Chapter Five: Part Four

Continued from Chapter Five: Part Three...

Digger whipped his sword to guard. He pointed it first to his left, backing away in case the enemy showed himself. The laughter sounded from his right then, however, and louder. He turned to face it. “Gods, how many?”


“There are few left in the world,” Silk said. His voice sounded serene. Twig looked at his face. Silk still smiled, looking toward the one standing in the flames of the barracks. “One is too many.”

“What are they?” Digger asked.

“They are Scarpy,” Silk said. “You know of Tetch Slander and the Scarpy. These are they. They came for me, just as you predicted that they would.”

Twig wondered what Silk’s crime really was. The Holy Assassins—the Scarpy—the classiest killers hunted Silk. When he found his own footing, Twig wondered if perhaps he would want Silk’s scalp too.

“Gods preserve us,” Digger said. He kept his voice strong and gripped his sword in both hands.

“Hold fast—here he comes,” Silk said. He brought his own sword to be on guard. The Scarpy in the barracks leapt out. Remnants of flame clinging to the oils of his skin, he began running the hundred yards from the barracks toward them. Silk and Digger stood to wait for the Scarpy. Twig had no such patience. Darting first sideways, and partly concealed in the dark—though he knew that the Scarpy could see heat—Twig ran toward the hot Scarpy. The Scarpy’s body generated the campfire heat Twig had been feeling. All Scarpy had blue and hairless bodies, tightened with muscle. This specimen, naked from the fire, stared with its glowing eyes straight at big Silk. The Scarpy had his head lowered, the small horns in his forehead pointed at Silk like a charging bull. Sparks dribbled like spittle from between his pointed teeth.

He ignored Twig. Until the last second, the Scarpy stayed intent on Silk. Somehow, Twig’s quiet charge in the dark shadows passed the Scarpy’s notice. Twig was not sure why. He pressed his advantage, however. Coming at an angle, Twig planted a foot in front of the Scarpy’s. The Scarpy gave a bestial scream that morphed to an obscenity. The Scarpy began to fall. In the middle of the Scarpy’s dive, Twig rotated to knee the Scarpy in the chest. He shoved the heavy body of the Scarpy gracelessly sideways. The Scarpy fell into a jagged hole in the bars of the near bear pit. A scream like a burning hawk escaped him as his side was pierced by several of the jagged ends of the bars on his way to the bones of the bears. A belch of fire lit the pit when he hit the floor.

“Do you think he’s dazed?” Digger said, running up to Twig.

“You can thank the man, boy,” Silk scolded.

“He will not keep for long,” Twig said. “We should run.”

“It’s a bit hard to run from them,” Silk said.

“It is harder to fight them,” Twig said.

“Damn it,” Silk said. He hocked and spat. “I always tried to keep on the same side as them during the War.”

“That is prudent,” Twig said. At the sight of the Scarpy going down, the laughs of the other Scarpy in the Gorge changed to howls and insults. Probably the insults were witty and profane. The thick Scarpy accent obscured what they said exactly. The voices all approached. “This gorge is fitted with explosives. If they are triggered it will cause a cave-in. The Scarpy will be crushed.”

“But probably not killed,” Silk said.

“They may be killed,” Twig said.

“How can we help?” Digger asked.

Twig looked at the young man’s face. He had urgency to do in his eyes. Impotency made him nervous. They would merely get in the way, however. The mechanism was supposed to be triggered by three people, but only Twig knew where the three triggers were.

“Run if you want to live,” Twig said. Digger looked uncomfortable at the command. “Give me your bow and a knife.” Twig took his cloak off and traded it for Silk’s bow and quiver of arrows.

“You’re in for a flailing if this goes otherwise than you say it will, boy,” Silk said. He took the cloak and handed over the bow, however, and produced a knife from somewhere. “Come on, lad. Let’s leave him to his arena.” Silk turned and jogged back to the zigzagging road up the wall of the Gorge.

Twig turned his back to them. He slung the quiver of arrows onto his back, tightened its strap. The knife he stuck under some of the straps on his leather sleeve. The snowy ground stretched flat from him. The building where the bears had been bred stood to the right—the stable to the left. Behind the breeding building the wall of the gorge loomed up, sheer and straight. Ancient mining equipment clung to its face, dirtying the clean stone. Among the catwalks and cranes hanging on the wall a series of cleverly placed charges, based on the Scarpy design, could be triggered to make the whole stone face crumble and bury the Gorge in stone. There were three triggers. Three Zombies were meant to light them at the same time. They were hidden.

Motion caught his eye. He looked toward the breeding building. Someone jumped from the roof. Orange-glowing eyes stared at him. A second Scarpy, walking toward him. A third ran around the stable, his eyes visible in the shadows.

“Well, cold one, we know what to look for now,” the lead Scarpy said.

Twig swung his foot back and drew an arrow. He looked at the wall of the Gorge, recalling the triggering process. It should take three people. Now he looked at it, he wondered if he might have thought of a way to do it by himself. The idea seemed ludicrous, though. He had no idea how to execute it.

He would need some rags.

Continued on December 21...

Chapter Four: Part Two

Continued from Chapter Four: Part One

“You know, price the size they’ve put on you, you’re not to be attracting just any mercenary,” Digger said. They rode their horses through the hills, along the highway where the murderers had turned up dead.

“That’s reasonable,” Silk said, puffing on a cigar.

“There are only two or three scalp hunters willing to pursue a warrant so expensive,” Digger took a thoughtful tone, waving three fingers to emphasize his point. “Low-Ball and his lads might,” Digger said. Low-Ball was one of Silk’s people, from the far southern peninsula, who’d turned his skills learned pirating into a mainland trade. Though Silk knew that Low-Ball had turned governor and spent most of his time attempting to unite the southern islands into a republic, and make “honest” trade—honest understood in a diplomatic sense. In any event, Silk had little fear of Low-Ball. “Then there’s Bogeyman,” Digger went on, mentioning one of the scary stories that had graduated from merely haunting the nightmares of children to tainting the stories that hard men told each other around campfires. For years no one believed that Bogeyman existed, and the few raving men who talked of him received the “mad” label. Digger believed Bogeyman existed—as did Silk.

“He’s been tied up with business, they say,” Silk said.

“Aye, so I hear,” Digger agreed. “He’s still a danger. He isn’t already rich and he always needs money.”

“That is true,” Silk said, scratching his cheek. Bogeyman always had some expensive venture on his platter, or so folk believed.

“And my father,” Digger said with thought in his voice. “He’d be up for the chase.”

“Yes,” Silk drew out the word, smiling. “That would be a worthy chase.”

“Aye.”

“Do you think he’d take it up?” Silk asked. Digger shook his head.

“He’s distracted with his own affairs,” Digger said.

“Pity.”

“If you actually wish to be caught it is,” Digger said as they rode past some huckleberry bushes frosted with old snow.

“You have very little faith in me,” Silk said, smiling.

“I hardly know you,” Digger said. Silk chuckled.

“You forgot someone,” Silk said.

“Did I, eh?”

“Tetch Slander and his boys,” Silk said.

“There is them—gods preserve you if they like the scent,” Digger said.

“Why? I think it’d be rather a lark evading old Slander and the Scarpy,” Silk snuffed, taking his cigar out of his mouth. “I fought beside them often enough. Fighting against them presents all new puzzles.”

“You are an odd one,” Digger shook his head, raising an eyebrow. He clearly could not believe that Silk was serious. Silk chuckled again. “Do as you like. I’d really like to clarify this Engelkind point.”

“I have declared war on the man.”

 “Right, you’ve declared war on Engelkind’s institution,” Digger was saying as they rode. Silk interrupted here.

“Just the man, not his institution,” he said, snuffling. He puffed on his cigar and looked around at the pine trees growing up the sides of the steep valley. It was the only highway out of town, Digger had said. Silk was not sure it smelled believable, but it didn’t matter much. The dead murderers had been found on this road.

“Declared war on Engelking the man—greater tang of blarney to that, but I’ll leave it aside till I know better of your character,” Digger continued.

“Most gracious,” Silk said.

“What I’m hearing as the moral to the grand story is Silk wants to see Engelkind killed, eh?”

Silk nodded. He heard something in the woods roundabout. Or, rather, heard an empty where scurrying critters ought to be audible. The silence had surrounded them for some minutes now. It had washed the valley suddenly half a mile back.

“Engelkind is a dictator and a scourge on future generations—does the young lordship’s conscience like the ‘tang’ of that?” Silk said, concentrating on listening to the woods rather than to Digger.

“Nay, I find it hard to understand. Legend tells us that Engelkind is a marked man, and that Ferryman’s own instrument is the only end he’ll meet.”

“And you have trouble believing I’m Ferryman’s instrument?”

“Aye. The story says Engelkind can only be killed by a thing unknown to this world.”

Digger was quite true, of course. Silk knew the story. He found it fascinating and he’d seen enough things try and fail to kill Engelkind the warlord to believe the legend. Ferryman occasionally marked men as his own quarry. The fact was well known. Those men only died according to Ferryman’s own design. No one had ever succeeded in directing or predicting the designs of Ferryman, the god of death and the end of things. What with Ferryman disappeared from the world, and Engelkind simply proceeding to age—he must be eighty or ninety already—it presented Silk a pretty puzzle.

He thought he had perhaps cracked it. The silence around him seemed familiar. As a clue, silence was wretched. It hardly told Silk anything. He paid attention to it, though.

“Well, we shall see,” Silk said.

“It’s too quiet,” Digger said.

They let the silence lower. It breathed through the trees—a scream with no breath, no throat, no voice. The icy sky pressed down on the snow covered ground. Before them, the road lay clear like a bated snare.

A noise like a hiccuping sob interrupted the silence. Stumbling from the trees, a man fell onto the road. His coat had ripped—he held a bloody hand to a too-limp shoulder, trying to steady the dislocation. With red shot eyes leaking frustrated tears, he stared at Silk. A grin cracked his face.

“He saw you,” the man said—Krist Novoselic gone far past the edge. Novoselic ran at Digger and Silk. Stumbled, though his legs appeared uninjured he had trouble walking. His breath came in grunts and snuffs. Digger’s hand fell on the handle of his bow, but he left his arrow un-nocked. Novoselic posed no threat; he loped past Silk and Digger, smelling of blood and sweat—muttering, “ha, he saw you, ha,” as he went. They let him go.

Digger looked sideways at Silk, raising an eyebrow. No words seemed required. The mad murderer spoke frighteningly for itself. Digger loosened his big knife in its sheath. Silk drew his curved two-handed sword, so that he looked prepared, although he thought he knew what had beaten Novoselic. With the mumbling, hiccuping breaths of Novoselic falling behind them, Silk and Digger rode their horses forward at a walk.

The road rounded a bend. Thick bushes blocked the view forward till they had made they turn. Twenty yards further on, a boulder stood in the middle of the road—the road parted around it. The boulder stood ten feet tall. On it, with no apparent weapon, stood a slim man, clutching a voluminous cloak like enough to a Holy Assassin’s around his shoulders. He had the hood up, though his face--youthfully shaped but shadowed around the cold eyes and sharp lips--stared out from the dark hood. His skin had the white cast of a corpse frozen in the snow on the ground. Silk recognized the pallor and nothing else about the person. That seemed strange. Silk expected to see someone else. His surprise, damnably, showed on his face for a second. The man standing on the boulder didn’t react. He stared passively at Silk. Silk gained control over his surprise after only a second. The man probably saw it.

A brief hiatus will be taken for Christmas. Continued on December 27...