by Mike Wild
The arrow shot high above the ring, tearing through canvas and anchoring itself, and Slowhand rose on the whizzline attached to it. He leapt from it into the web of rope rigging that filled the hemisphere, that part of the Big Top where the aerialists performed, and sat like a spider in its nest. His attackers now far beneath him, Slowhand saw there were nine of them left, ten with the girl. She was already angrily despatching her men towards various ladders and poles that accessed the upper tent, but Slowhand was ready for them, clambering swiftly along the ropes to the centre of the hemisphere, where lay the riser ring through which most of the Big Top’s rigging was tied off. The band that encircled the king pole – the central support of the whole tent – was a confusing snake’s nest of thick and intertwining guy lines but, as everyone mucked in together on the road, he was no stranger to them and knew precisely which to loosen or untie to create the utmost havoc beneath him.
His new friends were about to discover just how dangerous a place a Big Top could be.
Two ropes brought down the gantry from which handlers controlled the trapeze lunge ropes, and another one of the wheels from which hung the cloud swings, the ropes on which support performers swung out over the audience to hold their attention while the next aerialist ‘trick’ was readied. Both structures first collapsed sideways, dropping to forty five degree angles as their guy lines whizzed through their pullies, then, as they whipped free, both fell to the big top’s floor, those Filth who were using them as a means to reach him falling with them, screaming. Slowhand’s satisfaction on hearing the crunching impacts of his attackers’ bodies was, however, short-lived, as three crossbow bolts thudded into the king pole next to his head, and he immediately dropped down through the rope spiderweb, grabbing onto one of its strands and swinging rapidly, hand-to-hand, down it towards its connecting quarter pole.
The quarter pole – and the seven others that ringed the arena – were the medium supports of the Big Top, positioned where they were to prevent sagging, and each rose to a point where the Big Top’s triangular roof flaps were lashed together, separable in case of an emergency. This, Slowhand reckoned, qualified as an emergency and, dangling by one hand, he quickly undid the lashings on one side, then rapidly shimmied, crossbow bolts thudding about him, along the skirt of the tent to the other. He undid the lashings there, too, and the entire section of canvas roofing flopped inwards, dropping down like an exhausted dog’s tongue. From the expressions on the faces of the Filth it headed towards, climbing the tower to the high-wire, it was clear they thought it an inconsequential threat, but they had seriously underestimated the weight of such a section of canvassing – wet or not – and were slapped from their positions with another bone-crunching thud and appropriate screams as the flap hit them, almost overbalancing the tower itself.
Slowhand needed to gain height once more, and he flipped himself from the guy rope into the air, grabbing onto the lip of the flap adjacent to the one he had dropped, then heaving himself onto the roof of the Big Top. Dressed as he was, he hissed against the cold and hammering rain, and his bare soles slithered frustratingly on the buoyant canvas as he pounded determinedly up, but eventually he reached the Big Top’s cupola, and, through the gap in the roofing, out of which projected the king pole, flipped himself back inside once more.
The last of the Filth – the girl aside – had now managed to reach the spiderweb of guy lines some twenty feet below him and, spotting his return, were aiming crossbows, but Slowhand had already worked out what he needed to do. He dropped from the cupola onto one of the guy ropes that made up the spiderweb, the impact of his landing sending a tremor throughout the lines, and the Filth staggered, one of them involuntarily loosing a bolt he’d primed into the chest of a comrade-in-arms on the line next to him. The skewered Filth fell, clutching the line desperately for a moment before dropping away, and the resultant second tremor gave Slowhand all the time he needed to work his way across the web and boot his unsteady opponents from their perch.
Far below, the girl side-stepped the falling bodies as they exploded beside her, and raised her gaze slowly upwards. Eyes locking with Slowhand’s, she smiled and then made her way to the ladders that would eventually bring her to him. Slowhand’s jaw tensed, knowing his final opponent was in a different class entirely to the rest, and his eyes darted around the hemisphere, working out the moves he would need to counter those she would doubtless bring. Unarmed, dressed in nothing but his thong, the possibilities seemed limited, but then, almost unwillingly, he remembered a phrase that had many times been used by Kali Hooper.
Make it up as you go along.
Slowhand calculated the girl’s route and made his way to one of the surviving lunge gantries, drawing in a trapeze on a guide rope. As he’d guessed, she was already doing the same, stepping onto the horizontal swing, intending to use it to reach him. She didn’t get the chance, Slowhand bringing the fight to her by kicking off at the same time she did.
The two of them clashed in the heart of the hemisphere but, neither practiced on the acrobatics tool, did so clumsily, and the wind knocked from the pair of them, they were sent spinning wildly in opposite directions. Slowhand struggled to bring the trapeze under control, the Big Top and, more threateningly, the girl looming in his vision in a series of skewed, disorientating and vertiginous flashes, and then the two of them impacted again with a thud and an explosion of air and spittle. The collision was slower this time, accidental, but that didn’t stop the girl taking a swing at him with one of her swords, and Slowhand only just escaped decapitation by dropping from his standing position to grab the trapeze bar with his hands.
He swung away from the girl, knifing his legs to gain momentum to cross the hemisphere, and gained a moment of precarious rest on the edge of the trapeze platform from which his opponent had kicked off. Twisting, he saw that she was doing the same on his, using the time to position herself with her lower legs wrapped about the trapeze ropes, freeing both hands for her swords, and then he was swinging once more, as she was swinging towards him.
Heading inexorably towards her, Slowhand had nothing with which to block the coming blades but the trapeze itself, and with a grunt he flipped himself back into a standing position. As the girl rushed towards him, he violently jerked his body sideways and downwards so that the hand rail of the trapeze rose up to parry the blows. Swords met wood, one deflected harmlessly but the other cleaving the trapeze in two, and the archer immediately grabbed the guy line of its left half, swinging out with it as it broke from the right.
The manoeuvre caught the girl by surprise, and Slowhand already had another one coming as, with a further twist of his body, he swung his now singular support around in a sweeping circle, heading directly back towards her. The girl gasped as Slowhand’s feet smashed into her side and her trapeze was again sent spinning, this time so violently that its guy lines wrapped themselves about each other like plaiting hair. As she struggled to bring it under control, Slowhand swung in again, wrapping his legs about her entangled form and twisting an arm so that she released one of her swords into his grip. The girl roared in fury and swung at him with her other weapon, but Slowhand had already released his legs and was swinging away. It was only after a second that he realised she had nevertheless cut cleanly through his thong, and he was now completely naked. Once upon a time he might have reflected that the combination of nakedness, girl in black leather and lots of ropes would have held much promise but what had happened since – who was he kidding? What had happened today – quashed any such thoughts. Make no mistake, this girl might have been hired to capture him but this was rapidly turning into a battle of life and death.
But here was not the place to fight it. If he was going to take the girl on on even terms, now that he had one of her swords, he needed space, and needed it quickly. The girl already freeing herself from her entrapment, Slowhand swung away, flinging himself from the trapeze rope onto one of the surviving cloud swings, and from there shimmying up the rope to the wheel
that suspended it. From there, another couple of leaps took him back to the section of roofing he had released, and then back onto the exposed upper surface of the Big Top.
The girl was right behind him, and Slowhand backed up as she pulled herself up onto the outer canvas. For a second the two of them stood there bent and gasping in the hammering rain, weapons poised, and then the girl came at him, yelling like something possessed. Slowhand did his best to defend himself under her furious barrage of blows, blocking and feinting, but he was being constantly forced back and barely managed one thrust himself, and it didn’t take him long to realise that, despite the weapon, they were not on even terms at all. The girl was good. Very good.
She swung again, and Slowhand jack-knifed at the waist, avoiding her blade. The move threw his balance and he fell onto his back, slithering into one of the valleys of the undulating canvas, and cold water rushed to pool about him in the depression he had made. The girl launched herself at him, blade destined for his throat, but a moment before she struck Slowhand raised his legs, caught her, and sent her tumbling over him. He scrabbled around as she scrambled up, and the two of them circled each other, struggling to regain their footing.
“Who are you?” Slowhand gasped.
“You asked me that.”
“No. I mean who are you, really?”
“I’d have thought you’d have known that. After all, we don’t look that different, he and I. And after what you did, I’d have thought his face would have been etched in your mind forever.”
“Who?” Slowhand asked, confused, but then her brow, her nose, her mouth started to transform into another face, one that, as she’d said, didn’t look that different at all. He was suddenly back on the battlefield outside Andon during the Great War – the Killing Ground – lining up his shot to take out the general of the enemy forces as his brothers-in-arms breathed expectantly, desperately about him.
“My gods,” he said, “you’re John Garrison’s daughter.”
“John Garrison’s daughter,” she replied, her face hardening. “And Ben Garrison’s sister.”
The boy, Slowhand thought. He had never told anyone, not Shay, not Hooper, about the boy. The reason why he had laid down Suresight and left the military after the events of that battle. Pits of Kerberos, what the hells had he been doing there, on that worst of days? A child, no more than eight years of age. No one had ever quite been able to work it out but later, when casualties had been identified and someone had told him who it was that had died, speculation was that he had been running to help his father in the face of defeat, help him in the way only an eight year old boy would have thought he could.
And he, Slowhand, had killed him. Because the fact was there had never been a perfect shot that day. But there had been a shot. A shot through the heart of a figure who had looked bigger than he was, clad in the battered helmet and chain of a dead soldier. A shot that had punctured his body and continued on to impact with Garrison’s forehead. A shot that, in a spray of arterial blood, had killed the child instantly.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Beth.”
“Beth, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You took the shot.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You murdered my family that day. All I had.”
“Yeah? Well, you just murdered mine.”
Garrison’s daughter laughed. “You think that makes us even?”
Slowhand studied her eyes. It was clear the girl had only used the Final Faith’s resources to help track him down, and it was equally clear that there was going to be no reasoning with her. As much as he’d like otherwise, there was no way Beth was ever going to understand or accept his remorse, and there was no way that, because of what she’d done to Shay, he was just going to lie down and die. The Killing Ground, it seemed, was never going to let him rest.
“No. But it means one of us has to die here.”
“Yes, it does.”
Both paused as, through the opening in the canvas from which they had emerged, three Eyes of the Lord appeared, hovering.
“So what about your contract?” Slowhand said, indicating them.
“Fark it.”
Beth roared and flung herself at him again, sword cleaving the air. Slowhand blocked and his blade locked with hers, and for a second they strained against each other, but then, with a deft flick from her wrist, the archer found himself disarmed, his weapon flipping away to land, tip down and quivering, piercing the canvas some feet away. He leapt for it but Beth was there before him, throwing herself forward to skid on her stomach along the wet surface, snatching it back into her grip as she went. She stood, possessing both swords once more, and, grinning manically, sliced the air in a complex pattern before her. All Slowhand could do as she came again was retreat, sometimes tumbling, sometimes skidding and sometimes somersaulting, until the two of them had completed a full circuit of the roof of the Big Top.
Momentarily, he found himself teetering on its edge, wondering if he would survive a slide down its outer surface, but the cages and calliopes were far below, and without clothing or padding of any sort – unless, he reflected bitterly, you counted his slight beer gut – it was unlikely he’d emerge unbroken. He finally had to admit to himself that, despite his challenge, he’d been bested, and his best chance of survival was to return from whence he’d come.
Slowhand began to scramble back up the sloping canvas, to the cupola, intending to flip himself back inside the Big Top. He was aware with every step that Beth was right behind him, swords slashing, but while he half expected to feel one or the other or both of them slicing into his flesh, he didn’t at all expect to hear the tearing of canvas beneath him. He span, saw that the girl had clearly changed tactics, and the multiple rents in the canvas that she had sliced with her swords were lengthening towards him, their pace exacerbated by his own weight.
A gap appeared beneath him and he plummeted. Desperate grabs at the rigging in the hemisphere failed, and there was nothing between him and the floor of the circus ring far below.
Slowhand hit hard and at an awkward angle, having twisted himself to avoid being impaled on rigging beams, the wreckage of his own making, which projected up on his either side. Landing on these might have been more merciful. He roared as his bad arm snapped under him, emitting cracks as loud as gunfire he heard again and again, reverberating in his other bones. His leg, almost rigid as it impacted, thrust its bone up into his pelvis, creating further waves of agony as the pelvis shattered and the sheared bones of his leg punched out through the flesh of his upper thigh. He felt his ribs snap, puncturing his insides so that he felt as if he’d been flooded with hot soup, and as the shockwaves from the impact travelled up his spine, he felt vertebrae mash together until something sharp and pointed rammed up into the base of his skull, filling him with a dizzying disorientation that made his consciousness swoop in and out of a black pit.
He barely heard his own loud, long groan as his body at last settled into a shattered heap.
From somewhere, however, he retained enough awareness to realise that though the fall hadn’t killed him, he had far from escaped death. He forced himself to turn over, tears flowing involuntarily with the effort and pain it brought, and through pulsing waves of shadow stared upwards and saw the wavering shape of Beth descending on a guy rope. She would take a few seconds to reach him and he knew he had to get away. All he could do, however, was roll sideways, the pain causing him, despite himself, to mewl like a baby, and find a hiding place under the crumpled sheets of canvas he had earlier released and which had now fallen completely to the ground. It offered little to no protection – would only prolong the inevitable by a matter of moments – but still he was possessed by the urge to swathe himself in the darkness, like a wounded animal returning to the depths of a cave.
His breath was loud beneath it, but in the darkness he shuffled himself further and further in. But then, when he could move no further, he simply lay ther
e, his heart pounding.
An eternity seemed to pass but he could sense his opponent drawing closer. Then, as the canvas tightened about him, he knew Beth was standing right over him, trapping him.
What would it be? Slowhand thought. A swift blade thrust through the cloth. Or would she simply wait there as he suffocated beneath a shroud of his own making?
All Slowhand could see in the darkness was Shay’s face. For a second it transformed itself into that of Kali Hooper, but then, as quickly as she had appeared, Hooper was gone and Shay was back again, smiling her unjudgemental, caring smile. He chuckled softly. Too late, it seemed, he’d found where he belonged. With whom he belonged. Too damned late for both of them.
Slowhand blinked as the canvas was torn from him and Beth loomed over his broken body. Surrounded by the hovering spheres of the Eyes of the Lord, she seemed like the centre of some dark universe. But then something else appeared in the universe, a hazy, blurred shape that trundled into existence behind her, and he was dimly aware of her turning in shock, gasping a name that he surely misheard. He hadn’t imagined that Beth would be afraid of anything, but she was afraid of the owner of that name.
“You are disobeying orders child,” a voice said. It was a strange voice, breathless and high. “The Faith want him alive.”
“I... I’m sorry, sir,” Beth responded. “But this man is a murderer.”
“No. He’s a soldier. A mindless, regimented drone.”
No, Slowhand wanted to respond. That’s not right. But the sudden sound of a larynx being crushed silenced him. It wasn’t his own. He tried to focus, work out what was going on, then saw. Beth was a foot above the ground, legs kicking, hands struggling to free herself of an invisible grip.
“You can’t do this,” she gasped.
“Why is that?”
“Because we’re on the same side!”
“I think not.”