InterWorld

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There was a rumble from above us, and a big section of a pipe broke free and crashed down. It didn’t come anywhere near us. I wondered what the freed souls were doing to the rest of the ship. Then I turned back to the disaster at hand.

As the first soldier came through the opening, Josef picked him up, like a kid picking up an action figure, and dropped him over the side of the mezzanine to the floor below. He screamed a little on the way down.

“So,” said Jai to me, “you are declining to accompany us home in order to foolishly squander your life in attempting to rescue your pet multidimensional life-form from…” He trailed off as another handful of astoundingly ugly soldier critters came through the corridor and were respectively picked up, teleported and blown over the rail to drop onto the floor below us in varying stages of dead.

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose I am.”

He sighed. Then he looked at Jo.

“Sounds good to me,” she said.

“Me, too,” said Josef. “I’m in—hey, not so fast!” and he tossed one of the soldiers back down the corridor, tumbling men like ninepins.

“Say please,” J/O said.

“What?”

“Say please and I’ll help get your pet back.”

“Please,” I said. I swung the poleax, and another soldier thing fell screaming. Then we waited, but no more came through the corridor. They seemed to have given up on that idea.

“We’d better to hurry,” said Jakon. “I don’t think this ship is going to be here for much longer. And Lord Dogknife is going to be getting off before it goes. I know his kind.”

I said, “Nobody’s mentioned the real problem yet.”

Jai smiled. “Which real problem in particular might that be?”

“We’re on the bottom of the ship. We need to get to the top deck. And the quickest way is probably back through the corridor we just came down.”

“Not necessarily,” said Jo. She pointed down. “Look over there.”

There was a grand door to the engine room, a huge thing made of brass, and it was opening now, slowly, being wheeled or winched, screeching and complaining like the Wicked Witch of the West as it did so. Once it was open a small phalanx of HEX soldiers marched through it and formed lines. They made no move to attack, however. They simply formed a solid wall of flesh and weapons, facing us.

For a tense moment no one moved. Then the HEX soldiers split ranks, to reveal a single man standing there. A man whose naked flesh crawled with nightmares.

“Hello, Scarabus,” I shouted, trying to sound confident, although my skin felt like it was crawling just as much as his. “Enjoying the cruise? There’s gonna be shuffleboard and bingo later.”

“I felt from the start that Neville and the Lady Indigo underestimated you, boy,” he called back up to me. “I would have been happy to have been proven wrong.” He put his hand on the small image of a scimitar tattooed on his left bicep, and suddenly there was a real scimitar, the oiled blade gleaming wickedly, in his right hand.

“You’ve destroyed the Malefic,” he said. “The conquest of the Lorimare worlds has failed. Lord Dogknife intends to deal with you all personally. Believe me, every one of you will wish you had gone in the pot instead.”

Good, I thought. Lord Dogknife was still on the ship.

Jai tapped me on the shoulder. I moved out of the way. Jai looked down at Scarabus and said, without raising his voice, but clearly audible across the whole huge hall, “We have a deal to offer you. To all of you.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to make deals.” Scarabus slashed his scimitar through the air.

“But we are,” said Jai. “One of us will fight you. If our champion wins, you alone will escort us up to Lord Dogknife as free folk. If our champion loses, you may march us to Lord Dogknife as your prisoners.”

Scarabus stared at Jai for a heartbeat, and then he began to laugh. It was obvious why. From his point of view, whether we won or lost, we wound up in Lord Dogknife’s clutches. I couldn’t see that it made much difference either. One could call Lord Dogknife a lot of things, most of them uncomplimentary and none in his presence, but “stupid” wasn’t one of them.

“Bring on your champion!” Scarabus shouted.

Jai shook his head. “I need you, and all your men to swear not to harm us, if our champion wins.”

The soldiers looked at Scarabus. He nodded. “I so swear!” he shouted. “And I!” “And I!” repeated the soldiers one by one. They looked vastly entertained.

“I’m ready,” I said to Jai. I knew he had a plan, and I just hoped I’d learn what it was in time.

“You?” said Jakon with scorn in her voice. “Let me take him on. I’ll rip out his throat.”

“Excuse me?” said Josef. “Biggest? Strongest? Come on, guys, do the multidimensional math.”

“It’s not a matter of strength,” said J/O. “It’s a matter of swordsmanship. Has anyone here ever gone up against a scimitar?” None of us answered. “Well,” he continued, “I was an Olympic level fencer. And I’ve done historical reenactment sword fighting, with broadswords and short swords—and scimitars.”

“This is a magical location,” said Jai. “Strong magic. You are already weakened, and you are the smallest of us, J/O. This world does not recognize your abilities.”

“It’s not a matter of nanocircuitry and augmented reflexes,” said J/O. “It’s a matter of skill. I can do it.”

They all looked at me, and I looked at Jai. He nodded.

J/O looked as smug as a cyborg face can look. “Jo, can you fly me down there?”

She nodded.

“Ask them for a sword, then.”

I shrugged. “Hey!” I called. “Have you got a spare sword, for our champion?”

One of the soldiers produced a sword, took a few steps forward, put it down on the floor, stepped back again. The laughter increased.

“Thank you,” I said. “Enjoy the show. Remember to tip your waiter.”

Jo picked J/O up then, and she flew down him to the floor. He picked up the sword—which was almost as long as he was—and bowed low to Scarabus.

The soldiers laughed louder still. If it were possible to laugh oneself to death, we would have already won. Scarabus looked up at us. “What?” he asked. “Are you sending me the smallest child in the hope that I’ll be merciful?” He grinned widely. “I shall not be merciful!” he said. And then he raised his scimitar and charged.

He was good. He was very, very good.

Trouble was, it was obvious to all of us—even him, even the soldiers—that J/O was better. From the first moment their blades crossed, he was faster. Way faster. He seemed to know exactly where Scarabus’s scimitar was at any point in the fight, and he was always somewhere else.

The main thing I remember is just how loud the fight was. Every time the blades clashed, the room rang with the sound of metal banging metal. I can still hear it.

Pretty soon Scarabus seemed to abandon the whole idea of clever sword fighting and tried to win by taking advantage of his size and strength, slamming J/O with great blows that cyber-me barely seemed able to parry or block.

Then J/O tripped, and Scarabus lunged, bringing down the blade with all his might, shouting in triumph—and J/O moved, quick as thought, to one side, raising his sword as he did so.

The tattooed man impaled himself on J/O’s sword.

Scarabus’s victory cry was cut off. He didn’t scream—he didn’t make a sound. He just gripped the metal shaft and stared at J/O in amazement.

Then he fell to the floor—and all hell really broke loose.

His skin boiled. It was as if all the tattoos had been imprisoned there in his flesh somehow, and were released by his death. Monsters, demons, things for which I had no name—they all rose up and away from him, expanding and solidifying—

And then they shuddered and froze in mid-flight for an instant.

Then—it was like watching a film run backward. The tats were sucked back down in a whirlpool of ink and form, and in seconds were safely in his skin once more. Scarabus pushed himself up to his elbow, coughed red blood and wiped it away with one illustrated hand. “You just cost me a life,” he said to J/O. “A life! You little monster.”

From his place beside me, Jai asked calmly, “Will you accompany us to Lord Dogknife’s presence without harming us?”

“I have no choice,” said Scarabus. “I swore an oath. There’s too much raw magic in the air to go back on it now.”

Two soldiers helped him to his feet as Jai, Josef, Jakon and I joined J/O and Scarabus on the floor of the engine room.

“Good job,” I said to J/O. I meant it.

He shrugged, but his eyes shone with pleasure.

We started to run, as best we could, up a set of narrow wooden stairs. Every deck we passed showed chaos—people, and things that weren’t people, were panicking, running, screaming.

Scarabus cursed us, demanding that we slow down. He was somewhere behind us. We ignored him. The Malefic wouldn’t hold together much longer.

“More like the Titanic than the Malefic,” I said to Jo, trying to catch my breath. There were a lot of stairs.

“Titanic?”

“Big ship, from my Earth. Hit an iceberg. Went down. nineteen twelve, thereabouts.”

“Oh right,” she said. “Like the King John disaster.”

“Whatever,” I said, as a huge chunk of ship fell apart to one side of us, and went tumbling off into the Nowhere-at-All.

We kept running up steps and along corridors and up more steps. And then we were there, outside the auditorium, the place where I had seen Lord Dogknife last, an hour or so earlier.

And I stopped.

The others stopped, too. “Hey,” said Josef. “Something wrong?”

“He’s in there,” I said. “Don’t ask me how I know.”

Jai nodded. “Good enough,” he said.

Josef kicked down the door and we all went in.