Affliction (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 1) Read online

  After another few hundred yards, I manage to grab the lip and look over.

  The Devil’s patrols are out in force on the streets. There might be about fifty men. There are workers down there too, carrying loads of woodstone through the city. I can’t see where they’re going, but I know it’s not to the smelter ovens I’d seen them use earlier.

  The aqueduct is moving me, but I’m going the wrong direction. I need to get a gun to Myla’s head and make her tell me where Aiden is. I need to rescue my son. I need to kill Hagar.

  The aqueduct drags me onward while I try to build up the will to move—then I catch sight of the waterfall.

  Damn, I’d forgotten about that.

  I catch on to the supports for a service ladder just before the waterfall. I try to pull myself up, but my arm isn’t strong enough. The weight and speed of the water pulls me down. Maybe I should just take my chances with the fall?

  No, I would surely die.

  With my good leg I try to push up, but the aqueduct is curved and slick, and I get no traction from my boot.

  So here I am, stuck.

  I take a sip of the water and let my breath come back to me. My arm is shaking, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep holding the ladder. I’m trying to rest, but I’m getting weaker, not stronger. I consider tying my shirt to the ladder’s support strut, maybe then I could just rest. But the effort that would take is beyond me.

  Hell.

  I pull myself as far up as I can, and when my muscles refuse to pull me any farther, I jam my left arm in between the rung and the aqueduct. I don’t know if this gives me more leverage, or if the pain gives me one last burst of adrenaline, but I’m able to lug myself up.

  The climb down is hundreds of feet. Maybe I should just stay here on the aqueduct’s lip. This might be the safest place for me, but I doubt it. Sooner or later they’re going to find Kessler’s body and come looking down the aqueduct. I need to crawl into a little house and hole up in a room. Maybe I’ll be able to stand before I starve to death.

  Slowly and deliberately, I let myself spin around on the aqueduct’s lip. Then I dangle my left leg down to begin my descent. My right arm is still shaking. With my fingers wet, my grip isn’t very good. I start by lowering my leg on one rung, then, when I’ve found my balance, I drop my torso one to match. For what seems like hours, I descend.

  I get more and more dizzy the farther down I go. I feel the need to vomit, but my body can’t do it. I look down to check how far I have left to go, posting my foot on a rung—it slips. My weight is too much for my right hand. I begin to fall. I clutch at the rungs as they go by. I bang against a few of them and then land in a heap at the base of the ladder.

  Before the beating, I doubt that fall would have hurt me much.

  Right now I can’t see.

  I can’t breathe.

  I can only feel the punishment my body has taken.

  I awaken.

  Distantly I hear something squeaking, like unoiled hinges. It repeats slowly and steadily as it gets closer. It’s possible that whoever, or whatever, is coming hasn’t seen me yet. I need to crawl under the aqueduct’s supports for cover, but I can’t figure out where the aqueduct is. Where did I land? Did I get turned around when I fell?

  I try to look about me, but I keep seeing a dream instead of reality. Maybe this is what dying is like. Maybe I’m a lost and hopeless shade like Kessler was. Maybe that’s for the best.

  The squeaking gets louder and louder and then stops beside me. A face enters my vision. It’s the old man from the inn. He’s on his rounds. I see the wheelbarrow full of dead bodies. I guess that’s where I belong.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he whispers.

  It takes me a minute to respond. “Oh?”

  “I’m glad you’re alive, too. You just pretend to be a rat,” the innkeeper says. “I know you’re an Infidel Friend.”

  Somehow it didn’t seem right to lie to him. “More like an infidel . . . friend of a friend.”

  “I came out looking for you as soon as I heard you escaped. Durigon and his men came, raided my inn. They took your pack. I knew you were something good for this town. I just knew it.”

  “I don’t deserve you, innkeep.”

  I hear footsteps. Now that I can see again, I look down the street. Two men are running from building to building, bursting through doors and looking through any open windows.

  The old man bends down and picks me up as if I’m just another dead body. He lays me in the wheelbarrow. To make sure I’m hidden, he arranges a couple of dead bodies on top of me.

  “You’ve come to kill the Devil, haven’t you?” he asks. “The Infidel sent you to save Maylay Beighlay. I knew he wouldn’t abandon us. Everyone else left, but I knew. I knew.”

  I have neither the heart nor the energy to tell him any differently.

  The squeaking continues.

  Finally, I manage to speak. “Taking me? The inn?”

  I look up past one of the corpse’s rotted arms to see his head shaking. “No. Then they’ll find you, surely. There’s a little temple where people used to pray. I’ll take you to it. No one will think to look for you there. Maybe I can get you food and some clean water.”

  The corpse on top of me has a rotted out eye. His hair is getting in my mouth and his body is weighing down on my wounded ribs. I push up, but all I do is shake the corpse around. Whoever had killed this one had left a hole in the back of its head. Fluid oozes out and falls onto the back of my neck. The fluid begins dripping down the collar of my shirt.

  I manage to roll my eyes. It can’t get much worse than this.

  I hear another voice, and the two men I saw earlier shout back before running off.

  “What are they saying?” I ask.

  “They think they know where you are.”

  Well that’s a relief. Since they’re running away from me, I’d guess they’re wrong. The squeaking continues rhythmically as I drift in and out of consciousness. I awaken to the sound of footfalls. I look out from under the corpse which lies on top of me and see the line of workers that I had spotted earlier. They are depositing woodstone at the base of the Prince’s palace, and they’ve already made a pile surrounding the building that’s about three feet deep.

  The Devil is there, and a gang of his men, perhaps fifty of them, are broken up into groups around the palace’s exits.

  “Stop,” I order.

  “It’s too dangerous. The Devil is here.”

  I look up and back at the innkeeper. “I need to see this.”

  He shakes his head. “Too dangerous.”

  “They’re too busy to notice us.”

  “The Devil is here, he can read our minds.”

  Now the workers are pouring out bags of what seems to be sawdust. If they light it, it’s going to be a bad day for the Prince. I’m surprised the Prince’s men aren’t shooting these guys, but I suppose it makes sense. The Devil probably has more slaves than either side has bullets.

  NOW.

  It takes me a moment to realize that the noise I just heard was the Devil giving an order. The workers begin running back toward the Core. His dim eyed men produce torches and firerock. Gunshots start coming down from the palace windows. Some of the Devil men shoot back, but the paucity of gunfire from both sides confirms just how rare bullets are now. The backpack they stole from me must have been quite the find for whichever of the bastards took it. The dim eyed soldiers slam the firerock against the flagstones, each strike sending showers of sparks across the ground. One by one, their torches light.

  A few dare to make the run while their comrades are firing. Others toss the torches from behind their cover.

  “The Devil can’t read your mind, look . . .” but there is no reason for me to continue speaking.

  The innkeeper has stopped the wheelbarrow. He’s spellbound, watching the flames as they begin to spread over the woodstone the workers had placed around the palace.

  Some of the Prince’s me
n had aimed well. Two of the Devil men lie bleeding to death in the streets, their torches lying, flickering and dying, at their sides. However, the small fires about the palace join together to form a giant blaze. And then the blaze becomes an inferno. I’m a little surprised by how many men are actually in the palace on the Prince’s side—perhaps there are as many as ten. The skinny man and Hagar certainly aren’t with them, however. I see the pair with one of the Devil’s groups, their guns drawn and pointed at the door I’d used to enter the palace.

  Smoke pours up in sheets from the wood.

  THERE IS STILL TIME TO STOP THIS, PRINCE. GIVE US THE INFIDEL FRIEND.

  The Prince’s head pokes out of a second story window. “I told you, we don’t have him!”

  YOUR LIES WILL NO LONGER BE TOLERATED. YOUR SOUL IS MINE.

  The Devil turns and motions to the marble man, and the wight walks out from behind the wall they were using for cover. The Prince’s men appear shocked to see him out in the open, or perhaps their ammo situation is worse than I thought, because no one fires.

  “Well shoot him!” the Prince’s voice calls out.

  Bullets fly. Packets of dust pick up all around the marble man as bullets tear into the stone street and the building behind him. The bullets whine as they ricochet off of the rock. The man’s clothes erupt with tiny holes, and his jacket disintegrates off of his body in a rain of buckshot, but the barrage does not slow the marble man. Those bullets which touch his skin stop and drop to the ground around his feet. The Prince’s men stop firing, probably stricken with horror.

  Bullets and shot tinkle as they skitter across the now pitted flagstones. Apparently Archdevils aren’t the only ones immune to bullets.

  The smoke thickens at the base of the building. The marble man stops outside the fifty foot door, the fire melting the rubber of his boots and licking up the sides of his trousers. He’s got the keys, probably from Hagar. He uses them as the smoke curls around his figure and he pulls open the door. Smoke billows out into the street, obscuring my view of the marble man. I hear a scream from inside.

  PONDER NOW YOUR DISGRACE AND VILLAINY.

  More screams, some of them female. My heart beats faster in my chest. Women start coming out of the smoke. With bullets so scarce, the Devil men are unwilling to use them. They draw hatchets and advance on the escaping ladies. Even with the smoke in the way, I can see the rot on some of the women. Black blood, the blood of a corpse, spews forth from their bodies as often as red does. As the slaughter continues, some of the women that emerge don’t even need to be killed. They come out on fire and then drop to the ground. They rise again as corpses, but the fire is an insatiable murderess, and takes from them their undeath just as it took their lives.

  A couple of men come out. The huge black wight draws his pistol and shoots them down, considering them dangerous for some reason.

  “I swear I don’t—” the Prince’s voice is interrupted by a fit of coughing, “—have him. He’s not here.”

  A couple of the Prince’s men try to escape by jumping out of a window. They’re rotten, so their landing is messier than one would expect. One’s leg gives out, not at the joint, but at his shin. He stands up on his good leg, somehow unaware of the extent of his injury. As he steps forward with his wounded leg, it bends under his weight as if he’d grown an extra knee. He topples over in time to be overwhelmed by hatchet wielding, dim eyed Devil men.

  The other jumper never even gets the chance to stand before he’s hacked to pieces.

  Another batch of harem women comes out from the front door in a rush. The skinny man’s laughter starts as he and his pack of Devil men draw their own hatchets and join in. More of the women are burning this time, but there are enough still alive to receive the thin man’s high pitched sadism. As the hacking continues, his laughter gets higher and higher.

  Another figure comes out of the smoke. Her legs are so thin I’m surprised she can walk. She’s got a serape covering her head, perhaps to protect against the black smoke that she’s emerging from. One of her arms is upraised. The serape falls away from her face and I notice her pixie haircut. The skinny man shrieks like a hyena while he chops Twiggy down.

  “I surrender!” the Prince is pleading. “Oh God. I surrender. I’m coming out.”

  The Prince emerges, smoke swirling around him. He falls to his knees beside Twiggy. “What have you done to her?” He shouts. He stands up, furious, his finger leveled at the skinny man’s heart. “You were her guard!”

  There is a moment where no one moves and no one speaks. The fire of the palace crackles, producing sparks which ride the currents of smoke high into the air before winking out. I remember when the skinny man was leading me through the palace, when he stopped and reflected on how horrible his home had become. It must have come to him as a moment of clarity. He must be having one now. The skinny man looks up at the Prince. I can see them well from where I am, in the street before the palace, surrounded by a half moon of dim eyed Devil men.

  The Prince’s former servant looks down at the body that he’d just slain. It’s twitching, rising again. The skinny man’s laughter picks back up, worse than a hyena. It sets my teeth on edge. The hatchet rises and falls, slamming into the Prince. The Prince was probably killed by that first blow. His and Twiggy’s corpses were probably killed shortly after that, but the skinny man continues with abandon.

  I look up at the old man. His face is marked with profound sorrow, and it should be. With the Prince dead, Maylay Beighlay has reached a point of no return. There is no coming back from this. Even if the Devil were killed and his people delivered, Maylay Beighlay would surely die.

  Suddenly I feel shame for this city that I called my home for a brief time so long ago. The Archdevil that conquered Maylay Beighlay, surely he’s a terrible force in battle. Surely he’s immune to almost all substances, as strong as a Minotaur, and as fast as an Icanitzu. But the shameful thing is that he didn’t need to fight at all. He didn’t even need to personally make a single kill. We humans ripped this city apart for him. All he’d done was promise an infinite and pleasant future—and look how we flocked around him. Look how we gave up thinking and accepted his laws without question. Look how we buried our minds in drugs until we walked around as thoughtless corpses through the streets that once led us to the vibrant purposes of our lives.

  I recognize this as an old evil, an evil I remember from Earth. How many times have such promises led to the folly of men? The slaves of the Egyptians, the serfs of feudal European lords, the soldiers of Stalin. How much evil has been done by unthinking people who have been promised one heaven or another?

  I know this Devil. I know this evil.

  While the skinny man hacks and laughs at the fallen bodies of Maylay Beighlay’s royalty, the marble man emerges, his clothes nearly all burned away, from the palace.

  DID YOU SEE THE INFIDEL FRIEND?

  The marble man shakes his head. “I looked, perhaps he’s still in there. We can search the ashes when the place cools down and the smoke does not obscure my vision.”

  The Devil’s head nods.

  The world starts passing by to the tune of the fire and the shouts of the dying and the skinny man’s laughter and the slight repeating squeak of a wheel. The old man is taking me away to someplace where I can only hope that the Devil cannot find me. To some place where I can heal.

  To someplace where I can think.

  I awaken in a small circular room made out of marble. It’s even smaller than my prison chamber in the Core. The stone beneath me is smooth and cold. The pain has only gotten worse. There is a blanket beside me. I try to reach it with my left hand, but that arm shakes when I attempt to move it. I use my fingers to help my hand crawl there. Then, inch by inch, I pull the blanket back to me until I can grab it with my good arm.

  The roof is domed and supported by Corinthian pillars. Every other pillar is decorative, supporting statuary instead of the roof. My guess is that the statues there were originally Gre
co-Roman and that they’d been removed in favor of rough hewn hellstone crosses and a poorly carved Jesus. Whoever sculpted it was not very skilled. Jesus’ tortured, misshapen head lolls to one side. His arms are of different lengths. The crown of thorns around his head looks more like a hippie’s bandana. The eyes, a little asymmetrical, look down on me. One other statue remains. It is of a man with an upraised hand with what looks like a Renaissance style baby cherubim behind him. Whoever sculpted this one possessed remarkable skill. I get a wry sense of enjoyment as I come up with a theory on why this statue is here. The Christians who remade this temple in their own God’s image didn’t remove this statue, I imagine, because they thought it an angel clinging to him. However, this is a representation of Caesar Augustus. Aphrodite was one of the goddesses thought to favor him, and the “angel” is actually Cupid.

  I don’t mind his gaze. Augustus can stare at me all day long.

  It takes me a while to get the blanket over my body. I begin shivering again, and the pain makes me wish to die.

  I awaken to the old man looming over me like an angel shepherding me to the next afterlife. “The houses around the Palace still burn.” He looks out of the curtained doorway of the temple onto the city. “Every time I think those fires have stopped, they spring back to life.”

  “Let me know . . . if those fires get close.”

  “I brought you food,” he says. “It’s as clean as I can make it. I’ve got some pure water too. They don’t let me light fires anymore, and they’ve cut off the aqueduct at its source in the Core, but there is a place where the water condenses on the ceiling, and then drips down. I have collected it for you.”

  I am covered now in blankets. He must have put them on me while I slept.

  “What will you drink?” I ask.

  He scratches his greying facial hair. “It is my lot to rot. You are an infidel. You have a mission. You must heal and destroy the Devil.” His face looks a little more rotten then when last I saw him. He’s got grey patches of skin on his cheek. He scratches one of those dead patches, and dry skin flakes come down from his face like falling snow—or dandruff. “You are right, the Devil cannot read minds. Otherwise he would have known you were in my wheelbarrow and not imagined you in the Prince’s palace. They will send Durigon in there soon. They will find out you are not there. They will begin searching the city. If they find you . . .”