Call of the Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “On it!” Vaste's voice was suddenly beside him, lifting a much smaller pair of legs.

  Just past the healer, Birissa let out a roar at a much larger, much thicker troll—

  “Hold.” The larger troll – Qualleron, Alaric had heard him say – held out a hand. He lunged around Birissa, keeping his distance but ramming himself into the gallows–

  It cracked with the force of his hit. He backed up, rammed it again with his shoulder before anyone could say anything–

  The gallows was uprooted in one good hit, and came crashing down, prisoners and all. Now a host of gasps came from those who had been left without footing by the collapse of the stage, as Qualleron took a step back from his handiwork and lowered his hand, still staring at Birissa over his immense blade. “Proceed.”

  “Wait,” Vaste said, darting the end of his staff into one of the length of ropes affixed to the gallows. Letum snapped it neatly, as easily as any blade. “You paused your battle to help us rescue these prisoners?”

  Qualleron bowed at his immense neck. “There is no honor in slaying the defenseless. It is...unworthy.”

  “Oh,” Vaste said. “Well, that's ni—”

  Qualleron bellowed and lunged for Birissa, who brought her blade across barely in time to keep the larger troll from cutting her in half. She knocked his weapon to the side and parried out from his attack, but he neatly countered, coming back at her with another attack.

  “Okay, maybe not that nice,” Vaste said, darting his staff down and severing another rope.

  “But honorable,” Alaric said, cutting a rope himself as he watched Qualleron rail at Birissa, forcing her out of the ruin of the stage with his relentless, bestial attacks. “Which is most unexpected given the source of—”

  He did not have time to finish his thought. Nor would it have been heard in any case.

  Because from the north of them, two wagons unleashed with some foul new treachery. Guns that looked like larger versions of Dugras's six-barreled pistol, mounted to the wood, let loose upon them with an unending torrent of bullets, and Alaric was forced – with all the others – to dive to the ground lest he be battered senseless by their unending flow.

  Chapter 17

  Guy

  “This is idiocy, this is imprudence, this is stupid—” Guy sputtered, facedown on the ground as bullets flew all around him, over the top of his head. He was supposed to be avoiding the Machine and here he was getting blasted at by two gatling cannons mounted on bloody wagons across the way. He was pitched down, nose in the dirt, wishing he was anywhere but here.

  “Muratam,” he muttered, lips kissing the grains of black dirt. “I could 'ave been heading for Muratam right now, where I could hump stupid boxes out o' ships at the docks all bloody day long—”

  Someone grabbed Guy by the shoulder and dragged him up. He found himself looking into the stern face of an elf, eyes slitted and ears pointy. Guy tried to pull himself back down but the elf was having none of it.

  “What do you want?” Guy tried to strain free.

  “We haven't been introduced,” the elf said, dragging him to the side. Guy's knees hit a root and he cringed as the elf pulled him to his feet, a long sword in his hand. The man was hunched over almost double, yanking him along as he tried to break into a run but failed against Guy's resistance. “My name is Hiressam, and I need your help.”

  “Yeah, well, I need to not die,” Guy said, cuffing Hiressam's hand off his collar. He keeled over into the dirt and covered his head as another burst of gatling fire pelted the stage area, sheering leaves off the trees overhead and raining green upon the whole square.

  “Good, then we're in agreement about what needs to be done,” Hiressam said, seizing him by the collar once more and dragging him to his feet.

  “What – no – there is no bloody agreement between us on–”

  “If we don't hurry and remove those rifleman from the rooftops, we'll all be picked apart,” Hiressam said. A blast of pure fire(!) shot overhead and Guy just about threw himself down again. It looked like it had come from behind them. Hiressam just looked up at it and smiled. “Ah. Thank you, ladies.”

  Guy had his feet beneath him now but he was not pleased about it. The only good news seemed to be that the bullets were not hitting near him anymore, as they were running for the road. In fact, his feet hit solid cobblestones, and he would have let out a breath of relief if not for his paunch being quite folded by being forced to run bent over to keep from being shot.

  “This way,” Hiressam said, seizing at his arm and dragging him—

  Toward the bloody gatling guns.

  “Ah, no, let's go this way,” Guy said, yanking his arm back and breaking for the road that led out of the square.

  Hiressam seemed to ponder it only a moment before coming alongside Guy in his run. “Yes. Quite so.”

  “See, now we're in agreement,” Guy said, pelting for all he was worth across the road and out of the bloody square. From here he'd just use the cover of the crowd to lose himself and go-

  “This way,” Hiressam said, dragging him down the alley to his immediate right.

  The elf was strong. Guy let out a squeal of protest but not much more. He was spending all his effort keeping upright against the torsion the bigger man was applying to him. Not that the elf was that big, but he had a grip like a coal shoveler, the bastard. “What now?” Guy moaned.

  “Here,” Hiressam said, reaching the first door on their right. He kicked it in without even trying the handle, then shoved Guy in first.

  “What are we even doing?” Guy asked, feeling the elf's hands pushing him into the darkness of the building's exterior. Gunshots continued to ring out madly outside.

  “Quickly, the stairs,” Hiressam said. “Surely they must be – aha!”

  Guy was shoved into a stairwell and frogmarched at a damned unreasonable speed toward the steps. “I don't want to go this way—”

  “Why not?” Hiressam's voice was high, certain. He kept shoving, and Guy kept having to give ground.

  “The men with guns are perched atop this roof, in case you bloody forgot!”

  “I have not. It is very much on my mind. Which is why we are here.”

  “Such a right prick, you are,” Guy hissed, desperation creeping in the farther he was pushed up the stairs. “They have guns, you nutter. What are we supposed to do against that?” For this, he turned his head 'round.

  Hiressam's gaze was serious, his lips twisted at the edge in a smile that radiated a confidence that was surely the mark of a madman. “Kill them, of course.”

  “Great, good luck with that,” Guy said, trying to escape his grasp and failing. Now they were in a shoving match on the second floor landing. “Why – are – you – badgering me about this?”

  “Because you're all the help I have,” Hiressam said.

  Guy stopped struggling. “Well, I don't want to be help. I just want to live!”

  “How long do you calculate you'll survive the Machine without our help?” Hiressam asked, eyes twinkling with that damned elven manner. Like he knew something Guy didn't.

  “A lot longer than if I go charging the line of Machine riflemen with guns girdling that roof!”

  Hiressam's eyes twinkled. “A lot?”

  Guy had to give some ground there. “Well...a little, at least.”

  Hiressam shook his head. “How does it feel, being a prisoner of fear all the time?”

  “Better than being dead!”

  Hiressam shook his head. “No, my friend. You suffer from the failings of being a man: cowardice and sole regard for your own life. Take it from one has done exactly as you have – I once ran from these people when I feared for my life. Regret hounded me for the next thousand years.”

  “Well, I don't really have that much time, so I choose the regret over death—”

  “Come, quickly,” Hiressam said, dragging Guy up the stairs again. His grip was just too solid. “I will show you courage.” The elf's breath was war
m in his ear, and slightly minty. “You'll see. Better to die on your own terms with no regrets than live running all the rest of your days.”

  “I don't agree with any part of that!” Guy said, but with the elf's unrelenting grip on him, he had little choice, so up he went.

  Chapter 18

  Curatio

  “This is new,” Curatio said as the bullets thundered all around the collapsed wooden platform. While this was, after a fashion, a new thing to him, it was also old, as well. He considered each bullet like an individual spell streaking at him. Be hit, maybe die. Be hit by more than one, almost certainly die.

  Therefore he kept his head down as much as possible. While he'd felt peril in more than a few battles, this was definitely different in the sheer volume of death raining toward him.

  Oh, and he was essentially drained of magic. That was a problem.

  Also a problem: the wagons spraying death so wildly across the square at him. There seemed to be two of them, each doing its best to level the fine folks of Sanctuary. He couldn't see Alaric, Vara or Cyrus. Glimpses of Birissa flashed at the edge of his vision; she was tangling with a large, yellow troll near the edge of the square, where the bullets were not raining down like droplets from a black cloud. Vaste seemed to be following her, ducking behind trees and wagons as he went, presumably to avoid being shot.

  A blast of flame was lobbed over head, and came down in a burst the size of a wagon atop one of roofs nearby. Curatio traced it to its origin and found Shirri and Pamyra both covering behind one of the trees that dotted the square. They must have been hidden from view of the riflemen behind them, and carefully ducked behind the wide trunk any time the spew of bullets came their way from the wagons and riflemen in front.

  Curatio eyed their target. He guessed they'd perhaps taken four, five riflemen out. Of the fifty or hundred that were shooting from the rooftops, to say nothing of the new weapons mounted on the wagons. He'd seen Hiressam take that Machine fool and head out of the square. Perhaps he'd do something about the rooftop problem. Perhaps not. It seemed likely Hiressam would try and the laggard might perhaps aid him.

  Which left those still in the square with no shortage of problems. Curatio picked the nearest and decided to do something about it.

  “Can you throw a fireball at that wagon?” he shouted at Shirri and Pamyra when the fire quieted for a moment. He chanced a look; the men on the wagon seemed to be doing something, though he was hard pressed to discern what. Loading more bullets to fire, perhaps.

  Shirri looked out at it, then was forced to duck back behind the tree trunk as a bullet shaved chips of wood off, showering her face. A small trickle of blood ran down her cheek, and she shook her head.

  “Keep up the pressure on the riflemen on the rooftops, then,” Curatio said, and clutched Praelior tight in one hand while deploying the spikes from his mace with the other.

  “What are you going to do?” Pamyra shouted at him, her hand glowing with white as she healed her daughter.

  “Something old that I suspect will always be in vogue: violence,” Curatio said, and then broke into a sprint.

  Chapter 19

  Alaric

  “You seem to find yourself in trouble quite a lot,” Mazirin said, sandwiched next to Alaric in the ruin of the stage, bullets hammering overhead.

  “I truly hate these weapons,” Alaric said, sighing, his back plate pressed against a pile of ruined boards. “Guns. Bullets. It's as though the whole world has thrown honor out the window. Or over the deck of the airship, I suppose.”

  “So you can only be honorable with a sword in your hand?” Mazirin asked. The usual storm in her eyes seemed to have died down, replaced by grim amusement. She had her pistol firmly in hand, but did not seem eager to rise up and fire it. “That is what governs your concept of honor here?”

  “I doubt my concept of honor has had much dominion here, in Arkaria, for a very long time,” Alaric griped. He had Aterum squarely in his hand as well, but could not see much point in standing up to get bombarded with bullets that might eventually find his face and end his journey here, without any sort of satisfying conclusion. Better to keep his head down until he saw an opening, then show these fiends the error of their honorless ways.

  “You sound like the hardliners from Amatgarosa.” Mazirin's eyes flared back to life now. “The ones who think our many nations never should have united. The ones who think gunpowder and cannon are soulless drains upon the strict codes of warriors to look each other in the eye when they battle to the death.”

  “You cannot tell me that you approve of this madness,” Alaric said, lifting Aterum to point in the general direction of the weapon that was pouring fire upon them. A bullet hit the blade and ricocheted into a nearby tree, prompting him to hastily pull his weapon down. “These things that let you kill ceaselessly without even giving a care for the human being you end with them?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I have seen men die on the edge of a blade to other men who care nothing for their lives, either. Who might even have enjoyed watching them suffer and perish. So, no, I don't view the invention of firearms – which have been around for quite some time now in the rest of the world – as some great evil and destroyer of honor. But then, I once watched a near-defenseless grandmother heft a rifle and shoot a bull of a man who was threatening to murder her grandchildren, so perhaps my view is somewhat colored by my experiences. As is yours.”

  Alaric let out another grunt, more grudging this time. “You may have a point,” he conceded. “Still, this?” He nodded as the bullets just showered over them. “This is intolerable. And I mean not to tolerate it.”

  That prompted her brow to rise. “What do you intend to do about–”

  “This,” Alaric said, and lifted his arm to cover his face as he rose. He kept his head down, eyes and chin protected by his own hand as he stepped from behind cover. Tightly he squeezed his gauntlet fingers together, hoping that the Protanian metal would hold against these tiresome bullets—

  The sound of a dozen impacts along his body, including a stinging few that impacted the chain mail at his joints, convinced him that, indeed, he was more or less impervious to the fire of this weapon. Provided he didn't get hit in the face, or one of the bullets didn't skip into a seam where armor and chain mail didn't quite meld properly.

  Alaric let out a fearsome, bellowing cry, and off he went, charging over the ruin of the stage toward the wagon some hundred and fifty feet ahead. He'd show this new world what honor looked like if it was the last thing he did.

  Chapter 20

  Cyrus

  The steady, deafening rattle of the guns laying down fire upon them made Cyrus's ears and brain hurt as though someone were pounding a drum deep within his skull. “This is maddening,” he said, cringing against the violence of the sound.

  “I hear you and agree,” Vara said, causing him to jerk his head about. She was just beyond a collapsed tangle of boards that was being chewed at by a swarm of bullets running through like virulent, angry bees. The occasional ding! came along with the buzzing of metal through wood; the guns scoring hits on their armor.

  Cyrus frowned. Her superior hearing probably put her at a higher level of vulnerability for this agonizing noise. He lifted his head slightly only to have a bullet hit him squarely in the side of his helm, ringing out like a temple bell and forcing him to duck back down. “What are we supposed to do in the face of this?” he called to her. The withering level of fire that was being directed, apparently right at the two of them, was...well, withering.

  “Deal with it,” Vara said, rising, the metal hitting her like hard rain on one of the metal roofs of Termina, loud and clanging in its disagreement between water and steel. She held her blade tightly in hand, had her back toward the guns, which seemed to walk their fire toward her like she was an intersecting point, and soon sparks flew from the bright silver of her backplate as she hunched her shoulders to protect her face from the stream of fire.

  “Right,�
�� he said and rose, cringing as one of the guns turned on him and peppered him fiercely. He could feel it plainly through the plate, the thousand stings of angry leaden wasps. “Now we—”

  Something hit him squarely in the side, harder than the swarm of angry bullets, and Cyrus went stumbling, managing to turn to see someone stalking toward him from some fifty feet off, well out of the line of fire.

  It was a...dark elf?

  He was holding a longer rifle, no hint of the hammer and flint system that Cyrus had experienced on all the pistols he owned. This one looked different: smoother, sleeker, and longer in general. A boxy metal thing stuck out of the bottom ahead of the trigger and it fired again and again as Cyrus felt the hard ding of the bullets slam into him, far harder than the pelting stream coming from across the way-

  “Time to die, impersonator,” the dark elf said, relentless in his steady approach. He fired, stepped, fired, stepped. He spat a particular vitriol in his last word. His cloak was not dissimilar to that of the Machine, but different enough as to be clear he was not of their ilk, and he wore no armband. His eyes were hidden behind black, rounded spectacles that covered his eyes in perfect circles, some metal extending from the frame to completely cover the sockets all the way to his skin, as though letting in any light whatsoever would pain him.

  “Not an impersonator,” Cyrus said, swinging loose Rodanthar and positioning it in front of his face to help block the incoming fire. A bullet hit it squarely, knocking it back into Cyrus, the tip dinging off his helm. It stung a little. “I am Cyrus Davidon.”

  “You're the filthy sort of liar, aren't you?” the dark elf spat back. “Gutter swine. You try to stand in the boots of a greater man and rattle in them. But worry not; I'll cleave them from you and take them as trophy from your corpse.” He closed to some fifteen, twenty feet away, and now the bullets truly rattled Cyrus's head when they struck, like a lightning spell striking his helm.