by Mike Wild
Kali mounted Horse and spurred him down the hillside towards the fleeing figures. She frowned, the fleeing men and women were some distance apart, and to aid them all she and Horse would have to perform some pretty fancy manoeuvring.
With a "hyahh!" she drove the bamfcat toward the nearest group, shouting at them to raise their arms as she leaned sideways to scoop the first of them up. The man arced up onto Horse's back, landing with a thud in the saddle, and Kali repeated the rescue with a second farmer and a third. She could carry no more behind her for the time being and reined Horse away from the landslips and to the safety of a patch of stable ground.
Kali had no choice but to ignore their pleas about rescuing husbands, wives or brothers and wasted no time, turning Horse again and scanning the fields for those in the most immediate danger.
One group of five or six — in the chaos it was difficult to tell — were struggling, their escape route cut off by a fresh fissure. Attempting to backtrack, they were once more caught in the middle of the subsidence.
Another "hyaah!" sent Horse hammering towards them and, almost as if he had read her mind, the bamfcat deployed more of his natural armaments. The extra horns which had just sprang from Horse's body were, for once, meant neither as defensive or offensive appendages but provided hand and footholds for the group of farmers it would otherwise have been impossible to carry. Quite what the farmers made of the great armoured beast as it pounded towards them she'd never know, but as they staggered back before his fearsome sight, Kali had to indicate as best she could what they should do. Thankfully, in their desperation, the men and women seemed quick learners, and as Horse galloped into their midst, they leapt for and clung to the armoured protrusions.
"Hang on!" Kali shouted and, wondering vaguely if there was some kind of obscure world record for the number of farmers dangling from a bamfcat, she quickly reined Horse around once more, riding him into a jump across the fissure that had earlier stymied the farmers' flight.
The bamfcat roared triumphantly as they arced over the collapse, and, as they thudded down on the other side Kali, too, let out a whoop. But it wasn't over yet.
"My girl!" One of the women pleaded as Kali dropped them off with the others. "Please, she was frightened, she ran, I couldn't reach her…"
"Where?" Kali said, already turning Horse.
"She ran beneath one of those things. Lord of All, please, you have to help her!"
Kali stared back into the chaos, seeing no sign of the girl but spotting instead another group of stranded victims, whose escape route was blocked by fallen trees. They were attempting to hack through the barrier of vegetation but their going was slow and all the while, behind them, the ground broken by the machines was growing ever larger.
Kali swallowed. She had no choice but to ride to help these people, and all she could do was hope she'd spot the youngster on route — the problem being, if she did, what the hells was she going to do then?
A second later, the dilemma became stark reality, a scream managing to make itself heard over the strange wailing of the machines. Kali stared hard and spotted a small figure struggling on the edge of the pit in the shadow of the first of them, and cursed. There was no way she could reach both the girl and the others in time, and for a moment she reined Horse's nose left and right, left and right, tortured by the decision to save the lives of a whole group or of one, however young. Thankfully, it was a decision she didn't have to make, the sound of further heavy hoofbeats signalling the arrival of a second horse by her side.
"You take the girl!" Its flame-haired rider shouted from her solid white mount. "I'll fetch Treave and the others!"
There was no time to think about who the woman was or where she had appeared from. Once more Kali booted Horse's flanks and steered him towards the girl. But if her chances of success had been precarious so far, they had just gotten a lot worse.
Kali found herself weaving Horse through the masses of soil that poured from the machine hanging above the girl in a deadly rain, at one point even having to turn him abruptly as a tree — crashed back to the ground directly in their path. It was a close run thing with far too many near misses and, the further in she rode, the thicker the falls became, leaving Kali with no choice but to ignore the painful hammering of falling detritus on Horse's hide and on her own, far less protected flesh. At last, though, she reached the girl and scooped the dishevelled, but miraculously unhurt, child up behind her, turning Horse for the return trip.
But again, she cursed. What seemed like a whole field by itself was falling in a solid curtain that would be impossible to pass without being crushed. Nevertheless, Kali spurred Horse on, leaning forward as she did to whisper in his ear, "If ever there was a time for you to do your thing, my friend, it's right now."
Horse was of the same mind, galloping straight ahead. One moment the bamfcat, Kali and the girl were heading into the roaring soilfall and the next they were heading away from it, on the other side.
Kali kept Horse at a gallop until they had reached the waiting farmers, slowed him to a trot, and stopped beside the anxious mother to swing her daughter down into her arms. She dismissed the woman's thanks, but not ungraciously, being more concerned with the fate of the one who had come to aid her in the rescue attempt. She stared back into the disaster area, a hopeless mass of uncontrollable landslides now, and bit her lip. Long, long seconds went by but then, bursting through a cloud of debris, a white, if somewhat soil-stained, horse appeared at full gallop. The farmers she had rescued clung to her saddle in much the same way Kali's had clung to Horse's horns, and a moment later they were with their own.
Kali watched the woman dismount, nodding modestly as the farmers thanked her for what she had done, but seemingly more interested in tending to the welfare of the animal she had ridden. Kali dismounted Horse and walked to the white horse, casually palming between its gravestone teeth one of the bacon lardons she kept for sentimental reasons, and then, without a word, the two women stood side by side to stare up at the strange, rotating machines which had come to dominate the whole sky.
All three of them now fully inverted — or perhaps the right way up, who was to tell? — their rotation appeared to be speeding up. The sound of their sirens faded to be replaced by a strange and very deep thrumming that seemed to be produced by the rotating eaves. The faster the machine turned, the more intrusive and painful the thrumming became, and all in the fields were forced to press their hands to their ears to block it out. The painful effects seemed to last no more than a minute, however, although both bamfcat and horse snorted in protest a little longer. As the animals calmed, Kali guessed the thrumming had passed beneath the range of anything's hearing, leaving the machines to rotate in apparent silence.
Kali glanced at the woman beside her. She still stared up at the machines with narrowed eyes and a steely set to her jaw, as if these things were an affront to her. There was also the same determination on her face that she felt herself — to find out just what these bastards were and what they would do next.
"Hells of a morning," Kali said.
"Not exactly what I expected when I got out of bed," the woman said.
"Kali Hooper."
"Gabriella DeZantez."
Kali studied her more closely. With her bone structure and fiery red hair she looked like a younger version of the Anointed Lord, Katherine Makennon. Kali didn't usually notice such things but it was also clear to her that the hair had been cut by her own hand rather than the prissy fingers of the primpers and preeners who'd begun to appear in the cities. She could tell immediately that Gabriella was different, like herself having little time for people's expectations or normal conventions. Her attitude was reflected in her clothing, too, the woman dressed for practicality rather than fashion, in a dusty surplice and working trews. Unfortunately it was the surplice of the Order of the Swords of Dawn, the Final Faith's warrior elite, bearing the faded crossed circle of the church. Kali had no idea what had caused Gabriella to end up as she wa
s in a backwater such as this but she knew instinctively that she liked her. Which made it all that more of a shock when, with no preamble at all, the woman's next words were, "As the Enlightened One of the town of Solnos, I am placing you under arrest."
"What?" Kali protested. "Why?"
Gabriella DeZantez turned to face her directly for the first time, and Kali started slightly. Gabriella's eyes were unlike any she had ever seen, one a clear sapphire blue, the other a striking almond flecked with gold.
"I should have thought that was obvious," she said.
Kali surveyed the devastation. "You mean this? I had nothing to do with this."
"There is evidence to the contrary."
"Evidence? What evidence? Now wait one farking minute!"
But before she could argue her case further Gabriella DeZantez quickly unsheathed her twin blades, whirled them full circle and slammed their hilts into her temples.
Kali dropped to the ground like a stone.
"Treave, Maltus, bring her," the Enlightened One said as she strode by two of the farmers in the direction of what was left of the town. "As the Overseer has decreed, this 'Kali Hooper' must answer for her crimes."
Chapter Three
For the last hour the archer's aim had been unwavering, the tip of the arrow pointing precisely where it had pointed when his wait had begun. It had not moved a hair's breadth in any direction. In the hands of any normal bowman, the strain of holding it so would have long ago become too intense. The bow would have begun to shake and skew, the shaft unstable and tremulous between two crooked fingers of the right. The nock of the arrow would, by now, have begun to buck spastically on the bowstring, and the strain would have transformed the tendons of the arms into agonising webs of red hot wire. Under such circumstances the bow would have to have been relaxed, lowered, and the trembling, cramped limbs exercised and massaged. The intended target of the bow might, as a result, have been lost.
In the hands of this archer, there was no such concern. The bow remained steadfast and its aim true. Everything was perfectly still, the only sounds in the flue where he hid the subtle creaking of wood and his soft, measured breathing. His concentration was sublime. Where others' gaze would have long ago started to wander, their vision to blur and lose focus, his blue eyes remained focused and alert, waiting for the moment — the one, fleeting moment — that he knew would eventually come.
Man and weapon were the best there were.
It was why the bow was called Suresight.
And why the archer went by the name of Slowhand.
The moment arrived. A small flicker of shadows betrayed motion some twenty yards outside the flue, framed in the one inch square formed by four bars of the iron grille through which his arrow was aimed. Despite the imminent arrival of his target, Slowhand's breathing remained calm. All that changed was that he smiled.
Smiled because this was not the first time in the last few days he'd waited for the perfect shot, and depending on how things went it might not be the last. For the last thing Slowhand intended was to kill the man whose shadow approached — that would be far too easy. He did not want Querilous Fitch to die quite yet.
Oh, Querilous Fitch. Slowhand so much wanted the psychic manipulator to suffer. He wanted him to suffer in the same way the corpse-like bastard had made Jenna suffer, stripping from his sister everything that had made her who and what she was. It might have been Slowhand himself who had given the order to fire upon her airship, and consequently end her life in a flaming crash, but in truth it had been Fitch who'd ended it long before. Independence, spirit, freedom of will: Fitch had taken them all until Jenna was nothing more than a puppet of the Final Filth. Slowhand did not have the abilities that Fitch possessed, of course — to literally stick his filthy little fingers in unspeakable pies — but he had his own, and so far they were working just fine.
During the past days, wherever in Scholten or beyond Fitch had been, he had been also — unseen, undetected, undetained. And on each occasion he had sent Fitch a message to let him know he was there, an arrow despatched from whichever hiding place he had used which could almost, but not quite, have dropped him dead where he stood. By these means he had gradually robbed Fitch of the very same things the bastard had taken from Jenna, reducing him to his current state — a furtive, quivering hostage to mortality, unable to do anything or go anywhere without the presence of the living shield of bodyguards he had so desperately employed.
There the bodyguards were now, Fitch huddled in their midst. The passage along which he walked was one that rose from the cells and torture chambers beneath Scholten Cathedral to the central level of the Final Faith's sprawling underground complex. It was a route Fitch followed daily at roughly the same time, depending on how thoroughly he had attended to his 'guests.' The fact that he had not varied his routine was probably reflective of the fact that he considered himself safe in the bowels of the secret stronghold, but the time had come to prove him wrong.
Slowhand waited until Fitch was outlined in the dead centre of the one inch square and let his arrow fly. It cut perfectly through the grille, flew through the narrow gap between supply crates that blocked the flue from view and then embedded itself solidly into the wall next to Fitch's face. The psychic manipulator and his guards fell into immediate, blind panic; Fitch, clearly torn between gathering them more closely about him or sending them in search of the origin of the arrow, settled for half and half. Some guards pounded towards the flue, while others bundled Fitch away, swords raised defensively as they attempted to get their charge out of sight.
As the first batch of guards kicked open the flue and examined its interior, Slowhand was already gone, having slipped out and replaced the grille the moment he'd released the arrow. Now he circled the crates, keeping out of sight but, as the opportunities presented themselves, unleashing more arrows in Fitch's wake, until a line of them dotted the wall of the passage along which he fled.
Turning with a look of horror each time one hit, Fitch made the decision that might make these his final moments after all. He ordered his protectors to guard his flank.
No problem, as far as Slowhand was concerned — he simply clambered up onto a stack of crates, leapt for a support beam and passed over the guards' heads.
Fitch, he thought, you really should have invested full gold and bought in decent mercenaries from Allantia. The kind with brains, because you only get what you pay for.
It was just him and the psychic manipulator now. As Fitch fled into the warehouse and distribution area, Slowhand followed, passing the Faith workers there unopposed, creating confusion as they hurried through. Once or twice Fitch looked to his rear, trying to defend himself by unleashing fireballs, but, born of haste and panic, they ricocheted wildly off the walls.
Querilous Fitch reached the other side of the central area and entered one of the railway tunnels that fanned off it, dodging between the couplings of stationary wagons. The expansive network of tunnels that spread far across the peninsula — beneath both Vos and Pontaine — were thought to be the remains of dwarven mines which the Faith had extended into a transport network, and the cable-driven, funicular trains which rode their rails simply developments of the ore-collectors once used. It was what the Faith did — purloined technology and then adapted it for their own insidious purposes — but it gave Querilous Fitch no advantage here.
Just the opposite, in fact. In his panic, Fitch had clearly neglected to take into account what lay some distance into the tunnels — and Slowhand knew what lay there because he'd had to bypass one to enter the Cathedral.
Since last Slowhand had been here with Hooper, security had been upped dramatically on the surface, and without offing every guard between himself and Fitch he would have had the pits' own job of reaching him undetected. But, as was so often the way, when security was increased on one front, it was often left vulnerable on another. Instead of heading for Scholten Slowhand had made his way to a tiny and purposefully underwhelming Faith mission
some leagues east. The Church of Divine Intervention was more than it seemed, the fact that it had never been open for worship a clue that it had another purpose more fitting to its title. The mission was but a hollow shell concealing an access shaft to one of the Faith tunnels that led from Scholten to Volonne.
The mission also had only one guard, and he was swiftly despatched with an iron-tipped arrow to the helmet that concussed rather than killed. After that it had been easy to gain entry to the shaft and drop onto the first train heading back west. The train had been carrying naphtha for the cathedral gibbets, and he had used some of the oil mixed with grime to apply facial camouflage before he reached the complex.
But before the complex, of course, had been the shields.
Fitch had forgotten about the shields.
Slowhand smiled. The tunnel along which the psychic manipulator now fled was not the one through which he had rode the train — appeared, in fact, to be long unused — but that didn't matter, for its defences would be the same. He allowed Fitch his rein, letting him increase the distance between them, exhaust himself as he fled into the darkness. Slowhand followed at his own pace, knowing he had all the time in the world.
Fitch now gasping and staggering had negotiated most of a broad bend in the tunnel, and the blue glow that he could see illuminating the walls seemed to him to be some kind of salvation, a heavenly exit, perhaps, which would end this dark pursuit. It was nothing of the kind, of course, and as Slowhand appeared along the tunnel behind him, the stark reality of what he faced hit home.
The magical force barrier that sealed all of the tunnels against intruders into the sub-levels of Scholten Cathedral closed off the tunnel, its surface rippling gently. The only things capable of passage through its lethal charge were the trains, their front carriages embedded with crystals that momentarily nullified its destructive effects. Given time, Fitch might have been able to use his own sorcerous powers to break the barrier down, but time was something he no longer had. The psychic manipulator weaved left and right, as if trying to find some alternative escape route, but unless the first train in who-knew-how-long came through the shield in the next few seconds, there was no way out.