But the woman went across to the broken drone and stood over it. “Monono,” she said. “Are you still in there?” She waited a little while for an answer. None came. She didn’t waste the time of waiting though, but strapped the belt of grenades around her middle. She turned back to me.
“Do you know how to use them things?” I asked.
“I seen what he did. I guess I’ll pick it up. Ready?”
“Ready.”
We ran down the hill and into the cut.
Koli
70
The Half-Ax woman was face to face with Catrin now, with not much distance in between them. She pointed at the firethrower and a narrow spark of blue jumped from her finger to touch it. Catrin give a yell of startlement and staggered back, flinging the firethrower from her just as it catched fire its own self. It fell to the ground, bright yellow flames springing up out of it like choker flowers. It roared as it burned.
The blue light died out of the woman’s hands. A pair of bracelets that was on her wrists glowed blue for a moment or two longer, and then went back to being silver. She took a longsword from off her back. Holding it in her two hands, she raised it high with the blade pointing straight up at the sky. It wasn’t hard to see what she was saying – that Catrin and her would set aside their tech and fight with simple weapons. I would not of called that great sword simple though. It had a guard on it that some ironsmith must of spent a month or more of their life on, and the blade was fine work too. I didn’t doubt but that the silver-haired woman kept a good edge on it.
Catrin never carried a sword. The firethrower was all her care where weapons was concerned. She crouched down quick and come up again holding a spear that had been dropped. It was a throwing spear, not a thrusting spear, and not much use against a sword. She raised it up in front of her, jabbing with it as she backed away.
The silver-haired woman followed hard. She didn’t swing or bother to block Catrin’s feints, but only kept narrowing the space between them. When that distance was down to a couple of arm’s lengths, Catrin lunged at last, aiming high, but she was too clever to put all her weight into an attack that was bound to fail. The Half-Ax woman broke the spear in two with a single swipe. At the same time, Catrin ducked down under the sword and come up inside the other woman’s guard. She hit her in the face with her clenched fist.
The woman staggered but she didn’t fall. She couldn’t use her long blade no more – not against an enemy that was all but touching her – but she still had a weapon that would serve. She stabbed Catrin with the sword’s cross-guard, which had wicked sharp points to it. It tore a deep, straight cut across Catrin’s right-hand shoulder, slicing through the thick leather of her armour as if it was spider’s gossamer.
The two of them locked together then. The silver-haired woman twisted her wrist round, bedding the guard’s spike deeper and deeper into Catrin’s shoulder. Catrin couldn’t get free of it but she put that closeness to what use she could, hammering her fists ever and again into the woman’s side, low down near her stomach.
The fight had not stopped all this while. People was running and grappling on all sides, and arrows went by my face close enough that the fletch-feathers tickled my nose, as they say. I wasn’t doing no good at all just standing there, but I was too wildered to move. I had been in fights before but I had never seen such fury and hot blood as this, not even on Sword of Albion’s deck when Paul and Lorraine battled Monono. The sight and the smell of it took all the thoughts out of my head. I had grabbed up my knife again, but I couldn’t even remember what it was for.
Monono was not cumbered in the same way. The drudge turned in circles beside me, its gun spitting out bolts to put down any fighter that offered me harm. And when some trick or turn of the fighting sent a great wave of bodies down on us, it put itself between to be a bulwark for me. It run out of bolts at last, so its gun spit only air, but even then it struck out with its heavy clubbed feet at anyone that come too close.
Two Half-Ax fighters come running in, carrying loops of black wire that sung on a high note, loud enough to be heard over all the other sounds around me. They throwed the wire and it come looping through the air, wrapping itself around the drudge’s front legs and then pulling itself tight. The drudge crashed down, its legs sheared through. The fighters run on without so much as looking at me.
The silver-haired woman had tired at last of wrestling and striving. Her bracelets waked again, high and hurtful blue. Fire or lightning or light or something that was different from all of them lanced out and took Catrin in her arm and her chest – the parts of her that was closest. She sunk down on her knees, struck to the heart of her by that double blow.
That was what brung me out of my dream and made me move. It was not that I come to a point of planning or deciding. I just seen Rampart Fire on her knees, hurting and dying, and a part of me that was deep buried said no. That was not a thing that could be let to happen, if I could only stop it.
You can’t, Stanley Banner said. But I can. It wasn’t like he was there with me on that field. It was just that I seen through his eyes for a half of a heartbeat. He knowed what it was the Half-Ax woman carried on her wrists – a lance-flammes – and he knowed how it worked.
I run toward the two women. “Koli, no!” Monono yelled out of the felled drudge. She had seen that blue light too, and she knowed what it could do.
The silver-haired woman had room now to swing her sword. She brung it up and back, her mind so tangled up in her triumphing that she didn’t see me come. She was going for that two-handed stroke again, her left hand over her right on the sword’s hilt.
I only had time for the one blow. I did not have any faith at all in the strength of my arm or the keenness of my aim. I brung my knife hand forward, but I turned my wrist at the last moment so the blade was sideways on. The blade touched the two bracelets, joining them.
Closing the circuit.
There was a sound like the whole world cracking clean in two.
A smell and a taste of bitter herbs.
A dark place where I landed hard and could not climb out of.
Spinner
71
What I can tell about the rest of the fight will be of little use to anyone. Certainly it’s a trial to me to bring any of it clear into my mind. It must have been there once. You don’t live through such things without having them burned into you like a brand that stings and blisters and is too tender to touch.
But as soon as the first pain fades, you start to pick at the wound in your mind the same way you might do with a wound in your flesh. You set about to explain it, to tell the story and so lessen the itch and the ache of it. You realise quick enough that words are not the right tools for the job, but they’re all you’ve got so you use them anyway. And in a strange way they work. The words lie over your memories and dull them. In the end, you can’t sort out what you did from what others say you did, what you saw from what you only said.
What I tell you now is the closest thing to truth I know, but if I had to raise my hand in Count and Seal and swear my soul to it, or my daughter’s soul, I would not. I can only offer it for what it is, which is a scab over a terrible wound that still, after so much time gone by, hasn’t all the way healed. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe we’re better off with the pain than we would be without it.