Chapter #98The Wake: Fyodor's Tale by: imaj   “I too have a story about Margaret I’d like to share,” says Fyodor with a rueful smile.
“Is it a war story,” groans Rick.
“It might have happened during the war,” replies Fyodor a shade defensively. “Besides, Margaret was inspirational during the war. Very important. It happened near the end of the war. Everyone knew that the Germans were going to lose by this point, and that included both the Stellae and those warlocks hiding under the German’s skirts. The warlocks knew we would be cleaning house once the war was over and they were getting desperate.”
*****
I hefted one of the rocks from the riverbank into the river, just to see how far it would go. It sank in the middle with a satisfying plopping sound. Quite some distance! My strength was continuing to increase all the time. Besides, all this skulking around and waiting was boring. I was starting to wonder how long this was going to take.
“Could your apprentice be any louder Alexandre,” came a hissing voice from nearby.
I turned round to see a very small woman emerge from one of the bushes, I guessed she maybe came to the top of my stomach in height. And so old looking, in her fifties at least, I thought. “Pfft, let them find us,” I replied, not bothering to lower my voice. “Better than all this hiding.
“Margaret has a point Fyodor,” my mentor said quietly, emerging from his hiding place. My mentor was as tall as I was, but gaunt looking. Cadaverous even.
“Who else is coming,” asked Margaret.
“Just us,” replied Alexandre ruefully. “The Germans might be retreating on all fronts, but all the warlocks that have been hiding in their territory are getting bold. Or desperate. I’ve had to detail members to clear up seven kinds of hell between here and Paris,” he explained. “So just us.”
“Diversions,” snapped Margaret. “This is where the Ordo Mortis has moved to and they have something very, very big planned. Didn’t you read my message?”
Alexandre had told me a little about the Ordo Mortis. Despite the Latin name they were only a few years old. It would be wrong to describe them as a kind of anti-Stellae. They were a simply group of Necromancers that had banded together for mutual protection, hiding out in Germany to escape our reach. War was good for Necromancy. There was always a plentiful supply of bodies.
“I did,” replied Alexandre evenly. “And if it was from anyone other than you I might have doubted them. I have a contingency plan in place. We have two days to recover whatever they are using to power this ritual otherwise it goes active.”
“A shard of the Nothung,” replied Margaret. “Which tells me that someone high up in the German government is desperate too. Desperate enough to work directly with the Ordo rather than keep them at arms length.”
“Tell me what you’ve found out Margaret,” asked Alexandre.
“No more than a dozen ritual sites, with the shard at the most important,” explained Margaret briskly. “I don’t know which one that is yet, but Julius Keyserling is here. Find him and you find the shard.” The name was familiar to me too. The Ordo’s leader: An American traitor of some kind, although Alexandre knew no more than that.
“And the ritual itself?”
“Three days from now,” explained Margaret. “The city’s population is swelled by refugees. Many will die if the Ordo is completes it. Then they will come back as walking dead. Unstoppable soldiers that can’t be killed because they are already dead. Whatever your contingency is, it will need to be very powerful Alexandre.”
Alexandre looked at the city, less than a mile downriver from us. It was almost entirely untouched by the war. “It is,” he stated flatly
-----
We cleared our third site by the evening of the next day – a cellar underneath an abandoned house. In truth they were hardly challenging. It was all hangers on and followers. No real necromancers worthy of the name. It was only in the third site that I got a real fight! A single unliving servitor with the cultist had required the efforts of all three of us combined to bring it down. I could see why the prospect of an army of them worried Margaret!
Margaret, however, was worried. “We should be seeing more full members,” she said, kneeled beside the dead body of an Ordo lay brother. They had defended with such ferocity there had been no chance to capture them.
“I’m inclined to agree,” replied my mentor.
“We should be near the centre,” explained Margaret. The ritual sites were supposed to be chained together, so each one led us to the next. Each step closer to the centre and the heart of the Ordo’s cult. “Not cutting our way through their chaff. Give me a minute and I’ll work out the location of the next site.”
I stooped to examine one of the bodies. There was a little leather bound notebook protruding from his shirt pocket. Flipping through it, it looked to be in English. Not a language I understood back then. The only language Alexandre, Margaret and I shared was French.
“What’s this,” I asked, handing the notebook to Alexandre.
“Instructions for the cultist here, ‘destroy on reading’ it says,” he replied, looking through it. His face suddenly fell. “No! ‘Location number twenty five’,” he translated. “Number twenty five – at least twice as many as your estimate Margaret, maybe three times as many”
“Give that here,” she snapped, looking at the book. “We can still manage this before your contingency,” she said after a minute. “We just need to move fast.”
Whatever Alexandre’s response was going to be, I never heard it. In the distance a familiar wail started up. One that I had dreaded since the first day I heard it in the early days of the war.
“Air raids,” ask Margaret, her face quizzical. “The allies never bomb here.”
“Oh no,” moaned Alexandre, his legs giving way beneath him. “No, no, no… They’re here a day early. We have to take shelter.”
-----
“I think it’s safe to emerge now,” Alexandre said. It had been over a day since we had taken shelter in the cellar. For me that time has been spent making constant adjustments to the sigils that protected our little hideout. I was very tired. Exhausted. “Fyodor,” added Alexandre, nodding at me. I took this to mean he wanted the sigils broken.
I obliged him. There was a faint his of steam and a little debris fell from the roof as I did so. Then it took us maybe another hour to dig through the ruins. Just my luck that I was the only one with Kenandandra’s strength!
It was some time in the middle of the afternoon when we reached the surface. The city was gone. It resembled the surface of the moon. Only a few broken shells of buildings remained. There were very few signs of life. In the distance I could make out a shell shocked survivor wandering the ruins in bewilderment. There was a prisoner of war work gang that seemed to be clearing bodies from the ruins.
I am ashamed to admit it now, but I felt exalted at the destruction. It was only a couple of years since I’d seen the same devastation wrought on my own motherland. Why shouldn’t the Germans suffer the same? The smile disappeared from my face when I saw Margaret.
Her face was grave, much more so than it had been in the last few days. “There will be a trial for this Alexandre,” she said, with a quiet, yet steely fury in her voice.
“I know,” replied Alexandre, his voice hollow. “I want you to lead the case against me Margaret.”
*****
“Wait a minute,” interrupts Kali. “Are you talking about Dresden? Are you saying that the Stellae was responsible for the bombing of Dresden during the second word war.” The shock on Kali’s face is obvious, even though you don’t know what she and Fyodor are talking about.
“Yes and no,” replies Fyodor sadly. “The Allies intended to bomb somewhere into oblivion anyway, all Alexandre did was use his contacts to nudge their target a little. They did not require much nudging.”
“Thousands of people died,” says Kali quietly
“Thousands more if the ritual was completed,” sighs Fyodor. “But you are right Kali. Margaret got her trial.”
“But Alexandre was still leader when I was an acolyte,” says Kali slowly, confusion written across her face.
“Yes. He was acquitted. ‘Exceptional circumstances’, they said, because of the war and the threat posed. Then everything about the business, the records and the shard of the Nothung – we pulled it from the ruins of the Frauenkirche the following morning – was locked away in the archives.” Fyodor’s mouth twitches. “I always thought Alexandre had secretly hoped he would be convicted. He carried the guilt with him for the rest of his life the way only a Lurga can.”
There is a long period of silence. Everyone seems to have faraway looks in their eyes as they reflect on Fyodor’s tale.
“I think that’s why he chose Charles as his successor,” says Fyodor with a sigh. “He wanted someone untouched by the horrors of the war. The way I felt when I saw the city that morning…” Fyodor shudders. “I went to see Margaret in Brighton after the war. To pay penitence for my part in it all. She had grown distant… More severe.”
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