The Amoral Hero

by Logan Jacobs

  “Who are those men with Kennedy?” I asked the twins.

  “I don’t know,” Janina answered. “I don’t really know anything about him.”

  “Except that he was willing to pay two hundred gold coins to marry you, you mean?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, with that and the fact that he competed in the poker tournament, he must have money,” I remarked.

  “I suppose so,” Janina said.

  “But those men aren’t dressed like servants in uniform, they’re dressed more like a gang,” I said.

  “Yes, I suppose he might have made his money in an illicit way,” Janina replied.

  “If you ever really consider marrying someone who’s mysteriously wealthy, maybe you should ask a few questions about that first,” I suggested with amusement.

  “I don’t really care about a person’s past,” she responded. “I only care about who they are today and who they’ll be tomorrow.”

  “You can say that,” I said, “but how are you supposed to predict who someone will be tomorrow, without knowing what kind of person they’ve been so far? Are you going to take their word alone for it? Does that seem like a clever idea to you?”

  Janina didn’t have to answer that, because we all heard raised voices outside then, and fell silent in order to listen better.

  “You’ll be the first wave-- ” Sheriff Cavendish was saying.

  “Fuck you, we’ll be the first wave!” Kennedy seethed. “You’re officers of the law, ain’t you? Don’t those shiny stars of yours mean a damn thing? Supposed to stand for your commitment to upholding the law, aren’t they? You’re all supposed to be a bunch of damn heroes putting your lives on the line to protect the rest of us from the wickedness of man.”

  “That was the deal,” Sheriff Cavendish snarled through gritted teeth. “You get your pardons, but only for helping us apprehend these people.”

  “Helping you,” Kennedy repeated. “Not doing the damn job for you.”

  “What does ‘apprehend’ mean?” one of his red-kerchiefed followers inquired innocently.

  “Killing,” Kennedy said. “We kill the bitch, we kill her sister, we kill the guy who’s helping them.”

  “That isn’t what ‘apprehend’ means,” Sheriff Cavendish said irritably.

  “Do you have an objection?” Kennedy demanded of him.

  “No, no, not at all, dead or alive will suffice… but, that simply isn’t the definition of the word,” Sheriff Cavendish insisted.

  “Well, that’s our definition,” Kennedy replied sharply.

  “You can’t just decide on your own definition-- ” the Sheriff sighed.

  “He wasn’t like this at all when he was courting me,” Janina whispered in horror.

  “Willfully misusing words like that, you mean?” I asked. “You’re right, it’s quite shocking.”

  “Who is the guy, anyway?” one of the sheriff’s deputies asked as he glanced up at the window. “A lover to one of the girls?”

  A lover to both of them, I thought, but decided not to correct the misconception aloud.

  “Heard he’s their cousin,” one of Kennedy’s men replied. “That’s what someone in town said.”

  “He’s a nobody,” Sheriff Cavendish stated impatiently. “Just one man, and no one even knows his name.”

  Lots of people know my name, I thought, just because you don’t doesn’t mean otherwise.

  “But… he killed two of your guys, didn’t he?” one of the Red Kerchiefs asked.

  “Two officers of the law lost their lives during an engagement with this individual,” the sheriff admitted stiffly.

  “And then the rest of y’all turned tail and fled?” another Red Kerchief asked.

  “Yes,” the twins chorused quietly beside me. Sheriff Cavendish disregarded the question, but he stood with his hands on his hips facing the questioner in such a way that I suspected he must be glaring at him.

  “It’s just one man, and two women,” the sheriff snapped. “You go in and take them out. We’ll reinforce you. And then you get pardoned. That was the deal.”

  “You asked us to reinforce you,” Kennedy argued.

  “This man is a menace to society,” Sheriff Cavendish said. “If you want to redeem yourselves for your own crimes against society-- ”

  “I don’t care about the man,” Kennedy snapped. “I just want Janina Elliott dead. If I can’t have her, no one can.”

  “Well, you can’t have any woman if we arrest you and try you for your crimes!” the sheriff retorted.

  He backed up a few steps and seemed to realize his mistake as the Red Kerchiefs’ hands all sprang to their sword hilts.

  “I didn’t mean that that was our intention,” he said. “As long as you uphold your part of the deal, you will be free men, at liberty to pursue whatever women you choose.”

  “Look here, do you fear this one, nameless man?” Kennedy asked slyly. “Are all you shiny-starred bastards pissing your pants at the thought of busting into that cave there?”

  “That is not the problem,” Sheriff Cavendish answered coldly.

  “Oho?” Kennedy replied. “What, exactly, seems to be the problem then, Sheriff?”

  “The problem is that my men and I are not expendable lowlifes,” the sheriff answered. “We are valuable, contributing members of society. Unlike you and your ruffians.”

  “If you want to talk about that, we can talk about that,” one of Kennedy’s Red Kerchiefs, the largest of the lot, came up to stand beside his crisply blue-suited, black-hatted boss. “Where were y’all when my cousin’s wife got murdered on your watch? Right in the middle of town?”

  “I don’t know who your cousin’s wife is, and I don’t know what this personal tragedy has to do with the present situation in the least,” the sheriff sputtered.

  “Annabelle Locksley,” the man responded immediately. “That’s her name. Annabelle Locksley. And you let her die. You let her get murdered. You never even caught the man. That ugly son of a bitch, Zabala. Everyone within a hundred miles of Sunderly has heard of him, but you never nabbed him, did you?”

  “Think he’ll switch sides if I tell him I got Zabala?” I muttered to the twins.

  “No, he won’t believe you,” Katrina said.

  “Look here, you’re being completely unreasonable!” Sheriff Cavendish declared. “It doesn’t matter how hard-working a man is, or how ready with a sword. It isn’t possible for mortals to be in every place at once. To predict a crime before it happens. To chase down every piece of scum that ever wanders through town and rides off into the horizon by sunrise. Do you think our job is easy?”

  “I don’t give a damn if it’s easy or not, you’re the idiots who chose it!” Kennedy yelled. “The idiots who think a bit of shine on your chest gives you the right to lock up whoever you want, to hang whoever you want. You’re murderers too. You kill people’s fathers, their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters. The only difference between you and lawless killers is that you’re so damn self-righteous about it! You get your hands bloody and think you’re doing God’s own work!”

  “We are carrying out the will of, and ensuring the safety of the citizens who duly elected us,” one of the deputies said angrily. “It’s not murdering to kill a murderer! It’s the only way to protect the innocent.”

  “Yeah?” one of the Red Kerchiefs snorted. “And who are you protecting right now, miles away from town, while there isn’t a single lawman left in Sunderly?”

  “Of all the damn fool things to say!” one of the lawmen scoffed. “You have the understanding of a child. Do you think that good order in Sunderly would last for long if criminals discovered that we never pursued them beyond the bounds of the town? If they took one step into the desert, we let them go, since we didn’t want to leave the populace unattended?”

  “What if they kill each other?” Janina asked hopefully.

  “Wouldn’t mind it,” I said.

  “Enough!” Sheriff
Cavendish shouted, as if he had heard us, although we were speaking far too quietly for that to be the case.

  As both the lawmen and Kennedy’s thugs converged on his tall white hat, the sheriff lowered his voice far enough so that I could no longer hear it from up in the cave which I am sure was his intention.

  Shouting and protests immediately arose from the surrounding crowd, and they dispersed a bit and gesticulated at each other. Again, hands darted toward sword hilts, but no steel was actually drawn.

  “Come speak with me, you and I,” Kennedy demanded of the sheriff as he jabbed his finger at him.

  I could see the sheriff hesitate. He glanced around at his men. But then he realized that the entire party was watching him, and that he had no choice but to accept the one-on-one conference, without losing face.

  The two leaders went off a little ways. They were still within sight, but they walked off just far enough that not only could the twins and I not hear their conversation, their respective followers couldn’t hear it either.

  Both contingents of men that they left behind looked uneasy in their absence. They stopped arguing and sat down a little ways apart, by their separate campfires. Some of them started smoking pipes.

  After probably twenty minutes, Sheriff Cavendish and Kennedy Cox finally returned to the group. They conferred, quietly, with their men at their own campfires. This time, there was no outbreak of shouting. It was clear that a decision had been reached.

  I didn’t think we would find out what it was that night, because they really did seem to intend to wait until morning light to launch their attack. But, for a second night in a row, I would have to stay awake and keep watch, just in case. Given that that was the case, I went down to the lower cave right below the ones where I had left the twins, and gave Theo water and brushed his coat. Then I took half a dozen vials of potencium, put them in my pocket, and climbed back up to rejoin the twins.

  I handed a couple of vials to each of them and drained the first of my two vials.

  “Thank you,” they chorused, with widened eyes. Potencium was expensive, worth as much as if I had just handed them jeweled necklaces.

  “You may as well get some sleep,” I told them. “I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

  “I don’t think I could fall asleep,” Katrina said. Janina murmured her agreement with her sister.

  I just savored the lingering taste of potencium on my teeth and tongue and made no response. Within a few minutes, they had curled up together and their eyes drifted closed as their lips parted slightly.

  I stayed at their side. Once the attack started, I planned to go down to the lower chamber, since the sealed doors would probably get assaulted first, and I wanted to be there to greet the intruders. But for now, it made more sense for me to stay by the window, so that I could keep an eye on our besiegers and be aware of it as soon as they made their move.

  It was easier said than done. The hours crept by. I watched the twins toss and turn in their sleep. I stuck my head downstairs to check on the horses, who were half asleep, and quite content with the coziness of their new quarters, all of them except Theo entirely oblivious to the threat outside. I stared at the stars, which started to blur as my eyes glazed over with exhaustion, until I blinked them back into focus. I didn’t know how long it had been since the sun set. Maybe only an hour. Maybe I was the victim of a curse that had condemned me to an endless night, and I was now on the hundredth year of my lonely watch.

  By the end of the night, I would have been willing to trade a hundred gold coins for an hour’s sleep. But then just when I thought it never would, the desert sun finally started to peek over the flat, sweeping horizon in all its fiery glory. And the lawmen and the outlaws, most of whom had been dozing by their fires while a few took it in turn to keep watch, started to shake each other awake.

  Sheriff Cavendish got up and jammed his tall white hat on. Kennedy Cox clapped on his black gambler hat, and I’m pretty sure I saw him smooth his mustache out with his fingers.

  Then, four deputies walked up to the front entrance of the lower cave.

  I shook the twins awake.

  “Don’t panic, but it’s starting,” I said. Then as they blinked at me, before they could fully process my words, I scrambled down the latter into the lower chamber. I drew my sword and stood behind the door.

  “Go on, Donny,” I heard a voice say from behind the wall of boulders between me and my enemies.

  Then one of the smaller rocks, which was about the size of a melon, started glowing like a hot coal. Before my eyes, it turned an incandescent orange red, one of the most beautiful colors I had ever seen.

  Then it started to vibrate as if there were an earthquake, despite the fact that none of the other rocks were moving, and shattered into a hundred fragments.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Well. That was an impressive magical power, especially if it applied to all objects, not just rocks.

  Especially if it applied to humans and other living creatures, unlike my power.

  Thankfully, they didn’t immediately start shooting arrows through the hole that opened up, since they might easily have hit the horses if they had. I suppose because they didn’t want to waste arrows by shooting at targets they couldn’t see. I, for my part, stayed to the side out of view of the hole and waited.

  “Do another one, Donny,” someone shouted.

  I wondered how taxing this power of his was. Making objects explode would have cost most sorcerers a lot of energy, and wasn’t the sort of thing that could be repeated indefinitely, but that wasn’t necessarily the case when it came to natural born powers. We natural magic users couldn’t accomplish a fraction of the feats that a skilled sorcerer could, but oftentimes what we could do, we could do better than even the greatest of sorcerers.

  Either way, Donny raised no audible objections to “doing another one.” Soon enough, another boulder started to glow cherry red until it became blinding to look at. This one was larger than the last. If it exploded, the other rocks on top of it would fall, too. It vibrated for longer than the first rock had, for so long that I thought maybe Donny’s power wasn’t strong enough to destroy it.

  Then, I threw my arm up just in time to shield my face as the boulder exploded into smithereens just like the first. The flying shards were, at least, of the right size not to cause any worse damage than cuts and bruises. If larger chunks had flown at that speed, they would have broken the bones of anyone standing nearby. If smaller chunks had flown any faster, they might have been able to penetrate flesh, tear through organs, and cause people to bleed to death from the inside out.

  When the rubble hit the ground, I found myself facing a somewhat dazed looking sheriff’s deputy. He gripped a sword in his right hand, but his left hand was still outstretched, his palm pressed against empty air where the boulder had been a second earlier.

  Before Donny had time to react, I drove my sword through his heart.

  He gurgled blood, and his eyes opened with surprise as I planted my foot on his chest and kicked off to dislodge my sword from his ribs. Then, the surrounding lawmen screamed as one and charged me.

  The barrier that I had created out of boulders was open now, since the recently deceased Donny had destroyed half of it, but there was still a smaller boulder in the way about waist high that you had to squeeze past or vault over in order to enter the cave. That meant that only two could enter at once.

  I clashed swords with the first lawman to get through. As we exchanged blows, the second deputy climbed over the boulder and attempted to rush past me. I didn’t want him to reach the twins upstairs, so I forced my opponent’s sword back with my own in order to buy myself just enough space to step sideways and then stuck out my foot just in time.

  The second lawman tripped over my foot and fell face down on the floor. His resulting scream made me suspect that he had smashed his face into a pile of the rubble that was now strewn across it.

  I slid my sword free of my opponent’s wh
ile ducking low to allow his sword to complete its natural downward arc without striking me. Then I ran to the left with a brief pause to stab his fellow deputy through the back of the neck before turning back to face him again, over the fresh corpse.

  He let out a roar and charged me. I swung my sword, and he parried it. But then I stepped back just the right amount so that, if he wanted to press his attack effectively, he would have to step directly on top of the corpse of his friend. It would have been the intelligent thing to do. I don’t doubt that it’s what his dead friend would have wanted. But it’s not what he did.

  Instead he took an exaggerated step forward so that he could plant his foot on the ground, on the other side of his friend’s body. That way he avoided disturbing the corpse. But it caused him to throw his balance off slightly and lurch forward farther than he intended and thereby impale himself on the end of my sword as I extended it to twice its length for that purpose. I stepped forward to meet him and slide my sword in all the way to the hilt. He collapsed, and I tore my sword free with a spray of blood.

  That was three deputies down so far. Three more survived, including Cavendish.

  The one remaining man on the other side of the door backed up slightly, his face filled with fear from having witnessed the fates of his three comrades, as Sheriff Cavendish started shouting instructions.

  “Get them!” he yelled. He wasn’t addressing the one surviving lawman near the door, or the one that he had retained by his side. He was facing Kennedy and his gang and wildly beckoning them with his arm toward my cave door.

  “Gentlemen first, Sheriff,” Kennedy drawled with amusement as he folded his arms across his chest. “We second-class citizens know our place. We’ll follow after you.”

  His Red Kerchiefs hung back behind him, their posture lazy and unconcerned. They were too far away for me to see their faces, but I imagined that they probably wore smirks.

  The two surviving deputies looked desperately back and forth between the unhelpful outlaws, to Sheriff Cavendish, to the cave opening where I awaited them over the bleeding corpses of half their unit.