Ragged Heroes: An Epic Fantasy Collection

by Andy Peloquin

  “We have plenty of witches,” he said aloud, as if that were reason enough to go killing the ones they found from this point forward.

  They were losing this war. Witches help or no. And time was running out.

  The Captain narrowed his gaze on what should be one dead witch.

  Strangely, she bled but did not fall. The Captain watched her, waiting, as the army waited, for her to die. And when she did not, he finally grew impatient.

  With a nod from the Captain, the man who held the witch took his dagger and stabbed her, this time in the back. The edge of the blade showed through like a glinting jewel of red from her chest.

  The witch made no plea, though blood poured from her mouth in a silent trickle.

  When it was apparent that once again she would not fall, the witch spoke. “Mayhap it’s the beheading that will do it,” she said as if to herself.

  The Captain was surprised, but not immune to the idea that witchcraft could revive a witch. So he nodded yet again, and his man forced the witch from his blade onto her knees.

  The Captain himself pulled his sword—duty prodded him to not ask his man to stand as executioner thrice—and he lined it up across the back of her pale neck.

  This time, when he lobbed the blade downward, and the witch’s head rolled, hair trimmed uneven at the chin, he watched the body fall with the satisfaction of a job well done.

  Chapter 4

  Magic such as Esa’s does not fix slowly and messily. It is a sneaky thing that happens when most have looked away.

  Just a blink and she rights herself.

  And there she sat, head in place, and the Captain this time, unsuspecting, shouted and stepped backward in fear.

  “You she-demon,” he cried.

  And Esa smiled. “At your service.”

  “I have no time for witches who cannot die.” The Captain lifted his blade again, but Esa stood and waved him off, brushing her dress free of leaves.

  “And I have all of the time in the world, good captain. You can cut my head off a hundred times, and it will return that many and more.”

  He frowned and scratched at his chin that was in need of a shave. “Shackle her.”

  She hoped her indignant glare would be remembered. “For what?”

  “A spy,” he said. “You’ve got immortal books in your home. We’ve found them all. They’ll be burned.”

  Her books! The witch approached the Captain with angst. “That seems hasty. Don’t you want to know your enemy, Captain? You should let me go. I’ve no quarrel with you, not really, and it’s not like you can rid yourself of me anyway.”

  He smiled then, but it was not a nice smile, as Esa knew it would not be. “If I choose, witch, I could kill you every day at midday until we find the method that does the trick.”

  Not drowning, Esa thought, anything but drowning.

  She’d never tried that since she held a terrible fear of water, as all witches did. It has kept her from even trying to learn to swim.

  “Captain,” Esa said, wondering if a bargain might do. “Perhaps I can help you.”

  He was already walking away. “I have witches.”

  To his back, Esa spat, “Not like me, you don’t. Not ones who know immortality.”

  The Captain paused. This was true. They would lose, and it was time he did something outside of the normal. They did not fight humans, so perhaps fighting like a human was the reason they’d lost almost all of their forces. His leader had died. Then his leader’s leader had followed. All of them gone before these bloodthirsty giants, and so, it was up to him now. And perhaps a strange witch that couldn’t die would think like the enemy that had been unable to die until recently.

  “Bring her to my tent.”

  And a man rode up and snatched Esa from behind.

  Together they traveled behind the Captain’s horse to the encampment, which was a pitiful thing to her eyes, if she compared it to what the islands of men had had before.

  Esa shook her head to see how the mighty had fallen.

  While the force of humans had been less than the Immortals they had once been much greater than rags and sticks pitched to barely resemble tents.

  They were scattered now, the mortal forces, like feathers on a breeze, and this was what was left.

  Esa pursed her lips and sighed a hard sigh, because she knew right then that she would help. She may watch them all die otherwise—the Captain, his men, humans, perhaps the islands entirely—unless she tried her hand.

  Even if she didn’t quite like the Captain, his brutality was something Esa rather admired. The best reason being, the Immortals were by far the cruelest of the two sides, and this might be good for the humans to have someone quick to make decisions, even if they weren’t good.

  The tent for the Captain wasn’t a living quarter usually set for a high-ranking officer. It looked no different than the others, and his uniform was threadbare. He seemed weary, but there was still fight in this man, and Esa decided, mostly because of her beloved Henry, that she would help this camp in their next skirmish. Flee once they fell? Certainly. But until that moment, she would do what she could.

  “What magic do you have, witch?” The Captain had no time for niceties.

  Once inside, Esa was made to stand before him, no chair, no drink offered—but at least they’d left off the shackles.

  “It’s a twisted magic, Captain. Something you probably have never seen.”

  “I have never seen magic at all. You reviving yourself was the first. I’m not sure I believed in it at all until that moment, to tell you the truth.”

  His exhaustion was now pouring through. He sat behind his table, a wooden thing laid out with their force numbers and formations. One leg was patched near her feet, and the table sat at an angle from uneven carpentry.

  With his long arm, he swiped at the small pegs until each fell. They continued to roll until they dropped to the floor of the tent which was just dirt and weeds. “It’s useless, right?” he demanded, his blue eyes flashing, frank and real, and honest.

  Esa could work with this. She could handle honest. She smiled. “You don’t have to believe in magic for me to use it. You don’t even have to like me to get my help, Captain. As long as I am free to go once this is…finished, I think we can work together fine.”

  “The Immortals cut through us like butter.”

  This was said almost in a plea. A confession.

  My how the tables have turned.

  Now, a sad and angry man sat before her, impotent in his rage.

  Esa lifted her chin. “Then we should make you harder to cut through.”

  The Captain cringed, no doubt thinking of the uglier side of magic. The literal side. Harder to cut through? It might mean the men turned to stone. But Esa, while a mess with spells, knew what she was doing even so.

  “When will the Immortals arrive? Are they close?” Esa asked.

  He rubbed his face. “Close…? They are practically breathing down our necks at every stop. The weather is wet now, and it’s slowed them. Given us a day or two.”

  “Good.”

  “Good…?” the Captain mimicked. “Woman, are you listening to a word I am saying? There is no one and nothing standing between them and the last castles of men. There is us, the road, and our King. Our force is the last stand. We are all that is left. Have you no sense to be concerned? Do witches get a pass from these brutes? I think not.”

  The Captain is not a brute, no. Despite lobbing her head off without regret. He is a clever man, and his eyes narrow on her now, reading things, putting them together.

  “Perhaps they would not mind a witch,” Esa said. “I’m not sure, they do seem angry at the world, the stars even. So no, I don’t think I’d get a pass. You see, Captain, they believe somehow humans figured out how to steal their immortal powers, and since now they are as capable of death as you, they are afraid. A man afraid is one dangerous beast. Immortal giants? Twice as much.”

  That is what the humans
called them, despite them only being rather big and tall. Giants were giants, and giants were no longer.

  The Captain laughed. He found the witch’s eyes entrancing, her smile alluring, even now, even when he felt the mouth of the beast clamping down on his hide. Stars….he hated magic. Hated it through and through. Something about it made the world batshit, and something about her made him shift in his seat thinking about what it would have been like to have met a witch like this with nothing but time and a bedroom…but he focused on his steady mission, once again.

  His Anna was not far from here wondering if he was still alive. His love for her was strong, but he had been at war now for two years…it mattered little. He wasn’t an animal.

  And he’d fight his best to keep Anna’s village from being the next one burned and ransacked by the monsters.

  “What’s your name, witch?” he asked, hating that his voice sounded so weary.

  “Esa.”

  “Hardwin.”

  Her plump lips pulled upward, and he already regretted asking, “What? Is my name strange to you?”

  “Strange?” Esa chuckled. “No. Hard….win…”

  Esa was a strange name to him—not funny, but not unpleasant. What a lewd witch Esa was to think his own name comical, but then Hardwin was a soldier, and lewd wasn’t new. In fact, he too smiled at the bad joke after a time.

  Hardwin said, “No one would have had the heart to tell my very prudish mother that there are certain connotations to a name like mine.”

  The witch’s laugh was like the tinkling of tin in the back of a seller’s cart, but Hardwin felt himself laugh with her as if it was the only way to abide the sound.

  “Esa is different,” he said, toying with a quill. “Old.”

  “Old…?” Her perfect brow arched above a playful gaze.

  “I mean the name is old…you…you’re…I mean for a witch…” He forced himself to shut up.

  Her smile knew things. “Captain, let’s get back to business, shall we?”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Of course. What do you have in mind?”

  “I have a plan,” Esa said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  “I have no choice.” He held out a hand to her. “We’ve run aground as far as I’m concerned. The men are tired, and if I’m honest, they’ve lost the passion to fight. The Immortals at least feel a purpose to strike out at us.”

  “Are you saying you’ve got nothing to lose, Captain?”

  “Please, call me Hardwin. And yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Good…Hardwin,” Esa murmured. “Show me your dead.”

  Chapter 5

  He told her that they did not bring the dead from the last battle to their homes. They had had to leave them in hasty retreat because the Immortals had taken over and won so fiercely.

  But now, this has worked to their advantage. The Immortals had traveled the long way to the village, because of the thousands of dead, the smells and the rot.

  The village was now all that stood between the Immortals and the last castles of man.

  The Captain took Esa there to the last battleground, the two alone on a single horse. They traveled all night without protection from the enemy.

  “Did you lead this battle?” Esa asked, her arms wrapped around Hardwin’s middle as if it were the most natural thing in the world to hug your executioner close.

  “No,” the Captain replied, helping her down when the cold battlefield came into view.

  The stench, even in the cool night, was enough to make them cover their noses, eyes watering.

  “So, your leaders fell here? How sad. I’m sorry.”

  “Where did your man fall?” he asked, shrewd enough to know that there would be a man.

  “It was a year ago. Much further north.”

  “I see. I’m sorry, too.”

  And Hardwin was truly sorry, Esa could see it. She nodded in thanks, and touched the locket at her throat.

  Esa swallowed the emotions, confused momentarily at how strong they still were.

  Hardwin was busy picking his way through the dead, some of them so rotted and pecked by vultures that they’d be unrecognizable even to kin. Esa thought about her Henry. He’d been brought home, at least, and she’d buried him properly.

  She’d see what she could do to get these home as well.

  Henry wasn’t nearly as tall or strongly built as Hardwin. He hadn’t the obvious swagger of a Captain, either. Hardwin was right, though. He was all that stood between the last castles and the Immortal hordes now, and that came with a tremendous amount of pressure.

  It didn’t completely forgive him from his having tried killing her, but it did ease her away from anger.

  She was a survivor as well, and she understood she’d found another along this route.

  “Have you seen the Immortal forces, Esa?” Hardwin asked.

  “I have not.”

  He smiled but there was no joy. “They are giants, all of them. Their armor’s gold-plated, and their helmets have sharp points like elf ears. They swing their blades the length of a grown human man…The women fight, too. Their eyes are dead, without emotion, and there is no honor in their fighting, because they do not care about winning.”

  “They don’t?”

  Hardwin looked across the field of dead men. So many that it would take days and days to count them. “No. They will still be cursed. And once they’ve killed every human, they will not be satisfied. Because they will still perish. They will still age and fall. It is not about besting anyone for them.”

  Hardwin paused in his pacing. The witch had looked away when he’d said all of that about the Immortals, and it just now occurred to him that perhaps Esa knew far more about the Immortals than him.

  Being that she held books of their language, it is possible he should be asking her the questions.

  She finally met his gaze, and then she sighed. Deciding something, it seemed.

  “It is the human’s fault,” she said.

  The Captain froze.

  “Hardwin,” she said sadly into the empty night, so quiet that even the wind died just for her. “It was the King, the old King, who cursed them. The fighting has been for so long that I’ve lost sight of who did what, but I remember it well when it began. He cursed them and died himself with that curse, and it cannot be undone. Somehow, they are tied to that King and nothing they do can stop it. But they aim to take humans with them. This is not a war for land or to win anything, just like you said. It is purely for revenge.”

  “And our King now?”

  “He’s innocent.” The witch waved her hand as if the King stood there himself. “Or as innocent as a royal can be.”

  Hardwin gave a dry smile at that.

  Then he waited for Esa as she walked the walk of a strange being around the dead for some time.

  Finally, she clapped her hands and she nodded. “I need some things for the rest. You might not want to see me do it anyway. Should you leave?”

  Hardwin shivered with goosebumps. “I’ll stay.” But he shook his head. “What will you do?”

  She blinked at him and, as if she was commenting on the weather, said, “Why, bring this army back to life for you.”

  Chapter 6

  Esa didn’t have everything for the spell, but it mattered little, because she didn’t need them to rise and be who they once were: Not a son of a mother who missed them, or the father of a child who needed his sire. No, these would be empty vessels for the fight.

  Esa needed no guidance to purposefully mess up a dead raising spell, or call rather, as she’s done so before.

  Witches could cast.

  They could spell.

  But few could call.

  Esa, because she’d been cursed herself for thieving magic, could call quite well. Calling took ancient or dark magic, and stolen magic was darkest of all. But no matter how she got her powers, she could call, and she would call tonight.

  For the dead to rise.<
br />
  Using the dirt and the moon, but mostly the stars, she drew power from all of the lights in the night, seen or unseen.

  Then she asked Hardwin to busy himself with a pyre.

  Burning bodies seemed proper. It seemed right. But Esa was really just cold and wanted to distract the poor Captain who grew ashen as the time passed, watching her work.

  She marched around the pyre, mostly to get warm, calling to the heavens: “Ashes to sky. Hear who’ll hear. The dead alive. The dead alive.”

  Hardwin’s eyes rounded, and he looked as if he’d faint.

  Esa shooed him back from her circle she’d drawn in the sand and raised her arms to the sky. “Stars to ashes, chaos to rise. Dead alive. Dead alive!”

  Chapter 7

  Hardwin pushed his mount onward down the last hill that lead to his army.

  He let the horse have its head and the animal rushed downward hastily.

  When the horse slowed, Hardwin’s cue to continue was too strong, so the horse spooked at his stiff prodding.

  His hand on the reins were jerky, and his horse tossed his head in reaction.

  If he didn’t get ahold of his nerves, the Captain was going to end up busted on the side of the road.

  The Immortals would love that.

  But he couldn’t help his rush. Somewhere far behind Hardwin were tens of thousands of soldiers, and one witch leading them all on foot.

  He’d offered her a ride, but she’d given a soft laugh and urged him to mount alone and go.

  And he so badly had wanted to leave.

  Then she’d sort of danced on the pathway in front of the soldiers…things…men…whatever they were.

  Empty eyes, sullen movements and mouth’s slack, they followed their queen of death in perfect formation.

  “Soldiers in life,” she’d said, “soldiers in death.”

  If Hardwin had not seen it with his own eyes, he’d think whoever had told him so a mad man.

  Perhaps he was mad. Perhaps Esa had spelled him all along for cutting off her head and he was rejected by the stars and sent to be punished.