Caine Black Knife

His eyes open again. They’re the same color as yours. Once, he says. In puptime. Before the land hates Black Knives. Long gone now. I’m Dust Mirror since the Horror. No more Black Knives.

Your upper lip curls under and your lower peels down, baring your tusks to the roots. Except for me.

His gaze fixes on you, and there’s a hint of a spark there before a spasm of pain smudges his face blank. What you want?

You stand, knife in one hand, Automag in the other. Submission.

Huh. His face goes old now, tired and sad. Just that?

Yeah.

Fuck my bitch. Dint have to shoot me.

You cock your head half an inch. Dint have to rush me.

So-submission. His jaw works. And?

And you go easy.

He stares at you for a long time. From outside come grunts and distant shouts and shuffle and scuffle, drawn by the shots. Inside there is only blood and bowels and the whimper of the bigger one clutching the spurting gash in his forearm. You can see pain picking up steam by the waves of emptiness that roll through the hunchback’s eyes.

Finally he hisses resignation. Dint have to shoot me.

You wait.

He rolls himself forward off the wall, kneeling, and lowers his face until his forehead rests on your insteps. You thumb the Automag over to single shot.

He says, I give myself to you-

You center the muzzle on the crown of his spinal ridge.

— fuckbitch.

The slug splinters a fist-size hole through the floor planks. A wet one. You track the hunchback’s brains over to the other.

Ignik? Ignik Dust Mirror: Tchundiget?

Uh. He lifts eyes like bloody eggs. Kill me too, you gonna?

You twitch the Automag and point it between your boots.

Down.

Whimpering, he presses his forehead into his sire’s gore. I, I, I give-he’s snuffling so hard he can barely get the words out-I give myself to you.

You drop to one knee and tuck the Automag back into its holster by your kidney. Ignik gasps when you grab his wounded arm-bone scrapes together in there: splintered ulna, maybe. You press the gash your knife left on his forearm to the shallow rip his fighting claw gouged in your belly.

This is my battle wound. This is your battle wound. Our wounds are one. Our blood is one.

His jaw hangs open like he’s trying to draw flies to the rot on his teeth. I uh I uh I uh-who are you?

Use your fucking feet. Black Knives don’t kneel.

Bu bu bu hrk? He smears crimson tears off his face with a greasy hand. Black Knives?

You palm the KA-BAR and roughly square his shoulders. You’re filthy, little brother. And soft: too long in Hell. Your tusks are grey. Your neck bends easy.

He slobbers. And you-you-and you-I am Black Knife. You flip the KA-BAR pommel- first and hand it to him. Now, so are you.

My Gift has now been given, and I release you: you open your all-too-human eyes, stare at the mold-eaten plaster ceiling above your bed, and mutter, “Son of a bitch.”

And I imagine that it is the weight of years you shed to rise in that grey dawn. The deep ache in your joints may be the memory of dread: darkness and terror, the cotton-rip of flesh tearing under blunt claws, the icy inevitability of agony and death-

And yet it may be only the scars of half a century at war.

I cannot know. Though I feel the grinding of hip and shoulder and the scrape of hangover-dried eyelid, taste the fewmets of last night’s brandy and smell the old sweat that stains your tunic with salt rings-though I can count the pulse in your temples and calculate to a nicety the uneasy pressure in your bladder-I can never know what you’re thinking. Perhaps this is why you have fascinated me so. It is as good a reason as any.

Which is to say it means nothing at all.

You limp, stiff with morning, to the dirty bubbled window and rest your forehead against the autumn-cool glass. I fancy you wonder how you came to be so inexplicably old; I fancy you recall yourself facing Black Knives at twenty-five and marvel that as many years have passed from then to now.

You turn aside to the water stand and mop your face with a dripping towel that smells of rot. When you regard your reflection in the silvered glass above the basin, you scowl at the scrapes of white at your temples, at the salt in your once-black beard. You scowl and you shake your head and you scowl some more, and you sigh like a tired old man. . but we both know it’s a pose.

Shall we say: an act?

The dark flame in your eye is as plain to you as it is to me.

Your scowl turns thoughtful, and I know: you’re thinking that I could be lying to you.

What My Gift has shown you-is it history? is it news? is it prophecy?

Is it horseshit?

And I watch your scowl settle, and harden, and finally crack toward a grim smile, and I know: you have discovered that you don’t care.

I have Called. You will answer.

Have you found in your heart yet a story you can tell your daughter, that sweet half-godling child who dreams of you in her castle bed so many leagues away from this mountain town? Will you share with her guardian a reason? An excuse?

Or when they call for you, will only echoes answer?

Will you say to Lady Faith, ten-year-old Marchioness of Harrakha: “Your Uncle Orbek’s getting himself into some trouble. I owe him. He went into the Shaft for me.”

Will you say to Lady Avery, the formidable Countess of Lyrissan: “I have to go north for a while; there’s news of Black Knives in the Boedecken. You don’t want that kind of trouble to your north.”

Or will you tell them the truth?

Will you reveal the fresh trip of your pulse? The high sweet song adrenaline hums in your veins, the youth My Gift breathes into your old, tired legs?

Will you tell them that you feel alive again?

This is My Gift to you, My Devil. Come out from your place and walk once more to and fro upon the world and go up and down in it. I give you back your joy. I give you back your passion. Come forth, My Caine. My love.

Come forth and serve Me.

Come out and play.

PART ONE BELOW HELL

I leaned on the deck rail and silently numbered my dead.