CHAPTER FOUR.

Killer in the Mists The sun had just begun its slow crawl up the sky as Investigator Topaz and Sergeant Michael Gunn led their company of Watchmen through the Merchants Quarter. The early morning light filtered unevenly past the thick curling mists, and the sun was little more than a pale red circle, glimpsed dimly through the fog. The night's bitter cold was falling reluctantly away, and the icicles hanging from roofs and gutters and windowsills had all developed their own persistent drip of icy water.

The winding, narrow streets were still mostly deserted, but already the first few beggars and street traders had begun to appear from dark back alleys and sheltered lean-tos. And here and there, lying half-buried in the snow, were the stiff unmoving bodies of those who'd been unable to find shelter from the cold. All too many of them were children, left to wander alone in the bitter night, bereft of family or shelter or hope. The Watch pa.s.sed the bodies by, paying the pathetic heaps of rags no real attention; it was too common a sight to be worth a second glance. One of Mistworld's first lessons was the futility of mourning over things that could not be changed, or even eased. The Outlaw planet was a harsh world, and cared little for the life it reluctantly sustained.

A lone horse moved slowly out of the mists towards the Watch, its rider huddled inside a thick black cloak. Horse and rider moved with an eerie silence over the snow-covered cobbles, forming slowly out of the fog like some shadowy phantom. Investigator Topaz kept a wary eye on them as they pa.s.sed slowly by and disappeared back into the mists. The cloaked and hooded rider had paid the Watch no attention, but in this kind of area it was wise to trust nothing and n.o.body.

Topaz strode on through the thick snow, one hand resting lightly on the b.u.t.t of the holstered gun at her side. Her eyes flickered at every alleyway and side street she pa.s.sed, but n.o.body challenged her, and the shadows remained just shadows. It seemed the threat of the Hob hounds had been enough to keep the human vermin off the streets, for a time at least. Topaz frowned. The city boundary wasn't far now, and Topaz hadn't much experience of Hob hounds. She knew what everybody knew, that they were quick and they were deadly and there was no defence against them except to attack first, but that was all she knew. She had a strong feeling that might not be enough.

She glanced at her husband, walking quietly beside her. Sergeant Michael Gunn was an inch or so taller than her five foot six, but his broad shoulders and muscular frame made him seem shorter. He was in his mid-thirties, but as yet his face and body had made no concessions to either his hard life or the pa.s.sing of time. His long brown hair was pulled back in a scalplock, the sign of the mercenary. Gunn had been a Sergeant of the city Watch for over five years, but he liked to keep his options open. His dark laughing eyes were fixed on the street ahead, and his stride was loose and easy, almost as though he was looking forward to his encounter with the Hob hounds. Topaz smiled slightly. Maybe he was; Michael Gunn needed excitement the way most men needed food and drink.

The boundary wall loomed out of the thickening mists before them, a huge twenty-foot barrier of stone and mortar that marked the outer limit of the Merchants Quarter, and the edge of the city. The stonework was scarred and pitted from the unrelenting weather, but the four-feet-thick wall was still strong enough to keep out most of Mistworld's predators. Unfortunately, a twenty-foot leap was nothing to a Hob hound. Topaz glared thoughtfully about her as Gunn spread out the Watchmen in a defensive pattern.

They moved silently and cautiously into the surrounding warren of side streets and alleyways, checking the snow for recent tracks. Gunn came back to join Topaz, and took his gun from his holster to check the energy charge. It was almost full. He put the disrupter away, and looked gloomily about him.

"Hob hounds in the city . . . If you ask me, the Council's gone daft. Everyone knows the hounds don't get this far south until midwinter at the earliest. Do you think this could be some kind of drill?"

Topaz shrugged. "Could be, I suppose. But then, you never can tell what the d.a.m.ned hounds are going to do from one year to the next."

Gunn grunted an acknowledgement, and glanced dubiously at the boundary wall. There could be half a hundred hounds gathered on the other side of that wall, and he'd never know it until they came scrabbling over the top.They should have built some eye-slits into the d.a.m.ned thing , he thought. Gunn sniffed disgustedly, and looked back at his men. The Watchmen had trampled the surrounding snow into slush, and half of them were so far away they were little more than shadows moving in the mists. The fog m.u.f.fled most sounds, and even the slow, gusting wind had been reduced to a dull, faraway keening. At least it had finally stopped snowing. Gunn sniffed heavily and wiped his nose on the back of his glove.

Ever since he'd first come to Mistworld six years ago, he'd had one d.a.m.ned cold after another. He was beginning to forget what it was like to have a sense of smell. He stamped his feet hard against the packed snow, trying to drive out some of the cold that was already gnawing at his bones. He should have brought his cloak. He glanced at Topaz, standing quietly beside him, and smiled fondly. She never seemed to feel the cold, or if she did, she refused to give in to it. There were those who mistook her poise and elegance for coldness, but Gunn knew better. Topaz prided herself on her control; that was what made her such a deadly fighter. Not for the first time, Gunn looked admiringly at his wife and wondered what he'd done right to deserve her.

Investigator Topaz was a medium-height, slim, handsome woman in her late twenties, who wore her sword and her gun with a casual competence that was both disturbing and intimidating. Her close-cropped dark hair gave her cla.s.sical features a calm, aesthetic air. Her face was always composed, and her stance was relaxed but unyielding. Most people considered her a cold fish, but Michael Gunn had always admired her poise. Topaz had her fires and her needs, but she shared them only with him.

Perhaps because he was the only man who'd ever earned her trust.

The fog seemed to be growing thicker, and the sun was lost to sight. Lanterns glowed bravely on the surrounding walls, their light the only landmarks in the endless sea of grey. The mists pressed close about Topaz, leaving a sheen of moisture on her hair and cloak. The Investigator frowned thoughtfully. The Hob hounds preferred a heavy fog to do their hunting in. She thought about drawing her gun, but immediately decided against it. To do so this early might be misinterpreted by her men as a sign of weakness, and Topaz had sworn never to be weak again. She tried not to think about her past with the Empire, but her memories were always with her. Memories of the things she'd done, the things the Empire had made her do; all the many deaths . . . Topaz closed her eyes a moment, forcing back the past by concentrating on her a.s.signment. There was always work, to bury the memories. Topaz had a lot she needed to forget, but sometimes it seemed to her that even on Mistworld there was no escape from the Empire; the spectre at the feast, the wolf at the gate. Topaz opened her eyes and glared coldly at the mists around her. She was free, and she would stay free, even from her own memories. Her hand closed tightly around the pommel of her sword, and her heavy Investigator's cloak of navy blue settled about her shoulders like the weight of past sins.

"Chasing Hob hounds," growled Michael Gunn. "We should be tracking down last night's burglar, not wasting our time with this nonsense."

"We have our orders."

Gunn muttered something under his breath, and Topaz smiled slightly. "What's the matter, my husband?

Pride hurt?"

"Something like that. I would have sworn an oath our security could keep out anyone but a Poltergeist, but that flaming roof runner just walked right in like our defences weren't even there. And it's more than that; it's knowing that someone else was in our house, our home, invading our privacy . . ."

"He didn't get the crystal. You came back in time to stop him."

"There is that. Though if I hadn't had to go to the toilet, maybe the sensor on the bedroom door would have caught him." Gunn shook his head unhappily. "At least the crystal is safely at the command centre now, and out of our hands. Anything that happens to it from now on is their responsibility."

"Exactly," said Topaz calmly. "The Hob hounds are our responsibility."

"All right, all right." Gunn leaned against the boundary wall, the harsh uneven stone pressing uncomfortably into his back. His broad, stocky body was full of a nervous energy that gave him an edgy, restless look even when standing still. His right hand rested on his gunbelt, not far from his disrupter, while his dark, darting eyes probed the shadows of the nearby alleys. The rest of the Watch were methodically searching the alleyways and side streets for traces of the hounds, poking their swords and pikes into the darker doorways and openings. So far all they'd found had been half-a-dozen cats and one rather startled drunk.

Topaz rested her hand on her holstered gun, but knew that if the hounds were here, they'd have to be fought with cold steel in the end. Out of the whole company, only she and Gunn had disrupters. Energy guns were rare on Mistworld. Still, a reliance on energy weapons just made you soft in the long run, and Mistworld had its own ways of dealing with the weak. Gunn shivered suddenly, and Topaz frowned.

"You're cold," she said brusquely. "I told you to wear your heavy cloak."

"I don't like cloaks. They get in the way when you're fighting."

"They keep you warm when it's cold. Here." She took off her own cloak and draped it round her husband's shoulders, ignoring his protests. "Don't argue with me, Michael. I don't feel the cold like you.

I've been trained to survive much worse extremes of temperature than this."

"You and your Investigator's training," muttered Gunn, pulling the cloak about him nonetheless and fiddling with the clasp. "Even a Hadenman couldn't do half the things you claim."

"Wear the cloak," said Topaz firmly, but her eyes were full of fondness. Topaz had spent many years as an Investigator, a paid murderer in the service of the Empire. She'd been very successful in her work, until she met the mercenary called Michael Gunn. He'd taught her to feel human again. Not long after, they'd both been Outlawed, and they had come, as so many before them, to Mistworld, the rebel planet.

The only surviving rebel planet. Now Topaz and Gunn were both Sergeants in the city Watch, guardians of law and order, a fact that never failed to tickle Gunn's sense of irony.

Topaz still kept the t.i.tle of Investigator. Even she wasn't sure why.

"You ever seen a Hob hound, close up?" asked Gunn.

Topaz shook her head. "You have, haven't you?"

"Yeah. I led the raid up at Hardcastle's Rock, this time last year. The place was crawling with the ugly beasts. The hounds had killed every man, woman, and child in the town, far more than they could ever have hoped to eat. They killed just for the joy of it. Most of what's written about the hounds is rubbish.

The largest one I ever saw was barely ten feet long, and they're not poisonous. They don't need to be.

They run on all fours, they're covered in fur, and the head is long and wolfish, but that's all they have in common with a hound. They're always hungry, and they move so fast they seem like a blur. Their fur is white and their hearts are dark. They delight in slaughter and the torturing of prey."

"They should feel right at home in Mistport," said Topaz, and Gunn cracked up. He loved Topaz's dry sense of humour, mostly because it was so rare.

Topaz suddenly became very still, and Gunn froze in place beside her. The Investigator's face had formed into harsh, unyielding lines, and her eyes were hunter's eyes.

"What is it?" asked Gunn quietly.

"There's something out there," said Topaz, her voice little more than a murmur. "Something moving, deep in the mists."

"Here in the Quarter with us?" Gunn looked casually about him, but all he could see were the shifting shadows of the nearby Watchmen. "Is it a hound?"

"I don't think so. It feels more like a man. At about four o'clock, I'd say."

Gunn glanced in the indicated direction. All he could see was the curling mists, but suddenly his skin was crawling beneath his scalplock as all his old mercenary's instincts kicked in. The feeling of being watched and studied was all at once so overpowering he wondered how he could have missed it for so long.

a.s.suming, of course, that his clash with the burglar hadn't suddenly turned him paranoid. Gunn whistled quietly, and three Watchmen appeared out of the mists before him.

"Anything to report?" he asked casually, but his hands move surrept.i.tiously in the mercenary's hand signals he and Topaz had carefully taught their men. His voice was routine, but his hands said,We're being watched. One man. Four o'clock. Find him .

"Haven't seen anything, Sergeant," said the most senior of the Watchmen, nodding slightly.

"Okay," said Gunn. "Keep looking."

The Watchmen faded back into the fog, and were gone. Topaz looked at Gunn.

"Do you think they'll find him?"

"I doubt it," Gunn admitted. "Whoever's out there has to be b.l.o.o.d.y good to have got this close without either of us catching on earlier. But who the h.e.l.l would be that interested in us?"

"Empire agents?"

Gunn shook his head slowly. "There'll always be some Empire spies in Mistport, but we were never important enough to justify any of them coming after us here."

Topaz looked at Gunn thoughtfully. "So why is there somebody out there watching us?"

"Hounds! Ware the hounds!"

Topaz and Gunn drew their disrupters at the Watchman's shout and moved quickly to stand back to back. Watchmen boiled out of their hiding places and peered quickly about them, swords and pikes at the ready. Somewhere out in the fog a man screamed shrilly, and the sound was cut suddenly short. And out of the curling mists the Hob hounds came howling.

Their white fur blended into the fog, so that it was hard to tell where the one ended and the other began.

Only their bright emerald eyes showed clearly against the mists, together with the steaming scarlet maws that gaped wide to show long, vicious teeth. The hounds moved through the fog like wild, demonic ghosts, and their cry was full of an endless hunger and an endless hate. They leapt among the Watchmen, rending and tearing, and blood flew on the freezing air. Men and hounds rolled together on the hard-packed snow, sword and fang searching for a dropped guard or a bared throat. One Watchman thrust his pike deep into a hound's side, spiking it to a st.u.r.dy wooden door. The hound screamed and struggled, refusing to die until the Watchman cut its throat with his dagger. Two hounds pulled down a Watchman and tore him to pieces almost before he had time to scream. Gunn took careful aim with his disrupter, and the searing energy beam shot out to burn clean through a lunging hound. It fell silently to the snow and lay still, its fur burning fiercely. Gunn slipped the disrupter back into its holster and drew his sword. The gun was useless until its energy crystal had recharged, and that would take at least two minutes. A lot could happen in two minutes. Gunn hefted his sword eagerly, and headed for the nearest hound.

The snow and slush were stained with crimson and littered with the dead and the dying, and still the Hob hounds leapt and tore among the milling Watchmen. Steel flashed in the lantern light, and the air reverberated to the savage howling of the hounds. Gunn and Topaz moved with deadly skill through the thick of the fray, guarding each other's back. Topaz shot a hound as it leapt for her throat, and then threw herself to one side as the burning body crashed past her to slam against the boundary wall. Another hound came flying out of the mists towards her, and Topaz knew there was no time to draw her sword.

She opened her mouth and sang a single, piercing note. The tightly focused beam of esper-backed sound smashed the hound into the snow. It quivered once and then lay still, blood seeping from its ears and muzzle.

Topaz holstered her gun and drew her sword. She looked quickly about her, and her heart missed a beat as she realised Michael Gunn had become separated from her in the fighting. She relaxed a little as she saw her navy blue cloak moving among the purple-cloaked Watchmen, and forced herself to concentrate on the matter at hand. Gunn had been a mercenary for over ten years; he could look after himself. Her sword sheared clean through a hound's rib cage, the keen-edged New Damascus steel barely jarring on the splintering bones. The hound collapsed and scrabbled helplessly on the b.l.o.o.d.y snow. Topaz killed it quickly, and then a heavy weight slammed into her from behind, and she and the attacking hound fell together in a clawing, struggling heap. Topaz swore viciously as a flailing paw raked across her thigh. She pushed the pain to the back of her mind, and thrust her sword deep into the hound's guts even as its jaws reached for her face. The hound howled with rage and pain, and then fell limply across her, soaking her furs with its steaming blood.

Topaz pulled herself out from under the dead weight, and staggered to her feet. Her wounded leg ached fiercely. She looked down and saw her left thigh was slick with blood, only some of it the hound's. She shrugged, and looked away. The muscle was still intact, and the leg still held her weight. That was all that mattered. She looked down at the dead hound, and shivered in spite of herself. Nine foot long, if it was an inch. The eyes were already glazing over, but its paws still twitched, as though searching for the enemy that had killed it.

Topaz hefted her sword and looked about her, but the fight was over. The Watchmen were finishing off the last few wounded hounds with their pikes, and the air no longer reverberated with the howling of the hounds. The only sounds now were the ragged breathing and occasional moans of pain from the surviving Watchmen. Topaz did a quick head count, and found that although they'd been facing a full dozen Hob hounds, she'd lost only nine Watchmen from her company of twenty-five. Topaz grinned harshly. The Hob hounds were certainly impressive, but muscles and claws and fangs were no match for handguns and cold steel. She looked round for Michael Gunn, to share her triumph with him, but he was nowhere to be seen. A sudden chill wrapped itself around Topaz's heart.

"Michael? Michael?"

There was no reply. Topaz gestured quickly to the Watchmen, and they spread out through the surrounding back streets and alleyways, calling their Sergeant's name. It didn't take long to find him.

Topaz saw the answer in the Watchman's face as he came to tell her. She followed him into a narrow alleyway, and stared silently at the unmoving body of her husband. Michael Gunn lay face down in the blood-soaked snow, his sword still in his hand. A dead hound lay only a few feet away. Topaz knelt beside her husband, her face as cold and composed as ever. She reached out a hand to take his shoulder and turn him over, and then stopped when she saw the ragged hole burned through the navy blue cloak.

A cold and deadly rage surged through her as she realised the Hob hound hadn't killed her husband.

Michael Gunn had been shot in the back with an energy gun.

There's someone out in the mists, watching us . . .

Topaz placed her hand gently on Michael Gunn's shoulder, and squeezed it once. "Rest easy, my husband. I swear upon my heart and upon my honour that I will avenge you. I promise you blood and terror, Michael; blood and terror to our enemies."

She paused a moment, almost expecting him to repeat the mercenary's curse after her, but the only sound in the alleyway was the distant moaning of the wind. Topaz patted Gunn's shoulder once more, as though to apologise for leaving him, and then she rose slowly to her feet and walked out of the alley to rejoin the silently waiting Watchmen.

"The Sergeant is dead," she said quietly. "Carry him back to his home. I will notify the Council that the Hob hounds have been dealt with."

Her voice was calm and perfectly composed, and if she cried any tears, they stayed locked inside her.

Topaz was an Investigator.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Balefire Steel sighed, and put down his cup. They'd forgotten the sugar again. Eleven years he'd been Director of Mistworld's only starport, and they still couldn't remember to put sugar in his coffee. It wasn't even real coffee. He leant back in his specially reinforced chair, and stared sourly about him. Computer banks and monitor screens lay spread out to every side of him, piled one on top the other as often as not. Less than half of them still worked at any given time. The heavy wooden desk before him was overflowing with reports and schedules and inventories, but for the moment he couldn't work up the energy to deal with them. Steel felt tired and sluggish and irritable, and theBalefire worried at his nerves like a nagging toothache.

All around his soundproofed gla.s.s cubicle the starport control tower worked on with its usual air of grim urgency. There was always more to be done than there was time to do it in, and everybody knew it. The technology broke down faster than it could be repaired, work piled up as deadlines were constantly shortened, and every year the d.a.m.ned winter blizzards arrived out of nowhere and buried the landing pads under seven feet of snow. The command centre carried on as best it could, and prayed for better days.

Gideon Steel sat slumped in his chair and gnawed thoughtfully at the last piece of sweetbread. He reached for the console keyboard built into his desk, and tapped in a code. The command monitor screen lit up, and after a moment the swirling colours slowly formed into a clear image. Looming out of the curling mists like a great steel mountain, theBalefire lay brooding on the main landing pad; the last ship out of Tannim before the Imperial Fleet scorched the planet lifeless. Steel's chair creaked in complaint as his two hundred pounds stirred uneasily. As Port Director, Steel was personally responsible for every ship that landed at the port, and theBalefire was a mystery. Steel disliked mysteries. He scowled at the screen, and scratched absently at his bald patch, as if to stir his thoughts into action. As the only surviving planet to break free of Empire rule, Mistworld was the end of the line for those the Empire Outlawed; you either made your way to Mistport or your scalp hung from a bounty hunter's belt.

Normally, when the Iron Empress Outlawed a whole planet there were thousands of refugees caught offworld. Strange that no other ships had come calling. . . .

The screen flickered, and the picture broke up into a ma.s.s of swirling colours. Steel cursed wearily, and heaved himself up out of his chair. He moved quickly over to the command monitor, and slammed a meaty fist down onto the top of the set. The screen flickered again, and then cleared reluctantly to show theBalefire . Steel shook his head slowly, and returned to his chair. The sooner the first a.s.signment of spare parts arrived from theDarkwind , the better. The command centre's systems were becoming increasingly jury-rigged and improvised, and therefore, not surprisingly, increasingly unreliable. The whole d.a.m.n place was falling to pieces around him, and there was nothing he could do about it. Steel picked up the latest smuggler manifests from his desk and leafed disgustedly through the flimsy papers. Typical. He needed memory crystals and solar energy converters, and what had the smugglers brought him?

Lightspheres, heating units, and flush toilets. Steel threw the manifests down, and squeezed his eyes shut a moment. He had no right to complain. The smugglers risked their lives every time they braved the Empire blockade; it was only to be expected they'd concentrate on goods they knew they could get a good price for. And anyway, as the smugglers so often pointed out, beggars can't be choosers.

Steel opened his eyes and looked out of his gla.s.s cubicle at the surrounding command centre.

Technicians and espers moved purposefully back and forth from level to level, tending the machinery and keeping alive the complex beast that the starport had become. Thick swirling fog pressed close against the vast steelgla.s.s windows of the control tower, isolating it from the rest of the landing field. Only the espers and the monitor screens kept Mistport functioning, and there were never enough of either. To Steel's left lay the navigation systems, and to his right, the communications net. Directly before him, where the main computer banks had once been, there were now a row of camp beds. Lying on those beds were fifty men and women with blank faces and empty eyes. Each one of them had an intravenous drip strapped to his arm, feeding them nutrients. Steel flinched at the sight of them, but didn't look away. They were his responsibility, like every other part of Mistport. In a sense, they were his children; a fact that never ceased to torment him. When the computers had first started to break down, he had sought out and gathered together the only kind of people who could replace a computer: lightning calculators and idiot savants, all of them with just enough esp to link up with a telepath. Take enough of these people and put them together with a handful of espers, and you ended up with a rough equivalent of a computer. A thinking machine. It was a poor subst.i.tute at best, and every now and again one of the units would have to be replaced. The weaker minds tended to burn out.

"Director."

Steel looked back at his command monitor. TheBalefire' s image had disappeared from the screen, and in its place was the worried face of the duty esper. He was barely into his twenties, but already his face showed deep-etched lines of care and worry.We're starting them too young , thought Steel.And asking too much of them. How long before we're reduced to breaking in children, as long as they've got the esp we need? He sighed, and shook his head wearily.

"Yes, lad. What is it?"

"The Captain of theBalefire has given us access to his flight computers, Director. Apparently, just before his ship dropped into hypers.p.a.ce, his...o...b..ard cameras were able to catch the last few moments of Tannim's Outlawing. I thought you might want to see the recording."

"Of course. Run it."

Steel keyed his command monitor into the main system, and watched impa.s.sively as the screen showed him the death of a planet.

Hundreds of Empire ships surrounded Tannim, pouring down destruction. Refugee ships trying to flee the planet were blown out of s.p.a.ce almost before they left the atmosphere. The searing disrupter beams showed stark and bright against the dark of s.p.a.ce, and the planet writhed beneath them like an insect transfixed on a pin. The oceans boiled, and volcanoes and earthquakes ripped apart the land. The ice poles melted, and the air was churned into an endless maelstrom of storms and hurricanes. And still the Imperial Fleet grew larger as more and more ships dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce and into orbit, and still the disrupter beams stabbed down, scorching the planet lifeless.

How many millions dead, how many millions . . .

The monitor screen went blank, and Steel sat for a long while in silence, staring at nothing. It was one thing to know that a planet's entire population had been destroyed; it was quite another to watch it happening. And yet he couldn't let it affect his judgement. He daren't. He had to be true to his duty; the protection of Mistport. He reached out and slowly tapped a code into his console. The command monitor lit up again.

"Duty esper."