S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

No, six. Damn, goes faster all the time. I thought I knew how things worked even if I didn’t like it, I got the contract for the run to the east coast, and that was when this really strange stuff all started, six years ago.

. . six years ago. Just about the only good thing he’d ever heard about the CUT was that it disapproved of burning coal; mining it was among the very limited set of jobs that made soldiering look good. Iowans dug up a lot of the filthy stuff around Des Moines, not having near enough wood for such a huge city, and the air there always smelled of it.

When the dicker was over and while they sat and twiddled their thumbs and waited for the young Bossman to come in and OK the deal-he hadn’t been the most reliable of men, having been raised without hearing the word “no” very much-one of the ministers had told him that cages of small birds were taken down into coal mines in Iowa. To test for poison gasses that sometimes accumulated underground and either choked the miners or swept through the tunnels in walls of flame that burned them alive.

Yeah, there are worse ways of making a living than fighting cannibals to salvage artwork for rich assholes.

The little critters keeled over and went toes-up behind the bars before the gasses reached dangerous levels for humans, which sometimes gave the workers time to throw down their picks and run. It was a neat trick when it worked, and Ingolf had been raised among matter-of-fact farming folk who were prosperous enough but couldn’t afford much sentimentality. He would have been sorry to use a dog that way, but he’d have done it if he had to and birds came in only three categories: edible ones, nonedible ones, and ones which were pretty before you decided whether they were edible or not. And at a pinch, they were all edible.

The thing was that the birds probably thought the miners kept them around and fed them and cleaned out their cages because they loved them.

Likewise, the Cutters on the rooftop probably didn’t think of their role as making plenty of noise while getting killed so their main force would know what was coming, but that was about what it amounted to. That was why officers who knew their business tried to get someone else’s men assigned this sort of duty, and rotated it when they couldn’t. Or saw that the ones they could spare most got it.

I pulled a lot of outpost duty when I was young and stupid, he thought as they padded forward through darkness as black as the ink of the bureaucrats who laired here in the daytime. So the whole point here is to kill this bunch without making a lot of noise. Don’t think it’s necessarily going to be easy just because you’ve done it before, Ingolf old son. Nobody ever managed it with you , though that was partly dumb luck at first.

The inside of the office part of the building was very nearly as inky-black as the tunnel had been; there just wasn’t much ambient light to come through the windows with the moon down and the sun not up yet, and the Cutters outside were sensible enough not to eliminate their night vision by keeping a fire going. The downside was that they were concentrating on the streets and relying on the access door alerting them if anyone tried to break through that way because it was thickly fastened with chains and padlocked. Or on hearing the sound of windows breaking. It was a double-type door, windowless pre-Change metal and still strong.

“Saw,” Hordle said softly.

He gripped a section of the chain, pulling and twisting to hold it rigid. Ian pulled the flexible wire saw out of a pouch; the Force used them too, and the Dúnedain had good gear. Unlike their models in The Histories in peacetime they charged heavily for their services when the clients could afford it, with a bank in Corvallis as their business agents, and nobody tried to stiff them. Not twice. A bunch of pissed-off Rangers and a Corvallan debt-collector. . that was like a grizzly bear with a catapult mounted on its head.

Ian looped the flexible blade around the chain and began to work the handles, going slowly to keep it quiet and prevent heat buildup that might ruin the tool’s temper. The miniature chips of diamond set into the wire carved at the soft steel, a quiet ruhh. . ruhh sound.

“Stop.”

Ingolf had been around the man Mary and her sister called Uncle John a fair bit since they got back from the Quest. Sprawled by a fire with a mug at his elbow, cracking walnuts between thumb and forefinger, bellowing some off-key and usually off-color song, you’d think him a genially boisterous bruiser and not too bright. Unless you looked closely at the little piggy russet eyes in the massive face. Right now his actions were as precise as a surgeon’s.

Hordle’s fingers explored the cut in the darkness. “Enough.”

Ian withdrew the saw, coiled the loop and put it back in the pouch. Hordle’s monstrous hands clamped and twisted, straining for a moment. There was a soft ping as the weakened steel yielded. Then an occasional slight clack as he threaded the chain cautiously through until the doors were ready to open. The hinges were on this side, and the doors swung inward too.

Hordle worked the catch with infinite care, and applied his eye to the crack. Then he tapped two fingers towards his eyes and made the signs that meant: One man close. Ready.

Hordle set himself like a sprinter. Ian nodded, got out his bow, put an arrow on the string and held the weapon in his left hand. Ingolf drew his tomahawk again; he needed only one hand to pull his side of the double doors open. Cole Salander waited behind them, crouched slightly with his crossbow already at the shoulder.

It was a pleasure to work with people who really knew what they were doing. .

The third finger came up. Ingolf gripped the old metal handle and pulled, fast and not trying particularly to be quiet, but without any unnecessary jerk. Ian did the same, like the motions of a country-dance. Hordle lunged through in the same instant, his shoulders clearing the opening doors with not a hair to spare. There was a Cutter trooper about six feet from the door, looking at it curiously; probably he’d been wondering at the small sounds.

He started to leap back, started to draw his shete, started to open his mouth and yell. Hordle took one long scissoring stride, and his hands closed on the man-one over his face, one behind his head. His size did not mean he was slow. A single wrench, and the Cutter’s face was pointing out between his shoulder blades; there was a crackle like a green branch breaking when you twisted it, a stink of human waste.

One down, eight to go.

Hordle threw the body aside like a broken doll as he charged and drew his two-handed blade. A human grizzly with a sword, silent in the night.

Ingolf went through on his heels, Ian beside him already drawing his bow and loosing. The arrow struck a man at the edge of the roof high in the chest. He staggered back three steps, hit the balustrade with his buttocks and pitched overside. Three stories down and he hit concrete with a clattering, very final crunch. Imagination filled in the figures who darted out and grabbed his ankles to drag him out of sight.

Seven left.

After the ink-pot inside, the rooftop looked almost bright. Two more Cutters were at either corner of the rooftop, squatting on their heels with the ease of men who’d grown up without chairs, looking out over South Capitol. They turned and rose snake-swift at the flurry of motion, one reaching for an arrow and the other drawing his blade, a quick glimmer of metal.

Cloaked shadows rose behind them, flipping up like gymnasts from where they’d clung to the brick, hidden by the overhang and their war-cloaks. Mary hit the coping with her soft soundless elf-boots, crouched with the motion and sprang. Suddenly the two Cutter sentinels seemed to be dancing, dropping their weapons and putting hands to their throats. Mary’s fell, with her riding him down with her hands straining back, like a bad horseman sawing at the reins, and Ritva’s was down too.