Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

He turned his back on the conflagration.

They mounted two horses they had rented at exorbitant cost. Which cost, however, came to less than outright purchase would have and thus, given that they had no intention of ever returning the horses to their former owner, was, looked at properly, something of a bargain. The saddlebags, moreover, were packed with a judicious assortment of items taken from the Diamond Fund.

As they put Moscow behind them, Surplus narrated his recent adventures. When the tale reached its climax, Darger, astonished, remarked, “I did not know that your walking stick was actually a sword cane.”

“There is a great deal that you do not know about me,” Surplus said complacently.

I t was a remarkable sight: A band of hard men numbering in the hundreds-far too many to be called a raiding party, though perhaps not quite enough to be considered a true army-were readying their weapons on a hillside above Baikonur. Most were mounted on short, sturdy horses, but a sizeable fraction rode camels, which lived wild in the region and could be captured and broken to the saddle by those who knew how. Small bright flags here and there identified the leaders from each of the hidden towns of the steppes that had contributed warriors to the cause. Below them sprawled a dark, Satanic city of smokes and machines. Enigmatic engines reached for the sky. Cracking towers and gantries loomed from the yellowish smog. There were silvery glints of movement here and there, but for as far as the eye could see not one sign of life-not an animal, not a tree, not so much as a blade of grass.

A bold young man on a roan mare cantered up to the band’s leader. “Are you ready, Father?”

“Arkady Ivanovich, I was ready when your mother was still a virgin. As well she learned.” Gulagsky reared up his horse, roaring with sudden laughter. He gestured the young man to his side. “Come ride with me. We will each protect and defend the other.” Then, raising his klashny overhead, he shouted, “Are you ready to ride? Are you willing to fight? Are you prepared to die? Are you men enough to crush and destroy every living machine in the city below?”

Up and down the line of mounts, the men grinned savage and merciless grins. They had grown up in an unforgiving land and stayed when lesser folk had fled. Among them they felt not the slightest flicker of fear. Their eyes, to a man, glittered with the indwelling God.

“Baikonur is ours!” Gulagsky bellowed. He swept forward an arm. “The demon machines stole it from us-now we take it back!”

The men roared.

They galloped down on the city like wolves upon the fold.