Ragged Heroes: An Epic Fantasy Collection Page 9

  “Yeah, run, coward! You never were a hero,” Tamos spat. “Don’t think this will make anything better.” He turned to the others as they returned to him for further orders. The last gnarl was a charging bull, stomping anything that fell into its path and grinding bodies into the ground. When it locked eyes with Tamos, it let out a yearning, sombre, gurgle.

  “I agree, Marcus,” sneered Tamos. “What the Overlord doesn’t know won’t hurt him. “Elves, lay waste to this village. I mean it. To Osi’s hell with them! Remove it from the map.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jack didn’t get far before he found his path blocked. A stout man with a thatched moustache and sleeves rolled up past his hairy forearms stepped in his way before he even made it past the end of the street. It was his father, Todrick. He was barely recognisable now. His shirt was torn and there was a wild, primitive look in his eyes. His face was a puffy mask of midnight-blue bruising. Jack could roughly tell what he was thinking by the way he was handling a pitchfork.

  “Not now!” Jack yelped, partly to himself as he failed to sidestep his father. “I want to help but I can’t deal with this now.”

  Making eye contact was impossible. He just couldn’t bring himself to peer into the soul of the animal he had created. Trying to dodge him a second time, Jack dropped and rolled. The fork’s prongs stabbed into the cobblestones under his feet and he halted. Confused, he tried to work out why he couldn’t get up. He glanced at the pitchfork. The spikes had narrowly missed his body but had staked his tunic between a couple of cobbles.

  “I always suspected you’d turn out a disappointment,” Todrick whispered.

  “Papa, no! Please.” Tears welled in Jack’s eyes, but his father didn’t seem to care. He pulled the pitchfork out of the ground and wrenched Jack up by the scruff of his collar.

  “Weak,” he said. “I saw it. Your mother saw it. She stayed up every night for the first month of your life just to make sure you didn’t die in your cot like the boy next door. Now I realise she shouldn’t have bothered.”

  The insult burned. He knew the words weren’t coming from his father – not really – but they still struck home. A natural dreamer with ideas nobody in the village understood, Jack had always been considered an oddball, a disappointment. His parents would never say it that way, but he knew that’s what they thought. It just took turning one of them into a monster to hear it. He was just glad his mother wasn’t around to hear. Hopefully, she was still at home. Though, there was little doubt, she had heard the explosion.

  Todrick’s meaty fist hit Jack square in the jaw and his head snapped back. The piercing whine he had been hearing since the explosion was silenced for an instant. Then, after a brief respite, it returned. Not that it mattered. A fog had descended over his mind.

  “Please,” he mumbled.

  Another punch. More silence.

  His father tossed his near-lifeless body to one side, shredding the cotton of Jack’s trousers and tunic on the edge of the pitchfork. Jack cried out as his back struck a hard edge. Something rectangular that had fallen out of his belt. The Booke of Spells.

  Somewhere within earshot Tamos barked abuse. “You think humans are the centre of this world? That monsters can always be overcome, despite their magical prowess, their superior battle tactics, and their freedom from the shackles of honour? Well they can’t, and it’s time you saw their true power with your own eyes! It’s time you realised that heroes never win in the real world!”

  Drunk on his own bloodlust, the elf kept ranting. His minions kept slaughtering. People kept dying. And Jack took blow after blow after blow from his father. A particularly brutal punch made him spit blood, his eyes rolling in his head. Only when they focused did he realise he had fallen on top of the battered book. It lay open under him. Jack recognised the exposed spell. He had used it once before.

  Rolling onto his elbows, he took a closer look. Then a boot slammed into his torso and a bolt of shooting pain ran up his side. A broken rib? Whatever it was, he was screaming. He kept trying to get up but struggled to gain purchase. The next time his father swung his boot he was ready and rolled out of the way. His father overbalanced and fell. Jack took this as his opportunity and grabbed the book.

  On his feet, he raised a finger and pointed. Tamos was laughing. His violent grin faded when he saw Jack was upright.

  “What are you doing?” he snarled. “One last bid at heroism? Don’t make me laugh!”

  Something moved in the edge of Jack’s vision. His father was flying at him, pitchfork held in two hands, raised above his head. Jack flinched, not for his own safety, but because a second attacker swooped in faster. It was a neighbour. A stout woman with a shrewish face.

  Coming up behind Todrick with a carving knife in her hand, she thrust it into his side. The old blacksmith stopped in his tracks. For a second it appeared he couldn’t quite work out what had just happened. The blade was buried up to its hilt in his flesh.

  Stunned, Jack froze. His initial reaction was to rush to his father’s side and hold him up as the pitchfork slipped from his hands but it was already too late. Seeing his body crumple, he stared, petrified by shock. Air clogged in his throat like mud and he felt his lashes turn wet.

  “Argh!” The next noise that came out of him was primordial. It came with savage thoughts, not restrained by reason. He moved quickly. Snatching the knife out of his father’s body, he swung it up, slicing, first air, then skin. A fraction of a second later, a dark patch spread across the woman’s chest and she fell, screaming.

  Jack wanted to stop there but he kept going. He knelt down and kept stabbing the woman to make sure she didn’t get back up. Jack knew this was all his fault. He had murdered his father, and Angelo. And he was stabbing this poor woman to death, too. He wanted to stop but he couldn’t help himself. Even now, struggling to breathe through the tears, he couldn’t stop. He just needed somewhere to focus his anger. Someone else to blame.

  He had caused these horrible things. An unpractised puppeteer, he had pulled strings before finding out how they worked, and the story he imagined had gone terribly wrong. Now he had one last string to pull.

  He staggered up breathlessly and pointed his spell hand at Tamos. His index finger was trembling, his hands covered in blood.

  Tamos’ mouth formed an impressed smirk. “There might be hope for you after all, boy. Feel better now?”

  Jack ignored him. His reaction had been one of pure instinct. A violent means to clear a space around his father. Now, however, was different. He wasn’t filled with the frantic fight-or-flight response. He wasn’t acting on some primitive reflex. His head was clear and his intention was certain.

  His spell hand began to move. First it swept low, and he crouched. He whirled, remembering the ancient, guttural words without reading them off the page. He never stumbled, blocking out everything around him. Realising what was going on, Tamos’ grin disappeared. Scrambling for a sword strewn on ground, he began to close the distance between them.

  Jack spun a second time, continuing the dance laid out in the book. Each second, he was aware that Tamos was closing in. The elf had reached the edge of the square. Clubbing a villager aside with the hilt of his sword, he strode confidently.

  Jack came to his final move, knowing it was perfect. He grinned at Tamos who was now only a few feet away. Speaking quickly, Jack raised his spell hand and pointed at the elf. Then he turned his hand on himself.

  Chapter Nine

  He didn’t want to care anymore. The pain was too great. He had hurt his people and himself. And he knew he was about to do it again. There was no turning back.

  For the first time ever, Jack’s mind went completely quiet. All fear was gone. His father was caked in dirt and blood on the cobbles at his feet, dead, yet he felt nothing.

  Tamos had stopped only feet away, a look of confusion on his face. Jack wasn’t sure how the elf had got there, but Tamos was on his knees.

  “Any last words?” Jack’s voice sou
nded unfamiliar. It had acquired a husky quality, a brevity that exuded confidence in every word.

  “You missed!” The elf laughed, but there was no humour in it. “Even after all this, you had one chance and you missed – on purpose!” He stood up stiffly, taller than Jack. “And you’re asking me if I have any last words?” He laughed again. “Weak. That’s what you are. I don’t know if you know how this works, boy, but I thought you’d realise by now that heroics don’t work in the real world.”

  Jack swiftly produced the Booke of Spells from his belt and opened it. His spell hand raised, he perused a page he had read many times, unconcerned by the elf whose body had now gone rigid. Jack knew from what he had read that the elf was petrifying, filling with paralysing dread, in spite of his fool’s confidence.

  In the past Jack had made a conscious decision not to use the black magic from the back pages of the book. However, that didn’t mean he hadn’t read the spells with great interest and memorised them.

  “Indeed, you’re correct,” he said finally in response to a whimper from Tamos. “Heroics don’t work.”

  Jack didn’t know what he might do next as he looked at Tamos. There was a freedom about such unpredictability he had never experienced before. A carelessness. He knew he could do any number of things and not bat an eyelid. Guilt was an emotion he no longer entertained. The spell he had turned on himself had sucked every trace of that weakness from his body. Each second, his old self slipped further away. But he didn’t care, for he knew he had made the right decision.

  Heroes had their place in the world but this wasn’t one of them. No. What the village needed now was a villain. Not someone who would do what was right. Quite the opposite. They needed someone who was willing to get dirty to survive.

  For the first time, he wondered why he ever felt bad for unleashing this psychosis onto his people. They needed no pity. He, for one, felt better than ever, unhindered by the shackles of moral obligation. It gave him the permission he needed to entertain his base desires. To come to one delicious conclusion: revenge.

  Underused in the small community, Jack had always wanted to see it for himself. Now he could make that happen.

  Following the book’s instructions with an unusual level of confidence, he applied… pressure. Tamos howled, his limbs locking rigid, his body suspended as if by an invisible rope. There was no outward sign of destruction. Just a building pressure in the elf’s face that turned his whole head a deep shade of mauve. He shook, sweating, his heartrate pulsing visibly in his temple.

  Breaking out of Jack’s hold, Tamos moved his arms. At first, they were small, bug-like twitches. Had he been able to breathe, he would have screamed, but words wouldn’t arrive. It was clear from his face that his only thoughts were concerned with how to make the ordeal stop. He had one way out, one way to release himself from the madness.

  Swivelling the sword in his grip, Tamos levelled the tip on his own stomach, lining it up with his vital organs. His bottom lip wobbled as he appeared to come to terms with what he was about to do. Then, letting out another whimper, he winced and pressed firmly towards his abdomen. The sword slid in. The life faded from his eyes.

  Easy! thought Jack.

  To his surprise he was smiling. It was a nasty, insane smile. He knew it but he didn’t care. With Tamos toppling onto his side, he was already searching for another target. His work was far from finished.

  “Get out of my way!” he barked.

  Judging by the reaction from those around him there must have been something visibly different about Jack because, psychotic as they were, everyone stepped aside. He clambered onto the wreckage of the broken doors. There he stood, arms spread-eagled, soaking in the chaos.

  It was unclear whether the approaching elves had seen the full extent of what he had done. If they had, they were either too brave for their own good or had less intelligence than he gave them credit. Swords drawn, they were backed against each other, hacking and slashing at a baying mob that had formed around them. Their leader – the remaining gnarl – was faring better, flinging Wilderfolk in every direction.

  Having trampled a frantic mother into the dirt, it now loomed over her child. A boy named Peter, five years younger than Jack but similar in appearance, was brandishing a fire poker with both hands. His arms wilted under its weight.

  “I’ll save you, Mama, I will!” he screamed to her body sprawled at the gnarl’s feet.

  His eyes were streaming but he steadied the poker as the monster crept forward.

  Such heroics, thought Jack. Fool. And yet he couldn’t help but see a shred of his younger self in the boy.

  “Hey! Mole,” he called without thinking.

  The creature’s head snapped in his direction. Only a few minutes ago, that look would have sent his stomach careering into his throat. Not now. Instead, staying perfectly still, he let a hint of amusement reach his lips and challenged the monster with a taunting stare. It abandoned the young boy and barrelled after him.

  “That’s it,” Jack whispered to himself. He stole one last glance at the Booke of Spells and slipped it into the back of his belt. “Come for me. This is what you want.”

  Sweat dripped down the side of his face as he watched villagers hurl themselves out of the way of the six-legged beast, counting down the seconds to when the abomination would land at his feet.

  Five.

  A teenage girl found herself caught in the monster’s path. She screamed as her body was engulfed in a tempest of crushing legs. There was something brutal about the way her head snapped back an instant before she disappeared.

  Four.

  The gnarl’s throat reverberated, sounding its hunting-horn shriek. The monster attracted several dozen spectators. Fights split down the middle as both warring sides agreed by some silent signal that something more important than their own squabbles was about to happen.

  Three.

  His fingers twitched. He held back the instinct to get out of the way.

  Two.

  Crouching low, Jack pushed his spell hand skyward, murmuring words that meant nothing to him.

  One.

  The monster’s mouth gaped open in front of him, a fleshy tunnel to the afterlife. With its eyes focused on his spell hand, Jack moved quickly, plunging his other into a dark recess between the broken door boards.

  His fingers closed around a heavy chunk of metal and he drove it upwards at the last second before impact. A giant scream engulfed him and the creature leapt several feet into the air to escape the shock of pain. Jack dropped low, rolling to safety, the heat of the beast’s muscles sliding inches away from his body.

  Releasing a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding, Jack watched as the animal hurtled into the Mayor’s hall. The hilt of Tamos’ sword became detached and was discarded on the hall’s flagstones near the entrance. As for the blade itself, it jutted awkwardly from the base of the monster’s oversized jaw. The fractured edge scraped a line into the stone as the beast charged.

  Jack saw the danger well in advance: the sparks flying from the grating sword on the floor; the mess of broken artefacts around the overturned cabinet. He knew exactly what was coming next and, even in his current fearless state, he had the good sense to run. He took off, using the wood under his feet as starting blocks.

  Wilderfolk and elves alike stared at him bewildered as he powered past them, chest puffing, arms and legs pumping. They understood a moment later when an almighty boom detonated inside the hall and the building exploded around the fireball that tore through it.

  Jack didn’t see the explosion. All he saw was the orange hue that reflected off everything around him. Then he was thrown off his feet by the shockwave.

  The next thing he remembered was coming to in a mangled heap, fragments of rock, wood, and earth pattering on his skin. A snowstorm of ash followed after the initial blast had settled.

  “Wha–”

  The word turned into a cough as dust in his throat made its presence known. T
he ringing had returned, but multiplied by ten. Wriggling a finger inside an ear to massage his battered eardrum, he winced.

  All around, the village was tinged with a coffee-brown filter of destruction as smoke billowed in the air. Fires had started everywhere in the village. Their orange, flickering walls separated families and enemies alike. There was little that remained of the main square.

  The Scarlet Overlord’s men had failed. Yet, Jack knew that whatever the tyrant had lost today was nothing compared to the losses of his own friends, family, and neighbours. He watched them, hobbling figures, their lives ruined in a single morning, too broken to fight anymore, too senseless to know how damaged they had become.

  Those further from the blast’s epicentre were relatively unscathed, but only skin deep. Although physically undamaged, their emotional wounds were sure to be devastating.

  One thing was certain: after they had finished searching for survivors amidst the wreckage, and had salvaged what little was left, the villagers would come for him. No matter how much confidence he now possessed, no sleight of hand or remorselessness could protect him from his own people. They knew what he was now, and he was outnumbered several hundred to one.

  “Monster!”

  The first accusation came as a shock. Earlier than expected, a finger jutted through the smoke. It was attached to a man in his thirties – Evan Turnsythe – a neighbour whose children Jack played with as a child. The farmhand’s clothes were so torn by the explosion the cotton had come away in flakes.

  He was limping badly, staggering towards Jack. Even with an injured leg, Jack knew the man had a significant weight advantage over him. The wild look in his eyes was frightening. But what was more frightening was that, given the chance, Jack knew he could strangle the life out of the man without hesitating and watch him shaking in the throes of death.

  He didn’t do that, though. As much as he wanted to experience the rush of murder again, he knew that wasn’t his original plan. It wasn’t him; it was the psychosis slowly taking over the final strongholds of his mind.