‘No, lass. It’s only sleep you need. Sleep and a good hearty meal with a fine bottle or two of wine to wash it down.’ Commodore Black glanced around. The beyrogs had formed a semicircle-shaped double line halfway down the hall, the front row beating back the wave attacks of their more diminutive cousins with their blades. Behind them stood a second rank of crossbow-wielding beyrogs, pouring independent fire into the charges coming at them and exchanging bolts for bullets with the marine snipers at the rear.
It was proving a mortal effective defensive formation, but there wasn’t enough cover in the hall as exhibits were smashed into clouds of bony shards, while the grand vizier seemed to have an entire citadel full of these new claw-guard regiments to throw against them. A diversion must divert.
Another wave of the stone-faced claw-guards came leaping and howling like wolves against the front line of beyrogs, the imperial bodyguard unit’s scimitars swinging and cutting in response, claw-guards screaming as they died, beyrogs stumbling back where the beasts broke through the tight line and swarmed over the giant defenders.
This was no battle for men, no battle for old Blacky. Not with both armies supplied by the empire’s dark womb mages. Attacking and defending without any sign of fear or care for their own skins. They were living machines driven only by raw animal instincts and the cruel whims of their masters. This wasn’t a battlefield, it was a vast gladiatorial pit, starving lions and wolves thrown against each other for someone else’s advancement.
A ball buzzed past the commodore’s ear. Tracing the shot back to the short-stocked airship carbine pulled tight against a marine’s shoulder, the commodore sighted his pistol and was rewarded with the sight of the man slamming back through a discharge of gun smoke as his pistol bucked once.
Still the relentless claw-guards crashed against the beyrogs’ lines, the defenders’ crossbow-fire finally faltering and slowing. Commodore Black noted the empty quiver swinging from the nearest beyrog’s back. They were running out of ammunition.
‘Fall back,’ shouted the commodore. ‘Move back out of the hall.’
‘Those are not their orders,’ said Westwick, translating for the massive one-eyed officer.
‘Their orders were to keep them busy, not to die here like blessed fools,’ said the commodore. ‘The passages behind us are narrow. You can funnel their assault down tight and hold them with your front rank’s bulk. You want to sell your mortal lives, then sell them dearer than this.’
‘There!’ shouted Westwick, interrupting the argument. She’d thrown a hand towards a figure at the far end of the hall. It was Immed Zahharl, the grand vizier waving a sword and urging the claw-guards forward to overwhelm the beyrogs.
‘I can say goodbye to my blessed chance to act as broker for the next king of Jackals,’ said the commodore.
‘I’m out of charges,’ said Westwick.
The commodore picked out the very last crystal shell from his cartridge pack and kissed it before tossing to the first lieutenant.
Westwick broke her pistol, pushed the charge into its breach and cocked her gun, sighting it along her forearm. She squeezed the trigger and a marine running past the grand vizier collapsed and went sprawling as the ball took him in the skull.
‘Luck of the bloody devil,’ she cursed.
The grand vizier looked across the marine’s corpse and spotted the two Jackelians behind the beyrog ranks, then yelled in red-faced rage, shoving his monsters forward with the flat of his blade.
‘And you’ve lost your chance to join the Sect of Razat,’ said the commodore.
‘For the Caliph Eternal,’ yelled Westwick. ‘For the honour of the Caliph Eternal, fall back and hold them in the citadel’s passages.’
With the logic of the move undisputed by the officer this time, two of the beyrogs sounded the retreat using circular trumpets coiled around their cuirasses. Giving ground, the caliph’s monstrous bodyguard marched back in lockstep even as the grand vizier’s claw-guards intensified their assault. Wave after wave of the beasts harried the retreating line, leaving corpses spilled from both sides, many fastened around each other in death. With no more bolts left to fire, most of the beyrogs had thrown aside their crossbows and drawn their scimitars, the hall echoing to the clash of claws against tempered steel, the snarls and growls of an animal pit fight filling the chamber.
His empty pistol discarded, the commodore held his position in the retreating line alongside Westwick, his sword hacking and thrusting as the number of claw-guards pushing them back swelled, both Jackelians made mere components in the living war machines savaging each other. Every metre they lost littered with dead. Every minute they gained for the main attack purchased with their blood and bodies; every second closer to their ranks being thinned to a complete rout.
No place for a man — no place for Jared Black’s unlucky bones.
‘Go back, Omar,’ called Salwa from the line of claw-guards blocking his passage down the tower steps. ‘You do not have to die here tonight for the sake of someone else’s palace intrigue.’
‘It is not a palace intrigue I die for,’ said Omar. ‘It is the Caliph Eternal and my guardsman’s oath. I already gave you my answer back on the walls of the palace fortress.’
‘You thought you were giving your answer to Salwa,’ called the new grand marshal of the guardsmen. ‘Not to Shadisa.’
‘No! I was right. Salwa did kill Shadisa, for I see nothing of her in
‘Then you have been blinded by your stupid male pride,’ retorted Salwa, ‘for we are exactly the same. You never knew me at all, did you? Only the idea of a golden-haired girl you filled with all your hopes back in Haffa.’
‘Order your soldiers aside,’ demanded the caliph, stepping forward. ‘You have fallen under the glamour of the grand vizier, I can see that. Stand down your force here and I will see that you are pardoned for your treason. There are womb mages inside the city who can undo the evil changes that have been worked upon you.’
‘The changes that really count, little enculi,’ spat Salwa, ‘aren’t the ones your sorcerers can undo at your whim. You and your ossified regime have held back progress for so long that you have forgotten how to bend with the winds of change. And if you can’t bend, you must be made to snap.’
Omar rested his hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword. ‘I only hear the propaganda of the Sect of Razat. None of your own words.’
Salwa slipped the scimitar out of his belt and raised it ready to commence the attack as the leather- uniformed ranks of his claw-guards jostled each other, preparing to spring up the stairs and begin the slaughter. ‘Then you may hear mine now.’
There was a splintering sound behind Omar as the snarling beyrogs’ massive crossbows were cranked back and projectiles pushed into position, ready to release the first of their heavy three-fletched bolts.
The caliph spoke softly to Omar. ‘Let the beyrogs go in first. I heard your voice when you spoke of this Shadisa back in our cell; I would not order you to do this, guardsman.’
‘You do not have to, your majesty,’ said Omar, drawing his scimitar. ‘This is my fate and this is my choice.’
The caliph smiled sadly. ‘So be it, then. They are coming up the stairs while we are going down, with only enough space for one of us to pass. That’s a story as old as time. Let us settle it now …’
There was a moment’s silence, the claw-guards’ quivering talons left shaking in the air, the wordless growling beyrogs holding their oversized scimitars out high as though they were totems to the storm shifting above them. Both sides’ roars rose up almost simultaneously and the two ranks surged towards each other, Omar and Salwa’s swords clashing in the centre of the melee as they ran to do murder.
Biologicks from both sides crashed into their enemies in multiple waves of animal frenzy, the claw-guards’ charge fleet and furious, the beyrogs meeting them with the weight of moving mountains, beating aside sabre- fingered strikes with four-foot tall scimitars as bestial yells were hurled between the hacking, thrusting, howling forces. Dead soldiers spilled over the sides of the twisting staircase, living ones too, still locked in fierce combat. Lightning flashes illuminated the hellish scene while the heavens split and roared, two armies from a nightmare spiralling towards each other far above the black spires of the Forbidden City.
Lost in the sodden stench of the animal rage all around him, the world reduced down to his own private
