The Infiltrators (18 page)

The sight of his peaceful house tried
to placate his anxiety, its unblemished appearance—becoming closer
and closer—urging calm and coolness, but he dismissed it like a
rascal at his door seeking to talk his way in.

As soon as his horse reached the house,
he stood on top of him and then leaped into the air, kicking the
door as soon as he reached it and went charging in like a marauding
barbarian.

The ridiculousness of his actions
almost brought a smile to his face and relief to his heart, as he
expected a righteous scolding from Donive at any second, and yet no
reprimand from that golden voice was forthcoming.

He charged up to the bedroom.
Empty.

He rushed into every other room of the
house. Empty.

As he passed through the family room
and prepared to enter the kitchen and begin frantically running
around outside, the slightest sound caught his attention. To call
it a whimper would have been to exaggerate its volume. It sounded
like a soft whistle from a half-mile away, perhaps the slight
creaking of a rusty weathervane.

He looked around closely, and there,
behind a large footstool, was his beloved Mervin.

Blood caked his head next to his left
ear, and spatters were all over the surrounding area.

Again, he heard the light whistle from
handsome beast’s nostrils and saw his chest rise ever so slightly.
Then, Pitkins noticed more blood on the downed animal, all
emanating from his mouth, close to which lay several human
fingers.

Pitkins quickly crouched down and
looked at them and saw they were from a man.

Ever so gently, he squatted down and
put his ear next to Mervin’s snout. A slight breeze caressed his
ears.

“You hang in there, boy,” Pitkins said.
“You’ve had quite a scrap. I just gotta go get
something.”

Pitkins was of a mindset that rarely
was anything purely bad, and in spite of Lookout’s soiling of the
culinary form of Smokeless Green (“Spicy Green”) that Donive had
brought home long ago when it was perfectly legal, Pitkins had
acted on a hunch and saved a separate bag but hid it deep
underneath the kitchen counter, surrounded by many other spices so
that the troublesome cat wouldn’t take it upon himself to damage
any more of it.

As he pulled it out, he took solace in
the fact that, while it might not work, Mervin was minutes from
death if extreme intervention didn’t occur. He could live with
attempting a failed cure. Watching Mervin pass away with his arms
crossed, he could not.

“This is gonna be a little strong boy,
but it’s gonna help you.”

Pitkins caressed the noble beast gently
while he began daubing a little Spicy Green into the wound on his
head.

Then, he went back to caressing his
side gently.

“You’ve been a brave doggie. You did
good,” Pitkins said, pointing to the fingers.

Mervin looked at them briefly as if to
say he saw them as insufficient evidence of valiant
resistance.

Pitkins put his head to the dog’s side.
He could sense his heart beating faster and faster.

“Mervin?”

Two big, brown eyes looked up at
Pitkins.

“I have to go find Donive.”

Pitkins immediately, but gently, put
his hand against Mervin’s side when he attempted to
rise.

“You’ve already done too much, pal. You
need to rest. Donive’ll be awful sad if you don’t recover. That’s
what you’ve got to do now. Rest.”

He leaned down and listened again to
Mervin’s heart. It seemed to be beating normally now, perhaps just
a little faster than normal.

Pitkins brought Mervin some
water.

“You get better, buddy. I’ll be
back.”

Mervin looked up at him anxiously and
then lowered his eyes again in what seemed to be assent.

Pitkins gave him a couple pats on his
side so lightly they wouldn’t have disturbed a feather, and then he
dashed upstairs.

He stripped himself to the buff in five
seconds flat and then began strapping armor onto his legs, arms,
and groin.

No more than two minutes later he
finished and then threw his clothes back on.

Inspired by the weapon Mr. Simmers had
long ago requested, Pitkins had crafted himself multiple
concealable swords, and he quickly inserted them into sheaths
underneath both forearms and one into a back sheath.

Then, feeling only a second’s
hesitation, he kneeled before a window facing east and beseeched
the Sogolian god of war and vengeance:

“Leol, hear my prayer. Guide my sword.
Boil my blood. Kill my remorse. Freeze my heart.”

He then sprinted outside, leaped on top
of Frederick, and took off, headed for town with more zeal than he
had ever gone to war with.

Chapter 27

Pitkins knew as he headed into town he
was like a rock lobbed out of an unaimed trebuchet, but that would
just have to do.

“Hey,” he said to a passerby. “I’m
lookin’ for a whorehouse. Can you point me in the right
direction?”

“Well,” said the man, taken aback by
such unusual frankness. “There’s one not too far from here. Let’s
see . . . .”

Pitkins tossed a gold coin at the
man.

“Today, would ya?!”

The man looked up at him ready to make
a snide remark, but when he took a look into the tornadic eyes of
fire and death he lost his anger and regained his memory all in the
blink of an eye.

“Go down two blocks. Turn right. Go
three blocks. You won’t miss it.”

“Kasani bless you, friend,” Pitkins
said, and then he nudged his horse forward quickly but not to a
full gallop.

Sure enough, the pictures on the
exterior, while far from pornographic, didn’t require a genius to
infer the place was a brothel.

Pitkins tied up Frederick and then
approached the door.

For a moment, he thought the
mammoth-sized man at the door was the beast Rucifus had brought to
his shop earlier today and convinced him unequivocally to never put
a sword into her hands or those of her men ever.

But as the stern-faced man turned his
attention towards Pitkins, he realized it was not. The man’s
brother perhaps. But not him.

“Howdy, sir.”

“Good afternoon,” Pitkins said warmly,
pulling out a bag of money.

“Hold your horses, there,” the man said
snickering. “You are ready to go, aren’t you?! Just go ahead and
lift up your arms; I’ve got to pat you down.”

“I’m here to be touched by women, not
men.”

“Hey, it’s my job, bud.”

“Is this owned by Rucifus? I hear her
girls are the best. And I aim to find out.”

“She don’t exactly like to be the focus
of attention, but, yeah, she owns it. Now, if you can just raise
those arms for me . . . .”

Pitkins raised his arms.

As soon as the hulk’s hands touched his
ribs, Pitkins said, “This is one time you should have just taken
the money.”

Pitkins overhooked the man’s left arm
and grabbed firmly onto his jacket. Then, he turned sideways away
from the man, stuck out his right leg, and tossed him in a twisting
motion to the ground.

Pitkins landed on top, and his two
hundred-plus pounds did little to soften the man’s fall against the
hard ground below. No sooner had the wind begun to whistle out of
the man’s deflated lungs than Pitkins released his grip on his
jacket, snaked his right arm behind the man’s neck, placed his
right hand underneath the man’s armpit, and then arched his body
upwards to the sky.

Had the man not been winded, there may
have been some tug of war with a doubtful outcome, as his neck was
almost the size of Pitkins’ thighs. But with the wind and energy
drained from him, a sickening pop was heard seconds later as two
neck vertebrae snapped.

Several gawkers had clearly seen the
whole thing and were whispering to each other
frantically.

Pitkins stood up and marched inside the
bar.

“What’ll you have, partner?”

“Information,” Pitkins said, slapping a
small bag of gold coins down onto the bar.

“Well,” said the man, eyeing the money
with no little curiosity, “just what kind of
information?”

“Rucifus—where does she
live.”

“He-he-he,” the man chuckled nervously,
shoving the gold back to Pitkins. “Let’s just trade money for
whiskey. That sound fair?”

“No. It doesn’t.”

Pitkins grabbed the man’s hand before
he could retract it from the bag he had just pushed forward, shook
his compressed sword out of his right sleeve into his right hand,
and then lopped the bartender’s hand off.

“AHHHHHH!!!!!! KASANI!!!!”

Pitkins leaped atop the bar like a
leopard, spun the man around, and put the dagger to his
throat.

“I’d cut your head off with as little
hesitation. WHERE’S RUCIFUS?!!!!”

“She-she—”

Pitkins saw he had company.

Five gorilla-sized men were tumbling
his way on legs that could barely support their massive torsos.
Three had clubs; two had large knives.

Pitkins sliced the man’s throat, lifted
him up, and hurled him at the infantry charge.

He landed against one of the men’s
head, knocking him slightly off balance.

Pitkins jumped over the bar in one
leap, ducked beneath a club swing that would have caved in two
men’s heads, and sliced the man’s right leg in half at the
knee.

In a move so graceful it combined
beauty with slaughter, Pitkins continued with his body’s rotational
movement and spun around just in time to greet the falling man with
an upward slice that cut his head from his body before he even hit
the floor.

Over his left shoulder, he saw a man
coming towards him with his club raised overhead like a wild
barbarian. Pitkins adjusted the grip on his sword, placed his left
foot behind his right, and spun to meet invader with a snappy
thrust that pierced through several inches of fat and muscle until
punching right through his abdominal aorta.

Pitkins adjusted back to normal grip on
the hilt and then pulled the sword out in a downward slicing
motion, cutting the man down to the groin.

He saw an overhand club swing coming
towards his left ear, and he immediately brought his sword up,
while stepping to his right at a forward angle, and sliced the
incoming forearm in two and then swiveled to his left bringing his
sword in a horizontal slicing motion towards the guy’s head. The
man, seeing the sword coming, found it in himself to attempt to
defend his head even while his severed arm was clamoring for
attention, and he raised his left arm in a futile attempt to block
four feet of razor-sharp steel.

His left forearm failed to even slow
Pitkins’ blade as it sliced through this petty nuisance of an
obstacle and hacked the man’s head clean off his
shoulders.

This display had prompted the remaining
two thugs to question whether dealing with such patrons was
included in their job description, and both seemed content to keep
their distance, each inviting the other to be the hero.

Pitkins didn’t have time for a
standoff, so he immediately lunged at one of the two muscle-bound
oafs. The man took one, then two, steps backwards before turning
tail and running for the door at a full sprint. He knocked over a
patron who was making a subtler escape like a charging bull
knocking aside a field mouse.

“Tell me where Rucifus lives, and you
leave alive!” Pitkins shouted at his one remaining foe.

“Rucifus?! Heck! I just started here
last Monday! Startin’ to regret it too! Just let me leave in
peace!”

“Drop the knife!”

The man glanced at it briefly before
turning his frightened gaze back to Pitkins. He chucked it to the
floor and turned to run.

Pitkins quickly sidestepped and cut him
off.