by Lee Bond
One solid … beam … was crawling up his chest, angling for his face, and Garth knew, just knew that if he could look in a mirror, his once white-hot eye would now be a glittering, dark orb, dark as the Kingsblood he’d been force-fed.
Those who caught sight of the look in Garth’s eyes took an involuntary step back. This was something they’d never seen of or heard of before. Why, the man’s whole eye looked as though it’d just been flat-out eaten by Kingsblood!
Jimmy quirked a brow at Fishy-Fish’s eye but said nothing. The Vicious Elixir did many things to a man. Just because they’d never seen this before didn’t mean it had never happened. Besides, there were other things to worry about; anger and betrayal were coming off their blacksmith in waves that even the most non-Ironed man or woman could sense.
Oh, their Fishy-Fish had himself a past, oh yes he did, but now he were enslaved like they all was, that past didn’t matter anymore. Jimmy took a step forward, readying himself to knock their fish out so the rest of them could get to the matter of beating as many people unconscious as possible.
“I…” Garth growled low, fizzing dark thoughts coursing through him as the Eye tried assimilating the bleak power of the King’s secret nanotech before it was too late, “I don’t have one or two implants, Nicked Jimmy. I am a fucking implant. Every atom, every blood cell. Every bone, every vein. Every … single … bit … of me.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” Jimmy quipped, “there won’t be much left of you, hey?” A simple rap on the forehead with a fist hard as iron and their Fishy-Fish blacksmith would down for the count. Nicked Jimmy struck with the speed and skill of someone who’d grown accustomed to hard violence in a hard world.
Garth snatched Jimmy’s fist out of the air and held it in place. His eyes widened as filigrees of Dark Iron began pushing through the skin, sick neon ebony grooves and curls that matched the beating of his heart. The inky stuff swirled and swam, eager to match King’s adherence to format by forming weird cogs, wheels and other odd contraptions. “Oh I bet you’ve never seen this before, Nicked Jimmy. Dark Iron nanotechnology going toe to toe with the most advanced extra-dimensional hybridized tech known anywhere in the Universe. Reckon you never seen anything like before in your life, and you never will again.”
“Know what, Fishy-Fish?” Nicked Jimmy sucked at a tooth and focused on a spot over the man’s right shoulder. Between the glittering black eight ball of an eye their fish had to the way he was just holding a gearheaded veteran’s hand in place like it was no big thing had Jimmy all sorts of worried. For the first time in a long time, he were that short, fat accountant that’d gotten himself tossed through the Geared Doors.
And Nicked Jimmy did not like that feeling at all.
“What’s that?” Garth whispered. Oh, the old him was coming on strong! Let loose on a volcanic tide of foul nanotech … God help them all.
“You’re not worth the fuckin’ effort, mate.” Jimmy unslung his weighted knobkerrie as he did every time this situation arose, clouting Garth right alongside the head with titanic strength.
The assembled hordes watched Fishy-Fish the Blacksmith drop Nicked Jimmy’s fist, clapping both hands to the side of his head and howling in agony. Jimmy stepped back a few paces, nodded as he gave the old knobkerrie a few practice swings. About him on all sides, gearheads and wardogs were all but cheering as he swung that skullcrusher straight into the groaning blacksmith a second time with enough ferocity to send him sailing through the air.
Clattering crashes followed by a muffled thump a few seconds later reached all their ears. Jimmy nodded in satisfaction. Fish’s head hadn’t been crushed in by the blow, so unless he had himself a glass chest, the disrespectful and stupid man weren’t completely dead. Up there on the second or third floor of the Kingspawn Pub as he was, Fishy-Fish was being given a rare opportunity; his first chance at a new life had been given to him by another man, not a Big King. Far less traumatic and infinitely less demanding of resources.
Why, Jimmy thought almost resentfully, it were nearly unfair. Their new fish –if he survived, which was possible, given the amount of Dark Iron in the old red stuff there for a newcomer- would come out of the situation better than most.
“Now.” Jimmy swung his knobkerrie around his head in slow, languid motions, enjoying the thrum-thrum-thrum sound it made as it passed through the air. He made eye contact with Mistar Chang, the wonky-eyed EuroJap who’d somehow done a King’s Son wrong nearly a hundred years ago. He licked his lips with all the perversion he could muster at Sally Ahoy, the blonde-haired doxy who’d come up from the South eleven years ago and he just shook his head at All-Points Eric, who’d only been in the Big King game for two years.
This were going to be well fun.
“Now,” Nicked Jimmy repeated, “let’s get this over with.”
The teams swarmed at each other, howling for blood and eyeing the prize; three and a half glass and brass containers of the blackest delicious elixir you could ever hope to latch onto.
***
Dave rose unsteadily to his feet, eyes held tight, dreading the moment he officially saw what he already knew was happening; he’d lain on the floor of his wonderful bar, intentionally ignoring the agonized shrieking, the pleading worry in the fish’s voice, all of it. The bartender regretted both his curiosity and his inaction now, so he did, so he did, but there were nothing for it now.
A quarter-gallon! How the fool had last long as he had with all that in him, only to be standing upright as he were… it were a mind-boggling mystery for the bloody ages!
Like as not, it were going to remain a mystery, too; it were hard to dismiss the sound of Jimmy beaning that poor old fish senseless, aye, which meant that it were likely the old gearhead had bonked Nickels right in the old head. Still, Dave reckoned, had Nickels the Fish been capable of coherent thought –a damned impossibility, with all the crude in him- he would’ve thanked Jimmy for the head-squashing as opposed to what he’d become if he’d survived.
Well, anything to do with Nickels was all done and over with, and now the ruckus thumping back and forth across his bar was nowt but a regular old fight, as Dave had expected he’d be dealing with before night’s end. There was nothing for it but to sit tight, mind his manners, and once everyone was tired of brawling, well, he’d set to fixing Kingspawn right back up again and no one would be the wiser.
Dave, eyes still shut, flinched when an entire row of glassware off to his left exploded, raining him in shards of glass.
The glass, now, the glassware … that didn’t grow back. He had to trade beer and the occasional cask or two of whiskey he brewed when Kingkilling season was slow and he had the time with a blower from the east.
Dave opened his eyes and watched the mayhem for a few seconds. Nicked Jimmy –as expected- was in the center of the maelstrom, laying about with that goddamn metal skullcrusher of his, bashing in heads and cracking arms and legs like twigs. Others of his crew were in the process of scampering up the support beams to the second and third floors of the pub, clinging onto their Dark Iron canisters with one hand, the ceiling with the other, shouting encouragement and deployment strategies.
The injured crawled or limped their way out of the center of the conflict, aided by their own support staff of launchers, lookers and lobbers; geared for long-range combat, those skilled with guns and other means of large devastation were all but useless in this kind of situation. Jimmy ran crews that were melee-heavy, so even though his group was outnumbered, everybody else was outclassed.
Jimmy scooped a fool’s legs out from underneath her with a vicious swing from his club, swinging it again quickly as she fell to the ground, catching the poor girl right in the stomach. All the air and a substantial amount of blood escaped her as she went for a quick trip across the pub’s floor.
“Right.” Dave the Bartender muttered firmly. Just like that, his mood had changed. Jimmy were a blight on everything this side of the wall leading in, and it were high time them Gearmen
–who always claimed they were out to look after what remained of the citizenry- got involved in putting the rabid gearhead down. “I’ve had about enough of this.”
Dave thumbed the brass button. A faint electric shiver passed through his finger and up his elbow.
The Gearmen were on the way, Lord help them all. The Gearmen would come splash Jimmy up and that would be that. Kingspawn Pub would get the chance it’d deserved with a rotten old bastard like Nicked Jimmy off the streets.
Dave poured himself a pitcher of beer, grabbed an unbroken glass, and sank down behind the counter. Soon enough, it was all going to be over. Naturally, explanations would be given, both as to how they’d been called out so far, and why. Beer would help with that. If that didn’t work?
Under the right circumstances, Dave reckoned he could still be quite persuasive.
***
Way up on the third floor, Ferd listened to the sounds of the fight down below and grumped. He really wanted to be down there alongside Nicked Jimmy and Staunch Mel, kicking and punching and biting his way through those other crews, but Ferd also knew what Jimmy wanted; their looker, him who was smart and crafty, wanted their Vicious Elixir kept well safe. So he, and three of the biggest crushers, were holding onto a canister apiece. There was him, Hammering Hank, Gorgeous George the Midget and Ed. Two crushers to each of the floors above the bar where all the fun was happening, each on opposite sides of that floor.
Best tactics, that. That way, when –not if- other crushers from other crews came up the beams or the stairs, no one got in anyone else’s way.
Ferd waved to Hank, who was busy swinging his hammer back and forth with long, slow motions. Hank gave him the finger, so Ferd stuck his black tongue out at him, then looked over the top balcony to get a good look at what was going on down below.
Typical stuff. Jimmy down in the center because though he was a looker, Jimmy’d done just about every job in the book, at least, that’s the stories you heard. Mel, who’d fallen in quick with Jimmy, was darting in and out with her sticker, slicing guts open or giving people a second smile. Around those two was a sea of heads, eyes hot and hungry for the Vicious Elixir they were fighting for.
Ferd wanted to be down there, right enough, but if he were patient, the fight would come to him. Even now, the rest of Jimmy’s crew was being whittled down to size. A few lucky blows here and there had taken some of their hand-to-hand boys and girls out of the game early on. Ferd shrugged his massive shoulders as he turned away from the balcony.
His eyes fell on the unconscious form of the blacksmith. Their newest member had been knocked all the way up to the third floor by Jimmy’s mighty swing, and was slumbering nicely underneath a collapsed table.
Ferd looked over at Hank, who was still busy limbering up for any confrontation that came his way. Grinning, Ferd worked his way over to where the fishy-fish lay. He stood there for a second or two, tilting his head this way and that, working through the process. He nodded to himself rapid-fire.
Stupid Ferd lay his canister down gently behind him, running one scarred hand lovingly across the hot glass for good measure. Then he reached out and lifted the heavy wooden table off the blacksmith.
Jimmy’d done for the blacksmith really well, he had. One whole side of the fella’s skull was dented in, and the bastard had done some bleeding internally if the rouge all spilled down his chin and neck was any indication. The giant gearhead hardly remembered anything at all of his first death. All that had gone away with the brain implant. All he did remember was that he’d dreamed of nothing but darkness and the grinding of the gears that everyone talked about when it were real late at night and they wanted to give themselves a proper fright.
Ferd shivered. The grinding of the gears. The thumping of the cogs. The thunder of the black.
Fishy-Fish the Blacksmith’s eyes snapped open. Caught mid-thought with a brain full of secret fear, Ferd bellowed in terror and jumped back to the balcony’s railings. “Huh?”
No one came back that fast, not for their first time, and not with those injuries. Not even with all that Kingsblood Jimmy’d squandered, which –now he had time to think on it- would likely cause friction between the looker and them as thought he’d taken more than his fair share.
“The problem,” Garth said as he rose smoothly to his feet, “the problem, Stupid Ferd, with Jimmy’s decision to hook me on this Dark Iron, is that he thinks he’s better than I am. That he’s better than anyone. Why? Because he’s killed his fair share of Big Kings? I’ve done better.”
Ferd nodded. Fish’s one funny eye was the color of midnight. From where he stood, holding onto the wood banister like it was a lifeline, Ferd was nearly convinced he could see spinning gears amidst the black, fibrous weave of that weird orb. “Sure you have, squire, we all knew that.”
Garth held his arms up into the light so he could get a better look. The pulsing black and very ornate mesh running all over his skin glistened in the bright light of the pub. There wasn’t time and he didn’t have the inclination right then to worry over-much about the implications behind the change. Not right then.
Right then, it was time to teach someone an object lesson.
“I don’t think you understand. When I say,” he twisted his arms back and forth, clenched his hands open and close, “when I say I’ve ‘done better’, Stupid Ferd, what I mean is ‘I’ve done worse, and so very much worse that Jimmy should’ve killed me when he had the chance’.”
Ferd licked his lips nervously and tried to keep from laughing in utter, utter terror. He’d been a gearhead for what, fifteen years, he’d been up and down the outer ring at least twice in that time. He was just smart enough to know that he wasn’t very smart any longer and knew also that sometimes the things he thought he saw weren’t really there, but there was one thing he’d stake his life on.
He’d never seen the Dark Iron do this to anyone. Nor had anyone else. People talked to Ferd because he was dumb as a stump, they told him things they didn’t tell anyone else because Ferd was only good at crushing, thumping and keeping secrets. If any one of the people he’d killed Kings with had ever seen the Dark Iron turn into spinning, clicking and clacking tattoos up and down a man’s arms, they would’ve said, because that was something … awesome.
Garth caught the worried look on Ferd’s face and flexed his muscles. The Dark Iron under his skin stretched and spun in weird, almost fractal patterns before resettling. “Your … Kingsblood … can’t find purchase deeper in, Ferd. That’s the good news for me. The bad news is, it’s a fucking nanotech plague and it’s burrowing in through the one weak spot.”
Ferd raised his hands and nodded slowly. “Your … your eye.” Hammering Hank had finally seen what was going on the other end of the third floor and was coming up behind the blacksmith as stealthily as anyone he’d ever seen.
Garth tapped his eye. Unsurprisingly, it was rock solid. “My eye. Supposed to be an outlet for the operating system running the atomic-level enhancements I’m full of, which is … which is … reminding me of who I used to be. And that’s the other bad news.”
“What’s that, blacksmith?” Ferd couldn’t keep the grin from splitting his big, stupid face wide. Hammering Hank was within striking range with that big old hammer of his. True to his name, Hank raised the three foot sledgehammer high above his head and took aim for the blacksmith’s head.
Garth caught the hammer one handed and wrenched it loose from Hank’s grasp with a blurring twist that elicited a squawk of surprise from the much larger man. Before either Ferd or Hank could react beyond surprise, Garth spun the hammer around until he was holding it properly. Then, because he was struggling to maintain sanity and losing every step of the way, he caved Hammering Hank’s skull in with a single, decisive blow.
And then, because he was really fucking pissed off at the whole situation, slammed the hammer’s head into Hank’s chest a few times for good measure, filling the air with an unnecessary amount of blood and gore.
&
nbsp; “The problem,” Garth ran a blood-slicked hand through his hair, “the problem, Stupid Ferd, is that before I fucking came here, before I figured out who the fuck I was and what I didn’t want to do –which is kill people for no fucking good reason- I was that guy. I was The Specter, Stupid Ferd, and I strode across The Cordon like a fucking giant. My name was legend. I rained fire and destruction down on whole solar systems, Stupid Ferd, and the only reason I stopped doing it was because I discovered mythological levels of self-control.”
Garth swung the hammer around a few times. Shitty weapon. Too top heavy to be of any practical, long-term use. Down below, sounds of fighting and dying reached his ears. “The problem, Ferd, is that with this shit stuck in me, The Specter is on the loose and I … I’m afraid I need to let this nanotech plague run its course in the hopes it’ll burn itself out.”
Ferd tried to say something, to plead for his life –or, at the very least, that Fish the Blacksmith not do him quite as badly as he’d done Hammering Hank- but no words came. It was hard to speak when a hammer the size of a boulder is crashing into your skull.
Garth looked over the edge of the railing. The ‘data’ coming in from the … the DarkEye was difficult to understand, but that’d come with time. Time, Garth hoped, that never came to pass.
The Specter dropped the hammer. It was a stupid weapon in such cramped quarters. He climbed over the railing. He fell.
***
Something big and heavy crashed into the ground beside Nicked Jimmy, dislodging half a dozen combatants from his limbs and sending him falling backwards. Staunch Mel caught him and propelled him upright.
The fight stopped for a moment, and that was all that was needed.
Nicked Jimmy started bellowing angrily, basing the source of his tirade on the size of the body in front of them, “Goddamn it, Stupid Ferd, you let one of these assholes take your can, didn’t you?”
The Specter stood and eyed the crowd coolly. He turned towards Nicked Jimmy, relishing the look of absurd astonishment on the much older gearhead’s face. “No. Not Ferd. Specter.”
