Dead Boys (18 page)

“You know, this is my fault,” said Etienne, a jagged edge in his voice. “I’m acting like a passenger on this journey when it’s my directions that put you on a path you have no chance of surviving without my help. I mean no disrespect, but everyone who saw that fight knows that you’ll be pulled apart if you step into the scrimmage as you are, and then
we’ll
be the ones arguing in a heap of parts for the rest of time.”

“What battle were you watching?” said Leopold. “We emerged from our first encounter victorious! Our adversaries are mangled and charred! By what mad measurement can you consider us failures?”

“The head’s right,” said Clay. “Y’all can handle the Shallow End, but the scrimmage is a whole other deal. They’re hard on squads out there.”

“The violence is constant,” said Etienne, “and it comes from all directions at once. You’ll need more than luck and timing. You’ll need a solid defense. You’ll need to learn to move and react as a unit, and the only way that will happen is if somebody takes command.”

“And I suppose,” said Leopold with a snort, “you’d have us believe that someone is
you
?”

“I’m the only one with the necessary experience. Besides, I know my history. Tactics will get us to White Gate. But in order for those tactics to do us any good, you’ll need to respond, without questions, without witty asides, to my orders.

“Your training starts now.”

They followed, however reluctantly, through an interminable succession of drills and exercises, and while it was unsettling to take orders from someone they’d grown used to regarding as cargo, it was impossible to deny the results. At Clay’s suggestion, Etienne recruited the stone-thrower (who was so eager to escape beheading that none doubted his allegiance), adding a crack shot to the roster.

In their standard formation, the five would-be soldiers stood in a ring with their backs to Remington, who held Etienne on his chest and aimed him like a flashlight. At a word from Das Kapital, as Leopold dubbed their bodiless commander, the ring could expand outward and overwhelm an enemy or retract into a defensive huddle. Once enough Plains-Deadish had been drilled into their heads, they could take orders as swiftly as any seasoned scrimmage-rat.

It only became evident how long they’d been training when Etienne declared them as ready as they’d ever be, and Jacob noticed, as if waking from a dream, that his body was coated in grit, that his leather had lost its shine, that his skin was cracking at the joints. He bent one elbow and shuddered: for the first time in years, he could see the unwelcome brightness of his own skeleton.

Etienne thanked the spectators for their advice (for they had offered much, and he’d treated them like elder statesmen), then rotated the ring toward the south, where the scrimmage loomed like a thunderhead, its dark, heavy, mutable front of battle-stirred dust letting glimpses of carnage peek through: the glint of a rusted breastplate, the proud blue of some forgotten army’s uniform, the bright gleam of bone. Waves of voice and violence washed over the company, a hideous magnetism drawing them into the dust. They pushed into the fray, knocking warriors into an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of teeth and knuckles, chains and helmets, gloves and cuirasses. The company offered a constant barrage of wild attacks, their rare successes measured in severed extremities, each one resulting in a scuffle over fallen armaments. Not that their formation kept them safe, exactly: as they swayed and staggered on, they were subject to hundreds of bludgeonings, piercings, and changes of course, making Etienne’s sense of direction their only compass.

He and Remington, removed from the action by a precious few feet, had the leisure to analyze the madness around them, but to the rest it was a blur, and they made no distinction between lone warriors and the rare squadrons who recoiled from their blind efficiency and ricocheted off in search of easier prey.

Clenched together, the five soldiers labored through yards that felt like miles. The thudding vibrations of battle became commonplace. They’d push, they’d bash, they’d strain, they’d holler and hoot, and then, without warning, the mass would loosen around them, allowing the opportunity to travel unmolested for short periods of time.

In the pauses, there were matters of martial hygiene to attend to. Adam had been disemboweled again, and his guts needed trimming; various sharp weapons were extracted from stomachs and buttocks and thighs; and an arrow that had been wielded as a dagger had to be pulled from the stone-thrower’s eye socket, where it was lodged with uncommon tenacity.

The struggle kindled a sense of camaraderie, and each time they pressed forward, exchanging blows with Confederate soldiers, Mongols, and Crusaders (or warriors who’d inherited their equipment), they’d trade their opinions on the efficacy of various techniques. Jacob and Leopold would debate the efficacy of various two-handed attacks, Remington would pester Eve to hold her shield arm higher, and everyone would praise the stone-thrower’s sling, which pitched many a weapon to the ground. (The little man spoke little, but always gave a flattered titter after a compliment.)

Ankles and ribs were strewn about, hands scuttled like crabs between their feet, and heads that were giggling, sobbing, and telling tall tales to no one at all littered the ground. The company grew used to these sights, as they’d grown used to the rising and falling tides of the scrimmage. Time itself seemed to fray, lending each moment the hazy, predetermined weight of a living dream. An attacker who’d broken their ranks was held down in the dirt, and a blade sawed back and forth through his spine until it snapped—but who’d done the holding, and who the sawing, none of them could say, nor whether it happened many times or just the once.

In a rare moment of clarity, Jacob glimpsed himself in the blade of the broadsword he’d pulled from the meat of his shoulder, recognizing with a queasy thrill that the leather patches that once had distinguished him as a man of wealth had all been torn out of his face, that he was coated in the yellowy grime of the Plains, and that his nose had been smashed into his skull, leaving his visage as grisly, battered, and anonymous as any he faced in the crowd.

“A Plainsman,” he whispered. Turning to survey the damage done to his fellows, he noted with alarm that Eve’s shield arm had been severed below the elbow, and wondered how long ago she’d lost it. Beside her, Leopold loosed a long, wordless scream and lashed a barbarian in the face with his chain, time and again, until his opponent was a heap of shards and skin. Remington screamed and cursed, his voice a low and rasping thing. Who have we become? Jacob wondered, as a noise unlike any he’d heard shook him out of contemplation.

The usual soundtrack of the scrimmage was a chorus of voices raised in triumph and defeat, insult and mania, hilarity and hysteria; a raucous blend, to be sure, but nothing so jarring as the roar that now erupted. It was a pure expression of terror, and as it crested, the scrimmage devolved into a stampede, which at Etienne’s command the ring faced head-on, digging in their heels and bracing their weapons in an attempt to send it around them.

“What spooked them?” said Remington as his companions, stumbling back against his body, held their ground.

“
Horde
!” shrieked a warrior, shedding his helmet, his basher, even his boots in an attempt to gain speed. The word, once it was recognized, could be heard echoing around the company in every language they knew.

“Why, they look like they’re fleeing a volcano!” said Leopold, lashing a crazed warrior aside with his chain.

“Maybe they know something we don’t,” said Remington. “Should we run?”

“And lose the ground we’ve gained?” said Leopold. “Fie! Whatever evils may fester in these lands, there are no monsters here. This Horde is made of nothing more terrifying than dead men, and I say we’ve proved ourselves fierce enough to face them.”

“There’s no time to talk it over!” said Jacob. “We’ll stand and fight. With all these warriors fleeing, we’ll have a straight shot to White Gate once we’re through. If we win, Remy and I will patch us up in White City, and if we lose, well, there’s always the Medic.”

“Adam, Eve, you’ll sit this one out,” said Etienne, “and carry us to the stitchery if we fall.”

Holding their weapons to their chests, the headless slumped to the ground, feigning hack-shock as the last of the stampede passed by.

“Remington, it’s your turn to fight. Whatever happens, don’t let them get hold of your head!”

“Oh, stop worrying, you old hen!” said Leopold. “The stampede is past, and this Horde has yet to materialize. Perhaps they’ve passed us by entirely.”

The exodus of so many warriors had filled the air with such a massive quantity of dust that it felt like nightfall—and dusk was such a distant memory that even its echo shook them. Soon, the shifting and clattering of armed men in the darkness dispelled Leopold’s hope, and though the company could discern the vague silhouettes of armed corpses, they had no sense of how many there were.

The Horde stood twenty feet before them. With excruciating slowness, forty of the oldest corpses that Jacob had ever seen became visible, standing in a crescent before the company.

In his days as a preservationist, Jacob had come across any number of citizens who, like Leopold or Caesar Augustus, claimed to be superannuated while clinging to the very flesh that revealed their vintage. He had often remarked that giving in to skeletonization would have allowed these blowhards to claim whatever date of death they liked, but the sight of the Horde dispelled this theory in an instant, for it was clear in the presence of these ancient, fleshless creatures that all bone was not the same. The Hordesmen were skeletons, yet nothing about them was blank: every bone was an artifact inscribed with proof of the passage of time. Lavish coats of desert varnish lent a golden-brown sheen to their skulls, shins, and patellae, filling the hashmarks scored by hundreds of thousands of blows with a sticky, dark resin.

They wore tarnished breastplates, cracked jerkins, and tattered robes; many of their joints were lashed together with bands of metal, leather, and rope. The implements of destruction that were, for now, held loosely in their hands induced in Jacob a perverse desire for the fight to begin, simply to see how corpses so slight could wield weapons so massive. Lengthy spears and swords abounded, as well as hammers and axes that brought gods and heroes to mind. From the talons of a tiny black-robed woman sprouted a scythe worthy of the Grim Reaper, and at the back of the crowd, borne by a seven-foot giant, was the great, two-bladed propeller of some antiquated airplane.

As the air cleared, three Hordesmen bearing spears beat them in unison against the rock floor in an intricate rhythm. One warrior strode forward, speaking eloquently in some outmoded rhetorical style as he tossed a great battle-axe from hand to hand.

“What language is that?” said Jacob in wonder, for the idiom was so ancient it was alien to him, but before an answer was offered, the spear-bearers, hearing the language of their opponent, beat out another rhythm, summoning three warriors fluent in their enemies’ tongue.

The little reaper ambled forward, using her scythe as a walking-stick, and from the midst of the Horde two skeletons in chain-mail vaulted forward on a twelve-foot pike, the bands in their joints jangling as they landed on the rock behind her.

“Idle threateners!” cried the reaper, her voice as bright as a bell, while the warriors behind her brandished pike and sword. “You stand accused of banding together, that your combined force might challenge the supremacy of the Horde.”

“Feh!” cried the swordsman, and the pike-bearer tapped out a rhythm on the rock, prompting the Horde to chant their Latin motto, which Etienne translated for the benefit of his fellows: ‘The Last Man Standing shall a Hordesman be.’

“Listen to these spindly blowhards!” scoffed Leopold. “Decayed as they are, I doubt they can even swing those weapons.”

Suddenly, the pike-bearer leapt onto the swordsman’s shoulders and dipped his weapon into the ring, skewering the stone-thrower. The little reaper, standing under the midpoint of the pike, propped it up with one hand, and as the pike-bearer dropped from his partner’s shoulders to the ground, holding the end of his weapon, the stone-thrower was launched into the air. The pike-bearer yanked his weapon free, the reaper swept her scythe upwards, and the stone-thrower tumbled to the ground with his stones, bisected.

“Then again,” said Leopold.

“Huzzah!” cried the pike-bearer, booting a bit of would-be ammunition at Remington’s head. “The Horde, supreme: and woe to your team!” He seized the stone-thrower’s torso while the swordsman grabbed his legs, and the two warriors launched the two halves in opposite directions, where they were lost in a wasteland of human detritus.

The three Hordesmen advanced, the swordsman reaching his mark first and swinging for Leopold’s neck. Leopold wrapped his chain around the blade, yanking with all his might in the hopes of dislodging it from the swordsman’s grip. Failing this, he swung his own rusty blade at the swordsman’s wrist, snapping the leather band around it, which did not, as he’d hoped, cause the swordsman’s hand to fall off. The little reaper, while Leopold’s hands were occupied, twirled around and swung her scythe through his middle, and with an indignant yap he fell variously to the ground.

Distracted, Jacob stumbled out of range of the pike-bearer’s jabs, steadying himself on his crowbar as he swatted the air with his scimitar. While he searched his mind for a gambit that would bring him close enough to engage, the little reaper danced to his side. Too late, he realized that the pike-bearer had merely been toying with him to allow her to reach him unopposed.

Her crooked blade swept through him, and the snap of his spine resounded like a snare drum struck in his gut. Though years had passed since he’d felt the cold, something like a chill touched him as his legs toppled down beside him, and then his mind ground to a halt, and the world passed through it like river-water.

Remington ambled forward as pike-bearer and swordsman melted into the Horde, leaving the reaper alone to finish him.