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"Like meeting here."
Thorsen nodded as he took a tiny dog biscuit from the wicker basket to the
side of the cages, then fed it on his open palm to the dog. Two. workers in
coveralls were working their way down the row of kennels, moving the animals
out of their own cells to a holding cell long enough to clean them out. But
the smell of Pine-Sol and bleach couldn't quite cover the reek of dog piss and
dog shit.
"We can be sure there is no Son here, or the animals would let us know."
Thorian Thorsen smiled thinly. "Even if it likely would be by pissing down
their legs."
Jeff nodded. "So you want to buy one?"
Thorian Thorsen shook his head. "That would just delay things." He pursed his
lips. "Imagine that this is a duel in the mists of in the mists. What's the
most important thing the mists hide?"
"Who the players are," Jeff said, slowly. "What they want. What they're
doing."
Thorian Thorsen nodded. "He, or they there may be more than one, although I
doubt it is hidden from us. We don't even know what he wants."
"But "
Thorian Thorsen shook his head. "We know what the vestri thought he wants.
But he has been here long enough not only to locate my son, but to... to fit
in here, perhaps as well as I have." He shrugged. "If he had wanted my son's
blood, he would have had it by now. Thorian is as fast as I was at that age,
and much smarter, if not as devious, but it doesn't matter how fast and smart
you are, not when a dark shape leaps out of an alleyway or a doorway when
you're not expecting it, to rend you flesh from flesh." He looked up. "Do you
fence at all? No? Nor play chess, nor draughts? Pity. They're really much the
same, complicated by the same contradiction: in order to strike, you must move
forward; but the moving forward exposes you to be struck.
"With the sword, the wrist is the center of it all, the fulcrum around which
the fight swings. If you hit his wrist, be it a first-blood affair or a duel
to the death, you've won. You have a saying about the fastest way to a man's
heart; the one I was taught is that the fastest way to the heart is through
the wrist. Disable his wrist, and you can cut out his heart at your leisure.
"So from that truth there flows a classic move: you offer your opponent your
wrist, hoping that as he lunges for it, he exposes himself to you for the
riposte. Much of the time, if you're good, it even works." Thorsen pulled back
his sleeve. His thick wrist was badly scarred, at least a half dozen thick
white lines speaking of old wounds. Blunt fingers rubbed at his scars. "But
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not always, not always."
Which is what they had been doing with Torrie, last night. If the Son had
gone for Torrie, he would have exposed himself to Jeff, just like a fencer
dropping his guard as he lunged. "So why didn't he go for it? He was
watching."
"There's another classic move, and that's to, oh, turn a tactic into a
strategy. Instead of trying to hit, you try to manipulate your opponent into
being ... off the ideal line. Take his balance, control his timing or the
spacing, and you can win by indirection what you can't win directly."
"Which is what he's done here."
"Off-balance, aren't we? Out of place?"
"Not we. You."
Thorian Thorsen nodded. "Me. That's the only thing that makes sense. I'm both
the wrist and the heart, here, the center of it Ian was wrong; the Son is
after me. The only reason he revealed himself to young Thorian was to force me
to be out of line, off-balance, here where I don't have a feel for the space,
where the time and the balance are his."
Jeff nodded "Then what we need to do is get back home. There's been, oh, a
death in their individual families, and both Torrie and Maggie need leaves of
absences."
Thorian Thorsen shook his head. "Look another move ahead. What does he then
do? Give up?"
"Maybe he comes at us again at home."
"Perhaps. Or he could try a much simpler move: he could start killing here.
One kill, one mauling, just to let me know that he can continue. Then another
and another." He reached through the bars and let the black dog lick his
fingers. "How much blood would you have it take to draw me out, to bring me
here?"
Jeff sucked air through his teeth. You can't protect the whole world, just
your little piece of it, and sometimes not even that Sure. They could go home,
and wait until the Son started killing, and hope that it only killed people
that he didn't care about; they could let the bloody bodies pile high until
the weight of the corpses finally tipped the scales and tumbled them back
here.
How high a pile of bodies would it take? "Okay," Jeff said. "So you're the
wrist, and we offer him the wrist. We use you as the bait and when he goes for
you, I nail him. Just like we tried with Torrie."
"But not following so closely, eh? He's smelled you now, and he'll know you."
"You're saying I've been made?"
Thorian Thorsen shook his head. "Not really. But you will be 'made,' you
say? you'll be made, then, if you follow too close to me. He is several steps
ahead of us, this one. He waited last night, and simply observed in wolven
form, where his senses are their sharpest, perhaps? He crouched there,
sniffing the winter wind, and now can identify each of the people who were out
walking around Torrie last night. If he finds the same smell again, he'll
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recognize it. Were he to find your smell close to mine, he'd know you." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]