Caine Black Knife

I shake my head. “Fuckers ran off. Not that I blame them. And I–I-”

“What?”

I can barely make myself say it. “I lost the bladewand.”

She nods exhaustedly. Her eyes drift briefly closed. “All right. All right. We can-we still can-”

“Still can what? Die ugly?”

She fumbles under her gorget for the cuirass buckles. “Khryl loves me-once I can breathe, I can pray. He’ll Heal me. Us. Fight on.”

“Yeah, okay.” I reach down and smooth blood-soaked hair out of her eyes. “That was a real pretty neckbreak, Marade. Since when do Khryllians teach the sleeper?”

Her fingers slip on the buckles, and that guilty flash crosses her face again.“Caine, I–I mean-”

“Forget it.” A few of the downed Black Knives are still twitching. One drags himself painfully toward the shadows. The flames of oil clinging to the crumbling walls and across the sand-packed street gutter and fade; we’re about to lose the light. Much as I’d enjoy watching Marade remove her breastplate, I better get with business.

Her last kill had dropped his warhammer; I pick it up. “If you’re okay with getting that plate off, I’ll go smoke the wounded.”

She gets the straps unbuckled and slips the cuirass enough that she can sit up, then freezes, her head cocked.

“What?”

“Tizarre.” She lifts one arm in the I hear you wave at the night-black parapet far above. Her face goes blank, then grim. “Pretornio’s in trouble.”

“Worse than us?”

She yanks at her breastplate. It comes off with a squeal of ripping metal.“Yes. The porters broke. They’ve been overrun. Some of them have already been taken.”

“Taken? Taken alive?”

A single nod. “We have to-have to get to them-” She heaves herself to her feet, swaying. Her surcoat gleams red-black, soaked through with gore. She takes an unsteady step, and another, and stumbles against a wall. She leans there, retching blood.

“You’re in no shape to go anywhere. You shouldn’t even be upright.”

“Have to,” she says. She pulls the collar of her surcoat up to mop her mouth and chin. “We stand to pray. By the time we all get down to Pretornio, I’ll be able-”

She stops and looks around, blinking stupidly. “Where’s Stalton?”

I ape her, feeling stupider than she looks. “Fuck me. He was right over-”

Right over where there is now only fading flames and Black Knives in various states of disrepair.

“Stalton! Hey, Stalton!”

“Caine-!” she hisses, making shushing motions with her hand.

I ignore her; anybody who can hear me already knows where we are. “Stalton! Come on, man, link up! We gotta move!”

I stand for a while in the quiet wind, listening to the whuff of dying flames.

A stir in the sand looks like it might be tracks.

“Stay here and pray,” I tell her. “I’ll find him.”

Blood streaks and scuffled sand lead me beyond the firelight. Another dip into the Control Disciplines fully dilates my irises and floods my retinal rods with rhodopsin. It’s not quite Nightsight, but I am trained to see things clearly without looking straight at them; in the starlight, the fringes of my meditation-enhanced peripheral vision are sufficient to find a spot in a right-of-way between two crumbled dwellings where Stalton’s boot tracks disappear into the prints of bare ogrillo feet.

My hauberk suddenly gains a couple hundred pounds and I really, really need to sit down. Better not. Don’t know if I’ll get up again.

This glorious death thing could be going a hell of a lot better.

“Caine? Where are you?” Her voice is stronger already. “What happened to the lantern?”

“I don’t know. Lost.”

“Stalton?”

“Him too.”

She comes stumbling toward me, blundering through what is to her impenetrable darkness. “What do you mean? Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. His tracks stop here. Theirs go on. There’s no body.”

“How can you-” She stops herself, and the night goes silent around her. “You can see.”

“Sort of.” Why bother to lie? “A little.”

For what feels like a long time, she stands perfectly still. I can hear her breathe.

“What are you?” Her voice is quiet. Slow. Fatal. “Monastic?”

In the distance: fading human screams.

“What difference does it make now?”

“Some kind of Esoteric. You must be. Why did you not tell anyone?”

“We all have secrets,” I remind her.

“An assassin,” she murmurs, a bleak dropping half-whisper, as though discovering what I am has broken something precious inside her. An inexplicable hint of tears. “Who is your target? Is it me?”

Given the history between the Monasteries and the Order of Khryl, there is some justification for paranoia. “It’s not like that.”

“What, then? All of us? This is what you’ve been pushing for, is it not? We all die. A brilliant strategem-”

“Marade, cut it out. Pull yourself together.” I need to do the same. “We’re not done yet.”

Her silhouette gives a silent nod. A sniffle in the darkness. “Yes. Yes. Pretornio, his men. Stalton. They need us.”

“That’s right.” I unbuckle my belt and let it drop, then shuck my hauberk and surcoat off over my head. Finally. Just the leather tunic and pants. I can move again. “You go for the priest and the porters. Do what you can.”

“And you?”

“I’ll find Stalton.” One way or another.

“If he is dead-”

“Then no problem. Tizarre can link us up.” I breathe adrenalized strength back into my legs. Some, anyway; there’s a limit to the Disciplines, and I’m not far from it.

I’m as ready to go as I’ll ever be.

“Caine, I-this is-” The outline of one hand, reaching. “We’ll not see each other alive again, I think.”

“I guess probably not.”

That shadowed hand gropes in the darkness. I let it find me, and she gathers me into a bearhug, lifting me effortlessly from the ground with steel-sleeved arms that could crush my spine with a shrug, but through her sodden surcoat her breasts are soft and round and instead of crushing death I get her bloody lips on mine in one copper- salted kiss.

Before I can even clearly think What the fuck? she sets me on my feet again.

“Die fighting, Caine,” she says, and stumbles off toward the guttering flames beyond.

I watch her go for a second, and two, and three and four, and I am such a useless sack of shit coward that I can’t say a word. Not a word even now.

And she’s gone.

Shit.

My good-byes go only to the night and to the dead.

The last of the flames flutter out. All that’s left is to breathe back my night-vision, find a warhammer, and trot off on the Black Knives’ trail.

››scanning fwd››

So these two decided on a snack. Easier than lugging his body all the way back to their camp, I guess. Just goes to show: your average Black Knife can be every bit as selfish, undisciplined, and lazy as your average human.