by Mike Wild
He swung away from the girl, knifing his legs to gain momentum to cross the hemisphere, and gained a moment of precarious rest on the edge of the trapeze platform from which his opponent had kicked off. Twisting, he saw that she was doing the same on his, using the time to position herself with her lower legs wrapped about the trapeze ropes, freeing both hands for her swords, and then he was swinging once more, as she was swinging towards him.
Heading inexorably towards her, Slowhand had nothing with which to block the coming blades but the trapeze itself, and with a grunt he flipped himself back into a standing position. As the girl rushed towards him, he violently jerked his body sideways and downwards so that the hand rail of the trapeze rose up to parry the blows. Swords met wood, one deflected harmlessly but the other cleaving the trapeze in two, and the archer immediately grabbed the guy line of its left half, swinging out with it as it broke from the right.
The manoeuvre caught the girl by surprise, and Slowhand already had another one coming as, with a further twist of his body, he swung his now singular support around in a sweeping circle, heading directly back towards her. The girl gasped as Slowhand’s feet smashed into her side and her trapeze was again sent spinning, this time so violently that its guy lines wrapped themselves about each other like plaiting hair. As she struggled to bring it under control, Slowhand swung in again, wrapping his legs about her entangled form and twisting an arm so that she released one of her swords into his grip. The girl roared in fury and swung at him with her other weapon, but Slowhand had already released his legs and was swinging away. It was only after a second that he realised she had nevertheless cut cleanly through his thong, and he was now completely naked. Once upon a time he might have reflected that the combination of nakedness, girl in black leather and lots of ropes would have held much promise but what had happened since – who was he kidding? What had happened today – quashed any such thoughts. Make no mistake, this girl might have been hired to capture him but this was rapidly turning into a battle of life and death.
But here was not the place to fight it. If he was going to take the girl on on even terms, now that he had one of her swords, he needed space, and needed it quickly. The girl already freeing herself from her entrapment, Slowhand swung away, flinging himself from the trapeze rope onto one of the surviving cloud swings, and from there shimmying up the rope to the wheel that suspended it. From there, another couple of leaps took him back to the section of roofing he had released, and then back onto the exposed upper surface of the Big Top.
The girl was right behind him, and Slowhand backed up as she pulled herself up onto the outer canvas. For a second the two of them stood there bent and gasping in the hammering rain, weapons poised, and then the girl came at him, yelling like something possessed. Slowhand did his best to defend himself under her furious barrage of blows, blocking and feinting, but he was being constantly forced back and barely managed one thrust himself, and it didn’t take him long to realise that, despite the weapon, they were not on even terms at all. The girl was good. Very good.
She swung again, and Slowhand jack-knifed at the waist, avoiding her blade. The move threw his balance and he fell onto his back, slithering into one of the valleys of the undulating canvas, and cold water rushed to pool about him in the depression he had made. The girl launched herself at him, blade destined for his throat, but a moment before she struck Slowhand raised his legs, caught her, and sent her tumbling over him. He scrabbled around as she scrambled up, and the two of them circled each other, struggling to regain their footing.
“Who are you?” Slowhand gasped.
“You asked me that.”
“No. I mean who are you, really?”
“I’d have thought you’d have known that. After all, we don’t look that different, he and I. And after what you did, I’d have thought his face would have been etched in your mind forever.”
“Who?” Slowhand asked, confused, but then her brow, her nose, her mouth started to transform into another face, one that, as she’d said, didn’t look that different at all. He was suddenly back on the battlefield outside Andon during the Great War – the Killing Ground – lining up his shot to take out the general of the enemy forces as his brothers-in-arms breathed expectantly, desperately about him.
“My gods,” he said, “you’re John Garrison’s daughter.”
“John Garrison’s daughter,” she replied, her face hardening. “And Ben Garrison’s sister.”
The boy, Slowhand thought. He had never told anyone, not Shay, not Hooper, about the boy. The reason why he had laid down Suresight and left the military after the events of that battle. Pits of Kerberos, what the hells had he been doing there, on that worst of days? A child, no more than eight years of age. No one had ever quite been able to work it out but later, when casualties had been identified and someone had told him who it was that had died, speculation was that he had been running to help his father in the face of defeat, help him in the way only an eight year old boy would have thought he could.
And he, Slowhand, had killed him. Because the fact was there had never been a perfect shot that day. But there had been a shot. A shot through the heart of a figure who had looked bigger than he was, clad in the battered helmet and chain of a dead soldier. A shot that had punctured his body and continued on to impact with Garrison’s forehead. A shot that, in a spray of arterial blood, had killed the child instantly.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Beth.”
“Beth, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You took the shot.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You murdered my family that day. All I had.”
“Yeah? Well, you just murdered mine.”
Garrison’s daughter laughed. “You think that makes us even?”
Slowhand studied her eyes. It was clear the girl had only used the Final Faith’s resources to help track him down, and it was equally clear that there was going to be no reasoning with her. As much as he’d like otherwise, there was no way Beth was ever going to understand or accept his remorse, and there was no way that, because of what she’d done to Shay, he was just going to lie down and die. The Killing Ground, it seemed, was never going to let him rest.
“No. But it means one of us has to die here.”
“Yes, it does.”
Both paused as, through the opening in the canvas from which they had emerged, three Eyes of the Lord appeared, hovering.
“So what about your contract?” Slowhand said, indicating them.
“Fark it.”
Beth roared and flung herself at him again, sword cleaving the air. Slowhand blocked and his blade locked with hers, and for a second they strained against each other, but then, with a deft flick from her wrist, the archer found himself disarmed, his weapon flipping away to land, tip down and quivering, piercing the canvas some feet away. He leapt for it but Beth was there before him, throwing herself forward to skid on her stomach along the wet surface, snatching it back into her grip as she went. She stood, possessing both swords once more, and, grinning manically, sliced the air in a complex pattern before her. All Slowhand could do as she came again was retreat, sometimes tumbling, sometimes skidding and sometimes somersaulting, until the two of them had completed a full circuit of the roof of the Big Top.
Momentarily, he found himself teetering on its edge, wondering if he would survive a slide down its outer surface, but the cages and calliopes were far below, and without clothing or padding of any sort – unless, he reflected bitterly, you counted his slight beer gut – it was unlikely he’d emerge unbroken. He finally had to admit to himself that, despite his challenge, he’d been bested, and his best chance of survival was to return from whence he’d come.
Slowhand began to scramble back up the sloping canvas, to the cupola, intending to flip himself back inside the Big Top. He was aware with every step that Beth was right behind him, swords slashing, but while he half expected to feel one or the other or bot
h of them slicing into his flesh, he didn’t at all expect to hear the tearing of canvas beneath him. He span, saw that the girl had clearly changed tactics, and the multiple rents in the canvas that she had sliced with her swords were lengthening towards him, their pace exacerbated by his own weight.
A gap appeared beneath him and he plummeted. Desperate grabs at the rigging in the hemisphere failed, and there was nothing between him and the floor of the circus ring far below.
Slowhand hit hard and at an awkward angle, having twisted himself to avoid being impaled on rigging beams, the wreckage of his own making, which projected up on his either side. Landing on these might have been more merciful. He roared as his bad arm snapped under him, emitting cracks as loud as gunfire he heard again and again, reverberating in his other bones. His leg, almost rigid as it impacted, thrust its bone up into his pelvis, creating further waves of agony as the pelvis shattered and the sheared bones of his leg punched out through the flesh of his upper thigh. He felt his ribs snap, puncturing his insides so that he felt as if he’d been flooded with hot soup, and as the shockwaves from the impact travelled up his spine, he felt vertebrae mash together until something sharp and pointed rammed up into the base of his skull, filling him with a dizzying disorientation that made his consciousness swoop in and out of a black pit.
He barely heard his own loud, long groan as his body at last settled into a shattered heap.
From somewhere, however, he retained enough awareness to realise that though the fall hadn’t killed him, he had far from escaped death. He forced himself to turn over, tears flowing involuntarily with the effort and pain it brought, and through pulsing waves of shadow stared upwards and saw the wavering shape of Beth descending on a guy rope. She would take a few seconds to reach him and he knew he had to get away. All he could do, however, was roll sideways, the pain causing him, despite himself, to mewl like a baby, and find a hiding place under the crumpled sheets of canvas he had earlier released and which had now fallen completely to the ground. It offered little to no protection – would only prolong the inevitable by a matter of moments – but still he was possessed by the urge to swathe himself in the darkness, like a wounded animal returning to the depths of a cave.
His breath was loud beneath it, but in the darkness he shuffled himself further and further in. But then, when he could move no further, he simply lay there, his heart pounding.
An eternity seemed to pass but he could sense his opponent drawing closer. Then, as the canvas tightened about him, he knew Beth was standing right over him, trapping him.
What would it be? Slowhand thought. A swift blade thrust through the cloth. Or would she simply wait there as he suffocated beneath a shroud of his own making?
All Slowhand could see in the darkness was Shay’s face. For a second it transformed itself into that of Kali Hooper, but then, as quickly as she had appeared, Hooper was gone and Shay was back again, smiling her unjudgemental, caring smile. He chuckled softly. Too late, it seemed, he’d found where he belonged. With whom he belonged. Too damned late for both of them.
Slowhand blinked as the canvas was torn from him and Beth loomed over his broken body. Surrounded by the hovering spheres of the Eyes of the Lord, she seemed like the centre of some dark universe. But then something else appeared in the universe, a hazy, blurred shape that trundled into existence behind her, and he was dimly aware of her turning in shock, gasping a name that he surely misheard. He hadn’t imagined that Beth would be afraid of anything, but she was afraid of the owner of that name.
“You are disobeying orders child,” a voice said. It was a strange voice, breathless and high. “The Faith want him alive.”
“I… I’m sorry, sir,” Beth responded. “But this man is a murderer.”
“No. He’s a soldier. A mindless, regimented drone.”
No, Slowhand wanted to respond. That’s not right. But the sudden sound of a larynx being crushed silenced him. It wasn’t his own. He tried to focus, work out what was going on, then saw. Beth was a foot above the ground, legs kicking, hands struggling to free herself of an invisible grip.
“You can’t do this,” she gasped.
“Why is that?”
“Because we’re on the same side!”
“I think not.”
Beth Garrison stared imploringly at the hovering Eyes of the Lord.
“But they’ll see! At the cathedral, they’ll see!”
“I don’t think so,” the shape said. Slowhand saw the outline of a hand being raised and, simultaneously, the Eyes of the Lord detonated, the resultant shrapnel tearing holes into Beth’s shocked face. But she didn’t suffer. Instead, her head snapped abruptly to the right, neck broken by the same invisible force that had held her aloft, and she dropped to the floor like a stone. Slowhand could feel her body heat already fading beside him.
The shape trundled closer, revealing itself to be some kind of wheelchair. But a wheelchair built by a madman. Looking like a mobile torture device, tubes with needles wove slowly about its surface, occasionally injecting its occupant with coloured fluids, while bladder like things inflated and deflated, hissing and gurgling with air and water that seemed somehow to sustain him. It was an impossible, nightmare thing, but nowhere near as impossible or nightmarish as the shrivelled figure that was the centre of its attentions. Despite the state of its occupant Slowhand recognised him immediately.
He hadn’t misheard the name, after all
It was Fitch.
Querilous Fitch.
The psychic manipulator stared down at him, smiled.
Not long after, Slowhand felt what was left of his bones begin to crack, and he began to scream.
CHAPTER SIX
KALI REACHED GRANSK lying on her stomach sandwiched between slices of creev. The thick, blubbery material used to line the hulls of ships for buoyancy did not feel very buoyant, pressing down on her and holding her immobile like the blankets of a tightly made bed. It was damp, hot and stifling between them, and the creev stank so badly she was constantly on the verge of throwing up. It was an urge she’d quelled by snatching swift lungfuls of air through a raised flap of the stuff whenever it had been safe to do so.
She was denied that luxury now. Her last glimpse of the outside world had been of the cart which carried the creev itself becoming sandwiched between Final Faith wagons, part of a convoy which was forming to snake down the cliff road into Gransk. Just before she’d closed the flap, she’d studied the wagons pulling into line behind her, wondering what the large, cigar-shaped, canvas covered objects they carried were. The only thing she did know was that they were not the only wagons out there. Far from it. Whatever kind of ship Jakub Freel was building here, he seemed to be throwing at it every resource the Final Faith had.
Kali felt the cart dip beneath her, beginning its descent into the town, and she pictured the scene outside her hiding place.
Once a small and tranquil fishing community, Gransk had grown into something quite different since the Filth had adopted it as the location for their shipyards. Adding both docks and dry docks for the construction of their coastal clippers and patrol boats, most of the original fisherfolk had over the years been driven away, replaced by a coarser breed of peninsulan labourer who’d stamped their own identity on the town. She’d visited the place on a couple of occasions before now, and while the Filth had found it necessary to garrison a few Swords of Dawn to ensure that the work they commissioned was actually carried out, they had for the most part left the inhabitants to run the town for themselves. Now, though, it seemed to be a different story. From the number of delays, shouts and barked orders Kali heard from beyond the slices of creev, security had been upped considerably. It didn’t take much to figure out by whom, or why.
The cart came to a stop and Kali was aware of the presence of soldiers gathering about it. She felt a slight lurch as the cart’s driver climbed down, presumably in response to a signal from one of them.
“Your goods?” a deep but muffled voice
enquired.
“Creev, sir,” the driver responded. Kali was relieved to hear his voice remained calm. He was aware of her presence but there was not a hint of betrayal in his weary tones.
“Creev? That’s all?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was the sharp scrape of a weapon being withdrawn from a scabbard, and then another, and Kali sucked in breath, knowing what was coming. What kind of lunatic they imagined would secrete themselves in this pile of shite she couldn’t imagine, but the guards had clearly been ordered to be thorough.
She froze as swords thrust into the slices of creev. The blubbery substance deflated and released puffs of noxious gas. She was grateful that the odour was so rank that they were reluctant to make the inspection too thorough. Nonetheless, one or two of the thrusts came too close for comfort and Kali quietly contorted herself each time, like a magician’s assistant inside a sword trap.
“You’re clear. Papers?”
A shuffling, and a cough.
“These seem to be in order. Pondeen’s Maritime is on the western harbourside. Proceed directly there, unload your shipment and then turn your cart around.”
“Around?” the driver said. “But I intended to stay at the tavern. It’s been a long haul.”
“Turn it around, old man. Trust me, you don’t want to be in town tonight.”