by Dylan Doose
“I don’t think they do,” Theron said.
“I’m not a wizard,” Aldous cried.
Theron and Ken both shot him a glance and said in unison, “You better hope you are.”
There was a lull in the attack for just a moment after the first group had been slaughtered. Then came a brute, heaped with more muscle than Ken and Theron combined. Its arms were stout and it looked like it was having a great deal of trouble getting through the door.
Kendrick knifed it twice in the groin.
It fell to one knee then lunged forward, swiping its hulking claws. Ken sprang to the side and Theron came in with the mallet, striking it heavy on the head.
Ken went to the goliath’s flank as it pressed at the hunter and pounced on its back; with one hand he grabbed hold of a tuft of hair, and with the other he set to stabbing. He plunged the knife into the creature’s neck, but it was as thick as an oak and nearly as hard. He struck a boil and it burst. Hot, sticky puss ran warm on Ken’s arm.
“You’re quick for a large man,” said Theron as he avoided the teeth and claws.
“And you’re a talker? I should have guessed as much,” Ken mumbled as he strained to keep his grip on the creature.
“Better a talker than a screamer,” Theron said as he gave the thing a low crack in the ankle.
It roared and tried to reach backward to grab at Ken, but its stout arms would be its doom. It bucked and screamed as Ken held to the tuft of fur and kept digging his knife ever deeper through the dense muscle.
Theron brought the mallet down over and over on the brute’s right knee as he dodged gnashing teeth. After six heavy blows there was an echoing crack and the pustulant titan went down.
“Aldous, lend us a hand in finishing this deed,” Theron called out as he wrestled to restrain one of the beast’s powerful arms.
Ken was startled by the invitation. He couldn’t see that they needed the boy’s help. But he held his silence, because he’d often bolstered the confidence of his new recruits with similar tactics.
The black-haired boy looked around and set his eyes on a fire poker in the torturer’s hands in a corner of the room. The boy grabbed the shaft and the two engaged in a most pitiful tug of war as the torturer sniveled. It was won when Aldous placed his foot firmly on the torturer’s bald head for leverage and tugged.
Kendrick shifted his hand from the tuft of fur and lodged his fingers deep into the beast’s eye; it screamed, its mouth opening wide. Ken ripped the knife from the rat’s neck and wedged it into the open mouth.
“Shove it down the throat, boy. All the way down,” he ordered.
The creature screamed and bawled; it frothed and snapped its tremendous maw of rotten, grinding teeth. Aldous wanted to lend aid. He wanted to help the two men be done with the thing, but every muscle in his body was stiff. With the poker held like a spear, he willed himself to move. His limbs began to shake, but still he could not charge.
“Do it, lad, do it,” Ken ordered again, his voice loud enough to be heard over the gagging and thrashing of the beast, but it was steady.
“Kill it! Ram it down. Spear it like a fucking boar, boy!” Theron yelled, his voice not nearly as calm as Ken’s, and Aldous could see every muscle in the blond man’s body bulging and straining to hold the giant hell spawn’s colossal meat hook of an arm in place.
“I’ve never speared a fucking boar!” Aldous yelled back with a moment of legitimate fury at his savior. “You don’t need me. Please, you don’t need me.” He started to lower the poker. “Kill it yourself.”
“We need you. We do. Be brave, Aldous. Show me what you are! Show me that we are in this together!”
He hesitated for a moment longer. “Ragh!” Aldous gave a meager roar and charged.
He drove the poker home.
The beast gagged from the depths of its fathomless belly, barfing blood. Aldous gagged, a symphony of gagging, his stomach convulsing from the stench of the fiend’s breath. But he stayed the course. He was screaming and in a state of horror that nearly had him shitting liquid down his legs, but he stayed the course. His shoulders and forearms strained as he felt the poker drive through walls of organ tissue.
The creature lifted the arm it was using to balance, and swiped at Aldous, but he jumped back, releasing his makeshift spear as he did, and the rat fell face first, swallowing the poker all the way down. It convulsed for a few moments, then went still.
The three of them were huffing and covered in the devil’s gore, but the fight was won. For now. The dead rats were strewn—mangled and mutilated—across the chamber floor. Kendrick looked to the corner. The torturer sat in a puddle of his own piss. Ken smiled at the pitiful man, the type of smile that said, I told you so. You should have listened, without saying anything, anything at all.
“Quickly, Kelmoor, before we are overrun. We must hasten from this place!” Theron stood in the doorway, his boots mushing through the pieces of rat and chunks of the dead guards, gesturing for Ken to follow. The echo of squealing sounded from the tunnels below. Death beckoned from the black pit in the dungeon floor.
Ken turned from his prize and stared at Theron a good while; he knew there was no need to stay, not from a rational sense, at least, but Kendrick the Cold always saw the job done.
“I’ll be just behind you,” he replied.
Theron hesitated. It was strange that he did. For he owed Ken nothing; in fact, it was the other way around, for Theron and the boy Aldous had saved his life.
“Right on your heels, lad,” Ken said.
Theron grimaced, and then looked past Ken at the torturer.
“All right, but be quick about it. It is not worth dallying over.” Theron and Aldous made their way down the hall, the sound of their feet sloshing through the gore as they disappeared from sight.
Kendrick looked back at the torturer. He was glad he’d stayed.
Welcome back, Kendrick. Welcome back.
“Can we feed them?” the black-haired boy asked his father. Three stray wolfhound pups lapped at the water in the estate’s garden fountain. They were dreadfully thin; their fur was matted and one was walking with a terrible limp.
“Yes, but be careful,” said his father.
They fed the hounds, and the next day the hounds returned. Again the boy fed them, and again the next day they returned. After a week of this, the boy asked, “Can we keep them?”
“Why do you wish to keep them, my son?” his father asked.
“They need us. They need our help, can’t you see?” the boy asked.
“I can. I most certainly can.”
“And we can help them, so we must help them, just because we can,” said the boy. His father smiled and stroked his black hair.
“You are right, my son, but you must understand. If you help these pups, if we take them into our house, if we save them from their own savage devices and the wild, then we are making them a promise.”
“A promise?” asked the boy.
“Yes, for a good man must promise to never abandon that which he saves. In this moment you must be sure. We cannot simply save the pups’ lives, only to leave them to their own devices when you have grown tired of their company.”
“I promise,” said the black-haired boy, a promise he was destined to break.
Chapter Eight
Escape
T hey passed, single file, through a narrow corridor with walls and floor painted in the mingled blood of man and plague rat alike. The upper dungeon was empty, with no sign of a struggle, but the guards were gone, the weapon racks were emptied, and the sigils were at a continual burning blue glow. Theron searched franticly through rooms and chests for his swords, hoping that this was where he would find items confiscated by the soldiers and added to their own coffers. He had a hunch that they had not seen the last of the rats, and even if they had, they were now escaped fugitives in a city filled with foes. He needed the instruments of his trade.
“Is this what you’re looking for, hunter?”
Kendrick asked from another room in the dungeon. Theron ran to the voice and found Ken standing with his claymore in hand.
“How did you know this was mine?” Theron asked. He cut a glance at Aldous, the boy he had promised to protect, and now that his claymore was found, the sturdy weapon that had never failed him, he truly began to believe he could keep his promise—he could keep the lad safe.
“Too heavy and fine for any common soldier,” Ken said.
Kendrick threw Theron the blade then lifted a second sword—a short sword—of the same fine steel from the chest he was standing over.
“Borrow it,” Theron said. “Better we each have one than I have two and you have none. Any of those swords from a common soldier have not the strength or flexibility of my blades, and might break when we need it most.” He looked at the unarmed Aldous, deathly pale on the parts of flesh that weren’t covered by gore.
“I’m more than happy with none,” Aldous stuttered.
“You have your magic,” said Ken, at the same time Theron said, “Very well, but stay close.” Theron felt a fool after giving such an instruction, for the boy did not look as if there was anywhere else he would like to go.
“I have no magic,” Aldous grumbled.
As the three climbed up the stairs to the kitchens, they did so in silence. Theron listened intently, but no sound came from above.
“Ready?” Theron asked, pausing at the door to the kitchens.
“Aye,” said Kendrick, the same way a man says aye to being ready for a nap.
“Aldous?”
“Ready,” said Aldous the same way a lad says he’s ready for some surgery on his cock.
Theron threw the door open and charged forward into the kitchens, his claymore at the ready. The blade was hungry and Theron was angry. He was angry at his arrest, he was angry at the mistreatment of Darcy Weaver’s heir, and he was bloody furious that the rats were back.
The floor of the kitchen was strewn with dead. The walls were spattered with blood and guts, and a few bodies had found their way into the roasting fire. This was no fight, just a massacre.
“You saw the sigils, hunter. You saw the way they burned with that strange green haze beyond the blue flame,” said Ken as the three paused to study the savaged bodies.
“Yes,” Theron whispered as anxiety built in his chest, an expanding stone .
“Yes what?” asked Aldous. “They were glowing. I saw it too. I thought you said they were glowing because of the rats.”
“Aye, and if they were glowing from the rats, that means this plague is no thing of nature. They only glow in the face of magic,” Kendrick said, and Theron shuddered. Magic was like a terrible storm, churning and gathering, uncontrollable.
“The plague is a spell?” Aldous asked incredulously.
Theron locked eyes with Ken and said, “There is some great and evil sorcery afoot. Black sorcery and a blacker betrayal.”
“What do you mean betrayal?” Aldous asked, as he walked forward, looking up, away from the corpses on the ground.
Both men ignored him, and Theron said, “They appear to be acting with some sort of order, almost like an army.”
“An army of rats needs a leader. A spell needs a weaver,” said Ken.
“A weaver close by,” Theron said, and shot a glance at Aldous. “And I don’t mean our own.”
“This sorcerer is within the city?” squeaked Aldous.
“Oh, she is. She most certainly is, and I think it is high time we absconded from this deplorable city and the presence of its capricious count.” Theron motioned for the two to follow. Aldous did, but Kendrick stood still.
“I will not leave.”
“What?”
“This is an opportunity for me to kill that bastard. Too long did I serve under him. Too long did I carry out his evil on the weak and helpless. He sent me to do his evil deeds. He sent men almost as bad as me to rape and murder Alma. He will pay for that. I will be sure to see him off to hell for all that he has wrought.”
Theron was unsure who this Alma was, but it was clear that Kendrick would not follow until he saw or created the count’s corpse.
“We can just leave now,” Aldous whispered to Theron. “Just us. We can leave him to his vengeance.”
“We cannot,” Theron said firmly.
Aldous looked around as if he were looking for the explanation to Theron’s response. Theron felt a pang of disappointment in the young lad, but he could not begrudge him, for perhaps Theron would have thought in the same manner many years ago.
“We cannot simply save a man’s life and then take his assistance in preserving our own, only to leave him to his own devices in completing what appears to be some sort of oath-bound quest. We must assist him in his endeavor.” Theron clasped a hand firmly on the back of Aldous’ neck and pulled him close. “It is the right thing to do, Aldous Weaver, son of Darcy Weaver.”
The boy winced as Theron’s words struck home. “It’s as if you knew him better than me,” he whispered.
“Stay or leave,” Ken said. “I care not.”
Theron felt for a pocket in his trousers. Not his trousers, the trousers they had made him wear in the dungeon. No Brynthian ducat. No coin to flip. This decision could not be made by chance, so Theron left the question to his morality instead.
“We stay,” he said, and Theron Ward was his word—he was now committed to a killer.
“We are going to murder a count?” Aldous’ voice grew higher in pitch.
“You say the word ‘count’ like it excuses him from punishment. Count or beggar, the man’s deeds have woken the justice that now pursues him. This is an opportunity for heroics, an opportunity I will not abandon.” Theron shook the boy then. “An opportunity you should grasp with equal vigor. You must be prepared to call upon your magic and reduce to ashes whatever foe we may next face, do you understand?”
Aldous looked with wide eyes and a drawn face at Theron, just at the mere mention of magic.
“I understand,” he said, but Theron was not sure he did. Not that he doubted the boy could kill, because he had already proven he could, which had put him in this predicament in the first place. But Theron was unsure that Aldous could actually control his powers. “But,” Aldous added after a moment, “to be honest, I really don’t think I will be able to do it again.” He winced and scratched the back of his head with the pitifully obvious symptoms of embarrassed guilt. Theron winced back.
Looking at the boy, it was hard for Kendrick to picture him committing a crime punishable by torture and death. “So it’s fire, is it?” he asked.
“Indeed. Young Aldous here burned a priest to cinders with his bare hands. A nasty bastard, by all accounts,” Theron said. “Well, only by Aldous’ account, but I trust him. For he is the son of the great writer Darcy Weaver.”
Kendrick gave Theron a blank look. “Never heard of him.” Ken paused. “And that’s a horrible reason to trust someone.”
Theron’s brows drew in. “Do you have a better one?”
Ken had not taken Theron Ward for a fool, but at those words he thought he might reconsider. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“That’s just as foolish as trusting everyone,” Theron said. “Let us find Count Salvenius and make certain of his death.”
“Aye,” agreed Ken, happy to leave this skirmish of words and head to battle.
“Do you wish to be the one to claim his life?” Theron asked.
“If the boy’s a mage, I would prefer that he burn the bastard alive. The more brutal his death, the better. And like to like. The count has burned many,” Ken said, as he stared into space, a cruel sneer curling his lip.
“I’m not sure I can kill a person,” Aldous said, avoiding Kendrick’s gaze.
Ken looked at the boy and thought of how many times he’d heard those words from boys who went on to kill dozens.
“If our wizard can’t burn him, then he dies slow, by blades,” Ken said.
“We haven’t the time, nor d
o I have the stomach for torture,” Theron said firmly, but without any anger.
Ken glowered at Theron, and had he been the man he was six years ago he would have come to blades with the hunter over that, but he was not the same man. Perhaps he was a better man now. Or perhaps he was simply a more patient monster.
“Fine,” he eventually said, icy calm. In truth, it didn’t matter how the count died, so long as he died. “Then to answer your question, hunter, no, I do not wish to be the one that kills him. It doesn’t bloody matter now. Let’s just go and fucking get it done.” And he strode into the hall.
They entered the throne room. The walls were adorned with the heads of dead beasts, glass eyes staring out, fur matted with the spattered blood of the slain who lay scattered across the floor, dead, filmed eyes staring at nothing.
“Same as the kitchens,” Ken said.
“Not entirely,” said Theron, kneeling over the half-naked corpse of a dead woman—more a girl than a woman, really. “She was raped, and her throat was slit. By knife, not by claw. Look around, Kendrick. A great deal of these wounds were made by sword, knife, and spear. Men, not rats.”
“They’re the same,” Ken said as Theron lingered over the corpse too long for a man who knew death. “Who is the woman?”
“I don’t know her name, but this is the count’s daughter.”
Ken thought there was perhaps the slightest bit of sentiment in Theron’s voice, but he could not be sure.
Theron rolled the body over to inspect the girl’s face. He stood abruptly. “Oh,” he said, “no, that’s not the count’s daughter. I don’t believe I know who this is after all.” He shrugged, then gave one last glance. “Hard to tell, in truth, for she was wearing a mask when we fucked in the stables, so I can’t say for sure, you see? But she was quite good, really.”
Strange man, this Theron Ward.
Theron made his way to another set of stairs. These led to the second level at the back of the throne room. Aldous followed the hunter and, after a final look around, Ken did the same. The count’s body was not among the dead, and he was too bloody fat to be missed even if he was half eaten.