Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

‘The distance of command,’ said Omar. ‘That is what Master Uddin called it.’

‘It was an early lesson from my tutors, too. Detachment from those you must ask to die for you. I always used to wonder whose benefit that was for. My soldiers, or mine? When you detach yourself too much from life, the world and reality, I believe you start walking the path towards insanity.’ The ruler threw his hands towards the storm, as if he could command the very heavens around the Forbidden City. ‘I like the rain on my bare face. Have you got anything to say about it, all you caliphs who have passed before me? No whispers of advice for me? No pearls of wisdom to cast down before my sopping-wet toes?’

Protecting him from the wild discharges of energy in the sky, the beyrog formation gently eased the Caliph Eternal away from the open edge of the twisting staircase. ‘My voices seem quiet today,’ said the caliph. ‘Perhaps they have been embarrassed to silence by failing to spot the perverted nature of Immed Zahharl’s plot against me before it was too late. It was you and my two Jackelian angels that came to save me, guardsman, not the wisdom of the ages. When the time comes, I vow that I will see to it you do not suffer the producer’s fate the grand vizier has set for you.’

‘They all serve, those who do not oppose,’ said Omar.

The caliph shook his head. ‘Your faithfulness is much more than that, guardsman. Unlike that of my beyrogs, it is not instinctive. All that you have achieved, you have achieved for yourself.’

‘The famous Barir luck,’ whispered Omar. To have lost everything. To be left nothing by fate except revenge.

He was about to find out how far it could be stretched before it snapped. As they rounded the bend on the tower’s stairs, Omar discovered himself facing rank after rank of the grand vizier’s claw-guards on the steps below, their talons already outstretched and glinting in the evil electric light of the chasm. And in the middle of the first line was Salwa, resplendent in the full regalia of the grand marshal of the imperial guardsmen; the faint, hidden pulse of Shadisa concealed somewhere far deep within the rain-slicked uniform.

No, this is what I have been left.

Howling like a banshee, the claw-guard crashed back through the skeleton of a sandpede, hundreds of leg bones sent scattering through the air and spinning across the polished floor of the ossuary. Lowering his pistol’s smoking barrel, the commodore broke the gun and cleared its spent charge, feeding in a fresh shell while Westwick emptied her own pistol into one of the charging monsters. The noise of her shot was lost against the splintering volley of the grand vizier’s forces and the air-splitting thud of the beyrogs’ crossbows replying in kind.

‘There’s too many of the wicked things, Maya,’ coughed the commodore, snapping his pistol shut and pulling back its clockwork firing mechanism.

They were coming like a black flood through the exhibits, a vast, relentless tide of fury breaking against the beyrogs’ cuirasses and swords. While the claw-guards loped forward en masse, snaking past the displays of the ossuary, the Imperial Aerial Squadron marines had taken snipers’ positions at the rear of the hall, maintaining a constant rain of fire in their direction. Balls whizzed through the air, buzzing with the evil song of angry hornets.

‘That is rather the point,’ said Westwick. ‘A diversion must divert.’ She rubbed tiredly at her eyelids, just underneath where her forehead had been splashed by a claw-guard’s blood. ‘Damn my itching eyes; is the blood of these creatures poisoned?’

‘No, lass. It’s only sleep you need. Sleep and a good hearty meal with a fine bottle or two of wine to wash it down.’ Commodore Black glanced around. The beyrogs had formed a semicircle-shaped double line halfway down the hall, the front row beating back the wave attacks of their more diminutive cousins with their blades. Behind them stood a second rank of crossbow-wielding beyrogs, pouring independent fire into the charges coming at them and exchanging bolts for bullets with the marine snipers at the rear.

It was proving a mortal effective defensive formation, but there wasn’t enough cover in the hall as exhibits were smashed into clouds of bony shards, while the grand vizier seemed to have an entire citadel full of these new claw-guard regiments to throw against them. A diversion must divert.

Another wave of the stone-faced claw-guards came leaping and howling like wolves against the front line of beyrogs, the imperial bodyguard unit’s scimitars swinging and cutting in response, claw-guards screaming as they died, beyrogs stumbling back where the beasts broke through the tight line and swarmed over the giant defenders.

This was no battle for men, no battle for old Blacky. Not with both armies supplied by the empire’s dark womb mages. Attacking and defending without any sign of fear or care for their own skins. They were living machines driven only by raw animal instincts and the cruel whims of their masters. This wasn’t a battlefield, it was a vast gladiatorial pit, starving lions and wolves thrown against each other for someone else’s advancement.

A ball buzzed past the commodore’s ear. Tracing the shot back to the short-stocked airship carbine pulled tight against a marine’s shoulder, the commodore sighted his pistol and was rewarded with the sight of the man slamming back through a discharge of gun smoke as his pistol bucked once.

Still the relentless claw-guards crashed against the beyrogs’ lines, the defenders’ crossbow-fire finally faltering and slowing. Commodore Black noted the empty quiver swinging from the nearest beyrog’s back. They were running out of ammunition.

‘Fall back,’ shouted the commodore. ‘Move back out of the hall.’

‘Those are not their orders,’ said Westwick, translating for the massive one-eyed officer.

‘Their orders were to keep them busy, not to die here like blessed fools,’ said the commodore. ‘The passages behind us are narrow. You can funnel their assault down tight and hold them with your front rank’s bulk. You want to sell your mortal lives, then sell them dearer than this.’

‘There!’ shouted Westwick, interrupting the argument. She’d thrown a hand towards a figure at the far end of the hall. It was Immed Zahharl, the grand vizier waving a sword and urging the claw-guards forward to overwhelm the beyrogs.

‘I can say goodbye to my blessed chance to act as broker for the next king of Jackals,’ said the commodore.

‘I’m out of charges,’ said Westwick.

The commodore picked out the very last crystal shell from his cartridge pack and kissed it before tossing to the first lieutenant.

Westwick broke her pistol, pushed the charge into its breach and cocked her gun, sighting it along her forearm. She squeezed the trigger and a marine running past the grand vizier collapsed and went sprawling as the ball took him in the skull.

‘Luck of the bloody devil,’ she cursed.

The grand vizier looked across the marine’s corpse and spotted the two Jackelians behind the beyrog ranks, then yelled in red-faced rage, shoving his monsters forward with the flat of his blade.

‘And you’ve lost your chance to join the Sect of Razat,’ said the commodore.

‘For the Caliph Eternal,’ yelled Westwick. ‘For the honour of the Caliph Eternal, fall back and hold them in the citadel’s passages.’

With the logic of the move undisputed by the officer this time, two of the beyrogs sounded the retreat using circular trumpets coiled around their cuirasses. Giving ground, the caliph’s monstrous bodyguard marched back in lockstep even as the grand vizier’s claw-guards intensified their assault. Wave after wave of the beasts harried the retreating line, leaving corpses spilled from both sides, many fastened around each other in death. With no more bolts left to fire, most of the beyrogs had thrown aside their crossbows and drawn their scimitars, the hall echoing to the clash of claws against tempered steel, the snarls and growls of an animal pit fight filling the chamber.