Veiled (16 page)

I hesitated, caught between Leo and Caldera. I didn't want to fight this thing, but if I left Caldera alone—

A grey shape darted behind the golem, turned its blue eyes onto Leo, and lunged. I'd forgotten about the other icecat. Leo screamed; I tried to get my focus up in time but the angle was wrong and I was thrown onto Leo with the icecat on top of me.

For a few seconds everything was chaos. The icecat was raking with its claws, trying to shred through me to get to Leo; Leo was screaming; I was swearing and striking with elbows and knees, the floor shaking as Caldera fought the golem. A future of my arm being burnt off flashed before my eyes; I twisted right and the golden beam of the laser seared a glowing line along the floor. Leo broke away, dashing for the door; the icecat bounded after him and I grabbed it, hanging on grimly. The icecat dragged me a couple more steps, then the futures flipped as it switched targets and turned on me, jaws opening wide to bite at my head.

I'd been ready for it. My dispel focus was in my free hand, and as the head came round I rammed the spike right through the construct's eye. The focus discharged and the
icecat spasmed, throwing me back. The spell animating the cat construct flickered and died. Icy claws raked the floor, then went still.

I looked up to see Leo fumbling with the front door. “Leo,” I shouted at him. “Stay here!”

Leo shot me a terrified glance, then pulled the door open and ran out into the street.

I swore and went after him. To my left, Caldera somehow got through the whirlwind of steel and landed a solid blow on the golem's armour; plates cracked but a sword came around before she could pull back and I heard her grunt. I made it to the front door—

—and ducked back as a force blast nearly took my head off. Leo was out there but someone else was too, and the force mage was in the cover of a station wagon across the street. There was something going on, but as I looked back I saw that Caldera was struggling. The golem was pressing down on her, a golden swirl of death. I could go after Leo or help Caldera, but I couldn't do both.

I hesitated a second . . . then turned back to Caldera, bending as I did to yank my focus out of the icecat. The mantis golem brought all its weapons to bear, striking at Caldera with three limbs at once. Caldera blocked a downward slash, ducked under the laser, and
almost
dodged the stab. It didn't impale her, but blood sprayed and Caldera staggered and went down. The golem moved in to finish her off.

I charged with a shout. Futures shifted as the golem retargeted on me, and I felt a spike of terror as the golden eyes turned to look down at me. I feinted at the golem; for a second I had it on the defensive, then it moved into its attack routine.

All of a sudden the futures were a whirl of violent deaths, all of them mine. Move that way and I'd be impaled; move the other way and I'd have a severed arm; stand still and the laser would burn a hole through my chest. I ducked and dodged, staying half a step ahead of the gleaming blades. I caught flickers of futures in which I hit the golem, and none
of them did anything. My dispel focus wasn't recharged, and even if it had been, it wouldn't even scratch a monster like this. I'd forgotten all thoughts of Leo, or the force mage who'd been shooting at me, or the ice mage who was still lurking around. My world had narrowed to the next two seconds, and nothing more.

The left sword came at my head and I half-parried with my forearm. Even using the angle to limit the blow, I felt the shock go up my arm, sending me lurching back. There's this terrifying sense of
power
to golems, a kind of smooth, unstoppable force. So many of the machines we meet on a daily basis have checks, safeguards; it's easy to forget how lethal they are until one's turned against you. The laser fired and I ducked, letting the beam pass an inch or two over my shoulder, feeling the air heat and seeing the armour of the golem's body backlit in the glow. Caldera was somewhere behind but I couldn't take the half second to check. The golem still hadn't used the device on its fourth arm: it looked like a torch with a gaping barrel. No time to study more closely. Swing, sword thrust, laser. Dodge and block and twist. There was a rhythm to the attacks, and I fell into it, matching the golem's movements like a dance, and for a moment I was holding my own.

But only for a moment.
I'm losing.
Had to change tactics. Couldn't break its armour. What to do?

Evade. Run.

I stepped into the next swing, catching the golem's sword arm. The blow was too powerful to stop and I let it lift me, pushing off the ground to let the golem swing me around like a roundabout. The golem stepped back, twisting, trying to bring its weapons to bear, and with the moment's breather I pulled a condenser from my pocket and smashed it against the wall.

Mist rushed out, filling the room, and suddenly all I could see was the shadow of the wall and the construct's golden body. It swung again and I ducked past; two steps brought me out of its visual range and I felt the futures in which it killed me fray and scatter. The futures opened up again and I could see where I was going.

Caldera was against the other wall, struggling to rise. I caught a glimpse of her side through her torn clothes; blood, a dark gash, something peeking through. I threw her arm over my shoulder, heaving her up. “This way,” I whispered. “Quiet.”

Caldera resisted for a second, then let me guide her. “Where is it?” she muttered. She was still half dazed and her voice was loud in the mist.

There was the sound of creaking metal and the floor shook as the golem zeroed in on the noise. I switched direction, pulled a stumbling Caldera to one side; a massive golden shadow loomed up, appearing out of the fog and disappearing again. The lines of its future didn't turn to intersect ours; it hadn't detected us. I held my finger to my lips and this time Caldera stayed quiet.

We'd reached the stairs. The golem was no more than ten feet away but it couldn't see us. Constructs aren't sapient, and they're very bad at dealing with unexpected situations. The golem had been sent into the house with a simple directive: kill us both. Now it couldn't detect either of its primary targets, and following the voices hadn't worked. It paused, waiting for input.

I led Caldera up the stairs. A future flashed up of a stair creaking under Caldera's weight, and the golem hearing and lasering us through the wall; I caught Caldera's shoulder, signalled for her to place her foot to one side. Blessedly, she didn't argue. The mist thinned and vanished as we made it up into the hallway.

The light was still on in the room where the icecat had attacked, and I led Caldera into the other one. She was silent and favouring one side. “How bad are you?” I whispered.

“Managing,” Caldera muttered.

I looked sceptically at Caldera. She wasn't trying to order me around. Bad sign. “I don't think that golem can get up the stairs, so if you don't mind, I'd kind of prefer to stay up here. You might be able to fight that thing, but I'd just as soon not go another round with it.”

Caldera didn't answer for a second and I wondered if she'd spotted what I was doing, but she didn't push it. “Leo?”

“Panicked and ran out the front door.” I hesitated. “The force mage was right there. No way he could have missed him.”

Caldera glared. “I told you to stay with him.”

I looked away, stung. I wanted to make excuses—I'd been tied up fighting the icecat, I'd gone back to help her—but on the facts, she was right. Guarding Leo had been my job.

“Where are they?” Caldera said.

“Ice mage is in the back garden.” I kept my voice very low. The golem was really damn close, and that laser could easily pierce the floor. “Lost the force mage. Golem's still waiting.”

“What if we make a break for—?”

“Bad idea,” I said. I'd been looking at the futures in which we did exactly that. “The street doesn't have enough cover—with you hurt, they'd chase us down and pick us off. Only reason they haven't done it already is they aren't sure where we are.”

Caldera paused for a second, and I could sense her flicking through plans. “All right,” she said. “We're going to have to stall them. I'll—”

The futures shifted. I took one glance at them and my heart sank. I caught Caldera's arm and pulled her towards the bedroom.

One of the few silver linings to these sorts of situations is that you learn pretty quick whether someone trusts you. Even wounded, there was no way I could have moved Caldera if she didn't want to be moved, but after one startled glance she let me drag her inside.

There was a weird low-pitched noise, like a deep cough.

I twisted around. Through the doorway and out in the hall, where there had been carpet, now there was a big circular hole in the floor. Through it, I could see the mist-filled living room. As I watched, there was another cough and most of what was left of the hallway disintegrated into dust.

From below, I felt the vibrations as the golem moved and
turned. The cough came a third time, then a fourth. There was nothing left of the hallway: if we stepped out of the bedroom we'd fall straight into the room below.

“Well,” I said quietly. “I guess now we know what that fourth weapon does.”

“What the
fuck
is that?” Caldera whispered.

There was another cough, followed by another. It wasn't going directly towards us . . . yet. “Disintegration cannon. Wonder why it didn't use it earlier. Maybe it's got too slow a charge-up time. Or it could be one of those spells that needs the target to be stationary to—”

“Did you hit your head?” Caldera hissed. “Focus!”

“We all have our ways of dealing with stressful situations,” I said absently. Most of my attention was on plotting out futures. “It's going to shoot the floor out from underneath us. Probably collapse the house.”

More coughs sounded. The golem was destroying the small guest room in which we'd found Leo, one section of floor at a time. We'd gotten lucky that it had decided to start there. Not too lucky, though. Our room was next.

Caldera hesitated one second, then lowered her head. “Fuck it.” Her voice was harsh. “We fight.”

“No.”

“We don't have—”

I didn't raise my voice. I often get calmer in really dangerous situations. “If you go down there, you'll die.”

“You don't—”

“I
do
know that, and that's without the ice mage interfering. He wouldn't have ordered the golem to force a confrontation like this unless he knew he'd win.”

“Then—”

“Our best chance is to wait for backup. And no, I haven't seen it coming, I'm still looking. Please let me concentrate.”

“When are—?” Caldera started to ask, then stopped.

Another series of coughs. The light in the next room blinked out and the house went dark. One of the shots must have cut the power cable. There was a groaning sound and
a rumbling crash that I could feel through the floorboards. The floor shifted under my feet.

Caldera snatched a look out into the hall. “Mist's clearing,” she said in a low voice.

“I know.”

“Got another?”

“No.” I don't stockpile condensers—they work best when they're fresh. I'd lost two in the battle with Chamois, and the one I'd just used had been my last. I kept scanning through the futures. There was some sort of disturbance up ahead, something like . . .

. . . fire?

Now I just needed to figure out how to keep us alive until they got here.

The coughing sound came again and the wall ahead of us shuddered. “I think I'm going to have to go keep that thing busy,” I told Caldera. “Wait up here, okay?”

Caldera glared at me. “Screw that!”

The wall shuddered again. A few more shots and it would collapse. “Stay in the corner,” I told Caldera. “When that wall goes it'll take down most of the floor, except for the far corner. As long as you stay there, you won't fall.”

“If you—”

“You're hurt, I'm not.” I kept my voice calm. “I've fought these things before; I can stall it for a little while. We just need to survive another forty seconds.”

Caldera hesitated. I don't know much about medicine, and I hadn't had a close look at Caldera's wound, but I'd seen the futures in which she tried to fight the golem, and they'd been brief and messy. We didn't have time to talk it through. “Stay back,” I said, and walked to the edge.

There was a final cough. The wall groaned and collapsed, taking the section of floor I was on with it. I'd been ready for it and rode it down, jumping off at the last second to land in the living room, rolling to soften the fall.

I came up to see the golem turning to face me. Plaster dust was in the air, and broken drywall littered the floor.
Taking down the wall hadn't collapsed the house, not quite, but it wouldn't take much more. Caldera was hidden by the remains of the ceiling. From the back garden I heard a yell, then the golem moved to attack.

The laser burned a line across the carpet as I dodged right. The golem approached, swords coming down, and I backed away. The living room flashed, lit in the glow of spells from outside: red, blue, red again. I couldn't take the time to look and see. All my attention was focused on the mantis golem.

The laser fired again and again, a glowing golden line of death. I stepped aside from each blast, calculating how to position myself to dodge the next. The golem was herding me, pushing me towards the corner. The spells from outside had stopped; the dust in the air was cutting the visibility but I could see the futures that were approaching and knew what I had to do.
Just need a little distraction . . .
I stepped forward to go under the next laser blast, letting myself be drawn into melee range. The golem's swords came down.