by Will Madden
Abhoc’s audience laughed politely, but their eyes fixed across the gap. The Purple Onion was arguing with a man in a rhinestone top hat how best to reinforce a hubcap and fit it to his forearm.
“Oh no worry of the Onion over there,” he said. “Realizes now he needs a shield or ol’ Heckley will kill him outright. Run him through like a melon atop a post. That’s how we practice, by a’way. Melon posts. A few years ago, some American came over and said, ‘’Ey, what’re you doing? You’re driving up overhead on my act.’ We asked what he needed so mucho melonos for. ‘Comedy,’ he says. Comedy! Well, what’s the joke, we ask. ‘Broken melons,’ says him. Don’t get it, me. A broken head, sure, is funny. Broken what else, not so much.”
Nothing. Not a titter. Abhoc tried again.
“I like the artistry of the joust, you know. The sacred war ritual. Reunite with your Tectonic roots, all that. But give me pitchéd battle any day. Or a bar fight. ’N one man try to kill another, there’s simplicity. Jus’ grab a bottle and start swinging. But two men agree to kill each other, aw, now it’s about production value. The natural act of murder, forget it: now you got, uh, director, producer, scrip’ writer, prop manager. ‘Cause here’s what you gotta have: First, the saying of proud words. Rrrrrr!, all that. Then you gotta make bicker on the terms. ‘Cause if you don’ can’t find something wrong, you ain’t done it before. Means ‘r an amateur. Green from the garden gets you green in the grave. That done, find a pen. For versification. ‘My dear might’r-be widow, if you readin’ this,’ all that. Big quill feather fluffin’ over ‘r shoulder. But hold still, not yet. Never a man knows his business till come time to put a lance through a man’s head. Now remembers candles need ordering for his daughter’s quinceañera. Now remembers ’as a daughter. Ol’ Heck here got two. Both fairer lookin’ than the father, I thank God. Whoever he is.”
Abhoc licked his lips. “The father, not God, I mean. God is His Majesty, J. Harthur Christ.”
He noticed Heckley had given up trying to sweet talk his mare, and was now rubbing some kind of ointment on her gums.
“Then all that done,” Abhoc said, “you still gotta drug your fucking horse!”
He smiled friendly, with all the teeth he could manage. The crowd was lukewarm, at best. These duddies better get entertained soon, he thought, or I’m gonna start cutting some new laugh holes.
An equine-mounted propulsion system and cling wrap body armor had been game changers for the Pestilence, but the true genius of the Church’s R&D team was a jousting lance for modern urban warfare. Made of a titanium/aluminum alloy, it was lightweight and flexible, yet durable enough to skewer three skulls on a single pass. Heckley had tested it on hundreds of materials and knew a direct hit would pierce right through the Onion’s makeshift shield. Even a glancing blow would throw him from the bike, nine fatal stories above the asphalt.
Every muscle in Heckley’s body was prepared for this joust. Once they’d established their trajectories, he could hit the target with his eyes closed.
“For luck,” said a woman’s voice.
He turned. Her lace-trimmed dress seemed years out of style, and driblets of mascara stained her cheeks. And wasn’t she too old for clubbing? But Dodoville can age a person so fast, he thought.
She held out something to him, hung limply between her fingers. The other arm twisted nervously behind her back.
The danger he faced now excited many of the party-goers, but this woman seemed genuinely afraid for him, about to make a death-defying pass against a known predator.
“Don’t worry,” he said smiling. “If a man alive can best me at the joust, he’s not in Dodoville tonight.”
Her foot brushed the back of her ankle. She twitched indecisively, her hand still out, words dying unformed on her lips.
Tightening his grip on the reins, Heckley lowered himself to accept the trinket and offer his cheek for a kiss. In a sudden flurry, she flung her arms around him. She was sobbing—more like screaming in his ear!
He studied her face again. No, their paths had never crossed.
“By your honor, m’lady,” he said jovially, disentangling himself. “I’ll soon have that rapscallion sorted.”
He didn’t know if this sounded courtly, but it did the trick. Reassured, she sniffled and laughed shyly. Three shrill little shrieks. With a bow, she scampered away.
Heckley looked at the handkerchief. It was a pinkish cream color, embroidered with an evergreen motif. He had owned one just like it once, though he couldn’t think why. His instincts urged him to throw it away.
As their eyes met again, she glanced down and smiled.
He stuffed it into one of his leather bracers.
The narcotic he’d given Potato Chip was quick acting: his mare already saw the Onion as something she’d like to gnash apart with her teeth.
Across the gap, Heckley’s adversary was posing for photographs with the crowd. Nothing about that purple moron’s bearing betrayed he had only moments to live.
The lion must confront even the hare with all its strength, Heckley reminded himself.
It was a pity they would not meet in hand-to-hand combat: sword against quarterstaff was Heckley’s favorite melee pairing, and rumor had it that the Onion was a worthy opponent. But at least Dodoville would witness them fighting across the sky. Like gods.
Heckley watched the Onion fit the motorcycle helmet over his mask. Two gold points of light shone behind the visor. An illusion of the night, it must be. Or perhaps an onboard AI? No matter. Heckley’s equipment was optimized for the task at hand, balance strength and reach.
Once the Onion was dead, Heckley would unmask him. Anticlimactic, whoever it was. Life had taught him if you wore a monk’s habit to confiscate people’s property, or if you pretended to be a knight so you could crush some skulls, these became your true faces. The same for someone who dressed as a vegetable to act out his messiah complex. The person out of costume became the real disguise.
Heckley recognized the handkerchief now, from one of his jobs for the Archive. Christ’s spurs, that scientist!
About a year ago, an anonymous foreign investor had issued the Consortium a special request for an exiled botanist living in Dodoville. Anyone on earth can do bad math, Heckley had thought, but somebody wanted this guy special. To put in a display case, for all he knew. He and his partner had boxed and labeled that lab monkey like a regular artifact. They left a receipt for him on the kitchen counter, like he were a teapot or something.
Strange as the affair had been, he might have forgotten it except for the fuss the man raised. If only Heckley would find a way to lose him, the scientist promised anything within his power, nothing too precious or too sordid. Life simply didn’t exist for him outside of Dodoville, he said. Untenable, simply untenable.
Heckley assumed it was empty talk. But on the morning the buyer was to collect the goods, they found him dead in his storage locker. He had wrapped the damn handkerchief around his neck and twisted the ends till he choked himself. Bulging eyeballs and embroidered evergreens.
How odd, Heckley remembered thinking. In Dodoville, you teetered every day at the brink of destruction—itself a kind of death. He’d always imagined being delivered from here would be like being reborn.
Heckley led his mare to the launch point. He accepted well wishes on either side of his saddle, clasping hands and returning the high salutes which some revelers assumed knights like him must make. When they asked to stroke his mustaches, he grinned and swore on his lance that he’d run them through if they tried.
Across the gap, the Onion was enduring his own love fest, chuckling at those who shed crocodile tears at his approach, dislocating the shoulder of someone to tried to remove his mask. (He popped it back in to show no hard feelings.)
Both here and atop the garage, everyone cheered the warrior in their own midst. Club Towers for Sir Heckley. Across the way, Team Onion. If any breast housed a deeper allegiance than this, they kept it to themselves.
&
nbsp; Heckley thought about those samurai movies where the two warriors whose loyalties had crossed set out into the wilderness together before dawn. They walked in file, the silence between them noble, intimate, with a touch of the sacred. Qualities he had always lacked in his own life. They reached the designated place as the sun broke upon the horizon. The adversaries faced each other and bowed, the strong wind that whipped their kimonos the only sign of the turmoil inside. No witnesses to the duel but their honor. They fought, sword clanging upon sword. When one had slain the other, the victor bowed again and closed his opponent’s eyes. The two departed, one in body, one in spirit. The only sound the wailing wind.
Ah, bliss.
About him now, riotous voices. “Heck-El-Ham. Heck-El-Ham.” This idiotic emBritishment of his name hadn’t existed until Bubo uttered it earlier today.
Around the Purple Onion, a different chant had gone up. Only when actors mimed it out did Heckley understand the words: Kill the horse. Kill the horse.
On this side, Heckley’s crowd, having touched and smelled the mythic monster, identified with its fearsome power. Over there, the mare was an abomination that needed to be destroyed.
Poor Potato Chip had to land in hostile territory! Heckley petted his mare on the neck and enabled her self-defense appliances. Poor those folks.
All was ready. Abhoc stood by the retaining wall with a flare gun. When it exploded over the gap, that was the signal to charge. Abhoc raised a hand to silence the crowds. Heckley heard the Onion Chopper’s engine turn over. His own thrusters came to life.
The gun fired. The flare popped. Heckley spurred his horse.
Spectators who leaned over the runway to watch his approach got sucked closer by the vacuum of his passing. The terrible hoofbeats devoured the roof. He reached the wall and his mare leaped, hind legs trailing like a comet’s tail as an explosion from the thrusters carried forward rider and mount.
Heckley saw the yellow flash of the Onion’s lance, the purple blur of the motorcycle, the chrome circle of his useless buckler.
For an instant, the silence he craved enveloped him, borne aloft by eternity.
He felt the handkerchief stuffed under his bracer blow loose into the night.
The scientist had died for her, he realized, the mousy woman with mascara on her cheeks who had fallen in love with him just now. His head turned slightly to catch sight of it floating away.
For half an instant, he let his lance fall.
Not accused, yet condemned by her kiss, judge and jury in the smallness of a world where fragments of the past always come back to you. He felt everything escape with that tear-soaked rag, snatched from him by an invisible hand.
At once, the judgment of God was upon him, striking him like a thunderbolt. The electricity of it struck his chest and burned him to his extremities. As the abyss enveloped him, he saw the tiny square of cloth against the veil of night.
Vengeance on the wind, embroidered with evergreen trees.
As the quarterstaff struck, spectators saw the knight’s body rise from the saddle as if lifted by the arms of an angel, then fall as if crushed by the archangel’s hammer. A crackling cascade of sparks chased the limp form down from the dome of heaven, the slumped shoulders catching flame like a meteor. The body struck the moat around Club Towers, raising a tsunami of swill and filth that overflowed its banks then receded into lapping waves. Bubbles rose and died.
The riderless mare completed the pass and landed deftly on the makeshift ramp upon the parking garage. The tailgaters, who moments ago had clamored for her death, fell silent in awe.
Heavy as a monument, light-moving as a breeze, the regal animal trotted into their midst, her eyes and mouth glowing a hellish red. She snorted, expelling deep-colored smoke from her nostrils.
A standoff: one demon versus a multitude of mortals.
A shot rang out from the crowd. Kertwang! The animal kicked, terrifying her assailants with the endless pink expanse of her tongue and gums. As more reports followed, a hideous whinnying laughter seemed summoned up from below. The volley intensified until it faded at last into impotent clinks.
As Potato Chip stomped a steel hoof, sparks flew from the concrete. Smoke from her nostrils swirled blue and purple.
One woman stepped forward. “Don’t be fooled by superstition,” she cried. “A horse is not a monster! Or a demon! It is a creature of nature, which humans domesticated thousands of years ago. Like dogs and cats! So there’s no reason to be afraid. If we act with authority, it will obey us!”
A silence followed.
“You go get it, then!” someone yelled.
The woman ventured a step forward. And another. The creature of nature stiffened but suffered her approach. A tentative hand reached out to pet the roan snout. The mare’s breathing eased as froth dribbled from her lip.
Slowly, the great head bowed.
Sensing a gesture of submission, the woman advanced to take the reins.
Twin plumes of fire belched from nozzles in the bridle. The woman screamed and leaped back. The mare reared up, a cyclone of hooves spinning before her. She came down hard, horseshoes popping on the concrete like firecrackers.
Once again, the horse lowered her head deeply and scraped the ground with her hoof.
The woman looked to the crowd, uncomprehending.
Again, fire spewed from the creature’s maw. Again she reared and pawed the air and bowed and scraped the ground. Eyes afire, she took a step closer.
Knowing better than to show the beast her back and run but too terrified to do anything else, the woman fell to her knees and pressed her forehead against the ground.
Potato Chip neighed and nodded her head in approval. Then she turned to the next person.
Who needed no further encouragement. He too knelt and bowed.
Like a wave, the entire crowd prostrated themselves before the magnificent creature and begged for mercy.
Graciously, Potato Chip acquiesced as she waited patiently for her master.
The crowd atop Club Towers that had leaned forward to watch the knight pass now jumped back to allow the motorcycle to stick its landing, veins of neon pumping purplish light across the chassis. The Onion’s sizzle stick crackled as he hoisted it triumphantly above his head like a thunderbolt.
There just wasn’t enough runway.
The Onion leaped backward from his seat in a slender arc like a knife flipped blade over pommel as the chopper skidded out into the retaining wall. He landed lightly on one knee, holding out the quarterstaff parallel to the ground, like a missive scroll from the land of grievous beatings.
Brum nodded to Abhoc, who lowered his lance and charged. The Onion jumped up, quarterstaff battering the lance to one side, catching the mare on the jaw with the backswing, then again on her flank as she passed. The horse’s spider-silk armor dispersed the physical blow, but the electrical contact echoed like a transformer box exploding. It took all of Abhoc’s skill to keep the animal from throwing him.
For reasons beyond anyone’s comprehension, DJ Skymole was playing Fleetwood Mac.
“Maim and murder as you will, Lord Brum,” said the Onion, his voice even but authoritative. “You’ll carry no booty home to your profane church tonight!”
“So many times now,” the knight commander replied, “you’ve made citizens of Dodoville blubber their most shameful secrets before the entire city—but this time it is you who shall be the spectacle. I’ve lured you here, out into the heart of the Saturday night. Now tens of thousands of honorable Horsefolk, to whom this territory has always belonged, will be shown that you are just another agent of the ganglords, who for the last century have sought to abolish our culture, denigrate our heroes, and deny our God-given rights of plunder. But we Pestilence shall prove even an Onion can be beat.”
“Get it, beet?” muttered Abhoc to no one at all.
Brum’s war hammer, basically a steel breeze block on a mahogany handle, swung down upon the Onion’s head, its arc shredding the moonl
ight into tattered ribbons of color. The Onion braced his quarterstaff and received the blow. The clang reverberated as pure as silver on gold, while Stevie Nicks adored or implored the names of Sara or Rhiannon or whoever.
As the Onion struggled to regain his feet, Abhoc lowered his sword and attempted to slash out the throat from under his mask.
A battle so fierce followed, even the indifferent gods who molder beneath the clay earth raised a stony eye to watch.
A horse is not a dragon. If you ride one off a tower, you will surely die. Right? Mandi knew nothing about war but she knew that.
Death seemed such a lonely thing, so she had given the knight a token to keep him company in his last moments. She could think of nothing worse than this—than thinking of someone dying alone!
With her handkerchief on his wrist, even his senseless death could be for something, she thought. In the stories she’d tell, it would be.
Once upon a time, she had believed in chivalry: the romance of my lady fair with whose blessing you rode into battle, trusting love to conquer all.
But in the end, she learned, only death wins. The only conqueror is death.
The flare of the starter’s pistol had exploded above the gap.
His lance and helmet and shield, all polished and laser-y. The revelers’ tongues’ parched for a dewdrop of destiny. How important it all looked, this heavy-hooved action!
She watched his colors trail after him into the annihilating night. She forced herself to see a beautiful thing in this. Still, he was dying for nothing. At least, now he died for nothing for her.
Farewell. This time she had gotten to meep out her goodbye. Even if it had been to a stranger.
High in that hanging void of darkness now crackled a ball of orange light, opening like a portal from the future. Out spat that veiny Onion Chopper. The purple-glowing machine hurled past, nearly clipping her up and crushing her against the masonry wall—as it had that nice, attractive couple standing next to her.
This was pain renewing its assault on her. It would persist in hunting her until she was dead. And then keep after her, probably.
