Then, one day, less than a week from our lady’s departure, something changed for me. A few of the men had started to hear whisperings on the streets and in the taverns about a group calling themselves the Saviour’s Chosen. I had given the reports the appropriate heed, which is to say not much. I’d heard of such cults before, knew that they occasionally sprung up around madmen, seers or people who wanted to manipulate their fellows. They were charlatans and without any power of their own. Duke Warmont had never tolerated this sort of subversion and had stamped these movements out with overwhelming force and ruthlessness. I’d always thought that the savagery of his actions was little more than consistent behaviour for the man – another excuse to kill his subjects, as if he needed one.
The deaths started – bodies began to appear on the streets in their ones and twos each night, always damaged in a way far beyond what had been needed to kill the victim. More information trickled in that the so-called Saviour’s Chosen were killing the prostitutes who had provided their services for the soldiers garrisoned here, as if our lady had decided that these of her people were not worthy of saving. In a way, I could almost make sense of what they were doing – they saw in the women of the streets a reflection of their own shame. They had allowed the Duke and his men to rule over this town without resistance for so long and needed an outlet for their anger, as if they could hide their own inaction behind senseless murder. We each deal with our lives in our own way and I found myself gripped by an anger I hadn’t felt in many years, that the Saviour’s Chosen had passed this judgement on the women who doubtless had little choice in how they earned their coin.
“They will not do this in her name!” I shouted, striking my fist against the desk when Corporal Grief brought news of another murder.
The First Cohort’s doctor had seen death beyond measure. On the battlefield and the aftermath, he could view it dispassionately, as if the men he treated were objects – though objects that demanded the very best of his attention. Corporal Grief did not lack feeling, far from it, but that was how he kept himself sane in the face of inhumanity.
“It brings me great sorrow, Captain,” he said, “that these young women have had their lives cut short. For them there has been no Saviour.”
His words made me feel even greater anger and I surged to my feet. It was late at night, though I had still been in my familiar position at my desk. Some people find the sanctuary of sleep to be an escape, but it was one we were denied in the First Cohort. I left Corporal Grief to his own affairs and found a group of my men.
“I want you to find the fuckers who are doing this,” I told them. “And I want you to bring them to me. They will not use our lady’s name to justify their deeds!”
I could see that they looked worried too. When we were stationed in a town for an extended period, the rumour and gossip was all there was to keep us interested. Gold wasn’t such a large town and I bet everyone knew about the murders. We just had to find someone who knew who was doing it.
I sent fifteen of them out into the streets, to the outskirts of the town where all of the killings had taken place.
“Fuck it, I’m coming with you,” I said, following one of the groups.
“Itchy feet, Captain?” asked Weevil.
“Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, Weevil,” I said. “We don’t want you getting into the biscuits again.”
“Seventy years and I’m still remembered for that?” he exclaimed, entirely unoffended.
“I hope they were worth it, you greedy sod,” said Chant, happy to get in on the act.
“Best biscuits I’ve ever had, thank you for asking.”
We went out, choosing our destination almost at random. I didn’t know why I was so keen to act, but I’m sure Weevil’s assessment of my itchy feet was as good a guess as any. I’d just needed an excuse to get off my behind and feel like I was making a contribution of some sort.
The streets were more or less deserted, though an air of faint menace remained. Even in the outskirts, the robbers needed to sleep at some time. Either that or they didn’t steal from their own and were loitering outside the taverns closer towards the centre of town. It was cold and clear and the chill of the air felt good on my face.
“Want us to start knocking on some doors, Captain?” asked Hobble.
“Not just yet. Let’s see what we can see first.”
“There’ll be someone who knows, Captain. There always is.”
“I agree with you, Hobble. Let’s keep our eyes open for now.”
We found a body, slumped in an alleyway between two shabby wooden dwellings. I’d have walked past it in the darkness, but the keen eyes of Squint picked it out.
“Over there, Captain,” he said, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. “I think there’s something along that alley.”
We drew our short daggers – it took little effort to be prepared for the unexpected – and I knelt down next to the slumped form. It was a woman, head-down in the dirt. I pulled at her arm, rolling her onto her back and saw her face. It was the young woman I had saved on the night the Saviour had first come into the town.
“Lilith,” I said, feeling an emptiness I could not comprehend.
“Did you know her, Captain?”
I was silent for a long while. “No, Waxer, I didn’t know her. I saved her from Warmont’s men and she told me her name, but I didn’t know her.”
In death, Lilith looked beautiful. I could see that she had bought herself some new clothes, doubtless with the coin I had given her and she’d cleaned her face of the layers of makeup and blush that she’d worn before. We all looked at her.
“She could have been my daughter,” said Chant wistfully. He said what we all felt. The Saviour brought hope with her, and here was a young woman to whom it had been denied. I could see that Lilith had done what she could to change already – my chance meeting with her had affected her that much.
I reached down and closed her eyes and then pulled the sword from between her legs where someone had forced the entire length inside her body. Her agony must have been unimaginable. I slung her body over my shoulder. She felt as light as a feather, as if her fleeing soul had carried away everything she kept within.
We took her outside the walls and buried her beneath the soil. Weevil had found a couple of shovels from somewhere – I didn’t know if he’d borrowed them or stolen them and didn’t care. We looked at the unmarked grave for a time, with our heads bowed, none of us able to give voice to why the death of this woman had affected us so much. Perhaps her face had reminded us all of our past, back to a time when we all had our hopes and dreams.
“Let’s find these fuckers, Captain,” said Weevil. “And kill them all.”
Violence would bring more violence. It was the only thing we knew and there were times that I felt no remorse.
We remained on our search for several more hours, each of us driven on by a need to bring matters to a close. Of course, things are not always so straightforward and in the early hours we had to give up the fruitless hunt. I’d knocked on a few doors in anger, and had roused the occupants in their dwellings to question them about what they’d seen and what they knew. No one I spoke to had given anything meaningful. I counted myself a good reader of people – it was always the eyes that gave away the truth, but I resigned myself to frustration.
Once I’d returned to my office, I found myself wishing that Jon Ploster was still in the town. I needed to speak to someone about the murders and my feelings. A quiet little voice in my mind had already started to ask if my planned retribution was something that our lady would approve of, or if the anger was my own. I cursed myself for this inner conflict and wished for the hundredth time that I was somewhere far away from this town, and listening to the clash of metal on metal, rather than my own insidious thoughts.
The day after we had found Lilith, I was as busy as ever. I did not shirk my duties, but by now I felt somewhat cheated into a position where I was expected to undertake tas
ks which were a better fit for another man. I worried more and more that by sitting in my office for hours at a time, I was losing this vital time to bond with the new men of our lady’s army. There were many of the new recruits who had hardly seen me, except in passing or when I was in conversation with one of my lieutenants. I knew that my rank permitted me to act entirely through my officers, but that was not how I preferred to treat my men. It was part of my success that my troops saw me as a man who could fight with the best of them and not retreat from something because I feared for my own safety. I had seen officers who sat aloof and rarely drew their own weapons. Those officers were the ones who lost the crux battles.
I sent more teams of men into the streets to knock on doors and locate the murderers who committed their acts in our lady’s name. I had the word put about that anyone who provided suitable information would be well rewarded and then I waited to see what would come of it. I reasoned that if the townsfolk sympathised with the Saviour’s Chosen, the promised reward would not be successful in drawing anyone out. On the opposite side of the coin, I expected to find plenty of eager tongues ready to wag if the sympathies of the people were not with this group.
I have been told that patience is a virtue and that patience is always rewarded. By these measures, I was not at all virtuous. I reasoned that if one is forced to wait, it is essentially unimportant if the waiting is done patiently or not, for eventually the passing of time brings the same conclusion. After two days, there was a knock on my office door, which opened to admit a soldier from Lieutenant Trovis’ regiment. I vaguely recognized his face, though his name escaped me.
“I’ve got two men here to see you, Captain,” he said. “They claim to know something about these Saviour’s Chosen, or whatever they call themselves.”
“Very well, let them in,” I said. Two men were duly brought before me, one tall, one short, averagely dressed and otherwise unremarkable. I waved the soldier from the room.
I cut to the chase. “Who are you and what do you want?”
The shorter man grinned at me. I didn’t like his cockiness. “We’ve come for the reward, sir,” he said.
I wasn’t in the mood to dance around the issue. “Speak clearly. I don’t have all day. Do you have information for me?”
“Yes sir, we do,” said the second man. “We’ve come to tell you some things.”
“Things that only we know,” said the first.
I wasn’t in the best of moods already and these two men were irritating me greatly. “Speak quickly before I throw you out of the window!” I demanded. At that moment, I felt a very faint whispering in the air around me. As though a tiny, scarcely-felt breeze rustled over my skin.
“We’ve come to tell you that you are not worthy to serve the Saviour, dead soldier of Warmont.”
“You need to burn for what you have done.”
I had already started to move as the power of the magic struck me. It fluttered around me gently, lapping at my inner walls like the softest of waves upon a clean, white beach.
I punched the tallest man, a thundering right hook that splattered his nose across his face and sent a fountain of blood onto the floor. He fell back, clutching at his face and screamed loudly. The second man had drawn a pair of daggers and held one in each hand. He lunged at me, the action pitifully slow and poorly-coordinated. I stepped away from him and pulled my wooden desk into his path.
“You cannot serve our Saviour,” said the man, almost repeating what he’d told me only moments before.
I kicked the desk into him, the suddenness of my action catching him off guard so that the heavy wood caught him in the midriff. Whatever magic the tall man had cast at me had dissipated, without even triggering a faint glow from my skin-patterns. The caster was struggling to recover and I didn’t give him any chance to do so. The desk kept the dagger-wielding man at a distance for the seconds it took me to hammer my fist into the neck of his partner. My strike was a good one and by the way the man collapsed, I could tell that I had ruptured the arteries beneath the skin.
When the office door burst open to admit the soldier again, I had already killed the second man with my sword, pushing it without mercy into his abdomen while he flailed in vain with his daggers.
“Find out who knew these men and have them held,” I told the soldier. I studied him carefully – his fluster telling me that these would-be murderers were not of his acquaintance. “And get someone to take their bodies away.”
“Yes, sir!”
The town of Gold was not large enough to hide the group who called themselves the Saviour’s Chosen, and the populace showed little interest in sheltering them. In dribs and drabs, we heard names, or learned of houses known to be associated with the group. I had them flushed out and put into the building we used as a jail. I visited the place once, and looked through at the men in their cells. Of course, it was all men and of course the only prostitutes they had killed were the women. I hated them for what they had done and found myself wrestling with this emotion. Hatred was not something I had been familiar with for a long time, except perhaps where Bonecruncher was concerned. I didn’t know if I was losing a grip on my feelings, or if the Saviour had changed me from what I had been.
I doubted that we’d caught all of the culprits, but the murders stopped and I was content with that. Our lady could deal with the prisoners when she returned from the coastal towns. I didn’t want to guess if she would be forgiving or if she would be merciless in her judgement of these people who had killed her own.
Then, twenty-two days after our lady had left to go on her own mission, my thirst for action was rewarded, though it was not a reward that I had hoped to enjoy. It was noon, give or take an hour and I had managed to find the time to put in an appearance on the training grounds. My timing was bad, for the majority of the men had dispersed in order to partake of their mid-day meal, so I did not get to watch them practice as I had intended. In another way, the timing was perfect.
“What the fuck is that?” came a voice close by. It was a man from Treads – another one with a familiar face but a name I didn’t know. He was staring into the clear blue of the sky, shielding his eyes with his hand, even though he was not looking towards the sun.
I heard other voices raised in concern as well and when I stared, I saw the reason why.
“Xoj-Fal the Wyrm,” I said aloud.
High in the sky above us it flew, black and sinewy. Its wings were enormous, but even so, looked too small to carry the creature aloft. It hung in the air strangely, as if it had no right at all to be off the ground. Every flap of its wings spoke of the vast effort required for it to maintain its height. I crossed my fingers that we were not its business today, but with a twist of its body, it changed course and glided silently down towards the town of Gold.
Twenty-Two
I ran for the barracks, knowing exactly where I’d find my lieutenants. Outside, other men stared, frozen in horror as they looked into the sky. I’d seen this effect from the Wyrm before – it’s presence was enough to cause men to quail before it, their terror feeding its pride, yet not sating its thirst for destruction.
“Craddock! Sinnar!” I bellowed. “Get here! Now! Full muster! Bring spears.”
Unwilling to wait for even a moment, I looked out into the training yard again, just in time to see the underbelly of Warmont’s First as it swooped low, almost directly overhead. I felt relief that the training ground had not been packed with men, as this would have certainly drawn the creature’s attention and the casualties would have been immense. From up high, the training area probably looked like little more than an unused piece of land.
“It’s gone over there!” cried one soldier, pointing into the distance.
Now I heard a sound: a great bellowing roar as the beast announced its coming to the people in the streets and houses below. After the roar, there was a different sound, but one that was equally terrifying, since I knew what it heralded. It was the noise of suction, like a blacksmi
th’s bellows drawing in an unimaginable quantity of air. The beast was visible over the peaks of the rooftops, now several hundred yards away and I watched as it exhaled a monumental gout of greasy, black flame, directing it downwards into the buildings below. I’d seen this once before, many years ago, and the damage this darkness caused had frightened even the most hardened of men. The Wyrm’s breath did more than just set towns ablaze.
My soldiers had begun to spill out into the training ground and I felt a burst of pride that they were each fully prepared in their armour, weapons held close. Sinnar approached me, seeming to push the men aside as he ran, yet without his having to lay a hand upon them.
“Captain, we’ve only got half the First Cohort available. The rest are on patrol.”
“Break them down into groups of forty, Lieutenant. Assign a man to lead each one and have them take cover in the streets away from here. They need to run.”
“Yes, sir!” he said, meeting my gaze, rather than following the flight of the Wyrm. He was a professional to the last.
“You know what that creature will do to the town, Sinnar. And what it will do to our lady’s men if it sees them.”
“I know, sir,” he said.
Lieutenants Craddock and Trovis had joined me now. I spoke to them quickly, watching as Xoj-Fal slowly, leisurely wheeled around in the sky over the town away from us.
“Trovis, scatter your men. Don’t have them bunch up anywhere in the open. Have them keep order and fight fire. Do not, under any circumstances lead them out of the city in any kind of tight formation. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir!” said Trovis. He looked alive now – as if he itched to do something. Some men only show their true worth when the challenge is at its greatest. I had started to get the idea that Lieutenant Trovis was one of those men.
“Nothing stupid, Lieutenant Trovis. I’m going to lead my men against it when it lands. We’ll chop the bastard into chunks and we can all eat its liver and piss on its dead body once we’re through with it.”
Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1) Page 24