In mindview, Berne’s Shell—the shimmering aura of life power that surrounds him—is as large and eyeburning-bright as an arch-mage’s, and I fight down a rising panic that would throw me out of mindview.
This isn’t possible; Berne’s a warrior, not an adept, he’s a Monastic-trained swordsman—he has no magick. He never did! But now—
Now, through the tangled ribbons of multicolored light that represent Flow in my mindview, I see another ribbon, a shaft of power bigger in diameter than my doubled fists. It neither twists nor tangles as do those of the raw Flow, and its color is the pure crimson of hot steel in a forge. It bathes Berne’s Shell, and it runs straight as a spear from him to the southwest. It vanishes into a tenement there, but mere brick and wood is no impediment to Flow, and I know what’s in that direction. That shaft of power aims toward Old Town, the island in the Great Chambaygen that is the heart of Ankhana.
That shaft of power springs from the Colhari Palace.
This son of a bitch is channeling. Never mind that it’s impossible—he’s channeling from bloody Ma’elKoth! That explains the magickal Cloak that let him invisibly take our stooges without my feeling the pull of the spell: the power for the spell comes from a mile away, and it doesn’t draw local Flow at all. As all this runs through my mind I fail to notice Berne stretch his hands up toward my window until it’s almost too late.
I throw myself back from the window. The entire wall explodes with a splintering roar and a wash of fire. Even as I sprawl on the floor and cover my eyes against the flames, my other hand seeks out the miniature shield modeled of faceted quartz in my breast pocket. My hand tingles with the charge it carries, and mindview shows me the lattice of glowing lines enchanted onto its surface. I force that image into my consciousness, visualize it so powerfully that I can actually see it filling the yawning gap that was once the wall.
Sunlight streams through the ragged hole, and flames lick its edges; the ceiling sags, cracking now that the wall’s support is gone, and on the rooftop across the street, ten Cats swing cocked crossbows up over the lip of the roof and fire on me.
Their quarrels sing across the street and stop where the wall once was, quivering as though they’d struck wood, though the only thing that holds them hanging suspended is my imaginary Shield, which fills the hole. Four Cats swing down on ropes from the roof of the building—it’s a beautifully executed maneuver that would have brought them gracefully through the hole into the apartment. Instead they hit my Shield and bounce, though their impact feeds back enough to make me grunt like I’ve been gut-punched.
The Shield looks in mindview like a decimeter-thick matrix of golden force; to them it’s a wall of semisubstantial glass with the texture of vulcanized rubber. Flow streams through the quartz model. There’s plenty of power here, and I can hold this Shield as long as I can keep the visualization going. The Cats hanging from their ropes outside kick off the Shield to hit it again, and again it hurts.
At least Berne can’t channel another of those firebolts without frying the Cats outside; I take my time getting to my feet, concentrating on holding the Shield.
Over my shoulder, through the arch Lamorak cut in the wall, I can see Talann lowering the younger of Konnos’daughters through a similar hole in the floor. She clenches her fist in the catspaw “We’re okay” sign and beckons for us to follow, then leaps lightly down through the hole.
The Twins have been using the planks Lamorak cut from the wall to angle-brace the hallway door—a dagger pounded into the floor foots the planks, and the tops are wedged beneath the handle. This might slow the Cats for a few seconds, but no more. “Come on, move it move it move it!” I yell. I’m going to have to give up the room, retreat through the cut, and shift the Shield from the outer wall breach to the cutaway arch, because I can’t hold the breach and the door at the same time.
As the Twins pound the last plank into place, the door and the wall around it explode into smoking splinters and blow them sprawling across the room. The room fills with choking sulphurous gas, and through the hole, from the corridor beyond, pour the Cats.
They come in fighting.
The jerkins they wear are reinforced with wire, but that is their only armor; their acrobatic mobility and stunning speed are their defenses. They’re at their best in small groups on open ground; that’s why I’ve chosen our battlefield in the most constricted quarters I could find. It may not be enough.
Berne’s bell-toned tenor comes from the corridor outside. “Get the adept! I want him alive!”
Both Twins are bleeding as they struggle to get up. The lead Cat dives at them and pays for it—Jak has his broadsword out, and he spears the Cat through the throat. The Cat’s impact lays Jak on his back again, and Dak has to cover him from one knee. Then I see no more because I have problems of my own.
A pair of Cats spring for me. I drop the Shield—four more won’t matter, in this crush—and draw the finger-length boltwand from my left wrist sheath. I barely have time to trigger it with a caress of my Shell before they’re on me. A lance of light springs from the end and spears through a knee of one of the leaping Cats. He goes down in a heap, but the other hits me like a charging bull and slams me against the wall.
He slaps the wand out of my hand with the flat of his blade and gives me the pommel hard upside the head. I roll with it enough to escape a skull fracture, but fireworks shower across my eyes. He pins me against the wall with his off shoulder and holds the point of his blade against my throat and snarls, “Now, y’cunt traitor, whatter y’gonna do?”
He’s justified in his confidence; most adepts are helpless in hand-to-hand range, and I’m a small, slender woman who clearly is no physical threat. On the other hand, when you’ve spent a couple years married to the man who’s popularly considered to be the best infighter alive, you pick up a bit here and there.
I bite my tongue, and saliva floods my mouth. I take a deep breath, and spit in his eyes.
He blinks, that’s all—but it’s enough. In that bare instant while his eyes close and open again, I lift a foot, put the edge of my boot on top of his kneecap, and stomp down. Ligaments tear as the kneecap shifts. The pain is stunning, and while he’s deciding whether to scream first and then stab me or the other way around, I twist out from under his shoulder and dart away; he won’t be able to follow.
The Twins are up and back-to-back; they’re breathing hard and bleeding, but five Cats lie draining their lives onto the floor around them. Dak and Jak grew up in the gladiatorial pens, they’ve been fighting as a team since they were six years old: in this kind of crushing close-quarters fight they’re unbeatable.
But now the Cats are backing away from the breach in the outer wall, leaving the Twins exposed to the crossbowmen across the street—and now the Cats notice that their companion doesn’t hold me anymore.
It’s a second’s work to return to mindview; their Shells shimmer around them, and the drifting lace of Flow fills the room. My hands find a tiny pinwheel, only the size of a copper coin, in a pouch that hangs from my belt; it’s layered of platinum and gold, and the sigils I enchanted onto it glow with the green of new leaves. The pattern fills my consciousness as I bring the pinwheel to my lips and blow.
The pattern expands outward from my eyes to layer my Shell, then it reaches to the shattered planks and splinters that litter the floor, their tiny faded Shells reflecting the life that once flowed through them. It takes me only a second to link the pinwheel’s forcepattern to the faded Shells of the planks, to forge a sympathetic identity between them and the pinwheel’s vanes. The planks lift off the floor, and when I blow on the pinwheel again, the planks spin.
They spin fast.
They spin like propellers, like buzzsaws; I wave the pinwheel through the air, keeping it spinning faster and faster, and the planks match its speed. The link to the pinwheel will keep them spinning; now I can use my own Shell control to direct their flight.
I send them whirling into the Cats. The whining ro
ar of the wood mingles with the Cats’ cries of pain and dismay; the larger planks hammer with crushing force, and even the tiniest splinters draw blood.
“Retreat, you idiots! Fall back!” Berne barks from the safety of the corridor. The Cats scramble for the gaping hole where the door once was, and I send half the wood roaring after them. The other half I send whirling toward the opposite roof, to cover the Twins’ retreat from the crossbowmen, and for half a wild, exhilarated second I start to believe we might actually get away.
The crossbows’ flat whacks are barely audible through the roar of the spinning wood. Only two quarrels make it through the cloud of wood into the apartment—but one of them slams into Dak’s shin. These quarrels mass roughly two hundred-fifty grams of solid forged steel, and they hit like a sledgehammer; Dak’s shin shatters, and he goes down with a cry, clawing at his brother’s shoulders. Jak turns to take his arm and carry him, and that’s when Berne dives into the room like a bloodstained thunderbolt.
His dive becomes an acrobatic roll, and he comes to his feet with his sword in his hands. I frantically reverse the direction of the flying wood, but long before I can bring it back into play, Berne spins and his blade opens a gaping wound across the nape of Dak’s neck before the wounded Twin even knows Berne’s in the room. Dak’s head flops forward, spraying blood across his brother’s face, and Jak howls like a damned thing, trying to drop his brother and bring up his sword at the same time. Berne’s already reversed his blade for an over-the-elbow backstrike, and he drives its chisel point through Jak’s open mouth and out the back of his head.
In just over a second, he’s killed two of the best swordsmen in the Empire.
He says, “Shield. Personal.”
As my roaring wood finally spins into him, a globe of semisub-stantial glass has already surrounded him. The wood batters uselessly against it.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” he says. Within the globe, he whips his blade in a short arc that sprays blood, and smiles.
I don’t answer; instead I send the wood flying out into the corridor among the Cats, then I smash the pinwheel into the wall at my side, exploding the planks into what I hope is a blinding cloud of splinters and sawdust. Outside, the Cats respond with a satisfying chorus of shouts.
Berne looks at me, frowning, then his face clears. “Pallas!” he says with a broad grin of recognition. “It is you! Pallas Ril, fuck me if it isn’t! Does this mean that Caine’s with you? No, no, I don’t need to ask. If he was, he’d be at your side like a loyal puppy.”
I back away, through the cut into the next room, as he paces toward me.
“Does this mean you’re on your own? Is it . . . is it you? You’re Simon Jester? You? The Infamous Simon Jester, the Elusive Thorn in the Paw of the Ankhanan Lion, is Pallas fucking Ril. Fuck me like a goat.”
He licks his lips. “I’ve dreamed,” he says, his voice becoming thick and wet, “of meeting you again. I have plans for you, Pallas. Who knows? You might even like them. If you like them enough, you might live through them.”
I hold my tongue and keep backing slowly away; the longer Berne talks here, the farther away get Lamorak, Talann, and the Konnosi.
His grin spreads even more. “It might actually be fun to keep you alive. That way you can tell Caine all about what I did to you.”
I shake my head. “That’s pretty weak, Berne. Caine and I—we had a parting of the ways. He doesn’t care what happens to me.”
He nods judiciously. “All right. I’ll just please myself, then.”
“After you catch me.” I follow the words with breath control, shifting back to mindview as my fingers fumble for the drawstring of a pouch at my belt.
He snorts. “I’ve caught you already.”
The polished buckeye that comes into my hand starts to trail smoke and pulls a huge swirling cloud of Flow as my patterned concentration triggers the enchantment. Berne sees the smoke and gives me a pitying look. “You don’t have to be smart to be a pretty good thaumaturge, but I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to think you can hurt me. This Shield is powered by Ma’elKoth, you stupid cunt. Nothing you’ve got can get through it.”
By way of answer, I flick the buckeye at his feet as though I’m shooting a marble. I can’t resist a cheesy line, Caine style, because my adrenaline’s high and I still don’t quite believe that I will die here.
“See you in the fall,” I tell him, and then jump down through the hole at my back as the buckeye erupts into a ball of fire that shatters the floor and blows Berne, Shield and all, out through the breach in the wall.
We’re only on the third floor; it won’t kill him, but the three-story drop to the street might break a bone or two and shake him up some. And the hole in the floor should slow the Cats a little. I hope.
I land in the apartment below, and pause just long enough to catch a whimper coming from under a bed in the corner. Some poor guy got awakened out of a sound sleep by fire and explosions and people cutting through his roof. I shrug; he’s as safe under his bed as anywhere else in this building.
Following through three cutaway walls, it takes only seconds to catch up with the others. Lamorak’s working on the brick wall that adjoins this tenement to the next one south, but it’s slow going; sweat darkens the end of his ponytail. Talann, covering their backs, nods to me. “Where are the Twins?”
“Dead.” I turn back toward the hole I came through and pull another carved shield of quartz out of a pocket.
“Dead?” Talann sounds stunned. “Both of them?”
I don’t answer her until I have another Shield in place to seal this hole; even as the Shield resolves into existence the Cats are dropping through the ceiling in the farthest room and pelting toward us with swords in hand.
“Yes,” I tell her. “They bought us this time. Let’s not waste it.”
Both of Konnos’daughters cling to their mother and sob soundlessly. Konnos shakes his head, stricken. “I should have given myself up. I should have surrendered. I’ve brought this upon all of us.”
“Shut up,” I tell him. “We’re still alive, and we’re going to get you out of this. All of you. Lamorak—how long?”
Cords bulge in his neck as he forces Kosall through the brick to the bottom of one side of the arc. “Thirty seconds,” he says, hoarse with strain.
“Make it fifteen. This is my last Shield, and I don’t know if I can hold it against Berne.”
Cats pound booted feet and blades against my Shield, and feedback makes me dizzy. A splintering crash comes from the outer room of this apartment: the Cats have found the hall door.
Talann draws a pair of long knives and salutes me, wearing a manic grin. “I believe they’re calling my name.”
“Talann—” I begin, but she’s already gone into the outer room. It’s not for nothing that she idolizes Caine: in battle she becomes a berserk chainsaw of feet and fists and blades, and the shouts of alarm and pain from the room beyond confirm that the Cats weren’t ready for her. I find myself praying that she kills a lot of them before they bring her down.
Lamorak pulls Kosall out of the bricks and kicks the center of the arc. It falls away into a cloud of dust, and he helps the Konnosi through the gap. He takes my arm and pulls me close. “No more cutting—you can run straight down the corridor, through to the alley that curves to the river. Go.”
“Lamorak, they’ll kill you—”
He shrugs. “It’s me, or it’s you. You can get the Konnosi away by yourself. I might not.” He taps the cut brick with Kosall. “And this is a gap I can hold for a long, long time. If you get to the Subjects, send a rescue.”
As I start to protest, a blazing wash of flame punches through my Shield, and pain scatters ragged patches of black across my vision.
Berne is coming.
My knees buckle, and Lamorak pushes me through the gap. He says, “Please believe that I never wanted it to turn out this way. I’m sorry, Pallas. And this is where I pay for it.”
“Pay? Lamorak—”
But his back is to me, and his shoulders fill the cutaway arch, and Kosall sings as it shears through steel and bone. “Go!”
Konnos and his wife—I’m struck by a sudden absurd embarrassment that I don’t even know her name—wait for me to lead them. “Pick up the girls,” I say. “Now we have to run.”
They each gather up one of their daughters and fall in behind me as I race through the apartment and out into the mercifully empty hallway. It’s long and straight and lined with doors. The window at the end gleams with golden sunlight like the promise of salvation. We run like hell.
From the window, I look down into the alley below.
It’s full of Cats.
There must be ten of them at least, two groups of five closing off the visible ends of the alley. Ten Cats, and I don’t have anyone left to fight them with.
Konnos catches the look on my face. “What? What is it? They’re out there, oh great gods, they are.”
“Not dead yet.” I reach into a pocket on the inside of my tunic and pull out a silver key. It takes only a second to summon mindview and pattern my mind to the glowing sigils. I stick the key into the lock of the nearest door, and the lock snaps open sharply. I pull everyone inside.
It’s a two-room, and it’s empty, thank all gods.
“All right,” I say. “We’ve got a few seconds to figure out what to do next. As long as I do no magick, no one will detect us in here; they’ll have to open every door.”
“Can’t you . . . can’t you,” Konnos’wife stammers, speaking for the first time. “Can’t you turn us all invisible, or something?”
“Don’t be a ninny,” Konnos says severely. “A Cloak cannot work when there’s no other magic being done around it. Any device and quite a few people can feel its pull on the Flow.”
Heroes Die Page 6