Dumarest 33 - Child of Earth Read Online Free Page A

were thick, the mouth a gash, the teeth filed into points. All carmine with blood smeared over the writhing curlicues of paint that masked and distorted the visage beneath. Only the eyes seemed alive, ringed with darkness, usually narrowed; now wide with terror as the blade rose before him to rest its point against his cheek.
    He writhed, fighting the hand clamped around his throat, the fingers digging against nerve and artery. A grip his clawing fingers failed to break as the desperate violence of an up-thrusting knee wasted itself on air and the column of a thigh. Things Dumarest ignored as he guided the knife up and over the cheek the skin parting beneath the edge to form a long, shallow wound. One welling blood as the blade halted with the point pressed against the inner corner of the eye.
    Before him the lips parted, the man fighting to talk, to plead or beg, but the grip on his throat kept him silent.
    Only his eyes could speak and they showed nothing but the horror of knowing what was to come. A horror which lasted a long moment then the knife thrust forward, twisting, the eye spurting from its socket to lie on the bloodied cheek, the blade driving on and into the brain, to twist, to drag free coated with grey and red as the dead man fell from the opened hand.
    Air, gusting from his lungs, made a sound like the agonized sighing of wind.
    Dumarest reared upright on the cot, feeling the sweat dewing his face, the heat prickling his skin. The air vas thick, tainted, various sounds blending to form a teasingsusurration. But there was no painted visage with a snarling mouth and eyes belonging to something less than human. That was a memory from his distant past. An act that had needed to be done. He had no regret but wished the dying sigh had sounded less like the sough of wind. He’d had enough of wind.
    Enough of fighting and killing and the need to do both. He looked at the cabin he was in, the soiled surface, the dirt and mess. The common elements of Lowtown, but while this was not a normal refuge for the poverty-stricken, other things made it a true comparison. Those within it were lost, sick, stranded, desperate and, above all, dangerous.
    Dumarest swung his legs over the edge of the cot and sat, elbows on his knees, face cradled in his hands. For too long he had walked the razor-edge of danger, surrounded by those who hated him and wanted him dead. He was tense, jumpy, tired, mind and muscles clogged with the poisons of fatigue.
    His skin burned with the prickling of danger and, no matter which way he turned, he could see no escape from the trap that held him close.
    He tensed as a scrabbling sound came from the external passage. He rose as something scraped at the door of the cabin, reaching it, tearing it open with his left hand, grabbing at the shape standing outside as his right hand lifted the knife snatched from his boot.
    “Earl! For God’s sake!”
    It was Chagal, his face old, lined, sagging with fatigue in the light outside. Fatigue and more than a little fear as he recoiled from the weapon threatening his life. The diffused glow caught the blade and haloed it with a nacreous brilliance. One that vanished as Dumarest lowered the knife and slipped it into his boot. Had Chagal been an assailant he would have died.
    “Earl—”
    “What is it?”
    “There’s something you should see.” Chagal entered the cabin and slumped down on the cot. He touched his throat, looking at his fingers, the smear of blood from a tiny wound.
    “A hell of a greeting.”
    “I had a bad dream.”
    “And reacted instinctively to anticipated danger.” Chagal nodded. “Your nerves are too tense. You’re too much on edge. You could have killed me.”
    “I recognized you.”
    “I was lucky. But what if I had been someone else? A woman seeking a little consolation, perhaps, or a man bringing a suggestion or a warning? You would have killed without hesitation.” Chagal looked at his smeared fingers. “I can’t blame you.