by Ari Marmell
You already see, perhaps, where this is going? It was not the first time that two angels of widely disparate ranks fell in love. It will certainly not be the last. But it is, in all the history of the White City, the most infamous.
Hadrimon was, at the time, a … Well, I think there are no equivalents in any military structure with which you’re familiar. The ranks of the angelic militias are varied, and the differences remarkably subtle. Let’s say that he was a field officer of some authority, in command of multiple flights of underlings, and that should suffice.
Her name—you knew there would be a “her,” of course—was Raciel. She was the field leader for one of the squadrons that fell under Hadrimon’s command. Had she been nearer his equal in rank and position, they might have found some legal means of legitimizing the love they felt for each other. Had they been more widely separate, then at least the conflict of interest would not have been as great, and perhaps our leaders at the time would have felt less of a need to … To …
Ah, what use speculating? What was, was.
Their love could never be, and they both knew it. Again, they were hardly the first among angels to find themselves in such straits. The Library of the Argent Spire has multiple shelves devoted solely to the mythic poetry inspired by such hopeless romances, whether unrequited or shared. For other races, other cultures, the triumph of such a tale might involve the illicit lovers finding some means of thwarting convention, of allowing their passions to flower.
But we are angels. We are warriors. Mind, law, discipline … these are our heroic ideals. For us, a soldier worthy of respect tends to his or her duties, obeys the strictures of the Codex. Emotion, satisfaction of one’s desires—these must come second.
Throughout our history, they always had. Not this time.
Most angels know this story; it’s one of our most popular cautionary tales. The general belief in the White City is that Raciel was weak, somehow lesser than those who faced such temptations before. Me? I’m not so certain; sometimes, I wonder if she might not have been among the strongest of us, to knowingly risk so very much …
Either way, it scarcely matters.
Raciel acknowledged her feelings to Hadrimon—and in the face of her admission, he could no longer deny his own. They arranged a later meeting, in which they might discuss their possible futures, any options that might allow them to be together. That their love might also, at that time, be consummated went unspoken, but I doubt that the thought had failed to occur to either of them.
Once the immediate encounter had passed, however, Hadrimon began to reconsider. Either, depending on whom you ask, he rediscovered the courage of his convictions, or his courage failed. However one looks at it, Hadrimon pondered all the possibilities, everything that could go wrong, all that he would have to give up, whether he was prepared to violate the Codex Bellum for love.
I’m uncertain precisely how he phrased his report, but when Raciel arrived at their prearranged meeting place, she found a squad of soldiers waiting to detain her, to hold her until she could stand before a military tribunal for such gross violation of legal proprieties. Of Hadrimon, she found no trace. To my knowledge, the two of them never faced each other again.
Had it ended here, with Raciel suffering demotions in rank, reassignment to unpleasant duties, social stigma, then this tale would be a sad one still, but ultimately of little importance. Unfortunately, what happened was … not nearly so rational.
I remind you, again, that we were at the height of our war against Hell. Further, the Charred Council had only recently emerged as a power in the struggles across the Tree of Life, and the White City did not yet know whether or not they would prove to be an enemy. As such, military discipline—always of paramount importance among my people—was at its most fevered pitch. This was absolutely the worst possible time for any sort of breakdown in the chain of command or the social order, and the generals of Heaven determined to take advantage of the opportunity presented them.
They would make an example of Raciel, a chilling precedent that would be remembered through the millennia.
Standard disciplinary action would not suffice. Long-term imprisonment or physical mutilation would resonate, but it would also make her a burden on resources that could be better used elsewhere. Death? That might do, save that dying for a cause in which one believes is the highest possible honor to many of my people. It might make her a rallying cry for others who harbored secret desires to challenge the stringent laws of the Codex Bellum. And besides, death was a threat with which every angel lived. The notion of losing oneself, of returning to the Well of Souls, was unpleasant but hardly terrifying.
I understand they even approached the Charred Council, to request that Raciel be banished to Oblivion, but the White City’s envoy was rebuffed. Raciel had committed no crime against the Balance or the Council itself, and they were unwilling—rightfully so, I should think—to serve as a tool of vengeance for others.
All of which, alas, left one option remaining. First, Raciel was stripped of some of her memories—not many, only those that involved the defenses and military tactics of the White City, so that her knowledge could not be used against us. So, too, was she robbed of the magics and powers that would otherwise have allowed her to locate or manipulate the passageways between worlds.
Then, with great ritual, in a ceremony observed by thousands, Raciel was exiled to Hell.
I know. Her crime hardly seems worthy of such a fate, does it? Yet that, I am forced to confess, was her sentence. A great portal was opened and Raciel was allowed to fall, fall until the very notions of distance and depth became meaningless. And there, in Hell, she would suffer whatever torments and tortures the demons chose to inflict, to say nothing of whatever vile transmutations the Pit itself might wreak upon her, until the day the infernal creatures finally tired of the game and killed her. A day, her judges knew, that would not come for a very, very long time.
Hadrimon abandoned his duties not long afterward and disappeared. I would like to think that if he had any notion of what would be done to her, he would never have reported Raciel’s lapse in propriety. His later behavior certainly suggests a guilty conscience. Several times since then, he has briefly reappeared, engaged in some half-planned scheme directed against the leadership of Heaven, Hell, or both. At times, he has attempted to reignite the war between Above and Below—staging an attack of one upon the other with the aid of mercenary soldiers, committing sabotage and leaving evidence to implicate the enemy, that sort of thing. At other times, he’s made abortive efforts at raising a force of soldiers powerful enough to invade Hell itself. He’s never said as much—or if he has, I never heard about it—but I can’t imagine he thinks of it as anything else than a rescue mission.
The sad truth is, he’s something of a joke in the White City. His efforts are desperate, feeble, easily detected and thwarted. They’re almost the workings of a child, as though his regret and sorrow have overridden whatever strategic acumen he once possessed. As such, and because some of us still felt sorry for him, no concerted effort at locating and capturing him has ever been undertaken. We all assumed that he would eventually wear himself out and disappear, or would attempt something so foolish that he would be caught in the act—by Heaven if he were lucky, otherwise by Hell. Not an angel alive would ever have believed that he might become a real danger, especially after all this time.
And I imagine he never would have, had he not come across one of your profane devices. I don’t know where he found it, or how; and again, I don’t imagine that it matters. All I know now is that, for the first time, Hadrimon may have the power necessary to wreak whatever vengeance he still feels is his due. And now that he has the influence of the Grand Abominations stoking the hatreds in his soul beyond all comprehension or sanity, I shudder to think of just how appalling that vengeance may be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IT REALLY DIDN’T TAKE THEM ALL THAT LONG.
Even with three score angel
s on the wing—operating in organized flights from a central base camp, working in an ever-expanding spiral—it could potentially have been quite some time before they discovered anything of note. The territories occupied by the last of the Ravaiim, though certainly limited when compared with an entire realm, still covered a vast expanse. As such, their blood had spilled across and infused the earth over a broad swath of terrain, all of which had to be thoroughly searched. Further, much of what had appeared from above to be featureless plain had now revealed itself to be festooned with jagged crevices and narrow ravines, the entire region cracked and rough as an old callus. With these, the thick fumes that seemed to be the final lingering breaths of this dying world conspired to make any sort of search, however methodical, a dubious proposition at best.
Yet it was only a couple of days between the angels’ arrival and the first report of contact with the enemy, found scattered over a wide plain festooned with mushroom-like polyps of glistening, clot-speckled meat.
Now, following the directions of the scouting party—who had themselves returned to keep an eye on Belisatra’s forces—the Horsemen and their allies silently closed on their targets. Death and War traveled on foot; the steeds of the Council’s Riders possessed many strengths, but stealth was not high on that list. Around and above them were forty of the White City’s soldiers; all that could be spared without leaving the base camp undefended or recalling the most distant scouting parties. And in the center of the slowly advancing forces, Azrael, his lips and fingers moving in eldritch incantations. They were simple spells—one to cloak the company in an illusory mist, making them all but invisible in the drifting haze; another to enhance their vision so that they might see just a bit farther through that haze than otherwise—but extending them over so many at once, while on the move, was proving tricky even for the ancient mystic.
Despite their difficulties, they drew ever nearer, step by soft and careful step. Until Death, peering intently through the fog and scattered particulates in the air, finally managed his first glimpse of what lay ahead.
He’d known the enemy forces were numerous—the scouts’ report had been explicit on that point—but it still came as something of a jolt to see them scurrying over the encrusted flatlands. Without taking the time to actually count, he estimated more than two hundred of the multi-legged stone workers, and almost half that many of the brass myrmidons, their spinning shafts kicking up clouds of dust.
He saw something else as well, something new. Several iron cauldrons, complete with articulated legs without and rotating gears within, crept slowly through the midst of the other automatons. At irregular but frequent intervals, the stone servitors would dump loads of earth into those peculiar receptacles, which would then, via the grinding of the gears and various magics that the observing Horseman could sense but not see, be compressed into so much pulp.
A pulp that left behind it trickles and stains of a deep crimson extract.
Death would have liked a closer look, purely out of curiosity, but it wasn’t necessary. He knew precisely what those devices were doing, even if the principles and methods remained unclear.
This was how Belisatra was extracting the long-lost residue of the Ravaiim blood from the flesh of the world.
“Still no word from the other scouts?” Death called softly.
Azrael shook his head, his voice still devoted to maintaining his spells.
“War? Thoughts?”
“Until we know otherwise,” the other replied, “we should operate under the assumption that this is not the only enemy force in the region. Avoid a prolonged engagement if possible, and devote a portion of our forces to perimeter guard if we are drawn into one.”
“I thought much the same.”
“We should hit them from all sides,” War continued. “Keep them from setting up any defensive lines, or organizing to protect the workstations.”
“Agreed. Four squads of ten angels each. Azrael, you, and I will each lead one. Azrael? Whom do you trust to serve as a fourth?”
The elder angel pointed, indicating an angel with a halberd over her shoulder, a warhammer with a beak nearly as long as her wingspan slung at her back, and a perpetual squint.
“All right. You!”
“Ezgati, Horseman.”
“Fine. Ezgati, you command the fourth division.” Death stepped aside, allowing War to indicate which unit should approach from which direction.
“The scouting party?” Ezgati asked. “We don’t know precisely where they’re stationed.”
“Keep an eye out,” War answered. “Hold off on any cannonades until you’ve located them—unless one of the other units requires immediate assistance. In that case, the scouts will have to take their chances.”
Ezgati grumbled under her breath, and Azrael scowled, but neither voiced any objection.
“Remember that your primary targets are the cauldrons. We—”
“Look there!”
Both Horsemen turned at the interruption. One of the angels held his halberd before him, pointing toward a clear spot where the eddies and currents of the breeze had temporarily opened a window through the fog. There, roughly a third of the way around the edge of the enemy operation, the aforementioned scouts had taken shelter behind an encrusted, necrotic dune. Their position should have kept them out of sight of the constructs, yet a small squad of the brass-and-stone soldiers were advancing on them, gradually, silently, from behind.
“Damn it!”
Several of the angels were already moving, weapons out and wings spread, but War raised a hand to stop them. “If we engage, the others will know we’re coming!”
“We are not just going to leave them out there to be cut down from behind!” Ezgati retorted.
“We need to—”
“Both of you shut up!” Death hissed. No, they couldn’t launch an overt attack without giving away their presence—but he might just have another option.
The elder Horseman dropped to one knee and plunged his fingers into the rotten, flaky soil, already whispering. Doing this at such a distance was taxing, but not impossible. If he could just …
There!
Just ahead of the advancing myrmidons, skeletal hands bristled from the ground, already grabbing at the enemy. Death knew from experience that the rapid spindles would grind those bones to powder, but perhaps if he focused them all on a single construct, they might slow it for at least an instant—and, more important, ought to make sufficient noise to warn the scouts of the approaching attackers.
At the Horseman’s command, nearly a dozen of those hands converged on the construct in the center of the advancing line, reaching over and around one another so that they might all grab the rotating stalk at once.
Bone snapped, dust flew … And then the necromantic strength of so many hands dragged the spindle to a sudden halt.
The upper half of the construct instantly began whirling uncontrollably in the opposite direction, metal screeching under the sudden stress. Like the mad project of some drunken toymaker, part child’s top and part marionette, it wobbled as it spun. Its arms flailed wildly, and with them the killing blades into which the construct had already formed its hands. The two myrmidons to either side, as well as one standing a bit too close behind, were instantly hurled aside to land in heaps of shredded metal. Faster and faster the runaway automaton spun, leaning ever farther as it began to topple, until finally one of those arms dug deep into the earth and ripped itself free of the rotating torso in a spray of metal filings, dust, and something that might have been a mix of blood and groundwater. At that point the construct, now completely unbalanced, crashed to the dirt where it flipped a few times, denting itself grotesquely out of shape, before finally going still.
War, Ezgati, and Azrael stared, their jaws comically slack—first at the wreckage, then at Death.
Who, in response, could offer up little more than a halfhearted, “Huh.”
Still, while the attempt might not have gone precisely (or at al
l) as Death had expected, it worked. The small scouting party, alerted by the sensational cacophony, took to the air and vanished into the swirling haze long before the surviving members of that ill-fated ambush could reach them. And while the larger force of constructs clearly knew, now, that something was amiss—they couldn’t possibly have missed the clamor, either—they could only respond by converging on the fallen myrmidon, given that the attack lacked any more obvious origin.
Death shrugged, allowed the hands to fade back into the earth, and gestured for War to order the attack.
Things could, perhaps, have gone a bit more smoothly—the four separate divisions had to rush into position, now that the enemy was on guard—but ultimately, it made no difference. Two of the Riders of the Apocalypse and forty angels laid siege to an army of constructs that outnumbered them nearly eight to one, and the constructs never stood a chance.
Sacred energies and tearing shrapnel detonated across Belisatra’s forces as a dozen circling angels opened fire with Redemption cannons. Around the edges, those artificial creatures that sought safety away from the enclosed ranks of their comrades instead found themselves peppered into chunks by volley after volley from the ranks of halberdiers. Unable to fire back—none of them was equipped with gun or cannon of its own—the constructs sought shelter within the shallow ravines that crisscrossed the plain, gathered in bunches to shield the “distilling” cauldrons, or darted forward in crooked paths, trying to close on their attackers.
Which was, of course, when the angelic blades came into play.
Swords of impossible width sliced stone and brass as readily as parchment. Ezgati’s warhammer whirled in murderous arcs, detonating anything unfortunate enough to meet with the blunt head it boasted on one side, often piercing two or even three constructs at a time with the bill on the other. Azrael and two handpicked soldiers meandered casually through the melee, cloaked in illusions to resemble a trio of the gleaming myrmidons. The scholar focused on maintaining both the phantom image and a second incantation, one to allow the other angels to sense their true natures—didn’t want their allies to mistake them for constructs, did they?—while his companions lashed out and obliterated enemies who never knew they were threatened at all.
