by J. M. Martin
Skav spun his hand, too, and swept the sword out of line. He sprang and raked at my chest with his claws. The other trolls roared in anticipation of the killing stroke.
I leaped backward, and the attack fell short by a finger-length. He kept charging and slashing, and I continued my scrambling retreat. I tried to open up the distance so I could interpose my blade between us again, but he was pressing too hard.
Then I attempted a shift to the side that would cause him to blunder past me. He compensated.
In desperation, I suddenly reversed direction, advancing instead of retreating. That spoiled his aim, and his talons slashed harmlessly behind me. I bashed the broadsword’s pommel into his jaw. If the impact stunned him, it would win me the instant I needed to separate myself from him and come back on guard. If not, I’d positioned myself perfectly for him to gather me into a flensing, bone-breaking bear hug.
The attack did stun him. Even so, simply by stumbling on forward, he nearly knocked me to the ground. But I wrenched myself out of the way and even managed to cut the back of his thigh as I did.
Unfortunately, though, when Skav shook off the daze produced by the clout on the jaw and whirled in my direction, he moved as fast as before. The leg wound didn’t hinder him.
The thing that was hampering him was the sunlight stored in the sword. That became apparent when it dimmed and disappeared.
The trolls bellowed and howled to see the enchantment exhaust its power, and Skav came at me even harder. He could now see me better.
Whereas I was seeing him worse. With the glow in the blade extinguished, I discovered that if the sun hadn’t quite set yet, it might as well have with the trees obscuring it.
Curse you, Elkinda, I thought, and curse my stupidity, too. Why had I staked my life on a second exorcism succeeding when the first one had been an abject failure?
I belatedly decided I should try to kill the Hearteater. If I succeeded, the trolls wouldn’t have a demon for a leader anymore and presumably wouldn’t go on a rampage. That would be victory of a sort even if I doubted the creatures would let me survive to celebrate it.
Since I’d been fighting defensively, when I came on the attack, it surprised Skav. A stop cut met a clawing hand and left the little finger dangling. He hesitated. I stepped in, feinted high, then low, then spun my blade high again to deliver the true attack at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. The cut landed where I’d aimed it.
But Skav drove at me once more. Leathery hide and dense muscle had kept the sword stroke from shearing deep enough to kill.
I jumped back. His claws still grazed my chest, though, and that was enough to dump me on the ground.
Skav threw himself on top of me. The hand I’d maimed retained sufficient strength to pin my sword arm, and the Hearteater raised his other hand to rip me to pieces.
Then Ojojum rushed in behind him, grabbed his wrist, and strained to keep him from clawing me. Her intervention roused the rest of the trolls from their passivity, and they charged forward, too. I had no doubt it was to pull her off Skav and enable him to get on with butchering me.
But that was when the incubus finally came swirling up out of the troll chieftain’s head like steam from a kettle.
The spirit’s long, rippling face seemed even ghastlier than before, because now it was full of rage and the rage was directed at me. Its cloudy arms stretching, it reached down and plunged its fingers into my head.
Its touch felt like what it was, filth slithering into me, but there was even more to the unpleasantness than that. Every nasty thing in my mind—emotions it had shamed me to feel, perverse impulses I didn’t even realize I had—welled up to join with the intruder.
Given time, that dual onslaught would surely have crushed my will. But when Elkinda dragged the spirit out of him, Skav had gone limp. His grip on my sword arm had relaxed, and I was able to jerk it free.
I thrust the blade through the demon’s torso and felt nothing. It was like stabbing fog.
Still, perhaps because Elkinda’s magic rendered it susceptible, the incubus screeched, a shriek heard not with the ears but with the mind, and disappeared. To my relief, the vile sensations in my head vanished along with it.
Afterward, the trolls stood flummoxed by astonishment and, conceivably, even horror, for it seemed to me that the incubus’s appearance had appalled them, as well.
In that moment of quiet, Elkinda emerged from her thicket. “There,” she declared, “all better.”
Still heedless of his various wounds, Skav got up off me and embraced Ojojum. “I couldn’t help it,” he growled. “The spirit had me in its grip.”
“I know.” She ran her talons through his greasy black hair, dislodging a nit or two. “I know.”
Skav rounded on Elkinda. “I should have said,” he growled, “the spirit had me in its grip thanks to you.”
I clambered to my feet. “You’re right,” I panted. “The wise woman’s magic didn’t work precisely as intended. But she and I risked our lives to save you, and at the end of it all, you and Ojojum have the child you wanted. That being so, I ask you to let us go in peace.”
Scowling, the troll mulled it over. Then he asked, “All the things you said before. About being an envoy, the relic, and loving Ojojum. Was any of it true?”
“Not a bit,” I said.
He laughed a grating laugh. “The demon believed, but I didn’t. All right. Go.”
I took a long breath and strode toward Elkinda.
Then Skav said, “Wait.”
Heart thumping, I turned.
“We have gold,” said the troll. “Some our fathers took fighting your fathers. Some, we took from city fools who hunt too deep inside the forest. Do you want some?”
I did. I knew just what to do with it.
With gold, I could rent a more fashionable space for my school, buy elegant clothes, and cut a stylish figure to attract the notice of Balathex’s gentry. I could stage fencing exhibitions and demonstrate my skills. Gold was a second chance to achieve the life I wanted.
I smiled at Skav. “Well, if you’re offering,” I said.
A Better Man
A Tale of Egil and Nix
Paul S. Kemp
Egil and Nix feature in my sword and sorcery novels, The Hammer and the Blade, A Discourse in Steel, and the forthcoming, A Conversation in Blood. Their stories are pacy, filled with action and wit (I hope). I think of them as a cross of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, spiced with a bit of Conan and Indiana Jones. I hope you enjoy reading their stories as much as I do writing them. “A Better Man” takes place after the events of A Discourse in Steel (though it is entirely standalone).
~
Summer heat smothered Dur Follin in humidity so heavy that Nix fancied he could twist his hands in the air and wring out a tankard of water. The Slick Tunnel’s common room steamed in a fog of body odor, pipe smoke, stale puke, and Gadd’s eel stew. Even the walls seemed to sweat.
Nix watched a half-drunk slubber from one of the farms outside the city stagger up the stairs with one of Tesha’s working girls.
“In this heat?” he said. “They’re going to slip right off each other.”
Egil eyed the farmhand hob over the rim of his tankard. “Eh, you just dislike hard work.”
“It’s hard work by definition, yeah?” Nix waited for a response, received none from the big priest, then added, “No doubt that galloped unnoticed past what passes for your wit.”
“It wasn’t funny, is all,” Egil said, swirling his tankard. “It’s the heat. It’s turned your wit flaccid.”
Nix inclined his head, warming to the game. “‘Flaccid,’ is well played, priest, especially for one of your otherwise stunted intellect.”
“‘Limp’ would’ve worked just as well,” Egil said with a nonchalant shrug. “Both pinion the point. To wit, that your wit is lacking in wit.”
“I guess you’re in a mood, then,” Nix grumbled.
Egil shifted in his chair, the legs groaning und
er his weight. “I want for something to do, is all.”
“You’re a priest. Go pray or something. ”
“To whom?” Egil said absently.
“Fair point,” Nix conceded. “But that’s your own fault for worshipping a dead god. And did you say, ‘whom,’ now?’”
“I did.”
“Fak, man. ‘Flaccid’ and ‘whom’ within moments of each other? You’re prohibited from reading henceforth.”
The two men shared a table in the corner of the common room, near a window that looked out on Shoddy Way. Egil’s glare, notorious ill-temper, and hulking frame kept the other patrons at a reasonable distance, and that suited Nix fine. Less stink, he figured. Sweat covered the priest’s bald head, turning the tattoo on his pate teary eyed—the eye of Ebenor, the Momentary God, divine for only a moment, dead ever since. Nix pulled restlessly at his shirt and shifted in his seat, unable to get comfortable.
“Here sit men of flaccid wit, to whom the heat is shite,” Nix said. “The two, they want for ought to do, but only naught in sight.”
“Fak’s sake, man,” Egil said, shaking his head. That makes everything more terrible.”
“It does,” Nix agreed, and eyed the common room to distract himself.
Patrons thronged the room’s tables, sipping at Gadd’s warm ale, while the working women and men of the Tunnel did a brisk, sweaty trade, but everyone did everything at a languorous pace, as if they could stave off the heat by moving slowly enough to avoid its notice.
Nix took a gulp of ale, more out of habit than thirst, and grimaced. “Gods, it’s like drinking spit. Not even Gadd’s excellence makes this tolerable. Fakkin’ summer.”
“We ought to leave,” Egil said, suddenly animated, the movement of his massive body testing his chair’s construction. “Get out of Dur Follin. Head north, maybe. We could search out the Tomb of the Wraith King.”
Nix was already shaking his head. “It’s too fakking hot to move. And the Wraith King is a legend. No, I submit that we sit here until the sooner of our deaths or the arrival of autumn. Done?”
Egil slouched in his seat, the liveliness in his eyes gone as fast it had appeared. He raised his tankard in surrender. “Done. But no more fakking limericks.”
“Done.”
A few moments passed in silence.
“I’m bored of this course already,” Nix said.
“Likewise.”
“Fak.”
“Likewise.”
“I heard the Night Blade’s in town,” Nix said after a moment, just to say something.
Egil harumphed and made a dismissive gesture. “The Night Blade. Bah.”
“As skilled an assassin as they come, is what I hear.”
Egil burped and somehow infused the sound with contempt. Nix waved away the stink of the expulsion.
“A skilled assassin is as contradictory a term as a virginal whore,” Egil said. “Assassins sneak about and stab from the dark unseen. Cowards, the lot. Even you, my small friend, with all your faults in things martial—”
“Faults! Small!”
“Even you, my diminutive friend, with all your failings—”
“Diminutive, now? You are done with reading, priest. I will burn every book you own. So vowed. And you’re soon to get another terrible limerick.”
Egil chuckled. “Even you, my quick, stabby friend, don’t take the coward’s path and at least face your foes.”
“Well…” Nix began, thinking of the many times events ran afoul of Egil’s characterization, but the priest continued on, his opinion untroubled with facts.
“This Night Blade is just a more skilled coward than most.”
“You realize we’re tomb robbers and not knights, yeah?”
“Noble work, nobly done,” Egil pronounced somberly.
“No argument from me,” Nix said.
Chairs propped open the double doors to the Slick Tunnel in a futile attempt to lure a breeze inside, but the opening just seemed to draw in more heat. Nix was about to call for them to be closed when a silhouette darkened the space between the jambs.
She stood a bit taller than Nix and wore a wide brimmed hat, riding boots, a faded green tabard to mid-thigh, and sharpened steel of various lengths. Long dark hair fell out from under her hat to reach a strong jaw. A crossbow hung from a shoulder sling.
Nix nodded at the doorway. “Could be something to do just stepped in the door.”
Egil turned in his seat. “Hmm.”
The woman’s gaze scoured the common room, moving from table to table.
“That’s an old uniform, but not one of the Lord Mayor’s,” Nix said.
“One of the noble houses, maybe?”
“Nothing I’ve ever seen,” Nix said. “Looks threadbare. Shite, are we wanted men?”
“Usually,” Egil answered. “But not at the moment.”
Nix ran a hand over his stubble. “She looks grim of purpose, no?But I’d wager not a bounty hunter.”
“Agreed.”
“Shite,” Nix swore.
“Shite, indeed,” Egil echoed.
“A Road Warden,” they said together. “Former.”
Her eyes reached them, narrowed, and stuck them to their seats.
“I don’t like the look of that,” Nix muttered.
“I think maybe I do,” said Egil, with a smile.
“She’s not hard to look upon, I’ll concede,” Nix said.
She strode toward them, drawing eyes as she went. She stopped when she reached their table.
“Egil and Nix,” she said, not a question. “May I sit?”
Nix smiled as best he could. “Not with so serious a look on your face. And how is it you’re not sweating in this heat?”
Egil stood and pulled out a seat for her. Her eyes might’ve widened a touch at the priest’s hulking form. “Sit, please.”
“Gods, man,” Nix said, tsking. “She’s pretty so you’re pulling out a chair just like that? What if she was here to arrest us?”
“Ignore him,” Egil said.
“I’d ignore you both if I could,” she said, and sat. “But that’s not my decision.”
“Egil, I think she walked through that doorjust to hurt our feelings.”
She looked Nix in the face, her lips pursed. “Do you always talk so much?”
“See?” Nix said to Egil. “Another blow to my feelings. And with all that I still feel she’s about to ask a favor.”
“Not a favor,” she said. “An offer.”
“A drink?” Egil asked her.
“No. So—”
“So you’re a Road Warden,” Nix said, interrupting. “Or were once. You probably hail originally from…oh, I’ll say, New Dineen?”
“Cooler there,” Egil said wistfully.
She looked surprised, then intrigued. She put her elbows on the table and interlaced her fingers. Nix went on.
“You’re here looking for someone or something in Dur Follin and need our help. Close?”
She half smiled. “So you’re not the hobs I thought you might be. Well enough. I was a Road Warden, true. But I’m protecting someone, not looking for him.”
“Who’s the him?” Egil asked.
“It’s too soon for that,” she said, and her half-smile lost the war to a frown.
“I’m not interested,” Nix said. A lie. He was interested in just about anything at the moment. He wore boredom with no style.
“I am,” Egil said.
“Of course you are,” said Nix, rolling his eyes. “Because you are an oaf.”
She removed her hat, letting her dark hair fall free to her shoulders. Egil was already smitten, Nix could see.
“How can we help?” Egil asked.
“Shall I continue?” she asked Nix. “Or are we done?”
Nix waved her on, and she dove right in.
“Imagine that an important person from New Dineen had an unofficial meeting with an important person here in Dur Follin. Imagine further—”
�
��This is a lot of imagining to demand of my priest friend,” Nix said. “We were just discussing his limitations in that—”
“I can imagine punching your nose,” Egil said. “Twice.”
“That’s twice more than I imagined you able, then,” Nix said.
“Imagine further,” she went on, irritated, “that a party or parties very much wanted to ensure that this meeting did not occur and had retained a party or parties to ensure that the party, or parties, coming from New Dineen would be killed here.”
Nix frowned, looked to Egil. “Is this what it’s like to listen to me talk?”
Egil tilted the bucket of his head. “Mostly. But you’re not as pretty.”
“I most assuredly am,” Nix said, then leaned forward in his chair and stared into her face. “That was a lot of words to say so little. Party of this, party of that. We still don’t know your name.”
“Sairsa is my name,” she said, “and I’ve told you all I can for now.”
“Except why you’re here and what you really want,” Nix said. He sighed, reached down to the satchel in which he kept his needful things, from lockpicks to magical gewgaws, and removed a black candle.
“What is that?” she asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“A gewgaw,” Egil said contemptuously.
“My priestly friend has limited use for things magical,” Nix explained.
“As do I,” she said cautiously.
Nix slammed the rest of his warm ale in one long gulp and placed the candle in the cup to prevent its falling over. He removed a match from his satchel and lit the taper. An orange flame danced on the wick.
“See this? If any of us speak a lie while this burns, the flame will turn from orange to green, like so.” He cleared his throat. “I think Egil is highly intelligent.”
The flame remained orange.
“Fak,” Nix cursed. “Must not be working.”
Egil leaned back in his seat and crossed the tree-trunks of his arms across his chest. “The truth is made plain, you mean.”
Nix ignored him and said to her, “You understand the point?”
She stared at the candle, at Nix, at Egil, and Nix could see thoughts moving behind her eyes.