Small Wars

by Matt Wallace

  “The fuck I will.”

  The leprechaun presses the tip of her spear into the pulsing center of flesh covering Cindy’s carotid artery. It must sound like the beating of a war drum to her.

  “You will fight, or you will die. In bondage. If you be a warrior, you’ll want to die on your feet with your axe in your hand. So you will fight.”

  “Those boys are my comrades and my friends. I won’t fight them.”

  “Then they’ll kill you. On your feet. With your axe in your hand. But in the end your kind always fights. You kill everything, until there’s nothing left.”

  The leprechaun raises her spear.

  Cindy flinches.

  This time, however, a tiny crimson ribbon, like a thin stream of blood underwater, flits from the tip and touches Cindy’s wound, closing it.

  “The touch of a god,” the leprechaun says wryly. “If only your kind appreciated it instead of damning it.”

  * * *

  The gnome’s name is Auch and he looks ancient even for a creature made of grizzled beard and stony flesh.

  “I was a prisoner of your kind for a time,” he explains as he balances on Ritter’s shoulder.

  It’s not the high-pitched helium voice of a microscopic character in a fantasy film. It sounds more like an aged whisper.

  “I learned to speak your modern tongue. Brought it back to the Gnomi. Comes in handy when some wise-ass plastic-helmet-wearing worker bungles into these shafts.”

  The old gnome grinds the granite meat of his own palm into a fine powder and sprinkles it on Ritter’s wounds.

  The Gnomi want them both in optimal condition for the battle.

  “Why live so close to the surface with the kind of power you have?” Ritter asks. “Everything I’ve heard about elementals has them dwelling much deeper.”

  Auch sighs. “Once we kept the whole world spinnin’,” he says, the single gnomish voice barely a whisper to them both. “’Twas our task. We formed and re-formed and moved the great rocks to keep the surface from tearing itself asunder. We moved the great wheel of its core to keep it from being spun off into oblivion.”

  “What happened?” Ritter asks.

  “The world changed. The need for elementals lessened. The core became molten. The heat gave rise to creatures like the ones who fathered your kind. We were forced farther and farther from the fire.”

  Auch works his way around to Ritter’s other shoulder, concentrating on his wounds. “Yessir. The Earth you’ve made is not a place for gnome nor sylph nor salamander anymore. The undine’ll be next. When you’ve spoiled the land you’ll delve to new depths of the sea. You don’t know no better.”

  Ritter has nothing to offer that assessment, or its truth.

  “Why fight the Tuath Dé? Why not band together to make the most of what’s left?”

  “They still think they’re gods. We still think we’re the wardens of the Earth. Nowhere shall the two meet, I reckon. So we’ll keep killing each other over who’s the right to these miserable mined-out hollows till we make slaves of the few of them’re left or they do the same to us. And there’ll come a time when those that’ve survived the battle to come fade into the rock and that’ll be the end of us both.”

  “Wow,” Moon says weightily (for him, anyway). “That’s some fucked-up shit, little dude.”

  “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to your people,” Ritter says. “I really am.”

  Auch snickers. “Aye. Your folk always are. Shame they never feel that way before they do a thing.”

  * * *

  “Is it always like this when the lot of you go out?” Ryland asks.

  He’s sitting on the ground, one hand cradling a half-smoked cigarette while the other holds a clotting, blood-soaked compress against his skull.

  Hara doesn’t answer.

  He’s busy smashing a heavy pickaxe against the cave-in that’s preventing them from searching for the others.

  “I’ll abstain from now on, if it’s all the same to you,” Ryland adds.

  Hara just grunts.

  Whether it’s a reply or a sign of exertion from bringing the axe against the rock futilely and for the three hundredth time is unclear.

  * * *

  Neither Ritter nor Moon can guess how deep beneath the surface they are now, but they both feel as far removed from the world above, their world, as they ever have in their lives.

  The Gnomi and the Tuath Dé have chosen a vast, stalagmite-filled cavern as their epic battlefield. The armies are mustered on opposite sides of it. They’re too small to take a proper counting, but there can’t be more than five hundred in either force.

  Ritter wonders fleetingly if those numbers represent their entire respective species.

  If the lives of his team weren’t in immediate peril he might be filled with sorrow and sympathy for both collectives.

  “Is there a plan here, boss?” Moon asks nervously.

  “For you? Stay in the background and try not to get killed.”

  “Check. What are you going to do?”

  “Get to Cindy. Try to hack our way out of here. Keep an eye on us.”

  Ritter stares at Cindy across the subterranean cavern. She looks very much the way she did when he first put eyes on her, stripped to the waist and prepared for combat, only this time, rather than a plastic knife, she’s armed with the razor-edged tomahawk he once gifted her.

  He can’t read her expression.

  He doubts she can read his, either.

  2012—Tijuana, Mexico

  “Hígado del chupacabra!” the fat master of ceremonies announces, holding a slick, fetid organ high before plopping it down on the tabletop between Moon and his opponent.

  The crowd packing the tiny bar cheers raucously as bet takers move through their ranks exchanging hand-scrawled tickets for cash.

  Moon is too busy sucking the pickled scorpion from a bottle of mescal to fully take in his next challenge.

  His opponent, however, a fierce looking curandera who must be pushing eighty years of age, is focused solely and intently on the piece of offal between them. She grips a knife and fork in her withered fists and steels herself.

  Somewhere in the back of the bar Ritter wedges himself between drunken tourists and sober locals. He spots an American in a floral resort shirt flirting with one of the bartenders and wades to him.

  “Migs!” Ritter yells through the cacophony.

  The man dressed for a Hawaiian vacation turns at the sound of his name and grins wide when he spots Ritter.

  They embrace briefly a moment later and then Ritter motions to the center attraction of the evening.

  “That him?” he asks Migs.

  “Shit, Ritt, this kid is unbelievable! I never seen nothing like him even when we were chasing rogue brujas through the Andes with the WET team. He’s been down here a month and I’ve watched him eat and drink shit that would turn a harpy inside out. It’s like he has some natural immunity to curses and hexes. And the metabolism of a billy goat on meth on top of that.”

  Ritter just nods, although inwardly he feels a sudden rush of adrenaline, the kind that occurs at the end of a quest.

  “Just the boy I’ve been looking for,” Ritter comments casually.

  In the middle of the room the master of ceremonies unsheathes a machete and cleanly severs the organ atop the table in half. He sweeps one piece directly in front of Moon and the other in front of the curandera.

  The entire bar abruptly goes silent.

  All eyes are on the table.

  Moon, humming a tune that sounds vaguely like a Green Day song, picks up his knife and fork and cuts into the meat as if it were a grass-fed, medium-rare porterhouse.

  He’s on his fifth bite by the time the curandera slices one tiny, carefully considered bite and forks it resolutely into her mouth.

  She immediately spits it onto the floor, grasping her throat.

  A few seconds later her flesh has turned green.

  Half the crow
d cheers while the other half jeers.

  Money is exchanged and tickets are torn apart and cast to the floor.

  Moon continues eating happily.

  Hours later the bar is empty and the fat MC is getting thoroughly plastered with Migs and his new bartender companion.

  Moon is in a corner booth counting the evening’s take in half a dozen forms of currency.

  Ritter slides into the booth across from him.

  He’s only carrying one form of currency.

  Dollars.

  Ten thousand of them.

  Which he plops in a bundle atop the table.

  “What’s this?” Moon asks.

  “A signing bonus,” Ritter explains. “I want to hire you to come to New York and taste test a bunch of weird magical shit for me on a regular basis.”

  Moon reaches out and picks up the bundle.

  “Like, a regular job?” he asks.

  Ritter nods. “Trust me,” he says. “For you it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  Now

  It’s like no battle Ritter or Cindy has experienced.

  They’ve both been soldiers, but never living war machines, and that’s what they are now. The gnome and leprechaun leaders are each directing them to combat the thickest throngs of both sides, decimating front lines on the ground with kicks of their feet.

  Cindy is tasked with beating back the Gnomi construct of balled-up armored warriors with her tomahawk, keeping it at bay so it can’t break through the leprechaun’s multicolored pathways being shot through the air.

  Ritter, meanwhile, has been given a short sword with which he severs those same beams as if cutting through a jungle thicket, dissolving them and causing the leprechauns surging across the strips of light to tumble to the ground.

  The cavern is streaked with rainbows, over and between and around which spherical armored gnomes are flying every which way. The air is filled with tiny spears, and Ritter is punting leprechauns while trying not to step on any.

  Cindy, meanwhile, is using the flat of her tomahawk’s blade to bat away gnome balls coming at her from every angle.

  Moon watches his teammates from behind a stalagmite. Thus far he’s gone unnoticed by both sides.

  It’s all relatively chill, he thinks, until a gnome flies out of nowhere and banks the side of his skull.

  In the next moment Moon is reflexively chewing grit, the crunch more than the mossy taste causing him to spit the dirt from his mouth.

  He blinks away blood and sees Ritter besieged by leprechauns, dozens of them scrambling up both of his legs.

  Moon turns his head just in time to watch a gnome collide with Cindy’s gut and knock the wind from her.

  For the first time in a long time Moon—who is insufferable in his nihilism on most days—feels genuinely pissed off.

  A warrior of the Tuath Dé leaps into his field of vision, a spear in his hand and a battle cry on his lips.

  Moon doesn’t even think.

  He reaches out, grasps the leprechaun in his fist, and stuffs the entire being into his mouth.

  Fortunately the tiny god drops his spear.

  The worst part isn’t the chewing.

  The leprechaun’s screams echo in the chamber of Moon’s skull.

  That’s the worst part.

  When he swallows it’s agonizing and Moon can feel his mouth and throat being shredded by tiny bones and it is all he can do not to vomit immediately.

  Just when he thinks he can’t choke it back any longer the urge goes away.

  What replaces it is far worse.

  Fae magic fills him like a virus, and his body rejects the unnatural energy. It would certainly rip most humans apart rather than be expelled, but Moon was born different for reasons none can guess or discern.

  He vomits magical waste from every pore.

  And every stream is a projectile.

  It sweeps across the cavern floor in waves of blue fire, toppling every gnome and leprechaun in its path. It even sweeps Ritter and Cindy off their feet.

  And it just keeps coming.

  Moon rises to his knees, screaming as the magic continues to vent from his pores.

  The next thing of which he’s truly conscious is Ritter tackling him to the ground.

  “Stop!” Ritter is begging him, and the raw emotion in his voice, so uncustomary for Ritter, is enough to break Moon’s consciousness free of the rapture.

  “Moon! Please, stop!”

  Appealing to his conscious mind seems to have an energetic effect on the rest of him.

  Slowly, he’s able to force his body under a shaking, fragile form of control.

  The remaining fae magic is reduced to a trickle.

  Groaning, his face sticky with sweat and tears, Moon stares blearily from underneath Ritter at the desolation he’s created.

  The entire cavern floor is littered with tiny bodies.

  They all seem even smaller now.

  It’s like staring across a mass grave, though many are still alive, moaning in their semi-conscious state.

  What happens next shocks Ritter more than his own pleading startled Moon.

  Beneath him, Moon begins to sob.

  Ritter cradles him like a child, stroking his damp hair and whispering comforting words in his ear.

  Moon clings to his arms, unbidden, tears pouring from him as fiercely as the magic did.

  Several yards away what’s left of the Gnomi force scrapes across the stony ground, drawing to a center point and slowly forming an even more grotesque, bastardized version of their battle construct, this one missing key portions throughout its form.

  The construct limps towards the spot where the few dozen conscious leprechauns are attempting to regroup and attend to their wounded.

  Ritter opens his mouth to protest, but in the end he doesn’t have to speak a word.

  Hara bursts through the armored form like a star running back shredding the opposing team’s banner before a game.

  Unfurled bodies of armored gnomes are scattered everywhere, most of them knocked unconscious by the force of Hara’s dense, almost inhuman mass.

  Hara, a true giant among his people, stands there, ever the stoic, surveying the damage without expression.

  Ryland staggers around him from behind, looking at Ritter.

  “Oh,” he says, as if he’s just popped in for high tea. “There you are then.”

  Cindy limps over to where Ritter is cradling Moon, her breath ragged, her torso bleeding in dozens of places and gnomish blood dripping from her tomahawk.

  “I think we can go now,” she says.

  Ritter looks up at her, still holding Moon in his arms.

  He nods. “What about the gold?”

  “I know where we can find as much as we need,” she informs him.

  Then, looking over the littered leprechaun bodies: “I don’t think they’d mind even if they could stop us at this point. It’s no good to them to anymore.”

  “We all end up that way,” Ritter says. “Eventually.”

  Then: “Let’s finish the mission.”

  “Aye-aye,” Cindy affirms.

  * * *

  Back in their rented Transit, driving away from the abandoned mine filled with its two forgotten, waning worlds, none of them speak for a long time.

  The cargo vehicle is weighted down heavily and moves like a sluggish drunk running from his bar tab, but it will get them there.

  Them, and all of the gold pressing the back end of the van inches from the road underneath it.

  They’re silently worried about Moon, who seems to be the worst for their shared experience (except for Ryland, who, even if he fully grasped what had happened while they were separated, probably wouldn’t appreciate it).

  Moon sits, almost catatonic, for an hour.

  Then, abruptly and with deep gravitas, he says: “It sucks being small.”

  They all look back at him, even Ryland, who has spent just enough time with Moon to know he’s not the sort of person who
speaks introspectively.

  Moon doesn’t seem to notice the gazes he’s drawn.

  He’s very much in his own head at that moment.

  “I’ve been small my whole life. It really sucks, you know? And you figure out pretty quick it’s useless fighting about being small and about how fuckers treat you when you’re small. No one cares. But you still want to fight. So you fight about stupid shit. You’ll fight about anything, really. When really you’re just fighting because it’s better than being shit on and taking it. But it’s always about being small. Always.”

  There are no immediate replies or comments or reassurances offered.

  Cindy stares openly at him, completely taken aback.

  Ritter keeps his eyes on the road, but the truth of those words, and the illustration of them to which they’ve all just born witness, digs at the back of his brain.

  Ryland lights his thirty-fourth cigarette of the trip.

  In the end it’s Hara who breaks the wake of oppressive silence.

  “It’s not easy being big either,” he says in a voice that always sounds to Ritter like everyone imagines their father sounds when they’re young.

  Hara pauses before adding: “But it’s a lot easier than being small.”

  The rest of them seem to wait for Moon to decide the fate of that statement.

  Eventually he laughs, just a little.

  “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

  They all leave it at that.

  About the Author

  Matt Wallace is the author of The Next Fix, The Failed Cities, and his other novella series, Slingers. He’s also penned over one hundred short stories, a few of which have won awards and been nominated for others, in addition to writing for film and television. In his youth he traveled the world as a professional wrestler and unarmed combat and self-defense instructor before retiring to write full-time. He now resides in Los Angeles with the love of his life and inspiration for Sin du Jour’s resident pastry chef. You can sign up for email updates here.

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