The Brothers Cabal (40 page)

Backing the Dee Society and the Yellow Inquisition were the witches of the rival cults of Hecate and Medea respectively, carefully kept separate from one another to no complaints from anyone. The Inquisitors had actually asked to have the humourless Sisters at their back, possibly because their businesslike demeanour impressed the Inquisitors, but more likely because the Inquisitors found the tight lips and narrowed eyes of the witches inexpressibly amusing. Unlike the better-known inquisitions, the Yellow had found a sense of humour to make up for losing papal dispensations, and strolled through life as rapscallions and troubadours, songs in their hearts and thumbscrews in their pockets. There was pleasure to be found in the irony of witches, traditionally wanton and lascivious, and inquisitors, equally traditionally sombre and duty bound, swapping their stereotypes. Nor did the Yellow Inquisition mind having witches at their back; they had long since traded in cant and dogma for compromise and pragmatism. They judged by deeds, and the Sisters of Medea had done much good. Some evil here and there, it was true, but nothing on the scale of that which the
Ministerium Tenebrae
threatened.

Equally, the Dee Society were content to have their backs covered by the ever-practical Daughters of Hecate. To them, the great mystery of everything was wound up in their Witch Goddess, a grand dame of the ancient pantheons to whom even Nyarlathotep had been known to bow courteously and hold the door open, and a large part of that mystery could be expressed as ‘It's all bigger than you can deal with, so why worry?' Thus, they carried on through life as agents of Hecate, adhering to principles that wavered between ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' and ‘Do as thou wilt, and that shall be a fair bit of the law'. Managing to reconcile Christianity, Thelema, some woolly Earth Mother beliefs, and the worship of an ancient and unknowable goddess of powers who was also pretty good fun at parties, the Daughters of Hecate could afford to be patient and happy, because no matter who ended up winning the war of creation, it would somehow still be them. In the meantime, they asked themselves daily ‘What would Hecate do?' and then went for the most enjoyable option. In their philosophy, ‘enjoyable' did not necessarily mean ‘safe', which was how a force of them came to be there unto the breach. They might die, but at least they'd do it pissing off the forces of seriousness.

Whenever a Templar happened to look at them, the Daughters of Hecate would grin back. The Templars always broke eye contact first.

That the witches were not in the vanguard was in no way any reflection of their combat worthiness or upon their sex. Rather it was in their forte, which was the remote bringing down of trouble upon the heads of their foes. They were roughly equivalent to the secret little army's artillery, and therefore kept back where they could do the most good without being distracted in close combat.

The castle sentries must have spotted them a good half mile away, but there was no hue and cry, no alarums and excursions. The sentries watched, drinking tea and eating sandwiches. There was no great hurry, after all; such events had the air of an over-rehearsed local amateur dramatics performance that had long since lost any likelihood of surprising the audience. Finally somebody realised the coconut fancies had been left in the guardroom so they sent somebody down to fetch them who, in passing, remembered to sound the alert.

There was no longer the slightest intention of sending human soldiers out to deal with this latest
bijou
uprising; the guards instead busied themselves taking bets as to how long the attackers would last before routing. The few who did not gamble or were waiting on payday trailed off to ensure the castle's defences were tight, i.e., the windows were shut. Up on the battlements, they heard an ironic cheer as the newly repaired drawbridge rattled down. This could only mean that the sally was commencing.

In days of yore, this would have consisted of a bunch of knights, squires, and assorted varlets boiling out of a sally port like weevils from a biscuit to disrupt the besieging army, returning smartly before any real resistance could be organised. That was days of yore. Now, the main gate opened, the portcullis rose, and an uninterested horde of zombies staggered out into the early evening. They staggered, and they groaned, and they stuck their arms out in attitudes of deathly menace, but even they in the last dim glimmerings of their intellect were getting bored with this. Usually the irked Mirkarvians thought better of it and ran away at the first sight of the undead. Sometimes, they would actually engage, lose a few people, and
then
think better of it. More rarely still, they would engage, make a decent fist of it, but then the lycanthropes would turn up like the vainglorious windbags they were and steal the glory. One wouldn't have thought there were many fates worse than death, but for the zombies being dead
and
upstaged by a bunch of furry bastards fitted the bill precisely.

The zombies moved out onto the road on the far side of the river and milled around for a minute, groaning threateningly at one another while they got themselves sorted out. Finally sighting their actual designated victims for the evening's wander, they set off westwards, following the riverbank as they closed on the attackers.

If they had been possessed of a little more tactical sense, they might have wondered why the opposing force was neither advancing nor retreating, but was instead consolidating their line. If the sentries on the battlements had actually been paying much attention, they might have wondered that, too, but they were currently preoccupied with getting their fair share of the coconut fancies. The undead came on, arms waving, and only appreciated that something was different on this occasion when there was a solitary crack of a pistol going off in the rear of the besiegers and, a moment later, a green parachute flare floated slowly down, twinkling sickly in the dying light of the sun.

The zombies paused, first with confusion, and then to point and coo at this wonder, a small pretty thing in an afterlife less noteworthy than they had been led to believe.

*   *   *

Two miles away on a branch line that was now lucky to see a train a week, Denzil and Dennis stood on the footplate of the locomotive, pointing at the new green star in the sky, and making ghoulish hoots of happiness. Their afterlife was certainly looking more engaging these days. They'd experienced air travel, been given a new train to drive, and now there was a green star to hoot at. This was, indeed, paradise.

Three entomopters lined up on the dirt track running parallel to the track. Miss Virginia Montgomery checked her watch, made an unhappy face, and walked down the row of machines, their engines silent, their pilots standing by them.

‘This is a hell of a thing we have got ourselves into,' she had said to them. ‘A hell of a thing
I
have got us into. We've seen what the black hats have got lined up, we know they're playing hardball, we know there's going to be some empty seats tomorrow. You signed up with me as aerial performers. Not as thieves, not as warriors. Sure as hell not as martyrs. I…'

‘If you're going to say we don't have to go, maybe you should've said it before we stole all these guns, bombs, and ammunition,' said Dea Boom. She nodded sideways to indicate the opened gunports with the tips of muzzle shrouds projecting from them, the gleaming rocket racks, the dull black ten-pounder bombs held below the stubby ordnance wings

‘Maybe I should've,' admitted Miss Montgomery. ‘But I'm telling you now. Anyone wants to stay, I don't blame you, and I won't hold it against you.'

There was silence.

Then Mink picked up her helmet from within the cockpit and started sorting out the chin strap. ‘We done now? I want to blow up zombies.'

*   *   *

Horst awoke in a different place. Reaching around himself, he realised he was encased in some sort of metal box, about the size of a coffin. The air was close, and he was glad that he didn't have to breathe much these days except for a smidgeon for his metabolism, for speech, and for nostalgia, as he held a strong conviction that the box was hermetically sealed. He did not panic, however. He sensed the methodical hand of Johannes at work here and would trust to his brother's planning.

Nor was this trust ill founded. Some fifteen minutes later as he was working on anagrams of ‘bored vampire', the upper edge of the box to the right of his head was penetrated by a curved steel blade that, after a moment or two's observation as it rocked back and forth cutting its way through the soft metal of his enclosure, he realised was essentially a large sort of can opener. The metal parted easily, confirming his suspicion that it was lead, and he helped push it open as the blade continued down the length of the box.

Horst sat up to discover he had been travelling in a lead-lined coffin. ‘Very swish,' he commented to his brother. Cabal threw down the curved blade, and took up his jacket from where he'd thrown it over the tailgate of a horse-drawn hearse.

‘Your definition of
swish
has changed over time, I see,' he said as he shrugged into the jacket.

Horst climbed from the coffin and joined his brother. They were in a gloomy, low-ceilinged vault of some kind. Open stalls ran down either side of the wide and oppressive space. ‘Where are we?'

‘The stable undercroft of Harslaus Castle. The guards are, as predicted, terrified of those they are nominally guarding.' He took down a black top hat, its crown circumscribed by a long black silk ribbon that trailed over the rear of the rim. He dusted some lint from it absent-mindedly. ‘A delivery order signed by Lady Misericorde and countersigned by Vizconde Velasco de Osma was sufficient to cow them.'

Horst looked at the hearse, the top hat, and then Cabal. ‘A delivery order?'

‘For a three-week-old corpse. “Nice and ripe”, as I characterised it to the guards. Required for m'lady's experiments.'

Horst looked at the buckled lining. ‘Hence all the lead?'

‘Both to discourage careful searches and to protect you from daylight should they decide to open the coffin. An unnecessary precaution as it turns out. A piece of paper with Lady Misericorde's name upon it was sufficient to put the fear of God upon them.' He sniffed. ‘I swear, Horst, I've never heard of the woman.'

Horst smiled. No; in truth, he grinned. ‘Oh, Johannes. Infamy envy.'

‘Certainly not,' snapped Cabal. ‘Simply stating a fact.' He made a show of looking around. ‘Speaking of women, where has Fräulein Bartos got to? She said she was just going to perform a brief reconnoitre, but that was fifteen minutes ago.'

Horst was delving into the coffin to recover his brother's weapons. These comprised the compact automatic in its shoulder holster, and the Webley .577 in a gun belt supplied by the Dee Society. ‘It rather puts a hole into any pretence of being stealthy if you're seen wandering about with a gun at your hip,' he said as he passed them over.

Cabal shrugged into the shoulder holster. ‘You're a known enemy, Fräulein Bartos is much the same, and I am an unfamiliar face. I think we can forget about passing ourselves off. At some point the guards who let us in will start to worry if they've done the right thing and inform their superiors. They may already have done so. I think I shall be glad of the extra ammunition that I have brought along.'

He finished strapping on the big military-issue gun belt and was just pulling on his jacket when he became aware of Alisha Bartos at his side. He almost managed to hide a slight jump of surprise. Unhappily, only ‘almost', so he had the twin humiliations of jumping and an ineffectual dissembling to live down. He dealt with both in his habitual way: applied testiness.

‘If you could spend a little more of your time lurking up on the enemy rather than your allies, madam, perhaps we might stand some small chance of succeeding in this enterprise.' She just looked at him with her head tilted slightly to one side as if he were a competent but bland painting in a gallery. ‘Those guards may wonder what happened to us,' he persisted. ‘What have you done to find us a route out of here and into the castle proper?'

‘They won't be calling anyone. They're dead drunk in the guardroom.'

Cabal looked at her suspiciously. ‘Are we talking about the same guards? Katamenian fellows. Disreputable in many ways, but perfectly sober when we came through.'

‘Not with a syringeful of scopolamine in a solution of ethyl alcohol delivered via the carotid artery, they're not.'

There was a momentary silence.

‘There were three of them.'

‘Yes,' agreed Alisha. ‘I've only got one syringe left now.'

‘I see,' said Cabal. He regarded her as one might a competent but unsettling picture in that same art gallery. ‘I see. Very well. And the reconnaissance…?'

‘Herman and I mapped as much of the building as we could access. The
Ministerium
and its lords and lady had some areas we could not reach without causing suspicion. Otherwise, most of the castle is known to us.'

‘Very efficient,' said Horst. Then to Johannes, ‘Isn't she efficient?'

‘Shut up,' said Cabal.

*   *   *

Two miles away, a flight of three entomopters took to the sky and headed towards Harslaus Castle, two CI-650 Giaguaros in echelon behind a J-55 Copperhead. Behind them they left a train, two mummified corpses dancing and waving at the rapidly diminishing aircraft, a tired and grim mechanic, and a carriage upon which a sign had once read:

MISS VIRGINIA MONTGOMERY
'
S

FLYING CIRCUS

Now the last two words had been painted over in white and in the new blankness a single word had taken their place. In a hasty but pleasing hand it read in proud black characters:

WARBIRDS