Retribution Falls (51 page)

Dust billowed out of the corridor and engulfed his crew where they hid. Frey coughed into his fist and looked around the corner. It took some seconds for the dust to clear, but when it did he saw Bess standing there, dirty but unharmed. A section of the ceiling had caved in, burying all but one of the chests. Of Orkmund and his men, there was nothing to be seen. They’d either fled or been buried. Frey didn’t care which.

What he did care about was the red-lacquered chest that lay near Bess’s feet. A chest with a beautiful branch-and-leaf intaglio on the lid and a clasp in the shape of a silver wolf’s head. He ran to it and tugged at the lid. Locked. Stepping back, he blasted the clasp away with his revolver.

There would be no mistakes. He had to be sure.

The others had gathered around him as he knelt down and threw open the chest. Inside was a golden mass of ducats. Thousands upon thousands of coins. Even in the dust-hazed air, it seemed to him that they glimmered.

Bess leaned in over his shoulder to look. She cooed as she saw the wealth within.

Frey could hardly breathe. He had it at last. They had it at last. After all the years of scrabbling in the dirt, they were rich.

He stepped back, and looked at the joyous faces of his crew, transfixed by the sight of more money than they’d ever dreamed of.

‘Bess, pick that up,’ he said. ‘We’re getting out of here.’

Thirty-Eight

Shells - The Duel - Malvery’s Hour - Out Of The Mist

Frey didn’t hear the explosion. It took some seconds for his stunned senses to recover, but even then, all he could remember was the sensation of being squashed from above by an enormous force, like an insect trodden on by an invisible boot. After that, there was the taste of grit in his mouth, the stinging in his eyes, and the high-pitched whine in his ears, like the squeal of a turbine.

He looked around. Everything was muffled and clouded. The air was grey with pulverised stone. He was on his hands and knees. Ahead of him, what had once been a corridor was now a wall of broken stone.

A shell, he thought, numbly. Orkmund’s stronghold must have taken a direct hit.

Suddenly he was being pulled to his feet. He looked up dazedly to see Silo holding his arm. The Murthian was saying something, but he couldn’t hear. Silo stood him up and spoke with exaggerated volume and clarity, but to Frey it still sounded like it came from a great distance through the cottony pressure in his ears.

‘Cap’n? You hear me?’

‘A little bit,’ he replied. His voice sounded strange in his own head.

‘You hurt?’

Frey checked he had all his arms and legs. ‘Don’t think so.’

There was a faint yell. Silo looked towards the rubble that had filled the corridor. Frey followed his gaze.

‘Hey!’ It was Malvery. Had it not been, Frey probably wouldn’t have heard him, but the doctor’s bellow could wake the dead.

‘Doc!’ Frey cried. ‘You okay?’

‘Cap’n! We’re fine over here. Cuts and bruises. Silo with you?’

‘He’s okay.’

‘Okay!’

The conversation faltered. The dust was settling, and now Frey could see the section of ceiling and wall which had collapsed into the corridor. Frey and Silo had been lagging behind, guarding the rear of the retreating group. Frey stared at the tons of rubble in front of him, and thought how lucky they were that nobody had been beneath it.

‘Wait there!’ cried Malvery. Frey glimpsed him momentarily through a gap in the rubble. ‘We’re going to get Bess to dig through to you!’

Silo grabbed Frey’s shoulder and shook his head. He pointed up at the ceiling. ‘Ain’t a good plan, Cap’n.’

Frey caught on. ‘Silo says no!’ he cried. ‘The roof could come down on you.’

Malvery considered that for a moment. ‘I expect that’d hurt quite a bit,’ he said.

‘Go on to the Ketty Jay. We’ll find another way round.’

‘You sure?’

‘You’ve got the treasure with you?’

‘Safe and sound.’

‘Get it on board. We’ll get there as fast as we can.’

‘Right-o.’

‘And Malvery? If they start shelling us again, you tell Jez to get her airborne and get you out of there.’

‘Without you, Cap’n?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’d rather choke on my own shit,’ Malvery replied cheerily. ‘See you on board.’

Frey shook his head to clear it of the ringing. It was about as effective as he’d expected. At least his hearing was getting less muffled with time.

He picked up his revolver from the ground where it had fallen, and thumbed in the direction they’d come. ‘That way, I suppose.’

They hurried back down the corridor and through a doorway, into a crude kitchen. They could see an exterior window, but even though it had been smashed by the explosion it was too small to get through. Frey led the way into a simple eating-hall with benches and a fireplace. He stayed close to the exterior wall, hoping for a door, but room after room confounded him. Eventually, they came out into another corridor, like the one they had left.

‘Damn it, how hard can it be to get out of a building?’ he complained, and that was when they ran into Orkmund.

He must have heard them an instant before they came around the corner, and that small warning meant he was faster than they were. He was emerging from a doorway as they came into sight, carrying a small jewellery box in his arms. Frey and Silo skidded to a halt as Orkmund dropped the box and pulled a revolver. By the time their own guns were halfway raised, Orkmund already had his levelled.

‘Drop ’em!’ he cried, and they froze.

Frey thought desperately, but he couldn’t force an idea through the fog in his head. This wasn’t a war: there was no question of taking prisoners. If they dropped their guns, he’d shoot them. If they drew, he’d shoot them.

‘Drop ’em!’ Orkmund shouted again, allowing no time for deliberation.

Frey looked at Silo. Silo looked back at him. And in that moment, Frey realised what the Murthian was thinking.

He could only shoot one of them. And Silo had decided it was going to be him.

‘Don’t—’ Frey began, but it was too late. Silo moved, raising his revolver to fire. Orkmund reacted, shifting his aim to Silo. Frey folowed Silo’s lead, an instant behind him: but Orkmund had already committed to his target.

Three shots fired, almost simultaneously. Orkmund fired first, and his bullet took Silo in the chest. Silo’s own shot went wild. Frey’s, hastily aimed, clipped the side of Orkmund’s revolver and sent it spinning away with a spark and a metallic whine.

Silo fell to the ground. Orkmund hesitated, surprised to find that his gun was no longer in his hand. Frey aimed square at his head and pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber. He was out of bullets.

Orkmund lunged at him, drawing a cutlass from his belt. Frey threw his revolver down as his own cutlass leaped from its scabbard, flying into his hand, the blade moving of its own accord. The two cutlasses met hard with a ringing chime. Orkmund swung again, pressing the attack, slicing at his ribs and then his thigh. The daemon-thralled blade parried both, blurringly fast, moving with a speed far beyond anything Frey would have been capable of alone. Orkmund was an expert swordsman; Frey had an expert sword.

There was no time to think of Silo. The necessity of survival wouldn’t permit it. All he saw was Orkmund’s blunt face, twisted in fury, the blades darting between them. He backed away under a flurry of blows, knocking away the pirate’s strikes. The cutlass in his hand was doing its work with little help from him, but it could barely manage to keep up with Orkmund’s attacks. There was a sharp bite of pain in his shoulder as Orkmund nicked him; a moment later, it was followed by one on his forearm.

The pain set loose the rage. In the corner of his eye, he could see Silo lying motionless on the ground. Possessed by a sudden recklessness, he pushed forward, switching from defence to attack. His cutlass sensed the change, moving with renewed vigour. It felt eager in his grip. Adding his strength to the blade’s forced Orkmund to retreat. Suddenly Frey was the one hacking and thrusting while his opponent blocked and parried.

Then, an all-consuming roar, bone-shakingly low. The corridor shook as a tremor ran through it from a nearby shell. Orkmund stumbled back, Frey overreached and lost his balance; but it was Frey who went tumbling to the floor and Orkmund that kept his feet. Frey rolled onto his back, parried aside a downward thrust aimed at his heart, and kicked the pirate’s legs away. Orkmund went down, and suddenly they were on equal terms again. They rolled apart and sprang to their feet, panting, facing each other.

There was surprise and a little amazement in Orkmund’s eyes. ‘You can fight!’ he exclaimed.

‘Yeah,’ said Frey, hatefully. ‘I can fight.’

He lunged forward again. He was taken by a loathing for this man, a need to eradicate him from existence. The very sight of him was unbearable: the broken planes of his nose, the pattern of tattoos over his neck, skull and arms. This man had pulled the trigger that sent the bullet into Silo’s chest. Maybe the quiet Murthian was already dead. Maybe he was even now gasping his last. The one thing worse than the fact that Orkmund had shot him was the fact that he was now preventing Frey from doing anything about it. Every minute was a minute his friend could be bleeding out. Every minute could be the one that ended him.

Silo had taken a bullet for him. He was damned if he’d have that man’s death on his conscience for the rest of his life.

Had it not been for the cutlass Crake had given him, the wildness of his attack would have seen him dead at the hands of a swordsman like Orkmund. But with the blade guiding itself, and his murderous strength behind it, he became formidable. Orkmund parried and blocked, but Frey’s blows were so vicious that he could barely hold on to his weapon. Steel rang again and again, punctuating the distant explosions.

Then Frey’s hands were wrenched back, and his cutlass withdrew of its own volition, in preparation for a mighty strike. Frey panicked, struggling against the wishes of his own blade: he’d been left wide open. Orkmund, seeing the advantage, thrust inside Frey’s guard to skewer him. But then Frey’s cutlass twisted impossibly, almost breaking his wrist as it did so, and Frey felt the blade cut through meat and bone.

Orkmund’s cutlass clattered noisily to the floor. The pirate captain staggered back a step, dazed, gazing at the severed stump of his forearm. Blood fountained with the pulse of his heart. White-faced, he stared at Frey in disbelief.

Frey gritted his teeth and ran him through.

The square in front of Orkmund’s stronghold had become a battle-ground. Shells pounded the grey sky and gunfire cracked and snapped all around. A lumbering pirate frigate was cruising slowly overhead, terrifyingly low and close, its cannons bellowing as it fired at distant Navy frigates. The return barrage exploded deafeningly above the square. Stray artillery ploughed into the town itself, demolishing whatever it hit. A row of buildings along one side of the square had dissolved into rubble and slumped inward after one such misplaced shell.

In the centre of the square sat the Ketty Jay. Its cargo ramp was open and guarded by Bess. Its crew had taken cover inside the mouth of the hold or behind the hydraulic struts, firing on anyone who came close. Pinn and Harkins hovered in support, laying down machine-gun fire from their fighter craft, staying just high enough to avoid potshots from below.

An increasingly desperate group of pirates were shooting from the cover of the rubble. The square was scattered with the bodies of those who had already tried to rush the craft, seeing the Ketty Jay as their only hope of escaping the cataclysm around them.

Frey hurried through the gates of Orkmund’s stronghold with Silo on his back, heedless of the gunfire criss-crossing the air. The ground shook beneath his feet; there was a vast groan of metal from deep below. It felt like the platform they were on might collapse at any moment. He ran low and hunched over in an attempt to keep the Murthian from sliding off. Jez called out at the sight of him and the crew redoubled their fire, keeping the pirates’ heads down as their captain came closer.

Frey was exhausted, running on adrenaline alone. The constant noise of the explosions, the effort of carrying almost ninety kilos of dead weight on his back, and the emotional shock of the past few minutes had put him into a shallow trance. He hardly noticed when a shell obliterated one of the buildings nearby, spraying him with stone chips and pushing him sideways with the force. He staggered, corrected himself, and ran doggedly onward.

Bullets whined past. He didn’t know if they were meant for him. All he wanted was to get to the Ketty Jay.

He stumbled onto the ramp and was met by helping hands from Malvery and Jez, propelling him up into the dim safety of the hold. Bess stepped back onto the ramp, surveying the square threateningly, and Crake pulled the lever to raise it. The pirates screamed with frustration as they saw their chance of escape narrowing, but none of them dared to take on the golem.

All Frey wanted to do was lie down and sleep, but he didn’t have that luxury. He hardened his resolve. This wasn’t over yet.

He let Malvery take Silo from his back. Warm blood had soaked into his coat where the Murthian lay against him. They laid him on the floor of the hold while the doctor looked at his wound. Malvery’s face was pale and fearful.

‘Fix him,’ Frey told Malvery.

‘He’s losing too much blood,’ Malvery said.

‘Fix him, damn you!’ Frey snarled. Then he headed for the stairs that led out of the hold. He went up to the passageway that ran along the spine of the Ketty Jay, then through the doorway into the cockpit, where he flung himself into the pilot’s seat and punched in the ignition code. Jez was moments behind him, dropping into her spot at the navigator’s station as Frey flooded the aerium tanks to maximum.

Another explosion rocked the Ketty Jay as she began to lift her weight off her landing struts. Frey flinched and ducked as a bullet hit the windglass panel in front of his face, leaving a small circular shatter-mark. The pirate frigate loomed above them and to starboard, shells bursting in the air all around it in a pummelling cascade of light and sound. Its keel suddenly came open, unbuttoned in a sequence of detonations that raced along its flank from stern to bow. Frey willed his craft to lift as the frigate tipped sideways towards them with a moan like the death-cry of some enormous metal beast.