Chapter Nineteen

The chainsaw came for her with a scream and raised sparks from the deck plates, gouging a bright silver wound in the fresh paint. Ayaan stepped aside, tried to circle around the Least. She ducked as the chainsaw bounced off the deck and back into the air, then lunged forward and slammed both fists against the Least’s knee.

Nothing. She might have punched Jello for the same effect. The Least’s enormous body was covered in a thick layer of fat that absorbed all the energy she put into her swing.

While she was absorbing that information the lich wound up for another pass. The audience went wild as he whirled the chainsaw over his head and brought it down in a swinging arc that missed Ayaan’s chest by centimeters. She staggered back, away from the howling metal—she could feel the friction heat of the blade. Too close, much too close for comfort. She jumped back, tried to get away. The chainsaw bit down again, light glaring off the polished blade. She pivoted on one foot, tried to slip under the attack—and pain exploded all down her arm.

Ayaan dropped to the deck, grabbing her arm high up near the shoulder, horrified. Had he gotten a vein, an artery? If he’d cut too deep, if he’d cut open a major blood vessel she would bleed to death in minutes. She had to know, had to assess the wound but she didn’t have a moment’s respite. The whining blade kept flashing down, left, right, center and all she could do was roll around on the deck.

The Least came at her again, looming over her, moving in for the kill. Ayaan struggled up into a crouch and ducked between his legs. Shrieking in confusion he swung the chainsaw around, tracking her, failing to watch his swing. As the blade flew around it cut right into the throat of one of the onlookers—a living cultist, a thirtyish man with a stubbled chin and thick rimless glasses. Blood flashed across the deck, stained everything as he went down in convulsions and horrible liquid grunting noises. Screams went up from the audience, screams of terror from one side, screams of bloodlust from the other.

Ayaan didn’t waste the diversion. Head down she bulled into the crowd, shoving some zealots aside, jumping at others as they shied away from her. Finally she had a chance to check her arm and her stomach went weightless for a moment as she brushed blood away from her wound. It wasn’t fatal—a lot more than just a scratch but the bleeding had mostly stopped on its own.

The Least shouted “Mine!” and plowed right into the crowd after her, his chainsaw held high to avoid any more accidents. She kept her head down and snaked through the bodies, shaking off the hands that grabbed at her, punching, slapping, clawing anyone who tried to get too close. She was looking for something, anything she could use as a weapon. There—on the deck—a smoldering cookfire. A pot of beans simmered in the coals. Her hands screamed in agony as she grabbed the hot metal pot but she ignored the pain. The Least came at her through the crowd, lunging forward, and she let him have it right in the face. Beans splattered his wobbling chins, boiling water splashed up his nose, his mouth, his eyes. His hands went reflexively to his face, to try to scrape the water away. The chainsaw drifted, forgotten, the tip of the blade bouncing up and down. It dropped to the deck with an endless clattering.

In a second—in less than a second—the lich would recover himself. He didn’t feel pain the way a living person did, would hardly notice the burns on his face and chest. He was probably more upset about getting wet. Ayaan didn’t have any opportunity to think. All she could do was act.

Using both hands she picked up the chainsaw—she could lift it, if she got her center of gravity under it, if she heaved with her back and her knees and all the muscles in her arms—and sliced the Least right in half. The chainsaw slid through his flesh like so much hamburger. It bucked when it hit his spine but she pushed, shoved, grunted her way through until his torso fell away from his abdomen and both big nasty chunks of meat hit the deck.

The Least howled in pain for real, then, but only once. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath for another scream. The noise of the chainsaw chugging and gasping and singing as it cut through empty air was the only sound.

Nothing happened for a long, long time. Long enough for Ayaan to gulp a single lungful of air. Long enough to shift the weight of the chainsaw onto her hip.

She had… won, she supposed. She had beaten the Least. He wasn’t going to get up, not from that wound, so it was over. She had saved herself.

A voice—her own voice—her mind’s voice—was screaming in the background:

Who’s next?

Time broke down into its component parts. Ayaan’s body moved through space. Her mind reeled at a very different speed. The crowd didn’t move at all.

The green phantom stood no more than six meters away, leaning on his staff. His eyes were on the Least. Ayaan couldn’t determine which half he was looking at.

If she could take him down. If she could. Her brain looked at it as a chess problem. If you could capture a bishop by sacrificing a pawn, then losing the pawn didn’t hurt at all. They would shoot her, they would keelhaul her, they would crush her but if she could cut down the green phantom it would mean the end of speeding ghouls. It was his power alone that drove those madly whizzing horrors. More than that: the green phantom was the Tsarevich’s right hand man. His most important general. If. If. If.

She lunged forward but she didn't get anywhere. A hand with fingers like bloated sausages closed around her ankle, pulled her foot back down to the deck. In the midst of rising horror she looked down. The Least had her in a death grip.

“Mine,” he mewled, like a dying kitten.

Rage pulsed through her body, she could feel the heat of it pumping through her capillaries. She raised the chainsaw in one savage motion and brought it down right between the Least’s eyes. His head liquefied as the metal teeth ground through bone and brain tissue like a flaming knife through rotten cheese.

They hit her then, the zealots, cultists large and small falling on her like a rain of bodies. The blade bit and chewed of its own volition—she didn't even know how to turn it off—but the bodies kept coming, kept piling on. Someone kicked and smashed at her wrist until she let go of the chainsaw. It became hard to breathe and her vision dimmed. Time stopped altogether.

Was the price of a pawn worth it, she wondered, if you only took a rook? It had to be. It had to be.