Raegith sat there, wondering what, if anything, he should say. Every word he said to her only further upset her and as much as he liked infuriating his authorities, he was having a difficult time convincing himself that the Empress deserved any of it.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked. “Of course you don’t. You act as if you know everything about us because you spent time among our lower filth. If you really mean to call yourself Greimere, then I would have you at least be an educated member of the empire. You’ve tempered your body in the Pit; will you now temper your mind here in the palace?”
Raegith looked around at the books on the shelves. There were histories there, behind the spines. Just at the end of his reach were books and books filled with an alternate history to what he knew. It was the Greimere version of history; a version no one from his home ever knew. As far as he could tell, the language would be legible to him. All he needed to do was accept her offer and spend some time in luxury.
“I have conditions,” Raegith said.
“Naturally,” Kalystra replied, waving her hand out in front of her for him to continue.
“There are a few prisoners I would like freed from the Pit. Namely Helkree of Edge and Noriko, the Junrei’sha. If possible, there are five females that are loyal to me, that I would seek freedom for.”
“I will see what I can do on the releases, but I cannot promise anything. Depending on the crimes they have committed, it could look very bad if I pardoned them. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Raegith continued. “I have begun training with the Junrei’sha and I wish to continue that training. Also, I wish for Helkree to be trained…”
“I’ll stop you right there, Raegith,” Kalystra said. “The Whore will not be trained in anything. If she is released, she will be banished from the Citadel, again, and that is the extent of my mercy for her. This is not negotiable.”
“Then the deal is off,” Raegith said, getting up.
“Stop it, Raegith!” Kalystra was up from her seat as well. “I cannot… I will not concede on this point. It is too much to ask of me. I will give on all other conditions and you will have the extent of our knowledge at your fingertips. Don’t throw that all away on this one, tiny issue, please.”
“Why do you hate her so much?” Raegith asked. “It was you who had her chained to that rock, wasn’t it?”
“She is an affront to everything we stand for, that is why! She is a remnant from a time long gone and she refuses to abide by even the simplest terms of civility expected of her kind!”
“Her kind, as in Rathgar women?”
“So she has not told you?” Kalystra asked, suddenly delighted. “Raegith, of all the Rathgar you have encountered over the time you have been here, how many have more than a single name? I doubt any but Kalystra of Black Talon and Helkree of Edge, correct?”
Raegith thought of the Rathgar he had dealt with in the Pit. They all went by a single name: Torga, Ganzorg, even Brimgor.
“I see you trying to figure this out, but you’re being tricked by something,” Kalystra said. “The reason you’re being tricked is because you cannot find even a single similarity between the Whore and I that is not shared by all Rathgar. It’s because the Whore does not deserve to call herself ‘of Edge.’ Only Rathgar nobility carry an additional name, denoting the house they are from.”
“Helkree is a noble?” Raegith asked.
“Shocking, isn’t it? Though you’re not entirely correct concerning her heritage. The House of Edge is no longer a house of nobility. In fact, it is no longer a house at all. The Whore is the last scion of that house, the sole survivor of a lineage that lost any nobility long ago.”
“So she was competition for you?” Raegith asked. “Do you hate all other nobles?”
“Raegith, you need to read a book or something,” Kalystra laughed. “The Whore knows nothing of nobility. She was born in poverty and has lived as a drifter her entire life. If she would concede to her place as a peasant, then I would have no problem with her. Hell, I might even invite her to be one of my maidens; a grand gesture between nobles.”
“I think it’s courageous that she refuses to let the world bend her to its rules,” Raegith replied.
“I think it is absurd!” Kalystra walked around the table to Raegith and knelt in the chair beside him, leaning forward against the back. “When the war is over and I have secured my legacy as a successful Empress, you will be given citizenship in the Empire and with the backing of the Empress, you will have immense power and influence. You could be an Overseer of an entire village, Raegith.”
“You would put me over a village? To govern the people?” Raegith asked.
“We don’t have much in the way of luxury here in the Greimere, but having power does have plenty of advantages,” Kalystra said, running a finger down his chest. “You think the pleasures you’ve had at the hands of those convicts and cretins in the Pits were nice? You cannot imagine what is in store for you as an Overseer. You will have men and women under your complete command.”
Raegith had thought himself strong of will. He had refused to bend before the threats and tortures of the Guard Captain and the other inmates. He had never backed down and often chose the route of pain over ease just to frustrate and anger those who had any kind of power over him. Now, with so much laid out before him, he could not resist the Empress’s offers. With an entire village under his control, he could elevate his friends to positions of power. He could fill his village with outcasts, those pitiful souls just like him, who had no other place in the world. That is what he had always wanted, wasn’t it? Wasn’t building a place for those like him his greatest desire in the world? He had promised it to Onyx before, but he did not know how he would ever accomplish such a thing, even as he swore to his first love that he would. Now he had that opportunity and if it meant bending to the will of a woman barely older than he for a few months, then he could not be so prideful as to discard this opportunity.
“I will stay with you, then, and learn the history of the Greimere,” Raegith said.
“Yes!” Kalystra cheered, rocking back in the chair. She caught herself and tried to regain her composure, but she was simply too giddy. “Then let’s have some food and get into something more comfortable than these…”
“Wait, just wait a second, Empress,” Raegith said, trying not to give in to the infectious excitement of the Empress. “Food is fine, but I’m not dressing like your staff. I like my basic clothes just fine and I want time to train each day, as well. I did not build this talent for brutality just to let it rust in a palace.”
“You have the chance to do nothing but lounge and read, from here on, and you still choose to fight?” Kalystra asked, clearly intrigued. “You are quite the madman, Raegith.”
She paused for a moment, something needful flashing through her young eyes. She looked up at him and smiled faintly. “You should have been born here, Raegith. You should have been born Rathgar.”
Chapter 24
Smoke rose so high into the Spring air that it looked like a complete overcast for miles around. To those villagers of the south, the lines of fleeing refugees and the scattering of lone homesteads hidden in the forests or sitting atop hills, it was ominous. They had heard the screams and cries of the Sabans and those cringe-worthy roars of the monsters from the Greimere, but the battle that raged in the village of Duransk was unlike anything that they had heard of. From history and stories, the southern-most peasants of Rellizbix knew that battles were quick and clean. War was commonplace for these people. The urban cities of the northern parts of the kingdom had not seen war since the days of the first Saban kings, but those farmers and tillers below the Pisces River lived with the threat of the Greimere raids forever and this was not a battle that they were accustomed to.
Riding atop a cart, her small face smudged with soot, a Twileen girl looked back, over the heads of the Sabans in the line of fleeing refugees at the pillars of black rising from her home.
She pushed the stray strands of her coal-black hair away from her eyes, which shined like the fires behind them. Around her fear and anxiety reflected in the faces of the Sabans that she rode with. She was not afraid; only angry.
Chev’El was only eight years old, but she had been on her own for almost a year now, after her mother died. When the first signs of the approaching horde came, she had wanted to hide. She was good at hiding. Her mother told her it was because they were from the western forests; the Oaksplinter tribe. The Saban man who drove the cart she rode atop and his wife grabbed her from the streets that morning, before she woke. They would not allow her to stay inside the village with the monsters coming. She had actually wanted to catch a glimpse of one, but she did not get the chance.
“Did you see the size of the army that rode in to Duransk?” a man asked in the procession. “Could they not have spared a few to escort us?”
“They needed everyone they had, of course,” another man answered. “They could spare no men on the first encounter with the Greimere. Would you rather they be shorthanded when they go into battle?”
“I would rather not be caught on the open road to be ambushed by a stray group of those things!”
“It’s not that,” a man with grey hair and a beard said. He was older, but had the powerful walk of an old soldier and the scar over his eye was from a blade. “That was the 1st and 4th Regiments and their armor was shining. The Ninth Regiment is the closest to the south this time of year. The 7th and 8th Regiments are even still in the Wilderness.”
“What are you saying, you?” the second man asked.
“I don’t need to say anything. It’s obvious to those willing to see it.” The man looked up and found Chev’El’s curious eyes. “They don’t care about us here in the south; not as much as their own glory, that is.”
“Careful with your tongue, stranger, we are patriots all!” one of the men said. “Or maybe you care nothing for the brave men back there, dying to protect us from an insatiable enemy, you coward!”
“King Helfrick only sends his best to this war, to end it quickly and save more people!” another man yelled.
“Most likely you are a discharged soldier yourself, who blames great men for his own failings!” a woman said.
“Cattle should not taunt the panther just because he chooses to ignore them,” the older man said softly.
“Funny words for an old man fleeing danger with the rest of us ‘cattle,’” one of the men said. “All of the panthers are still back there, where the fighting is.”
He turned and brushed his hair back from his face, displaying the ugly pink ravine that ran down his face. “This is not a cooking accident or from a farming instrument mishandled. This is from an axe, twenty-two years ago, when I was young and stupid enough to believe the Regiments would be at my rescue. How many of you have seen a Rathgar up close? How many of you have stood close enough to feel their rank breath on your face; to see their oddly-vibrant eyes cut through you with pure hatred as sharp as a Twileen dagger; much sharper than the iron blades of their battleaxes?”
“You stayed behind to fight the monsters by yourself?” Chev’El asked, fascinated. “What happened?”
“What normally happens when a few barely-armed huntsmen stand against an organized army, child: we were massacred. The Ninth Regiment was an hour away when the first signs of attack happened on the outskirts of Bellkirk. Three hours later we realized that they had passed by us, moving to a more ideal battlefield in which to engage the roaming horde. Our chance to flee had already passed. We could only stand at that point and let the wave of teeth and iron crash over us.”
“Then how are you still here? Did you hide while your fellows were killed?” a man asked. “If all were killed, then what are you, a ghost?”
“I was spared,” the older man said. “I don’t know why, but after my brother had fallen it was only me and they just stopped. I was blind in one eye… a broken arm and ribs; I was little more than a snarling animal at that point, snapping at anything that came close to me. One of them just looked at me, his massive axe resting on his shoulder and his sky-blue eyes burrowing under my skin. He could have cleaved me in two with one swing and I was certain he would, but he only slapped his chest with his fist and then turned away. Then they left and I buried my family.”
“They just left?” Chev’El asked.
“Sounds like bullshit to me!” the woman scoffed.
“Yeah, those demons leave nothing alive in their wake,” another man said. “I hear they roast the young and wear the skin of the women as trophies and that they tie their belts with the innards of those they’ve murdered!”
“If ‘Panther’ here had really fought with one of those things, they would be wearing his face like a festival mask right now!”
“That old man cut his face falling on a plow or something.”
“I believe you, mister,” Chev’El said. “My name is Chev’El and I wanted to see one of the Rathgars, too… but now I don’t.”
“Because you’re smart, Chev’El,” the man replied. “The Treewalkers usually are, aren’t they?”
Chev’El brightened at this. Whoever this man was, he knew that she was from the forests and not one of the Twileens from the plains or the coast. “What’s your name?”
“I am Sevictus,” the man replied with a smile.
It was another month before Chev’El returned to Duransk, one of the first to return to the destroyed village after the battle. She travelled with Sevictus and had already started learning the frontier skills of a huntsman from him. Her dark hair was short and away from her face and on her leather belt was a skinning knife. She was well-fed and cleaner than when she lived on the streets of the village, yet dirt and debris clung to her clothes and hair. Though her face was alive and full of eagerness to learn from the grizzled mentor, she was shocked when she arrived to see the carnage of the village.
“Is this normal?” she asked her teacher. “What happened here?”
“A massacre,” Sevictus said, looking around at the piles of charred bodies and the empty-eyed heads screaming silently atop long poles in the ground. The ground was littered with smashed wine barrels and the clear decanters that carried the bubbly juice that Faeir mages enjoyed. Empty boonivarn gourds were scattered among broken beer steins and there were clean carcasses of fowl and game resting atop make-shift tables. Carrion birds were few, as most everything edible was already picked clean.
“It looks like… a festival happened here shortly after the massacre,” Chev’El said, picking up what looked like a pair of lacey panties that mostly prostitutes or exotic dancers wore. “Who… who was doing the celebrating here?”
“This was a Rellizbix victory,” Sevictus said, pulling a burned pair of shackles from one of the piles. “Not all of these bodies were dead when the fire blazed.”
“So our soldiers defeated the enemy, stuck their heads on poles, burned the prisoners alive… and then feasted?” Chev’El asked.
“And they left to the southwest, the same direction the attack came from,” Sevictus said, pointing the trail that had been beaten into the ground by thousands of boots, hooves and wheels. “They are giving chase to the ones that retreated instead of moving to secure the other villages parallel to Duransk. This is abnormal.”
“What is abnormal?”
“Everything, Chev’El. This was not just the 1st and 4th Regiments that we saw from before. There was at least another regiment of men here and for some reason they had all of this booze on them. This isn’t how the army works. We do not burn prisoners alive and then drink among the death screams. That is not the actions of a defending army. It’s much too… vengeful.”
“They did not even clean up after themselves,” Chev’El commented. “This will take forever to rebuild.”
“We’re not staying, Chev’El.” Sevictus was already headed to the southwest part of the village ruins. “There is nothing but death here.”
“We’re going to fol
low the regiments, aren’t we?” Chev’El asked, grabbing her pack and trotting off after him.
“Something is amiss, even for something as horrible as this war. I wish to see what this has meant for the rest of the land down here. I wish to see what terrible state the king’s men will leave us this time.”
Chapter 25
Tiberius looked upon the Hell Cliffs as the sun broke over the mountains to his left. He had only once before looked out onto the barren dirt of the south, far below the line that divided his people from their dreaded enemy. The last time he had looked out on the Greimere’s land, he was relieved. He was a young officer and seeing the Cliffs was his sign that the war was over. Now he watched the last few dozen Rathgar flee across the cracked red landscape, escaping his wrath as fast as they could. This time Tiberius watched them with anticipation.
Behind him the men of Regiments were sleeping off the booze or watching over the few prisoners they had taken. Tiberius did not like having any of these wretched creatures among his men, but it was necessary; he needed information on the lands to the south. He needed to know what would be waiting for his men, if anything, once they crossed into the Greimere Empire.
“Have they gone, sir?”
Tiberius turned to see Captain Laurent standing behind him. The young captain was bright-eyed and ready. He was not a drinker or a glutton, like so many of the other soldiers. Laurent was clean, but ferocious in battle. He held no love for the Rathgar or their allies.
“They flee back to their Emperor, I suppose.”
“Will that pose a problem to our mission, sir? The Witzer Cannon is still days away. They will have an opportunity for ambush and they know these lands better than us.”
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