Free The Mark of Ran by Paul Kearney

glided forward, drew a deep breath, and then risked a split-second glance round the corner.
    He leaned back against the rough wall again, exhaled. In his mind’s eye the picture was bright and hard and clear. Once again, his body knew what it would do with no prompting from his will. He closed his eyes for a second, evened out his breathing, then nodded once, and turned the corner.
    Three men, one on the bed, another at its foot, the third at its head. The belaying pin cracked off the skull of the nearest before he even turned round, the noise sharp and startling. Not all Rol’s strength had gone into the strike; he remembered Grandfather teaching him how to kill a pig. The placing of the blow was more important than the force.
    As his striking arm completed its arc, snicking off the broken bone of the man’s head, so Rol stepped forward alongside the bed. The second man was naked from the waist down, his member jutting out from under his ragged shirt. Rol reached below it, found the testes in their soft bag of skin, and clenched his fingers about them, squeezing with all the strength in his fist. He felt them squish and pop. The man’s mouth opened in an O of agonized astonishment, but before a noise could issue from his throat Rol had thrust the blunt end of the belaying pin in over his teeth, breaking them, hammering through to the back of his throat.
    He turned then to the third man who was disentangling himself from his activities on the bed, a blade naked in his hand. This one had had a moment more to collect his wits. The knife stabbed out for Rol’s side but Rol was already turning, and the blade buried itself in his forearm instead. The belaying pin swung round and took the fellow under his left ear. The blow staggered him long enough for Rol to bring a final swing down on the top of his forehead. This last was delivered with every ounce of strength he had left. The front of the man’s face caved in, nose and eyes destroyed as the hard wood went through to the brain.
    A gurgling squeal from the floor from the wretch who lay cupping his genitalia. Rol stamped a boot down on the side of his neck, breaking the vertebrae there with an audible snap, and he was still.
    He stood breathing evenly, the pain in his forearm beginning to make itself felt. Perhaps eight seconds had gone by since he had entered the room, and the noise of the fight had been no louder than the groans and grunts that had preceded it. There was no sudden uproar. Rol stared down at the bed, at Rowen, and something went out of him, some calm exaltation. He bent over, gasping, and was sick in a corner of the filthy little room.
     
    Her body was very white in the dim candlelit gloom, which meant that the bruises and welts stood out on her skin all the more starkly. She was watching him, but there was a dulled detachment in her gaze he had never seen before. He had dreamed of her nakedness for weeks, but seeing her like this roused only pity in him, and outrage. He untied her arms and closed her legs to hide the glistening darkness at their crux, wiped some of the filth off her skin with the corner of a less-filthy blanket. She lay unresisting and limp, and he wondered what they had done to her, besides the obvious.
    That smell in the air. He traced it to a small brass dish by the side of the bed. Within it were a number of tiny black cubes. As he touched one, part of it crumbled into powder and he coughed at the fragrant little cloud it produced. His head swam momentarily, and he spat to get the taste out of his mouth.
    He stepped over the bodies on the floor. His forearm was dripping and numb, his left hand close to useless. He tore strips off the coverlet and tied them tight about the wound. Rowen’s eyes followed him but she made no sound. He found her clothes to the right of the bed and set them on her stomach. “Get dressed. We have to go.” This last in a racked whisper. Fear was rising up in his throat, the thought of what he had just