by Ugland, Eric
But after a block or so, I just had this feeling that someone was following me. I reached out with my tremorsense, but there was a lot going on. People were still awake, so there were were not only hundreds of people moving about in the area I could sense, but a nearly uncountable number of other little things as well. Mice, rats, something that seemed like a snake. Trying to pick out footsteps of someone behind me was next to impossible. So I did the next best thing, at least as far as I could come up with. I stopped in front of the first store I came to, which was just a basic general store, and peeked inside the window. I couldn’t make out too much inside.
Behind me, though, I saw a clear street.
I waited there.
Tried to think of who might be following me. If there was something in the night hunting people, I wouldn’t really be on the top of the list as prey. Hell, I’m not even sure I’d be on the list. Unless the creature doing the hunting had a pretty warped sense of self-preservation. Which, here, in Vuldranni, that could totally be the case. I could see there being some monster that just searched out the biggest, meanest thing possible and tried to kill it. In this city, I was willing to bet I was in the top, say, ten percent of baddest things to kill. Maybe higher — I didn’t know the city that well. But I knew that I was more likely the thing to be scared of, not the other way around.
Still nothing in the reflection.
I sighed. Just my imagination.
After another two blocks, I saw a man under a lamppost. Leaning there, watching me.
Now I could hear boots on the ground behind me. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed there were, in fact, several men and women there, all looking pretty mean in long dark coats, hats pulled low over their eyes. Several had clubs out, a few had naked blades.
The man in front of me, the one on the lamppost, stood up straight. He sauntered over to where I’d stopped.
“The Hero of Osterstadt,” he said. “What a sobriquet.”
“What a what?” I asked.
He frowned, and looked at me.
He seemed a bit familiar, but I couldn’t place him. With high cheekbones and an aquiline nose, he was a handsome man. He even had a perfect loop of hair peeking under his tricorn hat. His big black cloak hid his frame, but I was willing to bet he was well-muscled. It was the way he moved, with an ease about everything. There was also a scabbard under his cloak. Or, I suppose, it’s possible he had a very inflexible tail. Stranger things, right?
“That’s the name they gave you,” he said. “The Hero of Osterstadt.”
“I didn’t— I mean, news to me.”
He looked over my shoulder at the people behind me. As far as I could tell, he got some sort of nod or wink from them.
“It is you,” he said. “And you can play dumb, that’s fine. I’ve heard that you might be stupid, which would explain things. Might make it hard for things to work in your favor, but that’s the price of stupid, eh?”
“They say stupid is like a box of chocolates.”
That got him more than a little flummoxed. I could almost see him trying to work it out.
I decided the best way to piss him off would be to keep walking. And he seemed like a man who needed a little pissing off. Or maybe on, I wasn’t so sure.
As predicted, he didn’t like me leaving, and quickly moved to block my path.
“Whatever your idiom might mean,” he continued, “you need to understand something. You have been warned and you ignored that warning. We gave you the benefit of the doubt. That, perhaps your employer was watching, that you could not back down. We don’t want to hurt anyone unless we have to.”
He let his words linger for a second, I guess so a doof like me could absorb their meaning. Now I realized this was the guy from the first fight at the wall, the one who’d tried to threaten me but had gotten all tongue-tied.
“You must understand,” he continued, “this is for the good of everyone involved. But, and this is very important, so please do me a favor and do your very best to not so dense for a momentL Do not get involved in the fights on the wall. Ever. Do you understand?”
“No,” I replied, and I smiled, just to try to confuse him.
“How am I not getting through to you?” he asked. “And why do you even care? You, a foreigner to this city, not in the Legion. Why are you helping them?”
“Maybe because I like to fight.”
He nodded. “Yes, well, I suppose that was certainly one avenue I did not expect. It is rare to find someone who just, likes to fight.”
“That’s me.”
“Evidently. So perhaps, because I am kind, and we are trying to avoid bloodshed as much as we can, I ask you to not fight there any more. Go and fight in one the catacombs. Or all of the catacombs. As far as I know, there are plenty of temples that need cleaning. And I’ve heard there’s a dungeon beneath the city. Go and fight there. But stay off the wall.”
He nodded, and took a few steps from me.
“Or what?” I asked.
“Or what?” he asked in reply. “Or what? You need to know what exactly your potential punishment might be before you decide if you will agree with me?”
“That’s usually how this works.”
“You see, that’s the other problem. Normally, I’d just threaten you with bodily harm. Or I’d have one of my associates behind you cut your throat. Slice your calcaneal tendon and laugh as you fail at walking. But you are a tough one. You have quite the set of skills. Perhaps even some amazing abilities. I know you hide your true character sheet, that much is obvious. So I’m not sure hurting you would work, and I fear killing you would wind up causing more of my own men to get hurt in the process, and I tend to value those who follow me. So I suppose I’m left to threatening that who you swore to protect.”
“See, I take threats to myself pretty well,” I said. “Part of the job. I get it. A professional hazard. But that’s like me saying I’m going to hurt your family. They’re not in this game of ours, are they?”
“If you can find my family, or anything about me, I would be willing to say they are part of the game. You are just dumb enough to have your feelings on your sleeve. So that woman you are assigned to protect, the one you obviously care deeply about, the one you probably love but can never have. What a silly and stupid man you are. She is the one who will pay the price for your disobedience.”
My hands were in fists. Someone must have noticed, because just then I felt a sharp point on the back of my neck.
“Now now,” the man in front of me said, “it would be unseemly for the Hero of Osterstadt to strike down a citizen who was just trying to have a friendly conversation.”
“If I kill you all, who’s to say you didn’t attack me first?”
“Ah, to be as stupid as you. Must be quite nice, living in such a vacuous head.” He pointed up at the rooftops, where there were several smaller figures silhouetted against the low grey clouds. They waved. I waved back. “You might be able to kill us all. I have my doubts, but I also bring insurance.”
He snapped his fingers, and one of the figures darted off. I could hear soft footsteps as they ran across the slate tiles above.
“Now,” he said, “do you understand? Do you see what we ask? That it is not so onerous. That you just, well, stop putting yourself in danger for some time. Or, at the very least, refrain from fighting in one part of the city. Plenty of other areas to seek your fortune in violence.”
I didn’t have a choice right now. I nodded.
He smiled broadly.
“What a delight,” he said, and patted me on the shoulder as he walked by. “Enjoy your stay in Osterstadt.”
In the space of a few heartbeats, I was alone on the street again. And irrationally angry. I stood there, as the snow started to fall again, trying to understand why this interaction pissed me off so much. Why I wanted to kill that man. I took a few deep breaths of cold air, doing my best to let go of the rage. It sort of worked. I still wanted to kill the guy, but at least now
I was willing to take my time instead of going right after him. Figure out who he was, why he was so against the Legion.
Then I’d kill him.
Chapter Thirty
I walked a little more, enjoying the quiet the snowfall brought. That was something I always appreciated. I wanted snow. I loved winter. If there was a place of perpetual winter, I’d have probably tried to find a way to live there.
* * *
Snow can cover a lot of things: sound, reality, the dirty bits of the world. I wanted that, here and now. I wanted a buffer between me and reality. At least for a few minutes. Because there was so much happening here, and I wasn’t smart enough to figure out why. Or even what. Something was going on, and I was sure there were connections, but I was missing all of them. I was tired of being pulled along, of blindly reacting to shit, not having any of my own agency. Even now, in Osterstadt, I was working on behalf of others. Sure, I’d made the decision to come along, but it wasn’t because I wanted to. It was because I’d been pressured into it. Maybe it was what I wanted to do.
* * *
Lost in my own thoughts, I realized I was just meandering, and had definitely lost my way. I was in a square I’d never been in before. There was a statue of a man mounted on a horse. The horse had one leg raised, and the man had his arm lifted high, holding up what seemed like an axe. I walked up to the statue to look at the plaque on the base.
Janus Leth.
That was it. No bit of history about him. No reason why the statue was there, or what the man had done to deserve a statue. It was well done — the sculptor did an impressive job on the horse. A little too anatomically correct, but who was I to judge?
“Look at what we have here,” came a sing-song sort of voice behind me.
I looked over my shoulder and saw five young men strolling together. They were slight, and pretty, wearing obvious finery.
“Gents,” I said, and kept walking.
“He’s a big one, isn’t he?” said one of the men to the others.
I turned to get a better look. The one in front, the one who’d been doing the talking, was blonde. He had a delicate face, and was thin in a way where I doubted he’d ever had to do work. Even from the distance, in the mild glow of the city’s lights bouncing off the grey clouds and scattered among the snow, I could see his complexion was perfect.
Next to blondie was a dark-haired young man with dimples and a wide smile. Like his buddy, he too seemed to have a body devoid of muscle.
Third was a stern-looking fellow. His face angular and severe, not smiling like his friends. He had piercing eyes that bounced around the square. I had no idea what he was looking for.
The shortest among the group had the biggest smile, but it wasn’t a friendly thing. It was the smile of mischief, of joy through other’s pain. He looked like the chief bad-guy friend in an 80s teen movie, eager to please and ready to laugh at blondie’s jokes.
The last dude was the biggest. Still not that big — he was at least a head shorter than me, but his shoulders were broad. He had just the hint of a mustache under his big nose.
All of them wore fancy clothes and plenty of jewels. And not much in the way of cloaks or coats or mantles. They had pale skin, but dark red lips. I would’ve thought them just young drunk men. But they had a serious swagger to their walk, like they owned the night. And I was a trespasser.
Blondie continued to close in on me.
“He is quite large,” came the short bootlicker’s assurance.
I gave them a little wan smile, but kept walking. I didn’t need to get in a fight with some rich assholes.
“Oh dear,” Dark Hair said, “I think he might be trying to get away.”
“Do stop, big man,” Blondie called out.
“I don’t think he is going to stop,” one of them said, in that stupidly playful singsong way.
“You don’t want me to stop,” I called out over my shoulder.
“Does he threaten us?” Blondie said in mock shock.
I shook my head, just wanting to be rid of them. But they were filled with the immortality of youth and the invulnerability of wealth. You know, annoying as all fuck.
“I believe he threatens us,” Tall, Dark, and Stupid said.
“Boys,” I said, turning around to face the five of them, only to see that one of them had taken his liberty of us. Down to four. It seemed like the short sycophant had scampered off. “I’ve had a really long day, and I’m not in the mood for playing. Okay?”
“Playing he says,” the blonde one said to his buddies, laughing at the implication. “He wants to play with us.”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid,” I replied. “I don’t want to play. I’d just like to go home, get some sleep, have a nice day tomorrow.”
“He thinks he’ll see tomorrow,” came a voice behind me, much closer than comfortable.
I’d found Shortie. He was leaning on a wall behind me.
I sighed.
“You really don’t want to do this, boys,” I said.
“But we do,” said Blondie, clearly the leader. “A big one like you will feed us for a week.”
The stern serious one in the back shook his head. “The Master would not want this,” he said. “It is too brazen.”
“And he is too cautious,” shot back Blondie. “This one will feed us for a week.”
“Hold up a minute,” I said, stepping closer to Blondie. “The Master? Is there, I mean, can you take me to him?”
“I don’t think the Master appreciates visits from food,” Blondie said.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, a grip that was surprisingly strong. Fingers dug deep into my deltoid.
“It would seem I get first bite,” Bootlicker said, his voice right behind my ear.
“Okay, but I warned you,” I said.
All of them chuckled, all except the serious one. He looked, well, serious.
First, I shot my head back, and I felt Bootlicker’s nose and lower face crunch against my unyielding skull.
Then, I grabbed his hand and pulled as hard as I could. I threw him over my shoulder and into the nearest wall.
He groaned.
“The big one has teeth,” Blondie said.
Tall, Dark and Stupid swaggered in my direction, looking me up and down like a piece of meat.
“I bet you think you are the strongest in the world,” he said, “with all your bulging muscles. But you look like a peasant. And like a peasant, you are dumb. And you know nothing.”
He reached blindingly fast, and grabbed onto my neck, and squeezed. Hard. I blinked, trying to figure out exactly where this guy was getting his strength from, because there were no fucking muscles anywhere on him.
With my right hand, I grabbed him by his neck and lifted him off the ground, one-handed. Which felt pretty badass. My left hand grabbed his wrist, and I wrenched it around.
Bones snapped, problem solved. He was no longer strangling me.
His eyes went wide. Then wider as I started squeezing his windpipe closed.
“Perhaps a glamour?” he wheezed out.
I felt a tingling settle over my person. It felt gross, tight. So I shook it off, literally. Shaking my head, and gritting my teeth. Part of me, a big part, wanted to say something pithy, but I didn’t have anything to say.
Instead, I threw Tall, Dark and Stupid to the ground and gave his chest a solid kick. Then I reset, thinking that maybe his buddies might see what’d happened and decide messing me with wasn’t worth it.
Nope.
Blondie’s eyes seemed curious, but he still had his stupid smile plastered across his face.
“You are intriguing,” he said. “Not rising above the level of food, but still--”
A hand shot out and grabbed my neck, feeling like an iron noose. I saw the sadistic smile of Bootlicker open up, revealing big fangs.
“Vampires?” I eked out through my quickly-crunching trachea. “I hate vampires.”
But, again, it was a pretty
easy maneuver to get out of. Reach back, grab hold of the dude’s head, and then throw him over my shoulder.
Oddly, though, it was Bootlicker once again flying through the air to crunch against the building.
Blondie then moved through the space at speed, a blur. I had no time to even think of a proper defense before he pushed me over, on top of me like a beast, crouching on my chest and showing off his teeth.
I punched him in the side of the face, and he fell onto the rocks.
Tall, Dark and Stupid was back on his feet, and coming for me. The stout dude was still trying to get his sword out of his scabbard. A truly depressing display of martial prowess.
Clearly these vampires had healing properties to rival, or best, my own. So I decided the best course of action was extreme violence. Tall, Dark and Stupid was just charging me. Sure, he was supernaturally fast, but he was also remarkably dumb. I sidestepped, and extended my foot a little. He tripped, and since he had a whole lot of momentum, he plowed into the ground hard enough that he left pieces of himself behind on the cobblestones.
Blondie was still trying to get to his feet, I grabbed him by the back of the head, and using all the strength I could muster, slammed him, face-first, into the wall.
The wall shook and went inward, the stones shifting ever so much. They did not, however move quite as much as Blondie’s beautiful face. It was now a mixture of flat and jelly.
He moaned, but I could already see things starting to stitch back together.
I roared with disapproval, and used my knee to pin his body to the wall. Then I got both hands around Blondie’s head.
Bootlicker took this moment to try his same move once again, reaching around my neck and trying to choke me out.