Hack, Slash & Burn 1: A LitRPG Fantasy, page 1
HACK, SLASH & Burn
Book One
Todd Herzman
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
HACK, SLASH & BURN
Copyright © 2022 Todd Herzman.
All rights reserved.
Written by Todd Herzman.
Cover Designer: Germancreative
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To my wonderful wife, thank you for encouraging me to live my dream.
Chapter 1
Calder wiped down the solid oak bar for the hundredth time that night. Rain battered the roof and shutters of the Broken Mug tavern, and more than just the townsfolk had wandered in to be warmed by its hearth. Calder nodded at the old drunk sitting at the bar telling him the news, keeping one eye on the four Imperial Soldiers playing cards in the corner.
The big soldier with the scar under his eye had downed at least five mugs of ale, lost the past three hands, and was beginning to sway.
The old drunk, Dodger, his mug gripped with his good hand—his other hand lying on the bar, three fingers missing—leant forward. “They say a demon came out of it. That it sliced through the town of Casdale like it were nothin’ at all, slicin’ heads from shoulders, cuttin’ legs, arms...”
A sixth mug of ale went down the big soldier’s gullet as one of the other soldiers at the table—a shorter man with dark brown hair and a dusting of stubble over his upper lip that looked like a failed attempt at a moustache—put his cards down with a grin plastered on his face.
“... the Disciples of Light ain’t doin’ a damned thing. Those bastards don’t come out this far. Ain’t no glory in savin’ backwater farmin’ villages. Then in Eamesmore, ‘nother one o’ them Dark Portals sprang ta life. Right in the middle of that old Turan church! The monks were slaughtered durin’ daily prayer...”
The big soldier blinked at the cards the short soldier had laid down. He swayed slightly in his seat, grunted, made sure his mug had nary a drop left, then smashed it over the short soldier’s head as casually as one would swat a fly.
Calder sighed. “Be back in a minute, Dodger.”
The old man nodded with a chuckle. He raised his mug and turned on his stool, staring at the Imperial Soldiers’ table. “Takin’ out the trash, aye Calder?”
Calder grunted, grabbing his cane and stepping out from behind the bar as all the soldiers stood, chairs scraping the wooden floor. Except for the short one with the failed moustache—he was on the ground, blood from his head leaking onto the sawdust.
The other two looked like they were ready to take down the bigger one. They must’ve been from the same unit, yet they were fighting among themselves?
These are the bastards that defeated us? Calder thought with a shake of his head.
His leg ached with each step. Floorboards creaked beneath his boots. A fight like this would be bad for business, and Calder needed all the business he could get. The Broken Mug tavern might be a dump, but it was his dump. Uncle Koran had done Calder a damned good favour leaving this place to him. After the war was lost, keeping the place afloat was all Calder had keeping him going.
He wasn’t about to let the dump go to hell on account of some damned Imperial Soldiers who couldn’t hold their liquor—that was no way to honour his uncle’s memory.
‘Oi! There’s no fighting in my tavern!’ Calder hollered, cane tapping the sawdust-strewn hardwood floor as he strode toward the soldiers’ table.
Now, no one in their right mind would call Calder small. Not when he stood at six-foot-two and had a build closer to a stonemason’s than that of an inn’s proprietor. But when he closed the gap and the soldier turned around, he realised he had miscalculated.
If Calder had the body of a stonemason, the Imperial Soldier had the body of someone who had eaten a stonemason.
The big soldier swayed again, blinking down at Calder. He looked at the broken mug in his hand. The mug had shattered when he had hit the other soldier over the head and was now jagged and sharp.
A swipe from that could do serious damage.
“You really want to start something with me, Calder?” The Imperial Soldier spat the last word, looking down at Calder’s bad leg. He stopped swaying. “It is you, isn’t it? The coward who limped back from the Valley of Kirkright. The only Lorilan Soldier to survive the Battle of the Narrow Pass.” He smiled, as though recounting a happy memory. He placed the broken mug down on the table. “I was there, you know.” His hand fell to rest atop the pommel of his sword. “Probably gutted a few of your friends.”
Calder gritted his teeth, remembering that trouble was what he didn’t want.
But trouble was hard to avoid when it came looking for you.
This soldier—a bloody sergeant, going by the stripes on the right shoulder of his coat—knew who Calder was.
That was never a good thing.
Calder glanced over at the other Imperial Soldiers. One had hard eyes and was looking between Calder and the sergeant. The other was helping the short one with the head wound up from the floor.
“Leave,” Calder breathed, hand tightening around his cane. He nodded toward the door. “Now.”
The sergeant’s eyebrows pinched together. He took a step forward. “Make me.”
“Sarge.” The soldier with hard eyes said. “Why don’t we get out of here? You don’t want to beat on a cripple, do ya, Harlan?”
“Stay out of this, Yensen,” the sergeant—Sergeant Harlan—growled. “This man isn’t just a cripple. He was a soldier.”
Calder raised his chin. “I told you to leave.” With his left hand, he pointed at the door. “Get the hell out of my tavern.”
“I don’t take orders from you.” The sergeant’s face distorted into a scowl. He gripped his hilt and began pulling his sword from its sheath.
Before he had it halfway out, Calder’s cane cracked over the man’s wrist. Then Calder surged forward, slamming the side of his left hand into the sergeant’s throat.
The big man stumbled back, each step heavy on the wooden floor.
Calder placed his cane on the ground, braced himself on his good leg, then shove-kicked the man hard in the chest with his left. He winced at the pain. Gods, it hurt. But damn was it worth it.
The sergeant thumped to the floor.
By the time he did, the soldier with the hard eyes—Yensen—had his sword drawn. “That was a mistake, my friend. Attacking an Imperial Soldier is an executable offence.”
Calder stared down at the massive sergeant. His heart thudded against his chest, and anger bubbled up inside of him. Anger at these bastards having won the war. Anger at them being here, in his tavern.
Then the reality of his situation set in.
He was nothing. No one.
And he had just laid a sergeant in the Talna Imperial Army on their ass. Self-defence or not, he would see the chopping block for this.
The other patrons in the Broken Mug were all standing now. There weren’t many, and they weren’t hard people. Just men and women trying to eke out a living under Imperial rule. Kohl, the town’s blacksmith, a dark-skinned man with bulging muscles—probably the hardest among them—stared at Calder, then at the soldiers.
Calder heard Dodger come out of his seat. The sound of his walk was familiar. He didn’t need a cane like Calder, but he had a slight limp—he too, had been a soldier once. Many years ago.
Yensen pointed his sword at Calder. The tip was a step away from him.
The big sergeant stood. He rubbed at his neck, face red with drink and anger. “You’ll die for this, coward. I’ll see to it myself.” He drew his sword. “Corporal Yensen, give this man your sword. Let’s make it a fair fight.” He grinned, two gold teeth glinting in the candlelight.
Calder gripped the handle of his cane ever tighter.
Trouble always had a way of finding him.
Dodger stepped up beside Calder. “He was just defending—”
“You want to see your death too, old man?” Sergeant Harlan didn’t take his eyes off Calder as he spoke.
Calder hated men like this, who abused their power to stomp on the little guy. Who hurt those they were supposed to protect.
He smiled. If he were going to die, at least he could take this bastard with him.
Corporal Yensen hesitated, but only for a second. He spun his sword until the hilt faced Calder, then he handed it over, those hard eyes unyielding.
Calder gave his cane to Dodger, then grabbed the sword. He leant heavily on his left leg. He tested the sword’s weight. It was a falchion. A one-handed, single-edged sword—the standard side sword for a Talna Imperial Soldier.
Calder held up the sword. He assumed a fighting stance, his right leg—his bad one—sliding backward on the wooden floor. Pain stabbed at him, shooting up his thigh, tearing at the muscle. It took a great amount of will to stop that pain from showing on his face. A fair fight, he thought. Not likely.
The sergeant stepped forward, lunging for Calder, right toward his chest.
With a turn of his wrist, Calder slapped the sergeant’s blade to the left, then he flicked his sword toward the man’s exposed neck, cutting a line across it.
It happened fast. Most fights do.
Blood poured free. The sergeant’s hand grasped at his th
The big man fell to the ground once more. This time, for the last time.
Calder stood over him. “I wasn’t the last survivor of the Battle of the Narrow Pass by being a coward.”
The familiar sound of two more swords being drawn met Calder’s ears. Yensen knelt, snapping up the sergeant’s falchion—it had been knocked to the wooden floor, scraping across the boards as the sergeant fell.
Calder took a faltering step back, his bad leg betraying him and making him stumble.
Shoulda stayed behind the bar.
Yensen, standing back up with the sergeant’s sword in hand, pointed it at Calder. Even the shorter soldier—blood still dripping down his brow into his left eye from where he had been hit with the mug—had his blade turned toward Calder.
Calder shrugged, sword point dipping toward Sergeant Harlan’s corpse. “He started it.”
“And the emperor’s justice will finish it.” Corporal Yensen nodded at his fellow soldiers, and they spread out to surround him. “As much of a bastard as the sergeant was, you will pay with your life for his death.”
Calder couldn’t keep his eye on all three at once. Inwardly, he cursed his damned limp. Cursed the man who had given it to him. A year ago, even three against one, he might have been able to make a go of it. Take them all down with him, at least.
Now? Without armour, and with a leg that could barely hold his weight?
A grin flickered across his face. Suppose I always knew I’d die by the sword.
Corporal Yensen’s left foot tilted slightly to the side. About to lunge.
As he did, a horrible, howling scream pierced the night. One loud enough to be heard through the tavern’s thick, log-stacked walls and the rain pissing down outside.
Corporal Yensen froze mid-stride. His face turned white.
“What in Asrael’s name?” Dodger whispered.
Calder’s brows rose. He couldn’t remember the last time he had heard the old drunk invoke one of the Turan Gods’ names—especially not Asrael, the Father.
The soldiers snapped their attention away from Calder, white faces staring at the door.
People’s eyes darted between each other, drinks abandoned on their tables.
Another howling scream came.
Then shouting—the townsfolk.
Calder swallowed. He gripped the falchion hilt tight, gritted his teeth. “Demons.”
Six months ago—a whole half year after the war met its end, and the Talna Empire occupied Lorilan—Dark Portals began springing up all over the known world, spewing forth monstrous, demonic beasts that destroyed anyone and anything in their way.
No one, and nothing, had been able to stop them. Mortal weapons had proved useless.
The priests and priestesses, preachers, monks and devotees to any and all religions around the world of Halanor said it signalled the apocalypse. Armageddon.
The end of the world.
Then more portals opened, and the Soldiers of Light arrived.
They wielded weapons with magical enchantments—weapons none in this world had ever seen before. They could conjure magic. Cast spells of protection and destruction. Heal with a touch.
And they were able to fight off the demonic invaders.
The Soldiers of Light handed out power to the residents of Halanor in the form of Weapon Stones, and those they bequeathed power to were known as Disciples of Light.
More screams rang out in the night—these ones were human. Very human. Calder had heard screams like that before. Men and women dying, slaughtered on the battlefield.
Gripping the falchion, Calder limped toward the Broken Mug’s door. From all he had heard, he knew he couldn’t stand a chance against these beasts. A strong hand gripped him on the shoulder, stopping him short.
“Do not open that door,” Corporal Yensen commanded, eyes wide in his pale face. “I’ve seen what these beasts can do. They’ll rip us—”
The Broken Mug’s door crashed to the floor, torn clear off its hinges. A cold wind shot through the tavern, and a large, dark shape stood just outside, hard to make out in the blackness of the stormy night.
It stepped forward, ducking under the tall doorframe, stepping into the tavern’s candlelight.
Calder stepped back, right onto his bad leg. He didn’t feel the pain. Couldn’t. All he felt was cold dread at the sight that was before him.
The beast, demon, or whatever the hell it was stood on two legs, like a man. But its skin was dark grey. Two curling tusks jutted out from each side of its chin. It snarled, lips pulled back, revealing jagged-sharp teeth and four massive, yellowing fangs.
Its head was bald, whether naturally or shaved Calder couldn’t tell. About its neck hung a necklace of ears. Human ears. It had on rough-spun trousers, though it wore no shirt, and its bulging muscles—muscles that would put even the dead sergeant to shame—were on full display.
The beast held a spiked club, the head painted in blood.
Then it roared that horrible howling scream.
Corporal Yensen pushed Calder back toward the bar. The shock of the beast’s entrance wore off, and the patrons within the tavern began to yell and shout, turning over chairs and knocking mugs and plates to the ground in their haste to get away.
“On me!” Corporal Yensen commanded. His face was no longer white, and his voice sounded strong and hard—though his eyes were still as wide as they had been before.
The other two soldiers stepped to either side of the corporal. The short soldier with the failed moustache, who mustn’t have been older than twenty, shook so much that his sword was jerking from side to side.
The three men rushed the massive, club-wielding beast.
A hand gripped Calder on the shoulder. He flinched, till he saw who it was.
“Back door,” Dodger whispered, standing so close Calder smelled the ale on his breath. Though with Dodger, that wasn’t hard. “We gotta run.”
Corporal Yensen lunged, sword pointed at the beast’s heart.
The blade hit true. The beast didn’t so much as try and step out of the way.
But the sword didn’t penetrate the beast’s grey skin. It was stopped, hard, as though the beast’s skin was made of thrice hardened steel. The impact shook the man’s arm.
The beast swung its club at the corporal’s head. The movement was casual and easy, so similar to the sergeant smashing his fellow soldier over the head with a mug that Calder blinked at it in disbelief.
Dodger shook his shoulders. “Calder! BACK DOOR!”
The spell of watching that thing be impervious to a sword and kill Yensen wore off, shattering like the broken mugs all over the sawdust-strewn floor. Calder glanced around. Back door. He had to get out of here. Had to get out.
He didn’t have his cane.
He braced himself on the sword in his hand and made his way toward the exit right behind the old drunk, Dodger.
He heard a crack. The club breaking another of the soldiers’ skulls, no doubt. Most of the other patrons had already scrambled out the back door. Calder smelled smoke—more smoke than the candles and the fireplace could produce. He glanced back as he fled into the rainy night.
A candle had fallen.
His uncle’s tavern—his tavern—was about to go up in flames.
Calder stumbled onto the wet grass out back, slipping across it every few steps, limping past a stack of firewood. Dodger came to his side, and the pair limped toward the tree line with an arm about each other’s shoulders.
Once there, Calder turned and watched the Broken Mug tavern as it slowly burned to the ground.
“There,” Dodger whispered, pointing toward the middle of the town. A massive, dark patch of shadow seemed to swallow even the barest hint of light. “A portal.”
Calder gripped the falchion tight. He still heard screams—people dying. His gaze flicked to more fires about the village of Berring, the rain barely cutting through the flames. It’s all burning to the ground, and there’s not a damned thing I can do.
Then a light appeared. So bright Calder had to shield his eyes. He blinked hard, waiting for his vision to recover—
Another portal had opened.
Someone was stepping through it.
