Caine Black Knife

I think you better share with Raithe. I’m telling you: I was this close to that fucking thing. It’s old. It’s easily the five-hundred-plus years old it’d have to be. And it’s been in the Knights’ possession a long damned time, maybe all five hundred years. And they don’t show it to Incommunicants. But I’ve seen it before. I’ve held it in my hand. So has Raithe.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither.” I stared into the flames within the stove. “I had that fucking thing sticking out of my guts eleven years ago. Three years ago I jammed it through Ma’elKoth’s face.”

“Caine, what are you talking about?”

“The Sword of Man, the Accursed Blade, whateverthefuck you want to call it.” I met her eyes, and my voice emptied out.

I said, “I’m pretty sure it’s Kosall.”

CAULDRON

RETREAT FROM THE BOEDECKEN (partial)

You are CAINE (featured Actor: Pfnl. Hari Michaelson)

MASTER: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

© 2187 Adventures Unlimited Inc. All rights reserved.

Wet

cool wet sting lips tongue throat

water fuck me it’s water

hakHAKH

fuck that hurts

fuck hurts just breathe

breathe

a pinhole star in the void bright and brightening and going red and wind hushing to a roar and the star screams toward me and yawns beyond the universe-

And I’m awake. And it wasn’t a dream.

I’m still on the cross.

Tilted back so I can breathe. Must be some-

It’s Crowmane. Cold yellow eyes framed with gloss feathers gleaming black-red in the light from the bonfires. Looking in her face feeds the furnace in my chest with dreams of fist-fucking her eye sockets.

She lifts a dipper to my lips and I take a mouthful of cool clean water-fuck me, it is water, it is-and I spit it on her anyway.

Try to.

My gut just won’t push that hard right now.

Water dribbles down my chin and neck and chest and some of it goes down my throat, and y’know, if she’d bring that dipper up again I’d just fucking drink it, but instead her raw-liver lips peel back around her tusks and she says something to me, waving down at the lower tier with the dipper, splashing carelessly the water that is my sole hope of heaven, painting the retaining wall with little black wet dustballs that I would gladly lick off her asshole just to get that moisture past my lips. .

Down where she points, the other bitches have Pretornio.

Shit, they haven’t even stripped him yet. I couldn’t have been out more than a couple of minutes.

Shit.

I wanted to miss this one.

Next to where the bitches hold him rises a pole seven feet tall, blunt as a knuckle and big around as my wrist. It’s fixed on a sprawling iron stand so it won’t tip over when he starts to struggle. I wish I could look away. I have, y’know, some, what you might call, issues with anal penetration. In general. And this will be, y’know-

Overly specific.

I really wanted to sleep through this.

I wish there were some way I could stop myself from imagining how it’ll feel.

The bitches go to work on his clothing, cutting it off so they can strip him without opening his shackles, and he’s still staring up at me-I mean, it looks like he’s staring up at me, kind of, in a sick way-with that same stupid dreamy smile he had when he begged me to pick him for this. Which is bone-fucking creepy on a face with only clot-crusted holes where eyes used to be.

Well, this is what you asked for, man. You can fuck me if I have a clue why.

Under his robes he’s all soft and white. It’s hard to look. I mean, sure, priests don’t have to be athletes, even Kannithan priests, but shit he’s got these little saggy man-tits. . and when they cut away his pants, his crotch is just a thatch of mud-colored hair. Huh. Since when is Dal’kannith one of those, y’know, those full-castration type of-

Oh.

Holy shit. I get it. I get it now. Those aren’t man-tits.

Pretornio-

He’s a chick.

››scanning fwd››

When the world comes all the way back the smell is still turd-smoke and old meat; the feel is still easterly breeze on my face and my chest and my balls but not on arms and legs that are numb as the wood they’re nailed to. The sound on the wind is still Pretornio’s voice, gone high and ragged, still chanting away in Old High Lipkan, and when my eyes fall open she’s still impaled on the pole like a trout on a fish spear.

Doesn’t wriggle, though.

Me, I’d be thrashing with everything I’ve got. Drive my weight down onto the blunt end of the pole. Make it rip through me. End it fast.

She’s perfectly still. Must be holding out for something from Dal’kannith.

Good fucking luck.

Moon’s out, way over in the west. The top bitches are back up here. I catch Crowmane’s voice behind me, and Dugsacks leans on the retaining wall and chews wood-roasted meat off what looks a little like it could be half a giant chicken wing but is actually the forearm of somebody I know.

Knew.

Maybe somebody who died in the fight. Stalton. Rababal. Maybe somebody who’s died since. Somebody I chose. Maybe Kess, or Nollo.

Maybe Tizarre.

Dugsacks sees me watching her eat and tosses the arm to Cornholes, who gives me a friendly snort that sounds like a lion’s cough because each of her nostrils is bigger around than my dick. Teasingly, mockingly, she lifts the arm up within reach of my teeth.

So I take a bite.

Why not? Better than a sop of vinegar. Tastes good too.

The ridges of flesh that serve her for eyebrows pop wide. While I chew, she chuckles and says something to the other bitches and they hoot and when she turns back and lifts her head to laugh up at me, I figure my gut’s recovered some. I make an experiment: I spit the hunk of somebody-I-know in her eye.

Dammit. Wanted it up her nose.

She starts for me and Crowmane stops her with an authoritative bark. Dug-sacks says something that gets a laugh from the other bitches and Cornholes’ eyes bulge and she whaps Dugsacks a good one with the roasted arm and they go for each other and Crowmane has to wade in personally, and while they’re all still hooting and clawing and shrieking and struggling-

This place is suddenly getting light. .

Shadows sharpen and stone glares and what exactly the hell is going on here? Not dawn. Can’t be. Dawn