Part 21 (2/2)
”You-you ugly monster!” the former rhocraft engineer shrieked. He tore off a red-heeled brocade slipper and pitched it overhand with all his strength. It missed the spider, which sprang onto Dougal's face. The husky medievalist opened his eyes and screamed blue murder, whacking at his beard with open hands and kicking the straw in all directions. ”Away, you scullion, you rampallion, you fustilarian!
Aaach-the wh.o.r.eson's fanged me!”
The other twenty prisoners were coming awake in varying degrees of alertness. As they tumbled from their pallets they disturbed other questing arachnids, and it seemed as if the dungeon was suddenly alive with the scuttling things. They ran about like the disembodied hands of black demons, and wildeyed Dougal in his fake chainmail howled and sucked one thumb and crashed to the floor with a doleful cry. ”Then, venom, to thy ... work,” he whispered. His eyes closed.
”b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!” exclaimed the appalled Betsy. The medievalist writhed slightly.
”It got Dougal!” Clifford gasped. He pointed a trembling finger at the surgeon, Magnus Bell. ”And you said they were harmless ... ”
”But they are,” Bell protested. He had knelt to take the medievalist's pulse. ”He's only hysterical.”
All around them, the walls and floor seemed to crawl. But it was a tangible enemy at last, not a mysterious human woman who tricked and mind-blasted them, who clamped the grey torcs of slavery around their necks and threw them into a Tanu dungeon.
Phronsie Gillis' clarion contralto rang out. ”What're we waiting for, mates? Let's get the mothers!”
Basil's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were galvanized. They locked onto the target and roared into a counterattack. Betsy wielded his slipper.
Phronsie and Ookpik and Taffy Evans and Nirupam slammed at the spiders with loose boots, wooden cups, and plates. Farhat and Pongo Warburton stomped. Bengt hammered the creatures with his bare fists. The zany technician Cis...o...b..iscoe snapped his belt like a whip, to sick-making effect. They cursed, whooped, chased, and tripped over one another, all the while taking a fearful toll of invertebrate life. Only a handful of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were noncombatants: Miss w.a.n.g cowered against one wall, trying not to throw up; Philippe the ultrafastidious curled his lip and stood aloof; and the Tibetan physician Thongsa piped out futile admonitions: ”I beg of you! Stop! Have respect! The life-form is physically unprepossessing, but it serves a useful purpose in the local ecology!”
”b.u.g.g.e.r the ecology,” croaked Stan Dziekonski, who had captained a dreadnought in the Metapsychic Rebellion. He jumped on a spider with both feet.
Dimitri Anastos knelt beside Magnus, holding the water bucket while the medic swabbed Dougal's bite. ”You're sure he's not dying?”
”Asian!” groaned the knight. ”Shall I abide in this dull world, which in thy absence is no better than a sty?”
”Take it easy, big fella,” Magnus said. ”You'll live, all right.”
”Kill!” Mr. Betsy smote the arachnid foe right and left, using his ichor-smeared slipper. ”Kill!”
The dungeon door clanked, squalled, and flew open with a resounding crash. Six gold-torc human troopers armed with Husqvarna stun-guns marched in, followed by a brilliantly glowing Tanu fa.r.s.ensor knight whose gla.s.s cuira.s.s was emblazoned with a harp motif. In the corridor, brandis.h.i.+ng naked swords, were other stalwarts, who shone coercer blue and psychokinetic rose-gold, as well as more nonoperant humans carrying Milieu weapons.
The fa.r.s.ensor lifted a commanding hand. Constrained by their grey torcs, Basil's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were instantly mute and submissive.
The Tanu smiled on them. ”I am Ochal the Harper, and I bring you greetings and affirmations of goodwill from King Aiken-Lugonn. Rejoice-for your unjust imprisonment is at an end! We are here to take you away from this place and transport you with the utmost speed to Calamosk, where the King himself will meet with you. Follow us now to the courtyard, where your leader, Basil Wimborne, awaits you.” He turned and left the cell.Their minds released, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds looked at one another in numb disbelief. One of the Husky-toting troopers c.o.c.ked a thumb. ”Come on, hop it! Or we might all end up in the soup.”
The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds began to laugh. They put on their footgear, gathered up their meagre possessions, and began to file out, the able-bodied a.s.sisting the halt. Betsy was the last to leave, having wiped his slippers as well as he could on the straw and resettled his bedraggled wig. Two troopers of the rear guard stood on either side of the dungeon door, grinning, and presented arms as the reincarnation of Good Queen Bess the First swept grandly past.
The door swung shut. When the metallic boom had died away the great cell was utterly silent. Among the welter of black bodies in the straw a few kicked brokenly, then were still.
After a time the mice crept out and discovered that the Jubilee was upon them.
It was a dream, Hagen Remillard told himself. It had to be a dream ...
The linked ATVs bobbed at anchor in the Mediterranean shallows south of Aven's neck, waiting for first light and the land race to Afaliah. Hagen had taken the night watch, sure that he wouldn't sleep after his sister told him of the gold-torc force that would certainly arrive at the citadel ahead of him.
Would this advance guard of the Nonborn King present him with some impossible ultimatum? Would it threaten the captive pilots and technicians who might be so crucial to his plans?
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