The nearest Elf pointed his pistol at Per and pulled the trigger.
16th-Side A:
The FUP Compound
Joe Sterkarm • Kaitlin
“Oh no,” Joe said as Chitra tried to draw his gun. He grabbed the man’s arm and kicked his legs from under him—a move Joe had learned in the playground and honed among the Sterkarms, who liked to wrestle. Now that the rough stuff had started, he acted quickly and ruthlessly.
Kaitlin came to his side and threw herself down, pinning Chitra’s arm to the carpet tiles. The office’s floor resounded like a drum.
“What you doing?” Strong shouted, sounding terrified. He started panting and put one hand to his chest. Sweat sprang to his face. Swinging around, he pawed at his computer’s keyboard. …
21st-Side A:
FUP Headquarters, the Tube Control Room
Maisie • Leo • Ethan
Maisie’s favorite game involved shuffling brightly colored dots. Her colleagues wouldn’t give her away, because they so often played themselves. Ethan’s feet were propped on a desk as he drank Coke. Leo stood at the window, working out how to tell his girlfriend that he would rather be castrated than go on holiday with her parents.
The Tube’s operation’s room was almost empty. It was the midmorning break, and the three of them were babysitting the parameters. It was pretty boring.
The claxon made Maisie almost fall off her chair. Leo spun around, bewildered. “Fire?”
“16th side.” Maisie read the message on her screen. “Something’s wrong.”
Ethan jerked his feet to the floor, and he and Leo joined Maisie at her computer. The message flashed in one corner of the screen: EMERGENCY! The main screen showed them the office five hundred years away.
“False alarm,” Maisie said, hopefully. Someone 16th side had clumsily triggered the alarm program and woken the sleeping Tube. It had happened before. They peered into the past. It was hard to see what was going on, with desks and chairs blocking the view, but someone was on the floor, while others bent over them. “Heart attack?” Many of the security men were old. “Do we call an ambulance?”
Ethan snatched up his headset and spoke into the mic. “16th? Hello? What’s your emergency?”
They watched the screen. No one seemed to hear.
“We were trained for this,” Maisie said. “Come on!”
“You were trained, too,” Leo said. “You tell us.”
Maisie lifted her phone. “He’s having a heart attack!”
“Hang on.” Leo put his hand over her phone. “Is that allowed?” They’d all signed a secrecy agreement. Directing a crew of paramedics through the Tube would probably be breaking that.
Maisie, staring at the screen, said, “Hey! Are they fighting?”
16th-Side A:
The FUP Compound
Changeling Per
“Oh, deer run wild on hill and dale,
Small fowl flee from tree to tree …”
When Fowl was once more between him and the Elf-Guards, Per drew his dagger and wedged it in the top of his left boot. He took up his longbow and quiver. Sweet Milk, rising, did the same.
Per changed his tune:
“My hob is swift-footed and sure,
My sword hangs down by my knee—
I never hung back from a fight—
Come who dares and meddle with me!”
He took three arrows in his hand and fitted one to his bowstring. Under cover of his horse, he drew up. His change of song was the signal to his men on the other three sides of the Elf-House. He hoped they’d heard and understood. If not, then he and Sweet Milk would be cut into pieces small by Elf-Pistols.
Stepping from behind Fowl, Per aimed, with as little thought as he would give to pointing, at the middle of a guard’s back. He’d learned, while with Patterson, that the Elves’ protective jackets ended there. He loosed. As the arrow was still in the air, he fitted the nock of another one from the three in his hand to the string.
As he drew back the second arrow, he saw the first find its mark. The guard was thrown, with a rattle, against the steel fence, the shaft standing out from his back. Per loosed the second arrow. With a soft thump, it entered the guard in almost the same place. Good shooting! Pierced through, the arrow lodged in the fence’s steel mesh, the Elf couldn’t fall.
Sweet Milk’s Elf spoiled his shot by moving. The arrow went through his thigh. The Elf stared at his leg, where he’d felt a hard blow, as if hit by a club. Seeing the arrow seemed to puzzle him further—he hadn’t seen or heard it coming. He brought up his Elf-Pistol, tried to look around, but was hampered by the long arrow catching in the fence behind him. Sweet Milk’s second arrow drove through his belly, and the guard dropped his pistol. The third arrow slammed into his belly, too, and the fourth through his thigh.
“Good shot!” Per said.
Holding their bows horizontally, with arrows on the strings, Per and Sweet Milk walked over to the guards. Per’s target, his face pressed against the steel mesh, breathed in hard gasps. He would give them no trouble. Sweet Milk’s Elf faced them, and had an Elf-Pistol at his feet.
This Elf was no coward. Squirming against the arrows that held him, he tried to reach the pistol. He cried out in pain, and blood soaked through his clothing. Sweet Milk put another arrow through him and was then near enough to kick away the Elf-Pistol. The Elf sobbed. He knew he hadn’t long to live.
Sweet Milk tried to wrest off the Elf’s helmet, but it fitted tightly and the Elf hindered him by striking at him, his hands slippery with blood.
Seeing Sweet Milk endangered angered and frightened Per. He took a running kick at the Elf’s side, which shifted and broke the arrows inside him. Squealing, the Elf fell to his knees. Sweet Milk straddled him, yanked back his head, and cut his throat. Blood sprayed, spilling onto Sweet Milk’s arm and legs, gurgling and choking in the Elf’s throat.
They turned to the other Elf. Fixed to the fence by two arrows, he grappled the mesh, rattling it. His helmet strap hung loose, flapping. Per dropped his bow, drew his dagger from his boot, jammed his knee in the Elf’s back by the arrow fletchings, yanked back his head … and then started and nearly let go as a giant’s throat clearing echoed from the hills.
Per froze, twisted his head, and he and Sweet Milk stared at each other. An Elf-Pistol had been fired.
Per recovered, drove his dagger into the side of the Elf’s neck, and jerked the blade forward. He turned his own face aside, closing his mouth to avoid the Elf’s blood. He stuck the bloody knife back in his boot, caught up his bow and arrows, and ran back to the Elf-House. Sweet Milk followed.
All around them birds called and cawed, frightened by the pistol shot.
Behind them, the dead Elf was still upright, pinned to the fence.
Cuddy, tied to the Elf-House’s support posts, saw her master run past and out of her sight. She pulled at her leash, then threw up her head and howled.
26
16th-Side A:
Wild Country
Per May and Andrea • Joan Grannam
Still half-deafened by the pistol shot, Joan grabbed the scabbard she’d dropped and wondered what part of an Elf she should hit. Their heads were protected with helmets. Their legs? Their hands holding the pistols?
On the slope below, Changelings Ecky and Sim Sterkarm lay dead, Andrea sprawled unconscious, and Per Sterkarm, staggering, prepared to fight the Elves who climbed toward him.
An Elf aimed a pistol at Per. Joan winced, expecting an explosion as the pistol fired. Instead, a tiny red dot appeared on Per’s leg.
A dart sprang from the red dot, trailing a shining line behind it.
Per gave a choked cry, stood on tiptoe, and fell like a tree. Appalled, bewildered, Joan stared. The scabbard dangled, forgotten, from her hand.
Per May
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Per never saw the dart and hardly felt it. He knew only that ropes of pain wrapped him around, invisible, but unbreakable. Elf-chains!
Pain coiled around him, crushing his arms to his side, fastening his hands around sword and dagger hilts. His neck was pressed down into his shoulders and his legs stiffened, every muscle tugging at its tendons and bones. His toes pointed, forcing him onto tiptoe. He felt himself topple.
He couldn’t do anything to save himself. He yelled, in rage and fear, but only a harsh groaning left his mouth. A heavy blow at his side and he realized he’d hit the hard ground. The slope was steep enough for him to slither down a little way, still paralyzed.
He heard Joan yell, “No!” He heard her feet on the ground, and she appeared above him, brandishing his empty scabbard. He heard her fast, frightened breathing as she prepared to fight. The Elves were silent.
The pain seeped from him, leaving weakness behind. His whole body trembled, and his clenched hands, loosening, let his sword and dagger fall. He tried reaching for them, but his body slept. He forced his arms to move, but they were slow, without strength or skill. Yet his heart pounded, filling his chest, leaving no room for breath. He was cold and shivering—and then his guts wrang. He turned his head to the side and spewed.
“He be sick!” Joan cried.
The Elves fell back from her, as if afraid. They stared at Joan and looked from one to another. One of them spoke, but in Elvish.
The Elves
“Cop a load of that, Corp!”
Corporal Reynolds didn’t like the effect the girl was having on his men, but couldn’t blame them. He and his patrol had followed this little party for a while. It was what Patterson had sent them out to do—find out more about the country, what’s where, who’s living in it, what they’re doing. He’d seen, through his field glasses, that there were a couple of women with the men, so he’d guessed they might be a family. Food producers. They might lead the way to pigs or chickens.
The “family” was slow, and further observation made Reynolds think that one woman might be Andrea Mitchell. The Skipper had given clear orders about her.
One of the men looked like Per Sterkarm—though whether FUP’s tame Per Sterkarm or the wild one was unknown. Mitchell’s presence suggested the wild one. If they took those two in, dead or alive, it’d be brownie points all around. The Skip would give them each a bar of chocolate.
Reynolds paid less attention to the other woman, and as they approached closer still, his attention narrowed to the men and whether or not they would fight. So when Joan ran down the slope, waving the sword holder, it was as if she’d suddenly sprung up from the ground, or appeared out of thin air. And, close up, she was a real stunner. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful girl, not for real, not just standing there in front of him, half-dressed.
She was tall and long-legged, with thick, fair hair hanging loose and blowing around her shoulders. Her face was a little jewel, and the way she held her head made him think of a deer’s poise. The long dress she wore was flimsy, and so muddy and damp that it plastered itself to her, showing the lines of her thighs and clinging to her little breasts.
He looked around at his men’s variously shifty, grinning, leering, or embarrassed faces. None of them was in a hurry to electrocute her.
Reynolds moved closer for a better look at the man by the girl’s feet. She swiped at him with the sword holder, so he caught it in one hand and pulled her toward him hard, sending her sprawling on the slope with a squeal. His men laughed.
Norton set his leg in front of Joan as she rolled down the slope. The collision almost took him from his feet, but he laughed, grabbed her by the wrist, yanked her upright. The hard fall had left her gasping, and Norton enjoyed looking her over. Glancing around, he saw other men staring, too. “What’s this I’ve caught?” he called. “Can I keep it, Corp?”
Joan, still breathless, stretched her free hand toward Reynolds. “Han air krank! Krank!” She waved her arm to indicate Andrea and the bodies of Ecky and Sim. “Dey air alla krank!”
“She’s kranky anyway,” Norton said. “Got your monthlies, love?” He looked around, but most of the other men were too on edge to laugh. They kept watch around them.
Reynolds ignored it all as he crouched over the stunned man. Spender, the paramedic, came to his side.
“Broken nose, look,” Reynolds said. “It’s their Per Sterkarm, not ours. We’re in luck.” A valuable hostage and a source of information to take back to Patterson.
“She keeps saying they’re sick,” Spender said. “That’s what krank means. Sick.”
Beside Per Sterkarm lay Andrea Mitchell. Spender nudged her with his boot. There was no response. “I think she’s saying they’re all sick.”
Several of the other men came trampling nearer. “Krank! Krank!” the girl repeated in the background.
Burnett put the barrel of his rifle to Mitchell’s head and looked at Reynolds. “Say the word, Corp.”
16th-Side A:
The FUP Compound, the Tube Office
Joe Sterkarm • Kaitlin
They’re going to pile in from the 21st any minute now, Joe thought. Any minute now.
Chitra struggled, yelping desperately. Kaitlin lay on one of his arms while Joe breathlessly fought to control the rest of him. Arms, head, heels banged on the hollow, booming floor. The other guard, Strong, sat at his keyboard and yelled things like, ‘What’s going on?’ He moved as if he was going to get up and help his friend but never did. But you could bet he’d sent an alarm 21st side—any minute now …
A footstep on the floor behind him. They’re here! They’ve come! Still holding down Chitra, Joe twisted his head around and saw Per Sterkarm lunging into the office, bringing a stink of horse and leather—and something else, some taint Joe knew but couldn’t name.
Joe thought Per would help him, but Per went to Strong, who tried to push himself away in his chair. Per held something between his hands. He threw it over Strong’s head, like a barber throwing an invisible towel over a customer.
Sweet Milk pounded across the office floor. He was always close behind Per. Sweet Milk held Strong’s hands down, while Per made a twisting motion. Joe suddenly understood. Per held a bowstring between his hands. He was twisting and tightening it around Strong’s neck.
21st Side:
FUP Headquarters, the Tube Control Room
Maisie • Leo • Ethan
“Oh my God,” Maisie said.
“What?” Leo asked. He was watching Ethan welcome the medical team at the door, but the fear in her voice alarmed him.
She pointed at the screen. “He’ … attacking him.”
Leo bent, for a closer look. “No, he’s …”
The med team and Ethan came up behind them. Leo turned to them with white-edged, scared eyes. “He’s killing him.”
The med team pushed them aside, stooping to see the screen.
“Is the Tube open?” Ethan dropped into a chair at a keyboard.
“It’s closed, isn’t it?” At the thought of the attackers strolling through the Tube and into the office, Maisie skipped to her own desk. “No—it’s closed. Thank God!”
One of the med team straightened. “Good. Nobody’s going through there without the specials.” Taking a phone from her pocket, she pressed a code into it. “They’re coming.” She looked at Ethan. “You should have sent for them.”
16th-Side A:
The FUP Compound
Joe Sterkarm • Kaitlin • Changeling Per
Chitra bucked like a horse, almost throwing Kaitlin off. Joe knelt on his legs and pressed down on the man’s chest and right arm. Kaitlin crawled back into the fight and caught a punch on the nose, but grappled Chitra’s free arm to the floor.
Chitra was pale and soaked in sweat. Retching, he twisted his head to the side.
The bloke’s probably got kids, Joe thought. Why am I here? Then he saw Kaitlin’s face, with streaming eyes and a red nose.
Other Sterkarms entered, their feet loud on the floor. A quiver of arrows was dumped against a cupboard with a scratching from the stiff fletchings. The wheels of Strong’s chair rolled and the floor shook as his body thumped onto it. Shadows fell over Joe as Sterkarms pulled Chitra away from him. Joe saw a knife, and then there was blood on the floor and splattered on the doors. Joe recognized the smell that Changeling Per had brought with him. Fresh blood.
Sterkarms butchered chickens, pigs, rabbits, fish, pigeons, goats, sheep, cows, even sparrows and finches, on an almost daily basis. They brought the same deft, callous efficiency to killing enemies. He and Kaitlin were surrounded by killers.
21st-Side A:
The Borderers Hotel
James Windsor
When his phone played Totentanz, Windsor knew he had to pick up, no matter what he was doing. “A minute,” he said, reaching for it.
After a first glance at the text, he rolled over and read intently. “Shut up,” he said, when his companion spoke.
He swore, shut the phone off, got up, and dressed. What the Hell. Duty called.
“Where are you going?” A typically stupid, pointless question.
“Oh, shut up.” He slammed out of the room and all but ran to the lifts. In the lobby, he passed the desk with an upraised forefinger. “Later.” They knew him. He often stayed there when he needed downtime but had to stay close to work.
In the car, he put the phone on speaker and returned the call. The Sterkarms! Of course it was. Not a technical hiccup, not a fire, not a breakout of mass hysteria or Black Death among the staff. The Sterkarms.
How the fuck had they got inside the compound?
Security were going to wish they were dying of Black Death with their arses on fire when he got through with them. …
16th-Side A:
The FUP Compound, the Tube Office
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 23