The house had once been respectable. Not grand or majestic, but respectable, the home of a prosperous farmer, of wooden boards on a stone foundation and with a high-pitched, steeply sloping roof that shed snow and made for spacious attics. That, though, lay long in the past. Its long years lying empty had left it rotting and sagging, with no human hands to repair the work of animals or the elements for over thirty years. The windows gaped like blank, empty eyes, the shutters hung askew, and there were crumbling holes in roof and walls alike, some even large enough to admit a man. In another decade, perhaps two, it would have caved in on itself, been nothing more than the corpse of a building.
Yet even so, a half-dozen people were drawing slowly, stealthily near to the crumbling house. Even though it was night, they moved cautiously, bodies close to the ground, using both the natural slope of the land and the obstacles, the low stone walls and the two majestic oaks as cover. Though two of them held lit dark-lanterns, they were kept firmly shuttered so that no light could escape.
There was something there, something within that abandoned shell that someone wanted very much.
Michele Tablas was at the back of the group, crouched behind a stand of thorny briars. Her sword-hand itched as she watched her troops, dull shadows in the night, creep ever closer, drawing into position. She saw the dull orange glow from two of the ruin’s windows, marking the position of the one who’d taken shelter inside. She wanted this, wanted it so badly she could taste it. In a few more seconds they would be in position, she would give the signal, and they would strike.
Tablas glanced at the man next to her. Paul Domcine caught her glance, then nodded once. She could just see the point of his neatly trimmed beard from beneath his hood. Tablas would have to share some of the glory with him, she knew, but there was no getting around it; she needed the hedge-wizard’s help.
Besides, she could afford to be a little generous. The prize was rich enough for that, and it was important to reward those who supported her. Loyalty, after all, could be a fleeting thing, and was heavily seasoned with self-interest. Even those whose character was not inclined towards leadership themselves had to have a reason for which path they followed. Tablas would have that path be hers.
Footfalls from behind her. They were soft, muffled, but still audible, the steps of someone being cautious, not someone trying to creep up in ambush. Her hand dropped to her saber anyway as she whirled.
Then, the heavy sweetness of anticipation turned to ashes on her tongue.
There were three people there. One she knew well enough; it was Pelforth, one of her own, but who never should have been there. His face was caught in a mix of emotions, anger and shame, and there was a stubborn set to his gray-grizzled jaw. He stood at the right hand of the trio; to the left was a young woman, barely more than a girl of twenty or so. Her hair was a dark gray, surprising for her age, and was drawn up into a bun with two long tresses left free to frame her face. Pince-nez balanced on her nose, with a thin silver chain letting them drop and hang from her neck. The restrained, conservative look of her face was offset by the tightly-corseted, close-fitting blouse and skirt that showed off her frankly spectacular figure and the pale choker crafted to resemble skeletal hands clutching at her throat.
The central figure in the group looked not much older than the girl, but carried and mien and manner of someone with more years. He wore the garb of a respectable gentleman, a country squire or perhaps a physician or advocate, greens and browns leaving his silver-white hair, cut close on top and tied back with a bit of ribbon in a queue, the only splash of the unusual. His expression was stern, his eyes hard behind square-rimmed spectacles.
“Put out that light, you fool!” Tablas hissed at Pelforth. “Do you want to be seen?”
Obediently, the elder man turned down the wick in the lantern he carried, by whose light Tablas had been able to see the newcomers’ appearance. Her attempt to assume control of the situation failed utterly to move the other two.
“I think,” the man said, “that my message was extremely clear as to not acting until we arrived, Lieutenant Tablas?”
Lieutenant Tablas didn’t answer the question. Instead, she looked over at Pelforth.
“Sergeant Pelforth, what is the meaning of this? You’re supposed to be in command of the garrison while I’m in the field.”
“Orders, Lieutenant. These two showed up looking for you, and when I told them where you’d gone, they insisted on bringing me out with you.”
“And just who do
these two claim to be?”
“They’re from the Chamberlain’s office, Lieutenant.” Pelforth let that pause for half a moment, just long enough for Tablas to open her mouth, probably to say something about bringing civilian officials on a military operation, then cut her off to finish the sentence. “Hiram Courvoisier and Opalneria Rain.”
Tablas’s mouth snapped shut, and she swallowed nervously.
“Let me guess how this went,” Hiram said. “You sent your report to the Chamberlain’s office that you had located Wychwood. They sent one letter to us to inform us, and one to you to let you know we were on the way and giving you your orders that you were to give us all assistance necessary in taking him into custody. You saw an opportunity to seize the glory of the capture for yourself by pretending you didn’t see the letter because you’d already left on your own. Is that roughly how it went?”
“I wanted only to do my duty and stop this monster before he hurts anyone else, Your Highness.”
Hiram didn’t entirely blame Pelforth for not immediately telling Tablas that one of the new arrivals was the third prince of the kingdom. The sergeant had been the senior soldier left at the garrison when they’d arrived, and he’d suffered the sharp edge of Opalneria’s tongue as a result. Several decades of teaching Necromancy to apprentice magicians had honed that sharp edge to an extremely keen blade indeed.
“Haldane Wychwood is extremely dangerous. You’re putting your troops at risk by rushing in blindly.”
“We’re aware of what he can do, Your Highness. That’s why I brought Mr. Domcine along. He’s charmed each soldier’s blade to deal with familiars, and he’ll provide direct magical support if necessary.”
Hiram glanced at the magician. His dull-colored hood and robe looked almost monklike.
“You’re with the army?”
“A private citizen, Your Highness,” he answered. “I’m a licensed magician who provides services for the Crown. I like to think I’ve earned their trust.”
“What did you use for the weapons?” Opalneria interjected.
“The standard elf-shot,” he said, a little surprised at the question. “From Taliesin’s variant of the Fairy Ring.”
“Functional enough, but the situation calls for Solomon’s Flame or at least a common shadowtouch. Necromancy is the best tool against Sorcery, and Wychwood’s Sorcery familiars have been enhanced.”
“We didn’t know that,” Tablas said, inadvertently saving face for her magician. From Domcine’s expression, Hiram suspected that he didn’t know the techniques Opalneria had suggested. Nor was it all that expected he would have; Domcine’s skill level wasn’t the problem at hand.
“You would have known if you’d waited as you were instructed to do. The Chamberlain wouldn’t have asked for us if he didn’t think the situation called for it.”
That was what so infuriated him. If they hadn’t rushed out in time, Tablas would have charged squarely into Wychwood’s hands, completely ignorant of the true threat, and if they were exceedingly lucky might have had a few survivors. All of it for nothing worthwhile, just prestige and politics.
“Then tell me, Your Highness, what makes Wychwood so special? What makes him any different than any other bloody-handed madman?”
“He claims to be from Triamelle; he’s actually Albionese, a spy sent by their crown to hunt out magical secrets. Two weeks ago, he found one. That’s how we first got on his trail. He disappeared from the Hawthorne Archives, giving his watchers the slip.” Hiram made a sour face. “He’d been there for over three years; they got complacent. We didn’t find out what had happened for a week. Three days after Wychwood vanished, a notorious tomb-breaker named Zird turned up dead in Smith Forge. Zird was from Gyre, where the Archives are located. When the Watch investigated Zird’s activities in Gyre, they found witnesses that he’d been meeting with a man who matched Wychwood’s description.
“The combination of Wychwood, Zird, and Smith Forge led to some fairly obvious conclusions, and we found that they had, indeed, broken into Montnoir Catacombs and violated the crypt of Argentine Courvoisier.”
“Monstrous!” Pelforth gasped. There hadn’t been time to tell him any of the specific details. “Profaning any grave is horrible enough, but the Paladin Royal’s?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Tablas snapped. “Everyone knows that Princess Argentine’s sword is kept in the palace, and that every test carried out by you magicians over the years revealed it to be nothing but a normal sword, that if it ever did hold any powers they were a miracle of God. And Wychwood isn’t a foreign spy, he’s a mad sorcerer.”
“The Lieutenant’s right about that,” Pelforth said. “You two didn’t see what that bastard did to those people. There were
children there, for God’s sake.
We still don’t know how many! If that’s what Albion calls a
spy, then we should give them the war they’re begging for and drive every last one of them into the sea!”
“Sergeant!” Hiram did not raise his voice for the command, though, since that was his entire point. “If he hears us, then he may get away, and neither one of us wants that.”
“Sorry, Your Highness. But the point—”
“The artifact he sought wasn’t the sword Aurora,” Opalneria cut in. “Have you heard of the Burnt Rowan Sceptre?”
Domcine had.
“It was a magical rod supposedly given to the Red Sage, Arsene Pendle, by the devil prince Belial. It allowed him to command an unholy host that let him carve out a territory in southern Chernyakhov and attack our northern baronies, until Princess Argentine and the Silver Company infiltrated his demense and destroyed him, and the Sceptre.” Shadowed by the hood, his bushy eyebrows rising could still be seen. “Do you mean the Sceptre wasn’t destroyed after all?”
“Apparently not. We found records in the Archives, ones that Wychwood had obviously come across first, suggesting that the Paladin Royal had taken personal custody of it when she and her companions had been unable to find a way to unmake it. It’s not surprising; unless you destroy it with brute force, a magical talisman has to have the magic that went into it unbound, and the Silver Company never had any magician with more than an apprentice’s grasp of Sorcery. Nor, I think, would they have trusted anyone so steeped in Sorcery that they would be able to do the work. So not only did Princess Argentine carry it for the next two dozen years, she was buried with it to continue guarding it in death.”
“Until Wychwood and Zird stole it from her tomb,” Hiram finished. “Then Wychwood murdered his accomplice to try and cover his tracks—foolishly, as it turned out, since that was what enabled us to pick up his trail. Luckily, he seems to have succumbed to the Burnt Rowan Sceptre’s more toxic influences.”
“Luckily!”
This time the interruption came not from either Tablas or Domcine, but Sergeant Pelforth.
“Luckily!” he repeated. “You heard what I told you about Wychwood’s butcher-work. And you call that lucky?”
“Yes, because if he
hadn’t given in, he’d be at the border by now, putting the Burnt Rowan Sceptre into the hands of an Albionese war-mage. As horrible as his atrocities have been, at least we have the chance to stop him, and it, before they do any more harm.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“It isn’t your job to,” Opalneria said. “It’s your job, and ours, to stop him now and recover the Sceptre before it can do any more damage.”
“Which brings us back around to the original point.” Hiram said. “Lieutenant Tablas, how many people do you have in your troop besides you and Mr. Domcine?”
“Six.”
“And their equipment?”
“They’re ordinary soldiers: studded leather, swords, and daggers. Three of them have light crossbows.”
Hiram nodded. They’d already asked about how their weapons were charmed for use against familiars. He glanced back at Opalneria.
“Did you see any preset wards or any sign he’s already aware of our presence?” He’d already checked for himself, but the skill difference between Opalneria and Hiram was considerably greater than that between Hiram and Domcine. In this case, though, that difference did not produce altered results.
“There hasn’t been anything so far. It all seems slapdash. I can’t understand such a basic lack of caution in an espionage agent. From the report we were given, his rooms in Gyre were both warded and trapped.”
“It’s more evidence that he isn’t in his right mind, if we needed any. Still, it gives us the chance to properly prepare, and summon familiars. Glamour as well as Necromancy, do you agree?”
Opalneria nodded.
“Yes, I do. Ordinarily I might suggest Sorcery, since Wychwood was known to be an alchemist as well, but I don’t want to bring any devils within the potential influence of the Burnt Rowan Sceptre.”
“That’s what I thought. I don’t know how it works, and while I’m sure you’re strong enough to hold your familiars, it’d just be a waste of mana and effort to have to.”
“Let’s get to work, then.”
She took out her wand, preparing to set her first Rune, when all their plans were cut off, not by an enemy ambush but by a high, wailing cry coming from the decrepit house. All five people in the little cluster straightened up sharply.
“He has a
child in there?” Opalneria gasped, her cool, controlled mien vanishing in an instant.”
“Bloody hell,” Pelforth swore, his sword already half-drawn.
Hiram, too, had drawn his own sword, a triangular-bladed rapier with a silver swept hilt. He pressed his thumb against the sapphire set in the guard for two seconds, and the blade began to glow a cold blue. He glanced back at Opalneria.
“Work fast,” he said. “We’ll do what we can.” To Tablas he said, “Signal the attack. We can’t wait.”
“What happened to it being so dangerous and needing to prepare?”
“It’s our duty to take that risk, not that of whomever Wychwood is holding in there!”
He spun away and charged up the bank towards the farmhouse, keeping his body low to reduce the risk of being spotted as best he could without sacrificing speed. Right on his heels came the thudding of Pelforth’s boots, the sergeant readily keeping up with the younger man. Behind them rose the cry of a barred owl, a nightbird not native to the region which was clearly Tablas’s signal to her troops. To the left and right, Hiram caught flashes of movement in the shadows, soldiers advancing. They would have already picked their points of entry, as would those on the other side, and might or might not be closing on the open gap in the wall Hiram was heading towards.
For a moment, the fear flickered at the back of his mind that the soldiers didn’t know who he was or even that he was on their side. For all they knew, he could be an ally of Wychwood’s and the signal given in response to his appearance. A crossbow bolt in the back was not going to do him any good—and it certainly wouldn’t help in stopping Wychwood.
Then they were at the house and those fears went away, replaced by the more tangible threat of a mad wizard and his minions. He plunged through the opening, jumping up a foot or so to clear the broken edge of the hole, and his boots caused the plank floor to rattle dully and kick up dust. Pelforth and two more soldiers followed him through, one stumbling as she landed and nearly falling.
Even in the shadows of the moonlight from outside and the cold glow of Hiram’s sword, it was plain that the room was almost empty. The farmhouse had long since been picked clean by scavengers; all that remained were broken bits of wood and twisted metal that had been kicked into corners; there was even what looked like the decaying remains of an old animal nest surrounded by small bones. Off to the right, though, a ruddy glow shone through the door and they went that way—or at least three of them did. With a hideous tearing sound, the floorboards gave way beneath the weight of one of the soldiers, who plunged between supporting cross-beams into the cellar below, landing with a sickening thud and a groan of pain. There wasn’t even enough time to stop and see how badly he was hurt, because the remaining three all but found themselves on top of their quarry in the next instant.
Wychwood had evidently set up in what had once been the kitchen of the old farmhouse, judging by the massive stone hearth, still seemingly intact, that dominated the left side of the room. Fire burned there, but it was not a natural flame; rather it was the dull, corrupt red of Sorcery.
Squatting in the middle of the floor was the man they’d come for. He’d turned to face the door at the sound of the shattering floor, so Hiram was treated to a perfect look at the sorcerer. It was a study in horror.
Hiram doubted Haldane Wychwood’s masters in Albion would even recognize their agent now. His dull blond hair was wild and unkempt, his cheeks were coated with stubble, and the neatly trimmed moustache witnesses had described him as wearing had grown scraggly and bushy. He wore a utilitarian-looking leather doublet and trousers, probably practical gear he’d donned to explore the catacombs, but they were now filthy, spattered with dirt and blood and other grime left to crust and dry. His left hand was curled into a claw around the throat of a boy of perhaps three years of age, while his right held a three-foot staff of wood, burnt black but with the outer layer seemingly cracked in places to let through a red glow as if its inner core was red-hot. The cracks formed runic patterns, symbols that Hiram didn’t recognize but was sure meant nothing good.
Wychwood’s eyes were wide and staring, unnaturally bright, and there was nothing sane in them. The insanity had not clouded his vision, but rather seemed to have expanded it, so that he gazed on hellish vistas invisible to everyone else.
Imps, a half-dozen or more, were clustered around him, tiny, withered manikins with coarse black fur and macabrely jingling jester’s caps. They stared at the new arrivals with the negligent cruelty of demented children who took pleasure in tearing apart their toys.
Then, the frozen moment shattered. The swarm of imps surged towards Hiram and his companions. At the far side of the room, the side door that led to the kitchen garden was smashed open from the outside to admit another pair of Tablas’s troops. The seething fire in the hearth, obviously some kind of summoned guardian, spat a flaming orb at the nearest soldier.
And Wychwood rammed the tip of the Burnt Rowan Sceptre, blunt as it was, up under the ribcage of his prisoner, plunging it in so that it ripped up through the heart. The choking grip on the dying child’s throat stifled any cries of pain; the light was already fading from his eyes as Wychwood tore the rod free.
Pelforth let out a scream of rage and charged forward. The burly sergeant swatted aside an imp with a two-handed swipe of his sword, then slashed the blade down on Wychwood, who raised the black rod to block. Fire pulsed through the sword, tearing it apart in a tremendous explosion that hurled chunks of burning metal through the room, wounding at least one imp and punching more than one hole in the decrepit walls. Pelforth was hurled back, flying bodily over ten feet in the air to land hard on the floor.
Hiram stabbed out, his rapier easily piercing an imp. Buying space, he thrust the point into the ground, activating its secondary enchantment and triggering the bound Rune that had been tied to it. He felt the sudden surge of mana drawn from him in a flash, and the shimmering pattern of a Hades Gate flashed into existence long enough to call forth the two phantoms that had been bound to the weapon.
“I swear by my soul,” intoned the ghostly knights, warriors drawn from Purgatory to occupy Astral forms of shaped mana. Hiram at once set one to attack the flame-guardian in the hearth and a second to assault Wychwood himself. That bought some time for Hiram and the soldiers to try to deal with the imps and reduce the general chaos of the situation. As they did, the last two of Tablas’s troops found their way into the room from opposite ends, adding their strength as another was swarmed under by three of the imps.
Even as Wychwood wielded the Burnt Rowan Sceptre like a blade, fending off the phantom’s strikes, something else was taking place under his feet. Tiny trails of fire licked at the ground, racing to and fro across the floorboards. A Rune was taking shape, seemingly drawing
itself in the dull light of Sorcery. It was clearly the power of the sceptre at work—or of the devilish will that possessed it, acting either at Wychwood’s behest or, and far more frighteningly, for its own ends. Whichever the case, Hiram knew that if the Rune was completed, it would be very bad for him and for the surviving soldiers.
Unfortunately, he had no idea how to stop it.
Another one of the soldiers went down screaming under a pair of imps, their hooked claws tearing leather and flesh alike. Her partner hacked wildly at the creatures, his broadsword rising and descending in fear-driven strokes that more than once slashed into the dying woman in their frenzy.
The hearth guardian suddenly guttered and died out beneath the phantom’s blade, plunging the room into sudden shadows as its life was extinguished. The attackers were suddenly taken aback by the shock of falling darkness, and even Hiram was taken off-guard long enough that an imp’s claws raked his right thigh before he could react and cut it down. He ordered the phantom, even flickering and wounded as it had been from the guardian’s fireballs, to come back and help its fellow against Wychwood.
Hiram then did the same, lunging in to assist his familiars, and it was good that he did, because the sorcerer struck out then, tearing the black rod through the ghost-knight’s armor and unleashing magical force that rent apart its Astral body from the inside, destroying it. Hiram thrust with the expertise of one who’d been trained in fencing as a matter of expectation since he was a boy, but somehow Wychwood parried and Hiram felt the thunderous surge of power from the dark artifact pulse into his sword. The enchanted weapon held, unlike Pelforth’s sword, but the force still made Hiram reel back.
And then the Rune kindled beneath Wychwood’s feet, flooding the room with the baleful light of Sorcery. Hiram recognized the symbolism of the Hell Gate, but there were additional elements to the Rune, no doubt crafted by the unholy artifact. The difference became obvious at once, as almost instantly two hulking shapes began to form, massive horned figures, seven feet tall with batlike wings and hoofed feet. True demons, more than capable of tearing apart a squad of soldiers with little trouble, charmed weapons or not. Hiram sent the surviving phantom after one, but he needed to fight them as a magician, with familiars of his own, if he was to have any chance of winning.
Only, he couldn’t do that. His sword, his pre-bound phantoms, those were the things he’d brought with him. To do more would require time, to draw Runes, to summon his familiars. Even then there was no guarantee of success; Hiram’s Necromancy was effective against Sorcery but the Albionese scholar had been a skilled magician himself—not a master, but neither was Hiram. And from what Hiram knew of Albion’s spies, they tended to be skilled in both magical and physical duels. And that was
without his wielding a diabolic artifact that could do far more than a normal magician’s wand.
Desperately, he thrust again, only to be parried once more. He had no idea if it was the sceptre at work or some fragment of Wychwood’s own skill surfacing in his muddled brain. The sorcerer then riposted with a clubbing slash that Hiram barely blocked, the burst of magical force traveling between the weapons sending him staggering back.
To his left, the demon’s claws dug into the surviving phantom, ripping apart its Astral form even as its flaming sword cut a long gash down the demon’s side.
To his right, Sergeant Pelforth lunged forward. The broken stub of his sword was clenched in both hands, and he ducked low under the huge demon’s wild swipe to bury six inches of charmed steel in the thing’s belly. Roaring, it swung a titanic backhand, clubbing the soldier with its fist and sending him flying away.
Cackling, Wychwood slashed down, driving Hiram to his knees when he parried.
Red haze crowded in on Hiram’s gaze, the corrupt light of Sorcery shining from the Burnt Rowan Sceptre as it forced him down, drawing closer and closer to his face. He was forced to put his hand up to catch the blade of his rapier higher up to use both hands to try to hold it back. The demons closed in from both sides, and he had no idea if any of the soldiers were still alive but doubted that it mattered at all.
Taking a last, desperate chance, he pivoted around on his left knee so he could snake out his right leg and hook Wychwood behind the ankles. The sorcerer was off-balance from trying to force Hiram down, and he toppled over, crashing down onto his Rune. Hiram rolled away, trying to gain some distance before he got back to his feet.
Not that it would matter, under the circumstances. He’d bought himself only a few seconds of life, at best. Even if he could hold off the wounded demons, there would soon be more, and Wychwood himself was more than a match for him one-on-one even if the Burnt Rowan Sceptre was only considered as a physical weapon.
But sometimes, a few seconds’ delay, the ability to hold out just a bit longer, was enough.
The pale shine of Necromancy flooded the ruined kitchen, drowning the dull crimson in its light. It poured through the windows as a half-dozen or more phantoms came swarming through the entrances and others sought for entry. And it filled the air as a great shape descended through the roof, the translucent Astral form of a double-ended boat filled with shapeless, clustered forms, and in its prow standing a naked, near-skeletal figure clutching a scythe.
The demons, hurt as they were, shrank and flinched from the ghostly glow. Sorcery was weak to Necromancy; the baits by which devils lured humans to sin were so often rooted in the needs of the physical body, things the substanceless souls of Purgatory had cast off in death, and this symbolism was preserved in the clash of magical forces. Then, rage replaced fear as the demons realized they were cornered, and they flung themselves at the phantom knights.
It was an uneven battle in the extreme. Three phantoms, moving with unnatural swiftness and the tactical skill of the soldiers they’d been in life, isolated each demon, flanked it, and cut it down from all sides.
The Charon, for its part, swept its scythe towards Wychwood himself. It did not strike him; rather, the stroke called forth two of the shapes it was ferrying and hurled them against the sorcerer. One was blocked, parried by the Sceptre, but the second hit the man himself, knocking him sprawling.
Wychwood’s Rune began to burn brightly, its flames burning faster as the sorcerer or the sceptre itself began to call forth help, but Hiram struck quickly and drove his sword down into the heart of the pattern, the rapier’s point piercing the floorboards, the enchanted blade’s power directly striking against the Rune’s energies. The Rune flickered, fading in and out as it fought to maintain itself, until a sweep of a phantom’s sword finally shattered it.
The sorcerer howled wordlessly, froth spitting from his lips as he pointed the glowing sceptre at the Charon. His eyes burned with an inner glow, as if the diabolic power unleashed by the cursed rod had taken root in his body, but the ferryman of souls did not show any emotion. It merely, one after another, cast forth the power embodied in its last three passengers, power that was joined by ghostly orbs, shapeless balls of pale blue flame that floated through the walls and hurled themselves at Wychwood one after another.
Some of the attacks he was able to parry, but others he was not, and those smashed into him. Despite the magic that was infusing his form, he fell, the Burnt Rowan Sceptre slipping from nerveless fingers to clatter off the rotting floorboards, even before the phantoms had the chance to turn on him as well.
The black rod lay where it had fallen, the runic symbols in its cracked surface glowing balefully, pulsing with a hate so tangible Hiram could feel it wash over him, but even the fiercest fire could not burn without fuel, and ultimately without a human soul to anchor it the dark artifact was nothing but a tool. With Wychwood dead, the power his sacrifices had awakened could only gutter, face, and die away as well.
When Hiram picked it up, the Burnt Rowan Sceptre wasn’t even warm from any lingering flame. It was just a stick, as cold and dead as the spirits Opalneria had called forth while her prince fought to delay it, as cold and dead as Wychwood himself and the spy’s foolish dreams of taming devilish power for his king.
As dead as all the lives wasted in the attempt.