Overkill

by Steven Shrewsbury

  Garnet even understood the dragons, while rare, could be used as fodder in this conflict. They weren’t the important thing as the center of the opposing army held in reserve huge lines of archers and men with slings. Mostly, these were annoyances, set to scatter the Transalpinian middle. From her studies Garnet thought such men should have been deployed to soften up the lines of their forces and couldn’t comprehend why they hung back.

  Gorias shouted and rallied the scattering men to charge the center anew. At his words and example, many broke from the weakening wings and stabbed forth into the center. Led by La Gaul, the lone man on horseback in this charge, the shouting soldiers raged on into the bloody fray.

  He struck, flanked by running, berserk Kelts and green pikemen with something to prove. The field opened up, letting them near opposing lines of archers who only wore leather jerkin, not thick armor. Their ranks, arrows notched, were easily penetrated as many ran at the sudden shift in the battle. The spearhead move bit deep, dividing the middle of the Albion forces, driving Gorias to within sight of several older men on horseback, generals, he surmised.

  *****

  “Mum?” Orsen said.

  The Queen blinked and found herself back in her main throne room with the youth she’d called.

  Orsen tilted his head, concerned, “Mum? Are you well?”

  Broke from her memory, but unable to stop smiling, “Yes. Fine.” Her manner turned stern and she faced Orsen, then glanced at the two women guards. Neither set their eyes on the Queen, but stared down. “Convey my thoughts to Gorias.”

  “You’re certain he’ll do it?” Orsen’s voice sounded wary. “The stories of his lack of interest in any conflict for the past ten years are many.”

  “Aside from the dragonfire, which will get his interest, convey the other matters in due course. He’ll do it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  She turned away, eyes closed, saying, “Gorias La Gaul is a great many things. I saw him return the heads of two Generals and three wizards due to their slighting of a princess, over a century ago. He has a soft spot for girls who love him, be he bitter and old now.”

  “He will see the program through to the end?”

  Again, she looked at him with stern eyes. “Only Gorias can be trusted in full. Only he will execute it all with impunity.” Her bony hands fists, she looked to a rendering on the wall and said, “I won’t leave the throne to that bitch and her offspring.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Is there something else?”

  Orsen’s shoes shifted. “What was the slight to you, then the princess? What would make Gorias lead an army over?”

  Eyes dancing, Garnet replied, “Ask Gorias sometime. He may even tell you.”

  After a bow, Orsen departed.

  The Queen waved at the Castellan and said, “You are dismissed Turenball. I’m glad you have not fallen to the fire in the night.”

  He too left after a bow, leaving the Queen with her guards.

  Garnet never turned but said, “Speak, Alena. I feel your mouth wanting to burst.”

  “Mum,” Alena said, her throaty voice steady, eyes still pointed to the floor. “Your affection for Lord La Gaul is clear.”

  Again, Garnet’s eyes closed, remembering the night of the battle of the Somme, how Gorias came unto the chambers of the Princess, a lower quadrant to towers near the inner walls to this day, and went to his knees before her. He’d helped regain her honor that day and it felt beautiful.

  “Yes? What is it you wish to know?”

  “Why didn’t your father choose him for your husband? Isn’t Gorias of royal blood?”

  Eyes open, manner curt, the Queen replied, “I’d been promised to another since my fourth birthday. The marriage of my consort was wonderful and I produced many lovely children. Unfortunately, they cannot aide me now. Gorias, well, every young maiden has her first love, no?”

  Hand resting on her sword pommel, Alena said nothing.

  “I saved my virginity for my husband, but mind you, young lady, Gorias La Gaul was the first man to touch me.” She turned to Alena, an impish smile on her lips. “Would that every girl had a tender lover as I had for her introduction to the arts of love.” Her smile disappeared and Garnet’s rigid way returned. “Still, that was a long time ago. We shall soon see if La Gaul is truly a Lord or the dirty dog many say.”

  *****

  Orsen Riva met Gorias La Gaul in an Albion whorehouse. The young man Orsen came to Rhiannontown in hopes of contacting the legendary mercenary for a service for his Queen, the much-feared Lady Garnet Peverall of Transalpina. La Gaul attended the whorehouse to purchase a harlot. The two men, nearly seven hundred years apart in age, met when La Gaul’s twin swords sent a head flying into Orsen’s delicate hands. At the bottom of the stairs, the youth caught the hairless orb like a ball in a child’s game. An erudite palace servant, Orsen’s shock froze him. He let the head, slick with blood and sweat, turn in his hands. The eyes of the decapitated man blinked. Orsen screamed and dropped the head on the red carpet. Unlike a ball, it only bounced a few inches off the floor and didn’t roll over but once.

  “Try and cheat me out of the last whores,” the deep baritone voice of Gorias La Gaul echoed in the foyer of the candle-lit brothel. The looming legend swore and spit on the corpse of the man he had just killed. Streams of blood painted the velvety tapestry to the left of the grand staircase of the house of ill repute, but not a drop struck the imposing, armored figure of La Gaul.

  The dead man’s corpse flailed, slapping at a tattooed chest in terror, unable to deal with the reality of his own death. Ominous in his stance over the body as it grew still, Gorias’ grim face frowned at the display. His white beard drooped as his teeth ground together.

  “Now I gotta pay to clean the damn place up.” His heavy leather boot kicked the dead body and he spat on it again. “Ask to flip a coin for the services of the Mallory twins, ya prick,” La Gaul snorted, blue eyes afire. “Lucky I didn’t cut ya deep and let ya bleed to death.”

  Orson wiped his mouth and accidentally rubbed blood into his teeth. He dropped to his knees, seized the bronze spittoon in the entranceway of the whorehouse and vomited. After his spasm ceased, he looked up the stairs at the towering fable, La Gaul. The old man’s massive body obscured Orsen’s view of the two harlots on the stairs. He saw their flowing hair and heard them giggle. Orsen felt embarrassed at his weak moment. Even the aged Madam, graying, swathed in burgundy samite robes gave him a sympathetic look from across the room.

  “You killed a man for that?” Orsen rasped, checking his tan cotton breeks to see if he tore the knees on the trip to the floor.

  Gorias replied, “Turak there was a wanted man.” He pointed at the deceased man and made an obscene gesture. “Besides, he could’ve waited until I was done.” Sweeping back his mane of white hair with a jerk of his head, the old fighter turned to the red-haired women. No words were spoken as they started to ascend the stairs. Suddenly, he stopped and turned back to the youth. “Who are you, kid, and what the hell are ya doing in this place? Somethin’ tells me it ain’t for a game of hide the manhood.”

  Orsen stood, straightened his jacket and said clearly, “I am Orsen Riva from the service of Her Majesty, the Queen of Transalpina across the channel, in the name of the goddess Ernytel. She requests your skill in hunting down a suspect that has confounded the local guard and Constables back in our land.”

  La Gaul blinked and seemed lost in thought as the Mallory sisters walked their long fingernails up his substantial cloak-covered arms on opposite sides. “The goddess or the Queen?” He laughed at his own joke and then said, “Huh. Lady Garnet Peverall of Transalpina? She’s still alive, by God? Damn. The gal paid me a fortune ‘bout a hundred years ago. Well, I can use the cash if ya really are from the old lady.”

  “I can prove I’m from Her Majesty.”

  He turned and started to walk up the stairs. “You can wait a while, all right?”

 
“But…” Orsen sighed, realizing he wasn’t going to change what La Gaul had on his mind.

  At the top of the curved stairs, La Gaul let his cloak open, revealing the blue armor. The candlelight glinted off the shiny plates from his neck to his boots. The Madam gazed up after him and sent the renowned combatant a wink.

  Gorias said, “You coulda hired Turak there, I guess, he’s as much a rogue as me in this enlightened age of the judgmental goddess ya mentioned.”

  “The Queen desires your service, La Gaul,” Orsen explained calmly, glancing at the lifeless man. “Turak was near to five hundred years old and hadn’t as many kills as you.”

  Gorias grunted, “Time he was dying anyway then, wasn’t it?” A few men entered to carry out the body of Turak. Dressed in russet gypons, these men made no eye contact, and pulled their gorgets closer, having shielded themselves from the night’s chill with the musterdevilliers fabric. A few servant girls in drab, flaxen tunics started to take down the bloody tapestries.

  Just before he disappeared upstairs, Gorias called down, “The Madam there owes me a favor. If she does it wrong, tell me and I’ll take her head as well.”

  The swaggering marvel left Orsen confused by his words. The older woman, not unattractive, ample of bosom and supple of hips, now winked at Orsen. She waited until the others left and sighed. “He wouldn’t do that to me, the hoary sinner.” She then walked over, pulled up a chair and started to undo Orsen’s pants. She held his trousers firm and there was no escape, though he struggled. “He knows I do quality work.”

  Orsen tried to get out of his mind what he saw disappearing upstairs with Gorias…how the twin Mallory sisters sported three legs and were joined at the hip.

  Orsen Riva faced the chandelier and blessed the perks of being the servant of the Queen.

  *****

  In an hour’s time, Gorias staggered down the stairs and fell onto a reclining couch in the receiving room of the brothel. A portly girl with a disfigured right cheek handed La Gaul a flagon as he groaned, stretching out his long frame. He gazed up into the placid face of the auburn-haired youth Orsen and paused a moment before drinking.

  Orsen said, “I’m flabbergasted the couch can hold all of your weight with the armor and all.”

  Gorias drank, then coughed, but didn’t answer.

  “Surprised I’m still here?”

  His mane of white hair shaking from side to side, Gorias cleared his throat. “No. After what the Madam gave you, I figured you’d wait and see if she owed me any more favors.”

  “Your friendship with the Madam was much appreciated, sir, but the matter of the Queen remains.”

  Another drink fell; Gorias put his head back, adjusted the armor by his hips and sighed. “I gotta great joke here kid, but I’ll leave it go.”

  Orsen raised his right hand and then extended it, showing Gorias what he held.

  The old man squinted and then leaned forward long enough to snatch the object from the youth. “Huh. Been a long time since I saw this. Garnet was wise to send this along, as there’s no way to doubt where it came from.”

  “She said you would listen after seeing this. What is it, exactly? She wouldn’t tell me.”

  Gorias ran a thumb over the object, and then held it up. “The main hunk of the bracelet is gold, of course, but the piece that surrounds it is off a dragon’s eyelid. Kind of pretty really, ya see, some of them had double lids like crocs. I handed it to her about a hundred years ago.”

  “Very kind of you.”

  Though his eyes got lost on the bracelet for a moment, Gorias soon snapped out of his trance. “I was a bit of a romantic back then, not just whores and no feelings like now.”

  “I see.”

  “What’s so damned wrong that she needs me? Doesn’t she have guards, a police troop near the coast and some necromancer assface telling her which way is north? All of the royals have that kinda stuff to lean on. I’m sure that’s how ya knew I was in Albion, anyway, some idiot rolling bones. Why call on an old killer like me in a petty criminal case?”

  Hands on his belt, Orsen admitted, “Yes, the Queen now refers to Yannick as her chief prognosticator. His abilities are more to portent horoscopes for the Queen and make her balms for various ailments.”

  “I never saw a wizard yet that wasn’t rolling the wrong bones when he should be doing his regular job.”

  “The Queen wants to usher in an enlightened age, one under the edicts of the pure goddess, Ernytel, via the abbess Niva.” Orsen stated as if reciting a pledge.

  “I’ve heard of Ernytel,” Gorias related with little breath left in himself. “Nosy bitch who tells ya how to live your life, what to think and where to piss. I’d bend a knee to someone else if I were young.”

  “She’s the one true goddess from which all purity and light flows.”

  The old man looked at him curiously but let him talk.

  “That’s why the act of selling curses, and various acts of wizardry, are forbidden in Transalpina, land by the ocean. Transalpina’s old feuds with Albion are no more and our place will be a realm of brightness and good breeding, not one of darkness. It will take time to shrug off the bonds of old magic and primal fears, but the Queen is determined to see it happen.”

  Gorias drank before saying, “Yeah, I heard you all will burn them if caught, the necromancers and such.”

  “Mostly a token gesture at first, just to drive the practice off the street corner.”

  “And back into the privy where it belongs?” Gorias stifled a laugh. “Better than selling babies on the street corner like they do in the far East for such ceremonies. I’d sooner all wizards went the way of the dragons, if I had my say.”

  Orsen’s keen eyes studied La Gaul’s dragon skin armor and fumbled for his words, then blurted, “Are the legends true that it was you that killed the last of the dragons?”

  Gorias sipped the drink again. “Ya believe everything you hear around the campfire or at a mead hall?” Again the old man laughed before saying lowly, “Funny, there aren’t any dragons around any more, are there?”

  Eyes on the nail of the dragon on Gorias’ forearm, Orsen blinked. “Odd that you mention dragons, La Gaul, for part of this may involve them in a rather strange way.”

  “There aren’t any more dragons,” Gorias said with a firm voice, watching the disfigured server trim the lamp near the doorway. She curtsied before leaving, smiling at Gorias. The warrior waved under his chin at her and took another swallow. “All right, ya have my interest, kid. What makes ya think that a dragon could be involved in any of this trouble you talk of? What’s happening, anyway?”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t be a dragon, per se, Lord La Gaul…”

  “Call me Gorias.” La Gaul stared at the back of his right hand and his eyes traced a crossing of scars there. “I haven’t been a Lord in hundreds of years.”

  “Fine, then, Gorias, a dragon couldn’t fit into the bed chambers of these politicians who are being burnt to death.”

  His head snapped back on the plush pillow, Gorias roared with laughter. “By the God of Heaven, kid, yer a riot!”

  Still serious, Orsen stated, “It’s not without good reason the dragon idea was postulated, sir. These men were of high office, usually castellans for the Queen herself or her family’s households. They were found in small rooms burnt alive, yet the fire didn’t consume the entire establishment. You see, dragonfire…”

  “…isn’t like regular flame,” Gorias completed his sentence and sat up on the couch. He winced and rubbed his back-brace. “Dragon fire is gelatinous like a dessert dish and will eat away what it gets deposited on like an acid. Yet, it has a strange combustible quality that’ll only go until the substance burns out.”

  “Your help is requested for a great sum,” Orsen said and fell quiet when Gorias stood up. The big man lost none of his menace in his old age, the youth thought. “I can take you to the latest scene across the channel if you are up to it.”

  A sour look spread on
the harsh features of La Gaul as he snapped, “I’m ready for more than just sniffing after a Queen, the goddess Ernytel, and her trouble, ya damned runt. Must be a real problem if yer Queenie sent ya after me. These politicians her friends or family?”

  “Friends, of course,” said Orsen as La Gaul stretched.

  “Is there something else she wants?”

  Orsen hesitated and then said, “It looks rather bad if the Queen is trying to create a better world and her castellans are found dead in rooms above taverns.”

  “You’re right there,” Gorias agreed, watching Orsen amend the cuffs of his jacket. Great reflexes undiminished, La Gaul snatched the young man’s right hand and turned it over. “That’s some tattoo for a house servant,” Gorias jabbed at the mark on Orsen’s wrist. “Why would a pretty boy like you have such a thing?”

  His hand pulled back, Orsen wore an angry look. “It’s a tattoo of good fortune, endowed on me by Yannick, the Queen’s Prognosticator.”

  Gorias raised an eyebrow as he wrapped his cloaked about himself. “Yeah, if ya paid enough, I wager that wizard endowed you with special rites in that mark, to ensure good fortune.”

  A mild shrug later, Orsen said, “That’s no one’s business but mine.”

  “Take me to one of these scenes, kid…I…” the old eyes of La Gaul looked up and he said quietly, “wonder why I gave ya that favor from the Madam? Maybe the necromancy of that there Yannick is strong enough to give ya good luck.”

  Orsen frowned. “Such major arcane powers are illegal in Transalpina. What of it then?”

  Gorias smiled and slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make the boy take a step. “No real reason, just curious that’s all. Hell, ya better walk slow with me, kid, if yer lucky. I need all the good fortune I can get these days.” He tossed the bracelet to the Madam of the house and performed a perfect bow. Orsen stared for a long time at the bracelet as it slid on the whore’s wrist, but said nothing.