“Hell Hath No Fury”, 2/3

[aadler]

 
Second installment.

Part 1 here

Part II

The door opened out into a courtyard, an enclosed space with walls and paving of rough brown stone, a small garden section, and an alcove at the far end within which a second door was set. Two benches were placed at opposite sides, east/west where the doors were north/south, and from the east bench a man rose without hurry at the sight of Cale. “Ah,” he said. “I wasn’t told. A moment, if you will.” He stepped out of the sandals he wore and shrugged off his outer garment, a kind of sleeveless tunic of coarse weave, loosely belted and of the same general color as the courtyard stone. Beneath it he wore only a brief loin-cloth of some twisted fabric; he was solidly muscled, with whitened scars on his arms, chest, and at the left knee, but would have been easily six inches shorter than Cale, perhaps more, and of proportionately less weight. He crossed to a point a dozen feet or so from the far door, his steps light, brisk, and casual, and turned to face his visitor. “Now. We may begin whenever you wish.”

The man’s demeanor was cordial, even cheerful, and Cale found himself uncomforted. He had seen the same kind of thing at many tournaments: quiet, diffident, polite men who hung back, watched and nodded, and invariably surprised the swaggering steroid freaks and chest-beaters. He had learned to be wary of the type, and now he stopped well short of where the other had taken his position. His features carefully composed, he said, “So what’s the deal here? Any rules I should know about?”

“Yes, that would be important,” the other man acknowledged. He made a gesture that took in his surroundings, and said, “Within these walls, the only law is that of my lord Dis, and he tells me that I may let none pass. Still, I abide by certain guidelines, for sport and for the sake of fair play. I am not bound by them, save by my own choice, but you might find them of interest.”

“Sure,” Cale said, matching his tone and manner to that of the smaller man. “Fire away.”

If the other had any trouble understanding the colloquialism, he showed no sign of it. “To begin, I will contest with you only while you stand within the field of play.” He indicated the stones at his feet, and Cale saw that a semicircular line was of a somewhat lighter color, marking an area roughly the shape of the three-point boundary on a basketball court, though at least twice the size. “Then, if it is agreeable, we will set our match in three parts. In the first I will only defend, and you may attack as you will. In the next, I will assess your own defenses, but on my word I will not attempt to land a deciding blow. In the last, there are no constraints, and the victor is he who stands at the end.” His smile, amiable and relaxed, showed who he expected that to be.

“I agree to your rules,” Cale said, and launched himself into the circle with a huge leap, going at his adversary with every last measure of his greater weight and reach and momentum, striking and kicking and driving in to grapple. Where he had jockeyed for advantage with the old man, all his instincts told him that here he faced a fighter of such consummate skill that he couldn’t afford to give the man a single extra moment to further gauge his capabilities.

It was like chasing a ghost. Within the first second it was clear that he had achieved no momentary surprise with the instant attack; his nameless foe slipped the assault so smoothly that it felt as if Cale had hurled himself at the wrong space within the stone circle, and continued to evade, parry and misdirect Cale’s follow-ups with an unsettling lack of effort. When Cale attempted to use his attacks to shift their relative positions and edge himself closer to the far door, however, the other man’s techniques changed. Though he held himself to the defensive posture he had promised, the defenses immediately became more painful: easy deflections gave way to hard-bone blocks, redirections of motion were extended to send Cale tumbling and gasping across the floor of the courtyard, and the last such flung him entirely out of the designated combat circle.

Cale stood, breathing hard, to find the other man watching him with mild eyes; he hadn’t even broken a sweat. “An amateur, then,” he observed with apparent regret. “You could show promise with seasoning, but for now I fear you are much overmatched. Ah, well. With your leave, we may rest a moment before the next bout.”

Cale nodded wordlessly, and turned to trudge toward the bench opposite the one where his adversary had previously sat. It was an unexpected courtesy — the other man needed no rest, he had nullified Cale’s attacks almost absentmindedly — but one he intended to exploit to the fullest. In his peripheral vision he saw his foe move to the second bench (though he had waited until Cale was well away from the marking line), where he lounged with a seeming unconcern that somehow failed to convey carelessness or lack of attention.

Behind the bench was a small pool fed by a low, bubbling fountain; mossy rocks lined the sides and bottom, and iridescent fishes darted in the green shadows. Cale gazed at the rippled surface for several minutes, eyes blank, then went to his knees in front of the pool. He took off his shirt, by now grimed with sweat and dust, and laid it out in front of where he knelt; and, reaching down into the cool depths, drew up water to splash on his arms and bare chest and face, though he was careful not to let any drop of it pass his lips.

When at last he returned to the bench, he left the shirt loosely folded next to him, and sat silently studying the man who waited on the other side of the courtyard. ‘No challenge that a strong, brave, clever man cannot meet.’ Right. He knew his own capabilities, knew without vanity that his hand-to-hand skills were equal to those required by any special forces unit on Earth; but the man he faced was at an entirely different level, proficient to a degree that almost transcended human flesh. He might well have jabbed and cut with cestus-spiked fists in the original Olympics, or stood in the Coliseum with upraised arms to the cheers of Roman multitudes … and then spent a couple of millennia in the old man’s realm, honing his art against all comers. There was no possibility of beating him in a straight-up fight. None.

Cale stood, and the other man did likewise. They started for the contest circle, Cale leaving his shirt on the bench. The pugilist quickened his step to reach the circle several seconds in advance, and Cale made no attempt to compete for first arrival; something told him that would have proven uncomfortable as well as unsuccessful. This time the other man took position some five feet back of the boundary, so that Cale could enter the circle without being immediately nose-to-nose with his adversary. Cale nodded his appreciation and stepped inside, and the other man was on him with the leisurely power of a tidal wave.

Just as before, Cale was helpless against his opponent. He tried to turn off his mind and let his reflexes meet the other’s advance, but found that to be no more effectual than conscious strategy; the smaller man probed with light, darting jabs that shifted instantly to take merciless advantage of Cale’s automatic responses. True to his word, he held back from the finishing strike he could have delivered at any moment, but Cale was taking substantially more of a pounding than he had received in the first segment of this one-sided contest. Reminding himself that the other man had placed no restrictions on his role — he had only sworn to his own behavior — Cale doggedly moved to the offensive, calling on everything he had learned, trapping and shin-kicks and nerve-point techniques, grappling, joint locks, anything that might serve against the irresistible versatility and craft of his foe.

It failed as he had known it would, the other man somehow blocking and striking simultaneously, so perfectly synchronized with the fruitless attempts that Cale might as well have been attacking himself. Still he refused to back away, soaking up a systematic pummeling that steadily became more intense, until one last panting, uncoordinated swing overbalanced him and Cale again stumbled outside the stone circle.

He stayed where he had fallen for three or four minutes, supporting himself on his hands and knees while he forced air through ragged lungs. The pugilist stood, silent and watchful, until Cale pulled himself to his feet and began moving back toward the neutral bench. As he had done before, the other waited until Cale was halfway to his destination before stepping out of the circle. “You do not beg,” he said to Cale’s back. “You meet your fate without hesitation or retreat. I respect this. Take as long as you wish to recover. We know how this will end; it need not be hastened.”

Cale lifted a hand in acknowledgement, but didn’t turn or speak. All the same, he kept the other man in the corner of his eye as he neared the bench. There would be a moment … It came, and in the instant the smaller man began to recline on his own bench, Cale snatched up his shirt by the sleeves, whipped it around his head in a quick arc, and hurled it across the courtyard at his foe, and was racing for the contest circle even as the improvised missile left his hand.

He had set a pattern, he had taken his lumps and fought on against hopeless odds and done all the things a strong, brave, overmatched man would do, while he waited for the only chance he would have. The shirt, folded with seeming carelessness, was in fact loosely knotted around a pear-sized stone he had palmed from the bottom of the pool, and the single swing had sent it rocketing toward the other bench with centrifugal force augmenting all his frantic strength. In the fraction of a second the pugilist needed to reach his feet, the barely padded stone struck home: not against his head — that would have been ideal — but to the side of the scarred knee, and the man stumbled for a crucial moment before regaining his balance and bounding in grim pursuit.

After the first bout, and throughout the second, Cale had kept disparate elements foremost in his concentration, even as he had swung and reeled under the methodical punishment of his adversary. The man’s behavior, guarding the area around the door until Cale was well away from it (which had in turn allowed Cale to reach his own bench, and hidden weapon, first); where the two benches lay in relation to the far door; speed and distance, and how the slung stone could not only reach the other man far more swiftly than a direct charge, but could be launched in the same instant Cale dashed for his goal; the other man’s several-times-demonstrated sense of fair play, which might make him the tiniest bit slower to recognize and react to trickery from one who had fought him toe-to-toe even though unquestionably outclassed.

And one last thing: the door itself. Cale had been confident that he could maintain his brief lead in the short race to and through the stone circle … but if he had to stop at the door and pull it open, rather than pushing straight through, he was a dead man, plain and simple. The door leading into the courtyard had opened to a push, and the one before him now —

— did the same. Cale burst through it and out of the courtyard, and the first trial was behind him.
*               *               *
He was a man renewed. Literally; as soon as he was through the door, he found himself restored to his pre-trial condition. The bruises and sprains were gone, the split lip and bloodied nose, the scrapes from tumbles across the paving stones. He was even wearing his shirt again, unstained and unwrinkled.

Cale pursed his lips in a noiseless whistle. This was encouraging; it not only indicated that he had suitably passed the first challenge, it meant he could meet the next one with none of his physical capacity eroded. Before, he had refused to consider the possibility of failure, but now he began actually to believe he might succeed.

Resolutely he clamped down on that line of thought. One thing at a time, and his current task required all his attention. The door from the courtyard had brought him to a single room, and less mystical surroundings he could hardly have predicted. The walls were plain cinder block; prosaic industrial bulbs provided light, and the floor was equally undistinguished concrete. Where the courtyard might have been from the garden of a Roman villa or feudal estate, this room was seemingly drawn from some minor factory or municipal storage facility. Cale’s first thought was that he was in a transitional area, with the second challenge yet to be encountered; as his eyes took in more detail, he began to revise that impression.

To begin with, the door on the far side of the room (not the one through which he had entered, he wouldn’t be opening that one again unless absolutely all other options had been exhausted) had no visible handle or latch, and when he pushed experimentally, it held solid with no hint of swinging open. For another thing, the room itself was featureless; a brief glance showed no furniture, no fixtures, nothing except himself and the two doors. He was about to return to inspecting the exit door when something caught his eye, something beside the frame of the entrance door, and he went to get a closer look. A metal collar of some kind, like a medium-sized drain pipe, was set into the wall, and protruding from it for a few inches was the end of a metal bar. Cale took cautious hold of the bar and withdrew it from the collar; it was not quite four feet long, and as it came clear of the wall he encountered resistance: a chain was riveted to the other end. Automatically he gave the bar another tug, and felt it release another inch or so of slack before again being brought up short.

Another couple of repetitions clarified the situation. Apparently the chain was strung through a clockwork-like mechanism that would feed out a single link when the chain was pulled, but the chain then had to be allowed to retract slightly before the mechanism would release the next link. The bar could be pulled out, along the chain, by means of a series of tug-and-relax motions. But why?

Cale returned to the far door and looked it over again. This time he saw, a hand’s breadth from one side, a recessed slot that, on closer inspection, seemed to angle diagonally upward. He suspected that the bar from the other wall would fit into the slot, and then serve as an unlocking handle to open the door.

He didn’t like it. The old man had specified tests of body, mind and spirit. The first challenge had been physical, and brutally demanding; if this one, now, was a mental test, wouldn’t it be more complicated than what he was seeing? And yet, as he went over and over every detail in the room, Cale could find no added factors. The exit door would not open without some external aid. The chained bar was the only external feature in the room. If there was more to the situation than that, it wasn’t readily apparent.

He sighed. It couldn’t be that straightforward, but whatever was the twist awaiting him, it would have to be discovered in-process. He went back to the first door, took hold of the bar, and began the pull-slack, pull-slack procedure that fed out the chain.

The room was perhaps thirty feet across. The first four feet of chain played out easily, then Cale began to feel faint resistance. At seven feet the resistance had increased to the point where Cale had to lean back and put some muscle into each pull, but past that the opposing force remained stable, and he settled into a backward rocking motion that continued to play out chain.

At twelve feet he noticed the heat. The bar he was pulling had warmed as he worked, but that could have been the result of normal friction or even his own exertion. It had quickly become uncomfortable, though, and by fifteen feet it was hot. He set his jaw and went on pulling and releasing, pulling and releasing.

At twenty feet a new blister on his palm broke, and the sharp pain startled him just enough that he lost his grasp. The bar jerked from his hands, and he jumped to catch it as the unopposed tension reeled it back toward the wall. It was at seven feet again before he got a good grip and braced to halt the return.

He held where he was for a minute, resting and assessing. The bar seemed to have lost some of its heat when it left his hands; but now, he realized, it was warming again, which meant the temperature increased with time rather than distance. He pulled, and the chain played out as before; gave slack, pulled again, and again it functioned according to its previous pattern.

Cale released the bar and let it return to the wall. He wanted all the heat to dissipate before he started again, and meanwhile he needed to think. Okay, so this was a test of will, meaning a challenge to the spirit. He looked at his hands, and the smaller blisters that bordered the one that had burst. Was there any way to shade the odds, gain an extra edge as he had in the first challenge? The bar itself might provide enough leverage to break the chain, if he could get a good purchase; but the end was too large to fit into any of the links, besides which there was no obvious way to secure any other part of the chain to give him something to twist against.

Or … right. When he judged that enough time had passed, he took off his shirt, wrapped it around the bar, and began again: pull-slack, pull-slack. This time he went as rapidly as the mechanism would operate, trying to gain distance ahead of the growing heat. At fifteen feet he could feel it through the padding of the shirt; by twenty it was once again nearing the level of pain, but the extra insulation made all the difference. Pull-slack, pull-slack, pull-slack. Twenty-four feet and he knew he could do it, this mechanical mother was hurting him but it wouldn’t beat him. Twenty-eight feet, almost to the door

The shirt burst into flame. Cale yelped and flung it away, unable to suppress his reaction; the chained bar shot across the room, and the burning cloth flapped to the concrete floor. He shook his scorched hands, blew on them, hugged them into the relative comfort of his armpits. When he had regained control, he looked back to the unlocking bar, now fully recessed once again in its metal collar. His nostrils flared, and his lips thinned to a slit line.

All right. All right, God damn it.

He returned to the entrance door, sat cross-legged in front of it. Anger quickened his pulse, but he made himself relax, made his breathing slow and deliberate, pulled his mind away from the immediate moment and down into a dark, cold place.

The bar hadn’t been that hot. It couldn’t have gotten so hot as to produce ignition in cloth fiber, not without frying the skin of his palms long before that point. The laws of nature were being bent in this room, so that the nature of the test would be simple and iron-solid. Strength of will. Strength of will. Fine, then. He knew he had it, he had only to call it up and then hang on to it.

Inhale, exhale. Relax, relax. Clear the mind, wipe away all distractions, strip out everything except the essential focus, the source of his will, the reason he was here. Eyes, an elusive blue-gray-green that defied precise definition, open and clear and holding something he didn’t want to name. The feel of her hands clutching at him, the whisper of her breath in his ears. Terror of imminent death, and then salvation from the most unlikely direction, and the expression on that face as he poured out his feelings … and then the response. Another response, unsought and unexpected, when he had spoken later of what she meant to him. Moments branded on his heart forever, memories that had driven him to remake himself in pursuit of a resolution that had then been snatched away from him. He had refused to accept it, had searched and stolen and fought until he found his way here. He couldn’t quit. He would die before he quit. The debt between them was too great.

Strength of will. Strength of will.

He stood and took hold of the bar, his face empty, eyes unfocused, mind in another place. Pull-slack, pull-slack, pull-slack. Moving like a robot, a machine to match the machine he was working while his soul was concentrated in that center where her memory resided. At twenty feet the torture of his seared hands broke through his detachment; at twenty-five feet he was screaming in rage and defiance, screaming her name as a mantra to force all his resolve into a fire that burned brighter than any suffering. At thirty feet, half-blind with hate and agony and fury, he forced the bar into the door slot and wrenched downward with charred hands, the stink of his own roasting flesh choking his nostrils, and toppled forward into oblivion.
*               *               *
His eyes opened, and he clutched reflexively for support as his mind sought balance. He didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t see … a soft cloth was bound around his head, covering his eyes, and he pulled it away with clumsy haste.

“Don’t.” It was a woman’s voice: quiet, controlled, underlaid with an odd note of entreaty. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t hurt you.”

Cale looked to the sound, but he was still disoriented, and his vision registered disconnected details of his surroundings well before he located the speaker. Whitewashed walls, hung with small tapestries and unframed mosaics in multicolored stones. Wooden floors, fine-grained and aromatic with the smell of cedar. (Or perhaps that came from elsewhere; wouldn’t cedar be too soft to serve properly as a flooring material?) A chair to one side, woven cloth stretched across a frame … and, yes, he was lying on a longer version of the same item. A door —

Not a door. His eyes focused, and Cale realized he was looking at a mirror, angled to allow him to see into an adjoining room. There, a woman (or possibly a girl) sat on one of the frame/cloth chairs; she wore a loose shift of white linen or raw cotton, embroidered with tiny patterns in blue and red and yellow, and her hair was covered with a similarly embroidered cloth, somehow secured behind her head so that the headpiece hung in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a nun’s wimple. Her face was clear and olive-complected, with dark eyes and sooty lashes, cleanly arched brows, and full, lush lips. She might have been fourteen, or thirty, or ageless.

“I believe you,” Cale said, though he didn’t, not entirely. “If you wanted to hurt me, you could have done it already. How long was I out?”

Her hand moved in a small gesture. “Not long. You were gasping, like someone having a nightmare, and then you just stopped. I made you as comfortable as I could, and waited for you to wake up.”

He had already ascertained that, as had occurred with the first test, success had reset his body to its uninjured state; even the shirt had again been restored.  “Thank you,” he said, keeping his eyes on the reflection of the girl’s face and his voice low and polite. He had just seen another door behind her, but nothing in his face or manner betrayed the quick lurch of excitement. “I’ve had a rough afternoon, so a little hospitality is really appreciated right now.”

“It …” The girl bit her lip. “It’s nothing, really. I don’t get company very often, and it’s nice to … to have someone to be nice to.” Her smile was nervous and uncertain. “Would you like me to get you some water, or wine, or tea? Or I have some lemons I could squeeze out …”

“No, that’s all right.” Cale returned the smile, imbuing it with a little extra warmth. “According to the stories, I should be careful what I eat or drink while I’m here.”

“Oh!” She looked to him with wonder and realization. “So you’re a … visitor? Not one of the residents here?” He nodded confirmation, and she said, “You’re right, you probably shouldn’t have anything. Although He’d probably want me to make the offer anyhow.”

Cale let the light brighten behind his eyes as he smiled again at the wry humor underscoring her words. “Well, you did your best, so he can’t hold it against you, now, can he?” It was automatic, old routines smoothly reasserting themselves, and he made no attempt to check it. What he had here

Her response was everything he could have hoped for; she positively blossomed at his approval and implied comradeship. “He could,” she answered, the cloth that covered her hair stirring with some breeze that didn’t reach Cale. “He can do whatever He wants here. But He probably won’t.”

“Ah,” he said, letting the word carry a teasing note. “So you’re one of his favorites.”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.” She hadn’t exactly been taken aback at the suggestion, but her pleasure had visibly dimmed. “It’s just, mostly He leaves me alone here. I … don’t exactly want Him to get interested again, but I do get lonely.”

“That’s a shame,” Cale told her. “A shame, and a waste, and a mystery.” The last word made her tilt her head quizzically, and he explained, “That anyone could tire of such pleasant and considerate company.” He stood and took a half-step, not toward the mirror but toward the low archway that opened into the room reflected there. “If it were up to me —”

“No!” She had come to her feet with the swiftness of a startled deer, her eyes wide with alarm. “Please, you can’t …” She brought herself under tight control, and looked to him with imploring eyes. “Can we just talk? Just sit awhile, and talk? I get so lonely here, you can’t understand …”

Cale kept bafflement and concern on his face, while his thoughts raced. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. You’ve been so nice … I’d never do anything to offend or upset you.” He sat, slowly, his gaze locked with hers and his smile reassuring. She did the same, her mouth trembling with agitation and reluctant hope; she reached up to tuck back the headcloth as it shifted again in response to some

Movement.

Mirror.

Hair, covered. Lonely woman. Infrequent company.

Cale knew what he faced now, and he let the full force of his natural charisma flow out of him even as he evaluated his current position and the possibilities it held. He had taught himself to fight, drilled himself in the rules and nuances of mystical practices … but dealing with women, that was his own special gift, the arena where he reigned supreme. “If that’s what you want, we’ll talk,” he told her. “It’s the least I can do.”

So they talked, Cale effortlessly reestablishing and reinforcing the first faint connection that had already formed. He spoke of his home town, his family, stories of school and friends and personal experiences. Dreams, and desires, and the things that mattered; disappointments, riddles, the meaning of existence. He kept it moving between them, a conversation rather than an exposition, guiding the interplay with a deft, undetectable subtlety that nonetheless constituted total control. He could do this practically in his sleep, inborn ability polished by interminable enthusiastic practice, so that it was child’s play to assess his options while he worked her happily along.

The old man had played it straight with him, he had to admit that. Three challenges to face, three doors to pass through, each with a unique obstacle. Furthermore, in each case he had been given the opportunity to work out the nature of the test and choose a method of meeting it. The physical trial he had passed as much by guile as by fighting ability; the test of spirit he had surmounted by guts and inflexible determination. This last one was obviously a mental puzzle, a tactical challenge, and if he couldn’t slide through it on sheer charm, he wasn’t the man he knew himself to be.

He finished the anecdote he had been relating to her, and let the moment stretch out while he held her eyes with his own. “I know who you are,” he said at last.

She sat very still, and he was sure it wasn’t imagination that she had lost some of her color. “Do you?” she asked, almost too softly to hear.

“I’m not really solid on all the old stories,” he said. “But from what I remember, you didn’t choose what happened to you, it was someone else’s doing. And you’ve dealt with me decently, you’ve been thoughtful and nice and you’ve done everything you can to keep me comfortable and safe. I think you’ve gotten some bad press; I think, even if there was any truth to the original legend, you got tired of it a long time ago.” He had stood while he spoke, slowly to avoid triggering her previous panic. “I think you just want to be treated like a person.”

Her eyes were brimming with barely contained tears, but she held her head straight and her gaze direct. “I want a lot of things,” she said, yearning raw beneath the surface calm. “Most of them are impossible.”

“And some aren’t.” He raised the cloth he had earlier stripped away, and deliberately tied it over his eyes, knotting it firmly in the back. Facing the archway he couldn’t see, he called gravely, “Can I come in? If that’s okay with you?”

The silence seemed to go on forever, and he could feel her in the darkness ahead: wanting to try, wanting to believe, wanting to take the chance. “It could … still be dangerous,” she said finally.

“I’ll be careful,” he said. “And I trust you.”

There was another long pause. “Why would you do this?” she asked.

His lips bent in what wasn’t really a smile, conveying regret rather than humor. “Because you deserve it,” he said. “Because you got a raw deal, and you took care of me, and you deserve it.”

This time it was only seconds before she spoke again, fear and hope intermingled. “Come ahead, then.”

He had memorized the layout of the room he occupied, and what he could see of hers from the mirror, but he made his steps hesitant and uncertain. Not too much, he wanted to go to her rather than having her come to him, but he also didn’t want to look too sure of himself. He found the archway, turned into it, and moved forward until she halted him with a light touch.

He reached out to let his hands rest on her shoulders.  “Is this all right?” he asked, his voice just slightly shaky with manly, gruff tenderness.

“Yes,” she whispered.

His arms went around her, ever so gently, and she let herself nestle against him. He had known she was petite, but she would have been well under five feet tall, her head not even reaching the top of his chest. He stroked her cheek, ran a thumb over her lips, the fingers of his other hand tracing up and down her spine. She shuddered, and he tilted her face upward, bent to find her lips with his own. She met him with tremulous eagerness, her breath ragged with need, reaching up to slide her fingers into his hair.

Beneath the protective blindfold, his eyes were tightly closed, even as his hands orchestrated her responses with expert caresses. All his experience and instinct told him he had her, but this was no time to be taking chances. He was here, the third door was there, all that remained was to close the distance without becoming garden statuary. He lowered his lips to her throat, pulling her closer, turning her and altering his own stance so that he stood at a slight angle behind her, kissing her neck with mounting passion while his arms enfolded her above and below her breasts

It was the work of a casual moment to raise the upper arm, pressing her throat into the crook of the elbow while he shifted the lower arm to interlock with the upper in the classic jujutsu bare-arm choke. She stiffened, disbelieving, then erupted in shrieking betrayal … but it was laggard and futile, he had secured the hold too carefully. He cranked it in, using his greater height to lift her off her feet while he jammed his face into the back of her head to hold the blindfold in place. She fought with hopeless desperation, drumming her heels against his shins, clawing at his hands, the tendrils of her hair squirming from beneath the headcloth to hiss and snap at his cheek and jaw with needle teeth. He ignored it all, increasing the pressure until he felt her go limp, and then maintaining the choke for an additional ten seconds before releasing her.

He had stood as still as possible while his arms cut off the blood flow to her brain, not wishing any movement to jumble the mental image of his position in the room. He laid her out on the floor with what gentleness he could spare, murmuring, “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s just how the game is played.” He found the exit door, his hands going unerringly to the antique ironwork of the latch, lifting and pushing — no, wait, this one did have to be pulled open. Good thing it had been here instead of at the second door

Confident and triumphant, the girl forgotten, he stepped through the final barrier that separated him from his prize.

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