by Sean Heslin
“Grandpa Gregor?” questioned Rancha.
“Yamsuel?” wondered Yrinmet.
“Governor Morrick?” considered Pib.
“Ten Stands?” requested Terand.
They all blinked for a moment, then the spell was broken as Yrinmet grudgingly handed over the money.
“Now what?” said Pib.
Rancha sighed. “I guess you lot had better get to the lodgings or whatever it is they've found.”
“What you gonna be doing?” said Terand.
“I think I'll become a hellbat or something, and look round town during the night, see if I can't find some clue as to what the pants we are doing here other than to find a crummy ancient statue. Book me in too though, so I can have breakfast.”
“Fair enough,” said Perci. “See you in the morning”.
The crew promptly disappeared in search of cool shadows and wholesome food leaving Rancha stood on his own in the square, looking, for lack of better description, like a right fool.
Chapter 26
“There's ways of doing things in this world that would make your eyes pop. Popping other peoples, for example.”
- 'Shifty' McGrendal, patiently explaining to his 'guest' the error of his ways, 734 C.M.
The ruler of Fear had a name for those who cared to use it. It was Eric the Merciful, so called because despite being a prime anti-hero, as he called himself, or as most people would call him, 'a bad guy', it was reputed by those speaking in hushed tones in shadowy public houses that whomsoever decided to leave Eric's Legion/Army/Battalion/Horde of Darkness/Evil/Death/Despair could do so quite easily with nothing but personal fulsome thanks for their contribution, full up to date back-pay plus bonuses, and a promise of a restored position if the soldier/minion/underling decided to rejoin the ranks. There was no slaughter for betrayal, or any of the nonsense that lesser overlords would indulge in. The minions would be left alone to continue their lives in whatever fashion they wished with no bitter recriminations or petty revenge whatsoever.
Nobody ever wanted to leave. Ever.
Today, Eric was having a bit of break to mull the events from the last couple of days over and indeed most of his lifestyle choices so far. He was deep in his thirties, plain-looking, medium height with a tendency to slouch. He was relatively pleased with the amount of hair he had. He was in possession of all his teeth. He ate enough. He smiled at everyone.
He was desperately unhappy.
In most other circumstances, Eric would have probably walked through life with no more than the usual amount of hassle and bother, become employed with some nondescript job enjoying a title like 'data processor' or 'filing consultant' or even the perennial 'stock distributor'. He would have quietly grown up, married some young lady he met at his regular evening classes in an unspecified foreign language, had two and a bit children, possibly a hairy loveable pet on the side, and would have bought a house which he would spend the latter half of his life decorating and shelving. He would die quietly in the calm knowledge that he had achieved his few simple aims in life, being friends with almost everyone he had known and leaving behind him a legacy of well-provided for offspring to continue his line.
However.
Upon reaching the age of nine, his doting mother and father who happened to be baron and baroness of someplace or other, were determined that they should have a child who would do something great with his life, something huge and meaningful. They somehow reached the conclusion they would have the child cursed. They recruited a travelling warlockish type who had fallen on hard times to do the deed. The curse was set up so to make people Fear Eric's presence forevermore or until the contract with the warlock ran out, and there was a lot of doubt which would last longer.
This sort of thing had a terrible effect on a growing lad.
Being an experienced adult now, he could see all the whys and wherefore behind the decision and so his subsequent upbringing, and had invested a lot of time and money to find the doer-of-deeds in question, to have the curse removed and the doer extinguished. He had managed to extract a photo-fit image from the confessions of his parents, an amalgamation of features which they assured him were a good likeness of the maker of curses. No name though, because why would rich people bother to remember names? Eric made a point on keeping a track on all the major players in the world, in the hopes of running across the right one, but there was a lot of world to cover, hence the arc of his existence.
No amount of therapy in the world could fix his daily anguish. Simply, everyone was afraid to stay around him for more than a few minutes at a time.
By age eighteen he had received a well-rounded education, topped mostly by battle tactics, etiquette, leadership degrees and the surprisingly ever-useful needlecraft. He was not in the slightest bit meek and the constant weapons training gave him a body that ensured his pick of the wenches (not that any of them could or would willingly go near him). He didn’t have much interest in conquering and legend-making as intended by his doting parents, but then who does what their parents want at that age?
By age twenty-one he had capitulated to the demands of his elders, seeing the use of power and owned three castles, a fairly large bit of countryside and a standing army of approximately fifty-six thousand people of various races and species. It had not made him happy.
By age twenty-five he was the undisputed, if slightly unwilling, ruler of nine countries (admittedly the smallest ones he could find within a set radius). His army had increased to a veritable earthquake of two-hundred and eighty thousand strong of which a fair proportion were seven-foot stregs, gargoyles and other fearsome beasties from the meaner side of unnatural evolution.
By age twenty-six, a group of unlikely heroes and an enormous devastating wave of refined blahblahblah caused by overloaded dark MacGuffin had reduced his empire to a measly nine thousand men and only two countries. The fact that he was far too nice to fuss about with confiscating a certain enchanted ring when he had managed to capture the heroes for a brief period barely factored into it. A learning experience indeed.
By twenty-seven he usually had any aspiring heroes immediately put to death after a brief interview to find out what they were intending to do in his realm, how many more of them were skulking about, if they knew the sorceror he was looking for, and where the hell had they hidden the artefact intended to destroy him on that occasion so no other buggers could get their hands on it. He had done rather well with this tactic and increased his army to a respectable eleven hundred thousand which was enough to conquer one country at a time at a leisurely pace. He was even sensible enough to train them to shoot straight, call for backup when threatened, and rush en-masse at the apparently stricken hero instead of one man at a time, as was vogue.
At twenty-eight he was struggling a little due to an early mid-life crisis. Funding for his army was slowly trickling away, due to the irksome fact that most of the resources from the local lands were being tainted by leftover evil energy from the explosion two years ago and so all the natural splendours becoming practically unusable. This was doubly a shame because he had originally picked his main base to be artistically set in a sliver of countryside that was the absolute epitome of beauty and peace, with rolling fields and frolicking mooins, but now it had become a storm-ridden, desolate, lava rivered wasteland, like a proper home of terror should be. He was rather pissed off about this.
On his twenty-ninth birthday he decided enough was enough, he would conquer the world in one fell swoop and so would have his pick of surroundings every time a home went bad and needed time to recuperate. The overarching aim was that if he could not have the company of others, he would at least have nice things to look at.
His current scheme had been triggered by the discovery of an old newspaper article. It was concerned with a long-forgotten General of Doom, or whatever crappy title he had given to himself, and how he very nearly managed to take over the world by the collection of certain artefacts and the amassing of his army in a certain plac
e. Usual humdrum stuff, however, Eric had been intrigued and had sent out his agents to find out more specific details, like what the stratagem actually was and more precisely, why it had failed. He discovered that the plan the General had used was amazingly simple - The simultaneous taking over of every seat of power in the world, everywhere, before any of them could contact any of the others and raise the alarm. A relatively bloodless coup on a worldwide scale with his army emplaced exactly where it needed to be.
As far as Eric could tell, the General had very nearly managed to pull it off, except the pillock did not have a big enough army to finish the job, so his attempts were very quickly quashed by all the world's other armies at once. His name was ancient history, but Eric could easily succeed where the mostly forgotten leader had failed.
Eric had ownership of quite a big army at this point and then spent the next couple of years increasing it to an absolutely bloody enormous army; An army that did not need feeding, or shelter, or pleasant fields to frolic in. He had researched a spell to summon back the souls of all his former warriors into their reanimated and thoroughly de-rotted corpses using nothing but a modern wooden sculpture and a small hedgepig. He had tried reanimation on the decomposed versions of the corpses but they had kept falling apart and most had not moved at all, due to lack of central nervous systems. He often tutted at this gross error that many ancient sorcerors of days gone had fallen prey to. They had no idea how to apply basic biology and physics to their mighty works and just tended to rely on sheer power to get the job done. No wonder the so-called baddies were always so easily defeated!
Now, near the culmination of all his planning, Eric wondered if he was really such a bad guy? Sure, he had several of the necessary attributes, but he did not feel like he was that bad. To a certain extent, this was true; he did not have a malevolent nature, he was usually kind to animals (apart from the mass hedgepig slaughter), he occasionally donated to charity and had formed a few self-help groups in his spare time. If it wasn’t for the Fear curse he was stuck with and the ambition to find the perfect home without paying for it, he could have been a minor hero, or a respected leader of men. He could not decide if that was a worthwhile ambition or not. He had tried and tried and tried to get the curse removed, but without the original caster, wherever the hell he was, there was nothing to be done. So, for the sake of a happy life, he would continue, he would see through what he and his parents had started.
It was either that or spend the rest of his days dribbling in a corner.
Chapter 27
“Abusing the gift of song is a given. Doing it well is the trick.”
- Shoni the Bard 312 C.M.
In a delicate forest far away from anywhere of importance, night-time has fallen. The place is filled with the quiet sounds of the night creatures going about their business, and the gentle rustling of the trees in the slight breeze. Here, in a grove of sweet-scented trees, through the darkly contrasted trunks, a warm orange flickering can be seen. Drawing closer, one would see the glow resolving itself into a cosy campfire set in the center of an animal clearing. Two silhouettes of hunched figures are there. One of them starts to hum a mournful tune. The power of the hum is amazing. It vibrates and has bass where it should not. The forest quietens even more and eyes pop up at the edges of the clearing, entranced by the lonely music.
The beat picks up a little, filling any who would hear it with a longing for home and the comfort of family. The animals gather in number at the outskirts, their usual single-minded purposes temporarily forgotten as the haunting rhythm washes over them.
A tutting noise arises from the second figure, and a new, faster tune emits from it, counterpointing the first's lonely music and dragging it into a more lively song. Heads start bobbing around them as the upbeat, foot-tapping tune gives them vim and zest that daily life does not possess.
A passing poacher who had crept close upon noticing the light cannot help himself but to stand up and dance an impromptu jig, his pack bouncing as he discovers footwork in himself the finest dancers would become jealous of. A few of the more agile animals rear on their hind legs and start barn dancing, front paws waving about like maniacs. Night birds swoop overhead for the sheer joy of being alive and with the spirit of good fun. The trees wave in time, the rodents squeak the backing, the badgkin jump for joy…and then it stops.
The dancers shake themselves and almost immediately return to business; the birds of prey dive on the mice, the badgkin nip the poacher, and the first voice wonders where the marshmallows have gone.
Chapter 28
“Worship me and no other and I shall give you a toffee.”
- The God, Hobol the Swift, taking the piss out of a lowly mortal farmer, 11 C.M.
Perci awoke to further snoring from the obviously far too comfortable Terand, who had a bed by the far window. Having run out of shoes and things to throw at him, he grunted, and after squirming for a while gave up and wondered what time it was.
He would have shaken Terand, but the last time he tried, around threeish in the morning, the drangl's hand had moved faster than the eye could follow and a knife had narrowly missed slicing Perci's throat, all the while the bounty hunter had continued to snore happily.
He espied a clockwork alarm on the dresser that professed it was nearly seven in the morning. Perci groaned, he never got up till the afternoon if he could help it. He didn’t think he had ever seen this side of ten o'clock this often in years.
He sat back down on his bed and rubbed his forehead with a sweaty hand in some despair. He did not particularly want to wake the others up, showing some common sense for a change as he guessed they would not be too grateful either. They never mentioned sarcastic companions when they talked about epic quests. Or all staying together in one small room, in a bed and breakfast. It was supposed to be all about nobility and tents on the prairie and well, action and proper adventure.
He lay back down and stared at the ceiling. It was a nice chunky patterned tile one, the sort that gives children nightmares when they start seeing faces in it when the lights went out. Perci squinted at it until he thought he saw a picture of his home castle, which had the effect of homesickness. He made a face and turned on his side. Terand had stopped snoring briefly, so Perci started to drift off again when…
“BANGBANGrattletaptaprattleBANG!!”
The window had started to shake in its frame from the walloping it was receiving. Yrinmet, who had gone to sleep on the ceiling because of the lack of floor space, stirred, yawned and twitched the curtain aside. He pulled up the sliding window with a grunt of effort. From his upside-down vantage point, he was treated to a view of the top of a particularly ugly monster with wings, that gratefully hopped through and shook itself to restore some circulation to cold extremities.
“Morning all,” the thing croaked cheerfully.
Perci sat bolt upright, bearing a look of horror and utter disgust. “What the hell is that?”
Yrinmet sighed and lay back down next to the light fitting so he could address Perci directly.
“That, is what is known as an Iruquo imp. Ugly little sods, but great night vision, stealthy flight and have the gift of speech. Most imps just gurgle a lot. Useful spies, employed a bunch of them myself.” He rolled over on his patch of painted stucco ceiling to the imp, who had hopped onto the towel rail. “A good choice Rancha.”
“Ta,” said Rancha in a squeaky voice. “I figured a bird or something would be a bit useless if I couldn’t talk to anyone.” He glanced around the room. “Where’s Pib?”
A drawer on the dresser opened by itself and a yellow hand waved out of it before flopping back down. Genteel snoring resumed within.
Terand flipped over on his patch of floor. “So, what news, ya ugly critter?”
“Bugger all really,” the miniature demon wheezed. “I’ve been flying around all night, looking through windows and chatting to the locals and scuttlebutt has it that a decade or so ago some historian took the last orchard tree an
d lugged it back to the spot in the desert that the first one was found.”
“How’d you find that out?” asked Perci.
“A very old woman used to have it in her back garden and the tractors did a certain amount of damage to her house when they removed it. Allegedly, that’s all she’s talked about for the last ten-ish years. Must be so much fun living around here.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Yrinmet.
Terand grunted, flipped over and soon started snoring again. Yrinmet did likewise on a more comfortable patch of ceiling. The imp that was Rancha yawned, scaring Perci with the imp-form's mismatched teeth, then hopped onto the window ledge and appeared to start meditating.
Pib was already well away in the arms of the sleep gods, so Perci was left all alone once more with his enforced insomnia and the usual feeling that he had absolutely no idea what was going on.
---
Two uneventful hours later, the alarm clock went off. Yrinmet stood up and stretched upwards to turn it off but was beaten to it by a lightning-fast yellow hand, emanating from within the dresser. Perci was a shapeless mass covered beneath a duvet and Terand did not make any indication he had heard anything. Rancha the imp stirred from his inner calm and glided to the street below. There were a couple of whoomps of air, audible through the window, followed by rapid footsteps on the staircase and a woman shrieking further down the corridor.
Seeming to sleepwalk, Pib flumped out of her drawer, picked up a bag and dropped it outside the door. A grateful hand picked it up and there was a brief flash of pink as someone moved very quickly into the shared bathroom at the end of the hall.
Gradually, the others began to stretch and yawn and look about vacantly. Terand swung his leg onto the floor and scrabbled about for his travelling shoe. Yrinmet walked down the wall and peered at his tongue in the dresser mirror. Pib returned to her drawer, still with eyes shut and commenced quietly snoring again. Perci did not appear to make any motion to move other than a further clenching of blanket.