Trent Jamieson - Night's engines

The dirigible passed overhead, and for a moment they were in shadow. Shots stung the air around them. Margaret dropped to a crouch and fired at the sky. The dirigible was already sliding over the ridge.

“Don’t let it distract you,” David shouted into her ear. “They’re on the ground. They’re here!”

David fired the flare.

The land filled with light. He jerked a thumb to the right, near the tree line. A tall man stood there, dressed in a ragged morning coat, hands flung up against the light.

“To the left, too,” David said. “By the rocks.” He fired his pistol there, at another man dressed in little more than rags.

“Where are the rest of them?” Margaret said, firing to the right. The Old Man had already moved to cover.

“Some always move faster than others. They'll be here soon enough, Miss Penn.”

Margaret blinked.

She asked, “Are you all right?”

“Not at all,” David said, and the words were clearly a struggle. “But I am what I need to be.”

David straightened, seemed to broaden across the chest, and flashed a smile at her that was both nightmarish and reassuring at once. “They’ll come at us in a rush, probably once the flare-”

They didn’t wait that long.

In a blur of movement they were upon them. Margaret managed two quick shots, caught a satisfying spray of blood, then her rime blade was unsheathed, a pistol in her free hand.

She fired again, the bullet striking the Old Man in the side of his face. That slowed him, she swung out, and the Old Man closed his fingers around the blade. Margaret lifted her pistol, fired again. Blood sprayed from the Old Man’s neck.

She didn’t see the fist that struck her.

Only found herself on her back, ears ringing. She snatched out at her pistol, dropped it.

A heavy boot kicked her in the chest.

She felt something break, pain boiled across her chest, but she managed to pull free another pistol from her belt, and her free hand found the rime blade. Time stilled, she rolled backwards. Pain again, waves of it. She could taste blood, her nose streamed. The Old Man stood there, wounded and bleeding too.

He took a step forward, the grass around his boot crackled. Margaret fired.

Another wound, but he didn’t stop.

Neither did she. She crouched low, and sprang out, straight towards the Old Man. There was something beautiful in her movements. She knew it, could feel the fluid grace of her limbs, the arc her blade described.

The Old Man moved to block her, but she was already past his guard. She fired her pistol one last time, right into his chest, then cut off the Old Man’s head. It fell to the earth. She crouched down, grabbed her second rime blade, and looked at David.

They were talking.

The Old Man had David around the neck, lifting him with just one arm. The other he was using to punch him in the ribs. David’s limbs juddered. And yet they talked as if old friends.

“Surely it would be in our interests to work together,” David said as blood streamed from his head. His hands were closed around the Old Man's wrist.

“Doing what you do,” the Old Man said, swinging, swinging. “You have no idea whose interests you are working for. We cannot countenance the application of the sciences that made us what we are. If I do not succeed in destroying you, the others will try, until you or all of them are dead.”

“But the Roil is building. There is so little time left.”

“Let the Roil build, let it do what it will do. That is better, let it happen this time.”

“I can’t and I won’t,” David said.

The Old Man nodded. “You were always at the heart of the madness, Cadell. Leave the boy alone.”

“You’re the one trying to kill me.”

“Oh, you are so naive. Both of you are so naive. What does it matter?” the Old Man hissed. “What does any of it matter?”

Her first blade she drove through his back and into his heart, the other she hacked into his neck. The Old Man dropped David and turned. She struck his neck again. The Old Man’s head fell one way, the body the other.

“It matters a lot to me,” Margaret said.

“Get up,” Margaret said, reaching down. David gripped her hand with fingers which had grown icy cold, and she almost dropped him.

“The rest are coming,” David said.

Margaret nodded to the nearby ridge. “Then we climb that.”

She grabbed her bag of guns, wiped her blades free of blood. David was looking at her, one hand rubbing his throat where a dark bruise was forming.

“You'd do well to hurry up,” she said and headed for the ridge.

THE NORTHERN WILDERNESS 1520 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL

The stone struck Margaret on the head. David caught the movement a moment too late. She turned, blinked at him once and tumbled. A few more steps and they would have been clear.

Another stone flashed through the dark, but David was ready. He caught it, and hurled it back. Soft laughter sounded from the trees ahead.

“Good throw.”

David squinted and could see the Old Man there, half hidden in the branches of a great pine. It was dark, but the Old Man glowed.

David checked that Margaret was still breathing. And she was, though a lump was fast growing on her forehead. The stone that had struck her had been about the size of a fist. David picked it up speculatively.

“I could have shot her,” the Old Man shouted. “But I am merciful.”

“You’re the very picture of mercy,” David said.

“And how many men have you killed this day? Men as ancient as the stony moons. And you snuffed out their slow lithic lives just so you could breathe a few days more.”

He sat in a lower branch, a coat about his shoulders, as if he could ever grow cold. The Orbis on David’s finger glowed and the one on the Old Man’s responded with a reflected light. A flickering luminescent dialogue occurred between the rings that David was only partly aware of. Like having a conversation smacked into the side of your head with a flashlight. The sensation passed quickly and the Old Man looked down at him with an expression that was almost avuncular.

“Ah, you’ve led us a merry chase,” the Old Man said, and all at once, David recognised the voice. And it unleashed so much. He stood unsteadily, buffeted by all that memory.

“Milton,” David said.

Andrew Milton nodded his head. “Nice to be remembered.”

“I remember you all.”

Milton pulled up his coat, blood had darkened and stiffened the sleeves — none of it his own. But he didn’t come down from the tree. David could smell Milton from the ground, and despite himself, he felt a little hungry.

Ignore it, a voice whispered.

“Where are the others?” David demanded.

“Not far away,” the Old Man said. “The fear was that you might be using explosives, or that a friend of yours might sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Sacrifice is something you never understood. I don’t need them to kill you.”

“Rupert couldn’t. Nor could Michael or Carver.”

“But now, you are alone. Be honest, you have hardly acquitted yourself well. The Old Man's there, but you've stripped away his teeth with that fancy drug of yours.” Milton dropped from the tree, landed on his feet easily.

Milton was a good head taller than David, a foot broader across the chest.

David took a couple of steps back. The Old Man matched them, lighter on his feet. He rolled his broad shoulders loosely, bits of dried blood dropped from the coat, onto the ground. David could feel his hunger, feel how it echoed his own. It made his mouth water, his tongue felt thick and heavy, and it stuck to his teeth.