Dead Boys (22 page)

Mahmoud brightened upon inspecting the watches. “So be it,” he said, stowing them in a pocket. “Here are the weapons, as promised, one gross, no more, no less, feel free to count them. Over here we have the armor, a rarer commodity, but you will find none so fine nor so plentiful in all the Armory.” With a flourish, he threw back the bed-sheet.

A terrible screeching erupted as the fence was wrenched out of the earth, propelled by a force so powerful that Mahmoud’s Guard froze in terror before its source had even been glimpsed. Once the creature bashed the tattered panels across the Plains, exposing itself to full view, several dropped their weapons and took off running, while the rest fell immediately to their knees, shouting the words “Last Man Standing” in half a dozen languages. As for Mahmoud, his body stopped trembling at once, locked in place by a rapt and unifying attention.

The Last Man Standing towered above the kneeling soldiers, a patchwork monument in rotting flesh. Its twenty legs were bundles of thighs and calves, each twice the length of a human leg, each ending in four feet joined at the heel, divided at the midpoint by a pair of hips like a giant knee from which a single severed hand extended, grasping and clawing, ready to defend. These legs were connected to a wide hoop of spines, giving the creature’s undercarriage the appearance of a demented chandelier, above which rose a wall of torsos, a defensive girdle festooned with thrashing arms. This bulwark of flesh tapered upward for six feet, and near the top, sprouting from a smaller hoop, were four limbs like giant cables, each comprising five torsos stitched end to end, terminating in a gargantuan hand whose fingers were made of arms, whose knuckles were elbows, whose fingertips were the knotty hands of warriors.

These appendages tore into the piles of swords atop the pallet, each “finger” arming itself, so that the creature seemed to sprout steel claws. No preference was shown to these larger limbs: the creature armed itself evenly, passing swords from hand to hand and buckling armor to its extremities, exhibiting an eerie awareness of its entire mass.

Above it all, a bony clamp held Etienne in place, while Leopold, filleted to the bone at every joint and digit, rode in his harness on the opposite side, giggling shamelessly. Jacob dashed around the creature’s feet, shouting directions, gesticulating, and being summarily ignored by the men at the top.

“Good thinking!” said Remington. “With both those guys up there, it can see in all directions at once. But how did you plug Leopold in without me?”

“I have no idea,” said Jacob, staggering backwards. “I thought I’d check to see if he’d fit, but as soon as his bones touched the harness the whole thing lurched to its feet. Then it grabbed Etienne and plugged him in itself. It would appear that it’s making its own connections now!”

“Mahmoud, old boy!” roared Leopold, his sunken eyes flashing twenty feet above the ground. Twisting his body in its harness, he swallowed the merchant in shadow. “So pleased you could make it,” he said, his every word veined with hysterical glee. “I gather from your luggage that you’ve decided to take the trip down Bazakh way! Tell my city to expect me, won’t you? I should arrive not long after you: all of me!” He shrieked with laughter, and every joint below him shook in sympathy, pressing him to new heights of hilarity.

“But of course, of course I will, my friend!” said Mahmoud, stowing his watches in his waistcoat as quickly as his trembling hand allowed. “But look at how late we’ve stayed, and with such a long trip ahead of us. Farewell, Mr. Eclair and friends: on behalf of Mahmoud’s, may your swords serve you well.

“Boys!” he cried, but the eight warriors who hadn’t fled refused to budge. They saluted the creature instead, barking out their allegiance in Plains-Deadish, and Mahmoud, cutting his losses, hobbled away without them, his backpack wiggling furiously as he dwindled.

“Last Man Standing, is that what they’re calling it?” said Jacob. “Of course. What else could it be called by someone who’s spent his afterlife hearing about a single man destined to conquer the Plains of War?”

“Now,” said Leopold, sweeping his eyes over the hundred and forty-four swords shining in his hands, “let us cut a swath through the Plains, and through the minds of its denizens as well! You lot,” he shouted down to the company, “try and keep up, eh? I want to see what these legs can do!” Beneath him, the Last Man Standing reared up and swung around in a great circle, pointing Leopold’s face toward the south. He let out as mighty a roar as his single throat could manage and pounded forward, circled by the squawking crow. As the rest of the company, joined by Mahmoud’s Guard, staggered ahead, Etienne gazed back at them over a seething wall of flesh, his lips pulled back from teeth so tightly clenched they cracked.

Since the Last Man’s legs were twice the length of a normal man’s, it moved at a clip that terrified the scattered souls in the Shallow End, as well as the company that lagged behind, for whom it was all too easy to imagine Leopold charging into the scrimmage and forgetting them in frenzy. However, as soon as that dark cloud of combat was near, the Last Man thrust its forelegs down and skidded to a stop, giving the company a chance to catch up.

Mahmoud’s Guard stomped in lines of six on either side of the company, whom they seemed to revere as the creators of their hero. Thus protected, Remington and Jacob were able to focus their attention on keeping up with their companions, both of whom were loosing an increasingly barbaric series of yawps that seemed to begin and end at exactly the same moment.

“Whoa,” said Remington after the loudest of these tandem screams. “Do you think they’re all right up there?”

“Let’s hope they’re just getting into character,” Jacob replied, but his unease was growing.

“Ah, Jacob,” screamed Leopold as they approached, “you can’t imagine what fun this is!” He swiveled his head toward the scrimmage, rubbing his swords together in eagerness. “And that was a mere appetizer. Now, my lovelies, let us feast!”

“Leo, can you see what I see?” said Etienne.

“Very nearly,” said Leopold, “but the beast can see it
perfectly
!”

Without further discussion, the Last Man Standing thundered into the dust, followed by the Guardsmen, their blades and voices raised in fealty, and behind them the company, whose backs were pressed together in grim recollection of their last trek through the scrimmage. As he glanced ahead, however, Jacob’s fear dissipated into awe as the accuracy of the creature’s hundred-and-forty-four swords became apparent. It was sweeping its massive hands through clutches of warriors, carving through masses of bodies with ease. The company had no trouble following through the wide and gore-strewn path that the creature created, hearing everywhere amongst the human rubble the shout, “
Last Man
!”

“We’re near White Gate now, Jacob,” cried Etienne when he spotted the company in their wake, the giant hands below him shaking parts of men from their bladed fingers. “When we arrive, you must get me down; the lines are blurring in here, Jacob, do you understand?”

But before Jacob could reply, the Last Man Standing burst through the far side of the scrimmage, leading the company into the muted light of day, through which they stared at the bone-pale Southern Rim, where a cleft as slight as a hairline fracture was carved, concealing a long, crooked hallway in its shadow.

“The White Gate!” said Leopold, and the Last Man thundered toward it, the swords around its legs shaking like bangles.

The company, still terrified by the sounds of the scrimmage, clambered after the Last Man, stumbling and dragging one another up again. As they approached the crooked shadow in the Rim, Leopold called, “White City today, Dead City tomorrow, and then all the underworld shall be mine!” As the crow wheeled above, he shifted his vantage to the north, planning to repeat this promise in the direction of Lethe, and so Etienne was turned to see the dark mass of the Horde rushing out of the cleft in the Rim, crashing against the Last Man’s flanks.

“It’s them!” he cried, and then a pole was launched like a javelin straight through his mouth. As its sharpened end shot through the back of his skull, the three heads skewered on it slammed against his: Clay, Desi, and Gork were now jammed against him like olives on a toothpick, laughing and hollering as if the greatest moment of eternity had arrived.

Etienne screamed, and a great arm swept up and yanked the pole from his mouth, tossing it at Jacob’s side.

“You traitorous balls of bone!” shouted Jacob. “You gave up our destination to these savages?”

“Come on, man, how much fun you think we get to
have
out here?” said Clay.

“All is fair in the love of war,” said Desiderata.

“Mash!” said Gork.

Remington said nothing, but focused his attention on the crow, who was patiently feeding its vision to the boy. Adam and Eve, watching the action through Remington, stood tensed, waiting for an opening. With a few orders barked from their midst, the Horde surrounded the Last Man Standing, taking care to block the rest of the company from reaching White Gate.

Circling the Last Man’s feet, the Hordesmen attacked, first singly, to test the strength and speed of their curious foe, and then, following orders uttered from various points in their ranks, in joint strikes: five warriors at once lashed out and were repelled. The Horde kept up their assault, methodically and precisely, until they’d located the weak points in the field of vision established by Etienne and Leopold’s twisting heads, whereupon two warriors broke through the Last Man’s defenses, each cleaving a minor arm from its knees.

Leopold roared in irritation and began spinning the Last Man around like a top, knocking two dozen Hordesmen to the earth, where they suffered nothing more than dust in their joints. Nor were the Last Man’s precision strikes any more effective, for the Hordesmen either parried with their oversized weapons or took the hits directly, shedding a few inconsequential bones on impact, which they gathered up and fit back into their bodies like puzzle-pieces while their fellows provided cover.

“Leopold,” said Etienne over his shoulder, “we won’t take them with brute force.”

“What in hell did we build a brute for, then?” cried Leopold, trying in vain to stomp a Hordesman beneath a four-soled foot.

“Listen! There are two things I noticed when we met the Horde. First, all their most effective moves are choreographed. Second, the only one of them who fell apart when she was struck was swinging her blade at the time.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” said Etienne, parrying five blows at once, “that we have to take their attacks until we’ve learned their moves, then strike when they’re in the middle of a long one. They’re skeletons, so every joint that isn’t lashed together is held by will alone. If we hit them when that will is focused, they’ll fall apart!”

At that moment, the Horde gave Etienne the opportunity to demonstrate, as the pike-bearer and his partner the swordsman initiated the same maneuver that had sent the stone-thrower flying. The pike-bearer leaped atop his partner’s shoulders while a third man stood before them, ready to act as the fulcrum—but this time, as the pike lunged to strike the Last Man in the foot, a great arm shot out and sprayed the pike-bearer’s bones into the Rim. As his jabbering skull rebounded, Etienne crushed it beneath one foot, provoking the Horde to pummel the Last Man’s midriff with a complex and increasingly furious series of maneuvers, causing a slow wave of body parts to fall.

This escalation, while it won the Horde a few limbs from the Last Man’s lower regions, exhausted their repertoire of maneuvers in a more expedient and methodical fashion than Etienne had dared to hope for.

“They’re repeating themselves,” shrieked Leopold. “They’re repeating themselves!”

“At last,” growled Etienne. “The small one feints. The large one leaps. The two behind spin over and smash. We’ve seen it all. We know their maneuvers now. We know them. We
know
them!”

“He doesn’t sound good,” said Remington.

Jacob shivered: Etienne’s voice had retaken the ragged timbre of his first coherent moments in the cave. “We know them,” he was chanting, “we
know
them.”

Leopold joined the refrain. Together, they roared, “We
know
them. We
know
them. We
know
them! The Last Man Standing
knows
them in our
bones
!”

“Our?” said Remington.

“We’ve made a mistake,” said Jacob. “We’ve got to get them out of there as soon as we can. Their minds are being assimilated by the creature’s will!”

In a single rhythm, the two men loosed a grand, unhinged cackle as the body below them set about dismantling their opponents with a synergy that was startling to behold, picking apart every recycled attack with the four gigantic arms it had heretofore held over the fray. Bones sprayed in shards and clusters from the Hordesmen, and the tiny bands of metal that once held their joints together rolled and clattered underfoot.

The Last Man’s twin-throated voice was raised in victory, but even as it howled, the little reaper, who had not yet been dismantled, ran toward it from a distance of several yards, tossing herself to the ground at the last moment and skidding between two of its massive legs.

“This is it,” shouted Remington, and the crow dove into the great cavity inside the Last Man’s body in time to see the little reaper climbing up its innards. Cursing, she locked her legs in place around two torsos and started hacking with two push-daggers at a column of spines. The crow heard the Last Man shriek as four of its legs went limp at once, sending its body listing to one side, and before the remnants of the Horde began to cheer, the reaper launched herself to the next column and set to work.

“Get ready,” said Remington, but Adam and Eve were already in motion. As Mahmoud’s Guard sprung into motion, distracting the remaining Hordesmen with their bellowing attack, the headless duo tossed themselves under the Last Man’s legs, sliding out of Remington’s field of vision and into the crow’s. Astride the creature’s second spinal column, the little reaper glanced down at them in surprise, a mistake from which she would never recover, for in the moment it took her to admit that she was being attacked by two decapitated opponents, they had already overtaken her.