Contents
Dedication
Copyright
map
1 Ivanos
2 Emmanora
3 Vendronia
4 Kazimir
5 Aeile
6 Emmanora
7 Ivanos
8 Vendronia
9 Kazimir
10 Aeile
11 Emmanora
12 Ivanos
13 Vendronia
14 Kazimir
15 Aeile
16 Emmanora
17 Ivanos
18 Vendronia
19 Kazimir
20 Aeile
21 Ivanos
22 Emmanora
23 Vendronia
24 Kazimir
25 Aeile
26 Ivanos
27 Emmanora
28 Vendronia
29 Kazimir
30 Aeile
31 Ivanos
32 Emmanora
33 Vendronia
34 Kazimir
35 Tincup Tom
This book is dedicated to Rachael Thom my wife, Vanessa Thom my daughter, and my amazing friends who are family to me, Jarrod King, Michelle Doville, Carrie Lough & Ryan Elliot, without whom not a single page of this story would exist as it is based on their characters in our D&D game and a great thanks to them for helping me to edit this thing into a halfway tolerable read. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Also to my brother David Thom who was there with me in my early years and always believed in me and followed me on my creative journeys with my biggest childhood inspirations of Star Wars and played many nights of Star Wars table top with me.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael Edward Thom
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
First Printing: 2020
ISBN: 9781794749771
Michael Thom Publishing
https://www.facebook.com/michaeledwardthomauthor
Ebook
1
IVANOS
"So, this is why they call it the Bleeding Wood," Ivanos Jorganaut said. He gently spurred his horse trying to keep her at a slow but steady pace. "So many red leaves, even the damned grass is blood red. Looks like fountains of blood shooting up from the ground. I don’t like it."
Trailing behind Ivanos, Jesper twirled his walking stick, dodging and whacking at imaginary foes. "Green Mother gushes with blood. . . painting the—no—seeding the—no wait—I got it! Green Mother gushes with blood, bathing the land with her aching crud!"
Ivanos laughed so hard he almost fell off his horse. "Blackened skies, boy! Give it up. You’re not a poet, and that one’s as awful as the rest!"
"Why?" Jesper said.
“Mother gushes with blood? You don’t know what that sounds like?”
"Oh, well. It does imply a distasteful thought, I suppose. Ha, Ha! At least I made you laugh!"
"Perhaps," said Ivanos. Then he spoke in lower tones, "We've got to keep our voices down. Red caribou are said to wander even on the outskirts of the forest. It'd be nice if we nabbed one without having to spend the night here."
"I guess. I kind of like it, though. I bet I can find a great new walking stick, like a red one! Anyways, why couldn't this squire hunt his own red caribou? Seems like he's a bit of a softy to me."
"No. It's a matter of honor," Ivanos said. The surrounding birds diminished their songs. Insects buzzed by and flitted past them, lessening as they moved deeper into the wood. Ivanos glanced to either side of him into the trees as his horse carried him up the hill. "You don't understand knighthood. We have codes and many must prove themselves honorable. I'm happy to pay my dues if he can get me a meeting with his knight."
"Pay your dues with joy or you might end up a toy!" Jesper sang.
Ivanos sighed and flipped the visor on his steel helmet over his face, though it did little to negate the boy's chattering.
"I do understand some things about knighthood. I've been paying attention to your lessons about honor and codes. Like for instance. Truth. You said a noble knight always speaks truth and will die for it, even if it means he must rat out his brother. I can do that. I have no brother or sister."
"I know, lad. I was there when it happened," Ivanos said. "It's good to remember that one above all. Now, remember this one. A knight is patient and sharpens his blades slowly, so the edges are true."
Jesper paused and looked downward in thought before he said, "I get it. Rushing things will cause you to make more mistakes."
Ivanos nodded. "Aye." He tugged on the reins of his warhorse and caressed her neck under the black mane where she liked it most. "Easy, Velvet. I smell it, too."
Velvet shuffled her front hooves from side to side and her armor clanked. She snorted and whinnied.
"Come on, girl," Ivanos said. "Just go easy. You know we gotta go up there."
Velvet took a step back and twisted her neck to turn around, but Ivanos reined her pace before she trotted up the road. The stench of death grew much stronger than a dead ox or horse. Ivanos unbuckled the strap over the hilt of his longsword. The icy wind chilled further by the cold steel vents of his helmet burned his eyes as he scanned the forest to the left and right of the road. As far as he knew, besides a few thieves' camps, there wasn't much if any settlements this far north of Red Wolf Keep. It was for hunting and as a travel route to the Caribou Valley. He saw nothing obviously out of place in the forest to either side of him, not even an abandoned camp.
Ivanos gagged a little as Velvet brought him up the hill. Nausea waved through his torso up to his head until he struggled to stay in the saddle. He stared hard up the hill, and a black figure emerged and stared back at him in the middle of the road. It shifted and surged in and out of cohesive form. For split seconds it was in focus, he noted a long-pointed crown on its head. A complete coldness crept into his chest. Velvet trotted onward as if she hadn't noticed something unusual. The figure turned an about-face, melting tracers of inky blackness as it did so before it walked away and out of sight again.
"Whoa, Velvet!" Ivanos tugged hard on the reins and Velvet stopped in her tracks.
"What is it, Sir Jorganaut?" Jesper asked. He stood to the right of Velvet, flipping his walking stick in figure eights.
Ivanos stared at the space where the shadowy figure had been. "Did you not see it?"
Jesper peered ahead. "See what, my lord?" He walked forward a few steps to get a better view.
"Halt, boy!" Ivanos said. "It's not safe!"
Jesper stopped in his tracks and lowered into a defensive stance with his stick brandished in both fists. Corded muscles stood out in his arms, lined with healthy veins. "Anything out there is gonna get a sticking to the face!"
Ivanos sighed. "Quiet! There was someone up there,” he whispered.
"Was there?" Jesper whispered back. "Let's get'em! Wait, what did they look like? Was it a bandit?"
Ivanos pushed his open palm out at the anxious boy and shook his head. He then cautiously dismounted Velvet and removed his sword from its scabbard and handed it to Jesper. "Stay here. Don't move unless I call out for you," he whispered.
Jesper's eyes gleamed. He tossed his walking stick aside and took the blacksteel longsword from Ivanos and gave a discrete bow as he did.
Ivanos removed his quiver of arrows from Velvet's saddle and untied his longbow from her side and strung it. With an arrow nocked, he crept up the hill. As he crested the top, he pulled the arrow back and raised the bow to aim. He furrowed his brows and swept his aim over the
entire landscape ahead, but found nothing to be of immediate threat. He lowered his bow and shrugged.
"Sir Jorganaut? What do you see?" whispered Jesper.
Ivanos stared blankly for a moment before he answered. "Nothing. I don't see anything, lad. But I know I did earlier. Ah, Bleeding Mother of Time, that stench!" He grimaced as he walked farther along the road and pointed to the ground where he stood. "Right here. A figure was standing right here." He gagged and covered his nose and face with is hand. "I swear it."
"I don't doubt you, my lord. What did this figure look like?" Jesper pressed the tip of the longsword to the ground and rested his hands on the ornate ruby-encrusted pommel.
Ivanos widened his eyes and bolted over to the boy and snatched the blacksteel longsword from his hands. "A hundred thousand dead knights shivered in their graves when you put this fine blade into the dirt, you fool!"
Jesper stumbled a bit then knelt before Ivanos. "Apologies, my lord! I forgot and was careless."
"Here, take the bow. When you master it, you may try the sword again." He handed the bow and quiver over to Jesper. "The figure I saw was all black from head to toe, and I thought I could see a black crown on its head."
"Thank you for the bow, I mean! Wearing all black, you say? Ya think it could've been a ghost or a witch? I've heard such things can followed by a smell of. . . death."
"I don't know. I never much believed in such things."
"Well, that might explain why it's gone now? I mean if it were a ghost." Jesper turned to face the road that seemed to go on for miles in the forest. "Hey, look there!" he whispered and pointed down the road. "Is that one of those red caribou?"
Ivanos saw it. Two grand antlers twisted up from its head and gleamed in the sunlight as it studied them both. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen it before. He held out an open hand back at Jesper and motioned for him to hand over the bow.
Jesper had already loosed an arrow. Ivanos turned to see it had hit true into the mid-torso of the magnificent copper and white-haired beast. It screeched and then bolted towards them, the back half of the arrow jutted from its side and bobbed up and down as it ran.
Ivanos ground his teeth. He didn't know whether he should panic or celebrate. What an incredible bout of luck. Hope lingered before him. He could redeem the pivotal mistake that had cost him the life of his King Rygon and ultimately the usurping of the entire Kingdom of Ironwood. He would bring the hide to the squire at Red Wolf Keep. When he gained an audience with the knights of Red Wolf, he would swear fealty to King Ingul as a loyal knight. It was all he knew; all he had ever trained to do.
Jesper shot another arrow straight into the charging caribou's chest. The beast made four more strides and collapsed dead. "Yes!" Jesper raised the bow high over his head and fist-pumped it a few times.
Ivanos saw something else too late. Another red caribou leaped in a blur and plowed into Jesper with its antlers and snagged him into the air. With Jesper impaled up through his chin, the caribou flung Jesper over its back and twirled him over twice. Jesper’s neck cracked, twisted and stretched. He dangled glassy-eyed from the beast's antlers.
Ivanos raised his blacksteel sword and swung whilst he screamed, "NOOO!" The blade slid through the caribou's neck and its huge head wriggled through the air and crashed into the ground antlers first. The body spurted blood and sprinted off into a tree at the edge of the road and fell with its legs twitching.
Ivanos stood shaking with his blood-smeared blade. He stared at the lifeless twisted body of the poor boy for several seconds, and then tossed his sword aside on the ground. He sat down where he stood and began to weep with his face in his hands. Jesper Eisenaum had annoyed him most of the time. He had chattered on about his fleeting thoughts many times above the average seventeen-year-old boy, but he had a stubborn will to improve himself. Ivanos thought that was a rare quality. It could've brought him to great things. Ivanos could still see the boy's face filled with determination and resolve back when he had pulled him out of the burning cottage. He had gone in to save his mother and sister who had already perished in the flames. Ivanos had been following the pillar of smoke through the forest and had walked up on the incident just as Jesper kicked in the door of the cottage. Ivanos had run in after him and drug him out by the arms after the boy had passed out from smoke inhalation.
Ivanos reached into the dirt next to him and dug out a rock with his fingers and chunked it at the headless carcass of the red caribou. He had lost another under his watch. He felt guilty now trying to redeem himself at the loss of others, but it seemed senseless not to continue. He had fled his own Kingdom the first time, rather than face the enemy usurper and die with honor.
He glanced over at Velvet. She was ever loyal. She stood still where her master had left her and waited to serve him again. "If only I were as honorable as you, girl." He sighed. "But I'm not gonna give up. We must bury this boy. He was a good lad and deserved better. Then I'm taking not one, but two red caribou hide to the squire in Red Wolf."
Ivanos stood up and went for the spade in his bedroll on Velvet's saddle. He began untying the cord that held it in place and suddenly the smell of death overwhelmed him again but stronger than ever before. The air behind him chilled and his armor was like ice on his skin. He paused. "Who's there?" Prickles lit up the back of his neck.
Something rasped behind him.
He slowly pivoted around; the spade ready in his hand. What he saw before him was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. A pulsating hole had opened on the ground. It rippled and shimmered with inky blackness and then flickered with tiny fingers of lightning on its edges. The odor of death fumed from somewhere within the hole. He tried to focus on the forms inside it, but nothing solidified. Instead, two smoky black arms reached up, and the dark figure with the black crown pulled itself into Ivanos's world.
Ivanos trembled. He had never seen anything unworldly, nor did he believe such things ever existed. He thought possibly he had died, and this was the Shadowed One, the Harvester, or Death itself coming to claim his soul from this world.
"Are you Death?" he asked softly. "Is this... my end?"
The crowned figure stood up fully before him and stared directly into his eyes. It was faceless. Darkness churned over the surface. Two eyes glowed like stars. His heart raced. "No, but I have crossed over to make use of lives in this world. Serve me and I will make you one of my champions, but it will be a difficult allegiance to bear. The rewards I give you in return will endow you with unfathomable power. You will destroy entire armies."
"This can't be real. I must... I must be dreaming! Please leave me, monster! End this nightmare vision!"
"I'm not a monster!" barked the dark figure, its voice a low vibrato of many that echoed in Ivanos's mind. "I'm the King of Scion, and I have come to make this world ready for the coming of my people. Will you serve?"
Ivanos closed his eyes and nodded. "I’ve only ever wanted to serve. I've nothing else."
The figure wrapped long cold fingers around Ivanos's chin with pointed fingernails that dug into the skin. With another wispy black hand, the figure held up a violet ball of light that spiked with fissures of white. The King of Scion pulled Ivanos's mouth open and shoved the light inside. He pushed Ivanos's chin up to close his mouth.
A biting cold ,rolled down into his chest and blossomed throughout his body.
"Now you will build an army. You will conquer a country, and you will rule it in my name! You will not serve as a knight but as a king! You will serve me by conquering lands and growing my kingdom to be fruitful and glorious for when I come with my people!"
"But... I'm not—" Ivanos tried to say. He hunched over and vomited, holding his hand over his stomach, though it did little to comfort him through the plated cuirass. After regaining his composure, he wiped his goatee with the back of his moleskin glove and said, "I've not shown myself to be a great knight. You've chosen the wrong man. Please, spare me this burden or make my death quick. I've lost everyt
hing as it is. I've no family. I'm a wandering old nomad. I couldn't even protect this poor boy." He pointed at the corpse of Jesper, still hooked by the head of the red caribou.
"You are no longer that which you believe. You now have a power that will take you to greatness beyond your comprehension. Now, go! Use it, and armies will fall at your feet." A cyclone of darkness enveloped the King of Scion and pulled him down into the rift on the ground below. A bolt of lightning twenty feet high shot up from within and then, the fissure dissipated.
2
EMMANORA
Emmanora unbuckled her belt, pulled down her black leather trousers, squatted over the corpse of Baron Thomas Echert and pissed into his bleeding open mouth. Baron Thomas had been an easy mark. He was fat and stupid, and he had hired a troop of guards from the dumb cunt farm in the hills of fuck face. She spat on him as she finished refastening her belt. The good thing about dumb cunt guards was she didn't have to fight anyone. She didn't do confrontation well, and she only took jobs where this would be at a minimum.
She pulled Heartnail, her razor-edged rapier, from where she had driven it to the hilt up into the baron's taint and wiped the blade across his leopard fur overcoat. She removed the four gold necklaces he wore and went through his pockets. She found six silver triads altogether, not a great haul from his body. She knew that he kept a key in his bedside table that opened a safe hidden inside his wardrobe.
When she had finished looting what she could carry, she left Baron Thomas Echert's estate laden with eight bags of gold, silver and ornate pieces of jewelry tied to the saddle of her dwarf-camel Ruby. He was only five feet high at his hump which was a perfect fit for her four-foot milg physique. She estimated the sum of it to be worth about twenty-thousand gold. Not bad. One of the biggest hauls yet. She pulled out a pinch of moon-moth from her belt pouch and pressed it into her finger-bone pipe. She rode along through the grasslands of The Silver Plains towards her secluded tree-house. She'd built it within the branches of a giant redwood. She smoked her pipe and let the soothing tingles of the moon-moth envelop her from head to toe. She always enjoyed a bowl of moon-moth powder after a long day of work. It helped her get through the nerve-wracking task of finding yet more space for the spoils she kept locked in her cellar.
The Vanguards of Scion Page 1