Caine Black Knife

ridge that crowns his skull. He growls something that I don’t register as words.

He’s found his nerve again.

He starts to circle: three hundred-plus pounds of sentient predator, stalking me. His blade slides through slow, lazy loops, tracing infinity.

Idiots pretending they know something about fighting sometimes say shit like Other things being equal, advantage lies with the longer weapon or Other things being equal, the fighter who strikes first wins. My favorite is Other things being equal, a big man beats a small man.

Know what makes them idiots? Wait. I’ll show you.

He finally commits: with a grunt like a rhino’s cough he launches a full lunge, jamming that spear straight for my spine by way of my navel. I slap the spear aside with a clank, and his eyes go wide at the sparks the knife up my left sleeve strikes off his blade.

Before he has the faintest fucking chance to figure out what just happened, I’m spinning toward him along the spear shaft, left hand grabbing his nearside tusk while my right clears the knife past my left cuff, and when his reflexive sideways yank rips his tusk out of my grip, that same yank shows me the back of his skull. So that’s where I put the knife.

The blade’s only seven inches. The point doesn’t quite come out his mouth.

Get it?

“Other things” are never equal.

His body convulses: a single giant spasm that rips the knife from my hand and flattens him like he’s been hit by lightning. One more wrench slams his head backward into the dirt. His jaws gape around an extra tongue of bloodsmeared steel.

His yellow eyes fix on mine with a mournful doggy puzzlement, as though we’d had a deal, as though we’d gone into business together with the mutual understanding that he’d live and I’d die and now he can’t quite comprehend how I could double-cross him like this. His eyes cup that canine dismay till the dust he’s kicked up settles across them and dulls even the illusion of life.

Wow.

I mean: wow.

Fuck me if I don’t really, really have to pee.

I look up. Black Knives everywhere. Standing. Staring. Silent as trees.

Which is as raw butt-naked sexual as the kill itself.

Yeah.

I mean: yeah.

Now for the curtain call.

“You see that, you fuckers?” Ten years of kiai have given me a voice that can dent plate armor. “Did anybody NOT see what just happened here? Does anybody need it EXPLAINED?”

They stand. They stare. Whispers rustle into growls that roll into low thunder.

“This”-I sweep a hand behind me toward the vertical city-“is MINE. Go wherever the fuck you want, but you can’t come HERE.”

Minor shifts of weight, a general sway like a forest before a storm. I can’t tell if I’m getting through.

“For you, this place is HELL. You HEAR me? You UNDERSTAND? For you, here is PAIN. Here is DEATH.”

I turn my hand toward the corpse of Spearboy. “He died EASY. You will die HARD. You will die SCREAMING. Your bitches will HOWL. Your pups will STARVE.

“I will FEED YOU YOUR FUTURE.”

Still they only sway. Their thunder-grumble starts ramping up in rhythm: swell and slack and swell again, like the surf ahead of a typhoon at high tide.

Do they have any fucking clue what I just said?

I look down at the dust in the dead eyes at my feet, and think about predatory carnivores and pack-hunters-

And I start to chuckle. I mean: this is about marking territory, right?

So before I turn my back on the massed warriors of the Black Knife clan, before I begin to walk the infinite thirty yards to lead them into the ambush back at the ruined gate, before I even have time to worry about how much extra shitstorm I might’ve spun up for myself and all of us, I unlace my breeches, open the front, and pull out my dick.

And pee on Spearboy’s corpse.

Ahhh, shit. Son of a bitch.

Should have picked up my goddamn knife, first.

LORD RIGHTEOUS

Light found me on something soft and knobbly that rose along my side and under my head and feet: a brocaded sofa, maybe.

I discovered I could open my eyes.

The plaster ceiling my blank stare found had been painted a tasteful ivory not long ago, and somebody had come by with a feather plume within the last day; the deep curls of the ornate crown molding showed no hint of dust. A cobweb would have died of loneliness.

I tried to sit up, but my gut spasmed and wouldn’t lift me. No pain, just weakness: like I’d trained past muscle failure. Way past.

But no bandages. No blood.

Somebody had dressed me in a plain linen tunic and pants. My hand shook a little as I pawed back the right- side hem of the tunic and rolled my head over to find four ragged pink coins of fresh scar pocking my side, neatly bracketing the flattened diamond of age-browned keloid where an Ankhanan Household Knight had put a broadsword through my liver about fifteen years ago.

I fingered the fresh ones. Big enough to be something in the range of 00 buck-maybe 7mm, maybe bigger. Who knows what Khryllians load? Lucky I didn’t take it in the face. Lucky old man.

Lucky to be getting older.

There was another new scar, long and thin and curving from my short ribs up toward my nipple, too smooth to be a wound.

Surgery.

Rubber-band muscles shivering with echoes of trauma, I managed to roll myself onto my side. Then I had to rest.

Seated in a severe chair by a severe window was a severe man in severe armor.

The chair was no more than a stool with a back. The window was an arch in the wall, plaster giving way to white stonework open to the westering sun beyond. The man was thin, even in armor, with the long narrow head and extravagantly arched nose and cheekbones of Lipkan nobility. His hair was the color of his armor and cropped to the uniform length of a fingerbreadth. His armor was starkly brushed and oiled carbon steel, lacking entirely the ostentation of polish and design that is the hallmark of the Khryllian Knight. Its sole ornament was a stylized hand- the symbol of Dal’Kannith, Lipkan god of war and father to Khryl-inlaid in electrum upon the upper left of his cuirass, fingers open and palm facing forward, and on that palm the golden Sunburst of Khryl.“

Freeman Shade.” He inclined his head fractionally. “I am Markham, Lord Tarkanen-Lord Righteous in service to the Champion of Khryl.”

“And I am-” I strangled a groan as I forced my legs over the edge of the sofa and sat up. “-almost impressed.