Several rolling logging machines lay in pieces by the dry river’s bank, in various stages of construction. Those that were complete had giant, swiveling cannons mounted on their backs. “Tanks,” Boudica had called them, and now Hephaestion understood their glory and horror.
Once he’d observed the motion and noise of the industrialized hellscape, Hephaestion’s gaze settled on the mundane: a row of wooden rafts, built of deep red wood—barges, he realized, flat bottomed for dragging through the woods. Such sea-worthy vessels would cross Styx with ease. He’d the same idea himself when Alexander and he had crossed the Hydaspes. Was this tactic common among armies now?
A few laborers gave the burning trees behind him half a glance or a shrug before returning to work, but no one noticed him. Occasionally, a whip cracked, someone barked an order, and the steel hammers pounded in an unbroken rhythm. An army crafted war machines, so focused on their task that the world could turn to cinder around them without their notice.
A regal depiction of a man on a horse stood tall on a pillar of carved red stone. Smoke and steam obscured the finely honed edges, but something about the stance captured his attention and resonated with a question deep within him. His exhaustion muddled his thoughts, so he wandered nearer for closer inspection. So intent on the statue, he was oblivious to the encroaching threat until they were upon him.
Laborers parted as the samurai moved in, and the motion registered in his peripheral vision. Hephaestion kept his gaze steady on the statue, letting them think him clueless. With their hands resting on their sword hilts, the dark warriors approached from all sides. Ensuring the burning woods stayed at his back, the samurai closed around him, keeping several steps back. Behind them, head high, waited Father Franco stoically, his quarry finally cornered.
Drawing his sword and adjusting his shield on his forearm, he dropped the satchel at his feet, shedding the weight. He counted six samurai, each armored in their traditional trappings of bushido warfare. The cacophony of sound had stilled as the workers backed away, their smelters and anvils unattended.
The samurai drew their katanas in unison. Each stepped their left foot forward, dug the balls of their feet into the mud, and held their swords out. Their dark, expressionless eyes offered only that Hephaestion was at the end of each of their blades.
One shouted and charged, but Hephaestion recognized the ploy. Pivoting so his shield met the loud attacker’s decoy strike, he drew his sword and deflected a stealthier foe who’d approached from behind.
Boudica’s burning edge sparked along the Japanese steel. Then he kicked, the second samurai’s knee collapsing with the blow. Using the momentum, he slammed his shield into the other, knocking him onto his back.
Snarling, Hephaestion sliced his blade across their midsections, ensuring they’d not arise. The remaining four charged a coordinated blaze of flashing steel and shouts. Hephaestion’s cuirass glanced several blows, and his shield deflected two attacks. His burning blade disoriented them, giving him precious seconds during which he regrouped and met two more blades aimed for his head.
They avoided his parry, leaping out of reach. Blood trickled over his armor from shallow nicks and cuts.
Well out of harm’s way, Father Franco folded his arms, his gaze patient.
When they came at him again, Hephaestion blocked and slashed, but this time, their wickedly fast katanas bit hard. A blade slid into his outer thigh, carving deep, and his leg went numb, unable to hold his weight. Then they retreated again before he could riposte.
Blood coursed over his ruined armor, his grip slick and unsteady around Boudica’s angry blade. His chances slipped away as he glared at the lithe warriors, knowing his bluff would earn him little. The astrolabe would be captured, his heart would be ripped out and jarred, and that would be his eternity.
When they retaliated, he charged one at random, knowing he could not survive being surrounded again. His piston defense crushed the man’s helmet and skull.
Shield up, he then attacked the opposite direction, smacking into the nearest samurai and bowling him over. Hephaestion stomped the downed swordsman’s throat as the remaining two both stabbed into his midsection. They swiftly withdrew and danced away as he staggered, shield tipping on his weary arm.
Father Franco didn’t stir.
The two samurai flanked Hephaestion on opposite sides, one katana high, the other low. They feigned a strike, but he didn’t flinch. They faked a second time, but he remained still. Before they tried a third, Hephaestion lashed out with his blade, but he stumbled, blood loss and injuries weakening him.
One katana sliced into his sword arm, the other drove into his chest. His thighs unstrung, Hephaestion fell to his knees. The samurai backed off a moment, one looking to Father Franco. The priest nodded in return.
Gaze drifting, his thoughts jumbled by pain and weariness, Hephaestion looked beyond the Jesuit to the statue high above. The fight had maneuvered him closer, and he recognized the profile at once.
Alexander stared out at a distant battlefield, sword fisted and raised high, atop a horse so akin to Bucephalus, even the braids in his mane and nicked hooves had been captured. Confusion warred with a dawning reality. Surely there were other statues of military legends decorating Plegethon’s dusty shores. Had someone used Alexander’s likeness against his will as a way to rally the damned to rebel?
The horse, though—he was perfect…even the eyes, which betrayed the beast’s passionate nature, held in check only through Alexander’s firm hand. It was Bucephalus, as only Alexander and Hephaestion had known him.
Which left only one answer. One that Hephaestion knew in that moment to be true: only Alexander could have overseen this statue.
Hephaestion’s shield slipped from his grasp, and his sword fell sizzling into the mud.
“With honor,” the samurai standing over him whispered just before decapitating him.
Chapter 37
“Alex? Don’t leave,” Hephaestion begged, his eyes burning from the fever. While on the mend after a week of brutal illness, he was still too weary to leave the bed on his own, and various doctors hovered outside the chamber doors, joined by medicine men from all corners of the empire. Alexander had barely left his side up until now.
“You are doing better, Patty.” Alexander had already dressed for the music festival. The city of Ecbatana was renown for instruments and musical competitions, and Alexander was to be a judge, despite knowing little about music. “There’s a race later today. A causal one, but I have to win it all the same. I must be there.”
“They can postpone the race.” Hephaestion rested his hand on Alexander’s arm. “We can stay here, and you can read the correspondence to me.” Something felt wrong in Hephaestion’s gut, and despite the fever having dropped and the pain easing, his instinct warned him not to be alone.
Simply put, he didn’t want Alexander to leave. Hephaestion wanted to be like boys again, lying in the hay, listening to the horses chomp oats and flick their tails. Having Alexander’s head on his chest would put everything right, fix whatever was wrong in his gut, and then they could go together to the music festival the next day.
But Hephaestion was too proud to say how much he needed Alexander to stay.
And Alexander could never say no to a challenge. “Patty, I have to go. You said so yourself that a king can’t be a king on the campaign trail. Here I get to be with the people and show everyone how much of a king I am, not just a conqueror. This is something you wanted me to do.”
Hephaestion caved, as always. He smiled and nodded, touching his dear face. Alexander was so handsome, his green eyes crinkling as he kissed Hephaestion’s fingertips. Spry and boyish despite the scars and arrow wounds of a dozen cavalry charges, the man might very well be the god others claimed he was.
“I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
With a final, tender peck on Hephaesti
on’s forehead, Alexander walked out. When the physicians flooded back in, Hephaestion demanded solitude and ordered them away with a ferocious shout. If he didn’t have Alexander with him, he preferred to be alone. No other soul would do until Alexander returned.
Ulfric said the first death was always the worst. He was right. It was the scariest and loneliest. Hephaestion couldn’t remember or recall if his end was painful, but he knew it was the loneliest moment of his life.
He waited in Purgatory. Waited for Alexander. Waited for him to return from his festival of victory. Waited for him to return from the finish line.
And when Hephaestion had no more patience, he descended into Hell, determined to get him back, no matter what the cost or how arduous and impossible the journey.
Only to discover that the prison he thought trapped the one person who’d ever made his life worthwhile had been broken open, its population pressed into service like a captured empire, all under the shadow of the legendary Grecian conqueror who could never say no to a challenge.
Chapter 38
Father Franco waited anxiously in the interrogation tent. Chained upright to a center pole hung Hephaestion, his head having grown back, but his eyes still sealed shut. He’d regained consciousness only moments before, but he’d remained still in hopes of gaining some insight as to what would happen next.
Risking the tiniest motion, Hephaestion cracked his lids. Franco’s personal compliment of samurai stood erect along the sidewalls of the tent, their armor still bearing the scorch marks of their battle with Hephaestion. Each stood as unmoving as a statue.
He appeared pleased with his samurai. Father Franco had earned the Provost General’s attention, it seemed, and subsequently he was given command of the small detachment of ronin.
The tent flap swung open. A regal man, clad in holy garb, entered surrounded by four robed and mysteriously hooded figures, their hands folded into their cloaks. Their close guard suggested they were his personal escorts, security, and record keepers.
“Provost General.” Franco spoke with a gleeful reverence as he genuflected.
Charismatic with a trim, grey-speckled beard, the Provost General strode in as though he owned everything in sight, including Hephaestion’s belongings on the far table. With mild interest, he poked and prodded the astrolabe, ruffled through Gil’s documentation, and tinkered with the heart ripper.
“Ah, it is truly him.” The Provost General examined Hephaestion, drawing closer. “You have saved us a tremendous amount of trouble, Lord Hephaestion. We are grateful you came all the way down here to deliver yourself to us. You even delivered a clever little instrument to contain you. I like it far better than our cruder tools,”
“What shall I do with him, your eminence?”
“We have a steel jar for him, more of a sphere, really, and, once it is welded shut, he’ll be safe and sound.
“Hephaetion is the best collateral we could ever hope for,” Father Franco inserted, making it clear that he had done marvelously for his lord. “Alexander will be kept in line knowing that we have a little metal ball that contains the heart he loved most on earth.”
“True,” the Provost General intoned. “But there’s hardly need, is there?” he said, an enigmatic smile playing over his lips. “Anyhow, take the heart, give it to one of my attendants here, and then I’ll seal it away. You did well, Father Franco.”
Bowing low, Franco accepted the compliment.
With that, the Provost General marched out, one of his robed attendants splitting from the pack and remaining in the tent.
Father Franco sighed. “Who would like the honor of ripping out his heart?”
The samurai remained silent.
With few options, Hephaestion seized the miniscule advantage of surprise. “Is this manipulation how you plan on getting into Heaven?” Despite being chained to the post, Hephaestion managed to sound threatening.
The priest gasped, causing each samurai’s hand to tighten around their sword handle.
“All humanity will conform,” Father Franco fired back, a stern finger pointing. “And through conformity we will be saved. I will repent, as will the Provost General and all others, as we are entitled to do. But first, we must bring the rest of condemned humanity to its knees, Hephaestion!” He frothed, still energized from the scare. “No more enabling them to wallow in sin. No more pity or sympathy like the Buddhists provide. The Jesuits are the light. We are the light! First that light may come from a cannon’s barrel, but eventually it will come from Heaven itself.”
“And what of Alexander?” Hephaestion snapped.
“Alexander? Heh—this was largely his idea.”
Hephaetion squinted at Franco as though he’d spoken another language. The words made sense individually, but when connected into a single idea, they became slippery.
“I…what?”
“My vows forbid me to ever touch a weapon or the blood of another.” With that, Father Franco turned to one of his samurai. He jerked his head in the direction of Hephaestion’s things on the table behind him. “Take his heart. Be quick with it.”
“I would reconsider that, good sir,” the robed figure who’d remained breaking his silence. “I have a better proposal to offer you. One far more beneficial.”
Franco spun about to face the robed attendant. “I don’t…your grace, you heard the Provost General. Why would you tell me to not follow through on his direct orders?”
“Oh! Oy, I’m sorry,” Yitz said, pulling back his hood and drawing his revolver from under his robes, aiming it at Father Franco’s heart. “I wasn’t actually talking to you. I was talking to them.”
Yitz kept his weapon on the Jesuit, but looked at the samurai. With measured effort, he met each pair of eyes. “I was hoping to speak to all of you without your white master, but it is what it is, am I right?” Yitz shook the robe off of his shoulders and kicked it off to the side. “You know, gentlemen, my wife is back in New Dis looking after the displaced souls from your ward. Those ‘un-Christian.’ Those unwilling to convert. Unwilling to obey…” Yitz lingered. “Those in need of help.”
The two nearest samurai shifted their weight, slowly tilting toward Yitz. He had only a few moments before they sprang on him. “What part of the bushido code stands supreme: obedience or honor?”
They halted.
“He is manipulating you. It’s obvious!” Franco protested.
“You’re Goddamned right I’m manipulating you. I’ll do anything to save New Dis, my wife, and our freedom. Even if you want my head, I have to do what I can for us. You are part of my city.” Yitz turned his attention back to Father Franco and cocked the hammer. “Manipulative or not, ulterior motive of not, I’m right, and all of you know it.”
Hephaestion cleared this throat, his voice distant but resolved. “Take me to Alexander and I can end all of this. I can end it all.”
Father Franco reddened with rage. Sputtering, he appeared about to argue, but then his eyes widened in surprise, and he crumpled to the ground with a whimper. The samurai behind him stepped over his twitching body, not giving him the honor of a beheading.
The Japanese warriors unshackled Hephaestion and helped him down.
“From one warrior to others, thank you,” Hephaestion said, suppressed misery in his voice.
Yitz packed Hephaestion’s satchel and handed his cuirass to him.
Taking the sword from the small man with muted, awe, Hephaestion couldn’t resist asking, “How did you manage to get those robes and play yourself off as one of the Provost General’s servants?”
“Submissive silence. That’s all the Provost General expects. He didn’t even notice I replaced one of his men,” Yitz answered with a wink. “People are functions to him. So what now, Heph? What’s the plan? How do we bring this all down?”
Hephaestion thought, sorting through the ugly, slick tr
uths in his mind. Alexander may be leading the charge…but did he know what Father Franco and the General Provost’s true plans were? Had they been lying about their motivations?
Hephaestion gasped, the horror of it all sinking in. The airships. They’d been scouting the pit, surveying the terrain from above. All the smoke from the foundries had obscured their operation, and tanks would be rowed across the river Styx, taking Dis as a staging ground of operations so they could march into New Dis and take all of the circular city, including the docks. All of Hell would be under one regime, Alexander at the head.
No, not Alexander. He would lead the campaign, but no…someone had to have fished him out first. Someone had to dam the river. Someone had to have the vision, who wanted conformity and to conquer.
“The Jesuits,” Yitz said quietly, reading his mind.
“They converted Japan to limit their threats within the city so it would be easier to topple. Promising ascension to all that fell into line was their recruiting technique.” Hephaestion snapped his fingers. “What was it Father Franco said in the railcar? Something about being of the same mind and conformity, but also ‘soldiers of God.’ Was that their path to Heaven they promised all others? Promised Alexander?”
Yitz’s gaze reflected the compassion reserved for those who’ve only just realized the lie they’d convinced themselves to believe.
Hephaestion’s thoughts raced ahead. “No, they would have to promise each murderous soldier Heaven through conquest, but not Alexander. He needed no such promises. All Alexander needed was the challenge, to know that a city was there that was not his.”
To know that war was to be had.
The Provost General had stated it perfectly: Have you seen him? And he had smiled. Hephaestion knew exactly what the Jesuit leader meant. How many nights had Alexander bounded around the war table, planning with boyish glee? How often had he delighted in training the shock troops until morning’s first sun? What did Alexander love more than anything? What meant most to Alexander above everything else?
Trampling in the Land of Woe: Book One of Three (Hellbound 1) Page 22
