going to ship them off the Eden Road, without attracting attention?”

  “Do I have to solve everything myself?” Gabriel muttered good-naturedly. “The raw materials will come from the mines and refineries of Hell. The completed components will be shipped not out to Earth proper, but to a system of caves in the underside of Earth.”

  “You refer to the Overhell,” Athé said.

  “Right, precisely,” Gabriel pointed at the half-Archangel. “It’s an extensive cavern system.”

  “Isn’t the Overhell patrolled by Interdict enforcement divisions?” Magna asked.

  “Not as much as you’d think,” Gabriel said smugly. “Good Intentions can deliver the parts straight into a couple of storage and staging areas in the Overhell that have never even seen a border patrol.”

  “Then we still need to distribute them all over the world,” Magna said, and glanced at Galatine. “If I’ve understood correctly.”

  Galatine nodded. “To very specific places. And did you say the raw materials were going to come from Hell? How is that going to work? These are extremely specialised metals and alloys, that only a handful of specialists in the world would recognise as not being living gun components – and even they might easily mistake them. Not only that, but … well, whether or not Good Intentions is a Diabolic outpost, Hell is outside the Interdict.”

  “I mean, while you’re solving everything…” Ludi said sweetly.

  “You could only manage it with permissions and oversight from a very high-level administrator,” Athé said.

  “Higher than Kozura,” Philip added, his Angelic face worried.

  “Higher than Kozura’s opinion of Kozura,” Frogsalt put in, and Galatine looked up in surprise to see the little Angel perched on Big Thundering Bjørn’s metal-clad shoulder. Athé also looked up, then pretended she hadn’t.

  “Exactly,” Gabriel said, and cracked his leathery toes again. “What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

  A MOMENT’S SYMPATHY

  (AN INTERLUDE, OF SORTS)

  For several thousand years, the Greater Burning Fweig Data Routing Station and its huge rich-mirror transfer panels had floated on the edge of the Four Realms environmental envelope. Once upon a time, the station had been the backbone of the communications network between Heaven, Earth, Hell, and the scattered settlements of Cursèd. As the station had revolved, its panels had caught the rays of the rising and setting sun and turned it into one of the brightest and most enduring lights in the Earth’s night sky.

  When the big data channels of the Eden Road had superseded the station’s usefulness, it had been decommissioned but preserved as a heritage satellite. Everyone was used to its faithful presence, appearing before the stars of the Playground came out to shine and not winking out until after they had vanished once more into the vault of space. It was grossly sentimental, but a little sentimentality never hurt anyone.

  When the veil came down and Earth, Hell and Cursèd were rolled into a solar system of spherical planets, the Greater Burning Fweig Data Routing Station was left behind on the outskirts of the gulf. The newly-forged planet Venus, however, occupied the same well-mapped and familiar point in the Earth’s heavens. This was a feat of cosmic architecture and orbital engineering that even the slightest analysis revealed to be astounding – indeed, practically impossible for the finite mind to even conceptualise, let alone implement.

  As luck would have it, of course, it was not the work of a finite mind.

  Limbo, furthermore, had a sense of humour. This is something that too few scholars credit the Ghåålus with having, but about which most Firstmades and other immortals agree. “Limbo’s sense of humour is like a Bharriom crystal,” Pinian Second Disciple Hindab the Sly once said. “You don’t see it very often, it’s not
for everyone, but it definitely exists,” to this the Pinian apocryphally added, “and wherever there’s a fuckalmighty swath of destruction spanning half a universe, you’ll probably find evidence of it in the rubble.”

  The flatworld of Hell had, for the most part, been wrapped around the surface of the planet Venus.

  Hell had never been what you would call balmy, but within hours it became obvious that the planet it had been reborn as was incapable of supporting life – and that evacuation was not possible. The temperature skyrocketed. The atmospheric pressure increased mercilessly. The wind rose through all sensible registers until it became a boulder-hurling global glacier of noxious air capable of scouring the surface bare. The atmosphere filled rapidly with toxins and corrosive agents. In less than a day, there was nothing alive on the surface of Venus. In less than two days, there was nothing alive beneath the surface, either.

  Before the capital city of Hell was burned off the face of the planet, the ten sentient beings who were capable of living on Venus gathered in a crisis meeting that critically underestimated the severity of the issue they were facing. These beings, of course, were undead. Specifically, they were Angels.

  It was a common misconception that Hell was a place of punishment, and that the Angels assigned to operate there were ‘fallen’ in some way – were even misidentified as Demons of the Adversary. There was some truth behind this misconception, but it was blown out of all proportion in the human religions that popped up like mushrooms on the carcass of the Pinian faith following the exile. The only humans in Hell were living humans – Hell was not a gathering-point for the souls of the dead. Not this Hell, in any case.

  The simple truth was, Hell was almost as much of a work in progress as the frozen grey world beneath it, not because it was newly-made but because it was old, and had been built before things had been properly planned. It was a challenging dominion for an Angel to administrate. Its geography was largely unsanctified, its mortals stubborn and independent, its climate abysmal. And instructions and oversight from Heaven were even patchier than they were on Earth. About all Hell had going for it was that it wasn’t Cursèd.