Somehow that should be more comforting than it is.
I should blow. Leave them to their dinner and go see if I can find Marade, because there’s really fuck-all anyone can do for him now, and I would go, I would, but the moon’s finally coming up and in that strengthening silver-bleached glow, there’s something weird about how they’re kneeling over his belly.
One keeps a hand on the bunched hauberk where it’s pulled up over Stalton’s face, and the other is half turned on all fours so that his legs pin Stalton’s to the sand, and while the meaning of this is still seeping through my mental wall of
And fuck me
With all their grunting and slurping they can’t hear me as I slip over the sill of what must have been, a thousand years ago, somebody’s bay window, hammer over my shoulder, and with a big slow backswing, I step up and golf the head-end one right in front of the ear.
The impact straightens him upright on his knees, eyes blank and staring over his shattered cheekbone, and the one kneeling on Stalton’s legs manages to lift his head in time to catch my downstroke between his eyes like a steer in a slaughterhouse. The peen leaves a fist-size dent in his skull and his eyeballs splatter and he topples sideways and before his corpse can even hit the ground I spin and let the first one have the back-spike through the nape of his neck. It punches though bone and I use it like a gaff to drag the bastard backward off Stalton’s chest and out of the mess of guts and black soggy sand.
The two Black Knives flop and twitch and kick and grunt as their autonomic nervous systems refuse to believe they’re actually dead, but after a while their
The chainmail over his face twists side to side. His hands are still bound under his back. I drop to my knees beside him, just where that ogrillo had been, and gently pull the hauberk down to his shoulders.
His eyes are squeezed shut like he’s afraid they’ll burst, and his mouth and chin and cheeks are thick with tear-streaked blood. He’s sobbing like a heartbroken teenager. I slide one hand under his head and stroke his hair with the other and say some stupid meaningless shit about how he can quiet down now because everything’s okay, it’s all over and it’s okay, and somehow that stupid meaningless shit must not sound stupid to him, because his breathing starts to even out, and pretty soon he lets himself open his eyes. “Who-?”
“It’s Caine, Stalton.”
“C–Caine? Caine, I. . hurt. It hurts, Caine.”
“Yeah, I know.” Fuck. Better if he dies now. Better if he died twenty minutes ago. Fuck. “Shh. Hush now. Let it go.”
“It’s not. . I’ve had worse. . it’s not too bad. The pain.” His voice is blurred. Shaky. “Like a little-little food
I’d tell him to save his strength, but, y’know, for what? “Yeah.”
“Got. . water? Thirsty. Mmm, really thirsty.”
Me too. I don’t remind him what we did with our canteens. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’ll get you some water. In a minute.”
“Wasn’t supposed to
Tears roll out from the corners of his eyes and trail down his temples. “Just a j-j
“Yeah.” I lower his head back down to the sand-packed floor. The moon glows in over my shoulder. “I’d make it different if I could.”
“I, uh-I. . ahhh, fuck.” His back arches. “Can’t-can’t even sit up. .”
Not with his abdominals chewed away. “I know. Don’t try.”
“Can you-? Can you help me see-?”
“You don’t want to.”
“It’s really bad. .? I can’t see. It is. It’s really bad.”
“Trust me.”
I get to my feet and pick up the warhammer. It’s gained a ton or so; I have to rest it on my shoulder, and the weight still buckles my knees. I’ve killed men before. But I’ve never killed a man who’s
A man I wish could have been my friend.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Caine, don’t-don’t-”
“It’s better like this. Quick.”
“No. No, not that. It’s okay. Just don’t-” Fresher tears roll along the streaks down his face. “-don’t
“Tell-?”
His raw streaming stare begs me to promise. “Don’t tell them I went out like a. . like a
Like there’s anybody I can tell who’d care. But I guess that’s not the point.
“Yeah.” I shift my grip on the hammer. My arms tremble. My hands prickle sweat inside my gloves. “Ready?”
“Does it have to be-is there. . is there any way-? Marade or Pretornio or-”
“No. It’s just me. And I don’t know anything about Healing.” I show him the hammer. “This is what I know.”
His eyes fix on mine. “Don’t tell them I went out like a punk.”
“You won’t.”
The hammer goes up over my head and I bring it down like it’s an axe and his skull’s a log, and there is a crunch and a splatter and y’know in the end, I told him the truth. He didn’t go out like a punk at all.
Didn’t even close his eyes.
Tougher than me. .
What I just did bitches my candy ass before I get back out the window.
Reaction buckles my knees and throws me retching against the sill. I crumple just beyond the mess of corpses and skid myself into a corner. And all I can do is sit and shake.
Because I’m looking at my future. What’s left of it.
It’s here. It’s this.
Fighting them is pointless. I don’t really give a rat’s butthole about that glorious-last-stand crap I sold everybody on. Sounded good coming out of my mouth, but it was dogshit and I can taste it now.
This is a hell of a time to find out I’m no hero.
Only one thing I can still do for them. One thing. For these people I conned into dying ugly. I hope the next one is easier. No, I don’t.
Shit, I don’t know. Can it get easy to kill your friends?
What if it does? What does that make me?
Huh.
Guess I’ll be finding out.
HALF ELIGIBLE
I don’t have a clear memory of the Rite of Investment, which is probably a good thing. Like nearly everything else Khryllian-once you get past the pretty armor and nice white buildings and the defend-the-innocent-and-be- kind-to-peasants crap-what I do recall is flat-out nasty.
It all took place under the Regard of Khryl, which makes it bleed together in my head, but there was some bare-fingered ripping of flesh involved, hers or mine or both, and a lot of precious bodily fluid likewise, and at one
