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

“Where’s the fun in that?” He grins at her. It is a grotesque expression, his startling white teeth glaring from a mask of blood and excrement.

Jan Ray turns and walks to the far end of the chamber. Trivner has his tools of torture set out here, an array of metal, stone, leather, paper, wood, bone, and jars containing living creatures, that is in itself enough to give anyone nightmares for life. The tools are exquisitely clean, the insects well-kept, and the thought of someone tending lovingly to such things is horrific. She wonders if Trivner has a wife and children, and hopes not.

“So why you?” she asks, picking up a long, pointed bone. It’s hollow, and dozens of small holes give it barbs.

“Why me what?”

“Why have the Wreckers become organized under you?”

“Have they?” he asks, and for the first time she hears doubt. She remains facing away from him, putting down the hollowed bone in favor of a clawed glove. Each flapping finger is tipped with a razor-sharp hook. She can barely imagine the damage this would do to a human body.

She slips her hand inside and grimaces at the slick, oiled feel.

“Of course they have. And they’re little more than gangsters calling themselves terrorists. The name they choose for themselves says it all. They want anarchy, but for their own ends. They spout secularism, but only if it means they line their pockets, get all the slash they want. They claim to shun false gods—”

“All gods are false,” Bamore says, “and the Wreckers—”

“No!” Jan Ray shouts. She turns and advances on the bloodied man, and as she swings her gloved hand she sees something in his eyes that confuses her. The hooks bite in and she uses her weight to tear them through his skin. He screams—

He screams but he’s laughing at me.

—and the hooks open him across the chest. Blood flows. Dal Bamore falls onto his side, and Jan Ray steps back and drops the glove. She has lowered herself to this out of anger and rage, but also because she has feared this man ever since he stood before the Council and said, If Hanharan is a raindrop, I am the storm; if Hanharan is a fly, I am the spider. Now take me and make me God.

“How can you be a god hanging from that Wall?” she shouts, and his cries fade away into a chuckle.

As he sits up, the wounds across his chest cease bleeding.

“No,” she says, backing away. She starts hammering on the door, screaming for Trivner, feeling her old heart fluttering in her chest like a bird trapped in a clenching. “No!”

Bamore stops laughing, closes his eyes, and grimaces, and the cuts heal, leaving only pale streaks beneath the dried blood flaked across his body.

“Whatever you do, they’ll remember me,” he says. As the door behind her opens and she falls out into the unlit hallway beyond, Jan Ray thinks, There’s no way that can happen.

The last time there was a sorcerer in Echo City was almost four hundred years before.

More screams, more shouts, and being blind was driving her mad. Jan Ray poked at knotholes in the wooden shutters with her ceremonial knife, popping out one knot large enough for her to see through. It afforded her a view of the street ahead of them, the dead tusked swine, the Blades gathered around Bamore’s rack, and the facade of one row of buildings. But she only had eyes for Bamore.

Don’t let him wake, she thought. I had no idea how much to give him, or how little; no inkling of how effective it would be. I was flailing in the dark even before this, and now…

If the Wreckers achieved the unbelievable and managed to take him away, there was no telling what Bamore would do. He had come to them supercilious and aloof, welcoming the tortures because they would allow for a miraculous recovery. But he had not expected what had happened after the torture. If he gained time to let it wear off, then perhaps his air of superiority would transform into a need for revenge. And powerful though the Marcellan family was, sorcery was anathema to them, evil and unknown.

One of the buildings to their left was on fire. Screams originated within, and a flaming shape burst from a window and fell into the street. Two Blades shoved their way past a scatter of café tables and approached, and when they confirmed it was a Wrecker and not one of their own, they retreated and left them to burn. The cries soon bubbled to nothing, but the dying person continued moving for some time.

Her soldiers seemed to have taken control. Though surrounded and besieged, they were fighting with calm determination, archers picking their targets, swordsmen allowing Wrecker attackers to approach them, picking their own places to fight. She could see two dead Blades close to the carriage, and further away were six dead Wreckers.

Several arrows struck the carriage. It was too dark inside to see properly, but moving back from the knothole, she saw the gleam of one arrowhead protruding through the shutter. It was likely that they were using poisoned tips; she would have to be careful.

She widened the knothole with her knife, peeling out slivers of wood to afford a better view. When she looked again, it was just in time to see a dozen Wreckers charge into view from the other direction.

Where did they come from? she thought. She almost shouted a warning, but Jave appeared from where he’d been protecting the carriage, rushing across the street toward the enemy. Four Blades went with him, swords drawn, and clashed with the Wreckers close to where Bamore was being shielded.

Jave’s first sword swipe cut across the throat of one shrieking woman, and a spray of blood misted the air. It won’t be long now, Jan Ray thought. Reinforcements would be on their way—the moment the ambush fell, a messenger bat would have been sent back to the barracks at the gate they’d passed through—and she could already see the fight swinging their way. Besieged they might be, but the Blades were far superior fighters.

But then something began to change. The Wreckers engaged by Jave and the others stepped back slightly, swords held before them, and something about their faces was different. It took Jan Ray a moment to discern just what it was, and she squinted through the knothole, wondering whether her poor view was distorting her vision. But no. One Wrecker screamed as his head began to shake, and before he even drew a breath for another shout, he was raving. He leapt forward onto an outstretched sword, his own slashing at the air, other hand clawing for the Blade he’d gone for…and then he grabbed the sword piercing his stomach and pulled himself closer.

The Blade stepped back, forgetting for a moment that she was drawing the impaled man with her. In that moment of confusion, the bleeding, screaming man fisted her across the face. Her head flipped around, and he swung his other hand and buried his sword in her skull.

Other Wreckers had charged, shifting from angry to raving, and they swept across the Scarlet Blades. Blood splashed, but wounds seemed not to hinder them. Blades parried and fought bravely, but they were not used to enemies with slashed throats coming at them still, screams faded but rage just as rich.

“Jave,” Jan Ray said, partly in fear for her captain, partly terror at what she realized had happened. Whatever blasphemous sorceries Dal Bamore had been practicing were employed here to rescue him from certain death.

Jave fell back and hacked at a man slashing at his arms and face. He kicked the man from him, stood, and stabbed him, again and again until he seemed to die at last. Glancing at the carriage, he shouted some order that Jan Ray could not hear, then pointed. Sending them back to protect me! she realized, and six soldiers from around Bamore moved past the dead swine to surround the carriage.