Twenty-One

‘You Ain’t Much More Than Thieves’ – A Thousand Ways To Die – Plan B – Frey Holds On

Bree and Grudge, of the Century Knights. Sometimes they’d been allies to Frey, sometimes enemies. Tonight, they were definitely the latter.

Colden Grudge towered over his companion, shaggy-haired and bearded, clad in dirty plates of armour, carrying an autocannon cradled under his arm that could put a hole in a man the size of . . . well, pretty much the size of a man. Bree looked positively delicate next to him, her twin lever-action shotguns puny in comparison. They stood just outside the doorway to the circular chamber, covering the room. Three guns for three targets.

This wasn’t going to go well.

‘Samandra . . .’ Crake began limply.

‘You shut your meat-hole,’ she snapped, raising the shotgun in her left hand, aiming at his head. ‘I don’t mind admittin’ to a certain amount of disappointment, Grayther Crake. Thought you were better than this.’

Crake looked crushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You weren’t supposed to remember.’

‘You think that makes it better?’ she cried, and Frey saw with some surprise that she was genuinely angry. ‘You got in my head, you bastard! I oughta gun you down like a dog!’

‘Hey,’ said Frey quickly. ‘Let’s nobody shoot anybody. Crake here had a good reason to do what he did.’

‘Yeah, I know the reason,’ she sneered. ‘Grothsen’s new acquisition.’ She spat on the floor. ‘Damn daemonist trickery. For all the tales told about you, you ain’t much more than thieves.’

‘I need that relic,’ Frey said. ‘This isn’t about stealing. See, there’s a thing called the Iron Jackal, it’s a daemon of some kind, and I’ve got a curse on me that—’

‘Don’t,’ said Crake, holding up his hand. He looked at Frey sadly. ‘Don’t bother. Even I wouldn’t believe you if you told me.’

‘Well, then,’ said Samandra. ‘If you’re quite done bullshittin’, gentlemen, I suggest you lower them guns.’

Frey’s eyes flickered around the room, skipping over the exhibits. His mind raced. A plan, a plan. Fighting was out of the question. Apart from being crack shots, the Century Knights had the advantage of cover. Frey and his companions were out in the open; the Knights only had to duck behind the doorway. He didn’t much rate his chances of making it behind one of those marble plinths with all his organs still functional.

‘I ain’t gonna ask twice,’ Samandra warned.

But Frey knew that the moment he lowered his pistol, he was as good as dead. He wouldn’t even make it to the gallows. It wouldn’t be the Knights that killed him, though. They’d find him in a dark cell, a scream of terror frozen on his face, torn to ribbons by bayonets. The metal claws of the Iron Jackal.

There were a thousand ways he might die. But it wouldn’t be helpless in a cage.

‘You really gonna start a gunfight in here?’ he asked, his mouth running to buy time. ‘With all these valuable artefacts?’

‘Won’t be much of a fight, way I see it,’ said Samandra. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t miss much.’

‘That feller’s got an autocannon,’ Frey pointed out.

‘Colden here’s touched by your concern for our heritage, Captain Frey,’ said Samandra. ‘He’ll be real careful not to hit anything else while he’s killin’ you.’ She steadied her aim. ‘Don’t make me count to three.’

‘Alright,’ said Frey. ‘Guns down, fellers. Nice and easy, so the lady doesn’t get nervous.’

Silo laid his shotgun on the ground and slid it away from him with his feet. Crake, who hadn’t even drawn his pistol – and couldn’t hit a barn door with it anyway – did the same.

‘Can’t help noticin’ that one of you still has a weapon trained,’ said Samandra. She switched her aim so that both guns were on Frey.

That’s right, he thought. Focus on me. The others aren’t part of this.

‘You thinkin’ of makin’ somethin’ of this, Frey?’ said Samandra. ‘Wouldn’t be the smartest thing you ever did. Sure would be the last, though.’

Frey gave a slight smile. ‘I’m not stupid, Miss Bree.’ Slowly, he swung his aim away from her, until he was holding his arm out to his side, level with his shoulder. As if he was about to drop it.

But he didn’t. He pulled the trigger instead.

He was throwing himself down even as he fired, slamming flat to the marble floor. Samandra, faster than her companion, pulled her triggers reflexively at the sound of the pistol. But she hadn’t been expecting the shot, and that split-second of hesitation saved Frey’s life. Even so, she blasted the tail of his greatcoat to rags as it followed him to the floor. If he’d dropped into a shooting crouch, it would have been his face she hit.

Glass exploded, shards pattering across his cheek. The huge Thacian vase inside the display case exploded with it, shattering like an eggshell.

Samandra switched her aim, pointing her shotguns right at Frey where he lay helpless on the floor . . .

And suddenly she was gone, obscured by a thundering wall of metal that slammed down from above, inches in front of her gun barrels. The gate, triggered by the pressure pad beneath the vase. Trapping them inside the chamber.

‘Heh,’ said Silo appreciatively, as the clamour of alarm bells began in the distance.

‘You . . . you . . .’ Crake gaped. ‘That was a priceless antique!’ he shrieked. ‘Over two thousand years old!’

‘Smashed pretty good though, didn’t it?’ said Frey, getting quickly to his feet. He struggled out of his greatcoat and flung it to the ground: it was tattered to the point of uselessness. ‘Jez! We need out of here, right now!’

‘Plan B, Cap’n?’ said Jez in his ear.

‘Plan B,’ he agreed.

‘Oh no,’ groaned Crake. ‘There’s a plan B?’ Then he flinched as Silo put the butt of his shotgun through another glass case, and snatched up the relic.

‘On my way. Where are you?’ Jez asked.

Frey looked around the chamber, then up to the roof. ‘Top floor. There’s a dome above us.’

‘I see it. Be right there.’

Something pounded against the gate. ‘Frey!’ came Samandra’s voice, barely audible over the alarms. ‘You come out of there now! You and that son of a bitch daemonist of yours!’

‘Ain’t gonna be long before someone opens that gate for ’em,’ Silo muttered, handing Frey the black oblong case.

‘I don’t intend to be here when it happens,’ said Frey. He dropped to his knees, brushed aside shattered glass from the floor and laid it down. He began to feel over its surface, trying to locate the row of small depressions he’d found before.

‘What are you doing?’ Crake asked, pacing the room helplessly.

‘Reckon I’ve got about thirty seconds to kill. I’m gonna make sure that . . . ah!’

A seam appeared in the oblong and it slowly opened. There was the double-bladed weapon suspended in the delicate metal cradle. And there was the teardrop-shaped emblem of a jackal, wrought in shining grey metal on the inside of the lid. He stared at it for a moment.

What are you?

Then he closed the case, got to his feet and handed it back to Silo. ‘I’d feel a bit of a fool if I nicked off with an empty box, now, wouldn’t I?’ he said to Crake.

There were shouting voices outside the gate. Guards. Frey wasn’t sure how the alarm system was deactivated, or how the gate was opened once it slammed shut, but he was betting it wouldn’t take long. And the Century Knights were going to be pretty mad when that gate came up.

‘Folks,’ said Jez. ‘I’d get under cover if I were you.’

‘Up against the wall!’ Frey yelled at the others.

‘What? What’s going to—’ Crake began, but he was cut off by the sound of the Ketty Jay’s autocannon smashing through the roof of the dome overhead. They ran for the walls, arms covering their heads, as chunks of rubble rained down from the ceiling, spinning end over end to smash into the remaining display cases. Crake cried out in horror as a suit of elaborate armour was crushed and scattered. The rest of the exhibits were obliterated in a cacophony of tumbling stone and tinkling glass.

When it was all over, Frey took his hands from his head. The alarm still rang, and he could hear the hiss of stabilising gas-jets as the Ketty Jay manoeuvred overhead. He appeared to be undamaged, which was more than he could say for the chamber.

‘Frey, you bastard!’ Crake howled, surveying the wreckage.

‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’ said Frey, who was getting a bit sick of his ungratefulness. ‘I’d like to see you appreciate the historical value of all this worthless junk when you’re swinging from a bloody gallows.’

‘Worthless junk?’ Crake spluttered.

A rope snaked down through the hole in the dome, slumping in heavy coils on the rubble-strewn marble floor.

‘Get up there,’ he ordered everybody, while running for the rope himself. He wasn’t about to be the last one up, especially not with the Century Knights on the other side of that gate. Despite his enthusiasm, however, Silo was quicker off the mark than he was. It was with some surprise that he saw the Murthian race ahead of him and grab the rope. He gripped the relic between his knees and climbed, using only his arms.

Damn, that feller’s strong, he said to himself. He had to admit that he was more than a little perturbed that Silo hadn’t let him go first. He wouldn’t have expected it of anyone else, but he’d become used to Silo deferring to him over the years.

The alarm stopped suddenly. Frey had a dreadful feeling about what would happen next.

‘Bess!’ he yelled, as he grabbed on to the rope. ‘Pull!’

Somehow, she heard him over the gas-jets, and he was hauled off the ground, up and up in clumsy jerks. Crake, slowest of all, ran across the chamber and grabbed on to the rope a few feet below Frey. He was pulled into the air with an uncertain yelp.

‘Jez! Vertical ascent! Keep her steady!’ Frey barked. The hole in the dome overhead was getting closer, but not fast enough. He concentrated on hanging on to the rope and fought the swarming vertigo as the chamber floor receded beneath them.

‘Cap’n!’ Crake cried, and there was something in his voice that flooded Frey’s veins with ice. He looked down. Crake had a desperate, horrified, helpless expression on his face.

‘Cap’n . . . my arm . . . it’s too numb to . . .’

And suddenly he lost his grip, slipped a few inches, grabbed on again with a frantic clutch. His legs flailed above a fatal drop as they were pulled upwards ever faster by the combined efforts of the golem and the Ketty Jay’s aerium tanks.

There was no time for Frey to think. No time to do anything but prevent what he saw was about to happen.

Crake was several feet below him, beneath his feet on the rope. Frey swung his legs out, shifting them out of the way, and climbed downwards with his arms. He wasn’t strong enough to do it for more than a few seconds, but a few seconds was all it took to get his arse down to a few inches above Crake’s hands. In other circumstances he’d have found it all childishly comical, but now things were deadly serious and he moved with a grim efficiency. He twisted the rope round one wrist to anchor himself, and reached down with the other one.

‘Frey, I can’t —’

He slipped again. Frey lunged and caught him by the wrist. The jerk almost took his shoulder out of its socket. Pain blazed across his back; the rope cut into his wrist. Bess pulled again, and they were yanked upwards, almost at the roof of the chamber now. Crake swung in the air, reaching with his other hand, grabbing on to Frey’s wrist as Frey had his. His eyes were wild with terror, but Frey was calm. There was nothing else in this moment but holding on. All he had to do was hold on.

Below him, there was a clanking sound as the gate to the chamber was winched up. Bree and Grudge came running into the room. They looked around, and then up, and Samandra raised her guns; but suddenly they were gone, blocked out by the green dome of the Mentenforth Institute as Frey and Crake were pulled through the hole and out into the night sky.

‘Don’t let go of me!’ Crake screamed, and for an instant he thought he heard Rabby’s voice instead, the voice of his dead engineer. ‘Don’t you leave me here!’

‘I’m not letting go,’ said Frey, steadily. He didn’t take his eyes off Crake’s. He didn’t want to see the city spreading out beneath him, the carpet of lights, the immensity of death waiting to meet him on the ground. Bess pulled them in, hand over hand, her inexorable power drawing them closer to the great black shape of the Ketty Jay above them.

One more second. And when that had passed, one more. And then another. The pain was meaningless. His strength was infinite. They’d have to pry his fingers open with a crowbar before he’d let go of Crake’s wrist.

After an eternity that seemed to pass in no time at all, there were hands on him, reaching over the lip of the cargo ramp, pulling him aboard. Silo was lying on the edge, and he grabbed Crake’s other wrist. Malvery had raced down from the autocannon cupola to help out. Harkins was babbling frantically as he grabbed at them, and even Pinn was there to lend his good arm. Behind them all, the anchor at the end of the rope, was Bess, a massive presence in the gloom.

He didn’t release Crake until he was sprawled on the cargo ramp next to him. Harkins scurried over to a nearby lever and threw it. Hydraulics kicked in, and the metal floor that they lay on began to rise as the ramp came up. Silo and Pinn dragged them both away from the steadily closing gap, and they were finally deposited on the floor of the cargo hold, panting and breathless.

‘Jez,’ said Frey. ‘We’re in. Cane it.’

The Ketty Jay’s thrusters boomed in response, and she thundered away across the city. The cargo ramp slid shut, sealing them in, the protective metal cocoon of home.

Crake was lying on his back, panting, halfway to sobbing with relief. Bess lumbered over and crouched next to him. She made a concerned bubbling noise and poked him in the arm. He shook his head in disbelief, staring at the ceiling. ‘Spit and blood. We are in so much trouble,’ he gasped.

Frey got slowly and painfully to his feet, brushed sweaty hair away from his forehead, and straightened. ‘Anyone else think we’ve outstayed our welcome in Thesk?’

Pinn, Malvery, Silo and Harkins all put their hands up. Crake did the same, from where he lay on the floor. Bess looked around in confusion, turning this way and that, and then tentatively raised her hand, because everyone else was doing it and she wanted to join in the game.

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Frey, tiredly. ‘Let’s go back to Samarla.’