Arslan

when he come back hurt, it seemed like a God’s judgment. We don’t none of us figure you had a thing to do with it, Mr. Bond. I know I don’t.”

I stepped back across the porch to the front door and opened it, and held it open while I motioned to Flaxman and J. G. They straightened themselves and came up the walk grim as death, not a hint of a grin between them. “I’ll take the gun,” I said to Flaxman.

“No, sir,” he said, snapping his mouth shut. That meant, most likely, that it was loaded. Guns were a lot easier to come by than ammunition.

“Then you wait out here.” He nodded curtly. “You two come in. You can say what you think about Hunt to his face. If it’s more than hot air, the whole business belongs in court.” There were no treason laws in Kraft County— we hadn’t been able to agree on how to word them—but the KCR had its own rules. It was one thing when Hunt was a virtual prisoner, with Arslan’s hand on his throat; it was another to ride a hundred miles out of county to tell his little tales behind my back.

Hunt on the couch looked at us with eyes no more wary than usual. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t help knowing that something was up, but he was prepared to be polite if the situation allowed. J. G., not sure what had been told, wasn’t about to say anything, either. As for me, I didn’t feel much like doing favors for any of them. “Tell Hunt what you just told me,” I said to Cully.

“Well, like I was telling you, Mr. Bond—”

“Tell it to Hunt.”

He mustered some of the patriotic indignation, or whatever it was, that had slipped away from him. “Hunt, we seen you up on the Wabash.”

He raised his eyebrows very coolly, but I’d lived with Hunt long enough to recognize the quick shrinking look in his eyes—hurrying to acknowledge defeat before the fighting started.

Cully was back on the track now; his voice shrilled and trembled. “You been spying for Arslan all along, ain’t you? There ain’t nothing never went on in this town but what you told him, ain’t that right? Living right here in this here house and everything. There’s a lot of folks always said so, and now we know it. We got the proof!”

But it wasn’t for Arslan, it was for Nizam. Hunt shrugged. He had been looking steadily at me, and I at him. “Am I being charged with something?”

“I’ll have to check out the legal aspects,” I said. “One way or another, we’ll see that justice is done.”

Fear and humor washed like rotating colored lights across Hunt’s face and left him looking tired and injured. He nodded vaguely. Six weeks ago. He had believed then—at least he could have believed—that Nizam was still Arslan’s selfless right arm. And four weeks later, he had ridden north again to battle against Nizam.

“I don’t hear him deny it,” J. G. observed contemptuously.

“He can deny it all he wants to,” Cully shrilled. “But we seen it with our own eyes!”

The door scraped open. Flaxman was well into the room before I took my eyes off of Hunt. “Cully,” I said, “you know Ward Munsey’s house. You go tell him or his brother we’ve got a charge of collaboration to investigate. If you can’t find them home, get me Leland Kitchener or—”

“You just stay put, Cully,” Flaxman said. Five minutes earlier he wouldn’t have dared cross the porch with that gun. Five minutes earlier I wouldn’t have let him. There was a kind of justice that replaced legality sometimes—the kind of justice that dragged a careless hand into the gears of a machine.

“Hey!”

I didn’t understand for a moment what had happened. Flaxman, with his startled shout, had dodged back, jerking up his gun. Cully wavered, then leaned his long reach forward and scooped up something from the floor. It was Arslan’s knife.

He was leaning on the bannister. His face shone with sweat. His mouth was drawn into a grimace or a grin. J. G. was swearing softly.

“By God, it’s him. Is it him?” Cully said, in a voice of awe, looking from the knife to Arslan and back. Flaxman leveled the rifle.

“Wait,” I said, and “Wait,” said Arslan at the same instant. His hoarse voice rasped. As he spoke, he forced himself upright from the bannister, his arms trembling with the strain. “I make you an offer,” he said steadily. “You see that I am weak—even too weak to throw a knife properly. You see that I am alone. You want Hunt. Will you trade him for me?” His voice was gathering strength and color. “I will surrender myself to you, in return for a promise.” I wouldn’t have surrendered a tenpenny nail to those three for all the promises they could make. “You will promise—you will swear—before Mr. Bond and before your God, that you will never come to this house again, that you will never attack this house or anyone in it. Do you understand?” It was ridiculous, of course, but inside I was cursing whatever had made me keep the whereabouts of my gun strictly to myself. If I’d told Hunt about it, Arslan would have known by now.

They looked uneasily at each other, with dawning greed. Flaxman had lowered the rifle. J. G.’s mouth twisted. “Looks to me like we got you both,” he said fiercely. “We don’t need to make no promises. What’s to stop us just walking up there and getting you?”

“This.” Now the grimace was unmistakably a grin. He raised the second knife—Hunt’s knife, it must be— turning it in front of his chest to make it glint.

Cully cleared his throat. “Well, hell.” He sounded embarrassed. “We can just shoot you, and take Hunt anyways.”

“I am dying,” Arslan reproved gently. “Which do you want more: Hunt Morgan, or Arslan—alive, in your hands?”

They looked sidelong at each other, and suddenly they all three moved, drawing together and mumbling agreement. “Okay, drop the knife,” J. G. ordered.

“When you have sworn. You first.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Who says you can take anybody out of my house?”

“Mr. Bond,” Flaxman said patiently, “if you don’t shut up, I’m going to shoot you dead. I ain’t promised nothing yet.”

“Then wait just a minute. I’m going to get a Bible for you to swear on.” I started for the stairs.

“If that ain’t a Bible on that there table'—the gun muzzle dipped towards the coffee table for half a second —'my mama sure didn’t teach me right.”

“You first,” Arslan repeated. I held the Bible, and J. G. laid his hand on it unwillingly, looking past me to Arslan.

“Repeat what I say. ‘I swear upon this Bible that I will never set foot in this house—’”

“I swear on this Bible I’ll never'—he faltered over the words—'set foot in this house.”

“’Or on its grounds—’”

“Or on its grounds.”

“’And I swear I will never try to hurt anyone—’”

“I swear I’ll never try to hurt anyone.”

“’While they are in this house or on its grounds—’”

“While they’re in this house or its grounds.”

“’And I swear I will never damage this house—’”

“And I swear I will never damage this house.”

“’And if I ever break any part of this oath—’”

“If I ever break any part of this oath.”

“’I pray that God will strike me—’”

“I pray that God will strike me.”

“’And all my family—’”

“And all my family.” J. G. had no family worth mentioning, but by this time he was speaking in deadly earnest.

“’Dead in agony.’”

“Dead'—he balked a little, and finished in a strangled voice—'in agony.”

I pulled the Bible away. “Do you understand what you have sworn?” Arslan insisted.

“Yeah—to leave this place alone, and anybody that’s in it—as long as they’re in it.”

“Or on the grounds.”

“Yeah, or on the grounds. But that’s only if you drop the knife and come with us.”