The Sea Peoples(89)
“I think they’re cutting out the hearts and eating them,” Thora said.
Others dropped their pants and threw themselves on the twitching bodies. The Boisean made a retching noise from beside him and raised his rifle.
“Wait—” John began, then cursed and brought his rifle to his shoulder.
Crack.
It punched back into his shoulder with a hard solidity. He was a fair archer and very good with a crossbow; evidently whatever had translated him here translated that as well, for him and the others. He worked the bolt again and again, letting the muzzle fall back down and the sights settle. Toa was firing his heavier weapon too, short bursts of braaaap . . . braaaap . . . braaapp. In the firelit darkness the weapons spat blade-shaped tongues of yellow flame from their muzzles as they shot.
John let his fingers reload the weapon, pulling the bolt back and pressing clips of cartridges from the pouches at his belt into the magazine well. His senses were stretched in alertness, but some part of his mind that had been listening to all those grizzled veterans was appalled by the firepower this little group had spat out. Things he’d read in pre-Change books made more sense now, how soldiers in the ancient world had spent so much time hiding. He was used to a world where when men fought they usually did it in masses and blocks, and at arm’s length after charging through a shower of missiles that might or might not wound and kill you through your armor and shield if they chanced to hit.
“We must travel some miles from here,” Deor said, when the enemy were all dead. “It will be better if we take that . . . horseless vehicle.”
John mentally cursed himself. They all knew the concept of horseless carriages and wagons, and he’d seen refurbished pre-Change vehicles running on big windup springs used as a rich man’s plaything. Usually only a few elders who’d been grown before the Change were interested in that sort of thing, of course. One mill-owning magnate in the city-state of Corvallis had shown off just such a toy to the Royal family on a visit when he was fourteen, and had let him drive it sedately around a blocked-off street. There had been a tear running down the man’s seamed, white-bearded cheek as they climbed out, and a four-horse hitch of Percherons had come back to tow it home.
It was just that you didn’t think of them in terms of anything practical, like going somewhere important fast. For that you used horses, one way or another, or sails on water.
“Well, it won’t come here by itself,” John sighed, and led the way, rifle at half-port.
None of them were squeamish, but they all looked away from the mutual massacre around the motor-truck; except for Toa, who stopped to administer an elephantine kick.
“That ’un was trying to reach for his gun,” he explained. “Somehow I don’t fancy lying wounded in the street around here if I can avoid it.”
The truck had a towing-hitch at the rear, seats in an open body, and 44th Battery stenciled on its side, over the sigil of the Yellow Sign; he presumed it had been designed to pull some explosive equivalent of field catapults. The motor under the hood at the front was making a steady ticking sound, which was a relief.
They stopped and looked at each other as John climbed in the open side.
“You know how to use one of these, Johnnie?” Pip asked curiously.
“Not really, but—” He explained about the spring-driven replica. “That’s as close as anyone around today, I think . . . anyone under seventy years old, that is. órlaith was bored, but I thought it was interesting.”
Deor and Pip climbed in beside him as he slid behind the wheel; Thora and Toa and the Boisean went in the open space behind, where they had a broader field of view and could cover the sides with their weapons.
“Good-oh you know how to drive these things, Johnnie dearest,” Pip said cheerfully.
“Ah—yes,” John said, smiling brightly and remembering his father and mother telling him to look confident for others even when he wasn’t.
I remember how I made the wind-up toy move, he thought. And those controls were rigged up to make it work just like a pre-Change automobile, so that rich old bastard could relive his childhood with a stick-shift. The problem is that this thing doesn’t have the same controls except for the wheel. All right, there are three pedals on the floor, so one should be the clutch, one should be the accelerator, and one should be the brake . . . I think I can figure this out, but by the Saints we’re sort of pressed for time!
As if to punctuate the thought there was a shot from the bed of the truck, and the clink-clack sound of Thora working the bolt of her rifle. A tentative tap at the leftmost pedal made the engine roar; that must be the accelerator. He crossed himself, pulled out his crucifix and kissed it—whenever you thought yourself the uniquely unfortunate victim of circumstances, a brief glance at the Man of Sorrows was a good idea for putting things in perspective—took a deep breath, and worked the lever by his side with the knob on it.
“You got him, mate!” Toa cried enthusiastically, as the truck lurched backward and hit something with a grisly crunch.
“Well, you meant to do that, eh?” Pip murmured.
“Of course!” John said as he stamped on the brake—it was the brake, thank God—and shoved the lever back where it had been before.
Logically, if it had gone backward when he pushed it this way, the forward gears must be the other way. From the worn and battered and faded indicators, there were three. Hopefully the nearest meant ahead slow.