The Brothers Cabal (39 page)

‘Trousers,' said Horst.

‘Trousers. So, I feel sure we have the only vampire and, for all his undoubted blessings, he labours under one major disadvantage. Daylight. He is our ace in the hole, but we are limited in when he can be used. Thus, your attack is scheduled for one hour before dusk. When the enemy are fully engaged, then Horst will awaken, and he, Fräulein Bartos, and I shall infiltrate the fortress. Therein, we shall perform the necessary
decapitation
of the
Ministerium
. I, for one, am looking forward to it.'

‘He's cold,' said Palomer to Straka. ‘I like that.' She did not reply, but nor did she manifest her usual show of repugnance for the Yellow Inquisitor, so that passed for agreement.

‘Strategically, the aim is to destroy the
Ministerium Tenebrae
in one night. How that will be achieved tactically is what we shall discuss now. I have,' said Cabal impressively, ‘a flip chart.'

‘Dawn's coming,' said Horst brightly. ‘I had best be off to bed. Good luck with the planning, everyone!' He vanished before anyone could even reply.

*   *   *

Plans were laid. As the sky lightened, the train was already preparing to move, and operatives were spreading out across the countryside. Time was short, and there was so very much to do.

It took some gentle persuasion that actually
was
gentle persuasion and not a euphemism for horrible torture, but Henri Palomer managed to find Father Hornung of the church of St Francis in Halderberg, a small town some twenty miles from Krenz. He was not the only agent there; both Johannes Cabal and ‘Korka' Olvirdóttir were also in town on errands of their own.

Palomer, however, was a Catholic born and bred, and even if the Vatican had decided that it could, and indeed should, do without the services of the Yellow Inquisition, he would not, and indeed could not, live without Mother Church. So, he sought out the father in humility and respect.

That he had to seek him out at all rather than just walking into the church was a demonstration of how the state of Mirkarvia was in transition from a nominal monarchy (but in reality a military oligarchy) into its interesting new form as a teratarchy, to use the exciting new term coined by Professor Stone. The new ruling class did not care much for churches and the like, places where the wrong god or gods were worshipped. When things had stabilised a little more and the Mirkarvian bureaucracy had adjusted to its new form, then the churches, synagogues, and the handful of temples and mosques to be found within its boundaries would be closed and, where necessary, deconsecrated. As it was, a rigorously enforced ‘worship tax' was already in place, causing the closure of all but the most well-attended. The survivors served both to swell the Mirkarvian coffers while concentrating the more devout botherers of God into a few well-defined locations for ease of persecution.

Even while Palomer bemoaned such wickedness, Cabal could not help but enjoy the irony of major organised religions suffering a degree of the troubles they had visited so vigorously on others down the centuries. He had joined Palomer after securing a few minor requisites of his own, and now they sat on pew ends about the northern aisle of the church. This particular church was not open to worshippers by mandate of the Red Queen, and the priest had suffered visits from servants of the state to remind him of this. That these servants spoke with Katamenian accents and had emphasised their points with blows was no surprise in these difficult times.

‘These are perilous times for followers of the faith,' said Father Hornung. He looked harried and tired, unshaved for at least a day, and a cut on his cheek still healing from the last time he'd been reminded that Mirkarvia's state religion was no longer Christianity or any of its near relations.

‘Which faith is that?' asked Cabal. He looked around, affecting to have only just noticed the seven-hundred-year-old building in which he was sitting. ‘Oh,
that
one. Pardon my interruption. Please, carry on.'

Hornung gave Cabal a hard look.

‘Do not mind him,' said Palomer. ‘He cannot help it.'

Hornung leaned close and whispered, ‘Apostate?'

Palomer smiled and shook his head. ‘Necromancer.'

Hornung was thunderstruck. ‘Here? In the house of God? Impossible!'

‘If you're going to have a whispered conversation,' said Cabal, ‘you might do better than to hold it in a building with such excellent acoustics. Yes, Father, I am a necromancer. Yes, I am on consecrated ground but haven't burst into flames as you so clearly believe I should. Consider this: if you are wrong on a detail such as that, upon what else may you be mistaken?'

Cabal was, of course, being entirely disingenuous. Necromancers as a rule
do
catch fire on consecrated ground as an effect of being divested of their souls. Not all necromancers follow such a path, but most take the plunge in the early stages of their career. Johannes Cabal had done exactly that himself and, as a result, been forced to dance hotfoot across several stretches of church land in his time. Unlike most necromancers who make such a sacrifice, however, Cabal's interests in necromancy were analytical and not simply confined to littering the world with zombies and animated skeletons, the usual highly limited domain of the popular necromancer, which is to say, the highly
un
popular necromancer. To him, the lack of a soul had become a burden. Alas, not in any metaphysical or poetical sense, but simply because it was a nuisance and caused perturbations in his experiments. Thus, he had gone to some little trouble to recover it.

This he did not trouble to tell Father Hornung, both because it would have indicated that Hornung's belief in the ungodliness of necromancers was not entirely unfounded and also because the mechanism by which Cabal had recovered his own soul involved dealings with Satan himself and the offhand dooming of a lot of incidental
hoi polloi
to eternal damnation in the fiery pits of Hell. Cabal thought that this latter point would just have led to a lot of tedious moralising by the priest, so he kept it to himself.

Despite such a rhetorical nicety on the part of Cabal, however, Father Hornung did not instantly warm to him. Instead he pointedly ignored Cabal and spoke to Palomer as if there were no one else present.

‘I have asked for instructions from the cardinal, but he no longer replies,' said Hornung. ‘At first I thought the post was disrupted, just like everything else is in Mirkarvia these days, but now I hear Cardinal Etter was arrested. Nobody knows where he is. The Vatican has
demanded
the government explain its actions.'

Cabal's derisive snort echoed around the pillars and plaster saints. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I just found what you said enormously amusing. Don't mind me.'

Father Hornung paled beneath his stubble. ‘You find the Vatican amusing, sir?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Cabal. ‘Very much so. Verging on hilarious at times.'

‘
This
is the kind of man that your order is allying itself with?' Hornung demanded of Palomer. ‘You're dining with a devil.'

‘I have a
very
long spoon, Father,' said Palomer, measuring out a length of air between his index fingers to indicate a spoon of remarkable length.

Suddenly there was a crash from the roof almost overhead. Something dark flashed down by the window. Father Hornung leapt to his feet.

‘The devils! They've come!'

‘No, no, Father,' said Cabal in a tone that, if intended as soothing, only succeeded in seeming a little arch. ‘That's our associate.'

The face of Korka Olvirdóttir smiled engagingly through a hole that had freshly appeared in the plaster of the roof. ‘Sorry!' she called down. ‘It got away from me.'

‘How long until you're done?' asked Cabal.

‘Soon. Already got most of what we'll need. Another ten minutes?'

‘Thank you,' said Cabal.

‘Who is that woman?' demanded the priest, pointing at the hole with a trembling finger. ‘What is she doing up there?'

‘Lead,' explained Cabal. ‘We need some lead. Not very much. No more than a hundredweight, I should think. You've got tons of it up there, you'll never even notice that little bit's gone.' He looked at the hole and considered. ‘Except when it rains.'

‘How dare you!' Father Hornung looked like he might be moved to violence. ‘How dare you defile this church without…'

Cabal rose to look the priest in the eye. ‘As you seem to be under the impression that the Red Queen is just going to go away if you complain enough, let me disabuse you of that notion. She is not. To the contrary, she will consolidate her grip on this country, and she will expunge all religions except the dark ones in which she is currently comparison shopping.'

‘You can't possibly know…'

‘She is Lady Orfilia Ninuka, daughter of the late Count Marechal.'

The animosity left the priest's face in a moment, replaced by astonishment. ‘The count's daughter? Didn't she die?'

‘Alas, no.'

‘But … No, you're mistaken. She cannot be the Red Queen. The Lady Ninuka was …
is
just a bit flighty.'

‘No,' said Cabal. ‘She's a sociopath with nothing to lose, who is also a bit flighty. We need the lead to stop her. Should we fail, you won't have a church within the space of a year. The forces she is bringing to Mirkarvia will not tolerate churches.' He perceived the unspoken question in Hornung's mind. ‘Yes, those are exactly the forces I am talking about. Now, given the alternative, isn't that worth a few damp pews?'

Hornung seemed to make up his mind. ‘I can get a tarpaulin to cover the hole.'

Cabal smiled, or at least he flexed his face in such a way that the corners of his mouth rose. ‘Splendid. Pragmatism suits you, Father Hornung. Now, while you're in a cooperative mood, I have a tiny little request to make of you.'

‘What?' said Hornung. He darted a glance at Palomer, who only shrugged. ‘You want more? Such as?'

‘Well, in the first instance, do you know where we might lay hands on several large barrels?'

‘Barrels?'

Cabal nodded. ‘Oh, and a carpenter. And a hearse.'

*   *   *

The attack came from the west. As the sentries on the ramparts of Harslaus Castle squinted into the setting sun, a force numbering a few hundred appeared around the bend in the river and advanced in skirmishing order on the fortress.

It didn't look much like a military operation, and that was entirely deliberate. Careful planning was to be found in the apparent disarray, meant to suggest yet another minor demonstration of the locals' anger at their new overlords. The common folk of Mirkarvia were used to tyrants, and took it as part of the social contract that they were permitted to mass and shout and string up a couple of magistrates, just so long as they then ran away into the night and settled themselves, ready to be downtrodden some more as and when the authorities found a gap in their appointments.

Their new masters, however, were of a different ilk altogether, and the Mirkarvian people—traditionalists all—weren't about to settle for all this newfangled ‘republic of occult evils' nonsense without making their feelings felt. This was done every week or two on average, and had settled down into a routine that began with splendid indifference from the muck-mucks in the castle, and finished with a spirited game of ‘Eat the Dissident' involving werewolves. The Mirkarvian people, long inured to vigorous relations with their ruling class, sensed a tradition forming, and were beginning to think that perhaps the new regime were going to be okay after all.

This developing harmony between the suppressed and the suppressors was monitored and quantified by the militaristic minds of the Templars—a contingent of whom had belatedly arrived, the ‘Great Evil' rising from the sands of North Africa having been discovered to be terribly evil, but not so very great—and so they were able to predict that the attack date that had been forced upon them was not such a bad one, as it fell quite neatly upon the sweet spot when the castle authorities would be expecting some trouble from the yokels, yet just before the yokels actually felt quite aggrieved enough to provide it.

Into this window of unfulfilled expectation entered the combined forces of several of the world's more benign secret societies, where ‘benign' is left open to a degree of interpretation. By and large they were unused to doing their skulking
en masse
but to their credit had adapted well. The Templars formed their heavy infantry, men (and a few women, for the order no longer cleaved quite so closely to many of the precepts under which the Templars were formed; the first to go had been the business about never shaving and generally keeping a poor toilette, this when it became understood that hairiness is not necessarily next to godliness, and God would prefer to stand upwind if that was all the same to them?) who dealt with the enemies in their manifold holy wars with vigour and certainty, or brutality and cruelty, depending on one's viewpoint.

They were flanked by the lighter skirmishers of the Dee Society on their right and the Yellow Inquisitors to the left. The Dee Society had already lost many of its best in the failed assault of a month before and, although reinforced by people who absolutely were
not
—perish the thought—mercenaries hired by the British government and detached British intelligence agents of splendid expendability, they were still under strength. Of Yellow Inquisitors, however, there was no shortage. After centuries of quietly doing the work of the Vatican, often to the great surprise of the Vatican, who had long since forgotten there had ever been a Yellow Inquisition, this was their grand chance to face evil personified, and they were much looking forward to sticking a stiletto in its ribs. In an orgy of dead-letter drops and secret handshakes, the Inquisitors had been roused from their secretive lives and they had answered with the cheerful satisfaction of professional torturers and assassins on a busman's holiday.