palace garden scene - edit

Mann stood in the wooded palace gardens, the smoke from the fire barrels stung his eyes, and the stench of burning fish oil turned his stomach. He had hoped to find an easy entry to the palace, but that seemed unlikely on this side of the building. 

Suddenly, the cold, insistent pressure of a gun barrel pressed behind his ear forced him to step sideways away from the tree that he thought had him hidden. He had been so lost in thought he had heard no one approach and been caught as easily as a kit. He waited a moment, expecting either a command or a bullet but since neither came he chanced to edge slowly around to see his assailant.

The one called Barge, Helen’s executioner. He was muffled this time but Mann could still see the grimace on his face and a certain vacant light mixing with the sudden fear in his eyes as he recognized Mann. Was he dull witted? Mann cast back to the big man’s behaviour in Helen’s kitchen, perhaps so. The idea gave Mann a moment, but only a moment, of pause. The man had after all put a bullet through Helen’s brain. Barge’s child eyes were fixed on Mann’s mouth, the source of all the scourge’s of hell as far as he was concerned. So he never saw coming the knee jerk that Mann landed square in his groin. The breath went out of him and he dropped to the ground and curled like a baby to cradle the pain. Briefly again, Mann felt he should stay his hand, something didn’t sit well with this. His heart wasn’t in the kill but at his feet Barge was reaching for his dropped gun, ‘Leave it,’ Mann hissed, ‘Leave the gun.’ Barge seemed not to hear and began whimpering loudly, working himself up into a boil. Mann feared the noise would give up the game. He cursed the God who had spared him for this sort of work as he pressed a micro-syringe home into the tender flesh below Barge’s ear. He muttered a prayer as he carefully pulled up the dying man’s muffler to cover his terrified face, and as he stepped away from the convulsing body he heard a sly tread behind him and whirled about to face Gunnar.

‘If you think you can cough out a spitball before I can bury my knife in your heart you are welcome to try.’