Siege Line

by Myke Cole

  He contracted his shoulders and brought the Alaskan’s butt whistling down toward her head.

  A crackling of branches, and something collided with his side hard enough to send him flying. His ribs screamed under the sudden pressure, and then he lost all sense of direction, flopping and rolling, his nose and mouth filling with snow. At last, he came to a stop on his back, blinking at the sliver of gray sky visible through the treetops. He could hear the woman shouting something, a man’s voice answering, a crooning rasp that made Schweitzer shiver despite the pain in his side.

  He heard the crunching of footsteps on snow. “It is irritating,” Peter said, “to have to kill the same man twice.”

  Schweitzer coughed, rolled onto his stomach. His mind screamed at him not to present his back to his brother, but he knew if he didn’t get up, he wouldn’t stand a chance. You don’t stand a chance anyway.

  Peter took a light, dancing step and seized the hood on Schweitzer’s parka, hauled him upright. “No, maybe not the same man. Who’s in there?”

  Schweitzer drove himself forward, trying to break the Director’s hold, and when that didn’t work, he fumbled with the parka’s zipper, tried to wriggle his arms out of the sleeves. The Director laughed, seized Schweitzer’s wrist, gripped his chin. Slowly, Schweitzer felt his face rotated until he was forced to turn or else have his neck snapped.

  Up close, his brother’s face was a gray horror. The rip in his cheek had made his skeleton’s smile into a demon leer. At some point, he’d trimmed off the excess flap of skin, and Schweitzer could see the blackened workings of his muscles as he spoke. “Who’s in there, I wonder? They bring you back from the dead?”

  Peter hadn’t bothered to pin his arms, and Schweitzer delivered a powerful forearm strike to his brother’s dead brachial nerve. He knew it wouldn’t work, but had no idea what else to do. The Director didn’t even notice the blow, strong enough to make Schweitzer’s arm sing out in pain.

  “Did they put a jinn in you? No. Look at those eyes.”

  His brother leaned in closer. “Who are you, then?”

  “I got him, sir!” the woman shouted, running up beside them. Her face was lit, and Schweitzer could tell her breathlessness was from excitement and not exertion. “I winged him! He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Damn it, Mark. The man is ancient and decrepit,” the Director snapped. “He wasn’t going anywhere regardless.”

  A man’s name for a woman. The Cell. Mark looked crestfallen. She stammered a reply, stopped herself. “So, what you’ve done is effectively risked the life of the very reason we came to this godforsaken place,” Peter said. “Go check on him. If he bleeds out, I will be . . . disappointed.”

  The woman stammered an apology and raced off.

  “He did it, didn’t he?” Peter asked, turning Schweitzer’s face this way and that. “He put my baby brother in the body of this walrus. That’s wonderful. That’s the one piece of good news I’ve had since I arrived here. It’s you, isn’t it, Jim? How do you feel? What was it like going in?”

  “The name’s Joe Yakecan.” Schweitzer managed to bite words out through the Director’s viselike grip.

  “Oh, I don’t think it is,” his brother crooned. “I think you’re a naughty little liar.” He tightened his grip, and Schweitzer felt his jawbone flex painfully.

  “Not that it matters,” the Director said. “You’re dead either way. It only remains to be seen how attached the old man is to you. But I can see you like to tell lies with that filthy mouth of yours. So, let me put a stop to that first.”

  The pressure on Schweitzer’s jaw intensified, the pain focusing behind his lower lip, where the halves of the bone joined. He’s going to snap it in half.

  He fumbled at his waist.

  “I was hoping to have the granddaughter for this,” Peter said, “but a practice run will do me good.”

  Schweitzer wrenched his head up and down, desperately tried to shake off that deadly grip. It was useless. The bone screamed, inching its way to failure.

  “Boss!” Mark shouted. “Bleeding’s stopped, but I can’t wake him up!”

  “What?” Peter paused, turning his attention to the woman. “What do you mean you can’t—”

  Schweitzer shook the pistol free of Yakecan’s waistband, jammed it up under his brother’s chin just as a pistol had been jammed under his when he’d still been alive and in his own body.

  His brother only had time to saw his head back to Schweitzer before the gun kicked and his head exploded.

  The Director’s grip on Schweitzer’s face slackened just enough for him to slip free, unzipping the parka as he fell, finally shrugging the garment off and running with everything he had. He heard the Director’s howl of rage, Mark’s semi-coherent shouting. A bullet kicked up snow in front of him, Mark’s inexpert marksmanship saving him again. Schweitzer heard snarling, yipping, Mark shouting. The wolves, the tháydÿne born of Plante’s magic, coming to Schweitzer’s aid or Plante’s. It didn’t matter so long as they kept Mark from drawing a bead on him. Schweitzer thought of their emaciated bodies, their stilted, jerking movement, knew they wouldn’t stop Mark for long.

  Running was useless and Schweitzer ran anyway, because now that he once again had a living body, the old instincts had returned, the chemical cocktail of adrenaline and blood sugar that sent jittering shocks through his muscles and boiled panic in his gut. He didn’t want to die, not now, when he was finally alive again.

  “Jim!” his brother gurgled, the sound clotted and wheezing, like a broken bellows straining air through a wet sponge. “Jim, wha’re doin’? You can’d run!”

  Schweitzer knew Peter was right, but his legs refused to obey him, and he kept on running, the crunching of the snow suddenly turning hard and brittle, resounding with tinkling cracks under his feet. He glanced down, saw he was pounding across the frozen pond they’d skirted before, the light dusting of snow swirling with each step.

  He slowed, conscious of Yakecan’s size, of his heavy tread, the ice trembling under him. His mind screamed at him to keep going, that plunging into the icy water was a far better end than whatever Peter had in store for him, but his instincts were confused, his training still adjusting to the shift in his form, to the noise of life all around him. The ice plate shuddered, broke free where it touched the shore. Schweitzer felt the entire plate drop an inch, saw water lapping at the edges.

  “Jim.” His brother’s voice was close, just a few feet behind him.

  Schweitzer slowly turned, wincing at the cracking beneath him.

  The bullet had blown the back of Peter’s head open like a bomb casing. His scalp bloomed outward, a smoking gray flower, the jagged petals heavy with the shards of his skull. His face had imploded as the structure behind it was torn away, features gone hideously concave. Peter’s jaw hung askew by a few threads of muscle, but Schweitzer could tell he was smiling. “C’mon,” Peter said. “S’s stupid.”

  Schweitzer looked left and right, tested his weight. The ice plate rocked, and he pinwheeled his arms, trying to keep upright. Peter shifted his weight seamlessly; Schweitzer knew that his brother’s core muscles were locking and unlocking as needed to compensate, effortlessly and with all the magical strength he’d once had. “Eben now,” Peter said, “I fogibe you. Eben now, you can come wid me.”

  Peter extended a hand. “I ged you awb dis ice. Come.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Schweitzer said. “I take your hand, and you get me off this ice, and then I help you.”

  Peter laughed, his jaw dancing hideously. “You heb me how? I don’ need yo helb.”

  “Yes, you do. Your end isn’t an end, Pete. Remember how you used to lionize Alexander the Great? What happened when he conquered the world? He couldn’t rule it. He was angry and alone, watching his friends turn on him and everything he’d built slip through his fingers.”

 
; “I’m greader than Alegsander,” Peter said, but Schweitzer could hear the irritation in his voice.

  “For all the fucking good it’ll do you. This is the problem with greatness for greatness’ sake. This is why I bought into the family-God-country stuff. Not because I’m stupid but because it’s something to live for.” He thought of his last fight with Sarah, the night the enemy had come for him and his life had changed forever. Why do you do it, Jim? What do you get out of it? I mean, apart from the adrenaline rush, she had asked, her cheeks pink with anger, with frustration, with her willingness to lose him.

  Oh, God, Sarah. I was such a fool. I made the wrong choice. I’m so sorry.

  “This is proof that it works.” Schweitzer gestured to himself. “It can work for you too.”

  “It will wordg bor me,” Peter said. “Da owd man id alibe.” He pointed a finger at Plante’s still form. “I canb hear his heart.”

  “No,” Schweitzer said. “He’ll die first. He doesn’t give a fuck about me.”

  “Led’s test dat,” Peter said, reaching for Schweitzer’s wrist. “And if nod you, den I find da sheriff. I’ll conbince him. I’m good ad conbincing.”

  Schweitzer didn’t doubt it. “And then what? Senator Hodges? To what end?”

  “Dat’s my probrem.”

  “It is your problem, and it’s a bad one. You think you’re going to live again, but you won’t. You’ll just be a dead man hiding in a living body. Your existence will be just as empty as it was before. You’ll be like Alexander: you’ll grasp everything and have nothing. You’ll be alone.”

  “Shuddup.” Peter’s voice was dangerously low. He reached for Schweitzer’s hand again.

  “Sarah’s gone,” Schweitzer said. “Patrick too. I want a family again. We can be that for each other. We’ll find another body, the right body, and the old man will put you in it willingly. We can fix this.”

  “BS. I fugging made you. You berrong to me.”

  Schweitzer felt a gulf open in his stomach, deeper and darker than the void he knew hovered beyond the edges of his consciousness. “What do you mean?” he whispered. “You didn’t make me.”

  “Course I didb,” Peter laughed, nearly losing his dangling jaw. “I thought youb be sumbting. I thoughtb maybe whatb madbe meb who I am ranb in da family. Thought I was wrong for a bit. But I don’ hab ta be. Gib me yourb hand.”

  The gulf opened wider, until Schweitzer felt sick, like he was choking on despair. He had lost everything—his career, his wife and child, his very life—all because his dead brother wanted to see if his delusions of grandeur ran in the family. Peter, his brother, his idol. Peter had taken everything for no reason at all. From the moment Peter had died to the moment Schweitzer had joined him, he’d prayed that heaven was real, that there was some paradise beyond the grave where good men like his brother could dwell in peace. Now he just wished the bastard had stayed dead.

  “You fucker.” Rage blotted out his senses, dark and sonorous, nearly as intense as what he had felt when he was still paired with Ninip. It choked Schweitzer’s professionalism, sent the SEAL packing, replaced him with a violent animal. Schweitzer made no effort to fight it. He was a human with no magic ability to speak of, going up against a magically-powered immortal. Schweitzer didn’t stand a chance whether he ran or fought, and being angry felt so much better than being afraid.

  Peter lunged for Schweitzer, and though a tiny part of him knew it was useless, hopeless, Schweitzer stepped into the grip, let his brother’s dead hands fasten on his wrists. He brought Joe Yakecan’s beefy knee up and drove it hard into his brother’s hip, right where he’d seen the joint wobble from his vantage point in the church steeple. It gave a satisfying pop, and he felt Peter topple sideways, grunting. Schweitzer jerked his wrist back and punched his brother’s broken face with everything he had.

  Rage gave way to reality. Where a metal bullet had torn through like hurricane, Yakecan’s fist crumbled on impact against the metal-reinforced bone of Peter’s ruined face. Schweitzer grunted as he felt the small bones of the hand shiver and burst, the fragments shearing through the blood vessels and supporting tendons. Schweitzer drew back his—Joe’s—fist, which looked more like a dripping red bag than a hand. If it had been useless whole, it was certainly no help now.

  He yanked on the other wrist, but Peter’s grip on him was as strong as death itself, and he felt the bones beneath the skin grinding together as his brother held on. Schweitzer let himself fall forward then, his body weight unbalancing Peter, who cursed and let go. “Stob, Jim. You canb getb awayb.”

  Schweitzer’s wrist ached, but it was nothing compared to the flaring agony of his pulped right hand. Peter reached for his wrist again. “Stob being an idiob and combon.”

  Schweitzer let his brother take his right wrist. The broken hand screamed in agony as the pressure of his brother’s grip made it balloon, the purple skin going taut.

  But it left his other hand, with its working fingers, free.

  Schweitzer remembered the Bible passage he’d thought of as he’d laid on the pyre outside Grandpa Plante’s shack, feeling his old body burn away. The lamp of the body is the eye, if, therefore, thine eye may be perfect, all thy body shall be enlightened. It was the eyes. When his eyes had gone, so had he.

  He made a forked V with his first two fingers and thrust them forward, into the silver flames that still burned in his brother’s shattered skull.

  There was no heat, no pain, only pins and needles . . . strangeness, as the flesh passed through the fire and rebounded off the bone behind.

  Peter howled, released Schweitzer’s wrist. Could it actually be working? Schweitzer grunted, pushed his fingers harder, hooking them down, knuckling them in, doing his best to fill the cavities of his brother’s eye sockets so that no flame could possibly burn there.

  Peter went rigid, fingers clenching and unclenching. Schweitzer felt hope blossom in his gut. He was winning. He pushed harder. “When you get back out there,” he said, “stay the fuck away from my wife.”

  A sharp crack sounded and Schweitzer felt a hammerblow on his chest. Agony flared in his shoulder, and he struggled to draw breath. He spun, fell, hearing Mark’s exultant shout of “Got him!” Her feet pounding toward them.

  “No, you fuggin’ foo!” Peter was already recovering, the silver flames of his eyes burning brightly again.

  Another crack sounded and Mark toppled sideways, dropping her rifle. Schweitzer could see a dark shape racing toward them, weapon at the low ready, and then he struck the ice, head rebounding hard enough to make him see stars.

  The sudden impact was too much; the ice plate groaned, cracked, and gave way, the icy water reaching up to admit him. Schweitzer forgot his pain as the frigid liquid soaked into his clothing, his limbs crying out and going numb almost instantly. Yakecan’s bulk sank like a stone.

  Peter danced nimbly off the shattering ice, balanced easily on the extreme edge of the shore, shooting out a hand to grab the back of Schweitzer’s shirt. He held his head above the water. “See? You got sum steelb inb youb. Youb canb be moreb dan dis. Lass chandce, Jim,” he said. “Do I sabe you or led you go down?”

  The figure was closing, but Schweitzer knew that Peter’s magical reflexes were agile enough to handle the threat as soon as it came in range. Schweitzer looked up into the lopsided pits of his brother’s eyes, stared in wonder at the flickering silver flames there.

  Snarling, two heavy shapes landed on Peter’s back, sending him toppling forward.

  Schweitzer saw two of the tháydÿne latched to his brother, jaws tearing at the remains of his shattered head. A second later, they were joined by a third, then a fourth, until it seemed his brother wore a coat of writhing wolves. Peter released Schweitzer’s shirt, turned to tear at the wolves, but the water seized him as hungrily as it did Schweitzer, and all of them sank below the surface in an instant.

&nbs
p; Schweitzer saw his brother’s shadow flailing against the wolves, sinking deeper into darkness. The cold wrapped itself around Schweitzer and the light faded. He looked up at the rippling surface above, graying. It’s refreezing, he thought. It’s gone to slush already.

  A thin trail of blood wormed its way up from his chest, reminding him of the rosewater trail he’d followed to his wife. At least I’ll have a chance to find you again, Sarah, he thought, and then the cold and the darkness swallowed him whole.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CAVALRY ARRIVES

  It had been so long since Schweitzer had last slept, or passed out, or known anything other than the long, waking hours of his unlife, that at first he had no idea what had happened. The leaden feeling of his body, the dull, wet ache in his chest, the blackness and lost time. It took several moments to realize that he was awake and alive, that the darkness around him was nothing more than the inside of his eyelids.

  He opened them.

  Light flooded in, and Schweitzer blinked away tears. The water haloed the world, refracted the light into a spray of rainbows around the edges of some low pine boughs and wisps of cloud in a steel-gray sky. A face looked down at him, silhouetted and wavering. Callused fingers stroked his head, pushing the hair out of his eyes. “Saved you this time.” The voice was hard, but warm.