Operation Arcana

by John Joseph Adams

  The trolls look up just as four gouts of flame erupt from the planes, each stream of phosphorescent rounds looking like a laser beam. Two of the Warthogs loose rockets, and explosions rock the gully. We all drop flat, and you’re thrown down, back as you come to an appreciation of what “danger close” really means. The heat of the explosions washes over you, singeing the grass, reddening your exposed skin, and the weight on the line goes heavy.

  The trolls bellow and cry and scream, and it all mingles with the cacophony of the Warthogs’ attack. They seem to be stampeding to the ravine, to the frontier with the dark lands, and two of the Warthogs overfly them while the other two circle back around and strafe them again to make the point. One of the trolls actually falls and does not stir.

  “Fuck yeah!” someone says. Or maybe we all do. Hard to tell.

  You grab hold and start hauling on the line again. Lady Wíela is still on it, but heavy, not assisting you. Fantasy nerds who’d been through boot camp knew that their gaming stats had real world counterparts, and you went in big on your Strength and Constitution. Hand over hand you pull her up the side of the gully.

  We all pick ourselves up, several limps and cuts and bruises, but nothing to keep us from hoofing the last few miles. We hurry over to where you are, where you’re pulling the Lady Wíela up over the lip of the gully.

  I’m hoping she’s not dead. Really, really hoping. But you see her as you drag her over the lip and relax slightly. She’s unconscious, blood down the side of her face, but she takes several deep breaths as we watch. Antoine gets down to check her out and pronounces her alive, but he’s muttering, “This ain’t right,” over and over again.

  We all take in the state of her cloak and gown, torn and shredded by the trip up the rocky wall of the gully. Her skin is gray and mottled beneath, no match for the pale face and blond hair showing above her shoulders.

  Not human.

  Her face and hands are a glamour, I realize. A magical disguise meant to fool us.

  Or someone.

  Orley draws his sidearm, ready to put two between her eyes, but you grab his wrist and push the weapon back.

  We see it clear in your mind. Diaz’s story about the two black Special Forces guys riddled with bullets because the sentries had mistaken them for orcs. The lady’s disguise was not going to survive a trip to Washington, so she knew she would be unmasked long before she got anywhere the surprise might do her any good.

  “She’s an orc, but she’s here to help us,” you say aloud. “I don’t think she dangled herself out there as troll bait for nothing. She’s a friendly. And, I’m guessing, an important one.”

  After a moment, Diaz nods and grabs the second collapsible litter off of Antoine’s back and unfolds it. We get Wíela on it, and, as the Warthogs make one final strafing run along the gully, we start hoofing it for friendlier territory.

  Forward Operating Base Hammerhand sits perched on a bare sweep of rocky soil, just on the frontier of the High Elves’ sacred forest. Dawn breaks as the big Osh-Kosh truck crawls up from the Entry Control Point down on the plain proper. As we crest the rise, we can see the Seven Sisters Falls, sparkling in the morning sun, pouring out from the sacred forest and into the river we all call “Binky” because none of us can pronounce its real name.

  As soon as we’re stopped, Antoine hauls Marcel off the back of the truck and two more corpsmen come running up. Together, they all hustle off to the Combat Support Hospital. An aircrew and some officer, meanwhile, come fetch Lady Wíela. The officer, at least, doesn’t look surprised at the mottled gray skin showing under her torn clothing.

  “Fucking figures,” you say. And for once, we don’t give you a hard time. That’s hard-won knowledge—the fact that sometimes you’re a mushroom: kept in the dark and fed orders.

  Tactician’s Weave is wearing off and we’re all starting to fall back into our own heads, but we don’t really need it to make some decisions together. Dropping off the back of the truck we haul our weary bodies out to the eastern end of the FOB, looking out over the forest and falls and the faint hint of golden spires away over the forest canopy.

  We shuck our gear, bodies steaming with sweat evaporating in the cool morning air. As we settle in, the CH-53 Sea Stallion lifts off its pad at the western end of the base and forms up with two Cobra gunships already orbiting the base. They leg it north at top speed, and we wish them luck. Flying through the rifts is nowhere near as easy as walking or driving.

  “It ain’t D&D rules, that’s for sure,” you say, leaning back on your gear. Like some salty vet, you’ve already broken down your M-16 and gotten out your cleaning kit, the pieces settled on your lap. We’re all following suit, of course, even those of us who didn’t get off a shot.

  “Yeah,” Orley says, stretching his back, “I wish I could ignore encumbrance.”

  We all laugh. We’re all nerds of some stripe or another, and most of us rolled those dice before taking the chances we do now. But reality’s not as simple as those worlds we conceived. All of those guys did tap into something real, as it turns out, some ancient memories of the world when those rifts opened and the weird and scary and monstrous poured out, populating our nightmares and fairy tales for millennia.

  “So did those elves sell us out?” Ysbarra asks, leaning over her SAW to disassemble the light machine gun.

  “What do you think?” Diaz replies. “Those trolls were aimed right at us. They delivered their package, got paid, and then got paid for telling the other side where the package was.”

  “That’s jacked up,” you say. You’re still too boot to say “fuck” sometimes.

  “It’s fucking complicated,” I say. “Just like the ’Stan, just like Iraq. I was in both places. I saw how fucked up it could be, even back there. No surprise it’s the same here.”

  You look over the sacred forest, the lands of our allies, frowning a little. We can read the thought on your face, don’t need to see into your mind.

  “And no—no guarantees they can be trusted, either,” I say. “But if we trust each other and think things through, we’ll be alright.”

  That’s how it’s been done through all the long years, you figure, since trolls and goblins first walked out of our nightmares, and the many wars since. If we hold off the darkness together, that’s how it’ll go this time, too. Maybe this time we won’t forget it all to legend.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  David Klecha is a science fiction writer living in West Michigan with his wife, three children, and no cats. After graduating from university, he skillfully parleyed his degree in History and fuzzy mastery of Russian into an enlistment in the Marine Corps and a series of entry-level IT jobs. A deployment to Iraq brought the opportunity to start a milblog, and when Dave returned home he began writing professionally, as well as climbing the IT ladder, putting his combat experience to good use. Dave’s short fiction has appeared in Subterranean Magazine, Clarkesworld, and the anthology Armored.

  Born in the Caribbean, Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times bestselling author. His novels and over 50 short stories have been translated into 17 languages, and he has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. He currently lives in Ohio.

  THE DAMNED ONE HUNDRED

  Jonathan Maberry

  1

  “If the Gate falls, we fall!” Kellur yelled at the top of his voice.

  The iron doors remained shut. Silence was the only voice that spoke to him beyond the ghost echoes of his own words.

  “They won’t answer, Father,” said Kan.

  “They’ll answer,” growled Kellur, then added, “They must.”

  Kan looked away, and Kellur immediately regretted his words. He knew that his son was unable to meet his father’s eyes. The boy was embarrassed, and for good reason. His words were weak. They were a house of straw built in the wind. They must was many weary miles from They will.

  Kellur squared his shoulders and stepped u
p to the doors. They were twenty feet high but narrow, and every inch of each bronze panel was set with carvings of demons and gods, heroes and monsters. The whole of the scriptures were there. The birth of Father Ar in the endless fields of the Summerlands. The last of the old gods blowing her last breath into Ar’s lungs, making him immortal, beginning the age of the New Faith. And all of the parables and stories of the six Books of the Faith. All of the wonders and miracles, all of the treachery and bloodshed upon which their beliefs were built. The sacred and the profane, recorded here in thousands of tiny metal figures carved from solid bronze doors. The works of a hundred nuns for a hundred years.

  The great doors were set deeply into the living rock, the metal work perpetually in shadows. Kellur knew full well that no sunlight ever touched those doors. No sunlight touched this side of the mountain pass at all. It was why these witches had chosen this spot to build their cathedral.

  “Open the door and hear me speak,” bellowed Kellur. He pounded the side of his fist against the bas-reliefs of Mother Sun and the hero twins. “I come in the name of the Chosen. I come as defender of the faithful. Open!”

  The sound of his pounding fist coaxed echoes from within.

  “They will not answer,” repeated his son. Kan was sixteen winters old. A fine, strong boy with his father’s face and the hard, clean build of his grandfather. Blacksmith shoulders and scholar’s eyes. Like all the men of their line. Warrior artisans. Poets and fighters. And like all of them, stubborn.

  “Hush, boy,” snapped Kellur. “They’ll answer if I have to knock these doors down.”

  The boy opened his mouth to say something, then shut it. He looked away again, facing east toward the howling wind. The road down from this mountain pass twisted like a snake. The bones of ten thousand times ten thousand men littered the hollows at the foot of these mountains. Bones of heroes, bones of soldiers who had marched along that path toward the Red Gate that blocked the way one mile to the west.

  No one walked through those broken rocks. Not yet. But far, far away, the sound of drums could be heard. It was like thunder from a coming storm. Kellur knew that his son was listening to that sound more than he was watching the road. The mountain passes amplified distant sounds and carried them for freakish distances. To someone who didn’t know this, those drums sounded like they were no more than five or eight miles away. In truth the vanguard of the Hakkian army was more than fifty miles away. Days away.

  That distance was not a comfort. The Hakkians were marching as fast at the treacherous pass would let them go. As fast as the whips of their sergeants would make them march. As fast as the war songs of their trumpets would impel them.

  They would be here in two days. Three, if they paused to rest before they assailed the Red Gate. Soon the lumber carts bearing the components of their siege engines would roll up the long slope toward this spot. There the army would pause and build its towers. The towers that had brought down West Aylia and Goshtan. The towers that had allowed the Hakkians to flood like ants over the walls of Betheltown and Vale.

  Then the Red Gate would fall, and the whole of the west would be laid bare to the enemy.

  The fear of that, the horror of that, put steel into Kellur’s fist, and he spun around and hammered the door until pain exploded in his flesh and sent shocks up his arms.

  “Open the door, you damned witches. Open the door to the Champion of the Faithful. In the name of Ar I demand this!”

  He staggered back, chest heaving, hands pulsing with pain, mind ablaze.

  Despair was a black scorpion that crawled through his mind.

  Then, from far above, a voice spoke. Old, creaking, leathery. Nasty.

  “You dare invoke the name of the usurper god when knocking at our door?”

  Kellur and Kan looked up to see that a section of the rock wall above the door had swung out on iron hinges. A woman leaned out to stare down at them. She was so comprehensively wrinkled that she appeared to be little more than a mummy. Wisps of gray hair clung to her yellow scalp, and her eyes were so deeply set that they seemed to be the hollow sockets of a skull. She craned her head forward to study them, but she still stayed within the shadows.

  “Woman,” said Kellur, “if woman you be, then yes, I dare invoke my god. But if that is an evil thing to you, then tell me by whose name I should call, and I will be on my knees in prayer if that will get you to open these damned doors.”

  She studied him, her lips writhing as if preparing to speak, but for more than a minute she said nothing.

  “Will you not speak to me?” demanded Kellur.

  “You would bend a knee to the true goddess?”

  “Father . . .” whispered Kan, “what are you doing?”

  Kellur ignored his son. “Name her and I shall sacrifice a thousand spring lambs on her altar.”

  “Even to the point of forsaking the false god, Ar?”

  “Even then.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You wear the coat of a Knight of the Faith. You call yourself the champion of that religion. Why would such as you forswear his beliefs? What calamity would make you do this? Or do you come here with lies, as so many have before?”

  “What choice have I? The wolves are at the door, and the hour of our doom is at hand. That is not poetry; I am not quoting a song. This is real, and it is happening. I am the Champion of the Faithful, loyal son of Father Ar, this is truth. But the greater truth is that I am charged with protecting all of the Faithful, with protecting everyone west of the Red Gate from their enemies.” He pointed toward the eastern road. “Those enemies are coming. Do you not hear the thunder of their drums? Do you not know the doom they bring? You ask me if I would forswear my religion to save my nation? Let me in so that you can look into my eyes and know the truth of my heart. You are witches; surely you have some spell that will assure you that I speak the truth. Ensorcel me. Spill the entrails of a kid and read the secrets of its blood.”

  The witch watched him for a long, long time. She said nothing, but those thin lips twitched and writhed like worms.

  Then she withdrew and pulled the stone trapdoor shut, leaving Kellur and Kan Kellurson standing on the doorstep.

  Kan shook his head. “Oh, Father—I told you this would not work.”

  “Hush.”

  But the boy pointed a finger at his father. “You spoke heresy to that crone. You promised to betray everything you believe in. I . . . I . . . don’t know what to say. I am . . . ashamed for you.”

  Kellur took a single step toward his son, but it brought them to within a finger’s breath of each other. Kellur, taller and broader, looked down at the boy.

  “And what would you have me do? Leave without their help? Would that raise me in your esteem? Should I go back to the wall and try to hold it with a scant thousand men? If there are even a thousand left. The soldiers of the Faithful desert in the hundreds. The walls are half bare. Will Father Ar send twelve legions of angels to fight alongside us? Isn’t that what the prophecy says? Well, lad, those legions are slow in coming, and the enemy marches with great haste.” He took another step forward so that his son was forced to yield ground and step back. “You tell me what you would do to save our homeland. What will save your mother and sisters? What will save that girl you fancy? What will save our people from being wiped from the face of this world?”

  The boy stared up at his father, but though he tried to speak, he could not. In the end, he turned away and walked ten paces toward the Red Gate. Then he stopped, and his shoulders slumped.

  The wretched silence that followed was broken by the sound of rusted metal hinges screaming in protest. Kellur and his son both turned to see the doors of the witches’ cathedral opening inward.

  The witch who had spoken to them stood inside the arch, her skeletal hands clutching dark red robes to her bony frame. Behind her, the shadows within the cathedral seemed to twist and move as if there were a hundred demons hiding from the sun’s pure light.

  Kan cried aloud and drew h
is sword, but Kellur held out a warning hand. “Sheathe your blade, boy,” he growled. “We are guests here.”

  The boy frowned but did as he was bid. The witch smiled. Her smile was an ugly thing. If disease and sickness were embodied in the form of a woman, its smile would be like that. It lacked warmth and promised awful things.

  The witch beckoned. “Of your own free will and heart’s desire, I invite you to enter.”

  Kellur straightened his shoulders and nodded. “And with free will I shall enter.”

  With his son trailing uncertainly behind, the Champion of the Faithful entered the great church of the Red Religion.

  2

  The witch said nothing, but instead turned and led them down a long hall with vaulted ceilings. Fires burned in buckets hanging from the rafters and thousands of candles dripped from sconces mounted without pattern on the brick walls. Between the sconces hung rich tapestries of great antiquity, their faces covered with embroidered women of surpassing beauty. And yet as Kellur passed, those women seemed to turn to ponder him and his son. It was a trick of the light, he knew—though he was not certain of that knowledge. This was an abode of witches, after all.

  They approached another set of doors, and these were even more massive than the outer ones. They rose in a graceful arc to stand fifty feet tall and were banded with steel set with rivets as big as his fist. Across the doors and along the walls was a single carving of a woman in repose, her gowns flowing around a voluptuous body, her hair coiled like serpents. The sculptor had captured a vulpine intensity in the woman’s smile. And he’d fashioned her arms across the doors in such a way that as they opened it was as if she were opening her arms to embrace whomever entered.

  It was beautiful and intensely unnerving.