Suddenly a bloodcurdling howl rose through the night. It hollowed out all of Will’s resolve, left him a quivering shell.
He found himself thinking of the Pantheon. Of Lawl, father of the gods. Of Lawl’s wife, Betra, mother to all. Of their children, Klink, Toil, and Knole—gods and goddesses of money, labor, and wisdom. Of Lawl’s daughter-wife Cois, goddess of lust and desire. Of Betra’s husband-son Barph, god of revelry. Who could he pray to? Who might, against all the odds, send him aid?
Fuck it, he thought. I’ll slaughter a whole damn army of pigs to the first one of you lot who helps me out here.
Apparently the Pantheon had about as much faith in him as he had in them.
His arms, more cooperative than his legs, rose up over his head. His spirits almost rallied as he felt movement in his petrified legs, but it was only him sinking to his knees.
Wait, said the small voice inside him, the one that had advised retreat, that howl came from behind you …
Shut up! yelled the panicking component of his mind. I don’t have time for your shit. I’m busy dying, gods curse it.
Something massive bowled past Will. He felt the wind of it as it passed him, the bass growl of its roar in his chest, the pounding of its feet through the rock beneath him.
Then silence. A moment of absolute silence.
Then wind. A violent swishing noise.
And then the sound of death.
Will had grown up on a farm. He had raised enough livestock to know that sound. The sound of flesh tearing, bones breaking.
But it wasn’t coming from him.
He dared to open one eye.
Divine intervention. At first, that was the only explanation that came to his mind. That somehow his prayers had worked. That Lawl had really stepped down from the heavens and come to intercede on his part. That a divinity had finally come back to Kondorra. Just for him.
And then he got a look at the creature, and while there were stories of Lawl, and Betra, and Barph, and the rest of the Pantheon taking on some odd forms over the years, nothing he’d ever read was quite like this.
It was a creature perhaps eight feet tall, made entirely out of vast slabs of muscle, and spackled with cobblestone-size scales that glistened bronze in the firelight. It wielded a massive war hammer, the head of which scythed through the pressed ranks like a blade through wheat. Small bodies flew, anatomy distorted, fluids flying in great spraying arcs. The scent of blood and shit filled the air.
The goblins screamed, panicked, tried to flee back into the dull dead end of the cavern. A few brave souls leaked around the edge of the creature’s arc of death, fled toward the entrance. They raced past Will, and he tracked them as they hurtled toward the night.
And that was when he saw her. The angel to pair with the demon deeper in the cave. She was etched in moonlight, sweat-slick hair pulled back into a haphazard ponytail, mouth set in a grimace of rage. She held a sword in one hand, a dagger in the other. She slit the throat of the first goblin that tried to get past her, cut the legs out from beneath the next. It collapsed on severed knees, screamed so hard it retched.
The vast lizard demon waded into the cave, splashing death upon the walls and floor, and the woman followed, ending the lives of those initial survivors one by one with sharp, careful precision. Like a surgeon following in a butcher’s wake.
Could they be demigods? When the gods manifested, they usually had just one thing on their mind. Anyone unfortunate enough to fall under their glamour and be impregnated was rarely allowed to go full-term, though. The Pantheon’s offspring—demigods—simply sowed too much chaos in the world. They were too powerful, too unpredictable. The balance of nations could be knocked askew.
This butchery, though. Its scale. Its efficiency. It still felt almost divine to Will. The pair were quiet in their work. After the initial howl of the charge, there were no more battle cries, no more declarations of righteousness. All around them the goblins screamed, but the pair worked with a grim set to their jaws.
But as he watched, Will decided, no. Not divine. While the scale and the proficiency of this slaughter was a new vista for him, this was still quotidian butchery. There were no lightning bolts, no quakes of telekinetic power. Just blade, and blood, and bone.
So who in the Hallows were they?
Eventually the slaughter was done. All about them were the dead and dying. The pair stood, panting, looked at each other, sighed, and shrugged.
“See,” said the lizard monster in a voice that sounded like rocks grinding together, “that is being more fun than baking.”
“Shut up and start looking for the purse,” said the woman. She wheeled round suddenly, stabbed a finger out at Will. “You,” she said. “Have you seen a purse?”
Will stared at her. His life did not make sense to him anymore. He remembered a metaphor his father’s old lost farmhand Firkin had said to him, in one of his increasingly rare sober moments. He said it was as if the narrator of his fate had needed to step away for a moment and handed the reins to an angry toddler—a god’s hand sweeping through the bricks of his life and knocking everything to the floor.
“Me?” Will said, to the woman pointing to his chest.
“No,” said the woman, shaking her head, “the other helpful bystander standing just behind you.”
Caught off guard, Will looked over his shoulder. There was no one there. Then his mind processed. He looked back to the woman, embarrassed.
He could see her better now. The goblins’ torches littered the floor. Her face was angular, hard, flat planes coming to abrupt angles at her cheekbones and jaw. She was dressed in boiled leathers studded with steel. A hodgepodge of plate mail was strapped to her shoulders, arms, and shins. The sharpness of her features carried through to her eyes, bright and alive in this field of death.
Behind her, the massive lizard man was holding two dead goblins aloft by their ankles and shaking them. A few scraps of leather and dirt fell from them, along with a fairly large quantity of blood. There was no purse, though. The lizard man grunted and slung both bodies toward one corner of the cave. They landed with a crack of breaking bone that made Will wince.
A hint of sympathy entered the woman’s face. “Not how you spend your typical evening?” she asked.
Will shrugged helplessly. “Not even a typical day.”
The woman cracked a smile at that. The hard planes of her face transformed, curves appearing out of nowhere at her cheeks, and even a small dimple revealing its presence.
“I’m Lette,” she said. “That’s Balur.”
Will stared at the lizard man. Balur. The word sounded foreign. He had the feeling that this was a moment when curiosity might equate to a feline fatality, but he couldn’t quite help himself. “What is he?” he asked.
“An obstinate idiot,” Lette said without a pause.
Balur shook out two more goblins and flung them at the corner. “You being flirting is not helping us find our purse any faster,” he said without looking up.
“At least,” she spat back, “my version of flirting is a little more sophisticated than whipping my britches off and proffering some coin.” Without pausing for breath she turned to Will and said, “Get any ideas and I shall feed you your own testicles.”
Will was still watching events through a thin haze of confusion. His head still hurt from running into the tree. He wanted to sit down and ignore everything in the hopes that it would go away. Except Lette. He thought Lette could stay.
He realized he had not introduced himself. “I’m Will,” he said. “I’m a farmer.”
Lette nodded. She looked back at Balur. “How about farming?” she asked the lizard man, apropos—as far as Will could tell—of nothing. “Working with your hands. Very physically demanding, farmwork can be.”
Balur grunted. “Bad for reflexes. Ruin muscle memory,” he said, leaving Will none the wiser.
Lette sighed, sank to her knees, and started rummaging through the possessions of the nearest corpse
. Behind her, Balur had moved on to a different part of the cave. He shook out two more goblins, then, disappointed, flung them away to start a new pile.
As they landed there was a muffled yell.
Balur hesitated, arm still outstretched from his throw. “Got a live one,” he said.
Will’s stomach tightened, a sharp knot lodging near his kidneys. He looked back at the entrance to the cave. He could slip away. They wouldn’t notice. He could …
He could what? Run into more trouble? It was unlikely he would come across any other well-armed strangers to brutally slaughter all of his problems. Given the many and various ways the world had tried to screw him over this night, staying with Lette and Balur actually seemed the safer option.
Lette had her short sword out once more and was advancing on the source of the sound, Balur by her side. They slowed as they came close. Then with a speed that surprised Will, Balur darted forward and grabbed something. It wriggled and writhed in the lizard man’s massive hand as he held it aloft.
It was bigger than the goblin corpses littering the ground. And it was wrapped in ropes. Balur had it by its ankles, but it still took Will a moment to realize the massive scruff of hair at the bottom was a man’s hair and beard.
“That’s not a goblin,” Will said, just in case stating the obvious would help.
“Might be in league with them,” Balur said, eyes narrowed at the struggling form. Grunts and squeaks emerged, and Will realized that one of the ropes had firmly gagged the man. “Maybe be killing it just in case.”
“In league?” Will said incredulously. “He’s tied hand and foot.”
Lette nodded. “Farm boy makes a compelling case.”
“I am still thinking I should perhaps be squishing it. Just in—”
“I’m still thinking about spaying you,” Lette cut in. “Put the poor bugger down.”
Grudgingly, Balur lowered the man to the ground. Lette’s knife appeared in her hand, apparently without having traveled through the intervening space between it and the sheath at her waist. The knife flashed in a single stroke, and the bonds fell away.
A dirty, disheveled man emerged from the looping mass of rope, shouting as he came. He was naked except for a pair of discolored undershorts, and a fairly thick coating of mud. He was rail thin, but with a small potbelly sticking out, as if he had at some point in the past swallowed a child’s ball and it had obstinately stuck in his system. His arms too were more muscular than his frame might suggest, and his hands were disproportionately large. His face was almost entirely lost in a shock of hair and beard, long, tightly curled bristles standing out in wild clumps.
“Varmagants!” he was screaming. “Barph-cursed wotsits! Menagerie! Cursed and hexed vermin! Thy cannot prevent me. I am the inevitable! I am the word of the future that shall come! I am the inescapable odor!”
Both Lette and Balur took a step away from the man. Lette’s sword was up once more.
It was rather a shock to Will that he recognized the man.
“Firkin?” he said.
Lette glanced at Will, quick and darting. “You know him?” she said fixing her attention back on the raving, half-naked man.
Will took a step toward him. And, yes. Yes he did. It was indeed his father’s old farmhand, Firkin.
Memories flooded Will. Sitting with his father and the farmhands on a summer’s day, all of them laughing at Firkin’s tall tale. Up on Firkin’s shoulders, his mouth full of stolen apple flesh, racing across a field, his father chasing and cursing. Watching Firkin tell jokes as his father branded the pigs. Passing bread out of a kitchen window while his mother’s back was turned, Firkin gathering the rolls up in a fold of his shirt. Sitting and talking about dragons and dreaming of revolution. Watching Firkin tickle the cow’s backside with a porcupine quill and then watching as the cow’s kick sent him halfway across the yard. Laughing so hard he thought some part of him might rupture. Firkin and his father standing in the yard, yelling at each other, red-faced. Will and Firkin sitting slouched beneath a tree, daydreaming about stealing a dragon’s gold from beneath his nose. Firkin drinking so much he fell off the table, and his father, not far behind him, laughing so hard he joined him on the floor. His mother slapping Firkin full across the face, the red handprint standing out stark on his pale skin. Firkin telling him that he didn’t want company right now, and the first feeling of utter rejection in his life. Then riding a cow madcap down a hill, Firkin running behind full tilt, switching its behind. His mother holding him, sobbing and shouting at the same time. Asking his father where Firkin was. Days spent listless and wandering. Then a meal interrupted by a knock at the door, his father rising, words exchanged with an unseen man, voices rising, the scuffle of violence, and then Firkin framed in the doorway, his father on the floor, lip bloody, horror in Firkin’s eyes. Then Firkin from a distance, a shadow shape that haunted distant fences. Riding with his father into town and seeing a man shouting at people who weren’t there—he only recognized him as Firkin as they passed him on the way home. The moment when he realized he was used to that sight, not bothered by it anymore. His father’s funeral—seeing that familiar shadow that used to haunt the fences. Watching Firkin being thrown out of the tavern again. Again. Again.
And now here. Firkin. The village drunk. The village crazy. A man who seemed to be waiting for everyone to forget why they gave him the dregs from their plates, the spare copper sheks they couldn’t spare.
Firkin chose that moment to vomit noisily and messily over the floor. It was a practiced movement—tip and pour. He straightened, wiping his mouth. “Darn varmints,” he said. “Gone went fed me some of the pootin’.”
Nobody seemed up to the task of asking him what “pootin’” was.
Balur regarded the filthy, scrawny man and then shrugged. “Is looking goblin-y to me.” He hefted his hammer.
“No!” Will yelled, darting toward the old farmhand. “No, he’s not. He’s a friend.”
Firkin narrowed his eyes at Will. “I don’t like you and your bunk,” he said with surprising clarity.
“I am saving you from poor taste in friends,” Balur said, not relaxing his grip on the hammer.
Firkin assessed the massive lizard man, stuck out his lower lip, and squinted with one eye. “You’s a biggun,” he said. “I like the bigguns. Carry more of the ale for me. Down to the merry lands, and we all drown happy like.” He smacked his lips twice.
“We can’t kill him, Balur,” said Lette from behind Will and Firkin, sounding slightly exasperated. Will felt a wave of gratitude flood through him.
“We can be,” said Balur matter-of-factly, causing the wave to break. “Be being simple. I be bringing down this hammer with speed of a certain amount. His head is going crump, and we are having a dead man there.”
“Well, I know literally you can kill him …”
“Thank you,” said Balur, readying himself once more.
“No!” Will shouted again. “He’s my friend. He helped raise me.”
Balur gave Will a skeptical look. “Maybe I should be killing him to be saving you from your poor taste in friends, then I should be killing you to be saving Lette from her poor taste in men. Everybody be being happier then.”
“No!” Will said, starting to feel repetitive, but not sure what other words might save him from a homicidal lizard man at this point in the proceedings.
“If we’re saving me from my taste in friends,” said Lette to Balur, “maybe I should be killing you then.”
The hammer blow continued to fail to fall.
“Look,” said Will, reaching out to Balur, imploring, “he’s just an old drunk, who the goblins found and tied up. Who knows how long he’s been captive? He needs some kindness, not death threats.” That, at least, seemed obvious to him. A little piece of the world he could have make sense.
“Was all part of my plan,” said Firkin, tapping the side of his nose. “Right where I wanted them.”
“You’re not being where I want y
ou,” Balur groused, but he finally put down the hammer. The head rung as it struck the stone ground, a sonorous bass note. Will had no idea how he’d been able to hold the weight of it for so long.
“Let Firkin just stay for the night,” Will said, turning to Lette, now that yet another threat had been averted. “He’ll catch his death out in the rain, and you only just saved his life from the goblins.”
Lette nodded. “Be a shame to put good work to waste. He sleeps downwind of me and there’ll be no complaints.”
Balur grunted. Possibly in agreement.
“Hey,” Lette said as if struck by a sudden thought, putting a hand on Firkin’s shoulder. “Don’t happen to have seen a purse, have you?”
“I seen the world,” said Firkin, eyes fixing on some far-off point. “I seen the plans. I seen the writing on a turtle’s back. I seen the insides of a cow.” He nodded, self-satisfied. “It was warm in there,” he added.
“Right,” said Lette. “I’ll just look over here then.”
As the search continued, Firkin drifted away toward the cave entrance. Will was worried he might wander into the rain, but he stayed standing there, half-sketched in moonlight, staring out into the night, muttering obscenities to himself.
Behind him, Lette and Balur seemed to be losing what little good temper they’d had.
“Where in the name of Cois’s cursed cock is it?” Lette spat. “Where did that little fucker put it?”
“Maybe you were tracking him wrong. Maybe this is being the wrong cave.”
“Oh, it’s insulting my professional skill set is it now? That’s how you’re going to fix this situation? By pissing me off so much that I gut and skin you and sell your hide. Except, oh wait.” She struck the side of her head with the heel of her palm. “It’s fucking worthless. If I just hung a ball sack from a stick and carried it about with me it would be very little different from having you around.”
Balur shrugged. “Be being a better conversation starter too.”
Joining the conversation, Will realized, would be a little bit like holding his hand in a flame to see how it felt. Lette captivated him, but the piles of corpses around the room were a useful reminder that she could back up her threats if she wanted to. And then, despite all this sensible thinking, he found his jaw starting to move
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