Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  “He that lives by the sword shall die by my knife,” I tell him. “That’s prophecy, if you like.”

  And I can see something else in his eyes now: the frenzy. He’s gone blood simple.

  It’s like looking into a mirror.

  He says, inexplicably, “Fuck Ma’elKoth.”

  He springs at me, and I leap to meet him.

  He makes the over-the-shoulder draw so fast his hands are barely a flicker of motion. No subtlety here: he’s slicing at the joining of my neck and shoulder. My knife meets his sword in a two-handed rising parry that forces the arc of his blade over my head. The knife buzzes in my hand, sending unsettling shock through my arm and shoulder to my teeth.

  I backhand the knife with my right to rake the point across his eyes, and miss by a handbreadth. I continue the motion into a diving side roll, and Berne comes after me, slashing, the air singing a tooth-grinding whine as his blade cuts through the carpet and into the floor beside my head as though the planks are soft cheese. I hook his ankle with my toe and kick his knee; he bends his leg to take it so the joint doesn’t break, but it brings him to the floor.

  I kip to my feet and now I understand why my backhanded slash missed his eyes—my knife is about five inches too short, its blade sheared off three fingers above the guard, bright new steel gleaming like chrome along the cut edge.

  His sword—sweet shivering fuck, that’s Kosall. . .

  The realization freezes me for a scant second, long enough for him to reach his feet. A smooth croisé brings me into range and I chamber my leg for a side kick to knock him down again—

  And a huge, blunt-clawed hand grabs my arm from behind and yanks me back and up into the air.

  I drop the useless stub of knife and flail desperately—I was so consumed with Berne, I never even saw the ogre who now holds me—but Berne has the same problem: two of them hold him. One has both huge hands on his sword arm, and the other holds him tight around the waist.

  And I feel like I’m swimming up to the surface of a dream. What in all gods’ names was I thinking? Wasting my time here with Berne, maybe throwing away my life—I must have been crazy—

  Somehow I got sucked down into that feral blood lust again. Shit, that’s part of why Pallas left me, this mindless thirst for death. Master Cyrre, the Abbot of Garthan Hold—almost twenty years ago, he used to tell me I think with my fists.

  And the sonofabitch is still right.

  Now Kierendal is coming toward us across the room, the perfect image of icy command. “That’s about enough of that,” she says. “Now I think we’ll all wait quietly for the constables to arrive.”

  Berne’s eyes meet mine. He’s not struggling anymore, and his sardonic grin briefly contracts as he blows me a kiss and mouths Next time.

  The ogre lifts me higher and gives me a little shake. My feet dangle an arm’s length from the floor, and the ligaments that hold my shoulder together start to hurt. My head’s straight now, though, and everything’s clear—if I get taken by the Constabulary, it won’t matter what they want me for. By the time I can get shit sorted out, I’ll be too late for Pallas.

  The ogre gives me another shake, a not-so-gentle warning. “Don’t get ideasss,” it rumbles wetly, slobbering around its tusks. “You s’ould know I won’t mind hurting you.”

  “Yeah,” I say softly. “Likewise.”

  I jack my knees up in front of my chest and then buck like a wild horse, a whip-crack arch of my back that sends my feet backward into the ogre’s midsection. It’s like stomping on a stone floor. The ogre barely grunts, but this wasn’t the part that was supposed to hurt.

  I kick off its chest and swing up around the pivot of my shoulder joint like a footballer doing a wheel kick, up and over; I wrap my legs around its head with a wrestler’s ankle lock. The ogre snarls and instinctively turns its head to rip the inside of my thigh with those wicked tusks. One punches through the leather and into my flesh.

  This is the part that is supposed to hurt.

  I twist and drive a handspear past my butt, right into the tearduct at the corner of its eye. Ogre’s eyes are hard-shelled, kind of like a snake’s, but they pop out just as easy as a man’s. I drive my hand in there and blood sprays; I scoop its baseball-sized eye right out of its head with a wet ripping sound as the muscles around it give way. It dangles from its long ropy optic nerve onto the leathery cheek, and the ogre screams into my thigh, releasing my arm to clap its hands to its face. I untwist my legs and buck again, and the ogre’s tusk tears free of my leg.

  I land clumsily but keep my feet. The swiftness with which scalding wetness spreads down my leg tells me the ogre nailed me good. It’s almost funny—I come through fighting Berne without a scratch and get the shit ripped out of me by the fucking bouncer.

  The ogre screams like an air horn while it tries to fit its eye back into its socket. The people in the casino flinch away from me, covering their ears. Berne is struggling now, furiously twisting and snarling grim threats, but the two ogres holding him show no signs of letting go.

  I shoot a glance toward Kierendal, who looks like she’s thinking seriously about casting a spell. I draw my last throwing knife from between my shoulder blades and show it to her, and she changes her mind.

  In the brief silence that comes when the ogre stops for breath, I say loudly, “I’m leaving. The first three creatures—man, woman, or sub—that get in my way, they die. Right here on the floor. Die.”

  They believe me. A path clears to the door, and I take it at a dead sprint, out into the sunlight and the smells of the city.

  Berne’s screams of frustrated rage fade into city-sounds behind me.

  Sometimes, y’know, that passion for violence serves me well.

  A squad of constables pounds toward me, far away along Moriandar Street. I go the other way. I’m going to need somewhere to go to ground until I can get this wound properly dressed. The Subjects are out, at least for a while, until I can learn whether Kierendal’s right about Majesty and the Eyes. Majesty’s my friend, but that doesn’t mean I trust him.

  The answer’s obvious. There’s still one place in Ankhana where I can claim Right of Sanctuary. I just have to live long enough to get there.

  Three paces within a convenient alley, I lean against a clapboard wall to pull the tear in my breeches closed over the wound and tie a couple loops of my belt around it. This’ll do until I can get stitches and a real bandage. The leg is swelling already, and starting to throb, and I know I’d better keep moving, get out of Alientown before it stiffens. Looking back along my trail of left-foot prints outlined in blood, it’s clear that I’m losing a dangerous amount, and I’m limping enough to guess that the tusk tore deeply into muscle.

  On through the alley and along one of its branches to another curving street. Away northwest along the curve there’s another constable squad. This one has fanned out in teams of four, knocking on doors and entering shops. Only now does it become clear that Kierendal gave me up as soon as I left her chamber. I should have known. I don’t hold it against her—I would have done the same—but it’s gonna make getting out of Alientown kind of a problem.

  I fade back into the alley and take a different branch, picking around piles of garbage. I find a reasonably sheltered place near the alley mouth where I can watch the street, and I scan the passersby for humans or elves close to my size, looking for someone I can persuade to donate their clothes to a hunted man.

  16

  ARTURO KOLLBERG SLAPPED his face shield up, away from his eyes. As the induction helmet automatically retracted, he rummaged through the swingarm pharmacopoeia for a trank and an antacid. His nerves thrummed like overwound guitar strings. Caine still hadn’t killed anyone, though this hunted-fugitive-in-Alientown business was promising.

  Caine apparently didn’t understand how important it was to make this Adventure a success. Good God, there were live feeds going out to Studios all over the world! If he continued to lay back like this, he’d ruin Kollberg’s
reputation, and with it his chances of upcasteing to Business and eventually succeeding Westfield Turner as Studio President.

  Didn’t Caine realize that Kollberg’s whole career rode on this? Didn’t he care?

  At the very least, he could have done that ogre. Christ, he’d already maimed the poor creature; how much more trouble would it have been to kill it? People—Leisurefolk—around the world had spent millions of marks to be him while he took some lives; what in the name of God was holding him back?

  Kollberg heaved himself up out of the chair and mopped sweat from his brow. He peered briefly at the picked-over leavings of the snack foods on the other swingarm, made a face, and decided that he should eat a real lunch while he had the chance. He keyed the wait service and ordered a cart of whatever they had that was hot and fresh and could arrive in his private box within five minutes.

  Then he paced heavily around the tiny room while he dictated the next Adventure Update release. Though he couldn’t control Caine’s actions, he certainly could control what the public thought of them.

  17

  THAT EARNEST FACE on the world’s wallscreens says:

  “Well, by the numbers on the Adventure Update Pallas Ril Lifeclock, it’s time to get a report on Caine’s progress in Ankhana. Once again, Jed Clearlake.”

  “Thank you, Bronson. There’s been some action since our last update, in fact. I’ve received reports of an inconclusive fight with—can you believe?—Berne!”

  “That would be the swordsman who murdered two of Caine’s partners in Race for the Crown of Dal’kannith.”

  “That’s correct. This is a blood-feud that’s been running for quite a while. We caught up with Caine only hours before his transfer into Ankhana, and we asked him about Berne . . .”

  A shimmering white line crosses the screen in a diagonal wipe to reveal Caine as a talking head against a neutral smoke-dark background. “Berne?” His recorded voice has an odd combination of cynicism and husky emotion. “Yeah, we have history.” A sense of shifting in his chair, a deep breath to organize potent memory, a hesitation before opening a painful subject—all combine to make a truly pregnant pause: Caine’s a pro, and he does interviews as well as anyone in the business.

  “Laying hands on the crown of Dal’kannith turned out to be a lot harder than anyone expected. My team—it included Marade and Tizarre, the only two other survivors of Retreat from the Boedecken, as well as Pallas Ril—we were turned back twice, with nothing to show for it but wounds and exposure. Berne, well, he had a team of his own, and they decided that the easiest way to get the crown would be to take it away from us.

  “I came back from a two-day scout in the mountains, not in a good mood—I’d had to bury a partner up there. I was carrying a pair of barbed ogrillo quarrels that I’d had to dig out of my shoulder and thigh with a knife. I was exhausted, I was frostbitten, and I found my camp empty except for a semiliterate letter from Berne. He wanted me to turn over the crown to his boyfriend t’Gall; each day I made him wait he was going to torture one of my partners to death.

  “Problem was, I didn’t have the damned crown.

  “I knew Berne’s reputation. I didn’t waste any time with the truth.

  “I got my hands on t’Gall and spent a couple hours persuading him to tell me where Berne was holding my friends. T’Gall didn’t survive the experience. I hit Berne’s camp hard and fast enough to free Pallas, and between the two of us we fought our way out.

  “I didn’t get there in time for Marade and Tizarre.

  “Anybody wants the details, he can rent Race for the Crown of Dal’kannith. It was ugly.

  “Berne is a disease that sickens the world; his breath poisons the air. If I get the chance, I’m going to do the world a big favor. He’s a cancer. I’m a knife.”

  The screen cross-fades to Jed Clearlake’s earnest gravity. “And Berne is now, as you may recall, Bronson, a Count of the Empire and the de facto commander of the Grey Cats, the elite Imperial special-operations division.”

  “That sounds like quite a fight, Jed.”

  “Well, Bronson, we have a clip—”

  . . . and through Caine’s eyes the knife skids off skin, and again . . . The twisting disorientation of being lifted and thrown . . . and Berne vaults the brass rail and wipes blood from his mouth below his broken nose . . . Caine’s Soliloquy: * . . . like any good scientist . . .* The cut on Berne’s thigh . . . *He’s gone blood simple.*

  “He that lives by the sword shall die by my knife. That’s prophecy, if you like.”

  The image freezes for an extended discussion of magickally enhanced strength and reflexes, and the curious “Berne’s Buckler” effect, and joking references to Caine’s either astonishing daring or extraordinary foolishness in facing an obviously superior opponent.

  “And our latest report indicates that Caine is wounded and on the run in Alientown, the subhuman ghetto that comprises the red-light district of Ankhana. Studio analysts predict that he’ll try to cross Knight’s Bridge into Old Town, and take refuge at the Monastic Embassy.”

  “That’s an interesting choice, Jed.”

  “Well, Bronson, Caine can claim Right of Sanctuary there, seeing as how he’s still technically a Monastic citizen, though he’s no longer a sworn friar.”

  “But can they actually protect him against the Empire?”

  “A lot depends on just how much pressure the Ankhanans are willing to bring; as you know, Caine still hasn’t managed to discover why they’ve issued a warrant and a reward for his capture. But I should certainly say that the Ankhanans will under no circumstances use force to settle a dispute with the Monasteries. Whenever this has been tried in the past, the results have been shortterm success, shortly followed by appalling disaster. As Caine fans will remember, several of his earliest Adventures involved the Monasteries’ complex revenge against those who foolishly violated their sovereignty on one pretext or another; their standard policy in such matters is to appear to give way, and later inflict the harshest of punishments. In an area such as the Ankhanan Empire, where the Monasteries have been well established for hundreds of years, this lesson has been learned the hard way. I don’t think that anyone in the Imperial Government will make that sort of mistake.”

  A polished, professional chuckle. “So the Monastics are not quite like, say, Franciscan friars, tending gardens and healing the sick?”

  “No, Bronson, that’s true.” An answering chuckle. “While the Monasteries do comprise a ‘nation without borders’ not unlike the Catholic Church in the Europe of a thousand years ago, they’re not actually a religious organization. Monastery is the word we use for the Westerling Khrasthikhanolyir, which translates roughly as Fortress of Human Future. The Monasteries are centers of learning, primarily, and serve as schools for the children of nobility and such of the common folk as can pay their fees. They attempt to spread a familiar philosophy of the brotherhood of man, and that kind of thing. This all sounds very peaceful, you might think, but remember: they preach the brotherhood of man, in a world where there are no less than seven sentient humanoid species and more than a dozen species of sentient nonhumanoids. They also teach a number of very advanced fighting arts, and several Monasteries are well known for their schools of magick. The Monasteries are aggressively political, and are certainly not above toppling a government that they perceive as being dangerous to their long-term goal, which is nothing less than the survival and dominance of the human race on Overworld. You might recall Caine’s adventure of two or three years ago, A Servant of the Empire, when at the instigation of the Council of Brothers, Caine assassinated Prince-Regent Toa-Phelathon . . .”

  18

  I REFUSE THE offered wheelchair, even though dodging the garrison soldiers’ crossbow quarrels on that dash across Knight’s Bridge reopened my thigh, and with each step my left boot squishes blood out like a sponge. It’s an irrational prejudice, I guess, but I’d rather limp exhausted along behind the puzzled novice who leads me to the inf
irmary than sit on my ass and leave my progress in someone else’s hands.

  I walk with my palm brushing the rich paneling of the corridor wall—this gives me support against the occasional waves of dizziness that seem to be coming with increasing frequency, and it also keeps me close enough to the wall that my blood won’t stain the exquisite Ch’rannthian runner that decorates the floor.

  Friars, novices, and students all glance at me as we pass, most of them trailing toward the dining hall for supper. The embassy in Ankhana does a brisk hospital business; there’s nothing unusual enough about a blood-soaked man limping along their halls to draw undue attention. I wonder how many of them suspect who I am . . .

  Down in the vaulted bedlam of the infirmary, the Healing Brother’s eyes widen when I identify myself: “Caine of Garthan Hold.”

  “Oh, my,” he says, lips pursed with prim dismay. “Oh, oh, my. The Ambassador must be—”

  “I claim Sanctuary. I am a Citizen of Humanity and Servant of the Future. I have broken neither oath nor law. By law and custom, Sanctuary is mine by right.”

  The Healing Brother looks decidedly cross. “I’m not sure that I—”

  “Horseshit. You know who I am. What are you waiting for, the goddamn secret handshake?”

  I can read his face like a billboard: he doesn’t want to do anything without the Ambassador’s approval, and he’d really much prefer that I have a stroke and die right here before he has to answer me. But I gave him the formula, and he knows the Law: he doesn’t have any choice at all.

  “You are welcome, Caine of Garthan Hold,” he says sourly. “The arms of your Brothers enfold you, and you need fear no prince of the world. You have found safe Sanctuary.”

  “Swell. Now who’s on call that can sew up this damn leg?”

  “Combat or accident?”

  “Combat. Hey,” I say, brightening, “does that mean you’ve got a Khryllian here today?”

  He nods, his lips going even thinner. “He’s donating his services for three days as a minor penance. Cell three. Await him in meditation.”