Countdown

by Joshua Alexander

in Issue 84, January 2019

As I gazed past the grimy bars of my prison cell to the somehow-grimier wall beyond, I was reminded precisely why I avoided cities. The dusty backwater provinces I usually haunted had little wealth, but they also had fewer jails. I could hear a madman babbling to himself a few cells down, and the air smelled faintly of piss.

The details of my capture were hazy, but I have some snatches. Enough to get the gist, anyway. I have no idea what happened to my horse, though. A shame. It was a good horse.

Predictably, Balaam had abandoned me in the fray, or not long after. Spellbreaker was missing as well, which seemed natural. I’d not heard of many jails that allowed four-and-a-half foot enchanted swords to circulate freely. Just as well, since I wasn’t even certain the sword would work without the wicked little familiar.

Without Balaam or Spellbreaker, I was practically back where I started all those months ago. Except I’d been free then, and not in imminent danger of execution. Win some, lose some.

I passed the night in various states of consciousness—from drunk, to concussed, to feverish dozing. I tried to question the guards when they walked this way or that past my cell, to no avail. Hours passed with only the grimy wall for company. I wondered if, when they hanged me, would Balaam still get what was owed him? Or had he broken the compact by abandoning me? The latter was a comforting thought, albeit unlikely.

They slipped a saucer of thin porridge-gruel under the bars around noon. I was just spitting it out when I heard a slight jangle, much less like the carrying of keys and more like dragging.

‘Psst!’ whispered the little red stoat, and I had never been so happy to see Balaam. Well, I’d never really been happy to see him, but he had the keys.

‘Where were you?’ I hissed. He offered that childlike laugh of his, high and sweet, like a little girl.

‘Not rotting in a jail cell,’ he sniggered, sliding under the bars with his prize.

‘How did you find them?’ I asked, and suddenly became aware of the sticky, tinny smell of blood—the smell of a hound’s chops once the gore of a fresh kill had been licked clean. There was a glint in the familiar’s red eyes.

‘The jailer is a heavy sleeper,’ he said, scampering up my sleeve to rest on my shoulder, ‘now let’s go before they discover that he won’t be waking up.’

I’d seen what weasels could do to chickens and blinked a few times to chase the unbidden images from my mind. Snatching up the keys, I stood to work the lock.

‘Wait,’ I said, ‘where’s the sword?’

‘I think it’s in the armory,’ Balaam said. ‘There’s a secret way. I’ll show you.’ When the key found home, a horn sounded somewhere in the street and the start almost saw me drop the keyring outside the bars. There was a clatter of hooves and guards went scampering by. I tucked the keys away as Balaam sought refuge up my sleeve.

‘Make way!’ someone called in an obsequious voice, ‘Captain Carnos comes! Make way!’ Shadows moved in the dingy light that leaked into the hall before me. The sound of marching feet drew closer, and two guards with halberds quickly flanked the cell to either side.

A tall knight, all polished armor, red billowy cape and blond locks, strode into view. He eyed me officiously, then cleared his throat.

‘I am Sir Ardamand Carnos, captain of His Excellency’s guard,’ he said, his tone full of practiced self-importance.

‘Congratulations,’ I replied. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that His Excellency’s decided to drop the charges?’ The dandy screwed up his face.

‘Don’t get cute, witch. You will pay for your many crimes—all of which, I remind you, you boasted of in practically every tavern in the city. But I come not for the count, but his daughter. The Lady Euthea is curious to speak with you before your sentence is carried out. Heavens only know why.’

Curious. A shame Balaam had to go through all the trouble of killing a man just to have us sprung by this buffoon. But I decided I shouldn’t look too comfortable with that fact.

‘No one has even told me what my charge is!’ I shouted.

‘Death,’ the captain spat. I rolled my eyes.

‘That’s a sentence,’ I corrected, but that merely seemed to confuse the dapper oaf even further.

‘It’s more of a word, innit?’ one guard whispered, and Carnos shot him a look.

‘Enough!’ the captain said, ‘I will take you to the lady now. If you resist, I will be forced to subdue you.’ He captain looked about. ‘Where is the jailer? Open the cell. Immediately.’ I expected trouble then, but one of the guards shuffled up and stammered something about the lord jailer not being disturbed and fumbled for his own keys. Good, I thought, this threatened to get too interesting too quickly.

Carnos’ guards clapped me in irons and I bid the dank, ureic air of the jail goodbye as we stepped into the street whose waft was redolent of night soil, horse droppings and dead cats. I suddenly missed the jail.

The captain stepped on the back of a servant to mount his horse, and a guard handed him the chain that led to my gyves.

‘I will not ride briskly,’ Carnos said, ‘but you must keep up. If you lag, I will be forced to drag you.’ Balaam giggled from under my coat, but the dandy didn’t seem to hear. Glad somebody’s enjoying this, I thought. The captain heeled his great white destrier and we were off at a snail’s pace. It was clear he wanted to humiliate me by parading me like a common ruffian. A bit of a useless exercise against a man with no self-respect, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

As we made our way through the filthy streets, I got the feeling that the place had seen better days. Everywhere beggars and scrawny children stared up with glassy eyes, and pock-faced hags peered silently from the jettied upper stories of half-collapsed buildings. All the wood looked to be moist and fuzzy, and all the stone was spotted with black. The cobblestones were slippery even were dry.


The merchant’s stalls seemed to stock only dusty turnips and shriveled dates. All the sausages and cured mats that hung in the butchers’ windows were covered in white fuzz. A haze obscured the distant streets and gathered on the high hill where the towers of the castle loomed into the low, foggy clouds. As the bouquet of horse dung and night soil dulled on me, I became aware of another scent, like that of old, liquifying mushroom. Like the city itself was moldering.

It was classic bedevilment, of course. I met a few of the eyes watching me and saw hate there, in others there was only dull suspicion. They would all like to see me hang, but only half looked like they could do it themselves if need be. I looked down and caught Balaam smiling up at me. He was expecting something interesting, I’m sure. I didn’t want to see anything that got the little demon this frisky.

‘See their faces, witch,’ said Carnos, tugging at my shackles. ‘These good people will watch you swing for your crimes, here and elsewhere. Since His Excellency attainted all sorcerers, we have hung them by the score, but you are the first in many weeks. The lady suspects you are quite powerful. If that is the case, perhaps your death will lift the wretchedness that has fallen on us.’

‘Human sacrifice doesn’t wash out mediocrity,’ I grumbled, and the captain yanked my chains so hard I thought he broke a wrist.

‘Hold your tongue, witch!’ Carnos bellowed. And I did. For the whole walk up to the castle, I said not a word about how it was clear an evil nested in that very fortress, how the mind of their beloved count was probably overthrown, and how this campaign of murdering sorcerers was almost certainly the will of some infernal intelligence. I did formulate several passable plans of escape, however, and now that Balaam was here, one or two of them might just work.

Under the barbican, into the inner walls, past the parade grounds and into the gloomy palace we went. The air grew staler inside, the rich decor notwithstanding. We were brought to a great hall, all marble and crystal and gold, statuary and mural and exotic carpets. A red rug led from the door we entered to the greater gold-leaf-brushed oaken doors of what I could only guess was the throne room.

Before those doors, the lady Euthea stood, gripping Spellbreaker’s scabbard. It was a sight for sore eyes.

‘Welcome, friends,’ she said, her smile luminous. She was beautiful, to say the least, with her silver coronet, golden curls and cloth-of-silver gown studded with crystals and chased with all manner of mind-bending filigree and embroidery. It was the kind of beauty that kingdoms fall over, and epics with lots of stab wounds are written about—the kind I had absolutely no interest in. The smell of sour mushroom returned.

‘I thought you said it was in the armory,’ I whispered into my coat. The surprise was pleasant. I just needed to get Balaam to slide the key into my manacles and I could snatch Spellbreaker and make quick work of the big oaf in polished plate.

‘Murmur not in the Lady’s presence, charlatan!’ Carnos barked, wrenching my chains. I spat a curse.

‘Please, captain,’ the countess said, drawing closer. ‘I think our friends have suffered enough. Isn’t that right, little one?’ She was staring down at Balaam, whose tiny weasel face was peeking from inside my coat. She reached out her hand and he slithered up her arm to rest on the shoulder of her sparkling gown, soaking up the little scratches she placed about his ears. While they had been watching the stoat, I had been rummaging for the keyring.

‘A fa-, a fami-, a—,’ the captain stammered, and his guards gripped their swords.

‘A familiar, you dolt,’ I said as the cuffs slid off, twirling the jailer’s keys on my finger. The guards all drew their swords and Carnos, clearly surprised, made a move to seize me, but Lady Euthea raised a hand.

‘Thank you, Captain’ she said, ‘but that will be all. Leave me with our guests.’ The captain’s eyes grew into particularly stupid saucers.

‘B-but, my lady,’ Carnos said, ‘these are unholy, dissolute and, by all senses, unclean beings. Let me take them from your presence and do justice upon them.’

‘Unclean?’ I protested.

‘That will not be necessary, Captain,’ Euthea said. ‘I am more than protected from their… charms? I’m sure you can understand.’ She ran a finger down the captain’s chest plate then and the oaf’s face turned so red he might have been a boiled lobster.

‘I await just outside the doors, my lady,’ Carnos assured, bowing. He eyed me viciously as he turned, but he went all the same. When the doors clapped shut, I extended my hand to accept Spellbreaker.

‘For what it’s worth,’ I said, ‘only some of the piss was mine. You should really clean out your jails.’ With a wry smile, the lady extended the scabbard. Balaam ran along its length to spiral up my shoulder and perch by my ear.

‘There are few sorcerers alive who could even grasp Spellbreaker,’ I said, shouldering the baldric. ‘What is it that you need us for that a sorceress of your obvious power could not accomplish?’ There was a glimmer then in those deep, emerald eyes of hers—cold eyes. Beautiful eyes.

‘You are eager to leave my fair city?’ she said with mock offense. I had had enough of games by then and did not answer.

‘As you will,’ she said, the veil of graciousness falling away. ‘I have a task for you.’ She turned and began walking towards the great golden doors. ‘Behind these doors, my lord father sits, his mind overthrown by a dark entity.’

‘Knew it,’ I assured Balaam. The little demon giggled softly.

‘He has ruled long and justly, and someone has made him the target of the entity’s greed, perhaps to overthrow him.’

‘Someone?’ Balaam said, voicing the suspicion I hadn’t dared to. Euthea turned, her eyes green daggers.

‘I could return you to your cell at any moment,’ she snapped. ‘I doubt that sword will save you from crossbows and pikes.’ She had us there.

‘I suppose we don’t have a choice, then.’

‘You’re a clever man,’ Euthea said acidly. ‘But, if you succeed, and somehow manage to exorcise this force that threatens my father’s life and rule, then you shall have a reward greater than any you have ever known.’ Before I could inquire as to the nature of this supposed reward, the count’s daughter produced from her bodice a swatch of parchment, bearing a symbol of binding. She gripped the handle and pulled one of the doors open with a groan.

‘Once the door is closed,’ she said, slapping the piece of parchment onto the gold-brushed wood above the gleaming handle, ‘it will not open until the evil has been dispelled.’ The parchment flashed then, combusting in blue flame and burning out to reveal the symbol, formerly written on the piece of hide, scorched deep in the wood of the door. I scowled at the makings of a prison or a trap. It was powerful magic. Balaam giggled.

‘There is no time to lose,’ she said, taking me by the shoulder, ‘my father awaits.’ She seemed almost desperate, but not in a daughterly way. ‘Even now, my uncles ride for this city to divide the regency between them. Either free him or…’ I stopped then.

‘Or…?’ She blinked her big, emerald eyes and realized she had said too much.

‘Never mind or. Do the deed or die,’ she hissed, practically shoving me over the threshold. The last glimpse I caught of her face was one twisted in anger and tinged with desperation. The door slammed closed in our faces, and the lock clicked and echoed with an otherworldly twang. I knew it would be useless to try the handle.

‘I like her,’ Balaam whispered, and I took a deep breath before turning into the throne room.

The hall was high-vaulted, a practical forest of white marble columns. The floors were checkered black and white diamonds of polished marble spidered with red. High windows of a man’s width and five heights rose at the far end of the hall. And there, at the far end upon a velvet-carpeted dais, sat the count leaning on the arm of his throne. He didn’t seem to have noticed us.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s just… take a look. Maybe it’s not as bad as—’ And as if to prove me wrong, a cold wind blew through the throne room, accompanied by a gurgling, moaning sound almost too low for human hearing.

‘Yeah, that’s a really nasty possession,’ I said, taking my first steps forward.

‘Classic,’ Balaam seconded from my shoulder. As I approached, I could see that the count’s splendid velvet tunic, studded with silver stars and embroidered with dancing twining swans, had been stained with a black, tarry substance that trickled from his lips and down his beard. The count’s eyes, which had hitherto been shut, flicked open to reveal black orbs with not a trace of white.

‘Well?’ I asked Balaam, drawing Spellbreaker. ‘What’s its name?’ Balaam looked at me strangely.

‘No idea.’


I blinked at the little stoat.

‘What do you mean you have no idea? If we don’t know the name, then why are we here?’ He looked at me, and at the door behind us.

‘Presumably so blond human number one wouldn’t order blond human number two to kill us both!’ Balaam spat. Admittedly, I had little enough of a plan as it was, but without a demonic name, the entity could not be defeated entirely. It could be suppressed at best, perhaps even confined, but its manifestation on this plane could not be reversed without secret knowledge—knowledge I relied on the little demon for.

‘Fine,’ I said, ‘We can try the windows, but if that doesn’t work, maybe we can—’ Suddenly, the muttering, gurgling sounds congealed into something approximating speech as the count’s head cocked in reptilian fashion.

‘It’s trying to say something,’ Balaam whispered, and there was a fear, or something like it, in his voice that I had never heard before. ‘It shouldn’t be this powerful yet.’

‘I am… all powers,’ the thing said haltingly, sputtering black liquid from the count’s lips. ‘Your world is quaint, it’s… laws… predictable. I will be… powerful here.’ Then the creature smiled, revealing a mouthful of black, needle-like teeth that glimmered wetly as with ink.

‘Yeah, smile at this,’ I said, passing my hand along the black runic blade and whispering the words that brought the symbols to life. The cold retreated from the circle Spellbreaker made, and it seemed that color had returned to the columns and tiles that fell inside. ‘That should give us time to—’

Before I could finish, the creature made a burbling sound and the countenance took on the pallor and distance of a man about to vomit.

‘This isn’t good,’ Balaam said. The cheeks of the count filled, like a squirrel stashing nuts, before tendrils of whipping black ink spurted forth and began waving in the air, ropes of oily black tumbling out to smatter the floor.

‘Not good,’ I seconded. Now when the entity spoke, it did not use the count’s mouth, full as it was, but spoke half in the air and half in the mind.

‘I will lay upon your cities,’ it said, ‘I will taste screams.’ The count’s undulating, distending body rose, not of any human will, and began to shudder, coughing gobs of black here and there that themselves bloomed into anemones of sensing tendrils. Balaam was muttering something in a forwards-backwards ululation that I couldn’t understand and perhaps was never meant to.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘Trying to figure out its name,’ the stoat said, ‘starting from the top.’

‘Like it’s just going to tell you?’

‘It might react when I discover it.’

‘What if it doesn’t?’

‘Then I think your world might be done for.’

Since my world included myself, that was obviously not what I wanted to hear.

‘Euthea will know,’ I said, since it was clear this was her doing. The anemones were growing into tentacled palms, smaller ones joining with bigger until the dais was nothing but a garden of slithering tendrils that concealed the body of the count.

‘No use,’ Balaam said, ‘that enchantment she placed is solid. She wouldn’t even hear us.’ That was also bad news. The anemones bloomed into palms and palms bloomed into a great lion’s manes of waving tentacles out of which the count’s body rose, suspended from the mouth by a black arm of slime like some morbid catch, or the man-lantern of a nightmare angler-fish.

I watched the possessed count rise high on a throne of inky filaments and swallowed hard.

‘These names,’ I said coolly, ‘how long will it take you to recite them?’

‘Hours,’ answered the stoat-demon, ‘maybe days.’


I nodded.

‘The windows!’ I said, and dashed around the dais, slashing the tendrils that lashed out to stop me. Balaam, muttering the whole while, was whipped off my shoulder as a gaggle of slimy filaments wrapped around my leg. Before I knew what was happening, I was upside down, whirling through the air. I careened disoriented through space. The windows ran up to meet me. I held out my hands to stop them but exited anyway in a wash of glass splinters and whole panes.

When I opened my wind-stung eyes, I was, for a split moment, suspended over the city, neither rising nor falling. I could see the people and the towers and the streets, antlike. The falling shards twinkled in the light. Too far to fall. Too far to escape. I saw the rolling rivers of dingy fog as they sought their lowest route. Then, moving again, I plunged back toward the glass-toothed maw of the high windows, back into the throne room and through the columns.

The tendrils at my ankle released, and I flew, skidding and sliding on the marble, slowing to a tumble to smack into the great golden doors.

I must have been unconscious, for when I next remember opening my eyes, I sucked in the rarefied breath of a man who had not been breathing for some time. My ribs ached and my head swam as the air returned to me.

I groped about for Spellbreaker but didn’t find it. Balaam was missing as well. The heavy musk of mold was strong, and I remembered Euthea. I staggered to my feet and slammed my fists against the door, but to no avail. Balaam was right about that binding enchantment.

A crash brought me back to my wits. I spun and saw a column topple and shatter against the walls. Balaam, dodging and feinting, was hopping and diving through tendrils and human-like hands of black ink, dancing a weasel war-dance through anemones and whips and clubs of black ichor, all the while muttering the infernal names as the creature squealed through the toothed ends of its club-like appendages.

‘I will dissolve this world,’ the entity was gloating. ‘So much life! So much decay!’


Balaam was fast, but he had been at it long. He was getting clumsy. No longer muttering, he was practically shouting the infernal names now—Drunaand, Snyrg, and Pzyrie, Thamagorgos and Imbaum. Where those failed him, he began reciting the ceremonial titles of demons whose names escaped him—Seneschal of the Sable Tower, Pilot of Plagues, Handmaiden to the Miscarriages, Worm-Marshal, Jester in the Court of the Headless One. That last I recognized from the ritual that had summoned Balaam. I always thought it was his title.

I took two steps and collapsed. Some ribs were broken, certainly, and my head was swimming. I glimpsed Spellbreaker far across the room, near the slimy black rise that was once the dais, that had now become the base of a terrible, flower-like monster, it’s needled maw spinning with hideous mandalas. The tendrils of the creature were rearing like cobras in a circle about Spellbreaker, not yet strong enough to pierce its circle. At this rate, that would soon change.

The creature shifted its tactics and formed from dozens of smaller tendrils a needled club and began pounding the marble here and there, each time shattering the tiles just on the heels of the little stoat. I knew Balaam couldn’t hold out much longer. I staggered forward a few steps and had to catch shallow breaths in between. ‘Think!’ I hissed. Balaam hadn’t come to an amateur. I was a fraud, a fool, and hell-bound to boot, but I wasn’t an idiot. My vision blurred and I wheeled. A particularly nasty waft of fetid air brought me back.

I remembered the fetid stench of the city, of the decrepit and rotten buildings, and my vision was as fuzzy as the butcher’s sausages. I thought then of the fog.


Not fog, I realized, staggering forward again.


Spores.

‘It’s not a demon!’ I cried to Balaam, who had narrowly missed being crushed once more.

‘Then what is it?’ he called back, desperate, dodging the club again.

‘It’s a mushroom!’

Balaam looked back at me for a split moment, then feinted again, but I saw the creature was preparing a deception of its own. A trio of tendrils was snaking behind the nearest pillar, and Balaam was unaware. I tried to call out, but it was too late.

‘Of course, its name is—’ And Balaam was swatted against another pillar by a whip formed of the three filaments. He bounced against the marble and lay motionless. After that, the devil-rose of swirling black teeth turned to me as if no other being existed. The club, waving over the pillar Balaam had fallen under, switched its target. Nerves flashed and I dove away, stabbing pain jolting through my side. The club shattered the column behind me and brought it down. I weaved between the columns, inching toward Spellbreaker. Close enough, I dove through a thicket of tentacles into the circle, falling over the blade. Almost immediately, its white magic invigorated, but I knew it could not heal.

The monster shrieked then, half in the mind and half in the world, a cacophonic gurgling mixed with the cries of babes and the laughter of madmen. Once again, the mandala-head turned to where the little stoat lay against the base of a column. With the club poised high, I called out. Balaam, blinking awake, lept away just in time.

It was good luck, too. The crater the beast made in its anger was bigger than all the rest. Balaam got his footing back and resumed his dance, this time more furiously. The little demon cried out, darting from pillar to pillar.

‘I name you,’ he said, his tiny, girl-like voice filling the room supernaturally, ‘Ulothogg, the Fungus that Rimes the Slopes of Hell!’ At the mention of its own name, the mandala-headed creature squealed and split into a hundred such needled clubs, letting the count’s body drop to the floor with a sickening crack. They waved in the air a moment and then came down, drumming upon the dome of light that Spellbreaker made, and snaking through the columns after Balaam, thrashing the walls in an explosion of blind fury.

I passed my hand over the runic blade and incorporated the infernal name into the grammar of the ritual. I repeated the name again–Ulothogg—and sunk the blade deep into the marble. The crack that spidered out snaked toward the creature and cry it made was anything but earthly.

First the small tendrils, then the larger ones were sucked into the black fissures that ran along the floor. The clubheads and needles and anemones were all slurped into the closing rift like a reverse rain of sludgy pitch, rivulets, torrents, a flood. The larger pieces tore into smaller ones, and those into dashes of liquid. Thousands of tentacles and clubs and human hands groped and grabbed at the pillars or the thrones, but snapped one by one, their broken bits racing toward the bleeding ley line like spilt mercury. The abomination’s cries receded, smothered by the bunching waves of black as they were drawn downwards. When the cracks evaporated in puffs of black smoke, my legs gave out and the floor came up to meet me.

When I blinked awake, I beheld an angelic form, silvery in the haze of dream light. Then a red figure bent over me.

‘He’s not dead,’ Balaam was saying. ‘Trust me, I would know.’ Would he know? That might have been a point for a later conversation, but I had had enough of infernals for one lifetime.

‘We mourn the death of our lord father,’ Euthea said as she helped me to my feet, ‘but even as we speak, the pallor that has gripped this city departs. I thank you.’ She took up Spellbreaker and smiled, then slid it into its sheath. She leaned in with a dreamy look in her eye—cold eyes for all that—and I realized she was going to kiss me.

‘No thanks,’ I said, holding her at arm’s length. ‘But we’ll take that reward if you don’t mind.’ Her kiss was probably poisoned with the same mushroom she used to call upon the Ulothogg, anyway.

‘As you wish,’ she said, walking to the great golden doors. Balaam climbed nimbly up my shoulder as if he had not almost been crushed by an infernal fungus mere moments before. A few meters away, behind the dais, the crumpled hide and tattered finery of the count lay discarded. I turned from the sight.

Euthea opened the doors wide and stood there expectantly.

‘Your incalculable reward,’ she said, ‘is your life. Spend it wisely.’ My lip curled and began to quiver. Somehow I knew this would happen, but what choice did I have? I could feel the blood leaving my clenched fists and wondered if I had enough strength left to slay the witch-countess.

‘I suggest you get going,’ she advised with a honeyed smile. ‘I won’t be able to restrain my guards for long. Someone will have to pay for my father’s death.’ As I stalked past the smiling countess, I heard Balaam giggle. My rib was killing me.

‘The stables will be lightly guarded,’ she added at my back, ‘I suggest you get far afield. Into the provinces if possible. I may have need of you again.’

I cursed something low and profane then. When I reached for the ornate handle of the stair door I had been brought up, shackled, I was startled when it turned before me and a hulking silver-and-scarlet figure shouldered through.

‘My lady, the hour is come, and—’ Carnos looked past me, wide-eyed, into the carnage of the throne room.

‘His Excellency is…,’ Guards poured up the stairs behind him, and in a flash, the big dandy unsheathed his blade and put himself between the countess and myself.

‘Stand back, my lady! I will slay the witch and his demon in the name of your father!’ Halberds leveled at my back and I heard myself curse again. Captain Carnos raised his blade in the air. There was a pop then, like the denting of a steel bucket, and a metallic sliding as the captain’s features curdled into a grimace.

Dropping his sword with a twang, he turned to Lady Euthea, disbelief on his face. ‘M-my lady… I was to be your…’ He dropped face-foremost to the floor with a clatter, the hilt of the countess’s rondel dagger pointing skyward. I blinked at the spreading pool of red.

‘Well?’ the Countess said to her guards. ‘Your count and your captain have been murdered. Round up the usual suspects. Search the streets.’ Eyes flashed from me to the countess to the cooling corpse of Captain Carnos, and the men bowed in their turn and tottled off, fear and loyalty competing in their hearts.

When we were alone, Countess Euthea lent down and snatched the reddened blade out of the captain’s back.

‘Like I said,’ she whispered coolly, wiping the blood on the captain’s red cloak, ‘the guard stables. Go.’ As I pounded down the steps, laughter rose behind me—augmented, I thought, with some terrible sorcery. She never even asked my name. Not that I would have told her.

‘I like her,’ Balaam giggled as we crept through the guard stables. The ride was agony with my broken ribs, but by sunset, I was sure we weren’t being followed.

Do you see why I hate cities?

©January 2019 Joshua Alexander

Joshua Alexander is an amateur writer of fantasy and science fiction from Western Pennsylvania.  This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.