by Rachel Ford
“Horse, or dog, or rat or rabbit – they will kill anything.”
“Oh God. I’m going to be sick.”
“Are you unwell, traveler?”
He took a moment to remind himself that the rat meat wasn’t real. This was still a videogame, after all. Then he said, “I am fine. But tell me, Friya, when they come for people, do they always arrive in the same spot?”
She nodded and pointed to a section of wall half a dozen meters away. “Yes. Over there, by the torch.”
“They always come through there?” he confirmed.
“Always.”
Now, he smiled. “Perfect. Okay, Friya, let’s get to work.”
“To work? Doing what?”
“Setting a trap, for a few hungry werewolves.”
Chapter Thirteen
Jack and Friya worked for three long hours. Once or twice, he appealed to Migli for assistance. But the dwarf was busy with the two forlorn lovers. He’d started singing about broken hearts and betrayals, and they’d joined in providing harmony and vocal and body percussions to his lead.
Jack, naturally, put as much distance between himself and the boy band as possible. Which meant in the beginning, he had to rely on the other inmates for assistance. Here, the little prison scamps he’d fed proved most useful. They could stand on his shoulders and reach heights he could not.
So little by little, the trap came together. But the boy band had a role too, and as soon as the snare was complete, he filled them in on what he expected of them. Then, in his head, he planned contingencies, since he figured that any plan that involved Migli should come with a backup for when and if he dove for cover.
Then, they waited. The hours ticked by. Jack fed his fellow prisoners again. He’d gone through most of his foodstuff now, and he only had a few coconuts left.
But he hoped that if they were hungry, their captors would be too. They waited. An hour passed, and then another.
Then an aperture appeared in the wall, exactly where Friya said it would. Jack was standing to the side of it, but when he craned his neck, he could see marble floors and a great wooden dining table beyond. He shivered. There were manacles fixed to the table, and leather straps. This was no regular dining room. This was where the wolves would bring their victim. And no one needed shackles if they planned to kill their food before mealtime. So this is where they would bring live victims and devour them – still alive.
Jack forced his discomfort away. He made himself stay in place, still and silent. A set of massive, hairy paws entered the room through the magical aperture, and then a head and chest. The wolf scanned the room. Jack hunkered down and covered his face, like he was terrified. It was only part playacting. Half of the monster’s body had entered the cell and seemed to levitate there. The other half, he knew, was back in the dining room. But half of a werewolf was horrifying enough up close and personal – from its size to its stink, from the malice in its eyes to the weapons on its paws and in its mouth.
The wolf must have found Jack’s reaction believable enough, because his eyes passed over him with barely a glance, moving on to the other cowering prisoners. Then, satisfied that no one meant to challenge him, he stepped all the way through the portal. A second wolf followed without bothering to check the prisoners. The first pass, apparently, had been sufficient.
Now a man stepped through, tall and bearded and imperious: the man he’d known as Ieon. The Pretender. He turned a scornful gaze around him, at the filth below his feet. Then, he glanced at the lead wolf. “Find the girl.”
It snarled and bowed its head in some kind of obeisance or acceptance of the order. Then, the pair sprinted forward. The crowd broke before the monsters. Children screamed, and women hauled their young from the path of the beasts. Men shielded their little ones. The old man on the wall just stared, listlessly, like he’d seen it all a thousand times.
He probably had – more than a thousand.
Jack’s mind started wandering. He was wondering how many people the werewolves would eat in a year. Certainly, not one a day. Friya’s account seemed to indicate there was usually a space of a few days between feedings. But even if they paced themselves to a single victim a week at a time, that would be fifty-two murders in a year. Which would mean it would take nineteen years and a few months of these scenes to hit a thousand.
Jack shook his head and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. His mind had been about to wander down a rabbit hole. He didn’t have time to guess how long the old man had been locked up here or to estimate how many of these scenes he’d witnessed across his lifetime. Neither was relevant nor helpful. So he concentrated. Wolves. Coconuts.
The Pretender took another few steps into the room, and a pair of wolves followed him. Two before, and two after: a hideous, supernatural bodyguard contingent.
Jack tugged the cord he’d been holding. It was the string from his bow, disassembled and connected to a tattered old prisoner’s cloak. They’d stretched the cloak between two iron torch sconces and filled it with as many coconuts as they dared. With that tug, a hail of the heavy, brown fruit rained down on the last two wolves as they entered the room. They grunted and groaned in pain.
He knew the pain. He’d been on the receiving end of those coconuts, back on the keeper’s island – back when the demon monkeys pelted him with them. Individually, they hurt. Together, they could do serious damage.
Which of course was the goal. Jack didn’t wait to see if it worked, though. He sprang up, drawing his sword as he went. The first werewolf barely had time to glance in his direction. It was still tripping over coconuts; they were all over the floor now, rolling this way and that. Its golden eyes blazed with a helpless rage as it saw its doom coming.
Jack brought the edge of the blade down hard and swift against the wolf’s neck. He cut through flesh and bone, and the creature’s head rolled off its shoulders.
Then he raced forward, trying to avoid the coconuts as he went. He kicked into a few but managed to plant his feet on solid ground. Two seconds later, he’d reached the next wolf. It had used the two seconds to its advantage, contorting its body around to spring. With two or three more, it might have proved a formidable foe. Fortunately for Jack, it didn’t have that extra time, so it had only just started to leap for him when it met his blade.
The sword missed the werewolf’s neck and cut deep into the flesh of its shoulder. The cut landed with enough force to sabotage the leap, though. The wolf collapsed backwards, snarling and roaring with pain. Jack struck a second time, and this hit did the trick. The wolf’s head rolled onto the floor, and its body slumped down. The bristling fur of its back started to vanish, and the carcass morphed into a human shape. The head, though, remained a horrible cross between man and wolf, with animal fangs and fur and human cruelty in its still features.
Now the Pretender wheeled around. “You,” he said. Gone was the kindly expression of before, or the friendly tones, or even the exasperated ones. Now, the wizard’s eyes glinted with rage. “You meddling little menace.”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “Prepare to be meddled with.” It wasn’t the coolest catchphrase. It certainly wouldn’t go down in the history books. It was no make my day or from hell’s heart, I stab at thee, or anything of that nature.
But it pissed the Pretender off, and that was good enough. The old man bared his teeth in a snarl and conjured up a spell. His hands glowed with a fiery orange light, and then fire flew from them.
A great ball of flame hit one of the dead wolves, and a sickening smell of charred fur and roasted flesh filled the air. That, and the implication it carried – that it might be the fragrance of his charred hide next – hastened Jack’s step a little.
The last two wolves were rushing back toward their master, having abandoned pursuit of Friya, or whoever their assigned victim had been, to focus on the fight at hand. It was now that the boy band stepped into action. Migli drew his axe and raced forward, fast as lightning. He went for one wolf. His backup singers went
for the second. One of them carried some kind of metal or bone shiv, and another a broken shard of plate. They jumped on the wolf from behind, driving their makeshift weapons into its neck. It writhed and screamed and flailed, flinging blood and chunks of tissue this way and that in a grisly mess. Migli’s attack was a little more decisive: one tremendous blow of his axe lopped off his wolf’s head. But both were effective. Both werewolves went down, equally dead: one headless, in a puddle of blood, and the other relatively whole, in a pool of gore.
Jack glanced away quickly. He could feel the urge to vomit surging in the pit of his stomach. And pausing to puke would be a death sentence. He kept running, in a wide circle around the wizard. The Pretender moved with him, turning to keep Jack in his sight.
Migli and the boy band, meanwhile, moved on in the same arc, keeping just out of the wizard’s sight. The prisoners, meanwhile, raced for the portal in a frenzied dash. Those who couldn’t run, walked; and those who couldn’t walk, crawled. Those who couldn’t crawl clawed at anyone who passed, latching onto whoever they could. Some of the passersby aided the less fortunate. Some kicked their hands away and moved on.
Jack figured there would be time enough to help everyone once he killed the Pretender, so he stayed focused on that. So far, his plan had worked well – really, absurdly well. Even Migli had performed exactly as he’d been asked; which, considering it was Migli, was a performance well above and beyond what Jack had actually expected. He’d planned to have to fight the whole team by himself. But the dwarf had pulled through.
That had been about as far as the plan had gotten, though. He hadn’t known for sure if a wizard was going to step through the portal, and he didn’t know how to kill one anyway. So he’d said, “And then we kill anyone else who comes through that door.”
Which sounded like a good plan at the time. But with fireballs raining down on him, Jack wished he’d put a little more attention to trifling details like that one. Now it was too late to change anything, though. So he ran, and dodged, and completed one full circle around his opponent.
The Pretender snarled at the sight of bodies pressing through the aperture. For a moment, he diverted his fire from Jack toward the escaping prisoners.
“Shit,” Jack said, which the game translated to, “Sugar.” He figured if he ever met whoever programmed the profanity filter substitution list, he might just wind up with a criminal record for aggravated assault. Unless the judge spent a few hours in the game. In which case, he’d probably win some kind of medal.
That would be a bridge he’d cross when he got there, though. For now, he had a cannibalistic werewolf wizard to stop. He dove forward with his blade level with the wizard, like it was a lance and he was jousting. He was about four good strides away. The fifth would propel him – and the tip of his sword – straight into fake Ieon.
He got three strides in when a wave of energy slammed into him. It crackled and buzzed through him. He could feel his bones sizzling and vibrating. “Mother trucker.” He couldn’t feel pain, mercifully, but he could feel discomfort. And right now, he was feeling a whole lot of discomfort. His entire body seemed to be buzzing with an electric charge, from his hairline to his toes, his eyeballs to his teeth.
The force slammed him backwards against a stone wall about a foot from the portal. He hit the stone with his back, and then collapsed forward, face first, onto a hard, lumpy surface. Stone flooring, and coconuts, he realized.
He groaned and tried to push himself upward. But a blast of fire seared into him. This time, he did smell his own flesh burning away. He was especially grateful that he couldn’t feel pain. But he couldn’t move, either. He was dropping too many hit points, and the spell carried some kind of paralyzing effect.
Then one of the boy band leaped forward with his bloodied shiv. He caught the Pretender in the side, just under the arm. Jack felt the stream of fire lift, and two seconds later he could move again.
Fake Ieon, meanwhile, spun around, swatting the dark-haired guy aside like a ragdoll. The blond was a step behind, with his own makeshift weapon flashing. Migli seemed to be settling into familiar patterns, because he had stayed at the outskirts, calling, “Have at him, my friends. Show him who he’s crossed this time.”
Jack joined the fray, swinging his longsword in a heavy, sweeping motion. The blade bit deep into the wizard’s side, and he staggered. But he stayed on his feet and loosed some kind of energy pulse that sent them all sprawling.
Jack groaned and pulled himself to his feet. The Pretender was racing for the door. He stopped two strides away and sneered at the prone men. “You think you’re clever, meddler? Well, we’ll see how clever you are when you spend your last days starving to death, begging for mercy here. There’s one way in, and one out. And we won’t be back – not while you still draw breath. You’ll go mad with hunger. You’ll turn on each other until there’s only one left. And then he’ll starve too.”
He laughed, a kind of maniacal bellow – a classic villain’s laugh. Jack tried to push to his feet, but his legs and arms wobbled under him. Fake Ieon, meanwhile, turned back to the portal and ran forward.
Then, something strange and almost inexplicable happened. The wizard’s feet flew out from under him, and he careened through the air headfirst for the stone wall. A sickening thud sounded as flesh and bone impacted with stone, and then a quieter thud as his now limp body hit the floor.
Jack managed to drag himself over, sword still in hand and at the ready. But he didn’t need a weapon. Fake Ieon’s skull had cracked in two.
For a moment, he didn’t understand it. He might never have figured it out, if not for Migli whistling. “Well, who’d have thunk coconuts would come in so handy.”
Then, Jack glanced down and understood. A coconut rolled along the stones a few inches from where the dead wizard had taken his last step. “Well, well, well. Who’s laughing now, eh, smarty pants? You’re the one done in by a booby trap. You booby.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jack paused to loot the fallen wizard. He didn’t bother to examine the other man’s inventory. He just grabbed everything and moved on to the wolves. He did the same for them, and then turned his attention to his fellow prisoners.
Most of those who could flee had already gone through the portal. But some were still secured to the wall by one contraption or another. Jack glanced through his recently acquired spoils, looking for keys. And sure enough, he’d grabbed a heavy iron keyring. He was glancing through the myriad of keys on it when Friya’s voice sounded beside him.
“Quick, Sir Jack, you must help us. There are wolves all through this enchanted place.”
“I need to free the prisoners,” he said.
“Yes, you must. When we leave, the portal will close.”
He headed to the old man with listless eyes. “We’ll start here. You’re going to be free, old man.”
The old man stared at him, not curiously, or – anything, really. He wasn’t angry or sad, happy or impatient. He just looked at Jack, emotionlessly, uninterestedly.
“Who is this guy?” he asked the young woman.
“I do not know. He has been here longer than any of us. They call him ‘fool,’ and I have never heard him utter anything at all. If he once had a name, it is lost.”
Jack sorted through his keys until he found one that fit the locks. They were a strange manner of restraint, seemingly made of iron. But as his hands neared it, he could feel a wicked power reverberating through him. It was so strong that for a moment he stood, stunned, not quite remembering what he was doing, or where he was, or even why.
Then Friya said, “Unlock him, Jack.”
And he did, mechanically, without recalling why or who the old man was. He had been given an order, and he obeyed it. That was all.
Then, the locks opened with a click, and he pulled the locking pins from the wall irons. “Come on,” Friya urged, and he let go of the metal. His mind cleared after a few steps, and he raced to the next prisoner. Jack worked qu
ickly as the mental fog lifted. He raced from prisoner to prisoner, stopping only long enough to free them, and then moving on.
Meanwhile, the old man stumbled from his restraints. He stood for a minute, bowl-legged and obviously confused. He watched the scene before him.
Jack didn’t notice at once, but then he could feel his eyes following him as he worked his way around the giant cell. The prisoners fled, one by one, as he freed them. Some could go on their own, and some Friya helped through the portal.
Finally, they’d finished. Migli, to his nominal credit, hadn’t gone anywhere. He hadn’t lifted a finger to help, but he hadn’t run off, either. Now, he said, “Quick, let us away.”
Jack returned to the old man. “Come,” he said, “we must go. I do not know how long the door will remain open.”
“Who are you?” the other man asked.
“My name is Jack.”
“You are not one of the wolves.”
“No. I am – was – one of the prisoners.”
“Then how are you free? How do you have their key?”
“It’s a long story,” Jack said. “And there are more wolves out there that I need to kill, before they get the villagers. Come now, and I’ll tell you when it’s done.”
The old man didn’t argue. Jack wrapped an arm under his shoulder and hurried him through the portal. He didn’t protest. Migli and the boy band ran on ahead.
Jack propped the man up against the wall. “Wait here,” he said. “I will return when I can.”
He stared in apparent confusion, but Jack didn’t have time to talk it through. He could hear screams and roars reverberating through the palace. He knew there were villagers out there, being torn to shreds. They needed his help. The old guy would have to wait.
He’d gone about three paces when the other man spoke. “You will need assistance.”
“We will be fine. Rest.” The truth was, Jack didn’t figure the old guy would be any help at all, and he didn’t want to waste time bailing him out of trouble any more than he wanted to stand there and let him die.
