The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  Nor was this trust ill founded. Some fifteen minutes later as he was working on anagrams of ‘bored vampire’, the upper edge of the box to the right of his head was penetrated by a curved steel blade that, after a moment or two’s observation as it rocked back and forth cutting its way through the soft metal of his enclosure, he realised was essentially a large sort of can opener. The metal parted easily, confirming his suspicion that it was lead, and he helped push it open as the blade continued down the length of the box.

  Horst sat up to discover he had been travelling in a lead-lined coffin. ‘Very swish,’ he commented to his brother. Cabal threw down the curved blade, and took up his jacket from where he’d thrown it over the tailgate of a horse-drawn hearse.

  ‘Your definition of swish has changed over time, I see,’ he said as he shrugged into the jacket.

  Horst climbed from the coffin and joined his brother. They were in a gloomy, low-ceilinged vault of some kind. Open stalls ran down either side of the wide and oppressive space. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The stable undercroft of Harslaus Castle. The guards are, as predicted, terrified of those they are nominally guarding.’ He took down a black top hat, its crown circumscribed by a long black silk ribbon that trailed over the rear of the rim. He dusted some lint from it absent-mindedly. ‘A delivery order signed by Lady Misericorde and countersigned by Vizconde Velasco de Osma was sufficient to cow them.’

  Horst looked at the hearse, the top hat, and then Cabal. ‘A delivery order?’

  ‘For a three-week-old corpse. “Nice and ripe”, as I characterised it to the guards. Required for m’lady’s experiments.’

  Horst looked at the buckled lining. ‘Hence all the lead?’

  ‘Both to discourage careful searches and to protect you from daylight should they decide to open the coffin. An unnecessary precaution as it turns out. A piece of paper with Lady Misericorde’s name upon it was sufficient to put the fear of God upon them.’ He sniffed. ‘I swear, Horst, I’ve never heard of the woman.’

  Horst smiled. No; in truth, he grinned. ‘Oh, Johannes. Infamy envy.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ snapped Cabal. ‘Simply stating a fact.’ He made a show of looking around. ‘Speaking of women, where has Fräulein Bartos got to? She said she was just going to perform a brief reconnoitre, but that was fifteen minutes ago.’

  Horst was delving into the coffin to recover his brother’s weapons. These comprised the compact automatic in its shoulder holster, and the Webley .577 in a gun belt supplied by the Dee Society. ‘It rather puts a hole into any pretence of being stealthy if you’re seen wandering about with a gun at your hip,’ he said as he passed them over.

  Cabal shrugged into the shoulder holster. ‘You’re a known enemy, Fräulein Bartos is much the same, and I am an unfamiliar face. I think we can forget about passing ourselves off. At some point the guards who let us in will start to worry if they’ve done the right thing and inform their superiors. They may already have done so. I think I shall be glad of the extra ammunition that I have brought along.’

  He finished strapping on the big military-issue gun belt and was just pulling on his jacket when he became aware of Alisha Bartos at his side. He almost managed to hide a slight jump of surprise. Unhappily, only ‘almost’, so he had the twin humiliations of jumping and an ineffectual dissembling to live down. He dealt with both in his habitual way: applied testiness.

  ‘If you could spend a little more of your time lurking up on the enemy rather than your allies, madam, perhaps we might stand some small chance of succeeding in this enterprise.’ She just looked at him with her head tilted slightly to one side as if he were a competent but bland painting in a gallery. ‘Those guards may wonder what happened to us,’ he persisted. ‘What have you done to find us a route out of here and into the castle proper?’

  ‘They won’t be calling anyone. They’re dead drunk in the guardroom.’

  Cabal looked at her suspiciously. ‘Are we talking about the same guards? Katamenian fellows. Disreputable in many ways, but perfectly sober when we came through.’

  ‘Not with a syringeful of scopolamine in a solution of ethyl alcohol delivered via the carotid artery, they’re not.’

  There was a momentary silence.

  ‘There were three of them.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Alisha. ‘I’ve only got one syringe left now.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cabal. He regarded her as one might a competent but unsettling picture in that same art gallery. ‘I see. Very well. And the reconnaissance…?’

  ‘Herman and I mapped as much of the building as we could access. The Ministerium and its lords and lady had some areas we could not reach without causing suspicion. Otherwise, most of the castle is known to us.’

  ‘Very efficient,’ said Horst. Then to Johannes, ‘Isn’t she efficient?’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Cabal.

  * * *

  Two miles away, a flight of three entomopters took to the sky and headed towards Harslaus Castle, two CI-650 Giaguaros in echelon behind a J-55 Copperhead. Behind them they left a train, two mummified corpses dancing and waving at the rapidly diminishing aircraft, a tired and grim mechanic, and a carriage upon which a sign had once read:

  MISS VIRGINIA MONTGOMERY’S

  FLYING CIRCUS

  Now the last two words had been painted over in white and in the new blankness a single word had taken their place. In a hasty but pleasing hand it read in proud black characters:

  WARBIRDS

  Chapter 17

  IN WHICH FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED

  They made their way out of the undercroft. Alisha moved from corner to corner using cover, gun drawn and ready. Horst stayed to the rear, his superhumanly acute senses honed and alert. Johannes Cabal walked in the middle with a poorly concealed air of impatience about him, like a father given charge of a pair of overactive children who had cleared out a sweet jar an hour before.

  They encountered no one en route. ‘They’ll be on the battlements, enjoying the show by now,’ said Alisha in a whisper as she crept along, pistol held in a two-handed grip.

  ‘All of them?’ said Cabal in a normal tone. Alisha narrowed her eyes at him. He was unabashed. ‘That seems unlikely.’

  Horst appeared at his side in a localised weather condition of stiff breezes, forcing Cabal to straighten his hair. ‘Likely or not, there’s nobody around. You suspect a trap?’

  ‘I always suspect a trap. That, however, is not my point. They will not all be on the battlements. Life continues for the servants, if no one else. We should be cautious.’ Alisha went back to leading the way quite pointedly, unamused by the suggestion that she was anything less than diligent. Cabal was rendered entirely unrepentant by her sharp looks as was his way, long exposure to sharp looks in general having lent him immunity.

  ‘I,’ he offered, ‘am of the opinion that we should split our force. I can make a couple of decent guesses where you are likely to find the officers of the Ministerium, and I can make a damn good guess where Maleficarus is to be found.’

  ‘No,’ said Alisha. ‘We stick together.’

  ‘That does seem more sensible,’ said Horst. ‘Isn’t being divided a good way to be conquered?’

  ‘In the usual run of things, I would agree,’ said Cabal, ‘but we have time against us. We can be sure of the defenders’ responses to the attack, and we know how they will climax. If it reaches that stage, our allies without shall shortly be fodder.’

  ‘You mean Maleficarus,’ said Alisha.

  ‘Indeed so. If we stop him, the Ministerium will take the opportunity to rally their forces in a tight defensive shield about themselves, or run. Either way, they will survive the night, and this whole cycle will start again in a few months when they have replaced their losses.

  ‘Alternatively, we exterminate the Ministerium…’

  ‘That sounds a bit ruthless,’ said Horst.

  ‘You could stay outside while Fräulein Bartos and I do what is necessary. By the time
we’re done, the attacking force will probably already be dead at the tentacles, mandibles, or whatever other excesses Maleficarus’s latest recruits happen to be sporting. In short, we need to deal with both Maleficarus and the Ministerium at one and the same time. Thus, we must split our force.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Alisha, very unwillingly.

  ‘So who goes after who?’ asked Horst.

  ‘Maleficarus is mine,’ said Cabal. ‘You will probably find the Ministerium in either the hall where you dined the first night, or in the room where you eavesdropped upon them. I shall find Rufus Maleficarus in the most melodramatic location available, because that is the nature of the beast.’

  He walked off, leaving Horst and Alisha behind without a second glance.

  ‘So,’ said Horst, in the awkward silence that followed. ‘That’s my brother. What do you think?’

  * * *

  The castle’s defenders, which is to say the minimum-wage earners of sufficient amorality not to care greatly that they were working for demonstrably evil people, got their first inkling that all was not well when the ‘undisciplined mob of disenfranchised Mirkarvians’ (approaching across the very same area of scrubland from which the Dee Society had launched the previous attack on the building) not only failed to be dismayed at the approaching horde of the undead, but instead took positions and stood ready for the counter-assault. Then, at a range of fifty yards, they opened fire. This was no panicked fire of dismayed common folk, but a disciplined and well-placed volley. The castle guard, viewing the action from on high, clearly saw many of the front rank of the zombie horde drop as if their strings had been cut.

  ‘They’re shooting for the heads,’ said one guard.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said the sergeant. ‘They’re shooting for the heads and hitting them. They’ve got marksmen down there. Where are my bloody field glasses?’ Locating his binoculars (they were around his neck), the sergeant set to scanning the ranks of the attackers. ‘There’s something not right about this lot,’ he said. ‘There’s something a bit … professional about all this. Hullo…’ He peered off towards the edges of the common scrubland. ‘Who are that lot? There’s a bunch of women just standing around…’

  One of the women was watching the engagement through her own pair of binoculars. She looked up towards the castle, and their gaze met through several sets of lenses and prisms. The sergeant had a faint premonition that this meeting did not bode well. The woman lowered her glasses and looked directly at him. She had a very intense look about her, and she seemed to be mouthing something. The sergeant was just noting that she was a very handsome woman, from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean he would guess, when his eyes unexpectedly burst into flames. This distressed him, and he staggered around, blood-red fire erupting from the sockets, while he explained the degree of agony he was enduring and how much he would appreciate assistance of an unspecified form from those present. Then his head caught fire and his conversation became very scream orientated.

  For their part, the other guardsmen looked on, crying much profanity and incoherent expressions of dismay and consternation. They did not help him, for they did not understand what was happening and they were filled with fear.

  The sergeant fell with a final groan, and they stood and watched him burn down to dust.

  Out in the ranks of the attackers, there was some dissent. Henri Palomer had made his way back to remonstrate with Atropos Straka of the Medeans.

  ‘Ma’amselle Straka…’ he said, a scoped rifle slung beneath his arm.

  ‘Ms…’ growled Ms Straka.

  ‘Ms Straka, you have tipped our hand.’ He gestured at the battlements. ‘Now they know we are not just angry locals.’

  ‘I think they were well on their way to seeing that when you started mowing down their zombies.’

  ‘Ah, but that was a suspicion. Now it is a certainty. Why did you feel you had to break from the plan anyway?’

  She nodded castle-wards. ‘He was looking at me.’

  Palomer set his jaw askew while he absorbed this. ‘I am looking at you,’ he said, not unreasonably. There was a long moment during which they looked at one another. On this occasion, Ms Straka did not invoke the powers of Hades to immolate her observer, which was nice.

  Palomer sighed. ‘Alors,’ he said heavily, and returned to his place in the line.

  * * *

  In a window in one of the towers, Lady Misericorde, dressed in a fetching black shift, was joined by Devlin Alsager, dressed in nothing at all, which might also be regarded as fetching depending on one’s disposition. She was not required for the deployment of the undead, having shared that responsibility with the captain of the guard. Thus, she had not been called upon when the zombies had been sent out to remonstrate with the attackers. Instead, she had stayed abed with Alsager in one of the more remote guest rooms, and it was from here that she watched her creations being mown down and one of the sergeants burning up.

  Alsager stood behind her, his arms encircling her waist, and his desire tactilely very apparent against her bottom. He kissed her neck. ‘Come back to bed, my lady. The guards can handle this.’

  ‘Can they?’ She smiled slightly, but her eyes were active and intelligent, taking in the activity below. ‘I have my doubts.’

  Below, another volley crackled out and still more of the zombies stumbled and fell. The muzzle flashes gave her some idea of the attackers’ positions in the deepening gloom. There seemed to be three sections she could make out, the centre very defined, the flanks less so. And she could see movement further back still. A reserve, perhaps?

  She bumped her hips back coquettishly into him. ‘Get changed.’

  Alsager frowned. ‘For dinner? I didn’t hear the gong.’

  She turned and, drawing his face down to hers, kissed him deeply and thoroughly. When she broke the kiss, he blinked as if waking unexpectedly from sleep. ‘Those shots were your gong,’ she whispered, ‘and your dinner waits outside the castle walls.’

  He blinked stupidly once more and looked out of the window. ‘Oh,’ he said, comprehension dawning. ‘That sort of changing. You don’t really think that rabble is such a great threat, do you?’

  ‘They’re not a rabble, and yes, I do.’

  Alsager reluctantly let her go and walked, still naked, to the door. He was cut from a thoroughly heroic pattern physically, a model for saturnine bad boys throughout the world of romantic novels, and he knew it. That his heart throbbed with love primarily for himself and his soul was a shrivelled affair was neither here nor there. He looked wonderful and was prone to wandering the corridors of Harslaus in tight breeches, riding boots, and an open frilly shirt to prove it. Going naked was no great step from that. In any case, he would soon be suited in fur. Indeed, already his lupine nature was expressing in the lineaments of his face, and the hairiness of his buttocks above which the nub of a burgeoning tail was forming.

  He paused at the door. Misericorde was standing by the window, her arms cradled across her stomach, hands to elbows, as she watched the developing battle. ‘You’re not how I imagined a necromancer to be,’ he said. The words sounded rough and improperly fashioned, the fault of his palate extending and his larynx deforming.

  She didn’t trouble to look at him. ‘Good.’

  Alsager sensed an ineffable dismissal and, further, felt it wisest to comply. He left her, a dark form silhouetted against a dark sky.

  * * *

  The undead were not faring well. The usual sense of ennui at being sent out to do battle was becoming tempered with a new and distinct feeling that they had not previously experienced. It was a slow realisation, making its way through slow mental processes mired in decay and maggots, but the penny was very gently dropping that perhaps they were losing this one.

  This hardly concerned them tactically; they had been given orders and it was beyond their ability to do aught but obey. Nor were they subject to such living frailties as failing morale. They were already dead. Further de
adness was not something that bothered them unduly. There was, however, the remnants of the very human instinct towards curiosity, and they wondered in a nebulous sort of way how it was that their numbers were thinning so distinctly. Even deceased, the human mind searches for patterns and repetitions, and is sensitive to breaks in a sequence, to holes in the tapestry.

  Then, usually, such strange and tenuous ghost trains of thought were smartly brought to the buffers by a bullet travelling through the brainpan of the philosophical zombie, and that was that. Of the survivors, there was a distant inkling of something about running away from danger. It was an interesting thought, and they considered it with cobwebbed ratiocinations as they continued on to the guns of the attackers.

  Professor Stone watched them coming on, gauged their rate of attrition, and found it while impressive, insufficient. ‘They’ll be on us in a minute,’ he said to one of the reinforcements London had sent.

  The man paused to reload, thumbing rounds into his Winchester rifle. ‘Should we give ground, Professor?’ he asked. He seemed very cool and resolute under pressure, the professor noted. One of the skilled and experienced reservist combatants the Society’s shadowy sponsors in Whitehall kept on call, no doubt.

  ‘Not just yet. With any luck, we won’t have to.’

  Behind them, over the rattle of disciplined fire into the zombie ranks, a distant drone sounded. As it grew louder, the image it brought to mind was the largest, angriest dragonfly imaginable, something from the ancient days before dinosaurs were dinosaurs and not being aquatic still had novelty value. Soon, minor tonal variants in the droning gave the impression to the acute ear that perhaps there was more than one colossal, angry dragonfly on its way from the late Carboniferous period, and it might be an idea to hide.

  Despite knowing the origin of the sound, and knowing it was allied to their cause, the attackers still hunched slightly as the drone became a roar. The zombies, showing the polite interest of a politician at a primary school, raised their heads to look into the glowing horizon.