The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint

The Cat was still backed up against the wall, flailing away at the other Hand. “Thanks a lot!” she snarled. “The damn thing’s a leftie!”

Greyboar skidded to a stop and came rushing back. “I’ll get him! I’ll get him!” He pointed his finger at the right Hand. “Hrundig! Ignace! You take care of that one!”

Hrundig paused just long enough to toss the bag he was carrying up to Benvenuti. “A present from Gwendolyn!” he shouted. “She said you’d know what to do with it!” Then he drew his sword and charged at the right Hand.

Benvenuti snatched the bag with his left hand and upended it. A bullwhip slid out into his right.

“She remembered!” he cried gleefully. “What a woman! Nonpareil!”

Honest. That’s what he said, hanging upside down over a kettle of boiling oil. Nonpareil. Crazy artist. He seemed as ecstatic over a bullwhip from an ex-girlfriend as he would have been if she’d presented him with a negative pregnancy test.

A moment later, I discovered why. I knew Benvenuti was accounted an expert swordsman. What I didn’t know was that his skill with a bullwhip was even greater. His weapon of choice, as it happens, being as he’d been trained in its use by his uncle Larue Sfondrati-Piccolomini.

Good thing they don’t allow bullwhips in dueling, all I’ve got to say. Still hanging upside down, Benny cracked the thing once and the bullwhip parted the rope holding him by the ankles like it was a thread.

On the way down—I believe I’ve mentioned his grotesque physical condition—Benny not only managed to twist himself around so he was falling feet first, but he did some kind of bizarre little quick rubbing motions with his feet like he was trying to take socks off and shed the rope altogether. His feet now free and unfettered, he landed right on the rim of the kettle. Balanced there perfectly, for an instant, before springing to the ground and racing off to the Cat’s rescue.

Moments later, he and the Cat and Hrundig were battling away with the right Even Worse Hand while Greyboar and the left were scrabbling around in a melee that would give delirium tremens to a drunken wrestler.

* * *

And me? What was I doing?

Thinking, of course. What else?

* * *

Give me a break. I stand four feet, eleven inches tall when I climb out of bed in the morning. By nighttime, I’m probably an inch shorter. Soaking wet, with a full meal in my belly, I claim a hundred pounds.

That’s a lie. Jenny and Angela once forced me onto a scale after a feast. Ninety-eight and a half pounds. After I whined, they poured a basin of water over me and weighed me again. Ninety-nine pounds.

So. We’ve got two gigantic hands each of which outweighs me by what your mathematician types call an order of magnitude. Not even going to talk about relative strength. Each of them—not to mention both together—are so vile and insensate and ferocious and wicked that Whoever Decides These Things had relegated them to the Place Even Worse Than Hell.

Nor was Whoever Decides These Things any kind of dummy, either, let me tell you. Outnumbered two-to-one, Even Worse Hands was holding its own against:

The world’s greatest strangler;

The world’s most unpredictable female slasher;

The world’s second-most-accomplished artiste with a bullwhip; and,

Hrundig of Alsask, Barbarian Master-at-Arms.

* * *

And you want to know what Ignace was doing?

Thinking, that’s what. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it on these asinine adventures.

I set my pack down and squatted beside it. Then, dug out a flask of whiskey. And a corned beef sandwich. A bit on the stale side, maybe, but it was the best I could manage.

Munch, munch; take a sip; think.

The first thing I considered were the darts I still had on me, which I’d retipped with poison after the scrape with the Ogre. But I discarded that idea right away, because it was obvious at a glance that the dosage was hopeless. Even with all the blood pouring out of the right Hand from the various wounds the Cat, Hrundig and Benny had managed to inflict on it, the thing was still going as strong as ever. While I watched, a jab of the thumb sent Hrundig flying and Benny barely managed to avoid a murderous flick of the pinkie by a prodigious leap in the air that would have had the audience at the ballet bringing down the rafters with applause. Especially the women, what with Benvenuti’s physique so exposed to view. All of it, for practical purposes. That loincloth was pretty much a joke.