The Lost Reavers

by Mike Truk

  “Get him!” came the shout from the walkway above. “Get him, you idiots!”

  The slap and scrape of boots on stone steps as the men came charging down toward him, axes in hand. The stairway was just wide enough for one. Kill them here? No. Once he started drawing blood, there’d be no end to it. So Hugh turned and raced ahead of them, taking three steps at time, down into the shadows, down to the base of the inn where it met the Zienko, the arches of the bridge rising high and dark above him, the rushing run of the waters louder until he spilled out on the narrow stone dock where supply ships were wont to moor, where he kept his own skiff tied up for those long afternoons where he was too drunk to do anything but drift upon the Zienko’s slow waters.

  The skiff was gone.

  Hugh didn’t hesitate. He sprinted down the length of the stone, the waters rushing darkly alongside, under the bridge and out the far side, to leap down onto the muddy bank, amongst the choking weeds and scraggly bushes.

  His boots sank to the ankles, but still he powered on, crashing through the undergrowth and up an embankment to spill down the far side and out onto a beach of pale sand made alabaster by the light of the moon.

  A barge was pulled up here, a rope extending from her prow to an anchor that had been chucked into the sand. Two guards stood impassively before it, hands on the pommels of their swords, with a third man wrapped in a voluminous cloak a few paces behind.

  Shit.

  “Lord Hugh of Stasiek,” said the cloaked man. “I’m gratified that you saw fit to come to me of your own accord.”

  Splashing from behind, then the two pursuers came up over the embankment to stagger down onto the sand behind him.

  Four guards, then, with more coming. The sand as compact as cement beneath his boots. A wooden stairway, a free-standing wooden double to the river steps on the other side, rose steeply up the bank to the Rusałka’s courtyard high above. The railing there crowded now and growing more crowded by the second as the patrons spilled out to watch the confrontation below. The moon massive and silhouetting Hugh’s tower against her lambent face.

  Had he been up there but ten minutes ago pounding Mathera into oblivion? Madness.

  “Mink,” Hugh said, “it’s unwise to threaten the Duke of Stasiek’s brother. Takes either madness or rank stupidity. I came to see in which camp you fell.”

  The Mink pushed back the cowl of his cloak. The moon illuminated his features quite clearly. Little by way of a neck, head square, eyes small and deeply sunken under heavy, obdurate brows. Hair cut short up top, shaved almost to the skin by the sides. A mean, old scar snaked its way down a cheek that could have been used as an anvil. A powerful frame, the body of a peasant or craftsman. There was no give to him. No softness. In his way, the Mink was as tough as he was, Hugh realized. A man who’d learned to take whatever he wanted in life, and realized that if he was strong enough, brutal enough, he need never apologize.

  “Hugh of Stasiek, survivor of the Goat’s Wood, last remaining member of the Lost Reavers. My my. Given those titles, a sensible man would be afraid. But you’re no longer the man you used to be, are you, Sir Hugh?”

  Hugh narrowed his eyes. His hand ached for the hilt of his blade.

  “Word is that the last of the Lost Reavers spends his time drinking, whoring, and losing at cards. That he hasn’t drawn his blade since the massacre in the Goat’s Wood. That his spirit’s broken, his courage gone, and whatever made him a man died along with the rest of the Reavers. That true, my lord? You a broken reed, a cockless echo of the man you used to be?”

  “You idiot,” whispered Hugh. “You keep pushing me and you’ll find out.”

  “Idle threats,” said the Mink, voice growing brisk. “I’ve made my wager. Men, disarm our lordship and get him aboard the boat. We’ll continue this conversation in greater comfort.”

  The two men before the Mink drew their blades and began to walk forward, while the two who’d pursued him closed in from behind. High above from the inn Hugh heard shouts of dismay and excitement. One voice rose above the others, made loud by desperation: “They’re coming down the steps, Hugh! Five more, at your rear!”

  Elena.

  He glanced back up and over his shoulder at the narrow stairway that led down from the courtyard. The five original men were hurrying down the first switchback. Thirty seconds at most before they reached the beach.

  That’d make it nine against one.

  Not counting the Mink himself.

  “Last chance,” grated Hugh, hand flexing. “Call them off, Mink. You can still walk away from this.”

  Despair washed over him. Of course the Mink wouldn’t listen.

  Which meant Hugh had to decide. A choice he’d been avoiding ever since he’d understood the curse that had befallen him in the Goat’s Wood. The curse that had cut down his thirty companions and left him standing.

  Left him standing, but not alone.

  To draw his sword and welcome horror back into his life, or draw his knife and cut open his own throat.

  It was one or the other. Blood would drench these white sands. His or that of ten men.

  He closed his eyes, clenched his jaw. No. I swore I’d never summon you. I swore I’d never draw on your strengths.

  Then cut your throat, you miserable cocksucker, came a rasp of a voice. Dragoslav, and oh, how the sound of that old voice caused goosebumps to ripple over Hugh’s skin. Cut your throat, you sniveling piece of horse shit and end this damn charade.

  No, came another voice, familiar, oh by Fate Maker and Fortuna herself, so terribly familiar. Chavaun, his oldest friend, his boon companion, so close once he could have been his brother. No, Hugh. Fight them. Draw your blade, damn you, and fight them!

  This last came as a bark. Hugh’s eyes snapped open just as one of the guards reached for the pommel of his blade. They were all about him. Clearly nervous, unnerved by his own immobility.

  Time seemed to slow, stop. The guard’s hand extended toward his blade. The wrist covered in thick, wiry hairs. Fingers stubby and powerful.

  Come to me, then, thought Hugh, reaching out, drawing on Chavaun, on Evassier, pulling on Birandillo and Foughtash, on Sweet Severen and Black Evec. Come to me, brothers. Dance with me beneath the light of the moon.

  Hugh closed his hand about his sword hilt and turned as he drew it, so that its edge sliced cleanly through the guard’s wrist, up and around in the night air to descend like Fortuna’s displeasure upon another man’s shoulder, cleaving through leather, through muscle, through clavicle, through a mess of ribs and out the other side, a second cut as clean as the first, the gout of resultant blood terrible, obscene, as the man’s arm was lopped right off.

  Shouts of alarm and panic as the other two threw themselves back, nearly tripping on the hard sand.

  Hugh didn’t give them much more time than that. Allowing his blade to complete its downward arc he charged after the third, hurtling over the pewter sand to bring it razoring through the air in a horizontal swipe.

  The man was trained. Experienced. Instinct kicked in, for no conscious thought could have let him react so quickly. He raised his blade to parry.

  But a parry is only so strong as the wrist behind it.

  Hugh knocked the man’s blade aside, snapping bones, and then slid through the man’s neck. Skin, muscle, cartilage, bone.

  A one-handed cut, the strength coming from the hips, a backhand that sent the man’s head sailing up as another torrent of blood erupted blackly from arteries.

  The five others had reached the base of the stairs, were slowing as shock and horror assailed them. Hugh noted them, noted the distance, and promptly disregarded them.

  There was one man still standing in close.

  Boots digging into the sand, he arrested his momentum, turned, and sighted over his raised elbow at where the fourth guard stood, gaping. His companion was screaming, holding his wrist with his other hand, staring at the stump in rank disbelief.

  The Mink in the background,
arms crossed, the only man to yet retain his composure.

  Hugh strode toward the fourth. Who, seeing him approach, grabbed at what remnants of self-control he had left and raised his shaking ax, clutching it with both hands, to hurl himself at Hugh, ax rising overhead to descend in a brutal chop.

  A simple matter to sidestep the attack, kick the man’s lead foot out from under him as he did so, then turn, pivoting, to bring his blade down with both hands and cleave the man’s head off before he hit the sands.

  Four down. Five to go.

  Hugh turned to face the remaining guards. Their charge across the sands was faltering, their certainty cracking.

  Hard to believe you’re a badass when your friends have all been lopped apart in less than five seconds.

  “Boss?” This from the man who’d threatened Hugh back in the common room. He held his slender blade before him, shoulders rising and falling rapidly as if he’d sprinted a mile and not just descended a staircase.

  “Get back, Bartoss. Looks like I’ll have to handle this personally.”

  The relief that washed over the five men was palpable.

  Hugh turned to regard the Mink. The man had shrugged off his cloak and drawn what looked like two bars of metal from a satchel at his hip, each extending perhaps a foot in length from either side of a plain basket hilt that would protect his fists. No edge, no point to them.

  “Strange weapons,” said Hugh, thwipping his blade down and to the side so that blood spattered across the sand.

  The maimed man groaned as he sank to his knees, clutching his wrist to his chest.

  The Mink drew a flask, thumbed the cork out, and tipped its contents down his throat. Swallowed audibly, then tossed the flask aside. His whole frame shivered, and then he shrugged his massive shoulders, as if settling into his own flesh.

  “When you hit hard enough, edges become superfluous.” He slid one massive fist into each basket hilt and then rolled his head about on his non-existent neck, causing it to crack several times. “And I like to do my work in close. More intimate. More… enjoyable.” The Mink bared his broad teeth at Hugh, eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

  “You’re going to die here,” said Hugh, blade still down by his side. “You can’t fight me.”

  “You’re fast, I’ll give you that. And your blade has an edge on it. But you’re not the only dangerous man on this here beach. It’s been too long since I’ve had a chance to push myself. Being the Mink has made it so that nobody dares fight back. So come at me, Lord Hugh.” The Mink crossed both rods before him, forming an ‘X’. “Let’s see what you got.”

  Hugh could feel the summoned Reavers riding him just under his skin. Felt as if he were about to fly apart, unable to contain the strength, vitality, and speed that his brethren imparted him. Felt as if he could cut down a dozen men, a hundred, could butcher until the sun rose up and the Zienko ran red with gore.

  But something about the Mink’s confidence caused him to approach slowly. To fight for calm, to control his febrile elation.

  The man was stocky, built like a bear, shoulders massive, chest deep like a bull’s. Narrow hips. Faster, perhaps, than one might initially credit. Again, the Mink shivered, his whole frame vibrating, and then he exhaled, a slow hiss like that of a snake.

  “There,” said the Mink, voice soft. “Now. I’m ready.”

  At the last moment Hugh exploded forward, blade spearing toward the Mink’s chest in a feint. The Mink parried but Hugh twisted his wrist, cutting low, aiming to sever the man’s leg at the knee.

  Klang!

  The Mink’s other rod dipped down to block. It was like striking the side of the building. Absolutely no give to the parry. Hugh’s blade flickered up, lashing at the Mink from every side, again and again like a darting tongue of flame.

  And each time the Mink parried, his hands weaving up and down, side to side, twisting the double-sided rods to catch his blade’s edge and deflect it away. Sweat bathed the man’s anvil of a head, his teeth bared in a permanent rictus, and then he lashed out with a punch of his own, aiming to stave in Hugh’s chest at the sternum.

  A magnificent blow.

  But not good enough.

  Hugh wove to one side, undulating with sinuous speed, and felt the faintest scratch from the outermost tip of the metal rod as it grazed his chest.

  Hugh threw a short punch from the hip, shoulder locked, his blade’s hilt slamming into the Mink’s elbow with ruinous force.

  The elbow snapped, bending inward as bone shattered and tendon tore.

  The Mink snarled and backed away, eyes wide, good hand still raised, face bathed in sweat. “What the fuck are you?”

  Hugh assumed a high stance, sword held in both hands by his temple, point aimed at the smuggler. “You were wrong,” he replied, voice as cold as the steel he held. “There aren’t two dangerous men on this beach. There’re more than thirty.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” The Mink’s voice was strained by pain, but he allowed his broken arm to dangle by his side, keeping his other hand up. “Bartoss! Attack, all of you, now!”

  The five men had drifted closer, and at this command burst forward with a roar, weapons raised as they fell upon Hugh. The Mink rushed at him as well, hunched low, good hand trailing behind him.

  Shouts and screams from the courtyard above.

  Hugh dropped into a crouch and threw himself into a backward roll, hilt held tight to his chest, blade extending out to the side like the speared spoke of a chariot wheel. Men crashed over him like a wave, and he felt his blade shear through shins. Blood splashed him as the hard beach rolled up over his shoulders and head, feet coming around so that he came up in a crouch, the four men who were still on their feet staggering to a stop to turn and stare in horror over their shoulders at him - but then he leaped and was upon them.

  They were within him. His brothers. Each swing of his blade was fueled by the might of six other men, warriors all, Lost Reavers, the best of the best. Almost he could see their ghostly arms superimposed over his own, felt their warring instincts meld with his own desires, their battle lust, their rage, their fear. All of it a storm through which he fought, a rushing roar in his ears, an intimacy beyond sex, a bonding beyond brotherhood. He was them and they were him and none could stand before his blade.

  The remaining four men did their best. They fanned out, formed a semicircle, attacked all at once. Did everything right. Against anyone else their professionalism and skill would have been too much. Against any one Lost Reaver, even.

  But they didn’t have a chance.

  Hugh’s blade was alive in his hand, a flashing fork of lightning that parried every stab, blocked every slash, a cage of living steel that encased him and protected him better than any suit of armor. Hugh turned as he blocked, spinning on the ball of his foot, and on impulse lashed out with his heel, a high kick that hooked at the knee to crush a man’s jaw, spin him around into a tight pirouette, the damage done to his face nearly unconscionable. Hugh snapped his leg back in, blade parrying two other attacks near-simultaneously, and then the Mink was there, blasting through the ranks to plow his rods through Hugh’s ribs.

  Or try.

  Hugh used the momentum of retracting his leg to flip into an armless cartwheel, spinning with impossible grace over the massive fist, the Mink’s eyes flaring wide in disbelief as his foe seemed to fade away before him, and only barely managed to raise his basket hilt to parry Hugh’s riposte, sparks flying, before Hugh’s boots hit the hard sand and he spun away.

  Enough of this shit, came Black Evec’s growl. The man had always seemed more wolf than human. End this now.

  Hugh snatched his dagger from his boot, spun, loosed. The blade flickered through darkness to embed itself in the closest man’s eye, tip clicking audibly as it impacted the rear inner curve of the man’s skull.

  And something within Hugh snapped. Frustration that had mounted over the past three years. The horror, the guilt, the terror, the self-loathing. All
of it finally given vent here, now, under this killer moon. No need for pretense, for excuses, for wishing he were other than what he now was: he let slip his fury, his hatred, and descended upon the remaining men like the breaking of a century storm.

  He cut one man in half, blade rising to scythe the man from front hips and out his shoulders, a diagonal slash that briefly revealed a writhing mess of intestines, spewing blood, bifurcated heart, the gleam of white bone, the canals and tubes, all of it wet and pulsating as the man collapsed in a spray of gore.

  Blade sliding down his own back to parry a stab at his rear, Hugh kicked the third man’s fist, driving the man’s cutlass into his own face, knocking his head back, staggering him. Hugh fell down into a crouch, leg sweeping out to hook the other behind the ankles, lifting him up off the sand so that for a moment he seemed to hover, horizontal, only for Hugh to rise and hack him in two across the waist, the man’s own rising momentum pressing him against Hugh’s descending blade.

  With a scream of incoherent rage, Hugh turned, faster than thought, and grasping the hilt of his blade with both hands, slammed his weapon with zero finesse, zero skill, straight into the remaining man’s raised slender blade. Bent the sword before his blow, drove it with sheer might down into the man’s upturned face, crushed bone, shattered the skull, caused both eyeballs to leap forth from his ocular cavities as he hewed him down to the clavicles.

  The man went down without even a gurgle.

  Silence from the courtyard above. The watching crowd was - what? Stunned? Aghast? Mesmerized?

  Hugh turned, moving slowly now, feeling unstoppable; a force of nature, devouring chaos personified, shoulders barely rising and falling, not winded, not tired, ready for an infinitude of more men to cut down.

  Turned to stare at where the Mink stood, paralyzed, eyes wide in shock, sole double-rod fist yet raised before him, face pale in the dark.