The Horns of Ruin (13 page)

I lowered the bully at her chest and snarled. She held her
hands up in surrender, dropping the rope and the pulley. I motioned to the
mask, and she worked it free from her neck and sent it clattering to the
ground. No other weapons that I could see.

"You should gag me, if you're worried."

"I'll leave the worrying to you. Owen, you can come
out now," I said, pocketing the pendant. The hatch swung open and Owen and
his boys exited, sparking up their lamps as they came. The room looked pretty
much as it had under the influence of the Fellwater. Gray and cold and wet.
Cassandra squinted at them, and I realized she had been seeing without light.
Not something I knew about the Scholars. Now I could see that her right hand
was in some sort of glove, metal laced into flesh. I remembered seeing that
hand after the wreck, bending all sorts of wrong.

Owen started when he saw the girl, then gave a crisp nod
and motioned to his boys. Always the leader. They surrounded her, guns held at
her tiny chest. She made no move.

"Where did the rest of them go?" he asked me.
"Was there a ship?"

"Beats me. Probably. You think all those kids swam
out?"

"Seems unlikely." He turned to Cassandra, who was
staring blankly up to the ceiling. "What do you say, kid. Boat?"

She didn't answer.

I shrugged. "Yeah. So. They have a boat."

"Maybe someone ..." He paused, cocking his head
at a curious angle. "Huh."

"What?" I asked, then a gunshot echoed sharply
down from the spiral staircase. Yelling, more shooting, then feet on metal.
Owen grabbed me as he ran by. I shot the girl a look and then followed up the
stairs.

The staircase was chaos. Lots of people rushing down, a
couple of us rushing up. The ones coming down were hurt. Blood on their faces,
or their shirts. One guy was dragging a body. The limp's head was bouncing on
each metal step, thumping meatily and leaving bits behind. I made a note not to
get shot on a staircase, or at least not get shot in such a way that some fool
felt compelled to drag me out.

The firefight was on us quick. Heavy bullistic fire came in
short bursts, answered by weak revolver shot that was again quickly drowned out
by the heavy stuff. The first shots came ricocheting past us shortly after we
left the lower room. Not long after that, I heard those staticlaced voices,
methodically working their way closer to us. I stopped.

"What are you doing?" Owen asked. "We've got
to get up there."

"Up there is coming down here," I said. I cursed
myself for never learning many rites of the bullet. The sword had always been a
nobler path, but I kept finding myself in places where it just wasn't
appropriate. "The rest of your team is dead."

"You don't know that," he said, nervously.
Something in his voice ... He hadn't lost men before. That's tough. I looked
him in the eye and waited for him to actually see me.

"Justicar. Your team is dead. All that's left are
those boys behind us. And all we can do is take care of them."

He looked up the stairs, grimacing and twisting his hands
around the short shotgun he had slung out. More shooting, much closer. Hot
bullets traced a row of dimples into the wall just above us. He nodded.

Once we were on our way down, it went fast. Those things,
with their static voices and cold-piston hearts, must have sensed us. Must have
known there were few of us left. The fever of the hunt was on them. I knew the
feeling.

"Get your men in the water. Maybe the Amonites swam
out, and there's a quick path that we just can't see."

"There are injured. They'll drown."

"Drown or get shot," I said. "Now get 'em in
the water."

On the dock, the few remaining Healers were milling around.
Alexians aren't cut out for this, I thought. How did we ever let them take
charge? Who left them in the big-boy chair? This crowd had done a bangup job of
getting the injured all lined up and field triage accomplished, but most of
them had dropped their weapons. Those who were still walking around were pretty
badly hurt themselves.

Cassandra knelt by the edge of the water, staring nervously
at the door. She had a guard or two, but those boys looked more scared than
her, and she looked pretty scared. I pointed at her.

"Don't you try getting away in all the excitement.
This bit'll be over soon, and then we have business."

She nodded at me, or at least in my direction. I turned my
attention to the defenses, such as they were.

Owen got into an argument with one of the older guys. It
was pretty clear that no one was going into the water any time soon. I closed
the hatch, but the lock was on the other side. A couple of the Alexians saw
what I was doing and tried to help. That's when I saw the other Amonite.

He was sitting cross-legged against the wall, staring at
Cassandra. It was the guy who had opened the hatch for us, Owen's pet Scholar.

"Hey, aren't you on the wrong side of this door?"
I yelled. He shrugged, then stood and came over.

"Would you like me to go out there, or would you like
me to close that door?"

"Can you close the door, and then maybe drown
yourself?"

He sighed, then placed one palm on either side of the
pressurized window and began to invoke. All of our frictionlamps guttered,
which is unusual for normal, mechanical lights. The air around us seemed to
swell and grow heavy, like we were moving through molasses. His words stretched
out in time, long syllables rolling out of his mouth and sticking in the air,
their weight and density drawing us in. The room seemed ready to collapse.

Everything snapped, the whole world rushing at the space
between the Amonite's two palms. I lurched forward like a drunk on a ship, and
the room lurched with me. We were in sudden vacuum, without sound or breath,
the instinctive panic burning through my lungs before I even realized I
couldn't breathe. The door crumpled like a child's toy and I felt an instant of
betrayal, before I realized that the egglike hatch had flattened out and molded
itself with the frame. The whole door was solid metal now, wrinkled and hot.
Only the window remained intact, untouched among the violence.

"That will do," the Amonite said, then shot me a
dull look and returned to his seat. He went back to staring at the girl. She
couldn't bring herself to look at him, at his chains.

"How the hell will we get out of here?" one of
the badly injured men asked. I shushed him. One problem at a time.

And our first problem came up pretty quick. Through the
window I saw pale blue light, and then the wide goggle eyes of the coldmen. I
couldn't hear their static voices, but I could feel them, itching through my
bones. It felt like I could taste that breath again, centuries dead. I put away
the revolver. At least here, on the deck, I had room to swing some blade.

"Everyone stay behind me. If it gets bad, jump in the
drink and go under. If they come for you ... swim."

"Swim," Owen said, "and pray to Alexander
for deliverance."

"As you like," I said. "But mostly I would
swim."

Hammering at the door, now. A slow, patient, heavy stroke
that rang the metal like a bell. The whole room echoed from the impact. The
water behind us lapped against the dock. I drew my sword and began to invoke,
drawing a semicircle on the ground in front of me and feeding it what power I
could. What power Morgan could give me.

The door burst like a shell, spitting hot metal across the
dock, hissing as it struck the water. The debris arced off the flimsy wall of
my shield. I kept my sword crossed over my chest, chanting the ritual of
protection as hard as I could. When the explosion settled into nothing more
than smoke and cinder I dropped the shield and rushed forward. Owen fired a
shot into the roiling smoke from behind me, then cursed as I got in his way. I
trusted my steel more than his lead.

They came out of the gaping hole in the wall, the jagged
wound of the hatch. The coldmen. Their eyes were luminescent in the smoke and
steam. White fog vented out of their faces, frost riming the blades of their
greaves. They lurked, like animals stalking into the light of a campfire. Their
eyes flashed, and then I was on them, screaming.

They fell stubbornly. I put the blade into chests,
shoulders, thighs, drawing harshly back to pull the sharp edge of the sword through
their flesh as I retreated. I heard and felt the remaining Alexians firing
their weapons into the flanks of the horde of coldmen who spilled out of the
door. Hot white lances punched into dead skin, rupturing bone and metal. They
kept coming. They always kept coming.

I dove in and out, slashing and giving ground. There wasn't
a lot of ground to give. Their wrist blades were sharp, and I had no shield to
protect me. The wide blade of my sword got mired in a rib cage; another of them
punched metal through my coat, slicing skin. The holy-forged form of my noetic
armor crumpled under the assault like a child's toy. I let go of my sword with
my right hand and punched the one in front of me twice, fast, reeling him back,
then drew my bully. I started firing as soon as it cleared the holster, putting
the first shot into the long bone of his shin, splintering it as the bullet
went from knee to heel. My second shot cracked open his hip. I whipped the
revolver up, slamming the thick barrel into his chin, cracking it like a
wishbone. He fell back, taking his blades with him, out of my skin and my coat.

The sword came free when I put the tip of the revolver I
had stolen against the offending rib cage and blasted it away with three quick
shots, then holstered the bully and cleared the space around me, swinging metal
into bone. There were so many of them, and we'd been pushed back nearly to the
edge of the dock. I was losing sight of the ruined hatch. I lost sight of the
girl, too.

"Justicar!" I yelled, looking around for the
scion of Alexander. He was off to my side, trying to reload the fat cylinder of
his shotgun. "We're going to have to make a move here awfully quick."

"We'll keep fighting, Paladin. Until we're out."

"That's not going to-"

The air cracked around me and I stumbled. The planks of the
dock went crazy. The world was moving, sliding farther into the water. Away
from the hatch.

The dock must have been damaged in the explosion, or the
girl had cut us loose. I spun around, looking for her. Nothing. The dock
twisted on its supports and pulled free of the wall, slapping against the
water. We started to sink in cold water and earnest.

The wounded screamed, those awake enough to register the
danger. Several rolled off and disappeared into the water, soundlessly. The
coldmen didn't seem to notice, just kept fighting, pressing, coming. I fought
on, because it was what I knew how to do. The water made it to my ankles, my
knees, the shocking spike of cold into my crotch taking the breath from my
lungs. The platform was tilting and I slipped, ashy water splashing into my
mouth and eyes. I hauled myself to my feet.

I lost sight of Owen, of the other Alexians, of the walls
all around. A couple of the frictionlamps bobbed on the surface of the water, a
couple more glowed dimly as they sank beneath the waters. I saw the girl, once,
refastening the mask that she had surrendered, her eyes panicking as the water
rushed up around her throat and into her still-open mouth as she slid beneath
the surface. Hands clutched at me, and I cut them, unsure if they belonged to
the coldmen or my dying companions. My attackers gabbled at me in staticky
panic, falling beneath my blade or stumbling off the platform to disappear. The
planks under my feet began to shift as the whole structure lost integrity,
forgot that it was supposed to be stable and flat. I was standing on a loose
bundle of boards, and the bundle was coming apart. I tried to pick out the ruin
of the hatch, but could see nothing but blackness and the swallowing darkness
of the water. I picked a direction, lurched toward it, thrashing against the
water to try to stay up, then stepped off into an abyss, into oblivion.

The water swallowed me, and the darkness, and the cold.

he corridor was a tube of slimy
brick with gutters on both sides of a narrow iron walkway. There was no light,
other than the soft glow coming off the Healers' runed cuffs as they invoked
over the bodies of the nearly dead. I was on my back, shoulders arched
uncomfortably over the mass of the articulated sheath. The corridor ended in a
waterfall that fell silently, held back by some hidden force. I sat up. Owen
saw me and came over.