by Nick Harrow
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “It won’t take me long to—”
The girl turned her head away from me, and I took that to mean that she didn’t want to hear any promises.
As the door had swung wide to allow light into the darkened room, a powerful stench gusted out like the fetid breath of a slumbering crocodile.
I’d smelled this enough to know what it was, but I didn’t want to admit the reality to myself. Instead, I straightened my shoulders and stepped into the room with my head held high.
The dining room, if you could call it that, was just inside the doorway. A small table with three rickety chairs arranged around it squatted in the middle of the floor, its surface adorned with a single clay vase that held a wilted cornflower whose leaves had faded to the color of chalk.
The kitchen was off to my right, a small room separated from the rest of the house by a low countertop. A clay pot of cold soup rested on top of the counter alongside a cutting board, a kitchen knife, and the ragged tips of various vegetables. The stove in the corner of the kitchen was as black and dead as the mouth of an abandoned coal mine.
Enough of the warm sunlight that poured through the door made it past me to reveal some of the home’s opposite wall. The foot of one bed was visible, along with strange dark splotches on the floor around it and a tangle of what looked like blankets next to it.
The smell of raw meat grew stronger as I stepped around the table. I didn’t want to see what was on the other side of the house, but I had to know.
At first, I couldn’t make out the details of what I saw. The blanket across the bed covered lumps and shapes I didn’t recognize, and the pillows were empty. Flies buzzed through me as they searched for the source of the smell, and Rathokhetra’s rage flared at their inconsideration.
The mass next to the bed wasn’t blankets, but clothes. They were sodden and black, and the smell that emanated from them told me they were soaked through with blood. I took another step toward the darkened end of the world, spent the mote of ka to incarnate, and peeled the blankets away from the strange bulges they covered.
My jaw clenched as the image burned itself into my mind. There was little left of the bodies. The arms and legs had been stripped down to a jumble of naked bones stacked at the end of the straw mattress. Loops of intestines drooped out of the hacked-open torsos, and the ribcages had been cracked open to remove the hearts and lungs. Heads, one male and one female, were nestled in the torso’s empty bellies. The murderers had hacked off the tops of the skulls to get at the brains, and the dead eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, where flies lapped at the streaks of splashed blood.
This wasn’t a murder. It was a slaughter.
Rathokhetra howled in rage at what we’d seen, and I wanted to holler right along with him. A day after I’d raised it out of the dust, my poor settlement had its first murderer.
Chapter 4 – Soketra CSI
ONCE THE LITTLE GIRL, whose name turned out to be Izel, had been hustled off to City Hall by a small detail of wahket Nephket had summoned, I let the rest of the guardians inside her home.
“I want whoever did this found, skinned alive, and fed to jackals,” I said. “And I want it done quietly. We can’t have the villagers freaking out because there’s a goddamned maniac on the loose.”
“We can do that,” Nephket said, her voice calm and confident. “I picked up a lot of new tricks when you advanced us, but I’ll need some time to get them ready.”
“I can’t believe someone butchered some of our villagers,” Zillah grumbled.
“Didn’t you want to butcher that fat kid?” Kezakazek asked.
“That’s different,” Zillah said. “It’s me. Also, you’ll note that I didn’t, in fact, butcher anyone.”
The rest of us let out nervous chuckles at that, and the temperature in the room rose a few degrees. Zillah’s words were the kind of gallows humor we needed to get through this mess.
“How long will you need?” I asked Nephket.
“I have to prepare some spells,” she said. “I should be ready to go in the morning.”
“What can I do to help?” Delsinia asked.
“I need the bodies, or what’s left of them,” Nephket said. “Can we get them back to City Hall without attracting attention?”
“Oh, yes,” Delsinia said with a sly smile. “When I do not wish to be seen, I rarely am.”
“Thanks, Del.” I ran through a list of things we needed to do in my head and ticked them off one at a time. “Neph, have the wahket keep the girl under wraps, and make sure no nosy neighbors spread any rumors about what happened here. Delsinia, move the bodies and clean this place up. Zillah, you’re with me. I need to hear what you found out about our friend the tax collector. Kez, walk with us for a bit.”
“You should leave first,” Nephket said. “You’re a good distraction.”
“Thanks, I think.” I motioned for Kezakazek and the scorpion queen to join me.
Nephket was right about me. Wherever I want, the villagers had their eyes glued to me like they were afraid I might accidentally call lightning down on their homes or ask for them to sacrifice their firstborn children. On the one hand, I wanted them to know I wasn’t that kind of asshole god, but on the other hand it was nice to see they all toed the line when I was around.
“Our boy didn’t come alone,” Zillah said to me in a voice so low I heard her thoughts more than I heard her words. “He’s got a camp about an hour northeast of the oasis.”
“When you say a camp, how many are we talking about?” I asked.
“A couple dozen,” Zillah said. “But that’s not all the soldiers who came with him.”
“How do you know?”
“Del got up close to them. Listened to the soldiers chitchat.” Zillah shrugged. “The guards said the rest of the army was about a week behind.”
“And did they say how many soldiers were in that army?” My stomach tied itself into a knot of acid at the frown that Zillah gave me.
“A thousand,” the scorpion queen said. “Plus their support teams, however many noncombatants that is.”
Kezakazek spluttered at that and grabbed my arm for support.
“I guess that’s it then,” she said. “It’s time to pack up our shit and go somewhere else, right?”
I chewed on this new nugget of very bad news and tried to make sense of it. Feeding and maintaining a legion of soldiers just to collect taxes didn’t make any economic sense. It would have cost Selician more than he could possibly make from extorting a little settlement like the Kahtsinka Oasis.
If Selician was willing to send an army to stomp a mudhole in my guts if I didn’t pay Lexios, then he’d keep squeezing the oasis until he bled us dry. Shit, for all I knew those soldiers were on their way here as an occupation force.
That thought set Rathokhetra’s blood to boil. This was our settlement. They’d take it over our dead bodies.
“No,” I said. “A thousand soldiers are a pain in my ass, but I’ve already invested my ka into this settlement and my dungeons. I won’t abandon them because some asshole showed up asking for money.”
“We can’t kill a thousand trained soldiers.” The dark elf stated her opinion like it was a stone-cold fact. “We’re all quite a bit stronger since you advanced us, but I can’t kill two hundred soldiers on my own.”
“I probably could,” Zillah said confidently. “It would take a while, but I could kill two hundred. This isn’t a problem. They’re totally dead.”
“I’ve got reinforcements on the way,” I said. “Should be here in the next few days.”
“Mercs?” Zillah asked.
“He put out the call for more guardians,” Nephket said with a smirk. “A very loud call.”
“Are these new guardians hot?” Kezakazek asked. “Are they hot? Are they dark elves?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not sure,” I said. “We’ll find out when they get here.”
“They better be hot,” Zillah s
aid. “We’ve got a pretty strict no uggos policy going on here, and I’d like to keep that locked down. It’s better for morale.”
“Any idea what kind of troops Tax Boy brought?” I wasn’t sure the scorpion queen would have all the answers, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask. “All foot soldiers? Cavalry?”
“Mostly armored infantry, from what Del heard. We were going to snatch one of the guards and haul his ass back here, but then you called us in to look at the—”
I interrupted Zillah before she could say anything about the murder scene. There were too many eyes and ears around us to risk a leak that could spread panic like wildfire.
“That’s not great,” I said. “Kez, when you advanced did you pick up any cool new tricks that could wipe out a bunch of horses?”
“I’m a sorceress, not a fucking butcher. Maybe you should send Delsinia to do it. Aren’t horses afraid of snakes?” The drow held her tongue as we crossed the street and headed to the edge of the oasis, and then continued. “I could probably come up with something to spook a unit of cavalry. I don’t think horses like undead.”
“I don’t like them either.” I ignored the dig Kez had taken at Del. Any response I made would just piss her off, and then Zillah would get dragged into this fight and no one wanted that. “Just make sure you keep a leash on any skeletons or zombies you call up.”
“So bossy,” Zillah said. “She should raise a bunch of corpses and let them run wild. It would get the job done.”
A horrific vision of the oasis overrun with walking corpses flitted through my thoughts, and I shook my head.
“We’re definitely not doing that,” I said. “But we need to do something, Kez. If I send you back to Kozerek’s library to search for something we can use in this fight, will you try to limit your personal research?”
“Seriously?” Kez’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “You’ll let me go back to the library without a chaperone?”
“Yes,” I said. We’d reached City Hall, and I threw the doors open. “But you’re there to do research that will save the oasis from an army. I don’t want you to spend all day and night down a vengeance rabbit hole.”
“Speaking of holes I’d like to go down.” Zillah plucked the diminutive dark elf off the floor with her tail and dangled her in front of me. “Let’s have some fun. It’s good to get all the anxiety out of your system before you fight.”
“Soon,” I said. “Do you have any other details about this guy’s army or camp that would be useful?”
Zillah let out a forlorn sigh, and her shoulders slumped. She lowered the drow to the ground and her tail lay limp across the floor.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “The camp we saw was well provisioned, so they probably brought enough food for a siege if it comes to that. The tax collector’s got himself a swanky pavilion right in the middle of the camp, and there were guards around it for the couple of hours we were nearby. There are five soldiers’ tents arranged evenly around the collector’s hangout. Probably thirty or so support staff had tents on the east side of the place, near the supplies.”
It was a serious bummer that the collector’s arrogance didn’t keep him from posting guards around his place. I’d hoped he was one of those guys who was sure he was immortal and got lax with security. It sounded like Delsinia might be able to get into the camp and cut the fucker’s throat, but she probably wouldn’t survive an escape once the deed was done. And because she was outside my dungeon, the soultaker would end up just plain old dead instead of respawning.
That was no good.
“All right,” I said. “I guess we’ll put them on the back burner while we deal with this murderer. If Lexios comes around again, I’ll stall him until we can figure out some way to take him out.”
“If you let me contact the drow, I might be able to find some assassins who would take the job,” Kezakazek said. “It would be expensive, but I’m sure they could get it done.”
“For starters, I don’t need you bringing any more drow in. Just yet,” I said. “And what would keep those very same assassins from turning on us once they dispatched the collector?”
“That’s a very good point,” Kezakazek said. “I’ll find another way.”
The drow blew a kiss to Zillah, pinched me on the ass, and then darted toward the stairs behind the throne before I could catch her.
Assassinating the collector wouldn’t have solved my problem, anyway. Once his men showed up and found their leader with his head cut off, they’d attack the oasis as a straight revenge job. It’d be a complete shitshow of a battle, and they wouldn’t be worried about collecting taxes. They’d raze the place to the ground, take the wahket as prisoners, and loot whatever wasn’t nailed down.
“What’s your honest assessment of this fucker?” I asked the scorpion queen.
We’d reached the throne, and I flopped down in it. Zillah curled up in my lap and wrapped her tail around the chair’s back.
“He’s in this for the long haul,” she said. “His advanced camp has enough food for an extended stay. They’ve dug latrines, they built a corral for the horses they rode in on, and we saw a cage for messenger birds. We don’t know what his army is packing, but I bet they’re well supplied and spoiling for a fight. It’ll be a fun challenge to murder them all.”
That certainly sucked. I’d hoped the bastard had burned himself out hiking all this way and would be ready to turn around and go home with his tail between his legs when I refused to cough up the cash. Something told me Lexios’s boss had given him explicit orders to come home with a sack filled with gold coins or my head. Maybe even both.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” I said. “I don’t want to go toe-to-toe with an army of that size, but I don’t see any way around it. Even if we paid him off this time, Lexios will show up with his hand out again every year. Maybe every month. He’ll bleed the oasis dry, one coin at a time, until there’s nothing left.”
“We’ll need more troops.” The scorpion queen said. “You think the new guardians will get here in time?”
“Let’s hope so.” I gestured to the north. “Did Lexios see the call go out?”
“Oh, yeah,” Zillah said. “Del and I figured you were just showing off, but the bad guys definitely noticed. There was a lot of shouting and finger-pointing.”
“Hopefully that little display will make them think twice about heading this way.” It was a faint hope, but I’d take it. “Any edge will help.”
“They’re still pretty chewed up from their trip across the desert,” Zillah said. “I doubt they’ll be breathing down our neck in the next day or two, but I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t pay us another visit within the week.”
The sun was about set on one of the longest days in my life. Tax collectors, deranged killers, an army on my doorstep, and a frightened little girl upstairs weighed heavily on my mind.
“What would you do?” I asked my guardian.
“Sneak into his camp, kill him, and then run like hell,” she said.
“Probably not a great plan,” I said. “The run like hell part would likely end up with you getting caught and killed.”
“I know,” she said. “But I’d still do it for you.”
“I’d never ask that,” I said honestly. My guardians were sworn to protect me, but I felt the obligation went both ways. I would protect them as much as I possibly could. “Outside my dungeon you wouldn’t respawn.”
“It’s a sacrifice I’d be willing to make to keep you and the others safe,” Zillah said quietly. She traced the edge of my jaw with her index finger and leaned her head against my chest. “All you have to do is ask.”
I didn’t have a response for that. It wasn’t every day that a beautiful and deadly woman offered to lay down her life for mine.
Zillah and I sat in silence for a few minutes before I screwed up the courage to ask her a question that could easily start an argument.
“What do you think about Delsinia?”
Zillah looked up at m
e and tapped her chin with a fingernail.
“She’s okay.” The scorpion queen gave me a quick nod. “Also hot as hell.”
I knew I should let it go, but I couldn’t. Kez’s attitude toward the soultaker had rattled me, and I needed to know if there was a civil war brewing between my guardians.
“That’s it?” My fingers found the ticklish spot on Zillah’s side and dug in.
“Stop!” The scorpion queen giggled and trapped my hand against her side with her fingers. It took her a few seconds to catch her breath. “She’s not like the rest of us. I guess that’s it.”
“How is she different? She’s sworn loyalty to me. I invested ka in her.”
“Who do you think she sees when she looks at you?” Zillah leaned away from me and curled her arms around my neck. She stared deeply into my eyes, and I found it hard to hold her gaze.
“You think she’s confused about which Rathokhetra she’s in bed with?”
“Something like that.” Zillah gave me a soft kiss that was hardly more than a brush of her lips against mine. “She was in that hole for a long time, Clay. Her mind wasn’t her own when we found her. Are you sure it is now?”
That was a question I didn’t like to think about. Delsinia adored me, or at least seemed to. She was willing to do anything I asked, never complained, and did her best to fit in with the rest of the guardians. Most of the time, she meshed well with the rest of the group. But Kez couldn’t resist taking jabs at the soultaker, and if Zillah had doubts, there could be big problems on the horizon.
Just what I needed.
“Thank you for your honesty.” I stroked Zillah’s muscular arms and hugged her close. “I think she’s solid, but if the rest of you are worried I’ll watch for any signs of danger.”
“We will, too.” Zillah said it in a way that was clearly both promise and warning. I wasn’t sure what the rules were about guardians fighting each other, but if the scorpion queen thought the soultaker was a danger to me, things could get ugly. “Wanna make out?”
The throne wasn’t the most comfortable place for our shenanigans, but Zillah’s tail supported her in some interesting positions in the half hour before Nephket and Delsinia returned from their grisly task.