Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 48 : Capitano

Ah, don't complain of smiling and killing. If a man can do both, why he's proper soldier. If he must sniffle at blood, best he find other employment.

As for the fellow who'd lost his hand, I did him kindly favor. He was good as dead anyway, bandage dripping out fast as wine bottle upturned. Didn't expect him to do me the same; knife to the ribs, up into the lungs.

We sat in the dirt of the alley watching one another bleed out. I tried to recall his name. Decided he'd never had one. Some folk go through life anonymous as a stray dog dying in a ditch. Or alley.

Not me. I am Cristoph Caleb, Captain of the ducal guard. Was. Dead now.

Getting dead was a long slow business. I watched my blood quit pouring. My ripped lungs ceased panting. The panicked heart ended its idiot thump, thump. All the world went gray as the face of the dead man opposite me. Gray, but not black. Not what I expected.

Time passed. Some wanderer came into the alley, peed against the wall. Eyeing us, but not saying anything. He finished up, hurried away, calling for the watch.

Stand up, I told myself. And so help me St. Venus's middle kingdom, I stood. Take the knife out your chest, I demanded. And I watched my hand do just that.

Took a while to comprehend. But I wore the helmet. Command of the Dead, it gave the wearer. Being dead, I could order myself about.

"You get up too," I told the fellow that finished me. And he twitched, and stumbled, and stood.

Now what? I was in command of myself. Maybe more than I'd ever been. But what the Infernum did I want to order myself to do?

I considered going after the miller. I'd cut his nose off, feed it to crows, make him eat the crows, then cut off more of him, feed the parts to rats. Round and about in a pleasant circle of pain.

But the thought didn't give that pleasant belly-fire I'd once felt when contemplating settling scores.

I could finish my mission for the duke. Go across the river, report no pending invasion; hand over the holy relic helmet. But then he'd order me to go bury myself. Bright side of Persephone didn't have any use for revenants.

I looked to my fellow alley-corpse. He didn't look useful, having just a hand. But he was company of a sort.

"Let's march," I told him. We abandoned the alley, leaving life and blood behind.

Being the dark half of Persephone, folk looked at but didn't get upset. We even passed a few fellows just as finished with life as us. In cleaner clothes, granted.

"What's your name?" I asked my companion. He gave me a look, but no answer. Possibly he couldn't speak. Else he'd forgot it, same as I did. As I said, some people just go down the road without a name.

"That's alright," I told him, clapping him on the back. "We'll find you a good name."