Alex Bledsoe - Burn Me Deadly

I held up my hands. “Whoa, guys, I was just on my way to Neceda and got lost in this fog. Am I anywhere close?”

“That’s the guy who busted in and kicked me in the head!” the other guy insisted, pointing at me with a frantic waving finger. Well, that was even more luck.

I kept up the innocent act. “Buddy, maybe it’s the fog, but you’re mista-”

“Shut up,” Marantz said calmly, and I realized he had a small crossbow pointed casually in my direction. It wouldn’t be accurate for more than a short distance, but in this situation that was plenty. There seemed to be no other bodyguards with him, which was a small blessing at least. Guess Gordon wasn’t expecting a fight, although he certainly wasn’t thrown off by it. “Who are you?”

I smiled. “Lance Thrower.”

“Well, Mr. Thrower, you busted into an establishment owned by me and beat up an employee and one of my guests. Care to tell me why?”

God, I was too tired for this. No useful lie came to mind, so I just shrugged.

Marantz’s expression didn’t change. “Get his sword, Vinnie.”

Vinnie dismounted and strode over to me. A bruise roughly the size of my foot colored one cheek and temple. “You are going to so regret this,” he hissed, pointing his finger right in my face.

“I already do,” I assured him.

He drew my sword, gave me a smug your-ass-is-mine look and turned to Marantz. “Let’s take this guy and-”

When he turned the blade upright, the spikes shot from the hilt through his hand. They were two inches long, needle sharp and (because I’m devious that way) coated with dried lemon juice. Vinnie stared at the tips poking through the back of his hand for about five seconds before letting loose with a howl that was probably heard in Sevlow.

I didn’t wait for his scream. As soon as I heard the mechanism click, I jumped past him and grabbed a handful of Marantz’s clothes. The crossbow bolt shot harmlessly into the trunk of a nearby tree. I yanked him from the saddle and threw him to the ground. Before he knew it I had my knee on his chest and the dragon knife from my boot at his throat.

Vinnie reflexively opened his fingers, but the spikes held the sword in place. Without his grip to control it, though, the weight of the blade made it fall over suddenly, and I heard the crack of a wrist bone. Lockett had been right; the Shadow Slasher III was top-heavy, for just that reason. Vinnie howled again.

I saw none of this, though, because I wasn’t dumb enough to take my eyes off Marantz. He was completely unruffled. “Now what?” he asked calmly as he looked up at me.

“How about you tell me what you’re after here,” I said.

He laughed. “You gotta work a lot harder to scare things out of me, bucko.”

I put more weight on his sternum and he grunted. “Not that much harder,” I said, fighting to stay calm. Rage would do me no good.

“Oh, God,” Vinnie sobbed behind us. “My arm…”

“It’s a business investment,” Marantz said, his voice tight. “Tempcott controls Prince Frederick, and I control Tempcott.”

“And what’re your people looking for in the Black River Hills?”

He laughed again. “You do get around. My people are looking for a long shot. If they find it, then I’ll have something any king in the world would give his trea sury and firstborn daughter to obtain. If not… no harm done.”

“Boss…,” Vinnie pleaded.

“I’m occupied!” Marantz snarled.

“No harm except for Laura Lesperitt,” I said. “What is it?” I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it, to have his words give it a tangible reality.

Instead he smiled. “The fire dreams are made of.”

“Are you suddenly a poet?” Now I grinned. “You think there’s no harm telling me about your setup because I’ll be dead before I can pass it on, don’t you?”

“Pretty sure,” he agreed.

I pulled my knife away, slipped it back in my boot and stood. Marantz stared at me, puzzled, but didn’t move. I went to Vinnie, took his limp hand and pressed the catch on my sword. The spikes retracted, and he moaned in both relief and fresh pain. He fell flat on his face as I put the sword back in its sheath.

Marantz slowly sat up. “What are you doing?”

“Walking away,” I said. “I have no real quarrel with you. You can send your boys after me if you want, and eventually I’m sure they’ll get me. But I’ll take a few of them down first, and word would get around that you’re wasting time and manpower trying to get revenge on someone who had a knife to your throat and didn’t slice it.”

Amused and bewildered, he said, “You’re counting on my sense of honor?”

“No, your vanity. You have a lot of pies on your fingers because you don’t make silly decisions. No one knows about this little run-in except you, me and Vinnie. I won’t tell anyone, and I don’t have any illusions about how you’ll deal with Vinnie. So unless you start talking, no one will ever know.”

He stood and brushed dirt from his clothes. “Who are you, soldier?”

I shook my head. “The less you know, the safer I am.”

He laughed again. He laughed a lot, for a guy with so much blood on his hands. “I can find out any time I want, you know. And every shadow you pass might have a knife with your name on it.”

I shrugged. “I could say the same thing to you. Except I already know who you are.” With that I turned and walked away into the mist; I couldn’t ask for a much more dramatic exit. Marantz’s chuckling followed me down the hill.

It’s hard to be nonchalant when you’re expecting a crossbow bolt in your back at any moment, but I managed it. Only time would tell if Marantz called my bluff, because bluff it surely was.

I’d gone quite a ways down the hill when wheels rattled in the mist behind me. I stopped and waited as a single-horse wagon came into view. It carried a farmer and his wife on the seat, and four children in the back. They were dressed up and looked very grim. The farmer reined up beside me and looked me over. “You hurt?” he asked with no urgency.

“No, just heading into town. Is this the right way? Hard to tell with this fog.”

“We’re going into Neceda for the hanging. We could give you a ride.”

Hanging? Who the hell was Gary hanging? “Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

“Well, hop in. We don’t want to miss it.”

I climbed into the back. The four kids, three boys and a girl all under age ten, looked at me with the barest minimum of curiosity. “Who’s getting hanged?” I asked as I sat.

“Fella who killed one of the moon priestesses,” the farmer said as he snapped the reins on the horse’s rump. The wagon jumped forward. “Mother Bennings. She helped out Myrtle here when little Helene was breech. Can’t believe someone would just cut her up like that.”

“That’s why we don’t live in the city,” Myrtle said. “Too much violence.”

I said nothing, but my mind was racing. I couldn’t believe that weasely Gary Bunson had actually apprehended Mother Bennings’ murderer overnight. “Do you know who it is?”

The farmer shook his head. “Nope. But whoever it is, we want to see his face when the rope snaps tight. She didn’t deserve that; she was a good woman.”

The sunlight finally rose over the treetops and burned off the mist. Despite his ostensible urgency, the farmer seemed content with his horse’s idle walk. Other wagons, lone riders and even three unsupervised children on foot passed us on their way into town. “Break his neck, pay his check!” the kids gleefully called out, a gallows chant children everywhere seemed to know.

I settled into the back corner of the wagon bed, aware that the four children never took their eyes off me. They didn’t join in the chant, and all had the same dead eyes as their parents. Whatever they farmed to eke out a living apparently left no room for childhood joy.