Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  He cut down two of the Heretics before any of them spotted him. Then all the survivors pivoted in his direction.

  He fired another burst, blasting an ancient-looking, gray-haired woman's head apart. Her body imploded like a broken balloon. He turned, seeking his next target, and rhen someone with Chanteur powers wailed.

  The screech penetrated his head and reverberated on and on inside. Fighting the pain and the sheer distraction of it, his vision blurring, he tried to pivot toward the source of the noise, but his movements were halting and spastic.

  A bullet slammed into his thigh, staggering him. Even with the Chanteur's scream scrambling his senses, he could tell that he hadn't sustained a serious wound. He didn't feel the numbing caress of Oblivion scraping away his substance from within. But no doubt the next bullet or arrowhead, or the missile after that, would be both better aimed and made of darksteel.

  Guns barked and rattled behind him. The screech stopped abruptly, releasing him from his partial paralysis. He realized that his companions had followed him, and just now saved his life.

  He shot a Heretic kneeling behind a broken tombstone. The man flew backward and lay thrashing in the grass. Montrose spun toward another target and saw that this one, a thin man with enlarged, pointed ears and protruding canines, was goggling at the space above his would-be attacker's head.

  Montrose threw himself to the ground. Something swooshed through the air above him. He frantically rolled onto his back and glimpsed the Spectre flashing past. No longer content simply to hover above the graveyard, the creature had changed its form—its arms had elongated and its fists had enlarged into knobs studded with black spikes—and joined the fray. It wheeled for another pass.

  Scrambling to his feet, Montrose tried to fire at the Spectre. His gun only clicked. It was out of ammunition, and he didn't have time to reload. The bogus angel was already plunging down at him. He dropped the assault rifle and whipped out his new rapier.

  He waited an instant, and then, when the Spectre was nearly on top of him, hurtled up to meet it, hoping that the creature hadn't realized he could fly. And perhaps it hadn't; in any case, the sudden, all-out attack seemed to catch it by surprise. Montrose's blade rammed into its breast. Cancerous black light began to lick away its flesh.

  Wrenching his sword free, Montrose grinned savagely, and then a new pain stabbed him in the shoulder. Someone had shot him from the ground.

  He could tell it wasn't a mortal wound, but it startled him and broke the focus necessary to use his Arcanos. He fell and crashed to the ground. The arrow in his shoulder snapped beneath him.

  Gasping reflexively, dazed, he struggled to gather his strength. It began to return, but it would take a few seconds. He managed to lift his head and looked around.

  Fink stood over him, leering and pointing a Mag-10 Roadblocker shotgun at his nominal commander's chest. Certain that the burly Haunter meant to avenge his humiliation in the Green Head, Montrose gave him a level stare. He hadn't lost his composure on the scaffold in Edinburgh and he wouldn't now, either.

  But Fink merely mouthed the word, "Boom," and then roughly hauled Montrose to his feet. "How are you?" he asked.

  "I'll make it," Montrose said, peering about. The only remaining Heretics in the graveyard were incapacitated. So was the Spook with the red jewel in his forehead, who lay motionless beside a headstone with several white, glistening slashes in his throat and chest. Montrose's other companion had vanished and had probably been destroyed. Judging by appearances, Fink and three other raiders had charged up to complete the task of taking the area.

  The Stygian gingerly tested his legs. The wounded one throbbed, but they could support his weight. Extricating himself from Fink's grasp, he picked up his AK-47 and sword and swung the latter over his head. "Everybody, come to me!" he bellowed.

  "Use the houses for cover !M Any soldier worthy of the name should have sense enough £0 take advantage of any available Cover without being told, but one never knew what eyen;seasbned troops would forget in the heat: of battle, particularly when they were losing.

  Alone or in pairs, their faces white and their eyes rolling with incipient panic, the raiders limped into the cemetery. About a third of the initial force failed to appear. Behind the survivors, guns banged and a Chanteur wailed as their pursuers harried them.

  "What are we going to do?" cried the Sandman from the tavern, his rainbow- colored mantle now hanging in tatters. "We're outnumbered and surrounded!"

  "We're going to charge," Montrose said. "Through the open this time, so we can keep together. The Heretics :are spread out in a ring. We'll outnumber the ones comprising any given section of the circle. If we hit hard and fast, we can break out of this crossfire. Are you game ?"

  "It sounds like a plan to me," said Fink.

  Some of the raiders cheered. Others grimly nodded their agreement.

  "Then let's go," said Montrose, striding toward the edge of the cemetery. By the time he left its confines, he was running. His soldiers thundered after him.

  In the darkness ahead, guns flashed, but this time, no One hit him. Montro$e held his own fire, waiting till he got close enough to have a reasonable chance of hitting someone himself. After a few seconds, bullets and arrows began to whiz at the column's flanks. Witnessing the raiders' sudden maneuver, Heretics fighting elsewhere around the ring scrambled into new positions in order to continue shooting. But they didn't produce enough fire to break the momentum of the charge.. Too few of them had moved up quickly .enough.

  The faces of the Heretics in front of the guerrillas swam out of the murk. As they shot and shot and their opponents kept coming, their eyes began to widen in dismay. Eventually one threw down his longbow, wheeled, and fled toward the edge of the village. A moment later, a second rebel bolted.

  Montrose judged that he wflis close enough to start firing. He squeezed the trigger and the AK-47 rattled and shook in his hands. A Heretic in bib eraf|, armed with a slingshot, of all things, flew off his feet.

  The Stygian's column smashed into the Heretics. He shot someone, then sensed an attacker lunging at him from the side. He pivoted, ramming the butt of his rifle into the other wraith's face.:Bone, or what passed for it in a ghost's anatomy; crunched. The Heretic collapsed, :a tomahawk slipping form his fingers.

  Montrose looked around, but failed to find another opponent. The only figures standing in the immediate area were his own troops. Evidently recognizing that they'd succeeded in breaking free, one of them threw back his head and let out a war whoop.

  The Scot supposed that since they were tired, in some eases wounded, and still outnumbered, the prudent thing would be to disengage and run for the boats. But if he led them away without a victory, without loot, they'd never follow him again. Heedless of the risk of attracting enemy fire, he levitated over the outlaws' heads so everyone could see him.

  "We just took away the enemy's advantage," he said. "If you're as tough as you're supposed to be, we can beat them now. We can form into squads, sweep through this rat's next, and drive the bastards before as. We can avenge our fallen comrades and capture a fortune in thralls!"

  The freebooters shouted their assent, a sound like a pack of wild dogs snarling. They divided into groups of five or six, and then began to spread out.

  At the head of one such party, Montrose led it from lane to lane, yard to yard, and house to house. The battle became a game of cat and mouse, blasting away at the shadowy figures that pounced out of nowhere, chasing the ones that fled, proceeding swiftly but warily in case the Heretics were leading them into a trap.

  It was dangerous work. One of his men perished, decapitated by a blow from an ax. Another was temporarily crippled when a blast from an assault rifle all but tore his leg off. But the Heretics fared worse than their enemies. Montrose didn't know if they'd been demoralized by the destruction of their Spectral patron or if, indeed, they simply couldn't match the prowess of his own band of ruffians. In any case, it soon became apparent that they did
n't stand a chance.

  With victory all but certain, the excitement Montrose had been experiencing, a kind of wild abandon seasoned with fear, gave way to a feverish ecstasy. Without his quite realizing it, the grim satisfaction of driving home a telling blow, of staying on one's feet while the other man went down, warped into a gloating enjoyment of the terror and agony in his victim's face.

  Christ, he hated Heretics! Or at least he supposed he did. At certain moments, as he slipped deeper into his delirium, he imagined that he was striking down not a rabble of deluded Shadowlanders, but Argyll, Hamilton, the two Charleses, VanLengen, and Louise. Finally wreaking vengeance on all the traitors.

  Until at last he and his companions prowled through two more houses without finding anyone else to maim. Despite the haze of cruelty clouding his mind, he realized he no longer heard shooting anywhere in the Haunt. Evidently the battle was over. Suddenly feeling dazed and empty, he simply stopped and stood in the center of a ruinous parlor, like a clockwork toy running down.

  After a moment, a raider in a green hood said, "Anacreon?"

  Montrose jerked as if someone had startled him awake. He felt his Shadow writhing inside him. He supposed that the events of the last few minutes had nourished it in some way, though he wasn't entirely sure how. He'd just been defending himself, hadn't he, doing what needed to be done.

  In any case, he didn't have time to think about it now. He looked at the outlaw. "What is it?"

  "I was thinking you could fly up over the town and get a bird's-eye view of what's going on."

  "Good idea," Montrose said. He floated through the ceiling, a bedroom, and finally the attic, flitting through a mass of filthy cobwebs filled with the husks of flies, roaches, and termites in the process. His passage didn't disturb a single strand, but sensing him, the spiders skittered madly about.

  He soared through a warped expanse of roof that had shed half its shingles, up another twenty feet, then stopped and looked around. Below him, his men herded staggering, whimpering prisoners toward the edge of the village. Though some of the surviving Heretics had no doubt fled into the countryside, the raiders had rounded up an excellent haul.

  A number of outlaws were cuffing, shoving, kicking, or obscenely fondling their prisoners. The spectacle made Montrose feel obscurely ashamed. Throughout his Scottish campaigns, he'd forbidden his soldiers to engage in gratuitous cruelty, and made the edict stick. Shouldn't he do the same thing now?

  He scowled, disgusted by his own momentary squeamishness. No, of course not. The Quick Montrose had been a fool to fret about securing gentle treatment for his own enemies. And the Heretics were pawns of the Void itself, condemned to slavery and an eternity of rough treatment by his own decree. Besides, an attempt to alleviate their distress might cost him the respect of his band of thugs.

  He spotted Fink marching along between two houses with his arms full of rifles and shotguns, booty as valuable as the newly made thralls themselves. He flew down and landed in front of him.

  Something had singed the left side of Fink's face, charring shiny white patches and grooves on his skin and burning away an eyebrow, much of his hair, and a section Of his mustache, But if he was in pain, he didn't show it. His eyes were as full of devilish mirth as ever. "I thought the Marquess of Montrose was supposed to be some kind of hotshot Cavalier general," he said.

  Montrose raised an eyebrow. It was the first time Fink had indicated that he'd ever heard of his new leader's mortal career. "We won, didn't we?"

  "Yeah, but not very elegantly," said Fink. "First we sneak into town, then we run back to the edge of town, then we; sweep into town again. Kind of a Chinese fire drill, in my Opinion."

  "Well, if my worthy lieutenant had provided adequate intelligence—"

  Fink's burnt cheek rippled, repairing itself. He shrugged. "You wouldn't even have found the Heretics if it hadn't been for me. I said I knew more about the river than anybody else. I didn't say I knew every thing about it. Nobody does."

  Montrose could well believe that. The vast expanse of the Mississippi seemed more akin to the open sea than any of the rivers he'd known in Europe. In many respects, it was as awesome as the River of Death itself, the colossal waterway twisting through much of the Tempest.

  "I'm willing to stipulate that we both did an adequate job," the Stygian said. " But we did take heavy losses. I hope the rest of the men will continue to follow us."

  Fink snorted. "Don't worry about that. They're too afraid of me to quit on you unless I do. Besides, you know how it is with sons of bitches like us. We think nobody could possibly kill us, even though a lot of us became wraiths because somebody did. If we didn't believe we're indestructible, we'd find less dangerous pastimes to get us through the centuries.

  "Trust me. Manpower is no problem. When word gets out about the plunder we took tdrtight, you'll get all the volunteers you need. Every cutthroat and lowlife from Cairo to the Gulf of Mexico will beat a path to your door-"

  Potter prowled restlessly about the enormous, high-ceilinged chamber, where Hittite chariots and Sherman tanks cast blurred reflections in the gleaming gray Montrose smiled crookedly. "Now there's something to look forward to." he said.

  marble floor, Stealth bombers and Fokkers, supported only by an artificer's magic, hung above his head, and glass cases full of polearms, machine guns, and grenades lined the walls. The air smelled sharply of oil, and the dripping tick of a water clock echoed through the gloom.

  Sometimes it soothed the Deathlord to wander the museum, or one of the twenty like it scattered through his allotted portion of the Onyx Tower. The surroundings evoked the godlike spirit inside his mask. But tonight they failed to silence the fretful human soul hiding at the core of the transcendent entity he'd become.

  The door clicked. Potter turned, reflexively holding his halberd across his body as the images of the Smiling Lord in all the paintings and statuary did, standing straight and still. By the time the door swung open, he'd become a figure that might easily have been mistaken for some enigmatic idol.

  Tall, thin, and saturnine, the folds of his toga draped as elegantly as ever, Demetrius stepped into the chamber. He'd tucked his carved sardonyx helmet of a mask under one arm, his naked face a token of submission and respect. Bowing deeply, he said, "My lord."

  Potter relaxed a little. He didn't feel the need to maintain absolute formality with the advisor, though the question of just how much of the inner man he ought to reveal to anyone was often troublesome in its own right. "Good evening," he said. "I hope I didn't summon you away from anything you were reluctant to set aside."

  "Dispatches from our Citadels in South America," Demetrius replied, advancing. His sandals made a scuffing sound on the floor. "They'll keep. Is something troubling you?"

  "Another vision," Potter admitted. "In this one, this section of the castle collapsed in around me and crushed me, while everyone else's quarters remained untouched."

  "I rue the day I ever brought that miserable statuette to your attention," Demetrius. "We don't even know who made it, or how it found its way into that storeroom. And I think there's a malignancy about it, some subtle taint of Oblivion, even if we can't detect it directly. Let's cast it into a Forge and be done with it."

  "No," Potter said. "You don't kill the messenger tor bringing bad news. You do your best to comprehend what he has to tell you."

  "That assumes your dreams truly are portents of things to come."

  "Since I haven't slumbered since you gave me the image," Potter said, "they can't be simple nightmares. I'd rather consider them warnings than signs of impending insanity." Feeling restless again, he turned and walked toward a trebuchet, using his halberd as a staff. The butt of the weapon clopped rhythmically on the stone.

  Demetrius fell into step beside him. "I assume that was a joke."

  "You shouldn't," Potter said. "It wasn't particularly easy to be a Deathlord even when Charon was in power, and it's far more difficult now. How would you like to have final
responsibility for preserving the Hierarchy?"

  "I'm sure I'd snap like a twig," Demetrius said. "But I'm not Charon's anointed lieutenant. As Hierarchs, we know there's no God, but by all accounts, our late master came close. He wouldn't have chosen you if you weren't equal to the challenge."

  "No one understood Charon," Potter replied. "Not unless it was the Lady of Fate, and she's not talking. No one knew why he did the things he did. Perhaps he made me his deputy precisely because I was strong enough to assist him, but no stronger. Not nearly strong enough to cast him down and fill his place."

  "Come now," Demetrius said, "naturally the Emperor's disappearance left turmoil in its wake. But Stygia has weathered times of trouble before. Your Council of Seven will hold the realm together."

  As they veered around the catapult, Potter resisted a childish impulse to pull the triggering lever and send the stones in the basket crashing against the wall. "Perhaps," he said, "but will it still be a Council of Seven when things finally settle down? I'm absolutely certain that some of my peers are scheming to expand their power at the expense of others."

  "Schemes that will likely come to nothing," said Demetrius. "But I'm confident that whatever happens, you'll still be securely ensconced in your place, if not more influential than before. The Master of War and Murder is too formidable a personage to assail. And your campaign against the Heretics can only serve to enhance your prestige."

  "Naturally you think that," said Potter, drifting toward a mannequin in a doughboy's uniform equipped with a gas mask, carbine, and bayonet. "It was your idea."

  "You miss Montrose, don't you? I don't blame you. He has a keen mind, when he can be induced to put it to use."