Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"There you go, Eddie! Level playing field. Now kick his self-righteous, hypocritical arse!"

Uncle James looked at his empty gun hand as though he couldn’t quite believe it, and then he looked at me. I smiled, and suddenly so did he. That old familiar devil-take-the-hindmost grin.

"All right, Eddie. Let’s do it. Show me how much you’ve learned."

"You always were a big drama queen, Uncle James," I said.

We armoured up, the living golden metal enclosing both of us in a moment. The terrible pain in my left side was immediately muted, and I didn’t realise how bad it had got until it wasn’t there anymore. The golden armour made me strong and powerful again. My dead brother made me strong…but I couldn’t think about that now. I had to concentrate everything I had on Uncle James, or he would kill me. He was, after all, the most proficient and deadly field agent the family had ever produced.

But he’d never had to face someone like me. A semi-rogue who’d learned all his best tricks outside the family. Tempered in the fires of two appalling days, made stronger than ever before by what I’d had to do to survive. And Uncle James didn’t have my outrage, my anger, my righteous cause. No; he’d never met a Drood like me.

We circled each other slowly, warily, gleaming golden and glorious in the muted light of the old library. I didn’t know what weapons he might have under his armour, but the odds were he wouldn’t dare use them, for fear of damaging the old library. Just a few sparks in the wrong place could cause a terrible fire…And all I had left was the Colt Repeater, its everyday bullets useless against his armour. So it all came down to him and me, one to one, man to man.

I grew heavy spikes on the knuckles of my golden hands. Uncle James grew long slender blades out of his golden hands. The edges looked very sharp. I’d never known a Drood who could do that with his armour before, but the Gray Fox always was the best of us. Champion of a thousand undisputed victories against the forces of evil. He knew tricks no one else did, learned the hard way in thirty years of fighting in dirty secret wars. Deep down…I knew I couldn’t beat him. But I had to try. If only to buy Molly a chance to escape and take the truth with her. Uncle James stood between us and the only exit, the painting’s frame that led back into the main library. So I had to drive him back, drive him away, fight him to a standstill; die on my feet if that was what it took to buy Molly her chance.

My one advantage over the Gray Fox: I was already dying. So I had nothing to lose.

I surged forward, driven by all the supernatural strength and speed my armour could produce, and still Uncle James was ready for me. He sidestepped gracefully, and his right-hand sword came sweeping around, the supernaturally sharp edge slicing right through the armour over my right side. My armour healed itself immediately, closing the cut, but I wasn’t so lucky. Pain flared across my ribs, and I could feel thick blood coursing down my right side under my armour. I’d never felt that before. I charged Uncle James again and again, knowing my only hope was to get in close and grapple with him, and every time he avoided me like a toreador with a bull, his impossibly sharp blades cutting through my golden armour again and again, cutting me, hurting me, slowing me down through accumulated shock and blood loss. The Gray Fox circled me, staying carefully out of my reach, watching for the first sign of weakness so he could move in for the kill.

So I gave him a sign. I pretended to stumble, almost going down on one knee, and he came gliding in for the kill, smooth as any dancer. Only to find me waiting for him. I lunged forward, forcing him backwards, off balance. He quickly got his feet back under him again and straightened up, but by that time I had both my hands around his throat, my golden fingers pressing down on his golden throat. I concentrated and grew sharp barbs on the insides of my fingers, digging them deep into the living metal around his neck. And Uncle James couldn’t grab my wrists to force my hands away without giving up his swords.

He drew back his right arm and slammed his right sword forward with all his armour’s strength behind it. The golden blade punched right through the armour over my left side, through me, and out my back. The pain was horrific. I cried out, and there was blood in my mouth. It coursed down my chin, under my golden mask. I almost passed out. I probably would have if I hadn’t been so angry.

I clung onto his throat with both hands, searching desperately for some last trick I could use against him; and that was when I remembered how I’d once fused both my golden hands together to contain and seal off Archie Leech’s Kandarian amulet. If I could fuse my armour together, why not mine and Uncle James’s? Just for a moment. Just long enough to do what I had to do. I concentrated, focusing all my willpower, sweat running down my face under my mask, and the living metal around his throat yielded to my greater will, my greater fury. His armour fused with mine, and suddenly my bare hands were around his bare throat, and I bore down hard.

He struggled fiercely, not understanding what was happening, throwing me this way and that by sheer brute strength, but I wouldn’t let go. He pulled his right hand back, jerking the sword blade out of me, and I cried out again as I felt things break and tear within me, but still I wouldn’t let go. Not even when he ran me through again, and again, sinking the blade deep in my guts and twisting it back and forth.

He was weakening fast, but so was I, and God alone knows what might have happened if not for Molly.

We’d been so caught up in ourselves, fighting face to golden face, that we’d both lost track of Molly Metcalf. She came up behind Uncle James in his blind spot, and she had Torc Cutter in her hands. She jammed the ugly shears up against the back of his neck, yelled the activating Words, and cut through his golden armour, right where his collar should be. Uncle James screamed once, like a soul newly damned to Hell, and then his armour disappeared all in a moment, and his whole body went limp in my hands. It took me a moment to realise what had happened, and a moment more to armour down and unclench my hands from around his throat, but finally I let go, and his body fell to the floor and did not move again. I sat down suddenly beside him, my legs just giving way. I hurt so bad I could hardly breathe. There was blood all over me. My uncle James was dead. I wanted to hold him in my arms, tell him I was sorry, but my arms wouldn’t work. I would have cried, but somehow…I was just too tired. Too deathly tired.

Molly crouched down beside me and put her arm across my shoulders. "I had to do it," she said. "He could still have won. And he would have killed you, Eddie."

"Of course he would," I said. "He was the Gray Fox. He was the best. He knew the mission always comes first."

"I killed him," said Molly. "So you wouldn’t have to."

"I know," I said. "That was kind of you. But…he was my dad, in every way that mattered. The one Drood I always loved and admired. The man I most wanted to be."

I cried then, and Molly did her best to comfort me. After a while she retrieved Oath Breaker from where I’d left it and hauled me back up onto my feet so she could half lead, half carry me out of the old library, back through the painting, into the main library again. Blood poured down my sides with every movement, my face was slick with sweat, and my hands hung numbly at my side. Away from the old library’s magic suppressor field, she was able to run a whole bunch of healing spells over me, but though she closed my wounds and stopped the bleeding, I couldn’t say I felt any better.

"It’s the strange matter in you," she said finally, frowning. "It’s interfering with my magics. I’ve stabilised you, but that’s about all I can do for you."