Vrenna and the Red Stone and Other Tales

The Executioner

Torchlight broke into Thorn's cell like streams of fire. He sat up on his bed slowly and glared at the guard who woke him. The guard dropped his gaze. They always did.

"The execution is at dawn."

Thorn continued his stare and the guard hurried to leave. Thorn stood naked. He stretched to his full height, the firelight of the hallway torch dancing off of his dark skin. He looked out of the barred window of his cell and saw the dark blue light of the approaching dawn as it overtook the night.

Thorn wrapped a pleated leather kilt around his waist and buckled it with a large bronze buckle. He pulled a black leather tunic, sleeveless and cut low over his chest. His huge chest and arms helped bring the crowd and the tailors of the tunic knew it. Thorn tied two leather wraps around his wrists and palms of his hands. Finally, he put on a dark steel helm shaped like the head of a snarling bull complete with low curling black steel horns.

Thorn looked to wide-bladed sword that sat propped up in the corner of his cell. It was the most famous sword for five hundred miles. It was more famous than Dragontooth, his lord and master's jeweled rapier that now sat unused for years over the lord's bed. It was more famous than Treesplitter, the master-at-arms's two handed greatsword with a hilt of living wood and a dark green blood groove running from tip to hilt. Thorn's people knew his blade as Earthsplitter before the war, but his new masters had a different name. They called it Noble's End. He had killed forty six men with the huge blade before the wars, including ten officers of Faigon's army. Since his capture he had killed thirty more including eighteen gladiators and twelve nobles of Castle Doven. Today it would kill its thirteenth.

The blade was three feet long and five inches wide. The wide blade looked like a slab of thick steel with an edge and a hilt. The hilt was wrapped in leather from the hide of a dire boar slain by Thorn's father nearly forty years ago. The leather grip, all sixteen inches of it, was dark with oil and old blood.

Thorn lifted the blade and felt its cool weight in his hands. The tip of the blade angled in towards the edge giving it the shape of a large cleaver instead of a typical sword. Along the blade, just above the hilt, twelve notches marked the blade for each noble head it cut off.

Thorn stepped out of the cell and walked down the hall where two double doors lay open to the courtyard.

A roar exploded from the crowd of five hundred that watched Thorn step out onto the courtyard. Castle Doven sat behind high walls to the north and the shops of the village surrounded the open royal courtyard where many of the town's events took place. Executions were always popular, only second to gladiator fights.

Thorn held his bull helmed head high and strode to the center of the courtyard as the cheers of bloodthirsty villagers continued their cries. On a raised platform, Doven's nobles sat in red upholstered chairs accented in gold. An angled canopy edged with flowing silk tapestries protected the noble family from the soon rising sun.

Lord Reynold Alaphin sat surrounded by his extended family. He had two wives, the newest one a spoiled nineteen year old named Jonya Tivora and her son, an equally spoiled and fat six year old named Calven James Alaphin. Reynold's other wife, the venerable twenty two year old Klarissa Windsbow Alaphin was away for two years for a strange and unknown illness.

Lord Alaphin had two brothers and twelve sisters, each with their cash-hungry husbands, wives, and spoiled fat children. Nearly all thirty five family members sat in the pavilion to watch the thirty sixth lose his head to Noble's End.

Johnathan Rudolph Tenevar, second cousin of Jonya Tivora and husband of Reynold Alaphin's sixth sister, Claudette, known adulterer and embezzler of the treasury of Castle Doven, wet the front of his fine red velvet pants when the noble met Thorn's eyes through the huge black bull helm. The two men were from different worlds soon to crash together. Thorn smiled behind the nightmare helm when he saw the look of confusion, denial, and finally fear on the Johnathan's pale face.

The crowd continued to cheer as Thorn walked to the large dark chopping block. Two guards stood in leather three-cornered hats, shining steel breastplates, royal velvet uniforms, and tall leather riding boots folded down at the knee. Eight more guards circled the chopping block, black barreled muskets resting on their shoulders.

A priest of Suun whispered a prayer over Johnathan Tenevar but the doomed fop was not listening. His eyes kept shifting from the noble's rise, where he surely expected a pardon to be spoken, and the huge slab of steel held by the bull-headed monster in front of him.

A castle crier wearing a huge white floppy neck ruffle, a bright pink tunic, and a ridiculously large hat began reading a list of crimes approaching complete nonsense.

The crowd continued to cheer. They didn't care what the man was accused of, today they got to see a noble bleed. Rumors said he stuck his tiny noble prick into the wrong young girl and got her pregnant. Beheading the idiot was easier than bringing in a whole new family into the royal apartments and so the crimes were fabricated and the execution announced. No doubt the young girl, a mere lass of twelve if rumors held true, thought of velvet beds and four feasts a day instead of her own eviscerated body laying in a ditch after the Lord Reynold's guards got a hold of her.

The prayers of the false priest and the reading of idiotic charges finished. It was time for the real work to begin. The crowd quieted as the two guards pushed Johnathan down on the bloodstained chopping block. One pulled the lose skin of the back of his neck taught while the other held down his legs.

"Wait." Johnathan squeaked in his most aristocratic voice. Thorn looked up to the pavilion and nodded. Lord Reynold nodded back. Thorn raised Noble's End high and swung down hard.

Few who have never seen a beheading understand what forces are really at play. As sharp as Noble's End was, simply pressing the edge of a blade against skin will not cut it. Even with great force, the blade does not sever, it crushes. The thin edge splits open the skin at the base of the neck, crushes the bone of the spine and the thin pink cord it protects. It crushes the windpipe and presses on veins and arteries until they burst. Last, it presses the split skin of the back of the neck through the front of the neck until the pressure of the blade against the soft wood of the block finally splits the skin apart. It is not a pretty sight.

It was not a pretty sight for Sir Johnathan Rudolf Tenevar. His head spun face up and flew forward out of the hands of the guard holding the back of his neck. His mouth was wide open as were his still unbelieving eyes. His decapitated body shot upright squirting blood in intermittent gouts into the air. A long stream sprayed across the front of Thorn's helm and chest. The body fell onto its side, continuing to squirt blood into a growing pool.

The crowd roared in bloodthirsty glee. Thorn slashed the huge sword to his side sending a line of red blood across the ground. He looked back up at the grim faces of the nobles who sent one of their own to die by Thorn's hand. Thorn's eyes met those of the small fat boy, Calvin Alaphan. The boy stared at Thorn with wide-eyed horror before burying his head into his mother's narrow chest. Thorn smiled behind the black steel helm.

Johnathan Tenevar's spray of lifebood blood across Thorn's face and the look he gave Tanya Alaphan's fat child changed Thorn's life forever.

The door of Thorn's cell slammed shut behind him. Sweat flowed down his bare chest in long rivers. His dark hair hung in wet strands in front of his eyes. He set his training club against the wall next to the door. Tufts of black hair and drying blood hung on its splintered head.

Two of the fourteen slave gladiators with which Thorn had sparred had died today. Two others were maimed; one with a broken leg stabbing out of his gushing calf and another with an arm that had been twisted nearly entirely around. They were Voth slaves as was Thorn, big and dark-skinned. Every day they got better with the swords and axes and spears with which they fought. One of them nearly opened up Thorn's belly with a palm knife. Thorn had caved in his skull with his training club. He didn't spar with a blade. It wouldn't be fair and Lord Alaphin wouldn't have any gladiators left when the games arrived this fall.

Thorn's door creaked open and small feet wrapped in silk sandals stepped in. Thorn let her aroma reach his nostrils. Valenda. Thorn turned and smiled. Valenda's green eyes gleamed and she smiled back.

Her skin was soft and pale, not hardened under the burning sun like Thorn's. She was slender and wore only two bands of thin silk around her breasts and waist. Sunlight reflected off of tiny flecks of glitter in the outer corners of her eyes. Long straight black hair cascaded down her bare shoulders. Her tongue touched her upper red lip.

She set a wash basin steaming with hot water on the room's only table and drew out a thick wet cloth. She began to gently wipe the dirt and sweat and blood from Thorn's chest. Her delicate fingers traced the swirling tattoos on his chest, now faded from nearly constant exposure to the sun. She followed the swirls of ancient script and symbols to the bestial gods of the Voth.

She was from the deep south deserts, she had once told Thorn on one of the few nights where they spoke. She was born a slave, as was her mother, and was continually traded across the deserts and the seas. She spent her teenage years in the harem of a pirate king until a Faigon noble bought her and gave her as a gift to Lord Alaphin. His wife had little use for a pleasure slave, however, and at the age of nineteen, she was far too old for Reynold Alaphin's tastes. Her extraordinary skills would not go to waste however, and the nobles gave her as the top reward to the mightiest gladiator in Castle Doven's slave pits. For the last ten years, that had been Thorn.

Thorn made love to her violently, grunting and roaring like an animal. The word love had little to do with his actions, however. To him, sex was the end victory of violence. For him the actions in the gladiator pits and his actions in bed were of little difference. Valenda didn't seem to mind. She met his fury with her own cries of pleasure, surprisingly real. As for Valenda's pleasuring of Thorn, she was very good at her job.

Later, Thorn watched her wrap her thin band of silk around her waist, tying it high on her right hip. What would happen to her as age began to take her beauty? Thorn hadn't felt love for anyone since the last days of the Voth wars, but he couldn't help wondering what fate awaited the beautiful pleasure slave. Valenda turned, giving Thorn a glimpse of her beautiful creamy breasts before wrapping another band of silk around her chest, deftly tying a large bow in the back. She smiled at Thorn and stepped out of his cell.

Thorn laid back on his lambskin mattress and slept.

Thunder roared and walls of rain washed over the fields of the Three Stones. Thorn let the rain wash over his face and down the long braid of his hair. It washed over his boiled leather breastplate, following the dozens cuts that criss-crossed across its hard surface. Thorn's left hand held the reigns of Firehoof, his black steed. He could feel the wild beast coiled like bent steel under him. His right hand held Earthsplitter. Lightning reflected off the wide steel blade and water rand down to its angled tip.

Around Thorn, fifty riders of the Voth prepared to charge. The Voth king called them Hell's Axe, and now they prepared on the west flank of Faigon's musketeers.

Five hundred yards ahead, musket fire mixed with the clashes of steel and the cries of the dying. The battle raged for hours but still the Faigon commander had not sent in his reserve musketeers. Until he did, Thorn would wait. Then he heard it; leather boots marching in formation. The reserves stepped out of the woods towards the center of the battle.

Thorn placed his direwolf skull helm over his head. He felt range and bloodlust burn through him. He raised Earthsplitter high over his head and kicked Firehoof into a full gallop. All around him, the fifty riders of Hell's Axe rode hard.

It was said that Firehoof held the blood of demon's in his veins. Thorn was the only man to control the black steed but Thorn knew that no one controlled Firehoof. Thorn just hung on for the ride.

The world slowed and thunder crashed as the fifty riders roared in. Thorn held his breath. The closest musketeers had not yet seen them. The soldiers in their gray uniforms and three-cornered hats fired into the center of the battle, sending led balls into Voth warriors and Faigon pikemen alike. Time continued to slow. Thorn squeezed his teeth together and continued to hold his thirty pound blade high into the air.

Thorn fixed his eyes on the closest musketeer, a blond boy of perhaps seventeen winters. The boy saw something in the corner of his eye and began to turn. Thorn felt the thudding of Firehoof beating into the soft wet earth. The boy's eyes focused and saw the wolf-headed rider and the black steed riding him down. The boy's expression began to turn to sheer nightmarish terror but never fully reached it.

Thorn's blade met hardly any resistance at all as it split the boy's head in half horizontally through the bridge of his nose. The fifty riders pierced into the reserve musketeers like the tip of a knife into soft dough. Leather hats filled with blood spun through the air. The sound of spears, lances and swords piercing through steel breastplates rang in the night air. Muskets were split in half and wide-bladed swords cleaved through arms and heads.

Thorn caught sight of the reserve unit's commander. Large rolls of fat pressed out of the commander's uniform like overstuffed sausage. The commander held an ornate saber that looked more like jewelry than a weapon. Thorn kicked Firehoof into a gallop. He saw the commander draw a flintlock pistol and fire at the wolf-headed hellspawn that prepared to ride him down. Thorn heard the ball zip past the left side of his head. Thorn roared to Kavashek the Bear God and rode harder.

When he met the officer, the force of his swing added to the power of Firehoof's gallop was beyond measure. The officer appeared to explode from the waist up. Rolls of pink intestines, burst organs, and white bone filled the air.

Blood pumping through him like liquid fire, Thorn reeled Firehoof around for another target. Only then did he see the second reserve now on their flank. The gleaming steel of five hundred bayonets fixed to the black uncaring eyes of five hundred muskets stared down at Hell's Axe and then roared into life. Three lead balls and the bits of cloth they carried with it, bits of cloth that would nearly kill Thorn from infection days later, punched holes through Thorn's leather breastplate and tore into his leg and arm. He fell back off of Firehoof and heard the horse screaming as Thorn's vision went black. All around him, Hell's Axe shattered under Faigon's muskets.

Calvin's screams echoed through Castle Doven like shattering glass. Dressed in his night tunic, gray trousers, and his gun belt, Jovalin Vandorn, master-at-arms of Castle Doven, ran down the corridor to the bedroom of Jonya Tivora and her son.

Lord Reynold burst out of his own twin-doored master bedroom, his nightshirt hanging down to his bare knees. Jovalin's razor-sharp vision caught the darting naked figure of a young girl slipping out of the side entrance of the well-designed king's bedroom. He had picked an older one this evening, it appeared, thought Jovalin.

The two men burst into Jonya's bedroom and saw her holding young Calvin to her chest. The boy's thumb was in his mouth and huge tears rolled down his fat cheeks.

"He had a dream. A vision!" Jonya's own tears fell from her hollow cheeks and her voice cracked with hysterics. Her thin bony arms stuck out from her ornate silk nightgown grasping her son with claw-like hands. She had lost nearly forty pounds since she and Reynold no longer shared the same bed. Some said she had the same sickness as Reynold's older wife, but her chambermaids often whispered that she tickled her throat with a feather and vomited up her meals. She had wanted to look more appealing to her husband's young tastes but ended up looking more like a skeleton each day. Jovalin made it his business to learn what everyone in Castle Doven had to say, from his lord to the chamberpot cleaners. No doubt even this late-night shrieking was just another attempt to capture her husband's attention.

"He saw a vision!"

"The bull-man!" Calvin's thumb popped out of his mouth and his whiny voice cracked and squeaked. "He came for me and mother! He came for you!" Calvin pointed at his father. "He had his big sword and it was all bloody!"

"He is ours, lad." Lord Reynold spoke softly but with more than a hint of impatience. "He only hurts who we tell him to hurt."

"He killed uncle Arden and uncle Benji and aunt Fileora. He killed our family!" The boy began wailing again.

"Do something, Reynold," Jovya hissed.

"He brings villagers from one hundred leagues. He fills the market purses with gold. Everyone comes to see him."

"He kills our family!" Jovya screamed.

"We will not have noble blood on our hands, m'lady." Jovalin spoke softly. "He does it so we don't have to. No noble will ever kill another noble."

"And how much noble blood washes the hands of this Voth slave?" Jovya pulled a sagging breast from her nightgown and forced it into Calvin's mouth. The fat boy sucked greedily and loud. Jovalin tried hard to hide his disgust.

"He is an atrocity. A demon." Jovya spoke over the wet noises of her son's suckling. "He cares not if he spills noble blood or his own brothers. He has no respect for us. He does not know our superiority, our station. His Voth sword falls on Royal necks and every head that falls shows him and our people that we are the same as them - less than them! We let ourselves be killed by a Voth!"

Reynold looked at his wife and then to Jovalin.

"Shoot him." Reynold turned and headed out, whispering under his breath. "Perhaps that will keep his whimpering down for a few nights. He and that skinny bitch."

Jovalin looked to Jonya who stared defiantly back. She had victory in her eyes. Jovalin nodded and left.

Jovalin ordered two of his men to shoot the slave tonight behind the barracks. As they left the castle, Jovalin sat down at his angled writing desk, dipped a quill, and penned a letter to Lord Avadery of Castle Davenport. It was time he sought new employment.

Jovalin had served Castle Doven for twenty years. He lived his fifty years with one rule: be careful and make no mistakes. This night, in the lateness of the hour and in his disgust at his lords and ladies, he had made two. One was sending his two men, as skilled as they were, without seeing to the order himself. The second was missing the thin shadow that slipped past his door and out into the night.

"Apparently she hasn't had enough, tonight." The guards of the gladiator barracks laughed and one slapped Valenda on her rump as she walked down the rows of cells. The hall guard smiled as she opened Thorn's door and stepped inside.

Thorn could tell immediately that something was wrong.

"The vomiting princess and her bastard son have marked you, Thorn. The boy's dream spoke of your taste for noble blood. Lord Alaphin appeased her by ordering your death. They send guards to shoot you as we speak."

Valenda stepped forward and pressed a steel spike, ten inches long, into Thorn's calloused palm.

"Bite them first."

Valenda kissed Thorn hard. He felt her mouth open and their tongues touched. He pressed harder. He circled a muscled arm around her thin waist and crushed her to him. When she stood back, Thorn saw a drop of blood on her lip. She smiled. Then she was gone like a whisper of silk in a breeze. Thorn heard hard boot heels approaching in the hallway.

The four guards came with practiced steps and perfectly measured performance. Two of the guards, David and Pervusal, were Jovalin's own guard. Like their lord, they took no chances. They did not hit Thorn or insult him. When they entered, one immediately collected up Thorn's club and Noble's End. The other asked Thorn to join him in the courtyard. Without the spike in his hand and Valenda's warning, Thorn would have died that night in the dirt behind the gladiator barracks.

The two gladiator barrack guards walked behind Thorn with musket barrels pointed at his back. Behind them, Sergeant David walked with Thorn's club and sword. In front, Sergeant Pervusal walked to the open gates at the end of the hall.

Thorn knew he was dead if they reached the end of the hall. The two behind him weren't much of a problem. The barrels of their guns were nearly pressing into the flesh of his back. Thorn knew both men were drinkers, slow of wit and slow of hand. Thorn would have just a moment before the sergeant up front would be able to turn and fire his owl-hammered flintlock pistol. The sergeant behind, however was a much greater problem. Even though he held Thorn's sword and club, Thorn had little doubt that the young man could draw fast.

Twenty feet remained in front of Sergeant Pervusal. Thorn had no choice. He would leave his fate to the gods.

Thorn spun in a single motion out of the way of one gun barrel and pushing the other away with his left hand. Both barrels fired. One lead ball cracked against the stone wall. The other hit sergeant Pervusal in the small of his back. In the same spin and sweep, Thorn stabbed six of the ten inches of the spike in the ear of one of the musket wielding guards. The man's eyes went wide and his teeth chattered in nervous spasms as death took him.

Thorn was right about Sergeant David behind him. The man dropped thorn's weapons, drew his own black and silver flintlock pistol, and fired. Thorn grabbed the tunic of the remaining guard behind him and pulled him into the steel bullet. The bullet exploded through the guard's chest but the force of the shot was gone. The bullet smacked thorn's chest and fell to the ground.

Thorn scooped up one of the muskets as he rushed the sergeant. David dropped his pistol and started to draw his gold saber but Thorn got there first. Thorn swung the musket hard by the barrel and hit the sergeant with the edge of the stock. The crack of David's skull echoed down the hall.

Thorn picked up the huge blade, Noble's End, and began to run down the hall of the gladiator's cells. He stopped, however, and ran back to his own cell. One final object retrieved, Thorn ran smiling from the gladiator's cells.

Jovalin looked at the bodies of his men. How had things gone so wrong, he thought. How did this happen? He should have been here. David and Pervusal were good but Jovalin would have seen that the slave had meant to do violence. Even with four men, Jovalin would have bound the barbarian's hands or found the spike now buried in a guard's ear. Jovalin only had to shoot one other gladiator before learning of Thorn's last visitor, the one who surely had tipped him off and armed him.

Jovalin put his hands on his twin flintlocks of black steel and redwood grips. Each gun had two barrels, one over the other, and two hammers shaped like shark teeth. Jovalin ran his fingers over their rough edge with nervous energy.

"Sir. Sergeant Pervusal is alive."

Jovalin knelt down to the sergeant. Pervusal's face was ghost white. A pool of blood grew from the two inch hole punched through the back of his steel breastplate.

"We disarmed him but he hit the guard with something and the other shot me in the back. He broke us down like rotten wood. Someone told him."

"I know, son. Don't worry about that. Where did he go?"

"He ran past me but turned and went back to his cell. Then he fled with something under his arm."

"He went back to his cell after getting away from you?"

Pervusal coughed. "Yes."

Jovalin stood and beckoned two of his guards to take him to the healers of the church. Jovalin walked back to Thorn's cell and examined the sparse room. What would Thorn come back for? What was missing now? The barbarian already had his sword and he left the worthless club on the ground. Jovalin looked to the table and his eyes went wide. He left with a twirl of his black cloak and yelled to his remaining men.

"Sergeant Vorhees, get your men to the courtyard and bring the whore Valenda with you."

"We're bringing the whore to search with us?" The sergeant looked confused.

"No. Take her to the chopping block. He hasn't left yet."

The stars of midnight pierced the black sky but the old gods blessed Thorn with a moonless night. Thorn lay face down on the roof of the smithy and metalwork shop overlooking the courtyard where Thorn brought so many of the townsfolk to see his bloody acts. A hundred scratches and bruises covered his naked chest and arms. A tattered loincloth and leather wrapped sandals were his only protection. His heavy wide-bladed sword sat tight in his grip.

He heard her scream and heard the slap of a fist on soft flesh before he saw her. Two castle guards dragged Valenda to the block where only earlier that morning Thorn had taken Johnathan's head. Two more guards and Jovalin, the castle's master-at-arms stood by the block. The older man ran his eyes over the surrounding area. Lantern light gleamed off of the black hammers of his flintlock pistols hanging low on his hips and the hilt of Treesplitter, the greatsword strapped to his back. He dug the hard heels of his glove soft brown leather boots into the dirt. His own gold-adorned black steel breastplate matched the darkness of the night.

Valenda's silken clothes hung in tatters around her chest and waist but Jovalin ripped off what remained, leaving her naked in the night air. Her soft pale skin and smooth curves stood in stark contrast to the steel and leather armor of the five men around her. Jovalin's eyes scanned the buildings from under his brown leather three-cornered hat. The master-at-arms turned and punched Valenda in the face with his leather-gloved hand. Thorn heard her nose break from one hundred yards away. Jovalin punched her hard in the stomach and she crumpled to the ground gasping for air.

Two of the guards lifted her and bent her over the chopping block. She cried out through the blood pouring from her nose and mouth when one of them forced himself into her.

Thorn watched with cold eyes as each of the four men took her again and again. All the while, Jovalin's eyes scanned the surrounding buildings. A shine of lantern light reflected off of a long barrel of metal from a roof of one of the opposite buildings. Thorn looked at other buildings and saw similar barrels each tracking across the courtyard. To drop from the roof and rush the five men meant being ripped apart by a dozen musket balls.

A more noble man would not have cared about the death that would find him in the streets. A more noble man would have dove from the roof, run to the block with his blade high hoping to cleave through the men at the block before the tiny balls of lead tore into him. A more noble man would have loved Valenda and would have died trying to save her. Thorn lost his nobility when he lay in a cell, his insides rotting and three holes still burning in his body. When he awoke a month later emaciated and beaten, he was no longer the hellrider of the Voth, he was something else. If Thorn ever possessed any such nobility, it had died with him on the hills of Three Stones.

When they had finished, Jovalin shook his head, drew one of his pistols, and put a bullet in Valenda's unconscious brain.

The sewer system of Castle Doven was one of the oldest known systems in the northern reaches of Faigon. The river Eisen flowed from the north of the castle's west side down to the south. A long bypass and series of canals brought water to the eastern fields and through the twin villages that supported the castle. One large channel flowed into the castle itself and spread through a network of tunnels and pipes and back to the channel that fed the river to the south. The land where the village channels met was known as the black join. Dozens of slaves known as Blackkeepers dug through the rivers and mountains of waste that often clogged or broke down the walls of the canals. Hundreds of slaves died from those lands. Diseases horrible and deadly ripped apart the unlucky Blackkeepers. The skin slid off of their bones. Their teeth and hair fell out. They vomited and shat until their organs ruptured. A sentence serving the Black Join was a sentence of death.

In his ten years, Thorn heard many escape plans. Some were perfectly simple until a musket ball tore open the escapee's chest. Others of amazing complexity were passed along from slave to slave like an old tale of lore or a family heirloom never to be attempted.

One of these treasured plans spoke of escape through the sewers of the castle itself. A body servant of the Lord Reynold's half brother, Jason, sick of the man's perversions had told a sparring partner of Thorn's of the great maw that brought the noble shite out into the Black Join. The grate that protected the tunnel was nearly rusted through from centuries of decay. Thorn had no use for the information at the time but it served him well now. The Black Join and the tunnel that fed it was almost completely unguarded.

Thorn waded hip-deep in the thick black waters of the Black Join. The smell was maddening. He retched continually but the determination in his heart was stronger than the stench of a thousand sewers.

Only one guard watched these foul lands. He had made no sound at all when Thorn had pulled back his head so violently that his neck snapped and his head fell between his own shoulder blades.

Thorn found the castle's main sewer and the ironwork grate was indeed nearly rusted through. Bar by bar, Thorn ripped or pried apart the rotted iron bars. His hands bled and the lines of a hundred infected scratches crossed his body but soon the bars left a hole just big enough to accept Thorn's massive body.

Thorn followed the sewers deep below the subbasements of the castle. Huge hairless rats with milky white eyes sniffed at the air. Something big and wet moved back in the shadows with a sickening thud and the sound of suction. Thorn came across the bloated white corpse of a slave who apparently died trying this escape before. His hands and feet had been gnawed off but his eyes stared at Thorn as he passed.

Thorn followed the network of sewers for an hour. At one point he had to completely submerge himself in the thick liquid of waste and swim down a tube just big enough for him to squeeze in. His lungs and eyes burned as he crawled though the tube, propelling himself with his fingers and toes. If the tunnel narrowed even a few more inches, Thorn would be trapped and drown in the feces of the nobles sleeping above him.

Again the old bestial gods of the Voth smiled on Thorn and the tube let out into a large pool. Firelight danced from a grate twenty feet above his head.

His hair hanging down his back and in front of his face, Thorn looked up at the firelight with murder in his eyes and in the set of his jaw and the leather wrapped hilt of Noble's End in his right hand. In his left, he held the possession that demanded his return to his cell: the shining black steel bull-headed helmet. Holding the helm by one sharp black horn, Thorn placed the helmet over his head.

With bleeding fingers, Thorn climbed the slick stone wall of the chamber and with a powerful blast of his palm, broke into the kitchen of Castle Doven.

An old woman in a canvas apron stood as still as death as the bull-headed monster crawled out of the drain of the large kitchen. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth mumbled strange words. Thorn stood his full height, his huge blade in his hand and locked eyes with the woman. He saw the swirling faded blue tattoos streaming down the side of her neck and down the wrinkled skin of her left arm. Then he recognized the strange words she spoke. It had been ten years since he had heard a prayer to the old gods of the Voth. The woman twisted her hands together into a knot, a hand symbol of the god Moknche Blackclaw. Thorn walked past the old Voth woman and into the foray of Castle Doven.

Echoes of shouts, the ringing of steel smashing on steel, and the loud pops of gunfire followed in Thorn's wake.

Minutes later, Thron climbed the stairs leading to the Noble's quarters. Blood flowed down his naked chest and dripped in long strings from the blade of Noble's End. Two deep wounds crossed his chest and a charred circular hole of a musket ball in his shoulder oozed dark blood. Much of the blood that covered Thorn's body was not his own. Behind him, Thorn left a wake of decapitated heads, severed arms and legs, dismembered and disemboweled bodies. Wounded guards screamed for help as their innards flowed out of huge wounds in their bellies and through their own grasping hands. Blood, skin, and hair caked Thorn's heavy blade.

Already seven nobles had tried to escape down the second floor's only stairwell but met Thorn halfway up. Roaring, he cut into them. Many continued to think that their nobility would somehow armor their soft skin. Lord Philip Alaphin, Reynold's third oldest brother, stood and shouted orders at Thorn just before Thorn's blade cut him open from throat to groin with a cut so deep that it spread nearly as wide as the man's shoulders. The other nobles screamed and cowered as his blade chopped into them one by one.

One noble, Lord Dennith Alabaster, stared at the ruin that had once been his wife before Thorn's blade had flayed her open. The tall noble turned with eyes deep in shock to behold Thorn towering above him. Thorn smashed the hilt of his blade into the man's face. Thorn grabbed the front of the man's tunic and tore it off with one quick motion. The man stood confused and nearly unconsciousness, blood streamed down his face, as he watched Thorn draw off his helmet.

Jovalin stood at the end of the hallway of the Noble's apartments. His twin black pistols sat in his hands, all four hammers cocked back. Treesplitter sat strapped tight along his back. Torchlight gleamed off of his black and gold breastplate and his eyes watched the opposite stairwell sharply under the pointed brim of his leather hat. His tall soft leather boots, folded down at the knee, stood motionless against the stone floor.

He had heard the screams and chaos below. He watched those idiot nobles rush out of their apartments and down the stairs against his advice. He could only imagine how the guards below, filled with panic and dread, fired into the floor or the sky or each other as the slave executioner hacked through them. Panic and fear hurt people's aim.

For the entire battle, Jovalin stood and waited for the bull-headed barbarian to step up the spiral of the opposite stairwell. A torch burned brightly at that end of the hallway. Just before stepping into it, Jovalin would fill the barbarian with four steel balls from these pistols he had taken from a pirate slavelord fifteen years earlier. He had known since the minute he realized that Thorn had returned for his helm, that this might be the end. He had hoped the hot barbarian would have rushed out to defend his pleasure slave but even then he knew the odds were slim. It all came down to this. Thorn would come up the stairs, and Jovalin would shoot him dead. He lifted the twin-barreled pistols and aimed at the hall ahead.

He saw the torchlight shining off of the black steel horns first. Then the huge bull head, tilted down rose over the edge of the stairs. Jovalin pushed back the urge to fire at the head knowing even these fine pistols had shot poorly at a target that small. He heard the footsteps coming up the stone stairs one by one. Jovalin was almost disappointed to see the stagger in the man's steps, obviously one of the guards below had gotten a lucky shot. The bull head rose and the memories of the huge blade falling on the heads of noble men and women flashed past Jovalin. Light fell across the figure's bare chest. He raised his guns and fired all four shots.

Jovalin had survived the Voth war and served as master-at-arms for so long by making few mistakes. More importantly, Jovalin had learned to recognize his mistakes and begin to fix them as early as possible instead of denying or burying them. As the hallway filled with the smoke of his guns, he realized his mistake. The skin was too pale and not well muscled. His hands were empty, not carrying the huge sword. Jovalin had fired his guns into another man, not Thorn. Jovalin had been the second man in the villages of Castle Doven to ever kill a noble and he realized this when he saw the first rushing towards him.

Jovalin had no time to reload. Thorn ran towards him, leaping over Denneth Alaphin's destroyed body, and holding Noble's End in both hands. Torchlight reflected green off of the two hundred year old blade as Jovalin drew it off of his back in a fluid and practiced motion. His great grandfather had forged the blade in the mountains of the north and cooled it in a stream under a new moon on the holiest days of Suun. Jovalin had carried the greatsword into the war against the Voth and had killed nearly two dozen Voth warriors with it. The sword was a symbol of the strength of Castle Doven military might.

It shattered into a hundred pieces when Noble's End smashed into it and cleaved open Jovalin's chest from shoulder to shoulder, splitting his sternum and the heart underneath. Jovalin watched his lifeblood pour out from the ungodly wound in his chest. He saw the hellfire in Thorn's eyes and knew he was a fool to stand in the way of such a force. It was the last thought he ever had.

Thorn spat on the dead corpse of Castle Doven's master-at-arms. He walked back to the body of the noble he had used as bait. Ten years ago, Thorn lost fifty men by falling into a trap like this. He would never do it again. Thorn pulled the helmet off of the smoking corpse and pulled it over his own head. Blood from the noble trapped within the helm poured down Thorn's back and chest. Thorn took a deep breath and headed to the double doors of Lord Reynold Alaphin's chambers.

Thorn would never have considered himself lucky but the old gods had smiled on him twice before this day and they smiled once again. Thorn would have caught an entire chestful of lead shot from Reynold's massive blunderbuss but the panicked lord had overfilled the powder by nearly twofold. When Thorn kicked in the doors, all he saw was an explosion of red blood and fire as the lord of Castle Doven blew his upper torso into pieces.

Thorn barked out laughter and turned back into the hall. A whimper from the room across the way grabbed his attention. He turned and with a kick as powerful as five men, Thorn splintered the door between him and Lady Jonya and her fat son, Calvin. Thorn's eyes met the eyes of the spoiled soft child whose nightmares had started this night tumbling in its bloody direction. Thorn saw the boy's terror as the boy beheld the bull-headed monster covered from head to toe in the blood of the boy's family. The boy's eyes fell to the shining slab of sharp steel in Thorn's hand. Thorn smiled and stepped inside.

For decades to come, the villagers told the tale of the Executioner's cleansing of Castle Doven. They would tell of his past deeds, the jealousy of a spoiled queen and her spoiled son. They would tell of the shadow that fell over the road as Thorn made his way south, with the bull head helm under his arm and Noble's End in his hand.

They would speak of the night that their two worlds, the peasant villagers and the nobles who ruled them, came crashing together in an ocean of blood and a mountain of bodies. They always ended the tale by describing the ear splitting scream of Jonya and her son. The scream that ended when the heavy blade fell twice on the cowering pair. Thorn the Executioner had received his blood-soaked revenge.

Author's Notes: The seed of the Executioner came from the introduction dialog of "Shogun Assassin" a black and white Japanese samurai movie that had some connection to the Lone Wolf and Cub stories. I wrote the entire story, wrote a Shogun Assassin style introduction, and then cut it out when I realized, with the help of a few editors, that the introduction stole a lot from the rest of the story.

Executioner is a bloody story with no real hero. Thorn is really a noble man who died in a war ten years earlier and just can't seem to fall down yet. He isn't very deep in this story and a couple of times his decisions break from the reader's wishes; once when he lets Valenda die and again when he murders a defenseless woman and child. Thorn is most likely going to come up in other stories. The initial character of Thorn actually came from a Brom painting of the same name.

Shock

Jack looked up from the press-wood table when Frank opened the door. There was concern in the Jack's eyes, though the kid tried to hide it behind the innocent yet half asleep look most teenagers used when they wanted to avoid something.

"Jack. My name's Frank Calhoon." Frank took out the black leather wallet and opened it up to the intimidating credentials inside. He let Jack get a good long look at them. "I'm a federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security." Frank waited a few seconds to let Jack's mind wrap around the badge and the title. Then he placed down his ace.

"I brought you a Coke." Frank put the cold red can in front of the boy.

"Thanks." Jack's voice was low for his age. It was a voice that could seduce a college freshman out of her blue jeans if it wasn't attached to an awkward high school sophomore.

The coke was an easy trick but it beat the hell out of the bullying and muscle flexing most agents in his line liked to use. It was his favorite weapon.

He waited for Jack to swallow.

"You like Hole?" Frank asked.

"They're ok. The shirt is my brother's."

"Who do you listen to?"

"Manson."

"That guy creeps me out." Frank got a lucky break here. "My son listens to him. His remake of Sweet Dreams is sort of fun. A little loud at times, but fun. My daughter likes Britney Spears. Yeah, I know." Frank nodded at Jack's prune-faced disgust. "My house is like a sixteen hour long Pepsi commercial." Jack snorted. Frank let a few more moments pass.

"Why are you here, Jack?"

"You tell me. I have no idea."

Frank gave the kid a good long look before speaking again. "You remember when the power went out at the Schaumburg mall? The cops here asked around and a couple of kids pointed you out. They told some pretty fantastic stories but we had a look at your record anyway." Frank held up a thick manila folder. "Frankly, the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but we don't fool around anymore when it comes to terrorism. There was enough loose thread in here that it was worth bringing you in.

"But I would like to hear it from your side. Why do you think you're here?"

Jack looked at Frank for a moment, his fidgety fingers remained still.

"My braces."

Frank sat back in his chair and waited for Jack to continue.

"When I was thirteen, my mom told me I was getting braces. She told me I had teeth like David Letterman. I had a couple of fillings put in a year before and when they were tightening the braces their wrench, or whatever it was, sparked off of one of my fillings. It knocked me out.

"Everything was fine, though. The braces hurt like hell but I was ok. They told my mother it was just a 'complication'.

"One morning I realized I could do things. My alarm clock went off and I snoozed it about three times. On the fourth time I realized I snoozed it without touching it. I looked at it and the numbers flashed 12:00 at me. I thought about it all day and when I got home I sat on my bed and did it again.

"I can't really describe how I did it. I ... pulled it. I pulled it with my mind and the power would go out of it. It felt like tugging on a rubber band. I would feel it stretch and the power would go out. When I let go, the power went back on again. Eventually I pulled harder and it snapped. The clock never worked again. I had to get my mom to buy me a new clock. I told her I dropped it.

"During the year I tried messing around with other electronics but it gave me headaches so I usually stopped. I couldn't do more than make a light bulb dim. I got the braces off a year after they put them on and the power stopped for a while. Then one day I was sitting at breakfast and looking at my mom's toaster. I could still feel the tiny bands in my head, bands I could pull and stretch.

"I felt something else too. It's hard to describe. I could push. It was like blowing water through a straw. I could feel electricity inside the circuits of the toaster. I could pull them out or I could push them in. I pushed the toaster and it exploded. I woke up in the hospital with a huge headache. I had been unconscious for hours. My parents thought it was the exploding toaster and kept talking about suing GE.

"They did a whole bunch of tests, cat scans and MREs."

"MRI's," Frank corrected.

"Yeah, with that machine that sits on you and bangs. They didn't find anything wrong with me and no one ever mentioned the toaster again. My dad never did send a letter off to GE.

"The entire time I was at the hospital I remembered what I felt. I saw the toaster behind me. I saw coils of red metal and tiny bundles of wire. I felt the tiny little computer chip that powers the clock. I felt the two huge cables of copper going into the electrical plug.

"I got home and didn't do anything for a while. I didn't know what had happened to me but I could feel my alarm clock again. I pulled it once or twice, it was much easier this time, but I never did anything more than that. I could feel electricity flowing through it like a river splitting into a web of tiny streams. It was like marbles in a tube jerking back and fourth over and over again. All I had to do was pull on them and out they came. All I had to do was push on them and they exploded like the toaster.

"I read something in a video game magazine about pilots who played in flight sims a long long time. Neural pathways in their brain changed to fit the flight sim they played. When they got out and tried to walk down the street they fell over because it burnt new definitions of motion and balance into their head. I thought this might have happened to me. My mind got used to the braces and whatever they did to me and it simply kept on doing it when the braces were gone."

Frank listened closely to Jack. Jack wasn't lying, he knew that much, but the boy didn't seem crazy either. The kid believed what he was saying. There were also the reports.

"What happened with Rick Phillips?"

Jack shuffled in his chair and his eyes went to the mirrored two-way glass on the wall. Frank switched tactics.

"Who was he?"

"Rick was a junior when I was a freshman, about nine months ago."

"Who's Marcy?"

Jack's eyes shot to Frank. Any glaze of teenage apathy or nervousness fled from those hawk's eyes. This is what Frank was looking for.

"Marcy was my best friend." There was no doubt from those eyes. However Marcy felt about Jack, Jack didn't just think of her as his friend. He was in love with her.

Jack broke the hawk's stare and seemed to think for a moment. He made some sort of decision. When he spoke again it wasn't with the one or two word answers most teenagers speak. Frank wouldn't need a crowbar to get information out of Jack like he would any other teenager. Jack wanted to tell his story. Frank only hoped the recording equipment worked well in the observation room.

"Marcy was one of the few girls who would even talk to a guy like me. She was a freshman the same year I was and knew one of the guys I used to eat lunch with. We spent a lot of time together that year. We ate lunch; we talked on the phone until early in the morning; we went out and watched old Hitchcock movies together. She was beautiful but we never...hooked up." Jack spit out these last two words like a bad piece of meat.

"She was my best friend for a year and a half and now she won't talk to me." Jack thought for a moment more and continued.

"Half way through my freshman year she and Rick Philips started going out. He didn't ask her out so much as tell her. 'We're going to the Outback Friday night, babe.' was the way he picked up his women. It drove me crazy but it didn't last long. She told me he was pushy. They broke up only three weeks or so after going out. Rick's father was some rich lawyer or business executive. They had an apartment on Lake Shore Drive in the same building Oprah lived in, but their home was here in Schaumburg.

"He and I had gym class around the same time during the second semester of my sophomore year. We were in the locker room after class when it happened." Jack took a deep breath and drank more of his Coke. Frank could see he came to another decision. Jack, glanced again to the mirrored glass on the wall, looked down again, and continued.

"I'm minding my own business when he comes over and leans on the lockers. God he pissed me off. I hated his perfect tan, his washboard abs, his skater hair. I hated everything about him.

'You still hanging around Marcy Jones?' he said. I told him I was.

'You fucked her yet?' I didn't say anything but he continued anyway. 'You're missing out, man. She cried a little bit the first time but opened up a lot after that. She loved doing it in the park. You should tap that if you have the chance, hoss.'

"I didn't know why he wanted to pick a fight with me but I really didn't care. I saw the gleam in his eye. I saw the look on his face and I knew he told the truth. I saw his slick body and his slick hair. I saw her laying on a blanket at Sunset Park with her little blue dress pushed up and his asshole hands on her white legs. I saw the same gleam in his eye that she must have seen when he pushed himself inside her. I saw the Casio X-shock diver's watch on his wrist and I saw tiny threads of current vibrating inside it. He took the only girl I ever loved, the only girl who ever loved me, and he fucked her in a park. And worse, she let him do it." Jack looked again at Frank with the hawk's eyes.

"I pushed his watch. I pushed hard."

Frank had seen the ER photos of the wound. It looked like a lion bit out a huge chunk of Rick's wrist. Only a ribbon of flesh and the tendons of his index finger and thumb held his hand to his arm. The bones of his wrist splintered like a tree hit by lightning. They amputated the arm a few minutes after the photos were taken.

Frank also saw the crime scene photos. One of the lockers, the one Rick had been leaning on, had a hole the size of a softball in it. The door bowed out at the top and bottom like someone had hit it with a hammer. There was blood everywhere. It covered the wall and spattered like red paint on the floor and ceiling.

There was no bullet, no casing, no explosive residue. There was no gun. Two other kids saw it happen and both said the watch on Rick's wrist exploded like an M-80. No one had heard Jack's side until now but rumors abounded. Frank sat quietly for a moment, his own mind trying to wrap around the idea that this kid was telling the truth but slipping off before it took hold. Jack continued.

"Marcy left school and went to a private school in Evanston. I never talked to her again. I heard Rick went to college but not to the fancy Ivy league schools everyone thought he would."

"Did you shoot him?"

The question shot out of Frank's mouth before he could stop it. Jack looked at the agent with those hawk's eyes. Frank realized he might have shattered any smooth relationship he had built so far.

"What have I been talking about all of this time? No. I didn't shoot him."

"How did you feel about what you did?" The change in questioning shocked Jack and he spent a moment to think about the question. Jack shifted his eyes back to the mirrored glass.

"I felt sick. I felt sick for weeks. I saw it happen over and over. I hated Rick, that will never change, but I realized I wasn't as mad at what he did but at Marcy for letting him do it.

"But he was just a dumb animal doing what stupid horny animals do and I blew his hand off for it. That wasn't who I was. I didn't want to be like that and the more I realized what I did, the more I hated myself.

"I'm not Superman but I can do something other people can't. I can do something that might help people and the first time I use it for more than a snooze button I almost kill a guy. I was sick for a long time after that day but it helped me think and I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to help people.

"But how? It's not like Spiderman where I can walk down the street and watch a car full of bank robbers drive by. I read a report about nineteen thousand people a year dying in drunk driving accidents but how would I find them? I can't just pick out drunk drivers and stop their cars any more than the police can find them and pull them over.

"I spent a few days hanging around the airport feeling for the threads of bombs in suitcases but there weren't any. I wasn't doing any good there either.

"I thought about turning myself in. Perhaps scientists could figure out how to use me to solve some power crisis. Then I had a dream of myself in a vat of some thick liquid with cables coming out of my eyes driving enough power to light up the east coast all at once and I scrapped that idea. I don't want to be a machine.

"Something I read gave me an idea. I had a teacher who made us read these terrible books where young boys kill themselves all the time but she gave us a book I really liked. It was the Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451. The main character, Guy something"

"Montag."

"Right. His wife just sits around and watches shitty soap operas on three huge TVs. The whole world is like her, with radios and cell-phones stuck in their ears to keep themselves from thinking. I looked at my father with that stupid cord hanging out of his ear like a booger. He spent more time talking to people he couldn't see than people he could. My sister took her iPod to the dinner table, her head bopping the entire time she's shoveling food into her mouth. My mom never stops watching TV. She has one in the kitchen she watches until 4am some nights. What is that? What are we doing that for? Why bother living together? The only time we had a conversation in the last week was discussing the stressful political situation of American Idol.

"I found something else out around this time. I could pull farther. I could feel the TVs in my neighbor's houses. I could follow a thread of current from a lamp into the wall socket and feel it spread through the house. I could follow it down the street lighting up every house in its own web. I could travel for miles that way. I could see cars as they blasted past with their radios blazing like small suns. I could see a cell phone in someone's pocket like a road flare and then see the path it burns into this huge web that covers the whole town in a giant yellow bubble of the signal. I saw white paths burning up into the sky. I had to pull myself back once in a while to keep from going nuts. It was pretty strange." Jack paused

"Tell me about the mall," said Frank.

"I knew how far I could feel and it seemed to go on forever, but I didn't know how far or how much I could pull. So I went to the mall."

The reports from the mall made little sense to Frank, probably on purpose. The cops didn't have an explanation so they came up with anything to fill in the blanks on the form and forget about it. Now Frank would find out, or at least find out what Jack thought. Whether Frank could accept it was a different story. Right now, however, Frank didn't have any other theory.

"It was easier than I thought. I was in the food court when I wound up the courage to give it a try. I closed my eyes and felt for the threads. They lit up like Christmas, all over the mall. Billions of these tiny little lines spreading in giant columns of power or a cellular paper-thin sheet. Everyone had something; a watch, a cell phone, a pager, a palm pilot. So I grabbed a thin line and began to pull on it like a loose thread on a sweater. The whole place began to unravel. From the food court outward the whole place went dead silent. The air conditioning shut off. I heard fifty people all at once say 'Hello? Hello?'. I gave them five seconds to take their phones away from their faces and then I pushed. Not hard, but just a little bit. I saw white arcs tear through those dying lines and I heard a thousand tiny pops. The air filled with the smell of burning plastic. The lights, the check-out computers, everything smoked. The entire mall was dead quiet, more quiet than I've heard anything in my life. And then the place went nuts."

Nuts didn't really begin to describe it from the reports Frank read. Overall five people died and twenty six had to be hospitalized. A woman shouted something about a nuclear bomb and a riot started. A stampede for the grocery store trampled those unlucky enough to get in the way. It took thirty six officers and six detectives to restore order. They had to come in riot gear.

"Things got crazy when that woman started shouting that the city got nuked." Jack continued, his eyes on the mirrored wall. "I saw these old businessmen just stampeding out of the place leaving young kids standing alone. But then I saw something else.

"There was this large black guy. He looked like a gang banger. He walked over to a woman in an electric wheel chair. She looked horrified at first but he said something to her, only one or two words. She looked relieved and she said 'thank you'. He picked her up and two of his buddies pushed the yuppies away from the door while he took her out.

"That guy was a hero that day. There were others like him too. Some didn't know what to do but a lot of people who never would give each other the time of day helped each other out. I saw a businessman pick up a woman with a twisted ankle and kick his way through a fire exit. I saw two young kids take an older fellow out one of the store exits. I saw people treating others like people again. Fifteen minutes earlier they didn't even see each other."

"I wasn't a hero, but that day I made heroes."

Frank looked at Jack for a long time. He sat calm, his eyes hard and unblinking. His mind, however, raced and roared. He tossed ideas back and forth like a game of championship ping-pong. Logic and reason battled with the unbelievable story he had heard from Jack and read in the reports. His head hurt. He didn't see any other way to go on without something.

Frank stepped out of the small room. He returned less than a minute later and put his pager on the fake wood table. The small rounded black box sat staring up at the ceiling with a single little green eye flashing the time. Frank looked at Jack. He didn't have to tell the boy what he wanted him to do.

"If I prove it to you, I will go to jail."

"You're not leaving here anyway. A team from Washington will be here in an hour. They're going to take you back with them to find out more about this. I'm here to prove we're not wasting their time."

"I'm not David Blane. I don't do sidewalk magic to impress girls."

"What do you think you're going to do next? Will you shut down every electronic device in the country?"

"No. The planet."

"You'd kill hundreds of millions of people," Frank said. "Food would dry up. Water wouldn't flow. The economy would collapse. Children would starve to death. Taking so many lives doesn't sound like a hero to me."

"And what sort of lives would I take? The world would be a better place if people couldn't get fat on MacDonalds watching 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. People like my dad would have to learn how to grow enough food to eat instead of what tie goes with what suit. He'd have to actually walk for water instead of doing 20 minutes on his bow flex. Our twisted and warped economy would go back to working hard to survive instead of killing time between episodes of 'Survivor'.

"You remember what happened after nine-eleven? Do you remember the stories of people breaking through walls to rescue people trapped under rubble? Those were heroes. Five minutes before they're getting coffee and sending faxes but five minutes later they saved someone's life. I remember when my dad drove me to school the next day and I saw a guy, he looked like a biker, standing on an overpass holding up an American flag. The rest of us were off to school or work but he stayed there to remind us that something happened and we were all brothers. Everyone was a lot nicer to one another after that. Everyone helped each other.

"I'm going to make heroes again. I'm going to get rid of business executives and CEOs and Palm Pilots and Tivos. People will have to help each other again."

Frank sat looking at Jack, his eyes projecting none of the chaos that swam in his head. Visions of the future flashed in Frank's mind. He saw himself walking down the street next to the beltway in Virginia. He could hear every machine shut down, every motor dying. He could hear nothing but the crickets and confused people getting out of their cars. A few seconds later he would hear far away explosions as jets full of screaming people smashed into the ground. People in hospitals would die in hours or minutes or seconds. People on ships stuck in the middle of the ocean would starve to death in a few weeks or run out of drinking water even sooner than that.

His mind cleared. There is no way this kid was telling the truth. It was impossible. Let the psycho-technologists from Sandia poke him with pencils all they wanted but he was tired of wasting his time. Frank's anger boiled and his chest tightened. His vision darkened. He looked down at the green-iridescent display on his pager. Fuck this kid and his bullshit story.

"You want to see proof?" Jack's voice was calm.

The tightening got worse. Frank's left arm throbbed like rivers of lead flowed through his veins. His vision closed in and his chest wanted to explode. Frank's knees buckled and he tipped to the right in his chair. He crashed to the floor his chest crushed by a sledge hammer of pain. Through blackening vision he saw Jack stand up and scoop the pager off of the table.

"I'm not going to kill you. I haven't killed anyone and I don't plan to. I could have blown up that squad car that came to pick me up this morning, but I didn't. I could have blown up this building on my way in if I wanted, but I didn't." Frank heard the crackling and sputtering of recording equipment exploding and burning behind the mirrored glass wall. "Most of the equipment in there is gone, but the VCR still works. I want people to know why I'm doing what I'm doing. They may call me an enemy or a terrorist or whatever, but I want them to really know why."

The thin boy walked over to the locked door and balanced the pager between the round steel knob and the jam of the door. There was a loud bang like a pair of M80s and the door swung open. Jack looked down on Frank.

"I guess they shouldn't have sent someone with a pacemaker, huh."

Author's Notes: After seeing Spiderman 2, I had the idea of writing a superhero tale using the same set as My Dinner with Andre. I wanted a superhero story told in a room between two normal people. If done as a play, the play could be done with a table and two actors. The entire story would be the dialog between them. What I didn't count on was Jack's anti-hero quality. He's not exactly a good kid, and his plan is pretty dangerous.

Vrenna and the Red Stone

Hot sand ripped across the city of Gazu Kuul. It beat against the hardened stone and clay buildings as it had for nearly five thousand years. Every morning, just after daybreak, the sands would carve off another layer of the life within Gazu Kuul. Only those with thick skin, hardened narrow eyes, and the instincts of the desert survived in this place.

Alzen's dark eyes stared intently at the flat rooftops of the market, watching the deadly clouds of sand pour over them like dry rain. He exposed only his eyes, covering his mouth and nose with faded gray cloth and his head in a white wrap. A tattered robe covered his lean brown body. A strip of tied cloth kept the robe closed. He spent his whole life in this city, thirteen hard years. Every day since he was three years old, Alzen started the day the same way. He watched the sands tear across the city and he prepared.

Most merchants and beggars waited until the burning orb of the sun broke through the morning sandstorm, signaling the end of the tearing wind. Alzen knew a trick. He watched until the orbs of the towers shone through the beating red clouds. When he saw those black, gold, and silver tapered bulbs towering over the torn and beaten hovels of most of Gazu Kuul's Alouthoga, a word that meant both citizen and slave in the desert tongue, lived, Alzen knew that the storm began to break. In three more minutes most of Gazu Kuul's people would flood the market buying, selling, begging, and stealing nearly everything they could.

He thought about his day as he watched the rooftops and when the ominous bulbs of the towers stood in the shadows of the storm he did what he did every morning. He ran.

By the time the sun fully cut through the dust, the bazaar burst open with people. The cries and shouts filled the hot air. Everywhere the smell of sweat and animal feaces saturated the city. Dark-skinned bodies, now stripped of their protective robes, pressed together and shouted at one another over the price of wheat or melons or women.

Alzen pushed his hand out to every passer-by who might have a coin. Two hours in the blistering sun had given him only two coppers, hardly enough to pay for his own food this day, not to mention the rest of his family. If he didn't have seven by high sun, he would have to steal it. Stealing was dangerous. His older brother lost his left hand stealing from an ox merchant. Alzen came close to losing his own once or twice if it hadn't been for a well placed kick to the groin.

Alzen's morbid thoughts broke up in his head when he saw the crowd break open in the narrow street. He heard voices quiet and the haggling ceased. Two huge men towered over the crowd, shoving those few who did not see the procession. Their massive size and dark hairless bodies stood in stark contrast to the thin half-starved bodies around them. The two men stood pushed open a clearing within the sea of people. Another huge man wearing an iron helm and mask walked behind them. He held chains leading to the iron collars of three young slave girls. Not one of them was older than sixteen. They wore thin veils over their smooth faces and small bands of cloth around their breasts and waists that did more to expose their young ivory skin than to cover it.

A smaller man walked in the center of the procession carrying a large sunshade made from huge bird feathers. From under this shade, at the center of the bubble that broke the unruly bazaar apart, walked Zeeva the Flame.

A silver tiara held her flowing red hair back from her smooth creamy face. Her large breasts threatened to burst forth from her black and red jeweled corset. The straps of her black silk sandals snaked around her long smooth legs halfway up her bare thighs. She wore only a tiny undergarment around her waist, cutting deep between her buttocks and barely covering her most private of places. Hanging from a leather cord around her neck, settling comfortably between her full breasts, sat the Eye of Gzaara, a sphere of swirling oranges and reds set in a cup of gold. It burned like a small sun.

The second Alzen saw the woman he backed as far into the crowd as he could. There would be no handouts from her. Though she had just returned from the slave market and the slightest of smiles touched her full blood-red lips, Alzen knew that no mercy would be found here. His brother made that mistake once. Zeeva's bodyguard, the one in the iron mask, cut off his brother's hand with three strokes of a cleaver while Alzen's mother screamed in horror. Zeeva smiled then too.

Dark bodies pressed themselves away from the woman and her entourage. The red-haired woman, her guards, and her newly purchased slave girls, their eyes wide in fear for the future, continued their walk to Zeeva's tower. All crushed themselves out of the way. All but one.

She was cloaked in gray and wore tall leather boots ending halfway up her thighs. A jeweled sword hung low on her left hip. The hood of her cloak covered her head from the morning sun. While everyone else scrambled out of the way, this mysterious raven haired woman held her ground.

Zeeva stopped and her green eyes blazed with anger.

"Move away, desert whore!"

One of the huge bodyguards shoved the cloaked woman aside and into the crowd. She fell back against the dark bodies of the marketplace and the procession moved on.

As the menacing group passed, business returned to normal. The roar of the bazaar rose again. The bustle of merchants and beggars pumped back into life. Alzen saw the pale blue eyes of the cloaked woman. Her eyes followed Zeeva and her huge guards all the way down the street towards her tower. The rest of the merchants and beggars forgot about the passing of Zeeva the Flame. Alzen saw very clearly that the cloaked woman had not.

Alzen thought not of the woman or of Zeeva until much later that evening. Alzen's feet ached and his skin still burned from the day's hot sun. He had earned what he needed for the day. Now he slipped from shadow to shadow on his way home.

Thieves and ruffians owned the streets at night. Twice Alzen had to change his path home to avoid gangs of thugs that hunted like wild beasts. He found himself in the alleys of the higher people and their ornate dwellings. Alzen made special care to remain hidden in the streets of the rich. The private guards hired to patrol here were quick to label anyone a thief and slit open a throat before any plea may be heard. In many ways, the guards were worse than the gangs.

Alzen ducked back behind a pair of wooden crates when three men armored in chain and wearing masks of metal walked past. When they moved on, Alzen realized where he stood. His eyes traveled up above the two-story houses on this street to the tower of the Flame that stood only two blocks away.

Seven towers marked Gazu Kuul to the lands around it. Legend spoke of a king who had the towers built for each of his favorite wives. Now two of these towers belonged to Gazu Kuul's current lord, a brutal and lazy man known by very few. He cared little for the city and let the rich rule their own lands while paying for his extravagant lifestyle and his taste for small virgin males. The richest of Gazu Kuul's citizens owned the other five towers.

Each tower stood nearly two hundred feet tall and the top floor of each was a ball of stone tapering to a point at the roof. While most of the seven towers were plated in gold or silver, this one was plated in onyx. The tower of the Flame stood black as pitch against the dark sky. Only a burning red circle on the bulb of the top floor marked it from the darkness surrounding it. Red fire illuminated a window on the top floor and black smoke billowed out into the night. Zeeva the Flame owned this tower and when he thought of what dark horrors lurked in that tower cold bumps covered Alzen's brown flesh.

A scream cut into the silent night coming from that window and Alzen nearly turned to flee until something else caught his eye. Something moved on the surface of the tower. Alzen squinted his eyes and the shape became clearer. It was a figure scaling the walls of the tower like a spider. Patches of ivory skin shown at the thighs, buttocks, back, and shoulders of the figure. Black leather gloves and boots sought holds in the smooth walls. The figure turned and Alzen caught a glimpse of the woman's pale blue eyes in the dim light. It was the woman from the street! She had shed her cloak leaving very little clothing left, tied her jeweled sword to her back, and now climbed Zeeva's tower.

Alzen stared with his mouth agape. Never in his life had he ever wanted to go near that tower and now he watched a woman scaling its walls to break in! He watched her smooth lithe body as it climbed with amazing speed. He watched her long legs swing into the round window burning red with unholy light. He saw the woman disappear into the tower and again resisted the urge to run when another scream, this one of frustration and anger, cut across the night air.

Power flowed through Zeeva. She felt it streaming through her veins. She felt the heat of the stone between her bare breasts. Warmth flowed over her naked skin as dark words of an ancient tongue left her full red lips. She spoke the tongue of the Old Empire now dead for nearly fifteen centuries. At the end of each long, spiteful sentence, her arm pumped and her whip cracked.

The three headed whip in her hand cracked down on the naked slave girl in front of her. Lines of a dozen such lashings criss crossed the young girl's back and buttocks. The girl, her hands and feet bound, cried out and twisted under the beating. The young girl feverishly kissed Zeeva's feet, tears streaming from her eyes. The two other slave girls watched with wide terrified eyes. Their binds held them naked to the stone walls, the chains held by the stone arms of huge demonic statues. A brazier burned with a deep orange flame as black smoke billowed to the ceiling of the room and out into the night air. The deep orange light twisted the grimacing faces of the stone beasts lining the walls.

Zeeva stood naked except for an ornately stitched silk cloth belted around her waist with a gold rope. A band of red paint spread across Zeeva's eyes. Her hair hung unbound down her back and shoulders. She read from a large leatherbound tome laying open on a stone pedestal. Diagrams and instructions of horrible mutilations and prayers to dark and ancient gods burned black on the yellowing pages.

Zeeva closed her eyes and began chanting another dark verse. The naked girl in front of her continued kissing and licking her mistress's feet. The smoke of fire intoxicated her. She felt drunk on the strange thick concoction she drank at the beginning of her dark rite. Visions of worlds beyond imagination filled her swimming head. She saw a sun of huge blue fire setting over a world of molten metal and black rock. She saw horrors of twisted claws and thick leathery tentacles. She saw burning yellow eyes.

Coldness fell over her like a bucket of water and the visions broke apart. Her breath stole out of her lungs. Confusion shattered her trance. She placed a hand between her breasts, feeling for the red stone. It was gone.

Zeeva wheeled around and the piercing stare of twin blue eyes sent her rocking back on her bare heels. The whore from the market stood right behind her. The red stone, eye of Flame, dangled from a severed leather tie in the woman's left hand. A saber of gemmed gold and steel hung loosely in the woman's right hand. Before Zeeva could catch her balance the woman shoved her hard. Zeeva stumbled backwards and over the naked slave girl laying curled at her feet. She fell hard, her bare behind smacking hard on the stone floor.

The woman with the blazing blue eyes smiled down at Zeeva. She stood on long legs clad in high leather boots. Zeeva started to stand when a flash of steel slashed across, threatening to cut open her eyes should she attempt to get to her feet. Zeeva fell back, again, her face flush with rage and humiliation.

The woman raced across the room like a cat. In a flash she disappeared down the room's only exit, a spiral staircase to the floors below.

Voroth was just beginning to wonder why the slave girl's cries had ceased when he saw the leather clad thief race down the spiral staircase. The furious cry of his mistress followed, echoing like steel scratching slate throughout the tower. Voroth shouted for the two closest guards to stop the woman. They reached for her but both fell away crying out in pain. One clutched a deep gash along the inside of his wrist His thick fingers hung limp on severed tendons while blood gushed from the gaping wound. The other fell to the stone stairs howling in pain and grabbing at the back of his knee. An deep wound in the back of the man's leg opened to the bone.

Voroth rushed at the little woman and ducked just as her jeweled blade cut out at his throat. No mere novice to battle, Voroth punched hard and fast. His fist smashed into the woman's chest and he felt the woman's breath explode out her mouth.

Voroth heard a clink and saw Zeeva's necklace rolling down the staircase. He heard his mistress shriek again and looked up to see Zeeva half naked, gesturing, and crying madly for her the falling gemstone.

Voroth dove and grabbed the necklace just before it fell over the edge likely shattering on the floor over one hundred and fifty feet below. He grabbed it firmly inside his huge hands and turned to shout his success when a hard boot heel smashed in his nose.

Small leather-gloved fingers plucked the gem from Voroth's grasp as blood sprayed down his face. Through glazed watery eyes, Voroth saw the lithe thief turn towards his mistress at the top of the stairs. The rogue held up the stone and dangled it from its leather string.

"Payment for your insult."

Voroth tried to grab the woman's ankle as she fled past and down the stairs but another kick to his ruined nose flooded him in agony. All he could do was watch as the rogue raced down the steps and out into the night.

Alzen sat unmoving in the alley. His eyes never left the burning red window far above the ground where the strange woman had disappeared. Screams of rage, crashes of stone, and the deep roars of men flowed out through the cracks of stone in the tower. Alzen knew he should run but he could not.

Less than two minutes after the woman had disappeared the front door of the tower burst open and the woman rushed out. One of her eyes was dark and swollen but her other blue eye blazed. She ran down the road pursued by three larger dark men wearing loincloths and brandishing wicked spears but they could not catch her. The largest of these men held a hand to his ruined face. Alzen crouched as she ran by but she saw him anyway. He could see the smile on her lips and he winked at her. In her hand, the red gem of the witch queen shined in the moonlight.

In all his days, Alzen had never seen one as powerful as Zeeva bested by anyone. He would never have considered it possible. But this woman had shown him the possibility. This woman's theft of a witches gem planted a seed in the young boy, a seed that would grow for years making him stronger and smarter. It was a seed that would one day sprout into revolution.

Author's Notes: Vrenna and the Red Stone was my second Vrenna story and the second one that is more character introduction than full story. This is the first Vrenna story that takes place in the southern deserts although I hadn't fleshed out the desert enough to give the city a place name. Zeeva is a fun character and I love her witchy ways. This story was definitely influenced by Robert Howard's Conan novels in my unapologetic gratuitous use of sex, torture, and violence.

This story was also my first attempt to tell an entire story outside the perspective of the main character. I don't think that idea worked very well and I abandoned it with Vrenna and the White. The idea was to keep Vrenna, her backround, and her motivations completely separate. Someone had to tell the story, however, and thus the beggar boy, Zeeva, and Zeeva's captain were born. A lot of people complained that all Alzen does is watch her. That was his purpose.

I have a sequel to this story planned with Zeeva seeking the return of her stone and revenge for the theft.

Mad Cow

Dave crossed the street without looking both ways. He didn't have to. Occasionally he heard an engine roar over the smoggy air but he hadn't seen a working car in almost a month. Most of the few people left in London didn't remember what a car looked like much less how to drive one. They saw the large London cabs that sat like dead black hippos in the road, but they didn't have the words in their head to describe them anymore.

Six months earlier the streets were as busy as always. The cabs swam along the lines between two lanes in the seas of cars. Packs of commuters flowed up and down the sidewalks. Attractive women in smart suits pushed their long black hair over their shoulders. Retro-punks with foot-tall mohawks of green and purple sneered at anyone who made eye contact. Few did. Life in London changed little from the turn of the millennium until 2020. People worked. People lived. Everyone talked on a cell phone.

Six months ago there were nine million people in London Now less than five thousand still lived. It wasn't war or terrorism or a collapsed economy that destroyed the world. It was cows.

Dave gazed up at the black smoke pouring out of the windows of St. Pauls Cathedral. Everything south of the Themes burned a month earlier but this looked more like a camp fire. It was cold this October. Dave imagined a few people died each night, people not smart enough any more to start their own fire.

Dave's stomach growled. He hadn't eaten in two days. His canned food ran out a week or so ago. He shot a dog the day after and that kept them fed for another two days. Yesterday Janet began to cry and didn't stop throughout the night. This morning Dave knew he would have to go find some food no matter how dangerous it was outside. They would both die in their small flat cold and starving. Getting stabbed or beaten to death by a rape gang for the meat on his bones didn't sound so bad. He loved Janet and he couldn't stand hearing her cry like that.

There wasn't much food left in London. When the first reports hit, the numbers were low. The same people who bought strapping tape and sheets of plastic bought record amounts of vegetarian canned meals. Most everyone else waved their hands and kept on with their lives. The numbers got bigger. Almost everyone gave up red meat even though it wasn't yesterday's hamburger that killed you, it was the one you ate 20 years earlier.

That's when food hoarding became a real problem. The government slaughtered cattle with almost hate-filled efficiency. The government sated people's thirst for blood by declaring a war on cows in everything but name.

They regretted it a month later when massive food shortages led to riots with thousands dead. Feed corn became the first solution. The same blood crazy people who demanded the execution of the perfectly healthy cows for the plague of their ancestors ended up eating the same food the cows ate. The feed didn't last long either but this time the food riots didn't last. Two months after the first outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease the deaths went from hundreds to hundreds of thousands to millions. Few were left to riot.

Dave looked up and saw the bluest sky he ever saw. Not a single cloud marred its surface. He breathed in a lung full of fresh clean air and the sounds of birds and the river danced in his ears. A broken water main spilled water in a twenty foot waterfall from a burned out building to a pool below. Green ivy climbed up the red brick building. A chilled October breeze blew back his uncut hair. He couldn't remember such a beautiful day. Thoughts of Janet sunk in his chest. Perhaps he would take her outside to enjoy what might be her last beautiful day.

The stab of hunger in his stomach reminded him of his purpose. He would take her outside after he found some food.

Dave hadn't worried when the first reports came in. For twenty years the media fed off of the fear of the people. How many times can one cry wolf before people stop listening? Hundreds died and thousands more were diagnosed with the disease.

The symptoms started out as mild alzheimer's and grew steadily worse. Extreme cases died in days. Others took months; agonizing months. People died in pain. It ripped their mind open and their brain sent spasms so severe that muscles tore and bones cracked. It wasn't the reports or the numbers that frightened Dave, it was the clinics.

The first death clinic opened up three months after the first outbreak. Dave expected the police or religious groups to tear the walls down. Instead it opened to a crowd of a thousand people, not protesters but customers.

The clinics ran day and night. The smoke of the built-in crematoriums billowed black smoke into the air constantly. Priests worked in shifts. Parliament passed no laws and the Catholic Church made no statements since the day the pope died after screaming for five days straight until his throat ripped itself apart.

The lines of people leading into a small building with a column of black smoke pouring from its stack frightened Dave more than anything else.

Somewhere far away something exploded and brought Dave's mind to the present. Two overturned trucks and a pile of metal formed a barricade in the middle of the road. Somewhere far away someone played The Who's "Join Together" over a stadium-sized system. Dave was surprised anyone was left to operate it.

Dave walked around the barricade trying his best to keep silent. What he saw on the other side made his empty stomach retch.

Blood painted the side of one of the trucks. A pile of bones, skulls, and festering rotting organs sat in a pile. The smell pushed away any thoughts of food. The white skulls, the tops crushed in, grinned at Dave. They knew what trap Dave fell into and soon his gleaming grinning skull would sit next to theirs.

The disease hit everyone differently. Some exhibited severe forms of parkinson's, others severe forms of alzheimer's. It attacked the brain and nervous system, triggering all kinds of chemical releases. Most wasted away or died horribly as their system poisoned them and shut down their organs. Others went crazy or lost all memory and died of starvation. Dave imagined later that the disease triggered massive amounts of testosterone and adrenaline, the biological version of PCP, in the man who attacked him. At the time, however, he only saw a monster.

The man that climbed out of the overturned trailer must have been seven feet tall and well over three hundred pounds. His had no hair and one of his arms was twisted and dangling half way up his left forearm. Thick muscles covered his massive frame. He was completely naked. His tiny penis sat withered and useless between his thick legs.

He held a baseball bat in his right hand. Dried blood painted it from the splintered tip to the handle wrapped with white tape. A thick river of blood ran down the huge man from the bottom of his mouth, down his chest to his crotch. One of his eyes focused on Dave. The other, milky white, rolled aimlessly. He opened his mouth in a wide grin of rotting and blood-filled teeth.

The fourth month after the breakout of the disease, after the government quit pretending to address the problem the gangs ran the streets. Like packs of wild dogs, they roamed from door to door killing men, raping women, and stealing any food or weapons they found. They ripped through blocks of flats like leather-wrapped fire. Dave heard that one of these gangs bragged about killing a thousand people in one night. As month four turned into month five, they added cannibalism to their resume.

Dave's flat neighbor, Larry the cop, showed Dave and Janet his .357 revolver and a double barreled shotgun at dinner one evening. He remembered thinking about turning in Larry to the bobbys but something told him not to. It saved his life a year later. When Dave heard about the gangs he knocked on Larry's door. When Larry didn't answer, Dave broke the door in hoping he wouldn't eat a chest full of buck shot.

Instead he breathed in the smells of feces and decaying flesh. Larry's decaying corpse sat in his easy chair. The shotgun sat propped up on the wall by the door. The pistol was in his lap on top of an issue of ?Oui?. The buxom seductress on the cover pouted and pushed her breast together. Dave was pretty sure there wasn't a woman alive with breasts like that anymore.

Dave didn't have to fight off gangs of cannibal rapists. No roaring skinhead kicked in their flat door. Dave only used the pistol one time to shoot a wandering dog for food. He fumbled with the rubber contoured grip of the steel revolver stuck in his waist band. He was lucky he didn't blow his dick off, he thought later. He raised the gun and aimed it at the beast who approached him. The ogre-man grinned a stupid grin and raised the bat high over his head.

He jerked the trigger and the pistol kicked hard in his hands. He missed by a mile. When he opened his eyes the huge man still came on. Dave could smell the mix of rot from the man's breath and saw patches of hair and skin stuck on the bloody bat. The huge man's broken arm dangled back and fourth.

Dave aimed the pistol again, let out a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. The gun went off by itself this time. Hot blood gushed over Dave's face. He thought it was his own streaming out from his newly cracked skull but when he opened his eyes he saw the jagged hole spraying blood where the man's face had been. The man crashed backwards into his pile of skulls, bones, and decaying meat. His body convulsed as blood poured out from the back of his head into an expanding dark red pool.

Dave wanted to run away. Adrenaline rushed through his body. He breathed hard even though he did nothing but pull a trigger. He felt like he just sprinted for a mile. He stumbled back and retched but he had no food to throw up. He spat on the ground and closed his eyes until his nausea passed. He wiped a hand across his face and retched again when it came back soaked in blood.

Something kept him there. Perhaps Dave had developed a sixth sense for finding food. The rusted hole in the overturned truck beckoned to him.

Dave climbed up the twisted steel trailer that lay like a wounded beast. He tried to peek inside but shadows covered anything within. Dave couldn't imagine it was any worse inside the trailer than it was outside. He turned onto his stomach, dangled his legs over the edge and dropped inside.

He panicked as his feet hit the floor. He looked up and saw the hole he fell through was almost nine feet up. He wouldn't be strong enough to lift himself out without help and the help had all died. The vision of starving to death stuck in this hot stinking trailer flashed through his mind along with another shot of adrenaline. He forced himself to calm down and look around.

The smell of rotten meat filled the hot air within the trailer. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. Dave recoiled in horror at the stacks and stacks of shining skulls. He saw hundreds of them piled into neat rows and wrapped in plastic. The light got better and his eyes adjusted. It wasn't skulls he saw.

It was cans of food.

Rows and rows of cans sat on wooden pallets wrapped in plastic. A few sat busted on the floor like giant fat bugs crushed by a boot. Each can had a self-opening pull top lid, like a large beer tab, but the ogre outside apparently couldn't figure them out and settled for crushing people's heads and eating them instead.

Dave tore open the plastic and saw fifty cans of beef and vegetable soup. Another stack of chicken noodle soup sat underneath. He did some quick math in his head and counted forty stacks of fifty cans. If he and Janet ate two a day they could live two years before needing more food.

Dave tore open the top of an alphabet soup can and drank it down in four thick gulps. It tasted better than anything he ever ate. When his ravenous hunger subsided the logistical problems presented themselves. The crates would help him get out of the trailer, so the image of dying in this box left him. Dave dragged four crates under the hole in the trailer's roof and he easily climbed out the hole. He went back in and began filling his backpack full of the soup cans. He managed to stuff thirty cans of beef and vegetable soup in his backpack. The beef and vegetable soup had the highest calorie count of any of the cans he found. The pack weighed over twenty pounds now. His back lanced with pain when he shouldered it. He climbed up the crates and scrambled out of the stagnant air of the trailer.

Dave imagined a dozen men, tattooed, no shirts, and wielding axes, knives, and blood-spattered hammers waiting for him. His backpack carried priceless cargo, perhaps the only valuable substance left on earth. Honorable men would slit his throat and leave him sucking lungs full of his own blood for those thirty cans. When his eyes adjusted to the daylight he saw no such mob waiting for him. Dave replaced the two spent shells in his pistol before beginning the walk home.

He needn't have worried. Besides himself, Janet, and the now-dead ogre, no one within ten kilometers of this area woke up this morning. He saw no one but a pack of wild dogs. He let them be and they let him be. They were just two packs of scavengers sucking what meat they could from the dead of this world.

Dave stepped over the piles of boxes, electronics, appliances, and mattresses that blocked the stairwell to his apartment. He opened the door to his home. Heat rushed out and he cursed himself for not opening any windows. The apartment got hot in the afternoons whatever month it was.

Dave went into the bedroom and his heart broke when he looked at Janet. At first he thought his wife had died but when her chest moved up and down he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He kissed her yellowed skin and felt heat coming off of her. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. He kissed her again.

Dave went back to the kitchen and found a spoon. He went back to the bed and helped Susan sit upright. He popped open a can of soup and inhaled the incredible smell. He fed her two cans and she kept both of them down.

Susan and Dave married five years before the outbreak. On their honeymoon they went to Cozumel and spent two weeks making love, reading trashy novels, and watching the sun set. One evening they sat on their wooden porch of their bungalow and sat silently for two hours under the deep blue sky. They watched the sun fall below the sea and listened to the waves crash on the shore.

Dave grabbed a blanket and two pillows and stuck them in the arms of his pack before slinging it over his right shoulder. He lifted Susan out of bed and into his arms. She was as light as a child. He grabbed two jugs of water from the kitchen and climbed four flights of stairs to the roof of their flat. The city lay below them sprawling out to the horizon with columns of black smoke rising into the deep blue sky.

Dave propped up the pillows on the brick wall of the stairwell. He dropped the backpack full of food and the two jugs of water on the gravel roof. Dave sat with Susan in his arms wrapped in a blanket and watched the sun set over a dead world.

Author's Notes: I grabbed the seed of Mad Cow during a lunchtime conversation with a coworker who said that the real danger of Mad Cow is that it lays dormant for twenty years before it kicks in. He mentioned the human euthanasia clinics and boom, I had a story. I submitted this to Strange Horizons who sent it back saying the science was lacking. That never seemed to stop Bradbury, though this is no Bradbury by any means.

Loyalty

Devlin Charlson looked up at the Tower of the Eye and wondered if its agents already watched him. His nerves tightened with each of his horse's clopping steps. The Tower of the Eye sat in black contrast against the gray sky on the south west hill overlooking the city of Greenhorn.

All around him, the city bustled with life. An ornate carriage carried royal aristocrats from one massive palace to another. Merchants and beggars cried out and hustled one another for chickens and cords of wood. A small troop of the emperor's guard marched by in shining steel breastplates, three-cornered hats, tall polearms, and long barreled muskets strapped to their backs. All of this faded into a gray dull cloud. Only the Tower stood in his senses.

Two weeks earlier he had stood on a dead hill, blood splashed across his armor and dripping down his saber. His pistol smoked in his hand. Below him the bodies of two thousand dead Voth barbarians lay rotting under the smoke-filled sky. Ten thousand musket-armed soldiers of Faigon's Sword had cut the Voth to pieces.

A week later in the army's camp, the blood of his own men stained his hands. He sat in the tent of his commander and the commander's adviser, a small pale man with deep lines cutting across his cheeks, pushing his mouth into a permanent frown. Unlike the commander and his soldiers, dressed in boiled leather breastplates, leather three-cornered hats, and black cloaks, the agent of the Eye wore only a gray tunic, brown trousers, and a hood that covered his bald head. The adviser was an agent of the Eye. Every commander had been assigned one and it was this adviser that had sent Devlin north to Greenhorn to meet with an investigator in the Tower.

Devlin looked back up to the Tower of the Eye. It stood nearly three hundred feet high and looked even higher sitting on the hill next to the ornate royal palace. Its surface was the color of slate. Unlike the Emperor's palace, it lacked any decoration and had only a handful of narrow windows. The tower was old, built when the first trade ships took port along the wide bend in the Greenbloom River that cut through the northern mountains of Athuel down towards the eastern shores.

The stories of the Tower and the Eye were as old as the Tower itself. Every soldier had a tale to tell. Some spoke of siblings taken to the Tower's depths and never seen again. Others spoke of friends returning from investigations simple minded and slow witted. The stories were quickly hushed, however. It was dangerous to speak in such ways about telepaths.

The stories would not leave him now, however. They had not left him since he left the front lines. He imagined dark cloaked agents of the Eye, their arms buried in the sleeves of their robes, tearing into his every thought, every memory, and every dream with telepathic razors. He envisioned himself naked on a stone floor covered in his own vomit as they fed nightmare after nightmare into his skull. They could bury him in one of the Tower's deep cellars for fifty years and no one would ever ask for him. No one would ever mention his name again.

Devlin approached the Tower's horse rail. He swung one leg over and dropped to the ground in a fast and well-practiced dismount. His hands fell instinctively to the twin flintlock pistols hanging low on his hips from his well oiled four buckle gun belt. His fingers brushed over the hilt of his gold-pommeled saber before reaching up and taking off his own brown leather three-cornered hat.

Two guards flanked the steel reinforced oak doors of the Tower. Fine steel breastplates shined in the afternoon sun. Each guard held a black-barreled blunderbuss far bigger than Devlin had ever seen.

Devlin handed the larger of the two guards a folded parchment. The adviser had given it to Devlin before sending him north. The guard broke the seal, read the parchment, and looked hard at Devlin. For a moment Devlin imagined the guard swinging his shining black blunderbuss towards him and ripping off all of Devlin's skin in an explosion of fire and lead shot. The big guard smiled and swung open the massive door. Devlin stepped inside.

The main hall of the tower stretched fifty feet across and nearly two hundred feet high. Dim light flowed in from narrow high windows. A spiral staircase snaked around the edge of the hall to each of the fifteen floors above. Feeling a cold sweat on the back of his neck, Devlin approached the huge room's only furnishings, a large oak desk manned by a small man with steel-rimmed spectacles.

"You're two days late." The small man looked at Devlin over his spectacles with green sharp eyes. Devlin got the feeling that his mind was already being probed. Was even the receptionist a telepath? "We expected you earlier."

"A storm caught me in Vandersmare. It didn't break for two nights."

"You must leave your guns and sword here." The old man kept his eyes on Devlin. A huge guard, the mirror image of the guards outside, stood by the door Devlin had entered. Devlin was very conscious of the man's eyes on the back of his head and the huge gun in the man's hands. Devlin unbuckled the two main buckles of his belt and dropped his two guns and his saber on the desk. He felt naked and vulnerable. The guns hadn't left his side for nearly two years.

"Come with me."

The small man led Devlin up the staircase to the second floor of the Tower. Dozens of doors lined the walls of the second-floor walkway. The small man went to one of the doors, knocked twice, opened the door, and beckoned Devlin inside. When Devlin stepped in, the spectacled man closed the door behind him.

An old man sat behind a large oak desk carefully penning words into a hardbound book with a steel quill. His head was shaved bare and red blotches stood out against his pale skin. Deep black skin sagged under sharp eyes. He looked up at Devlin with sharp eyes that would have spoken of youth except for the rest of his appearance. The knot in Devlin's stomach tightened.

"Welcome, lieutenant. I am glad you arrived safely." The man's voice was a calm and melodic voice. "My name is Avalon Gasterson, second circle investigator of the Eye" Devlin nodded and felt his hands sweat. Avalon paused.

"I understand you are worried about our meeting but I assure you it will be short and easy. If you have nothing to hide, we have little to discuss and you can be on your way."

The man's words struck home with Devlin. In an hour he might be back on the road headed south to the army of the Sword. The camp was a great comfort compared to this place. The front lines drew no nervous strings through Devlin's veins but here Devlin felt like insects crawled in his skin.

"Are you ready to begin?"

Devlin swallowed.

"Yes."

Avalon smiled before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Devlin felt an itch on the back of his left hand but he did not scratch it.

"You fought in the Sword for ten years."

"Yes."

"You fought under Commander Kalvon Ramsin on the southern front against the Voths?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever acted in violence against the Emperor or his forces?"

Devlin felt a chill flow up his arms. He had broken the arm of a fellow soldier in a fistfight when he was nineteen and the nose of one of his own men when he caught him raping a young girl against orders. His mind spun in a spiral. Is this what they want to hear? Were those actions against the Emperor's direction? What would they do to him if he lied? What would they do if he told the truth? Devlin came to a decision.

"No."

Avalon smiled at him. A dull pain thudded behind Devlin's left eye.

"Have you ever plotted against the Emperor or his plans?"

Again Devlin's mind whirled. He had violated regulations hundreds of times. Every soldier had. Violating regulations was often the only way to operate without getting yourself or your men killed. The hypocrisy of the question twisted in Devlin's thoughts. He felt nauseous.

"No."

Again Devlin saw Avalon smile. The bald man placed his elbows on the desk and pressed his fingertips together. He peered around his hands at Devlin. Devlin felt the blood rush out of his face.

"On the wheel's night in March, you were ordered to capture a Voth witch. You were given command of twenty men and only returned with six. What happened?"

Devlin felt as though a force pushed his temples together. His eyes felt too big for their sockets. His heart boomed in his chest squeezing thick blood into his brain. Flashes of his battles with the Voths raced through his mind faster than he could recognize them.

"It was dawn the day after the last day of the battle of Gathenvarn. We broke the Voth's main army in two. Rumors whispered that a Voth witch had fueled the remaining Voth raiders with strange powers. Her hut was supposed to be nearby and my first lieutenant gave me twenty musketeers and an order to find her. We combed the hills of three villages for a week hoping to find her.

"We did."

Wind whipped at Devlin's wool cloak. He stood on a rock overlook, the heels of his tall leather boots firmly planted on the edge of the rock. Below him, in a grove of dead trees and brown grass, stood a single round building of wood and clay. Black animal skins covered the door. Strange runes carved into the wooden frame sent a shiver through Devlin's skin as his eye followed their alien script. Splashes of crimson and black colored the clay and wooden walls of the round hut.

Devlin took off his leather three-cornered hat and ran a hand through his unwashed hair and down his pony tail. Patches of blood still stained his thick leather tunic from yesterday's battles. He reset his hat on his head and dropped his hands to the butts of his two flintlock pistols hanging low on his hips. He ran his thumbs over the rough edges of the wings of the two chrome eagles that served as the pistols' hammers. His hand then grazed over the jeweled hilt of his saber hanging low under his left gun. He reached up and tightened his thick leather collar protecting his vulnerable neck; a deep scratch in the collar matched perfectly to a scar on Devlin's cheek.

He spent nearly a minute staring at the hut and the woods around it before speaking.

"First musketeer Aerus."

"Yes sir!" From behind Devlin a young yet battle-worn soldier stood to attention. He held a long musket in his dirty blood-stained hands aiming at the sky.

"Move your men to that clearing twenty yards from the hut. Form two rows and watch the door."

Men stepped out of the woods behind Devlin. They half walked, half slid down the rock overlook to the clearing below. As each man slid down, another covered him with a musket aimed at the hut and the woods around them.

Devlin never moved his eye from the doorway of the sinister structure. He felt his heart sink and his stomach turn as though he swallowed a handful of hot pebbles. What horrors would he find in that hut? What sorcery might burn or tear apart his men? Devlin didn't believe in magic or witchcraft, but whispers spoke of sacrifices and tortures beyond imagination. The Voths swore by their old and dark gods and the witches who spoke for them. These witches had thousands of unarmed Voth rushing ten thousand musketeers rather than surrender. Anything could be behind that skinned doorway.

When the two lines were in position Devlin slid down the overlook using exposed roots for stability. Soon his hard boot heels planted on the ground below and he stood next to the rows of men.

The two lines of musketeers faced the doorway, ten kneeling in front and ten standing behind. Their muskets formed a wall of firepower; every barrel aimed towards the doorway of the dark hut. Devlin spoke the words he rehearsed in his head for nearly a day.

"Witch of the dead wood! In the name of the Emperor come fourth now or we will rip apart your foul den with lead and fire."

No creature dared to make a sound. Devlin felt his heart hammering in his chest. He imagined demons pouring out of the hut's doorway on thick hairy limbs and black leathered wings. He imagined columns of fire enveloping his men and himself. Yet all was quiet.

"Hammers back, First Musketeer."

Aerus shouted the command. The twenty musketeers drew back the heavy flintlocks of their long muskets. Devlin heard the satisfying sound of twenty smooth-bore muskets cock back in unison. It was a reassuring sound of superiority, the superiority that had given Faigon the victory over the powerful and vast Voth Empire. The next moment, that confidence fell out of him like a cold sheet of water.

They appeared out of the woods like ghosts. They were half naked and huge with rippling muscles covered in dark red runes like those around the doorway. Self inflicted wounds dripped blood down their faces and chests. They were Voth but the burning look in their eyes spoke of something else, something dragged from the depths of hell and poured into their thick veins. The one in front of the other three must have been seven feet tall. He carried an axe that must have weighed seventy pounds.

The first huge Voth raised his axe and roared at the clouded sky. Faster than his mind had registered the motion, Devlin drew and pulled back the eagle hammers of both of his pistols. The twin eagles screeched back to the sky preparing to crash their beaks down into the powder caps of the guns. Devlin didn't fire with his men, however, and holding back saved his life.

Something kept his fingers from squeezing both triggers as hard as he could, giving the two eagles the one thing they wanted to do most in life, the one thing they were born to do. Instead he held his guns ready as the roar of twenty muskets fired simultaneously pressed in on his ears and stole all other sound away. He realized later that he didn't fire because the other three Voths didn't move at all. They didn't move when the first huge Voth charged and they didn't move as twenty lead balls ripped him apart.

Devlin saw the lead Voth's head and chest burst open. A cloud of blood and smoke obscured the view. The huge man fell in a heap of crushed bone, ripped muscle, and tattered flesh. His huge axe fell to the wet ground with a deep thud. Then, before the musketeers could reload, the other three charged.

Their strategy worked nearly perfectly. The musketeers needed thirty seconds to reload and in their haste they hadn't bothered to bayonet their guns. Two of the Voth berserkers tore into the lines like two scythe blades through grass. In two strokes of their own huge axes they had beheaded four men. Two more strokes and half of Devlin's men lay dead. Those remaining managed to draw daggers and swords but four more of them fell before the two Voth berserkers fell to the ground cut to pieces.

Devlin saw all of this happen in the corner of his eye but he focused on the remaining Voth; the Voth that charged towards him.

Devlin fired his left gun dead center in the huge Voth's chest. He saw the satisfying spray of blood behind the Voth. The Voth didn't slow. Devlin's boots slipped and he fell backwards as the Voth's giant axe swung over his head. The Voth overextended and fell onto Devlin, pinning him under three hundred pounds of thick muscle. Devlin pulled his sharp dagger from the top fold of his boot and stabbed it into the man's thigh. When this showed little effect he raised it and stabbed deep into the Voth's side.

Devlin felt the rush of air spurt out from a burst lung. A smell or rot and decay poured out of the Voth's mouth as the huge man roared. The Voth vomited dark blood as his lungs filled up from the dagger's wound. Devlin saw burning rage, still very alive, in the Voth's eyes. The Voth opened his mouth wide, preparing to tear Devlin's face off with his ragged brown teeth. Devlin rammed his second pistol deep into the Voth's mouth and pulled the trigger. He closed his eyes against the dark warmth that sprayed across Devlin's face.

Devlin pushed the huge man, now half headless, off and stood up. He wiped dark blood from his face with one leather-gloved hand. He saw the vacant look in Aerus's eyes.

"First Musketeer. Gather your men, reload, fix bayonets, and come with me."

Devlin heard Aerus give the order as he reloaded his pistols. With loaded guns and a deep breath, Devlin entered the witch's hut.

The smell hit Devlin first. A pungent aroma of spoiled meat and burning hair sat thick in the hut. Burning sticks of black incense and a large boiling pot of a thick brown liquid poured smoke into the air. Carcasses of animals and human skulls hung from the hut's wooden supports and sat on large stained tables. Sitting on the floor in the back of the hut, the Voth witch grinned at them.

She sat half naked, her gray-skinned breasts sagging down her chest. Folds of skin hung from her thin atrophied arms. Her eyes, orbs of pure white, stared past them. Every ounce of her, every ounce of this place, filled him with dread and horror beyond imagination. He felt his mind cracking like dead wood. The witch began to whisper in a sickening and ancient tongue. Devlin felt his vision begin to close into thin tunnels of darkness. The stench of the place filled his nose and mouth, choking him.

Devlin felt the witch's mind slipping into his, whispering to him in a dark language he shouldn't understand. She told him to draw his pistol and put it in his mouth. She told him how easy it would be to forget all of this blood and war. She told him of the peace that waited for him.

Devlin drew and fired his left eagle-hammered gun into the witch's face.

More than anything in his life, Devlin wanted to leave that foul den and get into the open air. He turned and pushed back the skins covering the hut's door. Sunlight hit him like a hammer. He breathed in clean air deep into his lungs. His eyes met Aerus's and he saw the horror in the young man's eyes. They came to kill an old woman and they lost fourteen men.

"You lost fourteen men." Avalon's eyes burned into him. The thudding in Devlin's temples continued. He could feel thin cold lines snaking into his ears and in the ducts in his eyes. He could feel them laced through his head, each one picking over an image or a thought or a feeling. Avalon hadn't just listened to his story, Avalon had seen every moment of it. He knew how Devlin felt seeing his men cut to pieces. He knew what the witch's hut had smelled like. He knew how close Devlin had come to putting one of those eagle-hammered pistols into his mouth as the sightless eyes of the witch watched.

One by one, Devlin felt the tentacles withdraw from his mind. Devlin saw a drop of sweat flow down the side of Avalon's bald head. The man looked old and tired.

"You may return to your unit, Sergeant." Avalon dabbed at the sweat with a small white cloth. "We will write a full report and send it to your commanding officer for his review." Avalon's eyes captured Devlin's once more.

"You are not to speak to anyone of what we have discussed here today. You will not speak of me. You will not speak of the Tower. If you do, we will know." Avalon let the sinister words hang heavy in the air and then he sat

Vrenna and the Red Stone and Other Tales

Contents

Vrenna

The Executioner

Shock

Vrenna and the Red Stone

Mad Cow

Loyalty