Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong) (3 page)

“But—”

“Quiet, Turi. I said I’d think about it.” He tested the liver with one of his knives, cutting into the center of it. “Get your plate.”

Arturus walked over to the supply closet and picked out his favorite hellstone plate. It had a chip on one of its square edges from where he had dropped it years ago. The grain of the plate’s rock swirled towards the center, making a dark spot which Arturus pretended was a girl sitting by a river. He offered it up to Rick, who delivered to him his portion of hound liver and flatbread.

Arturus’ heart sank. Rick had managed to burn the bread. Arturus stayed quiet, not wanting to anger his father while he was in the middle of making such an important decision. He sat back down and waited.

Rick was frowning as he made his way to the table, deep in thought. Arturus watched him intently.

“Don’t stare, Turi,” Rick said as he took his seat.

Arturus looked at the hound liver. It was covering up the girl on the river. He wrapped it in the flatbread and started to eat it with his fingers. The liver was hot enough to burn his tongue a little.

He dared another glance at Rick.

“Can’t let you go,” his father said. “How would you make the trades?”

“I’ve watched Galen trade hundreds of times! I know who to speak to and how much to offer.”

Rick took a bite of the flatbread and chewed it thoroughly. “They’ll try and cheat you. They might think you are an easier mark than Galen.”

“I’ll be smart. Besides, I won’t take much if you don’t want me to.”

“You wouldn’t even know who to go to.”

“Massan has shells, he always does, and he won’t try and cheat me,” Arturus insisted. “I can always trade at the Fore if he doesn’t.”

Rick sighed, putting down his flatbread. “There’s a lot of trouble you can get into at the village. I don’t know if I feel safe with you alone in Harpsborough.”

“I’ll just do the trades, I swear. Then I’ll come right back. Besides, if I get in any trouble, I’ll go to a Citizen. They all know me.”

“You could get lost on the way.”

“I won’t! I know how to get there. I can just head towards the Kingsriver until I get to the road.”

Rick smiled and shook his head. “Perhaps you’re right, Turi. I do need help today, and I suppose it’s about time that you get some experience being out there on your own.”

“Really?”

Rick laughed and nodded.

Arturus felt like hugging him. “Thank you! I’ll do the trades right, I promise.”

“Go get your bag. I’ll help you pack. The barrel we need is for an AR-15, so you want to keep that part as private as possible. I don’t need rumors of us using 5.56 sp
reading around Harpsborough.”

“I’ll be careful,” Arturus said, his heart beating with excitement.

“And make sure you get a good deal, understand, or when Galen finds out he won’t let you go to Harpsborough on your own again until you’re old and sodden.”

“But you said I can’t get old!”

“Exactly the point, my boy, exactly the point.”

Arturus hurried back to his room to gather his things.

“Stay alert,” Rick told him as he left. “Don’t forget to check the shadows twice before you enter every room.”

“I will.”

“I’m serious, Turi, we don’t need a dyitzu getting a hold of you. And don’t get lost. If you do, just find a river and wait for a hunter.”

“I’ll be careful!” Arturus said.

Rick gave him a serious look. “Keep your eyes peeled, and remember to announce yourself to the guards. People sometimes shoot first and look second.”

“Of course I will.”

“And don’t spend too much time with that Alice girl. She’s trouble for you—well, go on. And be careful!”

“
I will,” Arturus said as he crossed over the river’s bridge, his feet thumping over the woodstone structure.

He stopped on the far side and turned around, suddenly unsure of himself. Rick had also paused. His father smiled sadly, waved goodbye, and then walked back into their home chambers.

I can do this.

Arturus steeled himself with a deep breath and left the red river room.

He’s so paranoid sometimes.

Arturus began his journey, moving slowly and carefully through the labyrinth.

The next few sets of chambers were fashioned out of blue stone. Their ceilings, supported by a varied array of arches and pillars, soared above him. The light came from the floor of these rooms so that the walls darkened as they rose. The floor itself was an almost neon color, and it gave his clothing a cooler cast. He watched his own shadow march across the ceiling.

I better look where I’m going.

Dyitzu had been scarce, but that didn’t mean he had to go out of his way to make sure he’d get eaten by one. As he traveled through the labyrinth, he imagined one of those devils—black eyed, hunched over, long clawed—finding him while he was staring at his own shadow. It would rip him apart. Then he would be dead, his soul descending to a level of Hell even worse than the one he was on now, and Rick would be alone. For some reason leaving Rick abandoned scared him even more than his own death.

Just head towards the Kingsriver, you’ll see the rustrock road.

He froze.

He’d heard the scuff of a shoe. It had sounded like it was coming from one of the dark corridors which led into this chamber. He moved to one corner of the room and crouched, peering intently into the blackness. Gingerly, as quietly as he could, he drew his pistol, shifting slightly as he did so.

He heard the sound again.

Wait, is that my own foot?

He jiggled his boot a little.

I’m an idiot.

He holstered his pistol and stood back up, feeling slightly relieved.

Have I been here before?

The stones of this room were frighteningly unfamiliar. Should he backtrack to another room that he knew? He had never seen a pillar like this before. Or had he? It was straight until its midpoint, where it began to lean off to one side until it melded into one of the walls.

But he had been through this chamber before, perhaps a thousand times. He remembered playing with Galen by that pillar as a child.

My mind is playing tricks on me. It’s because I’m afraid.

If Rick had known how badly this trip was going to go, he probably would have forbid it. Arturus allowed his breathing to slow. It did not take long for his fear to play itself out, and when it was gone,
he felt he was one step closer to the person that Galen had trained him to be.

He knew the way, so he pressed on towards the Kingsriver.

The rooms became smaller, and the stone dulled from the soft blues to a red which reminded Arturus of dried blood. Light ceased to come from the floor and took on its normal ethereal and sourceless quality.

After a few more minutes, he came to the road.

Halfway there!

The road was a series of rivets cut into the stone. Another type of rock, which Galen called rustrock, had been laid inside the grooves. It was a brown stone, almost black in color.

Arturus began to follow the road.

Galen had told him that if you spent the time to pry out the rustrock, then the rivet would heal in a few decades. Arturus didn’t like to think of stone healing. He had argued about this with Galen. Galen had taken him to a wall in his own chamber and made a chip in it with a few chisel strikes.

“Tell me boy, in three years’ time, that I have lied to you.”

Galen hadn’t been lying.

Arturus adjusted the pack on his shoulders. It was almost completely full. He wished that Rick hadn’t given him so much latitude in the trading, both because it was heavy and also because it gave him plenty of excess to be cheated with.

They don’t have to know how much you have.

The riveted road forked, and a large violet stone, about two feet tall, was lying along one of the paths. Arturus thought that it might just be his imagination, but the air from that path felt cooler. Perhaps there was a river down that way. Violet stones such as this one had been placed by Rick, he knew, to warn travelers on the road not to take this fork. Paths marked by such stones led to the Carrion. Arturus knew better than to go near there. The place was thick with devils, and any man who survived in such a Hell was not likely to be friendly. Rick and the people of Harpsborough had spent many years barricading most of the main pathways that led to the Carrion, but Galen had warned him that there were still many more open.

“You cannot block out a whole region,” Galen had told him. “Always there will be a hidden passage, perhaps a corridor or door which you missed. The enemy might go high or low or left or right, but they will find a way.”

Arturus hurried past the fork, taking extra care to make sure that his footsteps were silent.

He felt much safer after he put a couple of turns and stone walls between himself and the Carrion path. In fact, the farther he traveled down the road, the more comfortable he felt altogether. It was secretly thrilling to be traveling the wilds of the labyrinth on his own. He imagined that this must be how Galen felt on his many long hunts.

His sweat was making his clothes stick to his body and his own movement through the air gave him a ghost of a chill, even in the temperate labyrinthine air. He stopped when he realized that the village’s guards would be in the next chamber.

I made it!

He remembered that he needed to hail them before he entered. Arturus didn’t think that they’d fire at him, but Rick had been pretty worried about it.

“It’s Arturus, don’t shoot,” he said, his voice sounding high even to his own ears.

He rounded the bend and saw two Harpsborough guards leaning back against the stone wall that stood by the village chamber’s entrance. Set against the wall beside them were two model 700 Remington rifles, which Arturus knew was the weapon used by most of the Harpsborough hunters. One of the two wore a hoodie, and the other had his arms folded.

“Well, look who just came out of the wilds beaming like a flashlight,” the guard in the hoodie said.

“You broke your leash, boy?” asked the other. “Where’s Rick and Galen?”

“I came by myself,” he said proudly.

He had meant to say it in an offhand manner.

“Aren’t you the adventurous one?” one guard laughed.

“Leave the boy alone, Avery. The wilds are dangerous.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Arturus said.

“Then maybe you should have been.”

Arturus felt childish and glum. He had meant to ask them about which traders were in, but he ducked his head instead and walked past the guards.

Why do they have to be like that?

Arturus pushed through into Harpsborough. He forgot his embarrassment almost immediately. Though he had been to Harpsborough many times, the fact that he was here alone gave the village a sense of freshness. The ceiling, vast, and made of the same arched and bricked pattern as the one over the Mighty Thames, hung nearly a hundred feet over his head. Most of the buildings were squat, barely five feet tall, and made of a mixture of stone and blankets. Life was as permanent here as could be found almost anywhere in the labyrinth, so many of Harpsborough’s denizens had taken the time to add colored blankets, beads, or some other touch to personalize their homes.

There were two proper buildings which dwarfed the rest. One was the church, whose twin, crucifix-topped steeples were nearly high enough to touch the bricked ceiling, and the other was the Fore.

The Fore was the supreme building of Harpsborough—a tremendous four story structure with its first few levels almost entirely intact. Only the fourth floor had devolved into the hodge-podge stone and blanketed mess which characterized the rest of the village’s architecture. Harpsborough’s most powerful people, called Citizens, lived in that building. Arturus longed to stand on one of its third story balconies and look down upon the town. To be a Citizen, to not have to hunt or wor
k
. .
.
it would be a dream. Then he could invite Alice to come dine with him, and they would eat as the Citizens did on those balconies. They would speak of petty things, like which vines grew the sweetest sinfruit, and which stones were the best for sculpting.

The town seemed deserted, and none of the traders Arturus was looking for had their wares on display.

They must either be out or sleeping. It’s probably not morning yet.

He caught glimpses of som
e of the slumbering Harpsborough people through the cracks around their door blankets. Since light was a constant in the chamber, there was no mandated night or day, and people pretty much slept when they felt like it. Galen had told him that villagers tended to accidentally synchronize their sleep patterns.

“Be wary of the man who walks during the night in a good city,” Galen had said, “and seek him out in an evil one.”

Like I’d even get a chance to see another city.

Arturus spotted one man lying up against the Fore, his open eyes locked into a thousand mile stare.

“Excuse me, sir,” Arturus asked him quietly so as to avoid waking anyone who might be sleeping inside the building, “is Massan i
n
. .
.
do you know? I was looking for some shotgun shell
s
. . .”

The man wasn’t answering, and Arturus noticed that his eyes were so bloodshot that there wasn’t any white around their irises.

Catatonic.

Galen had taught him that this happened to some people. They would become so depressed that
they ceased to respond to anyone or anything. The villagers called it the stilling sickness. Galen had even related to him horror stories where such men were eviscerated by demons without even blinking. The stilling was a village thing, Arturus guessed. He had certainly never felt sad enough that he could have his bowels spilled without fighting back.

Arturus waved his hands in front of the man to make sure.

Yeah, he’s gone alright.

Arturus remembered him
vaguely. Galen had traded something to him for some wooden cups a few years back.

Arturus didn’t remember him acting any differently than the other people here, which he found disconcerting.

What if this happens to Alice?

She would still be inside her hovel, he figured. He stopped to look at it on his way to Massan’s tent. The cloth that covered the building’s ceiling was blue and worn, and she hadn’t beaten the dust out of it in some time. She’d hung an odd ornament from the stick archway which supported her door blanket. It looked like a spider web made of yarn, surrounded by a wooden circle. Caught within its strands were a few pebbles instead of people. She was probably inside that hovel, sleeping. He imagined her curled up on her side, her eyes closed.

Maybe someone else will tell her that I was here by myself. That I didn’t need Galen or Rick or anybody.

He spotted Massan’s tent and moved on towards it.

Or maybe she’ll come out while I’m trading.

That thought excited him. He would look very grown up, he decided, haggling for shotgun shells all on his own.

“Oh, I’m just picking up some shells,” he might tell her nonchalantly. “We’ve been running a bit low lately.”

And then they would talk about something different entirely, and she would laugh at his jokes.

Arturus was startled by a noise from above him. When he looked up he saw a man standing on one of the Fore’s third floor balconies.

It’s Michael Baker. He’s up early.

The First Citizen and leader of Harpsborough gave Arturus a slight nod and a smile before disappearing back into the Fore.

If he’s awake, surely that must mean others will be getting up soon.

Arturus’ pack seemed to get heavier as he came up to Massan’s tent-house. He slapped his hands a few times against the door blanket which had been made out of dyitzu hide. Galen would have approved of the accoutrement. The man liked to make things out of the environment around him. He said everything else was cheating, since you could never be sure you could replace it.

Arturus noticed that his hands were shaking.

Why am I so nervous? Either I get the trades right, or I don’t.

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice answered.

That would be Kara, Arturus decided. She had been sleeping with Massan for a while now. Arturus had been a little surprised at the matchup since Massan seemed so ugly. Galen had told him that humor and riches could go a long way.

“Arturus, ma’am,” he responded, speaking loudly enough to be heard through the door blanket, but softly enough—he hoped—to avoid waking any neighbors. “Is Massan here?”

“He went out to the river to get some water. He’ll be back in just a minute.”

“No problem. I’ll try and meet him by the guards.”

First Citizen Michael Baker eased himself down onto the Persian cushions which guarded his body from the brutal rigidity of his stone chair. After settling himself, he took a sip of his bloodwater. Across the Fore’s parlor room was his sycophant, Davel Mancini, the brewer of the sharp, sweet concoction which he drank.

“Anybody awake out there?” the Brewer asked.

“Just a hermit trader. The village will be up soon, though.”

The pair sat together in the Fore’s parlor, located on the third story next to Michael’s own sleeping chambers. The lavishly decorated room held more wealth than all of the rest of Harpsborough combined. The stone couch and two chairs which furnished the room were so finely sculpted that the people of Harpsborough believed it had been Hell’s architect, not man, who had chiseled them. Each of the stone pieces was covered over in an assortment of earthen hued blankets and pillows. A set of shelves, full of rare and ancient guns, wine bottles and devil hides, adorned the wall across from Michael along with a full length mirror and a running water clock.

Michael regarded the ruby red bloodwater through his crystal glass. “Mancini, this is certainly smooth. Tart in a good way. The aftertast
e
. .
.
has somethin
g
. .
.
odd. Sinfruit? You’d be able to trade this to the Pole.”

“I might, when this famine passes,” Mancini said after drinking from his own glass. “Which hermit
is about?”

“Rick and Galen’s boy.”

Mancini stood up and walked across the dyitzu skin which carpeted the floor.

The room was illuminated by a pair of three foot tall stone spheres which could be covered by a varying number of blankets in order to control the level of light in the room. At the moment, a few thick blankets covered them to give the parlor a soft, homely glow. Mancini, who had despised light for as long as Michael had known him, added another pair of blankets for good measure.

Michael Baker stared at the draped spherical stones until the Brewer interrupted his thoughts.

“Hunters came
home empty handed last night,” Mancini said, sitting back down on the couch across from Michael.

Michael let his gaze return to one of the orbs. “Second night in a row. Not sure what it means.”

“Maybe it means we should tell Aaron and his hunters to hunt up the Thames,” Mancini said, “and tell Galen and Rick to hunt somewhere else.”

“They’ve always hunted there.”

“Hidalgo always hunted on the far side of the Kingsriver, and we demanded he hunt farther out.”

Michael shook his head. “Well, that’s different.”

“Oh?”

“There’s actually dyitzu on the Kingsriver.”

Mancini paused before the parlor room’s mirror long enough to pull a strand of his thick black hair behind his ear. “Galen and Rick never seem to be wanting.”

“They’re just one family. One devil for them is enough for a month. We’d go through that in half a day. Maybe Aaron’s right. Maybe Hell is emptying out. Maybe we really should start sharing the Fore’s food.”

“Would have never happened when you were Lead Hunter, Mike. Let ‘em starve.”

Michael’s gaze snapped back to Mancini. The after image of the orb blocked out the Brewer’s face. He blinked a few times until he could see the man, but Mancini’s expression revealed nothing.

Michael stood up from his chair, suddenly restless, and wandered across the carpets. He pushed through the door tapestry, making his way back onto the third floor balcony. He turned to see Mancini following, protecting his glass of bloodwater from the curtain with his forearm.

Michael Baker looked down from the balcony onto his sleeping city.

“What would Aaron know anyway?” Mancini asked.

“Nothing, but it doesn’t matter. The hunters listen to him.”

“They blame you for it, though, just because you’re up here safe with us.”

“I served my time,” Michael said. “Has Aaron looked dead into the eyes of a Minotaur? Has he lain for twenty nights and twenty days upon the banks of Lethe, nursing the wounds made by its horns? I built bonds of blood with many of those hunters out there. I’m the one who trained Aaron. What’s he done? Well, he’s led the hunters through their leanest years yet and
made sure there are fewer dyitzu month after month.”

Mancini sipped his bloodwater thoughtfully. “They’ve forgotten you, Mike.”

“Well, of course they have,” Michael said. “Barely any of the hunters I used to lead are even alive anymore, and the rest of them have spent more time under him now than me.”

“He says you’re causing the problems. He says it’s your restriction on how far they can go out that’s starving Harpsborough. He even says that, if it were not for your direct orders, he might be willing to enter the Carrion to get food.”