Pendulum Heroes

by James Beamon

  She turned the blade on herself.

  “I would rather die by my own hand than yours, lawseeker.”

  Demirtash paused in his approach, causing the ones in tow to follow suit. Behind the sickly green tinge of the torchlight, his lip curled up into a sneer.

  Savashbahar plunged the knife down, toward her own gut.

  Before it found a home in her flesh, she pulled the knife to the right, cutting a wicked gash through her robes. With her free hand she grabbed the cut garment and pulled a handful of fabric free.

  “Burst!” she yelled and flung the swath of fabric toward the Hexenarii. Mike saw a silver dipped piece of wood, stuck on the fabric, glow red before disintegrating. The fabric shredded itself and flew out like daggers toward the Hexenarii, forcing them to shield their faces from the impromptu shrapnel.

  The clever broad had slipped a hex past them.

  Now she had a hex in both hands. “Barrier,” she named the left one. “Raise,” she named the right. She smacked them both together and then she brought her hands down to smack the ground. The hexes dissolved and the ground shot up to make a wall a foot thick in front of her.

  Her wall came just in time. No sooner was it up than the wall shook with the force of three explosions. Mike could tell by the sharp orange light and flaming rock chunks that the Hexenarii had thrown their hexes as fireballs.

  Savashbahar turned and looked at Mike and Runt.

  “Hold onto those crates and run, you idiots!”

  She didn’t have to tell Mike twice. He didn’t even pause when he saw her cut across her own wrist with the knife. The relative safety of the tunnel was a few scant paces uphill, and that’s all he cared about.

  “Flood,” he heard Savashbahar say behind him as they all ran toward the tunnel. “Oil.”

  As he made the tunnel, Mike ventured a look behind him. Runt and Savashbahar were close behind. Savashbahar brought up the rear, running backwards and facing the direction of the Hexenarii. She was holding her wrist, which was gushing blood. It streamed out like a river, black in color and running a course down the side of the hill.

  It was impossible to get that much blood from a wrist. Hell, Mike didn’t remember Melvin’s friend shooting that much blood when the weagr lopped his arm off.

  Down below, the Hexenarii had made it around the rock wall and were in pursuit, hexes at the ready. When their boots encountered Savashbahar’s coursing blood, they all lost their traction and began to stumble and slide.

  Demirtash yelled “Fire.” He went down on one knee and dropped his hex into the river of blood. Flame sprang up, blazing a trail toward Savashbahar’s wrist.

  Savashbahar was in the tunnel entryway now. She swung her bleeding wrist over her head, causing black blood to splatter the walls and ceiling inside the tunnel. Then she held out her wrist toward the encroaching flame and brought a hex up.

  “Burst!”

  Blood shot out of her wrist as a projectile stream. It collided with the approaching fire and was like a grenade going off. The mountain shook with smoke, fire and a wave of dust. The force of the explosion knocked Savashbahar off her feet. Mike hit the deck.

  When the smoke cleared, the tunnel was blocked by a cave-in at the entrance. Savashbahar lay on the ground, reaching for the dagger in front of her with shaking hands. Her wrist still spewed blood.

  Mike rushed over to her. She looked at him.

  “Burn it,” she said. Her trembling fingers held up a hex. “Heat,” she said, then placed the glowing hex on the blade of her dagger.

  Wisps of smoke emanated off the dagger. Mike grabbed the hilt and pressed the hot flat of the blade into Savashbahar’s open wrist. Her clenched teeth did little to suppress her growl of pain.

  “Crazy broad,” Mike said as he took the blade away from the freshly cauterized wound. “You can’t lose that much blood as fast as you did. What the hell were you thinking?”

  She raised an eyebrow at him like that answered the question. Weakly, she turned her head to Runt.

  “Can you carry?”

  “Leave the crates,” Mike said.

  “You will not,” Savashbahar said with a barely-there shake of the head. “I bled for those. They are ours.”

  Runt hoisted her onto his back. “Hold and brace,” he told her. She gripped his shirt and leaned her head against his massive neck, as if to take a nap. With his free hands, Runt picked up his crates.

  They were off. Mike ran full steam with his little legs, hauling ass with his crate. Runt had little difficulty keeping up, despite the extra weight of two crates and a semi-conscious nasran lady. It seemed to take forever, much longer than it did going in, to make the exit.

  Finally, they emerged out of the tunnel and into the cool night air. A brief glimpse of the lake was visible in the distance. If Ruki still had the engine running, they’d make it out of this after all.

  “Transgressors! Profane!”

  Six Hexenarii, led by a soot-covered Demirtash, charged out of another tunnel and were running down the side of the hill in pursuit. Great, they had doubled up.

  The lake was growing closer but it still looked so far away.

  Mike turned his head to check distance from the hex tossers. They had gained a bit of ground. Mike wondered what the range was on those fireballs.

  Eyes back on the lake, he saw salvation heading their way. Ruki’s train was closing the gap.

  Mike put as much sprint as he could in his legs. If he ever got out of this and got his body back, the first thing he was going to do was take a jog and enjoy his long stride.

  A fireball exploded behind them to the right, close enough to feel the wicked heat of it.

  The engine of Ruki’s caravan rolled past. Mike had no time to pussyfoot the awkward logistics of entering a moving vehicle while you’re moving in a different direction. He jumped, crate first.

  The crate landed on the floor of the open train car and slid, scuffing Mike up along the way. He should have let go when he landed in the car, but his adrenaline had kept his fingers locked on the wood like it was some sort of cubed safety net.

  He turned on his back, looked out of the moving car and saw Runt tossing a crate at him. Mike rolled out of the way and dodged again as the other crate and then finally Runt landed in the caravan, still bearing Savashbahar on his back.

  The Hexenarii were still coming down the mountain in chase. The only difference was now the train was en route toward them. Two of the Hexenarii’s hands lit up with flame.

  Ruki took a hard left. It almost threw Mike out of the car. Two fireballs exploded where the train would have been if not for the turn. Mike looked up to see the train headed straight for the beehive bar.

  Ruki, in the driver’s seat, didn’t turn the wheel. He cranked a lever all the way down, then turned his head and ducked down. The train leapt with even more power.

  Crap. Mike followed Ruki’s example.

  All he heard was the splinter and crack of wood giving way. The train groaned and shook but it kept on going through the wall. Mike looked out and saw flabbergasted nasrans, sitting at their tables and holding onto their beers, staring mutely at the train as it plowed through their watering hole.

  Gazi was one of the gaping bar patrons.

  “Ruki Provos gets what he’s promised!” Ruki shouted at him with a smile.

  They broke through the other wall and found themselves free of Maltep. The endless expanse of the Dry Flats stretched out in front of them. Behind them, the town was growing smaller and smaller by the second.

  Now that they had escaped, Savashbahar released her grip on Runt. Her legs touched the floor and they gave out like they were made of paper. Mike rushed over to her.

  “You aight?” he asked as he helped her to lie back against the wall. She nodded.

  “You know you crazy, right? Of all the possible ways to hex your way outta there, you pick the most suicidal.”

  She shook her head. “This just shows how little you know about hex magic,”
she said. “Four things have to align: the intent of the user, the design of the hex, the word spoken and the materials on hand. Blood wasn’t my first choice. It was my only choice.”

  “I dunno. Couldn’t you have said ‘escape’ or something?”

  She gave him a weak laugh. “You cannot just speak a word hoping your intent is clear. Each hex is designed to pay the cost for a certain kind of magic. Speaking ‘escape’ to any random hex with no materials to guide it would just as soon find me instantly buried under a mountain of rock or a thousand spans in the air in freefall. My way was safest.”

  “Doesn’t look it.”

  “Looks deceive, Mike Ballztowallz,” Runt said. “Her grip is strong. Her strength will return.”

  They were all quiet for a moment. The train’s engine whined as it chugged along the lonely stretch of barren turf. Well outside the reach of the train’s spotlight, Mike could see desert animals looking up in puzzlement of this noisy intruder. Another question came to him.

  “Hey, lady, could you teach me hex magic?”

  “No.”

  “Damn, that’s cold. You could’ve at least looked at my job app before turning me down.”

  “It takes years to learn. Reading hexes is a nuanced skill. Not only do you have to read the basic form of it, whether it’s for aggression, defense or utility, but you have to understand the tone of it. Did the crafter carve sharp lines for fire or smooth curves for water? Once you’ve mastered that, you have to master yourself. If your intent strays when you speak, if you think of home or a hot meal or any errant thought when you name your hex, it will bend the hex. Many aspiring Hexenarii die learning the ways. It is not for everyone.”

  Before she said that, Mike figured anybody with a tongue could be Hexenarii. Between the self-bloodletting and her explanation of how hard it was to work the hexes, he had grown a lot of respect for her.

  “Aight. One more question; how come you ain’t a Hexenarii yourself?”

  Her eyes turned sad. “It is yasak. Forbidden. Because I am a woman. So I left Maltep when I was young, learned the ways among a clan who were more open and accepting. I am Hexenarii among them, but will never be to my people.” She looked at him, tired resignation on her face. “How much more appetite does your curiosity have before it’s satisfied?”

  That reminded him of a question he had earlier. “One more and I’m done. How’d you find us after you made that distraction?” She had just come out of nowhere, like she knew where they were the whole time.

  A grin crept up on her lips. She pointed at Mike, then patted her own back.

  Mike reached around his shoulder to pull a stuck piece of wood off his back. The hex glowed green.

  A tracker. He thought about when she had patted him on the back and told him to be manly.

  “Clever broad,” Mike said with a smile.

  Chapter 14

  Discovery Bonus

  Melvin, Rich and Jason formed a semi-circle around the body. An arrow from Jason’s bow protruded from the corpse. This was one unlucky rabbit.

  “What do we do now?” Rich asked. He looked around like an answer was lurking in the grassy plains around them. But there was no answer, or much else other than grass and occasional shrubs, for miles around in any direction.

  “We clean it and cook it,” Jason said with a shrug, smirking with satisfaction at his kill.

  “How the hell do we do that?” Melvin asked. Jason may have been celebrating his martial proficiency, but Melvin wasn’t.

  They didn’t even need to make a meal of poor Mr. Rabbit. The Hierophant Majora had seen to it they had plenty of field rations in their packs. But as they had cruised along in the hava-chaises, the rabbit had shot out from some undergrowth and made himself a tempting target to a guy who had recently learned he was a crack shot.

  None of them had experience with meat that wasn’t prepackaged. Before the fatal arrow, Jason’s statements of “I need the practice,” and “we need to preserve our rations anyway... we don’t know how long we’ll be out on the road,” had sounded great, but didn’t go a long way for Melvin now that he was standing in a semi-circle looking down at a dead rabbit after the hunt.

  If Jason had any qualms about Step Two, he didn’t show it. “Well, we take a knife and skin it,” he said. “And gut it.” Apparently, a person could learn a lot watching cable TV.

  “But we don’t have a knife,” Melvin said.

  Rich and Jason stopped looking at the rabbit and turned their gaze on Melvin. His brow furrowed as he thought through his last statement for any evidence of nonsense. No, it made sense, so why were they looking at him like he held a solution?

  Because he was a warrioress with a double-edged bastard sword on his back.

  “No!” he cried. “Not me. It’s not even a knife.”

  “It’s a big knife,” Jason said.

  “Big,” Rich mumbled in agreement with a nod of his head.

  “C’mon, guys! How am I supposed to skin something this small with a sword this big?”

  “Slowly?” Jason asked.

  “Carefully?” Rich asked with a shrug.

  They both patted Melvin on the back and walked back to the hava-chaises, leaving him alone with the tiny carcass. For long moments Melvin wrestled with indecision. He wanted to leave it. But the least he could do was eat it... otherwise the bunny took an arrow for nothing.

  What would Mike do? He probably wouldn’t have a qualm about skinning a rabbit. The thought of his missing brother sent fear pangs through Melvin, and he had a mind to forget everything, jump on his hava-chaise and head back to the Hierophane. Maybe Mike had made it there and was waiting for him.

  But how would his friends fare out here without him? Hell, they didn’t even have a knife between them to skin a rabbit. Mike wouldn’t leave friends in need. He also wouldn’t stall on creating carnage. Melvin looked down at the rabbit and pulled out his sword with a sigh.

  After a minute or two at the task, Melvin knew with certainty he would have nightmares about it. Pulling blood-stained fur, cutting into muscle, it was unadulterated gruesome with every sloppy slash of his sword. He didn’t think a little rabbit could possibly hold so much blood. It stained his hands, smeared his boots and legs, streaked his face as he wiped away the mounting sweat.

  “Finished,” Melvin said at last. He held up his hard-earned bundle, a little mass of bloody meat. Small tufts of fur still clung wetly to the creature.

  “Dude,” Jason said, “it looks like an aborted fetus.”

  “Yeah, Mel, that looks worse than the weagr you chopped up,” Rich said.

  “Well, next time you bastards can do it. Then I won’t be the one looking like a crime scene.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jason said. “I couldn’t pull off that look. Nothing says dangerous like a woman who shows she’s not afraid to get dirty, and right now Mel you are a dirty, dirty girl.”

  Jason looked at him straight-faced, like it was a statement of fact. Melvin cut his eyes at Rich and swore he could see Rich’s smile under that bushy gray beard.

  “We gonna cook this thing or what?” Melvin asked. Some battles just weren’t worth fighting.

  Melvin and Jason both had to cajole Rich, who wanted to gather dry sticks instead of casting a fire. The obvious argument of where to find dry sticks in the middle of a grassy field held little sway until they coupled it with the observation that everyone should contribute to the meal. It took even more prodding before Rich would create a bowl of water for Melvin to wash the blood off his hands, legs and face.

  After their resident mage made fire and water, grumbling the whole time between casts, Melvin took to washing up while Jason manned the grill. He overcame the lack of sticks by impaling the rabbit with an arrow, kebab style, and holding the shaft low to the flame with his bone hand. The bones might be disturbing to look at, but they didn’t suffer from muscle fatigue and were impervious to fire. Lucky him.

  Thirty minutes worth of slow turning over th
e fire, lunch rabbit was ready. It was the hardest meal Melvin ever had to work for. And it was still teaching him things.

  It taught him rabbit was indeed tasty and delicious. It also taught him one rabbit did not stretch very far between three guys, or two guys and a warrior woman.

  “Anyone else think all this wasn’t worth it?” Jason asked.

  Both Melvin and Rich’s hands shot up.

  “Yeah,” Jason said with a nod. “But it’ll be better next time. You two’ll be more efficient. Me? I was awesome.”

  Jason pulled his index finger bone off at the knuckle and dropped it into the blood-tinted water bowl. He pointed West with the nub digit.

  They headed out, hava-chaises sounding like little tornados as they lifted off. They made good time through the grasslands. Melvin cast wary gazes at any undergrowth, hoping no more rabbits decided to make a dash.

  “I’ve never seen so much grass without houses,” Rich said. “This would suck to mow.”

  “Yeah,” Melvin said. “Back home somebody would’ve turned all this into civilization... condos or a subdivision. Something.”

  “I like it better as grass,” Jason said. “Just grass.”

  They rode on in silence for a bit, looking at the endless sea of green. Jason spoke again.

  “I gotta be honest, the more time I spend here the more I don’t want to leave.”

  “Dude, you’re tripping,” Melvin said.

  “Not really, I thought about it,” Jason replied. “Here, there’s all sorts of stuff to do. Adventuring, slaying monsters and other baddies. No school. Quests. Wide open, exotic locations. Back home, I’m just another kid from the burbs, being bland and working toward college, motivated by the prospect that I can maybe get an average job so I can continue being bland.”

  “Yeah, but here you’re also gray skinned and your eyes won’t stop jumping around,” Rich said. “And you have a skeleton arm.”

  “I still have my original arm,” Jason said, pointing behind him to the severed appendage strapped to his back. His hand flopped up and down, perpetually waving as he cruised in the hava-chaise.