The Incorruptibles (24 page)

He looked to the crowd and held out his hands. ‘We happy here. We have good jobs. The Croesus company keeps us all safe from
vaettir
and the infernal influences of the perverted Ruman Emperor and his engineers and warmongers.’

He paced the front of the gallows like an intemperate cat stalking the bars of its cage. ‘But this man, this creature of Rume, came among us. To kill. To interrupt the honest flow of industry! And he brought with him conspirators!’

Croesus’ long finger jabbed at us. Two hundred heads turned as one and stared at Livia and me, framed in the jail window. A woman spat and cursed in a thick tongue. A hunk of muddy ice was chucked at the jailhouse by some hidden crowd member.

‘So, today we take a stand. By executing these conspirators, these—’ He paused here, thinking. ‘– these assassins, we take a stand against Rume and all of its corruption and evilness.’

The crowd turned back to the gallows, and Croesus moved to stand beside the dazed Fisk.

Livia shook her head, and I saw the tears of rage and frustration in her eyes.

Croesus put his hand on the lever that would release the gallows trap. A guard cinched the noose to the side of Fisk’s head so that his neck would snap – a small mercy.

‘By the power invested in me by the good people of Hot Springs, I do condemn this man to death.’ And then, without any more ceremony, he pulled the lever and Fisk dropped beneath the platform.

Livia closed her eyes and hit the window casement with her hand. I don’t know what I was feeling then.

Sorrow, maybe. Anger.

Everything remained silent. I looked away from Livia and back to the gallows and the dark crowd gathered around it, steaming in the hard, cold air. The wanton boys with sticks had stopped their play, and the townsfolk, far from clapping and exuberant at the hanging, remained utterly still.

A dog gave one long, painful wail.

On the gallows, the guards and Croesus peered into the open hole of the trapdoor. Smoke rose.

I touched Livia on her arm, and with a hoarse voice, said, ‘Miss Livia. Something is happening.’

She opened her tear-stained eyes and gasped.

Flames licked up the rope that held the noose and Fisk. Soon the smoke coming from the gallows billowed and the guards and Croesus began calling for water.

And then townsfolk surrounding the platform began to scream in terror.

The flaming rope around Fisk’s neck went slack as he rose. Up through the trapdoor he came, rising up in the air, still tethered around the neck, his arms outstretched as though he’d been crucified. Grinning.

His eyes had vanished, replaced by burning black flames streaming into the air, and he threw back his head and laughed, a booming sound that reverberated off the buildings of Hot Springs, off the slopes of Brujateton. I could feel the vibration of that terrible sound coming through the stonework of the jail floor, shooting through my skeleton. I felt weak, feeling it – weak as though my legs might collapse or my bladder cut loose or I would run gibbering around the cell. It was a sound that blotted out all thought, all reason. A sound like fire, burning away your memory, your kindness, your kinship with your fellow man, and leaving nothing behind except fear and madness and desperation.

He hung in the air, grinning at the screams of the townsfolk, arms outstretched.
There’s nothing left of Fisk now
, I remember thinking. He opened his mouth and it was like looking down a well, or the open bore of a shotgun, or the maw of Hell itself.

The thing that had been my friend and partner Fisk spoke a word, a word I’ve never heard before and I hope I’ll never hear again. It was curdled with hate, twisted by cruelty.

He spoke in the language of Hell.

The horror it caused – I can’t do it justice. If his laugh was bad, the sound of that one utterance was a million times worse. I watched as Croesus’ eyes widened and his hair caught on fire. I think I saw the moment when sanity fled him and, even then, could feel some sympathy for the man.

Even the worst of men didn’t deserve to die that way.

The guards lifted shotguns and drew six-guns but the weapons would not fire – not against Fisk and the terrible thing he carried with him, carried in him. The men threw down their guns to flee, but it was too late.

Once the word had been uttered, the flames spread like an explosion. Out from his eyes, out from the open bell of his mouth, out from the burning noose around his neck. Out from the burning
daemon
hand beneath it.

Townspeople ignited. They ran to and fro, some dropping to roll in the mud. The gallows became a pillar of fire rising to the heavens, licking at Fisk’s feet as he hung in the air, still with that awful grin splitting his face. The backwash of heat hit me, stinking of brimstone and sulphur and corrupted flesh. The stench of Hell.

Fisk descended, through the flame and smoke, hovering in the air, his arms still wide in cruciform. His eyes burning incandescent with dark flame. Smoke poured off his body.

But he smiled. He smiled.

And saw us.

He swept forward, the smoke and flames trailing from him like a robe. Upon his head was a crown of fire and in his hands were a sword of fire and an obsidian sceptre of coalesced smoke.

And he was so happy.

‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you two,’ he said. And he raised his sword, bringing it down in a fiery arc.

There was a tremendous crack, and we – Livia and I – were flung away from the jail wall as it was pulled asunder. Stonework exploded as though it were straw, and the sound was as cacophonous as the world being born into existence from the mind of Ia.

I never passed out of consciousness, not when Fisk floated through the breach in the jail wall, not when he looked down upon us with eyes so terrible, framed in flame and bearing infernal accoutrements.

And he laughed.

‘We’re running a tad behind schedule,
friends
,’ he said. ‘I must become whole.’

My body was lifted up by an unseen hand, and I felt myself moving through the superheated air, out under the sky. The pressure was unbearable and I felt the breath being pushed out of my lungs, my ribs cracking like kindling. In the air I could smell the scent of human flesh burning, hair and clothing and meat all mixed together in a charred greasy odour – fatty and rank and stinking like some charnel house that had caught flame – that clung to my nose and clothes. I opened my eyes. Livia was hanging suspended, too, awake and looking at Fisk with her eyes wide and mouth a grimace.

I thrashed and squirmed as we floated out and away, past the inferno of gallows, past the burning corpses of the townsfolk, and beyond, to the centre of the main street.

And then, as we hung ten feet above the slush of the street, Livia threw up her leg, kicking the hem of her dress high. When it fell, she held her shotgun in her hand and had it pointed at Fisk’s face.

‘Put us down.’

Fisk – or the Crimson Man – laughed again. He was having a high old time.

‘As you wish, madam,’ he said, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

We fell.

Titus and Reeve appeared in the smoke and helped Livia to her feet. It seemed the whole world was aflame, and I couldn’t stop myself from coughing. It was as though some
imp
billowing soot and flame had lodged itself in my chest and would not let me stop hacking.

I felt a soothing hand on my arm and was surprised when Samantha lifted me to my feet with strong hands.

‘We must get to the horses now!’ she cried. ‘Before the stables catch flame!’

She dragged me across the street to where the air was clear. I gained my breath long enough to look around.

There was no one left alive in Hot Springs save our small group.

I shuddered.

‘Come,’ Titus said. ‘We must hurry.’

Fisk lay unconscious on the ground. Gone were the crowning flames, the robe of smoke, the sword and sceptre of fire. Fisk looked very small lying there in the muck of the main street.

Reeve picked up Fisk as easy as hefting a sack of potatoes and slung him over his shoulder. He trotted off, and we followed after. A merry little party we made, half-running through the remains of a burning town.

When we arrived at the stables, Samantha stopped. I looked from her to the puzzled faces of Titus and Reeve.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘The doors. They’re wide open. We closed them before the hanging.’ Reeve pulled his pistol. ‘We were going to shoot down Croesus and his guard on the gallows but the guns wouldn’t fire.’ He spat on the ground. ‘That
thing
didn’t want ’em to.’

Livia said, ‘You all would have died.’

Reeve grunted. ‘Aye, ma’am. That we would have. But I weren’t going to let them take a Ruman centurion without a fight.’

‘Fools,’ Livia said, but her smile belied her words.

‘But this ain’t right,’ Titus said, and he withdrew his six-gun and peered into the stable.

The horses were fully tacked and agitated, nickering in their stalls. Something was wrong.

When we approached the wagon, the trouble became plain.

The bodies of the stable boys lay upon the ground. They’d been torn asunder. The hay around their bodies had soaked up their blood.

The wagon was empty.

Agrippina had found her freedom.

TWENTY-SIX

We put the burning ruin of Hot Springs behind us and followed the trail up Brujateton. Samantha had wanted to bury the dead, but Titus said, ‘Ma’am, you’re a kind soul, but that would take weeks. You think
he
will give us that time?’ He jerked a thumb at the wagon where Fisk was being carried, unconscious.

Fisk had been unconscious since Livia had threatened him with the shotgun and he’d let us fall.

‘When do you think he’ll wake up?’ Titus asked.

Livia, looking very weary, gritted her teeth and said, ‘Let us be happy he’s not awake now. And that he still breathes.’

Samantha frowned and said, ‘It takes enormous energy to do what he did.’ A worried look crossed her plain, wide features, and I drew Bess alongside her. We were in the shadow of Brujateton’s peak, and it was cold. It would be night soon but none of us had wanted to camp among the corpse fires of Hot Springs.

‘What is it, Samantha?’

‘No minor
daemon
could do what Fisk did. I think Beleth might have—’

‘He loaded the deck, didn’t he?’ I said.

She nodded, very slowly. ‘I fear so.’

‘This is just getting better and better,’ I said. ‘And Fisk?’

‘The Crimson Man, as you call him, expended a lot of his power in the … the event. He won’t disappear, but it will be a while before he’s back to full strength.’

‘So, we’ll get Fisk back for a little while?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

Reeve whistled. ‘Be one doozy of a hangover our man will have.’ He turned his horse and rode on, up the slope.

That night we found a flat promontory rimmed in firs and made camp. Wind had whipped the ground clean of snow, and brushwood was plentiful. It was agreed that one of the five of us would keep watch at all times – that we’d sleep in turns – and we found a break in the firs where we could find some relief from the biting gusts coming down from the peak of Brujateton.

Agrippina was out there, somewhere.

I don’t know how I felt about her then. Part of me thought of Agrippina and her brethren like intelligent animals – bears or cougars, even – having been trapped by man and tortured. Maybe driven mad. There’s just no telling with the stretchers. Their minds work differently. Without the influence of silver or holly their incorruptible flesh never dies, so they assume the immortal aspect of nature and the land itself, as tall and unknowable as the mountain, as swift as the river, as deadly as hoarfrost. They make me feel young, by comparison, the elves. They’re the teeth of the earth, come to eat the living, and they’re as hungry and pure as fire.

From somewhere out there, she watched us.

Fisk awoke in the darkest hours of night.

I was on watch, and a thin, high layer of clouds wreathed the moon and obscured the stars. The firs whined and thrashed in the wind coming off Brujateton. He coughed a few times and rolled the blankets and tarp covering him away from his head and sat up.

I must say I’d seen him looking better. He rubbed his face and ran a tongue over cracked lips.

‘Water.’

I gave him a canteen and he drank until it was empty and then threw it back to me.

He sucked in a sharp pained breath, put a hand to the back of his head where his hair was matted with dried blood.

‘You remember anything?’

He nodded. ‘All of it.’ He scooted down the wagon’s bed until his legs dangled off the end. ‘Except for after the fall – when he let me go.’

Fisk sniffed and looked at the wagon bed, then glanced at me questioningly.

‘While we were in jail and the others were trying to figure out some way to prevent your death, the stable boys decided to take a peek under the tarp.’

Fisk cursed and wrapped his arms around his body.

‘They think they were rescuing a princess or something?’ He spat again and shivered. ‘It’s cold as shit on a shingle, Shoe.’

He sat that way for a long while, staring into the darkness, his arms wrapped around his chest, covering the
daemon
hand resting above his heart.

‘Oh, damn, pard. I’m in over my head,’ he said at last.

‘He pushing on you now?’

‘Some. I can feel him.’ He uncrossed his arms and took up the
daemon
hand in his own. He was quiet for so long I thought he’d fallen back asleep or passed into a trance. He looked up and said, ‘He’s tugging on me, Shoe, ready to go. North. North and west.’

He pointed into the black firs ringing in the camp. ‘That way. She’s that way,’ he said and dropped his arm.

I sat by him on the wagon bed. It was cold, and the wind didn’t help anything.

‘Listen, pard. Come first light, we head out. Leave this wagon, take the horses and ride hard as we can.’ I patted his knee. ‘We’ll get to Isabelle and do what we need to do.’

He cocked his head back at the empty wagon. ‘You don’t have your girlfriend no more.’

‘Right. Not much we can do about that now.’

He looked around. ‘Livia? How is she?’

‘She’s had it bad, fearing for you, truth be told. You two never really had it easy, did you?’

From inside his jacket, he withdrew a tobacco pouch and a paper and began to roll a smoke. But his hands shook so badly, I took the pouch from him and twisted the tabac for us both.

‘I’ll get Livia,’ I said. I moved to the embers of the fire, pulled a burning branch, and lit my cigarette. ‘I think she’s got some heavier clothes for you.’

He nodded.

When I scratched at the tent Livia was instantly awake. She rolled upright, and I heard Reeve and Samantha shift in their bedding. She appeared in the flap and said, ‘He’s up?’

A few moments later she reappeared in full winter garb, holding a large heavily furred coat and gloves.

‘He’s over there.’

I smoked my cigarette near the fire and couldn’t help but see their wordless reunion. She went to him, coat in hand. He sat on the wagon bed, his head down. She stopped and stood before him and waited like that until his face came up, streaming with tears. I was amazed at that – seeing tears on Fisk. He was a killer, born and bred. But whether he wept, for himself, or what he’d done, or where he found himself, I didn’t know.

She placed the heavy coat in his lap and put her hand to his face and he latched onto it like a drowning man to a line. He put it to his cheek and kissed the palm.

She pressed in, kissed him, and the look on her face was as inscrutable as I’ve ever seen.

My cigarette was down to the butt, so I flicked it away into the night, and went into the tent to get what sleep I could before the break of dawn.

We scuttled the wagon the next morning and packed the tent and the rest of the oats and ammo on Bess. I took a pony, even though I didn’t want to, and we rode hard north for the next three days.

It was overcast and had began to snow again. In the day, Fisk was back to normal, calm – silent, even. But at night the Crimson Man would turn the screws on him, and Fisk would become restless and antsy, prone to cursing, or worse – laughter. None of us wanted to be reminded of the events in Hot Springs.

Finally, we came into a shallow valley before ascending the other side up and up into a forest of gambels, and I spied what looked like smoke tracing a faint path through the air, coming from high up in the V where two peaks met.

‘Look there,’ I said to Fisk, pointing. ‘That pass.’

His eye rolled and began to smoke, as though matching whatever fire burned on the heights. ‘We must go. She is there,’ he said, his voice not human.

I was frightened to see how fast he had changed. He was gone, and the Crimson Man seethed and burned.

Fisk rode ahead, and Livia kicked her horse to catch up.

I waited for Samantha. With the events of Hot Springs and the rigours of the trail, I had remembered something that I needed to ask. ‘You were saying Beleth duped us,’ I said once she pulled next to my horse.

‘I think so.’

‘Then if it ain’t some minor
daemon
kicking around in there, who is it?’

Samantha scowled the majority of her time in the saddle, but the look on her face this moment was different. Thoughtful. Maybe a little preoccupied.

‘There’s a whole miserable cast of
devils
and
daemons
that we, as engineers, can draw up.’ She sighed. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

We rode on for a while, following the path in the snow that Fisk and the black had carved out for us.

‘Everything has a counterpart. Many counterparts.’ She waved one gloved hand at the mountains. ‘All of what you know is seen as if through a veil that’s been drawn over your eyes, and if you could just go a little …
sideways
… you could see everything, all of nature and mankind – you could see it differently. There are infinite worlds stacked like parchment upon one another.’

I nodded even if I might not have understood.

‘But things cross over,’ she said.

‘
Devils
.
Imps
.’

She shook her head. ‘Not originally. Think bigger.’

‘What? Elephants? Shoal aurochs?’

She laughed, but it was short and bitter. ‘You are
dvergar
and have lived for countless years, right?’

‘I wouldn’t say
countless
. But I am older than anyone here.’

‘When your mother was young, had she heard of Hellfire and raising devils?’

I thought about it for a long while. Shaking my head, I said, ‘No. That came with the Rumans, she always told me. Mam used to talk about when the world was new and there were no guns – no way for any man nor beast to force a
dvergar
from our mountain. She always kept with the old gods, the gods of tree and stone.’

Samantha looked toward the mountaintop for a long while, as though thinking, choosing her words. Finally she said, ‘Not here, but very far away on the other side of the world, the first engineer came into the world by piercing the veil.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Before then there were the old gods – Mithras, the Pater Dis, Veneris, the twins. The others. And even older spirits, the numem that drove life, the gods of the house. The gods of rock and stone.’

I was having a hard time following. I tugged on the pony’s reins, drawing myself to a stop. After a bit of trouble, Samantha reined in her horse.

‘What are you telling me here, miss?’

‘You need to know the truth, at least. Of the
daemons
. Because they have your friend in thrall.’

‘You know about all this? How it came about?’

She nodded. ‘I was schooled at the College of Engineers and Augurs in Rume. I have much knowledge.’

I didn’t know what to say to that so I said nothing and waited for her to continue.

‘His name was Emrys and not much is known about him, but he managed to marshal the numen and put a pinprick in the fabric of worlds. And something came through.’

‘What came through, Samantha?’

‘Ia, the Stranger.’

‘No.’

It was lies she told.

‘There’s no doubt. Emrys had apprentices. I’ve read their journals. They went insane, to a man, but their accounting was thorough, if garbled and crazed. Ia came through, a creature of darkness.’

‘No.’ I slapped my leg. ‘Ia is light. Ia is the good lord who welcomes us into the afterlife and judges our souls with the Pater Dis at his side. He might be hard but he is fair.’

She looked at me sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ilys. But that is not true. Ia came through and scourged the land, caused a century of disease and despair and darkness.’

‘Scourged?’ I laughed. ‘Then where is he? Why isn’t he known? Where is this scourge?’

She sighed again. ‘This happened nearly two thousand years ago. And on the other side of the world.’

‘No.’

‘He came through and laid all the countries of the world to waste for ten years. No army could stand before him, no weapon hurt him. By all accounts, Ia was a creature of unbelievable scale. He caused the interregnum mundus. The dark age.’

Shit
, was all I could think then.
Shitfire
.
Ia damn this heifer straight to Hell
. I felt like I rose and sank all at once. I wanted to punch the woman’s fat moon-face. I wanted to knock her to the ground and have my horse prance upon her bones until she breathed no more.

But I didn’t. I breathed deep and tried to take it all in.

‘And then, after deaths innumerable and corpse-fires as high as the sun, he withdrew upon himself, becoming smaller and smaller. Some said to sleep. Others said to wait like a fisherman with a net, between mankind and the stars, fishing for our souls when we die.’ She shivered. ‘East, far east, in a blasted land called Ombra Terra, he lies sleeping. That is Ia.’

‘It don’t make sense, woman. None at all. Why do the Rumans bring temples to him from overseas? They come from Latinum with their priests and temples and preach goodness. Good deeds and kindness.’

‘Somewhere in history, it all got mixed up. Once engineers learned how to summon
daemons
through the fabric of worlds through the pinprick Emrys created, it was easy to recast Ia into a benevolent force, if only for political reasons. And to set all the
daemons
in opposition to Ia.’

‘Don’t make sense, woman. None.’

‘It’s hard to come to grips with, and it’s knowledge the College of Augurs and Engineers are privy to and not many others. Maybe the royal family.’

‘Okay, say it’s true. You’re telling me that the Ruman royals would get into bed with something that damned evil?’

She threw back her head and laughed, a rich throaty sound. I could see Sam’s back teeth in her wide mouth.

When she got a hold of herself, she said, ‘I’m sorry, Shoestring, but you obviously have never been to Rume. Your opinion of patricians is influenced by Cornelius, who is among the best of them. Rumans getting in bed with
evil
?’ She chuckled again. ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Consider the westward expansion.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s dependent on Hellfire.’

She had a point, but I couldn’t leave it there. ‘If Hellfire is so bad, how come you’re training to be an engineer? If Rume is so corrupt, why are you working with the Rumans?’