“Yeah,” Pyle said. “But what about us?”
“Don’t worry.” Came Sinna’s high pitched reply. “We’ll have him captured in less than half an hour.”
She pointed towards a puddle of blood in one corner.
She’s right, he rested there.
Pyle bent down and inspected the blood. It hadn’t even had time to clot.
And he can’t afford to rest.
Arturus heard the boom of the shotgun in the distance.
Closer still.
They were moving much faster than he was now. He could barely walk, and his right foot had swollen so badly that the laces which held his boot together had spread open. He could see the grey wrapping he’d placed around that foot through the torn boot.
He forced himself forward into the river room, his unlit woodstone torch held up as a club. No enemies.
He considered drifting away with the current. How long could he just float? How long until he passed through a room full of dyitzu and they doused him with flames, or leapt into the waters and tore him to pieces. Or until he came to a waterfall and fell to his death?
The Infidel Friend had done such a thing, drifting away, counting on luck to save him.
But this was the Carrion.
There would be no Ellen to pull him out. The current would just pull him deeper in.
“Galen!” he shouted. “Galen.”
His voice echoed in the river chamber.
He tossed his firestone brick across the river and watched it clatter in a series of sparks on the far bank. He slung satchel, torch and all, after it before he dropped into the water. The current was swift enough to make him fight to get to the other side. He made it just in time to avoid being swept into the next room. Water poured off of his clothes and spilled out of his open shoes as he made his way out of the river.
He tried to stand, but only managed to get up to his hands and knees. He was out of breath.
I need to keep going.
He was so tired.
I have to go now, or they’ll find me here.
His heart was beating too quickly, and his vision was shaky. Blood started coming down from the cloth at his forehead, dripping into his right eye.
Somehow he managed to stand, and then he limped across the chamber. The hobble made Arturus feel like he was a corpse.
He picked back up his brick and torch, pressing on as fast as he could. He was leaving a trail of water behind him, but what did it matter? They had a hound. They could follow him even if he left no trail at all.
“Check the far side of the river,” Sinna ordered. “Quickly. That was him shouting.”
“It’s getting time to drug the hound again,” Hale reported.
“What’s he going to do, bite you?” Sinna asked. “Get him across.”
Pyle waited with her on the near bank as the soldiers forded the waters.
She’s probably afraid to get her robe wet.
“What are you staring at, Lamb?” Sinna challenged him.
“You. If your soldiers all die, I might rape you.”
She giggled, girlishly. “You’d have to grow a dick first.”
“Maab will let me have it back soon enough. In the mean time I might settle for a fist,” he said.
“I’d break your hand.” Sinna’s smile was malicious. “Then where would you be? You think Maab would ever let you grow your cock back after you had tried to desecrate a priestess?”
He glared at her. He imagined feeding her to the hound. It would chomp at her wildly with its toothless maw, trying to eat her. It wouldn’t be able to cut her, of course. Its saliva would tangle her hair. The strength of its jaws would break her nose. She would scream in her high pitched voice. He could almost hear it. And then he would feel bad for the hellhound. They’d been castrated by Maab together. They owed each other something. He’d cut bits of her flesh off with his dagger, piece by piece, and feed them to the hound. That’s the least of the revenge that poor beast deserved after all it had been through.
He realized he was still staring at her. She hadn’t flinched.
“How much did Maab leave you with?” Sinna asked him. “An inch, a quarter?”
He turned away suddenly.
“Don’t be worried.” She moved closer, reaching one of her slender hands behind his head and touching his cheek in an intensely sexual way with the other. “If we return Maab’s property to her she’ll be happy. And I’ll plead with her to give you your dick back.”
She drew him in, turning his head back towards her, and kissed him. She sucked his top lip into her tiny mouth, biting him hard enough that it blocked out the dull throbbing from the bruise Arturus had left on his forehead.
“And then,” she whispered softly in his ear, her tongue flicking his earlobe, “when you’re a man again—then I want yours to be the first cock I break.”
Pyle looked away, his whole body shaking.
Hale was saying something, shouting at them from across the river.
“What?” Sinna asked, though Pyle could tell that her eyes had not left him.
“He’s got to be exhausted now. He should have used the river to try and break the hound’s scent, but he didn’t. He just ran straight through.”
Sinna disrobed and wrapped up her Beretta in the cloak. She tossed the bundle over to Hale and jumped, nearly nude, into the water.
Pyle’s mouth filled with saliva at the sight of her pre-adolescent body. He felt blood rushing to what was left of his organ.
He absently scratched at his groin.
I’ll kill her.
He held his gun and ammo belt over his head and jumped in, surprised by the swift current. With one hand upraised to keep his weapon and bullets dry, he kicked his way across.
I may just fucking shoot her. Maybe if I kill them all Maab won’t know.
But she’d know, and he knew better. He just had to bide his time.
Wait. If I was the first man Sinna broke, I’d be her lieutenant. Did that little cunt just ask me out?
He emerged on the far side. Sinna was putting her robe back on. The hound was struggling mightily against the soldiers. They were having trouble keeping it still and were leaning back against its pull. The thing wanted to continue the hunt.
Sinna smiled at him.
“I should drug it,” Hale said.
“We’re almost there,” Sinna chided. “Just don’t let your soldiers free him, is all.”
They jogged again through the wilds. Water was dripping off of their bodies, but Pyle was heartened. He could see in the dim light the river water that Turi had left behind him as well. It didn’t last long, but when the water was gone, he noticed something else. The hound did too.
“He’s bleeding very badly,” Pyle said with satisfaction. “He doesn’t have much time left.”
“He’s only just ahead of us.” Hale’s eyes were wide with adrenaline. “I can feel him.”
At least I’ll get to tear this one to pieces.
They followed the hound. The tunnel dimmed, almost getting too dark to see.
“If only we had torches,” a soldier muttered.
“It’s okay, he’ll dare not light his. If he did, we’d see him,” Sinna answered.
Bitch’s ears are as sharp as the hound’s.
He struggled to keep up with the pace of the hunters, but he wasn’t about to let little Sinna outpace him. The priestess was running along quickly beside them, barely even breathing hard.
“Here!” Hale said. “He took a left here. He’s not going straight anymore. He’s hopeless.”
They trotted down the dark corridor. The stone was black in some places, a deep purple in others. There was enough ambient light to see but only for a few yards. Odd symbols, looking like moons and stars, had been carved into the sides of the corridor.
Pyle saw a shadow ahead.
There he is!
But it was just rock. The passage dead ended. There was a symbol carved into the stone. To make it out, Py
le had to get within a few inches of it. It was star made out of two triangles.
A Star of David.
“Dead end,” Hale said.
“He may have run here deliberately,” Sinna said. “Check. Maybe there’s a passage.”
The hound was confused. The thing was letting out a low whine, and its ears were flicking back and forth. After a moment, it dropped low to its belly.
The hell?
“What’s that sound?” Sinna asked.
Everyone quieted, except for the hellhound, which kept whining. Sinna kicked it, and the thing finally shut up.
Have I heard that before?
“Wind chimes?” one soldier asked.
“It sounds like pins dropping,” Hale said, bemused.
It did sound like pins dropping. Thousands and thousands of pins.
Oh, God in heaven. Silverlegs.
“Torchlight coming!” Hale shouted. “Look!”
But it was more than torchlight. Millions of little reflections, dancing like frenzied fireflies, filled the corridor’s distant entrance.
Nowhere to run.
Sinna’s face looked terrified. For the first time in Pyle’s memory, she looked like a little girl. She backed up against the wall as her men stared ahead in confusion. She looked towards Pyle and clutched at his swollen hand. Her fingers brushed one of his broken nails, but he didn’t care. He bent down to listen to her.
“I’m afraid of death,” she whispered into his ear.
He could hardly hear her over the sound of the spiders. “Of course.”
“Will you hold me as we die?”
She seemed so vulnerable. So much like his sister, and so unlike Maab. He was suddenly aware that she truly was just a little girl. “Of course, my lady.”
The silverlegs came pouring down the passage, covering the floor from wall to wall.
They’re swarming. How can there be so many?
Hale and his men fired their shotguns at them.
Fools.
Pyle clung to Sinna and waited. She burrowed her head into his chest. He sat down slowly, leaning back against the wall and sliding down it. She climbed into his lap, curling up into a fetal position. She rested her head on his shoulder, and he rocked her back and forth.
“Sing to me,” she said. “Won’t you?”
He nodded.
The booms of the soldiers’ shotguns became more rapid. One soldier was shouting for ammo, another was crying out in pain. A third made a break for it, charging headlong into the spiders, but the silverlegs were too thick. He toppled over after a few strides, and the spiders covered him over. The hound was howling now, a terrible, terrified high pitched howl.
“Summertime,” Pyle began, “and the livin’ is easy.”
The hound’s howl turned into a short whine. The sounds of the shotguns were replaced by the screams of the soldiers.
“Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high.”
He felt the first sensations on his boots. It seemed more like tingling, really, than anything else. That tingling began spreading up his legs. The successive spiders began ripping through his clothing, and then he felt them digging in into his skin as they marched across his shin bone. He was being flayed, slowly. He clutched the weeping Sinna to his chest and tried to cover her with his body.
“Your daddy’s rich, and your mother’s good lookin’.”
The tingling became a burning as the tide of spiders rose. He saw their little spurs catch on the now exposed flesh of his legs with each of their eight legged steps. His skin would rise just a little bit until it ripped off of the spur. The shrieking of the still dying Carrion soldiers let him know that his own death would not come quickly. He tried to fight the spiders, to keep them off of the girl, but the swatting at them did no good. The millions of little wounds on his body screamed in pain. The lacerations stayed silent only so long as he kept perfectly still.
“So hush now little baby—”
They were creeping across his chest and over his neck. A source of light was coming towards him, sending the silverlegs into a panic. He covered his eyes with his arm.
He felt the flesh melting off of him. One of the spiders was crawling across his ear, the same ear that Sinna had whispered into. He imagined the silverlegs swarming all over the girl, imagined their tiny legs as they tore the flesh from her bones, imagined that she must be feeling the same pain that he was feeling now. He reached up with his free arm and covered her eyes. The spider on his earlobe entered his ear.
No!
He could feel it crawling up towards his brain. The blood in his ear was drowning it, he knew. He could feel its death throes against his eardrum. Pyle had never imagined such pain was possible. The blow from the torch, the moment when he burned off his own face. . . castration—they were nothing. Desperately he cupped a hand over Sinna’s exposed ear. The motion left his eyes unprotected, but he couldn’t bear the thought of her experiencing such agony. He pushed her head down to his chest, keeping her other ear safe against his own body. Something was coming. He looked up with his eyes, because he could no longer move his head. He saw torchlight approaching, illuminating the corridor as it came, scattering the spiders before it. One spider crawled down the bridge of his nose and across his cheek, a giant silhouette against the coming storm of swirling lights.
He’s been driving them towards us.
The limping form of Turi approached. The boy bent down waving his torch over one of the still writhing soldiers, clearing most of the spiders away. He stood again, this time armed with a pistol he’d taken. He brushed the spiders off of it with the butt of his torch.
One silverleg made it onto Pyle’s eyelid. He felt the little legs pierce through the skin and catch on the surface of his eyeball. He blinked suddenly and felt the razor legs cutting through his eyelid. He opened his mouth to cry out, letting spiders in there as well.
“Mercy,” he shouted, and tried to say more, but all he could manage was “her.”
He couldn’t see anymore. He wasn’t sure if he could even move. He heard a single report, and the writhing form of the girl in his arms suddenly stopped moving.
There was no second shot.
Graham walked across the empty village. The smell Harpsborough had achieved during its brief period of prosperity still clung to it. The stench was perhaps even worse now, as there was no smoke from the still or Kylie’s Kiln to mask it. Alice was here, leaning against her hut, eyes opened and unblinking. She looked almost as if she had the stilling. She twitched though, and scratched her nose, so he felt it was safe to leave her be. Martin was here as well, leaning against the Fore next to Benson and muttering to himself. Graham could hear the snores of some off duty hunters, and there were a few Citizens about.
Other than that, the village was deserted. With the spider food exhausted this morning, everyone had suddenly returned to the wilds. Graham paused at the Fore’s door blanket. He felt like he could run through there without permission.
With Aaron gone, I belong in the Fore.
He pushed against the blanket but then lost his courage. He popped his hand against it a few times. Chelsea answered, pushing the tapestry aside. Her hair had fallen in front of her face, but Graham could still see the dark circles beneath her eyes. She was mourning somebody. Probably Aaron.
“I’m here to see Mike,” Graham said.
Chelsea nodded and motioned him in.
“John,” she called. “John, go and tell Michael that Graham’s here to see him.”
He entered the Fore, and Chelsea let the door blanket fall behind him. John’s sandals clapped loudly against the Fore’s stairs as he ran up them. Chelsea didn’t bother him with any questions, returning instead to a card game she was playing on the Fore’s waiting room table.
Solitaire.
John’s sandal claps returned as he came back down the stairs. “He says to head on up. He’s in his chair.”
Even most of the Citizens are in their rooms. Harpsborough feels so
empty.
Graham marched up to the third story and entered the parlor room. Michael was sitting in his chair, looking at the chess set.
“I think I’ve got him,” Michael said.
“Who, sir?”
“Mancini. You see, he’s attacking me here, but after I move my knight here. . .”
Graham looked blankly at the pieces. He wasn’t sure how they moved, but it did seem like Mancini had a few more of them than Mike did.
“Sir, I’ve more news on Molly.”
The First Citizen nodded and leaned back away from the chess pieces.
“I was thinking about that,” he said. “We might want to take her into the church, have a mock trial or something. Scare her out of this. She’s liable to kill herself.”
“She may have found something, sir. She may have found an alternate way to get behind the Golden Door.”
“Impossible.”
“Hell’s a big place, sir.”
“I had twelve hunters with me when we went up and down the surroundings of the Golden Door. There’s no way in.”
“She’s bought some torches, sir, and she’s gone pretty deep. She’s found some tunnels that lead up and is exploring them. I think they go to the great bridge.”
Michael’s hand came up and covered his mouth. “She’s going that far out?”
“Yes, sir. That’s why I didn’t come back yesterday.”
Michael stood up and walked stiffly about the room. He stopped for a moment in front of the ancient mauser rifle which hung on the wall. He ran his finger along it, removing some dust. “We’ll bring her in, definitely.” He stared at the dust on his finger. “I’m not too worried. It’s not like she’s likely to find the Infidel Friend, even if she did somehow find a way in. It’s been days since he was sent in there.”
“I wasn’t worried about Molly, sir.” Graham stepped forward, feeling the soft carpet beneath his boots.
The motion caught Mike’s attention, and he looked up from his dusty finger. “Oh?”
“This isn’t some common man you threw through the Golden Door, sir. This is an Infidel Friend. If there’s a way out, then he’s going to find it.”
Michael nodded, rubbing the dust off of his finger.
Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong) Page 42
