Resistance (16 page)

The Master Scolari, utterly taken aback, looked to Lord Guyuk for instructions. The lord commander seemed at a complete loss too, but he raised his giant talons in a show of acceptance. All of his instincts were singing a high hymn to murder. His ichor burned with the need to put down the impudent Thresh. But his intellect bade him to listen to the creature who knew more of human trickery and magick than the entire Consilium of Scolari Grymm.

‘Best heed the Thresh, Scolari.’

*

‘Well that was weird,’ said Dave, hanging up the air phone. ‘Fun, but weird. You think the air strike got them? I think one of ’em seemed to tumble to your cunning plan right there at the end, Compton.’

The crush around the phone broke up as everyone headed back to their seats. Compton hung on with Heath, as ever looking underwhelmed by Dave’s performance.

‘You could have led them on more,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine we got much intelligence from them in the short time you spoke to their commander. And we couldn’t understand a damned word of it. We’ll have to rely on you to recall and translate accurately.’

Compton’s expression left Dave in no doubts about the odds he put on that.

‘May have been enough to get a strike on to them, though,’ said Heath. ‘You can’t put your head out of the window at the moment without getting a buzzcut by a passing combat air patrol.’

‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to put down your beer, Hooper,’ Compton continued as though Heath had not spoken. ‘I need to transcribe as much of that exchange as possible. I just hope you can remember it all.’

Dave stepped around the professor and picked up his half drunk bottle of premium suds. Didn’t even have a decent headspin yet. No way was he going to sit through a Q and A with Compton stone cold sober. He caught the flight attendant’s eye and waved the bottle at her in the internationally recognised signal for ‘more beer please’. As ever, Joy was happy to help.

‘Look, he said a lot of things,’ Dave threw back at Compton. ‘But mostly what he wanted to do was warn us we’re flying into a trap.’

Heath’s face, normally an obsidian mask, blank and unreadable, fell apart for just a moment in surprise. His eyebrows shot up, widening his eyes to comical effect.

‘He did what?’

‘Like I said, man, weird.’

*

The Master of the Ways hurried them toward the rear of the cave. Thresh perceived the floor of the tunnel bending downward toward the Earth’s core, just enough to notice. The hateful sting of daylight – Thresh found that even indirect daylight prickled unpleasantly at his hide – fell away, eventually giving onto the full, comforting darkness of the UnderRealms. And then the dim red-yellow glow and the sulphurous stink of home. The nest of his Horde.

The small party came to a halt on a black basalt outcrop overlooking a pleasingly barren waste studded here and there with sharp outcroppings of rock looking like giant fangs, or maybe Drakon spikes, had erupted from below. Massed formations drilled on the plane below. Legions and even full regiments of warrior Grymm. They had to be Grymm, Thresh knew, because only the Grymm trained that obsessively. A great weight descended on its shoulder plates and squeezed, subtly, but just enough to send a jag of white-hot pain shooting down that side.

‘Explain yourself, Thresh. And I do not wish to hear the babbling of Thresh-Trev’r on this.’

The lord commander turned Thresh around with careful but irresistible force. The training field of the Grymm fell behind, and Thresh craned upward at its superiors. The Commander of Her Majesty’s Grymm, the Master Scolari, and two heavily armed Lieutenants Grymm.

Thresh bowed its head, presenting its neck for the killing in a gesture of submission. The pressure from the lord commander’s talons sharpened, as did the pain. The tip of one claw suddenly punctured hide and a thin trickle of ichor began to flow.

‘Enough of this foolishness, Thresh. I do not need your life. I simply need to know why we had to flee. Although, of course, if we did not have to flee, I shall have your life.’

Thresh shivered with fear. Much greater fear than it had ever experienced in the face of death, which was a constant in the UnderRealms. Thresh knew this down in its meat and bones. Why then this sudden, fearful clutching of its hearts?

‘My Lord Commander, I apologise, but the Dave meant to strike at us as you parlayed with him.’

The Master Scolari spoke up before Lord Guyuk had a chance.

‘But this is rank foolishness, even cowardice,’ he growled. ‘The Consilium has studied closely the reports of the encounter with the human champion. Including yours, thresh.’ The Scolari, Thresh noted, did not deign to address him with the same tonal inflection conferred upon the minor daemon by the lord commander himself, a telling insult. ‘The Dave, while proving himself to be a formidable combatant, fought in the manner of the ancients, drawing on the lore of battle as it ever was and will ever be. He did not ride the iron Drakon. He did not summon nor project the magick fire. He carried a maul into battle and when he was done it was honourably bathed in ichor. He is their champion. He has no need of their magicks.’

Before Thresh could respond, Lord Guyuk withdrew his painful grip, one long claw sliding out of the wound it had made and causing Thresh to stagger with dizziness. Guyuk spoke directly to the senior Scolari Grymm.

‘All true, Master Scolari, and yet the Dave need not have visited treachery upon the remnants of Scaroth’s revengers band and where are they now? What power did he call upon to make their humiliation complete? Certainly not his own strength. We had no reports of him fighting in that final encounter. He called down the talons of the iron Drakon to rake at Scaroth’s thrall.’

‘It is not settled that the Dave did any such thing,’ the Master Scolari retorted. ‘His lieutenants, none of them even remotely possessed of the Dave’s inherent power, are much more likely to have summoned the iron Drakon.’

‘And it is his lieutenants against whom we shall move first. But, Thresh, tell me now how you know of the Dave’s treachery while I entreated with him.’

Desperately wanting to nurse its latest wound, Thresh nonetheless put aside its discomfort. Thresh-Trev’r would have little problem explaining how the government could track a cell phone. Indeed, Thresh-Trev’r had a great many thinkings and conjectures on the subject of exactly how much effort the government spent doing nothing but tracking him, listening to his phone calls, reading his emails, making a long list of every website he had ever visited including the gay ones which he only went to by accident. Thresh was not sure why Thresh-Trev’r was so convinced that his superiors were spying on him; as best Thresh could tell, the calfling had not been a particularly important or impressive member of the human Horde and yet he seemed utterly convinced that his accidental visits to websites where humans coupled in all manner of unusual arrangements was of interest to the human equivalents of Lord Guyuk and the Master Scolari. Probably best Thresh did not draw on the theories of Thresh-Trev’r then.

‘The magick that allows us to converse with the Dave also allows the magicians who made the amulet to locate it,’ explained Thresh. ‘And when located, they can rain down fires. Knowledge of these human magicks only became known to me thanks to the thinkings of the calfling sweetmeats I consumed.’

What a lot of shit, thought Thresh-Trev’r, but Thresh wisely kept that thinking to itself. The Master Scolari’s eyes were almost lost in the deep folds of the sceptical squint with which he received that explanation. But, much to the relief of Thresh, the master did not further question him. Lord Guyuk raised his chin a little to look down his nasal cleft at Thresh.

‘If I understand you, Thresh, you speak of something like a great ballista firing a war shot into the camp of
dar ienamic
because
. . .’
And Thresh could see the lord commander forcing himself, step-by-step, through the thinkings necessary to understand what Thresh was saying. ‘. . . because
. . .
the artillery master has spied the signal flags of his foe and determined from that where to range his shot?’

It was passing strange, but Thresh felt as though it were the teacher, it was the superior, and Lord Guyuk ur Grymm the nestling with a mouthful of egg fangs.

‘In essence, yes, you have the truth of it, my Lord.’

The Master Scolari who had leaned forward to hear Thresh explain himself now stood to his full height, towering far above the little daemon.

‘I do not like this at all, my Lord Commander, not at all.’ He slammed the ironshod butt of his staff on the fused glass ground, where it struck sparks, three times as if for emphasis as he growled, ‘These are matters requiring too much thinking to be entrusted to the likes of daemonum inferiorae such as this creature.’

Thresh bristled, a reaction as alien, unwanted and dangerous as its earlier fear of extinction at the claws of Lord Guyuk. Nothing but a trip to the blood pot could result from challenging even a minor Scolari on a point of learning or interpretation. It was not that Thresh would never have done such a thing in the past, more that such a reaction would simply not have been possible. No more possible than imagining that Thresh could walk under the high sun Above without cloak or cover and hope to survive. What under the earth was happening to Thresh? Was this indignation that burned in Thresh some echo of Thresh-Trev’r’s thinkings? Thresh knew not, but it also knew that to reveal its fears or resentments would mean torture and death. And for some reason, the prospect of torture and death bothered Thresh somewhat more than it had in the past.

‘I propose,’ said the Master of the Ways, who had continued talking while Thresh had allowed its thinkings to wander into dangerous realms, ‘that we test this theory of Thresh by returning to the cave to examine it for any sign of attack by human magicks.’

‘Knock yourself out,’ said Thresh-Trev’r before Thresh could restrain him.

Instantly Thresh found itself knocked to the ground with the master’s staff pressed so deeply into its throat that breathing became all but impossible.

‘You dare snivel defiance at me?’ roared the Master Scolari. He had moved so quickly, in such a disorienting blur of speed and precisely honed violence that Thresh was reminded of the Dave slaughtering the Lieutenants Grymm. It was possible to forget, especially when one’s thickened cranium was not so large to begin with, that all the senior Scolari had once been BattleMarshals of the Grymm. You did not ascend to the rank of marshal, and you did not long survive there, through brute force. But, thought Thresh-Trev’r, you didn’t even get to first base if brute force wasn’t your thing. The Grymm might be the elite of the six Horde clans, but within those legions the warrior Grymm who graduated from battle armour to Scolari robes and staff lived on another, even more rarefied, plane.

‘Forgive me, Master!’ Thresh choked out. ‘It is not the way of Thresh to defy any
superiorae
. It is the thinking of the cattle, inside my own thinkings.’ Thresh moaned. ‘It is like a sunspot canker in my skull, Master Scolari. It makes
. . .’

The pressure on its throat was suddenly relieved as the figure of Lord Guyuk loomed into view and gently rested one claw on the bone plates of the master’s chest, pushing him back just enough to allow Thresh to breathe again.

‘Master Scolari,’ Guyuk began, in surprisingly measured tones, ‘you will recall that this was the very consequence you presumed to exploit by suggesting we have the empath daemon consume that skull meat wherein the Scolari theorised the seat of human thinkings might be found.’

Another gentle push and suddenly the staff was gone and the Master Scolari no longer towered over Thresh, but stood back, looking even more aggrieved, but less likely to do something about it.

‘Your offence is well taken, Master, but ill timed,’ Guyuk continued. ‘Do not take umbrage, take satisfaction, for your theorems have proved out.’

Thresh found itself lifted to its hind-claws once more, where it lowered its head and bared the back of its neck once more. But the Master Scolari offered no further admonition.

‘You are correct, Lord Commander,’ conceded the master grudgingly. ‘I apologise for striking your underling. But I would still test the judgment of this thresh by reconnaissance of the cave.’

‘And it shall be done,’ Guyuk assured him. ‘If only to measure the treachery of the Dave and the power of his armoury. But Thresh convinces me of the urgency of pressing ahead with our own treachery. We must use the cover of the Djinn to thrust deep our hidden blades.’

12

Great titty bars, crude oil and good times were disgracefully thin on the ground in Nebraska. Hence, Dave Hooper had never set foot there. What little he knew of the place he’d taken from the cover of the old Springsteen album. It was like to be cloudy, flat and grey. Life was lived hard there, in a sort of watery, washed-out black and white that reached right back beyond dust bowl images of the Depression and landed on the bones of its ass somewhere around the Civil War. He knew a lot of frackers had moved into the Niobrara play in the west of the state, but that wasn’t Dave’s idea of oil work and, anyway, they were a long way east of that, circling the besieged city of Omaha, flying into a trap.

He turned those ideas over as the Boeing dropped toward the tarmac at Offutt Air Force Base. How long had it been since any American city had been under siege from an enemy force? He couldn’t recall. The Brits had burned Washington in 1812, or something. And he supposed lots of cities were taken under siege in the Civil War, but he’d never been much of a history buff and as he stared out of his window over cultivated fields to the city’s southeast (all the shades of green, and a few brown, freshly harvested) he saw no obvious evidence of siege works or even the enemy force.

Dar ienamic.

Yeah them.

The hour and a half after the dragon
. . .
had dragged on. He snorted at his own wit as he felt the undercarriage deploy. Heath confirmed the air force or NSA or someone had pinned a tail on the donkeys who’d called him on the air phone, and goddamn if they hadn’t put a couple of bunker busters into the side of the hill where the call was coming from. A limestone cavern complex in lower Missouri, deep in some national park. His head spun with wonder at the bureaucratic fire hoops the air force must have jumped through to pull that off. But then, he had to concede as the wheels smoked and screeched on the tarmac, maybe bureaucracy just melted away when you found a regiment of Hunn on your doorstep.

Not Hunn, he had to remind himself. Djinn. Dave, it turned out, knew all about the Djinn, because Urgon did too. To Urgon they were shur-Hunn. Loosely translated, mud people, or subhuman, but only the way Nazis would have called Africans that. To Dave, when he closed his eyes and examined his race memory of the Djinn, they looked pretty much like Hunn to him. Maybe a bit redder of hide, with even flatter, more apelike faces. But Hunn.

Not to Urgon, though. Not to any member of the vast monster clan . . . No the monster
sect
he thought of as the Horde. The Hunn, he understood as soon as thought on it, were just a part of the Horde. One of the six clans. To Urgon, and presumably this Guyuk clown, the Djinn were
dar ienamic
. The Djinn and the Morphum and the Horum and Shakur and Krevish. Just more fucking orcs, all of them. Twelve sects as best he could count. All with their own constituent clans, bloody histories, mythology, feuds and hatreds and internecine bullshit. They reminded him of a bunch of squabbling former Soviet republics. The Chechnyas of Middle Earth.

The captain’s voice came over the PA as they taxied toward the terminal, or whatever the air force had instead of terminals. Big fucking sheds, maybe.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Offutt Air Force Base, where local time is 2.40 pm. Air temperature is a very pleasant seventy-nine degrees, humidity is thirty-eight percent. Weather service predicts a low chance of rain later this evening.’

As Dave wondered what the UV rating was and when sunset would be, the captain thanked them for chartering
Studio Air and wished them well.

‘Go kick some monster ass, people,’ she signed off.

‘Dave?’ It was Boylan, come back to life after burying himself in work for that part of the flight when they weren’t in danger of being eaten by dragons which, thankfully, was most of it. He had his laptops slung across opposite shoulders, the straps creating a bandolier effect, and he carried a briefcase as well as an overnight bag. ‘Dave,’ he said. ‘I have made excellent progress on three fronts. Your tax affairs, your credit card debt and your soon-to-be ex-wife. Considerably more on the first two than the last for the moment, but now we are back on solid ground, and failing a catastrophic fall of the city and scenes of chaotic bloodshed downtown, I mean to advance on that as well, just as soon as I secure a serviced office.’

‘That’s cool, X,’ he said, carefully hoisting Lucille onto his shoulder. It was more than cool. His tax and the black hole of his credit card debt had been festering like an untreated wound for years, forcing him to rely on the mattress and mason jar method of fiscal management. It had been much easier when Baron’s still used paper cheques but ever since they switched to direct deposit it all went to shit. Boylan took him by the elbow, guiding him around the SEALs, who were gathering up black bags and cases full of clanking metal.

‘But Dave,’ he continued. ‘I want you to pause for a moment and imagine what your life would be like without Amex, MasterCard and Visa all chasing you, because my friend, they have abandoned the chase! And not only that, they are competing with each other to place within your possession debit cards to a combined value of more than four million dollars, in return for the usual industry standard endorsement and promo arrangements, which you can leave to me,’ he hurried to add, before slowing again. ‘It won’t be possible to work with all three providers, naturally, but we’ll choose the offer that best amplifies our other market partnerships and, I must reiterate, Dave, it’s important you understand this, that as of right now, you have no credit card debt, no matter which company we go with. They have all wiped all of your liabilities as a gesture of good faith for the coming negotiations and, of course, because to not do so would leave them at a crippling disadvantage
. . .’

The entire monologue was delivered on one gulping breath of air. Boylan sucked in another and was about to resume – ‘As for the IRS, they won’t be bothering us either,’ – when Heath forcefully interrupted him.

‘Time to move, gentlemen.’

They emerged into a warm, cloudy afternoon and a large, busy military base. Combat aircraft patrolled high above while other planes were armed and refuelled on the concrete apron. Fat, double-bladed helicopters hammered at the air, waiting for their turn to disgorge soldiers gathered from who knew where. The men assembled in the big sheds, checking over gear while their bosses, sergeants he figured, oversaw it all. Others unloaded crate after crate of ammunition, distributing it among the soldiers who busied themselves loading magazines. Gunships like the ones he saw down in New Orleans plus heavier helicopters with two pilots were arrayed in a line down at the far end where their crews received a briefing.

‘Our ride is over here,’ Heath said, pointing to a couple of black Ford Expeditions, a cell phone to his ear as they left the Boeing.

‘Carry a lady’s bag, strong man,’ said Emmeline, passing Dave a dark blue canvas shoulder tote which seemed to contain more laptops than Boylan was carrying.

‘No problemo,’ he said. And it wasn’t, except for feeling a bit awkward knowing that part of her wanted to fuck him, but most of her was revolted by the idea.

Compton signed for the vehicles and they piled in. Dave rode in the first SUV with Heath, Emmeline and Zach. Boylan was content to be relegated to the chase car so he could work his cell phones and initiate hostilities against M. Pearson Vietch, attorney at law. Compton had notes to pore over from his debrief of Dave after the conversation with Guyuk and each man maintained an icy silence with the other.

It was still warm for September with green on the trees as they motored down Looking Glass Avenue toward the main gate. With Lucille sat between his legs, Dave took it all in as they sped past a Second World War bomber display and merged into highway traffic headed north.

‘Yes, sir,’ Heath said. ‘We’ll be there, ETA eighteen minutes and yes, we have the asset here with us.’ He put the phone away. ‘Okay, we’re headed to the D-Tac.’

Zach, in the passenger seat up front, held his hand up. ‘Sorry, sir. D-Tac?’

‘An army advanced command post from the Big Red One, their show for the most part. They are set up at a Cracker Barrel just on the southwestern edge of town. First, we’ll feed Dave, make sure he’s up to full strength. The other task will be to meet with this Hunn emissary, or Djinn, or whatever he’s calling himself and see what he wants.’

‘Simple,’ Dave said. ‘He’ll want a quarter to half the population to march into the blood pots. And in return, he’ll let the other half live until he feels like a snack.’

‘What about challenging their leader to single combat?’ Emmeline asked from the back where she sat next to Dave. ‘Worked well last time.’

‘I got a better idea,’ Dave said, leaning forward to poke his head between the two front seats. ‘If they’re sitting out there, doing nothing but keeping the sun off, why not just bomb them?’

Heath frowned, as if the idea had already occurred to him.

‘A kill box has been designated,’ he said, ‘and the air force has strategic assets in theatre ready to service the target.’

‘Translated, that means?’

‘B-52’s,’ Emmeline explained. ‘Loaded with bombs, Dave. Lots and lots of bombs. Some of them smarter than the bloody things they’re aimed at, I’d hazard.’

‘Well that’s good,’ said Dave, sounding hopeful. ‘So, shouldn’t they all be dead now?’

Heath answered as he turned left on to Harland Drive, which became the Strategic Air Command Museum Highway after a minute’s rolling through open fields that gave way to standard issue American suburban housing on Dave’s side of the car. ‘Their emissary – and in case you were wondering, that is what he calls himself – wants to talk to you. About New Orleans.’

‘Well maybe I don’t want to talk to him. Did nobody hear the bit back on the jet where I explained that Guyuk said this was a trap? I’m not a military guy, but doesn’t this sound very fucking trappy to you?’

‘Little bit,’ Zach agreed.

‘You could take your lawyer,’ said Emmeline.

Dave ignored that. ‘So is there some good reason the air force hasn’t reduced the lot of them to monster mist yet? I mean, you know, since you got them in your handy kill box already. Like, seriously, I vote we go with the kill box thing.’

‘Not until we know their intentions,’ Heath said. ‘Especially not after what Guyuk said. If this is all just some underworld war spilling out into our world, Washington feels there’s an advantage to be had from talking to this emissary. Maybe he wants an alliance against the Hunn? Maybe he’s just staging out of our field, same way we do out of little countries who can’t really stop us.’

‘But we can totally stop these guys,’ Dave protested.

‘And we will, with the press of a button. I promise you, Dave, there is more than enough high explosive targeted on that field to kill everything there many times over. But the fact they’re not moving to attack makes Washington think they are serious about negotiating.’

‘They’re serious about avoiding a bitchin’ case of sunburn
. . .’

And then he thought of something.

‘You keep saying Washington, but aren’t you the guys advising Washington?’

‘We’re not the only ones, Dave,’ Emmeline said. ‘And even our advice isn’t necessarily as consistent as it could be.’

He leaped on that.

‘Wait. Is Compton advising them that I have to talk to this emissary? Did that cock chafer sell the Pentagon a line about allies and staging posts and shit? Fuck!’

No wonder the little weasel had hopped into the other car with such enthusiasm.

‘Dave.’ It was Heath. ‘I will be coming with you when you meet the Djinn emissary. We will be covered, don’t worry.’

‘You’re the one who should be worried,’ Dave said. ‘And Compton should be the one coming with me if he thinks it’s such a great idea.’

*

While he’d never been to Omaha, Dave had eaten at Cracker Barrel before. This one, on the edge of a business park overlooking a large swathe of undeveloped prairie at the southern limits of the city, was surrounded by soldiers in Hummers and armoured vehicles. Salted in amongst the olive drab and tan-painted military vehicles were half a dozen police cruisers. Some state cops, some Omaha PD. At a desert tan tent next to the entrance local emergency service personnel stood around drinking coffee out of paper cups and picking at a box of doughnuts that stood open on a folding table. The second SUV, carrying the rest of Heath’s team was forced to park a few hundred yards down the road, delaying the reckoning with Compton. Emmeline volunteered to go fetch them while Heath stopped at the tent entrance and pondered the options for a moment.

‘Come on in with me, Dave,’ he said. ‘We can eat in a minute. Something better than this, I would hope.’

‘I’ll hunt up some lean protein,’ Zach Allen offered. ‘And leafy carbs for a change, Dave. Let’s get to work on the new you.’

Dave snatched a doughnut so quickly as he passed that it disappeared from the box in less than the blink of an eye. Inside the tent a dozen men and women worked at cheap trestle tables that bowed under the weight of the computers and other equipment piled high on them. Two men, one white and one black, leaned over an old-fashioned paper map on a large, low table with fixed bench seating. Dave thought it looked like a barbecue setting pressed into service. They both stood up as the newcomers pushed through the tent flap. The slightly shorter man nodded to Heath. ‘Mr Hooper. Clayton Salas, Nebraska National Guard.’ He extended his hand to Dave, who was forced to switch his doughnut over at hyper-speed and shake the general’s with great care. He assumed Salas was a general from the single star at the centre of his grey, digital-funky looking uniform. ‘We’re glad to have you here, sir. This is General Vincent De Brito from the 1st Infantry Division. He’ll be the combatant commander.’

Dave shook the tall, black general’s hand as well. He counted two stars on De Brito which meant he outranked the other guy, the Salas adjutant dude. They both sported the same weird grey-tan pixelated uniforms. Dave was starting to straighten out this army shit.