Ascendance

by John Birmingham

‘No chance, nest-wetting urmin-type. I burst my pustules at you and call your battle name a silly thing. You are but a tiny-balled wiper of this Threshrend’s bottom.’

  He didn’t have any pustules of course, but the insult did its work. In what passed for etiquette among the Hunn, to purposely rupture a pustule into the face of an opponent was akin to issuing a challenge to a duel by way of flinging a freshly squeezed turd squarely between the eyes.

  Dave saw the remaining onlookers flinch back as the young Hunn roared with ungovernable rage and leaped out of the crouch in which it had been standing. The howling bellow all but drowned out the flat, cracking reports of two handguns unloading five rounds into the head of the Threshrend daemon, and the war cries and snarls of the other two Hunn and their leashed Fangr.

  Dave felt the pressure that had been building in his head suddenly fall away and, as he dodged to one side to avoid the first clumsy swing of Jägur’s cutlass-style blade, he was surprised to find the world suspended again.

  Warat.

  There was no time to check on her. Lucille sang her high keening tune as he jumped under the arc of the cutlass swing and drove the axehead of the splitting maul up into the Hunn’s breastplate, aiming for the vulnerable area just beneath its shield-wise arm, where the smaller of the creature’s two hearts lay close to the surface. The steel head bit through boiled leather and shattered hundreds of chain-mail links. Daemon-hide split, bones disintegrated and gore erupted from the wound in a slow geyser.

  Dave whipped the hammer head back as the Hunn – moving slowly, but still appreciably faster than the human beings frozen outside Dave’s warp bubble – folded in on itself around the fatal wound. Fatal, but not quite fast enough for Dave’s liking. He spun Lucille in his hands and swung, bringing the flat, crushing surface of the hammer to bear on the creature’s head as it dropped toward the ground. Twelve pounds of forged and magical American steel punched through the thick, nobbled bone of Jägur’s skull. Twelve pounds which felt light in Dave’s hands, but which he wielded with all his power. The Hunn’s skull blew apart in an explosion of daemon ichor, grey-green brain jelly and shards of broken bone.

  Lucille came free of the obscene wound with one fierce tug and a sucking sound that made Dave wince. Still half expecting to be forced out of the warp bubble at any moment, he braced himself for the rest of the war band, but it was too late. Warat had all but cut them down.

  He shook his head in surprise at the sight of the Fangr, which were markedly swifter in attack than their lumbering Hunn masters, dying in profligate blood sprays on the edge of her hissing sword blade. She moved in a blur of fluid power, inhumanly fast with the speed and surety of long practice and elemental grace. Karin Varatchevsky – he had no doubt he was seeing the woman reduced to her essences now, without the layers of pretense and assumed identity in which she had cloaked herself for years – Colonel Karin Varatchevsky danced between the hulking, slow-moving carcasses of the Horde. Her blade flashed and hummed and described great, blurred arcs of lethal intent, and wherever she danced, Hunn and Fangr died. They came apart in big raw pieces and Dave was sure that he could discern the unnaturally drawn-out, grating shrieks of their deaths somewhere beneath the rumbling sibilance of the city’s elongated soundtrack.

  The Threshrend, clutching at the gunshot wounds, which had further disfigured its ugly face, was dropping toward the road surface like a redwood felled by the axeman. Steaming loops and bags of internal organs, purple and green and yellow, spilled from a long diagonal slash which had opened its belly before Karin had turned her attention to the rest of the war band. But with the warrior daemonum now all slaughtered she spun back toward the slain empath, perversely reminding Dave of a ballerina in her leathers and heavy black boots. Her knees flexed as she crouched and leaped a good couple of yards toward the collapsing Threshrend. The sword twirled like a baton major’s party trick, raised on high at the last moment, and . . .

  The bubble popped.

  She brought the blade down in real time with terrible swiftness and resolution, neatly severing the creature’s eyestalks at the already ruined base. The sound of screaming all around them redoubled and changed in tenor, as people now cried out more in shock than fear. Warat stood without moving for a few seconds, and then she reached down to pluck a Subway sandwich wrapper from where it had become stuck to one boot. She used it to clean the worst of the gore from her sword. Dave, like the cops, was stunned into silence and stillness. His eyes fell to Lucille, recalling how she had come to life during the fight in the Russian consulate. He was convinced that if she hadn’t, Warat would have carved him up as easily as she had the war band.

  ‘Gonna have to ask you to put that away, ma’am,’ said Officer Chadderton. He was pointing his gun Karen’s way, his eyes flitting anxiously over to the chunks and slabs of cooling monster meat that lay all about them. ‘Somebody might get hurt.’

  04

  Lord Guyuk ur Grymm could admit to himself, if to none other, that the scale of this human settlement, the brute size and weight of it, conspired to crush all gurikh from him. To extinguish his warrior spirit, to draw his claws and dull his fangs. It was just too . . . too much. Too vast and wrong to be endured. He tried to shield his thoughts, lest Compt’n ur Threshrend discern his weakness, but everywhere he turned, evidence of profound human dominion confronted him. Even worse, it seemed not to bother the Threshrend at all. But then, why would it? The creature was part human, at least in its thinkings.

  ‘Awesome, right?’ said the empath daemon, as if it knew exactly the blasphemy that had soiled Guyuk’s mind.

  But, no, that could not be. Even Threshrend Superiorae were not given to the subtle reading of individual minds as strong and shielded as Guyuk’s. The Lord Commander of all Her Majesty’s Regiments Grymm dragged his gaze away from the towering palaces beyond the edge of these woods, a reserve of sorts according to the Threshrend.

  ‘Dude, I love it when a plan comes together, and my plans always do, because they’re not just awesome. They’re like the internationally recognised benchmark for awesome,’ boasted Compt’n ur Threshrend.

  So. He had not been attending to Guyuk at all, or taunting him in the leastways, and the lord commander relaxed. Instead, Compt’n ur Threshrend had been partaking in his most favoured indulgence: congratulating himself.

  The forested reserve in which they hid – no, in which they lurked, Guyuk reminded himself. Warriors Grymm did not hide. They lurked with dark intent. The reserve seemed to be surrounded on all sides by the towering palaces of the human elite, or what Compt’n assured him were the elite. The calfling royalty, as he put it, seemingly amused by the very idea. The way Compt’n spoke of them, there appeared to be a whole city full of royalty, bound not by ties of blood but by the simple coincidence of their power. It was absurd, irrational, and even worse there were more human cities like this than there were rival palaces in all the realms.

  Much as the greenery set his fangs on edge, Guyuk was grateful for the concealing foliage in which they lurked. The portal was nearby and secured by a half Talon of Grymm. He himself was guarded by a detachment of lieutenants trained especially in the art of close-quarter protection. And, as Compt’n ur Threshrend had just boasted, their plan did indeed appear to be working. The Threshrend Superiorae relayed details from his thralls as they spread across the city, sowing terror and havoc in their wake. The empath assured Guyuk that the humans were reacting not as they had before – checking Scaroth and the Djinn with unexpected violence, expertly applied – but rather with fear and disorder. Guyuk looked forward to leaving the forest and examining the seer stones of the Diwan when they were ready to tell the full story of what he and the Threshrend had wrought. He might not deign to call the execution of Compt’n ur Threshrend’s scheme ‘awesome’, but there was no shame in admitting it was quite impressive.

  ‘How much longer must we remain here?’ Guyuk asked.

  ‘Dude, seriously,’ said Compt’n in the odd vernacular of
the first human whose mind he had consumed. ‘You’re harshing my mellow here. I gots to have my quiet if you wants me to . . .’

  Compt’n ur Threshrend broke off and seemed to sniff the air. ‘Okaaay, time to go,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What! What is happening? Why must we retreat?’ Guyuk demanded, but the recently ennobled Superiorae dar Threshrendum ur Grymm ignored him, hopping down from the stone table on which he had been standing, sniffing at the air, seeking out the thinkings of his thrall.

  ‘Super Dave is happening. And he brought a friend. Looks like Kill Bill’s samurai bitch.’

  ‘The Dave is here? In this settlement?’

  Guyuk did not need to be an empath daemon to sense the tension which ran through his bodyguards. The Captain of the Guard stepped forth, drawing his blade.

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘Seriously, how fucking dumb are you?’ Compt’n ur Threshrend whined, sounding very much like one of the calfling prisoners begging for mercy in the cells. ‘It’s Super Dave and he brought a big can of whoop-ass with him. Plenty to share round. The plan is good. The plan is working, but having the Dave and his bitch go to town on ol’ Threshy? Not part of the plan, man. Totally not part of the plan. So let’s bounce!’

  ‘We must bounce?’

  And Compt’n ur Threshrend was off, across the darkened greensward in the strange, half-hobbling hop-gallop of his kind. Bouncing indeed. Lieutenants Grymm closed in around Lord Guyuk, but without orders, or any immediate and obvious threat, they were uncertain about what they should do next. Not wanting to indict himself as a coward like dar Threshrend, the lord commander made a show of ignoring the perverse display. He took the time instead to examine their surroundings. The bodies of the humans they had surprised upon emerging from the portal lay stacked in a large pile, securely bound with wulfin-hide netting for easier transport to the UnderRealms. The bizarre, unnatural sounds of this metropolis of cattle grew neither louder nor quieter. The popping of their weapons. The strange noise of the beastless chariots. The alien miasma of smells. It was all so outlandish as to be incomprehensible.

  Still, until a moment ago the empath had been very pleased with himself. Only the arrival of the human champion –nowhere nearby that Guyuk could see – had interrupted dar Threshrend’s constant babble about the brilliance of his scheme, and how well it was working.

  ‘My Lord?’ the Captain of the Guard asked again.

  ‘Gather as much of the plunder as we can take,’ said Guyuk, turning from the cold light of the human towers and walking deeper into the darkness of the woods. ‘Dar Threshrend has apparently seen enough and we are to withdraw.’

  ‘As you will it, my Lord, so shall it be.’

  Guyuk saw the Captain Grymm check himself, inclining his head and going down on one knee instead of smashing a full salute into his armoured chest with a mailed fist; another order from Compt’n ur Threshrend, who insisted that stealth be their watchword in the human realm. The half Talon of Lieutenants and Sergeants Grymm gathered up the catch in the nets, suspended it between long poles and carried it back to the portal. The calflings were all dead, an unfortunate necessity given how noisy they tended to be when captured. The flesh would not now be as sweet and toothsome, and of course the bloodwine had already cooled and spoiled in the vein. But Lord Guyuk ur Grymm snorted at his own fussiness in even thinking of such things. It was not so long ago, just a few turnings of night and accursed day here in the Above, that the very idea of dining on man-meat, fresh or otherwise, would have been ridiculous. He would not bother the palace kitchens with anything but the freshest kill. Nonetheless the regimental mess would make good use of all they took back.

  Surrounded by his guard, he threaded through the forest, avoiding the stone paths and cleared fields where they might be seen by human eyes. The idea of hiding from the calflings would also once have been ridiculous. More than that. It was heresy. Anathema. And he knew that even his Marshals Regimental were troubled by the idea. But the Threshrend insisted, and so Guyuk ordered, and because he was the lord commander, the most successful of Her Majesty’s Lords Commander in a good long eon, the marshals complied. Or agreed to, anyway. Neither they nor their main formations were even deployed. The chaos he thought he could discern in the city, the noises to which Compt’n ur Threshrend had bade him attend, testified to the success of their plan which, for now, did not rely on main-force Grymm or even Hunn elements.

  No, this city was tonight taken under siege by mostly untried, untested, unnamed Hunn. Hundreds of them, nearly half a legion in all, seemingly scattered at random across the city’s boroughs. Lord Guyuk had been sceptical, Marshals Guyur, Sepcis and Khutr positively outraged. But Compt’n ur Threshrend had explained his plan in such a way as to convince them all. He had done so in the infuriating argot of his polyglot minds, but eating the cranial meats of the human Scolari Compton, and the elite warriors captured with him, had blessed the Threshrend with an unusual clarity for tactical and even strategic reasoning.

  Even if it was expressed in the bizarre tongue of the calfling known as Trev’r ur Candly.

  If and when we repeat this experiment of harvesting individuals from the human Horde for their thinkings, Guyuk thought as they pushed through the thin forest, we will take much greater care with the minds we have our empaths consume, especially as the first one taken imprints itself so profoundly.

  ‘Hurry up, motherfuckers!’ came a shout from ahead. ‘Threshy wants out of here.’

  *

  The empath daemon once known only as thresh, as were all thresh, and now elevated to the high rank of Superiorae dar Threshrendum ur Grymm, Pro-Consul to the Lord Commander, bounced from one horned foot to another, his escape through the portal prevented by a pair of hulking Lieutenants Grymm. Armed with pikes and short swords they barred any escape, crashing the shafts of their principal weapons together to form a giant cross as Threshy charged them at a gallop. He paid them no heed. They were so tall, the point at which the big iron polearms met so far above his eyestalks, all he needed to do was put his head down and boogie on through to deliverance, perhaps even biting one of them on the ass as he shot past. Teach these ugly fucks to show some respect.

  Oof!

  Threshy flew backward, in exactly the opposite direction to that in which he had intended to keep moving at high speed. Sparks flared across his vision, standing out brightly against the darkness which bloomed in his head. He rolled through leaf litter and dirt, the little copse in the woods of Central Park spinning around him until he came to a stop thanks to a kick from another of the Lieutenants Grymm. A second kick, really, the first one having sent him flying backward. But who was counting?

  The security detail, a half Talon of Lieutenants and Sergeants Grymm, ringed the entrance to the portal, a region of darkness a few steps into a stormwater drain, noticeably denser and deeper than the surrounding night. Mail and armour clinked and creaked in the darkness. They cut off his passage as effectively as a high castle wall.

  ‘Step to me, would you, motherfucker?’ grunted Compt’n ur Threshrend, but not too loudly, in case they heard him. The little empath daemon had a moment of recall that was both profoundly familiar and alien; the memory, not from its own experience in the nest, but from one of the minds it had consumed. It could not tell which, but knew the reminiscence to be from either the calfling called Trev’r or the Scolari Compt’n. A human nestling very young, very frightened, and ashamed, surrounded by its nest mates – no, its schoolmates, Compt’n corrected – kicked and mocked and spat on and . . .

  The tiny unnamed, unlamented thresh, which endured somewhere under all of the layers of memory and understanding it had recently consumed, struggled to understand. But Threshy, the strange, protean personality it had become, remembered well and understood implicitly.

  Motherfuckers were pelting him with their filthy jockstraps after gym class.

  The daemon shuddered in recall of a humiliation which was not, in truth, its own. Compt’n ur Threshr
end glared at the lieutenants from across the vast unfathomable gulf which separated them, anticipating sneers and taunts. Expecting a mouthful of moist jockstrap. But it did not come.

  The Lieutenants Grymm merely returned to standing watch.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Threshy, very quietly. ‘Didn’t think you’d fuckin’ cowboy up for a second round. Bitches.’

  He could hear the approach of Guyuk and his escorts. They didn’t crash through the little forest, but there was no way a score of eight and nine foot tall warrior daemonum could move with complete silence.

  At least they weren’t Hunn, he thought.

  Those dumbasses would’ve charged up Broadway the second they heard the Dave was there. Unable to do the smart thing – get the fuck out of Dodge – Compt’n ur Threshrend used the time left in this realm to reach out for his thrall.

  Yeah. That’s right.

  He had thrall now.

  Dozens of Threshrendum. Minorae, majorae and even a couple of motherfucking superiorae. He shut himself off to his immediate surrounds, to the shadows and smells of Central Park, so strangely familiar and alien all at once. Compt’n ur Threshrend reached out across the city with his thinkings, gathering up the sights and senses of all his thrall. Knowing as they knew. He stood atop high towers looking down on scenes of slaughter. He leaped from the roof of a flower delivery van as it spun out of control. He raced through a mall behind a small war band of unnamed Hunn, thrilling with them at the blood and horror. But he did not see the Dave or the terrifying female who seemed to have attached herself to his cause.

  That sucked.

  Everything had been going so well. He’d brought Fallujah to Manhattan. He’d unleashed scores of small, uncoordinated attacks on soft targets well away from any place the humans were able to concentrate firepower. He’d watched with mounting excitement and delight as the city lost its shit. Totally, completely, to the fucking max. He’d known it was going to work. Had seen the way the entire island seized up. He’d tasted the panic and madness of the calfling masses for himself, not even needing his thralls for that. Their fear was thick in the air, even here, hidden in the forest at the centre of the metropolis.