Caine's Law

by Matthew Stover

  “Red, he’s got a point.” This from Charlie. “If the war goes bad, all of a sudden the whole place is on fire and everybody’s dead and it won’t be such a nice spot for us to live.”

  “Risky. Real damn risky.”

  “Think about it, Danny. Instead of starting a war, we can end one before it starts. And retire as landed gentry.”

  “Not likely,” Bannon said, grim. “Not while the Count’s alive.”

  “Danny, Danny, Danny, come on, man.” Fist grunted an ugly laugh. “Who are you talking to?”

  Silence.

  “You know, Red, that’s another good point.”

  “Yeah,” Bannon said slowly. “It surely is.”

  Fist laid one hard hand across Orbek’s harder shoulder. He kept his voice down. “Take the supplies and the weapons,” he said in Westerling. “Leave the extra clips for the Automag and a couple boxes of tristacks. Take the gold. Get those poor bastard grooms remounted and rekitted and kick them back toward Harrakha.”

  “Like you say, little brother.”

  “After that, stay with the witch-herd. I figure maybe a tenday, maybe two. Between now and when I get back, kill anybody who comes after the horses. Or the horse-witch. You okay with this?”

  The ogrillo’s fleshy brows drew together. “If you don’t come back?”

  “Worry about that when it doesn’t happen.”

  He nodded. “Like you say.”

  “Die fighting, Orbek.”

  “Die fighting, little brother.” He picked his way back down through the rocks toward the cache of gear. Full dark was coming on.

  Fist turned to the horse-witch. “Look out for him, will you?”

  “That’s not what I do.”

  “Not as the horse-witch,” he said. “As a friend.”

  “Then of course.” She looked solemn. “This is dangerous for you.”

  He shrugged. “Everything’s dangerous.”

  “I prefer you alive.”

  “Thanks. Me too.”

  “You place your life between dangerous men and horses, and you don’t like horses. Between dangerous men and me, and you don’t know me. Do you know why you’re doing this?”

  His lips drew into a thin flat line. “What does why have to do with anything?”

  “I hope you know. That’s all.”

  He was silent for a long time. He’d been right about this ending in tears. About that, he was always right. It always was tears and he knew it and he was old enough to know better but her hair smelled of sunshine and grass and wildflowers and finally the knots in his heart twisted so tight he could barely breathe.

  “Is it all right …” He coughed, and swallowed, and took a deep breath. “May I touch you?”

  “Of course.”

  He reached out with his left hand and she came to him seriously, solemnly, staring full on, her eyes of fawn and white into his of midnight. Instead of pulling her to him, he let his hand slide up her neck to the corner of her jaw, where the bone was a little crooked, like an old break badly healed. He slid his hand along her cheek to touch a small, almost invisible scar that tugged at her lower lip, and reached with his other hand to her ice eye, and to the pale thread of scar that snaked up from her eyebrow. He pulled her closer. His fingers found the back of her jerkin’s loose collar, and there on her back he felt what he had known would be there: skin with the texture of silk layered over irregularly knotted cords.

  Whip scars.

  “Price of admission,” she said. “Not just any girl can be horse-witch.”

  “Must have hurt.”

  “Some more than others. Some still do. But you know about scars. You especially.”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “That’s why you’re welcome here. You always have been. You always will be,” she said. “Come and go as you please. You’re paid in full.”

  “I guess I knew that, too.” He gave her as much of a kiss as the knots in his heart would allow: one chaste brush of his lips on her forehead. “I guess that’s one reason why I’m doing this.”

  She gave him a smile like dawn breaking over mountains. “I still like you.”

  “Funny thing,” Jonathan Fist said. “That’s the other reason.”

  “She’s a hero, Ma’elKoth. A real hero, not like me—or you either, no offense. She couldn’t stand off and let innocents be killed, and that’s the only reason she’s involved in this in the first place.”

  — “CAINE” (PFNL. HARI MICHAELSON)

  For Love of Pallas Ril

  When Duncan reopens his eyes, another woman has joined them.

  She is tall, clad in a full suit of gleaming tourney plate. Her short-cut hair is dark auburn with red streaks of sunbleach. She stands, staring out across the snow-softened badlands, a great helm under her right arm and a shield on her left. He sees no sign of a weapon.

  Duncan says, “Hello.”

  She turns and meets his eyes, then inclines her head in grave acknowledgment. “Dr. Michaelson. An honor, sir.”

  “Duncan, meet Angvasse, Lady Khlaylock.” Caine now sits on the other side of him, next to the horse-witch. “She used to be Champion of Khryl.”

  Khryl … Interesting. He remembers another female Khryllian, from several of Caine’s early Adventures. And he remembers the name Khlaylock. “I believe the honor is mine, Lady Khlaylock. You’ll excuse my not getting up.”

  She inclines her head toward the sword. “Courtesy surrenders to necessity, Doctor.”

  “A gracious answer. And there’s no need to address me as Doctor.”

  “I apologize, sir. I have been given to understand that this is a title you yet hold.”

  “Technically, I suppose, yes. It has been a very long time since I have practiced my profession, and even then, the customary honorific was Professor.” He turns his head toward Caine. “Lady Khlaylock is another of the ‘people’ you spoke of?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Since she doesn’t look like anyone I know, can I assume she is who she appears to be?”

  “Depends. Who do you think she appears to be?”

  “Someone on your side.”

  “My only side, Professor,” she says stolidly, “is that of my sworn duty. I have no other.”

  “Your duty? You have duty here?”

  “Wherever I am. Simply put, I am sworn, in all ways and at all times, to reflect honor upon the Order of Khryl. Here I have an additional duty as well: to defend this place and all within it with every power at my command.”

  “You’re here to guard us? From whom?”

  “From whomever might seek to do you harm.”

  “Ah.” He looks over at Caine, who has one hand resting on the horse-witch’s knee. “Curious how much of your life is defined by your complex relationships with exceptional women.”

  “Curious for a guy who hasn’t had a mother since he was six?”

  “If you want to hurt me with that needle, you’ll have to stick it somewhere else.” He rolls his head back over toward Angvasse. “Lady Khlaylock, I hope you have been made welcome here. Please feel free to have a seat and relax.”

  “I do feel free, sir. I prefer to stand.”

  He turns to Caine. “A relative, yes? Daughter?”

  “The woman she looks like is his niece. Might as well be daughter.” He gives a same difference head-bob. “Raised in his household.”

  “The household of a man you maimed with a sucker punch.”

  “And killed him the same way.”

  Duncan is far past being surprised by such news, but still he finds the concept difficult. “You’d think after the first time, he’d know better than to get that close.”

  Caine shrugs. “Special circumstances.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Mostly now.”

  “And yet here stands his niece.”

  “Sort of. These are special circumstances too.”

  “This man did not kill him,” Angvasse says. “Purthin Khlaylock dish
onored himself, House Khlaylock, and the Order of Khryl. It was Khryl who took his life; this man had the honor of acting as Khryl’s agent, no more.”

  “You managed to convince her you were doing God’s work? You’re smoother than I thought.”

  “I didn’t convince her of anything. And that’s not really her. You get that, right?”

  “Well …” Duncan has been frowning so much for so long he’s giving himself a headache. “I know I’m not really me in one sense, obviously; I know I’m not a twenty-something man with a sword through his chest. But otherwise—”

  “Yeah, well, otherwise you’re not really you either. None of us is.”

  “I am,” the horse-witch says. “I’m never anything else.”

  “Except for the horse-witch. But she’s a special case.”

  “I’m still not entirely sure exactly what she is.” He nods to her. “What you are.”

  “I’m the horse-witch.”

  “And the horse-witch is …?”

  “Is the horse-witch,” Caine says. “You get used to it. Here’s the thing: this place is a real place, but it’s also a metaphor, just like the sword is a metaphor but still a real sword. Just like I am. You need to understand that so are you. We’re each here to represent something.”

  “Except for me,” the horse-witch says.

  “Except for her.”

  “Represent what?”

  “If it were simple enough to be described in a sentence or two, we wouldn’t need metaphors, right? Any answer I can give you will be just another metaphor. And anyway, each of us is kind of a special case too. Look, Angvasse there isn’t the real Angvasse; she looks like her because the real Angvasse is the most profound expression of what this woman here with us really is.”

  “And who is that? Who are you really?”

  “You seek another name?”

  “I don’t wish to insult you, but I do hope to understand you.”

  Caine looks disgusted. “I explained about anthropology, right?”

  She nods. “There is no insult in the service of truth.”

  “So who are you, really?” Duncan repeats patiently. “Who just pledged to defend this place and everyone in it?”

  “I did.”

  “And you aren’t Angvasse Khlaylock.”

  “I am as much Angvasse Khlaylock as she can be Me. She is My Aspect in this place.”

  “Aspect?” A peculiar tingling seems to begin in the sword and trickles outward along every nerve and vessel. “You’re a god?”

  “You seem undismayed.”

  “My son was married to one.”

  “Ah.”

  “And so—if a Knight is your Aspect, you must be …”

  “Yes, Professor Michaelson,” she says simply. She turns to show him the back of her shield; with no hand to hold it, the shield is bolted to the stump of her wrist. “I am Khryl.”

  “It wasn’t Tourann’s fault that the god he served had murdered my wife, and my father, mind-raped my daughter and made my best friend into his immortal zombie meat puppet. Gods are like that.

  “And what the hell: He’s my god too.”

  — DOMINIC SHADE

  Caine Black Knife

  The smoke choked out the moon and haloed the flames of tenements around. It smelled of seared wool and burning blood, and of the thick stinking lampblack that twists up from untrimmed wicks. The screams were sporadic now; civilians in Purthin’s Ford knew that screams draw the Hunt, and no armsman would sully his honor by showing terror. Echoes of gunfire boomed in the distance and nearby, random splatters of blast accented by an occasional roar of Dizhrati golzinn Ekk!

  The fires were a gift. Deep shadows flickered and twisted at the edges, always in motion, masking his movement, and not even ogrillo eyes could dark-adapt fast enough to see him beyond flame. He flitted across empty streets and threaded ink-black alleyways. The supple suede of his soft boots kept his footfalls no louder than the rush of flames and the swirling wind.

  He followed the river until he could glimpse the street where they had come out of the water. The street where the hostelry stood.

  Had stood.

  He found he had stopped without meaning to. He leaned on a whitewashed wall and tried to unclench his jaw. “Not the hostelry, goddammit,” he muttered. “It was the Pratt and Redhorn. At least fucking say it.”

  The timeline was hard to correlate, but he was pretty sure it had to be hours rather than minutes since Lord Motherfucking Righteous Markham Tarkanen had slapped him into a skull fracture. Five of the fucking Leisure-brat Smoke Hunters had still been upright and active.

  Hours. Jesus.

  He’d been trying to imagine some way it could have worked out okay. He hadn’t come up with any. Five mostly indestructible monsters under the control of a pack of sociopathic teenagers. Who’d get extra points for killing everyone at the Pratt & Redhorn and burning the place to its foundation.

  Kravmik Red Horn, who could roast a duck that would bring tears to your eyes with every bite, who had independently discovered the secret of Scotch whiskey. Lasser Pratt, the harried, hardworking head-of-the-family hosteler. Yttrall, his fierce and beautiful Jheldhi bride. Their infant twins. His son, the armsman nurturing hope of Knighthood …

  It already seemed like a long time ago. In one sense it was. But only one.

  In every other sense it had happened maybe an hour ago.

  And he was too old, too tired, and too guilty to pick over the charred corpses of people he’d actually liked.

  What was it about this place? If he raised his head, he could look up into the face of Hell and probably pick out the spot where he’d crushed Stalton’s skull with a Black Knife war hammer, and he needed to stop this shit, because if he kept it up, pretty soon he’d be thinking about Marade, about her breathtaking courage and a toughness he could barely imagine, and that would get him started on Race for the Crown of Dal’Kannith and how she and Tizarre could survive everything except Berne. And that would get him to Shanna, and he didn’t have time for that shit right now. It was this fucking place. Something in the air wouldn’t let him just walk.

  Jesus. Why did he keep coming back to this town?

  Why did he feel like he’d never left?

  He pushed off the wall and forced himself to keep walking. The alley, he decided. He could come at it from the alley. The alley where Markham had stood waiting for Calm Guy and Whistler and Hawk. And him. Sort of ease his way in, instead of having to face the fucking thing all at once.

  And maybe there was something there, some kind of a clue, he didn’t know, cigarette butts or peanut hulls or whateverthefuck people did on stakeouts in Purthin’s Ford, a clue that might tell him something if he were smarter and sharper and actually knew shit other than how to kill people.

  Besides, that’s where he’d dropped the pistol.

  Maybe nobody thought to pick it up. Maybe it was still lying where he’d dropped it. Maybe this time he’d get lucky. Maybe. That’s how his luck seemed to run. Luck for him. Everybody else fucking duck and cover.

  He found an alley mouth on the opposite side of the block and paced along it slowly, silently, giving his eyes a chance to adjust, pumping up his night vision which told him, predictably, nothing of value. No sign of the Automag. An ogrillo arm lay on the brick only a meter or so past the far end of the alley. If he moved close enough to look it over, he couldn’t avoid seeing whatever was left of the Pratt & Redhorn. And he didn’t need a close look. It was a right arm. He remembered the Smoke Hunter he’d blown it off of, how he had stopped in the street to pick it up and bring it along.

  Packard. That was it. The kid riding the one-armed Smoke Hunter. Little fucking Packard, two weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday. Normal enough kid. Self-professed fanboy, mouthy and pushy and smart, figuring out how his pack could do something nobody else had ever quite accomplished.

  Kill Caine.

  The high point of his young life. His natural reaction. Just an extra boss battle
. If you meet Caine in the road, kill him.

  Because, y’know, children are the future.

  This particular child had probably killed and eaten one of Lasser and Yttrall Pratt’s baby twins. If he didn’t, one or more of his friends did. Except for Turner, who no longer had a mouth. Or a face or a head at all.

  Maybe the Khryllians were right. Maybe Earth really was where bad people go when they die. The True Hell. He could make the argument. How was the Smoke Hunt different from possession? How were Actors, doing violence, starting wars, crushing lives for the entertainment of their underworldly brethren, different from devils?

  How was he different from a mythological hell-spawn, clawed up from Pandemonium to wreak suffering and death across the face of the world?

  He remembered lying on the transfer platform in the Cavea, Kosall through his guts, Shanna with him, cradling his head, Berne’s corpse beneath him. He’d seen it on Ma’elKoth’s face. He’d spoken the words himself, in his Soliloquy, his Actor’s internal monologue.

  … he sees that his world, Overworld—that place of brutality and pain and sudden death—is the dreamed-of, sought-after paradise of this one, where now he’s trapped.

  I’ve brought him with me into Hell.

  He knew something about monsters. Berne had been a monster. Kollberg had been worse. But there are monsters and monsters. Some monsters can be haunted by faces of their dead.

  Once again he found himself leaning against a wall, head down, only his locked-straight knees between him and collapse, and he pushed off the wall and lifted his head and bared his teeth to the fire-lit clouds. “You fuckers won’t break me. None of you. One at a time or all in a rush.”

  He was talking mostly to himself because he was more than one of those fuckers himself and if he broke himself there was nobody to put him back together. He shook the knots out of his shoulders, cracked his neck and all his knuckles, and walked out of the alley.

  Where the Pratt & Redhorn had once stood, there stood a building that looked exactly like the Pratt & Redhorn.

  He stopped in the street, frowning, blinking, unable at first to comprehend … until he saw the woman sitting on the boardwalk in front of the door.