Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (reading like a writer TXT) 📕

this. We have taken some women hostages, too, at the next village. And it happens that Helen was among them.”

      Perugino’s expression hardly changed. Perhaps he had no extremes of reaction still unused. It was at this point that I finally decided what I was going to do.

      “Now, are you listening to me, artist? I have orders from Colleoni to hang thirty people here, to make an example of this place. But I find that some of my soldiers cannot count too well. The total of hostages, men and women included, is now thirty-one. Are you following me?” The lies came to me quite easily as I went along, and they were of a kind to be readily believable to any inhabitant of that region. As for Perugino, I think I could have told him that the key to the pearly gates was in my pocket, and he would only have nodded agreement with that same sickly, insanely hopeful smile.

      “Listen to me further, wall-painter. I tell you that I have sworn a great oath—never mind why—that my vengeance shall not fall upon both of you, but on one only. Therefore I am compelled to set one of you free. I will then hang the other— after some preliminary punishment. Now the question is, which is it to be? The guilty wife, or her seducer? Which goes free, and which one suffers?”

      I think, looking back, that I was wasting my inventive powers. I think that of it all he heard and understood almost nothing but those two words, “goes free.” The moment I was silent, he fell on his knees in supplication.

      “You will set me free? Lord, sire, you are a great lord, a blessed man. My aged mother will bless you. Her prayers and mine will go with you from this day forward, to the hour of your death …  I swear that I will never bother anything of yours again. My gratitude will be eternal…”

      I do not remember now the whole catalogue of these absurdities he babbled. But it went on and on, perfectly disgusting. I cut it short: “What of the woman’s fate? Does that mean nothing to you at all?”

      “The woman. Ah. You will know best about that, sire. I swear to you that I am never going to look at her again. I swear…”

      I was as good as my word to Perugino. A few minutes later he was walking out the front door of my borrowed house, his hands cut free of their bonds by my notched dagger. His pass with my signature on it was in his hand, and one of my soldiers was with him to escort him to the edge of town.

      Now I can hear the gentle reader murmuring again. What would the infamous Dracula have done, had the man proved as self-sacrificing as the woman? Well, it is my theory that Helen in coming to me was really not all that altruistic— she was tired, as she said, and took what she saw as the best chance, obeying an almost suicidal impulse—to get out of an intolerable situation even if it should mean death. On the other hand, if Perugino had proven himself ready to sacrifice himself for her—I did not think he would, but if he had—well, I should probably have taken him up on the offer.

      As matters actually went, I walked into the room as soon as Perugino was gone. I stood there silently confronting Helen, who had sat down on my bed.

      “But he is no longer a brave man,” she murmured, staring at my boots. “If he ever was. So much has happened … what did you expect?” Then her eyes lifted. “Tell me, are you going to have him killed now after all? Stabbed to death somewhere down the road? Tell me now if it is so.”

      I had considered some such plan, but had decided against it. I half-expected that the fog of war was likely to carry out the postponed execution without any active effort on my part, local conditions being what they were. This was a faulty expectation, as we now know; Perugino’s lifeless paintings done after 1467 are still to be seen covering a great deal of wall space in a number of Italian churches.

      “It is not so,” I assured her. “I do not mean to have him killed—unless he should come near you again. Then I will kill him, but only as an annoyance, not as a matter of honor. Do you understand?”

      Helen tried to look agreeable, but I could see that she did not understand. She could not, perhaps, or she, did not care.

      So I explained it to her, once. “That man is already dead.”

Chapter Twenty

      Pat O’Grandison was dreaming again, and again the dream was of Annie, and in this dream she was naked. She and Pat were in bed together, and the sheets were satin. There were paintings and statues all about, watching. Pat was enormously aroused, but even more important was the secret that Annie was about to whisper into his ear.

      Before he could hear a word of it, he awoke with a small start. It was dusk, and he could not immediately remember whose great house this was or how he came to be in it. He was lying on his back on a sofa in an unknown, luxuriously furnished room. His shoes were off, and his knapsack was under his head where he had put it to make a pillow against the sofa’s wooden arm. He was beginning to remember now.

      A brown-haired, slightly built girl was sitting at the foot of the sofa, looking at Pat. She wore jeans and a loose pullover shirt.

      “Annie?” Pat was fully awake in an instant, and his body jerked up into a straight sitting position. At first glance he was sure this girl was her. The sense of Annie’s presence was very strong. But as soon as he got a good look he could see this wasn’t Annie’s face, though this