by Harold R. Thompson
in Issue 105, October 2020
I didn’t get tired of the killing. You know that wasn’t it, not for me. I got tired of fighting the same enemies, the same villains, the same assholes. Not the exact same assholes, but the same type of guys. Over and over. So after I made a pile of gold on what turned out to be my final job, I said to hell with it and settled in this little hut on the edge of the Enborn Forest. I cut and sold a little firewood sometimes, but mostly I hunted and fished and went for long walks. I contemplated my life. I grew more and more anxious and dissatisfied.
One day these two kids came to see me, this girl about fourteen and her little brother, riding mules. Just rode right into my clearing. I was chopping wood for the pure satisfaction of it, but I stopped when I saw them ride up. Two kids in plain linen shirts and leather breeks, covered in dust.
“We seek Sir Jervis,” said the girl in her little squeak.
“That’s me,” I said, putting down my axe. “Your quest is over.”
The girl’s dark eyes went wide and she said, “I thought you would have a beard!”
I rubbed my baby-smooth chin. Yeah, I’d had a beard, but it’d started to come in grey, made me look like an old man. I remembered when it was red. I’d liked it red and didn’t like it grey. So off it went.
“I shaved it,” I told her. “Now what can I do for you?”
I knew they wanted something, and I was pretty sure I already knew what it was. They wanted help. They wanted the awesome Sir Jervis. And I was right.
I listened to their sob story. They were from an ancient people, descended from the Macronians, who built the foundations of our civilization. They’d been reduced to this small community living in the Five Hills. I knew all that already, knew there really was a remnant of these people there. That was all fine. The next part made me shake my head.
“We are being persecuted, sir,” the girl said while the boy just frowned and nodded every now and then. “Every month now. The landtharn sends his men, his soldiers, to take what he calls tax, but it’s not a tax, it’s our people. He takes one away every few weeks to be his slave, and they never come back.”
Shit like this is going on all over the world, I wanted to say, so what makes you special? But I didn’t want to be rude. Not to a couple of kids. I had to let them down easy.
“I don’t do this kind of thing anymore,” I said. “I’m retired. Sorry, but you’ll have to find some other champion.”
The girl objected and the boy frowned, but I was having none of it. I sent them packing. I wasn’t interested in getting back into the hero business. I’d tried that, but it was like holding back a wave with my fingers, you know? I could catch a few droplets but most of the water just crashed around me.
They finally gave up and rode off. I watched them with my axe on my shoulder. That’s when the girl looked back. I think it was her look that did it. It was her big sad eyes in that dirty face, framed by that messed up hair. They were so full of hurt and fear and disappointment that something twisted in my guts, like a fist punching me from the inside. Maybe it was my soul telling me to smarten up.
That night I opened my old trunk, just to check on the state of my gear, the stuff I hadn’t sold or given away. Or so I told myself. It smelled like must and was in pretty bad shape. I had a leather hauberk covered in steel discs, wrist bracers, bronze shin guards, and an old leather helmet reinforced with steel rings. Junk, really. My weapons consisted of a dirk and some charms, including a little bronze mirror that was supposed to reflect spells back toward the caster, and a few smoke bombs and a potion that provided some protection against fire (which actually worked). My remaining sword, a three-foot Forman blade, was under my cot wrapped in oiled cloth, but the moisture had still gotten in and there was rust on the blade.
I took the sword outside to my wheel and ground the worst brown crud off and gave the thing an edge, just to see if I could.
The next morning I was up early, cooked myself some bacon, ate some and packed the rest for the road.
“Fuck it,” I said, and dressed in my battered armour. It didn’t fit, the straps were on their last holes, and the helmet dug into my skull on the right, but that was the best I could do. After belting on my weapons and filling a shoulder pouch with stuff I might need, I went and saddled old Ralph, who was busy pulling at the grass in my little pasture.
“Just a little trip, ol’ buddy,” I said. “Just for a couple of days.”
I rode through the village, heading south. One of the local boys was there whacking a hoop with a stick, one of the kids who come out to my hut to listen to my stories, and he grinned a big grin when he saw me.
“Where you going, Sir Jervis?”
“To make the world a better place!” I told him.
Yeah, I know. I laughed at that.
I tried to catch up to the kids on the mules, but I never did. I don’t know how they got back to the Five Hills before me, but Ralph wasn’t much of a galloper anymore. It was a two-day journey, and I was sore as hell, every joint aching from camping alongside the road, when the ancient Macronian ruins came into view. Those ruins are all over the empire, but there’s a cluster of them in Five Hills where a city once stood. I forget its name, though I should know it. The Macronians had been great builders and thinkers and so on, and we all owed a lot to them, but invasions and migrations had reduced their descendants to a small tribe that had been kicked around for years. Now they lived in mud and thatch huts in the shadow of broken marble columns and what had been huge halls and magnificent palaces, just fallen stones and crumbled bits of brick.
I rode up what looked like the main street, and people came out and surrounded me. They looked fearful, but then I saw the girl who’d come to my hut. I wondered what authority she had, just a kid, but she ran toward me with her hands over her mouth.
“You came!” she said.
“I may have changed my mind,” I said.
She started to babble and I had to tell her to slow down, to take it easy, and was there an adult around I could talk to? The answer to this last question was no. She was the last surviving descendent of their king or queen or whatever, but was dependent on the local tharn. The landttharns are landowners who have proven title to an area of land. Old families mostly. So the local tharn owned the land where the Macronians lived, despite their ancestry.
The little dispossessed queen took me to her palace, which had been a real palace probably a thousand years ago. Now it was a tent set up between four walls that had lost their roof. She sat in a chair made of birch logs, and her people, men, women and children, crammed in behind me as she told me their story.
“What does the tharn want with the captives?” I asked. “What does he make them do?”
“There’s a sorcerer,” the girl, whose name was Saran, told me. “An evil man with evil eyes. He takes them… to perform experiments, he says.”
She’d complained to the tharn, complained all the way up to the emperor, but the empire doesn’t like to get involved in tharn business, which is beneath them, I guess. And no one cares about the Macronians.
“And you want me to take on the landtharn,” I said, stroking my chin where my stupid grey beard had been. My helmet kept sliding down over my eyes, and I pushed it back. “I’m just one man. What am I supposed to do?”
“Not just the tharn,” Saran said, “but the sorcerer. He has the tharn in his thrall. He is a member of the Guild of the Eye.”
I laughed at that.
“Right.”
Then I sighed.
The Guild of the Eye are the biggest assholes in the empire, learned magicians and philosophers who push everyone around, even tharns and possibly the emperor himself. It made sense, now, why a tharn was stealing people. That was a Guild trick. That was the Eye. They thought of themselves as above the law, and to attack one member was to attack them all. They were unrelenting in their revenge.
I looked around that pathetic tent, suddenly wondering what I was doing there. Here I was playing hero again, the mercenary who only took jobs that allowed him to right some wrong, kill some monster or kick some bully’s ass. I’d been a real knight once, trained by the best, but when my kingdom had been absorbed by the empire, I went my own way. I was angry, really pissed at the annexation of my home, my people, but I blame my mother for teaching me about justice and fairness and how the evils of the world don’t come from the gods but from people treating other people like shit. If we want a better world, we have to make it.
But I’d quit. Why was I letting myself get sucked back in?
Because I should never have quit.
I knew the Guild of the Eye were a bit much for me to tangle with, but what did it matter? What was I doing with my life anyway? I’d given up, gotten tired, and that made me useless.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Where do I find this sorcerer, and what’s his name?”
As it happened, the landtharn and his pet (or the other way around) wizard were due to collect their human tax in a few days, which was why Saran had gone looking for me. So I didn’t have to wait long to do my job. I had a few days to think about strategy, and came up with a bunch of plans that I threw away in favour of the direct approach. I figured I’d meet these guys, size them up, and make my move.
On the appointed day, I planted myself at the end of the main street. The Macronians were hiding in their huts and tents. I waited on foot for a while, letting Ralph munch on grass tufts that sprouted from the ruins, but when I finally saw my adversaries, I climbed back into the saddle.
Six horsemen in full plate armour approached the ancient city. I didn’t think any of them were the tharn or the sorcerer, more like flunkies. Household guards. Their gear looked expensive, but a couple of them sat their horses like sacks of oats. You’ve probably heard that you shouldn’t underestimate your opponent, and that’s true, but so’s the opposite. I had these guys pegged and knew my standard tactic, tactic number one, would do just fine, if I timed things right.
The horsemen formed a semi-circle and halted at the end of the street. Two approached me, their captain, I assumed from his bearing, and a second man who looked like the biggest of the bunch. He had a battle axe strapped to his back. I wondered if there was any point in talking, but decided I may as well give it a shot. I held up my hand and nudged old Ralph forward.
“You’re trespassing,” said the guard captain as I reined in close enough to see his eyes thanks to his raised visor, “on the lands of Lord Bartol Demuel. I will give you one warning, and then I expect you to leave.”
This was a nice start.
“I’m here as a guest of these people,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“We come on the tharn’s business, and you’re barring our way. Now move along!”
This was a waste of time. I hoped Ralph was up for some fun, and kicked the poor old boy in the sides, causing him to lurch forward. I drew my rusty Forman as I made straight for the captain, who turned his horse in surprise, those eyes going wide. His hulking companion drew his axe and took a swipe at me as I rushed in, but the blow was hasty and imprecise and I easily avoided it by ducking my head, so I was low in the saddle when I passed the captain and gave him a backhanded blow. It was lucky, my old blade biting between his helmet and his gorget, taking the head clean off.
I turned Ralph and charged back toward the axeman, but my stupid helmet slid down over my eyes. Ralph collided with the big man’s horse and I found myself toppling out of the saddle. Luckily the axeman was also thrown, and he fell on his back with a loud grunt, the wind knocked out of him. I hit the grass and rolled a few times, ending up in a sitting position. My helmet was still on my head, but I unstrapped it and threw it away, shouting, “Piece of crap!”
The axeman was trying to get up, and the other four horsemen had spurred forward. I got to my feet, found the battle axe where it had fallen, killed the axeman with a single blow that dented in the side of his helmet, then whirled to my right to face the next threat.
It’s not easy to stand up to a charging horse, but I’ve done it many times, and these guys weren’t co-ordinated. The first rider was out ahead of the others, and I raised the axe, both hands over my head, and threw it at him. It smashed into his chest and a second later he was on the ground.
The ruins on the side of the street were perfect cover where horses couldn’t go, so my next move was to grab my rusty blade from where I’d dropped it and leap behind a pair of columns. The last three guards had to dismount. I could tell they were nervous, and that made me laugh.
The rock is the most basic of weapons, but it can be effective. I took out a fourth guard with a chunk of marble to the face. He should have lowered his visor. A fifth guard came at me from around one of the columns, and I just scurried away, coming up behind him and cutting into the unarmoured backs of his legs. He fell with a howl and I stabbed the point of my sword through his unprotected throat.
The last guard was helping his two hurt buddies get back on their horses, and then the three of them took off. They’d had enough of Sir Jervis.
I went back to where the captain’s severed head lay there in the dust.
“That’s a nice helmet,” I said. “Think it’ll fit my big noggin?”
It did.
It had been a good fight, and I felt the elation of battle, the hysterical joy of victory. I’d forgotten how that felt. Those six idiots had no idea who they were dealing with, and they’d paid the price, but the down side was that they’d just been minions. I hadn’t dealt with the real problem, but now that I’d had this minor triumph, I felt like I had this job half accomplished, and any doubts I’d had were unfounded and I couldn’t lose.
“Where does this sorcerer live?” I said to Saran when she and the whole town came out to gawk at the carnage I’d wrought. “I think I have to bring the fight to him. What’s his name, anyway?”
The sorcerer lived and worked in a tower, of course. The tower was on an island in a swamp close to the tharn’s estate. It wasn’t far.
I rode there at once before the wizard could be warned of my coming, hoping that the guards who’d escaped would go straight to the tharn first. I needed to maintain the initiative.
The swamp, as it turned out, was just a swamp, and nothing more sinister, with a causeway leading to the old tower. The tower was a fort, as they all are, square and six stories tall. It had no outer wall but plenty of outbuildings, stables and kitchen and workshops, and lots of workers, including a smith with arms as big as mine, but I just rode into the yard as brazen as could be and shouted that I had business with Prosperectus the sorcerer.
No answer, of course, except the workers or servants or slaves or whatever they were coming out of their sheds and staring at me. I dismounted Ralph and drew my sword. Again I wasn’t going for any kind of finesse. The door to the tower was open, I assumed because members of the Eye thought they had no use for defences of any kind, so I climbed the short flight of stone steps and barged right in. You have to be quick when tangling with magic practitioners, before they can throw any of their tricks at you.
The place smelled bad, like damp and rot and some kind of spice. The first floor looked like stores, bottles and jars and crates and sacks, bundles of candles. The ceiling was of thick timbers, and a staircase with no railing led up from my left. I went up.
The second floor was stuffed with oblong crates that looked like coffins, but I didn’t stop to investigate. I kept going up.
“Prosperectus!” I shouted, but still didn’t get an answer.
The next floors were living quarters, bedrooms and an audience chamber and a dining hall, but no one there. The fifth floor seemed to be where the worst smell was coming from, and when I opened a thick oak door off the landing, I found out why. I took a few steps into the room. It was lined with shelves, and on the shelves were body parts. Some were of forest animals, but most were human, arms and legs and heads and full torsos, dried like mummies, preserved. The remains of a few Macronians, I figured. That explained why none had returned.
The top floor was a single room, the sorcerer’s lab or workshop, and here were more body parts and full bodies, not quite as old, but stretched out on long tables, their insides exposed. Charts of the human body covered the walls in between the shelves of bottles and other paraphernalia, scrolls and books and other wizard junk.
One table was empty and seemed to have been scrubbed clean, waiting for the sorcerer’s next subject or victim.
What was this crazy bastard up to?
I dug the tip of my sword into the timber floor, hand resting on the pommel, and said, “You here, Prosperectus?”
And he was there, appearing out of nowhere. No puff of magic smoke or flash of light, just his sudden presence, a thin figure in a white linen robe, his head shaved, his beard streaked with gray. He didn’t look all that evil or menacing, but these guys can fool you.
“An intruder?” he said. “A petty burglar?”
“No,” I said. “I’m here on behalf of the people you’ve been abusing. My name is Sir Jervis, of No Kingdom.”
He smirked, actually smirked. He knew who I was, and he didn’t care, and I guess I have my pride, because that really pissed me off.
“And what is it you want, Sir Jervis?”
I pointed with my sword at the half-dissected bodies on the tables.
“To stop you from doing this.”
Prosperectus drew himself up and looked insulted.
“Stop me? Do you realize what my work entails, its importance to the future of the human race?” He clenched one hand in a fist. “I seek the very essence of life, the very soul, the secret to immortality and oneness with the stars.”
I don’t know why I bothered talking to the guy, but sometimes I want my enemies to know where they went wrong.
“And you murder people to do it,” I told him. “They want you to stop.”
“My work will live on longer than any single individual, work that will benefit all of humanity.”
I pointed at him with my sword.
“You’re one guy, and no more important than any other one guy. You don’t get to use other people for your own pet projects. That’s it.”
Now he looked angry as he realized I meant business.
“Any resistance to my will or violence to my person,” he said, “will bring the full wrath of the Guild of the Eye down upon you.”
“You know what the Eye needs?” I said, taking a step toward him. “A code of conduct or something. Like we had in the Knights of Ardelon.” I almost choked on the name of my old lost kingdom. “A code we lived by, and I still live by. To actually help people when they need it.”
I took a swing at him, thinking I could cleave him in two, but I’d let myself get angry, and I was being cocky. It was almost the end of me.
My sword cut through air, but nothing else. Prosperectus just vanished, and I had time to wonder if he’d ever been there.
“Shit,” I said, just as something slammed into my chest, like a giant invisible hammer, knocking me on my ass. My sword went flying.
I got my hands under me and pushed myself up, rolling in time to see the wizard bearing down on me, one hand raised. I guess he was there in the flesh after all, but was either really quick or had some way of transporting himself from A to B. I figured the latter.
“I shall enjoy this,” he said.
Fumbling in my pouch, I pulled out the little bronze mirror, the one that was supposed to deflect spells. There was a flash, like lightning, and Prosperectus froze, hand still in the air. I waited a few seconds, not sure what had happened, then got to my feet and retrieved my fallen sword.
The wizard’s eyes were moving, but that was about it. I guess he’d thrown some kind of spell of paralysis.
“I can’t believe that actually worked,” I said, holding up the little mirror so he could see. “It’s been packed away for twenty years. How long till it wears off, I wonder?”
I’d been lucky, very lucky, but that had always been part of my success. Prosperectus made a gurgling sound in his throat. He sounded pretty upset with me.
“How does it feel to be powerless?” I said. “Yeah, it stinks, doesn’t it? Well, that’s how you make people feel.”
Somehow he peeled back his lips and managed to growl, “You have just assured your own painful death.”
“That was assured the moment I touched a sword,” I said. “Look. Your guild buddies can go fuck themselves. I welcome a war with them. That would be a good next project, something to give my remaining days meaning!”
His eyes were starting to glow a weird red colour, and I figured he was preparing a counter spell and I didn’t have much time before he was back in action. With no time to waste, I struck, taking off his head with one blow, just like the guard captain.
After that, I thought about burning the whole place down, but decided it needed to be cleaned out first. Something proper had to be done to all those bodies, but that wasn’t my decision.
I rode back to Five Hills. It was late and the shadows were long, but when I arrived, the people came out and swarmed around old Ralph, only parting when Saran arrived, her little brother in tow. I announced that the sorcerer was dead and wouldn’t bother them anymore, and I’d go and let the landtharn know that. This probably wasn’t the end, I told her, because it never is.
“If you want to be a real queen,” I said, “lead and figure out how to best help your people. The bad guys are gone, but they’ll be back, or someone like them. You have to be prepared. It’s the same old story. Find out where your strengths are and use them. Don’t let anyone else push you around.”
That was the best advice old Sir Jervis could give.
I almost forgot to take the payment they’d offered, a bag of gold they’d saved up to hire me, and then I rode away. I’d hardly known these people in a specific sense, but I’d met a thousand others like them, and now that I was no longer retired, I was sure I’d know a thousand more.
Yeah, I had to admit it. I was no longer retired.
And I felt more alive than I had in years. I should never have given up the fight. It’s never-ending, but I should have realized that’s just the way it is. Never give it up.
“Let them come and get us, hey Ralph?” I said. “Guild of the Eye or some other bunch of bullies and jackasses. It doesn’t matter, because Sir Jervis is back!”
©October 2020, Harold R. Thompson
Harold R. Thompson‘s short fiction has appeared in StarShipSofa (Episode 624), Youth Imagination, The Weird & Whatnot, Thrilling Words, Crimson Streets, Frostfire Worlds, Factor Four, The Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Vol. 5, and the Aurora nominated Clockwork Canada anthology, among others. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.