The Fall of the House of Cabal (42 page)

Another staccato hammering of automatic fire, another flare. She returned her attention to the battlefield. ‘Where are Cabal and these three women throughout all this? I heard shooting.'

‘I couldn't see, and the subaltern I sent to find out didn't come back, Your Majesty.'

‘You couldn't see.' There was the slightest note of derision. ‘All can be seen if you stand in the right place.' She walked towards the aeroship's prow, past the covered shapes of several CI-880 Ghepardo entomopters liberated (or looted, depending on one's perspective) from the Senzan Aeroforce inventory. Fischer glanced at them as he passed by, half longing, half loathing. Mirkarvia's aerial forces had been a joke in the region. (‘What is the difference between a spider and the Mirkarvian Aeroforce?' ‘People are afraid of spiders.') Air superiority would have been impossible to impose in the wars against Senza and Poloruss. The Red Queen's unconventional forms of warfare had rendered that shortfall moot, and the vastly superior aerofleets of the conquered powers had fallen into Mirkarvian hands.

But, it was all for show. Now Mirkarvia had the weapons that had proved useless to their vanquished enemies, and continued to prove useless in Mirkarvian hands simply because they were often surplus to requirements. Off in battles going on that moment around Britain in such exotic-sounding locales as Uttoxeter, Thetford, and Charnock Richard, such engines of war were being used in earnest. Wherever the Red Queen was, however, they were simply ornaments.

The deck jerking slowly beneath his feet in reaction to another salvo of shells fired into the pathetic remains of Buckingham Palace reminded him that this not entirely true; Her Majesty seemed to have a fondness for aeroships and their effective use. The entomopters may sit unattended and barely used but for occasional reconnaissance flights, but the vessel on which they sat was allowed the privilege of flexing its muscles in anger and of drawing blood. Every station aboard the ship was manned by Queen Ninuka's personally chosen crew and staff. This really was her palace now she had grown bored with the crumbling heap that was Harslaus Castle in Mirkarvia's equally faded capital, Krenz. A very special palace that could go where it was required and, if necessary, level an area the size of a small town once it got there.

Fischer was distracted enough by the entomopters that he allowed Ninuka to get a few yards ahead of him. She therefore reached the rail overlooking the ship's prow first, and so Fischer had the dubious honour of hearing his famously imperturbable queen become perturbed for the second time in five minutes. ‘What is
that
?'

He joined her at the rail, and they looked down in mutual incomprehension. A badly formed and rapidly disintegrating cordon line of green soldiers was breaking up under the onslaught of a woman with a rifle, another with a wand of all things, and …

‘What is
that
?' echoed the general. It was Zarenyia, but they weren't to know that.

‘The drained corpses found in the National Gallery.' Surprise was rapidly being replaced by calculation in the queen's mind. ‘The webs. It cannot be a coincidence.'

‘I shall have the ship's guns redirected upon that … thing,' said Fischer, glad of a chance to give orders and feel like a soldier again. He would have pointed out that if the
Rubrum Imperatrix
had been left on its habitual alert levels, lookouts would have spotted the monster immediately after it appeared. As it was, everybody had been ordered by the queen to keep a close eye on the approaches to the ship's aft quarter. He decided that this was neither the time nor the place to criticise Her Majesty, just like every other place and every other time. In the empire of the Red Queen, discretion was a survival trait.

‘No!' She was pointing furiously into the middle of the unlikely group of attackers.

A man wearing the uniform of a Mirkarvian commissioned officer but with the air of a civilian was climbing to his feet in the middle of the triangle of forces arranged about him. He took a moment to dust himself down and then—Fischer drew his small binoculars from their case to confirm it—strolled over to an abandoned forearm that lay on the ground not far away. The forearm still wore the lower sleeve of a Mirkarvian uniform, and Fischer judged it as belonging to a major by the rings of rank around the cuff. The hand gripped a service pistol, and before Fischer's astonished gaze, the man placed his foot on the severed forearm and wrestled the pistol free from the dead fingers. Pleased with his prize, the man rejoined the monstrous squad of women and started a conversation with them while placidly plinking 9mm rounds at the unhappy conscripts.

‘That is Johannes Cabal!' The queen's teeth were bared. ‘On no account is he to be killed or seriously injured, General. Any man who breaks that order will suffer my profound displeasure.' Given the awful fates that had befallen those who merely peeved Queen Orfilia Ninuka, this was not a warning to be lightly ignored.

Very aware that he was likely exposing himself to such displeasure, General Fischer felt compelled to point out the realities of the situation. ‘Your Majesty, he is protected by a monstrous spider … woman …
thing,
a witch, and a woman who seems very comfortable with a rifle. Capturing him may be impossible.' Ninuka turned on him, scenting insubordination. He raised his hands in pacification. ‘I speak only of practicalities. The troops we have to hand are green, barely out of training. It would take experienced men to do as you wish, and we have none.'

‘None? There must be a few veterans. They cannot all be dispersed around this wretched country.'

‘There
were
a few squads I might have trusted to mount a competent attempt to take that man unharmed, but…' He nodded aft where the flames of the burning palace rose high into the sky.

Orfilia Ninuka looked at the glowing smoke rising from the unloved palace, and her jaw became set. For a moment Fischer was sure she was going to demand his pistol and, in all likelihood, shoot him dead. It would not have been the first time she had retired troublesome senior officers whom she felt had disappointed her. Instead she smiled. ‘Then we shall consider an alternative stratagem. Listen carefully, General.'

*   *   *

Horst did not feel at all lucky to be blown up, yet he was, which only goes to show something or another. The reader is at liberty to draw their own lesson in irony.

Even at his accelerated state wherein hummingbirds seemed slothful and sloths seemed geological, the detonation of an artillery round as it passed through the room into which he was about to enter was still an unavoidable surprise. Admittedly, he saw it as no mortal might with their own eyes—the sudden twitch in the far wall, the ripples travelling across the torn wallpaper, the glow of light around the door frame, then the hot, radiant gas of the explosion ramming in glowing planes under and over the door and even through the keyhole, the shudder in the wood, the eruption as the hinges and lock were torn from the disintegrating frame, the door shivering into smaller and smaller pieces, the floorboards lifting beneath his feet, waves rushing along the carpet as the gas got beneath it, and then the waves turning to smoke and fire as the material flashed—but he stood no chance of escaping it.

The blast picked him up, threw him back down the corridor as easily as if he were a scrap of paper, and then projected him through a window to fall thirty feet. As he lay there, burning, peppered with wooden splinters the least of which was the size of a pencil, and his suit utterly ruined, he did not feel very lucky. Yet he was, for he had been thrown out of the side of the building away from the guns of the
Rubrum Imperatrix
and so did not finish the moment punctured and destroyed by the arcane ammunition devised by the inventive mind of Orfilia Ninuka.

He became aware of somebody appearing over him, and then all became black. He felt some hard textile thrown over him and somehow dredged up the memory of lying on carpet offcuts in a den he had made in the woods near his home when he was perhaps nine or ten years old. Somebody was using a length of salvaged carpet to put out the flames upon him, which was kind of them, whoever they were, and probably not the actions of the enemy. This was reassuring and he allowed himself to relax a little. Presently the carpet was removed, and he found himself looking up into the face of Johns. His morning suit looked the worse for wear, and his top hat had entirely gone.

‘Are you all right, my lord?' he was asking anxiously.

‘Oh, call me Horst.' He said it vaguely; the blast had taken more from him than he realised. ‘What happened?'

‘They fired on their own barracks! They must be insane!' Johns looked back at the burning building. ‘And they have some kind of special weapon, my Lord Horst. It kills those who are like us. There's only a handful of us left who were lucky enough to be on this side of the building when they opened fire. What shall we do?'

‘Lucky?' Horst managed to sit up, but it hurt more than anything had ever hurt him since he had become nocturnal by necessity. He made a mental note to avoid third-degree burns and blast injuries in future.

‘Wait here.' Johns vanished into the smoke.

‘Righty-ho,' said Horst, and waited there. Presently Johns returned dragging a terribly injured corporal, also a victim of the short-range artillery bombardment.

‘There you go, old chap. Tuck in. Got to keep your strength up if we're to confound the Mirkarvians.' He noted Horst's dismay, and added, ‘I know, I know. I must admit, I've never really understood how some of our number can be so gleeful about feeding. But needs must and, for what it's worth, he's quite insensible and not long for this world in any case. Poor fella's already lapsed into shock, and I doubt the best doctor in the world could bring him out of it. Go on … Horst. There's still work to be done.'

Horst nodded reluctantly, muttered a few words of regret and apology to the comatose man, and fed.

*   *   *

He lifted his head some minutes later feeling physically much better, but mentally much worse. The soldier was quite dead and, even if he was technically one of the enemy, using him as a handy panacea to a vampire's injuries seemed unfeeling at best. But it was done, and there was no point crying over spilt blood.

‘I hope the others have made some use of the distraction.' Horst climbed easily to his feet, now as limber as a boy once more. He stepped away from the body, putting it out of sight, and proceeded to attempt to put it out of mind. ‘How many of us are left?'

‘Including us? Six.' Horst looked at him, dumbfounded. Johns shook his head. ‘I don't know if they fired into the barracks simply out of panic and were lucky, or if it was a very deliberate trap. Surely they wouldn't sacrifice their own people like that?'

‘They wouldn't.
She
would.' The identification needed no further clarification than that, Ninuka's public relations disasters being common knowledge internationally.

‘I'd heard stories of what she did to her own country—'

‘All true. She is perfectly capable of any act. Rally the few we have left. We have to make this count before they realise they haven't destroyed all of us.'

Johns nodded, and ran off, dodging through the ruins, seeking cover as he went. He was barely gone a minute before Horst saw him running straight back in as straight a line as he could manage in the terrain. He looked terrified.

‘My lord!' Horst couldn't tell if he was calling to him, or sending up a prayer to an uncaring God. ‘They're dead! They're all dead! We have to—'

The bullet took him high in the back and went clean through, exiting from the left side of the chest. Horst, who as a vampire had been shot often enough to remove the novelty of it, was momentarily unconcerned; what could a bullet do to such as they? But almost instantly smoke began to issue from the exit wound. Johns looked down at it in uncomprehending horror. Smoke curled from around his collar, and he tore at it as if he believed his clothes were on fire. They were, but only because the body on which they hung was starting to burn. Johns tore away the collar and half his shirt, his waistcoat buttons popping under the frantic violence, and the flesh exposed beneath was already incandescent with escaping energy. Johns started to scream. It lasted barely three seconds before he collapsed in a rain of charcoal and hissing bones.

Eight men appeared seconds later, and they were very different soldiers from the majority of the Mirkarvian forces. They wore steel helmets finished in a matte carmine, and gorget patches in the same shade on the collars of their black uniforms. These were the queen's own Imperial Bodyguard, an elite force used not only as a personal guard but frequently for special operations at the Red Queen's behest. They were well trained, well equipped, and feared by friend and foe alike. There was also the rumour that any new recruit had to endure a ceremony during which the queen took the soldier's soul for safekeeping and to ensure loyalty. Of course, that was just silly hearsay. As if such things were possible.

How stylishly they were apparelled was of secondary interest to Horst at that moment. That they carried ugly, squared-off carbines that could apparently kill vampires with a single shot occupied his thoughts far more acutely. His recent dismay that his feeding upon an, admittedly, already dying man had shortened a life by a few minutes was now replaced by a very pragmatic relief that he had done so; his reserves were full, and that was just as well. By the time the Imperial Bodyguard arrived, there was no hint Horst had ever been there but for a slight breeze in the otherwise still air.

*   *   *

Cabal, Leonie Barrow, Miss Smith, and Zarenyia had sought cover not long after the aeroship lowering nearby laid fire into Buckingham Palace, thereby putting the last vestige of the building out of its misery. It had occurred to Cabal that he had made a mild error in forgetting that the
Rubrum Imperatrix
was positively bristling with guns of assorted kinds and that it might take it upon itself to use them at some point. Thus, he led his party at a sprightly trot to cover by a tumbled wall. It would offer no protection from an artillery shell, it was true, but at least they would be invisible to the gun-aimers.