Banks, Iain - Canal Dreams by Banks Iain

Author:Banks, Iain
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

Sucre looked wide-eyed at her for a second. She stared back. The firing deep inside the ship went on.

Sucre grabbed her hand, spun her round in front of him and threw her through the door, back into the corridor he'd bundled her out of minutes earlier. 'Down!' he shouted, ramming the rifle into her back, making her run. She half-fell down the stairs, Sucre clattering behind her. The firing stopped beneath them as they went down the next companionway.

Grey smoke drifted from the doorway of the Nadia 's saloon into the corridor. She could hear crying and shouts. Sucre screamed at her to keep going; the gun hit her in the lower back again.

The saloon was thick with acrid, stinging smoke. Bodies lay amongst the plush chairs and couches like obscene scatter cushions. She was standing behind one of the venceristas ; he was shouting, waving his gun around. Another vencerista stood behind the bar, heavy machine-gun poised, smoke curling from it.

She looked at the bodies. The ringing in her ears made it difficult to hear things, but she thought somebody was calling her name. The bodies covered much of the floor, almost from end to end of the room. A few of the dark-skinned men were still at the far end, standing there with their hands behind their heads, looking cowed and terrified.

'Hisako!' She heard her name, and raised her head. It was Philippe. She was shoved towards him anyway, pushed in the back so that she had no choice but to move, and so ran across the bloody carpet, stumbled over bodies to him. He hugged her, mumbled in French into her hair, but the ringing noise smothered all his words.

Sucre was shouting at the other two venceristas . Then he ran down the length of the saloon and screamed at the Moroccan and Algerian men standing there. He slapped one, punched another in the belly, and clubbed a third with his rifle, sending the man crumpling to the deck. More venceristas piled in through the door, waving their guns. Sucre kicked one of the Algerians in the leg, making the man hop about, trying to keep his balance while not moving his hands from the back of his head; Sucre kicked him in the other leg, making him fall over.

'Hisako, Hisako,' Philippe said. She leant her head on his shoulder, and looked through the room; at Sucre kicking the curled up Algerian lying on the floor near the far wall; at Mandamus, squatting beneath an up-ended chair, bulging out from under it like a snail too big for its shell; at Broekman, lying on the floor, looking up now; at Janney and the Bleveans, Captain Bleveans holding his wife's head down near the floor at the side of the couch the motionless Janney lay upon; at Endo, sitting back against the wall, cross-legged, like a slim-line buddha.

'Hisako -- '

'These men were very stupid!' Sucre shrieked at them, waving his gun at the Moroccans and Algerians.

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