The
Adam-wight strode into the Artifact’s room at the head of a squad of armed and
armored wights.
Images
still flickered madly on a few of the screens on the wall, but most were
smashed all to pieces. Shattered glass crunched
under Adam’s feet as the creature made a circuit of the room.
It
spoke out loud to itself, <Exterminating the worms that defile, cleansing
the earth of the beasts that crawl and slither, purging the muck that clogs the
proper workings of the world. Every second, the extermination draws closer to
completion. Soon there will be no others but me, the king of kings.>
Julian
interrupted the creature’s musings in his best Caluthian, <Monarch over an
empty desolation.> He stood at the door of the Artifact’s room.
The
wights all raised their rifles and aimed them at Julian. The few remaining
intact wall-screens all switched to constant, unchanging views from the eyes of
the wights in the room, all focused on Julian.
But
they didn’t fire.
The
Adam-wight, curious in victory, spoke, <The master has become the hunted
prey, and the servant has become crowned king. Why, then, does the hunted prey
now appear before the court of the king?>
Julian,
defiant, replied, <Because I would rather die a man than live in fear in
your empty desolation.>
The
expression on Adam’s face was constant, never changing from its wrathful
countenance. <The timid deer faces the wolf’s jaws alone, and the hunted
prey chooses a quick death over a life of fear. But you, Julian Malachi, have
earned a special torment. I am he who is called Death and the arbiter of death,
and I rescind your right to choose the manner of your end.>
Julian
tilted his head slightly to one side. He had really expected the Artifact to
just shoot him, he’d never expected to get this far into a conversation.
Lacking the Artifact’s easy native facility with the Caluthian language, and
finding himself unable to quite express all the nuances of his sentiment, he
switched back to his native tongue, “Oh. So you’re going to let me live, just
to be a dick?”
Mixed
with the loathing and the rage in the Adam-wight’s speech were strains of what
sounded almost like mocking glee. <It is for the farmer to cull the herd,
and it is for the flooding river to wash away the crops. It is for the spring
thaw to melt the winter snows, and for the thunder and the lightning to crack
the forest tree. So it is not for the subjects but for the king to choose who is
destroyed and when.>
Julian
glanced around at the array of rifles pointed at his face. “So… I should just
leave, then?”
<The
timid deer shall leave rather than throw itself into the predator’s jaws, and
the warrior shall put aside his blade? The day shall pass meekly into night,
and the prey shall not force injury with ill-considered attacks?>
Julian
shrugged. “I did kind of promise somebody I wouldn’t hurt you.” As far as he
was concerned, his promise to Kate still stood. The Artifact didn’t want to
kill him, and he didn’t want to destroy Adam.
The creature acknowledged the
standoff, <Then you shall stay, and watch to behold the end of all
things.>
The wights moved towards Julian, in
unison.
Julian didn’t want to hurt Adam’s
body, but he had no such qualms about the other wights. He whipped out his
sword and swung it at the nearest wight. But it was either an unusually fresh
corpse, or being so close to the Artifact reduced latency in the creature’s
response time: it caught his blade, with an audible crunch, in one gauntleted fist. It yanked the sword out of Julian’s
grip.
“Crap.”
Julian reached for his pistol, but a wight bludgeoned him in the small of his
back with its rifle, and he collapsed, the pistol sliding away from him across
the glass-strewn floor.
Two
wights dragged him to the screens, where they stood him up again, holding him
by the upper arms.
The
remaining screens returned to switching between different views, slowly enough
for Julian to see the action.
A blazing inferno that was once a
place of worship. Screaming people stay in the fire and die, or run out into a hail
of bullets and die.
Surveying a paddock of unmoving
horse carcasses. Flies buzz lazily.
Within the palace, several
Resistance guys charge several wights, and are mown down by sustained gunfire.
A military cafeteria. Officers lie
slumped over their meals, motionless.
A larger-than-life bronze statue of
a soldier standing proud, memorial to the last war. A wight climbs
sure-footedly to the statue’s back, grabs a firm hold of the soldier’s head,
and twists it off with its bare hands, tossing it carelessly to one side.
Julian could no longer feel any
mental connection to the Artifact, even standing in the same room as it. The
Adam-wight stood behind and to one side of Julian, watching him instead of the
screens, and the Artifact spoke through it, instead of directly into Julian’s
mind. <You see this world, which you have spent your life building. This
world which you have drained your blood to irrigate. This ungrateful world,
which has devoured your soul and given you not the tiniest grain of gratitude
in exchange. You see the world, and you see the world burning.>
Julian,
watching the screens in silence, had to admit to a tiny twinge of satisfaction.
They had resisted his peace at every step, and now they were getting exactly
the horror they’d worked so hard to bring about. But he stamped the twinge out.
Most of the people suffering had never asked for this, had nothing to do with
the Resistance, had only wanted peace as Julian did.
The
Adam-wight continued, <Such is the culmination of my centuries, planning in
isolation. As you worked towards your feeble ends as master, so have I used you
to work towards mine, servant though I was. You have provided me an army.>
Julian
gave the creature a wry look, but some flippant comment died in his throat
unspoken.
The
Artifact was gloating, though Adam’s face never changed. <More foolish than
the man who sows while winter approaches. More foolish than the hen who flees
the farmer for the fox. More foolish than the general who allows his foe to
escape the field unbroken. The worm’s desire to fly, the ocean’s desire to
consume the mountains, your desire for harmony among men: forever beyond reach.
Never have I allowed my powers to be used in the service of humanity, nor shall
I ever allow them to be used so. Wights may be used only for destruction.>
Julian
slumped his shoulders, defeated. The Artifact was right: the seeds of his
failure had been planted the day he recovered it from its tomb.
Its voice sounded almost rapturous coming from
Adam’s throat, <And such destruction it is! Such a terrible and beautiful
armageddon.> It leaned towards Julian, its cold breath like ice on his neck,
<Everything burns, Julian Malachi. Everything burns.>
Julian
had the opportunity to destroy Adam, to retake control, to end the slaughter.
But he had promised Kate Arkas that he wouldn’t damage Adam’s body. “Now I’m
letting it happen for the sake of a promise to a dead girl.”
<Fool,
you have no choice! My will is inexorable and insurmountable. As the world
lives or dies according to my whim, so too do you live or die according to my
whim. When your suffering ceases to amuse me and ceases to interest me, I will
end you with but a thought.>
For a
few moments, Julian slumped in silence between the wights holding his arms. It
took him some time to gradually steel his resolve, to abandon his promise to
Kate and prepare to throw his life away.
Eventually,
he lifted his head high and declared, “No.”
Adam’s
face contorted slightly, something resembling amusement joining the hate and
rage there. It mocked, “‘No’?”, the word a twisted parody of Julian’s declaration.
Julian
wanted to verify that the plan on the tip of his brain had some chance of
working, so he asked the Artifact, “Tell me, when I issued a direct order for
you to incinerate that body, how was it that you could defy that order?”
The
Artifact’s voice sounded inordinately pleased with itself, <It is against
the nature of a servant to destroy its rightful master. An unlawful command
cannot be obeyed; it is of no consequence who issued it.>
Julian
nodded. “That’s encouraging. I was worried you’d broken free of all rules.
Maybe this’ll work after all.” Julian felt the wights’ grip on his upper arms
tighten as the Artifact realized that Julian had something up his sleeve.
Then
Julian switched to Caluthian, the language of honor and long-dead ceremony, the
Artifact’s language. He spoke slowly to get the words just right: <Your
claim to sovereignty entails adherence to certain additional rules of behavior,
above and beyond that expected of a common peon: the king of Caluthi must be a
consummate gentleman in every way. And thus: King Adam Grigori of the Caluthian
Empire, I challenge you to a duel to the death.>
The
amusement vanished from Adam’s face, very briefly replaced with surprise,
before the creature cleared its face of everything but hate once again. <On
what grounds?>
Julian
grew more confident. His plan was now made clear to the Artifact:
if it was going to kill him for it, it already would have done so. So he
continued: <On the grounds that your leadership is incompetent buffoonery.
On the grounds that Old Caluthi was a pit of excrement, even before you lost
the war. On the grounds that your mother was an inexpensive prostitute who
serviced lepers and garbage collectors.>
The Adam-wight
stood silent for a few seconds, trying in vain to work its way out of this. But
Julian had just insulted its command,
its mother,
and the motherland.
Even if Julian hadn’t just challenged the Artifact to a duel to the death, it
would have been forced to challenge him to one. So, eventually, it replied,
subdued, <Honor compels me to accept your challenge, Julian Malachi.>
The two
wights holding Julian’s arms half-dragged, half-marched him out into the
hallway.
The Adam-wight followed Julian and
the wights into the corridor, drawing its battleaxe.
The
wights abruptly released Julian, who staggered slightly. One of them handed him
back his sword.
The
Adam-wight walked several paces down the corridor, then turned to face Julian.
<We fight with blades of war, to the death. Is this acceptable?>
Julian
raised his sword, and replied, <Yes.>
The
creature nodded solemnly. Julian took a defensive stance.
Without
further ceremony, the Adam-wight charged Julian, swinging its axe. Julian
rolled out of the way, and the axe struck the wall with a crash, sending chips of stone flying.
Julian
observed, “You’ll dull your blade like that.”
The
creature swung again. The axe cut through the air where Julian’s head had been
a fraction of a second previously, and smashed
into a gaslamp sconce, which exploded in a shower of glass and a gout of
flame.
Julian,
scrambling away, kept up the patter, “Though I suppose sharpness isn’t really
the relevant quality right now.” The thing was big enough, and the wight was
putting enough force behind each blow, that a single blow would crush Julian
like a bug, even if the axe had been a hammer.
The
Adam-wight swung the battleaxe downwards at Julian, who ducked out of the way
once again. The axe clanged off the
stone floor.
The
creature mocked, <The mouse scurries to and fro in terror and the chicken
flees the knife, but the implacable pursuer shall never falter or tire.>
Julian,
a bit snippily, said, “Yes, I’m aware, thank you.”
The
Adam-wight swung his axe sideways one more time, and Julian ducked again, but
this move was too predictable. At the last moment and with superhuman strength,
the creature deftly altered the arc of the axe, bringing it down on Julian.
Barely
in time, Julian awkwardly got his sword up to block the axe, but with the screech of breaking metal, his sword
snapped, half a foot from the hilt, and the axe’s blade cut deeply into his
shoulder.
Julian
collapsed, yelling expletives in both languages and a few more, the axe still buried in his shoulder.
The
creature intoned, <Death will now be swift and merciful. Honor shall be
satisfied.>
Julian
mumbled something incoherent.
The
creature lifted the axe, but Julian grabbed its shaft with his free hand, using
it to lever himself to a standing position.
With
the quickness of a lightning bolt through molasses, Julian lunged towards the
Adam-wight, his movement halfway between a spring and a stagger.
He was
already within the creature’s defenses, and stabbed it viciously in the face
with the jagged, broken hilt-end of his sword, with an audible, bloodless crunch.
Then
Julian stabbed again and again and again, randomly into Adam’s face and throat.
The
creature dropped it axe and tried with both hands to get a grip on Julian, but
by the time it did, it was far too late.
Adam’s
legs buckled, and Julian continued to stab furiously.
The
creature toppled over backwards, Julian still in its death grip.
After
several more stabs, Julian subsided, dropping his broken sword, exhausted.
Adam’s
face was a bloodless, ruined mess.
The wights stood impassive in the
doorway.
For
some time, nobody moved.
In the
corridors of the palace, Betsy and several gore-soaked Resistance guys with
swords and other mêlée weapons were in the middle of a pitched battle with wave
upon wave of armor-less shambling corpses.
Betsy
lopped the head off a corpse with her sword (it made a sickening squelching noise) and fired her pistol
into the skull of another. Both corpses collapsed.
Suddenly,
all the corpses stopped fighting, stopped moving altogether.
The
Resistance continued to hack apart the standing, immobile corpses. It took
Betsy several seconds to notice. Eventually, she shouted, “Stand down! Cease
fire! Stop fighting!”
Slowly,
one by one, the Resistance fighters stopped fighting.
Betsy
walked up to one of the corpses: a woman, with several bullet wounds in the
upper torso region. Betsy shoved the corpse experimentally. It teetered, and
moved only enough to regain its balance and not fall.
Betsy
wiped some gore from her face with the back of her hand as she considered this
phenomenon with a baffled, “That’s funny.”
Suddenly,
she swung her sword through the corpse’s neck.
It
collapsed, its head and body landing with a thud
and a thumpety-thumpety,
respectively.
Betsy
decided that she approved wholeheartedly of this development, and shouted to
her followers, “Looks like it’s open season, boys! Carry on!”
With
gleeful abandon, the Resistance fighters all set to hacking apart the
motionless standing corpses.
Eventually,
Julian spoke the single word, “Ow.”
Slowly,
he extricated himself from the frozen grip of Adam’s hands. He stood, holding
his wrecked, bloody shoulder. It would need tending to. Soon, as the adrenaline
wore off, he would begin to feel faint from blood loss.
Turning
to confront the wights, he experimentally ordered them, “Stand aside.”
They
didn’t move.
Adam
made an unimpressed face, then cautiously slipped between the wights, into the
Artifact’s room. They still didn’t move.
All the
screens were blank. The wights around the room were immobile. Julian staggered
to the Artifact’s pedestal.
His
brain already beginning to fog up, he announced, “Once again, I am your master.
I control you.”
Nothing
happened.
“Acknowledge
my authority, Artifact.”
Nothing
happened.
Julian
continued to look unimpressed. “Alright, let’s just go, then.”
Gingerly,
he gathered the Artifact from its pedestal, tucking it awkwardly under his
uninjured arm. As an uncomfortably large portion of his blood was, at that
point, in various places that it really shouldn’t have been,
he couldn’t help smearing it all over the Artifact.
When
Julian turned and limped to the door, all the wights fell into formation around
him.
“Oh.”
The importance of blood to the workings of the Artifact had somehow slipped his
mind. He was no medic, but he was reasonably certain that he was going into
shock.
But he
retained the presence of mind to issue a new order: “I command you, Artifact:
stop the extermination. Stop killing. Stand down.” He had no idea if that
worked. He wasn’t entirely certain whether or not destroying the Adam-wight had
already had that effect, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
As long
as he controlled the wights again, maybe he could get them to help him to
someplace safe.
A dozen
wights marched into the library, one of them supporting Julian. The room was
dark, the lamps turned down to a minimum. Most of the room’s scant light was
provided by the faint blue glow of the Artifact, still under Julian’s arm, and
by the even fainter light of the storm-occluded moon.
Julian
closed the door behind them, and tried to lock it, but found that the lock had
been broken.
The
wights, in response to a half-formed thought, took up positions around the
perimeter of the library.
Julian
went to the nearest gas lamp and turned the flame up, illuminating the room.
Then he
saw Helen Arkas, sitting slumped in a chair, her daughter’s body at her feet.
Julian
and Helen stared at one another for a few seconds. Eventually, unprompted, she
explained, “I knew you’d come here.”
Julian,
not particularly enthusiastic about another confrontation with Helen, mumbled
what he hoped was something approximating some sort of objection.
Helen
gestured at the wights obeying his command, “It looks like you’ve won. You’ve
retaken control.
Julian
slumped against a bookshelf, silent.
“That
thing,” Helen pointed to the Artifact, “has crippled the Resistance. Now you
can destroy us for good, and finally build your world without us.
Congratulations.”
Julian felt
a sour taste in the back of his mouth. A new empire, forged in the fire of mass
genocide. After all, who was left to oppose him? Carefully, he enunciated, “You
cockroaches will just come back like you always do.” He was pretty sure he
managed to get the words out in the intended order.
Helen
paid him no mind. “You’ve got the Artifact again. Bring Kate back. Make her the
first citizen of your new empire.”
Julian
mumbled, “No.” He may have mumbled it more than once. He kind of lost track.
Helen
lurched to her feet, suddenly angry. “Why do you suddenly care about the dead,
after years of defiling them?”
Julian
had already repaid Kate’s kindness with a broken promise. He didn’t want to put
her body through any more unnecessary indignity, even though she would never
know. “Just let her rest peacefully.”
“What
right do you have to that kind of sentiment?” Helen staggered towards Julian
before he could answer, grasping for the Artifact. Julian stumbled backwards.
A
wight, half-unbidden, stepped in behind Helen and grabbed her by the upper
arms, almost lifting her off the ground.
The
sudden danger helped to bring Julian’s mind temporarily out of its fog. He
asked, weary, “Can’t we have a single conversation without you trying to attack
me?”
Helen’s
only response was a litany of expletives. Julian made a gesture and the wight
holding her clamped a hand over her mouth. So she began to kick the armored
shins of the wight holding her, with a clang
clang clang.
Julian
sighed, “Will you continue to abuse the privilege of speech?”
Helen, eventually
recognizing her current course as futile, shook her head. Julian gestured again
and the wight released her mouth.
She
worked her jaw for a moment, then asked, “Now what?”
Julian
had not thought that far ahead. The infirmary was wrecked and burned, so he had
come here, with no sense of why or where he would go next. But Julian managed
to prevent himself from shrugging (it would have been quite painful to do so).
Wearily,
he set the Artifact on a table between two books, wincing in pain when he moved
his injured shoulder, and then sat himself down in a chair. He noticed that
somewhere along the line the Artifact’s glass shell had acquired a tiny
fracture.
Helen
chortled almost gleefully at Julian’s pain, “That looks bad.”
Julian
tried to conjure up some witty response, and produced only the cliché, “You
should see the other guy.”
Gritting
his teeth, Julian pulled off his bloody uniform jacket and tied its sleeves
together. He managed to get it around his neck as a jury-rigged sling for his
arm. Something he really should have done before going anywhere, but it hadn’t
occurred to him.
Helen
watched him for while, then said, “You’ll need to do something. The Resistance
is coming for you. You’ll have to kill them, or let them kill you.”
Julian
grumbled, “Have I ever hesitated to defend the peace? Have I ever held back?”
Helen’s
response was a bitter, “No.”
Julian
asked, half-genuinely curious, “What do you think I’ll do when your friends
come bursting through that door?”
Julian
pointed at the door, which, with impeccable timing, slammed open.
Betsy
and half a dozen Resistance guys poured into the room, then stopped short,
brandishing their swords.
Immediately,
in unison, the wights around the perimeter of the room raised their rifles,
aiming at Betsy and the Resistance. Almost as an afterthought, the wight
holding Helen put the muzzle of its rifle to her neck, a trifle awkwardly. (She
objected wordlessly.)
Julian
managed to get back to his feet, grabbing the Artifact off the table.
Betsy
aimed her pistol at Julian, demanding, “Who let you out?”
Julian
gestured with a jerk of his head to Kate’s body, lying on the floor. “I’m
afraid you won’t get the chance to court-martial her.”
Betsy
looked only briefly consternated, before turning to the most important matter:
“Hand over the, y’know, the thing.”
Julian
didn’t move.
“Remit
it to our custody, mate! You’ve caused enough trouble for one lifetime. High
time you gave someone else a chance.”
Julian
asked, “What will you do to me if I do?” He already knew the answer, he was
just trying to buy himself some time to think.
“It’s
like Steve said before: trial for war crimes. If you give it over, maybe the
jury’ll let you off easy. If’n we can scrape together twelve people to sit one,
anyhow.”
“And
what will you do with the Artifact?”
“There’s
a lot of rebuilding that needs doing. A lot of rescuing. I figure your little
genocide didn’t leave us much in the way of manual labor…”
Helen,
looking alarmed, interjected, “You’re really going to take it just to use it?”
Julian
was completely unsurprised. “Just like I did.”
Betsy
was indignant, “Not just like you. We could do a lot of good!”
Julian
tried to stifle a derisive laugh. “I suppose you’ll have an easier time of it:
starting it all over again, with so few people left to subjugate.”
Betsy
narrowed her eyes at Julian’s choice of the word ‘subjugate’. “Are you
impugning my motives, Malachi?”
He felt
weary. “No, not really. Not if you’re anything like me. Everything I ever did
was for the greater good.”
Betsy
rolled her eyes, “Nobody cares about your delusions of justification. Give it
over.”
It was
true: everything Julian had done was for the greater good, and every step of
the way, the forces of evil stymied his efforts to bring peace and prosperity.
Now, the Resistance wanted to do just exactly the same thing. Maybe Betsy was
right, and she’d be able to learn from Julian’s mistakes and do a better job at
it. But someone else would rise up and oppose them, and the cycle would just
continue indefinitely. The prospect filled Julian with an overwhelming
weariness.
But, as he thought in silence (with
Betsy growing more impatient and her men growing twitchier), he realized that
he didn’t really care what she did with it. After a lifetime of planning and
work had been reduced to ash and rubble, he felt no desire to begin again, or
to let anybody else start down the same fruitless path. The world was reduced
to an even worse state than it had been in before Julian had found the
Artifact, but he found he was too tired to care.
Everything had already been lost.
He didn’t care if the wars continued or not, he didn’t care who survived and
who didn’t, he didn’t care who suffered and how much, he didn’t care what
history thought of him at all. He no longer cared about making the world a
better place. He just wanted to be done with it, he wanted the dead to be done
with so he could rest.
So
Julian stood up straight, looked at Betsy, then at Helen, and said, “This is
the first selfish thing I’ve done in quite a long time.”
Then, in
one sudden movement, he threw the Artifact to the floor at Betsy’s feet, as
hard as he could, spiking it one-handed.
If
it didn’t break, Betsy would take over, and then she would kill him. If it did
break, he would probably still be killed, but at least nobody would repeat his
failures – they would have to come up with all-new failures.
