Free The Sunset Warrior - 01 by Eric Van Lustbader Page B

at the moisture. Sweat dripped along the sides of Ronin’s face as he stared at the twisting, tortured countenance. It rolled along his wrists and on to the backs of his hands, seeping between his fingers, and he tightened his grip. Borros’s hands were like claws, the tendons corded and raised just beneath the skin, held out in front of him as if warding off his agony and terror. Then he seized Ronin’s arms.
    They were locked, immobile, and Ronin, caught in the pull of the grey-and-gold eyes, felt that he had lost volition of independent movement.
    ‘It is coming!’
    Bound within the moment, he felt the writhings of Borros’s mind—
    ‘I have seen—It—’
    —knew with an awful certainty suddenly flooding his being that Something was there—
    ‘—draws closer—the people cannot st—’
    —not a presence but merely the threat of a presence, and that was enough to—
    ‘Must go to them—help—hel—’
    ‘Who, Borros, who? We are the only—’
    The jaws snapped closed, the eyes saw him, perhaps for the first time, and the terrible ivory grin came again and now Ronin felt as if he faced—what?
    ‘Fool!’ hissed Borros. ‘They want no one to know. A secret!’ And he laughed without humour. ‘ Their secret!’ The eyes took on a glossy depth, the pupils huge. Veins stood out along his temples where the Dehn spots pulsed as if alive. ‘Fool! We are not alone on this world!’ Eyes bulging alarmingly, teeth grinding in effort. ‘But it—will mean nothing. It comes—comes to destroy everything. Unless—’ His head whipped from side to side, with a spray of sweat. His throat convulsed and it appeared that he cried out, although the sound was low and strangled and seemed barely human. ‘Death—death is coming!’
    Borros jerked again and went limp, his eyes fluttering closed. Ronin let go of him then, his hands and arms numb. He put his ear to Borros’s chest, then quickly pushed rhythmically with his palms. He listened again. Pounded his fist once, twice, over the heart. Listened again.
    He wiped his dripping face and stood up. Moving to the doorway to the surgery, he pressed a part of the wall and darkness bloomed before him. He stepped through, out of the light. The door closed. He listened for a moment. His eyes adjusted. All shadows in their place. Then, like Stahlig before him, he disappeared into the shadows.
    ‘What do you know of the Magic Men?’
    ‘What brought that to mind?’
    ‘You are always answering a question with another question—Oh yes! There.’ The hand moved, flesh on flesh, orange and light brown in the low guttering lamplight. Black pooled in the hollows.
    ‘Just a peculiar topic to bring up now,’ Ronin said softly.
    K’reen moved slowly, gently against him. Cascading dark hair, soft and cool, accentuating the heat of their bodies. ‘Not at all. They are purported to be—oh!—the saviours of the Freehold, divining ways for us to live in case the Great Machines cease to function. Is that not true?’
    Hands moving from orange to black, light to shadow. ‘So it is said.’ Their lips met and opened.
    K’reen licked the sick of his neck. ‘With all the political talk going on—the rumours of the Saardin—mmm—it’s natural to be thinking of the future.’
    ‘I know very little of them,’ he whispered. But the temptation was very strong within him.
    She rolled away from him, the lamplight licking at the indentation of her spine, the crease of her buttocks. ‘Won’t you ever talk to me?’ she said in a small voice.
    ‘There is nothing to talk about.’ He reached out and she drew away.
    ‘You mean you have nothing to say to me.’
    Ronin sat up in the bed and stared at the dark bell of her hair sweeping across the pillows. ‘That is not at all what I meant.’
    She turned on him, eyes flashing. ‘But it is!’ she cried.
    ‘You are twisting what I say. Why do you do that?’
    ‘I will not play this game.’
    ‘There is no game.’ There was an edge