He thrust.
A boot drove into his ribs, knocking him sideways and making him gasp with pain.
Another man had come.
Then two would die first.
Sek steadied himself and swung the lance.
Mkoll leapt back. The shingle squirmed under his boots. The lance blade lopped the air. Sek twisted and re-addressed, feet braced, looping the lance around to jab.
Mkoll danced clear. He dodged the next swing. He hunched low, a fighting stance, the skzerret in his hand. Not straight silver, but it would do.
Sek stamped forwards, scything the blade. He had speed and finesse for a wounded old man. He had strength.
Mkoll sidestepped. As Sek passed him, he slashed with the knife, and tore a deep gash along Sek’s upper arm.
Sek snarled. Mkoll felt the buzzing swarm into his ears. The Anarch lost the grip of one hand, blood weeping down his arm, but he kept his footing, and rotated the lance with frightening skill, spinning it in his right hand.
He lunged, then lunged again, forcing Mkoll backwards up the beach away from Milo’s prone form. He returned to a double-grip, blood-wet hands sliding on the lance’s haft. He speared at Mkoll.
Mkoll feinted right, avoiding the lethal strike. He punched in low with his left fist, cracking ribs, and as Sek hunched, followed with his right and slammed the dagger into the Anarch’s chest.
Sek flailed backwards. He dropped the lance. The air throbbed with the buzzing whisper of his cries. Mkoll came on, relentless, stabbing twice more with the serrated blade. Blood stippled his face as he pulled the blade out with each strike, ready to repeat it.
Sek fell on his back.
Swaying, Mkoll knelt down to finish the kill.
He ran the blade in where the heart should be. Sek shivered and convulsed.
His right hand snatched up, scattering pebbles, and clamped around Mkoll’s throat. Mkoll gasped, his air cut off. The Anarch squeezed. Frail neon light blazed in his dark orbits.
Sek would not die. He would not die.
Kater Holofurnace had been right all along.
Blades were never going to be enough. Anarch Sek was a magister. A man like Oan Mkoll, just a mortal man, was never going to carry enough punch to finish a monster like the Anarch.
Mkoll’s vision dimmed. Blood pounded in his head. The strangling grip around his throat tightened. His wet clothes clung to him. He felt a dead weight in his jacket pocket.
Unable to break the grip that was killing him, Mkoll let go of the knife and pulled the anchor mine out of his coat.
It was the last one remaining, the one they hadn’t used because its anchor pad was broken and refused to grip.
Mkoll had seen what Milo had tried to do. He rammed the anchor mine into Sek’s hissing maw.
Sek gagged. He let go. Mkoll scrambled backwards, kicking up stones, retching and gasping.
Sek writhed, choking, trying to disgorge the mine from his mouth. He sat up, and rolled onto his knees, kneeling for a moment, clawing at his mouth.
The mine went off.
Foul tissue and liquid sheeted in all directions.
Mkoll sat up, blinking away the blood in his eyes. Gore plastered him and the shingle in a two metre radius around the Anarch’s body.
Sek was still kneeling. His hands had flopped in his lap. He was gone from the shoulders up, smoke fuming from the massive blackened wound and a charred stump of protruding spine.
Mkoll raised his fingers to his lips and blew a goodbye kiss to mock the Sekkite salute.
The whispering had stopped.
Twenty-One: Many, Many are the Dead
People fled past the chapel door in terror. The sounds of battle and destruction from the floors below were like an approaching nightmare.
Hark looked in through the door as people hurried by behind him.
‘Clear out!’ he yelled. ‘Come on! It’s coming this way! Head to the west exit. There are destriers on the landing field! Move, now! This is a full evacuation! If you can’t make the carriers, get out of the building and hide!’
‘You heard him!’ Beltayn shouted. ‘Don’t dawdle now!’
Most of the retinue and the other survivors who had packed into the chapel had already fled. The remainder were too badly wounded, or still too deep in shock to understand what was happening.
‘You have to leave!’ Beltayn yelled. ‘This thing is killing as it goes! It’s just… just blades! Many, many are the dead!’
A few of them struggled to their feet and stumbled blankly towards the door. They had already suffered immeasurably that night. It was hard for them to comprehend that anything could be worse.
Beltayn steered them out.
‘Go! go!’ he yelled.
‘Take her! Bel, take her!’ Merity shouted, pointing to an old woman from the retinue who was staring numbly at nothing.
Beltayn ran to the woman, and got her on her feet, gently guiding her by the shoulder and the hand.
‘You too, Mam Chass,’ he said.
‘We’re coming,’ Merity called back. Two stretcher cases remained, unconscious, and too injured to walk even if they’d been awake.
Merity and Fazekiel crossed to them as Beltayn led the old woman out.
‘We can’t carry both,’ Merity said.
‘Then this one first,’ said Fazekiel. ‘We’ll come back for the other one.’
Merity nodded. ‘Come back? There’s a prospect. All right, take that end.’
‘I can help,’ said Meryn.
They looked at him. He’d come from nowhere. His face was sallow with fear.
‘Get some help, then, captain,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Another bearer, anyone, and we can carry them both.’
‘No,’ said Meryn. ‘You take that one. I’ll shoulder-lift the other. There’s no time to be lost.’
‘All right,’ said Fazekiel, turning to grip the stretcher’s handles. ‘I appreciate your help.’
Meryn nodded. ‘Help,’ he muttered. ‘That’s right. A night like this, it’s time to help yourself.’
‘What?’ Fazekiel snapped.
Meryn ran his straight silver into Fazekiel’s back. She gasped, and fell backwards as the blade came out again.
Merity stared at Meryn.
‘Oh, feth,’ she said.
Beltayn gently escorted the old woman along the panelled hall, passing the wardroom and then the chamber door where Hark stood with Laksheema and Auerben.
‘Get her clear, Bel,’ said Hark.
‘I will, sir.’
‘Everybody out?’
‘Almost!’
‘Then get out yourself. We’ll do the rest.’
Beltayn nodded, and hurried on his way. Hark turned to his companions.
‘How will we do the rest, do you suggest?’ Auerben asked.
Hark grunted. He pushed past them and entered the chamber. The medicae staff had been ordered out, but Curth still tended the Saint. Zweil sat nearby, hands clasped, murmuring a prayer.
The eagle perched on the back of a chair.
‘The feth’s that doing in here?’ Hark asked.
‘Not high on my list of priorities,’ replied Curth, without looking up from her work.
‘The thing’s coming, Ana,’ he said. ‘Coming right for us. We have to move her.’
‘Well, we can’t,’ said Curth. ‘She’s barely hanging on. I believe she’s healing her psychic wounds, or something is, but it’s slow and it’s uncertain. If we move her, she will die.’
‘Then… then we have to leave her,’ said Hark.
Zweil shot him a toxic look.
‘Absolutely not,’ said Curth. ‘I’ll stay with her.’