Chased By War

by Michael Wolff

  “Thirty kegs?” That was enough to fuel most empires.

  “I don’t carry drugs. Don’t care about the price. Weirwynd mystics can kill people on their own time. They don’t do it through me.” His eyes became glassy with memory. “Some of my crew joined me, and got killed for their trouble.”

  “Yet you somehow survived,” Mykel said.

  “The first rule is to get them to fear you more than they love you. They knew who I am. The mutiny was as far as it went.”

  “A tragic story.” John said. “We have need of a ferryman’s service.”

  “Look around you Stromgald. Does it look like I carry a ferryboat with me?”

  Stromgald sighed and walked over to the tar-black tree. He did something to the trunk and suddenly the entire tree pivoted, folded backwards and receded into the island to reveal a set of stairs. Stromgald came up with a lithe canoe that looked barely able to support one man, much less three.

  “I’m going to kill him.” Tolrep growled. “I’m going to find that bastard Eddard and hang him from his toes!” His anger was understandable, Mykel thought. As captain of the ship, it was his duty to know every trick in the book. The very notion that one of his underlings had a book of his own – not to mention a trick that he himself didn’t find after an exhaustive search of his own – set torch to Tolrep’s pride.

  “Now.” Stromgald looked none too bad for a man who dragged his weight of wood onto land. He’s a machine. “Will you help us to the island over yonder?”

  “That island?” Tolrep laughed. “You’re either very brave or very stupid.”

  “There’s a difference?” Both men chuckled. “Well? Will you help us or not?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “You’ll get Eddard’s cut.”

  “Not good enough.”

  Stromgald sighed. “State your terms.”

  “I need help getting my ship back. You help me, I’ll help you.”

  Stromgald rubbed the bridge of his nose. “There are prior engagements.”

  “Don’t care. You don’t help me; you don’t get into the isle.”

  “Look.” Mykel stepped forward. “I could try to appeal to your sense of honor. I could tempt you with money. But we don’t have the time, so let’s skip past all the bullshit. A lot of people are going to die if we don’t get to that isle. If you want the blood of hundreds on your head, then take the damn boat and find your damn ship. That is, if you can find the manpower to help you, which I doubt. People tend to be wary of men who abandon people in need.”

  Tolrep chuckled. “Who’s going to tell them, exactly?”

  Mykel hid his smile. Even a blind man could see the sweat beading the privateer’s brow. “You know how fast gossip grows. Even if the story gets diluted, all it will take is one whisper. Now are you going to help us or not?” Mykel barely kept the bravado in check. If his gaze faltered before Tolrep, everything would be ruined.

  “So, let me get this straight. If I help you, you help me get my ship back. But with everything that’s going on you can’t help me immediately. This means I have no choice but follow you until everything works its way out. Otherwise your end of the bargain gets lost in the shuffle, and I get screwed. Again.”

  “Yep,” Mykel said with more confidence than he felt.

  Tolrep let out a long sigh, scrubbed his face with his hands, and nodded. “One thing first. I’d like to finish the burial before we go.”

  The three took up the appointed task with almost mechanical precision. The process was three-fold. Mykel split the head from the shoulders, John retrieved the stones for the cairn, and Tolrep scratched the name of the deceased into the stone. Mykel pretended he was putting down a hound crazed with rabies. It didn’t stop the blood from spraying across his face, into his lips and swallowed before he could react.

  The real danger was when the heads started talking.

  “You’re a fine-looking lad. I have a granddaughter about your age. Wonderful personality. You’d like her.”

  “Is my hair messy? It always gets frayed on a ship. Something about the salt or so I’m told.”

  “SHUT UP!” The sound staggered the librarian from his fear, reddening over the glares of his companions.

  “Mykel. My fingers are getting numb from this water. Would you mind trading? Good. Here. Wash your face. Can’t have you looking like that.” Stromgald took up the axe. There were no more disturbances from that quarter.

  The graves took less time to prepare than any of them expected. All there was left to do was the ceremony.

  “I know this isn’t the reception you were expecting,” Tolrep said. “Hell, nothing of this was what you expected. I know, and I’m sorry. I promise I’ll tell your families someday. And I promise to feed Eddard feet first to some sharks. You know I’m a man of my word. Rest easy, people. You’ve earned it.” After a little wine was sprayed over the cairns, the privateer returned to his guests. “One more thing. I assume this excavation of yours is highly dangerous and will probably kill us.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “All right then. Let’s get going.”

  VII

  The sun was starting its slow ascent from the horizon by the time the canoe stopped. About damn time, the librarian thought, and then clutched his cloak tighter. The winter was stronger here than at Iroverin. Every spare inch was the white of a child’s prayer. Strange that the arena was on the verge of bloodshed. Stranger still that the pair were the ones responsible for it. No, it’s the versi. They’re the ones destroying lives. Not us. The affirmation failed to provide comfort.

  Then, suddenly, they came upon houses, which stopped Mykel dead. Houses? Here? Is this a town? “Why are there houses?”

  “This used to be a town.”

  Mykel waited for more, but nothing followed. “Well? Go on.”

  “It became a nest of demons.”

  “I figured that. I don’t get the how. Or the why.”

  “Not the time.”

  Not the time? Not the time? “Make the time.” Involuntary his hand clamped upon Stromgald’s shoulder and spun him about. The ranger took one glance at the fingers at his shoulder, then raised his gaze to meet Mykel’s with flat, empty eyes. Mykel yanked his hand back as though seared by fire. The glare withered his newfound courage so fast that the librarian felt like a mouse before the descending cat. Progress commenced in silence.

  Then, suddenly, abruptly, and casually, the town became upside-down. The small, thatch-roofed houses stood point-down. The toys floated with bellies up. Birds chortled past on wings that beat against the air rather than upon it. Rats scurried here and there on their backs.

  “This is one fucked up island.” Tolrep grunted. “Is there a reason why we’re...you know...not falling into the sky?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Deus ex machina,” the librarian whispered.

  “What was that, Myke?”

  “Deus ex machina.” Stares of confusion. “In the early Greek history of theater, many playwrights wrote themselves into climaxes that didn’t end well for the hero. So, they had a “god” come down on a motorized lift to “save” the hero. The full translation is “out of the blue.” Essentially, it’s a convenient way for lazy writing. Like this place. No explanation, it just does.”

  “Let me guess, Myke. You’re a writer.”

  “On my better days.”

  “Enough,” said Stromgald. “There is no time for games. We must hurry...just try not to look down.”

  As well as a rooster being a stranger to the sun. The twisted warrens of Kal Jada flashed across Mykel’s min
d. Children melted into the walls like distorted wax. The quicksand had somehow gained ripping teeth to devour those foolish enough to step near the sand. The manor did not have anything he hadn’t faced before, and thus there was nothing Mykel could fear from this twisted insanity. I hope. Then the world pivoted as Stromgald shoved him back a few inches. Tongue ready to flay Mykel spun about...and his jaw hit the ground in astonishment.

  A thousand arms flailed blindly from the ground. Each hand was black as coal, and sported a blood-red eye from the palm, shaking with rage. Stromgald sent the katana whistling through the air, and the hands shrank back, unearthly voices screaming at the site of severed fingers or dripping juices from slashed eyes. The three warriors kept their steel at the ready.

  Chaos erupted. Beasts of legend hurled themselves to the attack, their tempers flaring upon the realization they had been duped by a minor spell, by a mere human, and that rage carried them forward. Chimeras, furies, angel-winged tengus. Dhampir, imps, serpents that walked like men. No. No! Stay away from me! Stromgald. “John! John!” Gone, abducted by the shadows. “No!” Already he felt death’s decay stirring his nape. “No!”

  “Stop shouting, Myke! Can’t hear myself think!” Tolrep, wielding his flintlocks, now shown to have needle blades extending straight from the underside of the barrels. From the thick haze of blood and gore Tolrep flickered from demon to demon with an uncanny precision, leaving only a welter of blood and limbs in his wake.

  Then John shouted, cutting through the dark. “Back to back!” Instinctively Mykel stepped back, glanced to see he was protecting Tolrep’s back as Tolrep was protecting John’s. A mere glance. The librarian turned and met the horde already deep within the battle-black.

  Over three hundred years ago, there was a nation called Carom. It was at the mercy of the dreaded warlord Rin Dalov, who collected the limbs of the children slain and fashioned them into his personal collection of accessories and charms. Mykel made a gesture, and a tengu shirked as both wings were sheared at the same time. Dalov’s favorite accessory was the necklace of shriveled hands, fashioned from his traitorous queen and the children she stole from him in her flight. Treachery could not be tolerated, be it commoner or royal-born.

  A versi brandished its four arms in a whirlwind of steel. Instead of the easy prey it expected, the beast found its first two arms severed in one motion, the second arms in another, and finally Ifirit erupting a foot from its back. The Emperor Octavius created an extra month to the Naitco calendar as a symbol of his nation’s conquests. A horse-headed amiduscias did not expect a mere mortal to dodge his heavy war-hammer, and got a bloody chasm where it’s throat used to be. A basilisk leapt into view before the horse-demon began tumbling down, threads of smoke issuing from the beaked maw. Mykel remembered well the stone-spell John Jekai once cast, and could twist away from the creature’s petrifying breath just in time for a counter that ripped the demon in half.

  The butchery ended as suddenly as it began, leaving Mykel with his limbs suddenly rubbery with the exertion of battle. It was an effort to follow both ranger and privateer; double that to ignore the corpse-laden ground at the same time. Just walk faster, damn it. Telling himself it was just a matter of safety did not help.

  “Is this a usual day for you? Sneaking into monster nurseries and killing nightmares?”

  Stromgald chuckled. “There are a host of retainers from which our services are selected, but yes.”

  “Does it get any easier?”

  “No.”

  “And not mine either,” Tolrep added.

  “You face demons daily?”

  “Ha! Start dodging pirates and bounty hunters, Myke. Then I’ll be impressed.”

  “Oh great.” Then they came upon the biggest manor Mykel had ever seen. Even reversed on its roof it was a grand sight. It must have taken the serfs decades to fashion it. As far as the three could tell the damn thing stretched to the isle’s edge. Impressive. Except...“Why aren’t we sinking?”

  The other two looked at him as though looking upon the town drunk. “No. Seriously. Why aren’t we sinking? We’re on an island with a massive manor on top of it.”

  “Magic,” Tolrep answered.

  “But the Leylines are drained,” Mykel pressed. “There shouldn’t be enough manna to support an entire mansion on the isle.” Tolrep’s face twitched with revelation, and the dubious frustration showed the thought was not a new one on John’s mind.

  “I have a feeling the answer lies within. Come. We don’t have much time.”

  Mykel paled. The courage in declaring the oddity dissolved, replaced with threatening nausea. If they can do this, then so can I. Small comfort, but the librarian clung to it with all his strength. If they can do this, then I so can I.

  The first surprise was the corpses. Twisted, gaping corpses, eyes bulging in fear. One and all shared certain dismemberment: skulls cloven to the eyes, patches of flesh and bone ripped from the scalp, exposing the brain and the fluids that leaked from it. There was no sign of swordsmen’s precision. This was brutality. Sheer, unadulterated brutality. Versi. The word was a curse ringing in his mind.

  “Myke! Stromgald! You’ve got to see this.”

  The pair followed Tolrep’s voice to a side chamber, filled to the brim with broken shelves and shattered vials. Two long tables, positioned side by side in the room’s center, lay in ruins, sheared of legs in the same frenzy as before. Skulls dressed in bandages enchanted to keep it polished like new. Vials of various liquids supported various organs: eye and tooth, jaw and ear, cut away with such precision that there was not a mark of blood to tell of the separation.

  Mykel blinked. Stromgald cast not an eye for any of the various distortions of nature. Instead he moved as if in a haze, as though something was drawing him by a string. He stopped at a pentagram drawn with the ash of bones roasted with eldritch fire. At the heart of the symbol a thread of ethereal mist curled lazily upward, splitting into even thinner threads before disappearing completely. “Manna,” Mykel breathed.

  “No.” Stromgald stretched a hand towards the wisp, and both hand and wisp jerked away as if seared. “This is not manna. Not pure.”

  “Artificial manna?” Mykel asked. The flaws came naturally to thought. What use was this magical energy if the Weirwynd could not harness it? And there was the matter of the catastrophe laid all about them. Whoever labored here met a gruesome end at the power they unleashed. Whatever purpose did this experiment serve?

  “—versi—”

  The answer slammed in his face with all the suddenness of a barn door. “Versi. They must have been eating it.”

  “Eating what?”

  Mykel offered them a slight smile; the words running through his head faster than he could speak them. “The old legends say the versi fed on magic to sustain them. What better way to appease and control versi to create an entirely new food supply for them?”

  Tolrep frowned. “But whatever happened here, it obviously didn’t work.”

  “No.” Stromgald stroked his chin. “But it would explain the massive numbers of versi outside. Versi typically hibernate this time of year.” Stromgald furrowed his brow, and the artificial Leyline disappeared. “We can’t have such an incredible power source in enemy hands. Let’s move on.”

  The next chamber was a labyrinth of disgust and horror. Versi eggs traced a flowing mosaic upon the hollowed walls. Some pasty liquid glazed the eggs a sickly yellow-gold. Mykel watched Stromgald fall to one knee for better clarity. The eggs were weeks away from gestation; they were no threat. That did not stop the librarian’s chattering. He was surprised, though, when Stromgald’s teeth joined the fright.

  The warrens were bloated with the closed shells of young fly traps. The Venus fly trap is an a
ggressive form of their species. It lays, defenseless, to lure the hapless insect within range. Once the insect is within that range, the trap snaps to life, swallowing the prey whole, where the dinner is consumed slowly over the course of a month. Mykel could imagine the serrated teeth biting down, ripping flesh from the bone. No. That’s not going to happen.

  Mykel twitched at a sound behind him. It’s nothing. Just my imagination. Despite himself the librarian turned and clamped his teeth on an oath. I am a fucking moron.

  It was big. Really big. Its head came a few inches shy of butting the twenty-foot high ceiling, not to mention the scatter-brained maze of stalactites, thick enough and more to impale a giant foolish enough to think himself invulnerable. Mykel’s teeth ground with the frenzy of a hammer to the anvil. It was an effort to deny his bladder from draining. All he could do was twitch at the monstrous eyes and the vast malice housed within, regarding, weighing and skinning upon a scale...and then deciding if the librarian was big enough for a proper dinner. Perhaps a snack.

  Wait a minute. The eyes. They were beyond number, and some of them were closed. The sight poked at his memory. Giant with many eyes...come on come on come on! You know this. The realization came down with the force of a lightning bolt. Of course.

  The soft rasp of John’s katana filled the chamber, shining silver in the lantern-light. “Wait. Don’t attack him.”

  “Him? He is the guardian of this grove and you would fail at slaying him?”

  “I gotta agree with Stromgald, Myke. That thing’s not going to share tea and dumplings.”

  Slowly Mykel circled the giant’s mammoth frame to get a better look. Yes. A hundred eyes. Again, there were eyes wide open, and others closed in the deep sleep of the exhausted. Mykel gestured Stromgald’s katana to be sheathed. “It’s okay. I know what this is.”

  “Oh, do you? What is it?”

  “Argus.” Mykel frowned at the confusion knotting the ranger’s brow. “You know, Argus. Faithful guardian of Hera.” Nothing. Tolrep massaged his sinuses. “Assigned to keep watch over the maiden Io, who was changed to a cow by Zeus, king of the gods?” Still nothing. “How can you not know these things? What do they teach you in school?” Stromgald’s sharp gaze dared both librarian and privateer to continue the debate, and the counter should they be stupid enough to pursue the argument. “Look. In the myths, he was a guardian. Obviously, he’s here to guard the eggs. If we can destroy him, it’s an easy path to the Queen.”