by Sam Sykes
Rem’s cellmate stirred beneath his pile of straw, but did not rise.
Kevel almost fell with the force of the blow. The big guard caught him and set him upright again. The lithe elf backed off, staring intently at the prisoner, as though searching his face and his manner for a sign of something. Without warning, Ondego hit Kevel again, this time on the other side of his face. Once more Kevel toppled. Once more the guard in his path caught him and set him upright.
Kevel spat out blood. Ondego tossed the book back onto the table behind him and went looking for another implement.
“That all you got, old man?” Kevel asked.
“Bravado doesn’t suit you,” Ondego said, still studying his options from the torture table. He threw a glance at the elf on the far side of the torture pit. Rem watched intently, realizing that some strange ritual was under way: Kevel, blinking sweat from his eyes, studied Ondego; the lady elf, silent and implacable, studied Kevel; and Ondego idly studied the elf, the prefect’s thick, workman’s hand hovering slowly over the gathered implements of torture on the table.
Then, Kevel blinked. That small, unconscious movement seemed to signal something to the elf, who then spoke to the prefect. Her voice was soft, deep, melodious.
“The amputation knife,” she said, her large, unnerving, honey-colored eyes never leaving the prisoner.
Ondego took up the instrument that his hand hovered above—a long, curving blade like a field-hand’s billhook, the honed edge being on the inside, rather than the outside, of the curve. Ondego brandished the knife and looked to Kevel. The prisoner’s eyes were as wide as empty goblets.
Ingenious! The elf had apparently used her latent mind-reading abilities to determine which of the implements on the table Kevel most feared being used on him. Not precisely the paragon of sylvan harmony and ancient grace that Rem would have imagined such a creature to be, but impressive nonetheless.
As Ondego spoke, he continued to brandish the knife, casually, as if it were an extension of his own arm. “Honestly, Kev,” he said, “haven’t I seen you feign bravery a hundred times? I know you’re shitting your kecks about now.”
“So you’d like to think,” Kevel answered, eyes still on the knife. “You’re just bitter because you didn’t do it. Rich men don’t get rich keeping to a set percentage, Ondego. They get rich by redrawing the percentages.”
Ondego shook his head. Rem could be mistaken, but he thought he saw real regret there.
“Rule number one,” Ondego said, as though reciting holy writ. “Keep the peace.”
“Suck it,” Kevel said bitterly.
“Rule number two,” Ondego said, slowly turning to face Kevel, “Keep your partner safe, and he’ll do the same for you.”
“He was going to squeal,” Kevel said, now looking a little more repentant. “I couldn’t have that. You said yourself, Ondego—he wasn’t cut out for it. Never was. Never would be.”
“So that bought him a midnight swim in the bay?” Ondego asked. “Rule number three: let the punishment fit the crime, Kevel. Throttling that poor lad and throwing him in the drink … that’s what the judges call cruel and unusual. We don’t do cruel and unusual in my ward.”
“Go spit,” Kevel said.
“Rule number four,” Ondego quickly countered. “And this is important, Kevel, so listen good: never take more than your share. There’s enough for everyone, so long as no one’s greedy. So long as no one’s hoarding or getting fat. I knew you were taking a bigger cut when your jerkin started straining. There’s only one way a watchman that didn’t start out fat gets that way, and that’s by hoarding and taking more than his fair share.”
“So what’s it gonna be?” Kevel asked. “The knife? The razor? The book again? The hammer and the nail-tongs?”
“Nah,” Ondego said, seemingly bored by their exchange, as though he were disciplining a child that he’d spanked a hundred times before. He tossed the amputation knife back on the table. “Bare fists.”
And then, as Rem and the other prisoners watched, Ondego, prefect of the watch, proceeded to beat the living shit out of Kevel, a onetime member of his own watch company. Despite the fact that Ondego said not another word while the beating commenced, Rem thought he sensed some grim and unhappy purpose in Ondego’s corporal punishment. He never once smiled, nor even gritted his teeth in anger. The intensity of the beating never flared nor ebbed. He simply kept his mouth set, his eyes open, and slowly, methodically, laid fists to flesh. He made Kevel whimper and bleed. From time to time he would stop and look to the elf. The elf would study Kevel, clearly not simply looking at him but into him, perhaps reading just how close he was to losing consciousness, or whether he was feigning senselessness to gain some brief reprieve. The elf would then offer a cursory, “More.” Ondego, on the elfmaid’s advice, would continue.
Rem admired that: Ondego’s businesslike approach, the fact that he could mete out punishment without enjoying it. In some ways, Ondego reminded Rem of his own father.
Before Ondego was done, a few of the other prisoners were crying out. Some begged mercy on Kevel’s behalf. Ondego wasn’t having it. He didn’t acknowledge them. His fists carried on their bloody work. To Kevel’s credit he never begged mercy. Granted, that might have been hard after the first quarter hour or so, when most of his teeth were on the floor.
Ondego only relented when the elf finally offered a single word. “Out.” At that, Ondego stepped back, like a pugilist retreating to his corner between melee rounds. He shook his hands, no doubt feeling a great deal of pain in them. Beating a man like that tested the limits of one’s own pain threshold as well as the victim’s.
“Still breathing?” Ondego asked, all business.
The human guard bent. Listened. Felt for a pulse. “Still with us. Out cold.”
“Put him in the stocks,” Ondego said. “If he survives five days on Zabayus’s Square, he can walk out of the city so long as he never comes back. Post his crimes, so everyone sees.”
The guards nodded and set to unchaining Kevel. Ondego swept past them and mounted the stairs up to the main cell level again, heading toward the door. That’s when Rem suddenly noticed an enormous presence beside him. He had not heard the brute’s approach, but he could only be the sleeping form beneath the hay. For one, he was covered in the stuff. For another, his long braided hair, thick beard, and rough-sewn, stinking leathers marked him as a Kosterman. And hadn’t Rem heard Koster words muttered by the sleeper in the hay?
“Prefect!” the Kosterman called, his speech sharply accented.
Ondego turned, as if this was the first time he’d heard a single word spoken from the cells and the prisoners in them.
Rem’s cellmate rattled the bars. “Let me out of here, little man,” he said.
Kosterman all right. The long, yawning vowels and glass-sharp consonants were a dead giveaway. For emphasis, the Kosterman even snarled, as though the prefect were the lowest of house servants.
Ondego looked puzzled for a moment. Could it be that no one had ever spoken to him that way? Then the prefect stepped forward, snarling, looking like a maddened hound. His fist shot out in front of him and shook as he approached.
“Get back in your hay and keep your gods-damned head down, con! I’ll have none of your nonsense after such a bevy of bitter business—”
Rem realized what was about to happen a moment before it did. He opened his mouth to warn the prefect off—surely the man wasn’t so gullible? Maybe it was just his weariness in the wake of the beating he’d given Kevel? His regret at having to so savagely punish one of his own men?
Whatever the reason, Ondego clearly wasn’t thinking straight. The moment his shaking fist was within arm’s reach of the Kosterman in the cell, the barbarian reached out, snagged that fist, and yanked Ondego close. The prefect’s face and torso hit the bars of the cell with a heavy clang.
Rem scurried aside as the Kosterman stretched both arms out through the bars, wrapped them around Ondego, then tossed all o
f his weight backward. He had the prefect in a deadly bear hug and was using his body’s considerable weight to crush the man against the bars of the cell. Rem heard the other two watchmen rushing near, a flurry of curses and stomping boots. Around the dungeon, the men in the cells began to curse and cheer. Some even laughed.
“Let me out of here, now!” the Kosterman roared. “Let me out or I’ll crush him, I swear!”
Rem’s instincts were frustrated by his headache, his thirst, his confusion. But despite all that, he knew, deep in his gut, that he had to do something. He couldn’t just let the hay-covered Kosterman in the smelly leathers crush the prefect to death against the bars of the cell.
But that Kosterman was enormous—at least a head and a half taller than Rem.
The other watchmen had reached the bars now. The stubble-faced one was trying to break the Kosterman’s grip while the elfmaid snatched for the rattling keys to the cells on the human guard’s belt.
Without thinking, Rem rushed up behind the angry Kosterman, drew back one boot, and kicked. The kick landed square in the Kosterman’s fur-clad testicles.
The barbarian roared—an angry bear, indeed—and Rem’s gambit worked. For just a moment, the Kosterman released his hold on the prefect. On the far side of the bars, the stubble-faced watchman managed to get the prefect in his grip and yank him backward, away from the cell. When Rem saw that, he made his next move.
He leapt onto the Kosterman’s broad shoulders. Instead of wrapping his arms around the Kosterman’s throat, he grabbed the bars of the cell. Then, locking his legs around the Kosterman’s torso from behind, he yanked hard. The Kosterman was driven forward hard, his skull slamming with a resonant clang into the cell bars. Rem heard nose cartilage crunch. The Kosterman sputtered a little and tried to reach for whoever was on his back. Rem drew back and yanked again, driving the Kosterman forward into the bars once more.
Another clang. The Kosterman’s body seemed to sag beneath Rem.
Then the sagging body began to topple backward.
if you enjoyed
GOD’S LAST BREATH
look out for
THE DRAGON LORDS: FOOL’S GOLD
by
Jon Hollins
It’s not easy to live in a world ruled by dragons. The taxes are high and their control is complete. But for one group of bold misfits, it’s time to band together and steal back some of that wealth.
No one said they were smart.
1
WILL
It was a confrontation as old as time. A tale begun back when the Pantheon of old first breathed life into the clay mold of man and set him down upon the earth. It was the tale of the untamable pitted against the master. Of the wild tearing at the walls of the civilized. It was man versus the beast.
Will placed each foot carefully, held his balance low. He circled slowly. Cold mud pulled at his feet. Sweat trickled down the crease between his eyebrows. Inch by inch he closed the distance.
The pig Bessie grunted at him.
“Five shek says she tips him on his arse,” said Albor, one of Will’s two farmhands. A strip of hairy gut was visible where he rested it upon the sty’s rickety old fence. It was, Will had noted, significantly hairier in fact than his chin, which he scratched at constantly. Albor’s wife had just departed the nearby village for a monthlong trip to help look after her sister’s new baby, and Albor was three days into growing the beard she hated.
“I say it’s face first, he lands,” said Dunstan, Will’s other farmhand. The two men were a study in contrasts. Where Albor’s stomach swayed heavily over his gut, Dunstan’s broad leather belt was wrapped twice around his waist and still flapped loose beyond the buckle. His narrow face was barely visible behind a thick cloud of facial hair, which his wife loved to excess. She had a tendency to braid sections of it and line it with bows.
“You’re on,” said Albor, spitting in his muddy palm and holding it out to Dunstan.
Will gave a damn about neither beards nor wives. All he cared about was his father’s thrice-cursed prize sow, Bessie. She had been his dancing partner in this sty for almost half an hour now. He was so coated in mud that if he lay upon the sty’s floor, he would have been virtually invisible. He briefly considered this as a possible angle of attack, but the pig was as likely to shit on him and call it a good day’s work as anything else. There was an uncanny intelligence in her eyes. Still, she was old and he was young. Brute force would win the day.
He closed the distance down by another inch.
Bessie narrowed her eyes.
Another inch.
Bessie squealed and charged. Will lunged, met the charge head-on. His hands slammed down hard against her sides.
Bessie flew through his mud-slick palms and crashed all of her considerable weight into his legs. The world performed a sprawling flip around Will’s head, then hit him in the face.
He came up spluttering mud, and was just in time to hear Dunstan say, “That’s five shek you owe me then.”
Bessie was standing nonchalantly behind him, with an air of almost studied calm.
Will found his resolve hardening. Bessie had to die. With a roar, he launched himself at the pig. She bucked wildly. And yet still one of his hands snagged a bony trotter. He heaved upon it with all his might.
Bessie, however, had lived upon the farm longer than Will. She had survived lean winters, breeched piglets, and several virulent diseases, and was determined to survive him. She did not allow her limb to collapse under Will’s weight, advanced years or no. Instead she simply pulled him skidding through the mud. After several laps, he appeared to be done. With her free hoof, she kicked him in the forehead to emphasize the lesson, then walked away.
“I think you almost got her that time,” Albor called in what might be generously described as an encouraging tone.
Will did not respond. Personal honor was at stake at this point in the proceedings. Still, there was only so much mud a man could swallow. He clambered to his feet and retreated to consider his options.
Dunstan patted him on the shoulder as he collapsed against the fence. Bessie regarded him balefully.
“She’s too strong for me,” Will said when he’d gotten his breath back.
“To be fair, you say that about most girls,” Albor told him.
“I have to outsmart her.”
“That too,” Dunstan chipped in.
“Don’t usually work, though.” Albor chewed a strand of straw sagely.
“This,” said Will, his temper fraying, “is not so much helpful advice as much as it is shit swilling in a blocked ditch. That pig has to become crispy rashers and if you have nothing helpful to add you can go back to picking apples in the orchard.”
For a short while the only sound was Bessie farting noisily in her corner of the sty.
Above the men, thin clouds swept across a pale blue sky. The distant mountains were a misty purple, almost translucent.
Will softened. None of this was Albor’s or Dunstan’s fault, even if they did not want to see old Bessie taken to the butcher’s block. Deep down—deeper perhaps now than at the start of his ordeal—neither did he. Bessie had been part of this farm as long as he could remember. His father had sat him upon her back and had him ride around the sty, whooping and hollering, while his mother stood clucking her tongue. Dunstan and Albor had been there, cheering him on. Even old Firkin had been there.
But now Will’s parents were gone to an early grave, and Firkin had lost his mind. Bessie was old and would not sow anymore. And Will was the unwilling owner of a farm on the brink of ruin.
“Look,” he said, voice calmer, “I want Bessie dead no more than you do, but I am out of options. The Consortium increased taxes again, and paying them has left my coffers bare. If I am to have a hope of surviving another year, I need to put her to the knife and sell her pieces for as much as I can get. Next winter she’ll be blind and hobbled and it will be a kindness.”
Another silence.
�
��You can’t wait a little, Will?” said Albor, straw drooping in the corner of his mouth. “Give her one last good year?”
Will sighed. “If I do, then there won’t be anyone to slaughter her. This whole place will be gone to the Consortium and I’ll be in a debtors’ jail, and you two will be in old Cornwall’s tavern without any sheks to pay for his ale.”
At that threat, the two farmhands looked at each other. Finally Dunstan shrugged. “I never liked that fucking pig anyway.”
Albor echoed his sad smile.
“That’s more like it,” said Will. “Now let’s see if together three grown men can’t outwit one decrepit pig.”
Slowly, painfully, Will, Albor, and Dunstan hobbled back toward the farmhouse. Albor rubbed at a badly bruised hip. Dunstan was wringing muddy water out of his sodden, matted beard.
“It’s all right,” said Will, “we’ll get her tomorrow.”
Later, the farm’s other animals locked away for the night, straw fresh on the barn’s floor, Will stood in the farmhouse, heating a heavy iron pot full of stew over the hearth. A few strips of chicken roiled fretfully among vegetable chunks.
He never bothered naming the chickens. It was easier that way.
He sighed as he watched the stew slowly simmer. He should be checking the cheese presses, or scooping butter out of the churn and into pots before it spoiled, or possibly even attempting to tally his books so he could work out exactly how much money he owed folk. Instead he stood and stared.
The nights were long out on the farm. It was five miles through the fields and woods down to The Village. The distance had never seemed far when he was a child. But that was when his parents were alive, and when Dunstan and Albor, and even Firkin, would all have stayed to share the supper, with laughter, and jokes, and fiddle music lilting late into the night. That was when performing the chores around the house had never seemed exactly like work, and when stoking the fire so it warmed the whole room had never felt like an extravagance.