James Axler – Cold Asylum

The simple but malevolent idea was that father and son would take a drink from alternate glasses, until one of them stumbled upon the poisoned chalice.

But the baron was deprived of his sport.

Before either of them could begin the torturous process, the father turned and struck his son a ferocious punch to the stomach, knocking him gasping to the floor. Before the baron, his watching guests or any of the circle of sec men could act, the man snatched the glasses and drained them all.

Ryan remembered that the Trader had been disgusted when the baron had personally executed the surviving son as his father lay dying. But he hadn’t felt that the broken promise was an issue worth drawing the blasters over.

There the setting had been the nave of the church, with the fragmentary remnants of a beautiful stained-glass window dominating the scene.

Now it was the grassy arena at the end of the shooting butts, with trees all around and the skies darkening, the chem storm moving toward them faster than a galloping horse. And the silent ring of onlookers.

The family of wildwooders stood in a ragged semicircle. The old woman had dropped to her knees and was plucking up dried leaves from the turf, touching them to her breasts, then crunching them between her gums.

The younger boy clapped his hands together when he was released, the crusted blood from the cuffs beginning to run crimson again.

Guiteau had taken charge of the proceedings, holding five identical horn-hilted daggers, with short six-inch blades. He stuck them into the ground, keeping a careful eye on the prisoners in case any of them went for him.

But they seemed to be completely passive and cowed.

“Listen up!” he shouted. “Baron Mandeville in his mercy has willed that one of you can go free from here, despite the crimes you committed by stealing a deer and several rabbits from the lands of this ville. There are five knives here. You are each to take one and then fight until there is only one survivor. Do you understand?” The prisoners remained silent. Guiteau spat on the ground. “Take the fucking knives and fight to the death.”

The father of the wildwooders finally showed some response, ignoring the sec man, speaking directly to the baron. His voice was low and grating, so heavily accented that it was difficult to understand.

“Animals come from forest gods. Fed by sun and rain. Free for all men. You got not a right to say they’s yourn. We don’t fight son and grandam. Won’t.”

“Tell him, Guiteau,” Marie Mandeville commanded. “Tell the ball-brained clod what happens if they don’t fight.”

“Yes, lady.” He stepped in closer to the leader of the little group, poking him in the chest with the muzzle of the Armalite. “You don’t get it, do you? You fight and one of you gets to walk free. Well, mebbe hop free. But you’ll live. One of you. You refuse and you go to the cellars of the ville to the hot irons, the probes, the rack, the cold water and the screws and vices. You’ll all pray to your heathen gods for death, and it won’t come. Your eyes’ll sizzle and you’ll try to scream, but you won’t have no tongue to scream with. Take the knives and get on with it. Now!”

He stepped away, not taking his gaze from them. There was a long rumble of thunder and the sky seemed to grow darker by the minute. A fresh wind had risen, soughing through the tops of the surrounding trees.

The father stooped and picked up the five knives, looking down at them as though he had no idea what they were.

“Yes.” The syllable came from the red-bearded young man. “But not like they want.”

“How?”

The son, father and mother all drew together, talking in urgent whispers, inaudible to any of the watchers.

“That storm’ll be here if they don’t get a move on,” J.B. said.

Guiteau glanced back toward the raised platform, but Ryan realized that he was looking to Marie, rather than the baron, for orders.

The deaths came almost unnoticed.

The father spun on his heel with a grace that belied his clumsy, oafish appearance. He gripped the crouching old woman with surprising gentleness and cut her throat from ear to ear, driving the blade in, the soft crack of cartilage parting, and pulling it across from left to right.