Dren had heard of golems, of course. Who, after all, hadn’t heard of them at some point? The histories, fables, myths and legends of Tamalaria included descriptions and paintings and carvings of all manner of oddity and grotesque that could possibly be conceived by the mortal imagination. The concept even held a degree of fascination, from an academic perspective. Dren had himself once daydreamed a scenario wherein he had a couple of the soulless constructs of his own, used as simple laborers to help him around the forge.
In his daydreams, these automatons had been roughly man-sized, and hewn from furnace-blasted clay, their features rudimentary, almost innocently childlike. The thing that came bursting through the wall from the hallway into their ambush room, however, was as far as undefined and kid-friendly as one could get without the assistance of a degenerate necromancer or a long time sadist; the very sight of the golem brought a yip of terror from the narrow young smithy.
Cylindrical pistons stood at the end of each of its massive arms, and it had been these the golem had struck the wall with, blasting wood, insulation and bits of wiring everywhere like shrapnel throughout the room. Towering even larger from foot to head than Andrei, it was a thing constructed of rounded bulbs of canary-yellow enameled metal, assembled in a fashion that gave it the appearance of a heavily armored giant in gold plate. The head looked to be a kind of gladiatorial helm, complete with barbican face shield and a metallic splitter-wedge down the center of its top.
Rigged like bandoliers from each shoulder to its hip spun two rows of jagged metal links, like the blades of the ‘chainsaws’ the dwarves had created for forestry work some two hundred years earlier. Its gold-yellow legs were covered with metallic thorns and small rings that glowed scarlet and let off enough heat to let those near it know that contact with those rings would blister, boil and burn at the merest contact.
The pistons that stood where its arms terminated were not the only weapons on those limbs, either; thin, silvery threads wavered about from its elbow joints, each one crackling with lightning power. Stamped on its broad metal breastplate in bold, dark blue letters was a single word- ‘HECTOR’.
The minotaur freelancer, standing nearest the metal golem when it crashed into the room, let out a low grunt as he took one step forward and swung his warhammer in a semi-circular arc, bringing the head of the weapon crashing against Hector’s lower abdominal area. The hellacious ‘gong’ and reverberation of metal made Dren wince as he clapped his free left hand to that ear, but he saw the shadows of movement behind Hector pause as well, hands reaching up to three dark-clothed and hooded heads.
Holly, reacting half a step slower than Andrei, threw what looked like a neon green line of energy from her left hand at the golem. The end thrown at the creature landed with a wet smacking sound on the flat end of its right piston-hand, and the golem bent its arm up, scarlet lights flashing out from the small grille holes in its face shield.
The first of the golem’s companions came through the actual door of the room, a curved long knife in his hand. The fellow’s timing couldn’t have been worse; Andrei’s initial strike on the golem had bounded off hard, giving him backswing momentum. The minotaur freelancer pivoted around with his warhammer, bringing it viciously against the hooded man’s head. The sickening crunch and spray of blood as the thug crumpled dead seemed to have no effect on the golem, though. It took one lumbering step toward Andrei and brought its right arm back to take a swing at him.
Holly rolled to her left and pulled on the line of force still connecting her to the golem. The energy pulsed, and the golem teetered, stumbling to maintain its balance as the cuyotai mage pulled it off target. Dren, down on all fours, started crawling from where he was toward the opposite corner, since Holly’s momentum was bringing her, and thus the golem, in his direction.
Andrei grunted painfully as one of the other goons slipped into the room on his flank and stooped down quickly, thrusting a narrow dagger into the minotaur’s right hip. The stab, delivered expertly, slipped into the narrow gap between his cuirass and chain leggings. Reacting on pure reflex, the minotaur let go of his warhammer with his right hand, reaching out and clamping the svelt human by the face.
With a rapid pull-and-pump movement, he hoisted the man up and threw him through the wall, out into the hallway.
Dren squeezed himself into his new corner and spun about, watching as Holly whipped the neon green tendril back and forth, throwing the golem’s attached arm around in a confused jumble of movements, forcing it to bump into its companions and force them back. But finally the golem’s eyes flashed brightly, and it turned its attention to the cuyotai mage, wrenching its piston arm powerfully to its side. Being attached, Holly was flung crashing into the room’s bed, the footboard letting out a resounding ‘crack’ as she collided with it. The magical power tying her to the construct vanished as she lay groaning, trying to get up.
Before the golem could advance to strike her, however, Andrei was once more stepping into its path, delivering a punishing overhead blow to its shoulder plating. The golem’s left arm crumpled, shearing away as Andrei delivered a second follow-up blow from the side. The golem, seeming to finally realize how badly it was being damaged, took an evasive step away from the minotaur, who continued to advance upon it, forcing it to back toward the hole it had made in the wall upon entering into combat with them.
Dren took all of this in, and would have felt hopeful, but for another pale, darkly dressed figure slipping all but unseen into the room, a wicked long knife in his hand. The hooded figure slunk toward Holly, who had just managed to get onto her hands and knees, panting as she shook her head to recover her senses.
The young human smithy knew she would not recover in time. Even if he should shout a warning of some kind, she would not recognize the danger quickly enough to save herself from what would likely be a lethal attack. There was nothing to do but to take action himself.
There are moments in a mortal being’s lifetime which, upon looking back, will forever be emblazoned in their hearts and minds as events so powerful, so loaded with meaning and import, that they are given a special name in psychoanalytical terms- traumas. For Dren, one such moment transpired in the span of less than three seconds. In the first moment, he felt himself exploding forward from the protective huddle he’d been crouched in in the corner, the smell of blood and burnt ozone from Holly’s magic and the fallen thugs riddling his nostrils, while the grunts and familiar ring-thud of a hammer (Andrei’s weapon) on beaten metal (the golem) sounded out, a hum to his ears that masked the tidal rush of adrenaline-laced blood pounding in his head. In the next moment, years of practiced movements overtook his hand and arm, gripping his smithing hammer with just the right amount of pressure before bringing it forward in the precise arc needed to do the finer work on slenderer blades or plates of armor, or the securing ring of steel for a round shield’s bracing. It was something he’d done thousands of times, never really pausing to think about it.
The final moment, however, arrived as an experience so alien to everything he’d ever known or done in his life that there were no thoughts, just observations. There was the subtle adjustment his wrist made, turning the swing from a direct overhead to a swooping swing, to begin. There was the fact that the smooth, shiny head of his tool connected not with a clang and the resistance of metal, but a flat and somehow wet surface that crunched like an eggshell under the directed force of his blow. There came no sparks; instead, what issued forth were thin streamers of blood as the thug’s brains and eyes were pushed against the front of his faceplate by the pressure being applied by the decimated rear of his skull and bludgeoned rear-facing gray matter. The smell of the man’s bowels loosing inside his own trousers, an involuntary reflex of nigh-instantaneous death, fouled the air superbly, tickling the back of Dren’s throat in an effort to compel him to vomit.
And the moment after those three moments? Well, that moment was filled with the highwayman collapsing dead on the dingy plankwood floor, a fallen thing lying face-down in a spreading pool of blood and pants full of its own excrement.
Dren’s world went black only after he vomited all over the fellow he’d struck dead.
**
Andrei didn’t much care about bruising any ribs at this juncture, the two humans bouncing up and down on the pauldrons of his cuirass as he lugged them both on his shoulders toward the inn’s stables, Holly racing along ahead of him. She had their bags all clustered in a translucent ball of bluish force, which she dragged along behind her on another tether of magical force. He’d tried to convince her to carry Dren and Norto this way as well, to free him up to fight off any pursuers, until she explained to him, briefly, that the bubble had no air inside it. The humes would suffocate in seconds inside the spell, and she’d never experimented with it enough to feel comfortable trying to adjust it to include such niceties as oxygen for living things while in the field.
The minotaur trundled through the open sliding door of the stables and spotted their wagon, swiftly tossing the unconscious Dren and grumbling Norto into the back before heading toward their horses. As he was hitching them into the traces, he heard a low snarl from Holly over by the barn door. “We’ve got company coming,” she called over to him as she once more drew mana about her for spellcasting.
Andrei drew his warhammer once more into his hands and jogged over toward her, casting a quick look out into the benighted street of the village. Perhaps a hundred yards away, a clutch of five people, dressed in the garb and armor of watchmen, steadily approached their position, weapons in hand. “It’s those provost guards,” the minotaur rumbled. “And probably this outfit’s leader, coming up behind them.”
The sixth person, hanging back of the main group by a dozen yards roughly, could barely be made out visually by Holly from their distance, but she recognized the scent coming off of them; khan, the tiger-man lycanthropes native to the Allenian Hills region that dominated the central regions of the realms of Tamalaria.
Khan rarely made for gifted mages, but those few that did dabble in the arcane arts tended toward shamanistic magic. That, she thought, explains the golem. Shamen were among the few kinds of specialized mages that could construct and animate golems. “How do we want to do this,” she asked the minotaur freelancer.
“We go meet them out there, in the open,” he replied, already stalking away from the stables with his warhammer held combat-ready, altering his gait to accommodate the weapon. Holly followed slightly behind and to his left, and when they drew to within thirty yards of the foremost thugs, she volleyed a trio of small, swirling balls of flame toward the two of them.
Holly hadn’t expected either of them to be struck by her spell, but while the man on the left was adept enough to flatten himself on the ground to avoid the magical projectiles, his companion turned out to be less skilled, flying back with a grunt and a smouldering hole where his throat had once been. The lizardman, moving awkwardly in his oversized armor, charged then at Andrei from the remaining cluster, scimitar flashing out.
The minotaur freelancer saw the incoming initial blow, but only barely moved his weapon to block it; he recognized the feint for what it was, and turn-stepped aside from the follow-up stabbing dagger the reptilian warrior lunged forward with a split second later. The two circled one another then, grim grins of appreciation matching on their faces.
Andrei would have enjoyed sparring around with the smaller man a while, but he and Holly were outnumbered still. Instead, set his jaw tight, calling mentally on the spirit he called Finn; to his delight, he felt the spirit respond, flooding him with incalculable, if temporary, raw physical strength. He swung his warhammer like an arc of lightning, pummeling the lizardman broadside so brutally that the armored thug became an airborne glint of metal sailing out of sight like a shooting star.
He heard gasps, the clatter of dropped weapons, and the padding of fleeing feet as the khan, dumbfounded, watched his people take flight from the scene. “Poxy cowards,” the tiger-man snarled, squaring himself with Andrei ten yards away. The khan wore a sandy brown cloak drawn partly shut over simple green tunics, his clawed hands swirling with pale yellow power, his magic coming to bear. “Do not think me so easily initimidated, bull,” the khan sneered, bringing one hand out, fingers curled downward. The scent of jasmine filled the air around Andrei, and the ground around him shifted and stirred.
The earth under his feet burst upward, lifting him in the grasp of a giant hand made of soil and stone, wrapped around his body, pinning his arms to his sides, his warhammer encased along with him as he was lifted several feet in the air. “Yield to me and give me the blacksmith Norto, paladin, and I shall let you live,” the khan called up to him. Andrei grimaced, feeling his own armor pressing in painfully against him, but he smoothly transitioned to a smile as he looked down at the khan; Holly had slipped, unnoticed, around behind the tiger-man and to his right.
“Just one problem with that,” Andrei replied.
“Oh?” The khan’s lascivious smile snaked across his feline face as he flexed his outstretched hand, applying more pressure on Andrei’s armor. “And what, pray tell, would that be?”
“That would be her,” Andrei said. The khan looked over his shoulder just in time to see a shimmering green bow and arrow, comprised of magical energy, aimed at him. The arrow took flight, and what had been the khan’s head was quickly replaced by the spewing geyser of a neck that looked like a blowing caldera.
Andrei fell to earth with a loud grunt, the lower rim of his cuirass cutting stingingly into his lower back. He groaned, rolling over and pushing to his feet, plucking up his warhammer by the nub at the bottom of its shaft and dragging it toward the cuyotai mage. “Nice work, kid,” he muttered. “Come on, we gotta blow this place.”
**
Andrei winced as Holly worked her healing powers on his lower back, the power stinging almost as badly as any normal salve. His eyes remained locked on Dren, hunched forward on the other side of their hastily set campfire, his eyes sunken, haunted. He held a brown ceramic mug with both hands between his knees, staring sightlessly into the fire, lips slightly apart, moving every now and then as he mumbled something to himself.
The veteran freelancer wanted to reach over and slap the kid, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good. Dren had to come to terms with what had happened, what he’d done. Violence came naturally to some people, but Andrei didn’t fool himself into assuming Dren would turn out to be one of those such folks. The vast majority of everyday citizens in the realms of Tamalaria were normal, law-abiding folk, people who rarely had to consider what it would be like to take the life of another sentient being. Killing rashum was one thing; monsters posed an obvious and easily identified threat, after all. Dren, however, had killed another human being.
“I’m worried about him,” Holly whispered to Andrei, sitting down finally beside him, across the fire from the young smithy. Norto had hastily assembled his own tent and crawled inside when they’d finally stopped about ten miles beyond the village, muttering darkly to himself about troublemakers and magical nonsense. “It’s like he doesn’t quite realize we’re even here, or where he is.”
Andrei made no remark beyond a non-commital kind of grunting noise. Leave it alone, girl, he thought.
“Shouldn’t we do something? Try to snap him out of it,” she rasped. Andrei felt a tightening in his guts, but he held still and kept his mouth shut, staring into the fire himself. “Hey, I’m talking to you, here,” Holly snapped, and finally, Andrei slowly, calmly turned his head to look her dead in the eyes.
“You have killed before,” he said flatly. It wasn’t a question, or even a comment, just an observation. Holly nodded nonetheless as if he’d posed an inquiry. “Do you think he ever has? Do you suspect for even a moment, that at any point in his mild-mannered, everyday life, even growing up in a city as rough as Desanadron, that he’s ever done more than throw a punch in anything even approaching anger?” Holly blinked at him, but shook her head slightly. “I don’t think he has, either. And now, Holly, he has killed a man. There was a moment there, and I saw it from the corner of my eye, where he lost himself in the moment. One of those goons was moving in to likely slit your throat after that golem threw you into the bed. Dren was behind him, ignored because he was cowering.” Here, Holly’s gaze turned from Andrei to Dren, who hadn’t moved a muscle. “He had to chose. Strike, and you would live. Stay still, and you would die.”
“He could have just warned me,” Holly said softly.
“No, he couldn’t have,” Andrei said evenly. “Had he spoken, that goon would have just moved in quicker for the kill.” Holly shook her head and turned eyes thick with tears on Andrei once more.
“He just did what he had to,” she choked out.
“Maybe so, but not all folken are built to kill,” Andrei observed, slouching a little as he sighed. “And don’t forget what he used to protect you,” the minotaur said, reaching over to his left for his gear belt, which he had removed along with his armor before settling in to let Holly minister to his wounds. From it, he drew up Dren’s shaping hammer, its rounded head scuffed and stained with blood.
“You should have left that behind,” Holly said, wiping at her eyes, sniffling.
“No,” Andrei replied, turning the hammer this way and that, considering it. “Go to your tent, Holly.”
“What are you going to do,” she asked, a slight edge to her voice. Andrei gave her a gentle grin, spinning the hammer by its smooth wooden handle.
“Do you trust me?”
“I barely know you,” she retorted.
“Better question, then; do you think I intend to hurt him?” Holly looked over at the frail human, barely a man grown and looking for all the world at that moment like a broken thing. She finally shook her head.
“No, I don’t. But intention isn’t magical or a guarantee of anything.”
“Nothing’s guaranteed in this world, kid,” Andrei said with a snort, rising to his feet and towering over her. “Now go to your tent.” Without further argument she left the campfire, and Andrei met her eyes one last time before she slipped down into her tent and out of sight. He let out another sigh, moving around the fire and settling down beside Dren, holding the hume’s hammer between his knees.
The spirits of strength that had been bound to his soul all those years ago would not be of any use to him here, Andrei thought, and even if they should have offered any sort of council, he would have roundly ignored them. He was mercilessly sober, and should have been under a barrage of whispers from the back of his head; yet they remained silent, observing only. The minotaur freelancer used his right hand to reach gingerly over and pluck the mug from Dren’s hands, setting it down between his own cloven feet, sliding the hammer into its place.
“Look at it,” Andrei whispered. He sensed a stirring, saw Dren’s eyes shift down to the hammer. “What do you see?” At first, there came no sound from the hume, but after almost a minute of silence interrupted only by the crackle of the fire, Dren spoke, his voice devoid of inflection.
“Blood,” he said.
“Okay, yes. There is blood on there. What do you see,” Andrei repeated. Dren turned the hammer slightly, pointing at the rounded surface.
“Chipping, from the man’s skull,” Dren said, voice still hollow.
“Right again. What do you see?” Dren tilted his head to the side, fixing the minotaur with a queer look, eyebrow raised, then looked down once more at the hammer.
“A weapon,” Dren said.
“Wrong,” Andrei said, hoisting himself up and stepping away, returning a moment later and settling down. He dragged his warhammer up between his knees, holding it vertically by the shaft, the head resting on the ground. “This is a weapon. Sure, it’s shaped a little like your hammer there, but its only practical use is to smash things and people.” He tilted the weapon down, and reached over, plucking up his sheathed long sword. “This is a weapon, kind of a like a knife, but designed for stabbing and cutting and hacking and slashing people.” He set this aside, then pulled up a short throwing spear, two nubs on its shaft, which he pressed together, extending the weapon into a full-sized combat spear. “This is a weapon. Sure, I could use it for fishing in a stream or river, but mostly it’s a pointy-stabby-pokey thing for making holes in other things and people.”
“Is there a point here,” Dren asked, showing a little flash of life and personality finally, even if it was that of a petulant child. Andrei didn’t begrudge him this; this entire exercise was intended to provoke a response, after all.
“The point is, what you’ve got there is a tool,” Andrei said, collapsing the spear and setting it aside. “A tool you’ve used to make other weapons, shields, armor. I imagine, from the wear on that puppy, that you’ve used it for all kinds of stuff around the building, even maintenance and repairs, right?”
“Yeah,” Dren said, looking at the head of the hammer once again, spinning it slowly back and forth. “I got it when I first started apprenticing to Norto. He said he never used it anymore, and it was in pretty rough shape. This isn’t the original handle,” he remarked, running a finger along a faint crack along the shaft. “Holly got it for me from some Wayfarers who passed through the city last year. It’s pure ash, woodshaped by an elven gaiamancer.”
Andrei didn’t interrupt, didn’t dare speak again just yet. The kid was coming back to himself, inches at a time. Still, it was progress, and he wasn’t about to interfere. Dren thumbed the rounded head, using his fingernail to chip at the dried blood there.
“I never wanted this,” Dren said, shaking his head. “I make things. I’m just a blacksmith, I’m no warrior.”
“Nobody’s expecting you to become one,” Andrei said, unsure of where this conversational experiment was going to turn now. Yet he had an idea, one of a sort not normally in his nature, so he opted to take a risk and pursue it. “But you are also Holly’s friend, right?”
“Of course,” Dren said, whipping his eyes around to lock onto Andrei’s. That was fast, the minotaur thought.
“And you did what you had to to protect her, right?” Dren looked down at the hammer again, but he nodded. “Then know this, Dren; you’re a better man than me.” Dren gave the freelancer a confused look then, a confusion Andrei sensed was shared by the spirits riding his soul. He was thinking of something his father, a drunken fool but a wise and heartful father indeed, had once said to him and his brother. “The true measure of a man lies not in what he can fight and kill, my boy; it lies in what he will fight on behalf of. I fight and kill for money and sport.” Andrei patted Dren on the shoulder and stood up, turning toward the wagon, where he would curl up to sleep in a few moments. “You fought and killed to protect someone you care about.”