Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

However, while the Frangoni rock was in peace, the Combat College was the scene of considerable alarums. Many Combat College students belonged to the Free Corps, which essentially supported the status quo. As soon as the rioting began, word went out from the Brick, the headquarters of the Free Corps. In obedience to commands from the Brick, vigilante squads began to form to put down the rioting, and many Combat College students went forth into the world to join those vigilante squads.

Scorpio Fax, he who had informed Hatch of the impending revolution, had initially taken refuge in the Combat College. But he began to get increasingly concerned as messengers came and went, as Free Corps zealots went hustling off to participate in their vigilante actions, and as other Combat College students sought refuge in the safety of the College itself – bringing with them tales of burnings, and beatings, and upsettings, and sinkings, and kidnappings, and rapes, and mutilations, and murders.

It became clear to Scorpio Fax that the revolution so long fomented, so carefully planned and so meticulously organized was getting underway prematurely. All kinds of possibilities occurred to him. Perhaps his own encounter with Asodo Hatch had been observed, and those with whom he had conspired had realized that Fax was betraying their cause, and so had decided to launch their revolution immediately, before it could be put down. Or perhaps some of the rowdiness which attended the days leading up to Dog Day had convinced some revolutionaries that their revolution was breaking out by itself. Or perhaps – Well, Scorpio Fax had an inventive mind, and he had invented up a full three dozen scenarios by the time night fell. And in the course of his inventing, he found himself creating unfortunate deaths for the purple-skinned Penelope Flute, the woman whom he had secretly admired for so long – and so fruitlessly.

As Fax had learnt long ago, Penelope Flute was deeply committed to Lupus Lon Oliver. And Lupus, of course, was a Free Corps member through and through. Therefore, it had long ago occurred to Fax that a revolution which saw the destruction of the existing social order would see the Free Corps destroyed along with that order; and the pulling down and pullling to bits of the Free Corps might well mean the dismemberment of young Lupus himself, and therefore – Yes, let the truth be told!

There are all kinds of reasons for getting oneself embroiled in a revolution, but the deepest motivation which had impelled Scorpio Fax into an involvement with Dalar ken Halvar's revolutionary cause was the hope that the overthrow of the ruling order might win him the woman he loved.

Or might at least secure the destruction of the young Ebrell Islander who was proving such a successful suitor of her hand.

As Fax sat in the Combat College, receiving successive reports of the growing turmoil in the streets of Dalar ken Halvar, his anxiety grew. And, when he had conjured up lurid images of the death or despoiling of Penelope for the seventieth time, he finally gave in to his fears – and exited from the Combat College, and hurried to House Jodorunda, intending to ensure the preservation of the life, health and safety of the delectable Penelope.

When Fax came down Zambuk Street to House Jodorunda, he found an ox cart overturned outside that house. The ox cart had been carrying water barrels, which were being smashed by an enthusiastic gang of wreckers. The oxen had been slaughtered, and amateur butchers were hacking steaks out of the dusty carcases.

The noise of this revolutionary celebration covered the sound of Fax's intrusion into House Jodorunda.

Which he found empty.

There was nobody at all in the house, except, in the bathroom, the delectable Penelope Flute herself.

"Ah," said Fax, breathing his relief, pleased beyond the telling to find Penelope safe and secure.

"What are you doing here?" said Penelope, looking up at Fax from the comforts of her bath.

When Fax made no immediate answer, Penelope heaved herself out of the water like a wrathful hippopotamus, and Fax beat a hasty retreat, withdrawing into the outer room.

"I was looking for your brother," called Fax, once he had put a door between himself and Penelope.

"Well, you're looking in the wrong place," said Penelope, throwing open that door and pursuing Fax. "Because this isn't his house, it's mine."

"Penelope," said Fax, moving impetuously to embrace the Frangoni female, for all that her fully-clothed female form was dripping wet from the bath. "I – "

Penelope made a curt gesture of discontent. This gesture caused her bunched knuckles to connect with the underside of Scorpio Fax's jaw. Fax crashed backwards, taking a lacquerwork table down to ruin as he went to the ground.

Fortunately, at that point Fax's combat training came into play, and he crossed his legs quickly enough to block the kick which Penelope aimed at his crutch.

"Look, you!" said Penelope, looking down at Fax from the ominous tower of her height. "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times – I don't want you sniffing round here any longer like a dog in heat!"

Scorpio Fax was acutely conscious of the blue and green ceremonial tattoos which adorned Penelope's nose. She had castrated and killed one rapist, and was perfectly capable of doing the same to Fax himself if she thought him to be himself a member of that breed.

"I, ah, I didn't mean any harm," said Fax.

"Good!" said Penelope, picking up a lacquerwork table.

Fax did a combat roll which brought him to his feet, threw up his arms to shield his face from the lightweight table, then fled out into the night.

He was hot.

He was flushed.

He was panting.

And he was bitterly disillusioned.

In the months of conspiracy which had been directed towards launching a properly-coordinated full-scale revolution in Dalar ken Halvar, Fax had indulged himself in confused but definitely salacious imaginings. In his fantasies, he had imagined himself taking advantage of revolutionary chaos to either seduce Penelope or else to subdue her to his will by exercise of brute force.

He had imagined that Penelope would be panic-stricken, terrified by the noise, the screams, the crackle of bursting flames, the clash of steel, the roar of the riotous cloud. He had imagined her weeping, clinging, clutching, imploring. And he would have been a hero, stalwart amidst the storm, instead of – Fax slowed to a walk, heading west through the night along the dust of Zambuk Street. Perhaps if there had been a full-scale revolution, things would have gone as he had imagined. But instead, the thing had happened spontaneously, prematurely, and the results were desultory.

Instead of a city awash with roaring flames, the night was merely sprinkled with arson. Instead of a howling mob, there was the occasional shout and – intermittently – some distant screaming.

What is revolution without the bloodstorm riot which storms the prisons, overthrows the palaces and pulls down the high and mighty from their places of power?

A revolution without such excesses is more a random riot than an effective political movement, and a riot was what Dalar ken Halvar was getting. The prison was tucked away in Childa Go, north of Na Sashimoko, in amongst the shacks and drying huts of the fishing center. There was no booty to attract rioters to Childa Go, and the fishing folk were not the kind to riot on their own account.

So Fax was ready to bet that nobody was storming the prison, and that nobody was trying to storm the heights of Ogo Blotch to kill and rape, to burn and pillage, to force the defenses of Na Sashimoko and raid the very Hall, pulping the Silver Emperor to a mash of bones and setting the flames amok amidst his palace, leaving the Shrine of Thrones in smoking ruins.