Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  ‘No, that’s okay, Threshrend,’ she said. ‘Really, I should be getting back to your library. You said all I had to do was cut together my report and I could go.’

  Compt’n ur Threshrend’s forest of eyestalks all drooped at once, but he pulled himself together. This was crazy. She was his captive, possibly his dinner. Not some fucking Tinder date.

  She was part of the plan. And she was sticking to her part of that plan, even as he tried to distract her with offers of a trip to the Drakon rendering pits, or a promise to get her a ringside seat at a Shurakh contest in the Hunn barracks.

  Might as well just throw her into the blood pots, you idiot.

  ‘The library, yeah, okay, I suppose we should get back to the library.’

  ‘People will be getting worried,’ Polly said.

  Threshy had to stifle a snort of nervous laughter, even as part of him couldn’t help but admire this chick’s fucking moxie. It wasn’t all down to the Threshrend Majorae topping up her natural reserves of courage. Threshy’s own radar told him Fred had a cast-iron pair of Hunn nuts on her.

  Polly! Her name is Polly and she is not wearing a spanky blue leather catsuit that I want to peel off her delicious little bod with my fang tracks.

  Peeps had a lot more to worry about than Polly running a little late. The Horde was going to eat their world, and Threshy had the carving knife.

  ‘Okay. You’re right. We’ll book it back to the library. Ha. See what I did there?’

  She sketched a perfunctory smile, more of a facial twitch, really. And he died a thousand little deaths inside.

  You fucking idiot, Compt’n, just shut the fuck up!

  ‘I just wanted to make sure you got all the vision you needed,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Thanks.’ She gave him a measured look. ‘You seem to know a lot. About TV production. For a monster, I mean.’

  Threshy turned his back on the Regiments of Grymm which swarmed like black geometric storms over the vast bloodstone plains of the training grounds.

  ‘I understood TV production actually was full of monsters,’ he said and both his hearts soared as she let him have a genuine smile.

  ‘That’s funny,’ she said, without laughing.

  She didn’t laugh, but she said I was funny. Fred said I was funny.

  No, Illyria.

  No!

  Polly.

  He let go of a ragged breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

  ‘Okay. Let’s go, Polly.’

  He took a furtive pleasure in saying her name, but lost it as the pair of Lieutenants Grymm detailed to escort them and vouchsafe the calfling prisoner crashed their horned feet on the Drakon-glass flagstones of the reviewing platform. The Threshrend Majorae assigned to maintain Polly’s Zen cool was doing a hell of a job, because she didn’t flinch.

  ‘This way?’ she asked, indicating the nearest archway leading back into the main tower of the Grymm Lord’s Keep, from where Guyuk ur Grymm commanded Her Majesty’s most elite forces.

  ‘Yeah. Don’t get too far ahead of us.’

  Threshy trailed after the young woman in a complete funk. He was starting to regret having the Threshrend – he couldn’t even remember the fucking thing’s name – chill her shit out. He was starting to think he might have preferred it if Polly Farrell was appropriately terrified and extravagantly grateful to old Threshy for keeping her safe from all the big bad monsters.

  An image bubbled up out of all the human thoughts and memories he had consumed, gurgling to consciousness and breaking the surface like a fart in a poison mud bath.

  Princess Leia chained to Jabba the Hutt in her space bikini.

  When he imagined himself as Jabba – not that fucking hard, really, – and Polly as Leia, Threshy felt a stirring in his loins. This was a new thing. He hadn’t even realised he had loins before. Physically, he was still very young, not long out of the nest. Normally, if he had survived into adulthood it would have been many years before he could even think about breeding. But now, apparently, he had loins. And the motherfuckers were stirring inside him.

  What fresh Hell was this? Those Scolari douche bags who’d made him eat that fucking moron Trevor and set him on this path hadn’t said anything about this shit.

  ‘Wait up, Polly,’ he called after her.

  *

  It had been an age since the lord commander had called upon the Archivum Scolari. It was not far removed from his quarters, being directly accessible from the Lord’s Keep by any one of five bridges which reached between the two towers. And it was not as though Guyuk shared the prejudice of the last lord commander against knowledge preserved upon stone tablets and within the bound volumes and bundled scrolls of grosswyrm vellum. Lord Traabal ur Grymm was famous for taking the heads of Scolari whose advice displeased him, roaring, ‘I think with my meat!’

  And he did not lie. If he’d actually done a little less thinking with his meat he might have seen his loyal deputy Guyuk coming for him with a blade. Guyuk had struck at the lord commander, as was his right and duty, because the old fool was weakening, if not destroying, the Grymm with every Scolari master whose head he took. Furthermore, upon taking the commander’s chain for himself, the newly ennobled Lord Guyuk had it proclaimed amongst his thrall that he afforded the greatest urgency to binding up the wounds and filling out the ranks of the Scolari Grymm.

  As the oldest of scrolls cautioned, in the knowing of things lies the mastery of them all. Or as Guyuk had ordered inscribed upon the redesigned livery of the Consilium, commissioned to mark the nightfall of a new era, Knowing Things Is Useful.

  So it could not be said of his era that he turned away from knowledge. Only that he had not the time to pursue it as he might, given the burdensome duties of Her Majesty’s Lord Commander of Grymm. Those duties, onerous in the rare interregnums between wars against the lesser sects, were crushing indeed now he had the human Horde with which to contend as well. The latest from dar Diwan ur Sliveen both thrilled and appalled him as he stalked past long ranks of Praetorian Grymm guarding the passages of the keep. Each guard would crash out a salute as the lord commander drew level, smashing mailed fist into iron breastplate, creating the effect of a slow war drum. Spent seer-stone chips glowed malefic red to light his way as he brooded on the Diwan’s latest revelations; vast panoplies of battle had she laid out for him while Compt’n ur Threshrend tended to his schemes; slaughter on a scale to unsettle the scribes of even the most ancient war scrolls.

  The Superiorae had sown an exemplary terror amongst the peoples of the American sect, and done so without spilling oceans of daemonum ichor across the Above. Or not the Horde’s ichor, to be more accurate. Many legions of the lesser sects had been lured into battle with the Americans, and in every instance they had been utterly destroyed.

  Ay, but there was the rub of it.

  For all of the success of Guyuk’s lures and entrapments of the Morphum and Djinn and the other bastard sects, for all the success of the Horde’s strange new stratagem Compt’n ur Threshrend called ‘insurgency’, the lord commander’s gall simmered at the inability of any daemonum force to engage the calflings in open battle.

  We are the calflings, herded toward slaughter, he grunted to himself as he crossed the lower viaduct to the Archivum and twinned ranks of Praetorian Grymm on either side of the bridge crashed out salutes, so many of them now that they sounded like some diabolical war engine of the Gnarrl. One of the war hammer ploughs, or the great rolling fortresses bristling with rock throwers. Guyuk did not put these troubling thoughts to one side as he acknowledged the salute of the Captain Grymm and strode through the portcullis of the Archivum. Leaders did not flinch from sharp truths. They allowed themselves to be cut by contemplation of the realities, to bleed a little in worrying about all that might go wrong. Better to do so before battle than after, when it was always too late and the bleeding too great to staunch with mere thoughts.

  He found the Superiorae and the human female in the great domed library o
f the Masters Scolari. The atmosphere was hushed, the silence broken only by the rustle of scrolls, the scrape of bone quills on wyrm-hide parchment and the occasional bizarre exclamation of the Superiorae dar Threshrendum ur Grymm in the strange wet tongue of the calflings.

  ‘Fuckin’ awesome. This is made of win. Yeah, fucking win, baby!’

  What was the Superiorae saying?

  The human, Polly ur Farr’l, did not so much as flinch at Guyuk’s approach. That was explicable, he supposed, because the Threshrend Majorae was enhancing her natural gurikh, which she apparently had in abundance, but surely not such abundance that being cast into the dark heart of the UnderRealms would not undo her fragile mind.

  She said something in her own language.

  ‘I really don’t think we need the star wipe.’

  Did she speak to Compt’n ur Threshrend of magicks, or dread technology? They both seemed intent on the small iron box with human magicks contained within.

  ‘But I love the star wipe,’ Compt’n said, seemingly in protest, leaning so closely over the creature’s shoulder that the lord commander wondered how he contained the urge to bite off her head and have at the sweetmeats inside. Indeed, the Threshrend’s tiny half-formed loins were engorged and trembling with the very prospect.

  ‘Attend me, Superiorae,’ Guyuk growled, slowly.

  Polly ur Farr’l looked away from her magick box, her comput’r, and regarded the lord commander with equanimity.

  ‘I think your boss wants you,’ she said.

  ‘He’s not the boss of me,’ Compt’n ur Threshrend declared.

  ‘Threshrend!’

  ‘Coming, boss!’

  The female returned to her labours, some arcane series of devotions made to the magick box, which reminded Guyuk of the ritual gestures the Diwan had performed over her seer stones earlier. The Farr’l was not in the leastways intimidated. Guyuk glowered at the Threshrend Majorae, squatting quietly, concentrating its thoughts on her. Was it necessary to imbue her with such confidence that she had not even the slightest terror of his presence?

  The Threshrend inclined its eyestalks in the direction of the Superiorae, as though that explained everything.

  ‘Is she nearly done?’ Guyuk asked. ‘I am wont to press on.’

  The Threshrend seemed distracted, his attention divided between his lord commander and his prisoner.

  ‘Do you hunger for her, Superiorae?’ Guyuk asked.

  It was as though he had caught the empath in some illicit observation of Her Majesty’s own thoughts. His eyestalks went rigid with surprise, possibly even fright, and he appeared to become aware of his loins for the first time.

  ‘No!’ he said, not at all convincingly.

  ‘We have plenty of prisoners in the dungeons. Get yourself something to eat down there if your appetite distracts you.’

  ‘Appetite?’ the tiny Threshrend said, as though Guyuk had spoken in some foreign tongue and the translation had been especially difficult. ‘Oh, right. Yeah. She totally embiggens old Threshy’s appetite, boss. For, like, eating her and stuff. Yeah . . .’ his thoughts seemed to wander off again as he contemplated their captive. ‘Yeah, old Threshy would love a piece of that. I would just . . . eat . . . her . . . up.’

  ‘Your treachery is admirable,’ Guyuk rumbled quietly, ‘but ill timed. You yourself have explained we need this female to deliver our message and vouchsafe our honour and trustworthiness until such a time as we might be positioned to strike at the unwary calflings. Her path does not lead to the blood pot, not yet.’

  That caught his attention at last. Lord Guyuk even imagined that the Superiorae was alarmed by the idea of his prisoner going into a regimental stew. Good. It was his idea, after all, to spare her for other uses.

  ‘You’re right! You’re like totally right, G-Man. No blood pot for Fred . . . I mean, Farr’l. My bad. My mistake. If I confused you when I said Fred. Because I meant Farr’l. The wretched calfling Farr’l. Yeah. Fuck her.’

  Guyuk had little to no sense of what his pro-consul meant, but that was not unusual. Not for the first time did Guyuk have cause to regret the choice of the first human soul the Scolari had given his Threshrend advisor to consume.

  ‘I wish to return to the Above as soon as you are finished stitching together this cloak of lies,’ Guyuk said, inclining his furrowed brow toward the calfling woman. She busied herself at the thin iron box of magicks. Really, it was more akin to two lids hinged together than a box with a lid.

  ‘Sure,’ Compt’n ur Threshrend said. ‘She’s just wrapping now. We can make it back to the Big App with her in five, I reckon.’

  ‘We shall not return to . . . Manhatt’n,’ Guyuk advised him. ‘Not with the captive woman. If she is the adept you think her, she will have no need of a sizeable thrall to escort her to the Above. The two lieutenants currently assigned her watch will suffice.’

  The Threshrend’s eyestalks actually drooped in reply.

  ‘Oh, okay then, but they’re not gonna eat her when she’s done are they? Because that’s not part of the plan and –’

  Guyuk struck him with the back of his fist. A light flick, but quick enough to snap the creature’s head to one side and induce a whip-crack motion in all of its eyestalks.

  ‘Gather your wits about you, Threshrend. It was you who determined that this female should go under our protection. My lieutenants are tasked to ensure nothing eats her. Or has your hunger robbed you of memory along with your wits?’

  The empath was staring at him as though he had never been struck by a higher daemon. Lord Guyuk admonished himself, not for the loss of control, but for not having thought to strike the creature earlier. Superiorae and Pro-Consul adeptus he might be, but Compt’n ur Threshrend still answered to his lord commander.

  ‘I would have thought you had gorged yourself to point of utter satiation in the Above, Superiorae,’ he said, applying the balm of his proper title. ‘But it seems you are possessed of a hunger every bit as demanding as your . . . personality.’ He made the effort to draw out the human term Compt’n had taught him. ‘Order sustenance from the regimental kitchens before we take leave. I would not have you distracted during our audience with Her Majesty.’

  If Guyuk expected the empath to be surprised or even perturbed by the news of their summons to the palace, it was not to be. Still rubbing his skull where the lord commander had cuffed him but lightly, the Superiorae did not even react to the summons. Instead he asked, ‘So, the lieutenants, they’ll get her safe home? Polly, I mean.’

  Guyuk frowned at the unusual phrasing, but put it down to all the personalities at war within the Threshrend’s thinkings.

  ‘They are tasked to deliver her wherever she demands or desires. They will die in her thrall, if needs be.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Compt’n ur Threshrend. ‘I can live with that.’

  ‘Oh, Threshrend,’ Guyuk rumbled, ‘You cannot imagine how my hearts flutter with relief to hear that.’

  Compt’n ur Threshrend regarded his lord commander with cautious reserve.

  ‘Your sarcasm’s coming along real nice, boss. A little more work and it’ll sting nearly as much as your bitchslap.’

  16

  Another explosion, a series of them, like a string of lethal Chinese firecrackers, burst over the Grymm struggling through the breach in the apartment wall. Gunfire ripped into those warriors who had cleared the opening and closed most of the distance to Dave and Karen. Armour-piercing and tracer rounds.

  For illuminating targets and destroying personnel, Dave recalled from another reality. The SEALs had chanted that, like a children’s poem.

  When?

  Once upon a time, he thought.

  Some of the Grymm caught fire at the touch of the incendiary rounds, consumed by the same strange blue-green flame that had torched the bodies of the unnamed Hunn below.

  ‘The fuck?’ Dave muttered as more dark figures poured into the room. They wore body armour, helmets and night vision goggles and it mig
ht once have given them an intimidating, otherworldly aspect, but now it marked them as members of his tribe. His Clan.

  They were men.

  And, you know, maybe a hot monster-killing babe or two. He wasn’t sure whether equal opportunity laws covered special operations teams.

  Dave wondered if Karen was okay, but he was too far gone to check. He closed his eyes and drifted off to the sweet, sweet sound of human gunfire.

  Guns, he’d decided, weren’t so bad after all.

  *

  The penthouse didn’t look like a normal apartment. It looked like the big white box an apartment came in. A big white box with a white leather couch. These guys obviously didn’t have kids. For a long time after he woke up, Dave just lay there, looking at the drip someone had hooked up for him.

  He felt as if he was bleeding out, but of course that wasn’t possible. The fluid was going in. All of his wounds were either healed, or healing in fresh pink swatches and ridges of scar tissue which would fade away over the next hour.

  He found a few energy gels in pockets he didn’t even know he had. He could feel his body burning the calories as soon as he sucked down the warm, sweet-tasting jelly. Like throwing drops of gas onto a roaring bonfire.

  The power was back, the penthouse clean and brightly lit. No sign of the SWAT team or ESU or whoever had saved their asses. No sign of the medics who’d plugged this drip into him.

  ‘Eat this,’ Karen said, and he jumped a little as she emerged from the kitchen.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, as his head fell back on the padded arm of the white leather couch. He’d painted this fine piece of furniture with so much of his own blood and sour sweat it seemed a shame not to finish the job. Warat, or Varatchevsky, was carrying something which looked heavy, although the weight did not bother her. She looked as though she’d been awake for a while longer than him. Her leathers were filthy and torn here and there, but her face and her hands were clean, freshly scrubbed. He could smell the soap.