Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) by James Lovegrove Read Free Book Online Page A

direct-market covers in the 1980s in place of the UPC symbol.

 

    7. THE MAN-LION AND THE DWARF
     
     
    I N A COURTYARD between the seventh and sixth rings of the complex, two men approached.
    They were a study in contrasts.
    One was African, long-limbed and tall, seven feet if he was an inch.
    The other was Caucasian and short, three feet if that, a dwarf.
    The African had a regal bearing and a shock of frizzy hair like a lion’s mane. His fingers were tipped with nails so long and pointed they resembled talons.
    The dwarf had an easy smile, but an air of self-importance, too. I knew him from the TV. He was an actor. He’d featured in a BBC sitcom, and a Channel 4 documentary about the trials of being a little person in showbusiness. His name escaped me just then.
    Both men wore plain black jumpsuits and combat boots. They greeted the Trinity Syndicate with nods, the tall man deferential, the dwarf not so much.
    “Zak?” said Bhatnagar. “This is Murunga Kilimo and Tim VanderKamp.”
    “Tim VanderKamp,” I said to the dwarf. “Yes. That’s who you are.”
    “Yeah, yeah, him off the telly,” said VanderKamp, sounding slightly bored. “BAFTA-nominated. Winner of a People’s Choice Award. Also an Olivier for my Macbeth at the Young Vic. And you are...?”
    “Zak Bramwell. Better known as Zak Zap.”
    “Daft name.”
    “Not a comics fan, I take it.”
    “Why would I be? I’m not eight years old.” VanderKamp turned to the three men. “Who is this loser anyway? Is he why you asked us to meet you here?”
    “Zak’s going to be working on costumes for you,” said Lombard, although I hadn’t agreed to it yet.
    “Sewing them?”
    “No,” said Bhatnagar, “designing them. We hope.”
    “Oh,” said VanderKamp, unimpressed.
    “We’d like you and Murunga to show him what you can do,” said Krieger.
    “Like performing monkeys, you mean?”
    “Like indentured employees of the Trinity Syndicate,” said Lombard, with a broad grin full of latent menace, “who’ll do whatever’s asked of them by the blokes who sign their paycheques.”
    VanderKamp shot him an insolent glare. There was a very large ego packed into that very small body.
    But he knew which side his bread was buttered on. He turned to Kilimo.
    “Why don’t you go first, Murunga? I need a few moments to prepare.”
    The African gave a bow of consent. “How do you wish me to display my skills as Narasimha the Man-lion?” he asked the Trinity trio.
    From the back of his waistband, under his cream-coloured linen jacket, Krieger drew an automatic pistol.
    He levelled it at Kilimo. “I’m a Texan. We tend to settle matters with guns.”
    He cocked the hammer and snaked his forefinger round the trigger.
    Kilimo, staring down the barrel of the pistol at point blank range, was admirably unperturbed. Me, I was alarmed just being near a gun. I cringed away from it.
    Lombard and Bhatnagar lodged their fingers in their ears. I copied them, just in time, as Krieger loosed off a shot at Kilimo.
    Who was no longer standing in front of him.
    Who was, indeed, nowhere near us.
    Krieger looked up. We all looked up.
    Kilimo was clinging to the side of a second-storey balcony. His fingers were dug into the fabric of the building like climber’s pitons.
    Krieger drew a bead on him and fired again.
    The bullet ricocheted off the spot where Kilimo had been holding on. He wasn’t there any more. There was only a set of gouges.
    Krieger spun. Kilimo was now on the opposite side of the courtyard, even higher than before, hanging upside down from the base of a skybridge. He had leapt faster than the eye could follow, covering a distance of some thirty feet in a single bound.
    My jaw was halfway to my chest by this time. It would drop still further in the coming moments.
    Kilimo alighted back in front of us before Krieger could get off another round. The pistol seemed to vanish from the Texan’s grasp. Next thing I knew, Kilimo was holding it out to its owner,