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Posted on 05/15/2025 8:47:58 AM PDT by piytar
HENCHMAN a short story by Piytar McPherson
I am a “henchman.” Someone who gets hired to provide protection when much more powerful people are doing something significant.
You’ve all seen the movies. Us henchmen get killed off all the time and nobody really notices let alone cares. We are those people who just get blown away.
Now this job: It’s stereotypical. We have the Hero – typical over-large muscle type. The mage – all white hair and radiating power. The Princess – looks frails but tough as nails. Then a few of us henchmen – cannon fodder.
Do have a friend. He’s a little guy with no fighting skills. However, he’s a great campfire cook. He can make even the worst rations taste good using local roots and herbs.
An army or people on a “quest” travels on its belly. He is why we get good gigs and are paid a premium. Still not much but it’s a living. Well until we get killed off as a random casualty most of you would barely notice.
So what is this quest about? Retrieving some scepter, spear, or orb to stop the Big Bad from opening the Gates of Hell, Oblivion, or some such. Save the world kind of thing. Sorry, just another Tuesday. I really don’t care about the details anymore.
Then the grokus attacked, Ugly little things but very strong. I really don’t hate them. They did not choose how they were born. But did my job. Killed a lot of them.
My friend turned out to be surprisingly good with his cooking knives. Turns out knowing how to fillet a deer works as well as filleting someone trying to split your skull.
So now we are at quest’s end. The Princess turned out to have the bloodline that let her control the Spear. The Big Bad was actually shocked when the Spear swung in his hands and stabbed him through the heart. Have to admit that was a new one for me.
So back home. Got a nice payday. Guess I’ll wait for the next quest…
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Short but vivid. I like it :-)
The theme reminds me somewhat of the Terry Pratchet book "Guards! Guards!" which was dedicated to "They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men."
Some great historical opening paragraphs:
“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.”
“The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.”
“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is in Southern California, and that is where he is going to stay, unless something really weird happens. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest.”
“Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.”
“The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime and commercial world, the fact is that a thing, a something, a moving object, was sighted by many ships—an object which moved with such speed and in such a way that it defied all hitherto known laws of mechanics.”
“I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay.”
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
These openings excel because they establish tone, introduce compelling characters or mysteries, and hint at the thrilling journeys ahead.
Keep going! I was never any good at short stories in HS and college. It was always an intense labor with little to show for it.
Call me Ishmael ...
“Call me Fred” isn’t going to sell a lot of books.
Of course. I thought about “Call me Ishmael...” but went with “It was a dark and stormy night...” to mix it up.
My favorite opening line (from memory) would be C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: “Once there was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
I was expecting a little more John Wick with your henchmen all getting shot in the head by some obscure boogyman who lost his dog.
I've heard the line, but don't know anything about "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." What a great name for a book!
Grok says: "Why it works: This line immediately grabs attention with its wry humor and sharp characterization. By introducing Eustace with a playful jab at his unfortunate name and personality, Lewis sets a lighthearted yet adventurous tone, hinting at the transformative journey ahead in the Narnian seas."
I’m also reminded of Redshirts, by John Scalzi.
LOL. Actually thought about making a more blatant John Wick reference, but tried to hint around the edges of it. Maybe could have done better.
Again I’m a technical writer. This is my first try for a while regarding a short fiction story. Laz (copied) is an actual professional writer. Sure he’ll tear this apart. :)
Yup. Redshirts... :)
The Henchmen were a South Jersey bike gang in the 1970s. I knew some of those guys and always got along with them.
I liked the opening, led me down the path of learning about the character, and wanting to know more about the time and place the story was occurring in.
Great job.
I used to ride. Was affiliated with Scorpions Intl. Never got patched but was allowed to ride with them. Long story why I could. Confused the #### out of the prospects. :)
Fun story is when I bumped into a Hell’s Angels crew coming from Bike Week in Austin, TX. Let’s just saw when you’re running Lone Wolf and about 70 Hell’s Angels follow you into the stop — you pucker up a little.
Again, it's raw. Was just tossing a concept out there. May develop more. You nailed the key points I need to flesh out -- time and place.
I'm thinking of pulling from Zelazny's Last Defender of Camelot: Last Defender of Camelot.
Thank you for the erudite and thoughtful comment.
“A barometric low hung over the Atlantic. It moved eastward toward a
high-pressure area over Russia without as yet showing any inclina-
tion to bypass this high in a northerly direction. The isotherms and
isotheres were functioning as they should. The air temperature was
appropriate relative to the annual mean temperature and to the ape-
riodic monthly fluctuations of the temperature. The rising and set-
ting of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon, of Venus, of the
rings of Saturn, and many other significant phenomena were all in
accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The
water vapor in the air was at its maximal state of tension, while the
humidity was minimal. In a word that characterizes‘the facts fairly
accurately, even if it is a bit old-fashioned: It was a fine day in August
1913.”
- Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities.
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