Salute the Dark

Totho felt the impact like a physical shock to his own body and his own snapbow, his glorious repeating snap-bow, was now levelled in his hands and, without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled on the trigger, feeling the weapon rattle, its mechanism still slightly rough and needing adjustment.

Three shots tore through Big Greyv, ripping into the massive Mole Cricket’s frame and driving the huge man to his knees. The rest sprayed the guards even as they were gaping at Kaszaat’s body, the weapon leaping wildly in his hands, but the bolts punching straight through armour and flesh without distinction. Only the last man to fall had some idea of what was happening, and he was able to look up and see his killer before the bolt found him.

And there will be more guards, Totho thought desperately, automatically fitting a new magazine just as he had when he tested the weapon. Even as he thought it, he heard running footsteps from the tower’s other side. Two sentries who had heard the shouting were coming up, not seeing any bodies yet, hearing no massed attack and so suspecting little. They did not even hear the snapbow crack before Totho had shot both of them dead.

More, surely? But no more came. The sentries from the other side of the line must have been the same men who came with Kaszaat. The Bee-kinden rebels of Szar were well dug in, and nobody was expecting an attack.

A hand closed on the barrel of his snapbow and crushed the metal like foil, twisting it closed and useless. Totho jerked back and found himself at the rail with Drephos standing before him, the ruined weapon dangling from his metal hand. The master artificer looked at it sadly, recognizing the waste. He turned the same expression on Totho.

Totho went for him, fumbling for a knife at his belt. Drephos’ artificial arm, the bolt still jutting from its shoulder, was quicker. It took his wrist in a vice-grip that shot pain through Totho, forcing him back against the rail.

‘Why?’ Drephos asked him, but Totho had no answers for him. From the moment of Kaszaat’s arrival here tonight he had felt that his choices had been stripped from him, and the path he might otherwise have taken was closed.

His left hand found the hammer in his tool belt and, despite the grinding pain in his other wrist, he pulled it out and struck. It was a small hammer, but he knew what he was doing now: striking not as a warrior but as an artificer. He hammered Drephos’ arm three times, three precise strokes, denting in the elbow and the shoulder and locking them in place. Drephos’ mottled face went pale at the last blow, and Totho knew that he had impacted something, some pin or plate, deep enough to reach the real man.

He deliberately struck again at the same place, and Drephos hissed through bared teeth, sweat suddenly standing out on his forehead as the metal of his surrogate body cut deep into the flesh he had been born with. He fell to his knees, dragging Totho down by his rigid arm, and Totho saw the tears of pain in his eyes. His living hand clawed weakly at the ruined shoulder. He did not cry out. Either his pride or the pain was too great for that.

Working carefully, left-handed, Totho removed the man’s thumb. Once he had prised the covering plate off, it was surprisingly easy, but of course Drephos would have had to maintain it single-handed and so it had been designed for that facility. That done, Totho could remove his bruised wrist from the other’s locked grasp.

Looking down at the carnage he had wrought, his first thought was to go below to join Kaszaat, but there would be no last-second reconciliation there, no last fond words or exchange of vows. Big Greyv’s single blow had killed her as thoroughly as a catapult stone.

Drephos let out a long, ragged breath, and Totho turned back to him. The master artificer gripped a pair of pliers awkwardly in one hand, with which he was trying to release something in his trapped shoulder. His fingers shook and his face was clenched into agonized concentration. When he saw Totho watching him, he stopped, the pliers scraping on metal. His eyes were bright through his agonized mask.

‘So what now?’ he asked. ‘Do I scream for the guards? And what do you do now, Totho?’ His voice was so quiet and clipped with pain that Totho had to hunch forwards to hear him.

Totho looked beyond him past the gleaming metal of the engine towards the rebels’ lines. The city was waiting in the still air, waiting for what morning would bring. He knelt by Drephos, wondering how easy it would be to free the damaged arm, or whether Drephos could even survive the loss of this mechanical part of himself.

‘You’ve not so long left,’ Drephos said, his voice trembling despite all his self-possession. ‘Better make your decision soon.’

‘I have decided,’ Totho announced, standing up again. ‘And in a way, I think you would approve.’

Towards morning, the Bee-kinden soldiers that had apprehended him brought him before their leader.