Joined at the Hilt: Union (Sphereworld: Joined at the Hilt Book 1)

by Caleb Wachter

  Soon thereafter, the Tol was suddenly silenced and Rada dropped his twitching carcass to the ground. Looking around himself as he felt the Rotting God’s power suffuse him, Rada saw that nearly half of his raiding party had gathered to witness the increasingly common spectacle of their Glu punishing a scout for his failure.

  He saw a relatively new member of the tribe standing at the outskirts, and Rada was well aware that he now had need of a new scout. The Glu of the tribe pointed to the man’s fallen corpse while holding the young man’s eyes. “Take up his sash,” he commanded, and the other did so without delay. “You are the new Tol of this host,” he said as he reached up to his chest and withdrew the dagger, which he cast to the ground beside Harren’s dismembered arms. “Serve the Rotting God better than Harren, or I will be even less forgiving.”

  The man stoically wrapped the sash around his waist and Rada knew he had chosen a fine replacement. His new Tol was a northerner, and these northern people were made of iron compared to the soft, sheep-like inhabitants of the south.

  It was for that very reason that the Rotting God had brought them to this place, for his resurrection required worthy sacrifices of hard, tempered flesh. Flesh was much like metal; the harder it was worked the more value it held. The initial raids into these lands had been bountiful, and Rada had thought it to be only a short while before his god walked again.

  But the yields had grown smaller and smaller with each successive village they raided, and he knew that soon he would have no choice to but march on a larger community in force—a proposition which he relished, but knew would as yet be unwise, even with the gifts the Rotting God had bestowed upon them.

  A flash of movement caught his attention on the far side of a nearby fire, and his tribe turned to face the source of the motion. Glu’Rada sneered when he saw the one who approached: he was Kol’Darj and had been a member of Yu’Vana’s scouting party, which had disappeared some weeks earlier without a trace. Yu’Vana was Rada’s third wife, and though her tongue often acted against her, she was a proven warrior and leader of men; the tribe had missed her during this latest absence.

  Kol’Darj approached, carrying a small sack in his hand which he held before himself as he knelt in supplication to Glu’Rada.

  “Where is my wife?” Rada asked, his voice barely above a whisper. He noted with some minor satisfaction that Yu’Londa’s expression turned from a gleeful one to a scowl at his words. Londa was a fine warrior, but an even finer manipulator and it was by use of those skills that she had secured the position of first wife to the Glu of their tribe. Rada knew she required a firm hand to keep from causing widespread discord within the tribe—and thankfully for the tribe, his was such a hand.

  “Mighty Glu,” Darj began, bowing his head in deference, “while raiding villages south of the river we were set upon by a fearsome warrior. He wielded a blade of incredible power…and that was not all…”

  Rada leaned down to pick up Ahsaytsan, the massive, cleaver-shaped weapon whose eye had once again closed. “Speak, Kol,” Rada hissed, “or I’ll take what I want from your corpse.”

  “Yu’Vana battled the warrior,” Darj continued, casting a brief, fearful glance at the grey blade in Rada’s hands, “but she fell before him. He was fast, and even while blinded by smokesand…he was able to destroy her.”

  “What of her blade?” Rada demanded. He would miss Vana’s skills on the field of battle, but their utility had diminished with each successful raid which brought their Rotting God closer to resurrection.

  “The stranger,” Darj replied with a bitter expression, “destroyed her demon blade, mighty Glu.”

  The eye of the grey blade in Rada’s hand snapped open, and the entire tribe took a step backward—all except Darj, who winced but kept to his knees.

  That is impossible, Rada heard a familiar, serpentine voice slither through his mind. The demon blades are unbreakable; they are spawned from my own fragments.

  Rada stepped closer to the Kol, who was the longest tenured scout in the tribe, and towered over the smaller man. “You lie, Kol,” he said with uncaring certainty.

  “I swear by the Rotting God that it is true, Glu’Rada,” Darj assured him as he looked up with cold fury in his eyes.

  Rada disliked the look in the other man’s eyes, and he raised the grey blade to strike him down.

  “The blade was strange; it glittered in the moonlight as though it was made of the stars themselves,” Darj shouted as he awaited the deathblow.

  Stop, the feminine, slithering voice shouted as though she commanded the Glu of the tribe. Rada halted just as he began to bring the weapon down to kill the Kol for his failures. Tell him to repeat that, the sword demanded, and Rada cast a baleful look at the kneeling Kol.

  Only Glu’Rada could hear the voice of the grey blade he held, but that did nothing to diminish his outrage at the sword’s presumption. Drawing a deep, measured breath, Rada lifted Kol’s chin using the tip of the massive, jagged weapon. “Say it again,” he commanded.

  “The blade glittered,” the man repeated, “it seemed as though I saw the stars themselves within it.”

  The shape, the voice of the grey blade urged, tell him to describe the shape of it.

  Grinding his teeth in anger at the sword’s issuing commands to him, the Glu of the Fleshmonger tribe and Chosen of the Rotting God, Rada leaned forward menacingly over the man kneeling before him. “The weapon’s appearance…” he prompted.

  “Of a simple, yet strange design,” Darj explained, “a thick, straight blade less than half a man’s length with a leather-wrapped hilt. It bore no furniture I could see, but had five white gems set into the blade.”

  There was a wordless, hissing sound which pierced the night, and the grey blade’s eye flashed with a dark, red light. The entire tribe stepped backward—including Darj—and Rada brought the weapon before himself.

  I must see, the sword demanded as its eye pulsed in time to a deep, droning sound which was as much felt as it was heard. I must see it!

  “Where is my wife?” Rada demanded, acutely aware that the sword had never behaved in this fashion during the entire time he had possessed it.

  Darj hesitantly produced the bag, which he opened as he held it before himself. Inside was the stinking, rotting head of Yu’Vana. Its return was befitting her station in the tribe, and Rada took the sack in his free hand as the sword’s eye narrowed.

  The dark, malevolent power of the sword channel through his body and Rada felt a surge of pain as his guts twisted unnaturally while his wife’s final moments flashed before his eyes. The images flew by so quickly he was unable to decipher the entire scene, but he was pleased to see that she had secured a handful of the Blooded as sacrifices to the Rotting God before her death.

  Not only that, but after watching the movements of the man wielding the strange, enchanted weapon which Darj had described, Rada knew that despite his outward appearance the man was, himself, a Blooded.

  Yes, Ahsaytsan’s voice pierced his mind, he is of the Blood…and such a pure specimen. If you destroy both he and his weapon, the way is clear for you to become the next Storm Lord!

  “He is a worthy sacrifice,” Rada mused as the memory stream came to a sudden, violent end, “but the Chosen of the Rotting God has little need for trinkets and titles.” Rada tossed the sack unceremoniously to the ground as he considered what he had learned—and how to later punish the sword for its far-too-blatant attempt at manipulating him to serve its purpose.

  However, he knew that the man who had killed Yu’Vana would be worth at least twenty—or perhaps even a hundred—of the Blooded they had captured from the small village which still burned around them, and that such a bounty could not be ignored. The Rotting God’s time drew near, and this man’s sacrifice might prove to be pivotal to the resurrection of the greatest god to ever walk the lands.

  “Show me where to find him,” Rada commanded, gripping the sword’s hilt with both hands as he poured his own willpow
er into the weapon. At first there was resistance, but that was what he had come to expect of the insolent weapon that fancied itself his master.

  There was a sound in his mind very much like a whimper as he felt the sword’s will break beneath his own, and that sound filled Glu’Rada with a great sense of satisfaction as the sword’s lone eye snapped open and fluttered about in seemingly random directions.

  Images flashed through Rada’s mind as the sword’s powers of prophecy slowly, but surely, came under his control as they had many times before. The images were chaotic and incoherent at first, but he did see a great city of stone nestled amongst the hollow mountains.

  He saw a brief battle involving the man—who no longer painted his skin in disguise—followed by a journey on horseback. The journey flew by in a blur, and Rada almost missed the moment he had sought—but he managed to capture it before releasing the grey blade’s mind.

  The sword’s wordless voice cried out in pain at the edges of his mind, but Rada paid it no heed. He now had a destination, and it was a place with which they were already familiar.

  With the image of the long, barren bridge sitting astride the Dry River, Rada hung the grey blade from his belt and gestured to the sack containing Yu’Vana’s head. “She has earned her place at our god’s side,” he rasped, and the fleshworker of the tribe came forward to collect the package. “See to it she has a place of prominence in his new army,” he added as the woman went to leave, and she nodded respectfully before leaving the gathering.

  Turning to the others, he raised his voice and called, “The Rotting God has sent us a vision; we are to return east to the Dry River where a fitting sacrifice awaits us.”

  There was a barely audible growl of anticipation from the assembled tribesmen. Yu’Londa stepped forward and gestured toward the burning village. “What shall we do with our god’s tribute?” she asked, pointing to the two groups of slaves they had taken—the humans, and the Blooded.

  Rada considered the question. He had barely forty tribesman with him on this particular raid, and the bare minimum required to safely return their offerings to the Rotting God’s altar would be over half of them.

  “Kol’Darj,” Rada rasped, and the Kol stepped forward immediately, “select six of your best for this mission. The rest of you,” he said, sweeping his gaze across the tribesmen and women, “carry the tribute to our god.”

  “And the young ones?” Yu’Londa prompted, and Rada saw an all-too familiar gleam in the woman’s eye. It was a gleam he had tried, and failed, to remove using every method available to him—and Rada had not become Glu of the Fleshmongers by being squeamish.

  He heard the children wailing and crying throughout the darkness surrounding the burning homes. Rada knew that they were unsuitable for the Rotting God’s sacrifice, but he had no interest in slaking his first wife’s…appetites. At times such as these it was better to be seen denying her what she wanted, even if granting her desires would appear to cost him nothing. To be Glu of the Rotting God’s tribe was a demanding and precarious position, even for one as strong and clever as Rada.

  He locked gazes with his first wife for a long, silent moment, and she had the good sense to avert her eyes before he felt it necessary to force her submission physically. Knowing she would not bring further harm to the children of the settlement, his lips peeled back revealing teeth which had long since been stained black.

  “Leave them screaming,” he commanded, turning his back on the group and marching off into the darkness. Before he set out for the Dry River, he intended to demonstrate to his rebellious weapon why he was leader of the Fleshmongers—and encourage it to avoid such outbursts in the future—before ‘suggesting’ that she did, in fact, grant him the power of the Storm Lord as she had done for another so many years ago.

  After all, Rada had learned long before in a world far, far away that it was always better to have a weapon with no apparent need, than need one which is not possessed.

  And Rada knew that power was nothing if not a weapon.

  The Following is a Sneak Peak of Exclusive Material available at www.pacificcrestpublishing.com

  Chapter I: A Grey Storm

  The White Knight swung Rimidalv in a broad, sweeping arc which severed a Stormborn warrior’s leg at the thigh, sending the painted warrior crashing to the ground in a heap.

  Rimidalv tore through the man beside the first with the White Knight’s follow-through, burying his edge in the man’s hip and eliciting a scream of agony as he, too, crashed to the ground while the stone hammer in his hands fell to the stones with a thunk.

  Covering at the White Knight’s flank, Dan’Moread flashed through the air in the last rays of the setting sun and the Stormborn standing before her fell as both he and his pitifully-forged weapon were torn asunder by her wrath.

  We are nearly through them, she cried with savage glee as she parried an incoming spear thrust, while another glanced off her wielder’s heavy, iron greaves.

  Do not become overconfident, Rimidalv barked as his wielder pirouetted far more gracefully than Dan’Moread had believed possible given the bulky, white steel armor for which the White Knights were known. Following the graceful spin, Rimidalv tore through the armor of the Stormborn before him, burying himself clear to the parrying hook set tipward from his immaculate, white ricasso. The Storm Lord will not yield the gates to his domain so easily. Conserve your strength, Dan’Moread; it will be needed when we reach the mountain itself.

  Dan’Moread kicked her wielder’s foot forward at the spear-wielder’s knee, and was satisfied when her opponent’s joint locked up and the man screamed in pain. She drove her tip through his throat, silencing his screams in a gurgling fountain of blood. We do not tire so easily, Rimidalv, she quipped confidently. There was nothing like the thrill of battle, and with so many foes arrayed against them this was easily the most fighting she could remember seeing in a day. But perhaps you should see to your own wielder; your movements seem to have slowed.

  As if to punctuate her point, Dan’Moread brought her wielder’s off-hand to her hilt and spun in a wide arc, severing the head of a nearby axe—incidentally removing its wielder’s arm at the elbow—before kneeing that wielder in the midsection with her wielder’s ironclad legs. The Stormborn fell before her fury, and she ended his suffering with a quick, downward stroke to the back of his skull.

  Ending the lives of their enemies was a necessary act, and one which she did not shy away from. But ‘Dan’Moread’ was not only her name—it was also her purpose. ‘Dan’ was from the old Ghaevlian for ‘Blade’ or ‘Sword,’ while ‘Moread’ meant ‘To Sunder’ or ‘Breaker,’ depending on the context. Oddly, ‘Dan’Moread’ was also the phonetic twin of the Yirvukanian for ‘First Daughter,’ for which there was no written term since the Yirvukanians had no use for transcribed documents of any kind, owing to their race’s lack of eyesight.

  So while she would slay their foes without hesitation, her true preference was for destroying their weapons. A weaponless foe was a helpless foe, and she took great pleasure in destroying an enemy’s ability to inflict suffering.

  My wielder knows when to rest, Rimidalv growled as the White Knight gripped Rimidalv’s ricasso just behind his exquisite parrying hook and blocked an incoming flail with his foible. With feet firmly planted, the White Knight pivoted hard, wrenching the flail from its wielders hand as Rimidalv’s pommel was smashed into the heavily-armored Stormborn’s eye socket, dropping him in a quivering, boneless heap as his body came to grips with its own demise. And also when to call upon allies, Rimidalv added pointedly.

  There was a loud, piercing fanfare as a chorus of trumpets and bugles sounded from behind the two warriors. Dan’Moread did not need to look to see the approaching Greystone warriors riding to their aid. Or, to be more precise, they were closing the trap on the band of Stormborn which she and Rimidalv—with the aid of their wielders—had cornered in the blind ravine.

  How are you faring?she asked her wielder as the
Stormborn began to retreat in the face of the charging Greystone warriors. Despite her boasting with Rimidalv, Dan’Moread had become acutely aware that her wielder’s limbs were fatigued to the point it had hindered their movements. The only thing she cared for more than hunting down the followers of the accursed Storm Lord—whose aim seemed to be nothing short of the absolute annihilation of everyone and everything in their world—was the well-being of her wielder.

  “I’m fine, Dan’Moread,” he replied promptly, and though she would have liked to believe him, she knew he was simply trying to be supportive of her desire to continue the fight.

  Conserve your wielder’s strength, Rimidalv advised as he hung back while the score of mounted Greystone warriors—along with a hundred infantryman—cornered the remnants of the Stormborn raiding party and began the gruesome task of putting them down. We will need him fit for battle when we arrive at the mountain.

  Feeling a surge of resentment toward no one in particular, Dan’Moread reluctantly decided that the White Blade was correct. With no immediate threats to their safety in sight, she relinquished control of her wielder’s body and her senses seemed to diminish. She still saw and heard everything her wielder did, but somehow it was all less…vivid.

  You have fought well today, she said appreciatively. Unlike before, she spoke only to her wielder now, while she assumed Rimidalv did likewise with his.

  “I did no such thing,” he quipped as he leaned against a nearby rock on wobbly legs. “This was all your doing,” he gestured to the bodies littered around them.

  Nonsense, she retorted patiently, it was your diligent preparation for today that made this victory possible. The White Blade could not have done this alone, and we could not have aided him as we did without your constant efforts to improve your physical conditioning.