The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint

Everything, in short, which the world’s greatest professional strangler wouldn’t normally touch with a ten-foot pole.

But, now—

Again, I whistled. “She’s safe!” I hollered. “So are the rest of us!”

I saw Greyboar’s head pop up between two of the Fingers and stare at us. I gave him the thumbs-up. (If you’ll pardon the expression.)

Greyboar grunted. Then—

Something seemed to heave inside the palm of the Even Worse Hand and the next thing you knew the monstrosity was sailing through the air. Whump! against the stone wall of the cavern; then, collapsing into a heap at the bottom. Like a stunned tarantula.

Greyboar shook himself like a wet dog and started advancing upon it. In—

The Stance.

Not too many people had ever seen The Stance. And precious few of them were still around to talk about it. Greyboar never bothered with it for the average job, you’ll understand. The Stance was pretty much reserved for the Finals at the Barbarian Games, and such jobs as the famous burke he put on the Comte de l’Abattoir and his entire party of knight-companions.

Hrundig and Benvenuti, once they saw The Stance, had enough sense to leave off any further idea of “rescue” and concentrate on finishing off the Hand in the kettle. Even the Cat, after bouncing around the cavern a bit, settled down and took her turn at the chore.

Of course, everyone couldn’t stop watching. Annoyed the hell out of me, that did, since it meant I had to concentrate on keeping their minds on The Task At Hand.

So I didn’t get to see much of it myself, since I had to keep my eyes on the Hand at hand and keep the others steady at their work. Which annoyed me even further, until I realized that it really didn’t matter whether I could give a detailed and accurate report to the Records Committee since Greyboar and I were no longer members in good standing of the Professional Stranglers’ Guild anyway.

Which really annoyed me.

So, here’s how it went, as best as I can tell you:

Crunch, crunch. That was the pinky, going first at both joints. I could tell it was the pinky from the—comparatively speaking—delicate sound. I knew then that the Even Worse Hand was in for that they call a “Bad End,” because Greyboar doesn’t normally trifle around with curlicues. This was one of the rare occasions when his temper was up.

But even when he’s pissed Greyboar doesn’t really let his professionalism lapse. So the next thing he did was take care of the middle finger—CRUNCH; broken in half—and the index finger. YERK! Torn out of its socket, no doubt about it.

From there it was all denouement. There was a lot of crunching and yerking, and a stretch of about a minute or so with a lot of thumping when Greyboar put the Hand through a series of what they call “body slams” when it’s an actual body instead of a giant Hand.

Then, silence—except for the sound of Greyboar’s heavy breathing and something which, for lack of a better term, we’ll call a scrinnnch.

At that point, I risked a look. And saw what I expected to see. The Hand itself was nothing more than a pulpy mass, now, and Greyboar was going in for the Final Big Squeeze on the Even Worse Thumb.

Horrible thing to watch, it really is. The Final Big Squeeze, I mean. But I didn’t tear my eyes away until the very end, when Greyboar—

He doesn’t usually do this kind of thing, honest. It’s not like him at all. But the Even Worse Hands had attacked his girl, you see, and even Greyboar can get kinky about stuff like that.

So he finished by tearing off the Even Worse Thumbnail and brandishing it like a trophy. (He’s still got it, too. But at least he keeps the damn stinky thing packed away in a chest somewhere in the cellar.) Then, after the Cat wafted over and steadied him down a bit, he hoisted the Hand’s corpse (is that the right term?) onto his back and brought it over to the kettle.

Plop. Bubble. And it was all over.