Chương 10: The Hunt Comes Home

"At the time, we called it monstrous. Let that be written plain. We said the Third Hero went too far. The city was already starving and burning in places, and when those river jackals started raiding the prayer-lines and relief wagons in South Relikov, most of us were too frightened to stop them. They beat old men for flour and they cut purses from widows. One dragged a girl by the hair because she would not let go of her mother's medicine."

"Then the Hero came, and he struck them down in the street so brutally that people turned away from the sound of it."

"We were horrified for three days."

"On the fourth, the raiding stopped."

"Now, years later, men call that same night an act of justice. Funny how morality grows bolder once danger is dead." —Testimony of Votary Mikal Sevren, recorded eleven years after the Battle of the Dread Rift Orland's rage didn't stop burning in his veins as he ran down to the lower district, but he did have a bit of time to become smarter. Mainly, it'd do nobody any good—least of all himself—if people spotted the 'Hero' beating up merchant sons.

He was still wearing his mask, and his hair was more golden than anyone else's. Even the most ignorant lower district folk would recognize at a glance. So he fixed his look. As he rounded a corner in the back alleys of the lower district, right beside Baba Marza's store, he found a rubbish barrel near the wall full of tattered rags.

He snatched up the least foul-looking ones and threw them over himself, wrapping one torn cloth across his shoulder and yanking another over his chest to hide his clean clothes underneath. As for his hair, he crouched by a gutter, scooped up a palmful of wet mud, and ground it into his hair. With this much mud and his mask under his coat, it shouldn't be easy to tell he was the Hero in the dark. There. I'm filthy again. Then he turned the final corner, his chest hot, his fists already clenched.

He heard them before he saw them: Ruslan and his five cronies laughing at the back of Baba Marza's store. They were clustered at the wall again, scratching and drawing horrid images of Baba Marza with sticks of chalk. Ruslan had his hands stuck in their pockets, but all of them had their backs turned to him. Easy targets. He grabbed a rock from the ground and hurled it. It cracked against the back of one boy's head, making him stagger into the wall with a pained yelp.

Orland kept walking at them, roaring before the others could even turn to process what'd happened.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Ruslan, however, turned slowly. The older and larger boy seemed like he'd grown used to sneering lately, or maybe he'd always sneered and Orland had only started caring enough to notice. Either way, the boy's sneer was sharp and smug, completely out of place on a boy whose teeth deserved a good rearranging. That pissed Orland more than it should've.

He broke into a charge, aiming to deck Ruslan straight in the face— A barrel beside him exploded, and an entire wave of salt surged at him in the shape of a giant hand, slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack his shoulder. His breath blasted out of him. Gasping, he fell forward onto his chest, and by the time he looked up again Ruslan had taken his hands out of his pockets. Rings.

He hadn't noticed them before, but all of them, including Ruslan, wore thick silver bands set with pale stones and white inscriptions on their fingers. Three of the boys Orland didn't know the name of wore one on each hand. Borimir and Voron, his main lackeys, wore two on each hand. Ruslan himself had five on his left hand, and they glowed faintly white as the giant salt hand floated over to wrap around his hand.

"Told you we'd be back, mudrat." Ruslan grinned.

"This time, we've got our own relics." More barrels by the sides of the alley exploded, and more pale waves of sand washed across the ground, crawling up around all of their fists. Then the salt thickened, packed together, and formed oversized crude gauntlets around each of their hands. Orland bared his teeth as he clawed to his feet. Of course. These rich little swines went crying to their papas. Ruslan took one step forward and raised his new salt fist.

"You must've thought you were tough because you got lucky once. How about now? Tell you what, we'll let you off if you kneel at my feet and—" Orland lunged straight for Ruslan. The older boy twitched a brow, evidently not expecting his resolve, and brought the giant salt hand down on him—but he poured mana into his sylph shoes and activated them. Fire. Heat surged around his soles.

A burst of wind immediately exploded under his feet and hurled him forward much faster than even he expected, making Ruslan's eyes widen. I don't even need my gauntlet for this! The boy tried to raise his giant salt fist like a shield, but it was too slow, too little. Orland's fist smashed into his face with all the speed the shoes gave him and all the anger he'd brought with him from the manor. Ruslan's head snapped back, and the boy tumbled back with a shocked shout, blood spraying from his nose.

"Wha– Get him already!" he snapped. Then the others piled in. Three giant salt fists came at Orland from different angles—big and clumsy and strong enough that if one landed properly, he'd probably be eating his own teeth. But his blood was still boiling, and compared to Kazimir, they moved… too slow. He slipped past the first swing, ducked under the second, and hopped back from the third just in time to feel the air of it miss his chin. The new clothes helped by giving him more levels of might.

The shoes helped more by giving him more levels of dexterity. He felt light on his feet as Boron and Vorimir and the rest of them clambered after him, swinging their giant salt fists with reckless abandon. They were all brute force and wild swings, no technique. Their fists crushed barrels and dented cracks in the walls as they swung after him, but they were all too awkwardly placed, too obvious even compared to the beasts he was used to hunting. They couldn't hit him.

He dodged one with a quick half-step with his sylph shoes, ducked under another with a fast inhale, and reared his own fist back.

"So fucking slow!" he snarled. He drove a punch into a boy's stomach. The boy folded. Orland shoved him down by the head and pivoted away as another salt fist crashed into the wall where his shoulder had just been, chalk and dust bursting out. He stepped inside a second boy's reach and hit him twice, once in the throat, once in the cheek, then kicked his knee out from under him before elbowing a third boy in the face.

By now Ruslan had crawled back onto his feet, hand clutching his nose, so Orland ignored Borimir and Voron by dashing past their clumsy swings with another burst of wind from his shoes, driving a hard kick into Ruslan's stomach to send him falling back again. The alley quickly turned into pure sounds of pain. Grunting, shoes skidding, salt cracking against bricks, cursing— lots of cursing—and one by one, the older boys all dropped.

When Ruslan hit the ground for the fifth time, Orland stood in the middle of the alley panting, shoulders heaving. But his fists were still up. His eyes were still twitching with open contempt.

"You're all just playing with your papa's toys," he spat.

"You've never worked a day with those salt shipment-moving relics, so let's drop all the relics and fight like real men if you dare—" The back door suddenly burst open beside him as the boys rolled onto their elbows, trying to get back up. Orland whirled.

Baba Marza stood at the door with dye stains still all over her hands—having evidently had her work interrupted by their little scuffle—but her eyes quickly jumped from Orland to Ruslan and back again, taking in all the panting, the bleeding, the dissipating salt fists, and the cracks in the walls around them. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"... What in the seven winter pits is going on out here?" she demanded. Orland pointed straight at her wall.

"They're drawing on your shop again! I'm just sticking it to them!" Baba Marza followed his finger. The drawing of her was even uglier and even more brutish than the one they'd drawn yesterday, but she looked at it sternly for only a second before looking back at him.

"That's it?" she asked.

"Yeah! They were here yesterday, and now they're here again to—""Just let it go." Orland stared at her.

"What?" he breathed.

"It's just a drawing. They don't hurt anyone," she said with a shrug.

"Who cares?" Behind Ruslan, one of the boys snickered. Then another started laughing, and Ruslan wiped his mouth as he found his smugness again"Y-You heard the hag, mudrat," Ruslan said, crawling onto his feet.

"It's just fun and games. Why spoil our fun when nobody's getting hurt, right?"

"Shut up!" Orland snapped back, turning to look at Baba Marza again.

"It's not fun! How's it fun? They're disrespecting you! They're disrespecting your shop!"

"And that's worth getting yourself hurt over?" She held his gaze, reaching into her apron and pulling out a scrub as she approached the drawing.

"It's chalk on a wall, boy. You'll learn as you grow older that there's no need to fight and draw blood over something so inconsequential, especially when it's not even your shop. Is this why you were hurt yesterday?" Inconsequential. That word hit him strangely. To her, maybe. Or maybe she was just being practical. But to him, standing here bruised and furious and already tired of rich people and their sons and their stupid little games, it didn't feel inconsequential at all. It felt like…

the whole ugly order of fate squeezed into one alley. Boys with money mocking the only person in town who'd ever fed him without asking something first—and to her, fighting back was inconsequential? … No. That wasn't right. He knew—even as she started scrubbing the chalk off the wall and the older boys got up one by one, snickering under their breaths—that she just didn't want him to get hurt for her. She'd always been like this.

It wasn't that she tolerated Ruslan and the boys making fun of her, but if she had to choose between chalk on her sleeves or blood on his, she'd pick the former a hundred percent of the time.

"S… See?" Ruslan taunted, still slightly breathless.

"Even the old hag doesn't care." But that did it. That poured oil on the slowly dimming fire in his chest. He was about to turn and look for a weapon to bash Ruslan's head in, Baba Marza's wishes be damned— A low rumble shook the ground, making all of them freeze. … What? While Baba Marza and boys whirled to look around, likely wondering if the noblequarters had just set off some unusual fireworks, Orland's eyes dropped to the sewer grates lining the edges of the walls.

The grates were trembling as something pale and thick and wet slithered under them—and the hairs on the back of his neck raised. Tip, tip, tap. Then the grates exploded. Steel blasted upwards out of the alley stones, and a giant beast surged out from the ground behind the boys, showering filth and broken metal in every direction. Orland's eyes went wide before his mind even caught up. That elongated body. That mouth lined with a thousand teeth. Those four gangly limbs. The pure size of it. God-Sucking Leech.

Every bit of smugness vanished from Ruslan and his cronies. One of them screamed, and the leech's ringed mouth immediately snapped down at the noise, all one thousand teeth shifting wetly. Just like that, Baba Marza moved. She lunged at the boys with both arms spread and barked, "Get down, you brats—" The leech whipped its head sideways, hitting where they'd been standing half a heartbeat later. The alley exploded.

Baba Marza's shop vanished in a spray of planks, stone, and dust as the leech smashed through it and the walls beside it, wrecking not only the back of her store, but two neighboring buildings as well. Orland threw himself back at the same time, arms up over his head as debris rained from him. A shrapnel clipped his shoulder. Stone chips slapped his cheek and something ceramic shattered near his ear. Then the first crash passed, and the alley filled with dust.

Orland pushed his head up coughing, hacking, peeling his eyes open slowly. The God-Sucking Leech now reared over the Vodyanaya Thread Street, standing amongst a crowd of celebrating middlequarter folk who couldn't yet process what they were looking at—and after the leech swivelled its head around for a moment, seemingly failing to find what it was looking for, it let out a shrill screech that shattered every window and glass pane across the street. Carnage.

It launched itself up the street on those gangly limbs, smashing through carts, clipping awnings, sending people scattering in every direction. The entire lower district erupted in panic. Shouts rose as merchants and tailors dropped their lanterns, running for their lives. Somewhere uphill, warning bells began to ring, one after another, and the alarm passed through the town so fast Orland could barely believe Rusalka was just celebrating the deaths of two leeches just moments ago. But why's it here?

What's it looking for? Guards were already coming. Scattered lines of golden lanterns began streaking down from the streets of the upper district, but they weren't going to arrive soon enough. All Orland could do for a second was stare at the giant leech's back as it tore deeper and deeper into the lower district, leaving wreckage and screaming behind it as people tried to run. Then he turned away from the beast completely. Baba Marza. He scrambled over broken timber and chunks of bricks in the collapsed alley.

Dust still hung thick in the air, and Ruslan and his cronies were half-buried under tons of debris and whining and cursing, but what he saw first—throat full of dust—was Baba Marza lying over them, her body bent around theirs like they were children worth shielding even now.

"Get off!" one of the boys yelped.

"Move, old hag!"

"Gods, she's crushing me!" Orland dropped to his knees beside them, but he barely registered them. He grabbed Baba Marza by the shoulders and quickly rolled her off the top of them, sitting her upright against a slab of broken stone. The old lady let out a low, pained groan that made his heart sink into the pits of his stomach. She looked bad. Blood ran from her forehead into her brow and down the side of her face. Ash and dust coated her hair and sleeves.

Worse than that, her eyes didn't seem to focus properly when she blinked them open. One hand groped weakly over the rubble as if looking for where the ground had gone, so he put his trembling hand in hers, letting her hold onto them.

"Don't… don't move," he stammered. He looked her over once. Twice. Still he couldn't spot where the hell she was bleeding from, but with shaking hands, he pulled out his bloodreturn flask.

"Don't move, Baba. I know… I got this. Your blood. Give it to me. Just sit there and—" He was already about to pop the lid open and hold the flask against the side of her head—even though he knew there wasn't nearly enough blood to fill the flask with—when she grabbed his sleeve.

"I'm fine." She coughed once, winced, then forced herself into a more comfortable position.

"I've had worse. Last incursion age, half my city burned and I still kept selling threads the next morning. This is nothing worth fainting over." His mouth tightened. That was a lie. She was just trying to sound steady for him. Behind them, Ruslan and the other boys were climbing free of the rubble, but he couldn't even bring himself to go over and give them a few good kicks, because Baba Marza was lifting a trembling arm—and she pointed at the giant leech in the distance.

"What matters is that… thing," she said.

"You need to get the Hero to deal with it. Now." His throat tightened.

"What?"

"The Hero," she repeated.

"Go get him."

"I don't… know the Hero? How would I? I'm just—""The clothes you bought from me. The hair dye. They were for the 'Hero', right?" Silence sat between them. Orland didn't answer. He couldn't. His mouth had gone dry. The town behind him was full of noise—bells, screaming, and distant crashes—but right there beside the rubble, it all seemed to fall away while he and Baba Marza stared at each other. Then she raised her shaky hand and pointed once more at the giant leech.

"When a monster is loose, the Hero deals with it," she said.

"Otherwise, there'll be no town left for me to rebuild my shop, will there?" Orland lowered his head at that. She had a point. She always had a point. But there was another reason why she was telling him to go away.

"... I'll be back soon," he whispered, tucking his bloodreturn flask back onto his sash.

"With a load of blood inside this healing bottle. Promise." Then he looked around for a water source. With the sewer grates blown up, muddy water was everywhere, so it didn't take him long to find a small puddle and dip his hands into it. Once he did that, he stood. Ruslan and his cronies were also on their feet now, pale and filthy and still trying to pat ash off their shoulders, but Orland shoved past all of them without ceremony, driving Ruslan aside hard enough to make him stumble again.

"Hey!" Ruslan snapped.

"Watch… it…" The words died halfway out. After all, Orland had washed out all the mud in his hair, and he'd also torn off the rags he'd been wearing over his relic clothes. Ruslan stared. So did the others. Orland didn't bother looking at them as he reached under his coat and slid his gauntlet onto his hand, because the real reason why Baba Marza wanted to send him away was because she was worried he'd get hurt in the chaos.

She didn't want him to fight the boys because she thought he was weak, and wouldn't get out of a fight unhurt. She pitied him. … I'll show you, then. Mana burned from his chest to the gauntlet, lighting up the gem on his palm as he glared at the God-Sucking Leech. I'll show you, Baba Marza.