Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (32 page)

/***/

Later that evening,
Adam sat with Giselle in the upper row of the operating room and noticed that she was shivering. He offered her his coat and she accepted; it was freezing in the room because Santos had funneled air in from the outside to mute the Fountain’s powers.

The Fountain was lying on the operating table, conscious but comfortable. Though Santos had a suite of surgical instruments
fanned out by her bedside table, she showed no fear. Perhaps Santos had spoken Arawak to her in preparation for the surgery, but whatever the case, this was no longer the frightened girl who didn’t quite understand the commotion around her. This was a girl who was prepared to face the full truth of her destiny.

“When I separate her into her two selves, life and death, you must keep your distance,” said Santos. “Her power of death will be able to harm you, even in the cold.”

The operating room was clean and lit by candles, and most of the surfaces were hewn of wood. Santos’s assistant Skarr brought a gloved hand over the Fountain’s head and then placed a small canister on the floor. He placed a mask over her face, gently turned on the gas and then Santos went to work, slicing a hole in her abdomen. He was quite slow with his cuts, and it was a half hour before he took a step back and began the work in earnest. He then made small incision after small incision, cutting into her flesh with shallow movements, demanding a different instrument from Skarr with each cut.
This place is archaic,
thought Adam,
but the Surgeon knows what he’s doing, and he keeps his own form of cleanliness. Perhaps that’s the true nature of his castle; it’s not dead, but rather ‘sterile.’

The Surgeon seemed to be cutting around something within the Fountain, and he sliced around it as gently as if he were slicing over the membrane of a bubble. Adam had witnessed surgeries before but had never seen someone so deft with a scalpel; Giselle later whispered to him that Santos only moved the knife in between his own heartbeats.

An hour later, the Surgeon was making visible progress; there was a small, black, slimy object within the Fountain’s abdomen, and it appeared to be quivering. Adam looked closer; it was moving faintly, like a dying animal wriggling to get out of a hunter’s net. The Surgeon nodded at Skarr, and the assistant brought over another machine and turned it on over the Fountain. It blew air on her body and was so cold that Adam felt the chill in the upper decks of the auditorium.
They’re preparing to separate her two selves,
thought Adam.
She’s about to become incredibly powerful and quite dangerous, like a living bomb.

The Surgeon worked his way around the pulsating black
mass for another hour, slowly trying to detach it from the body from whence it came. He cut and cauterized, sliced and then cut some more, gently bringing it out as if he was taking a baby from its womb. He bid Skarr to bring another machine and the assistant brought out a wheeled apparatus that looked like a tire pump. Skarr turned the machine on and it made a slow humming sound. The Surgeon then placed it inside of the black object’s body, trying a few places with no success. The Surgeon eventually found the right spot, and soon the dark tissue was contracting and relaxing at a quick but consistent pace.
It’s a living being, distinct from the Fountain,
thought Adam,
and Santos is helping it breathe on its own.

Santos made a few more cuts and
lifted the black object out and placed it on the table. There was a hush in the audience, and Skarr managed to genuflect quickly towards it before taking another large instrument out from the corner of the room: a container to place over the Fountain that had gloved holes to allow the Surgeon to operate on her from behind a barrier. He closed the Fountain’s wounds relatively quickly; it was clear that he was nervous being around her separated form.

Santos completed his sutur
ing on the Fountain and then turned around to face the black tissue, still breathing with the help of the machine.

“We have separated the two,” said Santos
. “Death and life.”

“Death is the pale body on my left,” said the Surgeon, “and the quivering black mass on my right … is life.”

/***/

“From her conception, the Fountain of Youth was
both
life and death,” said Santos in a small room afterwards.

Skarr had placed the Fountain in her own frozen room and had placed the black tissue in
a glass jar that would give it nutrients and help it grow. Santos was talking to Adam and Giselle alone. More Arawak and Viking reinforcements were coming in outside, but Santos paid them no mind.

“The Fountain was a bei
ng sent from above, perhaps an angel sent to lead us to salvation,” said Santos. “But whatever the case, in the womb she split into two beings, not just as a twin but as a
mirror
twin.”

“The exact opposite,” said Adam.

“Precisely,” said Santos. “One held the power of life, and the other the power of death.”

“Then why did they grow up as one?” asked Giselle.

“Death is more powerful than life, so in the womb the force of death
absorbed
the force of life, and forever after they lived in a parasitic fashion, with the force of life living as a digested twin, or a
bezoar
, if you will. You only saw the form of death in the pale girl that you have come to know, but they were both there the whole time, and now they’ll live apart.

“Living as one
, they largely cancelled each other out and only a glimpse of their powers came through; her outer self brought death to those who came near, and her inner blood granted the power of immortality. Now separated, their powers have increased by several orders of magnitude; the pale girl could kill others with her presence before, but now she could destroy a city if she so desired. Her inner self granted immortality before; now she can magnify a spanner’s power by an untold amount, and perhaps one day bring the dead back to life.”

They sat in silence and listened to the outside
sounds of the Vikings sparring and clashing swords with each other. There was also the sound of gunfire as the Arawaks tested out their rifles.

“Both halves are innocent and don’t mean anyone any harm,” said Santos. “They’re mere children with the powers of gods, and they can’t help us defeat Juan by themselves. It’s my role to take their power and win this war. Your role
, Adam, is to help those out there hold Juan at bay until I figure out how to do just that.”

A BATTLE AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Brogg had a hard time digging into the frozen earth, which wasn’t a bad thing overall. Adam had been on both sides of an extended siege, and knew that digging was much more important for the attacking party. The invaders would excavate trenches to hold catapults, hide troops and cut off supply lines from the outside. If the invader couldn’t batter down a castle’s gate, they would burrow under it; in general, frozen earth was a besieged castle’s friend.

Geryon was nowhere to be seen; Cattaga had developed a high-pitched whistle that only he could hear, but she whistled and he didn’t come.

“He ain’t lazy; he’ll help us dig when it’s nighttime,” said Phage, shoving a sharp stick into the ground. “Geryon doesn’t like fire, and he doesn’t care for the sunlight either, as weak as it is up here.”

Phage was laying spiked traps in the small depressions between divots and then covering the traps with loose dirt and leaves. He had concocted a batch of deadly bacteria that could live in the cold, and he poured the liquid on the wooden spikes.

“These are what we call Punji sticks,” said Phage. “They can kill a human, slow down an immortal. Wood pierces the skin, these bacteria do the rest.”

“You fight dirty,” said a bearded Viking named Erich, who was digging alongside Brogg.

Erich was wearing a dusty old helmet that had a guard to protect his eyes and nose, but it didn’t fit well and he could barely see.

“I fight fair,” said Phage. “If they don’t want to get stuck, they shouldn’t come.”

The Viking Erich didn’t quite understand Phage’s reasoning, and Adam realized that therein lay a weakness in their army. The Vikings were looking forward to the battle but they were accustomed to invading, not defending.
Our Norse friends haven’t fought in centuries,
thought Adam,
and they’ve never fought from behind a wall.

Adam had lived through sieges before and knew that the main thing they needed was patience. He knew that the Vikings would be eager to scale down the walls and engage the enemy in hand
-to-hand combat, perhaps dying nobly, but Adam knew that dying nobly never won a battle. Adam understood that he had to keep the Norse warriors on the wall; if the enemy scaled it, he’d need the Vikings to push them back down again.

Adam heard the sound of gunshots from far off and saw that the Arawaks were shooting at targets in the far distance. They had all brought rifles and Adam could see their sights peeking over the walls, ready to fire on command.
They’ll keep Juan at bay, but we’ll still need the Vikings,
thought Adam.
In a siege, ammunition runs out, but swords don’t.

Adam looked back at Santos’s fortress; the walls were strong and high, and mostly stone.
Frozen ground will protect us on the outside,
thought Adam,
and the inside is invulnerable to fire.

/***/

Adam and Phage went back to the castle and then walked along the parapet. Brogg had drilled holes into the stone for the Arawaks to shoot from, and Phage had Brogg drill more openings that led straight down.

“
They call these
murder holes
,” said Phage. “An army comes near you, you pour some nasty shit on them when they start to climb.”

“It’s a last line of defense,” said Adam.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find something good to pour down there,” said Phage. “I’ll make it count.”

/***/

Santos’s guards did one more sweep around the fortress to make sure that no one had been trapped outside. Everyone was in except for two Vikings who hadn’t arrived in the first place, so they closed the heavy doors, which shut so tightly that they all but disappeared into the outer wall. Adam went downstairs to see Mayfly, and Mayfly wasn’t happy at the role Adam had given him.

“I should be out there fighting,” said Mayfly. “If it’s because of my heart
—”

“It’s not that,” said Adam,
and he pointed to the back rooms where the Surgeon kept the Fountain’s two selves. “If this castle is breached, you need to be the last line of defense to keep them from kidnapping her.”

“The best defense is for me to be up there fighting—”

“You need to be down here,” interrupted Adam. “If Juan’s crew sneaks in here, we’ll depend on you.”

“Depend on me to do what?”

“I don’t know,” said Adam. “You’ll have to figure something out.”

/***/

Adam saw the phalanx of Juan’s troops approach the castle and stop a kilometer out. Adam looked at his troops’ reaction to the enemy’s arrival; the Arawaks held no expression, and the Vikings smiled and sang songs in their Old Norse dialect. Adam looked through his binoculars and saw that Juan’s steward Balthasar was riding up to them on a horse, treading carefully and instinctively avoiding the patches of earth where Phage had buried his Punji sticks. Balthasar had an odd sack on the back of his horse and was yanking a walking boy behind him on a leash; upon closer look, Adam noticed that the boy was missing a hand.

Balthasar stopped twenty meters from the castle wall and then walked towards it, close enough that any of
the Arawaks could have shot him.

“I was prepared to meet you halfway out, as war negotiations are wont to do,” yelled Balthasar to the castle above. “But I
want your army to hear what we can do for them if they surrender immediately, and what we’ll do
to
them if they refuse.”

The Vikings laughed at Balthasar’s words, but he ignored them and
pulled two containers from the bag on his horse. Adam saw that these containers were made of metal and looked like closed cooking pots, with three legs and small gas tanks underneath them. Balthasar got on the ground and lit a match under the pots; the flame under one vessel caught, and then the other, and as they heated up the boy started to yell in agony. The kid ran towards the containers, but his feet were bound and he tripped. The boy was now in too much pain and couldn’t get up; he could only writhe on the ground and scream. It was enough to get the castle’s attention, including the Vikings who had ceased their singing and were now staring grim-faced at Balthasar. One Viking was about to throw his axe at the steward, but Balthasar held up his hand and turned the flames on the pots down, and the boy stopped screaming, eventually settling on a small whimper.

“In the
canister on the right is the head of one of the Arawak leaders, as well as the boy’s hand, to give you a glimpse of the agony that we can inflict,” said Balthasar. “The other container is filled with the head of one of your Viking compatriots; I believe his name is Ragnar.”

The Norsemen were aghast; Ragnar was one of the Vikings that hadn’t arrived at the fortress.

“You let them go!” yelled one of the Vikings from the roof. “I swear I’ll—”

“We caught Ragnar with his friend Sweyn as they traveled up here, and we decapitated them both. We’re now holding Sweyn well behind our front lines, along with four other
Arawak chieftains,” said Balthasar. “If you should try to harm me in any way, we’ll spend the next day boiling the containers that we have.”

The angry Viking spat and muttered something in
Old Norse, but held himself back.

“This is our offer
; hear it once, for I’ll never give it again,” said Balthasar. “Surrender now in aggregate, and we’ll give these heads back to you. Whoever surrenders individually will be let go and not pursued. But if you should choose to fight, we’ll kill your mortals in particularly harsh ways, and as for the immortals
—
”

Balthasar tapped the small containers by his feet.

“We have places for you in here,” said Balthasar. “So either walk free now, or spend eternity roasting in a box.”

Adam looked at his comrades; some of Santos’s assistants looked nervous, but Balthasar’s offer had only served to anger the Arawaks and Vikings.
The Arawaks loathe Juan and the Vikings don’t understand the concept of surrender,
thought Adam.
Still,
I must try to defray this a bit.

“You say you’ll create a new society?” yelled Adam.

“Yes,” said Balthasar. “A new world, free of sin. There will only be ten thousand inhabitants of earth, no more, but there will be room for all of you if you surrender now. We’ll have no war, crime or depravity, just peace and inhabitants with the power of gods. This is the future, and it’s up to you to take your place in this world.”

“Look at the tanks beneath your feet and the screaming boy at your leash,” said Adam. “Is this the foundation from which a new world will be born?”

Balthasar looked down at the boy and the tanks, and though he seemed to understand what Adam had said, he shook it off.

“The time for philosophical discussion is over,” said Balthasar.

“Then we’ll not surrender,” said Adam. “Again, all I ask is that you question what you’re doing, Balthasar. Whoever wins this day, you’ll fall on the wrong side of history.”

“We’ll win,” said Balthasar. “And the winning side is always on the right side of history.”

/***/

Adam took the binoculars and saw that Cannon had brought an actual cannon and was loading it with ammunition. The weapon had a semi-modern design and was most likely pilfered from a military depot. Adam told his crew to get down, and though the Arawaks did so immediately, the Vikings needed convincing. Adam saw Cannon fire the
big gun, and Brogg had to tackle a stray Viking before the projectile hit the side of the fortress with a
crack
. Adam looked over and saw that though there was a mark where the cannonball had struck, there was no real damage. It had barely made a dent in the fortress.

There was a cheer amongst the warriors
; the Norse started singing their strange songs again and one of the Vikings did a dance on the tower, making particularly obscene gestures towards Juan’s army in the distance. The Vikings laughed at the display, and then Adam looked through his binoculars again and saw that Cannon was preparing another projectile to be fired. Adam tried to warn the Viking, but he was too late; the second cannonball reached the wall a split second before the sound of the blast did and careened through the top of the tower, spraying bricks and dust into the air. There were yells and screams in both Old Norse and Arawak, and when the dust settled, Adam noticed that the cannonball had torn the dancing Viking in two. The group gathered around him, and Adam instructed Brogg to check for more cannon fire.

The Viking’s eyes glowed as he coughed up blood and smiled, vowing something in his old dialect
, and the other Vikings listened intently as he spoke. His blood was all over the place and his midsection had been torn to shreds, but he held up his fist and soon his comrades were cheering for him.
He’ll survive this,
thought Adam as the Vikings carried their compatriot’s broken body down to the bowels of the fortress.
But he’s out of this battle. We can’t afford any more dancing Vikings.

/***/

Juan’s barrage lasted throughout the night. The cannon couldn’t do much damage to the base of the fortress, but Juan’s army had time on their side, and they shot projectiles towards the upper edges of the towers and into the courtyards. The defending army remained intact but the anticipation of the cannon blast unnerved them, particularly at night when all they could see was the flash of the cannon’s muzzle. The group had to look on all four edges of the fortress too; though Juan’s army had brought only a single cannon, they moved it from edge to edge, taking their time with each edge.

“How are you doing?” asked Adam
of one of the Arawak chieftains.

“We’ve seen worse,” said the Arawak, holding his rifle. “We may have to do
a raid in the morning, to get a clear shot at that cannoneer.”

“Let him shoot,” said Adam. “Santos is working on unleashing the Fountain’s power, and he needs time. These cannon shots may give Santos the time he needs.”

/***/

By
dawn the enemy troops had shifted to the east side of the castle, which caused great concern amongst the Vikings. Leif told Adam that this meant Juan’s army was going to attack at sunrise.

“
It’s a common tactic for a raid
,” he said in his old Viking dialect. “
Fight with the rising sun at your back so that your enemy is blinded
.”

They hastily prepared themselves for the morning battle as best they could; those with sunglasses put them on, and those with an extra pair shared them. Adam went downstairs and had Mayfly make sunglasses out of whatever he could; he found a cache of smoked plastic and hastily fashioned face shields out of them.

“Let me go upstairs,” said Mayfly. “I’m wasting away down here.”

“You’ll waste away more up there,” said Adam, pointing to the recovery room of the Viking who had taken a cannonball to the midsection.

The Viking was snoring loudly, but his body was mangled.

/***/

The sun rose and Juan sent the populous to attack the castle, flanked by a group of spider-wolves, running wild but still obedient enough to keep pace with their slower comrades. The endless mass of the populous became angry as they approached, and descended upon the castle with a yell. Some were equipped with makeshift armor, but most were not. The Arawak snipers did their best to shoot whoever they could, but they had a hard time shooting in the morning light and rarely connected. Some populous had fallen into Phage’s traps, but they stayed down and the other members of the populous simply avoided them.
The Punji sticks slow the enemy down,
thought Adam,
but just barely. Of the thousand rushing towards us, perhaps twenty have been felled.