Red Sun Also Rises, A (17 page)

I slumped against the autocarriage. “No!”

“The infection caused severe malarial symptoms in you, but in the Yatsill it manifests more like a mild flu but with one noticeable difference: the victims experience a debilitating ‘loosening’ of their telepathic connection to their fellows. This lessens the intelligence of the Workers and causes a sense of isolation in the Aristocrats, which, Clattersmash says, is by far the most disturbing aspect of the illness.”

“Have you found a cure?”

“Not yet, but the microorganism cannot survive in the blood of the islanders, and as I say, though active in yours, is rendered harmless to its host by an active counteragent. Those two lines of inquiry will, I hope, lead me to the solution.”

“I can’t believe I’ve been the cause of this,” I groaned.

“There’s every chance you’ll also provide the remedy.”

“Should I be quarantined?”

“It would be pointless. The infection is already too widespread.” She looked me up and down. “And speaking of health, Aiden, my goodness—what a transformation has been wrought in you! You’ve filled out so much we’ll have to ask the tailor to supply new clothes. You look a different man.”

“A man who can’t remember the last time he didn’t ache all over. How I miss my quiet little vicarage and my books!”

“Do you really mean that? Are you not feeling a certain fulfilment in the physical challenges you face every day?”

I snorted, as if she’d spoken an utter nonsense, but as a matter of fact, she was right. Physically—despite the disease I apparently carried—I’d never felt better in my life. I didn’t even notice the drag of Ptallaya’s gravity any more and was experiencing an unexpected exultation in our strange new existence. However, for whatever reason, I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit to this, so I replied, “Constitutionally, I’m more suited to holding a Shakespeare than a sword, but I’ve lost my position in life and am left with no options. I have no social standing. I’ve become naught but a common soldier. And now you tell me I’m a plague carrier!”

“Hardly that!” she objected.

“I’m going to take a bath,” I grumbled, and marched into the house, feeling inexplicably irritated that my friend should have identified that I, a scholar and clergyman, was starting to enjoy spending my every waking hour in mock combat.

I was halfway up the ramp to the upper rooms when I heard Clarissa give a loud cry of alarm. In an instant I was down again, across the vestibule, and back out through the door. My companion was standing against the autocarriage. Blood was streaming from her left shoulder. She was swinging a large spanner back and forth, and the three Aristocrats were crouched in front of her. They’d pulled swords from beneath their jackets.

“What in the Saviour’s name do you think you’re doing?” I yelled, striding toward them.

In answer, one of them threw himself at me, chopping downward with his blade. My training took over. Without thinking, I pivoted, and his weapon flashed past less than two inches from my face. In the same instant the tip of his sword clanged on the cobbles, I drew my own and, in doing so, slammed my forearm into his neck. His head snapped back, his top hat rolled away, and he stumbled from me, giving me the space to slash at him. His hand went flying, still clutching his weapon. With a scream of pain, he squatted and scuttled out of reach, clutching at his spurting stump.

A wave of revulsion hit me as I felt my inner demon squirm with sick delight, rejoicing at the damage I’d inflicted upon the attacker. I lowered my sword, stepped back, and stammered, “I’m—I’m sorry.” I was torn, as if two personalities were grappling for dominance of me. One would not hesitate to take a life in order to protect Clarissa. The other could barely lift the blade, so afraid was it that if I started killing I’d not be able to stop.

I teetered backward as one of the other Yatsill came at me, but as I did so, I saw the third creature take a swipe at Clarissa, who barely managed to block his blade with her spanner. My sword came up automatically and I parried my new opponent’s first swing, then—with my body rather than my mind in control—slashed at one of his legs, slicing it off beneath the first knee joint.

I leaped away from him to defend my companion.

The third Yatsill saw me coming and scurried backward into the square, giving himself more room to manoeuvre. I realised at once that this creature knew what he was doing. His stance spoke of someone well practised with the sword, though how he came by such skill was a mystery, for only the Working Class trained as guardsmen. Even before we
engaged, this appreciation of his ability sent a thrill of fear through me. Crossing blades when you are well padded and your opponent is under strict instructions only to aim at that padding and not hit hard is one thing, but facing a foe who’s under no such compulsion is quite another. I’d seen for myself how readily these Ptallayan swords could sink into the hard wood of tree stumps. Wielded with strength, they could easily slice straight through a limb, as I’d already found.

Had I been alone, perhaps I would have succumbed to the insistent part of me that wanted to drop my weapon and take to my heels. As it was, I couldn’t possibly leave Clarissa, so my only option was to fight.

The Aristocrat stepped in and swung at me. Our blades met and, after a shimmering sizzle as they slid along each other’s length, were immediately whirling so fast that an unpractised eye would see nothing but flashes as they again and again reflected the light of the twin suns. The square echoed with clangs and clashes. My enemy was terrifyingly fast and vigorous, setting me on the defensive from the outset. Somehow, somewhere, he’d worked long and hard to acquire such skill. It had given him confidence and a technique that, by Yatsill standards, couldn’t be faulted. In addition, his only concern was to cause my demise, while I was distracted by the knowledge that his companions were nearby, nursing their wounds, and capable at any moment of attacking me from the rear or, worse, of plunging their swords into Clarissa. In addition, while he obviously held no compunction about murder, my fear of killing caused me to frequently miss opportunities to turn the attack on him.

That initial flurry of passes and parries ended with a clumsy lunge on my part. It was diverted with such ease that my opponent actually stepped back and made the clicking noise I knew to be a Yatsill laugh as I tottered sideways, only just regaining my footing.

The burst of rage this incited was immediately quelled by the realisation that he was trying to provoke me. I ducked and wheeled just as Clarissa shouted a warning and the three-legged Yatsill thrust from behind, aiming between my shoulder blades. I was lucky. As I sank down and twisted, he missed my face by a hair’s breadth, and the edge of my blade caught the flat of his with all the force of my spinning body, breaking his weapon clean in half. The point clattered away across the cobbles. I completed my gyration and raised my blade just in time to block my principal adversary. Now I settled into defending myself and did so without a single riposte, hoping the Aristocrat would exhaust himself. Dimly, under the chimes and scrapes of battle, I heard the two creatures behind me run from the square, probably under threat from Clarissa’s heavy spanner. That was the last thing, beyond my opponent, to impinge on my awareness, for now a sudden focus descended upon me—a sharpness of attention quite unlike anything I’d experienced before. It was as if time itself changed, so that every alteration in the angle of my adversary’s shoulders, every adjustment of his stance, could be examined and analysed in meticulous detail. Indeed, my mind appeared to encroach upon the immediate future so that my reflexes operated slightly ahead of his, allowing me to dodge every thrust, parry every sweep, evade every trick.

It felt as if many minutes were passing, although in truth they were mere seconds, but they were enough to drain his energy. Then I saw a slightly too careless thrust coming, deflected it with ease, stepped in, and used my left hand to punch him in the head. He staggered back in the direction I wanted—toward the fountain in the centre of the square.

The tables turned. I changed my tactic from defence to an all-out assault, putting into practice every technique
I’d developed at Crooked Blue Tower Barracks. To earthly connoisseurs of swordplay—the Alfred Huttons, Egerton Castles, and Richard Burtons—no doubt I’d have appeared woefully clumsy. However, while I was no d’Artagnan, I began to feel myself a match for my opponent, and now forced him into retreat with a flurry of slashes and jabs that, I’m sure, from his perspective made my point seem everywhere at once. I struck the mask from his face, cracked the shell of his upper left arm, and scored a furrow across his trunk. “Stop!” he cried out, but I didn’t. Instead, I pressed my attack and demanded, “Who are you? Why did you try to murder my friend?”

“I don’t know!”

“Are you following orders?”

“Yes!”

“From whom?”

In an act of wild desperation, he exposed his entire torso to a thrust—which I didn’t take—and swung his weapon full force at my head. I raised my own at an angle to meet it, causing his sword to hiss along its length, showering sparks a good six inches above me, then stepped in and kicked him savagely between the legs—a barbarous move that was just as effective on a Yatsill as it was on a man. He doubled over, moaned, and dropped his weapon. I delivered an uppercut to his face, my fist squelching into the boneless flesh. He rocked backward, spraying blood into the air, tripped over the lip of the fountain, and went plunging into the water.

After kicking his sword out of reach, I waited for him to emerge. He struggled to his feet and swayed, weighed down by wet clothes and exhaustion. Blood streamed from his wounded arm.

“Answer me!” I snapped, levelling my blade at his chest. “Who ordered this attack?”

With difficulty, he clambered up onto the fountain’s low wall.

His four bead-like eyes met mine. Though they were expressionless, as was normal with the Yatsill, I detected a peculiar blankness in them, as though his mind wasn’t his own. He shook his head, then whipped up a hand, grabbed the tip of my sword, and propelled himself forward onto it. The metal sank through the vertical seam of his body shell and emerged from the middle of his back. His corpse thudded against me, causing me to tumble to the ground with it on top. My head cracked against the cobbles and everything blurred.

When the world came back into focus, I realised that Clarissa was dragging the dead creature off me.

“Are you all right?” I groaned. “Your shoulder is bleeding.”

“A small wound. Nothing I can’t fix with a poultice. And you, Aiden? Your hand is spouting blood and your cheek has been laid open. Is that the worst of it?”

“It is.” I pushed myself to my feet and looked at my right hand. At some point during the conflict I’d lost my little finger, though I hadn’t felt it. Now the pain began to throb abysmally.

I looked at the fallen Yatsill. “I couldn’t kill him.”

“You didn’t need to—he threw himself onto your blade.”

“But Clarissa, I
had
to kill him in order to protect you, but something in me prevented it. I was battling myself as much as I was battling him.”

“Good. You’ll have no more Jack the Ripper delusions, then!”

I gave a grunted agreement, but I was puzzled. My inner conflict had been far deeper than I could put into words and had felt somehow unnatural, as if my hesitancy hadn’t been wholly of my own volition.

I moaned as the pain in my hand grew worse, then shook my head to clear my muddled thoughts and asked, “Why, Clarissa? Why attack you?”

“I have no idea. Stay here—I’ll fetch my medical pack.”

My friend, as a Magician, had been trained to treat wounds using Ptallaya’s various herbs, many of which possessed remarkable healing properties. She now brought some from the house and applied them to my hand and lacerated cheek, fastening them against my skin with an adhesive leaf. Immediately, the pain was numbed.

“Your first duelling scar,” she murmured, “and your finger will quickly grow back.”

“Grow back?” I echoed. “How is that possible?”

“The miracle of Ptallaya. Remain here and rest. I’m going to report this atrocity. Shall I fetch you something to drink?”

I nodded wearily.

After treating her own wound and supplying me with a bottle of water from our kitchen, she mounted the autocarriage and drove off. I sat down and leaned against the wall of the fountain. The dead creature was sprawled nearby, still transfixed by my sword. Its blood seeped between the hard cobble-like shells, exactly as Mademoiselle Clattersmash’s had in my vision. All of a sudden, I was trembling violently, and, partly out of shock, partly at sheer relief at having survived, I began to giggle like a madman.

° °

I was still half-dazed and using the wall of the fountain for support when a convoy of steam-vehicles came panting into the square. Clarissa and Father Mordant Reverie disembarked from the first, Lord Upright Brittleback and Mr. Sepik from the second, and Colonel Momentous Spearjab and two guardsmen from the third. I straightened and greeted them all as they gathered around the corpse.

“I’d just delivered our sick chaps to the Magicians when I heard,” Spearjab said to me. “Harrumph! Are you injured?”

“Only slightly.”

“Humph! Humph! I understand the three Aristocrats were after Miss Stark. What!”