The Infiltrators Read online

  “But you—”

  “I’ll walk. You take Frederick. Watch over him for me, would ya? You’ll know of my outcome via the papers. If I live, I ask you return him to me. If I don’t, he’s yours to keep or to give or sell to someone you think will take good care of him.”

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  Pitkins nodded. “Either I leave that place with her or die.”

  Rose gulped. “Not many people would do that . . . not even for someone they love.”

  “Then do they really love?”

  Rose gave him a long look that suggested she’d like to say more.

  “Can you do one last thing for me?” Pitkins asked.

  Name it, she almost said, but a soft “What?” came out.

  “You come to me if you’re ever in danger. For what you’ve done tonight, I’m forever indebted.”

  “What about the police?” Rose asked, choking back tears at seeing a man walk to his death.

  “You kiddin’?” Pitkins asked with a piercing look.

  Rose blushed.

  Pitkins grabbed her hand and looked deep into her eyes, “May Kasani always bless you,” he said and then turned his back to her and began walking up the street.

  As he walked up the street, adrenaline began to trickle and then flow into veins he had allowed the luxury of relaxing during their stroll. A hard lesson he had learned in battle was to the importance of suppressing adrenaline when it would serve no purpose. Failure to follow this practice could leave you mauled on the battlefield.

  He loosened the sword straps inside both sleeves, ready to let them drop into the palms of his hands.

  “Halt there, Pitkins; we know it’s you.”

  Pitkins couldn’t see the person yet, but he immediately determined its origin.

  He quickly moved from the open street to some shrubs alongside it and began moving forward more stealthily.

  “You ain’t getting’ into Rucifus’s house, and we know that’s where you’re headed, so just come on and out, and let’s talk.”

  Pitkins kept moving forward, clinging to the bushes.

  “DAMN IT TO HECK! Get your butts out there and find him!”

  Scurrying footsteps echoed from boots striking the cement of the street—the smooth, hard surface serving as a status symbol that distinguished it from the muddy roads throughout most of the city.

  When Pitkins realized he was going to be outflanked, he reluctantly broke from cover and headed back to the street.

  “Now that’s more like it!” the voice rang out. “I ain’t fixin’ to play hide-and-go-seek tonight. Now, just keep on comin’, and let’s talk.”

  Pitkins saw a badge on the chest of the man barking the orders. The men heeding them looked like run-of-the-mill thugs.

  He was now a mere fifteen feet or so from Pitkins, and his wolf-like servants were quickly moving around Pitkins in a circle.

  “CALL YOUR MEN BACK!” Pitkins barked.

  “Don’t go any closer, gents,” he said, and they stopped approaching Pitkins, but did not break the circle they had formed around him, each about six feet from Pitkins.

  Pitkins kept walking closer to the deputy.

  “Now it’s your turn to halt, and I advise you do it right quick. I ain’t fixin’ to go toe to toe; I know a thing about your past. So just you stop right there and we’ll talk. Otherwise, I let out one whistle, and you’re fit for dog meat; get my drift?”

  Pitkins stopped, about five feet from the deputy.

  “Where’s my wife?” he asked ominously.

  “She’s inside, and not a hair on her pretty little head’s been hurt. Now, I’m a negotiator here, and—”

  “An accomplice.”

  “Pardon.”

  “You’re a damned accomplice to kidnapping.”

  “And you’re a damned wanted rascal who’s killed some deputies tonight. You’ll hang unless I pin it on someone else; catch my drift?” he said, a glint in his blue eyes, the only attractive feature on his fat face.

  “Take me to Donive. Or I’m going to her.”

  “Now just cool down there, son. What Rucifus wants is just for you to be the sword smith for her men. That’s it. She’ll pay you falons by the bushel. What’s the harm?”

  “Arming anyone who works for her would be as bad as handing a knife to the outstretched palm of a robber holding an innocent victim with the other.”

  “Don’t get all moralistic, son. You’ve murdered a handful of innocent people tonight just doing their job and who didn’t have anything to do with this kidnapping,” he said with a gleam in his eye.

  “Job hazard. People will start to question whether working for Rucifus is a good thing, wouldn’t you agree? Maybe even deputies.”

  “Why you smart-mouthed fool! You could have your wife in your arms by now; instead you’re blabberin’ about job hazards!”

  “So let me get this straight . . . .”

  The deputy turned around, a sly look in his eye.

  “If I agree to make swords for Rucifus, I get Donive back . . . right now?”

  The deputy gave Pitkins a long, hard look like a man playing poker and deciding what his next move would be.

  “Well, tonight might be a slight exaggeration, but once you craft a few top-notch swords, you’d have her back all right.”

  “So, basically, my wife—the woman whom I swore to love, honor, and defend until death do us part—is to be collateral to ensure that my stated acquiescence to your boss’s extortion demands is in good faith.”

  “Lots of fancy talk, but I think we got an understandin’.”

  The right dagger fell so smoothly into Pitkins’ hand it went without notice, but when a flip of a lever caused it to grow to a monstrous four feet in length, the display was anything but subtle.

  Pitkins rushed forward while the deputy appeared to question what his eyes were telling him and stabbed him directly through his throat. He then grabbed the deputy by his hair to prevent him from falling and used him as a temporary shield while he breathed deeply and then sent a side kick flying directly into the trachea of a man rushing him like a bull.

  His windpipe crushed so quickly he could make no sound as he toppled over to the ground.

  Pitkins let his shield go and immediately introduced his left dagger to his left palm. He adjusted it to sword length as two men came rushing him from each side. He squatted down until his butt touched the ground and then thrust his body upwayrds with a loud “HUMPHH!!!” coming from his lungs as he shot his arms out laterally and poked each man through the tummy with cold steel.

  He lunged towards an incoming man and brought his left sword down across his neck at an angle, followed immediately by the sword’s twin brother, slicing through the carotid and cutting all the way down to his chest.

  He then sucked air more vigorously than a whale and then exhaled loudly as he moved towards a group of incoming attackers with a series of tornadic twists and turns that presaged the helicopter blade.

  He hacked off several legs and disemboweled four people until just one lone man was standing uninjured. He shrieked and went running down the street, appearing to have decided on early retirement.

  Pitkins heard a groan and went towards it like a dog towards a bone.

  The man had both eyes fully open, but his mind somehow seemed absent from them.

  “I bet you’d love a little of this right now, wouldn’t ya?” Pitkins asked, placing a small sample of Spicy Green near his nose.

  The man salivated upon sensing the pungent smell.

  “It’d take the pain down a notch or two, wouldn’t it?” Pitkins inquired.

  He took a quick look around him and then squatted down to one knee. He saw some blood coming out of the man’s mouth.

  Pitkins put his hand on the edge of his deep abdominal wound and then placed the Spicy Green near the man’s nose.

  “Your choice, pal. This or this!”

  The man screamed in agony as Pitkins pressed down on th
e gut wound.

  Pitkins dropped his face down to where his eyes were just an inch away from the man’s.

  “Is she here?”

  The man’s eyes twitched back and forth, as if Rucifus was standing directly over him, threatening something even worse than toying with his gut wound if he opened his trap.

  Deciding Pitkins was the more imminent threat, he said, blood sputtering from his lips, “Earlier . . . maybe still, if you hurry. HUUUUH!” The man sucked in a greedy portion of air for his last breath, like a man making the most of the last call at the bar.

  Pitkins closed the man’s eyes and sprinted toward the shrubs.

  As he navigated the bushes and edged towards the first sentry, he envied the Metinvurs. This would have been their element, their world. Yet, he felt like a fish on dry land. Open combat was his game, and yet Donive’s life was going to depend on more than just charging and slashing.

  As he continued slowly through the shrub bushes, he saw he was near the end of this cover and facing a large open yard. He reduced his speed even further, taking care that each movement would not crunch a twig or do anything else to alert half of mankind to his location.

  Once he was down to a few inches of cover left, he cautiously spread the branches just enough to give him a peek of what he was up against.

  He halfway regretted it. The front yard looked like a castle courtyard filled with an army ready to go to war against an approaching invader. There had to be at least fifty people, and while he didn’t have time to do a written inventory of their weaponry, it looked like everyone had a club, knife, chain, or sword, and it looked like there were a few crossbows to boot.

  His heart began to pound. He didn’t care if he died. He had faced death with a sneer many times on the battlefield after his family had been killed, half wishing he would be felled by a worthy opponent. But there was a sweet, helpless innocent life depending upon his performance and not a damned soul in the world he could summon to help him.

  Sure about that?

  His left eye wandered down to his front shirt pocket. He hated what he saw Spicy Green doing to this town, but he had heard enough about its effects to realize that it was something he would have loved to give his Nikorian troops before a major battle. They had often drunk savitas before large battles, a bitter herb that could just about make you retch but that gave enhanced energy for hours. Its disgusting taste removed any serious risk of addiction, a protection he saw Spicy Green did not have.

  But he had had a long day, and even if he had not had his energy drained by the combination of his prior fights and the soul-sapping adrenaline of constantly thinking about what Donive could be enduring at this very moment, he knew that what lay in the yard before him would be a suicide mission.

  You owe it to Donive to do whatever it takes to get her!!

  The judge ruled, and Pitkins poured a little Spicy Green into the palm of his hand, waited for a couple of the men in the yard to start talking, and then sniffed up the contents.

  For five seconds, he felt nothing, and he wondered what in the world the big deal was, but then like lightning falling from the sky and striking the energy center of his brain, it hit him full force, knocking him back a couple inches as his mind rocked from the tsunami of energy that had just entered his body.

  The most energetic, adrenaline-rushed moment he could think of suddenly felt like a nap in the shade compared to what he felt now. He could see the god Leol smiling wickedly at him:

  You will find no peace until you avenge your family, but first you must find Donive. I will help you.

  He remembered the oath he had made upon finding their bodies that he would avenge them, something he had regretted bitterly, as there was no way he could ever track down the Varco. It would be like chasing a cloud. But he had made it, and it was widely believed that Leol left no man in peace who failed to fulfill his oath, though some said he enjoyed helping people fulfill them.

  Suddenly his mind cleared, the long-ago oath being brushed aside like a simple task on a to-do list that must make way for something more pressing.

  He remembered the one time he had seen the statue of Leol. He was six years old, and the large, snarling face had given him nightmares for years. Now it seemed as if that face turned into dust and went racing into Pitkins’ ears and infused itself into his soul.

  “GRRRRRRRRR!!!!” he shouted like an enraged bear as he came shooting out of the thicket, a low sound that vibrated his vocal chords at depths he had never come within an octave of.

  “Over there!” a man shouted nervously.

  Pitkins sliced the first man in half with a scissor strike, the two swords coming towards each other at the man’s waist.

  With a quick expansion of air in his lungs and a whippy snap of his lat muscles, both swords went shooting forward into a man’s chest with a speed he had never approximated in his best practice sessions.

  Pitkins couldn’t even believe his own eyes, as he watched himself pull out the two swords so quickly it was as if they had never even been there, and as he immediately spun to his right while stooping to one knee and bringing both swords around in a perfectly horizontal arc.

  A chef would have turned green with envy as Pitkins’ two swords cut the man into three slices so straight not even a geometer could have found fault with them, but instead would have cited them as proof of the existence of perfectly parallel lines in the natural world.

  His breathing was deeper, calmer, and yet more explosive when needed than he had ever felt it in his entire life. He remembered one of his first sword masters telling him that the legendary masters of old could beat a hundred of the best swordsmen of modern times because modern man was too lazy to develop proper breathing, it being a discipline with little show value.

  But now it seemed to Pitkins as if his entire body was one giant lung, gulping up greedy amounts of air at will and using it like coal in a furnace to fuel massive amounts of explosive energy.

  He ran straight towards his next opponent, already calculating his next moves in advance. He jumped up into the air and planted a nose-shattering kick to the man’s face, stuck his sword into the man’s right trap muscle, and then vaulted over him, slashing his throat in the process.

  He heard the creak of a finger on a crossbow trigger and immediately leaned backwards till his head touched the ground. An arrow whizzed over him and buried itself in the throat of a portly beast with a club in his hand.

  “Watch it, Randy!!” a man cried out in alarm.

  Pitkins sprang to his feet and charged at a skinny rail whose eyes grew wider than his torso when he saw he had been singled out, apparently lamenting his calculation that some other bastard would take this maniac out before he got a scratch on him.

  Pitkins brought his right sword down towards the man’s neck at an angle. The skinny rail somehow managed to jerk his own sword up to block it. A half-second at most passed before Pitkins’ left sword came down and sliced the man’s hand off neatly at the wrist.

  Pitkins then spun to his right, disemboweling a muscular, tattoo-covered hulk heading straight for him, squatted to his right knee, and then brought his left sword around and sliced off the skinny rail’s left leg at the meaty part of the thigh, severing the femoral artery.