by Alex Beecher
in Issue 124, May 2022
The girl tending the bar offered me a shot of fermented fish liver oil before my beer, which is how I figured she was wise–it was winter, and dark, and soft bones followed the sun’s disappearance, this high and this far north–and then didn’t so much as meet my eye contact after I tipped, which only confirmed her wisdom.
I looked worn at the best of times, and my best times were a couple decades past. I could feel splinters through the rumor of leather passing for my boots as I walked back to my table, saw two men sitting there who hadn’t been when I left.
One was the biggest man I’d seen in a season. The other was bigger.
They saw me see them, moved just enough for the chair legs to complain loudly.
“This your table?” asked the bigger one.
“Was,” I said. “But I don’t see my name on it.”
The other man laughed. “This is the part where you say you don’t want no trouble, right?”
“Seems you said it for me,” I replied.
They paused. I said nothing.
They broke.
“Maybe we want trouble, soldier.”
“Soldier?” I asked.
They both nodded.
I looked left, and then right. “Can’t be.”
“Can’t?”
“What’s a soldier, to you?”
“Any person who stands like you do. Got the look.”
I shook my head. “Can’t have just one soldier. A warrior–maybe. But a soldier can’t be singular. Not really.”
“And yet you find yourself alone,” he sneered.
I nodded. “So, you get the point after all.”
“And you, perhaps, will get ours.”
I sighed, let my hand drift toward my hilt. No sense hiding the movement. They would see what they would see and they would react, or not, in ways variously appropriate, or not, and we would get on with it. With the whole damn thing.
There is a moment where a person must decide if they are willing to kill or not. I saw the men making their calculations. One moment, and then another. One too many. I had already made my decision.
They began to reach for their blades and to stand. I kicked the table into their chests, stunting their movement. My blade flashed–and stopped, just short enough for a shave no self respecting barber would charge for.
The bigger man looked into my eyes, his pupils dilated and empty as the space between the stars, a void into which he knew he could have fallen into. Could have been kicked into, by me, had I wanted to.
“Sit,” I said. “I’m not a soldier. But I’m not a killer either. Unless I have to be. Don’t make me have to be.”
He sat, slowly. And nodded. “Be whatever you want, sir.”
I shook my head. “Being whatever you want is a promise parents make to children. I’d like to be a lot of things, but I am what I am.”
I sheathed my blade, turned my back on the men, and walked to an empty table. The girl at the bar nodded to me. I nodded back. Tried to smile in a way that communicated that I knew blood and bile were difficult to clean, and I couldn’t tip enough to make it worth her while.
The door opened with a start, but no light came through–and not just because it was night. The man entering was enormous, eclipsing the entrance, but there was something else about him, a kind of unlight, a darkness that I could see. ‘See’, of course, not really being the right word for it, but it’s as close as this language can get. In the Old Tongue, the one spoken by lichen and stone, there is something. But about that, I only knew enough to know the depths of my ignorance.
He stomped into the bar, moving like a man newly acquainted with his size. Bumping into things, and almost knocking his head on one awkwardly low rafter. He moved slowly, with exaggerated languidness, trying to hide it as nonchalance, like a man who had worked so hard to forge a massive physique that the effort required to move it about wasn’t worth any additional effort. He looked like a troll whose bridge had collapsed and was out looking for a new one.
Eventually, he made his way to the table occupied by my two erstwhile friends. They spoke to him in a low whisper and cast furtive glances my way. He turned, and there was nothing at all furtive about his glare. It was only a matter of a few loud strides, and he placed himself in front of me.
“My men tell me you’ve been causing trouble.” His voice wasn’t precisely low, but seemed to echo from some depth, as if he’d cast it down a well and had it come back up for effect.
I shrugged. “Maybe there was a brief misunderstanding, but no trouble. Anyway, I’m just passing through. I’ll hit the road in the morning, and you’ll never see me again.”
“I’m afraid that won’t work. You see, this is my town, and I own the roads too. You stay, you owe me.” He smirked. “But to leave, you owe me a toll, too. What can you afford to pay?”
I sighed. “Have a seat. Let’s discuss this.”
I watched as he moved the chair out from under the table, not quite enough to accommodate his bulk, moved to sit, recalculated, and stood back.
“Not comfortable for a big man like you?” I asked. “I understand. Maybe we’ll take a step outside. There’s a big, open sky in this part of the world. No risk of bumping your head.”
His eyes shone, and I saw him pause to weigh whether he would be diminished by accepting my offer, even if it was what his pride demanded. After a moment, he nodded, apparently unable to find a biting enough retort. I just walked out the door, into the quiet and cold night, beneath a different display of stars than the last time I had to do something like this. Looking up, they didn’t seem entertained by the relative novelty. Fair enough–I wasn’t either.
I turned, drew my sword, and–looking at my opponent–tried to recall whether most people in this part of the world studied Johannes’ Treatise or Codex. I saw the big man, his dark penumbra shimmering, adopt a passable Auroch stance. Codex, then. From page one.
I focused on his blade–which wasn’t especially difficult, as it was leveled at my face. If the man exuded darkness, the blade positively luxuriated in it. It was darkness as a stark presence in and of itself, not merely an absence of light.
I smiled and shifted into the prescribed defense against a larger man adopting Auroch. The big man moved to Ditch Digger, and I countered by the book’s dictates. He shifted again and again, and so did I, until we reached the last prescribed stance–and the last page. He paused and shifted his feet like a farm boy at his first town dance. Only, I wasn’t a blushing local girl about to ask him to two-step.
“Not a very extensive library around here?” I goaded, and sheathed my sword.
This surprised him. Angered him, too. Bullies are like that, predictably.
I drew an ugly little notched dagger from my boot, and said “This should be good enough.”
He charged, all bluster, abandoning any pretense of the forms he probably hadn’t ever practiced much anyway, and attempted a clumsy overhand swipe.
I moved the dagger a few inches, letting the power of his swing drive the blade into the deepest notch, and twisted my wrist as if discarding a bad hand of cards.
The sword cracked. Barely. But enough.
The darkness went out, the looming, cold presence evaporated; and the stars seemed suddenly brighter, perhaps a little more present. Maybe I had gotten their attention after all.
And the big man in front of me, wasn’t. Not really. He was big, still, but lesser–both in stature and presence. He was younger, and there was nothing of the power that had enveloped him, projecting out like a black sun.
He dropped the sword–now just an average blade–and stepped back, his face a rictus of panic and shame.
I raised a hand to mollify him, lest those two turn to rage. I didn’t want to kill him, but people are never more aggressive than when they are made to feel weak.
“How…” he stammered.
“Not the first magic trinket I’ve seen that can impart some cheap glamour, and maybe even buff a little of your natural attributes. Not the first I’ve broken, either. Nor are you the first young man I’ve seen who uses one to make himself feel bigger than even magic can make him look, who has read a pamphlet or two and now thinks he’s a real brigand, a real strongman, who can take a shortcut to wealth and–” I closed my eyes, shook my head.
“Bullshit!” he spat. “You don’t know anything about my life. So you made some lucky guesses and got even luckier with a broken knife.” He reached for his cracked sword. “I don’t need anything but what I’ve got to kill you.”
“Don’t try,” I said. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear because young men never do, but I was like you once, and–”
“Bullshit!”
“Gods dammit, kid, I grew up on a farm, before I went on and made many of the mistakes you’re aiming for. One thing I know for sure is that just because bullshit stinks to the deepest Hells doesn’t mean it isn’t real, or that you don’t have to shovel it sometimes. This is one of those times. But one of the other things I know is this: if you shovel it, the work gets done. Then you can move on. But not before.”
Some part of his rage cracked, just like his sword had. He looked at the broken blade. “I guess this won’t be good for much more than that sort of work. Maybe I won’t be, either.”
I had exerted myself too much breaking this young man down; I didn’t have the stamina or patience to build him back up. “You’ll be whatever you make yourself.”
I saw something like hope dawn on his face, “Hey, you could–”
“No. I’m leaving, like I said. Alone. The only thing you can do for me is tell me where you got the sword. A third-rate enchanter selling things like that causes all sorts of problems.” I looked back up at the stars, hopefully disguising the eye roll. “But let’s head back inside for now. You can tell me about that. Maybe I can tell you a thing or two of some use.”
I’m not sure whether I had any additional wisdom to impart, but he did give me a story regarding how he got the sword. Not an any-rate enchanter after all, but a winding tale about an even more winding cave system just a day from town, into which he had delved, and found the black sword that’d turned him into a puffed-up version of himself. He said it was a goblin hoard, and I said that was bullshit, and he reminded me what I’d just said about the reality of bullshit–which was at least some proof he could learn a lesson. Anyway, I didn’t clarify what I’d meant, that goblins were of course all too real, but that a goblin city a day from this town meant that this town wouldn’t exist. Ignorance isn’t bliss, but sometimes it’s less bitter than a given piece of knowledge.
Ultimately, I wasn’t sure what to make of his story but decided it would be worth exploring myself tomorrow. I didn’t have anywhere better to go, or anything better to do. That decided, and the night stretching thin, I made my way to the bar to pay for my drink, and his.
The girl smiled at me, and I smiled back, trying to straighten myself up just a little–but I didn’t have any glamour to make me look bigger, or better. Still, there was something about her look that seemed… appraising, and not disappointed in the balance she found.
“Just the drinks, or will you be paying for a room too?” she asked.
“Guess I’d better.”
She looked away demurely. “You know, those men had been causing a lot of problems here these last few weeks. I’m awfully grateful you solved them.”
I coughed. “Well. It was nothing, really.”
She waved away my objections. “No, no. I couldn’t let you pay for a room. It’s not much, but my place is close…”
I felt, at that moment, as if no magic existed that could make me feel so big, so vigorous and young. Into the conversational breach I prepared to stride, my affirmation drawn and ready to strike.
“If you’d like to meet my mother,” said the girl. “I know this is awfully forward, but ever since my Dad died… well, it’s been years, and you look about the same age, and I just thought maybe you could have another drink, maybe a bite, and see.”
There was rubble in that conversational breach, it turned out. I nearly tripped but settled myself.
“Thank you for the offer of hospitality,” I replied. “I’d love to visit.”
There was, after all, value in experience.
© May 2022, Alex Beecher
Alex Beecher is an emerging author. This is his first published story.