by Col Buchanan
This was it then. The reason he had come all this way. The reason Kosh had given up his life in the Hush.
‘He is ready?’ came his whispered voice.
‘Only just.’
The room was a long oblong chamber with pale red lights along the ceiling which brightened as they entered. Behind them the door slid closed with a hiss of air and Aléas and Cole stationed themselves on either side of it.
‘Here,’ said the Anwi woman and yanked a lever out from a wall hatch next to the door. ‘Hold this down to keep it locked.’
Triqy moved deeper into the chamber and pulled something else from the wall: a steel slab with a body lying upon it rigged up to a series of tubes. Ripping sounds erupted as she worked over the prone form. Liquid dribbled onto the floor at her feet. Ash forced himself to take a step closer, and then another.
‘Is that him?’ hissed Aléas from the door.
‘Yes!’ replied a startled Ash in his native Honshu, and for all that the world turned beneath them he was rendered still.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Fear of Big Birds
It was the boy all right.
It was Nico, his apprentice, lying there as though dead within a tight transparent wrapping that reached up to his neck, his pale exposed face gleaming wetly. Ash could barely believe what he was seeing.
‘Nico,’ he breathed and cupped the boy’s head in his palm, seeing the curls of his hair and the slightly upturned nose.
From the door, the longhunter Cole shifted around to stare. ‘What did you say?’
But Triqy was ripping more of the wrapping away, and she yanked a pair of paddles from the side of the slab trailing cords and placed them against Nico’s bare chest. ‘Stand back,’ she declared, and the boy jerked and arched his back for a moment, then lay there suddenly breathing. Even as Ash watched he saw colour returning to his bloodless skin.
‘His signs are good,’ she said, producing something else from the side of the slab, trailing more cord. She clamped the device around the boy’s forehead, talking rapidly as she did so: ‘He’s still a blank page, though. Normally we’d have a good working image stored on a heartstone to work with. Same things as your seals before you twin them. But since we don’t have that, we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.’
She snapped her fingers to gain Ash’s attention. Placed something cool into his grasp.
It was Nico’s hand.
‘What do I do?’
‘Call for him.’
‘How?’
‘In your mind. Call for him like his life depends on it.’
Nico!
‘Think of a memory you both share. Relive it intensely.’
His mind went blank for a moment. But then he thought of autumnal leaves swirling around his ankles as he’d called out for the boy back in Q’os, waiting for his apprentice to return long after he knew that something had gone wrong.
No, you fool. Nico wasn’t even there.
Flames rose up in his vision. A great pyre burning on the floor of an arena with his apprentice staked upon the top of it, struggling and crying out in pain. The last memory they had ever shared.
Nico!
A shadow crossed before his eyes, cast from the window of the room. An Anwi guard in a black uniform was peering through the glass at them all. A moment later, someone started thumping on the door.
‘Usht!’ cursed Triqy, and pulled a white breathing mask onto her face to cover it. ‘Keep your hand on that handle whatever you do,’ she told Aléas, for Cole had left him to it and was approaching the slab.
‘It isn’t working,’ she announced with disgust, checking a glowing square of lights on the surface of the slab.
But Cole shoved her out of the way and looked down on the young man lying there breathing softly.
‘Nico?’ he croaked in amazement, and his scarred forehead wrinkled in a knot. It was as though Cole no longer heard the banging on the door. With all the time in the world the longhunter reached out to touch the boy, though he flinched back when their skins connected.
What’s this? wondered Ash in confusion.
Before he could react, the longhunter was rounding on him with eyes wild with rage, grabbing at his suit to shake him roughly. ‘What are you doing with my son, old man? What’s he doing here?’
‘Whatever you two are fighting about we haven’t the time for it,’ Aléas called out from the door. Blue sparks were flying through the metal and lighting the young Rōshun’s grim features. The red lights of the room started to flash on and off above their heads.
‘This is your apprentice?’ raged Cole. ‘All this time and you didn’t tell me?’
Ash swept the man’s clawed grip clear of him. ‘You know this youth?’
‘Know him? He’s my son, you kushing fool! Nico Calvone! What’s he doing here of all the damned places?’
His son?
In the midst of Ash’s stupefied silence, Triqy held up a hand to placate them. ‘You’re his father?’ she asked.
‘Yes damn it!’
‘Maybe you can help then. Here. You try.’ And she thrust Nico’s other hand into the longhunter’s grasp. ‘Call for him.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to understand. Just call for him!’
Outside, a guard struck the window of the room with an axe. A starry crack appeared in the glass. The guard leaned back to swing again.
‘Nico!’
‘Do it with more meaning.’
‘Son!’
‘Again. But in your mind. Put all the meaning in the world into it.’
Ash glanced across to Aléas. A guard was shouting through the glass in muted silence, glaring and jabbing his finger at the apprentice. In reply Aléas pointed at the lever he was holding – this? – this thing here? – and dangled from it with a shake of his head.
Again Cole shouted in anger. ‘Just tell me what’s going on here!’
‘I think it’s working,’ Triqy announced in a whisper. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ she said to Ash and straightened over the slab. ‘That’s all we can do, for now anyway.’
‘You found him?’
‘He found us. What impression was left of him, anyway. We’ll have to see how well it worked.’ She wiped her forehead as she looked to Ash, who stared down at the young man with his mouth still gaping open.
‘We really shouldn’t be moving him in this condition.’
Ash blinked, and forced himself to the business at hand. ‘No choice,’ he told her. ‘Cole, can you carry him?’
The longhunter stood dumbly looking down at Nico too.
‘Cole!’
He started. Gathered up the boy in his arms, crushing him to his chest while glaring at Ash and the rest of them. Now, to get out of there.
*
Dust roamed the gloomy maintenance passage behind the rear wall. Ash almost sneezed when he pulled his head back into the chamber and motioned Cole through the open panel.
‘Go left and follow it round until you can find somewhere clear to come out,’ Triqy instructed him, and then the longhunter vanished with Nico in his arms.
‘Good luck,’ she panted at Ash then stepped into the passage too, though she looked to the right.
‘You aren’t coming with us?’
‘No, I have an alibi to get to. Tell Meer I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. Tell him . . .’ she shook her head and motes of dust flew about it. ‘Tell him it was good to see him again.’
‘I will. Thank you, for everything.’
She nodded, then a moment later she was gone too.
‘What about this damned door?’ Aléas gasped, drawing Ash back to the door.
The guards were almost through the glass now, though he ignored them, and instead grasped the lever holding the door in place. ‘Go. I’ll catch up shortly.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘On three then, release together and run for the hole in the wall.’
&nb
sp; ‘You must think me an idiot.’
‘Aléas, it is no trick. On three and we both run for the wall. Now stop messing around.’
‘Fine, fine.’
‘One. Two. Three.’
They released the lever at the same instant and Ash pushed Aléas ahead of him towards the back wall. Almost at once the door slid open behind them.
Ash ducked behind one of the steel-sided trolleys occupying the room. Waited until Aléas was through the open wall panel then drew the sword on his back, feeling the heft of it in his grip.
A gunshot rang out, bouncing off the wall around the opening and forcing Aléas back inside. But the young Rōshun was armed too, and he fired back with his own pistol, toppling a guard entering the room before he swung out of sight to reload.
‘Go now!’ Ash shouted back at him, hearing the window crashing to the floor in pieces.
A pair of boots scrunched into the room, stepping across shattered glass towards his position.
Now.
With his naked blade Ash lunged up at the approaching guard, who was crouched down for cover, and speared him cleanly through the neck. Ducked down again just as another shot whipped past his head. The other guards opened up wildly and Aléas fired back again, but Ash could only huddle down as instruments and debris flew all around him and bullets spat through the metal of the trolley. He hunched lower and lower until he was sprawled on the floor, seeing the boots of more guards between sets of rubber wheels.
Shouts sounded from outside and the firing ended.
Silence fell amongst the gun smoke. Something dripped nearby. The red lights of the room still pulsed on and off. Ash checked to see if he was hit and felt a hole in the left sleeve of his suit, but no broken skin.
He hoped that Aléas had sense enough to stay back. Wondered how long Cole would need to make it back to the Vulture with Nico. Tentatively, he raised his head until he could peer through a ragged hole in the side of the trolley.
The fallen guard he had poked was gasping and clutching his bloody neck and trying to push himself back towards the broken window, where other guards had taken cover. One was trying to reach out to grab him. Beside them, a figure stepped through the open doorway wearing a fine black suit with tails.
The old Rōshun grinned.
*
‘I did not think you were the kind to get your hands dirty,’ he called out to the Archon.
Through the hole in the trolley he watched the thin man sniff something from a vial in his hand, then take a step further into the room.
‘Consider it a compliment,’ came the Archon’s smooth reply. ‘A professional courtesy, if you will.’
The Archon uttered a sound from his throat and swept his other hand through the air, causing one of the wheeled trolleys in his way to race to one side. He stepped into the space it had left, then swept his hand again and forced another trolley out of his way.
Getting up close and personal with this man was likely the worst tactic to follow here, Ash thought, running through the inventory in his head of the weapons Aléas had given him. He dug into one of the pockets on his leg for a throwing star he recalled placing there then rose to a crouch, just enough to throw it with a whip of his arm.
The disc spun at the Archon then veered past his head sharply.
‘For all I know, you could be the last living Rōshun of your order. Your people could be moments away from extinction.’
His fine shoes crunched on the shattered glass. Ash gripped the hilt of his sword and readied himself to strike out, but suddenly the trolley before him swept to the side and he was hit in the chest by a force which threw him back skidding across the tiles.
Gasping on the floor, he called out weakly, ‘Aléas?’
‘The gun’s jammed! It just jammed up on me!’
Gasping, rolling over, he snatched up his blade and gained his feet again, but another blow picked him up like a massive hand and swung him high into the wall by his legs.
Ash blacked out for an instant, and found himself on the floor bleeding from a head wound. He pushed himself through the familiar sickening grogginess of the knockout.
‘Go!’ he croaked to Aléas. ‘Make sure the others wait for me. Tell them to give me a hundred counts.’
It was all he could think of to make the lad leave this scene, to save his young skin.
It was hard to breathe, hard to see straight. Like a pitfighter, Ash used the precious moments on the floor to regain his senses.
‘I have to say,’ declared the Archon, striding towards him where he lay on his back. Beneath the white streaks of his hair the Archon’s temples were throbbing from his efforts. Sweat glistened on his face, cut trails down through his dark lips so that his chin was streaked black. ‘I fear the fictions of the Rōshun may be as inflated as any other.’
At last Ash found it in a pocket – what he was groping for with his scrabbling free hand. Pain stabbed at his side as he staggered to his feet. For a moment Ash leaned on his sword as though it was a cane, observing the Archon with a calm and unforgiving outlook.
Make him bleed.
With a hiss Ash bounded forwards, swinging his blade up too fast to follow. Still it slid past the man’s shoulder as though he knew it was coming.
The Archon swept his flat hand at Ash, and Ash ducked as a slice of air whipped across him.
Stinging pain across his left cheek. No way, it seemed, to get through with the sword. Nothing left for it then.
With all his strength Ash grasped the Archon in his embrace and felt the hoary force surging around the man’s body and then his own, surging like muscles where Ash held him, surging as Ash fumbled to place something in his grasp, clamping the man’s fingers around it.
Ash met the Archon’s fervid gaze only briefly, and then he launched himself backwards over a trolley for cover.
He had just enough time to see the Archon glancing down at the live grenade in his hand, his expression curious and amused, before the thing exploded.
Smoke and shrapnel ripped through the air. Cries rose out and then the gunfire started again, shots whipping blindly through roiling smoke. When Ash glanced up, the Archon was standing there gaping in shock at a blackened stump where his lower arm had recently hung.
The rest of him seemed entirely unscathed.
Time to get out of there.
Ash’s ears were ringing when he scrambled over the tiles and dived into the maintenance passage with the Archon’s rage roaring after him.
‘Rōshun!’
Like a gleeful rat, Ash scurried along the passage with the hood of his suit fluttering in the wind of the man’s fury, letting the shine of his sword lead the way.
Nico, he’s alive!
*
Ash, are you almost here?
It was Juke, his voice suddenly loud in Ash’s head.
On my way.
We just took some incoming fire. We’ll have to swing around and come back for you.
Understood.
Ash rounded a corner in the passage and spotted the light pouring from an open panel ahead. Behind him he could hear the footsteps of the guards pursuing him. He ran for the end of the passage, ducking his head out then back again as a bullet skipped off the floor before him.
Another quick fumble in his suit produced a smoke grenade. He pulled the fuse to let in the moist air then tossed it out into the corridor. Took a deep gulp of air then leapt out after it.
Blindly, Ash sprinted through the billows of black smoke until he could see again. Ahead lay the open maintenance door where the rain was coming through in gusts. He gripped the door frame and pulled himself through onto the maintenance gantry outside, looking about through the downpour.
No sign of Juke or the flying craft anywhere.
A guard rushed through the doorway and Ash kicked him back inside and threw the hatch shut, trying to find a locking mechanism without success. He leaned his back against it and looked down through the grilled floor of the gantry, taking in the
vast sweep of netting stretched between the legs of the Sky Bridge and over the distant streets below. A winged shape sped towards the netting, and then with a violet flash it was falling, rolling and spinning down the flexing slope with sparks trailing in its wake. In the bursts of light Ash spotted other shapes soaring through the rain. Gunfire sounded from the Sky Bridge, heavy and rapid percussions which caused another winged shape to drop from the air.
They were the birds that came with the seasonal rains. The birds that Meer had first mentioned and Triqy had explained further, giant featherless carnivores that always returned to these mountains to prey on runs of fish and the yearlings of the wild goat population. Fairly harmless by the sound of them, rarely known to attack humans save for in a few instances of confusion, yet the Anwi apparently waged a defensive war against them every year, shooting the creatures on sight whenever they came too close to the city.
Accordingly, all winged craft should now be grounded while the city defences targeted the birds, including the security craft that would normally be shooting any escape attempts out of the sky. It was the perfect cover, the perfect time, in which to make their escape back down to Guallo Town, where the Alhazii too would be seeking shelter. Chaos was their best chance now, so long as they could avoid being shot at by the Sky Bridge itself.
The door bounced behind him and Ash pushed back harder, struggling to keep it closed. His boots slipped on the wet gantry. He glanced about for any sign of the returning craft.
Juke!
No response and the door was swinging outwards against him, pushed by several guards at least. Guards with guns and stunsticks no doubt. He had run out of options here. The only way remaining was down.
Perhaps it was a form of madness that allowed him to do these things in such moments as this, though to Ash it was a simple matter of faith, of taking whatever step needed taking next and hoping for the best. His eyes and nostrils flaring, Ash launched himself over the rail and toppled through the air.