by Ben Galley
By the gods, he wouldn’t have gotten through any of his days if not for any of them. Their friendship, their laughter, their conversation, filled in the holes opened by the loneliness of his work. And yet, most of them lay dead or gone in his pursuit for his family’s totem.
Just another carving. Just another piece of wood. And though it could mend flesh, he knew it would never seal the wounds the lost of his friends had created.
And as the giant snake mesmerized him with his failures and grief, it reared its head to strike. Scrap didn’t move.
Take me, he thought. End this lifetime of suffering before it starts.
The serpent struck, and just as its teeth and tongue enveloped him, he was knocked aside, broken free from its hypnotism. He heard its fangs snap close and a scream.
Tama was caught inside the snake’s mouth, wriggling, a fang clearly through his stomach. But as hard as the snake tried to swallow him, it couldn’t. His pack, still containing the heavy weight of the sapphire, was wrapped around the snake’s other tooth, a rope saving him from plummeting into the creature’s stomach.
Scrap fumbled for another bullet, but by the time he had reached one, Tama had managed to raise his axe and bring it into the snake’s skull.
The serpent bucked and hissed, but Tama was stuck and so was his axe. Blood slipped from its wound and with it, so did its vitality, until eventually it stopped fighting at all and it fell to the ground dead, Tama still in its jaws.
Scrap ran to his friend’s side. The Boarling greeted him with a cough that added more blood to his already-stained tusks. Scrap curled his fingers around the snake’s jaws and tried to pry them apart, but even after death they were too strong. But he didn’t stop. Not with Tama, the strongest man he had ever known, staring up at him as weakly as he was. The only thing that stopped him was Tama’s hand on top of his own.
“It’s over,” whispered Tama. And Scrap could feel by the weakness in his hand that he was right.
Scrap let go of the snake and knelt over him and kept saying, “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve got your totem,” said Tama. “Now go make your family proud. I’ll tell them you said hello.” The Boarling closed his eyes.
“Tama?” said Scrap.
His friend’s hand fell away from his own.
For many minutes, Scrap just stared. Hathis groaned and yelped around him, but its denizens seemed far away. Threats made for another person. Another place. What could they do to him that was worse than the suffering he felt then?
And as he stared at Tama and watched his frozen face, and the blood still dripping from his mouth, he felt the useless piece of paper in his pocket.
He tore it free. He put his fingers to its edge and started to tear, but stopped.
Make your family proud, Tama had order him to do.
And in that instance, Scrap vowed that he would. With this piece of paper, he would make the greatest totems he had ever made. Ones that could mend flesh. Ones that could save lives. He would make his family proud, but not the one that watched him from the sky above. Not the one he thought he was always meant to please, rather the one that had followed him here. The one that had risked their own lives to save his. The one who had filled his loneliness time and time again. The one that Hathis had taken from him and he would never get back. The one he had sacrificed, like a fool.
He placed the drawing back in his pocket and stood. Before him Hathis rose like a new city welcoming a traveler down an unfortunate road.
And though he could still hear the creatures of the Flaw infecting its shadows, and the old stones still glared at him like menacing, dark eyes, he walked back into the city. Alone. Unafraid.
Things more terrible than the Flaw and it’s creations at his back.
THE END
Head to www.hallwaytoelsewhere.com to discover more stories by Jeffrey Hall.
13
Black Barge
A Black Powder Wars Short Story
J. P. Ashman
Earldom of Chapparro Minor, Kingdom of Altoln, Brisance
Summer – 492nd year of the Alliance
Back aching, Tips shovelled another load of coal into the furnace and the black barge glided along the canal. A scree slope dropped away to port, whilst the opposite happened to starboard. She straightened, shovel forgotten, and pressed fists into her lower back whilst eyeing the dense conifers above. It hadn’t rained yet, despite black clouds hiding the mountaintops throughout the afternoon. The scent of pine was strong on the damp air. Tips took a deep breath and rejoiced. Aunt Bitch aside, she was lucky to be on the barge. Lucky to be out of the mines where so many gnomes laboured. It didn’t matter that she’d been rushed aboard and knew not what her family hauled.
‘For ’morl’s sake, Tips, she won’t shovel coal into herself.’ Uncle Stalwart stood by the tiller, eyes on Tips rather than the subtle curve of the canal, which hugged the mountainside. A feat of engineering the canal may be, but there was little time to contemplate such things with Stalwart as skipper.
No reply needed. No apology. Just a bent back and a shifting shovel.
The black barge chugged on, Tips stoking her fires.
‘Morning, shit!’
Tips didn’t laugh, but her eyes creased and her cousin knew her well enough anyway. ‘Morning, butt-skuttler,’ Tips offered back.
Brinner frowned, his adolescent wisps of a beard comical in the morning sun. ‘What does that even mean?’ He clambered across the coal sacks and sat on the side of the barge, next to Tips, a broad smile across his pock-marked face.
Shrugging, Tips nabbed the flask off her younger cousin. ‘Small-beer?’
‘Well I ain’t for drinking rancid canal water, am I?’
She took a swing and sighed. ‘Beats the taste of your mother’s cooking.’
‘I heard that, you shit of a girl!’
Tips and Brinner grinned at one another. Aunt Loop stayed below deck.
The rain fell during the night, the sound of it pleasant on the canvas awning Tips slept beneath; oil lamps continued to light the deck in the morning shadow of the mountain, reaching out a ways, onto the ground of the mooring. She shuddered at that. At the shadows it caused and the black wall that was the treeline, but the rain soothed her whenever she heard it, felt its touch or watched it creep across a vale or hillside or mountaintop like a thinly drawn veil. The morning air felt and smelt damper than the day before and the morning rays lit the sky, but not the canal, on a west facing slope as it was.
‘We’ll be off soon,’ Brinner said.
Tips nodded. ‘And I’ll be shovelling coal whilst you play dice below deck.’
A nudge before a response. ‘I have chores too, crow-face.’
Smiling, Tips nodded. ‘I know.’ She changed subject quickly, opportunity for the taking as Stalwart left the barge and disappeared into the woods for a shit. He was regular, she gave the old gnome that. Leaning into Brinner, Tips whispered a question. Brinner thought on it a moment or two before whispering back.
‘I don’t know what we carry,’ he admitted. ‘They won’t tell me.’
Tips frowned. ‘That’s not normal,’ she said, catching her cousin’s eye. He shook his head and rolled his bottom lip, straggly strands pointing this way and that.
‘Who ordered the haul?’ she tried, remembering the rush before they left the mine’s tunnelled canal.
A shrug for her efforts. ‘Don’t know that either. All a bit mysterious, if you ask me.’
‘I am asking you, dick.’
Brinner smiled. ‘And I’m being truthful. I don’t know anything.’
An eagle’s call lifted both heads. They sat together and watched the golden raptor soaring above. Time froze. Questions fell away. What a sight it was. Never got old.
Nor had such a sight ever been shattered by such a shriek as the large bir
d folded in flight and fell from the sky.
‘What…’ Tips started, stomach lurching, before turning to the dawn-dark treeline, a cacophony erupting from where her uncle had entered. Out he came, hose round his ankles, braes held up by one hand. He waved like a crazy gnome. Waved for them to make ready with haste, Tips knew.
‘Crossbows!’ She shot the order at her cousin and to his credit, Brinner scrambled across sacks and covered cargo like a ferret. ‘Loop!’ Tips shouted, immediately after ordering Brinner to arms. ‘Loop!’
Aunt Loop popped up as Tips shovelled coal. Shovelled and stoked and cursed as Loop – needing no more than a panicked shout from her niece – climbed on deck and rushed to cast off.
The barge was shoved from the bank before Stalwart crossed the plank. He made it just in time to draw the plank in and turn back, watching with Tips and the rest of her family as a dozen hobyahs emerged from the forest’s shadows, the large goblinkin howling like rabid wolves.
No order was given. None was needed. The double twang-clunk of the barge’s windlass crossbows launched bolts across the meadow faster than Stalwart could turn and make for the tiller. But as the closest hobyah took both bolts, dropping flat, Stalwart moved, and moved fast considering his age.
Brinner worked at cranking and loading the mounted crossbows at the fore-end whilst his mother spanned a smaller crossbow she’d brought up from below. Both managed to aim and loose at the charging hobyahs before the barge finally got under way.
Paddle churning at full power, Stalwart’s vessel created a bow-wave as it steamed along, chimney belching and hobyahs howling. A crude arrow came in, thwacking into the hull, just above the waterline. Tips knew then, as would the others, that the hobyahs weren’t feral. An arrow meant one thing: goblins. And goblin’s guided their tall, brutish hobyah kin with a cunning the hobyahs wouldn’t normally possess.
‘Goblins!’ Brinner’s warning was needless, but accurate nonetheless, for there were far more goblins appearing from the trees than the dozen hobyahs.
‘Fucking bastard turd-mongers,’ Stalwart strung out. ‘They’re not meant to be here…’
Tips frowned at that, but watched the clearing they were leaving behind as three more bodkin-tipped bolts left the barge to fell one more hobyah and slow another.
The howling was horrific. It churned Tips’ gut and brought her heart up to her throat, causing her to swallow repeatedly before turning to stoke the fire. The eagle was taken by an arrow, she thought, of the magnificent bird, likely dying slowly on the scree below.
Another arrow sailed over, passing through Tips’ periphery as she forced herself to focus on stoking the engine. She knew the goblins and hobyahs could not follow. She knew they’d have to chase through dense pine on steep slopes whilst the barge ploughed through calm waters. And it was her surety of that fact that led her mind back to her uncle’s surprise at the attack, but apparent belief that their attackers should not be there; if he thought they shouldn’t be there… where did he think they would be? And how would he ever know where a goblin raiding party would be? He’s a fucking barge skipper, not an elf ranger! Tips shook her head at the thought.
The howls died away as the barge continued along the canal, but along with the commented relief of her family, Tips couldn’t help but notice the remaining worry on her aunt and uncle’s faces, especially when they stole an unguarded glance each other’s way.
The argument below deck that afternoon was fierce. Tips operated the tiller – a first – whilst Brinner tended the engine – a rarity.
‘Wish we could hear what they’re saying,’ Brinner said, breaths coming hard to the underworked youth. His mother moddy coddled him and, to Tips’ eternal confusion, his father allowed it.
‘Not sure I want to. Have enough of your mother’s jibes and your father’s growling and grunts as it is.’
Brinner made a grunt of his own, but not a patch on Stalwart’s. Tips knew it to be a laugh during the exertion of shovelling coal.
‘What’s in the cargo, puss-head?’
Leaning on the shovel, Brinner sighed. ‘I don’t know, Tips. I swear it. They let me into the outer-mines when it was loaded, so I witnessed nothing. Why you asking so much? A stoker doesn’t need to know what we haul. It’s for dad and mum to know.’ He shrugged and bent to the work again, cursing colourfully.
Because those goblins were after something, I’m sure of it, and your dad seemed sure of it too.
The wind picked up, cold, promising rain. The clouds were black once more, darkening the afternoon and the mountainside. A murder of crows took flight to the right and Tips shuddered, her eyes tracking the treeline along the bank of the canal. A lock was coming, she knew, and despite the distance they’d surely put between themselves and the bastard goblins, she didn’t relish the time consuming level-change to come.
‘I saw him, I tell you!’ Stalwart’s shout had been muffled, but audible. Loop’s angry shouting down of her husband, her berating him for his own loudness was heard more than the croaking of the crows overhead.
Tips frowned and looked to a shrugging Brinner, who got back to the shovelling he’d swiftly forgotten.
Seen who? And where, in the woods? This was getting worse. More than two score trips she’d made with her family, allowed by Stalwart as a favour to Tips’ late father, but none like this. None of them secretive and, grumpiness and rudeness aside, none of them tense or anger-filled. I need to know what we’re hauling, Tips decided, teeth grinding at the thought of the betrayal of trust and privacy. I just need to know.
Despite the desire to explore the cargo, Tips knew the lock would come first.
The lock… always the weakest point in any canal journey. We stop, disembark and wind bloody pulleys until the barge is at a level where it can continue. All whilst the blasted forest looms over us. And if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a series of locks after the first; the canal climbed the mountain, albeit gradually and over a stretch of miles.
Her heart thudded at the thought of the goblins and hobyahs, fresh in her mind’s eye, and ear.
‘The tiller’s mine again, lass.’ Stalwart stomped up to her, snatching control of the rudder before Tips could so much as step aside.
Cursing under her breath, not caring if her uncle heard it, she smiled at her cousin and took over from him, whilst he headed off to the mounted crossbows once more. He’d hung by them since the fight and hadn’t been told to do otherwise, until his parents began to row, that was.
It made Tips feel a little safer, at least, knowing what a crack shot her young cousin was. He practiced enough. Eighteen years, most spent on the canal, on the black barge herself, loosing bolts at whatever took his fancy to improve his aim. It annoyed her, most of the time, but not now. Not now.
Thinking of bolts striking hobyahs once more, Tips got to work, and dreaded the thought of the lock they neared.
Black and white wood, rushing water, sheets of rain to add to that sound and the rattling of crank-handles played on Tips’ nerves as the barge rose within the lock. Her back ached from shovelling coal and now from cranking the lock’s mechanisms, but on she went, looking over her shoulder at the hazy forest more than watching the black barge approaching desired level. A twinge in her neck followed another glance over her shoulder, but it meant little compared to what she saw standing in the rain-enhanced blur of trees.
‘Goblins!’ Brinner beat her to it, but she shouted the same a moment later, the words having already formed on her wet lips.
But we’re miles away from where we left them? Oh how she cranked, blinking water-filled lashes rather than wasting time wiping away with working hands.
Curses flowed from Stalwart as he did the same, looking at nought but his operation of the lock, despite the danger a human’s bowshot away.
Heart thumping and nausea threatening, Tips mirrored her uncle, her head turning painfully from
swiftly approaching goblins and hobyahs to the too-slow rise of the barge.
‘Fuck…’ she called, loud and prolonged. ‘Fucking rise!’ she pleaded, her breathing ragged.
‘Mum?’
Tips heard the panic in Brinner’s voice and she knew enough of her cousin’s favourite toys at the fore-end to remember that crossbow’s – any bow – don’t work well in rain, let alone the deluge assaulting the side of the mountain.
‘Weak shots are better than none, love,’ Loop shouted back, before loosing her own crossbow at the fast approaching shits that would rip them all to pieces.
Looking back again, shoulder, back and arm burning but hand cranking like never before, Tips cursed herself for her morbid fascination with her impending death. The bastards were three barge-lengths away. She wanted to run, across the lock to the other side of the canal, but she cranked on.
‘The gate, son!’ Stalwart roared.
Brinner forgot his crossbows without hesitation, lucky for them all, and leapt from the barge to the opposite side, ready to heave as the water depths finally met. Tips forgot the crank-handle and made for the barge as her uncle took his handle and ran to his lock gate. He heaved. Brinner heaved. Loop loosed a wet bolt and Tips could have shit as she remembered her crank-handle and turned back.
She’d never seen a hobyah so close before. In fact, the only other time she’d seen a live one had been that morning, chasing her uncle. This one, alas, was much closer. Much closer indeed.
She’d also never seen the details of a crossbow bolt, albeit weakened in its flight by rain slackened cords, punch into anything, let alone a hobyah’s grotesque face, at such close quarters.
Howl cut short, the pallid green face of the thing imploded and snapped back, to look at the forest from which it came as its knees overtook its feel to bring it, crumpled in a unusual humanoid-shape, to Tips’ feet.