Breaking the Lore

by Breaking the Lore (retail) (epub)

  ‘Are you ready?’ Tergil asked him.

  ‘Ready to fight four trained soldiers the size of Grarf? Oh yeah. Can’t wait.’

  ‘I doubt they will be as big as him. Grarf is among the strongest of all the demons. Do you have a weapon?’

  ‘Got a pistol from Randall. To tell you the truth, though, I’m not exactly an expert shot.’

  ‘Then I advise you not to use it. A stray bullet passing through these thin walls may injure a child. Keep it in your jacket. Let the rest of us engage them in melee.’

  Paris assessed “the rest of us”. Eric and Sven held battleaxes, Karl a nasty-looking war hammer, while Tergil carried his sword.

  ‘You sure the four of you can handle it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the elf. ‘However, do not expect it to be pleasant. It will be quick and decisive, but not in any way nice.’

  Paris nodded. The tone of Tergil’s voice didn’t leave any room for argument. He couldn’t argue with the advice either, although it did make him wonder. Using hand-to-hand weapons so you could limit collateral damage made sense. But the Vanethria weren’t bothered about the kids, so why didn’t they have guns?

  The group set off down the corridor, rounding up Sven as they passed the first stairs. Paris peered into the deserted classrooms along the way. He considered the story books and boxes of crayons sitting on the tables, waiting forlornly for someone to use them. Maybe tomorrow.

  Another click in his ear interrupted his musing.

  ‘Yes?’ he said quietly.

  ‘They’ve moved,’ said Cassandra. ‘Standing by the classroom door again.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And Malbus says that with all the flying around, he’s knackered.’

  Paris rolled his eyes. Still a few issues to resolve with the crow and squirrel communication network.

  He relayed the information to Tergil at the foot of the second set of stairs.

  ‘Good,’ came the hushed reply. ‘They will not hear us as we ascend.’

  Tergil led the way cautiously upwards, around the dog-leg landing and towards the top. He stopped on the final stair. Paris watched as the elf pulled a small make-up compact out of his trouser pocket. He opened the lid, cupping the mirror in his palm. He stared down at it as he turned his wrist, trying to get the right angle to see round the corner.

  ‘Cassandra is correct,’ he whispered. ‘They are by the door.’ He looked across at Paris. ‘Do you wish to see what we are up against?’

  ‘I think I pretty much know,’ replied the cop.

  He took the mirror nonetheless and peered down at it. He stifled a gasp as he saw the reflection.

  Two figures lurked at the end of the corridor. Both were obviously demons, although neither looked like the one he’d met so far. The same basic humanoid shape with the same featureless, monochrome eyes, but there the resemblance ended. The first one was purple, with an almost doglike face, apart from the spiral horns protruding from his forehead. The second was bright yellow, with a flat, triangular head and spikes curving downwards from his cheeks. He also bore spikes all down his arms, plus along the thick tail that swished behind him.

  Tergil nudged Paris’s elbow.

  ‘What is the matter?’ whispered the elf.

  ‘You said they’d be like Grarf,’ hissed Paris.

  ‘No, I said they would not be as large as him. Demons come in many forms. Now is not the time for explaining their genetics.’

  Paris gritted his teeth. Tergil was right, as usual. But if they got out of this, he would make sure they did find the time.

  Squinting down at the mirror, he studied the creatures in more detail. The purple one had a black-bladed sword, while his companion held an elaborately decorated spear. Both were naked apart from the only thing which was similar to Grarf: the tatty leather loincloth. They weren’t as tall as him either, judging by their size compared to the door. Each seemed merely as big and muscular as a single rugby player. Why, Paris wondered, could he never find bad guys the size of jockeys?

  ‘So what do we do?’ he asked. ‘Do we rush them?’

  ‘No,’ replied Tergil. ‘We need to be more subtle.’ Turning towards Eric, he mumbled something in a language Paris didn’t recognise.

  ‘Okay,’ said the inspector. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘I believe you answered that question earlier.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes. Nick Paris, it is indeed time to face your demons.’

  Muscular dwarven arms shoved Paris in the back. He lurched out into the corridor, staggering across it. He stopped halfway, turning slowly. Four malevolent red eyes glared at him. The purple demon pointed a clawed finger, then barked out what sounded like a command. Unfortunately, it was also completely incomprehensible. The demons advanced menacingly, with the yellow head flicking out a pointed tongue. The purple one issued the same command as before, with the same lack of understanding. Now, however, they were closer, so Paris began to back away. He moved past the stairs, glancing down them as he went. Was that really two dwarves on top of each other? He risked a closer look. Sure enough, there stood Sven on the last but one step, with Karl sitting on his shoulders. The demons looked too. As they did, Sven leant forward. Karl brought his war hammer up from behind his head, down onto the purple skull with a thud. Tergil darted out from the stairwell. His sword plunged into a yellow chest, followed swiftly by Eric’s axe. That was that. Quick. Decisive. And, considered Paris, definitely not nice.

  He leant against the wall to steady himself. In his years as a cop he’d seen plenty of dead bodies, but he’d never actually seen anyone killed right in front of him. And he’d certainly never seen corpses leaking green blood.

  Karl jumped down from his brother’s shoulders. Ninja potato acrobats, thought Paris. It just gets better.

  ‘Well done,’ said Tergil. ‘You do a very good impression of being frozen in terror. Have you ever taken acting lessons?’

  Paris glared at him. ‘I must be a natural. Do you think the others heard?’

  Before Tergil could answer, the classroom door burst open. Another demon appeared in the doorway. Light brown this time, with a pig’s face flaunting an array of tusks like the wild boar from hell. It leapt towards the would-be rescuers, barrelling down the hall with a serrated knife in each hand. Paris gasped as he realised it was coming straight for him. Tergil jumped in the way, fending off both blades in one movement. The force of the charge knocked him backwards. He crashed to the ground with his attacker on top of him. Paris went to help, but the dwarves beat him to it. The battle raged at their height now and several quick blows ended it.

  Paris looked down at the lifeless brown body. This little piggy wouldn’t be going to market any more – unless it was as sausages. Mental note, he thought. In combat, one demon equals not quite three dwarves.

  Now a solitary Vanethria soldier remained. This one was pure white, with a bulbous nose and a circle of small horns surrounding its face. Two spikes stuck out from its shoulders. In its right hand it carried a long curved sword. It hung back at the classroom entrance, casting dull blue eyes around the group in front of him.

  Paris crouched down to help Tergil up. The elf was spattered with stinking green blood, but otherwise unharmed.

  ‘Now it gets tricky,’ said Paris. ‘This guy has seen his mates get killed, so he’ll want to save his own skin. He’s going to dive into the room and hold his sword against some kid’s neck.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Tergil. ‘He appears to be more interested in you.’

  Paris glanced down the corridor. The blue eyes had stopped scanning round. They were set squarely on him.

  The demon lumbered forward, much slower than his colleagues. Paris pondered briefly how demons moved as differently as they looked. He had no time for further deliberation as the three dwarves ran to intercept it. The creature made a few clumsy swipes of its sword at them. Each was blocked with ease, then returned with interest. The inspector watched
as blows rained down upon it. He realised that, from the dwarves’ perspective, they were actually raining up. The creature fell under the onslaught, disappearing from Paris’s crouched view. Mental note addendum, he decided. One demon equals a lot less than three dwarves if he walks like a drunk.

  He stood up and let out a deep breath.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he said. ‘I think we’ve won!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tergil. ‘But it is only one battle.’

  ‘Right. Well, let’s just check these kids are okay, then we can get back to Rocky.’

  ‘Thank you. Although I am now sure that she will be safe.’

  Paris stared at the elf. ‘How can you possibly know that? Have you had some sort of vision?’

  Tergil smiled grimly.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Some sort of vision.’

  27

  ‘The children were okay?’ asked Bonetti.

  Paris looked at his sergeant across the staffroom table. Although he’d tried to relate the story as matter-of-factly as possible, Bonetti insisted on getting excited. He might as well be telling another kid.

  ‘All fine,’ he said. ‘I walked into the classroom fearing the worst, only to find none of them had been touched. Scared, obviously, and the teacher was doing her best stiff upper lip impersonation, but nobody’s harmed.’

  ‘What did the rest of your team do?’ asked Cassandra. ‘When you went in there?’

  ‘Tergil found the toilets. Cleaned himself up. The dwarves raided the next-door room to grab a big load of those navy blue art aprons.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Bonetti, looking puzzled. ‘Are they planning to do some DIY?’

  ‘Because,’ replied Paris, ‘these aprons are useful to wear if you’re painting. And they’re very useful for covering dead demons. Even if the kids weren’t harmed physically, I reckon they’ve got enough mental scars already.’

  Though he didn’t say it, the inspector knew he’d accumulated a few as well. Not all from the battle, either; some derived from the aftermath. Coming out of the school into a sea of TV cameras felt uncomfortable. Finding more reporters gathered outside the station was disturbing. Then entering the building to see every officer clapping and cheering, with Grarf and Rocky leading the applause – well, that was simply weird. The magic creatures’ heroism meant they’d not only been accepted, but practically adopted into the police force. Perhaps the most surreal event of the last few days. And that was saying something.

  Paris sat back in his chair, stretching out his legs. He had plenty of room to do so with just Bonetti and Cassandra there with him. Everyone else currently occupied different parts of the station. The dwarves were back with their kin, doubtless showing off their battle scars and the demonic spear captured as a trophy. Technically it should be held as evidence, but Paris figured they deserved it. Plus he wasn’t about to argue with Karl’s war hammer. Grarf and Malbus had gone with Tergil, who wanted to spend some time with Rocky. He probably also needed to recover from the hug she’d given him when he arrived. Paris looked on as she did it, enormous stone hands patting the elf on the back. Quite sweet really. If you liked watching people get cuddled by boulders.

  ‘So what happened here?’ he asked Bonetti. ‘No Vanethria attack?’

  The sergeant grunted. ‘Nothing. Most excitement we got was when I showed Rocky how to play ludo. And she beat me.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ replied Paris. ‘Trust me, there’ll be plenty more chances for fighting. Five minutes to catch our breath, then we’ll be straight back into it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cassandra, sipping her coffee. ‘I think the dwarves were being slightly premature making up victory songs.’

  ‘Little bit,’ said Paris. ‘If they wanted one for now, it’d have to be…’

  He paused, searching for the right words. He clicked his fingers.

  ‘How about: after the demons have been slain, we lick our wounds and start again.’

  Cassandra raised her eyebrows.

  ‘That’s almost poetic,’ she said. ‘Are you ill?’

  Paris affected a frown as he turned towards her. ‘Are you telling me cops have no poetry in their souls?’

  ‘Not policemen in general,’ replied the witch. ‘Only you.’

  She grinned behind her coffee cup. Paris smiled back. For a moment, dwarves and trolls and general mayhem disappeared from his thoughts. Just for a moment.

  ‘I wrote a poem once,’ said Bonetti.

  Paris kept his eyes on Cassandra. Was it too much to hope that, if he ignored the irritating noise on the other side of him, it would go away?

  ‘Do you want to hear it?’ asked Bonetti.

  The inspector sighed. Obviously the noise wouldn’t be going away. He turned to reply, but it was stifled as Cassandra kicked him in the shin.

  ‘Of course we do,’ she said.

  Bonetti beamed a child’s grin of pleasure as he pulled out his wallet. He delved around among the credit cards and scraps of paper.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said, pulling out a battered page from a notepad. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Ready as we’ll ever be,’ replied Paris.

  The sergeant shuffled round on his chair. He adopted what presumably served as his poetry-reading posture: head back, eyes intent, concentration etched across his face. Paris guessed it was supposed to appear Shakespearian. He didn’t want to say it looked more like somebody having difficulty on the toilet.

  Bonetti cleared his throat and began.

  ‘I went down to the river bank.

  A cold wind made me shiver.

  Beneath my feet the river flowed.

  It flowed just like a river.’

  He lowered the paper, staring expectantly at his boss. Paris stared back at him, not sure what to say.

  ‘That’s…’ he began, with some hesitancy. ‘Deep.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Bonetti. ‘It’s the Mersey.’

  Paris slumped in his seat. This was a different sort of mental scar, although still one he could do without. All things considered, he’d rather be fighting demons.

  As if on cue, the door opened. Tergil entered, with Malbus perched on his shoulder. The giant shape of Grarf followed, squeezing himself through the doorway. Paris brightened up immediately. Tergil said a lot of things which were at best dodgy and at worst downright lies, but he’d never recited verse.

  ‘You’re back,’ he said. ‘How’s Rocky?’

  ‘She is well, thank you,’ replied Tergil.

  ‘As you knew she would be. Though you never explained how you knew.’

  ‘I could not be certain, though I saw something which made me reasonably confident. The fourth demon. I assume you observed how he moved?’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Paris. ‘As if he didn’t have control of his own limbs.’

  ‘He did not. Somebody else did.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Tergil sat down opposite the inspector, with Grarf looming behind.

  ‘There is a magical technique called “far-seeing”,’ said the elf. ‘The subject surrenders their will to another, generally a mage. The magician then controls their actions and views events through their eyes. The last demon went into the school merely to watch what happened. In effect, to relay pictures back to base.’

  ‘You’re serious?’ said Paris. ‘They sent one of their men to be a walking video camera?’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Malbus. ‘See, my guys couldn’t tell from outside. But once Tergil here realised what was going on, that’s when he figured Rocky’d be safe. Controlling someone from a long way off takes loads of concentration. And when you’re finished, you’re shattered.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Tergil. ‘The battle mage would first become engrossed, then exhausted. He would not be able to participate in an assault on your station. I doubted they would attack without him.’

  Paris sat looking at Tergil for a moment while he pondered. There was something else going on which he wasn’t being told. As usual.

  ‘Okay,’ he s
aid. ‘So there’s just one of these warrior wizard bods?’

  ‘Only one here at the moment. Based upon everything we have encountered so far, I estimate a single Vanethria unit. Fifteen to eighteen soldiers. Sufficient to warrant a solitary battle mage.’

  ‘Also,’ said Grarf, ‘we doth know who it be.’

  ‘Well, we think we do,’ said Malbus. ‘It’s somebody who can do far-seeing plus the mystical scythe that killed the centaur. Means they’re pretty good, ’cos there ain’t too many folk can handle both of them spells. And there’s precisely one who’s been active near the portal back home.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Grarf, almost spitting out the word. ‘Shadrak.’

  He clenched his fists, making the muscles in his arms swell like balloons. Definitely not hot air in there, though, thought Paris.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Malbus. ‘Nasty piece of work. Killed a lot of folks, including Rocky’s parents.’

  ‘The Knights of the High Council have pursued him for many years,’ said Tergil. ‘He has always eluded us.’

  Grarf snorted, sending puffs of smoke out of his nostrils. ‘Dost thou remember how we didst almost catch him on the Isle of Fire?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ replied Tergil. ‘We defeated his guards. He fled, with only his familiar for company.’

  ‘His what?’ asked Paris.

  ‘Familiar,’ said Cassandra. ‘It’s the term for a witch’s cat.’

  ‘Not in our world,’ said Tergil. ‘Magicians seldom have cats. Shadrak’s familiar is a gigantic insectivore, with a long snout and a sticky tongue. Similar to creatures in your world, except much bigger.’

  Paris rolled his eyes.

  ‘Course it is,’ he said. ‘Fancy thinking it’d be something as boring as a tabby.’

  Tergil gave him a hard stare.

  ‘Anyway,’ said the elf, ‘they attempted to escape along a mountain path. Shadrak slipped, falling over the edge. He held on by his fingertips. We saw him across the gorge, but we could not reach him. As we raced to get there, his familiar came to his aid. It lowered down its enormous tongue, wrapped it around him and pulled him to safety.’