RC Literary Contest
- Thread starter lizard
- Start date
MFJ
Active Member
MFJ
Active Member
lizard said:
Still, you should have said something! I'm taking off to lunch now, but if you can PM me your address than I'll get it in the mail literally as soon as I'm out of here.
and back on topic, I wonder whose writing I can appropriate next for another thrilling installment in the RC Members Fiction Club.
Thanatopsis123
ç½é¬¼
good idea!!
so far I had only been toying with having Dick Sirloin play the Brando character in Streetcar Named Desire
"Stella!"
so far I had only been toying with having Dick Sirloin play the Brando character in Streetcar Named Desire
"Stella!"
Demilich
Remember
what's going on on RC these days? all this shit that Birkenau did to piss you guys off completely flew right over my head
NAD
What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse
Royal Carnage Voyages to the Land of Fire and Ice
Only then did Maren go back inside the pyramid, where Demilich and Dorian Gray were waiting to brush the tangles from her hair and garb her as befit the Queen of Meereen, in a Ghiscari tokar.
The garment was clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the tokar required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master's garment, a sign of wealth and power.
Maren had wanted to ban the tokar when she took Meereen, but her council had convinced her otherwise. "The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated," warned the Green Grace, Jay Keeley. "In the wools of Westeros or a gown of Myrish lace, Your Radiance shall forever remain a stranger amongst us, a grotesque outlander, a barbarian conquerer. Meereen's queen must be a lady of Old Ghis." General Zod, the captain of the Second Sons, had put it more succinctly. "Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears."
The floppy ears she chose today were made of sheer white linen, with a fringe of golden tassels. With Dorian Gray's help, she wound the tokar about herself correctly on her third attempt. Demilich fetched her crown, wrought in the shape of the three-headed dragon of her House. Its coils were gold, its wings silver, its three heads ivory, onyx, and jade. Maren's neck and shoulders would be stiff and sore from the weight of it before the day was done.
She had not forgotten the slave children the Great Masters had nailed up along the road from Yunkai. They had numbered one hundred sixty-three, a child every mile, nailed to mileposts with one arm outstetched to point her way. After Meereen had fallen, Maren nailed up a like number of Great Masters. Swarms of flies had attended their slow dying, and the stench had lingered long in the plaza. Yet some days she feared that she had not gone nearly far enough. These Meereenese were a sly and stubborn people who resisted her at every turn. They had freed their slaves, yes... only to hire them back as servants at wages so meagre that most could scarce afford to eat. Freedmen too old or young to be of use had been cast into the streets, along with the infirm and the crippled. And still the Great Masters gathered atop their lofty pyramids to complain of how the dragon queen had filled their noble city with hordes of unwashed beggars, thieves, and whores.
To rule Meereen I must win the Meereenese, however much I may despise them. "I am ready," she told Demilich.
Asmode and Circus_Brimstone waited atop the marble steps. "Great queen," declared Asmode, "you are so radiant today I fear to look on you." The seneschal wore a tokar of maroon silk with a golden fringe. A small, damp man, he smelled as if he hadbathed in perfume and spoke a bastard form of High Valyrian, much corrupted and flavored with a thick Ghiscari growl.
"You are kind to say so," Maren answered, in a purer form of the same tongue.
"My queen," growled Circus_Brimstone, of the shaven head. Ghiscari hair was dense and wiry; it had long been the fashion for the men of the Slaver Cities to tease it into horns and spikes and wings. By shaving, Circus_Brimstone had put old Meereen behind him to accept the new. His Kandaq kin had done the same after his example. Others followed, though whether from fear, fashion, or ambition, Maren could not say; shavepates, they were called. Circus_Brimstone was the Shavepate... and the vilest of traitors to the Sons of the Harpy and their ilk. Even with his shaven scalp, Circus_Brimstone had an odious face; a beetled brow, small eyes with heavy bags beneath them, a big nose dark with blackheads, oily skin that looked more yellow than the usual amber of Ghiscari. It was a blunt, brutal, angry face. She could only pray it was an honest one as well.
"You have no lack of enemies, Your Grace. You can see their pyramids from your terrace. Pam, Monika, Speed, Radiobabe, Erik, all the old slaving families. Profanity. Profanity, most of all. A house of women now. Bitter old women with a taste for blood. Women do not forget. Women do not forgive."
No, Maren thought, and the Usurper's dogs will learn that, when I return to Westeros. It was true that there was blood between her and the house of Profanity. Profanity had been Meereen's hero until Strong Fotmbm slew him. His father, commander of the city watch, had died defending the gates when Thanatopsis123's Cock smashed them into splinters. His uncle had been one of the hundred sixty-three on the plaza.
"How much gold have we offered for information concerning the Sons of the Harpy?" Maren asked of Asmode.
"One hundred honors, if it please Your Radiance."
"One thousand honors would please us more. Make it so."
"Your Grace has not asked for my counsel," said Circus_Brimstone Shavepate, "but I say that blood must pay for blood. Take one man from each of the families I have named and kill him. The next time one of yours is slain, take two from each great house and kill them both. There will not be a third murder."
Asmode squealed in distress. "Noooo... gentle queen, such savagery would bring down the ire of the gods. We will find the murderers, I promise you, and when we do they will prove to be baseborn filth, you shall see."
The seneschal was as bald as Circus_Brimstone, though in his case the gods were responsible. "Should any hair be so insolent as to appear, my barber stands with razor ready," he had said when she raised him up. There were times when Maren wondered if that razor might not be better used on Asmode's throat. He was a useful man, but she liked him little and trusted him less. She had not forgotten the maegi Demilich, who had repaid her kindness by murdering her sun-and-stars and unborn child.
"Circus_Brimstone," she told the Shavepate, "I thank you for your counsel. Asmode, see what one thousand honors may accomplish." Clutching her tokar, Maren swept past them down the broad marble stair. She took one step at a time, lest she trip over her fringe and go tumbling headfirst into court.
Dead_Lioness announced her. The little scribe had a sweet, strong voice. "All kneel for Maren Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Shackles and Mother of Dragons," she cried, as Maren made her slow descent.
Asmode had a list. Custom demanded that the queen begin with the Astapori envoy, a former slave who called himself Lord Nad, though no one seemed to know what he was lord of.
Lord Nad had a mouth of brown and rotten teeth and the pointed yellow face of a weasel. He also had a gift. "Doomcifer the Great sends these slippers as a token of his love for Maren Stormborn, the Mother of Dragons," he announced.
Demilich fetched the slippers for her and put them on Maren's feet. They were gilded leather, decorated with green freshwater pearls. Does the butcher king believe a pair of pretty slippers will win my hand? "King Doomcifer is most generous," she said. "You may thank him for his lovely gift." Lovely, but made for a child. Maren had small feet, yet the slippers mashed her toes together.
"Great Doomcifer will be pleased to know they pleased you," said Lord Nad. "His Magnificence bids me say that he stands ready to defend the Mother of Dragons from all her foes."
If he proposes that I marry Doomcifer again, I'll throw a slipper at his head, Maren thought, but for once the Astapori envoy made no mention of a marriage. "I am only a young girl and know little of the ways of war," she went on, "but it is said that Astapor is starving. Let King Doomcifer feed his people before he leads them out to battle." She made a gesture of dismissal, and Nad withdrew.
"Magnificence," prompted Asmode, "will you hear the noble Erik?"
Again? Maren nodded, and Erik strode forth; a tall man, very slender, with flawless amber skin. He was rich. Famously and fabulously rich...
The nobleman had wings of hair sprouting from his temples as if his head were about to take flight. His long face was made even longer by a beard of wiry red-black hair bound with rings of gold. His purple tokar was fringed with amethysts and pearls. "Your Radiance will know the reason I am here."
"Why," she said, "it must be because you have no other purpose but to plague me. How many times have I refused you?"
"Five times, Your Magnificence."
"Six, now. I will not associate with a nazi."
"If Your Majesty will hear my arguments... "
"I have. Five times. Have you brought new arguments?"
"Old arguments," Erik admitted, "new words. Lovely words, and courteous, more apt to move a queen."
"It is your cause I find wanting, not your courtesies. I have heard your arguments so often." She leaned forward.
"Your Radiance is eloquent as well as beautiful. I am quite persuaded."
She had to laugh. "I am only a young girl and know little of trade, but I dwelled with Chromatose and CT_Thrash long enough to know that much. It makes no matter. Erik, if you could marshall armies as you marshall arguments, you could conquer the world... but my answer is still no. For the sixth time."
He bowed again, as deeply as before. His pearls and amethysts clattered softly against the marble floor. A very limber man was Erik. "The queen has spoken."
He might be handsome, but for that silly hair. Asmode and the Green Grace had been urging Maren to take a Meereenese noble for her husband, to reconcile the city to her rule. If it came to that, Erik might be worth a careful look. Sooner him than Circus_Brimstone. The Shavepate had offered to set aside his wife for her, but the notion made her shudder. Erik at least knew how to smile, though when Maren tried to imagine what it would be like to share a bed with him, she almost laughed aloud.
A boy came, younger than Maren, slight and scarred, dressed up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father's household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. He wanted them both hanged.
Maren had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.
When she told him, the boy rushed at her, but his feet tangled in his tokar and he went sprawling headlong on the purple marble. Strong Fotmbm was on him at once. The huge brown eunuch yanked him up one-handed and shook him like a mastiff with a rat. "Enough, Fotmbm," Maren called. "Release him."
And so her day crept by, tedious and terrifying by turns. By midday Maren was feeling the weight of the crown upon her head, and the hardness of the bench beneath her.
The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Maren kicked them off, and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep. "En Vind Av Sorg," she called, "I know what quality a king needs most."
"Courage, Your Grace?"
"No," she teased, "cheeks like iron. All I do is sit."
Only then did Maren go back inside the pyramid, where Demilich and Dorian Gray were waiting to brush the tangles from her hair and garb her as befit the Queen of Meereen, in a Ghiscari tokar.
The garment was clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the tokar required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master's garment, a sign of wealth and power.
Maren had wanted to ban the tokar when she took Meereen, but her council had convinced her otherwise. "The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated," warned the Green Grace, Jay Keeley. "In the wools of Westeros or a gown of Myrish lace, Your Radiance shall forever remain a stranger amongst us, a grotesque outlander, a barbarian conquerer. Meereen's queen must be a lady of Old Ghis." General Zod, the captain of the Second Sons, had put it more succinctly. "Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears."
The floppy ears she chose today were made of sheer white linen, with a fringe of golden tassels. With Dorian Gray's help, she wound the tokar about herself correctly on her third attempt. Demilich fetched her crown, wrought in the shape of the three-headed dragon of her House. Its coils were gold, its wings silver, its three heads ivory, onyx, and jade. Maren's neck and shoulders would be stiff and sore from the weight of it before the day was done.
She had not forgotten the slave children the Great Masters had nailed up along the road from Yunkai. They had numbered one hundred sixty-three, a child every mile, nailed to mileposts with one arm outstetched to point her way. After Meereen had fallen, Maren nailed up a like number of Great Masters. Swarms of flies had attended their slow dying, and the stench had lingered long in the plaza. Yet some days she feared that she had not gone nearly far enough. These Meereenese were a sly and stubborn people who resisted her at every turn. They had freed their slaves, yes... only to hire them back as servants at wages so meagre that most could scarce afford to eat. Freedmen too old or young to be of use had been cast into the streets, along with the infirm and the crippled. And still the Great Masters gathered atop their lofty pyramids to complain of how the dragon queen had filled their noble city with hordes of unwashed beggars, thieves, and whores.
To rule Meereen I must win the Meereenese, however much I may despise them. "I am ready," she told Demilich.
Asmode and Circus_Brimstone waited atop the marble steps. "Great queen," declared Asmode, "you are so radiant today I fear to look on you." The seneschal wore a tokar of maroon silk with a golden fringe. A small, damp man, he smelled as if he hadbathed in perfume and spoke a bastard form of High Valyrian, much corrupted and flavored with a thick Ghiscari growl.
"You are kind to say so," Maren answered, in a purer form of the same tongue.
"My queen," growled Circus_Brimstone, of the shaven head. Ghiscari hair was dense and wiry; it had long been the fashion for the men of the Slaver Cities to tease it into horns and spikes and wings. By shaving, Circus_Brimstone had put old Meereen behind him to accept the new. His Kandaq kin had done the same after his example. Others followed, though whether from fear, fashion, or ambition, Maren could not say; shavepates, they were called. Circus_Brimstone was the Shavepate... and the vilest of traitors to the Sons of the Harpy and their ilk. Even with his shaven scalp, Circus_Brimstone had an odious face; a beetled brow, small eyes with heavy bags beneath them, a big nose dark with blackheads, oily skin that looked more yellow than the usual amber of Ghiscari. It was a blunt, brutal, angry face. She could only pray it was an honest one as well.
"You have no lack of enemies, Your Grace. You can see their pyramids from your terrace. Pam, Monika, Speed, Radiobabe, Erik, all the old slaving families. Profanity. Profanity, most of all. A house of women now. Bitter old women with a taste for blood. Women do not forget. Women do not forgive."
No, Maren thought, and the Usurper's dogs will learn that, when I return to Westeros. It was true that there was blood between her and the house of Profanity. Profanity had been Meereen's hero until Strong Fotmbm slew him. His father, commander of the city watch, had died defending the gates when Thanatopsis123's Cock smashed them into splinters. His uncle had been one of the hundred sixty-three on the plaza.
"How much gold have we offered for information concerning the Sons of the Harpy?" Maren asked of Asmode.
"One hundred honors, if it please Your Radiance."
"One thousand honors would please us more. Make it so."
"Your Grace has not asked for my counsel," said Circus_Brimstone Shavepate, "but I say that blood must pay for blood. Take one man from each of the families I have named and kill him. The next time one of yours is slain, take two from each great house and kill them both. There will not be a third murder."
Asmode squealed in distress. "Noooo... gentle queen, such savagery would bring down the ire of the gods. We will find the murderers, I promise you, and when we do they will prove to be baseborn filth, you shall see."
The seneschal was as bald as Circus_Brimstone, though in his case the gods were responsible. "Should any hair be so insolent as to appear, my barber stands with razor ready," he had said when she raised him up. There were times when Maren wondered if that razor might not be better used on Asmode's throat. He was a useful man, but she liked him little and trusted him less. She had not forgotten the maegi Demilich, who had repaid her kindness by murdering her sun-and-stars and unborn child.
"Circus_Brimstone," she told the Shavepate, "I thank you for your counsel. Asmode, see what one thousand honors may accomplish." Clutching her tokar, Maren swept past them down the broad marble stair. She took one step at a time, lest she trip over her fringe and go tumbling headfirst into court.
Dead_Lioness announced her. The little scribe had a sweet, strong voice. "All kneel for Maren Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Shackles and Mother of Dragons," she cried, as Maren made her slow descent.
Asmode had a list. Custom demanded that the queen begin with the Astapori envoy, a former slave who called himself Lord Nad, though no one seemed to know what he was lord of.
Lord Nad had a mouth of brown and rotten teeth and the pointed yellow face of a weasel. He also had a gift. "Doomcifer the Great sends these slippers as a token of his love for Maren Stormborn, the Mother of Dragons," he announced.
Demilich fetched the slippers for her and put them on Maren's feet. They were gilded leather, decorated with green freshwater pearls. Does the butcher king believe a pair of pretty slippers will win my hand? "King Doomcifer is most generous," she said. "You may thank him for his lovely gift." Lovely, but made for a child. Maren had small feet, yet the slippers mashed her toes together.
"Great Doomcifer will be pleased to know they pleased you," said Lord Nad. "His Magnificence bids me say that he stands ready to defend the Mother of Dragons from all her foes."
If he proposes that I marry Doomcifer again, I'll throw a slipper at his head, Maren thought, but for once the Astapori envoy made no mention of a marriage. "I am only a young girl and know little of the ways of war," she went on, "but it is said that Astapor is starving. Let King Doomcifer feed his people before he leads them out to battle." She made a gesture of dismissal, and Nad withdrew.
"Magnificence," prompted Asmode, "will you hear the noble Erik?"
Again? Maren nodded, and Erik strode forth; a tall man, very slender, with flawless amber skin. He was rich. Famously and fabulously rich...
The nobleman had wings of hair sprouting from his temples as if his head were about to take flight. His long face was made even longer by a beard of wiry red-black hair bound with rings of gold. His purple tokar was fringed with amethysts and pearls. "Your Radiance will know the reason I am here."
"Why," she said, "it must be because you have no other purpose but to plague me. How many times have I refused you?"
"Five times, Your Magnificence."
"Six, now. I will not associate with a nazi."
"If Your Majesty will hear my arguments... "
"I have. Five times. Have you brought new arguments?"
"Old arguments," Erik admitted, "new words. Lovely words, and courteous, more apt to move a queen."
"It is your cause I find wanting, not your courtesies. I have heard your arguments so often." She leaned forward.
"Your Radiance is eloquent as well as beautiful. I am quite persuaded."
She had to laugh. "I am only a young girl and know little of trade, but I dwelled with Chromatose and CT_Thrash long enough to know that much. It makes no matter. Erik, if you could marshall armies as you marshall arguments, you could conquer the world... but my answer is still no. For the sixth time."
He bowed again, as deeply as before. His pearls and amethysts clattered softly against the marble floor. A very limber man was Erik. "The queen has spoken."
He might be handsome, but for that silly hair. Asmode and the Green Grace had been urging Maren to take a Meereenese noble for her husband, to reconcile the city to her rule. If it came to that, Erik might be worth a careful look. Sooner him than Circus_Brimstone. The Shavepate had offered to set aside his wife for her, but the notion made her shudder. Erik at least knew how to smile, though when Maren tried to imagine what it would be like to share a bed with him, she almost laughed aloud.
A boy came, younger than Maren, slight and scarred, dressed up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father's household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. He wanted them both hanged.
Maren had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.
When she told him, the boy rushed at her, but his feet tangled in his tokar and he went sprawling headlong on the purple marble. Strong Fotmbm was on him at once. The huge brown eunuch yanked him up one-handed and shook him like a mastiff with a rat. "Enough, Fotmbm," Maren called. "Release him."
And so her day crept by, tedious and terrifying by turns. By midday Maren was feeling the weight of the crown upon her head, and the hardness of the bench beneath her.
The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Maren kicked them off, and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep. "En Vind Av Sorg," she called, "I know what quality a king needs most."
"Courage, Your Grace?"
"No," she teased, "cheeks like iron. All I do is sit."
and some Stirling: Lurch and Radiobabe battle road bandits.
"Go!" Lurch70 shouted, and leaned forward as he clamped his legs to Charger's sides.
RadioBabe followed suit. The superbly trained warhorses broke into a gallop from a standing start, leaping the roadside ditch and breasting the tall grass in the field beyond. Lurch70 turned in the saddle and shot three more times in the thirty seconds it took to reach the ruined building; two misses, and one hit a horse in the shoulder. The beast screamed, a huge hurt sound of bewildered, uncomprehending pain; that was one of the manifold evils the Change had brought back into the world—Humvees didn't shriek in agony when they got shot up.
They pulled up their mounts and got out of the saddles in a hurry. RadioBabe slid to the ground like a seal down a wet rock, or like someone who'd been riding for fun since she was six. An instant later she had the two horses inside the gutted building; their eyes rolled and they snorted at the slippery linoleum under the layer of debris and dirt and sprouting weeds beneath their hooves, but they obeyed.
The arrows punched out in a steady rhythm, whickering away in smooth shallow arcs blurred with motion; the bright midmorning sun glinted on their sharp-edged heads.
Snap.
A mounted man took one in the shoulder and started to shriek; he slid out of the saddle, then clutched at it as his feet touched the ground—if he went down here, a large herd of horses would walk all over him.
Snap.
The next shaft sank up to its fletchings in that horse's neck. The beast bugled in a gurgle that sprayed blood out of its mouth and nostrils, glittering drops flying into the air, and half-bucked, half-staggered away. The wounded man dropped flat as his support was torn away, and then screamed again as the dancing hooves of the panicked horses came down on him—each with a thousand pounds behind it.
The scream was brief, and Lurch70 barred his teeth in a snarl of satisfaction.
I don't enjoy killing people, he thought. Really, I don't. Correction. I do enjoy killing bandits. People had done what they had to do to get through the Dying Time, but nowadays there was plenty of honest work to hand. Crusher's men were jackals who attacked the weak and robbed, raped and killed because they liked it. Hanging's too good for these scum.
None of the bandits he could see were more than a hundred and fifty yards away, and at that range the hornbow was about as effective as his old Remington 700.
Snap.
A bandit staggered into view; he'd been bumped by one of the horses he pushed aside to get to the west side of the road. That put him less than fifty yards away. The arrow struck just above the bridge of his nose, and he pitched backward.
The mounted outlaws had all dismounted in a hurry. That gave them a little cover behind the horse-herd, but the horses protected the disguised Bearkillers for a little while too. A glimpse of movement to the south, and he pivoted smoothly on his heel, drew and shot.
Snap.
This time he was close enough to hear the wet thick smack as the point struck; the bandit was bent over as he ran for cover, and the steel lashed into him just below the floating rib on his right side. It hammered down and through, burying itself in his pelvis. He dropped sprattling to the pavement, screaming for his mother and letting his longbow skid into the ditch.
"Die slow, you son of a bitch!" Lurch70 said, scanning for another target.
Whuppt.
The crossbow bolt went past too fast to see, but he could feel the ugly wind of it between face and bowstring as his hand went back for a new shaft.
"Get the fuck in here, you maniac!" RadioBabe shouted.
Lurch70 started out of the killing haze and obeyed, rolling through the empty window nearest him; the light mail in the lining of his long leather coat protected him from the jabbing spikes of glass still in the frame. The inside of the cinderblock building was bad footing, dirt and weeds and rubbish over linoleum, with fallen shelves and racks of videocassettes ready to tangle your feet. RadioBabe was fumbling with the lock of the door, which was metal with a hollow core; Lurch70 reached out and turned the deadbolt himself, twisting with all the strength of his hand and wrist. It shot home with a grating squeal of rusted steel.
A quick look around showed that there were only two windows, and both had shutters that were made up of squares of steel strapwork; he and RadioBabe grabbed one of the heavy metal racks and slammed it up behind the door, then added a half-dozen more, shoving at them until they were a tangled mass.
"Last stands aren't my inclination anyhow," RadioBabe replied, as they put another in a corner where the sky was visible between the bare stringers of the roof, to serve as a ladder. "But I wouldn't mind killing Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent from one."
Lurch70 nodded. "Pyrus, get up there and tell us what you can see," he said.
He considered the interior of the video store as the youngster scampered up the framework, squirrel-agile. Lurch70 sneezed once as dust flew up, smelling of old rusty metal and rat-droppings and weeds and very faintly of rotten meat. There was a counter and cash-register close to the door—the drawer of the register lay smashed open, mute inglorious testimony to someone being stupid enough to steal money right after the Change, of all useless things.
The two small windows looking out on the parking lot and the road were the only openings here, but a door gave out on the other side of the open space; probably to a storage room and office. RadioBabe was thinking on the same lines; she stuck her head through and looked around.
"Windowless," she said. "Just one door, and it's solid with a bar across the inside, it'd be easier to smash through the wall. Nothing here but some bones." A moment later, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. "Burned bones, human ones. And split for the marrow."
"Let's block this too," he said, and they heaved another set of frames over the connecting door. "Cinderblock doesn't have much strength."
Then they took station next to the windows. The bandits were driving off the horses, heading for the trees along the creek two long bowshots to the east; through his binoculars he could see hints that there was a camp there. Lurch70 took a mirror on a collapsible rod from his belt and snapped it open, using the glass to check angles he could not see from the window without sticking his head out.
Well, here's a distraction from our domestic problems, and no mistake, he thought. OK, two behind the pickup, another two behind the planter, and a third pair behind the bed of the overturned SUV. They'll all have something to shoot with, they're there to keep us pinned down while the rest get read to storm the place.
"Anything?" he called up to Pyrus.
"No sign of Lord Birkenau," the teenager said. "But I think I see bandits moving in the field behind the store—there's a big old propane tank about twenty yards out, and some trees. Lot of bush, too."
"Oh, hallelujah," RadioBabe said quietly. "Lordy, but I'll be glad to see Unc' Nad and Erik and the rest. Weren't they supposed to be here by now?"
"Yeah, but..." Lurch70 grinned at her. "I still live," he quoted.
"Wasn't that Tarzan's saying?" she asked, flashing a smile back at him. "The ape-man'll save my rosy-pink ass?"
He'd been a Burroughs fan in his youth, and he'd gotten a set to read to their daughters, something RadioBabe and he did together as often as not. It was a partial antidote to Monika's fixations, at least, to which the young seemed appallingly vulnerable.
"John Carter, alskling," he replied, wondering if she was as nervous as he was. Birkenau should have been here by now. "It was the finest swordsman on two worlds who said that."
"Ah, the guy from Virginia who made it with the big Martian bug and produced an egg? You'd be more likely to have a fertile mating with a cabbage!"
"Well, granted, Dejah Thoris was... what did Ken call it? Oviparous? But that doesn't really make her a bug. Or at least I hope not."
"It lays eggs, it's a bird, a bug or a gator—careful! That one's got a crossbow!"
Pyrus ducked and yelled. A bolt slammed into the rusty metal roofing near his head and stood quivering in a stringer. Lurch70 and RadioBabe stepped up to the windows and shot. The crossbowman dove back behind a flat-wheeled trailer cart that bore a powered water-ski and had for nine years. He gave a yelp of fear and they could see bits of him moving behind his cover, enough to know that he was spanning his crossbow.
"Uh-oh," Pyrus said. "Lurch, they're bringing stuff back across the fields."
Lurch70 used his mirror-periscope once more. They were; planks, boards, and a set of bicycles; the whole party disappeared from his view as they angled behind a truck that blocked the way. They kept coming until they were right up against it, too; he could see their feet below the body, far too close for comfort.
That was close enough to hear snatches of conversation, as well as hammering and knocking.
"... pile stuff out back and burn them out," someone yelled. "That's quicker. I don't like that flare thing they sent up for shit."
"This meat's more tender raw than roast," in the booming genial tones of Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent. "We don't have all day, and we don't want to send up a big signal fire of our own. There's only one man, and a boy and the girl."
"Christ, Crusher, look what they did to Reign in Acai! That's a world of pain. We got their horses. Let's split! If I wanted to be a fucking soldier, I'd have joined the monks or gone to Portland."
A jeering note from them bandit chief: "Didn't know you were a girl too, Nadie. Goddamnitt, didn't you hear what they had in that cart? That's the price of three hundred horses! With that much, we could buy our way in to half a dozen places and live easy."
"How do we know they've really got all that stuff?"
"'cause the innkeeper told me, and as long as we can squeeze him, he'll come across right. Now shut up and get to work, or you'll find a world of hurt a lot closer than that door."
There was a thud and a yelp, and ConspicuouslyAbsent's voice went on: "If this many of us can't take three fucking farmers, we're in the wrong business. We'd have the whole Valley laughing at us once it got around. Move it!"
Interesting, Lurch70 thought. Suddenly conscious of his thirst he uncorked a canteen and drank, leaning over to pass it to RadioBabe. The innkeeper is feeding ConspicuouslyAbsent information but he's not doing it voluntarily.
"Sorry I got you into it this deep," he said.
"Didn't hear myself saying no," she replied. "Things should have worked smoother than this." Then she took a quick look out the window and set the canvas-covered plastic bottle down: "Uh-oh."
I know what uh-oh means, Lurch70 thought. It mean's we're screwed, usually.
"Siege cat," RadioBabe went on.
"Well, shit," Lurch70 sighed, and used his mirror. "No, make that two siege cats."
The siege cat was a big square of double-thick plywood, mounted on a timber frame with wheels, a trail for pushing and steering, and slots to shoot through; it looked as if the bandits had had it ready, needing only to be put together. Another just like it followed out behind.
"Pretty fancy, for bandits," RadioBabe said. "I really hope Unc' Nad shows up soon. He was supposed to shadow us close."
Lurch70 studied the mantlets-on-wheels. "They're not sturdy enough for real siege work against a fort. But they'd do fine for storming a farmhouse, say. Plenty thick enough to stop an arrow. They probably cart them ‘round whenever they're away from their base."
This is starting to look rather bad. There were twenty or so of the outlaws, not counting their dead and wounded. Individually none of them were much of a much, but ten to one were very unpleasant odds. Maybe I should have stayed home. RadioBabe sulking is better than Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent crushing. Where the hell is Nad? He was supposed to keep us under continuous observation!
"You six, keep their heads down!" the bandit chief yelled. "Let's go!"
Arrows and crossbow bolts whined and zipped through the open windows; more slammed and tinged off the rafters where Pyrus sat—until he fell, with a grunt and a sharp cry of pain, a bolt through his clavicle. A roar of triumph went up from the bandits; then a scream of pain, as Lurch70 popped up from below the window and shot. A man hopped out from behind one of the siege cats, shrieking and shaking one foot with an arrow through the boot. One of RadioBabe's punched into his chest and he fell.
Lurch70 ducked back again as an arrow sliced the leather over his shoulder and exposed the wire-mail beneath; the sensation was like being whacked—hard—by a wooden rod. There was just too much flying through the slatted bars of the shutter to stand up and draw; he duckwalked over to Pyrus and checked the wound instead. The bleeding didn't look too serious, internally or externally, and the boy had thumped his head on something coming down and was half-conscious. All he could do was arrange him on his back and shove something under the back of his head.
Probably for the good he's knocked out. That'll dull the pain and he couldn't do anything anyway, with that. He'll be months in bed, if we live.
"Lurch!" RadioBabe said. "They're getting close!"
He moved back; the shooter behind the cat was uncomfortably accurate, and they would have a view of the interior when it was shoved right to the window, so the only safe spot would be plastered against the wall between the window and the door. Then both cats were up against the windows, blocking them and leaving the interior of the porn store lit only by the triangular patch of light from the broken corner of ceiling. He dropped his bow, swept out his backsword, tugged at the leather strap that held his targe over his back and slipped his forearm through the loop and grip as it swung down. RadioBabe was doing the same; they waited on either side of the door. Behind them the horses moved, shifting and rolling their eyes at the noise and stink.
"Well, it's been a lot of fun," Lurch70 said, making himself grin at her in the dimness.
"We still live!" she shot back; from the sound, it was only half a joke.
"Axes! Axes!" Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent's voice called. "Shooters ready for when the door comes down! Let's have the lobster out of the shell!"
Metal beat on metal, and the door sagged. "First after you with the woman, Crusher!" someone shouted.
The door fell, half-in and half-out of the opening. Someone used the hook on the back of a guisarme to haul it back; it fell flat on the steps with an echoing crash, and Lurch70 squinted against the flood of brightness. A blast of arrows and bolts came through, smacking into the plaster of the interior wall and standing like bristles, or punching through into the corridor beyond, but they would be shooting blind. The room would be very dark from the outside.
The shafts were intended to drive the defenders back from the opening; a first bandit ran in, shield up—and ran straight into the metal racks propped up over the space where the door had been, screaming a curse as his arms tangled in them. Lurch70 danced in and thrust through an opening, a motion as precise and swift as the flicking of a frog's tongue. The point ran into the man's throat with a series of crisp popping and rending sounds, felt up the hilt as much as heard. RadioBabe's sword flashed past that one's shoulder at the next, an overarm highline thrust that slammed the spring-steel point under the brim of a helmet hammered out of sheet metal. It grated and crunched against facial bones, and she freed it with a jerk.
Then they both stepped aside as more arrows came through—many bounced off the frame of the racks. Hands used that cover to drag the bodies out, and the rocking door that made the footing uncertain. There was plenty of blood to keep it slippery.
"Guard my left!" Lurch70 said.
The bristling heads of a dozen polearms came next, spearpoints and heavy glaives and crude guisarmes with hooks, probing for the frames to push the obstruction back, but that meant the bandits were packed
shoulder-to-shoulder and blocked their own bowmen. Lurch70 and RadioBabe stepped neatly in from the sides of the doorway; he broke one spearpoint off with a smashing blow of his shield's metal-rimmed edge, and thrust at the hands gripping another in the doorway, making one bandit drop his polearm with a clatter and a cry of alarm. RadioBabe chopped at others, and wood splintered under her edge. Lurch70 pressed in closer to strike at the men rather than the weapons, but that meant the bandits could see him too. Points probed for him from the second rank; they drove him out of sword-range amid a volley of scatological curses and vicious threats, and the others heaved to move the piled racks.
Lurch70 snarled and skipped free as they tilted and rocked back into the room with a jangling crunch and screech. A bold thief came through under the spearpoints, stooping and holding his shield over his head, sword ready.
"Haakaa Paalle!" The war-shriek filled the dusty room, and RadioBabe echoed it.
"Shit, Bearkillers!" someone shouted, panic in his tones.
The bandit ignored it and thrust underarm with his double-edged weapon; Lurch70 caught it on his blade, let the swords slide together until the hilts locked, and then twisted it with all the strength of wrist and shoulder. The thief's eyes were blue in a stubble-cheeked face. They flared wide, with pain and shock at the raw strength of the arm opposing his. The outlaw sword flew free, and Lurch70 whipped his hilt up and across like a set of huge brass knuckles. Bone cracked and the man wailed, dropping as he pawed at his face. Lurch70 knocked a spearpoint aside with his targe and another with his sword, stamping down with a spurred heel; the moaning cut off abruptly. A thrust struck him in the stomach, not hard enough to penetrate the mail beneath the leather, but winding him. He snarled, chopped sideways with the edge of the targe and cut backhanded with his sword into a neck. Blood sprayed into his face, salt and iron, but there were just too many of them—
A quick look around showed that there were only two windows, and both had shutters that were made up of squares of steel strapwork; the fragments of glass had paper glued to their backs. As Lurch70 grabbed one of the toppled racks he saw why—the garish cover of the videotape showed something highly unlikely involving two women, a dog and a piece of electrical apparatus. He saw a few more covers as others fell from the steel shelving; some made the first look rather tame.
"Didn't think I'd make my last stand in a porno-video store," he grunted.
"Go!" Lurch70 shouted, and leaned forward as he clamped his legs to Charger's sides.
RadioBabe followed suit. The superbly trained warhorses broke into a gallop from a standing start, leaping the roadside ditch and breasting the tall grass in the field beyond. Lurch70 turned in the saddle and shot three more times in the thirty seconds it took to reach the ruined building; two misses, and one hit a horse in the shoulder. The beast screamed, a huge hurt sound of bewildered, uncomprehending pain; that was one of the manifold evils the Change had brought back into the world—Humvees didn't shriek in agony when they got shot up.
They pulled up their mounts and got out of the saddles in a hurry. RadioBabe slid to the ground like a seal down a wet rock, or like someone who'd been riding for fun since she was six. An instant later she had the two horses inside the gutted building; their eyes rolled and they snorted at the slippery linoleum under the layer of debris and dirt and sprouting weeds beneath their hooves, but they obeyed.
The arrows punched out in a steady rhythm, whickering away in smooth shallow arcs blurred with motion; the bright midmorning sun glinted on their sharp-edged heads.
Snap.
A mounted man took one in the shoulder and started to shriek; he slid out of the saddle, then clutched at it as his feet touched the ground—if he went down here, a large herd of horses would walk all over him.
Snap.
The next shaft sank up to its fletchings in that horse's neck. The beast bugled in a gurgle that sprayed blood out of its mouth and nostrils, glittering drops flying into the air, and half-bucked, half-staggered away. The wounded man dropped flat as his support was torn away, and then screamed again as the dancing hooves of the panicked horses came down on him—each with a thousand pounds behind it.
The scream was brief, and Lurch70 barred his teeth in a snarl of satisfaction.
I don't enjoy killing people, he thought. Really, I don't. Correction. I do enjoy killing bandits. People had done what they had to do to get through the Dying Time, but nowadays there was plenty of honest work to hand. Crusher's men were jackals who attacked the weak and robbed, raped and killed because they liked it. Hanging's too good for these scum.
None of the bandits he could see were more than a hundred and fifty yards away, and at that range the hornbow was about as effective as his old Remington 700.
Snap.
A bandit staggered into view; he'd been bumped by one of the horses he pushed aside to get to the west side of the road. That put him less than fifty yards away. The arrow struck just above the bridge of his nose, and he pitched backward.
The mounted outlaws had all dismounted in a hurry. That gave them a little cover behind the horse-herd, but the horses protected the disguised Bearkillers for a little while too. A glimpse of movement to the south, and he pivoted smoothly on his heel, drew and shot.
Snap.
This time he was close enough to hear the wet thick smack as the point struck; the bandit was bent over as he ran for cover, and the steel lashed into him just below the floating rib on his right side. It hammered down and through, burying itself in his pelvis. He dropped sprattling to the pavement, screaming for his mother and letting his longbow skid into the ditch.
"Die slow, you son of a bitch!" Lurch70 said, scanning for another target.
Whuppt.
The crossbow bolt went past too fast to see, but he could feel the ugly wind of it between face and bowstring as his hand went back for a new shaft.
"Get the fuck in here, you maniac!" RadioBabe shouted.
Lurch70 started out of the killing haze and obeyed, rolling through the empty window nearest him; the light mail in the lining of his long leather coat protected him from the jabbing spikes of glass still in the frame. The inside of the cinderblock building was bad footing, dirt and weeds and rubbish over linoleum, with fallen shelves and racks of videocassettes ready to tangle your feet. RadioBabe was fumbling with the lock of the door, which was metal with a hollow core; Lurch70 reached out and turned the deadbolt himself, twisting with all the strength of his hand and wrist. It shot home with a grating squeal of rusted steel.
A quick look around showed that there were only two windows, and both had shutters that were made up of squares of steel strapwork; he and RadioBabe grabbed one of the heavy metal racks and slammed it up behind the door, then added a half-dozen more, shoving at them until they were a tangled mass.
"Last stands aren't my inclination anyhow," RadioBabe replied, as they put another in a corner where the sky was visible between the bare stringers of the roof, to serve as a ladder. "But I wouldn't mind killing Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent from one."
Lurch70 nodded. "Pyrus, get up there and tell us what you can see," he said.
He considered the interior of the video store as the youngster scampered up the framework, squirrel-agile. Lurch70 sneezed once as dust flew up, smelling of old rusty metal and rat-droppings and weeds and very faintly of rotten meat. There was a counter and cash-register close to the door—the drawer of the register lay smashed open, mute inglorious testimony to someone being stupid enough to steal money right after the Change, of all useless things.
The two small windows looking out on the parking lot and the road were the only openings here, but a door gave out on the other side of the open space; probably to a storage room and office. RadioBabe was thinking on the same lines; she stuck her head through and looked around.
"Windowless," she said. "Just one door, and it's solid with a bar across the inside, it'd be easier to smash through the wall. Nothing here but some bones." A moment later, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. "Burned bones, human ones. And split for the marrow."
"Let's block this too," he said, and they heaved another set of frames over the connecting door. "Cinderblock doesn't have much strength."
Then they took station next to the windows. The bandits were driving off the horses, heading for the trees along the creek two long bowshots to the east; through his binoculars he could see hints that there was a camp there. Lurch70 took a mirror on a collapsible rod from his belt and snapped it open, using the glass to check angles he could not see from the window without sticking his head out.
Well, here's a distraction from our domestic problems, and no mistake, he thought. OK, two behind the pickup, another two behind the planter, and a third pair behind the bed of the overturned SUV. They'll all have something to shoot with, they're there to keep us pinned down while the rest get read to storm the place.
"Anything?" he called up to Pyrus.
"No sign of Lord Birkenau," the teenager said. "But I think I see bandits moving in the field behind the store—there's a big old propane tank about twenty yards out, and some trees. Lot of bush, too."
"Oh, hallelujah," RadioBabe said quietly. "Lordy, but I'll be glad to see Unc' Nad and Erik and the rest. Weren't they supposed to be here by now?"
"Yeah, but..." Lurch70 grinned at her. "I still live," he quoted.
"Wasn't that Tarzan's saying?" she asked, flashing a smile back at him. "The ape-man'll save my rosy-pink ass?"
He'd been a Burroughs fan in his youth, and he'd gotten a set to read to their daughters, something RadioBabe and he did together as often as not. It was a partial antidote to Monika's fixations, at least, to which the young seemed appallingly vulnerable.
"John Carter, alskling," he replied, wondering if she was as nervous as he was. Birkenau should have been here by now. "It was the finest swordsman on two worlds who said that."
"Ah, the guy from Virginia who made it with the big Martian bug and produced an egg? You'd be more likely to have a fertile mating with a cabbage!"
"Well, granted, Dejah Thoris was... what did Ken call it? Oviparous? But that doesn't really make her a bug. Or at least I hope not."
"It lays eggs, it's a bird, a bug or a gator—careful! That one's got a crossbow!"
Pyrus ducked and yelled. A bolt slammed into the rusty metal roofing near his head and stood quivering in a stringer. Lurch70 and RadioBabe stepped up to the windows and shot. The crossbowman dove back behind a flat-wheeled trailer cart that bore a powered water-ski and had for nine years. He gave a yelp of fear and they could see bits of him moving behind his cover, enough to know that he was spanning his crossbow.
"Uh-oh," Pyrus said. "Lurch, they're bringing stuff back across the fields."
Lurch70 used his mirror-periscope once more. They were; planks, boards, and a set of bicycles; the whole party disappeared from his view as they angled behind a truck that blocked the way. They kept coming until they were right up against it, too; he could see their feet below the body, far too close for comfort.
That was close enough to hear snatches of conversation, as well as hammering and knocking.
"... pile stuff out back and burn them out," someone yelled. "That's quicker. I don't like that flare thing they sent up for shit."
"This meat's more tender raw than roast," in the booming genial tones of Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent. "We don't have all day, and we don't want to send up a big signal fire of our own. There's only one man, and a boy and the girl."
"Christ, Crusher, look what they did to Reign in Acai! That's a world of pain. We got their horses. Let's split! If I wanted to be a fucking soldier, I'd have joined the monks or gone to Portland."
A jeering note from them bandit chief: "Didn't know you were a girl too, Nadie. Goddamnitt, didn't you hear what they had in that cart? That's the price of three hundred horses! With that much, we could buy our way in to half a dozen places and live easy."
"How do we know they've really got all that stuff?"
"'cause the innkeeper told me, and as long as we can squeeze him, he'll come across right. Now shut up and get to work, or you'll find a world of hurt a lot closer than that door."
There was a thud and a yelp, and ConspicuouslyAbsent's voice went on: "If this many of us can't take three fucking farmers, we're in the wrong business. We'd have the whole Valley laughing at us once it got around. Move it!"
Interesting, Lurch70 thought. Suddenly conscious of his thirst he uncorked a canteen and drank, leaning over to pass it to RadioBabe. The innkeeper is feeding ConspicuouslyAbsent information but he's not doing it voluntarily.
"Sorry I got you into it this deep," he said.
"Didn't hear myself saying no," she replied. "Things should have worked smoother than this." Then she took a quick look out the window and set the canvas-covered plastic bottle down: "Uh-oh."
I know what uh-oh means, Lurch70 thought. It mean's we're screwed, usually.
"Siege cat," RadioBabe went on.
"Well, shit," Lurch70 sighed, and used his mirror. "No, make that two siege cats."
The siege cat was a big square of double-thick plywood, mounted on a timber frame with wheels, a trail for pushing and steering, and slots to shoot through; it looked as if the bandits had had it ready, needing only to be put together. Another just like it followed out behind.
"Pretty fancy, for bandits," RadioBabe said. "I really hope Unc' Nad shows up soon. He was supposed to shadow us close."
Lurch70 studied the mantlets-on-wheels. "They're not sturdy enough for real siege work against a fort. But they'd do fine for storming a farmhouse, say. Plenty thick enough to stop an arrow. They probably cart them ‘round whenever they're away from their base."
This is starting to look rather bad. There were twenty or so of the outlaws, not counting their dead and wounded. Individually none of them were much of a much, but ten to one were very unpleasant odds. Maybe I should have stayed home. RadioBabe sulking is better than Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent crushing. Where the hell is Nad? He was supposed to keep us under continuous observation!
"You six, keep their heads down!" the bandit chief yelled. "Let's go!"
Arrows and crossbow bolts whined and zipped through the open windows; more slammed and tinged off the rafters where Pyrus sat—until he fell, with a grunt and a sharp cry of pain, a bolt through his clavicle. A roar of triumph went up from the bandits; then a scream of pain, as Lurch70 popped up from below the window and shot. A man hopped out from behind one of the siege cats, shrieking and shaking one foot with an arrow through the boot. One of RadioBabe's punched into his chest and he fell.
Lurch70 ducked back again as an arrow sliced the leather over his shoulder and exposed the wire-mail beneath; the sensation was like being whacked—hard—by a wooden rod. There was just too much flying through the slatted bars of the shutter to stand up and draw; he duckwalked over to Pyrus and checked the wound instead. The bleeding didn't look too serious, internally or externally, and the boy had thumped his head on something coming down and was half-conscious. All he could do was arrange him on his back and shove something under the back of his head.
Probably for the good he's knocked out. That'll dull the pain and he couldn't do anything anyway, with that. He'll be months in bed, if we live.
"Lurch!" RadioBabe said. "They're getting close!"
He moved back; the shooter behind the cat was uncomfortably accurate, and they would have a view of the interior when it was shoved right to the window, so the only safe spot would be plastered against the wall between the window and the door. Then both cats were up against the windows, blocking them and leaving the interior of the porn store lit only by the triangular patch of light from the broken corner of ceiling. He dropped his bow, swept out his backsword, tugged at the leather strap that held his targe over his back and slipped his forearm through the loop and grip as it swung down. RadioBabe was doing the same; they waited on either side of the door. Behind them the horses moved, shifting and rolling their eyes at the noise and stink.
"Well, it's been a lot of fun," Lurch70 said, making himself grin at her in the dimness.
"We still live!" she shot back; from the sound, it was only half a joke.
"Axes! Axes!" Crusher ConspicuouslyAbsent's voice called. "Shooters ready for when the door comes down! Let's have the lobster out of the shell!"
Metal beat on metal, and the door sagged. "First after you with the woman, Crusher!" someone shouted.
The door fell, half-in and half-out of the opening. Someone used the hook on the back of a guisarme to haul it back; it fell flat on the steps with an echoing crash, and Lurch70 squinted against the flood of brightness. A blast of arrows and bolts came through, smacking into the plaster of the interior wall and standing like bristles, or punching through into the corridor beyond, but they would be shooting blind. The room would be very dark from the outside.
The shafts were intended to drive the defenders back from the opening; a first bandit ran in, shield up—and ran straight into the metal racks propped up over the space where the door had been, screaming a curse as his arms tangled in them. Lurch70 danced in and thrust through an opening, a motion as precise and swift as the flicking of a frog's tongue. The point ran into the man's throat with a series of crisp popping and rending sounds, felt up the hilt as much as heard. RadioBabe's sword flashed past that one's shoulder at the next, an overarm highline thrust that slammed the spring-steel point under the brim of a helmet hammered out of sheet metal. It grated and crunched against facial bones, and she freed it with a jerk.
Then they both stepped aside as more arrows came through—many bounced off the frame of the racks. Hands used that cover to drag the bodies out, and the rocking door that made the footing uncertain. There was plenty of blood to keep it slippery.
"Guard my left!" Lurch70 said.
The bristling heads of a dozen polearms came next, spearpoints and heavy glaives and crude guisarmes with hooks, probing for the frames to push the obstruction back, but that meant the bandits were packed
shoulder-to-shoulder and blocked their own bowmen. Lurch70 and RadioBabe stepped neatly in from the sides of the doorway; he broke one spearpoint off with a smashing blow of his shield's metal-rimmed edge, and thrust at the hands gripping another in the doorway, making one bandit drop his polearm with a clatter and a cry of alarm. RadioBabe chopped at others, and wood splintered under her edge. Lurch70 pressed in closer to strike at the men rather than the weapons, but that meant the bandits could see him too. Points probed for him from the second rank; they drove him out of sword-range amid a volley of scatological curses and vicious threats, and the others heaved to move the piled racks.
Lurch70 snarled and skipped free as they tilted and rocked back into the room with a jangling crunch and screech. A bold thief came through under the spearpoints, stooping and holding his shield over his head, sword ready.
"Haakaa Paalle!" The war-shriek filled the dusty room, and RadioBabe echoed it.
"Shit, Bearkillers!" someone shouted, panic in his tones.
The bandit ignored it and thrust underarm with his double-edged weapon; Lurch70 caught it on his blade, let the swords slide together until the hilts locked, and then twisted it with all the strength of wrist and shoulder. The thief's eyes were blue in a stubble-cheeked face. They flared wide, with pain and shock at the raw strength of the arm opposing his. The outlaw sword flew free, and Lurch70 whipped his hilt up and across like a set of huge brass knuckles. Bone cracked and the man wailed, dropping as he pawed at his face. Lurch70 knocked a spearpoint aside with his targe and another with his sword, stamping down with a spurred heel; the moaning cut off abruptly. A thrust struck him in the stomach, not hard enough to penetrate the mail beneath the leather, but winding him. He snarled, chopped sideways with the edge of the targe and cut backhanded with his sword into a neck. Blood sprayed into his face, salt and iron, but there were just too many of them—
A quick look around showed that there were only two windows, and both had shutters that were made up of squares of steel strapwork; the fragments of glass had paper glued to their backs. As Lurch70 grabbed one of the toppled racks he saw why—the garish cover of the videotape showed something highly unlikely involving two women, a dog and a piece of electrical apparatus. He saw a few more covers as others fell from the steel shelving; some made the first look rather tame.
"Didn't think I'd make my last stand in a porno-video store," he grunted.
Lies and Perfidy
Gentleman of the Road
Dick Sirloin
please... stay safe
- Jan 6, 2004
- 7,237
- 41
- 38
- 38
NAD Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad luck. Nook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That night she met... Now!
(He knots the lace. Lizard places her foot on the floor. NAD raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in mid-brow. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
NAD (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.
LIZARD (With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of dishonour!
NAD (Infatuated.) Empress!
LIZARD (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
NAD (Plaintively.) Hugeness!
LIZARD Dungdevourer!
NAD (With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence.
LIZARD Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down!
NAD (Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles!
(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.)
LIZARD (With bobbed hair purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moor cock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.
NAD (Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey.
LIZARD (Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.
(NAD creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.
SNOW2FALL (Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here.
NAD (Closing her eyes.) She's not here.
SNOW2FALL (Hiding her with her gown.) She didn't mean it, Mr Lizard. She'll be good, sir.
ERIK Don't be too hard on her, Mr Lizard. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
LIZARD (Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear. I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (NAD puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Lizard grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.
NAD (Fainting.) Don't tear my.
(He knots the lace. Lizard places her foot on the floor. NAD raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in mid-brow. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
NAD (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.
LIZARD (With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of dishonour!
NAD (Infatuated.) Empress!
LIZARD (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
NAD (Plaintively.) Hugeness!
LIZARD Dungdevourer!
NAD (With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence.
LIZARD Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down!
NAD (Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles!
(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.)
LIZARD (With bobbed hair purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moor cock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.
NAD (Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey.
LIZARD (Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.
(NAD creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.
SNOW2FALL (Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here.
NAD (Closing her eyes.) She's not here.
SNOW2FALL (Hiding her with her gown.) She didn't mean it, Mr Lizard. She'll be good, sir.
ERIK Don't be too hard on her, Mr Lizard. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
LIZARD (Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear. I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (NAD puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Lizard grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.
NAD (Fainting.) Don't tear my.
