K Parker - Devices and Desires

Fine. First place they'll look.

Breathing in was like dragging his heart through brambles. He got to his knees and peered round the edge of the arch. There was the wall, a grey blur behind a curtain of silly little trees. He followed its line until he came to a square shape, almost completely obscured by a lopsided flowering cherry. That would be a gatehouse. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't see the sun through the arbour roof, so he couldn't tell if it was the north or the south gate. Not that it mattered. He wasn't likely to get that far, and if he did the gatekeepers would be on him like terriers.

He plotted a course. Arbour to the line of trees; using the trees as cover, along the wall to the gatehouse. He could hear shouting coming from several different directions, and he wondered whether they'd catch him and take him back to his cell to be strangled, or just kill him on the spot.

I'll escape, though, if only to he annoying. He stood in the doorway of the arbour for a moment, until he saw two men running towards him. They were wearing helmets and carrying halberds; there goes another option, snapping shut like a mousetrap. He lowered his head and charged in the direction of the trees. They'd get him soon enough, but at least he was making an effort, and he felt it was better to die running towards something, rather than just running away.

It was inevitable that sooner or later he'd trip over something and go sprawling. In the event, it was one of those ridiculous dwarf box hedges that did the damage. He landed on his face in a bed of small orange flowers, and the two warders were on him before he had a chance to move.

'Right.' One of them had grabbed his arms and twisted them behind his back. 'What's the drill?'

He couldn't see the other warder. 'Captain said get him out of sight before we do him. Don't want the Membership seeing a man having his head cut off, it looks bad.'

The warder he could see nodded. 'Stable block's the nearest,' he said.

Between them they hauled him to his feet and dragged him backwards across the flowerbeds. He sagged against their arms, letting them do the work; buggered if he was going to walk to his death. He heard a door creak, and a doorframe boxed out the light.

'Block,' said the other warder. 'Something we can use for a block.'

'Log of wood,' his colleague suggested.

'How about an upturned bucket?' the first man said.

'Might as well.' The unseen warder trod on the backs of Ziani's knees, forcing him down; the other man came forward with a stable bucket, shaking out dusty old grain. Ziani felt the wood under his chin. 'Grab his hair,' the second warder said, 'hold him steady. Halberd's not the right tool for this job.'

A simple matter of timing, then. Ziani felt the warder's knuckles against his scalp, then the pain as his hair was pulled, forcing his cheek against the bucket. He heard the cutter's feet crackle in the straw as he stepped up to his mark, in his mind's eye he saw him take a grip on the halberd shaft and raise his arms. A good engineer has the knack of visualisation, the ability to orchestrate the concerted action of the mechanism's moving parts. At the moment when he reckoned the cutter's swing had reached its apex and was coming down, he dug his knees into the straw and arched his back, jerking his shoulders and head backwards. He felt a handful of his hair pull out, but he was moving, hauling the other warder toward him.

He heard the halberd strike; a flat, solid shearing noise, as its edge bit into the warder's forearms, catching them just right against the base of the iron band that ran round the bottom of the bucket. By the time the warder screamed, he was loose; he hopped up like a frog, located the cutter (standing with a stupid expression on his face, looking at the shorn stub of his mate's left hand) and stamped his foot into the poor fool's kidneys. It wasn't quite enough to put him down; but the other man had obligingly left his halberd leaning up against a partition. All Ziani knew about weapons was how to make them, but he did understand tools-leverage, mechanical advantage-and the principles were more or less the same. With the rear horn of the blade he hooked the cutter's feet out from under him, and finished the job efficiently with the spike. The other man was still kneeling beside the bucket, trying to clamp the gushing stump with his good hand. The hell with finesse, Ziani thought; he pulled the spike clear and shoved it at the wounded man's face. It was more luck than judgement that he stuck him precisely where he'd aimed. In one ear and out the other, like listening to your mother.

His fingers went dead around the halberd shaft; it slipped through, and its weight dragged it down, though the spike was still jammed in that poor bastard's head. It had taken a matter of seconds; two lives ended, one life just possibly reprieved. It was a curious sort of equilibrium, one he wasn't eager to dwell on. Instead he thought: this is a stable, wouldn't it be wonderful if it had horses in it?

Of course, he had no idea how you went about harnessing a horse. He found a saddle, there was a whole rack of the things; and bridles, and a bewildering selection of straps with buckles on, some or all of. which you apparently needed in order to make the horse go. He'd decided on the brown one; it wasn't the biggest, but the other two looked tired (though he had no idea what a tired horse was supposed to look like).

Pinching the corners of its mouth got the bit in. He fumbled hopelessly with the bridle straps, sticking the ends in the wrong buckles until eventually he managed to get the proper layout straight in his mind. The saddle went on its back, that was obvious enough. There was some knack or rule of thumb about how tight the girths needed to be. He didn't know it, so he pulled the strap as tight as he could make it go. The horse didn't seem to mind.

That just left getting on. Under better circumstances, he might well have been able to reach the stirrup. As it was, he had to go back and fetch the bucket to stand on. It was slippery, and he nearly fell over. I wish I knew how to do this, he thought, and dug his heels into the horse's ribs.

After that it was shamefully simple. The gatekeepers had seen him being caught and so weren't looking for escaped prisoners any more; besides, he was on a horse, and the prisoner had been on foot. The horse wanted to trot, so the saddle was pounding his bum like a triphammer. He passed under the gate, and someone called out, but he couldn't make out the words. Nobody followed him. Two murders, possibly three if he'd killed the secretary of the expediencies committee when he hit him with the lampstand, and he was riding out of there like a prince going hawking. His head ached where the hair had been pulled out.

As soon as he was through the gate, he knew where he was. That tall square building was the bonded warehouse, where he delivered finished arrowheads for export. The superintendent was a friend of his, sometimes on slow days they drank tea and had a game of chess (but today wasn't a slow day). He was in Twenty-Fourth Street, junction with Ninth Avenue.

Three blocks down Ninth Avenue was an alley, leading to the back gate of a factory. It was quiet and the walls on either side were high; you could stop there for a piss if you were in a hurry. He contrived to get the horse to turn down it, let it amble halfway down, pulled it up and slid awkwardly off its back. It stood there looking at him as he picked himself up. Nevertheless, he said. 'Thanks,' as he walked away.

The factory gate was bolted on the inside, but he managed to jump up, get his stomach on the top of it and reach over to draw back the bolt. The gate swung open, with him on top of it. He slipped down-bad landing-and shut it behind him, trying to remember what they made here. At any rate, he was back on industrial premises, where the rules were rather closer to what he was used to.