Chapter 12 - If the hammer should fall (Rookie Games arc)

　　Flourishing his dagger, the prince seemed so fierce a foe they might all shrivel—this, at least, was his hope. To dissuade the wild brood hording now toward him. Most of them too weak or too dim to stand, feral and flailing. Claws raking in belly-drag along the soil and the grass.

　　But it was for naught. They had no sense of danger or no felt need to avoid it.

　　The first clambered now into striking distance, its beady eyes not half-agleam. Torqued like Artisan but worse, it came in a beaten sway, one leg propped under and one behind, swiping at the prince with a misshapen claw... no, not even that—the wiry arm was without hand. Gnawed off to a gangrened stump. Swollen and red and black, it brought the stench of death.

　　Thick like bile, revulsion roiled in the throat of the prince who wanted to fight nor flee. These things were low as sin, yet perhaps deep inside there resided still the soul of man, the scarred shards that remained. And though vicious they were harmless to one who could simply walk away in leisurely step. But the prince had business here; he could cede some ground but not all.

　　Sliding in a measured step back, the prince indeed gave ground, edging ever closer to the lake. His place grew more and more precarious, pressed in on by the clamouring pests.

　　There was little else the prince could do.

　　He closed his eyes as he brought the hammer down.

　　There was a sick squelch as the thing gave way. Pus seeping from an open pore.

　　Briefly, to assert a better balance, the prince opened his eyes. The writhing beast before him had ceased—nothing now but a twitch or shiver. Spasms of the half-eaten arm.

　　But more came, and more and more.

　　All scraping and misshapen, howls of a faltered lament. Swarming ever and all to the feet of the intruder.

　　One more howl to join the many—it was the prince himself. Had he not endured what most a man could muster? His soul as bust it might be?

　　There were tears now in his eyes, but in a way that helped. A film of salty water. Made it hazy like a dream.

　　And that is where it should have ended. But five and ten and then fifteen. Still the gnats kept coming. Mashing them to meaty pulp.

　　Sorrowful still, until the hammer felt heavy.

　　Curse this land and the whole rotten world. For making me do what the heavens said not.

　　A sick rage then surged in the prince. And it felt good almost. Take them all and watch them come. Flattening the heads to mush.

　　Weary and wild, the prince let it out—that what he held in. Break and howl and tear at the heavens.

　　They make and they love and then they abandon. What do the damn gods know of the hell below?

　　The grass was blood; it was like the lake. And the last cries died and there then was nothing. Nothing in the world still living.

　　Nothing in the end at all.

　　--

　　The prince washed himself in the lake. He cleaned the hammer, the buckler, the dagger. Cleansed his overalls with a pair of rocks. Then he walked to where a moss-hard stone jutted from the earth. There were more stones there, all jutting. Not scattered but deliberate. A small mound in the flat terrain.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

　　He crouched and squeezed but he could not fit. Then he lay down in the grass, soiled his clothes again but he did not care. He thought of home when he was a boy. Painting with dad`s new brushes. The shades of summer and of scarlet roses. Red as leaves come early fall.

　　He pulled himself inside the cave, pulled the hammer in after. It was dark but not so bad that he could not see.

　　The magestones glinted blue, and in a sense it was pretty. He brought the hammer down and the rocks shattered. Cracked to shards and dust. He put the shards in the sheet turned satchel, the leather coarse against his skin. It was a small ore but it was enough. A handful is what Artisan wanted. Cedric had gotten that and more.

　　He crawled out as he came in—lower than that could a man not get.

　　He washed again but the lake seemed different. Not the way it had before. The sun was the same and the lake was the same. But something seemed missing.

　　He cleaned his overalls, though at first he thought he might not. He wanted them to see. The weight and the worth in a hand of dust.

　　He journeyed back the way he came. Blue shrooms sprouted in the shade of the trees, lots and lots. There in the sides where he had not looked. But he had no need for them now.

　　The leaves rustled, and it was a stir of meaning. Not a bowshot in the distance, the prince spotted a beast like he had seen so many. Short and stymied, a bulbous head bobbing hardly a hair above the bushes. A purple spear in its grimy hand.

　　Cedric could have gone round—the thing had not seen him. But he walked in a path fell towards.

　　The dagger could well have served. But why do less when the heart wants more.

　　The beast gave a howl, twirled its spear, paint flecked purple on the forest floor. And what pretension in the mind of this one—he wore what a man would wear and not a beast. Cloth that was simple but still handmade. Its overalls were brown, but now turned red.

　　What a whirl it was, the hammer in spiral spin. It dashed out its eyes and then its brain.

　　A tired old tussle, not even a fight. Here lay a full-blown rookie.

　　And the prince got not a scratch in turn.

　　--

　　Nearing the two beasts he thought of as ally, Cedric had hoped to be different. The proud prince of old, or a new thing entirely. He would even, if he could, be a witless cur—the mute he was before his necklace. But with or without the shiny locket... the stone hung always around his neck.

　　He saw them from afar—somehow they were laughing. Like the world was not without mercy at all.

　　The huntress was munching on blue and red berries. Her leg was propped up on a sturdy low branch, vibrant salve dripping from a moonshade fern wrap. It was a work of certain skill—the mix seemed like medicine. The bandage was tight but the blood could still course.

　　And Artisan lay back in the same way he left him. Though the sweat on him had dried, and his eyes seemed now fresh.

　　The prince was far off, but still they should see him. Or did he now dwell in the same realm no more? Could his arms and his hands—these brutal dark hands—reach in from the rift long beyond?

　　He was unsure and he would not approach. What if like a ghost he would now only linger? His feet might well walk but it could prove too far.

　　...

　　If the wind would just talk, like the stories of old. A faint long-off whisper from the gods to below.

　　The prince sat back watchful, held his ear to the air lest he miss a lost murmur.

　　But like a fool he just sat, and the heart had still left him. A small thing and wild is all he would be.

　　Though righteous his wrath, the fires fanned woeful. He had sinned in the eyes of the world and his own.

　　He broke down and wept for the death of a nation, the run-down thorned prince who was now but a knave.

　　His thoughts went to Gael, how her body lay shattered. Broken like dust in the palm of the earth.

　　She was his queen and now she was crownless. Felled for the king he was fated to be.

　　...

　　He sobbed like no living thing should. His body was lead; he could not move it if he wanted. But he did not. May the woods swallow him whole.

　　Through broken pride, the prince peered out. He saw how they had vanished—the man who sat down and the woman there with him. The he who had harmed. The she who forgave.

　　They had moved like shadows or might as well have. Standing tall like the woods around them, they had come to the call he had not wished to make. In silence they wove round him, somehow sensing there was a time and a place. They picked him up, limping and stumbling, the three of them stepping together as one. The two sat him down and fed him with berries. Artisan was jovial, not a slight from his lips. And the huntress seemed not in the slightest bit worried. She nurtured the prince like the wound on her leg.

　　The prince returned the ring and Artisan wore it. The hammer they tossed; it had a purpose no more.

　　When at long last they rose, the dust was their guidance. Blue-shimmered haze from the dark lonesome woods.

　　The buckler was strapped to that twisted old back—Artisan bearing the weight as before.

　　The huntress took hold of his dirty old dagger.

　　And for a while the prince could just walk. He had done much.

　　He had gone to the lake.

　　And he had come back.