Re-Habilis
1. Crash Mash Brash Dash Smash
He fell to the floor and cowered as the land itself ripped asunder, a dreadful, tooth-rattling, ear-splitting screech and crash heard neither hence nor thenceforth long as the world stands, yet fatefully unmistakable. The gates, the mighty gates, the timeless gates, wrought (it was said) by The Lord himself at the holdfast's first delving in unglimpsed ages before sun or moon, the gates had been breached, burst open at the word of primordial powers too dreadful to think on. Moments passed. Collapsing tons upon tons of rent iron and shattered stone echoed against the fortress walls. Cold, clear alien alarums set him trembling again. Through ruined defenses soon would pour fearsome hosts of pale walkers who had besieged the lord's domain for centuries, a force beyond mortal life, rank upon rank of sharp steel, deadly sure arrow and indomitable mail.
What was he to do? He gathered up the waterskin he had been carrying and hurried to his duties at the kitchens. Maybe they'd know, the higher-ups. The defenders' horns now answered the call. Battle would soon be joined within the gates. The youth shouldered his way through into simmering fumes of ovens and boiling pots, where the other kitchen lads stared blankly, huddled behind tables. None of them knew a damn thing more than he did. What were they to do? On bloodied boards all around, animals, gutted and in various stages of partitioning, waited to be cooked. Work had stalled. The routine into which they had been born, raised and disciplined faltered. Kitchen staff lacked standing orders for the end of the world. So what else was there to do? Unstop and empty the waterskin, empty the waterskin in the pot like you were told, and then? And then? The enemy is coming. And then?
Another crash in the distance. Hair-raising tide of indecipherable noise from the outer halls, drawing nearer by the minute. One of the other drudges bolted for the door. The rest huddled even lower behind tables and counters. Commanding voices bellowed out a muster. A muster of what? Untrained servants whose most familiar weapon was a meat cleaver? He wedged himself lower into the narrow gap between a cooling stove and the cold stone counter by it as the ceiling reverberated above. Wait. Think. Yes! Yes, the enemy would first attack the barracks above before descending to the middle levels where the kitchens had been dug. There was still time to find a way out. Out of the fortress, out of the fight, out of the mountains, out into the wide world. The enemy was pouring in. There would be fewer of them out there. Made sense. Like when the boss gets mad. Out of his way, just stay out of the way, wherever he's not, that's where you gotta be. Makes sense. So how are you getting out? Up and above the enemy rampaged, and down and below... best not even think it. The air holes then? Too narrow. The pulley shaft? Came up straight in the middle of the barracks, and there's no telling which side would be waiting up there. Retreat deeper into the back rooms? Then you'd be trapped, that's no way to think, gotta get out. The garbage pits! That was the way to go, skirting the chasms the fortress city used for waste disposal. Cracks high up in the walls ventilated the grand, reeking refuse chambers, some large enough to admit light. Some climbing to do, but-
"What're all of ya cringin' an' cowerin' in 'ere for? Don't you know there's a war on?"
The kitchens' door slammed open. Other lads yelped and scattered. The boss' voice bellowed this way and that among the clattering, padding, frenzied scuffle to avoid his reach.
"Grab a poker, grab a cutter, bash wit' rocks if ya gotta, but if I dun see you out there holdin' tha line in the next breath, I'll cram yer filthy hides into tonight's pot m'self!"
Padding, scampering footsteps raced each other out the door, where it sounded like half the fortress was cramming into the hallway. The stove rattled and suddenly a yellow-eyed, leathery face leaned into the hiding spot, leering broken-fanged as a thick, muscular arm twisted its way in and yanked the last kitchen hand out by the scruff of his neck.
"Mash! There ya are, Mash. Oughta wring yer neck." Mash cringed beneath blows from a gnarled wooden stick then holding his palms out in self-defence found it shoved into them as the boss shoved him forward. It was topped at one end by a rusted, hastily sharpened chunk of metal as spear-tip. This, then was to be his arsenal in the battle to come. "Now fall in line afore I pound ya inta one!"
Mash scuttled desperately along the floor to obey. His ears, still ringing from the boss' fists, failed to pinpoint the approach of rhythmically stomping feet. A heavy boot dug into his ribs. A deep voice cursed in a strange tongue. A stiff, mailed hand clamped the back of his throat. He flailed aimlessly with the spear. The gauntlet's owner cursed again and shoved him deeper into the marching column. Another hand gripped the top of his skull and, just short of crushing it, shoved him onwards. Another caught him underarm as he fell and half-lifted him to the last, which slapped him heavily between the shoulderblades. His spear flew sideways to slap against his back, clattering useless to the floor.
Mash looked back. The Lord had called up his armies of Men. Row upon row of warriors marched, four abreast, armored in crude but thick iron-studded leather, bearded, uncomplaining in lockstep, chanting their stride along with the drummers scattered through their ranks, tall and if not straight-backed at least straighter than he himself would ever stand, kicking aside the other kitchen boys as the boss shoved them through their ranks.
"Rot yer guts, ya hairy piles o' dung!" Mash cursed and brandished his spear at them, then ducked as the boss hurled a pot over their column at him to keep moving. Fear of punishment drove his feet onwards, but desperation drove his hand to the rolling, chipped and dented pot to cram it on his head for protection like some of the men had.
His own people's ranks did not march or even stand four (or any number) abreast. No line to fall into. Their hunched, leathery, wiry forms milled and roiled, shifted and shoved each other. The crack of a whip and a pained yelp occasionally caused one or another side of the throng to lurch forward, so that as a whole they more or less stood still even as individually they snuck behind the front line in fear.
"Move yer gimp heels, ya cowards!" roared a boss from one side. Mash was elbowed in the ribs.
"Yeh spineless maggots either move up or get stomped when the rest do!" shouted another from far behind. Someone indeed stomped on Mash's foot, and when he was staggered moved him forcibly up.
"Ain't nothin' ta be scared about!" screeched another desperate voice, accompanied by a flurry of whipped air above their heads. Mash managed to smash his head back with a satisfying crunch, then watched in glee as his victim, still clutching his nose, was grabbed and shoved forward several ranks.
"Them bright-eyes ain't nothin' to us!" This time he managed to parry a fresh elbow to his ribs and stood his ground, rearranging the pot on his head.
"They bleed same as you do!" Mash was inexorably forced on as the herd stampeded a few brief excited steps.
"Their throats taste sweeter'n you've ever tasted!" Mash found himself cheering along with the horde for a brief second, stopped at seeing the hall entrance draw a step or two nearer somehow. The hall beyond portended fear, but something else as well... blood milled and tensed beyond that huge metal-banded wooden door. They could all smell it now, hateful and mesmerizing at the same time, high blood, clean flesh, just waiting to be torn and spilled in glorious red. His teeth clenched involuntarily upon nothing in anticipation.
"They can hit, you can hit!" Mash pretended to cheer again, but instead lifted his arms just halfway to shove against another conscript's shoulders, the ranks closing behind before the other could react.
"They got iron, you got iron!" Hoarse, bloodthirsty screeching vibrated the cavern walls. Mash contemplated the iron point bound atop his spear for a split-second, waved it triumphantly only to bring the haft down between the shoulderblades before him - but putting too much of his own weight into the motion found himself instead tripped and squeezed between row after row. By the time he managed to plant his feet, it had become impossible to move. So many orcs had been mustered into the half-lit corridor that, willing or not, they at last stood shoulder to shoulder. Mash whimpered. He was barely third from the front.
"Wish I'd'a thought o' that" mumbled a nearby voice. One of his fellows, bleeding black down his jaw where his lip had been split in the scrum, staring enviously at the pot leaking sticky stew sauce over Mash's ears. "Give it 'ere!" The other made a grab for the helmet but Mash quickly slapped him away.
"Gitcherown! Ya never were a smart one like-"
But their argument was cut short by a metallic screeching from ahead. The doors were... opening? No. The bar still held, the massive two-story tall slabs of bronze, iron and beams not even shaking with any attempts to burst them open. Instead they barely, just barely, lifted. A hair, just enough to admit thin shining saw-blades at each rusted hinge. Nimbly, surely, hands from the other side filed away in unison. Minutes passed as the defenders watched in wonder and grumbled but awaited the inevitable. With a final screech and crash the twin barrier fell inward, still barred. The bosses ordered a volley. Javelins and sling stones clattered innocently off the bright leaf shields of the enemy vanguard, which wedged inward then parted in unison, holding the flanks to admit a pike-wielding charge under a whistling barrage of arrows.
Mash found himself screaming both in panic and a surge of primordial hatred. The very surety of the enemy's motions, the clean lines of their every armor piece and slender, graceful weapon, the steady, clear, determined gaze flaring from beneath every lightweight, silvered steel helm filled him with hatred. He needed their blood. As the front line collapsed, he poked awkwardly with his spear over the shoulders of the second line, felt a clang of unyielding mail and pulled back to duck under a perfectly straight spear haft, heard it strike home into a gurgling death back over his shoulder. Without bothering to retract their pikes, the elf spear tip retreated, the flanking shields closing in again.
The front became a crush of flesh, sheer back-row weight driving short swords and short spears past each other in desperation, if nothing else, to simply make room. Stepping on a fallen brother-in-arms, Mash struck feverishly outwards, again and again, feeling a shoulder braced against him from behind, pushing him forward into solid shields and arcing blades. For a moment, it seemed the defenders were managing to repel the assault but their forward lurch merely collapsed dead, pierced and slashed to the last as two or three lightly wounded attackers fell back. Again the enemy lines shifted, shields parting, long spears charging forward as one as arrows flew overhead to winnow down the rear ranks. Mash saw the bright burnished razor tip of a lance drive mercilessly toward his face, had time to halfway cringe and felt the blow sledgehammer into the pot on his head instead.
When he came to he was being stepped on. He knew, could feel the foot shift atop him but it carried little weight, was placed and lifted as if it were the mere concept, the impression of a booted foot. Another followed, just as lithe and sure. His hearing came back next. The fighting had moved far down the hall, where the fortress population's hoarse cacophony mingled with the invaders' percussive and precise commands. The hallway, then, had been over-run. Struggling not to breathe too obviously, he suffered another and yet another enemy to step over him. Then, silence. The fighting continued, far off, farther and farther off. He chanced at long last opening his eyes. Nothing moved. Light had passed with the action. He felt his head. The brittle metal which had saved his life had cracked and split on impact. Abandoning it, he chanced on the haft of his spear, mired in a sticky, tasty-smelling pool and took it along regardless that its tip has itself snapped away. Feeling his way along the wall he stumbled quickly among the corpses and spent arrows or spears cluttering the floor. The battleground thinned where hallways split and recombined. Room after room reeked of spilled guts and flowing blood. Breathlessly he rushed past halls where enemy calls could be heard, found at last a half-dozen kin huddled together in a storeroom binding their wounds.
"You!" To his dismay, the boss' form muscled its way to the door, grabbing him by the throat. "Where were you, you whiny little shit? Took to yer heels at the first sight of 'em, did ya, Mash? I'll skin you-"
"No! No! Look, look!" Mash waved aloft his broken, blunted spear-tip. Only now in the light did he see that by sheer chance the bloodstain on it happened to be red, not black. "I hit! I stuck 'em! I stuck 'em, boss! Stuck 'em good!"
This gave the others pause. The boss, missing an ear now, grinned a broken smile and ceased strangling him to pat him on the back.
"Whad'ye know lads, we've got us a hero! Which is good, it's good, 'cause we got a job for a hero." He turned Mash in place to point him down the corridor. "We're gatherin' all the ones made it out to hit their ranks in the back. But we need a fight to start. So you, you go out there and tell the rest of ours we'll attack when they do."
With that, Mash found himself shoved back out. Behind him he could hear the door being barred. It was, in truth, as much or more than he'd expected from the bonds of friendship and kinship.
2. Revolving Door
Having won this end of the mountain-spanning battle, small bands of surfacers now roamed from room to room securing their advance. He watched from the shadows as two of his kind tried ambushing one band around the corner, only to be effortlessly cut down. Watched another run roaring in bloodlust into a sleek sword-tip, never touching the enemy. One enemy patrol cornered a full dozen in one room, shouted something at them, then when answered with javelins charged in and calmly walked back out, unscathed, wiping black blood from their blades. Why... why had they shouted first? What was that they shouted?
Give up?
Give up? Give up means die. Doesn't it? It does. Always has. Every denizen of the Dark Lord's demesne knew this. Give up means you're gonna die anyway, maybe they chop you quick instead of slow. But maybe they don't, maybe they want some fun, so you don't give up. Ever. But the surfacers chop everyone quick anyway. Never have their fun. Why shout to give up?
Lit only by a torch here and there, cluttered with corpses and abandoned equipment, the massive corridors provided decent cover, but everywhere he turned he found only more enemy bands going room to room. Hemmed in, a flickering light around one corner, the musical sound of surfacer voices behind him, the kitchen boy threw down his spear to grab a sword from a nearby corpse, that'd take one down at least, stab right in the guts, it's just a long knife, just poke him in the guts when he turns the corner and run... but before he could even reach the blade, a thinner, sharper one flashed out of the dark toward his face. More footsteps surrounded him. Six in all. A torch flared painfully bright in his face. In their own tongue, one of the others questioned:
"<Calanon? Why do you hesitate?>"
"<It bears no weapon.>"
"<So? It is a weapon nonetheless.>"
"<Is it? This place has packs to be carried and water to be drawn from its wells, floors to sweep and boards to hammer. We are deep into the mountains' bowels now. Is this a fighter or a drudge?>"
"<If a drudge fights, it is a fighter. Do not let your kindness drive you mad with false hopes, Calanon. You've had us give a score of the monsters their chance to surrender, and each has tried to gnaw your face off.>"
"<Yet this one does not.>"
"<You merely startled it.>"
"<I am sick with the hopelessness of this place, brother. If even one may not be wholly lost, if their tale might be true, I would seek that extinguished spark within.>"
"<If that tale may be true, it is also ended. Do not weary your spirit with such empty hopes. But, this is your command. Ask it as you have the others, if you will.>"
"You surrender? Give up?"
Mash, still frozen, heard the familiar words among the alien ones. Blood trickled down his neck from his chin. But... they could have done it at any time.
"Give up." The others seemed taken aback. The blade's tip eased imperceptibly off his split skin. "I give up!" he repeated, encouraged.
"<It lies.>"
"<You cannot know that.>"
"<You would have me call a crow an eagle? The world that is holds many wonders we have yet to witness, but this?>" He waved dismissively in the creature's direction. "<We know this downcast thing. Broken and lost, its nature defiled until it becomes defilement itself, decay incarnate. For centuries we have kept watch, for centuries we have tamped down its villainy, and always the beast bares its fangs anew. It does not think but merely schemes, it does not treat but merely wars, it breeds and consumes beyond all measure even of the stunted folk, even of the secondborn at their basest, it contents itself in wretched ignorance, it does not speak but every word scars the air with stupidity and lies. You or I may well have planted an arrow through its sire's throat, or its grandsire's, or their own forebears, yet always filth begets ever more filth. What is more likely: that its bloodthirsty nature has changed in the span of a few years or that when pressed it merely spins crass lies anew to poison your ears?>"
"What are you?" Calanon inquired. "None of the rest surrendered."
"I ain't like 'em!" Mash's mind raced. This was working. Somehow, this was working. "I cook, don't go out to fight youse. I ain't like 'em, I'm the one they threw out!"
"Threw out? Of where?"
Without hesitation, Mash pointed down the hall.
"How many?"
"Many as you."
The torch-bearer muffled the light and led them forth. At the door, they paused, silently. He knew this game. When the higher-ups are hungry for blood, give 'em someone else. A quick rap on the heavy stone.
"It's me, boss. I got through."
Nothing.
"It's quiet now. The fighting's gone off away. Lemme in, boss. I found swords, bright shiny ones."
A long pause, then the heavy scrape of the bar being pulled up. As the door opened the barest crack, Calanon kicked it in. Two of his fellows drew blades, hefted their shields and slashed their way in. The fight, even in near pitch blackness, lasted barely a few moments, a few shouts and clangs, a few wheezing, sucking stabs. When the torch flared back alive, Mash found himself staring down at his boss' decapitated visage. Too quick. Too painless. For a lifetime of kicks, for a lifetime for singeing with a hot iron when he burned the stew, for a lifetime of spitting in his face and starving him to work harder, the damn fool elves had made it much too quick and painless.
"<You see now side-by-side>" Calanon pointed to the heavy, muscular headless corpse "<this one is bigger than the rest. The scrawnier ones like this other, they serve the larger warriors we've always seen outside.>"
"<Yet are they of a kind.>"
"<Let's ask it.> Are you of a kind?"
"Wit' 'im?" Mash shook his head vigorously. "He's a boss, I ain't!" That was an easy question, if ever in his life he'd been overheard claiming to be equal to a boss, well...
"<Calanon, you well know the beast did not truly understand the grounds on which you question.>"
"<The day is won, and after long centuries final victory at last in our grasp. I would make my decision on the grounds of that hope. Let us at least have the wretch ease our remaining task, and report up to the front all the faster.> We go from room to room. You go in front. Tell us what each room is."
And so Mash did, a sword ever at his back, giving them a tour of a lightless dormitory filled with ramshackle bunks, then a workshop where tools were mended, then a supply room (it took a bit to make the prissy pricks understand the rats were in fact part of the supplies) other patrols curiously questioning Calanon about his prisoner.
"They haven't seen one of your kind cooperating before. Maybe you really are a different breed" the squad leader joked, his musical voice echoing hollow among the death-reeking tunnels. Finally back where Mash's day had started, the kitchens. Battle had swept past leaving them untouched, all the game brought down from aboveground, hunted at great risk under cover of darkness, still half-butchered on the tables. It seemed to give his captors pause, the entire group fallen deathly silent, their breaths caught in their throats at the spectacle, but to the youth it only made his stomach growl. There was noone to stop him taking a bit extra for himself now, was there?
"No. Out. Out!" Calanon slapped his hand aside and shoved him back out the door as he'd reached for a particularly juicy carcass, one of the smooth, tender two-legged ones usually reserved for the warriors' roasts. A sword whisked toward Mash's throat suddenly when outside. Calanon parried it, then threatened Mash himself in turn.
"Never again. You hear? That is over. If you are a different kind, a new kind, then never again... do that!"
"Sure boss yeah won't do again new kind I am I am old kind did that I's new kind I's yer prisoner now I surrender and do what you say boss like new kind never do it again" Mash babbled incoherently, barely even understanding what had made them all so sick to their stomachs. But it was good to be a different kind, he understood that now.
"<Kill it, Calanon. By all the light we've seen, end this darkness. You cannot raise it from such depths. The sickness in this creature cannot be mended.>"
"<We will... report what we have found. After all, we always knew. Then a decision shall be taken. Perhaps the war council shall have mercy for mine is, I will admit, sorely tried.>"
They marched on in silence, through darkened halls, over corpses, beneath smoke-darkened ceilings, beneath untold tons of incubating rock... and vaguely, the prisoner marked, in the direction he had hope to escape toward the refuse pits, if only the swords at his back would falter long enough to make a dash for it. Down one intersection and another they followed the brighter lights and sounds of battle until finally reaching the front. A bright-mailed host, hundreds strong, had found one of the downward passages and were beating back its defenders. But there were many such paths between the levels.
"<Hear that? No, not in front. Down this other branch.>"
Mash knew but did not let on. Devoted marching to savage drums, heavy boots, he remembered the sound, could almost smell the facial hair.
"<Flanking attack, sound it! Fighting retreat, buy time for the rearguard to turn!>"
Events moved quickly. One of his captors blew a horn signal as the rest backpedaled down the corridor. In the distance, the invading force's rear ranks turned to meet the new challenge. Behind, a familiar four-strong column turned the corner, roared a defiant battle-cry and charged. The lone squad deflected lances and sling-stones, thrust and feinted struggling to regain their allies, but one by one began to be struck down, the wild men's axes and spears making up in brute strength and overwhelming numbers what they lacked in finesse. Calanon hissed in pain as a thrown flint axe bit through his dented armor above the knee... and Mash was on him instantly as he fell, throttling him, clawing at his eyes, seeking his pulse, until a spearman caught up to their wrestling forms and putting his weight into it from above jabbed straight through the immortal's guts.
But as ten thousand years of experience, of wisdom, of life and pride and dogged hope were extinguished, a freezing wind whistled up from the lower levels. Hints of blue fire snaked up the stairs. And just like that Mash let go his prey and scrambled on all fours against the flow of wild men, knowing he had to be anywhere else at this moment. There were reasons none of his ilk went down below unless forced to. Below boiled the Dark Lord's malice made corporeal. Flame and shadow, scale and fang, held in reserve for a last ditch defense. They would fall, he knew that now, the invaders were mightier. Still the deeper horrors would keep the leggy sun-loving freaks busy long enough not to care about one apprentice cook. He ran.
Out of the blue flame and out of the torchlight, out of the last glints of reflected pallor he ran. Enemy squads dashed past to reinforce the front. But everywhere he turned he could not avoid them. Time and again his path to the pits was blocked. Hiding and sneaking, crawling and playing dead, he found himself at last in a long straightaway, a byway connecting hollowed out mountains, empty but for a statue of the Lord midway through, now toppled by the invaders.
Voices behind. Torches.
A shout.
He ran.
An arrow whistled over his head. Another slid neatly beneath the skin of his forearm.
He could not outrun arrows. Ducked behind the fallen stone.
No escape. Can't fight. It worked once before. Will it work now?
"I surrender! I surrender! I's by m'self, different, I give up!"
Silence. Mash panted, the arrow in his forearm burning, then caught his breath. What if these ones didn't want surrendering? Distant hiss, barely so much as a cockroach's scampering, not the rusty scratch he'd heard so many times before but what else could it be but a blade drawn from a perfectly fitted scabbard? What if it was only that other one? He couldn't retreat now, he was in open field... wait... the longshanks moved swift as the hungry shadows below and twice as silent... they must be halfway across the chamber already, what could he say?
"<Calanon>!"
"What?" The clear voice came from above him. The steady-eyed terror stood already perched atop the fallen statue's upward-pointing elbow, arrow nocked. A second and third stepped calmly around to both sides.
"Calanon!"
"How do you know that name?"
"It was him! I mean I was his. I mean he sent me to youse. Priz'ner, I's a priz'ner, Calanon tol' me to run to you lot here when the fighting started up ahead."
Their leader waved his fellows to lower their weapons, examined his catch critically, ignored its wincing and hissing as he snapped off the arrow and pulled it from its bleeding forearm.
"<A graze. You've let your archery lapse in the bright-mailed vanguard. Where now the eye and hand which could fell frightened sparrows from the canopy on a cloudy night?>"
"<The sparrows had no such stormclouds to shield them as this creature's palpable aegis of stench. It will turn an arrow as surely as it does a stomach.>"
"<Fastidious the beast may not be, yet prisoner still may. If quarter was indeed given, I am loathe to dishonour Calanon by gainsaying his mercy, misguided though I find it.>"
All three as one glanced in all directions for signs of trickery, then circled their terrified prey. One pointed to its chin:
"<What do you make of this?>"
"<The scratch is too sharp and precise to be from their own battle-cutlery.>"
"<One of our own could have killed it, and did not.>" Grudging nods. "<It is not proof enough, but it is doubt enough. Bind its arms. And, I suppose, its wound as well.>"
And so, prisoner once again, Mash was marched back the way he came, and from their few comments understood these ones were as amazed one of his kind had overcome his bloodlust long enough to surrender as the last group had been. But he was still alive. It worked. Surrendering worked. Yes, yes, good, it was good to be a different kind. He'd get his hands on their throats yet. And oh, what serendipity awaited ahead. The other three of their squad were ducking rocks thrown from behind a barricade where familiar voices shouted taunts and curses. Mash grinned at the spectacle, then had a flash of inspiration. If one could give up and live... could more?
"Oy, boss, let 'em give up like me! They're just cooks like me, not the other kind."
The enemy leader aimed a disdainful look in his direction, expressing wordlessly just how absurd such a scenario sounded, then sighed.
"If Calanon let you live, that is for you and him. And" he waved to the barricade, now covered in burning oil "they do not give up. Only kill."
"No boss, you got it all wrong, let me talk to 'em! They'll surrender nice and neat. You'll see. We're a different kind, a new kind. Our bosses, they was so cruel, we'll cook for you instead."
"I have known your breed since you <crawled from the depths>" snorted he "and if you <differ, it is only in preferring lies before or after butchery> but yes, go, tell them to give up. We will not kill them now. We will bring them to our... bosses... to be <judged> instead."
"Ey, ey, you lot back there! Y'hear that? Give up and they won't kill yas, you work for 'em instead! Grind, izzat you I heard back there?"
"Mash, izzat you?"
It took a bit of back-and-forth under the firstborn's incredulous eye-rolling, but he soon had them coming out one by one and putting their arms out to be roped tight. Grind, Gutbrew, Scratch, Nailgnaw, Fatrat, Poker, Gurgler, good, dependable lads all, he extolled their virtues as a new breed to their captors as they herded into a well-lit camp in a back room, not like the others under the mountains at all, they were a different kind, he babbled on and on until threatened with a gag to shut him up.
But they were alive.
They were given water, cleaner than they'd ever tasted. Hours passed, slumped on the floor together in a pile. He tickled Poker's hands behind him until the other got the hint and started sawing at the ropes with his jagged clawlike nails. One of the six captors was dispatched for news from the front. Another reinforced a passing patrol. The mid levels grew quiet. The fighting had moved down below. Nailgnaw, who had laid down as if to sleep, began chewing on their ropes in earnest. The remaining four elves, not fooled, separated them.
Mash continued shooting encouraging looks at the others. At first incredulous, they gradually regained their spirit. They had no signal. They needed no signal. They knew all too well the look in their own eyes when they were ready for a fight, ready to bash and tear into flesh, primordial rage welling up inside them once more. The day which had broken invisibly somewhere outside drew once more toward evening. Suddenly, with a roar, Fatrat jumped to his feet, snapping his weakened bonds. The rest were ready. Grabbing a jagged pot shard he managed to slash Grind's hands free before his head was lopped clean off. Poker headbutted one of the guards. Scratch bit into another's hand as they stabbed him through the lungs.
This was everything Mash had hoped for, the result he knew he'd get from his lifetime friends. They wouldn't kill a single one, but that wasn't their purpose. Triumphantly, he jumped to his feet and planted a heel in Gurgler's back, shoving him into the nearest spear, then ducked behind Grind, tripping him in the path of a blade, jumped over Nailgnaw's disemboweled, writhing form and stomped on Poker's foot as the other managed to open the door, kicking in his stomach, making his escape into the darkened tunnels. They'd keep the four freaks busy long enough.
Good, dependable lads all!
3. A New Leaf in the Fall
Entire clans of the stunted folk, whether collaborators or captured slaves, had toiled centuries upon rickety scaffolds to polish into rectilinear perfection even this least regarded corridor, but gradually, whether because they had been drafted or consumed, even their stone mastery had here met its end. Mash padded anxiously along the dim angle of the wall along the floor, letting his feet carry him. It had not taken too long to find a jagged stone on which to finally free his hands of the itchy, burning, highborn-woven rope. With each closer furlong one trod the lone, poorly aerated tunnel toward the crevasse, the sleekly polished, age-old fortress' facade of monolithic will and command slipped ever so slovenly into the truth belying its hollow ambitions. Here nocturne basaltic luster gave way to grit, fashioned perpendicularity to implacably watershaped swooping and soaring walls and ceiling.
The kitchen boy, accustomed as he was after pulling a hundred offal-laden hand-carts through this very corridor, angled a halfhearted kick at a lump in the floor which a month back had cracked a wooden wheel and earned him a beating, but paid his surroundings no further mind. His eyes strained instead after wavering torches but saw none. His ears strained after criminally musical voices but heard none. His nose at last picked up a trace of blood black and red, and slowed his feet. There had been a fight ahead. A skirmish. Several of his kin lay trampled in retreat. More slumped against the walls ahead. One wearing a tunic and wooden shield having caught fire from a now extinguished torch lit the hall in a dancing miasma of burnt hair, skin and grease.
But where the enemy dead? Surely this could not have been so one-sided a confrontation. The people knew how to hit. The immortals bled like anyone else didn't they. There, there was red blood on the floor. But no body. They take their dead with them, that what it is, cogitated Mash to his self, alone and desperate for signs of victory. That's what it must be, they wanna eat tonight, they wanted the body. That's gotta be it. And look! Look-look-look, that ain't one of our carts, them's skinny wood with no iron banding to hold it together, that's one of theirs. Now having put the fighting behind him for the time being, he found a trace of patriotism creeping back of old habit. His chest swelled at visions of the terrible invaders, over-run by the dark lord's hordes, fleeing pathetically, forced to abandon their goods to plunder.
He paused, sniffing at it. Lots of stuff inside there. Surface stuff. Fancy stuff. Maybe even... magic stuff. Oh yes. They had magic, the pale stick freaks, they always had them some magic. And here it was to plunder. He kicked one of the cart's skinny, elegantly-spoked wheels and peered over its lip, glanced around and listened for approach, then in the safe silence reached in.
It itched. Filthy sunbitten magic. But powerful magic it must be, and all his, all his. A bold vision of himself returning to smite his foes with their own weapons pulled his hand in. No more Mash the kitchen boy. Mash the hero! Mash the champion, honored by the Dark Lord's word for saving the fortress, yes... Yes!
What was this then? Long but not a spear, not a knife. Lots of em in a bundle, all tied together in canvas at one end. A net! But too heavy and clumsy to throw, stupid, stupid, didn't they know how to make nets? Maybe if you knew the magic, said the magic. There was pictures on the canvas, of people grabbing each other by the hands, capturing each other, yes, a tarp, a net! But the pictures made no magic for him, and rubbing the canvas only released sweet-smelling witch-herb smell into the air, filthy magic, dangerous magic! He cantilevered the carefully-bundled tent out of the cart and tossed it disdainfully onto the burning corpse for more light.
What was this other thing then. Stick. Spear, but not sharp, blunt at both ends. But straight, carefully straightened and lacquered and drawn on. Pictures of birds, what did they mean? It must be a weapon, or why make it fancy. Pictures of birds. His hands burned in touching them, his oily, hardened, calloused skin smearing soot onto the spiraling depictions of birds and fish intertwining. Food on a weapon. Must be for huntin' somehow. Who would make a stick and not sharpen it to stab if it's not heavy enough to crush? Magicians, but he knew not the words. He tossed the whimsically etched walking-stick out of the cart.
And this? What's this? Frying pan, that was easy enough. Kitchen boy knew this one sure enough. But along its edge, miraculously undarkened by smoke, wrapped a delicate floral relief. What was the point of magicking up a frying pan? Did they use it to torture their prisoners, mash their face down into it until they screamed and begged and wailed and roasted and maybe the magic made them tell it all true before you bit into the roast tasty and victorious hunger gnawing bedamned becursed, why magic up a damn frying pan with tasty poisonous carving symbols and hungry. Wait, that was it! The carven pan must make food! Magic food to make you strong, to crush your enemies with one hand!
"Food!" ordered he. Nothing happened.
"Roast!" ordered he. Nothing happened.
"Fry!" ordered he. "Whaddaya want?!? Fire, ya like fire?" He held it over the burning canvassed corpse. "Fire! Food, gimme food! Alam kum sum batrakh shakakh!" He desperately tried to imitate incantations he'd overheard from bone-clad mysics and (deliberately) blind(ed) prophets in his brief life. Nothing happened. Growling in frustration, he banged it against the cart a few times, then hurled it against the far wall, cringed at the echoing clatter and cursed himself for the dangerous noise, listened again for approach but could not resist the treasure cart's lure.
This is clothing. Long and wrapping around like for cold, hood on top, and this had pictures too on the back all spread out, more birds and leaves and sunlit hills in brilliant blues and yellows and greens and reds so blood-red they made his mouth water, and a face. Not painted, he found when running his fingers across it, but woven into the garment itself in colored thread. A Face! There, on the shoulder, where the wearer could look to it as he marched to war, where it could be kissed in longing before the toil and mud and horror and anguish and perhaps death of battle, there was the face. Faces he had seen carved, one face, the same stiff masklike stylized face above every door he'd walked through, sneering, frowning, looming down on him every day of his life. The Dark Lord's face and only his glared murderously everywhere in the fortress. But this was not that face. It was delicate of feature, with gold-threaded hair braided around its high clear brow and sweeping back into a sleek mane. Its eyes were soft and kind and weak hatefulweak WEAK WEAK!!! Its lip curled languidly, not into mocking laughter but an easy, welcoming smile.
Mash, feeling his eyes water at the sight and not knowing why, suddenly forced his hands apart. With a disdainfully musical pop, the fabric held. He tore at it harder fruitlessly, then bit into it, dug his rotting teeth right into that bright, insultingly kind visage and gnawed desperately in his rage. When he pulled it away and shook it clear of his slaver, he had managed only a single incisor hole through the monster's eye. With a despairing shriek, spitting the inimical taste out of his mouth, he threw it to join the others on the fire.
Mash's shoulders tensed at a far-off trumpet. He had been making too much noise. One last look. Filthy firstborn magic. Why a face, and one which did not even instill fear? Why birds and beasts if the charm did not conjure such to tear out the eyes and rip the skin from one's antagonist? Or at least conjured them as food. Why any of this, it was all pointless, useless, the entire insane pile's meaning was beyond him. He grabbed one last object, feeling it warm and scald and writhe imperceptively in revulsion at his touch, and ran for the pits.
Something was coming. Below his feet the Lord's horrors rumbled in revulsion. From the upper levels a glint of light reflected impossibly, infinitely off the dull black walls, rounding every corner as if hunting the darkness. Not torchlight but the clear cold silver of the heavens, as if the stars themselves now kindled in the depths. Wind fluttered playfully against his shivering skin, like the beating of raptor wings. Challenging battle-ready laughter, or was it a horn. It was all death to him. Mash sped his pace. They were here.
The Powers had entered the fray. Deep beneath the strongest fortifications, the Lord himself awaited them. Such primal ambitions admitted no scullions. Run.
He burst into the gigantic refuse hall thoughtlessly. Battle had not spared even this remote place, and a couple of torches could be seen moving around the edge, hugging the wall toward deeper tunnels. One of these stopped on Mash's entrance and reversed direction, prompting him to scamper the other way. The central crevasse appeared bottomless, but the sheer weight of odours it spewed spoke of an age's worth of offal and effluent. Luckily his pursuers were less practiced dodging around the slippery, leftover piles and smears dotting its lip, and he put more than an arrow's flight between him and their bows.
This next part, he had not thought through. The air holes had been cut high in the cavern walls, and intentionally too thin to admit either intrusion or escape. But the work had not been perfect, and some, he knew from gossip, had been deliberately widened by subsequent generations. Luck had not left him yet. Massive, scaly forms with limbs thick as tree trunks lay slain among his own smaller kin, one among these slumped against the wall just beneath his escape route. But still, he could see in the intruding moonlight, not tall enough to boost him all the way, and he cursed himself for having thrown away his binding ropes... then realized he was still holding his prize.
It was a stick with a box at one end, it was wood and had metal strings like a bow, but where would you fit the arrow? And there was a hole inside but nothing inside the hole, like a drum and a bow at the same time. Useless thing, and he couldn't stop to untie the strings but would it hold? Clambering onto the corpse's knee, then its belly and shoulder, he gained the top of its skull as an arrow fell short, and holding the lute by its neck hooked it as best he could onto the window-hole's rough stone ledge to pull himself up, drawing an indignant clang from the instrument as it dented under such mistreatment. The dent held. The masterfully worked plywood held. His fingers gained the ledge as another arrow clattered off the stone next to him. Throwing his climbing tool ahead, he planted a knee, then the other, and without pausing to look at the closing threat, forced himself through the too-narrow opening, wailing as an arrow struck his calf. If they hadn't starved him all his life, he'd never have fit.
With a final pained but victorious cackle, Mash launched himself into the night.
And fell.
Ventilation shafts had been carved high up into the mountain so as to remain unreachable, slit jaggedly and slimly into only the sheerest rock faces and guarded by winged abominations from their aeries on peaks above, ready to hurl would-be spies from the cliffs or bring them back to their nests to be torn apart piece by piece, or thrown into the mountain itself as offering to the dark lord's luckier minions, their anguish supplying days' worth of lullabies to the kitchen boys' happier nights.
The same fate awaited deserters, Mash recalled as he scraped his palm struggling to break his fall, as his other shoulder cracked against the mountainside, as he tumbled and crashed through shale and scree. Veritable avalanche built under his careening bulk, prickling and tearing at his skin but saving his bones the worst impacts. A scraggly, wilting young juniper bent and tore under him, another lost a branch, rare tufts of weeds snapped and matted, still lower and lower two dried pine saplings were uprooted, but slower and slower the slope eased and his magic carpet of scree slowed and finally lost its momentum. Breathlessly he rose, recovered his wooden cart-prize from where it had landed nearby, and stumbled away from home. He remembered. He had a pine needle stuck in an eyelid, black blood painted his palm, shoulder and shins blacker in the night, he cried as he broke the arrow out of its thankfully shallow wound in his calf, but he remembered and so he ran bleeding and gritted his teeth against his bloodied toes scraping through dead twigs and lichen, and ran not from the enemy but from remembered joy.
Slop had been the other's name. Had he ever gotten enough to eat he'd've been a fat one, always a little flabby and loose, shared many happy hours tearing carcasses apart with Mash in the kitchens. Then one night he'd not been there and Mash had had to work his load too. Next night the guards brought him in, strapped him to a rack. Deserter. Do wotcher want wit 'im. Oh how Slop had begged and cursed and pleaded and vomited and howled so deliciously as they'd started at the bottom and worked their way up, crushing his toes one by one joint by joint and sawing off the shards to suck his marrow in front of him until they took his eyes and his tongue and his shins cut around inside and disjointed and ripped out lengthwise so his tattered skin and sinew flapped around slapped and nibbled on and Mash himself had one of Slop's hands to chew but the stinker was tougher than he looked so he'd had the stroke of genius to bend his fingers back on themselves and pound the whole lump in a bowl with a sledge until it ran thick and chunky down from its crackling stump.
Oh yes oh yes Mash remembered how he'd earned his name, makin' mashin' Slop slop while the boys at his feet peeled his hairy boneless shins up over his thighs and kept cutting and peeling to see the meat underneath, singe the wounds so he don't leak out and put 'im by the fire so he don't get cold until muscles start drying and cracking and crackling and dripping juicy and we don't even remember when he died boss, the ecstatic, tearing, masticating, transcendent joy of the proceedings so overwhelmed.
His friend Slop had made him so happy. Now Mash ran from happiness, on bloodied hands and knees until he tasted blood and further until he passed out crawling and crawled again as soon as he regained consciousness until the first stream. It ran sooty from the fires of the siege above yet still cold as death as Mash dove in, rolling in the grass on the far side to rid himself of the hateful wetness - there was grass here! There was grass, yellow, patchy, scraggly but still grass. This was the right direction. Further on he found some bushes to shelter under just as the hated sun rolled red ahead, burning his eyes. Mash collapsed.
Mash rose with the evening breeze, his heart already pounding. Dead leaves and shoots clung to the scabbed-over wounds in his arm and leg heating with rot. He spent some time tearing nature out of his scabs and listening, watching through the spiky, insufficiently sheltering foliage for pursuit. But the winged things were busy with the war, or had themselves already flown farther than he could ever run. He dared to rise. He hobbled painfully through the night on his slashed and battered feet, chewing random shoots for nourishment. The grass grew a bit livelier. A streambank sheltered against the next day, blessing with its bounty of frog eggs and a groggy lizard.
Torchlit columns of marching troops or enemy camps forced the deserter onto his belly several times. Vultures dogged his passage. More nights and more streams, feverish and lost but moving ever downhill, slapping his limbs haphazardly through the deeper waters, scabs falling away, bruises less tender by the league, the hero of his own story distanced himself more and more from the ongoing war. The wooden thing he never understood but never abandoned, though he wrapped grass around the neck so it wouldn't sting against his cursed touch. It was useful. It held water until the holes in it became too many. It could be thrown at birds and clubbed rodents, lizards and bugs alike well enough, lightweight as it was. Living things were even drawn to it for a while, before it became too damaged, mesmerized by its increasingly scuffed and dented and cracked beauty, they willingly sat on it for him to grab. Gradually he regained the strength not just to crawl and hobble but run. But one night as he ran, Mash felt the breath rush out of him.
The moon's hateful face was hidden by cloud. The day's rain had called up plenty of earthworms giving him at least something to mash between his teeth, albeit unsatisfactorily, sending him into something nearing a carefree saunter over the increasingly flat plain. At first he found himself slowing his pace, at once wary and enraged. Then his chest felt tight, limited, compressed. Moments passed. Minutes. He sheltered beneath the nearest bush as he had in fear of recapture. No life stirred, but after a period of increasing weakness, something wrenched within him, sapping his will halfway to death. He slumped. The wind shifted. The land shook repeatedly. An unheard wail rattled every part of him but his ears, a cosmic fury telling of immeasurable pride insulted, wounded, demeaned. That wrenching pain twisted and tore itself from him, following a greater defeat into the void. Another voice wailed sympathetically in immortal anguish far in the distance, subjected to the same indescribable loss. Compatriot, but no kin. Mash himself was torn empty, wrung bare, lacking for a moment even the most fundamental drive to live.
At long last he gasped, imbibing air anew as he had never tasted before. He chanced lifting his head. Nothing about had changed. Only in himself he knew with a certainty... The Master was ended. Somewhere many nights' way back, far beneath the heretofore impenetrable mountains, The Dark Lord was cast down. The Terror which had scarred the very world, had even worked in birthing it if tales were to be believed, had godfathered his own race among many, could no longer work His will upon it. Unraveled, enchained, transported, Mash did not know. Mash did not care to know. But for the first time his short, miserable life felt somehow his own. New eyes looked upon an old night. Clear, enveloping darkness. All his. He was now truly a new sort, a new kind, a new breed.
He was, though, getting scrawnier by the day. The splintered, thoroughly defaced hollow club no longer drew birds and dragonflies for the catching, and he possessed no hunting skill, no woodcraft for tracking, no way to sustain himself in the long term. One night, toward morning, he despaired at finding his path blocked by a river wider than any he had seen. As it turned out though, even broken and shattered the wooden thing floated far better than it had any right to. Painstakingly, he paddled through the current, almost drowning several times, until dawn found him clambering through the mud on the opposite shore, and face to face with a leather boot.
"It's one of 'em, innit husband?"
"That it is." A heavier, sterner voice answered the first.
Mash coughed more water out and looked up. The man was broad-shouldered, tall enough to tower over Mash even at his full height, sunburnt and with his beard clipped somewhat roughly but dressed in linen and not furs like those of his race who'd served the Dark Lord. In one hand he held a spade. The other was a stump. Behind him, a wide, puffy-faced, bonneted creature pointed at the remnants of the lute.
"What's that?"
The man left the spade momentarily in the crook of his damaged arm, reached out and snatched the shattered object fearfully, as it taking a bone from an angry dog. Mash was too exhausted to struggle for it.
"It ain't much no more. Used to be one of 'em hand harps the highborn make. Filthy thieving murderous thing" he hefted his spade menacingly.
"Give up. I surr- surrender" coughed Mash.
"Wait" the woman grabbed her mate's arm.
"Why?"
"It's giving itself up."
"That don't mean nothing from its kind. They don't know nothing but to kill and smash."
"It knows enough to get stuff from the highborn. You've never gotten one of those, and you served them and all."
"'Cause I ain't dumb enough to steal from their like!"
"Well maybe it's handier 'n you! We could put it to work."
"You want to bring one of these inside our house? Lost yer wits?"
"Not in the house. It can sleep under the lean-to. Do chores for its meals. We could use an extra hand to bring in the harvest."
"There ain't nothing its kind brings in but suffering, you ain't seen 'em like I did."
"Diff- different kind. I'm a new kind. Not the same. Big boss dead now. I surrender" coughed Mash, extending a supplicant hand, letting its voice wail pathetically.
"Hear that?"
"Don't believe your ears. This thing'll slit your throat in the night soon a your back's turned."
"But the war's over now. The highborn even done said so. If it ain't put to work up north no more, put it to work 'ere, don't throw out a good thing."
"Good thing? Ain't no good in this thing!"
"Work's good! More hands in our fields than your cousins' is good! A fuller loft come winter's good! Dun let yer belly go empty 'cause yer afear'd o' tha beastie!"
"Fear of murder on two legs is right! None of his breed's ever been aught else but poison, rot and murder. It don't know how to work a farm any more than a crow do."
"Teach it"
"Ya can't teach a crow to plow!"
"Wasn't our own kin like him when we come up from the forests not but nigh six lifetimes ago? Didn't we got better like it says? Ain't we now the new breed of our'n?"
"Woman, be quiet! We had it in us to get better, an' even of our'n weren't many could, and gone over to his master's side, these six lifetimes and more before. This thing ain't nothin' inside it but the world's pus and bile, and naught else it'll e'e'r yet sow but darkness upon the face of the world, and the world won't forgive us forgivin' it!"
"Youse think so, husband! You so chastised by its kin over the hill and across the water. You so low down brought by your loss" she spat in the grass, gesturing to his handless arm "and unmanned." She triumphed at seeing him cringe. Another argument won. "If'n ya thinks the beast so much less'n ye, mighty warrior" she swaggered to beneath his face and pointed down to the prostrate orc, her eyes wide and shining into his quivering, moist ones "then master it! Master it, an' put a whole pair'a'hands to work on this land. We got mouths ta feed, husband!"
Mash did not understand the whole of their dialect, but knew well enough the sound of a boss being shouted down by a bigger boss. Knew to bow before and reassure the first, stay out of the way of the other. Knew to take a lump without flinching and hope the boss' anger falls on some other drawing his attention. So he begged, and promised, and swallowed down his rage. And after all, the elder race had taught men to be kind and forgiving, and other thoughts noble in application.
The first couple of days the big one didn't take his eyes off him, never let him near the house, trying his hands together to a beam when he couldn't be watched. But they fed him, even though he spat out their bread at first and they never had enough meat, but they fed him. Mash was once again drawing water from a well, and carting dung to the pile. Gradually they let him work in the morning and evening when he begged to be spared the burning sun. Gradually they put less effort into tying his knots. Gradually the man began turning his back to him. It was not so easy. Though the rage welled in him, though he murdered a sheep slow-like and made pretend it ran away just to sate his bloodlust and left it to rot under a stump after eating its liver and leg, Mash gradually regained his strength.
One night the knot around his wrists was slack. Their home was a simple, one-room cottage, but there were many things he could've taken. Or he could've just walked away. But who were they, to say their kind had bettered themselves where his had not? They had to hurt. The door was barred. He could not risk attacking the big brute, even one-handed, even in its sleep. But there. The window. Slit with a trowel at the corner, peel back the scraped translucent pig skin covering it, reach in, they tried to hide it from you but it makes noise and you know where they keep it, take care the wooden wobbly thing its sitting in doesn't creak, feel for the warmth and softness... grab!
It cries! They wake! Pull it through the window and run. They howl in desperation and give chase. Run, run, across the fields waving in the moonlight, across the ditch, into the tree line, slap a hand over its mouth to quiet its wailing but keep running, across a stream and up a hill, deeper into the woods, find a cave, barely a crack in the stone over a stream and slap your prize down they never let you have one of these, they brought 'em in and made you prepare them, the tender little juicy ones were only for the bosses but the bosses are dead now it's all yours start at the bottom work your way up gripping its hams tight so it doesn't bleed out as you chew your way up each leg, so it doesn't stop squealing and squirming so pretty, so pretty, you'd learned that with the rats, so many rats, and this was only a different, plumper, juicier, hairless kind of rat, it was only a rat, it was only a rat.
Died too soon, the hated sun had not even climbed to its deadliest brightness. Belly full. Joyous rest. Wake under a cloudy night, nibble on the leftovers.
No bosses to boss old Mash now. What did he need with giant fortresses and grand designs on the world. The old kind had slaved away for the bosses and he was a new kind now, he was a different kind, the world was full of different kinds, rats all together, and who was to say what kind was better or worse? He'd find others of his breed, some would have to have made it out like he did. They would multiply, here out in the caves and dark forests, in ruins and slums. The other breeds would build, and strive, and improve, and he would be there the whole time, gnawing at their foundations, begging their mercy, thieving in the night, chewing at their toes. Their few spawn would feed his many.
Eventually,
the world itself would be himself. No gratuitous beauty to soothe the
soul. No edifices. No mastercrafts. No ambitions. Only an endless,
malformed, faceless Mash. Yes, yes, good, good, it was good to be a
different kind, a new kind, a better kind, the winning kind.
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