Squad leader Gilbert Eckhart was miserable. He liked the uniform he had been issued, all black leather and bright polish, and he liked the feel and look of his weapon in his hand, a heavy, solid, and deadly M-16 with a slung M-101 grenade launcher beneath.
He also liked being a member of one of Wentworth’s special fighting units. Eckhart hated his country and wanted to see it changed: and he was young and did not care how the change was made. Orders allowed them to take prisoners and hold them without charge, without warrant, without cause, for as long as they liked: and anyone deemed to be a danger was subject to summary execution. No complications, no mess, and, above all, no lawyers. What could be better? The elite squad was meant to act swiftly, with drastic and certain results.
But here he was on a lonely road in upstate Maine, one of the hundreds of Wentworth’s units in the area, guarding some mansion some miles away. Swift? Drastic? He was sitting on his ass doing a whole lot of nothing.
Somewhere there were riots going on. Somewhere there were units of state volunteers in open rebellion against the federal government. Somewhere there was action happening. Somewhere.
Not here.
The morning sunlight streaming through the leaves of early springtime did not lighten his mood. He sat on the hood of the Abrams M1-A1 tank that stood in the middle of this narrow country road, watching some of his men sleeping on the blockade of sandbags, and others arguing over a card game. He knew he should whip them into shape, call them back into order. But somehow, he didn’t have the heart.
It was his friend, Sergeant Furlough. Furlough had been acting strangely. At first Eckhart thought it was a joke; that Furlough was playing some sort of mind game with him, trying to weird him out.
Thinking that, Eckhart slid off the tank hull, landing upright on the road. He walked over to where Furlough was crouching on the pavement, staring off down the road, and sniffing.
“Hey, Furlough, what’s up? What’ch going to do with your bonus money when it comes? I was going to go in town and find a fine woman and a keg, hey?”
Furlow cocked his head sideways. “Ar! Aye, now, would ye be? But afore ye count yer gold, there’s something strange on the winds, ar! Har! Ho, hoy, me bucko! Something powerful bad dangerous I reckon!”
At that point the radioman spoke up, shouting down from the back of the transport truck. “Squad leader, sir! Post Six just gave me a strange report!”
Eckhart walked over, looking over his shoulder at his friend Furlough only once. Then he said, “What’s up?”
The radioman’s name was Petroff. He was all spit and polish, upright of posture, and did everything by the book. He thought Elkhart ran a sloppy unit, and he did not bother to hide the sneer in his voice as he spoke: “Sir, Post Six just reported something broke through their perimeter. Sounded like they said it was an old goat in a wheelchair. Something like that.”
“Huhn. That’s funny.”
“Sir? Shouldn’t we go to general quarters?”
“Uh. Yeah. I guess so.”
Eckhart started giving out orders; the men listlessly moved to obey; the tank raised its cannon and pointed down the road.
“This is stupid,” whispered Eckhart to himself. “Nothing can get through Posts Seven and Eight. They’ve got APCs and LAW rockets …”
The radioman jumped up. “Sir! Post Seven has been hit! Post Twenty-two is under attack!”
Eckhart said, “But—Twenty-two is on the road north of here. They’re coming in two different directions!” And he worked the action on his piece, a sudden, heady joy in his heart. Action at last!
“Get ready, people!” he shouted. “Rebels coming!”
One of the men laughed. “Shit! Ain’t nothing coming through Murphy’s squad. They APC shoot them so full of lead, they be shitting pencils!” Some of the men chuckled, but they all kept their eyes on the road south.
“Petroff, what’s hitting Post Twenty-two?”
“They said it was a black, armored limousine before they went off the air.”
A chill feeling touched Eckhart’s spine. “Wh—why would they be off the air?”
“Post Twenty-three is calling for reinforcements—no—static now … I think we’re being jammed.”
“Get on it! Raise somebody! Anybody!”
“Wait—It’s Tolland’s unit, at sea with the Coast Guard cutter. There’s some sort of paratrooper just sank two of our gunboats …”
“Paratroopers?” Eckhart’s voice broke into a high-pitched note.
“Keep calm, sir,” said Petroff, with an open sneer of contempt on his features. “No, just one paratrooper. He has some sort of particle beam weapon like a lightning bolt. They just reported that he’s … wait … now they’re off the air, too …”
In the distance, down the road, a huge tree erupted into splinters and fell across the road, blocking the way. Oddly enough, there was no flash of flame nor any smoke, almost as if no explosives had been used.
“They’re coming!” shouted one man.
Eckhart saw Furlough turn and slink away into the woods.
There was a whistling in the air. The line of sandbags exploded, and hundreds of pounds of sand were flung skyward.
That was enough for Eckhart. “Petroff, you’re in charge!” he shouted.
He turned deserter and ran into the woods. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Petroff hesitantly raising his rifle, as if debating whether or not to shoot Eckhart in the back as he fled.
At that same moment, the tank fired, and the front of the tank crumpled and fell in on itself, with a noise like the end of the world tearing the air. Scraps of heavy tank armor flew through the air as an iron hammer pulled itself backward out of the wreckage and flew away. Petroff was hit by the shrapnel and fell.
Everyone fired. The air shook with the continuous hammering fire of machine-gun bullets.
Eckhart looked back again when everything fell silent. He wondered if his hearing had gone or if …
Since he was running away, and since he was looking back, and, since the leaves and shrubs nearby had been cut away by the gunfire, Eckhart may have been the only person alive who saw the sight of two monster goats, running at impossible speeds, breathing fire and pulling a wheelchair, who rammed their horns into the hulk of the tank, broke it in two, and threw it from the road.
They didn’t even slow down.
And because Eckhart had dropped his rifle a few steps to the left, he was not near it when some whistling instrument of destruction ripped aside the trees, smashing the rifle into flinders in the bottom of a smoking crater. He blinked for a moment at the white-hot, smoking weapon. It was a sledgehammer with a short haft.
The falling tree (cut in half when the hammer pulled itself out of the crater and flew away) missed Eckhart by several feet. He did not look back thereafter, but put down his head, and ran.
Peter shouted over the thrumming of fiery goat hooves on the road, “Dad! How come your Morpheus spell didn’t work?”
Lemuel, clinging breathlessly to the rear of the wheelchair bumping and flying down the road, gasped out, “Don’t … know …” The goats skidded to a stop before the main gates of Everness. The platoon of astonished men raised their weapons, and the warmachines behind them began to elevate their heavy guns and rotate the turrets of their miniguns toward the goat-drawn wheelchair.
“Mollner! Kick all the bullets and shells out of the air before they reach us!” shouted Peter, throwing.
“Somnus! Hypnos! Morpheus! Slumber!” whispered Lemuel, holding up the magnet in his hand.
A moment later, Lemuel dismounted from the back of the wheelchair to stare in fascination at the fragments of the heavy tank shells lying, flattened, in craters to either side of the wheelchair. Then he started pulling sleeping men aside to make room for the wheelchair to pass through. Tanngjost put down its horns and was shoving the armored personnel carrier off the road; Tanngrisner, still excited by the noise of the deflected gunfire, was kicking holes in the side of the Bradley Tank.
Lemuel straightened up. “There’s still so much I don’t know. Perhaps those squads infested with selkie have been warded by Azrael; perhaps he has raised the Yellow Sign and put on the Pallid Mask. It could be the stars. Mars is in opposition to Venus, now, and Mercury is in retrograde in the house of Aquarius, a water sign. This may be making my magic weaker; but these are very bad times for Azrael.”
“I don’t know what all that means …”
“Perhaps if you had studied your lessons …,” began Lemuel.
Peter cut him off. “I don’t think you know what it means either. You’re all dealing with book learning, here. You never did a lick of magic in the waking world before.” And then he smiled. “I guess we’re just going to have to make allowances for each other, huh, Dad?”
Lemuel’s expression softened. Then he smiled too. “Forgive me. I suppose we shall. After all these years, I finally know why you were meant to go into the military. We are a warrior race; our blood has a love of honor, of faithfulness, which must come to the fore.”
Peter looked skeptical. “Whatever. Let’s take the grounds slowly. According to their radio here,” he hefted the walkie-talkie he had taken from a sleeping man, “they sent most of their units north to stop some big black car. We don’t know what they left behind to guard the …”
Out from between the trees lining the main drive, it came, huge, black, monstrous, walking forward on padded paws, its horrible cat’s eyes slitted into thin crescents in the sun. The odor from it’s rank fur smelled of napalm and blood.
Peter raised his hammer. Lemuel said, “Wait … I don’t know if Mollner can stop it …”
The beast reared up on its hind legs, like a grizzly rearing up, and stood looking down at them. The two goats snorted flame and pawed the ground nervously. Lemuel whispered prayers beneath his breath, eyes downcast. Peter looked the creature in the face without flinching.
The beast raised one mighty paw. It beckoned.
“Welcome, henchman of Ares. Come! Increase my kingdom. Soon the Horn shall come to light; when the final note is sounded, then my kingdom shall encompass all the worlds, and yea, hell and heaven also! I will not oppose thy path …”
Falling again to all fours, the monster turned and lumbered off, pausing only once, briefly, to smile back over its shoulder at Peter. It expanded, becoming rarified, swelling to fill the whole landscape, faded into smoke, and was invisible.
“I got a bad feeling about that … ,” said Peter.
“We must acquire the Sword!” whispered Lemuel.
“Let’s get going!” grunted Peter.
When they came upon the main house, everyone was asleep, except for a group on the front steps, in the distance.
“What do you think that is?” asked Peter, pointing to the side-yard. A circular barrier of snapping electric bolts surrounded a large group of sleeping men. Next to the barrier were two large trucks with generators and dynamos filling their truckbeds. Heavy cables ran from the trucks to the edge of the electric wall; technicians in bulky radiation suits were slumped over their instruments. There was a burnt-out shell of some sort of circuit-breaker board smoking nearby.
Lemuel said, “The scientists here were trying to impede the Storm-Princes’ power. They were succeeding. Note how the electricity is dying down.”
“What about those guys up there?”
They came closer to the main doors.
A cluster of pale-faced lepers stood three ranks deep on the steps, blocking the doorway. Here were sickly men; frail, thin women; and wide-eyed children standing, sad, silent, and motionless. Each face was gaunt and slack with despair; what tears they had once shed were long since gone. They stared at Peter and Lemuel with the apathy of concentration camp prisoners.
Each bony hand, even the hand of each child, was holding some pathetic weapon: a knife, a tire iron, a chain.
In front of the steps were huddles of corpses, skulls, and ribcages strewn amidst rotting garments and stinking flesh. The one or two crows that had picked at the diseased flesh there had fallen over dead.
Peter reined in the goats well away, and he held a scarf over his nose and mouth, his eyes watering in the gangrenous stench that came from the living, the putrid odor from the dead.
One old man covered with sores and boils, near the front, said softly, “Wait! If you approach, we must attack you …” His voice trailed off feebly.
Peter asked, “Who the hell are you?”
One old woman raised a ruined, pockmarked face, and peered out with bleary eyes from between the ratted tangles of her gray hair. “Lemuel Waylock. It’s me. Freda Teeldrum. Don’t make us fight. Let us alone …”
Lemuel whispered in horror, “Mrs. Teeldrum … ?”
Her dry, thin voice whispered, “Let us alone so we can dire … .”
“Where’s Mr. Teeldrum?”
One of the figures pointed with a gray and skeletal hand at the ring of disease-eaten corpses surrounding the stairs. “That’s what happens if we don’t do what they say. We can’t let you in.”
One little boy’s voice from the back wailed thinly, “Mama! I want to sit down. I’m so tired …”
A hard, harsh voice answered, “You stay on your feet! I’m not going to lose you and Cathy, too!”
Lemuel said, “Mr. Milliard! Reverend Shipley! Joseph? Ellen?”
There was a stir among the crowd of invalids. One tired voice said, “You best be going away, Lem. We might like you as a partner for bridge, but we sure ain’t going to die for you. You step up here, we got to try to stop you.”
A woman’s voice from near the back hissed, “Let’s get them anyway! It’s all his weird antics and eccentric ways brought this plague on us! It’s this house!”
Lemuel backed up, face pale, unable to speak against that accusation.
Peter raised the hammer. Lemuel said, “Wait. These people are innocent.”
“Those bastards there aren’t.” Because around the corners of the house, to the right and left, came two lines of armored knights. The horses were lame and sickly, ghastly to behold, creatures of rotting flesh and peeling skin. The knights were handsome, with sober, pious faces. And their swords and lances dripped blood and corruption.
The knight banneret who led them, a plumed cavalier carrying the sign of a leprous face on his shield, now smiled with false warmth, and said unctuously, “Beloved friends …”
Peter whirled the hammer and threw it with an angry convulsion of his powerful arm.
The Kelpie-knight did not even bother to raise his shield, but swatted the hammer aside with his palm as if it were an annoying insect. The mighty hammer fell to the grass with a dull noise. One of the other knights shook his head sorrowfully. “Poor, ignorant man! Does he think diseases.can be vanquished with bludgeons? You do not kill a fever by stabbing the patient!”
The knight banneret said; “Beloved friends, the citadel of the chiefs of our high order on the dark side of the moon has been ruthlessly destroyed by one of this house. While we forgive you, it is not right that you should have while we do without. Therefore we intend that you should share your house with us. Is this not simple fairness? In return, we will share the blessings of our diseases with you. Poxes! Plagues! Instruct them in our wisdom!”
Peter gestured; the hammer jumped back into his hand; he threw again; a smiling knight lightly brushed the hammer aside with a small movement of his shield, ignoring it.
With a flourish, and a murmur of polite excuses, the knights lowered their dripping lances, spurred their grotesque horses, and charged.
Lemuel jumped on the back of the wheelchair. Peter screamed at the goats, who spun and raced down the road.
Clouds of dust erupted from the tires of the shuddering wheelchair. Racing horses were to either side of them, half-hidden in the smoke billowing from the flying hoofs of the goat-monsters. The horses, ears flattened, necks tense with veins, yellow teeth bared, galloped at supernatural speeds equal to the goats’. The knights, with condescending smiles on their faces, jabbed with vile spears and lashed out with stinking swords.
One horse leapt ahead, a hurricane of speed, rearing up before them, its rider standing in the saddle, glorious in his armor and crested helm, black blade held high.
The goats trampled him; he smiled as he fell, thankful words on his lips. Tanngjost began to stumble and vomit black blood.
“Through there!” shouted Lemuel, pointing at a line of trees crossing the southwest lawn.
Peter cut Tanngjost out of the traces with a sweep of his hammer. The monster goat, dying, turned and fell upon the pursuing knights, spitting blood and fire, kicking with hoofs like meteors. Two ranks of knights were crushed and burnt before the row behind swept over the falling Tanngjost, whose hair had fallen out, and flesh grown pale, leprous, and corroded.
They passed through the trees, the Kelpie-knights only strides behind them. When the knights encountered the line of the trees, however, they smashed into an invisible wall; some were flattened and others thrown.
There was a single moment while the trees turned sickly, rotted, and fell, and the cavalry passed though the unseen barrier. During that moment the wheelchair had flown to the front gate. The front gate was held against them by a vaster cavalry than they had seen before, including charioteers of obscenely fat blind men, whose cars were drawn by pairs of the rotting, horrible Kelpie-steeds.
They turned again, now pursued on both sides. Lemuel shouted and pointed, “The cabin!” They flew beyond the shrubs that hid the smaller, modern house. There was no time to open the front door; Peter shattered it with a throw from his hammer.
Tanngrisner stumbled, his flesh crawling with sores and boils, his fur peeling off in clumps. The goat-monster fell sideways, and momentum carried Peter and Lemuel, and the wheelchair, over the goat-monster’s shoulder in through the door. They fell and slid across the carpet, yanked out of the wheelchair when the reins around Tanngrisner went taut. The great beast had bent the doorposts, but was too bulky to pass through the frame.
The Kelpie-knights reined in, coming instantly from their impossible velocities to a dead stop. The corroded Kelpie-steeds stamped impatiently, and pulled on their bits.
One knight leaned from the saddle, doffing his helm. He said politely, “May we come in?”
Peter pulled himself, hand over hand, out of the toppled bookshelves of his son’s tapes and recorded music, which he had crashed into. “Dad! What do we do now?”
Lemuel had risen weakly to his feet, and was staring in horror at a tiny cut on the back of his hand. It was the tiniest of cuts; but his wrist was becoming inflamed and swollen, and blisters were visibly growing and crawling down his forearm.