Then I had other problems, as two men hurled themselves at me. I lashed out, retreating into a lunge that caught one in the chest. The highmatter sword met no resistance, its edge as fine as hydrogen. Without slowing, I tugged the weapon sideways, cleaving effortlessly through the ribs and right arm in an arc that severed the head of the man beside it.
Neither of them bled. I slid forward, mindful of Switch at my back and the too-deadly weapon in my hand. I risked a look down.
“Holy Mother Earth protect us,” I heard Switch swear. The first thing I realized—absurdly—was that I’d seen wrong. There was blood, but not nearly so much as there should have been. It dribbled out upon the wood planking, flowed out past . . . “It’s a daimon,” Switch said. I had to move, sidestepping another of the diners as she lurched toward me. But I had seen the metal in the flesh, the severed wires, the tubing. Something white spilled upon the floor, mingled with the blood like milk. They were machines now, and had not always been.
“Ghen!” I shouted, waving my sword. “The stairs!”
“On it, Radiance!”
Shots rained from above, brought down from the tower opposite. Ghen’s snipers. Four of the daimons went down sparking, their flat eyes flashing in the light like the eyes of some night predator. Crim howled past, a high-energy laser in one hand, a long ceramic knife in the other. His kaftan fluttered in the wind, white and crimson. We were outnumbered at least five to one, more if you didn’t count the three or four snipers Ghen had kept on the tower opposite. But we were armed, and the diners had nothing.
“Where’s the homunculus?” Greenlaw shouted, ejecting a spent plasma cartridge from her burner.
I looked round. There was no sign of The Painted Man anywhere. Howling in frustration I cleaved forward through another of the daimons, slicing it clean through from shoulder to hip. It fell with a heavy thud, but the legs stumbled on a moment, trying to find the body. The arm still attached to the head and torso reached out, as if guiding the legs. Switch kicked the legs over and shot them. I reached down and drew my phase disruptor with my free hand, checked the settings. Stun. Good enough. I hadn’t the time to sort it properly. I fired, catching one in the throat as it lunged for Ilex. At once it seized up and slumped, black lines burning its skin from within where wires seared into flesh. I must have scored a lucky hit, for the next two stunner bolts seemed to have no effect on the machine daimons.
Switch seemed to hunch over his plasma burner, his posture as folded in as his broad frame would allow. I felt for him, for the terror of the moment.
“Machines,” I swore. The reality would not process. How many times had I heard stories of the Extrasolarians? How many times had I heard they packed their artifice into the bodies of the men and women they took as slaves to turn them into something less than human? I had not believed it possible, and so had walked directly into a trap. Had The Painted Man known what we were the entire time? Had Samir?
Samir.
Where had the plagiarius gone? I cast about. He was still cowering by the table where I’d sat but moments before. Frowning, I shot him with my stunner. If The Painted Man had escaped, Samir was better than nothing.
Ghen stood at the top of the stairs now with two of his legionnaires at his back. The big centurion’s rictus—part focus and part delight—was visible even at a distance. They fought as Pallino had taught us, the way true Imperial soldiers did: back-to-back-to-back in groups of three.
I saw a dense knot of the diners clustered about a prone figure on the ground beside an overturned table. I holstered my stunner, deactivated Olorin’s sword a moment. The blade melted into smoke as the highmatter decayed from liquid crystal to gas, vanishing into the air. I tugged my heavy coat from me and tossed it aside.
“What the hell are you doing?” Switch asked, drawing Ilex’s attention. The homunculus cocked her head at me, cat’s eyes wide.
I reactivated the sword. It glowed pale, like moonlight on naked steel. “Just stay back.”
“He’s dead, Had!” Switch said, putting the dots together.
He wasn’t. I knew he wasn’t. “I said stay back!” I checked my shield and bounded forward. In the weaker gravity, my every step carried me up and forward faster than I could believe. For so long I had lived in the high gravity of Emesh. Muscle had grown heavy on me, and I had grown strong as old tree roots. I could see the body of my downed peltast lying prone beneath the swarming machine-puppets, could see the blood there. Seldom had I felt so righteous.
There are few things in the universe that highmatter cannot cut. Adamant, or the long-chain molecules of nanocarbon, or the energy curtains of high-class static fields. Or highmatter itself. Anywhere the atom-fine edge could find a chink—a gap between molecules—it could cut. Not stone, nor steel, nor ablative ceramic could slow a knight’s highmatter sword. It never dulled or broke or wanted oiling. It could take any shape its maker asked of it, and built itself of the very air by some alchemical process I did not understand, transmuting the nuclei of common elements to something strange. Once, I’d cut the wing off a Tanager-class lighter as it took flight, severing carbon fiber and the metal endoskeleton all at a stroke.
Flesh was no object, nor whatever foul praxis the Extras had contrived. They fell like blades of grass, scattered like leaves. Five of them rose at my approach. Five of them fell in pieces. I went to one knee beside the body of our man, went to check his pulse. The flesh there had been torn as if by some wild thing . . . Switch was right. Our man was dead. He’d been Jaddian, one of Jinan’s boys. Artur, I think. Or Arturo. I hadn’t really known him.
A hand hard and cold as iron seized my leg, squeezing with superhuman strength. I gasped, struggled for my feet. Another hand seized me, dragged me back down. Twisting, I looked down, found a headless man dragging me down with the help of a woman’s torso. She leered soullessly at me, like a statue. There was blood around her mouth and on her teeth. Looking at the dead soldier and the torn flesh there, I did not have to guess. Blood and the strange white fluid soaked my boots. The whole pile of dismembered people churned about my feet, slipping in the blood and fluid, clawing toward me. The woman’s eyes were on me, fixed like stars, unblinking. I put out those eyes with a slash. Switch hurried over, firing his plasma burner. Violet flame turned to orange as the bodies caught, still moving toward me.
I managed to shake myself free and stumbled sideways into a table. My sword fell through it, notching the surface. It broke as I staggered into it, knocking me from my feet. I fell, and at once the headless man fell upon me, clawing, crawling its way up the length of me. I’d lost my sword in the confusion, buried in the debris of the table. A sudden, horrible memory swelled up in me of a night on distant Meidua, when the other boys had dragged me from the dinted box I called home in the loading depot behind the old desalination plant. Almost I could hear their laughter, their jeering, could feel their hands on me.
My own hands scrabbled through smashed china and splintered bits of table, blindly seeking the touch of silver and Jaddian leather. The headless man bore down on me, and turning I could see blue light flickering in the holes of its throat, and the flapping of tissue in the damaged trachea where the lungs still pumped. The sound it made was awful, a wet rattle like some damned thing. Sparks flared from the ends of wiring planted in parallel to vein and tendon, and blood dribbled down its front to soak what had been a white business shirt.
Was that silver I felt? Leather? The sword? I could not get a grip on it, could not close my fingers round the weapon. I brought a knee up hard between the machine man’s legs, but found there was nothing there to bruise. Its hands found my throat and squeezed. Bassander was right. I wasn’t a soldier at all. This mercenary game we’d played was just that. I would never see Valka again, or my Jinan. My vision blurred, and in the dimming of it I saw my father’s face hovering where the headless man’s should be, his eyes turned red from their true violet, his face whi
te as the funerary masks of my forebears hanging about the palace door.
I didn’t find my sword in time.
Light smashed over me, blooming back. The hands that crushed my voice vanished as the light returned, and I coughed and spat upon the ground, rolling out from under the headless body where it smoked from plasma fire.
“On your feet, Your Radiance!”
Ghen of Emesh stood over me, grinning a strained grin, his gray cloak spattered red and white and charred in places. He offered me a hand, and I stood, sagging against him. Switch and Ilex covered him—where was Crim? Bleary, I looked round, spotted the Jaddian hewing down one of the machines. Where was The Painted Man? Had it gone over the side of the rail? Breathing hard, I gasped, “You almost shot me.” The plasma burner had chewed fist-sized holes halfway through the back of the headless man. Bits of metal and ceramic glistened in the wounds, melted and warped and dead.
“And don’t you forget it!” Ghen said, clapping me on the back.
Ilex stooped and handed me my sword with a quiet nod. There was a wound high on her temple, just beneath the woody crown of her hairline. Her blood flowed thick as amber and just as slow, black as black. “Are you all right?” I asked, nodding at the wound.
She smiled, “No one’s strangled me.”
“Cute,” I said, “I deserved that.”
“I’ll say,” Switch hissed, eyes wide with concern. “The fuck were you thinking?”
“Not now!” I shouted, and pushed him aside. “Ilex, wave the shuttle. We need a pickup like . . . ten minutes ago. I have Samir by the table.”
If she answered, I missed it. I drew my stunner fast as was possible and fired as one of the machines rose up behind Switch. There was still enough human tissue in the thing that it staggered under the impact, and rocked back. Ilex was fastest, training her phase disruptor and firing with an electric spat. The weapon was designed to fry the human nervous system, but it melted copper and fiber optic just as well. The daimon fell smoking, and I asked the question that had plagued me moments ago. “Where’s the homunculus?”
Ilex twitched at the word, but I had no time for apologies. Ghen turned. “Stairs?”
“Shit.”
We ran, cutting our way through a few more of the daimons. There seemed no end of them. There had not seemed so many when they were seated at the table. We passed another of our soldiers dead upon a table, his guts torn out beside him. I ground my teeth and made for the top of the stairs, where Crim and Greenlaw held our remaining peltasts together. A disruptor burst flew just past my shoulder, and turning I found that one of the machine-men had taken up our dead soldier’s sidearm. Being shielded, I turned back and charged the machine. Ghen, Switch, the rest had shields, but the peltasts did not, and I would not lose another soldier. Sniper fire from Ghen’s men rained down—it was hard to imagine that the local authorities had missed the struggle, but if what Samir had said was true, there were barely any authorities to speak of.
Another burst from the disruptor caught me in the hip and coruscated through my shield, turning the energy field radiant about me. That didn’t slow me down, nor did the next shot, which would have fried my chest and shoulder. My sword sprang out, silver blue in the mist and vapor of the fight. I struck the arm, disarming it, carrying the arc through to cut the right leg from beneath it and to the ground in pieces. Another slash clove the head and torso and finished it. I turned back, and found myself face to face with a slack-jawed woman, a knife raised to take me in the back. Only the sniper had stopped her, had saved me. The first shot had stunned her, wrecking the shoulder whose arm held the short blade. The knife would have passed through my shield as if it weren’t there—my attacker moved slow enough. It would have killed me and there would have been nothing I could do. The second shot knocked her down and away, and I hurried back to the stairs. There was great tumult in the room below, as of scrambling feet. People escaping the chaos, I imagined. More than two dozen of the machine-men yet stood upon the rooftop.
“Where’s that shuttle?” I asked Ilex.
The frown in the dryad’s voice was evident, though I saw only the back of her head and her long ears. “On its way, Marlowe.”
“Ain’t that fat son of a bitch over there?” Ghen asked, pointing.
I swore. I’d been so preoccupied guarding the stairs I’d lost track of the fact that when I’d moved us to regroup I’d put two dozen daimon-augmented human slaves between us and our consolation prize of a plagiarius. I wanted to scream. “I’ll think of something,” I said. “Just hold for the shuttle, that’ll change things.”
“You fucked this up,” Greenlaw spat. “You really fucked this up.”
I ignored her as Ghen’s snipers peeled off another of our enemies. It crumpled jagged to the ground, crumpling as no human crumpled. Pieces of our fallen opponents yet crawled among the upturned tables and shattered china, undead.
“Down the stairs, Ghen,” I said, “take two and check our escape. We may need to leave that way.”
The big man clapped me on the shoulder. “Will do, Had.” He waved his gun at two of our peltasts. “You lads, with me. Down the stairs now, double quick. You heard His Radiance.”
They left in a rustling of gray cloaks, boots slamming against the treads.
He’d called me Had. I have not forgotten that. He almost never used my name. I didn’t quite notice at the time, but later . . . looking back, it stood out clear and sharp in my memory as the edge of my own sword. I’d no time to dwell on it then, for the shooting began anew. Sniper fire rained down, shattering tea sets and splintering furniture.
“They’re on their way!” Ilex called, meaning the shuttle, I assumed. That was something.
Beside her, Crim fired his laser, burning a thumb-sized hole in the chest of one of the machines—a woman little more than a girl. He swore darkly, and I imagined him shutting his eyes as he fired again. I held my ground then, waiting for the others to come close. Much as I hated to admit it, Greenlaw wasn’t wrong. I’d gotten us into this situation. I was in command. The fault—for our failure to get the intelligence we needed and for the deaths of our two men—was mine.
“We need to secure Samir,” Greenlaw said.
Switch glared at her. “Are you enlisting?” he shouted, firing again. His burner whirred in his hands, indicating he was out of plasma in his reservoir. His gun was sucking air, slowing his rate of fire.
Something changed without warning. It was as if whatever malevolence animated the daimons before us changed its mind and plan, for the score or so of hollow men before us froze, their glassy eyes watching, flickering as if with a blue light.
“I do not like this, boss,” Crim said, voice strained. Was he injured? I’d not noticed in all the commotion. He swore in his strange Norman pidgin. “Where is Ghen?”
He shouldn’t have opened his mouth, for the next instant all twenty of the machines—or so it seemed—sprinted straight at us. They crashed like a wave under the dominion of a mighty moon. We could not fire fast enough to stop them all. I stepped forward, sweeping one of them in half with Olorin’s sword. The liquid metal hummed in my hand, delicate filaments of blue-white highmatter dripping and trailing to and from the blade, following micro-lines of force the way solar flares arc to and from their mother stars. I took the arm from another and retreated, backing down the stairs. One of the peltasts came with me, but none of the others. Four of the machine puppets pressed us back.
“With me!” I cried, voice lifted as high as all my speech training would allow. “Red Company, with me!” I do not know if they heard. Greenlaw was shouting about Samir, and the sound of gunfire and scuffle rose like the chaos of a concert and drowned out all order. My sword cut through wall and railing, leaving dark, cold gouges in wood and plaster and steel, littering the steps with pieces of our foes.
“We have to go back up, Lord!” the peltast said, quite rig
htly. “The others!”
I tripped over something behind me. Not a stair, I’d taken those carefully, retreating as I was. Something soft and uneven. Keeping my wits about me, I immediately deactivated the Jaddian sword I held so as not to maim myself in the fall. I did not yell, but tumbled over the thing there to land on the bamboo mat at the base of the stairs. That clumsiness cost the peltast her life. The remaining machines leaped at her without me to aid, and before I could regain my feet she lost hers, borne down by the weight of the two grown men. As I staggered up one sunk his teeth into her neck, tearing as they had the other on the portico above. To her credit, she unloaded her sidearm into the daimon’s chest, but the simple bullets in her weapon were not enough to crack whatever metal or ceramic it was protected the daimon’s internal organs. She fell beside the body that had tripped me on the stairs. One of the other peltasts I had sent with Ghen.
Ghen.
I threw myself at the two machines, sword flashing back to life in my fist. The legs came out from under one of them with little effort, my blow cleaving the balustrade in twain. I caught the bloody machine that had killed—I did not know her name—by the throat with my free hand. In Rustam’s weak gravity, I lifted the man bodily from the floor with one hand. It pulled back a fist to clock me, and I dragged the atom-sharp sword through its chest, tossing the head and shoulders away.
The blood beaded on my hydrophobic clothing, ran off toward the floor. Chest heaving, I cast about madly, trying to remember what it was I was looking for, what I had just been thinking of. I couldn’t see past all the red, but remembered after a few short breaths.
“Ghen!” I called. “Ghen, we need you!”
I found him then, sprawled in the tea house foyer. The two women who had escorted us up the stairs to meet The Painted Man lay broken around him, white blood and red pooling on the Tavrosi carpet. They’d been machines, too. Some titanic force had pulled their arms from their sockets and staved in their breasts. On Emesh, Ghen had been strong as an auroch; in Rustam’s gravity, he must have been like Herakles.
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