The Bloody Deluge
Date: 2014-07-01 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic; Fiction
Description: A year ago, civilisation died, drowning and choking on its own blood in the brutal scourge of the Cull. Eking out a living on the newly primitive land, British-born biochemist Katy Lewkowitz finds a new life as a doctor among the small communities springing up in Eastern Germany... until a terrible new cult, calling itself the 'New Teutonic Order,' begins purging all 'undesirables.' Katy and her friend and old tutor Dr. Emil Weber, fleeing the depredations of the fanatical Order, escape into Poland, eventually taking refuge among the strangely anachronistic survivors at the monastery of Jasna
Publisher: Abaddon Books
Rights: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

THE AFTERBLIGHT CHRONICLES

THE BLOODY

DELUGE

ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY

ABADDONBOOKS.COM

An Abaddon Books™ Publication
www.abaddonbooks.com
abaddon@rebellion.co.uk

First published 2014 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

Editor-in Chief: Jonathan Oliver

Commissioning Editor: David Moore

Cover Art: Sam Gretton

Design: Simon Parr & Sam Gretton

Marketing and PR: Lydia Gittins

Publishing Manager: Ben Smith

Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

The Afterblight Chronicles™ created by Simon Spurrier & Andy Boot

Copyright © 2014 Rebellion.

All rights reserved.

The Afterblight Chronicles™, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84997-764-7

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

The Afterblight Chronicles Series

The Culled
by Simon Spurrier

Kill Or Cure
by Rebecca Levene

Dawn Over Doomsday
by Jasper Bark

Death Got No Mercy
by Al Ewing

Blood Ocean
by Weston Ochse

The Afterblight Chronicles: America

An Omnibus of Post-Apocalyptic Novels

Arrowhead

Broken Arrow

Arrowland
by Paul Kane

School’s Out

Operation Motherland

Children’s Crusade
by Scott K. Andrews

With thanks to Jarek Rybski, Michael Czajkowski, Shane McLean and Irene Bock for their assistance in researching the world before the Cull.

PART ONE

BETWEEN THE EAGLES

CHAPTER ONE

AMIDST THE BONES

THE VAN HAD taken them as far as Wrocław before running out of gas. Katy had been driving two whole days and half a night by that time, running on fumes herself. She had barely been able to see the road by then, dusk and her own leaden eyelids making the obstacle course of abandoned cars into a deathtrap.

“That’s it.” Her voice came out as a dead croak. “Emil, that’s all I’ve got in me. We’ll hunt some fuel tomorrow, when I can see straight.” There was a tight fist of a headache dug in between her eyes, like she always got if she drove too much, or stared at a computer screen...

Oh, yes, staring at computers. When did we last do that?

“Miss Lewkowitz, they’re still out there,” came that cautious, measured voice from the back.

“Listen, Emil.” She had her eyes closed. They were on the outskirts of the largest city in Western Poland, and surely there were still people here, but the night was silent. No shouting, no screaming, no gunshots, no vehicles on the move. They might have been in some other world entirely from all those things. Makes a change from where we came here from.

“There might be... looters, cannibals—or more fanatics. Please,” pressed the soft voice of Dr Emil Weber. He had two modes, she knew of old: very, very polite, and his sudden rises to impassioned rhetoric. And his cringing embarrassment after the latter, she supposed, made three. But he had been polite all the way since they fled the executions at Forst.

“There’s going to be a road accident right here if I don’t sleep. Car crash, right? Ah, Autounfall?”

“Miss Lewkowitz, my English is perfectly—”

“And the car’s out of diesel. Argue with me all you like, but—”

He hissed through his teeth. “Then you may by all means sleep for precisely such time as it takes for me to siphon some fuel out of any of these vehicles that still have any.”

“They won’t. Why d’you think they’re abandoned?”

“You don’t know that. Arguing from a position unsupported by evidence—”

“Oy, Emil, not now. Save it for the show trials.” She settled back in the driver’s seat as best she could, reflecting that his patient, almost accentless tones became incredibly annoying after prolonged exposure. It was something she had never noticed when he was her tutor.

SHE DIDN’T IMAGINE anyone would be studying to be a biochemist any time soon. She might as well have gone to the Brandenburg Technical University to be a wizard or a Disney princess: the ambitions were just as realistic, had she only known.

Her German had been rusty when she came over from the UK, and learning the language and the science at the same time had almost broken her. But she had trained and studied, under Emil Weber, and thanks to his meticulous assistance she had passed, and secured a starter position with a GMO lab in Kolkwitz nearby. Her golden future as a bona fide scientist was right there waiting for her.

And then the Culling Year had come and everyone had died. Everyone at the lab but her. She had stumbled out into a country that had degraded shockingly fast into somewhere she could not even recognise. She had only survived because she was often the closest thing to a doctor that anyone could find. Practical medicine was another thing she had to learn fast. Those first few years had made all of her study at Potsdam look absurdly leisured and simple. Every day had taught her something; every day had confronted her anew with the fate awaiting those who failed to learn.

She had thought that she had found a new life for herself, by then. Not a good life, most certainly not the life she wanted, but unless someone had a magic wand, then she was never going to get that. She had set up shop as quack and sawbones in a walled community and fended off the advances of the local young bucks.

And then the first word had come from Emil. He, too, had survived. More, he was working. He had gathered up students, colleagues, everyone he could find with a pulse and an education. Faced with the oblivion of everything he had ever known, the deaths of almost everyone he knew, Dr Emil Weber had got to work. She had pictured him, a short, stocky man, grey peppering his dark hair and stubbling his cheeks, pushing his glasses back up his nose and reducing death from the apocalypse to just another problem for science to solve. And every little death had its own nemesis. The letters she got from him said he was working on the biochemistry of the Cull virus. He was after a cure.

And of course he had asked her to join his little community, and of course she had meant to, but there had been people close at hand who had needed her—or who would have tried to stop her leaving. She had never quite broken away.

And if she had, they would both be dead by now. Procrastination had saved her, and she had saved him.

SHE WAS STARTLED awake by him banging on the side of the van.

“Miss Lewkowitz! Miss Lewkowitz!”

He would never just call her Katy.

“Seriously?” She took a deep breath in which the last few exchanges between them replayed in her mind. “You’ve filled the tank? Already?”

“No!” And still maddeningly polite, but there was an edge to it now, a man strained towards breaking point. “They have found us.”

“How do you know?” Because she thought he was just overreacting to something. He was a man of infinite calm, in his laboratory kingdom. Take him out of that, and he jumped at every shadow.

But then she heard them: the growl of the bikes.

Emil jumped into the passenger seat. “Drive us!”

“Doc, still no diesel!” she snapped. “We’re going to have to make it on foot.”

“No, that is not acceptable.”

“Just follow me.” She kicked the door open and was out, scanning the dark road, the strewn debris of dead vehicles. How did they find us? But then the enemy had been on their trail since Forst, never far behind, never catching up. That had lulled them into a false sense of security. And taking the biggest, straightest road east might not have been the best move. So what now? Can we hide? Surely the ruins of Wrocław offered a thousand boltholes. How many were unclaimed, though?

Still: “Into the city,” she told him. although she had to drag him by the cuff. He was still wearing one of those pinstripe shirts he had never been without, though it had gone through at the elbows, and hadn’t seen an iron in a year. They had taken his lab coat off him when they caught him, though. White was their colour, and they were jealous of it.

Emil and she should have made it, she would decide in retrospect. They should have melted away into the ruins. All those houses with vacant-eyesocket windows, all those hollow shells cast up by the tide of the Cull, moulded around the vacant impressions of their lost owners. She and Emil should have been able to hide there forever.

The dogs betrayed them, in the end. She had not thought about dogs, but of course the Cull was like some message from a green messiah. The innocence of the natural world was not the target of its sermons, only sinful mankind. There had been a lot of dogs in Wrocław. Most of them had not long survived their owners, probably, but the biggest and the strongest had growled and clawed and snapped their way to some sort of supremacy. They ruled the streets there, and in the utter absence of human moral guidance they had made their own society.

From the look of the pack that loped into view, they had recruited some wolves along the way. They were big, scarred beasts, and there was no recognition in their eyes that they had once bowed their heads to masters. Only the moon gleamed back from their fixed gaze. No collars, no chains, that stare seemed to say.

“Just keep still,” Katy hissed, but Emil was already shuffling backwards. Dogs were just one of a long list of things he was not fond of.

“They’re just—” she started, and then the growling started: a low, deep sound that seemed to reach her through the ground more than through her ears. It spoke to something primal in her, something that had hidden up trees and trembled when the pack gathered to greet the moonrise.

She dragged the pistol from her pocket. There was a look in the dogs’ eyes—or it was her imagination—that said they knew what it was, and what it could do. The growling grew steadily louder, and then they were barking furiously, first one, then all of them. Compared with the silence that had reigned moments before, the sound was deafening.

Emil ran, and she was backing away right after him. The dogs advanced a few steps, and kept up their savage racket. Go away! Go away! This is our place now!

And that was how the enemy found them. She almost ran straight into Emil at the far end of the street. Three bright orbs confronted him: headlamps. The growling yammer of the dogs gave way to the thunderous rumble of the bikes.

The moon caught them: they wore old leathers, painted up white so that they shone like broken angels, the colour flaking away at the joints and creases as though the darkness within was leaking out. Only one had a helmet, in the same livery, painted with a dark cross. The others had shaved heads, pale faces, the whitest of the white, with that black bar across their eyes, that stripe from forehead to chin. Black cross on a pale field; the ghosts of history.

She was behind Emil. The thought came to her that they had not seen she was armed.

One of them reached up high, arm thrust into the air. He had an air-horn there, the sort of noisemaker she remembered from the football games her dad had dragged her to. Even as she recognised it, he let out a long, piercing hoot that echoed out across the broken rooftops.

It was answered almost immediately, and from not far away.

“You’re going to have to run now, Doc,” she murmured.

“Not without you.” He had actually squared himself, as though ready to put up what miniscule amount of fight he had in him.

“Oh, I’ll be right behind you, only I’m going to put some bullets their way first.”

“That will only antagonise them.”

“Doc, they were going to hang you. I don’t figure pissing them off is going to make things worse.”

“A good point.”

The man in the centre was lazily guiding his bike forwards. He had a hockey stick over his shoulder, its inside edge studded with sharpened coins. They would have guns as well, but she had seen the way they worked. Given a victim who could not fight back, the soldiers of the Order preferred the personal touch.

“Good girl,” he murmured, grinning. Jarringly, his accent hailed from London, still flying the tattered flags of Chelsea and Fulham, but then the Order was happy to take in anyone who was male, white and bigoted as hell. “You come quietly, good girl. Step away from your friend there, nothing bad’s going to happen to you.”

One of the others made a suggestion in German about precisely what might happen to her. Probably he didn’t consider it ‘bad.’ Perhaps he thought it would be an honour.

The Englishman’s eyes glinted as he inched his bike closer. “That’s it,” he said softly, but the same desires were plain on his face. Neither she nor Emil were getting out of this, if they were caught.

So: “Run,” she said, and then gave Emil a shove when he didn’t move. He stumbled to one side, but then he was dashing off almost at random, leaping and clambering over a bank of blackened rubble where one house had come down, where the bikes couldn’t follow.

English Bigot gunned his bike forwards, and perhaps he didn’t see as she brought the pistol up. His two friends did, certainly. Would-be Rapist dived off his machine, letting it clang heavily to the ground as he scuttled for cover. The man in the helmet went straight for her, practically demanding to become her primary target.

There was a moment when her finger was on the trigger and she could not make herself pull it. Then she must have done, because the weapon bucked in her hand, the recoil jarring her wrist, and Helmet was lying flat back across his saddle, hands ripped off the handlebars by the impact. His bike slewed sideways, spilling him off and almost scything her legs from under her. She jumped aside, and was already pelting after Emil.

She got to the rubble just after English Bigot, and he turned on her, lashing out with that doctored hockey stick. As she reeled back out of reach, he dragged his own gun out of his waistband. She froze. For a long second she had no idea what to do, and if he had been able, he could have shot her there and then. He was fumbling with the safety catch, spiked motorcycle gloves making a fist of it, and she forced herself to raise her gun again, even as she scrambled up the scree of bricks and broken tiles.

He brought his pistol up, saw that she was ahead of him, and threw himself down the slope. The weapon thundered in her hand again, the shot going who knew where. Then she was off after Emil.

She hoped after Emil. He had shown a surprising turn of speed. She could only hope that if she lost his trail, so would the Order.

The sound of bike engines was loud across the barren skyline of Wrocław.

She darted through the ruined house, boots crunching and skidding on stray detritus, and then she was out in what had been a garden once, now a bristling nursery for weeds. These had been good houses with big gardens. For a moment she entertained the thought of simply hiding in the new-minted undergrowth, stalking the Order soldiers like a Viet Cong veteran.

Except she had one bullet left. One.

She hit the fence at the back of the yard, already rotten with too many untreated winters. Here was Emil’s trail; he had frantically kicked through it to get out. It couldn’t be more obvious if he had left an Emil-shaped hole in the wormy wood like Wile E. Coyote. She followed after, waving the gun behind her in case it might give the hunters even a second’s more pause.

There was another garden beyond, in the moon-shadow of a house that had weathered the fall rather better. The back door was open: Emil again. The building would provide no shelter, given even a cursory search. She only hoped he had kept on running.

He had got as far as the street out front, she discovered, and had stopped there. Two more Order bikers had turned up. They had him pinned between them, circling slowly, revving their engines. One was swinging a chain lazily, the other had what looked like a shotgun levelled crookedly over his handlebars.

She burst from the house’s front door like an avenging angel, gun thrust out towards them. One bullet. Two men. No chance they’ll line up, is there?

Emil flinched and dropped, covering his head with his hands. She caught the startled looks of the Order men, seeing her. Mr Shotgun swore and almost lost the weapon under the front wheel of his bike.

Her gun went off at point blank range. She was still running, her aim veering madly between them. She had not even decided to fire; her finger had twitched as she ran and taken the decision from her. The bullet struck sparks from Chains’ bike, making him yell in shock. Mr Shotgun was juggling his weapon, bringing it up, and she was looking right into the barrels. He had gone for heavy spiked gloves too, and she was close enough to see him trying to jam his finger through the trigger loop.

She was close enough to grab the weapon’s end and whip it upwards into his face; the report as it went off sounded like the end of the world. Mr Shotgun screamed and fell backwards off his bike, clutching at his face. Katy was hardly better off, half-deaf and with one hand bruised and seared from the gun’s discharge.

Someone yanked at her. She swatted wildly with her pistol before she saw it was Emil. There was shouting from behind them: English Bigot and company catching up.

Adrenaline had her springing away fast enough to win sprint medals, still waving the useless pistol. She heard a bike behind her roar, and realized she had forgotten Chains. Her own shadow fell away into the night ahead of her as she was caught in the headlamp.

Look left, look right: no convenient side alley, but that house ahead had a good stretch of garden in front. Another second’s safety from the bikes. Every moment was becoming increasingly precious.

“Emil!” she gasped. “Left!”

He was already running out of strength, she saw, stumbling and lurching. He had never exactly been a jock, and the privations of the Culling Year had not strengthened him. He cut left, trying to vault over the garden fence, and tripped, falling flat on his face. He crammed his glasses back on.

The bike had caught Katy up. She felt the roar of it up her spine, heard a whistling whip that must be the chain in motion. Something flickered past her face and she flinched back, turning just as the bike spun past her on its side and smashed the wooden fence panels to splinters.

Chains was on his back in the road. The transition was as sudden and inexplicable as if he had suffered a freak heart attack, until she saw the slender shaft that stood proud of his chest. He was still alive, apparently, twitching and gasping, but he was not about to threaten anyone any time soon.

The horse’s shoes on the grass-cracked tarmac of the road were very loud. The beast was sleek and lean and beautiful; if it had come with a horn Katy would not have been more surprised. The woman riding it wore a grab-bag of denims and leathers, with a scarf over her hair. Her face was closed and dark, maybe five years older than Katy’s own late twenties. There was a quiver hanging from her saddle, and she had a short, recurved bow in her hands, and was guiding her steed with nothing but her knees.

English Bigot and Would-be Rapist spilled out of the ruined house down the street, finding Mr Shotgun first, who was in no position to advise them. She saw Helmet there as well, making heavy going of it, but obviously not badly hurt.

“Listen,” Katy said in German, low and urgent. “This man, he needs to get out of here.”

The horsewoman regarded her impassively.

“He’s important. He’s a scientist. These men—they’re—” She had been going to say religious, but then maybe this woman was just the same. It seemed to be a disease sweeping the world, from what Katy had seen, with people taking refuge from the global tragedy in the most hate-filled sects and dogmas. “He is trying to help people, to protect them from the plague,” she went on. “Please, these men, they’ll kill him, for no more reason than that. Is there somewhere you can take him?”

“Katy, what about you?” Emil asked plaintively.

“I’ll take my chances. Doc, I’ll do better without you slowing me down.”

He complained about that, but the rider had come to her decision. She spoke to Emil, something Katy could not follow, but then she was reaching for him, dragging at him. Katy had to help coerce his protesting form onto the saddle, but then he was there, somehow, magically, and the woman was bending down to speak.

“Bless you,” she said in awkward German. “These men we know. We fought them. Fight them. I will come back for you. Have faith.”

Katy did not know what to make of it, but then she heard a shout from English Bigot. Their time was up: they had been spotted.

The horsewoman turned her mount and it coursed off, not at a gallop that would shake Emil from his tenuous seat, but faster than anyone on foot could have kept up with.

That just left Katy to figure out where she could run now.

CHAPTER TWO

HISTORY’S REPEATERS

WITH HOOFBEATS RINGING in her head, she jumped on Chains’ groaning body, scrabbling at his leathers, because he had to have a gun, surely he had a gun, surely she couldn’t have here the only Order soldier who had some kind of fucking oath not to have a firearm on him when she needed one...

If he’d had one, it had come loose, skittered off into the thousand shadows of Wrocław. He had a big serrated knife, and he had his stupid chain, a weapon that was probably the quickest way for Katy to strangle herself if she tried to use it.

She took the knife. Why the hell not?

English Bigot had shoved Mr Shotgun off his bike, and was now approaching with caution. Behind him followed his two mates, Helmet still limping, one gloved hand pressed to his shoulder.

Katy was backing off: not a conscious decision, but her feet had made it for her. Three steps, four. The moonlight gleamed on English Bigot’s grin and he revved the bike engine ferociously.

“Run, girl! Why don’t you run!” he shouted at her, and some madly calm part of her mind thought that he was a fantastically unimaginative man. Of course he wanted her to run. He wanted to ride her down like a knight of old. All very well as long as she ran down the road.

She bolted through the jagged hole in the fence that Chains’ bike had made, dashing across the overgrown tangle of the garden. From behind there was a chorus of shouts as the Order realized she was not interested in playing fair, and then the big-cat growl of the bike as English Bigot gunned it forwards.

She made to go round the side of the house, but abruptly there was a cast iron gate in the way, one that the night had hidden from her. Shoving knife and empty pistol in her belt, she leapt at it frantically, failed to gain purchase and ended up sitting at its base. Spitting fear and frustration, she started scaling it more carefully, soles slipping on the elaborate curved flourishes.

She heard English Bigot come into the garden when she was halfway up, and that gave her the motivation to double her speed. He yelled something at her—it might have been “I’ll shoot, you mad bitch!”—and then she was folding over the top of the gate, for a moment snagged on it, wrestling to get free.

She heard the bang, and the gate shuddered, sparks flying as the bullet ricocheted back from it. Then she was over, falling heavily to the ground beyond, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Breathless, she lurched to her feet, stumbling away. English Bigot took another shot and the gate fielded it for her again and sprang open.

She ran, pelting into a back garden. Was there a gate out? There was. Was it locked? She fought with it, got it open with a furious wrench of the rusted latch. Then English Bigot was on her. He got a hand on her shoulder just as she was about to go through, dragging her back. She whipped her pistol out, meaning to threaten him with it, and smashed him across the nose by happy accident.

He stumbled back, sneezing out a jet of blood that was black in the moonlight. When he looked up, it was into the barrel of her weapon.

“Give me your gun,” she told him. Because your gun probably has bullets in it, and then I won’t need to keep pretending that mine does.

His teeth were bared like an animal’s. “Luv, you are in so much trouble right now.”

She wanted to say something very suave like, I’m not the one with a gun up his nose, but all she could do was just stammer, “Give me the gun!”

He was buying it. With exaggeratedly careful movements he reached down and placed the pistol on the ground between them. His eyes never left her gun. She could hear his mates somewhere behind him, but she didn’t care about them. They weren’t going to do anything while she had their leader by the balls.

Then someone grabbed her from behind, dragging her arms down, and her finger closed on the trigger. The loud and non-explosive click of the hammer was like the punchline to a very bad joke.

She struggled, but the grip was firm, and then something hard struck the back of her head, a headbutt from someone else sharp enough to be wearing a motorcycle helmet. Even as the pain flashed through her head, English Bigot slammed a fist into her gut, the spikes of his gloves ripping her clothes.

“You bitch!” and a lot more like that, English and German invective, and what sounded like it might be Italian from one of them. After the third punch she was dropped to the ground, curled into a foetal position and covering her head as a couple of them put the boot in. Not too much, though. English Bigot called them off soon enough. He had other ideas.

“I want her,” said one of them, quite distinctly, and she gritted her teeth against the thought of it. She tried to take comfort in Emil’s escape, but right then comfort was another country.

But: “No,” from English Bigot. “She’s got a lot to answer for. That means she goes to the Grand Master or to the Reverend. And neither of them like their meat spoiled.” He reached down and hauled her up by her collar, racking every bruise they had just given her. “Make camp,” she heard him say in his accented German. “The main force will be here soon. Lukas, Anatoli, go hunting. I want that bastard doctor brought in.”

Ride far, she thought, hoping that the strange horsewoman could be trusted. That the rider might actually come back for her as promised was nothing more than a fantasy.

BACK THEN, THE word that had come to her about what was growing in Brandenburg had been fragmentary, contradictory at first. The world after the Cull was still in its death throes. Every community fended for itself, and the world beyond the hastily-raised walls was not to be trusted. People looked to themselves and their known neighbours for survival. And yet, at the same time, the dream of the world that had passed was strong in everyone’s minds. Early on, there had been plenty of talk about it. Surely the government was still functioning, over in Berlin. Surely the military had held itself together. There would be helicopters any day, with food, with medicine. This was a disaster, but it couldn’t be that bad. It couldn’t be the end.

And of course the months had turned into a year, and then two years. The brave got supplies together and drove out to the erstwhile capital. The lucky came back, without any good news. Too many people had died—enough that in their own little community there were hardly two people who had known each other before the Cull. Katy remembered something she had read or watched about the Native Americans on their reservations, Jack Wilson and the Great Ghost Dance, after the systematic extermination of a people and a way of life. She remembered the testimony of a survivor, that in their memory the faces of the dead vastly outnumbered those few they knew who were still alive. So it was for everyone, now. Not the government, not the military, not nations, not cities, nothing of the grandeur of the old world could survive with so few hands at the pumps. The horizon shrank.

But still people dreamt of an authority. They dreamt that someone would come and tell them what to do, just as people always had.

And so the word came, at last, and in the beginning people welcomed it: that there was a new order rising, men who were banding together to bring law and unity to the world, or at least this part of it. Men who spoke of a nation reborn, under justice and under God. And nobody, not Katy, not any of them, had so much as harboured the thought, Surely there’s no precedent for this turning out badly? At the start, when the rumours had come, she had felt a need in her own heart for that old lie: stability and security.

But it was always a lie, just one that crept up on them. Word travelled unreliably between those isolated towns. The new power gathered itself, won some allies, kissed a few babies, until it was established. Then it showed its true colours: the white flag and black cross.

And there were people who welcomed them even so, but by then Katy had heard enough to know she wanted no part of them.

They called themselves the New Teutonic Order. They styled themselves as knights, guardians of the Fatherland. Order was what they brought, too, but they brought it by ruthlessly suppressing everything that did not fit in their Brave New World.

By then, she knew that they had established themselves near the university, and she knew that Emil would be too short-sighted and too much of a rationalist to run. He would try to argue with them.

The Order did not argue. It enforced.

She had left her community that night, because Emil Weber was the sole person left in the world whom she had known more than a few years, and she had to save him from his own naivety.

WHEN SHE GOT to the university itself, it was burned out, with a dozen blackened corpses dangling from the trees. There had been prisoners, too—she found a few survivors who confirmed that. Yes, Doctor Weber had been amongst them.

The Order had their main camp nearby: they moved about like locusts, but only once they had beaten down all opposition in a region, seeded it with their people, put on a bit of a show. It was that last part they were engaged in, when she arrived.

Getting inside was no problem. They had no walls, and they were actively encouraging everyone from the surrounding communities to come visit. They had plenty of food, tools, alcohol, all sorts of plunder that they were open-handed with—to those who met their criteria; to those whom they considered properly human and worthy to inherit the Earth. And the best way, the absolute best way to worm yourself into the heart of the Order was to bring them your neighbour and accuse them of being less virtuous, less pure, less human than you.

The soldiers of the Order were all of a certain type, she saw. They were men, uniformly men, and mostly they were young. They had their heads shaved down to a stubble, and their faces painted. None of them looked overly virtuous to her, but then she reckoned they were probably little different from any warrior elite throughout history: they took what they wanted and rewrote morality to give them the right. Many of them were native Germans, but truly they had collected a pan-European band of the righteous. She heard Dutch and Italian in their voices, Scandinavian tones, Slavic and French and familiar English accents, from London and Birmingham and Newcastle. These men had drifted across Europe after the Cull, looking for somewhere to belong. They had banded together in packs, living each day on what they could take, fighting where they found weakness, fleeing where they found strength. Then the bands had begun to join, she guessed, the strong becoming stronger. Then had come a man with a dream of nationhood and power, of a new feudal age where they could be the first estate, those who ruled.

That was the secret, of course. Katy could watch them holding a mirror up to history. Rule by strength is not rule by right. Rule by strength and you look over your shoulder always, in case someone is stronger. Convince others that you rule by right, though. Convince them that this is the way things are, and that a great supernatural beard in the sky wills it so... well, humanity had only just started shrugging that fairy tale off when the Cull came.

She was unsurprised when, within an hour of her arrival, there was a sermon.

God’s judgment. That was how the Order described the Cull, and surely they were not the only ones to leap to that conclusion. More, it was God’s just judgment, another page of the same book that had brought Noah’s flood. The world had been cleansed of so much evil, but it was for the Order—for all right-thinking people—to finish that work. Only then could the new Kingdom of Heaven be made on Earth. Only then could the true spirit of the nation rise, pure and strong.

The sermon was bellowed through a loudhailer by a man in a grey suit that looked freshly laundered. He was shorter than Katy, but up on the stage he could have been ten feet tall. His hair was groomed back in a bouffant wave, and his smile was bright as the sun. He spoke German with a Midwest twang, and she understood he was the Reverend James Calumn, Jr. Judging from his fiercely charismatic delivery, she guessed he must have been a big-time evangelist back home. Standing in the press of the crowd, listening to him exhort and cajole, she almost became caught up in it. He spoke with a blazing hot sincerity that promised hope and succour and all good things.

And then he strode back into the big white tent behind the stage, and they began bringing the prisoners out.

There were a round dozen in that first batch, bruised and bloodied and with their hands behind their back. They each bore a placard hung about their necks, written in plain, clear script. ‘Schwul’ said a couple, with ‘faggot’ added in another hand on one man’s plaque for the Order’s more Anglophone homophobes. Several men and women sported the legend ‘Zigeuner,’ though whether they were genuine Roma or just travellers, Katy could not tell. Three young women were labelled as ‘Hure,’ which barely needed translation. A black man was simply ‘Neger.’ Two others were given as ‘heathens’—‘Heide’—and the last was Emil Weber. About his neck they had hung a word that transcended any linguistic boundaries here: ‘Atheist.’

And, she had to admit: guilty as charged. Emil had always been a fierce, almost a crusading champion of humanistic atheism. The fierce fires of his unbelief would have made Richard Dawkins proud. The slightest sniff of organized religion, new age superstition, astrology or homeopathic medicine would get a rise out of him reliably enough that his students ran sweepstakes on it. It was not surprising to find him up on stage with the other enemies of the Order. What was surprising was that he had lived that long.

She knew with bitter certainty that the idea of simply keeping his mouth shut and mumming along would never have occurred to him. Like many brilliant men, he could be extremely stupid, in a lot of ways.

The crowd were encouraged to yell and jeer and throw things. Anyone who had come here hoping for a handout would want to be right at the front; others were probably thinking that a poor showing here could see them on the stage the next time this pantomime was enacted. And of course there would be a few for whom this was what they had been waiting for all their life. There always were.

The Reverend Calumn was back, smiling like a lighthouse, speaking in his US-accented German. “Brothers and sisters, you will now see God’s work performed right before you. This is what back home they call a ‘lynching,’ you know that term?” The English word leapt out at Katy with the terrible understanding that she had come too late. Trapped by the crowd, she could only wait, hands clenched into fists, bottling up her fury because it would only get her a placard of her own.

But it turned out the Order was rationing its prisoners. The Reverend picked two of the Roma and one of the Schwuler, and they strung them up, right there on the stage. They did it the hard way, too: no trapdoors and sudden drops, but teams of straining Order soldiers hauling them from their feet by their necks, letting them kick and gasp, swing and jerk and mottle over agonised minutes, before the crowd, before the other prisoners. Everyone was very quiet for it, and she saw a kindred horror in many of the people there—watching this spectacle, and seeing how many men there were, with guns and cudgels and black-crossed white faces. They were watching a coup; a fait accompli. It was time to cheer along or to flee and never come back.

The balance of the prisoners were taken back inside the big tent, and the Reverend was introducing a new man, some leader of the Order, a tall, broad-shouldered thug with cropped peroxide hair, long-limbed as a spider. He started to talk about the Teutonic spirit, about God’s mission for a chosen people. Katy sloped discreetly off during that. She had no idea how long before the lynch mob would be ready for a second helping.

At first she despaired of getting near the tent. There were plenty of Order soldiers about, not exactly on guard, but very visible. She made a circle of it, as innocuously as possible. Behind the marquee were a host of other tents, looted from a dozen outdoor living and army surplus stores, together with a motley host of vehicles. I can’t just walk into their camp, though. They’ll catch me in an instant. I can hardly dress up like a soldier and hope.

And then she saw it: that she had been guilty of thinking like the enemy. She was never going to pass as an Order soldier, no: they were all men. She had already worked out that this new dawn for Brandenburg had very definite ideas about a woman’s place.

And that was it: a woman’s place was everywhere. The camp was full of women—cooking, cleaning, darning, mending. They had been put back in the kitchen by their new overlords, and at the same time, nobody was paying much attention to them.

She walked straight in. She kept her head down, her shoulders a little slumped. She had her backside slapped a couple of times, and once a lurching soldier slapped a stinking, boozy kiss on her lips, mumbling endearments. Enduring all of that took her to the side entrance of the main tent, though, and she stepped in with two mismatched mugs and a pitcher of beer, entirely invisible.

They kept the prisoners strung by their arms to the ridge pole of the tent, and there was a single man guarding them. He was a lean, bony youth, probably very low on the pecking order to draw this duty. He was young enough to be her kid brother, surely no more than eighteen. Under the white, his face was a minefield of acne.

“All right, yeah?” His eyes lit up when he saw her. From beyond the tent came the sound of the Order’s leader ranting himself into a fury. “And two mugs also? You and me, yeah?” The guard spoke German badly, but she could not identify the accent.

“Yeah,” she said, giving him the pitcher and one mug. She held her own out to be filled. In her other hand was the knife.

By then, she had killed twice, but both times had been in self-defence, her actions forged in the fires of fear and adrenaline. Standing there, watching this near-boy pouring a cup of beer for her, she suddenly knew she couldn’t do it. Not in cold blood. Not like this.

And of course it was Emil who came to her aid, squinting at her through the spectacles he had somehow retained, and saying, “Katy?”

The guard’s eyes went wide and he looked from Katy to Emil, mouth opening. By the time he glanced back, she had driven the knife down past his collarbone with more strength than she thought she possessed.

He hacked a mouthful of blood over her and she stabbed him again, and then four times more, teeth gritted against the sensation, a wholly unanticipated fury driving her hand.

Then she cut them all down, starting with Emil.

The escape was ragged and desperate, but she liked to think that most of them had a good chance of getting clear of the camp at least. She slit open the back of the tent and raced for the slew of vehicles.

And from there to the eastbound road, with the motorcycle outriders of the Order always behind them, until she simply could not understand why they had not given up. What was it that they saw, in her, in Emil, that they would go to such lengths, cover such distances to regain them?

And at last, in the empty shell of Wrocław, regain her they did.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MASTER AND MAGDAYEVA

THE LITTLE BAND of Order hunters made camp in one of Wrocław’s vast supply of abandoned houses while they waited for their scouts to return. Katy had never been given to prayer, but she came close: if the bikers came back with Emil riding pillion, then it would all have been for nothing.

But at last, they came back empty handed. The strange woman, whoever she was, had out-ridden them.

Then the English Bigot who led them seemed to remember the prisoner he had been ignoring for hours. She had been lying, bound, in an upstairs room. But now he came kicking the door open, his hockey stick in one hand.

“Where did you send him?” he demanded, and when she did not answer, he hooked her about the head with the jagged inner curve of the weapon and hauled her upright. “Where?” he demanded again.

“Away,” she said, with a defiance that lasted precisely until he cocked the stick back to strike. “Away! I just told him to—he got on her horse. I don’t even know who she was.”

“Then why did you send him with her?” he demanded.

Because she wasn’t you! But she just cowered, and that seemed to pacify him a little. He plainly liked a woman who cringed.

“Woman, the Grand Master is on his way with our army. The Reverend, too. They’ll want to speak with you, be sure of it. They’ll want to have a real long talk with you. But if there’s anything left of you after that, if you don’t cause them to destroy you, then I’ll ask them to give you to me. I’ll be waiting for you, girl.”

Spit, I spit on you. But she didn’t. She was disgusted by her own cowardice, but she could not make herself antagonise him.

She tried to get some sleep after that, for some imaginary future in which being rested and alert would be in any way useful. The engines woke her at what felt like past midnight: bikes, cars, the basso profundo of trucks. The vanguard of the Teutonic Order was drawing to a halt at the outskirts of Wrocław.

There was a lot of shouting after that. She supposed she was in no real position to take satisfaction from the sound of the English Bigot getting a chewing out in acerbic German, but it lent a tiny spark to her, that someone else was having even a shadow of her bad night.

She hunched over to the window, dust-slathered and streaked, but she could just peer through it if she twisted her way to her knees. The view was mostly of the back garden, but she could see a little of the street through a stand of trees, and there were plenty of headlamps out there jostling for position. She could hear the sounds of a lot of men bitching at each other and heavy objects being unloaded. No doubt the tents would be going up soon.

Something moved in the garden, just a fleeting suggestion that caught in the corner of her eye. She stared out desperately into the dark, trying to recapture it. A cat? A fox?

For just a moment, she thought she saw an upturned face lit briefly by the moon.

Then heavy boots were clumping up the stairs, voices nearing, and she flopped back down to the floor, innards freezing up in fear.

“I don’t believe it,” she heard that sharp German voice. “Your men have just been sloppy. They’re in hiding. We need to draw them out.”

Then English Bigot, struggling a little with the language. “There’s not a one, Grand Master. We have searched many streets. No single person can be found living here. Can they have all died?”

“God has not spared us the work elsewhere,” the Grand Master replied as he gained the landing. “And there must be some righteous men in Breslau who would join with our crusade and form a chapter.” Breslau was the German name for the city, Katy recalled.

Then the door was opened, and there was the wide-shouldered, long-limbed man she had last seen ranting at the crowd back in Forst. Behind him, English Bigot held an oil lamp that threw his master’s shadow across Katy’s prone form.

He regarded her with disappointment. “This is all you have for me, Edward?”

Edward the English Bigot hung his head in shame. “I am sorry, Grand Master.”

The big man took a deep breath and then crouched down on his haunches next to her. “Do you know who I am, child?”

She shook her head.

“My name is Josef Danziger, and I am God’s chosen.” He spoke softly, almost gently, eminently sane. “I am tasked with establishing the Lord’s Kingdom in His new Holy Land, in these the End Times.”

She decided to nod, this time.

“Tell me, where are all the people?”

“I don’t know. We only just got here when your people found us.”

Danziger’s expression was best described as vexed; a man discovering the milk is off in his tea. “The Reverend will be disappointed not to put on a show. But perhaps we may still be able to purify the world of a few more sub-humans.” Untermenschen. The word sent shivers down Katy’s spine. “Speaking of which,” Danziger went on, “Edward here tells me you were the last to see Doctor Emil Weber.”

Her bad feeling was only getting worse. “Why come all this way? Surely the world’s full of people you want to hang?”

“We would have come here eventually. These lands are part of the new Fatherland, as they were of the old. And the world is a little emptier of those people, day after day. I make it so.” And he smiled: such an engaging expression, as though he expected to awake an answering grin in her. “But Doctor Weber is more than just a sub-human, he is the Enemy of God.”

She stared at him. Because he’s an atheist? No, he means something more...

“I want you to spend some time in earnest contemplation and prayer while I order my camp,” Danziger told her, almost avuncular. “Then you will tell us where you were fleeing to, and where you have sent Doctor Weber. Or I will punish you, as wilful women must be punished.”

Away, there was nothing else to it but away. But she knew that answer would not satisfy, so she said nothing.

The Grand Master straightened up and put a hand on Edward’s shoulder, lightly at first, but then he obviously ramped up the pressure, making his subordinate twitch and hiss.

“More scouts,” he ordered. “Find the people of this place. Find out who this rider is. Find something, Edward. Sometimes I doubt your faith.”

The door closed behind them, and Katy heard them thumping down the stairs. Right about then, she was considering whether she could somehow break the window glass and try to cut her throat on the shards.

But then the window rattled: once, twice, and then it was sliding open and a woman was slipping in. Not a woman; the woman. She stared at the closed door for a moment and then said something fast that Katy didn’t catch. Seeing her blank expression, she added in her poor German. “Thought they would never leave.”

She crouched by Katy and slit her bonds, hands moving with swift economy. “You will keep quiet now. Follow with me and quiet.”

The window was still open, and the woman peered out, pressed against the wall to minimise her silhouette. Katy took a moment to study her: small-framed, lean and leathery, her tan skin weathered brown, her features not quite Germanic or Slavic, but something else.

“You will drop,” she told Katy flatly, leaving no option to demur, and then she was out of the window, hanging by her fingertips. There was almost no sound when she let go and hit the ground. Faced with that example, Katy felt she could only follow it. She did not look down. Events were handing her this path. Loosing her grip on the sill, she dropped into an unseen abyss, terrified of breaking an ankle, of getting so far and then no farther.

Strong hands caught her, the woman falling back with her to break the last of her fall, then springing immediately to her feet. No broken German now, just a beckoning gesture.

The garden was dark, overshadowed by trees. Strips of light from the house’s lower windows scarred it, briefly busy now and then with the shadows of the soldiers inside. Katy’s rescuer stepped carefully from shadow to shadow, unhurried, stopping and starting to a rhythm entirely within her head, leaving Katy to muddle along behind her. The Wrocław night, that had been so bone-silent, was raucous now with fifty or more of the Order setting up camp, breaking out the drink. From somewhere came the cries of a woman doing her utmost to convince someone she was having a good time.

At no time did Katy hold any belief whatsoever in the reality of an escape. Part of her was waiting to reawaken bound in that room. Of course the rider had not come back for her.

And then there was a flash of white ahead, at the garden’s end, and she froze, seeing a pale face quartered by black. A huge man stood there, leaning on what looked like a sledgehammer. The horsewoman had stopped as well, crouched low and waiting. She did not have her bow, Katy saw: probably it would have been too cumbersome and noisy to sneak about with.

Kill him, she willed silently. Creep up on him and cut his throat. Except that the rider would have had to stretch to tip-toes to even reach; would have to sit on Katy’s shoulders, possibly.

More movement: another two soldiers slouched up, on patrol and plainly not too happy about it. The moon caught them for a moment, and then they were in the big man’s shadow. After a couple of words, they moved on, talking in low, discontented voices.

The big man watched them depart, and Katy thought, Go now! Now, while he’s distracted! But the horsewoman stayed utterly still, and without her example Katy did not dare try it.

Then the Order soldier was looking back towards the house—no, he was scanning the garden, eyes raking the shadows. What had betrayed them? A noise, a furtive movement. And now the rider was darting forwards, right into his line of sight. Katy hissed desperately at her, reached to snag her belt and missed.

She met with the big man, brushed fingers with him momentarily, then glanced back for Katy.

“Now we go,” she explained. The big man nodded and shouldered his hammer.

THEY WERE CLEAR of the camp soon after, but they were an hour crossing open country, moving swiftly off-road and away from Wrocław, before they reached the horses. There was a second woman there, fair-haired and thin-faced, who must have had an arrow directed at them long before they saw her.

“Jedziemy do domu,” she said, or something like it.

“We go home,” Katy’s rescuer explained, for Katy’s benefit.

“Where’s home?” Katy demanded. “Where’s Emil? Who even are you people?”

At their expressions, she grimaced. “I mean, thank you. Thank you for getting me out of there.”

The big man nodded. “Is good,” he said simply. “Home is good also.”

“Your man, he is with my people. They take him a safe place,” the horsewoman confided. “We go there now also.”

Katy felt that tide of destiny again, carrying her along whether she wanted it or not. “Please, just tell me who you are. I...” For all I know you might be just the same as them. It seemed impolitic to say it. “My name is Katy Lewkowitz. I’m—I was a biochemist, like Emil, the man you rescued.”

“Magdayeva,” the rider announced, pointing at herself. “Is Karel,” the big man; “Is Jenna,” for the other woman, pronouncing it as a Slavic ‘Yenna’. “And your Emil is safe, if there is safe in this world now.”

“Jenna Casimir,” the fair-haired woman agreed. “Ride with me, Lewkowitz, so Magdayeva can scout.”

THEY RODE ALL night to put distance between them and the Order—not the mad gallop Katy had expected, but a careful cross-country progress. Magdayeva, by far the best rider amongst them, came and went like a ghost in the moonlight, sloping up with her bow in one hand, the reins loosely held in the other, then vanishing away into the night again.

At dawn they rested, and Katy, who had nearly slid from the saddle twice, slept like the dead until they roused her at noon to eat wheatcakes and drink weak beer. A booze breakfast had been something that post-Cull life had inured her to: better to stress the liver than die of cholera. Karel was washing the paint from his face with great enthusiasm.

“Please tell me where we are going,” she asked at last. “I’m in your debt, I really am, but...”

“You want to know if you need to start running from us,” Jenna finished for her with a dry smile.

“No, no.” Yes.

“My people are camped near here still,” Magdayeva said, between mouthfuls. “If we reach them before they move, you will see your friend also. After that, to take you to Jasna Góra. That is near to safe.”

“Until the Order gets there,” Katy put in.

Karel grimaced and spat something unintelligible.

“We will let the Abbot decide what to do about the Order,” Jenna decided.

“I... don’t think Emil needs to go anywhere there’s an Abbot...” Katy said uncertainly.

Karel chuckled deep in his massive chest. It was not a particularly welcome sound.

“But the Abbot will want to see him, and you,” Jenna explained.

So the answer is yes, I should have run. But she could not outrun the horses and she still needed to recover Emil. The reins of her future were still firmly in the hands of others.

THE NEXT MORNING—before the dawn—she was woken roughly. There was a fourth there, a small, dark man already ahorse and obviously on the very point of leaving. He was a relative of Magdayeva’s, Katy gathered, and he had come to warn them.

Firstly, that her people were already on the move. There would be no safe haven with them, and the stranger—Emil—had already been passed on to Jasna Góra. In Katy’s mind the name was starting to conjure up something medieval and fortified, some Tolkienesque stronghold blighting the land with its shadow.

The other warning was unnecessary by the time they had her awake and stumbling towards the mounts. The sound of bikes was already in the air. The Order outriders were pushing east.

Karel had been all for stopping to fight them, but more sober heads had prevailed. They would ride for Jasna Góra.

The next few nights and days were a jolting, headlong nightmare for Katy. She was already sore from the saddle, and now they had doubled their speed, so that every part of her was bruised, and her legs were stripped raw by constant chafing. None of the others seemed to care. Even big Karel kept up a solid, competent pace on a steed that must have been descended from carthorses. Magdayeva could have been born to the saddle, riding ahead or out to one side, always keeping an eye out, reading the countryside even as it coursed past them.

Katy wanted to stop. She did not know these strange, fierce people, and she did not trust them. She had a horrible feeling that Emil would need rescuing from this Abbot just as much as he had from Josef Danziger and the Reverend Calumn. She entertained mad thoughts of headbutting Jenna, taking the horse, leading the others in a breakneck chase over the countryside that would require her to somehow pick up a decade of riding experience in moments. She reckoned the utmost rebellion she might actually effect would be to fall out of the saddle and break her neck. That would show them.

They barely stopped to rest, in that mad dash—and when they did, it was for the benefit of the horses, not the riders. Katy’s world contracted to a tight knot of weariness and rubbing pain. Even though every step was now shooting agony through her, sleep still clawed at her. She sat before Jenna like a zombie, falling in and out between wakefulness and lurid, confused dreams of black-crossed white faces, of foreboding high walls.

And she must have slept, in the end, if only because the next time she became aware of herself and her surroundings, both she and they were still. She was lying on a pallet bed, in a darkened room. Stone walls loomed on every side, rising to a vaulted ceiling. A crypt; a tomb, a cell.

Eyes wide open in the gloom, she tried to understand what had happened to her.

CHAPTER FOUR

A TOUCH OF THE GOTHIC

VOICES DRIFTED TO her, echoing. She caught no words, but enough to guess they were speaking Polish or something similar, not German.

Katy stood up, feeling every part of her ache, and hobbled to the door. The room had nothing but a lantern and a row of makeshift beds in it. Outside was a cramped antechamber: a few more doors and some steps, with the promise of daylight above.

For a moment, she was going to look in the other rooms: perhaps Emil was right there, and after all, she was only in this mess because of him. The light was irresistible, though, as to a moth. She needed to know where she was. She needed to see the sun, if only to give a sense of reality to her strange, gothic surroundings.

“Going where, I wonder?”

She spun, seeing that Jenna Casimir had been sitting right beside the door, so still that Katy had missed her entirely in the poor light.

“What do you people want with me?” she demanded, backing towards the stairs, reaching for a knife she didn’t have.

Jenna raised an eyebrow. “Aside from taking your friend with the glasses in, and then rescuing your backside from the fascists? Well, some idea of why we’ve gone to all of that trouble, maybe.”

“We don’t want to be trouble for anyone. We just want to...”—she stuttered a bit there, because the plan had not gone much beyond rescuing Emil from the Order—“be on our way,” she finished awkwardly.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Jenna told her, standing up smoothly. “Let’s take you to your friend, and then take you both to the Abbot. It’s time for everyone to get some answers.”

She was springing up the stairs in the next moment, every easy movement confronting Katy with her own arthritic rawness. Every step seemed a direct attack on her joints, so that by the time Jenna led her out into the open air she was ready to complain vociferously about everything she had been through. Until she saw where she was. She stared, dumbfounded.

They had come out into the courtyard of some sort of grand house. It could have been an unostentatious Ducal palace or a particularly fancy prison, three storeys of regimented windows on all four sides—some broken and boarded up, but most intact—capped by a steep-sloped roof covered entirely in verdigris. The space within the walls looked as though it had been a garden or a park, once, but right now it had been turned into a cross between an outdoor workshop and a renaissance fair. There were men and women everywhere, carding wool, clacking away on looms, sawing wood. The sound of patient, steady hammering rang from one corner, where a black man was tending a little forge. Beside him, a woman had a pot of glue on the boil and was carefully splitting feathers with a little knife, ready to fletch arrows. In the centre of the courtyard, a couple of lean young men in masks and padding were fencing, or whatever the equivalent was when the swords were four feet long and double-edged.

“What the hell is this?” Katy demanded, louder than she had intended. Her English seemed to make little impression on the people around her.

“Tomasz, Paul!” Jenna called.

The duellists parted, and one of them pushed his mask back, exposing a lantern-jawed, bony face. There was a brief discussion in Polish, then Jenna gave them some sort of instructions and they loped off.

“I told them, if they’ve nothing important to be doing, they can go get your friend,” she explained for Katy. “Come on then. The Abbot’s on the walls.”

I don’t want to meet any Abbot. But it was plain she was not really being given a choice.

SHE HAD NOT quite registered Jenna’s ‘on the walls’ before she took her out of the courtyard of that grand, grim building, and then up on what she could only describe as broad battlements. She found herself atop a great wall that enclosed not only the big house, but the looming spire of a church and ranks of humbler buildings as well. A castle, a fortress. It was not quite either, but she could not quite think what it actually was. The surrounding wall stretched off away from her in two directions, forming what must be a square compound, with great spear-head shaped projections butting out from the corners she could see. Beyond...

She had expected something craggy, mountainous even, or perhaps a dark forest straight from the Brothers Grimm, stretching impossibly to the horizon. Instead, when she reached the wall top and looked over the edge, she saw a great, silent city. The castle, or fort, or whatever it was, stood in a swathe of parkland, stubbled with the stumps of felled trees, but beyond that sprawled the interlaced streets of another monument to the terrifying scale of the Cull. Wrocław, all over again. For a moment she just stood there and stared out past all those empty homes, some whole, some fallen into ruin, to the far skeletal strands of the railway lines.

And, like Wrocław, an oppressive quiet hung over the place, clogging the air with absences, so that she spoke out loud: “Where is everyone?”

“There were many who wanted to stay here in Częstochowa, in the first days,” said a new voice, in Slavic-accented German. “Perhaps some have. I hope most have listened to us and found other places. Why stay in a dying city, no way of feeding yourself, no clean water? All those we spoke to, they took what they could and they left to find somewhere they could live, not just survive.”

And she turned, and set eyes on the Abbot.

He was not as big as Karel, who stood at his shoulder, as out of scale as a bad photoshop, but this newcomer was still broad-shouldered and powerfully made. His short-cropped hair was gun-barrel grey, and his face was set between two scars: a jagged old twist at his chin and a livid flash over one eye that looked more recent. His eyes were grey-blue and hawk-like. He wore a simple dark robe, but his belt looked modern, as did the combat boots beneath it.

Her first impression was dangerous—both in himself, and because these people round him evidently did his bidding. She thought about Danziger and Calumn—was he a rival warlord, or would he sing from their hymn sheet, or was he something different again?

When she made to speak, he held one hand up—almost a benediction—and tilted his head down the line of the wall. Tomasz and Paul were on their way, and between them was a familiar figure.

“Emil!”

She saw him start, then pick his pace up, outdistancing his escort. As he approached, she scanned his face for signs of injury, finding he had added a striking black eye to his mementos of the Order.

For a moment, she thought he was going to hug her, but that would not have been the man she knew. Instead he slowed as he approached, visibly recalling his dignity, and managed a businesslike nod. “Miss Lewkowitz, I am...” He shrugged. “I hadn’t thought...”

“You and me both,” she confirmed. “Emil, who are these people?”

“Introductions, then,” the robed man broke in smoothly. “You have met our Jenna, of course, who commands our scouts. Paul and Tomasz are my captains here, under whose guidance the order of Jasna Góra is maintained.” He spoke carefully, pausing on and off as he found the words. “And here is Karel, our champion, who styles himself the Golem of Prague.”

Katy looked the vast man over. He looked less Jewish than she would have expected, for the nickname.

“We’re very grateful for your rescuing us, sir...” she started, and stuttered to a halt in the face of the Abbot’s stern regard. Apparently nothing but frank introductions were going to be good enough. There would be no quick talking her way out of this.

“My name is Katy Lewkowitz.” Name, rank and serial number.

“English?” Paul asked. He was smaller and stockier than Tomasz, and more suspicious, too, from his expression.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”

“And this is Doctor Emil Weber,” the Abbot finished. From the way Emil started, Katy saw it was information he had not volunteered. “Doctor Weber, it’s hard to be famous at the end of the world, now we who remain live in such reduced ways. Yet here you are, and there are people who have travelled a long way to meet you.”

Emil’s eyes twitched to lock gazes with Katy. No need to ask who that is.

“Come with me.” The Abbot made a curt gesture and set off along the wall. With Karel and the rest forming behind them, it was hard to say no.

He stopped, looking out over what Katy guessed was the main entrance to the complex: a bridge rising up gradually through the near edge of the parkland. Beyond it, she could see a great stretch of open tarmac, still clogged with the rusting hulks of cars, edged by what might have been the rotting remnants of cafés.

“Tourist central,” she murmured.

“It was,” the Abbot confirmed. “You are standing at the heart of the faith in Poland. Pilgrims came here from all over the world.”

She saw Emil squirm at the talk. Overt displays of religion always made him uncomfortable, and she guessed recent experience had done nothing to alleviate that.

“Our problem is that,” Paul put in, pointing out past the ramp.

There were some tents set up there, and although she had been expecting them, Katy’s heart still sank to see them. This was not the Order’s great circus of preaching and punishment. She counted eight tents, along with six vehicles that had plainly been driven in recently. A scatter of motocycles were there too.

“So you have more pilgrims,” Emil said harshly. “You must be pleased.”

“We know the New Teutonic Order,” the Abbot said thoughtfully. “When the Rom travel west, they meet them sometimes. When you two were saved from them, my people were scouting out the limits of their presence. But they are far west, out beyond Wrocław. We know they are on the move, spreading their doctrine from community to community. But now they are here, a long way from their usual haunts. Perhaps you can tell me why.”

His gaze raked Emil, who squared up to it as best he could.

“Because they’re madmen, fanatics. Or perhaps you see that as their good points.”

“Emil,” Katy said, warningly. “Abbot, I don’t know who you are or what it is you’re doing in this place, but if you’ve seen anything of the Order, you’ll know the sort of people they are. I rescued Emil from them, when they were about to hang him—and not just him. They have quite a list of people they don’t like.” But then, maybe you have one too. She searched his expression for some clue, found nothing.

“Lewkowitz,” the Abbot pronounced, and hearing her own name on his lips sent a jolt of sudden fear through her. “Jewish?”

She didn’t answer, but apparently she didn’t need to. He just nodded thoughtfully. “You’re brave, then, to go into their camp for your friend. You’re surely on their list.”

“I’d be a ‘Heathen,’” she confirmed flatly. “It’s a sort of catch-all category. And you?”

“They don’t need a reason!” Karel snapped suddenly. “It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. They say they’re here for him? They’re here because they’re Germans. This is what they do. It’s what they’ve always done.”

Katy was just trying to get her head around having the huge man as an ally when Emil attacked him furiously.

“They are not German! How dare you say that’s what this is about? My friends at the university, that the Order killed, they were German. I am German. Those men out there, they do not even deserve to be called human. Faced with a global disaster, humans do not seek to turn their backs on the world and indulge in the worst excesses of history. There is some other word for what they are, and it is not ‘German’!”

Karel stared at him as though Emil had gone up to him and personally asked to be punched in the face, but then Paul put a hand on his arm.

“Karel, I’m German.”

“No you’re not.” The big man frowned.

“Seriously, he is. What did you think?” Tomasz put in, and Katy felt a weird sense of surreality, because of course the whole argument was even being conducted in German: the Czech and the Poles probably had no other common language.

“Enough.” The Abbot spoke quietly, but he had everyone’s attention. “Our guest is quite right. It isn’t national pride that has brought them to our door. Nations are dead. With what has happened in the world, the only people still flying the flags of Nations must be the mad or the wicked. They came here for you, Doctor Emil Weber, and I want to know why.”

“So you can decide whether to hand me over?”

“Yes, exactly that.” The Abbot looked him in the eye as he said it. “These are just the first. There are more on the way, and I am responsible for all the souls within these walls. The Order wishes to talk, and I will hear them out.” At Karel opening his mouth, he held up a silencing hand. “Just because they are bad men, does not mean they cannot also be wronged. I will go. Paul, assemble a dozen of our fighters, enough that the Order will mind their manners.” And the Abbot’s eye flicked over to Katy. “And I suppose you should come, too.”

“Me?”

“If I took your friend, I feel the temptation to break the truce would be too great for the hunters out there. But I assume that he would prefer someone present to represent his interests? Who else is there but you?”

CHAPTER FIVE

OLD DOGMA, NEW TRICKS

THE ESCORT THAT Tomasz and Paul put together consisted of eight men and four women, ranging in age from twenty to twice that. Apparently Karel the Golem of Prague was not coming, possibly because he was nobody’s idea of a natural diplomat. They sported a motley of studded leathers, Kevlar vests and pieces of metal armour that were archaic of design but weirdly new-looking. Some had bows, or in one man’s case, a modern high-power crossbow. Others had shotguns or hunting rifles, and one carried a stubby assault rifle slung on a shoulder straps. There wasn’t one of them lacking a sword or hatchet or long fighting knife.

“It’s Mad Max,” Katy said before she could stop herself. She hoped that nobody had been close enough to hear, but then Jenna was at her elbow with a sharp laugh.

“I saw that movie. We had a copy. The dubbing was horrible: one man, reading all the voices.”

“Who are you people? What is this place?” Katy demanded, almost desperately. She felt as though, somewhere during their frantic ride from the Order, she had gone down a rabbit hole and ended up some place where history documentaries went to die.

“Come back from the meeting, I’m sure the Abbot will have all the explanations you need,” Jenna told her coolly.

“If he doesn’t just hand me over.”

“If that.” Jenna shrugged. “No point me filling your head with useful information if that, eh?”

They were all mustering in a narrow, crooked courtyard, the gates of which opened onto the bridge she had seen earlier. The mood amongst the locals was serious, a little nervous. The odd snatch of laughter from amongst the makeshift soldiers sounded forced.

“You’ve not had to fight much around here, I’d guess,” Katy remarked.

“Not yet,” Jenna confirmed. “But history taught us that the day would come.”

Then there was the sound of hooves on stone, and the Abbot appeared, alongside a familiar horse. In the saddle, Magdayeva was bending low to speak to him.

He nodded at her words, then looked up with a glint in his eye, making some approving comment in Polish to the troops. Then he had a little spiel for Tomasz, who had turned up with a longbow in hand, every inch a Robin Hood. Katy assumed the long-framed man was going with them until he nodded sharply and took off for the walls, full quiver rattling at his belt.

Because of course that’s going to help. Katy was becoming increasingly convinced that she was surrounded by crazy people.

Then the Abbot had a meaty hand on her shoulder, and the escort was forming up around them. A handful of people unbarred the gates and hauled them open—and Katy could not help but notice all the recent reinforcement that had gone into them—and then there was nothing but four hundred feet of ramp and car park between her and the Order, dotted with the hulks of failed cars at the near end.

There were a fair mob of Order soldiers watching them emerge: perhaps half with guns of some kind, the rest with a menagerie of close quarter weapons. Their uniform facepaint made them into something more dangerous than the people from the fortress, though: one creed, one face, one mind.

They were most of the way down the ramp when the Abbot waved a halt.

“Just you and I, now. We’ll show them how things will be done.” His voice was light, but the hand on her shoulder was heavy. The escort had spread out to either side, not actually pointing weapons at anyone, but arrows were on the string, guns were directed not quite at the ground. A few had stepped into the cover of the picked-over chassis that had been abandoned towards this end of the ramp.

No, not abandoned, dragged there, Katy realised: another home-grown attempt to make this place more difficult to just drive up to.

She saw quite a stir amongst the Order when she and the Abbot came to the very edge of the ramp on their own, out into the horrible open ground beyond. For a moment it was not clear what their response would be, but at last a small group of them peeled off: four soldiers backing the one man amongst them who didn’t paint his face, and who wasn’t overtly armed. God had apparently sent His own mouthpiece to seek the recapture of Emil Weber: the Reverend James Calumn, Jr was leading the charge.

Magdayeva said something then, some caution or farewell, and then she was guiding her horse away, past the Abbot and off at an angle, away from both groups and off into the ghost-town that was Częstochowa. A few Order rifles twitched a little at that, but apparently everyone was still very much on their best behaviour for the diplomacy.

“Where’s she going?” Katy hissed. She had liked Magdayeva: anyone who would do what that girl had done for her was something to be counted on. She did not have the same feel about Jenna or any of the rest of them

“She’s carrying word to her people,” the Abbot murmured.

Her people. The Roma? That was the impression Katy had got. She had seen how the Order treated gypsies, but at the same time she had a feeling they hadn’t fared that much better in Poland, or anywhere else, historically. Nobody liked perpetual outsiders.

Then her eyes were drawn to the Order delegation, and she realised with a sinking heart that she recognised more than just Calumn, and that this other man would know her.

“That one, at the preacher’s left shoulder,” she murmured to the Abbot. “He’s”—she almost said the English Bigot, but that would hardly have been constructive—“Edward, his name is. He’s a second to their Grand Wizard, or whatever they called him.”

“Danziger,” the Abbot said softly, and Katy glanced at him in surprise. “Oh, yes, we have heard the name, despite the distance between us and him. A distance I suspect is shortening rapidly.”

But then he was raising a hand as the cross-faced soldiers approached. “Dzień dobry, Pochwalony Jezus Chrystus! Welcome, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Virgin Mary!”

Calumn and his cronies had stopped, somewhat startled by the address, but at last Edward said an awkward “Same to you” in his rough German. Katy wondered for a mad moment whether she would have to act as his interpreter. She had forgotten the Reverend’s gift for languages, though. The preacher strode forwards with smooth assurance, hand thrust out until the Abbot had to either take it or declare de facto war by way of poor etiquette.

“Good day to you, sir,” the American said, his smile gleaming, “and may I say, it is a pleasure to find more of His servants in this blighted world!” Behind him, his escort was uncertain: to follow up into arm’s reach of the Abbot would look as though they were about to attack him, to hang back was plainly counter to their pugilistic instincts. In the end three of them milled, and Edward obviously reckoned Katy’s presence was enough to allow him to regain the Reverend’s shoulder once again.

“My name is Calumn, sir,”—Mein Herr, but Katy translated it to the American idiom unconsciously—“James Calumn. I consider myself a servant of God in these latter days. I do His will.”

The Abbot nodded soberly, plainly giving this all due consideration. “I am the Abbot Leszek of Jasna Góra. I do what I can.”

“I’m sure you do, sir,” Calumn agreed sunnily. “Now, sir, I’d wager word of the New Teutonic Order has come to you, even here.” At Leszek’s cautious nod, he continued. “And perhaps you’ll have heard some stories that would lead you to be suspicious of their good intentions? It can’t be helped that the Devil has a quick tongue, wouldn’t you agree? It quite outpaces the Lord’s truth, sometimes.”

The Abbot grunted.

“I’ll tell you, sir, I was in Berlin when the last days began. I was booked in to preach to packed studios, sir. I sure as damnation had not seen the way my future was about to take off. I’m certain you remember those days clear as I do: how the deaths came, and more and more of them. Bodies in the streets, sir—not enough left to even give them a decent burial. The police, the hospitals, doing what they can, and none of those good people realising that this was not a matter for their hands any more. This was not just some new virus out of China, no sir. It was the end of the world. Well, sir, I don’t mind telling you, I had my moment of doubt. I was sore afraid, you can be sure. I reckon there aren’t many who wouldn’t say the same.”

He could certainly talk, could James Calumn, Jr. Katy found herself nodding along, remembering how it had been for her and recasting those memories in the Reverend’s words.

“It was a testing time,” the Abbot agreed curtly.

“It surely was.” Calumn paused philosophically. “When the worst of it was done, when God had sent so very many to their judgment, I found myself still breathing, and with not an idea of why I had been spared.”

“That was when you heard of the Order,” Leszek put in.

“It was, sir. You’re absolutely right. They were few in those days, just a handful who were asking the same questions I was: why have we been kept on this Earth? Where is the New Jerusalem, as was foretold? And so I joined them, and we found others—some believers, others who wanted to believe—and we set out on what I believe to be the final Crusade, the final expression of God’s will, to open the way for the Second Coming, and the founding of God’s Kingdom on Earth.”

“Do I gather that this way involves the removal of those who are not part of God’s plan?” There was no judgment or condemnation in the Abbot’s voice; precious little of any emotion at all, in fact.

For a second, Calumn’s eyes flicked from Abbot Leszek to Katy and back, trying to work out which way the wind was blowing. “Sir, it does, for Christ’s new Kingdom cannot be established on Earth while there remain sinners who have escaped judgment. That is the task that God has given to us.”

“You have come a long way to reach our doors. Are there no more sinners left between here and Berlin?”

Katy frowned: she had been asking herself exactly the same thing.

Calumn smiled. “There are sinners and sinners, Abbot Leszek. Some simply have no place in Christ’s new Kingdom, but there are a few who are active servants of the Devil, men who will try to undo the Lord’s work! In the face of such hubris there’s no distance too far to go, don’t you think?”

“We come now to the matter of Doctor Weber.”

“We do indeed, sir.” The Reverend’s expression suggested infinite regret at the wickedness of Man. “Do you know what he and his cohorts were about, when we discovered their little nest of heresy? They were using the tools of the Devil to study the instrument of the Lord that had sounded the last trump for the world. They believed that they could interfere with its effects, to prevent souls from being reaped by it. God has sent this judgment onto the world, Abbot Leszek, and it is not for Man to scheme against that Divine work. So yes, we have come here to bring judgment to this man Emil Weber, because he is an avowed enemy of the Lord, a man who before the fall spoke out against me and you and all other believers, and now has cast off his mask and works as the Devil’s right hand. I put it to you that it is your duty as Christ’s representative in these parts to pass him to us, so that the Lord’s justice may be done.” He took a deep breath: a compassionate man with a tear in his eye. “Sir, I know that folks hereabouts have looked to the great city of Rome for their inspiration, and I know that you and I might not, in other days, have seen eye to eye on that fact. I’ll warrant you’ve had no news from that quarter any time since the fall, but I can say this with one hundred percent conviction: I believe that if the Pope were here now, he and I would be singing from the same hymn sheet. After all, what has the great organisation of Christ’s Church on Earth, of whatever sect or flavour, been preparing for, if not for this?”

Leszek’s expression was... was almost absent, Katy realised, as though he had retreated inside himself. “You make quite a case,” was all he would say.

“So may I go back to my fellows and tell them that we shall see the heretic Weber shortly?”

The Abbot grimaced. “I will have to speak to my people. They are a varied lot, from many backgrounds. They are not perhaps as united in purpose as are your friends.”

Calumn nodded, with an easy smile that failed to encroach much on his eyes. “Of course, sir, of course. But, I pray you, remember we are all on the same side—His own side. You wouldn’t want us to have a disagreement over this.”

“I am sure many would regret it.” Leszek took a deep breath. “Do widzenia, Reverend Calumn. I am sure we will speak again shortly.”

As he spoke, Edward had leant in to murmur in the preacher’s ear, and the American nodded unhappily.

“Sir, there is one other matter: that woman who stands beside you, you’ll know she’s a confederate of this man Weber?”

“That is known to me, yes.”

“Well I’m sure that she has told you many slanderous things about the Order and its cause. Perhaps she hasn’t told you that she’s a murderer. The blood of Christ’s soldiers is on her hands.”

I may have neglected to mention it. She had not thought of the man in the tent, whom she had knifed when freeing Emil, for what seemed like an age. Now she saw the Abbot look sidelong at her, with a slight twitch of his eyebrow.

“It is true that this has not been said to me,” he confirmed.

“I don’t doubt it, sir,” Calumn stated. “I’d urge you to weigh that fact, when you listen to her lies. I have no doubt she’s a follower of the same Satanic cause as Weber himself.”

It seemed that Edward wanted to press for more—probably for Katy to be handed over—but Calumn cut him off with a sharp gesture, and then the Order delegation were trekking back to their camp, and she and Leszek were returning towards the walls of Jasna Góra.

CHAPTER SIX

DINNER AND INQUISITION

KATY FOUND HERSELF not quite a captive, when they returned, but most certainly not free to wander. She was back in what she had taken for either a stately home or a prison, but which she now understood to be the actual monastery building that Jasna Góra was built around. It didn’t seem to quite be fulfilling that function now, despite the presence of an Abbot. Instead, it seemed to house a surprising number of people, of all ages and both genders, all of whom had a great deal to be getting on with. She wandered the limited fraction of the building she could access—always with someone or other dogging her shoulder—and saw carding, weaving, cooking, cleaning, even teaching: a class of children repeating by rote something in Polish, that might have been doctrine or trigonometry, for all Katy knew.

She did catch various scraps of a running discussion between Paul, Tomasz and Karel as to how they might go about making a sortie to attack the Order camp, if it came to it. The topic turned sour towards evening and she gathered further reinforcements had arrived for the Reverend Calumn and his martial flock. It was evident that the fighting compliment of Jasna Góra was not large.

Later, Jenna tracked her down again. “Do you wish to go to the service, now?”

Katy blinked at her. “As in a church service?”

“Yes.”

“I guess you’re all avid churchgoers around here,” Katy remarked, and then had to restate the sentiment so that Jenna could follow.

“Before the dying started, I would take any excuse to avoid going to church,” the woman told her solemnly. “Even on a Sunday. Now... now things are different. It is what binds us together.”

Just like the black cross binds the Order, thought Katy sourly. “You just go ahead. My family were about as unreligious as it’s possible to be while still being Jewish, but I reckon becoming Catholic’s still a step too far, personally.”

Jenna shrugged. “Our smith, Hamid, he comes, and he’s hardly taken the sacrament, but it’s your choice. After that, the Abbot has requested to dine with you, and your friend, too. He wants to decide what to do with you.”

THE ABBOT’S QUARTERS were lit by candles and rank-smelling lanterns, and a single bright star of electric light that seemed somewhat less miraculous when Katy discovered someone had to wind it briskly every quarter of an hour to keep it shining.

There were just the three of them at the table, although no doubt a dozen tough survivalist monks were within earshot waiting for the call. Besides, the Abbot could have broken both his guests over his knee without breaking a sweat. Underlit by the jumping flames of candles, his face had a positively villainous caste to it.

The fare was coarse bread, beer, pickled cabbage and slices of heavily cured sausage that Katy stared at mournfully but could not bring herself to touch, no matter what she had said to Jenna about her upbringing. Emil had gone right for it, but then stuttered to a halt under the Abbot’s stern gaze, and fumed silently while the man said a quiet grace.

“I trust we do not fail as hosts,” Leszek addressed them, when at last he had allowed them to fall to eating.

Emil’s look was baleful but his mouth was full, and so Katy said, “What is this place? Who are these people? And why is this city and Wrocław, why are they so deserted?”

The Abbot smiled slightly. “It’s not so, west of here, then? Perhaps not. East of here as well, no doubt. What can I say? This is the monastery of Jasna Góra. For a lot of people, in the world we once knew, this place was Poland. This was the heart of our land, and every believer would make a pilgrimage here, at least once in their lives. How is that, Doctor Weber? You have come to shelter in the very bosom of the church!” The Abbot’s smile was mischievous. “This place was freedom from oppression, from conquest. I should tell you about the Deluge, some time—no, not the Biblical flood, Doctor Weber, but our own local tide of destruction—that broke against the walls that stood here, and came no further. But enough of that. Today, Jasna Góra is no more and no less than you see. Because of its place in the hearts of so many, many came here after the great dying began. Many have stayed: we take those who will teach or who will learn.”

“And who will pray,” Emil noted flatly. Katy tried to kick him under the table, but could not reach.

“The Reverend Calumn had much to say about you, Doctor Weber,” Leszek noted. “You and he are old enemies, I think?”

“I took him down a few pegs, when he dared to come on German television with his particular brand of nonsense,” Emil said hotly. “His absurd lies about the age of the earth, about ‘God’s plan,’ so he said. I took every argument and tore it apart, him, and some fool of a chemist who’d defected to the Intelligent Design camp, and I think there was a Bishop of some place I can’t even remember, one of your co-religionists. I took them all on.”

“Emil,” Katy snapped warningly.

His eyes found hers and for a moment he struggled with himself, but in the end he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Miss Lewkowitz. Feel free to disassociate yourself from everything I say.” He tore a loaf of bread in half, savagely. “Abbot Leszek, I have lived my entire life believing only in those things which can be demonstrated, consistently, by scientific method. I have fought tirelessly against quacks, charlatans, homeopaths, fraudulent psychics and men of the church, any church, who believe they have the right to insist that people honour and respect their stale dogma simply because some primitive fool wrote some lies down millennia before—” Just then, Katy, by dint of hunching half under the table, managed to connect with his ankle, cutting him off, and he glared at her. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “This is the only confession you’ll get from me, Abbot. I will eat no wafers, I will mouth no platitudes. Not even if it means my life.”

The Abbot’s hooded gaze regarded him for a few long seconds. “You are ready to be martyred for your unbelief.”

“Mock all you want,” Emil said fiercely, although he drew his legs up as he said it. “I am not a brave man. I am not a strong man. But I have my limits.”

The Abbot ate a little in silence then, as Katy tried and failed to catch Emil’s eye. At last, he said, “The Reverend Calumn claims that you have been trying to undo, as he says, God’s work.”

Emil scowled. “That... barbarian. Before he and his brigands destroyed my laboratory and murdered my fellows, we had been trying to understand the method by which the blood-disease operated: how was it made—for believe me it was made, not sent by any man’s God. How does it kill? Why are some blood groups unaffected? How might it be prevented?”

Leszek made a dismissive little gesture. “And yet the deaths happened. Or are you also researching a conveyance for going backwards in time?”

“Emil—!” Katy tried again, but the scientist stood up abruptly, knocking his chair over with a thunderous bang.

“You don’t understand!” he snapped. “You’re as blind as Calumn, as any of them!” He was angrier now, at this affront to science, than personal threats or insults ever made him. “Perhaps you truly believe that every living thing came into this Earth in its current shape, unchanging and designed, but it is not so! Life changes, Abbot Leszek. And if natural life changes, so does the artificial plague that human hands have unleashed upon it. What happens when the disease mutates so that the surviving blood type is not immune, tell me? What happens then, when a further, say, seventy percent of the surviving human race dies off? If we are to survive, we must develop a means of countering this thing before natural selection selects for it and against us!”

Big Karel and a stocky, short-haired woman had burst in, but Emil hardly seemed to notice them, even the pistol the woman had aimed at his head. He was breathing heavily, like an athlete just off the track. The candlelight caught the glint of tears in his eyes. “It’s not over,” he said hoarsely. “Life is never over. If human life, with all that it has created and discovered, is to survive, then we need the rational power of scientific thought more now than ever. Superstition and blind ritual will kill us all.”

The Abbot had barely reacted to the tirade, and now he waved the guards away with the smallest of gestures. Another motion of his hand sufficed to get Emil to right his chair and sit down again.

“To return to Miss Lewkowitz’s original question,” he said, as though Emil hadn’t spoken at all, “when the Cull came to these lands, there were many among the survivors who formed communities and had plans for the future. Given where we are, not a few of these were men of the cloth, or otherwise devotees of the Mother Church. Others were not: there were warlords, little parliaments, men who set themselves up as the ziemianie, the nobility of old. And there was fighting, and hardship. Many who survived the plague starved, or died from other infections. It seemed that mere chaos and human dissent would finish what the disease had started.

“But matters fell out that the leaders of all these communities could meet even though they did not trust each other. Here, they could meet. There was a summit, within these walls. They travelled many miles, some of them, to be here. Jasna Góra casts a long shadow.”

“I don’t believe it,” Emil broke in bluntly. “Or are you telling me someone kept the Polish cellphone network up somehow?”

“There was a way. Not as fast as all the modern conveniences we remember, but more reliable, more resilient. Sometimes the old ways are the best. But they came. Because the church called, if no other reason, they came. Many of the local leaders held sway because the survivors had come to the church in their time of need.” His lips twitched at Emil’s immediate sneer. “I wonder how matters might have gone, if you had found yourself at that gathering. Everyone there was frightened, as you can imagine. Anyone who had an answer—a future they had foreseen—they had an audience. People wanted to be told what to do.”

“That is an old excuse for the abuse of power,” Emil said curtly.

“And you can imagine some of the futures that were described. Yes, there were enough who wanted to revive the fortunes of the church, to return these lands to a time when religious law was a rod of iron. There were many ready to drive out any who refused to obey the strictures of the Mother Church. They argued that this was a new dawn, an opportunity literally God-given. If Reverend Calumn had been present, he would have found more than one kindred spirit in that gathering.

“And there were others who saw in this catastrophe the moment for our pride to resurface. They flew the red and white flag, or the eagle of old, and they told us that this was when Poland must be reclaimed for the Poles—that foreign influence must be cast out, hounded from our borders. Whichever borders they were using: we have had a remarkable variety over the years, depending on who was drawing the maps. There were great dreams, in those days. There were men who ruled communities of a thousand, two thousand people, wanting to re-establish the Commonwealth, each seeing himself king of a land that stretched from Berlin to Moscow, seeing himself Pope of a Polish Rome. There were men who had made themselves warlords, dreaming of becoming Emperors out of Warsaw, out of Poznań, gathering the desperate and the lost to themselves.”

There was something in the Abbot’s face. The candle-flame gleamed on it as though burning those past days like so many old newspapers. Even Emil had no words to take the moment from him.

“But other voices were heard,” Leszek said, at last. “There were some men—and yes, men of the cloth—who held their own council, and framed their own future. I cannot say that I was the leading voice, but mine was amongst them.”

“And you expect me to believe it was all peace, love and understanding?” Emil asked acidly.

“That is what Christ preached, after all,” the Abbot said softly, and in bringing his voice down, he seemed to summon silence into the room, that only his words could break. “But also this: each of these other futures relied on drawing borders: the church and the heathen; Poland and those who were not Polish; us and them. And so it was said: have you not seen what has happened to the world? Is it not the case, that every one amongst us knows more who have gone to God, than remain? Do you think we shall prosper, by drawing these divisions, and driving away those we see as not like us? And as for building empires—whether united by church or nationality or the size of a man’s shoe... these are dreams. These can be nothing but dreams. I am aware of what is going on west of here: the Order are not even the only warmongers whose names have come to us, and to the east there are more Tsars and Khans, more Alexanders and Peters and Terrible Ivans than I can count. And they shall pass, all of them. They shall pass, because while they make war and steal from one another and from those weaker than they, they build nothing. They do not plant, nor do their harvest. They see only their own tomorrows. Their ambition is to be the king of mankind’s ruin for a handful of years, and then pass from history, leaving the world only poorer. Those who seek to restore or even to maintain the dreams of yesteryear shall accomplish nothing, save to lessen the common lot of mankind. We cannot be the nations of old, any more than we can be the empires of ancient history, the heroes of myth. This we saw, when the clamour of voices in these halls reached its peak.”

“So what did you tell them?” Katy asked, in the hush that followed. “What was your solution?”

“Leave the cities,” Leszek revealed, “for the cities will not feed you; the cities will grow nothing but plague as the water turns foul, as the survivors live on top of one another and in each other’s filth. Poland has more than enough land for every man and woman to till the earth. Leave the cities and go to the villages, the farms. Learn what you can of the old ways, for the years of industry, of electricity and wonders, are dead or dying, and they will not return in our lifetimes. And although there were some who would not hear us, who returned to their strongholds to plot the conquest or conversion of the world, the majority came to see things as we did. And so anyone who could shoe a horse or tan leather, work wood or draw a bow, they were invited to come here, where their skills could be taught, passed on. And for the rest, so long as they can be a good neighbour, there will always be a place for them.”

“So your local warlords who aren’t good neighbours...?” Katy prompted, seeing that Emil had lapsed into sullen silence.

“Those who shared our dream helped one another. And those who chose instead to hold to their own dreams of exclusion and elitism, they did not. And there are not so many of them left, now. Now that the petrol is used up. Now that they must count each bullet for the guns they love. What was it that Goering said? ‘Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat’? It was the death knell of the old fascists—you can have all the guns in the world and starve from lack of butter.”

“So what this boils down to...” Emil started, and then looked at the Abbot with a curious expression, hostile and plaintive all at once.

“Is we will not hand you to the builders of Empire, either of you,” Leszek finished. “Jasna Góra will hold out against the invader, as it has before. We will weather this Deluge as with all the others.”

“And I?” Emil demanded.

Leszek spread his hands in a beatific gesture. “Welcome to the bosom of the Mother Church, Doctor Weber. I’m sure we’ll find some use for you.”

PART TWO

BRINGING THE STORM

CHAPTER SEVEN

THOSE WHO DEFEND

JENNA CASIMIR LEANT on the wall top, watching the soldiers of the Order. Since the Cull, the walls of Jasna Góra had been sporadically re-edified whenever there had been people without more urgent tasks at hand. Nobody had the skills or the materials to do the fortifications justice, and so what had been put up was mostly a motley of doors: front doors, interior doors, car doors, along with sundry pieces of wood and the like that could be spared from the cooking fires. The monastery had inherited people who knew their history, and a lot of the bigger pieces had arrowslits sawed into them, which was just as well, since the monastery boasted more archers than gunmen.

The Order had waited a day for Emil Weber to be handed back to them, after which they had begun offensive manoeuvres. By that time they looked to have around a hundred under arms in their camp in the car park. If Weber was as important as they’d said to the Abbot, then doubtless there were more on the way. Nobody was quite sure how many roving bully-boys the New Teutons could field, but Katy Lewkowitz claimed there had been a couple of hundred just in the camp she had sprung Weber from. Likely there were three times as many—have gun, will travel—able to drive the vacated roads from the border to Jasna Góra.

The total fighting strength of the defenders was about the equal of the mob currently at the gates, certainly not enough to make any sortie into the barrels of their guns an attractive prospect.

That first day, the enemy had simply scouted out the place. They had been given a look at the main entrance, the John Paul II gate, but there were other ways in. To the side, two narrower paths climbed to the Jagiellonian Gate, that had been solidly barricaded, and that a handful could defend. Everywhere else was similarly barred, so that anyone who didn’t want to have to make an assault straight up the wall was going to have to try the ramp and the gate.

There had been a few shots exchanged, on the next day. Men with rifles had tried to make the defenders’ lives difficult, but they had few targets, and from the bottom of the gradient, they were out-ranged. Still, there had been little return fire from the walls.

“We want them overconfident now, before there are enough of them that they can afford to be,” she explained, for Katy Lewkowitz’s benefit. Weber’s sidekick was a minefield of questions about Jasna Góra, and it was Jenna that she tended to dog.

“Why not just gun them down?” Katy wanted to know. “Every one you can.”

“You’re a bloodthirsty one, aren’t you?” Jenna noted. “This is not a good range, for them or for us. Shoot now, we waste most of our bullets. We don’t have so many. Neither do they, we hope, but we can make arrows and they cannot manufacture ammunition.”

“Back where I was, people used bows to hunt. Hunt rabbit, that is,” Katy stated. “You seem to think they’re a weapon of war.”

Jenna gave her a frank look that hopefully concealed how annoying she found that sort of talk. “When it comes to it, you’ll see. Probably the Order think the same as you. I hope so.”

“But who... who are you people, to sit here turning the clock back a thousand years? Shouldn’t you be... trying to preserve everything you can of our world?”

“Why, yes, every evening we gather in the refectory and re-enact reality television shows so that future generations will know the beauty of the art of the ancient world,” Jenna told her acidly, but she said it in Polish, which the girl didn’t speak a word of. More patiently, she went on, “I was one of the first to come here, after the Cull. I was nearby, with Tomasz and Karel and some others of ours who survived. Most of our friends died. Most of the monks had died. Leszek gave us a place, and he could use our skills.” Seeing the inevitable question bubbling up on the other woman’s face she went on. “They call it ‘living history.’ We would get together at places like this, places of great heritage, and we would re-enact battles and do crafts and show how people lived. For some it was a hobby, for others, study. These skills we are teaching, they were a thing of academic interest once. Now they have saved many, many lives: they clothe people, feed people, prepare people for the simpler lives we must lead.”

“Re-enactors,” Katy repeated leadenly, with a clear, unspoken who I am trusting my life to? “You must be loving this.”

“Really?” Jenna gave her a level look. “It was a game we played. I was a film extra, for money—over in the Czech Republic, mostly. I got a lot of work because I was a good rider. They were always doing historical epics, cut-price Tolkien pieces. I loved the internet. I loved television. I loved my family and friends, most of whom are all dead. So no, I am not loving this. I am surviving this, and helping others. That is what I am doing.” She brushed over the mumbled apologies. “And what do you do, Miss Lewkowitz?”

“I’ve done some medical work, if you have supplies...” A panicked look came over her face. “I don’t know crap about how they used to do that back when, what, Galen was around, so—”

“We have some painkillers, anaesthetics, antibiotics,” Jenna broke in. “Get it in your head: we’re not wilfully ignorant. We’re facing the fact that nobody is making these things anymore.”

There was a staccato crackle of gunfire and everyone around them froze for just a moment. Jenna leant out a little and her eyes narrowed.

“Right. I think we’re going to see their teeth. Hamid!”

The dark man who had been serving as smith earlier bounded over to her. He was a big, broad character with an easy smile, but unless he was some deadly martial artist he did not look ready to fight anyone.

“Go down the wall to Paul. Make sure he’s seen this. Then get Lewkowitz to the medics in case she’s any use.”

THE ORDER HAD three score soldiers mustering to advance along the bridge. Tomasz Osinski rested his binoculars on the wall top, seeing a good showing of rifles—sports guns, a few nasty-looking hunting pieces, a handful of ex-military automatic weapons. The Order had certain priorities, he guessed. They rated being well-armed more highly than being well-fed the year after next. The Abbot’s strategies—which had become their common strategies—were longer term: years and decades. Of course, to win in the long term you had to survive in the short term.

He had gone against the Abbot’s orders only once. Just a month after their community at Jasna Góra had got its direction—a month after everything had started working out—he and Paul had piled into a flatbed truck they still had fuel for and taken off for a place Tomasz remembered from his army days. He had done his time in the services, when not playing at being a medieval archer or a renaissance hussar. He had worn the blue beret and driven armoured vehicles and been spat on in fifteen different languages for trying to make things better. He had decided he was owed something, for all that.

The details of what he and Paul had done had stayed out there, where they had gone, or at least no word of it had yet crept to the walls of Jasna Góra, save in Tomasz’s own confession. They had not been the only ones trying to lay claim to the quartermaster’s stores, that was for certain.

They had come back to the monastery with a handful of rifles, ammunition, grenades, some armour vests. They had come back and stood before the Abbot and borne the brunt of his anger: that they would just go off and do such a thing without asking. Because Tomasz believed in his heart that the Abbot was a good man, and a wise man; but sometimes wisdom needed help from fools.

The word was already going out, to gather the bulk of the defenders on this wall. There would be enough eyes around to keep watch in case this was a diversion.

He hefted his own bow. He could have had his pick of the modern weapons, but there was a sense in his arms and in his mind when he drew the string back, that spoke to him as a gun never could. He had joined the army for the same reason he had taken up with the living history mob. He was a man who had always been lost in time: all the complexities of the lost modern world had eddied around him, understood but incapable of connecting with him. He might have become a drug addict, he might have become a killer. He had skated near the edge during psychological assessments in the army. It was just as well that Katy Lewkowitz never got round to accusing him that he was loving what the world had come to. In his heart he would know that she was right.

The Order made their move towards the John Paul II gate. There was a prolonged rattle of automatic fire as a handful of them opened up on the makeshift crenellations. At this range they could barely hit the walls like that, let alone anyone on them. Tomasz felt a moment of satisfaction. Military men would not be doing that: wasting ammunition on little more than noise.

He took a good view of them past his barricade, which had once been some suburban Częstochowan’s front door. A moment later he had the bowstring back by his ear and loosed a ranging shot, which arced high before it fell down amongst the enemy. He saw the shaft rebound from the tarmac, the Order soldiers scattering in momentary surprise. You are in reach, he thought, grinning to himself.

The enemy were advancing more cautiously. He let them have another few shafts, not really trying to hit anyone at this range, just amusing himself. A rifle bullet chipped the stone ten feet from him, sending some of his fellows ducking. He waited, and then waited some more, seeing the Order’s progress speed up as they covered more than half of the distance towards the gates.

Then he reckoned they were close enough, and yelled out the signal. In a ragged attempt at unison, two score archers, crossbowmen and snipers opened up, close enough now that at least a couple of the Order went down. The attackers grabbed what cover they could and returned fire, but there were too many of them crammed together down there, and they were bunching up more as their progress stalled. Tomasz just watched them; Paul would be dealing with the tactical work, passing along the wall and giving orders.

The Order stuck it out for another couple of minutes, unleashing a storm of ammunition against the walls. The defenders pot-shotted back at them, single shafts and shots, and the occasional short burst, just as Tomasz had taught. One of the defenders took a bullet through her upper arm. Another sprained his ankle coming up the steps to the wall too fast.

One, a former plumber from Wrocław, was killed. Tomasz did not see it happen, but the ripple of shock went down the wall, and he knew they had lost a defender long before the name came to him. Matteus Brodzinski, he was called. He had been with them for several years, a hard worker and a good man. Not the best of archers, though, and he had been leaning out, trying for a good shot after sending several shafts frustratingly wide. Whether enemy skill or his own poor luck had finished him, nobody could say. He had been shot in the chest and, by the time they had stumbled him down to the medics, he was in shock, heart pushed too far, past saving.

The Order had taken another handful of casualties by then, and abruptly they were on the retreat, entirely ignorant of the victory they had won over a forty-two-year-old former plumber. Tomasz watched them scurry away, taking their fallen, the odd arrow still falling amongst them. He drew his own string back, entirely still and steady and cold.

They were at the far end of the ramp, regrouping, arguing. He took a deep breath, held it, loosed.

The arrow leapt to the sun, then dropped back earthwards, lancing into the enemy even as they threw their recriminations. One man dropped, clutching at his leg, his thin cry just reaching Tomasz’s ears. Not a killing shot, but it was something to remember him by.

PAUL STEINARDT HAD checked in at the field hospital, assuring himself that Hamid was coping with the few injuries the first skirmish had turned up. The Lewkowitz woman was genuinely of use, apparently, which surprised him. She was trouble, by his estimation, and her friend the doctor was more so. Paul had a deep and abiding faith, not so much in God as in people. He believed in the Abbot and his comrades and the community that had built itself up in Jasna Góra. He would just as soon the outside world had not come to intrude.

But now it had, and his job was to soften the blow. While his opposite number Tomasz was out amongst the troops, clapping them on the shoulders and telling them they’d done well, Paul was counting. He counted the medical supplies after Hamid was done. He counted off the bullets the defenders had fired, the arrows loosed. He went to the fletchers and told them to make more, and from others within the monastery he asked for more bandages. He called up two dozen who had expressed an interest in learning to fight and told them their time was at hand, noting those whose expressions—now that fighting could easily mean dying as well—were suddenly less keen than they had been.

Then he went and made his report to the Abbot, finding him in his private chapel where the monastery’s greatest treasure had been set. Kneeling before Leszek, he heard a sound, and saw that the newcomer, Weber, was there too. The man was looking at the respect gesture as though it was a Satanic rite.

Paul did not want to report while Weber was present: the man was hardly going to betray them to their mutual enemies, but it still felt wrong. The Abbot had that expectant look on his face, though, so there was nothing for it. He rattled off his observations, his projections, the current numbers of the enemy, the weaknesses he saw in the monastery’s defences: nothing to worry about just yet, but depending on what the Order could muster... Paul was a worrier by nature. Back before the end of the world he had been a very successful civil lawyer, winning cases through meticulous preparation rather than impassioned rhetoric. Right now, someone who lost sleep over the small details was just what Jasna Góra needed.

“What supplies do you have?” Weber broke in.

Paul glared at him, but the Abbot seemed to think it a reasonable question from an outsider. “Of water, beer, wine, more than enough. Of food... Paul?”

Their monastery had cured meats, pickled vegetables, a small store of grain. Hundreds of people called Jasna Góra home, though, and until now the monastery had lived by actively trading skills and finished goods for food. That avenue was closed to them until the Order gave up or was decisively defeated.

“I have put some rationing in place,” he confirmed. “We can live for perhaps six weeks, I think, without resupply. After that... I need to recount the cans.” Years back they had harvested what canned goods could be found in Częstochowa. Paul had been meaning to inventory them for far too long. Now that unattended task called to him in a voice of pure guilt.

“I have faith in you,” the Abbot told him.

This seemed to annoy Weber no end. “And that’s it? Where does the faith go when you’ve run out of food?”

“We must hope that God will provide,” Leszek told him mildly. Paul caught his mischievous tone: the Abbot loved playing the Devil with people, and this Weber seemed exactly the type to have his tail pulled. The good doctor himself took the words at face value, sure enough, and seemed fit to explode. Seeing the Abbot in good spirits, despite all the grim news—despite having a funeral to attend—lent a great deal of heart to Jasna Góra’s quartermaster right then. But then, Leszek was always one to rise to a challenge, never in better spirits than when God had laden his shoulders.

The next morning, the Order unveiled its new weapon, and began an entirely different assault upon the monastery.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE LOUDHAILER WAR

MOST OF JASNA Góra’s complement were up with the dawn and so, the day after the abortive attack, she was woken rudely at daybreak by what seemed for a moment to be the voice of God. In those sleep-blurred minutes, if she had staggered outside to find a burning bush personally haranguing her, she would not have been remotely surprised.

But it was a human voice, though greatly magnified, and a voice she knew.

“Good people of Jasna Góra!” it trumpeted, echoing back off the walls, “I know you are a God-fearing and virtuous people at heart! You are those who have survived into the End Times, when so many of the wicked and the heathen have been cast down! You are those whom the Lord has chosen to build His New Jerusalem in this land, when it has at last been cleansed of evil!”

The Reverend Calumn, of course, but from the sound of it, he had grown forty feet tall and was looming over the monastery.

Katy struggled into some of the rough homespun that she had been given and staggered outside, blinking in the early light. The usual bustle of the place was stilled, everyone stopped in their tracks at this prodigy. She bumbled about, still bleary, before finding her way up onto the walls where she could see the Order camp.

There was the Reverend James Calumn, Jr, standing on top of a truck for greater stature and holding something to his mouth.

“I forgot he had a...” And she could not think of the word for ‘loudhailer’ in German.

It turned out she was overthinking it. “Lautsprecher,” Tomasz supplied. He stood beside her, arms folded, while Calumn went on praising the godliness of the denizens of Jasna Góra in a way that seemed uncharacteristically full of Christian meekness. Now, however, the worm of his rhetoric turned.

“People of Jasna Góra, you have been deceived. There is one among you, one to whom you are giving shelter, who is no friend of Jesus!” he warned direly. “You have taken within your walls a serpent, who wishes nothing more than to destroy all love of the Lord in this world, and remake it as a playground for the Devil, where nobody prays or worships, and where your faith would see you reviled and spat upon.”

“Uh-oh,” Katy murmured mildly. Tomasz just grunted.

“This man, this servant of Satan,” Calumn went on grandly, “he has beguiled your leaders into sheltering him from the Lord’s just retribution! But I tell you, it is not too late for you to do the Lord’s work, and give him up to justice. I speak of none other than the man Emil Weber—you will have seen him in the counsels of your leaders, I have no doubt. He is a creature of lies, an enemy of the Lord in every fibre of his being! He styles himself ‘doctor,’ but his only wish is to dismantle the Church of the Lord, to destroy its very foundations—your church, my church, all the churches of the world he has sworn to tear down.”

All of which would all be hilarious if it wasn’t fairly close to true. Katy ground her teeth. “How many of your people here know German?”

“Most know at least some,” Tomasz said flatly. “Those who don’t will ask those who do.”

Katy thought about all those people who, when the world was tottering on its axis, chose to flee to a monastery. How soon before they started making demands of the Abbot that Emil be thrown to the wolves? Probably before noon, by her estimation. And me, too. If he goes, I guess I probably get the boot as well.

“We need to do something,” she said, looking for agreement in Tomasz’s long face. What she found there was a calculating regard. He went to Mass like the rest of them, of course. She had made the mistake of thinking he was on her side.

“Tomasz.” For a moment she felt a stab of fear that he would throw her off the wall: ludicrous, but reflective of a greater and far more reasonable concern.

“It will be the Abbot’s decision.” And he was the Abbot’s man. What he might do, if he had command of Jasna Góra, he did not enlarge on.

CALUMN KEPT UP his vitriolic sermon for a good two hours, before retiring in obvious good spirits, his holy work done for the day.

The next day at dawn, he was back, dispelling any thought that his bullhorn had run out of batteries. Of all the miscellaneous pieces of technology to still be in working order, that squawking amplifier was fast overtaking guns and motorcycles as Katy’s least favourite. If Calumn had just been some hate-spreader, then she would not have minded so much: that kind of invective would have done more to unify the defenders than to split them. The Reverend was a strong and eloquent speaker, though. He quoted scripture readily and well; he had mastered an impassioned tone that made one imagine tears of love for the divine in his eyes. Worse, he had plenty of material to work with when it came to setting the devout against Emil Weber.

If Emil had been willing to bend even a little, then perhaps he and Katy could have fought some manner of rearguard action: he could have gone to church, mouthed a hymn, done a turn in the confessional, been baptised. He would not, though Katy argued ferociously with him. He would not fake devotion, any more than the most Catholic of the defenders would spit on a crucifix.

“This is who I am,” was all he would say.

The Reverend’s tirade continued for four mornings before the Abbot himself was forced to put in a showing on the walls. In that time, the attitude of many of the defenders had changed markedly towards both Emil and Katy. Black looks were given and backs were turned. Conversations stopped when they approached. Even those who were not so religious as to be swayed by Calumn’s rhetoric were being constantly reminded that the unwelcome visitors on their doorstep were entirely the fault of one man.

On the fifth morning, Katy found herself on the wall—she always did, as though her presence could somehow blunt the Reverend’s sermonising. She had looked at Tomasz, because he seemed like a good touchstone for the general mood. His expression had little welcome in it. He and Jenna had both grown subtly more distant as the verbal assault had continued, and Paul had never been friendly to begin with. Katy’s only unexpected ally was Karel, the ‘Golem of Prague,’ whose personal dislike for the Order outweighed any sectarian considerations. He would keep Emil safe for the sole reason that if you gave him a rope with the Order on the other end, he would pull in the opposite direction.

Calumn was in fine form that morning, speaking in glittering terms of the new Kingdom of God that was just over the horizon, if only the last of the wicked was purged from the Earth. To hear him, Emil might actually be that last sinner, whose death alone would usher in the golden age of piety and plenty.

“Can’t you shoot him?” The words got out before she had properly vetted them. Tomasz glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

“With your bow,” she added unnecessarily. “They keep putting that truck closer. I saw you get an arrow that far when they came.”

He kept on looking at her, and she had a sudden sense of herself through his eyes: the stranger in their midst, advocating bloodshed against...

“A man of God,” she finished the thought. “Is that it?”

Whatever Tomasz might have answered she never knew, for, a moment later, the Abbot was up beside them, staring out over the wall’s edge. Tomasz’s whole attitude changed immediately, though Katy suspected the man didn’t realise it. He was, abruptly, all dutiful attention.

Abbot Leszek stared down at Calumn as the Reverend’s amplified voice washed over him. His weathered face was expressionless. Two or three times, Katy made to speak to him, but his forbidding demeanour put her off.

At last he straightened up, rubbing his hands together to dispel the chill of the morning. He made a sidelong remark to Tomasz in Polish, and the lean man’s lips twitched a little before he replied.

A moment later, Tomasz was off, perhaps on some errand the Abbot had just given him. If Katy had hoped to see him come back with a quiver of arrows to make target practice of the Reverend, though, she was disappointed.

A moment later she had the heart-freezing thought that perhaps he had been sent to get Emil.

“What did you tell him to do?” she demanded. The look the Abbot turned on her was veiled, but she thought there was just a tweak of humour about his eyes.

“I only said, so much of a nuisance this is,” he remarked, and then: “Miss Lewkowitz, you and Doctor Weber will dine with me tomorrow evening, if you please.”

THE NEXT MORNING, she was jolted awake by the loudhailer again, just the same. She spent a minute cursing Calumn under her breath in English, German and Yiddish, as inventively as the hour allowed, before realizing that something had changed.

She lurched out as usual into the unwelcome proximity of dawn, the walls of Jasna Góra’s buildings ringing with words boosted to the echo. This time she did not know the words, though. The Reverend Calumn’s smooth German had been replaced with...

Polish? she wondered. Has he been visited by the Gift-of-Tongues fairy in the night, or... But, of course, it wasn’t Calumn’s voice. Now she was fully awake, she recognised the Abbot’s tones, whatever language he was speaking.

He was up on the wall, and she couldn’t get up there to join him because most of Jasna Góra had turned out for him, and she was just one more in the crowd. He was up there, with Paul and a handful of others keeping a watchful eye out towards the Order’s camp, and he was conducting some kind of service. Through a loudhailer. Through the Reverend Calumn’s loudhailer, to be specific.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, to nobody in particular. A moment later she was looking around the crowd, searching for one face.

There was Tomasz, at the crowd’s edge, and she approached him almost angrily.

“You, you did this,” she accused him.

He turned his cool look on her, raising his eyebrows. For a moment he almost had her, that she was mistaken, that the whole thing was some larcenous miracle the Abbot had brought about. Then she saw the traces of paint about his face, a little white caught in his stubble and eyebrows, and gritting his hairline. There was only one reason that Tomasz Olinski of Jasna Góra would be going about in whiteface, and it wasn’t mime.

“You did this,” she repeated, almost wondering, and at last his lips quirked a little. Even with that confirmation, she could not imagine how the business had been accomplished.

BEING HELD IN high regard by Katy Lewkowitz was not something that Tomasz had been seeking, particularly, but he had to admit that seeing the sour woman impressed was a pleasant bonus. A nod from Abbot Leszek had been the main reward for his night’s work, that and his own personal satisfaction at the exercise of his skills. A little baffled admiration from the English girl couldn’t hurt, though.

He had told only Jenna about the scheme: he needed someone watching for him on the wall, and he knew he could talk her into helping him without her trying to dissuade him or insisting on coming too.

Back before the fall, he had been a man without an idle moment in his life. The time his squad mates had spent drinking and watching movies and arguing about the football, he had used to recapture the skills of a lost past. He had not known at the time that he was also honing the skills of a terrible, devastated future. As well as archery and medieval longsword work, he had beaten every climbing wall he had ever seen, could hit a bull’s eye with a thrown knife and pick a lock like a master cracksman. None of these skills had ever been of use to him, back then. Simply knowing that he could was the point; that and finding new theatres to test himself in. Life had never challenged Tomasz in the way that he had wanted. He had been forced to up the stakes on his own.

So, with Jenna on the wall top with a rope in case he needed to get back up quickly, he had descended the wall of Jasna Góra by hand, face painted up in the monochrome livery of the Order.

He had spied out their camp by the light of their own fires, noting that their discipline was not of the best, their watchmen were too thinly spaced, and few of them had their minds on the task. After all, the people of Jasna Góra had made no move against them. Any initial vigilance had been worn away by inaction.

Reconnaissance accomplished, he had found the weakest point in their perimeter and crept in. Once inside, it had been a matter of walking with the confidence of an Order soldier within his own camp. There were few about, and nobody challenged him.

The morning before, he had taken a glass and, at the end of the Reverend’s sermon, seen exactly which tent the man had retired to.

The next step had worried him: something he could not readily plan for. Perhaps the Reverend would be up late entertaining? Perhaps he was a light sleeper, woken by every sound or his own nightmares?

But the Order camp was hardly silent—even past midnight, there was plenty of murmur, laughter and argument from the tents. More, there were a good many empty bottles stacked fastidiously outside Calumn’s personal domain. Abstinence was nowhere near godliness, it appeared. Tomasz could probably have brought Karel along to search the man’s tent, without any fear of waking the Lord’s chosen.

He had stood over the sleeping Reverend then, loudhailer in one hand, the other itching for a hilt. If it was just me... because Tomasz was bitterly aware that there were key parts of being a Christian that ran against his natural instincts, and that he had to fight them down on a regular basis. In another life, he knew, he might have been a different and darker man, perhaps even worn the facepaint for real.

Even now, listening to the Abbot speak, feeling the tension in his fellows unwinding after five days of Calumn’s proselytising, he wondered if he might regret staying his hand.

KATY HAD EXPECTED the Abbot’s table to be somewhat plainer than before, as Paul’s rationing measures began to bite. Instead, she was treated to an abundance: meat, fruit, fresh vegetables. It was all they could not preserve, she realised. The monastery had salted and dried and pickled everything it could. This bounty was to be enjoyed now, or it would pass beyond the reach of men into rot. The thought made her shiver: rationalist though she was, she had begun to see omens everywhere.

The Abbot had called all of his officers to the table this time, and whilst she saw Emil mirroring her own gloom, everyone else seemed in great high spirits, as though the theft of a bullhorn signalled the end for the Order.

They all took their places: she saw Jenna joking with Tomasz—he shaking his head and grinning at some suggestion of hers. There was Karel, already munching on an apple even before anyone had been served, and Paul was bringing in platters of food along with an older woman Katy didn’t know. Another woman—Anya or something like that, she seemed to be in charge of various weavers and makers—was knitting determinedly at the table: what looked like a child-sized glove. Hamid was next to her, passing on a wine bottle without pouring a glass. Katy made a beeline to grab the seat on the other side of him: he was something of an outsider himself, and so he made her feel less alone.

Emil had taken the place at the far end of the long table from the Abbot himself, which had probably been intended as a way of staying out of the limelight, but had the unfortunate result of putting him in prime debating position. Or perhaps that had been his intent all along. By then, everyone else was finding a seat, the air filled with chatter in Polish and German. A single place was left empty when everyone was settled, like a reverse game of musical chairs. For a moment, Katy wondered if this was some remembrance of the dead thing they did. Was that a Catholic tradition? She had absolutely no idea.

Then, just as the Abbot was lifting his hands to call for quiet, a woman slipped in, peeling back a fur-trimmed leather coat: Magdayeva in the flesh. Katy stood up abruptly, feeling an unexpected flash of delight. She hadn’t thought to see the woman again since she rode off.

“How did you get in past the Order?” she asked, belatedly aware that everyone else had gone quiet, so that her voice rang out across the room like an actor’s declamation.

Magdayeva smiled a little. “Not so hard, not on foot for one,” she said. Her eyes flicked to the Abbot and she muttered something in Polish. Katy had the impression she had come to speak to him, and had not expected to walk in on a formal gathering.

Leszek’s reply was obviously later, and at his gesture, she took the last seat, fidgeting through the Abbot’s sonorous grace. It was a strange, exclusive feeling, to see most of the heads bowed sincerely as the litany washed over them, while Emil scowled, and Hamid kept a polite smile on his face.

She had asked the smith, just the day before, what had brought him to Jasna Góra, the stronghold of another faith. He was Turkish, she learned. He had been an archaeology postgrad, working with the living history crowd on a doctoral thesis comparing European and Middle Eastern metalworking.

“Didn’t expect I’d need to do it,” he had told her wryly. “But these days—no, those days—if you studied the past, they expected you to recreate it. That’s where the grant money was.” He had a good line in self-effacing grins.

With grace apparently said, everyone set to work on the food with relish, and for a while there was no sound but chewing and the occasional request for one dish or another. Katy ate too, feeling somehow as though she was stealing, an imposter at the feast.

“Now, Doctor Weber,” the Abbot said at last, and Katy’s heart sank as the table quietened. “I have been having some thoughts on your future.”

Emil’s jaw stopped moving, and then he forcibly swallowed. “Oh?” he got out, tensing up. Cued by his mistrust, for a moment Katy expected the Reverend Calumn to sweep in like Darth Vader to take possession of him.

“I understand that there are men and women of education who have come together near Kraków,” Leszek went on genially. “They have what there is of the university there. They would be interested to continue your researches.”

Emil’s expression was still eminently wary. “Is that so?”

“You are not enthusiastic, Doctor Weber,” the Abbot noted, and Katy could see that he was amusing himself at Emil’s expense. “When it is safe for you to leave here, is this not what you want?”

“Under whose auspices is this team working?” Emil demanded. Everyone else at the table was looking from one speaker to the other, plainly not sure where this was going. “Or can I guess? This is your church?”

Leszek smiled. “I do not think the church exists as you imagine it, in our new world, but these men are men of faith, yes, as well as of science.”

Katy almost put her head in her hands at that, because scientists who ‘defected,’ as Emil had it, were the Doctor’s particular hatred. Tact, please, Emil; tact, she thought, as though she could crowbar the words into his head by telepathy.

The expected explosion did not come. Emil took a deep breath and occupied himself with a piece of carrot until he could say, with clipped decorum, “You will forgive me for saying that I have never observed faith to be the friend of science.”

Leszek took no offence at that, for which Katy was glad, for plainly most people at the table would follow wherever he led. “I correct you, Doctor Weber. For many centuries there were few men of science who were not men of faith. After the fall of the Romans, what learning there was, in the lands of Europe, was a flame kept alight by the church. To know the workings of the world was to know God.”

Emil was about to hotly dispute as much of that as he could, but the Abbot put a hand up, that mild gesture that was a cast-iron injunction when he wished it to be. His sleeve slipped a little as he did it, and Katy was startled to see a mess of scars about the wrist. Pretty sure the church is against that.

“Until these difficulties are ended, no answer can be given,” Leszek said, “but I wish you to know the choice you have. You would be welcome in Kraków; you would be honoured for your learning, and assisted in your quest for the good of all. There is nothing in the Saviour’s teachings to disapprove of that. But you would be living under God’s roof, whether you believe in Him or not. That is the choice you will have to make.”

“You would test me?” Emil asked him, belligerently.

“Test, tempt.” The Abbot shrugged easily. “As you will. Perhaps God wishes to see the manner of the man you are.”

Emil’s fuse was well and truly lit, and so Katy jumped in to stop him saying anything unwise, or possibly blasphemous.

“These men in Kraków, Abbot. How did you hear of them?”

Leszek turned his challenging smile on her. “Perhaps, mysterious ways, Miss Lewkowitz?”

She took a deep breath. Here was something she had been wondering whether to throw at him, and now probably wasn’t the time, but: “I’d believe you have a radio.”

The table went quite quiet, even Emil stilled in mid-splutter, so she pressed on, “You were saying that there were ways you had, of communities talking to each other, and I was thinking... and seriously, once I started looking, I saw it: there’s an aerial right outside this room, or maybe it’s the next room here, your chambers. It’s new—not something from before the Cull. It’s been bolted on too roughly for that.”

Into the silence that followed, Paul muttered, “It was a good job of work,” which served to defuse any tension that had been growing.

“You must have batteries, a transmitter,” Katy pushed on. “So... all your little villages and farms have them? How is that even possible?” She had begun to wonder if all this medieval-ness was a sham, and that they were hiding some high-tech survival beneath the woollens and the chainmail.

But Leszek shook his head. “You’re very observant, Miss Lewkowitz. And yes, we have a transmitter. No batteries, though.”

“Then how...?”

At a look from the Abbot, Paul spoke up. “When we wish to use it, we have to wind a lot of handles. Our only way of powering it is...”—he mimed turning a crank—“dynamo. However, many of the other communities have radios they can listen with—wind-up ones, again. They’re all UN-issue, meant to be distributed wherever the troops went. They receive very well. There are transmitters also at Kraków, and a place outside Warsaw. Two others that are mobile.” Another glance to Leszek, for a permission that was given, and he added, “This is not mostly how we talk, though. Too few transmitters, too hard to use and maintain.”

“Then how?” Emil broke in. His annoyance was completely gone; he was fascinated.

“Magdayeva, of course,” Leszek explained, bringing all attention back to the horsewoman.

CHAPTER NINE

THOSE THAT BESIEGE

AND OF COURSE everyone else at the table knew the story, and conversation turned to other topics, and so it was that Katy and Emil found themselves that evening in the Abbot’s own quarters, along with Leszek and Magdayeva, and the secret came out.

“When the plague came,” Leszek started, and then shrugged. “You know how it was. It was the same everywhere. You tell me, Doctor Weber, this is a thing made by human hands. That is a thing I wish to believe, far more than the Reverend Calumn’s divine judgment.” He took up a half-bottle of wine that he had somehow saved from the meal, and poured out four small glasses.

“But it did not lay an even hand on everyone, that we discovered,” he added. “Some there were, who lost fewer, though all lost some.” Seeing Emil regarding the wine dubiously, he added, “This is lay alcohol, Doctor Weber. It will not become the blood of Christ.”

Emil drank very little by habit, but he obviously took that as a challenge, for he downed the glass.

“Amongst those who suffered less were Magdayeva’s people.”

“The Roma,” Katy put in, and Leszek nodded.

“It’s possible,” Emil allowed. “There were reports, before we stopped getting reports, that some ethnicities were more resistant to the Cull. Certain blood types, yes, but also genetic markers that promoted a resistance to the disease. It was what we were working on when...” He blinked, ambushed by memories.

“When.” The word from Leszek bestowed finality, releasing him from having to put the deaths of his colleagues into words. “Yes, the Roma, or at least some families of them, were left far more intact than most of us. So it was that, when emissaries from across Poland gathered here, they were greatly represented.”

“I imagine that might have become ugly,” Emil said. “Antiziganism was alive and well in Germany, at least, before the Cull.”

“England, too,” Katy put in, remembering hysterical headlines in the tabloids from her youth.

Leszek shared a look with Magdayeva, a window onto shared tribulations past. “Yes, well,” he said, after a thoughtful pause, “I will not lie. That there were those who, despite all that had been lost, still wished to have nothing to do with the Roma, that is true. That there were Roma who wanted to shun the Gadzie, this also. That there were those who claimed the Roma had brought the plague, had carried it from town to town, yes.”

“And some of those from within the church?” Emil put in archly.

“Magdayeva is a good Catholic, and so are most of her kin... but yes. I am ashamed for it, but yes,” Leszek said frankly. “But in the end the last voices speaking were those arguing Christ’s message, to love our neighbours. And arguing reason, Doctor Weber.”

“Because there were too many of them to push around?”

“Because we needed them, and they needed us,” Leszek explained. “The settled and the travelling. The Roma cannot grow or harvest as settled farmers can; we cannot travel as they do. In this world where all the fuel and power of yesterday is draining away, we are fortunate that enough of the Romany kept up their husbandry of horses. They allow each community to trade with the next. And they carry our news. They are our little lights, in the great darkness that has descended on the world.” He smiled at Magdayeva fondly. “I have come to be very glad of our friends the Romany.” There was a lot of history in the look he gave the horsewoman: history, and perhaps apology.

After that, it was plain that Leszek and Magdayeva had other matters to discuss, and Katy and Emil went to their respective beds with much to think about.

THE SIEGE CONTINUED unabated, and unchanging, for seven days. In that time, the Order soldiers kept a watch over Jasna Góra, preventing any large-scale exodus or resupply. Although Katy would not have trusted herself to get out unseen, there were a few sufficiently stealthy that they would risk leaving at night, under the guns of the soldiers. Magdayeva was gone the morning after she arrived, creeping away with the last hours of the night to ride back to her people. Tomasz himself came and went as he pleased, testing the piecemeal Order perimeter, and once bringing back a black-crossed banner to hang from the monastery walls.

Shots were exchanged infrequently, between opportunistic snipers atop and outside the walls. There were no injuries on either side, or not from the guns. With foodstocks still carefully rationed, the greatest test of the defenders’ mettle was a widespread outbreak of constipation.

All that changed on the evening of the seventh day. As the skies above were shading into evening, the Order’s reinforcements arrived. The hundred-odd who had been camped out before the gates of Jasna Góra were abruptly swelled by a motorcade of vehicles: Transit vans, two large lorries, a cattle truck, a ramshackle fleet of sedans and estates and hatchbacks, and a tank.

It ground in at the back, a lumbering, tracked monster, drab green and brown paint flaking away from grey metal, a camouflage made perfectly pointless by its colossal grumbling roar. Behind it, the crumbling tarmac of the Częstochowa roads was left dented and mauled. It was a muscular, brutal implement of warfare, dented and scored, every line of it focused towards the stubby barrel of its great gun.

Leszek came out to see, as the newcomers were setting up their new swathe of canvas.

“Tomasz?” he asked.

“Leopard 2A4M CAN,” came the immediate reply. “From the way it’s handling, they’ve had good use of it before bringing it here.” Tomasz stared down at the thing, nestled within the expanding Order encampment. “I worked with them, years ago,” he confirmed. “Not easy to keep running. They must have some military on hand.” He was trying to think about fuel and ammunition—how much had the Order scavenged, to bring this monster to their door?

“Ah.” Leszek leant on the wall, staring out. Tomasz tried to follow his line of sight, and saw a large tent being raised, with another black and white banner flying proud over it: this one showed, with some artistry, a black eagle grasping a crossed white shield.

“I rather suspect that this signals the arrival of this Grand Master Danziger that Miss Lewkowitz spoke of,” Leszek noted. “We have achieved something, Tomasz. We have the full attention of the New Teutonic Order.”

“They will attack soon.”

“It seems likely,” the Abbot agreed.

“If they have shots for the tank gun, then the gate will not hold. The walls may not. They weren’t built with this in mind.”

Leszek took a deep breath. “These walls have held off a great deal that they were not made for,” he remarked mildly. “When the Swedish King swept his bloody Deluge across Poland, destroying with his cannon all who would not pledge themselves to him, the walls of Jasna Góra held. When the blood-plague cast down church and state and common humanity in our land, here was where that tide turned. Shall we not stand our ground one last time?”

Tomasz did not trust himself to speak. He knew the history as well as anyone, but there were a lot of men with modern weapons out there, and a great many civilians behind the walls who had no ready means of defending themselves. And still the Abbot stared out over the darkening tents, over the hollow rooftops of Częstochowa, as though searching the face of God for answers.

“YOU HAVE COME here to do the Lord’s bidding,” the Reverend Calumn told his congregation. “Within those walls is penned up one of the Great Deniers, a man whose every breath has been to spit on the good book, to spread lies about the faithful, to work against the Second Coming of Christ!”

These were not the ragged band of scouts and bruisers who had first pitched up before Jasna Góra’s gates. Here before him was a true crusading host, surely every spare body the Order could muster. Calumn had sent word back to the Grand Master, that the work of the Lord required a true gathering of the faithful. He had not been sure how Danziger would respond. The two of them had masterminded the rise of the Order from what was little more than a street gang into their current nascent empire, but Danziger was his own man. He took no orders from Calumn, nor from God. Danziger’s faith was in himself and the destiny of the Order, and it was unassailable.

“It is not just that the man Weber denies Christ,” Calumn told the assembled faithful. “We know from the confessions of his fellows that Weber seeks to undo God’s work! We all know that the great plague was sent by God. You and I, my brothers, we knew this end was prophesied, that the Lord had His plan for this world. Yet there have always been those who fought the Devil’s fight to turn back God’s clock. When the first signs of the End Times were felt—when storms and disasters and floods racked the world—did these wicked men seek absolution and bow to the Lord’s will? They did not! They turned to their false science and spun their webs of lies about melting ice and global warning. They claimed that the hand of Man was behind God’s work, just as they have always sought to deny the Lord, claiming His majesty for mere humanity or for some senseless, unfeeling cosmos. Where are they now, these so-called men of science? I’ll tell you, my brothers: Hell! Burning in Hell, almost all of them, and only a few left to trouble the world.”

There had been a time, before God’s judgment had come to the world, when Calumn’s own faith had known its ups and downs. The temptations of a material world had all too often lured him from the righteous path: women, drugs, all the wickedness that money brought. When the first news of the Cull came, he had been in a hotel room in Berlin with three prostitutes. The Lord would have been well within His rights to strike down James Calumn, Jr along with all the others, and he had waited for it. As so many others had died around him, he had knelt and prayed and readied himself to be gathered to God.

And yet he had lived, and wondered if it was only by Christ’s mercy had he survived. Surely the Lord therefore had a purpose for him. When he found Danziger whipping together the beginnings of an army under the black cross, he knew that he had found that purpose as well.

“Why did the Lord spare men like Weber, you’ll ask?” he told the rapt crowd. “Why did the Lord’s justice not light upon him, as it did for so many? I’ll tell you, brothers, though the answer may pain you. God is testing us! God knows that you and I and all of us, we did not do enough, back before the End Times. Our faith was weak, when it should have been strong as iron.” And passion leaked into every word he spoke, and fired them all up. “When we should have stood for God’s will, we bowed to Man’s law. We made accommodation with the Devil, when the Adversary spoke through the mouths of politicians and environmentalists. We let ourselves be led from the path, my friends, and for that the Lord will test us. We must prove to Him that we are worthy to witness the Second Coming! It is for that reason that God spared men like Weber. It is for that reason that the world is still a home for homosexuals and heathens. Because the Lord has set us the task to cleanse this world of the unworthy, before He will build His Kingdom here! We are the instruments of that cleansing, my brothers! We are the sword of the Lord!”

EDWARD GUYER, UNTIL recently temporal leader of the Order’s mission to Jasna Góra, had not been looking forwards to making his report to the Grand Master. He had been dispatched with one mission: catch and kill Emil Weber and his accomplices. In this he had singularly failed. Now Danziger was here with most of the Order, and it was reasonable to assume that he would not appreciate being put to the trouble.

Order soldiers came from a variety of backgrounds, but a good proportion of them had known both violence and the hard hand of authority back before the Cull. There were some soldiers amongst them, some police, a fair number who had been in and out of prison more than once. Beyond them, there were those who had lived their lives twitching for a certain kind of violence, but had never indulged in it for fear of the strictures of law and state. They had read the reactionary news and ground their teeth about the foreigners who had moved in three doors down. They had snarled and threatened on the internet. They had told each other that life had been better way back when...

And then the world had fallen, and all that they had was lost, and they had found in themselves, these men, two great needs: for someone to tell them what to do, and for someone to blame.

Edward was one of these. He had been an investment banker for a London firm, seconded to the Berlin office on an assignment that was supposed to last a month but ended up lasting until the end of the world. He had lived for demolishing his rivals on the squash courts and scheming in the boardroom. After the Cull, when it was clear that he was out of more than just commodities futures, he had lost all sense of what to do with himself. He would almost certainly have got himself killed if he had not found the nascent Order. Amidst its initial roster of hooligans, thugs and petty malcontents, Edward was ideal second-in-command material.

Of all the things that scared him in the world, Josef Danziger scared him more than most. Edward mummed along to Calumn’s services without being won over, but Danziger put the fear of God into him right enough. And now an angry Danziger was exactly what Edward was expecting.

The Grand Master’s tent was a full-size furnished marquee. Danziger did not care to live in a field like an animal, as he put it. The interior was curtained into a twilit gloom, then lit with a rank of hanging lanterns back to something approaching daylight. The extravagant use of their oil supplies was pointed; it was important for the ranks to know exactly who was in charge. A third of the tent was hidden by drapes, concealing the double bed that Danziger’s menials assembled wherever he stopped. The rest was dotted with folding chairs, a battered table liberated from a restaurant and a narrow bookshelf with a handful of books. Edward ducked in to find Danziger at his desk, a big antique piece pillaged from who knew where. A handful of messengers were waiting, their bikes outside ready to roll. Danziger finished each missive in his jagged, spiky handwriting, giving each man a one-word destination and sending him out. From the foot of Jasna Góra they would be heading west, back to the communities that the Order had stamped its mark on.

Reverend Calumn was already there, sitting incongruously in a deckchair. He was a welcome sight: perhaps the Grand Master’s ire would be split between the two of them.

But when the messengers were all sent on their way, Josef Danziger looked up with a disturbing absence of expression.

“So, you didn’t get your man yet,” he noted.

“If it were that easy, it would be no test of our virtue, Grand Master,” Calumn replied. The relationship between the two men was a shifting one. Calumn’s sermons gave the soldiers of the Order a strength of purpose beyond the simple need to loot and control. He spoke for God, after all, a venal Pope to Danziger’s would-be Holy Roman Emperor. At the same time, it was the Grand Master who gave the orders. They had come close to falling out before.

“And you, Edward, what have you to say for yourself?”

Edward swallowed awkwardly. “The fortress resists us. Our assault”—and why did we only try the once? Surely that makes me look weak and uncommitted—“was thrown back with losses. Since then... since then, we have been unable to make any progress. I am sorry, Grand Master.”

He waited for the angry reprimand, but for a moment Danziger just looked at the two of them—looked past them, really. Every second that ticked by was a stay of execution. Danziger’s anger didn’t need to bide its time before striking: the Grand Master of the New Teutonic Order treated failure summarily and harshly.

But now Danziger’s eyes were hooded. “What motivates our soldiers, do you think?” he asked, surprisingly mildly. “James? Edward? What do you think?”

“Faith,” said Calumn after a moment. His tone suggested he was testing the waters with Danziger, not sure where the man was going.

“God is our standard bearer,” the Grand Master murmured. “There are enough, it’s true, who follow because they have faith this is God’s plan. Because turning to a vengeful God makes sense of this world we find ourselves in.”

“The Lord is just—” started Calumn, but Danziger spoke over him.

“Let Him be vengeful. We need a vengeful God. How else to explain so many lost to His disease? And a vengeful God motivates our soldiers far more than a God of love. Do you think God loves us, James?”

Calumn opened his mouth, paused, closed it.

“Our God, the God who has done this, He doesn’t love us,” Danziger said, and at last Edward understood he was in the backswing of his mood, wrestling with the dark strength inside himself. Soon he would be standing before the soldiers, spitting destiny and purity of purpose at them, but for now the Grand Master was brooding. It made him more dangerous; it built a pressure in him, so that when his mood switched—always abruptly—back to action, it would be with plans full formed and ready for violence.

“We are the Lord’s instruments,” Calumn essayed.

“Yes.” A spark of anger flashed in Danziger’s eyes, a signal that he was approaching the flashpoint. “We are not loved like an ornament. We are used like a sword. So long as we are useful in destroying His enemies, He tolerates us. So that is what we do.” He blinked, long and slow. “You haven’t said anything, Edward.”

“I...” Edward started, his mind a blank.

“What motivates our soldiers, would you say, those who are not as strong in their faith as the three of us?”

A brief ransack of his brains brought some of Danziger’s rhetoric to mind. “We have a destiny, Grand Master. We, the pure, have inherited the world, free at last from those who would dilute our heritage with mongrel blood...”

Danziger stood abruptly, and Edward stuttered to a halt as two long strides brought the Grand Master right in front of him.

“Everything you say is true.” The man’s voice was like flint. He was on the turn for certain, now, rising from the black reaches of his soul on flaming wings. “We do have a destiny. We are the chosen people. The laws and borders of the old world, that were the bars of our prison, have been broken. We are free to take our place in the world. But do they see it? Do they believe? Precious few. I shall tell you what motivates too many of our soldiers. They march with us because in our wake they have their pick of the spoils—the food, the power, the women. They march with us because it is better to be behind the sword than before it. Despite all my efforts, despite every sermon James has given, there are too many who follow our strength because they are fundamentally weak.” And he was staring right into Edward’s face as he said it, eye to flinching eye.

“But this is what I am given, to hammer into our new Empire. This is the dross I must forge into fine steel.” He turned away sharply, staring towards the tent flaps, towards the wider camp hidden beyond. “I knew we would come east eventually,” he said, and by now his voice was twanging with that nervous, bludgeoning energy that had allowed him to gather this band of cutthroats to him in the first place. “I had thought we would spend more time consolidating our position within the Fatherland, but we would have to come here. You’ve forced my hand, you two. When Weber escaped, that was a slight, an insult that demanded answer. But now you have brought us before a whole fortress of mongrel heretics who defy us. What are we to do?” He swung back to them, eyes gleaming in the lamplight. “If we turn away now, if we return to our work back west, we will lose the heart of the Order. The men who have come here, they will remember that we looked to the East, that we stood in the shadow of this place and then turned back.”

Danziger breathed a long sigh, fists clenched. “But if we crush this place, if we defeat and humiliate and destroy those who dare to oppose us, will they see at last that we have a destiny? Will they stop thinking of themselves as men with human frailties, and see themselves as heroes? As supermen?” And now he was back: the leader of warriors, returned from the lonely places. “They might, Edward. And so I thank the pair of you, in a way. You have given the Order the chance to become what it should be.” And, with a fierce smile, he cuffed Edward hard across the side of the head, enough to send him down to one knee. Danziger fired up was prodigiously strong.

“But you’ve failed still,” the Grand Master snapped, and he had a grip on Edward’s shoulder now, keeping him kneeling. “You’ve risked it all, forcing us to this point before we’re ready. So you can do something for me, Edward, to help get us out of this mess.”

“Anything, Grand Master.” Because anything other than total subservience was a mistake, at times like this.

“We will take this fort of theirs,” Danziger stated. “We have superior numbers and superior weapons, and superior blood. But there are ways to weaken them first. If we cannot get an army across the walls without a fight, we can get a handful, eh? Just a few. Just enough.”

“Grand Master...?” Edward didn’t like where this was going, but he was being dragged along for the ride anyway.

“We have amongst our soldiers men who have scaled walls, men who have scaled mountains. This fort of theirs is a big place, and there do not seem to be so many defenders that they could watch every scrap of wall, not if they had some other distraction to hold their attention. Your time has come, Edward. This is your penance. I will muster the troops. You will enter the fort.”

“And do what, Grand Master?” Edward’s voice shook a little. The prospect of being at the head of the spear for once was not pleasing to him.

Danziger’s smile was icy and uncompromising. “Kill Weber. Kill Weber’s woman. Kill this so-called Abbot. Open the gates.”

CHAPTER TEN

LONG KNIVES

KATY HAD HOPED to eat a quiet dinner in the refectory, but the Abbot was having none of it. He was a busy man with plenty of demands on his time, but when the routines of the monastery gave him time to himself, he seemed to spend far more of it trolling Emil than in prayer. Now here he was, planting himself on the bench beside his victim with a satisfied sigh, as people hurried to serve him with what fare there was.

Emil was eking out a bowl of stew and a heel of hard black bread, and he flinched as the Abbot had his beaker refilled with the watered beer everyone drank there. Emil loathed beer, Katy knew, but at the same time he loathed dysentery, and he was a rational man.

The Abbot started off mildly enough, praising the food and the cooks, thanking God for the bounty, and each sentence punctuated with a “Do you not think so, Doctor Weber?” When Emil mustered only a few grunts of acquiescence, not rising to the bait, Leszek stepped up his campaign, asking if the good doctor had ever seen Kraków before. “The brothers there, they work out of Wawel castle, the cathedral there. Plenty of space for your experiments under that roof.” He became mock-solicitous. “Or you will live on the streets, perhaps. Kraków has seen its share of hermits.”

Emil twitched at that, and glowered up at him, meeting Leszek’s hard grey stare.

“Or perhaps,” the Abbot said sternly, “you are ready to admit that living under the Dominion of God is not the hell you always believed it to be.”

Emil closed his eyes for a moment, and just then he was exactly how Katy remembered him from his televised debates, his defence of evolution and humanism in the face of the smooth disdain of creationists and men of God like the man before him.

“I know,” he said quietly to the Abbot, at last. “You are all very virtuous here. So very open-minded.” A deep breath. “A world away from the persecuting church that I have always fought against, you say. There are no gibbets on this side of the wall, after all.” But he was conceding nothing. For Emil Weber, this was fighting talk. “Back in Forst, they hung homosexuals, did you know? Does the church have a comment on that, Abbot?”

Leszek met his gaze levelly. “God’s love is for all His children.” Katy wasn’t sure, but perhaps the Abbot’s gaze flicked to where Tomasz and Paul sat, discussing something animatedly over their own meal. If so, it was a moment’s break in his concentration. “Nowhere in His book does He withhold it for the act of lying with another man. So long as such matters are kept behind closed doors.”

Weber nodded, a fencer’s move, exploiting weakness. “So long as they deny who they are, when asked? So long as they stay in the closet. Yes, yes, of course, you are not like the Order. Given how many died in the Cull, you know how precious is each human life. But if two men—two women—were to love one another within your walls, well, if they can’t hide it from God, at least you prefer they hide it from you. And if Hamid was to give the call to prayer from your walls?”

“Hamid is a valued—”

“So long as he keeps his head down and doesn’t rock your boat,” Weber put in, cutting him off. If he noticed the hostile audience he had acquired by now, he did not show it. “And believe me, you are a man of enlightenment and tolerance.” The words were almost insults. “Because I know full well there are many of your faith who would take a far harder line, end of the world or not. You see yourself as the opposite of those men out there, Abbot, but you’re not. You, they, you’re on a continuum. Because the world you live in is determined by arbitrary faith, and if the logic of that faith took you to the terrible place where they are standing now, what then? And don’t say it couldn’t happen. History tells us it can happen. History tells us it has happened.”

Tomasz was standing, with a hand to his sword hilt, and Katy’s breath had caught in her throat, waiting to see how badly this would go, but right then Jenna burst in, half out of breath.

“They’re mustering!” she spat out.

TOWARDS EVENING, THE troops of the Order began to muster, breaking from their tents and fires to form rough ranks before the monastery walls. Tomasz watched them thoughtfully, seeing the tank, of course, front and centre.

Paul was beside him, studying the enemy through field glasses.

“They have mustered rifles on the flanks,” he reported. “I think the men behind the tank have pistols and close weapons.” The bulk of the Order’s men were packed in an unruly mob in the centre, obviously hoping to follow the tank through the gates and then disperse for mayhem. “You think this is it?”

Tomasz frowned. He felt inside himself for the spark of atavistic anticipation he would have expected, and found it wanting. “I’m not sure. Where’s the Abbot? He needs to see, if nothing else.”

By then, there were a great many people on the walls. Some were nominally defenders, at least partially trained by Paul and Tomasz. Others were just civilians, come to see, because to be left with nothing but rumour and imagination would be worse.

Tomasz opened his mouth to clear them all off the wall top, then wrestled with the words, aware that the last thing anybody needed was a panic. Still, if the Order did make a sudden advance on the walls, he would be wading through a lot of people whose only purpose would be to get in the way.

“Are they coming, then?” someone asked him, and he turned irritably.

“Why does everyone think I know these things?” he demanded, and Katy Lewkowitz backed off, looking put out.

“I was just...”

“You’re scared. They’re coming for you, for your friend,” he finished shortly.

“No—”

He could feel his uncertainty about what was happening outside turning into anger at her, and fought it down. “Are you armed?”

“I’ve got a knife.”

“Unless your knife can reach a hundred feet, you’re probably not much good up here, then,” he pointed out.

She glowered at him. “Then give me a gun.”

“Hm,” he considered, and then, “No.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“You’re not one of us. We have a common enemy, but you’re not ours. If they said they’d spare you and your friend, I think you’d open the gates to them.”

“You think that, do you?” She had her hands on her hips, fighting her own temper. Tomasz observed himself distantly, knowing that he was pushing her solely because he could not go out and push the Order back from the walls singlehandedly.

He started to speak again, but she broke in on him. “I know. We brought them here. We’re to blame. And I’m just waiting for the moment when you think it’s expedient to hand us over, so the distrust is mutual, believe me.” And, seeing him wrong-footed, she pressed on, “Tell me you wouldn’t. All it’d take is your Abbot giving the order.”

“How happy it is an order I’m not about to give.” Abruptly Leszek was looming between them, the wind tugging at his habit. “So, they think they will take us, then.”

At least that wasn’t phrased as a question. Perversely, Tomasz felt drawn to answer him anyway.

“I’m not sure. There’s a lot of movement, but... I don’t feel it from them.”

For a long while, the Abbot leant on the haphazardly-reinforced wall-top and stared out at the Order, as the skies shaded through increments of grey. A great murmur and a mutter arose from the ranks there, as they milled and shuffled, and a voice spoke over it, the words lost in the distance, but the tones of the Reverend Calumn quite recognisable.

“Are they reaching for their courage, I wonder?” Leszek murmured. “Keep a strong watch, Tomasz. You’d better have your people standing armed and ready through the night.” He turned to the people thronging the wall. “For the rest of you, return to your rooms. Find your weapons. Make sure your families are safe, that you know where everybody is.” And then again, in his coarser German for the non-Poles.

“Where will you be?” Tomasz asked him.

“At prayer,” Leszek told him. “Send for me if it seems they will make the attempt,” and he was striding off through the dispersing crowd.

“Abbot Leszek!” Lewkowitz was calling after him, and for a moment Tomasz was about to restrain her, because the Abbot could do without the distraction, She was off after him before Tomasz could snag her arm, though, and he could not go after her. His place was on the wall.

BACK BEFORE THE Cull, Edward had kept himself fit: jogging, circuit training, golf and squash, because lean and hungry was the look for a young banker on the fast track to the boardroom.

Afterwards—and especially after falling under the dominion of Josef Danziger and his nascent Order—he had been forced to turn his gym-honed physique to a whole variety of skills he had never imagined he might need. He had learned to hunt, men and animals; he had learned to shoot; he had learned to use a knife in anger, rather than just to cut his steak; he had learned to infiltrate, to sabotage, to murder.

There had been a point, standing over his first sleeping victim, when he had wavered. Danziger had run into an established commune in Lübben, whose charismatic leader had held the Grand Master off with a fine line in rhetoric. Danziger hadn’t had the numbers to just march in, but it had been plain that the woman in charge was the heart and soul of the community there.

That had been Edward’s first real mission, when he had been trusted to accomplish something important. Danziger and the rest had made a great show of retreating in disappointment. Edward, a one-man Trojan Horse, had broken in and found the commune’s leader. By then, a few years’ sneaking and clambering about dying cityscapes had equipped him with the skills and knowledge to do it, and he had found the woman fast asleep, an easy mark. Still, he had hesitated, whilst his many futures unfurled past him like the skimmed pages of a book.

And he had struck, of course. Struck and got clean away, though more by luck than skill or divine favour. The second time had been easier. Soon he was leading scouts and punitive raids and manhunts, riding the adrenaline, bloodying the knife because it was better to be holding it than facing it.

Looking up at Jasna Góra now, he felt that this was asking too much, but there was nothing the defenders could do to him that would be worse than questioning Danziger. The place was a fortress! Every line of it spoke defiance. And yet, and yet...

As well as the entryway that the Order was camped before, there was another around the side. Edward had given it some thought: a line of ancient archways or shrines or whatever they were would give some cover for a stealthy approach. However, the final arch into the monastery was heavily barricaded, and there were people on the wall above. But then, the walls were not so very high, after all, and they were old. Time had eaten into them, gnawed at their faces until there were handholds enough. Jasna Góra was not as impregnable as it looked.

He had his picked few with him, men he had worked with before on similar missions. They were a mixed bag: two were housebreakers since long before the Cull, in and out of prison until they had outlived the rule of law and order; one had been a ski instructor once, whose interest in certain aspects of twentieth century history would have been unhealthy if it had been made public back in the day; one was, plain and simple, a killer without any emotional connection to other human beings, who found the world post-Cull infinitely more to his liking.

The five of them discussed ingress even as Danziger was parading his men about to draw all eyes. Before evening cloaked them, they had already discarded the second entrance: there were too many heads above the parapet there, at all times. Instead they found a stretch of the wall that seemed unoccupied, and then the ski instructor, Marcus, took the wall carefully, hands and bare feet, with a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. The rest of them crouched in silence, watching the man-shaped blot of darkness creep up the wall.

Then he was up, just as the light was failing them and they could hardly make him out. The rope slithered down to them, and they began their own swifter ascent. Tonight, the judgment of Calumn’s God was coming to Jasna Góra.

DOCTOR WEBER WAS stirring up trouble. That was Jenna’s opinion. The confrontation over dinner had got the academic’s blood up, and now he was a bag of opinions looking for someone to vent them on. He was after a fight.

Not an actual fight, of course. Weber was a pacifist, she understood. Perhaps that was a genuine idealistic position that he was fervently committed to; perhaps he was just a coward. Jenna attached no particular stigma to cowardice. She knew what fear felt like. She had found it and fought it within herself, and she knew that some people just couldn’t cross that line: the fear would always master them. They were strong in other ways, no doubt. However, a coward who went around picking fights was something she had little tolerance for. She had known a few, and they were bad for the community. They undermined morale.

Undermining was precisely what Doctor Weber was about, she thought. It wasn’t that he wanted to bring the walls down about their ears, but she reckoned he couldn’t cope with only having the church standing between him and his enemies. It rankled too much, and so he looked for victories where he could find them.

Right now, even with the Order’s forces mustered and ready for an assault, he was playing his intellectual drum. He had tried to pick a debate with three people already—not defenders on the wall, but just inhabitants of the monastery, minding their own business. So far he had come across nobody who would admit to sufficient German to comprehend the lash of his attack on superstition, but now he had located Hamid, who was boiling water and readying bandages in case the attack came tonight.

He sat down companionably enough at first, and Jenna hung back round the corner, waiting for it to start. Sure enough, after a few clipped pleasantries he was back in the saddle.

“It can’t be easy for you, to live amongst these people,” he observed.

Hamid cocked an eyebrow at him and made a vague conversational noise.

“They make you go to their church services, I saw,” Weber noted.

“They invite me.”

“Really.” Weber was good at putting a boatload of subtext into a single word.

Hamid dumped a batch of bandages in one bubbling pot, and then began lifting damp strips of cloth from another, rolling them deftly with metal tongs he’d already sterilised. Antiseptic was in very short supply, and infection was always a spectre even in everyday life, let alone when there were fascists at the gates.

“Doctor Weber, I know what you want me to say,” the Turk told him. “Yes, I prefer to pray in my own room, because they do look, and they do talk, and some of them really don’t like it. And I sit in their services because here, that’s part of life. It’s what they do. They don’t force me to drink wine or eat pork, or try to convert me. Like you’re doing.”

“This isn’t the same,” Weber sniffed. “So, fine, they’re all good civilized people. They remember how life was, before the world went mad. And their children? How will they think? Like us? Or like the children of the Middle Ages, knowing only all the invisible walls of dogma? Where will civilisation be then? Where knowledge? Where will this tolerance be, when your grandchildren want the freedoms they grudgingly allow you?”

“Tolerance.” Hamid sighed. He was a man of very even temper, Jenna knew, which was just as well. “Doctor, if you had found your way to whatever’s left of Istanbul, would we be having this conversation? Just because I know God in a different way to them, it doesn’t make me your ally against them. Perhaps you should do as I do, and be grateful for their shelter and hospitality.”

Weber twitched at that, and then made a few abortive attempts at a comeback, obviously trying to find some way to twist the conversation back to where he wanted. Silently, Jenna smirked to herself, shaking her head.

“But listen, you’re a modern man. You’re a man of science—or a historian, anyway,” he pressed on at last, sounding desperate. “You want things to go back to the Middle Ages? Can you honestly say that when society recovers from the terrible catastrophe that has befallen it, you want it to be a feudal theocracy? You want everything that we learned for the last thousand years to be buried, because it’s inconvenient, because it contradicts something some priest set down thousands of years ago, and claimed to be God’s words?”

“Careful, Doctor,” was all Hamid would say.

“But is that what you want?” Weber insisted. There was a quaver in his voice: the future he was seeing was one that he must torture himself with every night.

“Is that what you see happening?” Hamid asked, stopping his work at last.

“If something isn’t done, yes,” Weber hissed. “If men like me don’t take a stand. We’ll lose it all.”

Hamid shook his head tiredly, not so much in disagreement as failure to understand the other man’s mind. Jenna judged that was probably a good time to interrupt, to guide Weber off so that he could stop wasting other peoples’ time.

She was drawing breath to call his name when she saw the intruder, just a shadow in the open doorway that Weber had entered through, but there was the gleam of a knife there, already half-raised.

KATY DOGGED THE Abbot’s heels all the way from the wall. She had been trying to corner him for a few days now, and as far as she could make out he had known it, and had taken particular pleasure in always having some other matter at his fingertips every time she had tried to beard him. Now the enemy was at the gates, a moment of crisis when she would have expected him to be surrounded by his people, and yet here he was, off alone.

She tracked him to the monastery’s church. Nobody seemed interested in stopping her right then, what with the Order giving out free tickets to the post-Cull world’s biggest military penis-waving contest right outside the walls. So it was that she found him, a small figure in its gilded space, alone amongst the statues. There were candles lit here, but the evening, and the lack of electric light, made of the place a rookery for shadows, from which sullen reflections of Catholic gold and finery gleamed like the scales of dragons.

Leszek himself stood before the altar, looking up at an ornamented picture given pride of place on the wall, and she hurried down the aisle to him, shoes striking sharp sounds like gunshots.

“So this is where you’re planning the counterattack from?” she asked his back, voice echoing about the vaulted ceiling. If she had been expecting to surprise him, she was disappointed.

“No.”

“I thought that’s what you were coming here for,” she pressed, at his shoulder. “You’re a military genius or something? You’ve got a plan.”

“Tomasz, or Paul perhaps. They are Jasna Góra’s soldiers,” he said softly. “I am here to pray.”

“Seriously?” Leszek was a man of action. He had a brawler’s burly frame, a face that had seen more than one fist coming at it fast. And she had been a disciple of Emil long enough that the idea of actual devotion—behind closed doors, when the masks were off—was something she had a hard time believing in.

At her tone, he turned at last. With a slight smile, he tugged at his robes to draw her attention. “They did tell you I was an abbot? Prayer is something I do.”

She would almost have preferred him angry; that would have been easier to react against. “You must have prayed a lot when the plague came.”

An odd expression was fleetingly in his eyes. “Then, I was not the Abbot, nor did I pray as often as I should. Miss Lewkowitz, you have sought me out...?”

“Yes, I...” And she had, and she needed to talk to him before Emil went completely mad, and here he was, but... Abruptly, cornering him in the stronghold of his faith didn’t seem like such a good idea. He seemed to draw strength from every stone, impervious to her accusations. Instead, her eyes flicked to the painting he had been considering. “That’s... is that Mrs Good Samaritan?” The image was of a woman in richly bejewelled robes of blue and gold, long-faced and dark skinned, shown with a similarly gilded child.

Leszek stiffened. “It is the Madonna,” and, when she opened her mouth to comment, “I know you draw strength from mockery, but I would ask you, of all things, do not mock her. You do not know, it seems, but she is the soul of Jasna Góra. She protects us, protects these walls, so that they may never be taken.”

And so, with the Order here, you pray. “She’s...” Katy frowned. “She’s cut?” There were thin lines down the woman’s face, too straight and sharp for tear-tracks.

“Thieves. They could not steal her, when they tried,” the Abbot rumbled. “So they tried to ruin her. But here she is. Here she stays.” And he fixed Katy with his eyes. “Speak, then. Every time before now, that you have come to me, I have had my people to mind. Now I have only God. He will wait. He will understand.”

“I want to talk to you about Emil,” she forced the words out.

“Of course you do.”

“I want you to stop bullying him.”

Leszek regarded her for a moment, without expression. “Is that what you think—” he started, but now she had him, she knew she could not let him squirm away so quickly.

“Abbot Leszek, don’t insult me. Every time you meet him, there’s something else. You mock him over wine. You make every meal a matter of ‘Christian charity’ to him. This business with a lab at Kraków—he can continue his work, but only if he puts on a cassock and bows the knee. You don’t understand him.”

“I understand that he has made it his business to attack my faith all his life,” the Abbot remarked, mildly, but with a hint of iron.

“Because he sees faith doing harm, Abbot,” Katy told him, almost feeling the ghost of Emil in her as she fought his corner. “Because he sees people put religion above health, above common sense, above reason, and call it morality.”

“And if I see people put greed and power above morality, and call it reason?” Leszek’s smile was gone.

“Listen to me.” Katy had her hands on her hips, fighting down her anger, and not least because she was within arm’s reach of him and he could break her in half. “Emil is a good man. All his life he’s worked to help people. With science. With reason. He’s worked to educate them. He’s worked to free them from things that were holding them down, blinkering them.”

“And that is how he sees God?”

She couldn’t tell if he was sad, or about to burst into a rage. His face was utterly closed.

“Everything he told you about the plague, it’s true,” she said, the words fast and flat. “It could mutate at any time, and then we’d need men of science and reason to save us. Or will you trust to prayer alone?”

And she was already backing away, but she managed one step before he lunged forwards and straight-armed her in the chest, knocking her to the ground.

JENNA WAS MOVING before she had a chance to think about it, bursting in on the pair of them and then lunging past Weber. He had gone completely still, jaw clenched, and for a moment, she realised, he thought she was attacking him.

The knifeman had begun his lunge at Weber’s back, but her sudden appearance threw him and he flinched back, the knife’s glittering arc clipping the doctor’s shoulder. He was a big man, a stranger with his hair cut short, an Order soldier even if he had washed the black and white motley from his face.

She didn’t have her bow, of course, or even a knife to fight with, but in that moment of surprise, she rammed the heel of her hand into his jaw as hard as she could, and tried to get a knee into his groin or stomach to follow it up. He reeled away, taking the second blow on the hip as he bounced into the wall. Then he was coming back for her, even as she heard Hamid yelling for help.

The room was not large enough for fancy footwork, and her attacker was short on subtlety, just groping for her, trying to fix her in place so he could tear her apart. She yelled at Weber to help, but he was just standing there, rigid as a statue.

Her assailant’s outstretched fingers caught the edge of her jacket and pulled. Frantically she spun out of it, ripping her arms free and denying him his hold, and instead he shoved her into Hamid’s preparation table, spilling the carefully rolled bandages everywhere. As she sprawled there, her fingers touched something cold.

A heavy hand slammed down on her shoulder and she twisted round, jabbing at him furiously with what turned out to be the scissors Hamid had been cutting cloth with.

It was not the first time she had stabbed someone. Far from the first time, in fact. The blades buried themselves into his shoulder, rammed in partly by the strength of her arm, partly by his own eagerness to trap her against the table.

He gave a shocked sound and tried to swing the knife, but she shoved him in the chest and he dropped it as he fell backwards.

There was another man in the doorway, another clean-cropped intruder. He had a pistol out, because there were already cries of alarm, and so the need for quiet knives was past. Weber was just standing there: not fighting, not cowering, facing up to the barrel of the gun.

Then Hamid took up the pot of boiling water and hurled it over the gunman with a tortured sound, and a moment later everything was steam and screaming. The scalding water lashed across Jenna’s cheek, and she saw Weber catch some as well, but Hamid had been on the mark, and the intruder got the rest of it in the face.

She was already stooping for the knife the first man had dropped. Some part of her mind had been tracking it, and it found her hand as naturally as a fencer’s foil. She had been too long without the practice, but her lunge was textbook perfect and she took him under the ribs as he scrabbled at his burned face. And then again, and again, because killing someone, really finishing them, with a knife is hard to do.

By then the first man was up, and he was running, the scissors still sticking in him. Jenna went after him but, even as he got into the open air, an arrow sprang from his thigh. Another drove between his neck and shoulder as he doubled over.

There were enough people out there to take care of things. She went back inside to find Doctor Weber doing what he could for Hamid’s burned hands, consumed by a calm professionalism she would not have expected.

THE WORLD SPUN wildly for Katy and she fetched up hard against the stone flags, already coiling for fight or flight, when a man tried to vault over her to get at Leszek. She had half got to her feet, quicker than anyone must have reckoned, so that he kicked her painfully in the shoulder and went headlong onto his face, a knife spinning from his hands to ring against the floor.

He was not alone. A second man had come in after him, metal glinting in his hand, and a third was lurking in the shadow of the arcades, watching the doorway. They must have been creeping through the shadows, from column to column, until they were close enough to strike.

Leszek took a solid step forwards, head lowered like a bull about to charge. The fallen man tried to scramble to his feet, but the Abbot stamped on him like a street brawler, his solid boot coming down, with all his weight, on the intruder’s hand, even as it raked out for the lost knife. The sound of bones crunching was audible and the next man in said, “Fuck you, old man!” in an accent that came straight from the streets of Chelsea.

Katy kicked away from him, and the words “English Bigot!” burst from her as though she had late onset Tourette’s. This utterance threw Edward completely—his knife had been jabbing forwards and now it jerked back as he looked around at her. In that startled second his face was all wounded innocence, all How could anyone think that of me? Then Leszek punched him, roaring mostly with wordless anger, but with some words of sacrilege mixed up in it.

The first man was curled about his ruined hand, so Katy lunged after his knife, the hilt dancing and jumping like a fish in her shaking hands. The third man had given up on keeping watch and was bundling in, too, even as Edward staggered sideways.

“This was supposed to be quiet!” he snapped out in German.

“You make him be quiet!” Edward snapped back, lashing about with his knife to push the Abbot back.

Katy had the knife, but its owner was on her, one hand clutched to his belly, reaching for her with the other, face black with pain and anger. Beyond him, she saw the other two backing the Abbot towards his precious painting.

She was no great fighter, but she wasn’t the cringing maiden her attacker probably imagined, either. He lunched for her and she buried the knife in his arm, trying to wrench it out quickly. He was a seething riot of adrenaline by then, though, barely noticing the new wound, his hand closing on her arm. She had on a woollen jumper made by one of the locals, and it stretched and pulled in his fingers, her arm sliding up inside it as he struggled to get a good grip. She hurled herself into him like someone shouldering a door, her elbow striking hard into his broken hand.

She could see Leszek with his hands up, fending off the knives. Blood flew from his palms and fingers. His back was to the wall.

With a sudden strength, she had the knife free from the man’s arm and past his collarbone, her underhand grip as brutal and obvious as a stage assassin’s, driving the blade in, scoring across bone and severing blood vessels so that she arose from his body painted red.

The knife was irretrievable, truly wedged, but she took up a candlestick and brought it down on the nearest man’s head and shoulders. That was the idea, anyway: the fittings in the old church were museum pieces all, far heavier than she had thought, and she almost ruptured something getting the thing aloft. When it came down, though, it struck with the weight of five hundred years of history, dropping the man with bone-shuddering force.

Edward, seeing he was the last man standing, stared a moment at her, at Leszek, the latter not the least daunted by the blood running from his hands, and fled.

His hurried feet boomed and slapped in the echoing space, and when he reached the end of the aisle, Tomasz was in the doorway, a sword in his hands, murder in his face.

Perhaps Edward could have surrendered, then, although nothing in Tomasz’s expression suggested that would go well for him. Instead he reached into his jacket and came out with a pistol, trying to bring it to bear.

Tomasz brought the sword down in a cleaving stroke. Edward had a moment to throw up his arms, gun and all, and the edge bit deep into his right wrist, almost severing it. He shrieked, more in horror than pain, and Tomasz twisted the blade free, the tip circling and gathering speed to swing up into Edward’s armpit, hilt high to protect its wielder’s face. It keened through clothes and flesh, then turned in its owner’s hands to follow its own path back, swinging past its victim’s elbow to cut down into the man’s scalp even as Tomasz stepped away from a notional counter-attack.

“Abbot!” Despite his performance, Tomasz’s expression was agonised, seeing Leszek’s condition.

“I’ll live. Miss Lewkowitz will staunch my wounds for now. Go send out the word. There may be more.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE LEOPARD AND THE LAMB

SHE BOUND HIS hands with strips of cloth torn from the clothes of their attackers, wincing as she did so. He had a half-dozen cuts across his palms and fingers, the sort that police would have characterised as “defensive wounds”; most often seen on corpses.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her own hands were shaking with sour adrenaline now the danger was past. “I’m sorry, I’m making a mess of this. I don’t want to hurt you more.”

“I barely feel it,” he murmured, and she looked at him sharply in case that meant he was about to die on her, but he was watching her keenly. Abruptly he lifted his hands so that the sleeves of his habit fell away, and she saw the scars she had noticed before, going most of the way around his wrists on both hands. “I don’t have much pain or even touch left, in these.”

“I... er... I’m guessing there’s a story to go with that,” she noted, pulling tight and knotting and then cutting more strips of cloth. “I... they must have got to you pretty quickly, if you did that do yourself.” Even as she said it, she was wondering how a man could so thoroughly cut both his wrists.

“I have many sins on my conscience,” he said softly, “but not that one. The men who did this to me... yes, I was lucky that others got to me before they finished.”

“Finished...?”

“Cutting my hands off. Or that was what they said they intended.” His face creased: humour or old pain, she was not sure.

“This was... they were persecuting you? For your faith?” In the mad world she now lived in, it was all she could think of.

“I forgive them now, for what they did.” And, despite everything, there was definitely a glint of amusement in his face. “After all, I had tried to cheat them out of a great deal of money.”

She froze, trying to work that one out. “The Abbot of Jasna Góra was—”

“No, no, no. Long before. No abbot, no God-fearing man at all, then. Just a crook, a man of violence and greed.” His voice grew softer as the fury of the fight and the loss of blood left him drained and weak. “You deserve to know this, to know who it is you’ve saved.” He shook his head slowly. “The police came before my friends could finish their punishment, and we all went to prison. For many years.”

“You found God in prison?”

“I did. I found God, and I lost heroin, though there were enough in that place who found it. God and the Virgin Mary touched me, in that place. Tell Weber this. Could science have done that? Could reason? I do not think so.”

“Leszek—”

“I know, I know.” He shook his head slightly. “I do bait him. And you, even. But you both should know that sometimes the world alone does not have enough to make a bad man good. But God...” He sighed. “And I came here, the lowest of the low, throwing myself on the mercy of the holy men who dwelled here, seeking a purpose and a life as far away from my old one as possible.”

“And then they died,” she finished for him.

“They did,” he whispered. “They died, and so did almost all the people of the world. And, God forgive me, I made myself an abbot, and tried to do good.” He craned upwards, eyes seeking the rich hues of the dark Madonna and child. There were dots and darts of blood across her face and hand, most probably his own. “So you know the truth, Miss Lewkowitz. I’m no holy man, not really. I am not a man of God. All I was, when it happened, was a man who could get things done.” He closed his eyes. “I have tried, since, to be a proper heir to this place. To play-act the wise man. Nothing but an imposter, but I have tried.” His voice had fallen so low that she was terrified he might die any second, but then he rallied abruptly. “And then God sent me an atheist and a Jew, and bade me protect them against those who style themselves soldiers of Christ. Have I done the right thing, do you think? Have I avoided disgracing her?”

By then Tomasz was bustling back in with half a dozen of the monastery’s people, a pot of boiling water and a box of antiseptics and medicines, and Katy stood up and backed away, feeling herself abruptly unwanted.

Still, later that night—sleep refusing to draw near her for the duration—the captain of Jasna Góra’s defenders sought her out.

“How is he?” she asked.

“Well. Sleeping.” Tomasz’s German was rough, and they both had to speak slowly. “He said to me what you did. We are grateful for it. I thank you.”

His tone was grudging, but she managed to muster a smile anyway. “What happens now?”

“Now?” For a moment his face was blank, then he nodded sharply. “Now they attack.”

EVEN THEN IN the Order camp, Josef Danziger was pacing, waiting for some sign that his assassins had hit their mark. What sign? He wasn’t sure. He could hardly expect scenes of Biblical lamentation atop the walls, the gates thrown open, a general surrender from the hoi polloi once their arrogant leader was put in his place. Still, he felt he would know. The air would change in some indefinable way, as if the scent of the Abbot’s blood could be carried to him all the way out here.

Danziger had not been changed by the Cull, only unleashed. Back in the day he had been a man constantly on police watch lists. A childhood spent dissatisfied and frustrated with the way the world failed to recognise him had turned into an adolescence of spread-winged eagles, of covert rallies, of learning all the wrong lessons of history: Teutoberg, the Stab-in-the-Back, the rallies at Nuremburg. He had been a man looking for a destiny to fill the hole he found inside him, grinding his teeth as he got older and older, and his cryptofascist peers just kept making the same speeches, some petty violence here, a little arson there. And still the world failed to see him as anything more than a small-time thug. In his mind, he was a wolf born to a man’s shape, and he had been caged by all the rules of society, watching the Germany-that-was diverge ever from the Germany-that-should-be, the Fatherland that was more yearning imagination than history by the time Danziger got to it.

The Cull had been the hand of Fate, opening his cage and letting him loose on the world. In that time of panic, it was easy enough to find kindred spirits, or just directionless men who had been emptied by the chaos of the fall, ready to be filled by any man’s purpose, so long as they had a purpose. Easy enough then to harken back to the birth of a fighting Teutonic nation. Easy enough to resurrect his own version of the past.

It was time, he decided. The gates were not going to open of their own accord. Edward and his fellows had failed, or they had succeeded. Either way it was time to test the Order’s sword against the mail of Jasna Góra.

He called his subordinates to him and took their reports. Two were sent around the side of the fortifications to pick their way across the jumble of dead vehicles that cluttered it. The rest would be attacking up the incline to the reinforced gates. He had long-arm detachments to rake the defenders on the wall-tops, and the mass of the rest would be going in after the tank. “Make every shot count,” was his instruction. The Order had plenty of guns, but ammunition was at a premium.

The tank crew he gave careful instruction to. It was a hungry beast for diesel, too, and they had only two shots for the main gun. It was a temperamental and ill-tempered monster. Fafnir, they called it, and the name rankled with Danziger: Fafnir was the prey of the true German hero, not its ally. Still, the myths were short on friendly dragons, and the name had stuck.

“You understand?” he demanded of all his underlings. There was a murmur and a nodding. Either they did, or they were too frightened of him to ask for clarification. It was the price of being a leader.

“ALL RIGHT, NOW they’re moving,” Jenna called, seeing Paul’s curt nod. The New Teutonic Order had made several false starts in the pre-dawn, which might have been to keep the defenders off balance or just because they were trying to start an attack before it got light. Jenna and the other good shots amongst the monastery defenders had been on the walls since the evening, sleeping at their posts and in shifts against a night attack. And there had been the business with the intruders too, that Tomasz was spitting feathers about. After the Abbot had been hurt, he had been in such a foul mood that she was glad he was commanding the monastery’s other entrance. He and Paul had drawn straws for it, and Paul had won the responsibility of fending off the main assault.

They were mostly archers like her, up on the wall. Some of the defenders had crossbows, sports and target models mostly, as the monastery smiths had not been much bothered about developing that branch of weaponsmithing. There was a scattering of rifles, too, the owners well aware of the dwindling number of bullets in their pockets. Down below, the Order was mostly just a general sense of motion as it stumbled and cursed its way into a semblance of military discipline and then pushed forwards. Except for the tank. The grumbling, growling snarl of its engine pinpointed it clearly for them, if only they had anything that might hurt it.

But that was what Paul had taken on, when he chose this front. His brains against the metal Leopard’s brawn.

The first shots came, mostly from below, with a couple of too-eager responses from the wall. Paul called for a halt, his voice clear in the still night. Then hold again, though nobody was firing. Jenna, who had been out shooting in the twilight enough to have a good sense of distance, drew back her string. Quivers of arrows were stacked all along the wall. That was one resource they were not short of.

She loosed a second before Paul’s shout, the shaft vanishing away, falling towards that mostly-unseen mass of men. There were distant shouts and cries, but few, and the Order came on, the tank preceding them like the standard of their new crusade.

The defenders were all shooting now, the thrum of bowstrings murmuring up and down the wall against the staccato crack of rifles. The Order was pressing forwards swiftly, the threat of the arrows driving them to kick and shove each other, to tread on each others’ feet in their hurry. Still Jenna had no targets, only the surging grey shadow, the enemy in aggregate. She could only send her shafts into that amorphous body and pray that she was doing some good.

Then the night was resounding day for one moment, as the tank’s gun spoke with flash and thunder. Jenna felt the wall shudder, beneath her, and to her left a spray of stones and wood splinters peppered the defenders. Abruptly everyone’s head was down, and the Order’s attackers surged forwards in a tight-packed mob.

The tank reached the first of the staggered vehicles that partially blocked the ramp and shouldered it aside with a revving of its engine. The next it simply ground over, one track mashing down the rusting hulk’s bonnet. Bullets and arrows alike danced from its armour. Jenna nocked another arrow, but the Order’s return fire was now becoming a threat, bullets striking brief sparks from the walls, or punching into the makeshift crenellations atop them. Jenna heard more than one cry from her own people.

So how much ammunition do they have? It seemed their supply must be limitless, the way they were sending their shot up, whilst every flash and bang from the defenders was a marvel of the lost modern world that they would not see again.

“Grenades!” came Paul’s cry. His hand-picked grenadiers set to work, choosing their moment to throw away the monastery’s handful of explosives. One missile flashed into fire on the tank’s hull without much luck. One fell into the thick of the enemy, and must have inflicted a fearful toll. Of the rest, Jenna didn’t see, but she had no sense that they accomplished a great deal. The battle was lit up in brief frozen images, like a badly-tuned television showing her fragmentary moments of a war movie, nothing but the gore, the horror.

And yet too few to stay them, and now both the enemy and the dawn were close enough that she could pick her target, and yet could not afford to, lest she become one herself. She sent one shaft after another down onto them, drawing and releasing as swiftly as possible, falling back on the old Japanese techniques she had once learned, where swiftness and smoothness of action overrode the need for a careful aim.

And then the tank came before the gates of Jasna Góra, and she saw the barrel of its main gun move as though it was inspecting them.

AT THE SIDE gate, the Order had achieved an unexpected early victory. They had come first as a mob with rifles, squeezing their way through the various arches, surging up the footpath. They came shooting up at the walls, spraying brick dust and splinters and wounding a few. They came to the solidly barricaded Jagiellonian Gate, finding themselves trapped and milling, as Tomasz and his fellows loosed arrows on their heads.

Tomasz kicked himself for not spotting their true intent. He was guilty of seeing the enemy as almost mindless, just a pack of thugs who would break against the fortifications of Jasna Góra. He had applied himself to his archery, already thinking that he could go and see how Paul was getting on.

Then the attackers, having suffered a score of casualties, fell back from the blocked entryway, and he had thought they were broken. He had even said so to the others, whilst reaching for another arrow to send after the fleeing enemy.

But they had not been fleeing. They had already regrouped, and he had the sudden thought, Did they leave more than bodies behind?

And then the explosives went, the charges they carried up with them, hidden in the dawn’s greyness, smashing the barricade in like a fist as the defenders below yelled and screamed. And the Order—of course the Order’s soldiers were rushing forwards, desperate to gain the gate.

“Karel! Ready!” Tomasz was already running for the steps. The yelling from below masked any reply he might have received.

He reached the ground just ahead of the Order vanguard. A handful of defenders was using the Jagiellonian Gate as cover, discharging rifles and crossbows at the onrushing enemy. Bullets pinged and bounced around them.

In one smooth moment, Tomasz drew back his bow, stood and loosed, the shaft vanishing into the faces of the Order’s front line. A shot skimmed his shoulder as he pulled back into the shadow of the gate.

“Karel!” he yelled out again, and then dropped his bow and cut his quiver from his belt so it wouldn’t trip him. His hand found the comforting roughness of his sword hilt.

He was no good at battle cries. He just went in as the Order’s soldiers clambered and sprang over the wreckage of the barricade, as the defending shooters fell back.

There were riflemen in front, amongst the enemy. One dropped even as he crested the car, an arrow sprouting abruptly from his shoulder. Tomasz hacked at the next one, who raised his rifle frantically to parry him. Tomasz let his momentum carry him forwards, let his weapon pivot about the gun barrel so he could ram the pommel into that painted, black-on-white face. There was a crunch and grind of a broken nose and he kneed the man backwards, letting his blade sweep round to catch a second soldier in the side of the head. Another shot went overhead, producing a brief spray of shards as it rattled off the stonework. There were too many of the Order cramming the gateway to get many shots in without hitting their own, but if they got past the confines of the entryway in any numbers, they would probably sweep everyone aside. Tomasz simply didn’t have enough firepower for a charge-stopping volley.

So it was down to the old ways, and in his heart of hearts, he was glad of it.

The Order had plenty of men coming at him, with bats and knifes, with fire-axes and cleavers. Tomasz had a blade forged by Hamid using thousand-year-old techniques and the man’s own modern knowhow. Around him shoved the men and women of Jasna Góra, a fierce crowd with spears and axes and swords, and at least a handful sporting steel mail or brigandine.

He struck at the enemy; he made them fear him. He took a ragged cut across the hip and a shallow but bloody badge on his scalp. Even as he gave ground, though, something in him was singing: Let me die now, and I will not begrudge it. The man he had always been—the man the twenty-first century had not known how to appease—was in his element, dancing with his sword, then dropping it to grapple and twist and throw, then taking it up again.

And yet the Order was pressing, pressing in; the cordon penning them back stretched and strained, further and further...

But he heard the call, from behind him. He heard the defenders chanting, “Golem! Golem!”

Karel thundered past him like a force of nature, like a thunderstorm clad in metal. He had on his full harness: probably he had still been adjusting it when the call went out. He was all over steel, plate over mail over a Kevlar vest. In his hands he had a pollaxe, a six-foot shaft with a gimlet spike at one end, and on the other all the worst aspects of axe and hammer and spear.

He had the kind of momentum that could not be denied, striking deep into the enemy, burying the axe in one, raking the spike across the face of another, then striking about him with the scalloped edges of his gauntlets. Weapons struck lines across his armour, but Tomasz remembered the small fortune Karel had spent on all that steel, back in the day. With not an inch of skin visible, with that weight of metal, driven by the man’s formidable strength, he truly was like a terrifying automaton. He truly earned his nickname.

The Order fell back before him, and the defenders seized on every inch they surrendered. Karel let the enemy break across his broad chest, seizing them in handfuls and throwing them back, wresting any weapon that crossed his narrow field of view and turning it on its wielder. Then Tomasz plucked up his pollaxe and got it back in the man’s hands, and that sight was enough to break the Order’s resolve. Abruptly they were falling back, the first assault repulsed.

“Get me furniture, barrels, boxes, anything to build up the barricade!” Tomasz shouted out, sending the defenders scurrying. He clapped a hand hollowly on Karel’s shoulder. “Took your time,” he added in German.

“Like you weren’t enjoying yourself,” came the voice from the helm.

THE TANK GUN spoke like a storm, so that defenders and attackers alike cringed away from the sheer physicality of the sound. The shot thundered into the gates and smashed them down as though the very fist of God was with the Order, leaving them hanging raggedly, half off their hinges, the thick bar that had held them closed snapped across. The air was full of smoke and dust and falling splinters.

And the tank ground onwards, crunching its way into Jasna Góra with eager speed.

Paul was already halfway down the steps. The defenders were rushing in to stem the tide, but the tank would not care about them. Human bodies were nothing to it, barely even noticed. The soldiers of the Order were already cheering as though the victory was theirs. Their great Leopard had triumphed so swiftly. Nothing could stand against the mechanical terror.

Or that was what they thought, or so Paul fervently hoped. How would Tomasz have dealt with this, had he drawn the short straw? Probably some manoeuvre that was one part military strategy and two parts wild daring. Paul did not have his reckless disregard for the odds; he had been planning ever since he saw the tank. Every dragon met its slayer, after all, and in the best stories it was not valour or strength of arms that killed the beast, but cunning.

The gateway was only just wide enough to admit the vehicle. The courtyard beyond was crooked, awkward to manoeuvre in. The edges of the metal monster gouged grooves in the plaster and stonework. Its engine bellowed and it surged forwards, seeking space. Pushing about the corner, the tank abruptly found itself lurching up at a mad angle, tilting queasily to the right. There was a confused eddy amongst the soldiers trying to push either side of it, finding the path ahead abruptly closed to a narrow channel either side of the skewed vehicle.

Then the real work of those atop the wall came. Those soldiers not under cover of the gateway were out of luck. Everything was coming down on them now: arrows, grenades, improvised bombs made of jars stuffed with nails and gunpowder, even big pots of boiling water. At the same time a line of defenders armed with spears below had made a fence of spikes and was pushing into the vulnerable human soldiers trying to get past the tank.

And the tank itself, modern marvel of the age? It was hoisted up, one track off the ground entirely, the other grinding uselessly back and forth and skidding without purchase on the hard ground. Its own speed had consigned it to its fate—that, and the great wooden caltrops Paul had ordered built. Each was made from strong timbers taken from the structure of Jasna Góra itself, nailed securely together so that jagged ends jutted out in six directions at once. Now the Leopard was hoisted up on a couple of them, invulnerable as ever but helpless, engine roaring and screeching as its crew tried to jerk it free. The machine gun mounted alongside the main gun abruptly stuttered out a burst, the bullets flying high over the heads of the defenders to rake the walls of the monastery. Then, as the melee about the vehicle surged, one man clambered up onto the hull and beat at the weapon with a crowbar until it fell silent, crooked and broken.

Paul had his hand to his sword hilt, but he did not draw the blade. The place of the commander was not in the press of the melee. He watched and waited, feeling the ebb and flow of the fight as though it was the blood in his veins. The desperation of the Order soldiers was in him, the fierce determination of the defenders. Every wounded cry echoed through him. And, in the end, the Order fell back—fled, even, hurrying to get out of the steel rain the archers sent after it—and left its pride and joy behind.

And the Leopard crew were still fighting, overheating the engine as they tried to work it off the spikes propping up its underbelly. The air about it was choked with the smoke of its exhaust.

They held out for a long time, and the Order made two attempts to reclaim the crippled vehicle, venturing into the defenders’ shot, trying to keep them occupied with rifle fire. Their heart was gone, though. Seeing their dragon impaled thus had taken the fight from them.

In the end, one of the defenders shoved a grenade down the gun barrel, detonating with a shuddering thump within the vehicle, and then they lit fires beneath it, and on top of it, doubling and redoubling the heat of its overstrained engine until the crew were forced, choking and coughing, out of it. One man surrendered, dropping to his knees and rolling, retching and helpless. The other tried to flee, and failed to get far.

By that time, Tomasz had stood off three attacks at the Jagiellonian Gate, and the Order finally gave up the day as lost, pulling back sullenly to its camp and licking its many wounds.

“Bring me a casualty report!” Paul shouted, because a commander’s work did not end with the battle.

IN THE ORDER camp, Josef Danziger received his own subordinates’ reports in silence. They cringed from him, ready for his explosive rage, but this time he was calm, a core of cold steel hardening within him.

Calumn wanted to speak to him, but he curtly told the American to go preach to the troops instead, to tell them God was still on their side, that He was testing them. “Tell them whatever you like, so long as it makes them strong again,” he said flatly.

Then he called for Jon Franken and Radek Majewski—Jon because he was good at following complex orders to the letter, Radek because Polish was his first language.

“I have a task for you,” he told them. “Take a score of the soldiers. But it must be accomplished tonight; tomorrow we will have another way of testing these monks.” And he told them what he intended, and their eyes shone with the righteousness of their cause, but mostly because this mission would give them the chance to take out their frustrations for the beating the Order had suffered today.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SUFFER THE INNOCENTS

TOMASZ HAD BEEN all for planning a sortie into the enemy camp, keen to add to their misery by spoiling their supplies or knifing a few of their leaders. Debate had swung back and forth amongst Jasna Góra’s upper echelons: Paul and Hamid had been against, but Jenna had sided with Tomasz, and Karel was constitutionally incapable of turning away from a fight.

“We can’t last out a long siege,” Tomasz argued. “So we get them to go away, any way we can.”

“The Abbot won’t permit the risk,” Paul countered.

“If we all agree, he will. If that’s our advice, he’ll listen,” Jenna put in.

“We kicked half their arse yesterday,” Karel growled. “We need to go tan the other buttock or they’ll forget it.”

Katy sat in the corner, eating a meagre breakfast of porridge and listening to them. Her opinion was not solicited, which was just as well as she didn’t have one. Beside her, Emil brooded silently, hands cupped about a steaming mug of coffee. She had no idea which of the monastery’s residents had felt coffee so very important, but they seemed to have enough jars of instant to see them all eating the granules raw when everything else ran out.

Emil’s hands shook, ever so slightly, and there was blood drying on his jacket. The two of them had both been rolling up their sleeves to help with the injured, especially with Hamid unable to use his hands. The monastery had suffered a handful of deaths, mostly those who had fought alongside Tomasz, hand to hand against the Order’s charges. More lives still hung in the balance. Medical supplies were dwindling to nothing as they fought off the threat of infection, and a score of casualties might go either way. And there are far more scrapes and minor cuts that could just as easily go bad. Even right after the Cull, she had not quite envisaged what the collapse of civilisation would mean. I don’t want to live in the Middle Ages. It’s fucking terrifying. Faced with the fact that the microscopic world turned every scrape into a chance of septicaemia, she couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever go to war for any reason whatsoever.

Then a messenger came tripping into the room, a girl of twelve, half out of breath, gabbling something in Polish. Tomasz stood.

“Reinforcements,” he translated. From his grim expression it was evident whose. He sent the girl off to tell the Abbot, and they all ended up on the wall, looking at the shambling block of newcomers as they approached the Order camp.

Jenna murmured something to Tomasz, narrow-eyed, and at Karel’s annoyed grunt she clarified, “Not reinforcements.”

Katy craned forwards, seeing a mass of people, perhaps fifty all told, being herded into the encampment. And herded was the right word: these weren’t soldiers, they were unarmed men, women and children, under guard on a forced march.

“They’ve gone to the farms,” Paul stated. It took Katy a moment to follow what he meant. As Lezsek had said, the people of Częstochowa, those that survived, had not clung on in the city, any more than the people of Wrocław. They had gone instead into the countryside, growing the new rather than feeding off the corpse of the old. This had been the plan, at the great convocation or whatever of Jasna Góra. They had been trying to look to the future.

And now the past had come to tear up their new-planted roots, carrying a black-and-white flag from a thousand years ago.

“We may need to bring them the fight sooner than you thought,” Karel stated.

“They may have taken prisoners to stop us doing just that,” Paul argued. “At the first sign that we are on the attack, they could kill them.”

“Whatever they plan, I don’t think it will involve waiting for us to act,” suggested Jenna.

“We’ll hear from them soon.” The Abbot’s voice made them all start and turn, to find him labouring up the stairs. A pair of armed defenders was shadowing him, but he was plainly refusing any attempt to help him. When he reached the top, he was breathing heavily, his bandaged hands folded into loose fists.

“Prepare for guests,” he said shortly. “And remind our people we don’t shoot messengers.”

SURE ENOUGH, THE Order sent a man out to the gates, or where the gates had been. His face and his flag both bore the black cross on white and he halted a good ten feet from the entryway, staring at the canted tank. The defenders had thrown up makeshift barricades either side of the grounded vehicle, even as they had refortified the Jagiellonian Gate as best they could. Now they and the Order’s emissary had to perform a peculiar pantomime, he passing up his flag to them before scaling the shifting wood and stone and bric-a-brac they had put in place.

The Abbot received the man in the monastery’s refectory, sitting at a long table with his hands mostly hidden in his wide sleeves. All his people were there, even Hamid with his burned palms, and Katy and Emil too, staring at the shorn-headed young man with the motley face as he stood before them.

“Well?” Leszek demanded, into the silence.

The man declared something in Polish, out of which Katy just about caught the name Radek and a reference to the Teutonic Order, but the Abbot held up a hand.

“Yes, yes, but we’re not all Poles here.” His eyes flicked to Katy and Emil, as much as anyone else.

“I bring a message from Grand Master Josef Danziger of the New Teutonic Order,” the man stated, his face twitching with annoyance.

“This much is obvious,” the Abbot stated acidly. “Perhaps you might let us know what it is.”

The man Radek’s lips tightened. Presumably he had envisaged his master’s name inspiring more respect. “The Grand Master sends his compliments on your valour. That you have decided to resist the righteous cause of the Order is regrettable. But your warrior spirit is to your credit.” His delivery was awkward and uneven, and Katy realised he must have prepared the speech in Polish. Little swot.

“However, the destiny of the Order is not to be denied. God has sent us to destroy a heretic, one man. If we must tear down your fortress stone by stone, then God shall give us the strength to do it. The Order is obedient to the will of God. Many lives have been spent to do God’s will already. If many more must be spent, so be it.”

Emil’s jaw was clenched. He flinched at every mention of the divine, and then doubly so when Radek jabbed an accusatory finger right at him.

“We came to you and demanded the surrender of this atheist, and you refused. Now many good men on either side lie dead on his account. Strong men, warriors, faithful. If it is blood that will accomplish God’s will, the Order will not be slow to shed it. But the blood of warriors is valuable. More valuable than the blood of Slavic peasants. Let it be known that unless this man is surrendered to the will of God, we will execute a dozen of your people by sunset, chosen by lot. Another dozen will follow at dawn, another dozen at the following sunset. Ask yourself how much is worth the life of one who denies Christ.”

Karel rumbled deep within his chest and took a step forwards, but a slight shake of the Abbot’s head stopped him.

“You’ve spoken your piece?” Leszek asked and, at Radek’s nod, “Then get out.”

“I will have your answer—”

“When we are ready, and not before!” the Abbot snapped, standing abruptly. “Now get this creature out of my sight.”

AFTER THAT, THE Abbot sent them all out, closeting himself away in his own chambers and brooding.

Katy found herself on the walls, staring out at the Order camp, and she was by no means alone. The sound of hammering drifted faintly up to them, blurring and scattering across the monastery walls. She didn’t need binoculars to see what they were building. The row of gibbets taking shape looked all too familiar from when she had gone to Forst to rescue Emil the first time.

Running all that way, she considered morosely, and it’s just caught up with us. All that human stupidity and malevolence. Perhaps the Abbot would put that down to original sin or something: evil was something they carried with them, no more possible to run away from than her own arm, than the heart inside her.

“You wonder what the Abbot will do with your friend.” Jenna’s voice came at her shoulder.

“Truly?” Katy shook her head. “Not even that. Just... this. All this.”

Jenna nodded. She had her bow in hand, but no target. “I remember when they met here, all the big men, the priests, the leaders, and I thought that we would end up like that. There were some who wanted to fight—not fight the plague, because you can’t, and it had already killed so many, so just fight, fight someone, anyone. Roma, Germans, witches, anyone. That out there, that’s us, in some other life. That’s us outside the walls of Berlin or Kiev, fighting other people because we can’t fight the plague.”

“But that didn’t happen,” Katy said carefully.

“And because of that, they come here. The Order this year. Next year one of the petty Tsars will bring their home-grown Oprichniks west, or there will be some Khan with a new Golden Horde, or Islamists coming north. While we try to survive as our ancestors did, they bring us all the mistakes of history.”

Someone nearby made an approving sound, and Katy glanced over to see Emil standing there. “It’s well said,” he commented. There was something wrong with the way he stood, a dreadful tension wound so tight within him that, when he moved, it was like a clockwork automaton. “You, I need to see the Abbot.”

Jenna regarded him doubtfully. “Do you so?”

Emil’s regard didn’t falter. “Whose life is it that everyone suddenly seems to have a claim on, if not mine? That gives me the right to speak for myself.”

She paused a moment, wrestling with herself, and then nodded reluctantly. “Let’s see if he will hear you, then.”

Emil opened his mouth, and Katy knew he was about to tell her to stay put.

“Oh, I’m coming, believe me,” she assured him.

THE ABBOT’S WISH for solitude had apparently been one of his few commands to be completely ignored. When Jenna brought them in, Tomasz was just coming to the end of a tirade in fierce, rapid Polish, leaning over the man’s desk and all but beating his fist on it. Seeing Jenna and her followers, Leszek raised a hand to cut him off.

“Ah,” he said simply. “How did I imagine that I would have the morning of prayer and contemplation I asked for?”

Jenna explained herself rapidly, gesturing at Emil, while Tomasz glowered at the interruption.

“Well then,” the Abbot considered. “I have been listening for at least an hour to the apparent necessity for our entire fighting force to rush out into the guns of the Order. I think, Dr Weber, that even you cannot tell me something less welcome than that.”

Tomasz made to speak, practically spitting in his haste to get the words out, but a look from Leszek silenced him.

“Well, Dr Weber? Perhaps your science has come up with a solution to our problems?”

“Yes, it has,” Emil told him, quite calmly. “You have been waving your charity at me since I got here. You have never missed an opportunity to show me how very grateful I should be to you and your church. Well then, let me say this thing now, because I won’t get another chance. I am grateful for what you’ve given me, but your church and your God are not the keepers of all human morality. Some of us wish to do the right thing without a desire for reward or a fear of punishment. Some of us believe that is simply what a human being should do. So today I will go out to the Order, and your little problem will be solved.”

For a long time there was no sound but what weak echoes his voice could raise from the walls.

Katy’s heart clenched. “Emil—”

“No.” He was terrified: she could see it in every line of his face, in his wide eyes. “This has gone on for long enough.”

Then the Abbot stood, wearily. “Tomasz, Jenna,” he said, and then an instruction that had them laying hands on Emil, grabbing him by the elbows and almost hoisting him off the ground.

“What, then?” Emil met his gaze levelly. “You think unless I swear to God, I’ll have second thoughts the moment I step out the door?”

“You are not going, Doctor Weber,” the Abbot told him.

“That is my choice to make.”

Leszek indicated his captors. “Apparently not. I have sent word to the Order. Their man from the tank, I gave him a message and had Paul release him.”

Watching Tomasz and Jenna, Katy was instantly sure that this was news to them.

“I have informed Grand Master Danziger that I will surrender myself, to spare the lives of his prisoners.”

Tomasz barked out an uncomprehending challenge, and kept on talking until the Abbot took him by the shoulders and stared into his face.

“Come now, Tomasz. We cannot let an atheist display more Christian virtue than us, eh?” and, to the next question, “Well of course he may not keep his word, but, even so.”

“You’re mad,” Emil spat, and for once he and Tomasz were actually in agreement. “Why would you do such a thing?”

Leszek sighed. “Dr Weber, I remember when you came here first. I remember you talking about your science and your plans, and about the disease that has so wounded the world. You recall?”

“Of course.” Emil blinked.

The Abbot shrugged heavily. “You’re right. If there is a danger that the plague may come back for us with a different face, to cull another nine in ten of the one in ten that yet remain, of course this must be prevented. I can understand the Reverend Calumn believing that the disease is God’s will, but the world was always full of ways to die. Is it God’s will we stand in the path of the volcano, trusting to His judgment to turn the lava aside? No. That is why He gave us feet. Is it God’s will that we wait for a new plague to destroy those that remain? If He gave you a brain fit to prevent that, then no, I do not believe it is. If there is any chance at all your liberty can assist that, then it is my duty, as a Christian, to preserve you. It does not matter that you do not know God. It matters, I believe, that He knows you. Tomasz.”

The captain of Jasna Góra stared at him mutinously, lip trembling. Katy saw tears in his eyes. The two of them exchanged brief words in Polish, and Leszek put his ravaged hands either side of the man’s face and touched foreheads, as though he could impart his quiet strength to his follower.

“You will be locked up for your own safety, Doctor Weber,” the Abbot announced. “If the Order comes through our gates at the last, then my people will bring you past the walls if they can, and flee for Kraków in the confusion.”

And with all eyes on him, Leszek turned and went to await the Order’s messenger.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE STONE TABLE

WORD CAME FROM the Order before sunset. By that time, the row of gibbets was complete, a skeletal copse of crooked necks with the angular and sepulchral elegance of cranes. The victims had even been selected, a little huddle of men and women penned in full view of the monastery and guarded. Perhaps they were seeking to provoke a doomed rescue, and in other circumstances Tomasz was not the only one who would have provided one. The Abbot’s word was iron, though.

And then the messenger came again, Radek, ignoring the scathing looks and the muttering, to deliver the answer. And then there was nothing left for it but for Leszek to step beyond the walls of Jasna Góra, leaving behind all of its defences, physical and spiritual, and go down to the enemy.

Katy watched them all arguing with him. Only Paul was calm enough to stand back and just let him go. Tomasz’s face was wet with tears. Jenna was furiously listing all the terrible things that the Order might do. Karel had lapsed into Czech, expostulating vehemently in a language nobody else there understood. Hamid tried his turn at reason. Half a dozen of the monastery’s other leading lights had their turn. None of it worked; Leszek was like a stone, letting their fears and grief and pleading wash over him. In the end, he just turned and raised his hands, calming the storm.

“Musicie mieć wiarę,” he told them. “Have faith.” In that moment, and only then, did Katy see the cracks in him, the uncertainty. The humanity.

They took apart enough of the barricade to let him leave with dignity, not scrambling over the top like an adulterer caught in the act. Just beyond the entryway he paused, the wind tugging at his habit, whipping his hood back from his grey head. He seemed both smaller and larger than the man she had met: not a Christ figure, but an echo of that English shadow-Christ of children’s literature, the lion giving himself up to the knives in place of one he had just cause to hate.

And then he was trudging towards the camp of the Order, where the enemy waited for him.

TOMASZ ACCOSTED PAUL immediately, spilling over with half-thought-through plans. His fellow captain waved him off, though.

“I have work I am set,” he told his friend, his sparring partner.

“What work? Work he set you?” Tomasz demanded.

“Yes.”

Tomasz gripped his arm hard. “Will it save him?”

Paul’s face was flat and expressionless. “I don’t know.”

Most of the people there were heading for the walls to watch their leader step into the Order’s hands, but Tomasz stayed at the gate, staring out with his hand on his sword. At last he felt her gaze on him and stared angrily round.

“You,” he got out.

“I’m sorry.”

He fought down whatever first response came to his lips, and the next, and the next, until he had nothing left to say, and stalked off. Perhaps he spent the night hunting the halls of Jasna Góra, desperate for an enemy he could fight.

But late that night, Katy crept to the Abbot’s quarters, and there she heard the faint, shrill whine of the radio the man had once mentioned, and Paul’s patient voice heading out into the aether, trying over and over again to make contact.

THE RECEPTION LESZEK received at the Order’s camp almost resembled an honour guard for some kind of state visit. A dozen of the Order’s soldiers stood to either side, forming a corridor for him to walk down: big men with close-shaven heads and painted faces, like football fans gone to the bad. Leszek had been a fan, back in the day. He had stood in the stadium and cheered for Lech Poznań and Śląsk Wrocław. And sometimes there had been trouble, after a match. Not trouble like this, though; he was well and truly amidst the opposing team’s supporters now.

Grand Master Josef Danziger waited for him, arms folded, a lean, long-limbed vulture of a man. He had a blade at his side, a proper museum piece, heavy with history, the hilt rich with gilded eagles. Over reinforced leathers he wore a sleeveless robe, stitched meticulously with the Order’s simple, uncompromising badge.

“Good evening, Father Abbot,” he called out. “We’re honoured you chose to accept our hospitality.” Movie-villain gloating, just as Leszek might have expected. In that moment, facing the guns and the knives and the sheer bubbling hatred of all those eyes, he felt his spirit come close to breaking. He had made a dreadful mistake. He had given away the most precious thing he had, to buy an empty nothing from liars and cheats. There was a turning instant when his heart and stomach trembled within him, and fear laid its cold hands on his shoulders and whispered in his ear.

And he closed his eyes a moment, erasing all that black and white, and felt for his faith as though it was a weapon, laying a hand on it just as Tomasz always sought solace in the hilt of his sword.

Ah, Tomasz: do I admit you were right now, and I shouldn’t have come? No, I’m too much of an old fool to start listening to sound advice now. And with that thought, the shadow was gone, and he drew his faith about him, took a deep breath and looked upon the face of his enemy.

“A little wine would not go amiss,” he answered, hearing his own voice calm and strong, and then he glanced at the knot of locals corralled near the gibbets. “And will you let these people go now, Grand Master?” He was going to add some taunt to that—did the Order fear to honour their obligations, some such jibe. But he had the sense that Danziger was one of those whose anger was always just below the surface: not a man to goad idly.

“That was not the agreement, Father Abbot,” Josef informed him. “You have bought exactly what was offered, when you came here. There will be no summary execution. Their freedom was not on the table, however. They and their fellows will remain as servants for my people, and as surety against some act of foolishness from yours.” Choosing his moment, he stalked forwards to stare into Leszek’s face. “And have no fear, we will soon determine those amongst them who have no place in God’s new world. We will ask close questions of them, to determine who is not of the faith; which among them is a slave to unnatural urges and longings. And those we will hang, because that is God’s plan, that the world be rid of those He abhors.”

Leszek blinked. “That is a plan not vouchsafed to me.”

The smile of Josef Danziger was razor-edged. “Then thank God we have been sent to spread the word. You see, Father Abbot, we are all on the same side, and no doubt when you have realized that, you will assist me in ridding the world of that heretic you have been harbouring, and his witch, and we can all go on doing the Lord’s work together.”

THEY HAD HIM in what must have been the Grand Master’s tent soon after, sat with his hands tied before him. Danziger lounged on a pirated couch, some middle manager’s pride and joy, leather-upholstered and expensive, but showing the cuts and nicks where an idle knifeman had undone careful factory craftsmanship in a few moments of vandalism.

“Reverend Calumn has been looking forward to talking to you,” the Grand Master revealed.

“Is that so.”

“It is indeed, sir.” The smiling evangelist stepped smoothly forwards. “You know, we may not see eye to eye, the three of us, but there’s one thing I do know. We all of us believe we’re doing the Lord’s work, isn’t that right?”

Leszek just looked at him.

“Abbot, good men have died here. I won’t believe that doesn’t mean something to you,” Calumn pressed. At Leszek’s grunt, he pressed on. “We are here on a mission from God, Abbot. God has charged us to prepare the world for His Kingdom. Just as a man who will build a house must level the ground, though, for God to lay out His New Jerusalem, we must remove the last stones and burrs from His creation. We must make these latter days perfect. Now you’ve had the man Weber in your hands for more than a few days. I’ll warrant you’ve found him no good company, not for a God-fearing man such as yourself.

Leszek’s lips twitched. “You have the right of it.”

“It seems crazy, doesn’t it, that we of the faithful are fighting one another over the fate of a loathsome creature like Weber?”

“Yes. Yes it does,” the Abbot said with feeling.

“I’d venture to say that is the Devil’s very plan here, Abbot,” Calumn said. “He seeks to sow discord amongst the faithful—discord between you and the Grand Master and me. Because these are the End Times, and old Satan will do everything he can to prevent God’s new kingdom arising—because that will be the Devil’s final defeat.”

“The last days.” Leszek cocked an eyebrow at him. “You believe that?”

“The proof is all around us, don’t you think?” Calumn shook his head. “So many souls purged from the world. What do you find more convincing? Some scientist’s hollow prattle, or that this is the work of the Lord?”

“You make a strong case.” Leszek took a long breath. “You had the radio, the TV, when it was happening? You heard the news.”

“While there was news to hear,” Calumn confirmed almost cheerily.

“Only, where was the Beast?”

“The Beast—?”

“The Beast!” Leszek was suddenly animated. “It comes out of the sea. It has ten horns and seven heads! Only, with all that news at the start, I was sure someone would have mentioned that. Or did it only turn up after they had stopped broadcasting, do you think?”

“There are parts of the Book of Revelations—”

“Only, if this is the end of the world,” Leszek pressed on fiercely, bound hands clenched into fists, “I’d have thought Saint John the Divine would have said more about the plague and less about the Beast.”

“There are many people who believe that our own President—”

“No, that is not what it says in the book!” Leszek told him. “I know the end of the world, Reverend. This is not it. This is a trial, perhaps, and no doubt we will all be judged.”

Calumn opened his mouth, then closed it, then started again. “No, but you see—”

“I take it that you do not intend to convince your followers to hand over Weber,” Danziger said lazily.

“That is correct.”

“Then, if you truly think that the world will go on, you are a fool to have given up your place in it by coming here.” Abruptly the Grand Master was sitting up, his sword across his knees.

“Josef—” Calumn started.

“I have done my duty, as it appeared to me,” Leszek said flatly.

“Your duty was to leave your people leaderless?” Danziger kicked himself to his feet and laid the blade on Leszek’s shoulder, the edge cold against his neck.

“It was to suffer for others.” Leszek’s voice was quiet again, his passion spent. “Sacrificing ourselves for others is our doctrine, is it not, to atone for all our sins?” He looked sidelong at Calumn again. “But you, you are all about sacrificing others for you: your power, your momentary glory.”

“I’ll have you know, sir, I was raised by a proper Christian family,” Calumn told him firmly. “I went to church. I learned what it was to fight God’s fight.”

“No.” Leszek’s voice was low enough that the Reverend had to lean in to hear it. “You learned to fight other men’s fights, who told you they spoke for God, and you never questioned them.” He grinned abruptly. “What if you are wrong about God, Reverend?”

“I have faith that I am not.”

“No? But it is that wager, is it not? I am too soft, you think, to let Weber live. You would be a murderer, I say, if you kill him. Which of us is judged more harshly, if he is wrong? Which of us can face God and account for his mistakes?”

Calumn’s professional smile remained, but there was something sickly behind it, and he said nothing, even when prompted by Danziger. At last the Grand Master hissed with annoyance.

“I will tell you, Abbot, which of us will find himself judged and found wanting. The man who has opened his doors to all the lesser types, the godless, the Roma, the Jew. Probably you’ve turned a blind eye to all manner of unnatural filth, behind those high walls of yours. You think your God will turn a blind eye to that.”

“I think my God wishes me to love my neighbour. Any creed, any colour, any race is my neighbour, if he comes in peace.” The blade was pressing against him now, so that a shallow line of blood welled up on the side of his neck.

“And if he does not come in peace?” Danziger growled.

“Then perhaps I was never such a good Christian as that.” Leszek gritted his teeth.

Abruptly the sword was gone from his skin, the Grand Master resting it on his shoulder as he paced about the tent. “You are so full of righteousness,” he told the Abbot. “Look at you, sending your people to grub in the dirt, arming your soldiers with bows and sticks. You are the shadows of yesterday. You are the stain we must remove, every bit as much as Weber. For we are the future.”

Leszek made a choking noise, but somehow it became something like a laugh. “How can you be the future?” he whispered. “You have no future. You build nothing. You plant nothing. You are no more than the last symptoms of the plague, before it is gone for good. You are the thrashings of the serpent, when its head is gone. You are dust, Grand Master. And in a year, in a decade, in a generation, you will have blown away on the wind. And we? We shall still be here.”

Danziger turned back to him, face cold and dead, and abruptly the sword came up and he was striking, but Calumn’s cry stayed his hand.

“Grand Master, wait, no! Kill him and you’ll make a martyr of him.”

For a moment Danziger stared at him, the steel hanging in the air, and there was enough ugliness in his expression that he might as easily have cut down Calumn as Leszek. But then something grew there, vicious and unnatural. A smile.

“Yes,” he said. “That is what we’ll do.”

“We can still talk him round,” Calumn began, but he faltered before that crooked expression.

“No talking, Reverend,” Danziger said. “These ignorant peasants, they can’t understand destiny. They’re not part of God’s plan. They never were. They won’t join us, so we must break them. Break them by making an example of their leader. A martyr of him? Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CALVARY

THEN HE WAS beaten—not by Danziger’s own hands, but the man watched while a couple of his men kicked Leszek back and forth with some enthusiasm. Then, spitting blood, his vision blurred in one eye, he was taken to a small tent and thrown in to await the morning.

Sleep evaded him: a multitude of pains kept him awake, and besides, he might not have another night. To sleep through his final hours seemed such a waste. So it was that the voice came to him, startling him out of sour, difficult remembrances of his early days, before God, before prison.

It spoke in a soft whisper, just loud enough to reach his ears: a voice from the aether, from the other side. Specifically, from the other side of the tent fabric.

How Tomasz had got there, he could not say, but the man always had refused to accept the limits that shackled most of humanity. Now he must be crouching at the back of this little tent, seconds away from being spotted.

“I will get you out of here,” the man said.

“No, Tomasz.”

“I will cut through the tent. We can run. If they try to stop me, I’ll kill them. I’ll kill all of them.” The captain’s voice sounded ragged.

“No, you won’t, Tomasz,” Leszek whispered patiently. “Why did I come here?”

“The—the prisoners...”

“And they’re still prisoners, but not under threat of execution. Not anymore. Not for now.” Speaking, even breathing, hurt. “I cannot come with you. All that sneaking and creeping. I’m too old for that.”

“Abbot—”

“Go back, Tomasz. Go back and wait for Paul.”

“Paul?”

“I have given him a duty. Listen to him. He will tell you what you must do, and when.”

There was a silence, then a long, slow release of breath, and then a longer silence still, until Leszek knew for sure the man had gone. Then he did sleep a little, and, waking, was not sure what had been real, and what a dream.

When he woke up, he could hear them hammering, just as they had when they put up the gibbets. He knew Danziger’s mind. He knew what they were building, and that they would have a few nails left over when they were done.

Later on, well past midnight, the Reverend Calumn was with him in the tent, or so he thought.

“You have to do what he says,” the American told him. “There’s still time. Tell him you’ll get Weber out. That’s all we want.”

“Why is this man so important to you? You wouldn’t go all this way for any atheist,” Leszek wheezed.

“God wants to end the world,” Calumn said hollowly. “He wants to bring the New Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, just like I was always taught. But this Weber, he dares... he dares to say that his science can defy God’s judgment, that he can hold off the agent of God’s work.”

“That he can see it under a microscope,” Leszek said softly. “Reverend, did you ever believe in God, tell me? Ever?”

“I’m a God-fearing man!” Calumn insisted.

“And is that the same thing? You were brought up amongst Christians, though? Went to church.”

“Of course—”

“And then you found there was a power in it, in the pulpit and the sermon. And if God had ever been in you, He left. There was no room for Him any more.”

Calumn made a couple of tries at a reply, stammering over words that would not quite come out, and Leszek wondered if, when the Cull had happened, the man had felt that emptiness inside him; whether he had gone chasing God after all, to try and cram that divine certainty back in him, because he couldn’t survive or make sense of the ruined world in any other way.

At last the Reverend came out with, “It isn’t my soul I’d be worrying about, Father Abbot. It’s your own.” He sounded glum more than triumphant.

“Even so,” Leszek agreed. He had heard, once, about the speed the earth revolved at. It had never been something he could conceive of, before, but now he had a terrible sense of the dawn’s swift rushing progress towards him. “Reverend Calumn, may I ask for your assistance?”

“I’m not going to release you,” Calumn told him immediately, unsolicited.

Leszek laughed, then wished he hadn’t. “I don’t think it is a part of your doctrine, Reverend, but I would dearly like someone to hear my confession.”

“Your...?”

“I have not walked with God for much of my life. I have done bad things. I do not want to see the sun tomorrow without a final accounting.”

Calumn said nothing for so long, there in the dark, in the tent, that the Abbot thought he must have gone, or never been there at all, but at last his voice came, just one small word. “Sure.”

DAWN WAS STILL hours away when Katy was woken by a growing murmur that echoed through the stone halls of Jasna Góra. Stumbling from her room, wrapped in a woollen blanket, she stumbled after the trail of the sound until she came out into the chill of the night; until she clambered up to the walls.

There were a fair number of people there, by then, mostly as bleary and half-dressed as she was, but a realisation was leaping from one to another. She looked about for a familiar face, and saw Tomasz, clad in dark leathers, his long features blackened up. Just going or just back? From his expression, she guessed at the latter.

“What is it?” she asked. Tomasz just scowled at her, but Jenna was there too, pointing out at the Order’s camp.

Beside the skeletal rank of gibbets, something new had taken shape. The leaping bonfires of their camp silhouetted it, stark and uncompromising. It was leaning up against the arms of the gallows, a nailed-together construction of heavy timbers the Order must have ripped out of some old Częstochowa house. For a long moment, Katy had no idea what it was.

Then the penny dropped, and she swore under her breath.

The New Teutonic Order had built a cross. A big, unlovely, functional cross.

“They won’t...” she started, looking around. From their faces, nobody believed her. She didn’t believe herself.

“This is what they are,” Tomasz said fiercely. “This is what they do. So we go. We go to them. We fight. For him.”

“And what were his words, Tomasz?” Paul came trudging up the steps to the wall, looking like a man who hadn’t slept in a week.

“That you would know,” his fellow captain hissed at him. “That you would give the word. So give it.”

Paul just shook his head. “I know,” he said, and he gripped Tomasz by the arm. “I know how it is. But to go now would be to doom us all. Too many men out there, too many guns.”

“Paul—”

But Paul was already retracing his steps. “Be ready,” he cast over his shoulder, too weary even to look back.

There was no sleeping, after that. Tomasz paced and clenched his fists and clutched at his sword and snarled at anyone who got in his way. Jenna stood at the wall with her bow in hand, and plucked at the string uselessly. Karel was about by then, part-armoured, looking to pick a fight. Katy stayed out of everyone’s way. She was waiting for them to remember it was her friend who was the cause of all of this. She was waiting for someone to decide to go against the Abbot’s dictates; that risking Leszek’s displeasure was worth saving his life. And all the time her rational mind told her, They won’t; they won’t do it. They’re not going to crucify the Abbot. And despite all that, she knew they would.

And the sky had a greyness to it now, a creeping dawn-ness to it, more wholly unwelcome than any dawn she had known, for surely it was only the sun that the Order was waiting for, before putting on a show.

Then someone was looming over her, and she saw that, somehow, she was in the way of Tomasz’s pacing, or he had set his course to make sure she would be. She braced herself for the ranting, and she could see that he had expected just the same, had been ready for the anger boiling inside him to vent itself on her. But it didn’t come. He just stared at her, and the man who looked out on her from those red eyes was tortured by guilt and self-accusation.

He opened his mouth, not to accuse, perhaps even to ask for help. Then someone was pelting up the steps, and a sea change passed over everyone there, a sudden presentiment of purpose. It was Paul.

“It’s time,” he said. “Now we go. Now we bring the Deluge to them.” He had his sword in hand, blade gleaming in the first leaden hues of the day.

“Yes! It’s time!” Tomasz spat, and he had his sword halfway bared as well before Paul stopped him.

“Not you.”

“Yes, me. I’ll lead the charge.”

“Not you,” Paul repeated. “Karel can do that. There’s something only you can do.”

THEY HAD THE cross set upright, sending its dawn shadow in a long, jagged stripe across the tents of the Order camp. Then they had to take it down again, because there was no obvious way of tenanting it otherwise. The Order’s usual modus operandi was lynching; crucifixion was a novelty.

Josef Danziger watched the work impatiently, glancing every so often to the walls of Jasna Góra, where the morning sun showed plenty of heads peering over the parapet. He reached for the feeling of destiny in the moment. Would it be this that future generations recalled, when they spoke of the rise of Josef Danziger’s New Order? He knew that such a moment would arrive, when he would become the man he saw in the mirror, a man crowned by history with the laurel wreath, a man to shape the world that was to come.

Abbot Leszek’s words came to him: You have no future. He shook them off angrily, shouting for them to bring the man out. By the time the sun goes down, old man, only one of us will be alive to see it, or at least you’ll wish you were dead. Who owns the future then?

The Abbot stood between his guards, brooding, broad-shouldered, and yet trapped. He reminded Danziger of a caged bear, all that futile, wasted strength.

“I asked you to take a message to your people over there,” he told his prisoner.

Leszek glowered up at him from the eye that was not swollen shut. “You have my answer.”

“You’ll be a message,” Danziger assured him. “And your people will surrender, when they’ve had a chance to think on it. Or I’ll do to them—all of them—what I do to you. The Order has no mercy for those who defy it.”

The Abbot took a deep breath and then looked him right in the eye. “I don’t know if this impresses your men, but it bores me to death. Get on with it.”

Danziger felt the white heat of his anger flare and abruptly he was before Leszek, smashing a fist across the man’s bony chin, sending him down to one knee. For a moment, the drive to simply kick and beat the man to death was almost impossible to restrain. He held it back, though: in the past, when he had indulged himself to that extent, he had lost followers. The sight of their Grand Master stamping and smashing a body like a child having a tantrum, spittle flecking his lips and his eyes glazed with the relish of the moment, it proved too unsettling for some. He tried to rely on others for his beatings now.

And probably the old man was baiting him to do it: a kinder and quicker end than Danziger had planned for him.

“Get him down there,” the Grand Master snapped. “Where are the nails?”

They were big construction nails, the heads beaten wide and flat so that the Abbot’s frail flesh would not just slip off them. There was a whole logistics of crucifixion that Danziger had never considered. As an intellectual puzzle, it was quite satisfying.

He held out his hand and, unbidden, someone passed him a hammer. “You’re a strong man, Abbot,” he told Leszek. “My men are making bets how long you’ll last.” He saw his prisoner’s lips move, trying to form some mocking comeback, but no words came out. They had him stretched out now, arms and legs held down. Danziger put the point of one nail to his palm, picking a point between the existing cuts lacerating the man’s hands. The hammer went up.

“Josef, Josef, wait.”

Danziger bared his teeth. “Later, Reverend.”

The Reverend Calumn had pushed his way to the front of the crowd, twisting his hands together. “Grand Master, there’s no need for this.”

“I disagree.”

“Grand Master, he will come round to our point of view. I can convince him to surrender Weber to us. We can win his support.”

Danziger straightened up and stared balefully at his ally. “Reverend, I don’t want his support. I don’t want to hobble our destiny by chaining it to the worthless opinions of mongrel peasants. I want to send a message to the world. I want the story told from here to Moscow, what happens when filthy slavs decide they can challenge the true masters of the world.”

“Grand Master, this is... this is sacrilegious,” Calumn got out. His usual smooth eloquence seemed to have abandoned him. “We may not see eye to eye, but he is a man of God. Why not keep him prisoner, use this as a threat, even—”

“I’m done with threats,” and Danziger knelt back down, set the nail, and sent a single leaden blow to drive it through the Abbot’s flinching hand and into the dense wood.

A moment later, he wasn’t quite sure what had happened. It seemed utterly impossible that Calumn had laid hands on him. The man didn’t have that courage in him. And yet here he was, standing again, with Calumn sprawled in the dirt at his feet and Danziger’s fist stinging from the return blow. Almost bewildered, he opened his mouth for a rebuke, but Calumn surged to his feet.

“I forbid it!” he snapped out, eyes wild. “You have strayed from the path, Grand Master. This is not the way to your destiny. This is not the will of God.”

Danziger felt the words strike amongst his followers: the religious rhetoric, that had been so useful in forging his army, now turned against him. They were still his people, still under his iron rule, but he could feel pinprick consciences starting up in some of them. He could feel the challenge to his authority like a grain of sand under his eyelid, impossible to ignore.

The roar of the pistol was so unexpected, so out of place, that Danziger was almost surprised to find the weapon in his hand. Calumn goggled at him, out of a face suddenly white as a shroud. Behind him, men were scattering in case Danziger felt like sending another bullet their way. At this range, though, one would suffice. He had taken Calumn right above the breastbone, and when the Reverend tried to speak, there was only a pinkish froth on his lips.

There was utter silence, when Calumn dropped to his knees and then fell on his face.

“Anyone else wish to defy me?” Danziger demanded. His soldiers were silent, and he wasn’t quite sure of their mood. How many of them had lapped up Calumn’s sermons just that bit too much? How many of them found belief twisting in their hearts like a treacherous knife?

And then, as though the retort of the gun had finally echoed back from the walls of Jasna Góra, a roar and a rumble sounded from the monastery: thunder; a monstrous beast; the damning voice of God. Danziger froze, and for a moment even he felt that divine judgment was about to light on him.

And then people were pointing, shouting: something was coming from the monastery, crunching and thundering across the bridge and jolting down towards them. The tank.

TOMASZ HAD TRAINED as tank crew, back before, but not in a Leopard. However, the Order’s crew had apparently not been professionals either, and the interior of the vehicle was festooned with labels in hastily-scrawled German, identifying the various controls. And so it was that, when he heard the signal rapped out on the hull, he sent the freed vehicle into reverse and slammed it out of the John Paul II Gate and down towards the Order camp as fast as it would go. He had no weapons to turn on them, but then the tank itself was a weapon, a battering ram. And it was a distraction. While they were watching his bumping, lurching progress towards them, the Order were hopefully not watching for the others.

DANZIGER STARED. FOR too many moments he had no words, his voice dry in his throat. His tank was coming back; his pride and joy. But, just like Calumn, it had betrayed him. It was working for the enemy now. And it was picking up speed.

He jabbed out a finger, bellowed the order to stop it, but they had nothing that could get in its way. The few who tried to shoot at it were just wasting ammunition against its armoured hide as the vehicle wove drunkenly backwards towards the camp. Already discipline was being lost, men trying to predict where the tank was going to hit, scattering from its path.

Something was wrong. There was plenty of shouting and alarmed cries, but some of them were coming from the wrong direction.

Attack!

And Danziger wheeled to see that, behind him, some of his more sharp-eyed soldiers were trying to rouse the rest of the camp’s attention. The defenders had sallied out. He had hoped they would, to rescue their beloved Abbot. He had envisioned a scything hail of gunfire cutting them down as they shed the protective stone of their walls. But now they were close, far too close. They had crept from their sanctuary and were coming to him from behind, out between the vacant shells of Częstochowa. They must have been stealing out of the monastery before dawn, working their way round.

His surprise broke, and he was storming through the camp, shouting orders. The tank could do limited damage, but here, here was an enemy they could fight, and it was almost upon them.

Even as the Order tried to make a firing line, the attackers were breaking into a run. There were rifles and pistols there, bows, swords, spears, an absurd grab-bag of human military history. Danziger saw several of them go down to the guns of his quicker followers, but not enough to stall the charge. In the lead, there was an enormous man dressed head to foot like a knight, loaded with steel and yet thundering ahead with the same unstoppable momentum as the tank. Danziger saw one rifleman shoot the giant in the chest and barely stagger him, the bullet vanishing into an impervious darkness within his breastplate.

Then the battle was joined.

KATY HAD NOT wanted to come on this suicide mission. The defenders had put together less than fifty people, and the Order had far more. There was apparently more to the plan than “run about and get killed,” but nobody was telling her. She should stay behind the walls and cower there, that was plain. That would be the reasonable course of action,

And now she was here, towards the back of the mob, running into the Order camp with a pistol and a knife stuck through her belt. Because of Leszek. Because of Emil. And because the only real alternative would have been to run away, because if the monastery’s warriors lost here, then there would be nobody to keep the Order out later. Paul had only a handful left for a token defence.

She had seen plenty of fighting since the Cull, but nothing like this. The warriors of Jasna Góra had used the cover of the buildings to get close to the camp, and then they had pelted across the last few yards of open ground, even as the bullets started flying. She had thought they would all die, at that point, but apparently Tomasz’s antics had been diversion enough. And abruptly she was running between untidy rows of tents, vaulting bodies from both sides, following up the charge as the attacking force drove into the heart of the Order camp.

Karel was the point of their spear, laying about him with his pollaxe, striking and moving on and leaving it to lesser men to finish off any wounded he left behind. Behind him came the men and women Tomasz and Paul had trained. Most of them looked absolutely terrified, electrified by fear and adrenaline, striking out at any face that was painted in black and white. The Order were still scattering, off balance and disorganised, unable to adjust to the swiftness of their enemy’s advance, but that wouldn’t last. As soon as they could get enough of their gunmen in one place then things were going to get ugly.

“Where’s the Abbot?” she called, completely turned around.

Jenna snagged her arm and dragged her off between two tents, stepping awkwardly over the guy ropes. The fighting was deteriorating into skirmishes now, knots of Order soldiers scattered by increasingly dispersed handfuls of the attacking force. Katy had a horrible sense of the mass of the enemy gathering itself back together again, barely scratched and recovering from its surprise.

“There!” And Jenna set an arrow to her string and loosed it, before following it towards the heart of the camp. A moment later Katy saw what she had seen: there was the cross, there the frail human form pinned to it by one hand.

The Order had first scattered outwards to meet the charge, and then recoiled away from it. The attackers were all pushing inwards, converging raggedly on their stricken leader. Which is a recipe for being surrounded, Katy decided, and ran for Leszek.

A moment later, she dived for cover as someone shot at her. She could hear orders being shouted from somewhere, and then she had a glimpse of the long-limbed, lean form of Josef Danziger with a fair number of men at his back. She dragged out her pistol, knowing that she was well out of range.

Then the Order men were running, scattering, and a moment later the tank ploughed through the tents where they had been, its tracks snarled with rope and canvas, oily smoke leaking from it as it slewed to a halt. Even as it stopped, the top hatch flew open and Tomasz practically leapt out, sword first.

And Katy was beside the cross, her hands reaching for the single nail, feeling it solidly set into the wood. Leszek’s calm eyes were upon her. His lips moved, and she thought he said the word, “Paul.”

“Yes, yes, Paul’s idea, blame him,” she said, looking around frantically for something to pull the nail free with. Jenna kicked her inadvertently, and Katy looked up to see the woman shooting again, reaching into her emptying quiver. The surviving warriors of Jasna Góra were pushing in, whilst around them the Order soldiers had rallied, taking up positions in the ruins of their camp, levelling their guns.

“Get him up!” Tomasz shouted.

“I’m trying!” Katy yelled back at him. She was reduced to wrenching at the nail, working it back and forth despite the ruin it was making of Leszek’s hand, seeing him twist and clench his jaw at every motion.

And then it was out, but by then it was too late. The Order had found its discipline at last, all around then, and Danziger’s mocking voice came to them: “I see you have a great desire to die with your leader! I grant your wish, peasants. And then I shall go to your fortress and hang everyone there from the walls. I shall show the world the price of defying the New Teutonic Order!” And he had forgotten himself enough to come to the front of his people to gloat, where any of the defenders could have taken a shot at him.

But by then Katy wasn’t listening to him. “Is that thunder?” she asked, and then, “Is it an earthquake?” The ground was shaking.

“No,” Jenna said, her eyes shining. “It’s the cavalry.”

They came swift out of the streets of Częstochowa, a coursing tide of dun and roan and grey that barely slowed as it met the milling Order solders. Those in the camp who had the self-possession to shoot were already using it to run. The rest went under the hooves, or were scattered left and right, to flee, or to stand and be shot down. They had rifles, the riders, and they had recurved bows of wood and horn that some driven obsessive must be crafting, east of here: skills that had waited out the turn of history until they were needed again.

The Roma had come. Called over the many miles by Leszek’s radio, summoned by the urgent words of Magdayeva, they had mustered their forces: their own horsemen, and those others they had agreed to teach. They had taken up their weapons and come at the call of Jasna Góra.

And the mass of the Order, all those angry men borne here on tides of nationalism and religious hatred, broke. A few shots were fired, horses and riders brought down, but most of the men ran and, in running, were lost.

It was not over so swiftly, of course. As Katy crouched by Leszek, the world around her seemed to be filled with fighting, crackling with sporadic gunfire and the occasional hammering of automatic weapons. The Order was being forced inward by the devastating charges of the Roma, but ‘inward’ meant towards the cross, towards the Jasna Góra defenders. She saw Karel go down, painted with the blood of his enemies, a half-dozen bullet holes punched in his armour. Magdayeva surged past, her mount vaulting over cowering Order soldiers as she twisted in the saddle to shoot back at them. Katy saw Jenna reach for arrows in an empty quiver, and then lash her bow across the painted face of an enemy. No quarter, no mercy was asked, expected or given.

She saw Josef Danziger there, and he had a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, but by the time Tomasz caught him, he must have run out of ammunition, for he met the captain of Jasna Góra blade on blade. He managed to fend off three furious blows, Tomasz’s technique suffering under his furious need to kill the man before him. Then Hamid’s steel won out against the museum-dusty metal, and Danziger’s sword snapped at the quillons, eagles and all.

Tomasz barked out a yell of triumph, catching Danziger with an upswing that smacked into his ribs, gouging his leathers and knocking him sideways. Then someone shot him. Katy didn’t see the impact or the bullet wound, just a sudden change in the way Tomasz stood. Even then he drove down at Danziger, but the stroke faltered and the Grand Master rolled away as the swordsman dropped to one knee. There was no awareness in Tomasz’s face that he’d been injured. His murderous composure promised Danziger a thousand deaths, but his body was dissenting, and his body had the casting vote.

An Order soldier was running up, fumbling another magazine into an automatic pistol and reaching out to help Danziger to his feet. Katy shot him, arms steady against the kick of the gun so that her bullet went into the back of the man’s head at five paces and spattered the Grand Master with half of his face. She had a second, then, locked eye to mad eye with Josef Danziger, in the moment when history discarded him.

Then Tomasz drove a knife into the man’s foot, pinning him to the earth, and Katy shot him, and kept shooting him until she had no more bullets.

THEY GOT TOMASZ back behind the walls of Jasna Góra and they did what they could, just as Katy and Hamid and all the rest worked night and day to save all those who came back bloodied from the battle. Many lived, but Tomasz was not amongst them. Leszek himself closed the man’s eyes with his good hand.

IT WAS A time of farewells.

“Are you going to keep your mouth shut and just get on with your job, this time?” Katy asked.

“What do you think?” Emil was trying to be flippant, but he didn’t quite manage it. “You think anything that has happened here has convinced me that religion isn’t the cause—”

“Emil.”

He looked mutinous, but held his peace. “What can I say? I’ll try to play nicely with the fanatics, Miss Lewkowitz. They have all the lab equipment, so I’ll have to smile and pretend, won’t I? It won’t be so different from trying to get grant funding, I suppose. But it would be easier if I had you there to help. Surely I can change your mind?”

Katy shrugged. “I’ll visit.”

“Why, Katy? These people, they’re mired in the past.”

She shook her head. “They’re planning for the future. I want to help. It’s been a long time since I found something I wanted to be a part of.”

A family of Roma was waiting for Emil, horses and wagons ready to travel the long road to Kraków. The animals stamped and snorted in the chill dawn. Past them, the Order camp looked like Glastonbury after the festival, a churned field scattered with all the rubbish that nobody had cared to salvage.

“Dr Weber.” A shadow fell across them and Emil looked up.

“Abbot.” The scientist scowled, shrugged, at last put out a hand. “I’m grateful. I suppose.”

Leszek laughed at that. “Repay us by making us all grateful. I have faith in you, Dr Weber.”

“Yes, yes, the humour never ends.” But there was less rancour in Emil’s tone than Katy might have expected.

She stood on the walls to watch them go, with Jenna and Magdayeva. They had even got Paul into the open air, though his grief for Tomasz was on him like a shadow.

“There goes the future,” Jenna said softly.

“The future?” Paul said gruffly. “You know what the future is? One of the Tsars will have an army, or a Khan or a Sultan, or some Lithuanian warlord or... there’s always someone.”

“So long as it’s someone we can fight,” Jenna told him. “So long as it’s not another plague.”

Katy watched the little group of riders and wagons until they had vanished into the empty streets of Częstochowa.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Lincolnshire and studied Zoology and Psychology in Reading in order to become a lawyer in Leeds. He is a keen roleplayer and sometime practitioner of European historical martial arts.

His series Shadows of the Apt started with Empire in Black and Gold in 2008 and concludes with Seal of the Worm in July 2014. He has also written numerous short stories for various anthologies and has a collection of short stories out entitled Feast and Famine from Newcon Press.

The Cull Begins...

Before the Blight had a name – before the world died – there was a chance to stop the AB-Virus in its tracks. It almost worked.

Astronaut Alvin Burrows holds the key: a literal Pandora’s box full of infected lab mice. But time is running out, and even orbit isn’t far enough to escape the pandemic. Burrows’ and his crewmates’ families are caught in quarantines on the ground, the death toll is rising, and maddened gangs are beginning their rampage.

The International Space Station is a world all its own, two hundred and sixty miles above the Earth, circling the globe every ninety-two minutes, fifty-four seconds; a fragile metal shell in which six men and women are trapped in close confines for months at a time. And something more sinister than the plague is loose on Station. Something driving one of the astronauts to murder the crew, one by one...

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Just before the Cull, Kelly McGuire and his gang staged a spectacular raid, to seize a load of gold bullion from an airplane on the runway, armed only with guts, guns, motorcycles and a bulldozer. But the deal went sour when one of Kelly’s mates tipped off the cops, and the gang was ambushed. McGuire barely got away with his life, running into the Bush beyond Melbourne’s sprawling suburbs.

Six months is a long time to hide out. Long enough for the world to end, for one thing. But now “Dead” Kelly—as the press was calling him towards the end, when the police reported they’d found his body—is back, and he’s gunning for some payback. A chance discovery gives him the perfect get-up, courtesy of another outlaw Kelly, and he’s set to figure out which one of his mates done him over. If he has to kill every one of the bastards to get there.

www.abaddonbooks.com

‘AFTER THE WORLD DIED, WE ALL SORT OF DRIFTED BACK TO SCHOOL. AFTER ALL, WHERE ELSE WAS THERE TO GO?’

Lee Keegan’s fifteen. If most of the population of the world hadn’t just died choking on their own blood, he might be worrying about acne, body odour and girls. As it is, he and the young Matron of his boarding school, Jane Crowther, have to try and protect their charges from cannibalistic gangs, religious fanatics, a bullying prefect experimenting with crucifixion, and even the might of the US Army.

Welcome to St. Mark’s School for Boys and Girls...

School’s Out Forever collects School’s Out, Operation Motherland and Children’s Crusade, with the short story The Man Who Would Not Be King, an introduction by the editor, interviews, and new, previously unpublished material.

‘Youthful idealism conflicts with jaded experience, and the characters are frequently forced to balance ruthless effi ciency with utopian optimism... A lot of provocative discussion sneaks in under the cover of machine gun fire.’

Pornokitsch on Kitschie Award Finalist Children’s Crusade

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Table of Contents

- Title
- Indicia
- The Afterblight Chronicles
- Dedication
- Part One: Between the Eagles
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Part Two: Bringing the Storm
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- About the Author
- 'Orbital Decay' by Malcolm Cross
- 'Dead Kelly' by CB Harvey
- 'School's Out Forever' by Scott K. Andrews