The smell of the mob gun’s propellant clung chokingly to the back of my throat, among the more familiar slaughterhouse odors. Lady Miriam’s breath whistled, and the bedsprings squeaked beneath her uncontrolled motions.
“Shut that off,” said the Baron to Murphy. The recorder’s pool of light shrank into shadow within the alcove.
The Baron turned and fired once more, into the tank lord’s groin.
“Make sure the others don’t leave the gatehouse till Ganz’s mercenaries are here to deal with them,” said the Baron negligently. He looked at the gun in his hand. Strong lights turned the heat and propellant residues rising from its barrel into shadows on the wall beyond.
“Marksmen are ready, My Lord,” said the Chamberlain.
The Baron skittered his mob gun down the hall. He strode toward the rooms of his own apartment.
It must have been easier to climb back to the roof than I had feared. I have no memory of it, of the stress on fingertips and toes or the pain in my muscles as they lifted the body which they had supported for what seemed (after the fact) to have been hours. Minutes only, of course; but instead of serial memory of what had happened, my brain was filled with too many frozen pictures of details for all of them to fit within the real timeframe.
The plan that I had made for this moment lay so deep that I executed it by reflex, though my brain roiled.
Executed it by instinct, perhaps; the instinct of flight, the instinct to power.
In the corridor, Wolfitz and Murphy were arguing in low voices about what should be done about the mess.
Soldiers had taken up positions in the windowed corridor flanking the banquet hall. More of the Baron’s men, released from trapping Lady Miriam and her lover, were joining their fellows with words too soft for me to understand. I crossed the steeply-pitched roof on the higher catwalk, for speed and from fear that the men at the windows might hear me.
There were no soldiers on the roof itself. The wall coping might hide even a full-sized man if he lay flat, but the narrow gutter between wall and roof was an impossible position from which to shoot at targets across the courtyard.
The corridor windows on the courtyard side were not true firing slits like those of all the palace’s outer walls. Nonetheless, men shooting from corners of the windows could shelter their bodies behind stone thick enough to stop bolts from the Slammers’ personal weapons. The sleet of bullets from twenty assault rifles would turn anyone sprinting from the gatehouse door or the pair of second-floor windows into offal like that which had been Sergeant Grant.
The tank lords were not immortal.
There was commotion in the women’s apartments when I crossed them. Momentarily a light fanned the shadow of the window bars across the courtyard and the gray curves of Sergeant Grant’s tank. A male voice cursed harshly. A lamp casing crunched, and from the returned darkness came a blow and a woman’s cry.
Some of the Baron’s soldiers were taking positions in the West Wing. Unless the surviving tank lords could blow a gap in the thick outer wall of the gatehouse, they had no exit until the Lightning Division arrived with enough firepower to sweep them up at will.
But I could get in, with a warning that would come in time for them to summon aid from Colonel Hammer himself. They would be in debt for my warning, owing me their lives, their tanks, and their honor.
Surely the tank lords could find a place for a servant willing to go with them anywhere?
The battlements of the wall closing the north side of the courtyard formed my pathway to the roof of the gatehouse. Grass and brush grew there in ragged clumps. Cracks between stones had trapped dust, seeds, and moisture during a generation of neglect. I crawled along, on my belly, tearing my black velvet jacket.
Eyes focused on the gatehouse door and windows were certain to wander: to the sky; to fellows slouching over their weapons; to the wall connecting the gatehouse to the West Wing. If I stayed flat, I merged with the stone . . . but shrubs could quiver in the wrong pattern, and the Baron’s light-amplifying goggles might be worn by one of the watching soldiers.