The Black Knight Chronicles (Book 4): Paint it Black

by John G. Hartness

  I ducked into the tent and blinked my eyes furiously against the smoke. I had cut the hole right into the area beside the serving line, so the space was crammed with beings of all shapes and sizes. Something big slammed into me and knocked me back a step, and I almost crashed to the floor.

  Greg caught me and kept me upright. “Now you won’t give me anymore crap about my night-vision goggles, will you?”

  “I sure as hell will. You look like the Steampunk Marshmallow Man. Which way to the kitchen?”

  He pointed off to the left, and I dove into the crowd, pushing and dodging my way across the tent. I vaulted the serving table and landed on a quivering goblin taking refuge from the stampede. I regained my footing and forged ahead into the kitchen. The “kitchen” was another, smaller tent butted up against the main serving tent. A lone goblin stood stirring a pot of stew and generally ignoring the fracas in the main tent.

  The goblin looked up at us as we barged into the kitchen and stepped back, holding the huge ladle up like a sword. The goblin was about four feet tall, with deep green skin, three fingers and a thumb on each hand, and double rows of pointed teeth. This particular goblin was spectacularly obese, almost bigger in circumference than it was tall. Rolls and rolls of green flesh hung down over its waist, and huge turkey-necks of flesh hung from its arms. I couldn’t really tell if it was male or female, and didn’t have any interest in asking.

  On a second table, a few feet behind the goblin, was a mound of human body parts, all cut apart and chopped into bite-sized chunks. I recognized a couple of thighs, a forearm, and what looked like it might have been a pair of buttocks but had now been reduced jiggly half-moons of flesh lying on the cutting board. The goblin grabbed a giant cleaver and brandished it at us, flashing all sixty-something of its teeth.

  “What do you want? You’re not here to eat, and if you think you’re going to steal my recipe, you’ve got another think coming!”

  “You must be the chef,” I said, stepping closer. “We’re looking for the most recent humans you kidnapped.”

  “And they’d better be unharmed, or you might end up in your own stew.” Greg stepped up beside me and glowered at the goblin.

  “You’d make a couple of good pots yourself, fatty.” The chef shot back, waving the cleaver at Greg. “Who do you think you are, coming in here making threats? I run a respectable business here. I don’t kidnap nobody!”

  “So people just randomly show up at your doorstep and say ‘Eat me!’” Greg said. I was getting confused by his attitude. I was always the “bad cop,” now he was stepping on my shtick. I gave him an elbow, but he ignored me.

  “I buy my meats from a legitimate vendor. Here’s the paperwork! They’re already dead when they get here, I swear it!” He reached over to another small table and grabbed a clipboard. He waved the clipboard in Greg’s face and got more and more agitated. “I run a respectable business here, and all I ever get is Sanguine giving me shit! That ain’t right! You eat people too, you just don’t bother to cook them first! Now get out of my kitchen!” He took a step forward and brandished the ladle at us. After a second he realized what he was doing and swapped the ladle for the cleaver.

  I stepped between Greg and the goblin before my partner got anything useful chopped off and said, “Look, chef. I apologize for the disturbance, but we really need to find these humans before they’re chopped up and delivered to you. So can I see that clipboard for a minute?” I took it from the chef and read the address written there. “Where is this? In the Market?”

  “Of course it’s in the Market, you moron! What are you, a mundane?” A light flickered in the chef’s eyes, and a slow grin spread across his face. “You are mundanes, aren’t you?” Greg and I nodded.

  “Hmmm, mundanes. And Sanguine, to boot.” The chef mused softly, scratching his chins. “Mundanes so far from home, lost in another dimension, wandering through the dangerous Goblin Market with no rights, no protection from any of the beasties that live there, whatever shall they do?”

  “That’s starting to sound like a threat, Chubby, and I don’t like threats.” I put my hand on the butt of my Glock to drive the point home, but the fat little goblin just kept grinning at me with those pointy teeth. “What are you smiling at, Lard-ass? There are two of us and only one of you, and in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a little bigger . . .” I yanked the emergency brake on that train of thought when I saw the goblin’s smile grow even wider. “There are a lot of your little buddies behind us, aren’t there?”

  The chef nodded, then bellowed, “Get them! But I want them alive!”

  I turned and saw half a dozen goblins massed behind us with various clubs, meat tenderizers, and cleavers at the ready. At the chef’s command, they all surged forward at once, threatening to overwhelm us with sheer numbers in the first few seconds of the fight. Fortunately, Greg is crazy strong, and I’m a lot faster than I look, so we were able to block and parry long enough to get ourselves set shoulder to shoulder and start to fight back. I drew my Glock and fired two rounds into the forehead of the nearest goblin, then stared as the rubbery green flesh just collapsed in on itself and quickly spit the bullet right back out. The goblin I’d shot shook his head, wiped a trickle of yellowish blood out of his eyes, and swung his club at my knees again.

  I jumped over his club and came down with my KA-BAR in hand. That put me a lot closer to the goblins than I wanted, but whatever magic they had going that made them bulletproof didn’t extend to a slashed throat. The first one dropped, and I turned to see if Greg needed my help. He had two goblins on him, both with clubs, and he was using one goblin to block the other one’s attacks. Obviously, these guys didn’t fight beside each other very often, because they kept getting in each other’s way. I turned back to face another oncoming beastie when I felt the air moving behind my head. A giant flash of light and pain exploded in my skull, and everything went black.

  Chapter 16

  I CAME TO WITH a raging headache, a throbbing ache in my wrists, needles of ice all up and down my arms, and what felt like hot pokers being jabbed into my shoulders. And then I realized the screaming pain in my left bicep. I shook my head to clear it, and a wave of nausea bubbled up from around my toes and swept over me like a tsunami. I choked down the bile and blinked my crusty eyes open. I was chained to a big X of timbers in another tent. My arms were supporting most of my weight, which explained the pain in my shoulders. I got my feet under me and tried to turn my head far enough to the side to see what was holding me. I turned to the right and saw exactly what I expected to see—sturdy rope with a thin silver chain twined around it, effectively sapping all my strength. I looked over to the left, expecting to see the same thing there, and had to fight the vomit down again when I got a good look at my arm.

  The little bastards had cut my arm off! Not really, my arm was still there, but the bicep muscle was gone! My arm had been butchered while it was still attached, and I could see all the way to the bone. And bone was about all that was left. My bicep, tricep, and forearm muscles had been stripped away as clean as you please, leaving white bone and a few fibrous ligaments holding the pieces together. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a reedy croak.

  “Good morning, sunshine. Glad you could join us.” Greg’s voice came from behind me. My head snapped up at the sound, and I returned to trying not to vomit.

  “Don’t puke,” he warned. “They’re not much for cleaning us up around here, unless we barf on a piece they want to cook.”

  “What the hell happened? What are they doing to us? They cut my friggin’ arm off!” I could hear my voice going up into squeaky thirteen-year-old-boy territory, but I couldn’t help it.

  Greg’s voice came back to me, and the calm in his voice helped me keep myself together. “Chill, bro. They didn’t cut your arm off, they just cut all the meat off your arm. There’s a difference.”

  “Yeah? You wanna point out exactly what that difference might be?”

  “You won’t li
ke it.”

  “I’m tied to a cross with silver chains and my arm’s been chopped up like sushi. I don’t think I like much right now.” I shook my head again and spat out a mouthful of bile.

  “The meat will grow back once we feed. If they’d just cut off the arm, it wouldn’t.” All of a sudden, I got it. All the pieces fit, from the chef yelling that he wanted us alive, to cutting out the muscle and not the ligaments.

  I took a ragged breath and hissed to Greg. “We totally just became the lunch special, didn’t we?”

  “And probably dinner, and I’d even bet we’re part of the Goblin Breakfast Burrito, too.”

  “Of course. Since our muscle tissue grows back, they don’t have to buy fresh, or even rotten meat anymore. They just cut us up carefully and we’re a renewable resource.”

  “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” I muttered.

  “Don’t forget regenerate. You gotta respect a goblin who runs a green kitchen, and keeps his overhead low to boot,” Greg added.

  “You got a plan yet?” I asked.

  “Not a clue. You?”

  “I just figured out that I was an entrée. Gimme a couple seconds.” Of course that’s when the grinning green lardball of a chef decided to waddle back in, grinning with all sixty-some teeth.

  “How are my prizes doing today? I brought you some din-din!” He held up a bucket, tipping it forward to show the blood within. He jammed a straw between my lips and held the bucket up to my face. I tried to turn my face to the side but he grabbed my chin with his fleshy mitt and held my face to the bucket. I smelled the rich metallic scent of the blood and started to drink. I could feel the strength flowing into me from the rich liquid until the silver sapped it right out of me, leaving me helpless again. I drank and drank, the lukewarm blood coursing down my throat and flowing into all my muscles, rebuilding the destroyed arms and regenerating the missing flesh. I finally let go of the straw and looked over at my arm, watching in horror as the muscles spun out of my arm like threads, twining around themselves, fastening to the tattered ligaments and bones, regrowing the skin, and then inflating it like a balloon.

  “We’ll regenerate faster if you bring us something better than pig’s blood, you know,” I said when I was able to tear my eyes away from the disgusting sight of my arm growing back.

  The chef was holding the bucket up to Greg’s face now, and my partner was trying to drink enough to grow back his right calf muscle. “I don’t think so, fangboy. I don’t want you getting back any more strength than my little silver bands can keep under control. Abdullah, get over here!” Chef yelled over his shoulder, and a lean goblin with a narrow face and slightly paler green skin darted into the tent. This new goblin wore a belt with a startling array of knives dangling from it, everything from tiny scalpels and art knives to a Bowie knife almost the length of his arm.

  Abdullah stopped in front of me and drew a pair of knives from his belt. In one hand he held a wicked short blade that curved back to a vicious-looking point. In the other he held what looked like a fillet knife that my dad used to clean fish with. He grinned at me, showing all his teeth at once and said, “This might hurt. A lot. But only if I do it right.” Then he sliced across my regrown bicep with the short knife, making two quick deep cuts across the arm. Once he’d slashed me to the bone at the elbow and inside my shoulder joint, he switched hands and used the thin knife to make long cuts lengthwise, sliding the blade right along the bone and sending a screech of blade on bone through my ears and every nerve ending in my body.

  I managed to keep from screaming until the fillet knife went in, and managed to remain conscious for almost the entire butchering procedure. I only passed out when he took the bicep muscle, held it up in front of my face and gave the raw edge of the muscle a long lick. His beady eyes fluttered shut, and he gave a contented sigh. That’s when I passed out.

  I came to sometime later, and looked over at my arm, at the ligament and bone it had become again. A few tendrils of muscle fiber tried valiantly to reattach to something. This time I felt a screaming pain in my right arm, too. Without looking, I knew I’d been filleted on both arms this time.

  “Greg, you there?” I whispered.

  “Barely,” his voice wasn’t a whisper, but it sounded like he was using every bit of strength just to speak.

  “What did they cut off you?”

  “They peeled both arms, cut off both calves and one quad.”

  “That’s the big muscle in the leg, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. They nicked an artery in my leg and had to stop. Apparently our circulatory systems still work, which came as a surprise to me and our captors.”

  “Why wouldn’t they work? We still survive on blood, right?”

  “Jimmy, you do know there’s a difference between drinking blood and a transfusion, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess it’s magic, then.”

  “Yep, we’re made by elves, just like the cookies.” Greg giggled a little, and I could tell he was goofier than normal because of the pain.

  “So . . .” I started. “About that plan for escape?”

  “I was hoping you had one.”

  “Nah man, that’s your gig. Remember? I get us into stupid situations, and you get us out of them. Well, I did my part. Now it’s time for you to step up. Use that overstuffed head of yours for something other than a hat rack and get us out of here. You think it up. I git ’r done.”

  “Sorry, pal. I got nothing.” Greg fell silent, and after a few seconds I could hear him snore lightly. I’ve never understood how in the hell a guy who doesn’t breathe can snore, but that falls into the category of “things I’ll worry about when I’m not in imminent danger of death.” I tested my bonds again, but I was tied tight. No matter what Abdullah cut off my forearm, he always left enough meat on my wrists to keep me bound. Then I had an idea. It sounded terrible even in my head, but I was out of options.

  I took a deep breath and shoved my arm forward as hard as I could, into the rope holding me upright. The bonds cut into my wrist at first, but enough blood had soaked into the rope to give it a little stretch, and after just a few seconds I’d shoved my forearm through the loops, which now hung loosely against the bloody bones of my lower arm. I had just a little extra room to maneuver, so I twisted, tugged, and generally tried to contort my way out of the bonds without giving the silver chain too much contact with my exposed bones and flesh. Everywhere it touched it burned like lemon juice on a paper cut—only a thousandfold. I pulled and twisted and yanked and stretched and cursed and wept for several long minutes before I realized I was getting nowhere and sagged against the rope, held fast by expert goblin knots and my own stupidity.

  I hung there, defeated, for what seemed like an eternity until the chef came back into the tent. He took a look at my forearm and said, “That must have hurt.”

  “Like a sonofabitch,” I replied. Chef motioned at the goblins behind him, and a pair of lackeys came forward. One held a stake over my heart with a mallet while the other untied my wrist and rebound me to the cross.

  Chef came over to me with the bucket I tried to resist, but a nod from the chef to the goblin with the stake set the little bastard to scraping along the bones in my arm with his knife. After about three seconds of that blinding agony I resigned myself to drinking, and reached out with my tongue for the straw. Chef grinned as he watched my flesh regenerate, then moved around behind me to feed Greg.

  I decided to give my stellar negotiating skills one more shot. “You know we weren’t alone when we came in here. Our friends will be here for us any minute now.”

  Chef laughed, a deep belly laugh that made me feel really bad about the prospects of my rescue. “You mean the lizard? The lizard is well known to us. He’s a decent purchase most days, but he doesn’t stay bought. You paid him in promises, I paid him in three bowls of stew and an all-you-can-eat voucher for his next visit. That little bastard was so stuffed when he left that his belly hung lower than his feet. He had to lift his
gut with his forelegs to walk out of my tent! So I don’t think you’ll be getting any rescue from him. No, Sanguine, you’re here until I decide that free vampire isn’t tasty any longer. And I love the taste of free.”

  “At least tell us where you were getting the humans from. We came here trying to rescue them. It’s not like we wanted to disrupt your business, we just wanted to—”

  “You just wanted to steal away the main ingredient for my stew!” Chef came around to face me again. “For that I should gnaw hunks out of your buttocks and make you sit in a salt bath! I should drain you dry and feed you vampire blood! I should peel every inch of skin from your body and paint you with acid! Then I should regenerate you and do it all over again! This is my livelihood, bloodfiend, and I deserve to make a living just like every other goblin in the Market!”

  “But these are people, Chef! Just like you and me! Well, maybe not just like you and me, but people regardless! And you’re killing them and chopping them up for soup stock. How is that right?”

  “I’m not killing anyone, moron. I buy my meat fresh, but not that fresh. This isn’t a slaughterhouse, you know.”

  “Coulda fooled me,” Greg said from behind me.

  “Shut up! What kind of monster do you take me for, Sanguine? I told you, I get the human meat in on a daily delivery from my supplier, and it’s dead when it gets here. Well, mostly dead, anyway.”

  “What do you mean, mostly dead?”