An Army of Heroes

by Scott J Robinson

  He shook the old man’s hand and once again wondered how he had happened along all these people so late in his life. Whether it was too late was yet to be seen.

  Rawk was directed into an alley with his companions and told to wait. He got a shock when he saw a creature in the dim light and a lifetime of habit had his sword in his hand in a moment. But Opok stepped from the shadows, empty hands held before him.

  “Don’t be sneaking around on a day like today,” Rawk said.

  Zid stepped out in the half-light as well.

  “I be sorry, Rawk.”

  “I’m just a bit jumpy and Kaj is the solution to most of my problems these days.”

  Opok narrowed his eyes. “Kaj? Your sword be named Kaj?”

  “Yes, I named it after Atine’s wolf thing.” He held up the weapon so the duen could see it better.

  Opok examined the weapon. “Do you be knowing what Kaj means?”

  Rawk looked at the sword, twisting it so it caught the feeble predawn light. “Well, no.”

  Opok cleared his throat. “It be meaning little princess.”

  “Little princess?” Rawk heard muffled laughter behind him. Keegen could barely contain himself. Red Raven and Sylvia were smiling and the dwarves suddenly thought there was something interesting in the sky. Rawk looked back at the sword. “Little Princess?” He gave a grunt. “Maybe I should have thought of that possibility before.” But he smiled and laughed quietly himself. “I like it though. All theses warriors being killed by a little princess.”

  Gannon came back into the alley. “We’re ready. We’ll send you out when you need to go. Don’t waste time when you get to the other side; we’ll want to pull back as quickly as possible if there are any problems.”

  Rawk shook his head. Any problems. There were going to be problems.

  He didn’t hear the signal, when it came. He wasn’t sure if there was one, or if the myriad of men and women who made up the militia simply decided that they’d had enough of the waiting. One way or the other, the great mass surged forward and after a few moments, someone signaled for Rawk and his team to insert themselves into the flow. Rawk didn’t know who the woman was, or if she knew what she was doing, but he grabbed Sylvia’s hand and stepped out of the alley. He hoped the others followed as they were carried along the street, bustled and bumped, trying to stay together.

  They entered the intersection with the street that ran along beside the river and for a few seconds the pressure was relieved. Then more of the militia joined the main flow from other, smaller streets and the press was doubled. They kept going, up the slope of the bridge towards the crest.

  There was a chorus of thumps from siege engines to the south and Rawk ducked instinctively as he heard the shot whistling over his head. He heard it hit to the north, a hailstorm shattering against the roads and buildings and men. People screamed, pummeled by the fist-sized stones. When his team reached the top of the crest, there was another thump, a volley from engines held in reserve, trying to catch them by surprise. The sound of pain and suffering increased. Then another sound filled the air and Rawk ducked again as a flight of arrows came from the enemy. The south returned fire, five volleys, one after the other, in quick succession.

  From that vantage point at the top of the bridge, Rawk could see down to the far side of the river. Torches lit scenes of carnage but also showed thousands of more men waiting for the real fighting to begin. And up ahead, the front edge of the militia reached the end of the bridge and crashed against the mercenaries. The siege engines and arrows had softened the middle of the defense, so the line buckled.

  There was a screech and Rawk looked up. A pair of dragons raced down from Two Watch Hill. As they reached the bridge they both let out a stream of the burning liquid, spraying it onto the militia that crowded the bridge. The fire went over Rawk’s head, but not twenty yards behind him, people started to scream. Arrows and siege engines returned fire to little effect. More dragons were coming to join the fight. And coming to meet them from the south...

  Rawk gaped and stared but the longer he looked the more confused he became. There were... things, floating out over the river. Silken bags with boxes hanging beneath were drifting with the breeze. He looked around for Kristun and shouted over the hubbub. “Are they yours?”

  Kristun looked up and nodded. “Balloons. And they’re working, so far. The most important bit...”

  The dragons came in a bunch, lining up with the bridge, and the first one shot a blast of fire at the balloon floating before it.

  And the bag exploded, a huge fireball lit up the sky. A second bag, and a third was caught in the blast and they exploded as well. A dozen dragons were engulfed in the flames. It seemed as if the creatures weren’t affected at all, but the men riding on their backs were on fire. Some swatted desperately at their clothes. It wasn’t going to help. Others had already succumbed and fallen. They screamed the whole way down and hit with a sickening thud.

  The crowd of mercenaries they fell into didn’t do much better. The front line was wavering, fighting on instinct alone as their thoughts focused on what might come next.

  The whole mob, mercenaries and militia, surged and thrummed, a mad mass in the flickering light of the torches and the fires. Shadows and light warred between the buildings.

  Rawk licked his lips, unsure what to think of the situation. “Now that they know what the balloons do, the dragons are unlikely to spit fire at them again. They’ll just let them pass by.”

  Kristun was smiling grimly. “I thought of that. The next wave will explode on their own, but getting the timing right will be the problem. That’s out of my hands though.”

  Down at the end of the bridge, Gannon was trying to push the advantage. The whole world was filled with sound; the ground and the air pounded with it. And the armies continued to ripple like the surface of a lake in an earthquake.

  Rawk was twenty yards behind the front lines when those engaging with the enemy threw themselves down onto the ground. Behind them was one rank of kneeling militia with muskets and pistols. And behind them was a similarly armed rank on their feet. They fired in unison. The sound of one pistol, indoors, had been deafening but even here, out in the open, two dozen of them was unbelievable. If he hadn’t known what was going on, Rawk thought he would have fled himself. Many of the mercenaries did. Of those that stood their ground, many of those closest to the bridge were overrun by the charge that followed.

  A minute later, Rawk found himself with his companions twenty yards north of the river. Militia, hacking and swinging and shouting and dying, surrounded them. A young man who worked at the pie shop died with a sword through his eye. And a fermi woman, a big as man was trying to hold in her stomach. Someone else just fell and it wasn’t clear why. But Rawk was not allowed to help. He wanted to help. He looked around and found Kristun, Rake and the other dwarves a few yards away. Heron and Crisp, were kneeling on the ground, working at a metal plate. They soon had it out of the ground and were gesturing the others forward.

  Rawk examined the fight pushing in close around him. The shouts and screams and curses of dying men and women. He didn’t know which of the sounds were coming from friends and which from enemies. He wanted to stay, but the best thing he could do was enter the sewer so everyone else could withdraw. He followed Sylvia and waited while Buzt and Frew helped her down then followed themselves. Rawk crouched on the edge then lowered himself down. In the drain he couldn’t see much past the end of his sword and didn’t want to touch anything, so he shuffled along behind the others. A short time after that, darkness enveloped them completely as the cover was replaced.

  Standing in the dark, Rawk tried to keep his breaths shallow. It seemed to be a long time before Rake lit a torch and the cold, grey cement walls of the drain came into view. They were in chamber about five yards to a side that was mostly filled by a hulking, cast-iron machine. It had large pipes coming and going. It looked like some strange monster crouching in the dark.

&nb
sp; “What’s that?” Frew asked.

  “A pump,” Kristun explained. “Gravity gets the shit to this point, but it needs a bit of help from here.”

  “And the big pipes?” They were nearly a yard across, much bigger than those further up the hill.

  “That’s what carries the shit.”

  “You mean it isn’t just in these tunnels?” Rawk said.

  “Of course not. That would be crazy.”

  “Then what’s the smell?” Breathing still wasn’t a pleasant experience, but the taproom of some taverns smelled worse.

  “The pipes need to be vented to make sure there isn’t a build up of gases.”

  “Well, it isn’t as bad as I was expecting,” Rawk said.

  Kristun grunted. “The drains are flushed every day.”

  “What?”

  “A whole heap of water is put through the pipes every night, when the tide is going out, to get out as much mess as possible. It hasn’t been happening for the last few days— we wanted to make things as unpleasant as possible for Weaver— but Thacker made sure they did it last night.”

  “Why didn’t someone tell me all this? I thought I was going to be walking through shit up to my knees.”

  Rake smiled. “Where would be the fun in letting you know?”

  “Really?”

  Kristun grunted. “I’m not too sure I’d like to be down in here with a torch if they hadn’t been flushed recently.”

  “Why is that?” Sylvia asked.

  “Methane, the gas made by animal waste, is very flammable.”

  “Then perhaps we should proceed,” the elf said, “before the people of Katamood begin their day.”

  Buzt said something too, in his musical language, but nobody could understand him. He seemed unperturbed by the idea. He stood, smiling slightly, shoulder stooped under the low ceiling.

  Rake carefully moved to the front of the line. “We won’t be in here too long. There’s a street not far from here where the street lamps haven’t been lit, so we just have to make sure we come out in the right place.”

  “There are dwarves working for Weaver, you know.”

  Rake nodded and didn’t look happy. “We know. They were diverting food from the refugees. And they obviously helped design those bridges… We think we know who they are and we’ll deal with them once this is over.”

  “Good. So, let’s finish this so Thacker can sort that out too.” Rawk wanted to draw his sword but in the confines of the drain, in the middle of the line, that seemed crazy. He could imagine poking Frew in the ribs every step of the way. So, shoulders hunched beneath the low ceiling, hand on the pipe that ran along the side of the drain, he followed Rake’s flickering torch, trying not to breath too deeply.

  Several minutes later they stopped at an intersection while Rake and Kristun consulted a map and talked about distances. Rawk had no idea how far they had travelled and he wasn’t sure if the dwarves knew either.

  “How did we end up here, Frew?” Rawk asked quietly. “Following some dwarves through a stinking drain. Once we get into the palace, Weaver’s men will smell us coming a mile away.”

  The other Hero grunted. “I try not to worry about things I can’t control.” He shrugged. “I’ve been in stranger situations anyway. I once spent two days lying under a dead sheep in the corner of a cave while I waited for a grupo to fall asleep.”

  “At least you would have been warm.”

  “It was the middle of summer. In Lakash. Warm wasn’t the half of it.”

  “Oh.” It felt strange, standing there talking about life beyond the tunnel. Rawk wasn’t sure that the world out there even existed any more. Beyond this one patch of torchlight it seemed that everything was just a story about somebody else’s life.

  Rake had gotten his bearings and the line was moving again, turning onto another drain that went off the main one at forty-five degrees. It was slightly smaller and Rawk hoped they didn’t make too many more turns or they’d be crawling. He followed along, watching shadows dancing on the floor. Drace and Buzt, both walking along silently for their different reasons, were behind him. Poe and Heron brought up the rear. It was probably sensible— they dwarves small enough that they didn’t have to duck and would be able to fight more freely in the cramped space— but Rawk had a feeling Buzt could easily outfight them both.

  Soon, the smell didn’t bother Rawk any more. They came to another intersection and Rake paused for just a moment before carrying on straight ahead.

  “I don’t think the Great Path will find us down here if we get lost,” Drace said softly, holding up two fingers to call the god’s attention.

  Rawk looked into the branching drain as he passed. “I don’t know; this might be the kind of place he likes.” Like Frew said, it was just one more strange path he’d traversed in his life.

  A couple of minutes later Rake called a halt. “We’ve arrived,” he said softly. He snuffed his torch while Crisp worked on a hatch above their heads. Rake had to help, but after a few minutes of grunting and cursing they slid aside the metal plate and let pale moonlight down into the drain. Rake poked his head out into the world for a look, then the rest of him quickly followed. Rawk hauled himself out not long after, banging his bad knee on the rim, and limped into an alley not far behind Frew.

  “That was easy,” Drace said when he was crouching in the shadows as well, but his rapid breathing and the shaking of his hands against the plaster wall beside him suggested otherwise.

  Rawk rubbed at his knee. “You’re doing great, Drace. Just make sure you know you limits.”

  The sorcerer looked at Rawk and nodded.

  “What now?” Sylvia asked, trying to wipe her hands on her clothes.

  Rawk shrugged. “Now we just get up the hill as quickly and as quietly as we can.”

  “That sounds easy, too.”

  Rawk tried to work out where they actually were. It was all unnervingly quiet, as if all the life had been sucked out of the city. Lights peeking around curtains and sniffing under the doors did nothing more than accentuate the darkness. It felt nothing like the city that had once been awake at all hours of the day.

  Apparently Kristun could read minds as well as tie bandages and make flying explosives. “We’re not far from the Keeto Alata warehouse.”

  Rawk looked out at the main street and examined the building over the other side. He pursed his lips as he thought. “Right. I think I know where we are. Come with me.”

  He checked to make sure they were still alone then hurried eastward. He turned up the hill at the next street, then east again after that. When he reached Carker Square he stopped in the shadows and watched for activity. He was unsure if Weaver had ordered a curfew or if everyone had just decided that it was a good idea to stay at home, but either way, the place was completely deserted.

  “Where are we going?” Rake asked. He was eying the mouth of Mistook Alley suspiciously.

  Rawk smiled.

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” the dwarf said.

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, but how long will it take us if we have to fight every cutpurse and murderer on the way.”

  “Two hours.”

  This time Rake looked at Rawk suspiciously. “How did you come up with that number? It would take about fifteen minutes just to walk the alley, even if we were left unmolested. But beyond that calculation...”

  Rawk sighed. “I have no idea how long it would take, Rake. I just picked a number.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Look, obviously it’s dangerous, but so is walking around out here, especially with nobody else around; a patrol will spot us instantly. So let’s just hurry up and do it.” He took a deep breath and led the way across to the mouth of Mistook.

  When everyone had gathered nervously, Rake struck a flint and relit the torch that he had snuffed and Rawk plunged into a flickering darkness that seemed much worse than the one in the drain, even with his shadow dancing on the ground
and on the walls. He had barely gone twenty yards when someone stepped out of a sheltered patch of inky blackness and barred the way.

  “Well, just when I thought it was going to be a quiet night.”

  Rawk drew his sword. He should already have done that. “Don’t worry, we won’t disturb anyone. We will be very quiet.”

  “I think it’s too late for that.”

  Rawk looked back over his shoulder. “Can you actually count?”

  The man leaned slightly to the side to look past Rawk as well.

  “Let me save you the head ache. There are ten of us, all up. Eight warriors and two sorcerers.”

  The would-be thief pursed his lips.

  “How many friends do you have? Who’s going to be the first to attack?”

  “Rawk? Is that you?”

  Rawk examined the shadows above his head, trying to find the source of the voice. “Who else would be coming in here in the middle of the night?”

  Something moved on a stub of balcony and a man swung his leg over the rail and climbed down to the ground. “I didn’t think you’d actually be back.”

  Rake helpfully held his torch a little higher so Rawk could see the man’s face and his perfect teeth. “Fix?”

  “Course it is. Or do you have lots of friends in Mistook?”

  “Well, there’s Johnny...”

  “He’s around here somewhere.”

  “Up here.” A silhouette waved from a window above the dwarves who were guarding the rear of the party.

  “What are the odds that I’d meet you two again?” Rawk started to relax a little.

  “Well, it’s a strange world these days,” Fix said. “Not that it wasn’t always strange, of course.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You said you’d tell us a story,” Johnny said.

  “I did. But I don’t really have time, again. Besides, wouldn’t you rather be a part of the story?”

  Apparently climbing was for wimps; Johnny leapt down amidst the group, and looked Sylvia up and down.

  “I would not do that if I were you, Johnny,” Red Raven muttered. “She could burn you to a crisp where you stand.”