After he’d passed, Seven Skull Shield eased the doorway aside on its silent leather hinges, and stepped out behind the warrior.
I can just back away and …
How silly that he could even think it? Too much was just plain too much. He stepped forward, taking the stalker’s measure: tall, muscular, wearing a hunting shirt from which dangled a half-full quiver of very familiar arrows. Folded over his shoulder was an empty bow case. The stalker moved like a wary lion, his bow up and drawn, the long braid forward. And that unusual bow? It had been made of dark hardwood laminated with layers of horn, both ends of the staves having an odd double curve.
A Tula bow?
As the stalker cleared the last of the wall’s curvature, he stopped, frozen, the bow held so steady he might have been stone. The dank smell of feces and human urine hung in the air, the sounds of the city distant. The man grunted an exclamation of surprise.
Seven Skull Shield juiced his tobacco for the last time and spit just as the Tula began his turn. The stream of tobacco-laced saliva took the man full in the face.
And then Seven Skull Shield was on him, bellowing, “You foul piece of walking shit!” He piled headlong into the warrior, barely aware of the arrow as it released and dug a groove out of the plaster wall to the left.
“I’m gonna break you!” Seven Skull Shield bellowed. “Gonna stomp you!” He head-butted the Tula in the face. His knee rose like a hardwood stump; the Tula’s body shuddered as it slammed into his crotch. “You rat-choking maggot meat!”
Grabbing the stunned Tula by the throat and dragging his face into each blow, Seven Skull Shield continued to head-butt him. He delighted in the pain and flash behind his eyes as he felt and heard the bones breaking in the man’s nose and cheeks. Blood and tobacco juice splattered his forehead as he drove it into the Tula’s face.
“Think you can hunt me? Shoot me in the back! In my own city? Worthless dog shit! I’m gonna kill you!”
He felt the man’s grip slacken on the bow, heard it clatter to one side. The Tula was pawing at something on his rope belt. From instinct, Seven Skull Shield shifted, knowing the move from old.
He tightened his hold on the Tula’s throat, screaming, “No you don’t! Foreign bit of trash! Come here? To my Cahokia? Think you’re gonna stick me!” Seven Skull Shield’s left hand caught the Tula’s wrist, stopping the bone stiletto before it could be driven into his side.
Pus and vomit! The Tula was as strong as bull buffalo!
Screaming like a war eagle, Seven Skull Shield stared into the Tula’s half-dazed eyes, dripping as they were and half blinded with blood and tobacco juice. As the Tula tried to squirm out of Seven Skull Shield’s grip, he levered the man off his feet. Together they crashed onto the smelly filth that filled the blind passage.
As they hit the ground, Seven Skull Shield had brought his knee up, landing so his weight drove it down like a ram onto the man’s genitals. The Tula shrieked, twisting away like a writhing rattler. The man had obviously wrestled, was going to break loose. Just a matter of time …
“You pus-weeping infected sheath! Back-shooting, worm-eating maggot!” He spit the tobacco quid fully into the Tula’s gory face then opened his mouth wide and bit. He sank his teeth into the Tula’s cheek and lower lip as the man tried to turn his face away.
Unable to shout, Seven Skull Shield could only growl and squeal his rage as he chewed, ripped, and jerked at the resisting flesh.
The Tula was kicking, bucking, and doing no little squealing of his own. Unlike Seven Skull Shield’s enraged vocalizations, the Tula’s sounded like sheer terror.
The man was clawing futilely at Seven Skull Shield’s hair, winding his fingers in and pulling desperately. His trapped right hand flexed and strained as he tried to drive the deer-bone stiletto into Seven Skull Shield’s side.
Which was when Seven Skull Shield let out a particularly wild shriek through his nose and mouth and let loose with his right hand. Before the Tula could react, he’d driven a hard thumb as deeply as he could into the man’s left eye. He felt the orb tear loose, then pop wetly.
The Tula’s scream might have come from a dying animal; his legs kicked in spasms. Then whimpering sounds broke from his throat as Seven Skull Shield did his level best to rip the tissue in his teeth from the man’s head.
“I think that’s enough,” a somber voice called.
Seven Skull Shield let his rage slowly drain, turned loose of the bloody remains of Tula lip. He spit blood-soaked saliva into the half-conscious Tula’s ruined face.
When the Tula wouldn’t release the stiletto, Seven Skull Shield braced himself, levered the man’s arm up, and broke the elbow over his knee.