Kyne held up a metal sphere and pressed the stud with his thumb. A piercing shriek cut through the hold, and Trinica shrieked with it. She stumbled back against the Azryx machine, clutching at her head, pawing at the air. The sight of her in such pain would have been more than Frey could bear in other times, but it didn’t move him now. It was a necessary cruelty. Whatever it took to get that creature out of her.
Kyne and Crake moved past him, splitting up to take position either side of Trinica. Each had a cylinder in one hand, with a pinecone arrangement of small rods at the tip, linked by a cable to the cumbersome backpacks they wore. Frey had forgotten what they were called, but he remembered how they’d worked on the Iron Jackal. They could cage a daemon between them, but care was needed. If the operators didn’t stand exactly opposite each other, the daemon could slip out.
Kyne was still holding up the screamer with his free hand. Trinica thrashed and writhed and threw herself about; she slipped to the floor and scrambled back up again, a wild creature tortured. In the strange light it was like some hellish dance. As Kyne and Crake manoeuvred to get an angle on her, Frey advanced steadily, the collar open in his hand. He caught a glimpse of Crund’s frightened face by one of the girder pillars, before the bosun looked away. Crund couldn’t stand to watch his mistress’s suffering, but Frey didn’t have the luxury of mercy. He pushed his feelings down and shut them away tight. He’d do what he had to.
Kyne thrust out his arm, pointed the cylinder at Trinica and pressed the stud on it. She shrieked with new vigour, stumbling away from him as if repelled. But Crake was waiting on the other side with a cylinder of his own. Suddenly she was trapped, paralysed, straitjacketed by invisible frequencies.
Kyne tossed the screamer aside and took hold of the cylinder with both hands, struggling against Trinica’s efforts to escape. ‘Now, Frey!’ he cried.
Frey stepped towards her, the jaws of the collar ready to snap shut on her neck. Her mismatched eyes were fixed on it. Her face, the face he’d loved for so long, was contorted in fear. For a moment, the look she wore shook his resolve. What if he killed her? What if this collar was a death sentence as sure as a bullet to the head, and she knew it?
Well, what if it was? Better than this half-life, her body in thrall to a daemon. He knew what she’d have him do, and he loved her enough to do it. No matter what it cost him.
‘Now!’ Kyne said again.
He reached forward to snap the collar round her neck.
The Mane shell that exploded against the Delirium Trigger’s flank was a big one, and it scored a direct hit. Even with all her armour, she shuddered violently and listed hard in the air. Everyone in her hold staggered with the impact. Crake threw out an arm for balance; the cylinders went out of alignment; the cage was broken. Frey saw the danger and lunged, but Trinica pulled her head back and the collar clicked shut on nothing.
She darted towards Kyne. Her hand lashed out, and came away trailing a thin chain: Kyne’s amulet, torn from his neck. Now unprotected, the Century Knight gave a yell of terror, distorted through the mouthpiece of his mask. He flailed backwards, tripped to the floor and went scrambling away on his hands and knees.
Crake grabbed for her, clumsily trying to pin her arms. She slipped from his grip and smashed him across the face with a backhand fist. The daemonist’s eyes went dull, and he collapsed to the ground, out cold.
Trinica’s head snapped around and she fixed Frey with a freezing gaze. He withered before her, and backed away slowly, the collar held uselessly in one hand. There was no way he’d get it on her now.
She bared her teeth. Her breath hissed through them. She’d been hurt, and she wasn’t playing around any more. There was deadly intent in her eyes.
— Darian ~
Not knowing what else to do, Frey pulled a pistol from his belt and held it out shakily. She looked at it with a puzzled frown, and then cocked her head to one side, as if to say: Really? Fast as a snake, she knocked it from his hand and it went skidding away across the floor, into the shadows.
Frey stumbled back a step, but she was on him in an instant. He felt himself lifted with inhuman strength, pulled up by the lapels of his coat. Then he was flung bodily through the air, twisting, helpless. He hit a stack of crates, and pain blasted his senses. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs. He was battered from above as more crates came down on top on him. The edge of one of them struck him on his crown, sending him reeling close to unconsciousness. He came back to himself, half-buried in boxes, his head swimming and his vision blurred, his body ablaze with agony.
Somewhere out there was a threat. He blinked and tried to clear his mind, searching the gloomy hold. There: a blurred figure, walking slowly towards him. Trinica. The daemon. Trinica.
Get up. Get up, or you’re gonna die. Get up, or you’ll fail her.
He fought to rise. The crates on his back shifted and toppled, but the effort was too much. He slumped back to the ground.
Trinica approached without hurry. He could hear the soft rasp of her breath, the tap of her boots on the metal floor, the drip of water from above. Behind her, the Azryx device rose like some dread edifice to the forbidden goddess of the Delirium Trigger, encased in bone. Decay and rot swirled at its heart.
There was no one to help him. Crake was out of it, Kyne and Crund reduced to cringing cowards by her daemonic power. He struggled to get to his feet, not knowing what he’d do once he got there, only that he wouldn’t die on his knees. This time there were no crates on his back. He got halfway before her hands seized him again, and he was pulled up, and brought face to face with her.
She dangled something in front of him, too close to focus on. Kyne’s amulet.
— How? ~
Somehow, that single word expressed all its intention. The daemon wanted to know how they’d learned to negate its powers. But more, it wanted to know how this had all come to pass. How had the Awakeners been defeated? Where had it all gone wrong? Why were the Manes here? Who was he, this Captain Frey that had plagued them for so long? It would learn, and it would share that knowledge, and next time there would be no mistake.
— How? ~ she demanded, though her lips never moved.
Frey began to laugh. Hysteria brought it out of him, and though it hurt like bastardy to do it, it felt good all the same. ‘You want to know what’s going on?’ he said. ‘Sweetheart, you’re asking the wrong feller.’ He coughed and gave her a shit-eating grin. ‘I just work here.’
She snarled, and with one quick movement she threw him across the room. He tumbled and turned in the air, his senses a whirling blur of vertigo and fright, dominated by the awful anticipation of impact.
He smashed into one of the great girders that held up the roof of the hold. Something gave as he hit; the snap of bone resounded through the hollow room. He crashed to the floor in a pile. He couldn’t catch his breath; his mouth flooded, and tasted like tin. He retched and blood splattered the floor. The dizzying agony as his stomach clenched made his head go light and his vision sparkle.
He managed to inhale. Razors scored his back. Something was broken inside. Couple of ribs, maybe worse.
Shit, shit, shit.
Each new movement brought new pain. He wanted to lie still and surrender himself to whatever was to come. Instead he gritted bloody teeth and forced his trembling limbs into action. It seemed like he’d spent his whole life getting back to his feet, and he wasn’t stopping now. Even when he didn’t have anything else, he had defiance.
That was the thing about underdogs. They never knew when they were beaten.