The Dragons of Babel

by Michael Swanwick

  With the phosphorescent makeup, he painted two red slashes slanting downward over his eyes, a straight blue line along his nose, and a yellow triangle about his mouth to make a mocking, cartoonish grin:

  With luck, the effect would be eerie enough to give his enemies pause. More importantly, the elves would see the glowing lines on his face, the top-hat-feathers-and-scarf, and the necklace of skulls, but they wouldn't see him. Once he wiped off the makeup and ditched the uniform, he would be anonymous again. He could walk the streets above without fearing arrest.

  "I'll just need just one last thing," he said when he was done. "A motorcycle."

  Two days later, the Army of Night's outposts came running up silently with news that the Breakneck Boys had entered the tunnels. Will had already scouted out the perfect place for a confrontation—a vast and vaulted space as large as a cathedral that had been constructed centuries ago as a cistern lor times of siege. A far more recent water main cut through it at the upper end, but otherwise it was much as it had been the day it was drained. Now he sent out decoys to lure the Boys there, while he made up his face with phosphorescent war-paint and wheeled his stolen motorcycle into place. "You stone-souped them," a voice whispered in his ear. "Yeah, I guess I did," Will said. "But if I'd asked for the motorcycle first, I wouldn't have gotten it. And alter this stunt, nobody's going to mind."

  "Or else you'll be dead.''

  "Tell me something, Whisperer. I never hear anybody else talking directly to you. Why is that?"

  "Because you're the only one who can hear me." The whisper was soft and intimate, with a mocking edge to it. "Only you, sweet Will."

  "Who are you?"

  Silence. The Whisperer was gone.

  Will waited in a niche behind a pillar at the lower end of the cistern. For the longest time there was no noise other than the grumble of distant trains. Then, faintly, he heard drunken elven laughter. He watched as the decoys ran past his station like two furtive shadows. The voices grew more boisterous and then suddenly boomed as the Breakneck Boys emerged from a doorway near the ceiling at the upper end of the cistern.

  They began to descend a long brick stairway along the far wall.

  They glimmered in the dark, did the elves, like starlight. They carried Maglites and aluminum bats. Some wore camouflage suits. Some had night goggles. They were nine in number, and uncannily young, little more than children. Their leader drained the last of his beer and threw away the can. It rattled into silence.

  Will waited until they were off the stairs and had clambered over the water main and started across the cistern floor. Then he kick started the motorcycle. It was a stripped-down Kawasaki three cylinder two-stroke, easy to handle and loud as hell. Pulling out of the niche, Will cranked the machine hard left and opened it up. The vault ceiling bouncing the engine's roar back at him, he charged at the elf-pack like a banshee with her ass on fire.

  It felt great to be on a cycle again! Puck Berrysnatcher, back when he and Will were best friends, had owned a dirt bike and they'd practiced on it, turn on turn, until they'd both mastered such stunts as young males thought important.

  Will popped a wheelie and came to a stop not ten yards from the astonished elves.

  Throttling down the engine so he could be heard, he cried, "I challenge thee by the holmgangulog, if thou hast honor! I am the captain and the rightwise defender of my folk. Present your champion that we may contest at deeds of arms."

  A disbelieving look, followed by low, mean laughter passed among the elves. "So you know the politesse of challenge, Master Scarecrow," said the foremost of them. Whatever else he might be, he was no coward. "Very well. I hight Florian of House L'Inconnu." He bowed mockingly. "What is your name and what terms do you pro pose?"

  "Captain Jack Riddle," Will said, choosing the nom de guerre almost at random. "High explosives at close quarters."

  The elf-brat nibbed his chin, as if amused. "Your proposal is scarce workable." Casually, his hand crept downward between the lapels of his jacket. Doubtless he had a gun there in a shoulder harness. "For. you see, I have no explosives with me."

  "Tough titty, Will said.

  With a muttered word, he detonated the bomb that earlier he had very carefully placed for maximum effect.

  The water main, which was directly behind the Breaknecks, blew open.

  A great wave of water struck the Breakneck Boys from behind, knocking them over and tumbling them helplessly before it. But not — and this was the crucial part of Will's plan —killing any of them.

  Will, meanwhile, had spun around his bike and opened the throttle wide. He raced downslope ahead of the cascading water, cut a right so sharp he almost lost control, and was out of the cistern and roaring up a narrow electric conduit access tunnel without a single drop getting on him.

  He would have liked to have seen the Breaknecks gather themselves together after the water washed them down to the bottom of the cistern. It would have been worth much to have heard their curses and witnessed their dismay as they pulled themselves up and began the long and soggy journey back aboveground. But you couldn't have everything.

  Anyway, he was sure to hear of it. There was a slit-gallery near the top of the cistern that had been used for inspections, which was thronged with silent watchers, soldiers from the Army of Night and potential recruits from Nilfheim and possibly even Hjördis herself. They'd have seen and heard everything. They'd have witnessed how he had routed their enemies without the least injury to himself. They'd want a share in his glory. They'd boast of his prowess. No longer was he merely their champion. He was their hero now.

  That evening the johatsu migrated several miles deeper into the tunnels. They moved silently and surely, and when they found their destination — an abandoned pneumatic train tube from an experimental line that went bankrupt in the Century of the Turbine — Lord Weary sent his specialists to tap into the electric and water lines. Even at this distance from the shattered main, the water pressure was lessened. But unlike the citizens above, they'd known to fill plastic bottles beforehand.

  "Dockweed," Will said. A hudkin snapped to attention. "Take a couple of likely lads and scout out a good location for latrines. Not too close to the encampment. That's unsanitary." He caught Lord Weary looking at him, and hastily added. "If that's all right with you, sir."

  Lord Weary waved a hand, endorsing everything. Then, placing an arm over Will's shoulder, so that it would be ostentatiously obvious to all that they two were conferring with perfect confidence, he murmured. "Dearer art thou to me, alter your little escapade today, than meat and drink to a starving man. Stand by me and I shall raise you higher than you can imagine, so that my empire rests upon your shoulders. But if you ever again give orders in my presence without first deferring to me, I'll have you gutted and chained to the bedrock for the rats to eat alive. Do you understand?"

  Will swallowed. "Sir."

  "I would regret it, of course. But discipline knows no favorites." He released Will. "Tell me something. What exactly have we accomplished today? Other than raising morale, I mean. In a day or three, the main will be rebuilt. The Breakneck Boys are still alive. By now they're probably fast asleep in their feather beds."

  "We've cut off an entire neighborhood from water for however long the repairs last. They'll take that seriously up above. If their in vestigations turn up the Breaknecks' involvement, it will be a political embarrassment for their parents. If not, the Breakneck Boys will still know what a close call it was. The smarter among them will realize they were given a warning. That I could as easily have killed them. We won't be seeing them back again."

  "There'll be others."

  Will grinned wolfishly. Bring 'em on."

  But his bravado was all bluster and bluff. Nothing here below was as simple as it seemed. While he was waiting in ambush for the Breakneck Boys, the Whisperer had called him Will—yet he had given that name to nobody in the territories below.

  So how had the Whisperer known?

 
9

  Great Mother of Horses

  Will adapted to the darkness. He learned its ways, learned to love the stillness and the silence of it. He grew familiar with the rumor of distant trains, the small dripping and creaking and scurrying sounds that were normal to the tunnels, and the fainter and more furtive noises that were not. He learned how to crouch motionless for hours, his eyes so thoroughly adapted to the dark that when a transit worker or a patrolman went by with a flashlight, he had to narrow them to slits against its glare. He learned how to move silent as a wraith, so that he could follow these intruders from the upper world for hours without them suspecting a thing.

  Nighttimes, he went upstairs to dumpster-dive and sometimes to steal. Just to keep in touch with his troops. It was important for them to know that he could do the work of any one of them and did not consider it beneath him. On deep patrols, when it was not possible to go topside for food, he learned to catch and roast and eat rats. Whenever they could spare the time, he sent his forces out to explore and to map, until he knew more of Babel's underworld than any individual ever had before. He would interview any wanderer who passed through Lord Weary's territory, and those who were capable but solitary by nature he organized into a loose confederation of messengers, so that for the first time all the johatsu communities were kept informed of each other's goings-on.

  Volunteers arrived daily, anxious to serve under the hero of whom they'd heard so much. Most of them were turned away. Nevertheless, the Army of Night grew. Little by little, their territory was expanding. Bindlestiffs, sadistic cops, degenerate trolls, and other predators learned to avoid tunnels marked with the three-lines-and-a-triangle that had become the token of Captain Jack's protection.

  Will knew his work was bearing fruit the day he ghosted up behind a transit cop, squeezed his upper arm in one hand, whispered softly in his ear, "My name is Jack Riddle and if you want to live, you'll place your revolver on the ground beside you and leave," and was instantly obeyed.

  That same day, one of his runners brought him a wanted poster from up above. It had a crude drawing of a fey with his grinning face paint, hat, and skull necklace, and it read:

  WANTED FOR TERRORIST ACTIVITY.

  THE DEMON, SPRITE, OR GAUNT KNOWN AS

  JACK RIDDLE

  Aliases: Captain Jack Riddle, Captain Jack,

  Jack the Lucky, Laughing Jack

  DESCRIPTION

  Date of Birth: Unknown Hair: Blond

  Place of Birth: Unknown Eyes: Dark

  Height: Unknown Sex: Male

  Weight: Unknown Complexion: Pale

  Build: Slim Citizenship: Unknown

  Scars and Marks: None known

  Remarks: A flamboyant dresser. Riddle's dramatic persona has led some to speculate that he may have formerly been involved in theater. By his hearing, he may once have been associated with the aristocracy, possibly as a servant.

  JACK RIDDLE IS BE INC SOUGHT FOR HIS ROLE IN NUMEROUS TERRORIST ACTS PERFORMED IN CONNECTION WITHHIS LEADERSHIP OF A SUBTERRANEAN PARAMILITARY FORCE THAT HAS COMMITTED ASSAULTS UPON AGENTS OF HIS ABSENT MAJESTY'S GOVERNANCE AS WELL AS UPON INNOCENT MEMBERS OF THE CITIZENRY OF BABEL.

  CAUTION

  HE HAS A SAVAGE TEMPER AND SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

  REWARD

  His Absent Majesty's governance is offering the informant's weight in gold to any citizen in Categories C through G or a statistically derived equivalent for all others, for information leading directly to the arrest of Jack Riddle.

  "How about that?" Will said, grinning. "And to think that a couple of months ago I was a nobody!"

  "Don't you get cocky, Jack." Hjördis said. "That's a lot of money. There are plenty who would turn you in for a fraction of that." She fastened her brassiere over her stomach, then slid it right way around, put her arms through the straps, and shrugged into it. "I'd be tempted myself, if I didn't have obligations to my people." She wriggled into her dress.

  "You shouldn't joke like that." Will felt inexplicably hurt.

  "You think I'm joking? That's enough wealth to buy anybody's way up to the surface."

  "We don't need gold to do that. After we've consolidated the underworld, we can rise up from beneath and seize the neighborhoods above us. Then we'll take the Dread Tower, one level at a time, all the way to the Palace of Leaves."

  "I realize that's Lord Weary's plan," Hjördis said doubtfully. "But how likely is it, really? I fail to understand why you would buy so completely into a fallen elf-lord's delusions of glory."

  For a second Will did not speak. Then he said, "I have been driven across Fäerie Minor by chance and events, helpless as a leaf in a storm. Well, no more! I needed a cause to devote myself to, one that would give me the opportunity to strike back against my oppressors, and Lord Weary provided me with one. It's as simple as that."

  He returned to the poster. "Innocent citizenry. That would be the Breakneck Boys, you think? Or the drug dealers?" Enough of their soldiers were addicted to various substances that it would be foolish to think that drug trafficking could be stopped. But the dealers were territorial and well armed, and prone to sudden violence. Johatsu had been gunned down simply because they'd wandered into the wrong tunnel at the wrong time. So the dealers had been driven upstairs. Those who cared to sell nickel bags of pixie dust or Mason jars of moonshine close by the commonly known exits were tolerated. But when their goods were tainted — when they killed — they were subject to being snatched and hauled below for a trial by the dead user's peers.

  There was a polite cough outside the box's entrance. It was Jenny Jumpup. "Sir, Lord Weary's respects, and he say pull your dick out the lady-thane and assemble your raiders. He want his horses."

  The clanging began in the distance, regular and unrelenting, the sound of somebody hammering on water pipes with a rock. Beyond and fainter, a second set of clangs joined it. Then a third. "We been spotted," Jenny Jumpup said.

  "Good." Will did not slow his pace. "I want them to spot us. I want them to know were coming. I want them to know that there's nothing they can do to stop us."

  "What's to keep them from slipping through the walls?" Tatterwag asked. "They're haints, after all."

  "Their horses couldn't follow. We'd get them all. And these guys practically worship their horses." Lord Weary had sent ambassadors to the horse folk, offering them full membership in his growing empire, immunity from taxation and conscription, a guaranteed supply of food, and other enticements in exchange for a small yearly tribute of horses. His advances had been rejected with haughty scorn, though the horse-folk were the poorest of all who dwelt in darkness, and possessed neither tools nor clothing.

  "Then why don't they just saddle up the horses and run? That's what I'd do in their circumstances."

  "They old haints," Jenny Jumpup said. She was a haint herself, and proud of it. Her hair was done up in a cascade of slim braids, tied in the back in a sort of ponytail, and she wore a brace of pistols butt-forward in her belt. "They ancestors left the Shadowlands before fire was brought down from the sky. They can't farm, they got no weapons, and they can't ride horses."

  "So why the fuck do they care if we take them?"

  "They're all the horse-folk have." Will called a brief halt to check the map. A muttered word and its lines glimmered like foxfire. The other raiders gathered about him. They were a good group — in addition to his two lieutenants, he had Radegonde de la Cockaigne, Kokudza, the Starveling, and Little Tommy Redcap. "We're on the bottommost level of tracks — but there are tunnels that delve even deeper, some of them natural and others not." He led them some fifty yards down the track. A black opening gaped to one side. Cool air sighed out of it. "This was an aqueduct once, nobody knows how long ago. Looks like dwarven work."

  "It older than dwarves," Jenny Jumpup said scornfully. "My people remember. We built it. And we ain't never been paid for it neither."

  "Jenny," Tatterwag said. "Give it a rest."

  A train went by a
nd they turned their backs to it. When their eyes had adjusted to the dark once more, they walked some distance into the aqueduct. Will got out the map again. "If everything's gone according to plan, our other troops will be in position here and here," he said. "That leaves only one way out — right through us. They'll stampede the herd in hopes of trampling us under."

  Little Tommy Redcap chuckled nastily. "I'll rip the horses' legs off if they try."

  "You were all chosen because you know how to ride," Will said. "Now space yourselves out and let's see if you can climb."

  They swiftly scaled the walls. This was a new skill for Will, but one he had picked up easily. There was a narrow ledge just below the vaulted ceiling. The raiders took up positions there, some on one side and some on the other. All save Jenny Jumpup and the Starveling, who swarmed up the ceiling and drove in pitons so they could hang face downward, like bats, waiting.

  After a long silence, Kokudza growled, "I don't get it. Horses, Caverns. Call me crazy, but I see a basic conflict here."

  "The horses used to be wild," Will said. "Back before Nimrod laid the foundations or Babel, they fed upon the grassy slopes of Ararat. Lord Weary told me he read a paper on this once. Scientists speculate that some of their number would venture into natural caverns to feed upon mosses and lichens. This would have been tens of thousands of years ago, minimum. Something happened, an earthquake maybe, that trapped a small breeding population in the caverns. They adapted to the darkness. You couldn't say they thrived, exactly—there can't be more than a hundred of 'em all told. But they're still here. Albino-pale, short-haired, and high-strung. They won't be easy to catch."