Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong) (39 page)

The room was sparsely furnished. The cot was finer than anything a villager might sleep on, but less lavish than any Citizens’ bed—except for maybe Aaron’s. That bastard would sleep on anything.

Past this room were the church’s stores. Klein led Michael to them.

Dust had settled on many things here. Most striking were the statues of the pagan gods which had been in the church’s archways when Mike and Klein had first settled Harpsborough. The Father opened one of the chests. At the bottom was a thin layer of spider eggs.

“This is all that’s left?” Michael said.

Klein nodded.

It wasn’t much.

Michael gave out a long whistle and shook his head. “How much longer?”

“A couple days. Maybe less.”

“Damn.”

Klein let the lid of the chest fall shut. “Julian’s food is gone. Our best hunters have chased after it into the Carrion. There are fewer devils than ever. Without Aaron, the hunters have almost no chance of finding any food.”

“They’re fine.”

“They haven’t caught a single devil since he left. Not one.”

“It’s only been a few days.”

“Wouldn’t have happened while Aaron was here.”

“They’ll learn.”

“Well, while they’re learning, the people will be starving. Even if they bring in twice what Aaron did, it won’t matter.”

Michael took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He sat down on the chest.

“Unless you can get out there and catch another spider,” Father Klein said.

“No.”

“You could give it another shot.”

“I knew where it was, Klein.”

Klein took a step back, running into one of the pagan statues. “What?”

“The expedition was a farce. I knew where the spider was. I led them there. I had found its lair when I was still Lead Hunter.”

Klein sat down next to him. “Then you’ve got to change things, Mike. You’ve got to convince the Fore to give food to the villagers. Even so, it might be tight.”

Mike rubbed the back of his head and frowned. “The Fore’s had a promise. Once they earn Citizenship, they’re never to be endangered again.”

“That was Charlie’s promise, not yours.”

“I told them I’d keep it, after I killed Charlie.”

“It’s not right for some to have so much, while others die.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Father Klein stood up and moved to exit. He held the curtain open, as if dismissing the First Citizen. “You had better try, and try hard. God is not here to disapprove of your actions, Mike, but your conscience is.”

Those words haunted Michael
as he walked back to the Fore. He went up the stairs in a daze and fell into his favorite chair. He blinked when he saw the chess game. He had forgotten it. Mancini had left, but not before making a damn good move. Michael searched the board to try and find a good reply, but without any luck.

The game seemed as hopeless as the city.

Arturus awakened when he heard Galen mention his name. He looked up to see his father speaking with Aaron.

“How long has it been?” Aaron was asking.

“Four days, about. Maybe six since Julian’s been gone.”

“Damn. What did you find?”

“There was another stone marker. That means the ritual will begin shortly.”

“Sure,” was Aaron’s response. “Take him, then.”

Avery sat up quickly. “You can’t let him take the boy. He’ll have no reason to come back.”

I’m going somewhere? To the ritual? What did I miss?

Aaron looked tired, pale. Maybe the wound on his shoulder had been deeper than he’d let on. “No, Avery. Arturus is Galen’s son. He has every right to take him along, and we have no right to keep him.”

“I don’t want to be abandoned here. None of
us
can walk.”

“Believe me,” Galen broke in, “if we don’t return, it will be because we are dead. Our only chance is for one of us to make it back in time to warn Harpsborough not to fill in the entrance. If I can get there and let them know that we’re here waiting to recover, then we can make it.”

Johnny nodded his head. “He’s right, Avery.”

Avery didn’t seem convinced. “Even if Galen comes back, I guarantee you the boy won’t be coming back with him.”

“And would you begrudge him that?” Aaron asked.

Avery thought about it and sat back. He crossed his arms and looked away.

“No,” Arturus said.

Galen looked at him oddly for a moment.

“No, you won’t go?” Aaron asked.

“No, I won’t leave you,” Arturus said. “This is the first important thing I’ve done in my life. I don’t want it to be marked by cowardice.”

Galen grunted.

“You’re a fool, then,” Avery said.

Arturus bit his lip. Avery was almost certainly right. Would he kill himself pretending at an honor that he did not have?

“We are what we repeatedly do,” Arturus said, quoting a lesson Galen had taught him years ago. “If I act a coward, then I am a coward.”

“Go, Turi,” Aaron said. “Those are Galen’s words that come spilling out of your mouth. Or your heart. You two will be back. I know it.”

Galen stood and walked to Arturus’ side. “Can you stand?”

Arturus did and was surprised at how little pain there was in his feet.

“Does it hurt?” Galen asked.

“Not badly.”

“Good. Get your boots on and follow me.”

They moved quickly through the Carrion’s wilds. Galen had never held him to a higher standard than he did now, chiding mistakes so small that Arturus often didn’t even know that he’d made them. With the ambient noise of the other hunters gone, Arturus began to recognize the signs of the devils. He could hear echoes of breathing, oddly amplified through the dark chambers. Footsteps, marked with the sounds of clawed feet scraping across hellstone, and then the ever so distant hound’s howl, also reached his ears. They were lucky they even survived the crawl from their old chamber to their new one, he realized. He had never imagined that there could be so many demons in one place.

Galen increased the pace, and Arturus started to feel the wounds reopening in his feet. He dared not complain. A fight now would surely be beyond him. There was no way that he could run.

They ducked low below an overhang, and Galen brought them into a small circular chamber.

“Are you okay?” Galen whispered.

Arturus nodded.

“Your feet?”

“Okay, maybe bleeding a little.”

Galen nodded, and handed him his canteen.

“I didn’t get to clean my weapons,” Arturus told him. “My pack is gone.”

“It’s fine. We’ll get to them later.”

“How can there be so many devils?”

“The Minotaur I sought,” Galen said. “He’s here. I looked all through the labyrinth to find him, and he’s been in the Carrion. He’s been here the entire time.”

No wonder there were so few devils around our home. The Minotaur is calling them here.

Galen led him down a shoot. The warrior scooted along on his buttocks. It was almost as narrow as the tunnel they had crawled through to try and escape the silverlegs. They emerged into a series of rooms with black crystal walls.

Not black. I can see through them. They just look black because everything is so dark.

Galen took him carefully through a maze of passages. The crystal walls stayed with them. Arturus found it difficult to remember to keep looking through them. Objects on the far sides of the wall were visible, but distorted by the crystal’s imperfections.

Galen raised a hand and crouched low.

Did he see something? Hear something?

Arturus stopped at the edge of a crystal wall. He peered through it and around it, but could see nothing. All was quiet. Galen hadn’t moved, though, so Arturus didn’t dare to do more than breathe.

Then he saw them, but they made no sound.

They are as quiet as death. As quiet as me, or Galen, or Julian. They have to be. They live here.

The mass of them, at least two score, rippled in Arturus’ vision as he watched them through the crystal.

They’ll see me if they only look.

But Galen had stopped them in darkness.

It’s lighter where they are, so I can see through and they can’t.

When they moved past the wall their forms coalesced into solid shapes. The first two moved in tandem, their padded boots touching the stone without disturbing the silence. Both had shotguns at the ready, held up near their chests. They were dressed the same way, with well fitted dark clothes that helped them blend in against the Carrion’s background. They each had pistols holstered at their belts.

They are in uniform. They are part of an army.

The men that followed wore lighter grey cloaks, much more easily seen than the two in front of them. They were decrepit things. Some were tall enough that their ankles, thin and knotty, could be seen beneath their cloaks. They were all bent at the shoulder, their right hands placed on the backs of the man in front of them. Their wrists also looked terribly thin. They moved as one, in step with each other.

Slaves.

They were arranged in ranks of four, sixteen deep. He could hear their cloaks swishing, just barely, with their every synchronized step. Two more of the warrior types came after them. They were so hard to spot when compared with the slaves that he had almost missed them.

Another shadow, blacker than the rest, and therefore just slightly more visible, came out from behind the crystal. It was a slender man, perhaps even an adolescent, moving gracefully within a velvet or silken black robe. The cloth clung to the man’s chest, which seemed oddly full.

A woman.

For some reason Arturus feared her more than the rest. He felt his breath quicken and his heart beat faster. She was as quiet as the warriors but walked with her shoulders held erect. Two more soldiers followed after her, equipped the same as the other four. The group seemed dangerous. Far more dangerous than the Harpsborough hunters.

As dangerous as Galen. Carrion born. Was Galen once one of these men?

He could no longer hear the slaves, either because they had moved farther on or because the beating of his heart was drowning them out.

The procession passed behind another crystal wall, and Arturus watched their shapes bend and distort before they finally disappeared. He waited for some time before Galen moved again.

I wish I were home.

They had not traveled far before Galen led him under another low stone overhang and into a small square room.

A narrow alcove came down from the ceiling of the chamber. It was so narrow that Galen could barely fit in it. He climbed it easily, putting his back to one wall and his feet on the other. Arturus peered upwards, but he couldn’t see any gap in the stones above.

Galen proved him wrong. The warrior steadied himself after he had climbed as far upwards as he could and pushed up against the ceiling. The rock there moved. Galen disappeared into the darkness. Casting a nervous glance behind him, Arturus followed.

The room he crawled into had no light at all. Galen, his face illuminated from below, was all that he could see—and even he disappeared after the stone was replaced.

“Rest for a moment,” Galen ordered.

Arturus searched blindly for a wall, his hands outstretched. He found one, and leaned against it. He wiggled his toes. His feet were feeling good. Better than he’d expected after climbing up the alcove.

“Are you tired?” he asked his father.

“I am,” Galen’s disembodied voice replied.

“Why don’t you show it? One of the hunters doubts you’re human.”

“It is not pride that makes a leader stoic, Turi.”

But you’re not the leader, Aaron is.

But Galen was right, if Aaron and he gave conflicting orders during a fight, the hunters would obey Galen.

“Why then?” Arturus asked.

“When hellhounds travel in packs they are vicious things. They will attack large groups of men, even when the hopes of winning are small. They will fight fiercely and to the death so long as their pack leader is strong. So it is with men.”

Arturus felt the sweat cooling on his body. His breathing had returned to normal. He had never felt so relaxed as he did now, wounded and blind, lost in the Carrion.

“People are different,” Arturus said.

“When there are no guns or arrows, entire armies will stop their fighting to watch their leaders duel. They wait to see whose champion will be victorious. To see whose hearts will be broken.”

It dawned on Arturus that it was for this reason that Galen was who he was. Why he never showed happiness and sadness in great degrees. He was too busy being a leader.

I don’t want that life.

But he had it already. Even as the hunters would follow Galen’s orders in battle, Arturus realized, they would follow him in peace—particularly if Galen and Aaron were gone.

Patrick died.

He realized now why the
man’s death had made him so sick. He could have stopped it. It had been his responsibility to find a way to quiet the man.

But I sat back, instead, waiting for someone else to find the solution. Looking to another for strength.

“I could have saved Patrick,” Arturus admitted aloud.

“Feel no guilt for that,” Galen told him. “Only make sure that you learn from your mistake. Are you rested?”

“I am.”

“Then follow me.”

Arturus crawled towards where Galen’s voice had been. He reached up above himself to see if there was room to stand.

There wasn’t.

He could hear Galen’s body armor shifting ahead of him. He followed the sound.

“Watch out. Wall,” Galen warned.

Arturus searched with his arm until he found the stone. “How far?”

“We are very close, it is best now that you be very quiet.”

“Stop here.” Came Galen’s whisper.

Arturus could feel strange vibrations through the rock. They were oddly rhythmic. A series of lesser tremors followed by two final deep thrums. He could almost hear them now, having felt them with his finger tips. He laid down his ear to the stone and listened.

Drums.

“Put this on,” Galen’s voice said.

Cloth hit Arturus’ shoulder.

He heard the sounds of Galen unbuckling his body armor. Arturus took off his own clothes. With his fingers, he inspected what Galen had passed him. He identified by touch a pair of rough pants, a shirt, and some sort of robe.

“Leave your weapons here,” Galen said. “I’ll have some on me, but they probably won’t fire, so try and keep out of trouble.”

“What’s happening?”

“We’re going to go down into the ritual. We may be a little late. I can hear the drums already. Slaves aren’t held to any specific order, though they usually pack together with the clan they came with. There are many clans. Keep out of trouble and wait for me to make contact. I’ll wave you out once I’ve found a friend, and we’ll come back up this way. If I show you my thumb, follow me. We may have to exit through a different passage. You’re dressed as a slave, so do anything anybody else tells you to. Try and keep out of notice. You’ll stand out a bit, though, since you’re healthier than the average slave. I’d dress you as a warrior, if you weren’t too young for it, and I’d leave you here if I was sure we could come back this way.