Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong) (8 page)

Alice smiled at him as he prattled on about his hunting and served herself seconds. She had to make sure she ate everything she could while she had the chance. If tomorrow Aaron decided he wanted Chelsea, she might not ever find herself here again.

She studied his profile as he looked out over the city. His jaw line was particularly sharp, and she could see the muscles of his shoulders through his shirt.

He’s so beefy.

Beefy was the kind of physique that Molly liked.

A beefcake. I could get used to that kind of thing. But Molly’s right, I can’t just give myself to him. No matter how much I like him, he’s got to get me a Citizen nomination first.

When their meal was done they left the balcony together. Alice tried to sit down on one of the couches as they entered the parlor room, but Aaron shook his head.

“I’ve got to go out today. We’ve got to try and catch something. Thank God for Julian, eh?”

“Thank God,” she mumbled, reluctantly passing by the cushioned divan.

He tried to kiss her at the bottom of the Fore’s stairs. She dodged him, but he tried again in the waiting room. This time he caught her, and she let him go on for a moment until his hand reached up for her chest.

“Easy tiger,” she teased him.

He shook his head. “I just don’t get you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

He rolled his eyes at that.

She leaned forward, pecked him on the lips, and pushed through the door curtain to exit the Fore. He adjusted his shirt and pants and came after, heading towards a group of his hunters. She spanked him on the butt as he started to walk away.

He jumped and gave a little yelp, obviously not expecting that.

His hunters laughed, and one called out to him. “You alright there, sir?”

Aaron shook his head and smiled. “Great. Thanks for your concern.”

“See you later, sweet-cheeks,” she called after him, drawing more laughter from the hunters.

He’s adorable when he smiles.

“There are sixty-four squares in a chess board,” Galen had told him, “thirty-two light and thirty-two dark. On top of those squares you will find infinity.”

Galen spoke of the game chess in the way that Father Klein talked about Jesus, but Arturus wasn’t falling for it. Galen talked about
everything
like Father Klein talked about Jesus. It must be Galen’s personal opinion, Arturus figured, that every activity contained within it some sort of transcendent, numinous, and all-encompassing wisdom.

It had been Arturus’ suggestion to find several different types of stone for Michael Baker to pick from. It had seemed a sensible idea at the time. As he wandered the wilds of Hell in search of rare and beautiful types of Hell rock, he began to regret his decision.

The black marble with red veins was the hardest to find, and it was this kind of stone which he was gathering now. Even after he found a few patches, he still couldn’t find a room where he could mine it safely. He finally settled on one, although he would have rejected it if the rock had been more common. The black marble was only on the back wall, so he had to view the entrance of the room out of the corner of his eye. The entrance itself was at the end of a long hallway, so he would have plenty of time to notice something if it started coming after him. He paused every few minutes to listen, just in case.

This part of Hell was dead quiet.

He continued chipping away and cursed when the brick he was working on broke in two.

I hope he doesn’t like this kind.

He thought this, but quickly changed his mind. He had already decided that if he was going to be making a chess set over the next few months, then it was going to be the most beautiful chess set that had ever been created. Surely, the black marble with red veins would help make the most beautiful board.

He stopped after making some progress on
the second brick.

There was some kind of noise, barely audible.

A distant rumble.

He put down his pick and placed both of his hands on the marble, feeling the sound as a vibration through the stone. He waited for a few moments and the sound died away.

Settling.

Galen had taught him that the force of the labyrinth’s stones weighing down on themselves would cause them to shift from time to time. He waited for a moment and was about to start mining again when the settling returned.

Rick didn’t call it settling. He called it thunder.

He heard a great crack, which was followed by the distant grinding and creaking of stone. The walls vibrated again, but this time more fiercely.

“They travel along fault lines,” Galen had told him once. “You can tell when you’re on one when you hear it getting closer and closer.”

Arturus remembered being terrified of that. As a child it had been his pet fear.

He held his breath and listened further.

The sound came again, but it seemed farther away.

Good!

He let his breath go and waited even longer. He could feel his own heartbeat in his chest.

The next quake was so quiet that the only way he knew the thunder had come again at all was because of the slightest shaking of the wall.

The sound did not seem like it was returning.

It has passed me by
.

Galen would undoubtedly go ranging to make sure that no chambers nearby had been damaged. He hoped all was well because he liked their home. He wouldn’t want to have to find a new one. That, and they’d leave Alice behind.

“Don’t make us leave,” he begged the stone.

The half brick he’d mined already would be just fine, but Galen had taught him that he shouldn’t make compromises after he had decided on how to do a thing.
He paused at times to listen for more settling while he finished the new brick.

Nothing.

He placed the brick in his pack and shouldered it, anxious to return home.

There was a man in the shadows.

Arturus drew his pistol.

“Who are you?” he shouted.

The hallway that led into this room was long and dark. The man had made it almost the entire distance without Arturus noticing.

I was too busy listening to use my eyes.

“Who are you?” he shouted again, and then remembered his training. “Declare yourself. I’m Arturus, a hermit near Harpsborough.”

The man did not answer, but continued walking forward, slowly and deliberately.

“Declare yourself. If you do not answer, I will shoot.”

He thumbed the
back the hammer, noticing that the barrel of his pistol was shaking. It never did that in shooting practice.

The man
passed through the entryway. The rot smell hit Arturus at the same moment that the room’s light illuminated the figure.

The corpse’s face was grey, the eyes black with long since clotted blood. Its movements were smooth, but slow. It didn’t seem to have the stiff legged walk of the corpses Arturus had seen in the past.

Arturus fired once. The report of the .38 was far louder than even the thunder had been.

Despite his nerves, the bullet had struck true. The thing’s head snapped back
, and it toppled over. The bullet had caved in the bones on the right side of its face, and its brains and clotted blood were leaking out onto the floor.

“You’ve got bigger things to worry about than the falling of the sky,” Galen had said.

Is he ever wrong?

Arturus waited to see if the thing would move. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t, but it didn’t hurt to make sure. Then, slowly, keeping an eye on the stilled corpse, he stepped over it. He looked down the long hallway, his pistol still drawn and held at eye level. He took a breath and started walking. Devils were often drawn to gunshots, he knew.

But people are too.

He
thumbed down the hammer, as Galen had trained him, to make sure that he didn’t shoot another human being. He searched the area thoroughly, but couldn’t find any more corpses. He didn’t holster his gun until he made it home.

The quake had driven the people of Harpsborough into the church. Alice was struggling to see in from where she stood outside the building’s heavy double doors. Nearly all five hundred of the villagers were crammed within that structure’s walls. The rest, save those on guard duty at the village’s entrance, were gathered on the steps, peering over the shoulders of their compatriots and through the doors to try and catch a glimpse of the men inside. The only parts of the church that were not crowded were the first four pews, whose stone benches had been reserved for the Citizens.

She noticed Kara standing just ahead of her at the doorway.

“What’s he saying?” Alice asked.

“That’s Father Klein,” Kara answered, “he’s speaking now. You missed Baker. He says that there’s nothing to worry about. Says it happened a few years ago. Says Hell trembles all the time.”

“Hush,” said another man on the steps, “I can’t hear.”

Kara wasn’t the only person silenced by his words, and Alice found that she could now hear the Father speaking, though just barely.

“You have viewed this as a bad sign. As a bad omen. You feel that the hunger that has come upon us is a punishment. That times are bad and that we are in famine. I tell you that is a lie. We hav
e
. .
.
” the next few words were drowned out by a man’s cough, “that quaking you heard, that glorious thunder, is the benevolence of God. He has turned His eye upon this part of Hell. We have been blessed, truly, for the great society that we have built. For those of us who have honored and feared God even in this distant realm of damnation, I call to you now—”

“Wish the windbag would speak louder,” Kara muttered.

“Hush!” several people responded.

“The devils are few, and you lament. The devils are thick, and you lament. Take the fewer, it is your blessing. There is enough food to feed us. Few of us die on our ranges. Thank God for that! Surely, the weight of God’s eye has driven out our enemies. It has bent the very stones of Hell. The wrath of God will not crush us, the Lord be praised, it will crush them! It will crush the men who follow in Maab’s footsteps. It will crush the men who call the Infidel their man. But it will not crush us.

“Rather, let us turn to each other. It is a time of great need and great prosperity. Instead of fighting the devils, we must now find accord with ourselves. We must love ourselves. There is enough food to feed us. We must share it, and stop hoarding. We must—”

“Seems like the Citizens hoard the most!” a man called.

“Silence.” That was Aaron, and his voice boomed loudly enough to be heard clearly outside the church. “You know full well that there’s a vote to be had in the Fore about that.”

“For your hunters, not for us.”

Kara shifted back and forth, trying to see around one man’s head. Alice swore she smelled Massan on her.

“My hunters hunt for you too,” Aaron was saying. “Now I don’t want that thunder to scare anyone. My men are working with a few of the hermits, Galen included, to search for the damage. Galen’s pretty far out in the direction we think the quake came from, and he said there wasn’t any cracking out their way. I’m told by Father Klein, who’s been here longer than any of us, that if there’s no cracking then there’s no danger.”

Alice shrugged her shoulders and wandered away from the church, leaving Kara behind. A few of the others followed her.

“You don’t look worried,” one of the men who had hushed Kara said to Alice.

She laughed and shook her head. She was worried, but she hadn’t been waiting for the town meeting. No Citizen was going to tell the villagers what was really going on.

It was the truth she wanted, and she intended to get that from Aaron.

Arturus was still shaking in the battery room as he removed the black marble brick from his pack. One of his ears was ringing a little from the sound of his gunshot.

“Galen,” the warrior declared his approach from outside the home.

Arturus could hear the crunching of the gravel beneath the man’s feet.

“Arturus,” he responded. “I’m home.”

After a few more crunches, Galen entered the room and moved towards their provisions closet.

“I shot a corpse today,” Arturus said.

Galen stopped rummaging long enough to turn back and flash a smile at him. “Well, good for you. Make sure you visit it again when it turns to dust. Mancini’s brew could use it I’m sure.”

“It almost surprised me. I was in a room on the end of a long hallway, working on the stone. It covered one hundred or so feet without me noticing it.”

“That’s not good,” Galen said, his voice echoing out from the supply closet. “Why do you think it got so close to you before you noticed?”

“I was listening, really hard. I think I was scared by the settling.”

Galen came out with two pieces of flatbread, some dried dyitzu meat, and a right angle leveler. “You didn’t hear it?”

“It moved silently. Smoothly too.”

“The old ones get like that. They start out stiff and uncoordinated, but give them long enough, and they move as smoothly as silk. Did it touch you?”

Galen was stuffing his food and the leveler into his pack.

“No, sir,” Arturus answered.

“You should probably wash your clothes and weapons. And try not to die in the next couple of days, just in case.”

Arturus laughed.
“What are you getting ready for? Are you going out again?”

“Yes, but not far.” Galen put his Heckler and Koch MP5 upon the marble counter and started to disassemble it. “I’ve been speaking with Harpsborough. I’m going to go out with some of their hunters and make sure there are no settling cracks.”

“You know Rick hates it when you clean your guns on the cooking counter.”

Galen nodded. “That’s because he has to clean it up.”

“Can I go with you?” Arturus asked suddenly.