The Crystal Empire (54 page)

He nodded at the pair of body guardsmen, who obeyed by raising the short black weapons slung across their armored chests, pointing them at Fireclaw’s belly.

Fireclaw smiled an evil smile.

A long, padded, waist-high counter lay in sections across the e
n
trance to the wing. Owald removed a small key from his sweaty wais
t
band. He bent, and from a cabinet within the counter removed another of the pec
u
liar weapons. He pulled the long, curved, empty magazine from behind its contoured grip, slapped back the knurled charging-handle u
p
on the left side of the dull-surfaced receiver, and peered deep into the mechanism to assure himself the firing chamber was empty.

He let the handle snap forward, replaced the magazine, handed the weapon to his father. Glancing from one of the armored guardsmen to the other, Fireclaw winked and chuckled. He accepted the deadly little m
a
chine his son had handed to him.

He hefted it in his left hand. Made for the right, it fit him awkwardly.

“Heavier than it looks,” he observed, turning the muzzle toward hi
m
self to peer back along its axis.

“About half the bore-size of my pistol, I’d guess. Same sight as upon a Comanche bow, e’en to the fashioner’s markings. This thing holds the ammunition.”

He pushed the release-button as if he’d been doing it all his life i
n
stead of swinging a sword. He handed the empty magazine to his son, indicating the operating lever.

“This starts the first into the chamber—better idea than a revolver, once solve the powder-fouling problem.”

Owald nodded, trying to disguise his amazement.

“Smokeless powder,” he answered, “not much fouling at all. You want to shoot it?”

Fireclaw grinned.

“If your little friends don’t shoot me first.”

Owald pointed a thumb toward the far end of the hall-wing, where, a hundred paces away, cloth bags of sand had been laid upon one another to a level twice the height of a man. Half a dozen man-shaped cutouts, in the subdued colors of the sandbags, had been fastened between wooden posts in front of them.

“Just keep this thing pointed downrange,” he told his father. “’Twill keep ’em happy and your skin intact. Here, I’ll start you with single ca
r
tridge.”

Owald pressed a smallish cylinder—slender, copper-tipped, alum
i
num-cased, and bottle-shaped—into the spring-loaded top of the mag
a
zine and handed it to Fireclaw. The older man laid the short weapon along his f
o
rearm, inserted the magazine with his left hand, slapped the floorplate until it locked. He pulled the charging-handle back with an edge of his prosthe
t
ic.

“A mite awkward for a one-handed man,” he observed, leveling at a target. He peered through the telescopic sight.

He pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Owald chuckled. “Safety. The small lever, away at the rear. Give it a quarter-turn upward.”

“Damn silly thing,” Fireclaw growled, “to tinker into a weapon! What if you needed a shot in a hurry?”

Nevertheless, the warrior obeyed, resighting the weapon, and putting renewed pressure upon the trigger. Its bellow filled the hall. The spent ca
s
ing leapt from the ejection-port atop the gun, spun tinkling upon the floor.

Fireclaw blinked.

“Loud enough for three guns!”

Owald nodded, grinning wide, as one of the soldiers ran forward—that small were the bullet holes they couldn’t be seen from where they’d been fashioned—to examine the target.

Excited, he pointed at the paper silhouette’s midsection, shouting back a single word, not in his native tongue, a Southeast Asian dialect neither Owald nor any other of the bodyguard was fluent in, but in Guard-speech, a clever, useful synthesis of the Sun’s own devising, re
n
dered necessary by the varied origins of his protectors.

“Dead center, he says, Father. He’s much amazed, but I’m pleased to tell you I’m not.”

Shouting, he signaled the guardsman back to the safety of the firing-line again. He thrust a gauntleted hand out, uttering more words of command in the same artificial language. The guardsman nodded, r
e
trieved an extra magazine from a fabric pouch containing several, fa
s
tened at the small of his armored back.

With a dubious expression upon his face, he handed it to Owald, who handed it to Fireclaw.

“Thirty rounds,” the commander told his father.

Fireclaw ejected and laid the first magazine upon the padded bench, reloaded with the full one, leveled the little gun, fired it five times at each of the targets in turn. Little recoil was apparent; the muzzle scarc
e
ly lifted b
e
tween shots. Empty cases spurted from the weapon, several hanging in the air at once.

When the deafening echoes died from the hall and the minimal “smokeless powder” smoke cleared, there remained no need for anyone to run down to the targets. Each had a single ragged hole—five shots clu
s
tered overlapping in the center of the head.

The armored guardsmen jabbered at one another—the other man was Saracen-Irish, the sole language the two shared in common one they’d learned in the line of duty within the Empire’s borders. They took firmer holds upon their weapons.

Fireclaw laughed aloud at the sight. Owald frowned, then joined him, clapping them both upon their shoulders, afterward asking for a spare magazine from the other man. This he also gave to Fireclaw, accepting the empty in exchange.

He laid it aside upon the bench.

“Rotate the safety lever yet another quarter-turn, Father. Be prepared for a surprise. And for Goddess’ love, keep the business-end pointed downrange!”

Giving his son a skeptical look, Fireclaw reloaded, aligned the sight upon a silhouette, pulled the trigger. Before he could release it once again a brief moment later—with a startled expression upon his bearded face—the magazine was empty, the floor about his feet littered with aluminum ca
r
tridge cases.

Silence.

“So this,” Fireclaw offered at long last, “is how the mysterious bla
n
ket-ripping sound comes to be. Impressive—”

Licking a finger—he touched it to the still-smoking barrel, listening for a hiss—he peered downrange, unable to see any further damage he’d i
n
flicted upon the targets.

“—but somewhat wasteful.”

One of the wooden posts beside a target groaned, gave forth a spli
n
tering noise. With a whoosh it toppled forward, tearing the target it had helped to hold in half.

Owald laughed again; this time his comrades joined him.

“It’s an acquired skill, Father.”

He took the weapon from Fireclaw’s fingers, removed the empty magazine, pushed a knob upon its side, and split the receiver end for end with a tipping motion.

One of the guardsmen took a long steel rod from the cabinet. He swabbed the barrel. The other gave the exposed parts a cursory going-over with a tiny brush.

“You’ll learn,” Owald told his father. “You learn faster than any man I’ve e’er seen.”

He hinged the weapon back together, slapped the magazine home, locked it up again inside the counter.

Fireclaw made a sour face and shrugged. He waved his right arm to indicate the place they were in, the nervous guards who watched his every move, his own missing hand.

“For aught good it’s done me,” he answered.

As if in cosmic agreement, the earth beneath their feet chose this moment to express its own unrest. There came to them a floating, flu
t
tering sensation, as if they stood within a boat and their breakfasts didn’t sit well with them.

Overhead, lighting-fixtures swayed a few fingers’ widths. A long time passed before they were still.

Although he disbelieved in omens, a disturbing tingle traveled up Owald’s spine. Watching his father at blade-practice had been one thing; teaching him the use of automatic weapons could well turn out to be a
n
other. Despite a great enthusiasm for which he’d his own good re
a
sons—Fireclaw
must
be recruited to the bodyguard; those who failed to find a us
e
ful place within the Crystal Empire were soon disposed of—the younger Helvetian still wondered about Zhu Yuan-Coyotl’s jud
g
ment and motive in this regard: the trouble he foresaw couldn’t be invi
s
ible to a man the likes of the Sun Incarnate. Nor was it likely much to be ameliorated by his famous warrior-father gaining yet another skill-at-arms.

Yet the next few words he intended speaking were the sole reason he’d joined Fireclaw at this morning’s practice. Receiving the Sun I
n
carnate’s permission to speak them had been more arduous by far than getting the nod about the gun.

“About your hand, Father...”

Fireclaw turned from a reexamination of the targets, a puzzled frown written across his face.

“What about it, son?”

’Twas the first time Fireclaw had named him thus. It added to the tingling of his spine.

“Well, if you’re to join the bodyguard, you’ll have to be less clumsy in the use of its issued weapons.”

He pointed at the prosthetic cuff.

“Yon stump-shoe could slow you down, under fire.”

Fireclaw nodded, waiting.

“That it could.”

“I’ve spoken to Zhu Yuan-Coyotl about it, just this morning, Father. He’s granted his permission. You’ve an appointment—another honor, I might add—with his personal physicians tomorrow afternoon. They’ll be wanting samples of your flesh.

“They’re going to start you a new hand growing.”

“How many a sign there is in the heavens and in the earth that they pass by, turning away from itl”—
The
Koran,
Sura XII

Fi
relight cast dancing shadows
upon the thick furry wall of eve
r
greens su
r
rounding the encampment. Smoke drifted into the starless sky, filling the clea
r
ing with incense.

Sitting under the front edge of the lean-to, Ayesha pushed at the coals. For a time, the light drizzle which had followed them all week had ceased. A fresh log hissed and bubbled, the bark crackling. She tossed aside the weathered stick she had been using to stir the fire
—
one end was charred and smoking. She turned, her eyesight dimmed by the fire’s light, to face her companion.

Fireclaw lay back to one side of the rough shelter he and the men had built for her, warming his damp-moccasined feet at the campfire’s margin. His we
a
pons lay discarded beside him.

He and his friend Knife Thrower had just returned from patrolling the perimeter of their small encampment, replaced now by Mochamet al Rotshild and Sergeant Kabeer. It was their second week upon the trail westward. They had just passed beyond the lands of the hospitable Utes, having maintained the fiction of seeing the dignitary, Traveling Short Bear, home. They were entering this new land with caution, taking long rest-periods, building conspicuous camping places, giving the so-far-invisible inhabitants of the region a chance to look them over.

Several yards away, in the outsized shadow of the Princess’ lean-to, young Shrimp and his companion Crab lay sleeping. In a few hours, they would r
e
place the Saracens upon watch.

Despite a lifetime spent tolerating the woman’s failings, Ayesha felt lonelier than she would have imagined possible with Marya gone. The fourth day of their journey, she had reached a careless hand down for a dried stick for the fire, only to see the stick writhe in her hand, striking her with its extended fangs upon the tender inside of her elbow. The po
i
son had been injected into a vein.

So quick had her dying been that it had scarcely delayed the party, despite the efforts of the Helvetian and his Comanche comrade to pull the potion of the rattled serpent from her body. Fireclaw, suffering a bad tooth, was still som
e
what pale and shaky from the effort which had resulted in his own poisoning.

This was a hard land, set in the center of what she was discovering to be a harder world.

He sat up, speaking as if he knew Ayesha’s thoughts.

“It is a shame, Princess,” he offered in improving Arabic—the man seemed to be a sponge for languages
—
“that your father did not see fit to provide you with more than one female companion.”