BladesTalk (gen, lyricwheel fic)
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Highlander: The
Series. They all belong to Davis/Panzer. I just be chillin’.
Thanks for the lyrics, Sarah/Loves to Write. They are “Let Me Touch You
for A While”. I would have written a love story, but I just don’t do those.
It’s a matter of principle. I am a woman of principles, and I don’t mean
Victoria.
By Amand-r
In the vaguest of senses the rest of your life will never seem as confusing
as these moments. Some old joke used to say that when things couldn’t
be going any worse, then is when the shit really hits the fan. I don’t own
any fans. But I do know a proverb when I hear one. Most of them aren’t
as old as I am, but for some mystic reason, that doesn’t ever make them
any less true.
I hate cities. I know it always seems as if I live in the city all the time, but
there’s only one reason I do live in a metropolitan area. Many could
make guesses; perhaps it’s because it’s easier to divert a challenge that way.
It’s easier to get lost. It’s even a good place to get beer. They’re all
wrong. There’s only one reason, and that can be summed up in two
words:
Pizza delivery.
You laugh, but really, the invention of the pizza available in 30 minutes
or less for less than ten dollars is possibly the most revolutionary
invention I have seen since, well, beer. And that was a long time ago.
It was pizza delivery that got me into this mess, as it were, flying into a
crappy city whose only virtue is the only reason I need to get there as
soon as possible.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Mac lets me stay on the barge sometimes when he’s not there. In lieu of
charging me rent, I get to stay there if and only if I promise not to (a)
break anything (b) sell anything for any reason (c) change his CDs (d)
have any lady friends over (e) have raucous parties a la Fellini’s
Satyricon…
There are more than these, really, and they’re on the fridge with a little
magnet affixing them there so that I see them every time I go for a beer
or leftover sushi. I could argue that I have yet to break any of them.
For example, Heather was not a lady but a rather comely pizza delivery
girl, and in fact I never really learned her last name despite knowing her
biblically, so one could hardly say we were friends. I could also argue that
I didn’t exactly sell that replication vase because I had no advance way of
knowing that she would take that instead of the 50 francs that I had given
her earlier, so it’s not as if it’s actually *sold*, per se. The mirror was
broken, but it was a six hundred year old Venetian handmade mirror
(crafted specifically for the Borgia woman, if I am correct), and so that’s
hardly *anything*.
Perhaps that was too much information. In any case, by the time I found
out that Heather had taken off with said vase, I had already broken ithe
mirror in a fit of blind groping and tangling sheets. Later, as I ran down
the street with my sword, clad in nothng but a sheet and a pair of leopard
underwear (not mine-don’t ask), I was suddenly taken aback with the
idea that I was well, naked, and armed. And in a crowded square with lots
of people.
Okay, I know you want to know if I was drunk. The answer is
emphatically yes. Three sheets to the wind, tied to the mast and pulling
the vessel all the way to the Americas. Call me the Nina, the Pinta, and
the fucking Santa Maria.
The cops didn’t call me that when they gave chase. A little thing I have
learned is that even though the city is a great place to lose challengers, it
is not a good place to go to lose the cops. They know the city better than
you do. In reality, I was running down the backstreet in an attempt to
find a place to ditch the sword.
Go ahead. Laugh.
It was fatal humor that made me dump it in a huge garbage cannister. It
was complete and utter irony that after I had spent three hours in the
precinct house, explaining how my “girlfriend” (whose last name or
address I embarrassingly didn’t know, which prompted the second lie that
I had short term memory loss, which also doubled for the feeble excuse
to cover for the reason that I have no current address.) had stolen a very
valuable artifact belonging to a friend or mine. It was however, possibly
one of the worst moments of my life when I made it back to the
dumpster to realize that it had been emptied by the city workers in a
preciously rare moment of unheard timliness, seeing as how the last time
the workers weren’t on strike and actually did their jobs was during the
German occupation. And even then I am sure it was because they had an
armed escort.
And so, the search for a new sword has left me on a globe trotting goose
chase. I should have known that Sean LoCacchio would come to this
place. And since he never sets foot on a plane, hasn’t since he got to the
states in the late eighteenth century, it’s a matter of going to him.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
PITTSBURGH:
Sean is probably the best sword maker in the Immortal world. Hell, he’s
probably the best sword maker in the mortal world right now, unless you
want one of those “faggy ass Jap swords”, as Sean calls them. Since I like
my blades with two edges (double the pleasure, double the fun), I go to
Sean.
The Ivanhoe I had last was not something that I had picked up ages ago
and kept because of sentimental value. I kept it because it was a damn
good sword. When exploring the Paris dump was not successful in
discovering its whereabouts, I gave up on it, because in my opinion, the
less time one spends without a sword *at all*, the better. If it turns up
later, I might be interested in getting it back, but right now, fond
memories don’t keep one alive.
Sean lives in the Pittsburgh, the city of steel. Or it used to be the city of
steel. All but one of the mills are closed down now, but trust Sean to be
working in that last bastion. I suppose that it makes it easier for him to
forge blades. I know that he still sells them on the side, though I have no
idea who his clientele is. Immorals, no doubt, but one has to wonder just
how he manages to keep his head while dealing with so many of our kind.
Not everyone is like Mac, as any given week in the Scotsman’s presence
will show. Rather violently.
I drive by the mill, a desitiute huddle of buildings still spewing toxins even
at this late hour. I know that the furnace rarely shuts off. Edgar
Thompson is located in the middle of what was probably once a very
popular part of town, but what is now a slum, a ghetto. The faces that
walk down the street are desparately trying to look satisfied, but fail,
knowing that somewhere, something failed them. I count the bars as I
speed out of he area: eight in a ten-block radius.
Sean lives somewhere else, I am sure. He may prefer the work of the mill,
but he likes the feel of silk sheets. He also likes pools and Maseratis.
The bar he has chosen is a little thing, by the name of Charley’s in the
next borough over. It is nondescript and dim, just the way I like it. I
dressed for nondescript: old jeans, sneakers, beat up t-shirt. I let my eyes
adjust to the light in the room (or lack thereof), hoping that the presence
I feel is Sean and not some other person. The way my luck is running
lately, it would be another Morgan, hell bent on my blood for something
I don’t even remember. I mean, I don’t even remember most of the early
seventies. But it’s Sean, because I hear him holler “Ey, Adam!” and a large
arm down at the end of the bar waves.
Sean is missing a tooth, the right front one. He told me once that a
stubborn gelding had kicked it out when he was just a boy. When he
grins, he is all teeth and that gap, a very trusting look, complemented by
a cap of straw colored hair that is short on the top and long in the back.
He rather looks very dull witted, in a Lenny from “Of Mice and Men”
kind of way.
“Hey,” I say as I plop down next to him on one of the over used stools, its
padding long pressed down to nothing. The drinker on the other side of
me belches and tells the bartender to put on the hockey game, though
not in such a polite fashion. I’m acutely nervous. I’ve been without a
sword for three days, and I don’t like the feel of it.
I edge closer to Sean and mutter under my breath, “What the hell do they
drink here?” Sean chuckles and orders me an Iron City. The first taste
reminds me of every little backwater piss ale I’ve ever tasted. This
produces another chuckle.
“You need to relax, Adam.” One cownflower blue eye winks at me, and I
know he thinks my current situation is hysterical. He actually dropped
the phone when I had been forced to explain how I had lost the Ivanhoe
to him.
“You relax when you’re in my position, “I mumble into my beer head,
“then get back to me.” The TV screeches as Lemiux scores, and the bar
crowd echoes it. The man next to me orders a shot of Yaggermeister,
slamming the flat of his hand down and demanding “a hat trick”.
Have I mentioned that I hate sports bars? I mentally run through
everything I’ve been through in this city that I have encountered so far:
non gridded city plans, tunnels desparately in need of repair, construction
detours, driving a Volvo in a run down area, and lastly, local pubs with a
sticky bar and a TV over it, a TV whose channels can only be changed with
a pair of pliers.
But Sean is happy here, amidst the beer nut bowls and empty cans of
Rolling Rock, the local sports playing on that degraded TV. His eyes scan
the crowd, the few mill workers on the opposite end of the bar, and some
thirty something women with Penguins jerseys who are trying to get the
frightfully old jukebox to work. Even the bartender looks ragged. Maybe
it’s the hairstyle. Mullets do not flatter any man.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“I don’t know what you see in this city,” I mumble as Sean speeds his
pickup truck down the Tri-Boro at a pace that cannot be normal, but
which Sean assures me is common. I gesture to the neon signs long gone
dead and hollowed out churches gone silent, bells waiting to teased into
announcing morning mass.
Sean chuckles, and when I look over at him, I am unsure if he has had one
too many. “Adam,” he drawls, “you don’t see the big picture.” His hand
leaves the steering wheel in a circular motion, and the truck swerves onto
Braddock Avenue. I know that we are returning to the mill, and part of
me doesn’t want to see it.
I have been in Sheffeld lately. All those steel mills are closed, and
everyone is put of work, and it’s not a romantic situation, no matter what
The Full Monty told anyone in the theatres. I don’t want to see any
more ghettos.
Instead, I close my eyes and press me head to the gritty window. “What is
the big picture?” I ask.
Sean’s voice is rough, like the dirt on the outside of the window, like this
town. “Steel is something special. These people have it in their veins.” He
sighed. “When I was a boy, my father taught me to fold the steel to
make things. But they were always small things, you know?” His voice is
wistful. I glance over to look at him, finally, this larger than life man who
still molds things woth his bare hands. How long has it been since I can
say I did that?
“We never made anything big, though,” he continues, “just small stuff
like swords, fences, horseshoes. Here, I made the beams that hold up half
of this country.” His grin is luminous. “Can you say that, Adam?”
He knows I can’t. Truth be told, I don’t give a shit about not making
steel girters and pylons. But I can’t tell him that. So I shake my head and
give him my best harmless Adam Pierson smile. He seems to buy it. That
causes him to shake his head, grinning.
“I don't hardly know you, Adam,” Sean says loudly, his hand leaving the
steering wheel dangerously. “I mean, I know what you like to feel in your
hand, but that’s all we do, business,”
I pause to look at the palm of my hand. It is grubby from all the beer
nuts and the pool cue. Sean pulls a tight turn, and I take that hand to grip
the armrest on the passenger side door. It is true, I realize, that I use Sean.
It is petty, and perhaps he resents it.
Perhaps not. Sean has never refused my money before. He certainly
didn’t refuse it when I bought the Ivanhoe.
“I never really thought you’d be interested in me, Sean,” I try to explain
feebly.
“No,” he answers, scoffing. “None of you ever do.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The selection of blades is small but impressive. There are three
shortswords, delicate blades sharpened already to a deadly edge. There is
one almost paper thin epee that I pass on entirely. There is also a lovely
longsword that catches my eye. When I pick it up, it hums. Not literally,
but figuratively.
The blade is handsomely oiled, and the steel itself is something dark and
gleaming at the same time. Most blades take on a terrible cold grey
color, losing their shine. Sometimes they don’t even have that glow in
the first place. Almost every blade I’ve ever had has never really had that
luminescence, as if they knew from the moment they hit my hand that
they would be used for death, and they weren’t excited about it.
The only weapon I ever had that seemed to have a light of its own was
when I was Death. The sword I used was a short blade that grew more in
color the more lives I took with it. Towards the end, every time I picked
it up, it made the noise that this blade is making now.
I turn the pommel around, flipping it from side to side, over and over
again. Sean lays out the last of the blades and leans against his office wall,
folding his hands across his huge chest. I turn the pommel again. It is
made of teak and silver inlay, a silver that makes the blade seem so much
lighter. The end is a heavy ball to weight the hilt and balance the blade.
“You like what you see?” Sean asks. He knows that he doesn’t even need
to ask it. I want the blade, and I haven’t even tried it yet.
I pull a half- hearted arc in the middle of his office, stopping short of the
filing cabinet. He makes a face, and I shrug.
The true test of the blade is in a fight. I won’t know until then if I can
take the length, which is a bit more than the Ivanhoe, or if I like the way
it moves when I do my patented underhand defense (and yes, I came up
with that. Anyone who might possibly contest that just needs to see my
birth certificate.). Sean is fit for a reason. He selects one of the
broadswords and we slide out of the office to play around a bit on the
factory floor.
Most of the time I’m not fond of fighting, but there are two times that
fighting is necessary: when you’re cornered, and when you’re buying a
weapon you intend to use to defend your life. I swing the new weapon in
a few pendulum takes before Sean raises his own. He takes his time;
always has. He cracks his neck, adopts a low defensive stance, and then
breaks it to launch a full onslaught right towrds me.
Blades talk, you know. When the edges of then touch for the first time,
the reverberation of them sends a massage to both players. In relaity, the
first few strokes towards your opponent pretty much dictates the entire
outcome of the fight.
Sean’s eyes tell me what the blades have already said. But I have to say it
out loud, because it has happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly. Most of
me is cursing myself for walking into it.
“Sean,” I say warningly, hefting the new blade in my hand. The weight is
perfect, but something tells me that its maker isn’t. Not at this moment.
He smiles, and his face is drawn, even through the grin. He brings the
heavier blade up into a down swing that I have to set my teeth against.
“Time to pay up, Adam.”
I think it’s the cheesiest line I’ve heard, and I spent a lot of time with
Ryan. I slip my blade around his and manage to back away, putting up a
better front guard. Then I di what I do best.
I run like a motherfucker.
I never learn lessons. The cops know the city, and Sean knows his mill. I
may be clothed, but I’m just as naked as when I chased Heather down the
street. I clambor past vats and coal pits, slip on a bitof gravel and try to
hide in a drenching shower. Poor mistake.
The only good thing about fighting here is that it’s impossible to hide
one’s footsteps, so whole Sean and hear me, I can still hear him. I side
curl the blade and catch him in the stomach as he comes around a corner,
but it won’t be enough to stop him.
I’m right. Sean takes the blow like a good little Immortal. Before the
blade is even back in my defensive position he’ll start healing.
“Sean, really, you don’t want to do this,” I say, looking for my friend in
Sean’s face.
But Sean isn’t my friend. He’s just someone I trusted enough to get a
blade from. This pretty much reinforces my theory that no immortals are
good immortals. Or perhaps immortals that you don’t really know. If I
had a foot free, I’d be kicking myself.
“You really expect me to let you out of here?” Sean growls.
I shrug, wondering if I can pull the knife at my back. No sword does not
mean not being armed at all.
“I said I’d pay you,” I tell him. “Why do you have to do this now?”
Sean smiles. “Change of heart. Change of plans. Change of initiative.”
There’s nothing I can really say to that. The great thing about being
immortal and havign the Game in play is that one can decide to kill
someone else, and really, we all know why. No need for a motive. It’s
just a happy head hunting time.
I decide then and there that I am not dying in the middle of a steel mill.
If anyone is going to die in this god forsaken filth, it’s Sean.
The funny trhing about a beheading, I think, as Sean’s body falls
backwards, is that the head seems to register the actual langing of the rest
of its self. He eyes go wide, every single time, as if it can’t believe that the
body is no longer its to command. And even though I have to think that
the beheaded is indeed dead, here is somethiung like surprise, something
like rage in the eyes. Just for a split second, I see the soul leaving the
body. Then it is gone, and the flame no longer flickers, because it’s busy
rolling into me.
There is nowhere to hide a body in this town. I hate leaving my kill sfor
the police to clean up. I don’t like being in the same town as any
reported beheading. Modern technology is too fishy for me to trust not
making a mistake, especially after a quickening. But then I have a flash of
invention.
Urban legends are amazing things, and I have a wealth of them, from
Babylon to Los Angeles. Sometime in the twenties, a steelworker in this
very city fell into one of the large molten vats of hot liquid metal. They
say that his body was mixed with the tseel and molded into one of the
girters they used in all of the bridges around here. Legens says that the
worker’s spirit still haunts the bridge.
I don’t believe in ghosts. But I do believe in the power of molten metal.
And I know Sean did, too.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Leaving Pittsburgh is the most relieving thing I’ve done in ages.
Returning to the barge means that I have to confront Mac, and I don’t
know if I have the spirit for that. When I watch the three rivers disappear
as my plane go higher and higher into the clouds, I wonder about so
much metal in the air. I wonder about the pollution that made this city
unlivable at one time. I wonder about Sean ‘s comment about the metal
in the blood, and I wonder about what could have possibly made him go
mad.
It could have been the steel, or the ages, or the feeling of being used.
Perhaps Sean, like so many others in that god forsaken place, the place
that once spawned labor unions and child labor laws, broke down because
he was old, tired, neglected and without hope. Perhapos he was past his
use, past his prime.
The new sword is in the cargo hold, and I plan to keep it. I am thinking
of what I will need to modify in order to accommodate its additional
length while my laptop warms up. I absently check my email, even
though they say you shouldn’t jack into the phone plane. The flight
attendent brings me a glass of gingerale and one of those bags of little
peanuts.
I check my email. There is a message from Joe. I read the directions of
the peanuts: “open bag. Eat nuts.”
To: firstman667@hotmail.com
From: bluesboy334@ihate clowns.com
Subject: Lose something, feeb?
I have something you don’t have, nyah nyah nyah…guess what your
watcher took from a dumpster?
Ha ha ha ha-
Joe
P.S. If I were an evil man I would make you pay your bar tab to get it
back.
I stop to consider this for a moment. It takes so long for the message to
sink in. Then I start to laugh. I don’t know when I start shaking, but I
manage to not cry. Instead, I bbusy myself surfing the porn web for a
second before finishing my mail.
To: olddude44@juno.com
From: macleodd@earthlink.net
Subject: Uhm, the vase?
And the mirror? Is there something you want to tell me? And what’s
with all the pizza boxes? Can’t you throw anything away?
Stop by. Joe says he has your sword. What are you doing running
around without that?
Don’t answer that.
Duncan
I consider that last line. Don’t answer that. I don’t think I can.
END
Series. They all belong to Davis/Panzer. I just be chillin’.
Thanks for the lyrics, Sarah/Loves to Write. They are “Let Me Touch You
for A While”. I would have written a love story, but I just don’t do those.
It’s a matter of principle. I am a woman of principles, and I don’t mean
Victoria.
By Amand-r
In the vaguest of senses the rest of your life will never seem as confusing
as these moments. Some old joke used to say that when things couldn’t
be going any worse, then is when the shit really hits the fan. I don’t own
any fans. But I do know a proverb when I hear one. Most of them aren’t
as old as I am, but for some mystic reason, that doesn’t ever make them
any less true.
I hate cities. I know it always seems as if I live in the city all the time, but
there’s only one reason I do live in a metropolitan area. Many could
make guesses; perhaps it’s because it’s easier to divert a challenge that way.
It’s easier to get lost. It’s even a good place to get beer. They’re all
wrong. There’s only one reason, and that can be summed up in two
words:
Pizza delivery.
You laugh, but really, the invention of the pizza available in 30 minutes
or less for less than ten dollars is possibly the most revolutionary
invention I have seen since, well, beer. And that was a long time ago.
It was pizza delivery that got me into this mess, as it were, flying into a
crappy city whose only virtue is the only reason I need to get there as
soon as possible.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Mac lets me stay on the barge sometimes when he’s not there. In lieu of
charging me rent, I get to stay there if and only if I promise not to (a)
break anything (b) sell anything for any reason (c) change his CDs (d)
have any lady friends over (e) have raucous parties a la Fellini’s
Satyricon…
There are more than these, really, and they’re on the fridge with a little
magnet affixing them there so that I see them every time I go for a beer
or leftover sushi. I could argue that I have yet to break any of them.
For example, Heather was not a lady but a rather comely pizza delivery
girl, and in fact I never really learned her last name despite knowing her
biblically, so one could hardly say we were friends. I could also argue that
I didn’t exactly sell that replication vase because I had no advance way of
knowing that she would take that instead of the 50 francs that I had given
her earlier, so it’s not as if it’s actually *sold*, per se. The mirror was
broken, but it was a six hundred year old Venetian handmade mirror
(crafted specifically for the Borgia woman, if I am correct), and so that’s
hardly *anything*.
Perhaps that was too much information. In any case, by the time I found
out that Heather had taken off with said vase, I had already broken ithe
mirror in a fit of blind groping and tangling sheets. Later, as I ran down
the street with my sword, clad in nothng but a sheet and a pair of leopard
underwear (not mine-don’t ask), I was suddenly taken aback with the
idea that I was well, naked, and armed. And in a crowded square with lots
of people.
Okay, I know you want to know if I was drunk. The answer is
emphatically yes. Three sheets to the wind, tied to the mast and pulling
the vessel all the way to the Americas. Call me the Nina, the Pinta, and
the fucking Santa Maria.
The cops didn’t call me that when they gave chase. A little thing I have
learned is that even though the city is a great place to lose challengers, it
is not a good place to go to lose the cops. They know the city better than
you do. In reality, I was running down the backstreet in an attempt to
find a place to ditch the sword.
Go ahead. Laugh.
It was fatal humor that made me dump it in a huge garbage cannister. It
was complete and utter irony that after I had spent three hours in the
precinct house, explaining how my “girlfriend” (whose last name or
address I embarrassingly didn’t know, which prompted the second lie that
I had short term memory loss, which also doubled for the feeble excuse
to cover for the reason that I have no current address.) had stolen a very
valuable artifact belonging to a friend or mine. It was however, possibly
one of the worst moments of my life when I made it back to the
dumpster to realize that it had been emptied by the city workers in a
preciously rare moment of unheard timliness, seeing as how the last time
the workers weren’t on strike and actually did their jobs was during the
German occupation. And even then I am sure it was because they had an
armed escort.
And so, the search for a new sword has left me on a globe trotting goose
chase. I should have known that Sean LoCacchio would come to this
place. And since he never sets foot on a plane, hasn’t since he got to the
states in the late eighteenth century, it’s a matter of going to him.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
PITTSBURGH:
Sean is probably the best sword maker in the Immortal world. Hell, he’s
probably the best sword maker in the mortal world right now, unless you
want one of those “faggy ass Jap swords”, as Sean calls them. Since I like
my blades with two edges (double the pleasure, double the fun), I go to
Sean.
The Ivanhoe I had last was not something that I had picked up ages ago
and kept because of sentimental value. I kept it because it was a damn
good sword. When exploring the Paris dump was not successful in
discovering its whereabouts, I gave up on it, because in my opinion, the
less time one spends without a sword *at all*, the better. If it turns up
later, I might be interested in getting it back, but right now, fond
memories don’t keep one alive.
Sean lives in the Pittsburgh, the city of steel. Or it used to be the city of
steel. All but one of the mills are closed down now, but trust Sean to be
working in that last bastion. I suppose that it makes it easier for him to
forge blades. I know that he still sells them on the side, though I have no
idea who his clientele is. Immorals, no doubt, but one has to wonder just
how he manages to keep his head while dealing with so many of our kind.
Not everyone is like Mac, as any given week in the Scotsman’s presence
will show. Rather violently.
I drive by the mill, a desitiute huddle of buildings still spewing toxins even
at this late hour. I know that the furnace rarely shuts off. Edgar
Thompson is located in the middle of what was probably once a very
popular part of town, but what is now a slum, a ghetto. The faces that
walk down the street are desparately trying to look satisfied, but fail,
knowing that somewhere, something failed them. I count the bars as I
speed out of he area: eight in a ten-block radius.
Sean lives somewhere else, I am sure. He may prefer the work of the mill,
but he likes the feel of silk sheets. He also likes pools and Maseratis.
The bar he has chosen is a little thing, by the name of Charley’s in the
next borough over. It is nondescript and dim, just the way I like it. I
dressed for nondescript: old jeans, sneakers, beat up t-shirt. I let my eyes
adjust to the light in the room (or lack thereof), hoping that the presence
I feel is Sean and not some other person. The way my luck is running
lately, it would be another Morgan, hell bent on my blood for something
I don’t even remember. I mean, I don’t even remember most of the early
seventies. But it’s Sean, because I hear him holler “Ey, Adam!” and a large
arm down at the end of the bar waves.
Sean is missing a tooth, the right front one. He told me once that a
stubborn gelding had kicked it out when he was just a boy. When he
grins, he is all teeth and that gap, a very trusting look, complemented by
a cap of straw colored hair that is short on the top and long in the back.
He rather looks very dull witted, in a Lenny from “Of Mice and Men”
kind of way.
“Hey,” I say as I plop down next to him on one of the over used stools, its
padding long pressed down to nothing. The drinker on the other side of
me belches and tells the bartender to put on the hockey game, though
not in such a polite fashion. I’m acutely nervous. I’ve been without a
sword for three days, and I don’t like the feel of it.
I edge closer to Sean and mutter under my breath, “What the hell do they
drink here?” Sean chuckles and orders me an Iron City. The first taste
reminds me of every little backwater piss ale I’ve ever tasted. This
produces another chuckle.
“You need to relax, Adam.” One cownflower blue eye winks at me, and I
know he thinks my current situation is hysterical. He actually dropped
the phone when I had been forced to explain how I had lost the Ivanhoe
to him.
“You relax when you’re in my position, “I mumble into my beer head,
“then get back to me.” The TV screeches as Lemiux scores, and the bar
crowd echoes it. The man next to me orders a shot of Yaggermeister,
slamming the flat of his hand down and demanding “a hat trick”.
Have I mentioned that I hate sports bars? I mentally run through
everything I’ve been through in this city that I have encountered so far:
non gridded city plans, tunnels desparately in need of repair, construction
detours, driving a Volvo in a run down area, and lastly, local pubs with a
sticky bar and a TV over it, a TV whose channels can only be changed with
a pair of pliers.
But Sean is happy here, amidst the beer nut bowls and empty cans of
Rolling Rock, the local sports playing on that degraded TV. His eyes scan
the crowd, the few mill workers on the opposite end of the bar, and some
thirty something women with Penguins jerseys who are trying to get the
frightfully old jukebox to work. Even the bartender looks ragged. Maybe
it’s the hairstyle. Mullets do not flatter any man.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“I don’t know what you see in this city,” I mumble as Sean speeds his
pickup truck down the Tri-Boro at a pace that cannot be normal, but
which Sean assures me is common. I gesture to the neon signs long gone
dead and hollowed out churches gone silent, bells waiting to teased into
announcing morning mass.
Sean chuckles, and when I look over at him, I am unsure if he has had one
too many. “Adam,” he drawls, “you don’t see the big picture.” His hand
leaves the steering wheel in a circular motion, and the truck swerves onto
Braddock Avenue. I know that we are returning to the mill, and part of
me doesn’t want to see it.
I have been in Sheffeld lately. All those steel mills are closed, and
everyone is put of work, and it’s not a romantic situation, no matter what
The Full Monty told anyone in the theatres. I don’t want to see any
more ghettos.
Instead, I close my eyes and press me head to the gritty window. “What is
the big picture?” I ask.
Sean’s voice is rough, like the dirt on the outside of the window, like this
town. “Steel is something special. These people have it in their veins.” He
sighed. “When I was a boy, my father taught me to fold the steel to
make things. But they were always small things, you know?” His voice is
wistful. I glance over to look at him, finally, this larger than life man who
still molds things woth his bare hands. How long has it been since I can
say I did that?
“We never made anything big, though,” he continues, “just small stuff
like swords, fences, horseshoes. Here, I made the beams that hold up half
of this country.” His grin is luminous. “Can you say that, Adam?”
He knows I can’t. Truth be told, I don’t give a shit about not making
steel girters and pylons. But I can’t tell him that. So I shake my head and
give him my best harmless Adam Pierson smile. He seems to buy it. That
causes him to shake his head, grinning.
“I don't hardly know you, Adam,” Sean says loudly, his hand leaving the
steering wheel dangerously. “I mean, I know what you like to feel in your
hand, but that’s all we do, business,”
I pause to look at the palm of my hand. It is grubby from all the beer
nuts and the pool cue. Sean pulls a tight turn, and I take that hand to grip
the armrest on the passenger side door. It is true, I realize, that I use Sean.
It is petty, and perhaps he resents it.
Perhaps not. Sean has never refused my money before. He certainly
didn’t refuse it when I bought the Ivanhoe.
“I never really thought you’d be interested in me, Sean,” I try to explain
feebly.
“No,” he answers, scoffing. “None of you ever do.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The selection of blades is small but impressive. There are three
shortswords, delicate blades sharpened already to a deadly edge. There is
one almost paper thin epee that I pass on entirely. There is also a lovely
longsword that catches my eye. When I pick it up, it hums. Not literally,
but figuratively.
The blade is handsomely oiled, and the steel itself is something dark and
gleaming at the same time. Most blades take on a terrible cold grey
color, losing their shine. Sometimes they don’t even have that glow in
the first place. Almost every blade I’ve ever had has never really had that
luminescence, as if they knew from the moment they hit my hand that
they would be used for death, and they weren’t excited about it.
The only weapon I ever had that seemed to have a light of its own was
when I was Death. The sword I used was a short blade that grew more in
color the more lives I took with it. Towards the end, every time I picked
it up, it made the noise that this blade is making now.
I turn the pommel around, flipping it from side to side, over and over
again. Sean lays out the last of the blades and leans against his office wall,
folding his hands across his huge chest. I turn the pommel again. It is
made of teak and silver inlay, a silver that makes the blade seem so much
lighter. The end is a heavy ball to weight the hilt and balance the blade.
“You like what you see?” Sean asks. He knows that he doesn’t even need
to ask it. I want the blade, and I haven’t even tried it yet.
I pull a half- hearted arc in the middle of his office, stopping short of the
filing cabinet. He makes a face, and I shrug.
The true test of the blade is in a fight. I won’t know until then if I can
take the length, which is a bit more than the Ivanhoe, or if I like the way
it moves when I do my patented underhand defense (and yes, I came up
with that. Anyone who might possibly contest that just needs to see my
birth certificate.). Sean is fit for a reason. He selects one of the
broadswords and we slide out of the office to play around a bit on the
factory floor.
Most of the time I’m not fond of fighting, but there are two times that
fighting is necessary: when you’re cornered, and when you’re buying a
weapon you intend to use to defend your life. I swing the new weapon in
a few pendulum takes before Sean raises his own. He takes his time;
always has. He cracks his neck, adopts a low defensive stance, and then
breaks it to launch a full onslaught right towrds me.
Blades talk, you know. When the edges of then touch for the first time,
the reverberation of them sends a massage to both players. In relaity, the
first few strokes towards your opponent pretty much dictates the entire
outcome of the fight.
Sean’s eyes tell me what the blades have already said. But I have to say it
out loud, because it has happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly. Most of
me is cursing myself for walking into it.
“Sean,” I say warningly, hefting the new blade in my hand. The weight is
perfect, but something tells me that its maker isn’t. Not at this moment.
He smiles, and his face is drawn, even through the grin. He brings the
heavier blade up into a down swing that I have to set my teeth against.
“Time to pay up, Adam.”
I think it’s the cheesiest line I’ve heard, and I spent a lot of time with
Ryan. I slip my blade around his and manage to back away, putting up a
better front guard. Then I di what I do best.
I run like a motherfucker.
I never learn lessons. The cops know the city, and Sean knows his mill. I
may be clothed, but I’m just as naked as when I chased Heather down the
street. I clambor past vats and coal pits, slip on a bitof gravel and try to
hide in a drenching shower. Poor mistake.
The only good thing about fighting here is that it’s impossible to hide
one’s footsteps, so whole Sean and hear me, I can still hear him. I side
curl the blade and catch him in the stomach as he comes around a corner,
but it won’t be enough to stop him.
I’m right. Sean takes the blow like a good little Immortal. Before the
blade is even back in my defensive position he’ll start healing.
“Sean, really, you don’t want to do this,” I say, looking for my friend in
Sean’s face.
But Sean isn’t my friend. He’s just someone I trusted enough to get a
blade from. This pretty much reinforces my theory that no immortals are
good immortals. Or perhaps immortals that you don’t really know. If I
had a foot free, I’d be kicking myself.
“You really expect me to let you out of here?” Sean growls.
I shrug, wondering if I can pull the knife at my back. No sword does not
mean not being armed at all.
“I said I’d pay you,” I tell him. “Why do you have to do this now?”
Sean smiles. “Change of heart. Change of plans. Change of initiative.”
There’s nothing I can really say to that. The great thing about being
immortal and havign the Game in play is that one can decide to kill
someone else, and really, we all know why. No need for a motive. It’s
just a happy head hunting time.
I decide then and there that I am not dying in the middle of a steel mill.
If anyone is going to die in this god forsaken filth, it’s Sean.
The funny trhing about a beheading, I think, as Sean’s body falls
backwards, is that the head seems to register the actual langing of the rest
of its self. He eyes go wide, every single time, as if it can’t believe that the
body is no longer its to command. And even though I have to think that
the beheaded is indeed dead, here is somethiung like surprise, something
like rage in the eyes. Just for a split second, I see the soul leaving the
body. Then it is gone, and the flame no longer flickers, because it’s busy
rolling into me.
There is nowhere to hide a body in this town. I hate leaving my kill sfor
the police to clean up. I don’t like being in the same town as any
reported beheading. Modern technology is too fishy for me to trust not
making a mistake, especially after a quickening. But then I have a flash of
invention.
Urban legends are amazing things, and I have a wealth of them, from
Babylon to Los Angeles. Sometime in the twenties, a steelworker in this
very city fell into one of the large molten vats of hot liquid metal. They
say that his body was mixed with the tseel and molded into one of the
girters they used in all of the bridges around here. Legens says that the
worker’s spirit still haunts the bridge.
I don’t believe in ghosts. But I do believe in the power of molten metal.
And I know Sean did, too.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Leaving Pittsburgh is the most relieving thing I’ve done in ages.
Returning to the barge means that I have to confront Mac, and I don’t
know if I have the spirit for that. When I watch the three rivers disappear
as my plane go higher and higher into the clouds, I wonder about so
much metal in the air. I wonder about the pollution that made this city
unlivable at one time. I wonder about Sean ‘s comment about the metal
in the blood, and I wonder about what could have possibly made him go
mad.
It could have been the steel, or the ages, or the feeling of being used.
Perhaps Sean, like so many others in that god forsaken place, the place
that once spawned labor unions and child labor laws, broke down because
he was old, tired, neglected and without hope. Perhapos he was past his
use, past his prime.
The new sword is in the cargo hold, and I plan to keep it. I am thinking
of what I will need to modify in order to accommodate its additional
length while my laptop warms up. I absently check my email, even
though they say you shouldn’t jack into the phone plane. The flight
attendent brings me a glass of gingerale and one of those bags of little
peanuts.
I check my email. There is a message from Joe. I read the directions of
the peanuts: “open bag. Eat nuts.”
To: firstman667@hotmail.com
From: bluesboy334@ihate clowns.com
Subject: Lose something, feeb?
I have something you don’t have, nyah nyah nyah…guess what your
watcher took from a dumpster?
Ha ha ha ha-
Joe
P.S. If I were an evil man I would make you pay your bar tab to get it
back.
I stop to consider this for a moment. It takes so long for the message to
sink in. Then I start to laugh. I don’t know when I start shaking, but I
manage to not cry. Instead, I bbusy myself surfing the porn web for a
second before finishing my mail.
To: olddude44@juno.com
From: macleodd@earthlink.net
Subject: Uhm, the vase?
And the mirror? Is there something you want to tell me? And what’s
with all the pizza boxes? Can’t you throw anything away?
Stop by. Joe says he has your sword. What are you doing running
around without that?
Don’t answer that.
Duncan
I consider that last line. Don’t answer that. I don’t think I can.
END