Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1)

by James A. West

  “Did you see?” Aeden asked.

  Eled, who had regained some of his color, paled again. “See what?”

  Aeden swallowed. “The Shadenmok and her demon hounds!”

  Eled let out an agonized moan and sawed the reins, dragging his horse around. Without a word, he kicked the mount into a hard gallop.

  Rathe leaped into the saddle, waited just long enough for Loro and Aeden to do the same, then went after Eled. Rathe fought against whipping branches and his horse’s plunging stride until breeching the forest’s grasp. Having caught up with Eled, the foursome raced back along the road to the first glade.

  Captain Treon and the rest of the soldiers looked around at the thunder of hooves. Before Treon uttered a word, Eled began screeching, “Strike camp! We must flee. Now!”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Treon demanded.

  “Shadenmok!” Aeden cried, provoking a few startled outbursts.

  Treon glanced at Rathe, for once his gray gaze showing something different than anger or hate. Fear leaped within them. “What did you see?”

  Rathe shrugged. “I know not what I saw,” he admitted, then described the creatures as best he could. “Perhaps it was mist, or a dark fancy conjured after seeing the dead huntsmen.” He did not quite believe that, but then, he did not want to believe the alternative. He had been frightened as a child by tales of fell creatures lurking within the black forests of the Gyntors, things that stole flesh and mortal souls with equal abandon. He did not wish for those stories to become reality.

  “Are you sure you did not see bandits?” Treon asked, voice trembling.

  Loro shook his head at the same time Aeden blurted, “It could not have been.”

  Eled shivered. “I saw nothing.”

  Treon regained some of his composure. “Probably a pack of wolves—”

  An agonized shriek rose from the south, stilling the captain’s words. Another cry followed, and abruptly cut off. The soldiers scanned the woods, goggling eyes twitching back and forth.

  “That was Alfan,” someone muttered. “He went out to hunt.”

  “Fool’s been drinking again,” Treon said unconvincingly, “and is toying with us.”

  “Or the Shadenmok hunts him,” Aeden blurted.

  “We must organize a search,” Rathe said.

  “No,” Treon countered. “I will not risk good men for a single, buggering fool with no more sense than a stone.”

  “Then I will find him on my own,” Rathe said. He was not keen on locating the man who might have ravished his backside over a barrel, had he misstepped the day he arrived at Hilan, but Alfan was a soldier under his command, and a brother-in-arms until he proved differently. Moreover, now was an opportunity he had waited for in which to begin implementing his plan against Treon. All the better that the cause was just.

  Treon sneered. “The Shadenmok is a race of she-devils that fill their wombs with the seed of dead men, then give birth to Hilyoth, their hunting hounds. You would challenge such a creature alone … in the coming dark?”

  Behind that derisive expression, Rathe saw the face of pure cowardice. “If I must,” he said, praying to Ahnok that no such hellish creature actually existed … or if it did, he prayed for his god to lend him the strength to defeat it.

  “I will join you,” Loro said. “There are torches in the wagons.”

  For a moment, no one moved. Then, hesitantly, a handful of the Hilan men stepped forward, then more. None looked to Treon for permission or guidance. Instead, all eyes fell on Rathe. I am the whipped dog no more.

  Not waiting for Treon to argue, Rathe squatted, drew his dagger, and stabbed the tip into the churned snow and mud at his feet. “We are here. Alfan is in this area. And here,” he said, scratching a deep groove, “is the road where we will form up, with no more than ten paces between each man. At my word, the line will beat the forest until we find Alfan … or whatever hunts him.”

  He looked up, marking each face. “If we do not find him before our torches fail, the forest may become his tomb.”

  Treon scanned the soldiers around him, and Rathe could see his mind trying to work out a response. If Treon refused to allow the search, he would lose more respect than he already had. Moreover, he had to know Rathe would go, whether granted leave to do so or not, and that act of defiance would further bolster his standing.

  “Take half the men, lieutenant,” Treon snapped, his face reddening. “The others and myself will remain here—to guard camp, and build fires to ensure you find your way back.”

  “I would expect nothing more from you,” Rathe drawled.

  Before Treon could register the insult, Rathe called for every man to take up a torch. After the torches were lit, the soldiers hurried down the road. Rathe came last, and Breyon halted him with a touch.

  “Your captain has it only part right,” he whispered, one muddy brown eye hidden by a fall of disheveled hair, snowmelt dripping off his crooked nose. “The Shadenmok … she has a taste for the seed of men, aye, but she will slaughter anything with the blood of life in its veins. In the last moon’s turn, six have been taken from Hilan, and only two were men. The rest were womenfolk.”

  Rathe looked after the soldiers, the need to hurry hard upon him. “I have not heard this before. Are you sure your people did not wander off, get lost?”

  Breyon shook his head slowly. “We searched, but Lord Sanouk and his pet viper will not trouble themselves with the cares of the village. We could have used the soldiers, but most are from Onareth. The villagers are of Hilan and the northern forests. We know these lands, but we found naught. Besides, those who vanished are not folk who would have left without word. Something took them.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Rathe asked.

  Breyon cocked his head toward Treon. “Because you are the Scorpion. Even in Hilan, we have heard of you and your deeds. I hoped you would listen … hoped you would help, where others will not.”

  Rathe shook his head. “I am not sure—”

  “I am sure,” Breyon insisted, and clapped him on the shoulder. When Rathe nodded, he spun away without another word.

  Rathe looked after the lanky woodsman a moment, then ran after the soldiers. The plan he had revealed to Loro had been to rise above Treon, show the man for the brutal coward he was and depose him, all without shedding a drop of blood. In that way, Treon would suffer a disgraced life, lose the authority he held most dear. He still meant to do those things. Yet Breyon’s plea for succor changed things, for it placed upon Rathe the responsibility that should have been held by Lord Sanouk. Should he lend himself to Breyon and the folk of Hilan, he would be treading upon dangerous ground. But how could he turn away from them?

  Rathe pushed aside matters that did not need addressing at the moment, and caught up with the soldiers. The snowfall had increased, the sifting white beating back the shadow of dusk, even as it obscured visibility. He positioned the searchers, then moved to the midpoint in the line, between Loro and Aeden. Feet shuffled and wide eyes peered through the burry gray veil of falling snow. No one wanted to be the first to step away from the protection of the road.

  “Begin!” Rathe called, motioning the men forward with his torch.

  After little hesitation, the soldiers stepped off. To the last, each had drawn his sword. Inside of four paces, the forest engulfed the searchers. Twilight marched rapidly toward full dark under the gentle, hissing voice of drifting snow. Trees loomed, muting forest sounds.

  “See anything?” Aeden called, sounding a short step from panic. He waved his torch overhead, peering into shadowy undergrowth.

  Rathe shook his head.

  Aeden pushed forward, slashing the brush with his sword. He gave a startled squawk and disappeared. Snow-topped bushes shook where he had been, and the sounds of struggle intensified. Rathe’s heart lurched into a gallop, his hand tightened on the sword hilt. He had taken his first step toward the fallen soldier when Aeden popped up, covered in snow and wet leaves.
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  “I fell,” he said, looking morosely at his extinguished torch.

  A gurgling howl rose up, not twenty paces ahead.

  “Alfan!” Aeden bellowed. “Where are you?”

  Rathe stared through the whirling white. Something shifted under a leaning fir.

  “You see that?” Loro demanded, even as the pale figure faded into the gloom under the tree.

  Aeden made a strangled noise and ran back toward the road. Rathe ordered him to stop, but the soldier never slowed. Drawn to the yelling, the other searchers converged, their advance marked by bobbing torches.

  “With me,” Rathe commanded, and crept toward the skulking murk under the leaning fir’s snow-clad needles. A metallic glint dancing with torchlight caught his eye, and he halted the others with a word. The men formed a half-moon circle around him, torches raised.

  Between them and the hoary evergreen, a sword rested on a skim of snow, its clean edge running with reflected flame. A fan of crimson splashes steamed around scattered boot prints. Alfan, bleeding and battling, had run to that spot, spun round and round, striving to keep an enemy at bay … an enemy that had not left any tracks of its own.

  With the scent of fresh-spilled blood in his nose, Rathe looked to upper boughs. “Alfan?”

  No answer came.

  “I will climb up,” a gravelly voice said. Rathe turned to see Remon’s lean, whiskered face. “He’s a dullard, but he’s my friend. I would know if he’s dead or maimed.” Eyes tight with fear, he handed off his torch, ducked under the lowest branches, and set to climbing.

  “Mayhap wolves chased him,” one of the soldiers said.

  Rathe pointed out what the man had missed. “The snow is new-fallen, the blood fresh enough to steam, but there are no tracks, save Alfan’s.”

  “He’s not here,” Remon called in a glum tone. “No blood … nothing.”

  “He vanished,” Loro said, swallowing loudly.

  Rathe tried not to consider what Breyon had said of the missing villagers, but he could no more ignore those dire words than he could dismiss the falling snow.

  “He was taken,” someone spoke up, garnering a few mutters of agreement. “Such is the way of the Shadenmok.”

  Rathe looked around, hoping against hope to find some indication where Alfan had gone, but there was nothing. He bit back an oath. “With no tracks to follow, there is no way to search without ending up lost ourselves.”

  Mutters of regret met the pronouncement, but no one disagreed, and Rathe ordered them back to camp.

  At their approach, Treon strode past the ring of firelight and confronted Rathe. “I do not see Alfan in your ranks.”

  “There was blood, his tracks and sword, but nothing else. Unless he gained the ability to fly … something took him.”

  Breyon, huddled next to a silent Carul, looked up at this, his gaze unreadable.

  “ ‘Took him?’ “ Treon said, lip curling. “I would judge, lieutenant, that you have failed your first crucial mission as a man of Hilan. Were it not against Lord Sanouk’s wishes, I would strike off your head at this moment.”

  Rathe took a deep, steadying breath. The only thing that kept him from knocking Treon’s skinny backside into the cold mud was the disapproving rumbles from the soldiers at his back—discontent aimed squarely at Treon. This night, Rathe had gained supporters. In the end, that mattered more than satisfying a personal grudge.

  “Forgive me, captain,” he said, turning.

  The men stared back, their faces a grim tapestry. They were malcontents, lawbreakers, the broken warriors of Cerrikoth given a last chance to demonstrate their worth. Some might prove irredeemable, some might earn death by his own hand, but at that moment they were his men, and he was their leader.

  “I ask the same forgiveness from all of you,” he said, raising his voice. “Would that the gods had rewarded our efforts, but our brother’s fate is now in their hands. However, trust that should any of you come up missing, or fall wounded in battle, or suffer any of a hundred trials that can trouble a soldier, I will aid you to the best of my strength.”

  “We could ask no more,” Loro said from the back, earning nods of approval.

  Treon glared at the men, opened his mouth, but a shout cut off his words before he spoke them.

  “Glory to the Reavers!”

  “And to the Scorpion!” another added.

  “The Reavers and the Scorpion!” thundered eighteen men.

  Only two of the company did not shout or bat an eye: Rathe and Treon. They stared at each other. The others beat a hasty retreat, talking overloud about Shadenmok, poor buggering Alfan, the women of Valdar, and anything else to distract from the motionless confrontation.

  “You think I am a fool, dog,” Treon rasped when all had moved out of earshot, “but I know your game. Make your bid for my station in Hilan as you will, but before letting you take my place, I will strew your reeking guts, and drive my dagger into your miserable heart.”

  A slow smile spread across Rathe’s lips, but his eyes were cold obsidian. He stayed that way, unmoving, unflinching, unspeaking, until Treon cursed him and turned away.

  Chapter 19

  Hood pulled well forward to ward against falling snow and inquisitive eyes, Lord Sanouk hovered in the shadows beyond the village green, watching the boy wander among wagons and hawkers. Innocent eyes wide and bright, the boy halted, entranced by jugglers tossing flaming batons up into the snowy night. A moment more, his gaze fell on dancing wenches clad in naught but ribbons of multihued silk, despite the unseasonable cold.

  When those charms lost their allure, the boy meandered to the far side of the green, where aged mystics sat rickety stools and scried futures from bowls heaped with glistening frog entrails, or deciphered good tidings or ill from smokes rising from acrid potions. Around the boy, bedraggled men and women wearing the soil of the field upon their faces and poor garb, clapped and squealed at each new trick.

  Sanouk turned his attention from the boy to the lively trading. The rabble he ruled showed vitality only when a caravan called, trading homespun cloth for trinkets, graven idols of stone or wood for buttons and needles. Sanouk’s lips curled at the sour taste on his tongue. Pathetic scum, offering up wishes for dreams.

  He demanded little of the smallfolk, yet they loathed him. Oh, they bobbed their heads and wrung their hands when in his presence, babbled platitudes, offered up thanks and blessings, but his spies told that when out of sight, they cursed him for a would-be usurper, and grumbled incessantly over their daily labors. When compelled by his soldiers to perform their duties, they did so with a lethargy that fired visions in his mind of putting them to torture. If nothing else, a knife or a glowing brand applied to their flesh would enliven them.

  Lord Sanouk gusted a breath. This night the swine did not matter. From their midst, he would pluck the ripe fruit he needed, and leave the ignorant fools to blame wolves or spirits, or gods knew what else, never knowing the enemy had passed through their midst undetected.

  He had sworn off taking sacrifices from the village after the last he had taken, but with Treon still not returned from Valdar, need pressed him—Gathul’s appetites were gluttonous, to say the least, and growing.

  No more, Sanouk silently vowed. Not from Hilan, at any rate.

  The boy moved away from the seers, a pitiful wretch with not even a copper to spend for a telling of his life. If not destined for a far different future, Sanouk could have predicted the boy’s fate. A life spent in squalor, made old before his time by lowborn toil, suffering a harridan of a wife and suckling babes who would grow into wastrels with not the wit to bathe the shite from their stinking backsides.

  I will save you from that, boy. I will lend purpose to your otherwise meaningless existence. At the thought, the bitterness behind his teeth sweetened, a faint smile quirked his mouth. The child would endure suffering, to be sure, but in comparison to whatever else his life might have been, that anguish could be counted a blessing. It was a small kin
dness, but a kindness nonetheless.

  Following a cart path, the boy vanished behind a row of wattle-and-daub houses. Sanouk followed, moving from shadow to shadow, careful to draw no attention. His boots, taken along with his befouled cloak from the oaf of a groom who minded the keep’s stables, squelched through mud, dung, and kitchen leavings.

  He raised a hand to his flaring nostrils, trying in vain to block the stench. After he gave this next offering to Gathul and received another blessing, a bath would be in order. Long and hot, with scented oils to rouse his own hungers. Afterward, flaxen-haired Milia would share his sheets. She had come from his holdings in the west, the village Noerith. From her lips, a wall-eyed crofter’s son did not meet her expectations for a suitor. “I would rather serve the Lord of the North,” she had said, leaving no doubt what she meant about serving. She was not the prettiest thing, but she was eager … so deliciously eager.

  With a pleasant shudder, Sanouk put away thoughts of Milia, and hurried along a path that would intersect with the boy’s route. With the arrival of the caravan, the village beyond the green lay quiet. Cheerless candles burned in windows covered in sheer, oiled cloth, thatched roofs slumped in disrepair, and wandering mutts snuffled at offal thrown out along with buckets of night soil. He longed for Onareth, with its pomp and finery, but only in Hilan could he meet Gathul’s needs.

  But is that true? he wondered. Perhaps the god would have no qualms relocating to more suitable hunting grounds? After a few more sacrifices, I will broach the topic.

  Sanouk quickened his pace, moving behind the boy on a path that led to the area of Hilan reserved for craftsmen. After a scan of the surrounding houses, making sure no drunkard loafed in the shadows, Sanouk called out. The boy, lost in some daydream, whirled.

  “All is well, boy,” Sanouk said, keeping his tone light.

  The boy, walking backward, suddenly froze. “Milord?”

  How did he know? Did my hood slip … and if so, did others see me? Sanouk shook away the guilty flash, schooled his features to calm. What did it matter if he had been seen? This village and the lands upon which it sat were his holdings. And if some sheep-buggering lackwit managed to connect his visit with the boy’s vanishing, what did it matter?