There was a murmur of admiration from the watchers, but no more. Which meant that Bonecrusher was not popular in the Army of Night, however much they might value his fighting skill.
The pain brought the dragon rising up within Will, a ravening wave of anger that threatened to wash over his mind and drown all conscious thought. He fought it down. Whirling the pipe around his head, he feinted at one shoulder. Then, when the wodewose brought up his own weapon to block it, he shifted his attack. The pipe slammed into Bonecrusher's forehead and bounced off.
Bonecrusher shook his matted dreadlocks and raised his weapon once more.
At that moment, a great noise rose up in the distance. A train! Will tucked his pipe under one arm as if it were a lance and ran full-tilt at his opponent. The pipe struck him in the chest and knocked him stumbling backward.
The train rounded a bend. Its headlight blossomed like the sun at midnight.
Will retreated to the far side of the track He pressed himself against the nearest support beam, feeling its cold strength under his back. Across from him, Bonecrusher started forward, hesitated, and then turned away, one great hand covering his eyes.
His eyes? Oh.
The locomotive slammed past Will, a wash of air shoving against him like a warm fist. He had a momentary glimpse of astonished faces in the passenger car windows before he threw an arm over his eyes to shield himself from the painfully bright light.
Then the train was gone. When he opened his eyes again, he could see nothing.
Bonecrusher chuckled. "Yer blind, aintcha?" he said."Motherfucker."
Now Will was truly afraid.
With fear came anger, however, and anger made it easier for him to draw upon the dragon-darkness within him. He felt it rising up in his blood and clamped down tight. He refused to give it control. It struggled against him, a fire running through his veins, an evil song lifting in his throat. It yearned to be let free
He heard the whisper of Bonecrusher's naked feet on the railroad ties. He backed away.
Now an inner vision seemed to pierce the darkness. All was still shadow within shadow, but he knew that the shifting blackness directly before him was the wodewose padding quietly forward, raising his makeshift club for one final and devastating blow.
The dragon-anger was straining at its leash. So Will let slip his hold a little, allowing the anger to leap forward to meet the attack. He threw aside his own pipe and stepped into the blow. With one hand, he caught the wild man's club and wrested it from his grasp. With the other, he seized the wodewose by the throat.
Flinging away the wodewose's weapon, he stooped and grabbed his opponent by his thigh. The creature's fur was as stiff as an Airedale's, and matted with knots. Will lifted him up over his head. He tried to curse, but Will's hand clutched his throat too tightly for anything meaningful to emerge.
The bastard was helpless now. Will could swing him around and smash his head against a pillar or drop him down over his knee, breaking his spine. It would be the easiest thing in the world, either way.
Well, screw that.
"I don't have anything against you." he told his struggling opponent. "Give me your word of surrender, and I'll set you free." Bonecrusher made a gurgling noise.
"That's not possible," Lord Weary said with obvious regret. "Our laws say: To the death."
Frustration filled Will. To have come so far, only to be thwarted by a childish warrior's code! Well. then, he would have to run. He doubted the Army of the Night would pursue him with much enthusiasm after seeing how easily he defeated their champion.
"If your laws say that," Will snarled, "then they're not mine."
With a surge of anger, he flung the wodewose away from him.
"Fucking bas—!" The word cut off abruptly as the wodewose hit the ground. Electrical sparks flew into the air like fireworks. The wodewose's body arced and crisped. There was a smell of burnt hair and scorched flesh. Somebody whistled and said. "That's cold." Will had forgotten entirely about the third rail.
Lord Weary picked out four of his soldiers for a burial detail. "Carry Bonecrusher upstairs," he said, "and leave him somewhere he'll be found, so that City Services will take care of the body. Be sure he's lying facing up! I don't want one of my soldiers mistaken for an animal." Then he clapped a hand on Will's shoulder. "Well fought, boy. Welcome to the Army of Night."
When the burial detail had lugged Bonecrusher's body into oblivion, Lord Weary lined up those who remained and led them the other way." On to Niflheim," he said. Will joined the line and, shivering, managed to keep pace.
He'd walked for what seemed like forever and no time at all when the smell of urine and feces welled up around him so strong that it made his eyes water. Somebody lived down here. A lot of somebodies. Will found himself stumbling up a crumbling set of stairs and onto a cement platform.
A miniature city arose before him. There were perhaps a hundred or so shanties built one on top of the other of wooden crates and cardboard boxes, each one sufficient to hold a sleeping bag and little more. Wicker baskets, large enough to sleep in, hung from the ceiling. There were narrow streets between the shanties down which shadows flitted. The Army of Night wove its way through them into a central plaza, where a cluster of haints and feys sat crouched around a portable television set, its volume turned down to a murmur. Others sat about talking quietly or reading tattered paperbacks by candlelight. High on the walls above was a frieze of tiles that showed dwarves mining and smelting and manufacturing. Deep runes in the stone arch over a cinder-blocked doorway read NILFHEIM STATION. Judging by the newspapers and old clothes strewn about, it had been closed and abandoned long ago.
A hulder (Will could tell from her buxom figure and by the cow's tail sticking out from under her skirt) rose to greet them. "Lord Weary," she said. "You are welcome here, and your army, too. I see you have somebody new." Most of those who rose in her wake were haints.
"I thank you, thane -lady Hjördis. Our recruit is so recent he hasn't chosen a name for himself yet. He is our new champion." "Him?" Hjördis scowled. "This boy?"
"Don't be fooled by his looks, the lad's tough. He killed Bonecrusher." Soft muttering washed over the platform. "By trickery?" somebody asked dubiously.
"In fair and open combat. I saw it all."
There was a moment's tension before the thane-lady nodded, accepting. Then Lord Weary said to her, "We must confer. Serious matters are afoot."
"First we eat," Hjördis said. "You will sit with me at the head table."
To Will's surprise, he was included with Lord Weary in the invitation. Apparently the office of champion made him a counselor as well. He watched as tables were built in the central square, of boards set over wire milk crates, and then covered with sheets of newspaper in place of linen. A cobbley set out pads of newspaper for seats and paper plates for them to eat from. Another filled the plates with food. The thane-lady's table was set under the wall, beneath the tiled dwarves. She and her favored companions sat with their backs to the wall, so that the rows of lesser ranked diners faced them.
The food was better than might be expected, some of it scrounged from grocery-store dumpsters after passing its sell-by date, and the rest of it from upstairs charities. They ate by the light of tuna-can lamps with rag wicks in rancid cooking oil, conversing quietly.
Will commented that the tunnels seemed more labyrinthine and of greater extent than he had thought they would be, and Hjördis said, "You don't know the half of it. There used to be fifteen different gas companies in Babel, six separate sets of steam tunnels, and Sirrush only can say how many subway systems, pneumatic trains, sub-surface lines, underground trolleys, and pedestrian walkways that nobody uses anymore. Add to that maintenance tunnels tor the power and telephone and plumbing and sewage systems, storm drains, the summer retreats that the wealthy used to have dug for them a century ago, the bomb shelters, the bootleggers' vaults..."
Lord Weary shook his head in agreement. "There is no lore-master of Babe
l's secret ways. They are too many, and too varied." His sea-green eyes studied Will gravely. "Now. Tell us what drove you here."
"Speak carefully or truthfully," the Whisperer said in his ear, "or you will not survive the meal." Will spun around, but there was nobody there. He looked into Lord Weary's stem face and decided it was the truth.
He told his tale, concluding, "Since that time, I have been cast out of my village and ill fortune has pursued me across Fäerie Minor all the way to the Dread Tower. Perhaps I have been cursed by the dragon's death. All I know is that from that day I have had no place to call home."
"You have a home here now, lad," said Lord Weary. "We shall be a second family to you, if you will have us."
He laid a hand on Will's head and a great flood of emotion washed over Will. Suddenly, and for no reason he could name, he loved the elf-lord like a father. Warm rears flowed down his cheeks.
When he could speak again, Will asked, "Why do you live down here?"
It was a meaningless question, meant simply to move the conversation to less emotional ground. But., "Why does anybody live anywhere?" the Whisperer said in his ear. Will spun around, and there was nobody there.
Then, graciously, Hjördis explained that though those above dismissed the dwellers in darkness as trolls and feral dwarves, very few of them were subterranean by nature. Most of the thane-lady's folk were haints and drows, nissen, shellycoats, and broken feys — anyone lacking the money or social graces to get along in open society. They had problems with drugs and alcohol and insanity, but they looked after one another as best they could. Their own name for themselves was johatsu—"nameless wanderers."
"Are there a lot of communities like this one?"
"There are dozens," Lord Weary said, "and possibly even hundreds. Some are as small as six or ten individuals. Others run much larger than what you see here. No one knows for sure how many live in darkness. Tatterwag speculates there are tens of thousands. But they don't communicate with each other and they won't work together and they are perforce nomadic, for periodically the transit police discover the settlements and bust them up, scattering their citizens. But the Army of Night is going to change all that. We're the first and the only organized military force the johatsu have ever formed." "How many are in the Army, all told?"
The thane-lady hid a smile under a paper napkin. Stiffly, Lord Weary said. "You've met them all. This is a new idea, and slow to catch on. But it will grow. My dream will bear fruit in the fullness of time." His voice rose. "Look around you! These are the dispossessed of Babel — the weak, the injured, the gentle. Who speaks for them? Not the Lords of the Mayoralty Not the Council of Magi. His Absent Majesty was their protector once, but he is long gone and no one knows where. Somebody must step forward to fill that void. I swear by the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, and the Golden Apples of the West, that if the Seven permit it, that somebody shall be me!"
The johatsu froze in their places, not speaking, barely breathing. Their eyes shone like stars.
Hjördis laid a hand over Lord Weary's. "Great matters will wait upon food," she said. "Time enough to discuss these things after we eat."
When all had eaten and the dishes had been cleared away. Hjördis lit a cigarette and passed it around the table. "Well?" she said at last.
"When last we were here," Lord Weary said, "I left some crates in your keeping. Now we have need of them."
A shadow crossed the thane-lady's face. But she nodded. "I thought as much. So I had my folk retrieve them."
Six Niflheimers stood up, faded into darkness, and returned, lugging long wooden crates between them. The crates were laid down before the table and, at a gesture from Lord Weary, Tatterwag pried open one with his bowie knife.
Light gleamed on rifle barrels.
Suddenly the taste of death was in the air. Cautiously, Will said, "What do we need these for?"
"There's going to be a rat hunt," Lord Weary said. "We're hunting rats?"
Lord Weary grinned mirthlessly. "We're not the hunters, lad. We're the rats."
The Ninheimers had been listening intently. Now they crowded around the main table. "We call them the Breakneck Boys," one said. "They come down here once a month, on the Day of the Toad or maybe the Day of the Labrys, looking for some fun. They got night goggles and protective spells like you wouldn't believe, and they carry aluminum baseball bats. Mostly, we just slip away from 'em. But they usually manage to find somebody too old or sick or drugged-up to avoid them."
"It's a fucking hobby for them." Tatterwag growled.
"Last time, they caught poor old Martin Pecker drunk asleep, only instead of giving him a bashing like usual, they poured gasoline over him and set it on fire."
"I saw the corpse!"
"This is a mad notion and a dangerous folly." the Whisperer said. "Their sires are industrialists and Lords of the Mayoralty. If even one of their brats dies, they'll send the mosstroopers down here with dire wolves to exact revenge."
"I fear retaliation," the thane-lady said, and then, with obvious reluctance, "Yet the Brcaknecks' predations worsen. Perhaps it is time to meet violence with violence."
"No!" Will said. He had eaten almost nothing, for his stomach was still queasy from the stench of Niflheim, and Bonecrusher's death weighed heavily upon him. If he closed his eyes, he could see the sparks rising up around the wodewose's body. He hadn't wanted to kill the creature. It had happened because he hadn't thought the situation through beforehand. Now he was thinking very hard and fast indeed. "Put the guns back."
"You're not afraid?" Lord Weary drew himself up straight, and Will felt his disapproval like a lash across his shoulders.
"I can take care of the Breaknecks," Will said. "If you want me to. I'll take care of them myself."
There was a sudden silence.
"Alone?"
"Yes. But to pull this off, I'll need a uniform. The gaudier the better. And war paint. The kind that glows in the dark."
Hjördis grinned. "I'll send our best shoplifters upstairs."
"And explosives. A hand grenade would be best, but—no? Well, is there any way we can get our hands on some chemicals to make a bomb?"
"There's a methamphetamine lab up near the surface," Tatterwag said. The creeps who run it think nobody knows it's there. They got big tanks of ethyl ether and white gasoline. Maybe even some red phosphorus."
"Do we have anybody who knows how to handle them safely?"
"Um... there's one of us got a Ph.D. in alchemy. Only, it was back when. Up above." Tatterwag glanced nervously at Lord Weary. "Before he came here. So I don't know whether he wants me to say his name or not."
"You have a doctorate?" Will said. "How in the world did you..." — he was going to say fall so low but thought better of it — "...wind up here?"
Offhandedly Lord Weary said, "Carelessness. Somebody offered me a drink. I liked it, so I had another. Only one hand is needed to hold a glass, so I began smoking to give the other one something to do. I took to dueling and from there it was only a small step to gambling. I bought a fighting cock. I bought a bear. I bought a dwarf. I began to frequent tailors and whores. From champagne I moved to whisky, from whisky to wine, and from wine to Sterno. So it went until the only libation I had not yet drunk was blood, the only sex untried was squalid, and the only vice untasted was violent revolution.
"Every step downward was pleasant. Every new experience filled me with disdain for those who dared not share in it. And so, well, here I am."
"Is this a true history," Will asked, "or a parable?"
"Your question," Lord Weary said, "is a deeper one than you know — whether the world I sank through was real or illusory. Many a better mind than mine or yours has grappled with this very issue without result. In any event, I'll make your bomb."
It took hours to make the plan firm. But at last Hjördis rose from the table and said, "Enough. Our new champion is doubtless tired. Bonecrusher's quarters are yours now. I will show you where you sleep."
She took Will by the hand and led him to an obscure corner of the box-village. There she knelt before a kind of tent made of patched blankets hung from clotheslines. "In here." She raised the flap and crawled inside.
Will followed.
To his surprise, the interior was clean. Inside, a faded Tabriz carpet laid over stacked cardboard served as floor and mattress. A vase filled with phosphorescent fungi cast a gentle light over the space. Hjördis turned and, kneeling, said, "All that was 'Crusher's is yours now. His tent. His title..." She pulled her dress off over her head. "His duties."
Will took a deep, astonished breath. It seemed too awful to kill the wodewose and bed his lover all on the same day. Hesitatingly, he said. "We don't have to..."
The thane-lady stared at him in blank astonishment. "You're not gay, are you? Or suffering from the Fisher King's disease?" She touched his crotch. "No, I can see you're not. What is it, then?"
"I just don't see how you can sleep with me after I killed your... killed Bonecrusher."
"You don't think this is personal, do you?" I Hjördis laughed. "Blondie, you're the most fucked up champion I ever saw." At her direction, he took off his clothes. She drew him down and guided him inside her. Then she wrapped her legs around his waist and slapped him on the rump.
"Giddy up," she commanded.
So galloped the chariot-horses of night. Briefly the first time he came, Will could sense the scryers of the political police searching for him. But half of Babel lay between him and les poulettes, and then Hjördis was guiding his head downward to her orchid and he was too busy to think any more.
In the morning (but he had to take Hjördis's word for it that it was morning), Will went out with two of Lord Weary's scouts to look over possible locales for the plan Then he returned to the box city and sorted through the heaps of clothing that the Niflheimers had brought him, some dugout of old stashes and some custom stolen for the occasion. Carefully, he assembled his costume. Biker boots. Mariachi pants. A top hat with a white scarf wrapped around the band, one end hanging free behind like a ghostly foxtail, with a handful of turkey feathers from the Meatpacking District splayed along the side. A marching band jacket with a white sash. All topped off with a necklace of rat skulls.
The Dragons of Babel Page 14
