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have to cut through some stuff in your leg tougher than bone. Don't forget
that you're not all natural.
What?
He tried to make sense of the new memories bubbling out from behind the brick
wall of his mind. The memories weren't specific images, or anything swirling
out like a dream. They were just things that
happened to be there when he turned his thoughts different ways.
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For example, the name Starport felt familiar. He remembered being there
before.
One of the men walked back toward John. He held the rifle up. Focus on the
moment. "I'll shoot you if you don't get back out on the rope," John growled.
It was in his eyes. This one was bad news. Oaxyctl, it was familiar to roll
that name around in the back of his mind.
The fever, the shock, must be shaking old memories loose, he thought. I
finally remember myself. And all it took was getting shot, gangrenous, and
half frozen to death.
He laughed, and they looked back at him.
John gestured with the rifle. "I'm fucking serious."
Of course, he thought, he needed them to pull him, so he couldn't shoot them
in the legs. If they rushed, he'd wait until he could hit an arm. They could
still pull him there with a shot arm.
Some of them wanted him dead. Or needed something from him.
They were so close to the dockyards, he thought, leaning back and drowsing
off. He could feel the
Ma Wi Jung calling him.
The man called Lionel stood overhead, blocking out the sun.
John placed the end of the barrel against Lionel's chin. "I'm napping."
Lionel scrunched back to the end of the rope and joined the two waiting men.
How long would this last? Wasting away, almost at the end. The memories he'd
grabbed during the last wave of semiconsciousness fled again.
Where the hell was Pepper? He'd have to get the man's attention.
John fired the shotgun into the air three times, fumbling to reload, then
leaned back. Let them think he was mad. That would keep them back for a while
longer.
He was kidding himself. He was too tired. Whom could he trust out of the three
men? Oaxyctl had saved his life before. John relaxed, called him back.
"I can't do it any longer." He handed Oaxyctl the shotgun. "I'm too tired. You
protect me. Keep us moving."
Avasa walked up behind Oaxyctl and whispered. Oaxyctl nodded.
"John." Avasa leaned down next to John. "John. Your leg is gangrenous, and
you're hallucinating. We need to cut it off now. We're trying to save your
life." Avasa cut and pulled away John's trousers. John protested weakly. The
numbing wind crept through the rest of his clothing from the inside out.
"Here." Avasa held a bottle of rum to John's lips and grabbed his good hand as
warmth spread. "I'm sorry, John, but I have to cut."
"Please don't," John whimpered as Avasa unwrapped one of the packages lashed
to the sled and unwrapped a saw. "Too dangerous."
Avasa picked up the long saw and positioned it above John's knee, his back
turned to Oaxyctl.
Oaxyctl raised the shotgun, aimed it at them, and fired. The back of Avasa's
head exploded over the
snow in front of the crude sled and John's bare leg.
"I don't understand." John blinked.
"He was trying to kill you." Oaxyctl walked away, head down, shoulders
slumped, shaking his head.
Lionel sat next to John. The sled creaked down into the snow.
"We need the code," Lionel said.
"What code?" John stared at the pieces of gleaming skull fragments on his
boots.
"The
Ma Wi Jung."
Lionel dribbled more rum down John's throat, then leaned down and pulled a
long knife out from his left boot. "The
Ma Wi Jung,"
he repeated. The rum's warm calm fled. Lionel was the fucker trying to get
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something from him.
"Ma. Wi. Jung."
Lionel slammed the knife into John's kneecap. On the good leg.
John screamed.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Dihana ran along the great wall of Capitol City toward the gates. Gordon saw
her and waved her over to a small wooden platform.
"Why isn't Haidan here?"
Gordon handed her a spyglass. "He hurt. Airship drop a bomb near him."
"Oh, no." Dihana's stomach clenched. Not Haidan. That meant Gordon was the new
mongoose-general in practice, and the only friend she felt she had lay hurt
somewhere. Dihana closed her eyes a moment, clutching the spyglass.
"They already drown a few thousand marching to take the flood area," Gordon
said. "Been watching them all morning. But they keep coming."
Dihana raised the long brass tube up. Mud, twisted wire, and bodies leapt into
focus. "So many." The
Azteca seemed to be everywhere she looked, as far as she could see. "What does
Haidan think? Will I
be able to go see him?"
Gordon looked down. "He still out, asleep, or unconscious, something. He ain't
responding."
"But he's alive?"
"Yeah."
They watched the mud and trenches for the next hour. Watched more Azteca
struggle through the flooded area between the tracks, then begin to use the
drier ground north of that, pushing up against their fellow warriors already
coming up along the northern tracks.
The front of the line faltered as mongoose-men opened fire from the trenches
farthest out from the city.
Then Azteca cannon fire blew gouts of earth into the air among the
mongoose-men trenches. Dihana
winced.
"We have Haidan's plans, we know what happens next," Dihana told Gordon.
The mongoose-man nodded. "I know." He turned and gave orders. Mongoose-men
scurried off to small stutter-stations along the wall, and minutes later
Dihana saw one of Haidan's surprises lumber down the northern tracks. He'd
left a one-mile stretch still down. An armored engine chuffed along it,
gaining speed. Two mongoose-men jumped out of it, and others pulled gates and
wire out of the way to let it pass through the zones.
It picked up speed, barreling toward Azteca who jumped off the track to get
out of its way.
Gordon leaned forward. "Right now."
The train exploded, metal and fire ripping out into the Azteca warriors
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