“The hell it ain’t!” the man spat against the blood pouring off his nose.
Hellequin went to drop to the floor to retrieve his knife. He was restricted by the time it took for him to bend at the knees and extend a hand. It was warning enough for the giant to step on the blade and secure it underfoot with his entire body weight.
“Leave it be, HawkEye. Maybe your kind did this world a service, but that one good deed ain’t enough to let you cut me more than once.” The giant brought his face to the HawkEye’s, bending at the knees as he did so. Few men matched the soldier’s seven foot stature let alone were forced to stoop to look the soldier in his one natural eye. “Now back off and let me do for Jackerie’s pansy son in a manner that’ll satisfy the revenge needs of all Humock,” he spat.
“The pansy ain’t no son of Jackerie!” Hellequin had enough sentiment left in the knotwork of his mind to want to admit his lineage. He owed his family that much.
“You want to settle a beef with a family member, start with me.”
His words carried through the room like dust swept up and carried by the wind. Time slowed. In the briefest instant before the Showmaniese giant brought his fist crashing down, Hellequin saw the reactions of those around him. How the Jeridian braves looked to Asenath for confirmation they were fighting on the right side. How the Showmaniese faltered, mid-brawl, their black eyes pinned wide. How Nim stared across the emotional miles that separated them. Newly distanced.
It was an instant of distraction, but it was enough to let the giant land a colossal blow to Hellequin’s head. His circuitry misfired, half his world thrown into pitch black as his steel eye failed. He experienced a queerly powerful blaze of emotion. Dread lined his stomach like quicksilver.
Again, the distraction worked in his enemy’s favour. The Showmaniese launched three hooks to the soldier’s stomach. Hellequin wheezed and doubled over, aiding the delivery of a fourth hook to his chin.
His neck snapped back. The HawkEye whirred into violent motion. Hellequin got a grip on his compound sight and forced his body to negate the pain.
He struck back, the tight knots of his fists striking the giant up under the ribs with force. The man gasped. Hellequin didn’t falter in his attack, raining blows. He pictured his father – tall as a hang man, lips that had pursed so many times when he was deep in thought that they had settled permanently into that position. Hellequin recalled his family’s homestead as it had stood before he despatched his neutralising platoon; it had looked like any other home on the plains, paint faintly peeling but with clean curtains at the windows, a creaking rocker on the porch, fingerprints of the dead and living imprinted on the door handle. He remembered trace emotions of love and fear and searing loss. And as the giant stumbled backwards, he dipped to the floor, retrieved his bowie knife and started to drive it towards the man’s throat.
Before the blade cut in, he saw a curve of silver whip across and back at the giant’s neck. He stared into the dead man’s eyes, forever startled, and leapt aside as the head toppled forward. It struck the floor heavily. A pound of flesh.
The body collapsed, pumping blood. Behind stood Asenath, her scimitar held towards the gaslight and greased red.
“Moj nagradu!” she growled. “My prize,” she told him, hard about the eye.
Hellequin didn’t dwell on the Jeridian’s victory. His eyepiece refracted to take in events across the room. Nim had been grabbed by one sharp-suited Showmaniese. The man had a blunt block resting on her skull; one tap and Nim’s brains would spill. Apparently the hostage taker had lost faith in making it out of there alive. Hellequin understood the man’s panic. The Jeridian gang seemed newly invigorated now the giant had fallen. As Asenath took out the ribs of one with a swish of her scimitar, the other three female Jeridians formed a lethal collective. Back to back, the women joined in the fray. Fight stars whirred in from the Showmaniese contingent; as one mass, the three Jeridians bowed back at the spine, the blur of lethal metal passing millimetres from their faces. In a deadly dance, they bent, wove and sidestepped as one. Three scimitars whipped high, down then up again. Blood glossed each blade. Showmaniese heads rolled.
“Mi smo victorios!” cried the women and they knelt down, washed their hands in the blood of their enemy and smeared it in streaks down their cheeks.
“Slice another head, bitches, and I’ll do for the whore here!” yelled the Showmaniese holding Nim hostage. It was distraction enough for one of his fellows to smash a blunt block into the chest of one male Jeridian. The man said “Oumph!” with the sickly tone of one who is shocked to greet death so quickly. He crumpled, choking on blood- filled lungs. No one intervened when the Showmaniese brought down the blunt block a second time. Better to finish it, even as the Jeridian women used the pain of loss to fuel their high-pitched eerie war cries.
“Shut it, you fucking red bitches! What say you, Solomon? Gonna let these jackasses slice your customers?” demanded the man with the block at Nim’s skull, his black eyes buzzing every which way.
Hellequin wondered the same thing. While Lulu poked his nose over the lip of the counter, the bartender took his time, wiping up gore from the same surface. “I’m more neutral than most in this nest of blood worms. Your kind wanna sell mine out. Well, I reckon it’s fair to slice a few heads in return.” He glanced up from his macabre housecleaning. “Want my advice? You and your buddies should ease on out of here for the night.”
“Screw that! Ain’t no guarantee any of us Showmaniese are escaping this joint in one piece tonight if these red bitches have their way. I say let’s even up the odds.” The man raised his arm. “Seems this whore means something to some of you.” He started to bring the blunt block down, Nim cringing in his foul embrace.
A hand broke the descent of the blunt block. Fingers gripped the handle, yanking it aside. Hellequin had seen the way of things at the exact same instant the man had taken action. Soft as a sidewinder, he’d slunk over. By the time the Showmaniese had sensed the HawkEye by his shoulder, he was already in the process of slamming down the blunt block. Now the soldier’s hand forced the block back up at force. The Shomaniese took a face full of the weapon, nose shattering on impact. He wasn’t going down without a fight though and drove his teeth into Nim’s neck. She gave a sharp cry.
Hellequin backed off, hands raised. The Showmaniese stumbled back towards the door, passing between the terrified whores and Johns, his teeth dug in just short of Nim’s jugular. The surviving Showmaniese fell in step with him. Weapons poised, they backed up to the exit.
None noticed Asenath slink the whores and Johns in and out. She stepped up, scimitar raised, and slid the blade in at the back of the hostage taker’s neck. The man fell away from Nim like a dried up tic. Inside seconds, Asenath had withdrawn the blade and swept it around on a descending trajectory. The remaining Showmaniese lost their heads. Their corpses hit the ground and the bar fell silent.
Asenath drew Nim up from the floor. The courtesan was gasping, a hand pressed to her neck in an effort to staunch the wound.
The Jeridian delivered Nim to Hellequin, passing her into his embrace with insistence. She walked across the blood-slicked floor, interwove her fingers in the hair belonging to the giant and held up the severed head.
“Moj nagradu!” she cried.
Solomon and the rest of the Jeridians opened their throats and offered up the same strange prayer.
TWELVE
“I’m not extravagantly shy and when a nice young man is nigh, for his heart I have a try, and faint away with tearful eye!” sang Lulu.
“Are you trying to wake all the blood rats of Zan City?” Hellequin muttered.
Lulu giggled and fussed at the HawkEye’s coat sleeve as they walked.
“Word’s out by now. Cyber Circus boasts some of the finest brawlers in all of Humock.” The ladyboy stumbled into Hellequin, who pushed him up.
“How much Jackogin you had back there?” Hellequin went to take his arm away. When Lulu started to fall again, he was forced to hold the ladyboy upright.
“Oh, ain’t no Jackogin, my pretty soldier boy. Remember when I slipped outside a while back at the bar? Well, I encountered a lovely gentlemen, robust and more than a little rabid.” The ladyboy floated his hand before his mouth in mock alarm. “He slipped me a little Dazzle dust,” Lulu confessed, his strung out eyes confirming the fact.
