Fallen Victors

by Jonathan Lenahan

  The group had come in last evening, right before dusk. After making a brief camp, they’d fallen asleep, though they’d had the sense to post a guard facing the woods. Denison had snaked around to each of the men, telling them not to peek around the trees, in case one of them had sharp eyes.

  He wiped his hands on his trousers again. Goddammit. Today sometime. He’d show Proln who was cowardly.

  What sounded like an owl’s hoot broke the night.

  Yas swung around the tree, crossbow in his perspiring hands. With the back of his forearm, he blotted his brow, taking a deep breath and setting his sights on a bear of a man: bigger target, easier target, right? Steadily exhaling, he squeezed the crossbow’s trigger. In his mind’s eye, an arrow sprouted from the huge man’s neck, a silent death, the perfect first blow of a perfect ambush. Denison would make Yas the hero of the day, the week, even the month, for who else could kill such a specimen?

  The arrow flew into the leg of one of Yas’s friends, a slim fellow who went by the name Lady. He fell to the ground with a yelp, the arrow gone straight through his calf and half out the other side. Yas almost dropped his crossbow. Shit. Say that Windslow had shot him. Yeah, that was it. Windslow. That bastard hadn’t aimed right since he’d taken up the pipe. Good ole’ Windslow.

  A shrill cry broke Slate’s sleep and he almost fell from the tree’s branches in his haste to grab his knife. Squinted. Rubbed sleep from his eyes. Squinted again. Well, the camp still stood.

  What had made that blasted sound?

  A roar exploded from the camp and he saw Teacher come alive, attackers no more than ten yards from the fire and closing fast.

  Oh.

  The Old Man roused himself at Teacher’s roar and grabbed a crossbow. His sights on the nearest attacker, he shot an arrow into the man’s chest, fire deep within the Old Man’s eyes coming to life like a furnace stoked. Hands wrapped around the bolt, the man went down, blood spilling onto the grass pillowing his fall.

  The night had stiffened his limbs, but Slate shimmed down the oak and landed on the soft grass, avoiding the twigs beneath him. A dry leaf crackled and he froze, painstakingly swiveling his head in the sound’s direction.

  A skinny crossbowman, winding an arrow into place, crouched behind an oak no more than ten feet away. Slate pulled a foot of burnished steel from his waistband, relishing its heft and balance. He grinned.

  Yas grunted and reached for another arrow. Friendly fire was never good, but this time he’d make sure to hit the big guy, and they’d probably still give him the hero’s treatment. It wasn’t his fault that Lady had yelled and awoken the entire camp. Now, when Yas saved them, it’d just be that much more obvious, and if he was any judge as to who needed saving, it was Proln and the others, because that big bear had waded in and was about to break somebody in hal –

  Slate’s knife carved a bloody smile into the crossbowman’s throat. Blood poured forth, splattering the heads of the arrows at his feet. The dying man sputtered, but Slate’s hand covered his mouth and nose, and his flailing diminished and then stopped. One down, but Slate had seen the flash of an arrow from his right, so he laid the dead man on the grass and moved deeper into the trees.

  The second crossbowman’s post allowed him view of not only the camp, but more of his surroundings as well. He saw Slate and turned, raising the bow to his shoulder, but one of Slate’s throwing knives sprouted from the second crossbowman’s forehead, and he fell without a word.

  Slate looked around. Kicked the body. Damn good location. That second crossbowman would have found good work as a scout if he’d joined a company. From where Slate stood, he could see in a straight path down the hill to their camp. Two men he didn’t recognize lay in the grass, one sobbing as he clutched at an arrow in his calf, but four were still up and moving.

  He started down the hill, but instead stopped and sat back against the second crossbowman’s tree. Imminent threat of death often revealed parts of people that they’d rather stay hidden. Slate sliced a piece of cloth from the dead man’s shirt and cleaned his curved knife while his eyes followed the action below. It’d be a shame to waste the opportunity.

  Teacher breathed in short, hard gasps, his shirt sliced to ribbons and one of his arms at his side. Slate picked up the crossbow at his feet and fired at Teacher’s opponent, who caught the arrow in his bicep. The man screamed and almost dropped, but kept a knife in his hand to swipe at Teacher. Slate chuckled as he wound another arrow. That should even the odds.

  The man who faced Crymson swung his axe high and brought it down on her unprotected head with the speed of an enraged bull. It fell, but she moved two paces to the left and the long-handled weapon buried itself in the ground.

  A lull as the axe-wielder strained to wrest his weapon free from the soft earth and Crymson lashed out with a cupped hand. Her palm hit the axe-wielder in the jaw and snapped his head back hard enough that his feet flew from under him. Shaken, the man scuttled backward, weaponless. Crymson advanced, but she ran into Isaac, who tripped and stumbled backward, his arms windmilling.

  The axe-wielder darted and grabbed Isaac, taking his already off-balance body to the ground. Sitting on Isaac’s chest, the axe-wielder dug his thumbs into the vulnerable flesh at the base of Isaac’s throat. Grunts were all that Isaac could manage as the axe-wielder choked the life from him.

  Slate bit into a piece of jerky that he’d tucked away into one of his pockets, the crossbow lying loaded at his side. Being Blessed didn’t seem too useful.

  Crymson raised her hands, about to launch a hammberblow at the axe-wielder’s unprotected neck, but a red and brown blur sent Crymson spinning as Teacher threw the body of his opponent across the camp, where it landed like a fallen comet, neck bent at an irreparable angle. Teacher sat heavily, his eyes vacant, his big hands flesh bandages covering the multiple cuts across his torso. Slate moved to help, but stopped; Teacher had lived through worse, and things were just getting interesting.

  The Old Man and his attacker faced one another, neither daring to attempt a finishing move. Both held swords, their legs spread wide, but even from here Slate could see the shake in the Old Man’s arms.

  Their swords rang against one another. The Old Man held the clear skill advantage, but his breath came in bellows, and his stomach jostled about like blubber on a stick. Slate reclined his head on the tree. A fat old man wasn’t going to win this fight without a bit of luck. He stuck a blade of grass in his mouth and chewed on it to dull the taste of the spicy jerky.

  The sound of crossing swords became less a flowing rhythm and more an afterthought as they began to miss instead of deflect or block each other’s strikes. The Old Man’s legs were barely moving, and a cut, then two, found their way through his defenses. Shame reddened his face beneath his beard. Or blood. Whichever. Slate leaned forward. It was a tossup between which would come first: the Old Man getting cut down or his heart crying surrender.

  From the camp, a thin stream of light lit the sky, outshining the dawn, the heat of it a gentle slap even on the hill. A fiery golden yellow intermixed with tongues of red and orange, Slate couldn’t stare at it and yet he couldn’t block it out, even through closed eyes. Soundless, it shot to the heavens with the straightness of a carpenter’s ruler and then disappeared, the only hint of its existence an imprint on Slate’s eyelids.

  He traced the afterimage to where Isaac lay, the axe-wielder’s hands still on his throat. Isaac’s head relaxed and hit the ground. A light grey smoke emanated from the two.

  Like any half-decent vet would’ve done, the Old Man took advantage of his opponent’s lapse in concentration and slid his sword between the ambusher’s ribs. The man’s weapon dropped from his fingertips, and he staggered back a step, hands covering the wound in a futile effort at stemming the blood flow. He fell backward into the fire. Screamed. Hitched a breath. Kept screaming. The Old Man swung his sword again. The screams stopped.

  The last ambusher ran toward the forest, attempting to flee the camp
fire massacre. Blade of grass still in his mouth, Slate gauged the man’s distance and speed while his free hand groped for the fallen crossbow. He put it to his shoulder, squeezed.

  A breath later, the arrow punctured the fleeing man’s thigh and brought him to an abrupt, shrieking halt. Weapon thrown to the side, Slate walked down the slight hill upon which he’d watched the show. Nobody screamed that loudly unless they were going to live. Real pain numbed men.

  Crymson advanced on him, hands clenched into fists and face red beneath her dark skin.

  “What? I saved your life. Get the fuck out’ve here.” Slate stuck a finger in her face. “I told you that something was up with that wagon. And now,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “we have somebody to ask about it. You can thank me with a bottle of wine, if you want. You know what, make that three bottles, one for each man I killed, no thanks to you.”

  Smirking, Slate walked to Teacher, who sat unmoving. Taking a clean shirt from his saddlebag, Slate wiped the blood from Teacher’s wounds. An arrow had dug a trench through Teacher’s arm, so Slate doused it in alcohol, and then applied steady pressure with the rapidly darkening shirt. “Don’t worry, Teach. I’m here.”

  The fire smoldered, ashes all that remained of last night’s wood. One of the horses – Teacher’s big miscreation – had bolted during the fight, but he could see the animal in the distance where it had stopped to chew on a field of grass.

  “Hold this here, okay, Teach?” Slate left the shirt in Teacher’s hand and moved to where the runt still lay in the grass, face up. The man atop Isaac had a singular hole through his back, near the heart, and when Slate kicked him over, he saw a perfectly circular hole of the same kind in the front of the corpse’s body. Isaac brushed himself off and stood. Slate looked him over, but other than the livid red marks around his neck, Isaac was unscathed. No perfect circles to be found.

  “Blessed, huh?”

  Isaac shrugged.

  “Right.” Curiosity tugged at Slate, but the matter of the escaped horse overrode it. He didn’t enjoy the prospect of riding double the rest of the way, not with Teacher’s bulk, and he wouldn’t wish that bitch of a mule on anybody.

  Forty-five minutes later, he reentered the camp, Teacher’s horse in tow. The others had packed everything, and dirt covered the fire, but the horses were still tied. Slate spotted the others on the small hill that led to the tree he’d sat against, gathered in a semi-circle. With a sigh, he staked Teacher’s horse near its brothers and made his way over to them, whistling a jaunty tune.

  Two of the attackers lay on the ground, the first with an arrow in his thigh and the other with one in his calf. Both were shaking, but conscious, the ambusher with the thigh wound a slight grey.

  “What’s going on?”

  The Old Man looked at him, and then to the men on the ground. “We’re figuring out how to get some answers from them.”

  “Uhhh, that should be easy enough.”

  Alocar shook his head. “We’re not torturing prisoners.”

  “Prisoners?” Slate laughed. “We’re not at war.”

  “And what would you have us do?”

  “Get the fuck out of my way, for one. I don’t need you white knights getting in my space.”

  Isaac and Teacher sat on the ground and began passing a bottle back and forth. Crymson took a few paces back, but didn’t leave, her lips a thin line.

  “Wake up.” Slate kicked the wounded man’s thigh, earning him a grimace and a whoosh of expelled breath.

  “We’re not torturing them!” Alocar said.

  “Or what? We need answers, don’t we? If you don’t want to besmirch your precious sense of honor, then wait by the horses. I have no such qualms.”

  Slate kicked the man with the thigh wound again, inches from the arrow’s entry point. “What was that? I can’t hear you over the cries of pain.”

  The Old Man walked to the horses, but the others stayed gathered around Slate. Teacher hiccupped as he gave the bottle back to Isaac.

  “If you don’t stop screaming, I’m going to cut that arrow out your leg and see how many shots it takes to sever your balls.”

  The screams died to pants.

  “Wonderful. Here’s the deal: all your companions – well, most of them – are dead, and you have an arrow in your leg. Not great odds, but you could make your survival more likely if you answer my questions. Who sent you?”

  The man’s face, already pale with blood loss, whitened to a gambler’s die, his eyes its pips. “No.”

  “No? Teach? Gimme a sip of that.” Teacher passed him the bottle and Slate took a gulp.

  He burped and then handed the bottle back and pulled the man’s dagger from its sheath so that he wouldn’t dull his own. He sawed an inch below the arrow’s head, sticking from the outer portion of the man’s thigh. The wails started anew, but Slate ignored them. Soon, the arrow’s head fell and dropped in the jungle of grass.

  Purposely shaking his hands like a recovering opium addict, Slate pulled the arrow free. Blood spilled from the hole and formed a small pond on the ground. Slate looked to the wounds and then at the man’s face – unconscious in five and dead in ten.

  “Who. Sent. You?” He bit off every word with a punctuation of his teeth, letting them click together like the closing of a door. His fingers found the hole left by the crossbow and dove in. Slate curled them around leg tissue and twisted, deeper, deeper. The man’s screams grew faint and his head lolled, close to unconsciousness.

  Slate slapped the injured man. “Tell me who sent you!”

  “Okay. Okay! Please just stop.” Tears ran down the man’s cheeks unabated, over hills of acne before clinging to the hairs of a barely formed beard. Been killing a lot of teenagers lately.

  “Well?”

  The injured man, face now a muddy grey, said, “Mendoza. We were supposed to kill you and,” he coughed and then continued, “make your bodies disappear.”

  “An old man with scars on his knuckles? So you weren’t just after our money, our valuables?”

  “Yes. No. We’re not . . . highwaymen.”

  “Where is Mendoza and why does he want us dead?”

  “He’s in the next town. Hammonfall. And I don’t know, honest to God. Please, don’t leave me out here. Please.”

  Slate stood and faced the others. The Old Man spoke up, returned from his retreat to the horses. “Bind their wounds and throw them on the mule. We’ll leave them at the next town.” He turned on his heel and began to make his way back to the camp.

  Slate kicked the wounded man’s ribs, yelling after the Old Man’s retreating form. “Take them? They tried to kill us! Any man, or woman, for that matter, that takes up a blade should know what he’s getting into! We should leave them!”

  The Old Man didn’t turn, his back straight. “Bring them along.”

  “Fuck you.” Slate bent and stabbed the wounded man in the heart. The man gasped, and a trickle of blood tumbled out of his mouth. Slate wiped the blade clean and stuck it back in its sheath. Crymson stared at him, while Isaac only blinked and took another sip of the liquor, swishing at the bottle’s bottom. “If you want to bring the other along, do it yourself, but I’ll be damned if we’re taking more than one.”

  He gestured to Teacher, who looked between him and the other two. “Fine. Help if you want, Teach. Just leave me out of it.” Slate turned his head and buried his feelings when he didn’t hear Teacher’s footsteps behind him.

  At the horses, he felt the Old Man’s stare drilling into him, but Slate ignored it.

  Fools. Didn’t listen to him the first time and it almost cost them their lives. Let them run into trouble again. Let them see how they handle it minus one.

  Angras

  Let me out.

  “Quiet,” I said.

  “Here, take these,” I told the men, who grabbed the swords from the rack at the back of the room.

  “You.” One of the men pointed at his chest. “Yes, you. Come here. Step up here a
nd tell me what your mission is.”

  This is useless. Allow me to do something.

  “You’re not needed here” I told Angras.

  The men looked at each other, one making a small gesture in my direction.

  “Nothing,” I told them. The man reeked of old sweat, and he probably hadn’t bathed in weeks, but I resisted the urge to cough. Instead, I stood straighter, ignoring Angras and concentrating on the man before me. “Speak.”

  He stared at my mask, not into it, for into it would reveal my eyes, and my eyes weren’t the type that anybody wanted to look into. “We’re to find the patrols in Tabernack and take them out, only kill if necessary. Once killed, we’re supposed to steal their clothes, weapons, socks, everything. Afterward, we put them in the safe house and leave, then you’ll pay us.”

  In blood.

  I ignored Angras. “Indeed. Breathe a word of this to anybody and it will be your heads, but I’m sure you all know that, yes?”

  The men around the room nodded, none daring to look in my direction. Inside, Angras rejoiced, but it only saddened me. Why be so frightened? “If all goes well, you’ll each have another job soon, one that pays twice this amount.” I paused. “Depart.”

  They left, leaving just Angras and me.

  You’re going to let me out soon, I know.

  I didn’t reply.

  Isaac

  They were two days out from Hammonfall, and tempers had risen to the point that Isaac could almost feel the heat radiating from his companions, a palpable animosity being forged as invisible masons added bricks, cemented together with a thousand petty slights, both real and imagined, accumulating to form walls between each member of the group. Two black clouds hung over them, one at its front and the other at its back, nearly touching in the middle but not quite, for when they did, they’d grow into something terrible to behold.

  Isaac rode in the center, where he felt safest, where he felt a sense of belonging, false though it may be. Not that he didn’t carry his own cloud, smaller but perhaps blacker. The fire. The beam. Light. Smoke. He’d tried his best to contain it, but the magic had eaten through his barriers and exploded out of him, protecting and exposing. Isaac had hoped that nobody had seen it, but with Slate’s vigilant eyes upon him, he knew it was only a matter of time until they forced him to explain.