“Pistols!” Cyrus shouted, throwing out a hand to point them out. These were no pistols, though; they were like the larger, meaner, older brother of pistols—
“They’re called rifles, you primitive bloody fartwat!” a thug shouted at him with glee, his own pistol already raised and pointed at Cyrus. The blast and puff of smoke heralded the coming of the bullet, and Cyrus put his head down and felt the THUNK! against his helm.
More followed. A veritable rain of them, in fact, forcing Cyrus to raise his shoulders and clench his neck, darting in front of Vara as a hail of bullets pinged and spanged off his armor.
“Into them!” Alaric shouted, and they slammed into the rank of thugs who had lined up to prevent the charge after the wagon.
Cyrus didn’t waste much time worrying about niceties. He cleaved arms from bodies, heads from shoulders—it was a good battle, if brief, until another thundering of bullets from the rifle company to their side cut it short.
“They’re shooting their own!” Vara shouted, ducking behind Cyrus as he carefully shielded his face from fire.
“Life is cheap to the Machine,” Alaric said, standing upright in the midst of all the shooting, bullets passing through him as easily as if he were not there.
“Shocker,” Cyrus said as something stung him in the shoulder. He jerked, and a little pellet of metal clinked out from between his chainmail and his pauldron. It didn’t have any blood on it, it had apparently just lodged between the layers of armor. “Why, my dealings with the Machine had led me to believe they had nothing but the utmost respect for life.”
Another wagon came rumbling and rattling in from the direction they’d been heading, no horses to pull it. Cyrus stared at it; truly it was one of the most bizarre things he could ever recall seeing. “It’s driven by invisible horses.”
“I very much doubt that,” Vara said, stepping behind him once more as the rifle company behind them started to reload and more piled out of the horseless carriage. “It’s making a godsawful racket; it must be one of those devices like those that move airships, or that we saw cranking gears in the mill.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Cyrus said and pointed to the line in front of them. “How do we handle this?”
“With grace and aplomb,” Alaric said, disappearing into smoke and reappearing behind the line of men piling out of the horseless carriage. He cut through them in a whirlwind, the slashes of Aterum tearing life from flesh everywhere it landed.
Cyrus watched for only a moment before turning to Vara, pointing out the line behind them, reloading their rifles. “Come on,” he said, and charged for them.
They had long rods out, pushing them into the barrels of their guns, all in a fancy line as Cyrus ran into them. Some dropped their long guns, trying to draw daggers. Cyrus made it obvious how foolish that was; they fell in ones and twos, and Vara ran in at the other end of the line, cutting her way through to him. They met in the middle, all their enemies driven to death, and Cyrus looked over to where Alaric had been and found the Ghost staring at him, beckoning him onward.
“Come,” Alaric shouted. “We have little time. We must pursue—”
Another vehicle rattled into the square, horseless as the last, while the first carriage started to move again, turning around.
“Go without us!” Cyrus shouted. “You have to catch her before she gets too far away!”
Alaric looked frozen for just a moment, but then nodded and was gone a second later. His trust in them was evident; he knew they would see their way through this next trial just fine.
“Stay close to me,” Cyrus said as he started toward the new carriage, Vara following a step after. He paused, stooping to seize one of these longer rifles, tossing the rod away. He would only have one shot, but that would be of some aid, surely.
“I believe I did vow that when I married you,” Vara said, breaking into a run beside him. They stormed across the square, Cyrus breathing in the little details of change—the fountain was the same but everything else was different. The dilapidated buildings of wood were gone, and though these were not the grand marble edifices of just down the road, they were still grander than most of old Reikonos had to offer.
The new horseless carriage rattled and shuddered into place, its doors facing Cyrus and Vara. He readied himself even as he charged, prepared for whatever came out—
The doors flew open. Cyrus halted his charge, skidding to a stop and holding out his arm to keep Vara from colliding with him. The violence with which the doors had swung open had been too sudden, too swift. “What madness is this?” Cyrus asked, and then had his answer a moment later.
The back doors of this new carriage rattled under the force of being thrown open so hard, and before they had even settled, out stepped a new combatant. Who it was was obvious by his bearing, and made more so by the fresh wound on his face as he stepped from the carriage and into the daylight, determination turning to fury when he laid eyes on Cyrus and Vara.
Tirner Gaull.
42.
“Well, well,” Tirner Gaull said with a grimace that might have been a smile if his cheek hadn’t born a bandage across it, stained red with dried blood. “If it isn’t my new friends, the legends.” He said this with peculiar vehemence and a twist of his lips.
Cyrus could feel the blood pounding through his temples. It was as though someone had seized him by them, squeezing them between an unusually strong thumb and forefinger. “You must be lonely indeed, Gaull, to think your foes friends. Maybe it’s your personality. You should, perhaps, strive to be less of a violent arse. I know—you could take up a hobby that would reinforce the threatening nature of your true being. Perhaps kitten petting. You could carry one around with you at all times instead of a sword. It would suit you, I believe—”
“You have a quick wit,” Gaull said, bringing up his sword and pointing at Cyrus. “Quicker than your sword, in point of fact.”
“‘Point of fact’?” Cyrus let out a low guffaw. “Terrible pun, Gaull.”
Gaull blinked. “I didn’t intend that … but …” His face twisted again. “It wasn’t terrible, was it?”
“Puns are the lowest form of wit,” Vara said. “Truly, it was terrible.”
“Everywhere sits a critic,” Gaull said. His words were less clear than before. Cyrus realized he probably had a hole in his cheek that was causing him immense pain. Or at least one could hope.
“Mostly she sits on me,” Cyrus said, trying to figure out how best to approach this fight. His initial gambit had been to see if he could stir Gaull with insults, get him to attack hastily. “And scarcely does she get too critical, thankfully—”
That wasn’t it. A flicker of impatience did run over Gaull’s face, but it was offset by Vara’s searing look, which he could sense out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh, to hell with it,” Cyrus said, and raised the long gun. Placing the wooden stock against his armor as a brace, he tried to line up the ridges at the front of the barrel with their corresponding matches at the rear. He put Gaull’s face right in the middle of them and then clicked the hammer back, giving the trigger gentle pressure.
The rifle roared, but Gaull dodged aside at the last second. Cyrus let it fall, already pulling his last remaining pistol from his belt and raising it. He clicked the hammer back and found Gaull still in his spin but coming out of it—
Fire now, and he’d just dodge or throw up his sword. Cyrus needed a moment of distraction for Gaull, to get him to somehow look away for just a brief second—
A cloud of mist rolled into the square, passing through Gaull’s feet and then swirling off to his side. Cyrus blinked; with Praelior in hand, Alaric’s motions seemed much slower. He swirled into a man-sized object as Gaull finished his spin. Surely, Gaull had not seen—
With stunning alacrity, Gaull struck in the direction of Alaric, formless but taking shape. His blade reached out and, unerringly, picked out the spot where chain met gorget, and he thrust it home as the Ghost reso
lved into perfect form—
Cyrus blinked; surely—
“No,” Vara whispered.
The blade struck home, and blood spurted from Alaric’s neck as the Ghost staggered back, the thrust of Aterum he’d been preparing thwarted by his wounding. Alaric brought his hand up to his neck and pressed it there even as he fell back a step, then another.
Cyrus stood there in awful stasis, unable to move, unable to shout, unable to do … anything.
With a look of absolute disbelief—something Cyrus had never seen before on the steady mien of the man they called the Ghost of Sanctuary—Alaric fell backward and dissolved once more into smoke and mist, disappearing as if he were a thin cloud on a windy day.
Gaull smacked his lips together, loudly, and drew his blade back, and with a wide smile, favored Cyrus and Vara with a look of great satisfaction. “So … shall we finish this?
43.
Shirri
The waking was the hard part, the painful part, her forehead screaming agony at her as she opened her eyes. She had no control of her limbs; they had been seized by some unknown force, and she was swaying, the world moving around her.
No—the world wasn’t moving. She was, she realized, just as the hands that had grasped her tightly let loose of her after a good swing. Shirri flew through the air and landed on her hands, which folded beneath her, and her knees, which stung with the impact against a hard floor. All the wind went out of her as well with the landing, her failure to catch herself resulting in her belly slapping the ground. Palms, knees, and stomach all screamed in pain, vying for her attention, with the throbbing in her skull where McLarren had clubbed her doing its level best to shout the rest of them down.
“Ungh …” she said, lifting herself up to her elbows, her moan echoing in a confined space. She blinked in the darkness; it was not total, the glow of lamps coming from somewhere behind her, but it was thick and inky in here, and she turned her head to look back at the men who’d thrown her.
They were framed in a doorway, both retreating, another figure standing just outside, looking in, small smile of satisfaction on his scarred face. He lingered behind them as they cleared the doorway, leaving him standing there alone, looking in at her with his lone seeing eye.
McLarren.
“And now we have you at last,” McLarren said, hands behind him. “Should you not have known it, Shirri? The Machine always gets what it wants.”
Shirri slumped, giving up on fighting against the pull of the ground. She let her cheek rest against the cold, grainy floor, and said nothing. For what was there to say? She could spit some defiant twaddle at him, but that would be all it was—twaddle. Her head was so filled with cotton that she couldn’t have constructed a spell now even if she’d possessed the strength to.
Which she didn’t. The fracas in the square had drained her. Foolish, it had been, sticking her neck out like that. What had she been thinking?
It was almost as though being around Alaric and those other fools had clouded her mind. Well, this was what she got for failing to look after herself. Now, again, she was hopeless, and worse off than before.
“What are you thinking?” McLarren asked with a sly smile. “I can see the wheels spinning beneath that spiteful gaze.”
“I was thinking … I hate you,” Shirri said.
McLarren was quiet for a moment. “Good,” he said at last, smile not diminished in the least. “You will hate me more before we are done.” And he slammed the door behind him.
“That was not the wisest retort I’ve ever heard,” came a voice from the corner, somewhere in the darkness. Shirri raised her head to look and caught movement as a figure crawled over to her with the shuffling of hand against straw and stone. She felt both on the ground, a long piece of straw against her cheek, clinging there as she raised it up.
A man came out of the dark—but no, not a man, tall and looming. This one was short, only half the size of most she’d met, and much smaller compared to that Cyrus Davidon impersonator. He was also squatter, and limped as he came over to her and knelt. His face was covered in a black beard, and when he got close enough for her to distinguish his features, she blinked in surprise—his eyes were different, shaped very nearly like an almond.
“You’re of Amatgarosa,” she said in a hushed whisper. “And—”
“And a dwarf, yes, which makes me doubly strange in this place without the shorter folk,” he said, examining her forehead. He had only the faintest trace of an accent. “My mother was from Vanreis and my father was an ambassador from Imperial Amatgarosa.” There was a sly guile in his smile. “My name is Dugras.”
“Shirri,” she offered in return as he inspected the place where they’d clubbed her. His expression evinced distaste, and she wondered how bad it could be. She raised a hand, trying to draw upon the well of magic within her, but no, nothing came. It seemed all spent; not even enough to cast a small healing spell to mitigate the damage.
“It would seem you have provoked the ire of this McLarren,” Dugras said, seating himself beside her. “May I ask what prompted it?”
“Ask all you want,” Shirri said, feeling some of the places where she’d been most impacted. All of them hurt, none of them felt remotely comfortable. “Just don’t expect me to answer.”
“Ah, the mysterious sort,” Dugras said, plopping down next to her. “This is going to be a boring stay in a cell with you, then. I suppose I shall have to do all the conversational heavy lifting.”
Shirri groaned as a swell of pain lanced down her forehead when she touched it. “Sounds fine. Get to it, then.”
“Oh?” Dugras asked. “You want me to talk?”
“Anything to get my head off this pain, yes,” Shirri said. “Talk. Laugh—bloody sing, for all I care.”
Dugras let a soft chuckle in the darkness. “Good enough. Hmm. Conversation, conversation—isn’t it funny that you’ll have a mind full of ideas and the moment someone puts you on the spot—poof, they all vanish. Oh, I know—I’ll tell you about myself. You already know my name and where I am from.”
“How did you get here?” Shirri asked, dragging herself on her haunches to the nearest wall and leaning against it. It was a small cell and thus a short drag.
“I was the chief engineer on an airship. The Yuutshee, a cargo vessel out of Amatgarosa.” He dragged himself next to her. “I was enjoying some shore leave with my shipmates and went to use the privy. Someone put a bag over my head, hit me with a club, and I woke up here.” He moved his hands to shrug in the darkness. “No one’s asked me a question yet, they just keep me in here.”
“Why?” Shirri asked, feeling another throbbing wave of pain radiate out from her forehead. The smell in here wasn’t making it any better; the straw was sodden, either with Dugras’s waste or that of someone else, someone who had been in here before he had.
“I don’t even know who’s captured me,” Dugras said. “I just know I’m unlikely to see the sun again.”
“Why’s that?” Shirri asked.
Dugras made a snort. “Do you know what happens to someone who kidnaps a citizen of Imperial Amatgarosa?”
Shirri blinked. “Oh. I’ve heard the stories, of course—”
“Yes,” Dugras said. “Their lives would be worthless. Their family’s lives would be worthless. Their homes would be burned. Silently, without sound or word or scream. Amatgarosa does not suffer its citizens to come to harm without answer. Someone will pay for this.” He shifted, back scratching against the stone. “My captain would see to it, were she to find out where I am. I can only hope she finds the correct target before loosing the—” And here he said a word she did not recognize.
“What’s that?” Shirri asked.
Dugras answered, and she could hear his smile—and then a little shudder—in the dark. “Best we talk of happier things.”
She let out a little laugh. “We’re in a cell. In the dark. You just admitted you have no hope of surviving this. I have no better, if we’re being
honest—”
“Why would we not be honest, given that neither of us has any hope left?” Dugras asked.
That brought Shirri up short, and a thought presented itself—what if Dugras was McLarren’s man? Oh, sure, he was a dwarf and from Amatgarosa, two things which would seem to make it unlikely, but—
If there was one thing Shirri had learned, it was that the Machine’s reach was seemingly limitless. And that what they could not take by force they would take by other means. More cunning ones.
“I don’t know you,” Shirri said, and her guard was now up once more.
“Well, let me tell you about me, then,” Dugras said. “I spend my days working on airship engines and my nights in a hammock in the engine space of the Yuutshee. On the best and least interesting days, nothing goes wrong and everything goes right. On the worst and most interesting days, things go terribly wrong, and I spend much time fixing the engines rather than maintaining them, and dodging our captain’s considerable ire.”
“He sounds fearsome,” Shirri said, her mind not really on the story.
“She is very fearsome,” Dugras said. “I would not wish to be the person who kidnapped me if she finds him.”
“She sounds like a true joy,” Shirri said, gently placing her head against the solid rest that was the wall. It seemed to give her strength, cool stone almost soothing her warm, aching head, as though taking the fierce resonating pain running through it and dissolving it by mere touch, catching those radiating waves of pain and taking them upon its stony self. It was soothing, strangely, and she almost felt better.
“She’s not bad. I’ve dealt with worse,” Dugras said. “So—are you ready to talk at all yet or do I need to choose another topic of conversation?”
“Best you choose,” Shirri said, closing her eyes. “I reckon I’ve been conversed with enough for the day.” She thought again of the weirdos—those strange people.
And, oddly enough, she rather wished that they were here now … or that she was back there with them.
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