Taniwha's Tear (23 page)

O
ne of the Ponaturi gestured, and Jones looked at Riki. He touched his lips with a finger, and then crept towards the rim. Riki followed, Damien and Cassandra a second behind him.

Cassandra pocketed her half-smashed glasses and lowered the black goggles over her eyes, making her look oddly insectoid. ‘Night-goggles,’ she murmured in reply to Riki’s questioning look. She pointed away into the darkness. ‘They went that way. Take my hand.’ She grabbed his in her bony grip, and he grabbed Damien, and they crept, hunched over double, through the grey gloom. Cassandra stopped suddenly, grabbed her backpack from Damien’s shoulders, and hefted it onto her own. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll just lose it.’

Suddenly, Ponaturi warriors were all about them. Cassandra gave a sudden whimper, and Riki clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent her from crying out. She had stepped on the prone form of a soldier, his eyes empty
and unseeing. Riki held her shaking form close until she subsided, then pulled his hand away.

‘I’m okay,’ she breathed, though she didn’t sound it. She slid around the body, not looking at it, and he followed her, slithering on his belly over the stones until there was nothing in front of him, and he was staring down into a stone hollow, forty feet or more below.

‘Oh, crap,’ breathed Damien beside him.

To their right, a line of Hauhau warriors stood like sentinels about Donna Kyle, all of them looking down. To the left were a handful of Bryce’s men, the rest below in the bowl. They were all looking at Lena, and just as Riki registered her, she spoke aloud, her voice filling the hollow.

‘Let the taniwha become me.’

Huh?

She stood, with her arms raised as if crucified, and he could have sworn, though her face was turned away, that green light was radiating from her eyes. Bryce was a few feet from her, transfixed. Sassman was on the edge of the dell. Then he saw Mat, and wished again he had a gun. His friend was on his back, staring up towards them, then back at Lena. A lean officer was kneeling on his chest, and there was blood on Mat’s hand. He stared…and blinked…and shook his head.

For an instant, it seemed to Riki as if he had seen a Maori chief bending over Mat, inhabiting the same space as the soldier. He blinked again, and shook his head. No, he was an officer…

My eyes are going…
He gripped his taiaha impotently, as Donna Kyle laughed, and her taunting voice filled the bowl. ‘You fool, Bryce. You left her a way out. You wanted a pliable girl in command of the taniwha. Instead you’ve just got a primitive savage inside the girl’s body. She’s useless to us now! This has all been for nothing, you imbecile!’ She opened her fist and let the braid of Lena’s hair scatter in the wind, tumbling strands of gold.

As she was talking, Riki noticed the soldier holding Mat pull him to his feet, and hand him his weapon. Mat immediately menaced him with it, then angled around his captive to watch Bryce and Lena. No one else had even seemed to notice. More weirdness.

Then it all got stranger. Lena seemed to change, as if she were turning into glass, her form slowly blurring and becoming translucent, as if she were made of water. He gripped the stone of the rim, scarcely daring to breathe.
What the hell is going on?

Bryce raised his pistol, and yelled, ‘Kill her!’ and that was the tipping point. Guns came up on all sides—except theirs—and carnage erupted.

Riki kept his eyes on Lena, so he saw how she seemed to dissolve into the water, which then flowed upwards into the big black rock that lay in the middle of the pool below. He heard Cassandra give a little cry, and pull back from the rim, and then she was flipping open her laptop, which seemed the most stupid response to a gunfight ever. A volley rang out from the south rim, as Donna Kyle’s
Maori fired down into the bowl. There were screams, and counter-flashes as Bryce’s men returned fire. The air shimmered about Bryce, and he remained untouched. Behind him, the man Mat was guarding seemed to jerk like a marionette on a string, and then collapse. Mat darted away towards the shadows down the slope. A movement caught Riki’s eye—DJ Sassman, following Mat, raising a gun.

‘Come on!’ he heard himself shout, as he sprang to his feet, and ran for the stairs.

Mat saw Donna’s arm rise and fall. Her men fired first, sending musket balls zipping into the bowl, as the rattle of their guns and the billowing smoke filled the hollow. Taylor spasmed and fell, blood erupting as if from bursting boils in three different parts of his back. None struck Mat behind him. Two other soldiers howled and fell, but Mat didn’t hesitate. He backed two steps, saw John Bryce fire at Donna Kyle while bullets pattered harmlessly about him, then he turned and ran downstream, desperately seeking cover.

He reached the edge of the eastern hollow as dozens of shouts came from all sides, and men leapt from above, screaming battle cries. Above it all he heard Riki’s voice, and turned in sudden fright for his friend’s safety. But before he could react, a dark shape loomed above him, and he found himself staring straight down the barrel of Sassman’s pistol.

The fog flowed down the western cliff and half the Ponaturi did the same, howling as they plummeted into the fray. The remainder flung themselves to the right, where Donna Kyle’s Hauhau were turning guns upon them. Riki glimpsed Jones and Godfrey going that way also, Jones firing a massive double-barrelled pistol that bucked in his hand, knocking two Hauhau off their feet just before they could fire, and then the sea-fairies were among the Hauhau, scything at their legs and bringing them down, darting onward. Then light flashed across the fog in the bowl, and what seemed to be a ghostly fire-demon leapt into the fog and roared.

Riki gaped, and then followed a beam of light back up the rim, to where a projector attached to Cassandra’s laptop was beaming the three-dimensional image. The roar of the flame-demon and the crack of its whip resounded through the bowl, and the rest of Bryce’s soldiers wasted their fire upon that image before they realised their mistake. By then, the Ponaturi were among them, with their dizzying speed and brutal bone weapons.

Riki grinned, then ran down the steps, calling for Mat. A soldier, kneeling and firing at Cassandra’s ‘demon’, cursed before turning at the sound of Riki’s voice. He was a professional; he didn’t see a teenager with an antique weapon—he saw an enemy. His musket whipped about to low guard, and the bayonet was thrust at the belly, already jerking about to disembowel.

But Riki had also drilled, and he had drilled solely in hand-to-hand combat against similarly armed men, not spent ninety per cent of his time shooting and the rest of the time stabbing a punch-bag with a blunted bayonet. He leapt the thrust as he charged, stamping downward with his left foot and pushing the gun into the turf, slashing left to right, catching the man on the temple with the taiaha blade, clubbing the man, stunning him. His right foot was already lifting, and he planted it into the man’s chest, shoving him over the cliff into the bowl.

There was another man three steps further down, yet to fire. He turned as Riki’s man toppled, frantically trying to aim. There was no time to pause, but Riki realised instantly he was going to be too late. The soldier’s gun was swivelling too fast, and there was nowhere to go…but there was…

He leapt sideways, and followed the soldier he had stunned off the cliff, as the second soldier fired. The muzzle of the musket flared, and a ball blasted past his head, the muzzle-flash almost searing the back of his neck as he fell. Then he was flailing to stay upright as the ground rose to meet him.

When Damien saw Riki pelt towards the stairs, his legs took him after his friend without requesting permission from his brain. He roared incoherently and sprinted, saw Riki smash a full-grown man aside like a toy, then leap aside to avoid being shot by a second soldier lower down.
The ball must have missed Riki by inches, then Riki was gone, falling down into the fray below. But the second soldier was still there, aligning his bayonet at Damien. He shouted and thrust, forcing the boy to check and parry desperately, years of fencing taking over as he deflected the razor-sharp blade, then counter-slashed with Jones’ sabre.

But this man was no novice. Holding the rifle by butt and stock, he blocked two-handed, then jabbed with the butt, sending Damien reeling away to avoid the blow, following with a low jab of the bayonet that made the boy give ground to avoid being skewered through the thigh. Suddenly panicked, and facing the age-old problem that all swordsmen faced against staves—two points of attack—Damien had to fall back, slashing wildly as his feet sought purchase. The man came again, roaring up the stairs, thrusting and slashing in a frenzied assault. Damien lost track of the butt in the darkness, caught it on his hip and fell back on the rock. The soldier rose to his full height to stab…

…and a brilliant orange light blazed into his eyes like fire. Dazzled, he froze for one instant…

…and Damien’s desperate jab took him in the left thigh. His leg collapsed, and he pitched sideways into the dell.

Damien looked back, where Cassandra stood above him, her laptop in one hand and the projector in the other, looking down at him. She whooped in frightened exhilaration.

‘We should marry!’ he gasped.

‘No way! Get up, you clown.’ Her voice hovered between laughter and fright. Her eyes were on some thing in the hollow below. He followed her stare. Sassman was lining up a point-blank shot at a stationary Mat. There was nothing they could do. Damien shouted desperately, calling the DJ’s name, but he never even heard.

Suddenly the rocks trembled, and Damien looked down, at a crack opening in the stone on which he lay. There was not even time to twist, to try and grab something, before the whole stairs and most of the cliff fell into the hollow. He fell like debris.

‘Get me outta this, and you live,’ Sassman shouted, half-threat, half-plea.

Mat looked down the gun barrel, and measured the resolve of the man’s eyes.

They were at the edge of the lit area, beside the ring of bones that marked where Puarata’s enchantments had ended. Behind Sassman, there was uproar; shouting and shooting, men leaping from the rim of the bowl to close and fight. All was confusion, but he couldn’t make sense of it, as he couldn’t afford to look away from that gun.

Was the musician really a killer? It was one thing to lead a man like Dwayne to a dangerous spot and leave him, but was Sassman someone who could kill face to face, in cold blood?

‘I’ll let you go,’ he offered back.

Sassman’s face contorted. ‘You know I can’t shift outta this world. I need you or Bryce for that.’ He glanced back, to where Bryce was fighting for his life against one of the fierce pale newcomers. ‘An’ Bryce is busy.’ He placed the gun almost in Mat’s face, inches away. The black cavern of the muzzle seemed to fill the universe. Its very presence threatened to break Mat’s composure. He fought rising panic, thinking furiously.

I’m stronger than him…I can shift worlds, and he can’t. I shifted a whole car and three people several times a day in September…I can beat him…

But I don’t know how. He has all the training, all the knowledge…and a gun.

His senses expanded fractionally, and he realised that flight to the real world was impossible here anyway. Opposite this place was a massive rockfall—in real-world terms, they were dozens of yards underground. To shift there would be to die instantly in the rock, if it were possible to shift at all.

‘Why not do this?’ Ngatoro whispered into his mind, showing him an image. Mat seized onto it with desperate hope.

‘Okay,’ he said to Sassman. He made a small change, no more than a flexing of fingers—all he was capable of under the circumstances. He felt his koru-knot pendant suddenly flare at his throat, and knew it had worked. He smiled grimly and raised his own gun, unsure if he had the nerve to use it, but damned if Sassman had to know that. He put all the confidence he could muster into his voice.
‘I refuse,’ he told the American. ‘But you may surrender, if you wish.’

Okay, Sassman, are you really a killer?

Sassman looked at him incredulously, and spat. ‘Damn you, boy. I never wanted to do this.’ He pulled the trigger. The hammer fell, striking a spark that ignited the fire-pan, exploding the gunpowder in the barrel.

That answers the killer-or-no-killer question,
was all Mat had time to think.

The gun exploded in Sassman’s hand, breaking his wrist and blinding him, searing pieces of metal ripping at his face. He reeled backwards and sank to his knees, blinded and horribly confused.

Yes!!
Mat thought.
It worked!

Just a couple of seconds before the American had pulled the trigger, Mat had sealed Sassman’s gun barrel with a small stone from the real world, pulled from one world to another, and there was nowhere for the small explosion to go, except the path of least resistance—back out the firing pan.

Mat rose and smashed the butt of his gun into the American’s temple, and Sassman toppled sideways. Then he looked up to the north face, as a body fell, and Riki followed it, shrieking Mat’s name and waving a taiaha. He struck the ground, and rolled, coming up in a graceful motion onto one knee like a ninja. A soldier turned on him with his bayonet, and they exchanged a flurry of blows, Riki holding his own, despite the size
difference, through sheer speed and skill.

Mat lifted his gun, seeking a target. Bizarrely, a dimly lit projection of a monster had appeared amidst the fog bank like a bad special effect, but then it winked out. Some instinct drew his eye up to the left, to where Donna Kyle stood amidst her warriors on the south rim. Like two ancient enemies drawn together, or two lovers across a bar room, their eyes met amidst the confusion.

She snarled and raised her gun, an action he matched, when suddenly the wall to his right collapsed in a sudden tremor, and dust billowed across the bowl, choking and blinding him.

Cassandra was at the head of the stairs clutching her laptop as the first tremor struck, Damien at her feet. The soldier Damien had wounded toppled into the hollow. She saw Mat under Sassman’s gun. She opened her mouth, a futile warning forming on her tongue, when the American’s gun exploded in his hand, and she punched the air as if at a sports game when Mat clubbed the DJ senseless and strode past him.