Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey (4 page)

“But you have guilt.”

“Somehow, yes.” He shakes his head and forces a laugh. “You must think I’m crazy.”

“It’s all right,” she consoles him. “I am still bound to you.”

“Bound to me?” He looks around as if an answer to his question is somehow in the air, if he could only find it on the wind.

“Yes, bound. You save me. You kill the wizard. I am bound to you.”

“No, really, you owe me nothing,” he says.

“I do!” she yells with an unreasonable hint of desperation in her voice. “I am bound!”

“Alright, fine—you are bound. Look, be still. You are hurt.”

“My body works. It is strong.” She stands up, falters, rights herself again. “Look, I can fly,” she flutters her wings, falls to her knees, doubles over in pain. “I will walk,” she says, disappointed.

“No you won’t. I’ll carry you,” Heraclix says, reaching down to lift her up onto his shoulder.

Pomp smiles weakly. “Where do we go?”

“Back to Mowler’s apartment.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a purpose, now: to gather what we can find of Mowler’s papers. There are things I want to know.”

“About what?” she asks.

“About myself.”

“Like what?”

“Who I was. Why I am. Who I am.”

Pomp has questions of her own, questions like
what happens when I die?
The prospect of the answer frightens her, mostly because she knows, somehow, that it had almost come to her.

And it could still be revealed.

C
HAPTER
3

T
he stench of sodden ashes rarely fell on Vienna these days. It was not like the past, when rains soaked the smoldering remains of Ottoman campfires and the valleys ran with soot and blood, or when the city was a ballroom filled with Saint Vitus dancers, and stiffened heaps of spent participants vomited smoke up into the sky. Perhaps it was those communal memories—engendered by the lingering smell of the sorcerer’s burned-out apartment—that drove residents to their homes and hovels to take up the morose contemplation of darker times, times before the enlightened despotism of the emperor.

Or, perhaps, it was the presence of the emperor’s private guard, the secretive army within an imperial army, who stole out of the charred ruins bearing stacks of loot-cum-evidence. Their white jackets made them stand out against the black background like ash on burning charcoal or clouds against walls of battlefield smoke. Whatever the reason, the puddle-strewn cobblestone streets were devoid of people save for the soldiers.

Heraclix and Pomp looked at the apartment from an alleyway across the street.

“We don’t dare just walk in,” Heraclix said

“Why not?”

“Some of us can’t just become invisible.”

“I see,” Pomp said.

“And I don’t. Which means the guards won’t either.” Heraclix
paused as the magnitude of the thought struck him. “How strong are you now, Pomp?”

She stood tall, becoming visible so that Heraclix could see her flex her biceps.

“Strong!”

“Good to see it,” Heraclix smiled. “I’ll bet it would be fun to fly in there and steal some things.”

She returned a tiny smile. “That is fun!” She flew off, vanishing in mid-air.

“Get the documents!” he yelled.

A pair of guards turned around in response to his booming, hoarse voice, lowering their bayonets and approaching the alley in which he unsuccessfully tried to hide himself.

Beyond the guards, a man on horseback came into view—a man of some importance, given the rows of medals pinned upon the breast of his perfectly clean, perfectly pressed, perfectly white uniform. He spotted the pair and called out to them.

“What have you found?” His voice was strong with authority.

“A spy, perhaps?” one of the guards said.

“Or a fool,” said the other.

“Carry on,” said the horseman, turning his attention to other matters.

As the horseman turned away, Heraclix recognized the profile. He had seen an illustration of that face before, among Mowler’s documents. He strained his memory to recall the labels associated with the face: “arrogant,” “competent,” “brave,” “superstitious,” . . . and a name, “Graf Von Helmutter, Chief of the Imperial Guard and Minister of Defense.” Heraclix recalled that this man was of particular interest to Mowler. “His lack of fear and plenitude of pride,” the Sorcerer had written, “can both be exploited when the time is right.”

Heraclix thought that, perhaps, Von Helmutter could provide some information on Mowler and on the golem’s own past. He rose to his full height as Von Helmutter’s soldiers drew closer.

“I’d like to speak with the graf,” he said with as much courtesy as he could project through his gravely voice.

The pair stopped, eyes wide. One of them, a red-haired young man, barely a teenager, took a step back, jaw agape.
Such a young,
inexperienced lad
, Heraclix thought.
How could he be a member of the Imperial Guard?

“You,” the other soldier said, “are as ugly as you are huge.” Fear caused his voice to tremble, but he stepped forward, bayonet pointed at Heraclix’s chest. “You come out real nice, okay? Don’t make any false moves and you might not get hurt.” The soldier’s voice became more full of false bravado with each forward step that he took.

Heraclix’s left hand started to clench and unclench uncontrollably. A raw energy coursed through it. The extremity was attached to him, but as he struggled to control it, it felt like it was another being, a separate sentience on the same body.

The soldier was now within
misura
, the striking range of the bayonet. His young companion had sidled up just behind him, ready to offer backup. The older soldier began circling and making tiny, hesitant jabbing motions with his bayonet, trying to move Heraclix out into the street.

The hand loosened, relaxing for a moment.

And just as quickly, it struck out, like a snake, grabbing the older soldier’s wrist and pulling so hard that the sound of cracking bone echoed off the walls. The soldier’s musket clattered to the street as the younger soldier fired his musket.

Heraclix’s shock at his own action nearly matched that of the boy-soldier, who tried in vain to determine how his musket ball, fired at near point-blank range, could have possibly missed its target. The older soldier was in no less shock as he crab-walked backwards on two legs and one good arm toward the crowd of white coated soldiers that was rushing to his aid, muskets at the ready.

The hand shot out again, this time clamping around the boy-soldier’s throat.

Pomp flies into the ruins, looking for things to steal. But the ruins don’t look much like Mowler’s apartment. The street-facing wall is mostly collapsed, and the door is nowhere to be seen. A semicircle of burnt roof is missing, as if a dragon had bitten off the front of the building before breathing fire into it. Most of the floor is covered in deep ash and charcoal. Everything is blackened
with soot, even the remaining wall outside the apartment. There is no furniture, no unbroken glass, no Mowler. Pomp gets closer, looking for any sign of the documents. She finds a half-scorched pile of papers, along with a book, peeking out from under a fallen chimney stone and works to salvage what she can.

She is surprised by someone entering the ruins. A soldier!

His uniform is white with blue lapels, unlike the other foot soldiers Pomp has seen in the neighborhood. A saber is sheathed at his side. He carries no musket. The insignia on his high hat indicates that he is someone special, maybe an officer of mid-rank, an adjutant to someone of great importance.

He is alone and looks around furtively to make sure he stays so.

He smiles as he stoops to kneel on the ground. His smile is genuine and reflects, Pomp thinks, some inner goodness mixed with a touch of lighthearted mischief.

Pomp is instantly curious about this man.

From his pocket he withdraws a pair of dice, knucklebones, dotted black on white. He shakes them in his hand and throws the bones on a flat stone, looking at them in wonderment, as if scrying the numbers for meaning. A pair of ones results.

“Dog throw,” he says, “not a good omen.”

“Two ones are bad,” Pomp agrees. “I will help this good man,” she says, does, flipping one one to two, making three.

“Three?” he says, perplexed, “How very odd!”

He looks around, the mischievous smile slipping from his face, and squints into the ashen gloom, slowly sweeping his eyes around the ruins.

“Who’s there?” he asks.

Pomp sees a touch of fear in his eyes.

He reaches down, grabs a handful of powder ash, and throws it into the air.

Pomp sneezes.

“Aha!” The good-natured smile returns. “Where are you, little spirit? I’d like to see the ghost that tempts lady luck.”

Pomp hesitates, starts to say something, thinks better of it, stops, starts again. Decisions are so hard. She wants, she doesn’t want, she wants, she really wants to, she will . . .

Musket shots ring out down the street.

“Major Von Graeb, come quickly!” someone cries out from just outside the ruins, “Von Helmutter’s orders!”

Von Graeb picks up his knucklebones and runs toward the street. “I’ve got to go,” he says to the air.

But Pomp has already flown.

The boy-soldier went limp, dead before Heraclix could pry his autonomous left hand free with his obedient right.

Three more guards raised their muskets and fired. One ball whirred under Heraclix’s arm, tearing a hole in his cloak. The other two hit him—one on the forehead, another on the chest, and ricocheted off at odd angles, one breaking a nearby window. The three guards looked at each other, momentarily stunned, then quickly gathered themselves and reloaded.

Heraclix, holding one arm up to protect his head, lumbered toward them, emboldened by the surprising deflection of the balls that had bounced harmlessly off of him.

The guards shot again at close range, and again the balls spun off of the monster’s body and into surrounding buildings. Screams rang out up and down the street.

Heraclix waded through the cloud of gunpowder smoke that blotted white the space between. He swatted at the muskets with his right hand, only wanting to disarm them.

They stabbed in unison, twisted the blades, but penetrated nothing, only succeeding in pushing Heraclix back an inch or so.

Heraclix’s left hand shot out, trying to grope past the musket barricade to find a throat. He again swatted at the muskets, this time knocking them from the guards’ grasp.

“Run!” he yelled, not as a threat, but as a warning. He did not want anyone else to be hurt by the renegade left hand.

The guards did not run, but they backed away, drawing their swords and making way for Graf Von Helmutter, who had dismounted his horse and drawn a short silver dagger.

“Back down,” he told the guards, “Cordon off the street.” He flipped the dagger around in his hand, twirling it around his fingers, savoring the prospect of one-on-one combat with a man, a beast, such as this.

“I did not mean to hurt anyone,” Heraclix said to Von Helmutter, “nor do I want to fight with you.”

Von Helmutter’s face remained grim, determined.

“Lies,” Von Helmutter said. “How can any . . . thing . . . so beastly speak anything but lies?”

“I am just a man,” Heraclix said.

“I’ll bet you almost believe that. But, no, you are a Hell-spawned demon.”

Another group of soldiers a dozen strong moved around the pair to block off either end of the street. All doorways and windows, save the burned-out cavities on the ruins of Mowler’s apartment, had been shut, locked, and barred. The guards’ bayonets came down, turning the section of street into a coffin lined with spikes, an iron maiden in which Heraclix and Graf Von Helmutter circled each other, one looking for an opening to strike, the other trying to stop the conflict by giving ground.

“I have been trained by tutors greater than any general to handle your kind,” the graf boasted. Then, quietly, only for Heraclix’s ears: “I know the secrets of eldritch warfare, fiend. I know what can hurt you. You can’t be harmed by mundane weapons,” he shook the blade of his dagger at Heraclix, “but silver cuts on every plane of existence, earthly or demonic.”