by Yronwode
The man stared at Keeler for a long time, then rose and began unpacking some sharp tools from his. They looked like a surgeon’s tools, or a butcher’s. They were still stained with old dried blood and Keeler had a pretty good idea how Che intended to employ them.
“Che doesn’t have a lot of patience for stupid. This is the last time Che’s gonna ask before Che brings on the hurting. What’s your name, hostage-man?”
“I need a minute to remember, I’ve got the brain damage,” Keeler protested.
Che took up a long, thin blade and whipped Keeler across the face with it, leaving a long, razor-like cut that stung badly. A few centimeters higher, and his eyes would have been cut open. It stung like a bitch.
“Now, if Che don’t like the answer this time, Che is really gonna start mucking you up. What’s your name, Hostage-man?”
Before Keeler could even answer, Che the interrogator jammed a rod into his shoulder that sent a hot charge of electricity through his body. Che let the rod pump electricity into Keeler until his heart began flipping and sputtering. Only then, when another few seconds would have meant death, did he pull the rod away. He let Keeler almost recover from the Electro-Shock, then gave him another shock, a shorter one, right in the groin.
“Che did that because Che knew you were gonna try and pre-jure yourself again. So, just tell Che what your name is, now saying.” Keeler moaned. “I think my designation was… Otto.”
Che contemplated whether he should accept this. “Otto, it is then. If Che gets it later you’re something else, Che’s gonna cut your balls off.”
“You are as wise as you are handsome,” Keeler told him.
Che ignited a small fire on the floor of the chamber and began calmly heating some of his sharper implements. “When you were with the Theocrats, what was they planning?”
Keeler had a good idea what would happen if he said he didn’t remember, and he didn’t remember enough to be able to lie his way out of the situation. “They didn’t tell me much. I was only there for a little while. I think they… I think they shot my ship down to keep me from talking with you guys.”
Che paused a long time. “What do you know? Maybe the Theocrats are gonna blow up power station, again? Maybe the Theocrats are gonna poison water, again?
Maybe Theocrats are gonna make children sick again, so they can steal their eyeballs.
You hear anything like that.”
“They wouldn’t tell me,” Keeler told him. “But they sound like terrible people.”
“If you don’t know nothing, you’re worthless to us.” Che jammed him with the electric rod again and held it for several seconds while every nerve ending on Keeler’s body seemed to explode.
And just then, the door opened again and the mad-woman Bang reappeared.
“Stop, Che! Stop now.
“Get outta here, horse! Or, Che’ll give you some of this, too!”
“Boros demands the Hostage. The Theocrats are gonna pay a lot for this Hostage, but Boros need him alive.”
Che put down the electrical device and smacked Keeler across the face with his glove again before leaving. He slammed the door on his way out.
Bang, gave Keeler a bottle of water. He drank from it. It was bitter, acidic, heavy with minerals and he guessed not entirely clean, but he was too thirsty not to be grateful. Somehow, the water diminished the pain in his head and made things clearer for him.
“I had to stop him,” she explained. “He was going to kill you.”
“Am I dead already?” Keeler asked. “Is this some kind of hell?”
“No… no… Death is perfection,” Bang whispered stroking the hair near his forehead. “Tsi Bai understand this. Death cures all disease. Death ends all suffering.
Death brings harmony with the universe.”
“I wish you had said that before you made me drink that water.” She brought out a pair of bolt cutters from the pack of things that Che had brought with him and cut him looked from the chains and wires that bound him to the bed. She pressed a stick into his hand, it was a staff about as thick as his wrist, smooth and polished with figures carved all along its length. He sensed there was a kind of energy inside, and even something like sapience.
“You were holding this when we found you,” she said. “Do you need it to walk?”
“Probably,” Keeler said, lifting himself out of the bed and encountering less pain than he would have liked.
“I’m going to take you to Boros,” she told him, as she began undoing his chains.
“What’s he, some kind of leader?”
“He is the Chieftain,” she told him.
“He’s going to return me to the Theocrats?” Keeler asked her, unable to avoid sounding hopeful.
Instead of answering him, she just took his face in her hands and stared hard into him with hard black eyes. “Don’t be afraid. When we meet with Boros, you will know exactly what to do.”
Bang led Keeler out from his cell, up some crumbling cement stairs, and into fierce daylight that hit his eyes with the force of a two-by-four… nailed to the front of a out-of-control semi-truck. Somehow, his eyes adjusted and the brightness diminished to a day-time level that would have been tolerable except for the hangover-like throbbing in his skull. Sensing this, his eyes adjusted still further to an almost-tolerable near-twilight.
How did I do that? Keeler wondered.
“This way,” Bang hissed, pushing him down the narrow street.
Even though he could not remember ever having been anywhere else before, Keeler was sure he had never seen any place as nasty as this. He could not see far down the dusty, garbage-strewn path in front of him because his view was blocked on all sides by buildings of surpassingly ugly concrete-box design, many of which seemed to be on the verge of collapse.
From far, far above, he caught a glimpse of white sky obscured by black smoke. Since nothing small was burning nearby, something huge must have been burning far away. The street was piled with garbage, tires, broken glass, and chunks of stone. A stench of urine, rot, and smoke permeated the air.
“What in Hell is this place?” Keeler asked Bang.
“This is the Major City of Izzan-Al-Izzan,” Bang answered him.
“Nice, are you hosting a filth convention?”
Bang answered in a near growl. “What you smell is the poverty and oppression inflicted on us by Theocrat oppression.”
“Poverty and oppression smell a lot like rotting garbage,” Keeler replied.
“We do not have enough sanitation workers, because of the Theocrats,” Bang growled.
“Because the Theocrats… killed them?” Keeler guessed. Kiling garbagemen seemed rather harsh, but if these ‘Theocrats’ were as evil as Bang said, they could have done such a thing.
“Because of the economic disparity,” Bang explained.
Keeler did not see how anyone could be too poor to pick up their own garbage.
“So, why don’t the people just… clean up after themselves?”
“Because of the economic injustices of the Theocrats!” she shouted. “Death to the Theocratic Entity! Death to Solace! Death to Midian!” Keeler waited until she seem to be a little bit closer to the edge of sanity. “You are not like the others. Your speech is different.”
“I was born in the Theocratic Entity,” she told him, sounding disgusted with herself. “I came to Izzan-Al-Izzan with the Faction for Action, Resistance, Truth and Solidarity. Living among the Tsi Bai opened my eyes to the truth. I saw that the Tsi Bai lived in filth, in poverty, and oppression while my… while those in the Theocratic Entity had comfort and wealth and arrogance and greed in the cities they built the stolen wealth of the Tsi Bai.”
She stopped and broke into an ear-splitting yelp, “The Theocrats stole our world from us! Long live the Ferkaktata!” Only a little quieter, she said to him, “You will end this injustice. It is your destiny.”
“Me?” Keeler said. He didn’t even know who he was. He didn’t see how he could end anyt
hing. He told Bang this.
“The Kariad are wonderful, powerful, enlightened beings,” she told him. “The Kariad have the power to transform worlds. You are of the Kariad. You used your power to heal your injuries, which were severe in the extreme. Now, you will lead a revived Ferkaktata to victory.”
“Why did the Kariad side with the Tsi Bai over the Theocrats?” Keeler asked,
“They pretended to be neutral to fool the Theocrats,” Bang said confidently. “But we knew they were with us. They knew the Theocrats used superstition and fear to justify oppressing the Tsi Bai. They knew this planet was rightfully for the Tsi Bai, and not those… colonial imperialists!”
Keeler said nothing more as she led him down several more streets. None was less aromatic than the first. They were narrow, and created a decrepit concrete urban maze. Even if he got free, escape would be impossible. He would be lost within minutes. Furthermore, only one streetlight in eight seemed to work at all and the light they cast was weak and orange. He probably would have run into a wall.
They came after several turns to steps that led underground. The tunnel underneath was lit by primitive incandescent light sources, many of which were damaged or broken despite being set into concrete behind thick glass. It was much hotter in the tunnel, and the air was acrid, tinged with a nostril-stinging edge of sulfur.
They passed through another tunnel, even narrower than the first, and finally into a chamber, where several hairy, smelly men were gathered.
The chamber was oblong, and not very large. There was a rectangular table in the center of it. The men were gathered around the table, and the table was piled with maps, coins, firearms, knives, filthy plates of food, and other less identifiable objects.
When Bang brought Keeler into the room, all conversation ceased, and twenty-some pairs of black eyes fixed on him.
“Hello,” Keeler said.
“So, this is our hostage-man?” demanded the hairiest, smelliest of the men. He was fat, with untamed black hair falling wildly from his scalp and making up the twists of his beard. Also, he had an eyepatch. He was squeezed into a kind of military-style jumpsuit, done over in a pattern of green and black leaves. K-Rock would have taken it for camouflage, but leafy camouflage in an urban environment made no sense. A large filthy scarf was tied around his neck. Keeler somehow knew this man was Boros.
“Ain’t he supposed to be wearing a hood in public, Chieftain,” one of the other men prompted, bringing a slap from the one called Boros.
“What kinda stupid horse takes a hostage-man out into the streets without a hood over his head?” Boros thundered.
“This is not just a hostage-man,” Bang spat right back at him, moving in close enough to get right into his face. Keeler wondered if all their conversations were so spirited. “He is Kariad, come from the stars to lead us to victory.” The large man began laughing, as did the other men around him.
“He ain’t no Kariad. He’s just the traveler-man for what the Crats are searching the wasty-lands,” another man, also dressed in inappropriate camouflage explained.
Boros smacked him across the face, for answering without giving Boros a chance, Keeler guessed.
“He comes from the stars,” Bang repeated angrily. “He could be useful to us.”
“Yeah, he’ll be useful-man for us,” one of the large, hairy, smelly men agreed.
“He’ll be useful-man to trade for tribute enough to keep us in guns and liquor for the next ten years.” The other men laughed loudly at this.
Boros pounded the table and grunted. “Shut your face-holes, all of you. Until Boros gets his tribute from the Crats, our Hostage-man is gonna stay locked up and hooded.”
“Don’t be such an idiot,” Bang spat. Keeler noted she was a very moist talker. A speech by Bang could have irrigated a sizable crop of barleyhops. “Guns and liquor are not gonna to destroy the Theocratic Entity! Guns and liquor are not gonna to remove the cancer of Theocracy from our planet.”
“Shut up, horse,” Boros commanded raising his hand as though to strike her.
“I have my loyalty proven to Tsi Bai, and to Boros,” Bang insisted. “Bang will be heard!”
“Bang already been heard,” Boros told her. “Now saying, Bang can shut the hell up!”
One of the other men spoke up. “The Crats gotta learn that we got the hostage-man. Then, we can trade him back for Mega-huge tribute. No less.”
“They say Goten got 400,000 creds just for lettin’ the Theocrats fly over his territory lookin’ for him,” said a smaller, weaselly-looking man near Boros’s left.
Boros took out a long heavy knife and passed it down. “Message the Theocrats that we got him. Then, take him over to Che for a little surgery. We’ll send the Theocrats some fingers to let them know we’re serious.”
“Why would you want to cut off Che’s fingers?” Keeler heard himself saying, but distantly, as some strange compulsion overtook him. His head grew light, and the pain left him, and his head filled with sparkles. He thought he was about to pass out, but instead, he found himself walking toward Boros as the other men looked on in shock and moved in super-slow-motion. Somehow, his walking stick had extended itself another meter at each end and his hand was brandishing it in a comfortable, swinging motion that felt natural, like he had been practicing it for years. Then, he swung out with it and connected with Boros right in the middle of his monobrow. Boros’s head disappeared in a thick, misty, red explosion.
It felt like the staff was commanding his arm to swing it against the next man on either side of where Boros had been, smacking their skulls hard enough to fracture and incapacitate them without killing them. Then, it had spun again back into an alert, protective position in front of his eyes.
The next thing Keeler knew, he was standing on the table with Bang and a half dozen smelly, hairy, dirty men, with blades in their hands and murder in their eyes.
“Stay back!” Keeler ordered. “I think I can kill all of you with this thing.” For a few tense moments, it was silent in the room. You could have heard a body-odor caused teardrop fall. The men seemed to be hesitating over who would make the first move to kill him, because even though en masse they would likely kill him, the first one to move was likely to die.
Finally, one of the men spoke. “By the Law of Tsi Bai, Who Slays the Chieftain, becomes the Chieftain.”
“Then, whoever slays the Hostage-man becomes the next Chieftain,” shouted another one of the men, but, noticeably, he did not leap onto the table to challenge Keeler.
Another man shouted back, “This man becomes Chieftain until somebody else knocks him off.”
Keeler was not sure if this was good or not, but the men began lowering their blades.
“Hail, to the new Chieftain, May Death come fast at your enemies,” said one of the men.
“May Death come fast at his enemies,” most of the others repeated.
Holy crap, Keeler thought.
“Send out word to the smucks,” the man who had first hailed him said. When no one moved to put the word out, he punched the man next to him. “Send out word to the smucks!” The other man ran from the room.
“I am your leader, now?” Keeler asked, just to confirm.
“Whoever Slays the Chieftain becomes the Chieftain,” the largest, smelliest remaining man explained. “Sooliok’s the name, offering protective services to the new Chieftain of Izzan-al-Izzan!” the Warrior informed him, thumping his enormous chest as an exclamation mark.
“I will never remember that name,” Keeler told him. “From now on, your name is Biff Hardslab.”
“My new… name?” the warrior questioned.
“Za, you will all be getting new names under my leadership, just to keep you on your toes,” Keeler began to stride across the table. He pointed to the men in turn, beginning with the second largest and working his way around the table. “Blast Thickneck, Buck Plankchest, Splint Chesthair, Gristle McThornbody, Blunt Hardcheese
… Bob Johnson. I’ll work
out the rest of you later.” When he finished, he turned to Bang. “I can do this, can’t I?”
“Your word is the whole of the law,” she said, and there was a smile underneath her lips she could not keep repressed.
“Then, it is done,” Keeler said. “Somebody make a note of this… and bring me some of that sweet, sweet liquor I heard you discussing.”
“And what do we call you?” Big McLargeHuge asked.
Keeler thought about this. This was important, he sensed. He needed something that would inspire awe and mystery. “What is the name of the shadow on the moon?” Keeler asked.
“This planet has no moon,” Bang informed him.
“Oh, in that case, Just call me, K-Rock, or, better yet, Lord AssKicker,” he paused and thought about it. “K-Rock the Ass-kicker. Za, that will work.”
“What means ‘za?’” asked Bob Johnson.
“It means shut up or I’ll give you a massive head wound,” K-Rock admonished him, waving his battlestaff. “Now…” he paused and tried to remember the priority order.
“Booze!” he finished.
A bottle was handed up to him, and he stepped down from the table. “Get somebody to clean that up,” he said, pointing at Boros’s body and the large puddle of blood forming under it. “And somebody go kill that Che guy,” he found himself saying, the words just coming out of him, as though on their own.
“Do you want somebody to kill Che the Torturer,” Gristle McThorbody volunteered, hopefully.
“Do you want to watch?” Buck Plankchest asked.
“Neg, just…” a throb of pain stabbed Keeler (K-Rock) from behind the eyeballs.
“Grant him a more merciful death than he would have granted me. The rest of you, get lost.” He brandished the walking stick. “Now!”
The Xirong men made their way out, some of them wondering how they could possibly get lost in a city they knew so well. Keeler/K-Rock sat down at the edge of the table and examined his battlestaff. “Look at this thing, I bashed three skulls with it, but there’s not a drop of blood or viscera on it.”