Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael

by Martin Parece

  “You are stupid, aren’t you,” the demon replies, though he takes Rael’s advice and moves to a bench near the center of the fifteen foot long boat. “Those men would’ve killed you in your home like your parents. Would you rather have died there? I can accommodate that now, if you’d like.”

  Rael ignores the threat and repeats his question, “Where are we going?”

  “To someplace safe.”

  Realizing that his savior (captor?) isn’t prone to conversation, Rael decides to introduce himself. “My name is Rael Jameson.” The man continues rowing with no answer. “What is your name?”

  “My name doesn’t matter,” replies the strangled voice, and it is now accompanied by a huffing as the man rows.

  “But you do have a name,” presses Rael.

  “I have forgotten it.”

  “I must call you something. Would you be offended if I called you Demon?” Rael asks.

  “Demon?”

  Suddenly fearful that he has angered the armored giant, Rael’s tongue trips over itself as he explains, “I do not mean anything by it. It is just that… that is what I thought you were when I first saw you.”

  “Demon,” the voice behind the skull helm whispers thoughtfully, and he has stopped his rowing for just a moment. “Yes, I like that. If I am not a demon, then who is?”

  “What land do you hail from, Demon? Your accent is peculiar.”

  “It is no accent, boy. I speak the way the gods made me. Damn Them, it is getting hot. Look boy, look on the face of a demon!”

  Demon raises the oars to rest them along each side of the sloop, and he reaches up to slide the skull helm from his head. Steel scrapes on steel as it does so, and one of his hands flicks back a chain mail cowl meant to protect the soft tissue of the neck. Rael inhales sharply at the horrible visage before him, as the man he now sees looks like no other man he has ever known. His round scalp is nearly hairless – just a few strands of curly black hair protrude here and there, but it is Demon’s face that nearly freezes Rael in terror. His left eye sits almost a full inch below its partner, and his triangular nose sits between them looking almost like the end of a pig’s snout. One cheekbone is bulbous and over-formed, while the other seems almost to be a cavity. His lower jaw protrudes at least a half inch beyond the upper, similar to what Rael has seen in some dogs, and his lips seem large and over formed.

  Rael inhales sharply at the sight, and he fights the urge to run, to again jump from the boat and try to swim away as fast as he can. Demon sees this and tenses with the thought that he may again have to fish the boy from the water. Rael slowly calms, focusing on one distinct fact of Demon’s appearance, something unexpected as Rael has never seen it on any person before with one exception. The skin over the malformed face is totally ash gray without blemish or variation.

  “You’re…” Rael stutters, “You are… like me.”

  “I’m nothing like you, boy,” Demon replies as he begins to strip his armor, revealing one of the most distinctly muscles torsos and arms Rael has ever seen, which is impressive as Rael is used to seeing men whose bodies are hardened from the rigors of heavy fishing.

  “You are,” Rael insists. “We both have the gray skin. I have never seen it on anyone else.”

  “It’s the mark, the curse of Dahk the Blood God,” says Demon, as if his answer explains everything.

  Rael says nothing for a moment, apparently digesting this piece of information. When he realizes that he doesn’t understand, he asks, “What exactly does that mean?”

  “You’ll find out after we reach one of the ancient castles of our people,” replied Demon as he again begins to row.

  “But we are not of the same people,” Rael states insistently. “My parents are… were Westerners. I do not know what land you are from, but I have never seen a Westerner like –“

  “You will never see anyone like me,” Demon nearly yells as he interrupts. “I am born of a black woman from central Dulkur. Her people saw the way I was made and drove her from her village when she would not dash my brains upon a rock. She barely survived to escape into the jungles and raise me. She’d have done both of us a favor had she done as her tribe wished.”

  “And I would have died as well, for it is you who saved me,” concludes Rael.

  Demon slows his rowing for a moment, as if the thought never occurred to him, and whispers, “Perhaps.”

  3.

  “Stupid, useless boy! Gods damn you!” Demon screams in frustration. “Why can you not learn to fight?”

  Rael lies on the ground flat upon his back, staring up at the blue sky as puffy white clouds run across his view, driven by the Narrow Sea’s ever-present winds. His longsword lay several feet away, dropped and forgotten as he used his small kite shield with both hands in an attempt to shield himself from Demon’s hellish strikes. The effect was that Demon’s blows bent the steel almost around Rael’s arm, and then the boy had been kicked to the ground.

  “Get up, you sack of rhino droppings!” Demon berates. “On your feet and fight me like a Dahken!”

  Rael sits up, and the arm to which the shield is strapped starts to throb terribly. He wonders if it may be broken as he says, “Fight like a Dahken? I do not even know how to fight at all. You are going to kill me.”

  “And perhaps I should right now,” Demon sneers, and he brings the point of his greatsword to mere inches from Rael’s right eye. “There were two others before you. They didn’t make it, and they were stronger than you. You are a weakling.”

  Rael’s eyes harden at the words, and he uses the bent and battered shield to bat the blade up and away. The impact nearly makes him cry out with the pain of it, but he bites his lower lip to keep back the sound. He moves toward his fallen sword, but the huge blade comes down in a deadly arc keeping him from it. Rael launches himself into Demon’s midsection, much like he did Orf’s years ago, but he finds Demon’s huge body to be completely unmoving. Demon laughs and brings the pommel of his sword down onto Rael’s right shoulder with a satisfying crunch of bone. Rael’s arm goes limp, and he nearly falls to the ground with the pain of the attack. Yet for some reason he cannot fathom, he stays on his feet. In fact he rears back very slightly and brings his left arm around, bent shield and all, straight across Demon’s unprotected face. Demon grunts in pained surprise as the sound of bones cracking and breaking again fill the air.

  “You Gods-fucking whoreson!” screams Demon in fury as he spits teeth and blood from his mouth.

  He brings his greatsword around in a massive two handed strike, and it rips into Rael’s midsection, the latter too stunned from his first and only combat success against Demon to move out of the way. By the time Demon ends the stroke and recovers enough to realize that a follow up is unnecessary, Rael is again on the ground, but this time he does not simply lay there staring at the sky. The boy can say nothing as both his blood and innards dump onto the ground from a torso that is half severed from its waist and legs.

  “I should let you die now. You will never survive real battle,” Demon says as he nearly cuts his own hand off at the wrist with a dagger. His own blood gushes in spurts from the wound to mix with Rael’s as the boy’s eyes glass over. At the last possible moment, he kneels presses his wound up against Rael’s open body, closing his eyes as he does so. When Demon reopens them, both his wrist and Rael’s easily mortal wound are fully healed. Demon sighs as he retrieves his sword and stands.

  “Then why do you not just kill me, Demon?” Rael asks.

  “Because for once, you managed to fight like a Dahken. Now if you could just figure out how to use a sword.”

  “You could teach me to use a sword,” Rael accuses, “instead of just trying to rip me apart with yours.”

  Demon tilts his head to the side as if he has never considered such a thing, and for a moment his eyes appear level with each other. “Perhaps, but not right now. Go inside. Go inside to your moldy books and scrolls, and do whatever it is that you do there. I’m going to Hager
to find a whore.”

  “I can teach you to read,” Rael calls as Demon turns away and slides his helm over his head. Demon turns and regards Rael quietly through the eye slits of his skull helm. “I mean, if you wanted to learn. I know Western and Rumedian.”

  “There is nothing for me to learn that I cannot learn from this,” Demon replies, pointing his sword toward the boy for a moment before he sheathes it. He then turns and strides through Sanctum’s shattered gates. Rael watches after the Dahken for a time, the man’s giant form growing smaller as it saunters north up an old dirt track.

  When they arrived at this place called Sanctum several months ago, Rael had spent hours that turned into days exploring the ruins. With the exception of an old rusty armory, he found most of the outbuildings empty or their contents destroyed. The old Dahken Hall captivated him for hours, for it was so obviously the place of a huge and ancient battle. From there, he discovered the entrance into the castle’s rickety tower, though he still hasn’t built up the will to climb the twisting steps. He once entered the catacombs, armed with a torch, but the heavy and oppressive air of the place quickly deterred him from thorough exploration. And of course, he discovered the great room of wealth behind the hall, but something deep within that unlit room warned him away. Outside of his sleeping area, the treasury was the only part of Sanctum for which Demon seemed to have any use.

  However, it was in the western wing of the castle near where they slept that Rael found what he considered to be the real treasure of the Dahken, and it is to that room he now wanders. He enters a deep and dark room, illuminated only by the lit torch that he thought to bring. In the centuries before the Cleansing, it seems that the Dahken kept an impressive and complete library. At first Rael, cursed the lack of windows in this room, but he now realizes that it is to keep sunlight away from the aged parchments and the precious ink upon them. There are no markings or guides anywhere within the library to indicate what information is found there, and it was through random selection of tomes or scrolls that Rael learned the organization. He discovered which shelves held Chronicles, philosophical treatises, journals of Lord Dahkens passed or monetary accountings.

  Rael places the torch in a stanchion next to the heavy wood table and makes certain that it is sturdy. With its dry and crumbling rug and ancient tomes and scrolls, an accident with flame in this place would likely turn disastrous within moments. He takes a candelabra from the table and lights each of its five candles in turn before losing himself deep within the shelves.

  4.

  “Boy, wake up,” Rael hears as he is shaken from a dream that he already cannot remember. “I said wake up, gods damn it!”

  Demon stands over him with a gauntleted hand roughly gripping his shoulder. Rael’s eyes take a moment to clear, and he realizes it must still be night. He leaves a window unshuttered on clear nights so as to allow the sounds and smells of the sea below to permeate the air, and no light comes through the open portal. He can only make out Demon’s outline in the soft glow that comes through the doorway into his room, and the Dahken’s entire form is steel-clad.

  “Get up!” Demon shouts, his voice full of haste. “We must go. Get what you need, what you can carry. We must leave.”

  Rael pushes himself up into a sitting position and asks as Demon turns to leave the room, “What is wrong? What has happened?”

  “Don’t question me, boy,” Demon says with finality. However, as he exits into the hall beyond, Rael hears him say, “Damned Western whores are so weak.”

  Demon has done something, Rael thinks. Whatever it is, it is not my fault. They will know it was not me. Let him go by himself. Would they even know to look here for him?

  A dark and massive outline is again framed in the doorway, and Demon bellows, “Boy, what are you doing?! Move!”

  “Tell me what happened,” Rael replied, calm and obstinate.

  “Does it matter? I killed a whore, and how long before her man discovers it? It’s her fault for being so weak.”

  “He knows to find you here?”

  Demon snorts derisively and then replies, “I doubt just any half-drunk ranger could follow my tracks, since I’m so stealthy. Stupid boy.”

  “Then go. There is no reason I must leave, too.”

  “Do you think the dogs’ll stop at your doorstep because you’re smaller than me?” Demon asks. “Do you think your smallness will protect you when they see the gray of your skin? Stupid boy, you’ll pay for my crime with your life, and I’ll roam free.

  “I’m leaving. Follow me east if you will, die if you don’t. I care not.”

  With that, Demon is gone again from the doorway, and Rael can hear the clinking of his armor grow fainter with each passing heartbeat. Rael just sits, thinking over his options, and neither seem very appealing. He could go with Demon, a man he has learned to hate and yet on which he depends, or he could hope the Westerners never come to Sanctum. And if they do, what then? He could hope to reason with them, point them in the direction to which Demon fled. The image of centuries old, rusted armor and weapons mixed with skeletal remains comes unbidden to his mind, the very scene which lay in Dahken Hall at this moment, and he thinks of the Cleansing. He read about it in Sanctum’s library; it seemed so long ago from his young perspective, but was it long enough?

  After a year at Sanctum, Rael moves through the dark agilely as he knows exactly where everything is at all times. Driven to action, he stands and belts on his sword. It’s nothing special – just a normal, double edged longsword – but he has learned to wield it with ease. He quickly picks up his iron buckler shield and a sizeable canvas sack with a strap so that one can hang it on his back, and he moves purposefully from his room to the library. From here he takes a thick, leather bound tome that he knows to be full of blank pages, several vials of ink and a quill pen, all of which he drops into the sack.

  In the hall outside of the room, he pauses with indecision. He considers running to the treasury. Perhaps he should face whatever resides in the darkness there just long enough to scoop up some coin. No, he decides, Demon will have done that already. He turns to leave, and on his way out of Sanctum, Rael quickly, and almost as an afterthought, grabs a large water skin which he fills with water from one of the rain barrels outside.

  He passes through the breach in the eastern wall and looks out over the sloping ground that leads away from the rocky promontory on which Sanctum sits. It appears to be nearly midnight, based on the moon’s position in the sky, and he curses the darkness. As Rael continues to strain his eyes, he finally catches just the smallest glimpse of motion off in the distance. He focuses on it and stares until he is sure that he sees the reflection of moonlight off steel. He starts down the slope to follow the figure that could only be Demon, but he soon realizes that he’ll never catch the Dahken, even at a brisk walk. Rael breaks into a jog and then a full run, very nearly losing his footing on the uneven ground more than once. He finally catches up to Demon just as they reach the tree line several hundred yards from the castle’s broken walls. Demon stops and watches impassively as Rael staggers and tries to catch his breath from the run. His breathing slows, but turns to a terrible, hacking cough, something both are familiar with.

  “Muffle that noise, boy,” Demon snaps in a harsh, strangled whisper. “Who knows who listens.”

  Apparently confident that they are reasonable concealed and safe in the sparse trees that thicken into a forest further in, Demon waits patiently while Rael’s coughing passes enough for the boy to speak without interruption.

  “Do you see anything?” Rael asks, leaning his hands on his knees. He coughs deeply, a great force pushing from deep within his lungs, and he spits something vile into the night.

  “Not in this shit thick gloom, but I doubt they will come until daylight. They’ll find the same thing that has always been – a dead, old castle – and we will have put many miles between us.”

  “Where do we go?”

  “We’ll follow the coast for a
while. We’ll find a town or city somewhere,” Demon says.

  “And do what then?”

  “Buy passage back to Tigol, where whores are hardy and men pay for killers like me.”

  5.

  Rael sits at a table in a large smoky room, pouring over a large leather bound tome. He’s careful to make sure the beads of sweat on his forehead do not drop onto the text. He would not risk damage to it for anything, for then the sage may not lend him any other books or scrolls. While he reads, he does not even keep water nearby to slake his thirst for fear of ruining the ink on the pages. Heat permeates everything in the room, partially because it simply drifts into the inn’s main room from the kitchens. It also seems to Rael that Tigol is just a hot place. Of course, he has never been to anywhere in Tigol except this small city – a place called Somi.

  Demon had led them on the most circuitous and fantastic of routes, as he was always sure that some priest, lawgiver or ranger was always on their heels. It took him almost two months of crisscrossing across the Shining West, avoiding all contact with people if at all possible, before he finally marched to the southern coast. Another month or so later, they bought passage on a narrow Tigolean ship and landed in Somi.

  Rael thought that, if they were in fact being followed, it would be only a matter of time before Demon was caught. After all, everyone would notice the young man with deathly gray skin and his companion – a hulking brute clad in steel with a skull mask and a giant sword. About a year since fleeing Sanctum, Rael admits that his fears were unfounded, because no one seems to notice them at all.

  They’re just two more strangers in a city full of strangers. Even on their first day in Somi, Rael saw a wider array of different peoples than he had seen his entire life. Mostly, there were small statured, yellow skinned Tigoleans with their almond shaped eyes, but he also saw a few Westerners. He saw his first Loszian – a frighteningly tall creature wearing dark robes with no hair – and an equally tall bronze skinned man called a Shet, whom he learned came from the southern regions of Tigol. He even saw a few men whose skin was as black as the volcanic rock that some vendors fashioned into jewelry, their skin a great shock against their bright white teeth. At some point, Demon had described his people from Dulkur in such a way. In such a place, Rael and Demon simply vanished into the crowd.