Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

Mommy! Mommy! Help me!

None left. Of course they could not be entirely certain of that, but they’d scoured every possible hiding place, rooting out the snarling oversized rats and chopping them to pieces.

Skint led them back to the arbalest armory, where they loaded up on bolts, including the assault quarrels with their looped ends, as well as bundles of thick cables. The walk back to the ladder was slow and awkward, with all the blood, corpses, and gore cluttering the passageways. By the time they strode out into the main chamber, Dullbreath was waiting for them. He nodded to a small figure pinned by a tiny sword to the floor in the center of the room.

“Still breathing?”

“Hard to say. Hard to kill for real, those things.”

“All right. Good work, Dullbreath. Let’s get ready then.”

The girl who walked in through the keep’s doors clutched a bundle of plucked flowers, her blond hair drifting like seed fluff. Her large eyes settled on the tiny figure of the imp nailed to the floor, and she edged closer.

Her expression fell as she looked down on her dead child. Kneeling, she set aside her flowers and reached out to brush that tiny, cold forehead.

Then, as she straightened, five soldiers stepped out from behind pillars, each bearing loaded arbalests.

The girl raised her scrawny arms and vanished inside a blurry haze. Spice-laden clouds rolled from where she stood, and the soldiers stared as she awakened to her true form, burgeoning, towering at almost twice the height of an average man, and easily twice as wide. Fangs as long as short swords, a mass of muscles like bundles of rope, hands that could crush armored soldiers as if they were frail eggs.

Huggs snorted. “A demon, huh? That’s not just a demon, Captain. That’s a fucking Harridan!”

“Commander of a legion,” added Dullbreath. “What were they thinking?”

The demon opened its maw and howled.

The sound deafened them, shook plaster loose from ceiling and walls.

The soldiers lifted their weapons. And fired.

The bolts pounded deep into the giant beast, and each dart snaked cables behind it—cables bound around the base of a pillar. The hinged barbs on the heads snagged deep in the demon’s flesh. Shrieking, it sought to pull away, but the thick ropes snapped taut—to tear loose of any one of the quarrels would break bones and spill out organs and who knew what else.

“Reload,” growled Skint.

And so they did.

Dawn’s light slowly stole in through the entrance, crept across the floor of the main chamber.

“Last crate,” said Flapp in a ragged, exhausted voice.

He went around, passing out the last of the bolts. Cranks clanked, but slowly.

Wither stepped up to squint at the pin-cushioned heap of mangled flesh huddled in the center of the chamber, and then shrugged and returned to her arbalest.

Five weapons clanged. Five bolts sank into the body.

“Quivered some,” observed Flapp.

“So would you,” said Huggs. “No whimpers though. Those stopped some time ago.” She turned to the captain. “Could be it’s finally dead.”

“Prod it with your sword,” Skint commanded.

“Me and my big mouth.” But Huggs drew her weapon and edged closer. She gave the thing a poke. “Nothing.” She poked harder. Still no response. So she stabbed. “Hah! It’s dead all right.”

Arbalests dropped from exhausted arms.

“Saddle us up, Withy. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“You got it, Captain.”

Graves had been up all night. No amount of beeswax could have stoppered up that seemingly endless chorus of screams and howls from the keep. It had never been so bad. Ever. Those soldiers, they’d died hard. Damned hard.

He rigged up his mule and cart and led the procession—a quiet bunch this morning, for sure—up to collect the remains and whatever loot came out with it. Work was work, wasn’t it just. People did what they did to get by, and what else was life all about? Nothing. That was it. It and nothing more. But, dammit, he didn’t want the boy to spend his whole cursed life here in Glory, didn’t want him taking over when Graves gave it up, not stepping in when Slim finally swallowed her ring and choked to death—the gods knew she wasn’t going to die naturally. Didn’t want any of that, not for the boy.

After sending a few scowls at the bleary-eyed but ever-greedy faces arrayed behind him, he tugged the reluctant mule up to the first of the hillside’s switchbacks.

And then stopped.

As the first clump of horse hoofs sounded up ahead.

The captain was in the lead. The others followed. Every one of them. Five, aye, five one by one by one by one by one.

Graves stared.

As she passed him, Skint flung a bloody mass of something at him. Reflexively, he caught it and looked down at the wilted remnants of flowers. Dripping red.

The sergeant was next. “Five graves? Not enough, sir, not by a long shot.”

Wither added more as she rode past, “Try about ninety-five more.”

Huggs snorted. “And a big one, too, and I mean big. Oh, and a tiny one, too.”

Dullbreath halted opposite Graves and looked down at him with jaded eyes. “For fuck’s sake, Graves, we kill those fuckers for a living.”

He rode on. They all did.

Graves looked down at the flowers in his hand.

People do what they do, he reminded himself. To get by. Just that, to get by.

“Two days to Piety,” said Flapp as they rode along the track on the slow climb to the distant valley mouth.

“And then—”

“Captain,” called out Dullbreath from the rear.

They all reined in and turned.

Slim was riding a mule after them, the old whore rocking back and forth like she’d never learned how to ride, and that struck Flapp as damned funny. But he didn’t laugh.

“We got us a camp follower,” said Wither. “I don’t believe it.”

Flapp opened his mouth and was about to say something, and then he stopped—he’d caught a glint of metal—from way up the trail they’d come down yesterday. “Captain! I saw a flash of steel! Halfway up to the pass!”

Everyone stiffened. Stared, breaths held.

“There! You seen it?”

And the look Skint turned on him was twisted into a mask of unholy terror. “He’s still after us! Ride, soldiers! To save your lives, ride !”

GLEN COOK grew up in northern California and served in the U.S. Navy with the Third Marine Recon Battalion, an experience that fundamentally affected his later work. Cook then attended the University of Missouri and the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. His first novel, The Heirs of Babylon , appeared in 1972 and was followed by a broad range of fantasy and science fiction novels, including the humorous fantasy Garrett PI series and others. His most important work, though, is the gritty Black Company fantasy series, which follows a mercenary unit over several decades and which brought a whole new perspective to fantasy. Cook is currently retired and lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he writes full-time.

We were playing tonk. One-Eye was in a foul mood because he was losing. Situation normal, except nobody was trying to kill us.

Elmo dealt. One-Eye squeaked. I peeked at my cards. “Another hand so damned bad it don’t qualify as a foot.”

Otto said, “You’re full of shit, Croaker. You won six out of the last ten hands.”

Elmo said, “And bitched about the deal every time.”

“I was right every time I dealt.” I was right this time, too. I did not have a pair. I had no low cards and only one face card. The two in the same suit were the seven and knave of diamonds. I do not have years enough left to fill that straight. Anyway, we all knew One-Eye had one of his rare good hands.