Welcome To The Age of Magic

by C M Raymond et al.

  What a twisted fuckhole, Astrid thought.

  “Well,” Astrid replied. “That was a very informative lecture. Thank you. Political theory aside, consider yourself defied. The Village of Argan will pay its rightful share to this Protectorate, but not if it means children will starve.—

  “This territory has a Protector? Fine. Argan now has me to protect it.”

  “I will be on hand to make sure your men will harm no one. And if they try, I will do far worse to them than I did to your petty thugs on the Toll Road.”

  “We will see about that,” Krann said with a toothy smile.

  He was fast. If Astrid hadn’t been watching his chest for signs of motion, he would have hit her square across the face with that stick. She ducked the whistling piece of wood. When she came back up, Krann was coming around again for another strike. She blocked it easily and wrapped his arm with hers in a leverage hold.

  Krann froze, but not from fear. He wasn’t angry, either. He just knew he was done. Astrid found his coldness disturbing and hoped he couldn’t see that she was unsettled.

  “You have my respect, Commissioner Krann,” Astrid growled. “I am a woman of her word, just like I said in the note I left with Pleth.”

  Krann’s eyes widened for an instant. That’s how Astrid knew Pleth didn’t give him the note. Why Krann didn’t question her on it, she had no idea. It was only clear that Pleth kept the informative piece of parchment from him.

  She kept his arm locked in hers, then dragged him out in front of his desk. Killing this asshole seemed like a very good idea.

  7

  Keep 52 Ale House, Lungu Protectorate

  “What in the new world is this!” Assessor Clive exclaimed as he climbed down from his wagon.

  “It is your guilty conscience,” Vinnie said, arms wide and smiling. “Are you always working? You should be home with that beautiful wife of yours.”

  As he beamed a fake smile at the Assessor, he tried to calculate the time Astrid would need to get over the wall and into the admin building. He had only left her just a few seconds before, so he had a relatively good idea how long he would need to stall.

  “Ha!” Clive said. “I should be, but Dariel village had an excellent harvest. It took two loads to bring in their tribute percentage.”

  “How are the kids?” Vinnie asked, laying it on thick to keep things moving.

  “Both are fine, just fine,” Clive replied. “I had my housekeeper make them that pork recipe you told me about. They are eating it tonight, but here I am. The meat is from Blue Creek—they raise the best pigs. I’ll probably have to stay the night in the keep bunkhouse.”

  “Oh, such a shame,” Vinnie said, draping his arm around Clive’s shoulder. “I guess you’ll just have to suffer through a few drinks at the ale house, too?”

  “I really shouldn’t,” Clive said with a fake look of remorse on his face. “Oh, I guess just one. I won’t play cards with you again, though. Not after last time.”

  The two men ambled over to the drinking place. Vinnie cast a glance over his shoulder back to the woods where he knew Astrid was watching. He was concerned for her in spite of a skill set he had never seen before. The woman was growing on him. She had earned a fierce loyalty from him in just a few days.

  “Vinnie!” The bartender called as soon as he saw the big man trundle through the door. “I made that temperature adjustment in my fermentation room. This is the best ale yet.” He pulled a lever and filled a huge mug with frothy, golden brew.

  Vinnie took half the mug in three long pulls. Wiping his mustache, he said. “I am just a humble man of thought and reason,” Vinnie said. “You are the artist. This is the best brew I’ve had in ages.”

  The bartender laughed and poured another mug. Vinnie produced a coin pouch and tossed it on the bar.

  “These two are on me,” the bartender said.

  “Thank you,” Vinnie replied. “I want you to keep that. I insist. But promise me you won’t open it until I leave.”

  “What—”

  “Just trust me,” Vinnie said with a twinkle in his eye.

  The bartender shrugged and put the pouch under the bar and out of sight. Vinnie took a seat at a long table where several Assessors, their guards, and crew all sat. The half-drunk men passed around pitchers of ale, wine, and mead. Vinnie emptied his mug several times and filled it with whatever came around.

  “You still haven’t told me why you are here,” Clive said from across the broad table. “Last time I saw you, you said you were moving on.”

  Vinnie smiled and locked on Clive’s eyes. “I’ve found work,” he said.

  “Work?” Clive replied. “Funny, I didn’t hear of any new visas coming through the keep. Did you register at one of the other keeps?”

  “No,” Vinnie said flatly. “I haven’t registered. I won’t register, either.”

  Several heads turned to him. A few set down their mugs and stared. Clive looked uncomfortable.

  “Vinnie, buddy,” he said, trying to laugh. “That’s not funny. We have laws here. As a foreigner—”

  “No, it is not funny,” Vinnie replied, taking a few gulps from his mug. “I misspoke. I should say that the work found me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Clive said. More of the guards stopped to listen as well as an Assessor or two.

  “I also don’t understand,” Vinnie said, smile fading from his lips. “How a land so rich can support itself and continue on when slimy,” he raised his voice, “pitiful, cowardly,” he raised his voice louder, “shit stains find it necessary to beat on old women and take from villages until they starve.”

  He polished off the last of his mug and held it out high to the crowd. “My mug is empty!” He shouted. “Who would fill it up?”

  The house fell silent. After a long pause, one of the guards spoke.

  “You’re a stranger here, fat man,” the burly man said, leaning across the table. “You got no right to judge us, so I’d just shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you.”

  Vinnie smiled broadly, but there was no humor in his eyes.

  “Is that what you tell the old ladies that you beat down?” Vinnie asked.

  “I’m being patient with you, chubbs,” the man spat. “I like you. I really do. I don’t want to have to teach you a lesson. I ain’t never beat on no old lady, but you gotta understand. These peasants need a strong hand. Sometimes they don’t pay so easy. If it did happen, she probably had it coming.”

  “Have you ever stopped to think,” Vinnie asked, “that it is not always easy for them to pay?”

  The man shrugged. “I just do my job,” the man said. “Protector says we collect, I collect, just like the Assessors order. We survived that way for a hundred years before your tub of guts came along.”

  “I’m glad we have an understanding,” Vinnie replied. “Because my job is to make sure your orders don’t end up harming innocent people.”

  The man jumped to his feet, but Vinnie stayed seated.

  “Who the hell do you think you are!” the man boomed.

  As Vinnie was focused on the man yelling, someone else came up behind him and smashed a clay mug over the top of his head. Only his hair moved. His eyes merely widened for a moment, but then he smiled as blood ran down his collar.

  “Oh, thank you,” he said. “For this wonderful opportunity.”

  Vinnie turned slowly to the man with the broken mug handle in his hand. They locked eyes for a brief moment before the man looked at his hand. He shrugged his shoulders, dropped the handle, and drew back his fist.

  The punch never landed. Vinnie was on his feet in a flash—faster than most men could perceive, much less move. SMACK! Instead of making contact with Vinnie’s face, the fist ended up being crushed inside Vinnie’s big, meaty hand.

  Vinnie squeezed until he felt one of the bones pop. The man screamed, his knees buckling a bit as he began to fold in from the pain. Vinnie let him go, then picked him up by the collar and the belt and
threw him into the people at the table. Ten men lay tangled on the floor beneath an overturned table, and the rest wisely scattered.

  Then, it was on. The assessors cleared out while the guards moved in.

  “Lock the fucking door!” someone shouted. “This shitbag ain’t leaving here in one piece!”

  Someone swung a billy club at Vinnie. He batted it aside as if it were a thin stick and drove his fist into the man’s face. He went down like a sack of dirty clothes before the wash bucket.

  Two more men rushed in, and Vinnie charged forward. Both of his palms slammed into their chests as their clubs cracked against Vinnie’s head with two loud THOCKS.

  The big man hardly seemed to notice as he tossed them away. The two unsuccessful attackers flew back into another group who all tumbled down like bowling pins.

  Vinnie whirled as he heard feet running up behind him, and he back-fisted the unfortunate man with a club in each hand. Vinnie scooped him up over his head and tossed him across the bar.

  “Maybe you fools should open that door, instead!” Vinnie shouted. “Or it might go a lot worse for you.”

  To his disappointment, they didn’t take his advice. Instead, someone grabbed an armload of long knives and began dispersing them among the angered and ego-bruised men.

  Vinnie sighed, knowing their bodies would soon be as bruised as their egos before this was said and done—but he did warn them.

  He raised both fists over his head and brought them down on the nearest table. The table plank split in two, and Vinnie pulled a section free.

  Two men stabbed at him with foot-long knives, but Vinnie batted them aside with the board. He drove his foot into the stomach of a third man, then used the board to wallop the shoulder of a fourth.

  Men screamed and bellowed in pain and rage while Vinnie tore through them all. They really seemed to want him dead for some reason.

  Two long minutes later, no one but Vinnie had any fight left in them. A few bodies lay on the floor, and he couldn’t tell if they were unconscious or dead. Vinnie didn’t give much of a fuck one way or the other.

  They had it coming.

  “Vinnie,” the bartender said, standing up from behind the bar. “What did you just do? Why?” His voice sounded pained. “I thought we were friends.”

  “Doing what I must,” Vinnie said, kicking a man who crawled toward him with a knife. “I’m sorry about your ale house. That bag is full of solid gold coins. I hope that covers the damages.”

  Vinnie felt a pang at the hurt look on the bartender’s face. “Nobody likes Assessors,” the bartender said. “But… this? What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Someone’s got to do something,” Vinnie said. “As far as I’m concerned, these asswipes got off easy. Don’t you get tired of serving beer to these monkeys?”

  “What’s a monkey?” the bartender asked.

  Vinnie just sighed and kicked open the barred door with his left foot. He pushed through the splintered wood and out into the night.

  The commotion he had caused didn’t let him hear the alarm bells ringing. At least a dozen men with clubs and knives charged toward him from the keep. There must have been a backdoor through which some smart soul had run to sound the alarm.

  Vinnie cursed and high-tailed it to the woods.

  Keep 52, Administrative Building

  Shouting and the sounds of ringing bells in the courtyard reached her through the closed, top-floor windows.

  “A group of bandits are tearing up the ale house!” somebody shouted. She couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but she counted three sets of feet.

  She jumped when pounding rattled the office door. “Commissioner! There’s a general alarm. Check that man! Is he alive?”

  Shit, Astrid thought. They found the guard. I should have killed him and dragged him inside. She decided that next time, she wouldn’t hold back.

  “Krann, Do you like birds?” Astrid asked, gathering up Krann by his expensive-looking shirt.

  “Wha—what?” Krann stammered. He was finally good and scared.

  She turned toward the window and lifted Krann off his feet. “Because you’re about to see if you can fucking fly like one!”

  Her eyes turned black, then swirled with gray clouds. She knew the feeling of the Well Energy when it flowed through her in this form. She had looked in the mirror once and scared herself when her eyes looked like this.

  But the door behind her crashed open, and she heard the guards draw blades. Instead of throwing Krann out the window, she threw him across the room instead.

  Krann shrieked as his flying body knocked down two guards, who cursed with obvious shock, anger, and fear.

  Astrid turned on her heel. On impulse, she grabbed one of the smaller ledgers from the desk. “Prisoner log,” was stamped into the brown leather cover. Something told her it was important.

  Instead of defenestrating Krann, she threw herself through the window. It took several seconds before she hit the ground in a roll. She found it necessary to pull deeply from the Well to survive the impact.

  Her back almost doubled over as she tumbled twice and ended up springing to her feet.

  The chaos Vinnie had caused kept the panicked guards from seeing her as she rushed back to the building and plastered herself against the wall, melting into the shadows.

  Astrid opened the book to the page marked by a ribbon built into the binding. She found a long list of names for the month of October. All but two of those names were marked, “fined/released.”

  But the notes next to those remaining names made her smile. “Foreign magic users,” the note said. Her instinct was correct. She had one more task to complete.

  She stuck close to the building’s shadow while creeping around the foundation. About half way around, she came across a series of window wells. Poking her head down into one, she found steel bars across the window. Craning her neck a little revealed the cell blocks.

  “Jail, how do I break you?” she asked as she continued along the outside wall.

  Around the next corner, she peeked around and found what she hoped was the entrance. There were no guards. Could I be that lucky, she asked herself. Not luck, she answered. That had to be Vinnie.

  She hoped he was OK.

  She waited a few seconds, took a deep breath, then bolted for the basement door. She jumped down five steps and was about to check the handle when the door opened.

  Astrid stood bolt upright, eyes wide in surprise. “Is this where I pay tolls?” she asked unconvincingly.

  The men drew back his fist to punch her, but she kicked him in the balls. When his head dropped, she kneed him in the gut. She dragged him back into the basement by the collar and kicked the door closed behind her.

  She dropped him on the floor, and he cradled his nuts and moaned. “Sorry about that,” she said. “You startled me.”

  “You bandits will pay for this,” he wheezed.

  “I’m not a bandit,” Astrid said, plucking the handcuffs from his belt.

  She used the cuffs to secure him to the bars of a cell. That’s when she first noticed the prisoners. One stood motionless in the center of his cell in a ripped, gray undershirt. The other hung upside down by his ankles from the cell ceiling.

  “Any more guards around?” Astrid asked.

  The short man with the light brown skin said nothing. He only stared at her with narrow, angled eyes with no detectable emotion on his face.

  “OK… ” Astrid said. “Not the talkative type.” She tilted her head to look at the upside down man. “How about you, bat boy? Got an answer for me?”

  “Yeah,” the hanger said. “They all left except the guy you just turned into a eunuch.”

  “I think she broke one,” the guard moaned.

  “Oh, poor you,” said the inverted guy. “It’s so unfair when torturers get kicked in the nuts.”

  Astrid fumbled with the keychain, looking for the key that would open the cells.

  “It’s the brass one,�
�� upside down said.

  Astrid found it.

  The man in the next cell over spoke then. “Open my cell. Leave that one. He is the real criminal. He’s a bandit.”

  “What’s your name?” Astrid asked the ‘real criminal.’

  “Gormer. Pleased to meet you. Don’t listen to him. He has no sense of humor. I’ve told him all my best jokes while hanging here. Nothing… ”

  Astrid unlocked Gormer’s cell and wrapped her arms around his legs. She lifted him off the hook that held him up by the ropes wrapped around his ankles. Then, she left him.

  “Wait!” he said. “You can’t leave me like this!”

  “We’ll talk in a minute,” Astrid said, unlocking the other cell. He pushed past Astrid immediately and reached for the keys.

  “Whoa there, buddy,” she said. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “I am Tarkon the Fallen,” the dour man said. “I need my weapons and armor back.”

  “You gotta take me with you,” Gormer said.

  “Shush,” Astrid replied.

  “My name is ‘Astrid the Breaking Your Sorry Ass Out of Jail,’” she said. “I could be ‘Astrid the Has a Job for You Two.’”

  “Work for you?” Gormer said. “Your shitty jailbreak plan just guaranteed that the five keeps within a twenty-mile radius will send troops.”

  “Well,” Astrid said, shrugging her shoulders. “The jailbreak is improvised. I saw your entries in the arrest ledger under ‘Foreign Magic Users,’ and it just so happens that I need some of those.”

  “Whoa,” Gormer said, looking past Astrid’s shoulder. “Where’d that fat guy come from?”

  She whirled to find Vinnie in the doorway. He ignored the question and stood there with a smile on his face. When he gave a quick bow, Astrid saw the hair at the back of his head was matted with blood. She didn’t ask.

  “Time is short,” Vinnie said. “If you two want to make yourselves useful and put your thumb in the eyes of this corrupt system, come with us. Otherwise, you can go your separate ways.”

  Tarkon perked up at that proposal. “A cause?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.