The Philosophical Strangler(133)

The Horizon was upon us! I was being torn in half! (Spiritually speaking.) Greyboar picked me up and we went through in a leap.





Chapter 30.

Into Even Worse Hands

When we landed on the other side, my senses were still befuddled. It didn’t help any that Greyboar must have jumped through leading with his shoulder so we arrived all discombobulated and tangled up. He tripped, but at least he had the good grace not to land on top of me.

I bounced off, while he scrambled out from under, trying to get my bearings. Things weren’t helped any when Hrundig came through and avoided tripping over me by stepping on me!

But I wasn’t so disoriented that I didn’t understand what Greyboar was shouting. My heart froze. Just the words I most didn’t want to hear.

“We’re just in the nick of time!”

Trust me on this one. If you ever go adventuring, always try to find the situation where the appropriate words are: “Damn! We’re too late! The villain hath done his villainy and decamped to parts unknown!”

Beats just in the nick of time, let me tell you. Parts unknown is the best place for villains, in my book. As the wise man says: “The only scientific definition of evil is that you can’t ignore it.”

I raised my head and stared at the scene in front of me. We were in another cavern, also lit by the same glittering gold-fire, but this one was built on a smaller scale. The ceiling was especially low, not more than twenty feet above our heads. But I didn’t spend much time looking at anything except the person we had come to rescue. Benvenuti Sfondrati-Piccolomini himself, in the flesh.

It was so trite. I mean—really! You’d think the Place Worse Than Hell would have more of an imagination. I’d been hoping that Benvenuti was being subjected to some kind of spiritual torment, don’t you know? The sort of ethereal agony that Greyboar and Hrundig and I could have spent hours standing around scratching our heads wondering what bruisers like them and a sensible sinner like me could possibly do about it. While we enjoyed a quiet lunch and maybe a flask of whiskey.

Nope. Instead—

Benvenuti was stripped naked except for a loincloth, suspended upside down from the ceiling by a rope tied around his ankles, his head not more than five feet above a huge iron kettle full of boiling oil set over a bronze brazier. The rope ran through some kind of pulley arrangement and was tied off on a post set in the stone floor of the cavern maybe ten feet from the kettle. Ready at an instant, obviously enough, to lower him to his doom. Which, judging from the various flaying instruments sitting upon a giant tray next to the kettle, was intended to be protracted.

Apparently—judging from the rope marks still on his flesh—his arms had also been bound up. But somehow he’d gotten loose from those ropes and had even managed to shed the manacles on his wrists. One of them, anyway—the set of manacles was still dangling from his left wrist.

At first, I thought the Cat might have cut them loose with her lajatang. But then, seeing the freewheeling style with which she was wielding the thing against her enemies, I realized that couldn’t have been it. As sloppy as ever, in a fight, the Cat would have hacked Benny himself to pieces.

No, I found out later that Benny had done it himself, as soon as he saw the Cat waft into the cavern. Turns out one of the many things his multitude of uncles had trained him in was the secrets of what they call “escapology.” He’d been saving it up as a last resort while he held off Even Worse Hands with the secret lore of suspended insults and shackled derision in which his uncles had also trained him. He’d managed to stall the Even Worse Hands for days that way. Got them so infuriated they held off from flaying him alive until they could rummage up the kettle and enough oil for boiling.

(Benny was an orphan, you see, and had been raised by his artist and condottieri uncles. And if you’re wondering why I hope I never meet those uncles, figure it out for yourself. The nephew is plenty bad enough, getting-you-into-scrapes-wise. Why would his uncles know all that stuff if they didn’t need it? Huh?)

Greyboar, of course, was rushing off to the Cat’s rescue. As slippery as she was, Even Worse Hands had her pretty much cornered against a wall of the cavern. She was flailing the lajatang around like you couldn’t believe—way better than she’d ever used a sword. Hrundig, I now realized, was every bit as good a weapons trainer as his reputation. But while her enemies bore the marks of several slashes, they could obviously shrug off the injuries easily enough.

Knuckle them off, I should say.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to describe Even Worse Hands. Picture two gigantic hands, each one about the size of a bull. Great, gnarled, ugly things, with calluses all over them and the worst manicure you ever saw. Fingers more like talons than fingers, and fingernails so long and scraggly they were almost claws.