by William King
Death’s Angels
Copyright © William King 2005
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Cover: Jan Patrik Krasny.
Website: www.krasnyart.eu
Editing: Angela King
Website: www.freelancecopyeditor.co.uk
Chapter One
“I hate those bastards. They think they are better than us just because their ears come to a point,” said the Barbarian. He chewed at the drooping strands of his long walrus moustache and glared at the scarlet-coated Terrarch courier striding away down the hill.
“No offence, Halfbreed,” the Barbarian added almost as an afterthought. He scratched his bald pate then ran his fingers through the fringe of long blonde hair surrounding it as if checking to see whether any had grown back since the last time he had done so.
“None taken,” Rik assured him. He was only nineteen years old and the Barbarian was pushing forty but that was his only advantage. Although he was tall, the Barbarian was a head taller still and almost twice as heavy. Most of that extra weight was muscle. On top of that the big man was the regimental bare-knuckle champion.
Leon gave Rik a supportive wink and then returned to packing his gear. As always, he had a clay pipe stuck jauntily in his mouth. It looked ludicrous when combined with his pinched street urchin’s features. Leon had watched his back since they were children in the rough streets of Sorrow, and Rik was glad of his presence now.
“They think they are better than you because they are immortal and wise and the chosen of God,” said Gunther, his lean face constricted with passion. “It is something you’d do well to remember.”
“If I hear one more word out of you about the chosen of your God, I’ll send you to him,” said the Barbarian. Gunther showed no fear. He was as tall as the Barbarian, and although much skinnier he had a wiry strength that made him a formidable fighter. And, of course, he had God on his side. He would need all the divine assistance he could get if he was going to fight with the Barbarian, Rik thought.
Toadface and Handsome Jan looked on with keen interest. Any moment now they would start making bets on the outcome of the fight. Toadface’s protuberant eyes bulged even more than usual now that he was excited. His long tongue licked his thick lips, making him look like a glutton contemplating a feast. Handsome Jan had stopped contemplating his profile in the shard of mirror he always carried, for a moment.
“You’d both better speak a bit lower,” said Sergeant Hef, moving between them. The top of his three-cornered hat only came up to the middle of the big men’s chests, but he had an undeniable authority. “If the pointy ears hear you, it’s a taste of the cat you’ll be getting.”
“Will it now?” said the Barbarian. “And do you think that bothers me?”
“It will if it happens,” said the Sergeant, sucking his teeth, his lined face and wrinkled expression making him look more like a monkey than ever.
"I am not one of you soft Southerners," The Barbarian said but his voice was softer now.
The Sergeant shook his head and went back to getting his gear in order in obedience to the lieutenant’s order. His long-barrelled rifle lay propped up on his rucksack.
“Have you so soon forgotten the last lashing you took?”
Rik doubted that anyone could forget a lashing. He would never forget the five lashes he had got a couple of months back, nor forgive Lieutenant Sardec for ordering it. The lick of the cat was not something that easily slipped from the mind.
The Barbarian put his finger in his mouth and became a study of a simple-minded attempt at remembrance. His blank-faced stupidity made everybody laugh, even the Sergeant, but it slipped no one’s mind that it had been less than a year since the Barbarian’s last encounter with the whipping post. He had been dragged away from that with his back bleeding, and barely conscious. The scars were visible when he took off his green tunic. He would carry them to the grave.
“I still hate the pointy eared bastards,” the Barbarian muttered. But of course he didn’t, not really, Rik thought. He disliked their Terrarch masters, resented their authority and power, and grumbled about it, but he did not truly hate them, not the way Rik did. Then again, the Terrarchs had not ruined the Barbarian’s life the way they had ruined his.
Rik hefted his heavy pack. The pot and cup and anything that might clank were wrapped inside his change of clothes. His greatcoat, not needed in the mild early spring weather, was rolled up and fastened to it by leather straps.
Before lifting the rifle he made sure all his pockets were full of wax paper cartridges, both pistols were in his belt and his tricorn hat was clamped down firmly on his head. Whatever had glory-mad Lieutenant Sardec so keen to get them out of camp was most likely not something to meet with unprepared. All the talk of war had everybody on edge, and they were far too close to the Kharadrean border for comfort. The flintlock felt reassuringly heavy in his hand.
Having made his point the Barbarian went about his business. He heaped what little gear he had into his pack and tested the heavy hill-man fighting knife he always carried on the air before sheathing it and picking up his own rifle. The knife was the size of a short-sword. The Barbarian was from Segard and like most of the denizens of his cold northern homeland he had little faith in gunpowder weapons. Having had his own share of misfires and damp powder during his four years with the army, Rik could understand that.
Off in the distance Corporal Toby bellowed orders to the rest of the Foragers. Since Toby’s speech was like an ordinary man’s shouting, the noise was not to be ignored.
“Old Toby surely likes the sound of his voice, doesn’t he?” muttered Leon, fitting his lucky goose’s feather into his tricorn the way he always did before action.
“He’s the only one,” said Rik. Leon’s laugh came out as small whistling noises vented through the pipe.
“Why is it always the poor bloody Foragers who get the hard work?” the Barbarian said.
“Because it’s our job,” said the Sergeant. “When you want rows of musketeers all marching in step you go to the line infantry; when you want things scouted it’s to the light companies you go. I would have thought that even you would have got that through your thick head by now.”
Sometimes the Sergeant took the Barbarian’s rhetorical questions too literally, Rik thought.
Soon, they had formed up in a line and were wending their way towards the great Redoubt. As they did so other squads joined them. All in all there were about ninety men, all light infantry and rangers: pretty much all the Foragers in camp at that time. Corporal Toby stood at the side of the path, his great chubby ruddy-cheeked face redder than ever as he checked off the name of every ragged-uniformed soldier who passed.
The camp was situated on a range of hills overlooking the town of Redtower. The great peaks of the Giant's Shield Mountains marched away north and south. From the hillside they had a good view of the town below and the open fields surrounding it. The great dragonspire of the Temple of the Terrarchs dominated the skyline. Leathery-skinned devilwings circled it on huge bat-like pinions, skimming over the red-tiled roofs to catch rats and pigeons and other prey in their long, serrated-toothed beaks.
All the flyers avoided the massive crimson tower of Lady Asea’s palace, as if afraid of it. They were probably right to be scared of that ancient structure. Most people were, even tho
ugh the town took its name from it. They said the sorceress was two thousand years old, and steeped in sin. She was already ancient a thousand years ago when the Terrarchs conquered this world with their dragons and their wyrms, and she would probably live to see the end of it.
As ever, curiosity about what she was like warred with fear in his mind. The intrigues of Lady Asea were said to have been one of the prime causes of the civil war that had torn the Terrarch Empire apart and left it a patchwork of warring realms.
Lines of wagons converged on the town from all over. In the year they had stationed here, Rik had never seen the roads so busy. He reckoned it must be true. The army was preparing to move into Kharadrea. And in far more force than the one regiment that was normally stationed at this border post.
As they strode along, the mocking shouts from the Skywatchers distracted him.
“Going for a little walk, are we?”
“Taking a stroll in the woods?”
“Lieutenant going to teach you to shoot?”
The last was an allusion to the marksmanship contest that the Foragers had lost to the Skywatchers the previous week. Most people still could not understand how it happened. Weasel and Leon were the two best shots in the regiment. Rik had his own suspicions. There was very little Weasel would not do to win money even if it meant betting against himself. Rik was certain that the former poacher had somehow persuaded Leon to go along. The scrawny little lad had always been malleable by any evil influence, particularly when ill-gotten gains were involved.
“I’ll teach you how to sit on a bayonet,” bellowed the Barbarian, who had lost quite a lot of copper betting on his friends. It was still a sore spot with him.
“Hush,” said the Sergeant. “There will be time enough to pay them back in months to come.” It sounded like he had a plan.
Weasel loped towards them from the tent village of the camp-followers. His tatty green uniform looked worse than ever as it clung to his long lean frame. He appeared to have lost his hat again, and his narrow, bald head on its long neck made him look even more rodent-like than ever. The nostrils twitched in his huge nose as if scenting for danger.
“Nice of you to join us,” said the Sergeant. “Any later and you would be competing with the Barbarian and Gunther for a place on the whipping post.”
“Just making sure your wife was satisfied,” said Weasel. He was one of those who, without having any rank whatsoever, still managed to wield a great deal of influence in the regiment. It came by way of his involvement with the Quartermaster’s countless black-market schemes. Still, he must have been feeling particularly cocky today, or even he would not have taken that tone with the Sergeant.
Sergeant Hef raised an eyebrow. Such talk was water off a duck’s back to him. He and Marcie had been together as long as anybody could remember, had numerous sprogs and, as far as anyone knew, had never even looked at anybody else from the day they met. It would take more than Weasel’s leering insinuations to upset him.
“With the rabbits,” said Weasel, with a comedian’s timing, his tone all wounded innocence. “With the rabbits I sold her. Not what these dirty-minded louts were thinking at all.”
The Sergeant shook his head. “One day you’ll dig your own grave with that tongue of yours,” he said.
“It’s the only digging he’ll ever do,” said Gunther. “Never seen that one do a lick of work.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Weasel. “Tupping your girlfriend is work.”
Gunther’s face congested with rage. His hand went to the butt of his pistol but somehow Weasel’s long bony fingers already contained a knife.
“That’s enough the pair of you,” said the Sergeant, in a voice that let them both know the fun was over. For such a small man he had a lot of authority. “It’s stripes on both your backs you’ll be getting if you keep up this nonsense.”
Weasel gave him a wink. Gunther subsided into the muted fury that was almost perpetual with him when he was not quivering in awe and fear of his angry god.
“What the hell,” said the Barbarian.
“Look, Rik, a dragon,” said Leon. Somehow despite his veneer of streetwise sophistication, something in Leon’s voice made it sound as if the dragon was something wonderful he was seeing for the first time.
“I see it, Leon,” said Rik. He was a little annoyed. Like most of the Foragers he preferred his nickname to his real name. The other one brought back far too many bad memories.
The whole unit looked up as a dragon passed overhead, silhouetted against the greyish clouds. The wind of its passage ruffled their jackets. Its vast wings, massive as the sails of a caravel, cast a huge shadow on the land below. Its long serpentine neck stretched forward at full extension and the great triangular head briefly gave it the look of a spear in flight. Its rider’s polished armour glittered in the dim sunlight. It was moving at quite a pace as it spiralled in to land within the massive stone walls surrounding the Redoubt.
A mutter passed up the line of Foragers. It had been a long time since any of them had seen a dragon, since before they had been dispatched to this benighted strip of borderland, and Rik wondered what message its courier brought. He knew they were all thinking the same thing: war.
The Sergeant just shrugged and said; “We’ll know soon enough.”
They passed the camp followers washing linen in the stream and carrying buckets of water back to the patched tents and hastily built hovels that were home. Small dogs and spine-backed wyrmhounds romped in the muck. Mud clung to the women’s bare feet, and dirty-faced urchins to their shawls. Most looked hungry. It was not much fun being a soldier’s brat. Still, Rik thought, most of them had it better than he did at their age. The streets of Shadzar, the Place of Sorrow, had been hard on orphan boys, particularly on one thought to be the bastard get of a Terrarch.
Shoulders straightened and even Weasel stopped whistling as they reached the village around the Redoubt. Most of the regiment’s officers were quartered in the Inn or the low stone built houses and the Terrarchs were always sticklers for discipline. The ten storey fortress loomed above them, rising from a walled promontory that added thirty feet to its height.
Atop its tower the huge black banner from which the regiment took its name flew proudly beside the Red Dragon of Talorea. The regimental flag showed a beautiful naked woman with the wings of a dragon and a rune-encrusted scythe in her hand; Arazaela, the Angel of Death. Beneath her were inscribed the words Death’s Angels All Are We in the high tongue of the Exalted. Rik could not make out all the details at this distance but he could picture it well enough. Its replica fluttered on the standards of all nine companies.
Those banners had flown over a thousand battlefields in the five centuries since the regiments founding and would doubtless fly over a thousand more but Rik’s heart did not lift at the sight. In this he knew he was among the minority of the men. He took no great pride in walking among the Angels.
Tall scarlet-jacketed officers strode back and forth, stick-lean, their narrow ageless triangular faces covered in that expression of bored haughtiness that seemed moulded onto their features at birth. Their long pigtails of fine hair swung like the tails of stalking cats as they walked. He fought down old hatred and old fear at the sight. His own face bore a resemblance to theirs, the same finely sculpted features, the same cold purple eyes, the same ash-blonde hair, the same narrow chin; a gift from his unknown father, the only patrimony he ever got from him.
He was not sure whether the frosty looks directed at him were a product of his imagination or simple reality. Perhaps it was merely in his mind. The Terrarchs looked that way at everybody. They were the lords of creation, and had been since they conquered Gaeia a thousand years ago.
The acrid smell of wyrm filled the village air. As the men passed, ferocious hunting ripjacks lashed their long tails and slammed themselves against the bars of their iron cages, each a wingless, blood-mad, bi-pedal dragon in miniature. Hunger and hate burned in their tiny snake eyes. Th
ey raised themselves to the height of a man on huge hind legs that ended in massive claws and razor sharp dagger-like spurs. They made what looked suspiciously like obscene gestures with their tiny vestigial forearms.
Their long necks undulated serpentinely. Rik smelled the stale blood and meat on their breath as it emerged from enormous snap-toothed mouths that could take off a man’s arm at a bite. He felt the furnace blast of their ferocity. Their alien masters loved these hunting wyrms. Years before, Rik had seen a group of Terrarchs run down condemned prisoners with a pack of them. It was something he had never forgotten. There had not even been enough of the bodies left over for burning.
The Foragers fell into a neat line in the square across from the Inn. Just beyond it was the ditch with its earthwork bridge that surrounded the Redoubt. A group of Terrarch officers mounted on destriers jogged across it and rode by. Servant girls came and went carrying burdens of laundry and food under the appreciative eye of the soldiers.
Lieutenant Sardec emerged from the Inn. He moved along the line inspecting the humans with those curious cat-like Terrarch eyes. In his red uniform with its gold braid, he looked less like one of the Chosen of God and more like an emissary of the Shadow. Try as he might, Rik could not push that particularly heretical thought from his mind. He told himself it was merely his own dislike talking; the product of the endless vendetta the officer seemed to have with him.
Sardec must have sensed the thought passing through his head because he paused in front of Rik. “A button missing here, Sergeant,” he said, pointing at the open eyelet in Rik’s tunic. “See that this…soldier is given extra duties this evening. Perhaps that will teach him to take better care of her majesty’s property. If that does not teach him, there is always the lick of the cat.”
“Aye, sir,” said Sergeant Hef, his face an expressionless mask.
It annoyed Rik that he flinched when Sardec had mentioned the cat but at least he had held his mouth firmly closed. He had wanted to protest. If missing buttons were a cause for disciplinary action more than half the men in this troop should be punished. Of course, that was not what he was being singled out for. His real crime was that he looked like a Terrarch and wore the uniform of a common infantryman. Shaking his head Sardec took up a position in front of the entire regiment.