But did he want to hear the answers to the questions floating through his own mind? He knew they waited for him in that dim, flickering glow beyond the canvas flap, lurking like a formless beast.
He shook himself and entered.
Inside a man in plain garb busied himself before a table, humming a pleasant tavern tune, laying out various implements of ever increasing cruelty, a leather apron tied around his waist covered with recent bloodstains. In the middle of the tent was a rack, designed for portability and functionality. Not so sturdy or so cruel as the ones that lurked in the dungeons below the Keep of Faldarun – extravagant, brutish constructs all of dark wood, cheerless brass and sharp iron – it still performed well at keeping the man who was currently strapped into it in the most delightfully vulnerable position, splayed out and naked.
Aenwald grunted, making the torturer look up from his tools and bow expressionlessly. Maeryfel, Chief Torturer and instructor of the crown’s many skilled artists of pain. A master of ghouls, to be truthful, though a man of considerable use, regardless. Even ghouls have their place in the arsenal of a king. Maeryfel only ever performed excruciations himself in special cases, where masterful exactness and new realms of suffering were needed to achieve the desired result. The man on the rack behind Maeryfel most certainly was deserving of such special treatment.
‘The first one sang beautiful, Your Majesty,’ Maeryfel said, his thin mouth appearing almost lipless in the half-light. ‘Though, I am afraid to inform you he deigned to transpire as we reached the climax of his performance, Sire. My assistants are transcribing the minutes of our acquaintance, I believe it shall be ready for your perusal on the morrow.’
Aenwald nodded, skin crawling at the thin, balding man’s presence. He was a creature, like one spawned from some nightmare of a child. All long limbs and skin and bone and dark-rimmed eyes above a thin, downward curving mouth, one that bore wicked, hateful little smiles around yellow teeth. Aenwald fancied such men had chased him through the dark corridors of his own childhood dreams more than once. It was no wonder he could break men so easily.
‘Very good, very good,’ the King muttered, ‘am I to expect anything new from it?’
‘I’m afraid not, Sire,’ Maeryfel sighed, bony shoulders shrugging, ‘mostly just the usual fanatical, heretical rambling we have come to expect from these poor fools. He was… devout, that one, and unusually so – but, oh, the sweet notes he did hit for me before he passed! This one, however –’ he glanced over his shoulder at the man on the rack ‘– I believe will prove to be more… informative, given his position and status amongst these apostates and eastern heathens. I was actually about to begin my questioning of him but momentarily, Sire, if you would care to watch? I would be honoured to have you present, of course, and I believe your most regal aura may even inspire me to new heights of inventiveness with this one.’
Maeryfel passed an open hand over the tools spread out before him like a hawker showcasing his wares, a vicious assortment of hooks, blades, spikes, cutting implements, hammers, chisels and other, more unknowable tools of his trade.
Aenwald nodded, lips pursed, at the array of promised pain before him. ‘I believe I will handle this one, Maeryfel,’ he said, ‘you did enough with his captain. Retire for the night, enjoy the camp festivities, perhaps a woman or two, it has been earned.’
The Chief Torturer blinked, corpse-thin lips drawing into a single, wrinkled point. For a moment, Aenwald thought the torturer was about to protest. Though, as Aenwald’s brow knotted impatiently, the skeletal man bowed, eyes vanishing in shadows, and exited the room with a mumbled ‘Of course, Your Majesty.’ The look Aenwald caught on the man’s face as he left the tent spoke only of spoiled fun.
Breathing deep, Aenwald paced across the tent to stand before the rack, looking the naked man strapped to it up and down, hands on hips.
‘Well, fuck me, if it isn’t Haakon Garrmunt, and don’t you look like shit!’
Lord Garrmunt’s eyes flickered open, crusted with blood from a blow to the head, and watched him silently. A pained smile played on his lips briefly.
‘King Aenwald,’ he muttered. ‘Forgive me if I do not bow.’ He tugged at his bonds slightly.
‘Of course not, old friend,’ Aenwald chuckled pleasantly, friendly smile fading in an instant. He narrowed his eyes, staring into Garrmunt’s as the man sneered at him from the rack, sharp features swollen from heavy blows. ‘You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve, Haakon.’
‘As do you, Ironbrand. Some might say it is one of your more redeeming features.’ Aenwald laughed at that. ‘Enmar might have said the same, had your fellow there not ripped his tongue out.’
‘So what is this all about, then,’ he asked, lips pursed. ‘Attacking your homeland, trying to unseat me, spreading some filth about this… this blood demon you’ve suddenly fallen in love with? What’s the fucking point, Garrmunt, tell me, I’m listening.’
Garrmunt smiled again, resting his head back on the rack and staring vacantly up at the canvas ceiling above him. ‘You could not even begin to understand His purpose, Aenwald.’ He sighed and closed his eyes again.
‘Wrong, Haakon. It is you who does not understand.’ Aenwald moved to the table Maeryfel had laid out his instruments upon and picked up a blade that he examined pointedly in front of Garrmunt, whose eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight of it. A simple flaying knife, small and gently curved. Aenwald tested its edge, his thumb coming away with a shallow cut from it. Freshly sharpened.
‘My father,’ Aenwald said slowly, ‘was a man to rely too much upon the service of others.’ He shook his head, looking at the blade and rubbing blood from his thumb. ‘Foolish, I always told him. If you want something done right, do it yourself. Many things, after all, require the personal touch to them, do they not? Unfortunately, the weight of a crown is want to make some men idle, or suffer apathy or slothfulness. An all too common flaw with sovereigns and other men of power. A shirker, you could say of my forebear. A craven, you could even call the man, if you looked back at his legacy.’ He pointed at Garrmunt with the knife, the traitor’s eyes fixed on the point. ‘I, Haakon, am not my father.’
He moved then to the rack, standing before Garrmunt, their faces almost touching. The knife came between them. He could hear the traitor’s breath – short, sharp intakes, his fear creeping through his calm exterior. Aenwald smiled then.
‘You’re going to tell me everything I want to know, Haakon,’ he breathed, and moved away, heading for the table to examine the other implements there. ‘And that was a nicely done feint, by the way,’ he called over his shoulder to the rack. ‘Attacking on the left flank while sending your banner down the right, you knew I could not help but lead the charge towards it personally – I fear my wrath will undo me some days. Lucky for me, then, that you’re a useless fucking commander as well as a loathsome traitor. But what were those creatures you sent to counter my counter charge? They most certainly weren’t men, I’m intrigued by them. All robed in black, wearing those steel masks. They were quite fierce, I found, one damn near ripped my head from my shoulders before it died. Friends of yours from the east, I’ll assume? Some creatures of the Empire?’
Garrmunt stayed silent, eyes on the tent ceiling, chewing his tongue insolently. Aenwald paced back towards him silently and rolled his sleeves up, knife gripped firmly in hand.
The first cut he made on the traitor lord’s shin, a long, thin slice, a few inches below the knee, down to the instep of the foot. Garrmunt writhed and clenched his teeth and stifled a howl.
‘What are they, Haakon,’ the King asked flatly, watching blood begin to seep. Garrmunt laughed, voice edged with a touch of pain.
‘Men in cloaks.’
Another cut, parallel with the first. More stifled cries, more writhing.
‘What are they,’ the King said again. Garrmunt spat at him. He flayed him this time, the knife slicing away the skin between the cuts with only a ghost of resistance. Garrmunt did how
l this time. The King let the long strip of bloody skin dangle before the traitor’s face between thumb and forefinger, before letting it fall to the ground with a small, exaggerated flair. He went then, back to the table where the instruments lay, and brought something else back to hold before Garrmunt, wrapped in bloody cloth.
Aenwald pulled the cloth away, revealing the severed head of the creature from the battlefield. He shoved it in Garrmunt’s face. ‘What are they, Haakon?’
It was a vile thing, all puckered, scarred skin, mottled pink and white, the ears, eyelids, nose and lips shrivelled away into almost nothing. All that was left were bare, gnarled, decaying teeth, glaring, mottled eyes like those of some beast and a hole where the nose should have been, like that of a leper, or a corpse.
Garrmunt hesitated, mouth tightening as he stared into the thing’s dead eyes. Aenwald sighed, dropping the head and letting it roll away, and cut into Garrmunt’s shin again. Another parallel cut, marking out where another strip would be taken from the limb.
‘The Burnt Men!’ came the cry, voice quivering and high pitched with agony. Aenwald smiled.
‘Now we’re getting places,’ he chuckled, tapping the knife on Garrmunt’s shoulder. ‘What are they?’ Garrmunt shook his head.
Aenwald finished the cut, a bit deeper than intended, the blood flowing freely, Garrmunt’s screams making his ears ring. ‘What are they, Haakon?’
‘I don’t know,’ the lord breathed, head sagging. Another cut only drew the same answer.
‘They are warriors, that much is obvious,’ Aenwald commented, flicking blood from the blade on Garrmunt’s face. ‘They move like nothing I have seen before, damn well near killed me, and took more than a few of my knights down before they fled. They killed one of my Red Cloaks with a fucking throwing knife.’
‘They are priests,’ Garrmunt suddenly whispered, as the knife touched his skin again. ‘Warrior priests. Of the Red Handed Prophet. We do not speak of them. They are ancient, and hallowed.’
‘At a boy!’ Aenwald patted the lord’s bloodied face, more heavily than was necessary. ‘That’s how you play the game! I cut, and you tell. Now,’ he said, straightening and crossing his arms, seeing Garrmunt’s chest rise and fall rapidly, the man beginning to bend beneath the pain. ‘You’re going to tell me how you came to betray me, Haakon. Every bit of it, it’s a story I am eager to hear. You are a tough man, and I have always respected that in you, but every man can break, Haakon. And I will break you, old friend, before this night is over, you have my word.’
It was only with a completely flayed calf that Haakon Garrmunt spoke and told his tale, of his plundering ancient treasures in the east, of how the lands of the Old Empire had not been so dead and empty as men had thought.
‘They came for us, in the night, while we camped in the ruins of an old temple,’ he panted, eyes wild, staring at the tent’s ceiling. ‘They slaughtered many of us, appearing like silver blades shining in the darkness. They were like ghosts. The Burnt Men. They moved like living shadows when they fought. My men barely held them back. And then he came…’
‘Of whom do you speak, Haakon,’ Aenwald asked, leaning close as he cleaned the knife.
‘The Kaethar,’ Garrmunt breathed, eyes distant, sweat making rivulets of dark blood run down his face and chest. ‘The Great Rider, the king on the pale horse.’
‘I have heard this name before,’ Aenwald said, nodding, ‘tell me of him. Who is he?’
‘The Conqueror. The King. The Prophet’s Word. He, whose hand commands the earth itself.’
‘Sounds like bollocks, Haakon.’ The knife bit into skin again. Garrmunt screamed.
‘I speak true, Aenwald!’ The man’s screech was painful on the ears. ‘He is the last of the Emperors of old, risen from the ashes of a foul nation. They are born again in fire and blood by the Red Handed Prophet’s will and favour. He has forgiven their hateful ways, given them new meaning, a new identity. He has given them to all of us.’
‘We will see how much truth there is in your words.’ Aenwald nodded, brow creased as though concerned. ‘I am a patient man, and the knife is hungry, old friend. This fool who thinks he can simply cross the sea and take what is mine – his name, Haakon, I want his name.’
As the knife caressed his flesh yet again, this time on the palm of his hand, Haakon Garrmunt screamed out a name. ‘Graxis! Kaethar Graxis!’
‘Good, good. I want facts, Haakon, not your fanatical rhetoric,’ said Aenwald. ‘I have no time for such things, any more of it and I will rip the nails from your fingers. This Graxis – what did he do to you? Why did you betray me for him?’
‘He spared us,’ Garrmunt croaked, biting down against pain, the flesh of his lower leg red, raw, glistening and exposed, darkening in places where the blood began to congeal. ‘He took pity on us, the fools that we were, and had the Burnt Men stay their hands. And they took us then… took us to the great palace beneath the earth, all of dark marble and onyx. It was a beautiful thing to behold, Aenwald, beautiful. And he taught us, of our ignorance, our foolishness and blind faith to the old gods of Caermark – the fabrications left in the wake of the Empire’s defeat.’ He laughed vaguely then, Aenwald narrowing his eyes at him as he listened.
‘The Kaethar, he and his priests, they showed me Him, Aenwald. I saw Him, I looked upon His face with these very two eyes.’
‘Whom did you see?’
‘The Red Handed Prophet,’ said Garrmunt, his voice carrying a tone of awe despite his agony. ‘They took me into a chamber, far, far back in that palace. A room all lit by pits of fire from deep in the flesh of the earth itself. There was a silver bowl there, huge and plain, full of soft flames. And a statue, a towering man, chained and masked, his wrist slit and bleeding. The Burnt Men cut my hand so the flames took my blood. They leapt, and grew… and then I saw Him, Aenwald. The eyes. The eyes from the fire.’
Aenwald sighed. The eyes from the fire. Nothing new. Many of them had spoken of the same thing. ‘Tell me something new, Haakon,’ he sighed, ‘I grow tired of this horse shit you and your men spout about eyes and fires and bloody hands.’
‘He spoke to me.’
Aenwald laughed.
‘This… Aboroth. He spoke to you through the fire?’
‘To speak His name carries the burden of death, Ironbrand,’ said Haakon, eyes round, white circles in a blood-streaked mask of pain and fading sanity. Aenwald spread his arms wide.
‘Then may Aboroth come right now and rape my royal arse, Haakon.’
Haakon laughed this time. ‘He is above such things, Ironbrand. You cannot taunt or summon one such as Him. He is far beyond your understanding, Aenwald. I would cut your throat for Him, but alas…’ Garrmunt laughed, shrugging slightly as he tugged at his bonds again. Aenwald narrowed his eyes.
‘This Aboroth. What did it say to you?’ He brandished the knife as Garrmunt’s mouth drew into a thin line, trembling ever so slightly. He moved, the knife hovering over the man’s unharmed right leg, the tip about to grace skin.
‘Blood,’ Garrmunt spat. The knife halted.
‘Blood?’ repeated Aenwald, looking up with eyebrows raised. Garrmunt nodded.
‘The blood of the unfaithful, He thirsts for it. And the blood of your foul gods, creatures that are nothing more than demons who whisper and make men bend the knee before them, waist-deep in filth. You are all an insult to Him, to everything that lives and draws breath. He wants this petty land emptied so it may start anew, your people put to the sword so they can be cleansed, their blood fed to the fire so he may bathe in it and savour your ending. And then… He will bring a new day over this rancid kingdom, as He did when the Empire of Ipathos fell to hedonism and its worship of false beings, just as when He showed Graxis the new way. The way of fire and blood, and the secrets they both hold.’
Aenwald shook his head.
‘I would pity you, Haakon,’ he sighed, ‘had I the heart. But I pity none that live. Especially a fool who would turn his back on me t
o find favour with blood-drinking demons from the east, who would ride with our ancient oppressor’s descendants against his own kinfolk. A coward I name you, Haakon. A snivelling wretch, desperate to save his own life when faced with death at the hands of fanatics.’
Haakon Garrmunt rested his head and chuckled to himself at the words. ‘Think what you like, Ironbrand. You were not there. You did not see what I saw, what my knights saw. The eyes. The fire, the fire…’ Garrmunt’s face became vacant, his mouth hanging open slightly. ‘You did not see it. There was such serenity in that fire. It was beautiful.’
‘And that serenity had you lead your knights back home to raze the north and betray your King,’ Aenwald spat. ‘Where is this Graxis, this Kaethar who stole your allegiance from me so very easily? I would very much like to meet the man who would call himself Emperor over my lands.’
Again, Haakon laughed, despite the exposed flesh of his leg and the pain written in his features. ‘Do not worry, Ironbrand, Kaethar Graxis comes for you. Do not think that your victory here today has achieved anything. We were but the first of many that come for Caermark. His vanguard. Graxis himself leads an army south to bring the Prophet’s Red Crusade to the south of Caermark, to spill your blood in His name, and when he comes for you, Ironbrand, it will be glorious thing to behold. Beautiful. Magnificent. I only wish I could live to see it.’
Aenwald grunted, the man’s words ringing in his ears. The silence after them felt almost deafening.
‘You won’t live through the night, Haakon,’ Aenwald said, placing the knife back on the table and cleaning his hands in a basin of water nearby. ‘That I promise. Your ending will not be quick. It will not be pleasant.’
‘Do your worst, King Aenwald,’ Garrmunt laughed at him. ‘I will go to feed the Red Handed Prophet like all the men who died today in the Dales. Do your fucking worst, Filth King.’
The Shadow of the High King Page 38