“You’re a pretty little man, aren’t you?” said Styx. He smiled through blackened stumps of teeth, which merged nauseatingly with the stained lips of the Blacklipper. I bet his breath stinks like a skunk, thought Saark.
“What, you mean in contrast to your own obviously handsome facial properties?”
Anger flared in Styx’s good eye, but he controlled it with skill. Saark became wary. There was something more at stake here than a simple trading of insults. This was too controlled, too planned. What did they want?
“What I meant to say,” said Styx, tongue moistening his black lips, “is that you’re a pretty boy.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, it’s like this. I love fucking pretty boys, so I do. In more ways than one.”
Jex laughed, and Saark caught a glimpse of steel beneath clothing. A hidden blade. Saark’s hand strayed towards his own sword, a tentative crawl of edging fingers, eyes never leaving the two men exuding hate and arrogance and dark violent energy.
“I like to hear them squeal, you understand,” smiled Styx, “only because pretty boys take so much better to the knives, to the scars. They scream, high and long, like a woman, and when you fuck them, later on as they’re bent over a log or table, oh that feeling, so tight, so much resistance,” he laughed, a low grumble of mirth, “what I like to call a good tight virgin-fuck, well man, that brings tears to old Styx’s eye. But not as much as flowing tears to the weeping eyes of a pretty boy.”
Saark smiled easily. “Well then, gentlemen, you seem to have me mixed up with somebody else. Because I fuck women, I fuck men, I fuck anything that moves. I’m used to taking it, so would offer little sport as your…how do you say? Virgin-fuck? But what I will offer…” He launched up, sword out, a movement so quick it brought the room to a sudden standstill and caught Styx and Jex with their mouths open…“Well, if it’s a little sword-sport you want, I’m all yours, gentlemen.”
Slowly, Jex pulled a weapon from beneath his clothing and pointed it at Saark. It was small, little bigger than his hand, and made from polished oak. Saark tilted his head, frowning. He had never seen such a weapon. There came a tiny click.
“You are familiar, of course,” said Jex, “with the workings of a crossbow? This is similar. It can punch a fist sized-hole through a man at a hundred metres. It works on clockwork, was created by the very enemy who now advance through our land.” He stood, chair scraping, and Saark licked suddenly dry lips. Styx stood as well, beside Jex, and pulled free a similar weapon.
“We call it a Widowmaker,” said Styx, single eye gleaming. “But rather than cause unnecessary bloodshed, I see you need a demonstration.” His arm moved, there came a click and a whump as the clock-work-powered mini-crossbow discharged. The sixteen year-old villager was picked up and slammed across her bed, an impact of red at her breast, a funnel of flesh exploding from her back and splattering up the wooden wall with strips of torn heart and tiny shards of bone shrapnel.
“No!” screamed the older woman, and ran to the dead teenager, sobbing, mauling at her corpse which rolled, slack and useless and dead, to the floor. The room fell still; cold and terrifying.
“Damn you, you could have fired at a target!” raged Saark.
Styx nodded, gaze fixed to Saark. “Aye, I did. I find the horrors of the flesh have more immediate impact.”
Kat stalked forward, eyes furious, hands clenching and unclenching. “You cheap dirty stinking bastards! She was an innocent villager, she meant no harm to you; why the hell would you do that? Why the hell would you kill an unarmed girl?”
Styx smiled, showing blackened stumps. “Because,” he said, eye narrowing, all humour leaving his face to be replaced by an innate cruelty, the natural evil of the predator, the natural amorality of the shark, “I am a Jailer,” he said, “and I thrive on the pleasure of killing sport.”
“The Jailers,” said Saark, voice barely above a whisper, sword still poised.
Styx nodded. “I see you have heard of us.”
“What the hell are Jailers?” snapped Kat, eyes moving fast between Jex, Styx and Saark. She willed Saark to attack. She had seen him in battle, seen him kill with his pretty little rapier; she knew knew he could get to them in time, could slaughter them like the walking offal they were…
“They spent five years in Yelket Jail,” said Saark, speaking to Kat but not moving his eyes from the two men with their clockwork crossbows. “They are very, very dangerous. They were put inside because of Kell. And six months ago, they escaped, and have been terrorising travellers on the Great North Road, killing Leanoric’s soldiers and innocent people up and down the land…they are destined to be hanged.”
“See, you do know us,” smiled Styx, and his weapon settled on Kat. “Now, Saark, my queer little friend, I want you to place your sword very slowly on the ground. One wrong move, and I blow a ragged hole through Kat’s pretty, pouting face.”
Saark tensed…and from outside, heard a shout Myriam kissed Kell, and he allowed himself to be kissed, but his thoughts flowed back to his long dead wife, so long ago, so distant and yet so real and images flickered through his mind…getting married under the Crooked Oak, Ehlana with flowers in her hair and she kissed him and it was sweet and they were young and carefree, not knowing what troubles would face them over the coming years…and here, and now, this kiss felt like a betrayal even though she was dead, and so long ago gone, and cold, and dust under the ground. Kell pulled away. “No,” he said.
“Help me,” breathed Myriam.
“I cannot.”
“You will not.”
“Yes.” He looked into her torture-riddled eyes. “I will not.”
“I think you will,” she said, and pushed the brass needle into his neck. Kell grunted in pain, taking a step back as he slammed a right hook to Myriam’s head, making her yell out as she was punched into a roll, coming up fast, athletically, on her feet with a dagger out, eyes gleaming, triumphant, a sneer on her lips.
Kell staggered back, fingers touching at the brass needle poking from his flesh like a tiny dagger. “Bitch. What have you done to me?”
“It’s a poison,” said Myriam, licking her lips, her eyes wide and triumphant. “Very slow acting. Comes from a brace of Trickla flowers, from way across the Salarl Ocean.” She tilted her head. “I’m sure you’ve heard of it?”
Kell nodded, and with a hiss, pulled the needle free, stared down at it, glinting in his palm, covered in his blood.
“You have killed me, then,” he said, eyes narrow, face filled with a dark controlled fury.
“Wait!” Myriam snapped, and seemed to be listening for something. Then she stared up at the night sky. “There is an antidote.” She grinned at him, head like a skull by starlight. “I have hidden it. Far to the north. Take me to the Black Pike Mountains, Kell, and you will live!”
“How long do I have?”
“A few weeks, at most. But you will grow weak, Kell. You will suffer, even as I suffer. We will be linked, lovers in pain, suffering together in dark throes of an accelerating agony, both searching for a cure.”
“I could kill you now, bitch, and take my chances.”
Myriam stood up straight, and sheathed her dagger. She held her head high. Her hair was peppered with snow. “Then do it,” she said, eyes locked to Kell, “and let’s be finished with this fucking business.”
Kell took his axe from his back, loosened his shoulder with a rolling motion, and strode towards Myriam with a look of pure and focused evil.
Inside the cabin, Saark leapt, sword slashing down. Styx and Jex moved fast, slamming apart in a heartbeat and Styx’s Widowmaker gave another click and whump and something unseen blurred across the open space hitting Katrina in the throat and smacking her back against the wall, pinned her to the boards as her legs kicked and her topaz eyes grew impossibly bright with collected tears and she gurgled and choked and spewed blood, and her fingers scrabbled at her chest and neck and the huge open wound and the dark glinting coil of brass and copper at her throat and quite suddenly…