The New Hero: Volume 1

by ed. Robin D. Laws

  Duncan! Where are you? Where’s Nihilan?

  Here!

  Iona heard Duncan bark again from somewhere out in the night. She ran toward the sound. Rocks and twigs tore at her stocking-clad feet, causing her stumble.

  Finally, in moonlight filtered by the clawed hands of trees, she saw Nihilan standing among the rocks at the bank of a small stream.

  Duncan?

  Don’t worry about me. Stop him!

  Iona held both weapons ahead of her as she crossed the distance toward the sorcerer. She took a practiced Pranic Pistolry stance as she moved, with one weapon held straight out, and the other behind her, straight up, like a scorpion’s tail, ready to strike.

  Nihilan did not move.

  Closer, Iona heard the man chanting softly. She saw that his eyes were closed. He didn’t even seem to know that she approached. With a swift motion, she flipped a massive pistol around in her hand and brought the handle down upon Nihilan’s head. He crashed wordlessly to the ground, his face colliding messily with a large, wet stone.

  Iona took a moment to see that he was unconscious, not pretending nor, in fact, dead. Then she looked around for Duncan.

  As if in response, he barked. She followed the sound again through the dark. Finally, she saw the dog with his leg trapped between two large stones.

  Did it with a spell, Duncan said psilently.

  ‘Hang on,’ Iona said aloud. She gingerly stepped toward him, getting her feet wet in the shallow stream. Once she got herself into a good position, she was able to move one of the rocks enough that Duncan could pull himself free.

  He licked her face, and then his paw.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Iona said with a smile.

  Despite Iona’s assurance that Nihilan was down, Duncan still went to check for himself.

  What happened? Iona asked her companion.

  He used some kind of spell on me. Before I knew it, he was free and out here chanting. When I tried to stop him, the rocks grabbed at me.

  ‘Sounds like he had this well planned,’ she replied aloud. ‘Except he wasn’t ready for me at all. I wonder why.’

  Maybe he did what he needed to do by the time you got here.

  What does that mean?

  Duncan made a noise somewhere between a growl and a whine and shook his head violently. Iona knew the gesture to be the equivalent of a shrug.

  ‘Maybe when―if―he comes to, we can ask him.’

  *

  Nihilan didn’t return to consciousness until many hours after sunrise. Iona had seen to his head wound, but had already determined that his fall would result in a terrible scar that would mar his face for the rest of his life. Of course, once he got to trial, his life would likely end soon thereafter. Trafficking with demons was punishable by death under Imperial law, and Iona had no argument with that.

  Nihilan was bound to the wooden post as he was before, but this time Iona had hobbled his legs and bound not just his wrists, but had used leather cords to bind his fingers. Mostly, though, she imagined that his wound would keep him from using a spell. Because of this, she took the small risk of keeping his mouth free so that he could talk.

  She squatted next to where he sat on the dirt floor. ‘What in all the hells were you doing out there last night?’

  After she asked him the same question three times, he finally answered, ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘That’s no answer.’

  He spat clotted blood. ‘The Uquanath have many ancient pacts. There are things out here of which you know nothing, from ages undreamt by your kind.’

  Nihilan grinned widely, despite the fact that it likely pained him greatly. ‘Soon, however, soon you will know these things all too well.’

  Duncan barked outside. Iona turned toward the open door. Duncan?

  Come out here, Iona.

  Iona gagged the sorcerer again, rechecked his bonds, and went to the door. She saw Duncan standing vigil. Lotus was nearby as well, but nothing or no one else.

  What’s wrong?

  The people. They’re all gone.

  Iona looked about again. The scattered wooden buildings―and, more telling, the open spaces between them―stood in silence.

  ‘Where did they go?’

  Duncan shook his whole body. Don’t know.

  ‘Did you see them leave?’

  Duncan sniffed at the ground. He took his time examining the area around them before answering. Saw a few early this morning, then no one. No one’s been nearby here since then.

  Iona realized that Duncan likely had not slept.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go inside and rest for a while. You can keep an eye on him in there as well.’

  Duncan paused, took a long look at Iona, before bounding into the shed.

  Convinced that Nihilan’s injury would keep him in place better even than his bonds or the suspicious dog sleeping next to him, Iona walked to the nearest house. She knocked on the door, calling out a greeting.

  No response came.

  She went to the next house and knocked on that door. Again, no one answered. Iona did not hear anyone inside. She tried a few more homes, with similar results.

  Iona went to the church in the center of Sorrow’s Hollow. She knocked on the door, but then just tried to open it. It was, after all, a church. The door opened only slightly—a chain latched on the inside kept it from opening further.

  ‘Hello?’

  No response came, although logically someone had to be inside, because the chain had been latched from within. Iona peered into the unlit interior, and saw a fairly typical looking interior with pews and a lectern. Only the altar appeared strange. Topped with a yellow and blue cloth, the altar held a strange silver shotgun adornment atop it, held aloft on arms of silver. Iona wasn’t certain if the weapon was real or simply an object of… veneration? She had never seen the like.

  ‘Ain’t no one talkin’?’

  Iona turned to her left to see a man standing just five strides away from her. Her surprise at having someone sneak so close to her ended when she saw the intricate blue tattoos on his face and hands. These marked him as a Mamoui, one of an infamous organization of thieves and sometimes assassins Iona and Duncan had faced before. They had barely survived the experience.

  Her hand was already on one of the leather covered grips of her pistols, but she didn’t draw. The man appeared unarmed. He wore a cloth and leather jacket too small to conceal any serious weapons.

  ‘What’s your business here?’ Iona asked.

  The Mamoui smiled. ‘I keep m’self here in Sorrow’s Hollow from time to time. Marshalls and… Soulbound Knights don’t come ’round here too often. And the folks here are all right.’

  Iona nodded. That made sense for a thief. This was an excellent hideout. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Hidin’, I’d say. You most likely won’t find ’em.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Search me. You do somethin’ to spook ’em?’

  Iona didn’t answer him, but she thought for a moment that the villagers might have heard Nihilan’s chants the night before. That was certainly the kind of thing that might spook a simple settler.

  ‘Name’s Jarisus. You?’

  ‘Iona.’

  ‘Who’s that’n up there with you in the shed, Iona?’

  ‘My companion, Duncan.’

  ‘No, I mean the dude wit’ the busted face.’

  He’d obviously been spying on them for some time. And he was good. She kept her hand on her weapon. ‘A criminal I’m taking to trial. You have a problem with that, Jarisus?’

  ‘Nope. Can’t abide no criminals, m’self,’ he replied with a smile and even―in Iona’s opinion―an audacious wink. Jarisus had a charisma about him that probably helped him in his chosen profession. She could imagine him talking his way out of a lot of tense situations. He was easily twenty years her senior, but even with the thick tattoos she could see that he had a clean, well-shaped jaw, a small nose, and brig
ht eyes. He showed straight white teeth when he smiled, with a slight gap in between the two in front.

  Iona couldn’t find it in her to trust him. It would not be out of the question to think that Nihilan’s people, the Uquanath, would hire a Mamoui spy to try to free him. In fact, Jarisus might not be working alone. She immediately headed back to the shed.

  Duncan?

  When no reply came, she sent the psilent message again. Duncan?

  Duncan’s eventual response indicated that he’d been asleep. He said that everything was fine, however. Iona arrived at the shed. Nihilan had not moved. She searched the perimeter and satisfied herself that no immediate threats presented themselves.

  Duncan awoke when she came back into the grain storage shed.

  ‘It’s time to get moving, Duncan. Nihilan needs to be in Duralo in four days.’

  Duncan barked in agreement.

  Iona bent down to free Nihilan after gathering up her gear. Despite the fact that she untied him from the post, he did not awaken. Even when she became more forceful in her attempts to wake him, he did not stir.

  Undeterred, Iona carried him out to her horse and indecorously tied him to the saddle. Looking around carefully for Jarisus but not seeing him, Iona led the horse away from the shed. Duncan guarded the rear.

  They hadn’t traveled a mile before Lotus began to make pained noises. Iona stopped her.

  ‘Duncan, what’s wrong with Lotus?’

  Duncan paused for a moment, mentally speaking with the horse.

  She’s weak, Iona. Something’s wrong. She’s unsure if she can support his weight.

  She’s sick?

  Maybe. Duncan sniffed at the horse’s hooves. Or maybe someone’s done something to her.

  ‘Dammit.’ Ask her if anyone came anywhere near her or her feed during the night.

  Iona looked around as she patted Lotus’s side lovingly and made a cooing sound. The dense crowd of trees obscured the sun with a menacing darkness. The babbling of the unseen creek was the only sound―no animals stirred in the woods.

  Something was very, very wrong.

  She doesn’t know, Iona. It seems likely, however.

  Iona knew Duncan to be more than a bit paranoid, but Iona thought it seemed likely as well. She was still worried that Jarisus might be involved.

  With Lotus ailing, however, she was going to have to either go back to the settlement or find a nearby place to hole up. She couldn’t move the unconscious sorcerer very far under her own power.

  Do we go back or stay out here, Duncan?

  I didn’t like that town, Iona. Those people were strange.

  Iona nodded. ‘I agree. Let’s find someplace safe and hope that Lotus works this out of her system.’

  The best place they could find before Lotus threatened collapse lay at the top of a small rise with thick brush on one side. Both Iona and Duncan could feel something amiss in the woods.

  Lotus’s condition improved slightly once her load and saddle were removed, but that blessing didn’t last. Iona kept a few herbs and remedies in one saddlebag. She gave them to the horse reluctantly, because while they might help her condition, they would almost certainly put her in a deep sleep for many hours.

  By the time the obscured sunlight faded entirely, Lotus was lying down in a bed of heather and lupine. Iona lit a lantern but kept the flame very low. Duncan padded around in a tight perimeter. Iona crouched next to Nihilan’s still unconscious form, a hand resting on one weapon.

  That weapon was in her hand half a heartbeat after she first heard movement in the distance. A moment later, she drew its companion with smooth clarity as a second sound confirmed the first. Something approached.

  Iona.

  I heard.

  Smells bad. Smells like old death.

  Iona could hear Duncan began to growl.

  Let’s keep quiet. Maybe it will pass.

  It’s coming right for us. And it’s not alone.

  Duncan’s nose and ears were uncanny, but Iona relied mainly on her eyes. She didn’t act until she saw the thing worming its way through the trees. Despite its man-like shape there was no mistaking it for a human. The thing scuttled with a palsy that made it somehow more like a segmented insect than a person or even some woodland beast. Its hairless, gray skin showed a striated pattern the color of a bruise, just beneath its surface. Long fingers writhed at the end of spindly arms like newly hatched serpents. The thing’s worst features, Iona thought, were its eyes, yellow like dried pus and as lifeless as gravestones.

  When it got close enough for Iona to see that another such thing followed behind, it hissed like an angry animal. Iona could smell it, and Duncan was right. It stank of rot and death.

  That was all Iona needed. With an aim so well-practiced that it required no effort or thought, she shot the closest thing in its sunken chest. It staggered backward, but did not fall. With a smooth motion, she brought the other pistol up and fired again, this time striking the horrific thing where its clavicle would be, were it human. Again, it took a step backward, then pressed forward, hissing in anger. Its wounds produced no blood, just a thin, oily bile the color of rotten teeth.

  Closer now, Iona saw that its mouth swarmed with jagged teeth surrounding a black tongue. She shot it again, this time in its hideous face. Normally, at this range, a hit from her Karrath-Ultcher six-shooter would all but remove a foe’s head, but in this case it drilled a hole through the thing’s right eye that extended to the back of its skull. It was like shooting into iron rather than flesh and bone.

  And still the thing did not fall. Instead, it screamed shrilly, turned and ran off into the darkness. It might be impossible to kill them, but at least she could drive them away.

  The other creature moved in to take the place of the first. At least two others writhed their way through out of the deep wood.

  Calling upon her Pranic training, Iona began firing both heavy pistols in a complex rhythm of violence. She became a thing of grace and beauty in the eye of a gore-filled storm of brutality. Her movements were both fluid and precise, making each shot count.

  No matter how exacting the punishment she dished out, however, it took at least three hits to drive one of the creatures back into the woods. And they kept coming. Iona could hear Duncan’s angry growls. She knew that her companion was fighting off more foes behind her.

  Iona calmly reloaded. Her practiced motions might have appeared to be the arcane gestures required in casting a spell. Then her weapons fired their careful barrage once again, each step and gesture a honed movement like that of a dancer.

  Suddenly, one of the creatures loomed large, almost upon her. Its breath stank of putrescence. She could see the bloodlust welling up in its flat eyes. These things were blood-drinkers.

  She thrust the barrel of her weapon directly into its mouth. She fired even as it reflexively bit down. The blast removed the back of its head and it fell to the ground. Without hesitation, it scrambled backward like an insect, leaving a wide trail of black bile behind it.

  Duncan! Are you all right?

  Bite them hard enough and they run, but it’s not easy. I have to all but chew an arm off.

  Hang in there.

  In the shadows beyond her lamplight, she heard gunfire not her own. She sent the only remaining blood-drinker in sight screaming off into the night and then looked toward the shots.

  A man―not one of the things―stepped into view.

  ‘Don’t shoot, Iona.’ It was Jarisus. He held a red-handled six-shooter in his hand.

  ‘What in all the deep places are you doing here?’

  ‘Giving you a hand with the hemovores.’

  Hemovores. That made sense.

  Duncan came out of the brush with a vicious snarl. His coat was aflame with bloody wounds.

  Hold up, Duncan. He might actually be on our side.

  Those things got to Lotus, Iona.

  Iona looked to her horse. In the midst of the fight, she hadn’t seen or even heard the thin
gs attack Lotus, but in a short amount of time they’d torn the poor animal into pieces.

  Dammit! I’m so sorry, Lotus, Iona thought. You deserved much better than that, my friend.

  She faced Jarisus, unable to keep the anger and loss from her voice. ‘Why would you come out here to help us? How did you know where we were?’

  Jarisus’ reply was as calm as ever. ‘Well, to answer the second first, I just followed the stream of the beasties. They were drawn to you and your dog like bees to nectar.’

  Or to the sorcerer, Duncan said psilently.

  ‘And as to why, well, I figure with all these hellborn freaks up and about, I’m safer with you still kickin’ than without you.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘Beats me. I first saw them down by the river.’

  Where the sorcerer was spouting his magic, Duncan told Iona.

  Yeah, I’m with you, partner. I think it’s pretty clear now what he did.

  ‘Didn’t see them until after sundown,’ Jarisus said. ‘Don’t think they like the sun. But there’s a mess of hours before sunrise.’

  ‘You’ve heard of these things before?’

  ‘Yeah. Drallis in town told me about them once when we shared a bottle of black ice whiskey. Came up and about around here when he was a youngun’.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Dead things. Ancient things that lived here long before our kind settled the frontier.’

  ‘Is there some way to kill them?’

  ‘Not sure “kill” is the right word. As you saw, you can blow ’em apart, but that don’t kill ’em. Worse, they’ll heal those holes we blasted into them real fast. They’ll be back Iona.’

  ‘Well, shit,’ Iona whispered.

  ‘But he did mention something real interesting. Maybe something of use.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, he was drunk as a brickbug, remember… but he said that the town had a weapon. A shotgun crafted by an angel back in the old days. It kills the hemovores.’