Call of the Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  Chapter 7

  Guy

  The Machine thugs were like shadows in their long black coats, every one of them taller than him, every one thicker, though not as thick as their leader, who seemed as wide as he was tall, no mean feat given his height and girth. None of them were smiling save one, and it dripped with cruelty and not one ounce of actual joy, giving Guy a warbling feeling in his stomach, as though he'd swallowed a live songbird and it was pecking out between trilling nervous notes in his belly.

  They moved forward at a steady pace, an onrushing tide sliding up the alley toward him, prompting Guy to look left, then right, only to see tall brick walls on either side, no hope in either direction, and especially not in front of him, where the tide of Machine thugs continued to roll in.

  Guy did a little backpedaling, trying to keep his distance from the steadily onrushing black cloaks. “Uhm...” He shot a look over his shoulder, the only avenue of retreat still open to him. There was, of course, the barrier of the dumpster bin blocking the alley down to a thin passage, the only thing in front of it the Cyrus Davidon impersonator in his hulking, black armor. “Hey, big fella,” Guy said, oozing desperation. “A little help here?”

  “Try spitting at them,” the impersonator said, hoarse and stiff, still leaning one knuckle against the cobblestone alley floor. “It's your best defense.”

  Guy just stared at him, hunched over on one knee, sword in hand. “For true?” He flicked a pointed finger at the black coats moving toward him, cutting the distance between them even as he continued to move backward, toward the danger of the one impersonator and his sword rather than the ten or so Machine thugs and their...well, whatever they were carrying under their cloaks.

  At least the impersonator's sword could be fast, Guy figured. What the Machine did to him for his betrayal...

  Well, no part of that would be quick.

  “Do I strike you as the untrue type in our dealings?” the impersonator asked, closing his eyes beneath that funny helm of his, muttering something under his breath. A faint glow appeared at his hand, and he grimaced and let out a breath, slumping slightly, as though someone had taken more of the air out of him.

  “Do I strike you as anything other than singularly desperate at the moment?” Guy asked, decision clearly made. Maybe he could squeeze past the impersonator, into the gap and—

  Movement beyond the gap caught Guy's attention. Flashes of—

  Black coats.

  “They have really boxed us in,” Guy said, sagging to a slow walk, now only ten feet from the impersonator, twenty from the front rank of the Machine thugs. “That'll teach me.”

  The Davidon impersonator rumbled with a laugh. “You only learn when you survive the lesson.”

  “I'm still hanging on to a tiny grain of hope here, okay?” Guy threw a look at the thugs crashing down on him. Now he was five feet from the impersonator, ten from the thugs. “It's not right for a man to die without hope.”

  Something flashed in the impersonator's eyes, and it drew Guy's attention at the most peculiar moment. “You're right,” he said slowly, and with none of the edge of sarcasm that his voice had held only a moment before. He straightened, just slightly, and suddenly, even bowed as he was, he was taller than Guy. “Get behind me.”

  Guy didn't need to be asked twice. He bolted behind the big man, mostly because he saw no other alternative. “What about—”

  “Take this,” the impersonator said, and landed a metal boot on the blade of Guy's knife, still lying on the alley floor. He slid it back, and it bounced off the bin behind Guy as though shot from a rifle.

  Guy managed to arrest its sudden movement before it shot out of reach. “Thanks, but—”

  “Get ready,” the impersonator said, lurching to his feet unsteadily, sword in hand. His fingertips glowed once more with red light, and he straightened slightly once it faded.

  Guy stared at the strange light display. What the hell was that?

  There was no answering it, at least not at present. There was movement between the bins, and Guy threw himself into the gap, jabbing his blade toward the Machine thugs threatening to squeeze through. “Back!” Guy said, “Back, you dogs!”

  A wild round of chortles came from behind the dumpster bin. It was wide and tall, bigger in each dimension than a large man – taller, wider than a man's height, and thicker across, too. It did block enough of the alley to keep them from rushing him like the men up front had, though, so there was that.

  “Your repartee needs work,” the impersonator muttered behind him.

  “My...'repartee'...?” Guy flashed a look at the impersonator in his heavy armor and long cloak. “We're about to die and you're critiquing the quality of my wit?”

  “Laughing in the face of death is one of the most liberating experiences a man can enjoy,” the impersonator said. “It breaks the chains of natural cowardice, lightens the heart of a most heavy burden.”

  “That's such 'elpful advice, really,” Guy said. “Maybe next time lead with somef'ing more practical, such as, 'Wear brown pants to hide the level of your intimidation'.”

  “In your case, that'd be advisable,” the impersonator said. “Also, maybe a heavy cologne to cover the smell of the fear-shit?”

  Guy thrust his dagger into the gap between bin and wall again, blindly, hiding himself behind it so as to avoid any shooting. Guns weren't rare among Machine thugs, but they weren't dirt-common, either. Every other nation on the globe might have them, but Reikonos's supply was mostly second-hand firearms. That was the downside of being the most backward land on the planet. “What's your plan to deal wif—” Guy started to ask, sparing a glance the impersonator's way.

  He didn't get to finish, because as he got the first part of the question out, the impersonator got hit by the breaking wave of Machine thugs. Three of them came upon him at once, lurching in like a tide around a rock by the shore. They were laughing, jubilant, their blades raised high to hack the man to pieces—

  They didn't end up doing the hacking, though.

  The Cyrus Davidon impersonator swung his sword once – once! – and it cleaved all three of the attackers in half, and not by a small measure, either. They were struck neatly in two, strongly so, to the point where their upper bodies fell off and their screams filled the air—

  As did a whiff of that shit smell the impersonator had joked about, though it had little to do with fear and more to do with three men having their bowels opened, along with the rest of their bodies.

  “I'll figure something out,” the impersonator murmured, just loud enough that Guy heard him before someone stuck their face through the bin-to-wall gap he'd been defending. With a blink of shock, Guy stabbed out at gut level. The Machine thug ducked back around and Guy missed him, the knife blade catching a button from the black coat and that was all. “Strike true, next time, will you?” the impersonator asked, and it took Guy a moment to realize that comment had been directed to him.

  “Uh, I'll try,” Guy said, shifting position.

  “Don't try, succeed,” the impersonator said. “Watch our flank, and when next a target presents itself, go for the damned throat or face and end them.”

  “I, uh...haven't ever done that before,” Guy said, feeling a strange rush flutter through his head. Squeamishness or lightheadedness in this current moment seemed a bad thing, but damn was this heady.

  The impersonator shot him a look that Guy caught out of the corner of his eye. “You haven't killed anyone before?”

  Guy flushed, the lightheadedness fleeing, leaving him with a sick feeling. “No.”

  The impersonator did not stir, looking back at him with a wary few remaining Machine thugs circling him, hesitant to move on him now that they'd seen three of their number cut down so easily. “I daresay that's about to change.”

  Guy glanced at the blade of his knife, glinting in the dim light shining down from above. “Um...I don't really want it to change...”

  “Do you want to be dead?” the i
mpersonator asked.

  “Well, no.”

  “Then change it,” the man in black armor snapped. “Because if you don't, that's going to be the result.”

  With that, the impersonator snapped to action. Moving in a strange, surging blur of motion, he swung his sword at one of the Machine thugs moving to flank him. The tip of his curved sword struck, and the thug's hands flew for his throat, crimson liquid spilling out madly like a tap of red turned on wide.

  The impersonator took a staggering half-step back, grimace laid on his pale face. He looked grey, in pain, and Guy could spare only a thought for him before someone made noise at the gap of the bin and the wall, and Guy thrust his blade in, but higher this time—

  A squeal met his attack, high-pitched, one of pain—

  “Yes, like that,” the Cyrus Davidon impersonator said. “But next time – take his damned head off.”

  Guy looked at the drip of red on his blade, and swallowed. That lightheaded feeling had not passed. Sure, he'd seen violence done to others before, but not much. Most of his encounters with it had been very sparing. People feared the Machine in Reikonos, and a little tap was all that was necessary to make them compliant in most cases.

  This...was far beyond a little tap.

  A scream from behind him made Guy swing around, mostly out of fear for his life. He turned to find the impersonator staggering another step back, two more Machine thugs on the ground, squirming, the smell of shit and piss rank and heavy in the air—

  The impersonator in the black armor had disemboweled them.

  “Do I need to tell you how painful stomach wounds are?” the impersonator asked, grim smile on his face. A little glow of white appeared at his hand, and he creaked up to stand a little straighter, armor plates rattling against each other. Three thugs remained, including the leader, who had steadfastly remained out of the impersonator's reach.

  Guy couldn't blame him. It was how he operated his crew, too. Why do the dangerous things yourself, like confront a man with a sword?

  The whisper of a leather boot on the ground behind him surprised Guy and he spun, dagger in hand, driving it toward the gap—

  Something hit his arm and made him cry out in surprise. A shock of pain ran up his wrist where he'd impacted—

  A Machine thug with a truncheon grinned from inches away. He snapped his weapon down and hit Guy in the midsection, driving all the air from his lungs in one hit.

  “Now, then, precious,” another thug said as a further blow was delivered, this time to Guy's head, making the world go fuzzy all around him, “you just sit here and wait for us to deal with this one—”Guy's eyes were blurred, thinking even more muddled, but he knew what the man was talking about, somehow—

  They were going to kill the impersonator, he realized, in a shocking rush of clarity, as he watched more thugs flooding their way through the gap he'd been supposed to defend—

  Then...

  Then they were going to kill Guy.

  Chapter 8

  If he'd had the presence of mind to do so, Guy would have been terrified. The knowledge that people were trying to kill him – well, that had been present for a day or so now, ever since he'd betrayed the Machine to this fartwat in the black armor and his shining silver angry queen impersonator.

  The hit of the truncheon to his head had put a blanket over the world, over Guy's senses, dulling everything except the shocking amount of pain radiating through his skull. It was as though someone had decided his head was a bell and then proceeded to beat on it for a bit, as though trying to summon the entire city in for dinner.

  He caught movement through slitted eyes, Machine thugs hopping over his legs to flood through the gap between bin and wall in this segment of the alley, their black coats flapping with the motion. It was a strange, slow procession, as though they were jogging by without a care in the world, train of their ebon coats like a flag flying from their arses, the V of their legs open and exposed just below his leg.

  Guy couldn't even figure out why he did it, but he lifted a slow leg – slower than even they were moving – and planted a booted foot right in the crotch of the thug that was hopping over him like he was a puddle of piss in the Reikonos gutter—

  The short, sharp scream this time came from his victim as the man folded at the middle, hands flying to his groin. He came down like an old building in a wind storm, folding up and falling over Guy's legs, which hurt, but only distantly.

  Then the next idiot came on through without paying a lick of attention, and tripped over that bastard, and the next—

  They all landed on Guy, of course, a pile-up of morons, like carts in the marketplace all crashing into one another. They landed across his legs, rolled to his midsection, wind knocked out of them, shouting, screaming, pissed off at each other, at him—

  The weak sunlight glinted on something, just out of Guy's reach. He blinked in the dim alley light, the glow overhead of a sun buried beneath the black clouds of factory smoke. Some days it was worse than others, but only rarely did you see it clearly. Guy could remember when the sun shone bright over Reikonos, but that was so many years ago...

  It seemed to be shining bright now, though, on that thing sitting near his hand. What the hell was that? he wondered dimly through the mental fog hanging 'round his head, that pain squealing out of the side of his skull.

  Oh. It was a little sword, longer than the dagger he'd been mucking about with.

  Guy touched the hilt, raised it up, like he was clutching it in a far-off dream. It shone as he raised it, a blade that was no longer than his forearm and hand, a dagger-and-a-half. He stared at it, dimly, then at the raging face of one of the Machine thugs, looking at him with absolute malice, clawing up his legs toward him, shouting something that Guy couldn't hear.

  Guy stared at the glinting sword, clutched in his hand. Then at the furious face of the Machine thug, climbing his way up to Guy's face, murder in his eyes.

  He didn't really even think about it, a little ripple running through his bowels as he realized, That man means to kill me.

  Guy raised the blade, lifted it right up to the bloke's face as he shouted something, up on all fours and crawling with a fist that glinted, steel knuckles built into his glove ready to fall on Guy–

  The thug ran face-first into Guy's blade, catching the tip just below the eye. It kept going, thanks to the thug's momentum, skipping up his cheek and into his open eyeball—

  The resulting scream and the sight of the gore cut through the fog in Guy's head. The Machine thug rocketed back from him as though Guy had shoved a hot poker in his face. He was bleeding, gushing, really, and he hit the bin back-first, a resounding thump echoing down the alleyway.

  “Still in the fight, are you?” the impersonator's voice trickled in from somewhere beyond him. “Good.”

  Guy blinked in his shock. “I...s'pose I am.”

  “Well, stab again, damn your eyes!” the impersonator said, then paused as he parried a strike from one of the attacking thugs. “Or rather, stab theirs!”

  Guy stared at the bloody blade in his hand and lifted it, then struck again, at the farther enemy, jabbing the blade end-on into the throat. A gurgling sound met his attack, and Guy squirmed away from the writhing thug, who was bleeding wildly over him and the fellow between them. Struggling, Guy pulled his legs, ignoring the heavy weight of two men upon them in a mad bid to get free of them both.

  He'd just managed to get from beneath the screaming, crying, bleeding men when another tried to kick his way through the gap, attempting to take a long step over the two blind and gurgling fiends. The new thug missed his footing, though, hurrying a little too much, and crashed down on the back of the man with the slitted throat. Both men made a noise, neither pleasant, and the stepping fellow collapsed with a cry as the one with the slitted throat bucked, jerking the other's foot from beneath him. The new arrival landed on top of the old and Guy, without thinking, thrust his blade and caught that fellow behind the ear. He spasmed,
once, and then was still, lying atop the pile, the only one not moving.

  Guy blinked at all the blood and felt a ripple of nausea threaten his stomach. What the hell had he just done?

  “This is not a time for squeamishness,” came the thick voice of the Davidon impersonator. Now he was fending off only two remaining thugs, each seeming to assess him, looking for weakness with a canny eye. Neither seemed to want to step forward first. Sound thinking, to Guy's mind. The impersonator had already killed a pile of them, after all.

  “I've never seen this much blood,” Guy said, and his voice sounded almost plaintive to his own ears, especially over the howls and cries echoing through the alleyway.

  “None of it's yours, so count yourself lucky and work to maintain that state of affairs.”

  Guy nodded and thrust his blade down again, like he was stirring a fire with a poker rather than plunging a sword into the back of a screaming, crying, dying man who was howling and lashing blindly at him. That made him stop, at least, though a horrible sucking sound came from where Guy had planted his blade in the man's back. He stared at it dimly as a little wellspring of blood spouted as he withdrew the blade. It was a most curious thing, and Guy found himself staring at it for a moment before he realized – That's blood and I've done it.

  He suppressed the desire to retch. Again. Because another thug leapt through the barrier between bin and wall, clearing the pile of dead and dying that he'd made.

  “Hit him before he gets his feet beneath him!” The impersonator shouted at Guy, his own blade just dripping red.

  Guy's mind was not working at full capacity. He reacted by rote instinct alone, jabbing the blade up at the thug as he landed, catching him in the thigh as he stumbled a step. Guy's blade landing there made him cry out, then wipe out, a perfect little prick as he went by that Guy could not have aimed any better if he'd had a week's warning to line it up. He stared as the man stumbled, then fell to his knees, already gushing blood. He let out a cry and surrendered to the massive puddle forming beneath him, his thigh pumping red as surely as if it was a wellspring.