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Forewarned is forearmed.

By the Sword

F. Paul Wilson

    Thanks to the usual crew for their efforts: Mary; Meggan; my editor, David Hartwell; Elizabeth Monteleone; Steven Spruill; and my agent, Al Zuckerman.

    Many thanks to Alexis Saarela, Jodi Rosoff, Dot Lin, and head honcha Elena Stokes of Tor/Forge publicity for taking such good care of me during 2007.

    Thanks also to a trio of gunnies from the repairmanjack.com forum: Biggles, Ashe, and Ken Valentine. They did their best to help solve the katana-meets-Glock question. The problem became a Gordian knot, which I finally Alexandered.

    Special thanks to Tom O'Day, whose generous charitable donation earned him a violent death within.

    And last, thanks to Paul Ramplin for the title. As often happens, I'll write a novel with no idea what to call it. Once again, I asked the members of the repairmanjack.com forum to help me out. Paul came up with By the Sword, and it stuck.

    I've always said that Repairman Jack would be a closed-end series, that I would not run him into the ground, that I had a big story to tell and would lower the curtain after telling it.

    Well, we're nearing the end of that story.

    And with only a few novels left in the series, I'm running into a problem. I'm no longer able to tie up each novel as neatly as I'd like. I've always kept longer story arcs running from book to book, but I used to be able to bring each installment to a satisfying conclusion. That, I'm afraid, is no longer the case.

    As I move people and objects into place and set the stage for the events that will tip all of humanity into Nightworld, the final chapter, this sort of incremental closure has become impossible.

    So I ask you to bear with me. You may have noticed that Bloodline didn't quite end. By the Sword picks up where it left off, and the next installment will pick up where this leaves off.

    At most, three or four more novels remain in the series. Along the way we'll be reprinting the remainder of the Adversary Cycle, synching the releases of The Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, and Nightworld with Jack's timeline. (See "The Secret History of the World" at the end of this book for the sequence.)

    More and more now, the post-Harbingers installments of Jack's tale are going to form what the French call a roman-fleuve—literally, a "river novel," with one story flowing from volume to volume. As a result, each new installment is going to feel richer, deeper, and make more sense if you've read the ones before.

    Hang in there, folks. It's been a long ride, and we've still got a lot of wonder, terror, and tragedy ahead, but I promise you'll be glad you made the trip.

    —F. Paul Wilson

    the Jersey shore

    They weren't making muggers like they used to.

    After trolling for about an hour through the unseasonably warm May night, here was the second he'd found—or rather had found him. Jack was wearing a Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt, acid-washed jeans, and his I ♥ New York visor. The compleat tourist. A piece of raw steak dangling before a hungry wolf.

    When he'd spotted the guy tailing him, he'd wandered off the pavement and down into this leafy glade. Off to his right the mercury-vapor glow from Central Park West backlit the trees. Over his assailant's shoulder he could make out the year-round Christmas lights on the trees that flanked the Tavern on the Green.

    Jack studied the guy facing him. A hulking figure in the shadows, maybe twenty-five, about six foot, pushing two hundred pounds, giving him an inch and thirty pounds on Jack. He had stringy brown hair bleached blond on top, all combed to the side so it hung over his right eye; the left side of his head above the ear and below the part had been buzzcut down to the scalp—the Flock of Seagulls guy after a run-in with a lawn mower. Pale, pimply skin and a skull dangling on a chain from his left ear. Black boots, baggy black pants, black Polio T-shirt, fingerless black leather gloves, one of which was wrapped around the handle of a big Special Forces knife, the point angled toward Jack's belly.

    "You talking to me, Rambo?" Jack said.

    "Yeah." The guy's voice was nasal. He twitched and sniffed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "I'm talkin a you. See anybody else here?"

    Jack glanced around. "No. I guess if there were, you wouldn't have stopped me."

    "Gimme your wallet."

    Jack looked him in the eye. This was the part he liked.

    "No."

    The guy jerked back as if he'd been slapped, then stared at Jack, obviously unsure of how to take that.

    "What you say?"

    "I said no. En-oh. What's the matter? You never heard that word before?"

    Probably hadn't.

    His voice rose. "You crazy? Gimme your wallet or I cut you. You wanna get cut?"

    "No. Don't want to get cut."

    "Give it or I stab you in the uterus."

    What?

    Fighting a laugh, Jack said, "Wouldn't want that." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. "I left my wallet home. Will this do?"

    The guy's eyes all but bulged. His free hand darted out.

    "Give it!"

    Jack shoved it back into his pocket.

    "Nope."

    "You crazy fucker—!"

    As he lunged at Jack, jabbing the blade point at his belly, Jack spun away, giving him plenty of room to miss. Not that he was worried about any surprises. Most of his type had wasted muscles and sluggish reflexes. But you had to respect that saw-toothed blade. A mean sucker.

    The guy made a clumsy turn and came back, slashing face-high this time. Jack ducked, grabbed the wrist behind the knife as it went by, got a two-handed grip, and twisted.

    Hard.

    The guy shouted with pain as he was jerked into an armlock with his weapon flattened between his shoulder blades. He kicked backward, landing a boot heel on one of Jack's shins. Wincing with pain, Jack gritted his teeth and kicked the mugger's feet out from under him. As the guy went down on his face, he yanked the imprisoned arm back straight and rammed his right sneaker behind the shoulder, pinning him.

    And then he stopped and counted to ten.

    At times like these he knew he was in danger of losing it. The blackness hovered there on the edges, beckoning him, urging him to go Mongol on this guy, to take out all his accumulated anger, frustration, rage on this one pathetic jerk.

    Plenty accumulated during his day-to-day life. And every day it seemed to get a little worse.

    He knew now the origin of that blackness, where it hid in his cells. But that didn't make it go away or any easier to handle. So when one of these knuckle draggers got within reach, like this doughy lump of dung, he wanted to stomp him into the earth, leaving nothing but a wet stain.

    A thin wire here, one he Wallenda'd along, trying not to fall off on the wrong side. Spend too much time there and you became like this jerk.