John hewed at the wheat stalks with mindless repetition while his grandson, Peter, worked the garden plot, eradicating the invading weeds before they could choke off the vegetables that would see them through the winter. It was their private war, a minuscule mock-up of the turmoil that has been ravaging two kingdoms for more than a decade.

John Langdon, even after twenty years the name felt wrong on his tongue and rang hollow in his ears. It was as big a lie as him pretending to be a farmer. Although, after nearly a decade of toiling, it was at the very least a partial truth. He stood, pressing a hand against his lower back and rolling his shoulder to relieve the pain. John sighed, as much at the tedium of farming as the constant discomfort brought on by old age.

“Grandfather!” Peter called out from the garden. “Riders approach!”

The old man shaded his eyes with a gnarly hand and squinted. His vision was not as sharp as it once was, few things were these day, but he was able to make out three men on horseback riding toward the homestead at a steady trot. While he could not distinguish the crest stitched onto their tabards, the colors marked them as soldiers in the king’s army. He strode across the wheat field on aching knees, reaching Peter’s side just a couple of minutes before the soldiers arrived.

“What do you think they want, Grandfather?”

“Probably coin or maybe food for the army. They don’t have a wagon with them, so I’m guessing the former.”

Peter grinned. “Not that we have much of either one to give them.”

John grunted as he eyed the men, now close enough that even his old eyes could make out every feature clearly. “You keep quiet. Let me do the talking.”

Peter said nothing, nodding his acquiescence.

“What brings the king’s men all the way out to this withered patch of ground?” John asked when the riders reigned in their mounts a few paces from where he and Peter stood.

The sergeant, his rank denoted by the symbol on his red and gold tabard, looked down upon the divergent pair. “Tell the boy to pack a single bag. He’s being conscripted into the king’s service.”

Peter’s mouth gaped open and his eyes widened in fear, but John silenced him with a hand on his shoulder. “He’s only fourteen, two years below drafting age.”

“The war is not going well. King Arman has lowered the age of conscription.”

“The war hasn’t been going well for ten damn years! Throwing children into the meat grinder ain’t going to change it.”

The sergeant shrugged. “I have my orders, and you have yours. Boy, go pack your bag before your grandfather gets himself into trouble.”

“Grandfather…” Peter said, his voice pleading.

John reached under his shirt and displayed a gold medallion with the king’s crest on it. “Your war already took the boy’s father, and his mother is in the ground as well. I’m invoking the exemption given to me by King Armen the elder.”

“The king has revoked all special grants and pardons issued prior to his coronation.”

“Not this one.”

“I was told all, and all it is. Send the boy to pack a bag, and do not get in our way.”

Fire burned behind the old man’s eyes so hot that it was a miracle the sergeant did not spontaneously combust. He let out a long breath and nodded slowly. “Go to the house.”

“But, Grandfather, I don’t want to go to war!”

“I said go to the house!”

Peter knew better than to defy his grandfather. Although never the jovial type, he had only seen him truly riled a few times, and in those instances, the target of his ire backed down, so fierce and intimidating was his presence. Peter turned and ran to the small farmhouse, his eyes watering and his heart pounding.

John watched his grandson until he disappeared inside before turning his gaze back to the soldiers. “Maybe you don’t recognize this medal for what it is, and I’m willing to let it go if you turn around, ride out, and don’t ever come back.”

“Or what?” the sergeant asked, his eyes flicking to the sickle the old man gripped in his hand. “You going to scythe us all down like your wheat?”

John looked down at the tool, not realizing he still held it until now. He shook his head. “No.” The soldiers’ chuckling ceased when his eyes bored back into the sergeant. “Just you.” He pointed with the sickle as he spoke. “That one I’ll shoot with your pistol. I’ll bury your dagger in the other’s back when he turns to run.”

The sergeant’s face reddened, and whatever courtesy he afforded the man given his age vanished. “You’ve made a bad decision, old man.”

“I guess there’s a lot of that going around these days.”

The leader pulled his musket pistol from its holster and pointed it down, aiming between the cantankerous geezer’s eyes. John moved with a speed that belied his age, grabbed the gun by the barrel, and pulled the sergeant out of his saddle. The sickle came flashing down, and he buried half its length into the man’s neck.

The two junior enlisted men fumbled to raise their muskets. Unlike theirs, John’s hands moved with practiced precision, without the slightest tremble impeding his well-honed skill. The pistol spat smoke and fire, sending one of the soldiers flipping off the back of his saddle, his rifle discharging harmlessly into the air. The second man brought his sights in line, but his horse, while trained, was not battle hardened, and its nervous shuffling fouled his aim.

John moved so as to place the sergeant’s horse between himself and the shooter, but he need not have bothered. The untested soldier’s aim was off the mark and the shot plowed a divot in the dry soil several feet from where John stood. The soldier threw down his musket and made to draw his sword, but when he met the old man’s eyes, he saw no mercy, fear, or uncertainty. Only the promise of impending death.

He wheeled his mount around and buried his spurs into the animal’s flanks. The horse leapt a foot into the air before its steel-shod hooves dug into the ground and propelled it and its rider away. John reached down, plucked the dagger from the sergeant’s hip, and hurled it at the fleeing man.

He winced when a tendon in his arm rolled painfully, sending the projectile off its mark. The blade sank high into the soldier’s shoulder blade, a painful, debilitating wound, but far from fatal.

With a curse, more for missing than the residual pain of his aching arm, John retrieved one of the fallen muskets, found the shot, wad, and powder, and reloaded the gun without ever taking his eyes off the rider. After blowing out the dirt clogging the rear sight, John took careful aim, one eye noting the way the grass and wheat stalks bent and feeling the force of the breeze blowing through his grey, bristly beard.

His aim was a full two feet wide of his target when he let out a slow breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger. The musket shot flew from the bore, and by the time the ball flew the two hundred-fifty feet to its target, the wind and gravity had guided it perfectly in line with the back of the man’s head.

John allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk when the soldier fell from his saddle, his body kicking up a cloud of dust as it tumbled to a stop. The old man turned and walked back to the house and found Peter starring wide-eyed out of the glassless window.

“Grandfather, how…?” He was in too much shock to finish the question.

He had only been a young boy when his grandfather had showed up. It was shortly before his father had been conscripted and had left to fight in the war from which he would never return. Just two years later, his mother had died not long after falling ill. There were so many question racing through his head, but one took center stage and demanded an answer.

“Why didn’t you save my father?”

John stuck a finger through a small hole in the floor and pulled, revealing a secret compartment from which he retrieved a flat wooden box. “What are talking about?”

“Your medallion. You said you had special privilege to keep me out of the war. Why didn’t you use it to save my father?”

“Do you remember the night your pa left?”

Peter nodded. “A little. You two were fighting.”

“Yeah, we tended to do that when we talked. It’s one reason why we rarely spoke. The argument was about that, and you. I wanted to invoke my favor, but your father refused to let me. We both knew this war could, and likely would, continue beyond just the one generation. He made me promise to use it to keep you out of it. Fat lot of good it did in the end.”

“How did you get a favor from the king? How did you kill all those soldiers?” He looked at the small arsenal his grandfather was pulling from the box and strapping onto his body. “What are you doing with all of those weapons?”

John paused his preparations and sat down on the side of one of the beds. “Whatever you think you know about me is a lie. Because of what I was and what I’ve done, you don’t even know your own grandfathers name.”

“Of course I do. It’s John Langdon. You used to be a tax collector. Father said that’s why you were never around much when he was a boy. Right?”

John shook his head. “All of that is wrong…so very wrong. My name is Jack Lazarus. I used to work for the king—the old king.”

Doubt and more than a little fear played across Peter’s face. “But…Jack Lazarus was a killer, a murderer. He was a horrible man. Everyone knows about him.”

“Yeah, I suppose he was, but it’s a little more complicated than that. I was one of several men who formed a group called the Brotherhood of the Midnight Hand. King Arman’s grandfather created us, sent us around the world to hone our skills until we were the deadliest people the world had ever known.”

“But why?”

“Because he was a wise man. He knew that kings had too much power, power that was uncontested. He said that uncontested power inevitably led to unparalleled evil. We were the solution to that problem. Whenever a ruler’s actions caused unmitigated death and hardship upon a people, we removed them from power. Our existence was to prevent precisely what is happening now with this war that has been going on for a decade and has no end in sight.”

“Where are they, the new Brotherhood? Why haven’t they stopped it?”

“Because there is no more Brotherhood. Arman’s father signed a treaty with the other kingdoms to dissolve the order. There were no wars, and our existence frightened those in power. We were dangerous, and all it would take to throw the world into chaos was for one king or queen to use us against the others. We took an oath to sheath out blades and disappear. King Arman the younger nullified that oath when he sent his soldiers here, at least as far as I’m concerned.”

John, or rather Jack, shrugged a heavy cloak over his shoulders, drawing it closed to conceal the numerous weapons hanging from his body. “See if you can round up the horse that ran off.  I’ll be taking the other two. There’s money in the box still. Take it, the horse if you can catch it, and the animals up to my hunting shack. You remember where it is?”

Peter ducked his head. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to go do what I should have done a long time ago—put an end to this damn war.”

“How will you do that?”

Jack paused in the doorway and looked over his shoulder. “By killing the only ones who truly deserve to die in it.”

End of Chapter 1