Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,81

second to respond. "Thank you, but we're not cutthroats," Joshua said. He stepped past her and pounded on the door. She ran a fingernail down his back as he waited.

"What are you? Maybe there's another special."

Joshua didn't even look back. "He's a two-hundred-and-sixty-year-old wizard and I'm either the Messiah or a hopeless faker."

"Uh, yeah, I think there is a special rate for fakers, but the wizard has to pay full price."

Joshua could hear stirring inside of the stable master's house and a voice calling for him to hold his horses, which is what stable masters always say when they make you wait. Joshua turned to the whore and touched her gently on the forehead.

"Go, and sin no more," he said in Latin.

"Right, and what do I do for a living then, shovel shit?"

Just then the stable master threw open the door. He was short and bowlegged and wore a long mustache that made him look like a dried-up catfish. "What is so important that my wife couldn't handle it?"

"Your wife?"

The whore ran her nail across the back of Joshua's neck as she passed him and stepped into the house. "Missed your chance," she said.

"Woman, what are you doing out here anyway?" asked the stable master.

Joy scurried out onto the landing and pulled a short, broad-bladed black dagger from the folds of her robe. The ends of the rope ladder were swaying in front of her as the monster descended.

"No, Joy," I said, reaching out to pull her back into the cave. "You can't hurt it."

"Don't be so sure."

She turned and grinned at me, then ran the dagger twice over the thick ropes on one side leaving it attached by only a few fibers, then she reached up a few rungs and sliced most of the way through the other side of the ladder. I couldn't believe how easily she'd cut through the rope.

She stepped back into the passageway and held the blade up so it caught the starlight. "Glass," she said, "from a volcano. It's a thousand times sharper than any edge on an iron blade." She put the dagger away and pulled me back into the passageway, just far enough so we could see the entrance and the landing.

I could hear the monster coming closer, then a huge clawed foot appeared in silhouette in the entrance, then the other foot. We held our breath as the monster reached the cut section of the ladder. Nearly a whole massive thigh was visible now, and one of his talonlike hands was reaching down for a new hold when the ladder snapped. Suddenly the monster hung sideways, swinging from his hold on a single rope in front of the entrance. He looked right at us, the fury in his yellow eyes replaced for a moment by confusion. His leathery bat ears rose in curiosity, and he said, "Hey?" Then the second rope snapped and he plunged out of our view.

We ran out to the landing and looked over the edge. It was at least a thousand feet to the floor of the valley. We could only see several hundred feet down in the dark, but it was several hundred feet of cliff face that was conspicuously monsterless.

"Nice," I said to Joy.

"We need to go. Now."

"You don't think that did it?"

"Did you hear anything hit bottom?"

"No," I said.

"Neither did I," she said. "We had better get going."

We'd left the water skins at the top of the plateau and Joy wanted to grab some from the kitchen but I dragged her toward the front entrance by the collar. "We need to get as far away from here as we can. Dying of thirst is the least of my worries." Once we were in the main area of the fortress there was enough light to negotiate the hallways without a lamp, which was good, because I wouldn't let Joy stop to light one. As we rounded the stairway to the third level Joy jerked me back, almost off my feet, and I turned around as mad as a cat.

"What? Let's get out of here!" I screamed at her.

"No, this is the last level with windows. I'm not going through the front door not knowing if that thing is outside it."

"Don't be ridiculous, it would take a man on a fast horse a half hour to make it around from the other side."

"But what if it didn't fall all the way? What if it climbed back up?"

"That would take hours. Come on, Joy. We could be