On the day the First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf marched through my town, I was busy. Nedd Potter’s beard was a tangled and fearsome creature even on his good days, and the weather out was hot and humid – a blackberry patch would’ve put up less resistance. So it was that I managed to ignore all sight and sound of outdoor hubbub and ruckus until I heard (midway through a particularly tanglesome knot) the sound of a throat clearing.
“Take a seat, be with you in ten, sorry to make you wait,” I said, for I hate disappointing people. “Nedd, quit swallowing like that or I’ll cut an artery.”
Nedd slumped over backwards in a disobedient faint.
“Goddamnit.”
“Barber. Your attention is required.”
I turned around ready to say something firm and no-nonsense and was put off my train of thought by the six-foot-ten knight clad in a jumble of spikes, skulls, and demons aglow with mortal peril and arcane power that was standing at my doorstep.
“Hello,” I said, intelligently.
“You are hereby conscripted,” said the knight, choosing to ignore this, “into the service of Her Overlord’s First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf. Pack your tools and report to barracks immediately.”
I looked at my razor and comb and then I looked at the knight’s fluorescent and wailing bastard sword, still gleaming from a polishing.
“I don’t think my tools are what you’re looking for here,” I managed.
“Oh quite the contrary,” said the knight. “Quite the contrary.”
***
There’s a lot to a bloodthirsty rapacious army of hellsworn fiends in human skin most people don’t know about; and then there’s a lot to a bloodthirsty rapacious army of hellsworn fiends in human skin that even the bloodthirsty rapacious army of hellsworn fiends in human skin don’t know about. And one of the latter blind spots is barbering, and one of the former is its necessity.
Every member of the First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf wore a unique greathelm, covering all hint of their humanity but a dying twinkle of eyeshine viewed through a slit barely wide enough for a fingernail. And inside there had to be a barely-human skull, and on that skull there had to be a head of hair just sufficient to fill space between the underpadding and the skull and exactly no longer, and it had to be kept that way.
I cut dozens a day, and after the first dozen I had the hang of it, and after the first day I had the mastery of it, and after the first week I was as bored as a grown man could be without being dead, which was something I’d also seen a lot of despite being far back from the frontlines. Our marches took us over an awful lot of corpses, and I started to envy the mutilated bodies of the fallen: at least they’d never have to look at another unshorn, sweaty head of gnarled corruption-riddled hairs snarling themselves into a muted mess around an inexplicable bald spot.
That’s what got to me in the end.
That damned bald spot.
***
It lived atop every pate, covered every crown. The size of my two thumbs pressed together at the first knuckle, round and opening onto greasy-pale to bruise-dark or everything-between skin. The lieutenants had it. The captains had it. The sergeants had it. The footmen had it. The general – who also had a giant pair of gnarled bull horns protruding from her skull – also had it.
And god help me, as I walked and rode and trudged the miles of burned fields and ruined towns and blasted roads, it grew and grew in my head to be the whole source of all misery and pain in my life.
That damned bald spot.
***
Gel was the first answer. Stiffen the hair that’s around it, put more spine into it, let it stand tall and ward off wear and tear from the weight of that warbucket of a helm and its thick padding. But I had nothing but an over-sharpened razor and plain sudsy lather and a gnarled old comb left to work with (I don’t know what the average First Darkest Nightmare Knight sprouts from their scalp, but it’s hard and angry as wire).
So I put in a trip to procurement, and I braved the dragon-torn visage of the Chief Supply Sergeant, Moonfalcon Mightslayer, and I presented him with my request.
“Gel?”
“Yes,” I said.
His silence invited words.
“Like, glue. But for hair.”
It deepened.
“For hair,” I repeated.
“For. Hair,” he put forwards.
“For hair,” I agreed.
“For hair,” he concluded, and pulled out a piece of scrip from his deadoak desk, scrawling upon it with a crow’s-feather pen. “Giant snail mucus. The apothecaries use it as a binding agent for particularly ductile unguents. Speak to Foulmixer Ghoulbottle.”
I did, and I didn’t even black out when I entered the apothecary’s tent, where the air mostly wasn’t and the smell was too powerful for the human nose to comprehend. I took my precious jar of greying silk-soft goo and I set it aside and I woke the next morning full of purpose and I spent all day cutting and combing and coating and coating, combfull after combfull and I went to bed hopeful and then I was rudely awoken past midnight by Captain Manifest Mournmurder to tell him exactly why his entire platoon’s helmets wouldn’t come off.
***
The next day, after being whipped to within two inches of my life, I cut hair without grumbling, fussing, mussing, or moussing.
And the day after.
And the day after.
And by the fourth day I was going crazy at seeing my reflection in the bald spot of a thousand murderous fiend-slave warmongers and I went to the apothecary’s tent again and spoke to Foulmixer Ghoulbottle, whose breath smelled of honey and the despair of a dying parent, and asked if there was such a thing in all their knowledge that could restore lost hair to the scalp of a human.
“Hellhound sweat simmered with harpy spittle,” they proclaimed without a moment’s hesitation. “Easy as pie. Don’t even need a writ for it: the hounds sweat buckets every day and nobody uses the spit for anything since we switched to skeletal horses last year and lost the need for saddle sore ointments.” I thanked them profusely and returned home with a bottle of liquid hope, which I sprinkled a half-droplet of on each awful little scalp that visited me all the next day from morning to sunset.
I was dragged from my berth at midnight under a full moon at the request of General Stormeater Mastermight to explain precisely why she and half her command staff had spontaneously sprouted a full yard of hair each within six hours of their barbering, pushing their helms clean off their skulls in the midst of pitched battle.
***
So, after being whipped to within an inch of my life, I was a little reluctant to try my hand at fixing this issue. I tried to embrace the bald spot, to love it uncritically, to accept it into my life as it so readily wanted.
I lasted almost half a day this time.
It was in the haircutting of some anonymous trooper that I lost my grip once and for all. I was trimming and cutting and tidying and without meaning to, quite without my conscious direction, my left hand flipped my comb a tiny bit harder than usual and plopped a thin strand of coarse and roughened hair atop the bald spot.
I stared at my crime as my other hand continued cutting.
Surely this could not be it. Surely this most-transparent masking could not be enough to satisfy the hunger in my soul. It wouldn’t fool a blind man at a dozen paces. It was less convincing than a wig woven from dandelion stems.
But I didn’t have to look into that damned bald spot and see my face staring back. So I let it be, and not on the next trooper, but the trooper after that, my hand slipped a little again.
And again.
And again.
And since I spent the whole night in dreamless slumber without so much as a whip in sight, I kept slipping with my work, combing over the spot with a thick swathe of still-growing hair. It soothed something in me, and my days passed from boredom into its beatific cousin: tranquillity.
***
Two months later, I woke up, reported to my station, and found it was missing along with half the mess and half the officer corps and the entirety of high command and someone had torn down the banner of the First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf and replaced it with a ragged white flag and nobody was wearing their helmets anymore but instead were tossing them into the sky like ugly metal reverse-rain, running wild and free through the camp.
“DEATH TO THE TYRANT OVERLORD!” shouted the knights as they marched. “DEATH TO THE SLAVER QUEEN! TO REBEL IS TO LIVE!”
“HUZZAH!” cheered a passing squad, who grabbed me and threw me atop their shoulders as they marched in great dizzy circles around the camp. “WE ARE FREE! FREE! FREE!”
A helmet landed in my lap as I was carried, nearly crushing my groin. As I scrambled to heave the thing away, my eyes alit inside it for the first time, and I was surprised to see that there was a cruelly barbed hook inside its very peak, dripping with malicious ensorcellments of servitude and enslavement meant to snag in and drip into its wearer from the crown downwards.
Oh.
***
I never quite told the historians how I managed to discover the secret technique to overthrowing the mind-thralldom of the Overlord. They seemed so happy to meet the brave hero who started the great rebellion, and I hate disappointing people.