Avenger

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Atro stood before the man he would stab to death. His floppy sandals slithered over the chilled, cobbled pavement. The bitter smell of iron tainted the midnight air: iron from the cold blade he held in his hand, and iron from the blood of dead men and women lining the streets. The drip-drop of blood from the sword he’d stolen splattered over Thindburg’s already blood-soaked streets. It was dark – so, so dark.

Up ahead lay a disheveled man wearing a cloven chestplate, alone in the middle of the path. On either side, menacing buildings loomed - but they were empty, their doors torn down and their windows shattered. Their bloodstained shadows had closed in. The man lay alone under the dimmest of lights from a broken street lantern. It was deathly silent, and deathly cold.

Atro knew what he was going to do, what irreversible crime he would commit. And for that, he felt nothing. For he must finish what he had sworn to do all those months ago, when the man laying in front of him had destroyed his entire life. He had to avenge Papa and Mama; nothing else, truly nothing else, mattered.

He shut his eyes, and the nightmare played unbidden through his eyelids. The Rooster crowing. The executioner pulling the rusty lever with wretched, ratchet glee. The whumph as his parents disappeared through the floorboards. He had not even the time to look them in the eyes. The nooses went taut, and all went still.

Tears wanted to flow, but Atro denied. He raised his sword and stalked towards that devil of a man.

General Stacy wriggled on the slick cobblestones, distraught and defenseless. With teeth-gritting anger Atro noticed the sword in the General’s hand - it was Papa’s sword. The one he had lost when Stacy’s men had caught him. The one Atro had used to spill his first blood. And this monster had taken Atro’s inheritance and used it as his own weapon.

Firsk could quench his grief with power and riches. But for Atro, the toll had to be paid. And he was not leaving without that sword.

“I want that sword back.” The words came unbidden to his lips. What was supposed to be terse and final came out weak and childish.

The General lifted his weathered head, greasy white hair stuck to his cheeks. “…Atro? Is that… By the Luck-wielder’s nose, it’s you!”

Atro wanted to say something. Needed to say something. But he knew not what.

Stacy was mortally wounded, but he shook his head in lazy amazement. “When that brute of a boy Firsk busted my leg and told me his ‘right-hand man’ wanted to kill me, I never thought it’d be…” He tried to lift himself up, but ultimately collapsed. “Argh, that blighter really did a number on me.” He chuckled softly.

Atro roared and swung his sword into Stacy’s leg. The fractured kneecap broke asunder and the man screamed in agony.

“You did this!” cried Atro. “You, you took Everything! Everything! My family, my home, my life…” Stacy couldn’t respond, only whince and whine as the pain shot up and down and up his leg. “Now, now I can execute you, just like you did my parents. It’s, it’s…” Atro’s lips curled in putrid rage. “It’s fair.”

With a heave he grated the blade out of Stacy’s leg and directed it at his glistening throat. The last time he had seen him was that fateful day at The Hanging Tree, but only now could Atro take a good look at his face. Atro had imagined the face of a monster, scarred beyond belief and riddled with warty orifices, eyes bloodshot and a smile maniacal full of pointed teeth. Something not human, more orc than man. But the face that now looked up at him was smooth and clear of all pockmarks. His blue eyes twinkled, wet, and the wrinkles on his face were dashed with colour as he gave him a pained, mournful smile.

“I didn’t give the order to hang your parents, boy. I was merely following it. Do you think I had the power to execute someone on The Hanging Tree?”

Atro couldn’t believe it - he was denying it.

“Yes, yes you do!” Atro said. “You can burn down houses, you can steal children away to fight your wars. YOU killed my parents, and you still, you still deny it?” He kicked Stacy’s shattered leg, instigating another anguished gasp of pain.

General Stacy shook his head between laboured breaths, scarcely moving now. “To… To sentence a civilian of The Orriental States of the Eastern Lands to death… That is a right given, only, to the Emperor and his close associates, not a lowly General of the White Regiment. All I wanted was to imprison them in the town jail until you turned yourself in. I swear upon my daughter. But when I received that Imperial letter to hang them publicly, I-”

“No, no, no, YOU’RE LYING!” Atro sent his blade swinging into Stacy’s kneecap again, and with a sickening crunch and a clang his sword sliced through the knee and hit the cobblestones.

Stacy screamed. His amputated leg tottered on the floor like a fleshy toy, and the rest of him thrashed as if struck by lightning. Red sap burst from both ends as if it were a party cracker full of jam. Hideous screaming filled the twilight. It would have sent even the stoutest men into fits of dread, but those cries fell on Atro’s ears like the chimes of insidious jingle bells. But he neither laughed nor smiled.

“You are nothing but a monster, Stacy,” Atro whispered, shaking head to toe. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you.”

But the General sobbed upon that grimy floor, barely heeding Atro above as repeated something under his breath. “Gwen… Gwen… I’m sorry…”

“What?” Atro shifted uncomfortably.

The General broke out of his stupour. “My… My Gwen would’ve… Would’ve been as old as you are now, 'round thirteen, fourteen…” With great effort he heaved himself into a sitting position, tears streaming. “She was only five when those… Barbarians…”

Atro felt something crawling up his spine. “What?”

“A fleet of Durgorian pirates sailed in from the eastern mainland. Long before the war. Burned down the entire coastline from the Weedy Woods to Vice’s Desert. And one night they came for us in our country home by the coast…” The General spoke faster and faster, his strength becoming lucid one final time. “They caught us asleep, they took us out onto the cliffs, they set fire to our home, and they, and they, and they…” Two wild lights flickered in Stacy’s dimmed irises. "They strapped her arms and legs and flung her into the sea. She did nothing. And they tossed her. And they kept me alive.

“The day I was released from the ward, I signed up for the Orriental army. I swore, I swore I would have my revenge. I would search for those pirates and do the same thing to them. Their broken bodies would be tossed into the sea just like they did my daughter.” He looked up at Atro squarly, tears sizzling through his fiery eyes. “Because it was fair.”

A supreme numbness now blanketed Atro. His heart arose and pled, Kill him now, KILL him now! But his heart and mind no longer had control of his body. His sword clattered to the floor.

Stacy twinkled weakly. "In the end, we’re all just people looking for revenge, eh? You want to avenge your home and your parents, and I wanted to avenge my gwen. We’re not monsters. The Orrient isn’t a monster. The Orriental States never wanted to go to war with Durgor; the Emperor just wanted that patch of land he was promised decades ago. And do you know why? Do you know your own history? The git was born there. Durgor took his gold as payment but then refused to give it over. The Emperor doesn’t despise you. He doesn’t know you. But if hanging the families of those who don’t fight helps get his childhood back, then he’ll do it.

“I never wanted to be a General. I never wanted to queue children up to slaughter. I just wanted my little Gwen back. I thought killing her murderers would help. I thought following the army’s every word and whim would help. Every battle I fought, every child I oversaw. I, I thought I deserved it. Deserved to sin.” He hacked and coughed, spittle and blood flying; it was a sound that Atro found more terrible than his screams. “And you know what? Dead as I am, I don’t even care anymore. I spent the past ten years of my life fighting in my daughter’s name, to the point her name is a bloody mess. And now I don’t even care about her. I lost track. I’m at the end of this great game of Life, and I’m just an avenger with no purpose.”

General Stacy burned his eyes into Atro’s. “We’re not monsters, just avengers with no purpose…”

Atro stepped back, seething in an emotion he could not divine. He felt his arms be torn apart and his lungs be strangled. His heart hammered against the bony walls of its prison. A fractured splinter in his head burned and burned and burned.

“So take it.” With what little strength he had, Stacy pushed Papa’s sword in Atro’s direction. “Take your inheritance and go. Leave me here to die. Go back to your band of brigands and destroy another town in your parents’ name, I don’t give a damn.” Then he fell truly to the floor, his chestplate heaving.

Atro stumbled forward and stooped over the blade. He tenderly picked up Papa’s sword and gazed longingly at its shining surface. With this weapon he could hurt a lot more people. Perhaps even the Emperor of The Orrient himself, the one truly responsible for his parents’ deaths. Then, with his revenge exacted, he’d be free.

Free? From what? What would I be free from?

A million memories flashed before Atro’s eyes: the golden Wheat Fields he harvested with Papa; the glorious aroma of Mama’s baked bread; the last Christmas he celebrated with his family; the first blood he drew from that soldier 11 months ago; his father causing that distraction for him, pleading him to run; seeing his parents’ names on the list of the condemned; the crow of the Rooster; befriending Firsk and being fugitives of the empire; watching their conspiracy grow and grow until it was a band of outlaws tearing the island apart - but he had only ever wanted one thing. Choices, wild and estranged, that had led him to this very moment: clutching his dead father’s sword on the verge of Christmas day in the ruins of Thindburg.

Atro thought back to what Stacy had said, the avenger with no purpose. He thought about the Emperor, who did not know a single thing about him or his life.

He turned to the General. Stacy’s unmoving body was like that of a ghost frozen in time. A pale look was plastered over his empty shell of a face, dappled with shame yet sprinkled with curiosity. The waterfall of blood that had spewed out of his leg was now merely a trickle. The foot Atro had cut off lay forlornly on the side, his boot all mangled and bloody. But the one on his other leg was as shiny as ever, a lucky boot, not even a single fleck of dust upon its flank. But his broken chestplate heaved no more.

With a final heartbroken thrust, Atro sank his father’s sword deep into Stacy’s chest. The steel blade tore through metal and flesh and bone alike, then metal once more. It thudded soundlessly on the cobblestone floor, and then even the ground gave way to the sword’s emotion as it cracked through rock. At last, Atro let go of his father’s gleaming sword, leaving it to wobble at the dark, motionless sky. Stacy didn’t react; he was gone, and so too was the revenge that Atro had sought.

Atro walked back up the street, leaving behind his inheritance and the body of General Stacy. Flickering tears of snow began to fall from the heavens as the silent night drew on.

This is a revised version of a story from 25 December 2021. It was previously called Christmas-killer. Get it? Because they killed Christmas, and he also killed a guy on Chr- nevermind.