by Jon Hollins
It was hard to raid somewhere that welcomed you as a conquering hero. It took all the fun out of burning a building to the ground when everyone just stood around and clapped.
He reached for his flagon, took another swig, and found that he’d emptied it again. He considered calling for another but the obsequiousness of the boy who came bearing them was grating on his current mood. He flung the tankard away, picked himself up, and stumbled toward his cot. The ale already had the tent spinning around him at a good rate. He didn’t need more ale anyway. Piss on ale.
Gods … Piss on ale? What was he thinking? Ruling Kondorra really had gotten him turned around. What he was needing was a fight. A good old-fashioned fight.
At that exact moment, a blade slipped six inches between his ribs.
Despite this staggering coincidence, Balur did not take any time to appreciate the irony of the timing. Instead he roared and twisted away from the violent flare of pain.
The blade was razor sharp, and the tip was barbed. A professional’s weapon. It tore at the skin as he pulled away, and the wielder twisted the blade, opening the sides of the wound, trying to maximize the damage and the blood flow. On any normal man it would have been an incapacitating blow, quite possibly fatal. Given what the blade told Balur about its owner’s professionalism, he guessed that the blow was meant to drive him to his knees so that his throat could be cut more easily.
Which meant that they had underestimated him.
As it was, the blade had only made it a few inches through his thick armor-plated skin, and at worst had nicked the edge of his lung. Infection was a concern, but not until long after he had crushed this fool’s skull. Free of the blade, he lunged and punched.
He struck nothing.
A shadow moved in the dying light of the fire. Another blade stuck him in his other side. Either his assailant was inhumanly fast, or he had friends.
Balur changed tactics. He didn’t want to be bleeding from too many wounds. Two was not too many, but it was the start of a bad trend.
Before his attacker had time to twist and remove the blade, he stepped into the attack. He felt a satisfying “oof” as his greater bulk collided with their lesser one. Balur dropped to one knee, feeling the smaller figure caught beneath his weight. There was a satisfying scream as the attacker’s pelvis shattered beneath him.
I am still having it.
Then he felt the whisper of the first attacker’s movement, closing in while he was still off balance. He felt the edge of the knife click off a thick scale where his chest met his neck.
Maybe not having all of it …
He lunged out with an open palm even as the blade skittered toward the more delicate flesh of his throat. He felt the whoomph of air as the attacker folded around his hand.
Balur grunted, heaving himself to his feet, but even as he did, his attacker slashed again and again at his arm. Ribbons of flesh curled between hacked chunks of scales. Balur roared.
Then another knife. Lancing into his back. A throwing blade from the weight and the penetration. He’d been hit with enough of them to know. Considering the second assailant was still screaming on the floor trying to work out what parts of her arse still held together, that meant a third knife wielder in the fight.
Who in the Hallows had he pissed off this much?
The answer, he supposed, was obvious. The Vinlanders. Which was insane because he hadn’t even put up resistance.
No. Firkin had. Lawl’s black eye upon that little shit stain. The old man ran his mouth, and now lunatics with knives were trying to kill him.
He reached back, snagged the knife from his back, and flung it back in the vague direction it had come from. There was a distinct lack of a satisfying grunt.
That was always being Lette’s trick anyway.
He satisfied himself by stamping down at where the first attacker had fallen, but the figure had rolled away off into the shadows.
There are being too many gods-hexed shadows here.
He needed more light than a dying fire could provide. And grabbing a log to use as a torch would just ruin his night vision further. He needed something, something to shift the balance of this fight.
Gods, three men with knives and they were having him on the back foot. He truly was going to seed running this armpit of a nation.
Someone came at him again, from the left this time. He let them come, felt the blade go in and out once, twice—
Be coming on. Be getting greedy.
—a third time. He grabbed his attacker bodily, crushed her to his bleeding side. A grunt of surprise. Balur seized her by the back of the skull and squeezed. She died with a scream.
Two down.
Someone else came at his right side. Gods, he could not keep this pincushioning bullshit up.
Just as he grabbed the attacker’s wrists another throwing knife landed in his back.
There were being four of them now?
Fuck this. Balur knew exactly where he could get some more light.
Dragging his yelling attacker by the arms, Balur ignored the next two knives that landed in his shoulder blades and hurled the man into the last embers of the fire.
The man leapt up with a yell, but it was already too late. Fire was creeping up his arms and legs.
Why you should not be using pitch to be blackening your clothes, thought Balur. Not so professional after all.
The man, now a scribbled stick figure of flame, staggered across the room. Balur could see his remaining attackers clearly. Three of them arrayed around the room, two men and one more woman unless he missed his mark. But they did not look like Vinlanders. They did not sway drunkenly. They held themselves tall and alert.
One of the men held a fistful of throwing knives. “For Theerax,” he said, cocking an arm.
And that whoreson, Balur decided, would be the first to die.
Then the red came, and occluded his vision for a while.
When it cleared he was hacking in the smoke of his flaming tent, holding a loop of gut that was threatening to spill out of his midriff, and he had the unmistakable taste of someone’s face in his mouth.
It is still being as good as I was remembering at least. This is not being a total waste of a day.
Just a total waste of a life.
The flaming attacker had managed to tangle himself in the wall of the tent before he died, and the canvas itself was on fire. Balur was breathing heavily, though. Too many cuts had gone too deep. Too much blood was running down his sides.
Old and fat. Slow and dead.
What had he even been fighting for? The Vinlanders—or whoever it had been—would just send another attack. And another. He would post guards, and that would stop some of it, but not all of it. And then eventually he would live long enough to see the Vinlander army coming to smash him into oblivion.
And that was it, in the end. He was achieving nothing here but his own slow death. It had tried to come at him more quickly tonight and he had almost allowed it. Allowed it through his maudlin, pathetic attitude. He was Balur, slayer of dragons, prophet of the Kondorra valley. He was an Analesian. He seized life by the throat and he shook it. He did not wait timidly for it to dole out its next beating.
All around him, everything was collapsing to ash. Why shouldn’t the people of Kondorra believe he had as well? A martyr would be as good as a living prophet. Better perhaps.
So he staggered away, through the tattered ruins of his tent, past the scurrying guards just coming alert to the chaos at the heart of their camp, and off into the night to find somewhere he could bleed in private for a while.
3
Happily Never After
Willett Fallows—once heralded as the prophet of Kondorra, the architect of the downfall of the Dragon Consortium, mastermind behind one of the most lucrative acts of thievery in Avarran history—was knee-deep in pig shit.
“It’s all right, Mr. Fallows,” called one of the farmhands, a thick-limbed young man who seemed at ease in his skin
in a way Will had never managed. “We’ve got them.”
Will waved the man off. This was his farm. He’d grown up raising and slaughtering animals. Instead he focused on the piglet. It needed branding and it was going to get branded, whether it wanted to or not.
“Really, Mr. Fallows …” the farmhand started again. Will thought his name was Joelep.
Will made a grab for the piglet. It darted left. He lunged after it. Then his foot flew out from under him, tipped his arse up in the air, and for a moment he was completely free of the ground, heels kicking up great soaring arcs of brown filth, before he landed down in it with a thick, wet splat.
It probably wouldn’t have stung his pride quite so much if he hadn’t heard Joelep’s groan.
“Here, Mr. Fallows, let me help you up,” he heard. And strong arms were grabbing him, hauling him up. The filth let go viscously.
There were three or four farmhands with him now. He shook them off. They backed up as he spattered muck around him. “Fine,” he muttered. “I’m fine.”
He could have done anything he wanted with the coin he had stolen from the Dragon Consortium. He could have become anything he wanted. And he had chosen this.
It had seemed such a glorious thing. A proper farm. Bustling and full of life. Home to others, and with a kitchen that fed them all. A life of warmth. Of family. A life made with his own hands.
Right now his hands were full of mud and shit.
“Course you’re fine, sir,” said Joelep with almost painful deference. “But why don’t you go and wash the worst of that off you. Me and the boys have this.”
“I’m—” Will started. Then he looked around. The degree to which he wasn’t wanted was painfully apparent.
“Just trying to help,” he muttered.
“And much appreciated it was, sir,” said Joelep. Will had to hand it to the man, he was an impressively good liar.
“Okay,” he said, trying to muster what little pride he had left. “Looks like you all have a good handle on this. I’ll leave you to it.”
He went to stride away. Joelep caught him as his foot went out from under him again.
“Careful there, sir.”
Will walked stiffly away. He tried not to hear the mutters that followed him.
Will stood in the center of the farmhouse, and stared at the bottle of wine on his kitchen table. It was, he had been informed, a very good vintage. The wine merchant had been very insistent on that. There had been a whole backstory about the vineyard, and the vintner. A child was involved, and three lambs, as he recalled. It was very touching.
It was also, he had been informed, strong enough to peel paint off walls.
She, was the one who had told him that.
He popped the cork and poured himself what was far from being the first glass of the day.
He thought about Joelep’s groan. But … gods, who was the pissing farmhand to judge anyway? He paid the man’s wages. He could do what he liked on his farm. His farm.
He could command them, he thought. He could force them all to come into eat with him. To share his hall. People used to beg to eat with him. He’d commanded an army of sixty thousand. He’d had the love of the people.
But then he’d given it all away.
He’d given all the love away.
You couldn’t tell people to love you. Even this wine—and she had been right, it was particularly strong—wasn’t enough to make him think that. It had to be earned. People had to be seduced.
Stew. He could make stew. A huge pot of stew. It would steam and bubble all afternoon, and the scent of it would draw them to him.
The cook had quit two months back. Said she felt bad taking his coin, when no one came in for the meals. Said, it was lonely just cooking for herself and him. Said it hurt to see so much food going to waste. And then she’d left too.
But he could cook. He’d cooked for himself for years.
And it felt good, that afternoon, cutting the mutton, slicing the vegetables, stoking the fire. The cauldron bubbled and frothed, and the wine helped the time slip by as good strong smells filled the room, and wafted up through the chimney out into the surrounding fields.
The stew was thick and strong as darkness rolled in over the fields.
Will poured himself a bowl, cut himself a thick slice of bread from the loaf baked in his oven, made from the flour ground from the wheat that grew in his fields, and sat down at the long table, and waited for company to come.
He waited a long time. Cold stew sat heavy as a brick in his stomach.
He thought about the others from Kondorra. Not her. But the others. Balur. Quirk. Firkin. What were they doing? Had they bought happiness? Should he have let Balur take over? Would she have stayed if …
He threw the thought away. He wasn’t thinking about that. He didn’t want to think about anything. He would open another bottle of wine.
He found one stashed in a cupboard, stood by a window, looking out onto the empty farmyard, listening to its merry glug as he poured it into an ale tankard, and tried to capture some of its cheer.
The farm was still tonight. Even the animals seemed quiet. Normally there was someone running back and forth on some late-night errand or escapade. There was always life here, at least. Some sort of bustle. He may not be able to find a way into it, but at least he was surrounded by it. Sometimes it muffled things as much as the wine did.
But not tonight.
But then … A shadow shape flickering just out of the reach of the firelight. He peered. Something about the half-glimpsed silhouette nagged at him. Something furtive. Something familiar. And a nag of fear that he hadn’t felt in eight long months strummed at the base of his gut.
Without exactly knowing why, he opened a drawer and pulled out a long-bladed knife.
Behind him, a fist pounded on the door.
The farmhands didn’t come here. As much as he wanted them to, as much as he tried to make the space inviting … they didn’t come. And it was late, and dark, and everyone should be asleep.
He looked down at the knife in his hand.
But what if someone needed help? Or company? Or a shoulder to cry on? Anything that could allow him to ingratiate himself with them.
What if he greeted them with a knife in his hands?
The pounding came again. Harder. Louder.
Assailants didn’t knock. Assassins didn’t ask politely to come in. He was being paranoid.
Slowly, aware for the first time just quite how much he’d drunk that day, he slipped the knife between his belt and britches in the small of his back, drew back the bolt and unlatched the door.
It flew open. Will stumbled back a half step. A massive bulk pounded toward him.
He genuflected, throwing up a hand, the knife forgotten. And—
Wait …
“Balur?”
“Yes, yes,” said the lizard man. “Come in,” he rumbled impatiently. Wind blustered and blew, whipping Balur’s cloak about him. The lizard man clapped his massive hands. “Be shutting the door,” he said. “It is being cold enough to be freezing a lizard’s balls off out there.”
“Balur?” Will couldn’t … He … He tried to put it together. Balur. Her old companion on the road. Her old tribe, as she would have said.
So if he was here …
“Is she with you?” he said. He could hardly dare hope. But he had to.
“Who?” Balur looked at him puzzled.
The wind from the open door stroked Will with icy fingers as his heart sank. “Lette,” he said, voice barely audible above the wind.
Balur’s brow creased. “Is she not being with you?”
Hope died. It curled up and rotted right there in Will’s chest.
“Never mind.”
Balur chewed on that. “Are you going to be shutting that door or not?” he said eventually.
They sat at the end of one of the long empty tables, sharing the bottle of wine.
“That,” said Balur smacking his lips,
“is being the good shit.”
Will was still having trouble with the reality of the situation. Balur was from a life left behind. From a dream abandoned. One that had seemed like a nightmare at times. And yet it was from that place and time that she … that Lette had emerged. And Balur was her oldest friend, her long-time traveling companion. If anyone might be able to figure out where the hell she had gone.
“So,” Balur started, his only preamble being him emptying his first glass of wine down his throat and immediately pouring himself a second, “how were you fucking it up then?”
“I … I don’t … She didn’t …” Will had been over it so many times in his head, but this was the first time he’d been asked to say it out loud, and he stumbled over how to begin. “Everything was fine,” he managed. “There was no warning. We came out here to Batarra, we bought this farmstead. We invited people to come and make a life with us, and they came. We had so much gold. It was so easy to buy animals, and crops, and equipment. Farming has never been so easy. Everyone lives well. The crops have been incredible. Breeding season was great. And she was by my side, and we … we …”
Memories bubbled up unbidden. Laughter, and love, and the embrace of her skin. Everything he failed to drown out on a daily basis screaming louder in his ears than ever.
“We were so fucking happy,” he said, taking a sip to try to hide the shaking in his hand, spilling wine down his chin. “And then one morning I wake up and she’s gone and there’s just a note saying she couldn’t take it anymore, and not to follow her.”
He looked up at Balur for the first time. The large lizard man appeared largely unmoved, but given the sometimes striking similarities between Balur and a cliff face, it could often be hard to tell exactly what he was thinking.
“You were going after her,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
