The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,107

me sick in my heart and stomach both. His right arm wasn’t there no more. From the elbow down there wasn’t nothing left, and upwards from elbow to shoulder was all burned black. The smell of that burning hung in the air, so heavy I was like to choke on it.

The only good thing, so far as I could see, was that there wasn’t much blood. Some was spilled on the ground, and a little flesh in streaks and gobbets along with it, but none was coming out of the stump of Mardew’s arm. I thought if he didn’t bleed out he might yet live, so long as the shock from the wounding didn’t kill him its own self. I seen that happen to people that was cut or burned as bad as he was.

He was in a lot of pain. He was crying out, like it should of been a scream, but instead it was only a hoarse sort of grunting that was forced out of him. His eyes was rolling around in his head, and his hand that was still left was shaking around and clawing at the dust as though he had dropped something and was trying to pick it up again.

I wasn’t sure he even realised I was there, so I touched his arm – his good arm – to let him know. I wasn’t thinking of him as an enemy no more, for it was clear he couldn’t hurt me. When I touched him, his hand shot up and grabbed a hold of me, tight as anything.

“You’re gonna be okay, Mardew,” I told him.

“Koli,” he said, through his teeth. “Dandrake damn you! You better not of broke it!” The words come out slurred, kind of, with a deal of bubbling under them.

“Broke what, Mardew?” I asked him. I didn’t guess what he meant, his arm being so much worse than broke.

“The cutter!” he said. “Is it ruined? If you broke it, Catrin’s gonna have my hide off.”

I swallowed down some bile that was rising up in my throat. From the taste of it, I swallowed a deal of blood and smoke along with it. “I – I don’t think it’s broke,” I said.

“Put it in my hand then! Oh shit! Oh shit, I’m hurting some! Put it in my fucking hand, Koli! Quick, now!”

I looked around. Off to one side, maybe ten steps away from the both of us, there was a strip of grey metal, all twisted, with a piece of cloth hanging off of it. I guess that was what was left of the cutter, and it wouldn’t do no good to let Mardew take hold of it or even see it.

I scuffled around a mite, making like I was picking something up, though I had got to do it one-handed for Mardew was holding on tight to my other hand. “Okay,” I said. “I got it.”

Mardew shaked all over. His head whipped to the left, then to the right. “Check it’s working,” he says.

I scuffled some more. “Yeah, it’s fine,” I said.

Mardew shut his eyes, and tears squeezed out of them. “Oh, thank you! Thank you! I would of been in so much trouble. Put it on my hand. I want to feel it’s there.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll put it on your hand, Mardew. But you got to promise you won’t cut me.”

“I promise,” Mardew said. “I ain’t gonna hurt you no more, Koli.” Another big shake went through him. “Oh, dead god fuck me, I was so scared I was gonna have to…”

A breath come out of him, that never went back in. His face got still, the eyes open again and looking up at the sky.

He never said what he was scared of, though I guess I knowed well enough. It was of going home to Mythen Rood so much less than when he come out. Without the cutter, he couldn’t be Rampart Knife, nor there couldn’t be such a Rampart again ever after. That was why the cutter meant so much more to him, in them last moments, than his own life did. The cutter was the thing he carried, like as if the world that was lost had lent it to him so he could pass it along to the world that was still waiting to come. And it was a terrible thing that he failed in that errand. He couldn’t bear to think such a thought.

But it was me that broke the cutter, just like it was