Broken Hero (28 page)

Kayla seems to be having fun at least. She is astride a fallen Uhrwerkmänn repeatedly stabbing it in the back of the head.

I look back to the other fight. It is blurring into this one. Several cultists are hacking down an Uhrwerkmänn, its limbs lying around it in spreading pools of oil. Another Uhrwerkmänn is wearing most of the upper torso of a cultist on its fist like a glove.

Felicity, Clyde, and Hannah are at the edge of the cavern, pushed up against the wall. Felicity ducks one sword blow. Tabitha screams, holds up her laptop.

A sword blow bisects the machine. Sparks explode everywhere. Tabitha screams again, louder this time.

Clyde spins, sees the cultist preparing a backhand sweep of the swords, and steps toward him. His hand is held out, is inches from the cultist’s face.

Electricity crackles over Clyde’s teeth as his speaks his spell. The convexity of the cultist’s face inverts, becomes concave. As he drops to the floor his skull becomes a bowl full of blood.

But Clyde’s rage has cost him his situational awareness. Even as I start toward him, the pommel of a cultist’s sword smashes into the back of his head. He sprawls. The cultist flips her blade up.

My scavenged sword still feels like an anchor. I try to get it up in front of me, but I don’t have the time to take the weight, to work it all out.

Instead I keep running, put my feet down and push. The cultist’s muscles bunch as she prepares the killing blow. My feet pound on unforgiving rock.

The sword starts to descend.

I barrel straight past the cultist.

My sword, pivoted out at an angle, clattering over the rock, slices into her ankle. She screams. Staggers. Her blow goes wide.

I stagger to a stop, manage to turn despite the momentum of my sword. The cultist is on the floor, screaming, gripping the jagged stump of her leg.

Damn, these swords are sharp.

Felicity is caught between two cultists, unable to close on one without exposing herself to the other. Clyde is still on his hands and knees shaking his head.

Tabitha is staring at the separate halves of her laptop and weeping. Openly weeping.

We have to get out of here.

“Hermann!” I bellow, but the battle is too loud for him to hear me. He and Friedrich are on opposite sides of the cave, tearing cultists from their bodies. Friedrich hurls one at Hermann, and the body leaves an obscene red stain down the Uhrwerkmänn’s body as it slumps to the floor.

I run toward him, as fast as my sword will let me.

“Hermann!” I scream again.

This time he hears me, flicks his head in my direction, some approximation of annoyance on his approximate features.

“The oil!” I jab my finger at the fallen Uhrwerkmänn. “Set fire to the oil!”

It’s all I can think of. A desperate stab at buying us time so we can beat our retreat.

Then he spits. A stream of liquid fire leaping out from between his teeth.

It is like someone turned the lights on in hell. Maddened cultists coated in ink and blood scrambling on the walls, dancing between fallen bodies, the air full of their sharpened blades. And among them—maddened Uhrwerkmänner, vast hulking ruins of machinery, coated in rust and blood, bits of bodies smeared across their limbs.

The flame from Hermann’s spit reaches the fallen Uhrwerkmänn. There is a soft whoomph. And then the louder, angry clap of detonation.

The shockwave cracks me across the face, sends me spinning. I eat floor, taste stone and sweat, oil and blood.

When I come up, Kayla is wiping her mouth, spitting. Beside her a cultist half picks himself up. Without even looking, Kayla spears him through his skull.

Jesus, we have to get out of here.

“Move!” I scream, lungs burning. The room is filling with smoke from the Uhrwerkmänn’s splayed flaming corpse. “MI37 to me! We have to move!”

Felicity is picking herself up beside me. Blood runs from gashes in her forehead and cheek. Tabitha is lying on her back, still clutching the separate halves of her laptop, still staring at them. Clyde grabs her underneath one shoulder, hauls. Blood runs down his arm, leaves a stain on her dark skin.

Kayla is moving, has Hannah in a vice grip. Hermann and Volk follow. Friedrich’s bellow chases them.

We push past stumbling cultists, through the bronze portal, into the belly of their fortress. The room is all yellow rock and hard edges. My over-sized sword skitters over the floor, tugging at my shoulder. Two corridors lead away, one left, one right.

“Left,” I yell. Experience has taught me that when you have absolutely no information to go on, decisiveness trumps wasting time trying to apply logic. Especially when you’ve only got a two-second lead on the bastards trying to kill you. We jag left—

—straight into a group of cultists charging toward the sound of fighting. Seeing us, they hesitate.

Kayla doesn’t.

She barrels into them like a sword-wielding bowling pin and limbs fly like struck nine-pins. I bellow with exertion hefting the leviathan sword above my head. The laceration in the bottom of my right arm screams pain. I scream too.

A cultist has turned her back, has turned to face Kayla. I bring my sword down. I bisect her to her sternum. Her feet splay. Her own sword drops lifeless to the ground.

One down.

I go to tug my sword free. It doesn’t move.

To my left and right cultists close.

Oh shit and balls. I heave on the sword once, twice more. But it is too heavy, too firmly embedded in the bone. Shit, shit, shit.

One cultist swings laterally, the other straight down. Because they’re assholes, I imagine.

I drop the sword, leap backwards as fast and as hard as I can.

I have to live. If I die then reality dies. I have to live.

Right up until reality dies.

God, this is messed up.

A sword skims over my face, a sting of pain from the tip of my already injured nose as it bounces off the flat of the blade. The descending sword catches on my shoe leather, sends me tumbling.

I lie on the floor. Blood is flowing from my nose again. I’d probably be more concerned about that if wasn’t lying prone on the ground with two cultists poised above me.

I glance around. Help? Anyone? Ferris Bueller?

And there’s Hannah. With a pistol. She points it first at one cultist and then another.

And she doesn’t pull the trigger. She switches her aim, back and forth, back and forth. There’s a helpless expression on her face.

She sees me staring.

The cultists’ swords go up.

She shrugs, infinitesimally, her lips move. I can’t hear her but her words are plain enough to read. “Only one shot.”

So fucking take it. But I’m through giving advice for her to ignore.

The swords are above the cultists’ heads. The moment their balance is weakest.

I push hard with my hands, lift my head, my legs, spin on my arse. My feet connect with one cultist’s ankles, a moment later my head with the other’s. The world spins a moment. I lose track of the falling swords.

I don’t knock the cultists over, but I do knock their swords wide. One blade lands an inch to my right, the other closer to my left.

Finally the shot rings out. A cultist falls to the floor.

One down. Thank God for small mercies.

Even as the second cultist tugs to free his sword from the trench it’s gouged in the floor, I am rolling forward and up, pushing myself to crash into his legs. He goes down, tumbling over me.

I hear the meaty smack of him landing face first on his own blade.

Two down.

I stand up. Everything is shaking. Around us the cultists have fallen. The smell of gunpowder is heavy in the air. I raise a shaking hand to my nose. The pain is excruciating. But the shape of my schnozz is still the same. Only skinned.

All in all, the fight probably took about ten seconds. Unfortunately, our lead was only about two.

That booming screaming roar comes again, almost so loud it sends me reeling. An Uhrwerkmänn fills the corridor around us. A cultist clings to its back, howling and smashing. He sees us, lets out a shriller scream.

“Run!” I bellow again. “Run!”

I collapse panting. This is better than fighting with my backpack on, but not by much. We are horrendously outnumbered. I had rather conceived of this as a stealth operation. I honestly believed that a secret underground passage would lead to a secret doorway. This is to stealth what McDonald’s is to dieting.

We’re in a small square chamber. It is surprisingly decorative given the spartan aesthetic that seems to dominate here. There is a geometric tapestry in reds and maroons hanging from one wall and red flowers in an earthenware vase sitting on a blocky table cut from the same rough yellow stone as the fort itself.

Kayla is pressed against one wall. She peers around one corner. “I think we’re finally free of the feckin’ bastards.”

Volk and Hermann hulk in the middle of the room. They have made the sneaking thing significantly harder. It’s been like trying to sneak down corridors while accompanied by two pieces of farming machinery. One of whom complains loudly much of the time.

“I do not know why we ever asked for your help,” Hermann grunts. “This is pitiful.”

I ignore him. Pointing out that he’s only managed to get this close to Lang’s papers because of MI37’s efforts is only likely to set him off further.

Rather to my surprise, the one who seems to take his criticisms most to heart is Hannah. She flinches away from the Uhrwerkmänn, shaking her head. Kayla takes two steps toward her friend, reaching out a hand, but Hannah flinches away again. She seems to fold in on herself.

“Hey.” Kayla’s severe allergy to sounding in any degree soft or sympathetic makes the comfort sound harsh.

“No.” Hannah shakes her head. “Just… no.” She looks around the room, a pained expression. “I mean… just, what the bloody fuck is this? I mean… There’s no intel. There’s no plan. This is shit creek and it’s like we all just sat around and made time for burning paddles before we even got here. And it’s always fucking like this. Always. And… and…” She wrestles to find an expression to express herself. Nose wrinkled, lips curled. Some awkward place between disgust and sadness. “And you all seem so fucking comfortable here.” She’s aghast. “Like this is how it’s meant to be.” She points at me. “Even bloody him. He bloody took on two sword-wielding lunatics and won. And I couldn’t even pick one to bloody shoot in the face. I mean what the hell is that? That bloody…
clown
outclassed me. Hugely. I mean hugely. It was like I was a bloody rookie. And… Jesus.” She sweeps a hand around the room. “This is wrong. Everything you do is wrong. But I’ve read your file. And you do good shit. And I can’t do it. I bloody can’t. I’m bloody good at my job. I was promoted into this. This was a big bloody deal. And it’s going to fucking kill me. Because I can’t fucking hack it. And that…” She points at me again. Struggles to put her disdain into words, “…that fucking muppet is good at it.” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand. I just don’t. And it’s doing my head in something bloody awful.”

I would comfort her except for, well, the constant barrage of insubordination and know-it-all comments.

“You’re not feckin’ useless.” Kayla takes another step, rests the outstretched hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Period of feckin’ adjustment and all that shite. Takes a while to get used to the weird shite. You should have seen him when he first got here.” She nods at me, because apparently I’m just exhibit A for the prosecution today. “Abso-feckin’-lutely useless he was. Couldn’t even get the safety off his gun. Now he’s all right. Took him a bit, but baptism by fire and shite. If he can pick it up, you sure can.”

Hannah looks unconvinced.

Felicity, on the other hand, just looks a little bit pissed off.

“Maybe,” she hisses, “we could all work on the interpersonal dynamics when we’re not trying to hide from not one but two packs of homicidal nutjobs. Better yet, you could have done it when I bloody suggested it.” Her gaze sweeps the room, and again I fail to avoid the ire.

Personally, if the timing were better, I might take this as a positive sign. Hannah is acknowledging that she’s no good at this and, begrudgingly, that we are. If she just threw up her hands and said, “Well that lot can take care of that shit, I want no part of it,” then MI37 would be back in the right hands.

“OK,” Felicity says when no one feels the need to snark back at her, “we’ve got some breathing room.”

“Time to find the papers,” I say. “Anybody got a good sense for how deep we are into this place?”

Tabitha, who has been trying to find the spot in the room farthest away from Clyde, snaps, “Probabilistic mapping algorithms. Would be using them if some magical asshole hadn’t totally failed to protect the things most important to the woman whose life he seems determined to ruin.” She wields the two halves of her laptop at Clyde. It is his turn to flinch away.

“I think the humans must be rusting,” Hermann comments to Volk. “We will need papers on how to fix
them
.” It’s the first time I’ve heard him sound amused.

“Hush,” Volk chastises.

Hermann just snickers.

“Well,” Clyde says into the ensuing silence, “most forts are built on an asymmetrical pattern to prevent attackers who breach the main gate from making a straight run to the good stuff. Create more of a killing field. Which is not the sort of encouraging term I suspect anyone wants to hear. Maybe be better if there was some nice euphemism for it. Poppy field perhaps. Though maybe that word’s a bit tainted. Actually, tainted is a bit of a tainted word, if you ask me. All sorts of nasty connotations to that one these days. Yick. But I, much like a fortress attacker actually—funny coincidence—am a little off course. Was going to say, at least, I am saying it now, I suppose. Got there in the end. Avoided the killing… erm, poppy field of my own distractions. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. The main gate of the castle was central. So I would anticipate an inner wall with a gate to the left or right, and then any sort of keep to be on the opposite side of the gate. Probably toward the back of the whole complex. Then the chamber would be hard to access inside that keep. Given that we’re subterranean probably down rather than up. I mean, just playing the odds here. And the way the tunnel took us came in near the back left of the fort. At least if my sense of direction still stands. And we’ve been meandering around here and found nada, so if we headed that way, and went down a few floors, that might be a best bet. If one trusts me. Which, totally understand if you don’t. Whole laptop disaster. So sorry about that. Not the sort of thing I would allow to happen to any live cargo Tabby had. Should she be carrying some sort of basket of kittens, or crate of chicks, or… well, erm…” He shrugs violently. “Say, a child.”