Shepherd’s Awakening (Books 1-3)

by Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla

  “By the bloody octopus!” said the sailor, who had noticed all this. “They’re already keeping a close eye on us. They suspect something. If that story you’ve invented were true, we’d have soldiers and other landowners with us, and we’d surely not stop at a rundown sort of place like this.”

  “That’s enough,” the witch cut in like a scolding mother. “The more you speak, the more attention you attract. Eat and be quiet. I don’t want another word from either of you.” For a moment, they looked like a couple of old people who had been married for too long.

  The sailor was offended but obeyed and dipped his spoon in the stew. It was much better than he had expected.

  Soon, the food relaxed the atmosphere in the dining room. Mérdmerén drank his draught as if it were water and asked for more, which he downed quickly in turn. His companions shook their heads.

  They were left speechless when the boss stood up and went over to the troubadour. He took a few crowns out of his pocket and said something to the musician, who gave him a toothless smile and began to play fast, cheerful chords.

  “Drinks for everybody! Drinks for everybody! They’re on me!”

  The customers stayed still. The men were watching; the women were fanning themselves impatiently.

  “Come on, vermin! Leeches! Drink, it’s on me! Grab your chance! To the bar! Let’s dance! Let the party begin!”

  A group of men and women, the readiest to let their hair down, wasted no time in heading to the bar to order their drinks. The owner could not believe this brazen impudence; he was so angry he did not even hear his customers. The general mood began to warm up, and alcohol ran like a river downhill.

  The drunkards got in behind the counter to grab bottles and drink from them. Mérdmerén danced with a fat whore with sagging breasts while the better-dressed and more dignified women fled to their rooms. Ságamas and Hexilda, who had stayed prudently aside, joined the party in turn. By now, it was in full swing.

  ***

  Ságamas opened his eyes with difficulty, raising eyelids that might have been iron blinds. The stump of his mutilated leg was sore.

  He had danced and pranced too much, and he had overdone it. He took a deep breath and gave an exhausted moan. He yawned.

  His breath stank, and his guts felt sticky. His mind was clogged by too much alcohol. A timid sunray pierced him like the edge of a sword, and he knew that the worst had happened.

  He opened his eyes fully. The bar was upside down. There were naked men and women on the floor, snoring like inebriated pigs. A smell of rotten fish flooded the place. There was complete silence in the bar and the rest of the hotel.

  The sailor looked down at himself. He was still dressed in the clothes he had arrived in, and nothing was missing, neither the satchel nor the weapons nor the few crowns he had been carrying. His spear was still leaning against the table where he had dined.

  Hexilda was lying on top of a massively built man, sleeping in absolute peace with her staff firmly gripped in her hands. The old woman was snoring louder than anyone else. Her languid hair moved with every exhalation of her dead-fish breath. The old woman was also naked.

  Broken bottles, vomit, blood, and other bodily fluids were scattered on the floor. The counter was completely wrecked.

  What in the squid and putrid mermaids has been going on here? And Mérdmerén? he thought, looking around for the boss.

  He slipped and fell on his face. His lip started to bleed. “Hexilda! Hexilda!” he called as he regained his footing.

  The old woman woke up. The moment she saw herself, she was shocked. She began to dress quickly with a smile of pleasure on her face. Something had happened between her and the corpulent man.

  “But surely you weren’t drunk?” the sailor asked, impressed by her alacrity.

  “No. Else I wouldn’t have been able to convince this young man to have sex with me. It was invigorating. What on earth could Mérdmerén have been thinking of? Although I thank him for this,” she said, pointing at the naked corpulent man. “I think it was imprudent.”

  On the wooden floor were two deep marks and a scratch.

  “Sailor, where’s Mérdmerén?”

  “I don’t know. By the squids, didn’t you just say you were looking after us?”

  “Absolutely, Ságamas, but when two girls dressed in black took Mérdmerén away to a room, I decided not to follow him, d’you understand? I don’t fancy being present at the deserter’s nocturnal activities.” The crone gave him a coy look.

  “Then he must be in one of the rooms, right?” The witch’s concern began to rub off on Ságamas. “Two women dressed in black?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Could they be murderers?”

  “You never know. We’ll have to find out where they took him.”

  “To some damn room or other, you said. We’d better start looking, don’t you think?”

  “Come on, quick,” said the old woman, grasping her staff firmly. “In case some son of a bitch has grabbed his ass.”

  They examined each room, door by door, but found no answer.

  “Sons of bitches,” murmured the sailor. “D’you think he can have been kidnapped?”

  “It’s quite possible. We have to find him before they sell his head. On we go!”

  They went back to the bar like lunatics, scouring every nook and cranny in search of clues, but there was nothing but grumbling drunkards. Ságamas found the owner of the hotel stretched out on the floor.

  “Bofo!” he cried as he shook him. “Bofo! Hell, Bofo! Hexilda! Hexilda!”

  The witch came at once and turned the unconscious man over. She bent to examine the body. In his neck was a tiny black dart with a feathered tail.

  “Murderers!” she muttered under her breath.

  “What’s that?” the sailor asked.

  “Murderers!” the old woman repeated, crouching there, paralyzed.

  “Hell, woman! Explain yourself!”

  The witch pulled out the dart that left a dry, dark hole. “It’s a dart belonging to the worst hitmen of all. They’re the murderers of the Brotherhood of the Ravens. Slippery, silent, and efficient. They serve Elkam, a Grim Shepherd. We saw them in the cauldron.”

  The woman’s gaze was lost in the distance. She was quiet for a long time. The sailor was getting impatient. He was looking everywhere, feeling that something—a shadow, an invisible animal—was crawling up his back and sucking his blood.

  “Hexilda…”

  The witch came out of her trance. “We must leave right away, find Mérdmerén, and save his hide.”

  “Don’t you think they’ll already have cut off his head?”

  “Imbecile!” the witch replied. “The Brotherhood of the Ravens serves Némaldon! They don’t want to sell his head. They want to make mincemeat of him!”

  “What! But—but why Mérdmerén!? What has he done to be on Némaldon’s blacklist?”

  “I don’t know, sailor, but it’s obvious that Mérdmerén’s of interest to them for some reason. For a Grim Shepherd to have sent his minions to capture him, his life must be a very valuable one.”

  “And how are we going to find him?”

  Jamie came into the bar like a bolt of lightning. “They’re coming! The soldiers are coming!” he shouted in terror. He was weeping. “Your horses are outside. Five men dressed in black took the lord you came with. I followed them. They’re in a cave not far from here. Quick! I can show you the way there!”

  “What do you want in exchange?” Ságamas asked distrustfully.

  “Nothing,” the boy replied. “I just want to avenge my family, my father, my sister, my mother—” His voice broke. “Come on, it’s getting late!”

  Ságamas and Hexilda exchanged questioning looks. Without stopping to think, they ran out after Jamie, who was already racing outside the bar.

  “Boy, what happened to your sister and mother?” the witch shouted at him. Jamie turned with his tearful face a mask of pain.


  “Everyone who tried to give the warning that the men in black were coming has died. They were murdered. They were shot with this.” The boy took two darts out of his pocket, probably the very ones that had put an end to the lives of his mother and sister.

  The witch cursed under her breath, and the sailor shook his head, gripped by fury. “My spear!” he cried. He turned back to the bar.

  Jamie and Hexilda waited outside. They did not have long to wait; in a few seconds, the sailor shot out as if the hounds of hell were after him.

  “They were there! The soldiers! If they see us, they’ll blame us for everything. Run!”

  They went into the forest which soon became overgrown. In the distance, they could make out a crack in the rock. Ságamas swallowed. Beside him, the witch was holding her staff determinedly, and from it issued blue energy.

  Chapter XXII – The Prophecy

  Through the walls of the cavern filtered a deep sadness that cast the atmosphere into mourning. The light that came in from outside projected ghostly shadows onto the walls. Jamie shuddered with fear. He was drenched in a cold sweat.

  The sailor was holding his spear. Their encounter with the sáffurtan was vividly in his mind. The witch, in contrast, was going into the darkness naturally as if she were part of that shadow world. The wyvern claw shone intensely blue.

  The boy coughed, and the sound echoed. He felt stupid. He would never forgive himself if he had alerted the enemy. The witch went on ahead with the sailor close behind her. Perhaps his wooden leg was making too much noise. He wrapped the end in an old rag to muffle the clicking. The witch stopped and signaled the boy to come forward.

  “Are you sure they went this way?” she whispered in his ear.

  The boy nodded, and the old woman continued. A thread of noise wove through the shadows and the depths of the cavern. Someone was near.

  It was a murmur of quiet voices and the scratching of some sharp object on the stone like they were drawing. They went on.

  Behind a bend, they could make out the brightness of candles and illuminated space. The sailor peered around and then drew his head back at once, frightened and in a cold sweat.

  The old woman wanted to know what had scared the man so much. She went closer. It was a body lying on the floor surrounded by a five-pointed star. At each one of the points, there burned a flame that danced to the notes of ominous music that had begun to sound.

  The body was still breathing. It was Mérdmerén. Five hooded men went close to him and stood between the points of the star. They could have been anything because their hoods and cloaks covered them completely; only their mouths could be seen, pale, but at least made of flesh.

  The five individuals were reciting incomprehensible words in the cadence of a spell. Despite the flames, the darkness around was dense. The hooded figures began to move their arms in perfect synchrony.

  They traced circles up and down, down and up, as if they were tugging at something. As if they were creating a portal to summon something. The witch gasped. She squeezed her staff, and her gaze took on a new fury. She began to mutter the words of a spell.

  Neither the sailor nor the boy had time to react. They only saw the witch give a start and the wyvern claw emit spirals of blue energy. They could see the effort in her face, almost pained. A beam shot out of the claw.

  It exploded in a furious flash and hit three of the hooded figures in the chest. They burst open and their innards were scattered across the walls of the cavern. The other two reacted too late.

  Hexilda hurled herself at one of them and, with the wyvern claw, gave it such a blow that it tore away much of its face and skull. Its brains slid out in a slow, viscous river. The fifth individual, however, had time to prepare.

  It was waiting with its black dagger drawn. It pulled back his hood. It had the pale, evil face of a demon. It moved fast, attacking and feinting astutely. It launched a thrust at the old woman’s stomach. She leaped backward and released another spell.

  The staff was now a pike of energy that she hurled at the hooded figure. The pike went through it at the level of its navel and skewered it to the wall of the cavern, immobile and gasping.

  “Who sent you, demon of the putrefied plains? Who ordered you to capture this man?”

  The hooded figure was gushing blood. It could barely speak.

  “The prophecy… the one who’s been marked by the curse must die… must die… before…”

  The individual opened his eyes to their fullest extent and died.

  “The prophecy?” murmured the old woman. “Mérdmerén has been marked by a curse. He must die before what?”

  She was perplexed and frustrated at not having wormed the plans of the demons of Némaldon out of this minion.

  “The sáffurtans!” She realized this all of a sudden as she stared at the five dead bodies. “If a sáffurtan comes near, he could resuscitate these dead bodies. We have to burn them. Ságamas!”

  He came out of hiding, still trembling with fear. Now, with the demonic darkness banished, the sunlight touched the corners of the cavern.

  “What the hell’s happened here? Hell and damnation!” the sailor howled.

  “Silence! Help me pile up these bodies. We have to burn them. Get a move on!”

  They got down to the task. Meanwhile, Jamie watched from where he was huddled in a corner, whimpering and shivering.

  While Hexilda saw to her own business, Ságamas helped Mérdmerén. He checked his prone body, making sure he was still alive. The boss was breathing deeply and slowly. He did not seem to have any wounds.

  “You’re the worst of pirates,” Ságamas said as he examined his traveling companion.

  When the bodies were gathered together in a pile, the old crone pointed her staff and recited an incantation.

  A blue, very pale fire enveloped the bodies and then turned into a blaze of wild tongues of flame. Hexilda and Ságamas watched the flesh and innards disappearing within the flames, with that unmistakable crackling sound. At the same time, they were thinking that their mission had taken a complicated turn.

  Now, it was not only a matter of recovering the past. Mérdmerén’s curse was beginning to show its face, and now the minions of the darkness were chasing their boss to kill him. But it was more complex than simple death. The hooded demons wanted to summon some evil conjuring, but for what? To trap his spirit? Death can come easily and in many ways. They could have slit his throat but did not. This meant they wanted him alive more than dead. This was not good at all.

  Maybe Mérdmerén was fated not to reach his goal. Whatever the case, something serious was unfolding, and it was linked to the Grim Shepherd and his followers of the Brotherhood of the Ravens.

  “The demons of Némaldon are unleashed,” Hexilda said, her gaze distant. “I don’t like this one little bit. Between what you told me about that village and the sáffurtan and what’s just happened here, I can only conclude that things are worse than I thought.

  “Darkness is spreading, and I think Mérdmerén will have an important role to play, for good or ill. We’re already deeply involved, and we’ve been touched by evil. Hell, now things are only going to get worse. We can’t stay here much longer,” the old woman said, her head bent. “We have to continue to the North as fast as we can.”

  The sailor took his spear. “Oh, all right then, bloody mermaids, let’s keep going north,” Ságamas muttered angrily. “Jamie, is there any chance you could bring our horses without attracting too much attention from the soldiers in the hotel?”

  Jamie looked at them for a moment, full of sadness and fear. He got to his feet and ran off. He did not take long to come back. By then, Ságamas and Hexilda had managed to take Mérdmerén outside the cavern. They hauled him over the rump of Ságamas’s horse and set off.

  Chapter XXIII – Lost in Thought

  The sun was shining full on their faces. Ságamas and Hexilda closed their eyes, grateful for its warm caress.

  Ságamas looked at himsel
f. His armor was blackened, and he smelt of burned corpses. Hexilda was worse, with the remains of blood and viscera on her. Now they truly looked like deserters who had robbed some great lord.

  “The soldiers are coming!” Jamie moaned, ashen-faced.

  “In the name of King Aheron III! Halt!”

  The sailor and the witch exchanged questioning looks. As if a demon were at their heels, they kicked their horses’ flanks and shot away, praying that Mérdmerén would not fall and that the boy would react and follow them.

  “In the name of King Aheron III, stop!” shouted the soldiers again. They shot two arrows at them, which only just missed.

  ***

  The sailor spurred his horse into its fastest gallop. Despite lacking a leg and being hampered by the weight of Mérdmerén’s body behind him, the man of the sea managed his reins well. Urgency had given him strength and skill.

  Someone was calling his name, but he had no intention of stopping. He could not let those bloody soldiers catch him.

  “Stop, you stupid idiot! We’ve fooled them! Ságamas! Stop, I tell you!” the old woman shouted.

  The sailor came to a halt and the horse, which was snorting from the exertion, was grateful.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you pathetic son of the filthiest witches? We left them behind a long time back! At this rate, you’ll kill the poor beasts!” she grumbled, her tangled hair electrified. Jamie arrived at her side. “If we’re being chased by the Brotherhood of the Ravens and the soldiers of the Empire, we’re going to need those horses, you idiot.”

  “All right, I see.”

  Mérdmerén began to grumble as he woke up from his hangover. The old woman gave him a savage glare and hit him hard on the buttocks with her staff.

  “Ouch!” he whined, waking up fully all of a sudden. “Sons of stinking mothers!”

  His eyes were staring wide, his face revealing his great confusion. He slid from the horse and hit the ground with a bump.

  “Fuck me rigid, what a party. What a hangover… My head…”

  He got to his feet slowly. “So was that a good party or not? And my girls in black?”