Prisoner 52 Read Online Free PDF Page B

looked up at him with eyes swelled shut and so Sejanus stopped, knife poised in the air. "Let me up. Let me die on my feet, like a man."
    "Let him up." He said and the Blackbloods which flanked the man animated, but froze at the noise of Hulk's snort.
    "This isn't a man." He said. "It's a dog. Cut him like one. Ear-to-ear on his stomach. Let him die that way, prostrate like he should have lived."
    "Did you fight?" Sejanus asked him.
    "Did he?" The big Blackblood said and pointed furiously at the Unionist, arm rigid with taut and inked muscle.
    "I asked you." He said and took his eyes from the Unionist to level them at Hulk.
    "No," He said and let fall his arm, but stood still on his toes and kept his fists clenched at his sides. "No I was here, lot longer than you - neophyte."
    "If I'm to kill him," Sejanus said and slipped out of his greatcoat. "Then I kill him my way. Fighting man to fighting man, soldier to soldier. Give him a blade and clear away."
    "Pfah," Hulk ejaculated and threw up his arms, turning away. "Should we let him recover in the infirmary first? Gods."
    "He's right." Anders said and looked after Hulk, who stood with his hands on his hips and away from the rest shaking his head at this feet. "He wants a knife, so give him a knife."
    One of the three men behind the Unionist produced from behind his belt a true dagger, long and sharpened fine and with a cutting edge, and then Sejanus began to wonder. The man held it to each of his eyes and cut the puffed up tissue, drained the fluids, and stood to drop into stance. The Blackbloods stepped away as they were bade and assembled themselves on all round outside the empty scaffolding. Sejanus brought his shank and wits to bear and stripped to the waist, tied the arms of the jumpsuit tight about his hips.
    They began then to circle one another, falling in and out of the shadows that clung to the sparse shafts of light filtering down from above. The Unionist made a low lunge at him of a sudden through the dark and he shifted his leg away from the blade and stepped back. He saw the glint of metal and watched it as he transferred the knife to the other hand. Sejanus stabbed at him in an overhead thrust as he did so and the Unionist ducked out beneath only narrowly and was grazed still along the shoulder. He pulled the blade away in haste and stabbed again in a straight, powerful forward motion that drove his foeman backward over a divider that ran across the floor. The Unionist stumbled backward and tried to catch his balance again when Sejanus swooped in at him with a quick downward slash and the greed of a quick kill.
    The man recovered in time and caught the strike wrist-to-wrist with an aim of winding round his hand to catch hold of Sejanus's arm and though he indeed gripped it, it did not move. His blade and the man's fist shook as they challenged one another and while they'd hold there the Unionist brought his long dagger up through the black and lances of light like some silvery eel possessed of daemonic speed. But Sejanus was the quicker and slipped his knee in the path of the upraising arm. The blow thus recoiled and the man tried again for the back of the leg that held him at bay and Sejanus pivoted sidelong, losing briefly the contest of his own knife. The Unionist made to take him and at last arrest him at his knifehand; but Sejanus rushed forward then in a mad gambit and of the sort that a man needs to be unexpected.
    The Unioinst toppled backward under the sudden force and Sejanus was upon him. The long knife cut him deep along his ribs in the fall and he could feel the warmth ooze out against the cold sweat that coated his skin. He drove his own shank with both hands at the Unionist's throat and the air was empty now but for the seething of their breaths, taken through the teeth and quick. There was no world for them but theirs. They had gone to that realm that all fighting men are spirited to in such bouts, duels of close blood and honest survival, wherein