Granger thrust his blade up at the man’s head.
The Samarol ducked and pivoted, and spun away.
‘Two,’ roared the crowd.
Granger felt warm blood spilling down his leg. A second cut had sliced through his breeches and split the skin on his thigh. He clamped his hand across the wound and turned again to follow the bodyguard’s progress.
The Samarol made a second leisurely circuit of the arena, and as he ran he wiped his knife against a leather patch sewn across his belt. He closed on Granger a third time, the seeing knife now clenched in one back-turned fist, his wolf helmet gleaming.
Granger swiped his blade in a wide arc, hoping to drive his attacker back. After all, he had the advantage of reach.
But the bodyguard caught the sword on the edge of his knife, and turned the blow up, over his own head. Granger had never seen reflexes like it. The man was inhuman. Within a heartbeat he had ducked again, moving inside Granger’s reach. And then came that same strange pirouette, and Granger felt something scrape his rib.
‘Three.’
Granger’s chest had been punctured on his left side. A third stream of blood now flowed from his flesh. He staggered back a few steps, gaping at his own lacerated body. His muscles were starting to ache and soon they would fail him altogether. The Samarol meanwhile continued his performance for the crowd, cleaning his seeing knife again as he jogged away. He had been deliberately inflicting shallow, non-lethal wounds. He was carving Granger up for the emperor’s amusement.
Granger watched his opponent wiping the edge of that unholy knife against the leather patch on his belt. The Unmer metal was conveying its surroundings to the blind warrior, while granting him unnatural swiftness. In this battle the blade was Granger’s real enemy.
The Samarol turned inwards for a fourth attack.
And Granger let him come. He feinted an uppercut with his sword, leaving his right shoulder vulnerable to attack. The bodyguard spotted the opening and struck out with the knife, but Granger was ready for him.
As the attack came, Granger dropped his sword and grabbed his opponent’s wrist. And then he plunged the knife even deeper into his own shoulder. A grunt of surprise came from behind the wolf helmet. The Samarol tried to withdraw the knife, but Granger now seized the other man’s wrist in both hands and held it fast. He had momentarily denied the bodyguard his sight.
Still fiercely gripping the other man’s wrist, he swung him around, and around again in a circle, hoping to further disorientate his opponent, hoping to break his grip on the Unmer blade. But the Samarol folded his knees and buckled in one fluid movement, dragging Granger down to the ground with him.
Granger landed heavily against the man. For several heartbeats they wrestled, the Samarol trying to wrench the knife from Granger’s flesh, while Granger tried to stop him. The pain was intolerable. He felt the edge of the blade raking against his clavicle. He felt his grip loosened by his own blood. He couldn’t hold on. He was going to lose this struggle.
But then he thought about Swan and Tummel and Banks, their dead eyes staring lifelessly at the ground, the blood leaking from the holes in their skull as the emperor applauded. He imagined Creedy’s brute face looking on as the Hookmen threw Hana into the brine, and he let the sound of her screams fill his heart. He pictured Ianthe in the hands of that bastard Maskelyne, using the girl to enrich his wretched little empire. Hu, Creedy, Maskelyne – Granger saw each of their faces behind that shining wolf’s mask before him now. And it filled him with rage.
He seized the brim of the warrior’s helmet and wrenched it backwards with all of his strength. He felt the chinstrap stretch and then suddenly snap as the helmet came away and flew across the arena.
The Samarol cried out. He released his hold of the knife and clamped his hands across his face. That face had only been exposed to the light for a heartbeat, but that was long enough for the horror of it to be burned in Granger’s mind.
No flesh clung to the man’s skull. It was as if the Unmer sorcery had consumed his living tissues, leaving nothing behind but raw bone. The eye sockets and nasal opening were covered by a smooth brass plate, utterly featureless and without ornamentation, and yet the bodyguard groped at it as if the light was searing his very nerves. He scrambled away from Granger on his hands and knees, howling like a child as he sought to reclaim his helmet. But without the knife in his hand and the helmet to cover his metal visage he could not find it.
Granger plucked the seeing knife from his shoulder and tucked it into the band of his breeches. He was weak and giddy and struggling to breathe against the pressure mounting in his chest. His hands and torso streamed with blood. But he thought he might now survive today after all. He stared at the corpses of his friends, Swan, Tummel and Banks, and a terrible grief came over him. That he should survive this trial at their expense. He could not forgive Hu for this.
All the crowd were silent as he turned to face the emperor. ‘I survived your trials,’ he said. ‘Will you honour the law and release me?’
Briana Marks’s face looked ashen, but the emperor’s own was red with rage. ‘How dare you speak to me?’ he cried. ‘Look at what you’ve done here! Do you have any idea how much Samarol cost? How many years it takes for the absorption to hold?’ His thin chest rose and fell rapidly beneath his golden mail. He turned to the crowd. ‘This man has shown himself to be a cheat. This is a mockery of justice!’
The crowd remained silent.
Administrator Grech came alongside the emperor and tried to speak, but Hu just slapped the old man across the face. He raised his Imperial hand again and pointed at Granger. ‘Shoot him,’ he said. ‘Shoot him now.’
Outside the corral, the remaining Samarol reached for their carbine rifles. Nineteen knives slotted into nineteen barrels.
Granger looked to the Haurstaf witch for help, but she simply buried her head in her hands.
‘Kill him!’ the emperor roared.
There was nowhere for Granger to go, and nowhere to hide. Walls of dragon-bone caged him on three sides. The gate remained sealed.
The Samarol lifted their weapons.
Granger glanced at his fallen comrades one last time. And then he ran, away from the emperor and his Samarol. And as the bodyguards’ fingers closed on the triggers of their rifles, Granger reached the harbour’s edge and dived headlong into the brine.
CHAPTER 11
THE DEADSHIP
16th Hu-Rain, 1457
25 degrees 17 minutes north
5 degrees 37 minutes west
Scythe Island is forty leagues SSW of our current position, but feels more distant yet. Have made good progress across the Candlelight Straits. Expect to reach the fringes of the Mare Regis by noon tomorrow. No dragon sightings. Chronograph stopped three times by dead airs. Have opted to use Sanderson Device in interim. Mellor feels there might be an Unmer deadship nearby. The men are uneasy about this.
The girl remains an enigma. How is she able to perceive what lies in the depths of the ocean? I cannot imagine any scientific answer. Her ability seems more akin to the Haurstaf’s own metaphysical powers. Indeed, Ianthe may herald a new bloom in mankind’s evolutionary tree: a unique flower indeed – and, if so, then needful of pollination. More careful observation is required.
Word from Carl before we sailed – the Unmer chariot is in excellent condition, but the power source has, alas, suffered from the inevitable rot. Brine has eroded almost all of her whisperglass. Close to ten thousand ichusae recovered, which I am told is a record for a single haul in marine salvage. It seems to me that every one represents another lungful of air for Jontney. I maintain high hopes for our current expedition. Our hold is already one-tenth full, and all this from the Star Crab Bromera alone! Notable among our treasures is a fine suit of clamshell mail and six metal pyramids that, if separated, unerringly find their way back to each other at night. No physical obstacle or locked container is able to prevent this mysterious reunion. Because the pyramids display evidence of electrical fluids, Mellor, as always, has claimed this as proof of the Vitalist argument. I was too weary to argue with him. Boy assigned to watch the artefacts has died of unknown causes, and so the pyramids continue to keep their secret for now.