Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

It was nearly eleven o’clockat night—an immensely late hour for those latitudes—but the whole town was still gathered in the Gatlinburg courthouse yard, listening to the disputes of theologians. The Scopes trial had brought them in from all directions. There was a friar wearing a sandwich sign announcing that he was the Bible champion of the world. There was a Seventh Day Adventist arguing that Clarence Darrow was the beast with seven heads and ten horns described in Revelation XIII, and that the end of the world was at hand. A charlatan magician was escorted from the premises for pulling a rabbit from a hat, while nearby a fundamentalist of the Merlin-Baptists pontificated on the epistles of St. Paul while shooting lightning from his eyes and none dared interrupt that sermon. There was the eloquent Dr. T.T. Martin, of Blue Mountain, Mississippi, who had come to town with a truckload of torches (the wooden, not the human kind) and hymn books to put Darwin in his place. There was a singing brother bellowing apocalyptic hymns. There was William Jennings Bryan, followed everywhere by a gaping crowd. It was better than the circus.

—H.L. Mencken,

Editorial in the Baltimore Mercurium

about the Tennessee Magic-Monkey Trial. 1926

New York City, New York

Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant was enjoying the view from the top of the Empire State Building’s super-dirigible dock. A mighty six-hundred-foot hybrid lifter was in the final moments of docking. Cables were coming out of the sky in great unfurling masses and his UBF employees were scurrying about securing the great beast. Two smaller dirigibles had been serviced in the last hour, and each one had been moved along with shocking efficiency.

The wind over the city was potent today, but with two full-time Weathermen dedicated to calming the skies, dirigibles would be able to dock safely on even the gustiest of days. There were two more Cracklers on staff to deal with the static electricity and lightning issues, and even a single underpaid Torch just in case there was a fire. This might not have been the largest United Blimp & Freight station, but it was certainly the crown jewel of innovation.

One of his retainers arrived, moving familiarly past his security man, and passed over the latest daily business summaries. There were two new orders from the British for small patrol craft and two complete air trains for Belgium, and they’d received the third installment payment for the Imperium’s diplomatic flagship vessel. Construction was complete and it was being taken for its test runs at the Michigan facility. If everything shook out to spec it could be shipped to Japan in a matter of days. He looked forward to the last payment, since the Japs always paid in gold bars, and he couldn’t care less if some of it had surely been melted down from Chinamen’s teeth.

A further note indicated that one of the admirals he was paying under the table at the Navy Department had confirmed that the general staff were very frightened of the new Japanese Kaga-class super-dirigibles, and would be ordering their own fleet upgrades in the next fiscal year. Perfect. “It’s a good day to be me,” he said aloud, then chuckled. Every day was a good day when you were the richest man in the world.

“Yes, Mr. Stuyvesant,” his bodyguard agreed. Cornelius couldn’t remember this one’s name, but he was a big Brute, and had come highly recommended.

“I wasn’t talking to you, idiot,” Cornelius snapped. The Brute nodded politely. It was best to keep such men in their proper place. Fighting dogs should always be kept on a leash. He made a few notes on the file and passed it back to his retainer, who then retreated from the balcony with ratlike swiftness.

Cornelius leaned on the balcony and savored his cigar. The dirigible was almost locked down. Who said that it was an economic depression? He was doing just fine.

“Hello, Mr. Stuyvesant.”

The voice had come from behind. Nobody was supposed to be out here except for him and his immediate entourage. Somebody was getting fired for this. He turned around, ready to bellow his fury, and stopped, surprised.

“Harkeness . . .”

The Pale Horse had returned. He was standing there, calm as death, in a pitch-black suit, a craggy shadow of a man. One bony hand was resting on his bodyguard’s shoulder, and the giant Brute collapsed to the deck, grey-faced and gasping for air. Harkeness removed his hand and stepped forward.

“Good evening, sir. I have come for that favor.”

Cornelius took an involuntary step back and crashed violently into the railing. “Don’t come any closer.”

Harkeness smiled with his yellowed teeth. “I’m a businessman, Mr. Stuyvesant. Why would I hurt you now? I’m just here to collect on our deal . . . You weren’t thinking of backing out now, were you?” His accent seemed to accentuate every wrong word. “That’d be rather upsetting.”

The bodyguard turned on his side and vomited blood in a great gushing mass. He convulsed violently, then was still. Cornelius screamed.

“Oh, sorry about that. I get carried away sometimes. You’re going to want to have a Torch clean that up. Perhaps throw down some peroxide as well. Now as I was saying—”

Cornelius thought fast. “He’s still alive! I don’t owe you anything until he’s dead. That was the deal.”

“Come now. We both know General Pershing is as good as dead. I’ve given him three years of terrible suffering, and I stand in awe of the man’s will. Anyone else would have eaten a bullet by now. I know that you know I speak the truth.”

“It hasn’t accomplished what I wanted,” Cornelius shouted. “I wanted results.”

“No. You wanted to fill the hole your son’s death left in your soul. You wanted to fill it with revenge, and you wanted the once-favored heir that had forsaken you to come crawling back to your fold, his pride broken. That did not occur, but that’s not my concern. You came to me for one thing, and one thing only: Death. Painful, lingering, death.” Harkeness stepped forward, crowding Cornelius, until he could smell the tobacco on his breath. “Black Jack Pershing will be dead soon, but I need my favor now.”

Cornelius briefly contemplated throwing himself off the ledge, but he was too scared. His fear seemed to cause his own Power to flare, and he reached inside, gathered all his energy and threw it at Harkeness.

The Pale Horse was hit by the telekinetic wave, and his polished dress shoes slid across the marble and into the puddle of blood. Harkeness looked up in disbelief. “That’s it? That’s all you have?”

Cornelius tried again, but his Power was exhausted.

Harkness stepped forward, glaring down at his shoes in disgust. When he looked up again, his face was flushed, with anger. “You think that Power is something you can mistreat your whole life and never respect, and then when in your time of need it will somehow rise to the occasion?” He covered the distance the feeble push had moved him in two steps and grabbed Cornelius by the lapels. “You have to earn Power, fool!”

Cornelius screamed when he saw the hands curled into claws next to his body. He could almost see the flesh crawling with disease. One narrow finger came up and stroked his lips with a yellow nail. His bladder let go. “Fine! Fine! Name it. Name your price, fiend! Please, just don’t hurt me. I beg you! I’ll give you anything.”

“I do not want anything more than our agreed upon price.” Harkeness released him. “You will make a change to one of your client’s specifications and you will not inform them.” He removed an envelope from his jacket and shoved it between the buttons of Cornelius’s shirt. “You will follow the instructions on these blueprints exactly, down to the most precise measurement. These changes will be made under your direct supervision. It will be done in utmost secrecy.”

Cornelius slid down the balcony, curled his knees up to his chest, and whimpered in a puddle of his own urine.

“You’ve been touched by the Pale Horse. You’ve heard what’s happened to Pershing despite the constant ministrations of Healers. Failure to follow these plans exactly will result in you sharing his fate. I will know if you try to betray me. I am inside your skin now, Mr. Stuyvesant. Good bye.”

When Cornelius finally looked up with tear-filled eyes, a set of bloody footprints were all that remained of the Pale Horse.

Tremonton, Utah

Sullivan sat under the shade of a scraggly tree. The narrow box canyon was covered in the little trees, hardly more than sagebrush, and the grass was tall and yellow. The gentle hills were broken with occasional gashes of ancient stone. It was a beautiful spot in its own rugged way. He could see why the old Grimnoir had chosen this as his hiding spot.

The Box Elder County Sheriff’s Deputies were still combing through the wreckage of the cabin, but Sullivan pieced together what had happened after a few minutes of wandering around.

Two cars full of men had come up the dirt road. Sven Christiansen was no fool. He’d abandoned the structure, which was the obvious target, and headed up one of the hills. Despite Garrett saying that the old Dane was in his late sixties, he’d managed to lug a Browning 1919 and its tripod up there, and when the men in the cars had proven to be who he’d expected, he’d hosed them down.

Christiansen had picked his targets and fired short controlled bursts, just like Sullivan had been taught as a machine gunner in the First. There were six bodies between the cars and the front of the cabin, all in various states of destruction. A large blood trail through the soft dust showed Sullivan where another man had been plugged bad, but had somehow kept moving.

One car was abandoned, hole through the radiator, puddle underneath. Tracks showed where the other had turned around and left.

The walk had left Sullivan winded and his wounds aching, but he’d found the ambush spot. There were over a hundred shell casings, and since the Browning ejected straight down, they tended to collect in a pile. Deep pockmarks in the rock showed where the goons had returned fire.

It was the other set of tracks that appeared suddenly behind Christiansen’s position that showed what happened next. The cloven hooves were massive, but the spacing told Sullivan that they came from a bipedal creature. He put his own considerable weight down in the dirt, and saw that in comparison the creature had been far heavier. Then the signs became confusing as the Summoned had descended on Christiansen. There was a claw mark scored into the rock where it had swung and missed. The three talons covered almost twice the space as Sullivan’s big hand. The dried blood splatter told how it had ended.

So now Sullivan sat under a tree, pondering what it all meant, while Heinrich and Garrett were having their turn being questioned. They had arrived twenty minutes after the law. Someone had seen the smoke rising from the valley and called it in. As strangers in the tiny community they were automatic suspects. A few radio calls and a bit of investigation had confirmed that they’d arrived in Ogden too late to be the killers, but that didn’t make them any less suspicious.

Garrett was doing the talking, which was for the best, since with a little gentle magic, Garrett could probably talk his way out of near anything. Sullivan figured that Dan would have been smooth even if he didn’t have magic. The man sure didn’t look like much, but he’d probably make one hell of a door to door salesman. Sullivan had taken a liking to him, despite having to constantly check his head to make sure that it wasn’t the Mouth’s magic talking. Heinrich was polite, but it was obvious that he personally didn’t like Sullivan much. Jake was fine with that. He didn’t really have any friends, and wasn’t looking to start collecting them, either.

The two Grimnoir joined him under the tree a bit later. “Sheriff says we’re free to go,” Garrett said. “I guess that ol’ Sven had a reputation in the local Danish community of having a lot of secrets in his past. They didn’t seem too surprised to see him end up like this. What do you think happened?”

“One big-ass demon got him,” Sullivan said. “Probably eight hundred pounds. Which means we’re dealing with a Summoner like I ain’t seen since the war.”

“You can read sign?” Heinrich asked, surprised. “You struck me a city boy.”

“I come from a place not much different than here. If we didn’t kill it our own self, then we didn’t get to eat. I moved to the city because that’s where the work was.”

Garrett squatted down next to him and pulled out a smoke. “Anything else?”

“Another one of them got shot real bad, lost most of his blood, but his tracks say that he walked around under his own power for a long time. Looks like a big old boy. Probably three hundred pounds and I bet he has to get his boots made special, like me. Plus he was shooting this.” Sullivan reached into his pocket and pulled out the moon-clip. It consisted of six, fired, brass cases snapped into a sheet-metal circle. He tossed it toward Heinrich, who caught it easily and held it up to read the head stamp.

“.50 RL? These are huge. This come out of a cannon?”

“Russian Long,” Sullivan said. “Cossack cavalry had a limited run of them made for their war against the Japanese. Smith & Wesson filled the contract. Cossacks wanted something portable and short, but could still punch a Jap helmet at three hundred yards. The shells were clipped together so they could load easier from the back of a moving bear. Damn thing even has a shotgun barrel for when they were up close in the trees. Most powerful handgun in the world, made specifically for Brutes, because it was loaded so hot it could sprain the wrist of a normal man.”

“Don’t see those around very often,” Garrett said.

“So this big boy with the big gun got hit a bunch of times, but kept moving. At first I thought he’d been killed from all the blood, then brought back as a damn filthy zombie.”

Heinrich scowled. “You’ve got a real problem with zombies, don’t you?”

“I only want to have to kill somebody once. Killing them twice seems like work. But the tracks aren’t from a zombie. They shuffle, stumble, like their balance is all gone, and they don’t take cover like this one did. So he got opened up, dumped most of his blood, and didn’t worry about it. Either of you know what Power that could be?”

“There are other things besides natural Powers . . .” Heinrich suggested. “We’ve not had a chance to tell you about those yet. The Imperium has special soldiers. The Chairman picks them himself.”

“They’re called the Iron Guard,” Garrett added. “They’re all strong Actives to start with, but then he changes them.”

“What do you mean changes?”

“There are two kinds of magic, Sullivan.” Garrett explained. “Natural occurring Powers. One Power, one person. Everybody knows how that works.”

He didn’t correct him, though he personally knew Garrett was wrong. Sullivan figured he was good for at least a one and a half himself.

“Then there are spells, where with different tricks you can capture some of the Power and use it.”

“The Power can be chained to certain signs and words,” Heinrich said. “All Grimnoir learn a few, but we don’t delve too deep. It’s too dangerous. You screw up a chaining the Power to a word and bad things happen. Some of us are more talented than others.”

“We stick with the easy ones, and we practice the hell out of them before we’re allowed to do them on our own,” Garrett said. “The Imperium, though, they push the limits. They mark their servants, even ones that have no magic of their own. They’ll mark multiple words permanently on their Guards. It makes them into something else, something not human.”

The swordsman. He’d been different. Not only was his Power something Sullivan had never seen before, it had been too strong. As they’d grappled, he’d felt the unnatural heat coming from under his shirt, like there had been something on fire against his skin. “Rokusaburo?”

“Normally we don’t try to take an Iron Guard unless we’ve got at least five-to-one odds, preferably more. We got lucky . . .” Daniel grunted as he stood up. “Come on, boys, we’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

Mar Pacifica, California

The Imperium goon was tied to a chair in the center of the empty storage room. As nicely equipped as the family estate was, it had not come with a proper dungeon, so they had to make do. A single naked light bulb hung directly over their prisoner’s head. Francis and Delilah were standing back in the shadows, watching. Lance was the most experienced at . . . well, everything, and was going to do the actual questioning.

Francis found himself praying that the man would roll over and talk quickly, because he didn’t have the stomach for violence. Sure, he’d killed his fair share of evil men. He’d even shot one of this particular fellow’s associates in the face with a P17 Enfield, but pulling the trigger or using his Power to bash someone’s head in during a battle was different than hurting someone who was completely at your mercy.

Remember the Imperium schools, Francis . . . He curled his hands into fists and steadied himself for whatever would come next. He and his family and other important delegates had been given a guided tour of one of the premier facilities in Tokyo. As many bored young men tended to do, Francis had wandered off the approved path and gotten lost. He’d seen the parts of the school that weren’t shown to the outside world, and it had changed him for the rest of his life. Never forget what they did to the children. Anyone who supported the schools deserved whatever they got.

Lance limped up to the chair and pulled the burlap sack from their guest’s head. He glared at his captors with angry eyes, and surely would have started shouting if it wasn’t for the fact Delilah had taped his mouth shut. The spell of weakness was drawn on his forehead with ash from the old place, which seemed somehow appropriate.

“I’m sure you know who we are,” Lance said with his rough drawl. He produced a hunting knife from behind his back and quickly shoved it through the man’s shirt. He twitched and jerked away in sudden fear. The blade was so razor sharp that it sheared through the cloth like it was nothing, and Lance laid the man’s chest bare. A series of red scratches had been cut into the prisoner’s chest. Francis couldn’t read the Japanese version of spells, but he’d seen this one before, and knew that it granted increased vitality. It made the Imperium thugs harder to put down unless you got them right in the heart or the brain.

“And I sure as hell know who you work for . . .” Lance made a show of studying the marks. “I’m gonna ask you some questions. You’re gonna answer or you’re gonna regret it.”

Lance roughly pulled the pressure tape from the prisoner’s mouth. He screamed as the tape removed most of his moustache. “Grimmy bastards!”

“So you do know who I am. What’s your name?”

“Albert,” he spat. “Albert Rizzo.”

“Where you from, Albert Rizzo?”

“Montauk, New York.”

It never ceased to amaze Francis that Americans would join the Imperium cause, but from what he understood from the international society, it was the same in every nation. The Imperium recruited mostly from the poor classes. They usually picked normals, gave them a taste of having their own magic, and put them to work. The smartest and most brutal were able to rise in the ranks, and the rest turned into cannon fodder in their never-ending war against the Grimnoir.

“Who do you answer to, Al?”

“I answer to the Chairman!”

Lance sighed and stabbed the knife into Albert’s arm. the man screamed. “You know what I mean.” The knife came out, the last inch dripping blood. “Unfortunately for you, your recruiter marked you with the kanji for health, which means that I can cut on you for twice as long as a regular man ’fore you croak. Plus I know all the places that hurt, but don’t have any arterial bleeding. See where I’m going with this?”

Albert growled at him. “Madi. He said his name was Mr. Madi.”

Francis twitched. He’d heard that name before. The man was a legend, even by Iron Guard standards.

“Big fella. Got one bad eye?” Lance asked.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Wait!”

Francis jerked toward the female cry. Faye? What’s she doing in here? She must have followed them down, but he hadn’t heard her. She can teleport, idiot. The girl walked into the circle of light and right up to the chair. Lance raised his hand that wasn’t holding a giant knife.

“You don’t want to see this, kid,” he said gently. “This ain’t for you.”

“Where’s the one-eyed man!” Faye shouted.

“Go to hell.”

Lance turned around and stabbed him in the thigh. Albert squealed. “See? Look what you made me do. My daddy fought Apaches, and he taught me every damn thing he learned from them when I was little. So don’t make me take a trip down memory lane, and answer the damned question.”

“I don’t know,” Albert said. “We work in little groups. They call us cells. They send telegrams when they need us for jobs. We don’t know how to reach nobody else. Especially the bosses. I swear. That crazy brunette done killed everybody else in my cell.”

Lance wiped his knife on Albert’s shirt before returning it to the sheath on his belt. “See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it? I didn’t even have to skin you or nothing.”

Albert started to cry. “You don’t get it, Grimmy. It don’t matter what you do to me. My brothers are gonna win in the end. The Chairman’s way is the only way. We need his leadership. Freedom is a lie. People are starving. There ain’t no jobs. The rich keep getting richer while we’re dying. The Chairman can fix everything. He’s just like Jesus!”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Damn useful idiots.”

“No! He’s not just magic. He works miracles. He’s the real second coming. He’s the new messiah, only this time he’s making the weak into the strong. His plan is to make man better, the perfection of humanity. People like you say that he’s taking away freedom, but he’s really just protecting us from our own bad choices. The Chairman will save us all. When he’s done, everyone will have Power. This isn’t just a movement, this is true religion. I see that look on your face, you think we’re crazy. Oh, you think you can stop us, but you’re wrong. I’ve seen Madi kill your stupid kind like it was nothing. You think you’re so powerful? You ain’t got nothing!”

Faye began to shake, but Francis didn’t think that it was because of what Lance had done. “Were you with the one-eyed man in El Nido?”

“Is that where that old Mexican lived with his stupid brat and his stupid cows? Yeah. His magic was supposed to be so rare and special and shit, but it was nothing compared to—” Albert’s eyes widened and he looked down in shock at the knife planted squarely in the center of his chest.

Francis jerked in surprise. Faye had Traveled directly behind Lance. She slowly took her hand away from the quivering knife. “He was Portuguese. And cows aren’t stupid!” she shouted. Albert tried to say something, but then his read rolled forward, limp. When Francis blinked again, Faye was gone.

“Aw hell . . .” Lance said, reaching around and realizing that Faye had relieved him of his hunting knife. “That ain’t good. A single kanji won’t save you from getting knifed in the heart.”

“Faye!” Francis shouted, realizing what had just happened. He ran for the stairs.

Delilah stepped into the light, grabbed the Imperium man by the hair and lifted his head. He was obviously dead. “You know, I like her. She’s a firecracker.”

Faye’s boots landed in the soft grass of the front lawn. Taking a few steps, she folded her arms around her chest and sunk down to her knees, sobbing.

That’s another promise broken. I said no more crying.

She was supposed to be tough now. She’d just killed one of the men who’d killed Grandpa. He deserved it. He deserved to die just as much as the one she’d gotten with the pitchfork. She’d taken Lance’s knife and she’d driven it right between his ribs and into his heart and killed him dead as meat. It served him right.

Then why am I so sad?

Her whole life had been hard. It never let up. She tried not to think about her first family. She had been routinely beaten for her weird grey eyes, just for being different, and her father had beaten her mother occasionally for spawning a demon. They’d kept her around though, because somebody that could steal food so good was okay, even if she’d been sired by the devil.

And even then she’d been happy. If everything was miserable, then as a little girl she’d decided that she’d be happy, just to spite them. Once she’d made that decision, nothing else mattered. She made up her own world in her head, one that wasn’t filled with hunger and terror, and she lived there instead. And then one day she found out that there was a place in the real world that was every bit as good as the fake one . . . and then she wasn’t alone anymore.

The one-eyed man had taken that away from her. That’s why she was crying, she decided. It wasn’t about the fact she’d just put a knife into a man’s chest, it was because he wasn’t the right man.

“Faye!”

She turned to see Francis running from the house. Oh no. She didn’t want him to see her like this. She sent her thoughts ahead. “Are you—?”

She landed on her knees at the top of a rock cliff, looking down into the crashing waves far below.

Grandpa had told her about crossing an ocean like this crammed into a tiny room on a steamship. He told her all sorts of stories about working hard, fishing, cutting up whales, about his first few cows, but he’d never bothered to teach her about any of this Grimnoir stuff. “Oh, Grandpa. You were probably scared to tell me. You knew about people like the one-eyed man, but I could have handled it. I’ll sure handle it now. You taught me a lot, and one of those things was to always finish any chore I start,” she told the ocean. “I promise.”

A seagull landed on the rocks next to her.

“Who you talking to?” Lance asked. His deep voice seemed strange coming from the goofy white bird.

“None of your business,” she snapped.

“Sounded like you were talking to the dead.” The seagull waddled up to the edge and looked over. “You gonna jump?”

Faye snorted. “That’s stupid . . .”

“Damn right it is . . . You know, nobody blames you for doing that, though next time ask me before you swipe my knife. I’m particular like that.”

She wiped her eyes. “Sorry.”

“If we had to apologize to everybody every time we screwed up around here, we sure wouldn’t get much done . . . How old are you anyway?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “My first family said I didn’t deserve no birthdays, because I was the devil’s child.”

Squawk! “What? That’s a bunch of bunk!”

“I figure I’m maybe sixteen or seventeen, give or take.”

The gull clucked. “Damn, that makes me feel old . . . Well, for what you’ve been through, you’re doing just fine for your age. You ain’t the first person ’round this place that’s got a need for revenge.”

“Do you need any revenge?”

“Well . . .” he seemed hesitant. “The Chairman destroyed everyone I loved and took my whole life away and part of my leg. What do you think?”

“I think I liked you better as a squirrel.”

Lance flapped his wings indignantly. “That’s not what I meant. You’re a strange kid, but I do agree. I’ve got a belly full of garbage and I smell like shit. You want to come back to the house? Francis is running around like a chicken with his head cut off looking for you. I think he’s worried.”

“Oh . . . he seems really nice.”

“He’s a good enough kid, but he’s had a sheltered life compared to people like us, so don’t hold that against him . . . He means well.”

“He’s nice looking.”

“Oh my hell.” Lance shook his narrow beak back and forth. “That boy’s been around the block . . . more than a few blocks I might add, and he’s at least four years older than you. Plus, I don’t want to have to snap his little twig neck for dishonoring you, okay? Let’s keep our minds on business for right now. Remember, evil empire trying to get a superweapon?”

“I want to help stop them, and I’m gonna kill the one-eyed man myself. I swear it.”

Lance was quiet for a long time, his head automatically cocking from side to side as he stared out to sea. “He’s in the big leagues, kid. You might as well say you’re gonna kill the Chairman while you’re at it.”

“He’s the one-eyed man’s boss? Fine. I swear I’ll kill him too then.”

Lance sighed.

“You’re really good at the other magic, aren’t you?” Faye asked. “You’ve got your animal Power, but you can write spells too. If you taught me what you know, then I could be more help.”

“It ain’t easy,” he said. “And it’s more than spells. Being Grimnoir means that you hold the line. It’s learning how to fight, how to tail somebody and be a good spy, how to shoot, all the tricks of the trade. It takes a lot of practice and hard work.”

“Well, if this Chairman is as tough as everybody says he is, we better get started if I’m gonna kill him anytime soon.”

The seagull laughed. “Delilah’s right. You are a firecracker. All right, I’ll teach you how to be a Grimnoir knight, but on one condition: no more murdering unless I say so, or you got a real good reason!”