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I rushed him. I lowered my shoulder to crash into him and he flicked up the tip of the knife, still smiling. I almost ran right onto the knife; at the last second the message got through to my brain and I twisted aside, skidding to a stop beside the altar, facing him from a few feet away.
He moved. Maybe it was my sluggishness, but I couldn’t react. I had never before seen anything move so fast. I felt a coldness along my good arm, and then wetness, and he was standing there smiling again. My arm was bleeding where he had lightly slashed with the knife.
Before I could do anything but stare he did it again. I managed to stumble half a step back this time, but he had opened up a new cut on my forearm.
Cappy stood watching me, relaxed and hardly breathing. He looked like he was having fun, like a kid with a new toy who knows it will be broken soon, but for now he’s having a blast.
When you are fighting someone that much faster than you, the textbook says you find your edge. Are you stronger? Tougher? Longer reach? More skillful? Then you try to trap your opponent in a position where his speed will not help.
It was a great theory. But I was having a hard time finding my edge. He was astonishingly fast; he had a knife, a snake, and a couple of thugs on call. I was half-dead with a broken arm, and a long way from home.
And Cappy was not giving me much time to ponder. He snaked the knife in again and found the side of my face this time. I jerked back. The knife might have taken out my eye if I had not. As it was, I now had my own dueling scar.
I was just about out of time and options. If I just stood there, Cappy would cut me to ribbons and the snake would crush Anna. And if I rushed him, he would skewer me and feed me to his snake.
He moved again. The knife went for my eyes and I got my arm in the way. I felt the point go in at the bicep and glance off bone. I twisted a little and the knife came out of Cappy’s hand and slapped to the deck. Without waiting for either one of us to go for the knife, I drove my shoulder into him.
I caught him high and he leaned backwards. A dim reflex from high school football got my legs churning and I pushed him into the altar. I heard the breath whoosh out of him and brought my broken arm around to hit him with an elbow into the face. It hit him hard, but it might have hurt me more.
I kept leaning, pushing him into the solid altar, not giving him a chance to recover, pick up the knife, get that smile back on his face.
His fist came forward, holding a mango from one of the offering bowls. It smacked me hard on the side of the head and I felt something trickle down onto my neck, whether blood or mango juice, I couldn’t say.
There was a ringing in my ears to go with all the other aches and pains. It didn’t matter. I had him now. If I could keep him pinned to the altar, his speed wouldn’t help him and he couldn’t get to the knife. I could live through a couple more mangoes. I couldn’t use my fists, but that didn’t matter, either. There are other ways.
I hit him with another elbow, this time with my knifed arm. He grunted and leaned backwards as I brought the other elbow forward. It missed him. He groped behind him for something, but I was too close to see what it was. I brought my knee up and caught him just below the belt, then hammered my head forward into his solar plexus.
I felt a rib crack. If I could keep this up for just a few more hard blows, he would be down.
I didn’t get the chance. He brought his hand forward, the one that had been groping behind him on the altar.
He wasn’t holding a knife, or a gun, or a baseball bat, or even another mango. I would rather have seen any of those things than what I saw him pull forward and drop onto me.
The snake.
And as Cappy gave his peculiar trilling whistle, the snake whipped a coil around me and tightened.
The pain was enough to cut through all the numbness. It was fire where the knife had gone in, and dull agony on the broken arm.
I tried to move, but it was like being drugged again. I was helpless. My arms might have been sewn to my sides. The snake tightened again, and the world went a few shades darker. I could hear a rib snap, feel the sharp pain of it in my side. For the first time that night, the sound of the drums faded just a little, covered by the pounding of blood in my ears.
I couldn’t breathe. The snake seemed to get heavier, forcing me down to one knee.
Cappy followed me down, his face just a few inches from mine, watching me with his soft, relaxed smile back in place. And as I watched him, the life being squeezed out of me, my breath gone, my vision dimming, that smile was all I could see. Like the Cheshire cat, Cappy faded and all I could see was the white of his teeth.
I did not want to die looking at that smile. Reaching for all my last reserves, I got back to my feet. It took almost the last of all I had, and as I stood there almost blind and deaf from the snake’s constriction, Cappy took it away from me. He moved into my field of vision again. I saw his lips pursed and I heard faintly the whistle he made for his snake.
The snake squeezed harder. My upper arms were crushed against my chest and I heard more ribs breaking.
My knees buckled again. I leaned on the altar, close to Anna’s face. It was so pale and beautiful. It was a pretty good choice for the last thing I would see. It summed up my failures as well as the pleasures of life.
I’m sorry, Anna, I thought. I died trying.
She did not answer. The snake squeezed. I looked Anna over one last time, thinking about what might have been. Already I could feel a kind of distance from all th
at silly human stuff. All the agonizing and self-torture.
We could talk it over soon enough. Anna would follow me into the black unknown. The bowl beside her was nearly full of her blood. It wouldn’t be very long now. Too bad.
