The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,158

and I bounced off her right after, like I was bouncing off a wall.

Sky pulled her spear free, and Ursala sunk down on her knees. Her lips was moving, but there wasn’t hardly no sound coming out of her mouth. Sky leaned in close to hear.

“War…” Ursala whispered. “War…”

The words come out with a great, hurtful effort, and a spray of bright blood that spattered on the front of Sky’s shirt. “Warned you.”

Sky jumped into the air. Not high, but fast. She jumped into the air and spun in a circle as she jumped.

The sounds of the shots come after, and the quivering of Sky’s body as the bolts bit into her seemed to come after too, though that doesn’t make no sense. She was flying and falling both, turning in the air like a Summer-dancer. And then she was down, with blood spreading out from her body and her eyes open on nothing.

The other shunned men made up their minds one of two ways. Some of them run on us with their own spears raised up. They was taken first, and it was done most careful in the order that they come on us, the closest first. There was one bolt for each man or woman, hitting them high up in the body where the heart is wont to be found, killing them before they knowed they was attacked.

The others run the opposite way, trying to get back up onto that rock wall and maybe take some cover there. But there wasn’t no cover to be had. They was shot in the back, one by one, and fell down onto the tracks, and lay there not moving.

The awfulness was over in about the space of ten breaths, though I don’t believe I was breathing much right then.

The drudge come down the wall on the opposite side slowly, anchoring one pair of legs before it moved the other, as sure-footed as a goat would be on that sheer face. The gun on its back spun and stopped, rose up and fell back again like it was looking in all directions for enemies it might of missed. But there wasn’t none.

When it was on level ground, it padded across to Ursala and settled itself down, the legs seeming to get shorter by an inch or so as it planted them firm in the ground. I cringed away from it, too terrified even to think. I believe I would of fell to my knees and begged for my life, only I knowed the drudge was tech and would only answer to its user.

Ursala grabbed a hold of my leg. I looked down and seen she was trying to speak again, so I bent to listen. There was dead people all around us, and the sound of the bolts was ringing still in my ears. I was scared I might never stop hearing it.

“Open him up,” Ursala said. More blood come out of her mouth, and there was bubbles under the words. “The side. There’s… a release. There.”

She pointed. The thing she called a release was like the little buttons on the DreamSleeve. I pressed on it and the side of the drudge fell open. The dagnostic filled most of the space inside. It was dark at first, but then Ursala touched her fingers to it, and lights gun to flicker all over it. The computer I seen her using that first time I come into her tent was in there too, set into the side of the dagnostic like a window.

Ursala said a word to the mote controller, so low I couldn’t hear it. Some wires come snaking out of the dagnostic and hung there in the air. They was shining silver, and they was rounded at the end like beads or teardrops.

“Hook me up,” Ursala said.

Well, I didn’t have no idea at all how to do that, but she told me what was needful and I done it as best I could. I had got to tear away her shirt, first off, and attach some of them wires to her chest both around the wound and under it. Another one went to the side of her head, and the last one to her throat.

I guess the drudge was taking a good look at her through them wires. By and by it put out two tubes. Ursala said for me to give them to her, which I done. She fed one into the wound and stuck the other on her arm, where