The other washboy, the human one, was screaming some sort of warning, but the chef paid no attention. The chef seemed to believe that Jake, having killed one of his helpers, was now duty- and honor-bound to take the dead cat's place.
Jake flung the other plate and it sheared through the warthog's neck, putting an end to its blabber. Perhaps a gallon of blood flew onto the stovetop to the thing's right, sizzling and sending up a horrible charred smell. The warthog's head slewed to the left on its neck and then tilted backward, but didn't come off. The being-it was easily seven feet tall-took two stagger-steps to its left and embraced the sizzling pig turning on its spit. The head tore loose a little further, now lying on Chef Warthog's right shoulder, one eye glaring up at the steamwreathed fluorescent lights. The heat sealed the cook's hands to the roast and they began to melt. Then the thing fell forward into the open flames and its tunic caught fire.
Jake whirled from this in time to see the other potboy advancing on him with a butcher knife in one hand and a cleaver in the other. Jake grabbed another 'Riza from the bag but held his throw in spite of the voice in his head that was yammering for him to go on, go on and do it, give the bastard what he'd once heard Margaret Eisenhart refer to as a "deep haircut."
This term had made the other Sisters of the Plate laugh hard. Yet as much as he wanted to throw, he held his hand.
What he saw was a young man whose skin was a pallid yellowish-gray under the brilliant kitchen lights. He looked both terrified and malnourished. Jake raised the plate in warning and the young man stopped. It wasn't the 'Riza he was looking at, however, but Oy, who stood between Jake's feet. The bumbler's fur was bushed out around his body, seeming to double his size, and his teeth were bared.
"Do you-"Jake began, and then the door to the restaurant burst open. One of the low men rushed in. Jake threw the plate without hesitation. It moaned through the steamy, brilliant air and took off the intruder's head with gory precision just above the Adam's apple. The headless body bucked first to the left and then to the right, like a stage comic accepting a round of applause with a whimsical move, and then collapsed.
Jake had another plate in each hand almost immediately, his arms once more crossed over his chest in the position sai Eisenhart called "the load." He looked at the washerboy, who was still holding the knife and the cleaver. Without much threat, however,
Jake thought. He tried again and this time got the whole question out. "Do you speak English?"
Yar," the boy said. He dropped the cleaver so he could hold
°ne water-reddened thumb and its matching forefinger about a qviarter of an inch apart. "Bout just a liddle. I learn since I come over here." He opened his other hand and the knife joined the cleaver on the kitchen floor.
"Do you come from Mid-World?" Jake asked. 'You do, don't you?"
He didn't think the washerboy was terribly bright ("No quiz-kid," Elmer Chambers would no doubt have sneered),
but he was at least smart enough to be homesick; in spite of his terror, Jake saw an unmistakable flash of that look in the boy's eyes. "Yar," he said. "Come from Ludweg, me."
"Near the city of Lud?"
"North of there, if you do like it or if you don't," said the washerboy. "Will'ee kill me, lad? I don't want to die, sad as I am."
"I won't be the one to kill you if you tell me the truth. Did a woman come through here?"
The washerboy hesitated, then said: "Aye. Sayre and his closies had 'er. She 'us out on her feet, that 'un, head all lollin..." He demonstrated, rolling his head on his neck and looking more like the village idiot than ever. Jake thought of Sheemie in Roland's tale of his Mejis days.
"But not dead."
"Nar. I hurt her breevin, me."
Jake looked toward the door, but no one came through. Yet.
He should go, but-
"What's your name, cully?"
"Jochabim, that be I, son of Hossa."
"Well, listen, Jochabim, there's a world outside this kitchen called New York City, and pubes like you are free. I suggest you get out while you have an opportunity."
"They'd just bring me back and stripe me."
"No, you don't understand how big it is. Like Lud when Lud was-"
He looked at Jochabim's dull-eyed face and thought, No,
I'm the one who doesn't understand. And if I hang around here trying to convince him to desert, I'll no doubt get just what I-
The door leading to the restaurant popped open again. This time two low men tried to come through at once and momentarily jammed together, shoulder to shoulder. Jake threw both of his plates and watched them crisscross in the steamy air, beheading both newcomers just as they burst through. They fell backward and once more the door swung shut. At Piper School Take had learned about the Battle of Thermopylae, where the Greeks had held off a Persian army that had outnumbered them ten to one. The Greeks had drawn the Persians into a narrow mountain pass; he had this kitchen door. As long as they kept coming through by ones and twos-as they must unless they could flank him somehow-he could pick them off.
At least until he ran out of Orizas.