“Because I want off this fucking cross.” More panting brings enough strength to go on. “Because you know it.”
One pace closer. The other bitches cluster instinctively at her shoulders. Those yellow eyes never flicker. Pagallo nezziokk. Burshraggikko ymik treyy, paggtakkuni. Ymik.
Talk now. Later I take you down, little rabbit. Later.
“I got your little rabbit for you right here, you stupid fucking cunt. You want to play games? Fine. I’ll die up here. Laughing.” I cough a wad of blood out of my throat and manage a spit that sprays it across her face. “Because I get to watch you die down there.”
She doesn’t flinch at my blood. She doesn’t even blink. The flarelight from Pretornio’s overload has gone stark white, crowning Crowmane with a halo of starfire. Pagallo nezziokk.
Talk now.
Out of the west come the low skirling whispers of storm winds spinning up over gravel-scoured badlands, rising into the hush where I can still hear the hiss and snap of the lightning-blue corona of flame and the high, thin sound of Pretornio’s voice, still chanting, still screaming her invocation to her god while His power burns away her breasts and her fingers and her cheeks and eyebrows and her scream loses words and spirals upon itself into the simple shriek of superheated gases that opens into an end-of-the-world thunderclap.
A whipcrack shock blasts out and over us and the camp and the vertical city and the badlands. Every bonfire and torch and hurricane lamp and even fucking candle flares into instant firestorms that claw for the stars—
And go out.
Darkness. Only a sliver of moon, and embers swirling toward the sky.
And near-to-silence, while night-blind Black Knives pick themselves up and try to discover just how badly hurt they all might be.
Shapes moving in the ink pool below my cross: Crowmane and her bitches. One of them murmurs, and a parapet stone casts sickly green light enough to let them find their feet.
Out in the camp, all that’s left of Pretornio is a smoldering ember on the end of half the impale-o-matic.
Three feet of vertical cigar.
Crowmane’s a little singed, but by the time she’s on her feet she’s pulled herself together and is already shouting orders down into the camp, getting torches relit, bonfires rekindled, burns tended.
To the west, the storm winds whisper themselves up to moans.
And I just hang here. And watch.
I watch Crowmane and Dugsacks and Cornholes and Thumbnipples and Turdcrotch and all the rest of them look around and check themselves out and chuckle at each other and convince themselves that they were never really scared in the first place. That the stupid Lipkan bitch-on-a-stick just didn’t have the juice, when the balls hit the butthole. I watch them get their party going again with an extra kicker because they had a little thrill but it’s all over now.
I watch Crowmane giving her orders, wielding her handful of Reality, striding back and forth on the parapet doing her Cinerama Tits-to-the-Wind Napoleon thing without even turning me one more glance.
I only watch. I don’t say a word.
Because I was just, y’know, making that shit up. About knowing what Pretornio was doing. It was just a story to get me off this cross long enough to get my teeth into Crowmane’s throat. That’s all it was. But that’s not all it is.
Here’s a nifty thing about my Monastic education—
It tells me, for one thing, that we have time right now for a history lesson, if I make it quick.
The Monasteries were founded by Jantho of Tyrnall at the end of what people here call the Deomachy-the God War. When gods go to war, it’s an ugly thing-that whole Armageddon Rag, Ragnarok’n’Roll shit. It’s never really over till everybody’s dead. That’s what got Jantho Ironhand’s brother Jereth up in arms; he decided to make the God War as ugly for the gods as it was for the poor bastards who worshipped them, which brought the Deomachy to a relatively swift and bloody end. Bloody on all sides. Though Jereth didn’t survive the war, he is reputed, before his death, to have kicked substantial deific butt.
His epithet is “the Godslaughterer.”
The Deomachy is why Our Founder, Jantho Ironhand, was of the considered opinion that the greatest threat to humanity’s survival on Home was our unfortunate tendency to murder people for bowing down to the wrong gods, and the gods’ unfortunate tendency to take advantage of our unfortunate tendencies, to play power games just because they can.
The whole murdering-people-because-we-like-their-land-and murdering them as an oh-well-whatthe-hell side effect of making money and murdering them because, y’know, it’s the kind of fun you just can’t get anywhere else-those were all side issues for ol’ Jantho, so the Monasteries didn’t start worrying about any of that shit till later on. Of course, most religions get into those businesses eventually, too.
So a lot of what the Monasteries do is keep an eye on the gods, and on their worshippers; a lot of what we in the Esoteric Service do is get ourselves bloody when some of these religions look to start running a little wild.
So we have to know the gods. All of them. And their religions-which, of course, often don’t have a whole lot to do with their particular gods, but let that go. We’re encouraged to be consecrated to some god’s worship and rise in their service, even their priesthood. So Monastics know a lot of, well, esoteric shit, if you’ll pardon the expression, about every major religion. Including some of the splinter sects that follow Dal’kannith Wargod.
This is why I’m sounding kind of fucking cheerful right now.
When I said I knew what Pretornio was up to, yeah, I was lying. . but, y’know, funny fucking thing. I was also telling the truth. Just took me a while to remember.
Probably that dying-on-a-cross thing screwing with my concentration a little.
And maybe it was because I was still thinking she was praying to Dal’Kannith. .
They were supposed to have died out or been suppressed-I can’t remember-something like two hundred years ago. That might be another reason. The trehv’Dhalleig Jzranapal, if my memory can be trusted, something like that anyway-the Silent Pure, more or less. Reluctant hostage-sacrifices from Chi’iannon to her son/husband/master Dal’Kannith, so the story runs-but really they were more like Home-grown Joans of Arc, strapping down their tits and stuffing fake codpieces and becoming, before the world, full Kannithan battle-priests. Often the most powerful Kannithan priests, in fact, so long as their secret was never exposed. And so long as they stayed virgins.
Surrendering virginity surrendered power. But surrendering virginity’s one thing. Rape is something else.
The Great Mother of the Lipkan pantheon rules the dead as well as the unborn-because, y’know, they’re the same, right? — and there is one tale in the Monastic Record, one fucking scary one, of an incident in Paquli’s Western Marches some three hundred and change years ago, in the Vale of the Dead, when one of the Silent Pure called upon Chi’iannon, instead of Dal’Kannith, while being murdered by sexual mutilation. Want to know why it’s called Vale of the Dead?
Wait—
Hear that?
Those low swirling storm wind moans from the west? I know you can hear them. You’re using my ears. Hear them ramping up toward the howls of a full gale? The question is, how long before those storm winds catch the attention of Crowmane and her bitches?
How long will it take them to notice that the wind they can feel is only a medium breeze? And it’s coming from the east. And then, sooner or later, eventually, maybe, one of them’s gonna remember that all there is west of the camp. .
Is the funerary platforms.
Those winds you’re hearing with my ears-I bet you guessed it already. That’s not wind. It’s howls of mindless insatiate hunger.
The voices of the dead.
There’s a storm coming out of the west all right, but it ain’t fuckin’ weather.
››scanning fwd››
“-your ass till it comes out your ears. Had your chance.” I’d
need the voice of a civil defense siren to be heard over the screams and howling from the horror show in the camp, but I’m pretty sure Crowmane catches my meaning anyway.
I laugh down into her smoking yellow stare. “I’m comfortable right here.” My instructor in Applied Legendry at Garthan Hold-Brother Clement, his name was-I remember him bloviating about the Vale of the Dead story: How minor incidents become exaggerated to preposterous degrees over only a few years. . Clearly impossible for a single individual, no matter how complete her attunement, to channel power sufficient for yammana yammana yammana bullshit. Pompous old fuck.
Wish he could be down in that camp right now.
The rest of the top bitches have joined the final defense perimeter, a thick wall of wide-eyed, flared-nostril, clenched-jaw fight-to-the-death determination between the howling chaos of the camp and the corral area where they’ve got all their cubs and juvies. Their last line of defense, with all the power they’ve got left. Dunno how much it is. Down in the camp, Black Knife bucks have given up on arrows and spears to use whatever heavy cleaving shit they can lay hands on to hack desperately at the arms and legs of writhing howling shadows that are all teeth and claws and hunger.
I think the bucks might be winning, might have a pretty good chance of containing the corpses and chopping them down. It’s hard to tell.
Goddamn shame so many of ’em we killed went down sliced in half by my bladewand, or with spines or legs crushed by Marade’s morningstar or arms severed or legs hamstrung by Pretornio’s porters. If we’d left their dead in better shape, this would have been a shitload more entertaining. But, y’know. .
It’s still not bad.
From the foot of my cross, Crowmane shows me her age-greyed tusks and sends a wave of dream-Real threat up to close over my head.
You think it can’t be worse for you. I tell you it can.
I show her my own teeth. Probably pretty fucking grey by this time, too. “Now you’re just flirting.”
She snarls up at me and squeezes her ball of Reality-
— and my days of death on the scaffold rewind within my head in a harlequin whirl of white-noon blaze and black-ice midnight until the dead cold carved-oak tree limbs that are nailed to the arms of the cross and connected still somehow to my shoulders and hips spasm and jerk-Hang on to your balls, kids. My arms and legs. .
She’s bringing them back.
Ligaments twist barbwire through acid-etched joints. Muscle fibers ripped in handfuls like hair from my head, steelclamped around the spikes—
I can feel the spikes again. .
Iron on naked bone scraping blossoms of screaming midnight off my arms-ankles—
Gahh.
Gahhhh.
Fucking pain center. . got that going again too. . betcha . . noticed, huh. .?
huhh—
the spasms and the twisting and the spurt of tears into the blood that trails from my lips—
tellya. . secret. .
secret to-
— gahhhhh—
The secret to great Acting.
Huh.
Huh fuck huh.
Here’s the, the, the secret to great Acting—
give the people what they want.
So I finally let it out: the howling and the sobbing and shit, sure, she’s seen me cry already and she’s heard me moan and sob but here it is: I finally let it all hang out.
All the the begging for mercy.
All the pleading that she just fucking end it I don’t care anymore just make it stop-All the weak sad shit I’ve been sucking back and swallowing ever since I first saw that buck stand up in the badlands.
I give it up. I give it all up.
“I’ll tell you I swear I’ll tell you anything-it’s the Cauldron of Chi’iannon, all right? I know about it! I know! Please-just get me down-! Just make it stop. .”
Fading now: a broken whisper.
Broken like me.
“. . just get me down. I’ll tell you everything. . please. .”
And because she wields a piece of Reality in her right hand, she knows my pain is real. She knows my break is real.
She knows I’m telling the truth.
She goes to the big wheel-crank that controls the angle of my scaffold and turns it until my cross becomes a timber bed. A curl of contempt twists her lips around her tusks. She slashes the ropes that tie me to the cross with the filed-sharp fighting claw below her left hand. She leans across my face, and with the same hand she yanks on the spike through my right arm. The wood squeals as it comes free, and my arm comes with it and my shoulder’s silent roar is loud enough to grey out the universe.
Annnnnd. .
When the world comes to life, I’m off the cross.
Under my back-
— night-cold stone—
Oh god—
Oh god oh god I made it. I’m off the fucking cross.
I made it.
Thank you. Oh, thank you.
The night gathers force in my ears: roars and screams. Smell of burning shit and hair and rotten meat.
Pressure on my chest crushes my sobbing down to thick gasps, then to a choked hush. I open my eyes. It’s Crowmane’s foot.
Long as my forearm. Wide as my hand span. Toenails hooked enough to draw blood from my chest. Her eyes smoke yellow into the stars around her head. Reality pulses around her right hand. Talk now, little rabbit. Talk of this Chi’iannon’s Cauldron. Tell me how I stop it.
Shit.
Gahh. She left—
Fucking spikes’re still in my wrists—
And-ahh, fuck me, fuck me, she left my ankles nailed together, ahh, fuck—
Guess I can give right the hell up on that quick getaway.
Talk now, little rabbit.
So I meet her eyes and give her the truth I promised. “You can’t stop it.”
Without transition her huge foot is on my throat-so goddamn wide she’s breaking my sonofabitching neck—
Tell this again, little rabbit. Tell this for the last time.
If she weren’t crushing my throat right now, I’d tell her I love her.
With weakly trembling hands, I scrabble at her ankle, then let my arms fall back, right thrown across my face to mask what she’s got to think is despair.
Hands work. So do arms. Maybe even legs, if I can take the pain.
She did this for me. And I’m off the cross. She did that for me too.
I love her very, very much.
I don’t need Control Disciplines. The singing in my ears makes the night a wonderland of shimmer and fades the screams and roaring into a distant melody of blood.
Darling. . they’re playing our song. .
From behind my right elbow I manage some whimpering gasps around her huge clawed foot on my neck. “Y’can’t. . stop the spell-’s done-all y’can do. . ’s chop ’m up and burn ’m. .”
She leans over me, shifting weight onto the foot-wide paw on my neck. My cervical vertebrae pop and crackle as the ligaments stretch. Her drool drips down across my face. It smells of rot. Been too gentle with you, little rabbit.
I shift my left hand three inches. Her eyes never flicker. She didn’t pick up the motion. The heel of my left hand is now against the head of the spike through my right wrist.
Oh, my god, how I love this bitch.
Some ideas I save. Something special.
I love her so much, I’m going to fuck her.
Special just for little—
Right swinging backhand from my left armpit, left jamming like a short shovel-hook and I can’t get much on them but together I don’t need a whole hell of a lot. The spike through my right wrist spears deep into the side of her knee.
It grates on bone and I can’t tell if it’s mine or hers but I’m balls-up adrenoamped far beyond feeling any fucking pain.
She jerks like I clamped a high-tension line to her nipples and says-
“. . hurkk. .”
— and I give the head of the spike another good whac
k with the heel of my left hand, and this time the bone it grates on is the inside of her kneecap because when she yanks back her leg, the spike rips down and jams behind her patellar tendon, so her yank of the leg yanks me with it by the spike, which sits me up and plants her foot within the loop of my pinned-together legs and slams my battered nervous system hard enough to grey the world down by better than half-But there is a fundamental difference between her and me. On the street, in the ring, on Adventure-so many times I’ve been half out or better, so greyed I didn’t know where my fucking legs were, hurt, cut, bleeding, having to use one hand to hang onto my guts while I try to cover my head with the otherI can deal.
Crowmane, though-what is she? She’s no Marade, no Pretornio. She’s not even a Tizarre. When you carve all the way to nuts and guts, Crowmane’s just a bitch with a shitty attitude, playing games with somebody else’s power.
Which is why when some of the world is slipping back into focus she’s still screaming like a brain-damaged howler monkey and trying to shake me off her leg.
It’s only now that she remembers she’s got better than a hundred pounds on me and a razor-sharp fighting claw curving around the fist that is directly over my head.
All I can do is bring up my left as her right comes down and in the last infinitesimal fraction of a second I register the relationship between her fist and my forearm and an image blossoms and my forearm adjusts its angle without interference from my brain.
Her fist comes down. Her fighting claw spears into my trapezius and scrapes my collarbone but goes no deeper because my block braced my left forearm across my head which set the spike in that forearm against my skull like a spear grounded to receive a horseman’s charge.
The horseman, in this case, is Crowmane’s fist.
She takes the spike between the second and third knuckle and she jerks again, rearing up, yowling—
Which is when we both remember that the fist she just punched me with, the fist I just spiked, was her right.
The one holding that ball of Reality-
WHITEOUT
The world darkens back into existence. .
Still pinned together-my forearm to her knee—
Not pinned forearm to fist anymore. She doesn’t have a fist. Just a stump of charred bone.
Caine Black Knife aoc-3 Page 25
