Fingit saw that Louze was now torturing in earnest. Of course, he wasn’t surprised when Louze used the pliers to apply crushing force to the Nub’s left nipple. That was almost compulsory in these types of affairs. Then Louze began sawing at the young man’s chest with the iron crosspiece.
Sakaj raised her voice over the Nub’s screams. “Is he attempting to cut the nipple off entirely?”
Fingit nodded. “I think he is. That shows a smidge of creativity. At least it does in my estimation.”
“I won’t be convinced until he accomplishes it. That’s going to prove vexing with that marginally sharp bit of iron.”
Two minutes later, Louze was still sawing away while holding the Nub’s nipple in place with the pliers, even though everything was slippery with blood. The Nub howled and wept as he tried to twist away from the pain. Louze worked with a smile and showed no signs of fatigue.
A minute later, the Nub passed out. Louze kept at it until he had sawed the nipple off entirely. In the end, the task had required about five minutes, and it left the Nub dangling unconscious. As Louze washed his hands, he muttered, “Something ought to come out of that, eh? Shame I don’t have days to do a full job on him before I kill him. Can’t do everything you want, I guess. That’s why they call it work.”
Fingit stared at Sakaj, his mouth open. He allowed the world of mankind to fade from his hearing.
“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something!” Sakaj shouted, her body quivering.
Fingit stood and stalked a few steps away. “You and your stupid rat-puking ideas!”
“Are you going to quit now, coward?”
“Oh, I don’t know! When the Nub’s dead, do you think we can fix this by dancing his corpse around like a puppet? Moron!”
Sakaj looked away, at least as far as she could with her entire body below the shoulders reduced to a gooey rug.
“What made you think that the Freak would deal?” Fingit shouted.
“She should have!” Sakaj shouted back. “Everything in her entire life, in her whole being, led up to that moment. There was no way she could have resisted.”
“Well, I guess there was some way, wasn’t there?” Fingit said in a singsong voice. “Now he’s being tortured to death, and I’m going to lose the little meat chunk! He still has a lot of good trades in him!” Fingit sighed. “What are we going to do for power? What am I going to tell Krak?”
“Don’t tell Krak anything! We can salvage this.”
“Stop saying that! How in the nasty corners of the Void do you think we can we fix this?”
“I don’t know yet, but I know we can. Trust me.”
“Like I trusted you before? Like the Nub trusted me? Like anybody trusts anybody around here? Are you still insane? I trust you as far as I can piss whiskey!” Fingit’s voice broke as he screamed at her.
Sakaj glared her disgust up at Fingit. “If I had feet, I would kick your balls through the top of your skull.”
Fingit roared, “Well, I do have feet, and you’re a pretty handy target, darling!”
“You wouldn’t!”
Fingit ran toward Sakaj and aimed a kick directly at her nose. Unable to dodge or even flop out of the way, Sakaj closed her eyes. Fingit exerted all his divine strength to pull the kick aside at the last moment, and it just caught her ear. Spinning, Fingit toppled to the grass.
Sakaj opened her eyes and released a trembling sigh. She whispered, “Thank you for not murdering me, at least.”.
Fingit rose. “To hell with you.” He grabbed her attenuated shoulders and lifted, and then he dragged her flattened body as if he were pulling a piece of lumber along by one end.
“Set me down!” Sakaj wiggled her body like a floppy rug as she repeated the command several times, accompanied by increasingly awful profanity.
Fingit dragged her down a gentle slope to a black pond. He hauled her into the knee-deep water and hurled her toward the middle, spinning like a fisherman’s net. She smacked onto the surface, settled a moment, and sank.
Fingit waded out of the pond and trudged up the slope. Then he stopped and took a couple of uncertain steps back toward the pond. He looked around and saw that no one else seemed to be in Unicorn Town right then.
I really ought to fish her out. But she’s probably not dead, and she can jump out of Unicorn Town whenever she wants. Of course, Krak will vaporize her once I tell him what’s happened, so she might not be anxious to go home yet. And if she’s dead forever? In that case, there’s nothing I can do to help her anyway, is there?
Fingit turned away from the pond and began wandering through the Unicorn Town murk, thinking about how to explain this to the Father of the Gods so that Krak wouldn’t vaporize him too.
Thirteen
(Sakaj)
Sakaj concentrated on suppressing her anger. She found it difficult, especially with a black aquatic weed wafting up her nose. She told herself that if she had arms, she could fashion that weed into a strangling cord for the next time she saw Fingit. Or if she had a drop of power, she could come upon Fingit unaware, cast him into a magical sleep, and replace some of his intestines with the black weed. That shouldn’t be impossible for the Goddess of the Unknowable.
But Sakaj did not have arms, so she may as well plan to carry Fingit off into the Void on a talking cow, there to destroy him beneath an avalanche of nasty hard cheeses. She considered it unlikely she could accomplish any of that, unless she now lay at the bottom of a mystical pond. She supposed that the pond could be mystical, considering that it existed in the Dark Lands. Yet unless it produced well-endowed love slaves, or a school of demon fish with which to destroy her enemies, it wasn’t
