Jack Cloudie

‘They know!’ growled a guardsman, waving his pistol. ‘They know we are not of the Sect of Razat. We were warned …’

‘Quiet!’ barked Farris Uddin. ‘Lower your weapons. Even my hunter’s nose cannot detect what faith lies within a man’s heart. Make for the library’s exit.’ They sprinted forward, any attempt to resemble a muttering train of womb mages thrown to the wind. The doors in front rolling open matched the rumbling of the doors behind them sealing shut.

Waiting for them was a group of womb mages, including a familiar face that set Omar’s blood racing. Salwa! The murderous dog’s hood could not disguise his effeminate, sneering features. The womb mages parted to reveal a company of soldiers advancing. But these were no ordinary soldiers. Their flat, stone-like features were reminiscent of beyrogs — but squeezed down into a normal human-sized frame. Each of the beasts wore a round metal helmet that fitted so tightly it might have been part of its skull, a pair of iron spikes rising from each helm’s edge like curling horns.

‘How appropriate,’ Salwa called down the gantry. ‘The Caliph Eternal’s old elite guard of soldiers meets their replacements. We call them our claw-guard. A new guard for a new age of glory. Do you like your replacements? Unlike you, their loyalty to the sect is imprinted. No antiquated notions of honour to get in the way of serving the empire.’

‘Serving you,’ shouted Omar.

Salwa shrugged. ‘They are one and the same.’

‘The Caliph Eternal’s new guardsmen,’ scoffed Farris Uddin. ‘If you think those stone-faced monkeys of yours are guardsmen, then you’ve forgotten to give them a songbird each for them to call their draks!’

As he spoke, talons extended from the paw-like hands of the claw-guards, each as long a short-sword. Loping forward and snarling, the grand vizier’s vision of progress charged to meet the steel and war cries of their predecessors.

Sprinting through the raiders, Omar yelled in fury, seeing only an obstruction between him and the target of his scimitar. Time for me to feed you my blade. ‘Salwa! Salwa!’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Omar dodged aside as a miniature beyrog-like monster slashed at him with its talons. It was even wearing a guardsman’s riding leathers. That dog Salwa is intent on perverting our traditions beyond the limits of all endurance. Dipping its head down, the thing tried to skewer Omar with the twin spikes of its helmet and Omar beat it back with the curve of his sword. There were ridges under its clothes that it moved to intercept Omar’s thrust, bone as hard as armour. If this had been a normal guardsman, he would have been slowly bleeding to death from a dozen cuts by now. Omar’s sword managed to fend off its talons again, as the creature moved them with all the skill of a born fencer — or a sorcery-created one. The real guardsmen had already discharged their pistols into the charging horde, and with no room to break them and load second charges, the fighting had switched to close quarters — talons clashing against steel. Killers who had been trained as the Caliph Eternal’s finest, versus slayers who had been born to it.

Omar’s opponent was joined by two more claw-guards, and he felt himself separated from the main press of the clash. He was pushed to the side against the railings as the mob of skirmishing fighters moved backwards, away from the exit and towards the sealed doorway his friends had used to enter the flesh library.

All three of the claw-guards came at Omar — not in a coordinated way, like real guardsmen would have done, but as jostling wolves pressing their prey for the first choice of meat. Covered in a sheen of sweat, Omar lunged and thrust his scimitar between them, keeping the beasts at bay — barely. They were hissing back at him in wordless fury as if they were serpents. Maybe the grand vizier only required obedience from his new elite, not conversation?

Then, suddenly, there was another guardsman by his side — Boulous. Two blades against three sets of talons. From the corner of his eye Omar noted that the other guardsmen were being pushed even further back down the gantry, but somehow brave Boulous had fought his way through to Omar’s side, leaving the pair of them as a little archipelago of resistance separated from their comrades.

‘They fight like savages,’ shouted Boulous, feinting forward and turning a taloned hand with a subtle twist of his wrist.

‘They are more handsome than you, Boulous.’

Boulous kicked out with a boot, landing a blow on a kneecap that would have left any human guardsman limping with a broken leg.

As the struck claw-guard stepped back, its brother charged at Boulous and the retainer moved sideways, using his womb mage’s robes like a matador’s cloak, confusing the monster as he speared the creature through its ribs. Boulous tried to slide his scimitar out, but something had clicked in the wounded, dying thing’s body, and the weapon stayed stuck. As Boulous was trying to retrieve his blade, the limping claw-guard returned, lowered its twin-spiked helmet and charged, catching the retainer in his gut and sending both of them sprawling back into the railing.

Omar yelled, smashed back the third of the trio, near-decapitating it, then turned around and hacked at the exposed neck of the claw-guard that had struck Boulous. It collapsed and Omar pivoted and unbalanced the last creature, sinking his scimitar through the false guardsman’s uniform and piercing its heart. Swivelling, he pulled off the dying claw-guard that had rammed Boulous, flipping it over the gantry and sending it plummeting towards the flesh library below.

‘I can’t see them patrolling — in the Jahan,’ wheezed Boulous, as he fell back against the railing, twin pools of blood soaking his womb mage’s robes. ‘No style. Give them a guardsman’s — cloak — and they’d probably — put it on the floor and shit on it.’

‘Get up, Boulous,’ urged Omar. ‘The Caliph Eternal needs you.’

‘The Caliph Eternal,’ coughed Boulous, his eyes rolling in his head as if he was trying to find the empire’s ruler. ‘I want — a governorship — from him — Omar. A nice fat — little province.’

‘You’ll have it.’

‘Somewhere — shaded — with trees.’

There was a bewildered howling down the gantry. The claw-guards were falling back, confused, while in front of them the womb mage’s robes that a second ago had been worn by Farris Uddin appeared to be worn by him no more. There was a new face inside them barking orders at the creatures. The grand vizier’s face!

‘Don’t obey him, you fools!’ screamed Salwa. ‘It’s a Pasdaran trick. Use your noses, mark his scent. It’s not the real grand vizier!’

The claw-guards were still retreating down the gantry, and when Omar gazed down at Boulous, his friend had passed away.

‘A forest kingdom for you, Boulous, if heaven truly rewards the deserving.’

As Omar glanced up, he saw Salwa flanked by his claw-guards working the controls of a console, his efforts rewarded by a cry from one of the raiders as the gantry began to retract into the wall behind the guardsmen. There was an open space growing between the citadel’s claw-guards and the raiding party, a space getting wider as the gantry pulled back. Omar’s friends tried to force open the sealed doorway to their rear but it was no good. The floor beneath them was vanishing foot by foot, until the surviving members of the raiding party spilled into one of the tanks below. Its occupants, a troop of stunted monkey-like things, hurled a primitive tirade of abuse at the interlopers. The guardsmen were trapped — even standing as a pyramid they couldn’t scale the tank’s tall glass walls.

‘New blood is always welcome here,’ laughed Salwa as his hideous claw-guards loped affectionately around him. ‘Especially when we don’t have to pay a slave trader’s head price.’

Omar rose up from Boulous’s corpse, pointing his scimitar towards the murderous cur. ‘Face me, Salwa! Set your half-sized beyrogs to one side and face me like a man, alone.’

‘That would be a hard thing to do, guardsman,’ said Salwa.

‘Your steel against mine — show me what the guard’s newly appointed grand marshal is good for!’