“Bees.” Pole is pondering how to reacquire the package and is studiously limiting his engagement with his fellow agent to the bare minimum. Important things are happening, the target he’s chased, knowingly and unknowingly for three decades is out and running. “He’ll move fast. The question is where.”
He is all too aware of Stevens’ predilection for humour in the face of deadly serious issues and it’s not as if he doesn’t have a sense of humour himself. In the right circumstances. They just never seem to occur recently.
Stevens has moved on to easier targets. He has the sad sack Protectorate guards in a groaning complaining line and is offering helpful advice. As with most Union types he is subject to an innate drive to belittle their continental friends.
“Not the bees!” His flip top head flaps open wide as he guffaws prodding at stings and dislocated joints. “Not the bees? Ah. That’s... so much stinging.” He points at the blotchy sergeant in command of the lead crawler. “Sergeant! How many times were you stung? No wait. Where did the bees come from? No. First question. How much stinging? It looks really, really painful!”
The guards hide behind the first instinct of most foreigners confronted by an obnoxious Englishman and pretend not to understand him. It drives him off for a while to more mechanical pursuits.
He kicks the side of the lead crawler set sideways across the now cleared road. “This is some pukka work. Real sporting. I get the trick with the power cells. Be fun for someone to clean out all that urine.”
“Tech officer over there says they’re going to have to replace them entirely,” Pole shouts from where he stands, thinking, trying to distract the annoying Agent from his troopers.
“But the bees. Tell me about the bees!”
The tech officer perks up and tries to dangle the bait, get Stevens concentrating on the practicals. “There was a trip point inversion which turned the ammunition we were carrying for the turret cannons into bees of unusual size, sir.“
Ouch. Bad phrasing. Stevens is off again. Big mouth, big man, big laugh. Always been a bit deaf though. Pole tries to blot him out, then shrugs and looks into the forest to where more useful things are happening. A drone operator brought by Stevens and his support group is flying his charge close over the treetops, skimming the top most leaves.
Wasted effort with the witches involved. He may have to wait for the Vamp, Albrecht, to break cover. Question is where will that be and what mischief he could create before the Union can track him down again.
There are a lot of leaderless vampires out there.
If you were an ancient vampire new to this world where would you go? Who would you look to for help? He’s read the files that the Union holds on Master Albrecht but they are limited. Some of his known lairs are under the Clouds now. Others are too dangerous to approach or too far away to matter.
After a little more prodding and chuckling the Protectorate guards file off for some basic medical treatment. Stevens sits himself down on the bench of his crawler to take a drink and eat a protein pack. Pole joins him.
“Not a good result kiddo.”
Pole nods.
“I’ve got Secretary Jenkins giving the locals up in Ruin a rap on the knuckles but spilt milk and similar sentiments rule the day.” He takes a slug of whatever is in his hip flask. Probably rum by the smell. Helps keep his humour fired up. It reminds Pole of a similar scene, years ago watching old Stan sip away at a similar flask while the Paris settlements burned.
He lets the memory slide away. Irrelevant. There’ll be time enough after, lots of post mortems. Stan’s for one.
“So, what’s the plan? Sounds from her up top are that basics remain the same even after this...” a chuckle from that oversized mouth. “This.”
The drone operator and the dog handlers come over to the agents. Good solid Union men GEV’d over from the Canterbury barracks. A medical team from the same source administers epipens and antihistamine cream to the blotchy local Guardians.
“Nothing sir,” the operator confirms. “Normal trees as far as we can go. No world-wood entries.”
“There wouldn’t be. Not now.” Pole confirms.
“And the dogs have scent up to the tree line but no further. Looks like three, maybe four of them plus the package meeting a fourth or fifth just before the forest. Trail cuts off at that point.”
“Have you tried…” Stevens starts.
“No Sir, I’m not sending the dogs into the woods even if you could get us through that solid brush. Best we can do is a direction of travel, but that’s your lot.”
“What direction do you have?” Pole asks handing over his tablet.
“East-ish.” The operator pulls up a mapping program and draws a line of advance based on the dogs’ guesswork. The maps are pre-Catastrophe, that’s not terminal though. Apart from around Paris not much has changed topographically in Europe. Good job really, as the satellites that had kept the program updated are dead and done somewhere up there.
Shame about the satellites, the egg heads had suggested they’d been falling out of the skies into the clouds for the first couple of decades but not even the wreckage had landed.
The line intersects a couple of interesting points, places he’s heard mentioned in reference to the lost Master. Well into the Baronies though.
He’s collecting his resources. That means he’s going to be going…
“Okay.” Pole picks himself up. “I have a theory.”
“That’s a start.” Stevens’ nods encouragingly, chewing.
“But I have nothing to work with.” He looks around at the locals. They’re going nowhere and he’s had a phobia around using the Protectorate troopers for any major effort since Paris.
“Ah yes, London sent your support team off to, where was it… Calabria?”
“Calabria.” Pole takes a deep breath and pulls his gaze up from his boots. “The one before was sent to the Falklands.”
Stevens pats him on the back. “Wasn’t your fault, the whole Iceland thing. You’d think they’d have given up on it by now.”
“That’s not how they work. Always has to be a scapegoat. Anyhow. Doesn’t matter. We adapt. Can I commandeer a couple of your MDR troopers? And a working crawler?”
“That’s not a problem,” Pole holds up his hand. “More?”
“More. This is what I’ve been working towards for… decades. Nearly in our grasp. So. I’d like to get an ‘eyes on’ out to the far network in case he surfaces there and we can requisition some friends to grab him.”
“I can do that sport, work of minutes.” Stevens pauses a look of concern flashing across his features before they revert to their habitual look of wry good humour. “And if he goes further than that?”
“Not my problem. The witches will have told him about Russia. He likes questions. He has no reason to go the city of stars, but if he does good luck to him.”
“Going off to chase into the backwoods then?”
“No. He’s coming back here once he’s prepared. We set up and catch him if he comes back.”
“Back to Paris then for you? That won’t be pleasant,”
“Nothing’s pleasant, there’s only what needs to be done.” He taps decisively at a ruin marked on his map manually a decade before. “We’ll be here. All set?”
“That works for me. Good luck fella'. Don’t envy you this one.” Stevens looks up at the clouds. There is a little light filtering through, but things are shifting around in the darkness up there and the light flickers and dies, leaving the sky as scarlet as ever in this cold waste. The blade grass hisses in the wind. “Sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. You know how it’s been recently”
“Couldn’t have done much anyway. Damn witches.” Pole picks out a stick of gum and chews. “What has she got you doing next?”
“Outbreak of shadow sickness near Ruin. Then some worm god cultists trying to bring up one of those for the usual sick jollies.” Stevens holds up his hand, a mirror of Pole’s earlier gesture to i
ndicate that of course there was more. “After that checking on reports of people on the coast upping and walking into the sea out of the blue. Kappa? Who knows. More than the usual that is and all to be sorted by end of next week when we rotate to Greenland of all places.”
Stevens’ bonhomie slips revealing a grim visage that resembles Pole’s. All Agents had the same expression buried somewhere, the older the closer to the surface. Pole was just a little more open about it. “God France is a fucking miserable place.”
“How many teams are on station?”
Stevens chews his lower lip. The red isn’t just natural colouring. “Total of four other agent teams in the whole North France Protectorate now not counting you and your chicken chase, none better off than mine. Maybe four hundred incidents that need immediate follow up logged and main force is tied up with that Argentine horror.”
“Evacuate and retrench soon. It’s like a tide. We push out, we overreach, we retreat and push out again. Politicians.”
“We do what we can. For as long as we can.”
“That we do.” Pole confirms before adding, “Can you get the locals back to the dig site? Don’t want to have anymore reasons for the locals to cause trouble.”
“Not a problem, chap.”
And with that the conversation is over and the Agents go their separate ways.
“Okay sad sacks” Stevens shouts at the now slightly more medicated, slightly less blotchy, itchy, Protectorate guards. “You’re with me now. Get a repack of ammunition from the crawlers, grab a snack pack or two and get your sorry arses in gear. We are off to see some bad men about a three-hundred-foot-long slime monster. And it’s double-up time on the accommodation till we can get these hulks cleaned out.”
Groans.
Pole heads to his newly commandeered Crawler with an equally commandeered driver and clambers into the turret with its uncomfortable perch-seat. He gives the safety belts a sour glare before leaving them undone and leaves the turret open to get a better view ahead. From experience it’s better to see where you’re going even if you’re risking a bullet in the brainpan by so doing. A carry over from his days as a soldier, before the Catastrophe.
Not that witches use guns anyway.
He brings up the HUD. The proximity warnings on the higher-specced MDR version are flashing arcana warnings, picking up the residual traces of the witch-ambush. “Wish I’d had you earlier,” he mutters. Locals get cast offs.
Then he taps in a course along the same line as the operator drew as modified for the vestigial road network and slaps his hand on the floor below him. The crawler sets off eastwards with a judder as its electro-hydraulic drive engages.
As the armoured vehicle trundle down the road towards the distant ruins of old Paris with its hidden catacombs filled with all the dead Masters’ knowledge he wonders for a moment if he should have told Steven’s about the faint buzzing coming from the holster of the man’s side arm.
10
Tree Wrangling and Ugaritic (Damn it.)
Aunty Clementine is the local coven's ‘tree wrangler’. I may have the translation a little off but that seems to be her function even if her title has some connotation in French of which I choose to be unaware.
Practically I suspect it just means she gets on well with the trees, and they are happy to shift around northern France and further at her direction. One thing I know for certain is that they don’t listen to me. Even when I hint that I possess a firebrand.
Stubborn creatures.
So now I stand around and wait for her to do something and I am not the master of my own destiny. That is an irksome feeling, I may not remember a lot of my life but I do remember that I have always been my own master. Now I have no control over even the smallest details, such as when my lunch is served.
That leaves me very little with which to amuse myself, but I am making do.
“From the way things have been proceeding I would most definitely say that that there are some benefits to the new state of affairs. What do you think Grandmother Clem?”
Irritating those around me, when bored, is one of my least heroic personality traits.
It is important to be aware of one’s faults and there is something about Clementine that rubs me up the wrong way.
Aunty Clem as Ariadne calls her is a tall austere woman who is studiously pretending not to understand English and that is infuriating. When I was still trying to engage her in a meaningful discussion I tried a couple of other languages, but each inspired an equal level of haughty down-the-nose staring and contemptuous Gallic snorting. Honestly, it’s all a bit of a hassle for the limited benefit of conversing with a middle-aged French witch, so now I tease the lady for my own petty amusement.
A little ungrateful I suppose. In my defence I am very, very old.
The witches have been kind enough to provide me with various sundries in some sort of Hessian carry all, and a compass. Although I have no real use for most of the items therein, for reasons related to not eating, not drinking or because I have no idea what they are, the compass is a mercy given that navigating by sun and stars appears to be a total loss. I watched the sunrise this morning. The sum total of that was a pale red glow on the horizon that blended back into the ever-churning cloud cover as it rose.
Not exactly the sun rising over the Pacific. The sea hissing across golden beaches and the locals pinging off arrows ineffectually at my recumbent form as I let the crabs nibble my toes.
Ah, memories. I’ll never forget the joy of a jaunt across that dark continent and reaching the edge of the world just as the sun rose behind me. I’ll miss that memory when it’s gone.
Or I suppose I won’t as it will be gone. Zeros and ones.
And I am aware of the irony of a vampire missing the sun. Though it’s less ironic than you might think, if you thought about it.
Aunty Clem is currently painstakingly negotiating with the forests for a path to my chosen destination. My understanding is that, if the trees like what she offers and the tone in which it is delivered, I may be at my destination by lunchtime. If not, or I somehow insult a tree…
Let that sink in for a minute. If I insult a tree. Gods and little Godlings help me. It almost makes me yearn for chariots and damp horse flesh.
Well in that case I could be wandering about in the woods for a century or more and that would be awkward to my ‘saving the world’ plans and involve an additional acclimatisation period that would be most unwelcome. If there were anyone left to save.
This is exactly why we’ve always stuck to more sensible methods of travel, excluding that unfortunate incident with the bat-transformation experiment. Who’d have thought so many animals ate bats?
Why am I still here? What can she be saying?
There is a concerning school-mistress tone to Clem’s one-sided conversation in fast French and a petulance to the susurrations emitting from the trees that makes me think I may miss the Christmas goose this year and for many years to come.
‘Old Clemmy’ being otherwise engaged and impervious to my barbs I turn my attention elsewhere. Behind me the witch’s hamlet is its usual boisterous self. Life goes on, such as it is.
“Hey! Lump!”
I turn and see Ariadne. Entertainment at last. She is carrying a companion to my hessian bag over her shoulder which has the effect of making her travel five degrees from true due to its weight pulling on her slight form. By my estimate that still makes her stronger than she appears as based on her frame she’d have toppled over like a dry stone wall.
And she has her travelling hat on in all its pointy ridiculous glory. It has stars and sickle moons on it for goodness sake. Who wears something like that?
“Hello young lady.” Aunty Clem looks back and glares at us both, we must be interrupting a very important bit of negotiation with the elms who are angrily raining leaves and damp twigs down on her. I ignore the glare. I didn’t make her tree wrangler.
“I’ve got some fair news for you Lumpy, my lad. Nan
’s agreed that, given that you’re enormously out of touch, I’ll be coming along to help you out of all the rascally moments you’ll get yourself into without someone sensible along. And so is...”
“Meow.”
Well that explains Hemlock popping a furry head out of the hessian bag I’m carrying. I should check my bag for secret cat pockets more often.
Also explains the kibble. I’d assumed that the witch who packed the bag had been a little slow. Where in all the halls of Minos was the cat hiding?
“I.... see.” I ponder for an endless moment but it’s an easy decision if you ignore the risks to others and concentrate on the greater goal. There will be danger in my travels. Some of the places I plan to go were not salubrious even when I was there the first time. I am strong though and extra eyes are welcome whether natural or unnatural.
The extra effort of protecting a third party would usually vitiate my enthusiasm markedly but a witch as a companion will require little nannying if you forgive the pun, and they have that all important link to nature which will make the forest treks a little more bearable. And a little less prone to endless recursion loop or literal, pitfalls.
I have a soft spot for cats too.
Then we can turn our minds to the enjoyment one can derive from simple but sparky company. It is far more gratifying to enjoy the grand tour with knowledgeable companions than it is to stumble around Europe like an uneducated fool being bilked by tavern keepers and harassed by vendors.
Looking at you Count Perkinas, you old fraud.
“You're both very welcome. Though with a little more warning I could have arranged a less arduous tour itinerary. I trust you won’t mind a little hardship?” I wear my best ‘concerned’ look. An elderly uncle worried that the mulled wine has chilled due to late arriving family.
Ariadne grins. “I lived through the Catastrophe, Lumpy. I can handle a little hardship. What do you think Hemlock?”
Hemlock ducks back into the bag and settles. I can hear his claws picking at the stitching.
Master In His Tomb Page 9
