Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  Still, came the reluctant response.

  Van Dieman knew that it understood. "Take away this pain. The path remains closed unless you do so!"

  The pain went away so quickly that it might never have been. A hardness probed at his abdomen. The harbinger's head dipped to that point and nuzzled him. A jagged ceramic shard emerged, passing through his clothes without tearing a thread. The harbinger dropped the shrapnel into Van Die-man's hand. He marveled at it, imagining the damage that such a thing must have done to him. The pain and damage were gone, made nothing by the harbinger's power.

  Van Dieman smiled, not from relief as a lesser man might, hut from pleasure—the pleasure of his exerting his will upon the rebellious harbinger, and knowing that he was still in control. There was also, of course, the anticipation of showing the harbinger its master's strength.

  But the ending of the pain brought back the input of his other senses. From outside the wreck of the Petrel he could hear gunfire.

  The harbinger's discipline would have to wait.

  He extricated himself from his seat. The telesmon's case was wedged in the rain of the forward locker. The carrying case had done its job of protecting the precious contents, but would no longer do so, mangled as it was. Van Dieman removed the precious treasure and clutched the telesmon to him. Making his way across the uneven floor, he looked at the gaping hole in the Petrel's side. Benton and the rest of Van Dieman's surviving bodyguards had spread out from the wreck in a skirmish line and were moving across the ice field back toward the McMurdo airstrip. From positions at the edge of the buildings, the enemy was firing at them, trying to stop them.

  A groan from the cockpit caught his attention. He turned and saw the copilot staggering into the cabin. Beyond him the pilot lay sprawled and dead, impaled on the steering yoke.

  "Santiago," Van Dieman said. He read the name on the man's bloodied flight suit as he silently ordered the harbinger to strengthen the man. His servant reported the copilot fit. "Are you well enough to fly?"

  "No ship," he replied, slowly but coherently.

  "That is a temporary condition," Van Dieman told him.

  The harbinger radiated fierce, anticipatory joy.

  Holger didn't like the way the firefight was shaping up. Carey was dead and Hagen down, wounded and out of the fight, taking cover before exposure did for him what the enemy's bullets had not. They were now outnumbered locally, and they hadn't managed to put down even one of the six hos-tiles who had emerged from the wreck of the Petrel. Half of Holger's force was still crossing McMurdo Station from their posts on the far side.

  The magical assets didn't offer any help. Spae and Reddy were attempting to weave some kind of magical net to throw over the harbinger should it appear, and weren't available for countering the mundane hostiles. The range of the firefight meant that this wasn't the sort of brawl in which a sword, even a magical one, would be useful. This phase of the op was pure muscle—the kind of fight he preferred.

  Only he preferred to win.

  He caught a flash of movement out by the wreck of the Petrel. Squinting, he could just make out two figures emerging from the wreckage. One wore an Arctic flight suit, the other a tattered business suit. A business suit? That one had to be the specialist, Van Dieman. Any normal man would have been down from exposure by now.

  Holger popped up the image enhancer on his Viper. It was a long shot, not the sort of thing the Viper was designed for, but he knew how to compensate for the drop-off in the Viper's 5mm round. With a bit of luck, this op might soon be over.

  But if luck was involved, it was bad.

  The image enhancer fuzzed. Holger tapped the reset, trying to clear it, but the magnified image did not return. He got nothing but gray. He snapped down the scope and looked with his own eyes.

  What he saw made him shiver.

  A rolling wall of opaque mist had risen from nowhere and was drifting toward him from the Petrel.

  Dr. Spae cursed, dropping the link between her and John, and he felt the change in the magical ambiance at once. Anxiety gnawed away the last vestiges of his focus. There were spells loose. Van Dieman hadn't been killed in the crash. He and the harbinger were active.

  And John and Dr. Spae weren't ready for them.

  John looked toward the wrecked verrie, expecting to see some kind of unholy monster rising from the debris, but he couldn't find the craft at all. Some kind of ground fog had come up, concealing it. Then he realized that perhaps he was seeing something monstrous and, if not unholy, at least unnatural. The fog reeked of arcane crafting, sizzling with roiling energies of magic that blinded the inner eye nearly as thoroughly as it did the outer.

  Van Dieman's doing.

  Something dark and hungry moved in the depths of the swirling opacity. John was intimidated by the thing he felt out there, but he knew that the thing was why they had come. That was what they were supposed to stop.

  If they didn't do it soon, they might not be able to.

  The fog rolled across the ice plain toward the McMurdo airfield. It appeared that Van Dieman wanted his Snowhawk ride into the interior after all.

  "Come on, Doctor. We've got to beat him to the verries."

  Dr. Spae didn't move. She just stared at the cloud come to earth. " It's so powerful."

  John tugged on her arm. "If we get to the airfield we may be able to activate the trap."

  "I don't know if it's strong enough."

  John didn't know either, but—"It'll have to be."

  At least they wouldn't have to foot it to their personal Armageddon. They had the little two-seater GoMo™ all-terrain vehicle they had used to haul the doctor's gear. John got Dr. Spae into the passenger seat, hopped aboard, and kicked the engine to cranky life. Icy pellets of fira sprayed as he peeled out.

  Now all they had to do was outrace the fog cloud, get past the gauntlet of the firefight, and activate the spells that they

  were afraid were too weak to do what they needed to do.

  Benton was unaware of the fog until it rolled over him. The drop in ambient temperature accompanying the vapor was additional evidence of its uncanny nature. More weirdness from the hand of Van Dieman? Then the bastard wasn't dead, as Benton had thought when he'd abandoned the Petrel.

  That meant he was still under contract.

  Benton couldn't see the front edge of the fog bank, but he suspected the dense grayness was engulfing everything between the Petrel and McMurdo. It wasn't hard to guess Van Dieman's intentions.

  Benton shivered, despite his thermal suit, when something unseen moved past him in the fog.

  This was not the time to stay put. "Everybody up!" he ordered over the tactical frequency. "Now! Head for the airstrip! They can't see us through this soup."

  He didn't know if that was true. The enemy might have enhancement scopes, but they probably hadn't anticipated such an eventuality. He hadn't. Fogs like this weren't part of the normal seasonal weather.

  Rather than be paralyzed by the lack of visibility, the best course was to try to take advantage of it, hoping the enemy was similarly disadvantaged. If he was, that was his loss. Cover like this favored the attacker, allowing an unobserved approach.

  Benton had an advantage his men lacked. He didn't need a scope to pick out the flickering thermal images against the cold glare of the ice that were the actors in this farce. Watching his men start moving, he waited for a response. There was none. He started after them.

  Movement was tricky, because the footing was uneven, and his enhancements didn't help him there. Cold rocks and ice against cold rocks and ice were as invisible to him as to fog-blinded normal vision. Still he made better time than the others. Natural superiority, he supposed.

  He had passed the straggling Juarez and Van Dieman's other surviving toady when he spotted another person moving on a converging track. He knew from the squat shape it was one of the enemy. He ripped a burst with his KAR-99 and cut the figure down.

  Someone fired back and he knew he wasn't t
he only one with enhancements. The fire was too on-target to be a response to the sound of his own shot. The enemy's shot missed Benton—barely—but caught one of his own men behind him. Benton shifted into high gear, leaving behind the moaning casualty. Benton knew from Juarez's shouting that he wasn't the wounded man. Not that it mattered which of the toadies had gotten hit—at this point they were just excess baggage, something Benton did not intend to be. He raced for the airstrip, heedless of the risk of a fall.

  Van Dieman dragged Santiago through the concealing fog, heedless of the man's whimpers. Santiago's whining grated against his nerves, and Van Dieman considered killing the man just to shut him up, but he couldn't afford to do that; he still needed a capable pilot. When they reached the nearest of the Snowhawks, Van Dieman flung the pilot against the hull of the craft.

  "Open it up," he ordered.

  Santiago took a moment to realize what he had been brought to, then scrambled to comply. His haste was gratifying, perhaps even necessary. Van Dieman could sense another presence in the fog. He turned to see one of Benton's men approaching.

  With Van Dieman's gaze upon him, the man abandoned his stealthy approach and approached with a swagger. This one was called Chase. Van Dieman remembered because he liked this one the least of all Benton's thugs. Chase had never been properly deferential.

  "Made it I see," Chase said. "We were coming to get one of the Snowhawks. We were going to come back and get you."

  Van Dieman didn't believe that. Underlings of Chase's sort only performed when they were being watched.

  "The others have not gotten here yet," Van Dieman said. "You must destroy the other aircraft before joining us. There must be no pursuit."

  "Sure," Chase said with uncharacteristic eagerness. He ran to do Van Dieman's bidding.

  The fog was no barrier to its master's eyes. Van Dieman watched Chase head for the next Snowhawk down the line. He waited until he saw Chase start to open the cabin hatch, then turned and boarded his own verrie. He had no intention of waiting for Chase or any of the others to join him. They were unimportant, save that their actions would continue to occupy the enemy for a bit longer. He no longer needed them to assure that he and the harbinger would get the telesmon to the place that awaited. The only one he and his companion needed now was Santiago.

  "Take us up," he told the man as he joined him in the cockpit.

  "But the fog," Santiago complained. "I can't fly in this fog."

  "What fog?"

  The air was clear again. Van Dieman wanted no impediments between him and the glory to come.

  When Holger saw one of the hostiles fire, he fired back. He missed the man and got one of the others. There was something in the fog that was distorting Holger's vision—he should not have missed the shot.

  When his target took off like a rocket-assisted rabbit, he guessed that his man was Benton, the hostile's commander. Who else would be likely to display unsuspected abilities? Fog-piercing vision for one, and now unnatural speed. Could he have done something to cause Holger to miss his shot? Whether he had or not, Benton was clearly the most dangerous of the bunch.

  Perhaps this was why Holger was here; this might be the part of the fight that was to be his.

  Benton was headed for the airfield at full speed, but he had to round an outbuilding to get there. Holger had a shorter course, and he took it. Caliburn, in the scabbard at his back, slapped against him as he ran. He was waiting when Benton rounded the corner.

  The mercenary was no fool. He knew Holger had him. He skidded to a stop and dropped his weapon to the ice. Holding his hands up, he strolled closer.

  "Stop right there," Holger told him.

  But he didn't. Holger wasn't a fool, either. His finger tightened on the trigger of his Viper. Benton twisted away. The bullets only ripped through the mercenary's parka.

  God he was fast!

  Too fast! Benton changed his evasion to an attack. His foot came up and around, catching Holger on the arm. Hand numbed, he lost his grip on the Viper. It went sailing away.

  Both without guns. No matter. Holger went at the mercenary with his hands. The quickness and ferocity of Holger's attack must have caught Benton off guard, because he did nothing more than defend himself in the first exchange. It was Benton's speed more than his skill that saved him from Holger's hammering blows.

  "Who the hell are you?" Benton panted as they circled each other warily.

  But—as Holger had guessed—the question was intended more to provide a distraction than to elicit an answer.

  Benton attacked, striking with dangerous skill and speed. Department M had rebuilt Holger for battle; someone had done the same for Benton. This would be no easy combat. They fell to it. Strike and counterstrike. Grapple and counter. Holger slipped into the intense concentration needed to deal with a threatening opponent. Openings were offered, taken, and countered as the combatants tested each other in the realm where failure was lethal. Rhythms emerged, only to shift dangerously before advantage could be taken. Strike and counterstrike. Time was meaningless. Grapple and counter. Only the opponent mattered. The fight. Searching for an opening, probing until—an opening. Holger shifted lines and launched a kick, but Benton's speed saved him again. The mercenary got an arm up to deflect Holger's foot.

  Benton tried to turn the block into a grab—unsuccessfully— but he did manage to shift Holger off balance. Holger threw himself back as he went down, away from his dangerous opponent. Holger landed on his back.

  For an instant, the fight was suspended.

  The hard steel against Holger's back shocked his brain awake. Could this really be what he was here for? He was carrying Caliburn and this mercenary agent, for all his uncanny speed and strength, was certainly not a problem worthy of the great sword. What if Benton was only a delay, a distraction to keep him from getting Caliburn where it needed to be?

  He couldn't afford to take that chance. He had to end this fight. Now!

  Caliburn might be a great magical talisman, but it was also a sword and could do a sword's work. Getting to his feet, Holger reached back and grabbed the hilt. In response to his tug, the breakaway scabbard opened. Holger drew Caliburn smoothly down over his shoulder and took up chudan-no-kamae stance, aiming Caliburn's point at his opponent's throat.

  When unarmed man faced armed man, the outcome was inevitable, unless the unarmed man was significantly superior in skill or physical abilities. Holger didn't think Benton was that good. What did Benton think?

  The tension went out of the mercenary's body. Straightening from his fighting crouch, he held his hands wide of his body, a strange smile on his face.

  At that moment Holger's reserve team arrived—not exactly late, but not on time either. Over Benton's shoulder Holger could see a Snowhawk lifting off. He left Benton with the dwarves and sprinted for the airfield.

  The rolling fog bank caught John and Dr. Spae before they'd gotten halfway to the airstrip. John slowed the MoGo—not enough to be truly safe, but some concession to the drastically reduced visibility was necessary. Every time

  John swerved to avoid an obstacle, Dr. Spae yelped and clutched the grab bar.

  "You're worse than Kun," she shouted.

  He wasn't about to tell her that the only driving he'd done before this was at a video arcade.

  Without warning the fog was gone and John found that they were rolling along beside the hangers by the airstrip, headed away from where the Snowhawks were parked. Somehow he had gotten disoriented. He spun the MoGo in a tight turn and gunned the engine, hoping they weren't too late.

  The rotors on one of the Snowhawks were spinning up to speed.

  No time left. Knowing that he couldn't drive and help activate the trap grid at the same time, he hit the brakes. Dr. Spae began reciting the first phrases of the spell before they skidded to a complete stop. John took her hand, throwing himself into the link that would add his strength to hers.

  They weren't fast enough. In a swirl of white, the Snowhawk lifted
. The contact with the earth was broken and the chance of tying the harbinger down lost.

  New gunfire erupted, announcing that the more mundane battle was rejoined.

  "He's gotten away," Dr. Spae said despondently.

  "Chill down, Doc. A Snowhawk's a verrie like any other. We brought him down before. We'll just do it again."

  John took control of the link and launched their projections after the departing Snowhawk. But Van Dieman had learned their trick. This time John couldn't get near the fire in the heart of the engines. Van Dieman had anticipated their attack and set his pet creature to weave an armor of darkness around the Snowhawk's engine.

  Hell, they were back where they'd been before the first missiles had been launched. Only this time, they didn't have any missiles to send after the fleeing verrie.

  Kun came pounding toward them across the air strip, covering the distance at surprising speed.

  "Looks like we chase him after all," he said when he arrived.

  John drove the MoGo and Kun paced alongside. They headed for the nearest Snowhawk. As Kun was opening the cabin door, Dr. Spae said, "I didn't know you were a qualified pilot, Kun."

  "I'm not."

  "But I am," said a voice from inside. Hagen.

  "So this is where you went to ground," Kun said.

  "And a good thing too," Hagen said. There was a bloodstained pressure bandage around his leg, but he seemed okay, if a bit pale. His gun was pointed toward the back of the Snowhawk's cabin. "Look what I caught sneaking around."

  Climbing aboard, they saw that Hagen had captured one of Van Dieman's bodyguards.

  "I believe he had some idea about sabotaging this craft," Hagen said.

  "That's what Van Dieman wanted," the man said. "Actually, I had a rather different plan in mind."