The Age of Heroes Read online

  Five yards from the forest, Rawk stopped and glanced back at Sparrow Tower. Lakin gave him the thumbs up, then shrugged, as if to say ‘You’re in the right spot, but I can’t see anything now’.

  “Great.” Rawk took a step towards the trees. The crowd wouldn’t be able to see anything if he continued. On the other hand, they’d think him a coward if he stayed where he was. Besides which, he could be waiting for the rest of the week.

  He was about to salute the crowd again, just to buy some more time, when a sound emerged from the trees. It wasn’t much. A rustle of the undergrowth. A whisper from the creatures up in the branches.

  Rawk took a step forward.

  Then a creature emerged from the trees.

  Rawk took a step back. He swallowed. “That’s not a wolden wolf.”

  It was a wolf of some kind. Lakin had that right. He may just have forgotten to mention that the thing was the size of a horse. A horse with very big teeth. Rawk took another step back. He shifted his grip on Dabaneera. Extra reach? He needed a barge pole. He needed a shield. He needed some armor. He needed to be somewhere else. It was fifteen years since he fought anything like this. At least. And he was pretty sure it had hurt.

  The noise of the crowd hit him again. Are they blind?

  The wolf lowered its head and stared. It took a step towards him. It was a magnificent looking creature. All muscle and sinew. Strength and grace. Stillness and precision.

  Rawk doubted running would do him any good even if the crowd left him with that option. He tried to think of what he might have done in the same situation twenty years ago. Well, firstly, he wouldn’t have let himself get into the situation in the first place. The crowd at the Mason’s Hammer had goaded him into immediate action instead of taking the time to do things properly. They hadn’t actually said anything, of course, but that didn’t change the facts.

  Options? Every second he waited was an advantage for the wolf. The element of surprise was his best course of action. The creature knew he was there, so he couldn’t surprise it that much, but it probably wasn’t used to things that just attacked it. So, now or never.

  Rawk flexed his hands on Dabaneera, took a deep breath, and rushed forward. He leapt into the air before he was within range. His sore knee almost collapsed under him. His battle cry turned into a cry of pain that he could hardly hear over the noise of the crowd. He blinked back tears.

  The wolf followed his movement, looking up, eyes narrowing, teeth bared. And Rawk ducked into a roll in mid air. He hit the ground hard. More pain. His shoulder jarred and he barely managed to keep his grip on Dabaneera. But he held on and, rolling in close, slashed across the wolf’s exposed throat.

  As easy as that. Rawk congratulated himself as he rolled to his feet. He staggered as his knee took his weight. His shoulder yelled abuse.

  For a moment, the wolf fought death. And in that splatter of blood-drenched time dagger-long, dagger-sharp claws raked across Rawk’s arm.

  A cry of pain. Again. Rawk didn’t know if it was his or the wolf’s. All the same in the end.

  He passed out when the wolf landed on top of him, but it must have been for only a moment. The crowd still cheered. The blood still pumped out onto the ground. The pain still screamed up and down his arm. And his knee was worse. He was still screaming. Or he had started again.

  Rawk clamped down on his fear and pain, managing to get control of his voice before anyone heard. He thought of staying put, waiting for help to arrive, but that wasn’t very dignified or Heroic and the noise of the crowd started to change as they wondered if he still lived. So he put his hand on the wolf’s neck, fingers sinking deep into the soft grey fur, and pushed with all his strength. He grunted with the effort, biting back more unHeroic sounds, before gravity took over and the wolf’s head thumped down onto the ground.

  He climbed to his feet, wavering, favoring his left knee, then had to stoop back down to collect his sword. It wasn’t easy. Upright once more, he held Dabaneera up to the crowd and they cheered. The adulation gave him strength for a moment. But only for a moment. He crouched down then—it was either that or fall down—and looked at his arm. There was blood, and a gash, but he couldn’t see a lot. He’d seen worse, he supposed. And at least it wasn’t his sword arm.

  He turned his attention to the exot. It definitely wasn’t a wolden wolf, but he didn’t know what it was. He’d never seen anything like it and hoped to never again. Soldiers were slowly making their way across from the tower. While they came, Rawk pushed his fingers into the fur again, searching. He found the buckle, cold and hard, and undid it with shaking fingers. The collar was a long strip of red leather, studded with steel. Before the soldiers came close enough to see, Rawk threw it under a bush at the edge of the forest. If they didn’t see it they couldn’t do anything about it. If he couldn’t see it, maybe he would forget about it.

  -O-

  “That isn’t a wolden wolf,” Waydin said.

  “Really?” Rawk gave his knee a surreptitious rub. It normally wasn’t too bad, if he didn’t do anything crazy, and he’d almost forgotten about the old injury in the last couple of months. Now that he’d injured it, it would probably hurt for the next week. He would try to avoid doing that again. He carefully stood up, avoiding putting too much weight on his knee, and snatched his useless shirt off the soldier. He pulled it on, torn though it was, in an attempt to hide his injured arm though nobody would see his blood through the wolf’s. Even that hurt, but he tried not to show it. And getting it off would hurt even more. “I’m going to have a word with Lakin.”

  “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “Really? Would you mistake a lion for a house cat?” Rawk managed to avoid looking towards where he’d thrown the collar.

  Waydin ignored the question. “Where do you think it’s from?”

  There were a group of soldiers gathered around the wolf. None of them seemed keen to get close, though it was well and truly dead. Rawk shuddered and turned his attention to the forest. “Not from in there,” he said. Then where?

  Rawk had done a lot of travelling in the last forty years. Habon in the south to Quera in the north. Tharpin in the east to Kenkona in the west. Across two continents and more than twenty-five nations. And in all those years he’d neither seen anything like the wolf nor heard reports from a reliable person who had.

  “Do you want the skin?”

  Rawk shook his head. “Give it to Weaver. He likes that kind of thing.”

  “Did he come with you?”

  “Of course not. Gaspar, or whoever he is this week, might have been in the crowd though.”

  Rawk didn’t wait to see if the conversation had finished. He put some more weight on his sore leg and found it wasn’t too bad at all, considering. So, with the crowd still watching, he sheathed his sword and walked back towards the city. He tried not to limp too much. People were starting to edge out past the wall. They cheered as he approached but parted to let him through. A Hero was all very well, but they could see him any time. A giant wolf was something else entirely. As long as the Hero had already dispatched it, of course. People patted him on the back. Others wanted to shake his hand. He gritted his teeth, smiled and pushed on.

  He clambered back over the tumbled down wall, thankful for the excuse to use his hands to stay upright. Give it a few minutes and he might be doing the same thing on a perfectly good street. The crow was still in the tree on the top. It cocked its head to one side but remained silent. Perhaps I told you so needed no words.

  At the mouth of the alley, Rawk paused to have another look at his arm but couldn’t get a moment to himself. Every stranger that spotted him wanted to talk, to shake his hand, to make him a part of their day. He had three conversations about the ‘wolden wolf’, one about the weather and one about a giant snake he’d killed five years earlier. Before the next person could step in to take more of his time, Rawk moved away from his shady corner. He followed the road back towards the Mason’s Hammer before turning aside
and making his slow way up towards the crown of the city.

  As he climbed the hill, the buildings became larger. The street was wider too, and filled with the scent of the flowers that filled small yards in front of the houses. Roses and violets. Pennylace and gerbera.

  A pair of dwarves stood in the street, looking up at a window. For a moment, Rawk wondered if they were going to rob the place, then he saw that the shutters were crooked. They were probably going to repair them. That was what dwarves did.

  Someone had once told Rawk that scents had different weights. So the scent of horse dung might weigh more than the scent of a rose and would therefore hang closer to the ground. So he wondered what the dwarves could smell, if not the flowers.

  Rawk’s mind wandered. He looked ahead and concentrated on the stone mermaid that sat atop the fountain in the Placton Square park. It rode a wave of trees. A couple of minutes later, he could see beneath the trees all the way to the coral shard on which the mermaid sat and the clam shaped cistern at the base. There were people all around it though they didn’t use if for cleaning clothes or filling pots as they once had.

  The park took up most of the square with just a wide road around the outside. Weaver’s Palace was on the left, and opposite, on the other side of Placton Square was the Hero’s Rest. The palace sat on the very top of the hill, but the Rest had the prime position. It perched atop a finger of stone that pointed southwest with views of the bay and the forest and the river that tied Katamood together. And to the west, a glimpse of the Yanandar Sea. The Rest was the largest inn in the city, three stories high with stables and a beer garden. It had burned down twenty years ago but been rebuilt and improved since. It was one of the few stone buildings in the city but just recently the dwarves had added new foundations and internal columns so they could build a huge water tank on the roof. Minstrels wouldn’t have sung of the building’s beauty before but with the tank on top it now resembled a hunchback looking for somewhere to sit. Rawk limped up onto the timber boards of the front deck.

  In the taproom, a dozen human men sat at tables and at the long bar. They nursed their ales and talked quietly. Merchants, lords, soldiers. All of them knew better than to make a commotion. The last person to do so had been thrown out on his ear, with a broken arm as an added bonus, and warned to never come back. Travis, who’d done the throwing and the breaking, stood behind the bar smiling and polishing tankards. He was a big man with a face and body more suited to back alleys and barracks. Today, Mykle was with him. He was younger and bigger though as yet unproven in the area of throwing. From all the evidence, he didn’t smile much at all.

  Rawk nodded to the two men but didn’t slow. He thought if he slowed he might topple over and never get back up.

  “Can we have a word, Rawk?” Travis said.

  He gritted his teeth. “What’s it about?”

  “Money, of course.” He scratched at the scar on his neck, as he always did when he talked about money.

  “Not now, then. I’ve got to go see somebody this afternoon”

  “Later?”

  “As ever.” Rawk staggered and had to lean against the doorframe for a moment. He tried to rub his knee but that just hurt his arm. “I may need a hand with a couple of things upstairs in a minute, Travis, if that’s all right.”

  Travis paused in his polishing. “Of course.”

  “Are you all right?” Mykle asked.

  Rawk looked pointedly around the room. “I’m fine. I’ve just got to...” He waved his hand as he tried to think. Neither thing was easy to accomplish on its own, let alone together. “I just need some help moving some furniture.”

  He took a deep breath and managed to get mobile again. In the hall, he kicked the stopper away so the door swung shut behind him and nobody could see. He clutched at the wall like a drowning man clinging to the last, tiny piece of spar. He might have stayed there all day, or at least until Travis came looking for him, but noises on the stairs above forced him into action again. One of the other permanent residents made his way down the stairs.

  “Good afternoon, Rawk,” Natan said with a smile that filled his round, red face. “I hear you have been busy.”

  “Never a dull moment around here, Natan.” The other man’s ample girth gave Rawk an excuse to lean against the wall again as they passed. Natan once said he always wore black because it was slimming but Rawk found that hard to believe.

  “I just wish you would complete your heroics closer to home. It has been many years since I saw anything exciting.”

  “You probably could have seen from the porch.”

  Natan nodded. “Oh, I could. But it was all very small and—” he waggled his fingers—“Vague.”

  “Well, it wasn’t from close up.”

  Natan nodded. “I’m sure it wasn’t.”

  “Well, I’ve got to get ready for an appointment.”

  “Of course.”

  Natan continued on his way. He probably wouldn’t get much further than the taproom or the beer garden. That was the normal extent of his travels.

  When he had gone, Rawk grunted and pushed himself into motion. He didn’t bother pretending now; he leaned against the wall as he fought his way up the steps. Each was a battle worthy of any he had fought in the past. The Lion of Gaganar. Herpatos. The five Witch Sisters. The Battle of Vilanor, though that had been a dozen battles all in one. That silly snake the citizen had mentioned earlier.

  Rawk lived on the top floor. It seemed he had relived half his life by the time he staggered up the last of the stairs and he wondered if a nice ground floor room might be the way to go in the future. He stopped to rest then completed the short journey to his door.

  The first room wasn’t much. A big bed, the blankets and sheets a continent of mountain ranges. A sword standing in the corner. A chest at the foot of the bed with a few odds and ends. Another long, flat chest under the bed with some weapons. A chest of drawers with some clothes. The only decoration was a moulting tapestry showing a trio of naked water nymphs and a very excited warrior.

  Rawk managed to unbuckle his sword belt and let the weapon fall to the floor. He leaned against the tapestry for a while. It was priceless. Seven hundred years old. The last piece ever created by Lacalar. He hadn’t known that when he got it. He hadn’t known when he hung it on the wall. He’d taken it as loot from... well, he didn’t remember... and years later a woman told him what he had. Priceless. Very soft. He wondered for a moment if he’d ever get the blood out. Rawk got himself upright with a hand on a nymph’s breast and fought to push the tapestry aside. Priceless and soft and heavy. Eventually, he didn’t so much move the tapestry aside as sidle in behind it so he could open the door that it hid and slip through, into the short hallway beyond.

  Outside the first door, he paused. He was exhausted. His arm wasn’t screaming at him any more. It was just numb. His whole body seemed to be numb. But that wasn’t why he paused. Well, it wasn’t the only reason. He paused because he didn’t want to go through the door. It felt as if he was outside Habanar’s Chamber again, about to go in and face the dragon.

  “This is stupid.” It was barely more than a whisper. He went through to face the dragon.

  He hadn’t seen the room since the dwarves had been there. It had just been a small storage room before, now the corner was tiled and adorned with a strange assembly of metal pipes. There was also a basin with more pipes and a seat with a fold down lid. Rawk didn’t want to think about the seat. He didn’t want to think about anything, so he leaned against the basin and tried to pull off his shirt. The material stuck, pulling away the drying blood and setting it flowing afresh. The arm screamed again. Leaving his clothes on, he staggered into the tiled corner and stood there, wavering as he looked at the pipes and the little handles. The taps. With a deep breath, he turned one. The dwarves had told him what would happen, but he still gasped when the cool water sprayed down from above. He didn’t have the energy or the balance to move clear so he leaned against the wall and
let the water flow down over his face.

  Such a simple thing. It felt wonderful, not like rain at all, though he wished he could get his clothes off. He watched the dirt and blood, the wolf’s blood and his own, flow down the hole in the floor.

  “Rawk? Are you in here?” The door opened and Travis stuck his head in. He looked at the blood flowing down the drain. “Path, what happened to you?”

  “That wasn’t a damn wolden wolf. It was huge. I’m lucky it didn’t rip me in two.” Rawk felt slightly better but could only wonder if it was just a trick of the cool, flowing water. He didn’t dare try to stand upright. “I’m going to need some help.”

  “Why didn’t you get help earlier?” Travis hurried over then paused to get his bearings. He removed his own shirt and breeches first, revealing more scars and a smooth, pink burn, then stepped under the water. He started carefully peeling the shirt away from Rawk’s arm.

  “I’m Rawk; the moment I go around asking for help it’s all over, Travis.”

  “No, the moment you die it’s all over.”

  “Same thing.” Rawk winced as the last of the material came away from his arm. Blood swirled around his feet. “This is all I have.”

  “Bullshit, Rawk. You don’t need to be a Hero any more. Retire. Rest. You are the last of the great Heroes. Nobody will forget you.”

  “Of course they will. Some new entertainment will come along and I’ll just be some old man sitting in the corner of a taproom.”

  “And what’s wrong with that? You’re already half retired anyway.”

  Rawk just looked at him.

  “I’m going to have to send for Janas.”

  “You’re—”

  Travis held up his hand before Rawk could say any more. “No, you need a proper healer.”

  “Well, Janas died.”

  Travis looked up from the arm. “What? When?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Well, she must have been ninety. We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose.”