Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  “These could be his, then,” Arturus said.

  “Maybe he came back,” Duncan wondered aloud. “Maybe he got Julian.”

  “If so, we should see his blood,” Fitch was saying.

  Arturus looked down one of the hallways.

  This is it.

  Hounds would dig out sleeping holes for themselves in woodstone. You could always find their chamber because they wouldn’t mark the walls leading up to it.

  But there’s no woodstone here.

  The passage also dead ended.

  “Bring the torch,” Arturus called.

  Fitch walked over his way.

  Towards the back was a burrow, cut straight into the hellstone.

  “Damn,” Duncan said as he walked up behind them, “that was one tough hound. A burrow in rock? Good eye, boy.”

  The heat from the torch was uncomfortably close to Arturus’ face. He moved in to inspect the burrow. Its edges had healed in quite a bit, making the burrow smaller now than it must have once been. There was a blanket there, and four backpacks. He opened one, and found it to be full of devilwheat.

  Fitch whistled. “Well, he was here. Any blood?”

  Arturus shook his head. “It looks like he slept here sometimes. Maybe to get away from the village.”

  “He may have had more than one place like this,” Fitch said. “We’ll keep our eyes sharp. He’s more likely to be around one of these hideaways.”

  Ellen uncrossed her legs and sat like a man. She leaned forward and let her arms fall by her crotch. She looked across the table to where the discarded mold of Arturus’ knight lay.

  “How can you stand this?” she asked Rick.

  Rick shrugged, and looked up from his whittling work. “I whittle.”

  “What are you making?”

  “A type of flute.”

  “Why?”

  “To give you something to do while you wait and worry.”

  “I’ve never been much good at musical instruments. You may regret it.”

  Rick laughed and lay his knife down amidst the excess woodstone. “I might. But I’m sure if you practice long enough you will get very good at it.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous, though, making so much noise?”

  “Yes, it is indeed. You shouldn’t practice unless you are here.”

  “When I’m good, I’m going to learn to play the saddest song.”

  Rick nodded.

  She looked at his serious face, which was frowning. “And when I play it, you’re going to look exactly like you do now.”

  “It’s something, isn’t it,” Rick said. “To be able to express your emotions. I always have this feeling, right here.” He pointed to his stomach. “A tightness. I’m used to worrying for Galen. He’s gone often. But now I feel for Turi, too. I think I would like to play a song as well. Maybe feeling it will get it out of my damn belly.”

  “Do you play?”

  “Yeah. I was a music teacher, in the old world. I taught band.”

  “I bet you were wonderful at it.”

  “I was a monster!”

  “No!”

  “I was indeed. I would work those kids so hard. I thought that was the way to teach them, you know.”

  “You don’t seem that way at all now.”

  He picked up the unfinished flute and pointed it at her. “I haven’t started to teach you yet. Just you wait.”

  Ellen giggled. “You’ll be nice. I know.”

  “You’re right, I teach differently now.”

  “You’ve taught people in Hell?”

  “Turi.”

  “Why do you teach differently?”

  “Galen. Galen changes the way you do lots of things. He asked me to teach Turi an instrument, because he thinks that’s very important. I was teaching Turi how I always had. Showed him how to read music, chastised him for even the slightest errors. He became an excellent machine.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, I was teaching him to play music in the same way that Galen was teaching him to wrestle and to hunt. Turi was getting very stressed. Galen suggested I change how I taught him. I told him that I knew what I was doing, thank you very much, and that if he wanted Turi to learn how to play anything worth a damn, this was the way to do it. Then I went too far.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Then I told him he could teach Turi to play his damn self.”

  Ellen leaned forward over the table. “What did Galen do?”

  “He took over Turi’s lessons. He asked Turi to write him a song.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I was horribly embarrassed. Turi had no ability to write anything at all. He could play the music I had written down for him as well as a record. He knew chord progressions and enough theory to make him a prodigy in the old world, but he couldn’t write a damn thing. I told Galen that was something that couldn’t be taught.

  “I feel bad about that sometimes. Not just for Turi, but for all the children I ever taught. For every child that was ever taught that way. I wonder why we figured it was right method? Maybe it came from military training, or something. Passed down from some weird totalitarian past.

  “Anyway, Galen agreed to take over the lessons. He just told Arturus to go to his room and write him a song. Turi would do this for the entire time that he would have normally practiced. He had all this emotion, all this passion pent up from Galen’s teachings, the boy was just dying to release it. That’s when I learned that Turi was an artist. I was destroying that in him. I’d destroyed that in so many people. From that moment on, Turi wanted to play. He learned little tricks, and some bad habits too, mind you, but little things I had never taught him. And they were his. All this time, I’d been teaching music, without having the first God damned clue of what music was about.”

  “So can Turi still play?”

  “Of course. And make sure that’s a lesson to you. Never challenge Galen.”

  “Oh, I would never be that stupid.”

  She could almost see the sad feeling return to Rick. She knew what he meant about it being in his stomach. About waiting for someone to return. “I think I love your son.”

  “I know you do, sweetheart. We all do.”

  “He doesn’t love me. He wants Alice.”

  “Boys are dumb sometimes. He may never turn around, or he might. It’s hard to say.”

  “The saddest song.”

  The worst of the crawlways was one made of blue crystal. It tore Arturus’ shirt in a couple of places and gave him cuts all along his arms. That passage had been particularly complicated. Each crawlway seemed different, but they all had one thing in common.

  They led nowhere.

  The main passageways had the same problem. They would dead end at random places, usually into Carrion barriers. At first Turi feared running into those barriers, but they were cooler, and he had to admit that the air was refreshing. Even Fitch got turned around, leading them into the same barrier a few times. After the third time, Duncan demanded they take a break and sat down on the purple stone marker.

  Fitch tossed his pack next to the barrier and leaned against the wall. Johnny collapsed into a corner.

  “This is the worst area Julian could have got lost in,” Fitch said.

  “At least it’s small,” Duncan said, pulling out some devilwheat meal.

  The hunter poured the meal into the cap of his canteen and then mixed water into it. He swirled it around in his hand for a moment and then drank it. The other hunters followed suit.

  Arturus pulled out some smoked dyitzu. The meat was tough, but he enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than he would have enjoyed the devilwheat meal.

  “That’s some fine looking jerky you got there,” Johnny remarked rather suggestively.

  Arturus smiled and shared it with the hunters.

  “Whew. Anything but spider guts,” Fitch said. “Amazing how quickly you can get sick of that shit.”

  “I started off being sick of it,” Johnny said. “You
guys are just catching up.”

  “Why?” Arturus asked him.

  “Michael’s not the first one to kill a giant spider,” Johnny answered. “I was swallowed by one before I made it to Harpsborough. I was so hungry, I ate my way out.”

  Arturus fought to keep his laugh quiet.

  “No one thinks you’re funny, Johnny.” Fitch said.

  “Turi does.”

  They ate some more in silence. Arturus’ legs began to cramp, so he stood up and stretched.

  Duncan must have felt similarly, because he began pacing. “I don’t know where this kid could be. We’ve been down all these passages.”

  Fitch just shrugged his shoulders.

  “He’s got to be up or down a level,” Duncan said.

  Johnny’s head followed the pacing hunter. “Thank God we’re right up next to the Carrion. Otherwise we’d have a lot more to search.”

  Duncan ignored him. “He’s got to be somewhere. It didn’t feel like we were missing any big. . .” He trailed off.

  Fitch put a finger to his lips. “Did you hear that?”

  Arturus cocked his head to the side and listened. He heard voices.

  Aaron. That’s Aaron’s voice.

  “Turi,” he announced himself.

  “Galen.”

  Galen, Aaron, Avery and Patrick came around the bend.

  “You find anything?” Aaron asked.

  Fitch nodded. “We didn’t find any leads, but we did find a few packs of devilwheat Julian had left in an old hound burrow. We can take ‘em back to town when we’re done, maybe get a hunter’s lot of the wheat. We figured Julian was sleeping there. The burrow was dug into the hellstone, just so you know.”

  “That would be a dangerous hound,” Galen said. “Any sign of it?”

  “No. Must have left years ago. No blood either, so we don’t think it got Julian. We’ll take you there.”

  Fitch moved to stand up but stopped when Aaron raised his hand.

  “In a minute,” Aaron said. “We haven’t rested yet. We might as well join you.”

  Arturus watched the hunters fan out. He dropped down to his haunches while Galen sat beside him.

  “How are you holding up?” his father asked.

  “Well, sir.”

  “Did you find anything else? Anything in any of the passages?”

  Turi shook his head. He watched Aaron pull out a canteen and mix in his own devilwheat meal.

  Alice likes him more than me.

  “Some of them were very small.” Galen said.

  “I almost got stuck,” Arturus admitted.

  “Don’t do it. Would be hard to get you out. You keeping up with the hunters?”

  It was an odd question. The hunters from Harpsborough were fairly noisy, and their sense of direction seemed poor.

  I was born here. And Galen’s been teaching me. If they had been born here, and Galen had taught them, they’d be as good as me. They’re better fighters, I know.

  “Yes, sir.”

  But I’m a better scout!

  “You look a bit cut up.”

  “The crystal passage. Very sharp.”

  Galen grunted.

  “Where could he be?” Arturus asked, surprised to hear the concern in his own voice. “We can’t find a trace.”

  Galen shrugged and nodded towards Aaron.

  Arturus listened in on the Lead Hunter’s conversation with Duncan.

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m not sure how many passageways we’ve got left.”

  “We should go home,” Duncan said, “maybe try another day.”

  “Not for some time yet,” Aaron said. “And it wouldn’t help us anyway. You know Mike wants us in these tunnels until we find that devilwheat store.”

  “But how? He had so much wheat. How could we not find it?”

  “Probably—”

  “Shh!” Galen quieted them harshly.

  The conversation died away, and Arturus tried to listen to what Galen may have heard. Galen could pick out one noise from another with an ease that amazed him, but if all was quiet, Arturus knew he could hear the fainter sounds.

  He heard Johnny shifting from foot to foot. He heard one of Avery’s knuckles crack as the man gripped his holstered pistol. Arturus even heard his own breathing, which he struggled to keep soft.

  Nothing.

  Galen heard it. Maybe it’s gone, or maybe I’m just listening to the wrong thing.

  He tried to ignore the hunters. To ignore himself. He cocked his head to one side and closed his eyes.

  A girl’s voice? Am I imagining it?

  It was so faint that Arturus had no idea if the voice was real, or if it was just the musings of his own mind. Whenever he tried to concentrate on her tone, the sound seemed to disappear. Even worse, at times it seemed to meld into whatever sound he thought it might become. If he imagined the pitch higher, it would become higher. If he thought it might be lower, it became lower.

  Is she singing?

  He tried his best to clear his mind, to not guess what her next sound would be. He tried to listen without expectation. It was one of the hardest things he had ever attempted to do in his life.

  Galen stood slowly, so slowly, as if he were afraid that any noise would scare the sound away. He waved them back. As quietly and as quickly as he dared, Arturus obeyed. Step by step, he made his way back down the corridor.

  He could hear her voice clearly now, a long, lonely single note.

  The hunters followed suit, their eyes fixed on Galen’s statue still figure. With the greatest of care they retreated down the corridor, moving past Arturus. Galen raised a hand and stopped them. He knelt, as quietly and as slowly as he had stood, and opened his pack. Arturus watched Galen while the man reached in and pulled out a small piece of folded cloth. He unfolded it and produced a single pure white feather.

  Galen stood again and moved next to the barrier.

  He held the feather in the air, stepping to one side. Gingerly, he let the feather go. At first it descended gently, swaying back and forth in the still air—but then it took flight, swirling about in the corridor, dancing.

  Wind.

  Arturus watched, hypnotized with the rest of the hunters, as the feather finally alighted to the floor.

  Her voice is the wind.

  Arturus and the hunters came forward quickly. Galen ran his fingers along the barrier, grasping at the stones, the feather lying abandoned on the floor. He found the passageway near the base of the barrier. A rock there, which seemed as secure as the rest, gave some when Galen pulled on it. It was shaped like a flagstone, large but flat. Galen kept tugging, and the rock came out from the barrier like a door, hinged on one side. Now that Arturus knew what to look for, he could see where it had scraped along the floor. Another hint was on the purple marker stone. The flagstone had run into it several times, and was marked with an indentation where it had collided with the other rock’s corner.

  Behind the flagstone was another crawlway, but this one was hollowed out not by Hell’s architect, but by the careful and diligent work of a human being. The barrier had been breached.

  “He wouldn’t have,” Aaron said aloud.

  “He did,” Galen whispered. “Julian found a way into the Carrion.”

  “God damn!” Michael lost his temper.

  He swung his arms about, scattering chess pieces across the table. Some bounced off of the carpet and onto the floor. Aaron stepped back. Even when hunting in the wilds, he had never seen Michael lose his temper.

  “Did he have any idea how much effort it took to build those walls?” Michael asked, “How many men we lost?”

  Aaron looked behind him towards the exit. He didn’t like the prospect of being alone with this man. Then his stomach growled. “We need the food, sir. Julian fed almost one hundred of our people. Without it, you’ll have to change things. A lot.”

  “Fuck food. Can’t you keep your head on straight for a second? Food is nothing, Aaron. Nothing. Do you under
stand me? You weren’t here when Pyle led the demons to us. You weren’t with us before we fled the Carrion and settled down. We used to scurry from room to room like roaches. When the Minotaur came we had to leave. There was no village, you get me? No home. You never lived with that kind of fear over your head.”

  Aaron waited for the man to calm. Michael’s eyes were wide, his nostrils flared. His breath came in heavy gasps. He swung out again as his rage boiled over, knocking the blankets off of one of the light orbs. Rarely were all the blankets removed. The light was harsh, so bright that Aaron had to shy away from it. He could see every pore in the First Citizen’s face.

  Molly had warned him that Baker got like this. She said that he had never really recovered from the Minotaur, from when he’d been gored by the Kingsriver. She had claimed that he came too close to death. That he had seen a bit of the world beyond and that it had lodged in his soul.

  She also said that he would go mad and beat her. But who the hell would listen to Molly? The Michael Baker he had known would never do such a thing, but who knew what the man in front of him now was capable of.

  “Aaron. Aaron,” the First Citizen was mumbling.

  Post Trauma. Like a soldier having returned from one of the old world’s wars.

  “Michael. No devils have come through. Julian went through that door regularly for the last year.”

  “This isn’t how Hell is supposed to be. You get me? We’re not supposed to be holed up all safe and sound behind these stone walls. We built this village to hide from our damnation, Aaron. We built it because we couldn’t stand Hell. Before this, before we walled off the Carrion, it really was Hell. Your every moment was filled with fear. We can’t go back to that. I know Harpsborough seems safe to you. Maybe it is. But you have no idea what’s in that place. You have no idea what devils we left alive behind those walls.”

  He doesn’t want us to go through.

  “You’re right about one thing, sir,” Aaron said. “This is Hell. We are damned, and there’s no way around it. Julian tapped a resource that was feeding nearly one in five people in Harpsborough. Shit’s different now. It’s a different Hell than the one you knew. We need to go in there, sir. We’ve got to find that devilwheat. You’ve got everyone in this place riding on your shoulders, so you better fucking face this.”