Summoned Read online

  Summoned 0

  by

  C.L. Walker

  Chapter 1

  I felt the words more than heard them, like a vibration in my bones.

  “Agmundr, vochex.”

  My name, and the command to awaken. Always the same. An invitation to violence.

  “Agmundr, vochex!”

  The words brought me back to the world, my eyes snapping open before the final drawn-out echo was dead. My body reformed, my skin tingling with its newness, the rage a fire inside.

  I was reborn, and already all I could think about was breaking something. Or someone.

  At first I thought I was on the edge of a cliff, looking out at the caves on the opposite side of a great canyon. It took me a few seconds to realize I was looking at buildings, man-made things stretching into the midnight sky.

  “Agmundr, vochex!”

  I turned slowly to see who had summoned me, to see who had been stupid enough to break the seal on my tomb. I wasn’t impressed by what I saw; he was a small man, a little overweight and nearly bald, sweating under the strain of the magic he was channeling. He drowned in a black robe with its hood up, lost in the heavy fabric he was obviously unaccustomed to wearing.

  “Agmundr—” he began again.

  “I’m already here,” I said before he could shout at me again. “You really only have to call me twice.”

  “I wasn’t sure.” He sounded confident, sure of himself, even as the strain of the powerful magic showed on his features and he got his first glimpse of what he’d done.

  I am an intimidating man, and I was angry; he should have been more worried.

  I waited for him to examine me; there were parts of the ritual for each of us, and showing him what he’d summoned was something I couldn’t avoid. It was irritating but expected.

  He stepped out of the protective circle he’d drawn and slowly walked around me, counting his steps under his breath to make sure he completed enough. He seemed new to the ritual but he made sure to follow it perfectly. I used the time to see if he’d made any changes to my appearance.

  I was six and a half feet tall, my naked body covered in fine, almost invisible tattoos. They would glow when I called on them but for now they lay dormant, waiting to unleash their power. I was as well built as I always was, of course, heavily muscled and imposing. My new master hadn’t altered me at all, so either he wanted me to be the berserker I’d been when the old cleric first bound me, or he hadn’t known how to change my appearance to suit his task.

  When he stepped back into his circle he lowered his head and finished the spell under his breath.

  I felt the final word as he spoke it, even though I couldn’t hear what he said. It was a shock to my system, the final step in bringing me back into the world I hated.

  “Tell me what you want,” I said, tasting the language of my master. It was one of the things that would come to me as part of the summoning, along with whatever other information I needed to complete his request.

  “I want you to destroy my enemy’s men and leave him vulnerable.”

  “What a surprise,” I said. “Just once I’d like someone to request help picking flowers.”

  He looked confused at my words, which made me smile. Messing with my masters always made me smile. It was a small, petty victory, but it pleased me every time.

  “Do you know where you are?” he said. He left his circle and approached me, his confidence clear as he stepped into reach of my fists before stopping.

  “I do.” The knowledge flooded my mind and I tried to ignore it; I was in a city in a new age, the end of what they laughably called the twentieth century. Mechanization now held sway, and petty men like my new master were in charge. Knowledge of modern technology, science, society was all slotted into place in the back of my mind, ready for me to use if I found the need.

  “Then let’s go,” he said, turning on his heel as he let the robe slip to the floor. He was wearing what I now knew to be an expensive suit beneath the ancient robe, recently tailored to accommodate his increasing weight.

  “I have a warning for you, little man.”

  “Oh,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice, as though he hadn’t just turned his back to a giant of a man, a berserker who could take down an army.

  “You should put me back. I am known for killing men who presume to control me.”

  He looked over his shoulder, smirking. I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to tear his face off.

  “Yeah, well, you’ve never been controlled by someone like me before.”

  “When the time comes, remember that I warned you.”

  He turned back to me and looked up, meeting my gaze. I could feel the urgency in him through the link we now shared, but in the moment he seemed more interested in staring me down. It said a lot about the type of man I’d been shackled to, that he would rather assert his dominance than deal with whatever problem had made him frightened enough to risk summoning me.

  “You will do whatever I tell you to do,” he said. “You will behave or I will punish you. You will fight, or you will wish you had.”

  “As you wish,” I replied dismissively. He could hurt me and he could order me around, but that didn’t change who he was, or what I was.

  “Can you dress yourself?” he said, his eyes sliding down my body before he caught himself and looked up again.

  “If you’ve got something for me to wear, I’ll wear it. Armor is normally provided.”

  He bit his lip and looked around, hunting for anything to cover my nakedness. The balcony I’d arrived on belonged to an empty penthouse at the top of an apartment building, and there would be nothing available for me.

  “Wear the robe,” he said, waving at it as he turned his back on me and began walking again. “And hurry up. My enemies are on their way and I need you to fight.”

  I put on the robe but didn’t tie it closed in the front. I’d seen the robe before, when my previous master had worn it. He’d been a true magic weaver, someone who knew the risk he was taking when he woke me. He had been powerful and feared by his enemies. I’d killed him anyway.

  The little man – his name, Phil, came to me – was going to regret dragging me back.

  I left the circle he’d hastily scrawled on the tiled floor and followed him through the empty, darkened penthouse. Descriptions of the things I saw around me kept popping into my head, but I didn’t have time for them. Or need. Air conditioner, telephone, kitchen sink: all concepts that I wouldn’t need in the coming battle. After the slaughter I would be put away again like the weapon I was, and the knowledge would fade anyway.

  “They’re coming up the stairs,” Phil said when we reached the door leading to the short hall the penthouse shared with its twin on the other side of the building. “I jammed the elevator door open up here, so at least they’ll be tired when you face them.”

  “It won’t change the outcome.”

  He stayed in the penthouse and gestured for me to leave ahead of him.

  “Do you have any weapons?” I asked, even as the knowledge that he had come unprepared to equip me popped into my head.

  “I didn’t think you’d need anything like that.” He tried to make it sound like he’d planned it, like he’d known the attackers were coming and knew he was going to summon me. He failed and he knew it, and it made him look away.

  “I will progress down the stairs,” I said. My breathing was speeding up in anticipation of the coming violence. My tattoos were starting to itch. “You will follow me one floor behind. I will know if you are in danger, so try to stay alive if something unexpected happens.”

  “There are at least ten guys coming up here, and they’ve got machine guns.” For the first time he looked scared, and I almost felt for him
. “Can you handle it?”

  “The number of men and their weapons won’t change the outcome, either.”

  I made my way across the hall and entered the stairwell leading down. Phil’s knowledge of firearms filled my mind but it didn’t affect my confidence. There was a reason the old cleric had bound me to this life; once I was pointed in a direction and given an order, there was very little that could stop me.

  I paused for a moment at the top of the steps to offer a silent curse to the Elder Gods. The red mist rose before my sight and then the chaos began.

  Chapter 2

  My summoning had been hasty, but it had still taken long enough to allow the attackers time to almost make it to the top.

  I poked my head over the railing and felt the bullet whizz past my face. Another followed a moment later, but I had already pulled back.

  There was no point in waiting for them; it gave them time to prepare for the assault, and I wasn’t going to get any more bulletproof by standing around.

  I took a short run at the railing and launched myself into the abyss between floors. For a moment, twenty stories of emptiness yawned beneath me and enemy soldiers waited below me. Then I was floor lower and amongst them

  They wore body armor and carried the most powerful weapons I’d ever faced, and none of it made any difference. I wasn’t bulletproof, but I was stronger than their flimsy protections, and their firearms meant nothing with me standing less than a foot in front of them.

  I snatched the first rifle from the hands of a confused man staring up at me. I used it as a club, crushing his face. The man behind him managed to raise the barrel of his own rifle, but I swatted it aside with my bloody improvised club and leapt at him. I knocked him backward and he lost his balance, tipping into the man behind him, and then the man behind that.

  Knowledge blossomed in my mind and I raised the rifle to my shoulder and took aim. It was a marvel, the power of a small squad in the hands of a single man. My finger tightened on the trigger and the men before me jerked in place and lay still.

  I was out of ammunition already, exhausting the pitiful supply that came with the rifle. I tossed it aside and lifted another from the first man I encountered, then continued down the stairs.

  The attackers had risen through the building at different rates, either thanks to fitness or a strategy that ensured they couldn’t all be taken out at once. It didn’t matter which; whatever they had expected at the end of their long trek, it hadn’t been something like me.

  The next two were prepared for an attack, alerted by the screams of their fellows. Bullets spat in my direction, but they were blind firing and nothing landed. I raised my stolen rifle and fired back as I ran toward them.

  I had no real skill in fighting, no finesse to my attacks. That wasn’t my strength, and I was happy to leave it those who trained for hours a day to achieve their beautiful dances of violence.

  No, my forte was madness, chaos. I lived in the incomprehensible moment when the enemy appeared before you and you had to react without thought. I wasn’t thinking as I drove my fist into the face of the first man, crushing his skull beneath my fury. I had no plan as I kicked out at the next attacker to keep him from using his rifle.

  I was on the man before he realized his weapon was gone and a barbarian was on him. He began to yell and I tore his throat out, letting him see the gore in my fist as he began to die.

  A bullet tore through my shoulder and I dropped to the ground. My blood stained the wall behind me and I took a moment to admire it, like primal art on a cave wall.

  The fury had me now, filled me and controlled me. I felt no pain, no remorse. There would be time for that later. In the moment all I could feel was the urge to destroy, and the itchiness of my tattoos continuing to awaken.

  I lifted the man with the missing throat and threw him in the direction of the next enemy, following him down the stairs and leaping to the landing before his body could be shoved aside by his squad mates. I landed between them, on top of the corpse I’d flung, and grabbed them both at the same time. My hand wrapped around each of their throats and I gave my anger a moment to savor what it had wrought, gave myself a heartbeat to grin at them through their fear.

  They were like children, tiny and inconsequential, and I crushed their necks easily.

  My master had said there were ten men, and now six lay dead in my wake. I realized I was laughing, delirious with the joy of battle.

  I grabbed one of the rifles I’d just liberated and fired across the gap, throwing it against the far stairs when it ran dry. The sound of the remaining men running carried in the otherwise empty space, their footsteps falling away and back down to the safety of the lobby.

  I yelled after them, filling the silence with my victory. I had bested them, with their own weapons and with my bare hands, and it felt glorious.

  “What are you waiting for?” my master said, approaching slowly behind me.

  I turned on him, a murderous grin on my face. “They are routed. We have won the day.”

  “Then finish them.”

  I turned without thinking and looked over the railing, trying to judge their location by the fading echoes of their retreat. They were three, perhaps four floors below me. Easily within reach.

  My tattoos had begun to glow a dull red, my bloodlust fueling them and bringing their power to life.

  “Follow me,” I said without turning back to the man who’d unleashed me. “Use the elevator. I will be on the ground to meet you.”

  I didn’t wait for his pathetic request for an explanation, or to see if he was pleased with the power I was about to display. I had orders to follow and soldiers to destroy.

  I vaulted the railing that protected people from falling to their deaths. The blood-tattoos on my arms flared with the angry red of a fresh wound in preparation. I fell into the abyss, my eyes scanning the stairs for my quarry.

  They were lower than I’d expected and they were terrified, taking the stairs fast enough that they were stumbling every few steps. Their eyes kept scanning the way behind them, desperate to know what manner of enemy was coming their way.

  I reached out for the next railing and clamped my hand on it as the tattoos on my arm glowed bright. My weight tore it free of the stairs, slowing me and allowing the next railing down the opportunity to arrest my fall.

  The men didn’t even fire as I pulled myself onto the stairs below them. They were so surprised they didn’t manage to react at all.

  “Run from me,” I said beneath my breath as I started back up the stairs. “For I am Agmundr, and I have come for your life.”

  My whisper might have carried in the stillness of the stairwell, or they might have been so far gone in their fear that they needed no push from me; one moment they were waiting above me, out of sight around the corner, and the next they were running the other way.

  I followed, taking the stairs three at a time as the red mist filled my vision. I rounded a corner and found them waiting for me, their hands in the air and their weapons at their feet.

  “Hey, dude,” one said, his voice breaking as his eyes tried to take in what he was seeing. “We’re sorry, alright?”

  The other one appeared dumb, unable to even muster the strength to beg for mercy.

  “We were just following orders, man. We were just doing what we were told. We’re done. We’re sorry. We’re—”

  I punched him in the chest, shattering his ribs and driving them into his lungs and heart. His eyes remained on my face for the rest of his life.

  “Please,” the other one now managed. “Please.”

  “Would you have killed me?” I said, glaring down at him, daring him to lie to me. “If I had been as sorry as you, would you have fired your weapon at me to get to my master?”

  We both knew the answer. I could see it on his face, the flash of despair as he realized his begging wouldn’t save him because I knew what he was.

  “Please,” was all he said, a barely audible whisper.
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  I spared him any pain, driving my fist into his head and his head into the wall. There was nothing left of him to feel pain.

  The blood-tattoos were alive, ready to do whatever I wanted. They burned with the need to act for me, to lash out for me, protect me. Etched in my skin with the blood of my wife, they were the curse that bound me to my life, and they were made for violence.

  I left the cooling remains of my master’s enemies and ran to join him in the lobby.

  Chapter 3

  My master was waiting for me.

  “I have a car outside,” he said, turning to the glass doors leading out into the wondrous city beyond.

  “Are you sure there are no more?”

  “I watched them coming on the cameras. There was only one more guy and he ran before I got down here.”

  He waved a device at me and I understood what he was saying, the alien concepts appearing fully formed in my mind. He could see the buildings surveillance cameras, which he accessed with his PDA.

  The century I had been brought to was a marvel, but I knew I wouldn’t get much chance to experience it. I was here for a reason and when I was done following orders I would be returned to my prison, if Phil had any sense. That was the way of my life and there was no reason to think it was going to change now.

  Thousands of years had passed since I was first bound to the locket, and I expected to be bound for thousands more. Nothing in my life would change before the end of days.

  The car was a long, black vehicle, large and impossibly shiny. I climbed into the back and Phil slipped behind the wheel. He pulled off and put us on a road away from the building before thinking to tell me what we were doing.

  I didn’t mind the silence; it gave me time to admire the dark world through the tinted windows.

  The city seemed abandoned, no more than a handful of people visible at any one time. It was late at night and the air was cold, but I wondered where the teeming throngs I’d seen in much smaller cities over the centuries had gone. A city as massive as this should have had crowds of people on the street begging for food, at least. A city of this size should have felt more lived in.