- - - - - - - -
Lir began to fold up
under the impact of Mara's booted foot. She grabbed the front of
his tunic with one hand and held him between her and Tam's gun, the
other hand reaching for her knife. “Behind me!” she shouted to
Dee. The cultists began to move forward, the shock of her sudden
attack passing. She held the knife to Lir's throat. “Let us
go,” she said, “or I'll gut him right in front of you.”
Tam grinned. “Are
not our deaths nothing in the eyes of the Living God?”
“Don't shoot
them,” Lir croaked, his eyes rolling back in his head. “They've
seen His Glory! They've seen!”
“Will you please
shut up,” Mara hissed, backing up to keep the cultists from
circling behind her.
“Mara,” Dee
hissed. “Mara, what do we do.”
And Tam fired –
not at Mara, but at Lir, once, twice, his body shuddering under the
impacts, the noise deafening in the enclosed space. Mara turned and
shoved Dee through the door into the storage room, one hand dragging
Lir with them, Dee slamming the door behind them.
Mara braced herself
against the door. She only just managed to hold it against the
first and second blows from the cultists on the other side. Then
Dee had slid the heavy stone statue in front of it, and with its
weight helping she held the third and fourth blows easily. By the
time the fifth blow came they had effectively barricaded themselves
inside.
Lir lay against the
wall watching them, blood pooling underneath him, his breaths clearly
labored. “That won't hold for long,” he observed as they
finished. “And even if it did, where are you going to go?”
“We'll figure
something out,” Mara replied.
“Why are we
fighting anyway? We both want the same thing.”
“I doubt that,”
Dee said, leaning against the wall, breathing hard.
“Don't we all want
to see the corrupt nobility overthrown, and a just order instituted?”
Lir paused, gathering himself. “Do you know how I found the
True Religion? I wandered into the bowels one day. And I realized
that any order that would force people to live like this is not a
just order. What have any of us to lose but lives full of pain and
suffering?”
“That's nice,”
Mara replied, not really listening. “The grey fabric on the wall,
that's sound proofing?”
“Yes. Some of
the rites can be a bit loud.”
“I bet.” She
dug into it with her knife, cut a section away to reveal the sheet
metal of the cargo container.
Her knife was
ceramic, a derivative of a design used in an industrial lathe.
Supposedly, it would hold an edge cutting through anything... “Dee,
do me a favor and gag the asshole.”
She pressed the tip
against the metal wall and pushed. It took a great deal of effort,
but the thin steel eventually parted under the pressure. Then she
began to work it back and forth, sawing downwards.
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