The Code War (36 page)

Even now he could see some of them
weighing up their chances, doubting the rumours about her, thinking
that maybe they could catch her alone later in the night and force
themselves upon her.

They'd be stupid to try. She could snap
them in two as easily as breaking a match. Even a gang would stand
little chance.

'She
's
in, dammit, she's in,' shouted Bezejel raucously to the adoring
crowd. 'We've guided that woman into Brother surer than a Pecheneg
arrow into a Byzantine eye. This is more exciting than watching
Scythian heads torn from their shoulders with a shredded shield.
Who can stand against us?' She was on her feet now. 'WHO CAN STAND
AGAINST US?'

Another huge cheer assailed the
rafters while hands al
l around the room
held up jugs of diesel in grateful salute. She looked around her.
'Come here Holzman you maggot-eating Schwabian goat-molester. Come
here you great wart hog.' Bezejel grabbed Holzman by his collar,
pulled him bodily off his chair and kissed him full on the lips.
But the next moment she swiped him on the side of his head with her
left hand sending him crashing to the floor.

'Don't touch me again,' she
shouted at the prostrate form in fury. Kodrob dropped from his
chair and threw his body in front of Holzman, protecting his squad
membe
r. 'I'll take care of him ma'am.
I'll punish him.' He half-pushed and half-dragged Holzman out of
the way and sat him on a distant table before returning to the bar.
It wouldn't do for Kodrob to absent himself from Bezejel's side at
this stage of the party. All he could do was hope that the storm
had passed and Bezejel's fiercesome exuberance would
abate.

There was a wide berth around Bezejel
now and even she seemed to realise she had gone too far. 'More
drinks, on me,' she shouted and this time the cheer was slightly
less loud than before as demons acknowledged her gesture out of
fear but deigned to meet her eye.

'Ma'am, I can't thank you enough for
your leadership,' said Kodrob obsequiously, looking for a way to
calm her down. 'We've rarely known such success as you have brought
us. Holzman just got carried away, that's all.'

'I don't hold it against him,'
said Bezejel defiantly.

'Thank you ma'am.' Kodrob glanced
around him and saw Lafarge, Zhivkin and Pu Gash looking anxiously
his way. He winked at them that all was fine then turned back to
Bezejel. 'Ma'am, this may not be the right time and place to
discuss this, but if we look forward to the rest of the project,
there is still much to do.'

'This is a perfect rime and pace,'
mumbled Bezejel who had herself drunk plenty and was beginning to
show it.

'Zhivkin has approached me with an idea
that I believe is worthy of consideration. It involves giving the
arrogant angels,' he paused to turn his head and give an obligatory
spit on the floor, 'a bloody nose that they won't forget in a month
of Hallowe'ens. It will need co-ordination and planning. May I come
and talk to you about it tomorrow when we've got some Hades coffees
in front of us?'

Bezejel looked at Kodrob and for
the first time he noticed the abject misery in her eyes. Bezejel
was lonely, he realised. Like all of them. But she was a female in
a wholly male environment and the only way she knew how to cope
with male company was either to dominate and hurt them or else use
them for pleasure and then destroy them. In her current mood she
was very dangerous indeed and could easily turn on him,
thoughtlessly, in a furious rage.

From the doorway came a sudden
hubbub followed by a loud cheer and a stamp of feet. Demons were
rushing to the exit in excitement as a voice shouted 'Banshees at
the ski jump, it's a spectacle.' Soon more voices were shouting
'Banshees at the ski jump' and 'Come on lads'.

It was just the distraction Kodrob
needed.

'Come on ma'am, let's see this,' he
said. 'It'll be good for our spirits.'

Bezejel rose from her seat and they
followed the crowd outside.

A few hundred yards from Naxela's
squawhouse lay a volcanic lava plain in-between where the Slothmire
and Miser's Folly fingers joined the Pentacurse region. The
flatland steamed and simmered in the
dim
light of Inferno's atmosphere. Here and there in the plain, the
barely solid crust on the molten rock would open up for a minute or
so exposing the flowing red magma underneath. Clouds of sulphur
spewed upwards from the vents and drifted lazily across the torn
landscape towards the fingers. The plain was a couple of hundred
feet lower than the finger promontories and a steep embankment led
down to its tempestuous red and black bubbling surface. In one
place the embankment had been worn smooth, like a slide, and at the
foot of the slide, whether through natural erosion or through the
deliberate working of demons' hands - no-one could remember which -
there was a hockey stick-like short upward incline in the rock. The
whole resembled an Olympic ski-jump.

An armed unit of jager imps had
captured a foraging party of banshees and was preparing to roll
them down the slide. Banshees were lower-caste female demons who
had been unable to obtain work in a squawhouse, liquor shed or
roadside shebeen or even one of the mean flesh farms that served
the needs of undiscerning male demons. They banded together in
sisterhoods of up to a hundred strong and roamed the remoter
districts of Inferno to rob the unwary.

They also launched daring co-ordinated
attacks against buccaneers and marauders, robbing them of their
captured loot after they had relaxed their guard upon returning to
Inferno from a scavenging trip. In this way they earned the enmity
of all Infernals from the lowest to the highest. On this occasion
an entire commando of banshees had been captured by jager imps
after an ambush they set had been observed and pounced upon. The
banshees had been taken prisoner and brought, moaning and
screeching as banshees do, to the ski jump site. Now the group,
over fifty females strong, were bound and perched on the edge of
the ski jump having been trussed up in balls and bound tight with
sargasso seaweed ties. Cahuatl, a former Aztec chieftain and leader
of the jager imps now sent his troopers around the crowd demanding
a half pint of diesel fuel from every demon who wanted to watch the
spectacle. Most paid up and only a few were reluctantly turned
away, out of funds.

Watching the scene, Bezejel had
considerably perked up and lost her maudlin tearfulness, much to
Kodrob's relief. She was starting to shout and jeer at the banshees
along with the loud macho figures among the dominant band leaders.
Because of Bezejel's rank, she and Kodrob had managed to make their
way to the front of the crowd close to the cliff edge around the
volcanic plain. They were joined there by the rest of the squad,
even Holzman who was holding his hand protectively to his
cheek.

Cahuatl had brought up several drums and
these now began to boom out across the fingers, raising the tension
and excitement even more. The first banshee was brought to the edge
of the ski jump and the crowd hushed in anticipation. The drums
fell silent and a wailing moan was heard from the tied figure. This
caused the crowd to laugh. The moan grew louder as the banshee
reacted to the mockery and wailed all the more. Soon all the
banshees were moaning in unison making a sound like an invasion
siren. The watching demons held their claws in their ears but
didn't dare tear their eyes away from the imminent spectacle. This
entertainment would be remembered for a long time.

Cahuatl kicked the first
banshee-containing sargasso ball with his foot and all eyes
followed it as it pitched over the lip of the embankment and began
to roll down the slide and pick up speed. As it hit the bottom
curve and shot up into the air the banshee's moan turned into a
piercing screech that made the crowd roar with laughter even more.
Cahuatl's purpose became immediately apparent. He was attempting to
aim the banshee so that its trajectory curve would take it neatly
through one of the openings in the plain's crust and straight into
the boiling magma. As it fell through the last thirty feet of its
journey the opening that Cahuatl had aimed for abruptly closed and
the first banshee crashed into the smoking rock. There its sargasso
ties smouldered and burnt away after a few minutes allowing the
indignant banshee to escape. She jumped up pulling her smouldering
skirts up around her and hot footed it across the sulphurous plain
in an effort to get away. The watching demons were so incapacitated
by their laughter that none of them bothered to try and catch
her.

Cahuatl, cashing in on the fun he
had created, now began to auction off the chance to aim and push
each sargasso ball. Commanders and section leaders, urged on by
their men, began to step up and pay large amounts of liquor for the
chance to boil a banshee. Bezejel was urged by many to take a shot
but couldn't bring herself to execute another female.

All night long the entertainment
continued with each moan, screech, scream and splash into hot magma
being greeted by roars of approval and cheering. In the end about
fifteen of the banshees had been successfully sautéed into the
liquid rock, some having been launched and recaptured several
times. Once submerged in the molten lake they were carried
underneath the crust to emerge aeons later in another part of
Inferno husked and reduced to lower status. Some banshees had
managed to escape but even the jager imps who caught them
originally had had so much fun that they didn't really care. Maybe
they'd capture them again another day and repeat the spectacle?

Kodrob's team
were all motivated more than ever before. They believed in
their ability to steer Nancy away from the angelic threat and
deliver her safely to the gates of Hell.

Bezejel
returned to her chamber, this time without even trying to
find a young satyr to accompany her.

Lafarge came and walked beside Kodrob as
they trudged back to Naxela's for more booze.

'Guv'nor, you know you were
telling me about the caste ladder and how all demons and demonesses
gradually slide to the bottom?'

'Yes, Lafarge. Why do you find that so
hard to understand?'

'It's not hard to understand. It's
just that I was thinking about Nancy. We all know that Bezejel will
make sure that Nancy ends up here in Hell. I just wondered how long
it might take before Nancy gets husked down the ladder and becomes
a banshee. It would be more fun to roll someone down the ski jump
if you actually know them. More personal, like. See what I
mean?'

Kodrob's imagination filled with a
picture of Nancy trussed inside a seaweed ball, screaming in fear
as she trajectoried into a molten bath. He stopped and scowled at
his subordinate.

'Shut up Lafarge. Go and buy
yourself a hangover. I've had enough to drink
. I'm going to bed.' He abruptly changed direction and
trudged off into the gloom, pausing only to punch a passing
troll.

Kowloon, Hong
Kong

Jabez swung the Fundial lightship down
beside the British Airways Boeing 747 as it continued its glidepath
over mid-Kowloon towards Kai Tak airport. He brought it up
alongside the cabin and looked in, so close that he could almost
reach out and touch the pilot on the shoulder. Then he swung it
around the other side and brought it just in front of one of the
engines, peering inside till he could see the turbine spinning and
the spout of blue flame from the jets. It was primitive technology
and yet so very advanced compared to his own time on Earth only
3000 years before.

Jabez could have flown above Earth with
his own wings but the lightship was even more effortless and fun.
He took the craft down just above ground level and overflew the
main thoroughfare of Nathan Road at 1000mph. Then he took it around
again and this time brought it down at walking pace. He took in the
bustle and traffic noise, the ferocious buying and selling in
streets and stores, the cooking and eating, the trade in heroin and
sex and the sheer energy of this middle part of the colony.

It was time to do some work
however so he looked for a suitable place to park. Leaving the
invisible lightcraft two floors up attached to the outside of a
building
in Yaumati district, he dropped
to the ground. Jabez's mission would involve placing the 1.11
number where Nancy would be able to see it. He was not just
observing humans, he had chosen to walk among them, visibly, and so
had tightly folded his wings behind him under a thick
hoodie.

Walking along Yaumati's main streets he
spotted Lafarge standing outside a foreign exchange booth. Lafarge
saw him too. But this was no place for an open conflict. Both Fifth
Dimensioners exchanged glances and then looked away and ignored
each other disdainfully, like cold war spies in Beirut.

Jabez set about his task. He
walked into restaurants, stores, clothes shops, jewellers and
grocer shops. He scanned hawkers' trolleys, food stalls, bins,
office signs, stairways, bus stops, taxi ranks and security guards'
uniforms. He made mental notes of everything he saw and then
gradually widened his search taking in backstreets and harbours,
boats and parks till he had covered every street in Kowloon from
Tsim Sha Tsui to Sham Shui Po and Yaumati Typhoon Shelter to Tsz
Wan Shan. Returning to Yaumati with his reconnaissance accomplished
he saw that Lafarge had been replaced by Holzman who appeared to
have a large bruise on one side of his face. Jabez summoned
the
invisible lightcraft with his
thought. He waited for a moment when Holzman was looking the other
way, stepped inside it and was gone.