RangerWickett
Legend
Aim
While Leoval set his sights on the archery target at the far end of the fallow field, Koji was trying to stay out of sight as he crept through the Pelor temple bakery. They were each only seventeen, but both were well-practiced. Leoval’s precision with a bow was as impressive as an ox was stubborn, and Koji stole apple pies with guile and stealth that would awe any bully who ever desired to yank a girl’s hair or discreetly punch his stepbrother.
It was early autumn, near dusk, and Leoval felt viciously alive with every release of his bow. He was now able to bullseye regularly from two hundred feet. He just wished he would get a chance to use all his practice for something other than county tournaments.
Across the town, Koji lifted the pie tray and nearly cursed in pain and dropped it. It was fresh out of the oven. This was not a complication he had planned for. He heard priests coming down the hall toward him, and so he grabbed the pie and gritted his tusked orcish teeth as he scrambled, head down, out of sight. There were two doors into the bakery, and he had to hope the priests would be taking the second. He crouched near the first door, gingerly passed the tray between his hands while blowing on it, and waited.
Leoval took aim, furrowed his thick brow, and let the arrow fly. In the temple, the sounds of the priests’ conversation passed the first door and headed to the second. The arrow struck the bullseye, and Koji scampered out the door, prize in hand.
For several more minutes, Leoval practiced his archery, until finally he was out of arrows. Proud of himself, Leoval shook out his arms and stretched in the golden heat that radiated off the field. While his arms were still up in the air, someone touched him, arms wrapping around his torso from behind. Leoval jolted with surprise, then smiled and touched Ella’s hand. He craned his neck back and kissed her on top of her head.
She laughed. “You always look so serious.”
“Aren’t you a little young to nag?” Leoval said.
Ella pulled away, and Leoval turned, holding onto her hand. She was grinning.
“Can you teach me?” she said. She nodded at the bow. “I bet I can be better than you before the spring tournament.”
“Another excuse for us to vanish off into the woods together? I don’t know.”
They laughed and stood, alone together. Ella’s lovestruck smile held Leoval’s eye until she leaned her face against his chest. He pulled her close with ginger earnestness, with no attempt to hide that she was the most precious thing in his world.
Then Ella began to sniff, tickling his chest, and Leoval almost laughed. He was just about to draw in a deep inhalation of the smell of her hair when she let go, stepped away, and sniffed again.
“I smell pie,” she said.
She was grinning widely. A moment later, Leoval smelled one of the Pelor temple’s apple pies wafting across them on the breeze. He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted into the dark of the treeline surrounding the archery field, the direction the wind and the scent was coming from. He could not see anyone, but he felt like someone was watching them.
Arms wrapped around him again.
“Not now, El,” he said.
A deep voice answered, “But I want you to aim your arrow at me.”
Leoval cringed slightly and pried Koji away from him, spinning and getting a safe distance away. Ella and Koji began laughing together, amused by his embarrassment.
Leoval brushed at his chest, trying to make sure none of Koji’s arm hairs were stuck on him. Somehow Koji had snuck across fifty feet of open field to ambush Leoval from behind.
“We need to put a bell on you,” Leoval said.
“Just what I need,” Koji said, “more reasons for people to look at me.”
Koji was a half-breed, his father some orc who had pillaged through a town to the north. His human mother had thrown the baby out, and a wandering knight had brought the bastard child to Leoval’s village, Tanham. A variety of folks in Leoval’s village had taken the responsibility of raising Koji, but the town’s stray dogs had gotten better treatment. Koji was less than five and a half feet tall with a perpetual hunch, sallow greenish skin, and uneven tusks rising from his lower jaw that lent his face the look of a constant smirk. He had gotten used to avoiding attention.
Leoval had been orphaned six years ago by a plague, and in the aftermath he had become Koji’s only friend. One of the town’s favored children, Leoval had grown up tall and headstrong, and had recently brought in Ella as Koji’s second friend.
Of the three of them, Ella was the only one still with parents. Her father was Tanham’s head Pelorite. She had started spending time with Leoval and Koji to rebel against her father, cutting her copper red hair short, but still attending to her priestess studies and temple duties. She loved her god more than her father.
“What happened to you?” Ella asked. “You’re burnt.”
She took Koji’s hands and shook her head. Koji laughed and pulled his hands away, pulling down his tattered sleeves to cover the raw flesh.
“Your palms sure look raw,” Leoval said, voice thick with insinuation.
“Yeah,” Koji said, “well not all of us get to sleep with the temple virgin.”
“Boys,” Ella said, “don’t fight over me. Give me your hands, Koji.”
Koji sighed like it was a great burden, then held out his hands.
“I left the pie over there in the woods to cool off,” he said. “Go get it, Lee. Ella and I might be a while.”
Leoval crossed his arms and watched as Ella prayed to Pelor, then touched Koji’s hands. The sunlight around them seemed to brighten briefly, and when the light faded, Koji’s hands were healed. Koji casually nodded thanks to Ella, then gave Leoval a funny look.
“Where’s my pie?”
* * *
Koji’s friends had shared his purloined pie, but they had bowed out on his offer to chase the town chickens after sunset, brushing off the idea as if they did not appreciate Koji’s generosity. He knew enough to give the lovers their distance when they got so dismissive of him, ever since the first few times he’d gotten curious and watched them lie together in the hay stacks on the south end of town. The voyeurism was losing its appeal the more he saw. Koji was content with his poor imagination.
Passing the town gates, Koji was imagining Ella guiding his hands across her body when he noticed a knight galloping in hard for the town entrance. He was maybe a quarter mile down the road, close enough for Koji to recognize the man’s standard.
Suppressing a groan, Koji glanced west, where the sun was setting just over the distant treetops of Dim Forest. On the summer solstice, if you stood at the town entrance, the sun set directly behind the Pelor temple, but it was lazily off-center this evening. Koji jogged for the town’s gate guardhouse, where Regdrick and Rehan were preparing to seal the town for the night. They were watching the knight’s approach, standing about as lazily as the sunset.
“Better hurry,” Koji said.
The two guards started in surprise, not having seen Koji sneak up on them from the town square.
“Oh, you.” Regdrick scoffed. “He’s still got a bit of sunlight left.”
“Alright,” Koji said. “You take responsibility when a goblin warband comes charging in because you didn’t close the gate fast enough.”
Ella’s father was a prestigious priest of Pelor, the sun god. Years ago he had vowed to build a great temple to his god, and the village of Tanham had become home to the few hundred workers and their families who had helped him build the massive building. There was room inside for all the townsfolk to pray, a bakery to feed them, and a convalescent hall for the sick and dying, though those were rare, since with Pelor’s blessing the priests could heal nearly any ailment.
The greatest boon Pelor had given the town, however, was the daylight ward. No one who wished harm to the town could enter its gates by day, and at night, as long as the town’s gates were closed, anyone attempting to climb over the walls would be illuminated and burned with a beam of sunlight from the spire of the temple. With the gates closed, two men could protect the entire town, allowing the other inhabitants to sleep gently in Pelor’s grace. The town was safe from harm.
That did not mean no one in the town was cruel, however. There had been more than enough sneers and switches bent in Koji’s direction the past seventeen years, and Pelor had not protected him from them. Thinking about it, Koji felt a bit less bitter toward the old knight riding in. The knight prayed to a different god, at least.
His horse came to a stop just outside the gate, its hooves scraping in the dirt just short of the town’s threshold. Atop the horse’s saddle sat a knight in silvery plate trimmed with dark gray etchings. His armor gleamed. His shield gleamed. Even his horse gleamed thanks to the cloak of white elvish silk it wore over its barding. The only smudged contrast was a figure in a dirty brown cloak, tightly bound and slung across the horse’s back just behind the saddle.
“I got a prisoner with me,” the knight said. “Help me get him inside. I think your town fathers will want to see him.”
“Don’t do it,” Koji hissed with a grin. “He’s a dark knight, one of the most cruel in the land. You’ll bring down damnation upon the whole town.”
“Him?” Rehan laughed. “Looks a might shiny for a ‘dark knight.’”
Just then, the last beams of sunlight fell behind the trees on the western horizon, and suddenly the knight was as dark as a cold iron statue. In the dusky gloom he lifted his visor and peered at the guards.
“Koji?” he said. “Get outta my way. I know you like your playtime, but this is serious business.”
“Just having a little fun Gregor.” Koji shrugged, then winked to the guards. “I warned you guys.”
Gregor was the knight who, seventeen years ago, had brought Koji to this shining hypocrisy of a town.
Koji made a show of leaving in the direction of the chicken coops, but lingered in the twilight shadows just beyond the guard house, listening as the two guards guided Gregor’s horse inside, then closed the gate. Koji risked a peek to see who Gregor’s prisoner was, while Regdrick and Rehan pulled the heavily bound man off the horse’s back.
“Argh,” Regdrick grumbled. “He reeks.”
Rehan said, “What do you expect from an orc?”
The prisoner landed on the ground and tried to shake the guard’s hands away, snarling in a language Koji did not understand, but he was fairly confident it was orcish. The orc was smaller than he would have expected, and somehow uglier. Considering the prisoner’s rotted yellow tusks, warty bruised face covered in patches of black hair, and massive nostrils dribbling black blood and green snot, Koji couldn’t help but think himself rather fortunate to have taken after his mother.
“Where’d you find him?” Regdrick asked.
“Best you not know,” Gregor said with a smile. “Careful. Little bastard bites.”
Koji crouched and hid as Gregor, the two guards, and their orc prisoner filed past in the direction of the temple. None of the humans noticed him, but the orc’s lolling head swung briefly to the side and his bloodshot yellow eyes lingered on Koji for a moment. Then the orc smiled and looked forward.
“This is a pretty town,” the orc said, snickering deeply like he was sharing a secret with Koji. “Maybe some of your pretty kiddies will visit me while I’m in jail, no?”
Gregor laughed once. “You’ll have visitors when you bathe.”
“Bah,” the orc said.
“That’s your choice then,” Gregor concluded.
Koji sat alone on the ground, considering what to do for a long while. When he saw the two guards coming back a few minutes later, holding magically illuminated torches in the shape of Pelor’s holy symbol, Koji skulked away, seeking a better place to think.
After a half hour of chasing the chickens on the south end of town, he grew bored, and decided he ought to go see the orc prisoner.
* * *
“And so when I tried to pull the tindertwig out,” Ella said, “my hand was right in the middle of the pile when it went off. But that didn’t stop me. I felt so terrible for dropping my twig that I had to get it back.”
Leoval winced, imagining Ella as a five year-old girl, not quite understanding the consequences of rummaging around in a pile of magically-volatile fire sticks.
Ella continued, “So when I go running, crying to my father, my hand is on fire, and I’m still holding onto the stupid tindertwig.”
Leoval couldn’t help but laugh, and Ella joined in. They were still laughing together when they came within sight of the stairs at the temple’s entrance. There was a crowd standing on the steps, fifty feet from the couple.
“Well dang,” Leoval said. “Looks like I kept you out past your curfew one too many times.”
“You’re a wonderful temptation,” she whispered back, kissing him on his lips in full sight of her father and those with him.
Leoval, as much as he was pleased by the kiss, kept his eyes open, nervous about being watched. Then he recognized Gregor among the group, and he quickly pulled away.
“Sorry,” Ella said, stricken. “That was wrong of me. I know you don’t want to look bad in front of my father, but I just-”
Leoval put a finger to her lips to quiet her.
“I smell knight,” he said.
There were three elder priests with Ella’s father and Gregor, and amazingly none of them had noticed the couple’s flagrant display. Concern shadowed their faces, even though they stood on the brightly illuminated steps to the temple’s front entrance. Light from the main temple hall poured out down the stairs from the wide double doors. Leoval wondered why the group had stepped outside to speak.
“We should go around them,” Ella said. “It looks important.”
“Exactly,” Leoval said. “You go inside. I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”
She softly brushed his hand and let her eyes linger on him, then stepped away, spun around spryly, and headed into the temple. Leoval waited for her to get safely inside before he approached the group. They spotted him and nodded at his approach, but stopped whatever they were talking about.
“Gregor,” Leoval said. “I thought you were away on a quest with Heydricus and the others. I didn’t expect to see you again until spring.”
“Nice to see you too, boy,” Gregor said. “I heard there was some danger coming out of the north, heading toward the Sheldomar Valley, so I left the others to handle the oddities in Hommlet, and rode back here.”
Ella’s father, his white hair backlit from the temple like a halo, shook his head. “Gregor, the boy doesn’t need to know.”
“What don’t I need to know?” Leoval asked.
Gregor scratched a few days worth of stubble, considering. Leoval had always been interested in joining the knighthood, and Gregor, the only knight he had ever personally met, did not hold himself with the same stiffness and stern disdain Leoval had heard in many tales. It gave him hope that he might actually enjoy becoming a knight.
“Come on,” Leoval said. “If it’s dangerous, I should at least know what to look out for.”
Gregor nodded. “It’s ah . . . it’s a little strange. The dead are walking, and they’ve attacked a few small villages and a lot of travelers on the road north of here. Tanham’s the northmost town in Geoff, so if we’re gonna keep them out of our land, we’ll need to stop them here.”
One of the town elders moaned. “We are doomed.”
Gregor frowned. “No, honestly. You ever fight a ghoul? They’re not that dangerous. They’re just a bit more resilient than a living person, but you hack him a bit, and he’ll fall down like anyone else. Plus, you’ve got your wall here, and enough priests that know how to channel to drive the ghouls away. But I don’t want to cause a panic. That’s why we need to keep this quiet for now. The last thing we need is people trying to flee the town and getting picked off on the road.”
“Walking dead?” Leoval tried to laugh, but couldn’t. “You’re saying we shouldn’t be afraid of the walking dead?”
“Not the ghouls, no. The wights, yeah, they’ll suck your soul out with a touch, but a ghoul is pretty standard fare in dungeons. I ran across a few on the road here, and I managed to take one prisoner. It’s hard to interrogate something that’s already dead, but I want to find out how many others are with it. We should all be on guard at nights.
“Also,” Gregor said, “reprimand your gate guards. They let me in after sunset. That kind of carelessness could get this town destroyed.”
Leoval straightened, wanting to look brave. “What else did you see on the road?”
“Not now,” Gregor said. “I’ve got a few teeth marks on me I’d like to get healed. Come find me tomorrow, and I can tell you about it over dinner. I hear you’re dating Brann’s daughter now. Bring her along too. I’d like to see the cute thing.”
Before any of them had a chance to respond, Gregor turned and headed up the steps to the temple, nodding curtly to the priests. Leoval grinned nervously at Ella’s father, then left too. He had some bite marks too that he did not want the man to find out about.
* * *
“Thought you’d come.”
The orc’s chuckle spooked Koji. The man’s voice was deep, like it came from somewhere below his body, some place so cold that the words themselves were chill.
Koji had snuck in through a loose window on the second floor, then crept down to the store room where the priests kept the spare podiums and pews, which had a trap door that led under the main prayer hall and on to the convalescent quarters. Someone had dragged a heavy cage for penning pigs into the room, and the orc was chained inside it. The room was dark, the nearest light coming from twenty feet away and through a door. No one was guarding the orc directly, probably because of his stench, and they had left the cretin alone in the shadows. It was too dim for a human to see, but Koji’s orcish blood let him see even in total darkness, so he could tell that the orc was picking his nose. His finger was in so deep, Koji wondered if he had reached his brain, which made him laugh at himself, because everyone knew orcs were too stupid to have brains.
“So what’d you do to get put in here?” Koji asked.
“The knight, he found me and my brudders on the road. Just because we was looting through a burnt wagon, he thought we’d burnt it and drove off the people in it. So he cut my brudders to pieces, and he grabbed me and tied me up.”
Koji frowned. “Well, did you?”
The orc’s mouth opened wide, like a broken scab trying to smile.
“Yeah,” the orc said. “We really wanted to use the wagon to ambush somebody else, but the knight, he got us first. We’d run out of the meat from the first people, you know.”
“Oh,” Koji said. “Oh well. Nice talking to you.”
The orc reached out of its cage, and Koji barely managed to dodge its grab.
“Wait, brudder,” the orc said. “You’re a spat house orc, I see. They treat you nice here, don’t they?”
“Not really,” Koji said. He pressed himself against the wall, further out of reach, but he did not move to leave.
“Me, I don’t like these people,” the orc said. “And they don’t like me. We just different, you know. If I was one of them, I wouldn’t need to burn wagons and eat people, you know. You know?”
The orc’s eyes were desperate, pleading for Koji to understand. After a moment, Koji nodded.
“Good,” the orc said. He leaned back in his cage, and started picking his nose again. “Hey brudder, you treated bad by these people?”
Koji nodded. The orc laughed, ducked its head out of sight for a bit, made a spitting sound, then looked back.
“Good,” the orc said. “You ever wonder, what if you was one of them?”
Koji chewed on his lip for a moment, wondering if it was worth it to lie to the orc. The man was clearly a murderer, but Koji could imagine himself maybe ending up in the same place if his life took a few more wrong turns. The people in Tanham all thought he was a savage already, even though he’d worked hard to be smarter than the lot of them. He had wanted to show he was equal to them, but he had long ago given up dreaming that he might be like one of them.
“Yeah,” Koji said. “The girls don’t really favor me.” He paused. “You know?”
The orc chuckled. Koji slumped against the wall, reminded of a bit of despair he had tried to forget.
“Hey brudder, it’s good, it’s good. I got something you might like. You do me a favor, though, brudder?”
“Oh sure,” Koji laughed. “Want me to scratch your back for you? There are faster routes there than through your nose, I hear.”
The orc made a confused grunt, then picked up something from the bottom of its cage. It was a glass vial the size of a thumb, filled with dark liquid.
Koji said, “Gods I hope that’s not your snot.”
“Potion,” the orc said. “My chief, he gives me this so I can sneak into your town, open the gates. It can be yours, brudder.”
The offer made Koji frown, but not as much as he expected.
“You were going to attack my town?”
“Just sneak in,” the orc said. “We all sneaks in, takes some food, some clothes, some long knives, and we go. We isn’t stupid. Chief, he knows we kill anybody, or carry off any women, they come and hunt us down. We just wants food so we doesn’t have to kill a spat body, you know.”
Koji huffed. “But you decided to go eating people on the road anyway. Way to stick to a plan.”
“Got hungry,” the orc said unapologetically. “Look, brudder, I can’t use this thing. Tomorrow, they cuts me to pieces, throws me out for the chickens ‘cause I won’t talk. But I thinks, maybe, maybe you do a dying brudder a favor, open the gate tomorrow night, then go be some spat lady’s man, you know. Have a good night. My brudders will thank you for it, and maybe we doesn’t need to eat kiddies on the roadside anymore.”
Koji knew right then that if he had a chance to ask anyone else in the town if this was a good idea, they all would tell him not to trust a murdering orc.
“How long does the potion work?” he asked.
“My chief, he could only make one, so he makes it good. He says it lasts as long as you don’t see any sun. Lasts the whole long night. Until the sun comes up, brudder, you can look like whoever you want.”
The orc cupped the tiny vial in his gnarled, bloodied hands, and leered endearingly. The chill in the room deepened, and the stench coming off the orc felt like it was crawling across Koji’s flesh. Horrified, Koji reached into the cage and pulled out the potion, hoping it might stop the chill.
He shivered, and then relaxed. He told himself he had just imagined it, and then nodded thanks to the orc.
“I’ll- . . . I’ll help your brothers out,” Koji said. “I hope if they kill you, that it’s painless.”
The orc chuckled, his body bending over and creaking like dry leather.
“Brudder,” the orc smiled, “the killing always hurts.”
Koji snuck out through the floor, hearing the orc chuckle behind him. The tunnel felt cold, and when he got out of the tunnel on the other side he slid a heavy chest over the trap door to make sure the orc could not somehow follow him out. Nervously, he tucked the potion into his pocket and slipped away.
He did not feel like sleeping in the one room hovel the town allowed him to live in, so he climbed on top of the stone roof of the church, found a cozy spot between carvings to the great sun god, and tried to get some rest. Despite himself, he spent a long time just looking out at the woods and the road.
* * *
Grunting and reeling, Koji flailed to try to keep his attacker at bay. By the time he opened his eyes he had nearly fallen off the church roof.
“Sorry,” hissed a voice.
Koji hung precariously on the edge of the roof, looking around in the early morning light. Then, beneath him in the apple trees that shaded the back of the temple, he spotted Leoval, lurking like some sort of inverse vulture waiting for him to fall out of the sky. He could feel a warm welt on his face.
“Did you hit me with a rock?” Koji said.
“Quiet,” Leoval whispered loudly. “People will be coming in for morning prayers. Get down off there before somebody-”
“Hit me with a damn rock,” Koji muttered.
He clambered sleepily down one of the decorated spires at the temple’s back corner, landing beside Leoval just as a few families appeared across the town square, heading toward morning prayers.
“Your aim is terrible,” Koji said.
“I managed to hit you in the face from thirty feet down,” Leoval said. “I think my aim’s pretty good.”
Koji smirked, then shrugged.
“Hey,” he said, “why are you here this early? Don’t tell me Ella’s got you on that short of a leash.”
Leoval shook his head. “I just wanted to see her before the service, to let her know Gregor wants to have dinner with the two of us tonight.”
“I’ll pass,” Koji said.
“The two of us,” Leoval said. “Me and Ella. Though I don’t know what Ella’s really going to do there. I was planning to talk about knight things.”
Koji grunted. “I’m sure you two will enjoy discussing new ways to chop orcs to bits.”
“Hey,” Leoval said, “you know, Koj, it might be a good idea for you to try to be nice to him. You can’t be angry at people for not liking you when you try to be mean to them.”
“With Gregor,” Koji said, “it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
Leoval gave a half-sigh, half-chuckle, then looked like he was about to head into the temple. Koji put out a hand to stop him.
“Um, hold on, Lee. You don’t want to go in there. People will think like I think, that you’re under your girlfriend’s thumb. And, um, worse, you know Ella’s trying to get on her father’s bad side. You go in there, people will think you like her father’s temple, and you’re no longer something to rebel with.”
“You’re not serious,” Leoval said.
“As serious as a stone to the head.” Koji grinned smoothly. “Didn’t you just say you didn’t really want her around? How about I go inside and make a big scene so they have to throw me out? You can say you asked me to deliver the message, but I’ll take the blame because I’m a stupid half-orc. Ella will love you because you were too good to go into her dad’s temple, and you’ll owe me a favor later.”
“Whatever you want,” Leoval said. He poked Koji’s forehead with a grin. “I think I might’ve jostled this, though. You’re not normally nice unless you want someone to help you chase chickens.”
Koji pulled away, eager to end the conversation. “Where’s dinner?”
Leoval said, “My family’s place. It’ll probably be just after sunset.”
“Okay,” Koji said. “I’ll make sure Ella is definitely not there at that time. See you later.”
“Wait,” Leoval said. “Be careful today. Gregor’s worried-”
“Yeah, I saw the guy he brought in last night,” Koji said.
Koji almost gasped at his own stupidity, but then realized it actually sounded fairly innocuous.
“Oh,” Leoval said. “Well be careful.”
Koji nodded. “Will do. I’ll go piss off El’s dad.”
Leoval started to leave, then looked at Koji with an expression of odd curiosity, but then he shook his head and walked off. Once he was gone, Koji sighed. He didn’t normally lie to Leoval, but it was early, and he’d had to make up his mind quickly. Now he needed to think of the right lie to tell Ella, and had almost too much time.
Then the overture prayers began, and Koji remembered. Soon enough, the town would be executing an orc. He did not like how serious this was making him act, and he could not trust himself not to reveal something if he saw the orc, so he hurried inside the temple, working his tongue loose for some clever liesmithing.
* * *
The day passed with great heat for Leoval. In the morning he checked the outer wall for possible weak points. Gregor and the priests still had not told anyone that there might be danger in the town’s future, so Leoval could not ask the guards for help, and when he looked for Koji he could not find him, so Leoval went about his task diligently alone. He made a show of smiling whenever another of the villagers saw him, hoping one of them might mention what he was doing to the knight.
If the defense of the town went well, he hoped he would get a chance to go with Gregor on one of his adventures. He could bring Ella and Koji along, just like all the stories he heard from travelers about groups of heroes. All they would need would be a wizard.
At noon, he convinced a lower priest to let him into the temple so he could find out what had become of the orc prisoner. When he tried to get into the convalescent hall, he ran across Gregor, carrying a small urn out to be buried. The knight was busy reciting prayers for the spirit of a fallen enemy, and did not spare a word for Leoval.
After that, Leoval decided to give Gregor his space, and for the rest of the day he did odd jobs around the town and cleaned up his parent’s old home to host the knight, feeling like he was watching himself from a distance. By the end of the day he was groggy with sweat, and he helped with the last run to the stream outside the walls before the gates had to be closed at sunset. The priests took some of the water to bless, and Leoval took the rest so he could clean up.
The sun set as he washed himself, and in the quickening dusk he felt suddenly chill.
* * *
Koji spent most of the day out of sight. He didn’t want to see the orc again, didn’t want to get involved with the defenses for the town, and definitely did not want to see his friends.
He kept telling himself that somehow Leoval and Ella would end up talking to each other, and that with a few simple words they would put an end to the ill-conceived plan Koji was hoping to pull off. He knew how bad a plan it was, and he knew if he was found out he would be in trouble, but he had cast the die, and now he was going to see how the game would play out.
As the sun began to set, Koji strode to the town gate, doing his best Gregor impersonation. Regdrick and Rehan spotted him, chuckled at his exaggerated shoulder-swinging, and were ready to ignore him when he picked up a rock and cleared his throat.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
Regdrick, lazily leaning against the wall beside the gate, glared at him. “We’re busy here.”
Koji spun the rock in his palm, nodding sagely. “I understand after last night, you got a dressing down from Gregor for being crappy guards. What did he say? ‘If you two move away from your post or let anyone through that gate, I’ll have the constable flog you.’ Is that right?”
Rehan sighed. “What, you going to harrass us all night now?”
“No,” Koji said, smiling. “I plan to leave pretty soon.”
He chucked the rock at Regdrick, hitting him in the shoulder. The two men gaped, shocked. Koji took advantage of their surprise to bend over and pick up another rock. He inspected it, then shook his hand.
“This one’s no good. Guys, I’ll be back once I find some better rocks.”
“Half-orc bastard,” Regdrick cursed.
The two men started to run at Koji, and he sprinted away, leading them on a nice chase. There were enough dark places in the village that Koji was able to keep pelting them with rocks, old chicken eggs, and other unsavories until he had them halfway across the town away from the gate. It was no difficult matter to sneak back quickly, unlock the gate so a casual glance would not notice it, and then return to the two guards so they would not pin the blame on him when they did inevitably find out someone had taken advantage of their laxness.
Eventually he had to let the two men catch him, and they smacked him with their sheathed swords a few times as punishment, then left him beside a horse trough when he started faking severe pain. They left, spitting irritated curses at him as they went, and Koji sighed, wondering if Gregor would actually have them flogged.
He was a bit dirty, but if the potion worked the way the poor orc had said it would, it wouldn’t matter. The sun had set, and he had a rendezvous to make.
Early, before causing the commotion in the morning Pelorite service, Koji had managed to whisper a message to Ella, telling her Leoval wanted to meet her that evening, just after sunset, at the hay stacks on the south of town, to spend the whole night together. He had to hope that the orcs would come in stealthily but eventually cause a commotion someone realized the town had been quietly raided, and that come morning neither Ella nor Leoval would think to check what the other had been doing the night before.
When Koji was close to the hay stacks, he took a deep breath to calm himself. This failed to have the desired effect, so he continued to breathe deeply as he walked until he realized what a commotion he was making. The approach to the hay stacks provided a lot of cover so he could stay out of sight until he was sure no one else was there to spot and potentially kill him for accosting the daughter of the town’s head priest. He was crouched, about to begin a careful circuit of the area when he saw one of Ella’s sandals lying at the edge of the loose hay that was scattered across the ground.
Glancing onward, he saw a white stocking, and then beyond it another sandal. Koji began trying to calculate the distance to the center of the hay stacks and how many pieces of clothing a woman would have to take off to keep up her current rate, but with a grin he had to stop himself.
Instead he quietly clambered atop the hay, seeking a higher vantage. He peeked over the highest pile of hay, and looked down into the secluded valley where he had watched Leoval and Ella make love before.
She was there alone, sitting with an embarrassed smile on her face, her body warm and bright in Koji’s orcish sight. She sat with her back pressed to a stack of hay, her knees up and her arms over her chest. The only thing she wore was a single glove on her left hand, probably just so she could take it off whenever her lover arrived. At that moment, she lifted her arms to stretch and scratch her back, and Koji exhaled loudly in awe.
She suddenly crossed her arms and looked around. She whispered, “Lee?”
Koji ducked out of sight and closed his eyes. He pulled out the potion vial and held it in his hands, opening one eye carefully. It was still in his hand, still full. It might be full of snot, but if it worked-.
From the other side of the hay stack, Ella whispered, “I can hear you. Right now I can hear your skin getting goose bumps. Can you hear me, Lee?”
Koji did not know how her knew, but he was certain the sound he heard was of a woman rubbing herself across a pile of hay. His skin tingled at her sultry taunting, and he ducked lower, desperate to stay out of sight.
If it worked, Koji knew he would be betraying the only two people who had ever treated him nicely.
His fingers were on the lid of the vial when he saw something flying through the air, glowing with fire. It was coming over the wall less than forty feet away, burning a wobbling arc through the sky. Before it landed, others shot into the air from other parts of the wall. One landed in the hay beside Koji, and only then did he recognize it as an arrow, soaked in pitch and on fire. A moment later Ella cried out in shock as an arrow landed in the valley between the hay stacks. By then, Koji knew he had already betrayed his friends, and his entire town.
He started to move to Ella’s aid, then shook his head and scrambled down the far side of the hay. He tucked the potion away and took a wide turn around the hay stacks to come at it from a different angle. More arrows were cutting through the air, landing randomly, a few hitting the roofs of houses or piercing thin shutters.
He ran in a frantic stagger into the center of the haystacks, seeing Ella struggling back into her priestess robes. She gaped when she saw him, but was clothed enough not to scream.
Koji said, “I think orcs are attacking. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Ella nodded, then blinked. “Wait. Where’s Lee? You weren’t just waiting around here, were you?”
Koji growled and nodded. “Yes, El, I was trying to watch you naked. You’re beautiful and I’m jealous of Lee, but you can scream at me later. I’ve got to get you to safety before one of those guys,” he nodded in the direction the arrows were coming from, “makes you mother of the next half-orc.”
“No, Koji,” she said.
“Look, I’m sorry!” he yelled.
“No. I mean, I feel something. I don’t think it’s orcs.”
“Fine,” Koji said. “So are we not running then?”
“No, we’re running,” she said, frightened. “We need to get to the temple.”
Koji handed her her sandals, and then they started to run, leaving behind several pieces of clothing which would burn up in the hay fire. Alarm bells were starting to sound, and the village, like a child that had never been bullied, was panicking as it realized it was in actual danger.
* * *
Gregor and Leoval had barely sat down to break bread when the knight cocked his head, saying he heard something that worried him. Moments later the alarm bells range out, but by then the third volley of arrows had been launched, and the arrows had not been fired until well after the town gate had been forced open and the two lax guards killed. Leoval and Gregor left their dinner at a run, buckling on what little armor they had time for, but by the time they reached the town square, the city’s defenses were already breached.
Panicked villagers were stumbling through the smokey darkness, looking for help in the dim firelight. Amid the dark shapes of the people of Tanham scrambled lean bodies in tattered clothes, their skin rotten, their eyes gleaming yellow, and the stench of the grave drifting off their flesh to mingle with the scents of burning buildings and dozens of interrupted dinners. Once men, or elf, or orc, in the flaring firelight they were all ghouls, driven by the same hunger.
As Leoval readied his bow and looked for an enemy to shoot, he saw one of the hunched attackers leap at a man and knock him to the ground, tugging his arm out of joint and biting hungrily into it. Leoval recoiled in horror and nearly ran, but a hand grabbed him. At first he thought it was Gregor, but he turned and looked straight into the blood-soaked face of a walking corpse.
It tried to grab him with its other hand and bite his face, but Gregor hacked off its head with a sword blow, and the creature fell away. Leoval shook, nearly paralyzed with shock, but Gregor grabbed him and pointed to the walls.
“The arrows are driving the people out of their homes,” he said. “Leoval, get whoever you can to the temple. The undead can’t enter it. Don’t let the ghouls touch you, and leave the fallen because they’re already cursed. Go!”
Leoval nodded, and now that he had a clear goal, he was determined not to fail. He found his bearing to the temple and started to run, shouting for people to follow him. A ghoul that was clawing the eyes out of a screaming man spun and leapt for him, but just before it reached him, the air grew heavy and a brief hush passed over Leoval, followed by a roar of divine power. The ghoul turned to dust before his eyes, and nearby he saw other ghouls disintegrating, obliterated by divine power. In the center of the holy burst stood Gregor, holding up his sword as a prayer to his god.
Knowing he had been saved again, Leoval gritted his teeth and shouted at the blinded man and the others nearby.
“Follow me!” he cried. “Follow my voice to the temple.”
A handful of panicked villagers clustered near him, and Leoval led the way, jogging and firing arrows at ghouls he had a clear view of. He and Gregor seemed to be the only two people fighting back against what must have been a hundred undead or more, and no single arrow of Leoval’s ever managed to stop a ghoul. They just got angry, turned away from whoever they had been gnawing on, and headed for Leoval and his group.
Some of the villagers with him started to flee, but light spread out from the steps of the temple, and the ghouls recoiled and hissed. The Pelorite priests had emerged, and though they were not powerful enough to simply obliterate the ghouls, they could drive them back.
Leoval and the others reached the temple, and while the villagers ran inside, Leoval stood beside the priests and fired at ghouls that tried to flee the blessed light of the temple.
Beyond the touch of the light, however, there were still countless horrors. In some places Leoval spied ghouls with pale white flesh reaching out at the town guards who had come to defend their home, killing the men with a single touch. Whenever a crowd of ghouls gave in to hunger and fell about devouring one of Tanham’s villagers, one of these white ghouls would drive them away, kneel beside the corpse, and lay its hands on the chest or face, like a mockery of giving aid to the wounded. Those who were mercifully already dead simply laid still, but a few who had still clung to life fell at the touch, and the white ghoul would glide on.
Then, in its wake, those it had killed with its touch rose and shambled after it, adding to the army.
Gregor had made his way to near the town gate, two hundred feet away, and he stood against the press of undead, cutting down those who came too close, and occasionally raising his sword high to channel his god’s power to smite the ghouls. Leoval was bolstered by the sight of the holy knight risking his life, and he lent his arrows to protecting Gregor’s flanks.
The priests at the temple risked heading out to retrieve some of the wounded and dying, and found that the grass where they had fallen had turned gray, marking the courtyard with the dull silhouettes of the dead. Ella’s father urged the priests to get back inside, saying he needed their aid in a ritual to keep the undead from assaulting the safe haven of the temple. Leoval briefly glanced inside the temple, hoping to see Ella, but the prayer hall was full of chaos and despair, and he could not find his love in the crowd.
Then a cry came from the distant Gregor, and Leoval turned back to look. A strange light flared beyond Gregor, illuminating a figure in black robes, the leader of the undead. Gregor was hurled through the air by the magical blow, flying back from the gate to the center of the town square. He struggled to his feet weakly, but a pair of white ghouls charged and leapt upon him, pushing him to the ground. Miraculously, he did not fall to their death touch right away, but finally his legs buckled, and he toppled to the ground.
Leoval screamed, and the distant figure leading the army looked up, its morbid smile lit by the torches of its army. Ghoulish archers appeared flanking the leader at the gate, and they began firing in the direction of the temple. Leoval fired back, trying to take cover behind the door, but he was the only one still trying to fight back. Many priests had fallen to the arrows, and Ella’s father was shouting from the center of the temple.
“He’s lost. Close the door before they cross the courtyard.”
An arrow flew past Leoval into the temple, barely missing him. Leoval scowled, hating himself for abandoning Gregor. He nodded and was about to push the door’s closed when he heard a woman shouting in the courtyard.
At the edge of the light, Ella and Koji had stopped within fighting distance of the two ghouls that had toppled Gregor.
* * *
They were nearly within sight of the temple doors, and with Koji in the lead they had managed to avoid most of the attackers. In Koji’s mind, the walking dead were far worse than orcs, but if they had been attacked by mortal enemies, he knew they would be dead. Twice the undead had spotted him and Ella, but before they could reach them, Ella had called upon Pelor to drive the monsters back, and they had been able to keep running.
When they reached the town square, however, Koji saw dozens of ghoulish bodies hacked to pieces or burnt to ash, and just at the edge of the temple’s light lay Gregor, guarded by two strange white ghouls. Less than a hundred feet beyond was the town gate, and among the ghouls lurking near it were the familiar but bloodied bodies of Regdrick and Rehan.
Koji was still running for the temple, but he realized Ella had stopped.
“Get Gregor!” Ella shouted. Then she thrust the symbol of her god at the two white ghouls and castigated them with a Pelorite psalm.
The ghouls crouched in fear, then screamed and turned to dust, seared by divine light. Even then, Koji was not ready to turn back until he saw Leoval standing at the door to the temple. Koji cursed, skidded to a stop, and then ran for Gregor’s body, while he watched the ghouls at the town gate begin to charge him.
Gregor’s body was dull and gray, covered in the ash of dozens of ghouls. Koji grabbed the man and swung him across his back. He coughed under the weight of warrior and armor, but he was determined not to fail his friends again. The next wave of ghouls was close, but Ella was shouting another prayer, and Koji ran past her, knowing he only had to make it sixty feet to the temple entrance. Behind him he heard the curses and hisses of the ghouls, and for a moment Koji’s pride gave him the strength to sprint the last few feet into the temple. He leapt through the doorway, dropped Gregor, and turned to help close the doors.
Leoval was not moving to help him. The man stood with bow in hand, shaking, his eyes focused at the base of the stairs. Koji turned to look, and his voice caught in his throat.
Ella had not been as fast as him. Four ghouls had knocked her down and were tearing at her arms and face with their teeth, and beyond them were scores more. It was impossible to go out to save her, as impossible as a simple townboy becoming a hero or a half-breed trying to be anything but a bastard. Koji saw Leoval almost run out to her, but then the man set his jaw and raised his bow.
One of the white ghouls was gliding toward Ella where she lay screaming and praying in the grasp of the ghouls. It reached out for her, and she tried to struggle away, turning and facing Leoval and Koji one last time. Leoval released the arrow, and Koji prayed. His prayer was granted, and the white ghoul hesitated, thinking the arrow aimed for it. But the arrow struck true, piercing Ella’s heart. She fell limp, saved.
Koji closed his eyes, shoving on the door to shut it. The ghouls began to scramble up the stairs to the temple, and Koji pulled Leoval inside from the second door, then shut it too, then lay the bar across them. The doors shook as ghouls slammed against them, but the temple was hallowed ground, and they were safe inside.
There was silence in the room, and both men slumped against the door. Gregor lay wheezing and near death between them. Leoval threw aside his bow and fell to tears. Across from him, silent, Koji fingered the potion, unopened.
The priests tended to the wounded, blessed the fallen so they would not rise again, and prayed for those who could not be saved. They took Gregor away to tend him, but none of them talked to either Leoval or Koji. Neither man slept until dawn returned, and the ghouls departed.
When the doors to the temple were opened at sunrise, the town was bare. Nearly every building was a pile of cinder, and the bodies of the slain were gone, with only gray smudges in the grass marking where they had fallen. But at the base of the steps lay one body, left by the ghouls but burned in spite. Leoval and Koji both looked down upon Ella’s body, and both were certain it was he who had killed her.
