“Stop!” Red yelled.
I whirled, keeping low, wishing my hands were free to block and punch. Red was behind Darla. His right arm reached around her, and the tip of his gladius was poised against the corner of her right eye. A trail of blood dribbled slowly down her face, as if she were a vampire weeping blood instead of tears.
“I’ll blind her,” Red said calmly.
“No,” I said. It was more a prayer than a command.
“Jeff!” Red barked. “Put your knife to her eye.” One of the men standing nearby drew a dagger from the sheath at his side and held it to Darla’s left eye. Red lowered his gladius and sauntered toward me.
“Take care of them,” he ordered someone else. A group of men scurried forward. The guy I had kicked in the stomach finally caught his breath and walked off under his own power. The guy whose knee I had shattered had to be carried.
“Now, if I cut your woman’s eyes out,” Red said, “I’d do it surgically. I’d pierce the epidermis right at the corner of the eye, pop the eyeball free, and sever the optical nerve and the central retinal artery. Oh, there would be bleeding, no doubt. You don’t sever an artery without drawing blood. And I might nick the sclera, so intraocular fluid would leak along with the blood. But my knives are clean and sharp. My cuts are precise. She’d probably survive.
“If Jeff there tries it with that dagger, well, he’s no artiste. He’ll just plunge his blade into each socket. He’ll probably hit the prefrontal cortex and cause permanent brain damage. He might chip the supraorbital foramen and maybe the zygomatic bone. The wounds will be nasty—a mix of exploded eye, bone, brain, and blood. She’ll die. Slowly. Most likely of infection.
“Blinding is not part of the revenge you’ve earned. The Law of Steel takes the hands of thieves, not their eyes. But I’ve earned a little fun, don’t you think? No one here would begrudge me that. After all, some of them want your head.” The crowd hollered and whooped its agreement.
“I’m going to cut your arms free now. Tell me, what are you going to do? Are we going to have some fun with your woman?”
“Nothing,” I said through gritted teeth. “I won’t do anything.”
“A pity,” Red said lightly from behind me. “But at least we understand each other.” His knife whispered at my back, and the ropes binding my arms fell away. He hadn’t even nicked me.
“Kneel and bare one arm. Place it on the chopping block. Your choice which one.”
I slowly sank to my knees in front of the log. Its surface was black and scarred. It had been used for this purpose before. I stripped off both gloves and forced my sleeves up to my elbows. I held up my hands, staring at them in horror. They had a slight blue tinge from the cold. I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to decide which hand to sacrifice.
“No hurry,” Red said. “We’re happy to wait. We’ll just amuse ourselves with your woman’s lovely brown eyes in the meantime.”
Without even thinking about it, I put both arms on the chopping block. Somewhere deep within me a terrified voice wailed no, no, no—a man with one hand is a cripple, a man with none, in this postvolcano world, is dead. My head floated—I was afraid I would pass out, but my voice was still strong and clear. “The thefts were my idea. Take both my hands. I’ll pay your knife’s price for both of us.” Red tsked. “That’s not how the Law of Steel works. Choose an arm. Now.”
My fingers curled around the edge of the chopping block. The bark was rough and ridged.
“Jeff,” Red said casually, “cut out her left—”
“No!” I yelled. I pulled my right arm off the block. The gladius flashed in a huge arc, and I watched in horror as Red severed my left hand just above the wrist.
Chapter 37
At first there was hardly any pain at all. My left hand and wrist lay on the snow before me, limp without the connection to my brain. Its fingers were already turning blue-gray. It was impossible to believe, impossible to take in. I still felt like I had both hands, like I could command both fists to clench, both thumbs to grip, both sets of fingers to caress. Blood seeped from the hand, staining the snow. Blood spurted from the end of my arm, keeping time with my heart.
Red seized my arm roughly, dragging me over to the fire. I was too dazed to resist. He plunged my stump into the pot of boiling tar. Then there was pain, indescribable in its intensity. The urine I had been holding released in a flood, and I passed out.
Darla’s scream woke me. Red laid her down in the snow beside me. The stump where her right hand had been was covered in black, lumpy tar. Consciousness fled again.
I was cold, terribly cold. Snow bit into my chest, arms, and legs; a bitter wind lashed my back. I was naked, face down in the snow. One of Red’s soldiers was hurrying away from me, carrying my boots and a bundle of damp rags that used to be my clothing. Darla was naked too, and unconscious again.
Red had retreated back to the circle of onlookers. “Let’s show ’em off in style!” he roared.
The crowd roared back. It didn’t sound like a collection of humans; it sounded like one gargantuan animal proclaiming its terror and rage to the black heavens. A snowball skimmed the ground near me. Another hit Darla’s face so hard it rocked her head sideways, splattering ice into her mouth and nose. She screamed and then started coughing.
I tried to go to her, to push myself upright, but in my rush I had forgotten about my missing hand. I planted the stump in the snow. The pain was so intense, black dots danced before my eyes. I collapsed. A ball of ice slashed across my back, and I felt a warm trickle welling in its path.
Darla was crawling toward me, wobbly as a threelegged stool. I cradled my left arm against my chest, moaning with the pain of it. I staggered over to Darla as icy missiles rained around us. We clung to each other with our good arms and started shambling toward the open gate— the only break in the vicious circle of people around us. The volume of their roar swelled, and they rushed closer.
A chunk of ice hit my nose. Blood dripped from my nostrils, streaming across my lips, filling my mouth with the taste of old copper pennies. We ran.
The crowd surged, following us out the gates, pelting us with snow and ice. Their roar had died down, and now we could hear individual epithets, “Thief!”
“Warren scum!” and worse. I kept my good arm around Darla’s back, my hand under her shoulder, trying to hold her up. She was doing the same for me. My stump was tucked close to my chest, where the snowballs pelting my back couldn’t reach it. We ran awkwardly, with our heads down.
Even our most enthusiastic pursuers dropped off after about a mile. My feet, which had burned like I was running across the blue flame of a gigantic gas burner, were numb now. Darla trembled under my arm—we were both shivering uncontrollably.
Bikezilla.
We had to make it to Bikezilla. Our go-bags were strapped to the load bed. They each contained a knife, food, a fire-starting kit and, most importantly, extra clothing. It was only another mile to the place we had hidden Bikezilla. We could make it. We would make it.
By the time we got to the right spot, we were both shivering so badly we could barely walk, let alone run. We had dragged Bikezilla across the snow berm near the ruins of a bank. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get Bikezilla back onto the road one-handed. It had been tough enough even when we were whole and clothed.