“True, but in Greece lotsa times, you people treated yer slaves like people. In the South, we didn’t so much. All cattle to us. Toys. The women especially. Men like me got a taste for dark ladies, and we never looked back. I been with many dark ladies, but few white. White ladies had to be willin’ for you. Dark ladies were just there for whatever you wanted. Anyhow, I was an awful man. Treatin’ beings like cattle and toys. Deservin’ of Hell, I assure you.”
“You’ll get no argument from me, sir. But how did you manage to land in Purgatory after death instead of, well… anywhere lower?” Yitz eyed Emmitt with something akin to disgust.
“Funny story, that.” Emmett spoke as though he was unaffected by his past. “On the eve of a big battle, I walked around camp lookin’ at all them dark faces sleepin’ an worryin’ and cryin’ and knowin’ they were to be sent in first against the enemy just to soak up damage an shells and such…” Emmett trailed off, lost in the moment. His eyes were distant, as though he remembered the smell of campfires and the sound of hushed prayers. “So I let ‘em go!” Emmett erupted, slapping Hephaestion’s knee. He laughed so hoarse, he had a coughing fit.
“You let them go? You set them all free the evening before the battle?” Hephaestion stared in surprise.
Clearing his throat, Emmett nodded. “Yep! Told ‘em where the line of the enemy was and sent ‘em that way to defect, even. I knew if I just cut ‘em loose, they’d be snatched up and hung after being whipped. So I told ‘em to take their rifles and go to the other side. They done all defected!”
“Did they fight against you the next morning?”
“Naw, hell, I didn’t even see much of the next morning. They hung me as fast as they could tie a rope. I cursed their names and told em I’d be banging their mamas in Hell. As I was dying, I knew I’d finally done somethin’ right in my life. Unfair, really. Unfair that one good act git you out of the burning pitch below. All those grey backs are cookin’ in the various Hells they done earned, but I’m here with coffee and guns.” Emmett’s sentence lost coherence as his laughter bubbled out.
Hephaestion accommodated him with an amused smirk. Yitz did not.
“But yea, I got a taste for dark ladies. Pomegranate lips an’ thick voices an’ coarse hair…carved a chess set out of myself for our lovely and beauteous Queen Sungbon. A woman well beyond me, but lawd, what a beaut. So, why you two here again? You lookin’ for a lad named Bill?”
“Gil,” Yitz corrected with startling authority.
Emmett snatched up Hephaestion’s satchel and dumped the contents on the floor.
“Someone special, eh?” Emmett said immediately finding the drawing of Gil. “Yer boy, then?” He held it up to the light comparing the visage to Yitz. “Handsome lad, so clearly Momma had the looks,” Emmett chided with a wink. “Never had kids that I knew of, and I certainly wouldn’t plague them with a visit from me if I did. But I get it. I do. What’s the boy got to do to get out from below?”
“Change,” Yitz said shortly.
“The hardest thing possible, eh? How can he do that if he is in Hell? No one can make choices down ‘ere. Just stuck in torment.”
Yitz inhaled his frustration. “When someone no longer wishes to be free, they are,” he explained as if to a misbehaving child. “Gil will accept what he did, accept the punishment, and through both his judgment and presumably God’s, he slowly becomes free.”
Emmett nodded with understanding. “Hmm, so he’s got to make the choice in his bones.” Reflecting further, he continued. “I know it burns you up seeing a scoundrel like me walking free, havin’ landed on Purgatory while yer boy suffers below. I’d hate me, too. Don’t make no sense, neither. It’s why I came here. As soon as my toes hit Purgatory sand, I traveled as deep as I could knowin’ that anywhere but in Hell itself I was an interloper.” Emmett clucked his tongue in deep thought, his eyes examining his internal landscape. “And if only yer boy Gil can free himself, then you are just here for you. Monks, too. They only come down here for theyselves. To keep up the good that they did on Earth. They actually save no one. Everyone’s teeth remain crooked no matter how good the dentist.”
“There’s been some debate on that,” Yitz said pointedly. “Some of us are in denial of our motivations.”
Emmett continued shuffling through Hephaestion’s documents. “But that can’t be all. Brother of yer juice don’t just be showing up to escort pops,” he said, eyebrow cocked at Hephaestion.
“There are other things.” Hephaestion watched the bizarre man, still distracted from Yitz’s barbed comment.
“Well, from what I see here, Gil’s far below. You wanna tread lightly. No angels be following you there. Weird things afoot. Lotsa smoke, for one. I’m seein’ huge swaths of trees gone time to time, too. Odd folk, and the armor and metal is fairly new, too. Like I was sayin’ things are odd.”
“How long have the loggers been so aggressive?”
“You ask that question as though I have a concept of time.” Emmett laughed. “Do you really know how long ago you set foot in the pit? Don’t you feel that time is just a ‘thing’ you don’t really consider no more? For me, it’s just this tower, this mounted rifle, my lever-action that you’ve already been intimate with, and a few pistols. My purpose is to introduce hot lead into bad bodies.”
Hephaestion nodded, succumbing to the impulse to rub his temples for the sake of easing his headache.
“Seriously, poncey boy. Go back to yer nap and rest up. Both of you. Rest while you can.”
“Poncey boy?” Hephaestion asked.
“Yep. A ponce. I ain’t judgin’ or nothin’. But I know a pole-greaser when I see one. Not that greasin’ poles is bad. I’m glad to have mine greased time to time, and I am grateful for it on such rare occasions. But, you, a ponce and I didn’t need no scope to spot that a mile away! Now get some sleep. Maybe I’ll think of a way to make you less poncey as you descend after Gil.”
Chapter 35
Emmett whistled like a songbird for what seemed to be hours during an endless and steady fervor of crafting in the floors below. Occasionally, his whistling would degrade into a lyric or two of whatever song he was singing, usually about a lady or a card game, but he was always on pitch and sprightly with his tune.
He’d gathered up Hephaestion’s armor and taken it with him. The sound of clanking metal and rolling spools accompanied Emmett’s song as Hephaestion and Yitz rested. Nothing could keep Yitz from a deep sleep, but Hephaestion was too anxious to drift again, and instead lay on his cot and counted the teeth in the ceiling’s gears.
Hours later, Emmett climbed the ladder and poked at Hephaestion. “Hey, you’ve got a Greek thing going, what with the ‘ponce’ and ‘shield’ and all, but you need some America in yer corner. America’s the newest nation there is, an’ nobody does it better. See this?”
Emmett held up a large revolver. Polished blue steel winked in the gaslights, revealing a well machined and carefully crafted firearm.
“A Navy Colt will fire even when wet. Not underwater, mind yeou, but just wet. Not like yer lady’s pistol thar.” He gazed at the pistol with an affection that seemed intimate. “God made all men, but Colt made ‘em equal. And this here Colt was made by his own hand in Purgatory! I got two of ‘em, but I figured if the Queen endorses you, so do I.” He handed the weapon to Hephaestion, grip first.
“I’m not very good with guns,” Hephaestion confessed.
“That is of concern, because guns are very good with you. But take it. It’s single action, so hammer away at the trigger if trouble is in yer face. Here’s extra rounds in a bandolier, too. I prayed over each an every one for hours so that Baby Jesus may guide them right into the brainpans of any jailbird givin’ a fuss.”
“Thank you.” His hand closed around the grip of the pistol. “This is a lot to give. But I won’t turn it away. Thank you.”
Emmett
showed Hephaestion how the hammer worked and how to reload it. “Several hundred years of technological advance, right here!” He beamed. “Big difference from yer purse pistol. I got somethin’ else for yeh.” Emmett scampered down the ladder like an agile child.
Hephaestion rose to his feet, stretched his legs, and looked out the window at the wood beyond. The trees rotated slowly into the distance as the circle continued its endless spin. Serene and without wind, each bough was still as a dried paintbrush.
“Seen anything in the wood since I got here?” Hephaestion called down. “More loggers?”
“Nope. Oddly quiet. Even saw a few of those rail-less cars just sittin’ in the wood, some still runnin’, with nobody at the wheel. You done scared ‘em!”
Hephaestion doubted that. His instinct told him he should be wary. Returning to his cot, he shoved into his boots.
His armor flopped onto the floor, tossed through the hatch, soon followed by Emmett’s grin. The cuirass didn’t look any different than before except for one distinct addition—there was now a left shoulder guard. A pauldron made of steel jawbones linked together would cover his shield-bearing shoulder.
“It’s meant to deflect a blow in case you can’t get yer shield high fast enough. The steel ain’t so tough, but it will help a bit. More meant to absorb a hit than to deflect outright. Like it?”
Five jawbones in all linked from the collar of the cuirass and around the muscle of the upper arm. Hephaestion had seen similar designs on tribal warriors, but usually for ceremonial purposes. But then again, those ancient decorations hadn’t been dipped in molten steel.
“I…I assume those are all your jawbones?”
“Yessir! One of ‘em I even lived through. Don’t recall which. I was curious to see if my bottom teeth would grow back crooked each time and what do you know?” Emmett pointed proudly at the lateral incisors. “They did. I be crooked no matter what, as God intended.”
Hephaestion packed his satchel with Gil’s documents. He tucked the heart-ripper in there as well, cinching the bag shut. Fumbling around with the Colt, he couldn’t figure out where to keep it on his person.
“I got a sash an’ bullet bandoleer you can use. It adjusts fer over yer armor or without,” Emmett said, rummaging through crates and under shelves. The commotion finally woke Yitz.
Hephaestion caught his bleary eye, motioning the pistol in an offering gesture to Yitz. With a shrug, Yitz accepted the piece.
“Yep, here you go. Just wrap it over yer one shoulder an’ stick it in yer—” Emmett froze, his eyes unfocused.
“In my what?” Yitz asked.
Emmett raised his hand, demanding silence. Then he bounced into his chair and squinted through the optics.
“Hear that?” His hands blurred as he toyed with the gears and dials, the entire tower rotating on its tiny island. “I hear propellers. Fans. Of an airship. Weird echo… They comin’ at me from above. Sunovabitches! They comin’ straight down!” Leaping from his chair, wooden leg thumping on the floor, Emmett craned his head out of the stone window. “Get ready, boys. You gonna run when I tells you!”
Thumps came from the roof. Emmett pulled a lever in the floor, and a choir of gears growled in unison from inside the tower’s guts.
Hephaestion checked his shield as Yitz threw on the leather bandoleer pistol holster. As Hephaetion frantically bound his armor to his body, Yitz secured the astrolabe in Hephaestion’s satchel.
Several rounds of black bombs soared through the window, smoke spewing, as Emmett cursed. Snatching each one up, he heaved them back out.
“Dumbasses just gave you cover to slip away. Now git that shit on!” he roared as he pumped the lever of his Winchester. The first ninja through the window did not expect a precise bullet to the head; he fell back and disappeared over the side of the window.
“Hey!” Emmett yelled out. “Hey, you played-out gallinippers—don’t be comin one ata time! That’s borin’!” Spinning toward Yitz and Hephaestion, his grin turned feral. “Git downstairs. Use the charge handle to shock the walkway until it’s safe. God’s speed, poncey and heeb!”
They did as instructed, climbing down the ladder into a mechanical workshop filled with vacuum tubes, vises, presses, and other machinery. A spiral staircase led further down.
The tower rotated as they ran. Emmett’s rifle fired several more times, each shot accompanied by a vicious insult that speculated over the validity of each enemy’s lineage.
Once at the bottom, Hephaestion lifted the barricade. The door burst open and several ninja slammed into him. With no weapon in hand, he settled for his skull, breaking the nose of the nearest ninja with a headbutt. With a swift kick, he drove the lot of them backwards through the door.
Over their shoulders, he could see nearly a dozen warriors, their swords flashing as they cut down the damned clutching at their feet. Several had explosives in hand.
“Hit the lever!” Yitz yelled, pushing Hephaestion aside, the Colt dwarfing his hands.
Spying the charge lever by the door, Hephaestion knocked it upwards as Yitz fired into the crowd. Sparks erupted, causing ninja and condemned to convulse in a macabre dance just before several of the explosives went off, chunks of flesh plunking into the river.
Hephaestion pushed Yitz through the door first, then shut off the current and followed.
“We’re clear!” Hephaestion yelled over his shoulder as they ran. He drew his shield from his back, turning to face the tower from the safety of the shore. Several arrows zipped by, and Yitz took cover behind him.
A dragon airship, much like the one that attacked Mom, hovered above, and dangling ropes released streams of ninjas onto the tower. Gunfire staccatoed the air, so Emmett was still in the fight.
Two more airships approached upriver, their gun ports open. One flanked the tower, ready to volley on the next pass.
Several gliders sailed along the edge of the wood, heading for them. Yitz fired the Colt. While not as loud as the other pistol, nor with as strong as kick, its accuracy was startling. Only his lack of practice could be blamed for his misses, but by the time the pistol was dry, two gliders had swerved and crashed, sinking down into the water to be consumed by the souls below.
More came. The fronts of the gliders wore blades, and, as the pilots hit the ground, they flung the gliders into Hephaestion, his shield repelling the attack.
He did not want to leave Emmett, not after he’d given them safe passage. The walkway fell back into the river. A throwing star glanced off Hephaestion’s chest. Two crossbow bolts struck a tree beside him. One narrowly missed Yitz’s head as he reloaded the pistol.
A victory yell that would do any rebel proud sounded from within the tower. Then the structure exploded, detonated from within, tearing apart the airship hovering over it and bringing the whole thing down into Styx in the most spectacular explosion Hephaestion had ever seen. The two other airships approached, shafts of light canvassing the suicide wood and tower remains through the billowing smoke and fire.
“We have to run,” Yitz pleaded. Hephaestion agreed, and they ducked into the forest, hoping the suicide trees would be enough to conceal them.
Chapter 36
Hephaestion wished he were like Adina so he could have hurled fiery salt spears into the airships. Or maybe he could have been like Boudica and called down lightning from Heaven to cook their crews. If he had been Minu, maybe he could have soothed the enemy.
But Hephaestion had no power except for what others had lent him. Feeling as helpless as the trees surrounding them, he stumbled on through the terrain, his toes catching on the roots and his knees banging each time he slipped.
Quivering with frustration, he leaned against a tree. The sound of the airships droned above, their lamps stabbing through the leaves above as the search continued.
Pistol at the ready, Yitz stopped walking and waited beside
him, scanning the trees. Hephaestion couldn’t resist a rueful grin when he realized Yitz was actually guarding him, protecting him while he caught his breath and gathered his senses. This tiny, unassuming man was as brave as any warrior when a friend, or any soul for that matter, was in need.
Pulling out the astrolabe, Hephaestion picked out several trees in the distance. “This way,” he whispered, and the two were off.
That’s when the blaze started. The two dragonships chucked giant flaming jars of pitch into the wood. The fiery masses crashed through the branches and shattered on impact, liquid flame splattering and splashing in bright plumes. Smoke churned, kicked up by the airships’ propellers.
Hephaestion held his breath as Yitz gagged and coughed, and when they finally reached a clump of trees, they examined the astrolabe again to judge their course. Flames crawled up the tree trunks nearby while waves of heat distorted his vision.
Heat and billowing, black smoke gave them no quarter: they must continue on. Soon the night shadows made navigation by sight impossible; they could only turn away from the brilliant haze.
Disoriented, Hephaestion tried to avoid the walls of heat erupting around him. He lost track of Yitz, and he called out into the curling smoke as he stumbled.
The trees thinned on either side. He couldn’t see the astrolabe in his hands. A break in the smoke revealed a smoother path ahead; he hoped Yitz could see the way.
Clearing the wood, he reached a high ridge, overlooking the boiling river of blood, known as Phlegethon.
Only dust greeted him, dry and arid, and as Hephaestion scanned the horizon, he found enormous generators and turbines funneling the boiling blood into pipes. The gnarled tubes emptied into squat stone buildings nearby. Steam puffed out of their chimneys, rising above clanging metal of uneven machines. The giant foundry crawled with people hauling crates, pushing carts, and yelling and tripping and arguing.
Several rolling logging machines lay in pieces by the dry river’s bank, in various stages of construction. Those that were complete had giant, swiveling cannons mounted on their backs. “Tanks,” Boudica had called them, and now Hephaestion understood their glory and horror.
Trampling in the Land of Woe_Book One of Three Page 21
