Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

Slowhand looked at her sympathetically. "Pits, you don't know, do you? That man's a psychomancer, Kali. Not so much a mind-reader as someone able to realise memories. I'm afraid he's been inside your head."

Kali seethed, knowing there'd been something wrong all along. "Munch told me he was there to stop me blacking out."

"It's a common trick. A dirty trick. While that little bastard was keeping your conscious mind distracted, his psychomancing friend was poking around in your subconscious and, in there, there's nowhere to hide. You couldn't help what they discovered, Kali, or stop them doing it. You literally weren't to know."

Kali snarled. Munch's abuse of her had gone far beyond the physical and, whatever it might have revealed to her by way of a side-effect, she didn't like that one little bit.

At the moment, though, that wasn't the issue.

"They know where Merrit went, and they know he has the key," she said to Slowhand. Her expression hardened. "As of this moment, the exploring's over. I have to get to the old man. You have to get me out of here now."

"Could prove a little difficult," Slowhand said, slowly.

"What?" Kali protested. "But I thought you — "

She stopped — because one of the two guards behind her had just discreetly coughed.

Clearly, the time for stealth was over. Kali informed the guard of the fact by smiling sweetly and punching him hard on the nose. He staggered back against the wall, hands over nostrils pouring with blood, and with a satisfying metallic-cum-fleshy crunch Kali booted him up under his armour, bringing the knee of her other leg up under his chin at the moment he crumpled towards her, howling. The guard flipped onto his back, out cold.

Slowhand, for his part, performed a kind of spin that was half pirouette and half boxer's dodge that took him behind the guard so fast that the man barely had time to register the manoeuvre. As Slowhand came out of the spin, he wrapped his arm around the guard's neck, bent him double and rammed his head straight into the wall. Twice, to be sure he was out. And then, because he was Final Faith, just once more. The guard slumped and Slowhand dropped his unconscious body to the floor like a sack of wet wort.

The pair of them stared at each other, he smiling, she inwardly cursing — dammit, they'd always been good as a team.

Cries of alarm echoed down the corridor and urgent footsteps clattered towards them from all directions. Somewhere far above, they heard the peal of the cathedral's bells changing volume and pitch. The change would mean nothing to pilgrims going about their worshipful business, but to Kali and Slowhand it signalled one disturbing fact — the Final Faith knew they were on the loose.

They ran, not sure in which direction to head in the underground warren but moving with the surety that if they covered enough ground they must eventually come upon the exit. A number of avenues became blocked to them, however, barred gates sliding down from their niches in the rock to block off doorways to rooms and corridors, and to some degree the pair of them felt they were being herded. But herded or not, they were going to be no easy catch. Helpfully, the corridors here were stacked with equipment and supply boxes, and while they presented some impediment to their flight, forcing them to dodge and weave as they ran, they also provided cover and the means to discourage some of the guards from their pursuit. Three who tried to block off a corridor ahead were flattened as Kali forced over one stack, causing a mini avalanche, another two crushed against a wall as Slowhand hefted, without much difficulty, a crate of armour and tossed it towards them for them to catch. There was little room to manoeuvre in the tight confines of the corridors, however, and more confrontations were inevitable. The two of them refused to allow such inconsiderate encounters to slow them down, kicking, punching, leaping and dodging their way past them all, and as the numbers dwindled they started to believe that their escape might be successful. It simply never occurred to them that there would be nowhere to go.

The corridor ahead came to an impassable and totally unexpected end. The rock out of which this entire complex had been carved had, it seemed, provided a starting point in the way of natural caverns, and ahead of them now lay one such chamber. Dropping away from the corridor floor to a depth of about fifty feet, stretching away ahead of them perhaps three times that, the stalagmite-layered area was impossible to traverse around its edge, and even if they had been able to climb down to its floor, it would have been impossible to climb out the other side. The Final Faith had provided a solution to this natural hindrance — a slatted bridge that spanned the gap — but at that very moment, powered by the pumping arms of two of their people on the other side, it was moving away from Kali and Slowhand at a rate that made it impossible to reach.

They skidded to a halt, staring at the bridge as it retracted along guide cables in response to the turning of the large spoked wheel on the other side. An identical wheel on their side was of no help as it was impossible to operate while the other was in use. What was worse, the opposing wheel clearly had visible on it a clamp that could be swung down once the retraction operation was complete, effectively making the device on their side useless.

If they couldn't get across the bridge, they had no way out at all.

Slowhand summed up the predicament succinctly. "Hooper, we're stuffed."

Kali, however, wasn't listening. She stared at the retracting bridge, weighing up the widening gap, and then without a word to Slowhand ran back along the corridor down which they'd come. The troubadour looked at her dumbfounded, but then his expression turned to alarm as Kali turned and, taking deep breaths, began to pound back towards him. He looked at her, looked at the gap, and then back at her again.

She was going to try to make the jump.

"Hooper, don't be stu — " he began, but Kali had already drawn even with him, then was panting past him, and then she was in the air. Yelling with exertion as she took flight, legs pinwheeling beneath her, she flew forwards, describing a long arc that took her towards the ever-distancing bridge.

Her hands stretched out for a handhold before her — and missed.

But only just. Kali twisted, forcing an extra inch, and slammed into the lip of the retracting edge with an explosive grunt. She dangled there by her elbows as she took a second to recover before heaving herself up onto its walkway. One of the guards was already coming towards her but, as he approached, Kali slid aside, around him, then slapped him in the back with her arm, sending him careering over the lip to the unwelcoming rock floor below. The other guard, seeing what was happening, flung the lock onto the wheel and grabbed a pike from against the corridor wall, charging at Kali and intending to impale her. As he came, she grabbed both rails of the bridge and flipped herself upwards, the guard and his pike passing harmlessly beneath her. Spinning in mid-air, Kali landed behind his back, roared into him and, using his own momentum, rammed the wailing guard into the air to join his friend below.

She took a deep, satisfied breath, walked to the wheel and flipped off the lock, then began to swing it into reverse.

The bridge began to move towards Slowhand and she watched him fighting off those who caught up while it arrived, echoing her tactic of discarding them one by one into the rocky drop — so many of them, in fact, that with only a few more additions they'd be forming their own bridge across the gap. Kali smiled. He was enjoying himself, she could tell. At last the gap was narrow enough for him to make the jump, and as soon as he leapt for and landed on the walkway she began to retract it again, blocking the path of future waves of guards — perhaps mercifully — from their sweaty but grinning potential despatcher.