Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  Colson sat back. “Perhaps not.”

  Maxwell studied his opponent. Colson was in terrible shape, flabby and sallow-faced, but the intellect within the dying body had thwarted and undermined and rebuilt half the governments in Europe.

  “You were not the man they sent,” Colson said. “In fact, they didn’t send you at all, did they? No one did.”

  Maxwell ignored the rhetorical question and slid a bishop through one of the holes opened in his pawn line. “Fifteen years, you’ve been doing this,” he said, opening the door at last. He met Colson’s eye. “I want to know why.”

  “And that, finally,” Colson said, “Is why we are both here.”

  W

  Garret got up from the table and strode quickly towards the girl. She shied back, eyes large when she saw him coming. He reached for the plate in her hand, then stopped. He grabbed the wadded cloth napkin off the top of it instead. He dug deeper into the wolf that he’d ever gone without shifting. It hurt. The girl flinched back and blanched. His eyes had changed color in front of her, no doubt.

  Garret put the napkin to his face and inhaled deeply. Only there, with his face buried in the napkin, did Garret find what he was looking for.

  Garret inhaled deeply from the napkin. The young man’s scent itself was as unique as any person’s scent, and Garret had smelled it before. Alcohol had taken the entire night of the bonfire from his human recall, but his wolf mind was not so easily blurred. The wolf remembered the scent of the young man who had handed Garret the jug of alcohol. The same scent was on the napkin.

  Garret hit the deli door so hard that he nearly tore it off its hinges. He blinked in the sunlight, turning this way and that, searching for the young man on the crowded street. Or course, the guy had long since disappeared. For any mere human, the chase would have been lost and fate would have been sealed.

  But Garret was not merely human. He drew so hard on the wolf that his posture began to hunch and his joints began to slide. He breathed deeply. Thousands of human scents mingled around him. Hundreds of them had been laid that very hour. He began to prowl around the outside of the deli, ignoring the weird looks he got for repeatedly taking a knee so he could inhale closer to the ground.

  There it is. Garret caught the faint scent where the guy’s shoe had touched the paving bricks. Garret took off at a sprint following the trail. He dodged people when he could, knocked them down when he needed to. Nothing and no one was going to stop him from getting to his friends. The sun shone down on him as he tore through the crowd, dropping to a knee to smell whenever he lost the trail. He turned a corner, and another. The crowds began to thin and the buildings began to molder around him. Affluence was fading with each footstep he took.

  At last a decrepit building stood before him. The young man’s scent trail led inside it. It looked as though it had been an factory building of some sort in bygone days. Without thinking, Garret charged up the front stone steps and to the door. Using his wolf strength, he wrenched it open and barreled through. He let the transformation begin as he went into the dim interior.

  He didn’t get a good look around before something hard connected with the side of his head, just as it had so many months before when the Sheriff had come to take everything he loved.

  W

  “Six thousand years ago,” Colson said. “The Babylonian Emperor Hammurabi codified law. He carved it in stone. From that one decision, civilization was born. I have done all this because I will not allow everything humanity has become to be destroyed.”

  “That does not tell me ‘why’,” Maxwell returned evenly.

  Colson pushed a piece across the board. His and Maxwell’s hands were moving automatically now, as though the pieces had taken minds of their own, sliding here and there across the board, networking in webs, patterns, plotting and killing one another with no remorse.

  “I will continue to answer that question until you are satisfied,” Colson said. “In return I demand you do the same. Until my satisfaction.”

  “Agreed,” Maxwell said as one of Colson’s knights trampled one of Maxwell’s to death. “What is your question?”

  “Tell me,” Colson said, boring into Maxwell. “Tell me why you loved your wife and daughter.”

  W

  Garret awoke, this time not tied to a chair, but tied to one of the wooden beams which was supporting the ceiling. He almost started crying when he saw his friends sitting near him. They were tied to various beams and pieces of machinery with huge gears, but they were alive. Fishy and Pun’kin were sporting fresh bruises. Velvet had a bloody cut running from his chin to his left ear. Butterworth was out cold, but he was breathing.

  Garret struggled to sit upright. As he did, steel links clanked around his wrists and ankles. He wasn’t tied. He was chained. His heart fell into a lake of fear. The chains were thick. They had been run down from an overhead trolley and looped many times around his wrists and ankles. His wolf strength wouldn’t break them.

  Garret looked at each of his four friends in turn. Again, he had let his fear push him into rushing headlong into a situation without thinking it through. Now, it was going to cost him everything. Several Serbian men stood around looking down on them. All but one of them held guns. The one without the gun had a ceremonial sword at his waist, though none of them were in uniform. The young man Garret had followed here was not in sight.

  The man with the sword knelt in front of Garret and said in heavily accented English, “By the Holy Mother, what are you?”

  “I don’t know,” Garret said quietly, shaking his head. Tears began to fall. “I don’t know. I don’t know!” he screamed. “Just let them go, please.”

  The man stood. “We know who you boys are,” he said. “Whether you do or not. You are merely the distraction. Time is short, so that means you are going to tell us exactly where your commander is, and what his plans are.”

  The man moved to a nearby table and picked up one of an assortment of knives. The one he selected had a thin, swept blade.

  “We told you,” Fishy said quietly as his lip crumpled with defeat. “He didn’t tell us.”

  “As you wish,” the man said. He pointed the knife at Velvet, who was trembling in his restraints. Then he pointed at a nearby grain scale, hanging from one of the beams. “I will carve a pound of flesh from this one, then I will ask you again. If you lie to me again, it will cost him another pound of flesh. And another, and another. I think it will not take long before you tell me what I need to know.”

  They all started screaming and yelling and begging. All except Fishy, who bowed his head in silence. The man stepped up to Velvet and placed the point of the knife beneath Velvet’s chin. Velvet stopped screaming so that the knife didn’t open his chin as if had apparently opened his face not long since.

  “Last chance,” the man said quietly. “A pound of flesh is more than you think, and no surgeon can put it back once I’ve carved it away.”

  Velvet was shaking. Tears ran down his face. A thready whimper issued from him, then he was silent. They were all silent.

  Because they were silent, Garret heard the hellhounds coming before they arrived. As the man laid the knife blade against Velvet’s shoulder, the Pass opened behind him. It was a dark vortex into another reality, one that Garret had too often visited. But now it had come to visit him.

  And the hellhounds came.

  W

  One of Maxwell’s bishops slipped a trap set by one of Colson’s knights and a pawn.

  “I loved my wife because she was beautiful, inside and out,” Maxwell said. “Helen was good. Better than anyone I’ve ever known. Her goodness made her lovely, more lovely with each passing day. My daughter was innocent and pure. She would have been the most beautiful woman alive, had you not murdered her.”

  One of Maxwell’s pawns went down, followed by one of Colson’s. They darkened their squares with their blood.

  “Pathetic,” Colson said, arms crossed.
“Try again.” He returned to his answer. “Because of Hammurabi, we have our world. Because of Einstein and Planck, we are going to lose it.”

  Maxwell frowned outwardly. Colson’s queen slipped up behind one of Maxwell’s pawns and cut its head off. “I love my wife because she brought light to my world,” he said. “I love my daughter because she was that light.”

  One of Colson’s rooks blockaded an attempt on his queen’s life.

  “I’m starting to fear,” Colson said. “That you are not lying to me, but to yourself. No man is so blind as he who chooses not to see.”

  W

  The Pass opened into a yawning cavern, and through it, Garret saw the grey trees, reaching high into the night. They were crowned with yellow leaves. Beneath them, stretching away into the forever-dark, was the empty dirt road on which Garret had so often stood.

  But the road was not empty this time. Hellhounds of shadow and fire came swiftly down it, bearing with them the most unlikely person. The Pass opened wider, and the Serbian men and Garret’s friends began to quake with fear. Garret didn’t blame them. The first time he had seen the hellhounds, it had given him nightmares for months, but Garret wasn’t starting at the beasts from the underworld. He was staring at the person they’d brought with them.

  Garret watched, stupefied as the hell hounds emerged from the Pass. They bared their glistening black teeth. Tongues of flame licked out between their ribs from their burning hearts. Their unblinking eyes, glowing orbs of orange hellfire, watched the Serbians with only one intent. Death.

  As the last of the hell hounds slinked from the Pass and surrounded Garret, his friends, and the Serbians, the human also stepped out. He was small and thin, bespectacled, and looked bone-weary from travel. Despite his paleness and fatigue, he stood tall among the milling hounds of power and shadow.

  It was Joseph Bendetti, Garret’s long lost friend. The boy who had lost both his mother and Father to the creature. The boy who had lost his own way and wound up in a whore house. The boy who had now come to save all of their lives.

  W

  Another pawn went down, splitting its head open on the square. Colson’s knight charged onward as if the pawn hadn’t been there.

  Colson was getting angry. “Einstein’s theories were only published a few years ago, but the implications should have been clear even to one of your education,” he spat at Maxwell.

  “Matter is transmutable to energy,” Maxwell said as his queen and a knight hunted down one of Colson’s bishops and made the kill. The board was spattered with blood. In Maxwell’s eyes, blood was also covering both of their hands. “You fear the weapons Einstein’s theory suggests,” he said.

  “What destructive force has ever existed that man has not harnessed to kill his brother?” Colson asked.

  “Is that your next question?” Maxwell responded.

  Colson glowered. His queen gutted another of Maxwell’s pawns and left it gasping in a pile of its own intestines. “Focus man!” Colson said. “You’re no good to me like this.”

  Maxwell smiled grimly. He’d said something similar to someone else not long ago.

  “Weapons will proceed from Einstein’s work,” Colson said. “It’s inevitable. Relativity weaponry could render the planet uninhabitable. But that will be nothing compared to the Pandora’s Box that we will open if weapons are developed from Planck’s work. Einstein’s relativity will unlock the power of the atom, but quantum theory will unlock the power of reality.”

  One of Maxwell’s knights and his queen made a try for Colson’s king. It vanished into thin air, reappearing behind the impenetrable wall of a rook and pawns.

  Maxwell’s temper was fraying in spite of himself. Colson was forcing him to talk about his dead family, and it was having exactly the effect Colson wanted it to have. It was throwing Maxwell off balance.

  One of Maxwell’s rooks pinned a bishop against a pawn and shot it through the head. The bishop dropped in a heap of robes and black and grey marbling.

  “You talk about things you don’t understand.” Maxwell retorted. “This is speculation, barely on the fringes of science. It would take centuries for any of this to—”

  “Right now, David.” Colson said slamming a palm on the desk. “They are experimenting right now! It will be not be centuries. It will be decades, and not many of those. A single battleship captain has the power to kill tens of thousands of people on a whim. Within your lifetime, humanity will gain the power to kill millions.” His voice rose. “Do you think our morality will rise to the occasion? Do you think there is the first chance we will not wipe ourselves from the face of the earth? Now tell me why you love your wife and daughter!”

  W

  Joseph did not raise a hand or even take another step, he simply turned to the Serbian with the knife. Joseph gestured to the hellhounds and said quietly, “They have taken Garret in as one of their own, because he was merciful to one of theirs. Harm him, or any of his friends, and they will drag you all to hell, tear your bodies apart and bury your souls in the soft ground at hell’s gates. Leave now. This is the only warning you will receive.”

  The Serbian men appeared nailed to the floor, but after the hellhounds began to crouch and their burning hearts began to glow throughout their wispy bodies, the Serbians moved with alacrity.

  Within ten seconds all of them were gone. They even slammed the door behind them. Garret’s friends, on the other hand, were still shaking, white as sheets, and alternately staring at the hellhounds, the Pass, and Joseph. With weary steps, Joseph walked to the curved knife, picked it up, and began using it to cut Velvet free.

  “Don’t worry,” Garret heard him say quietly. “They’re here to help.”

  “Who are you?” Fishy quailed.

  “My name is Joseph,” he replied. “Garret… is my best friend.”

  He met Garret’s eye. Joseph was more than weary. He was weighed down, burdened. “I forgot that for a while,” he finished.

  Garret opened his mouth to say he knew not what, but two of the hell hounds turned, then came his way. He tensed up. He was about to scream for Joseph’s help, but the hellhounds were too quick. One of them bit down on his ankles and the other on his wrists.

  Garret squeezed his eyes shut, but there was no pain. He opened one eye, then both. The hounds had not bitten down on him, but on the chains that held him. Working together, they ground their black teeth down on the steel, much as they had done to Garret’s forearm.

  Atop one of the desks, Butterworth grunted. He had sat up and was rubbing the back of his head.

  The steel chains around Garret began to glow and melt in the hellhounds’ teeth, but Garret wasn’t burned. Within seconds, the chains that had bound him fell to puddles of molten slop on the wood floor. The wood sizzled and smoked.

  Garret stumbled to Pun’kin, Fishy, Velvet, and Butterworth. All of them fell together into an around-the-shoulders group hug. Garret’s heart was bursting with relief. Garret touched each of their shoulders, just to believe that they were alive.

  W

  “Fear, David!” Colson barked as a knight trampled another pawn to death. “Have you learned nothing? People aren’t motivated by love or lust or greed, or caring or anything else they claim to believe in! At the heart they are only, ever—always—motivated by fear! They tell themselves that they marry for love, but in their heart of hearts, they marry because they fear being alone. They don’t love life, they fear death! Only fear has the power to stop what is coming!”

  Colson’s voice was like red magma. Maxwell’s was like Siberian ice. “You wish to end wars by starting the worst one in history? You are a fool.”

  Colson slammed a fist on the desk. The chess pieces were working themselves into a frenzy of bloodlust. “Millions will pay the price, yes! But if they don’t, our species will be obliterated by our own hand! There is no wisdom left in the world, David! They will not see in time. Even now, global catastrophe hangs over them all,
and they posture in parliaments, debate in universities, and pile up munitions in their capitols. They know what is coming. They know, David, and still they proceed!”

  Colson was standing, leaning over the desk while the pieces slaughtered each other. “They must be made to see what they have become. War on an industrial level—a worldwide war—is the only way! Nothing else but millions of dead bodies, cities in ruins, and families shattered will frighten humanity badly enough to make them stop this madness! The whole world, as one people must be frightened back from this precipice before it is too late. If an arms race begins, though it take a hundred years or a thousand, it will only end one way. Humanity will be extinguished by our own short-sightedness!”

  “That is why you are twisted beyond all men,” Maxwell said. “Because you had a child, yet you still believe this. Survival isn’t about killing others, Admiral, it’s about dying to save someone. I would have died a thousand deaths to save my daughter, but you did not give me that chance. You never give anyone the chance to prove that things like honor and loyalty can redefine us.”

  “Open your eyes, David!” Colson shouted.

  “No one can see the future!” Maxwell yelled.

  “You cannot be that blind!”

  “You had a child,” Maxwell roared, infuriated, “You had a daughter, just like me, but still you learned no better than this!”

  “Think!” Colson roared. “Why did you love your family?!”

  “Sacrifice, Ulysses!” Maxwell thundered back. “It’s not about fear! It’s about sacrifice!”

  “Open your eyes, David! Before it’s too late!”

  W

  “Garret,” a weary voice said. It was Joseph. Garret turned. “Come on buddy,” he said, gesturing to the circle.

  Joseph smiled tiredly. “I’ve got to go, and you guys do too.”

  “What?” Pun’kin asked. “You just got here.”

  Velvet groped for words. “We haven’t even said thank you,” he said.