The Lesser Devil

by Christopher Ruocchio

  The priest replied in the same language, taking the woman by the shoulder and leading the crowd back towards the caves, calling out for the others to follow. Others were coming, moving past Crispin as if he wasn’t even there. He watched their faces, the set of their eyes. They did not look like people afraid, seemed rather focused on their goal. Crispin guessed they must have sheltered in the caves before, perhaps when the hurricanes blew in from the sea and shook the mountains.

  “Lord Marlowe!” Jean-Louis appeared then, toting his cape gun over one shoulder. “You’re all right?”

  “Fine!” Crispin said, pushing past two old men to reach the young adorator. “What’s going on, exactly?”

  Jean-Louis adjusted the set of his gun against his shoulder. “Two— maybe three men on skiffs. Shot up the granary. Lit one of the fields. We have people fetching water to put it out.”

  The palatine lord was aghast. “You don’t have firefighters? Water mains?”

  The peasant moved past him, doubtless seeking the priest, “We’re on a well. Where’s the Abbé?”

  “Towards the back,” Crispin said.

  High above them, another flash of violet fire split the night like a wedge, sending a glow like the flash of lighting through the stained glass windows. Even Crispin ducked, throwing his cape over his face and Jean- Louis as he knocked the other man to the ground, counting on his shield to save them. The glass hit the floor an instant later, shattered from its leaden frames by the force of the concussion that rocked the world without. It fell like a stinging rain. Women screamed and covered their children, and someone let loose a holy oath at the destruction of those lovely windows.

  Jean-Louis swore himself as he surged back to his feet, shaking bits of glass from his clothes. “Merci, seigneur,” he said, and remembering that Crispin did not speak his strange tongue, added, “Thank you.” He stood and helped Crispin to his feet.

  “You’re welcome.”

  But Jean-Louis had strode past him, was helping a young boy to stand, murmuring something Crispin could not understand. The boy seemed to understand, however, and began urging the others to their feet. “Emil! Renoir!” the peasant said, calling to two of the similarly armed young men near the rail. “Get everyone into the catacombs! All the way in! More are coming!” He slung the cape gun off of his shoulders. “I’ve had enough of these bâtards.” His knuckles were white.

  “Can you shoot them?” Crispin said, eyeing the man’s primitive weapon.

  The adorator made an offended sound and moved towards the door. Crispin followed on after him as he moved towards the door, shouldering his cape gun. Crispin drew his sword once more, but did not activate it. He was still useless. No help against enemies in the air. He wished he’d had the foresight to bring one of the soldiers’ plasma burners with him when he’d stormed down from the rectory after Laurent.

  But he was shielded. “I’ll draw their fire!” he said, crouching with Jean-Louis beneath the shadow of the statue of St. Christopher.

  “In the dark?” Jean-Louis asked. “How?”

  Crispin squeezed the trigger on the sword’s handle. Highmatter the color of moonlit cloud blossomed in the night, casting the other man and the lupine saint into knife-edged relief. “They’ll see me.” Reaching up, he undid the magnetic clasp that held his cape, letting the rich garment fall. He shoved it past Jean-Louis into the niche where the adorator had left his gun before dinner.

  Thrusting his sword into the air like a torch-bearer at the Summerfair games, Crispin swung out from the shadow of the church’s door. He was acutely aware of each footfall, for it seemed each boot heel’s tap rang in his ears louder than the bone-deep pealing of the bell. Just like the Colosso, he told himself, lying. The two places were not alike at all, unless it was in the fact that they were both a kind of stage. Crispin tried not to cower at the threat of the enemies above. He was shielded, but the threat of foes hanging in the night above was like the slow descent of a trash compactor.

  A bolt of plasma broke over him, and he threw a hand across his eyes, felt the air rippling with heat that dissipated against the shield’s energy curtain, still hot enough to burn. He hadn’t thought this through. Plasma fire put out enough ambient heat that he was still in danger. He should have kept the stupid cape.

  Before the flash-blindness faded, he heard the whine of repulsors overhead and then—only an instant later—the crack of Jean-Louis’s rifle. Something pinged in the air above—metal striking metal—and the adorator let out a whoop. Turning, Crispin saw the hiss of sparks in the air above, the blue glow of repulsors spluttering.

  He’d shot it.

  The upcountry farm boy had shot it.

  The attacker’s skiff hadn’t even been shielded.

  Another round of plasma fire struck the pavement not two yards from Crispin’s feet. He felt the flash of heat, felt it lift the cool night air in a wave that buffeted him back a step, and looking up he saw another of the skiffs squeal overhead.

  At least two, he thought. People were rushing past him, scrambling for the doors to the church. Still more huddled in the shadow of the outer gate, afraid to cross the dozen yards of open space between the churchyard’s gate and the safety promised by the wolf-headed saint.

  “Jean!” he cried out, shortening the plebeian’s name, “We need to draw them away from your people!” He pointed with his sword, indicating the church’s side yard, where the white face of a columbarium glowed in the light through St. Maximus’s shattered windows and cypress trees swayed in the wind. Jean-Louis seemed to have gotten the message, for he lurched out from the protection of the church doors and darted across the yard to crouch in the dark of the outer wall. Crispin simply ran along the path, sword held above his head, marking him out for a target.

  He did not think the rider of the first skiff was dead, and guessed he must have put his foundering aircraft down over the village. And where was the second?

  Before that thought had finished shaping itself, the cypress tree beside him exploded, violet flames cooling to orange as the plasma kindled the green wood. Splinters ricocheted across Crispin’s body and he shut his eyes as a wave of heat rushed over him. Turning, he saw the skiff drop out of the sky, and sensed a thrumming in the air as its pilot dropped his velocity to bring the thing hovering down almost to ground level. Crispin had a brief impression of the skiff’s gunmetal gray chassis, the pilot straddling it as though it were a horse or motorbike, the forward stabilizers gleaming like the edge of a knife. Then it picked up speed, flying straight towards Crispin. Jean-Louis fired, but his shot went wide, buried itself in the pale stone of his temple.

  Crispin felt the blood stick in his veins, and every fiber of him froze for an instant long as days. The skiff was massive enough that—shielded or no—its hitting him would lift him from his feet and hurl him against the stone wall at his back. It would be like being hit by a motorcar. Black Earth, it might not even be moving fast enough for the shield’s threshold to matter. Shielded or no, he was going to die.

  He was not going to die standing there.

  He was not going to die frozen like a deer in sight of the hunter. He was not going to die a coward.

  He raised his sword for a final overhand strike—and that saved his life.

  The man on the skiff did not plow straight into Crispin, as the Marlowe lord had thought. The wall of the columbarium was at Crispin’s back, and if the man had charged he would have surely crashed into it, killing himself as surely as he would have killed Crispin.

  Instead, he let the hovercraft drift at the last minute, slewed into a braking turn that would have slapped Crispin in the belly with the side of his skiff with enough force to shatter bone. But drifting exposed the broad side of the aircraft to Crispin. And to the edge of Crispin’s falling sword.

  The edge of the highmatter blade was only one molecule wide. It could cut anything, anything, except the molecular bonds between atoms themselves. Anything except highmatter and the long-chain molecule
s of adamant and nanocarbon. Steel was as good as paper. So too lightweight armor ceramics. So too flesh. And bone. Crispin’s sword fell across both of the man’s arms where they grasped the flight controls, both his legs above the knee. It passed clean through the skiff’s saddle and the undercarriage beneath it, severing forearms, thighs, leather, and steel; cutting the skiff in two and its pilot into several bloody pieces. The momentum of its turn threw the two halves of the skiff apart. The rear end shot wide of Crispin and spun out, shattering against the white marble facade behind him, destroying dozens of funerary plaques and the names of people centuries dead. The front end tumbled to the ground and missed Crispin’s right leg by inches.

  And, miracle of miracles: Crispin still stood.

  He staggered forward a bit, mind blank with numb amazement. He could see Jean-Louis’s eyes: wide and white in the dimness. The man crossed himself, kissed the golden crucifix he wore. Crispin was only dimly aware that the pilot he’d cut to ribbons was dead. He did not feel the least bit sorry.

  He spat on the corpse.

  “Mon Dieu, Seigneur Marlowe!” Jean-Louis exclaimed, and babbled something else in French. “How did you do that? That was incredible! Très magnifique!” He stood, leaning a moment on his gun, as if he had run a mile.

  Crispin’s hand was still white-knuckled on the grip of his sword. I don’t know, he wanted to say. It had been an accident, in truth. A happy accident. Reflex and chance conspiring to save his life. Never mind. That the reflex was something he had trained for, something he had struggled and studied and practiced for thousands of hours with old Sir Felix Martyn. If the pilot hadn’t turned like that …

  “I should be dead,” someone said, and dimly he realized it was his own voice speaking. “I should be dead.”

  The plebeian put a hand on Crispin’s shoulder, “God loves you, my friend.”

  So stunned was he still that Crispin did not protest either the mention of Jean-Louis’s alien god or his familiarity. Crispin only nodded weakly. Struck mute. Some small piece of him was dimly aware that the whole spectacle had been visible from the rectory on the mountain above, and looking up raised his sword in salute.

  The same voice—his voice—asked, “Where did the other one go? Did you see?”

  As if on cue, a shot rang out, cracking the stone over Crispin’s shoulder. He moved automatically, placing his shielded body in front of Jean-Louis’s unshielded one. “Get back!” Crispin shouted, “Take cover!”

  “There he is!” Jean-Louis said, pointing over Crispin’s shoulder.

  “I said take cover, man!” But Crispin had seen him. The assassin was perched on the outer wall of the churchyard, right where it butted up against a two-story stone house. He must have clambered over from the street without. Despite the darkness, his metallic gray armor gleamed almost with a light of its own, and his visor was an impenetrable curve of mirrored glass, faceless and implacable in the firelight.

  Somehow Jean-Louis managed to get off a shot while still ducking behind Crispin. The man didn’t flinch, and Crispin thought he saw the momentary fractal glimmer of shield deflection.

  Whatever shock and fog had come at his survival was ebbing, and Crispin shoved the peasant back. “He’s shielded! You stay down! Cover me!” And then Crispin was gone, hurrying across the flagstones towards the far wall, past the door to the church and the snarling statue of St. Christopher. He cast his eyes around for some way up onto the wall, but the yard here was flat, just a space of mossy statues and green metal benches.

  But the wall was not so high that Crispin’s sword couldn’t reach. He swung high, the sword carving a deep gash clean through the field stone wall. The assassin leaped aside, shot at Crispin. His shield took the bullet, but the muzzle flash blinded him a moment, and unseeing he lashed out again, striking at the stone wall. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a wedge-shaped section of the stone crumble and fall away. But the assassin had leaped aside and fired again—uselessly—at Crispin. The bullets shattered against his shield. The energy field flickered in the light. Snarling, Crispin lashed out once more with his sword.

  This time he struck true, and the shining blade caught the man in the ankle, cleanly severing armor and bone. The man let out a cry and toppled forwards, dropping his gun as he fell. Crispin rolled on top of him and—straddling him—held his sword against the man’s throat.

  “Yield!” Crispin was practically screaming, despite the mere inches that kept them apart. Worried he might kill the man before he could speak, Crispin deactivated his sword’s blade. “Who are you working for?” He shook the man. “Who?” When the man didn’t answer at once, Crispin tightened his grip on the man’s throat with his free hand. He could feel the reactive polymers in the man’s suit stiffening to protect his delicate neck.

  “Don’t kill him, Marlowe!” Jean-Louis had appeared from nowhere and was standing above them, his cape gun trained on the wounded man.

  Keeping his sword against the assassin’s chin, Crispin reached down and switched off the man’s shield projector. “One wrong move and my friend will put a shot through your visor. Clear?” The man didn’t move. Crispin hammered the man’s helmet with the pommel of his sword. The cheap glass cracked. “I asked: Are we clear?”

  “Yes.” The man grunted in heavily accented Standard.

  “Good,” Crispin said, pressing the muzzle of his sword against the side of the man’s head. “Now who are you?”

  “Ves …” he winced, “Veselko Medved.”

  “Medved?” Crispin repeated the name, “What is that? Durantine?” He glanced up at Jean-Louis, as if the French adorator would have any idea what the names of offworlders might sounds like. “You’re a mercenary?” He glanced down at the man’s armor, hoping to find some clearer answer inscribed on the bright metal, but there was nothing save the emblem of an iron crown etched on the pauldron that plated the left shoulder.

  “Who hired you?” Jean-Louis asked, taking the question from

  Crispin. “Speak, man!”

  When Medved didn’t speak at once, Crispin thumped his face plate with the hilt of his sword again. More gently this time. “You know who I am?”

  “The Devil of Meidua,” the assassin answered.

  “Answer my questions and I’ll make sure your foot is reattached.”

  “Only to rot in your dungeons?” the man said. “No.”

  The tree on the far side of the yard was still burning, and by its light and the light spilling out of St. Maximus, Crispin thought he almost see the man’s face through the reflective visor. His eyes were narrow. Defiant. Cold. “I will kill you if you don’t tell me what I want to know,” Crispin said. The man made no answer. “Fine.” The young Devil of Meidua looked up at Jean-Louis a moment, then added, “I’ll let you walk out of here on one foot—if you can. Answer me and I’ll let you go. Now.” And Crispin took his sword away from the man’s head, though he did not dismount him. “Who are you?”

  “It won’t do you any good,” the man said. His words didn’t quite track with what Crispin had just said, and it took the lordling a moment to refocus himself. “Sparing me. The rest of us are coming. You won’t get away. Not you or that sweet sister of yours.”

  Mention of Sabine sent a flash of red crackling behind Crispin’s eyes, and he struck the man again in the face before shouting, “Who hired you? Was it Lady Kephalos?”

  The silence that greeted these words was of a different quality. More … pregnant.

  “Lady who?” Medved said. “We were hired by a woman called Orin-Natali back on Temeria.”

  “What?” Crispin’s mind had gone blank. “Orin? Did you say Orin?”

  It wasn’t possible. House Orin was extinct. His father had killed every last one of them. Every last one. The man beneath him seemed to know this, for he laughed. “Missed one,” he said, and Crispin could hear the way he grinned. He found he could hardly see anymore. Could hardly think. It couldn’t be true.

  “House Orin is dead.” “Not qui
te.”

  Crispin seized the man Medved by the throat again and slammed his head back against the earth. “Liar!” he shouted, and squeezed the trigger on his sword. The blade flashed blue-white in the gloom, piecing the metal helmet and the head within. The blade vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and blood ran hot and freely through the opening he had made and spread on the dull flagstones beneath the eyes of the watchful saints.

  “You killed him,” Jean-Louis said, voice very small. He crossed himself.

  “Yes,” Crispin said, and glared at the Frenchman. “And you watched me.”

  Chapter 11

  The Catacombs of St. Maximus

  The sun was rising by the time the last of the fires had been put out, and Crispin was sitting on one of the metal benches that lined the churchyard, not far from the spot where he’d killed the assassin. Someone had come with a pail to wash the blood away, but even though it was gone Crispin could still see it there. He wasn’t sure why it should bother him so much as it did, just as he wasn’t sure why the deaths of his men in the shuttle crash had bothered him so. He had seen dead men before, had killed before.

  You’re lucky because the thing that haunts you only happened to you, Father Laurent had said. You could be haunted by something you did.

  Well, he had done something now.

  “Are you all right?” He looked up in time to see Sabine crossing the yard towards him, shield flickering about her, Kyra in tow. She stopped three paces from where he sat. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’m bloody,” he corrected. “The blood’s not mine.” Neither brother nor sister spoke for a moment. Crispin could feel her eyes on him, but he would not look up again. He was afraid—he realized—of what he might see in violet eyes so like his own. Disgust? He guessed. Or approval? He wasn’t sure which would be worse. At last he found his words, and asked, “You … saw what happened?”

  Sabine took a step closer, and her shadow fell across him, cast by the cold sun of early morning. “You got lucky with the skiff.”