On that fateful night, his purse contained two silvers, three bronze, and nine brass studs. Odd that so many years later, he remembered the count. The clerk guarding the door tallied Langashin’s coinage and let him in. Anyone with less than a single silver would be turned away. The table he approached had four players. Three were inconsequential. Langashin couldn’t remember a thing about them except that the piles of studs in front of them were small and beads of sweat dotted their foreheads. But Slither - he remembered Slither.
The man looked like a veteran of more than his share of bar brawls and knife fights. The scars on his face were a map of a violent past. Langashin couldn’t tell his age but the gray in his stringy dark hair indicated he had passed through his middle years. His split lips, cleft at some point by a blade, never turned upward in a smile and his breath stank of hard spirits. He played “stone maiden” like a man with something to prove. Every lost stud caused the latent anger in him to coil more tightly. And he lost repeatedly to Langashin, whose luck that night was phenomenal. Problem was, Slither didn’t believe in luck. He got it into his head that he was being cheated. Langashin should have realized when he left that Slither wasn’t simply going to let him walk away but overconfidence had always been a failing. Truth be told, it still was.
They jumped him not far from the gaming house and pulled him into the darkest recesses of an unnamed, unlighted alley. There were three of them - two mute brutes who held him down and Slither. Langashin couldn’t read the man’s features in the darkness but his voice held no hint of kindness. “You took something dear to me in there, pup. Now I’m going to take something dear to you. Remember that next time you think of cheating a man of his coins. There’s worse things you can lose than a purse of jingling silver.”
Slither brandished a weapon. It was a frail looking thing but the edge was sharper than any razor and, when he went to work with it, its bite was more precise than that of the finest dagger. The first cut didn’t hurt much but the blood started flowing freely and by the time Slither lazily brought the blade back for a second taste, Langashin was screaming in agony.
When Slither had completed his handiwork, he negligently wiped the blade clean on Langashin’s tunic and motioned for his companions to let the boy go. “You might want to see a healer about that,” he advised. “Or you’ll bleed out. No reason you should die this time. But try it again…”
That was the night Langashin became a gelding.
At the time, for a boy already gripped by the stirrings of manhood, it seemed the worst possible thing. After the injuries healed, he found he could still perform with a woman, although with difficulty. But, with the passage of time, he discovered he no longer had much interest in that aspect of human congress. Sex, which had been a favorite pastime of his before the encounter with Slither, was no longer an interest. Over the years, he had come to view his castration as a boon. All the time and effort other men devoted to carnal pleasure could be channeled elsewhere. Slither’s “lesson” became a defining moment in Langashin’s life.
Not long after that late night encounter, he left Vantok. Shame, more than anything else, drove him away. The physical wounds healed quickly but the scars on his psyche remained. His favorite whores, including one he thought he might love, regarded him differently and he imagined them commiserating on his deformity. He no longer visited gaming houses for fear that he might again encounter Slither. And he imagined that everyone he passed in the streets knew about his emasculation. The humiliation was too much to bear although, all these years later, he recognized it to have been all in his mind. Slither would have wanted to keep the story quiet rather than exposing himself to the ridicule of being duped at the gaming table.
Langashin’s destination was Basingham, the nearest of the great cities to Vantok. There seemed little point in going further. To his way of thinking, one stinking bastion of humanity was much like any other. His accumulated winnings from Vantok allowed him to purchase food and ale at local inns and taverns but he didn’t bother to pay for lodgings. One place was as good as any other for a night’s rest - why pay for surroundings that mattered little to a sleeper? In the summer, he’d lie down in some farmer’s fallow field. During the winter, he’d sneak into a stable and curl up with a mangy dog or burrow under the hay like a mouse. He lived like that for nearly a year. His hoarded monies were nearly gone when the gods or chance offered him an opportunity.
He had been watching an elderly merchant for some time. The man was wealthy and influential but careless. Not only didn’t he hire bodyguards but he was modest and, as a result, his routine was to venture through a narrow, winding alley to reach a secluded privy pit to relieve himself. Langashin had noticed that when he made those trips, typically twice each day, he kept his coin purse tied to his belt. At a guess, it contained the equivalent of several dozen silver - an amount that would allow him to continue a life of relative comfort for the immediate future. If the old man died as a result of the robbery, Langashin would have to quit Basingham but that wasn’t a major inconvenience - the money would be as good in Earlford as it was here. Studs pressed in any of the great cities were recognized in all.
He made his move late one afternoon in mid-Harvest when the days had grown short and the alley was shrouded in shadow. As was his wont, the man temporarily turned over his stall to an assistant and, with the aid of a walking stick, hobbled toward the nearby alley. Langashin followed at a discreet distance, doing his best not to call attention to himself. For one of his size, he could be uncommonly stealthy. He loitered near the mouth of the narrow backstreet for several minutes before venturing in. What he discovered there surprised him - the merchant had not passed through unmolested. He was in the process of being robbed by two thugs.
They were thin, reedy men who, at least from the back, reminded Langashin of Slither. Gripped by a wave of indignation (this was his mark, after all), he surged forward. A small knife, the only weapon he owned, was more than sufficient to dispatch the first thief - his throat was slit from ear-to-ear before he knew of his jeopardy. The other turned to face Langashin, the look of shock on his face turning to terror when he saw the size of his attacker.
Langashin grabbed the man’s arm and wrenched it, nearly ripping it off at the shoulder and certainly dislocating it. The robber uttered a yelp of pain and dropped the dagger he was menacing the merchant with. His shout was loud enough to be heard outside the alley but no one would come to his rescue, not even The Watch. There were places where decent folk didn’t venture and this was one of them.
A punch to the face broke the man’s nose and stunned him. When Langashin released his arm, he fell to the hard-packed street like a marionette with its strings cut. In reality, he bore only a superficial resemblance to Slither but, in his agitated state, Langashin saw only his past tormenter and decided to exact his revenge on him here and now.
It was a bloody business and the man didn’t die easily. Langashin used his knife not to hack but for more precise cuts. All the while, as the screams escalated and the blood flowed, the merchant looked on with a combination of fear, relief, and fascination. He was grateful for his rescue but wondered what sort of man his savior was that he could dispatch someone in such a cruel and gruesome manner.
Langashin started by doing to his victim what had been done to him in the Vantok alley. He lacked Slither’s finesse but it didn’t matter. Once the balls had been cut out, he sliced off the cock for good measure. From there, he moved on to other easily removable body parts - ears and fingers in particular. In order to more easily cut through the knuckles, he broke the bones before applying the blade.
He didn’t stop until the man expired. As he rose from the mangled corpse, his clothing stained crimson, the feverish look in his eyes reflected his ecstasy. Not since being emasculated had he felt this alive. In fact, the act of butchering the robber offered more pleasure than he had ever experienced with a whore. He took a deep breath to calm himself before addressing his attention to the ma
n whose life he had inadvertently saved. He could have continued where the thugs had left off, but he saw the glint of an opportunity and seized it.
Thinking back on that first killing, Langashin recognized how inept it had been. The clumsiness, the inexperience... Since then, he had developed a precision in his craft he never would have imagined possible in that alley. It all began with the grateful, admittedly terrified merchant offering him a position. Seeing Langashin’s ruthlessness, he determined that having a man of that sort working for him could reap benefits far in excess of what he would have to pay by way of a salary. Thus was a career born.
Langashin worked for Caleb the merchant for more than a year before asking his employer for time off “to attend to a personal matter.” During his time serving Caleb, he refined his capabilities. He started off as a brute enforcer but became adept at using torture to extract information. This intelligence was important to the merchant; it allowed him to outbid his rivals for contracts and intercept goods at below-market prices. For Langashin, the benefits were twofold: becoming a master torturer not only made him invaluable to Caleb but the artistry of the profession filled a void. He hardly remembered what an orgasm felt like but he couldn’t imagine it to have been more satisfying than hearing the screams of someone as he meticulously carved away their flesh. Under Caleb, he evolved from being a crude wielder of sharp instruments into a maestro of suffering.
Now, with his skills honed to master-level, Langashin decided to go back to Vantok to resolve his unfinished business. Remembering what he had endured at Slither’s hands made him inwardly recoil with shame. It haunted him; he needed closure. The only way to erase that blotch was to repay the man who had caused it. That meant taking a hiatus from his position with Caleb and retracing his steps to the city of his youth. He had left Vantok frightened and disgraced. His would return as one of the most feared men in Basingham. He wondered if his reputation had spread beyond the walls of his adopted city. If not, it soon would. Langashin didn’t intend to come and go from Vantok like a thief in the night, leaving behind little trace of his passage. Slither was an important man in Vantok’s seedy underworld (or at least he had been when Langashin ran afoul of him). His demise would send ripples through the back alleys and dimly lit cellars. Crime bosses, not recognizing this as the settling of a personal score, would wonder if they would be targeted next. Langashin delighted in the thought of causing so much fear and consternation. It made the concept of revenge even sweeter. Who needed sex when torture and killing could be so orgasmic?
The trip wasn’t made alone. Langashin was accompanied by two of Caleb’s intimidating bodyguards, the brothers Bryan and Tyran. They idolized Langashin and sought to emulate him despite lacking the intelligence, creativity, and patience necessary to be successful as torturers. They were, however, good at intimidation and brute force activities. Since Slither rarely traveled unprotected, Langashin believed Bryan and Tyran’s presence would be useful. It had been difficult getting Caleb to agree to giving them a leave of absence but Langashin made it worth his while by negotiating a lower fee for his own services for one year following his return. He was making a small fortune as it was; a reduction wouldn’t hurt him. Strangely, after saving the merchant’s life, Langashin had developed a loyalty toward Caleb. He had turned down more lucrative employment opportunities, including one from the palace. Perhaps more than others, kings needed good torturers; demand outweighed supply. It was something to consider for the future. Caleb was frail and in poor health. It wasn’t likely he would be walking the earth for many more years. If a man’s natural lifespan was measured in years, Caleb’s sixty was longer than most. Langashin didn’t fret about what was to come. His reputation assured him that he would be fielding bids before the master merchant’s ashes were scattered on the winds.
Finding Slither wasn’t a challenge. Emboldened by a fearsome reputation that had grown since Langashin’s departure from Vantok, he no longer hid from anyone - neither The Watch nor his numerous enemies. When Langashin discovered the location of Slither’s favorite gaming house - an open secret easily learned after being generous with his coins at The Drunk Doxy - he and his companions found the back entrance and loitered in the shadows until the door swung open a few hours past midnight. Somewhat unsteady on his feet after a few too many cups of strong spirits, Slither emerged, flanked by the same two men who had manhandled Langashin on that fateful night. A mirthless smile creased the torturer’s features. This saved him the trouble of having to hunt them down.
At a barely perceptible gesture from their leader, Langashin’s companions moved toward their quarry. Slither’s bodyguards, not anticipating trouble and not fully sober, didn’t realize the threat until it was too late to counter. They toppled in concert, their throats slit from ear to ear. The only sound they made was the thud of bodies hitting the ground. Crimson seeped into the rusty mud of the alley’s floor; it wasn’t the first time the dirt there had been fertilized by blood.
Langashin advanced on a nonplused Slither; overpowering the smaller, lighter man presented little challenge. In fact, it was done almost gently. Without his “muscle,” there was little intimidating about the underworld boss. Slither would die but only after Langashin had played with him a little. Quick deaths, the kiss of mercy, were only for battlefields. Langashin was a master of keeping people alive long after they begged for oblivion. It was his talent.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Slither’s shaky voice failed to threaten. Bound and on his knees in several inches of mud, he wasn’t remotely fearsome. His fear was a delight to his former victim. Langashin’s minions stood behind him, blocking a retreat.
Langashin moved his face to within a foot of Slither’s so his features would be visible even in the alley’s dim light. “Remember me?”
The blank expression betrayed the lack of recognition. Langashin meant no more to Slither than the pig he had consumed for dinner the previous night.
That one night meant nothing to him. Nothing. Yet it changed my entire life. And now it will rebound and take his.
“Let me see if I can rattle your memory.” So saying, Langashin lowered his breeches to display what remained of his manhood. The paroxysm of terror that transfixed Slither’s countenance satisfied him. Now he knew. It had happened in an alley just like this one. How fitting. “Never thought you’d see me again. Thought me properly cowed. Maybe even dead. Bled out not too far from here. Your first mistake wasn’t finishing me off. You ain’t gonna get a chance to make a second one.”
Slither’s tongue flicked nervously across his upper lip. “I’m an important person. If anything happens to me, I’ll be missed. I have friends in high places…”
Langashin wondered if the man truly believed such a threat might save his life. Presumably, anyone who had gotten Slither into this position would be fully aware of who he was. And his associates, once they learned of his fate, were more likely to gobble up his territory and hunker down to protect themselves than worry about avenging him. Dead underworld bosses rarely elicited retribution unless they were members of powerful families. Slither was a loner. Always had been. And he would die alone (excepting his killers, of course).
“I don’t doubt it. I piss on your friends in high places. I’m more important that all of ’em. Got you to thank for that. So you have my gratitude. Let me show you a little something about what I’ve learned since we last met. I’m sure you’ll find it educational, although perhaps not entertaining. I wish we could take the whole night but Vantok has a Watch and I’m sure they’ll visit even this gods-forsaken alley once or twice afore dawn. It’s too bad, really. Basingham’s alleys are more accommodating to those who do what I do.”
Before getting started, Langashin searched Slither, ignoring coins - he had enough of those - and other items until he found the nasty little cutting device Slither had used to geld him. It was a sharp, precise instrument - smaller and sharper than a knife. Some might use it for a benign act like the shaving of whiske
rs. Langashin could think of a number of more creative ways it could be employed. When he was done with it, he’d keep it as a memento. But for now, time to practice…
It took Slither about an hour to die. The first thing Langashin did was cut out his tongue then stuff a rag in his mouth to staunch the blood and muffle his screams. No need to call undue attention to his activities - he didn’t want to end up in a skirmish with The Watch, although most of their members could be bribed to turn a blind eye.
After doing to Slither what Slither had once done to him, Langashin began toying with different cuts to other parts of the body. A slice here, a slit there. Scarlet blossomed. Bowels emptied. The tool was excellent when it came to soft tissue but a knife was more effective when bone was involved. Langashin had brought along his favorite blade and added it to the mix. Despite being rushed, he was relishing the experience, but it didn’t last. Slither met his end prematurely when Langashin accidentally clipped a critical artery and couldn’t cauterize the wound fast enough to save the weakened man. Slither died in the alley, covered in mud, blood, and his own shit. It was less satisfying than Langashin had hoped or expected but, as he learned over the years, that was often the case with revenge. In fact, the screams of others were more pleasurable when the person was a stranger. Torture was an intimate process, forming a deeper bond than sex between the participants.
The Watch didn’t investigate, at least not while Langashin was present. The next day, as he was wandering around the city re-visiting old haunts, he heard rumors about “the grisly business” in the alley. No one in the general populace seemed upset by it. Slither wasn’t well-liked and the general feeling was that he had gotten what he deserved and Vantok was probably a better place without him. It pleased Langashin to believe he had committed an act of civic value.
The Last Whisper of the Gods Saga: Stories from Ayberia Page 9
