The male slaves took the swords and money pouches of the slavers and I let them. I only needed the horse. The slaves moved quickly up the road. I turned to the slavemaster.
“You whore bastard,” he whispered, his life leaving him.
“You’re quite uppity for a man with no legs.”
“The emperor will have you starve in his dungeons for this. You will welcome the burning fire of the afterlife when he is through with you.”
I patted the horse on the muzzle. I heard the scream from the forest and knew that wolves had taken my hunt from me. Such a shame. I heard rustling nearby and saw fierce eyes and a red tongue. Wolves were clever and knew when they were outmatched. The easy target was the best target. The slavemaster wouldn’t die by my hand.
I climbed the horse and trotted off as the slavemaster began screaming behind me. I saw the wolf tear into the man. He tried to fight it off but once the wolf tasted blood it was too late. I rode through the trees and shrubberies to the sound of his screams. Three other wolves were on the other slaver that had gotten away. One of his arms had been torn away and one wolf had gotten hold of his face and was trying to yank it clean off. I watched for a while until the screaming stopped. Weren’t no fun after that. I turned and went back to the road.
I rode into the night until the moon lit the sky in its blue glow. I wasn’t any more fearful of the night than the day. They’re no different. People are afraid because they think they can’t see the things in the dark waiting for them. But that works both ways.
The horse, to its credit, trotted along without a complaint. I stopped at a stream and we both drank. Food would be more difficult to find out in the forest, but sometime the next day we would arrive at Hearth, my home, if you could call it that, and I would feed it and take care of it. It had proved itself a loyal servant.
I rode through the night. The forests here were dense, too many trees pushed too close together. I couldn’t see in the night whether an arrow waited to enter my throat just up the road or not. But anyone waiting in the trees to shoot an arrow into me would be in just as much danger from what was behind him. A losing proposition on all sides.
I pushed the horse through its fatigue and soon the sun came up and burned away the night. The frosty cold turned to warmth and we rested then. I had nothing to eat so I scavenged for berries but found none. I saw tracks just off the road: four-toed feet with clawed tips. Orcs. I watched for them, listened, but I knew they wouldn’t be out during the day. They hated the light as much as me.
Orcs sometimes stalked these parts of the forest but they were rare. Beastly creatures, half human and half … whatever else they were. Not animal, not quite devil. They could speak, or so I had been told, but I’d never heard it. I had only seen them attack and kill and rob and eat. I wondered what I would say to an orc were one ever to speak to me.
They had fine senses of smell though, and could smell fear. That’s when they attacked. I was certain they didn’t smell any on me and I’d be left alone.
We started off again. Hearth was only a half day’s journey now and Emma would be there waiting for me.
“You will love her,” I said to the horse. “First, she will kiss me, then hug me and tell me she’s missed me. I don’t know if she means it or not but she’ll say it. And afterward she’ll turn to you. She’ll touch you and kiss you and make sure you’re fed. She will take good care of both of us.”
I kept my head low and had to stop twice so the horse could rest. But before evening fell I caught sight of the walls of Hearth. Cut out of the middle of the forest, the town had been attacked for centuries until walls were erected by some long forgotten king. Though not a great city like Zeries, the capital of the Empire, or Balor Gesh, the main port, cities founded and blocked off to the rest of the world—the unconquerable cities, though who knew if that was true; history only went back so far, it had its own charms.
I approached the walls. They were several horse-widths thick and high enough that nothing could go over without great effort. At the front, its only entrance was guarded by a small army. I approached on my pitiful horse and the guards eyed me. Some of them knew me. I pulled out the little stone, a Stone of Hearth, one of the special black stones found only in a mine contained within the city. The guards inspected the stone and let me pass.
The city was as lively as ever. Shops lined the streets right through to the opposite walls. Merchants were selling everything from roasted cat and frog to swords and armor. Priests were shouting to repent, and doomsday-sayers were telling us to have anarchy for we would be dead soon. Both were equally unconvincing.
I was accosted by merchants, as are all who enter the city. Some of them recognized me and turned their eyes and let me pass. I went to the center of the city and then turned away from the larger buildings and went to the outskirts. Little huts were set up along grasslands that stretched out before me into fields of flowers. I rode quickly, pushing the poor beast under me that had ridden so gallantly the night before.
I saw what I was looking for, a hut on a small hill surrounded by flowers. She had planted those flowers because she wanted me to have something pretty to look at whenever I came to see her. She was always thinking of me and I couldn’t tell why such a goddess would take pity on a monster like me. Had I done something to please the gods? I didn’t know. Perhaps I had killed someone who had disfavored them.
I lashed up the horse and went inside. The hut was empty. No meal was prepared, no wonderful smell of spices and roasting meat. Only one other room was here and I went to it. The bed was empty, covered only by a layer of furs as blankets.
They were stained with blood.
I went to them. Blood had soaked them so much they were still wet. Blood had dried on the walls and floor and there were smears everywhere, as if someone had been trying to get away.
I quickly looked through the hut again and then went outside. I went to the hut next door. An older woman was there whose name I could never remember. She didn’t answer her door, though I knew she had nowhere else to be.
“Open the door or I’ll kick it down, you old wench.”
She opened the door. “What is it you want?”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to shut the door.
I stopped it and held it open. “Where!”
She looked at me, wanting to say something but unable to do so. “I’m sorry.”
I let go of the door and she shut it.
Emma …
Emma who was kind when no one else would be. And now she was gone.
5
The undertaker was in the building most set apart from the city. There was an enforcement branch, those who enforced the emperor’s laws, but they were useless. Usually, if there was a crime, they were the ones committing it. So I went to the undertaker.
He was an old man with thick black eyeglasses strapped to his head. The building was filled with corpses ready for the funeral pyre. The windows were painted black and I thought that this building must have been used for something else before the emperor’s liaison at Hearth realized they needed an undertaker. The city was so compact that if one person brought illness, it would soon sweep through the populace and kill the old and the young alike.
A fire was roaring in the other room in what appeared to be a large oven. It was for the bodies of those with no families. They would simply be burnt and the ashes thrown into a pit to return to the earth.
“Busy busy,” he mumbled to himself, not looking to me. “Too busy to talk to some but not to others. Too busy to talk.”
I grabbed him by his collar and pressed him against the wall. A hot iron used for branding the dead with letters to show they had been prepared and were ready for the pyre was on the table next to me. I lifted it and held it close to his face. He looked away.
“What do you want?”
“A young woman named Emma.”
“Ah yes, yes, Emma of the Glades. Yes? Yes?”
> “Yeah, that’s her. She came from the Glades of Rose.”
“Yes, yes. She came to me this morning. Came to me this morning, she did.”
“Where is she?”
“In the next room, she is. Going to be burnt tonight. No family to speak of.”
“I’m her family,” I said, pressing him harder into the wall and causing him to squeal.
“Well, well, a pyre can be prepared. A pyre can be prepared tonight, yes, yes.”
I released him. “What happened to her?”
He motioned for me to follow him into the next room. I did. And I saw Emma on a table. She was naked and her body was sewn together like an old rag that the dogs had torn apart. Her face was pieced together and stitched with heavy stitching, probably used for leather.
“What happened to her?” I said, my eyes not leaving her face.
“Cut up she was, I’m afraid. Cut up she was. Like scissors on soft cloth.”
“Who did it?”
“I don’t know, do I.”
I grabbed him and spun him onto his back. Dragging his feet near the fire, I placed them nearly inside. “Who?”
“Ask the enforcement guard you must. Ask the enforcement guard! By the gods I don’t know, do I.”
I released him. The enforcement guards. The biggest scum in the city. Fine, I would meet with them. But first I would take care of Emma like she had taken care of me. I pulled up a chair and sat next to her as the old man went outside to prepare a pyre.
It was night by the time the pyre was ready. The old man tried to go back inside and I grabbed his shoulder and held him in place. The body had been placed onto the pyre and he held a torch in his hand. I took it from him. This was mine to do.
I stood over her face again and looked down at her. I kissed her forehead. That smell that I knew wasn’t there anymore. And the warmth didn’t touch my lips. There was only cold. A stone left out in the woods. It was no different now. I placed the torch on the pyre and stepped back. I watched the body take up the flame and turn to ashes. If I knew how to cry I would have. But I couldn’t so I just stood there and watched the ashes as they drifted on the wind.
I don’t know what you saw in me, Emma, but I promise you that whoever did this is going to pay.
6
After the fires had died out, in the morning I woke the old man who had lain down in front of the pyre and fallen asleep. Then I went out. It was just early enough that the enforcement guard would still be sleeping. I walked to the center of the city. It was frosty cold; the sun was coming up and the tall towers were being lit with light through their windows. I could hear voices stirring as people rose. The enforcement guard wasn’t far but I stopped and got an ale at an alehouse, sat by myself and didn’t speak to anyone. The ale here was better than what I’d had the past few nights and I was grateful for it.
When my belly was warm I rose and walked to the building I was looking for. It was a tower of five levels. On the top was the chief enforcement guard, and on the bottom the grunts and everything in between, where they would know what had happened to Emma. I walked into the building and one guard was there. A young man.
“What do you want, citizen?” he said, not looking up at me.
“A woman was killed day before last. I want to know by who.”
He glanced up to me. “I wouldn’t know about that. You would need one of the Guards of the Night. They would handle that sort of thing.”
“Where are they?”
“Upstairs, but you can’t see them. Make an appointment and we’ll see if—”
I reached down and slammed his head into the wooden desk in front of him. It cracked his skull and I placed him on his arms to appear like he was sleeping. I went past him and to the stone steps leading up.
Not many people were here. I walked past the second floor because I couldn’t see anybody and went to the third. A few men were there. I walked in and approached the man nearest me.
“A woman was murdered day before last. Emma of the Glades.”
“So what?”
“I want to know who did it.”
“How did you get past the guard at the entrance?”
“He told me one of you would know what happened to her. One of the Night … whatever he called it. Night’s Guard.”
“I’m on the Guard of the Night,” another man said, walking over. He was older with a gray beard.
“Emma of the Glades. She was killed by someone,” I said
He nodded. “Aye, she was.”
“Who killed her?”
“Can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t look like her kin so you ain’t got no need to know.”
I unstrapped my axe. “I was hoping you would say that.”
Two of their heads were stacked on top of each other on a desk. Their headless bodies were slumped over in the chairs. The old man was still alive and we were sitting on the floor, both his arms missing and the wounds cauterized from the small fire I had started in one of the administrative rooms. I sat cross-legged on the floor with my fists underneath my chin. The old man was breathing but it was a gasping, raspy breath. A death rattle. I’d heard it a lot and it was something that I always found amusing, the last grasp of the body to try and hold on to life.
I looked to the old man. He hadn’t wanted to die at first, but I’m sure he was begging to go to the underworld after what I’d put him through.
“I have all the time I could want,” I said. “I can stay here as many days as I need to.”
“Soon,” he said, barely able to suck in breath, “more guards will come. They will deal with you. Every enforcement guard in the city will be here and they will … deal … with … you.”
“Really?” I looked to the heads on the desk. “They didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. That’s what happens when you recruit the most corrupt instead of the most able. But I’m happy to make a tower of heads here if that’s what you need to see before telling me what I want.”
The old man thought about it a while. His strength had left him, but since his wounds had been cauterized he wasn’t going to die yet. I picked up a knife one of the men had been carrying and brought it near his genitals again, what was left of them. I had taken one jewel and the other had shrunk back inside him. I took the sack in my hand and went to cut off the other one.
“Wait! Just wait.”
“I’m listening.”
He swallowed. “It was Lucius Kandarian.”
I let go of his sack. “The prince?”
“We don’t have princes anymore. Not since we became an empire. He is now the emperor abiding.”
I shook my head. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He … goes … on visits.”
“What kind of visits?”
“He has … the right of first night.”
“She wasn’t getting married.”
He shook his head. “That was changed by the emperor’s decree. Any able-bodied … woman who is unmarried at the age of … twenty-five is subject to the right. The emperor abiding came through here and this woman … was out in the markets. He saw her and had to have her. She is quite … lovely.”
“Was quite lovely. Before she was torn up like a flower in a storm.”
He swallowed. “He has certain … tastes. Things that he must do with a woman. The women, unfortunately, don’t survive.”
“And you not only didn’t stop him, you helped him.”
“It’s the law.”
“You’d be shocked at how much I hear killing and raping justified with that.” I rose. “Do you wish to live or die?”
“Without my arms and without my … manhood? In this city? What kind of life would that be? Begging on the streets … to try and have some wench feed me a crust of bread.”
I stabbed him through the throat and then twisted the blade to widen the wound. He fell back and the blood began
to flow. He was a brave old man and it had taken much more than I thought it would have to get him to talk. His younger compatriots had begun talking immediately but hadn’t known anything.
I walked out of the building. Several guards were standing around the front entrance as the young man up front had woken with a large bleeding bruise on his forehead but didn’t remember what had happened. I walked right past the fools without them so much as asking me what I was doing there.
EXCERPT FROM NECROMANCIA: A HANDBOOK FOR MAGES
The Turning Point for Magik in the Year of the Snake
It was said in days of old that mages and witches numbered as the roses in the Gardens of Ephilim. One could scarcely go to any suitable town or city and not hear murmurs of the mages that haunted this or that corner.
In the early centuries, mages and witches were considered beings with an unusual connection with the gods. They were consulted, sometimes for a fee, whenever a person had an important decision to make or wished for a blessing on their crops or pregnant wives and all manner of things. Mages held public offices, such as law givers and ministers and mayors. A witch, Helena of Gamcino, even became queen of the kingdom of the imperials, then known as Bactria, and ruled over the Bactrians with kindness and wisdom for nearly sixty seasons before her passing.
It was Helena that established the Mages Guild, a place of learning for those with the gift. A guild that lasted twenty centuries.
This perception of the kind and wise mage and witch, unfortunately, did not hold. Many myths came with the mages of old in later years, that they murdered children or virgins and used them in ritual. An unfortunate happenstance led to this misconception, and the results were more unfortunate still.
A mage by the name of Claudius Marcopius, hailing from the great city of Yenamin under the Bactrians, and which later was termed Balor Gesh by the imperials when they abandoned the culture and customs of the Bactrians, was born in the Year of the Snake and was just as deceptive as his birth year would lead one to believe.
Empire of War - An Epic Fantasy (The Empire of War Trilogy Book 1) Page 2