Death Flag

by Richard Haygood

  “I’ll take over from here,” Warren said to Erin as soon as he was close. “You don’t have to worry about making the trip, Erin.”

  Madison heard what sounded like a loud stamping noise. Did she just stomp her foot? He turned to see her fuming at Warren, her fists clenched into tiny balls. She did! Holy crap. She actually did it.

  “Don’t be mad at me, Erin!” Warren cried defensively. “I was only trying to save you from making the trip!”

  She stamped her foot again, causing Warren to sigh. “Alright. Well, I’ll keep you company, then, since I’m heading back there anyway. I’m sure Davion told you to escort him to the men’s dorms, but I’m pretty sure we need to get him by the cafeteria before they stop serving food.”

  “Food?” Madison asked, his interest suddenly piqued. That was about the best damn idea he had heard since this whole mess started. “Actually, when was the last time I even ate? That was . . . seven, eight days ago? How is that even possible?” Madison was bewildered by the concept. He usually couldn’t go half a day back home without munching down on something, yet he had been in this world for over a week by his best guess with little else other than some hard bread to eat, and he wasn’t even hungry.

  “That’s another one of the side effects of the healing you received,” Warren advised as they began making their way in a new direction, presumably toward some type of cafeteria. Erin seemed apprehensive at first but fell into step rather quickly so that she wouldn’t have to run to catch up. “One of the side effects of the magic is that it can really mess with your sense of appetite, and it can be really disorienting if you aren’t careful. It affects everyone differently each time, however. Sometimes you’re ravenous when you wake up, you feel like you could eat all day without stopping—and you probably could if you let yourself—and others you feel like you could go forever without so much as a grain of rice. No matter what you feel, however, you have to remember to eat normally. Your body might be confused, but it still needs fuel just the same as always. Eating too much like that can be just as dangerous as eating too little.”

  Madison nodded. He absorbed the information as it was told to him, but he had already written it off as soon as he heard ‘side effect of magic.’ “More magic mumbo-jumbo,” he sighed, and then jumped when Erin slapped him on the shoulder from behind. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt, and it actually stung a bit.

  Warren laughed at him, seemingly unconcerned. “She is rather particular about magic,” he explained. “She’s a real stickler for the rules. That’s likely why she was so upset with you earlier—and me as well. Davion explicitly ordered her to take you somewhere, and odds are you weren’t complying fast enough for her taste. And then, well, I came along and tried to interfere. There’s really only black and white with her,” he said, stealing a glance behind them at the girl while they walked. “She’s been here almost her entire life, so this is the only life she knows.”

  “Wait, how old are you?” Madison asked, turning to the young girl behind him.

  She stopped dead in her tracks and gasped, staring at him like he was a ghost.

  “Uh . . . No. No no!” Warren jumped between them and held up his hands apologetically. “He didn’t mean that! He doesn’t know.”

  “Don’t know that I shouldn’t ask a woman her age?” Madison asked, as confused as ever. “I’ve heard it was rude before, but doesn’t that only apply to women who are actually old enough to be embarrassed by it?” She can’t be over—”

  “Enough,” Warren interjected, giving him a stern look that meant he really needed to shut up. “It’s his first real day, Erin. He doesn’t understand.”

  Madison looked back and forth between the two as if they were speaking Egyptian. The poor girl looked like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be mortified or angry again, and Warren seemed to be determined to apologize on Madison’s behalf for some transgression he didn’t even understand he had committed. “Can someone just take a minute to actually explain something?” he asked, his sense of annoyance growing by the second.

  Warren held his gaze on Erin for a moment as if he was making sure that she wasn’t going to explode or fall apart before turning back to him. “I . . . really . . .” He struggled with the words for a moment, unable to find exactly what he wanted to say. “What did Davion tell you? How much?”

  “Not a lot,” Madison responded tonelessly. “Are you going to dodge this question like everyone seems to dodge every other question I have? Or can I finally get a straight answer out of someone?”

  Warren sighed heavily as he studied Madison’s face. Finally, after several long breaths, he looked down at his feet before continuing. “I was hoping he would have told you. It makes things easier when we don’t have to explain it. Madison . . . There are certain things around here that don’t work exactly the way they do everywhere else . . . They—”

  “No more of this ambiguous crap, please. Spare me if that’s all it’s going to be.” He turned to leave, but Warren reached out and grabbed his shoulder.

  “No, you need to hear this,” Warren said solemnly. “K’yer Utane is magic, Madison. This whole compound was created by magic, and it’s held together by magic. Powerful magic, in fact. More powerful than what anyone left alive can cast. That’s what protects us from the outside world and from prying eyes. It makes it so that no one can enter unless they are led here by someone who already knows it exists. That’s why you’d never have survived if I hadn’t found you. You can literally wander around lost in those mountains your entire life—however long that may be—and never be more than a stone’s throw from this valley, but you would never know it. You’d never find your way here because the magic wouldn’t let you.”

  Madison stared at him for a moment, his emotions wavering between anger and confusion. “Okay, so what does that have to do with—”

  Warren held up a hand, silencing him. When he continued speaking, his voice was low and a bit shaky. “Things don’t work the same way here that they do everywhere else. There’s a price to be paid for that type of magic, and we’re the ones who pay it. Time here doesn’t pass the say way it does in the rest of the world.” He paused, waiting for Madison to work it out in his brain.

  “That’s why . . .” Realization began to creep into Madison’s brain. He started putting things together, and it started adding up. “That’s why we were gone for two days?” he asked. “During the ritual . . . the test or whatever it was. We were actually gone?”

  “In a sense, yes,” Warren answered, lowering his eyes and nodding his head.

  Madison looked over at Erin to see that whatever anger she might have felt before was completely gone. The plain-looking girl had suddenly found the most interesting thing in the world to study, and it was on the dirty stones at her feet. “Wait . . .” A second thought hit him as he looked at her reaction. Don’t ask about her age. How old is she? How old is she really? How old are you? He turned his curious gaze back to Warren, and the other man understood that he had put it together at last.

  “Erin,” Warren said softly, “run to the kitchens and bring back whatever they have left. If there’s nothing there, find Burris and tell him that it’s for me. If they give you any trouble, use this.” He took a small ring from his finger and pressed it into Erin’s hands. Her eyes grew slightly wider at the sight, and Madison noticed for the first time that there was a red rim around them. “We’re going down by the bridge. It should be safe to talk there without disturbing anyone else, so come find us when you get the things.”

  She stared at the ring in her hand but didn’t move a muscle.

  “Go on,” Madison said reassuringly. He was still agitated, but for different reasons now than he had been. Someone had finally given him an answer. And knowing the truth pissed him off even more than if he hadn’t. If there was anything that nagged at him, it was seeing a woman cry. He couldn’t stand it. “I won’t go anywhere until you get back,” he promised.

  Erin studied him for a
moment and then took off, her gold and yellow robes bouncing along with every stride she took.

  “I thought those would have slowed her down more . . .” he remarked under his breath.

  “This way,” Warren said and began leading him down a third and different path.

  They traipsed across the grassy lawn in silence, giving Madison a moment to take things in again. His mind was locked on everything that was going on, but he just couldn’t press for any more answers at the moment. He knew that wherever Warren was taking him was likely so that they could talk privately, and he also understood that it was taking a good bit of effort on the other man’s part as well. He had seen how the simple question affected both of them, and he didn’t want to press for more just yet—not until they were ready to answer.

  Once they left the quad, they passed around one of the towers and then turned west into the sun. He initially thought that they were heading for the wall, but then they turned on a small sloped hillside and began passing through a small grove of trees that was completely unlike anything he had ever seen before. They had clearly been planted with a design in mind, and it was obvious that they were carefully cared for. The area around each had been cleared of anything but short grass, and their limbs were all perfectly trimmed, giving them uniform, round shapes. Though they varied in height, their leaves were what stood out: they were short, round, and were colored with hues of either pink or blue—though the colors were never mixed—and they had bark that was off-white, which only made the leaves’ strange colors stand out even more.

  They trod down the hillside and stopped at the bottom. There was a small stream running there, likely the one he had seen on the way in, and a wooden bridge spanning it. The peculiar trees seemed to thrive here, growing closely together and right up to the edge of the water in most places. Though it was only a relatively-small stream, it seemed to run rather deep in this particular spot, which was probably the reason for the bridge to begin with. It was a quiet, secluded spot. Madison’s first thought, in fact, went to how romantic it would be for a date night. Bringing a girl to a place like this had to be the golden ticket to getting laid if there ever was one.

  Warren sat down on a large rock, and Madison did the same, positioning himself so that he could watch the water. He had a feeling that he was going to need something relaxing by the time this was over. The pair remained silent for quite a while, both simply watching the stream. Finally, however, Warren broke the silence.

  “I’m sure that Davion gave you the usual speech, right?” Basically, told you that bit about history and all that, and then turned you out with rest of us without really giving you much to go on or telling you what to do?”

  Madison smirked. “It sounds like you’ve heard it before.”

  “I have,” Warren admitted, though it’s been a long time since I’ve heard it firsthand. Alright, well, here goes. Not to be rude, but I’m going to spell everything out as best I can so that I don’t have to go over this again. I don’t think you’re really a simpleton, but . . . ahem . . .

  “Several hundred years ago, the entire continent and most of the known world was ruled by a single family. The Hyndburn Dynasty lasted for a thousand years and more, and for most of its time, it was a peaceful, prosperous, and law-abiding empire. There was trade throughout the land, and even the lowest farmer was able to make a living for himself and his family. Goods from the east coast were brought to the west, and goods from the south were traded to the north. They built roads and canals and infrastructure and advanced technology well beyond the point of where it is even today. Their ships ruled the ocean, exploring the unknown parts of the globe and opening up trade with foreign civilizations across the vast oceans. Everyone was given a fair shot back then. No race was considered the superior of another, and everyone lived harmoniously and got along with everyone else. Or, that’s how the history goes, anyway.

  “Then, for some reason that has been lost to time, things began to turn bad. Some say that it was a fight over power that started at the highest ranks and trickled down to everyone below. Some say that it was greedy merchants who wanted more money and greedy nobles who wanted more land and more power, and some say that it was foreign powers jealous of the empire’s stability and success. But, whatever the reason was, things began to turn bad.

  “Trade within the continent stopped first. Markets at the far reaches of the kingdom that had thrived for generations dried up and closed off all trade outside their own small realms. Eventually, it became impossible to trade further than the closest town. Nobles began dividing up territories and setting up borders, charging people outrages tariffs to come and go or travel through their lands, and then they all turned jealous. One man became jealous of another who was able to make money or live more prosperously, one man became jealous of another who had a prettier wife. They were jealous of the size of their houses, the people serving under them, or the amount and quality of goods another might produce during a season. Then, they began bidding up against one another to see who could make the most money—who could accrue the most power. By the time they were done fighting their petty disputes, things had gotten so bad that no one could afford to travel more than a few miles away from home, and most never did for the entirety of their lives.

  “When the money dried up at home, people began turning their jealousy and their hatred toward everyone else—and not just the nobles in many cases. They saw vast conspiracies in everyone they met, and they believed their neighbors were working against them; and, truthfully, in most cases, they probably were. Alliances were forged and broken in the same night, and blood was spilled all across the country. They suspected everyone who wasn’t their own kin of plotting against them, and even then, they kept an eye on their own close families as well.

  “By the time the remnants of the Hyndburns got their act together and began trying to restore order, it was far too late. The military had troubles and ambitions of its own, and they refused to obey the emperor’s orders. The entire royal family was wiped out during a bloody coup one night, and a certain General Argoyle crowned himself the new emperor. In the matter of a few years, a millennia-old lineage came to an end. A thousand-year-old family was wiped out between dusk and dawn. Do you know how many family members can lay a claim to the throne after more than a thousand years? It was a bloody night . . .

  “But, rather than get better, things just continued to get worse.

  “Without the military to restore order, there was no way to go back to the old ways, and things turned even darker. Small lords began banding together and hiring mercenaries as they waged war against one another. Husbands blamed wives, brothers blamed brothers, and the races blamed each other for all their perceived and actual troubles. Everyone was looking for someone to pin their woes on . . . someone to blame for their misfortune. Things had gotten so bad for the common folk at that point that people signed up by the droves. It didn’t matter to them if they were risking their life or taking that of another. So long as they were given a hot meal every day and a way to provide for their families . . . Well, that was all that mattered to them.

  Then, somehow, the mages got involved. Only the wealthiest of lords could afford to hire them, but their prowess in battle was uncontested. All it took was a handful of ambitious men and a few magicians, and they could wipe out hundreds of average men. The temples provided succor where they could for a while, but even they eventually began to crumble when there was no one left to pay tribute to the old gods they no longer believed in.

  So, well, as you can imagine, the peasantry, the common man, was almost wiped out after years of this constant fighting. Things got real bloody with the magicians taking part in things, and we probably came close to being wiped out entirely as a species. When people eventually realized that the local battles would never end, that they would only continue spilling out over more and more land and against more and more lords, they stopped signing up. That was when the lords began really oppressing them. One group
would conquer a territory, enslave its people, and force them into servitude. Thus, the slave trade began.

  “Are you following everything alright so far?” Warren asked at last.

  “Actually, yes,” Madison admitted. It was far from the most unique history lesson he had ever heard, and it didn’t sound too far off from some of the lessons he had learned of his own world’s history back home. “Things are going good, people get lazy and corrupt, and someone else suffers for it. By the time anyone realizes that things have gone bad, it’s too late to turn back. One large and prosperous nation becomes a thousand tiny and horrible ones.”

  Warren nodded, staring at the stream a few feet in front of him as if it were a million miles away. “That’s the summation of it, yes. Well, when things hit their lowest, when most people were sleeping with their pigs to keep them from being stolen during the night and didn’t have two copper coins to strike together to start a fire, things started to change. Someone got fed up and decided it was time for things to get better. A noble pissed off the wrong person, slept with the wrong man’s wife, butchered the wrong man’s son—who knows what the original sin was. But, here’s what we do know: Someone started fighting back and things started changing for the better. A noble was killed one night, and then another was slain the next. A lord was slain in his bed, a general killed on the shitter, a priest was slain at the altar. It didn’t matter who: if they were corrupt or murderous, they were likely to die an ignoble death.