DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6)

by Andrew Seiple

  Well.

  I knew a thing or two about violence.

  “HOP ON,” I told the Last Janissary. “SOMEONE NEEDS A RECKONING, AND SHE’S IN A MOOD TO DELIVER SOME INFERNAL JUSTICE...”

  CHAPTER 3: FIRST CONTACT

  “And the great teacher did look upon the first demons, and all but two she judged unworthy. They fell like See-are-ones against a full party.”

  --Excerpt from the second chapter of the first book of the Chronicles of the Shared Lie

  As much as I wanted to haul Beaky along for backup, he was nowhere near combat-ready. Vector had a lot more brain poking to do before I’d trust our new pet abomination at our side. Besides, if there was something here with enough dakka to kill Beaky, I didn’t want to risk our new lair and best shot at survival.

  So instead I carried Khalid as I jetted toward the base camp, thirty-odd miles distant. Not far in the grand scheme of things.

  Perhaps that was the problem, come to think of it. We hadn’t set it far enough back from the road, and I’d fretted over that problem but seen no way around it. The geography and landmarks involved allowed no compromise.

  My stomach growled again, and I clenched my teeth. This mess had interrupted the first solid meal offered to me in days. Hopefully we could settle it quickly.

  Then the campsite hove into view, and I knew that we wouldn’t be settling it quickly.

  Two miles away, Beaky’s twin, the first thing I killed when I got here, lay decomposing on the ground. Just beyond the plains broke, revealing a vast crack in the ground, too straight and orderly to be anything but artificial. It was a quarry, with chiseled steps winding down into a valley of broken stone and gaping mouths of caves scattered around the slate-gray walls. Gray like the dust that filled the air, that would fill my lungs in days if I was dumb enough to go without my armor.

  A group of beasts shuffled and stirred at the edge of the quarry, low-slung and looking like a cross between velociraptors and alligators. They were gathered in a single spot. Next to them glittering frameworks shone bloody red as smaller forms writhed upon them. I zoomed in on the visual, then regretted it. I knew those people. I’d set them loose, and offered them safety in exchange for assistance. And now here they were, crucified spread-eagled on torture racks, screaming into the sky.

  Someone had made a liar of me.

  I swept my telescoped gaze across to the beasts, the five of them, and found that they had saddles and tack, and what looked like a few more torture racks broken down and bundled on their harnesses. Then I looked beyond them, to the smoke rising up from the bottom of the quarry. Couldn’t see any more; the smoke was blocking my sight, and the angle was bad. Didn’t feel like doing a direct overfly, not with Khalid slung under me and eminently squishier than my armor.

  I nudged him, gestured to a likely spot a few hundred yards distant. He shook his symbiote-wrapped head and pointed at a pile of rocks a kilometer away. I shrugged and made for it. The Last Janissary could make good use of stealth and tactical advantage when it came to fighting. There was no point in depriving him of his strengths.

  It felt like a long walk across the plain, with only the moans of the Damned to keep us company. “ANY IDEA WHAT THOSE ARE?” I rumbled, voice modulator dialed down, as I pointed at the riding lizards. They were all looking our way, but didn’t seem too alarmed at the minute.

  “No clue. Hellspawn.”

  “LEGION. RIGHT.” I gave them a wide berth. No noise from down in the quarry, save for the crackling of a large fire. The screams of the Damned drowned out anything my ambient noise filters might have identified.

  The lizards bristled crests when I got closer and snorted a bit more, but once I turned my back on them, they settled down somewhat. I watched them through the rear-view camera as I made my way over to Juno. She was one of the oldest Damned I’d freed from the spikes, a Roman from the Republic, long ago. Short, black-haired, perhaps in her thirties, she was currently bleeding into the dirt and spiked into the rack like a magician’s sword trick gone horribly wrong.

  I glanced around for Khalid, found him vanished. Typical. I pulled the spikes out of the contraption one by one, and her screaming faded into pained sobbing as she collapsed to the ground. Then I moved to the other two, who spoke no languages I recognized. Once they were loose and the screams faded, I turned back to Juno.

  “WHO HAS DONE THIS TO YOU?” I asked her. We’d found a common tongue in Roman Latin.

  “Demons,” she whispered through a raw throat, then flopped an arm until she managed to get it pointing toward the quarry.

  I nodded. “DON’T GO ANYWHERE.”

  To be honest, I’d known the answer to the question already. But this was more for show, more to ram home the point I was trying to get through her skull and the collective skulls of the rest of the Damned crew.

  They were my people now, and I looked after my own.

  I dropped into the quarry like a bolt from a crossbow, slamming into the ground in a three-point landing, dust flying as the ‘people’ clustered around the bonfire whirled around to stare at me. The ones with hands had blankets or coats or garments of some sort, and they’d obviously been using them to fan the flames into one of the cave mouths. I knew that cave. That was where I’d told my people to start mining. The rest of the dotted line fell into place.

  “YOU’RE TRYING TO SMOKE THEM OUT, AREN’T YOU?”

  The demons gathered themselves. Five humanoids, wearing leathers of a pale hue, broad-brimmed hats, and scarves pulled up over their faces until only their glowing, inhuman eyes showed. Various spikes protruded through holes in the patched leather, and they were tall, varying between eight and ten feet.

  To the side, a catlike thing the size of a doberman stood frozen, eyes wide, tail lashing furiously. Its eyes were human and bloodshot, and somehow that was the worst of all.

  The tallest demon garbled something, reached behind itself, dropped its blanket, and pulled out something that looked very much like a blunderbuss. I scanned it, smirked at the chemical mix my instruments returned. The demon garbled more words.

  “ENGLISH! DO YOU SPEAK IT, MOTHERFUCKER?”

  They recoiled from my shout. But one of the smaller ones raised a hand and tugged his scarf down, revealing a severely-handsome human face that didn’t go with his sickly yellow eyes. “Speaka ta Damned tongues sen? Palaver worra ta tongue o’ weak?”

  “YES. UNTIL SHE KNOWS MORE OF YOUR LANGUAGE, THAT SHALL SUFFICE.”

  “We be Low Riders, by chain and by claw, hunting escapes by order and authority of Bel gan Biss. I hight Thirteenth Chain. Boon compayans, Seventh, Third, and Ninth Chains, and Foolish Grub. Who be ye?”

  “Wrong question, wrong question, faulty, fickle, foolish,” The cat growled. “Ask what are you?”

  “SHE IS DIRE. AND YOU HUNT HER PEOPLE.” I raised a fist, raising my voice modulator’s volume as I did so. “WHATEVER FATE YOU MAY HAVE HAD, IT IS HERS TO DECIDE NOW.”

  “Dire Ban who?” Thirteenth Chain frowned. But I watched his hand, as it strayed to the hilt of a blade at his waist. And the one with the blunderbuss tensed, muscles writhing like ropes along his arms, eyes never leaving my mask. The other three shared glances.

  “DOCTOR DIRE.” And there they were, peering over the edge of the cliff; the captives I’d freed from impalement, healed up well enough to crawl over and see what transpired. “KNEEL OR FALL BEFORE HER!” I repeated the phrase in Roman, for Juno’s benefit, sweeping my arm out in a dramatic gesture.

  Thunder rumbled, shot cascaded from my forcefield as the crude blunderbuss discharged its load, and they came for me with knives and swords.

  I met them, with raised arms and mocking laughter. The first one to reach me came low, so I kicked his ribs in as his knife slid along my shell. The second-biggest one came behind him, trying to tackle me from the side, and I grabbed his head, knelt in a smooth motion, and crushed it into the ground. Blood sprayed, and I rose in time to meet the third one with a rising uppercut tha
t split him open like lightning cracking a tree.

  The fourth one was Thirteenth Chain, and he skidded to a halt, shielding his face as blood sprayed and spattered. He backed up and I advanced, catching him by the throat and lifting him high, all five-hundred pounds of him, according to my sensors and haptics. I lifted him one-handed, ignored his choking and the knife stabbing down, scraping and rattling along my arm.

  Blunderbuss boy was ramming a cleaning tool down the barrel of his weapon, backing up as well. Then he cast the tool aside, a rag on the end fluttering as a twisted, withered, third arm snaked from his coat and slid a soda-can-sized cartridge into the mouth of the blunderbuss. It packed the canister tight with poundings of a tiny fist.

  “DROP IT OR DIE,” I told him.

  He roared defiance, raised the blunderbuss at me—

  And I blasted him with a ninety-percent particle beam set to wide dispersal.

  When the golden light faded, and the cliff side he’d been standing in front of ceased cracking and sliding down the ridge, the only thing left of him were smoking boots. Rocks pinged and whined off of my forcefield, surrounding me in an inconstant halo of golden light, there and gone in split-seconds.

  I turned to look at the cat-thing. The cat-thing ran.

  It got all of ten bounding paces before Khalid stood up from a rock pile, and caught it square in the face with a vial full of yellow smoke. Oh, how it howled! It fell to the ground, pawing desperately at its face, warbling its pain to the world.

  A clatter of metal on stone. I looked down to see Thirteenth Chain’s knife broken at my feet. I looked up my arm to see him patting my gauntlet desperately. His face was way more red than it had been a second ago.

  Ah, right. Air. He might want that.

  I searched around, found a shovel sticking out of the fire. I took my time kicking out the smoky blaze, ignoring my Chain buddy’s pats and struggles as the demon slowly lost his strength. Then I picked up the tool, and let him drop right next to the ashes. He coughed, gasped, and stared up at me, eyes blinking and weeping gooey tears.

  I tossed the shovel right next to his face, and he flinched. “BEND YOUR KNEE OR DIG YOUR GRAVE,” I told him.

  He knelt, coughing.

  “And this one?” Khalid asked, his blade at the throat of the hellcat.

  “Man... most mortal?” It wheezed through its pain. Tremors still shook it, but its eyes were wide and blurred with goopy tears.

  “IT’S SAPIENT. IT GETS THE SAME CHOICE.”

  “I know this breed. They are called Grimalkin. Capricious and sensitive, with mental abilities.”

  Well, fuck. “MIND CONTROL?” I asked him.

  “No. But you have not been hearing its words with your ears.”

  I checked the audio logs. Interesting. “WE COULD USE A TRANSLATOR. YOU, GRIMALKIN!” I kicked the shovel its way. “THE SAME CHOICE LIES BEFORE YOU.”

  I held back my laughter as the cat painfully clambered to its feet, pushed its head down and its butt up. Swear to gods, I was tempted to flip out a laser sight and see if it went for the thing. But no, no, we had onlookers, and I had to maintain a certain gravitas for the audience.

  Speaking of which... “CASSIAN! COME FORTH.”

  I gave it a minute. Just as I was ready to call again, the thinning smoke at the edge of the cave mouth roiled, and a short, soot-stained man limped out, holding a steel spike low and to his side. He took in the carnage with wide, white eyes that were out of place on his smoke-seared skin. Behind him, the rest of his band followed, armed with similar spikes and lengths of bloodstained steel.

  “Jupiter’s ballsack,” he whispered, in Latin. He’d been my teacher for the tongue, and I’d made sure he taught me every choice epithet. I had the feeling they’d come in handy down here.

  “JUNO AND TWO OTHERS ARE UP ON THE BLUFFS. ARE THE REST WITH YOU?”

  He swapped the steel spur to his left hand, held out his right in a fist, and thumped his chest. “Yes, Lady.” The effect was spoiled a bit, as that triggered a nasty cough. I watched him heave up black junk, caring less about it than I would have if he’d been living. From what I’d learned after we got them off the spires, they had a decent, if slow, regeneration factor. And if Vector and Khalid were correct, they were essentially immortal. Cassian had been hurt, but he would heal.

  “COME THEN, WHEN YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH FOR IT. RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE QUARRY AND AWAIT.”

  “We have...” The old Roman coughed again. “We have dug out several armloads of copper.”

  I raised my eyebrows. By the looks of it, the demons had attacked hours ago. My Damned had only half a day or so to manage their mining. That was a pretty good clip.

  “DIRE SHALL GATHER IT FROM THE MINE. NO NEED FOR YOU TO BREATHE SMOKE AGAIN. GO, REST. SHE SHALL SEE HOW MUCH YOUR LABORS HAVE BROUGHT.”

  It was a bit less than several armloads, really. But then everyone in the crew was fairly short. I scanned it with my spectroanalyzer, nodded in satisfaction. I’d have to smelt it pretty well to get the quality I wanted, but this would more than suffice. A few minutes of work and the salvaged jacket from one of the dead demons, and I had a sack of ore.

  When I flew back up the cliff, I found the Damned gathered in a loose huddle, murmuring and shooting murderous glances at the Grimalkin and Thirteenth Chain. The Grimalkin stared back at me, paws folded under itself, tail switching back and forth with obvious curiosity. Thirteenth Chain, for his part, had his scarf back around his face. He was sneaking glances at the tethered lizard mounts, obviously weighing his chances. Khalid stood between the demons and the Damned, arms folded, his gaze as cold as the void between stars.

  Were stars a thing here? I hadn’t noticed any sort of day or night cycle, and I wasn’t exactly sure where the dim red light that filled the sky came from. I made a mental note to ask our captives when we had less pressing matters to tend to.

  First things first, though. “DON’T BOTHER RUNNING,” I told Thirteenth Chain. “YOU WILL JUST DIE TIRED.”

  Khalid translated my words to Latin for the benefit of our Romans, and they translated for the rest of the group in an assortment of languages. Judging by the smiles, they liked my line of thought.

  I turned my back on the demons, looked to the nine dead souls I’d ended up with. The first spire we cleared off, the Damned had fled the moment they recovered. Taken us for demons, or mistaken our mercy for some cruel game. Couldn’t blame them, really, they’d spent a hell of a long time bleeding out with jagged steel blades through their guts.

  The second spire, though, Cassius and Juno had stood together, hand in hand, and asked a simple question;

  Why?

  I answered now as I had two days ago.

  “BECAUSE DIRE CAN,” I rumbled at Cassius, here and now, as he looked from me to the demons and back again.

  “Your pardon, Lady?”

  “YOU ARE WONDERING WHY SHE SPARED THEM.”

  “I wonder if it is wise. There are stories of those who tried to fight demons, tried to kill them. The torments of the fools who try such things make the bloodspires seem tame by comparison. Leaving two alive to tell the tale does not seem wise.”

  Juno grabbed his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. She had to stand on tiptoe to do it. He blinked and shook his head. “I am not calling you a fool, Lady Dire. But you are newly come here. You have not heard the stories or seen what we have seen.”

  “THAT IS TRUE. BUT IT CHANGES NOTHING. THEY LIVE ON HER SUFFERANCE. WHEN THEY ATTEMPT TO BETRAY HER, THEY WILL DIE AT HER WHIM.”

  The cat was following our conversation avidly. Thirteenth Chain didn’t react. Didn’t know Latin? Probably. I’d have to quiz him to test his knowledge later. “FOR NOW THEY WILL SERVE AN IMPORTANT PURPOSE.”

  “And what is that?”

  I pointed at the riding lizards. “DO YOU SEE THAT?”

  “I see them,” Cassius said, keeping his steel spike ready. “They do not seem friendly.”

  “NOT THEM. THE...” I
didn’t know the word for tack in Latin. “...HARNESSES.”

  “What of them?”

  Romans. A very literal people. “EACH ONE IS IDENTICAL.” I’d noticed that, looking at them earlier. “DOWN TO THE METAL PINS USED TO HOLD THEM TOGETHER.”

  Juno, bless her heart, got it first. “If the demons riding them had made the harnesses themselves, they would be different.”

  “WHICH MEANS THAT THEY HAVE ENOUGH FREE HANDS THAT EITHER A DEDICATED CRAFTSMAN MADE THESE, OR A MACHINE DID. WHICH MEANS CIVILIZATION.” I’d figured that from the roads, but the tack and the blunderbuss both supported the theory. “A SETTLEMENT OR PERHAPS A CITY.”

  “Caym,” the cat offered. “The Bloodfont, on the Cliffs of Screaming Woe.”

  “You wish us to go to this city?” Cassus shook his head. “We would be captured and returned to the spires. Or worse.”

  “NO,” I said, opening the jacket and letting the copper ore spill to the ground. “YOU MAY COME IF YOU WISH, AND YOU SHALL NOT BE CAPTURED OR TORTURED FOR DOING SO. BUT SHE DOES NOT REQUIRE IT OF YOU. DIRE WAS THINKING THIS WAS A GOOD ENOUGH FARE FOR YOUR PASSAGE THERE, BUT IF YOU WISH SOME OTHER TRADE FOR THIS COPPER, THAT IS ACCEPTABLE AS WELL.”

  “I am very confused, great lady,” said the cat. “Are those rocks not their tribute to you?”

  “NO. SHE IS NOT THEIR MASTER. SHE IS THEIR EMANCIPATOR. THIS IS WHAT THEY HAVE TO OFFER, FOR HER HELP AND SUPPORT.” I would have helped them without it, to be honest, but Khalid had advised me to keep them busy and to insist on trading for any favors I did them. He was more familiar with their culture and the overall mentality of the Damned.

  Though I was learning as I went. For the most part they were dour, paranoid, and nowhere near as crazed as I’d expected.

  “Ah. May I trade for help and support?” the cat asked.

  “NO. SHE IS NOT YOUR EMANCIPATOR.” I let the empty jacket I’d been using as a carrying sling fall and went to loom over the cat and Thirteenth Chain. “FOR NOW, SHE IS YOUR MASTER.”