Caine Black Knife aoc-3 Read online

  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. .”

  “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.

  Rababal’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!” Rababal’s venomous glare would be more intimidating without the quiver in his jowls. “Unless you have a better idea?”

  AndSon 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: Rababal 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-” Rababal’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.

  Me, I’m not so squeamish. I hook thumbs behind my belt and lean back to rest elbows on the parapet. “They call it the Black Knife Kiss: they lock lips onto your eye sockets and suck your eyeballs out. One at a time. Bite through your optic nerve. They figure if you can’t see, you can’t do magick.”

  Rababal’s mouth works like he wants to say something but can’t remember any words.

  “And then there’s your hands.” I look at his; he palms that platinum disk like I caught him scratching his dick. “They twist wire around your wrists tight enough to cut your circulation. Pretty soon your hands turn black. And die. Sometimes they let their khoshoi nibble on them, or strap your arms out wide to attract crows. Sometimes they just leave ’em. Dead. Rotting on your wrists.”

  “Caine-” His voice quavers, and he swallows. “Still, I-”

  “And if you somehow manage to try a spell anyway, they pound these long spikes into your skull. Big steel needles about as l
ong as your forearm, big around as a horseshoe nail. Doesn’t kill you. Doesn’t even really hurt. But then they take a torch and hold it to the outside end of the spikes. One at a time. The spikes conduct heat pretty well. Still doesn’t hurt much; brain’s got no pain nerves. But it gives you a hell of a fever, y’know? Worst fucking fever anyone will ever have. Delusions. Hallucinations. A nightmare where you never wake up. You go to Hell while you’re still alive. And even through the fever, you can feel chunks of yourself dying. Slowly. Your brain cooks. One piece at a time.”

  Rababal’s face has gone grey. Guess he’s got a vivid imagination.

  Vivid enough to keep him from asking me how the hell I know all this, which is a really good thing because I don’t have a really good answer.

  “But it’s not always that bad.” I offer a reassuring grin. “Sometimes they get enthusiastic with the torches and your brain boils instead.” I shrug. “At least it’s quick.”

  I push myself off the wall and take one step, right into the middle of them. They shift unconsciously, spreading to give me space. That’s one good sign. They stand and wait to hear what I’m gonna say next. That’s another. “Know how ogrilloi wish each other luck? They say, Die fighting. You get it? That’s luck for us, too. The only luck we have left.”

  I give them all a good long slow look at as many of my teeth as I can fit into a smile, and hold out my fist. “Die fighting.”

  Marade’s eyes are the first to clear, and cold determination sharpens the elegant planes of her face. She squeezes a gauntlet into a jointed ball of steel, and extends it to touch my knuckles.

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes. Die fighting.”

  Figured I could count on her: Khryllians are suckers for that heroic laststand shit. And she is so beautiful right now that I better just keep my mouth right the fuck shut.

  Stalton squints at me. “You look like you’re enjoying this.”