The Religion (17 page)

Bors nodded. "We've three police inside, one of them a captain. We must beware of alarming the other pair outside."

"A cry or two they'll credit to poor Sabato, but we can't allow gunfire." Tannhauser indicated the crossbow. "Are you steady?"

"Steady as a rock."

Bors cradled the crossbow in one elbow and dug a three-inch stub of candle from his jerkin. He unhooked a small iron pot from his belt and flipped the ventilated lid. Inside glowed a burning lump of charcoal.

"An inquisitor and five constables," Tannhauser mused. "That'll put us as far beyond the law as men can be."

Bors's face was already gray with that knowledge.

"If we two run now," said Tannhauser, "I doubt that they'll pursue us across the straits."

"If anyone had foretold that I would risk my dirty neck for the sake of a Jew, I'd have laughed in their face." Bors mustered a grin. "In any case, I don't believe you."

Tannhauser clapped him on the back. Bors lit the stub of tallow from the coal in the pot. They slipped inside the Oracle by its light.

The darkness inside the warehouse was complete and without the candle they'd have blundered. Tannhauser picked his way through what remained of their stock until he found a bundle of javelins racked with the pike shafts. He cut the binding cord and sheathed his sword and chose three of the slender spears, five-foot staves of ash tipped with needle poignards. He tested each for balance. At short range they were as lethal as a musket and far more nimble.

As they crept toward the tavern at the front of the building, lamplight spilled across the floor from the doorless portal. With it came a shrill tirade that was almost ecstatic with bigotry. Tannhauser heard the word "Jew" shrieked as if alone it were an insult without rival. Sabato vented a curse that was swollen with agony. Then his voice was choked off and replaced by a guttural gagging. Tannhauser's bowels churned and his legs felt so weak that he feared they'd fail him. He quelled the urge to vomit. It had been a long time. He reminded himself that this was normal and he breathed deep and even and the jitters passed. Bors snuffed the candle and hefted his crossbow. Tannhauser edged to the portal and peered beyond.

He saw two constables and their captain, armed as described. The captain, who was plump as a partridge, stood with arms akimbo and watched the alcove. From the alcove came Sabato's groans. Tannhauser could see neither Sabato nor the priest. Of the two constables, one stood amid the deserted trestles, midway to the front door. His arquebus was shouldered and the match hung smoldering from his fingers. The second constable lounged on a bench, his long gun propped between his knees, and drank from a jug. Tannhauser reckoned the first to be nine paces distant, the second at no more than five. He pulled back and mimed drinking with his thumb then stabbed a finger at Bors. Bors dipped one eye around the architrave and withdrew. He gave Tannhauser a nod.

The shrill voice rose from the alcove. "Blood and circumcision! How
many good men have you reduced to beggary with your poisonous schemes and lies? Where is your gold, Jew? The gold you've stolen from us-from we who've shown you so much Christian kindness! We who let you live among us, as if you were a man and not a rabid, thieving dog! What Devil brought you to our country? God did not invite your fiendish brood! The gold, Jew! The gold!"

Tannhauser hefted a javelin in his right hand, the two spares balanced in his left. He gave Bors the nod, then propelled himself two paces into the tavern. As his front foot landed and his arm blurred past his ear, he heard the snap of the crossbow behind him and the hiss and crunch of the quarrel. The constable grunted as the javelin struck him below his breastplate and bored through his pubis. The poignard hurtled two feet farther through his lower gut and tumbled him beneath the trestles, where he twitched and blinked and gasped as animals pierced and dying often will. Tannhauser filled his hand with a second shaft and turned on the captain, who gawked at him with a shock too early for terror. Tannhauser advanced. The captain's pudgy hand flapped toward the snaphaunce in his belt, but the pistol was no more a threat than the panic-soured fart that squealed from his arse.

"Think of your wife," instructed Tannhauser. "Think of your children."

The captain did so, and what little remained of his resistance was undermined. Tannhauser put the javelin to his throat, then turned and tossed the spare across to Bors. He pulled the pistol from the captain's belt. It was a splendid piece, equipped with the latest Spanish stone lock, the kind of weapon a banty little turd would reckon his vanity demanded. Tannhauser blew the powder from the pan and returned it to the captain's belt. He looked yonder and saw young Gasparo. Gasparo lay on his back by the stairs with a bloody hole stoved through his chest. The boy had been loyal and had died for it. Tannhauser quelled a terrible urge before turning back on the captain. The captain's jowls trembled against the spear point as he tried to resurrect some shadow of his former authority.

"My name is-"

Tannhauser lashed a backhand across his cheek. The heavy gold ring laid him open to the bone. "You can keep your name," said Tannhauser. "I'll have no use for it."

The captain whimpered and clenched his eyes. Tannhauser glanced backward over his shoulder. One constable slumped over the trestle,
his face and beard as bright as enamel with gore. The quarrel of the crossbow had caught him behind one eye and was lodged so deep in his skull that the bone had half stripped the fletching. Tannhauser's victim lay clenched and panting on the flagstones, awaiting the arrival of a tide of pain so monstrous that he dared neither move nor scream, and hardly dared to breathe. Tannhauser turned toward the alcove. The priest stood staring at the floor, as if he hoped that this tactic might render him invisible.

Tannhauser looked at Sabato Svi.

Sabato sat on Tannhauser's celebrated chair. His jaws were wedged apart by an iron pear crammed into his mouth. A screw and a key protruded from the end of the pear, for cranking its diameter to ever more painful dimensions. Tannhauser glanced down. Sabato's hands had been nailed to the chair's armrests. Tannhauser met his dark eyes and saw that something had been torn from his soul. Something he would spend a lifetime trying to recover without success, for such is the harvest of torture.

Tannhauser turned to Gonzaga.

"You. Priest," said Tannhauser. "Take that atrocity from his mouth."

Gonzaga didn't dare raise his head.

"If I hear him so much as sigh," continued Tannhauser, "you will foot the bill."

Gonzaga scrabbled for the crucifix of the rosary beads belted around his waist and mumbled some hogwash in Latin. The gesture made Tannhauser's mind flare white with rage. He strode across the room. The javelin whirled through a half circle in his fingers. As he bore down on Gonzaga the wretched inquisitor finally jerked up his face.

"Mercy, Your Eminence!" he cawed. "Mercy in the name of Christ!"

Tannhauser drove the javelin through the instep of the priest's left foot. Gonzaga shrieked and clung on to the shaft. Tannhauser tore the crucifix away and a shower of black beads spilled across the floor. He looked down into the two revolving tunnels of abject terror bored into the priest's paling face. He held the crucifix before them. He spat on the cross and phlegm bespattered Gonzaga's contorted features.

"You're proud of your cruelty, aren't you, priest?" He threw the crucifix to the flagstones. "I was thirteen years a Turk. And this is nothing."

He shifted his weight and levered the poignard deeper through the splintering foot bones. Gonzaga had not a breath left to scream with, nor
could he find the strength to take one. His mouth gaped wide without sound. His quivering lips turned purple.

Tannhauser seized him by the throat.

"You haven't even begun to understand cruelty. But you will understand it now."

He twisted the javelin free and drove it through Gonzaga's other foot. Gonzaga started to crumple at the knees. Tannhauser held him upright. There was a venerable school of thought that held that acts of this vicious character reduced a man to the level of his enemy. Tannhauser did not subscribe to this philosophy. Again he gouged the spear deeper and felt the pain bubble through the windpipe clenched in his fist. The squalid priest's eyes rolled white and he gargled for his life. Tannhauser was distracted by an anguished grunt from the chair. He turned.

He looked at Sabato Svi and in his eyes he saw fear. He realized that a pall of mortal dread lay about the room, and that he alone was now its source. He withdrew the spear and shoved the screeching priest across the room. Gonzaga slithered in his own bloody footprints and hit the floor at the captain's feet. Tannhauser laid the javelin on the table. He looked at Bors.

Bors laughed and said, "When is it my turn?"

Tannhauser went to Sabato. With care he unwound the key of the iron pear until it shrank to a size whereby he could pull it from his mouth without further injury.

"Forgive me," said Tannhauser.

Sabato rolled his jaws and spat blood. He was white with shock, but though he had no violence in him, he was as tough as the nails that pinned him to the chair. Tannhauser examined them. Their flat heads protruded two inches above the backs of Sabato's hands.

"Can you endure a little longer, my friend? We're not yet safe."

Sabato produced a grim smile. "I'll be here."

Tannhauser grabbed the javelin and walked toward the prisoners. He stooped over Gonzaga and crammed the iron pear between his lips. He hammered it home with the heel of his hand and felt the snapping of teeth.

"Stand up," he said.

The priest could do no more than grovel and moan.

"Stand up! Stand, I say!"

The priest struggled to his perforated feet and stood there shuddering, his nostrils snorting for air above the iron gag. Tannhauser shoved him across the room toward Bors.

"Strip him."

With as much violence as possible, Bors began to rip Gonzaga's habit apart. Tannhauser turned and grabbed the chubby captain by the neck. He manhandled him toward the constable still panting over the javelin in his belly. He pushed the captain's head down.

"Look at him."

The spear point had gored the man's innards and sought the easiest exit, which was his anus. His breeches were clotted with excrement and leaking blood. The captain gagged. With the broad side of his boot, Tannhauser kicked the butt of the spear and drove it four more inches through the man's entrails. The man doubled up with a terrible groan. The captain unleashed a stream of vomit all over his writhing subordinate. Bors laughed.

Tannhauser cast his eyes about the desecration of his tavern: over the empty trestles and benches, the guttering pools of yellow light, the lurching swaths of darkness and shadow, the blood pooled black as petroleum on the flags. He turned back to the captain, his fat little face slack with fear in the tenebrous light. He grabbed him and spoke into his ear.

"Look about and feast your eyes upon what you've wrought."

The captain did so with a grimace of dismay.

"See the dead, the dying, the horror. See the barbarian laughing. The priest naked. The crucified Jew. Witness the vengeance of your enemies."

The captain hunched his shoulders around his vomit-clogged beard. With the bloodied point of the javelin Tannhauser lifted up the captain's chin so he could look into his eyes.

"Know that you are in Hell. And that we are its demons."

Puke foamed from the captain's nostrils as he tried not to sob. He wrapped his arms over his head like a bewildered child. Tannhauser stepped back to the dying constable and spun the javelin and punched the needle tip through the man's temple and into his brain. The crunch ran up his arm and the man fell still. He'd murdered a constable sworn to the Spanish Crown. His life had become one thing, and not another. He was once more a killer. So be it. He felt the drag of the bone as he plucked the spear free. He looked at the captain.

"Torment or mercy," he said. "You have a choice."

So desperate was the captain's relief at clinging onto life that he broke his silence. "Great lord, Excellency, I am your servant." He stifled a sob. "I am at your command."

Tannhauser pointed to the corpse. "Drag him to the wall, over there."

As the captain bent to his work, Tannhauser glanced at Bors and indicated the dead man bleeding on the trestle. Bors lumbered over and laid down his weapons and scooped up the corpse in both arms. He lugged him to the warehouse doorway and flung him into the dark. Gonzaga stood trembling and nude among the black-and-white tatters of his robes. Bors went back to the bench and took up the arquebus. He stabbed the muzzle hard in Gonzaga's ribs.

"Kneel," he said. "Kneel like a dog."

Gonzaga fell onto his hands, choking on the pear, and Bors laughed again.

Tannhauser picked up the second arquebus from the floor. He blew on the match and went to the window and cracked a shutter and peered outside. Two more constables and a score or so of idlers milled about in the street. He snapped his fingers at the captain, who dropped the body by the wall and trotted over.

"Clean your beard," said Tannhauser.

The captain scrubbed nostrils and chin with his sleeves.