Chương 9: 1.8. On Her

Seth would remember later that Polecat moved first, but it must have been Annalise, because Polecat came out the other side of the Verdugo clutching the raw ribbon of shining red Annalise's sidesword had opened on his bicep. He staggered and spun round, and his voice cracked with pain and hate as he cried " On her," to his foursome. And they were on her, all at once, sharpened steel and fearful violence. There was no flash to her. No pyrotechnics, no flourishes.

The Verdugo didn't fight like poetry; she fought like a concise list of bullet points. Nikolas' spearhead darted toward her head and her head simply got out of the way. Brock's side opened up with a foolhardy swing and Brock's side bled.

She moved with no nerve, no effort shown, swanning past the blow as though her attacker was thrusting through quicksand, as though nobody had thought of dodging before, and then Nikolas bled too, bright and bellowing, from a ruinous gash along his thigh, and then another across his chest and Nikolas was facefirst into the mud.

Annalise stepped over him with a nimble, deliberate ninety-degree turn that caught Brock's saber on the broad scabbard she still held across her back, still her right hand bent up past her shoulder on the grip, fighting southpaw against Polecat and Brock and Prichard and the fourth guy whose name Seth didn't know but wouldn't have to bother learning, because those were his fingers flying from his mutilated hand, and then Annalise's sword tip flicked silvery and swift and stuck deep into his neck.

He dangled gurgling and severed on its point until Annalise's boot connected with his sternum and sent him dying into Sure-Thing Brock. The great ivory prow of Annalise's right elbow lanced straight and tugged. The blooming arc of pressurized blood came screaming from the scabbard, right into Prichard, sending him sputtering and staggering back.

The executioner's sword shot forth, whirring black obliteration, and beheaded the anonymous gurgler clean, and took Brock's arm too in the arc toward the ground, where its slamming connection sent a sheet of mud and blood to the sky. Brock barely had time to open his mouth and maybe--just maybe? --say something that wasn't "sure thing." Annalise halted the miracle by bringing the monstrous edge back around and slashing his throat. Prichard raised his mitegun and pulled the trigger.

Annalise's eyes widened and flared jade-green and there was a clack as the hammer swung in and pulverized the popmite in his bullet's ignition chamber but nothing came of it but a sad verdant spark and a fizzle, and everyone paused momentarily as if there was a dance step they'd all forgotten. And then Annalise overhand hurled the side sword from herself, and it plowed pommel-first into Prichard's face, with tooth-cracking, nose-breaking force.

Her left hand slapped onto her executioner's hilt, joined its twin, and Seth saw her biceps bulge, tense, and hold as the hulking, hideous span of metal whistled up again and down again onto Nikolas, who'd clambered up to his knees and now held his spear haft up in a pitiful parry which served only to splinter it and redirect the murderous stroke from his chest to his waist, where it split him mostly the fuck in half.

Annalise gave a quick tug, found the blade bitten fast into Nikolas' pelvis, and released the sword to juke backward from the blurring cutlass that Polecat brought down toward her. The muran snarled and followed, and seized her round the middle, dragging her into the mud. The executioner's sword stayed in Nikolas, who stared down at it, face draining to pale wax, and his hands shivered and clutched the hilt that now protruded from his middle. He looked up at Seth with an expression like Don't that just beat all?

All Seth could think to do in the surreal moment was shrug. And then Nikolas leaned forward and died, held up by the skewering sword's crossguard as if in prayer to the Hundred Saints. Seth slid his picks from his sleeve. He did a jig-step around the tree to avoid the thickening pool of blood dripping from the ruined meat that used to call itself Nikolas. He gave his cuff a tug. The far shackle was too tight on the branch. He slipped his shim from the ring.

A roaring wraith encrusted with muck and blood slide-tackled him into the ground. His shackled arm wrenched painfully as Prichard mantled atop him. One of his quillons was out, shaking madly as he aimed for Seth's face. Seth scrambled for the knife with his one free hand.

"Fuckin kill you." Prichard's breath whistled through his busted teeth and brought forth bubbly red foam.

"Seth. You fuckin' nothing, fuckin' rat man."

"Prichard we've never even spoken." Seth twisted to avoid a mad thrust. He strained to listen over the screams and the sloshing and the crumbling of leaves. Now would be an excellent moment for the Fox to chip in. He would obey this time. Some cunning trick, some clever thief's art— Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Kick him in the balls as hard as you can, the Fox supplied. That worked. Prichard bellowed like an ox and tilted to one side.

His grip loosened on his dagger. Seth slammed Prichard's hand against the tree he was cuffed to, and tugged the blade free. You hear the vets and the enforcers three cups deep rumbling about how it changes you, killing a man. How hard it is to see a soul go. So Seth was caught offguard by how astonishingly simple it was. He had sliced potatoes more difficult than Prichard. He wasn't positive how many times you're supposed to stab a guy, but too many seemed far preferable to too few.

He calibrated his efforts that way, and when Prichard's flinches stopped registering the in-and-out of the blade, he figured it was done. He staggered to his feet, sodden with the other man's blood, his arm twanging from its painful bend. It occurred to him that the difficulty was probably this part, the part where you realize what you've done. But on the whole, that was unfolding rather easily, too.

He looked to where Annalise and Polecat wrestled for the cutlass, just in time to see Polecat's blade strike, and Annalise's head fly off. Polecat let out a hiss of victory. Then Annalise's black-gloved brick of a fist slammed into his face.

"Sword." From the patch of leaves upon which it had landed, Annalise's head was speaking.

"Seth, sword!" Seth gawped like a landed fish.

"You're—""Tell ya later. Sword." He swallowed his astonishment and rattled his wrist.

"I'm cuffed."

"Pick out of them, Seth. I know you've already started." Seth scanned the wet leaves and saw the shine of his lockpicks where Prichard had sent them skittering. He adjusted his sore arm and reached with scrabbling fingers toward them. His middle finger just brushed their keyring. The Weeping Razor snapped shut on Annalise's decorated tattoo sleeve. Another hexentat firing. Her swiping index finger opened a gory rent across Polecat's chest.

Her newly headless body monkey-flipped the shocked assassin upward through the air and crashing onto his back, rolling them both across the forest floor. Her boot pistoned out and sent the lockpicks the rest of the way into Seth's hand. He straightened up and smeared what muck he could from his picks across his waterlogged work shirt. He found his shim, shut his shackle one painful click tighter, and slipped the strip of metal into the space he'd made.

"Chancer," Annalise said. He flipped her the cursehook with the constricted hand he was working to free.

"Focus." She stuck her charcoal-colored tongue out at him. Seth slipped from the cuffs. He seized Annalise's sidesword where it lay by Prichard's chopped-meat chest.

"Not that one." Annalise flicked her eyes to Nikolas' corpse.

"The biggun in the kneeling fella." He dropped the sidesword and went for the biggun. His fingers slid and stuck on the sheet of Nikolas' drying blood. He gave a solid tug but the edge was still lodged in bone.

"Brace your foot on him," Annalise said, as her body sought for an armbar on the mortified muran it wrestled. Green vapor rose from its stump. Seth made another attempt and got it a wet, sucking inch out. A third tug finally freed the blade with a sickening splorch. Its emeralds glittered through the viscous blood. Seth lunged across the forest floor, avoided Polecat's desperate grab, and pushed the pommel into Annalise's outstretched palm.

Annalise drove her knee into Polecat's solar plexus once, twice, then let up her grip on his neck to seize the sword with both hands—one on the pommel, one on the squared-off head. She brought it downward, guillotine-style. Polecat's arm shot up and the sword buried itself in the meat of his forearm.

"Fuck—you—" he rasped, as Annalise shoved and the sword slid closer.

"C'mon, ya bugger." Annalise called from her leaf pile.

"Come on. Just—stop— there." The blade bit into Polecat's throat. The shock loosened his muscles, and Annalise tugged the sword a few inches back like a rocking chef's knife, then brought it plunging down once more. and it slid the rest of the way with a chorus of popping gristle and one loud crack. Polecat's head rolled once and then his furiously offended face was skyward again, two armspans from the rest of him. This one made no indication it was about to speak again.

Annalise's body hauled up to her feet and stomped over to her head, which she plucked from the earth. She pulled a few leaves from her disheveled bob and then popped her head back onto her neck with a sound like reality inhaling. From newly restored head to steelshod toe she was coated with mud and twigs and leaves and blood. She turned to the man with the axe and took a panther's pace toward him.

"What's your name, then?"

"Um," he said. Wyred." Annalise looked into the mud. Wyred and Seth followed her gaze. In front of Wyred's shoe, an impression in the ground. He'd taken one hesitant step and reversed it.

"See, now." She gestured with her toe.

"That'd be your sentence there, wouldn't it, Wyred?" A tear cut through the dirt that had sprayed on the bald man's face.

"Madam Verdugo. Please. Please —""Just acting the maggot." She turned her blade and thwacked the shorn top of his head lightly with the broad end.

"Fuck on off, then, Wyred." Wyred the axe man fled, and left the cooling corpses of his associates alone in the woods. And then it was quiet but for the cheerful tip-tip-tipping of the rain. Annalise stooped down, found the leather scabbard lying over a fallen branch like a great black snake's shorn skin, and slid her gory blade back into it. She stood it on its sheathed end.

"He cut your head off," Seth said.

"Nah," she said.

"I ejected it." She glanced over her shoulder.

"Glad you kept your little grabbers off this one."

"You're—" He paused. He didn't know the words for what she was.

"I'm Verdugo Annalise al Ydris," Annalise said.

"And now, Seth il Gutierre, we're off to pick the kids up and find my other head."