Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [146]
“I’ll go as low as one-third. In all fairness, there is far more here than the two of us can hope to carry off on our own.”
Sergeant Wojtek rolled his neck, showing his teeth. Then he held up his paws, uncurling the fingers one by one to extend their claws. “Do you imagine for an inshtant that a former member of the Royal Guard can be bought?”
He threw a punch at Surplus’s head.
Surplus danced away from the blow. “Really, sir, there is no reason for us to fight. We are surrounded by an ocean of wealth. It makes no sense to quarrel over who gets to drink from it.”
He barely managed to evade a second blow.
“Nobody takesh whatsh mine!”
“You make an excellent point, sir, I do confess it, a most excellent point,” Surplus said, searching desperately for an appropriate strategy. With each missed punch, the length of corridor behind him grew shorter. At its end, he could break and run, true. But the bear-guard was assuredly not only stronger but also considerably faster than he was. It was only his drunken state that had kept him from simply charging forward and seizing Surplus in a crushing hug. “Yet nighttime is a dwindling resource, and with the dawn we may expect a restoration of order. It would not do for either of us to be found here tomorrow morning.”
“Shtand shtill sho I can kill you, damn it.” Sergeant Wojtek aimed a haymaker at Surplus and almost fell over when it missed. Clearly the alcohol had badly degraded his reflexes. This was a factor which could be used to Surplus’s advantage.
“Is there to be no resolution other than death?” Surplus asked with genuine regret. He held his cane before him, one paw on the knob and the other by its tip, as if he thought it possible to fend off the gigantic animal-man chimera with it.
“None,” the Royal Guardsman said truculently.
“Then I must inform you, sir, that you are a drunken lout, a traitor, a thief, a murderous thug, a disgrace to your uniform—and quite possibly not even a gentleman.”
With a bellow of rage, Sergeant Wojtek charged.
All in one movement, Surplus stepped to the side, like a matador dodging a bull, pulled away the wooden sheath that was half of his sword-cane, and plunged the sword down the space at the side of the guard’s neck that was unprotected by bone.
Deep the sword went, into the heart and through.
...20...
Countless acts of heroism and cowardice, opportunistic looting and saintly forgiveness, small cruelties and inexplicable kindnesses occurred within the disaster that was Moscow. The citizens of that great metropolis, caught up in what felt very much like the end of the world, were granted the rare opportunity of confronting their true selves.
Thus it was, at any rate, for one young man who, weeping and bleeding, left the Hotel New Metropol by a rear window with a cask of rasputin wrapped in stolen hotel blankets. Through the maze of bewildered streets he limped. Column after column after column of black smoke rose up from the helpless corpse of the city behind him, and converged into a dark shroud overhead.
Slowly, painfully, he fled.
Hours later, when Arkady finally reached the outskirts of town where the city dwindled to nothing and weary farmlands began, he paused to take stock. He was penniless, horseless, and thoroughly ashamed of himself. All his connections in Moscow were either dead or extremely unlikely to want to see his face ever again. Further, his home was unimaginably distant and to reach it he would have to cross a howling wilderness filled with monsters. On foot.
Well, what had to be done, had to be done. The demon machines had unintentionally given him a weapon that could be used to wipe their kind from the face of the earth. His father would know, far better than he, how to put the rasputin to good use. All Arkady had to do was make certain that it reached him.
He squared his shoulders and set off.
Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma’s clothes were stained and disheveled and her spirit was