Tim Lebbon - Dusk

The village was in turmoil. A woman screamed when she saw the devastation on the bridge, and others soon took up her cry. Men emerged from doorways clutching crossbows and swords. Children ran along the street, their eyes widening with a terrible curiosity when they saw their dead friends. Goats and sheebok scampered through the dust, startled to the ends of their tethers, crying and choking as leather leads jerked them to a standstill. The man in red walked on, the robe still tight around his body, hood over his head. From this angle Kosar could see only his back, and for that he was glad. From the glimpse he had caught of the red face, he had no desire to see beneath that hood again.

A woman, mad with grief, tried to run past the man to hug her dead child. His arm snaked out and buried the sword in her stomach. He jerked it free without breaking his step, the woman’s blood splashing his robe. Her scream wound down like an echo in a cave. There was another shout from the village, and the whistle of a crossbow bolt boring the air.

It struck the man in the shoulder. He paused momentarily-

This is when he goes down, Kosar thought, and then they’ll fall on him and he’ll be torn to shreds.

– and then continued on his way. The bolt protruded from his shoulder, pinning the cloak tighter to his body. The shooter reprimed his crossbow, loaded another bolt and fired again, his eyes blinded with grief but his aim still true. This one struck the man in the face. Again he paused, his head snapping back with the impact. And again he went on his way once more. His pace increased, dust kicking up from beneath his red robe, clotted black with his own spilled blood.

Someone stumbled from the door of the brothel farther along the street. It was one of the three militia, naked, flushed and erect from his regular afternoon dose of rhellim, yet still of sound enough mind to bring his longbow with him. A whore staggered out after him, frenzied from rhellim overdose, grabbing at the soldier’s crotch even as he strung an arrow and sighted on the red-robed man. He nudged the whore aside with his knee. She sprawled in the dust and shouted her rage up at him. The soldier let loose his arrow.

It thudded into the man and burst from his back. He stood for a moment like a red butterfly pinned to the air. The first man with the crossbow ran at him, raising his weapon to strike the murderer around the face, but the aggressor moved so quickly that Kosar barely saw the sword shimmer through the air. The crossbow spun across the road and into the stream, closely followed by its owner’s head, mouth still wide in a silent scream.

Another bolt struck home, fired from somewhere beyond Kosar’s field of view. Another, then another. The man barely paused this time, as if becoming used to the impact of wood and iron, his body adjusting itself around the alien objects puncturing and shredding it. He reached the tavern where the regular drinkers were stirring from thoughtless slumber and slaughtered all six of them. He did so slowly, seeming to relish every thrust and slice of his sword, oblivious to the bolts and arrows pounding into his red-robed body.

The other two militia had emerged from the brothel and all three now stood in the street, ridiculously naked and sweat-soaked and hard on rhellim. The whores huddled back against the brothel wall and watched as their men plucked arrows from their quivers, strung, fired, strung and fired again. Each arrow found its mark, and the nearer the man in red came to the militia, the more damage they did.

One shaft struck his throat and exited the back of his neck, carrying a stringy mess of gristle and veins with it. The air was thick with blood. Kosar could not believe what he was seeing; the man should be dead. He resembled a cactus-there were two dozen arrows and bolts peppering his body, and more hitting home every few seconds-and yet he walked. He swung his sword, hacked at the villagers, and their bodies spilled blood into the dust. Kosar watched aghast as the man in red reached the militia. They stood their ground as they were trained, wide-eyed and terrified. They took up their swords, engaged the arrowed-peppered figure together and died together. One was split from throat to sternum by a twitch of the blade, another lost his rampant genitals before his guts followed them to the ground. The third, mad and brainwashed to the last, ran at the enemy with the intention of wrestling him into the dust. The robed figure spun at the last instant, and the soldier was impaled on his own arrows.

With the militia dead, the massacre of the villagers began in earnest.

The man in red still wore the hood over his face. His hands barely seemed to move before another body fell to the ground. And arrows and bolts still thrummed into him.

Time to leave, Kosar knew. He glanced at the bridge, queasy because he had not gone to help those children. But at least this way he still had the stomach to feel sick.

He turned and made his way along the trench on his hands and knees. Each splash in the shallow water was accompanied by a scream from the village, or a groan, or the thud of another useless arrow finding its mark. He’d seen some things in his time, some strange, some unpleasant, some weird and wonderful. But he had never seen a man fighting with thirty arrows letting his blood and twisting up his insides.

He started to pant, and realized only then that he was panicking. The sounds from the village were receding as he lay distance down behind him. They were worse than before-the screams of children once more-but they were quieter now. Certainly not easier to hear, but less of a threat.

Kosar paused for a moment and lifted his hands from the muddy water. The ground was clay here, hardly ideal for planting crops but perfect for coating unwary crawlers with a bloodred deposit. He hung his head until his long hair dipped in as well, perhaps willing himself to be bloodied. He had done nothing. Those children on the bridge, innocent, ignorant only because their parents were ignorant, so alive, so trusting…

He had done nothing.

“Oh Mage shit,” he whispered wretchedly.

The noise from the village stopped. No more screams. No more shouts. No more crossbows twanging, arrows whistling through the air or swords met in sparkling fury. Nothing but the slow, methodical footsteps of one man.

Kosar held his breath and raised his head slightly, looking back over his shoulder, the only sound now the thick water dripping from his hair. His hands were slowly sinking into the mud at the bottom of the ditch, his wounded fingertips stinging under the cold caress. It felt as if they were pressing into spilled guts, and the image horrified him. He was a thief, not a murderer.

How would he know what spilled guts felt like?

And then he realized. As his eyes drew level with the dried grass and he saw the man in red strolling among the dead, he knew. He knew the feel of guts because he had seen them spilled, smelled their tangy scent, heard the screams of their owners as they tried to catch them. He knew because he had stood by and watched those children die, when he could at least have warned them that this man was danger, this man was death. And because a sick realization suddenly dawned and he knew this man, who he was and where he was from. He’d heard whispers of legends, listened to outlandish stories by campfire light or the smoke-hazed atmospheres of taverns a lifetime from here.

The stranger was a Red Monk.

Which meant that somewhere in the land, magic was living again.

FROM THE HEIGHTSabove Trengborne, Kosar watched the Red Monk wandering the silent village. From this distance, the Monk resembled a huge spider, body bristling with arrow spines, his web a trail of blood in the dust. Sometimes he went inside the buildings, and occasionally there was a distant scream as he found someone hiding and silenced them at last. By the time his bloody route crossed and recrossed itself, he was barely moving.