A Quantum Mythology (5 page)

The Hellaquin retrieved his bow from where he’d hidden it in the bushes by the iron railings surrounding Soho House and walked over to stand by the Knight. To the south-west the forest of chimneys, steeples and spires above soot-stained brick almost filled the landscape as they looked back at Birmingham. Even now, workers would be starting to get up and break their fast before heading to toil in foundries, mills and workshops, powered by coke from Warwickshire and Staffordshire, and fed by iron from Sweden and Russia.

But the Knight wasn’t staring at the city. He was staring at the massive building that was the Manufactory, just below them on South Hill. The Hellaquin started flexing his bow.

‘He’s down there, isn’t he?’ the Knight said. The Hellaquin nodded. Boulton had wanted to look into the possibility of mass manufacturing Silas Scab’s clockwork. Silas had asked to see the Manufactory and Boulton asked his foreman to show him around. That was early yesterday evening. As far as Boulton knew, Silas had looked around the Manufactory and then returned to the city.

‘He knows we’re coming,’ the Knight said.

‘How?’ the Hellaquin growled.

‘The blood magic. He sensed me and destroyed the “devils” I sent out into the night.’ He said the last bit sarcastically.

‘He’s strong, then?’

The Knight just nodded. ‘I kill him, you understand me?’

The Hellaquin met the other man’s blue eyes and held their stare. ‘What is this man to you?’

The Knight didn’t answer. Instead he spun on his heel and headed down the hill towards the Manufactory.

The inside of the Manufactory was a cavernous space full of noise but empty of people. Massive machinery moved of its own accord, powered by glowing furnaces. Huge copper kettle-like boilers stood here and there in various states of assembly. The flickering gaslights threw strange shadows across the filthy stone floor and the air was unpleasantly hot and humid from the venting steam. The Hellaquin didn’t sweat any more, but his clothes, particularly the heavy leather coat he wore as armour, were very quickly soaked through.

I think when they’ve calculated all my sins I’ll be sent to a place like this
, the Hellaquin thought as he stalked deeper into the Manufactory, a flesh-tearing broad-head arrow nocked on the bow. Stalking or not, he did not feel like the hunter.

There was movement above him as something crossed in front of one of the windows on the third floor. The movement looked wrong, somehow, too jerky to be natural.

Even over the noise of the machinery the explosion of the pistol shot was loud and the muzzle flash momentarily bathed the interior of the building in a hellish orange glow. The Hellaquin tracked the source of the noise. One of the Knight’s pistols was still smoking.

The Hellaquin heard the chains first. He had a moment to realise the shadows around him were growing, then brought the bow up and loosed the arrow, relying on instinct rather than aiming.

The Hellaquin knew he had hit the thing falling from the ceiling beams of the Manufactory. His gift allowed him to hear through the noise of the machinery and he heard the sound of flesh torn open as the arrow passed through his attacker’s body. It landed in front of the Hellaquin. Whatever it was had chains wrapped around its wrists and ankles, but was otherwise shaped like a man. It moved towards the archer in jerky fashion, as if the chains were controlling it, though the Hellaquin could see that this was not the case. The Hellaquin realised the creature was supposed to look like the kind of puppets the Italians called marionettes. The wound in its chest was certainly mortal, but it kept coming. All over the Manufactory the Hellaquin could hear chains rattling, and he was aware of other things dropping from the beams running under the ceiling.

The Hellaquin loosed another arrow as he moved away from the thing and the human marionette’s head shot back as the arrow tore through it. The Hellaquin was appalled when its head jerked forwards again to look at him as the thing continued advancing. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining being able to see through its head or not. It swung a mattock at him, and the Hellaquin barely managed to dodge out of the way. It made no sense, the chains were getting in the way of the walking dead man’s ability to move. He could hear fighting behind him.

As he reached into the long tubular pockets inside his coat for another arrow, the Hellaquin saw the small brass scorpion wrapped around the marionette’s eye socket, its legs and stinger moving deeper into skin, flesh and the eye itself. The Hellaquin backed away from it rapidly as it lurched after him, swinging the mattock. He pulled an arrow with an adamantine-headed bodkin from one of the pockets, quickly nocked it, brought the bow up, took the barest moment to aim this time and loosed. The arrow hit the still-moving metal scorpion and tore the side of the man’s skull off. The marionette slumped forwards in its chains. The Hellaquin was aware of some tiny thing skittering across the floor and under one of the half-completed boilers.

‘Aim for the—’ he cried out as the sledgehammer hit him in the back. His leather coat hardened, as did his skin, but it wasn’t enough. Agony shot up his spine. The force of the blow staggered him and he collapsed to his knees as the breath exploded from his lungs. Behind him one of the human marionettes raised the sledgehammer high above its head to cave in the Hellaquin’s skull. His diaphragm, aided by his ‘gift’, shook off its paralysis and he sucked air into his lungs again. He put both hands on the ground and kicked up, hitting his attacker in the chest. Ribs broke and the marionette was thrown backwards on its chains. The Hellaquin dropped his bow and pushed himself to standing.

‘Aim for the scorpions in their eyes!’ he shouted as he ducked under another sledgehammer swing. The Hellaquin had a short sword in each hand now. He took a rapid step forward and thrust the right-hand sword through the human marionette’s skull, pinioning the brass scorpion and pushing it out through the other side of the human puppet’s head.

‘Aim for the scorpions!’ the Knight shouted. ‘I’m going after—’

Whatever the Knight had intended to say was drowned out by a pistol shot, followed by another in quick succession. The Hellaquin had a moment to look up towards a catwalk at the other end of the Manufactory. He could just make out a dark figure wreathed in pistol smoke, then the figure fired the pepperbox pistol again.

Silas kept firing the pepperbox pistol as the Knight leaped past one of his marionettes and onto the stairs leading to the winch platform upon which he stood. He knew he was hitting the Knight – he saw the man stagger more than once – but still he kept coming.

He was sure he knew the man. He had seen him before, walking out of his father’s burning workshop covered in blood. He screamed as he fired again. The man stumbled back against the wall. One of Silas’s marionettes landed in front of the man, swinging a huge spanner at him. The man ducked and sparks flew off the brick wall. Silas had to concede that the chains might have been a mistake, regardless of how much he liked the idea of human marionettes. The blond, blue-eyed man jumped up and, with little finesse but surprising force, he severed one of the marionette’s arms, then the other, and then one of its legs. His puppet’s torso fell forwards, leaving limbs dangling from the chains.

Silas fired again and was rewarded with a spray of blood from the man’s head. The pepperbox pistol was empty now. He laid it neatly on the workbench in front of him, in its place among his other tools.

The Knight’s blond hair was matted with blood by the time he reached the top of the stairs and faced Silas on the winch platform. As Silas watched, the blood was already disappearing from the Knight’s hair. That was when he realised the man was just like him. He had the will to control demons and do great works. However, he also recognised the look on the Knight’s face as he approached with a red and naked blade in his hand. This man wanted – no, hungered – to take his life.

The Knight moved with frightening speed, but so could Silas. Hot broken glass and iron nails hit the blond man in the face and chest as the blunderbuss kicked back into Silas’s shoulder. As the smoke cleared, Silas found himself disappointed. He expected to see the Knight’s chest a crimson ruin and his head all but gone. Instead the man’s chest looked fine, but where his face had been there was now a skull painted red that opened its mouth so blood could bubble out. Skin and flesh were already starting to creep around from the back of the blond man’s head.

Good
,
Silas thought,
I can take my time with this one.
He put the blunderbuss down on the workbench, in the right place, and reached for his blades just as he remembered the other man on the ground floor. He looked up as the broad-head arrow caught him in the throat and passed through, two feet of ash pinioning him to the brick wall behind him. Silas reached for it as blood ran down the shaft. He spat blood out of his mouth, more surprised than anything else.

The Hellaquin didn’t waste a moment to check the effects of his shot. He nocked another arrow, drew and loosed, then fired again at a marionette swinging towards him, his ability and ‘gift’ guiding the shot. The marionette slumped dead in its chains, the side of its head a ruin. He spun. Behind him, yet another marionette was running towards him, almost too close to fire on. He loosed and the human puppet hit the ground, sliding over the stone. Something leaped from the marionette’s head and skittered under a boiler. Then there was no more movement. Not down on the workshop floor, anyway.

The Hellaquin glanced up to the winch platform. His ‘gift’ made Silas look much closer than he actually was and he could see the killer drooling blood as he inched forwards on the arrow shaft. The Hellaquin drew his penultimate arrow from inside his coat. It was a broad-head.

The broad-head caught the killer in the chest and drove him back into the wall again. The Hellaquin reached the stairs to the winch platform and started climbing them as he drew the final arrow. He’d hollowed the head of this arrow and filled it with his own blood. He’d told the devils in the blood to do one thing and one thing only: to seek out others like them and kill.

The Hellaquin stopped for a moment to look down at the Knight as the other man struggled to regrow enough of his mind to be capable of movement. The Hellaquin stepped over him. He wasn’t going to shoot the killer from a distance. He was going to ram the arrow straight through his heart.

Silas continued trying to pull himself off the arrows pinning him to the wall as the big archer approached him. Every movement caused agony to reverberate through him as he inched along the shafts.

The archer was standing in front of him now, bow raised and arrow nocked, ready to plunge into Silas’s heart. Silas spat his blood into the archer’s face and gave the devils in his blood the order to eat.

The archer started screaming. He dropped his bow, hands flying to his face as the blood started to consume skin, flesh and eyes, overwhelming the archer’s own defences.

With a scream, Silas wrenched himself off the arrows, already starting to heal. The archer staggered back, much of the skin on his face gone, revealing the musculature underneath. Silas lurched to the workbench and grabbed one of his knives. A heavy knife for butchering meat, he’d modified it to include a ring for his finger where the blade met the hilt. He had a pair of them.

Knife in hand, Silas turned on the archer. He pulled the archer’s hands away from his diminishing face and slit the man’s throat. That act would normally involve some sawing, but Silas’s superior strength and the sharpness of the blade allowed him to do it in one deft cut. The archer grabbed at his throat as blood bubbled out. Silas’s own neck wound was already starting to heal.

The killer carefully placed his bloodied knife on the workbench, next to the virgin steel of its twin, and picked up another item. He remembered when his father taught him that people were like clockwork. You could take them apart quite easily.

Silas walked around behind the archer and stepped on the back of the man’s knee, forcing him to the ground. He grabbed his long hair and used it to force the archer’s head sideways onto the workbench. The man tried to fight him with one red-coloured hand. Silas released the archer’s hair and grasped the handle of the bone guillotine. There was sickening crunch as Silas’s strength forced the guillotine’s curved blade through the archer’s skull and sliced off the top of the other man’s head. The archer stopped struggling. Silas moved the body into a limp kneeling position. He looked around for something in which to collect the blood seeping from the neck wound, but found nothing.

I will have his knowledge
, Silas thought.
I will have his power.
Strong fingers scooped out the archer’s brain matter and Silas started to consume it. He managed to swallow one mouthful before he stopped. He shuddered, spat blood and grey matter out of his mouth, and then the tip of a sabre exploded out of his chest.

‘I enjoyed killing your father,’ the Knight whispered in his ear. Silas cursed himself for a fool. He had got far too carried away with the kill.

Du Bois wrenched the sabre out of Silas Scab. His face still burned and ached; it would be red and raw as he regrew it. The killer spun away from him with surprising vigour for a man who had just been run through, and du Bois suspected that Silas’s healing ability was even better than his and the Hellaquin’s. Du Bois advanced on Silas, stepping over the Hellaquin’s body. He was sure the archer was dead, his ability to heal overwhelmed by the damage inflicted by Silas.

Scab grabbed a pair of knives from the workbench, one already bloody, the other clean. Du Bois held his left arm across his body, the tanto all but concealed in his left hand. The sabre flicked out lightning-fast at Silas. Silas backed away, parrying as best as he could with the long knives. The killer relied on speed and strength, du Bois on skill and hundreds of years of experience. It was a short fight.

Silas saw his moment. He stepped inside the Knight’s guard, one blade ready to deflect the sabre, the other to cut into his opponent. To start to take him apart as his father had taught him. For his father. Steel rasped on steel as he turned the sabre aside. His keen blade bit deep into the Knight’s left arm, eliciting a grunt of pain. Too late, Silas saw the tanto. Folded steel sliced into the killer’s skin, cutting through it even as it tried to harden to armour. The chisel-like tip of the knife forced between his ribs.