Standing over them like an emperor grinning down into an arena was a tall, powerfully built young man. He was brutally beautiful, his pulchritude accentuated by ink scrawled across his skin. The tattoos were displayed by his half-open shirt and rolled sleeves, and he held his silver suit coat over his shoulder like a regal cloak.
“The future of warfare and therefore the future of mankind is being built in Petrograd,” the newcomer declared, managing to meet the eye of every upturned face without deigning to move an inch. “A future you are going to help build.”
Several voices cried out at once to know the man’s identity, and some of the attendants drew pistols and pointed them at the royal box. Trotsky and Wrangel exchanged concerned looks before turning to regard the man standing above them. Despite several weapons aimed at him, he didn’t seem concerned, and that alone gave the two leaders pause.
“You seem quite confident about our cooperation,” Trotsky called to the man, his tone flat and neutral. “Yet, none of us seems to know who you are. A rather odd way to begin a partnership, don’t you think?”
The stranger looked down at the Red spokesman and displayed a wolfish smile.
“I’m not sure I said anything about cooperation. Did I?”
The first canister rolled across the floor then, releasing jets of orange-yellow vapor as it went.
Horror robbed most of the men of the first few vital seconds, and panic stole the rest. Hurried shots scored and pitted the balcony beside the stranger or punched dusty holes in the ceiling. The man didn’t budge an inch, his fingers not even tightening on the crumbling scrollwork beneath them.
Those who hadn’t wasted time shooting or succumbing to fear had run for the exits, but that proved as ineffectual as the other options when brutes in gas masks emerged like specters from the thickening fog, clubs and canisters in hand. A few hard strokes and the runners were sent stumbling back with broken jaws and flattened noses.
More canisters with brilliant hissing contrails spun into the gathering until the main floor was thick with yellow fog. Men screamed and more shots were fired wildly, but they only bit into walls and the moldering seats. The armed men stood, breath rasping through their protective gas masks, and watched the figures inside the murky cloud contort and spasm as their screams grew fainter.
There was a splintering crash, and a biblical wave of chittering rodents rushed out of the fog. Some still bore the gas on their fur like tarnished motes of gold. Many of them collapsed spasming, while others, frenzied with pain, bit and tore at their brethren, but all were carried along in the verminous tide that sought to escape the poison. Even as high boots shuffled away from the coming torrent of rodents, the eyes of the masked men swept up to the man still watching the scene below. In a second, it seemed, all made the same decision.
Better to face the plague of rats than face their master’s wrath.
Fortunately, the dying vermin were more interested in escape than vengeance and so flowed past the men in a stream of squirming bodies. Most did not make it more than a few bounds through the doors before they succumbed.
In the distraction of the rats, the guards hadn’t noticed a single figure lurching through the fog toward them. One hand held a handkerchief to his mouth, while the other groped before him as he staggered forward. He was unrecognizable beneath a web of swollen and broken blood vessels squirming beneath his skin. Rivulets of dark blood seeped freely from his eyes and nose and smeared the handkerchief, further concealing his visage. A thick, horrid gagging sound issued from deep in his throat, and it was that which drew the guards’ attention.
The nearest man noticed too late as the groping hand grasped his hand, in which he carried a cudgel. Fingers turned to claws, and the handkerchief was abandoned as the dying man raked arm, shoulder, and face. The guard managed to beat his attacker back with a desperate punch and several savage blows, but not before the mask had been torn off his face. The poisonous fog was thin enough at the edge of the hall that its vapors could be seen sliding up the unfortunate man’s nostrils even as he cursed his dying attacker. Dark eyes wild with panic, he looked upward and saw with absolute horror his master’s eye upon him.
“Oh, my dear Ilyah.” The tattooed chieftain sighed with heavy resignation, then gave a slow nod.
A desperate gibbering moan escaped Ilyah’s lips as he dropped his club and tried to force the mask back into place, but the others closed in around him. He screamed and tried to find a face to plead with, but behind the flat, reflective eyes and rasping respirators were monsters beyond reason or pity. With single-minded implacability, they drove him deeper into the fog as he wailed and begged. When he tried to push past them, one of them kicked him hard between the legs so his body came off the ground. Gasping and mewling, he reached out, but a cudgel swept down and broke his arm at the wrist. Then his comrades retreated to the rear of the hall, boots crunching on the bodies of dead rats, and resumed their vigil.
Ilyah’s screams were swallowed by the choking fumes within a few moments.
Soon there was only the grating breath of the masked guards and the vapors congealing into small clouds that settled across the hall floor. Jutting from the saffron murk were the tortured forms of the dead warlords and their attendants, strewn across and between the upturned seats. Behind them was a jagged hole in the floor near the orchestra pit where one of the wretches had crashed through the rat-gnawed floor and now lay broken in the darkness beneath the
