by Paul R. Hardy
in Issue 98, March 2020
Cicatrix of the Thousand Scars marched into the throne room, drenched in blood and spattered by guts (as heroes are wont to be). The hall stank of putrescence and lime, doubtless emanating from the hides of all the creatures that hung in drapes around the hall, obscuring any sight of the throne beyond.
“Where are you, you monster!” she cried. “Show yourself!”
“Are you talking to yourself, dear?” came a musical voice from beyond the shifting skins as they flapped in the drafty hall.
Cicatrix locked her eyes on the source and narrowed them. The scars around her eyes glowed bright. “I can see you, vile beast!”
The voice laughed; a bright tinkling waterfall of diabolical amusement. “Why yes. That’s me. Vile and bestial as ever.”
Cicatrix hacked her way through the stitched pelts of a dozen shaggy bears and beheld her enemy at last: Excoria, the Duchess of Flay, reclining in ease upon her skin-clad throne, gowned in creaking leathers and wearing a head-dress made from the skull of a giant adder. The villain smiled with a hooked mouth as she looked down upon the hero, whose flesh smouldered with power along the lines of her thousand scars.
“Your tyranny ends this very night!” cried Cicatrix.
“Oh, tyranny, pish,” said the Duchess. “Honestly, I’m less demanding than the average king. You’d probably quite enjoy serving in my armies. I could do with a decent general.”
“Never will I serve your evil cause! My only goal is your annihilation. Each of my thousand scars gives me the power of a vanquished foe–“
“Oh dear, that sounds absolutely exhausting.”
“–and with their might will I destroy you!”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to rest before you cleave me from head to toe? You must have killed a hundred skinless wolves on the way in.”
“Abominations!”
“Why yes, I am quite proud of them, thanks for asking. But surely you’d rather have a cup of tea? And a slice of cake?”
“Vile temptress!”
“Oh, you,” smiled Excoria, waving away the insult as though it were a compliment. “Well, maybe you’re not a fan of cake. Perhaps I could interest you in a buttered scone…?”
“All I want from you is your death!” cried Cicatrix, flinging her arms and blades wide and spattering blood from them onto the skins hanging near her. Every muscle strained as the scars down her body burned bright, screaming power in a thousand dead voices.
She charged, legs eating up the yards between the two of them, eyes fixed utterly upon her foe, so obsessed that she did not trouble to mark where her mighty feet pounded upon the bearskins just before the throne–
–thus failing to notice the pit trap hidden beneath them.
Cicatrix fell out of sight and Excoria rolled her eyes. “Dear, oh dear,” she said, and lifted herself from her throne to peer down at the hero as she picked herself up from the base of the pit, surrounded by the shattered remains of razor-sharp spikes that had failed to do more than graze her scarred flesh. She leapt into the air, more than three times her own height, but the leather sides of the pit were oiled and she slid back down again.
“I’m going to climb out of here!” yelled Cicatrix, retrieving one of her blades and stabbing it into the wall, then following it with another to begin her climb. “And then I’m going to rend you limb from limb!”
Excoria sighed. “Yes, I think you probably might. Such a shame you don’t have the time.”
She took a small earthen pot from beside the throne, lit a fuse at its neck and tossed it down into the pit. Cicatrix hacked it out of the air as it fell, but only succeeded in igniting the dust inside. A billowing green smoke filled the pit, making her clutch her throat.
“Heroes and beasts,” sighed Excoria as she peered down into the pit. “All the same, really. Not very bright.”
Cicatrix collapsed to her knees as she choked, the glowing scars fading to nothing. “What–” she gasped. “What is this–“
Excoria called down to her: “I said, you’re not very bright, dear.”
The hero tried to make a retort, but gagged on the smoke and collapsed to the pit floor, only managing to get something out in the last few seconds:
“This is bloody typical–“
And then she died, with a peevish look on her face.
“Well!” said Excoria as a dozen skinless goblins crept into the hall, hunched over in fear of the leather whip hanging from her belt. “At least that’s over. We’ll need to step up production of skinless wolves, my dears. And do find some way to make them at least a little more vicious. They’re just not stopping the riff-raff from getting in. As for said riff-raff…” She looked down into the pit and cocked her head to one side. “I think she’ll make an excellent addition to my wardrobe. Not enough skin for a gown but I’m sure you’ll think of something. Just keep the scars, hmm? I want their power…”
The goblins mumbled their obeisance and set about their work. A mere trice of weeks later, the tanned skin of Cicatrix of the Thousand Scars hung from Excoria’s shoulders in the form of a dainty cloak.
“Oh!” she sighed as she turned in front of a triptych of full-length mirrors while her sewing goblin looked on with a measuring tape strung round their skinless shoulders. “It’s a mantle! So thoughtful! Just what I’ve always wanted. But did you manage to preserve the power of the scars, hm?”
The sewing goblin looked up at her, helplessly.
“Oh, dear, yes,” said Excoria. “I had your mouth stitched shut, didn’t I? All that yapping about things that had nothing to do with conquering the world. So tedious. Oh, well, I’m sure I can find out by myself. Let me see…”
She stretched out her arms and spread the short cloak wide. Her eyes rolled up in her head and the scars upon the mantle burned with power, glowing with distant voices that suddenly rushed close and screamed with might.
“Oooh!” she said as the power flowed into her. She slammed a foot upon a flagstone and shattered it to pieces. Then she laughed. A truly evil laugh. Tinkling with unbridled malice.
“Now,” she grinned. “Now I can lead my armies in person. Soon the world will be mine!”
Oh, look at the state of that floor, someone’s going to have to replace that.
“Who said that?”
Name’s Jobson, stonemason by trade.
“Ah,” said the Duchess. “You must be one of the foes she killed in battle…
Well, it wasn’t really a battle. Not as such.
“What was it, then?”
More a tavern brawl, really.
“Goodness.”
I spilled her tankard, you see. And mayhap I had a few words to say about her garb.
“Well, I can quite sympathise with her on that score–“
What’s this? We’re a cape now?
“Another one?”
We’re a sodding CAPE?
“It’s a mantle, actually. Quite fetching, I think you’ll find.”
Well, you’ll never conquer the world looking like that, young lady! You need armour! And a sword! See, I told Cicatrix this, I did. You can’t rely on magic, you need good steel plate ‘tween you and your foe–
“And how did Cicatrix penetrate your armour, perchance?”
Well. Bit embarrassing. Don’t like to say.
“Oh, go on.”
I was minding my own business, I was. Personal business. Between me and the necessary house. She got all shirty ’cause she wanted to use it and I was in there too long.
“I see.”
Well, takes time to get all that armour off so you can relieve yourself…
“Yes, I think I’ve heard enough on that front, thank you…”
Ugh. Is that goblins you skinned for your minions? Can’t stand bloody goblins. Them and their pointy ears and slitty pupils…
“Oh, for heaven’s sake…”
And I bet that’s all you’ve got for an army as well. Just like a tyrant. They’ve all got bloody goblins. What’s wrong with having decent human folk in your diabolical army, eh?
“Would I be right in assuming that Cicatrix killed all her foes in taverns, perchance?”
Nay, she slaughtered me in a temple! Why, I was just about to commence the sixth hour of my recital of the Epic Of Elcamenicar–
“…were you now.”
Tis a mighty prose paean to a mighty god! An honour it is to hear, and mighty the one who can stand to hear it! Why, the seating arrangements alone are a test of any hero’s endurance!
“I think I’ll give it a miss, thank you. Please tell me there aren’t too many of you. How many scars did she say she had?”
A thousand, I believe.
“Oh good gods…”
Though perhaps that was a boast. And may I say that we have been made into the most delightful mantle?
“Ah! Someone with taste at least. And where were you–“
She slew me in a brothel while she was undercover. So to speak.
“Well. We all have needs…”
Yes. Needs. Such needs. Oh sweet duchess, if you could only stroke the scar upon your left shoulder… oh stroke it please for it is all that remains of my mortal flesh… Stroke it, dear duchess, stroke it–
She flung the mantle away in disgust.
“One day,” she sighed. “One day the world will be mine…”
©March 2020, Paul R. Hardy
Paul R. Hardy has published stories in Future SF, Escape Pod, and Diabolical Plots with work forthcoming in a variety of markets. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.