Something Rotten:
Volume 1 of The Mercenary’s Guide to Ruined Seattle
By Will Hose
Copyright 2014 by Will Hose
Background image courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt
Cover art by Tim Hose
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Thanks for your support and respect.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
I swung my axe and split a Goblin from skull to waist, encoring with a burst from my shotgun that did the job on his buddy. The blast tore the little fucker in half with a thunderclap burst, the pieces smoking from contact with the iron in the shot. Goblins are allergic to iron, one of several ingredients in my special shells.
I felt an thump on my helmet and turned long enough to see Raine glaring at me. He snarled, “Ward! What part of ‘no guns’ was too hard for you to comprehend, asshat?” before turning back to the fight. He used a pair of steel hammers, each about a foot and a half long and covered in the green crap that Goblins used for blood. I didn’t bother to apologize: there was no time and he was right.
The boom from my gun set off a howl down the street as a dozen more Goblins came to see what was going on. I swore mightily and raised my dripping axe. Yes. I’m a half-Dwarf who uses an axe. Forgive the shit out of me for sticking with traditions.
The Goblins didn’t care about tradition; the moment they saw the six of us and saw that we were taller than three feet and not green, they screamed something and charged into what already felt like a crowded battle.
Fighting with an axe isn’t that hard, especially when there’s one edge to it, especially when the enemy comes in a flood. There’s a sharp side and a dull side, and generally you just want to pretend you’re chopping wood. There’s more to it than that, and probably some Viking descendant is being all indignant about this, but come on. Artistry is for sabers.
Not to say that Birgitte and her sabre-dagger combo wasn’t getting the job done. She wasn’t quite as heavily armored as I was, and it worked for her. She made it look good, too, spinning and jumping in and out of the fight and all. I didn’t have names for half of what she was doing; mostly I regretted not being able to watch her as she fought. Birgitte’s ass was the eighth wonder of the broken world.
The Goblins closed around me just then, panting and screaming and smelling like copper while they tried to stab me with blades they’d basically made out of old street signs. The weapons were ugly and not very effective but they could kill me just as dead as an atomic-age rail gun if they got through my armor. If I let them.
I had to drop the shotgun. It swung back behind my shoulder on its strap. Then I swung hard, chopping into anything I saw that had a green tinge to it. Since that made up something like ninety percent of my environment it wasn’t hard to find a target.
I lost track of time and everything else except for killing. Another part of my Dwarf heritage: berserking. Takes me a little longer than some of the true masters but when I get there I’m in for the long haul. It’s almost relaxing to settle into that haze of crimson, the blood spattering on my face and the enemies exploding off my axe. I was vaguely aware of the others fighting around me but I was safe and secure in the cocoon of raw rage.
I was so safe and secure that by the time I woke up again I found myself killing the shit out of an old Volkswagen van. In my defense, it was baby-crap green. The others stood around, panting and watching me go to town; by the time I realized what was going on and stopped attacking it the vehicle was covered in gouges and punctures. I had a lot of sharpening to do. I was surrounded by a low wall of Goblins, more warriors who’d come to see who was killing a Volkswagen. My shotgun was nowhere to be seen, apparently torn from my back somewhere along the way.
“Proud of yourself, fuckstick?” said Baran. “Just couldn’t stand not using that shotgun, huh? I knew it was a mistake to bring a newbie.” He spat to the side. Baran was tall and slim and had the cold eyes of a confirmed killer. He hadn’t liked me from the start and the feeling was wholeheartedly reciprocated.
“Hey, heat of battle,” I said, stumping toward him. I only came up to his chest but I was a lot broader than he was. He stood to his full height and drew one of his short swords, and I wondered if we were going to throw down right there. Exhaustion voted no but that psycho who lived in the back of my head licked some blood from his own arm and whispered yes.
“Shut up, all of you. Newbie, stand down. Find your gun.” Ethan was the leader of Breakers Incorporated. I didn’t know his last name or what he’d done before taking on jobs like this, but he’d been doing scary things for a long time. Dark-skinned and handsome, he wasn’t as tall as either Raine or Gunner and wasn’t as lithe as Birgitte or quick as Baran, but there was no doubt that he was in charge. I had never seen him change his expression from the polite interest that he usually wore, but something in his stare made Baran put his sword away and me turn to find my fallen shotgun. Ethan watched to make sure that we weren’t going to go back to growling at each other before turning to Gunner, his second-in-command.
Gunner was the biggest Human I’d ever personally met, and the cast of his features made suspect that there was some ogre in his background. He carried a genuine claymore sword on his back in a special sheath, and like me he wore the heavy armor of the front-line fighter. He’d been on the other side of the group, protecting our rear while I’d freaked out in front. His voice was a low rumble as he consulted with Ethan. Both of them threw glances in my direction from time to time.
I found the shotgun buried under three bodies; it was full of Goblin blood, which sets like molasses when it dries, so I started stripping it out to clean it as best I could before we got moving again. Mossbergs are some of the best shotguns in the world but if you dip a gun in syrup it’s just not going to work well.
Raine sat down on the curb next to me. Of all the others, he was the only one who’d made an effort to treat me as something other than expendable. Tall and broad in the shoulders, he was the largest of the Breakers save for Gunner. He had a latticework of scars up his left arm; he’d told me that he cut a new one for every life that he took. Apparently Goblins didn’t count. None of the scars were fresh. “Should switch to a hammer, newbie,” he said. “Easier to clean, don’t have to sharpen it.”
He took a polishing cloth and wiped the blood off of his hammers, leaving them good as new. When I looked at the remains of my axe’s blade, I could see his point.
“Maybe. I’ve been using this a long time, though. Maybe I just like the history of it. Lots of my ancestors used axes like this,” I said. I wiggled a part of the gun loose and cleaned it; the blood wasn’t setting quickly, which was my only saving grace.
“Yeah, well, something all your ancestors have in common. They’re all dead,” he replied.
I grinned but dropped it when Birgitte approached. Her armor was damn near spotless, without a single scratch on it. She moved like she had something in her background, too, like some Elf or a Valkyrie or something. I hadn’t asked, of course; it’s rude. And it’s not like my case, where my heritage is stamped on every feature.
“Were you trying to get us killed?” she said, her gorgeous face set in stone as she stared at me. That was the other reason I hadn’t asked: Birgitte thought of me as one step below a pile of dog crap.
“Aw, c’mon, ‘Gitte,” said Raine. “Like you never fucked up when you were starting out.”
“Wasn’t talking to you, hammerhead. Newbie.” She reached out with the toe of one bo
ot and prodded me. “No guns, that was the plan. You’re supposed to know your shit.”
“Heat of battle. Won’t happen again,” I said, looking up at her finally. She towered over me but I was used to that kind of crap. Everyone towered over me. Birgitte scared me for other reasons, like the fact that she moved fast enough that I wasn’t sure that I could take her in a fight even with the new armor that the Breakers had given me before we’d started into town.
“These were the new tribes, the ones who aren’t strong enough to make it on the inside,” she said, still glaring. “When we get in there, a shot like that could bring down half the city if it’s at the wrong time. Wait for your order, newbie, or we’ll leave you for the fucking crows.” She turned and walked toward Gunner and Ethan.
This time I did watch her ass. So did Raine.
“She ain’t wrong, but it ain’t like you did it on purpose,” said Raine. “Just wait, next time. Stick with that fucking axe until Ethan says different.” He got up and sauntered off to find a wall to piss on.
I finished stripping and cleaning my shotgun and tested the slide a few times before slinging it back behind my shoulder. I stood and started working the whetstone over the blade of the axe, trying to get it back to the point of