Overly specific.
I really wanted to sleep through this.
I wish there were some way I could stop myself from imagining how it’ll feel.
The bitches go to work on his clothing, cutting it off so they can strip him without opening his shackles, and he’s still staring up at me-I mean, it looks like he’s staring up at me, kind of, in a sick way-with that same stupid dreamy smile he had when he begged me to pick him for this. Which is bone-fucking creepy on a face with only clot-crusted holes where eyes used to be.
Well, this is what you asked for, man. You can fuck me if I have a clue why.
Under his robes he’s all soft and white. It’s hard to look. I mean, sure, priests don’t have to be athletes, even Kannithan priests, but shit he’s got these little saggy man-tits. . and when they cut away his pants, his crotch is just a thatch of mud-colored hair. Huh. Since when is Dal’kannith one of those, y’know, those full-castration type of-
Oh.
Holy shit. I get it. I get it now. Those aren’t man-tits.
Pretornio-
He’s a chick.
››scanning fwd››
When the world comes all the way back the smell is still turd-smoke and old meat; the feel is still easterly breeze on my face and my chest and my balls but not on arms and legs that are numb as the wood they’re nailed to. The sound on the wind is still Pretornio’s voice, gone high and ragged, still chanting away in Old High Lipkan, and when my eyes fall open she’s still impaled on the pole like a trout on a fish spear.
Doesn’t wriggle, though.
Me, I’d be thrashing with everything I’ve got. Drive my weight down onto the blunt end of the pole. Make it rip through me. End it fast.
She’s perfectly still. Must be holding out for something from Dal’kannith.
Good fucking luck.
Moon’s out, way over in the west. The top bitches are back up here. I catch Crowmane’s voice behind me, and Dugsacks leans on the retaining wall and chews wood-roasted meat off what looks a little like it could be half a giant chicken wing but is actually the forearm of somebody I know.
Knew.
Maybe somebody who died in the fight. Stalton. Rababal. Maybe somebody who’s died since. Somebody I chose. Maybe Kess, or Nollo.
Maybe Tizarre.
Dugsacks sees me watching her eat and tosses the arm to Cornholes, who gives me a friendly snort that sounds like a lion’s cough because each of her nostrils is bigger around than my dick. Teasingly, mockingly, she lifts the arm up within reach of my teeth.
So I take a bite.
Why not? Better than a sop of vinegar. Tastes good too.
The ridges of flesh that serve her for eyebrows pop wide. While I chew, she chuckles and says something to the other bitches and they hoot and when she turns back and lifts her head to laugh up at me, I figure my gut’s recovered some. I make an experiment: I spit the hunk of somebody-I-know in her eye.
Dammit. Wanted it up her nose.
She starts for me and Crowmane stops her with an authoritative bark. Dug-sacks says something that gets a laugh from the other bitches and Cornholes’ eyes bulge and she whaps Dugsacks a good one with the roasted arm and they go for each other and Crowmane has to wade in personally, and while they’re all still hooting and clawing and shrieking and struggling-
This place is suddenly getting light. .
Shadows sharpen and stone glares and what exactly the hell is going on here? Not dawn. Can’t be. Dawn here is vermillion dust. This light’s yellow as a lamp and it’s coming from-
It’s coming from-
Hot staggering fuck. Pretornio’s on fire.
A crown of flames fans the night from her skull, lightning-blue where it springs from naked bone, rising to a sunflower spray, and across the badland camp Black Knives turn and stand and stare, and the world goes quiet except for the night wind’s whisper and the harsh spit of flame. Flesh has burned off her spine, and the exposed bone spits a column of blue blaze up to join her crown, bright as an arc-welder. Bright as a star.
Shit, she’s in overload.
And she’s still chanting. .
Guess Dal’kannith’s coming through for her after all. With something Old fucking Testament.
The bitches have forgotten about me now. They’ve forgotten about each other. They line the retaining wall, staring down in brain-dead stupefaction at their homemade fusion torchsicle.
Crowmane recovers first. She roars something into the camp, where awed Black Knives have stopped eating and fucking and gambling and everything else to stand and stare with stupid looks scorching into their warthog faces. Crowmane roars again, and a couple of bucks grab a water barrel and run at Pretornio. This tickle in my guts might be the pre-echo of an oncoming laugh. They’re gonna be sorry.
The bucks skid to a stop at the base of the impale-o-matic and heave the barrel. A gout of water splashes up onto her and power explodes through it like a fuel-air bomb. The shockwave blasts cook fires into showers of burning shit and shreds tents and sends ogrilloi tumbling. What’s left of the two bucks looks like Daffy Duck after the dynamite goes off in his beak.
And Pretornio chants on.
Another roar from Crowmane. Bucks scramble to string their bows, and four-foot arrows as big around as my thumb zip out of the night and smack into her unresisting flesh with a stutter of flat whaps like bored applause.
Every one of them bursts aflame: instant torches fed with her melting body fat. And I finally manage that laugh.
The laugh shakes me. It rocks me. It rips barb-wire chunks off my ass-boned-to-Neverland diaphragm. I don’t mind.
It always did hurt.
“Hey. .” Dead crows wheeze better than that, if they’re fresh enough. Nobody even looks around. “Hey. . dumb cunts. .”
Gahh. Throat’s worse’n my gut.
Fuck it anyway.
I suck a fold of lip between my teeth and bite down and thick salt-black metal syrup slides down into my throat before I give myself time to think about drowning in my own blood.
“Hey, you stupid goddamn cows-”
Dugsacks turns and gives me the fisheye. I gasp strength back into my lungs. “Tell your head shit-suck over there that you have maybe two minutes. Maybe three. Then it’s fucking over for you.”
Next to Crowmane at the retaining wall, Cornholes snarls something savage over her shoulder at Dugsacks, who snarls something back and Cornholes raises a fist that’d stun a buffalo but Crowmane’s all over them again and one of her hands has gathered unto itself all the reality there is to be had here on the parapet, and I simply and purely dream-certain know that if they get seriously into it right now, she’ll make them seriously dead before either of them can seriously blink.
They know it too. Cornholes shuts the hell up. Dugsacks mutters something, and Crowmane barks at her. Dugsacks flinches, and says whatever it was again, louder.
Now Crowmane looks at me. The hyper-real shimmer around her hand swells toward my face, and when she growls something that sounds like nerroll pagganik torrin nezz, paggtakkuni, the eldritch dream-knowing tells me that she means What do you whimper, little rabbit?
I lift my head enough to give her a look at my teeth. “I know what she’s doing. I can tell you about it. Maybe in time.”
She swivels her swinging tits toward me and gives me a toss of the crowfeather headdress. Nershrannik pagannol. Pelshragikk laggan?