She lies down behind the Ponja gun, takes out the brace Signe made for her, and slides it down the gun’s forestock. She fastens it, then pops the brace into the latch in her false hand. She wriggles it a little and the brace holds fast—though she’s not sure if Signe’s handiwork can take the recoil of a half-inch round going off.
She puts the stock against her shoulder and aims down the seawall road, remembering that she has never personally fired one of these. She knows the general idea, and she knows its loading procedure. But she also knows that assuming you know the right way around a firearm is a great way to get yourself killed.
Though another good way, she thinks, is fucking around with a Voortyashtani saint.
She hears the om again and watches as Saint Zhurgut leaps up into the air above a row of houses to the north, sailing fifteen or twenty feet high in the air, raising his sword for a massive, devastating downward stroke at something she can’t see—but she knows it has to be Sigrud, perhaps trapped in an alleyway between two buildings….
There’s another boom of a Ponja gun. Saint Zhurgut jerks back awkwardly as he’s struck dead-on in the chest. The impact of the round sends him tipping over, his legs lifting up and his head drifting down, and he caroms off the corner of a roof before crashing into a yurt.
Mulaghesh laughs lowly and shakes her head. “Fucking Sigrud…”
The man himself comes dashing out onto the seawall road, his Ponja gun still smoking. He runs toward Mulaghesh, who watches his progression along the sights of her own Ponja.
There’s another om and the massive blade comes crashing out a few yards behind Sigrud, then turns abruptly to go wheeling toward him. Sigrud dives forward, and the blade arcs through the air he just previously occupied. As he’s clambering to his feet Saint Zhurgut bursts through a shop front down the seawall road like a furious bull, bricks and slate tiles clattering over his thorny back. He looks at Sigrud, and though Mulaghesh can’t see his face she can tell he’s mighty pissed.
The saint holds one hand up in the air, and the sword, droning lowly, comes whirling back to his palm. Sigrud has just now managed to start running again, but he’s a slow-moving target in a wide, open space.
Mulaghesh, panicked, tries to get a clear shot at the saint, but Sigrud’s between her and her target, blocking her shot.
“Ah, shit,” she mutters. “Shit!”
Saint Zhurgut raises his blade, spins around, and hurls the sword forward.
Mulaghesh watches, horrified.
The om echoes down the seawall road. The sword rises up, up, fifty feet off the ground, sixty feet off the ground, moving in a wide, graceful arc that will soon collide with Sigrud’s path.
Sigrud stops, turns, and raises the Ponja gun.
He is not, to say the least, following standard operating procedure with a Ponja: any weapon firing a .50-caliber round needs to be ground-mounted. As such, when he pulls the trigger, and the deep-throated boom! echoes down the seawall road, the recoil is so much that it knocks all two-hundred-andsome-odd pounds of him clear on his back, like he’s been hit with a truck.
There’s a high-pitched ping! sound, and suddenly Saint Zhurgut’s sword begins wobbling erratically. The wobbling grows and grows, sending the blade off course, until it flutters into the road nearly half a block short of Sigrud, burying itself in the oystershell pavement.
Her mouth opens. Did he just shoot that damned sword out of the air?
Saint Zhurgut stares, outraged. Then he begins running down the road to Sigrud, hand outstretched.
The om fills the air again. The sword wriggles in its spot in the pavement.
Sigrud hobbles to his feet, clutching his side—Mulaghesh gets the feeling the Ponja broke a rib, at the very fucking least—then limps to the seawall and dives into the ocean.
The sword extracts itself from the pavement and flies back to Zhurgut’s hand like it’s magnetized. Zhurgut turns to face the ocean, raising his sword, looking for Sigrud.
Mulaghesh places the sights of her Ponja on Saint Zhurgut. She moves her finger to the trigger, takes a breath, and fires.
The world seems to leap, like the streets around her are all sitting on a blanket and someone just picked up one end and shook it. She’s frankly not sure what’s worse: being behind the slate wall when it exploded, or firing this big fucking thing.
But she’s granted a moment of satisfaction when she sees Saint Zhurgut stagger with the shot. I might have just broken my clavicle, she thinks, but at least I hit you, motherfucker.
Saint Zhurgut wheels around furiously, looking for the source of the shot. He must have missed seeing her. Mulaghesh miserably realizes she’s going to have to shoot him again.
She waits until he’s facing her, and then—wincing and holding her breath like someone about to jump off of a very tall diving board—pulls the trigger again.
Once more, everything leaps. She groans as her body vocally insists she not do that again.
Saint Zhurgut tumbles backward as the bullet hits him in the lower gut. Then he stares down the street at her, trembling with rage, and hurls his sword.
But because it’s so dark, he can’t see that Mulaghesh has already stood and limped away, up the railway track to the watchtower. The sword crashes into a stack of crates on the other side of the track, but otherwise does no real damage at all.
The sword makes its return journey, fluttering through the air, its grip smacking back into Saint Zhurgut’s open palm. He cocks his head, waiting—maybe for a scream, maybe for another shot—but it doesn’t come.
Mulaghesh quietly, slowly climbs the watchtower.
Zhurgut stalks down the street, sword at the ready, his blank gaze scanning back and forth, seeking out whoever might still have one of those damned guns. He moves so carefully, so slowly, that Mulaghesh can hardly bear it.
He comes to the train tracks and looks them up and down. Perhaps he’s wondering what they are: he probably hasn’t ever seen something like this before. But he wouldn’t care, she realizes. This thing standing below her is a bottomless pit of rage and hunger, and all the world is his sustenance.
He looks at the abandoned Ponja gun on the tracks. He peers at the smashed boxes beyond it. Then he takes one step forward, a second, and a third.
He now has one foot over the first rail. Mulaghesh has to force herself to wait until he lifts his other foot and steps forward until he’s fully standing on the track.
Then Mulaghesh, who has had the PK-512 trained on him for some time now, finally opens fire.
***
When Mulaghesh had the PK-512 weapon system explained to her, detailing the firing, loading, and safety mechanisms however many years ago, she noticed how much the officer in charge of the demonstration kept talking about its mounting.
“This is most certainly a fixed system,” he kept reiterating. “Most certainly. It’s possible for us to mount it on a tracked vehicle, and we’re researching that currently, but for now, it’s best to consider this a fixed system, because of the unusual mounting issues.”