Caine Black Knife

Which is when we both remember that the fist she just punched me with, the fist I just spiked, was her right.

The one holding that ball of Reality-

WHITEOUT

The world darkens back into existence. .

Still pinned together-my forearm to her knee-

Not pinned forearm to fist anymore. She doesn’t have a fist. Just a stump of charred bone.

A snap of my left arm whips the white-hot remnant of the spike out of my charring flesh, and there is a bleak red light shining up on her and from the smell and the pain I’m guessing that my hair’s on fire, and I don’t give half a mouthful of shit. That spike was grounded against my skull.

We’ve been joined by the Outside Power.

She’s looking down at me, and in those yellow eyes now is the greatest gift she will ever give me.

Fear.

Because we Know each other now. And the punkass bleeding heart who said “To understand all is to forgive all” wasn’t from my fucking neighborhood.

I grin up at her. “Shaikkak Nerutch’khaitan. .”

I roll her name around in my mouth.

“Skaikkak Nerutch’khaitan-” My left hand spasms with nerve shock from the burn through my forearm; I let the spasm beckon to her. “I believe this is my dance.”

Her stump and her left hand make an off-balance pinwheel when she tries to backstroke into the night sky. I throw my weight forward when her heel hits my nailed-together ankles, and my forearm spike comes free from behind her kneecap and I keep the momentum going forward so that I can roll up onto one shrieking foot and shove myself up her leg and hook my left arm behind her neck. My weight captures her balance, and she keeps on staggering backward.

Behind her is the perimeter wall and beyond that there is nothing but coils of black turd smoke spinning toward the sky.

Guess this is my star exit.

Finally.

Good-bye, fuckers. Good-bye all of you sacks of shit who’re watching at home with your dicks in your hand or a thumb up your snatch.

Hope you had a good time, and kiss my ass.

The perimeter wall hits her above the knees, crushing my nailed ankles into a snarling white flare inside my head, and the wall’s just barely high enough to hold her, so I crook my arm behind her neck and croon lovingly into her rumpled mass of ear-

“When you wake up in Hell, you festering slab of rat cunt, I’ll already be killing you again.”

— and I backhand the point of my forearm spike at her right eye.

Nothing wrong with her reflexes: she jerks her head back and away from the point-

— and so the spike-

— which I hadn’t really expected to get her eye with, y’know, anyway, so there’s no point in shitcanning my follow-through-

— takes her just under the cheekbone, above her upper jaw, into what on a human would be a savagely sensitive nerve cluster around the trigeminal-

— triggering a transcendently satisfying airhorn shriek and instant stiff hyperarch of her back-

Guess ogrilloi keep a nerve cluster there, too.

— and we topple over the wall.

With a kick that’s half convulsion I yank my ankles apart as we start our long slow tumble into the darkness.

Why not? Like our Garthan Hold personal combat Brother used to say-

Hurts now. Be over soon.

Gahh-

– ’d like to hear that fucker say it again with a fifty-penny nail behind his motherfucking Achilles tendon-

But I still swing my legs around and wrench her thrashing underneath me as we fall free, because I am for ass-raping sure gonna land on-

Wham.

— tumbling flailing clawing-

WHAMWHAMWHAM

. .

. .

.

.

stars in the dust

breathe

— whoop-

breathe goddammit breathe

— whoop-

stars

hrakchakh

stars come out like a window

dusty sand settles around me and

on me

into my eyes and up my nose and

fuck my bleeding ass I’m still

alive

One minor-

hrakchakh

— minor flaw. . in the whole sonofabitching plan. .

The vertical city isn’t exactly vertical, exactly.

More of a steep slope.

I’m in one of the houses. . still has walls. . hasn’t had a roof in a thousand years or so. .

With the kind of effort that would have gotten Sisyphus to the top of his motherfucking hill, I roll my head sideways.

The city above catches enough of the firelight from the camp that I can pick out Crowmane’s body crumpled on the rubble maybe ten feet away.

She looks worse than I feel.

That is to say: dead.

I figure that between my two half-working hands, I oughta be able to chopstick a big enough piece of rock to make sure. And I will.

I will.

Just-

Just as soon as I get my breath. .

Yeah.

Someday this week.

All right, fuck breathing. I’ll go. . I’ll go-

Just as soon as I can make my eyes work.

Because I can’t blink away those haloes-migraine-aura prismatic splinters of starlight crystallizing over the rubble, crawling Crowmane’s bloody face, shimmering along my hands and arms-

That’s not my eyes. That’s the fucking universe slipping out of focus.