They don t look all that impressed, said Molly.
They re about to be, I said. Suddenly and violently and all over the place.
The soldiers looked at me and at Molly, and decided Molly was the easier target because she didn t have any armour. They all opened fire at once, the roar of gunfire shockingly loud in the quiet. I moved automatically to stand between Molly and the soldiers, and the bullets ricocheted harmlessly away from my armour, flying this way and that, making some soldiers duck frantically, and chewing up a nearby hedge sculpture of a giant boar. Its curving tusks were shot away in a moment, and its shaggy head just exploded. It did occur to me that if I d been wearing my usual strange-matter armour, it would have absorbed all the bullets rather than let them prove a danger to innocent bystanders. But I was wearing Moxton s Mistake, and the rogue armour didn t care. And, besides, there were no innocent bystanders on the grounds of Crow Lee s house.
Molly shouldered me aside. How many times do I have to tell you, Eddie Drood, that I am quite capable of looking after myself?
She strode deliberately into the hail of bullets. All the soldiers were firing at us now, the roar of automatic weaponry deafening at such close range. Molly had a protective screen firmly in place that gathered up all the bullets that came at her and held them in midair, hovering before her. One by one the soldiers stopped firing, lowered their weapons and just stood there, looking at her in a dazed and demoralised sort of way. Molly snapped her fingers once and all the bullets dropped out of the air to bounce lightly on the grass at her feet.
And while the mercenary soldiers were coping with that, Molly raised her hands in the stance of summoning, forced out a few really nasty Words, and a great storm wind rose out of nowhere and came sweeping across the open lawns, howling and buffeting and blasting through anything that got in its way. It picked up the soldiers and threw them about like an angry child. They went flying this way and that, tumbling end over end before crashing to earth again some distance away. The roaring wind picked up the abstract sculptures and smashed them against one another, uprooting the smaller hedge creatures and sending them bobbing and tumbling across the lawns. Molly brought her arms down sharply, and the wind broke off abruptly.
Half a dozen soldiers had dug in, hanging on to the heavier statues. Molly snapped her fingers briskly and lightning bolts stabbed down to incinerate the mercenaries. Black smoke and the smell of roast pork carried across the grounds on a gusting breeze. Molly turned to look at me.
Are you going to give me a hard time over killing a few professional soldiers who were quite definitely prepared to kill you and me?
No, I said.
Ah said Molly. You know, I had a response ready for pretty much everything except that. Are you sure you re not upset?
No, I said. They weren t interested in taking prisoners, and neither am I. Every one of these mercenary bastards gave up all their human rights when they signed on to work for the Most Evil Man in the World. They re standing between me and the rescue of my lost family. Kill them all and let the Devil sort them out.
This isn t like you, Eddie, said Molly.
I never had my whole family taken away before, I said.
Molly looked like she wanted to say something else, but a whole new army of mercenary soldiers suddenly appeared out of nowhere, just blinking into existence in large groups all around us. Molly and I moved quickly to stand back-to-back. It was the same professional types in the same bluff uniforms, but this time much better armed. They had glowing swords and axes, shining bitterly with dangerous energies; Hands of Glory with sulphur- yellow flames dancing at the end of waxed fingers; even a few elven wands. Though given how gingerly their owners were handling them, the wands clearly hadn t come with an instruction manual. I almost felt sorry for the poor bastards holding them. Elves live to screw humans over, and they never sell anything they don t booby-trap first. Their sense of humour isn t ours.
The soldiers carrying glowing axes and swords advanced on me, and I went cheerfully forward to meet them. The heavy blades smashed and shattered against my armour, and the metal pieces stopped glowing before they even hit the grass. I didn t feel a thing, and my armour wasn t even scratched. On the few occasions where the blades just rebounded, I snatched the weapons out of their shocked owners hands and broke them in two with my golden gauntlets.
They retreated rapidly, and a soldier stepped forward holding his blazing Hand of Glory out before him. A Hand of Glory can uncover any secret, open any lock, take command of any magic. The soldier tried to use the Hand s power to take control of my armour away from me and force it back into my torc. To leave me revealed and vulnerable. But mine was a Drood torc, and more than a match for a dead man s hand with candles for fingers. The magic rebounded, all the yellow flames blew out in a moment and the Hand just withered and closed in on itself, forced into a harmless fist. The soldier shook the dead Hand hard a few times, like that was going to help, and then fell quickly back to hide behind some other soldiers.
The two soldiers with elven wands stepped forward to take his place, stabbing the wands at me while shouting something in badly accented elvish. Massive energies blasted me, burning so brightly in the space between us that my mask had to shut itself down for a moment to protect my eyes. I stood my ground in the dark, untouched and untouchable inside my armour, until the attack was over. My mask cleared, I looked around and discovered I was standing in a large circle of dead grass, surrounded by burning hedge creatures and shattered statues. I let the two soldiers with wands take a good look at all the destruction they d caused and then at me, completely untouched; then I started purposefully towards them. They threw away their wands and turned and ran, and I let them go.
Next up were a whole bunch of soldiers with futuristic high-energy weapons. You can get your hands on anything these days, if you know where to look. The soldiers hosed me down with all kinds of energy beams, some so powerful they left sparkling trails in the air behind them, but they still washed harmlessly over my armour. One bounced off and set fire to a hedge sculpture of a towering minotaur. It burnt fiercely, but didn t move in the least, for which I was quietly grateful. Other soldiers hit me with sub- and supersonic frequencies, and I just stood there and let them do it, until they got a bit upset and gave up.
I waited patiently while the soldiers shut down their various weapons and had a quiet but agitated discussion. I was fascinated to see what they d do. Their next effort turned out to be a remote-control teleport device, which did its very best to send me somewhere else. But the process couldn t get a hold on my armour, so it bounced back and sent the device s owner somewhere else. Given the man s brief anticipatory scream before he disappeared, I had to assume that wherever he d intended to send me, it hadn t been anywhere nice.
I looked across at Molly. Soldiers were surrounding her from a distance, and using exotic tech weapons to form a cage of pulsing energies around her. Molly calmly took off the spangly earrings Patrick the Armourer had given her, primed them with a muttered Word and tossed them casually between the energy bars of her cage. Both earrings exploded noisily, generating big black clouds of smoke, through which soldiers were thrown screaming with their uniforms on fire. Surprised and caught off guard, most of the soldiers maintaining the cage were blown away in a moment, and the energy bars just collapsed. Molly stepped casually out of the fading trap and looked happily about her. The black smoke cleared to reveal two large charred craters in the lawns, and quite a lot of dazed and damaged mercenary soldiers. Half the soldiers who d been standing there threatening her weren t standing there anymore, and the rest were retreating for safer ground at quite a pace.
More soldiers pressed forward, grim faced and determined, carrying a variety of impressive-looking weapons. Molly smiled and produced a flat box with a single button on the top. I winced just a bit as I recognised it. The protein exploder. Molly pointed the box at the soldiers advancing on her and pressed the button, and most of the soldiers just disappeared. A great cloud of pink mist rolled slowly through the air while bones clattered quietly to the grassy lawn.
The surviving soldiers turned and ran, scattering across the grounds, presumably in the hope it would make them harder to hit. Molly picked them off with the box, one at a time, smiling reflectively. Her sharp-shooting skills were improving.
With Crow Lee s private army either dead or deserting, the grounds themselves took up the fight. Massive robotic guns rose from inside hidden bunkers, straight up through the flower displays, long barrels moving quickly to target Molly and me. I pointed an accusing golden finger at the gun positions.
That s another thing he stole from my family!
All the robotic guns opened fire at once, pumping out bullets at a rapid rate of fire, raking me from head to foot. There was enough firepower to punch a hole through steel plating, but it was still no match for my armour. I
