“And,” he went on, quickly, “those walls will hold up against your explosives, unless you got a whole lot more of them and some way to deploy them.”
This, he left hanging in the air, waiting to see if she would confide in him.
She said, “Hmmm,” again, which made him roll his eyes. She didn’t trust him, but she needed him and his ex-Corsairs. For now, he needed her and so he said nothing, knowing that she would eventually cough up her plan—if she had one that is. He was worried that she would expect him to lead some sort of suicidal charge. The men would never go for it—hell, he would never go for it.
He didn’t see any other way, however. The wall was too formidable. He was almost certain it would defy her crude bombs, unless she could figure out a way to deliver them without damaging them. They were fragile things that probably wouldn’t survive being chucked by a catapult, and no one in their right mind would try to run a hundred-pound bomb at the wall.
Of course, Shaina wasn’t exactly in her right mind. Leney turned slightly to take in the woman. Dumb as a box of rocks, Leney thought. Maybe the Queen is going to trick her into hauling a bomb up to the big, metal door set in the wall. That’s what he would do, if he were in the Queen’s shoes.
“So?” he asked when she had given the binoculars back to Shaina. “You can admit it, the wall is too much. The Captain’s spies were right.”
“I see that the only wall stopping the Captain is the one he erected around his mind. Take Lindy and arrange a meeting. And yes, I will be demanding their surrender.”
“Lindy? That girl who won’t shut up?” He took a deep breath, holding in the expletives that wanted to come shooting out. When he felt he was in control he asked, “Why?”
“Because your queen told you to.”
This did not help to control his volcanic anger which was threatening to explode out of him. He smiled, pressing his lips so tightly together that it made his eyes bulge. Then, with a bow that was very close to mocking, he whistled for the girl as he would a dog and started stomping towards the wall.
The girl caught up quickly enough and of course her mouth started going the second she fell in step with him. “What are we doing? Miss Jillybean said I was supposed to come with you, but she didn’t say why. I think it’s cuz she’s a witch in disguise. Not like totally a bad witch. No, she fixed up Aaron and Mister Trafny like magic and only good magic fixes people. And she can make fire and smoke, and ‘splosions, and water pumpers, and…”
“And shut up for goodness sakes! I don’t know why you’re here but it’s not to blather on nonstop. So, zip the lip, got it?”
Lindy nodded, wearing a hurt look. Leney rolled his eyes at the look, but refused to apologize. He began to march faster, making the little girl almost run to keep up.
“I need a white flag, not a stupid kid,” he grunted as he saw men in grey lining the top of the wall. Leney counted a hundred and twenty before he gave up; quite a few of them were aiming rifles at him. With careful movements he unbuckled his hip holster and then let his black pea coat fall. The cold wind immediately attacked him, stealing down the neck of his shirt and taking his heat for its own.
“Put your hands up, Lindy. Just to be on the safe side.”
The pair came within fifty feet of the reinforced steel door that had been set into the wall before they were hailed. “What do you want, Corsair?”
“And what’s with the kid?” another man demanded.
Leney didn’t know how to answer that, exactly, since he didn’t know what she was doing there. “Her name is Lindy and I am not a Corsair. I’m…”
A burst of laughter came from the wall. “You’re not a Corsair? Next, you’re going to tell us those aren’t Corsair ships lurking around our back door.”
“They were Corsair ships,” Leney admitted. “Now they are the Queen’s ships. You might have noticed the crown emblazoned on them.”
“What queen are you talking about?” an older man asked. Unbowed by age, he was tall with wide shoulders. He stared out over Leney and Lindy at the distant figure of the Queen. She stood alone under her rippling black and silver banner. “There are no queens anymore.”
Before Leney could say anything, Lindy piped up. “Yeah there is. That’s her over there with the flag. She’s the Queen of the Hill People. I’m a Hill Girl, case you were wonnerin’ about that. And this is Mister Leney. He was a Corsair until the Queen blew them all up.”
“It’s Captain Leney, and she’s right.”
The older man blinked like an owl. “So, the Hill People have given up on that ridiculous coven and they replace it with a queen? Well, that sounds slightly less blasphemous, at least. But what’s this about no more Corsairs? Is that true?”
Again, Lindy was quick on the draw. “Oh yeah. There’s been all sorts of big fights going on and the Queen whips them every time. Now she ain’t always what you’d call all good. She can be bad sometimes and crazy, too. There was this girl named…”
Leney clamped a dirt-tasting hand over Lindy’s mouth. “Sorry, she’s a talker. So, about the Corsairs, they did lose three or four fights. The Queen is something of a genius when it comes to, well a lot of stuff but she’s especially good when it comes to warfare.”
“And healing spells,” Lindy added. She had squirmed out of Leney’s grip. He grabbed her again.
“No, not healing spells. She is a surgeon, not a witch or anything. Ha-ha!” The laughter was forced, and while he smiled up at the men on the wall, he gave Lindy a quick pinch on the neck. “Look, she would like to talk on neutral ground.”
The old man’s eyes had narrowed at the talk of spells. Now, they were at slits. “What is there to talk about? The fact that your queen has brought an army into our lands? There’s not much to say; come fight or go home. It seems to me that those are your only choices, and I would advise that you go home. Even the Black Captain knows better than to test our walls.”
Leney agreed. “It would seem that way to me, too, but…” He let the word hang in the air for a few seconds, a sordid grin playing on his lips. “But you heard the girl, the Queen blew up the Corsairs. She can make explosives and she has used them. Two days ago, I saw her destroy a fleet of sixty-five ships in minutes. How many ships do you have?”
He had counted thirty-one tucked up inside a tiny harbor at one corner of the peninsula. It was guarded by some of the nastiest, boat-killing rocks he had ever seen, and the gap between them was so narrow, it was a mystery to him how they got in or out.
Finally, the old man looked uncomfortable. “Does she have artillery?”
“Maybe you and a couple of others should come talk to the Queen. You’ll be perfectly safe, I assure you. She would consider it bad manners to kill you without first chatting and giving you an opportunity to surrender.”
“Do you want to know what else is bad manners? Attacking people without provocation,” the man replied. His name was Christian Walker and he was the commander of the Knights of the Cross, a title that had never felt nearly so weighted with responsibility. In the four years he’d been commander he had drilled his men for exactly this situation—well, almost this situation.
They had trained to fight the Corsairs, not some crazy queen. Anyone claiming to be a queen was crazy in his book, and it had been his experience that being crazy made a person dangerous, especially if they had a fleet and a small army. “Give us an hour. I will send an advance man to make sure there will be no guns. You may do the same.”
The man with the horrid face tattoos and the little girl left; he walked in something of an uncouth shamble while she skipped or sometimes hopped on one foot. As a pair they didn’t make sense.
“Did that guy really say he was giving us an opportunity to surrender?” Keith Treadwell, his second in command, scoffed. “Like that would ever happen. Did you see his throat? Someone nearly laid that joker’s throat open from ear to ear. And that’s who they send? And a little girl? They might all be bonkers, if you ask me.” Everyone withi
n earshot agreed with a great deal of nodding, some knowing grins, and a few “Amens,” which were spoken with conviction.
Walker stared at the retreating figures and then at the distant woman standing under her flag. A sudden chill crept up his back; it wasn’t caused by the cool morning. “A queen,” he muttered. “That’s so odd.” Deep down, he knew it was more than odd and the situation was more than crazy, though exactly how and why eluded him at the moment.
“I have to inform the Bishop,” he said to Treadwell, tugging him close and speaking into his ear. “While I’m gone, recheck everything. Ammo, food stores, water, wood, everything. That queen might test us directly in battle or she might try a siege. We have to be prepared for either.”
As Treadwell snapped off a salute and began barking out orders, Walker went to the nearest port and ran down the ladder with the agility of a young man. With his snow-white hair and his sharp angular face, he looked much older than his forty-six years.
There was a crowd of people, two-hundred strong standing in a loose formation behind the single door in the wall. This was his reserve force; a nearly fifty-fifty split between those men and women who were slightly too old to fight and those not quite old enough. Most were armed with crossbows, compound bows or lances.
Walker waved over the reserve commander, a forty-two-year old named Jennifer Edgerton. He didn’t slow, forcing her to run to catch up.
“How many are there?” she asked, huffing along under the weight of her armor and her stiff leather uniform. Unlike the rest of the reserves who wore a mixed array of modified football shoulder pads and kevlar vests, Edgerton wore the same armor as the Knights of the Cross: military style ballistic plate that covered the shoulders, chest, neck and arms. It could stop a bullet and withstand the claws of the biggest zombie.
Like many others, she wore a heavy gold cross on a thick chain. She kissed the cross, saying, “Mack said there were two thousand of them. Is that true? Are there that many of them?”
“I don’t know yet. My count was seven hundred. Of course, she might have more, though I doubt it. She wants to talk surrender which suggests she’s showing her full force to scare us.”
“Seven hundred?” Edgerton was visibly relieved. “We can handle seven hundred even without the reserve.”
Unless they have explosives, Walker thought. He stopped abruptly, gazing with blank eyes around at the little community which consisted of little more than a few hundred homes, dozens of greenhouses and a warehouse-sized church. In and around all of this was tilled land waiting for the spring planting. If the wall came down, his Knights would have to defend it.
“Maybe,” he told her. “Perhaps even probably, however we can’t take any chances. I need your soldiers to start digging foxholes. I want fallback positions ready as soon as humanly possible. I’ll talk to Julia Jewett and have her release the civie teams to you. They can dig as well as anyone. Oh, and I think we can lose the lances for now. If zombies become an issue, it’ll be their issue, not ours.”
Edgerton went back to being visibly anxious again. Their community had been threatened a number of times: twice they had weathered the ravages of immense zombie hordes and once they had been threatened by the Azteca, who had come boiling up from south of Los Angeles, raping and pillaging as they came. These had been terrifying moments, yet she had never been asked to dig foxholes within the confines of the walls.
“It’s just a precaution,” Walker said, trying to reassure her. He even gave her a smile, though it was grim and looked like it had taken a great deal of effort.
Walker didn’t have time for more than the smile. He had to explain the situation to the Bishop and there was no telling how long that would take. When the Bishop was in prayer, nothing short of a meteor strike would budge him and maybe not even then.
Faith Checkamian met him as he entered the doors to the church. Like the wall surrounding the community, the church was made of concrete blocks and rebar. It was not pretty, inside or out. The building was purely functional. In shape, it was a square with hundred-foot sides and a ceiling thirty feet high. There were no chairs or pews, or tapestries or statues or even paintings. Covering its floors was plush carpeting and in the center of the building was an altar resting on a raised dais.
As he feared, the Bishop stood in front of the altar with his arms raised, softly whispering prayers. Kneeling with heads bowed at the foot of the dais were four priests, two nuns and an ancient, creaking deacon with huge white caterpillar eyebrows, who had managed to live through the apocalypse “by the grace of God.”
Walker was as devout as any of them, yet he groaned at the sight; an hour was not a long time, unless it was spent waiting for the Bishop to finish his prayers, then it felt like an age. Faith, dressed in the drabbest of grey dresses and the most sensible of her unadorned shoes, gave him something of a warped smile and whispered, “I will let his Excellency know that you would like to meet with him as soon as he has finished his prayers.”
This was her way of telling the Commander to wait outside. Weapons and armor were not strictly forbidden within the church; they were, however, frowned upon and Faith could frown with the best of them. She had taken a long, hard road from Pennsylvania to California and when she was displeased, she could display that hardness in a way that made children behave and many men quail.
Commander Walker went outside to wait. As he did, he checked his M4, adjusted his grey armor so that he could move fluidly and thought about the idea of explosives. “She destroyed a fleet of sixty-five vessels in minutes. How?” If it was a sneak attack that was one thing…only the girl had said their Queen had whipped the Corsairs three or four times. From what Walker knew of the Black Captain, he would never allow a sneak attack to occur when…
“Hello Christian.”
Walker hadn’t heard the Bishop approach. Although Bishop Gary Wojdan was soft and round in every aspect from his dimpled face to his dimpled knees, he was as naturally stealthy as a ninja. He called everyone else by their designated title, but he claimed Christian’s name was title enough for him.
“Your Excellency,” he said, inclining his head. “We have an issue with the Corsairs. For one, they’re not Corsairs. Supposedly, they used to be. Now, they are, well, I’m not sure what they are. They’re being led by a queen, if you can believe it. What’s more unbelievable is that she’s demanding our surrender.”
“A very cheeky thing she must be,” Wojdan said. He turned slightly to stare at the looming wall. “No, not cheeky. She must be a great deal more than just cheeky if she commands Corsairs. That alone suggests she is a very formidable person. I would like to meet her.”
Walker was relieved to hear this. He didn’t like playing the part of go-between. He was a soldier not a message boy.
The Queen was still standing beneath her banner and with her were two children, the tattooed Corsair and a woman who looked sickly skinny even through Walker’s scope.
“I believe we should match their number,” Bishop Wojdan said, after taking a look through the scope. “And I like the idea of children being present. Their innocence might have a mitigating effect on any aggression.”
“Perhaps this queen is using these kids,” Walker suggested. “Perhaps she’s trying to suggest she’s not all bad since she likes children.”
The Bishop lifted his round shoulders in a soft shrug. “Perhaps. Christian, why don’t you fetch your daughter Ryanne, and Faith, will you please find one of the orphans. I think Ida might do. Ida Battenburg. Such an interesting girl with such an interesting name.”
Walker wasn’t exactly happy bringing his daughter into this situation. If the Queen was using the two children as props, would she hesitate to take his Ryanne and use her as a bargaining chip? Or worse, as a human shield? There would be no changing the Bishop’s mind, however. It was no use even asking.
He returned with his chirpy, golden-haired daughter; his thick, scarred hand holding her tiny, soft one. Ida, a friendly thing who was com
pletely unaware of any danger, took Ryanne’s other hand and then asked for Faith’s. Not to be left out, the Bishop took Faith’s free hand and so the five of them walked through the doorway forming, what Walker felt was the most ridiculous formation he’d ever been a part of.
As they walked up the cracked and broken remains of an asphalt road that cut directly across the open field, Leney came out to meet them. His holster was empty, and he was once again without his warm black coat. He looked somewhat askance at the Bishop in his black, ankle length cassock and red sash that wrapped around his ample waist.
“I gotta frisk you, Father, sorry.” Wojdan lifted his arms so that his gold cross winked in the sun. He said nothing as Leney expertly frisked them one after another. When Leney was done, he lifted his arms to be frisked in turn. “We’re unarmed but you can send someone to check.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Bishop Wojdan said. “To earn trust, one must give trust. Don’t you agree, Captain Leney.”
“Huh? Yeah, I guess that sounds about right.” Except it sounded crazy to him. If he had been in charge, they would’ve had pistols stashed under nearby rocks and in seconds would have had what looked like two top tier guys and three hostages. But the queen was different.
She stood with her hands behind her back as her hair blew like flames around her head. After Bishop Wojdan introduced his small group, Jillybean gave Leney a quick nod. He gave his name and those of the others finishing with Jillybean, saying, “Her Royal Highness, Jillian, Queen of the Hill People and the Islanders. Queen from Sacramento to Santa Rosa to Santa Clara. Queen of the Pacific as far as her fleets may reach, and soon, Queen of the Guardians and all the land and people within their borders.”
The introduction was bloated with self-importance, so it was something of a shock when she stuck out her hand to Bishop Wojdan so he could shake it. “As a man of God, I will not ask you to kneel, now or ever. The rest will, eventually.”
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 22
