by Dylan Doose
“Help me,” the count said to his closest man, who in turn looked at Theron and Ken. They shook their heads. The guard backed away. Count Salvenius pulled up his sheets, like a child hiding from the monster under his bed, and his beady little eyes turned to Aldous. “I don’t even know who you are, boy. I’ve never wronged you.”
And Theron believed him. But he did not stop the boy.
Aldous punched the count hard in the face, pulled his blanket away, and punched him again, piteous punches lacking both aim and force.
“Tell me who she is!” Aldous screamed.
“I don’t know,” cried the count. “That is the truth! She was here for a few weeks. She said she hailed from Romaria, that she was a rich duchess, that she believed we would make powerful allies through marriage. I was bewitched by her beauty. Do you understand? Bewitched!” The count blubbered. “I don’t know what this is all about, I swear! An infiltration? The beginnings of a Romarian invasion?”
Aldous hit Count Salvenius again.
“I’m surprised you’re letting this happen,” Ken said to Theron.
“Why?”
“I thought you don’t stand for torture. Yet here you stand watching death by a thousand tiny fists.” Ken’s tone did not have the slightest bit of humor in it.
Theron chuckled. “A joke?”
“A joke,” Ken confirmed, straight-faced.
“Hard to tell,” Theron said as Aldous yelled and the count yelled.
“He knows nothing,” Theron said to Aldous.
“Agreed. The man is a fool,” Ken said.
Aldous landed another punch.
“Aldous, that’s enough.”
The boy didn’t hear. He just kept hammering his tiny fists into the sobbing Count Salvenius, who swiped his hands before him and batted ineffectively at the boy.
“Aldous!”
He finally stopped and looked at Theron, his knuckles bloody, and the count’s face a swollen pulp.
“You should be the one to finish this, Ken,” Theron said.
“This isn’t how I imagined it,” Ken replied.
Theron took a good look at Ken. He was wounded, from the open lashes on his back, to a hundred small and substantial cuts and bruises from the battles they had just fought. Theron too was wounded. He was beginning to calm from the adrenaline of the fighting, and the pain in his body was beginning to set in. A warrior never knew he was injured until a good while after the fight. Many died and never even realized they were injured. They fought out the whole battle and only after it was done did they fall dead. That was the type of exhaustion that was dawning on him now.
The count slid out of his bed and landed with a thud on the floor. Aldous remained lying in the blood-soaked blankets, taking deep breaths. It was dreadful, and, in some dark and depraved way, a most humorous scene. The fat count, bruised and bloodied, evicted from his bed by a fragile, black-haired boy.
* * *
The count slid like a slug across the blood-soaked ground, past the bodies of the men who had given their lives for his miserable existence. Ken followed, the point of his sword hovering over the back of Salvenius’ neck.
“Kendrick,” sniveled the count.
Ken pressed the sword into the back of the count’s skull, slowly lowering his weight down on the hilt. There was a crunch as the bones split apart, then came the squish of sharp iron eviscerating brain. He rolled the corpse over and stared at Salvenius’ face. It was not only bruised from Aldous’ strikes, but there was something else. Something…
Burns. There were burns in the shape of the boy’s knuckles.
Or perhaps Ken was just mad. He took a deep breath and sighed. It’s over. Until it began again.
“How did it feel?” Aldous asked from the bed, lying flat on his back, looking up at the ceiling.
“Not like much, lad, not like much,” Ken replied, as he stared at the boy on the bed and wondered if he truly was a wizard.
* * *
Theron looked at the painting hanging on the wall above the count’s bed. The great green Leviathan, tearing through the surface, causing tidal waves, the sky black behind it and lightning ripping across the canvass. Specks of blood had reached the piece of art. The red droplets gave the monster dreadful life, and a shudder of dark premonition reached up from the depths of Theron’s soul.
“I think it is high time we left Norburg.”
* * *
“I’m cold, sergeant. I’m really, really cold,” said the lad in the sergeant’s arms under the hot southern sun, one arrow in his belly and the other in his sternum. The arrowheads were barbed and there’d be no getting them out.
“That’s all right, Peter, it’s all right. Your fight is done. Your war is done.” Tears welled in the sergeant’s eyes, for Peter was a new recruit, and now he was going to die. The last bit of innocence lost.
“Was it right?” Peter asked as he coughed up blood.
“Was what right, lad?”
“What we did here, sergeant.”
“Ken. My name’s Ken. Don’t call me sergeant, not now.” Kendrick clenched his teeth hard, fighting with everything he had not to weep in front of rest of the men. Behind him, the easterners screamed on the crosses as their village burned.
Peter died.
Ken’s men were about to hammer the first nail into the brown-skinned child that had struck Peter from the bushes with the arrows.
“Don’t!” Ken roared. He stood and drew his sword, putting it to the throat of the man with hammer and nail. “Let him go.”
“Sergeant?”
“Let him go, Sebastian, or I will put you on a cross right next to him.”
Sebastian stood down and let the child go. The brown-skinned boy looked at a woman nailed to the cross. He looked at the little girl dying beside her. Then he looked at Ken with a hatred beyond any word of any tongue, and that was the first time Kendrick the Cold understood that he deserved to die.
* * *
Chapter Ten
Getting Out Alive
They waited by a window in the keep that looked upon Norburg until the sun rose and the fires died, until there was only ash and death.
The trio made their way down to the ground floor and exited the keep into the smoldering ruins. What a sight they must make for some great bird high above, Aldous thought. Three battered and broken forms, wounded and drenched with blood—their own and that of their butchered foes—casually strolling down the corpse-covered cobbles of Upper Norburg’s main thoroughfare.
Theron led the way, his shoulder bleeding badly, his forearms cut and scraped raw.
Aldous was the lucky one; the deep gash in his calf from the rat’s claw was all he had sustained through the ordeal, and although it hurt terribly, he kept his mouth shut as he followed behind Ken. The man was hunched forward, the crisscrossed wounds on his back oozing, and he was too careful with each step he took. He had lost a good amount of blood, not only from where his back had been carved up by the whip, but from a series of cuts on his arms, and, worse still, he bled heavily from a puncture just under his ribs on the right side.
“Kendrick?” Aldous reached a hand toward Ken’s shoulder, then yanked it back and said, “You are bleeding pretty bad.”
“Aye, I’m aware of that, lad.” Ken’s voice was heavy with fatigue, but there was no rasp or coughing up of blood. Even with the limited knowledge of medicines and herbs that Aldous had learned from the brothers, he knew that was a good sign, at the very least.
All around them were corpses and ruin. The only life to be seen was the gathering of the crows, and their small group of three, picking their way along abandoned alleys. Aldous greatly feared they would soon be a group of two if they did not treat Ken’s wounds.
“What do we do, Theron?”
“We must go to my estate. I have a full staff, and adequate medicaments to heal Kendrick.”
“How far?” asked Ken.
Aldous thought the distance was of little importance, since he
doubted Ken could make it another twenty feet.
“Just under half a day on horse, if we ride at a good pace,” Theron said.
The word horse did not sit well with Aldous. He had been riding twice in his lifetime, the second attempt worse than the first.
Kendrick snickered, but it was a halfhearted attempt. “I hope the rats were only interested in eating humans today.”
Theron sighed as he trudged on. “The stable is next to the inn where I stayed for a couple of nights. We must go there anyway to clean our wounds and gather provisions to prepare for our journey.”
As they walked through the thoroughfares of the city, Aldous realized he had completely run out of fear and disgust. They passed scores of corpses ripped asunder, limbs and guts strewn across the gray cobbles, and Aldous felt nothing. One week ago, he had been doing a poor job of copying out scripture in Father Riker’s church basement. One week ago he had been trying to write a book dedicated to his father. One week ago he had not even imagined horror such as this.
“It is impossible to prepare,” Aldous began. “It is impossible to expect what the next hour may bring. I had not the slightest clue the day they took my father, not the slightest hint that my family would soon be decimated. After that I swore to always be prepared for the worst, to always expect the worst of man and the world.” He moved his hand to gesture at his surroundings, though neither of the two men was looking at him. “Yet how could I have even fathomed this as a possibility?”
“We do not decide what destiny puts before us, all we can do is choose how to confront it,” Theron said. His voice was even, calm, and despite what Aldous had just said, he thought that Theron Ward was prepared. Prepared for anything.
“Destiny.” Ken scoffed at the word, then cringed and held his side.
“You deny destiny, Ken? You deny any governing force that exists beyond the realm of human understanding?” Theron asked, his voice quiet with fatigue.
“Is this the time to best discuss philosophy?” Aldous asked.
“We nearly died, and we’re not out of it yet, so I see no better time,” Theron said, as if his answer made sense. Which it sort of did. Which, in turn, made Aldous very nervous.
“I do not believe in God, Hunter,” Ken said.
“I am with Kendrick on that.” Aldous nodded, heavy with furious thoughts toward the church and the Luminescent, so consumed by his anger that he nearly fell face first into the gleaming entrails of a corpse with its gut ripped open.
Theron gave a bitter laugh. “I did not say God. I made no mention of the Luminescent. You let your scathing hatred for the Brynthian church and royalty ruin your connection with any greater force. It is childish.” Over his shoulder, Theron scowled at Aldous and Kendrick both. “There is something you despise, so you narrow your minds into only accepting the direct opposite. Instead of making an attempt to walk down any of the other near limitless paths of spirit, you choose to abandon them all because of a hatred for one.”
“Watch yourself,” Ken said, and Theron turned and sidestepped just in time to avoid a falling timber from a smoldering building. “Chaos,” Ken continued. “I believe it is all just chaos.”
“Then that is your God. That is your greater force. I call it destiny, you call it chaos. They are the same.”
“If you say so,” said Ken. “You have clearly thought about this a great deal more than I.”
“Then what do you think about?” Aldous asked, but Ken just walked on without offering an answer.
When they arrived at the stables, it was as they had feared. The horses had been slaughtered and half eaten. Theron knelt over a red-stained white gelding, its ribs exposed and guts hollowed. Aldous saw him brush at his eye, and had he not witnessed the brutality he had last night, he would have thought that the man was brushing away a tear.
“I did love that horse,” Theron said. He ran his hand across a scar on the horse’s shoulder. “He acquired this when he took a spear blow in my place, against a hill-man far to the north, in the land of Ygdrasst. I thought I was going to lose him there, but he pulled through. Many great fights and many great hunts we rode together.” Theron stood. “It is a foolish thing to grow so attached to an animal, but it is hard to avoid whether you know it to be foolish or not.”
“Did he have a name?” asked Aldous.
“No, I stopped naming my horses some time ago. It wrenches too hard upon the heart when they die.” Theron looked at the gelding all the while that he spoke, and it hurt Aldous to see such a strong man fighting off the pangs of melancholy over the loss of a beast.
“I lost a good horse,” Ken said. Aldous turned to him, surprised at the emotion in his tone. “I named her Steadfast. It was near the most painful loss of my military life. I’m sorry, Theron.” Ken momentarily clutched Theron’s shoulder with one hand as he held on to his bleeding side with the other.
“It is an absurd unfairness for the horse, and it plagues me with an equally absurd guilt, for who was I to force the creature here to his death?” Theron asked, and moved from the stables toward the Inn.
The building had not burned to the ground during the assault, and in the kitchen was a good amount of food—the appetite of the rats was not for bread, fruits, and cooked meats.
They gathered what they could and took four canteens of water, and a skin of wine. Theron spent a bit of extra time going room to room, looking at the faces of the dead as if he was searching for someone, but he said nothing, and when he had made a complete inspection of the premises, Theron mumbled, “Not here.”
“What’s not here?” Aldous asked, but Theron made no reply.
Upstairs Theron took them to the chamber he had rented. Aldous reached for Ken to help him to the bed, but Ken only cast him a glower and made his way on his own. Theron went to the fireplace and grabbed the tinderbox from off the mantel. Quickly he got a fire going.
“Aldous, at the foot of the wardrobe lie some of my daggers. Be so kind as to bring me one,” Theron said from his place by the fire, his eyes on Ken.
“Do we have to?” asked Ken with a dark laugh, as though he and Theron were party to a jest that Aldous was not.
“Let me see it,” Theron said.
Ken removed his hand from his side, and immediately blood began cascading down.
“Indeed we have to,” said Theron, grimacing so hard at the wound it was as if he were the one that suffered it.
Aldous opened the wardrobe and grabbed the longest of the three daggers. “Here,” he said as he unsheathed the blade and ran it to Theron.
“Kendrick, bite a pillow,” Theron instructed.
Aldous looked at the knife, then at the fire, then at the man.
“Sorry, hunter,” Ken said, “I’ve never been much of a pillow biter. I’d prefer to take it standing up.” Ken winked at Aldous. “You’re looking pale, boy.”
The blade started to glow in the fire. “Aldous, hold him still.”
Aldous and Ken exchanged a glance.
“Just do it, hunter,” Ken said, and then he took a deep breath, readying himself.
“Fine, but don’t you strike out at me.”
“I won’t, just do it. I’ve had worse.”
Theron pulled the red-hot dagger from the fire and crossed the room. His hand began to shake. Aldous figured surgery and killing took two different kinds of toughness, and he wasn’t entirely sure Theron was equal in both.
Aldous took a large swig from the skin of wine he had grabbed in the kitchen, and grimaced as if he were the one about to feel the hot metal. Theron took a moment to position the knife over the wound. Ken started a low growl before the fire-hot steel touched his flesh, and when Theron brought the knife down, close, so close, he tensed.
Aldous backed up until he hit the wall.
Theron stood poised above Ken.
“The knife cools,” Ken said, and when Theron still did not bring it to his flesh, Ken grabbed the other man’s wrist and pulled the steel to the open wound. The veins in hi
s neck looked as if they were about to burst, and he let out a scream that could shatter stone.
The smell of burning flesh hit Aldous. Father screams at the stake as the fire eats his legs. Father Riker screams in my hands as I melt his flesh like smoldering wax off his wretched bones.
He blinked.
Kendrick was done screaming. His teeth were clenched tight and his eyes were wide with pain-induced madness.
“It’s done. It’s done now,” Theron said. He sat at the foot of the bed. “I had to seal a wound like that once before. The fellow writhed around and jerked up when the heat touched him. I damn well slipped and the heated blade slid into his heart.”
“Thanks for not telling me that until now,” Ken said, then looked at Aldous and held out his hand.
Aldous looked back, not entirely sure what the man wanted.
“The wine, lad. Give me the wine.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Aldous reached out and gave Kendrick the wineskin. He chugged it dry in a single go.
“Now what?” Aldous asked.
“Now we bandage our wounds with linens from the beds and then we rest,” Theron replied.
Some time later, the trio donned fresh clothes from Theron’s wardrobe.
Aldous had enough spare fabric in his outfit to fit another Aldous, and he couldn’t help but feel bad that, even with a belt, the pants he wore dragged across the ground and caught under his filthy shoes. Of course, at this point Theron likely did not care, but Aldous felt the tinge of guilt nonetheless.
“My father told me that there was still goodness hidden in the world,” Aldous said. “That it was lost and hard to find, but it was there, like the reflection of one golden star on the sea during a clouded night. There will always be one golden star in that black infinity.”
“Which of us is the golden star and which the black infinity?” Ken asked, unsmiling.
“A joke?” Theron asked.