Kill Baxter (23 page)

I pick up a heavy baton and immediately feel ill. The violence in it throbs against my palm and I can feel the heads that have been cracked open, the limbs broken, the bones shattered. I replace it carefully on the rack. As I go through the weapons I start to get a sense of what Ronin means. They all have personalities: snarling and rabid or lethally calm. There’s a staff that feels like a snake in my hands, and a cane that I swear is laughing at me.

I happen on one that feels light to the touch. It’s a spring-loaded baton that lengthens into a longer quarterstaff at the touch of a button. It’s made of a faded grey wood carved with spidery sigils. Rather than the heavy, bloody, primal character of some of the others, it has a thoughtful, strategic, and maybe slightly snarky, sarcastic feel to it. It’s the kind of weapon that would crack a joke as its shoves into your solar plexus. I like it already.

I place it carefully on the floor next to me.

The bladed weapons are something altogether different. Arrogant, vain and narcissistic, the cutlasses, katanas, sabres, rapiers, longswords, knives and daggers seem to revel in their own sharpness. An ornate scimitar I take off the rack feels immediately like the worst kind of blowhard. I take a couple of test swings and it almost seems like I’m being forced to sit through some financier sounding off about how awesome he is. I put it back.

I pick up a short sword with a polished wooden handle. It feels solid, dependable, long-suffering. It’s the Eeyore of blades, seeming to sigh through the air, stoically accepting that it’s a sword and that’s what it does. It’s the kind of weapon that will cut through a thousand enemies and carry on going because that’s the fate it has accepted.

I place it on the floor next to the baton.

The guns feel calculated and lethal, the stolid personalities of Marine Corps sergeants and Army Rangers. This time I take a total chance and pick something different. In contrast to my other choices, this one is pure ego: a shiny chrome handgun with an image of the Wheel of Fortune tarot card inlaid on the handle in mother-of-pearl and semi-precious stones. It feels comfortable in my hand, wild, untamed, a gun that’ll blow between red hot and ice cold in a couple of seconds. It’s a mobster’s gun, a gambler’s gun, a gun that’s not afraid when the dice are thrown.

I place it next to my two other choices.

‘Knock, knock.’

I turn to see Sandile standing in the room with a smile on his face and a jacket slung over his arm.

‘You done?’ Ronin asks.

I nod.

They look at the weapons I’ve chosen, like breeders studying thoroughbred horses. ‘Excellent,’ Sandile says. ‘I’m very impressed by your choices.’ He looks at Ronin with a raised eyebrow.

‘Not my style.’ Ronin grimaces.

‘That’s why I like them so much,’ I say.

Sandile bursts out laughing. ‘I think you two are going to be perfect together. Just perfect.’

He hands me a shoulder strap and holster for the gun and baton, and a belt and sheath for the short sword, and then presents me with the jacket he has over his arm.

‘This is a gift,’ he says. ‘It stopped fitting me a long time ago.’

‘Let’s be honest,’ Ronin says. ‘It never fitted you.’

‘You’re probably right.’

I strap the sword around my waist and slide the baton and the handgun into the shoulder harness, then shrug the jacket on. It fits perfectly, like it’s been tailored, seemingly moulding to my body.

Ronin seems less than impressed, but Sandile nods approvingly.

‘He has potential, Ronin.’ He puts his hands on his hips and looks at me. ‘Real potential.’

‘Yeah, we’ll see,’ Ronin says gruffly.

‘Welcome to the agent’s life,’ Sandile says. ‘It’s not pretty, but it’s something, I suppose.’

‘Well, you look ridiculous,’ Ronin says as I enter the room he’s staying in for the night. I’m glad he’s the one that got the Safari Room. A really badly taxidermied eland stares cross-eyed across the room, and the faux lion rug looks a little too well used.

Ronin sits at an old wooden writing desk with a cup of tea and an expression of utter defeat on his face. He’s sweating again and he looks red and feverish. I’m starting to wonder whether he’s ever going to break the back of his addiction.

‘I look like you,’ I say, unstrapping my weapons and laying them down carefully on the couch. ‘So yeah, I guess you’re right.’

‘Lemon, ginger and honey,’ Ronin says, looking into the teacup. ‘Mmmmm.’

I sit down at the desk and Ronin grabs a piece of paper, turns it over and slides it away from me.

‘What’s that?’ I say.

‘Mind your own business,’ he growls. ‘Don’t you have to go practise looking tough in a mirror or something?’

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘What is it?’

He sighs. ‘OK, I’ll tell you. But you’ve got to promise not to laugh.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I promise.’

‘Well, in the book I’m reading, the doctor recommends writing a letter to your addiction as if it were a person.’

I burst out laughing.

‘Whatever, porno boy,’ he says.

‘Sorry.’ I try to suppress a giggle. ‘Sorry. So you’re writing a letter to alcohol?’

‘Well, he says it works better if you’re specific, so I’m writing a letter to Scotch. “Dear Scotch. You are a beautiful lady. You are the colour of copper. You are the taste of water to a man dying of thirst. We can’t be together any more. It’s not you, it’s me. Be happy without me. Ronin.”’

‘That’s beautiful,’ I say. ‘Real poetry.’

‘It’s not helping,’ Ronin says, sipping his tea desperately.

We sit for a while and listen to the crickets chirping outside.

‘That speech you made back at Hexpoort. About being an agent. Did you mean it?’

‘Yeah, mostly.’ Ronin takes another sip of his tea. ‘It’s a hard life at the best of times.’

‘I’ve just been thinking,’ I say. ‘Are we really doing the right thing for the Hidden?’

‘You’re getting all political on me now, sparky?’

‘It’s just that maybe I don’t want to be the prison guard,’ I say.

‘Sometimes you don’t get to choose,’ Ronin replies.

The next morning we pack our stuff into the Cortina and say goodbye to Sandile.

‘Ronin tell you how we met?’

‘No,’ I say.

He rubs his chin. ‘My village was destroyed by Gogs, real mean ones—’

‘No other kind,’ Ronin interrupts.

‘Yeah, well. Me and some of the other kids escaped by hiding in a tree. The Gogs cleared out and days later Ronin’s unit found us. His unit commander wanted to execute all of the survivors and Ronin knocked him the fuck out.’

‘Yeah, what a hero,’ Ronin growls. ‘You neglect to mention that it was our Gog unit that destroyed your village.’

Sandile leans in. ‘Don’t let Ronin fool you with his whole poor-evil-me routine. He’s done some really good things in his time.’

Ronin pats him on the shoulder. ‘It’s cute how you keep believing in something despite all evidence to the contrary.’

One hundred and forty-five white cars, ninety-five black cars, seventy-eight silver cars, seventy red cars, thirty-four green cars, one pink car with the words REAL FANDANGO emblazoned on it in lurid yellow, twenty-five cows, thirteen goats, one ostrich, one man dressed in a plastic bag holding a TV antenna on his head. These are the things I count on the endless road as I’m lulled into a vacant trance.

An infinite amount of time later, I regain a semi-conscious awareness of the car bumping down the road. Then I’m catapulted back into reality by Ronin mercilessly flicking my ear with his thick fingers.

‘Stop.’ I reach up to push his hand away.

‘We’re here,’ he says.

I rub my eyes. ‘Where’s here?’

‘Forest in Elgin,’ Ronin replies, lighting up a cigarette and getting out of the car. ‘Take a look.’ I open the door and follow him.

A fine mist shifts and coils among the silent trees. Ronin gestures with his cigarette towards a tree stump in the centre of a clearing. We walk through the mist and I breathe in the cold, ghostlike wisps. Venus hangs in the sky like tacky pink costume jewellery.

The burnt, blackened stump is etched with symbols in gold and silver that are so faint you wouldn’t see them if you weren’t looking for them. Ronin drops to one knee and runs his fingers across the dark wood, then spits on to the pine-needle floor of the clearing.

‘Obayifo ring,’ he says. ‘It marks the edges of their territority.’

‘What are Obayifo anyway?’ I ask.

‘Well, they’re really two distinct creatures: the queen and her offspring. The offspring are what would commonly be called faeries.’

‘Faeries? Don’t they just fly around and grant people’s wishes and shit?’

‘That’s the Disney version,’ Ronin says. ‘The world that these faeries inhabit is the Brothers Grimm version, the one where Sleeping Beauty gets nailed in her sleep by the prince and wakes up having already borne three kids.’

‘Right,’ I say, feeling that familiar sinking feeling that accompanies going anywhere with Ronin. ‘Well let’s get this over with then, I guess.’

Ronin claps me on the shoulder. ‘Now you’re starting to get into the spirit of being an agent.’

WE WALK THROUGH
dense, silent forest. There’s an ancient feeling hanging in the air. My magical senses are much more attuned to that kind of thing now, and the tingling sensation in my hands makes it seem like I’m clawing and kneading the air like a cat playing with yarn. My lungs fill with oxygen and I feel exhilarated as we walk. This is a beautiful, sacred space. If you spent enough time here you could really get in touch with yourself. The outer world would melt away and you’d be contained in a bubble of peace that—

My epiphany is interrupted by the sight of tiny figures up ahead. Tiny figures with wings. Slaughtering each other. We have walked into the middle of Faerie Armageddon.

The battle rages around us. A bloody, terrified faerie flies past me screaming, chased by two faerie warriors in armour. They catch and quickly dismember him. The forest floor is covered by faeries mounted on animals. An armoured squirrel rips the head off an angelic blonde faerie before it in turn is brained by a wild barbarian faerie with a spiked mace.

From what I can tell, the battle can be roughly divided into two sides: heavily armoured faeries flying banners with animal-skull heraldry, and wild-looking barbarian faeries consumed by berserker battle rage. Tiny whoops of bloodlust and the screams of the dying ring through the forest. The barbarians fight well, but they’re outnumbered, and the well-armed regiment of trained battle faeries are brutally methodical. The barbarian force is abruptly broken and they scatter and flee. Lancers on the back of large angry rats run them down and skewer them.

A female faerie directs her golden-armoured baboon mount towards us and removes her blood-spattered helm. She flicks her long dark plait and stares at us with the hard eyes of a killer, their coldness accentuated by sharp lines of blue paint that curve across her cheekbones.

‘I am Bodhi, Prime Enforcer of the Squirrelskull Cartel,’ she says in a high-pitched voice. ‘You are trespassing on our lands, humans. Why are you here?’

‘Greetings.’ Ronin bows with a flourish. ‘We mean no offence to the esteemed Squirrelskull Cartel, who are known far and wide for their battle prowess.’