Paul Kearney: The Mark of Ran

Psellos was clutching the scroll to his bosom as though it were the holiest of relics. “Why not? But do not break her, Canker. She has sweetened many a deal for me.”

Canker grinned. “She is perhaps a little bent, but nowhere near broken yet, never fear. Have some more wine, my lord. Perhaps we can discuss a little business.”

Rol eased himself backwards off the wooden gallery inch by agonizing inch. The creaks and groans of the rotten wood were masked by a raucous babble of talk and laughter from the gathered men below. At last he reached the passageway behind him and was able to rise to his feet. He heard Psellos laugh, and for some reason a hot blaze of hatred rose up in his heart. He dodged the strung wires with supple swiftness, and clutching his makeshift club, he padded back into the darkness of the abandoned warehouse, his mind full of what he had seen and heard. Not even in his own thoughts did he admit or analyze what he intended to do. His heart knew without being told.

He circled round the firelit chamber wherein the King of Thieves entertained Psellos. The warehouse had been subdivided by moldering timber partitions and piled mounds of rubbish. Here and there pallets of straw lay upon the stone, little heaps of belongings, a dying fire aglow in a crudely made rock hearth. But there was no movement save for the small scurrying life of half-glimpsed vermin. It would seem that all those who made this place their home were drinking with their king and his guest.

Almost all. In the quiet dark Rol could still hear the buzz of talk from the firelit chamber, but he had grown accustomed to that. Now there were noises nearer at hand. Men gabbling, a snorted laugh, a beastlike grunting.

It was pitch-black, but Rol had not thought to wonder why it was he could see quite clearly. He followed the noises down a series of passages, and the gleam of the wires brought him up short again. Three of them this time. He held his breath as he twisted through them, and then went on.

Candlelight flickering out of an opening to his left in the passageway ahead. An odd smell, like that of a moldy herb being burned. He glided forward, drew a deep breath, and then risked a split-second glance round the corner.

He leaned back against the rough wall again, exhaled. In his mind’s eye the picture was bright and hard and clear. Once again, his body knew what it would do with no prompting from his will. He closed his eyes for a second, evened out his breathing, then nodded once, and turned the corner.

Three men, one on the bed, another at its foot, the third at its head. The belaying pin cracked off the skull of the nearest before he even turned round, the noise sharp and startling. Not all Rol’s strength had gone into the strike; he remembered Grandfather teaching him how to kill a pig. The placing of the blow was more important than the force.

As his striking arm completed its arc, snicking off the broken bone of the man’s head, so Rol stepped forward alongside the bed. The second man was naked from the waist down, his member jutting out from under his ragged shirt. Rol reached below it, found the testes in their soft bag of skin, and clenched his fingers about them, squeezing with all the strength in his fist. He felt them squish and pop. The man’s mouth opened in an O of agonized astonishment, but before a noise could issue from his throat Rol had thrust the blunt end of the belaying pin in over his teeth, breaking them, hammering through to the back of his throat.

He turned then to the third man who was disentangling himself from his activities on the bed, a blade naked in his hand. This one had had a moment more to collect his wits. The knife stabbed out for Rol’s side but Rol was already turning, and the blade buried itself in his forearm instead. The belaying pin swung round and took the fellow under his left ear. The blow staggered him long enough for Rol to bring a final swing down on the top of his forehead. This last was delivered with every ounce of strength he had left. The front of the man’s face caved in, nose and eyes destroyed as the hard wood went through to the brain.

A gurgling squeal from the floor from the wretch who lay cupping his genitalia. Rol stamped a boot down on the side of his neck, breaking the vertebrae there with an audible snap, and he was still.

He stood breathing evenly, the pain in his forearm beginning to make itself felt. Perhaps eight seconds had gone by since he had entered the room, and the noise of the fight had been no louder than the groans and grunts that had preceded it. There was no sudden uproar. Rol stared down at the bed, at Rowen, and something went out of him, some calm exaltation. He bent over, gasping, and was sick in a corner of the filthy little room.

Her body was very white in the dim candlelit gloom, which meant that the bruises and welts stood out on her skin all the more starkly. She was watching him, but there was a dulled detachment in her gaze he had never seen before. He had dreamed of her nakedness for weeks, but seeing her like this roused only pity in him, and outrage. He untied her arms and closed her legs to hide the glistening darkness at their crux, wiped some of the filth off her skin with the corner of a less-filthy blanket. She lay unresisting and limp, and he wondered what they had done to her, besides the obvious.

That smell in the air. He traced it to a small brass dish by the side of the bed. Within it were a number of tiny black cubes. As he touched one, part of it crumbled into powder and he coughed at the fragrant little cloud it produced. His head swam momentarily, and he spat to get the taste out of his mouth.

He stepped over the bodies on the floor. His forearm was dripping and numb, his left hand close to useless. He tore strips off the coverlet and tied them tight about the wound. Rowen’s eyes followed him but she made no sound. He found her clothes to the right of the bed and set them on her stomach. “Get dressed. We have to go.” This last in a racked whisper. Fear was rising up in his throat, the thought of what he had just done, the sinking realization that there would be consequences.

Rowen’s hands twitched. Her mouth opened but only an inarticulate groan came out. He bent over her face and took her restless fingers in his own.

“What? What is it? Tell me.”

A tear fled from the outside corner of her eye and trickled down to her neck. Rol leaned farther, until they were sharing each other’s breath and he could feel the butterfly-kiss of her eyelashes on his cheek.

“Fool,” she said, and pushed him away.

He straightened, looking down on her in bewilderment. “Get dressed,” he repeated mechanically.

“Go,” she said, baring her teeth.

“I came here to-to help you,” he whispered. “Look what they were doing to you. He was going to let them have you another whole day. ”

That made her pause. They stared into one another’s eyes, burnished steel meeting a sea-storm. At last her fingers fastened upon the garments he had set atop her abdomen.

“Help.”

With one hand at the back of her fluted neck, he raised her up and began to dress her. As they wrestled with her shirt his wounded forearm bled down her stomach, the blood trickling into the matted hair between her legs. With the shirt on he set his arm behind her knees and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She could sit up by herself, though her head still lolled forward, the magnificent black mane of her hair falling down over her bruised breasts.

Rol stopped to listen. Still that murmur of talk and laughter from the main chamber. But it would not be long before others came down for their turn at the night’s sport.

He bent and retrieved the knife that had scored his forearm. It was a thick-bladed, slightly curved weapon with an ivory grip, well made and wickedly sharp. Tucking it into his belt, he took Rowen’s arm and hauled her to her feet. “Come. We must go now, right now.”