by David Benem
“Perhaps he won’t. Perhaps he will. Perhaps things will be finished after Hargrave, and we can all parts ways as friends.” She smiled slightly. “Those are long odds, but the best bet isn’t always the safest one. I’ll not consider abandoning a friend such as Karnag until I’ve seen how the dice roll.”
The next morning the skies were solemn and greeted the company with a chilling rain. Rocky earth and mossy tree roots crowded a path slick with muck, and the ride grew treacherous. More than once Fencress nearly toppled into the swift-moving stream from her horse, and the company quickly reached a consensus to dismount and guide the beasts by their reins.
At midmorning their path met a stout bridge and the wider road that crossed it. At the intersection stood a rotting signpost, upon which was scratched a marker. Hargrave was but five leagues distant.
The horses seemed to delight in the road’s firmer footing and the company remounted. Their pace quickened and the horses became playful. Fencress’s mare splashed ahead several paces on the puddle-filled road, and soon Fencress found herself just a few feet behind Karnag at the group’s lead.
She made no effort at conversation, and instead sat with eyes fixed on the road ahead as rain dripped from her cowl. It was a straight path, shaded by an overhang of trees, and Fencress reckoned she could see several hundred yards along its gradual upward slope. Beyond that, through the forest’s canopy, she could discern the distant, black smear of the Southwall Mountains against the gray sky.
“A killing ground,” said Karnag, his voice an unnerving monotone. “In days this road will be awash in blood.”
Fencress nodded, hoping it would suffice as a reply.
Karnag gestured at the road ahead. “The Arranese army has chosen this as one of their passageways into Rune. The road heads right to Riverweave, and the High King’s army is too late to mount a stout defense. The southern garrisons will take arms but they will be overrun, and the Arranese will take the whole of the south, from the Southwalls to the Sullen Sea, before they tender their terms. Already they’ve crushed the mountain garrisons and are marching upon this very road, putting villages to the torch and men to the sword.”
“You know this?” Fencress asked, unable to resist engaging the highlander in spite of her better judgment.
Karnag turned in the saddle, his bent face battered from a hundred battles. His gaze was just as Fencress remembered it from that awful day with the horse trader: heavy lids drooped over lifeless eyes. He stared at Fencress with those dead eyes for long moments before answering. “My dreams.”
Fencress looked away and lowered her head. The thought of such things was disquieting, unnatural.
“I have seen it,” Karnag said. “Just as I can see Tream now, sipping at a tall tankard of ale before him at the town’s only tavern.”
“Karnag,” said Fencress, squeezing her horse’s reins in gloved hands until her knuckles ached. She breathed deeply before continuing. “How can this be? I am not the sort to fear others, but lately I’ve seen things that have left me a bit… unnerved.” She steeled herself and turned to Karnag. The highlander’s eyes no longer held hers, but had drifted to the road ahead. “You are my friend. What’s happened?”
“There is a call I hear,” Karnag said quietly, the heavy braids of his black hair dripping with rain. “A whisper in my head. If I struggle to listen to it, it fades away, but when I am quiet I can hear it clear. It tells of paths before me, of things yet to come, and of my hand in such things. I can do naught but harken to it, for it tells my destiny.”
Fencress kept her eyes down, staring at the wet road and pulling again at her cowl to keep it low.
Long odds, indeed.
The road ran straight through Hargrave, a tumbledown hamlet huddled against the banks of Cladderback Creek. A fat sow and her piglets rolled in a muddy puddle in the middle of the road, snorting noisily. Lining the edges of the road were two dozen or so homes and shops of rotting wood. If there were folk who hadn’t fled the town already, then they’d shuttered themselves tight within. Aside from the pigs, the town’s only movement was that of its creaky watermill, beside which squatted its only tavern, The Wain and Paddle.
Karnag slowed his horse as he reached the town’s edge, and Fencress turned about to regard the others. The Khaldisian nodded meaningfully and made a pull at his horse’s reins, winking as though to tell Fencress he was ready to turn the beast about. Paddyn sat near him, rubbing his grimy face while keeping his eyes downcast. Fencress reckoned the young fellow was more confused and frightened than the rest of them, and was worried the lad’s bow would be of little use in trembling hands.
Down the road behind them, barely visible, was a solitary rider on the road, clad all in green. The same who followed us from the gates of Raven’s Roost? Fencress shook her head. Damned jitters. She brought her mare even with Karnag as the highlander pulled his steed to a stop. She noticed Karnag’s eyes were fixed on the faded shingle marking the tavern, and the highlander sat quietly for a time before dismounting.
“Tream is there, inside,” Karnag said firmly, stretching his legs as he stood. He tightened the leather straps of his jerkin and then his hands seized the hilt of his two-handed sword, Gravemaker as he called it. The weapon slid from its sheath with a harsh scraping noise which sounded loudly amidst the drumming rain and snorting pigs.
“You have a plan?” Fencress asked, her voice sounding more timid than she would have liked.
Karnag turned and looked up at the mounted company with those lifeless eyes. “I am going to kill Tream.”
“Just like that?” Fencress asked.
Karnag’s heavy brow knotted. “Is there something else?”
Fencress pulled at her cowl, feeling helpless and hopeless. She stared at her gloved hands as she knotted the reins about them. “Karnag,” she said uneasily, “we’ve done a lot of hard work together, and we’ve always had a plan. Shouldn’t we case the tavern, take count of its exits, and take a peek through the windows? Tream’s worked with us and knows how we do things. He’s a misguided lout, but he’s not entirely stupid. We should take care with such things.”
Karnag was already nearing The Wain and Paddle, his great sword drooping from his right hand and drawing a lazy line in the mud. The highlander stooped to peer through a window of clouded glass, and then, without warning, he smashed through it with his forearm.
Drenj kicked his horse next to Karnag’s, grabbing its reins and turning to Fencress. “We must leave!” he said, grinding his teeth together. “Now!”
There came a commotion from within the tavern, and someone inside hurled a cleaver out the broken window. It grazed Karnag’s shoulder and plopped harmlessly into the mud.
“Tream!” Karnag shouted, his deep bellow seeming to shake the tavern’s timbers.
“Now!” said Drenj more urgently, shaking the reins at Fencress.
“No,” said Fencress, watching as Karnag lumbered to stand before the tavern door. “I cannot betray him.”
“Tream!” the highlander roared again, his voice painful to the ears.
Just then there was the slam of a door being thrown open from the tavern’s opposite side, overlooking the creek. A tumble and a loud splash and then the sloshing of boots through water.
Karnag rushed through the tavern door and a chorus of shouts erupted from inside. There was the ring of steel upon steel, then the thuds and whimpers of folk being cut down.
“Get around this place,” said Fencress, almost to herself. She yanked the reins and drove her heels into the flanks of her skinny horse, spinning it about. She steered the mare to a gap between the tavern and the mill, around a rick of firewood and some barrels and then to the bank of the creek.
There he was—Tream—clad in a garish red shirt and running hard across the creek toward the opposite bank. “Paddyn!” Fencress shouted. “Take him down!”
In a moment Paddyn was beside her, hissing as he nocked an arrow to his bowstring. “You’re sure?” he asked.
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��No,” Fencress confessed. “But we haven’t a choice.”
“Sweet Illienne have mercy upon me,” Paddyn whispered. He let fly the arrow, but it splashed in the water a few feet ahead of Tream.
“To the abyss with you both!” came Drenj’s voice from behind them.
Fencress turned about and regarded the Khaldisian blackly. “Perhaps you’ll meet us there some day, after Karnag comes for you next.”
Drenj’s face was a mask of anger as he wiped rainwater from the dusky skin of his brow. “This is madness, woman!” he yelled. He threw down the reins of Karnag’s horse and spat, then drove his horse to a gallop north along the road.
There was another splash from the back of tavern. Karnag. The highlander crashed across the creek with long strides, speaking in a low tone those strange, broken-sounding words he’d uttered in his sleep. Fencress suddenly felt pity for Tream. This was a bad gamble for you, Tream. Things will not end well.
Paddyn’s bow hummed as he loosed another arrow. This time the shot was true and the arrow smacked into Tream’s back, just above the loop of his belt. Tream cried out and collapsed, clutching at the arrow with one hand and reaching for the creek bank, just a few feet away, with the other.
Karnag slowed his pace and watched as Tream howled in pain. He walked, unhurriedly and inevitably, to stand over Tream in the knee-deep water.
“Karnag!” Tream squealed, his hand struggling with the arrow in his back. “I thought you were dead, I swear it! I apologize! Please, Karnag! I apologize!”
“That’s it, Karnag!” Fencress shouted hopefully. “A lesson learned! Ask him to hand over the money, give him a good scar to remember, and let’s be done with this!”
“She’s right!” said Tream, sitting upright in the creek, face twisted with fear. “The gold. I left it in the tavern. A coin purse behind the ale cask. It’s yours, of course. I never would have taken it had I thought you’d live,” he said, gesturing clumsily. “For the life of me I thought the dead gods would strike you down for what you were about to do. Please. Please don’t kill me…” He burst into tears.
From somewhere far off there came a low rumble. At first, Fencress thought it was thunder, but it was too rhythmic, too consistent. War drums.
Karnag turned to face southward, his expression unreadable and his eyes hidden by his thick braids. He stood there with an eerie stillness for long moments as the rain fell about him and Tream blubbered at his feet.
“Be done with it, Karnag!” shouted Fencress, trying to sound calm and cheery. She reminded herself of how she’d bluffed her way into small fortunes at deadman’s dice, trying to stoke her confidence. “He’s confessed his crime, offered to hand over the coin, and Paddyn’s given him a wound he may not survive. Let us leave him and get clear of this place!”
A sinister smile crept across Karnag’s face as he turned back to Tream. “You hear it,” he said, his voice just loud enough to carry. “War. All of those soldiers and all of the blood they will spill. Marching to make a ruin of Rune and a sacrifice of its people. The rivers will run red, the fields will be sown with corpses. Yet, the great sum of their deeds will not move the scales when weighed against mine. I,” he said, heaving his arms above him, Gravemaker poised to strike, “have become Death itself.”
“Karnag!” cried Fencress. At least give him a quick, clean death.
The highlander brought down his sword, not upon Tream’s neck but upon his foot, fixing him to the creek bed like a great nail and bringing a thick swirl of red blood to wash about the water. Tream clawed at his face and pulled at his hair, whether out of agony or fear or relief Fencress did not know.
Karnag walked about him in a circle, moving with the drums’ cadence. He muttered words barely audible but entirely incomprehensible, squeezing his hands into fists and then slackening them again, over and over. Fencress had seen Karnag kill many, many men, and he’d always done so with a cold efficiency. He’d cared not for the manner of men’s deaths, only that they died. This, though, was different, for there was a careful method to this, a reverence. A ritual.
Paddyn tugged at Fencress’s sleeve. “We must stop this, or we must run! This is wickedness! If the dead gods haven’t cursed us already, they will surely curse this!”
Fencress pulled her eyes from the scene before them and looked at Paddyn. The young man’s face was as wet with tears as it was with rain. Faith can be a frightening thing. Fencress nodded and tugged at her horse’s reins to turn it around.
An ear-shattering shriek drew their eyes back to the creek. Karnag stood over Tream, holding the bloody remains of what appeared to be Tream’s arm. Tream sat shaking in the water, his mouth agape and seeming to draw breath for a scream. Karnag’s smile widened and he tossed the stump into the creek with a chilling nonchalance.
“Wickedness!” said Paddyn.
Then Karnag’s hand was upon Tream’s head, entwined in the mess of his greasy hair. He continued on in his mutter, brandishing that sick grin upon his battered face. Tream appeared to try to speak but formed no sound.
Fencress shivered, cold to her very bones. Her hands went numb and she dropped the reins of her mare. She could do naught but watch the grotesque display before her.
Karnag looked skyward and cried out a word in that strange tongue. His smile broadened and his teeth shone and he growled a savage growl. The massive sinews of his arm flexed and his knuckles whitened upon the crown of Tream’s head.
There came a cracking sound, like a tree splitting in a storm, and Tream’s tongue spilled from his mouth and his eyes rolled back in his skull. Then his head separated from his shoulders in a spray of blood and tissue.
Karnag hefted the disembodied head above him, displaying it as he would a great prize. He turned it upon himself, as though to look Tream in the eyes once more, then cast the head to the creek bank just below Paddyn and Fencress. It came to a rest with a thump, staring wide-eyed at them from a crook in a tree root.
Fencress stared back at Karnag, feeling her face drain of all color.
“I,” said the highlander, “have become Death.”
Fencress stood behind the splintered planks which had once served as the bar of The Wain and Paddle, studying the four finger-thin ingots of gold and sack of silver coins she’d found in Tream’s purse. She tried thinking of the things she could do with so much coin, but found it difficult to count money after seeing a former friend’s head plucked off. She tucked the money in her coinpurse and pulled a long draw of ale from a cask. She drained the tankard. And then she did it once more for luck.
She turned from the bar and regarded the corpses littered about the tavern. Five rough fellows were sprawled about, surrounded by pools of sticky blood buzzing with flies. She stepped over the body of the closest one, a farmhand clutching a rusty knife, and moved into the tavern’s kitchen.
The kitchen smelled as much of death as the common room, and Fencress found the carcasses of a few squirrels or rats and a dog stuck on a spit and only halfway cleaned. She chuckled in spite of the gore. Even with a wealth of gold, Tream, you still ate like a shit-headed scoundrel.
Paddyn had been rummaging through the larder and emerged cradling a sack of potatoes, a bottle of vinegar, and a few turnips. “There’ll be no kingly feast during our journey, but there’re a few things I can do with this and perhaps some venison and herbs.” He looked apprehensively about the kitchen and then peeked into the common room. “Is Karnag…”
“No,” said Fencress, gesturing toward the broken window. “He’s still outside.”
“Waiting for us?” Paddyn stuffed the provisions into a burlap sack he’d found and crept toward the window.
“Or the whole Arranese army, by the looks of him. I’m not sure.”
Paddyn stared outside, his expression fearful. “He’s facing south, just cleaning his sword. Do you reckon he’ll hunt down Drenj, like he did Tream?”
Fencress shrugged. “I fear I can predict that fellow no better than I can the roll of hones
t dice. But odds are his blade won’t stay clean for long.”
Paddyn scratched his head. “What’s going to happen, Fencress? You’ve known him for years. How long before Karnag kills us, or the dead gods curse us?”
“Sounds like the Arranese are slaughtering everyone in their path, so we’ll not be heading south, and I don’t reckon the guards will welcome us back in Raven’s Roost just yet. It seems the reasonable thing to do is to head north to Riverweave and hope the High King’s soldiers mistake us for refugees when we pass. That, or find an old friend of mine in the Ghostwood not too far away. Old Crook. You’d like him.”
“Has Karnag spoken of this?”
“No, but then his mind doesn’t seem much concerned with survival,” Fencress said, joining Paddyn at the window. In the middle of the road, fifty or so feet to the south, stood Karnag, menacing in his silence. He was pulling a rag down the length of his sword Gravemaker, giving it a dull gleam in the rain. In the distance the war drums sounded.
Fencress started to turn about but a movement caught her eye. Opposite the road, behind a rickety house and a line of brush, there was a bearded fellow clad all in green, creeping close to the ground and moving northward along the forest’s edge.
“Someone’s watching us,” she said. And our kind doesn’t take kindly to prying eyes.
“I see him.”
“It was a good distance, but I saw a fellow leave Raven’s Roost just after us, wearing those very same colors.”
“A scout for the army?”
“Perhaps,” said Fencress, squinting to keep sight of the figure as he moved low along the tree line. “I’d thought he could be a guard, but then no guard from Raven’s Roost would’ve bothered following us this far south during wartime. Yet,” she said, “everything that’s happened since we killed the Lector has left me thinking of things with a bit more care than I used to. It’d be best to ask the fellow a question or two, just to make certain.”
Paddyn pulled his long bow from his back. “Do we tell Karnag?”