by Rex Jameson
“I’ve always wanted to prick a knight,” the man said, pointing at his bow sitting next to a tree.
“Perhaps you’ll get your chance soon,” the companion said, nodding and picking at his teeth with a green blade of long grass.
Frederick motioned toward one of his archers, pointed at the man who had talked about killing a knight, and then made a cutting motion across his throat. He pointed at the other archer and made a drawn bow motion and finger-walking toward the group. Both archers nodded and Frederick and Simon drew longswords.
Frederick held up three fingers. Then two. Then one. When his fist closed, a bow twanged and an arrow shot across the eighty feet or so between them, burying itself in the middle of the man’s chest. Frederick and his men burst out of the wood and his other archer let loose an arrow that buried itself into the remaining man’s hand as he reached for his bow.
The man screamed in agony and rolled onto the ground.
Frederick grabbed the bandit by the shoulder and rammed him into the tree.
“Are you part of the Red Army?”
“Of course not!” the man tried to lie as he covered his red sash with his free hand. “I was just sitting—”
“We heard you talking about Lord Mallory,” Frederick hissed. “Who sent you here? What grievance do you have with Lord Mallory? I’m from Kingarth. Tell me what grievance your people have, and I might find audience with the King. I can help.”
The man chuckled.
“Oh, right,” the man said, favoring his arrowed hand. “I’m sure you would, and I guess you’d just march right through the Red Army to do it, would you? I don’t need your pity. We make our own way. We don’t need you lords…”
“Oh, sure!” Simon said. “Real strong men, you lot are! How many women and children have you pushed around today?”
“We’re two hundred strong,” the man bragged. “And we’re growing. The call has gone out. More come in every day. Perketh is burning, little lords, and there’s nothing you can do to stop what’s coming!”
Frederick checked the woods for more movement, but all he could hear were the birds and the rustling of branches and leaves in the wind.
“So, your target is Perketh?” Simon asked.
“Our target isn’t one town,” the man said. “We’re plundering the whole territory. We have grievances, we do! Taxed out of our homes to fund some war poem for a stupid lord and his crotch lice! I hope the whole lot of you burn.”
Frederick drew a knife from his belt. He rested it in his hand, sideways, poised for a slice. He positioned himself so effortlessly that the threat didn’t seem to register to the cornered man. Simon joined him in holding the man against the trunk.
“Last question,” Frederick said. “Where’s your leader?”
The man laughed. “Where would you be? Perketh is burning, milord! Why don’t you go admire the flames?”
Frederick’s wrist flicked fast as lightning across the man’s neck, leaving a grizzly red stain that spread in the afternoon sun. The man’s lips moved, likely trying to tell some jibe at Frederick’s expense. It wasn’t until the sound of air came out of his neck that realization dawned on the man’s face. He panicked and flailed against their hold. Wet sticky blood poured down the man’s brown shirt and red sash. They held him there as he bled out and didn’t release him until he stopped gurgling and spasming.
“That’s a cold way to go,” Simon said as he let go of the man.
“I hate bandits,” Frederick said, “and if Perketh has really been sacked, then these men are lower than low. Anyone who preys on the weak and the women and children deserves a long death—one filled with agony, pain, and panic.”
“Still,” Simon said, “bad way to go.”
Frederick kicked the leg of the other bandit who still leaned against the tree. The man never even reached for the arrow in his chest. The strike was instantly fatal.
“My only regret,” Frederick said, “is that our archer friend here was too good a marksman. This one should have died more slowly.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain,” the archer said with a smile.
Frederick clapped the archer on the shoulder. He and his three men returned to their horses and made their way toward the smoke and the distant screaming. A cacophony of metal, hooves and cries drowned out the sounds of their own footsteps. They moved in a circuitous route south and found five men with red sashes raping a woman along the road from Shirun to Perketh. Two men held down her arms as their cohorts cheered on a man who was vigorously thrusting and spitting in the woman’s face as she fought against the hands that pinned her down.
Two arrows split the heads of the spectators, and Frederick leapt from his horse with his sword at the ready. He plunged it through the rapist’s chest cavity, spreading blood all over the poor woman and the wagon on which she was pinned.
“I’m sorry,” Frederick said lamely as he realized he should have thought of the blood spray.
The two remaining men screamed and released her and ran toward the western woods. Simon and the two archers gave chase. Frederick didn’t have to watch them. He knew his archers would catch the perpetrators if his squires didn’t. His four other men stood ready, encircling him.
He knocked his visor up and absently stroked the plume atop his helmet. It was a nervous tick of his that happened when he couldn’t think of something to say. The woman looked in shock and disbelief at the blood all over her body.
“I should have gotten him off you first,” Frederick apologized. “I wasn’t thinking.”
She guffawed queerly as she pushed her dress back down and began to rub the blood all over her body. “No, good knight. This will do.”
“Are you hurt?”
Her eyes tensed up. She groggily looked back at a small house some twenty yards away.
“I don’t…” she said but nodding. “I don’t feel anything.”
Tears began to fall down her face. Frederick left her and moved to the fence and saw two sets of small legs from behind a wheelbarrow. The boys didn’t move. As he approached, he covered his gaping mouth with his hand. Their innards had been cut from them, likely in front of the mother. The children had been dragged around the yard. Blood was everywhere. Madness and evil had been here.
Frederick gripped his sword and gritted his teeth. He strode to the woman. He pointed to the dead bandits beside her.
“Bathe in their blood if you like,” he said. “If it provides you some comfort, I’ll empty the others onto you as well. Say the word and I’ll bring back all the blood you require!”
She stared at her body, raising her bloody hands in front of her face before looking back at him. “It would be an empty thing… Like me, I feel. Unnecessary… without purpose…”
“Is your husband also?”
She laughed so hard she cried, as she rolled off the wagon and began shuffling back toward her house and the backyard that held her horrors. “He left us long ago. For all I know, he’s one of these men… this Red Army.”
“I’ll tell the King of your loss,” Frederick promised. “I’ll petition for grievances.”
“I have grief enough,” she said softly.
“At least tell me your name,” the Captain said.
“Sarah,” she said. “Sarah Crow.”
“I’ll…” he said, trying to think of some promise to her. A song sounded too flippant. He would offer her a rose, but this wasn’t a tournament. What she had suffered was loss beyond what he could comprehend in the moment. “I’ll kill as many of them as I can.”
She turned to him along the short, barren path, likely trampled by her boys in their young years. She nodded as more tears fell.
“Yes,” she said. “Please.”
He leapt atop Lightning and Simon followed him closely on his own mount. They found a bandit group and slayed seven more before any backup arrived. Frederick became wraithlike, solely focused on carnage for Sarah. In his mind, he saw each of these men killing the small boys a
t the house on the road to Shirun, and they all paid bloodily for the damage they had inflicted.
Ten more on the road leading to Perketh. Five more in the forests just south of the smoke. Three more who had made camp and offended his ears with their boasts of rapes and murders. A small group of six who managed to ding his armor with arrows before he ripped their insides from their stomachs and spat into their faces as the light faded from their eyes.
Covered in their blood, he meandered through the wood, hoping against hope that Perketh still stood—that he had made it in time to save even one of these people. But the screams were muted and the smoke was beginning to subside, as if there wasn’t much more to burn.
He stumbled through the trees until he came to a shadow there, watching the town. Unlike the faceless men he had slaughtered, this one seemed familiar. Frederick raised his visor, squinting at the leather-clad, brown-bearded man in a long leather cap and non-descript armor who had not noticed his approach.
“Jeremy?” Frederick asked, surprised.
He knew Jeremy Vossen from anywhere. They had enjoyed many a strong ale together in the capital. Jeremy had even served as wingman to him while table hopping at social events, often distracting fathers as Frederick had stolen a kiss from Lucille Croft, Evelyn Crayton and any number of other dangerous potential liaisons.
“Freddie?”
Frederick forgot himself. He almost forgot where he was, as if the mayhem and retribution had all been a dream and this chance meeting was the reality. He took his helmet off and smiled widely and genuinely through his twirled blond mustache. He stroked the plume of his helmet as he thought of something to say.
“Lord Vossen has sent you here, hasn’t he?” Frederick asked, walking up to him and giving him a hug.
“Yeah…”
The hug was returned but lighter and stiffer than usual.
“Well, I’m so glad you’re here,” Frederick said. “I’m only leading ten men, but they’re good men. We’ve killed dozens. Maybe three. I haven’t been counting. But man, we could use you.”
Jeremy nodded, but he seemed lost.
“You ok?” Frederick finally asked.
“You’re on loan,” Jeremy said, in a rambling sort of way. “The King loaned you to Mallory over the repayment, didn’t he? This was your special assignment?”
“Yeah,” Frederick said with laughter still in his voice at seeing his old friend. “I thought it would be a quiet time on the frontier. I expected I’d be patrolling orcish borders, not this…”
He motioned at the smoke and bodies he had left in his wake.
“Whatever this is!” he said finally. “Man, I have some stories to tell you the next time we sit down…”
“I bet…” Jeremy said, hugging him again.
Frederick patted Jeremy on the back, slightly confused.
“There was this woman,” Frederick said. “Sarah. I found men… pinning her down. They were… You know… I… We killed them all, but not before they had killed her boys. Spread them out all over her yard… I left her there…”
He winced as he thought about her covered in blood, turning toward him on the path to her small home and the graves she would have to dig.
“I wish you hadn’t come,” Jeremy said, grabbing him by the back of the neck.
“No one wants to be here,” Frederick said, smiling at his friend, “but someone had to come. It’s a good thing I came. That we both came! You and me together? The Red Army doesn’t stand a chance!”
A sharp pain pierced Frederick’s neck and a metal taste flooded his mouth. He gasped as he pushed away from Jeremy. He grasped around at his exposed neck and felt the knife handle. He fell to the ground.
“I wish you hadn’t come,” Jeremy said as he bent down to Frederick’s level.
Every inhalation sent blood into his lungs. His body spasmed violently as he gasped for air. He reached out to Jeremy, who held his hand as he sputtered the last breath of his short 22 years. He looked up at the sky and thought of the tournaments he had won. Of his father’s proud face in the crowd. Of Jeremy standing next to Godfrey and just as happy as he had been.
“God damn it, Freddie,” Jeremy said. “God damn it…”
10
A Sight For Sore Eyes
Simon Casterby watched in horror from the bushes as a man stood over Captain Ross. Frederick’s final spasms had been grotesque and pained, but there was an agony there too in the brooding man.
“I will leave this place,” the man with the brown beard said, now hunching down near Captain Ross’ head. “I am done here. This army is without form and evil. They scatter like vultures to pick at the dead, forgetting their mission and thinking only of themselves. There is no order, and I cannot lead them. I have failed in my father’s task. These men will loot and pillage endlessly until someone like you kills them all.”
The man put his head in his hands. “But it can’t be you now that you’ve seen me, and who else would it be? You didn’t deserve this, Freddie. Neither did these people. My father was wrong to send me here. Gods, why couldn’t you have been assigned anywhere else?”
The man shook his head, wiping tears from his eyes.
“I’ll not bury you here in an unmarked grave,” the man promised, still talking to Captain Ross. “I’ll find a wagon, and I’ll have Lightning pull you back to the capital. I’ll be there every step of the way. I’ll present you to Godfrey… I’ll…”
The man didn’t say another word. He seemed lost in thought, and Simon thought about charging the killer. But something told him to stay his hand, that this man may be more capable than he looked.
Simon had watched the man bury a knife into his Captain’s throat. He had watched the man’s reaction as Frederick’s eyes had grown wider, and he began to clasp at his throat. His Captain had not just lifted his visor to greet this man. He had taken off his helmet, exposing his neck. This killer was a knight, possibly even a lord.
This was a man who Frederick knew well, and Simon knew a game that was above his head when he saw it. Simon was a knight in name only, with only the smallest of lands and titles to his family name. The Ross family was legendary. Ten Captains of the Royal Guard. Three continuous successions of Captain within their family in the past sixty years, and Frederick would have attained major and colonel ranks within five years. Simon was sure of it. He had fought like a madman, running headfirst into archer formations and turning his body with such expert care that two steel-tipped arrows had careened off that might have hit Simon in the chest, piercing right to the heart.
And yet, despite his skill and obvious training, Frederick lay dead and Simon still breathed. His mind tried to force a lesson onto itself. Never take your helmet off. Never trust a lord. Never trust a friend. No good deed goes unpunished. Each successive lesson more terrible than the previous one.
He followed the man from a safe distance and watched him follow through on his promises to Captain Ross. First, he found Lightning. Then, he requisitioned a cart that had not been burned. He hefted Frederick’s body onto the flat wood flooring, and smacked the white horse on the rear to get him trotting. The horse looked back frequently, seeming to mourn his master in his own way. The man refused to mount the horse but instead walked alongside the cart, staring into the dead eyes of the man who seemed so destined for greatness.
Simon ran back to his squad to report the death of Captain Ross. Each hung their head low and cursed themselves for falling behind, but he knew it was not their fault. Captain Ross had lived his life like a true hero, charging into scores of men. Simon didn’t tell the men how Frederick died. He left out the tale of the bearded man. All he told them was that Captain Ross had been stabbed in the neck, and a knight was bringing the Captain’s body back to the capital.
With the bearded man heading toward Kingarth to tell his side of the story, Simon knew there was only one place he could tell his. He beckoned the men to follow him down the road through Dona, the one that led to Mallory Keep.
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br /> 11
The Rebirth of Perketh
The scent of burning wood and flesh flooded Ashton’s nostrils on the road north from Mallory Keep. At first, he thought he was hallucinating Riley’s death in Perketh Square. As he got closer to Perketh, he realized that he was not just torturing himself again. There really was smoke and death nearby.
Clayton and he passed village after village, always finding the same scene of death and destruction. Depravity was everywhere, and it preyed on the weak and defenseless. Naked women lay along the main road. Old men had been beaten and worse. Babies cried everywhere, except where they had been thrown from windows onto the streets. A savage evil had ransacked the city, and none were safe.
Everyone had been butchered. No regular army or militia was in sight. No lightning bolts from the sky. Even the gods must have been turning a blind eye.
Ashton threw up more than once at the inhumanity of these men who ignored Clayton and him as they stumbled along the main roads. The bandits were too busy looting and raping in these villages to be bothered. When they were stupid enough to accost the two friends, it was the last thing they ever did. A man with a crooked knife and three friends approached them and demanded money a few miles south of Perketh. Clayton ripped off both of the man’s arms and beat one of the bandit’s accomplices to death with them. The third man ran off screaming.
“Go on,” Ashton called after him. “Tell your shit friends!”
They reached Perketh mid-afternoon. The sun was beating down on them, baking the dead in the streets. Unfamiliar, half-charred brick and stone buildings greeted them around every corner. A few roofs in the town remained untouched, but for the most part, it was an alien, surreal homecoming. Without really thinking about his destination, Ashton’s feet led him to Perketh Square, what was left of it.
With every step, he felt like people were staring at him, but the windows of the town were empty. He could smell the death, and in his bones, he could feel the loss. Every friend he had known. Every distant cousin and person who had attended Clayton’s funeral.