Caine Black Knife

Even the wind goes still. Rich fruity fumes steam up from the oil on the point.

From the apex, the Black Knife camp is a clutter of cinders and ash and smolder like a kicked-out campfire. The cinders are the hide tents, the ashes are knots of bachelor males sleeping out under the stars and the rain, and the smolder is the remains of watch fires burning down now with the approach of dawn.

I’m in place. Go.

I don’t bother to signal her that I heard.

She’ll figure it out.

Vengeance is mine saith the Lord but this morning He’s gonna fucking well have to share.

I press my painted palms to my painted cheeks. I draw as deep a breath as I can and open my mouth as far as it’ll go, then clap my hands once, crisp and sharp, in front of my open mouth.

It makes a sound like most of the Boedecken just exploded.

The magick of the Shout directs the sound away from me, but still the blast is physical, staggering me, buckling my knees and smacking stars into my eyes.

Cover my fucking ears too fucking right-!

Like I have any hearing left to lose.

I can’t even imagine what it must have sounded like to the Black Knives, but that sleepy kicked-through campfire just became a kicked-over anthill as ogrilloi jump up and rush out of their tents and spin around and fumble for weapons and probably shout and howl and squeal, if I could hear them, and I’m not even started yet.

Now I do cover my ears, and I Shout:

YOU

WERE

WARNED

The sound is too vast to be called speech: it is as though the escarpment itself roars at them. The anthill of Black Knives slows, and stops. Dim smears of ogrillo faces turn toward the sky.

THIS PLACE

IS MINE

With a foot, I tip one of the remaining oil barrels carefully, so that it pours over the lip of the point into the branching stone channels that drain down the face of the vertical city.

I SAID

I WOULD FEED YOU

YOUR FUTURE

On cue, the spill of oil running down the channels catches fire.

Good girl.

Rivers of flame cascade across the face of the vertical city, spreading through a delta of absolute darkness. And fire licks back up the channels as well, climbing, converging into a giant burning arrow.

Pointing exactly at where I stand.

BUT I AM

A MERCIFUL GOD

I tip over the final barrel of oil and skip back away from the point as the flames claw through the gap and the whole point becomes a pillar of fire fifty feet tall.

I WON’T MAKE YOU

EAT IT

RAW

I’m still chuckling as I get the first of the bottles out of the chest and ignite the wicks at the burning trickle where I tipped the first oil barrel. Even there it’s hot enough that I have to shield my face with my arm and I can smell my hair starting to crisp, but I don’t care, I’m chuckling anyway. It sounds like God playing dice with planets.

Didn’t think that was funny? Watch this.

I heave a burning bottle high out off the parapet and follow it with another, little specks of whippy flame snapping through long arcs down into the fading night, and turn back to the chest for a couple more before those two hit the ground. I don’t need to watch them land. I know where they’re going to hit.

I may be a crappy shot, but I throw really, really well.

At the retaining wall with two more lit in my hands, I wind up-

Caine-what are you doing?

Not really a Whisper. Is there a spell called Snarl?

I launch the bottle anyway before I look down at her red-lit form a level below.

WHY THE FUCK

ARE YOU STILL THERE?

The Shout makes my head ring. She flinches and covers her ears, but a second later she’s back at the wall down there waving an arm down at the Black Knife camp. Down at the flames spreading from where my oil bombs landed. Down at the crowded creche. Crowded with screaming cubs.

Screaming burning cubs. Burning juvie bucks. Burning juvie bitches.

The pregnant ones.

That’s not the plan! Those are-those are children-!

GET MOVING

GODDAMMIT

But they’re only children-babies-they never did anything-

I fling the other bottle. It shatters against stone ten feet from where she’s standing.

She has to skip back along her parapet to avoid the splash of flame, and in the brighter light down there now, I can see the horror and loathing on her face, and I don’t give half a squirt of runny fucking shit.

MOVE

OR YOU GET THE NEXT ONE

IN THE FACE

With one last look of pure outraged betrayal, she turns and runs.

Down below, somebody’s already unbarring the gate of the creche, and the whole camp is alive. Arrows clatter around me. Everybody who’s not scrambling to save the cubs is either shooting at me or sprinting up into the vertical city.

Works for me.

I turn back to the chest of bottles. If I really want to roast the little shits, I better get busy.

››scanning fwd››

“Tizarre, goddammit-!” How many times have I said that today?

I whip into a spin-kick that slams my right heel into the Shield hard enough to rattle my own damn teeth, but beyond the shimmering curve, the rose-pale glow of the Tear shows nothing but a tightening in the white pinch around her eyes. This is a hell of a time for her to discover she’s got real power.

Not to mention a conscience.

Standing among the shreds of bone and armor beyond the Tear of Panchasell, arms wrapped around her narrow chest to squeeze down her shivers, she looks like she’s ready to just stand there and watch. “You never said anything about killing their cubs.”

She has completely bone-my-ass cracked. “I’m sorry, all right? I promise I’ll fucking suffer for it the rest of my life if you’ll just fucking let me in-”

“Those were children, Caine-you never said you were-”

“If I had,” I snarl at her, “would you have helped?”

“Of course not!”

“There’s your fucking answer, then.”

Here they come on my trail now. Hear those howls echoing along the empty cavernways? Hear that blind ravening rage? Hear that pain? Sounds to me like they want to rip open their own guts with their bare hands and claw the pain out so they can stuff it down my throat till I strangle.