The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘Which faith is that?’ asked Cabal. He looked around, affecting to have only just noticed the seven-hundred-year-old building in which he was sitting. ‘Oh, that one. Pardon my interruption. Please, carry on.’

  Hornung gave Cabal a hard look.

  ‘Do not mind him,’ said Palomer. ‘He cannot help it.’

  Hornung leaned close and whispered, ‘Apostate?’

  Palomer smiled and shook his head. ‘Necromancer.’

  Hornung was thunderstruck. ‘Here? In the house of God? Impossible!’

  ‘If you’re going to have a whispered conversation,’ said Cabal, ‘you might do better than to hold it in a building with such excellent acoustics. Yes, Father, I am a necromancer. Yes, I am on consecrated ground but haven’t burst into flames as you so clearly believe I should. Consider this: if you are wrong on a detail such as that, upon what else may you be mistaken?’

  Cabal was, of course, being entirely disingenuous. Necromancers as a rule do catch fire on consecrated ground as an effect of being divested of their souls. Not all necromancers follow such a path, but most take the plunge in the early stages of their career. Johannes Cabal had done exactly that himself and, as a result, been forced to dance hotfoot across several stretches of church land in his time. Unlike most necromancers who make such a sacrifice, however, Cabal’s interests in necromancy were analytical and not simply confined to littering the world with zombies and animated skeletons, the usual highly limited domain of the popular necromancer, which is to say, the highly unpopular necromancer. To him, the lack of a soul had become a burden. Alas, not in any metaphysical or poetical sense, but simply because it was a nuisance and caused perturbations in his experiments. Thus, he had gone to some little trouble to recover it.

  This he did not trouble to tell Father Hornung, both because it would have indicated that Hornung’s belief in the ungodliness of necromancers was not entirely unfounded and also because the mechanism by which Cabal had recovered his own soul involved dealings with Satan himself and the offhand dooming of a lot of incidental hoi polloi to eternal damnation in the fiery pits of Hell. Cabal thought that this latter point would just have led to a lot of tedious moralising by the priest, so he kept it to himself.

  Despite such a rhetorical nicety on the part of Cabal, however, Father Hornung did not instantly warm to him. Instead he pointedly ignored Cabal and spoke to Palomer as if there were no one else present.

  ‘I have asked for instructions from the cardinal, but he no longer replies,’ said Hornung. ‘At first I thought the post was disrupted, just like everything else is in Mirkarvia these days, but now I hear Cardinal Etter was arrested. Nobody knows where he is. The Vatican has demanded the government explain its actions.’

  Cabal’s derisive snort echoed around the pillars and plaster saints. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just found what you said enormously amusing. Don’t mind me.’

  Father Hornung paled beneath his stubble. ‘You find the Vatican amusing, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Cabal. ‘Very much so. Verging on hilarious at times.’

  ‘This is the kind of man that your order is allying itself with?’ Hornung demanded of Palomer. ‘You’re dining with a devil.’

  ‘I have a very long spoon, Father,’ said Palomer, measuring out a length of air between his index fingers to indicate a spoon of remarkable length.

  Suddenly there was a crash from the roof almost overhead. Something dark flashed down by the window. Father Hornung leapt to his feet.

  ‘The devils! They’ve come!’

  ‘No, no, Father,’ said Cabal in a tone that, if intended as soothing, only succeeded in seeming a little arch. ‘That’s our associate.’

  The face of Korka Olvirdóttir smiled engagingly through a hole that had freshly appeared in the plaster of the roof. ‘Sorry!’ she called down. ‘It got away from me.’

  ‘How long until you’re done?’ asked Cabal.

  ‘Soon. Already got most of what we’ll need. Another ten minutes?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Cabal.

  ‘Who is that woman?’ demanded the priest, pointing at the hole with a trembling finger. ‘What is she doing up there?’

  ‘Lead,’ explained Cabal. ‘We need some lead. Not very much. No more than a hundredweight, I should think. You’ve got tons of it up there, you’ll never even notice that little bit’s gone.’ He looked at the hole and considered. ‘Except when it rains.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Father Hornung looked like he might be moved to violence. ‘How dare you defile this church without…’

  Cabal rose to look the priest in the eye. ‘As you seem to be under the impression that the Red Queen is just going to go away if you complain enough, let me disabuse you of that notion. She is not. To the contrary, she will consolidate her grip on this country, and she will expunge all religions except the dark ones in which she is currently comparison shopping.’

  ‘You can’t possibly know…’

  ‘She is Lady Orfilia Ninuka, daughter of the late Count Marechal.’

  The animosity left the priest’s face in a moment, replaced by astonishment. ‘The count’s daughter? Didn’t she die?’

  ‘Alas, no.’

  ‘But … No, you’re mistaken. She cannot be the Red Queen. The Lady Ninuka was … is just a bit flighty.’

  ‘No,’ said Cabal. ‘She’s a sociopath with nothing to lose, who is also a bit flighty. We need the lead to stop her. Should we fail, you won’t have a church within the space of a year. The forces she is bringing to Mirkarvia will not tolerate churches.’ He perceived the unspoken question in Hornung’s mind. ‘Yes, those are exactly the forces I am talking about. Now, given the alternative, isn’t that worth a few damp pews?’

  Hornung seemed to make up his mind. ‘I can get a tarpaulin to cover the hole.’

  Cabal smiled, or at least he flexed his face in such a way that the corners of his mouth rose. ‘Splendid. Pragmatism suits you, Father Hornung. Now, while you’re in a cooperative mood, I have a tiny little request to make of you.’

  ‘What?’ said Hornung. He darted a glance at Palomer, who only shrugged. ‘You want more? Such as?’

  ‘Well, in the first instance, do you know where we might lay hands on several large barrels?’

  ‘Barrels?’

  Cabal nodded. ‘Oh, and a carpenter. And a hearse.’

  * * *

  The attack came from the west. As the sentries on the ramparts of Harslaus Castle squinted into the setting sun, a force numbering a few hundred appeared around the bend in the river and advanced in skirmishing order on the fortress.

  It didn’t look much like a military operation, and that was entirely deliberate. Careful planning was to be found in the apparent disarray, meant to suggest yet another minor demonstration of the locals’ anger at their new overlords. The common folk of Mirkarvia were used to tyrants, and took it as part of the social contract that they were permitted to mass and shout and string up a couple of magistrates, just so long as they then ran away into the night and settled themselves, ready to be downtrodden some more as and when the authorities found a gap in their appointments.

  Their new masters, however, were of a different ilk altogether, and the Mirkarvian people—traditionalists all—weren’t about to settle for all this newfangled ‘republic of occult evils’ nonsense without making their feelings felt. This was done every week or two on average, and had settled down into a routine that began with splendid indifference from the muck-mucks in the castle, and finished with a spirited game of ‘Eat the Dissident’ involving werewolves. The Mirkarvian people, long inured to vigorous relations with their ruling class, sensed a tradition forming, and were beginning to think that perhaps the new regime were going to be okay after all.

  This developing harmony between the suppressed and the suppressors was monitored and quantified by the militaristic minds of the Templars—a contingent of whom had belatedly arrived, the ‘Great Evil’ rising from the sands of North Africa having been
discovered to be terribly evil, but not so very great—and so they were able to predict that the attack date that had been forced upon them was not such a bad one, as it fell quite neatly upon the sweet spot when the castle authorities would be expecting some trouble from the yokels, yet just before the yokels actually felt quite aggrieved enough to provide it.

  Into this window of unfulfilled expectation entered the combined forces of several of the world’s more benign secret societies, where ‘benign’ is left open to a degree of interpretation. By and large they were unused to doing their skulking en masse but to their credit had adapted well. The Templars formed their heavy infantry, men (and a few women, for the order no longer cleaved quite so closely to many of the precepts under which the Templars were formed; the first to go had been the business about never shaving and generally keeping a poor toilette, this when it became understood that hairiness is not necessarily next to godliness, and God would prefer to stand upwind if that was all the same to them?) who dealt with the enemies in their manifold holy wars with vigour and certainty, or brutality and cruelty, depending on one’s viewpoint.

  They were flanked by the lighter skirmishers of the Dee Society on their right and the Yellow Inquisitors to the left. The Dee Society had already lost many of its best in the failed assault of a month before and, although reinforced by people who absolutely were not—perish the thought—mercenaries hired by the British government and detached British intelligence agents of splendid expendability, they were still under strength. Of Yellow Inquisitors, however, there was no shortage. After centuries of quietly doing the work of the Vatican, often to the great surprise of the Vatican, who had long since forgotten there had ever been a Yellow Inquisition, this was their grand chance to face evil personified, and they were much looking forward to sticking a stiletto in its ribs. In an orgy of dead-letter drops and secret handshakes, the Inquisitors had been roused from their secretive lives and they had answered with the cheerful satisfaction of professional torturers and assassins on a busman’s holiday.

  Backing the Dee Society and the Yellow Inquisition were the witches of the rival cults of Hecate and Medea respectively, carefully kept separate from one another to no complaints from anyone. The Inquisitors had actually asked to have the humourless Sisters at their back, possibly because their businesslike demeanour impressed the Inquisitors, but more likely because the Inquisitors found the tight lips and narrowed eyes of the witches inexpressibly amusing. Unlike the better-known inquisitions, the Yellow had found a sense of humour to make up for losing papal dispensations, and strolled through life as rapscallions and troubadours, songs in their hearts and thumbscrews in their pockets. There was pleasure to be found in the irony of witches, traditionally wanton and lascivious, and inquisitors, equally traditionally sombre and duty bound, swapping their stereotypes. Nor did the Yellow Inquisition mind having witches at their back; they had long since traded in cant and dogma for compromise and pragmatism. They judged by deeds, and the Sisters of Medea had done much good. Some evil here and there, it was true, but nothing on the scale of that which the Ministerium Tenebrae threatened.

  Equally, the Dee Society were content to have their backs covered by the ever-practical Daughters of Hecate. To them, the great mystery of everything was wound up in their Witch Goddess, a grand dame of the ancient pantheons to whom even Nyarlathotep had been known to bow courteously and hold the door open, and a large part of that mystery could be expressed as ‘It’s all bigger than you can deal with, so why worry?’ Thus, they carried on through life as agents of Hecate, adhering to principles that wavered between ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ and ‘Do as thou wilt, and that shall be a fair bit of the law’. Managing to reconcile Christianity, Thelema, some woolly Earth Mother beliefs, and the worship of an ancient and unknowable goddess of powers who was also pretty good fun at parties, the Daughters of Hecate could afford to be patient and happy, because no matter who ended up winning the war of creation, it would somehow still be them. In the meantime, they asked themselves daily ‘What would Hecate do?’ and then went for the most enjoyable option. In their philosophy, ‘enjoyable’ did not necessarily mean ‘safe’, which was how a force of them came to be there unto the breach. They might die, but at least they’d do it pissing off the forces of seriousness.

  Whenever a Templar happened to look at them, the Daughters of Hecate would grin back. The Templars always broke eye contact first.

  That the witches were not in the vanguard was in no way any reflection of their combat worthiness or upon their sex. Rather it was in their forte, which was the remote bringing down of trouble upon the heads of their foes. They were roughly equivalent to the secret little army’s artillery, and therefore kept back where they could do the most good without being distracted in close combat.

  The castle sentries must have spotted them a good half mile away, but there was no hue and cry, no alarums and excursions. The sentries watched, drinking tea and eating sandwiches. There was no great hurry, after all; such events had the air of an over-rehearsed local amateur dramatics performance that had long since lost any likelihood of surprising the audience. Finally somebody realised the coconut fancies had been left in the guardroom so they sent somebody down to fetch them who, in passing, remembered to sound the alert.

  There was no longer the slightest intention of sending human soldiers out to deal with this latest bijou uprising; the guards instead busied themselves taking bets as to how long the attackers would last before routing. The few who did not gamble or were waiting on payday trailed off to ensure the castle’s defences were tight, i.e., the windows were shut. Up on the battlements, they heard an ironic cheer as the newly repaired drawbridge rattled down. This could only mean that the sally was commencing.

  In days of yore, this would have consisted of a bunch of knights, squires, and assorted varlets boiling out of a sally port like weevils from a biscuit to disrupt the besieging army, returning smartly before any real resistance could be organised. That was days of yore. Now, the main gate opened, the portcullis rose, and an uninterested horde of zombies staggered out into the early evening. They staggered, and they groaned, and they stuck their arms out in attitudes of deathly menace, but even they in the last dim glimmerings of their intellect were getting bored with this. Usually the irked Mirkarvians thought better of it and ran away at the first sight of the undead. Sometimes, they would actually engage, lose a few people, and then think better of it. More rarely still, they would engage, make a decent fist of it, but then the lycanthropes would turn up like the vainglorious windbags they were and steal the glory. One wouldn’t have thought there were many fates worse than death, but for the zombies being dead and upstaged by a bunch of furry bastards fitted the bill precisely.

  The zombies moved out onto the road on the far side of the river and milled around for a minute, groaning threateningly at one another while they got themselves sorted out. Finally sighting their actual designated victims for the evening’s wander, they set off westwards, following the riverbank as they closed on the attackers.

  If they had been possessed of a little more tactical sense, they might have wondered why the opposing force was neither advancing nor retreating, but was instead consolidating their line. If the sentries on the battlements had actually been paying much attention, they might have wondered that, too, but they were currently preoccupied with getting their fair share of the coconut fancies. The undead came on, arms waving, and only appreciated that something was different on this occasion when there was a solitary crack of a pistol going off in the rear of the besiegers and, a moment later, a green parachute flare floated slowly down, twinkling sickly in the dying light of the sun.

  The zombies paused, first with confusion, and then to point and coo at this wonder, a small pretty thing in an afterlife less noteworthy than they had been led to believe.

  * * *

  Two miles away on a branch line that was now lucky to see a train a week, Denzil and Dennis s
tood on the footplate of the locomotive, pointing at the new green star in the sky, and making ghoulish hoots of happiness. Their afterlife was certainly looking more engaging these days. They’d experienced air travel, been given a new train to drive, and now there was a green star to hoot at. This was, indeed, paradise.

  Three entomopters lined up on the dirt track running parallel to the track. Miss Virginia Montgomery checked her watch, made an unhappy face, and walked down the row of machines, their engines silent, their pilots standing by them.

  ‘This is a hell of a thing we have got ourselves into,’ she had said to them. ‘A hell of a thing I have got us into. We’ve seen what the black hats have got lined up, we know they’re playing hardball, we know there’s going to be some empty seats tomorrow. You signed up with me as aerial performers. Not as thieves, not as warriors. Sure as hell not as martyrs. I…’

  ‘If you’re going to say we don’t have to go, maybe you should’ve said it before we stole all these guns, bombs, and ammunition,’ said Dea Boom. She nodded sideways to indicate the opened gunports with the tips of muzzle shrouds projecting from them, the gleaming rocket racks, the dull black ten-pounder bombs held below the stubby ordnance wings

  ‘Maybe I should’ve,’ admitted Miss Montgomery. ‘But I’m telling you now. Anyone wants to stay, I don’t blame you, and I won’t hold it against you.’

  There was silence.

  Then Mink picked up her helmet from within the cockpit and started sorting out the chin strap. ‘We done now? I want to blow up zombies.’

  * * *

  Horst awoke in a different place. Reaching around himself, he realised he was encased in some sort of metal box, about the size of a coffin. The air was close, and he was glad that he didn’t have to breathe much these days except for a smidgeon for his metabolism, for speech, and for nostalgia, as he held a strong conviction that the box was hermetically sealed. He did not panic, however. He sensed the methodical hand of Johannes at work here and would trust to his brother’s planning.