M’Rae coughed and hacked, on his hands and knees, trying to breathe and failing. He was dead already but too hurt to know it.
The stranger did not speak, but merely charged. His body was as heavy as Able’s, and the fat thief growled as the man hit him. Able brought the mace over his head and slammed its head into the stranger’s back. The man slipped under Able’s arms and shouldered him in his guts, lifting as he ran. There was a blade in one of those hands. It met Able’s gut and stabbed again and again as he shoved Able backward.
Allim winced as the two of them staggered backward until they reached the edge of the cliffside that dropped to the river far below.
Able let out a scream worthy of a scalded cat as he stumbled across nothing but air and fell. The stranger stayed at that edge, his feet splayed wide apart, panting as Able dropped. By the time the fat man thudded to the ground below, the grey man was already heading toward Kellish.
Allim watched on, his enemy flexing his left arm as he strode toward the grease-masked swordsman. Allim’s heart sank. He’d though for certain Able had broken that arm.
Kellish looked on, sliding slowly to the side, as he faced the man who had already killed four of them. ‘This does not have to be.’
‘You have invited me to a war. I will make certain it is a proper one.’ The stranger didn’t even sound winded. Making matters worse, he smiled through a mouth covered in scars.
Grey hands moved, sliding under the thick fur cloak and emerging with an odd looking blade, more like a scythe than a proper sword. He drew another one a second later.
Kellish shook his head and backed further away. ‘Allim.’
Allim raised his hands. When he spoke his voice shook. He was scared, no way around it. He was the leader, sort of, but he had never been fond of actual combat. ‘Don’t. I’ve no particular desire to die today.’ His right hand had a sword in it. He’d rather forgotten that in all the excitement.
Still, better to die with a sword than without.
The grey warrior held two of the strange weapons, and when Allim saw them properly he was more puzzled than before. Both had a blade that ran along the outside of the hand, a spike at the top of the fists and a long metal post that ended just beyond the elbow in another spike. They’d been designed to wrap around the man’s thick forearms and looked more like reshaped bracers than anything else.
‘What are you holding?’ Allim asked the question as he considered the possible answers. There was little to consider, really. There were blades and spikes and he had no doubt that all of them could kill.
‘I will show you more closely.’
Allim shook his head. ‘No reason to rush on my account.’
While the fighter was distracted, Kellish moved in fast, stepping up close and stabbing with his short spear. Its point did not penetrate the cloak but snagged in the outer layer of fur, pulling Kellish, who had put his full weight into the blow, nearly off his feet.
He let go of his weapon before the man could retaliate. Then he backed up as the grey-skin threw a punch that would have impaled his chest if he had stayed his place.
‘You’ve made your point! We don’t want to fight you.’ Kellish shook his head. The giant shook his arm and Kellish’s spear fell free from the fur cloak.
‘Would you surrender?’ The man’s voice sounded odd, there was a sibilance to his words that Allim had not noticed before. The fine hairs on Allim’s neck rose and he edged back over to his horse.
Allim shook his head and spat. ‘No! We would retreat! Run away, Kellish!’
Allim hauled himself back into the saddle of his horse as the grey man charged Kellish.
The grey man was fast. Kellish was faster. He was also on the defensive. Every jab or thrust the man made hit air as Kellish danced back and shook his head and grinned. The smeared skull on his face grinned with him.
Allim backed up his horse. From thirty feet away he allowed himself one moment of bravery and threw a dagger at the back of the grey man’s head.
Then he turned his horse and dashed away as swiftly as he could, hoping that Kellish managed to win the fight.
It seemed like a good idea, but the horse let out a scream and bucked. Allim had never been a skilled horseman. He landed on his ass and watched the horse bolting away with his dagger in its flank.
‘Cowardly! At least your friends fought with some honour.’ The grey man looked at Allim with those glowing silvery eyes and Allim shook his head.
No. No chance he would fight the thing. It refused to die.
Kellish rose from the ground behind the grey man, his face bloodied, the painted skull smeared and stained crimson in spots. He lifted his spear and moved toward the man coming for Allim.
Allim picked up his sword from where he’d dropped it and charged at the man, praying Kellish would get there soon enough to do some damage. The stranger continued toward him, running hard. Allim braced himself, ready to strike as soon as the man reached him. He’d do whatever he had to do to survive.
The stranger was fast. Kellish was faster. This time the spear struck true and the warrior grunted as he fell forward. Kellish pushed his advantage. As the man crashed into the ground, Kellish drove the spear deeper into the large man’s chest.
Kellish pulled the spear free and backed away, warily.
Sprawled across the stony ground, the grey man coughed blood, and Kellish relaxed. The spear had gone deep, the blade and shaft painted with a heavy flow of blood.
‘All the gods…’ Allim moved a step closer but no farther. The man should have been dead by all rights but he was struggling still. His strength had failed him, however, and he didn’t seem capable of rising.
‘That man is crazy!’ Kellish shook his head and eyed the body as if he expected it to attack again.
Allim was contemplating hitting the back of that head with his sword a few dozen times to be safe. ‘Aye. Good work, Kellish.’
Kellish started to respond when the man rose to his hands and knees and coughed again, another gout of blood that was more pink than red.
He did not try to stand, but instead rolled over onto his back and looked toward Kellish. All the bravery in Allim faded just that quickly and he backed away.
The man’s eyes glowed. He’d thought that a trick of the light earlier but no. ‘He’s a demon!’
Three hooks on chains appeared in the man’s hand, each as long as Allim’s hand from wrist to longest fingertip. If they were meant to fish, then surely the fish must be the size of a man or greater. One flick of the grey man’s wrist and those barbed nightmares found Kellish’s face, eye and neck and sank deep into all three.
Kellish screamed and stumbled backward his hands waving madly. He dropped his spear and tried to pull the hooks free.
The stranger gripped the chains in his hand and hauled Kellish toward him. Kellish fell toward the man as his eye ruptured. He tumbled to his knees and the stranger ripped the hooks free from Kellish and threw them toward Allim.
They missed him by the grace of any possible gods.
Allim backed away, shaking his head in horror. The grey demon was supposed to be dead or dying, not fighting on!
Kellish still had some fight left, though it was not much. His face was torn apart and his neck vomited hot blood across his front and his enemy alike. Instead of leaning back and dying like a sensible enemy, the grey man hooked his fingers into Kellish’s shirt and yanked him closer until he could wrap both of his thick hands around his enemy’s neck and squeeze.
That was enough for Allim. He turned and ran. His horse wasn't far away, and he and the damned animal came to a quick understanding. Allim soothed its neck for a moment and whispered kind words to calm the beast, and then he was in the saddle and riding steadily away from the dead men who had been his friends for the past few months.
He did not know if Kellish was dead or alive. He did not know about the grey man. He only wanted to get as far from them as possible, and so he rode until the sun was nearly set
and the temperature fell icy. By the light of the dying sun Allim spotted his salvation. The village was one he’d seen before. A small gathering of farms and little else. He rode to the third house in the settlement. It was the largest and most likely to have room for a stranger. He’d have preferred a good pub, but beggars could not make demands.
He pounded hard at the heavy oak door and waited. The man who answered wasn't overly muscled but he was a tall fellow and he looked capable. His hair was greying and his face had several days’ worth of stubbly beard. His frown was not welcoming, but Allim took a chance just the same. He was exhausted. He needed rest and food.
‘Beg pardon, sir.’ Allim did his best to look sincere and reasonable. Which, in comparison to his now dead companions, was relatively easy. ‘I’m lost, you see, and I thought I might ask a place to sleep for the night and directions in the morning.’ The man stared at him in silence. Allim reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out four small coins. ‘I can pay. Not much, but I can pay.’ There was more coin, of course, but a good pauper’s pocket deterred curious eyes.
Dark blue eyes regarded him for a moment and then, ‘Aye. We can manage something, I expect. Come on inside. I’m called Tovish. What do I call you?’
He nodded his thanks and the man stepped back into the warmth of a spacious main room with a good fire going and what smelled like mutton cooking in a pot over it.
‘I’m Allim,’ he replied as his stomach rumbled noisily. He closed his eyes and felt himself relax for the first time since they’d found the grey man. There was food, there was a fire, and there was shelter. Really, there wasn’t much more a man needed on a bitter night. ‘I thank you, sir. It’s getting cold out there and there are too many animals for a man on his own. And too many of the sort that carry knives for my taste.’
Tovish nodded his head and gestured to the table. ‘Stew’s almost done. Sit. I’ve a spot of wine, too.’
That was one of the reasons Allim liked the flatlands. There were many people out in the area and most of them seemed more civilized than city dwellers.
‘You are too generous, sir, and I thank you.’ He bowed his head and smiled. The day had been madness to be sure, but the night promised a little rest and a full belly. Tomorrow he would be on his way and he’d find himself some honest work, the sort that didn’t involve fighting grey men with too many weapons, who would not die when they should.
‘Where are your friends?’ The man’s voice changed not at all, but Allim felt his skin crawl.
‘Friends?’ He was just preparing to draw his sword when something slammed into the side of his skull and dropped him from his chair, leaving him stunned and barely able to think.
‘Aye. Your friends. The ones had their way with my little Lyra and with my wife, too. I expect they were smarter than to come back here.’
‘Hkk. Uln…’ Try as he might he couldn’t move. Damnedest thing: he’d been hit before but never like that. His head was screaming at him and his arms and legs just lay there.
The man crouched next to him, his boots well worn, his clothes often mended and thinned out to nearly bare spots. ‘Lyra and the wife, they’re down in the cellar. They like to hide there when strangers come by these days. That’s for the best.’
‘Nuh. Plizz. I didunt.’
‘No reason to lie, boy. I never forget a face, especially one that’s made my kin suffer.’ As he spoke the man straightened out Allim’s legs and then tied his ankles together. ‘They’re proud women, my fine ladies. They’d probably face you and be brave for me, but I’ll save them from that.’
Allim tried to plead but the man just talked over him as he hauled on the rope around Allim’s ankles and dragged him toward the door. On the ground not far from where Allim had gone over, he could see a metal pan, likely what had hit him so hard in the head.
‘If I told them, they might even ask me to spare you, but that won’t happen.’ The man paused long enough to tie Allim’s hands tightly. ‘There’s a war going on, y’see. Soldiers might come along and ask about why I had a man like you bound in the cellar. I wouldn’t mind torturing you, but the wife and daughter, they’re better than you and me. They’re kinder.’
Tovish dragged Allim over the threshold and into the night.
Allim looked on as the ground slipped past.
His neck felt like it was lit ablaze when he was hoisted by his feet into the air near another building that reeked of animal shit.
The blood rushed to his head and nausea churned through his guts. The rope he hung from rotated slowly, so he had plenty of time to see the pen where the swine were kept.
‘Theft is theft. I don’t much like it but I understand it.’ Tovish spoke calmly as he wrapped the rope’s end around a fence beam and tied it off with practiced ease. ‘What that friend of yours did, that was worse. None of you deserve to live. If I ever find the others, I’ll show them how I feel. For now, you’ll do.’
Allim thought of telling the man he was too late but the words couldn’t make it past the bile clogging his throat.
Tovish squatted until they were nearly face to face. For the first time he smiled. ‘What I like about pigs is that they’ll eat any sort of garbage you offer them. They aren’t picky. They just like to eat.’
Allim let out one last scream as the pig farmer came for him, clutching a well-used and keenly sharpened blade in his heavy-knuckled hand.[GdM]
James A. Moore is the award winning author of over twenty novels, thrillers, dark fantasy and horror alike, including the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under The Overtree, Blood Red, the Serenity Falls trilogy (featuring his recurring anti-hero, Jonathan Crowley) and his most recent novels, The Blasted Lands and City of Wonders. In addition to writing multiple short stories, he has also edited, with Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, the British Invasion anthology for Cemetery Dance Publications.
The author cut his teeth in the industry writing for Marvel Comics and authoring over twenty role-playing supplements for White Wolf Games, including Berlin by Night, Land of 1,000,000 Dreams and The Get of Fenris tribe book for Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, among others. He also penned the White Wolf novels Vampire: House of Secretsand Werewolf: Hellstorm.
Moore’s first short story collection, Slices, sold out before ever seeing print. His most recent novels include A Hell Within (With Charles R. Rutledge) and the forthcoming apocalyptic sci-fi thriller Spores, and a new series tentatively called The Tides of War, with the first book The Last Sacrifice, slated for release in January 2017. More information about the author can be found at his website:
http://jamesamoorebooks.com , http://genrefied.blogspot.com/
On Twitter https://twitter.com/JamesAMoore,
and on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/james.a.moore1
Review: Wolfenstein
C.T. PHIPPS
It's a strange statement to make but Nazis and grimdark don't usually go together. Why? Because, despite being the singularly most awful people in the modern era (despite several close contenders), they tend to make any struggle into one of black versus white. Good versus evil. It is the reason they have become stock villains and why it doesn't take more than a bad guy putting on a vaguely Gestapo-esque greatcoat for the audience to know he's the bad guy.
This is doubly true with first-person shooters. Since, well, Wolfenstein 3D, Nazis have been one of the singularly least interesting antagonists to gun down without mercy. Whether literally in the original Call of Duty games or allegorically in Star Wars: Dark Troopers, Nazis are just an excuse to feel no guilt as you murder folk by the hundreds.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is not like that.
The premise of the game doesn't seem like it would be particularly nuanced: Jewish American commando William ‘B.J.’ Blazkowicz is part of an Allied mission to take down a secret Nazi research facility in 1946 after zeerust super-science causes the invasion of Normandy to fail. Nazi scientist Wilhelm ‘Deathshead’ Strauss has
created a host of cyborgs, robots, jets, stealth-bombers, and worse to cripple the American forces. The Allied Forces have one chance to defeat his army before their offensive crumbles.
They fail.
B.J. proceeds to wake up fourteen years later in a Polish asylum when Nazis are engaged in ‘cleansing’ of the ‘deviants’ inside the asylum. After rescuing the daughter of the doctors therein, B.J. finds the Nazis have conquered 75% of the Earth, exterminated the majority of resistance, and covered the Earth in horrific super-science machines. B.J., both for moral reasons as well as out of sheer horror, decides to strike back at the Nazi machine as best he can.
Pure escapism, right?
Wrong.
The developers at Bethesda games have taken a surprisingly nuanced look at why the Nazis were such horrible people. They take time to show just how horrible life would be under such a regime. We get to see the Nazis co-opt music, destroy local culture, replace landmarks, murder large numbers of dissidents, and slowly pave over the old world. What's worse isn't that the Nazis have triumphed but that so many people in this world have come to accept their rule.
B.J. and the makeshift rebellion he joins owe more to Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds than they do Star Wars' Rebel Alliance. They're a bunch of traumatized, hate-filled, and broken people who are well aware they might not be able to make any sort of difference. One of them, for example, is a former Nazi who doesn't have any disagreement with their ideology but lost his deformed son and wife to their eugenics program.
Another surprising member of this makeshift rebellion is a serial killer of Nazis who begs B.J. to understand why she does what she does. The resistance does numerous terrorist acts like suicide-bombings, blowing up bridges full of civilians, and even nuclear strikes to hurt the Nazi regime. They're the lesser evil, but the actions they commit out of mad desperation and insane righteous fury aren't shown in a flattering light.
The characterization for the game is also exceptional. Each of the individuals you meet has a fully developed personality. The Nazis in the game aren't portrayed sympathetically but, instead, as realistic grotesque—perhaps the most realistic they've ever been portrayed in a game—who have been allowed to enjoy their every depraved whim and who have had their most monstrous impulses normalized by the state. All of the game’s backstory comes from actual real-life policies of the Nazis, which makes it all the more disquieting.
Grimdark Magazine Issue #8 MOBI Page 7
