The ladyboy settled back on the stool alongside Hellequin. His gaze went from Hellequin to Asenath to the bartender.
“What is it?” he demanded, mouse-like eyes wide.
“Asenath wants to know if I am going to defend Nim’s honour again. I’m thinking that since Nim has proven less than grateful for my intervention previously, I may need to leave her to fight her own battles,” said Hellequin. He kept the courtesan in his line of sight though.
The bartender, Solomon, pointed to the group of men. “One of you take the big one’s head for me. He’s got a mouth on him.”
The ‘big one’ was a foot taller than the rest of the Showmaniese. All were tattooed under the throat with a fat ‘V’. In the case of the largest man, the tattoo looked like a clothhod yoke. His face was fattened up like a baby’s.
“And HawkEye, if the whore won’t entice you to fight alongside my sister, here’s added incentive,” said Solomon – and while Hellequin could pre-empt physical impulses, he couldn’t read minds. The bartender shouted up, “You’re the son of Jackerie, purveyor of Soul Food, you say? Well, there’s an interesting thing.”
Hellequin swung around on his stool, taking in the reactions of those surrounding him – rage tucked into creased foreheads, sneering lips, the pinch of muscle between eyes.
The Showmaniese were first to react.
“Son of Jackerie? In this hell hole?” hollered the largest. He approached the bar, the crowd parting either side.
“You the spawn of the bastard farmer who killed the land ‘n’ pocketed our dollar and left us to choke on the dust?” The giant did not direct his gaze to Hellequin. Instead it appeared that Lulu had been taken as the devil’s offspring.
“Lulu’ll never survive. You’ve stitched me up, Asenath,” Hellequin muttered as the Jeridian reached over a shoulder and drew her scimitar from its harness.
“Maybe. It’s written into your Daxware to protect your platoon. You’ve admitted that much. Which means you’re stuck protecting Cyber Circus and all who sail in her, which includes me.” Asenath glanced at Hellequin. Her face was ablaze, not with fear but anticipation of the fight.
So be it, Hellequin told himself. The steel eyepiece interacted with the wires in his brain to map the arrangement of bodies in the room. Directly ahead was the largest Showmaniese. Over by the rock tables, Nim had closed in on herself. Crowded either side were the rest of the Showmaniese, nine men with fight stars, tin swords and wooden handled blunt blocks. To the right of the room were the whores of both sexes and their liquor-pinked Johns. Nothing to fear from those lilies and their overlords. To the left though – and all this taken in by Hellequin’s lens inside the millisecond – a figure in the shadows as well as five Jeridians – three female, two male. Mohawks caked in green reed sap and baked hard. Piercings at the throat. Sickle tattoo at every ear lobe. Friend or foe? Hellequin caught a snarl at one woman’s lips, her gaze bearing down on the Showmaniese in the centre of the room. Friends, he concluded.
Drawing his bowie knife as the largest Showmaniese powered forward, he sliced in front of him and cut the stub of the man’s nose clean off.
His attack acted as a clanger to start the fight. Lulu slid across the bar and ducked under it. Solomon stayed put while Asenath stood her ground.
The giant ignored the spill of blood from his nose to career head-on into Hellequin. An outsized fist mashed Hellequin’s wrist; the HawkEye dropped the Bowie knife, an instinctual reflex to the crush of pain. At the same time, Asenath drove her scimitar towards the giant’s neck. His forearm blocked her attack, the power behind the blow forcing Asenath down. She pivoted on the ball of a foot to avoid slicing into her belly with her own blade.
Dodging blows, Hellequin was distracted by the figure in the shadows. What was it about the silhouette that seemed so hauntingly familiar? Regardless, the figure chose to remain incognito, unlike the remaining Showmaniese who muscled in on the fight against the five Jeridians.
Hellequin refocused. The neuro-feed off his HawkEye enabled him to take in the movements of his attacker and those of his companions. He dodged a slug from the giant, spine arching back. Meanwhile, Asenath sliced the heads from the shoulders of two Showmaniese. Each body crumpled to its knees and collapsed. Blood ran out the newly separated necks like sewage from a spurting drain.
He landed a blow to his opponent’s mouth. The Showmaniese hacked and spat a tooth aside.
“Let me alone, HawkEye,” he hollered, discharging spittle. “It’s the pansy I’ve issue with. Stand aside and let me strangle the rat.”
“Past’s dead,” shot back Hellequin, weaving between the giant’s punches; he saw the trajectory of each blow milliseconds before it landed. “Leave the lad alone. This ain’t his fight. And it ain’t yours.”
“The hell it ain’t!” the man spat against the blood pouring off his nose.
Hellequin went to drop to the floor to retrieve his knife. He was restricted by the time it took for him to bend at the knees and extend a hand. It was warning enough for the giant to step on the blade and secure it underfoot with his entire body weight.
“Leave it be, HawkEye. Maybe your kind did this world a service, but that one good deed ain’t enough to let you cut me more than once.” The giant brought his face to the HawkEye’s, bending at the knees as he did so. Few men matched the soldier’s seven foot stature let alone were forced to stoop to look the soldier in his one natural eye. “Now back off and let me do for Jackerie’s pansy son in a manner that’ll satisfy the revenge needs of all Humock,” he spat.
“The pansy ain’t no son of Jackerie!” Hellequin had enough sentiment left in the knotwork of his mind to want to admit his lineage. He owed his family that much.
“You want to settle a beef with a family member, start with me.”
His words carried through the room like dust swept up and carried by the wind. Time slowed. In the briefest instant before the Showmaniese giant brought his fist crashing down, Hellequin saw the reactions of those around him. How the Jeridian braves looked to Asenath for confirmation they were fighting on the right side. How the Showmaniese faltered, mid-brawl, their black eyes pinned wide. How Nim stared across the emotional miles that separated them. Newly distanced.
It was an instant of distraction, but it was enough to let the giant land a colossal blow to Hellequin’s head. His circuitry misfired, half his world thrown into pitch black as his steel eye failed. He experienced a queerly powerful blaze of emotion. Dread lined his stomach like quicksilver.
Again, the distraction worked in his enemy’s favour. The Showmaniese launched three hooks to the soldier’s stomach. Hellequin wheezed and doubled over, aiding the delivery of a fourth hook to his chin.
His neck snapped back. The HawkEye whirred into violent motion. Hellequin got a grip on his compound sight and forced his body to negate the pain.
He struck back, the tight knots of his fists striking the giant up under the ribs with force. The man gasped. Hellequin didn’t falter in his attack, raining blows. He pictured his father – tall as a hang man, lips that had pursed so many times when he was deep in thought that they had settled permanently into that position. Hellequin recalled his family’s homestead as it had stood before he despatched his neutralising platoon; it had looked like any other home on the plains, paint faintly peeling but with clean curtains at the windows, a creaking rocker on the porch, fingerprints of the dead and living imprinted on the door handle. He remembered trace emotions of love and fear and searing loss. And as the giant stumbled backwards, he dipped to the floor, retrieved his bowie knife and started to drive it towards the man’s throat.
Before the blade cut in, he saw a curve of silver whip across and back at the giant’s neck. He stared into the dead man’s eyes, forever startled, and leapt aside as the head toppled forward. It struck the floor heavily. A pound of flesh.