by Steve Vera
Gavin could hear Jack’s voice in his head. What comes around goes around, bitch. Besides being the entire reason the War of the Drynn had been fought in the first place, the Red-cloths were renowned for their ruthlessness, cruelty and utter efficiency in imposing their will—the clergy of the Spanish Inquisition could have learned a thing or two from their autocracy.
Their rule was of fear and pain and enforced by the power of their craft.
Any who dared challenge their rule died horrific deaths, as did their family, their friends and acquaintances and sometimes, the whole village. They could pop up in someone’s bedroom, ask a question for which there was no answer, burn their victims slowly to death for not answering correctly and then move on without a second thought. In Vambrace, the Red-cloths, held the power over life and death, and wielded it often.
Gavin glared down at the corpse and suppressed the urge to spit on him. His hatred for the Wizards of Vambrace went beyond the standard mortal enmity between Magi and Wizard.
The Wizards of Vambrace had killed Gavin’s father.
“How are we to fight such monstrousness?” Sir Taksony asked. He meant the Drynn.
“The stones of this tower are as thick as a man stands, and even in my day the Knights of Vambrace were vaunted for both their skill and quality of arms.” He gave his head another disbelieving shake. “This is beyond words.”
“And they had a wizard.” Sir Taksony’s grizzled serjeant Arnaut said. He didn’t speak often so when he did, Gavin noticed. “These men didn’t have a chance.”
“Most of them are only half dressed,” Tarsidion added. “He came when they were sleeping.”
Standard operating procedure really; Gavin bet a bag of gold that if they went inside the gutted tower of the Vambracian outpost, they’d see a gaping hole the size of a water buffalo in the cellar or in a wall from where Deos had tunneled in. It was a favorite tactic of his, to strike when his victims felt the safest. Something about a person’s fear was like a narcotic to him. Their pain was something like seasoning. Flavor.
“Notice how the wizard is the farthest,” Cirena said dryly. “First to run, just like in the war.”
It was true, but he wasn’t alone. Most of the dead were outside the safety of the tower, as if everyone had been running away from it.
“I feel more sorrow for river trolls,” Dwensolt said and stepped beside Gavin. Annoyed by the deluge of flies, he lifted his staff and rapped the end of it against the grass. A shockwave of disturbed air blasted out like an underwater explosion and when the air stopped moving there wasn’t a single fly around.
“Thank you,” Amanda said through a gag, a cloth over her mouth and nose.
The Druid hadn’t said much since the Pass, but Gavin was glad to see the wild-haired man’s eyes roving hungrily, taking in and processing everything they landed on. Something about his intensity comforted Gavin.
“If the mind and hearts of his victims are so important to Asmodeous,” Cirena said, studying the corpses with dispassionate detail, “then it stands to reason that if we take his head and heart, burn them to ashes and scatter them over the mouths of volcanoes on separate ends of the world—” she kneeled by the body of a young squire no older than twelve years old and closed his eyes, “—he should remain dead for all time.”
Gavin regarded the dead boy at her feet and tried to feel remorse but failed. The images of the Druid’s Pool were too fresh, too real for him to feel anything but a thirst for retribution. This was their fault.
They deserved this.
The day you can’t feel bad for a dead child is the day you’ve lost your soul, Stavengre.
Gavin couldn’t tell if the voice was some rogue memory escaping its bonds or something metaphysical, but it was Lucian’s voice. He knew that voice.
His shoulders slumped. Of course you’re right, brother. Gavin walked back over to the squire’s corpse, beside Cirena, and made himself kneel. Like Nazi Germany, there was a distinct difference between the SS and the regular army. Gavin tried to imagine that the boy had been given to this life in a last-ditch effort for his family to survive. Maybe he sent back whatever coin he earned to his sick mother, who herself had been victimized by the agents of Vambrace. Maybe this boy had wanted to change things.
“Indeed it does, Sur Cirena, stand to reason,” Sir Taksony said, tapping the hilt to his new two-handed sword strapped to his back—a magnificent artifact he’d acquired from Almitra’s treasure wall. When awakened, bright green flames simmered around its edges. “And yet who can know? If what you say is true, this abomination has been walking the world since the before time of the Dragons.” He shook his head and his sky blue eyes clouded. “It is beyond thoughts.”
“Looks like somebody got in a couple of licks, though,” Skip said, kneeling by a small cluster of men who’d managed to get most of their armor on. “I’d recognize that stink anywhere. Check it out.” Sure enough, the distinct, eggplant-colored stain of Asmodeous’s blood contaminated the rest of the congealing blood around it. It wasn’t much, the two broken arrows lying close told the story, but it was something.
Skip stood and rubbed his chin. “Kind of like a field goal at the end of a blowout, eh, Gavin?”
“Something like that,” Gavin replied. Even though he was looking directly at their bodies, there was something unfocused and vague about them, like he was viewing them through his peripheral vision. “Visitors sixty-one, home team three,” he said.
Now that the deafening drone of ten thousand flies was gone, the eerie, slightly crackling simmer of the red flame beacon above the tower was noticeable. It was a lonely sound, like the hum of a neon sign in the middle of a desert at night.
“I cannot recall a single instance of Vambrace ever calling for help,” Noah said, looking up at its flickering dance.
“Yeah, well, Deos has that effect on people. A bunch of these guys shit their pants. Literally.” Skip emphasized his words by wrinkling his nose.
“Perhaps we should extinguish it?” Tarsidion suggested, looking up at the antithesis of a superhero’s light.
Gavin shook his head. “Not our business. Let’s check for survivors and get the hell out of here. I can’t imagine an encounter with Vambrace under these circumstances turning out very well.”
Silently and meticulously they moved up toward the red tower, checking each corpse for signs of life or clues.
There were none. Asmodeous was very thorough. When they reached the base of the silent tower, looming above them like a bloody spike, on a nod Noah and Tarsy went in, easing through a door that had exploded outward. The rest of them fanned out and continued their search.
“Nothing,” Tarsidion said fifteen minutes later when they re-emerged. Not that Gavin had expected anything different, but occasionally Deos left a survivor, just one so that the person’s fear and broken will could infect the ones who found him or her. As they’d found in the first war, it was very effective. Toward the end, whole barracks would break and run as the news of what befell those who fought before them reached their ears.
Gavin glanced down at the young man at his feet who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, their age when the war had first started. His breast plate had been raked open like an aluminum can. Muscle and congealing blood clung to the tatters of metal. His heart had been ripped out of his chest. Rib bones stuck out of him like sticks smeared with two-day-old marinara sauce. The distant ringing of dread in his ears got louder. Vambrace was involved now. Things would change. They would want answers. For better or worse.
What would he do if he came face to face with them? What would he do if he came face to face with the people responsible for the death of his father, people and his homeland, the very reason this whole war started in the first place?
I don’t know if I’ll be able to not kill them.
“You find any
thing, Donnie-boy?” Skip asked. Somehow the police chief’s voice penetrated the ugly direction Gavin’s thoughts had been headed. Gavin looked and watched their silent companion pick his way through the carnage with meticulous analysis.
“Yes,” Donovan answered.
“Feel like sharing?” Skip asked.
To Gavin’s surprise, Donovan answered by pointing to a headless, bloody torso a couple feet to his left. “That one still has its heart.” The arms, legs and head had been removed either by brute force or some large bladed weapon, but Donovan was right. Unlike every other carcass feeding the flies here, there was no hole in the chest cavity.
Strange. Gavin went over to it, as did Noah, and together the two of them studied the still breastplate encased torso.
“Diseased?” Gavin asked, gathering his cloak as he kneeled so it wouldn’t get any bloodier.
“Maybe,” Noah said. Cirena and Tarsidion joined them.
“He was wearing this,” Donovan said. Gavin turned, as did they all, and saw a necklace dangling from his hand.
“May I?” Gavin asked. Donovan surprised him by tossing it right to him. Gavin caught the necklace easily in his hand and with his three brethren studied it. It was simple, made of low-grade silver and not overly valuable. It looked more like a gift or good luck charm than anything a Knight of Vambrace would wear but at the bottom of it, within a glass pendant, not even crystal, was a silver clump of liquid that rolled around as he moved it. “Was this over or under his armor?” Gavin asked.
“Under,” Donovan said.
Why you being so helpful, Donovan? Gavin wondered. “What do you think?” he asked his brethren.
“It looks like mercury,” Cirena said, smudging her finger over its surface.
It sure did. Very strange. Mercury was a very rare element on Theia, at least as far as Gavin knew. Those types of thermometers had yet to be invented on Theia. He turned to toss the necklace back to Donovan but their unwanted companion had unslung his rifle and was looking through his scope. For a second it looked as if he was pointing it right at Gavin’s face but a nano-second before Gavin summoned a cocoon of protective magic, he realized Donovan was looking past him. Beyond the hill.
“Riders approaching,” he rasped.
* * *
Decurion Markus Arkeides of the 4th Nu’romian Cavalry Legion of the Southern Outpost drove his men hard. Anything to get out of the barracks. Anything to thwart the dark mood that had befallen him.
Even the electric thrill of a possible invasion couldn’t lift Markus’s spirits. It mattered little to him that this was the first time in anybody’s lifetime that the Empire of Vambrace had ever called for help. Markus should have been elated.
But he wasn’t.
Today was the last day Markus could have been saved by a miracle. If he’d left today, at a full gallop, he could made it back up to the Eternal City in time to see the greatest spectacle in all the world—The Great Games of Nu’rome. The Olympics.
In just three days the greatest champions in all the realms would gather and compete for godhood in the Colosseum. And he wouldn’t be there.
Instead of sitting next to the very generously endowed Lady Varanna, daughter of the Second Senator of Ne’roum, in prized seats in the inner circle of the First Tier of the Colosseum (how long had he saved up for those seats?) he was here, two hundred leagues south stuck to a troop of miserable, complaining outcasts in the desolation of the Southern Sea, chasing prairie rats and kobolds.
Some promotion. He should have listened to his cousin Raushak. All that had been required was for Markus to keep his head down, to remain an anonymous middle, to refrain from crossing swords with one very short Centurion Alvadis, do his time and get transferred to the 4th Alae, but...as usual, Markus had been unable to heed.
“I can see it, just over the next ridge,” his second in command, Alaris Mesothos, said, looking through an old, dented eyepiece. His normally thick southern accent was nearly gone, his timbre unusually tight. “I should say it’s quite eerie.”
A couple more horse lengths later and Markus saw it, too, mixing strangely with the light of the setting sun.
The Red Beacon.
It was a sight worthy of pulling him from his seething. Like the candle of some god, the red blade of fire burned ominously over the still-red tower of the Vambracian outpost. By now they should have sent riders to meet them. Markus gave the signal to halt. He wanted to hear. The land felt even more desolate than usual. There wasn’t a single buzzard or crow to be heard or seen, no sigh of moving grass that was a hallmark of the Southern Sea, just the gurgle of a nearby brook, the creak of saddles and the uneasy neighs of their horses.
There was nothing.
He looked back at the rest of his men. Their customary lackadaisical indifference to the long-familiar prison of the Southern Sea Outpost at least for now seemed to have dissipated. They were alert, hands near hilts, but with the glint of curiosity and, dare Markus say, trepidation in their eyes. Vambrace made everybody nervous.
And then he caught a whiff. It was faint, unaided by any wind or breeze, but a wisp of carrion rubbed up against the bottom of his nostrils. His horse shifted beneath him and nickered unhappily.
“Easy, girl,” he said with a reassuring pat on her neck. Anxiousness was an unfamiliar sensation to Markus, who normally preferred to charge and sort later.
Not this day.
“I see figures,” Mesothos said, his voice tighter yet. “I count eleven. Blue armor of a type I know not adorned with long cloaks with hoods. There are others clad in green armor, ancient, and others who wear no armor at all. No horses.”
“Can you discern their colors or pennant?”
A couple of seconds passed before Mesothos lowered his eyepiece. “Perhaps you should look, sir.”
Markus didn’t much care for his second in command’s strained look of impassivity. Shoulders back, neck straight, Markus held out his hand to Mesothos, who then deposited the eyepiece to Markus. Ignoring the battering of his heart, he put the eyepiece to his eye. He said nothing.
“What is it, Decanus? What do you see?”
“Yeh, what do you see, Markus?”
Markus lowered the eyepiece and turned to his men. “In the field, you will address me as Decanus, am I clear, Alaris Trakkon?”
“Aye, Decanus Arkeides, you’re as clear as a Faery’s arsehole. What did you see?” The wide-girthed cavalryman leaned forward in his saddle.
Markus handed Mesothos back the eyepiece and leveled a stare far more serious than he’d ever conjured onto his men, ignoring Tarkkon’s insubordination. For once they seemed to get it. “They’re dead. Every single one of them.” Markus gripped his lance with a palm slick with sweat. “Lances at the ready, men...forward.”
And then they were galloping.
* * *
“Why are they charging us?” Skip asked. Sometime yesterday he’d detached his thermal scope from his M107 and was now using it as binoculars.
“They’re not. If they were charging their lances would be couched,” Gavin said. “Tarsy, Sir Taksony, with me. The rest of you hang back and cover us. Bring your banner, Sir Taksony.”
The golden-haired Cavalier nodded, received the freshly cut pole topped with the faded sun and swords of the Southern March from Serjeant Arnaut, and with Tarsidion on his left and Taksony on his right, the three of them strode out to meet the riders.
* * *
Markus halted twenty paces before the strangers and ordered his men to form a defensive crescent around them.
“A hail to you, riders of Nu’rome,” the man in the middle with the dark brown eyes and fresh sprouting beard called when they stopped. The salute he gave was an older type, dating back to the days even before Markus’s grandfather—great-grandfather, most likely—but it was crisp an
d full of authority. “And a hail to the Caesar.”
Markus said nothing at first. It was difficult to pick which to focus on. His eyes naturally fell on the giant to the right of the speaker who stood easily as tall as Markus atop his mount. Long black hair in the style of the Southern Plainsmen—he’d never heard of one this far west before—fell over an avalanche of muscle encased in glittering blue armor as masterfully forged as Markus had ever seen, an intricate interlaying of plate armor forged and fitted to his body over a habergeon of chain mail that threw the sun like a bag of jewels. In the middle of his breastplate was the image of a great, brooding willow tree, scintillating as if on fire. It seemed familiar to Markus somehow, in the way a long-forgotten song might sound if the lyrics were spoken. The giant’s eyes shined out like emeralds.
“And a hail to you, strangers,” Markus finally replied coolly, hand gripped around the haft of his lance. “Who are you, and what is your business in the Southern Sea?” He glanced in the direction of the Vambracian outpost and the carnage around it.
With a straight face and somber voice, the man in the middle replied. “I am Sur Stavengre Kul Annototh, Second Born to the House of Annototh, Knight of the Shard, First Rune.”
Markus would have expected his normally raucous troopers to laugh or scoff at such an outlandish declaration but they were silent behind him. Against the backdrop of death and the eerie stillness that had descended the normally breezy Sea, Markus could almost believe him.
“A Knight of the Shard, you say?” Markus asked calmly.
“Aye,” Sur Stavengre said with sharp eyes that seemed to absorb much while revealing only Markus’s reflection. Just when it appeared that the word would simply hang in the air like dust across a sunbeam, Sur Stavengre held up his hand and turned it slowly so Markus could see. His men coiled behind him. A single drop of light pooled in the center of his palm and then zipped softly through gossamer glyphs etched into his skin, leaving a trail of pale blue luminance that dissipated slowly behind.