Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [143]
“Giddy up.” She dug her heels into his sides.
Savoring Darger’s protests, Pepsicolova rode him like a stallion.
This day just kept getting better and better.
Yevgeny and his crew were engaged in blasting down burning houses in order to create a fire break to limit the spread of the conflagration.
“Awaiting your order, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Fire,” Yevgeny said miserably.
“Fire!” the sergeant barked.
The gun fired.
Thus did his men (and, temporarily, his women) show their displeasure with his indecision earlier. Everything was being done strictly by the book. There was no slack, no swagger, no camaraderie, none of the easy give-and-take natural to a well-run crew. Only a stiff adherence to the minutest detail of military protocol.
“Shall we load and fire again, sir?” The sergeant stood as straight as a ramrod, eyes unblinking and unforgiving.
“What is your advice, Sergeant?”
“Sir! No advice, sir!”
“Then we shall move the piece down the street to demolish the next house.”
There was the slightest pause. Enough to let Yevgeny know that he had guessed wrong—that he should have put another round into the smoking rubble or else moved the gun in the other direction—before the sergeant said, “Sir! Yes, sir!”
It was all Yevgeny could do to keep from weeping with humiliation.
Then, breaking with the script, one of the men shouted and pointed up into the sky. Turning, Yevgeny saw the most amazing sight of his entire life: a naked giant looming over the buildings before him. The unsteady light from the flames below reflected off its skin, making it shimmer. For the briefest instant he wondered if he were experiencing a mystic vision of one of the demons from the Pit.
The giant shifted against the stars. Moving slowly, it turned onto Teatralny proezd. It was coming straight toward Yevgeny’s gun crew.
A horse reared in terror. Several of the soldiers looked like they were ready to run. One of them had actually thrown down the swab he was holding and was about to bolt.
“Stay at your posts, damn you!” Yevgeny shouted, grabbing the panicky soldier and flinging him back toward the cannon. He drew his sword. “I’ll kill the first mother-violating one of you who breaks and runs. Sergeant, are you in control of your men or not? Get that gun swung around. Give me an elevation. Are you all hares and hyenas? Stand and fight like the Russians you pretend to be!”
“Sir,” the sergeant said, “there’s not the time for a precise—”
“Do it by eye, then.”
The gun was aimed and its elevation adjusted. “On your command, sir.”
“Let it get closer. We’ve only the time for the one shot.”
“Now, sir?”
“Not yet.”
“We’ve got a good shot, sir.”
“Just a little…” Yevgeny murmured.
“He’s getting pretty fucking close, sir.”
“Not until my command,”Yevgeny said. He waited until the last possible instant and then forced himself to count silently to three. “Fire!”
They fired.
The Duke of Muscovy’s great heart was hammering so hard it was about to burst. He had no illusions on that front. His body had been designed for a prone and sedentary existence. He could not long survive standing up and walking about like one of his own minuscule subjects. Already his mighty bones had sustained hundreds of small fractures from the stresses of his stroll through the city. His internal organs, crushed by forces they were never meant to withstand, were failing. In just a few seconds his heart would stop.
He had realized that all this would happen even as he had struggled to awaken, for the duke’s tremendous brain was capable of miracles of extrapolation. Further, having lived only a shadowy half-existence erenow, the dreads and fears natural to a man knowing he was about to die did not rise up within him. Quite the opposite. For the first time, he found himself capable of feeling full human emotion, and he had given himself over to the experience.
It had been, as he had known it would be, a brief life but