Take the body and give me the rest

by Julius Schenk

  ‘Okay, the plan is Flint goes through this double door shoulder first, and we moments later. There could be two men or twenty, but I’d rather have the element of surprise.’

  They moved out of the way and let Flint take four big steps backward, looked at the door, then up at Seth. ‘With a cry, Boss?’

  Seth almost chuckled. ‘Yeah, with a cry, why not. The whole house will hear this door crying anyway.’

  With an impossibly loud bellow that rang through the house, Flint ran at the double door with as much speed as he could and hit the magic spot joining the two doors with his huge, muscled and armoured shoulder. The doors were flung apart with a giant crash and rip of wood and metal. Flint maintained a staggering run into the candlelit room, followed closely by the rest of the band, who, also screaming, rushed into the room, swords ready.

  There were two guards on the other side of the doors who were hit with the rebounding slab of oak. Grimm slashed roughly at one’s throat, as the guard knelt stunned and bloody from the face, the sword slid through his windpipe , sending him to the floor clutching the wound and gurgling to a slow painful death on the floor. The other had gotten his arms up and was engaged with Goldie in a brief scrap. In moments, Goldie had his sword buried in the man’s stomach to the hilt.

  Four more guards came rushing out of the darkness within. Their swords were drawn, but the guards seemed dazed and bewildered. No doubt they had been dozing or fully asleep before Flint’s cry had woken them. Seth leapt forward and plunged his rapier into a charging guard’s chest. Then he was pushed aside as Flint, Goldie, Stone and Grimm attacked in force. They weren’t trained soldiers but sailors handy with blades. Anger, rage and bloodlust were their advantages as they hacked, screamed and lunged at the guardsmen. Soon they stood in the darkened room with only the sound of their own panting breath and the faint ring of swords clashing still sounding in their ears.

  ‘Goldie, go see about some more light in this place. Flint, Stone, Grimm, guard the door. The rest will be coming in a few minutes,’ Seth said, walking into the darkness of the large room.

  Soon, Goldie had managed to light a fire and some lanterns and the room fully came into view. It was a messy bedroom of large proportions. Around the room in a sort of semicircle, the guards had stood facing inwards. In the middle of the room was a tattered bed and, sitting up on it and looking at Seth, was an old woman from the Southern Desert. Her dark skin was lined with creases and her long hair of matted locks was white as bone. She didn’t make a move or sound, but had simply watched them as they had killed the men guarding her. Seth could see on her bed there were thick iron manacles and her wrists held the permanent scars of someone often chained. He’d seen that enough in the slave cages. So not guarding to protect her, but guarding against her escape. A prisoner of the Guild.

  The clang of swords broke Seth’s thoughts. He turned with Goldie and ran to the doorway. Outside of it stood the rest of the household guard. Luckily, they also hadn’t given themselves much time to prepare, too interested in protecting the contents of the room. No bows or crossbows, only swords and armour put on too quickly or not at all. The General’s eye looked at the eight men that stood in a rough mob around the doorway. Each had a gaping hole in his armour or the like which called out to his sword like a target to an arrow.

  ‘Okay, boys!’ Seth yelled. ‘Let’s show these Pellosi scum what Northerners are made of!’

  He then pointed to the guards in order. ‘Him, no helmet; him, no vambraces; him, no armour at all; him, scared shitless; him, short sword only; him, coward; him, no boots on; and him’—Seth lunged forwards quick as a snake and plunged his rapier through a hole in the guard’s chain mail and into his heart—‘he’s already dead.’ He finished with a shout as his boys leapt forward with him attacking the weaknesses he’d outlined.

  The guards were all trained and seasoned soldiers, as Seth knew, but they were also men and rattled by his performance all the same. Goldie stamped on the man with no boot’s foot with a hard metal instep and then knocked him down with a savage punch with his sword hilt. No Armour and No Helmet were quickly dead on the floor, one with a savage downward cut to the crown from Flint and the other a broadsword plunged right through the chest. No Vambraces was trading cuts with Grimm, sword to sword in the low light.

  Seth engaged the man with a short sword only and, as the rapier is a one-handed weapon, soon he had the dagger in his backhand plunged in the man’s underarm where there was no armour. The man died with a horrible bloody shriek of pain. Soon the rest of the guards had fallen, with the boys taking a few cuts and scrapes only. The worst was Grimm taking a hard hit to the chest, but luckily he had been wearing full mail under his shirt which hadn’t been pierced.

  Seth knew somewhere in the darkness were the stewards and slaves all muttering and wondering what to do now, but he had to turn his attention back to the strange woman prisoner.

  ‘Good work boys. Now I’ll go chat to our friend in there. Guard the door,’ he said and walked into the fire-lit bedroom.

  ‘Can we search them, Boss?’ asked Goldie, slightly out of breath.

  It felt like a bit of a mercenary act to pillage the dead, but Yend told him not to be a fool; the dead didn’t need money, and Seth could sell the weapons as well.

  ‘Good idea, Goldie, and take those weapons and the undented armour. We might get some coin for them,’ he said back. If the boys were surprised, they said not, but set to quick work pillaging the men they had just killed.

  The woman had remained sitting in the same position and had simply watched the carnage unfolding outside of her doorway. How she felt about the outcome, her face gave no expression. She looked very old and Seth knew that in the Guild that meant she was probably very, very old. Her brown eyes engaged him as he came close. Seth stood in front of her and slid his rapier and dagger back into their sheaths on his belt. He wasn’t sure she would understand him. He knew the desert language from Minsetta, who had travelled and lived there at one time. Still, he had never spoken it to anyone before, and he didn’t know if it would be correct. He focused on the memories of Minsetta speaking the language and tried.

  ‘Hello, I’m Seth. You’re not what I was expecting to find in this room,’ he said.

  She smiled at him slowly, and Seth could see the deep, deep pain in her eyes. It was like she was struggling to see and hear him through a storm.

  ‘Hello, Seth. I have what you are seeking. The darkest, deepest secret of the Guild itself. I’ll be glad to be parted from it,’ she said in a soft musical voice.

  ‘Tell me and let me share your burden for you,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t tell you, Seth; I need to show you. It’s not just the knowledge you need but the memory of it. Words alone cannot tell the story,’ she said.

  He took a step back and looked at her more fully. ‘You want me to kill you and take it.’

  ‘The guards were all here to stop me from killing myself. I don’t want these memories and voices anymore.’

  Seth was wary. Truly, if she was the holder of some awful burden, did he really want to take this on? Also, it looked as if she was plagued with voices. Right now, he had a handful of loud voices and the hundreds of whispering ghosts of Minsetta and the General’s victims in his head and, while they mostly only surfaced in dreams, he could only imagine what would happen to him if he took too many more.

  ‘How many people have you got in there?’ Seth asked.

  ‘It’s just me. The things I saw I witnessed myself when I was a child. But you’re right to ask. Please, Seth, end this for me, or I will end it for myself now that you’ve freed me of the guards who have stopped me from finding my final peace,’ she said.

  ‘I understand, but I truly have no wish to kill you or see you ripped apart in front of me. We’ve shed enough blood tonight, and you’re not my enemy,’ he said.

  ‘I know, Seth. You’re still holding onto the idea that you’re not a killer, and that’s good. What I’ll give yo
u will help you hold onto that. Leave the room and call him from outside; you need not see it happen,’ she said.

  ‘Can I do that? I’ve never tried before,’ he said.

  ‘Just imagine this room as you call and the rift will open where you will picture it to. Please, Seth.’

  ‘Okay, I will. I’m sorry for whatever hellish life you’ve been forced to live by these monsters,’ he said.

  Seth held her hand for a moment and then, mustering what coldness he could, left the room and shut the damaged double wooden doors behind him as best he could. In the next room, Goldie, Flint, Stone and Grimm stood on an easy guard. In front of them was a ripped sheet filled with eight swords and various pieces of armour.

  ‘Was she their prisoner, Boss?’ asked Grimm.

  ‘She was,’ Seth answered.

  ‘Should we take her with us?’ asked Flint.

  ‘No, it’s time for her to travel to the shadow lands.’ Seth imagined the room and her sitting at the bed. He started the chant in his mind, easily found the creature and called it in. He could feel the storm and felt the rift open in the room. He bid the creature to be gentle, though he knew that was not its nature.

  The men flinched but said nothing, taking cues from Seth as they heard her screams echoing from the room along with the sounds of a wild beast devouring someone through the gaps in the broken door. Seth felt the heat washing over his body and collapsed to his knees as the memories of her life came down on him with a weight like nothing he’d ever known. One memory stood out like a fetid wound, one that she’d thought of every single day since she’d had to witness it. It opened up to Seth, not allowing him to step away from knowing it and experiencing it all.

  When she was only a child of eight years a man came to the desert to be with her people. She knew not his name or who he was, only that he was great man from the north of the desert, a Pellosi duke or some such. He came with a rich retinue of retainers and footmen. He knew the language of the desert people and spoke with respect of their learning and to their wise people.

  He stayed with them for more than a year. Living with them and learning at the side of the wise men of the tribe, learning the ways of their spiritual path. He knew already of the summoning, but the desert livers only used this magic at the end of someone’s life. It was used to pass knowledge from wise man to wise man, shaman to shaman and father to son or mother to daughter. They had no written history, but by this ritual they passed knowledge on to the next in their family.

  He saw the magic being used. The creature being called wasn’t a white graveyard beast but the dead of the family. The grandfather would be called back to share the life of father and son. At first, the man was all monster-like, black eyes, sharp teeth and no real memory, but once he tasted the blood and was nourished, he became the person again and the life was shared.

  As the dying person lay still, the receiver of the knowledge would take a knife and cut into the heart. The person drifted into death as his or her ‘heart blood’ or ‘death blood’ was collected into a golden cup and then, normally with shaking hands, offered to the summoned. Once the summoned drank deeply, the knowledge would pass over. It was almost a beautiful ceremony.

  The man studied more and more. At death rites when a summoning would need to occur, he would often be called to perform the ceremony. He would sit cross-legged before them and in moments of silence the rift would appear and the family members of the dead would come through. He was a prodigy. Even the wise men of the tribe needed to take herbs, sing songs for hours to open the rift, but he could do it in mere moments.

  She was the daughter of one of the lesser shamans in the group. Her father feared and hated the man. She loved him. Truly, she was a child, but he was young, charming and interesting. He sat around the fire and engaged with them all in chat. One night he was speaking with the head shaman and she heard his words.

  ‘When you call the dead back, why don’t you let them stay here?’ He asked it simply.

  ‘They can’t stay; you’ve seen it. They come as monsters, struggling to control themselves. They only maintain themselves only while the life of another is in them. After a time, they start to turn back into beasts again.’

  ‘Why is heart blood different to blood, or the blood of the dead?’ he asked.

  ‘Blood can contain life or just be blood. If I found someone who had died weeks ago to the cold winter and tried to share their memories, it wouldn’t work. Heart blood contains life. The heart itself is even more powerful than just heart’s blood, but that’s too brutal for our needs.’

  ‘So a man killed in battle could be shared if you took his heart, even though already dead?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘If done before the sun rises and falls, you could, but it would be heresy. This is a gift to pass from family to family. Only in rare situations, if the person died unexpectedly, would we take the heart itself. It’s better that we have the ceremony of letting go.’

  The man had seen in the harsh environment of the desert that the sick or very old people of the tribe would sometimes let go. They would consult with the shaman and their family and give up their lives freely. It was something he couldn’t understand, but he had a different view of life than these people.

  ‘When that old mother and father took part in the letting go and both gave their heart blood, the summoned man stayed for a much longer time. He was even talking with people and had a drink of wine,’ he said.

  The shaman laughed. ‘That’s true. I think the more life or lives in the blood, the longer they can stay here.’

  ‘So if they took enough, they could stay forever?’ he asked.

  ‘Why would they want to stay? Their time has passed and on their journey must go. We call them back only to share with their family and maintain the memories.’

  What seemed inevitable to Seth as the memories exploded in his mind had been a complete shock to the young girl and the rest of the southern desert people. This man, who had lived with them for more than a year, had shared their food and secrets, now had what he needed to know. It had taken less time than he’d thought, they had been so trusting.

  She woke that night to screams in the darkness and the bright orange lights of a blazing fire. The man ran through the leather tents of the desert people, leading a troop of hundreds of soldiers with spears and swords. It was a relentless and merciless attack, with overwhelming numbers. He screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘Kill them all and cut out all their hearts!’ He made it clear to the men that they needed to be sure of that. The massacre was short and swift. The trained soldiers ripped open tents, stabbing and killing the unarmed people as they slept. The tribe was small, only around a hundred and fifty. Most died with a cold blade in their stomachs or throats; few escaped. Chests roughly stabbed and torn open, bloody or beating hearts ripped out with hard mailed fingers.

  In the centre of the small tent city, he stood in front of the fire with a large silver bowl that they slowly filled with the red and awful tributes. The man called out and from the rift walked a beautiful woman with blond hair. She was savage, white skinned and with deadly fangs. She lunged at him as he stood watching her. Two footmen helped him grab her arms and, with one hand at the bottom of her jaw he roughly poured some of the blood from the bowl into her mouth. She reached out and took the bowl and began devouring the contents as more men continued to fill it with more of their victims’ still-warm organs.

  The change was almost instant. As the rich red blood poured into her mouth, her pitch black eyes gained whites and pupils, revealing strong blue eyes. Her fangs shifted to normal teeth and her white skin lost its pallor and became a rich, living pink.

  ‘Take them all and give us all the rest’ he said, as she continued to devour with the hunger of a beast.

  The memories of all of those people hit him and his army of men in a wave. It was something Seth was not expecting, this was the reason for him to bring such a huge force of men. These weren’t just a hundred people being take
n either. He’d destroyed this entire tribe and shared them with all of his army, three hundred years of living history. Father to son, mother to daughter. Hundreds upon hundreds of lives and memories now filling them up with strength, power and knowledge.

  The man turned and went to the woman he’d called and returned to normal life, she looked just like he remembered, except her beautiful face was covered in blood and meat. She had retained an animal gleam to her eyes.

  She wiped some of the blood of her face and taking him in her arms kissed him deeply and strongly. She was back with him once again and now his army of men would be an unbeatable force on the battlefield. Stronger and more skilled than any ten men of any other challenger.

  A guard stepped forward, holding a young girl by the hair. ‘This is the daughter of one of the shamans. She was watching from the bushes and saw us all.’

  ‘Good.’ The woman replied. ‘We want to keep a living memory of the glory my husband has brought to earth. Now let’s and get back home, we have work to do.’

  Keep her to be a living memory they did. Even their deepest secrets they wanted to be recorded and now Seth knew this one. It was possible to bring someone back from the land of the dead if you were willing to pay the price in blood, the recently dead were also fair game and worst of all this man now had one of the most powerful fighting forces in the land.

  Seth stood up in the room again and looked at his men. ‘How long was I off for?’

  ‘A long time,’ said Goldie. ‘Your eyes went off and you couldn’t hear us.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m fine now, but we have to do one more thing before we leave here.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Burn this fucking place to the ground.

  Chapter 18

  The next day at daybreak, as the hot sun began to rise above the city, Seth and his well-fed and very well-armed Northmen approached the rear city gates. They were still on foot and trudged along with packs heavy with looted swords, books and trinkets from the house. To someone standing close by, they would have smelt strongly of a campfire. At the gates stood a very long travelling caravan. There were two major cities along the way from Pelloss to the Black Rock, and Seth imagined there would be a lot of these caravans stopping along the way.