Conflagration (52 page)

On the low ridge, Falconetti turned and roared to his men. “Okay, let’s go! Let’s hit them!”

Thirty men rose from the grass as one and started running. Raphael was between Steuben and Slide, slightly behind Falconetti, who was leading the charge. The unreality of combat had him in its grip, the dry-mouthed combination of fear and exultation. The sound of small arms fire was all round him, the rattle of musketry, the bark of heavy caliber pistols, and the rhythmic chop of Bergman guns on automatic. The camp’s floodlights went out, but it hardly mattered. A gray dawn was appearing in the eastern sky. Half-dressed Mosul stumbled from the huts, fumbling with their carbines and muskets, bemused, and, in most cases, were meat before they even knew for sure they were under attack. A handful of Mosul soldiers had the presence of mind to stay in their hut, trying to defend themselves from within, but then a grenade exploded, and the hut was matchwood. Two uniformed Zhaithan, black field capes flapping, ran for a car, but were shot down before they could make good their escape. Another tried to get away on horseback, past the camp’s gallows, where a dozen corpses were hanging, but was unseated by a bullet, leaving the riderless mount to panic through the fighting. Four men came out of a bathhouse, naked, clutching towels and underwear, and were slaughtered as they tried to cover themselves.

Falconetti’s group reached the fence that surrounded the slave laborers’ compound. A number of the men carried wire cutters, and swiftly ripped a path. Raphael climbed through the gap in the barbed wire, right behind Slide, who had his strange, matching pistols drawn, one in each hand. He found himself amid the smell of unwashed fear, helping to rip open the locked doors to the slave laborers’ huts, as Falconetti shouted to the dazed prisoners in their ragged and dirty overalls. “Come on! Out, out, get out of there! Don’t you fuckers know when you’re being set free?”

One prisoner called out, “Food, did you bring food?”

Falconetti’s laugh verged on maniacal. “Food? Find your own food. We’re delivering liberty and fraternity!”

CORDELIA

The battle was being joined all round them, but the women at the roadblock had more important problems. Harriet Lime lay on the hard road, close to the Benz, and the blood left behind by Phaall and Vogel. Her face contorted, her legs made involuntary kicking motions, her hands clawed spasmodically at the air, and, all the time, she maintained a meaningless, wordless babble. She had scraped her skin in a number of places, and two of her usually immaculate fingernails were broken.

“The … the … the … the…”

“I don’t think she’s faking this.”

“The … the … the … the…”

Cordelia knelt down beside the uncontrollably shaking Lime, while Jesamine and Cordelia looked on. “What? What are you trying to say?”

“The … the … the Twins…”

“What about the Twins?”

“The … Twins … they…”

Cordelia was rapidly losing patience. Her nature was not to play nurse in the middle of a firefight. “Yes, the Twins. I get it. They what?”

“They … they…” The paroxysms abruptly stopped, and she spoke, face blank as an automaton, talking with the voices of The White Twins.
“We want to talk
.
”

“You are talking.”

“We want to talk to red-haired Cordelia
.
”

“You are talking to Cordelia.”

Sera looked at Jesamine. “Holy shit. Harriet’s channeling them.”

“We are sorry
.
”

“Why are you sorry?”

“We are sorry, red-haired Cordelia
.
”

“But why are you sorry?”

“We were trained to hate you
.
”

“We were trained by our mother to hate you
.
”

“But now we hate mother
.
”

“But now we hate mother because she intends to kill us
.
”

“You just learned that?”

“We just learned that.”

“Help us?”

“Please help us.”

Cordelia looked round at Sera and Jesamine with the obvious silent question. They both nodded. They would go along. Cordelia asked, “How do we know we can trust you?”

A request for assurance did not seem to be part of the Twins’ world.
“We trust you
.
”

“Help us?”

“Please help us.”

“Where are you?”

“We travel
.
”

“We travel by road
.
”

Sera was becoming frustrated at the slowness of it all. “Do they have to say everything twice?”

The Twins somehow heard her.
“We say everything twice because there are two of us.”

Cordelia ignored the exchange. “Do you know where we are?”

“Yes.”

“Are you close to us?”

“Yes.”

“Are you among Zhaithan?”

“Yes.”

Explosions were coming from the camp, and Sera looked round anxiously. “This is like a fucking séance.”

Jesamine watched the channeled exchange between Cordelia and the Twins intently. “They don’t seem to have any real sense of place or time.”

Sera shook her head. “And they’re supposed to be superior to us?”

“We don’t know what else they may have a sense of.”

Cordelia kept focused on the twins. “I can’t help you if the Zhaithan try to hurt me. The Zhaithan will want to hurt me.”

“We will not let the Zhaithan hurt you
.
”

“We tried to stop the Zhaithan hurting your friend Kennedy
.
”

“We couldn’t help it that there was only one
.
”

“This makes no sense.”

“We will not let the Zhaithan hurt you if you help us
.
”

ARGO

By bleeding off the hydraulic fluid from the big steel recoil cylinders, Old Temps Perdu had been able to lower the elevation of the Paris Gun so the massive barrel, with its twenty-four-inch bore, was almost parallel with the ground. So far everything was going as Old Temps had predicted. The gun had been oiled and greased, and returned to some approximation of working order. “Not that I’d like to fire the thing. It ain’t been that well restored, but we can give thanks that the wheels ain’t rusted solid.”

With the barrel now at its lowest incline, it would be far easier to load the explosive into the massive two feet of gaping muzzle. While the other men kept watch with weapons at the ready, Old Temps, with Penhaligon at his side, had inspected the gun in the most thoroughgoing detail, and seemed pleased that everything, so far, was fitting in with his plan of destruction. After lowering the barrel, he had locked down the breech, and declared himself ready to start loading the explosives. The only real problem seemed to be the move of a hundred or so feet that would bring it hard up by the pyramid. He seemed oblivious to the fact that a raging firefight was being fought out just a few hundred yards away from them. When asked about this, Old Temps had laughed. “Hell, I thought we’d be doing it all under fire. This is a piece of cake. Now where are those fucking explosives?”

Lapin pointed. “There they are. The truck with the red cross on the side.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and watched as the olive green, former Mosul army truck steamed its way through the confusion of running, shooting men, bouncing towards them, with the driver apparently working on the principle that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line, no matter what got in the way.

“Just pray he don’t catch a stray bullet. Always been the big question. Do you make your ammunition trucks real visible, or real indistinguishable?”

“The Mosul don’t seem to be trying to stop it.”

In fact, most of the Mosul that Argo could see were doing their best to get out of the way of the speeding truck, doubtless afraid that it would come to a sudden stop and disgorge yet another wagonload of remorseless gunmen with blazing revolvers and roaring shotguns. For an instant, Argo caught sight of Yancey Slide in the middle of the mêlée, calmly firing his otherworldly pistols at any target that presented itself. Argo knew that Raphael was probably somewhere nearby. It was somehow reassuring to know that, although separated, they were all part of the same struggle.

Old Perdu, meanwhile, anxiously fingered the scars on his face. “I think the Mosul have their hands more than full with our boys, but there’s a whole lot of hot metal flying about out there. You never fucking know.”

The truck was now through the worst of the fighting, and coming straight at them. Perdu looked round at his men. “Let’s not waste time, lads. The moment the truck comes to a stop, get it unloaded and start pushing the stuff into the barrel of the gun. All except Calq and Riffi, you two get that cement I had made up, find water and start mixing it.”

The truck halted and the men went to work under the supervision of Penhaligon. The explosives were packed in dozens of small, one-gallon casks that were easily rolled down the barrel of the gun. Perdu watched for long enough to satisfy himself that all was well, then he turned to Argo. “You think you can get word to Falconetti?”

Argo nodded. “It worked before. Unless something’s happened to Raphael.”

“So pass the word to get all the slave laborers over here pronto, and bring all the ropes they can get their hands on. I don’t see no locomotive, so we’ll have to move this monster the hard way.”

JESAMINE

Jesamine was not happy. “So basically we’re in the hands of the White Twins. We’ve agreed to help them, but the whole thing could be a Jeakqual-Ahrach trap that we’ve just walked into it.”

Cordelia looked bleakly at her. “I don’t like it either, but what did you expect me to do.”

“If we only knew when they were coming.”

The noise from the firefight had become more spasmodic, and short lulls even occurred in the fighting. Jesamine could only hope that it meant that their people had overrun the Mosul opposition and were now mopping up pockets of resistance. It had been some time since they had heard anything from either Argo or Raphael, and, in their position, out on the road to the camp, they had no idea how the fray might really be going. The dawn was turning dark to day and, according to the rough timetable that had been set for the operation, Old Temps Perdu should be getting the gun ready to destroy, or at least damage, the pyramid.

Madden joined Jesamine, Cordelia, and Sera. He seemed completely unaffected by the general tension. “The waiting’s the worst. That’s what the old-timers say.”

Jesamine laughed despite herself. “Doesn’t anything get to you, Madden?”

The Ranger shrugged. “I figure if I can’t kill it, it probably can’t kill me, and vice versa, so all I gotta to be is faster.”

“I’m not sure I quite follow you.”

“What I’m saying is that you don’t have to worry about any crew of Zhaithan coming down this road. They’ll be no problem for me and these here Falconetti boys.”

Jesamine sighed. “This part of the fight may be more than just a matter of speed and firepower.”

Madden looked away. “I know what you mean, Major, and if you and Lady Blakeney just cover me and the boys from that witchy shit, we’ll do the rest.”

Jesamine smiled. Again, despite herself, she was starting to find Madden oddly adorable, but before she could decide just how much she liked him, Argo’s voice was in her head, painful with the distortion from the pyramid.
“Perdu needs all the slave laborers to the gun, with all the rope that can be found
.
”

The message was plainly intended for Raphael to pass to Falconetti or Slide, but they had no way to avoid all Four hearing it. Jesamine glanced at Cordelia. She had plainly experienced the same pain. Sera, on the other hand, was just plain curious. “What was that?”

“Just Argo for Raphael. They’re ready to move the gun. Not our problem.”

Madden seemed a little wistful that he was not part of the action at the Paris Gun, but then he looked up the road and pointed. “But here comes our problem, I think.”

RAPHAEL

A Mosul infantryman appeared in front of Raphael, lunging with a bayonet. Almost without thinking, Raphael feinted sideways, away from the blade, and shot the man. He had forgotten how easy it was to kill in the heat of battle. A detached part of him observed, in the graphic instant before the blood spurted, and the Mosul fell, that the man looked sallow and undernourished, and his uniform was dirty and threadbare. Two more Mosul were right behind the first. They were part of a raggedly organized wedge that was attempting a breakout under the command of two Teuton officers. It wasn’t clear if they had an objective, or if they were just trying to get away from the attackers’ overwhelming ferocity and superior weapons. Raphael retreated a couple of paces, recocking his double-action pistol to fire again, but was blinded by noise and pain that took over his mind, and brought with it the urgent voice of Argo.

“Perdu needs all the slave laborers to the gun, with all the rope that can be found
.
”

The communication could not have come at a worse moment. Raphael could see nothing but white light, but he knew Mosul bayonets were coming at him.

“Raphael? Can you hear me?”

“I hear you. I understand. But stop.”

Argo left Raphael’s mind, and he could see again. He heard two fast shots from behind him and, to his surprise, two unfortunate soldiers lay dead in front of him, and the Mosul wedge had changed direction, and was seeking escape another way. He turned and found an impassive Slide, with a smoking pistol in each hand, and a cheroot in the corner of his mouth. “I thought I was dead there.”

“Bad time for communication?”

Raphael nodded, catching his breath. “My thought exactly.”

“Argo?”