“Which is?” asks Sigrud.
Mulaghesh looks at Signe. “You know how to operate that train of yours?”
“The supply train?” asks Signe. “Yes, of course.”
“Good.” Then she looks at Sigrud. “And you—are all your limbs in working order?”
“More or less.”
“And you think you can use one of these?” She lifts one of the Ponjas, which is like a small cannon.
Sigrud shrugs. “I received training on a prototype, long ago.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“It’s a maybe.”
“Maybe will have to do. This isn’t Bulikov, Sigrud—I don’t think you can get inside Zhurgut’s gut and carve your way out of him, not this time.” She takes a deep, deep breath. I hope this sounds smarter when I say it, she thinks. Because it sounds damned dumb when I think it. Then she begins speaking and drawing out her plan in the mud at her feet.
* * *
—
Mulaghesh and Signe sprint northwest toward the SDC loading yards, where the supply train runs. Signe hauls Captain Sakthi’s radio box, and Mulaghesh has thrown a Ponja over her shoulder. They’re not going as fast as Mulaghesh would prefer, because for some damned reason Signe insisted on taking along the damned briefcase she brought to Mulaghesh’s room earlier that night.
Mulaghesh tries to ignore how much her feet and arms and back hurt. You’re getting old, girl, she says to herself. You can’t put yourself through a fight like this anymore.
“This,” says Signe, panting, “is maybe one of…of the worst plans I’ve ever…I’ve ever heard of!”
“Just do your part,” says Mulaghesh, “and we’ll see how it goes.”
“But…But the timing of it! The sightlines, the…well, the everything!”
“You spoke your piece back there,” says Mulaghesh, vaulting over a short wall. “Don’t waste your precious breath saying it again now.”
Finally the supply track appears ahead, along with the watchtower. The spotlight in it is dark, the huge PK-512 beside it crouched and silent. Electric lights run along the track, white and buzzing, giving the area a strangely spectral, antiseptic feeling. The two of them slow to a stop before the track, their breath whistling and chests crackling.
Signe sets the radio box down with a thump. “The train’s stationed up ahead,” she says, pointing uphill.
Mulaghesh looks up at the watchtower standing over the train track. “How long will it take you to fire up the train?”
“I’ll make it work,” says Signe.
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“I’ll make it work!”
“You’d better. Because you have to.” Mulaghesh looks back at the city. Saint Zhurgut stands on his perch, continuing his one-man assault on the entire city. Somewhere, Mulaghesh knows, Captain Sakthi and the other Saypuri troops are escorting all the civilians they can find back up to the fortress.
“There’s something else,” says Signe, setting down her briefcase and opening it.
“What?” snaps Mulaghesh. “What now?”
“I figure now’s the time to give you this….Mostly because I’m not sure if I’ll get another chance.” She turns the case around.
Inside the case is one of the most intricate creations Mulaghesh has ever seen: a gleaming steel hand, with jointed fingers and a flexible wrist, and some sort of small lock set in the center of the palm. It’s a false hand, but it’s leagues better than the one she’s using now.
“Wh-Where did you get this?” asks Mulaghesh.
“I made it. I have been observing the way you’ve been trying to compensate. That thing you’re using now is an ornamental piece of shit.” She lifts the hand out of its case. “Adjustable digits that you can lock into any position. Same goes for the wrist. And there is a latch in the center of the palm. Here’s its mate.” She takes a small steel ring out of the case. It has a clasp at the top, and at the bottom is what must be the male end of the latch. “You can slide this down a rifle barrel and tighten it on. Then you can lock it to the false hand. It won’t be as good as a normal hand supporting it, but it’ll be better than what you’re using.”
Mulaghesh stares at it, astonished and confused. “I…Um.”
“I think the words you’re looking for,” says Signe, “are thank you. And also it will make you a better shot, which will be very handy in the next five minutes. Take your shirt off.”
“What?”
“Take your shirt off! You obviously have that awful prosthetic strapped to your back using some kind of horrible rig. Get it off!”
Mulaghesh reluctantly obliges. Signe takes out a small knife, slices through the many straps, and rips the whole thing off her torso. Then she tsks. “It’s been beating you to pieces. I’m surprised you can bear it. Here.” She applies her new prosthetic to Mulaghesh’s arm, does a total of five clasps, and then stands back to admire her work. “There. Much simpler. Much sleeker. And it shouldn’t bruise you quite so badly.”
Mulaghesh looks at the prosthetic, then prods it with her free hand. It’s light but firm. She adjusts some of the fingers. “Damn, girl. You’re a fucking genius.”
Signe blows a thread of hair out of her face. “I know. I hope I survive to keep being one.”
“You listen. The second that train starts moving, you run, okay?”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” she says. “You just get out of the city, as fast as you can. And don’t look back. Now go. Get her started. You know what to do.”
Signe gives her a hesitant look, then starts backing away. “It was nice knowing you, General.”
“Likewise.” She watches Signe leave, then stands below the watchtower and pulls out her spyglass. It takes her a moment to find Saint Zhurgut—but he’s still there, of course, straddling the roof of the house like a monstrous rooster crowing at the dawn. She glasses slightly to the right and spies Sergeant Burdar getting into position in the window of a small, leaning cottage about two hundred yards beyond the saint.
Mulaghesh nods, checks her Ponja gun, and confirms it’s ready. She drags the radio box until it sits below the watchtower. Then she pulls out her carousel, draws a bead on one of the electric lights, and fires.
There’s a pop! and the light dies. Mulaghesh does the same for the remaining lights until the whole area is cloaked in darkness. She trots down the track about fifty yards and starts setting up the Ponja gun, unfolding its bipod. From this angle she has an excellent view down the seawall road running alongside the bay, but she has few other sightlines. Saint Zhurgut is perched atop a roof about two hundred yards north of the seawall road, so she can see him but nothing below him.
She runs back to the watchtower, where it’s dark. She faces the city, pulls out her lighter, holds it aloft, and flicks it on and off three times.
She puts the spyglass to her eye and sees Sergeant Burdar peering through a spyglass of his own at her. He takes out his own lighter, flicks it on, and kills it.
Mulaghesh’s breath is shaking now, but it has nothing to do with the run. Rather, she knows that if she doesn’t call up to the fortress in thirty minutes and tell them that Zhurgut’s been put down, those cannons up there are going to open fire and decimate the city—regardless of whether or not anyone in it happens to be alive.
Mulaghesh whispers, “Showtime.”
* * *
—
She watches as Burdar slowly draws a bead on Saint Zhurgut. She can’t see it, but she imagines the sweat running down his temple, the feel of his hand on the grip, his finger resting along the stock above the trigger.
The wind rises, falls.
The om fills the air, a low, dreadful howl as the blade returns from another lethal tour across the city.
Saint Zhurgut plucks his whirling sword out of the air
once more and swivels on his perch, his face craning about as he finds a new target. Then he rears up, his massive shoulders twisting, and hurls the blade forward again.
She watches as the metal abomination dips forward on one foot like a dancer, putting his whole shoulder and body into the throw.
I sure hope Sigrud saw that.
The sword buzzes out over the city. Mulaghesh hears echoes of eruptions and screams. Saint Zhurgut stands back up, tall and straight, every inch the proud soldier, and holds his hand out, waiting for his sword to return like a faithful hound.
He stands still for one second. Which is when Sergeant Burdar fires.
The retort of the Ponja gun is a low, deep boom.
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 wheel
s 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 its 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.
The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside Page 79
