Descent of Angels

by Mitchel Scanlon

  ‘Then may I offer you my congratulations, my lord,’ said Zahariel.

  ‘You may,’ smiled the Lion, ‘and they are gratefully accepted, though in practical terms my new role will make little difference to my life.’

  ‘You are Grand Master of the Order,’ said Zahariel. ‘That must feel… important.’

  ‘Oh I’ll grant you I’m proud to lead you all, but such was my role beforehand, though I did not have the title for it. How about you? Do you feel any different now that you are a knight?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How so?’

  For a moment, Zahariel was flustered, not quite knowing how he felt. ‘Honoured, proud of my achievements, accepted.’

  ‘And all of these are good things,’ nodded the Lion, ‘but you are just the same, Zahariel. You are still the same person you were before you killed the lion. You have crossed a line, but it does not change who you are. Don’t forget that. A man may be dressed up in all manner of fancy titles, but he must not let it change him or else ego, pride and ambition will be his undoing. No matter what grand title is bestowed upon you, to thine own self be true, Zahariel. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so, my lord,’ said Zahariel.

  ‘I hope that you do,’ said the Lion. ‘It is an easy thing to forget, for all of us.’

  The Lion then leaned conspiratorially close and said, ‘Did you know we two now share a brotherhood shared by no others on Caliban?’

  ‘We do?’ said Zahariel, surprised and flattered. ‘What brotherhood?’

  ‘We are the only warriors ever to kill a Calibanite lion. All others who tried are dead. One day you must tell me how you killed it.’

  Zahariel felt a justifiable swell of pride and fraternity as the import of his killing the beast sank in. The tale of how Lord Jonson had slain a Calibanite lion was well known and was commemorated upon one of the windows of the Circle Chamber, but until now, it had not occurred to him that he had survived an encounter with so unique a beast.

  ‘I am honoured to share that brotherhood, my lord,’ said Zahariel, bowing his head.

  ‘It is one that will only ever comprise of you and I, Zahariel,’ said the Lion. ‘There are no others of their kind on Caliban. The great beasts are almost extinct and there will be no others like them on our world ever again. Part of me thinks I should be sad about that, after all, extinction is such a final solution don’t you think?’

  ‘They are beasts that exist only to kill, why should we not exterminate them? They would do the same to us were it not for the knightly orders.’

  ‘True, but do they do it because they are evil, or because it is the way they were made?’

  Zahariel thought back to the beasts he had fought and said, ‘I do not know if they were evil as such, but each time I have faced one, I have seen something in its eyes, some, I don’t know… desire to kill that is more than simply animal hunger. Something in the beasts is… wrong.’

  ‘Then you are perceptive, Zahariel,’ said the Lion. ‘There is something wrong with the beasts. I don’t know what it is, but they are not just some other race of beasts like horses, foxes or humans, they are aberrations, twisted mistakes wrought from some early form that has not yet had the good grace to die out on its own. Can you imagine what it must be like to be so singular a creature? To go through life knowing, even on some animal, instinctual level that you are alone and that there will never be more of you. Think how maddening that must be. The beasts were not just driven by hunger, they were insane, driven to madness by their very uniqueness. Trust me, Zahariel, we are doing them a favour by destroying them all.’

  Zahariel nodded and sipped his wine, too caught up with the Lion’s words to dare to interrupt him. A strange melancholy had crept into his leader’s words, as though he was recalling a distant memory that flitted just beyond the reach of recall.

  Then, suddenly, it was gone, as though the Lion realised he had spoken unguardedly.

  ‘Of course, there will be some who are upset that you killed the last of the lions,’ said Jonson. ‘Luther, for one.’

  ‘Sar Luther? How so?’

  Lord Jonson laughed. ‘He always wanted to kill a lion. Now he’ll never get the chance.’

  AS PARTIES WENT, it had been a fine one.

  Zahariel had enjoyed the company of the other knights. He had enjoyed the feeling that he could look at these men as his peers, and with it came a feeling of inclusion, of acceptance. Following his talk with Lion El’Jonson, Zahariel had returned to his fellow knights, where the talk had turned to the war against the Knights of Lupus.

  All agreed that the war was in its final stages and that the final destruction of the rebellious order would be complete in the very near future.

  He had enjoyed good food and wine, and he had enjoyed the expression in Master Ramiel’s eyes, the one that said he had made his teacher proud. Most of all, he had enjoyed the moment, for he knew that such triumphs were rare in a man’s life.

  They must be handled with care, and then put away as memories for the future.

  TEN

  ‘WAR IS A terrible beauty,’ the knightly poet philosopher Aureas wrote in the pages of his Meditations. ‘It is breathtaking and horrifying in equal measure. Once a man has seen its face, the memory of it never leaves him. War gouges a mark into the soul.’

  Zahariel had heard those words often in the course of his training.

  They were among the favourites of his former mentor, Master Ramiel. The old man had liked to quote them regularly, reciting the same few pithy sentences on a daily basis as he attempted to turn ranks of supplicants from fresh-faced boys into knights.

  They had been as much part of his teachings as firing practice and extra sword drills.

  Among those who had come to knighthood under Ramiel’s tutelage, it was said they went armed with an appreciation of fine words alongside the Order’s more usual weapons of sword and pistol.

  Still, as often as he had heard the words, Zahariel never truly understood them, not until the final days of the war against the Knights of Lupus.

  His first impression as he emerged from the forest, riding his destrier, on the night of the final assault was that the sky was alive with fire. Earlier in the day, he had supervised the gangs of woodsmen cutting timbers for siege engines in the forests on the lower slopes of the mountain.

  His duties complete, he returned to camp at nightfall expecting things to be quiet.

  Instead, he found his fellow knights of the Order about to attack the enemy fortress.

  Ahead, in the distance, the fortress monastery of the Knights of Lupus sat on a brooding crag at the summit of the mountain, a towering line of grey walls and warriors. Surrounded on all sides by the concentric circles of the Order’s siege lines, the fortress was a masterpiece of military architecture, but Zahariel’s eyes were drawn to the extraordinary spectacle unfolding in the air above the two armies as they fired their artillery at each other across no-man’s-land.

  The air was thick with flames of a dozen shapes, colours and patterns. Zahariel saw the short-lived green and orange flare trails left by tracer rounds, the streaming red haloes of burning incendiaries in flight and the smoky yellow fireballs of cannon bursts.

  A bright tapestry of fire illuminated the sky, and Zahariel had never before seen its like.

  He found it equally appalling and spectacular at the same time.

  ‘A terrible beauty,’ he whispered, the words of Aureas returning to him as he stared in wonderment at the startling sky. The colours were so exquisite it was easy to forget the fact that they portended danger. The same projectiles that burned through the heavens with such beauty would bring agony and death to some unfortunate soul when they reached their target.

  War, it seemed, was full of contradictions.

  Later, he would learn that there was nothing unusual in the sights he saw in the sky that night, but this was his first siege and he knew no better. Pitched battles were so rare on Caliban that his t
raining had largely concentrated on close combat rather than questions of siege craft.

  Since the coming of the Lion, the knights of Caliban rarely made war against each other, at least not in any major or systematic way. Normally, any conflict undertaken to resolve some issue of affront or insult would take one of the traditional forms of ritual combat.

  A conflict of the kind he could see before him, where two knightly orders made ready to bring the best part of their entire strength to bear in a single battle, happened hardly once in a generation.

  ‘You there!’ called a voice from behind.

  Zahariel turned to see one of the Order’s siege masters marching furiously towards him, his expression thunderous beneath his hood. ‘The assault is about to begin. Why aren’t you in position? Give me your name, sar!’

  ‘My apologies, master,’ said Zahariel, bowing from the saddle. ‘I am Sar Zahariel. I have just returned from the lower slopes. I was detailed to—’

  ‘Zahariel?’ the master cut him off. ‘The killer of the Lion of Endriago?’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘So, it is not cowardice that kept you back. I see that now. Whose sword-line are you attached to?’

  ‘I am with Sar Hadariel’s men, master, stationed on the western approaches.’

  ‘They have been moved,’ said the master. He pointed impatiently to the siege lines to Zahariel’s right. ‘They are positioned for the assault on the south wall. You’ll find them over there somewhere. Leave your destrier with the ostlers on the way, and hurry up, boy. The war won’t wait on you.’

  ‘I understand,’ Zahariel said, dismounting. ‘Thank you, master.’

  ‘You want to thank me, do your part in the battle,’ growled the siege master as he turned away. ‘You can expect a hard time of it. We’ve been camped out here too long already, which means the Lupus bastards have had plenty of time to prepare to repel our assault.’

  He paused to hawk up a glob of spit, before looking towards the enemy fortress with what seemed like an expression of grudging respect.

  ‘If you think you can see fire now, just wait until you’re charging those walls.’

  IF ANYTHING, THE bombardment seemed to grow more ferocious as Zahariel hurried through the siege lines on foot. The enemy guns did not have the range to hit the Order’s emplacements directly, but their shells fell close enough to shower the forward positions with debris.

  As Zahariel neared the front lines, he heard a series of sharp, high-pitched whines as shrapnel ricocheted from the plates encasing his body. The armour did its job, deflecting harm and keeping the meat and bone of him safe, but he was relieved when he finally saw Sar Hadariel’s tattered war banner fluttering from the maze of trenches around him.

  He jumped down into the trench. Armoured warriors surrounded him in the semi-darkness, the black of their armour shimmering with reflected fire.

  ‘You made it then, brother?’ said Nemiel, the first to greet him as he landed.

  The speaking grille of Nemiel’s helmet distorted the words, but Zahariel would have known his cousin’s voice anywhere. ‘I was beginning to wonder whether you had thought better of it and decided to go home.’

  ‘And leave you all the glory?’ said Zahariel. ‘You should know me better than that, brother.’

  ‘I know you better than you think,’ said Nemiel.

  His cousin’s face was hidden within his helmet, but from the tone of his voice, Zahariel knew he was smiling. ‘Certainly, I know you enough to realise you probably rushed breathlessly over here from the moment you heard the bombardment begin. You can’t fool me, glory doesn’t come into it with you. It’s all about duty.’

  Nemiel jerked a thumb towards the front of the trench and indicated for Zahariel to follow him. ‘Well, come on then, brother, let’s see what your high ideals have got you into.’

  The remaining eight men of the sword-line were already standing beside the front trench wall, looking out into the open ground between the siege lines and the enemy fortress. As Zahariel approached, the flash of nearby cannon bursts illuminated them at irregular intervals.

  Each man was armed and armoured in identical fashion to Zahariel, carrying a pistol equipped with explosive rounds and a tooth-bladed sword. They wore black plate armour and hooded surplices marked with the Order’s identifying emblem of a sword with its blade pointed downwards.

  It was traditional for the knights of the Order to keep their white surplices spotless, but Zahariel was surprised to see that every other man in the trench was daubed in mud from head-to-toe.

  ‘You are too clean, brother,’ Sar Hadariel said, turning from his place at the trench wall to glance at him.

  ‘Didn’t anyone tell you? The Lion has issued instructions that we should blacken our surplices so we will not present as much of a target for the enemy gunners when the assault begins.’

  ‘I am sorry, sar,’ Zahariel replied. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘No harm, lad,’ shrugged Hadariel. ‘You know now. I’d be quick to rectify it if I was you. The word won’t be long in coming. When it does, you don’t want to be the only man wearing white in the middle of a night assault.’

  Sar Hadariel turned to gaze back towards the enemy fortress, and Zahariel hurried to follow his advice. Releasing the belt that held the loose surplice in place, he lifted it over his head and stooped to soak the garment in the watery mud at the bottom of the trench.

  ‘I always said you were an original thinker,’ remarked Nemiel as Zahariel rose and put the surplice back on. ‘The rest of us just left them on and spent ten minutes smearing handfuls of mud over ourselves. You come along, take the surplice off and achieve the same effect in fifteen seconds. Of course, I’m not sure what it says about your talent for lateral thinking that it finds its fullest expression in solving the problem of getting yourself dirty.’

  ‘You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it,’ Zahariel shot back. ‘If you had, I’m sure you’d acclaim it as the greatest development in warfare since they started breeding destriers.’

  ‘Well, naturally, if I did it then it really would be clever,’ Nemiel said. ‘The difference is that when I come up with a good idea it’s through foresight and deep thinking. When you do it, it’s usually through plain luck.’

  They laughed, though Zahariel suspected it was more a reaction to the tension they both felt than any particular humour in Nemiel’s words.

  It was a familiar game, one the two of them had played since childhood, a game of one-upmanship that they turned to automatically as they waited out the nervous minutes until the assault began in earnest.

  It was the kind of game played only by brothers.

  ‘THEY’RE MOVING THE siege engines forward,’ said Nemiel, observing the assault’s early stages. ‘It won’t be long now. Soon, we’ll get the signal. Then, we’ll be right in the middle of it.’

  As though in reaction to Nemiel’s words, the enemy guns seemed to redouble their efforts, unleashing yet more fire into the sky. As the noise of the barrage grew to deafening proportions, Zahariel realised that Nemiel was right, the assault was beginning to move forward.

  Ahead, in the no-man’s-land between the Order’s siege-lines and the walls of the fortress, he saw three anikols make their slow, incremental way towards the enemy.

  Named for a native Calibanite animal that relied on its shell-like armour to keep it safe from predators, each anikol was a wheeled mantlet covered in an overlapping patchwork of metal plates designed to protect the men inside it from enemy projectiles. Powered by nothing more than the muscles of the dozen men who sheltered within it, the anikol was a necessarily slow and unwieldy siege weapon.

  Its only advantage lay in its ability to soak up enemy firepower, allowing its crew to get close enough to lay explosive charges to breach the walls of the fortress. At least, such was the theory.

  As Zahariel watched their advance, he saw a flaming missile arc through the air from the fortress battlements and crash through t
he lead anikol’s armour. In a fiery instant the siege-engine disappeared in a powerful explosion.

  ‘A lucky shot,’ said Nemiel, dragging his eyes from Zahariel’s scabbard. ‘They must have hit it at a spot where the armour was weak. They’ll never manage to hit the other two in the same way. One of the anikols will get through. Then, it will be our turn. The main thrust of the attack will be against the south wall of the fortress. Once the anikols have created a breach, we’ll be the first wave as we take advantage of it.’

  ‘All our eggs in one basket,’ said Zahariel.

  ‘Far from it,’ said Nemiel with a shake of the head. ‘At the same time, diversionary attacks will be launched against each of the north, east and west walls to divide the forces of the knights of Lupus and draw off their reserves, but that’s not the cunning part.’

  ‘What’s the cunning part?’

  ‘To further confuse the enemy, the diversionary attacks are each going to have a different character from the main assault. The attack on the east wall is to be made using siege-towers, while the west wall assault will involve scaling ladders and grappling hooks.’

  ‘Clever,’ said Zahariel. ‘They won’t know which is the main attack.’

  ‘It gets better,’ replied Nemiel. ‘Guess who’ll be leading the assault on the gates of the north wall?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Lion,’ said Nemiel.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  As they watched the remaining anikols move slowly forward, Zahariel said, ‘I can’t believe the Lion will be heading the attack on the north gates. It’s only a diversion. You’d expect him to lead the main attack.’

  ‘I think that’s the idea,’ answered Nemiel. ‘When the Knights of Lupus see the Lion at their north wall, they’ll assume it’s the focus of our efforts. They’ll concentrate their troops there, allowing the real main assault an easier time of it.’

  ‘Still, it’s a terrible risk,’ said Zahariel, shaking his head in concern. ‘Without the Lion, the campaign against the great beasts would never have happened. And, he stands at least two heads taller than anyone else on Caliban. Even if enemy snipers don’t pick him out, there’s the chance the north assault will be overwhelmed for lack of numbers. I don’t know if the Order could stand losing the Lion. I don’t know if Caliban could.’