Super Human (15 page)

Ambassador Heriko nodded. “As you say, Lord Krodin. But—”

“Twice you would contradict me, Ambassador Heriko?”

The ambassador’s heavy brow furrowed. “Lord?”

“I do not like that. Remove your sword from its sheath.”

The other ambassadors, envoys, and servants formed a wide, murmuring circle as Heriko slowly withdrew his heavy, double-edged sword.

“You northern warriors claim to fear nothing, not even death. Let us put that to the test. Fall on your sword.”

Heriko lowered his sword, resting its point on the floor. With his free hand he scratched at his beard as he stared at Krodin.

“Do you not understand?” Krodin asked. “Or do you hesitate out of cowardice?”

The scratching stopped. “Heriko fears nothing,” the man said. He stepped closer to Krodin, looked down at him. “Not even the little king all others fear.”

Without taking his eyes off the warrior, Krodin said, “Imkhamun. Show this man your hand.”

The Egyptian shuffled forward, and raised his right hand so that Heriko could see the scarred stump where he once had a thumb.

Krodin said to Heriko, “Fall on your sword. If you do not, I will kill you myself. Then I will remove your thumbs. Your people believe that a warrior must do battle with demons to gain entry to the Hall of the Slain, but a man without thumbs cannot hold a weapon.”

Heriko stared unblinking at Krodin. His grip on the sword tightened a little. His muscles tensed.

The sword swung.

Krodin caught the blade in his left hand. He spun on one foot, planted the other in Heriko’s chest, and pulled the sword from the warrior’s hand.

Moving faster than anyone could see, Krodin continued the spin, shifted his grip on the sword so that he was holding the hilt. He stretched out his arms.

Krodin’s spin ended with the edge of the sword buried in Heriko’s chest.

The warrior’s eyes grew wide. His body shook. He made a weak, uncoordinated grab for the weapon with both hands, then toppled, crashing heavily backward to the floor.

“Imkhamun? Take him away. Have his thumbs removed
before
he dies. I want him to see—and feel—what’s being done to him. And inform Heriko’s first general that he is the new ambassador.” Krodin looked around, spotted the Assyrian envoy. “Everyone but the Lady Alexandria will leave.”

In seconds the throne room was empty but for Krodin and the dark-skinned woman. Krodin approached her from the side, then circled slowly around her. “Raise your right arm. Outstretched, level with the floor. Palm down.”

Nervously, the woman did as she was ordered. Krodin circled her twice more before he stopped at her side and spoke again. “Where are you from?”

“Ta Netjeru, Lord.”

“You are a long way from home. Ta Netjeru—The Land of the Gods,” Krodin mused. “Do you believe in the gods, Lady Alexandria? In the paradise rewarded to the virtuous? In the underworld that is the fate of the reprobates?”

“Lord, I . . .” She stared at her outstretched hand. “I do not know. I did, once.”

“But now you have met me,” Krodin said. “Many people believe that
I
am a god. A demigod at the least. This is not so, but it amuses me to allow such a folly to thrive.” He resumed circling. “I know that some call me the Fifth King. Not the
first
king, which would imply that I am the best, but the fifth, to suggest that I am only one among many.” He smiled. “It is intended as a disguised insult, I think. A . . . what would Imkhamun call it? . . . a compliment laced with irony. The Egyptians excel at such things. They are a remarkable people with a mastery of words that few can match. I have listened to Imkhamun’s woman speak many such things to her husband. Hemlock dipped in honey. The people of Hibernia call them ‘backhanded slurs.’”

Krodin stopped in front of Alexandria. “Backhanded. The back of
your
hand carries a mark, I see. You have disguised it with paint that closely matches the color of your skin. A normal man would not see this. But I am not a normal man.”

The woman was trembling now, her hand shaking as Krodin took hold of it with his left. He licked his right thumb and rubbed it over the dark paint, revealing a small tattoo of a cobalt blue eye encircled by a golden sun.

“An eye inside the sun. I have seen this before. Many times. I am somewhat older than I look, Lady Alexandria, and I have a perfect memory. The symbol indicates that you belong to the Azurite Order. A century ago your forebears attempted to assassinate me in Eritrea. I thought I had killed them all and destroyed the Order forever. Clearly I was mistaken.” He stared into her ocean-blue eyes for a long time. “You may speak. And speak freely.”

“Four escaped your massacre of the Azurite Order. Four out of seven hundred. They swore vengeance. They continued in secret, rebuilt their numbers.”

“And now? How many?”

“More than you can count.”

Krodin laughed. “Indeed? Perhaps that is so. Perhaps the new Azurite Order does have more agents than I can count. But tell me this, Lady Alexandria . . . Does it have more agents than I can kill?”

She looked away.

“You may lower your arm.” Krodin walked around her once more. “You will return to your superiors. Tell them that the Fifth King forgives them for their attack in Eritrea. They may move freely and openly. There will be no reprisals.”

“Lord . . . ?”

“Yes, I know. Strange, is it not? Such compassion is surely not expected of the man called the Butcher of Uruk, the Devastator of Empires, the Fifth King. You will tell the leaders of your organization that they need not fear me. This is my gift to the Azurite Order, and I know that your people’s custom dictates that a gift cannot be accepted without one given in return.”

Alexandria raised her head again, turned to follow him as he walked in his slow circle.

“I was born more than five hundred years ago, Lady Alexandria. I have seen much. I have traveled to places your people do not even know exist. I do not age, and I cannot be killed. I will be here in a hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand. You humans can never know nor fully understand immortality, so you instead try to achieve a semblance of it by erecting statues, by carving your names on the entrances of your tombs. And by having children in the hope that they will remember you well, pass on your story to
their
offspring. I have never taken a wife. It has always seemed . . . pointless. The beauty of even the most glorious woman will fade with time. She will wither and die. I could never allow myself to love something that could not last. . . . Until today.” Krodin reached out his hand and brushed Alexandria’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. “In exchange for my pardon of the Azurite Order, their gift to me will be a wife.”

The pilot—Ernie Wieberg—sat bleary-eyed in the copilot seat of the Bell 222B helicopter. He was wrapped in a thick blanket and every few seconds he shivered violently. His nostrils had been stuffed with wads of tissue paper and when he sneezed, the wads would shoot out and he would have to replace them.

Roz Dalton sat next to him with her hands gripping the joystick so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her eyes darted across the instrument board: radar, altitude, artificial horizon, airspeed, back to the radar.

“Gedly,” Wieberg said, then noisily snorted and cleared his throat. “Gently. Wodge—
watch
—the altimeter.”

“I know, I know,” Roz said. She hated flying, and hated helicopters even more. The only thing keeping them in the air was the powerful engine. At least an airplane had wings and could glide if the engine cut out. If that happened in a helicopter, the craft could fly in only one direction: down.

When her telekinetic powers first appeared, Max—already an established superhero—had insisted that Roz was to receive full training. By the time she’d reached her fourteenth birthday she could drive an armored car, fly a Cessna, and disassemble, clean, and reassemble an assault rifle blindfolded. Monday to Wednesday Roz was tutored in standard school subjects. Thursday and Friday were for military training. Saturdays she was expected to practice using her powers. Sundays were supposed to be for relaxing, but somehow Max always found something for her to do, from looking after their younger brother Joshua to answering his mountains of fan mail.

Roz didn’t mind most of it. She was solitary by nature and understood that Max was trying to do his best as a surrogate parent. Sometimes, though, she wondered whether she accepted every order he gave because he was manipulating her thoughts. He had assured her many times that his mind control didn’t work on her, but how would she know whether that was true?

“All ride, sed her dowd,” Wieberg said. He removed the wads of tissue and loudly blew his nose on a handkerchief.

As Roz eased the copter’s joystick forward, Wieberg said, “Slowly . . . Tage her dowd to fibe yards . . .” Another snort. “Five yards.”

“Take
it
down, not her,” Roz said automatically. It really bugged her when men talked about machines using the feminine pronoun. She checked the radar again, then looked out through the cockpit’s windshield. “OK . . . I think I see him. Hit the spotlight, will you?”

Ahead, a flashlight beam swayed back and forth as Lance McKendrick—standing alone in a field of long grass— waved both arms above his head to attract the copter’s attention.

“The spotlight, Ernie,” Roz repeated. She glanced at him: The shivering was much worse now, and a film of sweat had broken out on his forehead.

Roz flipped the switch telekinetically, and the spotlight attached to the Bell’s undercarriage blazed a beam of light down on Lance.
OK, got to do this without any help.
Roz frowned in concentration, the tip of her tongue protruding from the side of her mouth. She’d landed the copter only once before without instruction, but Wieberg had been right beside her at the time, ready to take over if she got into trouble.

The copter set down with a heavy
thump
, bounced once, and settled again. Roz felt a little embarrassed about that, but then remembered something Ox had often said: Any landing you walk away from is a good one.

She shut down the engine, unclipped her harness, and—on legs that were still shaking a little—climbed down and strode through the grass toward Lance.

He was saying something to her but she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the copter’s rotors. He pointed toward the road. Roz turned to see headlights bouncing their way across the field.

She followed Lance toward the jeep as it came to a stop. It was being driven by a soldier—a private—who didn’t look that much older than she was. The two medics in the back jumped out and ran to the copter.

“It’s everywhere!” the driver shouted to Roz and Lance. “Been on the news. There’s like,
millions
of people all across the States already infected!” He beckoned them closer.

“Get in. There’s only about ten of our guys left who haven’t caught it.”

Lance jumped into the back, and Roz climbed in beside the driver. “Where are you taking us?” Roz asked.

“Have to pick up that guy Thunder and the girl with the sword.” The soldier steered the jeep in a tight arc and headed back the way he had come. “The guys at the CDC are saying that maybe one adult out of every five has already caught it for sure. Luckily most of them have it pretty mild right now. We’ve had to clamp down on the media reports to stop the civilians panicking, so the official word is that it’s just the flu and everything’s under control.” The jeep hit a furrow and bounced. “Name’s Frankie Nazzaro, by the way. So you guys are superhumans, right?”

“She is; I’m not,” Lance said.

“You two all right?” Nazzaro asked. “Any symptoms?”

“I’m fine,” Roz said.

Lance said, “Me too. Hungry, though. I haven’t eaten in hours.”

“We’ll get you something after we pick up the others.” With a final bump, the jeep left the field and steered onto the road. Most of the army trucks and police cars had been cleared away—Roz saw three men climbing into one of the trucks. They were wearing what looked like silver space suits.

“That’s the guys from the CDC,” Private Nazzaro explained. “Near as anyone can figure, the terrorists blanketed this whole area with the virus sometime during their attack. Don’t know how they did it, though.”

Roz said, “I left Quantum at Max’s safe house. I was hoping that his fast metabolism would have helped him burn through the infection by now, but he’s in a really bad way. He was the first of us to be hit with it.”

Lance asked, “Do you know what those guys were doing here yet?”

The young man shrugged. “Not a clue. There wasn’t anything to steal.” He slowed the jeep to a crawl as he eased it past a truck that was parked diagonally across the narrow road. “But these guys, The Helotry or whatever they call themselves . . . The medics are still trying to find out what makes them immune from the plague.”