Fallen Victors

by Jonathan Lenahan

  He ran on and opened the door to the Coated’s room – he’d never make it up the lift – nobody in sight. He opened another room, nobody. Another. And another. And another. Pressure built inside him. He couldn’t feel anything. He felt everything. Spouts of fire fell from his fingers and trailed behind him. Sparks flew from him as he ran. Another room. Only one person in it.

  Teacher straddled Isaac’s body, alone, spiked brass knuckles on both hands, decking those who came too near but getting gashed in return, at a disadvantage in numbers and reach. He couldn’t last much longer.

  Panic. Lost in a labyrinth. No escape. The pressure built. His skin glowed, and the trail of fire grew. Another room. Empty.

  Crymson pulled the last of her knives from the back of her thigh, holding it with the blade down, ready to slash. In her peripherals, she saw Isaac stand, his eyes unseeing, and move Teacher to the side in a dreamlike manner. Intent on capturing him, the guards hesitated, holding back their swords.

  Voices. He turned. Voices meant an entrance, which meant an exit, which meant freedom. Escape. People. Another room. People. People everywhere. He halted and spun in a circle. Too many people. “How do I get out of here!” he screamed. “Help me!” He ran to the center of the room, a large circular thing, and pleaded with them. They stood mute. Fire poured from his body. It burned. It burned everything.

  Isaac clapped, and a wall of fire burst from his hands, incinerating most of the guards and opening up a clear path to Quintel, who screamed, shielding his face from the calm blankness that was Isaac’s eyes. Index finger extended, Isaac’s mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. A beam of fire, pencil thin, erupted, punching through Quintel’s forehead and out the back of his skull. The former Archbishop sagged to his knees, and then fell forward, facedown in the topsoil.

  People pointed. Some whispered. Others stood. A few yelled for somebody. Somebodies. Something. He couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t hear anything. The pressure flared. He just wanted it gone, wanted it to disappear. Isaac fell to his knees. The release valve, stuck this entire time, switched off. This hidden reservoir of magic – how had he stored it? – released. He screamed. The magic left his body. Fleeing. Running. Sprinting. An explosion rocked the room around him. Somebody moaned.

  The meadow went silent, and the remaining guards in black fled, each going their separate ways, leaving the curious scent of dirt and death behind them. Isaac swayed, and Teacher grabbed him by the shoulders, easing his fall to the ground. Alocar rested on one knee, his face puffy and red under his beard, while Slate looked at his sword. “Could have sworn I hit a few of them,” Crymson heard him say suspiciously.

  She knelt near Isaac. It felt like the fever had broken. “We need to get out of here. There’s not telling who else knew besides Quintel.”

  Finally, somebody here to kill him. The ground fell up to meet him. The world disappeared.

  The others nodded, and Slate again slung Isaac across his back. They picked their way through the wreckage of burned trees, leaving behind a wasteland of sand, grass on its outskirts, and nothing but an indentation in the ground where the guard had taken Crymson’s knife in the eye, not even a drop of blood.

  New Mansvern:

  “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

  Camus

  Slate and Teacher

  "How's the runt?"

  “Hard to say.” Crymson pulled at her growing hair absentmindedly. “He’s eating on his own, and I’ve seen him say a few things to Teacher, so I think he’ll be fine if we give it some time.”

  Slate looked at the big man, thick white bandages crisscrossing his torso so that he rode slightly hunched. He’d taken it as a duty of sorts to feed Isaac every night, always before he himself ate, no matter how much Slate urged him to do otherwise. It was a frustrating mannerism, but his sudden reemergence of independence reminded Slate of a time when Teacher had full control of his mind, and besides, he didn’t have the heart to take something from Teacher that made him happy.

  They’d left Hammonfall and the roasted Archbishop behind a week ago, managing to stay shy of trouble, though Slate couldn’t imagine that more wasn’t on their heels. That’s the way of trouble; once it has your scent, you can’t shake it loose, not until either you put it in the ground or you get buried atop a lonely hill with nothing to remind others of your passing but a crumbling headstone and a handful of withered daisies.

  “You think that priest of yours was sent by Mendoza’s old boss?”

  Crymson glanced at him, and then resettled her vision northbound. “The thought crossed my mind, but if he didn’t tell anybody, then we’ve got a headstart on them. And that’s likely: Quintel was the type to want to claim success for himself. The only thing I fear is that they weren’t the only plan for us.”

  “Good thing we blend in so easily.”

  Teacher’s giant frame, the only one like it that Slate had ever seen, dominated the road. Crymson had changed out of her priestess garb and into something more suitable for traveling: brown, tough leather pants and a matching shirt gave her a different identity than the blue goddess she’d been in Fayne, but her short-clipped hair still attracted attention in a land of long-haired maidens, and the Old Man had shaved his beard and mustache, the only difference being that it exposed the sagging flesh beneath his chin.

  “New Mansvern isn’t too far ahead. That’s the last town we’ll come across before we get into Tabernack, so we’ll need to stay sharp, watch each other’s back.”

  Slate nodded, his eyes ahead, looking out at the road, his senses behind, ready for the trouble he knew would find them.

  To call New Mansvern a town was to give it a compliment that Slate wasn’t sure the dingy little cluster of shacks deserved. Village, perhaps, or shithole, but not town. They rode in late that night, half-asleep on their horses, Isaac still barely able to piece together complete sentences.

  Despite the stars in the sky, it surprised Slate to see only a few people on the streets, most with a look of cunning on their faces as they prowled the night. A shirtless man sprinted out the darkness of a shanty and tried to leap upon Slate’s horse, but Slate kicked him in the chest and sent him tumbling head over heels back into the shadows. Definitely a shithole.

  Stopping in front of what looked to be the inn, a ramshackle, grey building, they read its sign: The Sleepy Traveler.

  “About as imaginative as I expected,” Slate said. “Hey, you. Come here.”

  The shirtless man that Slate had kicked sidled a few steps closer.

  “Watch our shit and don’t let it get stolen, and I’ll give you enough money to drown in alcohol. One hair missing from my mount’s head, though, and, well,” Slate bared his teeth in a smile fit for the damned, “I’ll let you imagine the rest.”

  The shirtless man nodded and made his way to stand in front of the inn, his malnourished arms crossed in front of his chest.

  They tied their horses to the termite-eaten post and made their way inside, pushing open the door, splintered and marked with black smudges. Behind the bar, a man with a stick of a body stood wiping down the counter, barely bothering to look up when the door closed, let alone give greeting. Two men were playing cards at one of the tables, but other than that, the room was empty. On the back wall, a message written in garish red said, “Down to those who oppose the king!” It appeared as if somebody had tried to scrub it away, the result like a huge thumb had smeared across it, still wet with paint.

  “I’ll go see if I can get us some rooms,” the Old Man said.

  “What are you boys playing?” Slate plopped himself down at the card game.

  “Gin.”

  “Gin? What about a real man’s game? Why not let’s play some poker? Smalls are ten pennies, bigs a silver.”

  “Piss off,” one said as he picked a card from the deck.

  Slate looked at the two men, neither of whom graced him with an imp
ression of giving a fuck. He balled his hands into fists, but then let out a big breath of air and pushed away from the table, deciding to at least grab a drink.

  “What do you have in whiskeys?” he asked, interrupting the Old Man, busy making a deal.

  The bartender, whose huge head looked out of sorts on his insect-like frame, flashed a hint of green as he opened his mouth to reply – probably some sort of chaw. “The better question is, what don’t I have?”

  “In that case, give me three Iresian whiskeys. Two for me, one for my friend.”

  The Old Man shot him a glance, but didn’t argue.

  “Here you are,” the bartender said, depositing the glasses on the counter, their reflections catching the hint of green in his mouth as he switched it to the other cheek. Slate pushed one over to the Old Man and they clinked the glasses together and quaffed the whiskey. The Old Man barely missed a beat, only giving a slight, abrupt shake of his head before putting the glass back on the counter. Slate approved, taking the third for himself.

  “Now,” said the big-headed bartender, who by now Slate had pegged as a cousin of the praying mantis, “you said two rooms? Ten silvers apiece, if that’s the case.”

  Alocar put the coins on the bar, and the bartender’s extraordinarily long fingers slid them into a purse that rested on his waist.

  “The rooms are at the top of the stairs whenever you have mind to occupy them. Numbers one and two, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Alocar and Slate walked back to the group. “Got a few rooms. We’ll stay here a night, and then light out in the morning. About three more weeks to the capital.”

  The others nodded, and with the exception of Slate, followed Alocar upstairs.

  Empty bottle in hand, Slate shared one of the room’s two beds with Teacher, Crymson alone on the other to his left. Isaac and the Old Man had taken shelter in the neighboring room.

  “What did those men say?” asked Crymson, awake despite dawn being no more than a few hours off.

  “You mean after I whipped their asses in poker?”

  “I know you asked about those words on the wall. Anybody would’ve.”

  Slate didn’t reply, chewing his lip as he debated his answer, his mind slow from downing enough drink to kill a bull moose.

  “I know you’re awake!”

  “Shuttup. You know how there weren’t very many people on the streets when we rode into town?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Well, that’s something to do with it. Few weeks back, this town was getting in an uproar about supposed tax increases or something. Strange we didn’t hear of it, being on the road like we were. Anyway, these townspeople, they go to bed, but they wake up the next morning to find most of the town was knifed in the night. There weren’t a lot of survivors, mostly people that weren’t asleep at the time, and that same message was painted on the wall of nearly every house and shop. A few of the victims struggled, because they found a couple bodies of Royal Guardsmen, but that’s it.”

  “That’s . . . abnormal,” Crymson said.

  “Do you believe in coincidences?”

  “Only on the most inconsequential of levels. You?”

  “Not really,” Slate said. “And I don’t believe this is the exception to the rule. Somebody is pulling strings here, and I feel like we’re only one puppet of many.”

  Crymson didn’t reply for a few minutes, and then she said, “Whose puppet do you think we are?”

  Slate’s bottle thumped to the floor, her only answer a soft snore.

  He awoke half out of bed the next morning, one boot hanging by his toes and the other across the room near a small hole in the wall. Something warm lay beside him, and still eyeing his lonely boot, Slate traced its giant outline – Teacher. “What did I drink last night?”

  Crymson didn’t answer, and when Slate glanced over, he saw her bed empty, the sheets pulled up and the pillow fluffed.

  The door swung open. “Up bright and early, I see,” the Old Man said. “Come on. We need to get a move on.”

  Slate groaned. His head felt like an egg cracked down the middle. “I’ll be right down.” He flopped back on the bed like a landed fish. “Right after I nap.”

  Again, nobody answered. Slate let his eyes remain closed. So this is what victory feels like.

  Water slapped him in the face, and he fell off the bed with a yelp, his arms tight around his head. “What the fuck! I was going to be right down.”

  The Old Man paused at the door. “Meeting downstairs in five.”

  Slate threw his boot at the Old Man’s retreating frame. Five minutes? That water had just earned him fifteen. “You about ready?” he asked Teacher.

  The big man frowned and turned over in the sheets. Slate sighed.

  A few cuts and a bruised ego later, they made it downstairs.

  “Where’s the runt?” Slate asked as he and Teacher pulled up a table next to the others.

  “Still upstairs,” the Old Man said. “Thought I’d let him rest a few more minutes before we pull out.”

  Slate handed a plate of sausage and potatoes to Teacher. “Here, why don’t you take a plate of this to your buddy. I’ll come get you in a minute.”

  Teacher nodded happily and disappeared back up the stairs.

  Last night’s bartender approached them with three glasses of the morning’s milk balanced atop a tray that in turn balanced atop upright fingers. Slate ignored the conversation filtering between the other two and watched the bartender wrap his long fingers around the glasses one at a time and deposit them without wobble. His mouth, too wide even for his humongous head, chewed on last night’s green, something with a hint of – Slate sniffed – mint.

  “Have you working a double, eh?” Slate asked.

  The bartender nodded, arranging Crymson’s glass before her. She gave an distracted thanks and continued talking to Alocar.

  Slate took his proffered glass. Their fingers brushed, and the insect-like bartender gave a small bow and turned away, the tray still balanced atop his outstretched hand.

  “You want to re-bandage Teacher’s cuts or shall I?” asked Crymson, the milk whitening the dusky skin around her lips.

  “Could you?” Though Slate wouldn’t admit it aloud, Crymson’s fingers worked twice as nimbly as his own. “I’m going to catch up on breakfast.”

  She got up to leave and Slate tilted his head back – too far. The back of his skull connected with the floor, and his vision blackened. He cursed and reached to feel for a lump, but then he felt a hand on the back of his head and another on his shoulders, lifting him.

  He opened his eyes and saw Crymson looking at him, her mouth to the side and eyebrows arched. Her lips moved, disconcertingly fast. Words pelted him in the face and bounced off without his comprehension. Her pitch sounded whiny, like a high buzz, far different from her normally controlled voice.

  Another face blinked into view, wattles at its neck, and then disappeared. They pulled him to his feet, and he thanked them, but they looked at him strangely, faces shifting into looks of bemusement, followed by anxiety, and finally, alarm, states that flickered nearly too fast for Slate to follow.

  A figure skated into view, large head bobbing and weaving. Slate caught a hand on an elbow, a flash of green, and a pointing finger. Crymson’s eyes locked with his, and Slate asked, “What happened?”

  “You fell. We thought you’d just overbalanced your chair, being hungover and all. But you didn’t get up. You just laid there. But now you’re fine, and, she stopped, “Slate, why is everything moving so quickly?”

  “I have no idea.” The conversation between the two of them flowed at a normal pace, but the room still blew by, like Slate and Crymson were the minute hand on a clock and the others lived according to the second hand.

  The men from last night’s card game watched, their hands in their laps. The Old Man’s fingers blurred to his sword and then leveled it at the wide-mouthed bartender. They parried, back and forth, swords connecting over ten
times before Slate was able to put his finger to his temple.

  Details clicked. “Time has slowed for us, or for me, at least. The only thing I can properly understand is you. What’s it like on your end?”

  “Same.” In the time that it took Crymson to respond, the wide-mouthed man had managed to get the Old Man to lower his sword, its point in the ground. As Crymson’s lips pressed together to finish the word, the Old Man covered the length of the bar and stood in front of Slate, a rope in his hands, his fixed expression telling Slate all he needed to know.

  Slate turned and lunged at the wide-mouthed man’s waist. Before Slate’s feet left the ground, the wide-mouthed man slipped behind Slate and, with an elbow pointier than it had any right to be, drove it into the small of Slate’s back.

  The ground rushed up to greet him without thought for his slowed state, and for the second time that morning, Slate smashed to the floor, his nose flattening against the boards. Somebody wrenched his arms behind his back and tied them together.

  Slate tested the ropes, blood leaking into his mouth. The Old Man had left some slack in the rope, if only –

  The wide-mouthed man destroyed his plan. He swept up behind Slate and retied the ropes, twice as tightly. After doing the same to Crymson, the wide-mouthed man stepped back. He blinked, and then opened his mouth to speak. Slate prepared himself for the high-pitched whine, but the voice rang clear.

  “The name’s Kross, and I think,” a hint of green as he smiled at Slate’s prone but struggling form, “we’re going to enjoy our time together.”

  Isaac

  The canvas-covered wagon bounced down the road, harassing its sweltering denizens. Isaac sat cross-legged at its rear, chains connecting his wrists to his ankles, which in turn were staked to the floor. A bench nearly as long as the wagon’s bed served as a seating arrangement for the others, who were chained back to back, their feet immobilized in a fashion similar to Isaac’s.