ROCKS FALL
EVERYONE DIES
Being the tale of a gathering of adventurers in a mystical land where bravery is second only to greed, and stupidity. So, third really. Fourth if you count Ego.
By Eddie Skelson
Copyright @Eddie Skelson 2019 Pandemic Press
Authors Note
The story you hold in your hands, be it in paperback format or as an eBook, began as a series of character stories. The first onto the page was Corbett. The misanthropic wizard started as many of my characters do, on a journey, or unhappy, or both. Joe, in Winter Falls, is gloomily making his way to Scotland, Crowley is engaged upon a mystical sailing ship, disappointed that his spell has not paid off. Superhero city is filled with unhappy people. No wonder then that the next character, Valeran the Cleric is also someone who is unhappy with his lot.
I often feature a duo. Geoff and Bevvo, The Lemonade Borthers, are probably my most popular in this bracket, and these guys at least have a more optimistic take on their circumstances, but this was deliberate. At the time I was sick to the back teeth of nihilistic zombie features where the real threat was people, not monsters. I wanted to turn that around. When Donalt and Andreton came to mind I was beginning to get a feel for a story and I wanted two fellas with some tension between them, but a lot of love and loyalty. These two were thrown together by some unknown event were easy to write. The best friendships are often built on seemingly incompatible people living under each other’s skin.
Daisy was a joy to discover, along with Dorian these two offer the most stabilising influence on the party while still being entirely different in their outlook and attitude. Bringing this awful crew of chaotic characters together for this improbable tale has been a delight.
I hope you enjoy their story.
Eddie Skelson Jan 2019
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity
Sun Tzu
It’s better to be alone than in bad company.
George Washington
Of course I can lift the bloody thing.
Daive, God of Poorly Thought Through Plans (formerly God of Scheduling)
The Cleric
It was warm inside Valeran’s tent, warm because the side he was healing for was comprised from Colonel to Corporal of absolute fuckwits. The huge fires the army had started around the city were burning fiercely. This has been just stupid tactic number… whatever. The bonfires achieved nothing other than to illuminate their own soldiers at night allowing the besieged forces to dob arrow after arrow into them with very little fear of recourse because the besiegers couldn’t actually see anything because of the brightness of the flames.
The heat bloom from them reached through the besieging forces and into the very rear of the ranks. It crept to the Stable Grounds where horses waited, idly chewing, and on to the Smithing Quarter, already a place of uncomfortable temperature as swords were re-sharpened, bows were re-strung and lance tips brought to a point. Finally it came to the medical tents where the Clerics sat, bored out of their minds.
Valeran rested his elbows on his consulting table. He felt old today. Far older than his eighty-six years. His hands held up his ageing face with its traditional clerical beard featuring suitably distinguished grey and white hair. The table, his 'desk', was a crudely put together thing made from the wooden slats of a former cart. Its singed edges admitting to a less than peaceful end to its former occupation. In front of him a solider stood, a man of average height, perhaps in his thirties. It was always hard to tell the age of a solider, especially in the middle of a siege, as the weight of battle and the lack of amenities aged them considerably. His britches lay at his feet and below his waist his penis dangled like a badly produced sausage. The solider pointed to it.
‘Sore as fuck it is. Hurts somefin awful when I pee.’
Valeran stared at the offending penis with a mix of sympathy and loathing. He was sick of seeing them. Day after day a line
would form outside his tent of men, scratching and clutching at their most privy of parts, all waiting to be cured. Occasionally an acutal wounded man would appear, perhaps he had injured himself during a brawl, or cut himself shaving. But these moments were rare. During a siege the injuries on this side of the walls, as the besiegers, ranged from self-inflicted due to clumsiness to self-inflicted due too poor life choices.
This covered such entertainments as brawling when pissed, falling into a fire when pissed or having sex when pissed. The latter could also be exacerbated by what the person involved had been having sex with.
‘What do you want me to do about it?’ Valeran asked of the solider, whose mouth opened a little, then closed and then opened again with no words comng out. Valeran sighed.
‘You have the pox dear. I’m not a pox doctor. You need a witch, not a Cleric.’
The solider stared at him so hard that Valeran thought he might be trying to see through him and look at the wall behind.
Valeran pointed at himself.
‘CLERIC’ He said slowly and with increased volume. ‘YOU NEED A WITCH.’
He raised his hands above his head and mimed a pointed hat.
‘But you’re a healer. Eric from Fourth Archers say’s you fixed his wang.’ The solider said.
Valeran thought for a moment, trying to recall each of the incidents of damaged penis that had come his way of late.
‘Eric.’ Valeran said.
‘Aye. Eric. From Fourth Archers. He took one in his joysack.’ The solider said earnestly. ‘Was proper unlucky to cop for an arrer in his sack.’
‘Ah yes.’ Valeran said. ‘One of his testicles was shot off by an arrow. My boy, I didn’t fix his wang, I stitched up his injury. His testicle isn’t coming back. I imagine its pinned to the floor somewhere.’
‘Squirrel ran off with it.’ The soldier replied.
‘What?’ Valeran asked, not sure what he thought he had heard was what had actually been said.
‘Aye. A squirrel came hopping along and snatched up poor Eric’s jewel an scarpered with it.’
‘A squirrel absconded with Eric’s ball?’
‘Aye.’ The soldier nodded, then returned to his own problem ‘So what about my old man?’
‘Your…?’
‘His Lordship. He’s proper sore.’ He looked back down to indicate the location of his malady. ‘Hurts when somefin awful when I pee.’
The penis remained dangling in Valeran's direct line of sight. It looked sad, doleful.
Valeran grunted and then, reaching into a large leather satchel at his feet, withdrew a pot. Its lid was secured by a length of twine wrapped tightly around it. As he placed the pot onto the desk his eyeline was once again in contact with the soldier’s diseased member.
‘For the sake of Tostvig, Lord of Dignity, please pull up your britches man.’
As the solider obediently lifted up his dirty pants Valeran untied the twine and lifted the lid off the pot. He scooped out a thick, foul smelling paste on the tips of his fingers, he dolloped this onto a scroll of greased parchment.
‘This is Witches Tit Milk.’ Valeran said.
‘Ohh.’ The soldier responded, his eyes widening.
‘It’s not actually milk from the breast of a Witch solider. It’s a medicinal compound formed from the leaves of a Jubbal plant, some spices and a few herbs gathered from the local area, before we and the horses ate everything that was once green and pleasant. Oh, and a couple of drops of vanilla extract, because vanilla is nice.’
‘Oh.’ The soldier said. Disappointed.
‘Rub this on to… his Lordship. Do it each evening and each morning. It will help to alleviate the stinging.’
‘Right.’ The soldier said, picking up the package Vale
ran had carefully folded for him. ‘Uh… will I be able to…’
‘Soldier, I strongly recommend you do not indulge in further sexual relations with… anything. Not until you have used all of the compound.’
‘Ah.’ The soldier said.
Valeran saw the man’s eyebrows rise a little and knew precisely what was going through his sex crazed, war-battered mind.
‘If you apply all of the compound at once or with any greater frequency than I have advised, your Lordship will drop off. It will shrivel like a slug on a hill of salt and hurt like the fucking sun is attempting to escape via your Cyclop’s Wink.’
The solider gulped. His colour became ashen.
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes sir.’ The soldier said.
‘That’s ten coppers.’ Valeran held out his hand. Palm up.
‘Ten Coppers! I thought medical treatment was free!’ The solider exclaimed.
Valeran fixed him with an icy stare and thought, ‘Every day, every hour, the same bloody thing.’
‘Injuries sustained during combat are covered by your contract soldier. Not dalliances with women whose privy areas have seen more action than the 1st Cavalry Division. Ten coppers. Or, next time this happens you’ll be able to post his Lordship to your wife as a keepsake.’
The soldier pulled his face. Reluctantly, he dug into his britches, withdrew a small bag fashioned from a pig’s bladder, and took from it the required coinage. He slapped the coins onto the table.
Valeran looked at the dented copper pieces as though the man had just dropped a turd in front of him.
He lifted his eyes to the soldier’s. ‘Good day.’
‘Right. Yeah.’ The solider replied.
He turned and left the tent, clutching the little package in one hand and scratching at his crotch with the other.
Valeran breathed out, long and steady.
‘This is awful.’ He said to no one. ‘Four months of this already and no sign of a lift of the siege in sight.’
He stood and walked to the opening in the tent where his last patient had just exited picking at his privy parts. Outside smoke drifted across the camp from the hundreds of fires, as men boiled up tea and cooked whatever they had managed to forage from the devastation they had caused.
War was hell. They said that. They were right. Not just the combat though. At least that was quick. A few hours of hacking and slashing, then count up the remaining soldiers and see who had the most still standing. War was basically just arithmetic with swords. But a siege could drag for months. Years even.
The Siege of Blackstock Castle had gone on for two years until they realised everyone had left the castle via a tunnel three days after the siege had started. That had been embarrassing. No. It was the waiting around. The poor food. The brave but frequently stupid people he had to minister too. No one came to ask him about Gods. It was dicks, diarrhoea and bad feet.
He needed more than this. More than just treating pox, and toothache and the odd missing testicle. He needed something worthy of his tremendous ability and keen mind. His prayers had gone unanswered for so long that he thought perhaps it was a sign. Maybe the soldier’s forlorn penis and Eric’s missing ball were some sort of cryptic message from his primary God, Boldoff, The God of Interesting Conversation.
‘Perhaps… yes.’ He had been thinking about this for a while, ‘I should attempt a Quest. Indeed! Adventure. Daring do. Bold action in the face of adversity in a strange land.’
Valeran thoguht that he should be the moral backbone of a fine group of splendid, tough and resourceful pioneers. Undoubtedly, what he needed was a Quest. There could be no question of it.
He had never been on one before but he had heard that the talents of intelligent and devout Priests were in high demand.
‘It makes sense,’ he thought, ‘the likes of those sour-faced arsonist wizards and dumb-as-a-box-of-hair warriors would need a man of learning and culture to keep a group together through trying times.’
Valeran’s mind began to race through the possibilities and a party began to form in his mind. One those Ranger types, and maybe some bloody cut-purse might come in handy. The Rangers were good with the wildlife he had heard, that’s when they weren’t making wicker baskets and trying convincing people that they were destroying the world by taking a piss in a stream.
‘Bloody hippies.’ He muttered.
His general disdain any of person not directly involved in his line of work, and also in his line of work didn’t really affect his opinion of himself as the moral backbone. In fact, it reinforced it.
It was done. He was decided.
He would collect his gear and leave this very evening. Sadly, he was contracted to see the out the siege, but that was only a minor problem. Once he had drugged all the guards who might attempt to prevent his flight he could safely exit the siege area. Again, for Valeran moral backbones tended to be very flexible.
‘Fuck em.’ He thought.
He began to prepare a travelling bag.
The Wizard
Corbett let out a sigh of relief as the first glimpse of rooves appeared in the distance. Faint wisps of smoke curled up from squat chimneys and the landscape he noticed, had changed from rough and wild heath to smooth and pleasant cultivated plots.
‘Thank all the fucking gods. Big and small, light and dark.’ He mumbled as he trod on, picking up his pace a little now his destination was in sight.
He had travelled a hundred miles on foot. Although this number, suggested by his mind, was fiercely contested by his feet who petitioned for something in the region of double that distance. They were sore, and they ached, and they demanded a recount. Few non-magic users knew that it was against all the rules of wizardry to indulge in owning, or even acquiring transport other than through magical ability or the kindness of others. In fact, a wizard could not ask for, beg or in any way intimate that, ‘Yes. They would dearly appreciate a lift.’
Par for the course not a single bloody Cartsman or coach driver had stopped to offer him a seat. Not one. A youth, some poorly complexioned squire, had hurtled past him astride a huge destrier, no doubt moving the animal from one stable to another for his master.
‘Hai there! Vagabond! Move thyself from the highway.’ The squire had shouted to him as he bolted past.
‘Twat.’ Corbett grumbled, the thought of that now fresh in his mind again. ‘And, thyself…’ he snorted. ‘Who says ‘thy’ anymore?’
It was further evidence, as if any were needed, that he was truly and deeply inside ‘shitkicker’ territory. He had already witnessed similar archaic language being used a little while back, and also the usual suspicious rituals, plus almost certain evidence of interbreeding and to secure the deal and the most heinous of crimes, desperately bland food.
The population of these backwoods crap-holes didn’t particularly like wizards either. Or any person with a supernatural leaning for that matter, except perhaps the odd Witch. So long as said Witch was a woman, not at all magically inclined and could cure or at least allay the symptoms of pox. Oh, and deliver babies, of course. That was a must.
But not wizards.
‘Not a bloody jobbing wizard with thirty-five years of training under his belt, and three Chains of Essence. Three! If there was a wizard within two hundred miles of this place with more than one Chain I’ll eat my sodding hat. But then, these jumped up web-toed pig-scutters wouldn’t give a squirrel’s nut-sack about that would they? Oh no.’
‘Ow many cows does ee ave, sur?’ Corbett said out loud. Mocking in the most awful manner, the accent and dialect of how he considered every citizen who didn’t have indoor plumbing must speak.
‘All they care about is cows, chickens and the bloody weather.’ He mumbled.
Yes. The bloody weather.
Wizards can heavily affect the weather. Especially if there was more than one of them in any given region. This is why scenes of battle always have those amazing canopies of foreboding clouds, and storms, an
d thunder, and lightning. Too much magic you see. Too many wizards tossing their energies around.
So long as Corbett kept moving there wasn’t much to notice. Perhaps the odd mysterious gust of wind or light shower but, if he stayed in one place too long his magical energy would seep into the immediate atmosphere and mess up anyone’s holiday with a good old gale, or rain storm or other climatic condition that means your day at the pool just got cancelled. Corbett removed his hat and wiped his brow. It wasn’t particularly warm on this late afternoon, but the walking had kept him heated beneath his cloak. It was a good cloak, made of lambswool and dyed a very pale blue. Although, at the moment
he thought dirt and dust and rain had played its part in making look more like he was wearing a whore’s bedspread. He hoped he could get some lass to clean it at the place ahead. Perhaps as he ate a hearty (but bland) meal at what would be their only tavern. The Tavern.
He looked at the hat in his hands. It was a worn, leather thing which he liked to wear at a jaunty angle. He thought the aura it conveyed was ‘I’m comfortable with myself and sure, I can vaporise you if you touch my stuff,’ but it was beginning to look a little threadbare. In fact, his whole ensemble actually conveyed the aura of ‘almost broke.’ His robe was tattered at the hem and he carried a rucksack with a bottom so worn the contents threatened to burst through at any moment. Added to this he practically buzzed with stored magical energy. This didn’t help at all as it had the effect of weakening the fibres of his clothing. But that would be solved shortly.
There was only one reason for a wizard to venture beyond a Great City, other than to get to another Great City and that was a Quest. A chance to get away from the ridiculous rules and regulations of Wizarding Law and blow the crap out of something.
Rocks Fall Everyone Dies Page 1