7
Seker-Ra turned on the spot. The baying and booing of the crowd died down as he circled his own shadow, staring up at the rows and rows of Once-Born. He stepped up to the wall of the pit and touched it. It was the first time he had ever been able to get so close to it. The finger-glaives slid back into their sockets and he stroked a deathless finger across the carven scenes that he had made real. For a moment there was hush, and then Seker-Ra balled his fist and pounded a hole into the wall of the pit, then another, then another, kicking footholds into it as he climbed the height with ease and leapt over the parapet at the top. The crowds screamed again, but this time, it was with fear. Seker-Ra, Stalker-God, slayer of souls, was walking among them!
People left the benches they had been sitting on and ran every which way, looking for an escape that few could find. Some jumped or fell into the pit, but most of them seemed witless with fear. And the Stalker strode among them, dealing razor-edged death with every step. His finger-glaives flickered like lightning, and the people parted in red waves in front of him. Then he reached the priest, who alone of everyone had not moved, but welcomed the coming of the Stalker-god with half-closed eyes and whispered chanting.
Seker-Ra looked down at that tattooed face, and something shimmered at the back of his memories, through the long years of darkness and death imprisoned in the pit, another face covered all over with markings, different but similar, that had peered down at him as the life quickened in his veins and he was re-born… And then the face before him vanished into ruin beneath a silver-edged blow.
Perfidy Lanyard and Madman Mallarcky watched the carnage from the centre of the pit. The aviatrix looked at her companion, at the bare skin smeared with blood, at the scored and scratched steel that glittered there. Madman, they called him. Mad, yes, she could believe that now. But a man?
"Now what?" she asked, ignoring all the interesting questions she could think of in favour of something more useful and immediate.
"Up," with one hand Madman Mallarcky grasped the length of chain that was still taut between the counterweights and the upright spear. The other hand held his shotgun, now reloaded. "Coming?"
Perfidy Lanyard stepped closer than she liked to Madman Mallarcky and took hold of another section of chain. She tilted her head back and looked up at the pulley-system and the wheels that the chain ran through.
"Wait. I'm not sure this is such a good id…"
Mallarcky's shotgun boomed for a second time, turning the upright spear-shaft into splinters, and the counterweights hauled the chain and the two of them up into the air. Before the chain could drag Madman Mallarcky and Perfidy Lanyard up to a gruesome end in the pulley-wheels, he fired again at one of the counterweights and it shattered into pieces. The chain stopped, held taut by just enough weight to keep Madman Mallarcky and Perfidy Lanyard hanging in mid-air.
They swung there for a few seconds, fifty feet above the pit, swaying and giddy. Below them, Seker-Ra trampled the stone benches of the arena to dust. A hundred spears tried to hold him back, but he scythed through them as if they were a field of ripe corn.
"This was your escape plan?" Perfidy Lanyard watched the fresh blood flow in rivers down the steps of the amphitheatre.
Madman Mallarcky pulled a crossbow and line out from under the shreds of his coat, took aim at where the cage that had first captured them was hanging in the shadows, and fired. The line whizzed out, the bolt looped through the bars, and they had a way out.
Perfidy Lanyard looked along the length of the line as he tied it off. "You had that the whole time?"
"Yup."
"Then why didn't you use it?"
"I'm Madman Mallarcky, remember? Not Sensible Mallarcky."
The cage shimmered in the firelight, its ghostly edges more imagined than real. Perfidy Lanyard clambered up the line, leapt for the cage, and caught hold of the bars.
Madman Mallarcky tried to creep along the line after her, but his wounds, though outwardly healed, burned like fury. It might have been Stalker-ichor in his veins, but he was still no Stalker.
"Here," Perfidy Lanyard said, reaching across the gap for the Madman. He stretched for her hand and heaved himself up beside her. Then the two of them were sitting on top of the cage, and another climb awaited them – up the chain that held the cage from the ceiling, back to the sloping tunnel that they had fallen down.
"You can do it?" Perfidy Lanyard asked.
"For four hundred marks?" Madman Mallarcky grinned. "I'll find a way."
The sound of bloodshed and terror faded below them, and going hand-over-hand up the chain, they were soon back in the sloping tunnel. Without the avalanche of sand rushing around them, it was an easy walk up the slope towards the glimmer of sunlight from the trap-door high above.
"Poor Skink," Perfidy Lanyard gave a shake of her head. "He always said his days were numbered."
And then Madman Mallarcky had a hold of her, pushing her hard against the cool stone of the sloping tunnel. In what little light there was, the blade of a finger-glaive shivered sharp and silver against her cheek.
"What is this? Killing me won't get you your four hundred gold marks!"
"Who said anything about killing?" Madman Mallarcky replied. "I can add your dainty double-dealing nose to my collection, or you can tell me why we just nearly got killed by a Stalker."
There was a click, loud in the narrow space, and Madman Mallarcky felt the muzzle of Perfidy Lanyard's pistol press up somewhere in the region of his groin.
"Just how extensive is that armour-plating of yours, Mallarcky?" she asked.
The two of them glared at each other. Then Madman Mallarcky retracted the finger-glaive and let Perfidy Lanyard go.
She smiled and pocketed her pistol. "Thought so. So what's wrong with Magnus Crome going after Stalker-tech'? Jealous?"
"No," Madman Mallarcky grunted. "Near-death experiences make me curious, that's all. And that Anti-Tractionist Fox Spirit that intercepted me and shot me down on route to Tibesti, that was no accident."
"Of course not. The Fox Spirit is one of the trophies of London's Guild of Engineers. The encounter was… arranged. As was the courier job for Alkazar."
"I wondered what Alkazar wanted with an empty box."
"You looked inside the box?"
"Of course I looked," Mallarcky said. "Rule number one of any courier job: Always Look Inside The Box."
"Skink and his partner didn't find gold at Constantin-Opel, but they did find something else: warnings of a Stalker-God, scratched into its deck-plates. Someone fleeing the ruined city must have been captured at the oasis and then managed to escape. For all the good it did them."
They reached the top of the tunnel and triggered the trap-door. Outside, the desert was so bright that the whole world seemed bleached of colour and so hot after the cool dark that the air was like molten glass
"We better hope that Seker-Ra doesn't know another way out. Or how to fly an airship," Perfidy Lanyard said.
"Shrike knows," Madman Mallarcky replied, glancing out across the oasis. It looked the same as ever, a haven of tranquillity between the dunes, and the sunlight sparkled on the pool. Then something else glittered against the water – Seker-Ra, wading through the shallows, drawing cloudy waves after him as he made for the Chim Chim Cher-oo.
Perfidy Lanyard cocked her pistol and broke into a run. Mallarcky ran after her, stumbling through the drifts of sand that had crept between the bushes. The air shimmered around him, and every step brought a gasp of pain from the injuries across his ribs.
There was no way they could reach the airship before the Stalker and they arrived just in time to see an armoured arm reach out of the gondola and slash the ladder free. It tumbled to the ground in untidy coils, and the mooring lines were next. One by one the engines started, and the Chim Chim Cher-oo rose up gently into the haze of the afternoon sky.
"I wonder where he's going?" Perfidy Lanyard asked, shielding her eyes against the glare and staring up after the gas-balloon as it turned into the wind.
"Does it matter?"
"Not really. I'll take the engines. You take the envelope."
Madman Mallarcky nodded and slid a tracer shell into the shotgun.
The two of them waited until the airship had pulled high enough and far enough away from them, and then they raised their weapons.
Perfidy Lanyard fired first, and the engine-pod on the starboard side of the gondola coughed smoke and sprayed fuel from a severed supply-pipe. Then Madman Mallarcky squeezed the trigger of his shotgun and a streak of white fire sped from the muzzle, bright even against the sun, and planted itself in the gas-envelope.
There was a whoofing roar as the gas cells erupted into flame, and then a stray spark caught the fuel tanks and the engine-pods exploded, showering the gondola with burning fuel. Shrapnel pattered into the sand around Mallarcky and Lanyard, and the blazing husk of the airship floated gently to the ground. The gondola crumpled, surprisingly heavy once it reached the sand, and the ribs of the airframe collapsed on top of it, still burning.
Something stirred inside the wreckage, rising up under the weight of red-hot metal, something that staggered around with its arms outstretched as if it were blind – perhaps the heat had cracked its eyes already. Flames flared around it and inside it, and Seker-Ra sank to his knees, black smoke streaming from his armoured body. Then he plunged forwards into the heart of the fire and was still. The Stalker-God was no more.
"Now what are we going to do?" Perfidy Lanyard asked, looking at the roasting wreckage of the Cher-oo.
"Walk to Constantin-Opel, pick up the supplies the Engineers left there, and then walk back to Tibesti," Mallarcky replied.
"Walk?! It must be four or five days to Constantin-Opel, and then another week to Tibesti! We'll die! We've got nothing! No water, no food…"
"We'll travel at night once we've put some distance between us and the oasis. Water we get here," Mallarcky went over to what was left of the Engineers' airship. He slashed at one of the fluttering sections of gas-envelope with his finger-glaives, cutting out large square pieces of tissue from the ruptured cells. "We fill as many water-bags as we can from the pool while the survivors from the pit – if there are any – are still too scared of Seker-Ra to come up."
"Alright," Perfidy Lanyard said, starting to gather up the squares he was cutting. "And food?"
"Food we have right here. Or should I say, 'right ear'," the bounty hunter pointed at the withered and wrinkled flaps of flesh he carried strung around his neck. He reached up and tugged one free, then offered it to Perfidy Lanyard. "Pickled pinna?"
"No thanks," she said with a grimace. "Maybe in a day or five."
"Suit yourself," Mallarcky said, taking a chewy bite of the lobe, and the two of them hurried down to the edge of the oasis to fill their makeshift water-bags.
Then, with the black banner of smoke from the Cher-oo streaming out west above them, they started to follow its inky shadow towards the ruins of Constantin-Opel, out across the sands of Seker-Ra.
The End
8
