Adjusting her webbing straps so they didn't chafe her through the mud caking her body, Kim led Tango-one-five back down the Styx toward their supply cache and the rope bridge they'd strung across the river. Once on the other side, they would set about making the Dis-Dysprosium road a hell within hell, one that Baldricks would fear more than they feared Satan himself. Kim already had a name for it. La Route Sans Joie.
Palace of Satan, Infernal City of Dis, Sixth Ring of Hell
The banners of kingdoms long conquered swirled in the red mist as the Akropoulopos approached the diamond throne of Satan. He had always known being a messenger was a bad idea, and now he knew that his life was a couple of minutes from ending. “Oh mighty prince,” he began, “overlord of the innumerable legions of – ”
“Get on with it,” snapped Satan irritably, clicking his claws against the hewn gem. “What news have you brought me of Abigor's brilliant success?”
“Sire, the messengers from Abigor are silent. I bring news not of Abigor, but of terrible happenings much closer to your throne.”
“Well, what is it? Hurry up; my time is not your kidling's plaything.”
The messenger swallowed and groveled. “My lord – I do not know how to say this. The bridge leading to the road to Dysprosium has been destroyed.”
Satan stopped clicking his fingers. “What?” His voice was quiet, which was even more terrifying than the hysterical fits. “Repeat yourself.”
Akropoulos was shivering uncontrollably. “Your invincible eminence, the bridge across the Styx has been destroyed. Those legionaries who were there report that it burst into many pieces with the roar of ten thousand demons. Flying stones killed many, and -”
“What,” asked Satan, cutting him off with a word, “do my advisors think to be the cause of this… outrage?” Still silkily smooth and quiet.
The court was silent, save for the shuffling of feet as some of the more perspicacious demons positioned themselves so that the inevitable rage would not claim their lives.
“Speak!” roared Satan. “I COMMAND you all, SPEAK!!”
One demon timidly cleared his throat. “Um, Sire, none of us can think of any explanation, save…” He trailed off, but not in time to save himself.
“Save what?” screamed Satan, balling his hand into a fist and pounding it on his throne.
“Save… uh… save, perhaps, most improbably, a bit of stray human magic?”
Satan's glare squashed him into an unimaginably horrible pulp. “You will all find us the cause of this outrage! You will ensure that it does not happen again! This is our domain; our immortal, invincible will decrees that no human mage shall ever work his magic once more in this infernal pit!”
As the court demons hastened to obey, scrambling around the wide hall, Akropoulos took the opportunity to scuttle unnoticed away. As he hurriedly left the palace, he promised himself to try again to join the legions; messengering was too hazardous a job.
Fifth Ring, Hell
The road, large flat paving stones laid atop a low causeway of dirt, wound through the foggy swamps. The half-muted groans of the eternally-drowning souls crucified in the mud echoed dimly through the stinking air. McInery surveyed it with a grim smile. “You think we can actually blow the causeway, ell-tee?”
Kim shrugged. “Why the hell not try, Mac? Bubbles, you got the Semtex?”
“Aye, ell-tee, right here.”
“Let’s lay it.” Kim directed the other members of Tango-one-five recon flight to lay eight Semtex bricks on each side of the road, spaced several hundred feet apart. The bricks were pushed down into the soft earth, no more noticeable than large rocks.
As Tarrant finished pushing the electronic detonators into the last brick, McInery hurried up to where Kim and the rest of Tango flight were standing. “Ell-tee, we have contacts coming from that direction.” He waved behind him.
“How many, Mac?”
“Didn’t count; just saw the torches and heard the voices.” In the distance, dim chanting floated through the mist toward them.
“Everyone, off the road!” she hissed. She grabbed the last bag, slung it over her shoulder, and waded into the bog after the others. They made toward a low granite outcropping just within view of the road. As they hurried behind it, stumbling past several submarine crucifixes, the chanting grew louder.
“Pie Iesu domine, dona eis requiem.” The tramping of the feet, all in step, grew, and the first torchbearers appeared through the mist. Kim suppressed a gasp; they were not Baldricks. These were honest-to-God Cherubs, dressed in pure white that seemed to glow like pearl through the thin fog, and they were chanting something – was it Latin? Whatever it was, Kim had enough of a musical ear to note that the singing was perfect, the pitch exactly correct, the timing exquisite. She couldn’t have emulated it herself, when trying to sing, she hit all the right notes, she just hit them in the wrong order.
In the midst of the Cherubs – all chanting, all bearing torches, and all wearing swords at their sides – were greater humanoids head and shoulders taller than the others, with flawless skin and, damningly, white wings folded across their backs. “Mac, how many you count?” whispered Kim.
“I got seven angels, ell-tee, and seventy-seven cherubs.”
“We’re at war with heaven and hell both, right, guys?”
There was a mutter of affirmation from beside her, and a brisk, quiet, “Let’s take them!” from one of the big game hunters, who had been a devout Catholic up until The Message. Kim nodded and thumbed the detonator.
The concussion knocked the breath out of her, even at this distance. The blast tore the heavenly emissaries apart, spattering white and red blood and body parts along with the dirt, mud, and chunks of rock. After, where there had once been a road, there was a giant gaping hole filling with vile, gurgling swampwater. The group of angels and cherubs was scattered in many pieces through the surrounding swamp.
When she got her breath back, Kim was last in line as Tango flight trooped away from the carnage as fast as they could, quietly jubilant. Then a stray thought crossed her mind. “Boys, we’re going to need some more Semtex.”
The Banks of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell
Rahab looked at the dead Beast and its rider in horror. The Beasts and the demons who rode them were invulnerable, everybody knew that. Those few who had tried to kill them had died deaths that were terrible even by the standards of hell. Yet those new arrivals had killed this pair. She knew who had done it all right, nobody else would have the gall to even try. And if that wasn’t enough, the letters PFLH written n the Beast’s side in its own blood were enough.
Were they insane? Rahab’s stomach clenched with fear at what was likely to happen. Once these deaths became known, there would be revenge, reprisals. The demons would come down here by the legion, searching every inch of ground for those who had done the deed. In the process, they would find all those who had escaped from the pits over the millennia and, at best, return them to torment. Thousands of souls doomed to return to their agony because these six decided to upset the natural order of things. When she had left them in the underground room, Rahab had been sorely tempted to ‘arrange’ for them to be found by the guards and returned to the pits. She had dismissed the idea, believing that their comments and stories had been just wild boasting. Now, she guessed they were not and she bitterly wished she had betrayed them. Condemning six souls was better than dooming the tens of thousands of escapees.
She’d been searching for them for days, trying to catch up with them and bring them into shelter. Now she had found this. She agonized over the decision, what to do? At that point another fact penetrated her bewildered mind. She had seen no flares from the watchtower that lay close at hand. Fearfully she made her way to where it had stood, only to be appalled by the sight that loomed through the mist. The watch tower was a blasted stump, its wreckage spread all over the paths, some of it sinking into the mud. And on the stump were the letters PFLH. Written in the blood of the watch-demon.