Can’t say I’m upset.
I’m waiting to see if anyone else has a bright idea, when the sound of a battle tank comes from behind us. That obvious rattle of ceramic treads, and the low rumble of an engine designed to grind its way across pretty much anything.
The crowd scatters.
That’s just to give the tank space.
‘Old-model Tusker,’ Leona tells me. ‘RR52-MBT. Heavy plating, fully rotating turret, two main guns, five LMG . . .’
I’ll take her word for it.
Main battle tanks combine heavy and medium capacity. Their plate is thick enough to survive a direct hit. But the chassis is light enough to allow them reasonable manoeuvrability and distance, supposedly.
Never used them at Ilseville. There were no powered vehicles on Hekati. And something that clumsy wouldn’t last many minutes in the sands round Karbonne. Can’t see the point of tanks myself.
Slowly, the Tusker halts.
Its turret begins to swivel. Inside, someone turns a dial or taps a touchpad or whatever the RR52 needs to raise its gun. The barrel steadies, quivers and then drops slightly.
The first shot blows off the door.
Actually, it blows the door’s frame out of the wall, takes a hundred bricks with it and reveals a spider’s web of pipes powering the needle gun. It also demolishes three internal walls and leaves a hole in the back of the house you could drive the tank through.
OK, I’m beginning to get tanks now.
As the crowd cheers and the hatch flips on the Tusker’s turret, allowing the gunner to take his bow, dust billows from the doorway and settles to reveal a man standing halfway up a flight of stairs holding a side arm.
His first shot drills the gunner through the head. And the crowd’s cheers turn to anger.
‘Jaxx,’ shouts a voice.
‘Get him,’ someone screams.
They’re shocked by their own courage. It’s the courage of crowds.
Everyone is shouting and no one wants to make the first move. Even the senior militia officers look stunned as General Jaxx descends broken stairs towards his missing front door.
None of them raises his own side arm.
That’s going to prove temporary, of course. All the same, it’s impressive to see the whole square still and watch General Jaxx’s sheer presence reduce the crowd to silence. This is the general after all.
He’s tall and thin.
Wire-framed glasses are his only affectation. And his uniform is immaculate. Even the silver and black dagger at his hip looks recently polished. From his neck hangs an Obsidian Cross, with oak leaves and extra crown. The general has dressed for the occasion.
Right down to a ferox-skulled armband.
‘Back,’ someone shouts.
As the crowd scatters and then freezes, three furies enter the square, herded by half a dozen militia with their rags on sticks. Red eyes watch us, snub noses wrinkle at the smell of blood. Needle-like teeth grin from narrow jaws.
The vinegar stink is unmissable.
I seem to be the only person to recognize the cylinder strapped to the general’s back and the nozzle that juts from his hand. A braided hose stretches from cylinder to nozzle. Although the hose is nearly invisible in the dust, shadows and darkness. The hose is black, obviously. Like the general’s boots, his uniform, his cap and the pressure tank on his back.
General Jaxx smiles. A cold, brutal and brilliant smile.
As he steps into the doorway I tell Leona to move. She doesn’t obey quickly enough. So I push her in front of me as I force my way towards the edge of the crowd. A militia colonel watches us leave but breaks eye contact when I glare at him.
The general’s attack comes without warning.
A flash of ignition that lights sticky liquid pumped from the high-pressure cylinder strapped to his back, and then a dripping hose-length of flame. I’ve faced it before, dropped from planes and poured down shafts to burn out underground bunkers.
Most of these people don’t even know flamefire exists. The furies have obviously never met it. Wrapping their leathery skin, it burns so fiercely that skin peels like tissue paper to reveal burning flesh and melting machinery beneath. Steel bones twist with the heat and joints rupture themselves.
The general achieves this without appearing to move.
When a militia NCO goes for his gun, General Jaxx redirects his nozzle, incinerating the NCO, the men either side of him and half a dozen of those behind. The furies died silently. These die screaming.
‘You can surrender,’ he tells the crowd. ‘Or we can play some more.’
‘We’re going to kill you.’
The voice is rough. Too rough. Like someone pretending to be campesino. The general sneers. ‘You think I don’t know that? I knew my time was up the moment our glorious leader decided to cancel his meeting.’
He glares at the crowd. And laughs harshly when they cringe as he twitches the flame-thrower nozzle. Ice-blue eyes sweep over us.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Surely one of you rabble has the guts.’
I’m not sure he can see our faces, because the searchlight on him must put most of us in darkness. We can see him, however. And no one can miss the contempt in his face. Until tonight, General Indigo Jaxx, Duke of Farlight, was the most powerful man in this city. What’s more, he’s held my life in his hand and opened his fingers more than once. I owe him my membership of the Death’s Head and my promotions. For all that he now wants me dead.
An order is given.
Five militia rush the door and burn like candles, falling in flames at the general’s feet. Having kicked the closest down the steps, he searches for the colonel who gave the order and smiles.
‘Guido,’ he says. ‘You can do better than that.’
A cobblestone is thrown, then another. Neither hits, and the general doesn’t react. He is looking over the throwers’ heads to what is behind them. Eight furies and a dozen minders, appearing out of a side street and hesitating at the opposite edge of the crowd.
Seeing this, the crowd moves back and freezes.
The general’s smile widens.
God, you’ve got to love this man.
He might be a murderer, commander of a regiment feared on a thousand different planets, as unremitting as thirst in the desert, and implacable as a blizzard or ice closing over a lake, but his bravery is beyond question.
As the furies advance, he steadies himself.
The rest of us are irrelevant. He sees only the silver-skinned creatures moving towards him with their loping gait and sloped faces. Their fingers flex as the hunger takes them and they head for the kill only to hesitate when they sense his armband.
Three turn to writhing pillars with his first blast.
Another two attack and he flames them as well. All die in silence. No one doubts the intensity of their pain or the depth of agony that drops them to their knees, before leaving them blackened and stinking husks on the cobbles.
‘Sven,’ he says suddenly.
People turn to see who he’s addressing.
‘Come to see me die?’
I shake my head. That’s not my reason for being here.
The general shrugs, and says something too quietly for me to hear. Guess he’s talking to himself. As a fury shambles forward, General Jaxx sets his feet, twists his body, and steadies the nozzle again.
Flame streaks from his hand and bathes his attacker in fire, dripping in molten splashes around its feet.
‘Fuck,’ says Leona.
She’s not talking about the fury.
The general must have known this would happen eventually. The flamefire that roars from the nozzle suddenly splutters, splutters again and begins to weaken. In all, he’s killed nearly fifteen of the creatures.
‘You ready?’ I ask Leona.
‘Always, sir,’ she says.
Reminds me of myself, that girl. ‘Right, then cover my back if needed. And be prepared to fall back when I give the word.’