The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  “We will save her, Lenk,” Mocca said. “Her and so many others. I have the power to help them, to prevent so much bloodshed. But I cannot do it without you.”

  “Me?”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “Sort of. I mean, didn’t they call you a god-king once?”

  “Gods are nothing without faith,” Mocca said, shaking his head. “And I am nothing if you do not believe in me.” He fixed his eyes intently on Lenk’s. “Do you?”

  Dark eyes. A gentle smile. A neatly trimmed goatee and perfectly manicured fingernails.

  Funny, Lenk thought. Look at him in the right light, he looks just like a man.

  And in the golden rising dawn, Lenk could almost believe it. He could almost forget that there had just been a beard of vipers a moment ago where flesh was now. He could almost pretend he hadn’t seen this man crawl out of a pit so dark that light feared to tread there.

  Almost.

  But this was not a man. And this was not Mocca. This was Khoth-Kapira, the God-King, cast down from heaven to earth and from earth to hell for sins ancient and countless. This was a demon. Foe of man. Enemy of the Gods.

  And yet…

  Man was intent on killing himself and everything around him. And the gods did not answer their prayers.

  And when gods were silent, demons spoke.

  Lenk placed a hand on Mocca’s. He felt flesh. Warm and alive.

  “I do,” Lenk said.

  Mocca smiled, nodded. “Then let me show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  Mocca released him, turned back to the crowd. “How I will fix this.” He leveled a finger at the crowd. “You. Child. Step forward.”

  Somehow, they knew to whom he spoke. The crowd of abominations shuffled aside with a murmur, revealing a misshapen creature. No more horrifying than the others, Lenk thought; this one had thin, spindly legs, a long flaccid arm that dragged behind it, a mouth rimmed with fangs, and a single unblinking eye focused on Mocca as it shuffled forward.

  A man? A woman? Lenk couldn’t tell. Not even when it approached the dais and sank to its knees before Mocca.

  Mocca sighed, laid a hand upon the molten scars of its brows. He stroked its head, pity playing upon his features. The creature leaned into his touch, a pet deprived of attention.

  “You poor soul,” Mocca whispered. He shut his eyes, breathed deeply. “I see them. Your family. I feel your hatred.” He shook his head. “But you mustn’t hate them, child. Their cruelty was driven by their fear. The same fear that drove you to the embrace of my Disciples.” He ran his fingers down to the creature’s gaping jaws. “Alas, they are but pupils. Their methods are… inelegant.”

  The abomination loosed a sound halfway between a groan and a whimper. A formless plea lurked between them, the piteous cry of a terrified animal. Mocca simply smiled and took its face in both his hands.

  “In such a short life, you have felt so much pain. I can ease it.” Mocca tilted his face toward the sky. “If only you accept… just a little more.”

  A single breath. His eyes snapped open. And the light of the dawn paled before the golden light that burst from Mocca’s stares.

  That same light poured out of his fingertips and into the creature. It let out a squeal, struggled to escape Mocca’s grasp. But his fingers sank deeper into its flesh, white smoke sizzling off his knuckles as the golden light seeped out of his digits and into the creature’s flesh. A dark voice from a deep pit tore free from Mocca’s mouth.

  “A little more,” he said. “Witness my miracle.”

  The creature’s shriek was lost, as was its form, bathed in a light so bright that Lenk had to shield his eyes from it. And when that was insufficient, he shut them tight and looked away, trying to ignore the terrified wails of the crowd.

  Only when they stopped did he dare to open his eyes. The light was gone. The screams had quieted. And in their wake, Lenk’s curse seemed woefully insufficient for what he saw.

  “Gods…” he whispered.

  “No,” Mocca said. “Me.”

  The creature was gone. No, not gone. Changed. It no longer stooped, but stood tall and proud. Its molten flesh had tightened across the broad muscle of a body, hale and whole. Its flesh was dark and warm, its hair was black and lustrous, its face was square and handsome and terribly human.

  It was…

  He was a man.

  No, more than a man.

  Lenk saw it in the length of his fingers, the strength of his naked body, the height and the hair and the bright yellow eyes. His face was angular and beautiful, too much for any normal human. This was… he was something else. Something more. Something powerful.

  He looked down at himself, at his long fingers and his thick legs and his nakedness. His face brightened with a childish disbelief as he took himself in. And when he finally found breath to do so, he screamed. Not the terrified, agonized scream of the damned, but the joyous, bright wail of the living.

  “Master!” he screamed, falling to his knees before Mocca and coiling around his feet. “Master, you have saved me!”

  “I have, child,” Mocca said, nodding. “And I have so much more work to do.” He stepped over the man, toward the crowd, and extended his arms. “And who among you shall also witness?”

  They let out a feral, animalistic screech. In one surge of glistening flesh, they rushed forward: monstrous limbs outstretched and mouths gaping in wails.

  And once more, Lenk had to cover his ears. But it did no good.

  “—master, save me! Save me! I have been faithful! You promised—”

  They screamed.

  “—it hurts so much, master! Make it stop! Make it stop, please, I beg—”

  They wailed.

  “—let it end! LET IT END! OH, MASTER, I WANT SO BADLY—”

  Their every word was wracked with such agony that it was poison that seeped into Lenk’s skin. He could stand it no longer. He turned, fought his way through the throng of monstrosities, who ignored him in their rush to approach the dais.

  And when he was finally clear of them, he turned and cast one final look to the center of the square.

  And there he saw Mocca, his arms outstretched, his beard of vipers writhing, a hundred misshapen hands reaching out toward him.

  And a look of ecstasy scarred across his face.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  THE MORTAL TALLY

  look out for

  A CROWN FOR COLD SILVER

  Book One of the Crimson Empire

  by Alex Marshall

  “It was all going so nicely, right up until the massacre.”

  Twenty years ago, feared general Cobalt Zosia led her five villainous captains and mercenary army into battle, wrestling monsters and toppling an empire. When there were no more titles to win and no more worlds to conquer, she retired and gave up her legend to history.

  Now the peace she carved for herself has been shattered by the unprovoked slaughter of her village. Seeking bloody vengeance, Zosia heads for battle once more, but to find justice she must confront grudge-bearing enemies, once-loyal allies, and an unknown army that marches under a familiar banner.

  FIVE VILLAINS. ONE LEGENDARY GENERAL. A FINAL QUEST FOR VENGEANCE.

  CHAPTER 1

  It was all going so nicely, right up until the massacre.

  Sir Hjortt’s cavalry of two hundred spears fanned out through the small village, taking up positions between half-timbered houses in the uneven lanes that only the most charitable of surveyors would refer to as “roads.” The warhorses slowed and then stopped in a decent approximation of unison, their riders sitting as stiff and straight in their saddles as the lances they braced against their stirrups. It was an unseasonably warm afternoon in the autumn, and after their long approach up the steep valley, soldier and steed alike dripped sweat, yet not a one of them removed their brass skullcap. Weapons, armor, and tack glowing in the fierce alpine sunlight, the faded crimson of their cloaks coveri
ng up the inevitable stains, the cavalry appeared to have ridden straight out of a tale, or galloped down off one of the tapestries in the mayor’s house.

  So they must have seemed to the villagers who peeked through their shutters, anyway. To their colonel, Sir Hjortt, they looked like hired killers on horseback barely possessed of sense to do as they were told most of the time. Had the knight been able to train wardogs to ride he should have preferred them to the Fifteenth Cavalry, given the amount of faith he placed in this lot. Not much, in other words, not very much at all.

  He didn’t care for dogs, either, but a dog you could trust, even if it was only to lick his balls.

  The hamlet sprawled across the last stretch of grassy meadow before the collision of two steep, bald-peaked mountains. Murky forest edged in on all sides, like a snare the wilderness had set for the unwary traveler. A typical mountain town here in the Kutumban range, then, with only a low reinforced stone wall to keep out the wolves and what piddling avalanches the encircling slopes must bowl down at the settlement when the snows melted.

  Sir Hjortt had led his troops straight through the open gate in the wall and up the main track to the largest house in the village… which wasn’t saying a whole lot for the building. Fenced in by shedding rosebushes and standing a scant two and a half stories tall, its windowless redbrick face was broken into a grid by the black timbers that supported it. The mossy thatched roof rose up into a witch’s hat, and set squarely in the center like a mouth were a great pair of doors tall and wide enough for two riders to pass through abreast without removing their helmets. As he reached the break in the hedge at the front of the house, Sir Hjortt saw that one of these oaken doors was ajar, but just as he noticed this detail the door eased shut.

  Sir Hjortt smiled to himself, and, reining his horse in front of the rosebushes, called out in his deepest baritone, “I am Sir Efrain Hjortt of Azgaroth, Fifteenth Colonel of the Crimson Empire, come to counsel with the mayor’s wife. I have met your lord mayor upon the road, and while he reposes at my camp—”

  Someone behind him snickered at that, but when Sir Hjortt turned in his saddle he could not locate which of his troops was the culprit. It might have even come from one of his two personal Chainite guards, who had stopped their horses at the border of the thorny hedge. He gave both his guards and the riders nearest them the sort of withering scowl his father was overly fond of doling out. This was no laughing matter, as should have been perfectly obvious from the way Sir Hjortt had dealt with the hillbilly mayor of this shitburg.

  “Ahem.” Sir Hjortt turned back to the building and tried again. “Whilst your lord mayor reposes at my camp, I bring tidings of great import. I must speak with the mayor’s wife at once.”

  Anything? Nothing. The whole town was silently, fearfully watching him from hiding, he could feel it in his aching thighs, but not a one braved the daylight either to confront or assist him. Peasants—what a sorry lot they were.

  “I say again!” Sir Hjortt called, goading his stallion into the mayor’s yard and advancing on the double doors. “As a colonel of the Crimson Empire and a knight of Azgaroth, I shall be welcomed by the family of your mayor, or—”

  Both sets of doors burst open, and a wave of hulking, shaggy beasts flooded out into the sunlight—they were on top of the Azgarothian before he could wheel away or draw his sword. He heard muted bells, obviously to signal that the ambush was under way, and the hungry grunting of the pack, and—

  The cattle milled about him, snuffling his horse with their broad, slimy noses, but now that they had escaped the confines of the building they betrayed no intention toward further excitement.

  “Very sorry, sir,” came a hillfolk-accented voice from somewhere nearby, and then a small, pale hand appeared amid the cattle, rising from between the bovine waves like the last, desperate attempt of a drowning man to catch a piece of driftwood. Then the hand seized a black coat and a blond boy of perhaps ten or twelve vaulted himself nimbly into sight, landing on the wide back of a mountain cow and twisting the creature around to face Sir Hjortt as effortlessly as the Azgarothian controlled his warhorse. Despite this manifest skill and agility at play before him, the knight remained unimpressed.

  “The mayor’s wife,” said Sir Hjortt. “I am to meet with her. Now. Is she in?”

  “I expect so,” said the boy, glancing over his shoulder—checking the position of the sun against the lee of the mountains towering over the village, no doubt. “Sorry again ’bout my cows. They’re feisty, sir; had to bring ’em down early on account of a horned wolf being seen a few vales over. And I, uh, didn’t have the barn door locked as I should have.”

  “Spying on us, eh?” said Sir Hjortt. The boy grinned. “Perhaps I’ll let it slide this once, if you go and fetch your mistress from inside.”

  “Mayoress is probably up in her house, sir, but I’m not allowed ’round there anymore, on account of my wretched behavior,” said the boy with obvious pride.

  “This isn’t her home?” Hjortt eyed the building warily.

  “No, sir. This is the barn.”

  Another chuckle from one of his faithless troops, but Sir Hjortt didn’t give whoever it was the satisfaction of turning in his saddle a second time. He’d find the culprit after the day’s business was done, and then they’d see what came of having a laugh at their commander’s expense. Like the rest of the Fifteenth Regiment, the cavalry apparently thought their new colonel was green because he wasn’t yet twenty, but he would soon show them that being young and being green weren’t the same thing at all.

  Now that their cowherd champion had engaged the invaders, gaily painted doors began to open and the braver citizenry slunk out onto their stoops, clearly awestruck at the Imperial soldiers in their midst. Sir Hjortt grunted in satisfaction—it had been so quiet in the hamlet that he had begun to wonder if the villagers had somehow been tipped off to his approach and scampered away into the mountains.

  “Where’s the mayor’s house, then?” he said, reins squeaking in his gauntlets as he glared at the boy.

  “See the trail there?” said the boy, pointing to the east. Following the lad’s finger down a lane beside a longhouse, Sir Hjortt saw a small gate set in the village wall, and beyond that a faint trail leading up the grassy foot of the steepest peak in the valley.

  “My glass, Portolés,” said Sir Hjortt, and his bodyguard walked her horse over beside his. Sir Hjortt knew that if he carried the priceless item in his own saddlebag one of his thuggish soldiers would likely find a way of stealing it, but not a one of them would dare try that shit with the burly war nun. She handed it over and Sir Hjortt withdrew the heavy brass hawkglass from its sheath; it was the only gift his father had ever given him that wasn’t a weapon of some sort, and he relished any excuse to use it. Finding the magnified trail through the instrument, he tracked it up the meadow to where the path entered the surrounding forest. A copse of yellowing aspen interrupted the pines and fir, and, scanning the hawkglass upward, he saw that this vein of gold continued up the otherwise evergreen-covered mountain.

  “See it?” the cowherd said. “They live back up in there. Not far.”

  Sir Hjortt gained a false summit and leaned against one of the trees. The thin trunk bowed under his weight, its copper leaves hissing at his touch, its white bark leaving dust on his cape. The series of switchbacks carved into the increasingly sheer mountainside had become too treacherous for the horses, and so Sir Hjortt and his two guards, Brother Iqbal and Sister Portolés, had proceeded up the scarps of exposed granite on foot. The possibility of a trap had not left the knight, but nothing more hostile than a hummingbird had showed itself on the hike, and now that his eyes had adjusted to the strangely diffuse light of this latest grove, he saw a modest, freshly whitewashed house perched on the lip of the next rock shelf.

  Several hundred feet above them. Brother Iqbal laughed and Sister Portolés cursed, yet her outburst carried more humor in it than his. Through the trees they went, and then made the f
inal ascent.

  “Why…” puffed Iqbal, the repurposed grain satchel slung over one meaty shoulder retarding his already sluggish pace, “in all the… devils of Emeritus… would a mayor… live… so far… from his town?”

  “I can think of a reason or three,” said Portolés, setting the head of her weighty maul in the path and resting against its long shaft. “Take a look behind us.”

  Sir Hjortt paused, amenable to a break himself—even with only his comparatively light riding armor on, it was a real asshole of a hike. Turning, he let out an appreciative whistle. They had climbed quickly, and spread out below them was the painting-perfect hamlet nestled at the base of the mountains. Beyond the thin line of its walls, the lush valley fell away into the distance, a meandering brook dividing east ridge from west. Sir Hjortt was hardly a single-minded, bloodthirsty brute, and he could certainly appreciate the allure of living high above one’s vassals, surrounded by the breathtaking beauty of creation. Perhaps when this unfortunate errand was over he would convert the mayor’s house into a hunting lodge, wiling away his summers with sport and relaxation in the clean highland air.

  “Best vantage in the valley,” said Portolés. “Gives the headperson plenty of time to decide how to greet any guests.”

  “Do you think she’s put on a kettle for us?” said Iqbal hopefully. “I could do with a spot of hunter’s tea.”

  “About this mission, Colonel…” Portolés was looking at Sir Hjortt but not meeting his eyes. She’d been poorly covering up her discomfort with phony bravado ever since he’d informed her what needed to be done here, and the knight could well imagine what would come next. “I wonder if the order—”

  “And I wonder if your church superiors gave me the use of you two anathemas so that you might hem and haw and question me at every pass, instead of respecting my command as an Imperial colonel,” said Sir Hjortt, which brought bruise-hued blushes to the big woman’s cheeks. “Azgaroth has been a proud and faithful servant of the Kings and Queens of Samoth for near on a century, whereas your popes seem to revolt every other feast day, so remind me again, what use have I for your counsel?”