Wolff did not remember passing out, but he came around to the whine of the
Shamrock’s
ventilation system. His throat burnt, and pain raced a course through his whole being. With arms stiff and aching, he forced himself to his feet and staggered to the door. “Open, damn you!”
The door slid back, and the man stumbled into a corridor almost completely unlit. He tripped on something and slid on a stickiness coating the floor as he made his way into the fore section of the ship. The gas had addled his mind and he could not think. He could see nothing in the dark, and realised his IR-UV bifocals must have fallen off when he’d lost consciousness. There was not time to return for them. Wolff had reached the window, and outside the shadow of a spiny wing blocked out the stars. The airlock door stood open. “Shit! Arrol! Arrol!” Wolff spoke as loud as he dared. “Curse you, morran!”
He found a scaffolding strut in the storage cupboard, and stumbled onward to the bridge.
Looking through the doorway, he could at first only perceive the still glow of the stars outside and a few lit patches on the ship’s console. As his eyes adapted, he discerned the shape of the seating and the two figures before it. One knelt, head tilted back, and the other leant in, toward the throat of the first.
Wolff sprang forward without a sound and swung for the intruder’s head with his weapon. The older Archer pulled back with just a fraction of a second to spare, and rolled across the floor. She got to her feet instantly, using her momentum to push herself upright. Wolff held out the scaffolding strut. “Keep back.”
A quick movement, and the female had the other end of the pole in her grip. Wolff fought to hang on to it, but she had Jed’s speed and overbalanced him. Wolff fell over Jed. His hand found her arm, and he pulled her back and out the way as the older Archer advanced on them both. “Jed, wake up!” he shouted. A low guttural noise rose from her throat. “Jed, Come on! I can’t win this on my own!”
“Stand aside,” the older Archer ordered Wolff. “The Code of the Archers is beyond the comprehension of a common man such as yourself.”
“Oh, I comprehend all right. You and your putrid, festering Blood and the disease you call the Moiety!”
She scowled and, even in the scant light available, lines etched by age and conurin showed on her face. “What can you possibly understand? Unthinking filth! Stand down or die now!”
Wolff hurled himself toward her as she came at him. He was heavier, and sheer momentum carried him though the impact, but her knees hit him in the diaphragm as he knocked her down. As she fell back, she got hold of his neck and kicked out, flinging his body over at a 180-degree angle. His back hit the floor with such force that for several seconds he fought the demon on top of him unaided by his senses of sight and hearing. His head was held in a vicious grip, forced back to expose the vulnerable area of his throat. His flailing hands fastened around his attacker’s neck and, winded though he was, he gasped out, “Men of the Blood are nonviolent? Men of the Blood are rational? You’re no better than beasts!”
He released her neck, and as she plunged for his throat his hands found the interface crown on her forehead. The metal buckled and warped under the pressure of his fingers. She pulled back, and issued a hideous scream. Heat trickled down Wolff’s neck. Immediately she gripped his wrists, fingernails digging into tendons, but Wolff pulled harder, crabbing his hands to lever off the band. One by one the bolts securing it gave, and the crown pulled free with a grate of metal against bone. She collapsed, the strength in her body dissipating to nothing, and Wolff threw her off him.
Light returned to the
Shamrock
’s
bridge. Wolff felt his neck. He was bleeding, but not badly. At once, he faced Jed.
Her eyes opened, turned impassively to the ceiling. Then she frowned, blinked, and sat up. She saw the old Archer lying on the floor behind Wolff, and her mouth fell open. “What have you done!”
Wolff got to his feet, indignation overcoming his pain and exhaustion. “Besides defending you? Would you have me do nothing and allow us both to be killed?”
“It is not your place to interfere with the order! The Code will not permit it!”
“Well, it is done now. I cannot undo it, and I would not, even if it were possible. Time is short enough. What is to be done now?”
Jed kept back from Wolff, and in her he thought he could detect a distrustful respect that had not been there before. She looked again at the body on the floor. “Had this been a just and fair contest, the ship of the defeated would have become the possession of the victor. As it would seem that I am now the victor by default, this is the course of action that must be taken.”
“Take the other ship? But this one is already damaged, and we’re being pursued!”
“To abandon it dishonours both clans!”
“All right, then I’ll accept we must do this your way. So if it’s to be done, let it be done quickly. Tell me how I may be of help.”
“We must dispose of...” Jed’s voice trailed off, but she glanced at the unmoving Archer. “You do it?”
“Is she dead?”
Jed kept her distance, her revulsion quite apparent. Wolff realised he’d broached a taboo. “No. You disconnected her by force, and the shock of it made her lose consciousness. If she is fortunate, her mind will have been destroyed and she will not wake.”
Wolff bent and picked up the female with one arm around her shoulders and the other under her knees, in much the same way as he’d lifted Jed when she’d been incapacitated on Satigenaria.
“Use the escape pod. Return here afterward to assist with the airlock manoeuvre.”
Wolff carried the Archer into the starboard corridor. She stirred faintly as he dumped her in the pod.
“You think you’re so superior, don’t you? Well, you’re not. Without your computers, you’re nothing, and you can tell them back on the
Bellwether
that this is what happens to those who screw with Gerald Wolff. Now good riddance to you!”
He slammed the door and hit the eject panel. He watched the light of the pod retreating into the night before returning to the bridge. Jed led him back through the port corridor to the airlock.
“In order for the airlocks to separate,” Jed explained, “the locking mechanisms on both sides must release. I can control the one on this side.” Jed pointed to a mechanism on the wall. “But as you have broken the interface crown for the other ship, I cannot control that one. Go in there and release it manually, then return here.”
Wolff climbed through the airlock aperture. He quickly identified the counterpart of the
Shamrock’s
lever.
“Are you sure it’s safe to pull this with the doors open—”
Wolff’s voice trailed off. A girl crouched in the corner against the joint between two walls of the
myth
ship’s airlock. Her wide, youthful eyes locked upon Jed, and they became even wider, and her lower lip dropped and trembled. “
Vaila
?” she uttered in a thin, reedy voice. Then her gaze fell upon Wolff, and fear was replaced by incomprehension. Then she looked back to Jed, and incomprehension was replaced by disgust. She slowly straightened her legs to stand, staring at Jed all the time.
“Avert your eyes,” Jed commanded the girl, “for I am
hortica
.”
“If
hortica
defiles its ships by letting common men tread in them, then I spit upon its Archers!” The girl’s head jerked suddenly forward on her neck, and she spat into Jed’s face. The child’s defiant attitude evaporated, and she fell back on bent knees. A horrified expression of dread and remorse suffused her face.
“I will not be sullied by clan
myth
’s filth-spawn!” Jed was upon the child in two strides, and her knee flew up, her heel delivering a blow of such brutal violence to the girl’s abdomen that it threw her backward and hit her head off the airlock wall.
“Stop it!” Wolff intervened. “You’ll kill her!”
Jed turned to him with savage alacrity, eyes shining with outrage. Her voice was low and controlled. “That is my prerogative.”
Wolff wanted to go to the child, but he dared not. She lay doubled up on the floor, struggling to draw breath. He turned back to Jed. “What good can any of this do?”
“I will speak with you. Now.”
They went back aboard the
Shamrock
, and Jed closed the door. “What would your proposal be? To do nothing would be dereliction of duty.”
“You saw how frightened she was! None of this is her doing. Why make her another casualty in a war not of her making?”
“Because that is the Code! She is the apprentice to an Archer of
myth
, a clan hostile to
hortica
. If I had defeated her mentor fairly, it would now be my duty to judge whether she is still malleable enough and suitable to serve
hortica
, or if she is irreconcilably contaminated.”
“I suppose, then, if you deem the latter to be the case, it is therefore her duty to die at your hands!”
“Be silent!” said Jed. “When I go back in there, you stand back and observe in a way befitting your station!”
In the airlock the child had got to her feet, and she cowered at Jed’s approach.
“The
Shamrock
was damaged. Vaila dishonoured the Code by attacking it and was justly terminated as a consequence. Her dishonour is your shame.”
The apprentice lowered her head. Wolff could see the tension in her face and knew she must be in pain.
Jed continued. “The Code states clearly that a man of the Blood, persecuted for a noble cause, may seek sanctuary with the Archers. Gerald Wolff satisfies such criteria. Do you not know the Code?”
The girl raised her eyes to look at Jed. “Then I do not know the Code well enough, but I would know it if you would teach it correctly to me. Then I might honour the
Shamrock
, as recompense for Vaila’s dishonouring of it.”
No one spoke for several seconds. The child dropped her head in genuflection, and Jed finally straightened.
“What is your name?”
“I am called Samphrey.”
“An apprentice does not get to choose her mentor. That is why you are being given this opportunity. Now honour
hortica
, as
myth
dishonours us all.”
Samphrey left the airlock and entered the
Shamrock
, a drawn, stiff figure, her expression tense and her complexion drained of blood. Wolff entered the other ship, opened the locking clamp, and returned quickly. He thought it correct and proper to stay out of Jed’s way as she finished disconnecting the ships, and went aft to look for his IR-UV bifocals.
He detected a metallic taint to the air as he passed into the rear section of the corridor. When he looked down, he spotted a dark shape lodged in a gap in the bulwark wall.
“Arrol, you wretched coward!”
His spectacles lay on the floor a few strides away, and he picked them up. When he put them on, the IR emissions from the morran’s body glowed dim, and he saw another object lying against the opposite wall. Approaching it, he saw it was Rh’Arrol’s leg.
Chapter 14
Sanctuary
Cross darkness I journeyed,
For all light was lost,
I came here seeking wisdom,
Yet I found only dust
Jed stood behind Wolff, arms folded, her gaze fixed on his broad back as he scraped the earth like a beast.
“Where’s Samphrey?” The man spoke breathlessly with the effort of digging.
“Inside.” Jed gesticulated in the direction of the
Shamrock
with a jerk of her chin.
“Then bring her.”
“I will not.”
Wolff took his filth-covered hands away from the ground and leant back on his haunches, looking up at Jed through sweaty locks of hair that had come loose during the exertion. “You want her to embrace
hortica
as her own clan? You want to convince her she’s been saved, been brought into something better? Rh’Arrol played a part in that. Let the morran be honoured as is fit!”
Jed wanted to argue, but she was tired and had not the strength. She said nothing and returned to the ship.
Samphrey sat on the floor in the corridor. She rose abruptly when Jed entered.
“The morran, Rh’Arrol, is dead. Nothing more can be done. You are to observe the funeral.”
Samphrey dipped her head. She looked up, opened her mouth, and hesitated. “May I ask a question of you, Jed my mentor?”
“Yes.”
“The man, Gerald Wolff. What is the nature of the persecution from which he flees?”
“He stands convicted of a crime he did not commit,” said Jed, as this much at least she believed to be true.
“And the morran, it sought sanctuary with him? An Archer may give sanctuary to a morran?”
“The morran was his ally. For him to abandon it in such a place as it might meet its death would be to dishonour it.”
“But the Code does not say—”
“The Code does not say we must eat, yet we must and we do! Sometimes the knowing of the Code is the understanding of the subtleties of its omissions, not in the surety of its statements. There are those who would mutilate the meaning of the Pagan Atheist’s words, those who would use them to justify atrocity. That is not the Pagan Atheist, and that is not Steel and Flame. To know the true meaning of the Pagan Atheist and to hold fast to it, that is to be of Steel and Flame!”