Red Prophet Page 0,99

good a time as any.

But he never did faint. Both legs broken above and below the knee, his fingers bent back and disjointed, his hands crushed, his arms broken above and below the elbows - through all that be stayed awake, though the pain eventually got kind of far away, more like the memory of pain than pain itself. If you hear one cymbal crash, it's loud; two or three cymbal crashes at once are louder yet. But along about the twentieth cymbal crash, it don't get louder, you just get deafer, and you hardly hear any of them at all. That's how it was for Measure.

There was a sound of cheering in the distance.

Somebody ran up. "Governor says finish up real quick, he wants you right away."

"I'll be done in a minute," said Fink. "Except for the burning.

"Save it till later," the man said. "Hurry!"

Fink dropped Measure, then stomped his chest till his ribs were pretty much broke, bending in and out any which way. Then her picked him up by the arm and the hair and bit off his ear. Measure felt it tear away with one last desperate surge of anger. Then Fink gave his head a sharp twist. Measure heard his own neck snap. Fink flung him onto the potatoes. He rolled down the backside and into the hole he dug. Only when his face was in the dirt did the pain stop and darkness come.

Fink flipped the doors shut with his foot, slid the bar into place, and headed back to the house. The cheering out front was louder. Harrison met him coming out of his office. "Never mind about that now," Harrison said. "There's no need for a corpse to keep things hot around here. The cannon just got here, and we'll attack in the morning.

Harrison rushed out to the front porch, and Mike Fink followed him. Cannon? What did cannons have to do with needing or not needing a corpse? What did he think Mike was, an assassin? Killing Hooch was one thing, and killing a man in a fair fight was something else. But killing a young man with a gag in his mouth, that was altogether different. When he bit off that ear it just didn't feel right. It wasn't no trophy of a fair fight. Took the heart right out of him. He didn't even bother biting off the other ear.

Mike stood there beside Harrison, watching the horses pull the four cannon right along, brisk as you please. He knew how Harrison would use the guns, he'd heard him planning it. Two here, two there, so they rake the whole Red city from both sides. Grape and canister, to rip and tear the bodies of the Reds, women and children right along with the men.

It ain't my kind of a fight, thought Mike. Like that man out back. No challenge at all, like stomping baby frogs. You can do it, and not think twice. But you don't pick up the dead frogs, stuff them, and hang them on the wall, you just don't do that.

It ain't my kind of fight.

Chapter 13 - Eight-Face Mound

There was a different feel to the land around Licking River. Alvin didn't notice right off, mostly cause he was running with his wick trimmed, so to speak. Didn't notice much at all. It was one long dream as he ran. But as Ta-Kumsaw led him into the Land of Flints, there was a change in the dream. All around him, no matter what he saw in his dream, there was little sparks of deep-black fire. Not like the nothingness that always lurked at the edges of his vision. Not like the deep black that sucked light into itself and never let it go. No, this black shone, it gave off sparks.

And when they stopped running, and Alvin came to hisself again, those black fires may have faded just a bit but they were still there. Without so much as thinking, Alvin walked toward one, a black blaze in a sea of green, reached down and picked it up. A flint. A good big one.

"A twenty-arrow flint," said Ta-Kumsaw.

"It shines black and burns cold," said Alvin.

Ta-Kumsaw nodded. "You want to be a Red boy? Then make arrowheads with me."

Alvin caught on quick. He had worked with stone before. When he cut a millstone, he wanted smooth, flat surfaces. With flint, it was the edge, not the face that counted. His first two arrowheads