An Age Without A Name Read online

“You’re thinking of hitting him in the rear, with the Chicago crew and your mercs?” Sky said. I shrugged. “Most gracious Commander of all things warlike, I have noted that you aren’t moving as quickly as normal and using speed to your advantage.”

  “You have noted correctly, Guru Sky,” I said, responding in formal Crow. “I would love to hit Enkidu’s rear while he attempts to hunt down Haggerty, but that would involve moving in the next two to three days, and all I have to work with are us, the rest of the Arms, and perhaps a hundred mercs. We wouldn’t succeed at doing anything useful.”

  “We’re that outnumbered?” Mizar said.

  “You’ve counted the noses. The Nobles remain too wounded to do anything but heal and replenish their lost households. The Focus households here remain shot to hell. At best. Armenigar and Keaton aren’t ready for another major battle, Sibrian and Debardelaben are barely out of their healing trances, and Billington’s crappy Crow still hasn’t finished de-Monstering our most impressive Chimera-fighting tank.” I waved my hands in the air as I paced and spoke, allowing myself to radiate my frustrations. I had come up with dozens of battle scenarios, and none of them brought us any closer to a victory. “I can recruit another half dozen Focus households, but none of them are top notch, so I would need all of them. Worse, recruiting Focus households takes weeks, as I learned both in the run-up to the Clearing of Chicago and Pittsburgh attacks.”

  “That’s here, Carol,” Lori said. “Your best militarily-capable Focus friends live outside of the Midwest region, but the war isn’t there, save for out west.”

  “You think I need to abandon Chicago and go west?” I think my subconscious agreed with Lori. There had to be a reason why I hadn’t wanted to go to ground in Chicago and start working on making my territory mine again.

  “Yes,” Lori said. “The Dreaming’s been pointing my vision to the west coast ever since we left Calgary. That’s where the Cause has gathered, not here.”

  I nodded. Webberly and Count Hunk’s four Major Transform household had target written all over it. Militarily, they were nothing more than a pothole on Enkidu’s road to victory, though. A smallish pothole, at that.

  However, were they worth defending? I took my turn to face away from my family and study the leafless trees. I might not be able to come up with a victory scenario over the Hunter Empire now, but perhaps I could come up with a way to save Webberly and Dowling’s experiment and give myself the time I needed for some proper organization.

  “You’re right. I think we need to figure out what the hell’s going on out west,” I said. “For one thing, there has to be a reason why the Madonna keeps saying the Hunter Empire has big problems. Let’s see if we can find out what these problems are.”

  There was no victory to be found in the Chicago area, that was for sure.

  Caveworm (3/15/73 – 3/16/73)

  The juice slave kicked him again. “Dammit, Caveworm, get a move on it.” Sinclair obligingly slithered slightly faster down the access hallway, dodging a cart carrying an entire cow, skinned and still dripping blood.

  He had a new name now, and the Hunters and their minions all called him Caveworm. Everyone in punishment house needed to work to earn their meals. Their overseer was a vicious little thug named Snake, their supposed trainer. Much to Sinclair’s disgust, the fake Hitler was a Crow. The prisoners were responsible for cleaning, usually the opulent Founder’s Lodge. The real lodge, not the ramshackle prisons on the Founder’s Lodge grounds.

  Since Sinclair lost his sight, he found his metasense growing more acute as time passed. With the ample dross and élan in the lodge, the world practically glowed around him. He could clean while blind, and he could clean and take dross at the same time as well, especially now that he mastered the use of his two tentacles. Damn the Arm! He still heard Bass laughing in his mind. Still, with three arms total, at least he could clean relatively quickly. He slithered into the huge industrial kitchen, and started scrubbing the floor.

  Cleaning was unpleasant duty. The caustic cleaning chemicals irritated his belly skin, and there was no avoiding slithering through them. Even despite the daily cleaning, the Hunters generated filth at an astonishing rate, their reek inescapable. He was slippery, filthy, exhausted, and in pain. The problems didn’t matter. He cleaned.

  The inmates in punishment house cleaned every night, six hours of heavy work. He had been at this for at least three days, now, he thought, though his recent memories played tricks on him. Like the others in punishment house, he didn’t learn what Snake tried to teach him. Sinclair was supposed to become a Hunter’s Shaman, broken to the Law and voluntarily following the Hunter way. Sinclair’s mind wasn’t docile, as it should be under the Law. Oh, the Law was in him, keeping him from fleeing, or attacking, or even harming anyone else. But the rest of the Law didn’t work on him.

  He didn’t know why, nor did anyone else in punishment house. The other inmates had their own reasons why they could resist the pressure of the Law: Elspeth drew strength from the Commander’s tag. Newton drew strength from Elspeth, as the two of them shared mutual tags. Tarn drew strength from (of all things) Armenigar’s tag. The Law itself made the Sport, Nabors, useless as a Major Transform.

  At least Sinclair wasn’t in the disposal dorm, the holding pen where they kept Transforms ready to be killed for their juice.

  “So, the mighty ‘Master’ Sinclair has been reduced to a mere worm,” a Hunter said, with a wall-shivering voice. Terror grabbed at Sinclair’s mind, and he drew himself into a coil. Enkidu. He hadn’t noticed the Hunter General’s approach, and even now could only barely metasense him. Enkidu reached down, grabbed Sinclair by the back of his neck and lifted him up. “I really missed you in Philadelphia, and I certainly wasn’t pleased when you skunked me in Detroit. Now, it looks to me like the worm has turned, so to speak.” Enkidu laughed long and hard at his own humor.

  “Sir,” the Law forced Sinclair to say. “General Enkidu.”

  “What a waste,” Enkidu said. “I thought I’d stop by and see how you were progressing, given that you’re one of the more famous captives we’ve ever taken. Looks like no progress at all.” Enkidu scratched Sinclair’s throat with a claw from his left hand. “Why shouldn’t I kill you, eh?”

  “Sir! I can’t help myself,” Sinclair said. “I want to help, really I do.” The Law. Sinclair hated the Law, what it made him think and do. But to save his life? He would follow the Law.

  “But you can’t, because we can’t break you to the point where you stop resisting the Law,” Enkidu said. “Well, no matter. You can be some Hunter’s Shaman, even without being broken fully to the Law. Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had Crow trouble.”

  “General Enkidu, sir, then why am I in punishment house?”

  “Punishment for being recalcitrant, Caveworm. Also, because I have this bright idea that a Shaman of your skills should be able to convince the others in punishment house to be useful.”

  Shit! Not only was he mentally and physically shredded, Enkidu would morally shred him as well, order him to be a quisling and win his fellow prisoners over with treachery. If only the damned Law didn’t forbid suicide!

  “You have a problem with that, Caveworm?”

  “No, sir!” Sinclair said.

  “You possess too much hope. Calgary has fallen. We’ve burned the Chicago Major Transform schools to the ground. Both Armenigar and Keaton run from me,” Enkidu said, with a grunt of pleasure, a Chimera’s pleasure at a job well done. “I’m destroying the idiot Cause of yours, piece by bloody piece. Neither you, nor the Commander, nor Armenigar, nor anyone else can stand against me. Look!” Enkidu said. Without eyes, Sinclair looked where Enkidu bid, at Enkidu’s other hand, which held one of the Commander’s prize possessions, the Lucite cube with Enkidu’s severed hand in it. She had cut it from him years ago, the first time they met. Sinclair quailed. “They’re all weak, and everyone I face falls to me. It’s only a matter of time before I mop up the remainder. Do you underst
and that you have no hope, that you’re mine, now?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sinclair said, his voice weak. Defeated. He was Caveworm now. A nothing. Caveworm, not Sinclair.

  Although Caveworm’s metasense focused on Enkidu out of sheer need for survival, he also metasensed two unfamiliar Crows intently listening, while doing some late-day paperwork in a nearby office. This entire empire was mad. Every one of them spied on each other. As far as he could tell, they never even reported their spying to anyone else. Or cared about why they were spying. There was no loyalty here, except for what the Law enforced.

  Couldn’t they see the flaws in Enkidu’s empire? Even Enkidu didn’t understand the problems. Perhaps even without hope of help from the outside, there was room for hope, here. Within the flaws in General Enkidu’s Hunter empire.

  Enkidu threw Caveworm to the floor, hard enough so that he bounced. “Finish your cleaning, Caveworm, and then start working on the others in punishment house. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. Let it be a secret between us,” Enkidu said, and chuckled. “I’ll stop by again, in a week or two, to see how you’re doing. I’d damn well better see progress, or I’ll give you back to Hecate. In the meantime, I need to see if I can finally destroy the fucking Hero, since nobody else in my Empire seems to be able to do the job. Get to work, Caveworm!”

  Fighting pain, all Caveworm could do was breathe. Enkidu kicked him for being impolite, and Caveworm curled into a ball. “Yes, yes, I’ll do it, General Enkidu,” he forced out.

  ---

  Caveworm slithered over to eat breakfast next to Newton and Elspeth. Although exhausted from the hours of intense cleaning, he found his new body recovered quickly. “What have they done to you, Focus Elspeth?” he said. He could see changes in her juice structure and physical form that he didn’t understand. Malnutrition of some sort.

  “Nothing like what they’ve done to you,” she said. She had a hollow look to her eyes, deep enough to sense it in the limning of the dross, but mostly she kept her demons under control. Sinclair understood. They all had demons.

  She was a kind woman, really, and she seemed to like him. He wandered how much of that came from the fact she had nothing to fear from him. “They thought I’d be more tractable if I was pregnant.” She shrugged. “It didn’t work, but I’m still pregnant. After that, they tried to starve me into submission, but I wouldn’t give in. I still won’t give in.”

  At the time of her kidnapping, Focus Elspeth still suffered from mental damage caused by the removal of Focus Patterson’s tag. This captivity couldn’t be good for her. “Who’s the father?”

  “Leo.” Her voice was cold, and the sound of it chilled Sinclair. Leo, he thought, should be damned glad that this woman remained under the control of the Law.

  A hideous scream from the Monster pen next door interrupted their conversation, the pen one of the places they trained their newly captive Monsters. Not all took to the Law. The Pack Alpha in charge of the training had decided to kill one of the Monsters, and the Monster fought back, Caveworm guessed. Did the Monster overwhelm the Law, somehow? Her defiance wouldn’t matter, as the heavy gauge steel pipes with razor wire on top fenced off the Monster pen from the rest of the area. The Pack Alpha, a female king-kong part-Monster, sliced the recalcitrant giant turkey to ribbons. Except that given the slices of skin the Monster took from the Pack Alpha, he would say ‘giant turkey’ was incorrect. This Monster was like one of those extinct South American flightless predators he read about years ago. The giant turkey went down, but the Pack Alpha didn’t stop, and didn’t make a clean kill, either. Sinclair couldn’t bear to watch, and he shut down his metasense entirely, save for what he was using to watch Elspeth, Newton, Tarn and Nabors.

  “I remember only a little from my recovery period, before the Commander went away,” Focus Elspeth said. “Without Newton, here, I don’t think I’d ever have recovered.” She paused and leaned up against Newton. He smiled and put an arm around her shoulders. “In many ways, I was reborn. Then, just as things began to look up, the damned Hunters came by and destroyed my household.” Her voice remained thin with remembered pain.

  Caveworm nodded with false sympathy. He could really care less about this Focus’s past or what had happened to her. All the first Focuses lived on borrowed time. Something nasty from her past would eventually show, and that would be the end of her.

  The hollow spots in his mind finally filled up, and things once foggy now became clear. The Crows had betrayed him again. First Chevalier cast him out, and now the Judges sold him into slavery. Appalling. If he wasn’t a Crow himself, he would start up an anti-Crow movement. The idea still tempted him. Between the Crows’ treachery, his encounters with the violent and mind-bent Arms, his bad luck dealing with Focuses (Polly Kiestermann, dead; Beth, likely so pissed she would never again say word one to him) and his near-death experiences with Hunters, it was a wonder he hadn’t chucked everything and gone lost-in-the-woods. He was bone tired of the betrayals. He was tired of spending more time complaining of his travails than in actually taking revenge for what his enemies did to him. He was tired of having to work hard just to be a doormat. To hell with following. He would either lead or get far far out of the way. Crow Master of the Greenland Barony sounded good. He would need a new one. A second absence in so few months, and this time with his place taken by his understudy, Coriolis, his current Barony would be gone for good.

  What the fuck. He would go down swinging.

  “I know of a way to help us,” Caveworm said, extending his Crow Master calming aura over Focus Elspeth and Tarn. “I’m a Crow Master of Nobles, and I can create a Noble household, here. My creation will give us leverage against the other Hunters, strength to resist them and create our own place.”

  “You can do that? Doesn’t the Law stop you?” Elspeth said. Caveworm shook his snake head, but he couldn’t say Enkidu had given him an order allowing him to play this game. “The Law prevents me from doing a great many things I should be able to do. Newton says the Crows get a little wiggle room, but he doesn’t make much sense when he tries to explain it.”

  “Yet you refuse to be a Pack Mistress and make juice slave armies for the Nobles, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I can resist cooperation, by omission, but I can’t actually resist in a positive way. No actively fighting back. Do you think this Noble household business will allow that?”

  “I don’t know,” Caveworm said. “But there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to try.”

  “I know what you’re doing, Sinclair,” Newton said.

  Sinclair had already bound everyone in the punishment house into his new Barony, and started Tarn on the path toward Nobility, by drumming. Drumming was the only way he knew, and in doing so, he carried out Enkidu’s orders.

  “Caveworm now. Sinclair is gone, and I’m not doing anything right this instant. I’m resting,” Caveworm said. He remained one big bruise, from when Enkidu’s slammed him to the floor. In another four hours, he would return to the cleaning.

  “Yes, you are too doing something,” Newton said. “This Noble household you’re creating? You’re attempting to seduce us into the Law, I can just tell. Traitor. Quisling.”

  Caveworm didn’t answer. If the Law inside Newton mirrored the Law in him, Newton wouldn’t be able to do anything to Caveworm to stop him.

  “You can’t help yourself, can you?” Newton said. “I know a way to fight, though. There’s a trick all the Crows around here know. The Law is a Crow thing. A Crow can rip the Law off himself, if he wants. Of course, the Hunters would kill you if they found you after you did, but it’s good to know we can, if we want to. The truth helps us think. Our trick is to make us look like we’re still under the Law. Move the Law out of our heads, so we can wiggle around, underneath it. See?”

  Newton outlined the changes he was suggesting, in his juice structure.

  “I’d rather not,” Caveworm said.

  “You don’t have to give in. You really can figh
t the Law!” Newton said, his whisper agitated. “I’d think you, of all Crows, a real Shaman, would be able to sense the truth!”

  “Your path isn’t right,” Caveworm said. “If I follow your path, I wouldn’t be obeying the Boss.” Snake. Caveworm refused to say the traitorous and sadistic Crow’s name.

  “Moron! Fight it! You’ll doom us all if you don’t,” Newton said.

  “Go away, Newton,” Caveworm said. He didn’t want to argue with Newton. In his opinion, the Newt wasn’t worth arguing with.

  Newton left, and Caveworm relaxed.

  Idiots. Nothing but idiots around him.

  Newton and the other captive Crows fooled themselves. Caveworm understood the change Newton showed him. This supposed Crow trick did the opposite of what Newton thought – instead of fighting the Law, the ‘resistance’ the Crows gained by buying into the illusion of fighting the Law instead opened up their subconscious to the Law. The real reason for Newton’s resistance wasn’t the powerless change in the Law he made, but instead, the Commander’s tag on Elspeth, accessed through Elspeth’s mutual tag with Newton.

  Tags Enkidu couldn’t see. Tags Bass, with typical Arm arrogance, ignored as a weakness. Dominant Arms tagged their subordinates, turning a flexible piece of juice technology into a part of their sadistic dominance structure. He had noticed this mistake several times, even in Arms who ought to know better, such as Amy. Intellectually, Amy knew the tags conveyed power, not just dominance, but Amy’s subconscious refused to acknowledge the truth, a lesson possibly beat into her by Keaton. Caveworm doubted a twisted Arm like Bass ever saw a tag as anything but a weakness.

  All Caveworm needed to do, to fulfill Enkidu’s secret orders in the most efficient way, would be to rip the Commander’s tag off Elspeth and Armenigar’s tag off of Tarn. That and find a way to fix the flaws in Nabors’ juice structure.

  Caveworm laughed the laugh of the insane in his mind, but didn’t let the least bit of sound escape his lips. He didn’t know exactly how or what Bass did to him, but his experience at her hands had toughened him in some unexpected way. To survive Bass’s torture, he had drawn on inner strengths he didn’t know he possessed. Now recovered from the torture, he could pull on those inner strengths for other uses. Uses such as the initiative to take risks and the desire to avoid sitting back idly and letting the world go by.