The Crystal Empire (25 page)

One brown-skinned native guide, the skinny one Mochamet al Ro
t
shild had hired in a grimy tavern shortly before departing the eastern shore, huddled at the pirate’s knee beside the binnacle, pointing and shouting a
d
vice. The captain shouted back and nodded, hauled upon the tiller or pushed it away from him as was appropriate. Against the wind and sounds of warfare, Ayesha could not hear a word they uttered.

The native’s squat, scar-faced companion lay upon his belly at the opposite end of the hurtling craft, high upon the foredeck, loading and di
s
charging a crossbow into the tormenting pack. These two were, in appearance, quite unlike the fair-skinned east coast villagers of the Sa
v
age Cont
i
nent—they much more closely resembled the attacking horde surrounding them—but had been stranded sailors whom the Commodore had picked up along the way.

She could not see the third man, the old one, they had recruited from among the villagers, but she knew enough of him by now to be assured that he had seen to his own safety.

Rabbi David Shulieman, as well, knelt close by the tiller, struggling in tight-lipped silence to reload the enormous four-barreled pistol he had seen fit to acquire in Rome, and to learn to use, and bring along. All the deadly while, he made the same frequent, unconscious stabs with a for
e
fi
n
ger at the bridge of his spectacles as he had while conducting lessons all her life, shoving them back into place before his eyes.

Once again Ayesha was tempted to laugh, and wondered if this was what people meant by hysteria.

Traveling even faster than the land-ship they harried, uncounted red-skinned naked men, faces painted up in hideous colored patterns, each straddled the saddle of a small, two-wheeled machine, decorated as ga
r
ishly as its rider.

They zoomed past the land-ship’s bow, flashing aft to cut behind its stern, then forward once again to complete the circle, shouting, as they rode, in high, bloodcurdling voices, bouncing across the road-ruts, stee
r
ing with their knees as they launched a sleet-storm of deadly missiles into the land-ship and those aboard her.

Ayesha caught a glimpse of a blood-red handprint slapped upon the flank of one such machine, a flash of unclothed flesh, a flurry of strea
m
ing coal-black hair and eagle feathers, just before a sudden volley of a
r
rows forced her to duck behind the rail.

Amidships, Abu and Ali, the retainers her father had sent along, fired back with issue military-rifles, trying, as they did so, to avoid the land-ship’s whirling lower sail-booms as they whistled overhead. They were aided by Mochamet al Rotshild’s young female...what? Body-servant? Traveling companion? In any case, she was an endless subject of sca
n
dalized indi
g
nant muttering upon Marya’s part, who, with Sagheer and the parrot, co
m
pleted their expeditionary party of thirteen.

Not far from Ayesha’s cabin door—she had not noticed him b
e
fore—Sergeant Kabeer lay face down upon the hardwood decking, his lif
e
blood staining the well-scrubbed planks.

Disregarding the hail of lethal objects showering all about her, Ay
e
sha crawled toward the fallen man. The land-ship pitched and wallowed over uneven ground, slowing her progress, tossing her from side to side, and bruising her elbows.

Kabeer groaned as she approached, trying to turn over. The long, u
g
ly protruding shaft of an arrow, one end tangled in a basket-sized coil of rope beside the gunwale, stopped the motion.

The other end was buried in his chest.

Ayesha freed the arrow-end from the rope pile. It was a strange art
i
fact, quite without the feathering she was used to. Its hollow rear length was filled with tiny drill-holes which lightened it, providing stabilizing resi
s
tance to the air. The front, almost half its length, was shod in metal.

The deadly implement had passed through Kabeer’s leather ammun
i
tion bandoleer, the heavy woolen layers of his tunic, into his body, and out again just above the shoulder blade, exposing a broad, sharp-edged, spade-shaped tip, much like the point of a dagger, save for the ou
t
ward-curving barbs at its rear corners.

Both entry wound and exit welled scarlet about the intruding shaft in short, regular surges. The tubular, perforated rear half of the shaft e
n
couraged the flow. The sergeant groaned again, relieved of some part of his pain, then closed his eyes.

With trembling fingers, Ayesha broke the arrow where it entered. Odd, how she could feel fear for someone else but not herself. Opening his tunic, she stuffed the corner of a sheer and beautiful silk handke
r
chief from her sleeve into the open end of the projectile, and the rest of it about the entry wound, trusting to his heavy coat to hold it. She was afraid to do more, afraid that she had done too much. The shaft was so
l
id where it left his back, the bleeding not quite so profuse there. She put her face near his, feeling his breath, warmly even upon the sensitive skin between her nose and upper lip.

For the moment, then, he was still alive.

An arrow smashed through the lightweight railing wall above her head, scattering splinters through her hair. She was surprised to feel a wave of anger washing fear away.

The unconscious sergeant’s long, hammerless army rifle lay smoking upon the deck beside him. Sitting up, she unfastened one of a dozen flaps upon the broad leather diagonal which encircled his body. She e
x
tracted three finger-length brass cartridges from their loops. She placed them between the fingers of her left hand in the regulation manner which her f
a
ther had insisted upon teaching her.

With the same hand she supported the wooden fore-end of the rifle—its round, blued, tapered barrel was too hot to touch, and much heavier than the cut-down target weapons she was used to—while with her right she grasped the gracefully curving underlever, yanked it downward, lowe
r
ing the breechblock at the rear of the receiver.

A spent casing sizzled past her, bouncing off her shoulder. It rattled across the deck.

She slid one of the fresh rounds into the breech, slammed the lever shut, and rested the muzzle of the long-barreled weapon upon the deck rail. That was better.

Another arrow lashed past her face, ruffling her hair.

Keeping both eyes open, as she had been taught, she laid her right cheek upon the polished walnut stock, wrapped her right hand about its wrist. She leaned forward, peering through the tiny hole in the rear sight toward the slim, bead-topped post atop the muzzle.

The movement of the howling, motorized savages was so rapid it was difficult to get one of them lined up in her sights, let alone to keep him there. Inspired, she pivoted her barrel toward the land-ship’s undercut bow, holding her sights upon an imaginary space just to its port side.

A different sort of howl unnerved her momentarily as the land-ship gave a slight lurch, grinding one unlucky rider and his machine beneath its giant iron wheels as he crossed the bow.

The instant she saw a second blurred flickering of movement—she had been taught, and properly, to focus her eyes upon the front sight—she squeezed the trigger, aiming to the left, giving the traversing Red Man an arm’s-length lead.

The heavy weapon roared, its all-consuming bellow becoming her entire universe for a moment which seemed to stretch into eternity. The rifle’s curved steel buttplate smashed cruelly against her frail, thin-clad shoulder, stunning her as if she had been shot herself. Her vision was obscured by shock and by infernal-odored smoke.

There was a scream, at first ahead of her. It drifted backward as the land-ship thundered onward. When it had passed out of the smoke, she looked back to see one naked savage struggling to get his machine u
p
right, blood streaming down his chest.

He shook his fist at the land-ship.

She caught herself grinning, wondering whether—no,
hoping
that—he was the one she had shot at.

“Princess!”

Ducking behind the rail, Ayesha levered the breech open. Smoke curled from the chamber. Marya’s hysterical shout she ignored, conce
n
trating i
n
stead upon the task of handling the awkward weapon without burning he
r
self upon its overworked and overheated metal parts.

The extractor flung the empty cartridge casing from the chamber with a cheerful
ping,
repeated as it struck a hatch-cover behind her. B
e
fore it had bounced a second time, she took a new one from between the fingers of her left hand and reloaded.

The servant woman elbowed and kneed her way across the blood-slippery, arrow-cluttered deck from wherever she had been hiding, her breath coming in ragged, frightened gasps.

“Princess, you must stay inside! We shall all be killed!”

“Marya, do not distract me!” Ayesha shouted over the clatter and roar of battle. If her maidservant’s fractured logic was correct, she would rather be killed outdoors than in. “Go inside yourself—or find a gun!”

One of her father’s hired retainers—Abu, she thought it was—fell on his face a dozen paces ahead. Seeing his impact with the deck drive a re
d
dened arrow shaft through his back, Marya began to whimper, then curled herself into a ball, her back against the railing wall.

This time, when Ayesha stroked the smooth curve of her weapon’s trigger—she was long past noticing its recoil—the rifle’s mind-shattering roar was matched by a secondary, louder bellow and a blin
d
ing burst of light. She had struck one of the riding-machines instead of its rider. There was an explosion. Something thudded heavily to the deck-planking just in front of her.

She glanced down briefly, expecting to be rewarded with the sight of a scorched, distorted fragment of the machinery she had just destroyed. Pe
r
haps the boiler.

Instead, she saw a brown-ankled human foot, severed high upon the limb, still writhing, encased in lightweight bead-fringed suede.

She swallowed back an ugly taste.

With the greatest moral effort she could ever remember expending, the Princess Ayesha, cloistered daughter of the Caliph, emptied and r
e
loaded the rifle once again, obtained three more fresh cartridges from the woun
d
ed sergeant’s bandoleer—he was still breathing, she observed a
b
sently—then sought yet another target.

She fired, uncertain this time whether she had hit her mark, took a calming breath, reloaded, and fired again.

Until this moment unaware of how her companions fared about her, she was suddenly conscious of a change. The rumble of the land-ship’s giant wheels had dropped in pitch. Its hull groaned mightily with the strain as, for some reason, its pace began to slow.

Past her rifle’s brass front sight, the air above it shimmering and dancing with the barrel’s metallic heat, Ayesha now made out a number of low sod buildings.

A big man, heavily bearded—unlike those smooth-faced savages u
p
on their machines—yet accoutered and deep-tanned in an identically indecent manner, stood in the broad gap of a grass-topped earthen wall, his hands upon his hips, complacently watching the Saracen vessel as it began circling round the buildings. She was reminded of an ancient sa
y
ing of her mot
h
er’s people: “In my weakness, I fled into the desert to escape my en
e
mies—and the desert gave me strength to defeat them.”

Armed with undrawn sword and unpulled bow, scabbarded dagger and holstered pistol, he waved what seemed a casual gauntleted hand at one of the savage riders, who gave a shrill whoop, wrenched his spee
d
ing machine up on its rear wheel, and waved back.

A nearby sound distracted her.

Marya sat staring with dull surprise at an arrow buried half its length in her silk-covered thigh. There did not seem to be much blood, and whatever pain she was suffering could not compete with such unco
m
prehending te
r
ror as she had already endured.

Enough.

Aligning her sights upon the bearded man, Ayesha pulled the trigger.

“Had there not overtaken him a blessing from his Lord he would have been cast upon the wilderness, being condemned. But his Lord had chosen him....”—The
Koran,
Sura LXVIII