A Poisoned Land (Book 1: Faith, Lies and Blue Eyes)

by Craig P Roberts

Squinting through the light of the waning sun, Londenia saw burned bones and unburied bodies scattered through the fields and streets of the outlying villages. One wretched soul had made it to the outskirts of the capital. It lay stiff at the foot of the hill, with a blackened, charred arm clawing for freedom. Its life likely ended by the stake impaled in its back.

  “Welcome to the home of the Watch King,” Taigo said, his eyes fixed, unblinking, on the scene below. The young boy led the group down a hidden path that wound its way to the valley floor. He was silent, as he had been through most of their journey, but a certain darkness seemed to come over him as they walked towards the ashen ruins. “I cannot come any further, Your Grace.” He turned to King Romarus.

  “Are you okay?” Romarus asked, clearly not understanding the impact of the devastation on Taigo’s heart.

  Of course he’s not okay. Londenia turned to Taigo. “We are eternally grateful for your help and you are always welcome in the keep of Deca’Herem.”

  “I fear this could be the fate of all the kingdoms if we do not stop the people who did this,” Taigo answered. “You must be safe and ensure the wellbeing of your people, or Last Kingdom may end up a pile of ash like this,” he drawled in a monotone.

  Celóndas, who was standing next to Londenia, grabbed Taigo and hugged him tight. The boy’s body was rigid with his hands pinned to his sides. One by one, he wrapped his arms around her. The healer’s shoulders shook as she sobbed onto the boy’s shoulder. Londenia went forward, laying a hand on her friend’s back and said, “Celo, he can look after himself. It is us I fear for now.”

  “You make sure you get yourself back to the Meeren safely.” Celóndas pointed at the boy’s bare chest like an overbearing mother.

  “I will, but I agree with Queen Londenia, it is you I fear for. Be careful, and may the Ten protect you.” He raised both palms in Ten Blessings and turned to climb the hill again.

  They continued towards the blackness of what was once the capital of the Watch Kingdom. As they reached the outlying farmsteads and little clusters of houses, many still smoldered and smoked. No matter how many twisted dead bodies she saw, Londenia’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. She wanted to help every one of the black, charred, dead bodies reaching out to her, that looked as if they were screaming for help. The less burnt the bodies were, the worst it seemed. Skeletons with no flesh, paled in comparison to the bodies with half a mortal face still hanging onto the bone. One healthy eye begging for the pain that brought death, to end.

  You can’t do anything for the poor souls now. They are with the Ten. “I pray for you,” she whispered to them as she shuffled by, followed by the rest of her company and their six faithful white broncos. Her stomach felt tender.

  It was all too much for Romarus’s small horde. They walked, huddled together like spooked glumps, jumping away from the death around them whenever they neared a blackened hand, charred leg or cooked swaddled baby. Ogla stumbled and ended face to face with a stiff-jawed head with no body. A squawking black-caw perched on the scalp, that was covered with long tufts of straw-like hair. The bird pecked at the eye sockets. Ogla’s scream set the rest of the horde into a frenzy.

  For a healer, Celóndas was taking the sight of so many dead bodies harder than Londenia would have expected. The normally lighthearted healer walked stiffly with her eyes fixed on the sky ahead, breathing deeply as if in another world. Celo, you have too kind a heart to see such times, she thought, wishing she could help her friend in some way.

  They neared the high walls of Deca’Point’s main keep. Smoke still puffed from the high broken towers. The main gates, made from huge hackle trunks, were barred and the outer wall remained un-breached. However, the black smoke billowing from the upper windows confirmed Taigo’s accounts of the attack. There was no movement on the battlements. Remembering his dark words of what had happened, Londenia was glad not to have seen inside. The windows in the highest tower were smashed. In the lower towers, the holes had been blocked up with planks of wood. The dry smell of burning hung in the air. Creaking sounds came from within the defensive walls of the keep. A crash in the distance, of a roof finally giving up the fight, sent a gasp through the traveling party. The noise stirred a bluster of black-caws. Their squawking echoed from the black cluster of flapping wings rising from behind the gray walls of the keep.

  Romarus crept up to the outer defenses and looked through a crack in the gate. He immediately sprung back, fell to his knees and vomited. The sound made Londenia’s own stomach turn. Celóndas ran over and knelt next to him with a hand on his back.

  “Who the fuck would do that?” the boy king exclaimed with chunks of sick clinging to the corners of his mouth. “Their bodies are…” He swallowed. “They have no skin. They’re just hanging there like meat.” He then vomited into the puddle of stomach contents that was already in front of him.

  “We must move on to the coast to meet King Stewart. There is nothing for us here,” Londenia shouted to the whole party. She was unsure how to respond to Romarus. A sort of morbid curiosity took her. She wanted to see what lay behind the main gate, but knew it would not help her sleep at night if she did. The sun was dropping below the horizon. After all the dreadful things I have seen today, I wish I had longer before I had to shut my eyes to sleep.

  They made camp over one thousand footfalls from the outermost dwelling of Deca’Point. None of them could bear sleeping under the few remaining unbroken buildings surrounded by the dead. The stench still occasionally drifted from the town full of corpses.

  Londenia sat outside the large royal tent, watching her campfire dying down, the world fading away into darkness around her. When she looked up, the night sky twinkled above like the one in the desert where her cares seemed so far away. But now, that sea of twinkling lights roofed a land of death. The Blue Wanderer glimmered, giving her strength to know Beverine still watched over her and protected them.

  She crawled into her tent where Romarus was already lying under the fur covers. He stared blankly upwards, chewing the inside of his cheek. At this time, he would normally be with a member of his horde or finishing pleasuring himself. Tonight, his face was blank and his eyes were troubled.

  Londenia buttoned the tent flap and felt sealed off from the troubles of the world for a while. For being so far away from home and so close to death and destruction, she felt warm and safe. It may have been because of the five guards they had posted around the camp, or the way Romarus recently took to wrapping her up tight at night, with his arms and strong body.

  The next morning, they set off early with a sense of relief as they left the scorched fields and buildings behind. Twisted corpses were replaced with the occasional tree or hopping espa—with their long gangly legs and tiny heads—bounding gracefully into the distance. By midday, a smell of salt cut the air and a cool breeze blew from the north. If Londenia shut her eyes, she could have sworn she was back home as a child in Long Kingdom. The sea air was something she hadn’t experienced in a great many years, in fact since becoming queen in the desert of Last Kingdom.

  They continued north, towards the coast over grass hills and little woods until a gentle slope led down the stony coast. For the first time, they saw the wide open sea. As the others looked out in amazement, Londenia focused on Romarus and saw the sense of wonder on his face. He would never have seen so much water in his life, having grown up only to know vast seas of sand.

  This was the fifth day after the new broken moon and it was on the sixth day that they planned to rendezvous with the party from the Wetlands. Camp was built two hundred footfalls from the sea—just on the other side of the ridge—for shelter from the winds off the coast.

  As the sun rose the following day, there was still no sign of King Stewart’s party and by the evening, they feared they had been lost.

  The seventh day of the new broken moon came and was uneventful, until sunset. An evening fog closed in. To the east, figures appeared on the land—a fast-moving party, no more t
han thirty-strong.

  Romarus’s chief guard, Grey’Gon, shouted to the others, “Stand ready!” The guards all readied their staffs with a wild flurry of spinning, halting them behind their arms. Londenia watched from behind their backs, straining to see through the shroud of mist. The boy king walked to his guard, reaching a hand behind to the staff he carried across his back. He spun it in front of him and stopped it behind his right arm. He pushed past the middle two guards and looked out on the approaching party, now less than one hundred footfalls away.

  Through the gray dusk, a voice shouted, in an almost drunken manner, “We come in peace. Lower your weapons. We mean you no harm.”

  Stewart, Londenia recognized the voice, even if it had aged since she last heard it. She stepped through the guards and watched as the party approached. King Stewart led the striding group. He was not leading on foot, for he sat on a platform carried by six of his guards.

  “Queen Londenia, it is good to look upon you again. You have blossomed into a fine woman from that teary-eyed little girl that I waved farewell to…how many years ago was that now?” The fat king shouted with his slurred voice from his platform, that was being laid to rest in the grass. As his platform sank heavily into the ground, his guards rubbed their aching shoulders and flexed their stiff hands.

  “Stewart!” she blurted out with a laugh and ran to meet her childhood friend. She saw a version of the young man she knew, sitting on a strange chair with wheels like a wagon. It sat aboard the carrying platform, locked in place with planks of wood to stop it from rolling off during transport. It was as if somebody had blown air inside him. His face was bloated, and his body was round. She tried to hide her shock with a smile. “Or should I say, King Stewart? And I believe it has been over sixteen years since we last met.” When she last saw him, he was a hearty young prince being raised by her own father in Long Kingdom and was due to leave to be crowned after his father’s death.

  “King indeed, Loni! Now bow to my wondrous fat kingly body.” He belly-laughed, which sent him into a coughing fit. “It’s okay to stare, my dear. Many do. For you see the gods have decided to play a cruel joke on me and let my muscles waste and my belly grow.” He slapped said belly.

  “I see you still have your sense of humor though, Stew.” She remembered the songs King Stewart used to make up about the fat old cook and the drunken mizer who used to wander around outside the main keep of Deca’Rise.

  “It’s about the only thing I have left, my dear. Now, we should go to your camp. We have much to discuss and I feel we should be making our way to King Servin’s keep as quickly as possible. We’ve heard strange tales of men with pointed teeth running around, carving people with bladed weapons! Can you believe it?! Bladed weapons! I’ve never heard of such a thing used in the kingdoms on mortals—on the mainland at least—in my lifetime.” As Stewart spoke, his eyes read her face. “Does something trouble you, Loni?”

  Her feelings must have been plain. “Stew…They’re all dead…all of them. The land is burnt and the buildings, destroyed.”

  His bloated face remained unchanged, but his eyes flicked and scanned uncontrollably from side to side. It was comforting to have a leader in their midst and somebody who looked like they were ready to take control…even if he looked as if he was unable to carry his own weight. “And what of King Servin? Have you seen him or…his body?”

  “The main keep was destroyed. Its gates remained barred but Romarus saw inside and—” Romarus! I’ve ignored him! “King Stewart, allow me to introduce King Romarus of Last Kingdom.” As she spoke louder, the boy king came jogging over.

  Stewart watched him approach, gave a brief nod, then raised both hands in Ten Blessings. “Forgive my shortness, King Romarus, but I have just been informed of the situation. What did you see in Deca’Point, in the main keep?”

  “It’s fine,” Romarus answered as if he was talking to one of his court. In that moment, Londenia realized this was the first time the boy had met another king. “I just saw them all with no skin. It was like their bodies were…the wrong way around.”

  Stewart looked at the boy from his rolling chair and watched his face as if he was reading a book. “You are much like your father,” he said out of the blue. He quickly returned to the pressing matter. “We must go back to Deca’Point and find out who is responsible. The people of this kingdom will need guidance. We must fortify what is left and ensure the security of the outlying farmsteads and villages. Deca’Point lies along our path anyway as I still plan to hold to our arrangement to meet the Bay King at the Dilly.”

  “Can we not take your ship direct from here to the Bay Kingdom?” asked Romarus.

  Londenia was impressed with the sensible question from the boy king and was about to ask the same thing herself. Anything to avoid going back to that place filled with death.

  “For one, my boy, we do not have a ship. We rowed across the narrow passing in small boats. And secondly, the King of the Bay will only accept passengers traveling on his own ships. Judging from what has happened here, that is a wise choice, indeed. And most importantly, as kings of the Ten Kingdoms we owe it to His Grace, King Servin, and his people to draw out this enemy and bring some kind of justice!”

  The party from the Wetlands added their camp to the same site Londenia’s people set up two days ago on their arrival at the coast. It had been dark for hours before all tents were fully erected but Last Kingdom’s guards had already prepared a dinner of roast gogor and some vegetable broth made from a root plant they found growing further inland. Queen Londenia and the queen from the Wetlands, Tanya, sat next to each other, opposite the oddest looking pair of kings. The large oversized King Stewart, sat in his rolling chair contraption that he used to move around when not on a carrying platform or being hoisted by his horde. Then, there was the small, able-bodied, young King Romarus. The two were as different in mind as they were in body. King Stewart’s wife, Pauline, sat in between Londenia and Romarus.

  “Tell me of this boy of Servin’s who guided you through Hal’s Forest. I will need to speak with him if he is to take up his father’s throne.” Stewart spat half-chewed gogor meat across the table as he spoke.

  And what throne is that? The burnt one? Londenia thought to herself. “There is nothing left of Deca’Point and the boy returned to his mother’s people in Hal’s Forest.”

  King Stewart’s eyes widened, his jaw quivering. “By So’Chor’s Cock! You let the first prince of the Watch Kingdom wander back into that blue forest to run around with those Green Islanders?” he said sharply, gripping his fork tighter.

  She forgot how argumentative Stewart could be but admitted she had perhaps not realized the importance of Taigo to the rebuilding of the Watch Kingdom. “I understand your concerns but was I supposed to hold a first prince against his will?”

  Stewart puffed sharply, then looked as if he were about to try to stand. Tanya put a hand on his and shot him a glare from her sharp brown eyes. He took a breath and spoke, “Forgive me. I am tired from my journey. You of course could not have stopped the boy. It would not have been right. But I intend to send two of my guard to properly explain the situation to him and see if he would be willing to claim his throne and help to rebuild his lands.” He nodded to his wife, Pauline, who returned the nod and left the tent, most likely to fetch one of the guards. Looking at Londenia, Stewart smiled. “I would have chased after him myself but I doubt my rolling chair would cope with Hal’s Forest.”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. What has happened to you, my dear Stewart? His wit, stubbornness and intelligence had not waned but the vessel that held them had.

  A guard entered the tent and Stewart whispered in the burly man’s ear. The king’s awkward, yet stunningly beautiful, wife stayed by the entrance. Her face was round and pale with lips which seemed to always be in a cute, happy pout.

  “Londi, your healer, Celóndas, knows the lay of Hal’s Forest, does she not?” asked King Stewart, as Pauline slinked awa
y from the tent out into the darkness of the camp.

  You should be asking Romarus, he’s right next to you, she nearly said. “Yes, she will be most obliged to give you the information you need.” She addressed the guard directly.

  To Londenia’s surprise, Romarus popped his head up from his usual low eating position. “I’ll show you where to find her.” He led the guard out of the tent, leaving his half eaten plate of food on the table.

  Before the tent flap closed, King Stewart spoke, saying, “He is much like his father.”

  Londenia smiled. “He really is. He’s a—”

  “—damned fool,” Stewart finished and belly-laughed.

  “I was going to say kind hearted,” she replied, giving a mouthy smile back to the coughing blob in front of her.

  Stewart’s coughing subsided. “Come, Londi. You know I loved Locutus as a brother and I can see the boy has no ill intent, but he’s a fool nonetheless.”

  To be fair, he’s right, she let herself think for a moment.

  Queen Tanya slapped her king on his fat shoulder from across the table. “From what I have heard, you and Locutus were both fools when you were younger.” She smirked and flared her squashy nostrils. “And I could tell Queen Londenia many a tale of a foolish king from the Wetlands of late. Perhaps I should tell her about the incident with the white bear that—”

  King Stewart threw up his hands and smiled. “I yield. I yield,” he jested with his queen, who returned a playful smile.

  I like you, Londenia thought as she watched Queen Tanya club the king over the head with her words. When Londenia first heard that Stewart had selected a brown-eyed woman to rule as queen, she questioned his decision. But now, seeing the smile on Stewart’s face, she realized this formidable, yet unattractive, woman brought out the best in him and without question had the strength to rule. King Stewart looked more like the young man she remembered from childhood—always joking, and with a wit as sharp as a meat knife.

  The three royals talked for what must have been hours around the table in King Stewart’s tent. Tanya seemed fascinated with the stories from Stewart’s younger days, when he was growing up under the charge of Londenia’s father, King Kalon of Long Kingdom. It was as if she were stowing away each story like a piece of rotten vegetable so that she could sling them back at her king in their next battle of words, which they both seemed to enjoy. They also discussed more serious matters and what their next move would be.