Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

“Where?”

“Back to the inn, stupid. For whatever reason, Smada wants to get us away from that place.”

“He says it’s because of that Greydon guy.”

“ ‘He says! He says!’ Dammit, Felix. I’m gonna go back to that innkeeper and kick his butt through the roof of his mouth until he tells me the truth. Are you coming?”

“Yeah!”

“Right?”

“Right!”

You have to understand, this made perfect sense in the stage we were in. That is: hungover and stupid.

So we went back. Despite everyone’s attempts to save us, Smada’s, the innkeeper’s. Despite everything, we went galloping straight back into the nightmare to come.

We were sitting there drinking on credit when the Bad Guys strode into the inn. We were able to get credit by taking it. We were pissed off. The innkeeper had been surprised when we showed up back at the inn. Surprised and then guilty-looking when we accused him of having set us up on Smada’s orders. When we saw his expression we were sure we were righ't. So sure, in fact, that we didn’t also notice the sad look on the man’s face that came right after.

We should have.

Anyway, we sat there and ate first and then drank some and then drank some more waiting for Smada to show up again. We were sure he would. We had no idea what scam it was he was planning but we were pretty certain there’d be some loot in it for somebody. And since he wanted us away from the inn, that’s where it had to be.

“Right?”

“Right!”

We did that a lot. We also drank a lot. And waited. Ducks in a barrel.

And then, like I said, the Bad Guys came in. 1 call ’em the Bad Guys because that’s damn well what they were. To begin with, they were huge. Every one of ’em was as big as I was or bigger, and they all wore black and carried polished swords with shiny handles and had big broad shoulders and big black helmets with little slits showing eyes that by God should have been blood-red and they slammed that front door open and stalked in two abreast in formation , for Chrissakes, all six of ’em, and set up a semicircle just inside the doorway where they could survey the room and then just stood there, poised, looking like they just hoped they’d get a chance to slaughter everybody in sight.

Then came Lord Grey don, and he was worse. I mean, the man was a walking ghoul. White hair. Not gray—white. White pasty skin stretched like dead hide across cheekbones that shoulda been knuckles and a forehead that loomed over his eyes like the Frankenstein monster’s. His eyes really were red. Bloodshot, anyway, like the look of somebody who spent his nights at a graveyard catching bats and cracking their bones with his teeth. And his voice . . . I’ll never forget that voice. Husky and dry and dead and . . . piercing, somehow, like he had some sort of dead man’s amplifier.

It was the voice that did it for me. From the first sound of it all my illusions were swept away. And you know what kind of illusions I mean. All the old cliches: “There’s no such thing as a bad boy” and “Criminals are made by society” and “The Soviets are just people like us” and “Any man can be reached” and, best of all, “There’s no such thing as Evil, only mental imbalance”—all of these thoughts were slapped pitifully down by that voice. It was as if 1 could hear the devil chuckling softly offstage, saying: “Welcome to the real world, boy,”

I want to tell you, I was scared of that guy. Scared of his men and terrified of him. Terrified and . . . caught. That’s it. Caught. It was as if 1 had been given every opportunity in my life to face reality but had been too lazy and too much of a punk and now it was too damn late. I had been caught pretending the whole thing was a game I could call off, but that wasn’t up to me anymore. It was up to this ghoul. And he didn’t want to call it off. He was here for death.

I glanced at Lanny and saw it in his face. He knew it too: Somebody was going to die.

Somebody did. Right then. For the first rasping words from Greydon’s dead lips were: “Kill him.”

The guy he was pointing to was some merchant standing closest to the door with a mug in his hand. We hadn't talked to him much and didn’t know anything about him except that he was just what he appeared to be: an aging overweight penny-ante fur dealer who liked dirty jokes and barmaids when on the road away from his wife and kids and who carried a sword for absolutely no reason other than for show.

But none of that mattered, because a second later he was dead when the closest black guard to him drove a blade as wide as your leg right through his spine and six inches out of his back with a horrible grating chunk.

It was so fast and so incredibly brutal that nobody else moved. The three guys at the bar and Lanny and me at our table just sat there while the blood spurted and the body sagged and a great black boot shoved against the deflating chest to give the murderer leverage to drag his sword noisily from the body. And then there was a blade at my throat and at Lanny’s and at everyone else’s and before we knew it we were disarmed and helpless and surrounded and Greydon was standing there smiling a grin full of wickedness and almost sexual delight.

“Where is Smada?” he asked the room.

And nobody knew. You could feel it. Not even the innkeeper. I could tell by looking at him. And I could tell something else, too. It hit me in a flash. Smada had been trying to save us. He had been trying to get us away from the inn, all right. Away from what was about to happen to us. But we had been too smart for him.

“Lord Smada is gone,” said a frightened voice just over my shoulder. I turned around and saw the old general sitting there with two of his entourage, the storyteller and a personal servant.

A lot of the next was a blur to my blood-pounding eyeballs. There were cries of fear from the bar girls and fearful protestations from the old general and those with him and one of the black swordsmen lit a great flaming torch but nothing could stop what was about to happen. It was all a preamble to . . .

Look. I’ll make it short. For calling him Lord Smada, they cut off the old general’s hand with an axe.

Then they used the torch to cauterize the wound.

Then they slapped him awake.

Then they slapped him to stop his moaning.

Then they rapped his cheek with a sword hilt until he talked. And he babbled like a child. So would I. And so I did when my turn came after they had found out from the old general and everyone else who knew that it was us who were riding Lord Greydon’s outriders’ horses.

We told him everything. We would have told him anything. I’d have given anything to know where Smada was. I’d have given my mother, my dog.

I would have given Lanny.

Yes, I was that scared. Scared and broken and beaten and willing to do anything to please the ghoul. I couldn’t even look the black guard guarding me in the eye after the first second. His gaze seemed to drill right through the soft me I knew right then I was and had always been and always would be. But these guys . . . they lived here and killed here. Had grown up killing here and loved it and always would and this was just a lark to us, a game and . . .

And nothing. We were going to die. And right there. Right then. Horribly. Slowly. Painfully.

Lanny’s voice while he desperately tried to explain broke my heart. He was too scared to even try to sound persuasive. He was merely plaintive. Almost begging. So was I, trying to help him. Help me, rather. Help make the ghoul just let us go. Let me go!

The ghoul loved it. It was the kind of thing he loved, watching us squeal and squirm like piglets. We were so scared we didn’t even hate him. We were so scared we would have loved him if he’d let us leave in peace. We were so scared we didn’t deserve a chance to live.

But we got one anyway when Trebor Smada, all six foot three and two hundred and forty pounds and mile-long broadsword and, incredibly, smartass grin, kicked open the side door and strode across the room to our table.

And the whole world . . . changed. More light seemed to stream into the room. More breath seemed to come to my lungs. Maybe it was the way the black guards moved back at his appearance. Maybe it was the look of hope on the innkeeper’s face or the one of . . . not fear, but wariness, on Lord Greydon’s.

Maybe it was none of these things. In fact, it wasn’t. It was ... I dunno, the truth. I’d been shivering in my seat so petrified at the price to be paid for my arrogant manhood. And then Smada showed up and reminded me that . . .

“So, Smada, you’ve come back to die,” scratched Greydon into the heavy air.

“We’ll all be dead someday, Greydon,” replied Smada evenly. Still, his voice boomed of life.

“You’ll be dead today, Swordsman!” snarled Greydon, but did nothing else. In fact, no one did anything at all for a second.

Smada moved at last. He did a curious thing. He was clearly responding to Greydon’s remark when he spoke. But as he did he turned and looked down at Lanny and me, saying:

“We shall all be dead for ten thousand thousand years

floating in the darkness and remembering that,

for a time,

some of us,

but not all of us,

were Swordsmen.”

I can explain what that meant to me, but it would take forever. Leave it at this. I was still scared. I still expected to die. But, well ... no more piglet. No point to it. Never was.

“Bah!” rasped Greydon. “You and your foolish Swordsman rituals. What good will they do you now?”

Smada’s voice was dead-cold: “Watch.”

He turned his back on them and looked at us. “Now, lads

“Now what?” we answered in sloppy unison.

“Now I’m going to retrieve your weapons,” he said softly with a gesture to the bar, where they lay now unguarded. “And the fight will commence.” He looked back at the rest of the room and spoke so all could hear: “I shall kill the three on the right. You get the rest.”

I couldn’t believe he just said that out loud. Neither could anybody else. We didn’t have a prayer and everybody knew it. So did Smada.

But he was saying: “Screw it!”

Lanny gulped and asked: “When?”

Smada smiled and looked at us and said, “Right now.” And then Smada was spinning impossibly fast around to the bar and the swords were flying toward us and we caught ’em somehow and managed to grip them and I spun around and a black guard slammed into me full-face and we went over the table together smashing it flat with splinters flying up into the air and seeming to hang above us while we grappled and he tried shoving the edge of his blade into my temple despite my grip on his wrist and his on mine. I got him over and got on top of him—I don’t know how—and smashed at him with my hilt and kneed him in the thighs and then the stomach. His grip slid on my sword arm and 1 twisted my hand and popped free and drug my edge across his face, shedding sparks from the edge of his helm and blood from the underside of his chin. He gurgled and spat and I shrugged halfway up and shouted with triumph or bloodlust or something and two-handed my point into his chest and then screamed as a dagger ripped through my tunic and waist between chain mail and belt.

I spun about, still screaming, and saw the bloody face of the guard upon me, his helmet long gone and he long dead from a gaping thigh wound (Lanny’s trademark) but not knowing it yet and maybe not caring. He threw himself at me again, his dagger blade flinging drops of my blood into my eyes. I dropped underneath his wide swing and drove upward with my point, but 1 skittered off to the side and suddenly the two of us were down, arms around each other and hissing hate and fear into each other’s face.