The Beauty of Destruction (11 page)

‘No, this is someone who has earned the right to say whatever he pleases atop a pile of corpses,’ the Pecht
rhi
explained.

‘I like him, he can stay,’ Bladud told Britha. Tangwen had to suppress a smile at Bladud’s cleverness, once again.

‘Bladud, called Witch King—’ Britha began. Eurneid gave a snort of contempt. ‘
Rhi
of the Brigante.’ Bladud cast a sideways glance at her – presumably he had expected to be introduced as
Brenin Uchel
, high king. ‘May I present Calgacus of the Bitter Tongue,
mormaer
of the Cait, a tribe from further north than my own.’

‘I have told you before, I mislike that name,’ Calgacus said. ‘I am Calgacus of the Perfect Beard!’ he announced. Britha laughed, as did Tangwen. Even Bladud had to smile.

‘You have had truck with the gods.’ Eurneid’s accusation was like a pall over any humour. ‘You know that is against our ways.’

‘We weak southrons do not fear our gods so,’ Bladud replied waspishly.

‘Because you did not fight them as our ancestors did, because you bare your arses to them, because you are servile, and because you are not very bright.’

‘I tire of this lack of courtesy. What do you want?’ Bladud snapped. ‘If you are just here to cause discord then be on your way, or we will use you as practice before we fight the Lochlannach.’

‘Is this one like Cruibne? Wishes to be high king? Ideas above his station?’ Calgacus asked Britha.

‘That is not what Cruibne wanted, as you well know,’ Britha said.

‘And my deeds speak for themselves,’ Bladud said evenly.

Tangwen was struggling to read the canny Witch King. He was rising only to things he could not ignore.

‘I have come for my people,’ Calgacus said.

Bladud looked to Britha.

‘I only know of one that yet lives,’ Britha said quietly. ‘And he is in the service of Crom Dhubh.’ She nodded up the valley.

Tangwen saw the pain etched across Calgacus’s ruined face at Britha’s words.

‘As you have been,’ Eurneid spat.

Tangwen found herself wondering how the hag knew that. Calgacus studied Britha but said nothing.

‘I will vouch—’ Bladud started.

‘Your words mean nothing, oathbreaker!’ Eurneid snapped.

Now Tangwen could see Bladud’s simmering anger. She knew this game. The
dryw
would use the freedom her position provided to say things to the
rhi
others could not to put him off-balance. She had rarely seen it played so blatantly and with such venom.

‘I would have vengeance, then, and this traitor must be dealt with!’ Calgacus announced.

‘They are enslaved by the Dark Man’s magics,’ Bladud explained.

‘This one was freed but chose to become a slave again,’ Britha said.

‘Like you?’ Eurneid asked slyly.

‘I have never been a slave,’ Britha said irritably.

‘Except to your cunt!’

‘Which one of you has the bitter tongue?’ Tangwen asked as she dropped her hatchet back into the loop on her belt. She still felt a thrill of fear at talking to a
dryw
so. The hag turned her head to look at Tangwen with blind eyes. Tangwen found herself involuntarily holding her furs tighter around herself despite not really feeling the cold.

‘That is the second time, serpent child. One more and I’ll snatch your tongue from your pretty head.’

‘This serves us nought,’ Bladud said. ‘If you can fight with more than words then you may join my warband.’ He emphasised the word ‘my’. ‘If not then prepare to fight or be on your way, as you like. It makes no difference to me.’

Calgacus regarded the Witch King carefully, then he smiled his awful smile.

‘So you have a spine, then?’ the Pecht
rhi
asked. Bladud smiled as much through exasperation as amusement. ‘You should consider yourself lucky I have no use for a Southron warband, though I do need more slaves.’

‘For someone with a reputation for straight talking you certainly take a long time to say anything.’

The smile disappeared from Calgacus’s face. Tangwen was aware of the Cait warriors shifting all around them.

‘If, and I mean if, you prove strong enough to lead this warband then we will fight alongside you.’

Bladud nodded and then looked to Britha. ‘Deal with this,’ he said, before turning and walking back towards the camp. Tangwen felt Britha bristle but the other woman said nothing.

It just seemed to appear out of the flurries of snow. A shaggy, white-furred creature with the face of a man’s corpse. Her hatchet was back in her hand, her dagger in the other.

‘Hold!’ Calgacus snapped in a voice used to being obeyed. Tangwen felt Britha grab her arm.

‘Look again,’ the older woman said. The man had limed his face. He wore thick woollen trews and a thick woollen
blaidth
. He had tied a bearskin to himself and that too had been limed to blend with the snow.

‘One of my scouts,’ Calgacus told her. Tangwen felt a moment’s embarrassment. He was doing the same thing she had done herself many times. ‘Selbath?’ Calgacus addressed the scout. The man pointed north into the flurries of snow.

‘The fair folk,’ the scout, apparently called Selbath, started breathlessly. Calgacus looked sceptical at mention of the fair folk. Tangwen assumed he meant the Lochlannach. ‘Coming across the ridge. Saw them with my own eyes. They make for the fort.’

Now she looked at him, Tangwen could see he was covered in sweat and panting for breath.

‘How many?’ Calgacus demanded.

‘More than fifty. I didn’t stay to count. They knew I was there.’

Calgacus looked surprised, as did his tall, blonde charioteer. There was muttering from the mounted Cait warriors.

‘And you ran?’ Calgacus asked. The man nodded, still trying to catch his breath. ‘Aye, well can’t say as I blame you. They don’t call you the Timid for no—’

‘There’s more!’ Selbath cried.

Calgacus looked like he had been slapped, so surprised was he at the scout’s interruption. Tangwen was aware of something but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. She looked around. Some snow fell off a tree. The naked branch was shaking.

‘I’m sorry,’ Selbath pointed to the east, the way the Cait had come. There was a tremor in his arm. ‘Giants,’ he said.

Now through the lime and the exhaustion Tangwen could see the man’s terror. Tangwen felt her own bowels turn to ice as she remembered the battle on the beach in the shadow of the wicker man.

‘Calm yourself,’ Calgacus snapped. Tangwen’s eyes narrowed as she peered into flurries of snow. Some of the horses whickered nervously. ‘These southrons aren’t that much taller than us.’

Tangwen thought she saw something through the snow, a huge shadow, though she wondered if her mind was playing tricks on her. Then the first horse reared. A Cait warrior was deposited into the snow on his arse, hard.

‘He means giants,’ Britha said. Tangwen could hear the tension in the other woman’s voice. The ground shook from an impact, and then another. Snow fell from naked trees, winter birds took to the wing despite the weather. Selbath, called the Timid, ran.

They loomed out of the flurries, towering over people and panicking beasts, warped and gnarled, faintly human in shape, each footstep creating an explosion in the snow. A number of the Cait’s ponies bolted. The spearmen and women backed away from the huge figures but to their credit did not break. Those with control of their mounts reached for casting spears, arrows began to stud the giants’ flesh, but the huge creatures paid no attention.

Tangwen was crouched, feeling useless. She didn’t even have her bow. Britha was looking up at them, one hand across her belly, a knife in her other hand. Calgacus dared the shifting chariot to grab his spear and shield even as his charioteer sought to control her team. Only Eurneid moved towards them.

‘Eurneid!’ Calgacus cried, stopping just short of giving a
dryw
an order.

‘Even the Otherworld know not to harm a
dryw
!’ the old woman called.

‘They are no respecters of—’ Britha started, just as one of the giants stood squarely on Eurneid.

The giants, however, did not attack. They just walked by and continued past the camps where there were more cries of warning and fear. They paid no attention to more arrows and casting spears studding their deformed skin. Then they were swallowed by the flurries of snow again. Though the ground still shook.

Tangwen swallowed hard. She could hear the frightened muttering from among the Cait warriors.

‘Master yourselves!’ Calgacus shouted, though Tangwen was pretty sure that the Pecht
rhi
was more than a little disturbed by the show of force he had just seen. ‘Remember where you are!’

Tangwen fell in beside Britha as the black-robed
dryw
moved forwards carefully. Calgacus joined them moments later, two of his warriors with him. There was barely anything left of Eurneid. She was a mangled red mess in a very deep footprint, barely recognisable as having been human.

‘There’s a lesson in this somewhere,’ Calgacus mused. Tangwen couldn’t shake the feeling that the Pecht
rhi
was more than a little relieved.

She was aware of movement on either side of her. Warm red liquid spattered her cold skin. One of the Cait warrior’s faces had been cut off. The body staggered backwards a few steps and then stumbled to the ground. There was a figure moving quickly towards her. He was a solid, well-built man, wearing no armour and little protection from the cold, a longsword in one hand, a dagger in the other. Tangwen was aware of movement on the other side of her as well. Calgacus was between her and the swordsman. He was moving forwards, punching his small round shield into the swordsman’s face.

Tangwen turned. The other Cait warrior was already reddening the snow. A second swordsman was stabbing his longsword at Britha’s belly as she threw herself backwards. Tangwen heard the sound of wood hitting flesh behind her. The hunter threw herself forwards, swinging out with her hatchet at the second swordsman’s blade. The axe head caught the blade and yanked it away from Britha but the man just turned, the dagger in his other hand snaking out towards Britha’s belly. Tangwen was aware of the sound of metal splintering wood behind her as she collided with the second swordsman. They hit the ground together, sliding through the snow. Tangwen howled and spat as she fought frantically. Her skin and the flesh beneath it smoked as his blade cut into her, and she felt the agony of its venom in her blood. Her dagger found his throat before he could do more harm, then her hatchet found the top of his head as he shook beneath her.

Tangwen stood up, spinning round. Calgacus had split the first attacker from hip to shoulder with his unpolished, blued iron blade, and had turned from him because none could survive such a blow.

‘No!’ Britha cried, running towards the first attacker, dagger in her hand. Tangwen was running as well but she knew she would not be there in time. More of the Cait warriors were sprinting towards the fight. Calgacus started to turn but he was just a man, and they were fighting those who had the blood of gods coursing through their veins. The first swordsman’s wound was closing. Tendrils of red metal were knitting the bloodless wound together again. Tangwen felt her body flush with fever as the magics of the chalice fought with the magics of the venom on the blade that had just slashed her.

The first swordsman swung for Calgacus but as Britha reached the Cait
rhi
, the attacker changed the angle of his blow, aiming for her. Tangwen had already thrown her hatchet. The spinning axe flew between Calgacus and Britha, narrowly missing them both, and hit the swordsman just under his right shoulder. It was enough. A screaming Britha parried the longsword on her way in, then rammed her dagger into his chest before the force of her charge sent them both sprawling into the snow.

Britha was sitting atop her attacker now, holding her dagger in both hands as she stabbed down again and again with all her strength, turning his chest cavity into a red ruin. She screamed, tears rolling down her face. Tangwen had seen this before. She knew that sometimes pregnant women had problems controlling themselves. It was one of a number of reasons that she had always preferred the tansy cake.

She glanced back at Calgacus. He looked badly shaken. The Pecht
rhi
looked between the dead Cait warriors.

‘Those were two of my best men,’ he muttered in his own language. Then he looked at the two dead swordsmen. ‘I didn’t kill him.’ He sounded appalled. ‘That blow would have felled a boar.’

‘And I’m just a southron girl-child,’ Tangwen said, smiling. ‘Guess you’re not quite as tough up north as you like to boast,’ she couldn’t resist adding. Calgacus just stared at her.

Britha stood up, using the sleeves of her robe to wipe the tears off her face, smearing her skin with blood as she did so.

‘He sent them to kill the baby,’ she said. Her voice was cold and hard once more.

8

Now

The retrofitted Harrier Jump Jet was easier to fly than some console games were to play. They could have downloaded and assimilated instructions straight into their neuralware from the plane itself had they wanted to. Though cramped, the cockpit had been made more comfortable and behind their seats there was a secure, armoured storage compartment that could be ejected. The plane’s engine looked like something out of a 1960’s spy film. Du Bois had told her that this was probably because Gideon had grown it from some kind of L-tech nano-factory that just needed to be given design specs and fed matter. When du Bois had transferred knowledge straight into her neuralware he had provided her with a great deal of conventional knowledge, but he had kept much of his hidden world of secret organisations and alien technology to himself. She understood why. He had wanted a weapon to help him out of a fix. She had been that weapon. He hadn’t, however, wanted to betray his employers.

They had kept low. Hugging the contours of the landscape, nap-of-the-Earth flying, she now knew this was called. The Harrier’s stealth systems were engaged. Du Bois hadn’t wanted to draw attention to them, though he had tried to re-establish contact with his employers several times, to no avail.

Nap-of-the-Earth meant they got to see more of the country close-up as they headed north. They spent a lot of time flying through smoke. They saw mobs in the streets of suburbia, towns and villages; geometric arrangements of bodies in fields; and lots of wreckage. Sometimes the places they flew over looked deserted. There were quiet places, particularly in parts of the countryside, where she could imagine there was nothing wrong at all, then she would see piles of decapitated bodies or some other atrocity.

Beth wanted to cry, but her body was now too efficient to waste liquid like that. She was pretty sure that she didn’t want to, couldn’t, live in this world. Du Bois had tried to talk her out of going to see her father, though he hadn’t tried very hard. She knew he was probably right. This wasn’t going to have a happy ending. The flight north had been very quiet. All of Beth’s friends had phones and access to the internet. If anything she had been the most Luddite of all of them. She tried not to think of what they would have become now. It was little consolation that they were too far from Portsmouth to be hosts for the spores of the monstrosity under the waters of the Solent.

Beth wasn’t surprised that Bradford was burning. Racial tensions had spilled over into violence more than once in the city’s past. Removed of inhibitions, racially motivated violence was revealed for what it really was: a convenient excuse for base, primal behaviour. Culture and skin colour had nothing to do with the open street warfare they saw beneath them as du Bois banked over the town centre. In some ways it was nothing new for Beth.

Du Bois brought the Harrier down smoothly in Peel Park. The park was in a basin on the hills just north of the city centre. There were a few lost souls wandering the area in various states of dress. A number of them looked like they had been attacked but they kept their distance.

They secured the plane and headed up Harrogate Road. It was lined with sooty, grey stone Victorian terraces. Nobody bothered them, possibly because the weapons they were openly carrying put them off. Even the insane instinctively understood a zero sum game when they saw one.

Her key still worked. Beth opened the door a crack and then leant against the doorframe, her eyes squeezed shut. Du Bois had his back to her, looking up and down the steep road. A badly beaten, naked man staggered past, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

‘You don’t have to go in,’ du Bois said quietly. Beth steeled herself and pushed her way into the house. It still smelled of stale cigarette smoke and the cold damp but there was something else there as well. That was when she knew.

It could have been worse, she thought. It hadn’t been peaceful. Even through the cloud of flies Beth could see that he had been frightened when he had died. She wasn’t sure what she had expected but she was surprised he’d had the strength to cut his own wrists.

Her neuralware was providing her with all sorts of information. Her father’s dead body reduced to data. She tried to shut down the process but it was like trying not to think. The lack of rigor mortis and other factors were suggesting a rough time of death. This had happened before the world had been driven mad. Her father had killed himself after her last visit. After she had taken the hope of seeing Talia from him.

‘I did this,’ she said, mostly to herself.

‘No,’ du Bois said quietly from the doorway. Beth glanced back at him. He looked troubled. ‘There’s nothing you can do here now. We need to go.’

Beth turned back to look at her father. ‘Why?’ she asked quietly. She was trying to remember his smile. Trying to remember hearing laughter in this house. Even when her mother had been alive, even before they had known she was ill, she couldn’t remember laughter or smiles. Beth wondered how much of that had been fear of discovery at having effectively stolen Talia. She knew the sudden surge of anger she felt towards her ‘sister’ wasn’t fair but she didn’t try to suppress it.

She turned to face du Bois; there was something in his expression that she couldn’t quite read. Her face hardened.

‘Let’s go. I’m done here,’ she told him. Du Bois nodded. Then the phone in the hallway started to ring.

The orbital habitat looked like a cross between a modern office building and a petrified biomechanical egg. The material of the habitat looked like contoured black marble. Mr Brown was looking down through a clear, coherent energy field at the burning Earth. He smiled at his own hyperbole. He knew it for what it was: the reflexive, spasmodic, instinctive lashing out of idiot gods.

As far as they could tell the diseased Seeder minds had accessed all the information on the internet. They had used data held by internet providers, social media, commercial data providers, marketing companies, blogs and used it to create information simulacra of people. Then the Seeders had created intuitive information entities to plot the simulacra’s worst fears and driven them mad. Finally they had played humanity’s dark electronic soul back to itself. That and vast, insane, alien intelligences trying to communicate had done the damage.

The developing countries and poorer parts of the world, places with less sophisticated communications infrastructure, had weathered this storm the best, but the insane part of humanity was reacting to years of blame and fear politics. The military-industrial complex had just had its inhibitions removed.

Mr Brown found himself unmoved. He was leaning on his opiate staff. The bags were depleting faster every day. He would never run out of the synthetic morphine while he had access to matter but even the vast amounts he was now consuming barely took the edge off his agony.

‘Have we established contact? With anyone at all?’ Mr Brown said out loud. They were keeping electronic contact to a minimum now. They had isolated and then purged their systems. The Control AI, corrupted, had been taken off-line and erased. Now they had to do the work the hard way. Augmented immortals plugged into ancient machinery.

‘We have established communication with several of our operatives via tight-beam communication when we have been able to find them,’ one of the immortals said from his contoured, organic-looking couch. The man had been a genius once. He had worked with electrical currents, magnetism and radio. Now his pale, hairless body was little more than the human drone component of a greater biomechanical machine.

‘Du Bois?’ Mr Brown’s question was practically a sigh. Du Bois was a very capable agent but he was also a lot more trouble than he was worth. Du Bois was more than eight hundred years old. Mr Brown couldn’t understand why the man hadn’t outgrown rank sentimentality.

‘There is an eighty-seven-point-three recurring per cent chance that du Bois was destroyed in Portsmouth. We have modelled a few predictions of his possible whereabouts, if he yet exists, and we are trying to sneak carrier signals through to the most likely locations,’ the drone told him.

The Seeders had gone after the Circle’s communications network first, presumably due to proximity and access. Kanamwayso had proven their weak point. They had lost the race against time. It was just a case of whether or not they could salvage anything at all, because this wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.

‘Attempting to establish contact now,’ the drone told him. Mr Brown heard the sound of a phone ringing. He mused for a moment on how the machinations of the godlike could be turned
on their
head by the actions of a few spoilt brats and
a young woman from the anus of Britain.

Du
Bois and Beth stared at the old-fashioned, rotary dial
phone as it rang. Beth walked out into the street
and listened. She couldn’t hear any other phones ringing
with her augmented senses. She walked back into the house
.

‘It’s for you,’ she said grimly. Du Bois just
stared at the phone. ‘Can you … we survive what happened
to the others who answered their phones?’

‘I don’t
know …’ du Bois said slowly. Beth was pretty sure it
was the first time he had seemed unsure of himself
, possibly even frightened. Then the frequency of the ringing changed
. Beth’s neuralware recognised it as Morse code. Slowly the
rings spelled out the word Control. Du Bois picked up
the phone and immediately both of them winced as something
howled at them from the receiver. It sounded like millions
of souls in agony, undercut with horrific, unknowable noises in
the infra- and ultrasound frequencies normally unheard by humans.

‘Hang
up!’ Beth shouted.

‘Malcolm, can you hear me?’ a voice
asked.

Even over the screaming Beth could tell the
voice was deep, resonant, cultured. She could see from du
Bois’s expression that he recognised the speaker.

‘I can
hear you,’ du Bois said.

‘Where is Natalie?’ The voice
on the other end of the phone had to shout
.

‘She has gone. The cult took her. Retrieval is not
an option.’

The voice didn’t answer. Beth didn’t
think she could take the screaming for much longer, and
then: ‘So it is over?’

Du Bois said nothing. Beth
could see him struggling with something.

‘Tell him about the
clan!’ she shouted at him. She wasn’t sure why
. Perhaps it was the closest thing they had to hope
.

‘Is that Elizabeth Luckwicke?’ the voice asked.

‘Yes,’ du Bois
answered. Beth could tell he was less than happy about
admitting this.

‘The clan?’

‘We managed to take some genetic
material from Tal … Natalie but the
DAYP
have control of
it.’

‘I see. And in the unlikely event that they survived the awakening, do you have any idea where they would be?’

‘I would imagine somewhere over the Atlantic making for their base in America. Can you provide us with transport?’

Beth frowned. They had transport. She opened her mouth to say something but du Bois motioned her to be quiet.

‘We are struggling with resources at the moment,’ the voice answered. ‘I think you’ve done all you can from there. You should stand down, or whatever it is you military types do.’

Beth could see du Bois wrestling with something else. ‘Alexia?’ he finally asked.

‘We do not know where she is. I am afraid she cannot be a priority. In other circumstances she would have been more than welcome. I am sorry,’ the voice said. Du Bois sagged. ‘You have been a good soldier, Malcolm. We, humanity, thank you for all of your service. There is just one more service we would ask of you, one more loose end. Do you understand?’

Beth frowned. She understood when du Bois looked at her.

‘Yes,’ he finally said and hung up. The screaming stopped. Slowly, du Bois raised his hands. Beth had stepped out of reach and had the suppressed barrel of the
UMP
levelled at his head.

‘I’m not going to kill you,’ du Bois said. Beth knew that she would be shaking if the tech inside her body hadn’t been so efficient.

‘He said it,’ Beth growled. ‘You’re a good soldier.’

‘We’re in no different a position to when I upgraded your neuralware in Old Portsmouth. There are standing instructions to execute anyone we had to use in that way as a possible security breach,’ he explained.

‘So why didn’t you?’ she demanded. The SMG hadn’t wavered even slightly, her finger curled around a partially depressed trigger.

‘You didn’t deserve it. If everything hadn’t gone to shit I would have purged you of tech, modified your memory and then made the argument to Control.’

‘But you’ve been given a direct order now, haven’t you, soldier?’

‘You’re no threat, the war’s effectively over. You don’t deserve this. It’s nice to see you want to live, though.’

As Beth looked into his very blue eyes, she knew that he had to be a very accomplished liar. As far as she could tell he was some kind of immortal super spy. Spies had to lie. They lived in deception, but everything told her to believe him. Perhaps that was just a result of du Bois’s tradecraft.

‘If you want to walk, just walk, take the weapons. The tech will give you a considerable edge, the skills you need. Go up onto the moors, there will be other survivors.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him about the plane?’ Beth asked, lowering the weapon. She knew he would have taken considerable killing anyway.