Caine Black Knife

I scowled. “Doesn’t speak Westerling, huh?”

“Don’t ain’t same as can’t, little brother.”

“I get that. So what’s with Lady Macbitch? Why’s she busting what’s left of your balls?”

“She wants Black Knives to live free. So do I.”

“Free. Right.” I jabbed a finger at Orbek’s huge chest. “I know you, big dog.”

“You know shit.”

“Come on, kid, you’ve been talking about how you’ll never have pups since the day you adopted me. It was the reason you adopted me. Remember?”

“I remember lots of things.”

“What did she tell you? No fight, no fuck? Shit, Orbek. You don’t think this is a little extreme?”

He snorted. “Are you the right guy to jab somebody on going too far-” Lips curled back from long hooked tusks. “-for his wife?”

I had to look away. A second or two passed before I could squeeze the bloom of pain in my chest down into its usual fist-size ball of barbed wire. When I could talk again, I said, “You think she loves you? She doesn’t give a damn for you, Orbek. She’s playing some game of her own.”

“Love? She loves what I love. She dreams what I dream. That’s her game. Mine too, hey? That’s why we marry. She loves Black Knives. She dreams being free. Together, we dream Black Knife freedom. Together we make our dreams true. Forever.”

My headache came dripping back with each splash from the grille. “Maybe you’d better explain this to me. Small words, okay?”

Orbek disentangled himself from the bitch and rose. Suddenly the pit felt a lot smaller. “My fight with the Champion ain’t cause I don’t submit. It’s cause I don’t have to. We fight over whether Black Knives have to submit. To Khryl. To His Law. Get it? To say Kopav was self- defense, I gotta get down and kneel. Give my life to Khryl. Gotta say I live or die by your law.”

He shook his head, lips curling in a snarl of revulsion. “Kopav’s submission makes me Black Knife kwatcharr. If I submit, so does my clan. We belong to Khryl, then.”

“That’s idiotic.”

“You think so? When the Khulan Horde falls at Ceraeno, what happens to Boedecken ogrilloi? They got my same choice: submit or fight. They submit. And now here they are, hey? You see much of how Khryl’s ogrilloi live? It’s no fuck-me joke, little brother.”

“I haven’t been laughing.”

“But I am Black Knife. Now kwatcharr. Black Knives never make submission. Not then. Not ever.”

“Only because there weren’t any-”

“Yeah.” Orbek leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “Yeah. You do that for us, little brother. After the Horror we scatter to cities. Submit to other clans. By the time the Khulan Horde loses at Ceraeno, Black Knives aren’t Black Knives anymore. Kopav Crookback ain’t Black Knife back then; his sire gives him to Dust Mirrors. Kopav’s sire and his bitches’ other get die without submission. So my clan is free. Of all the Boedecken ogrilloi, only Black Knives are free. And they will be always, unless I hang chains on them myself.”

“What, you’re gonna die over a fucking legal technicality?”

“No technifuckinganything. The Champion is the Fist of Khryl. Stand against her, and I stand against the god. So I fight her, and I die. But I die fighting. I die free. Honor on me. Honor on my clan. Next year in Ankhana, there is my oldest boy, Orbek Black Knife: Kaiggezget, to be Black Knife kwatcharr. Black Knives live free forever.”

I shook my head. “Ever think it might be better for these pups of yours to grow up knowing you? Being with you?”

“Better than being free? Who am I talking to here?”

Somehow that’s always the question with me. I brought a hand to my eyes, trying again to massage the headache away. It didn’t work any better than it had before.

“My father runs to the city,” he said. “This is his shame: that he runs from the Boedecken. Those days, my father’s younger than me when you and me meet in the Pit. My mother dies in Alientown. Killed by a drunk headpounder. My father fever-chokes in the Warrens. My brothers die in the Caverns War. None ever sees the Boedecken. Until me. All we ever know of Our Place-all we know of Black Knives-is what my father remembers, from cub-time. Before the Horror. Before you. When Black Knives rule Our Place. When other ogrilloi circle from our track. When their bitches use magick to scuff out their scent because they nose ours. When men run from just our name.”

“People run from some of my names too, kid. It’s not something to be proud of.”

“You say. Easy for you. You walk like a king. More than a king-kings hide when you come to town. When you talk, God listens.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Now God listens to me!” One ham-size fist struck his barrel chest. “Our god. Black Knife god. She hears my prayer: bring Black Knives back to Our Place. Bring back men’s fear.”

I could feel a black knife of my own twisting in my guts. “You don’t know what you were asking for.”

“I do. Our god is no Ma’elKoth, little brother. She makes her bargains up front. She tells me my life is Hers now, and She spends it how She chooses.”

“She chooses my ass.” I jerked my chin toward the bitch in the corner. “They choose, Orbek. That’s what your father never told you. Black Knives were never kings. They were always slaves. Slaves to the bitches.” He just grinned at me. “I stand with God, little brother. You know nothing.”

“I was there-”

“And I am here.”

“Terggol pettikaar homunn horrillterazz,” the bitch murmured. “Rummattagarr yas burratt net?”

I looked at Orbek. He showed me more tusk. “She says she knows humans are born half-eligible, but she wonders where you lost your balls.”

“Tell her-” I stopped and shook my head, disgusted. “Forget it. I got nothing to say to you, you fucking slag.”

“Hey.” Orbek’s grin dissolved. He pushed himself to his feet. He practically filled the pit. “Watch your mouth with my wife.”

I looked up into my brother’s cold yellow eyes. “She wants you dead, dick-head. I’m on your side.”

“My side is the Black Knife side.”

“I’m trying to save your life.”

“Nobody asked you.”

“All you have to do is tell that guy up there that you’ll submit.” I waved a hand at the gaslit face of the Knight Attendant peering down through the grille. “That’s him. Right up there. Just say it, and I’ll get you out of this.”

Orbek wouldn’t even look up. “Don’t need your help. Don’t want your help.” He took a single step that brought him looming over me. “Nobody asks you to come here. I’m asking you to go.”

I went perfectly still. For a long time I stared up at the red-streaked silhouette of this ogrillo I called brother. I remembered that if not for Orbek, I’d be dead now. I remembered meeting Orbek in the Ankhanan Donjon; I remembered our fight, and the birth of our friendship. I remembered how Orbek had single-handedly won the Donjon riot that had freed us all. I remembered thinking, back when we’d met in the Donjon’s reeking Pit, that Orbek was a lot like I’d been at that age. Now I could only wonder at how wrong I’d been. Had I ever been this young?

No, of course not.