In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  Duncan’s mind raced. If Circae was behind the attack, then she might very well want to seize custody of Cassandra. If another enemy was behind the assault, then the house’s heir would be at the very top of the list of high-level targets to assassinate. Either way, they were in deep trouble. ‘Do you keep any weapons here?’

  ‘I have the blueprints for a few,’ said Doctor Horvak. ‘But they’re not of a scale to prototype inside my laboratory; and if we were to use them, we wouldn’t have much of a castle left to take refuge in.’

  ‘Lend me your back, lad,’ said Paetro, picking up one end of the heavy testing bench, still covered in plates and half-eaten food. Duncan took the other side, lifted, and they dragged it towards the entrance. At least the door was constructed of heavy oak plated with steel. Locked and with the makeshift barricade behind it, they had bought themselves a little time. But time for what?

  ‘My mother…’ moaned Cassandra.

  ‘There are dozens of guards at the gathering,’ said Duncan, trying to comfort her. ‘Well armed and ready for trouble.’

  ‘Our best soldiers,’ added Paetro. ‘Picked more than a few of them myself. They’ll stand, they’ll stand.’ It sounded to Duncan as though he was trying to convince himself.

  ‘What if the sound we heard was a bomb exploding in the meeting hall?’ fretted Cassandra.

  Duncan’s heart went out to her. She had already lost her father to the imperium’s internecine feuding. So young, she didn’t deserve any of this. Do you? Do any of us here? He remembered how inconsolable he had been after watching his mother buried in Northhaven. Months of terrible darkness, hours the same as weeks. All happiness drained from his life, and Willow’s, too. What if that explosion had been the sound of Helrena being murdered? Would Cassandra be expected to assume the suicidally dangerous mantle of head of household? How long would the poor girl last in that cursed role? Duncan vowed he would help Cassandra survive, however difficult the task might be.

  ‘Don’t focus on what you can’t do anything about,’ barked Paetro at the young noblewoman. ‘Your pistol, check it, check the clip. What if I’ve passed it to you empty? Remember your training. You too, lad, search the science centre with the others – scalpels, acid, anything that you can poke, burn or pierce with, my braves.’

  One of the assistants looked up, distracted by Paetro’s orders. He was standing bent by the greenhouse corridor door. Duncan could hear an odd whipping noise beyond. ‘There’s something—’ The man’s words ended with the thud of bullets removing the top part of his skull. His body tumbled in a blast of shattered glass; the plant lab’s door’s remains scattered as blood-spattered shards across the stone floor. The shots sounded wrong to Duncan, deadened, spitting too silently to have come from any firearm.

  Paetro was by the side of the wall in a second, crouching low and firing down the plant lab corridor. ‘They’re sliding down the battlements on rappel lines!’ The bodyguard ducked back as more silenced weapons rattled down the passage, bullets cracking against their room’s far wall. Paetro’s pistol answered, sounding as a gun should, its barrel bucking after each thunderous eruption. Duncan sprinted to Cassandra, taking cover behind one of the doctor’s experiments. She was saving her ammunition for when the attackers entered the laboratory. Yair Horvak’s remaining assistant wrestled the doctor behind the furthest bench, trying to keep him safe.

  Paetro loosed off another shot. ‘Be hanged! Young Highness, it’s not commandos down there. They’re murdisto!’

  Duncan desperately cast his eyes around for a weapon. Long shards of glass from shattered chemical vials lay scattered across the floor, but they had fallen under the chattering volley of fire aimed into the chamber. Attempting to stab men armed with automatic rifles wasn’t going to keep Cassandra safe for long. Duncan pulled the girl lower as a ricochet whistled across their bench’s work surface. ‘We’ll be fine.’ And for my next lie…

  ‘It’s assassins we face,’ said Cassandra, her voice quavering as she tried to hold it steady. ‘Not soldiers. The murdisto are specialists; their tongues removed so they cannot betray their employers.’

  ‘Remember what I told you,’ Paetro yelled back, aiming another shot in their attackers’ direction. ‘How they fight – their techniques and weaponry.’

  ‘If they’ve come to take me alive,’ whispered Cassandra, grabbing Duncan’s sleeve, ‘they will enter with ceramic daggers and bullet-bucklers, high-power magnetic shields strapped to their limbs that can repel firearm projectiles. It is a fighting style they are renowned for.’

  Duncan reached up to the bench’s surface and found the tongs the doctor had used to push around his freezing magnets. He leant out with the tongs and located the longest shard of glass lying in the swelling chemical puddle on the floor. Bullets sprayed around, missing the tool and his hand. Duncan scraped the glass towards him. He had it. He tore off a strip of his tunic and tied a makeshift hilt around the crystal blade: now he could grip it without slicing his hand to pieces. ‘Their shields won’t be able to repel glass.’

  ‘They are very skilled at knife fighting,’ whispered Cassandra. ‘Highly expert. Don’t let yourself be killed for me, Duncan of Weyland. This is my fate; it doesn’t have to be yours. Please try and save yourself and the doctor.’

  Duncan leant closer to the young girl, blue sparks arcing over his head, damaged cables quivering dislodged on the experiment bench they sheltered behind. ‘I’ll let you into a little secret, I haven’t got a whole lot else to live for besides you. So when those hired killers come charging in here, I reckon I’ll give Paetro a hand, if it’s all the same to you.’

  Cassandra pulled back the triangular slide on the rear of her pistol. ‘Let us make a good end of it, then.’

  A voice sounded down the corridor from the shattered plant station, confident and aristocratic. ‘Lay down your arms, and we won’t kill you!’

  ‘You can talk? Aye, you must be these dogs’ owner, then. I’ll tell you that I was in the legion,’ called Paetro. ‘So I’ve seen before how well your friends back there “don’t kill people” who surrender to them. It must be all their country’s high mountains, that thin air making them forgetful! Besides, I developed a taste for hunting murdisto clans down, so why don’t you release your hounds and we’ll do this the traditional way?’

  ‘Maybe we should do as they say,’ said Cassandra. ‘They might wish to ransom me.’

  ‘It’s not for us to trust the good intentions of vicious scum like this, lass,’ said Paetro. ‘Just remember your training. Come on you bastards, are you trying to bore us to death in here?’

  ‘Your house is finished,’ called the voice down the corridor, furious. ‘Join it!’

  An eerie whining began at the far end of the corridor, growing louder with each second. Paetro slapped a fresh clip in his pistol.

  ‘They’re charging their shields,’ said Cassandra. ‘They’ll have two minutes of protection.’

  Duncan had the feeling it was going to be the longest two minutes of his life. Probably the last, too. Then that terrible whining built to a crescendo advancing towards them. Paetro bent around the wall, emptying his magazine down the passage. Each shot was met by an electrical howl and the sound of bullets ricocheting around the corridor, before the last remnants of their inner door exploded as a dozen assassins surged into the laboratory. The attackers wore armour formed from dark brown leather scales, wooden face masks carved as leering goblins, arms and legs weighted by circular domed metal shields strapped to each limb. No bigger than plates, the bucklers crawled with blue electrical energy, each shield singing as the assassins charged forward, deflecting shot after shot, Cassandra’s pistol laid across the table, each volley expertly aimed. It was as though the assassins could catch bullets and pluck them from the very air. Paetro’s weapon fell silent, his clip exhausted, and the bodyguard drew his knife, arms a blur as he traded blows with the nearest assassin. Duncan saw a leg swing out and catch Paetro in the gut, sending him slam
ming back into the wall, and then the attackers were all over Duncan and the young princess, her ammunition exhausted too. Without a weapon, Cassandra jabbed and kicked, every lethal move and technique he had watched drilled into her during the training sessions. Duncan lunged for the nearest assassin with his shard of glass, aiming for the man’s neck. But the killer snaked to the side, leaving Duncan reaching for air, a boot kicking his feet out from under him and sending him stumbling to the ground. Cassandra had noted his predicament, slapping back the man attacking her and twisting her body around in the air to land interposed between Duncan and the other raider. Who is protecting who here? Both assassins flicked their daggers at Cassandra, the young girl darting back, turning their hands with her fingers, nearly overwhelmed by the killers’ speed and skill.

  ‘Table,’ yelled Duncan, reaching for a torn cable under the bench. Cassandra rolled over the work bench, and as she touched its surface Duncan jabbed the sparking wires into the chemical lake across the floor. Energy danced across the wet flagstones, both assassins quivering and shaking before the blast of electricity sent them flying back into the wall. Cassandra rolled off the bench behind him, already engaging the men attacking Paetro. A scream sounded at the back of the room, drawing Duncan’s attention. Three assassins – and one of them had stabbed the last laboratory assistant in the throat, the other two pushing the struggling Doctor Horvak onto a table and binding his arms behind his back with black plastic cables. They could have rushed Duncan and the young noblewoman from behind, killed both of them, but instead… Duncan suddenly realised who the real target of this raid was. They want the doctor alive. The murdisto who had just dispatched Horvak’s assistant pulled the bloody dagger out of the scientist’s throat and turned back towards Duncan, noted the rubber cable hanging from Duncan’s hand, its sparking tip pointed in the killer’s direction, and laughed. Then the assassin contemptuously tapped his blade against the shield on his arm before charging at Duncan.

  Out in the almost endless grasslands the sloped steel prows of the grand duke’s tanks were visible. Dipping up and down over the rolling prairie slopes, cannons saluting the sky before they plunged down again. Seeing them, Jacob felt real apprehension. These vehicles were far bigger than the tiny destroyed tank he had once come across rusting away to nothing – more like galleons on tracks. Multiple gun turrets and ramparts up top holding infantry companies. Razored spikes and sharp ploughs for prows, their sides dotted with rifle ports. Three sets of tracks rumbling relentlessly on each tank’s side. A dozen exhausts sloped out of their rear, dirty black smoke pouring out as the armoured squadrons flattened grass and the few stands of trees that stood in their way. A small fortune in metal, and perfectly designed for warfare on the plains. And what do we have to face them? Blood and bones.

  Zanasi stood by Jacob’s side, the gad war leader’s armour strapped over his long limbs, withered and worn leather like dark wrinkled walnut shells. Dozens of warriors stood behind Zanasi, watching silently and grimly, Sariel among their number. The bard rubbed his snowy beard and stood on his heels to see over the dry chest-high grass. Animals poured past their position; antelopes fleeing the strange machines in terror, clouds of egrets rising into the sky. Sariel groaned. His feelings towards what came at them today sounded a lot like Jacob’s.

  ‘They are advancing as you believed they would,’ said Zanasi. ‘The middle force forward, while their left and right flank slows and widens their sweep. Is this one of the things you saw during your divination?’

  ‘No,’ said Jacob. ‘That manoeuvre is called the trident. Cavalrymen use it to attack a dispersed infantry formation holding firm against horsemen.’

  ‘Cavalry enjoy the charge,’ said Zanasi.

  Jacob smiled, but only to silence the nervous drumbeat of his heart. ‘Don’t they just. They’re fools for the rush.’

  An artillery bombardment whistled overhead, shells exploding in the village behind Jacob. Gouts of dirt and broken timber rose into the air. But little broken flesh. Anyone not in the fight had departed hours before. That included Sheplar, of limited use as an extra gun without his Rodalian flying wing, like the pacifist-natured gask, Khow. Jacob regretted that his attempts to salvage aircraft parts from the carrier wrecks and provide the mountain aviator with a small craft had failed. They really could have done with a scout in the air right about now. Sariel had been made to stay, of course, despite every stream of protest and exertion of his imagination to counter the rationale for his presence. It would hardly do for the tribes’ totem to be seen fleeing the field before the battle had even started. At least Hangel didn’t possess the shells or bombards to launch a proper rolling barrage to cover their tanks’ advance. Thank heavens for small mercies.

  Gaddish tribes divided their forces into companies of a hundred warriors apiece, rather appropriately called spears. Hangel’s tanks were now close enough to the first spears for the locals to launch their counterattack; rising from the grass where they hid. A wall of oval shields woven from river rushes rippled towards the tanks, with a rolling crack – like snapping wood – as Hangel’s rifles opened fire from gun ports, massive explosions turning the ground into blackened geysers of dirt and flame when the tanks’ big guns joined in. A gad shield was designed to catch and trap a spearhead. Against rifle volleys they splintered hopelessly, warriors clutching shield fragments as they were flung back, a bloody felling out on the plains. A second spear joined the attack, then a third and a fourth, attempting to overwhelm the armoured column’s guns. Soon, dozens of spears were rushing in from every direction. Crossbow-sized bolts rained down from the gads’ spear-bows, falling short of the vehicles in most cases. Where they hit, they clunked uselessly off the thick metal tank armour. Beside Hangel’s vehicles, the grand duke’s infantrymen knelt in two ranks, pouring massed volley fire into the attackers’ ranks. Their biggest problem was reloading fast enough to slow the charging waves of gads. Seeking to keep their fire from faltering in a close quarters’ melee, the troops retreated up ladders along the vehicles’ sides, taking position on the mobile fortresses’ ramparts. Every time the tribes’ warriors came within footsteps of the tanks, they fell back clutching their bodies as a storm of bullets cut them apart, more soldiers emerging from gantries along the tracked fighting machines’ topsides. Tank crews hurled grenades down into the grass, blasting apart any natives who had survived the furious, doomed charge, other tank-men pulling rifles to their shoulders and working the levers as fast as possible, pumping shells into the tribal warriors.

  ‘Their steel beasts are every bit as effective as you said they would be,’ growled Zanasi.

  ‘Pull your spears back,’ advised Jacob. ‘You’re getting slaughtered out there.’

  ‘I have commanded many armies in my time,’ said Sariel, ‘but there was only one force that fought in a cause as hopeless as this. The great siege at the Walls of Rodach. Just a hundred of us against the endless forces of the Emperor Sayarsa, that brainsickly ill-breeding apple-john. We blocked the advance of so many troops we believed an earthquake was erupting under our feet – yet it was only their legions’ boots.’

  ‘Call our brothers back!’ ordered Zanasi. One of his warriors lit the taper underneath a bolt wrapped in rags, and then he pointed his spear-bow at the sun. He fired his projectile high into the clear, cloudless sky, and a red trail of smoke scratched the air above them. Cheering could be heard from the grand duke’s soldiers as hundreds of gads turned and ran; long loping strides with the crackle of rifle fire against their backs, cutting warriors down as they fled. Out on the plain, the two exterior ‘spikes’ of the trident pulled in, tank columns aiming to roll over every gad concealed in the prairie and massacre them in a crossfire. The distant boom of artillery eased as their tanks’ prows crushed fleeing warriors; hard for cannons to distinguish friend from foe without butchering their own.

  ‘We are undone!’ moaned Sariel.

  ‘Give them time,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Time for what?’ dem
anded Sariel. ‘Are our gad brothers expected to run faster than those fierce engines? I have told you – I have told everyone who will listen – I am not Jok! I cannot turn the savannah into an ocean and drown these ragged warts of Hangel.’

  ‘Time for their trident to become a scythe,’ said Jacob. ‘When your enemy flees before you, you need to eliminate them quickly before they disperse into the wind.’ He pointed at the advancing vehicles. All three columns of tanks were sweeping out into a massive curved line, a long rumbling hook of armour, companies of infantry marching and firing between each tank. With the smoke of gunfire from the rifles and the tanks’ rocking, booming cannons, there was hardly an inch between each vehicle for a warrior to duck and hide in the grass. ‘You see… just as a cavalryman would do it.’

  ‘You predict a fate we cannot avoid,’ moaned Sariel. ‘Those pigeon-livered lackeys of the grand duke are too comfortable in their steel turrets. We are lost!’

  As if underlining the bard’s point, the long grass whipped around them as the village came within rifle range, bullets shredding the sward. They stood directly before the storm now. Jacob should have been terrified, but most of his fear was replaced by something he barely wanted to give a name to. Excitement? Anticipation? Longing? Courage was a cup you only drank from once. Because once tasted, there was only one place to refill it, and that was here. You’ve been hiding under your church’s simple cloth. The wrong man for the job. Smell it, taste it. Tell yourself the lie that you never missed this. A bullet whisked along Jacob’s ear, close enough for it to pass whining like a hornet. The invaders had found the gad war leaders’ range. And this was the signal for something more than the tribes’ imminent end. Zanasi’s warriors stepped aside as a team emerged carrying a device that resembled a dented barrel on a tripod, wooden slats across its front.