The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (42 page)

                            The signal came with the dull thud and flash of mortars falling around the Sentry Towers and the clang of smoke and phosphorous grenades upon the hard slabs. The smoke to hide the High Hats advance and the glowing phosphorus to draw the fire of the heat guided laser turrets.

                            Santiago grinned as the High Hats surged across the open space and the turrets did not reply. It would have been nice to know if his strategy would have worked had they been working, but it didn't matter now, it was as good as over. Without their technology the race of the Tallmen was as good as extinct he figured.

                            From beyond the billowing clouds of smoke the Tallmen heard the heart stopping banshee wails of the advancing High Hats. Random  shots rang out as they came only to be drowned out by the rising roar of a thousand pairs of hobnailed boots pounding on stone.

                            A palpable terror rose in the Tallmen ranks as they as they peered into the smoky gloom for their manic and invisible foe. Then after what seemed an age to them, wave after wave of them appeared, snarling, screaming, eyes widened in hatred and the desire for the gold they would earn for the pleasure of killing.

                            Lasers flashed and High Hats fell charred, but soon the sea of black cloth and top hats swamped them, guns blazing and blades slashing. In moments of thundering chaos the Tallmen warriors were crushed and cut to pieces by eager bounty hunters.

                            Flax walked amongst the remains of the Tall warriors who had fell to his army. He had realised that to kill them all was a mistake, he need to know how to work the machinery that lay in the dark buildings at the farthest extent of  the  realm's  field  walls.  Without  Tallmen  to operate it, at least briefly and the knowledge of how it was done he would have no empire to rule.

                            He called off the majority his horde, sending them back to the Upper City to claim their rewards from his paymasters. Now was the time for diplomacy. The soldiers of his enemy had fallen, so under a flag of truce and backed up by a hundred of his personal bodyguard he advanced toward  the  pyramid  shaped  building  which squatted at the centre of the Tallman city.

                            Nothing stirred until he reached the stone structure's door. He was close enough to touch it when it slid noiselessly open, permitting a dull light to send  a weak, yellow shaft into the smog around the city.

                            Flanked   by   two   tall   warriors   who   bore only ceremonial spears,  an  ancient,  white  bearded Tallman  studied the grinning human who stood at the doorway. The two leaders stood silently surveying one another for a while before the wizened giant spoke. "Who are you?" he spat.

Flax smiled at him, his yellow teeth glistening in the gloom.

"Why I am Silus Flax of course, new Emperor of this realm, Master of the Two Cities and Master of...." he paused for a while and chuckled.  "… and Master of the Tallmen." There was silence and then the old man laughed back. "HA! Master of Nothing." he sneered back impassively at Flax.

"If I choose, this place will become less than nothing in seconds; I only have to say the word!"

Flax folded his arms and stared at the Tallman leader and shook his head.

"But you have not, have you? You could have destroyed all this before we got this far, as soon as your    soldiers were defeated. Yet you did not. We are        still here! I ask myself  ...  why?"  Flax's  eyes narrowed.  A  poor  bluff  he  thought! He moved closer to the Tallman Elder and stared up into his eyes. “What you should have asked me, was "what you want"? Not who are you. Do you understand me old man?" Flax sauntered inside. The guards lowered their lances, but the Tallman Elder waved them away. "You will not destroy this place while there is still hope. Suicide is for the weak and martyrdom the stupid." Flax put his hand on the Elders shoulder. "You are neither weak or a martyr."

                            The Elder narrowed his eyes. The human was right of course. Had the other Elders met to debate  this issue, they would have ended Dubh's existence, they would not fall to a lower race. IF they had met, but now they lay dead in their chairs around that debating table. He alone had the strongest desire for self preservation; he had only one principle - survival.

The Tallmen still had knowledge this human needed, while they had it, they had power. This Silus Flax,

this  self  proclaimed emperor,  would  bargain. That  was why  was  here, unarmed and  vulnerable. Both of them would negotiate and both knew it. The Elder smiled at Flax and Flax smiled back at him. They both began to laugh loudly. Then the Elder stretched out a hand and shook Flax's.

"Come in Silus Flax, we have much to discuss." he said and then bowed theatrically as Flax entered and signalled his bodyguard to follow.

Chapter Thirty One

                            In  the  darkened,  smog  wreathed  alleyways and streets of Dubh, in its hovels and crowded tenements, the shaken population began to recover from the violence which had sent them running from their lives. They emerged from their dark warrens  into  a world of smoke and shadow, into a twilight world illuminated only by the lanterns they bore or from the flames burning out of  control  in  buildings  shattered by  Silus  Flax's  maniacal  army.

                            There was now almost no illumination from the field wall above them now only feeble, flickering and crackling bursts of energy that marked the dimension's increasing instability. Holes in the field walls had begun to appear and for instants, beams of light seared Dubh from dimensions beyond, blazing in a short lived existence before the Tallmen compensated for the irregularity.

                                          Ragged   tears   in   the   dimension    walls above Dubh, occasionally poured material instead of sunlight from above. Sea water, earth, pebbles and leaves rained down periodically, to those who dared to emerge onto the streets. Their attention was not focused on the freak showers for long though, soon it was turned toward the corpses that littered the rubble strewn streets. They offered booty, food and other less clearly defined uses. Corpses were stripped, robbed or dragged off to the lower levels, whose scavenging inhabitants now ventured to the surface where the increasing darkness offered better cover for their acutely depraved activities.

In  the  dimmed  light  of  Dubh,  dark  puddles  of shadow seemed to swirl and flow as the absence of light had released them  from  bondage.  Murky tar pools of lightlessness began to form where shadows could not truly exist, fed by rivulets of pure night that seemed to drain from rooftops or flow upwards  from  the  portals that led to Dubh's underworld. They increased in size rapidly and began to cover the cobbles and paving stones   thoroughfares completely. The long dead lived in these malevolent reservoirs, the malign spirit of Dubh  wallowed  there  now,  strengthened by the terror and destruction fostered in the souls of Dubhians   by    Flax's   horde.

                            Now it strengthened in the gathering  darkness and called out to those who had survived the bloody massacres on the streets commanding  them  to continue the violence and depravity upon which it fed. Sporadic violence began to erupt in the Lower City, without the rule of the presence of the Tans, with out subjugation to their social order, the population began to consume itself in a violent, anarchic frenzy of hedonism.

                            Despite,  or  perhaps   in   spite,   of   their uncertain futures, the inhabitants of Dubh pursued the lust for physical pleasure with a renewed vigour, never had such an intensity of depravity existed even in this fouls world. The people of Dubh  lost  control completely. The possessed darkness oozed from the cracks in the pavement or rained from the walls and rooftops  had  taken  control  of  their  functions, squeezing out reason and furthering its goals of destruction. Thanatos, the driver of self destruction that lurks latent in us all, rose within them and around hem, the ultimate pleasure was now  death,  the plunge into the imagined and paradoxical ecstasy of non being. Silus Flax had conquered a city, but lost its people. The forces of evil which resided in Dubh’s depths and channelled their energy through him, aided and cajoled  him, marched behind him sweeping up the dark spoils of war for itself, consuming souls, dining upon  despair.  Flax was one of its puppets, a means to an end and a catalyst             

for a world's destruction. He was a key to a door. While he strode in search of his empires, darkness gathered behind him, preparing for the day when Flax would enable its migration to worlds beyond this dying realm, to  fertile fields ripe for the disease of despair, a womb in which the seed of corruption could grow.

                            From the widening pools of pure and distilled corruption came insane gurgles of laughter that echoed around the grim gorges that were the  streets  of malignant  Dubh  and  reverberated  along  the   lower and deeper lanes of depravity,  as  an  ominous thunder. The people heard it and they laughed with it as they murdered and violated one another.

Such was evil's lightless intensity now and its anticipation of consummate rule so strong, that when a bright, shining star of purity and untouchable innocence emerged into the very midst of its being, the darkness upon the streets began to howl in puerile indignation. The whole city began to shake with its rage and its own despair.

                            In the City of the Tallmen Flax heard it howl, outside and inside his head and echo within the vast emptiness of his soul.

Chapter Thirty Two

                            As the army of howling High Hats advanced toward the river, sweeping the bewildered Tans before them, the Turkanschoner crouched low in a second  storey window observing the slaughter taking place in the streets below. He had ventured up from the underworld scavenging for food, leaving Milly safe and secure hidden in the derelict building opposite the one which housed the dimension door.

                            He had decided to move to the opposite side of the subterranean street because he feared that the house might be visited from the High Hat chamber he had glimpsed on his journey through the dimension door with

Jonathan. Better away from that portal he deduced.

                            The new refuge was now sealed and accessible only through the front door which, unlike many others still swung on its hinges. It also offered the occupants a clear view of the building opposite and any arrivals could be viewed from a position of relative safety.

                            The Turkanschoner had shown the machine he had retrieved from the Tallmen to Milly, and explained, the best he could, its importance in Jonathan's plans. She understood and he had left her attempting to reassemble it from its component parts. She had partly succeeded, easily interpreting the colour coding the technician had added to most of the glass tubes and small globes, so that he might reassemble the device more easily when he returned to the Elders.

                            The beast had left her pondering over the positions of the remaining parts which had no clues to their place in the construction, while he made a short foray for food while they awaited the reappearance of Jonathan.

                            Moving rapidly through the darkness aided by his acute sense of smell and ignored only by the most persistent of rats,  he  soon  found  his  way  to  the surface streets of Dubh and the battle which raged there.

                            Once on the streets he moved cautiously in the dim light, made worse by the smoke from the combat, and avoided the fighting around him. Now, from his vantage point on a blasted window ledge, he watched a Tan platoon fleeing down the street beneath him. Even though in superior numbers to their pursuers, they were picked off at will by the High Hats. When they reached a point almost directly below him they took refuge behind a makeshift barricade and prepared for a desperate last stand.

                            For every round they fired the High Hats fired a hundred. The Turkanschoner could see that they stood little chance against the enemy whose weaponry was vastly superior. Short and metallic, the guns the black coated men bore spewed round after round without the need for reloading, unlike the musket men who struggled in vain with ramrods and powder horns.

The              bemused              observer              watched              the conflict              intently. The High Hats weapons did actually run out, one of their number crouched below him and removed a magazine and replaced  it  with  another from a bag on his shoulder and then continued to spray the Tan position with long bursts of fire.