Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles - eARC

by Larry Correia

  Faye knew what to do.

  She Travelled around the magic, laid hands on the Black Monk’s robes, and then dragged them both back through space, reappearing right in the path of his magical attack. Faye let go and leapt aside at the last possible second.

  The dissolving magic washed over the Black Monk.

  His black eyes turned on Faye. Wide. Surprised. A little confused . . .

  And then he simply came apart.

  She could hear the cries of terror coming from the village and she could see them running around on her head map. They didn’t know what was happening. One minute it had been a quiet Sunday afternoon, and a minute later their church was falling down. The bell broke free of the tower, crashed through the beams, and landed on the stone floor with a terrible racket.

  Walking over, Faye kicked at the pile of black robes and slowly melting pink sludge that had been a real live person only a few seconds before. He was melting like the candles that had been sitting on the altar. One eyeball turned liquid and ran down his cheek. The last of his air was coming out of his chest as white foam. Even his bones were melting. She’d have to tell Mr. Sullivan about this type of magic, because she didn’t think he had anything about it in his notes.

  The Black Monk gurgled, spat out some pink fluid, and within a few seconds, melted flat out into a puddle on the floor. This time she was sure he was dead. There weren’t no coming back from turning into a blood puddle. And then Faye got her confirmation when she felt the Spellbound curse steal his ancient mighty,connection to the Power. She’d not really felt the individual deaths before, but she certainly felt this one. It was a weird sensation, like she was now somehow more.

  Nervous, she checked her Power. The river had grown deep and fast. Faye closed her eyes and found that her head map stretched for miles. It was almost too much information to process, and she began to swoon. Faye didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense, as she wasn’t the “fainting lady” type, so she wiped her knife on the curtains, put it away, reloaded her .45, picked out the spot where she’d hidden her clothing and Zachary’s art two and a half miles away, and Travelled there in a single hop.

  Now she was ready to fight the Enemy.

  UBF Traveler

  The communication spell was severed. The ring of fused salt fell and shattered on the table. Sullivan stared at the fragments, trying to reason his way through the implications of the news. The ready room was totally silent as the last bits of magical energy bound to the mineral slowly dissipated into the air.

  He raised his head and looked at the others. The feelings were easy to recognize on their faces; disbelief, anger, sadness, even resignation. They’d been worried that the Imperium might somehow detect the spell, so Heinrich’s report had been kept very brief. It hadn’t taken him much time to tell them that they’d been sucker-punched. Three of their four hideouts had been hit simultaneously. The only known survivors had been the four knights pulled out by the stolen patrol boat.

  The Grimnoir had been gutted.

  Sullivan couldn’t let his doubts show. They needed him to be the rock. He’d thought he’d left his soldiering days behind, but this was much the same. When you were in charge, you couldn’t ever let your doubt show.

  Pang must not have known about the small place where Heinrich and a few others were staying. Most of the Traveler’s knights were unaccounted for and assumed dead or captured. The local Grimnoir were functionally gone, the entirety of their membership consisting now of Zhao, the badly injured man Yip, and a woman who had been serving as a guide for the knights stationed with Heinrich.

  It sounded like the Shadow Guard had been effective in quickly removing resistance in two of the three attacks. Ian Wright had been in charge of the last group. Somehow they’d managed to break through the Imperium perimeter. Knowing Ian, he’d probably had a spirit out and about, which had given them some warning. Those knights had made it out into the streets, and that raid had turned into a long, running gun battle down the Nanking Road. There had been no word from any of those knights, but there was still a possibility that some of them had been able to escape. Since they hadn’t called in, Sullivan figured that was mighty unlikely, but at times like this, it was best for the troops to cling to whatever hope they had left.

  He kept his expression flat. Inside, Sullivan knew this was his fault and he accepted full responsibility. He’d made the call. Dr. Wells’ idea had seemed like their best option, so Sullivan had run with it. If he hadn’t stuck Toru out there as a personal insult to the whole Imperium, would they have gotten this level of response? Sure, they’d been betrayed by one of their own, but it had been Sullivan’s call which had put them all in danger. The Imperium had killed those knights, but they’d only been able to do so because Sullivan had put them there.

  It wouldn’t do to let the others know his dark thoughts. They might not realize it yet, but the mission still had to go on.

  Bob Southunder stepped back from the table and ran one hand across his bald cranium. Even the experienced pirate captain didn’t know what to say. Lady Origami and Barns were there, both of them looking pale and scared. Buckminster Fuller and Chris Schirmer had come into the ready room near the end of Heinrich’s report. They’d surely heard enough to know how bad things were. The Cog and the Fixer were both stained with grease and stunk of chemicals from their project, which had taken over the cargo hold.

  “Is your device ready?” Sullivan asked by way of greeting.

  “It is based upon my previous nullification technology, only multireinforced and omnireconfigured to repel a portion of the recently discovered Enemy geometries instead. Despite the scavenged materials being insufficient to complement the tensegrity of the spherical—”

  “Yeah, I got it rigged so it’ll function,” Schirmer said, quickly demonstrating the difference between scientists and engineers by getting right down to how things actually work. “The hard part is going to be where we’ll have to have to put this dirigible in order to make it effective.”

  “Where exactly do we need to place my ship?” Pirate Bob asked suspiciously.

  At least Fuller was excited that he had a new gizmo to play with. “The magically charged particles’ range is functionally unlimited, but they must travel in a straight plane. The further out from the curvature of spaceship Earth, the greater the area of the nullification zone!”

  “Real high altitude. Higher we can get this thing, the better.” Schirmer explained. “It’ll take a minute to move the array back and forth. Think of it like a cone. But the higher we get, the more ground we can sweep.”

  “Real high altitude, like where the entire Imperium can see us in broad daylight and shoot their line-of-sight Peace Rays at us? That’s a hell of a good plan,” Barns said sarcastically. “I’m a good pilot, but I’m not dodging-Peace-Rays good.”

  “Nearest land-based Peace Ray is in Japan. Given the altitude the Traveler is theoretically capable of, we would be over the horizon . . . They could be radioed our coordinates and start flinging death rays, but their odds of hitting us are slim to none,” Captain Southunder muttered. “The real concern is, how close is that Kaga class we saw on the way in? We’ve been parked for days and there’s been no sign of that monster on the teleradar device.” Pirate Bob wasn’t coming out and saying it; there were supposedly only a few of them built so far, and one had gotten splashed along with the Tokugawa, but they all knew that if the Chairman was in Shanghai, then that meant that one of the Imperium’s super battleships would be close. “That beast and its ray beams are the only thing I’m scared of. Anything else in this sky we can outrange, ou run, or outclimb. Good thing I can control the weather. I can provide us some cover at least.”

  “That will not work!” Buckminster Fuller exclaimed. “The refraction of atmospheric moisture will cause a dissolution of the concentrated magical energies—”

  “It won’t shoot as far in the rain or fog,” Schirmer explained. “That’ll defeat the purpose. We’ll only ge
t maximum power in a clear sky.”

  “I’m just going to keep you around as Mr. Fuller’s translator from now on,” Pirate Bob said. “Thank you, Mr. Schirmer.”

  “You still wish to go through with this?” Lady Origami asked Sullivan quietly.

  Sullivan nodded. “Got no choice. This is our only shot. He’ll come to Shanghai for sure now that he thinks he’s got us on the run.”

  “He does have us on the run,” Barns pointed out.

  “Yeah. So he won’t expect us. Toru’s probably gone, but I’m sticking with Wells’ theory of the man. He’d come to the party now just to gloat.”

  “Is Dr. Wells among the dead?” Buckminster Fuller asked.

  “He was with Ian’s bunch. They made a run for it.” Sullivan shrugged. “So maybe . . .” Probably.

  “Too bad. He was an intellectual peer, a charming conversationalist, and I much enjoyed his attempts at describing my childhood based entirely upon my current speech patterns, an absolutely fascinating endeavor indeed.” Fuller Said. “I would say that the untimely loss of such a great mind will be a terrible thing for humanity, except for that part where he was absolutely terrifying and completely amoral.”

  “Yep . . .” He’d gotten the alienist sprung from jail just to get him killed too. One more failure to throw on the pile. Sullivan turned to Southunder. “I know it’s dangerous, Captain, but I’m still asking you to do this.”

  Southunder mulled it over. He turned and walked to the map on the wall, running one bony finger from their current position up the coast to Shanghai. “Even if we don’t attract that Kaga, half the Imperium navy will come after us.” The captain scowled at the map, as if that would give him any better answers. “I would ask only one thing. Before we depart this village, we explain to the crew exactly what we face, take volunteers, and then we ask every single person without an absolutely vital responsibility to get off. I know some of the local captains. I could call in a favor and arrange their passage home. We will make this attempt, but only with a skeleton crew.”

  The captain didn’t want any extra blood on his hands. Sullivan understood the sentiment, especially today. “Agreed.”

  “What about the rest of Wells’ plan?” Schirmer asked. “We need boots on the ground, but we’re down almost everyone. Heinrich’s got five men on the other side of the town, and the Shanghai Grimnoir are all dead.”

  “Not all of us.” Zhao had entered the room silently. Sullivan didn’t even know how long the kid had been there. Zhao hadn’t talked much on the ride back or during the walk through the woods after they’d ditched the patrol boat. Getting betrayed by somebody you believed was a friend, and then executing your parents’ killer, was a lot to absorb. The burdens of leadership were tough, even tougher when everyone you were in charge of was gone and somehow you weren’t. “I will return to Shanghai and meet with Heinrich. We will still attack when Du’s gangsters begin their riot.”

  “Assuming that big-eared bastard keeps his word,” Barns said.

  “I will make sure he does.” There was ice in the young man’s words. “If he does not, he will regret it, and then I will find a way to distract the military myself. This is my fault. Pang was one of my men, and I trusted him, like a fool.”

  “Naw.” Sullivan shook his head. That sort of crushing weight didn’t belong on a teenager. It was Sullivan’s to bear. If there was anything he was good at, it was not being crushed under a lot of weight, and he’d gathered a lot over the years. Zhao was new at this. Sullivan had lots of practice. “You were lied to by a snake. Happens to the best of us. I brought us here. This was my plan. My responsibility. Got it?”

  Zhao didn’t respond. It would have to do.

  Schirmer returned to his point. Apparently Fixers were compelled to tackle all problems, not just the mechanical ones. “Every last knight you pulled out of the river is injured and in no shape to fight, and our Healer’s dead. Even if the new Chairman’s one-tenth what the old Chairman was, you’ll need more men to confront him. I can go with you.”

  “I need you here to make sure Fuller’s device runs right. Exposing the Pathfinder is first. Killing its stooge is second. We have to wake the Iron Guard up. That’s all that matters.”

  “All right.” Schirmer was a brave knight, but he knew Sullivan was right. Some problems just couldn’t be fixed. “I’ll shine the light so everybody can watch the roaches scatter.”

  “I can go, burn many Imperium,” Lady Origami offered.

  “You’re going to keep this ship in the air when it starts getting shot at. I got this myself.”

  “You hide it, but I see your sadness. You think this is your fault. Being killed will not bring them back! It was too much danger when there were many of you!” Ori was getting upset. “Alone, you’ll die!”

  “Maybe . . .” There was one other, drastic, final option. He hadn’t wanted to use it, because frankly, it scared him. He’d already figured it would come to this, even before they’d heard from Heinrich, so he’d retrieved the sheet he’d hidden in a compartment beneath his bunk. Sullivan reached into his coat and pulled out the folded sheet of paper that he had meticulously copied from the personal spell book of Anand Sivaram, when he had taken it from Bradford Carr. Sullivan carefully unfolded it and placed the paper on the table amidst the fused chunks of salt. “Maybe not.”

  It would just look like complicated scribbles and lots of weird geometric designs to most folks. Sullivan had succeeded in binding several spells to his body over the last year, but those had all been child’s play compared to this thing. He’d thought of those as an intellectual, magical, and physical challenge, an opportunity to even the odds against Iron Guard. And even then each of those had been incredibly risky, with each one taking him right up to death’s door before he’d forced himself to come back. This thing was a monster in comparison. It was doomsday. Buckminster Fuller scanned over it and then let out an audible gasp.

  “I know of only two men this spell’s been carved on. Giuseppe Zangara and the OCI man Crow. Zangara was a no-account weakling, and this turned him into the scariest Boomer anybody’s ever seen. And you all know what Crow the Summoner unleashed on D.C.”

  Fuller swallowed hard. “It drastically magnifies the user’s Power, that much is clear, but there is so much there . . . I would think that there could be terrible side effects.”

  “Don’t matter . . .” Of course there would be side effects. You didn’t screw around with this level of magic without dire consequences. Bradford Carr had been a fool. Zangara had already been crazy, but this thing had gradually pushed Crow right over the edge. Sullivan had studied Sivaram’s book, and though the actual Spellbound curse the Grimnoir elders were so scared of hadn’t been in there, this thing had been. He figured it was a sort of early prototype of the Spellbound curse. The elders would surely come apart if they learned what he was about to do, not that it mattered, since this was more than likely a one-way trip. “All I need to know is, can you carve this spell on me?”

  Fuller was shaking. The others didn’t get it, but Fuller did. The Cog could read magic, simple as most folks could read letters. One slip and Sullivan was dead. He understood exactly what Sullivan was asking, and God bless him for it, he manned up. “Yes. Yes, I believe I can do that.”

  As Toru had said back when they’d first embarked on this quest: they’d defeat the Pathfinder, or they’d die trying.

  Art to come

  Rasputin

  Chapter 18

  Dear Miss Etiquette,

  My boyfriend is a Mover. Is it still considered opening the door for a lady if he does it with his mind powers instead of with his body? And if it is not, how should I broach this subject so as to not hurt his feelings?

  Signed,

  Confused in Cleveland

  Dear Confused,

  It most definitely is not proper to use magic of any kind around a young lady, especially telekinesis. It is difficult enough for boys to keep their hands to themselves, let alone
extra invisible hands. If he is a proper gentleman he will get the door for you with his actual physical hands and never use his ghost hands in polite society.

  Miss Etiquette,

  newspaper column, 1931

  Somewhere in Russia

  It had taken what seemed like forever to find them and the nice new airship that Francis had so thoughtfully named after her, but Faye tracked them down eventually. She’d hoped for a pleasant reunion, but instead she’d damn near scared the hell out of everybody. They were jumpy, and it hadn’t helped that everybody thought she was dead.

  Her magic was a boundless torrent of energy and limitless potential, but her body was still human, so after she’d squared off against the Black Monk, she’d had to get some sleep. Being the most powerful wizard ever was great and all, but she wasn’t stupid. If she got tired and careless, she’d still be every bit as dead as anybody else if she accidentally Traveled and wound up with a bumblebee stuck in her heart or a tree branch in her brain. As marvelous as Traveling was, it still had some limitations, but it sure beat walking like a normal old boring person.

  She’d found a Russian fur trapper’s cabin with nobody home. Faye figured that sleeping in a bed made out of bearskins was much comfier than sleeping in some hay loft or open field. And she was about to go fight the Pathfinder anyways, and sometimes a girl just had to treat herself to something nice. She’d eaten some old potatoes and a whole bunch of jerky made out of who knew what kind of animal which had been stored there, and left a big handful of money to make up for it. There was a bag of salt there for treating the game they killed, so she’d used that to fashion some communication spells.