Authors: Kin Law
It must be aggravating to tell, particularly when the blade was invisible.
Hikawa was adjusting the length with each draw.
M-dono
had kindly provided the option with a brass dial in the hilt.
He watched the woman twist, agile, and perch on an uncut piling.
Ah, so the new weapon is to be a deck of cards. They were palm-sized, longer than playing cards.
Tarot
, he believed they were called. The
kappa
monks had frowned upon such pagan blasphemy. Hikawa was mildly amused. What new trick was the woman up to?
He did not have to wait long. It was obvious his enemy was a mistress of projectiles, like the
ninja
of
Nippon
.
Samurai
versus
ninja
- the thought struck momentary pleasure in Shotaro before his thoughts turned to the thrown cards.
Tricky.
Very tricky.
The cards wound through the air like predatory birds. One moment they were flying in straight lines, nowhere near Shotaro. The next, they seemed to change direction, scenting for his wrists, his neck,
his spine. There was even one that seemed to go for his groin.
Thunk! The edge of a card dug deep into Shotaro’s mask. It was a calculated risk- the swordsman did not know what these cards really were. He yanked it out of the lacquer and peered at the strange illustration- a man hung by the neck, against a background of a battlefield. Odin, it read.
Kudaran
- he threw it over his shoulder flippantly. Such frippery did not belong on the battlefield. He sliced another card in twain, seeing the image of jewels flip past his face.
The card half embedded itself into a bridge pylon with far more weight than it should.
Hmm. A mistake, Shotaro realized. His sword relied much on form- the sheath filled the hilt with vital gases needed to form the blade. It made him slow, sheathing and unsheathing now to fend off the barrage of cards.
Meanwhile, his opponent could fling four or five cards at once, some diving right for Shotaro, some hanging in the air to join in a hail of missiles. He could not always catch them in one swipe, and as his forms began to fail, he found himself falling back, step by clicking step on his wooden
geta
. They were split-second motions- the woman was a whirl of pleasantly textured cloth and leather, tossing her weapons with tiny flicks of her fingers, all the while keeping her distance. At this rate, either she would run out of cards or he would run out of gas in his sheath.
A gambit, then, Shotaro thought. Sheathing his blade once more, he undid the reserve on the machinery. Instantly, the gauge in the hilt began to rise, the needle creeping towards a red swath. He sidestepped, dodged, scrambled to stay away from the murderous fortunes striking all around him now- an Ace of Air, The Engine, Anubis, challenging Shotaro’s ability to pronounce the English letters. They stuck in the stone corner-first, feathering the bridge.
Just another few seconds…
A slew of cards stuck a line right near his right geta, cracking the pavement.
The Patriarch now, with a squadron of Knights. Where they hit edge-first, the card with the ornate art cut clean through steel fixtures.
He found himself reading the cards, letting the pips strike his mask and geta.
This was bad- the enemy was managing him, letting the card faces distract him from his target.
Worse, there were
some that were not blades- some suits erupted into tongues of flame, and others into clouds of stinging vapor.
No two were alike, and it threw Shotaro into confusion
.It was a devious scheme- the cards flipped through the air, face and back interchanging in a deadly dance.
In a moment he would slip, become distracted and find one embedded in his body. He wondered if they could cut through the false eye and cheekbones
M-dono
had placed in his skull.
All the while, his blade was filling with the precious energies of the perfect sword. Just as his
geta
were about to slip, throwing him off balance, there was a click at his hip.
Shotaro cried out, and leaped high into the slate sky. The woman peered, ready for the attack- but this cut would be impossible to avoid. Shotaro unsheathed.
He cut the bridge in half.
It was only when he landed in the midst of the crumbled pylons and mangled steel, did he discover the card pricking him in the hand. The others were probably only ever meant as decoys.
Of course- there was ever only one perfect, unavoidable cut in the world, and it had been stalking him ever since the heavenly buildings of the Vatican. He did not need to see the grinning face to know the edges were coated in poison; his peripheral vision was already white with its effects.
The card buried in his hand was called The Death.
11.4: Van Houten
Jimmy Van Houten thought it was mighty stupid of a man to try and sneak up on a sniper’s nest without any sort of weapon.
The seventy-caliber tank buster lay at his feet leaking a sooty residue. Its explosive cartridges and steam propellant were spent, the portable engine supplying both discarded nearby. Van Houten was now holding his faithful elephant gun, trusting to its cast-bronze stopping power to finish the mission.
The first phase had been accomplished. He had sealed off the rest of the Kremlin, given them the downed
Vasillisa
to worry about with its precious purple cargo. It had been easy to tap the Swiss Guard’s telegraph line, he recalled. The very presence of the leaders of Europe made their concerted plan a cacophony. With the
Vasillisa
downed, it would be child’s play to throw the rest of the Balaenopterons into discord. Even now he could see the dark blot of Mordemere reaching out with white-hot fingers, grasping at the bloated shapes attempting to surround it. One of the Balaenopterons, a Briton ship from the livery, seemed to be trawling the battlefield, rescuing crew from the downed ships.
“Aghh…” Van Houten groaned. His meat body and his steam one hadn’t yet adapted to each other.
Pain wracked his nerves periodically. His target dropped from between his sights for half a moment, enough for him to see the brown drover’s coat and floppy Stetson disappear behind a vodka kiosk.
“Damn,” Van Houten said softly. Already, his sniper’s mind was recalculating, predicting the possible avenues of evasion, calculating for wind direction, magnitude, for frost seizing up the lubrication in his rifle. Would his target emerge from the gap between the kiosk and the red cabriolet?
The red cab and the overturned truck?
The second phase, of securing Red Square for Mordemere to procure, was not quite so vital as the first, but Van Houten was well aware of the precarious position he was in.
Mordemere had saved his life, but behind the gray mutton chops and impeccable suit, there lived whims beyond Van Houten’s ability to comprehend.
Van Houten touched the place where his skin ended and a dense carapace began, under the layers of cloak and Clanker suit. Perhaps the inscrutable alchemist needed just one military man in his employ; Zahavi had been blue dead when they removed his suit, back aboard the
Nidhogg
.
Then there had been the great big hunk of metal tossed after him on the drop down here, like a copper-jacketed grizzly bear. Maybe the ringmaster required clowns to whip the beasts. Perhaps Valima Mordemere simply wanted to perform an experiment, and Van Houten was the most suitable guinea pig.
This was taking too long.
Van Houten squeezed off a shot, turning a mirror off the red cabriolet into a glittering cloud of debris. He expected the man with the Stetson to reappear; instead, a short man with ginger-tipped black hair emerged from a tipped-over lorry on the other side of the square. He was wearing a duster that could not have concealed a rifle.
“All right!” The man announced. “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed!”
What was this?
Two idiots from one nest? Van Houten took careful aim. He had to complete the mission. The mangled bodies lying at the foot of this very perch stood testament to his resolve.
That was when the filigree railings near his elbow suddenly burst into iron splinters. The shrapnel had bloomed- low-range ammunition. The Stetson was right under Van Houten!
“Damnation!” Van Houten cursed, and pulled back from the edge of the window. Tears in his cloak showed where sharp iron stuck in the Clanker suit.
His elephant gun shuddered from the vibrations in the air- there were shots thudding into the ceiling, and the rails, and the open French doors on either side of him. Only his mask protected against the rain of glass on his face.
His gun was too large to turn in tight quarters. He abandoned it, pulling two belt-fed repeaters from his hips. The square weapons were short, stubby, and easy to aim in wide, sweeping arcs.
H
e walked forward, into the hail of bullets, and stepped off the edge of the balcony, crunching the street below into rubble with his landing.
His new legs handled the shock well, hissing a cloud of expelled vapor
through cylindrical coolant sinks at his waist.
The Stetson wasn’t there- worse, the man with the ginger tips was running full-tilt towards Van Houten, zigzagging across Red Square.
“Cheese it,” he told himself. The situation was rapidly turning into one he did not understand- these weren’t the Russian or any official government’s agents. Their movements were too awkward, too unpredictable. Van Houten had served in the American West, not the European East, but he knew military and these weren’t. Privateers? Merchants of death, like himself? Nothing seemed to fit. It did not change his course of action, but the quiet part of his mind pondered on these questions. It occurred to him maybe he had survived this long because of it.
Wham.
A bullet caught him full in the chest, then three more, one in the forehead. They dug divots into the chest plate and ricocheted into a portrait of an old
babushka
lying abandoned in the gutter by a hastily evacuated street artist.
Van Houten turned and sprayed a vodka kiosk with his repeaters, feeling the boxy weapons thrum on smooth, lubricated axels. Bullets tore into the kiosk like termites into a house, filling it with holes and shredded newsprint until the little painted shed collapsed on itself- five seconds. The remains caught with periwinkle blue flames; there must have been something with a little kick in stock.
The repeaters in his hands were wreathed in steam. Were his fingers still human, the flesh would have melted into sludge even through the Clanker greaves. There were some advantages to working with an alchemic genius for an employer.
The Stetson wasn’t in the kiosk anymore. Van Houten thought he saw the willow wisps of coat tails on fire, but in a moment his chest plate was ringing with shots once more- this time tiny, like sleigh bells, not uncommon in this frozen shithole. Van Houten often thought this way. He didn’t have any beef with foreigners, but when a man only ever got to sightsee through a sideways rain of bullets, he tended to profane a lot.
“Really? A fucking derringer?” Van Houten asked of the ginger-tip firing at him from the cover of an overturned passenger engine. Garbage Ruskie engineering, Van Houten thought. Just on principle, Van Houten gave the broad side of it a good hosing, pitting the cheap Zebra 40 until it looked more like a spotted Giraffe.
“All right, all right, I’m coming out!” The ginger-tip announced. He stood up, throwing aside a tiny derringer as he did.
“What are you, a moron? I’m going to kill you.”
“The sword was never my strong point. I’m more the pen type.” The bookish looking retard actually thought Van Houten would talk with him.
The mercenary leveled one repeater, thumbing the setting to single shot. He would put one in the heart, and another in the brain, quick and easy. He would be merciful.
“Wait, wait! Your other mark is getting away,” the ginger said.
“You think I’m green?” Van Houten said. “I’m going to turn around, and your friend will put one in my face while you put one in my back. News for you, the Clanker suit doesn’t penetrate easy.”
“I was about to say, you could use me as a hostage. Make it easier for you to find my friend.”
Van Houten actually had to give this a think- it was a good tactic, even though his enemy had thought of it. Ordinarily, he would never risk it, but at the moment, he was clothed in a layer of impenetrable armor and half his guts were made of metal. His crotch itched something fierce, but if he tried to scratch all he would find was depression and a pair of purely cosmetic bearings.