Burn Me Deadly

SIX

I slapped him lightly across the face until he whimpered like a whiny child and opened his eyes. Then I stepped back and let him figure it out for himself.

He tried to move, realized his arms were pinned above his head and that his feet only barely touched the ground. He struggled slowly, his body pivoting on his wrists as his boots scraped the floor. As he awoke more he fought harder, gasping at the pain from his ribs. Then he comprehended, and froze. He dangled from the manacles that once held Laura Lesperitt, and looked slowly around until he saw me seated nonchalantly on the windowsill opposite him.

“Welcome back, tough guy,” I said.

He said nothing. The only sound was the beam above him creaking from his weight. Wind blew through the windows and ruffled his hair.

“Don’t know if you remember me,” I said, “but I lay on the floor here while you and your buddies tortured a girl to death right where you’re hanging. Don’t bother denying it; I know it was you.” I held up the knife I’d gotten from Bella Lou. “One of you had this same design on your boots.”

He said nothing, but the hate in his glare was a little diminished by fear.

I turned the knife like I was unfamiliar with how to handle it. “Now the thing is, I want to know some things, and I’m not real picky about how I find them out. Given the way you treated that girl, I’m sure you can appreciate that. But I’m a fair guy, so I’m going to give you a chance here. Who are you, and what did you want to find out from her that was so important?”

He said nothing. His face was red from pain, except for the white around his lips from gritting his teeth.

I shrugged. “Okay, then. I suppose I’ll just have to have a little target practice until you become chattier.” I grinned and turned the knife so the blade caught the light. “Always meant to learn how to throw one of these,” I said, then threw it expertly right at him.

Because I’m an expert, I knew I’d miss him by a mile and stick the knife in the wall behind him. He yelped as it swished past his left underarm, then glared at me as I walked across the room and twisted the knife loose.

“Wow,” I said as I returned to my spot across the room, “there must be a trick to this. Let me try again.”

This time I deliberately nicked his right side. It was little more than a glorified shaving cut, but it also stung like one and made him howl and writhe. He kicked at me as I walked around him to get the knife, and by the time I returned to face him, blood had soaked the side of his shirt.

“Wow,” I said, mock impressed with my own skill. “Would you look at that? Does it hurt?”

He glared.

I shrugged, backed up and threw again. This time it stuck in the big muscle of his thigh. I didn’t use enough force to go very deep, so it only remained for a moment before its own weight and his spasm of pain knocked it free. He jerked like a hooked fish and whined through his teeth.

I retrieved the knife and he followed me with wide, frantic eyes. I said apologetically, “I’m sorry, but you really have no one to blame but yourself.” I held the knife ready to throw and watched him expectantly. “What were you guys trying to find out from that girl?”

He opened his mouth as if to speak, then mustered his resolve and clamped it shut again.

I sighed, said, “I’ll be great at this before much longer,” and threw the knife again. This time I aimed higher, closer to his groin. This one finally got his attention. He howled as the point jabbed the soft skin at the crease of his thigh and hip, and thrashed madly until he shook the knife free. It clattered to the floor and he turned wide, panicked eyes on me.

“You son of a bitch!” he cried, his voice high.

“Don’t talk about my mother,” I said patiently. “And what should concern you is that I was aiming at your heart. So are you ready to talk?”

“ Yes! ” he snarled.

“What did you want to find out from the girl you peeled the skin off of a week and a half ago?”

He shook his head frantically. “Uh-uh, man, not me. That was Frankie. He’s into that. I was just the lookout.”

“Good for you. What were you trying to find out?”

He looked up at the manacles as if he hoped they’d magically open and free him. When they didn’t he sighed, looked down and said, “Lumina. We’re trying to find Lumina.”

“Who is Lumina?”

I heard the distant twang, followed by a much closer snick, at about the same time I registered his sudden, wide-eyed look of surprise. An arrowhead appeared just above his navel, poking out through his shirt. He tried to say something; then another snick-twang combo preceded the solid thunk of a second arrow into his back. This one didn’t come out the other side.

By the time the second one struck, I’d flung myself to the floor and scrambled over beneath the window. I drew my sword and held it up so I could use a specially polished part of the blade as a mirror. Outside, a man on horseback untied both my horse and the dead man’s, then smacked them with the flat of his sword and sent them off down the trail. He watched the house for another moment, then, apparently happy with his handiwork, spurred his own horse after the others.

Crap, I thought.

I snatched up the dragon knife and rushed out the door, scabbarding my sword as I went. I ran down the trail, but no way was I going to catch a guy on horseback. I skidded to a stop, out of breath and furious. Then I had a terrible idea.

If he left by the same cliff-top trail I’d used, there was a chance I could cut through the woods and head him off. He’d have no reason to hurry once he got out of sight, since he knew I was now on foot. But most of the trees were hawthorns, and they were woven together like the lies a king’s chamberlain tells to hide the queen’s dalliances. They’d shred me to pieces before I’d gone fifty feet. Still, I’d get no answers standing there wheezing. So I pulled my jacket sleeves down to protect my hands, put up my arms to shield my face, cursed the various fates that brought me to this point and headed into the gauntlet.

It was as bad as I feared. A couple of times I dodged around rocky outcroppings and caught another whiff of lamp oil. Finally I emerged on the trail where it ran closest to the cliff’s edge, my arms slashed from protecting my head and my shins cut from pushing their way through the branches. Exhausted, I sat down on a fallen tree beside the path to catch my breath. I tried to read the ground to see if my man had already passed, but it was too rocky, and the traces I saw could easily have been my own from earlier that day. Sweat from the exertion trickled into the various cuts and scratches, and the stinging made me even angrier. I was sure I’d missed him, that my frantic race to intercept the bastard had been for nothing. Then, from up the trail, I heard the distinctive neighing of my own borrowed horse as she came toward me.

I ducked out of sight behind the fallen tree and pulled a branch down over me. The dead man’s horse went past first at a leisurely trot, smugly unconcerned with the huge drop to its left. Then my gray mare followed, far more slowly, and actually turned my way as if she could see me. If she’d given me away I’d have pushed her off the cliff with my bare hands, but she went past without a sound.

My man had to be next, so I got ready. I heard him approaching slowly, letting his horse set the pace. He would be alert for pursuit, not ambush. I hoped. Then he was right in front of me.

He wore another one of the camouflage cloaks, but appeared taller and older than the man hanging dead back in the shack. I could see only his chin and its sandy-colored beard. His bow hung from his saddle, beside the quiver of arrows. No way he could nock one quickly.

I waited until he passed, then jumped over the fallen tree and grabbed a handful of the cloak. He was too surprised to resist and I yanked him easily from the saddle onto the rocky trail. He landed with a startled, “ OW! ”

I jumped onto him and pinned him with my weight and the cloak’s material. He struggled to get his hands free, and I punched him in the face. He grunted and stopped wriggling, so at least it got his attention. He glared up at me with fury that he knew, for the moment, he had to control.

“Nice shooting back there,” I said. “Now why don’t you tell me about Lumina?”

“Go to hell,” he hissed, and with a sudden burst of energy threw me aside. I rolled toward the edge of the cliff, but flattened myself and clutched the ground before I went over.

The guy jumped to his feet and threw off the cloak. He wore modified leather armor, the kind used as a status symbol by a certain type of criminal. It was covered with sword nicks and little pockmarks made by arrowheads, testifying to the wearer’s supposed history of violence. They were easy to fake, of course, but my gut told me he’d come by his honestly.

He drew his sword and attacked. I rolled out of the way just in time and the sword buried itself in the rocky ground. I got to my feet and drew my own sword, wishing now I hadn’t punched so many people that day. My grip was pathetic when I parried his next blow, and he damn near knocked the hilt right out of my hand. I responded by kicking at his groin. He turned and caught the blow on his hip, but it still made him grunt because my boots had metal toe caps for just such contingencies. His leg nearly buckled, and I jabbed with my sword, forcing him to awkwardly back away. I feinted, he moved to block it and I jumped inside his guard. I slammed the blade of my own sword into his chest and slid it up until the edge was horizontal against his throat, just biting into the skin.

We’d ended up closer to the cliff than I liked. “Tell me about Lumina,” I repeated. “And why you want to know so bad you’d kill some poor girl over it.”

He laughed. This close I saw the little patches of white hair that had grown from sword cuts on his scalp. He’d done his time, apparently. “Some ‘poor girl’? Pal, you don’t know who you’re talking about.”

A shudder went through me. I recognized his voice from that night: he’d been the torturer defending his professional skill. The dead man at the cabin had called him Frankie. That cold rage came again as I said, “I know she died being peeled alive by you.”

“Who are you working for, tough guy?” he demanded; suddenly he was now interrogating me. “You know Marantz doesn’t like strange noses poking into his business.”

“Then Marantz should’ve hired better people,” I said as if the name meant nothing. But it did; in my business, you got to know all about people like Marantz.

He laughed. “Okay, to tell you the truth, we were-” Then he head-butted me in the forehead. I reflexively slashed with the sword and cut the skin of his throat as I fell back, but not deep enough to do any real damage. I sat heavily on the fallen tree and my sword fell from my limp hand. I shook my head hard, and my vision cleared in time for me to see the man’s weapon glint in the sun as he brought it around in a wide, full-power slice at my neck. I leaned back so that it swished over my chest, then jumped up so that in one move I pushed him back and punched him in the jaw. He dropped his sword and, with an annoyed cry of, “Oh, god damn it!” fell backward over the edge of the cliff.

Almost.

I grabbed the front of his tunic, dug my boots into the dirt and managed to hold him with just his heels barely on the edge. The drop below was about forty feet, onto the same hard rocks that had so gently cradled me and his other victims. It might not be fatal; it definitely would leave a mark.

He froze, his arms flung wide for balance. All I had to do was open my hand. “Ready to talk now, smart-ass?” I said.

He glared at me. “I got nothing to say to you. You shouldn’t have been there that night, and we should’ve made sure you were dead. Mistakes all around.”

“Who is Lumina?” I asked.

He laughed. “The fire dreams are made of, pal.”

Dirt crumbled under his feet and he slipped a little. I couldn’t hold him balanced like this much longer. “What’s Marantz after?”

More rock fell. Somewhere a crow signaled to its brethren. “You are in so much trouble. Once Marantz hears about this, you and everyone you know will be mutton on the fire. You get me?”

I had to admire the guy’s balls for trying to talk his way off the edge of a cliff. “I get you.”

“Now if you let me go, we might be able to work this out. I can talk to Marantz for you. I mean, yeah, you killed Jimmy up at the cabin, but he was a kid and he wasn’t too smart, so he’s no loss. Marantz won’t give a shit.”

“ You killed Jimmy, Frankie. Remember? And does Marantz give a shit about you?”

He grinned. “Hey, we’re family.”

I didn’t know if he meant it metaphorically or literally, and really didn’t care. The chill was back: the image of Laura’s dead face in the moonlight loomed vividly before me. “You tortured a helpless girl to death. You damn near killed me, and you did kill the best horse in the world.”

“The horse?” he said in real surprise. “You’re upset about the horse?”

“Not anymore,” I said, and let him go.

His last words were something like, “No, wait!” But we were way past negotiating.

I watched him bounce off the side of the cliff about halfway down and land with the kind of limp thud that said he wouldn’t be getting up. Still, I sat down and waited to make sure he wasn’t faking. When something thick and crimson seeped out from under his head I was pretty sure, but after two crows landed and began pecking at the skin of his hands with no response, I knew he was really dead.

Killing him had felt good, but not smart. He might’ve said more if I’d kept at him. But hopefully he said enough: Marantz. That one name told me an awful lot. With a sigh, I got to my feet and walked down the trail toward the cut.