“I don’t think so,” says Niko.
“Ont tink oh,” the Australian agrees.
“Over the side with him then,” says Batface.
“That side,” adds Pignose, nodding at far side of the Ledge. Niko leans close to the Australian. The naked contact is unnervingly intimate. “Give. There’s no shame.”
“Uck oo, ank.”
Niko sighs. “Where’s my guitar? And my shoes?”
A pause. Beneath him the Australian hawks and spits out teeth and blood. “Lemme ub an I’ll tell ya.”
“I don’t think so, Cisco.” Niko glances up. The squareteethed edge of the parapet is only a few feet away. One sudden rush will heave the Aussie over the side like last week’s garbage. Harder without clothes to grab onto though. Niko must have missed the class where they showed how to fight naked against people who are already dead.
“Loyk to thang ya for the divuhsion. Bit of a chinge from the old ruh-tyne, yknow.”
Pignose strides over to them and glowers down. “If you don’t throw him I don’t collect.” His textured stone wings spread. “And if I don’t collect, you don’t get your ride.”
“Go on, mite. Oyve had my fud an ya bead me fair an zguare. Oy got nothin left to lose unda thize bastids.”
Pignose casually reaches down a massive hand and grinds the Aussie’s mashed nose against the parapet. The Australian screams.
Niko takes a deep breath. All right. He bends the Aussie’s right arm sharply up between the protruding shoulderblades and lifts. The downed man rises as if levitating. Niko moves the arm forward and drunkwalks the Australian toward an embrasure. Smooth, steady, don’t stop. Remember you won’t be killing somebody.
It’s still not easy to find it within himself to hurl someone over the edge of a cliff.
He relaxes just a bit on the arm and the Australian immediately comes nearly upright and Niko yanks down and lifts to throw him overboard and son of a bitch if the Australian doesn’t whip around as he hits the embrasure and grab Niko by the both forearms to pull him over the side along with him. Niko drops to the parapet but he scrapes forward until his bleeding shoulder hits an embrasure and he’s wedged against the inside wall. The Australian is leaning out from the Battlement with both legs braced against the outside wall, deathgripping Niko’s arms and pulling for all he’s worth. Niko braces a leg against the embrasure and manages to keep the Australian from pulling him over the edge, but he has no leverage to force the man back. He can’t hold this position very long.
The two men look at one another across the width of stone. The man’s pale eyes are bloodied and his lip is gashed and he’s missing front teeth. His nose is a swollen shapeless ruin dripping blood. And he’s grinning.
Niko’s arms feel as if they’re wrenching from their sockets. His face is hot and his head throbs as if he’s about to blow an artery. “Let go.”
“Not on your loyf, mite.” The Australian strains at Niko’s arms like an angry dog on a leash, each leg on a merlon and holding onto Niko in the gap between. He’s standing sideways above an unfathomable space of writhing darkness, the hiss of the bloodfall loud below. He’s a son of a bitch but he’s a brave son of a bitch.
Niko strains his arms inward to make a narrow X and slowly draws big outward circles, turning his wrists up as he does. For a moment it looks as if he’s making a handshadow of a bat as he follows the direction of the grabbing thumb in a slow elaborate shrug. He tucks his elbows toward his ribcage and brings his hands back toward his own shoulders. The Australian now holds on by little more than thumb and forefinger and it’s not enough. For the first time Niko sees something like alarm on the man’s face. He feels the grip weakening and he pushes his elbows forward to increase the angle.
Now the Australian’s grin holds a different edge. He concedes with a nod and never takes his eyes off Niko. “See ya in ell, mite,” he shouts above the torrent.
Niko moves his elbows outward and the grip slides off and the Australian falls away. He kicks out from the wall, upturned like a man backswimming toward the misty bloodfall far below, and silently he stares at Niko until he’s swallowed by the deeper darkness far below.
Niko turns and slides down to lie against the wall and rubs his burning forearms and looks at Pignose holding an upturned claw out to the rest of the gargoyles. No one else seems to have bet in Niko’s favor.
“O ye of little faith,” Niko mutters, and then he’s still for a good long while.
“PULL.”
Niko wakes to orange light. A weight of stone looms somewhere high above him. He can feel its pressure overhead. Yet he also feels a fragile sense of lying on a slender rampart jutting out into an immense open space. Vertigo assails him and he shuts his eyes. The back of his head is pounding and he’s covered with scabs and dried blood. His knuckles are bruised and swollen and his big toe feels broken. His testicles are lead weights. His arm and leg muscles burn. A tic in his cheek and his thigh. His gums are swollen and his tongue is thick and his breath feels like shimmering waves of heat should be rising from his mouth. His heel is bruised and his feet are cut so badly he’s afraid to stand. How good it is to shut his eyes and sink into the primal mud of sleep. To feel himself drift away from himself.
A tongue not human speaks his true name in a language dead to all but archeologists poring over earthen ruins. The single word a hook to reel him struggling back into the hopeless world.
Niko opens his eyes to see a huge and alien face peer down at him with eyes of purest aqua. Pupils shaped like plus signs. The eyes blink and Niko startles even more awake.
“Here.” An enormous hand offers Niko’s neatly folded clothes. Niko accepts them dumbly and stares at the proffered hand. A mass of writhing digits too slim and articulated to be called fingers. The skin seems made of smooth and glossy marble with a faint intaglio of slightly darker veins.
Feeling half in dream he sets his clothes upon his naked lap and looks up at the looming face before him. Violently carved yet in its lineaments there lives a kind of beauty. Ruinous terrible and cruel but beauty all the same. What emotion it contains embedded in its frozen features.
The monster is bald as a cueball. Faint blue veins roadmap its scalp. Ivory horns curve like baroque newels. And in the rough hewn setting of the monster’s face the adamantine of its eyes. Cold stone eyes of some dead blind idol carved and revered and then marooned by aliens who abandoned their world in some forgotten exodus. To look at them is to lose sight of their dreadful housing. The plus sign pupils give no hint of soul behind them.
Looking at the monster’s aqua eyes he feels a sudden oceanic pull.
The monster Geryon kneels until he’s only double Niko’s height. “Do I know you?” His voice is startling normal but those unnerving pupils throw back nothing Niko can read.
“I don’t think so.”
“I understand you know my true name.”
Niko nods. He tries to stand and finds he hurts too much and lacks the strength. Geryon holds out an everchanging hand. Reluctantly Niko clutches it and is surprised to find he touches cold unliving stone as Geryon easily hoists him to his feet. Niko’s head swims and he drops his bundled clothes and sways forward. Geryon catches him up and sets him like an infant on an embrasure and supports his back with one hand until Niko nods that he’s not going to fall off.
The monster steps back but watches him carefully. “I understand you want a favor.”
Niko nods. It hurts. “You’re very understanding.”
From down below a funhouse whipcrack snaps before a ragged scream.
“I understand you would like a ride down,” the monster continues, oblivious to the noise and Niko’s sarcasm.
“Yeah.”