An Army of Heroes

by Scott J Robinson

  There were dead and injured people lying on the cobbled street outside the inn. Some were soldiers or militia, armed in one way or another. Gunnar was there, staring silently at the sky, blood dribbling from his ear. But there was an old lady as well, and a girl with pigtails and a green dress. Rawk searched the faces but could not see Celeste. He ran in side and looked as well. Inside was worse than outside. A small area had been cleared to look after the wounded. Tables and chairs had been shoved quickly into the back corner where people were just starting to work at moving them even further. Nobody had gotten around to doing anything with the obviously dead yet.

  Rawk could not see her there, either. He had a quick look out through the backdoor, then raced back out onto the street. He saw Sylvia, kneeling over a dwarf on the porch of the cobbler’s shop next door.

  “Where is she?” he asked her. “Where is Celeste?”

  Sylvia looked up. She had a cut on her cheek and a haunted look in her eyes. “Were they looking for her? She left before they got here. She said she was going home.”

  Rawk nodded. The elf said something else, but he didn’t hear. He was already running, heading towards the house Celeste shared with her grandmother.

  But he was coming from a different direction. He wasn’t sure where he was going and became lost in the maze of streets. He stopped in a narrow street, whitewashed walls towering above him, and looked around. For the first time, he noticed the people. The whole city seemed to be lost. People were fleeing. Some were carrying their entire lives on their backs— clothes and valuables and children. Rawk wasn’t sure where they were going. He wasn’t sure if they knew, though perhaps the three inns in West Port would doing a roaring trade tonight.

  He stopped someone and asked, “Do you know where Celeste and Matilde live?” The woman didn’t know. The man he asked next didn’t either. Or the dwarf after that. He was ready to shout at the next person as his frustration grew, as his desperation grew. But nobody knew. He thought to ask if anyone knew where there was a weaving factory. And someone pointed him down a street.

  “A hundred yards.”

  “Thank you,” he shouted back over his shoulder as he ran, pushing past people. He was only vaguely aware of them struggling to stay on their feet, to keep their precariously packed lives balanced.

  He found the factory and the small plain door that divided it from the shops. He almost knocked the door off its hinges as he charged through. He pounded up the stairs and down the hallway, right to the end. And he stopped. The last door, the one that led to Celeste’s flat, was partly open. Rawk drew his sword. The rasp of the blade against the sheath sounded loud in the half-light. The only other sounds were coming from outside. It might well have been some other world. The creak of the door as he pushed it open sounded like the screech of a banshee.

  There was a man lying on the floor, jaw smashed, blood dribbling from his mouth. Sitting beneath the window, dark coat making her hard to see in the shadows, breath rasping in her throat, was Matilde. When Rawk gasped, the old lady struggled to raise her head. Her hand clutched at the haft of her club, but she didn’t have the strength to lift it.

  “Leave her alone. Don’t come near...”

  “Matilde,” Rawk said. “Mab.” He dropped his sword and rushed to her side. “What happened?”

  “Rawk? They took her.”

  “Yes, I know. I know that. I mean, what happened to you?”

  But the front of her coat had come open as she lost the strength to hold it as well and it became all to clear what had happened. The blood staining her dress was thick and dark. And there was a lot of it.

  “I’ll get help. Wait here.”

  The old woman gave a wet cough of laughter. “I’m not going anywhere.” She was barely audible. She barely had the strength to move her lips. “Too late for me. Celeste. Promise.”

  “Of course. I promise. I’ll get her back. And Weaver will pay.”

  But Matilde didn’t hear. The faint flutter of her breathing had stopped and her head fell forward once again.

  “I’m going to break his neck, Matilde. But I’m going to do it gently, so he’s alive for what I do next.” He kissed the old lady’s hand and laid it gently in her lap. Fighting back tears, he collected his sword and headed back the way he’d come. By the time he returned to the street his eyes were dry and his hand was aching on the hilt of Kaj.

  He stalked back towards the river, moving against the tide of people. He was aware of them moving out of his way, but he hardly saw them. He made it all the way to the battleground beside the river. There were no warriors there now, just dead people and survivors. And looking at the stump of the bridge, pointing out towards Two Watch Hill and the palace on top like an accusing finger, he wondered why he had come all this way. He wondered where the last intact bridge actually was. He was in the midst of deciding weather to go and look, or to find himself a boat, when he heard someone call his name. Thacker was standing not far away with Opok, Zid, Red Raven and the leaders of the river defense.

  “Rawk,” the dwarf called again.

  Rawk ignored him and headed for the river. At least until Opok moved to bar his way. He pulled up short, looking the duen in the eye. “Get out of my way, Opok.”

  “Prince Weaver be taken your wife?”

  “She is not my wife. She’s...” What was she? Rawk wasn’t sure. How could he be? She was a fermi and a dwarf. A few weeks ago he would have avoided being seen in public with her. Now... “I have to find her.”

  Opok shook his head. “If Prince Weaver has taken her, then you cannot simply be marching up to his palace and ask.”

  “I was not intending to ask.” Rawk tried to step past Opok, but the duen moved to block his way again.

  “I cannot let you go.”

  “Do you think you can stop me, old man?”

  “Yes.”

  He said it with such calm certainty that it made Rawk pause. He had killed duen, but none of them had known magic. And, magic or not, Opok probably had more cunning than all of the others put together. Rawk crouched where he was, surrounded by a snowdrift of bodies, and put his head in his hands.

  “Today’s fighting seems to be over— the men stopped trying to cross the river and the dragons have gone for now— so let us be going with Thacker and talk of what can be done.”

  -O-

  Rawk dully watched Opok squeeze in through the door of the meeting room. The duen stood uncomfortably, shoulders hunched, working out what to do next. Eventually he moved to the side of the room, freeing up the doorway so others could enter. Zid came in, calm and in control, and went to stand by the window. More men and women entered, bloodied and weary. They had just won a major battle, but they looked beaten.

  Red Raven strode in the door last. “I don’t know who you are or what your story is,” he said to Opok, “but you turned up just in time.”

  “If we had turned up sooner...” Opok responded. He sighed and crouched down so he didn’t have to stoop beneath the ceiling. “There was much debate amongst our council. Many hours of arguing.” He looked towards Zid, who was sitting alone near the window. “If Zid had not declared his intention to return, with or without us, we may still have be arguing.”

  “Well, I’m glad he did,” Thacker said. “Another five minutes and it would have been all over.”

  Rawk shook his head. They had been too late. Fabi was dead and Celeste was gone. He looked at his hands as the others talked around him. He had never thought that Weaver… But the prince had said ‘two out of four’. Maris, Sylvia, Celeste and… Lady Tapalar? Rawk knew that Ramaner had killed Bree, but had Weaver given the order all those years ago? Even then? Rawk clenched his fist, felt the wound in his arm pulling painfully under the bandage. His jaw was clenched.

  “But what is to be happen next?” Opok asked.

  Thacker rubbed at his face. A blue and white guild ribbon came away in his hand and he threw it down on the table. “Can you fight the dragons with magic?”


  Opok glanced at Sylvia and shook his head. “I cannot. Even if I could be hitting one of the creatures with offensive magic while it was flying, which I could not, I am be doubting that my strongest spells would have any success.”

  Rawk saw blood on his bandage.

  Thacker turned to look at Sylvia. “What about you? Can you do anything?”

  She cleared her throat. “No. Not even twenty years ago. I explained to Rawk that using magic in battle is like fighting with a two-handed battle-ax and a helm that keeps slipping over your eyes; you cannot see and fight at the same time. Also, and Opok may be able to confirm this, it seems that the dragons also have some magic abilities, or some magical qualities at the very least, that would allow them to counter or dodge sorcerous attacks.”

  Opok nodded. “I believe that to be true, though like Silver Lark, I am uncertain.”

  “But you shot some of the riders,” Thacker said.

  “Now they knowing what we can do, I doubt they be flying low enough to hit in future.”

  “So how do we continue this fight then?” Rake asked. “We can’t sit on this side of the river all day waiting for them to come and get us. And we don’t have the numbers to stage a major assault.”

  Rawk surged to his feet and several people close to him reared back. “We can’t give up.” He almost shouted.

  “I wasn’t suggesting that,” Rake said.

  “It sounded like it.”

  “I am sorry I could not save your friend, Rawk,” Opok said. Everyone suddenly looked uncomfortable. “The world turns on moments. In some moments it be the rush into action that saves us. In others it be the stopping to think.”

  “We will not save Celeste by sitting around here talking.”

  Grint grunted. “And we will not save her by dying as we try to cross the river. We need more than hope or desire here, Rawk.”

  “What about those pistol things?” Rawk asked spinning about to find Sylvia in the crowd.

  Sylvia gasped.

  Thacker’s eyes narrowed. “What pistol thing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Rawk looked at Sylvia. “Was it supposed to be a secret? I mean a secret from everyone, not just me?”

  Sylvia shrugged. “Kristun was not certain of the pistol’s effectiveness.”

  “Kristun has a weapon?” Thacker asked. “Go and get him, Rake. He’s in the Garner Room working with some engineers.”

  The inventor came back with Rake a couple of minutes later.

  “What’s this pistol Rawk’s talking about?”

  Kristun tugged at his nose with thick fingers. “Well, they’re not ready. There’s only about five currently in existence and there’s still a lot of work ta do on them.”

  “It seemed to work fine to me,” Rawk said. “Sylvia killed someone with it.”

  Kristun nodded. “They have a tendency ta blow up if you aren’t careful.”

  “And you let Sylvia have one?”

  The dwarf looked a bit embarrassed about that. “Yes, well... She assured me she would only use it if there was no other options. And the charge cartridges I gave ta her were really only half full. It wouldn’t do much harm at a range of more than fifteen yards.

  “Enough,” Thacker said. “Do you mind telling the rest of us what in the Great Path’s name you are talking about.”

  Kristun glanced at Sylvia and sighed. “I’ve been working on something. A weapon. I call it a pistol.”

  “So I gathered. And it can kill at fifteen yards?”

  “The range is better than that, if you want ta risk losing your hand. Or your face.”

  Thacker didn’t say anything. But the look on his face was clearly encouraging elaboration, and quickly.

  “When they do exploding at the canal, they make sure nobody is standing anywhere close.”

  “Of course. So they don’t get hit by flying stone or something.”

  “Right. People could die from stuff like that.”

  Thacker nodded slowly, as if realizing the implications of that thought.

  “So I wondered if I could do a smaller explosion and direct the blast, and the shrapnel, very precisely.”

  “And you did?”

  “Yes. Well, most of the time.”

  “And you’ve used this weapon, Sylvia?”

  “Yes,” Sylvia confirmed. “Just the once. Balen was only five yards away, at most.”

  “Bows are more useful,” Kristun said. “It takes me about thirty seconds ta load a pistol. I could get quicker with practice, I assume, but we don’t really have the time. And I wouldn’t be confident of hitting anything that was more than about ten or fifteen yards away anyway.”

  “The dragons have got longer range than that.”

  Kristun shrugged.

  “Well, go and make some more of the things anyway. Get some help. All the help you need.”

  Kristun nodded and hurried from the room but Rawk shook his head. How many of the weapons could they make? How many would work without killing the person using it? It was useless. Celeste needed help sooner than that. “Forget the war.”

  Everyone turned to look at him. Opok grunted, obviously confused.

  “We can’t win the war. Weaver has more men and most of them are experienced. We’ve got coopers and bakers. Even if we could win, it could take weeks of fighting and Celeste doesn’t have that long.”

  The conversation had gone full circle. “We cannot give up,” Red Raven said.

  “I know that. But, like we told Weaver, this ends when he leaves Katamood or when he dies.”

  “He isn’t going to leave,” Grint said.

  “Exactly. So I’ll go up to the palace and kill him.”

  “Just like that?” Sylvia asked. “It sounds like a fine plan.”

  “It isn’t a plan, and you know it. It’s an idea.” Rawk shrugged. “Getting across the river is the biggest problem. After that, I’m sure I can find my way up the hill without being seen.”

  “And, what, you stand out the front and challenge him to a duel?”

  Rawk winced. That would be a lovely cliché, the cliché to end all clichés, if he could conjure it. But Weaver had already admitted he was no match for Rawk in a fight. He was unlikely to strap on his sword and come outside. “Well...”

  “He might come out if you insulted him,” someone suggested. “He’s that kind of man.”

  “He is,” Thacker agreed, “but I doubt even he can be goaded that far.”

  Rawk sat back. “It’s a shame he didn’t get those secret tunnels he’s always talking about.”

  “He wanted secret tunnels?” Thacker suddenly stood up and went quickly to the door. He poked his head out, said something to the guard outside, then went back to his seat. “He wouldn’t have found a dwarf who would build them for him anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “People who build secret tunnels for other people normally end up dead.” He sat back and gave a satisfied smile. “We actually have something better than one of Weaver’s secret tunnels though.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes. I should have thought of it before.”

  “Well?”

  “We have tunnels that he doesn’t know about.” A guard came through the door and Thacker was up out of his chair again. He took a big sheet of paper from the dwarf and dramatically rolled it out on the table. The effect was ruined when it instantly rolled back up again and the momentum almost carried it right off the end of the table. But Red Raven rolled it out again and people held down the corners. Thacker continued, face flushed slightly. “Well, Weaver would know about them if he gave it some thought, but it’s unlikely that he will.” He pointed at a red line that ran right to the keep at the center of the palace.

  “Soooo, what do we have, exactly?”

  “We have the sewers.”

  “The sewers? That sounds like a crappy tunnel to me.” Rawk waited for the laughter, but it didn’t come. He was actually a bit relieved.

  “
We can get all the way there without him knowing.” Thacker looked down at the plan. “Probably.”

  “Unless he’s thought of them. Or one of his men has thought of them.”

  “Exactly. But I didn’t even think of the sewers.”

  “You want me to go in through the sewers?”

  “I thought we’d established that already. But not just you. That’s ridiculous. A small band of twenty or so.”

  “No, I’ll go alone.”

  Red Raven shook his head. “That is ridiculous. We know you want to get Celeste back but all it would take is for a couple of guards to see you...”

  “Ten people then,” Rawk said.

  “We can talk about it later. The sewer hatch there brings you up in the corner of the keep. It could be blocked by something but we won’t know until we get there.”

  “It’s going to smell,” Rawk said.

  “Yes it is.”

  “How long will we be in there?”

  Thacker looked at the plan. “There’s an access point here,” he said, pointing to a place close to the palace wall. “But unless we take time to chase the guards off the wall we’ll be spotted for sure. The next access is down here.” He calculated. “It will be about two hundred yards all up, I would think.”

  “Two hundred yards?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the pipe where the shit goes.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s going to smell.”

  “Still yes.”

  Rawk sighed. “Can we go tonight?”

  Red Raven shook his head. “You know we can’t, Rawk.”

  “Do I?”

  “Getting across the river is the hardest part, remember?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Gannon pushed up beside the table and examined the area of the map around the river. “So, only one bridge remains?”

  “Yes.”

  “We attack over the bridge as a diversion. Rawk and his party can cross via boats further upstream.”

  “That’s potentially a lot of lives lost just for a diversion,” Sylvia noted.

  “Yes, but there will be people watching the river. We need to get their attention.”

  “We don’t know if Celeste has even that long,” Rawk pointed out.