City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Her eye widens as she focuses on Saint Zhurgut.

  There’s a loud, hollow crack! as the half-inch round strikes his head. It’s loud enough that it makes her bones hurt just hearing it, even from here.

  The saint’s head abruptly tips to the side, like he’s been slapped. He stands up a little straighter, and he seems to hang in the air.

  She hopes—really desperately hopes—that he’ll go limp, plummet off the rooftop, and crash to the street in a heap, dead and done with.

  But he doesn’t. Instead he slowly, slowly turns to look at Sergeant Burdar’s nest in the cottage. She can see the light striking his helmet and, just slightly above his eye, a shallow dent.

  “Fuck!” she says.

  The sword comes whizzing back into Saint Zhurgut’s hand. He raises the blade, maybe a bit creakier and slower than he did previously. She knows Sergeant Burdar should have started scrambling away the second he fired the shot, not even looking to see if it worked. She knows that, ideally, he’s about one flight of stairs down in the cottage, maybe one and a half.

  She also knows it won’t matter. She knows the saint’s sword will tear through the cottage like a bolt of lightning.

  Saint Zhurgut reaches the apex of his windup. He twists his torso forward, ready to bring his wrist down to fling the sword across the city.

  One metal boot lifts up from the rooftop…

  …and Sigrud pops up just three rooftops away, mounts his Ponja gun on the lip of the roof, and shoots out the rooftop from under the saint’s foot with a single shot.

  Saint Zhurgut topples forward and accidentally hurls the sword down through the very building he’s standing on. The building dissolves like it’s been expertly demolished. Tumbling awkwardly ass over head, the saint drops down into the rising cloud of dust.

  She hopes that hurt him. Maybe twisted his ankle, at least. But if his helmet was able to deflect a half-inch round, she’s not holding her breath over it.

  And from the way Sigrud reacts, it didn’t slow the saint down much: Sigrud throws the Ponja gun over one shoulder, sprints forward, and leaps onto the next rooftop. He scrabbles down the slope of the roof, his boots sliding on the slate tiles, then squats and jumps to the next building.

  The om sound again, and the sword howls up, shredding the building behind Sigrud. He clatters to the next rooftop in a rain of tiles and debris and dust, briefly using one arm to cover his head. Then he vaults down to the street where she can’t see him.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Mulaghesh says. She runs down the track to where she set up the Ponja gun.

  Time for Plan B.

  She lies down behind the Ponja gun, takes out the brace Signe made for her, and slides it down the gun’s forestock. She fastens it, then pops the brace into the latch in her false hand. She wriggles it a little and the brace holds fast—though she’s not sure if Signe’s handiwork can take the recoil of a half-inch round going off.

  She puts the stock against her shoulder and aims down the seawall road, remembering that she has never personally fired one of these. She knows the general idea, and she knows its loading procedure. But she also knows that assuming you know the right way around a firearm is a great way to get yourself killed.

  Though another good way, she thinks, is fucking around with a Voortyashtani saint.

  She hears the om again and watches as Saint Zhurgut leaps up into the air above a row of houses to the north, sailing fifteen or twenty feet high in the air, raising his sword for a massive, devastating downward stroke at something she can’t see—but she knows it has to be Sigrud, perhaps trapped in an alleyway between two buildings….

  There’s another boom of a Ponja gun. Saint Zhurgut jerks back awkwardly as he’s struck dead-on in the chest. The impact of the round sends him tipping over, his legs lifting up and his head drifting down, and he caroms off the corner of a roof before crashing into a yurt.

  Mulaghesh laughs lowly and shakes her head. “Fucking Sigrud…”

  The man himself comes dashing out onto the seawall road, his Ponja gun still smoking. He runs toward Mulaghesh, who watches his progression along the sights of her own Ponja.

  There’s another om and the massive blade comes crashing out a few yards behind Sigrud, then turns abruptly to go wheeling toward him. Sigrud dives forward, and the blade arcs through the air he just previously occupied. As he’s clambering to his feet Saint Zhurgut bursts through a shop front down the seawall road like a furious bull, bricks and slate tiles clattering over his thorny back. He looks at Sigrud, and though Mulaghesh can’t see his face she can tell he’s mighty pissed.

  The saint holds one hand up in the air, and the sword, droning lowly, comes whirling back to his palm. Sigrud has just now managed to start running again, but he’s a slow-moving target in a wide, open space.

  Mulaghesh, panicked, tries to get a clear shot at the saint, but Sigrud’s between her and her target, blocking her shot.

  “Ah, shit,” she mutters. “Shit!”

  Saint Zhurgut raises his blade, spins around, and hurls the sword forward.

  Mulaghesh watches, horrified.

  The om echoes down the seawall road. The sword rises up, up, fifty feet off the ground, sixty feet off the ground, moving in a wide, graceful arc that will soon collide with Sigrud’s path.

  Sigrud stops, turns, and raises the Ponja gun.

  He is not, to say the least, following standard operating procedure with a Ponja: any weapon firing a .50-caliber round needs to be ground-mounted. As such, when he pulls the trigger, and the deep-throated boom! echoes down the seawall road, the recoil is so much that it knocks all two-hundred-and-some-odd pounds of him clear on his back, like he’s been hit with a truck.

  There’s a high-pitched ping! sound, and suddenly Saint Zhurgut’s sword begins wobbling erratically. The wobbling grows and grows, sending the blade off course, until it flutters into the road nearly half a block short of Sigrud, burying itself in the oystershell pavement.

  Her mouth opens. Did he just shoot that damned sword out of the air?

  Saint Zhurgut stares, outraged. Then he begins running down the road to Sigrud, hand outstretched.

  The om fills the air again. The sword wriggles in its spot in the pavement.

  Sigrud hobbles to his feet, clutching his side—Mulaghesh gets the feeling the Ponja broke a rib, at the very fucking least—then limps to the seawall and dives into the ocean.

  The sword extracts itself from the pavement and flies back to Zhurgut’s hand like it’s magnetized. Zhurgut turns to face the ocean, raising his sword, looking for Sigrud.

  Mulaghesh places the sights of her Ponja on Saint Zhurgut. She moves her finger to the trigger, takes a breath, and fires.

  The world seems to leap, like the streets around her are all sitting on a blanket and someone just picked up one end and shook it. She’s frankly not sure what’s worse: being behind the slate wall when it exploded, or firing this big fucking thing.

  But she’s granted a moment of satisfaction when she sees Saint Zhurgut stagger with the shot. I might have just broken my clavicle, she thinks, but at least I hit you, motherfucker.

  Saint Zhurgut wheels around furiously, looking for the source of the shot. He must have missed seeing her. Mulaghesh miserably realizes she’s going to have to shoot him again.

  She waits until he’s facing her, and then—wincing and holding her breath like someone about to jump off of a very tall diving board—pulls the trigger again.

  Once more, everything leaps. She groans as her body vocally insists she not do that again.

  Saint Zhurgut tumbles backward as the bullet hits him in the lower gut. Then he stares down the street at her, trembling with rage, and hurls his sword.

  But because it’s so dark, he can’t see that Mulaghesh has already stood and limped away, up the railway track to the watchtower. The sword crashes into a stack of crates on the other side of the track, but otherwise does no real damage at all.

  The sword makes it
s return journey, fluttering through the air, its grip smacking back into Saint Zhurgut’s open palm. He cocks his head, waiting—maybe for a scream, maybe for another shot—but it doesn’t come.

  Mulaghesh quietly, slowly climbs the watchtower.

  Zhurgut stalks down the street, sword at the ready, his blank gaze scanning back and forth, seeking out whoever might still have one of those damned guns. He moves so carefully, so slowly, that Mulaghesh can hardly bear it.

  He comes to the train tracks and looks them up and down. Perhaps he’s wondering what they are: he probably hasn’t ever seen something like this before. But he wouldn’t care, she realizes. This thing standing below her is a bottomless pit of rage and hunger, and all the world is his sustenance.

  He looks at the abandoned Ponja gun on the tracks. He peers at the smashed boxes beyond it. Then he takes one step forward, a second, and a third.

  He now has one foot over the first rail. Mulaghesh has to force herself to wait until he lifts his other foot and steps forward until he’s fully standing on the track.

  Then Mulaghesh, who has had the PK-512 trained on him for some time now, finally opens fire.

  ***

  When Mulaghesh had the PK-512 weapon system explained to her, detailing the firing, loading, and safety mechanisms however many years ago, she noticed how much the officer in charge of the demonstration kept talking about its mounting.

  “This is most certainly a fixed system,” he kept reiterating. “Most certainly. It’s possible for us to mount it on a tracked vehicle, and we’re researching that currently, but for now, it’s best to consider this a fixed system, because of the unusual mounting issues.”

  “What mounting issues?” Mulaghesh asked.

  “Well, General…This is a half-ton gun. So the weight of the weapon system itself—especially its barrel motor, fuel tank, and optimal ammunition feed—is extraordinary. We’re working to reduce that—engineering makes leaps all the time—but it’s not easy. But there’s also the issue of propulsion and recoil. The PK features state-of-the-art reduced recoil designs, but we’re still talking about six rotating barrels firing about 2,500 rounds a minute. That puts a lot of pressure on its mounting system. We tried one demonstration integrating what we believed to be a heavy enough vehicle to handle the sudden burst of force, but…Well. It started tipping over, and nearly crushed the gunner.” The officer scratched his chin. “In other words, think of this weapon system as an engine that essentially creates a column of lead in the air, moving at speeds up to two hundred feet per second. That should give you an idea of the physics of this weapon.”

  The instant Mulaghesh pulls the trigger on the PK-512, her understanding of the weapon’s physics grows immensely.

  The gun whines softly at first, the barrels rotating up to speed—she sees Saint Zhurgut look up at her, surprised—and then the “column of lead” the officer talked about comes into play.

  The barrels flare a bright, blinding white, the air is split with a deafening chatter, and Saint Zhurgut is slammed into the ground like he’s had a stack of bricks dropped on him, his body racked with what look like spasms as around fifty bullets strike him every second. But at the same time, the watchtower—which is mostly made out of wood—begins to creak and croak and drift back, like a reed bending in the wind, pushed by the sudden explosion of force from this weapon; which means that Mulaghesh has to raise the aim of the massive gun to keep it trained on the spiky bastard probably now wishing he’d stayed dormant.

  This setup, she realizes, has some serious mounting issues. The heat from the gun scorches the floor and rails of the watchtower, licking at the wood and turning it a deep black. Every second threatens to tear the whole watchtower apart.

  But Mulaghesh doesn’t care. She hears herself screaming, “Motherfucker! Motherfucker!”

  She keeps the massive gun trained on Saint Zhurgut, who is slowly, defiantly trying to stand. It’s like his own personal gravity has tripled. His body rattles and shakes and quivers, and she can see myriad dents appearing in his face, his shoulders, his thighs. Yet still he tries to stand.

  The train tracks around him are being shredded. The very ground under his feet turns to pulp. An enormous cloud of dust rises up as the PK-512 continues putting hundreds and hundreds of rounds into the skin of the earth, like it’s a pressurized water sprayer sawing through limestone. She’s aware of the rounds ricocheting off of Zhurgut’s Divine armor: a window shatters across the street, a hanging sign is flapping wildly, struck by countless stray rounds. Hot, smoking casings are raining down around her, the legs of the watchtower lost in a pile of broiling brass. The wooden rails of the tower are smoking and, in some places, even on fire. She feels like she’s dangling over the lip of a broiling volcano.

  But Mulaghesh still doesn’t care. She’s screaming, shrieking, howling as this terrific, beautiful, monstrous engine of destruction sings, its own low, guttural buzz the perfect countermeasure to Zhurgut’s serene om. For a moment Mulaghesh delights in this savage victory, and she wishes to scream, We’re better at this than you are! We figured war out in ways you stupid bastards never could!

  But she is very, very aware of Zhurgut’s right hand, which is slowly, slowly raising his sword.

  She swivels the stream of fire, very slightly, to focus on his sword hand. The PK is about as far from a surgical device as one could ever imagine, but she watches with dismay as even this doesn’t stop the sword’s slow ascent.

  She hears the sword begin to sing—a low, defiant note breaking through the rage of the PK-512’s buzz: a quiet om….

  There is a rumbling to Mulaghesh’s left. Zhurgut’s focus breaks, and he shifts his head…

  …and watches, helpless, as the eighty-ton supply locomotive comes thundering down the track toward him at top speed.

  She can tell he wants to leap out of the way. But Mulaghesh positions her never-ending column of lead so that he doesn’t have a chance, pinning him to the ground

  Mulaghesh howls in triumph. “Motherfucker! Motherfucker!”

  She halts the stream of fire as the locomotive slams into Zhurgut like he’s a toy soldier. She doesn’t even hear the sound of the impact.

  But that might be because the instant that the locomotive hits Zhurgut it suddenly derails, slowly tilting off the shredded, pulped train tracks around Saint Zhurgut and sliding across the muddy harbor yard with a terrific, deafening grinding and screeching. Somehow it manages to miss grazing the watchtower and instead goes sliding into a stack of steel beams and wire coils, which all tumble onto its roof and boiler with a tremendous clanging. Then the locomotive tilts to the left very slightly, threatening to tip over, but instead it hangs there, its right set of wheels suspended in the air, churning to an arrhythmic beat, like a half-squashed beetle pumping its legs, unaware it’s dead.

  Mulaghesh watches and realizes the destruction seems somewhat distant to her, and she slowly understands that she’s quite deaf from firing the PK-512.

  She lets out a breath. She has to force her hand to release the gun’s right handle, then undoes Signe’s brace holding her false hand to the left handle. She steps back from the weapon. Her whole body is shaking, vibrating, like she’s been put in a can and rattled by a giant, and her skin feels like it’s cracked and sizzling, furious from being exposed to so much heat.

  She tries to tell herself, “Stop. Stop. It’s over,” but she can’t find the voice for it.

  I’m in shock, she thinks. You know this. You’ve been here before.

  She looks at the locomotive, lying across the harbor yards like a beached whale. If Zhurgut had happened to stand just a little closer to the tower, and she’d damaged the rails here instead of there, it would have likely pounded through the supports of the watchtower as it derailed like a bullet through a matchstick—a close shave, in other words.

  She slowly climbs down the watchtower ladder, then wanders over to the wreckage. The locomotive’s firebox door has fallen open, and a handful of embers h
ave spilled across its metal floor. The whole contraption glows with a cheery yet hellish red light.

  She stops, twists her finger in one ear, and then listens. Despite the blaring “eeeee” in her ears, it doesn’t take her long at all to locate Saint Zhurgut—she just has to follow the sputtering om sound, which now sounds like it’s coming through a bad radio.

  He’s been cut in two, she sees, vivisected by one of the train’s wheels. His intestines have unspooled like rice noodles, and though his arm is obviously broken in several places, it’s still reaching for his giant sword, which lies on the ground several feet away.

  She cocks her head: the sword is still singing, murmuring, I am Her brightest blade. I am the distant star of war. I am conquest everlasting….

  “I sure wish you would shut the fuck up,” she says.

  There’s a splash of water from the shore. Sigrud staggers up, one arm folded in close to his chest. He limps over, and his mouth moves.

  “What?” shouts Mulaghesh.

  “Did we get him?” shouts Sigrud back.

  “Kind of,” says Mulaghesh. She points to the twitching body on the ground. “But that’s not Saint Zhurgut.” Her finger moves to the giant sword lying on the ground. “That’s Saint Zhurgut.”

  Sigrud frowns. She can’t hear him, but she can tell he says, “What?”

  “He said he was Voortya’s blade. I think he meant it both metaphorically and literally. His heart and soul and mind are bound up in that metal.”

  She takes off her coat, walks to the sword, and—pausing as she realizes this might kill her, as it was likely intended to—picks the sword up with it, making sure not one piece of metal touches her skin. To her relief, nothing happens, but the sword is terrifically, burningly cold. She sees the blade is cracked, the barest hairline running from its base to its point.

  She begins dragging the sword back toward the locomotive. “Come on. Help me get this big fucking thing up in the train. But don’t touch your skin to it. Use your coat or something.”

  The two of them lift the sword up into the locomotive door. It takes Sigrud a minute to find the right position, as he’s favoring his left side.