“I heard.”
“I made my point?”
“Yes.”
“They’re your fucking Laws of Engagement, and He’s your fucking god, and if I remember your stupid fucking rules, this means Khryl’s Own Motherfucking Self has just declared you cocksuckers had no business starting this shit up with me in the first place-”
“Freeman Shade-”
“And-and-” The cell darkened, and my tongue thickened, and I gritted my teeth and snarled, “And for shit’s sake, do something for that poor bastard armsman. .”
“We will.”
“Fucking right. . cocksuckers. .” I said, and night rose up within my head and swallowed me whole.
THE CAINE SHOW
RETREAT FROM THE BOEDECKEN (partial)
You are CAINE (featured Actor: Pfnl. Hari Michaelson)
MASTER: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.
© 2187 Adventures Unlimited Inc. All rights reserved.
“But shit, I mean-here we have priests of Lipke’s god of war and, and, uh, god of personal combat-” Sweat from Stalton’s plastered-flat hair trickles past the corner of his mouth, and his tongue unconsciously catches it. “Can’t we expect. . y’know, a miracle or something? I mean, your gods don’t just let you guys die, do they?”
I look back out at the gathering storm of Black Knives. If I weren’t so goddamn gutsick, I’d screw my cover and give the partners the benefit of my Monastic education: the Covenant of Pirichanthe and all the metaphysical Abbey school shit about the Will is a Function of the Body. . but I just don’t have the strength.
“The aid of the Lord of Valor is already here.” Marade stares into the badlands, and her mouth has gone hard. “I am His miracle.”
He rolls his eyes.
“I feel better already.”
Pretornio chimes in like he memorized this in seminary. “One Skill of Dal’Kannith is to bind men together so that many fight as one; another Skill can give us all the strength to endure the harshest battle: the courage to face suffering squarely, and to stare unblinking into death’s eye.”
“Hear what they’re really saying?” My chuckle’s like a stir of rocks in a rusty can. “Same as me. We’re on our own.”
“But if we can get a rider to the Khryllian outpost at North Rahndhing-” Marade begins, and I have to stop myself from smacking her one.
“Don’t play dumb blonde, for shit’s sake.”
“Caine.” Her voice goes severe. “The Order of Khryl has fought ogrilloi for generations. Protocols of prisoner exchange are well established-”
“Fuck your protocols. The Order’s got nothing to offer these bastards, and you know it.”
“Except their lives.”
I make a face. “Good luck with that, huh?”
Her voice rises. “No Soldier of Khryl is left in enemy hands. Ever. It is our Law.”
“Your Law. My ass.”
“Caine.” The severity becomes cold threat, and a hand that can crush bone to pudding seizes my shoulder. “The Law is sacred. I will not warn you again.”
I shrug out of her grip. “I don’t much like being touched that way.”
Her brow darkens but before she can open her mouth I plow on. “Tell them, Marade. You know this shit. You have to. Tell them what happens to captives of Black Knives. Tell them how many have escaped. How many have been ransomed. Ever. Come on. How many?”
Her face goes bleak. She says nothing. Which is an honest answer.
I turn to the others. “Boedecken bitches tell their cubs that if they don’t behave, Black Knives’ll get ’em. You follow? Black Knives are the grills that give other grills nightmares.”
Wish I could tell them about Mick Barand. About the bootleg cube of his last Adventure that I smuggled home when I was twelve. Wish I could tell them what the Black Knives did to him.
Wish I could tell them how Barand took it.
One of the toughest bastards in Studio history. How they broke him. How they made him sob and scream and beg. How at the end, he could only shiver. How it took him a week to die.
How he was dead two days, dead inside, before they finally killed him.
“People talk about fates worse than death. Nobody talks about a fate worse than getting caught by Black Knives. Because there fucking isn’t any.”
Do they get it? Can they get it?
Marade finally gets up dick enough to step in. “There is truth in what he says,” she admits. “Black Knives are feared among all the clans of the Boedecken. Feared and hated. They have abandoned even the debased gods worshipped in the Waste. Our best understanding, based on testimony of the few Black Knives the Order has ever taken-and based on the. . the. . the remains. . of their own prisoners that have been recovered-is that Black Knife society centers on sorcery of a. . primitive. . and grievously savage kind. Their aim of warfare is capture. Prisoners are. . ritually tormented, that their anguish might attract demons; their pain-their lives-are exchanged for certain dark powers. The torments of the Black Knives are known to be. . inventive.”
Which pretty well sums it up, but that dry-ass clinical shit won’t move anybody. “Are you hearing her?” I ask generally. “Let me translate. We could rape their wives, kill their grandmothers, eat their babies-we could assbone their goddamn lapdogs-and nothing they’d do to us would be any worse than it’s gonna be anyway. Understand? This shit’s lip-deep and the tide’s coming in.”
They look at each other, and they look at me, and after one long shared second of My, what a colorful turn of phrase he has, they go back to yapping among themselves like I never even opened my mouth, and I can’t make myself listen anymore.
I stare down at the coarse-flecked grain of the parapet’s granite and wish I could snarl and howl and bite off a chunk. I’m past the scared. I’m past the depressed. Now I’m pissed.
It’s not the dying. It’s not the torture. It’s that these cockknockers don’t give a shit what I say.
No.
It’s that there’s no goddamn reason they should give a shit. It’s that I haven’t done more. That I haven’t been more. That I have come all this way to get clipped as a fuck-my-bleeding-ass bit player.
I deserve better than this. I have earned better than this.
I should have been a star.
Rababal’s eyes shift and his lips twitch. “But-if some of us can escape, we can send help-even a full rescue; North Rahndhing is not so far away. It might be their best hope-”
“What, they have to work for a living, so they don’t even deserve a warning?” I lean close enough to bite a hunk out of his jowls. A whisper: “You want to run, you better start right now, you fat fuck. Before I kill you myself.”
I bet he tastes like pork.
Stalton shoulders in between us. “That’s too close, Caine. Back off. Now.”
I look up into his watery shit-colored eyes. “What if I don’t want to?”
Marade’s gauntlet falls on my shoulder like a steel brick. “Caine, now is not the time-”
“Now is the time. Now is the only time.” I smack her hand away and bare my teeth at the sudden heat this sparks in her eyes. “You pack of fucking pinheads-have any of you heard a word I’ve said? These are not animals. You can’t buy them off with some hunks of live goddamn bait. When they hit the camp, it won’t be some kind of mindless goddamn feeding frenzy. The first thing they’ll do with anybody they take is hurt them till they give you up. How long d’you think the porters will stand mute? Shit, why should they? After you’ve ditched them to be tortured to death?”