by Logan Jacobs
Skam would act on that hate.
My heart began to pound within my chest at the realization that our whiskey business was only the tip of the iceberg.
Freedom.
The keys’ melodic voice suddenly whispered in my mind, but I had grown used to their sudden appearance. Except then I felt a pulsating sensation grow in my gut like a deep heartbeat, but it wasn’t mine.
Suddenly, an image flashed in my mind and caused me to turn away from the interview.
All I saw was my hands wrapped around an elf’s throat, and the elf’s pointed nose dripped with blue blood that slowly coated his lips. I could feel the cold and smooth skin of the elf under my fingers and the quick drum from his heart as I squeezed tighter. More importantly, for the first time, there was fear in the silver eyes of the elf as he struggled underneath my grip.
A human inflicting pain on an elf?
That felt good, even if it was all in my mind, it felt like I was actually there.
“Wade?” Dar’s voice pulled me from my imaginary elf murder.
“Huh?” I widened my eyes at my best friend and Marver, who looked at me like I was insane.
“Any more questions?” Dar asked and glanced at the offer sheet that Marver’s hand hovered over.
“Marver?” I asked.
“I like him,” the chef grunted, “at least enough to give him a chance.”
“Thank you, sirs,” Skam said as he bowed his head a bit. “I’ll work hard.”
“We think you’d be the perfect fit with us.” I walked around the counter, took the sheet from Marver, and placed it in front of Skam on the table.
“Thank you, thank you,” Skam said as he grabbed my hand and shook it like I’d just given him a pouch of gold. “When do I start?”
“Fill that out with your information and return it to Marver here.” I bent down and scribbled down the location just in case he forgot. “I’ll give you more details then.”
Skam was going to need a briefing on how our exchanges worked. Right now, though, I wasn’t sure if I was going to tell him all the details or not.
“Of course.” Skam smiled wide and sighed in relief as he took the offer sheet and walked to the door. “Thank you again. You won’t regret hiring me. I will work harder for you than I did lifting boulders for those fucking elves.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said and turned to Marver and a smiling Dar, and then my friend waved bye to Skam as he left.
“I wouldn’t have hired him, but I assume he’s our grunt?” Marver asked as he tapped a pencil on the table.
“Yes.” I slowly walked closer toward the chef, who saw the intensity in my eyes and squirmed in his seat. “As I said before, you’ll have to trust us, too.”
“Okay,” Marver said as he nervously fiddled with his notes. “You’re right.”
“Dar, can I talk with you for a second?” I opened the door and motioned for Dar to follow. “Marver, feel free to call in the next candidate and ask as many questions as you want.”
“Of course.” Marver nodded. “Next!”
I moved aside as an older human woman walked in and took a seat at the table. She wrung her hands in her lap as she sat down, and she glanced with wide eyes at Dar and me when we stepped around her.
“We’ll be back shortly,” I said and smiled at her. “Dar, let’s take a walk.”
“Sure,” Dar said and turned to Marver. “Don’t you hire anyone without us.”
Marver just grunted and gestured for us to leave the house.
“Almost done,” Dar said as he dug in his pocket for his pipe and looked at the line of candidates as he lit it.
“You like that Skam guy?” I asked as we walked toward the tree line of the Falrion Forest.
“Unfortunate name for a thief, huh?” Dar laughed with his pipe between his lips. “I did like him, though. He’ll make our lives easier during the exchanges.”
“That was my thought, too,” I said and stuffed my hands in my pant pockets. I then leaned back against the first tree we walked up to that faced Adi’s house.
“What did you want to talk about?” Dar asked as he blew out smoke from his nostrils.
“At some point, we’ll need more like him.” I nodded toward the line of people waiting.
“Tattooed dwarves?” Dar asked as he tilted his head to the side. “That’s going to be a bit hard to find since most of them don’t live through the--”
“No,” I chuckled. “Strong men and women who have a bone to pick with the elves.”
“Oh,” Dar laughed, “that’s pretty much everyone.”
“Not like Skam,” I said. “They took away his life for what I’m going to guess is dozens of years. He’ll want revenge. Those are the people we want working for us since we’ll know they would never sell us out.”
“Got it.” Dar nodded. “Marver might hate that, but who cares.”
“So, you and the chef handle the rest of the interviews,” I ordered as I nodded toward the cottage. “I have to go and meet Penny back at the stables for a water run.”
“How are you going to get back to the stables?” Dar asked.
“I’ll take one of the horses from the wagon,” I replied.
“Okay, good.” Dar nodded. “We should try and keep the other wagon here until we need it for drop offs.”
“How’re you getting back, then?” I asked.
“I’ll have the chef drop me off at the theatre for a show.” Dar smirked. “Maybe he’ll even join me and lighten up.”
“I can’t picture him having fun,” I chuckled.
“Are you having fun?” Dar asked after a few seconds of silence. “I noticed you spacing a bit, and that’s usually my job.”
“Busy mind.” I smirked at my friend, whose dark eyes were clouded by the smoke from his pipe.
“You ever think this was where we’d end up after we stole the elven wine from the warehouses?” My friend nodded in the direction of the Warehouse District not too far from where we stood.
“No, not really,” I snorted and stepped toward the cottage. “I thought I’d die in that guild, or like Skam, end up imprisoned by the elves.”
“At least we’re technically free from the guild,” Dar said as he tapped the pipe against the tree to remove the blackened tobacco.
“Yeah,” I said and chuckled to myself, “but then we came up with the whiskey idea, and--”
“That was all you,” Dar pointed out.
“Whatever,” I laughed. “We are a team, and this is only the beginning.”
“Looks that way, huh?” Dar stretched his arms out above his head and twisted his back with a moan. “Give the pixie my best when you see her.”
“Will do, see you back at the stables,” I said as I made my way to a horse on the side of the house. “Remember, one more strong man or woman with revenge on his or her mind.”
A few humans in line heard me and immediately called out they were strong and could lift anything we told them to. I knew Dar would pick wisely, but I didn’t know if Marver would be fully on board.
“Yeah, we’ll see!” Dar said to the humans and nodded toward me as he opened the front door of the house.
I detached a horse from the wagon, climbed on top of it, and rode onto the main dirt trail that led back to the stables. I only traveled a few hundred yards before I came to a fork in the road. I was about to turn right toward the Entertainment District, but a tingling sensation crawled along my neck and stopped me.
Go left.
The keys’ voice echoed in my head and stopped me mid-turn. Left was the opposite way of where the theatre was, but the keys hadn’t lead me astray yet, so I was curious as to what they wanted to show me next.
“Sorry, Penny,” I muttered to myself as I tugged the reins to the left.
I did start to doubt the keys a few miles or so down the road when they hadn’t communicated anymore. I had work to do, Penny would be pissed I was late, and I had no clue if I’d even hear the keys’ voice
again.
“Talk to me,” I said aloud and hoped the keys were listening. I waited and heard the wind swirl through the trees, the distant rattle of another wagon, and my own heartbeat in my ears.
Then …
Go home.
“Go home?” I threw my hands up in the air and looked up at the clouds for answers as if that’s where the keys lived. “You told me to go this way.”
Was I losing my mind?
I wiped the sweat that rolled down the brim of my nose and looked around to see where I was. There were rolling green hills similar to the ones that welcomed travelers to the Capital District just ahead with a small path that cut to the right.
I knew the path, but I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. In fact, I’d ignored it and pretended it lead to nothing, and in a way that was true.
But it used to lead to somewhere important to me.
“Go home,” I muttered to myself again as my eyes followed the familiar path and then up to the sun that slowly began to vanish within a cluster of thick clouds.
I clicked my tongue and led the horse to the trail that curved right. As I followed the path, I could feel the sun’s warmth soak into the back of my neck, and the massive shadows created by the clouds inched forward on the ground ahead of me like giant snails.
I followed the familiar road straight and kept my eyes focused on the scorched wood sign in the distance. The burnt sign was once white, but now it was covered in ash. There was still a visible “L” on the front, but the rest of the lettering had melted into the charred wood.
“It’s been a long time,” I whispered to myself, and then I urged the horse quicker down the road. The path itself turned to dirt soon after I passed the sign. Then I halted my horse just before I entered the small town that used to be my home.
Remember.
Remember? Of course, I remembered.
“Why did you want me to come here?” I asked the keys, but they didn’t answer.
Along the path ahead were charred wooden remains that stretched toward the sky, frozen in time.
I inched my horse forward down the dirt aisle that cut through the wooden wasteland. I wasn’t sure if it was only my mind, but I could still feel the heat from the flames that had lapped against my face when I escaped down the same road so many years ago.
I could also still hear the screams from a store clerk as an orc tossed her into the fire that raged from her own shop.
I used to buy chocolates from her.
My hands tightened around the reins, and my eyes felt like they were lit on fire as well. I slowed my horse to a complete stop in the middle of the destroyed town, and then I climbed down and took a deep breath.
I remembered I’d dodged a group of orcs in the midst of tearing people apart as if they were made from paper, and I could still hear their limbs snap like dry branches.
I looked to the dirt at my feet and expected to see blood flow around my boots. There was no evidence a hundred or so people were brutally killed in this very spot.
And for what?
“A regrettable incident.” That’s what the elves liked to call it. With how orcs operated, part of me always felt like the elves had hired them to get drunk and destroy our town. They couldn’t stand the fact that humans settled out in the wilds close to their capital wall. Instead of dealing with us on their own, they used the orcs to do their fucking dirty work.
I turned and looked down the road that led to my family farm, and my nails dug into my palms. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see that. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to remember either.
Go.
The keys echoed again in my mind. As they did, my chest tightened, and my arms vibrated by my sides.
I slowly started to walk down the road until I passed the ruins of the last storefront on the block. Our farm was just over the small hillside that overlooked the entire town, so I made my way to the top of the hill and saw my old home for the first time since the night of the massacre.
“Is this what you want me to see?” I asked aloud to the keys as my stomach somersaulted.
Our humble home looked like the rest of the town, forgotten and destroyed. I sat down on the hillside as the memory of that night quickly came into my mind.
Our farm was the first place the orcs came for.
I remembered my dad had woken me up, placed a blade in my hand, and then hushed me with a finger over my mouth. As he did, I could hear the orcs growling outside of our home. They weren’t even sneaky about their attack, even though they came during the night.
As a family, we huddled in the front room of our house and peeked out the window to see the orcs’ bulky shadows run through our yard and set our barn on fire. The flames engulfed the entire structure in seconds, and as we watched our livelihood burn, my mom pulled me closer to her.
It was hard to remember what she looked like. I could see the flames and orc shadows so clearly in my mind, but the memory of my own mother was blurry. I just remembered her tears splashed on top of my head as she hugged me alongside my brother and my sister.
We weren’t fighters at all. We were farmers. Our family never started trouble, and even if we did, my dad would humbly take the blame or punishment even if he wasn’t at fault.
My dad fought that night, though.
The orcs approached our front door with heavy steps and guttural noises. Then our door was kicked in, and with it came a blast of hot air from the flames and a chorus of screams from the town.
An orc stood in our doorway, and I could still see him in my mind since the flames from our barn lit up his face in the darkness.
He had brown flesh that matched his rusted armor, and he flashed his rotted teeth at us when he stepped into our home.
The orc didn’t see my dad standing to the side of the door, and the big creature screeched when my dad had lunged and stabbed the orc right in the side of his head. I thought the dagger through the skull would have killed the brown-skinned creature, but he just picked up my dad like a doll, ripped his arm off, and tossed him through the window.
The orc still held my dad’s dismembered arm as he looked at me.
Suddenly, the memory ran away just as fast as I did that night.
I spat next to me on the hillside and grabbed a handful of black dirt in my hands.
I wasn’t sad. I was past the sadness.
Instead, I felt that same heartbeat in my gut when I envisioned myself strangling an elf during the interview with Skam.
I took a deep breath and noticed the sun start to sink in the sky. I felt like my time remembering was over, and now it was time for action.
Turn around.
I followed the keys command and looked back toward the town where my horse was.
“How did they--“ I let the dirt fall between my fingers as I stood up and saw four elven guards walking through the town.
The one in front looked right at me.
They were following you.
I cleared my throat and stood firm.
The elf who lead the small pack gestured to the others to stay at the base of the hill as he approached me.
All of them wore black armor lined with gold, and each had the traditional turquoise and gold hooded robes pulled atop their heads. The one who approached me lowered his hood and revealed long black braided hair. His eyes were gray and cold, and his skin tone was dark blue, the color of a night elf, but here he was out and about before nightfall.
What the fuck were they doing?
“You chose such a pitiful place to be,” the elf said in a smooth, monotone voice as he stopped in front of me. “Your eyes, human.”
The elf reminded me that I was not supposed to look him directly in the eyes.
Fuck him.
“Am I not allowed to choose where I go and what I do with my time?” I said as I looked at his feet.
His black boots were embroidered with the constellations of the sky, and I wanted to cut them off while I heard him scream.
“You a
re such moody creatures, aren’t you?” the elf snickered. “You aren’t as predictable as the others, though.”
“Can I help you with something?” I asked as my hands curled into tight fists.
“Such a shame what took place here.” The elf ignored my question and removed a leather glove from his left hand. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said and bit my tongue to silence myself.
“Humanity could never really protect itself anyway,” the elf sniffed. “Do you know why we’re here?”
“As I said, can I help you with something?” I mumbled through gritted teeth. The smell of flowers and magic that radiated off the elf started to burn my nose.
“My commander has taken a special interest in you,” the elf began, “and when he told me to track and follow you, I nearly lost my tongue since I laughed in his face. Track a human? For what?”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said as calmly as possible even though my mind was going a million miles a minute with questions.
How long had they tracked me? Did they find the whiskey? Did they find the stables? What did they know?
“Don’t lie, human. You’re not that good at it.” The elf stepped closer and nearly bumped into me. “Although, we can’t blame you and only you for what you’ve done.”
What the fuck was he talking about?
“Okay,” I said and glanced up toward the elf who was inches from my face.
“We’ll talk about that more, though,” the elf snarled, grabbed my shoulder with his ungloved hand, and sent a bolt of electricity through my bones that dropped me to my knees. “My commander wants to speak to you.”
Shit.
I tried to think of something to say so I could wiggle out of this, but the elf raised his other hand and slammed his fist into my face.
Then all I saw was blackness, just like the charred ruins of my hometown.
“Fuck you and your commander,” I groaned through the bloody taste in my mouth and the stars dancing in my vision.
The lead elf didn’t respond. He just snapped his fingers, and then the others dragged me down the hill and threw me into one of their caged wagons.
It looked like I had no choice but to meet with the commander.