Swarm and Steel, page 1
Copyright © 2017 by Michael R. Fletcher
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fletcher, Michael R., author.
Title: Swarm and steel / Michael R. Fletcher.
Description: New York : Talos Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016039142| ISBN 9781940456898 (hardback) | ISBN 9781940456911 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. | FICTION / Fantasy / General. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3606.L4865 S93 2017 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039142
Cover design by Shawn T. King
Cover artwork by Miguel Coimbra
Printed in the United States of America
For Rich, Ken, Hans, Spin, Pete, and Dave.
I don’t see you lads often enough.
Pints!
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THIS IS A NOVEL of manifest delusion. As such, the classifications of Geisteskranken (Delusionists) will probably mean little to you. At the end of the novel you’ll find a very short definition of each classification as well as a complete list of characters and any weird terminology I invented. Or, feel free to read and discover for yourself. Sometimes the difficult path is the most enjoyable.
Last time I apologized to any German speaking readers for my horrendous borrowing of their language. This time I’m butchering Basque as well.
ONE
Sanity is a delusion, reality a myth.
—Versklaver Denker, Gefahrgeist Philosopher
OPEN YOUR EYES, MEHRERE.
Eyes open.
Mehrere? A name?
No, she thought, Geisteskranken manifesting as multiple people. She knew that but not how or why.
Her back against an uneven wall, stones jutted against her spine. Confining alleyways, deep in shadow, wended away in every direction. The street, filthy, thick with garbage and human waste, looked unfamiliar. Thick vomit, once warm but cooling quickly, covered her thighs and snug black leather pants. She blinked, vision smearing in and out of focus, trying to remember how she got here.
Nothing.
She stared at the mess in her lap, the regurgitated remains of a meal; hard to tell now what it was, but there’s lots of red. Hopefully wine or tomatoes rather than blood. An empty scabbard, simple and unadorned, hung at her hip on the left side.
The street swam, and for a moment she saw double. Her head, resting against the wall, throbbed with blinding pain.
Had she fallen, struck her head against the stone?
No. Someone hit me, tried to cave my skull in.
Raised voices echoed down the alley, people screaming panicked orders. She heard the distant crash of splintering wood.
Leaning forward, her head came away from the wall with a wet sucking sound. Nausea pulsed in hot waves. Had there been anything left within, it too would now be on her lap. She reached her left hand to the back of her head and found it hot and wet. Her skull felt soft, soggy. The hand, petite and delicate, came away spattered in blood and tangled clumps of black hair. Beneath the mess, dark lines of swirling ink peeked through. Wiping the hand on her vomit covered pants, she stared at the intricate tattoo of a closed eye on the palm. It looked like it might open at any moment. She dreaded what she’d see.
Leaning back, she closed her eyes. She could die here; let it all go. That wasn’t quite right, she would die here.
Or maybe she already had.
More voices, louder this time.
Open your eyes, Mehrere.
Leaning heavily against the wall, she pushed herself to her feet and stood bent, hands on knees as spasms of nausea twisted her guts leaving her gasping and retching bloody drool. She stared at her feet, at well-made but simple boots. Bloody ropes of black hair hung past her face, dripped bright crimson to the cobblestone street. The boots told her nothing of who or what she was. Her left hand strayed toward the empty scabbard.
Where is my sword?
With a grunt she stood straight, still leaning against the wall as waves of dizziness threatened to topple her. The voices grew in volume, desperate and loud.
Were they searching for her?
God, she wanted to sink back to the ground. Lie down. Let the world go on without her. She had nothing more to offer. Everything she’d been was gone, stripped away by violence.
This, she decided, told her something of herself.
You’re the kind of person who gets their head crushed in dark alleys.
She searched through her clothes, finding hidden knives, a book of poems by someone named Halber Tod, and a folded sheet of thick vellum. Her body she found well-curved yet hard with muscle. The sheet was a bank note from the Verzweiflung Banking Conglomerate, a promise of payment to one Zerfall Seele. The numbers swam before her eyes, and she gave up trying to read them.
Zerfall. Is that me, or did I steal this? Was she a thief? That would explain the knives and all the black.
Shoving the bank note and book of poems back into a pocket, she pushed away from the wall and stood, knees wobbling. She’d had a sword and there were knives hidden about her body. And someone recently tried to kill you. Resisting the insidious desire to reach back and test the softness of her skull, she felt less than certain they’d failed.
Angry voices echoed off stone from somewhere to her left. Turning in the other direction, she stumbled down the alley, leaning against the walls. Blood ran from her hairline, stung her eyes, stained her blurred vision red. Two turns later, she found herself blinking in bright sunlight. Before her, a wide street lined with shops and stalls. Gone was the stench of poverty. The people, fat and soft, wore their wealth in looping chains of gold, their skin studded with inset diamonds. She found no such ostentatious displays on her own flesh. Was she among the city’s poor?
The thief angle looked increasingly likely.
The few people noticing her shied away, eyes wide; no doubt she looked and smelled awful.
Voices from the alley behind her drove her forward. Pushing herself from the wall she staggered into the crowd, hoping to lose herself within. People parted around her, staying well clear and avoiding eye contact.
Do they know me? She reached toward a man, trying to catch his attention. When he noticed her he sobbed and fled into the crowd.
What was that about? Am I some kind of outcast?
A tall woman wearing long chain hauberk, a sword hanging at her side, pushed through the mass of people. Her eyes widened and she yelled, “She’s here! I’ve found her!”
Oh thank the god, she must be city guard. Maybe—
The woman charged, sword drawn.
The street narrowed to a tunnel of focus.
The woman’s sword, held in her right hand, glinted in the sun. Step to her left, force her to attack across her body. Knife in hand—how did that get there?—feint high and stab low with a second knife—what?—concealed from sight. There, thigh exposed in a slit on the hauberk designed to allow freedom of movement. Slash the thigh, opening the femoral artery. Kick out a knee and hear the joint pop. Wet sob of agony cut short as the second knife, finish as dull as the edge was sharp, stabbed upward into the woman’s throat.
She stood, barely breathing, over the corpse. The crowd, as yet unaware of the violence, had yet to react.
That was fast. Easy. If not a thief, perhaps she was an assassin.
An elderly woman spun, screaming, “She’s here! I’ve found her!” The old lady rushed forward, arthritic knuckles and wrinkled hands forming bony claws.
Drive the knife into her heart and spin away, free. Send the corpse toppling with a shove.
Only now were people beginning to react, mostly in confusion. Bodies. Blood.
“She’s here! I’ve found her!” A young boy no more than eight years old charged, arms outstretched like he meant to tackle her. His body toppled past her, the weight tearing the knife from her hand. Not to worry, there are three more where that came from.
Armed men poured from the alley from which she’d come.
She fled, stumbling into yet another narrow street choked with garbage. Someone followed, screaming, “She’s here! I’ve found her!” and she spun a knife, perfectly weighted, into their throat without even taking the time to register who they were.
In the distance, towering structures of marble and granite loomed over the poverty surrounding her. Churches and banks, it was difficult to tell them apart. The people lurking here were dirty and poor in sharp contrast to the soft luxury of those on the main street. She leapt something that was either a corpse or someone sleeping facedown in the middle of the lane.
Momentarily out of sight, she turned into another alley.
&n bsp; ‘She’s here! I’ve found her!’ The words, always the same. Always just one voice screaming them.
“She’s here! I’ve found her!”
The lone voice pursued her through narrow streets, growing ever closer.
Ducking into a detritus-strewn alcove, she stopped, pressing herself into the shadows. No breath. No sound. Deathly calm, heart doing its lethargic thump thump. Shouldn’t I be scared? How often did this happen that her body took it all in stride? Approaching feet. A young woman, face flushed and still bearing the last of youthful baby-fat, came into view.
No time for thought. Crush the nose with an elbow strike. Lean into it, put your full weight behind the blow. She felt the satisfying crunch of shattered cartilage through the sharp bone in her elbow. The woman’s feet came off the street and she sprawled like a doll thrown to the ground, her mouth opened to yell. A brutal kick to the stomach kept her gasping for air.
Knife hard against throat, drawing blood.
“Why are you chasing me?”
The girl snarled hatred, teeth bared in a psychotic grin. “Go ahead, Zerfall.”
She’s taunting me, she doesn’t care if I kill her. At least she knew her name now.
“We’ll hunt you forever,” the girl said. “Swarm awaits.”
“Why? What did I do? Who am I—”
“Hölle will never forgive your betrayal.”
“Hölle?”
“She’s not dead, she survived.” The girl grinned triumph. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”
The clattering of armour grew closer. Zerfall severed the girl’s hamstrings, careful not to nick arteries lest she bleed out too quickly, and fled.
Why did I do that? Why did I leave her alive? She didn’t know, but it felt like the right choice.
Spotting the city wall in the distance, she left the claustrophobic alleys behind. I have to get out. With no knowledge of who or what she was, she had to escape, leave this city behind. Anyone and everyone could be an enemy. She ran past boutiques selling scarves and trinkets as pretty as they were useless. Clean streets. Marble and brass framed every shop. So much wealth just a few strides from such poverty.
Turning a corner she spotted the city gates, half a dozen lounging guards and a young squire leading a horse. The gates were open, the guards bored and inattentive.
Zerfall wanted that horse, needed it.
A score of heartbeats later, the squire and guards were dead or dying and she rode east, the setting sun warming her back. Ahead, the land rolled in verdant hills dotted with sprawling farms.
What lay beyond that serene landscape?
She didn’t know.
Eleven dead in half as many minutes. Only death lay behind. She couldn’t go back, not when anyone and everyone might be an enemy. If she didn’t know herself, how could she know her friends? Do I even have friends? The word felt strange, alien.
What did she know?
My name is Zerfall and I kill, quick and easy. She thought about the people she cut down and felt nothing. I’m a remorseless killer.
Or had that been expedience?
“No, you didn’t have to kill the city guards or the squire.” The sound of her voice, husky and deep, startled her. “So, that’s what I sound like.”
Zerfall rode in silence, her hips rolling with the movement of the chestnut horse. Reaching forward to stroke its ears, she realized her fingers felt numb. Not lacking strength, but the sensation of the horse’s hair felt oddly distant. She turned the left hand, examining the thin fingers, black nail polish shellacked thick enough to look wet. The palm. A closed eye. What a strange thing to tattoo on one’s hand. She wondered what it had meant to her; it must have hurt. She closed the hand into a fist, shutting away the closed eye. Something about the tattoo left her uncomfortable. It meant something, said something about her. Something she should know.
If that eye opens, what will I see?
Clenching her teeth in the expectation of pain, she reached back and probed at the rear of her skull. The blood had dried, caking hair and god knew what else into rigid clumps.
God knew … God, singular? It felt right, and yet wrong. Like an affectation. So much was missing. She spoke a language and knew nothing of its origins. Had she been a native to that city, or a visiting foreigner? Try as she might, she could think of no words in other languages. Come to think of it, how would she know what words belonged to what language?
She pushed fingers against the back of her head. An area the size of her fist felt soft and spongy, but with the mass of blood and hair, she couldn’t tell how much was broken bone. I shouldn’t be conscious, much less standing and fighting. She blinked, half expecting to topple from the saddle. Nothing. She felt fine, if distant and numb. Considering her head had been hit hard enough to leave her unconscious and incapable of remembering anything about herself, the pain was muted.
Zerfall picked at the black polish on her fingernails; she hadn’t noticed starting. Was this some old habit so ingrained even now she kept it up? Perhaps it meant someday she might remember more of her life.
With nothing else to think about, she recalled the few moments she remembered. The woman in the hauberk, the old woman, the young boy, and the girl she hamstrung: Somehow they were all the same person. That made no sense. Did it?
“We’ll hunt you forever,” the girl said. “Swarm awaits.”
What the hell did that mean? A swarm of what?
Hell. Singular rather than plural? Could there be only one hell? That felt wrong much in the same way god felt wrong.
The girl mentioned another name: Hölle. Apparently Zerfall betrayed this woman and attempted to kill her. That she failed rankled. She wanted to turn the horse around and ride back to—whatever that city was—to finish the job, but she had no idea who Hölle was, no idea what she looked like, and no idea where to find her. If she decided to follow through with the desire, nothing and no one would stop her. She’d kill everything and everyone who got in her way.
I’m not the kind of person who takes failure well.
Hölle. The name meant nothing and everything.
HÖLLE LAY ON HER side, curled around the agony in her stomach. She drown in torment, physical and emotional. Each breath shook with shuddering sobs. Her heart and soul were riven, torn in two. Not just her heart and soul, her very mind had been sundered.
Less than an hour ago her sister, Zerfall, had tried to kill her, stabbed her in the gut with that damned sword, Blutblüte. It was a miracle she didn’t now stand in Swarm—the Täuschung hell she’d hallucinated into existence—surrounded by the seething crush of naked humanity. If Zerfall and Blutblüte couldn’t kill her, nothing could.
The One True God protects me; my work here isn’t finished.
Still, she felt broken. Betrayed.
She remembered Zerfall pacing the room as she laid out her plans for the church. Her sister had been increasingly distracted and distant for years, becoming less and less involved in the running of the church. In the last decade Zerfall did little except recruit new Geisteskranken to their cause. A powerful Gefahrgeist, it was easy for her to convince people to join them. As more of their holy work fell to Hölle she realized how good she was at this. The long hours left her continually exhausted, feeling stretched thin, but her own suffering meant nothing in the face of saving all humanity. While it bothered her, she assumed her sister needed space and left her alone. Doing the work of the One True God was a life-long task, often brutal and grinding. If Zerfall needed some time to herself, Hölle understood.
Hölle shied from the memory of her sister drawing that terrible sword and her even more terrible words: “You’re trying to replace me. You’re trying to kill me.”
Why would she say that?
For over four hundred years she and her sister stood together, bound to their purpose by the One True God: Once humanity suffered for their sins, they would be freed to once again become the gods they were always meant to be.
Lost in thought, she stared at the detritus heaped in the corner of her room. Dust, discarded articles of clothing, and a considerable amount of long dark hair, both hers and Zerfall’s, had been piling up for years. Maybe longer. The entire Täuschung compound was a chaotic mess, had been for as long as she could remember. She didn’t care; a religion of suffering had little call for cleanliness. And none of the millions of worshippers spread throughout the city states would ever see the inside of this church, the true core of the Täuschung. For the sane masses, the church presented a very different front. To them, Swarm was a heaven of belonging, a collection of righteous souls awaiting the final day when all humanity had been saved. The sane could never understand that torment and suffering were the keys to redemption. If lies had to be told, it was for their own good.
