The Collected Short Fiction, page 148
Months burn.
We grow strong, Dad and I, although the leeches suggest Dad’s proud visage shall not remind anyone of Adonis. A mild joke assayed by the chief surgeon who is too old to fear execution. Dad was never what you might consider handsome. Now he is a trifle worse. Beauty lines, the legionnaires call such scars.
Something has changed in my master. His smell has altered. He smells of sadness and of determination and regret. I know trouble is on the way. He smells of fire and anger and the desperate foolishness of youth.
Mom comforts us. We walk in the hospital garden. She is radiant in her fear. Her black hair, her carmine lips! Her eyes blaze with mysteries. I am entranced. She and Dad talk of small things and though they are only small things, I cannot imagine how I have always overlooked her cleverness. I am sent to guard the front door. They mate there in the garden, beneath an olive tree. I hope he doesn’t kill himself in the doing.
Mom has wanted a son. I wonder if now she shall receive her desire. Dad has muttered of it some nights when he’d drunk overmuch and fallen prey to sentiment.
After Mom departs with her handmaidens and bodyguards, Dad mutters to me, “May it please the gods my latest heroics grant her a child as I have failed her as a husband these long years.”
In the morning she will find his sick bed empty. She will search while the servants lament. We will not be discovered.
9
An enclave nestles high in the mountains that shield the Empire from western aggressors. The name of the enclave is unimportant. What is important is that the progeny of various paranoid emperors have been sequestered here among bald monks and bearded goats. Few have heard of this enclave. Fewer know where it stands.
Dad is one of the latter and he lands his glider in a copse of paper birch. The walk is brief—we do not wish to run far if running becomes necessary. Because the air is chill he wraps a cloak about himself. Because he does not care to be recognized he wears a hood. In one hand he carries a lens—it has a nose for human chemicals. In the other hand he carries a rod. I alter my coat to blend with the terrain and lurk near his flank. I am on high alert.
It is late afternoon. The bark and leaves of the trees are changing colors. We pick our way through mossy boulders and across tiny streams. Soon, we spy the ancient stone battlement. Left seems a good direction, so we circle that way and mount a low rise screened by more birch and a few pines. A squatty monk in a brown cassock reclines among fallen leaves. Doubtless a lethal guardian. His job appears most boring. Dad whistles to me the whistle of a gyrfalcon. I greet the monk in Praetorian fashion and move on, licking my chops. At the summit there is a rocky clearing with a fine view of distant reaches. The world below is twilight damp.
The sensor blinks and purrs in Dad’s hand.
Just ahead, a pair of children play at rough and tumble. The children cease their sport and observe our approach with sharp interest. Doubtless, they have been taught to fear strangers. The monks are not fools and know what the Emperor expects of them. Fear, however, is a difficult thing to teach. It is better learned from bitter experience and at unpleasant cost.
Dad is hardly fearsome with those bent shoulders, the exaggerated limp. As for me, I’m huge enough to scare anybody with sense, but I grin a friendly grin and wag my tail. Good dog! Dad lowers the hood and bares an avuncular smile. His scars do not alarm, they attract a natural curiosity, and the boys are his. One strokes my fur, surely wistful for the pets he left in his household. I’m the only domesticated animal around for leagues.
The boys dress simply, yet comport themselves as befits princelings. Neither has met his father, Emperor Trajan. Nonetheless, they are proud little bastards, with hints of requisite cruelty in the crinkle of their eyes. Their teeth are white as young carnivores. I have seen their like in my puppyhood kennels. Brutes in training.
Beyond them, the rearward quarter of the knoll has eroded like a cavity in a molar. Blue light fills the ravine and hides its foot. “A bad place to make sport,” Dad says. “The monks would not approve.” The boys laugh at his timidity. The elder quips that life in the palace has far deeper pitfalls.
Dad gazes out over the darkening land where the lights of Prime should soon be. And then, casually, he asks which of them shall be master when his illustrious father relinquishes the throne.
They are close enough in age that there is room for doubt, and thus each makes his answer. He nods sagely. And if master of Prime, how would they govern her territories? Again each makes his answer and as they answer I watch their faces and think my own thoughts. They can’t smell the iron igniting in Dad’s sweat. They cannot smell his smell that is incipient destruction. I hear the creak of his fingers tightening on the weapon at his belt.
Oh, I am certain of what he sees.
In a while he sends the younger boy down to the monastery—the supper bell rings faintly. He keeps the elder at his side—Dad claims he is feeble and will require the lad’s muscle. But first, Dad asks him if he knows his brother well. Indeed, the boy does. Does he suppose his brother would truly break the Praetorian Guard? The boy is contemptuous—of course his weakling brother would do such a stupid thing! The younger son lacks the sense to recognize how the powerful must be warded from the madness of their subjects.
Ah, yet don’t ceaseless favors to the Praetorian Guard weaken the Legion and therefore the citizens? These are difficult times, are they not?
The boy sneers. If the flock must be sheared to clothe the shepherd, so be it. Dad smiles at his conviction and ask if he has ever seen proud Prime. No? Then come now and look across the chasm where night draws down. Stand here and look and see her lights as they spark and catch…
The boy does this. They stand there, Dad’s iron hand loosely upon the boy’s fragile shoulder. I whine softly, my tail swishing back and forth in the tough grass. Darkness falls. It is far to the bottom of the ravine.
10
Dad gets cute and tries to ditch me. He’s sly, tossing a treat into the bushes as he makes for the glider. I’m faster and beat him to the vehicle. He grows exasperated. This may be a suicide mission. My growl tells him, no shit, General. I figured that for myself after we murdered that royal brat.
He commands me to lope home to Mom and guard her. The distance is vast. My mighty dog heart and cyborg parts will see me through. I plant my haunches in the copilot seat and snap at his hand when he attempts to drag me out. Eventually he relents, swearing vilely at my disobedience while smiling a secret smile.
“All right, stupid dog. Let’s get you metal, at least.” I consent to an ancient war harness. The harness is another accessory forged by the old master artificer, Trang, who was peerless in matters of defense. He designed it for the Max Series canines. Such brutes! Such killers! Perhaps less adaptable and handsome than myself, you had to give them credit for ferocity. Scoured with sand and blasted with sonics, I still whiff the taint of gore and death sweat embedded in the harness mesh. My eyes roll back, white, and then forward, black. I’m not a lapdog anymore. I am, as the dead philosopher said, a destroyer of worlds. Small worlds, but worlds.
Dad’s glider was once a racing machine. It shreds the wind. We beat rosy dawn to the capital. There are a thousand doors into the palace and all one thousand are guarded by his gold-armored Praetorians. We enter by the thousand and first.
Moving within the mazeworks, I speculate as to whether the monks back on their mountain have raised an alarm. Yes. Although it may be delayed while the monks seek a method to extract themselves from an untenable position. Trajan’s displeasure is invariably fatal.
This alarm being a given, has the news broadened to include a notice against Dad and me? Yes again. Marcello would add two and two and be first to give the order. Dad trained him well. He is clockwork, dire Marcello. His loves and hates are suits he folds away as the occasion warrants. His duty shall prevail against all else. There can be no doubt that if he spies us lurking about these halls he will kill us if he can. I drool at the idea of this confrontation
Iades? Iades is loyal to Dad. He is also a Praetorian. He will do as Marcello does. Dad is the most loyal of us all—he could’ve divided the Legion and loosed his partisans against the Emperor, perhaps even set himself upon the throne. Instead, he’s chosen the lonely path of the assassin, the man who will pay to liberate the country from an error in judgment with his own life.
Dad may not desire the death of his men, although I would happily gut them one and all at this point. My ire is stoked. We travel by secret ways and come at last to the inner sanctum of our dear Emperor. The way Dad chooses is arduous—it involves no small measure of slithering through vents and clambering over shelves with precipitous drops yawning at our toes. Dad’s wounds pain him; his muscles labor. I worry he will fail. Yet he is tough, my old man. He persists against and my focus narrows to ward him from a sudden fall.
Artificer Lyth nearly has us because of this. He is waiting in the shadowy heights of an arch and descends with horrible alacrity. The pleasure upon his unmasked visage is manifestly unsettling. Artificer Lyth detests us as much as we detest him. He does not summon the Guard. He radiates a craving for homicidal glory. The Artificer thinks us relics easily dispatched by his dreadful craft.
Dad kneels near a vertical drop into a bottomless crevice. His arms shake with the stress of the climb. He snatches for his gladius. Too slowly, alas. Thankfully, my reflexes prevail. I spy the enemy and charge, roaring. Magnetized plasma jets forth and shrouds the enemy in a corona of fire.
To my chagrin, his shielding absorbs the worst I can dish. I suppose I should count myself fortunate he doesn’t manage to reflect the sluice back upon Dad and me. That would be embarrassing and fatal.
The Artificer bats smoking cinders from his hair, rubbery mouth slack with malice. A drop of blood gathers in his left nostril. The hem of his robe wisps smoke, charred along the panther trim. He flings elongated arms outward and makes claws of his fingers. Around me the air is rent with screeches and flickers of lethal geometry. Cracks race along the ageless granite pillars. Little fires slither, rootless. Most dogs would perish right here—smashed and burned to founding atoms from the grasp of Lyth’s telekinetic machinery.
Not me. I am Rex, left paw to the Consulate General, and greatest of my kind. Artificer Lyth isn’t the only one who can play this game. Trang embedded a network of kinetic shields and dampers into my war harness to counter precisely this sort of emergency. The harness is a powerful artifact, proof versus any detonation short of a tactical nuke, according to the literature. It’s a near thing, regardless. My foe’s malevolent gesture shorts the circuit and I bellow in agony as the harness melts and fuses into my hide. Consciousness contracts to a keyhole. Rationality is obliterated. However, I am spared and my foe is screwed.
Artificer Lyth cries in distress when his attack fails. He attempts to scuttle back up to his nesting place, and he is quick, but I am on him and my fangs are at his neck. And that is the end for Artificer Lyth. I hobble back to Dad and drop the Artificer’s gaping skull at his feet. Dad chuckles and gently scratches my ears like old times. His jovial camaraderie belies a deep concern for my condition. I am brave and try not to signal the graveness of my injuries or how much I suffer. We must hurry, for the commotion will soon draw the attention of the Guard and loose ends yet dangle.
We limp and stagger and redouble our pace through these secret ways.
Emperor Trajan reclines within his vasty solar. Dad has chosen this moment well, for the Emperor is inclined to sleep late after titanic debaucheries. Our leader is alone save for drugged slaves and a handful of Praetorian guards—only select favorites are permitted access to his person at these revelries. Sadly, these dregs are mixed with two or three men who have served honorably. There is nothing for it, however. I lick my wounds as Dad makes his preparations to seal our fates as traitors or liberating heroes.
Dad has brought several terrible weapons, which he activates from the safety of a hidden nook. Soldiers are obliterated where they stand and soon the Emperor has been stripped of his final layer of security. Dad takes a moment to ensure the great obsidiron doors are sealed. It will require technicians with plasma torches many minutes to breach them.
To slay Trajan would be simple. His eyes are glass, he snores. He is unaware of the carnage at his feet; he is oblivious to Dad’s looming presence. His slaves suffer from a similar malaise, sprawled about his dais, twitching with visions of erstwhile heroics.
Yes, to slay Trajan would require a mere gesture. Dad must only slide the knife between his ribs. Yet, he stays his hand and Trajan snores on. A dull gonging begins against the massive portals. I imagine the chaos beyond, the panic as the Guard is summoned to breach these gates.
So how now? Dad is vexed and bemused. I cannot help him in this matter, notwithstanding my confusion at his hesitation. The will to stand deserts me. I lie on my side and pant heavily, and encourage him with small whines and groans.
“I have destroyed one emperor,” Dad says. “How wrong can a man be? This venal creature deserves the mercy of neither bullet nor blade. I will not stain my honor with his thin claret.” His gaze wanders the length of the chamber and alights upon the answer to his dilemma. Nine elaborate cages depend above a steaming mud pit in the southwest quadrant. Nearby is a device that controls the pulleys and wires. This device swings the cages to my level and one by one he inspects them. In eight he discovers limp barbarian corpses, but in the ninth a healthy specimen who contrives to feign death until I bark a warning and Dad bangs the bars, provoking the prisoner to stir.
Wasted from abuse and neglect, the barbarian remains a formidable mass within his prison. He reeks of righteous malice. Dad smiles at him and burns the lock half through with his gladius. The barbarian observes with hateful stoicism. His tribe plot devilry and vengeance unto their last exhalation. Their clans war in family units. Doubtless it has been his brothers and sisters boiled in these cages. I smell the pungent rage he experiences regarding the fates of his kinsmen.
Dad does not speak the barbarian tongue. Thus, he makes his intention clear with a casual glance toward the Emperor. Then he drops the gladius and walks away. It would require scant effort for a beast such as this imprisoned warrior to fling his bulk against the lock and be free to raven throughout the peaceful solar. Who knows what havoc he might wreak before the Praetorians gain entrance.
The portals tremble as tremendous efforts begin upon them in earnest. Still faint; there is much time as time goes. Farewell, my Emperor. The kid we met in the mountains will do fine in your absence.
Dad makes a travois of his cloak and wraps me in its folds. I protest—he must abandon me to my end and save himself. He doesn’t listen. He has spoken, usually when drunk, of the primordial pact between man and dog. The pact has existed since men squatted in caves by their fires. Man and dog have been pack since we were more troglodyte, and more wolf.
We depart. Of course, this is a relative term. There is nowhere to go.
11
Because he was beloved before he earned the title of tyrant, the old Emperor’s tomb is a grandiose complex of marble. It is built upon a hill not far from where Dad derailed his train as he escaped from Prime. Wildflowers sprinkle the terraces. The old Emperor’s statue rises above the mausoleum dome and its stony eyes do not meet Dad’s when he kneels to offer his respects.
I lie nearby, swaddled and if not peaceful, resigned. I press my snout to Mom’s white kerchief that Dad took from his pocket to dab the gore draining from me. He whispered that if I should go on ahead and clear the way, I was a good dog and that he loved me. I breathe Mom’s perfume and she is here, her scent stronger than any dim memory of my own canine mother or littermates.
Dad’s weapons are spread beside me in a fan. Even now my mind ticks with possibilities. Is there any strength left in these bones? Could I summon a last effort to fight at Dad’s side when the Legion comes to snuff him for our treason?
Grassy fields curve unto sky notched by clouds. Somewhere the metropolis buzzes and wasps boil from the hive. At last I observe tiny shadow flickers of gliders and kites between the seam of heaven and earth. I imagine Marcello’s colors among the van. They search in swooping patterns that will soon intersect our hill.
The sun is warm on my muzzle. I drowse.
A stag appears in the field below. He coughs a challenge and nods his majestic skull. He gives me an insolent flick of his stub tail and eases toward the tall grass. Instinct, oh she truly is a bitch, and I’m on my feet in pursuit.
Pain swells and then recedes. My gait steadies. I breathe deeply of grass and musk. The breeze quickens and the sky dulls. Snow begins to fall. Soon, the stag has vanished. His tracks are swallowed in white drifts. The grass freezes like blades of upright knives.
I don’t know how long this goes on. I wander for hours, for days, for ages. Long enough that I forget what drew me here or where I’ve been. The dark and the cold and the wind and my loneliness is everything. I hear a voice from afar and my ears prick up. The voice of the wind calls my name and draws me to a hill of ice and stone. Ruddy light glimmers from within the mouth of a cave. I smell cooking meat. The two sides of my dog’s mind have a skirmish.
In the end, I creep forward. I’ll go inside and see what’s there. Perhaps I’ll warm myself by the fire.
Don't Make Me Assume My Ultimate Form
First published in Cthulhu Fhtagn!, August 2015
Polychromatic Mercy
Before you become Dee Dee Gamma, before the Black Kaleidoscope takes over your existence, you are Delia Dolores Andersen and you specialize in knocking over jewelry stores. Today will be your last day on the job. Your head swivels and that serves nothing, spares you nothing as your partner, a brute, points her gun at the jeweler and squeezes the trigger. A bullet punches into the jeweler’s forehead. The pistol vibrates. The frame drags, almost disintegrates into cigarette burns, and then steadies. Words and sound synchronize
