“Who are you people?” The guard ignored her, continuing forward.
Alocar and Rodnick weaved, keeping their backs to one another, their short swords biting into one of the King’s guard, but Alocar’s cuts lacked vigor, and his stump spilled blood freely. Even Isaac had his hands full, his remaining opponent avoiding Isaac’s flames, slowly working him backward.
“What are you?” Not who. Crymson grabbed the last two of her knives.
The guard paused, a look of almost sadness on his face. “Unholy,” he said, and then sprinted at her, his hands open wide, an all-out offensive.
“Isaac!” Crymson yelled, turning and running toward the King and his son, toward the last of the guards. Behind her, the rapid steps of the guard’s feet faltered, and Crymson felt a wall of heat push her gently as the world lit up around her. Somebody screamed, and then she was up the stairs.
Palming both her knives, she thrust them at the face of the remaining guard, risking it all in one bold strike. His sword rose to block, and Crymson saw that she wasn’t going to make it, but then somebody pulled back the guard’s head and a knife bit into his throat.
His sword dropped to the floor, his hands pawing at the hold, but the knife cut deeper, almost severing the head from the neck entirely. No blood dripped from the blade, the inside of the guard’s neck black, almost dry, mummified. Finally, the knife jerked free and the guard fell, his head hanging on by gristle and little else.
Crymson didn’t take time to think about the situation. She dove forward, hitting the King and falling atop him. His hands scrabbled at her face, raking across, and a fist connected with her temple. Lights danced across her vision, but she wouldn’t be denied. Expecting a knife in her back at any moment, the dagger in her right hand plunged into the side of the King’s neck once, twice, a third time, and then his jittering body slumped and his hands relaxed, eyes glassy.
With a groan, Crymson turned, preparing herself to meet the other guards, but found only the Prince, knife in hand, black on its blade.
Angras
I let the blade fall, bounce off the dead guard’s leg and clatter to the ground “What did you do?” I asked, horrified.
What needed to be done. You wouldn’t have been able to do it.
The guard in front of Alocar collapsed, leaving the guard’s blade stuck in Rodnick’s corpse like a planted flag. In front of Slate and Teacher, another guard crumpled, strings cut, and Isaac’s remaining opponent, the flesh on his face roasting, fell as well, animated one moment and lifeless the next.
“Bar the door,” I said.
Alocar frowned. I noticed him nudging Slate up the stairs. “Bar the door!” I flung my hand at them. “Unless you want the guards to find us like this.”
Alocar nodded to Isaac, who ran to the end of the room and threw the crossbar. My knees gave way, and I fell at the front of the stairs.
Silence filled the chamber as the four of them came together and walked to the steps, Crymson still behind me.
“You never told me it was going to be so hard,” I said to Angras. Alocar stopped before the first stair, putting his hand out to slow the others.
“Remson?” he asked.
Let me tell them.
“But I just got back out.” I heard the plaintive tone in my voice. “I don’t want to go back inside.”
Let me out.
His tone was so commanding that I retreated inside myself, watching as Angras took over my body, becoming me. He pulled the mask from my coat, threw it down the stairs, where it came to rest in front of Slate’s feet, face up.
Alocar stared at it uncomprehendingly, and then looked back at me. “Angras?
“Which me are we talking about? Yes, I am he.” Angras seated my body on the stairs. “It’s actually easier this way. That fool boy Remson never had the courage to do it himself, even at the end.”
At the bottom of the stairs, their faces grew puzzled, though Slate only appeared to grow angrier, his hands clenching and unclenching.
“You ever grow up and realize, really realize, that you hate your parents? Hate them with every fiber of your being, even if you respect them, love them? I know how that feels. Remson’s mother screwed half this kingdom, and his dad just stood by and watched. Remson never said anything. Not a word. He would always have been a coward, without me.”
Stop talking about them like that!
Next to Alocar, Slate shifted, his face darkening with each new word.
“Right, wrong. What difference does it make? Right and wrong aren’t reality, they’re just results. Remson could never understand that.”
Turning, Angras looked at my father’s still form, and then back down the stairs. “Want to know the sad part? Remson’s father couldn’t abide the thought of his precious county going up in flames, and so he made a deal with the Cao Fen – prompted by Remson’s mother, I’m sure. Cruel, she was.”
I said stop talking about them! I rattled the bars of my new mental cage.
Angras tilted his head, quiet for a moment. “No, she’s dead. I can speak ill of her if I want. She is dead, right?”
Uncertainly, Alocar nodded. He rubbed his hands together, and then asked me, “Who am I speaking to right now, Remson or Angras?”
“Angras.” A frown. “I thought I’d made that clear. Now,” Angras spread my body’s hands while I beat on the walls of my mind, “What is it you see here, surrounding us?”
Alocar looked at the corpses, wounds hacked into their bodies, burns covering some of them, more like dolls than humans. An involuntary shiver ran through him, and he turned back to face Angras. “I don’t know.”
“And well you shouldn’t. Dead, undead, you see the difference? And there’s more of them, many more. You remember Remson spoke to you long ago of the arrangements his parents made? This was it. These,” he swept my arm in front of him, “were to be our border defenses. Spirited away from our villages, towns, and cities. Dead to undead, the perfect soldiers.”
“How did you know?” Crymson edged her way past Angras, hiding a knife behind her back. “They looked normal until we took them apart.”
Just let her kill us, please, Angras! Aren’t I miserable enough?
“Hush,” he told me. “I’m in charge now.”
Without turning, Angras answered her. “Being drunk will land you in strange places, especially when you’re the son of royalty. Remson happened upon a Cao Fen ceremony one night and was able to see how they were put together. I watched from inside.”
Nobody answered him. Slate took a step forward, but Alocar put a hand on his shoulder. “Wait just a second.” To Angras, he asked, “Why’d they collapse like that? All at once, without warning?”
An elaborate shrug. “No idea.” Angras grew serious. “Are you happy we did this? I am. I cannot imagine the Cao Fen ruling my life. Not I. Not Angras. Look at me. Can you see me bowing to another?”
He knelt by my father’s side and removed the crown, and then kissed my father’s brow.
Don’t touch him! You’re the reason he’s like that!
Another tilt of his head as he listened to me. “I’m the reason? We’re the same thing, remember?”
“Why didn’t you do it your own damn self?” Slate shook Alocar’s hand off and moved up a stair. “Why’d you get us to do your dirty work?”
Angras began to pace. “Ever convince someone to kill his parents? I tried. Harder than it seems. Remson loved them too much for to get very far, even though he knew I was right, so I had to take my own actions into account. He lacked the will.”
You made me do this.
“Would you have let your people suffer?” Angras asked me. He stopped his pacing then, looked at the bottom of the steps.
“But why ask us to include you in the mission?” Alocar moved closer to Slate.
“Why? Be suspicious otherwise, wouldn’t it? You were just convenient.”
I beat against the walls of my mental prison. You turned me into a monster, a father-killer
! Let me out!
Angras ignored me. Black started flowing from his fingertips, forming into the swords that he’d used to decimate the village.
I should never have listened to you. Look at what you’ve forced me to become!
“And look at what I made you!” Angras roared. The others retreated a step, not privy to know Angras was screaming at me, not them. “You knew what needed to be done, and look at us, we’ve done it. What more could you ask for?”
A release! Let it end here. We’ve saved Prolifia, but let it be the end.
“The end? No,” he brandished his shadow swords, making his way to the stairs, “I’ve just begun.”
At the bottom of the stairs, they raised their weapons, but they wouldn’t have a chance, not against Angras.
I threw myself against the mental prison I’d once held Angras in, again and again. He faltered as it began to crack.
“Stop that,” he said, almost hesitantly.
I refused, throwing myself at the walls again and again.
The black left, retreated back into my body. “I said, stop that!” Panicky.
Screaming incoherently, I exploded from my mental chamber. We wrestled for control, and then, still screaming, I shoved him back inside, and abruptly, just like that –
I was back.
No! Let me out. Let me out! Letmeoutletmeout!
Vibrations went through me as Angras beat on his reformed prison, harder than he ever had before. My words rushed, I looked Alocar, who opened his mouth to speak but not before I said, “Not now. I don’t have time. It’s me, Remson. Angras is back inside. Your family? They’re alive. Back in Dradenhurst.”
Letmeout now! You are nothing without me!
With energy I didn’t know I had, I said to Slate, almost begging, “You never really had any need of coming here. Forgive me. Your friend’s wine glass held nothing more than wine, and there is somebody who can help him, but I’ve heard only rumors. I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop Angras. He had too much of a hold on me.”
I got on my knees next to my father, tears building in my eyes, even while Angras raged within me. “Please, do for me what I can’t do for myself, before he breaks free.”
You’re throwing it all away! Everything we’ve built. This could be the beginning!
I remembered times as a child, my father swinging me on his shoulders and carrying me around the palace. I remembered my mother, ever hard on me, wanting what was best for her only son. Both dead. Had I done right? Had I done wrong? Will somebody not tell me?
Footsteps approached, the slide of metal from a sheath, and I prepared myself for death’s warm embrace.
Slate extended Angras’s mask toward Isaac. “Come with me.”
“Wait,” Alocar put his hands on Slate’s shoulder, “who are we killing here: Angras or Remson?”
Slate looked at him with deadly calm. “Does it matter?”
Sword in hand, Slate walked up the stairs. A rage had built within him as the Prince had spoken, one that discounted the words spilling from his mouth, delivered as if he had done no wrong, even when he admitted to doing so. No matter the reasons given, it boiled down to something simple: the Prince had been too cowardly to do the deed himself, and so he’d put others at risk, nearly killing them. He deserved no reward.
In front of them, Angras, Remson, the Prince, whatever he chose to call himself, knelt by his father, tears fresh on his cheeks, his eyes closed and mouth moving silently.
Slate leveled the sword at the Prince’s neck. “Heat that up for me, would you?” he asked Isaac, pointing to the mask, keeping his voice low.
Isaac did as bidden, until Slate could feel the heat burning from distance, the metal white-hot.
Slate ripped a gauntlet from one of the fallen guards, about which he wrapped a long strip of cloth, torn from the same guard’s clothes. He repeated the binding until he’d used the guard’s entire shirt. In his protected hand, Slate took the white-hot mask from Isaac, attempting to spread the heat throughout the entirety of the gauntlet. He turned and faced the Prince, still on his knees, still with eyes closed.
“You ask our forgiveness for wrongs done, and they may have granted it to you, but I deny your wish.” Slate thrust the white-hot mask against the Prince’s face, and a scream erupted from behind it, one lost in the hissing of metal against skin.
Slate spoke over the screams, muscles flexed as he exerted pressure on the mask. “Execution is too easy for the likes of you.”
Leaving the mask attached, the skin beneath it melted along the edge, wisps of steams drifting up as the Prince’s screams died into the moans and grunts of a wild beast.
Finally, the Prince collapsed in a heap alongside his father. Slate looked at the figure with disdain, the pain too brief for his liking.
“Do you think he’ll live?” Isaac asked, his eyes wide.
Slate looked down at his still form. “I doubt it, but if he does, he won’t be happy.”
From behind him, he heard the Old Man approach, and then a hand rested on his shoulder. Slate thought about shrugging it off again, but let the motion ride. “We need to get out of here before anybody sees us. With luck, we can make it back to Dradenhurst without any problems.”
For once, Slate had no argument. “Let’s get out of here.”
Crymson
Back full circle, life taking you round and round, and just when you thought you’d found your stop, it deposited you back where you’d begun, the big picture still much the same, small details altered, almost unnoticeable except to those in the know. Crymson sat with her back against the wall at Brewmaster’s in Dradenhurst, waiting for the others to arrive, at the same table where they’d met the first time, distrust their only common ground.
Their table hadn’t changed, a detail that had escaped time, or perhaps embraced it, made a pact to remain in stasis, its old age giving the world-weary a sense of comfort. The rings still intersected other rings, so numerous as to be almost uncountable, blending with each other across the tabletop. Her finger traced one, deep and dark, new where the others were old.
Luckily, it didn’t seem that the Queen had told anybody of their capture, and all who knew their faces were dead, except their former pointy-eared guide and perhaps Angras. Still, she kept a watch over her shoulder, and sudden sounds in the night made her jump, knives materializing in her hands like a magician’s flourish.
On their way home, back to Dradenhurst, they’d avoided the main cities and towns, electing to stop only in Fayne and treat themselves to a visit with Newnam and his gnarled beard, heaps of bacon disguised as breakfast awaiting them in the morning. While they were eating, a group of Priests had entered the room, heading straight for their table. They’d all jumped to their feet, assuming defensive postures, but after a few words, they’d sat, Crymson’s ears particularly attuned.
After Quintel’s death in Fayne, somebody had picked up on his disappearance and reported it to his superiors, who scrambled to find a replacement for his now vacant seat, one that normally bore the brunt of the Cao Fen’s labor on the eastern side of Prolifia. The discussion had been brief, almost nonexistent, and rather than asking, the group had summarily elevated her to the rank of Archbishop, filling the stark void. Crymson had figured that they had meant her to be a temporary fix until they’d found a more suitable replacement, so she had taken steps to solidify her new station, a task that had busied her for some months.
The others had left her behind, heading back to Dradenhurst, letting Crymson put the pieces together, new post allowing her a degree of unprecedented power, formerly sealed records opening and knowledge normally whispered out of earshot now written up for her as reports.
Alocar walked inside Brewmaster’s, his beard newly regrown, white without a hint of grey. He’d managed to shed more of his prosperous man’s gut, and all that remained of it was a slight bump in the shirt’s fabric, the leanness of his figure lending him a more commanding air. The stump of his left hand was hidden beneat
h the fall of his sleeve, but he strode with it out to his side, a natural rhythm to its swing.
Seconds behind, the door opened, admitting Slate and Teacher. Slate struck a pose, hands on his hips as he surveyed the room. Nothing had changed about him, nor Teacher, the big guy standing there with his perpetual half-smile, living life as one did a slow-moving dream.
Alocar slid into his chair with a gentleman’s elegant dignity while Slate pulled his out and turned it around, placing his forearms atop its back and his chin atop his forearms. Teacher fell into his, a beer somehow already in one giant hand.
“Where’s Isaac?” Crymson asked.
Turning his chair so that he faced the crowd, Alocar answered, “We don’t know. He’s been missing this last month you’ve been gone, haven’t heard a word from him.”
Crymson nodded. “We have a problem.”
“So nothing has changed.” Slate lifted a finger to the barmaid. “Problems are the only things we know how to handle, everything else is a fucking bore.”
“This one is perhaps a bit more serious than the others. You remember what Angras told us of, about this army of the undead? Well, it’s there, and it’s real.”
Alocar leaned closer. “How do you know?”
“Does it matter? My new position gives me leeway to things I wouldn’t otherwise have access to, and it’s enough to say that the little I’ve found was more than I needed to scare me into coming here. Those guards we fought with the king? There are more of them, a lot more, and from what I’ve heard, they’re still being created, mass produced.”
The barmaid, long red braid swinging behind her back, brought a beer mug over and handed it to Slate, which he accepted with a small wink but no words. After she’d walked away, a blush on her cheeks, he said, “We’ve done our parts – more than our parts, if you ask me. I’m not getting wrapped back up in this mess.”
Fallen Victors Page 26