Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Stover

  The armsman’s face wiped itself blank, and the armsman’s foot paused in midstep.

  I rolled myself over and let the cool stone flags draw heat and twitching out of my face. “You and your fucking father . . .” I spat into the floor. “Let me tell you about my father.”

  I got arms and legs under me and heaved up to hands and knees. My head hung between my shoulders. I didn’t have the strength to lift it. “My father,” I said, “lived every fucking day of his life with a steel boot on his neck.”

  There it was, the strength I needed, trickling up my spine from my wounded guts. I could lift my head now. I met Tyrkilld’s stare with my own. His was white.

  Mine’s black.

  “My father . . . didn’t have armor of proof and the morning fucking star in his hand . . . didn’t have a god to heal him, didn’t have speed of lightning and power of thunder and the rest of your shit. Only a man. That’s all. That’s enough. My father died a little every fucking day just to—”

  I bit down on my breath.

  “—just to keep cocksuckers like you from getting comfortable with ruling the world.”

  Tyrkilld said, “Get him up.”

  The armsman crouched and reached down with his left arm, turning to keep his riot gun slung on the opposite side of his body. For all the good it did him.

  I reached up with my right to take the armsman’s left bicep in a grip that has been compared favorably to a bulldog’s jaws; my thumb dug into the nerve that ran up the inside of his arm along the radial artery. The armsman gasped and twisted instinctively to wrench his arm away from the unexpected pain, which pulled me off the floor and freed my left hand to stab a thumb into his right eye socket while my fingers crushed the armsman’s parotid gland in the process of hooking behind the angle of his jaw.

  Where the head goes the body will follow, and so when Tyrkilld roared, “Tashhonall,” and catapulted himself across the cell in a blurring blue-flamed shoulder-rush, instead of meeting my chest and crushing the life from me in a shower of splintering ribs and shredded lung and spray of blood from a burst heart, he met instead the armored spine of the armsman that I had wrenched between us to absorb the impact.

  The armsman never even had a chance to scream.

  Tyrkilld hit us like a bullet train on meth and crushed us both against the wall, and though I took it hard—my head blurred into fireworks and something gave in my guts—the poor bastard armsman from kidneys to asshole was just blood fucking pudding.

  I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t stand and could barely focus my eyes, but none of that mattered because while I was sliding half-crushed down the wall in a dogpile with Tyrkilld and the dying armsman, all I had to do was shift my grip from the armsman’s face to the trigger guard of the riot gun that was still slung bore-down over his shoulder, because Tyrkilld was yanking the armsman off me and winding up for a killing blow with a fist that smoked arcwelder flame, and because the muzzle of the riot gun was against Tyrkilld’s cuisse. It made a sound like bwank.

  The full charge of buckshot blasted through the armor into Tyrkilld’s quadriceps just above his knee.

  A spray of blood and meat and bone blew a fist-size hole out of the steel covering the Knight Householder’s hamstring and spun him and before he could hit the ground I had my other arm around the dying armsman’s chest, hugging him close while we fell together toward the floor; I managed to rack the riot gun’s slide and got off another round at one of the armsmen who was jumping to the side for a clear shot.

  A couple thumb-size holes burst open on opposite sides of the second armsman’s pelvis and sprayed jets of blood as he spun and slammed back against the wall and a ricochet screamed through the cell—slug round. The third armsman’s weapon roared and a buckshot charge slammed the dying first armsman against my chest and punched my right side but I had bigger problems right then because blowing most of his fucking leg off just wasn’t enough to slow down Tyrkilld, Knight Aeddharr.

  The bastard had ahold of the armsman again and even with one hand reaching into the mess of his leg to pinch off his femoral artery the other would be enough to pull the armsman clear one way or another which would be goodnightfuckingirene because killing fire still blazed around that fist. So I let Tyrkilld have the next round in the face. Or tried to.

  While I was still pulling the trigger, an impossibly powerful grip latched onto the end of the bore, and Tyrkilld took the whole charge right in the palm of his witchfire hand. Which did not explode in a shower of blood and bone. The blast did no more than knock his hand away. Spent buckshot clattered on stone.

  With the twitch of a what the hell shrug, I racked the slide and fired again.

  Tyrkilld got that undamaged hand of his back in the way . . . but its witchfire was gone. A hole appeared in its palm. And in Tyrkilld’s pauldron, beside his neck. And in the hip plate on the opposite side of his chest below his cuirass.

  Another slug shrieked around the cell for what seemed like a long time before it stopped in someone’s body with a wet-sounding smack. Tyrkilld’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Only a wheeze that bubbled with blood. He looked entirely astonished.

  I racked the slide again and leveled the bore on Tyrkilld’s left eye. “Drop your weapons.”

  I went on, louder, when I realized that I didn’t seem to be hearing anything except a long continuous clang. “By my count the next round’s buckshot again so fucking drop them or go home wearing his brains.”

  Maybe one of the armsmen—the one standing with weapon shouldered or the ashen-faced one who was sliding down the wall, riot gun rib-ready in hands that were starting to shake—maybe one of them could read lips. They put down their guns.

  “Kick them over here. Over by me. Now.”

  They looked at Tyrkilld, but his eyes had rolled up in his head. Then they could only look at each other. After a second, they complied.

  Carefully I shoved the spine-shattered armsman clear. Carefully I stood. My legs seemed to work. Hot syrup rolled down the back of my neck: scalp wound. I kept my elbow against the warm wet that spread down my right side, creeping toward my knee; no way to tell yet how bad I might be hurt.

  Right then I felt no pain.

  “Combat grades. Yeah, sure.” I hooked a toe under Tyrkilld’s shoulder and rolled him faceup. I lowered the riot gun’s bore to the Knight’s forehead. “School’s out till your next life, cocksucker.”

  But instead of pulling the trigger, I stood motionless, head cocked, and listened to the singing silence. A second ticked over. And another.

  “All right.” I tried a deep breath. It caught against a stab from my side. “You can come in now.”

  I nodded at the uninjured armsman. “You. Get the door.”

  The armsman looked blank. “Get the door for . . . ?”

  “For whoever’s out there listening.” Wires of pain ratcheted my ribs tighter over my barbwire guts. “Whoever’s not letting a shitload of armsmen bust in here and kill me right now. Fucking let him in, will you? If I pass out, I’ll fall on this sonofabitch’s corpse, you get me?”

  Light shifted in the cell, and a creak of metal on metal and the rise of dockside noise: the outer cell door had opened.

  “Freeman Shade.”

  This was a new voice: deeper, darker, low, and controlled, oiled and polished as ceremonial armor. “I am Markham, Lord—”

  “I don’t give a shit. You heard?”

  “I heard.”

  “I made my point?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re your fucking Laws of Engagement, and He’s your fucking god, and if I remember your stupid fucking rules, this means Khryl’s Own Motherfucking Self has just declared you cocksuckers had no business starting this shit up with me in the first place—”

  “Freeman Shade—”

  “And—and—” The cell darkened, and my tongue thickened, and I gritted my teeth and snarled, “And for shit’s sake, do something for that poor bastard armsman . . .”

&
nbsp; “We will.”

  “Fucking right . . . cocksuckers . . .” I said, and night rose up within my head and swallowed me whole.

  THE CAINE SHOW

  RETREAT FROM THE BOEDECKEN (partial)

  You are CAINE (featured Actor: Pfnl. Hari Michaelson)

  MASTER: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

  © 2187 Adventures Unlimited Inc. All rights reserved.

  “But shit, I mean—here we have priests of Lipke’s god of war and, and, uh, god of personal combat—” Sweat from Stalton’s plastered-flat hair trickles past the corner of his mouth, and his tongue unconsciously catches it. “Can’t we expect . . . y’know, a miracle or something? I mean, your gods don’t just let you guys die, do they?”

  I look back out at the gathering storm of Black Knives. If I weren’t so goddamn gutsick, I’d screw my cover and give the partners the benefit of my Monastic education: the Covenant of Pirichanthe and all the metaphysical Abbey school shit about the Will is a Function of the Body . . . but I just don’t have the strength.

  “The aid of the Lord of Valor is already here.” Marade stares into the badlands, and her mouth has gone hard. “I am His miracle.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “I feel better already.”

  Pretornio chimes in like he memorized this in seminary. “One Skill of Dal’Kannith is to bind men together so that many fight as one; another Skill can give us all the strength to endure the harshest battle: the courage to face suffering squarely, and to stare unblinking into death’s eye.”

  “Hear what they’re really saying?” My chuckle’s like a stir of rocks in a rusty can. “Same as me. We’re on our own.”

  “But if we can get a rider to the Khryllian outpost at North Rahndhing—” Marade begins, and I have to stop myself from smacking her one.

  “Don’t play dumb blonde, for shit’s sake.”

  “Caine.” Her voice goes severe. “The Order of Khryl has fought ogrilloi for generations. Protocols of prisoner exchange are well established—”

  “Fuck your protocols. The Order’s got nothing to offer these bastards, and you know it.”

  “Except their lives.”

  I make a face. “Good luck with that, huh?”

  Her voice rises. “No Soldier of Khryl is left in enemy hands. Ever. It is our Law.”

  “Your Law. My ass.”

  “Caine.” The severity becomes cold threat, and a hand that can crush bone to pudding seizes my shoulder. “The Law is sacred. I will not warn you again.”

  I shrug out of her grip. “I don’t much like being touched that way.”

  Her brow darkens but before she can open her mouth I plow on. “Tell them, Marade. You know this shit. You have to. Tell them what happens to captives of Black Knives. Tell them how many have escaped. How many have been ransomed. Ever. Come on. How many?”

  Her face goes bleak. She says nothing. Which is an honest answer.

  I turn to the others. “Boedecken bitches tell their cubs that if they don’t behave, Black Knives’ll get ’em. You follow? Black Knives are the grills that give other grills nightmares.”

  Wish I could tell them about Mick Barand. About the bootleg cube of his last Adventure that I smuggled home when I was twelve. Wish I could tell them what the Black Knives did to him.

  Wish I could tell them how Barand took it.

  One of the toughest bastards in Studio history. How they broke him. How they made him sob and scream and beg. How at the end, he could only shiver. How it took him a week to die.

  How he was dead two days, dead inside, before they finally killed him.

  “People talk about fates worse than death. Nobody talks about a fate worse than getting caught by Black Knives. Because there fucking isn’t any.”

  Do they get it? Can they get it?

  Marade finally gets up dick enough to step in. “There is truth in what he says,” she admits. “Black Knives are feared among all the clans of the Boedecken. Feared and hated. They have abandoned even the debased gods worshipped in the Waste. Our best understanding, based on testimony of the few Black Knives the Order has ever taken—and based on the . . . the . . . the remains . . . of their own prisoners that have been recovered—is that Black Knife society centers on sorcery of a . . . primitive . . . and grievously savage kind. Their aim of warfare is capture. Prisoners are . . . ritually tormented, that their anguish might attract demons; their pain—their lives—are exchanged for certain dark powers. The torments of the Black Knives are known to be . . . inventive.”

  Which pretty well sums it up, but that dry-ass clinical shit won’t move anybody. “Are you hearing her?” I ask generally. “Let me translate. We could rape their wives, kill their grandmothers, eat their babies—we could assbone their goddamn lapdogs—and nothing they’d do to us would be any worse than it’s gonna be anyway. Understand? This shit’s lip-deep and the tide’s coming in.”

  They look at each other, and they look at me, and after one long shared second of My, what a colorful turn of phrase he has, they go back to yapping among themselves like I never even opened my mouth, and I can’t make myself listen anymore.

  I stare down at the coarse-flecked grain of the parapet’s granite and wish I could snarl and howl and bite off a chunk. I’m past the scared. I’m past the depressed. Now I’m pissed.

  It’s not the dying. It’s not the torture. It’s that these cockknockers don’t give a shit what I say.

  No.

  It’s that there’s no goddamn reason they should give a shit. It’s that I haven’t done more. That I haven’t been more. That I have come all this way to get clipped as a fuck-my-bleeding-ass bit player.

  I deserve better than this. I have earned better than this.

  I should have been a star.

  >>scanning fwd>>

  Rababàl’s eyes shift and his lips twitch. “But—if some of us can escape, we can send help—even a full rescue; North Rahndhing is not so far away. It might be their best hope—”

  “What, they have to work for a living, so they don’t even deserve a warning?” I lean close enough to bite a hunk out of his jowls. A whisper: “You want to run, you better start right now, you fat fuck. Before I kill you myself.”

  I bet he tastes like pork.

  Stalton shoulders in between us. “That’s too close, Caine. Back off. Now.”

  I look up into his watery shit-colored eyes. “What if I don’t want to?”

  Marade’s gauntlet falls on my shoulder like a steel brick. “Caine, now is not the time—”

  “Now is the time. Now is the only time.” I smack her hand away and bare my teeth at the sudden heat this sparks in her eyes. “You pack of fucking pinheads—have any of you heard a word I’ve said? These are not animals. You can’t buy them off with some hunks of live goddamn bait. When they hit the camp, it won’t be some kind of mindless goddamn feeding frenzy. The first thing they’ll do with anybody they take is hurt them till they give you up. How long d’you think the porters will stand mute? Shit, why should they? After you’ve ditched them to be tortured to death?”

  “Then what do you suggest? This is the only way any of us has a chance!” Rababàl’s venomous glare would be more intimidating without the quiver in his jowls. “Unless you have a better idea?”

  And—

  Son of a bitch.

  It starts way down below my chest, below my stomach, down behind my navel. Somebody just now struck a match under my balls and set my guts on fire.

  “Yeah, funny thing.” The burn creeps north and ignites a smile. “I do have a better idea.”

  I look from one to the next: Rababàl pale and sweating, Marade glowering glamorously, Stalton going narrow-eyed, Tizarre swiping hair across her brow with a trembling hand, Pretornio twisting his prayer chain between his fingers, and I wonder: Can they see it?

  Can they see the flame in my head?

  Because all that lumpy grey mush—all the dying here before I ever have a real career, the sinking
dread and black despair and the whiny why-me-god-why-me—is melting, hissing, and just downright smoking the fuck away. Screw these shit-swallowing bit parts. I never expected to live this long anyway.

  But I am for motherfucking sure gonna make a star-quality exit.

  “Simple . . .” I talk slowly, carefully, so even Pretornio can understand. “Simple: we can’t outrun them. We can’t hide from them. We can’t buy them off. There’s only one way any of us will live through this.”

  Their empty stares wait for me to fill them with hope. Losers.

  Fuck hope.

  “One way: We have to convince them that hunting us is a bad idea.”

  Marade’s eyes are the first to spark. “You’re saying—”

  “I’m saying.” I let the flame kindle my voice. “I’m saying we have to hurt them.”

  And it’s working. I can see them warm it up, imagining—not in detail, not yet, just tasting the concept—and I can see heat swell inside them to melt that ice-numb dread. I turn from them and lean on the parapet, willing them to follow my gaze out into the badlands. Out at the dust and the Black Knives. Willing them to think with me: Why not? Let’s fuck ’em up.

  “You think—” Tizarre swallows the quaver in her voice and starts over. “You think we can do it?”

  A good lie trumps a bad truth. “I know we can.”

  “And this—” Rababàl’s platinum disk flickers faster and faster through his fingers. “This is our best chance?”

  “It’s our only chance. We have to step up and unleash severe fucking carnage. And we have to do it right.”

  “What do you mean by right?”

  I mean bend them in half and assbone them till their eyes bleed, but if I say so Marade’ll belt me and Pretornio will probably faint. “My way. No arguments. No committee. No goddamn debate.”

  “Why your way? Marade’s order has been fighting ogrilloi for centuries. Pretornio’s an experienced infantry commander—”

  “Hey, Marade—your people ever teach you what Black Knives do to thaumaturges?”

  She half-turns away and sneaks a glance at Tizarre. Then she looks down at her gauntlets. Muscle bulges along her jaw, and she’s got nothing to say.