Snake Oil - Waiting For The Galactic Bus - Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 15
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Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 15

"There wasn't anybody like you in Plattsville," she blurted - an admission of wonder and regret not unmixed with a certain relief. Dane was pure electricity, ten times what Roy would ever be or even Woody, but a woman could get very tired loving a raw wire. Roy and Woody she understood; besides, he might not even be Protestant.

"Well, then, come on," Dane challenged the dark. "Come an make an end." His hand swept over the mantel and came away with a magnificent rapier that flashed in an arc of light. "Listen!"

Hurrying into her gown under a muted cadence from plucked bass strings, Charity heard the hollow echo of a male tread over the courtyard stones - up the stairs, striding toward the hall. Illumined in his own light, Dane bounded across the vast chamber onto a low dais, whirling, rapier held high.

"Nemesis, come! And you unfeeling stars, I hurl defiance for reply, and cast into the balance for the world to see, my soul 'gainst thy insensate cruelty."

As Dane's ringing challenge died away, Charity started at the answer, a blast of horns descending in a minor mode. Another spotlight revealed a figure leaning, negligent but coiled, against the entrance arch. Even in apparent relaxation the black-clad stranger had about him the same dangerous energy as Dane. His sardonic laughter echoed off the stones.

"Bravo, Dane. Pentametric to the end." He lifted his rapier. "But I have found you."

A stifled scream of tension tore from high-pitched strings. Muffled timpani measured the intruder's cat tread across the hall as Dane stepped down to meet him.

Charity swallowed hard. Oh, man, it's Darth Vader.

"So you have," said Dane. "But think no more to follow me. Here upon my father's hearth, with all he left me, this sword, I speed you home to the deeper hell that spawned you." The sword cut a hissing swath through the air. "Come, sir."

Moving in his own light, the stranger's blade crossed Dane's with a chilly ting and slithered along its middle third. The two slender threads of steel were no more than moving light, flashing about each other. The two men circled like lethal dancers, the nasty ting-tack! of the blades a deadly dialogue. The steel threads wove about each other, crossed, disengaged, beat with resonant echoes over the inexorable trombones that measured them.

Then in a blur too swift to follow, the dark little man thrust and lunged like a striking snake. As quick, Dane parried overhand with a twist of his wrist; the blade streaking for his heart swerved far aside, tore from the attacker's grasp and clattered on the stone floor. He stepped back.

"Your father taught you well, Dane."

"Had he schooled me so in honor, or were I pupil apt, I should be with him now. But as to sword - " Dane speared the fallen rapier guard on his own point and launched it toward his enemy's grasp. "Well enough. Come again."

"You should not lend me mercy I may not repay." The stranger leaped at Dane again in a slashing attack, closed and tripped him. Dane lost his balance and fell. The dark man's blade whirled in a circle of light, came down just as Dane rolled aside and sprang to his feet. They closed again, beat, disengaged; then the smaller man slipped under a slight miscalculation in Dane's guard and lunged.

Dane faltered; the sword dropped from his fingers. Charity cried out as he sank to his knees with a strangling cough and fell on his side. His enemy regarded him with remote pity as the music melted to poignant strings.

"Victory," he pronounced with no joy in it. "Rest, most noble among the damned."

Dane lay in his light, a stain spreading over his shirt. With a sob, Charity ran to cushion his head in her lap.

"Dane. Dane!"

His eyelids fluttered open. "Aye, Charity. Well enough."

The grave, tender music brooded over them, a repeated figure in muted brass. Dane listened with a wan smile of satisfaction. "For the time . . . you made me very happy."

"Oh, Dane. Honest, for all the trouble, I was never so happy in my whole life." A rage welled up in Charity, a fury with a virulence to frighten her. Even her voice was different when she turned on Dane's killer. "You son of a bitch."

He stepped back, offended. "Madame, please."

"Pardon my language, but damn if I don't wish I was a man for two minutes. I'd take his sword and shove it where the sun don't shine for what you done."

"For what you did," Dane corrected weakly. "So please you ... a little of your namesake for our mother tongue."

She hugged him close, desperate. "I don't want you to die."

"I must." Dane's hand faltered up to touch her lips and hair. "My father's waiting. My . . . spirit fails. But I did love you. That . . . makes fair end."

"Please don't die. It ain't fair!"

"Don't blame this churl; he's but transport. He sends me home. Oh, Father, I stained your life. For earnest, take . . . my death."

The somber music faded to silence. Dane lay still in Charity's arms.

"Oh, Dane." With infinite tenderness, Charity eased his head down onto the stones and bent to kiss the stilled lips. "I should have gone with you. You were a man to die with."

"You are worthy, child." The stranger sheathed his sword. "The sentiment becomes you."

Charity was a little impressed herself. She'd never felt that depth or voiced anything like it in her life.

"You must go now."

"Go where?" she asked listlessly over Dane's body.

"Where you will, but with dispatch. Hark!"

The wind had risen outside, a pitiful moaning sound, bleak as her own sorrow, and a voice rode on it.

Char-i-tee . . .

"I came for him," the dark man said. 'They come for you. His ghosts o'ertook him; yours will come betimes. Quickly begone."

With a last adoring look at Dane, Charity hurried away from the hall, down the worn steps and across the gray courtyard while the wind cried with its terrible summons.

Charity?

She fled across the drawbridge into the fog.

In the gloomy hall, the victor gazed down at the body graceful even in death - and signed plaintively. "Wilksey, your pauses are interminable."

One baleful eye opened and impaled him with accusation. "That is the way to play it, Mr. Kean."

"Indeed." Edmund Kean snorted with dry disgust. "Is there no o'erdone reading, no tattered cliche, no cheap effect to which you will not plummet?"

"You amateur!" Wilksey Booth shot to his feet like a jack-in-the-box released. "You charge me with overplaying?"

"Amateur? I was playing the Bard before you were born."

"Precisely, Ned. One wouldn't mind your Shakespeare lit by flashes of lightning - "

"Just so." Kean's intensity softened with satisfaction. One's better reviews were delights evergreen. "Coleridge did say that."

"Were it not for all the darkness in between."

"Take care." Kean's sword flashed again from the scabbard. "I might school you in earnest."