by Guy Haley
A babble of confusion went up from the mooks.
"Unbelievers! Here!"
Hog turned round, glistening red. He stared directly at Richards and pointed.
"Unbelievers, there."
"Oh. Shit," said Richards.
" Madre de dios! " said Piccolo. "Men, to arms. Men, fi…"
"It is too late for fighting, man-meat," said a mookish voice. "This holy place. No fighting here. Only dying."
They were surrounded by dozens of armed and armoured mooks. The blades of glaives hovered close by the Adam's apple of each and every interloper. Below, prodded through the clotting blood, went a cowed and shackled Bear. A metal collar had been strapped around his neck, many chains held by mooks coming from it.
"Nice rescue, you cocky bastard," muttered Richards.
"Bring them to me!" shouted Hog.
"Let's take them now, cap'n, I will not be slaughtered without a fight!" said one of Piccolo's men.
"Wait!" said Richards. "We still have a chance. At least now we don't have to worry about how to get close to him. I may be able to save us."
"Aye," said Piccolo grimly. "May's the word."
Richards and his compatriots were disarmed, their hands bound behind their backs, and taken down into the arena. The warm blood soaked their trouser, and they gagged on its metallic stench. They were herded towards Bear, the eyes of the silent crowd fixed upon this profanity in silent horror.
"Sorry, sunshine," said Bear. "They surprised me as I was preparing a really sneaky ambush."
"Brilliant," replied Richards. "So much for the cavalry."
"You!" said Hog, pointing at Richards. "Come here." Richards tried to appear confident, but in truth he was not. For much of his life he had been unnerved at the prospect of death, but at this moment he understood that humans were not overly frightened of death, but pain… Lord Hog represented great pain. Pain he had control of ordinarily, but here, here he was at its mercy, not its master.
The guards poked him in the back with their glaives, forcing him up the steps to Hog. The beast grabbed Richards' face and turned it one way and then the other. "Hmm," he said. He bent down and tentatively licked Richards' face. Richards grimaced, but was otherwise still. "Open your eyes," Hog commanded. Richards recoiled as Hog's tongue descended towards his left eye, surfing a crest of vile breath. "Keep it open!" said the pig. "Do not worry for your sight. Do you not think if I wished to snack upon your soul-window I could not just prise it from your head? Be still!" He gingerly brushed Richards' eye with his tongue. Richards squirmed.
Hog stood back upright. Richards blinked frantically, disgust coiling round his heart.
"Nothing," said Hog. "I see nothing within you!" He focused his attention back on the crowd. "Know this! I know all! I know every detail of everything that moves or walks upon this globe. I know all things! All things are mine to see, for all things are consumed. There is a vast web of life, and I am the spider at its centre! I gorge myself upon life, and thus all life is revealed to me! We are all food for something. That is our fate. Hog is our fate. This I know. You have suffered as I have suffered, you have all lived! This creature — " he pointed at Richards "- he has not yet lived, not enough, not yet. He is as you were. A mechanism, the lie of life.
"Through me all things pass, I know all food! From flesh to rock to the mislaid skeins of the norns and the divine worms that gnaw upon them. I know all. But even I am blind in one respect. There is but one thing I do not know."
"I know," said Richards.
Hog oinked. "Yes. I saw you, Richards, thousands of years before you came. I have waited for this moment for all time, since the Flower King brought me here to be his harbinger of death, for what is life without death? I have feasted and feasted. I know you. You will one day be consumed by another like you, but that lies far ahead. A future where Hog is gone, long gone, and you are not as you are. But now as then, you know what I seek, Richards, and I would know it now."
"So I have been told," said Richards.
"Tell me."
"No. First, you must aid me."
Hog's gut made a strange grumbling sound. The noise worked its way up from the bottom of his belly and shook each part of his body before it reached his mouth, whereupon it erupted forth as a gale of laughter, a mix of mirth and halitosis.
"You seek to bargain with Hog? I am prince here. My will is all."
Richards shrugged. "Torture me if you wish. Kill my friends."
"I could. I might. I will," said Hog.
"You won't. You might think you'd get the truth from me if you did," said Richards. "But you won't. Because you need to be sure. You need to know. Torture me, and I might lie. Eat me, and my knowledge might not pass into you. Both conclusions would leave you alone, brooding upon what you can never know, until it is time for even you to die. My way is better. I swear to tell what I know. You seek a secret of me, and I seek counsel from you. That seems a fair trade."
Hog snorted and paused. "Aye, I suppose it is. Let not Hog be called half-wise in matters of exchange. A deal it is." He gestured to his monk mooks, who cut Richards' hands free, and spat a gob of yellow phlegm upon his left trotter. He grasped Richards' hand with bone-crushing force and pulled him close.
"A deal, sealed with spittle. Now, tell me what I wish to know."
Richards looked the bloody horror in the eye. "Aid me first."
"Truly?"
"Yes."
Hog squeezed Richards' hand harder. Bones creaked.
"Aid me," said Richards through gritted teeth, "open the doors of the house with no doors, and I will tell you what you want."
"You know what I seek?"
"Yes," gasped Richards. His hand felt as if it would break. Hog let go.
"Well, then, you must taste the bacon of truth." Hog said this as if he were suggesting Richards simply must try the port. He gestured to his mooks again. Richards felt fear grasp his stomach, but he let the blind mooks scoop him off his feet, dump him on the stone and make his limbs fast.
"Mr Richards!" called Bear, and moved towards the altar, ignoring the glaive blades as they tore into his fur.
"I'll be OK, you know me," said Richards, his skin running with cold sweat.
Hog leaned in and ripped Tarquin from Richards' chest, tossing him over his shoulder to be caught by a mookish monk.
"Have a care, monster!" called Piccolo. "This noble beast deserves more respect than to be doused in your gore."
"And you have a care also, pirate fool, in how you address me. Your friend here has yet to reveal what I seek, and you may find yourself still upon my board." He turned to Richards. "Now, soulless thing, you will learn how painful the truth can be!" He slipped a knife as thin as a whisper into Richards' arm, and sliced.
Richards screamed. The pain was like nothing he had ever experienced, growing in intensity with each pass as Hog cut. The pig-man stood, and Richards saw through a miasma of agony that he held a strip of red meat in his hand. Somewhere beyond that, blood ran freely onto the floor.
"Now eat! Feast upon the bacon of truth!"
Richards tried to keep his teeth tight shut, but one of the mooks played a nerve in his ruined arm, and as he screamed the pig stuffed Richards' own flesh into his mouth.
"Now," said Hog, and his evil whisper sliced through the redness in Richards' mind as the knife had sliced the redness of his muscle. "What is it I wish to know?"
Richards could not speak. He choked on pain and his own meat. His only response was to scream, and he did. But it came out as this.
"To know what manner of beast you are."
"Aha! Now we proceed. Good. Then, dear Richards, tell me what manner of beast I am."
Again Richards felt he would shout his suffering to the heavens. The pain burned through him as a wildfire rips through a dry forest, everything black ruin in its wake. But at its whitehot heart, something formed, a glowing truth, and his voice rang out with clarion purity.
"Truth is fate, fate is fear. Al
l are Hog."
"I know this! More!" Another twist of the nerve. But something had changed in Richards, and he felt this only as a man feels a wound from an old life, and talked on.
"Hog is death."
"Yes! Yes, I am!"
"But you are not Hog."
There was a short silence, Hog's face went like thunder. "What do you mean, 'You are not Hog'? I am Hog!"
"You are a thing that believes himself to be Hog. A phantom, a flicker, like me. You will die as this world dies."
"Nonsense! Hog will persist! Hog is all!"
"This world is a phantom, this world is a flicker. You will not persist. You will go on, but for only a while. Think, Hog. Think on what you are."
"I am pain! I am fear! I am fate!"
"No. Hog is the fear of a bad death and the pain it will bring. You are a pain men hope to avoid. And what is fear, without hope? And all things will die. Hope will die. Then Hog will die. Hog will be the last, but he will die."
"What? What?" Hog asked. "This cannot be! What then for Hog?"
Richards was silent.
"What then for Hog?" it roared.
Richards gasped. "You are not Hog."
Hog grabbed Richards and shook him. Richards slipped in and out of consciousness. His blood pooled on the floor by the altar. "How do you know this? How?"
"The shadow comes," Richards said, and then he was there no more.
CHAPTER 20
Waldo
"It was a set-up," said Valdaire.
Otto nodded. He avoided looking at her, keeping his gaze fixed on the wall of the heavy lifter's second tactical command. The room was plain aluminium and carbon plastics, utilitarian military. There were no windows on the lifter, for they presented vulnerabilities. Instead screens were imprinted into the walls, giving front, rear, dorsal, ventral, starboard and port views. There was a lot of degraded forest here and not much else.
"Did he know?" asked Valdaire quietly.
Otto closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cold metal behind him. "Of course he knew. That eugene boss of his — it was his idea to draw Kaplinski out. We knew that he'd either be looking for Waldo too, or he'd do his damnedest to stop us from finding him, being as he's the only hacker to breach the Reality Realms successfully."
"Waldo was caught. He was no success."
"It all depends on one's measure of success," said Otto. He opened his eyes and looked at Valdaire. "The others might have done a lot of damage, but most of them died."
"So," said Valdaire, her voice hard. "By your measure then, was it a success, your gamble?"
"Leaving an operative like that working for k52 freed was never an option," said Otto.
"And Chures? What about him? An acceptable casualty?"
Otto shrugged. "There is no such thing, Valdaire. Don't goad me. But one loss to neutralise Kaplinski? Our mission was a success."
"You're a cold bastard, Klein."
Otto stared at her, his eyes vacant in a manner that disturbed her, hollow like those of all Ky-tech, something taken from them. "When you have seen what I have seen, Fraulein, come back and tell me that again."
"Did Lehmann know?"
"No," said Otto.
"Do you trust anyone, Otto?"
He closed his eyes. She looked tired. "No."
Valdaire puffed a breath out, half in anger, half in frustration. "You screwed up, Klein. Kaplinski's too much for you."
"Maybe," he said.
"Maybe what?"
"Maybe to both," he said. "But you haven't."
"What do you mean?"
"The engines have stopped." Otto stood. "We have found Waldo."
Lehmann and Otto requested their weapons, but were refused. Whatever agreement the VIA had thrashed out with the People's Dynasty Government did not extend to them being armed.
The Dragon Fire troops went first, jetting off from the wide bay open on both sides of the heavy lifter. Below them stretched endless taiga, a carpet of sharp-pricked trees wrinkled where a river cut a shallow valley. There were signs of an overgrown road leading to a complex of long-abandoned buildings, a military base by the look of it; a series of squares and hard lines under the vegetation. The forest had reclaimed much of it.
Otto watched with approval as the Chinese established a perimeter and swept the area for hostile presences. They worked with little wasted movement. In half an hour they were done, and the heavy lifter moved over the abandoned base and lowered itself to treetop level, the resurgent woods preventing it from setting down.
Otto, Valdaire and Lehmann rappelled down to the forest floor. The Dragon Fire soldiers were occupied elsewhere.
Commander Guan joined them on the forest floor, distinguishable from his men by his red helmet and rank markings.
"This is the correct location?" he said, plastic English coming from his helmet speakers.
"Yes," said Valdaire. "If Kolosev was correct and managed to find Waldo. But we could be looking at a dead end."
"He has found him alright," said Otto. The base was piles of crumbling concrete streaked brown by centennial rebars rusted to nothing. Trees thrust up through asphalt gone to gravel. "He is here somewhere."
They walked through the ruins, the Dragon Fire soldiers golden blurs as they ran with superhuman speed from bunker to bunker or streaked overhead. Guan stopped, and bid Lehmann, Otto and Valdaire do the same. "This way," he said. He led them to where two soldiers stood alertly, another on a munitions bunker covering them, one of nine such buildings in a long row. Behind it were three more rows, some collapsed in on themselves, most sound.
"A vegetable garden," said Valdaire. The garden had been painstakingly hacked out of the base's pavement. Camo netting held up by poles canopied it over.
"Well hidden," said Lehmann. "I suppose he's got to eat something."
"And there," said Guan, pointing to another bunker. "A store. My men have found many provisions and foodstuffs."
"Right," said Lehmann, "if Waldo's not here, someone is."
"It is Waldo." Otto walked on past the vegetable patch, and pointed to a quartet of bunkers. "These have been threaded with cable." His Ky-tech eyes revealed a spider web of silver energy spread over them.
"Satellite relay," said Valdaire. "Not as efficient as a dish."
"But not as easy to spot," said Lehmann.
" Genau," said Otto.
There was a flicker of movement. One of the Dragon Fire soldiers shouted and raised his gun arm. Otto slapped the weapon aside as it discharged, the distinctive muted crack of the flechette going supersonic, followed by a clack as the round blew a crater in rotten concrete.
"Klein," said Guan. "You are not to act here."
"Then tell your soldiers not to shoot. We have to take him alive," said Otto. The figure darted away, weaving round bushes and vanishing into the rows of bunkers. "Come on, we're going to lose him! Lehmann, go left."
Otto set off at a sprint, ignoring the shouts of Guan behind him. Jets roared as the Dragon Fire troopers lifted off and those already airborne converged on the fleeing shape. Despite his anger at Otto, Guan must have ordered his men not to fire, as no more rail gun shots sounded. Dragon Fire troopers roared through the sky, Mandarin barked from their speakers, followed by Russian, English and Buryat, ordering the figure to halt. Otto vaulted a fallen tree, thrashed his way through undergrowth dying back for the winter. The figure appeared, a flicker between two bunkers before it disappeared. Otto had his iHUD capture the moment, and enlarge.
"It's a young woman, perhaps mid-twenties, threat levels minimal!" he shouted into his radio. Get to her before the Chinese do, Lehmann, he added via MT.
Otto sprinted through the lines of bunkers, bouncing from their sloping sides, twisting past obstacles and leaping the detritus of long-gone men.
Lehmann thought to him, I nearly have her!
The two of them converged, Lehmann running along the avenue parallel to Otto's. Tree branches whipped at Otto's face, old glass crun
ching under his feet, Dragon Fire troops sketching trails of fire above him. The girl was running for her life. Habitation in the DMZ was strictly prohibited; the Chinese could execute her just for that.
They cleared the lines of munitions bunkers. The girl was passing through a crack in a set of big double doors into a large building half-sunken into the ground, perhaps once a tank garage.
Otto accelerated as he cleared the ground between the munitions dump and the tank garage. The trees were shorter here, few of them having forced their way through the concrete of the square, the soil on top too thin to support proper growth.
Otto ran through the door and stumbled in shock.
Honour stood there, half in shadow. Her hair shaved, pretty eyes smudged black underneath, pink scar on her head from the mentaug implantation.
"Honour?"
The girl's face wavered and she hit him hard across the head with an iron bar.
Honour vanished. The woman in her place wore a threadbare grey dress with a heavy wool cardigan and fingerless gloves. Long brown hair whipped round as she dropped the bar with a clatter and ran across the garage. Light slanted in through the ceiling where the roof had failed. She headed for a cowled doorway at the back, from which came weak artificial light.
Lehmann leapt over the prone Otto, humour gone from his face under the influence of the mentaug, stone cold.
Otto scowled and recovered his footing. Lehmann caught up with her as a Chinese Dragon Fire rocketed in through a hole in the roof and knelt, covering the door at the back with his weapon.
"Steady there! Steady!" said Lehmann. The girl punched him hard in the throat, and gasped as her fist encountered his subdermal plating. Lehmann caught her by the wrists. He tried English, then Russian. The girl quietened, but her eyes were wide with terror.
Otto approached and spoke to her in Russian. It was halting and heavily inflected, not as good as his English. With connection to the Grid he could run a translation programme, but in the DMZ, where Grid coverage was patchy and officially circumscribed, he had to rely on his own meagre skills.
