Hellequin wanted to crush the pitchman’s windpipe and haul him over the scaffold. But the soldier in him saw the value in a simultaneous attack on backstage and Nim’s dressing room. Better to deal with all of D’Angelus’s men at once than give them chance to spread and take cover.
A great chittering arose from the main tent. The hoppers were in flight, the crowd gasping. It was time to act.
“You take out the men backstage. I’ll deal with Nim.”
“Like hell I will. By the shitting Saints, Hellequin, they’ve got rock rifles and our arsenal is back down in the living quarters! Let’s take them out together then come back for Nim.”
Hellequin gripped Pig Heart’s stumbled chin and directed his face down to the tent where Nim was being used.
“Do you see?” he demanded in a dry rasp. “You give Nim over to that for a fistful of dollars.” He slung Pig Heart back from the edge and wiped his hands down the worn blue frockcoat he wore at show times.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like the whore ain’t used to it,” muttered the pitchman. But he kept his gaze away from the goings on below. “Okay, I’ll cause a ruckus with the boys backstage,” he spat at last, adding, “I gotta do right by Rust anyways.”
“Right by your groin more like.” Hellequin was losing time, losing patience. “Rock rifles have to kick back against a shooter’s padded shoulder. Stay that same side of the barrel and, often as not, the ammo’ll miss.”
The pitchman nodded and moved away. Hellequin crouched down, one leg extended, fingers resting lightly on the scaffold. He homed in on the tented silk below, his mercurial eye in constant adjustment. Closer in, he zoomed. Closer, until he magnified the weave enough to see its shoals of silverfish. He found a worn patch.
Alongside the noise of the crowd and the clatter of hoppers’ wings, he heard Nim give a sharp cry. Without further thought, he tucked in his elbows and leapt. He dropped like a lead weight. His boots made contact with the silk; it rent under him like spider’s web and he fell through the ceiling of the dressing room.
Time narrowed as his HawkEye made a series of minute observations that prompted his body to react. The pole supporting the tent was in arms’ reach; he felt its flaking rust under his palms and swung in tight while sliding down. His steel eye’s shutter motion allowed him to simultaneously catch the first few seconds of reaction below. A three-backed beast broke apart to reveal Nim spread-eagled. Her attackers were saloon heavies judging by the cut of their cloth.
Two struggled into their pants as Hellequin slid to the ground. A third was in the process of raising a hand to his shoulder where he’d slung his rock rifle.
The heavy never completed the manoeuvre. Hellequin drew his bowie knife from its sheath at his hip. The hilt was clothhod leather, the blade, mottled blue steel. It glinted wetly in the gaslight. Mashing the blade into the heavy’s neck, Hellequin severed the carotid artery. He kicked the man aside.
Shouts from the far side of the silk wall told him that Pig Heart was also making his presence known. A rock rifle fired, but it was a smaller silhouette than the pitchman’s which slammed against the silk, clutched it and slipped down. A ribbon of red seeped through; Hellequin registered the fact while driving his arm through the air and plunging the knife into a second man’s shoulder.
Blood exploded from the wound. Hellequin’s steel eye focused in on a single bead, plump as a Jewel Fruit seed, tumbling sideways. His HawkEye refocused inside a microsecond.
Nim had a blank expression. Only the eyes gave her away, brilliant with tears and reflecting the third man with a rock rifle pressed to his shoulder.
* * *
A slug embedded itself in an upright landing mat close to Pig Heart’s head. The pitchman tore back his lips, baring yellow tusks. The sniper was tucked behind one of the flats at the far end of the backstage area; Pig Heart suspected an illustrated sand hill, where the faint plume of discharged spark powder lingered in the air. He dragged a hand across his nostrils. Before he could concentrate on the sniper, there were three more chumps to sock it to.
“Saints alive, you’re a sight, ain’t ya!” shouted a two-tone in a rag waistcoat and pants a size too big. He rocked from one foot to another, a knife to his young hostage’s neck. Pig Heart recognised the belt of dry rat remains at the kid’s waist. The hostage was the one-time exterminator who had ridden the lift rig with him earlier.
“Only one thing to do with a pig. Slit his throat and make him squeal,” said a second, a Sirinese with brow locks that flowed either side each eye and a butting plate stitched into his forehead. His rock rifle was trained on a number of the pitch crew who were spread-eagled on the ground, faces in the dirt.
The sniper took a second shot. Pig Heart felt the slug nip his ear. The sting of it, alongside the blood which oozed down his neck, made him let back his head and loose a tremendous snort. Crumpled at the bottom of the silk drop was the man he had killed first. Pig Heart yanked a rock rifle from the man’s dead fist. Swinging the butt in tight to a shoulder, muscular tissue bulging, he ran at the Sirinese.
“Take the pig out, Gribson!” called the Sirinese, presumably to the sniper. He kept his own rifle trained on Pig Heart’s men and showed his black teeth.
Pig Heart had the measure of the sniper’s angle. He kept the two-tone and the kid hostage between him and the gun. When the sniper failed to take him out, the Sirinese aimed his rifle at the nearest pitchman and fired a slug. The man’s skull cracked open like an egg.
Pig Heart kept on coming. He and the Sirinese clashed with the force of two rhinehorn bulls. Pig Heart brought his club of a rock rifle slamming down. The Sirinese blocked the blow with his own rifle, braced between two hands. A slug of rock ammo pierced Pig Heart’s thigh. He drove forward with new grit.
“Get up, you gimps! Drive these shitters out,” he roared at his pitch crew.
“Easy, freak. Else I’ll dust your boy here,” shouted the two-tone while the exterminator kid yelped, “He got me, boss! He got me!”
Pig Heart wouldn’t be held to ransom. He shunted the Sirinese in-between him and the sniper, with the vague idea of rescuing the kid once he’d disentangled himself. It was an idea which melted the instant he heard the zip of knife passed through flesh. The kid gurgled and fell.
It was distraction enough; Pig Heart felt a crush of pain and the world flooded black. He stumbled, blood draining from his split nose, the same cherry red smearing the butting plate at the Sirinese’s forehead. The man’s victory was cut short. Pig Heart crushed the butt of his rifle into the Sirinese’s windpipe, heard him wheeze like a pair of bellows. The whip of a pocketknife near his jowl told him the two-tone was on him. A slug from the sniper punctured the ground where he’d stood a second earlier.
Convinced his crew had deserted him, Pig Heart cursed them as yellow-bellies. But then the two-tone started to shake violently as if suffering from a malady. It took a second glance for Pig Heart to see the splay of blood at the man’s chest and the protruding curve of a scimitar. He didn’t stop to thank his backup but charged at the painted sand hill.
Shoot me up, chump! Just you shoot me up, he dared the sniper. There was a whistling noise and a rock took a second chunk out of his already bleeding ear. Pig Heart tossed his head from side to side while snorting, and powered his muscular limbs.
A red figure streaked by – the Jeridian he’d encountered earlier on the lift rig – and she was phenomenally fast. Inside seconds, she made an arrow of her body and leapt over the flat, twisting into a revolving bullet as she travelled and so avoiding the two rock slugs the sniper peeled off.
D’Angelus’s man knocked down the sand hill flat and started to run. The Jeridian landed in a roll of muscle, ripped the scimitar from the sheath at her back and flicked it clean through the sniper’s neck. Pig Heart watched the head fall.
* * *
Earl didn’t like being close to hoppers. He pressed back against the thick canvas wall as one of the two nymphs landed on a nearby tent
pole, claws scraping the dark metal, wings folding with a rough clack-clack. The nymph was the size of a small burrowing machine – in fact, as Earl noted, its taupe and black exoskeleton had a lot in common with the panel work of those machines abandoned by the government at the country’s inactive mines. That the creature was alive did little to detract from its stiff easing out of segmented femur and tibia, or the clockwork bob of its head. Resembling large black pustules either side the skull, the eyes appeared all seeing while the bright green cornsilk poking from between the forewings betrayed the creature’s botanical DNA. The same plant feed which had turned Humock’s farmland to dust was responsible for the crossbreeding of the original hand-sized greenkicks with a strain of air plant. To a man like Earl, the idea was as ludicrous as it was terrifying.
“Nothing natural about you,” he whispered, pawing the canvas at his back as if to scale its height. The hopper twitched its head in his direction. Earl could’ve sworn it absorbed him with those huge swimming eyes.
With a brittle rub of motion, the hopper took to the air and joined its twin in circling the tent.
Forcing himself to move, Earl mauled the leaf lump in his mouth and eased around the edge of the circus tent to the backstage curtain. Having forced Nim to drain his juice, he’d thought it good for morale to let his boys poke the whore; they’d never afford D’Angelus’s rates otherwise. “Swift as virgins getting their first tug-off,” he’d warned, and slipped back out front to keep an eye on the boss.
But the minutes were dragging and the men were taking their sweet time. D’Angelus and the heavies he’d kept back were eating up the hoppers’ act, but Herb reckoned the ringmaster would be rounding things up soon.
Finding the edge of the curtain, he pulled it gently aside. He needn’t have bothered with subtleties. Jaxx, the Sirinese, came tearing through the curtain, followed closely by the swine man, sweaty and mad-eyed. Earl slunk back into the shadows as the pitchman leapt onto Jaxx’s back, the two men careering into the ring.
There was a moment of hush as the crowd seemed to presume it all part of the act. Then a statuesque Jeridian woman strode out from backstage and raised her arm, the hair of a severed head intertwined with her fingers.
“Ahoj na vás, vražedné Bolesť Earth svině!” she cried in her native tongue, and the still of the crowd transformed into violent alarm.
Earl’s eyes were tight bobbing beads; they scooted to the far side of the tent, settling on D’Angelus and his reserve of men. D’Angelus showed none of the courtesy he’d shown earlier, slamming the Saint Sister aside as she tottered out of her seat and tried to force an exit. His men crushed around him, marking out a path through the crowd with their fists.
Earl dribbled his wad of leaf onto the back of a hand and slopped it aside. Devil in Hell! Where were the men he’d sent in? And what now? What as the Jeridian threw the severed head into the dirt and took on the first of D’Angelus’s men to reach her? What as the swine who’d pocketed D’Angelus’s dollars a short time earlier took the full thrust of Jaxx’s butting plate against his forehead and reeled, only to power back inside the second?
All around the ring, the townsfolk stampeded in a bid for freedom. The noise of panic was bloodcurdling. Having escaped to the calliope balcony, the ringmaster, that squat plug of fat, was hopping and gesticulating. Because the hoppers were still loose. Which meant the exit was stitched shut, Earl realised, his insides curdling.
He stared at the spot-lit heavens where the hoppers dashed against the side of the tent, motes of chitinous material dusting down. It was his job to fight alongside D’Angelus, Earl thought vaguely. But he remembered the hopper clinging to the tent pole earlier, and he felt the weight of its oiled black eyes, how it had seemed to stretch its sight inside him and leave some shred of itself tethered there.
There was an urgency to move; he felt it as acutely as a rush of leaf bitters to his bloodstream. One of the hoppers was skydiving. Twisting and tumbling, it swept around the circumference of the tent, slinking in and out the tent poles like a beast of legend. Earl watched, entranced and horrified by the whir of wings, and how, with each revolution, the creature dropped in height but increased its velocity. Nailed to the spot, he was vaguely aware of a blur of battle cries, the shift of bodies, and the tide of air against his face as the hopper swept closer.
* * *
“Saints alive, buddy!”
Herb’s round face puckered. He shook a hand out as if freeing his fingers of the gore which splashed one half of the stage curtain. The hopper swooped up to a perch in the rafters and was swiftly lassoed by its handler, the man having installed himself at the edge of the zoo platform for the purpose. Herb felt a sense of relief, an emotion which strengthened when one of the pitch crew called up, “S’okay Herb. Hopper just took out one of the brawlers.”
Whatta way to go though! From the safety of the calliope balcony, Herb cursed his vantage point. Seeing the pimp’s man sliced from hip to rib was another stain on his memory. But wasn’t that the price of the ringmaster’s life? Cyber Circus was a difficult beast to control and it took every last bit of effort to keep its savagery in check. Occasionally it spilt over.
Herb gripped the gilded railing, leaning into it. There was only one option – leave. But before they rolled on out, it made sense to know what, or who, had caused the ruckus in the first place.
He turned his attention to the crowd. The marks were tightly herded at the edges of the tent, the canvas straining with the pressure of so many bodies fighting to get out.
Herb tapped the rail under his fingers and said softly, “Hang in there, old gal. Just a minute more.” It was better to keep the marks circulating. Less chance of the troublemakers actually achieving anything.
In the ring, the Jeridian circled her scimitar above her head, other arm crooked out for balance. She faced three opponents – dust handlers from the looks of them. They had that ‘stooped against the wind’ stance. Pig Heart had it worse. His snout had been smashed. Blood soaked the pitchman’s chin, neck and shirt bib. He was up against a Sirian – ex-cage fighter judging by the brow bolt plate and the slug of the man’s fists. Pig Heart took it though and kept on standing.
Herb’s eye was distracted by the pimp’s black leather trekker’s hat. Ahead of him, heavies cut a path through the marks. They appeared to be heading in the direction of backstage.
Whatta they wanna do that for? Herb hummed a slow sad song, the sort Jeridians sang at their torchlight funerals. The calliope played one sour note to harmonise. Staring across the length of the tent to the twisting iron mass of the scaffold, Herb finally understood. On the lift rig stood the HawkEye soldier with the courtesan, Nim, in his arms.
“Okay, old gal. Let’s ring the changes.”
Herb gave the rail an affectionate pat. On cue, the calliope expanded its gilt ribs and began to pipe a lilting melody that meant nothing to the marks and everything to the carnie folk. Herb saw the Jeridian slice a second head, spin about on a heel and leave the two remaining dust handlers in a footbath of blood. She ran a circuit of the outer rim, leapt at one colossal tent post and hung off the pitch crew’s handholds. Watching her climb towards the rafters, Herb saw the second hopper reined in by its handler.
Nim, the hoppers... his main attractions were intact. Herb took off his hat, its soft plumage waving like a sea anemone.
“Adey up, old gal. Adey up,”
He settled his ass on a small stool, lent back against the vibrating pipes and added his hum to the calliope’s swan song.
* * *
Concussed, Pig Heart found his world had become a blood-red dust cloud, the roar of thousands of papery insect wings in his ears. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the Sirinese’s fist speed in again and he pitched sideways. The fist missed his lips by a finger’s breadth, just as the pitchman heard the farewell pipe of the calliope. A hot gush of terror ran beneath his chest. He had to get out of the ring and back on board.
“Lost your balls, swine?�
�� The Sirinese showed his black teeth. Blood greased the bolt plate at his forehead. Pig Heart’s.
The insinuation fuelled a fresh attack. Pig Heart juiced his legs and charged. The Sirinese might have the advantage of a plated skull, but he had the advantage of pig-headedness. He butted the Sirinese in the left set of ribs.
Pig Heart didn’t stick around to give his opponent time to recover. As the reedy music filled the tent, he ran to the side of the ring and attempted to pressgang his way to the backstage area. Rock rifles fired off in the heart of the crowd and he stepped up onto the rim of the ring to get a glimpse over the marks’ heads.
At the calliope’s cue, his pitch crew had rolled the steel shield across the gap between backstage and the ring. Just like he’d taught them. Dull prangs sounded from outside the tent, droplines being released. A sudden pitch in the tent walls told him that Cyber Circus was on its way out.
He didn’t join in the screaming. A glance back confirmed that the Sirinese had sniffed him out and was on his way over, thrusting marks aside. At the same time, Pig Heart sensed the air heating all around him.
The circus was abandoning him, just as he had abandoned it. Just desserts, Pig Heart reminded himself with regret. The dollars in his pocket weren’t worth shit now. And that one good thing he’d done in trying to keep the wolf girl out of the hands of the pimp D’Angelus, well, that might aid his legacy but it wouldn’t keep the Sirinese from caving in his skull.
The calliope was puffing faster now, its fluting transformed into a low purr. Pig Heart recognised the sound as a heartbeat as alien as his own. His eyes squinted every which way. No time to climb the girders that supported the tent and which were retracting in towards each another, like a dying insect drawing its limbs in to its abdomen. No time to fight the swell of marks and appeal for entry at the backstage door. He stared up at the heavens. Only time to thank the swine’s heart in his chest for a life stretched beyond its limits.
Cyber Circus Page 3