The Man of Bronze

by James Alan Gardner

  This time when he charged, I didn’t bother shooting. Treading water, I holstered my pistol and drew my commando knife from its belt sheath. It was a knife very much like the Kaybar I’d taken from the mercenaries in Warsaw. I had no idea if it could penetrate the eel priest’s hide any better than bullets, but it was worth a try. If that didn’t work, I still held the bronze leg in my other hand; maybe I could ram the chunk of metal down the eel’s throat and choke it to death. (Except, of course, that eels breathe through gills, not windpipes. I put that out of my mind as the priest bore down on me.)

  Once again, the monster reared over my head before making its darting strike. Apparently, the priest preferred show over subtlety—an occupational weakness. At the instant he started his downward attack, I surged forward through the water, not trying to get away but moving in close: so close he’d have to bend double to reach me. He wasn’t quite flexible enough . . . and a moment later, I’d wrapped my arms around his eely body, well below the human portion of his anatomy.

  I’ve ridden angry mustangs; I’ve ridden rodeo bulls; I’ve ridden maddened buffalos, panicked giraffes, and elephants in heat. But imagine something stronger than any three of those animals . . . then remember an eel is slippery with slime and able to dive underwater.

  I pretty much had my work cut out for me.

  At least I had a solid grip—not just my arms but my legs circling the priest’s slippery self. My nose was pressed tight to the monster’s skin; it stank of rotten mackerel, like Billingsgate fish market on a hot day in summer. Euu. I’d be doing the world a favor by sending this freak to his final reward.

  But my knife wasn’t up to the task. I tried; I tried with all my strength. Hugging the eel with one arm, I stabbed as hard as I could at the greasy yellow flesh. The blade skittered off, not gouging the slightest furrow. I made several more attempts—fast jabs, slow thrusts; the knife’s tip, then its edge—but the eel had a hide like an M1 tank. No chance of gutting this fish unless I found a more vulnerable part of its anatomy: perhaps its human abdomen or its wicked tooth-filled head. If I slipped the blade through its gill slits . . . but before I could test that approach, I had to get within striking distance.

  No sooner did I start to climb the eel’s body than the monster plunged underwater. It submerged fast and hard, blue fingerling eels glittering in a blur past my eyes. I had no choice but to give up my grip: the priest thing had gills and could stay down indefinitely; I had lungs and couldn’t. Letting go near the surface was better than ending up hundreds of feet below, clinging to a monster I couldn’t hurt and wondering where my next breath would come from. Still, I hesitated a fraction too long. By the time I pushed away from the priest, we’d descended far enough to get past the school of glimmerlings . . . into the dark beneath the smaller eels, where the priest had more freedom of movement.

  He turned the instant I released him: his long body snaking around, a shadowy sinuous form I could barely make out by the dim light glowing above. One look at his speed told me I’d never make it back to the surface in time—he could swim far faster than any mere human. Instead of trying to get away, I jackknifed down to meet him. New strategy: jam the bronze leg between his teeth so he couldn’t bite me, then hack away with the knife ad lib.

  I almost didn’t make it. The water slowed me so much, I nearly didn’t get the bronze leg between me and the eel’s snapping jaws. I’d pictured putting the leg right across the monster’s mouth, like a bit between a horse’s teeth; as it was, I only got an inch of bronze into place on one side of the gaping maw before the teeth chomped down.

  Urban folklore says that when people with metal fillings bite tinfoil, you can sometimes see sparks. My mutant priest had no fancy dental work, but the flash of light when his teeth snapped the bronze was brighter than a swimsuit photo shoot. I floated there blinded, brazen afterimages dancing on my retinas. When my vision cleared, I was still nose to nose with the eel priest . . .

  . . . but he wasn’t quite so eel-like as before. His moray head had shifted back to something semihuman. The jaw was shorter, the eyes larger, the gills a little like ears.

  Which seemed like a positive development. And since the priest was no longer munching on the bronze leg—he’d let go in shock at the blazing flash—I cocked back my arm and swung the leg to whack him right between the eyes.

  Another burst of light: bronze in color. The monster changed again in the direction of Homo sapiens. His long yellowed tail shriveled to half its length. His snout became a nose. His conical hat fit better.

  This is brilliant, I thought. The bronze giveth and the bronze taketh away.

  So I cudgeled him with the leg, clubbing at any target within reach. A dozen blows later, my opponent was reduced to his original self: a blubbery man, naked except for a fancy hat, unmoving in the water. I couldn’t tell if he was dead—possibly dead for twenty centuries—or just passed out from the shock of restoration. Either way, I took pity on the poor sod and dragged him behind me as I swam to the surface.

  Turns out I didn’t save the priest’s life, even if he still had life in him. A split second after we reached open air, something went crack from the direction of the trireme. The back of the priest’s skull splattered across the water, courtesy of a high-velocity bullet. I plunged back under the ocean before something similar happened to me. Either the chaps from Unauthorized Intervention were getting gun happy or Lancaster Urdmann had arrived.

  And if Urdmann could shoot at me from the trireme, that was bad news indeed. It meant Lord Horatio et al. had been taken out of the picture while I was fighting monsters. I didn’t know how Urdmann and his thugs for hire could defeat a crack commando team, but that didn’t matter. My companions were either dead or taken hostage, and I could guess what Urdmann wanted as ransom.

  I looked at the bronze leg and thought, If you’ve got any mojo to spare, now would be a good time to toss me a miracle. Remember, I’m on your side. I’m trying to get you back to your bronze daddy. Which wasn’t entirely true, since I still had my doubts about putting Humpty Dumpty together again; but at least there was a chance I might help, whereas Lancaster Urdmann was definitely a lost cause. He’ll put you on display, I told the leg, between a stolen Rembrandt painting and the head of an illegally poached elephant. Wouldn’t you prefer to avoid that? So why not whip up some magic or highfalutin nanotech or whatever it is you do?

  No response. The leg remained inert. All right, I mentally grumbled, make me do all the work.

  Scowling at the leg’s obstinacy, I swam toward the trireme.

  I surfaced under the galley’s prow, hidden from the deck by the curve of the hull. The first thing I heard was Urdmann: “Lara, dear, I apologize for my man’s shooting at you. He’ll be punished, of course. It was inexcusable.”

  Because, I thought, if the man had killed me, the leg and I would sink to the bottom of the Atlantic. But I didn’t say that aloud. I just tried to gauge Urdmann’s position by the sound of his voice. He gave me plenty to work with. For another full minute, he kept calling—things like, “Lara, Lara, can’t we discuss this like civilized people?” It was almost enough to goad me into an angry retort . . . but I held my temper and my silence. At last, Urdmann said, “All right, Lara, dear, by now I’m sure you’ve surfaced somewhere and are hiding close enough to hear me. Let’s get down to brass tacks. You’ve got something I want; I’ve got something you want.” He paused. “Say something, Lord Horatio.”

  Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a sudden groan: Lord H. in pain.

  “Your friend is alive,” Urdmann said. “And I have no desire to kill him. All I want is the bronze.”

  Oh, please, I thought. This standoff was bad enough; why make it worse reciting movie clichés? I promised myself then and there, if I ever found myself on the other side of a give-me-the-MacGuffin-or-the-old-guy-gets-it routine, I’d come up with sparkling new dialogue.

  As it was, however, I was stuck in my usual role: holding the treasure while s
omebody else held the gun. My bargaining position ranked somewhere between wretched and nonexistent. I had the passing thought, Wouldn’t it be fun to see the look on Urdmann’s face if I told him to get stuffed, then just ran off with the leg? But that wasn’t an option. Neither was bargaining in good faith—Urdmann had no good faith in him.

  So it was time once more for a new strategy.

  First: reconnaissance.

  With the bronze leg zipped into my backpack, I silently climbed up the trireme. The bulkhead had plenty of handholds—the boards were warped, with ample space between them for my fingers and toes. Given the many unseaworthy gaps, the galley couldn’t possibly be staying afloat naturally. Only the bronze leg’s preserving influence kept the ship on the surface.

  The three-tiered area where the rowers once sat was empty, so I continued up to the flat roof over their heads. Soon I was perched just below the top edge; I lifted my head to survey the situation.

  Urdmann wasn’t immediately visible. Eight of his thugs were. Four had surrounded Lord Horatio. He was still alive and sitting up, blood streaks on his face. His men lay scattered around the roof deck. None was moving. I doubted they’d be left unguarded if they’d had any drop of life in them. All those good men gone—I cursed Urdmann under my breath.

  The four remaining thugs stood beside the hatch where I’d first gone below. Urdmann was likely down in the hold . . . which was just as well. If he’d been anywhere in sight, I might have lost control and pumped a few bullets into his face, thereby endangering Lord Horatio. As it was, I had a less emotional decision to make: Could I dispatch eight mercenaries fast enough to make sure none shot Lord H. first? It was a ticklish question, especially considering that my pistols and ammo were soaked from a considerable time underwater. Misfires were a definite possibility.

  Tough call. As I deliberated, the trireme rolled on the waves. Perhaps it was just a fluke of the sea or perhaps the bronze leg grudgingly expended a pinch of energy on my behalf . . . but at that moment, the galley was lifted by a particularly powerful swell. As the deck tilted, the body of one of the dead commandos slid a few feet my way—dragging with him the OICW still strapped around his neck.

  Okay, I thought. I can work with that.

  The movement of the ship wasn’t cooperative enough to bring the OICW right to me. I’d have to cross a short distance without being noticed before I got my hands on the gun. After that . . . a burst round over the poop deck would go off like a grenade, giving the four men back there something to occupy their minds. Preferably bits of shrapnel.

  I couldn’t do the same with the mercs around Lord H.—not without fragging his lordship, too—but the OICW was also an assault rifle that could fire quite a few rounds in the time the thugs took to recover from surprise. I gambled that my enemies’ first instinct would be to turn their Uzis on me rather than Lord Horatio. They’d find me a difficult target: much more so than a wounded man sitting in the open at point-blank range. If I was lucky they’d never think to put a gun to his lordship’s head. The first thug who tried would be the next to fall.

  But before that could happen, I had to reach the OICW. Once I did, I had to disentangle the gun from its previous owner, wrestle it into firing position, and sight up the burst shell targeting computer before any of the bad guys spotted me.

  Nothing to it.

  “Lara!” Urdmann called from the hold. I nearly jumped out of my skin, thinking I’d been seen . . . but it was just another round of taunting. “I’m running out of patience, Lara. We really have to talk. Or perhaps you want me to carve souvenirs off your friend? Maybe an ear or a finger? What do you think, Lara?”

  I thought he was a gasbag who loved his own voice. But Urdmann’s blather distracted his men, who seemed to be listening to their boss rather than watching for me. Even better, torturing Lord Horatio seemed to capture the mercs’ fancy. Two of them slung back their Uzis and rummaged in their pockets, presumably searching for implements of torture. By then, I was already belly crawling across the deck, hoping I blended into the night’s shadows.

  “Lara!” Urdmann crooned, “I know you’re out there.” My arms sprouted gooseflesh with the foolish dread that he could see me . . . but, no. The thugs didn’t notice me either. I reached the OICW without being ripped apart by bullets. My knife cut the strap that attached the gun to the fallen man. Carefully, I raised the weapon and put my eye to the scope.

  Have I mentioned I’d never actually fired an OICW? I’ve explained that the guns were prototypes—not the sort of weapon I could buy in a Surrey hunt shop. When I first came aboard Unauthorized Intervention in Bermuda, Lord Horatio had talked me through the OICW’s features . . . but it seemed like bad manners to fire any rounds while we were still in Castle Harbour. Later, at sea, I had other things on my mind—like catching up on sleep before we reached the haunted flotilla. So I knew, in theory, how to work the laser sights, the targeting computer, the range finder, the safety release, the fire-mode selector, the electro-optical day-night viewer with patented blah, blah, blah . . .

  Oh, to heck with it. I aimed and pulled the trigger.

  A 20-mm round has a wicked recoil and a bang like the birth of a universe. Microseconds later, the burst shell exploded acceptably close to the poop deck: an air detonation three feet above the mercenaries’ heads. Don’t ask me what the shell was made of—steel, lead, Teflon, who knew?—but the hail of fragments lacerated the men beneath with the efficiency of an abattoir. I couldn’t tell if the shrapnel barrage got as far as Urdmann in the hold, nor did I have time to brood about it. The four thugs standing around Lord H. were out of the burster’s blast radius. They needed to be put down fast before anything regrettable happened.

  OICWs can’t fire full auto: just single bullets or two-round bursts. I switched to assault-rifle mode, thumbed the switch for two at a time, and blasted away. The first two shots disappeared who knows where as I tried to get a feel for the weapon—how much it kicked, how high it climbed between shots, how hard I had to squeeze my trigger finger. I was lying stomach down on the deck, which gave me decent stability against recoil . . . but the ship was still rolling on the waves, which didn’t help my aim.

  Even so, I took out two of my four remaining targets before they could react. Head shots were the only sensible choice; the men would be wearing Kevlar or some other type of armor, so bullets to the body were a waste. I was trying to draw a bead on the third man when he threw himself down and rolled. I fired a burst anyway but missed him. Then I was rolling myself, spinning away from my previous position just before a flurry of Uzi rounds chewed up the deck where I’d been.

  The corpse from whom I’d taken the OICW wasn’t so lucky. He got caught several times by the Uzi, his body jerking under each impact. Ghoulish though it was, I benefited from the dead man’s flopping—the motion was enough to catch the fourth merc’s eye, and he fired at the flailing corpse rather than me. I pulled my trigger to gun down the thug while he was still shooting the cadaver . . .

  . . . and that’s when I learned I was out of bullets.

  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is the risk you run in borrowing another person’s firearm. When I took the OICW from the dead man, I didn’t know how many rounds he’d already used, blasting haunts, giant eels, and Urdmann’s rent-a-goons. Too many, as it turned out. Moreover, I had no replacement clips for a lightning-quick reload; any spare ammo was back with the corpse, and I’d put a lot of distance between him and me. In a perfect world, my evasive moves across the deck would have brought me, by sheer coincidence, within easy reach of another dead commando and another OICW . . . but in this vale of tears, dice crap out, roulette wheels come up double zero, and you can never draw to an inside straight when you need it. All I could do was continue my desperate roll as Uzi muzzles swiveled toward me. If the trireme had been a few feet wider, I’d be telling this story by Ouija board.

  Fortunately, the Carthaginians hadn’t opted for spacious sailing. Before the last two mercs coul
d fire, I reached the edge of the deck and rolled over the side. Bullets sizzled through the dark . . . possibly killing some very surprised eels in the waters below, but missing me completely. Me, I just clung by my fingertips, dangling above the drop—a position that I seem to end up in with astonishing regularity.

  Good thing I’ve trained extensively to handle such situations. I let go with my right hand and drew one of my regular pistols from its hip holster. With a one-armed chin-up, I lifted my head and shoulders back to deck level.

  The good news is that despite so much time underwater, my pistol discharged its first bullet perfectly. One shot fired, one mercenary down: removed from the fight with an extreme headache.

  The bad news is that the fool pistol jammed when I tried to shoot the final thug; and however skilled I might be at dangling maneuvers, unjamming a waterlogged gun at rapid speed while hanging off the edge of an ancient galley is a titch beyond my limitations. In another second, the last man would have shot me . . . but he didn’t have that crucial second.

  Whomp! A fist to the jaw. Thud! Another to the stomach. Crack! A knee to the face when the merc bent over from the gut punch.

  The gunman dropped and Lord Horatio turned to me, dusting off his knuckles. “Got him, my dear,” Lord H. said with a smile on his bloodied face. Then he collapsed in a heap, passed out from the effort.

  I was heaving myself back onto the deck when a figure emerged from the hold. It had to be Urdmann—the tiny hold was scarcely big enough to hold his porcine body and anyone else—but the villain was now encased in silver.