The Magnificent Bastards

I | Enter the Witch-Doctor

I | Enter the Witch-DoctorThey were the kind of musical notes men and woman once swayed to—even worshiped to—or so Jasper had told him, ground from an instrument called an “organ”—which had once been common, or so he’d said, but had vanished from the face of the world. So, too, were there cymbals, which echoed throughout the crew compartment of the War Wagon like tinsel—if tinsel could be said to have a sound—and mingled with the steely whispers of their muskets and tanks and other gear as the truck rocked and their harnesses held them fast.

“When a maaan loves a woman,” sang a hearty and soulful voice both inside and outside the compartment, and Jeremiah knew they were close, else the driver wouldn’t have cued the music, and when he scanned the other Witch Doctors, strapped in six to a bench in the wagon’s cramped confines, he knew that they knew it too. What was more, he knew that, however fearsome they looked in their black jumpsuits and white flame-retardant vests, their goggled respirators, their buckled hats—they were frightened, too.

But then the wagon ground to a halt and there was no time to be feel anything, much less fear, as Jeremiah unbuckled and piled out with the others. And yet, as he paused momentarily to take in the building—a ramshackle six-story brownstone which looked as though it had been built before the Betrayal, much less the Pogrom—a strange thing happened. He thought he heard a voice; not from without but entirely from within—a woman’s voice, a witch’s voice. And it said to him, as faintly as the cymbals at the start of the music, Why have you come for us, Witch-Doctor? And he found himself scanning the illuminated windows of the brownstone as if someone had perhaps shouted to him (rather than reaching directly into his mind), and saw behind one of the uppermost panes a figure so small and motionless that he might have thought it a piece of furniture, a lamp, perhaps, had it not slid to one side and vanished.

Then he was activating his musket, which was connected to the tank on his back and shot not just explosive balls but streams of incinerating fire, and charging into the foyer—where a handful of witches already lay, writhing and smoldering. Fifteen minutes. That’s what they had before the Flyer lowered from the vespertine gloom and received them on the roof. He rushed into the first corridor, finding it already busy with Witch Doctors and choked in smoke, and instead of joining in located the door to the stairwell—whose steps he gained quickly, bypassing the second floor entirely (which he knew would be already under siege), and exiting onto the third level, where he was greeted by a gaggle of witches dressed in little more than rags, their white eyes focused solely upon him, their hands already joined, at which instant he raised his musket and fired, holding its trigger down as he swung his arm back and forth so that the women were consumed in flames instants before they were able to cast their spell.

How did it come to this, Witch Doctor? This war between Doctor and witch, man and woman, you and I?

The voice again, slightly louder this time, but still little more than a whisper, still difficult to hear through all the noise and screaming, as well as his own muffled breathing. He willed it away as he approached the first door and triggered his musket, which spat its ball and orange fire, punching out the knob and igniting the wood like dry tinder, causing the occupant of the room to scream so that it seemed the door itself screamed, blackening and shedding its paint which peeled away like rinds of burnt skin. He kicked it open and it fell with a crash, but had hardly levelled his pistol when the witch in the middle of the room launched herself against the ceiling—which she laid upon as though the world itself had flipped upside down—and, opening her mouth wide, vomited a stream of black liquid—which splattered against the floor as he dropped and rolled, tank clanking. The spot hissed as the bile melted through it and he hastened to warn any Witch Doctor below by shouting, “Black bile!”—even as he completed his roll and torched the witch while still on the floor. She danced wildly against the cracked plaster of the ceiling and a flailing hand smashed out the overhead light, yet still she did not fall, and he squeezed the trigger again. At last she dropped to the floor, arms and legs whipping about in a frenzy, then rolled in an effort to extinguish the flames and fell screeching into the flat below.

Do you presume all of us are such as she? Even so, can you hardly blame her for using all the power at her disposal to simply stay alive? Now that the room had been plunged into darkness, the voice seemed louder, was louder, he was sure of it. So, too, had it become clearer, more resonant, enough so that it had begun to make his every effort to ignore it or to will it away impossible. He clasped his hands to his head as if the pressure alone might suffocate it into silence, and yet it persisted: Jeremiah ... why do you not question the wisdom of your leaders, as I have done? Why do you continue to kill for them, when the very reasons for such killing have long since been forgotten?

He scrambled to his feet, shocked at the utterance of his name, and before he even realized what he was doing he was responding to her, forming words in his mind which were as clear and resonant as her own, nor was it just his own interiority he was hearing but rather some previously unimagined facet of himself given voice for the very first time. Never will it be forgotten. Never will it happen again. Never will a word from anyone of you be believed.

He burst back out into the hall at the precise moment several witches fled their units, and torched them as they ran. They screamed, bursting into flames, but continued running, vanishing into the far stairwell even as Jeremiah keyed his mic: “Be advised, runners in the east well.” Then he pivoted and kicked open the nearest door, not bothering to weaken it first with fire, feeling newly energized by the taunts in his head, feeling a new sense of urgency. “Ten minutes,” came a voice through his headset, followed by a squawk.

He fired without even looking, and because of the charging witch’s proximity and the fact that their muskets were incendiary projectile weapons as well as flamethrowers, her head simply exploded, scattering in great b****y chunks and dotting his goggles with blood. And yet the flaming body continued its charge, and before he could fully react it was upon him, tearing at his respirator, knocking off his hat, forcing him backward so that he collided with the opposite wall of the corridor and was pinned. He cried out as her flaming hands wrapped about his neck—then, suddenly, she was off him, she was being propelled across the hall with tremendous force—straight into the opposing wall, where an invisible hand stayed her, pinned her, her arms and legs flailing, her severed neck gouting blood. That was I, came the voice. That was me, Satyena. I have saved you so that you may save me. Hurry, Jeremiah. I am on the 6th floor.

He straightened his respirator and picked up his wide-brimmed hat, yet did not move further, remaining still instead, weighing the hat in his gloved hands, rubbing a blotch of tissue from its great, gold buckle. It was difficult to see clearly with the blood drying on his goggles; he took off a glove and wiped them clean, noticing as he did so that his hand was shaking—worse, that his entire body had begun to tremble. He looked around the corridor in a daze, first at the headless witch who was now an inanimate corpse, then through the door from which he’d exited, where blood and brains had begun to dry on the wallpaper, which was beginning to warp and to catch fire. That’s when he noticed something else, a crude sign on the fallen door—a sign which, when he moved forward to examine it, turned out to be a simple plea: ‘Please don’t kill the bird.’

Her name was Miriam, and the bird was her only friend. And during her life she was ostracized by everyone, because she was like me, neither fully witch nor fully woman. When the High Sisters came with their judgements and their sentences, it was she who spoke in my defense—only she who would still speak the truth as she saw it.

The birdcage came into view as he rounded the corner to the kitchenette, for he had been moving through the flaming apartment without being consciously aware of it. “Six minutes until dust-off,” squawked his headset. “Doctors Oceanus and Damaris KIA. Mind your thoughts ... there is a Whisperer at work.”

Jeremiah stared at the bird, which flitted about its cage in a frenzy, panicked by the encroaching flames. Why do you cling to the same old tricks, he communicated, even as a section of ceiling buckled and collapsed. When they have not worked for a generation or more? He looked at the window and back to the cage, which he suddenly picked up. You seek a window which no longer exists. He blew out the kitchen window and placed the cage on the sill, then twisted the latch and set the bird free. I’m coming for you.

Hurry.

And then he was scrambling, down the hall and toward the stairwell: kicking in doors, drenching the rooms in flame, rushing up the stairs and joining the assault on the third floor, where they stampeded the witches like cattle and roasted them as they ran. But he did not backtrack with the rest of his brothers when the time came to make certain the rooms had been cleared; rather, he pushed forward into the well and continued onto the fourth level ... then the fifth ... and finally, to the sixth.

—which, to his surprise, was almost completely barren of activity. Indeed, if not for the swaying of the roof access door, he would have though it abandoned for some time. But the whispers of the witches on the roof spoke otherwise, and he reminded himself to watch his back as he moved forward down the hall.

Where are you? he projected—for it wasn’t really thinking nor was it speech, but rather something else, something which emanated from a Third Place—a Third Eye and Tongue—which seemed as though it had always been there, always been a part of him, but had simply not found purchase—until the Whisperer, until Satyena. She called to him now, saying, whispering, You will find me. You have the gift, Jeremiah. Yes, the very craft that you seek to scour from the earth is in you, right now. Hold out your hand ...

And, to his surprise, as there were no witches to exterminate and he was alone, he did so, lifting his black, flame-retardant glove and gazing at the palm, which hovered before him still shaking but which looked no different than it ever had, until, again, she almost whispered, What will you do to me once you find me, Jeremiah?

And a flame burst forth from his palm—nothing dramatic, just a little flame almost as if he held a candle. Then it was gone, and his headset crackled. “Three minutes until dust-off. Advise all Doctors to begin advancing toward the roof.”

He began moving down the hallway, taking care to glance into the units as he passed, the doors of which hung open, his heart starting to thump in his chest. One door remained closed—the last one on the left: the room he had viewed upon stepping out of the War Wagon. And yet, even as he watched, it lazed open, beckoning him to come.

There was a thwip-thwip-thwip which he recognized at once as belonging to a Flyer, and then a volley of shots rang out—the Flyer’s guns, opening fire on the roof witches. So, too, was there a clamor in the stairwells, as the remaining Witch Doctors hurried toward the sixth floor. Hurry, Jeremiah. He gripped his musket in both hands and rounded the open door.

And she was there—but not as he had expected. For she lay n***d and hogtied in the center of the room, gagged, and looking as though she had not eaten in days, possibly weeks. His eyes darted about the unit immediately—it was a trap, surely, something designed to play upon his emotions and weaken his resolve, for such was the way of the witches, always. That or s*x, whose memory had faded with each passing year of the Pogrom.

Do you see now why I have called to you? The person you saw in the window, she was a projection of myself. It’s true I reached out to the others—I did not know who, if any, would respond. But you did, Jeremiah. And for this I owe you my life, even though you have taken the lives of many who were dear to me.

Slowly, he trained his weapon upon her. “One minute to evac,” squawked his headset, “Abort all offensive operations. Repeat, abort all offensive operations. The building will be Daisy-cut—repeat, the building will be Daisy-cut.”

What does that mean, Jeremiah?

He began to squeeze the trigger but hesitated. It means the assault has failed to clear all the units, and that they will now flatten the entire structure. Again he began to squeeze the trigger, and again he hesitated. Why have they done this to you? They say—our proctors tell us—that you are a hivemind; that none of you are capable of individual thought. How then does a witch come to be imprisoned by her own?

Her body shifted noticeably, enough so that her forehead bumped against the shallow water dish beside her. A hivemind ... She seemed almost to laugh. No, only on the surface. The witches have plotted and schemed to undercut one another from the beginning. Surely it is the same among the men ...

It is not, he projected. And yet ...

“Thirty seconds until dust-off,” squawked his headset.

Jeremiah ... please.

He eased his finger off the trigger, staring at her. And then he was moving, taking off his respirator and swinging it around behind him, holstering his weapon, hurrying toward her—but pausing before he removed her gag. She didn’t project anything but only looked at him, her large, brown eyes—which were only slightly fogged over with white—passive, resigned. He removed the gag and began untying her bonds, even as she gasped for air and tried to speak.

“Save your strength,” he said, picking up a garment from the nearby couch, draping it over her shoulders. “And step back, quickly.”

She attempted to and promptly fell, but instead of helping her up he moved to the window—the same one through which he had spied her at the beginning of the raid—and levelled his musket at it, blowing it away. “Ten seconds,” came the voice over his headset as he cleared the shards of glass from the sill with the barrel of his g*n, then gestured for her to come.

She did so, still struggling to walk, and leaned against him as he quickly unwound a rappel line from his utility belt and hooked it to the heater. Then he unbuckled his tank and let it drop to the floor before scrambling out the window and saying, “Climb onto my back, Satyena. Hurry.”

And then they were rappelling down the side of the building even as the Flyer lifted off the roof and Jeremiah could only pray that they remained unseen—until they touched down near where the War Wagon had been parked, and, hearing nothing over his headset, he knew them to be safe. If they could clear the area before the Daisy Cutter was dropped.

“We must hurry,” he said to her. “When they drop the Daisy Cutter everything within three blocks will be destroyed. Quickly!”

And they ran. Nor would they have made it if Satyena had not cast a spell of speed and endurance over them both, causing little flames to erupt beneath their feet each time they impacted against the pavement, so that by the time the Cutter dropped and the building shattered and flattened—the shockwave hurling them to the concrete—they were clear.

Then, together, they watched the flames and the smoke, each lost in their own thoughts, each clinging to the other, each reflecting on the friends they had lost. Until at last Satyena turned to Jeremiah, the firelight dancing on the side of her face, and repeated, “How did it ever come to this?”

“I have a friend,” said Jeremiah. “His name is Jasper. He’ll tell you.”

And she just looked at him, wanting to ask if he could be trusted, this Jasper, but knowing somehow that he could be. And knowing, too, that none of their lives, neither her own nor Jeremiah’s nor Jasper’s—if he was to be so bold as to actually harbor her—would ever be the same.