Heroes Gone Rogue

  Heroes Gone Rogue

  By Jason Kenyon

  Heroes Gone Rogue

  Copyright: Jason Kenyon

  Published: 26th May 2019

  The right of Jason Kenyon to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Find out more about the author or upcoming books online at www.mageforhire.co.uk

  Book Cover Design by www.ebooklaunch.com

  I wish to dedicate this book to:

  Matt, for all that you did for me in 2011

  Contents

  Chapter One: Cleaning the Filth

  Chapter Two: Changes in Time

  Chapter Three: Blade in Flight

  Chapter Four: Farewell to Ferrina

  Chapter Five: Scraps to Gather

  Chapter Six: A Hire Purpose

  Chapter Seven: On the Loose

  Chapter Eight: Supreme Command

  Chapter Nine: Dark and Light

  Chapter Ten: Making a Noise

  Chapter Eleven: The Penalty of Defiance

  Chapter Twelve: Checkpoints and Chaos

  Chapter Thirteen: Lia

  Chapter Fourteen: An Empty Throne

  Chapter Fifteen: The Legacy of Ferrina

  Chapter Sixteen: Settling Dust

  Chapter Seventeen: Last of a Kind

  Chapter Eighteen: Immortality Through Death

  Chapter Nineteen: Trails and Trailed

  Chapter Twenty: On the Hunt

  Chapter Twenty-One: At Odds

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Life in Shadows

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Last Round

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Under and Over

  Chapter Twenty-Five: News Over Tea

  Chapter Twenty-Six: A Troubled Heart

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Rope Tightens

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Scene of the Crime

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Consequences

  Chapter Thirty: Decisions

  Chapter Thirty-One: The Fallen Knight

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Forces Opposed

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Payback

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Deal

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Lighting a Spark

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Partings

  Chapter One: Cleaning the Filth

  Vanos didn’t like wearing his helmet in this city. It had clearly been forged for ceremonial purposes by a blacksmith who’d never expected their wares to be employed in the field of war, and weighed heavily on one side. The eye slit was not quite angled right for full vision, and that wasn’t helped by the fact that this damnable city was locked in eternal night.

  It wasn’t night time, of course. For whatever reason, the people who’d set up this dirt-filled place had decided to build it deep underground, where the darkness was at its thickest. The commander had been right when he’d warned the troops to expect nothing good here, but the paladins hadn’t realised just how vile it would be until they had actually stepped into the shadows of the city.

  ‘Pay attention, Vanos,’ said a woman nearby, and Vanos turned his limited field of vision to regard his fellow paladin Layana, who had already drawn her own sword.

  ‘Don’t you worry none,’ Vanos said, feeling a slight flash of anger. ‘Anything happens, I’ll take care of it.’

  Layana was also clad in her paladin regalia, her face hidden behind a glowing silver helm that was topped with a white crest. Vanos could sense her usual sneer though; he’d seen it plenty of times, and knew he’d given her plenty of reason for it in the past. Right now he didn’t feel it fair. Everyone was edgy in Ferrina, and even Layana was when she allowed herself a human moment.

  ‘Sure, with your blade sheathed,’ Layana said. ‘You heard about the others. You know what happens when you don’t pay attention. We’re here to clean things up, and I’m not going to wait for you if we need to run.’

  ‘Paladins don’t run,’ said Kelric a few paces behind them. ‘We get into trouble, we end it, that clear?’

  ‘Shut it, Kelric,’ Layana replied. ‘You aren’t in charge.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not, but the Light is,’ Kelric said. ‘We’re not losing so long as that’s true, and we’re not running either.’

  ‘The Light doesn’t suffer idiots,’ Layana said. ‘We screw up, we die, same as anyone else.’

  Vanos rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother to enter the discussion again. If Kelric was content to argue with Layana, then he was glad to let him. He turned his thoughts back to the streets of Ferrina, an unpleasant stench still heavy in the air even this long after they’d liberated the city. When they’d first received the orders to move to Ferrina three months ago, he’d had no idea that the tales of demons would turn out to be true.

  His eye twitched. Bastard creatures, they’d been. Foul reptilian nightmares, jaws as lethal as any wolf’s, and bodies more agile than panthers, seeming to possess perfect vision despite having no visible eyes. The city had been overrun by them, thanks to the damn out-of-control mages that the kingdom knew as the Clerics. In the couple of weeks it had taken for the Order to reach Ferrina, the demons had killed probably three quarters of the city’s population, and had herded the rest indoors, where those survivors had formed small pockets of token resistance.

  Damned Clerics. There wasn’t a man or woman at the Jheristar Cathedral who hadn’t lost a friend in the destruction of Aldrack, the first city to fall to the deranged cultists. Most of the paladins of the Verrinion Cathedral, serving under Commander Grand, had perished in the city, while the rest spoke in hushed whispers that Lord Bartell, renowned hero and general, had been in an alliance with the Clerics.

  Then the Jheristar Cathedral had deployed their forces here in time to find the remains of a bloodbath. Corpses lining the streets, and demons hidden in the shadows. The fighting had been intense at first, especially as gaining entry to the city in the first place had required the Paladin Order to bring down a towering behemoth, which had claimed more lives in one hour than anyone had expected to lose in the entire campaign.

  There had been foul magic at play when they’d initially arrived, bringing the demons back from the dead the moment a blade cut them down. It had all changed one morning when a group of strangers had approached the paladins and announced that whatever master was behind the demons had been slain. Sure enough, during the next battle the creatures had stayed dead, and the campaign to retake Ferrina from the demons had followed.

  ‘By the Light, Vanos, stop drifting off!’ Layana said. ‘We’re going this way, come on.’

  She gestured with her sword down a thin street, which glowed a sickly orange under the flickering torch that stuck out of the side of a half-collapsed building. It appeared to have once been some sort of general store, but whatever stocks it had once held had been plundered long ago. Vanos shrugged and turned to follow her, disliking small streets in general but at least finding comfort that his limited vision was less restricted when there were only two directions from which the paladins could be attacked – and Kelric would be first to handle anything from behind them.

  ‘You think they are really hiding them?’ Kelric asked suddenly, causing Layana to come to a halt in the middle of the thin street.

  ‘Hiding what?’ Layana asked.

  ‘The Clerics are dead,’ Vanos interrupted. ‘You heard what they said. Demons turned on them. Nobody seen a Cleric since.’

  ‘I don’t wanna go t
he same way as Grand,’ Kelric said. ‘If there are still any cultists in the city…’

  ‘The Clerics are dead in Aldrack, and they’re dead here too,’ Layana said. ‘And they must be doing badly if some knight killed their leader.’

  ‘Hell, they’ve been sneaking around for the last few years and nobody took any notice,’ Kelric said. ‘Now they’ve cleared out two cities quick as you please, and Light rest His Majesty….’

  ‘Clean your mouth out,’ Layana said. ‘Quit panicking as well. We’ve got the easy job right now and you know it.’

  ‘Don’t know nothing ‘bout it being easy,’ Kelric said, pushing past Layana and towards the end of the street. ‘Look at that – damned disgrace.’

  Layana and Vanos followed, and Vanos felt a familiar shiver as he found the dirt and stains that signified one of the many places where they’d burnt and buried the dead. They were long gone now, but some marks took a long time to clear.

  Especially when they were being refreshed so often. Just a pace away a corpse hung from the side of a building, arms held above the drooping head by stakes hammered into the stonework. Layana stooped to one knee in front of the corpse and Vanos felt a flush of brief surprise, wondering for a moment if she’d known the man. Then realisation set in and embarrassment ran through him as she rose to her feet again and lifted something that had apparently fallen to the ground. It was a sign that dangled from a small chain, which Layana carefully hung about the dead man’s neck.

  Vanos stepped forward and stared at the word that seemed to be swirling in the flickering light of the nearby torches.

  Cultist.

  ‘Think that’s enough talk,’ Layana said. ‘We’re getting close now. Stop being a damn coward and draw your sword, Vanos.’

  ‘If it makes you feel safer,’ Vanos said, snorting as he tugged his longsword from its scabbard. He hefted the weapon and then gave it a couple of quick swings out of habit, before resting the flat of the blade against his shoulder. ‘Let’s get a move on, then.’

  The three paladins followed the road next to the grim remains of the mage and Vanos began to grow uncomfortably aware of how loud their footsteps were, the ceremonial armour echoing as their boots struck the ebon cobblestones. Then he heard soft scrabbling noises behind their own commotion and motioned for the others to stop. They halted their march and waited as he listened, and the sound became steadily more apparent.

  Layana nodded at him, and she stepped past him with surprisingly little noise. She rested her armoured hand on the handle of a door that led into a shadowy building which bore the familiar sword emblem of a weaponsmith. Kelric stepped closer, and after nodding three times Layana threw open the door and barged inside.

  Vanos blinked as they found themselves faced by a solitary man, who was stooped over a pile of weaponry that he’d apparently been gathering from the deserted store. It was surprising that so much had remained untouched in these three months, but then this district had been, until recently, one of the last dens of demons in the ruined city.

  ‘Ah,’ the man said, and he straightened up, dropping the dagger he’d been attempting to balance on the pile. ‘Greetings, my good fellows. I was just tidying things up here. You can see what a mess it is.’

  Vanos rose an eyebrow in surprise, not that it was visible to anyone under his faceless helm. He’d expected a brutish thug, like the others they’d encountered, but this was just an old man. On second review, the man wasn’t all that old, though his hair and slightly messy, yet short-trimmed, beard were grey. The man was dressed in a rather shabby purple outfit that had probably been nice before this disaster had hit the city, but Vanos noticed with distaste that a staff was leaning against the nearby wall.

  There was no way a weaponsmith had crafted that sort of staff.

  ‘Mage,’ Vanos said.

  The man raised a finger as though he were about to ask permission to speak, before stopping and dropping the hand to one side. ‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘that’s something of a problem with you chaps, isn’t it?’

  ‘Take him in?’ Kelric asked.

  Layana snorted. ‘Course not. Kill him.’

  ‘As my lady wishes,’ Kelric said with a wry smile.

  ‘Afraid not, old bean,’ the mage said, and before Kelric could so much as lift a finger, a blast of ice shot from the mage’s hands and sent the paladin crashing back against one of the empty tables that cluttered the store.

  Layana didn’t waste time on further words, but instead went straight for the kill, lunging with her blade to the fore. The mage stumbled backwards towards a door that lay open, and before Layana could reach the mage a swordsman surged through the doorway into her path and parried her death strike.

  ‘Mercenary scum,’ Layana said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said the swordsman. Whoever he was, he’d definitely seen much better days. His black leather armour and beard seemed to cast him as the perfect opposite to the soldiers of the Light, and his face looked weathered beyond his years.

  As Layana’s sword lit with holy light, the swordsman’s own blade sparked and flashed a sickly green. Vanos reached for the amulet about his neck and uttered an oath.

  ‘A demon blade,’ Vanos said.

  ‘Bastards,’ Layana said, stepping away from the swordsman and the mage, her stance wary. ‘Put the weapons down now. You know you can’t win this fight. We have the city, cultists.’

  The swordsman laughed, a sharp and bitter sound that somehow seemed more chilling than the foul blade that glowed in his grip. ‘Oh, we’re no cultists. You all want to turn around right now and walk back out this store. It doesn’t have to end this way.’

  ‘You should probably listen,’ the mage said, folding his arms. ‘This fellow is most unstable.’

  ‘I am not,’ the swordsman said, tossing a glare at his companion.

  The mage shrugged. ‘Well, you’re just a tad irrational at times. Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘I didn’t have to stop her killing you, you know,’ the swordsman said.

  ‘As if I could not deal with a handful of these fellows,’ the mage said.

  Vanos noticed Kelric push himself up off the floor, shaking off some of the remaining ice from the mage’s initial strike.

  ‘It’s three against two,’ Kelric said.

  The mage counted off numbers on his hand and shook his head. ‘Erm, no, not quite. You should probably look a little more carefully.’

  ‘You shut your mouth, you damned pig m-’

  Kelric cut off mid-sentence and never finished. Vanos stared as the paladin toppled to the ground, and his eyes rose to meet those of a woman, most likely another of the mercenaries in these parts, dressed in a blue jerkin, and wielding a bloodied short sword. Her hair was surprisingly well-kept for these savages, striking blonde and arranged in a ponytail. It was her eyes that held his attention, though, the irises blood-red, which in turn made Vanos uncomfortably aware of the blood oozing from Kelric’s wound.

  ‘Ah, no, you were right,’ the mage said. ‘Three against two.’

  Layana was fastest to react again, the Light surrounding her as she lunged at the newcomer, who nimbly skipped back and smirked at her opponent. Vanos decided to leave Layana to that since there were still two to deal with, and he figured his best shot was to take out the mage as soon as possible. He brought his sword round and muttered a quick incantation, focusing his eyes on the mage, whose expression became serious as he noticed the light around Vanos’s sword.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ the mage said, ducking behind the swordsman.

  Vanos and the swordsman cursed at the same time, though for different reasons. Vanos had been trying to cast the Spell of Holy Fury, empowering his blade to mercilessly attack the viewed target by itself, but instead the mage had caused him to watch the swordsman while casting, and instead of killing the mage, Vanos’s sword pulled him into a clash with the swordsman.

  Then the mage stepped out from cover and began to cast.

  �
�Light halt you,’ Vanos said, keeping hold of the sword while it duelled the swordsman, and muttered a few further words. A barrier of light flickered around the mage’s mouth, and the man blinked with confusion before glowering in anger.

  Vanos felt a flash of confidence as he realised he could keep the mage quiet while he dealt with the swordsman, but it was short-lived. A second flash hit him moments later, but this was one of pain, and then he felt all his strength flow from that single point of agony in his back. At first he didn’t seem to quite grasp the enormity of it, and then, as he sank to the floor at the feet of the second mercenary, he realised that his campaign in Ferrina was over.

  Layana was lying nearby, her hand clasped against a hole in her armour at her midriff, red staining her fingers. Somehow, this band of ruffians had been faster than them, faster than the Light’s soldiers, and now… now….

  ‘Unpleasant business,’ the mage said, standing over the paladins.

  ‘Who cares, let’s just get this stuff together and get out,’ the second mercenary said, wiping off her short sword. ‘I told you they were patrolling this area.’

  ‘Tush, it hardly matters,’ the mage said. ‘We’re all fine. Now less of this insolence, and let’s get moving.’

  ‘Mage,’ Vanos said, his voice coming out as a strangled hiss.

  The mage stopped and looked down at him, a sudden expression of regret crossing his face. ‘You started this war, you know,’ he said. ‘We were all supposed to be allies here.’

  Vanos felt faint puzzlement in his fading senses.

  ‘You did… bastards….’

  ‘Not me,’ the mage said, shaking his head.

  ‘The King….’

  ‘As I said, not me.’

  ‘Outlawed… all of you.’ Vanos drew one last breath, and then fell still.

  Chapter Two: Changes in Time

  It had been different just a month ago.

  Stepping back to four weeks before the fight in the weapons shop, Ferrina was in a far different state. A city hidden from the sun, built beneath a sprawling hill that had been rich with precious resources, Ferrina served as a refuge at the edge of Valanthas where people could go to escape their old lives, concealed in the shadows that persisted through day and night. Where once it had been a mining haven, it had come to keep itself alive with its overseas trade, moving legal and dubious goods through both its busy port, and the hands of various seedy gangs that sat in ceaseless, silent conflict.