The Fly Guild

by Todd Shryock

  He looked up at the boy standing over him. His face was blank and he was staring at Quinton’s leg.

  “I need my arrow back.”

  “What?” Quinton gasped.

  “If you hold still, I’ll take that out. I can’t save the arrow, but I can save the tip and the feather, which will make it easier to make a new one.” He looked at Quinton. “But no funny business.”

  Quinton nodded. The boy pulled out a long, slender knife as he sat his bow down. He snapped off the point and then snapped off the feathered end, leaving only the narrow wood shaft in his leg. He grasped Quinton’s leg with one hand and the knife and the arrow shaft with the other. With a quick pull, it was out. Quinton screamed in pain and clasped his hands over the holes to stem the flow of blood.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked the boy. “Why did you shoot me?”

  The boy was carefully examining the point for any sign of damage. He then shifted his eyes to meet Quinton’s. “Because they paid me to.”

  “They?”

  The boy nodded. He stuck the arrow pieces into his belt, sheathed the knife and picked up his bow. “The soldiers will be back soon.” His tone throughout was emotionless. He didn’t care about anyone involved. He was just doing a job. He glanced around, then trotted off, disappearing through one of the other doors of the courtyard.

  Walking was out of the question. His leg wouldn’t respond. All his mind was doing was replaying Kate and Huck disappearing over the wall together as he laid there in the rain. The plan he had dreamed of for so long, and he was so close to seeing it work. He crawled over to a pillar and propped himself up against it, next to a man who was holding in his guts with his hands. Somehow, the man was still alive.

  “I told you not to trust anyone,” rasped the man.

  Quinton looked more closely at the man’s face. “Master Grubbs?”

  The man let out half a smile before wincing in pain. “Just Grubbs to you now, sir.”

  Quinton nodded and returned the smile. The man who had started with him at the guild after he survived the crimper would be here with him at the end. It was fitting.

  “Reach into my pocket,” he said. Quinton looked at him for a minute, then followed the man’s eyes to his shirt pocket. He reached in and pulled out a small glass vial.

  “Pour some of the liquid on your wounds, then drink the rest.”

  Quinton stared at him, not understanding.

  “It’s healing magic. It will fix your leg. You can still escape.”

  Quinton shook his head and tried to hand the bottle back to him. “No, it’s yours. You should take it. Your wounds are worse.”

  “Much worse than you know,” he said as blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s powerful magic in that bottle, but not powerful enough to save me. But you ... ” his voice trailed off and he started coughing. Quinton could hear the liquid in his lungs as he coughed.

  “How do you know it will work?”

  “Trust me,” he said.

  “But you just said ... ”

  “I know what I said and it was true. I spent almost my whole life being afraid of things. I was afraid of Fist. Afraid of the guild. Afraid of the city. Afraid of the swamps. I stayed in misery because I was too afraid to leave. I dreamed of freedom, freedom from fear, but I was too afraid to try.” He coughed again. “Use the vial. Make for the swamp. Any berries you find that are black are safe to eat. Stay away from the red ones. There are many bad things out there, but if you make it past the swamp, you will be free.”

  Quinton looked at him. His eyes were starting to droop. The loss of blood was too much.

  “Don’t be like me, boy. Don’t be like me. Make your run.” His head dropped and his breathing stopped.

  Quinton looked at the vial. Everything about the guild had been a lie. The people he had dared to trust had betrayed him. Was this one final cruel joke? Was the vial poisoned so that no one would escape? Would Fist find his body and know that Grubbs had been a faithful servant until the very end?

  He could hear shouting and things being knocked over in the buildings. The soldiers were coming back. He was out of time. He uncorked the vial, carefully dribbled a little liquid in each side of his leg, then drank the rest. It tasted like water, and his leg still hurt.

  The wind started to pick up again, and the rain returned. Perhaps the storm wasn’t done after all. He gasped and reached for his dagger because it suddenly felt like someone had grabbed his leg. He could feel the wound being pressured by some unseen force, but the burning sensation subsided. He examined the wound and saw that, though it was pink and tender, the hole was no longer there. He gently flexed his leg. It was still painful, but he could move it again. The boy pulled himself up and took several ginger steps toward the bottom of the pile. He paused to grab a couple of stray bags of food and tied them together and then onto his belt.

  When he looked up, the prince was standing across the courtyard staring at him, a dozen men on either side of him, including several armed with bows. The sky behind him was black as night. The wind picked up as if the breath of the gods were blowing directly on them, and the rain became a weapon. There was no way Quinton would make it up the debris pile with his gimpy leg. The archers probably wouldn’t be able to shoot him down because of the wind, but the swordsmen would surely catch him.

  “I remember you,” called the prince over the storm. “I remember you from yesterday, and I knew I had seen your face before.”

  Quinton took a couple of steps to the side and stood on the rug that was draped on the base of the rocks.

  “Now that I see my dagger, the one my grandmother gave me, hanging at your belt, I know why you look so familiar.”

  Quinton reached down and tied the decorative rope on the corner of the rug around his boot, never taking his eyes off the prince.

  “It was you that night who tried to kill me. It was you that night who took my dagger.” He started to walk forward. The men started to come with him, but he waved them back. He would handle this alone.

  “That’s not all,” Quinton yelled back. As he hoped, the prince slowed his pace and turned his head to hear him better. The sheets of rain were now pouring down and the wind was whipping debris in all directions, making it hard to see. “This morning, I visited your grandmother. I escorted her to the balcony.”

  The prince’s face twisted in rage as Quinton tied the other rope around his other foot.

  “It was I who broke into the elf’s room. It was I who took his sword.” Quinton reached forward, grabbed the other end of the rug and wrapped the rope around his hands.

  The prince pulled out his sword and stumbled forward, trying not to be blown over by the wind.

  “It will make me happy to torture you every day for years on end for what you have done to my family. Your death will not be fast.”

  Quinton stood up and hoped his plan would work. He held the rug up in front of him, all four corners tied to an arm or an ankle. “We will both remember this day then. My name is Quinton, and one day I will return to finish the job that I failed to do that night.”

  The prince moved in to attack.

  Quinton quickly high-stepped up into the air, the magic of the boots carrying him up and out of reach. The archers fired at him, but between the wind and the rain, it was like throwing confetti into a tornado. The arrows were batted around and slammed to the ground. The prince screamed in anger as Quinton climbed into the air, the wind already blowing him out over the wall. As soon as he turned, the wind grabbed his makeshift sail and nearly pulled his arms out of his sockets.

  He glanced back at the city. The storm was blowing the sea into the streets. He could see ships being pushed onto the roads and buildings crumbling from the force of the wind and the waves. People were trying to run, but like little ants in a stream, they had no power.

  When he looked to his front, he had to quickly gain altitude again, because he was heading for the tree line and was not high enough. Several top branc
hes grabbed at his feet as he skimmed by at an incredible rate of speed. He kept climbing higher and higher and watched with amazement as the swamp rushed by below. Occasionally, the road that twisted through it came into view and he spotted gaggles of refugees trying to make it to safety.

  Quinton wasn’t sure how long he could hang on. The ropes were cutting into his hands from the force, but he was covering massive distances thanks to the force of the storm. He kept riding the wind, the way a piece of driftwood rides the tide.

  ***

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the rug finally gave out. It tore down the middle and shredded. He now had four scraps of waterlogged fabric pulling him along. His speed slowed, but he was still moving. After much struggling, he managed to free himself of each piece. As he let each one go, it fluttered in the wind to the ground far below. Even without his sail, the wind still pushed him along. He could see the trees of the swamp and large lakes, their waters whipped into a frenzy by the storm.

  His next problem was how to land. Each time he dipped his feet and dropped his altitude, another line of trees came racing up, and he had to climb to safety again. As he approached the ground each time, he got an idea of just how fast he was going. It was certainly much faster than any horse could ever run.

  He spotted a large swath of high grass and reeds that appeared to have some sort of trail running through the middle of it. It was the most open spot he had seen in some time. He pointed his feet and began his final descent. As he approached the ground, he tried to start running with his legs, hoping to slow himself. He was coming down right on the trail, but as soon as his feet hit the ground he pitched forward, the boots no longer keeping him upright. He did several somersaults and then crashed into the high grass, flipping and rolling until he came to a stop.

  His elbow hurt and his hands and arms were scraped up, but the grass had cushioned his fall. He crawled back toward the trail to get out of the ankle-deep water he was in. There was some sort of stone ruin ahead. He stumbled a few steps in the wind and looked at it. There was only one part of a stone wall left of whatever ancient being had live here, and it was only knee high, but it was good enough. Quinton crawled next to it to shelter from the wind, closed his eyes and fell asleep. His slumber was easy, because he was finally free.

  EPILOGUE

  Blackberries grew in abundance around his lake in the swamp. At first, he built a platform and slept in the branches of the trees for fear of the giant lizards that Sands had warned him about. But as the days went on, he explored all around his new home and saw no sign of them, so he built a crude lean-to using part of the old stone wall. He had his food from the sacks to get him through those early days, and he made good use of it, stretching every provision as long as he could. The berries were many, but he knew they wouldn’t last forever.

  The tall marsh grass formed small natural pools, where fish would sometimes congregate. He used his sword like an ax, chopped down several saplings and tied them together in bundles using the broad strands of the reed grass that was exceptionally tough. He then took his bundles and blocked off the small streams that led from pool to pool, trapping the fish so he could spear them with his sword.

  Weeks later, he made a spear from a small sapling and used his dagger to sharpen the end into a point, then hardened it in his cooking fire. With practice in the pools, he learned to spear fish from the shore. Soon, he rarely used the bundles of sticks to trap the fish.

  The water in the lake tasted a little funny, but it was clean. Unlike the filth of the city, the outdoors was fresh. He bathed in the lake and enjoyed the feeling the cool water brought to his dirty body, washing away all the horrible memories.

  But not all memories would leave on their own. Each night, he saw them at the top of the rubble, leaving without him. He saw her face, and his heart sank. Occasionally, he woke up and found his hand clawing at the ground and a tear running down his cheek. She was the one thing that had kept him going in that place, the one thing of beauty, the one person he trusted. And she betrayed him.

  “Trust no one,” Grubbs had told him in the beginning, and in the end, he was right. Trust no one. Now he knew why.

  Sometimes he looked up at the stars after his fire had burned out and wondered where she was under the great black blanket of sky. He wondered if she ever wondered what had happened to him. But based on the situation she left him in, wounded, alone and surrounded by soldiers, she probably assumed he was dead. And realistically, he thought, she probably didn’t even care. If she had, she would have waited for him. Waited for him like they had planned.

  As he cleaned a fish using a knife one bright afternoon, a thought popped into his head. What if she had waited for him? What if she had been with him in the courtyard? The soldiers would have still come. Even if they had made it out of the city, they would have been hunted down. Or washed away in the storm. Did she die in the storm? He thought about it for a moment then decided no. She was alive. He could feel it. Some day, they would meet again.

  The days were bright and long, and after so many years of being stacked with other humans in a cold, dank basement like fleshy firewood, Quinton was glad to be alone with his thoughts. No more stealing, no more killing. The only person he answered to was himself.

  On nights with a full moon, he kept having the same dream. He was in a castle made of fog. The walls eddied and swirled all around him, and the floor was lost beneath a knee-high mist. There was always a figure in the distance, a boy his age, but he had a faint glow about him, as if moonlight shone from within. He did not appear to have any hair and his skin was pale white, but his features were always lost. Was this a shadow of himself in some netherworld? Or was it a message from beyond? He did not know. He didn’t like being in that dream, but he never felt threatened, and the figure never drew close enough for him to see the truth.

  The full moons came and went, the berry vines bloomed and faded. The only want Quinton had was for clothes. Most of what he had was mere rags, and he was already stripped to the waist. He was able to fashion a shirt of sorts out of one of his bags, but there wasn’t much warmth on the nights when it was cold. There were plenty of deer in the area, but he had no bow. He tried his spear at them a few times, but he didn’t know how to hunt, and the spear was too small to bring one down.

  He began to think of moving on. He would find the road and follow it out of the swamp. Perhaps he could barter for some new clothes. If not, he certainly knew how to steal some. He began to make preparations to leave. He would wait until the berries were in full fruit again, then set out to see what else was out there.

  When the time was right, he gathered up as many berries as he could fit in a sack, stored up a few days’ worth of fish that he could eat before it went bad and took several large live bullfrogs that would provide him some fresh meat if he were unable to find any. As the sun rose in the east, Quinton set out on his path, a free man.

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