"Valeric, I'm sorry. I was a fool." The words came hard. He did not admit error easily.
He had to move fast. Helga would have made sure Valerie could keep no secrets. "Honeyhair... Forgive me." He had to do the thing that, when first they had learned of Valerie's enslavement, he and Richard had agreed had to be done.
There could be but one escape for Valerie Storm. He could free her no other way.
Flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood... He had trouble seeing. There was water in his eye.
Shaking, he reached for the large red lever prominent in the center of the terminal. The worm within his gut metamorphosed, became an angry, clawing dragon.
He had thought himself too old, too calloused to feel such pain.
He hesitated for just an instant. Then he pulled the safety pin and yanked the lever.
His helmet rilled with a sound not unlike that of someone slowly strangling. His hand strayed toward the comm jack. He forced it away. He had to listen, to remember. This dread moment would never have been were he not a bullheaded idiot.
One must savor the bitter taste of folly as well as the sweetness of wisdom, for wisdom is born of folly well remembered.
She was going. Faintly, she murmured, "Peace. Father, tell Richard... Please. Tell Richard I... I... "
"I will, Valerie. Honeyhair. I will."
"Father... Play something... the way you used to."
A tear forced itself from his eye as he remembered a tune he used to tootle for her when she was a child. He unslung the case on his back, praying the cold and encounter with Helga's guardian had not ruined his instrument. He wet the reed, closed his eye, began to play. It squealed a little, but yielded its child-memory. "That one, Honeyhair?"
Silence. The voiceless, bellowing silence of death.
He indulged in a frenzy of rage that masked a deeper, more painful emotion. For one long minute he let his grief take him. His music became an agonized howl.
Valerie was not the first of his blood he had slain. She might not be the last. Practice did not ease the agony. He could not do it without crying in the night forever afterward.
This Storm, the Storm of tears and grief and fury, was the Storm no one ever saw, the Storm unknown to anyone but Frieda, who held him while the sobs racked him.
He took hold. There were things to do. He had learned something. He had to move fast.
He used the dead face of Helga Dee as a will-o'-the-wisp to follow from Festung Todesangst's deeps. He stalked it with the intensity of a fanatic assassin.
He had thought that he hated Richard Hawksblood. That odium was a child's fleeting passion compared to what he felt now. His feelings toward Helga had become a torch he would follow through the darkness all the rest of his days.
He had not asked the questions that had brought him to Helga's World. But their answers were implicit in what he had learned.
They had come to the end of Michael's game. Dee was pulling out the stops, laying everything on the line, risking it all to get whatever he wanted. The Legion and Hawksblood were being pushed into Blackworld like cocks into the pit, to fight and this time die the death-without-resurrection.
Whatever obsession compelled Michael, it was about to be satisfied. Michael was about to attain his El Dorado. There would be war, and there would be feeling in it. The hatreds were being pumped up. The Gotterdammerung could not be averted.
The twilight of the Legion lay just beyond a near horizon. It might mean the end of all mercenary armies...
Storm made a vow. He and Richard might fight, and both lose, but they would go to the shadows with one victory to light their paths to Hell.
The Dees would go down with them. Every last one.
Twenty-Six: 2845 AD
The last snow was melting in the forest shade when Deeth made his second bid for freedom. He had prepared for months. First he concentrated on convincing Jackson that he had resigned himself to his fate. He faithfully did all he was told, and cared for the old man beyond what was demanded. He made no effort to flee when apparent opportunities arose. Nor did he struggle much against perversions or the incessant maltreatment. He suffered in silence, stoically waiting.
He began decorating the stage of his revenge in the fall, under the guise of caring for Jackson. During autumn he carpeted the cavern floor with leaves. When the chills moved in and it became necessary to keep a fire burning, he gathered piles of firewood. While foraging wood he collected small, sharp stones that he concealed around the cave.
On the night he chose he cut his neck rope with an edged rock. Hours passed while he sawed, painstakingly avoiding rustling the leaves of his bed. When he was done he did not immediately flee.
Holding the parted rope round his neck, he rose and stoked up the fire. The old man wakened, as he always did when Deeth stirred. He cursed Deeth for disturbing him. Deeth bowed his head and went on with his work. Jackson settled back into a grumbling snore.
Deeth built the fire higher and higher. It began to roar, and pull a breeze into the cave.
Concealed near the fire were the things he wanted to take: a hide blanket, steel for fire-starting, a package of dried fruit. He tossed them out the cave mouth.
Jackson snapped to awareness, suspicious and crabby. He jerked the rope. It flew into his face. He stared at the frayed end in dull-witted surprise.
Deeth seized a forked stick and shoveled fire onto the dry, powdery leaves. He skipped back and toppled the huge kindling stack, carefully prepared for the moment. It slid into the flames. The fire gnawed at it, leaping higher and crackling louder by the second.
Deeth dumped piles of larger wood.
The old man, cursing, terrified, staggered out of his chair and tried to charge through before the barrier became impassable.
Deeth floored him with a thrown stone.
The power of hatred was in his arm. He whistled that rock into Jackson's chest with such force that he heard brittle old ribs crack.
Jackson rose for another try. The trap had closed. He retreated instead.
Deeth watched in fascination as Jackson screamed and danced in the fire. Eventually, crazed with pain, the old man flung himself at the barrier again. He crashed through and collapsed outside, twitching all over, feebly crawling toward his tormentor.
Deeth backed a step when necessary, and collected his supplies, but did not leave till Jackson died.
He felt no real emotion afterward. It had not been an execution, even, just an ending of misery.
He started toward the village.
The boy had been scarred. Something had been carved out of him in that cave. Never again would he feel true, whole, mortal emotion. He had become that fearful, wholly pragmatic monster which has no conscience, and no comprehension of emotion. Henceforth he would fake it, when necessary, as protective coloration, and would believe that everyone else was doing the same. The only things with meaning, most of the time, would be his own whims, fancies, and hatreds. Everyone else he would see as objects to be moved and used.
Deeth had acted now because the village chieftain had condemned the girl Emily to another week in the punishment pit. He could spirit her away without having to sneak her out of the chieftain's house.
He had to enter and leave the village past a guard watching for a night raid by neighboring tribes. Going in, the sentry was asleep at his post. Deeth crept past. Keeping to the deepest darkness, he moved to the chieftain's hut.
The pit had been covered with a lid made of hide on a wooden frame. Rocks weighted it down. Deeth removed it.
He lay on his stomach and whispered, "Emily! It's time." He could see nothing below, but knew she was awake. He heard her frightened breathing.
One of the village's domesticated beasts snorted nearby. It sensed his presence, but was neither noisy nor excitable. It did not give him away.