The Imagined Homecoming of Icarus Isakov by Steve Wiley

Author:Steve Wiley [Wiley, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780998149240
Publisher: Lavender Line Press
Published: 2020-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

In Which I Vanquish the Watchman

Obviously, I vanquish the Watchman. Did you think he vanquished me? If he did, he’d vanquish the rest of this book along with me. This book is short enough as it is.

Here’s what happened.

I was up and out the door early the next morning, dreamcatcher in my pocket. I hurried downstairs and through the Inn, with a nod to the bartender. I don’t think he realized I was off to the castle. If he did, I’m sure he’d have stopped me, probably talked me out of it. I didn’t want to be stopped, because I was unstoppable. I was a white goblin knight on his way to rescue a captive princess from some castle-dwelling evil spirit, or monster, or Watchman.

Why was I so confident, you ask? Good question. It was the dreamcatcher. It felt like it held some secret power, like a sword sheathed at my side. The thing about carrying a sword around is you feel pretty much invincible. Doesn’t matter if you aren’t invincible, or if you don’t know how to use a sword. Doesn’t matter if the sword isn’t a sword, or if you’re a scrawny goblin like me. With a sword, you are a swordsman.

I marched through downtown on my way to the castle looking all sorts of dangerous. Unfortunately, downtown was completely empty, with no one to admire such a fine specimen of a goblin champion. I imagined I looked like one of those murderous goblins you read about in old legends, all muscly and gritty, leathery skin, the cut of my overall jib immensely intimidating. The Watchman would give me no trouble, none whatsoever.

The castle looked formidable, like something out of Sleeping Beauty, though a tad more sleepy than beautiful. Not that it was ugly. It looked like your run-of-the-mill fairytale castle. There were soaring stone ramparts, watchtowers with arrow slits, and a great keep rising from deep within. The castle sat so near to the mountains behind it you’d have thought it was chiseled out of the rock itself. There was no sign of life anywhere in or around it.

My road led to the castle gatehouse, a front door of sorts, where I’d heard the Watchman kept his watch. The gatehouse itself was a small stone fortress about two stories high, shorter than the adjoining castle walls. There were two towers on each side of the gatehouse meant for guards to stand watch on, though I didn’t see any. A dark pathway closed off by a portcullis led through the center of the gatehouse.

I approached the gatehouse slowly, hand firmly on the dreamcatcher. There was no one to be seen, nothing to be heard, either. The silence was too silent. Until it wasn’t.

“CAWWWWWWWWW!”

A crow cawed, perched high above on the castle walls, scaring the totality of shit out of me. Funny that little caw was all it took to change me from goblin warrior back to goblin banker. All my confidence was lost in an instant. What in actual hell was I doing? As I wondered what that might be, I for some reason kept walking forward.

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