heaving involuntarily, felt the rush of warm water through his nostrils, flushing down his throat. He had to try again.
This time he launched his thumbs straight up into Rhino's eyes, digging the thumbnails deep into the eyeballs. Rhino's good eye flattened under the pressure, but that black marble of an eye on the damaged side of his face didn't move. It was as hard as a pearl, petrified. Eric dug harder.
Rhino's grip eased a little, then a little more. Eric was floating to the top. He broke the surface, sucked his lungs full of air, and heaved his weight into his thumbs.
But Rhino clamped his hands around Eric's wrists and easily pried them away. The enormous strength of the man surprised Eric. He tried to yank his hands free, but Rhino pulled them apart as easily as snapping a wishbone.
With a loud growl, Rhino suddenly reached down, grabbed a handful of Eric's chest bandage and a handful of pants and plucked Eric out of the water, raising him over his head. He threw him straight at the blue tiled corner of the pool like a child trying to crack open a clam by hurling it at a sharp rock.
Eric twisted slightly in midair, allowing his muscular back to smash against the hard edge of the pool, absorbing most of the shock. His head grazed the corner, sending five hundred volts of pain into his skull, but there was no serious damage. Dazed, Eric slid from the edge under the water to the bottom of the pool. His left foot landed on a piece of glass that sliced through the callouses on the ball of his foot. The pain jangled his nerves and sent an icy eel slithering through his stomach.
He forced his eyes open, peered through the murky slush. Ten feet away he saw Rhino's tree stump legs churning toward him. Eric dropped his hands to the bottom of the pool, felt gingerly for the glass that had cut his foot. Maybe a weapon, he hoped. His fingers bumped a high-top Nike sneaker, Volume I of Webster's Third International Dictionary A-G, a broken amber globe that used to belong to the lights around the pool. Too unwieldy, he thought, brushing it aside. Then his hands touched something else. At first he thought it was some kind of electrical wire, but it was too rigid. Then he recognized it: a wire coat hanger.
The legs were almost on him now. He didn't want to be caught short of breath again, so he fished up the coat hanger and kicked off the side of the pool, swimming furiously to the deepest part. When his head bobbed up again, he saw Rhino doing an easy breaststroke toward him. Eric hooked the hanger in his waistband to keep it out of sight.
'Hey, Ravensmith,' BeBop warned. 'You can't keep running, man. We can't spend the rest of the day here settling this one dispute. I got a whole fucking castle to run here. You either fight or'-he nodded toward Tsetse- 'my buddy here is gonna stick your face full of pins.'
Tsetse pulled a pin from his fishing hat and thumbed it into the end of his blowgun.
BeBop grabbed Tsetse's wrist and turned it so he could read the boy's watch. 'I'll give you both another five minutes. After that I'll have to award the match to my old buddy Rhino, based on aggressiveness. And you and your friends will be history. Understood?'
'Understood,' Eric responded, but didn't move.
Rhino grinned as he paddled closer, speaking out of one side of his mouth. 'Don't worry, Ravensmith. You don't even have five minutes.'
Eric treaded water for the twenty seconds it took for Rhino to get within five feet of him. Then he dove under the water, stretching the hanger at the hook and the middle of the bottom bar into an elongated diamond, making an opening he hoped would be large enough. His eyes were stinging from the dirty water as he swam, barely able to make out his target through the haze.
Rhino swiveled his head around, whipping it from side to side as he searched for Eric while treading water. He couldn't see anything through the floating garbage. Viciously he brushed away a soggy TV Guide that was piggyback on a tree branch. He looked over his shoulder at BeBop. 'He's running again, damn it. I want-'
But before he could tell the young musician and lord of Liar's Cove what he wanted, Eric exploded out of the water and jammed the hanger over his head, pulling it tight around the ragged throat, and twisting off the slack wire. Rhino's head jerked back as he clawed behind him for a piece of Eric. Eric leaned back, his knees lodged hard against Rhino's spine as he pulled on the hanger, constantly twisting the wire tighter. With each twist the black wire bit deeper into Rhino's windpipe.
Rhino's sputtering was a choked hiss. His small hands flailed blindly behind him, occasionally brushing some part of Eric's body, but not enough for those iron fingers to grab hold. He tried shaking his attacker off, but Eric rode him like a bucking bronco, yanking hard on the hanger, twisting the wire tighter and tighter.
The normal half of Rhino's face turned red, then white, then blue, but the scarred half maintained its lifeless marble color. With the terror of death slowly enveloping him, Rhino gave one last mournful cry, shrugging his shoulders like Atlas hefting off the world. Eric flipped up into the air, still holding onto the hook of the hanger with one hand. As he came back down again, Rhino was struggling to loosen the hanger with one hand, and reaching for Eric with the other. He managed to snag a handful of Eric's hair and was pulling him over his shoulder.
Eric had lost position, his knees no longer wedged into Rhino's huge back. He felt the stronger man's insistent power pulling him forward by the hair. He tried tightening the hanger more, but he was losing leverage there too. If Rhino managed to get both hands on him again, Eric knew he was done. He didn't have the strength-or time-to fight off another attack from those deadly hands.
Desperately, Eric held onto the hanger with one hand and dug his other hand into Rhino's face, trying to gouge at the eyes as he had before. Only his hands kept slipping from the rubbery scar tissue. Finally he clamped on to the thick ridge of flesh hanging over Rhino's black marble eye and pulled. A hunk of skin came off in his hands!
He could hear the horrified screams of some of the crowd, Tracy among them, and the howls of laughter from the others, drowning Rhino's own tortured wail. The shock of pain and the gushing of blood into his eye, distracted Rhino long enough for Eric to climb back into position. With five quick turns he twisted the hanger tight enough to cut off all the air.
Rhino began to sink into the deep water, weakly clutching at the wire and Eric. Eric stayed in place, knees pressed into the back, leaning backward, pulling on the wire. The muscles and veins bulged on Eric's arms and neck like bridge cables. He gulped a mouthful of air as they went under, Rhino fighting now in slow motion, a dying lump of animal raging against death.
Then nothing.
Eric didn't dismount immediately. He waited, holding his breath, ignoring the stinging in his eyes as he watched through the filthy waters Rhino's lifeless arms float out to the side. When he was satisfied that Rhino wasn't faking, Eric kicked off the dead man's back and broke surface, swimming lazily to the edge of the pool. Tracy and Blackjack helped him out of the water.
The crowd was alternately cheering and booing. Eric saw goods exchanging hands- cartridges, arrows, walnuts, salt-as losers paid their bets.
Eric looked at BeBop. 'You owe me a bath.'
BeBop's face clenched suddenly with anger. 'I don't owe you jackshit, pal. You're alive. Consider yourself lucky.'
Eric leveled his stare at the young man, his lips curled into a grim imitation of a smile.
BeBop flinched a little, then shrugged. 'All right. You earned it, man. Least I can do for a really big show.' He turned around and faced Rhino's crew. 'You can fish the whale meat out of the pool and get out of here. You've got an hour.' He waved the head of his security force to his side, speaking loud enough for the crowd to appreciate his words. 'I want these three to have the run of Liar's Cove for the rest of the day. Anything they want. Within reason.' He laughed, wagging a finger at Eric. The crowd cheered again. 'Now let's get the hell out of this cesspool,' he said, and spit into the pool.
The crowd began pressing and shoving through the doors. As they did, BeBop, a diplomatic smile pasted on his face, stepped up to Eric and whispered, 'You'd be wise to be gone from here by morning. And I don't want to see any of you back here for a long, long time. You're bad for business.'
18.
