The Pied Sniper

Those fools in the town below thought I would help them and they could simply stiff me on the bill.

Oh, I’ll show them. I’ll show them, indeed.

As I played my pipe, the incantation spun the benign notes into whatever the youngest of their ranks most wanted to hear. A loving father. A compassionate mother. Or maybe the call of the young girl across the way who they can never summon the courage to look in the eye.

Perhaps music so pure and enchanting they cannot help but want to find the source. So as to praise its creator and drink in every note that is offered.

What they want to hear matters not to me. Only that they follow the sound.

The other half of the incantation’s effect is far more straightforward. The older residents have all heard the most mellowing melody. All their troubles, whether about affording the local lord’s tithe or the crop harvest already savaged by those rats I banished or the lingering plague that I would have offered to drive out for another reasonable fee had they only kept their word, melted away.

What else to do but sleep in such a soothed state? A feeling foreign to all but the wealthiest and most secure of their lot. And in their slumber, they were powerless to stop what is happening now.

But even all the influence and gold in the world did not make one immune to my punishment. I wished to see my retribution visited upon rich and poor equally, rather than let the system that protects those with the means to pay from the worst depravities of this regressive kingdom do its insidious work.

Someday soon I vowed to find a way to use this gift to really change things, instead of simply selling my services as a traveling musical mercenary. I just hadn’t the time to sit down and figure out how.

As I neared the tree line, I turned back to watch the procession of children trooping after me. What a glorious sight to see so many young faces silhouetted by the sun starting its descent to the west, their town already obscured in the valley below. I blew a few more notes into the pipe, unconcerned as to whether they were in tune or on key; the incantation ensured they rendered into whatever each pair of ears needed to hear.

Full of bolstered confidence and glee at the thought of the townsfolk learning a visceral lesson they wouldn’t soon forget, I spun back toward the tree line and the rising slopes of tree-speckled land beyond with pipe in hand.

And in that moment with the sun warming my back, I caught a glint of something between those green mounds. Something shiny, like a polished breastplate.

Then the number of oddities doubled as something kicked me in the chest and sent me tumbling to the ground, pipe rolling away. I tried to grasp it, but it lay just out of reach of my splayed arm and searing pain stopped me from lifting my opposite hand more than an inch.

Thunder rolled across the valley as my arm slumped back to the ground.

The children halted their mindless march around me, no longer called forward but equally unsure where they are or what they are doing here. Some gazed about, some muttered to themselves, and others simply stood and swayed in place, still under the influence of the spell enough that any suggestion would be accepted as gospel. But my croaks to carry on went unheeded.

For the command was not spoken in the voice or song that had lulled them this far.

Eventually, when a numb frost had crept across my limbs and the sun cast long shadows behind me, a man approached, clad in green cloak and holding the strangest spear I’d ever seen. Pointed at me.

I caught sight of the glass lens atop it, like a looking glass my otherworld vendor had promised would allow me to look into spaces otherwise inaccessible to us mortals. But I did not see those horrid, contorted faces staring back at me as I had the one time I was foolish enough to partake. Staring back and laughing. It took all of Kajeet’s strength to keep me from smashing the piece.

Suffice it to say I did not buy it, and I really hoped I was not about to see those faces wherever I was going.

“Why?” I rasped, having had a lot of time to put together the far-off flash and my present state of dying.

Instead of answering, the man walked over to where the pipe had come to rest just out of reach in the grass and kicked it farther away.

His cloak twirled the slightest bit as he turned back to me. “Did you really think we’d let you traffic these kids?” He offered a small grin. “Even guns for hire have lines, and that’s crossing a big one.”

“I wasn’t trafficking them… and what’s a gun?”

He ignored the second part, cocking his head and asking, “Then what were you doing with them?”

“I… I hadn’t quite figured that part out yet…”

“Seriously?” a new voice asked. It belonged to a talking bear that walked on hind legs, of all things. “You just take a hundred or so kids and figure it out as you go?”

“When you put it that way, it does seem kind of silly…” I chuckled, trying to ignore how weak it sounded. “Mom always said I never thought things through.”

“Hey…” one of the children said, drawing all our gazes. “Where am I?”

“Go back to your homes,” the man called to her and the others. Then, far more quietly, he added, “I don’t want any of them seeing this next part.”

“Next part?” I asked as the patter of small feet grew distant.

He nodded, gesturing to the bear to get closer. “TJ here has a contract with the good people of Hamelin. Apparently they thought a traveling piper with the power to hypnotize creatures might try something and they brought in a Nightingale as an insurance policy.”

The bear dipped its muzzle. “Personally, I think it would have been far cheaper to just pay you what you were owed, but we never turn down honest work at the Nightingale Agency.”

The irony was too much. I sneered, “And what makes you think they won’t cheat you, too?”

They both laughed at that, the bear hefting his crossbow while the man patted his strange spear. “They wouldn’t dare,” TJ said.

“And we might have the mayor’s daughter with us as an insurance policy,” the man added with a wry grin. “Like my fellow Nightingale said, they don’t seem like the most trustworthy sort.”

I couldn’t believe this. “So you kidnapped a child from the town? What’s the difference between what I tried to do… and what you did?”

Bear and man looked at each other, shrugged, then turned back to me and answered in unison, “Forethought.”

“Including,” the bear added, “the foresight to subcontract with another Nightingale whose weapon was more, shall we say, long range.”

The other Nightingale nodded. “TJ’s pretty decent with the crossbow, thanks to me, but no sense in risking getting any closer to that demented flute of yours and its siren song than necessary.”

“Pipe… It’s a pipe.”

“Whatever,” they said together.

“Tell you what,” the man said to the bear, “seeing as how I feel a bit bad for our piper friend here, let’s do the second shot first. Then we can root the bullet out and cover up that wound when he’s no longer feeling much of anything.”

“You feel bad… But you’re still going to kill me?”

“A contract’s a contract,” TJ said.

The man nodded solemnly. “If we don’t hold up our end, then we’re no better than the townsfolk.” He parted his cloak, revealing a bulging satchel. “And TJ already paid me my subcontractual fee. Five jars of his family’s delicious honey.”

“You’re going to kill a man… for honey.”

“Not me,” the man said, nodding to the bear. “TJ’s going to deliver the killing shot. And then we disguise the bullet wound with another crossbow bolt shot into it. Would rather keep this whole sniping capability under wraps. Which is another strike against you living, my friend,” he gestured to the oozing hole in my chest, “seeing as you’ve experienced it firsthand. Don’t need you testifying about all this.”

TJ shook his head. “I think it’s time, Jason. This is starting to feel a bit like taunting him. Seems a bit cruel.”

Jason sighed. “All right, enough playing with our food, then.”

The bear raised the crossbow and pointed the iron tip at my heart.

True to their word, I didn’t feel anything of what came after that.

***

Want more Jason Nightingale? And TJ? Then why not go back to where it all began with Jason's first full-time assignment protecting a family of talking bears from a would-be home invader:

Or don't. Your loss ¯\_(ツ)_/¯