Death's Reckoning

by Will Molinar

  Most of the crowd moaned, and Jerrod smiled. His bet was secured. That night he would make a tidy profit that was in no way connected with his.

  Joyce was a hardy man, taking blows that would render most fighters unconscious, but a man could take only so much, and soon his head lolled to the side. The fight was finished.

  Cleaver showed mercy and rolled off the limp form of Joyce and staggered to his feet. The majority of the crowd voiced its disproval by hurling curses and objects. The in house security was too inept to stop, but neither Cleaver nor Jerrod cared. Let these slugs stew. More money for him. Thruck was coming soon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Muldor had no idea where they were taken to, but in the end it wouldn’t matter. It was a room similar to the one in which they had been ambushed. Dirty walls and junky furniture; dust swirled in the air. Anders or the other man coughed, he couldn’t distinguish between them, and Muldor questioned his sanity. The reality of their situation was difficult to fathom.

  Men were talking outside. Their kidnappers, their executioners had outsmarted him. They’d done it with ease. What a fool he had been. Someone had betrayed him. Either Becket or Styles though he couldn’t for the life of him believe the latter. The young man wasn’t ambitious enough. This maneuver smacked of careful planning, the covert execution of many people, things far beyond the common thoughts of Muldor’s runner.

  It had to be Becket and perhaps Lawson if in fact Becket had told him of Muldor’s plan to go after Maggur and the others, Crocker included. It did not appear he had any allies left among the Dock Masters.

  They had blindfolds on. Someone coughed again, perhaps Anders, perhaps his partner. What a pathetic trio they made. They were finished.

  “Muldor,” Anders said from behind his blindfold. They also had their mouths gagged, but the young thief seemed to have a knack for talking through such devices. “Can you hear me?”

  “I can. Are you injured?”

  “Nah. Tied tight, though. What the hell happened? Thought you had this all worked out.”

  “I am wondering the same. There is little time for abasement. We are in a predicament.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I was hoping your particular expertise would shed some light on the solution.”

  Anders grunted. Muldor could imagine him thinking hard. The young thief shuffled in his chair. The noise was miniscule, but outside the men muttered, and then the door opened. Muldor went still.

  The Guild Master could feel someone peering into the room. They were no doubt close to the wharf area, for the cool air of the sea refreshed his lungs. Nobody entered, and then the door slammed again.

  Silence reigned. Someone coughed. It wasn’t Anders but his associate. Muldor wondered if she were injured or mute. A few moments later there was the scrape of a chair and a grunt of frustration.

  Muldor heard a sawing noise, rough and relentless. Anders grunted in effort and perhaps he had found some way to get out his bonds. Several moments later Anders gasped, straining. Outside the men laughed. Muldor and his companions held their breath. Anders didn’t stop. If they were discovered, it was over anyway.

  A popping snap was heard, and a grunt of satisfaction from Anders made Muldor suck a breath in. Hope arrived. It was premature because a moment later, the door busted in and shouts of men sent a trill of fear through his heart. Muldor heard Anders and his partner thief yell in anger, and then a loud crash sounded as someone threw a heavy object through the air, and it landed on flesh.

  Muldor scraped his chair forward on two feet, but the motion was awkward and tedious. All he could do was shuffle forward a few inches before someone smashed into him, and they fell backwards. Muldor went with the momentum, smelled a strong dose of the sweat of the day on the man’s body, and they landed hard, smashing apart his chair.

  Someone moaned in pain, a sickening mewling like a skewered cat. Muldor found that his chest was bruised, but one hand was free. The handle of the chair smashed away. He rolled the man off of him, and the guard didn’t fight him. He pulled his blindfold away and saw chaos in the room.

  Anders knelt down, holding his stomach. Another guard grappled with the other thief while the second was rising from Muldor’s position. Muldor leapt forward and hit the man in the back of the knees, stunning him. One arm was still attached to what was left of the chair and so was much of his torso, but Muldor used the right arm to fling forward the piece of chair handle. He struck the man in the back of the head, and he crumpled.

  The second thief had no weapon, and the guard had a sword. The guard struck an overhead cut, and the thief threw his hands up and got half his forearm cut off for the effort. Blood sprayed everywhere. Muldor reached them and tackled the guard to the ground. He dropped the sword a second later, and they wrestled each other.

  There was nothing but leather armor, elbows and flashes of the dusty ground. Someone yelled, and then Muldor was twisted away by others. People were all around them, yelling and fighting. They were dock workers. People were shouting his name, questioning everyone in the room.

  “It’s Master Muldor! What is this?”

  “Who are you people?”

  “Muldor… what happened?”

  The questions came, but Muldor’s mind was dull, along with his battered body. Anders was moaning, holding his guts in while the other thief groaned in agony from the horrific wound deep through the bone of her forearm. Muldor was being extracted from the remnants of the smashed chair, but there was too much going on to make any sense of it.

  Someone shook his shoulder. Muldor waved them off. He needed some space, some time to think to get his head straight but they were insistent. He looked up and almost choked. It was Samuel Becket.

  * * * * *

  Water dripped somewhere nearby. It was a relentless dirge too subtle to bother a conversation, but in total silence the maddening sound tickled the sensibilities and grated nerves.

  Cubbins found the dank, stuffy rooms an odd place for a meeting between men of the law, but the situation being what it was, he had no room for complaining. He passed by a few of his men on his way deeper into the sewers of Sea Haven and patted Jenkins on the shoulder. The young officer looked nervous.

  “Stay sharp,” Cubbins said.

  “Yes, sir. We have more men coming from the City Watch.”

  “Have them cover the entrance near Maple Avenue.”

  “Will do, captain,” Jenkins said.

  The smell was sickening. He might have stepped in something unmentionable in the previous tunnel, but there was nowhere to clean it off. Everything was just as dirty and wet as everything else in this stink. Torches lined the concrete walls here and there, placed earlier in the day, and the light was murky, the walkway wet and nasty.

  The others waited for him in the next chamber. Mold and slime covered the walls while pipes ran down the floor and up into the ceiling in places. The water, nasty filth that it was, came up to his ankles.

  The three cousins, Yoseph, Beni and Karl had Giorgio propped up against the far wall atop a table. That poor man was tied hand to foot, a very tight. A professional job like a sailor would do with non-slip knots and good rigging around the pipes at the bottom and top of the table.

  Cubbins nodded to Unri and then pointed to Giorgio. “I don’t see how that’s necessary.”

  Unri looked contrite but stolid. “Sorry for treatment of man but must be. You will see, but we hold him tight.”

  “No escape is possible. There’s enough of my men.”

  “No, is not because of potential escape we truss this man up as such. It is for our own safety to protect ourselves against his power. Is very dangerous.”

  The unconscious man didn’t look dangerous but rather pitiful. Bruised, battered, tortured and immune to anything save pain.

  “Whatever you say,” Cubbins said. “But don’t hurt him unless it can’t be avoided.”

  Unri put his hand on his shoulder. “Friend Cubbins. This man is lost. W
e can no further harm him. His soul’s destiny lies with creator.”

  Cubbins held his frown. He didn’t buy into all that hokum of the afterlife, but each to his own. “Go ahead and get it done.”

  Unri’s brother Yuri stepped forward and examined every single inch from the bottom of Giorgio’s dirty feet to the top of his scruffy head. His hair was short and unwashed, his clothes tattered from their undressing, and he now wore a mere tunic and undershorts. Yuri said something in their gruff language, and one of the cousins brought forth a jar.

  It was filled with a thick, gummy substance and the man dolled it out with his fingers on various places on Giorgio’s body, indicated by Yuri.

  One of the other officers with Cubbins leaned over to him and was about to give him a look of wonderment, but Cubbins made a motion with his hand as if to say, “shut up.” The man clamped his mouth shut and frowned. It was indeed strange, but Cubbins didn’t need to hear it from someone else.

  Two cousins rolled Giorgio over to his side to get at his back the best they could, and continued to cover spots on his frame with the grease. It took some time. When they finished with the gunk, they added some kind of yellowish powder to the mix, spreading it on the spots of grease where it clung.

  Cubbins’ curiosity overrode his trepidation. Several more officers crowded in, peering at the ritual. Their arms crossed, heads shaking, eyes squinting.

  Yuri took out some flint and steel from his pouch and nodded to the cousins while Unri looked on. The cousins each grabbed a long metal pole, weighted on one end with the other sharpened to a point. They placed these points on the various spots on the prisoner’s body.

  Then Yuri lit the powder. Fire bloomed. The contact with the poles and the burning powder made sparks fly. Unri said some kind of shout of encouragement, and pointed. They nodded and kept working at their odd little ritual.

  The air smelled worse than before, and the officers covered their mouths with rags. Cubbins felt like he had been smelling filth for months. Blood in the precinct, offal in the hallways, that gunk they found in the graveyard, and now this. Death had a distinct stink to it.

  Giorgio convulsed every time they touched him with the poles after the powder was lit, but he remained unconscious. An acrid, pungent smoke drifted above his body in lazy clumps, rising to the ceiling, and spreading about the room.

  Cubbins and the other police coughed. They backed away from the growing cloud of noxious fumes, but there was no escape in the narrow confines of the sewer. The situation became stranger and stranger. Giorgio’s eyes snapped open but seemed to have no cognizant awareness.

  The trapped man’s body shivered as if ice cold water had been poured on him. His arms and legs tugged hard at the bonds, but they were fastened tight. The rope strained and cut into his wrists. His ankles and joints popped and groaned in protest.

  An officer gasped in sympathy, and Cubbins agreed with him. The process was inhuman. Yuri finished, and they erected a tent-like contraption above Giorgio’s table. The four of them each took a corner of the gossamer cloth. The men planted their poles on the ground, the other end tipped on the edge of the tent and stood ready, ramrod stiff and sturdy.

  Unri spoke in sonorous tones. The language was different from their normal tongue, some ancient language never spoken by man except in strange circumstances. Cubbins knew this somehow and felt the reverent power emanating from his words. The swarthy man’s voice was deep, and he spoke with practice confidence.

  It almost hurt Cubbins’ ears to hear it. It was a harsh, abrasive language with short, inflective words, like a cat hacking up something. Unri looked like a different person. His face flushed with rage and self-righteous vigor.

  Cubbins’ men stepped back, and he grew apprehensive but was somehow drawn to the spectacle. This was sorcery, dark, wicked sorcery. There was much more to these men than they had said. Trust of them began to evaporate.

  Yuri pulled out a bottle from his bottomless pouch and handed it to his older brother. Unri unstoppered it with a pop and dashed a reddish liquid on Giorgio’s writhing form. Giorgio moaned, almost sounding awake, and it was the first sign of consciousness they had seen from him that day. However, struggling was futile.

  Whatever these men were doing they had done many times before. Giorgio’s skin blistered and smoked where the reddish liquid struck. The yellow powder burns turned darker, giving off a retched stink. His mouth opened, and he gibbered the incoherent mumblings of the mad, though in truth it sounded much like the language that Unri continued to chant.

  But it didn’t sound human. It sounded as if someone, something were using his voice. His body was like a puppet, gurgling up rancid words and malicious power. Unri kept splashing the wine-like fluid, and the smoking skin cooled, simmering off its stink and whatever foul humors within.

  The spots Yuri and the cousins had burned with the yellow powder disappeared. Some of the officers gasped, and Cubbins shooed them away. Superstitious fools that they were, they offered prayers to whatever god they followed. Giorgio moaned again, but his body started relaxing.

  “Never seen anything like this, captain,” Bigus said beside him. Cubbins shushed him.

  “You should be up top watching the northern street entrance,” Cubbins said. “That’s where I assigned you.”

  “I know, captain. But I got Jenkins to cover. I had to see this. Too much goin’ on to miss, sir. Sorry.”

  “Then shut up and watch.”

  Bigus nodded, and they watched. The energy in the room lowered as the specific phase of the ritual had ended, and the officers thought it was finished for good, but Cubbins knew better. This was a mere preparatory measure only.

  Giorgio’s inert form lay still on the table top. Breath came in short gasps. A moment of silence from the expectant group made the dripping water all the louder and more distant. The trapped man made a disgusting sound deep in his throat, like a dog choking on a bone, and then he convulsed, gnashing his teeth, and tearing at his bonds, but they wouldn’t give. A few of the officers stepped forward, but Cubbins held out his hand.

  “Hold it, people. Let them finish.”

  Giorgio gagged and stomped his bare feet on the table. Spittle flew from his lips, and he tossed as hard as his strapped body would allow.

  Unri started his chant once more in the same harsh tongue, and the other four men joined in this time. Unri put his bottle down and pulled out a metal object with a long handle. Something stamped on the end of it like a branding tool.

  Giorgio’s eyes snapped open and looked around, altogether insane and inhuman. He looked upon the branding tool with absolute horror. A yell erupted from his throat, but it was not his own voice. It was an animalistic growl that rattled Cubbins’ nerves and made him wince.

  The other officers backed away, hitting their boots against the outer wall, and Cubbins couldn’t help but join them. He shared a look with Bigus, and there was real fear in the older sergeant’s eyes. Cubbins slipped on the murky surface of the floor and had to catch himself by throwing up a hand and gripping the wall. His hand came away filthy, covered with slim.

  It wasn’t possible. The man before them was not human, couldn’t be. The skin, so pale it was almost translucent. It stretched and bended in places it shouldn’t have been able to, and his bones popped. The skin grew red hot. Sweat dripped down as if he were dipped in the drink, and it drained down to the table to hiss and steam off.

  His skin smoked. Fumes rose and mixed with the fetid odor of the previous work of the night. Cubbins and the others coughed as it reached them, and now curiosity was no longer enough to keep them interested in the proceedings. Some of them bolted for the exit.

  Unri slammed the branding tool onto Giorgio’s neck. His body went rigid, and he screamed the scream of the damned, a sound so frightening Cubbins would never forget it as long as his days continued. Giorgio’s mouth opened much too wide to be possible, and he vomited forth some kind of eldritch substance.

  Cubbins stare
d, his jaw tight, eyes hard. A blob sprang out of Giorgio’s mouth, like a giant ball of phlegm. It hovered above his body, trailing a small tail behind it. More issued forth, and Giorgio’s body wracked with a major convulsion. He snapped his legs straight so hard a knee joint popped out of the socket.

  The cousins and Yuri steadied themselves as the five of them stopped chanting. They held the tent up high over the drifting form of whatever it was that came pouring from Giorgio’s mouth. It pulled itself out, dripping tendrils, and when it extracted its full body length, Giorgio went limp on his back.

  The glob of pink jelly floated up and stopped, trapped at the top of the tent like a curtain.

  What is it you want of me? The voice came from the glob. It was turning into a more humanoid form by the second. Bigus almost jumped out of his boots, and Cubbins heard Jenkins shout. Cubbins had forgotten about the young sergeant and told him to keep his mouth shut or leave.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  The five foreigners looked unconcerned. Unri stepped back a single pace and said something to his men in their language. They all nodded and tightened their grips. Unri faced the apparition, which now had the vestiges of arms, legs, and even the outline of a face, a cruel but concerned visage that struck Cubbins as odd.

  “Tell us of your master,” Unri said. “Where does he lie?”

  Why do you hold me here? I am undone.

  “Tell us what we wish to know, and we will free you.”

  The apparition tried to float up and away, but the material kept it locked down. The ghost shivered, like a rock skipping across water.

  I enjoyed my host. Why have you taken him from me? Woe to me, I am undone.

  “Your reticence shall be punished. You will tell us where your master resides. Speak or suffer.”

  Unri made a motion to his men, and they lowered the enclosure. The strange gossamer curtain pressed down upon the specter’s form, and it wailed in agony.

  Why do you do this?! I have done nothing. I am nothing but a poor, miserable spirit. I have done nothing to you! Release me. I beg of you! Release me!