Grey figures were hurrying across the meadows, carrying rifles. Dozens of them.
‘Soon as they’re close enough, let fly,’ he said.
‘I can go out there,’ said Jez. She gave him a disturbingly hungry look and drew her lips back over her teeth. ‘I can get among them.’
He felt a wave of repulsion at the feral leer on her face. ‘Keep your post, Jez. Need you here.’
She stared at him for a long moment, then turned back to the window. It was a relief to have her eyes off him. No man or woman could put the scare on Silo, but Jez was different. She got you in the place where dreams and nightmares lived. Courage didn’t mean a thing there.
‘Soldiers headin’ down the road to us!’ Malvery called, his hand on his ear where the earcuff was affixed.
Damn it. Too many sides to defend. Too many enemies. If the Awakeners overran the courtyard there would be no way out, no possibility of retreating into the trees to the north. He had to block them off.
‘Doc!’ he called, as he headed for the stairs. Malvery ran across the room and joined him. ‘You two, don’t move!’ he shouted at Ashua and Jez as he left. ‘We gotta hold the line!’
Harkins, Pelaru and Colden Grudge were strung out in positions along the south side of the hamlet, hidden among the buildings, waiting for the soldiers. It was the best he could do given the time that he had. They were already spread thin; now they’d have to spread themselves thinner.
He pushed open the door to the house and peered out. The gunship’s cannons were loud enough to make him flinch. Bullets destroyed the flimsy walls of a shed; the roof collapsed with a crash. Overhead, above the gunship, an identical craft hove into view. Two Predators together, and the crew like mice hiding from cats. The second gunship let loose on the house where Kyne’s device had been kept. The living room windows smashed in; stone and snow turned to powder beneath the assault.
Malvery jostled up to him and raised his shotgun, aiming at the gunship. Silo grabbed the barrel to stop him.
‘Can’t hurt ’em like that,’ he said. ‘It’d just bring ’em down on us.’
Malvery huffed in frustration. ‘Where’s Grudge and that damn great cannon of his?’
Silo would have liked an answer to that himself. But Grudge was smart. No sense giving away his position until he was sure he wouldn’t be massacred in retaliation.
Better not wait too long, though, Silo thought, and he slipped out of the door. Or there ain’t gonna be anywhere left to hide.
Just when Crake thought things couldn’t get any worse, the lights went out.
‘Well, that’s exactly what I needed,’ said Plome in a tiny voice.
Crake let his eyes adjust to the gloom. They were in a short corridor with three doorways leading off it. A large window at the end faced out across the chasm toward the hamlet. The cloud and snow was so thick that it was almost possible to forget it was still afternoon. The warmth of electric lamps was replaced by the grim cold glow from outside, and shadows clung thick to the corners.
The house was silent, but he could hear engines in the distance, and the chatter of machine guns, and the sound of collapsing walls. There were still a few lights on over the far side of the chasm. Perhaps the link between the generator in the hamlet and the mansion had been severed, some cable inadvertently cut amidst the wanton destruction. He wanted to believe that. Better than thinking the Imperators had done it on purpose.
He’d taken the earcuff from his ear. He needed all his concentration for the task ahead, and he couldn’t do it if he was worrying about the others. About Samandra. She was the most capable person he knew, a woman for whom no challenge seemed too much, a character larger than life who could never be overcome. But he feared for her anyway.
‘Maybe we should go back to the room,’ Plome whispered. He’d been loath to leave the chamber they’d rigged up as a trap, and was looking for any excuse to return there. Like most daemonists, he felt powerless outside his sanctum.
Kyne had his head tipped back and was looking up at the ceiling. ‘We can’t trap three of them,’ he said. ‘We need to deal with two first.’
‘Deal with?’
Kyne drew his large-bore pistol and fixed Plome with those green, faintly glowing eyes. ‘Kill,’ he said.
Plome swallowed and nodded. Clad head to toe in close-fitting brass armour, the Century Knight seemed barely human, a faceless force incapable of weakness. Crake hoped that was the case, anyway. He’d spent a few days working with Kyne on their preparations, and knew him to be formidably intelligent, but he’d still learned nothing of the true character of the man beneath the metal. Like many of the Archduke’s elite, Kyne presented a public façade that was hard to penetrate.
The Century Knight was looking up at the ceiling again. ‘They’re staying together,’ he said. ‘I’d hoped to split them up, take them one at a time. But maybe it’s better this way.’
There was a long creak from overhead. A foot on the floorboards. Crake felt something cold pass down his spine.
‘I only hear one,’ said Plome hopefully.
‘But I see three,’ said Kyne. ‘Follow me.’ He moved up the corridor, past the gaping Chancellor.
‘He can see them? Through the damned ceiling?’ Plome hissed at Crake.
Crake didn’t know. Hard to tell how much of Kyne was real and how much was show. Was it possible that Kyne had thralled the eyepieces of his mask to allow him to see through solid objects? Was it their daemonic auras that he saw? The heat of their bodies? If so, his mastery of the Art must be breathtaking. But it might just as easily be some trickery that he was passing off as a miracle.
Following Kyne’s lead, they made their way through the mansion. It was difficult to be stealthy with their clumsy backpacks, but there were rugs to muffle their footfalls. All Crake’s senses were on edge. Tuned to the daemonic as he was, he felt keenly the presence of the Imperators, somewhere out of sight. The paranoia and unease was expected, but it didn’t make the shadows any less threatening.
His mouth was full of the thin acid taste of fear. Three Imperators. Surely, to tackle them was suicide? He remembered the time he’d faced one in the corridors of a downed Awakener freighter, the way he’d cringed and puled in abject terror. He couldn’t face that again. Kyne said they were capable of killing a man with their power, and Crake believed it.
But he didn’t want to die. Not now he had so much to live for.
The man that first set foot on the Ketty Jay just over two and a half years ago had been a wretch. Hunted, riddled with guilt, he’d turned his back on the Art and sought only escape. How things had changed since. He’d had a hand in some of the most important events in the history of the Coalition. He’d seen things he hadn’t known existed. He’d learned more of the Art through necessity and adventure than he’d ever learned from books.
And he’d met a woman he’d never have expected to love, or to love him back. A brash, vulgar, wonderful woman, who made him feel for the first time that there was something in the world more interesting and exciting than daemonism.
That was why he’d survive today. Three Imperators? He’d just have to beat them. Because he was damned if he’d die now, just when things were getting good.
Kyne held up a hand, bringing them to a halt. They were in a parlour furnished with low settees, a harpsichord, a card table and a Castles board. To their right was a stone fireplace. A fire burned low in the grate, throwing shadow shapes into the room. There were two doors other than the one they’d entered by. Both were open, showing dark rooms beyond.
‘Here,’ said Kyne. He motioned for them to hide.
The room was large and cluttered enough to provide ample opportunity for concealment. Plome scurried off behind the harpsichord. Kyne took position behind one of the doors — presumably the one he expected the Imperators to come through. Crake moved behind a large settee and knelt down on one knee. Easier to get up quickly with the heavy pack on his pack.