S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

Mary bounced up to her feet, leaving the rumal around the dead man’s throat where she’d flicked it with a backhand cast-a long silk handkerchief with a gold coin knotted into one end. Ritva used a piano-wire garrote, but Mary was a traditionalist, in her way. .

Five. .

Cole’s crossbow spoke as soon as he was clear of the door, and a man threw up his arms, took two more steps, and fell.

Four.

Ingolf had his own target. One Cutter had very sensibly ignored everything else, and even more sensibly ignored the long trumpet hanging from a tripod of poles-standing and blowing in the middle of a fight wasn’t likely to be conducive to long life or prolonged music either, more like a single strangled blat followed by a dull thud. Instead he snatched up a covered lantern and ran towards the fire signal, a big steel trash bucket heaped with straw and splintery pinewood. There would be no hiding that if he pitched in the flame and the alcohol in the glass reservoir too.

Ingolf halted, took stance, flipped the two-foot hickory handle of the tomahawk to get the balance perfect as it smacked back into his callused palm and threw in the same motion. Less than twelve seconds had passed from the moment the door opened to that when the wood left his hand.

Thousands of hours of old Pete’s patient coaching when he was a child and a teenager went into it, more in camps since when there was nothing else to do but practice or drink. God help him, times when he’d taken turns throwing and standing in front of a tree as a mark, and done the whole thing while a whiskey jug was going the rounds after dark and the deceptive flickering of firelight shone in his eyes. A dozen times for real. You didn’t need a tomahawk as often as you did a bow or a shete, but when you needed it nothing else would really do.

The throw had the sweet surprise of something perfect. The blackened steel of the head flickered through the night and went into the back of the Cutter’s thigh, splitting the tendon just above the knee; he hadn’t dared try for the torso, armored with a leather coat covered in steel washers. The man went down with a thud and the lantern clattered ahead of him away from his outstretched fingers, rolling to the foot of the trash bucket.

An arrow-Ian’s-went through the space he’d just vacated a fraction of a second after he fell, a flicker of half-seen motion in the night.

Ingolf was already charging the instant his follow-through finished. He didn’t pause when he came to where the man lay, just starting to push at the pebbled asphalt with his hands and reach for the lantern again and making a breathless squealing sound. Instead he leapt up when he was two paces away, as high as he could, and came down boot heels-first with all the momentum of his more than two hundred pounds of bone, muscle, weapons and armor.

The impact jarred him all the way up to his teeth and he stumbled to his knees and one hand. He could hear bones crack as he landed and an agonized wheeze as the man’s breath was driven out of his collapsing lungs. Then he wrenched the tomahawk free from where it had sliced through tendon and muscle and into bone and struck twice at the base of the man’s skull-with the blunt poll, not the blade,which might stick in bone.

Damn, but this gets a little more disgusting every time, he thought as the crunching feeling vibrated up the handle, like hitting a teapot full of jelly.

Three. .

When he got back to his feet everything was over, as he’d expected; surprise was the greatest force multiplier, and when you got total surprise and threw in guys like John Hordle, there was only one possible outcome. Ambushing beat the hell out of a stand-up fight. He’d been aware of the greatsword’s blackened blade moving in a pivoting figure-eight, and a couple of meaty thudding, cracking sounds.

And then there were none. Forty-five seconds, max.

It wasn’t even very startling that they’d all come through with nothing but bruises, though he still had a slight unacknowledged sweat of relief break out when Mary came up grinning. It wasn’t that she actually enjoyed killing men, even Cutters, but she did like the rush of a successful action, that crazed sensation of godlike immortality. He knew the feeling. It was like telling yourself that you could always put the corncob back in the mouth of the jug after one more swallow. .

Or possibly hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because if feels so good when you stop.

“Ready for that meadow full of sheep?” she said cheerfully.

“Ready and eager.”

“Too bad. How can a girl compete with ewes? Maybe if I started wearing a fleece to bed. . that might be fun. . ”

Hordle was wiping down the blade of his greatsword with a swatch of linsey-woolsey, as they all cocked an ear to check if the noise had carried. There hadn’t been much, but it hadn’t been absolutely quiet either. Ingolf looked at the bodies Hordle had left and blinked, altering course to avoid getting his boots wet. The first one was beheaded, which was more common than you’d think, and he’d taken the leg off another just below the hip with the backstroke. The other. . it must have been a straight overarm cut landing on the base of the man’s shoulder.

Ingolf had seen at lot of battlefields, but nothing much like the results of that appalling blow.

No, I lie, he thought. When that Refugee, what was his name, Jesse something. . Hanks. . tripped and fell into the circular saw at the timber mill back home, when I was around ten. Just after Dad got that waterwheel running right.

Hanks had been stumbling-drunk that afternoon and every other time he could cadge or steal enough booze, but possibly he’d just let himself fall. The man had been like many who’d made it out of the cities after Change Day; he’d never really recovered from what he’d seen and done and suffered, so that only raw kill-devil corn liquor could make his brain stop squirming like a toad in a bone cage. Ingolf’s ten-year-old self had been hustled out of the building, but he hadn’t forgotten.

You can always add something to your memories, he thought as they dragged the bodies over to lie at the base of the higher section of the building.

It wouldn’t hide them, exactly, but neither would it have the distinctive sprawl of dead men left where they fell to catch eyes at a distance. Hordle’s victims required two trips each. Ritva’s was a bit messier than her sister’s, since piano-wire cut deep when used for what her folk called SSR. . or Silent Sentry Removal.

Cole pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully, eyeing the twins out of the corner of his eye.

“You ever think we’re insane?” Ingolf murmured to Ian Kovalevsky as they followed the Dúnedain back down the stairwell to the top of the ramp. “Or maybe too dedicated to finding women who really understand our work?”

“Eh?” the ex-Mountie said. “We just like really active blondes with forceful personalities, I guess. You never met my mother, but let me tell you. .”

“Oh, you betcha. But most husbands, when the wife says I could just strangle him! they don’t have to wonder whether to take it literally.”

Ian chuckled. “Hey, if they were absolutely perfect, would they still have been single when we met ’em?”

“I heard that!” came from below.

“Oh, shit .”

• • •

Rudi Mackenzie followed Fred Thurston up the ladder and into the room. He was just in time to see John Hordle and a group of followers trotting back down the ramp from the next level; it was too dark for the blood to show on dark clothing, but the smell was rank.

“All taken care of,” the big man said, jerking a thumb upward. “Until someone notices.”