Mardal smashed a fist into his palm.
‘Yes, crushing them,’ agreed Jaq. ‘But I am absolutely requiring one of those aliens as my prisoner, to be questioning about how they were arriving here. Mardal Shuturban, you are reeking of recent sorcerous assault. Your intention soon becoming known to the aliens. The flavour of what was happening to you in the House of Ecstasy attracting those psykers as carrion-flies to gangrene. Needing me to be protecting you with a conjuration of concealment. And then we are striking,
swiftly!
’
‘A conjuration?’ Sweat pimpled Shuturban’s cheeks.
‘So that you being immune from psychic surveillance. I shall be extending a mental shield, Mardal Shuturban. Requiring me to be reciting certain anathemas, and blessing you with this.’ Jaq exhibited his sleek black force rod, accumulator and booster of mind-energy.
As Jaq led a compliant Shuturban aside, amidst the pliers and rasps and sole-stitching machinery, Grimm smirked momentarily. Oh, the boss could extend an aura of protection around a whole ship. He wouldn’t use a force rod to do so. That rare ancient weapon was for blasting at daemonic manifestations. The boss was vamping for Shuturban’s benefit. Shuturban was duly impressed.
B
Y NOW IT
was well over half an hour since Jaq’s party had arrived at the cobbler’s premises. They were about to leave together with Mardal Shuturban and company, bound for a certain theatre in Mahabbat.
From outside in the night an amplified voice reverberated: ‘BEING HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY’S ARBITES! PREMISES BEING SURROUNDED. FOUR PERSONS WITHIN ABANDONING WEAPONS, THEN EXITING ON KNEES ONE BY ONE WITH HANDS BEHIND HEAD! SHORT WEARER OF NEW BOOTS BEING FIRST OF ALL!’
‘Oh my ancestors!’
Jaq rounded on Shuturban. The man mimed protestations of innocence which seemed perfectly sincere.
‘BE SURRENDERING PEACEFULLY FOR LAWFUL QUESTIONING BY ARBITRATOR STEINMULLER!’
The boots, the boots... That was the fatal flaw. A unique pair of boots had been abandoned in the ravaged Sensuality Suite of the House of Ecstasy. Someone had reported this fact to the courthouse. Could have been one of the ex-Guardsmen, acting secretly as an informer for the courthouse. Could have been the lord governor’s lascivious nephew, or one of the other patrons, infuriated at how the orgy had endangered or injured them. Someone of status, who could appeal to the courthouse to investigate.
Item: the stunted abhuman who lost his boots had been with a giant slave and with a robed bearded man.
Item: the bearded man had played a part in the trouble rather than being just a victim.
Thus: find the abhuman, and discover the true facts of the case. Proceed astutely, without letting it seem that any investigation was underway. Therefore, amongst other procedures: visit all cobblers throughout the city in the hope that the abhuman needed new boots.
It must have taken Arbitrator Steinmuller a while to arrive at the plan of action. By the time a bailiff of the courthouse had actually visited Dukandar, Grimm had already collected his new boots. When Grimm returned to evict Dukandar, the cobbler had raced to the nearest unvandalized public vox-caster.
Or did he even need to do so? Dukandar would already have revealed the fact of Grimm’s earlier visit. On the off-chance that the distressed boots might prove faulty and a grumpy customer might return, the bailiff might have been keeping watch on the cobbler’s from another building.
Now a squad was outside, and around.
‘ABHUMAN EMERGING WITHIN TEN SECONDS,’ came the voice. ‘NINE... EIGHT...’
Grimm readied
Emperor’s Peace
. Jaq levelled
Emperor’s Mercy
. Lex aimed his bolter at the door. Shuturban’s men pointed autoguns and laspistols at the shuttered windows. Mardal had produced a laspistol.
When Shuturban and company arrived, the bailiff must have been occupied contacting the courthouse. Those extra unexpected visitors had not been spotted. The Arbites believed there were only four miscreants inside Dukandar’s place; not a dozen.
Nor could the Arbitrators know that three were armed with fully-loaded boltguns.
On the count of zero, deafening explosions blasted the front facade of the cobbler’s. Rubble vomited; clouds of dust billowed. The whole of the wall and its door and shutters disintegrated. Beams and rafters sagged. Plaster from the ceiling cascaded upon tools and benches. Still sustained by side walls, the upper storey did not pancake down upon the ground floor, yet the building groaned almightily.
The Arbitrators had fired a volley of krak grenades to open up Dukandar’s premises. The explosive effect of these were entirely concentrated at the target, without collateral blast. Would the Arbites now be switching to choke grenades to disable those who lurked within? Or tanglefoot grenades?
‘Out, out – or gettin’ caught!’ bellowed Lex at Shuturban’s men, remembering to use scum patois. ‘Out, and killin’!’
With a roar he launched himself into the wall of dust and scrambled over rubble. As did Jaq, hauling Rakel with him. As did Grimm. As, with only the briefest of hesitation, did Mardal and his men.
F
IVE MIRROR-VISORED
Arbitrators were immediately evident, out in the dusty dark street. Two were indeed porting their weapons, busy attaching different grenade tubes to the long barrels.
RAAARKpopSWOOSHthudCRUMP RAAARKpopSWOOSHthudCRUMP RAAARKpopSWOOSHthudCRUMP
The first
RAARK
of explosive bolts – like the rowdy growl of some carnivorous terror-lizards or of hell-dogs erupting from the dust – caused the Arbitrators fatal instants of hesitation. Bolts penetrated chest or belly. Bolts exploded,
CRUMP
. Blood sprayed. Autoguns were racketing too. Ducking, two surviving Arbitrators loosed laser pulses which hit one of Mardal’s men simultaneously. Each had chosen the very same target. And a lesser target, too! Perhaps Lex seemed more like a force of nature than a mortal adversary. The abhuman must not be shot. As for the bearded man, was he using that woman as a shield? The woman might be important to the investigation. Wrong decisions, wrong.
Emperor’s Peace
and
Emperor’s Mercy
roared adieu to those two Arbitrators.
Which one of the five corpses was Arbitrator Steinmuller?
From an alleyway around the side of the cobbler’s three more Arbites were coming to assist. From a passageway on the far side, two more emerged. Crossfire flew. An energy blast caught Grimm on the very edge of his flak-jacket, bowling him over, but the squat was able to scramble to his knees. Another of Mardal’s men screamed and fell.
RAARKpopSWOOSHthudCRUMP
RAARKpopSWOOSHthudCRUMP
The raving of the autoguns! The gaudy flowering of energy shells on impact!
Did the fight last for fifteen strobing seconds? Perhaps not as long. Yet it seemed to last for several minutes in slow motion. The Arbites were all dead, or at least severely injured. Lex roved quickly from one body to another. He checked by starlight for signs of life. Where he found life lingering he ended it, so that the courthouse would be unenlightened.
Where was the cobbler?
‘Mr Dukandar!’ Grimm called into the night. ‘Your shop is damaged!’ How sadly the building sagged. ‘It’s time to salvage your tools, Mr Dukandar!’
Once the victors departed, shadowy beggars might flock to loot the premises of its boots and shoes – and of its pincers and shears and nails and leather. No cobbler showed himself. If Dukandar was wise he was already hastening with his wife and sons to lose himself somewhere in the smoky entrails of Bellagunge.
Did a bailiff still keep watch through a cracked shutter in some neighbouring building? Was he whispering urgently into a vox-caster?
Lex raked the street with his gaze.
‘Us gettin’ outa here!’ he shouted at Shuturban.
‘To the theatre!’ cried Jaq.
Grimm paused briefly to scoop up one of the dropped lasguns to which an Arbitrator had been attaching a new tube of grenades. The little man jammed the barrel diagonally inside his belt.
T
O THE THEATRE
, indeed: to the Theatrum Miraculorum on Khelma Street in Mahabbat, like some intoxicated nocturnal revellers eager for even more exotic entertainment.
En route, Mardal Shuturban collected five more men armed variously with shotgun or chainsword.
Mardal’s group now totalled nine men, plus himself. Would fourteen persons be sufficient to deal with three warrior-troubadours, sufficient to slaughter two and subdue a third? Mardal’s men believed so – especially those survivors of the encounter at the cobbler’s. They were flushed with having exterminated a whole patrol of Arbites.
E
LEGANTLY CLAD IN
silks and furs, patrons of this night’s performance were spilling out from the domed foyer of the theatre into Khelma Street to meet bodyguards and chauffeurs. Balloon-wheeled automobiles and gilded carriages pulled by snuffling snake-necked camelopards crowded the thoroughfare. Feet and hooves and wheels stirred dust. Rich perfumes competed with the weed-smoke of cigars and with exhaust fumes and with the odours of camelopard dung and urine.
The irruption of the fourteen through this secure normality seemed almost like a continuation of dramatic spectacle – especially since no armed robbery or abduction or murder seemed intended as regards any theatre-goers. A swift frontal approach through an excited crowd which was venting psychic noise might take the Harlequins unawares. Was this not a time and a place for an inquisitor to act flamboyantly? Let the courthouse suspect the secret presence of an inquisitor – aye, and of an Imperial assassin too! This would perplex and perturb.
Weapons weren’t being brazenly flourished, though eye-witnesses could hardly fail to notice the toothed blade of a chainsword or the long barrels of shotguns or of lasguns filched from the dead. Well and good. Had not Shandabar seen a genestealer uprising and a cleansing by Space Marines, and the pious and bloody riots of pilgrims? At times death was a currency as common as the shekel. Jaq and associates lagged a little, letting Mardal and his men take the lead.
T
HE DOMED AUDITORIUM
was almost deserted. Chandeliers of electrolumens glowed brightly. A spangled curtain hid the stage. As the intruders advanced down aisles, some ushers ducked behind plush seats.
‘Master Jadu!’ cried one of those attendants piercingly.
Glittering, the curtain swept up and sideways, bunching tableau-style – to reveal the impresario peering from the wings. What a peculiar fellow Jadu was. Exaggeratedly high heels and short skinny legs elevated a little barrel of a body clad in purple velvet appliqued with crescent moons and comets. With a red coxcomb hat upon his head he resembled a plump, fussy poultry-bird. One could imagine Master Jadu flapping his arms and clucking and crowing resoundingly.
Behind him – much taller than him – multicoloured spangles shimmered where no part of the curtain should be. A ghost of Jadu’s own moon-face swayed in mid-air. It was a Harlequin in chameleon mode. Its holo-suit was copying the sunoundings. Its psychoactive mask imitating the impresario’s own face! A device seemed to float unsupported: a sleek gadget with a sheen to it. Something wrought of psycho plastic or wraithbone – a shuriken pistol!
A stream of what seemed like tiny spangles sprayed along one aisle. One of Mardal’s men screamed. Blood laced his clothing. His chainsword fell from a crimson hand, from which two fingers also fell. No spangles, those – but tiny spinning razor-discs propelled at high speed by a compact gravitic accelerator. Those tiny discs would scalpel through flesh, severing arteries, piercing internal organs, cutting bone. The man behind spasmed in a delirium of pain and injury, and collapsed.
Autoguns opened up. The impresario-bird seemed to fluff out his feathers as shells tore into him.
RAARKpopSWOOSH
, spake Lex’s boltgun, as he fired over seats.
RAARK-RAARK, declared Emperor’s Peace and Emperor’s Mercy in chorus.
Explosive bolts ripped through the spangled drape as if through tissue, and one surely detonated in alien flesh. Ethereally tall, kaleidoscopically fluxing, a figure seemed to drift forward. Its false face was now a private nightmare to whoever beheld it. Mardal shrieked, ‘Chor, no don’t-!’
Rakel squealed, seeing some nightmare of her own. Was that figure on stage the assassin whom she imitated, coming for her? Shuriken spangles sprayed, scattershot. Blood flew from a nick on Grimm’s rubicund cheek. Blood welled from the upper slope of Lex’s brow as a new companion to old duelling marks appeared. The blood immediately hardened to a knob of cinnabar.
RAARK!
RAARK!
The Harlequin danced his last dance.
The raiders hurried backstage past a lanky alien corpse masked in horror and past the dumpy, slaughtered-turkey corpse of unfortunate impresario Jadu.
T
HEY FOUND THE
Death Jester lurking in a blue room walled with lapis lazuli.
Oh such a lanky mischievous figure of death he was. His costume was decorated with real bones. His skull mask, framed by a great clownish yellow collar like the fully-open petals of some huge jungle flower. A wild spray of inky hair fountained from his crown.
The first man through the doorway was greeted by a Harlequin’s Kiss.
Strapped to the back of the Jester’s forearm was a tube bonded to an egg-shaped reservoir. The Jester clenched his fist and punched the air in front of him. Briefly the interloper wobbled as if he had become a jelly; and collapsed. What had been a man had become a bag of minced organs braced with bones.
Such was the consequence of the monofilament wire which had leapt from that tube to pierce its victim’s body and uncoil within his entrails. Thrashing about like a whip, the wire had reduced guts and liver and lungs and heart to a slurry.
The wire had leapt back into its container, curling tight.
Already it was jumping out again, kissing the next man with the same consequences.
How swiftly a third! The third was Mardal Shuturban himself. The man jerked. He was a bony jelly containing warm soup. He spilled upon the floor.