by Logan Jacobs
At that moment we all heard human screaming and thundering hoofbeats from probably a hundred feet away. Then the screaming cut off abruptly. I assumed the customers of the saloon stared at each other, but I wasn’t looking in their direction.
“How much?” a voice asked, and I turned to see a middle-aged man wearing suspenders over his portly belly.
“How many, including Jimmy Gold Tooth?” I asked Phil.
“I-- I don’t know-- maybe six? Seven? Eight?” he guessed breathlessly.
“If you want a precise quote, then you need to provide precise specifications,” I said. “But let’s assume eight. I’ll charge you thirty gold pieces per head. That’s two hundred forty gold pieces. I’m no cheat. If it turns out there are fewer than eight attackers, I’ll refund you the difference.”
“Two hundred forty!” a man exclaimed furiously. “You must be mad.”
“We don’t even know you, how are we supposed to know if you--” someone began.
Then the saloon doors opened again, except this time instead of swinging, they got ripped off their hinges for effect. The new entrant strode in two steps and stood there as a giant, ominous silhouette blocking the way.
A huge sword extended conspicuously from his fist, and blood dropped from the blade and tapped on the wooden floor of the saloon like a lonely snare drum.
“Now everyone who wants to live, get up very slowly, form a line, and file out in an orderly fashion,” he rumbled. “My comrades will be waiting to relieve you of your valuables. If everyone cooperates, no one has to get hurt… Unless I don’t like the look of you. Or unless I take a particular liking to your looks.”
Everyone slowly stood up. A lot of people were raising their hands in the air. The intruder chuckled to himself, probably at what easy targets these people were.
Then, suddenly, the plump, ringleted matron who’d first solicited my help unclasped her three-strand pearl choker with a dangling ruby pendant, flung it across the room, and shrieked, “Here, take it!”
The expensive necklace clattered onto the bar in front of me.
Everyone in the room turned to stare, especially the big ruffian at the door who’d missed out on the whole previous conversation and didn’t have any context for her action.
That seemed to be the trigger for what happened next though. Maybe the matron had more influence in Highridge than I would have guessed. Or maybe the saloon customers just finally wised up to the fact that I was preferable to the alternative, once the alternative arrived in the flesh.
But whatever the reason, they crowded around me and started emptying their valuables onto the bar. Gold watches, entire wallets, more jewelry, even including wedding rings, and, of course, coin. Coin pelting me and Billy and Bob, coin spilling to the ground. More random odds and ends, too, like monocles and compasses and protractors and silk handkerchiefs. I guess whatever people had on their persons that they thought was worth something. I had no interest in most of it, but, as I surveyed the pile of treasure that had amassed on top of the bar in a matter of minutes while Dex gaped in red-faced speechlessness, one thing was evident. It totaled a hell of a lot more than two hundred forty gold pieces.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough, folks,” I said as I held my hands up for them to stop. “I’ll count out your change afterward.”
“What the devil is going on here?” demanded the big ruffian who had apparently been too bewildered by the people’s reaction to his threats to try to interfere. Well, that, and he probably also didn’t want to leave his post by the door, because it would be chaos if all the townspeople made a break for it into the street.
“Capitalism, you should try it sometime,” I replied as I walked up to him. The crowd shifted aside to let me through and everyone sort of retreated farther back into the saloon behind me and started putting tables and chairs between themselves and the two of us.
I watched him size me up and grunt with contempt as he determined that I, like virtually any other purely human man who didn’t have some kind of genetic abnormality, was smaller than him. He wasn’t a troll but he might very well have had some trollish blood in him, considering that he was practically seven feet tall and his facial features were rather primitive, to describe them kindly.
Just before I came within his reach I drew my sword from its sheath. He didn’t seem concerned by that, presumably for the same reason he wasn’t concerned by me, which was that his blade was substantially bigger than mine.
I’d never dueled a troll before, not even someone who was a significant enough fraction trollish for it to be obvious in their appearance, and part of me was tempted to try, just as a way of testing my strength and sharpening my skills. But that wouldn’t have been fair to the good townspeople cowering behind me, now that they had paid up for my services. Now, I had a duty to do my utmost to protect them from this gang of bandits. And that meant that I had to dispatch this first one as quickly as possible so that I could deal with the others before they got around to doing much more killing, raping, pillaging, and razing.
So, when he swung his sword at me, I didn’t raise mine to parry. Instead, I raised my free hand and pressed my palm against the tip of his blade. As soon as it made contact, the steel obeyed my will, and shrank backward as I shoved my hand forward so that it never more than nicked the skin of my palm. But the sword wasn’t just getting shorter, the whole thing was shrinking so that the proportions remained constant, and the hilt quickly became so small that it fell out of the startled part-troll bandit’s grasp and clattered to the floor.
He grabbed me by the throat with a snarl and lifted me bodily off the ground. I was not a small man by any means, but he made me look and feel like one. And from this position, dangling eye to eye with my enemy as I choked and gasped for air, my own sword was too long to fit between us and too heavy to move gracefully without the benefit of momentum, so I couldn’t have caused any more than superficial damage with it.
So I turned it into the size of a dagger and swiftly brought it up and plunged it into the side of the ruffian’s neck right below his jaw. A geyser of blood spurted out and soaked me. His face contorted in shock, and he dropped me. I fell next to his dropped sword, which by this time had returned to its usual proportions, and while still lying on my belly coughing and gagging through a bruised windpipe, I simply picked up his sword, held it in an upright position, and angled it so that when he collapsed a second after me, he impaled himself through the ribs with no further effort on my part. Meanwhile, my mini-sword that was sticking out of the side of his neck expanded back into a full-sized sword, which had the effect of tearing apart the sinews of his neck and practically severing his head from his shoulders altogether.
Then I staggered to my feet and pulled my sword free.
Behind me, the saloon erupted in cheers. I spared the saloon customers a glance over my shoulder and saw that a few-- not all of whom were even female-- had fainted. Others looked queasy, and a couple were actually doubled over retching. But the rest looked a hell of a lot more optimistic about the evening than they had a few minutes ago, and dare I say even a bit thrilled by the gory spectacle they had just witnessed.
I gave the room a cordial nod, and then I stepped over the massive corpse and out into the streets of Highridge to hunt down the rest of the bandit gang.
“Jimmy Gold Tooth!” I yelled. “All you other fuckers! Either you hightail it out of town right now or you come here and get what’s coming to you!”
An arrow twanged into the dust at my feet. From the angle, I judged that it had been shot from the roof of the inn next door, so I grabbed the arrow and threw myself against the wall of the saloon so that the building protected me from any other incoming missiles.
There wasn’t anyone else visible in the street nearby right now besides two people maybe twenty yards away, one of whom appeared to be dead or at least thoroughly immobilized and the other of whom was crouched over the first one howling in grief, and wearing petticoats, so I surmised that
neither one of them was one of Jimmy’s bandits.
The whole street was, however, illuminated by the blazing outlines of several buildings another two hundred yards farther down that were engulfed in flame, and there were panicked human shapes floundering around their perimeters, shadows against the terrible radiance.
Then a flash of nearby movement at the corner of the saloon caught my eye, and I enlarged the wooden, steel-tipped arrow into a lance just in time to skewer the bandit who leapt at me through the gut. He doubled over and went floppy like a marionette with cut strings as his sword fell out of his grasp. His face spasmed and he reached out toward me with his arms, I don’t know whether he was trying to strike at me or plead for my help, but I just made the six-foot-long arrow even longer to push him off to a safe distance, which had the additional effect of increasing its diameter and therefore the hole through his innards.
When you ran someone through with a sword, his outline didn’t change but when you ran someone through with the equivalent of a slender tree trunk, it made his sides bulge out. Dark blood dribbled from his nose, mouth, and ears and he slumped over dead. I dropped the lance which immediately started the process of shrinking back down to an arrow.
Then I ran around the side of the building that my assailant had come from, opposite the inn. There weren’t any other bandits in sight. I knew there was at least one archer on the roof of the inn though that had so kindly provided me with that arrow.
I crouched down and scrounged for some pebbles in the dirt. I filled my pockets up with about a dozen of them. Then I sheathed my sword, scaled the side of the saloon, and pulled myself up onto the roof.
Immediately I came into view of an archer across from me on the roof of the inn. He was aiming his bow downward still expecting me to be somewhere on the ground and waiting for me to make a break for it from the cover of the saloon, but as soon as I emerged onto the roof, he saw me and raised his bow. I threw myself flat on the shingles and an arrow whizzed over my head. As the archer strung another, I pulled out one of the pebbles from my pocket, turned it into a fist-sized rock, and hurled it at him. He rolled out of the way, and the rock bounced harmlessly along the shingles of the inn’s roof and got smaller as it went, but that prevented him from getting his shot off and gave me time to throw another rock. He ducked, and it struck him in the shoulder instead of the head.
But I was already up and running as he aimed his bow again, and I swerved to the side as he shot, which almost caused me to slip and fall off the roof, but I didn’t get hit by the arrow, and I managed to recover my footing. Then as I ran straight to the edge of the saloon roof, I leapt across the five foot gap between the two roofs and landed on the inn roof practically on top of the archer.
I grabbed onto his bow and wrestled it away from him as he yelled in a panic, “No!” Then I straddled his hips, grabbed him by the throat to hold him in place, and turned one of my pebbles into a rock conveniently sized for bashing his face into a pulp, which was exactly what I proceeded to do.
When the task of liquefying the archer’s brains was complete, I looked up to see two rough looking sons of bitches standing in front of the inn staring up at me sullenly. One of them had a sword in hand and the other had an axe. I turned my head the other way and saw that there were two more unfriendly looking fellows standing behind the inn, also staring up at me. Both of them had swords. One of them met my eyes and grinned wide, and a golden tooth glinted in the moonlight.
“You’re in a bit of a pickle now, ain’t you, stranger,” Jimmy, the leader of the bandit gang, called up to me.
“Not really,” I replied. I picked up the bow, grabbed an arrow from the quarrel on the dead archer’s back, nocked it back, and aimed. Jimmy ran up to the wall of the inn to a position I couldn’t hit him from without moving myself, but his companion was slower, and my arrow plunged into his heart. He toppled over silently.
There were two arrows left in the quiver after that. I used one of them to bring down the first bandit to show his face above the edge of the roof as he climbed up after me. The other went wide of its mark. That left two bandits alive, including Jimmy.
I still couldn’t see where Jimmy was from my position on the roof, but the other bandit, the axe-wielding one that I could see, turned to flee.
“Oh no you don’t, I gave you that chance earlier, but it’s too late now!” I yelled as I climbed down from the roof and chased after him.
I drew my sword from its sheath as I ran.
I could hear the bandit’s panicked breathing, and he apparently could hear my pounding footsteps as I gained on him, because just before I caught up, he spun around and swung the axe wildly at me. I ducked under and sliced off his right hand at the wrist. The severed hand fell to the ground still clutching the axe. Its owner stared in horror at the sight of the useless spouting stump left where it had been and let out a sound that was more like a whimper than a scream. Then his eyes darted to my face and before he could do anything annoying like beg me for his life or try to run away again, I ran him cleanly through the heart and gave my sword a twist for good measure.
He dropped soundlessly. I braced my foot against his torso and yanked my sword free of his flesh.
Then I heard footsteps and turned to see gold-toothed Jimmy running up behind me, sword raised.
I parried his first blow with my sword. Then the second time I reached out with my hand to grab his sword and shrink it. I slashed my palm in the process because of the particular angle at which I made contact, even though the steel did immediately start receding from my touch. Jimmy, however, was a little cleverer than that first trollish oaf had been, and instead of dropping his shrinking sword, he yanked it away from me and tightened his grasp on the now smaller hilt. The sword started growing back, but for a few seconds, he was armed with only the approximate equivalent of a dagger, whereas I still had a full-sized sword, and that reach advantage enabled me to overcome his guard easily and bury it in his chest.
Then I sprang backward out of reach as Jimmy stumbled to his knees with my sword protruding from his chest. I calculated that he probably had about half a minute left to live and I didn’t want him to use those last few dying breaths avenging himself on me.
He swung at me halfheartedly with his sword, which by this time had regained its full dimensions, too late for its master. Then he sprawled on his back and stared up at the stars. I saw that glint of gold wink as his mouth moved. I wasn’t sure, but I think I heard a very hoarse word wheeze out of his throat.
“Why?”
“Because they paid me,” I said.
Jimmy gave a little sigh as if that answer didn’t satisfy him, even though as someone whose chief occupation for years had been banditry, I hardly thought he had a right to judge, and then he went completely still.
The night was silent for a moment, except for the faint distressed voices of the crowd by the burning buildings. It was just me and Jimmy, and the loudest sound was my heartbeat in my ears, and the strongest sensation was my pulse pounding in my veins. I took a generous inhale of cool night air and blew out a satisfying exhale.
Then, a crowd of townsfolk exploded out of the saloon and surrounded me. Some of them whooped triumphantly as if they were the ones who had just dispatched Jimmy Gold Tooth’s gang of bandits, others wept happy tears of relief, others chattered amongst themselves or just stared at me silently.
“That was seven,” I announced. They got quieter. “So you only owe me two hundred ten gold pieces. There was enough coin on the bar to cover that. I just want coin, I don’t want your jewelry and other trinkets, so you can take all that back. A few of you go back in there right now and count it out for me. The rest of you, don’t you think you’d better run over there and help your neighbors try to put out those fires?”
Most of the crowd scattered, in accordance with my instructions, or just to go back to their homes where they felt safe, but one young woman stayed behind.
It was getting dark out by that hour, bu
t not so dark that I couldn’t tell she was a ravishing beauty. Ivory skin, sharp cheekbones and a sort of stubborn-looking firm chin, wide gray eyes under gracefully arched brows, the whole face framed by a mass of auburn curls that were artfully arranged in a chignon. Her figure was slender and her posture regal inside the corseted pale blue gown that her bust threatened to spill over the top of.
This was another perk of my sellsword profession. The local beauties always wanted to ride my cock after I had saved their town.
I was happy to oblige them.
“Can I help you, Miss?” I asked as she stared at me expectantly with the faintest of smiles curving her lips.
“Yes,” she replied. “Halston Hale, I have a job for you.”
Chapter 2
“What kind of job?” I asked.
“Something well suited to the capabilities that you demonstrated just now,” she replied, as she gestured airily with her white gloved hand at the raggedy corpses of Gold Tooth Jimmy’s gang. “I am not from Highridge, you know. I have traveled here from the town of Richcreek to seek someone who could defeat the gang of bandits that have been raiding Richcreek every single month for the past half a year. It seems our paths were destined to cross, Sir Hale.”
“I think you know I’m not a knight, Miss… ?” I inquired.
“Lucinda Fairfax,” she replied as she extended her hand to me, with the fingers trailing limply as if she expected me to bend and kiss it.
“Pleasure.” I took her hand and shook it firmly.
Her eyes widened slightly with surprise but then she squeezed back. “Well, you may not be a knight officially, but you proved tonight that you are certainly a hero. By saving all those people.”
“I didn’t do it for heroic reasons,” I said impatiently. “If you were in the saloon, then surely you didn’t fail to notice that heap of wealth on the bar inside?” It had been dim and crowded in the saloon, and my attention had been focused elsewhere, not on seeking out prospective bedmates, so I guess I simply hadn’t noticed Lucinda’s presence. If she’d actually come under my gaze, I certainly would have remembered a girl who looked like that.