The carnodon ran forward a few paces, bellowed, and lunged.
Effortlessly, it leapt up the side of the pit into the shrieking crowd. I was still attached to it by the scythe, the handle of which I clutched frantically. As we landed in the seating, I was thrown clear, and crashed down onto the frantic fleeing audience.
The beast was berserk. It tore into the crowd, hurling limp, mangled forms and gouts of blood into the air. The pandemonium shook the dome.
I got up, pushing away the individuals who fell and stumbled into me in their efforts to escape. Gunfire ripped out across the amphitheatre. In the higher stands, I could see the militia scrambling down, firing at the carnodon as Terronce and other men hustled towards the safety of a side exit. The militia's shots were hitting people in the crowd.
I jumped across the backs of several seats, and punched aside two servants who grabbed at me. On the steps of the seating tiers just above me, two household guards ran down, raising their autoguns to shoot at the creature loose in the crowd.
I felled one with a psychic lance powered by rage and adrenaline, and snatched his weapon from his hands. Before his companion could turn, I had blown him down the steps and over the rail into the pit with a short burst of gunfire.
I looked up at the seating where the Glaw nobles and their guests had been. Lord Glaw, Locke and the pipe-smoker had already disappeared and the guards were half-carrying Lady Fabrina and the ecclesiarch away. But Urisel Glaw was still there, bellowing at his men over the bloody tumult. He saw me.
The Inquisition will show you no mercy/ I yelled at him, though I doubted he could hear.
Urisel stared down at me for a moment, then shouted some more oath-laden orders and turned his attention to the camodon. It had ploughed beyond the common seating now and was disembowelling a member of the house militia. Multiple bloody gunshot wounds showed in its striped pelt.
Urisel snatched a hunting rifle that one of the men fetched for him. He took careful aim at the carnodon and fired.
The massive weapon roared and the huge bulk of the creature flipped over, its chest blasted open. Its falling bulk crushed the legs of a guard.
The crowd continued to flee, but the uproar decreased enough for me to notice that a series of bells had begun to ring. Metal bells, electrically triggered. From deeper in the vast mansion, other alarms sounded. Urisel lowered his rifle and gestured to some of his men to discover the meaning of the alarm. Those in the crowd not too far intoxicated or mindless with fear looked anxiously around.
There were distant, inexplicable sounds. I didn't wonder much about them. Urisel took aim again, at me this time.
I dived over and a section of wooden seats exploded.
I clambered up. Urisel was reloading the wide-bore hunting iron, and Terronce was heading down towards me, followed by other men.
Terronce fired. I aimed high and blew his head and his plumed silver helmet apart with another tight burst.
Urisel was about to fire again. He drew the hunting piece to his shoulder and found me in the crowd.
There was an abrupt, sizzling series of buzzing shots from somewhere behind me. Three of the militia guards at the pit rail juddered and fell, and Urisel Glaw was thrown backwards, his hunting rifle roaring as it fired wildly up into the dome. The crowd began to mob frantically again in a second, and the remaining soldiers swung their aim up, hunting for this new shooter.
I swept around and saw him at once. Midas Betancore, crouched up on the tiled slope of awning above the pit seating on the opposite side of the arena. His needle guns, one clutched in each hand, spat again, peppering the front stands with lethal shots. Members of the household and several more guards tumbled. One guard pitched over the rail and fell into the pit. Further along the front rail, the crowd's panic to get clear of the carnage turned into a stampede. The rail snapped and half a dozen pages and kitchen staff spilled down the side of the pit wall. One clung to a broken rail-end for a second before sliding off and dropping.
The remaining guards had found Midas now, and were firing up at the tiled awning with their autoguns. Tile chips exploded out in a haze of dust, but Midas was moving, sure-footed, along the terracotta shelf. Hol-stering his weapons, he slid down its length, grabbed the edge with both hands and executed a superb swing that carried him round and under the lip and into the emptying stands.
The guards tracked him, firing wildly, cutting down members of the screaming crowd.
I ran down to the rail. 'Cover! Cover!' I yelled down to Bequin and Aemos below. They were busy trying to drag Heldane's bloody form to the comparative safety of the pit wall. I ran to the nearby body of a guard and grabbed some more magazine clips from his harness.
A few shots whipped my way, but most were aimed across the pit at Midas. I took cover behind some seats and some of the carnodon's victims, and opened fire up at the stands, aiming short bursts at the militia. Return fire chopped my way and gobbets of wood and flesh sprayed up from my makeshift cover. Midas was moving again, his guns buzzing.
The alarms were still ringing, and now, behind them and the frenzy of the fleeing crowd, I could hear gunfire and the dull rumble of explosions.
Most of the arena had emptied now, except for the last handful of house guards trading gunfire across the pit with the stealthy Midas. The sounds of explosive fighting outside in the grounds and house were getting ever louder.
I reached the banks of seats where the masters of the house had sat. The Glaws and their honoured guests were now long gone. Urisel's hunting rifle lay on the ground, and blood flecked the seat. Midas had at least winged him with a needle round.
I pushed past the end of the seats and down into the stairwell, the auto-gun braced at my hip. The bodies of two staff members trampled in the press lay broken there.
Urisel Glaw had not gone far, bleeding badly from his shoulder wound. He heard me coming and staggered around, firing a small stub-pistol down the gloomy tunnel. Then he disappeared from view.
Gun-butt raised under my arm, I moved forward, searching the darkness of the dank stone tunnel. An opening to the left looked down into a stairwell that entered the cell bay below. To the right was a hatch that allowed access to the main house.
I pushed the hatch open with the barrel of the autogun.
Urisel came out of the cell-bay stairway, howling, and slammed into me from behind.
I hit the door frame face first, and the autogun fired off three shots as it twisted out of my grip.
Without even trying to turn, I doubled over and reached behind me, grabbing a fold of dress uniform cloth, and jerked Urisel Glaw around into the wall. He cried out.
I threw a left-handed punch that sent him reeling, then a right that smashed his teeth. He enveloped me in a bear hug and we stumbled back a few paces before I braced, kicked his legs out and jabbed a knuckle punch into his sternum.
The fight seemed to be out of him. I choked him with a clawing hand and cracked his skull back against the tunnel wall.
There will be no redemption for you, sinner/1 spat into his bloody face, 'or your foul house! Use your last breaths wisely and unfold your truths to me, or the Inquisition will teach you pain that Gorgone Locke has yet to imagine!'
Той-' he gurgled through blood and spittle and flecks of shattered teeth, 'you cannot even begin to imagine the Imperial misery House Glaw will wreak. Our power is too great. We will pitch the bastard Emperor from his golden throne and make him grovel and feed upon excrement. The worlds of the
