This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death

by Неизвестный

  Then you see Alex’s Mercedes on the other side of the highway, heading homeward.

  Alex, like many rubberneckers, is taking a look at the poor schmuck stranded on the shoulder on the far side of the highway. Your eyes make contact.

  “Hey!” the mechanic calls. “Back up!”

  You hadn’t realized how close you’d gotten to the live lane. A car shoots past and honks, swerving away to avoid hitting you. It clips the side of a truck to the left. There’s no pileup, but the truck screeches to a halt while other traffic swerves and brakes and screeches and dives to the side to avoid it. When the truck stops, it is blocking two lanes a good distance farther down the highway.

  You can’t believe what’s happened. In the distance you see Alex’s Mercedes, reversing along the shoulder back toward you.

  Luckily, at this time, there isn’t too much traffic heading in this direction, so there’s not much of a backup. Still, cars in all lanes are slowing down enough that you can easily cross to meet Alex, who is climbing over the center guardrail.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” you say. For a moment you think you might embrace, but instead you both stand awkwardly, unsure of the proper way to behave.

  “Thanks for stopping.”

  Alex shrugs. “I thought you’d been hit. I guess you didn’t get my message.”

  “Busy evening,” you say. “Listen, we should check if everyone’s okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  Suddenly you hear a screech of air brakes. You turn toward oncoming traffic to see a huge tractor-trailer jackknifing behind the slow-moving cars. Clearly the driver didn’t see the slowdown until it was too late. It’s plowing through cars as it hurtles toward you, spinning them out of its way. It shows no signs of slowing.

  Go to 26.

  26

  The huge vehicle is coming at you so fast. Alex stands to your right, frozen in terror. Which way should you run? If you jump left, you might avoid being hit but Alex will be killed. If you lunge right, you might be able to save Alex but you won’t stand a chance.

  Seconds remain!

  Left or right?

  Who will live? You or Alex?

  Now you know what the piece of paper means. Now you know what’s going to kill you.

  Your choice.

  * * *

  Story by Richard Salter

  Illustration by Graham Annable

  IN BATTLE, ALONE AND SOON FORGOTTEN

  GRUN STOOD WITH HIS BACK against the stone wall, listening. In the distance he could hear the chittering of the nightkin and the squelch of its feet upon the cobblestone. As the sounds slowly grew softer, he risked a peek around the corner. The nightkin was nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t necessarily the same as saying it wasn’t there; it was not yet dawn and the only light coming through the windows was dim and gray, highlighting the shadows rather than banishing them. The torches and chandeliers that lit the halls had long since been extinguished, for the nightkin needed no light, and Grun dared not bring a lantern or activate the runes of lighting that ran along the baseboards… those would only draw attention to him, and he wasn’t allowed into the master’s castle unless summoned. Orcs belong in the barracks, after all, during the rare periods when they weren’t off on the offensive somewhere.

  Grun sniffed the air; his low-light vision might be poor, but an orc who relied overmuch on sight would never have lived to sixteen. He could smell the acrid stench of the nightkin… a coppery tang of the old magic that had summoned the creature. It was not close; Grun decided to go for it.

  Corner, he thought. One, two, three, four, five, and turn left. He counted his steps, tracing out the path he’d laid out and memorized weeks ago. Unfortunately, he’d used a hand-drawn map he’d found on one of the bodies dredged out of the moat, and the proportions weren’t quite right; no single wrong turn had sent him astray, but innumerable missteps had slowed him far more than he was comfortable with. He put his arms out and felt the wall. After a minute of scrabbling he felt the doorway and tried the latch.

  It was unlocked. Grun gnashed his teeth in celebration. He opened the door as silently as he could and slipped inside.

  Because of the large windows, the room was almost visible in the predawn gloom, not that Grun needed light to know he was in the right place… it smelled of the messenger hawks, the smoky residue of sending spells, and Kerrek’s cheap tobacco. And, of course, the goblin stink of Kerrek himself, sitting in the corner, illuminated by the glow of his battered cigarette. Compared to Grun he was small, lanky, and easily broken. Orcs and goblins were close cousins and shared the same green skin and resistance to magic, but goblins were allowed to work in the castle. They were considered less of a danger. Most of them were in the kitchens or washing rooms, but Kerrek had a knack for the message hawks, which was why he got the leeway to work in the castle proper, as assistant falconer, and why Grun had asked for his help.

  “You’re late,” the goblin said.

  “My map was wrong.”

  The goblin grumbled. “I’m risking a lot for you, orc.”

  Grun gritted his teeth but forced himself to remain calm. “I am not ‘orc.’ My name is Grun.”

  The goblin’s large, haggard face was barely recognizable in the dim glow of his cigarette, but Grun could clearly see an eyebrow shooting up. “Grun? That’s a dwarf name.”

  “No,” Grun protested, “it is my name.” He thought for a moment, and then repeated, “It is my name,” to convince himself as much as Kerrek.

  As a general rule, orcs didn’t get names. Not the way other species did. Grun had a unit (D201) and a supervisor (a human, Rogerrik), and a station (swordsman) and a rank (forward) and a designation (third), to distinguish him from the thousands of other orcs in the lord’s employ. “Rogerrik’s Third Forward” was the name he was most often called, when others saw fit to give him a name at all. In most cases, “you, orc!” was sufficient.

  That said, it was common for orcs to take names of their own, though they all tended to follow a particular format… Grun shared a small room in the barracks with orcs called Elfbane, Darkstab, and Bloodfist, and for a time he referred to himself as Killclaw. These were meaningless nicknames, though. Some orcs went through them like boots; every few months they would mash more angry-sounding words together and tell their friends to start calling them that. Orcish sergeants accepted it grumpily because they had to maintain a more familiar relationship with their charges, but anyone higher on the chain of command and any non-orc stuck to official designations. After all, unless you worked directly next to the orc, odds were he’d be long dead by the next time you might see him.

  Kerrek shrugged and let it go. He had better things to do. “You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked.

  “I want to know,” Grun replied. He unsheathed his dagger, another trophy taken from a corpse, this one a halfling caught on the outskirts of the kingdom while he was on patrol. It glowed a pale blue; it wasn’t enough to read by, not that Grun could read, but it was enough to keep him from walking into trees on late patrols.

  “You’re not gonna like it,” Kerrek said, while eying the dagger greedily.

  “You don’t know.”

  “Don’t I?” the goblin sneered. “Mark my words, orc. ‘In battle, alone and soon forgotten.’ ”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “Doesn’t it? Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  “No,” said Grun, who honestly had not. The barracks didn’t have mirrors; they weren’t considered necessary.

  The goblin put his cigarette out on the wall and stood up. “You know what I mean. Every orc gets the same prophecy. I’ve seen a hundred of them; my brother works in the crematorium, stripping bodies, and he collects the damned things. You don’t see a lot of ’em on orcs, but whenever you do, they say the same thing.”

  “They don’t have to,” Grun growled.

  “Don’t take it personally. A greenskin’s fate is sealed. I
t’s like that poem… ‘Elves are born to cast and charm, gnomes are born to build and try. A goblin’s born to work and serve, an orc is born to fight and die.’ ”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way!” Grun shouted. He could feel the rage welling up in him, the comfortable berserk fury that was part and parcel of orchood. His claws itched and his legs tensed… it took an effort of will not to leap upon the nearest creature and tear it apart. Staying still and calm made Grun physically ill. He wanted to vomit.

  Kerrek flinched but, to his credit, did not actually run. He wanted to, though; Grun could smell his panic.

  Grun clenched his fists and took a deep breath. “I’m not… a troop,” he said, eventually. “I’m… me. My own… me. Argh!” Grun struggled to find the words he was looking for. “We’re not,” he started and then hesitated. The right words were somewhere on the edge of thinking, just past his grasp. “We’re not a poem,” he finished lamely.

  Kerrek was cold. “I think you should just give me the sample and go.”

  Grun took the dagger and pressed it against his forearm, where his thick orcish hide was at its thinnest. He carved a neat line, one more scar among many, and sopped up the blood with a rag that Kerrek provided.

  “I’ll send this now,” the goblin said. “The artifice of prophecy is in the Deeprun Cavern, with the dwarves, so it will take a week for the message to get there and a week for a reply. You should go now.”

  Grun left without another word, leaving the enchanted dagger behind, as they had agreed. Dawn was just about to break, and the human guards would be taking over as the nightkin began to dissolve, so he retraced his path from the barracks as quickly as he dared.

  Unfortunately, he was not quick enough. As he entered the kitchens on his way to the side door, a human, standing in front of an open icebox, spun and raised a crossbow in one smooth motion. Grun stopped and raised his hands.

  “Halt!” he called, his voice obviously muffled by food. With effort, he swallowed. “Orc! In the name of Lord Restharon I order you to halt!”

  “I have halted!” said Grun.

  The guard stepped away from the icebox, which swung closed. He stepped to the side, putting the large oak table in the center of the room between himself and Grun. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “What are you doing here?” Grun asked back.

  “I’m allowed in the castle! That’s it. I’m going to bring you to the quartermaster.”

  Grun growled at the human. “Don’t need to. I’ll leave.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, orc!” the human snapped back.

  It was all bravado. Grun could sense the man’s terror. Armed or not, the human was smaller, slower, and weaker than even the puniest of orcs. If Grun were to leap at him now, he’d need to jump over the table in the middle of the room, which would give the guard time for maybe one shot. And if it didn’t catch the orc in the eye or the neck, Grun could just keep charging… orcs are hardy that way. And once Grun got an arm’s length away from the human, there would be no fight anymore.

  Of course, if Grun killed the guard, he’d be chased down and executed for it.

  Of course, that would be cold comfort to the guard.

  After a few seconds of tense standoff, the guard lowered his crossbow a fraction of an inch and visibly relaxed. “You’re not an assassin,” he said confidently.

  “You thought I was?”

  The guard actually smiled. “I’ve been jumpy. I’m going to be assassinated.”

  Grun nodded. “You’ve used the artifice of prophecy.”

  “Yes, obviously. Surprised an orc could figure out that little riddle.”

  Grun snarled and stepped toward the table, claws bared. “I could still be an assassin!” he spat.

  The guard flinched but did not run. “No… no. For one thing, I’m not important enough to assassinate. I’m just on morning watch. But someday! Heh, can you imagine? Well, no, you can’t, orc. But still.”

  Grun narrowed his eyes. He was mad, but more than that, he was jealous. Assassinated! Even to be part of an honor guard, killed in an assassination writ large, would beat the ignominy of “In battle, alone and soon forgotten.”

  He was hardly aware of it, but his claws were sinking into the wood of the large kitchen table, leaving sharp dents on the hardwood, which had thus far resisted a century’s worth of cleavers. He wanted very much to take the human’s little victory away. “I could still be an assassin,” he hissed.

  The human smirked. “No, you’re an orc. Human assassin, goblin assassin, maybe an elf, sure. And halflings of course. How’s it go? ‘Humans born to build the tower. Halflings born to sneak inside. Dwarves are born to forge the blade. Orcs born to defend and die.’ ”

  “Raargh!” Grun bellowed. He did not leap at the guard, but he couldn’t help himself from shouting. “I was not born to do anything!” he tried. “I am not… born! No, I… I am me!” Desperately, Grun floundered for the words. “I am Grun! Me! The only one! Grun! Grun!”

  The guard was backed as far into the counter as it was possible to be without climbing into a cupboard. When he spoke it was conciliatory and gentle. “Y-your name is Grun?”

  “Yes!”

  “So… so how did you get a name?” the human asked.

  “Bron gave it to me.”

  “Bron? A dwarf?”

  “Bron Forgefounder.”

  “I see.” The human relaxed a bit. He was staring Grun in the eye with a strange ferocity, though. “Uh… who is that?”

  “He was a prisoner. I was his guard. He said I was different from the other orcs.”

  The guard frowned. “Well yes, the other orcs are obedient enough to not talk to the prisoners!”

  “That’s not allowed?”

  “It’s never allowed! Who knows what sort of crazy things they might convince a simple mind?”

  Grun shrugged. “He was alone after his friends were taken away. He wanted to talk. He said I deserved a name, and he taught me that I could be Grun.”

  The human frowned again, piteously. “You’re not, though. You’re just an orc.”

  “No. I am Grun. I am Grun! The only Grun!” He would have continued in this vein, except he felt a pinprick of a blade between his shoulder blades.

  “Orcs don’t get names!” a deep voice behind him shouted. It was accompanied by another voice, laughing a hooting, mad laugh that seemed disconnected from reality.

  The human reholstered his crossbow. “Nice work.”

  The laugher’s voice was also half mad… breathy, rapid, and somehow wet. “Do we take him to the master? Do we slit his throat here and now? Oh! I like that idea, second the motion. Meeting adjourned!”

  “No!” bellowed the other voice. “Prisoner to prison. Nobody killed.”

  Grun risked a look over his shoulder and was not surprised to see an ogre and a ghoul. The ogre wore the armor of Lord Restharon’s heavy guard and carried a sword almost as long as Grun was tall. The ghoul was dressed only in rags and tatters, which flapped wildly as he gamboled around the room, laughing and drooling.

  “The orc’s going to be tortured! Tortured! And then back to the barracks, hee! Silly orc, it thinks it has a name! Come with me!”

  The ghoul loped off, out of the kitchens. The blade on his back receded, and Grun turned around. The ogre, huge and impassive, was still pointing the sword at him, a foot away. The blade didn’t even quaver. “You will follow Sithes. I will follow you. March.”

  And Grun marched. He had little choice.

  The ghoul moved forward erratically, in hops and starts and sudden pauses, while the ogre was an oncoming wall that would shove Grun whenever he began to falter.

  “You could take me to the barracks,” Grun suggested hopelessly.

  “Ha!” barked the ogre, loud and defiant. The ghoul matched it with another mad cackle. “Orcs not allowed in castle! Orcs dangerous and stupid!”

  “I’m smarter than you. I’m safer than him.”

&n
bsp; “So you’re boring!” cackled the ghoul. “Orcs are boring! Orcs are boring! And the master doesn’t like to be bored, oh no, no no no. Hee-hee!”

  “Orcs can be interesting.”

  “Ah he-he-he, you can be laid out in interesting positions! And you will be, oh yes, you will be. Little orc, little worthless orc!”

  “Hrm…,” rumbled the ogre. When he spoke, his voice was flat, as he summoned a memory from far away. “ ‘Ogres born to crush the land. Drakelings born to burn the skies. Ghouls are born to cart the dead. Orcs are born to run and die!’ ”

  Grun stopped and turned to the ogre, drawing himself up as tall as he could. “I am not—” he began, but the ogre did not stop. He kept thundering forward, as inevitable as a merchant ship, and, when he reached Grun, delivered a sharp blow to the orc’s head. Grun collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

  “Oh, little orc? It’s been hours. Wake up, will you?” The voice was smooth and condescending and radiated power. Not the quiet power of a public speaker or a politician, but a literal force that dragged Grun out of the blackness of oblivion and back into reality. He opened his eyes, dazed and lost. He was on his back, on something hard, looking at a stone ceiling. He tried to sit up and groaned in pain as his arms were wrenched back… He looked over and saw the manacles that chained him to the table.

  “Oh, there you are. Let’s sit up, shall we?”

  Slowly the view rotated as the table Grun was strapped to tilted. Soon he was almost upright, still manacled. He wasn’t quite tall enough; he had to stay on his tiptoes or his shoulders would be wrenched out of joint. Grun got the impression this was quite purposeful. He could see little of the room besides the wall and sconce before him, but the décor screamed “dungeon” all the same.

  A man, mostly human but somehow not quite, was sitting in front of him. He wore no armor, nor a mage’s robes, but the fine clothes of an aristocrat dyed in shades of black. He sat on a small stool on the far side of the small room, legs crossed, fingers steepled, smiling broadly.