Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [118]
“Sir Seaton!” cried Mrs. Persson. “No more shooting, I beg you! Don't you realize you're aiding Klosterheim. Their souls are already pledged to Chaos. They are the blood sacrifice they intended to make of you. One last action and he can use them to destroy everything. Everything!”
Begg was confused. He kept his Webley leveled at the remaining Nazi, the slavering, terrified Hitler who whispered in his lisping Austrian: “She's right. Nothing but harm will come from killing me.”
“Then get down on your knees and lock your hands above your head,” snapped Begg. Slowly, with every part of his body trembling, Hitler obeyed. Taffy Sinclair knew his old friend well enough to understand that Begg accepted that he had, inadvertently, done Klosterheim's work. The beat of the Balance had changed subtly. Now it was as if they heard a distant wildfire, like the crackling and snapping of burning timber.
Una Persson came to stand beside Begg. He stepped backward quickly as if she threatened him, but her expression was one of mixed anger and fear. “I did not believe you could follow me,” she said. “Oh, Seaton, your courage is now likely to lose us the fight—even perhaps destroy the multiverse! Do you understand what this means?”
The massive, swordlike Balance, its cups swaying and groaning, continued to beat and pulse. The light around its hilt was a golden halo surrounding dull metal of a blackness greater than the void. From somewhere below Begg thought he heard the rattle of distant laughter.
Klosterheim's voice joined in the laughter. It was the bleakest, most desolate sound Sir Seaton Begg had ever experienced. He lowered his gun and looked helplessly from Mrs. Persson, to Klosterheim, to the kneeling, gibbering Hitler and to his friends.
“By Jupiter!” he whispered as realization dawned. “Oh, my good Lord! What have I done?”
The booming of the great Balance had now taken on yet another different, arrhythmic note. Under its deep, masculine throb, Begg thought he could hear the thin screams of the Nazis. The gulf surrounding the not-dead men now boiled vigorously with blood and black smoke.
“We would have mastered creation and moulded it in our desired image until the end of time,” wept Hitler. Begg did not care that the sobbing man now lowered his hands and buried his face in them. “Klosterheim! That was what you promised me!”
“Like you, my friend, I have made many promises in my long career.” Klosterheim's toneless voice betrayed no emotion. “And like you, Colonel Hitler, I have broken many promises. I helped you and your followers because it suited me. Now you have failed me and it no longer suits. Your actions brought my enemies to me, and we have reached this pass. Only the blood and souls of your colleagues will compensate for your clumsiness.” He turned to the metatemporal detective. “My master has his initial sacrifices, thanks to you, Sir Seaton. Now he will come to my aid, as he promised …”
Begg could not disguise his own self-disgust. He was about to speak when a new voice, light and mocking, sounded from out of the scarlet mist behind them. He recognized the voice at once.
“Oh, do not count on Lord Arioch turning up just yet, Herr Klosterheim.” The newcomer's tone held a kind of courage which could belong, Begg knew, only to one man. He looked in surprise back down the road which had brought them here. Strolling towards them, swinging his cane, for all the world as if he were still the insouciant flaneur of the Arcades de l'Opera in full evening dress, including a silk-lined cape and a silk hat, came Monsieur Zenith. “Good evening, gentlemen.” He lifted his top hat. “Mrs. Persson. This is not quite the scene I imagined I would find. Where are Herr Hitler's friends?”
“I fear they have become at least a potential blood offering to whatever demon of Chaos Hieronymous Klosterheim obeys,” replied Begg in chastened