Simon Green - Daemons Are Forever

I turned my back and ran on. There was nothing I could do to help. Either Molly would find a way to strengthen her shield, or she wouldn’t. I trusted her to do her job, so I got on with mine. I had to get to Giles and escort him safely back to the engine. I forced on the speed, my silver arms pumping at my sides, moving so quickly now that I couldn’t even feel the obstruction of the snow I was slamming through. Up ahead, Giles had come to a sudden stop. A whole group of his armoured enemies had manoeuvred to get between him and the Time Train. More were catching up from every side. There seemed to be hundreds of them, yelling triumphantly, their voices high and thin in the bitter cold air. Giles looked around him, calmly and unhurriedly, and then drew his long sword. He was surrounded now, by a whole army that clearly wanted him dead, but I couldn’t see the slightest trace of concern on his face.

Just something that might have been pleasant anticipation.

I charged forward, smashing my way through the weakest part of the circle, sending armoured men flying through the air. I finally crashed to a halt beside Giles, and he looked at me curiously, his sword at the ready.

“Hi,” I said. “Edwin Drood, at your service once again. Told you I’d be back.”

“Yes,” said Giles, “but I that was two days and three nights ago. I’ve been dodging my enemies ever since, waiting for you to show up.”

“Yeah, well, sorry about that,” I said. “Things to do, you know how it is. And time travel isn’t the most exact of sciences.”

“We know,” said Giles. “That’s why it’s forbidden.” He studied my armour. “Nice outfit. How do they get you out of it, with a can opener?”

“Show you later. Your carriage awaits; shall we go?”

Giles looked around him. “These gentlemen might have other ideas.”

“Hell with them,” I said.

Giles grinned. “My sentiments exactly.”

The armoured men finally got fed up listening to us talk and surged forward from all sides. There were ranks and ranks of them, but strangely they were all holding swords and axes now, instead of their energy guns. I really was going to have to talk to Giles about that later. At least these definitely were men in armour this time, and not cyborgs. So they should stay dead when I killed them. I grew long silver blades from my armoured hands, and Giles and I went to meet them.

There had to be over a hundred of them, all heavily armed, pressing in from every direction at once. They never stood a chance. Their swords and battle-axes glanced harmlessly away from my armour, and my strange-matter blades cut easily through every protection they had. I hacked about me with inhuman speed and strength, and blood flew on the freezing air, steaming in the moments before it hit the snow. Men fell screaming, dying, to every side of me, and I kicked them out of the way to get to my next victims. Giles stamped and spun and sliced about him with a speed and strength very nearly equal to my own. His long blade flashed through the air as he cut men down with almost clinical precision. No one could even get near him. We fought back to back, and sometimes side by side, and we were unstoppable. The dead piled up around us, the churned-up snow crimson with blood and guts. Screams and horrified cries filled the air, but always from them, not us.

It wasn’t a fight, for all their superior numbers. It was a slaughter.

I don’t usually kill on missions. Usually I don’t have to. The armour gives me all the edge I need. I’ve always thought of myself as an agent, not an assassin. The last time I had to fight and kill, on the Nazca Plain, I didn’t hesitate because the Loathly One drones weren’t human anymore. Killing them had felt like stepping on insects. This, here, was different. Giles and I were surrounded by a small army of enemies, intent on killing us. They’d already injured Ivor. In such circumstances, family training takes over. I did what I had to; I cut men down and ran them through, and all the time I did my best to feel nothing, nothing at all. I might have to kill, but no one had ever been able to train me to enjoy it.

Giles enjoyed it. He grinned cheerfully all the while, sometimes laughing aloud when he executed a particularly successful or graceful attack. Giles was a warrior, doing what he was born to do. That was what I’d come here for, after all.

The armoured men began to fall back and resort to their energy weapons at last. They were losing, and they knew it. But the searing beams ricocheted harmlessly away from my armour, often taking out their own men, and none of them could hit Giles. He danced and pirouetted in the heart of the enemy, striking out with deadly grace, now and then catching an energy beam on his arm-mounted force shield. I’d never seen a fighter like him. And in the end…the last of the armoured men broke and ran, rather than face us. They scattered across the snowy plain, running in a dozen different directions, and we let them go. Giles calmly lowered his sword, and I retracted my blades back into my silver hands. We stood together, both of us breathing heavily from our exertions. Giles flicked heavy drops of blood from the end of his sword. The front of his armour was splashed with blood, none of it his. There was no blood on my armour, but only because it couldn’t stick to the strange matter. Giles nodded to me cheerfully. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“So, was it good for you too? Laugh, Edwin; the enemy is dead and we are alive, and there is no greater feeling in the world! You have the makings of a warrior, Edwin Drood. A bit slow and deliberate, but efficient enough for all that.”

“If you’ll follow me to the Time Train,” I said, just a bit breathlessly, “I think it’s time we were getting out of here.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Giles. “I could use a break.”

We headed back towards Ivor, still encased in Molly’s protective shield. The airships flew back and forth overhead, energy beams stabbing down on and around the engine. None of them seemed to be getting through. All the snow around the Time Train was gone now, blasted away right down to the bedrock.

“The sooner we can get out of here, the better,” Giles said conversationally. “The emperor will send reinforcements, as soon as word gets back that I am still alive. He’ll send a whole army, if that’s what it takes to bring me down.”

“I thought you said you served the emperor?”

“I did,” said Giles. “But I am currently out of favour, at court. It’s…complicated.”

“Somehow I just knew it would be,” I said. “Is there by any chance a woman involved?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

I had to smile. “There’s always a woman involved.”

Once we were close enough to the Time Train for Molly to spot us, she set about distracting the airships by broadcasting illusions. A dozen different Ivors appeared, scattered all around the real thing, each with its own apparent protective shield. But the airships must have had some kind of sensors because they weren’t fooled for a moment. They just kept pounding away at the screen surrounding the real Ivor. A dozen huge yellow dragons appeared above us, clashing horribly with the pink sky. They launched themselves at the airships, which fired back reflexively. Energy beams flashed right through the illusions and actually took out some of the other airships. There were explosions in the sky and broken airships fell out of the air like burning birds.

By now Giles and I had reached the Time Train, and Molly opened a door in her protective screen just long enough for the two of us to hurry through. I armoured down, and then paused as I reached for the ladder leading up to the cab. The one energy beam that had punched through the screen had gouged a deep furrow all the way along Ivor’s black steel side, and steam or something very like it was venting furiously from the open wound. I scrambled up into the cab, with Giles close behind me. Tony was bouncing from one gauge to another, worriedly studying the shifting readings, while Molly sat cross-legged on the floor, working on maintaining the protective screen.