The knife missile spun slowly about, seemingly reviewing its few seconds' work, then it started to float back towards the window.Ĭompare to the hunter-seeker from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.Canticle for Leibowitz Rendezvous with Rama Princess of Mars Altered Carbon Foundation Blindsight Accelerando Old Man's War Armor Cities in Flight A Brave New World Children of Dune Stranger in a Strange Land Dhalgren Enders Game Gateway A Fire Upon the Deep Neuromancer A Clockwork Orange Ringworld Diamond Age Lord of Light Hyperion Startide Rising Terminal World The Forever War Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Hunger Games Left Hand of Darkness Man in the High Castle The Martian Chronicles The Player of Games The Shadow of the Torturer Sirens of Titan The Stars my Destination To Your Scattered Bodies GoĪ place to discuss published Speculative Fiction On emerging from the resulting detonation, the machine slammed to a stop in mid-air, while the rider's headless body slid off his collapsing, thrashing animal. The device went through its neck and straight into the face of its rider. The mount of the final rider was rearing up in front of the missile, its fangs bared, forelegs lashing, claws exposed. It curved like red light shining on a hook, and slashed across the necks of the last two dismounted riders, felling both.

The knife missile plunged straight through him. One man dropped his sword and started to run. The drone gave a little shudder of satisfaction. In the square, both of the inn-keeper's daughters slipped to the ground from the mounts they had been tied to, their bonds slashed in the same cut that had killed all seven men. Sma tried to scream at the drone, to make the missile stop, but she was still choking, and now starting to retch. Seven of the riders - five standing, two still mounted - collapsed into the dust, in fourteen separate pieces. The roar turned to a sound like the wind, bubbling thickly through the exposed wind-pipe as his body crashed to the dust.įaster - and turning more tightly - than any bird or insect, the knife missile made an almost invisibly quick circle round most of the riders, producing an odd stuttering noise.

It separated his neck from his shoulders.

He was still roaring when the knife missile flicked past him, field outstretched. One of the warriors roared, brandishing his sword and lunging towards the door of the inn.

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks