Distant Worlds Volume 2 Read online

Bahadur snatched the silver key off the floor. As his fingers closed around it, he felt a wave of heat course through his body. The wind picked back up, nearly pushing him off his feet again. Glancing up, he saw a few of the flying things break away from the pack and dive toward him.

  Petros reached him then and pulled him toward the archway.

  “Give me the key,” he said. “Now!”

  Bahadur handed the key over, then looked through the glowing archway before them.

  When he saw what lurked upon the threshold, he almost stopped where he stood and let the winged horrors take him.

  “Hurry,” Petros said.

  Reluctantly, Bahadur followed him through the archway, into the waiting embrace of the pulsating abomination beyond.

  Bahadur closed his eyes and screamed.

  When Bahadur opened his eyes, he found himself lying upon a mat of blood and frozen entrails. He sat up, stifling the urge to vomit as he breathed the rancid air. An archway of latticed bones stood just behind him, suspended from the ceiling and walls of the small stable with thread.

  “He is the gate…the gate and the key…”

  The voice startled him.

  “Petros?”

  Bahadur found Petros huddled against the far wall. Patches of his hair had gone shock white, and his eyes no longer matched in color. He clutched the silver key close to his chest.

  “The lurker…the key…the threshold…the threshold…Yog-Sothoth.”

  Bahadur tried to talk sense into him for the better part of an hour. Finally, he gave up and pulled the mumbling scribe out of the stable. Before they set off down the mountain trail, Bahadur ripped the bone archway down and scattered the pieces.

  He burned the stable to the ground.

  Mira

  Originally published in Don’t Open Till Doomsday (PunksWritePoemsPress, 2016)

  Yet another story intended to be the start of something bigger, “Mira” is representative of the rather dark turn much of my writing took after The Walls of Dalgorod. At the time, I wanted to capture the grim brutality of pre-modern life, especially in times of prolonged warfare. Partially inspired by a book I’d read about the role of women in mercenary armies during the 17th century, the story focuses on the experiences of people living on the fringes of war in an early modern world with fantasy elements. The result feels more like a work of historical fiction than fantasy, but I think the story possesses a degree of authenticity that gives it an uncomfortable edge. At one point, I explored the idea of writing a novel-length follow up, but the project never quite took shape to my liking. Still, “Mira” remains one of my favorite stories I’ve done, so I’m not willing to write the idea off completely.

  The line started twitching again just after dawn.

  Mira watched it closely as she heated up a pot of water to boil the rockbill eggs she scrounged up yesterday. By the time she dropped the first egg into the pot, the winch mechanism had creaked to life and slowly unspooled more line.

  “He’s descending again.”

  Parick stood near the edge of the sinkhole, his hand leaning against what remained of the sunken well.

  “You’ll beat him to the bottom if you don’t keep away from there.”

  Mira dropped the second egg into the pot and stirred the water carefully. She hated rockbill eggs.

  “Just thought you’d want to know.” Parick moved away from the earthen maw and walked over to the winch. Firmly bolted onto the wagon, the device’s hand-forged gears engaged in an ongoing tug of war over the slender rope coiled around its many spokes and spools. Inch by inch, more of the line fed down into the sinkhole nearby.

  He reached for the cask of greased lard next to the winch.

  “Don’t bother,” Mira said. “I doused it before you got up.”

  She fished one of the eggs out of the pot. It smelled like rotten pigs’ feet.

  Parick sighed loudly as he joined her by the pot.

  “Well what the hell am I supposed to be doing here, exactly?”

  Mira tossed an egg to him.

  “Eating.”

  He yelped when his hands closed around the still-hot shell.

  “And keeping quiet.”

  She took the second egg out and smacked it against one of the stones ringing the campfire. The shell split, and a greenish gray puss seeped through the crack.

  Parick grunted at the sight, but he wasn’t close enough to smell it.

  “Are you sure that’s cooked enough?”

  Mira shrugged as she pried the rest of the shell apart to reveal the soft, purple yolk inside.

  “This is as done as they get. I’d eat it quick if I were you. Tastes twice as bad cold.”

  She popped the yolk into her mouth and swallowed it whole. Her throat tried to force the slimy thing back up, but she managed to choke it down to her stomach.

  Parick groaned when he cracked his egg open and unleashed the stench inside. Mira considered letting him find out on his own how not to eat it, but she didn’t care to deal with him retching all morning.

  “Don’t chew it,” she said, “or else taste will be in your mouth for hours. Just take a deep breath and gulp the whole thing down.”

  He tried to follow her advice, but gagged as soon as he swallowed. Mira fetched a wineskin and handed it to him.

  “Drink.”

  A few gulps of liquid and a short coughing fit later, Parick meekly returned the wineskin.

  “Disgusting.”

  Mira smiled.

  “Nothing tastes worse. At least nothing that won’t make you sick. It’ll keep your stomach busy for the rest of the day, though. Saves us a day or two of rations.”

  Parick grimaced and shook his head.

  “Not sure it’s worth it.”

  The winch creaked to a halt.

  “He stopped again,” Parick said.

  “Uh huh. And he’ll probably start moving again in a few minutes whether you’re staring at the line or not, so why don’t you do something useful with that time instead? Get your horse saddled and go walk the perimeter.”

  Parick bit his lip as he glanced at the sunken well.

  “What if he needs help or something? Shouldn’t we—”

  “I’m not paying you to mind the fucking line, Parick. Now get your ass on that horse and go check the perimeter.”

  He glared at her briefly before conceding with a sigh.

  “Fine.”

  They’d fashioned a small, makeshift stable for Parick’s horse inside a house some fifty yards from the sunken well. Aside from the crumbling, stone hovel near the well, it was the only structure in the abandoned village with an intact roof.

  By the time Parick reached the house, the winch had ticked off a few more feet of line.

  Mira tossed another log on the fire before she buttoned up her long coat. The wind had picked up a bit since sunrise, and the heavy cloud cover promised another cold, sunless day. After she cleaned and stowed the cooking pot and tongs, Mira retrieved her belt and lashed it over her coat, pulling it tight around her waist.

  Parick led the horse back to the campsite before climbing up to the saddle.

  “How far out should I check?” he asked.

  “Half a mile’s probably good. Close enough for me to hear a warning shot, anyway.”

  “Right. You seen the ox this morning?”

  “Not yet,” Mira said. “He usually doesn’t wander too far, though.”

  Parick glanced at the winch. It had stopped again.

  “Go on, then,” Mira said. “You wouldn’t know what to do with that thing anyway.”

  The horse grunted as Parick dug his heel into its flanks to urge it forward. Mira watched the beast trot down what used to be the main road leading through the village until it passed through the ruined gate and veered off to the west.

  She walked over to the edge of the well and flicked the line with her finger. It held taut.

  “Hit bottom yet?”

  As if in response, the winch creaked quiet
ly behind her, slowly unspooling more line inch by inch.

  “Guess not.”

  Mira hoisted herself into the wagon and sat down next to the winch. After inspecting the device’s various gears to make sure they were still rotating smoothly, she removed the wheellock pistol from her belt’s holster and checked it for signs of rust. Once she was satisfied that the weapon was in good condition and that the gunpowder in the firing pan was still dry, she returned it to its holster and drew her rapier from its sheath to examine the blade for signs of wear.

  She repeated the inspection ritual every half hour, each time convincing herself that she might have missed something. Occasionally, she hopped down from the wagon and examined the line feeding into the well. The rest of the time she spent scanning the village’s ruined remains and wondering why the place had been abandoned. She eschewed the more likely explanations of war, famine, and disease in favor of fanciful explanations such as abduction by spirits from the nearby forest, a village-wide religious pilgrimage, or a spiritual rapture of one type or another.

  Although she recognized the clear signs of death and desperation etched upon what remained of the village, she chose not to fill in the gaps between them. Some memories she preferred to leave undredged.

  The winch stopped moving shortly after noon and didn’t start up again. Mira waited about an hour before she inspected the line. The length stretching from the winch to the well had more slack in it than before. She grabbed the line and shook it gently. It felt as loose as it looked.

  A horse neighed loudly in the distance, and Mira’s hand dropped to her wheellock.

  Parick couldn’t have completed his patrol already, she knew. After nearly a week in the village, she knew his routine almost as well as her own. The earliest she’d seen him return was three hours after noon on their first day, and after the scolding she gave him, he’d never returned that early again.

  The sun remained muted behind the cloud cover, but she guessed that it couldn’t have been more than two hours past midday.

  Mira felt the familiar, cold tremor in her gut.

  Something was wrong.

  She drew the wheellock from its holster and cocked its firing pin into position.

  “Don’t be trying any of that, now.”

  The voice, coarse and slurred by a southerner’s accent, came from her left. Mira glanced toward it to find a lone brigand standing next to a pile of stone and lumber some distance away from the well. Clad in a motley of hardened leathers and a few bits of steel, he trained a large pistol on her. The weapon had an unusually large barrel, so heavy that he had to steady it over his forearm.

  It looked like a dragon gun of some kind.

  “Put it down, pretty,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  Mira counted off the distance between them.

  Twenty, maybe twenty-five yards.

  She looked the brigand over again. His coat was smeared with mud and tattered at the edges. He’d probably been sleeping in ditches for at least a month.

  Dragon guns could be pretty squirrely after a few weeks in the weather, especially if they lacked the proper powder and shot.

  Mira took a deep breath.

  “Last chance, bitch. Drop it now!”

  She turned and ran toward the wagon. After her third step, she heard a loud cracking sound, followed by a thunderous boom. She dove to the ground as a few scattered projectiles harmlessly struck her coat or ricocheted off the cold soil. After rolling to her feet, Mira swung her wheellock’s barrel toward the bewildered brigand, took aim, and fired.

  The bullet sailed a bit off the mark, striking him at the base of the neck rather than piercing his heart. He staggered back against the crumbling wall, and dropped his dragon gun to clutch frantically at the bloody wound.

  Mira ran for the wagon, wondering how many friends her ambusher had skulking about. Her answer came quickly as another bandit, this one a woman armed with a hatchet, leapt out from her hiding place near the wagon. Mira holstered her pistol and unsheathed her rapier before the woman could close the distance between them. The brigand lunged at her wildly as if she hoped to lop her head from her neck with a single blow. Mira ducked and counterattacked with two quick strikes, the first severing the tendons at the wrist and the second slicing across the back of the bandit’s knee to send her tumbling to the ground.

  “That’ll be enough of that, dearie!”

  Mira looked up to find two more brigands, a man and a woman, standing near the well. The woman, lean and wolf-faced, aimed a musket at her.

  “I don’t mean to go giving another warning. Drop that blade and lie down, now.”

  “Shit,” Mira said, muttering through clenched teeth. She tossed her rapier aside and did the same with the wheellock. Then she knelt down to press her face against the ground.

  “There’s a good girl. Salis, get her tied up.”

  Rough hands pulled Mira’s arms behind her back and bound them tightly. The wounded brigand nearby called out to her companions for help.

  “How bad?” the woman asked. “Can she walk? Hold a sword?”

  “Doubt it, Lyssa.”

  “Then put her down.”

  The wounded woman managed to cry out before a heavy, crunching blow silenced her.

  Salis pulled Mira up and dragged her over to the campsite. By the time he got her there, a third brigand joined them, a ragged looking girl guiding a saddled horse.

  Parick’s horse.

  “Ought to shoot that fucking thing,” Salis said, gathering up Mira’s weapons and tossing them down next to the campfire. “Damn near got all of us killed.”

  The girl with the horse only glared at her feet, though her left eye was so swollen that she probably couldn’t see much out of it.

  “Leave her be,” Lyssa said. “Make yourself useful and go check on Nagy.”

  The brigand snorted and kicked dirt at the horse before trudging off towards the brigand Mira shot.

  “Quite the fighter, ain’t you, dearie?” Lyssa said.

  The wolf-faced woman wore a dirty, bloodstained buff coat riddled with bullet holes underneath her moth-eaten riding cloak. Mira guessed that she’d scavenged them from the same dead cavalry officer that provided her knee-high leather boots. One of her eyes looked crooked, like her eye socket had been broken at some point and hadn’t healed quite right.

  “Hope you ain’t caused more trouble than it’s worth.”

  Lyssa ordered the girl to tie up the horse and rummage through the food and supplies around the encampment. By the time she got started, Salis had reached the body.

  “Bled out,” he said. “Bitch put a bullet through his neck.”

  Lyssa sat down across from Mira and sighed.

  “Get his shit, then. He ain’t going to be needing it where he’s going.”

  The girl handed Lyssa a strip of jerky. She ate half of it before looking at Mira.

  “Not many folks run when you point a dragon at them,” she said as she chewed.

  “Figured it was in as bad a shape as he was. Dragon barrels wear out pretty quick, especially if you don’t have proper shot. What’s he been using? Gravel? Woodchips?”

  Lyssa chuckled as she swallowed.

  “Dumb bastard’s been scooping pebbles off the road since we left Dristbane. Said he was gonna add bits of bone from everybody he shot to the mix.”

  Mira hadn’t been to Dristbane in years, but she knew it was about a week’s ride to the west. Last she heard, the Duke of Barbathe was recruiting mercenaries to capture the city. That news was a few months old, though, and hearsay at that.

  “Dristbane,” Mira said, almost to herself. “Barbathe still have eyes on it?”

  Lyssa sneered and spat at Mira’s feet.

  “He would if he still had them. Hired enough swords to do it and the city sued for terms when he showed up. Trouble was, they sent a hexer to negotiate. Captains looked in on them after an hour and found Barbathe hung by his guts with his skin inside out
. Even nipped his cock and stuck it in his mouth just to tell him what they thought of his terms. Barbathe’s brother didn’t have the stones to stand and fight; slipped off with his banners that night without paying anyone. City attacked the camps at dawn, scattered what was left.”

  Mira could imagine what happened next. Stranded far from home without a battle to fight or any hope of getting paid, most of the mercenaries likely turned to raiding, plundering the area surrounding the city until somebody hired them away or put them down.

  “How long since then?”

  Lyssa glared at her for a moment before she shook her head and answered.

  “That don’t matter none to you, dearie. Don’t go thinking that you can talk your way out of this.”

  Mira could have told her that she held no such delusions, but she kept her mouth shut.

  Lyssa handed her musket to Salis before she pointed at the winch.

  “Get up there and keep a sharp eye.” She looked back to Mira. “You know how to work that thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “How many you got down that hole?”

  “Just one.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Lyssa reached down to her belt and drew a dagger from its sheath. The blade looked like it hadn’t been wiped clean in years. She turned it over in her hand several times before looking back at Mira.

  “Now I’m going to ask you again, dearie. How many men you got down there?”

  “Just one,” Mira said. “One delver, one winch, one line.”

  “One in the hole and one on top, eh? No other friends snooping around here anywhere?”

  Mira glanced at Parick’s horse.

  “No.”

  Salis climbed onto the wagon and inspected the spools of rope wrapped around the gears and pullies as well as the various locking mechanisms that kept the winch in place.

  “Wouldn’t go messing with that if I was you,” Mira said.

  Lyssa jumped up and struck her with the back of her fist. The blow knocked Mira to the ground and split her lip. She tasted the blood trickling into her mouth. Lyssa grabbed her by her hair, pulled her head back, and pressed the dagger against her throat.