“I think I might be lost,” I say, as I drop down from my horse and point to the west. “I was headed toward Wintervale… which is… that way, right?” I scratch the top of my head with the backside of my axe, as if to demonstrate incompetency. He quickly buys it.
“You are either really stupid or really lost, peasant,” spits the Rokhai warrior, from a bearded mouth that looks as if someone braided a long-haired rat. “You need to get the hell out of here now, before I split you in two. Go that way, and don’t look back.”
He heaves a finger to the east, turning his shoulder to me, which is exactly what I had hoped for. In that single moment my axe is now up over my head, like I’m about to fell a tree. Only this particular tree crumbles weakly to the ground as the axe severs three-quarters of the side of his neck. He’s trying to call for help, but all that can escape is a gurgling rush of air that’s silenced as the axe falls a second time. It frees his head from the gushing stump that is his neck, and sends it wobbling on its way like a spiked football tossed into the endzone. It’s not the first time I’ve killed in this world and certainly will not be the last. I’ve never killed in the real world, and I have no desire to, but here, as I stand with my bloody weapon, I look a bit like an axe murderer.
It seems like the only difference between an axe murderer and an adventurer is an objective. A quest, if you will. It’s a thought that makes me laugh beneath my breath. It’s also a fleeting one, because I’m here to rescue my wife and seek vengeance for the town of Falkhaven, a quest I begin as I grab a torch off the wall and step inside.
There are more Rohkai. A lot more, and they live like animals, but they don’t sleep like animals because I easily sneak into their lair. They’re too confident in their recent victory. They sleep peacefully, with sore muscles and full bellies. And so it’s not until my axe has torn through the fifth Rohkai that alert has filled this dimly lit cavern painted in bear skins and animal blood and shiny white bones.
A sleepy Rohkai pup, a teenager not yet with beard but with those same soulless eyes as his brothers, comes charging at me with a club made of sharp, jagged bone. I block it with my axe’s iron handle, and send his teeth into his stomach with the axe’s head. He falls, and another Rohkai takes his place. Then another. But my hands are too fast, and my axe is everywhere at once. Soon the last head has dropped to the rocky floor.
…Or at least I thought it was the last head. I hear a muffled yell, and then a figure pushes out into the torchlight. A woman. Maybe a girl. Doe eyed, thin face, big breasted—aren’t they always, in tales like this? She’s quivering.
“Are you here to kill me?”
“No,” I say, which she doesn’t seem to be buying as she eyes the blood-spatter that covers my face like Rohkai warpaint. She shifts on her feet, and I catch glimpse of the shackles that clink loudly against her ankles. “You’re a prisoner?”
She gives a solemn nod.
“Was Mary here?”
“Mary.” The word seems foreign to her lips, until she says it again, “Mary,” and then she nods. “Yes, Mary was here. But they took her.”
“Where?”
“Hammervale?” She squints. “I think? I don’t know.”
That’s right, Mario. The princess is in another castle. It seems she always is. It’s the story of my life—at least my life in this world.
And so, with a fresh victory over the Rohkai, I free the busty prisoner and listen to the clip-clap of bare feet as she scampers off. Then I lay down on one of the few bearskin rugs not covered in blood, I suck in a deep breath, and I close my eyes… and when I open them, I see white drywall. I feel old carpet beneath my elbows. I’m back in the real world, back in Will Howard’s garage apartment, and I expel my breath with a heavy sigh.
Coming back to this world is like going from a high-definition LED flat screen to an old black and white tube television with tinfoil covered rabbit ears.
I close the garage apartment door, step back into the backyard, and make my way to the backdoor of the house. I walk inside to check the time. According to the clock on the wall, it’s only been ten minutes. My adventure, meanwhile, had to have lasted at least four to five hours. Again—I don’t know how time works in my imagination, but I don’t want to push my luck. I have work to do, after all.
“Oh, hi, Robb,” I hear, from a very startled-sounding voice.
“Hello, Claire,” I reply.
Will’s wife is staring at me, or rather she’s staring at my hands, and only then do I realize I’m still holding my axe. I lower it, offer a not entirely reassuring smile, and tell her, “Just came to get a glass of water. I’m chopping down some more branches.”
“Yes,” she says, as she dashes off to the kitchen to do this task herself, “and the trees are looking wonderful, I should mention. Thank you for doing that. You’ve got such a green thumb… for, you know... such a… burly guy.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, both for the compliment and for the water upon her return. She’s a kind woman, and I think she might be afraid of me. She shouldn’t be.
With some reluctance I start my day of work. I mow the lawn. I trim some of the shrubs. I paint the back wall of the house, which had previously been faded and peeling. It’s lonely, it’s boring, and it’s unfulfilling, but time passes quickly because all I can think about is fighting the Rohkai. When the children get home from school they almost catch me swinging my paintbrush like an axe. Almost.
“Hi, Robb!” Ruth exclaims. She’s trampling up the path toward the house, making enough noise with her footsteps for an army of children.
“Why do you always say hi to him?” Tom asks. “He doesn’t want to talk to you!”
“Who would?” Sam shouts. “Mom, we’re home!”
Inside they go, stomping and banging and yelling, and after I put away the last of the paint and the brushes I’m headed back to my own apartment. I won’t remember walking home, or unlocking the door, or warming up a TV dinner. I won’t remember what I’ve eaten. I’ll just sit at the kitchen table with my elbows firmly planted, smiling as I think about being Falkhaven’s hero.
Mary would have been so proud of me. I used to read her Conan the Barbarian stories when she got too sick to get up out of bed. She told me that she always pictured me as Conan, and she pictured herself as Valeria, or Zenobia, or any of the other female characters that Conan found himself romantically entangled with. No matter how pale and how withered away her body became, these books allowed us to go on daring adventures.
We slayed mythical beasts, we fought powerful wizards, and we saved kingdoms together, up until the very last day, when I went to go get a cup of coffee to stay awake and came back to a room full of beeping machines that I ripped out of the wall.
*
Morning has come, my pot of coffee has been drunk, and my breakfast has been shoveled down. I’m walking up Line Avenue toward the Howard household, and my smile is long gone. It’s a new day, a new adventure, and I feel irritated that I can’t yet be immersed in my world. I can’t yet see my Mary. Knowing that I have to trudge through this dull reality first, passing kids on their way to school and parents that throw me nasty glances, it almost seems unbearable.
I pass Ruth, who says hi, and her brothers, who roll their eyes. I pass Officer Brody, who’s in his car, watching. Always watching. And then before I know it, I’m unlatching the gate and stepping into the backyard. Will’s already gone to work, but Claire is out here emptying some garbage from the house. She smiles and says a very quiet hello.
As much as it pains me, I’ve decided to wait until after the Howards leave ‘out-of-town’ to step into the garage apartment and resume my quest. Because of that, the day slugs by and the trickling of time is miserable. I find my mind drifting off to dark places. Picking a hospital. Picking out a wig after chemotherapy. Picking out a casket.
It’s not until the Howard children come prancing in that I realize I’ve been painting over the same spot for almost an hour—a thick sludge o
f white paint slips down the wall and balls up against the windowsill.
“Those goblins aren’t gonna stand a chance!” Ruth shouts, before her brother slaps her in the arm, hard.
“Shut up!” Tom notions toward me, and all three fall awkwardly silent. As usual, I pretend not to notice.
Less than an hour later, Will Howard is pushing a few twenty dollar bills into my hands and thanking me profusely for watching the house. He’s going out of his way to tell me that they’re going to walk to the bus station to save on gas money, but I know they’re just going to sneak back into the house and do whatever they end up doing when they disappear. In a way, I’m a little insulted that he thinks I’m so dumb, so naïve. On the other hand, I’m just eager for him to go wherever the hell he goes so I can go wherever the hell I go.
Plus, I like teasing him.
“I think I’m going to have a quick beer up in my break room,” I say, as I point back to the garage apartment. The only furniture it holds is an old fridge that barely runs and an unwanted couch, and I love seeing the look of apprehension in his eyes—the thought that I might slack off and daydream my way into his dark little secret—right before he persuades himself that I won’t discover anything up there. After all, I am the too-serious meathead with no imagination.
“Yeah, that’s alright by me, just don’t go overboard on the beers,” Will jokes. “And thanks again. Bye, Robb.”
He walks out the gate where his wife and children are already waiting to head off. Only Ruth glances my way and offers a quick wave. It’s not returned.
Instead, I’m off to the garage apartment, off to the closet that holds my beloved axe, and after settling into the carpet, I’m off to Fairhaven, which is looking better since the last Rohkai attack. Stronger. The cottages have been repaired. The streets are thrumming with happy villagers, which leaves me in a bit of surprise when I see that the Jarl’s longhouse is anything but festive. The soldiers gathered around the Jarl’s table are listless, as is Jarl Strolf.
“Robb,” he says, with a nod in my direction. “You’ve returned. You were successful?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then I’m afraid there’s more to do. I have word that the Rohkai are growing in number. They’ve taken a fortress out in the northeast.”
“Fort Highlock,” says another voice. “Are you familiar?”
It’s not until now that I’ve noticed the Jarl’s new advisor, sitting beside him clutching a quill and ink. He’s pale, unbearded, a bit old, and has a dark purple robe. Beneath the neck of his robe I can spy the faintest hint of a necklace. One that’s covered in bone. He’s surely a spy for the Rohkai.
I’m not mad, though. I like a good plot twist.
“I’m not familiar with Fort Highlock,” I reply. “What can you tell me about it?”
“Just that it’s heavily guarded at the front lines,” the advisor says, “but extremely weak from the flank. There’s an old mineshaft back there that I don’t believe they’ve fully explored, because it leads right into the heart of the fortress. Into a cellar. If you snuck in there, you could kill all of them like sleeping babies.”
I don’t like the way he says this, like killing an infant is a bit too familiar to him. “How do you know this?” I ask.
“Because I was a prisoner there, and they forced me to work in the mines until I escaped.” He holds up his wrists, which still hold the scars of shackles bound much too tight.
He’s good.
“Yes, and now he’s helping us in exchange for a seat at my counsel,” the Jarl says. “His name is Voss, he’s a priest of Aleria, and I’ve spoken with him at great length. He is to be trusted.”
Of course he is.
And so Voss, the priest of Aleria, uses his quill and inkwell and pens out a map leading to Fort Highlock, and offers his blessing before dropping a heavy bag of gold coins into my hand. A bag of coins that I take directly to the tavern. Once I’ve had my pre-battle ale, I mount up on my horse and head along the path to Fort Highlock. I’m expecting an ambush, of course. Or some kind of setup. But I’m prepared for this, and I like being outnumbered and outgunned. It always adds to the sense of thrill.
However, that thought is soon lost, because an hour into my journey, through those beautiful green Enderien fields, I see a woman waving a torn piece of cloth on the side of the road. Also on the side of the road is her wooden carriage, which is upside down, busted, and missing a wheel, along with the body of her horse, which has a broken neck.
“Please,” she wheezes, with dirt on her face and a fresh trail of blood running down her forearm. “I got ambushed by Rohkai, and they ran me off the road. I think my son is still inside the cart, but I can’t open it. The door is stuck.”
Her panic is genuine, and fresh tears fall down her face. “Please. I need to get him out of here! They mean to rape and kill me!”
Dropping down from my horse, I begin to circle the cart and eye the door along the side, which is actually propped open, and right as that registers as odd is when I see the glimmer of bone from the corner of my vision. Two Rohkai come flying at me, clubs poised to bash in my skull, but my axe is faster than they could ever hope to be and they drop to the grass in deep red puddles.
“That’s it?” I ask. “Just two of you?”
But it seems it’s not, and from behind the cart comes one more, with a double-sided axe that has twin blades forged from bone. I step narrowly to the side as he swings, and the head of his axe goes straight into the cart with such force that it shears the paneling along the side in half. When the Rohkai goes to wedge his axe free, however, it gets caught in the wood.
And so his shoulders are still shrugging with urgency, desperately trying to free his only means of survival, as my own axe launches into his stomach, parts his armor like butter, and spills his entrails onto his boots like a dropped bowl of chili. The Rohkai drops soon after, to his knees, and in a glossy eyed panic he’s trying to shovel his own dirt-and-blood covered intestines back into his stomach. His axe is long forgotten, as is his language, because he’s babbling incoherently.
Back on the side of the road, I catch glance of the woman who’d flagged me down. She looks like a rabbit, quivering timidly, just waiting to bolt off. But she knows better.
“I… What I said was true,” she explains, nearly tripping over her own feet as she backs up in the tall grasses. “Well, I don’t have a child, but the Rohkai, they did ambush me. And they demanded I trick you, or, or…” She’s beginning to hyperventilate. “Or they were going to rape and kill me. Please. I swear it.”
I believe her, and though I’m still angry (mostly at myself for not seeing this coming), I want to use this to my advantage, so I tell her, “Go back to Fairhaven, then, and tell Jarl Strolf and Voss of Aleria that Robb was ambushed and killed alongside the road. Can you do this for me?”
“Yes, but…” She chokes briefly on her tears. “Are you Robb?”
She winces at the sound of something heavy striking the ground, and behind me, the Rohkai that just scooped his dirty entrails back into his body lays dead.
“Just deliver that message exactly as I told you, and do it quickly.”
I toss her the half-empty bag of gold coins that Voss had given me, and quickly mount my horse. I haven’t much time to get off the road and find a good hiding spot before Voss’s spies send word to Fort Highlock that I’m dead. And when they do, and they sleep comfortably, carelessly—that’s when I strike, and that’s when I rescue Mary. I can’t explain it, but I know somehow that she’s being held in that fort.
I just know she is.
*
My axe looks and sounds like a miner’s pickaxe when I’m immersed in darkness, and it makes it that much easier to sneak into Highlock Mine.
‘Clink clink clink.’
My axe digs into the side of a rock, carving away little more than a few sprinkles of rock, but it sounds like I’m mining ore and allows me to draw closer to the guard, who can’t see my ar
mor in the torchlight.
‘Clink clink clink.’
He thinks nothing as I pretend I’m walking toward a wheelbarrow, but then I circle behind him, raise my axe, and part his skull in half down to his neck. The body flops to the ground, but not before his ejected brains paint the rock wall. Considering this man was a full foot taller than me, this is no small achievement.
Beside me, a miner in tattered rags is staring with his mouth agape, and the pickaxe falls out of his hands, landing beside the shackles that restrict the movement of his feet.
“You’re free,” I tell him, “so long as you get out of here right this instant and don’t make a peep.”
He’s about to say yes, but reconsiders it and turns on his heel to flee as fast as his shackles will allow.
As Voss had said, the mine leads straight into the fortress, which I discover to be true as I continue through the mineshaft and reach a pair of double doors leading into the fortress’s wine cellar. There are two headless bodies lying behind me, and ahead of me I hear the idle chatter of two more bodies that do not yet know they’re dead.
I take a celebratory swig of their alcohol after I spray the walls in blood, wine, and broken glass. It tastes like grape juice mixed with paint thinner, but it dulls my senses a bit and makes me forget the coagulating blood that’s covered my trembling hands.
“Everything alright down there?” I hear from the stone steps leading up. “It sounds like a damn ruckus! You two drunken idiots knocked something over again, didn’t you?”
“You’d better come check this out!” I yell in a muffled tone.
“Bloody hell,” I hear, and after the thumps down the stairs get loud enough, I round the corner and deliver the axe’s blade straight into the Rohkai’s neck. The pain is so great that he bites down hard on his own tongue and a mixture of blood—from his tongue, and from the geyser in his neck—bubbles up out from his lips. It stains his red beard even redder, and I grab his staggering form and toss him back into the wooden chairs behind me where his two friends lay in eternal slumber.
The Graveyard Shift Page 5