by Edwin McRae
Mark drew his sword as four sets of antennae twitched in his direction and four sets of compound eyes regarded him, multiple facets sparkling in the silver light like mirrorballs. He barely had time to shout “Arcane Edge!” as the first creature sprang at his throat.
9
Dayna’s green eyes burned into Vari. “This is what I get for trusting a reiver to do anything other than stab me in the ass.”
Heat rose to Vari’s face and her skull squeezed in upon her brain. Or was it that her grey matter swelled when she was angry and pushed against her skull? Perhaps at her next level-up, she could choose Physik Perception and observe herself in a mirror when she felt like this again. She’d probably need Dayna there too. Though she’d only known the woman a short time, it was patently clear that she had a knack for provocation.
“I’m a figurist, not a reiver.”
“Yeah, you don’t much look like a reiver,” admitted Dayna. Then she sniffed noisily. “But you smell like one.”
Vari ignored Dayna and peered out through the bars of their cage at the reivers who lounged and loitered about the courtyard. Though her people had been part of the reiver empire for over a hundred years now, her brown-black hair and olive skin still set her apart as an outsider. One of the conquered.
Reiver women tended to dye their mousy locks silver, platinum or blue-black. And most reivers, both female and male, tattooed their pallid skin with thorny, jagged tribal patterns. Self-decoration just seemed pointless to Vari. But then much of revier society seemed pointless to Vari.
She pointed at a group of reiver warriors lounging nearby. They’d shed most of their armor to enjoy the warmth of the sun on their tattooed, acne-pocked skin. Their long hair would normally have been tied into battle-ready ponytails. Now it hung, greasy and lank to their shoulders, soaking in the stink of the tobacco they smoked and the jolt-juice they swilled from tin mugs. Another tradition Vari had shunned, the drinking of that sickly-sweet stimulant, a concoction of sugar, herbs and effervescence that jolted the mind and staved off weariness. Reivers drank it like water while on duty, mostly to combat the effects of the booze they drank each night. And then, of course, they quaffed ale and whisky so they could relax and get some sleep after a day of drinking jolt-juice. One brew countered the other, and the shadowed eyes, taut tempers and rotting teeth were the only real ‘benefits’ Vari had ever seen from that vicious cycle. That and the fact that soldiers who spent most of their hard-earned wages on booze, tobacco and jolt-juice stayed loyal to their superiors. Loyal to the coin if not the crown.
“I don’t think like one of them.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word for that?”
“Why not?”
Dayna’s smile fell short of her eyes. “Your respect for the dead says it all.”
“I used them to help us.”
“Exactly what I’d expect a reiver to say. What your kind do is always more important to you than how you do it.”
Despite her irritation, Vari could sense a hint of interest within Dayna’s coarse judgement.
“In Garland, do you not do what you must to thrive, to grow stronger?
Dayna shook her head. “We learned, long ago, that there are ways of living that aren’t living.”
“Like meat puppets.”
The ranger snorted with derisive amusement. “If you live by taking from others, by destroying something naturally beautiful just to make something you think is beautiful, then you’re just a prisoner of your own greed and vanity.” She pointed at the other cages dotted around the courtyard, each containing the captives they’d traveled with in the wagon. “No better than those poor bastards. Doesn’t matter if you’re the slaver or the slave. You’re both fucked.”
Vari nodded as she pondered Dayna’s words. The ranger continued to watch her, yet her gaze had softened a little, as if impressed that Vari would simply listen rather than argue with her. Perhaps she’d surprised the Garlander.
The two of them sat in silence, watching the reivers go about their routines, sharpening weapons, maintaining armor, and keeping a disinterested eye on the prisoners. The two warriors who brought Vari and Dayna some food in the early afternoon were neither kind nor cruel about it. They were simply detached, cold, as they handed Vari and Dayna each a dark rye bun, a cup of water, and a pair of peeled carrots. The bun was freshly baked and tasty, the water was clean and the carrots were juicy and crunchy. While the reivers were clearly not interested in them as people, they were aware that decent grazing made for decent livestock.
As the afternoon light waned into dusk, Vari watched as the reiver captain ordered the changing of the guard and the preparations for dinner. She’d not had the chance to get a decent look at him during the attack on the wagon, to get the measure of the man who could kill Mark with such calculated ease. He wasn’t a big man, shorter and leaner than most of the reivers he commanded, women included, yet he moved with a lithe grace that spoke of both strength and confidence. His lack of scars and tattoos also told an interesting tale, at least to Vari. To rise to the rank of captain with so few signs of injury, that suggested a man smart enough to let others do the fighting for him, and skilled enough to kill without consequence when push came to shove. His hair was long and auburn, tied into a ponytail with a black ribbon, and his ginger beard neatly trimmed.
What struck Vari most was that the captain looked both clean and healthy. He lacked the greyness under his eyes and the flabbiness around his gut that plagued almost all of the soldiers he was now calmly directing. This was a man who was very aware of himself, but not out of vanity. His rattish features and snaggle teeth would’ve disqualified him from any of the male beauty contests she’d frequented, secretly, during her time in the capital. No, this was a man aware of the pitfalls of reiver life and determined not to let them capture him. Why? Possibly ambition, possibly something in his past. Whatever the reason, Vari judged the captain to be a man of thought and self-discipline. She’d seen those combined traits before, and it usually came with the label of Inquisitor. Yes, Vari quietly concluded, the captain was likely more dangerous than any other man or woman within these walls.
There was some good-natured grumbling and bantering as the reivers went about their duties, which the captain laughed off. To Vari, the whole dynamic felt more like a community of farmers at harvest time than a pack of slavers, with the captain as the respected elder. Then again, thought Vari, reivers are people just as Garlanders are people, and people, as a rule, tended to enjoy two things above everything else.
One was normality, that tomorrow would play out just as comfortably as yesterday did. The second was that people simply liked to think the best of themselves. Yes, these reivers were slavers, but in their eyes, that didn't make them bad people. They were simply doing what they needed to do to get by. And of course, if given the chance, the Garlanders would do the same to them. Vari personally doubted that second part, but she knew full well that most reivers were set in their views when it came to Garlanders and their nefarious ways.
A wide-girthed reiver woman carried a crate of clucking chickens into the courtyard and proceeded to behead and pluck them one by one. Nearby, the relieved sentries settled in with mugs of ale and pipes stuffed with tobacco, happy to have their duties done for the day. Their banter and laughter soon grew so loud that it drowned even the panicked squawks of the chickens as they faced their bloodied fates. So it was with some surprise that Vari heard Dayna's harsh whisper through the cacophony.
"Have you gone deaf?"
Vari shook her head.
"Good, because I have a job for you." Dayna wasn't looking at Vari, her focus fixed on the group of carousing warriors.
"What do you mean?"
"I want you to animate one of those deads hens." Dayna pointed at the pile of chickens that had suffered decapitation but had not yet been plucked, gutted, and placed on spits for the fire. "Do you have enough essence points left?"
"Enough for a chicken. But wha
t am I supposed to do with it?" Then she was struck by the irony of the request. “Wait, what happened to all that stuff about meat puppets and living that isn’t living?”
Dayna winked at her. “I’ll say a hunter’s prayer for our chook friend once we’re done.” Then she pointed out one of the warriors, a hefty woman whose skin was all but covered in tattoos. "She has the keys to the cages, and she's just knocked them onto the ground with her mug. They were sitting on the stool beside her and she hasn’t yet noticed that they’re gone."
Vari had her doubts, many of them. "You want me to puppet a chicken over to the keys, pick them up with one of the chicken’s claws, and drag them over here without anyone catching on?"
"Can you do it?"
"Shouldn't we just wait for Mark to get here? He could at least create a diversion."
Dayna shook her head, a disgusted smile twisting her face. "Yes, Mark has probably come back to life." She raised a hand to stop Vari's next question. "Don't bother asking me how the fuck he does it."
"So it's not some kind of Garland magic?"
"Mark isn't a Garlander. I don't know where he’s from, but maybe once we escape and find him, you can ask him yourself. In the meantime, I don’t have the fucking foggiest whether he’s coming to help us or not. And I'd be telling you to do this anyway, even if he was. I’m not in the habit of relying on others to save my ass for me. Not to mention the fact that’d he’d probably fuck it all up, based on his performance when we attacked the wagon."
While Vari thought that Dayna was being a little harsh, she knew the ranger was right in at least one regard. They had no idea if they were going to get any help from the outside, leaving them with only one choice. They had to free themselves and the prisoners, and somehow get out of the fortress without getting everyone killed.
Vari turned away from Dayna and attempted to plot a course from her prospective chicken puppet to the keys and then back along the fortress wall to their cage. The evening shadows had almost reached the carousing warriors and the chook-massacring cook, so her puppet would have liberal amounts of shade to use as cover.
To be on the safe side, she focused on a black-feathered chicken carcass that had rolled a little way from the others, reaching out with her mind, touching the chicken’s still warm flesh with intangible tendrils of essence, igniting the meagre life that remained within. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dayna watching her intently, her thick-fingered hands gripping the bars of their cage. As the chicken twitched and gave its first kick, Vari saw the tendons in the backs of the Dayna's hands ripple as the ranger gripped the bars a little tighter with contained excitement.
Doing her best to visualize the movements a chicken would make, Vari rolled the headless fowl onto its belly and stood it up on its trembling legs. Then she guided it through its treacherous journey, creeping behind the cook and over to the drinking warriors. She tried several times to get the dead bird to hook one talon around the keyring. She succeeded on the fifth go, only just managing to drag the keys out of sight before one of the reiver men walked right through the spot on his way to relieve his bladder against the closest wall. Vari waited until he’d done his business and returned to the group before guiding the hen back towards their cage. The poor thing limped as it dragged about half its own weight in metal across the dirt, and Vari could swear she heard the scraping and jingling of those keys clear across the courtyard. Thankfully, the tattooed woman was performing a long and very loud joke, the punchline of which produced a thunder of laughter that enabled Vari to pick up the chicken’s pace for several valuable seconds.
The headless helper reached the shadow of the cage just as the last guffaws were dying down. Dayna reached out through the bars, scooped up the keys, and nimbly unlocked the padlock. She positioned the lock so that it remained secure to a cursory inspection, then dropped the keys back down by the chicken.
Vari shook her head in disbelief. "You want me to take them back?"
"Unless you feel confident that you can survive the beating that woman will give you when she comes looking for her missing keys?"
Vari took a deep breath and willed the chicken to take the keys in its claw once more. It wasn't so much that the dead hen was difficult to control, but that the situation demanded such careful and continued concentration. She steeled herself for the task, and walked her key-bearer back through the shadows, around behind the cook, and back into the gaggle of warriors. Vari willed the chicken to drop the keys where it had found them, and walk back over to the place of its execution. And as soon as she let it flop back down onto the blood-stained dirt, it was scooped up by the cook to be plucked, gutted and punctured.
Beside her, Danya closed her eyes and murmured a Garland prayer, thanking the chicken for its sacrifice and wishing it well in its next life. Although she knew nothing of the god to which Dayna prayed, Vari found the words comforting. That hen had served them well and its reward consisted of being roasted over a fire, torn apart, and then digested through some reiver’s entrails.
Dayna finished her prayer and shot Vari an implacable look. "Not too bad, for a reiver witch."
Vari was about to deliver Dayna a sharp retort when she noticed the gleam of the ranger’s white teeth through the gathering gloom. The woman was smiling at her now, openly and warmly, and Vari barely recognized her.
Vari smiled back. "It seems I know more about being a chicken than I do about being a warrior."
Dayna laughed as she lay down on her side and tried to make herself comfortable within the confines of the cage. "All right, Mother Hen, let's try to get some sleep before all shit cuts loose." She looked at Vari with hooded eyes that were already drooping with drowsiness. "A little after midnight sound fine to you?" She chased the query with a gaping yawn.
Vari nodded in agreement. "I'll have all of my essence points back by then."
"Good,” Dayna mumbled, “I'll wake you when it's time to move."
Vari thought she'd be wide awake for half the night, but she surprised herself as she lay down and rested her head upon the dirty, bunched sack that was the only thing available as a pillow. Perhaps it was the exhaustion from controlling the chicken or perhaps her adrenaline had finally run out for the day, but even the laughter and shouts of the drunken warriors kept her awake for but a few, short moments.
10
Mark had a flashback to his "real" life. A stinking hot night in Samoa, lying in his undies on a rock-hard bed, watching the largest cockroach he'd ever seen crawl across a concrete wall.
He lost sight of it for a panicked moment, only to hear the ominous creaking and clacking of cockroach wings as the thing flew through the choking night air and ploughed straight into his forehead. And that had been one of the holiday’s highlights. The rest had been a montage of arguments, itchy bites, heat rashes, and sleepless nights worrying about how he was going to pay this trip off his credit card.
By contrast, slaying the monster before him looked much easier and far more enjoyable. His Swordplay talent kicked in as Mark stepped deftly to the right and swept his glimmering sword across the flying insect’s flight path. He felt the fluidity of the motion, the natural grace, followed by the cringe-inducing crunch of steel against chitin. Aided by Arcane Edge, the blade cracked the creature’s hard exterior like it was a chocolate casing and spilled the insect’s gooey center over the stone floor.
The remaining three bugs proved that they could learn from the mistakes of others by fanning out around Mark with the clear intention of coming at him from all sides. It was at this point that Mark rather wished he had a shield. He made a mental note to pick one up as soon as possible. In the meantime, he grabbed the fallen cockroach with his off hand and raised the remains of its carapace so that it blocked the first lunge that came in from the left. Mark braced himself against the impact, thankfully light as these creatures had more bulk than actual weight. At the same time he thrust out at the cockroach on his right, driving the point of his sword between the mandibles tha
t were about to take a chunk out of his leg. The blade sank deep into the insect’s innards, leaving the pinioned creature to twitch and thrash helplessly.
Mark had once seen a short video on YouTube about strange eating customs, and the moment reminded him of live crickets, skewered on kebab sticks, being roasted over an open fire somewhere in Mexico. He felt sorry for those crickets, and honestly felt a bit sorry for this cockroach, but had little time to dwell on his sympathy as the third one leapt onto him, its hairy feet hooking into the leather straps of his armor.
Mark found himself far closer to nature than he'd ever wished. Mandibles opened wide to reveal a pale, undulating sphincter of a throat down which his face was about to disappear. He threw his dead cockroach shield aside, along with the live cockroach scrabbling for purchase on it, and then jammed his leather forearm guard between his assailant’s mandibles. They closed like a vice, not hard enough to pierce the armor, but with enough pressure to bruise the flesh beneath.
The Giant Cockroach has damaged you for 3 HP!
HP: 36/39
Mark knew those bruises were going to smart pretty badly once this fight was over. Still, he had the cockroach where he wanted it. He spun on his heels, and slammed the insect down onto the rubble, putting all of his body weight against it so that it was helplessly pinned. Then, with three powerful strikes, he stove in its head with the pommel of his sword. The lifeless mandibles fell slack, freeing Mark’s arm so that he could turn and face his final opponent.