A Plague of Lions
Our task was simple: burn a field of flowers. But we were mercenaries. People who assigned mercenaries simple tasks never gave them a task which also turned out to also be easy.
Our employer was the kind of fastidious bureaucrat who always annoyed the hell out of me — I’m too good of a liar for him to suspect it — the kind of guy who worried more about a misplaced quill than a dead soldier. While pawing through the effects of the late King Cordozo he’d found a note: “burn a field of flowers,” a map location, and a fast approaching to-do date. So he’d hired us.
The location was out at the far edges of the Argo Empire. Far beyond the countries the late Queen Venetta had been able to manage by herself, and on the edge of the land granted to her appointed governor, the late King Cordozo. The previous year had been a deadly one for sovereign dragon arcanists.
In addition to their other powers, arcanists healed quickly and didn’t age. The nature of their other powers varied with the eldrin they were bonded to, and dragons were the undisputed top of the pile. Queen Veletta had lived for over a thousand years before she and her dragon were assassinated.
There were no arcanists in my band.
When I and my squad approached the appointed place, wagons full of people and goods gradually grew on the roads around us. I’m not the curious type, but eventually Jenkins asked a pretty young thing driving a wagonload of food. “Where is everyone going?”
“To the flower festival. Haven’t you heard of it? Every hundred years, an arcanist asks hundreds of people to stand on the pathways in a field and defend it from a dragon. You can’t actually step on the flowers — they have to be undisturbed — but if you succeed you get to be an arcanist and live forever.”
“How many fifteen-year-olds try to defend the field and how many eldrin are available for them, on average?” Jenkins asked, drawing idle circles on the bench seat of the wagon bench as his hand crept closer to the driver.
The young lady scooted away and Jenkins pulled back his hand. “You don’t understand,” she said. “Everyone gets an eldrin. Everyone who passes the trial of worth becomes an arcanist, from fifteen all the way up to ninety.”
“Heh, I guess these people don’t know the dragon isn’t coming this year,” Harper joked, next to Jenkins.
We started talking about what we would do if we all became arcanists. It didn’t really matter what the eldrin’s other powers were. Arcanists healed fast and never aged. Their reflexes never slowed with the passing of decades. And healing faster than an ordinary human? Every mercenary wanted that.
I don’t know what I had been expecting, a field a few acres across, at most. But what I saw was hillsides completely covered with yellow flowers, as if someone had been continuously planting them for a hundred years. Yellow covered fields and valleys for as far as the eye could see, divided up by criss-crossing pathways across the entire expanse.
And the “hundreds” of families who were here to pass the eldrin’s trial of worth? There were easily ten thousand tents, erected on every available open path. Word that King Cordozo and his dragon were dead had obviously gotten around.
“So let me get this right,” Smitty — not one of the smarter men on the squad — said. “All these people got to do is stand around in a field at night and they each get to be an arcanist? Sounds too good to be true.”
I ran a hand down my face. “And we’ve been hired to stop them.”
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Sitting around the fire with my squad that evening, Jenkins and Smitty took up positions opposite, with Harper at my side. My veterans looked resolved, while the rest of the squad looked grim. “You all know the mission. Let’s hear some ideas.”
“Seriously?” One of the newest piped up. “We’re looking at ten thousand against twenty. It’s hopeless.”
“Contribute or shut up,” Harper growled.
The new guy looked to Smitty for support and didn’t get it. Smitty stared at the fire, thick eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he absently pulled on his lip.
“We could spread out and fire the tents,” Jenkins said. “Packed in close like they are, they should go up pretty quick.”
“Quite a few city folk in the mix,” Smitty commented. “They’re used to jumping when somebody yells fire.”
“Is that going to help us or hurt us?” Harper asked.
Smitty shrugged, “Just saying. That’s all.”
“We’re not seriously considering leaving?” New guy asked. Both Smitty and Jenkins looked to me to see how I wanted to handle it, before replying.
“The contract is with the royal government of the Argo Empire. We come back and tell them we failed, or worse don't report back at all, some people with very long memories are going to be upset with us. Of course we’ll leave if we have to, but not before we’ve considered every alternative.”
Harper chuckled. “Trust me, the captain will think of something. It’ll be stupid crazy, but it’ll work.”
“If it works, it ain't stupid,” Smitty said.
The silence and hopeful stares which followed told me what I needed to know. Nobody had any good ideas, yet. Truth to tell, most of the squad’s crazy ideas weren’t mine. I just approved them.
I made a show of taking a slow sip of my drink, as if it just now occurred to me that I’d have to talk. “We don’t know enough yet and we still have a few days to go. Get some sleep and then tomorrow we get our bearings. Harper, find out what that arcanist can do, and if he’s the only one. Jenkins, survey the camp. I want to know where every oil drum, gunpowder supply, or anything else flammable can be found. If we can make this look like an accident, we stay safer than the alternative. Smitty, meet some people and find out what they know. Teams, follow your sergeant. I’m going to turn in, and I suggest you do too.”
My own bedroll was farthest from the fire. Sometimes men need to talk things out amongst themselves. Ageless virtual immortality for the taking… I didn’t have anything better to offer them.
As soon as I stood, Harper stood up and brushed off his pants. “Watch rotation–”
“No watch tonight,” I interrupted.
All three sergeants shot me a surprised look, but simply nodded. If a few people wanted to slink off during the night, who was I to stop them?
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I didn’t know what our plan would be — we needed to know more about what we faced — but whatever plan we actually followed, I doubted it would involve fire. A few deserters spreading misinformation might help more than hurt.
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Although I had expected to lose a few people during the night, I didn’t expect Smitty and Jenkins to be the only two remaining in the morning.
Smitty handed me a warm mug as I joined them. “Harper is out rounding everybody up. They partied a bit too hard last night.”
“With what we need to do, the men can take their time coming back,” I lied back. “Go let him know.”
Smitty frowned with confusion, but hopped up. He’d relay the message word-for-word, and Harper would understand.
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It was a few days before we saw the flower lion, strutting through the encampment like it was the most important thing there, which I guess it was. Despite being over a hundred years old and having the general shape of a lion, it was only the size of a large dog. Its skin looked like green leaves, tightly wrapped against its form. Its mane was a large yellow flower, similar in shape and color — if not size — to the yellow flowers growing all about us. And at the lip of its leonine tail was a white puff of a seed pod, larger than its head.
The eldrin’s arcanist, on the other hand, was a ball of anorexic anxiety. Like most immortal arcanists, who stopped aging upon bonding, he looked only fifteen, but his mannerisms were of a man much older. Every time someone stepped near a flower, he’d twitch like it was his own foot about to be stomped on. At this distance, I couldn’t see the arcanist mark mystically carved into his forehead, but I didn’t need to. I already knew what I’d see: a seven pointed star with an outline or some other symbol of his eldrin intertwined with the points.
“What can he do?” I asked Smitty.
“Temporarily make plants big, make things weigh less when he’s touching them — and maybe a few seconds after — and eat sunlight for food.” Smitty rubbed the toe of his boot in the dirt. “I don’t understand that last one.”
“I do. Harper?”
“The plants are actually baby eldrin–”
“They’re mystic creatures,” Jenkins said. “They’re not called eldrin until after they’ve bonded.”
“Whatever. The plants are actually mystic creatures, like caterpillars to butterflies. They are actual plants and have no poison — as a matter of fact, the entire thing from flower to leaves to roots is edible. If they can go one hundred years without being touched by human hands, they turn into green lion kittens. Their trial of worth is a simple oath to make more. But the definition of “touched” is a bit broad: step on them, hit them with a stick, dig them up and put them in a pot, and the clock resets.”
“But if a deer eats a few leaves,” Jenkins said, “and a human herded the deer there…”
“Hey, it’s only been a few days. Be grateful I found out what I did.”
The beginnings of a plan formed in my mind. “Harper, find the men. Let them know I’m retiring, and we won’t be looking for them. Smitty, see if you can round up streamers, paper mache, and any other crafting other stuff kids would like. No toys, just craft supplies. You three want to spend the next few days getting drunk, you have my permission. You want to help with the kiddos, your help would be welcome.”
“What’s the real plan, sir?” Jenkins asked.
“We’re going to turn the children into dragons.”
The men thought I was crazy, but they also didn’t leave, joining me in “retirement” as they had joined me in everything else.
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With some intense scouting, I had discovered four vantage points which could see all the fields between them. The fields were large, but we had war bows with draw weights of over one hundred and fifty pounds. Any of us could hit something the size of a dog. All we needed was a distraction which drove the eldrin out of the crowds into the fields.
As I had expected, with everyone fifteen and over watching the sky for dragons and watching the fields for the first sighting of a green kitten among the yellow, the twelve to fourteen-year-olds were left to take care of the little ones and were thrilled when an adult came along with something fun for themselves and the little ones to do. We made dragon masks, and wove together bright streamers. We practiced roaring at each other, and played lots of variations of tag and keep-away. And the young baby-sitters, I treated like adults. They ate it up.
Every drop of the squad's coffers went into the plan. Soon my little army numbered in the hundreds.
On the night before the big day, I sat the elder kids down.
“You are all old enough to know how the world really works,” I explained. “Those in power don’t want a bunch of peasants like us becoming arcanists. The real dragon isn’t coming this year, but that doesn’t mean what is expected to happen tomorrow will just be ignored. When the empire notices, instead of burning down this field, they’ll burn down your homes with you and the little ones inside them.
“Now, the adults are too blinded by hope to understand that. They’re hoping that their luck will last, that this time, they’ll get their happily ever after. But you and I, we know better. When we do this, nothing will change. Your parents won’t become arcanists with useless powers, and they won’t be killed. You will, likely, get a beating. But you will have saved your parents lives.”
A few kids sniffled, and one sobbed, but overall they held up to bad news better than many troops I’ve led.
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I waited in a tree, war bow in hand, scanning the fields for movement. The kids had their streamers and masks in red and blue and every other color of the rainbow besides green. Kill the eldrin and their arcanist becomes an ordinary mortal. And a dead eldrin who had caused this whole problem was something I could take back to my employer.
“It won’t work, you know,” said a voice above me. I whirled and saw the arcanist standing on a tree branch, swaying in the breeze. The branch looked too small to hold anything heavier than a sparrow, but he stood on it armed with two swords and wearing at least twenty pounds of armor.
“What won’t work?” putting on my best innocent face.
“I sent Dandy, my lion, away where you can’t find him. Everyone already knows of your plans to set the fields on fire. That won’t work. Soon, hundreds of deserving people will be the arcanists they were always meant to be.”
I grinned despite myself. The one thing most likely to frighten the children away was that eldrin with its long claws and sharp teeth. And my opponent had removed that threat for me.
Alarm bells sounded. “The dragon! That dragon is coming!”
The arcanist and every other adult eye looked up. And while they were looking the wrong direction, children charged across the fields, running in circles and stomping on flowers.
I had expected only a small percentage of the kids to break free and defy their parents orders, but my plan had succeeded beyond my expectations. Children were everywhere.
Their parents tried to catch them, but were afraid to leave the paths. The kids easily kept away from their grasping hands.
The arcanist screamed and lept, floating through the air for hundreds of yards. He landed among the children, drew his sword, and started mowing them down.
In all my scheming, I’d been focusing on the eldrin and its natural weaponry, discounting its weak powers. But I’d forgotten the arcanist, who had spent over a hundred years practicing and training, with the goal of eventually fighting a dragon. Children were no challenge.
I could only watch horrified as the skilled swordsman spun and bobbed, floating nearly weightless one moment and crashing down with his full bodyweight the next. All four of us fired our bows, but at that range the bolts just bounced off the arcanist’s armor.
Terrified parents surged forward to shield their children, trampling the entire field to mud. If ten thousand against twenty was terrible odds, ten thousand against one was even worse. There was nowhere the arcanist could go, no distance he could leap, which would protect him from the mob.
He lasted longer than I expected, and took dozens of people down with him. But once a lucky grab clutched an ankle and pulled him to earth, the fight was pretty much over. I didn’t wait to see if they killed him on the spot or tortured him first. Once the anguished parents finished with the arcanist, they’d start looking for someone else to vent their grief upon.
… and my men and I were pretty high on the list.
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The witch hunt ended after several days. A few deserters from my squad were hung repeatedly: dangling by the necks to the point of death, then let down to rest for a breath or two before repeating the process, over and over until their throats swelled and they died. Everyone eventually gave up searching for us and went back to wherever they had come from.
Once we came out of hiding and met back up again, my sergeants and I tracked the flower lion and killed it. We had our proof to take back to our employer.
In the makeshift lair, we also found four green kittens, so young their eyes had yet to open. During our journey home, they grew and matured, but that growth stopped at less than six months of age. They would remain that age, on the edge of kittenhood, until they bonded… no matter how long that took.
Once we got paid for our adventure, we would find arcanists for these creatures. And I just so happened to know four available candidates.