Sma turned, sickened, from the window, heard boots thunder on the rickety stairs. Skaffen-Amtiskaw was near the door. It looked, unhurried at her. Screams came from the square outside and from elsewhere inside the inn. Somebody battered at the door of her room, loosing dust and shaking the floor. Sma was wide eyed, bereft of stratagems.
She stared at the drone. 'Do something,' she gulped.
'My pleasure,' murmured Skaffen-Amtiskaw.
The door burst open, slamming against the mud wall. Sma flinched. The two black-cloaked men filled the doorway. She could smell them. One strode in towards her, sword out, rope in the other hand, not noticing the drone at one side.
'Excuse me,' said Skaffen-Amtiskaw.
The man glanced at the machine, without breaking stride.
Then he wasn't there any more, and dust filled the room, and Sma's ears were ringing, and pieces of mud and paper were falling from the ceiling and fluttering through the air, and there was a large hole straight through the wall into the next room, across from where Skaffen-Amtiskaw - seemingly defying the law concerning action/reaction - hovered in exactly the same place as before. A woman shrieked hysterically in the room through the hole, where what was left of the man was embedded in the wall above her bed, his blood spattered copiously over ceiling, floor, walls, bed and her.
The second man whirled into the room, discharging a long gun point-blank at the drone; the bullet became a flat coin of metal a centimetre in front of the machine's snout, and clunked to the floor. The man unsheathed and swung his sword in one flashing movement, scything at the drone through the dust and smoke. The blade broke cleanly on a bump of red-coloured field just above the machine's casing, then the man was lifted off his feet.
Sma was crouched down in one corner, dust in her mouth and hands at her ears, listening to herself scream.
The man thrashed wildly in the centre of the room for a second, then he was a blur through the air above her, there was another colossal pulse of sound, and a ragged aperture appeared in the wall over her head, beside the window looking out to the square. The floorboards jumped and dust choked her. 'Stop!' she screamed. The wall above the hole cracked and the ceiling creaked and bowed down, releasing lumps of mud and straw. Dust clogged her mouth and nose and she struggled to her feet, almost throwing herself out of the window in her desperate attempt to find air. 'Stop,' she croaked, coughing dust.
The drone floated smoothly to her side, wafting dust away from Sma's face with a field-plane, and supporting the sagging ceiling with a slender column. Both field components were shaded deep red, the colour of drone pleasure. 'There, there,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said to her, patting her back, Sma choked and spluttered from the window and stared horrified at the square below.
The body of the second man lay like a sodden red sack under a cloud of dust in the midst of the riders. While they were still staring, before most of the raiders could raise their swords, and before the inn-keeper's daughters - being lashed to two of the mounts by their captors - realised what the almost unrecognisable lump on the ground in front of them was and started screaming again, something thrummed past Sma's shoulder and darted down towards the men.
One of the warriors roared, brandishing his sword and lunging towards the door of the inn.
He managed two steps. He was still roaring when the knife missile flicked past him, field outstretched.
It separated his neck from his shoulders. The roar turned to a sound like the wind, bubbling thickly through the exposed wind-pipe as his body crashed to the dust.
Faster - and turning more tightly - than any bird or insect, the knife missile made an almost invisibly quick circle round most of the riders, producing an odd stuttering noise.
Seven of the riders - five standing, two still mounted - collapsed into the dust, in fourteen separate pieces. Sma tried to scream at the drone, to make the missile stop, but she was still choking, and now starting to retch. The drone patted her back. 'There, there,' it said, concernedly. In the square, both of the inn-keeper's daughters slipped to the ground from the mounts they had been tied to, their bonds slashed in the same cut that had killed all seven men. The drone gave a little shudder of satisfaction.
One man dropped his sword and started to run. The knife missile plunged straight through him. It curved like red light shining on a hook, and slashed across the necks of the last two dismounted riders, felling both. The mount of the final rider was rearing up in front of the missile, its fangs bared, forelegs lashing, claws exposed. The device went through its neck and straight into the face of its rider.
On emerging from the resulting detonation, the machine slammed to a stop in mid-air, while the rider's headless body slid off his collapsing, thrashing animal. The knife missile spun slowly about, seemingly reviewing its few seconds' work, then it started to float back towards the window.
The inn-keeper's daughters had fainted.
Sma vomited.
The frenzied mounts leapt and screamed and ran about the courtyard, a couple of them dragging bits of their riders with them.
The knife missile swooped and butted one of the hysterical mounts on the head, just as the animal was about to trample the two girls lying still in the dust, then the tiny machine dragged them both out of the carnage, towards the doorway where their father's body lay.
Finally, the sleek, spotless little device rose gently to the window - daintily avoiding Sma's projected bile - and snicked back into the drone's casing.
'Bastard!' Sma tried to punch the drone, then kick it, then picked up a small chair and smashed it against the drone's body. 'Bastard! You fucking murderous bastard!'
'Sma,' the drone said reasonably, not moving in the slowly settling maelstrom of dust, and still holding the ceiling up. 'You said do something.'
'Meatfucker!' She smashed a table across its back.
'Ms Sma; language!'
'You split-prick shit, I told you to stop!'
'Oh. Did you? I didn't quite catch that. Sorry.'
She stopped then, hearing the utter lack of concern in the machine's voice. She thought very clearly that she had a choice here; she could collapse weeping and sobbing and not get over this for a long time, and maybe never be out of the shadow of the contrast between the drone's cool and her breakdown; or.
She took a deep breath, calmed herself.
She walked up to the drone and said quietly, 'All right; this time... you get away with it. Enjoy it when you play it back.' She put one hand flat on the drone's side. 'Yeah; enjoy. But if you ever do anything like that again...' she slapped its flank softly and whispered, 'you're ore, understand?'
'Absolutely,' said the drone.
'Slag; components; motherjunk.'
'Oh, please, no,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw sighed.
'I'm serious. You use minimum force from now on. Understand? Agree?'
'Both.'
She turned, picked up her bag and headed for the door, glancing once into the adjoining room through the hole the first man had made. The woman in there had fled. The man's body was still cratered into the wall, blood like rays of ejecta.
Sma looked back to the machine, and spat on the floor.
'The Xenophobe's heading this way,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, suddenly there in front of her, its body shining in the sunlight. 'Here.' It stretched a field out, offering her the little chain of bright flowers it had made.
Sma bowed towards it; the machine slipped the chain over her head like a necklace. She stood up and they went back into the castle.
The very top of the keep was out of bounds to the public; it bristled with aerials and masts and a couple of slowly revolving radar units. Two floors below, once the tour party had disappeared round the curve of the gallery, Sma and the machine stopped at a thick metal door. The drone used its electromagnetic effector to disable the door's alarm and open the electronic locks, then inserted a field into a mechanical lock, jiggled the tumblers and swung the door wide. Sma slipped through, immediately followed by the machine, which re
locked the door. They ascended to the broad, cluttered roof, beneath the vault of turquoise sky; a tiny scout missile the drone had sent ahead sidled up to the machine and was taken back inside.
'When's it get here?' Sma said, listening to the warm wind hum through the jagged spaces of the aerials around her.
'It's over there,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, jabbing forward. She looked in the direction it had indicated, and could just make out the spare, curved outline of a four-person module, sitting nearby; it was giving a very good impression of being transparent.
Sma looked around the forest of masts and stays for a moment, the wind ruffling her hair, then shook her head. She walked to the module-shape, momentarily dizzied by the sensation that there wasn't anything there, then that there was. A door swung up from the module's side, revealing the interior as though opening a passageway into another world, which was - in a sense, she supposed - exactly what it was doing.
She and the drone entered. 'Welcome aboard, Ms Sma,' said the module.
'Hello.'
The door closed. The module tipped back on its rear end, like a predator preparing to pounce. It waited a moment for a flock of birds to clear the airspace a hundred metres above, then it was gone, powering into the air. Watching from the ground - if they hadn't blinked at the wrong moment - a very keen-eyed observer might just have seen a column of trembling air flick skyward from the summit of the keep, but would have heard nothing; even in high supersonic the module could move more quietly than any bird, displacing tissue-thin layers of air immediately ahead of it, moving into the vacuum so created, and replacing the gases in the skin-thin space it had left behind; a falling feather produced more turbulence.
Standing in the module, gazing at the main screen, Sma watched the view beneath the module shrink rapidly, as the concentric layers of the castle's defences came crashing in like time-reversed waves from the edges of the screen; the castle became a dot between the city and the straits, and then the city itself disappeared and the view began to tip as the module angled out for its rendezvous with the very fast picket Xenophobe.
Sma sat down, still watching the screen, eyes searching in vain for the valley on the outskirts of the city where the dam and the old power station lay.
The drone watched too, while it signalled to the waiting ship and received confirmation the vessel had displaced Sma's luggage out of the trunk of the car and into the woman's quarters on board.
Skaffen-Amtiskaw studied Sma, as she stared - a little glumly, it thought - at the hazing-over view on the module screen, and wondered when the best time would be to give her the rest of the bad news.
Because, despite all this wonderful technology, somehow (incredibly; uniquely, as far as the drone knew... how in the name of chaos did a lump of meat outwit and destroy a knife missile?), the man called Cheradenine Zakalwe had shaken off the tail they'd put on him after he'd resigned the last time.
So, before they did anything else, Sma and it had to find the damn human first. If they could.
The figure slipped from behind a radar housing and crossed the keep's roof, beneath the wind-moaning aerials. It went down the spiral of steps, checked all was clear beyond the thick metal door, then opened it.
A minute later, something that looked exactly like Diziet Sma joined the tour party, while the guide was explaining how developments in artillery, heavier-than-air flight and rocketry had made the ancient fortress obsolete.
XII
They shared their eyrie with the state coach of the Mythoclast, a cluttered army of statues, and a jumble of assorted chests, cases and cupboards packed with treasure from a dozen great houses.
Astil Tremerst Keiver selected a roquelaure from a tall chiffonier, closed the cabinet's door and admired himself in the mirror. Yes, the cloak looked very fine on him, very fine indeed. He flourished it, pirouetting, drew his ceremonial rifle from its scabbard, and then made a circuit of the room, around the grand state coach, making a 'ki-shauw, ki-shauw!' noise, and pointing the gun at each black-curtained window in turn as he swept by them (his shadow dancing gloriously across the walls and the cold grey outlines of the statues), before arriving back at the fireplace, sheathing the rifle, and sitting suddenly and imperiously down on a highly-wrought little chair of finest bloodwood.
The chair collapsed. He thumped into the flagstones and the bolstered gun at the side fired, sending a round into the angle between the floor and the curve of wall behind him.
'Shit, shit, shit!' he cried, inspecting his breeks and cloak, respectively grazed and holed.
The door of the state coach burst open and someone flew out, crashing into an escritoire and demolishing it. The man was still and steady in an instant, presenting - in that infuriatingly efficient martial way of his - the smallest possible target, and pointing the appallingly large and ugly plasma cannon straight at the face of deputy vice-regent-in-waiting Astil Tremerst Keiver the Eighth.
'Eek! Zakalwe!' Keiver heard himself say, and threw the cloak over his head. (Damn!)
When Keiver brought the cloak down again - with, he felt, all the not inconsiderable dignity he could muster - the mercenary was already rising from the debris of the little desk, taking a quick look round the room, and switching off the plasma weapon.
Keiver was, naturally, immediately aware of the hateful similarity of their positions, and so stood up quickly.
'Ah. Zakalwe. I beg your pardon. Did I wake you?'
The man scowled, glanced down at the remains of the escritoire, slammed shut the door of the state coach, and said, 'No; just a bad dream.'
'Ah. Good.' Keiver fiddled with the ornamental pommel of his gun, wishing that Zakalwe didn't make him feel - so unjustifiably, dammit - inferior, and crossed in front of the fireplace to sit (carefully, this time) on a preposterous porcelain throne stationed to one side of the hearth.
He watched the mercenary sit down on the hearth-stone, leaving the plasma cannon on the floor in front of him and stretching. 'Well, a half watch's sleep will have to suffice.'
'Hmm,' Keiver said, feeling awkward. He glanced at the ceremonial coach the other man had been sleeping in, and so recently vacated. 'Ah.' Keiver drew the roquelaure about him, and smiled. 'I don't suppose you know the story behind that old carriage, do you?'
The mercenary - the so-called (Ha!) War Minister - shrugged. 'Well,' he said. 'The version I heard was that in the Interregnum, the Archpresbyter told the Mythoclast he could have the tribute, income and souls of all the monasteries he could raise his state coach above, using one horse. The Mythoclast accepted, founded this castle and erected this tower with foreign loans, and using a highly efficient pulley system powered by his prize stallion, winched the coach up here during the Thirty Golden Days to claim every monastery in the land. He won the bet and the resulting war, disestablished the Final Priesthood, paid off his debts, and only perished because the groom in charge of the prize stallion objected to the fact that the beast died of its exertions, and strangled him with its blood and foam-flecked bridle... which, according to legend, is immured within the base of the porcelain throne you're sitting on. So we're told.' He looked at the other man and shrugged again.
Keiver was aware that his mouth was hanging open. He closed it. 'Ah, you know the story.'
'No; just a wild guess.'
Keiver hesitated, then laughed loudly. 'By hell! You're a rum chap, Zakalwe!'
The mercenary stirred the remains of the bloodwood chair with one heavily-booted foot, and said nothing.
Keiver was aware that he ought to do something, and so stood. He wandered to the nearest window, drew back the drape and unlocked the interior shutters, levered the external shutters aside and stood, arm against the stones, gazing out at the view beyond.
The Winter Palace, besieged.
Outside, on the snow-strewn plain, amongst the fires and trenches, there were huge wooden siege structures and missile launchers, heavy artillery and rock-throwing catapults; juried field projectors and gas-powered-searchlights; a h
einous collection of blatant anachronisms, developmental paradoxes and technological juxtapositions. And they called it progress.
'I don't know,' Keiver breathed. 'Men fire guided missiles, from their mounts' saddles; jets are shot down by guided arrows; throw-knives explode like artillery shells, or like as not get turned back by ancestral armour backed by these damned field projectors... where's it all to end, eh, Zakalwe?'
'Here, in about three heartbeats, if you don't close those shutters or pull the black-out drapes behind you.' He stabbed at the logs in the grate with a poker.
'Ha!' Keiver withdrew rapidly from the window, half ducking as he pulled the lever to close the external shutters. 'Quite!' He hauled the drape across the window, dusting down his hands, watching the other man as he prodded at the logs in the fire. 'Indeed!' He took his place on the porcelain throne again.
Of course, Mr so-called War Minister Zakalwe liked to pretend he did have an idea where it was all going to end; he claimed to have some sort of explanation for it all, about outside forces, the balance of technology, and the erratic escalation of military wizardry. He always seemed to be hinting at greater themes and conflicts, beyond the mere here-and-now, forever trying to establish some - frankly laughable - otherworldly superiority. As though that made any difference to the fact that he was nothing more than a mercenary - a very lucky mercenary - who'd happened to catch the ear of the Sacred Heirs and impress them with a mixture of absurdly risky exploits and cowardly plans, while the one he'd been paired with - him, Astil Tremerst Keiver the Eighth, deputy regent-in-waiting, no less - had behind him a thousand years of breeding, natural seniority and - indeed, for that was just the way things were, dammit - superiority. After all, what sort of War Minister - even in these desperate days - was so incapable of delegating that he had to sit out a watch up here, waiting for an attack that would probably never come?
Keiver glanced at the other man, sitting staring into the flames, and wondered what he was thinking.