When the door to Ledderly’s Inn opened a low smell of crushed stone and old dirt pounded into Clamp Champ’s super-sensitive nostrils. He could smell last night’s rain, and felt the pucker of the night’s chill on his skin. A torch on the wall did a little dance and then settled. There were only three people left in the inn, and the threat of Ledderly’s crusty bellow of “last call” hung in the air. Already the innkeeper was beginning to eye the remaining imbibers, sour eyes stuck lazily in a face like a side of beef left in the sun.
A thick shadow advanced towards Clamp Champ, announcing his passage with heavy steps. It settled at the table and blocked out the torchlight. Clamp didn’t look up, but shoved the chair opposite him out. The bulk sat down, bringing with him the smell of mines and must.
“Late,” Clamp said, bringing his twice-empty glass to his lips to suck the foam from the rim. “Almost closing time.” He looked up and saw the damage. Ram Man had a few vertical slices carved into his arm, and his cheek was weeping blood. He was holding a ripped piece of cloth to the gash on his arm. It was already sodden with blood.
“Not you too,” Clamp champ said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ram Man said, and waved a finger for an ale. Ledderly inspected him with an unfriendly look but began to pour one for him. You did not deny Ram Man his libation, even if closing time was seconds away. In fact, it was an alehouse rule for most Barkeeps: if your customer could break a barstool by sitting on it, it was best to serve him anything he wanted.
Ram Man wrapped the cloth around his oozing arm and tied it off. Clamp Champ watched Ledderly walk as angrily as he could manage over and set a large tankard down. Ram man tipped it up and sucked it down without missing a drop and pounded it down. “Tab it,” he said to Ledderly, who walked off with a grunt.
Clamp Champ took a breath. His ribs ached when he did so, and he felt the constriction of the bandage pull tight against his chest. A stumpy man in a long grey coat stumbled from a table to Clamp’s left and made his way to the door. It took him two tries to find the right one before the night swallowed him. Ledderly glared at the table again, but Clamp Champ only tipped his empty glass at him and returned his attention to Ram Man.
“You know it happened to Duncan.”
“Him too?” Ram man asked. He had wadded up a handful napkins and stuck them to his cheek. They blossomed: red roses.
“Three night ago. Just a flesh wound, barely anything, but still…”
“And he didn’t see who it was?”
Clamp shook his head. “You didn’t either.” It wasn’t a question
“No,” Ram Man said darkly. He drummed his fingers on the table. Clamp felt the impact rattle through his forearms. “When did you get it?”
Clamp Champ shrugged. “Two nights ago. Quick perimeter patrol. Should have been in bed, but I was too restless. I’m not used to living at the palace. Too much noise, all that staff, the guards, their loud-as-blazes boots on the cobblestone outside my window. I had to get out, get some air. I had passed by two guards, only moments earlier. They didn’t hear a thing.”
“And you didn’t hear anything?”
Clamp smiled without humor. “Yeah, I’ve been asked that five times by now. I say the same thing each time. No footsteps, no rustle of clothing, nothing but the hiss of metal cutting the air. By the time I heard what I heard, I was bleeding, and then it was quiet again. I can see perfectly in the blackest of pitch but there was no sign of anyone. Like…”
“Like a ghost,” Ram Man finished for him. “But not Scareglow.”
“No. Scare likes to let you know he’s there. Drinks the fear like he’s running his own tab. Whoever this is…I don’t know.”
“He could have killed me…easily,” Ram man said. There was a resignation in his thick voice. “You…me, Duncan. He could have killed us all. What in Skytree’s name does he want?”
“He’s testing you,” someone said from the shadowed table behind them. Clamp Champ didn’t allow himself to jump, but his nerves tensed immediately.
“How long have you been there?” His voice wavered a little and he cursed himself for it.
“Long enough,” Fisto said. There were four empties sitting in a neat row in front of him, and foam in his beard. “Long enough to hear your sad harmonizing.” He turned to Clamp Champ’s table companion and nodded. “Rammy.”
“Fisty.” Ram Man waved a stubby finger at him and motioned him over. “So you know who’s been attacking us?”
“I know the only person it could be, based on what I’ve heard,” Fisto said. His large metal fist was below the table. Clamp Champ was still wondering how he had missed him. He hadn’t been there when Clamp Champ came in, and as far as he knew nobody had sat down since. Almost as if he could read his thought, Fisto raised an eyebrow at him and gave him a sly smile.
Fisto got up and pulled out a chair at their table, not even stumbling. Clamp Champ caught Ledderly eyeballing them again. The barkeep turned his back to them.
Fisto’s fist gleamed in the torchlight. He pulled out a rag and polished it even though it wasn’t necessary. “Let me guess; superficial wounds only, no major damage?”
“Look at my face,” Ram Man said, pointing to the red clotted napkins.
Fisto did so. “Looks like you got some of the ugly carved away. That’s an improvement to me,”
Ram Man snorted. Clamp Champ had been smelling the blood ever since Rammy walked in. It was making him queasy. His dinner had been liquid tonight, and he was feeling the loss of something solid.
“Anyway, like you said, Rammy, he could have killed you easily. Any of you.”
When Ram Man spoke his voice had an impatient edge. “You going to be cryptic all night or are you going to tell us what you know?”
Fisto polished his fist again, and then tucked the rag into his belt. He examined himself in it, and smoothed his ragged beard. “When he trained me how to fight, his name was Ninjor,” he said. “But I doubt that was ever his real name. Back then he was still human. Or mostly human, at least. I still don’t think anybody that could move the way he moved could have been entirely human, but he was more human then than he is now.”
“This thing attacking us…he taught you how to fight?”
Fisto nodded. “He ran a school. Back when he was human, that is. Years after I left, I heard something went very bad there. They were just rumors, but I didn’t have any trouble believing them. Master Ninjor was always working at trying to improve his skills. He learned magic, and began traveling between dimensions, fighting things far beyond anything we know about. All the time, learning. He’d come back and teach his students the skills he had learned. All that magic, all that time spent fighting things that would make your gut squirm…you don’t do that without getting corrupted. And on Eternia, everything corrupted ends up with Skeletor.”
“So this Ninjor is just…what, playing with us?”
“Like Battle Cat with a Caramouse.” Fisto said, and examined himself in his fist again. “Super senses or no, you’re not going to hear him the next time he comes for you, Clamp.”
“Ball of joy, this one is,” Ram man said. “And would you stop lookin’ at your ugly mug? Your beard ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
Fisto laughed then, good and long and loud, to the point where Ledderly’s sour grimace seemed to intensify.
“What’s so funny?” Ram Man asked, pulling the blood-red napkins from his face. Clamp saw a gouge run the length of his cheek. It was no longer weeping blood, but it looked raw and painful.
Fisto shook his head and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. The laughter that had gripped him dropped away quickly, and the shadows thrown from the dimming torchlight leapt onto his face.“You think I’m looking at myself in this thing?” Fisto asked, holding up his big metal mitt. “I don’t need reassurance that I’m the best looking guy on Eternia, mallet head. I keep this thing polished so I can see behind me whenever I need to. Because I know, without a doubt, that one day, when I look in this thing, I’ll see Ninjor’s reflection in it. I only hope I’m fast enough that day.”
Fisto stood, pounded on the table and nodded his head at Ledderly as he strolled out the door of the Inn, as stone sober as a tree.
He left behind shadows that seemed much darker than before, and two wounded men who had much to think about.