“If I doubted you, I would not be here.” Harper did not flinch from his gaze. “She is your wife, and they are your children, but I’ve loved them too. They’re as much my family as you are, Brogan.”
“Why do they take them, Harper?”
“Why does the wind blow? The gods make demands and those who follow them obey those demands.”
Really there was no more to say and so they rode on as quickly as they safely could.
The land they finally reached was bleak, a dismal collection of black rock and broken shale that fell toward a dim, gray shoreline of more shale and dark sands. The ocean beyond it was equally uninviting and violent besides. The waves at high tide slammed themselves furiously against the shoreline and dashed into the blades of rock with murderous force. The vibrations from the impacts could be felt through the leather of his boot heels.
According to Harper more than one fool had attempted to attack by that route but none had succeeded. Few had ever approached the nameless keep of the Grakhul and come back. Those that did were never the same. Strong men were broken by what they saw and their flesh sometimes withered where they had strayed too far from the proper path.
Harper pointed out the Gateway to them. The place that the Grakhul claimed led to the home of the gods.
At a distance the monolithic Gateway rose from the night time waters, a massive bridge of dark stone that sometimes was merely an arch and other times revealed the land beneath it. They had heard of the Gateway before, but only one of them had ever seen it. Few saw the Gateway and fewer still saw the keep. These were forbidden things, as ordered by the royal families of the Five Kingdoms. Those rare few given permission to visit were allowed only because the Grakhul deemed them worthy. Harper was one of the fortunate souls trained to find his way through what seemed like an unremarkable terrain.
None of them looked at the Gateway for long. There was something about that odd stone bridge over the waters that hurt the eyes and made the mind ache.
After a scan of the area Brogan McTyre pushed aside the idea of attacking from the shore below. There were other ways that might prove slightly less dangerous.
“Well, now we know why no one ever attacks this place.” Laram scowled as he spoke.
The keep was built into the side of the dark stone cliff. Somewhere in the distant past madmen had decided to risk life and limb and carve the damnable place into existence. The very structure gave off a feeling of extreme age, even if one didn’t take the time to notice where the winds had smoothed a few of the edges.
Brogan looked toward Laram and nodded. He felt exactly the same way. The difference was that he was the one leading the assault and couldn’t actually voice that opinion.
He shook his head and spat into the cold sea air. If he thought too much about the dangerous air of the place, if he let himself worry, he’d lose his anger. He needed that right now to keep him warm and to keep him brave.
Unconsciously he let his fingers roam into the pouch secured on the inside of his broad leather belt, where the four coins rested. He did not need to see them. He’d memorized every detail of their surfaces. They’d been pressed between his belt and the fabric of his kilt for days, but when his fingers touched the heavy gold coins they still felt cold. He understood cold as he never had before.
“Enough. The sun’s up in a few hours.” He squinted into the wind and looked toward the east. “Though around here it might be hard to tell. Let’s find a way in. We’ve bloody work to do.”
A few voices muttered agreement but most were silent. They were here because they owed Brogan a debt or because they had experienced similar pains. Brogan couldn’t hope to offer enough to offend the gods. Where others had allowed the old ways to continue, Brogan intended to get his family back or make sure it never happened again.
Harper spoke up, dark hair flipping lazily around his lean face, dark eyes staring intently at Brogan. “You are sure you want to do this? It breaks all of the laws.”
Brogan knew the man was trying to be the voice of reason, but anger and reason have never been close associates. “I did not ask you here to stop me, Harper, and you know that.”
His thin mouth broke into a crooked grin that made the man look younger by years. “I never said I would stop you, Brogan. Only that I would aid you in any way I can. Sometimes that means saying the things you do not want to hear.”
Brogan put a heavy hand on his friend’s shoulder and nodded. “I thank you for that, but I mean to have my family today. Will you join me?”
Harper licked his lips. “I have never been one to turn away from blood. No reason to start now.” The leaner man looked toward the shore and the odd, rough stone that marked the top of the Grakhul keep. “There is a pathway. It’s right at the edge and it is steep. If you are afraid of heights, you might wish to turn back.” Almost as an afterthought he added, “The horses will have to stay behind. They’d never manage to keep their footing.”
“How do the Grakhul manage it?”
Harper looked at him for a long moment and barely even seemed to breathe. The man was seldom bothered by much. “They aren’t human, Brogan. Make no mistake of it. They are not like us, no matter how much they might look the part.”
Brogan spat again. “No turning back. Let’s go.”
Harper, the only one of them who knew the ways to enter the keep without dying for the effort, led the way with that same half-smile on his face.
Harper sighed. “No turning back, indeed, Brogan. No turning back now. Not ever again.”
Brogan had heard the warnings before. They had all been raised on admonitions about what it meant to defy the Grakhul. Those had always been enough in the past.
Everything changed when it happened to your loved ones. He understood that now. There would be no forgiveness for whatever happened. For that reason alone he owed a debt of blood to each of the men with him.
They were mostly mercenaries. They’d fought at one time or another for each of the kingdoms. The thing about being sought for crimes was first people had to know you had committed them. None of them were foolish enough to admit to the crimes. Well, except possibly Harper, but he could only hope the man kept his tongue.
“Harper?”
“Yes?”
Brogan looked to his friend and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what I’ll do if we’re too late.”
“I’d say we should pray, but that might not go the right way. I mean who would we pray to?”
He could always trust Harper to find the most challenging part of a quandary. Who indeed?
The others would not talk. Like him they were here for personal reasons. Blood sometimes calls for blood.
Harper was right. Madmen had surely designed the slope down into the keep. The stone was slicked with algae and nearly too smooth to allow a man to walk. Instead they clutched at the wall of the winding, twisting path, and half-walked, half-slid toward the plateau below.
Brogan, a man bent on either salvation or revenge, could feel his heart hammering in his chest. After ten minutes of doing their best to keep their footing, Harper and the men he was leading made it to the flat land of the keep itself.
The ground here was just as damp, and the green slime that had been under their feet coated the walls of the ancient structure as well, lending it an unsettling level of camouflage.
The winds along the cliff face were rough and those men who had long hair and had not already tied it back began the task almost immediately. The sole exception was Harper, who remained as calm as ever.
For one moment Brogan pondered whether the man would betray him, then crushed the thought. They had grown up in the same town and been friends as long as he could recall.
Harper looked his way and drew his chosen weapons. In his right hand he carried a long blade with a hook at the end. In his other hand he gripped a thin sword that was perfectly designed for a man of his leaner stature.
Harper broke the silence. He spoke softly, but did not whispe
r. The wind would have stolen his words away too easily. The men moved closer to hear him. “We move around the first wall here, and we’ll see their sacrificial pits. There are four of them. They are large, but they have no decorations to let you know they are there. Be very careful. You have already felt the surface of the ground here. Those pits, they are where the bodies go.” He didn’t have to say which bodies. They all knew.
The Grakhul had always come and they demanded their sacrifices.
The Grakhul did not ask. They took. They left only the coins. The weight of them pulled at Brogan’s belt.
Harper looked his way and Brogan realized the man was still speaking. “Beyond the pits is the great hall. It’s where the prisoners are kept and where all of the Grakhul feast.” He looked at the ground ahead. Dark and green and damp against a gray sky that showed no sign of a sun. There were clouds out there, a gathering black bank that rose up the gods alone knew how far. The waves raged and threw themselves at the land.
Brogan knew how they felt.
“Lead the way, Harper. Let this be finished.” His words were low, but heard by all.
Harper nodded, and that smirk marred his features as he turned and moved forward, sliding across the ground with a grace that Brogan envied.
Brogan strode across the level deck, with stone on three sides and a severe drop to the sea below on his left, and pushed his boots into the thick slime, balancing himself with each step he took. After only a few paces the slippery surface lost its coating of green and became a surer, safer footing.
Harper moved around the last corner and he followed. Five steps and Brogan saw the first of the pits. They were vast, indeed, and dark: cavernous holes large enough to easily swallow a fully loaded wagon and as perfectly round as anything he had ever seen. The walls were completely smooth and as far as he could tell no lichen or moss touched the stone. He had no idea how far they went down, but the cliffs ran for a few hundred feet before they met the ocean and he could feel a breeze rising from the pit. The breeze smelled of the sea and darker things.
Some moments take forever. There was so much to see, so much to absorb, and Brogan’s mind was a sponge at that moment, thirsty for information.
No more than three heartbeats to take it all in, but only one was needed before Brogan was screaming.
There were four pits. The edges of three of them were coated in a residual wash of crimson that painted the dark stone.
At the pit closest to them a single man dropped a small, bloodied body into the well and looked up at the sound that came from Brogan’s mouth. The shape that fell into the pit was tiny, no larger than a young boy. Brogan recognized Braghe’s face before the figure dropped.
The second pit had already been abandoned, and the man who’d been standing there was walking toward the farthest of the four deep holes.
At the third, a man was looking down into the depths of the well – and turned toward the group as Brogan screamed.
At the fourth of the sacrificial pits seven men still stood. They held a woman by her wrists, by her ankles, to stop her from escaping. She tried, too. She thrashed and struggled and wailed at them.
Tears stained Nora’s face. Through the markings they had painted on her flesh, he could see the tears as they cut at the colors that tried to hide her beauty from him. A hundred strides and more away and he knew Nora’s face, her shape, as well as he knew his own hands. She was his world, his breath, his light.
“No!”
Brogan charged forward, barely looking at anything beyond Nora.
She looked his way, her mouth an open wound showing her pain. Despite it all, his warrior’s brain calculated. There were four pits. Only one was still untouched. The sum was painfully simple. His children were dead. But there was still a chance, wasn’t there? There was the possibility that he could reach Nora in time.
He ran for Nora, and Harper ran beside him and raised his chosen weapons. As a unit the rest charged forward, spreading out in an effort to block any attempts their enemies might make at escape.
The single man standing at the first pit looked their way. He was dressed in a dark tunic and boots. His head was shaved clean and his skin was pale. He stared without any comprehension, an expression so completely shocked by the appearance of strangers that it bordered on comical. His eyes flew wide, his mouth dropped open and his hands raised up to clutch at his chest. And while he goggled in their direction, Harper ran a blade from his clavicle up to his nose, splitting everything between in one stroke.
The dead man fell as Harper pulled the sword free, never missing a step in his stride.
Brogan ran past the corpse and continued on. There would be time to look at bodies when the living had been sorted.
The wind roared and threatened to push him aside. The wind did not matter. There was Nora and nothing else.
As he went, Brogan pulled his axe from its sheath.
Four of the men around Nora came their way, most of them dressed much like the corpse left behind by Harper. Not a one of them was armed and as a whole they looked confused by the idea of anyone attacking them in this place of ritual and sacrifice.
Brogan sneered and raced toward them, his axe hefted up in his thick arms, his eyes locked on the closest of the pale bastards that had taken his family from him. He charged, a roar building in his chest. Four men stood between him and Nora. They would not stand for long.
The axe cut deeply into pale flesh and brought forth a river of crimson. He did not stop as the first of the bodies fell. The second man died where he stood. The next in line flinched back, tried to escape, but never had a chance. The blade cleaved through his chest and only stopped when it reached his backbone. A hard kick wrenched the body away from his weapon and Brogan roared again, the fury consuming him.
And up ahead Nora let out the smallest of sounds as a blade from the man beside her pierced her heart.
There was no thought left in him. Brogan smashed into the next fool between him and his wife and barged him into the pit. Another came too close and suffered the same fate as he reached for Nora.
The man who’d killed her – for even then, much as he wanted to believe otherwise, Brogan knew the truth of the matter – looked his way and tried to speak out a warning. His words were in a language Brogan did not know, but whatever he’d been saying in any tongue would have been wasted breath.
Brogan brought the axe up above his head and cut the man in two.
Whatever the plans, whatever possible ideas the Grakhul had in mind, they were forgotten when Brogan came forward. They fled from him, backing away and chattering in their foolish tongue as he dropped the axe from his grip and barely felt the sway of it on his wrist. Brogan moved to take Nora in his arms.
His wife looked at him. Her dark eyes rolled in their sockets and she looked his way, and whatever she might have wanted to say, whatever she might have been feeling, it faded from her, unuttered, as her ruined heart stopped beating.
There were only a dozen or so men. They never stood a chance against his gathering. If he had been alone Brogan would have died and never even noticed. He was lost staring at the remains of his beloved for a time. Who could say how long? Surely not Brogan himself.
He rose slowly, Nora in his arms, his axe swaying against his wrist, held in place by the heavy leather strap. It tapped against him several times but if it cut he did not notice.
Harper looked his way with haunted eyes and shook his head in sorrow.
“I am so very sorry, Brogan.”
Brogan had no words.
Around him his men stood guard and looked on. Not far away the ocean roared and the wind howled and Brogan understood all too well their fury.
For a moment he considered the possibility of taking Nora’s body home with him and giving her a proper burial.
Instead, he kissed her sweet face one last time and let her fall into the deep pit. A mother, he knew, would want to be with her children. “Let this be your last sacrifice.”
&
nbsp; Harper put a hand on his shoulder with great care. “Brogan, there are more of them. There is a city’s worth of people here.”
As he spoke, their enemies made themselves known. They came running from the great hall Harper had spoken of, most of them dressed much like the corpses around them. None were armed. None had even contemplated being attacked in this place.
The axe found its way back to his hands. It felt weightless as Brogan contemplated his enemies.
The closest of them bellowed in his gibberish language and Harper held out a hand, stopping Brogan for a moment.
He called to the strangers and they quickly exchanged words. Harper turned to his friend. “Truly I am sorry, Brogan. All of your family…”
“I know this.” Four pits and now all four were painted with blood.
“They say the gods demand fresh sacrifices or they will tear this world apart.”
Brogan’s voice was hoarse with tension. “Let them.”
The time for considerations and discussions was done. Brogan charged toward the speaker and cut into his stomach with one hard swing. Before him, the gathered men of the Grakhul stared, horrified, and did little or nothing to defend themselves.
Around him, behind him, he heard more battle cries. They owed him debts and so they came. They had lost to the Grakhul and so they shared their rage. They all had their reasons for breaking the laws and not one of them felt any regret.
The battle was brutal and fast; a reaping of bloodied wheat that fell to the stone floors without much protest and few attempts at defense.
When it was done, all of them were winded – murder is exhausting work – and Brogan looked at the corpses and frowned. It made no sense. These were not, could not be, the Grakhul he had heard so much about.
Laram said it for him. “These are the brutes who demand sacrifices?”
Harper shook his head. “No. They must be out and seeking their next sacrifices.” He frowned. “The women, the children, they are hiding somewhere below. What do you want to do about that, Brogan?”
Brogan looked at the corpses. For as long as anyone knew, the Grakhul had come and taken and left their coins. For as long as he could remember it had not mattered. Now, however, his family, his entire family…
The Last Sacrifice Page 2