Fantastic Metropolis

The man in red still wore his hood to cover his face. His hands barely seemed to move before another head was rolling, another spill of insides slurping to the ground. And arrows and bolts still thrummed into him.

Time to leave, Kosar knew. He glanced at the bridge, queasy because he had not gone to help those children. But at least this way he still had the stomach to feel sick.

He turned and made his way along the trench on his hands and knees. Each splash in the shallow water was accompanied by a scream from the village, or a groan, or the thud of another useless arrow finding its mark. He’d seen some things in his time, some strange things, some nasty things, some weird and wonderful. But he had never seen a man fighting with thirty arrows letting his blood and twisting up his insides. He’d heard of armour, too, suits of metal that diverted arrows and swords. But he’d seen the blood spray when that arrow hit the horseman in the neck. He’d seen the red mist in the air, heard the sound of metal and wood cleaving flesh. He knew that sound well; he was not mistaken.

He stared to pant, and realised only then that he was panicking. The sounds from the village were receding as he lay distance down behind him. They were worse than before—the screams of children once more—but they were quieter now. Certainly not easier to hear, but less of a threat.

Kosar stopped for a moment and lifted his hands from the muddy water. The ground was full of clay here, hardly ideal for planting crops but perfect for coating unwary crawlers with a blood-red deposit. He hung his head until his long hair dipped in as well, perhaps willing himself to be blooded.

He had done nothing. Those children on the bridge, innocent, ignorant only because their parents were ignorant, so alive, so damn trusting…

He had done nothing.

“Oh gods,” he cried wretchedly.

The noise from the village stopped. No more screams. No more shouts. No more crossbows twanging, bows whispering or swords meeting in sparked fury. Nothing but the slow, methodical footsteps of one man.

Kosar held his breath and raised his head slightly, looking back over this shoulder, the only sound now the thick water dripping from his hair. His hands were slowly sinking into the mud beneath the waters, his wounded fingertips stinging even under the cold caress. It felt like they were pressing into spilled guts and the image horrified him. He was a thief, not a murderer. He’d never killed anyone.

How would he know what spilled guts felt like?

And then he realised. As his eyes drew level with the dried grass and he could see the man in red strolling among the dead, he knew. He knew the feel of guts because he had seen them spilled, smelled their tangy scent, heard the screams of their owners as they tried to catch them and stuff them back in. He knew because he had stood by and watched those children die, helplessly, when he could have shouted to them that this man was danger, this man was death. And because he knew this man, who he was and where he was from. He’d heard tenuous legends, but also met the mercenaries and scholars who vouched for them. He’d listened to stories by campfire light or the smoke-hazed atmospheres of taverns and homes far from here.

The stranger was a Red Monk.

Somewhere in the land, magic was living again.

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The Dead of Night: Dusk will be published in 2004 by Night Shade Books.