The Dragons of Babel (20 page)

A new voice said, “That's bullshit! The Breaknecks sent him here to spy on us. He dies. Simple as that.”

“That's not your decision, Tatterwag,” Lord Weary said sharply.

“Siktirgit!”
Tatterwag swore. “We know what he is!”

“Are we savages? No, we are a community of brothers. Whatever is done here will be done in accordance with our laws.” There was a long pause, during which Will imagined Lord Weary looking from side to side to see if any dared oppose him. When no one did, he went on, “You brought this upon yourself.”

Will didn't ask what Lord Weary meant by that. He recognized a gang when he encountered one—he'd run with enough of them as a boy. There was always a leader, always the bright kid who stood at his shoulder advising him, always the troublemaker who wanted to usurp the leader's place. They always had laws, which were never written down. Their idea of justice was inevitably the
lextalionis
, an eye for an eye and a drubbing for an insult. They always settled their differences with a fight.

“Trial by combat,” the Whisperer said.

Somebody lit a match. With a soft hiss, a Coleman lantern shed fierce white light over the thronged I-beams, making them leap and then fall as the flame was adjusted down again to a soft near-extinction.

“You may stand now,” Lord Weary said.

Will stood.

A ragged line of some twenty to thirty feys confronted him. They were of varied types and races, tall and short, male and female, but all looked beaten and angry, like feral
dogs that know they can never triumph over the village dwellers but will savage one who is caught alone and without weapons. The lantern shone through several, but dimly, as if through smoked glass, and by this Will knew that they were haints.

Directly before Will stood a tall figure whose air of command made clear that he could only be Lord Weary. He had the pallor, high cheekbones, and lanceolate ears of one of high-elven blood, and the noble bearing of a born leader as well. Will could not pick out the owners of the other two voices.

But then a swamp-gaunt rushed out of the pack and, pointing a reed-thin arm at Will, cried, “He's one of the Breakneck Boys! I say we kill him now. Just kill him!”

So he had to be Tatterwag.

Will stepped forward, throwing a hard shoulder into the gaunt to knock him aside. “Kill me if you think it possible,” he said to Lord Weary. “But I don't think you can. If you doubt me, then name your champion. Make him the biggest, strongest mother you've got, so there won't be any doubt afterward that I could defeat any one of you if I had to. I do not brag. Then, if you'll take me, I will gladly pledge my loyalty and put my powers at your service.”

“That was well spoken,” Lord Weary said mildly. “But talk is cheap and times are hard.” Raising his voice, he said, “Who shall be our champion?”

“Bonecrusher,” somebody said.

There was susurration of agreement. “Bonecrusher…' Crusher… The big fella… Yeah, Bonecrusher.”

The figure that shambled forward was covered with fur, wore no clothing, and carried a length of metal pipe for a club. It was a wodewose—a wild man of the forest.

Will had seen wild men before, out in the Old Forest. In some ways, they were little more than animals, though articulate enough for simple conversations and too cunning to be safely hunted. They were stuck forever in the
dawn-times, unable to cope with any way of life more sophisticated than a hunter-gatherer existence nor any tool more complex than a pointed stick. Machines they feared, and they would not sleep in houses, though occasionally an injured one might take shelter in a barn. He could not imagine what twisty path had brought this one so far from his natural habitat.

The wodewose's mouth worked with the effort of summoning up words. “Fuck you,” he said at last. Then, after a pause, “Asshole.”

Will bowed. “I accept your challenge, sir. I'll do my best to do you no permanent harm.”

A mean grin appeared in the wild man's unkempt beard. “You're bugfuck,” he said, and then, “Shithead.”

This was another thing that every gang Will had ever been in had: Somebody big and stupid who lived to fight.

L
ord Weary faded back into darkness and returned bearing a length of pipe, much like the one the wodewose carried. He handed it to Will. “There are no rules,” he said. “Except that one of you must die.” He raised his voice. “Are the combatants ready?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

“Yes,” Will said.

“Then douse the light.”

All in an instant, darkness swallowed Will whole. In sudden fear he cried, “I can't see!”

There was a smile in Lord Weary's voice. “We can.”

With a soft scuffle of bare feet, Bonecrusher attacked.

Though Will felt himself as good as blind, there must have been some residual fraction of light, for he saw a pale glint of pipe as it slashed downward at his head. Panicked, he brought up his own pipe just in time to block it.

The force of the blow buckled his knees.

The wodewose raised the pipe again, then chopped it down, trying for Will's shin. Will was barely about to leap back from it in time. There was a
clang
as the pipe bounced
off the rail, striking sparks. He found himself panting, though he hadn't even struck a blow yet.

Will knew how to fight with a quarterstaff—every village lad did—but the wild man was not fighting quarterstaff-style but club-style. It was a sweeping, muscular fighting technique the like of which he had never faced before. The club slashed past him again, inches from his chest. Had it connected it would have broken Will's ribs. The wild man followed through, as if he were swinging a baseball bat, and brought it smoothly back, hard and level. Will ducked low, saving his skull from being crushed.

Will swung his pipe wildly and felt it bounce off the wodewose's ribs. But it didn't even slow the wild man down. His club came down on Will's shoulder.

Just barely, Will managed to twist aside so that the club only dealt him a glancing, stinging blow to his arm. But that was enough to numb him for an instant and make his fingers involuntarily release their hold on one end of his weapon. Now it was held only by his left hand.

There was a murmur of admiration from the watchers, but no more. Which meant that Bonecrusher was not popular in the Army of Night, however much they might value his fighting skill.

The pain brought the dragon rising up within Will, a ravening wave of anger that threatened to wash over his mind and drown all conscious thought. He fought it down. Whirling the pipe around his head, he feinted at one shoulder. Then, when the wodewose brought up his own weapon to block it, he shifted his attack. The pipe slammed into Bonecrusher's forehead and bounced off.

Bonecrusher shook his matted dreadlocks and raised his weapon once more.

At that moment, a great noise rose up in the distance. A train! Will tucked his pipe under one arm as if it were a lance and ran full-tilt at his opponent. The pipe struck him in the chest and knocked him stumbling backward.

The train rounded a bend. Its headlight blossomed like the sun at midnight.

Will retreated to the far side of the track. He pressed himself against the nearest support beam, feeling its cold strength under his back. Across from him, Bonecrusher started forward, hesitated, and then turned away, one great hand covering his eyes.

His eyes? Oh.

The locomotive slammed past Will, a wash of air shoving against him like a warm fist. He had a momentary glimpse of astonished faces in the passenger car windows before he threw an arm over his eyes to shield himself from the painfully bright light.

Then the train was gone. When he opened his eyes again, he could see nothing.

Bonecrusher chuckled. “Yer blind, aintcha?” he said. “Motherfucker.”

Now Will was truly afraid.

With fear came anger, however, and anger made it easier for him to draw upon the dragon-darkness within him. He felt it rising up in his blood and clamped down tight. He refused to give it control. It struggled against him, a fire running through his veins, an evil song lifting in his throat. It yearned to be let free.

He heard the whisper of Bonecrusher's naked feet on the railroad ties. He backed away.

Now an inner vision seemed to pierce the darkness. All was still shadow within shadow, but he knew that the shifting blackness directly before him was the wodewose padding quietly forward, raising his makeshift club for one final and devastating blow.

The dragon-anger was straining at its leash. So Will let slip his hold a little, allowing the anger to leap forward to meet the attack. He threw aside his own pipe and stepped into the blow. With one hand, he caught the wild man's club
and wrested it from his grasp. With the other, he seized the wodewose by the throat.

Flinging away the wodewose's weapon, he stooped and grabbed his opponent by his thigh. The creature's fur was as stiff as an Airedale's, and matted with knots. Will lifted him up over his head. He tried to curse, but Will's hand clutched his throat too tightly for anything meaningful to emerge.

The bastard was helpless now. Will could swing him around and smash his head against a pillar or drop him down over his knee, breaking his spine. It would be the easiest thing in the world, either way.

Well, screw that.

“I don't have anything against you,” he told his struggling opponent. “Give me your word of surrender, and I'll set you free.”

Bonecrusher made a gurgling noise.

“That's not possible,” Lord Weary said with obvious regret. “Our laws say: To the death.”

Frustration filled Will. To have come so far, only to be thwarted by a childish warrior's code! Well, then, he would have to run. He doubted the Army of the Night would pursue him with much enthusiasm after seeing how easily he defeated their champion.

“If your laws say that,” Will snarled, “then they're not mine.”

With a surge of anger, he flung the wodewose away from him.

“Fucking bas—!” The word cut off abruptly as the \wodewose hit the ground. Electrical sparks flew into the air like fireworks. The wodewose's body arced and crisped. There was a smell of burnt hair and scorched flesh.

Somebody whistled and said, “That's cold.”

Will had forgotten entirely about the third rail.

L
ord Weary picked out four of his soldiers for a burial detail. “Carry Bonecrusher upstairs,” he said, “and leave him somewhere he'll be found, so that City Services will take care of the body. Be sure he's lying facing up! I don't want one of my soldiers mistaken for an animal.” Then he clapped a hand on Will's shoulder. “Well fought, boy. Welcome to the Army of Night.”

When the burial detail had lugged Bonecrusher's body into oblivion, Lord Weary lined up those who remained and led them the other way. “On to Niflheim,” he said. Will joined the line and, shivering, managed to keep pace.

He'd walked for what seemed like forever and no time at all when the smell of urine and feces welled up around him so strong that it made his eyes water. Somebody lived down here. A lot of somebodies. Will found himself stumbling up a crumbling set of stairs and onto a cement platform.

A miniature city arose before him. There were perhaps a hundred or so shanties built one on top of the other of wooden crates and cardboard boxes, each one sufficient to hold a sleeping bag and little more. Wicker baskets, large enough to sleep in, hung from the ceiling. There were narrow streets between the shanties down which shadows flitted. The Army of Night wove its way through them into a central plaza, where a cluster of haints and feys sat crouched around a portable television set, its volume turned down to a murmur. Others sat about talking quietly or reading tattered paperbacks by candlelight. High on the walls above was a frieze of tiles that showed dwarves mining and smelting and manufacturing. Deep runes in the stone arch over a cinder-blocked doorway read niflheim station. Judging by the newspapers and old clothes strewn about, it had been closed and abandoned long ago.

A hulder (Will could tell from her buxom figure and by the cow's tail sticking out from under her skirt) rose to greet them. “Lord Weary,” she said. “You are welcome here, and
your army, too. I see you have somebody new.” Most of those who rose in her wake were haints.

“I thank you, thane-lady Hjördis. Our recruit is so recent he hasn't chosen a name for himself yet. He is our new champion.”

“Him?” Hjördis scowled. “
This boy?”

“Don't be fooled by his looks, the lad's tough. He killed Bonecrusher.”

Soft muttering washed over the platform. “By trickery?” somebody asked dubiously.

“In fair and open combat. I saw it all.”

There was a moment's tension before the thane-lady nodded, accepting. Then Lord Weary said to her, “We must confer. Serious matters are afoot.”

“First we eat,” Hjördis said. “You will sit with me at the head table.”

To Will's surprise, he was included with Lord Weary in the invitation. Apparently the office of champion made him a counselor as well. He watched as tables were built in the central square, of boards set over wire milk crates, and then covered with sheets of newspaper in place of linen. A cobbley set out pads of newspaper for seats and paper plates for them to eat from. Another filled the plates with food. The thane-lady's table was set under the wall, beneath the tiled dwarves. She and her favored companions sat with their backs to the wall, so that the rows of lesser-ranked diners faced them.

The food was better than might be expected, some of it scrounged from grocery-store dumpsters after passing its sell-by date, and the rest of it from upstairs charities. They ate by the light of tuna-can lamps with rag wicks in rancid cooking oil, conversing quietly.

Will commented that the tunnels seemed more labyrinthine and of greater extent than he had thought they would be, and Hjördis said, “You don't know the half of it. There used to be fifteen different gas companies in Babel,
six separate sets of steam tunnels, and Sirrush only can say how many subway systems, pneumatic trains, sub-surface lines, underground trolleys, and pedestrian walkways that nobody uses anymore. Add to that maintenance tunnels for the power and telephone and plumbing and sewage systems, storm drains, the summer retreats that the wealthy used to have dug for them a century ago, the bomb shelters, the bootleggers' vaults…”