His scowl vanished into a pale stone stare colder than the moonlight. “Knights of Khryl are warriors, not assassins.”
“Oh, grow up, for shit’s sake. What’s more important to you: Playing fair? or winning?”
“To act with Honor at all times is the absolute obligation of every Knight. Maintain the Honor of your Person, the Order, and Our Lord. Speak the Truth, though it mean your Death. Defend all those who cannot-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before.”
He was already turning back toward the topside access stair. “And there is no need for attack, nor to fear escape of the Black Knives below. Two Knights alone-three perhaps at most, given resupply up the rope we have ourselves lately employed-might hold this shaftway ’gainst the Black Knife Nation entire.”
He was right, of course, which was the problem. Well. . not exactly a problem. .
The only reason I was arguing with him in the first place was that I kind of liked the guy. I had a soft spot for the true-blue Honor-and-Justice types. Still do, a little.
When I was a kid, second-handing pirated Adventures bootlegged off the Net, I was as big a Jhubbar fan as the next guy-even though I couldn’t admit it, exactly. Or even at all. Not in my neighborhood. In the Mission District, you pretty much had to worship Mkembe, though he was long dead; Jhubbar-Raymond Story-was too goody-goody, y’know, noble and courageous, defend the weak and Show the Power of Truth through Righteous Action and all that shit. I was a sucker for it. Though I couldn’t tell anybody-not even Dad-I even wanted to be him when I grew up. He was a Knight of Khryl.
Sometimes I still want to be him.
Sometimes I wonder how much of the stupid shit I’ve done was just to punish myself for not growing up to be Jhubbar Tekkanal. I wonder sometimes if that’s why I married my late wife: because, down deep, we both despised the man I really am. It was the only thing we had in common.
I got over hating myself. Mostly. She didn’t. But let that go.
The point is, I hadn’t brought Khlaylock up there to sell him the plan. My plan wasn’t my plan. My plan was to bring him up there and kill him so I could tell the rest of the Knights he’d been taken by the Black Knives, and then I could lead them in a “rescue” raid; basically, to con the Knights into killing the Black Knife priest-bitches before they found out Khlaylock was dead. Liking the guy was giving me a little trouble pulling the trigger, that’s all.
And that wasn’t the only issue; I had my audience to consider.
We were close enough to the lip of the escarpment that a grab of his arm and a drop to my back for a simple tomenage would have done the trick-and that’s exactly how I’d have handled it, later in my career. But this was early days, and I had no idea just how popular Retreat from the Boedecken had become.
Kollberg was a genius at marketing; he was selling first-hander seats on a per-day basis, with discounts for multiple-day purchase and an option to re-up for extra days if the audience member processed the credit request before he or she left the building. He was also licensing the Adventure to other Studios across Earth, along with a cut-down second-hander cube of highlights starting when I spotted the Black Knives coming across the badlands, so new first-handers could get up to speed on the story arc. Every Studio in the world ended up splitting out some excess capacity; the Studio system hadn’t seen an extended Adventure with this level of nonstop slaughter since Mkembe and Mast in Westmarch Raiders.
By the time I was standing on the escarpment next to Khlaylock, I was already an international star; I just didn’t know it yet. So I was still looking to turn the High Drama volume knob up to eleven.
Which is why I said, “Wow. So Khryl loves cowards now?”
There are lots of cliches for how he took it-pillar of salt, turned to stone, that kind of shit-but none of them capture his eerily explosive stillness; he was locked down like a vault around a bomb. Somebody took the millisecond pause between triggering the detonator and the blast and stretched it into a long, long silence empty of everything but the waterfall’s roar. It really kinda gave me a shiver.
A hot black shiver, just above my balls.
I took that shiver in both fists of my Control Disciplines and jammed it into my adrenals. The night went bright and sharp and loud. Electric jolts along my arms and legs whispered that if I needed to, I could fly. .
When he finally spoke I could barely pick out his voice; it sounded like boulders grinding together in the river beneath our feet.
“You are no Knight, Caine Lackland, and I am not in Khryl’s Battledress-”
“I know a coward when I see one. Khryl does too.”
The look he sent over his shoulder shot those hot black jolts all the way up to the top of my skull. “Were you Armed-”
“Fuck Armed.” I pulled the knives out of my sleeves. A sharp flip of my wrists shot them both hilt-deep into the earth. “You have Khryl’s Strength. I have the truth. You think I’m wrong, prove it.”
“A Challenge? With you?” He stared, morning star hanging slack as his mouth. “Are you mad?”
“Yeah. Crazy too.” He finally turned toward me, slowly, considering, rolling it over in his head to get a good look at the angles. “You claim Khryl favors your plan-?”
“I claim,” I said, “you’re a gutless butt-weasel. You’re a Knight Captain, for shit’s sake. Even if you didn’t have Khryl’s Strength and Khryl’s Speed and Khryl’s Farts and who knows what else, you’re twice my fucking size. What are you afraid of?”
“My reluctance,” he said slowly, “arises of the debt you are owed by the Order, in the rescue of Knight Tarthell, and your aid against the Black Knife Nation. Do you understand that should I choose to Challenge and you Answer, your health, limb, and life itself are at peril? That even should Khryl favor your cause, you may be injured beyond the capacity of His Love to repair?”
I grinned. “Likewise.”
He stared a moment longer. “Will you not retract? You cannot hope to stand against me, Caine Lackland, and I would not willingly do you harm.”
“Sacrilege along with cowardice.” I wasn’t even talking anymore. It was the black jolt working my lips and tongue and throat. “Khryl decides who wins, doesn’t he? Unless you’re gonna pile on apostasy.”
He lowered his head with a resigned sigh. “Very well. Make peace with whatever god favors you, little man; you will have no further chance. Challenge.”
“Accepted,” I said. “I will Answer.”
So there we stood, on the lip of the escarpment, in billows of mist curling back from the waterfall. My back to the brink. His to the access tunnel. The moon, almost full and almost overhead, bleached the ten feet of softly damp pairie grass between us pale as a charcoal sketch on sheepskin. He lifted his morningstar in both hands; with the sun down, he could aim the weapon’s head only at the sun’s reflected light-y’know, the moon-and he composed himself for the prayer that would sanctify the coming Combat.
He drew himself up to his full height and lifted his head to Khryl’s light-the last time a Khryllian Knight ever kneels is when he takes his Orders, unless he’s defeated and Yields in Combat-and when he slipped into the Old High Lipkan Ammare Khryl Tyrhaalv’Dhalleig, the head of his morningstar took on that St. Elmo’s fire glow that began to creep down the haft toward his hands and I took one long skipping step for momentum and leaped.
In those days-years before Berne put Kosall through my spine-I could leap really well.
My Control Disciplines had my legs so amped that I might as well have been on the moon; when the arc of my leap reached him, I was still as high as his head and descending and I had to shoot the side kick down at an angle to catch the haft of his morningstar just below its centerpoint.