Once In a Blue Moon Page 5

  “See the wolf’s paw, little man? I cut it off a werewolf I killed in Redhart, when I was just starting out. Hacked the paw right off and had it made into this useful charm, so I can share the wolf’s strength and speed. No one gets in my way and gets away with it. I have a destiny to fulfil! I’m going to carve you up and cut you into little pieces, little man.”

  Hawk said nothing. Just stood where he was, in his experienced fighter’s crouch, axe at the ready, looking like the solid, skilled warrior he was. Students were running into the hall from all directions—not to interfere, but to watch and learn. News of the two clashing legends had spread quickly through the Millennium Oak, and now students and tutors alike were pressing forward to watch the fight. Because some lessons are best observed firsthand. Hawk didn’t move, or even look around, but he did smile briefly at the Wulfshead.

  “Don’t mind them,” he said easily. “They just like to watch me work.”

  The Wulfshead laughed theatrically, and swept his blade back and forth. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, flexed his muscles ostentatiously, and sneered at Hawk. “Pay attention, everyone!” he said loudly. “And I will show you how it’s done. And when it’s over, Fisher, you can take me on a guided tour of my new home.”

  He surged forward while he was still speaking, an old trick, and Hawk went forward to meet him. The Wulfshead stamped and danced around Hawk, darting this way and that, moving almost too quickly for the human eye to follow. He laughed at Hawk, taunting him, darting in and out, his sword seemingly everywhere at once . . . without actually committing himself to anything, trying to provoke Hawk into making the first attack. But Hawk just held his fighter’s crouch, shuffling slowly round so he was always facing the Wulfshead, no matter how quickly the outlaw tried to catch him off balance. For all the much younger man’s speed and fury, somehow Hawk was always in the right place at the right time.

  Finally the Wulfshead realised he was getting short of breath to no purpose. He roared deafeningly and hurled himself forward, his sword flashing in for the kill . . . and there was Hawk, waiting for him. His axe lashed out in one simple, brutal movement and buried itself in the Wulfshead’s chest. There was a loud cracking sound, as the heavy steel axe head slammed right through the silver chain holding the wolf’s paw, through the outlaw’s breastbone, and deep into his heart. Blood coursed down from the terrible wound, and the Wulfshead stood very still. His hand slowly opened, and the sword dropped from his numb fingers. The blade made a loud noise as it hit the floor, but neither Hawk nor the Wulfshead looked down. They only had eyes for each other.

  The outlaw’s mouth moved. Blood came out of it, and spilled down over his chin. “How . . . ?”

  “The High Warlock made this axe, for the original Hawk,” said Hawk. “It can cut through anything, including magical defences. Like the disguised charm hidden inside a wolf’s paw. This axe was handed down to me through all the other Hawks, just so I could deal with dangerous little shits like you.”

  “Oh,” said the Wulfshead.

  Hawk jerked the axe head out of the outlaw’s chest, in a flurry of blood, and the Wulfshead collapsed and fell to the floor, as though that had been all that was holding him up. Hawk looked down at him, and then raised his axe and brought it swinging sharply down again, to cut off the Wulfshead’s head. Just in case. There was a great burst of applause, and not a little cheering, from all those watching in the entrance hall, from students and tutors alike. Some money changed hands here and there, but not a lot; most people had more sense than to bet against Hawk.

  “Nice work,” said Fisher, moving forward to stand beside Hawk. “I knew you could take him.”

  “But you would have cut him down from behind, if it looked like I was losing?” said Hawk.

  “Of course,” said Fisher. And they shared a quiet grin. Then they turned unhurriedly to look at the Wulfshead’s seven followers, standing very close together and doing their best to appear completely unthreatening.

  “All right,” said Hawk. “There’s a place for you here, if you want it. Stay here as students, learn how to be real fighters, and how to atone for all the things you did before you got here. Or you can leave. Now. Your choice.”

  “We’d like to stay,” said one of the former Werewolves, and the others nodded quickly in agreement. Fisher signalled the security guards, who moved forward and disarmed the outlaws.

  “See they get a good meal,” growled Fisher. “They look half-starved.”

  The guards led the ex-outlaws away. A student in the watching crowd held up his hand to ask a question, as though he was still in class.

  “Excuse me, sir Hawk,” he said diffidently, “but according to all the old songs and stories we heard in the Forest Kingdom, the original Hawk’s axe, the one made specially for him by the High Warlock, was lost during Hawk and Fisher’s visit to the otherworldly realm of Reverie, home to the Blue Moon, where they finally confronted and destroyed the Demon Prince.”

  Hawk waited a moment, to be sure the student had finished, and then nodded briskly. “Even that couldn’t keep the axe from its rightful owner.” He paused for a moment, to clean the last of the blood from his axe head with a piece of cloth, then tucked the cloth back into his sleeve and put the axe back at his side. He realised the student was still looking at him. “The axe turned up again, when it was needed. As such things have a habit of doing.”

  “It just goes to show,” Fisher said cheerfully, turning her back on the dead body lying on the floor, “never believe everything you read in a story or hear in a song.”

  “And never trust a minstrel,” said Hawk.

  • • •

  The Auditions started at noon, but long before then the massive Audition Hall at the heart of the great Millennium Oak was packed from wall to wall with willing hopefuls, heroes-in-waiting, and desperate last-chancers. They came from far and wide, from every country and background, and some from cities and cultures no one had ever heard of. There were no entrance fees and no conditions. By long tradition, if you could find your way to the Hero Academy, you would get your chance to show what you could do and demonstrate your worthiness to be accepted. There wasn’t even a limit to the number of students admitted to the Academy every year; if you could prove you had what it takes, the Academy would make room for you. Of course, every potential student had to show their stuff right there, when called on, in front of everyone, and tough luck if you froze. The Audition process wasn’t for the faint of heart, but that was part of the challenge. If you couldn’t deliver in front of an audience, what use would you be in a battle?

  Hawk and Fisher got there early. They always liked to make a point of that, taking their seats on the dais at the rear of the Audition Hall, so they could watch the place filling up. Long experience had taught them that if they didn’t, potential students would look in, see the empty chairs, and go away again. Because if Hawk and Fisher weren’t there, it meant the Auditions weren’t anywhere near getting started, so there was no point in showing their faces. Besides, Hawk and Fisher liked to sit back and watch the students gather, study their hopeful faces, and make quiet side bets on which ones would faint or wet themselves, or have a fit of the vapours, the moment they were called on to perform.

  Some tutors turned up to watch and some didn’t. Because some were people persons and some most definitely weren’t. Some weren’t even people, strictly speaking. You didn’t get on staff at the Hawk and Fisher Memorial Academy by having a pleasant manner; you secured your place by demonstrating extraordinary skills and sheer force of will. Roland the Headless Axeman turned up for every Audition, standing beside Hawk, disdaining anything as soft and comfortable as a chair. He stood unnaturally still, his back perfectly straight, seeming to observe absolutely everything. Even though he didn’t have any eyes. Or ears.

  He doesn’t miss anything, Hawk said once.

  Oh, he must do, said Fisher. It was a very old joke, even then.

  I heard that, said Roland. I’m not
deaf.

  Then what are you? said Hawk.

  Complicated, said Roland.

  Fisher then said something extremely rude, and everyone present pretended not to have heard.

  The Alchemist would slouch in whenever he felt like it, glaring around at everyone else as though they’d kept him waiting. He wore a grubby white lab robe, with many colourful stains and scorch marks. He’d been wearing it for years, and on bad days you could smell it coming long before you ever saw the Alchemist. He could have had it cleaned, or even bought a nice new one, but apparently he considered the various signs of hard use as battle scars or marks of honour. It made a statement, he liked to say, though of what exactly, no one was too sure. Survival against the odds, probably. And it did help to put his students into a suitably cautious state of mind.

  The Alchemist himself was painfully thin, jumpy, and a decidedly testy sort, with a number of nervous twitches that chased one another round his body. He had an ascetic scholar’s face, with a haunted, preoccupied look. There were always a great many bets among his students as to whether he’d actually make it to the end of term. But somehow he always did. Even if his laboratory sometimes didn’t. There was no doubt he knew his stuff, and a whole bunch of other stuff that nobody else knew; and he was an excellent teacher, as long as you paid careful attention, and hit the floor when he told you to. He might not be able to turn lead into gold, yet, but he could blow shit up with great skill and never-ending enthusiasm. Many a battle had been won with one of the Alchemist’s little helpers. It was just that his extensive knowledge was accompanied by a wide-ranging curiosity and a complete lack of self-preservation instincts. At all of his lectures, there was always a scuffle between those who were going to sit up close, where they could see everything, and those who just wanted to stay safely at the back, near the door. And it was standard practice that if the Alchemist should say “Oops,” it was every student for himself.

  Jonas Crane the Bladesmaster, head tutor in all the soldiering skills, sauntered into the hall at the very last moment and stood at parade rest next to Fisher. He was the Academy’s only Bladesmaster, now that Anton la Vern was gone. He didn’t say anything, as he stood glaring out over the Audition hopefuls; he didn’t have to. His whole stance, wrapped in gleaming chain mail armour, spoke volumes. Fisher sighed, heavily.

  “You’re not happy, are you, Jonas? I say this on the grounds that your stance is disapproving so loudly it’s giving me a headache.”

  “La Vern was a Bladesmaster,” said Crane, in his harsh soldier’s voice. “We don’t grow on trees. Even if some of us teach in them.” That might or might not have been a joke. Crane wasn’t exactly famous for his sense of humour. In fact, some said that if he did smile, it meant it was going to rain for forty days.

  “We’ll get you another assistant Bladesmaster as soon as we can,” said Hawk.

  “I want a raise,” said Jonas Crane.

  “It’s nice to want things,” said Fisher. “Now stop moaning, or I will slap you one, and it will hurt.”

  Crane snorted loudly but had nothing more to say. For the moment. In Hawk and Fisher’s experience, Crane was never short of things to say, in his own good time. He also had a tendency to loom, in a meaningful sort of way. Crane was a large and blocky man in his late forties, as ugly as a cow’s arse, and strangely proud of his great barbarian’s mane of long blonde hair. He dyed it, and only thought no one else knew. He had a certain kind of animal magnetism, which attracted a certain kind of student, and his bed was rarely empty. If any of his conquests started getting too possessive, Crane would let them fight it out in a public duel.

  Lily Peck, the Academy’s Witch in Residence, was always the last to arrive. A gifted and highly experienced adept at every kind of magic you could name, and some best not discussed in front of the easily shocked, Lily was short and dumpy, defiantly middle-aged, in a sweet and cosy way, who turned people into small, smelly snot creatures only when they really annoyed her. She was always ready to lend an ear, because she loved gossip, and she could brew a lust philtre that would blow the top of your head off. This sometimes led to complaints, particularly when she drank the stuff herself, and then there would be loud recriminations, and tears before bedtime, and before you knew it . . . it was small-hopping-thing time again.

  Lily Peck preferred to stand at the very back of the dais, half-hidden behind the other tutors. Not because she was shy, but because she didn’t believe in making a target of herself. You don’t get to be a really powerful witch without making many enemies, among the living and the dead. She always carried a dead cat balanced on her shoulder, which hunched and spat at everyone and observed the world through malevolent fused-over eyes. Hawk winced as Lily took up her usual position, just behind his chair.

  “I do wish you’d get yourself a new familiar, Lily. That cat is getting decidedly whiffy.”

  “You’re just prejudiced against the mortally challenged,” said Lily. “Spot’s a good cat.”

  “He is not mortally challenged, he is dead,” Hawk said firmly. “And he stinks! I know he’s dead because my dog keeps trying to roll on him, and I can tell he’s decaying because my eyes start to water every time you bring him anywhere near me. Why couldn’t you settle for a parrot on your shoulder, like most people?”

  “Because I am not like most people!” said Lily. “And I am not a pirate! I’m a witch, and some traditions you just don’t mess with. I’ll get a new familiar when this one falls apart, and not before. That is one of the traditional tests for how your familiar’s doing; if he nods his head and it falls off, it’s time to upgrade.”

  “I remember Cook talking to me once,” said Fisher, “about how you can tell when a game bird is ready to eat.”

  Hawk looked at her suspiciously. “What?”

  “You hang it up by the head, and when the neck rots through and the body falls to the floor, that’s when it’s ready to eat,” said Fisher. “And she also told me that when she had to deal with game meat, she was always careful to grease her arms up to the elbows, so that when the maggots came crawling out of the meat, they couldn’t get up her arms.”

  “I am never eating game meat again,” said Hawk.

  “You are so unadventurous,” said Fisher.

  By now the massive Audition Hall was packed with row upon row of hopeful prospects, squeezed so tightly together they could hardly breathe. The only space left open was the demonstration area, before the dais. It was marked out with white chalk lines on the floor, with guards standing by to enforce them, the guards were hardly ever needed. No one was stupid enough to risk being thrown out before they’d even had a chance to show what they could do.

  The crowd didn’t contain just hopeful young things; unfortunately, there were parents too. There to be supportive, or protective; to cheer or cry or pick arguments with the judges, as necessary. There were always some parents determined to live out their dreams through their children, to make them the heroes and warriors they’d always known they could have been . . . if only they could have found the time. And some parents (usually but not always mothers of a certain age) were there to fight to the death over any decision that didn’t favour their particular offspring. The heavily armed security guards drew lots in advance to see who got this duty, because the hazard pay was never enough to justify what they had to go through.

  When it finally became clear that you couldn’t cram one more Auditioner into the hall, even if you greased them from head to foot and used a crowbar, Hawk and Fisher rose to their feet and the whole hall fell silent. The crowd was hushed, wrapped in an almost unbearable tension. Hawk and Fisher gave their usual brief speech of welcome and warning (Give it your best shot, but don’t waste our time) and then sat down again and gestured for the Auditions to begin. They kept the speech short because they knew everyone there was so on edge, and so caught up in themselves, that they could have announced the imminent end of the world and no one would have noticed.

  The Administrator
appeared, apparently out of nowhere, and jabbed his blackthorn staff at the first petitioner, and just like that, the Hero Auditions began.

  First up was a really impressive performance from a would-be sorcerer. He was still in his late teens, though the black robes and white face paint made him look older as he produced clouds of billowing black smoke, shot flames from his hands, and pulled a dead rabbit out of his hat. Given his reaction to the rabbit being dead, and the speed with which he stuffed it back into the hat, presumably the dead part hadn’t been intentional. He got some applause, and bobbed his head quickly in all directions, until Lily Peck stepped forward and fixed him with a cold glare.

  “Nice try,” she said, “but that’s not sorcery. Those were all tricks and illusions. The quickness of the hand deceives the mind, and all that. Come back when you’ve learned some real magic, and not before.”

  The young man disappeared back into the crowd before she’d even finished talking. Bunny-killer, murmured some sections of the crowd.

  An archer was the next to step forward, longbow in hand. He then made a long and tearful speech about what an honour it was to be there, and how much this would have meant to his poor dear dead granny, who had always believed in him . . . and how he was doing this for her . . . Until Hawk leant forward and shut the archer up with a cold look.

  “Sorry,” said Hawk, “but we don’t do sentiment here. There’s a target off to your right. Hit the bull’s-eye or piss off.”

  “Right,” said Fisher. “What are you going to do in the middle of a battle, make the other side cry so hard they can’t see to shoot straight?”