Threadbare Volume 1

by Andrew Seiple

  “What you do? What you do here? You should no be here!”

  “Mom, they’re going to kill everyone! The soldiers are here to kill everyone!”

  “Yes, which is why you must go!” Zuula shouted, green knuckles turning white as she gripped the porch.

  “No! We’re not leaving you!”

  “Child!” Zuula threw up her hands as the others came out of the trees, Garon’s forced march faltering as he reached his destination, and the others who had been swept up in it coming down from it, feeling their stamina drain all at once. “Ksh! Inside, quickly!” The shaman commanded, holding the curtain open. “Much to do and you can help, but then you go!”

  The children piled in, Celia clutching Threadbare tight, and Zuula punched through the floorboards, pulling rag-wrapped bundles from below and tossing them. “You, Jarrik, take these.” She threw a bundle at him. “Put high in trees around clearing.”

  Jarrik opened the bundle, and looked at its contents with a puzzled expression. “But these are—”

  “Do it!” Zuula bellowed, digging out another parcel. “Bak’Shaz, here be food. Elven waybread. Keeps forever, little bit last whole day. Elves not miss it, they be Zuula’s gumbo and shit out long ago. Porkins be out back. Get him and get back in here.”

  “Oh man, Porkins!” Bak’Shaz took the pack and scrambled. “I almost forgot about him!”

  “And for you,” she turned to Celia, with a large sack and a bundle of papers. “Take these. Animate with scrolls and invite to party. Then invite Zuula in and leave party.”

  “What? You’re...” Celia took the bag and looked at the five items inside. “Okay...”

  “Once they animated go put in treeline around clearing. Ask Jarrik if need help. Go!”

  Celia scrambled.

  Zuula looked up at Garon and sighed. He had his arms folded and his eyes set in a familiar glare. The same glare he always gave her as a child, whenever she tried to get him to eat sprouts.

  “I’m not leaving you here,” Garon said. “Not alone.”

  He never did eat those fucking sprouts, Zuula reflected.

  “Your father left Zuula here. Trouble coming for him too,” Zuula said, thinking fast. “Need him if we gonna win this one.”

  Garon squinted at her, and his eyes un-narrowed a bit. “You have a plan?”

  “Yes,” she lied. “He out at Caradon’s. You go get him!” Zuula tossed him the last sack.

  He opened it, and gasped. “This is... you just made a quest out of it? What the heck, Mom?”

  “You get bonuses, right? There reward. Don’t spend none until you get you father safe!”

  “This is at least...”

  “Mordecai maybe not take foolish daughter Mastoya’s money when she send it, but Zuula got no problem with pride. Use it if you need to.”

  “All right...” He frowned. “I don’t know if the others have the stamina to get there. I should leave them here—”

  Zuula almost howled in frustration. “Unclever child! You be talking to shaman! Get them in here!”

  After a few frenzied minutes, the crew was assembled. They’d left Beryl back in town to warn her family, so she was out of the equation, but Celia was looking ragged, Jarrik was wobbling, and even Bak’shaz, her little ball of energy, was drooping a bit.

  Zuula sighed. “Gonna use the heavy stuff.”

  Garon’s eyes flew wide open. “Whoa, mom, no, that stuff is—”

  “Then make sure they don’t never get it again. Not for about five years or so.” Zuula reached into the bundle of herbs on the wall, pulled out a bright green and orange one that almost seemed to almost glow with slickness, and threw it in the fire. Smoke billowed up, and the children coughed as it filled their lungs.

  When the smoke died down, they were vibrating, literally vibrating as the boards underneath them rattled.

  “What is this?” Celia said, staring at her fingers. “I feel so weird... status?”

  There was a pause, as the other brothers did so, all save Garon who palmed his face.

  “Um...” Celia frowned at the air, blinking five times faster than she normally could. “What is the ‘high’ condition, please? And why is everything all weird colors?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Garon said. “Come on, let’s go before it wears off. Forced March!”

  Zuula watched them go, then sucked in the smoke with a few deep breaths. The old familiar smell hit her again, peeling a year or two off her lifespan and filling her veins with fire. Being a shaman, with the poison resistance she had, it carried more benefits than the agility and stamina restore and buff it had given the children. It also added to her perception. And right now her heightened ears heard the flap of leathery wings in the distance and the tromp of metal-shod feet.

  She stepped outside, seeing the air swirl with smoke, seeing through the darkness as clearly as if it was day. Better, even. Darkspawn was a good trait, about half the time.

  “Call Winds,” she said, waving her good club in the air, and the distant howling changed, started to grow as they peeled away from the mountains and gathered behind her. In the distance a storm rose, a good ways west. For now.

  Then, before she could regret it, Zuula clamped the mask on her face. It bit into her, taking its toll in blood.

  “Slow Regeneration,” she gasped, casting her buffs before her mind could go to the place the mask sent it to. “Beastly Skill Borrow, Owl! Call Vines! Call Thorns! Fast... ah... hah, hahahhaha...” She laughed, as the mask became her, and she became it.

  “Come then!” She roared, in three voices at once, raising her club to the air. “Come and die!”

  And in time they did come. They came, with the runes on their armor suppressed, without torches, not that they needed them. Behind the unit of soldiers, Taylor’s Delve burned, sending smoke and fire far up into the sky. They came with a veteran of the northern wars leading the raid.

  Not that it helped them, in the end.

  *****

  Just one more house, Grant figured, then they’d be done with it. Bad for morale, running down civilians and killing them, but he’d done worse in the North. Besides, they were all traitors. And he had his orders, there, with the King’s Declaration of War buffing all his fighting stats. Death to Traitors, it said, and that was their job tonight.

  A dragon flew overhead, heavy wings beating. The first pass had shown only darkness, its rider had reported.

  “Gonna kill us some piggers,” one of the footmen next to Grant said “Gonna roast ‘em up and hear ‘em squeal. Makin’ bacon.”

  Grant shot him a look. “Shut up.”

  “Just saying, I bet they smell like ham when they burn.”

  Grant’s fist crashed into the footman’s helm, and the idiot fell like a poleaxed cow. Grant didn’t even break stride.

  “What the shit? What the shit was that about?” The idiot was saying as he got up, and Grant heard Boyle and Kaney restrain him.

  “The Grand Knight’s a pigger, you idiot,” Kaney hissed. “Lucky she ain’t here yet! Say that word around her you’re dead!”

  They made it out into the clearing, and the crude little hut on the hill. Smoke seeped out of it, and for a second, Grant wondered if the family that lived here had saved him the trouble. He was running without scouts this time, for reasons that hadn’t been made clear to him, so he was running blind and pissed about it.

  “Come out with your hands over your head! By order of the King!” he called.

  No answer.

  He started forward—

  —and the winds whipped up, as thunder roared across the clearing, as the freakish storm that had suddenly sprung up to the west roared in, pounding rain and hail, and instantly visibility went straight to hell.

  The fires of the town were rendered down to a shrinking glow, and the night pressed in...

  And a voice rang out from everywhere and nowhere.

  “Stupid boys...” It hissed, and Grant turned, barking orders, spreading his s
quad into a perimeter.

  “Unclever girls...” the voice growled, and somewhere behind Grant, Kaney screamed.

  “Come out and show yourself!” Grant barked.

  “You come to kill an orc? You come to kill an orc in the night?”

  Then the drums started all around them, and the rain fell harder as the soldiers screamed in the darkness...

  *****

  Jericho stared at his hands, as monsters screamed and died in the darkness.

  He could only see them due to his enhanced perception, and the Sensate-created illusions they were hiding behind didn’t help matters. It was dark out here, Dark as a Witch’s asscrack, he remembered his mentor saying, on nights like this.

  His mentor, the traitor.

  Jericho hadn’t wanted to believe it, but there the old man was, up on the roof of the house across the river, dodging lightning bolts and firing at the Spirewolf pack below.

  Up the line, past his unit and the next two, the King paced back and forth, his crimson plate cloaked and silenced by yet more illusions.

  They’d been waiting for hours. The army had rolled in at the beginning of the night, but the King hadn’t given the order yet.

  “What are we waiting for?” Yules said in the party whisper. Jericho could just see her blonde crewcut, crouched among the reeds of the riverbank. He’d have to talk to her about that later, she really should have hidden better.

  “We’re waiting on demons, I hear,” Zanzibar replied. His dark skin made him almost invisible, only his white, white eyes giving him away. Top marks.

  Jericho wanted to tell them to shut up, to keep the chatter down, but he suppressed it. He was their Captain, and a little pre-op chatter was to be expected. He’d always given them a free hand, more so than the Crown’s doctrine was comfortable with, but he found he got better troops out of it. After all, it had worked with him.

  Just like Mordecai did with you, back in training, the thought curled around Jericho’s brain.

  Yules continued. “Demons. Wonder if it’ll be imps. Or hellhounds.”

  “Those are the least kind,” Moony said. He’d been a cultist, once upon a time. And not the sanctioned kind, which was why he was working off his crimes in service. “The worst ones are the ones that look human.”

  “Now why’s that?” Zanzibar wondered.

  “Demons are from the outside. They have no way to understand this world, unless they’re the greatest of lords, or they’re bound by a pact, or both. And to seal the pact, you have to give it the head and heart of something. Not the body, just the head and heart. Takes a bird or a bat, to pact an imp. Kill a dog, get a hellhound. So to get one that looks human...”

  “You can stop there,” Yules said.

  But Moony didn’t. “They get the memories, some of them, if the brain’s intact. They get the senses, and the perspectives, and some people think they get the souls, too. But the ones that look human are the worst. They come back wrong...”

  “Enough,” Jericho said, looking up the line. “The Inquisitor is here.”

  And there she was, walking up to the King, dressed simply in her white-furred coat and high traveling boots. She put a hand on his shoulder, and pointed back towards town.

  But Moony kept talking. “There’s always been talk, you know, of the Fallen Six. Of why they had closed-casket funerals. Why the king had all their portraits destroyed...”

  “Stow it, Moony! Look alive!”

  The Inquisitor ambled over to them, and nodded.

  “I’m with your unit tonight, gentlemen.” She brushed back long, straight black hair with one red-nailed hand. “You have your orders. Let’s go do this.”

  Jericho nodded, and the horns blew, as the legion started forward. Scouts in the vanguard, and Jericho and the rest of the ninth were among them, leaping over the rocks in the river’s ford, and charging up the hill. He saw Mordecai’s head snap toward them, as lightning flared, but then they were in the treeline and charging past the first Raggedy Man. It raked out at Zanzibar and the scout cried out, twisted aside, and nocked an arrow.

  “Leave it and keep moving!” Jericho bellowed. The Raggedy Man pursued, but stopped as the first wave of infantry hit it, heavy shields dripping from the ford, swords rising and falling as they clustered around the wood golem. It turned and lashed out with thorny hands, sending troopers flying, but more closed in, and around the perimeter Jericho knew the other units were doing the same.

  Then he was out and into the clearing, as the first of the three dragon knights they’d brought flew overhead, breath flaring to illuminate the area. Mordecai was gone from the roof, and Jericho’s eyes tightened. “Camouflage!” he snapped, and the scouts faded from view one by one.

  Unconcerned, the Inquistor sauntered across the bloody lawn... up until she reached the door, then blue sparks flew from the handle as she tried to turn it.

  Sneering, she pulled out a scroll. “Dispel Enchantment,” she told it, and magic flared, and dissipated.

  Shouts from the left, and arrows flew out of the trees, into the unit following. “Rapid Fire!” Jericho heard Mordecai yell, and he held his breath and ducked low as a spray of arrows flew from the trees, into the infantry unit following behind. Men screamed and fell back. Casting a glance backward, the Inquisitor moved through the doorway, and Jericho followed. “Give me a perimeter!” he hissed over the Party Whisper.

  “On it, Captain!” Yules said, and the rest acknowledged, but by then Jericho was in the wrecked front room of the house, moving from doorway to doorway, securing the area. “People moving upstairs,” he sent a Wind’s Whisper to the Inquisitor.

  But the woman was stopped, by the ruin of a table. Crouched low, she held a picture frame in both hands, staring at a portrait through shattered glass.

  “Miss, we need to move, you’re in danger,” Jericho tried again.

  “No, Mr. Scout,” Anise said, rising up, still holding the twisted frame, staring at the distorted image through shattered glass. “I’m as safe as if I was in my own house.”

  CRIK... CRAKK... CRUNCH. With inexorable strength, the woman broke the frame, ripping it and the portrait below into pieces. She tossed them into the smoldering coals of the blocked fireplace.

  “What? Who’s there! Mordecai!” Came a bellow from upstairs, and the Inquistior waved a hand in Jericho’s direction.

  She can see me? A chill ran down his spine.

  “Go play with the old fool outside. I’ll handle the one in here,” she told him, leaping up to the second story.

  Jericho nodded, and got outside just in time to see one of the dragons bellow, and fall from the sky, wings torn off by glowing arrows.

  Jericho closed his eyes, and drew his bow tight. “All right, boys and girls,” he told his squad. “I want him taken alive.”

  CHAPTER 14: THE END OF INNOCENCE

  “This is as far as I’m going,” Garon shouted, ending the forced march.

  “What? No!” Celia shouted, staring in horror.

  Ahead of them, a half-mile upriver, the forest burned. Two dragons wheeled overhead, one rider gone and the other slumped in his saddle. They were visible due to the fires that roared and billowed among the pines, glinting off of corpses in armor, and showing figures rushing back and forth through the trees.

  “Yes!” Garon said. “Go and save Dad! Your Dad too!” Garon turned, and started back. “I’m going to get Mom. We can meet back at Oblivion Point, now go! Forced March!”

  “But...” Celia gave up, as he sped off down the river. Already enhanced by his movement buff, the weird smoke he’d inhaled supercharged his agility. There was no stopping him, and no catching up to him.

  “Come on! Follow me an’ be quiet!” Jarrik commanded, and they waded through the trees and the chaos.

  Amazingly, somehow, they managed to navigate the chaos and get to the side of the house. Crouched down, hidden by the remaining bushes, they were secure for the minute. Celia froze, as she saw the remaining windows shake, as a
great, hollow bellow of reverberating metal came pouring out from the structure. Flames licked at the other side of the house where a dragon had sprayed it with its breath during a pass.

  “I hear Dad!” Jarrik said, pointing off in the woods.

  “You!” Caradon shouted from upstairs. “What is this? What the hell is this?” The old man’s voice held a pain Celia had never heard, and she panicked, her somewhat herb-jumbled mind dropping to the worst conclusions.

  “We have to save Daddy!” She insisted. The boys shot her a look, looked at each other...

  ...then looked at the black armored guards, walking out of the burning building’s front door. They saluted in unison, as a huge man in red armor, glowing with almost its own malevolence, walked up the hill. Great horns rose from his helm, his featureless visor turning from side to side as he strode forward, sword out and shield leering, showing a moving, demonic face. Hellish images glowed in the firelight as he strode forward, not bothering to step over the bodies in his path, grinding the corpses of the fallen under his heel as he went.

  “Oh my gods,” Celia hissed.

  “We can’t take him,” Jarrik said. He pointed at the back porch. “Get to the second story from the overhang, get your Daddy out! We’ll need Dad to get us out of here. We’ll go get him. Use Wind’s Whisper when you’ve got him and we’ll figure out a way to escape. Go!”

  Celia nodded dumbly. She threw Threadbare up to the porch overhang, then grabbed a few chairs and piled them together. “Go make sure it’s clear!” She hissed at Threadbare.

  Threadbare nodded, and slipped through the broken window. He ran down the hall, just as Emmet burst out of one of the rooms the little bear had never entered. For a second, the toy golem and the armor golem stared at each other, kindred soul to kindred soul.

  “Command Gol—,” Threadbare heard Caradon croak from back in the room, before the sound of flesh hitting flesh interrupted him.

  “Oh do shut up, old man,” came a familiar voice. “Let’s see...” Paper crinkled. “Command Golem. Go out of this building with your hands up and do nothing once you’re out.”