Caine Black Knife

ogrilloi out in the badlands, rear rank facing the broad corridor of the gateway. That’s the anvil.

The Black Knives trapped inside-a dozen, maybe fifteen-surge and snarl and roar.

Through the deep-shadowed arch at the inner end of the gateway, jauntily spinning a four-kilo morningstar as lightly as a majorette’s baton, strides the unstoppable human battle tank that is Marade.

Already got the hammer part figured, huh?

There is a cheerful abandon in the way she goes to work on the mass of panicked flailing screaming Black Knives, and y’know what?

I think I’m in love.

››scanning fwd››

They stand in little clusters out in the badlands, well beyond bowshot. Watching.

Down below, Marade tosses another dead Black Knife onto the growing pile outside the gate mouth.

That’s it, you fuckers. Watch. Not one ogrillo will come back out that gate alive.

Watch, you bastards. You cocksmoking asswhores. Watch.

And think it over.

Tizarre’s still babbling about her Cloak. “I don’t understand-it doesn’t make any sense. . the more power I threw into it, the weaker it got-”

“Yeah, I know. Shut up about it, will you?” She makes a little noise like half a whimper, and I wave a dismissing hand. “Look, forget it. Didn’t get hurt, did I?”

Except for the crease on my buttcheek that stings like a bastard every time I take a step, but forget that too. “Go help Marade, huh?”

“Help her do what?”

“I don’t give a shit. Just go.” Do I have time for her wounded fucking feelings?

I turn away and screw the spyglass back into my eye. Wish I knew enough about ogrilloi to read the expressions on their faces. What bugs me: none of the Black Knives carry packs. Only a few even carry water skins. And there’s no koshoi, and there’s none of the little sorta-almost-burros Boedecken ogrilloi use to carry supplies and loot. I don’t think this is a raiding party. I don’t think it ever was. I’ve got a sinking feeling that it might be a short- range reconnaissance-in-force.

Or worse: like a, y’know, like a posse. .

Now one of them squats. Just drops, right where he is, bouncing down in that Asian peasant-in-the-paddy crouch, balancing comfortably between his knees. And another one. A few more-

And there they go. All of them, dropping in a weirdly beautiful not-quite-random ripple like a crowd settling in after a standing ovation.

Settling in to wait.

No: not all. Three of them peel off and lope away, off into the badlands. Along their backtrail.

Time to go.

My eye socket aches. I need to lay off the Zeiss before I pop an eyeball right the hell out of my face. “Rababal. We need to get people together. Is Pretornio still dicking around?”

“I wouldn’t call it-”

“How long does it take to bury a couple bodies?” Yeah, yeah, respect for the dead, sure. Petro and Lagget were good guys, greater love hath no man, whatever. They’re dead, we’re not, and I want to keep it that way. “Rababal?”

No answer. He’s staring out at the mass of Black Knives, flicking that fucking coin through his fingers again. “What are they doing? Just sitting there. Staring at us. Did it work? Will they leave, now?”

“If they were leaving, they’d be gone already.”

“Your brilliant plan,” he mutters. “What are they waiting for?”

I shrug. “Dark.”

He squints at me.

“Ogrilloi are-what’s the word? You know: twilight hunters.”

“Crepuscular.”

“Yeah. So they’re gonna wait till dark, because their night vision’s a lot better than ours. Not to mention their sense of smell. And they won’t come in a rush this time. It’ll be scouting parties. Little ones, and maybe a lot of them: ogrilloi like to hunt in packs of seven to ten. They’ll come in quiet. Infiltrating, if they can. Find out where we are and what we have.”

“And how do you expect to stop them?”

“I don’t. I expect to be gone.”

“Now we run?”

“If this had just been about chasing those two guys in the badlands, they’d have left already. There’s something here they want.”

“Other than us?

I shrug again and poke my chin at the pile of Black Knife dead. “Something worth getting another chunk of their collective dick chopped off. I don’t think we qualify.”

“I pray you’re right.”

“You do that.”

He makes a face at me. “And now?”

I bite down on a sigh; it comes out a flat hiss between my teeth. “Tell Stalton to have Kess and the grooms start tacking up the horses.”

››scanning fwd››

Oh.

Well.

That’s it, then.

I take the Zeiss from my eye and hold it balanced on my grimy blood-caked palm. It’s a goddamn nifty little thing. Seamlessly linked ovoids of brushed stainless steel. Kidskin-padded eye cup. Laser-ground polarized optics. A little crust of dried blood mars its softly gleaming surface, and I absently rub it clean with my thumb.

Man, I have seen a lot of shit with it today.

Somebody in my line of work must have brought it from back home. Had to be a long time ago. On freemod. One of the old-timers, maybe even one of the guys I grew up watching. The bosses those days were a lot looser about high-tech contraband. This nifty little piece of quality craftsmanship has probably been knocking around this world longer than I’ve been alive. Getting lost, getting stolen. Traded. Pawned.

Looted.

I remember how startled I was when I first saw it, when Hoppy Spinner pulled it out of his kit bag that afternoon in the God’s Teeth. I remember wondering if Hoppy might be another like me: a struggling second-rater nobody ever heard of. I figured he must be in my line of work. I remember how I found out he wasn’t.

There were ogrilloi there too.

I remember finding what was left of his body after they let their khoshoi strip his bones. How the shreds and tatters left behind lay quietly decomposing.

I found this monocular in a pool of khoshoi vomit between his fang-scored pelvis and splintered ribs. Khoshoi are as conservative as wolves; whichever one yarked up this hunk of indigestible metal had gone ahead and eaten whatever else had come up with it. All that was left was the Zeiss and a handful of clotted bile.

This little fucking thing is all I still have of old Hoppy. Wonder where he got it.

From the anxious crowd of partners and porters half crouching within the shadowed mouth of the crest passage, Rababal says hoarsely, “What is it? What do you see?”

I drift away from the passage mouth, through the scrub toward the brink of this vast escarpment. My boots crunch through sand and loose gravel. Below, the vertical city spreads in descending rings like a peeled-open map of the Inferno.

Huh. When I called it Hell, I was just, y’know, riffing. But now I see it with different eyes.

“Come on out if you want,” I call. Quiet has outlived its usefulness. “You can see for yourself.”

I heft the monocular. “Won’t need this.”

A long, smooth windup and I pitch the fucking thing high and hard, out over the half-klick drop to the badlands. The sunset picks it up at the top of its arc and makes it shine like a falling star.