by A J Dalton
Nostracles shrugged. ‘The demon will bamboozle us with blandishments and half-truths. Nothing it says can be trusted and it will lead us down a path that suits its own ends and the ends of its master. Better not to let it speak at all.’
‘Wait! Priest, did you know your temple-master was dead? He was abandoned by Shakri at the end.’
Nostracles closed his eyes in pain. ‘Guardian, if you please?’
‘It will be my pleasure!’ the Scourge said grimly, hefting his sword.
Young Strap and Nostracles both turned away as the Scourge went about his work. Phyrax spouted a torrent of curses and invective, which continued unabated even after its head had been hacked wetly from its shoulders.
‘Right! Done!’ the Scourge shouted over Phyrax’s hatred and dire threats.
Nostracles clasped the amulet in his hand and mumbled a few words. The roots responded and began to drag the disparate parts of the demon down into the bowels of the earth. ‘He will be taken deep enough so that the soil round about will be free from any taint due to his proximity. I’m not sure that these fields will ever fully recover though. Scourge, tell me, will we now have to hunt down those responsible for the original sacrifice of the body here?’
The Scourge blew out his cheeks. ‘Young Strap, you’ve been a bit quiet of late, not that I’m complaining, mind you. What do you think? In future, you’ll have to make decisions like this on your own.’
Young Strap looked queasy, but drew a deep breath and managed an even-toned answer: ‘The farming community round here is likely to have been responsible. Were we to challenge them, they would likely claim they only sacrificed a terrible criminal, and that under the bylaws of Holter’s Cross they were entitled to punish their own in any way they saw fit. It would lose us valuable time.’
The Scourge nodded and mustered a smile for his charge. ‘Good. This episode has been hard on all of us. The sooner we can leave it behind, the better. Nostracles, you concur? You look ill at ease.’
‘Yes,’ replied the priest of Shakri distractedly, ‘although I fear I will carry from here both what has been said and has transpired. Your words about how the gods play us, Guardian, were echoed by the demon’s own claim that my master was dead and that the goddess abandoned him at the end. I cannot believe he is dead! Somehow, I thought I would feel it or know when he died. But I felt nothing. Is there no genuine connection or common feeling amongst the living? Are there no essential shared by all? Is there no essential worth then to life and creation?’
The two Guardians exchanged worried glances. Even in the short time they had all been travelling together, the Guardians had both come to find reassurance in and rely on the priest’s quiet strength and principled constancy. It was Young Strap who piped up first, though he had to piece his words together slowly as he went along, not used to constructing arguments of the sophist’s kind. ‘Good priest… Nostracles… it seems to me that you have not managed to guard yourself against that very danger you warned us the demon represented. The demon could well have lied or fed you half-truths to lead you down just this path of doubt. His words have planted a seed that has begun to take root and grow with a speed that would make Shakri herself proud. You were right to say we should not even let Phyrax speak. If you do not find your resolve again, then he will have succeeded in his aim. If we were to meet him with you in your current state of mind, we might not triumph over him this time. You would be slow or faulty in your appeal to Shakri and would fail to aid the Scourge and me.’
‘Young Strap is right, Nostracles. You have temporarily lost your equilibrium because you grieve for your dear master. What is not right and proper is that you allow your faith to die with your master. That is not what he would want or expect of you. It would dishonour his memory.’
Nostracles smiled with a brave bleakness and hung his head. ‘You shame me. Forgive me my weakness.’
‘We are all weak in some way,’ the Scourge said with an uncharacteristic gentleness. ‘Even me, hard though it may be for the two of you to believe! What defines us is how we deal with such weaknesses. It is for us to decide if we are victims or not. I will concede that the gods allow us that much.’
‘Generous as ever, Old Hound,’ Young Strap quipped.
‘You’re more yourself now then?’ the Scourge observed sourly. ‘Definitely time to be going. No more of this self-indulgent prattle. Dray, come here, and we’ll show this pup how to race the wind itself.’
***
Despite the orders of the Guildmaster, he’d had friends enough to get the crossbow bolt in his shoulder seen to and poulticed before he’d been ejected from the city. Where friends had not sufficed, he’d begged for pity, and where that had failed he’d used bribery. Now, he stood outside the gates of Holter’s Cross with just his clothes, a single blanket around his shoulders and an old short sword at his waist. The guards glared at him and made it clear he should be on his way. With a change of name, a few more scars on his face and a new band behind him, he might be able to get back into the Guild in a year or so.
All of that depended on him surviving another year, which in turn required him to survive this first night. The air was bitterly merciless, he had no food, his ruined shoulder meant he could only use his weaker arm to defend himself and there was always the danger that his injury would become infected. Night was coming in, but he thought he would be able to make it to the nearby farming community before it became so dark he wouldn’t be able to see his way.
Hare lip started walking, wincing as the movement jarred his injury. But it would heal and he would survive to take his revenge. The green bitch would get what was coming to her and more. And so would the other smug Guardian, King’s Scourge or no. When he had taken his time and satisfaction exacting his due from those two, he would then hunt down and torture the maniac, even if it meant hiring a magic-user to bring him to bay.
The fire of his anger and resentment kept him warm and gave him energy to march determinedly down the road. He didn’t look back at the city, not being a man given to romantic notions of attachment, nostalgia and poignant leave-takings.
Caught up in his brooding, he barely noticed time passing before he was at the crossroads. Peering around, he saw that the bodies of his comrades still lay where they’d fallen. He crossed over to them without pause and started searching their pockets for coins. Their weapons still littered the ground as well. He couldn’t believe his luck! It was some small compensation for how he’d suffered that day. It was the least the gods owed him.
How had it got this dark all of a sudden? He started as he realised that large figures loomed all around him. They had come from nowhere. There were five of them – surely not the ghosts of his dead band!
One of them stepped forwards and he made out a slavering ogre by the dim starlight. He knew there was no point in reaching for his sword.
‘No!’ snarled the largest of them, the harsh sound of the word suggesting giant jaws ill-suited to language. ‘There h-is plenty h-of h-other meat here. This h-one has the scent h-of those we hunt h-on him. He can tell h-us things.’
A large, rock-knuckled grip snatched up hare lip by the neck and drew him close. The smell of musk was almost over-powering. ‘Stay here, little man. Brax will protect you while the h-others h-eat. H-eat, you dogs!’
The four ogres fell on the bodies of hare lip’s dead band and instantly started rending flesh from bone. They barely made the effort to pull the clothes from the bodies, such a feeding frenzy were they in. Hare lip was terrified and lost control of his bladder. Hot urine ran down his leg, but the animal-fear he felt was so strong that there was no sense of humiliation to it.
Brax held the weak man at arm’s length in disgust and shook him. ‘Speak!’
‘W-what do you want? Just tell me… please!’
‘You have been with the Guardian. I smell h-it! Tell me!’
‘Yes, yes! I saw him! I can tell you everything. Just release your grip on my throat. It’s choking me!’
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Brax threw the pitiful creature to the ground and crouched over him. ‘Speak now!’
‘Yes, yes!’ rushed the mercenary. ‘It was the King’s Scourge. He asked about the three that… that did this to my men. Will you let me go?’
‘Why would Brax let you go?’
‘Well, b-because I am helping you.’
‘You would h-anyway. Tell Brax h-about the three. Now!’
‘There was another Guardian, a woman dressed in green. And a soldier who did most of the killing. And then a small fellow, but there’s not much to say about him.’
Brax’s nostrils trembled. Yes, he had their scent now and no longer needed to follow along behind the Scourge like some lesser pack member. Brax was the strongest, Brax would lead.
Judging by the freshness of the spoor, he is not far ahead either. We will soon overtake him, Brax pondered as he crunched down on hare lip’s head. He relished the sweet, vital juices that trickled down his throat – they just weren’t the same when the prey wasn’t consumed alive.
***
Innius used the pumice fiercely on the palm of his hand. Beads of blood began to well up and he plunged the offending hand into a nearby container of salt water. He became giddy as his body indulged itself in an endorphin high. He hated losing control, even temporarily, to such physical responses, but he suffered them in the name of his god. He had to remain in this realm to see Lacrimos’s will done. He had to constrain himself to this inadequate body. And he had to defecate of all things, and then clean up afterwards just to complete the humiliation and indignity. As little as he ate, he was mortified every few days. It was a living torture which made the ecstasy of death all the sweeter and more enticing. Of late, his appetite for death had become all but insatiable – he needed to be near it, to see it and touch the dying every day.
He relied on the head necromancer, Savantus, to employ his undead creatures to round up sufficient numbers of the living for regular sacrifice to Lacrimos, to ensure that the sanity of His priest did not suffer so much that he would not be able to do his work. The problem was that the numbers of homeless, itinerants, refugees and incarcerated criminals had gradually dwindled to almost nothing. Local farmers and city employers were complaining to the palace that there was a lack of cheap labour to be had in Accros and its environs. Innius didn’t care about the local economy, of course, but he did care about the supply of victims and their consignment to the netherworld. Still…
‘The time must soon be at hand, my lord priest,’ prompted the ever-fatigued Savantus, slouched on a half-couch. The head necromancer maintained further undead necromancers. This network amplified Savantus’s powers, but in turn put an enormous strain on him, since every revenant relied on the head necromancer’s life-energy, even if indirectly, to remain animated.
Between them, they controlled Accritania absolutely: Innius controlled the throne and direction of Accritania’s rapidly disappearing living army; and Savantus controlled the rapidly disappearing living population of Accritania with his undead legions. Their alliance suited Innius, and served to further the designs of his divine master, but Savantus’s motivation was not clear. A man whose reasons were not known was as dangerous as a bubble in the blood. Yet Savantus was all but impossible to remove – the army of the undead was inextricably linked to the head necromancer, and that army was essential to the plans of the priest of Lacrimos.
‘Indeed,’ Innius replied cautiously. ‘Wine?’
Innius kept bottles of the purple liquid intoxicant in his suite of rooms specifically for visitors like Savantus. The more loose-tongued such people became, the more was invariably learnt. And Innius made sure he supplied rare, full-bodied vintages that few guests would decline. Of course, when it came to Savantus, there was little chance that he would actually turn wine down. Alcohol was the necromancer’s only obvious weakness – the bed blush of burst blood vessels across his cheeks and nose evidence of years of abuse. It had to be the strain of the undead army. No doubt the necromancer experimented with other stimulants as well.
Innius poured a goblet without waiting for Savantus’s assent and handed it to him. Then he wiped his hands assiduously on a cloth before sitting back down in his unforgiving, hard-seated chair.
Savantus sampled the wine thirstily. ‘Very good, very good. From a vineyard to the south of Dur Memnos if I’m not very much mistaken.’
Innius shrugged uninterestedly. The old sot took a strange delight in identifying the origin of wines, probably in denial about his drink problem and wanting to see himself as connoisseur. Still, it was worth noting that his palate was refined enough to be likely to identify any drug or poison slipped into his goblet.
‘How do you obtain such luxuries, Innius? For all the contacts I have, I still struggle to get anything this good.’
‘The royal wine cellar still has a few dark corners worth investigating. The King is very generous.’
‘Ahhh!’ came the envious reply. ‘And how is our good King?’
‘In good health, Lacrimos be praised. Troubled by how the war is progressing, naturally. You have positioned your minions on the border, yes?’
‘Yes, my lord priest. All necromancers coming to Accritania are welcomed with open arms, murdered and added to our army. But I don’t think we really need many more. We already control hundreds of necromancers and thousands of retainers.’
Savantus wiped his brow and Innius wondered if it was a sign the necromancer was finally at the limit of his powers.
‘Excellent, my lord necromancer. And your minions are alert to deserters and possible agents of Voltar?’
‘All as you instructed, all as you instructed. Very few are getting through the border alive anymore. A thin trickle of hardy traders and that is all.’
‘And are there many trying to leave Accritania.’
‘Virtually none. Apart from ourselves, I’m not sure there’s anybody left alive to try and leave. Perhaps we’re going too far.’
Cold fury burned in Innius. How dare this fallen wretch challenge an anointed servant of the holy Lacrimos, challenge the will of the god Himself. Innius smiled: ‘Have faith, my lord necromancer. The dead will inherit the earth. They will have a rich and immortal existence. There will be no more dying, as we will all be already dead. There will be no more of this desperate life in which we do no more than feed, fight and fornicate. No rush to get things done before we die. No more war or the illusion of suffering. We will have all eternity for the contemplation and discovery of true greatness. Our eyes will be fixed on the heavens alone, not on the mud and minutiae of this physically-bound existence. We are slaves to the whim of our corporeal bodies, my lord necromancer. It makes trivial, tawdry demands on us that we are powerless to resist… powerless to resist unless we cast our bodies aside totally. Our spirits must be released to soar across the vaulted heavens. Only then will we begin to turn our true potential into reality.’
Savantus drank in the fervour in the zealot’s eyes and voice. ‘My lord priest, I envy you both your wine cellar and strength of faith. They are both quite intoxicating. An end to the war? Yes, I’ll drink to that. I am led by you.’
Innius glared at the necromancer, whose speech had been much too pretty and contrived for his taste. ‘More wine, then, my lord necromancer.’ He poured without waiting for assent.
***
CHAPTER NINE: As are we all
The jouncing and jarring stopped his thoughts from settling down and making any sense. They seemed to be nothing but a random collection of images, sounds and feelings. His detached, other self had given up in disgust, no longer willing to perform the impossible task of putting things in logical order or meaningful relationship to each other. The one constant was the pain. He explored it to find its full extent. It went all the way to hand-shaped areas, to feet shapes, a head, a stomach… It was the complete picture of a man… a man slung over a horse. He recognised the face: Mordius the necromancer. It was him. He was this Mordius and slung over a hors
e on his way to Accritania.
‘Stop!’ he begged. ‘There must be more comfortable ways for me to ride this thing!’
The horse came to a halt and a pair of boots came towards him. Saltar bent, turned his head and looked under and up at his animateur.
‘You’re awake. That’s good.’
‘I’m not sure I agree with you. Get me down!’
‘Yes, master!’
‘Oof! Thanks, that hurt!’
‘You seem well enough recovered to shout about it. That’s good too.’
‘Saltar! Stop being so literal about everything. Help the man gently. Don’t add to his hurts!’
‘Kate, Shakri be praised! This man’ll be the death of me,’ Mordius smiled, intrigued that the Guardian and Saltar were now talking, even if it was just Kate giving Saltar orders after the fact. Mordius rubbed at his head ruefully. ‘I’m hungry!’ he announced.
‘Here is bread, Mordius. It will be all your stomach can handle. It is good you have an appetite,’ Saltar attempted, holding out a crust.
Mordius took the morsel with a nod of gratitude from where he sat on the ground. His stomach felt as if it had been kicked by a mule. Gnawing on the heel of bread, he finally took in the landscape.
They were in the foothills of the Needle Mountains, where trees clawed frantically at the rocky ground both to secure a hold and try to force the earth to give up some sustenance that would allow them to grow towards the heavens. The sky became darker as the setting afternoon sun moved behind the shadowed mountains looming ahead. The air temperature fell noticeably and Mordius couldn’t help shivering. He could feel the snow and ice piled up in the passes through to Accritania. Only the famous Worm Pass, which was overhung by rock on both sides, making it almost a tunnel, was likely to be open, which meant there would be Accritanian guards to contend with.
Mordius was sure that Kate, a King’s Guardian on a spying mission, would be as eager to avoid a close inspection and interrogation as Mordius and Saltar were. True, necromancers were said to be tolerated in Accritania, but necromancers were still natural enemies of each other. No, much better if they could pass for a fairly well-off trader and his two bodyguards. But what could he claim he was trading that would warrant two bodyguards? Hmm…