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PopPreview- GRENDEL: PAST PRIME
Coming this May from Dark Horse Comics...
The story of the Grendel has existed for millenia. Now, five years after the battle of Jupiter Assante's ascension, the world is beginning to colapse back into trechary, deceit, and lawlessness. Only one woman who stood by the side of Jupiter might have a hope of sewing the fracture clans back together.
GRENDEL: PAST PRIME is an illustrated novel written by acclaimed author Greg Rucka, with illustrations by Grendel creator Matt Wagner. It's in stores this May. Below you'll find a preview of the complete first chapter, WITH illustrations exclsuive to PopImage. Thanks to Matt Wagner and Dark Horse Comics for this preview.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
They were following me when I left Kusma. Four of them, bandits or thugs or Ghurkas, and you didn't need to be a scientist to figure out what they were planning to do to me.
I'd restocked provisions in town, and they picked me up in the market, seen that I had money. They'd seen my tats and either didn't know what they meant or decided they just didn't care. Maybe they just saw that I was alone, and figured I was asking for trouble.
And thinking back on it now, maybe that's exactly what I was doing.
Thing was, I didn't care. I'd been searching for almost three years. I was weary and empty and looking for a way out. An honorable way out.
When I camped off the path that first night, I thought that would be their moment, but they lost their balls and skittered back into the brush before getting close enough to be even a token threat. I even actually went to sleep, just to give them an opening, but when I woke up the sun was bright and I knew I was still alive.
I broke camp and resumed walking, wondering if I was disappointed.
Late that second day I hit Naya Pul, crossing the narrow footbridge suspended on the south side of town, then heading on through. It was mostly deserted, the locals driven further into the Himalayas by raiders and renegades. A couple of the ghars had burnt down, their blackened frames still locked in the shape of huts. Faded on the side of one building was a mural, several years old and now damaged beyond repair, showing a male Grendel, sword drawn, defending his townspeople from the invading hordes. Even with the damage, it was clear that the Grendel was supposed to be the hero of the piece-strong chin, clear eyes, all muscle and bloodied, his flashing blade gripped in one hand. The works.
But someone had defaced it, had painted a red "X" across the Grendel's face. In English, beneath it, were the words: "Death to Jupiter's whores."
I stopped and stared at it, and then looked away when I realized the lump in my heart was rage. I started forward again, made it another block when a girl, maybe seven or eight years old, came barreling around the corner of one of the ghars and slammed right into me. She was wrapped in rags of yak's wool and her feet were bare and blistered, and she bounced back off me and landed on her ass with a little gasp. She got a good look at me from the ground, saw my face under my hood. Her mouth worked and then she pointed and started shrieking in Nepali.
I reached to help her up, but the girl kept backing away and then the tears started, flooding down each cheek, and she was crying and obviously terrified. An older woman burst out of a nearby ghar and yanked the child back to her feet. The girl buried her face against her mother and the woman leveled a filthy index finger at me. More Nepali that I didn't understand, but the sentiment was loud and clear. There was only one word that I understood, the one that lives in every tongue.
"Grendel!" the woman spat, and then took her daughter and disappeared back into the ghar.
I kept going.
Outside of town the trail split, and I followed the north fork. The Annapurna Himal was still three or four days away by foot, but the mountain was imposing even at this distance, eight thousand meters high and jagged, filling the sky. Naya Pul was in the relative foothills of the Himalayas, still below the tree line, and though the path rose and fell sharply with almost every step, the altitude wasn't a problem yet.
Black clouds were clinging to the mountain, starting to boil, as I made camp. A wind was making the grass and the pine trees sway.
I made a fire and had some rice for dinner. Then I got out my bedroll and waited for them to come and do the deed. Again, I let myself fall asleep, only to be woken by the rainfall a couple hours later. I covered my head with my hood.
****
They didn't come that night.
The next morning the temperature had dropped, and although the rain had stopped, another mass of clouds was forming up on the south side of the Annapurna. The wind was stronger, too, and after some thought I figured that the mountain valley was as good a place to die as anywhere.
I got my gear in order, cleaned my weapons, then went through the personal belongings in my pack. I didn't have my uniform anymore, left behind over three years past, but I had two of my medals-the Blood Rose, for distinguished service in battle, and Jupiter's Cluster, for my participation in the battle of Jupiter Assante's ascension-and I polished up both until they gleamed in the sunlight. I had my clan badge, as well, the winged horse in black lacquer set on a silver badge, the symbol of the Veraghen Grendels.
I put them on, pinning the two medals above my left breast, using the clan badge to secure my cloak. There was no point to it; as soon as I was dead they would take them and sell them to someone in Kathmandu or Biratnagar for ammunition or drugs or sex. But since pointless had been my life for the last three years, it only seemed right.
In the afternoon, it started to snow, but I didn't move from where I sat, just let it collect on me, growing colder, waiting.
****
Just before sundown they came out of hiding, coming from the tree line and making straight for me. They stayed in a clump, all four of them, and I thought that was tactically damn stupid, but then again, they had concluded there was nothing to fear from me.
The one in the lead was white, wearing a wrap around his torso, almost a poncho, made out of yak's wool. It was either dyed black or outright filthy. There was something wrong with his face, too, like his eyes were three or four times as large as normal, and black. The other three were pretty much cut from the same cloth, but natives. One of them, the one who followed right behind the leader, was huge, easily over two meters tall, and a lot of muscle. I figured he'd been augmented somehow, either through gene therapy or surgery. Their clothes, like the leader's, were filthy, caked with dirt and grease, stained. None of them had a firearm presented, just blades, swords that had seen better days.
They stopped at five meters and eyefucked me. I gave it right back but didn't move.
"You just sitting out here all alone," the leader finally said in English. "You waiting for something?"
I didn't answer. One of the smaller ones said something quickly in Nepali and got grins from his companions.
"Sindle says you're crazy. You crazy?" the leader asked. "Sitting in the snow, just waiting to freeze to death, that looks crazy."
The light was going, lost behind the snowfall and the clouds and the mountain, and that's why it took me so long to realize what was going on with the leader's eyes. Along each cheekbone, surrounding the orbits of his eyes and then rising and falling into spikes that disappeared in his hairline and below his jaw, were tattooed the Devil's Eyes.
It showed in my face, because he said, "Yeah, that's right, lady. You're in my territory. The Grendel-Khan himself, he gives me this land. Jupiter the First gives this land to me, and he says I do with it as I please."
It occurred to me to say that I had known Jupiter the First, that I had worked for him for almost five years as head of security at his Dakota retreat. It occurred to me to say that I really doubted that Jupiter Assante, the Grendel-Khan, had given this filthy mountain goat anything, ever. But I didn't.
Instead, I said, "Jupiter is dead."
If they had been real Grendels, if the word and the title had meant anything to them, they would have reacted with grief that their Supreme Commander was gone. They would have demanded proof, or called me a liar, or something, anything, to show that they had some sense of honor and loyalty and duty. They would have wept for Jupiter, or at least pretended to. They would have cared.
The leader shrugged. "Fuck that. You're traveling my lands. I want tribute."
"No," I said.
The painted spikes over his eyes rose. "You want to die? We'll take your gold and you can keep on going. Make it easy on yourself, woman."
"No."
"Don't test me, woman. Right now I'll settle for the gold. You keep giving me shit, maybe I'll take something else."
I met his eyes and held the gaze, then moved it to look past him, at the trees.
"Shit! You show me respect, damn you! I'm a Grendel, understand? Stand up!"
I didn't move.
"Insha, stand her up."
The augmented one stepped around behind me, put both hands on my shoulders, and lifted. He had strength, and his grip hurt bone.
"Pull that hood down. I want to see this bitch's face."
Insha did as he was ordered, then stepped back. The other three stared. It'd been months since I'd seen myself in a mirror, weeks since I'd bathed, and I wondered what they saw. Matted green hair hanging limp, the smudged cheek and the purple-black tribal tattoo that covered the left side of my face from jaw bone to scalp. Skin white as sandblasted bone.
Sindle, the one who had spoken before, said something else in Nepali. Grins got bigger.
The leader laughed and said, "Fuck, lady, you're shit to look at. And that ink, what the fuck is the deal with that tat on your face?"
"Clan tribal." I tapped the badge on my cloak. "This is the badge. Veraghen."
"Never heard of it."
"You should have."
The snow behind me squeaked as Insha shifted his balance, relaxing.
The leader rubbed his jaw. When he did, the tail of the Eye on the right side of his face smeared.
"We're going to take all of your belongings, that's what I think," he said. "That'll be the tribute for passing through my lands."
I was suddenly absolutely tired of this, and I was getting angry, and so I said, "No. You're going to kill me."
"Excuse fucking me?" the leader asked.
I pivoted, snapped my knee into Insha's groin, and as he doubled, punched the heel of my right hand into his nose. The septum disintegrated, and I felt the bone slip into his skull. Blood from his sinuses was already trickling from around his eyes as he fell back. He hit the ground hard, all of his weight suddenly dead, managed a creaking wheeze, spasmed, and died.
I turned back to face them, saw that none of them had moved. It took another five seconds before they could tear their gaze from the corpse back to me.
"Kill me," I said. "In battle. Now."
The leader stepped back, his right dropping to his waist. "Cunt, you're gonna hurt for that. You could have got out of this alive, you could have-"
I screamed it. "Kill me!"
All three of them were breathing fast now, making clouds with their breath. The leader growled, and his hand came off his belt with a tube of black metal, and that was strange because I was sure I'd seen that tube somewhere before. The other two were drawing their swords, and I stepped back, moving over Insha's cooling body. The leader was pointing the end of the tube at me, and then his thumb moved against the tab, and there was a crackle of charging air. The blade energized, weak and shivering, but the red glow was unmistakable.
I stopped and stared despite myself.
I'd seen energy weapons before-hell, I'd even used one for a short time. But the blade flickering in front of me now-there was only one in the whole of creation like it. Made by Orion Assante, Jupiter's father, the first Grendel-Khan. Made for his Paladin, the ultimate Grendel. For the Paladin who had disappeared so many years ago.
For the Paladin I'd searched three years and half the world to find.
Reflex kicked me, then, and I realized that all three were trying to kill me, had already swung and missed and swung again, and that I was tumbling now, going low, coming up past Sindle's flank. He tried to turn inside and strike, but I was too close and he couldn't get leverage behind the swing. I blocked his arm with my own, kept rising up, grabbing him by the throat. The other one, not the leader, was right behind and stabbing where I had been. I twirled Sindle into the blade, heard their screams as one man killed the other, then gave a push. The blade popped out of Sindle's back like through a balloon.
The other man was struggling, trying to get his friend off his blade, and I used the moment to take Sindle's sword. It was a good-feeling blade, well balanced, a classic ninjato, and I snapped the tanto edge into the other man's throat before he could free his own weapon. Arterial blood sprayed and I kept moving through it, feeling it spatter on me, tasting it hot and salty on my lips.
The leader was backing away, and the painted Eyes on his face only made his fear more apparent. I gave him two feints, and he was slow and clumsy and bought each of them, and on the second he lost his balance and went down on his knees in the snow. The Paladin's blade sputtered and crackled, a bloody glow, then vanished, then returned.
He started begging. "You can take what you want! You can take everything! Whatever you want, I swear, please, just please don't kill me! Don't kill-"
"Turn it off," I said.
His hands fumbled over the tube, found the tab, and the blade vanished. The air smelled of electricity and blood, and, faintly, pine.
"Toss it here."
He threw it clumsily, but I caught it in my free hand, held it up for a better look. Midway up the contoured hilt, where the tips of the user's fingers would rest, were two small indentations, squares of circuitry covered by a flexible membrane-the plug where the sword could recharge its power.
There was no question. It was the Paladin's sword.
"Where'd you get this?" I asked.
He started babbling, begging for mercy.
I put a kick in his ribs, knocking him onto his back, then let the tip of the metal sword rest against his eye. "Shut up."
He had to bite his lip, and he had to do it so hard he drew blood.
"Where'd you get this?" I repeated and held the tube out for him to see. His eyes were shut, and stayed that way.
"Some merchant sold it to me, some trader, one of the mountain traders, goes from village to village, I don't know-"
"I want a name."
"Mace! Mace!"
"Where is Mace?"
"I don't know, one of the travelers, like I said, I don't-"
"Guess."
He squirmed and I let gravity take a fraction more of the blade's weight, and he stopped moving immediately.
"The Hotel! Check the Hotel!"
"Where is the Hotel?"
"It's in the mountains, follow the Modi Khola Road! Thirty klicks from here, maybe less!"
I gave the blade just another hint of weight, then removed it, resting it against my shoulder and stepping back to my pack. I stowed the tube, then closed the pack and got the strap over my shoulder. When I turned back, he had gotten to his knees, but hadn't taken the chance to run.
"You're going to let me go? Please, lady, let me go . . . "
I ignored him, went to Sindle's body. He had worn the ninjato in a sheath on his back, and I got it off him, careful not to cut myself on the blade still jutting from his body.
The leader had gotten to his feet. "You're going to let me go, right? That's what-"
I whirled and leveled the blade at him. "Who told you to stand?"
He went back to his knees.
"You call yourself Grendel," I said. "You paint your face and use a sword. You're no soldier. You have no discipline, no courage. You beg like a dog. I've seen children with more courage."
He started shaking. Maybe from the cold. I put the blade against his neck, forcing his chin up so he could see me.
"And maybe you are a Grendel, too," I said. "Maybe you're what we're all becoming, just cowards and bullies with weapons and a swagger. So I'll let you be a Grendel. I'll kill you here, and spare you the dishonor."
His chin trembled and his eyes began filling with water.
"Fuck you," he whispered.
I nodded, swung. And it was a good blade, indeed, because it took his head clean off.
"Vivat Grendel," I said, and started for the Modi Khola Road.
****
Grendel: Past Prime TM and (c) 2000 Matt Wagner. All rights reserved.
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