by Jon Kiln
“Hardly, human.” Ikrit read its host’s mind with ease. “Believe you me, there are far fewer places that I would like to willingly tread than these accursed stones—but there you have it. The path ahead was always going to be difficult, and at least we have one small morsel of solace for our journey ahead.”
“Do pray tell me. You have already lost for me my home, any friends I might have had, and I am fairly sure that this venture will kill the body that I have as well.”
“In all of these cursed and evil lands that we are now traveling, I am by far the evilest thing of them all,” the devil laughed a little maniacally, but Vekal wondered if he could detect a tiny amount of reticence to the fiend’s voice. Was it worried about passing through the cursed necropolis of Telset?
“Fire,” said Ikrit in the priest’s ear.
“I beg your pardon?” Vekal wondered what trick this was going to be now. Was the devil once again trying to change the subject away from its own past?
“Fire,” said the voice, and only this time the Sin Eater realized that it was not the devil that was speaking at all—
10
“Fire!” shouted Meghan, as she grabbed Kariss from the rafters, coughing and wheezing and dragged her bodily down the ladder to the floor.
“Hgnh? What?” Vekal opened his eyes to instantly have them burn with pain from the heavy clouds of smoke that were everywhere. Was it the hearth? Had it inadvertently set the hut ablaze? He tried to look, blinking through teary eyes to see that the entire downstairs room of the hut wasn’t harmed at all by fire.
“The flames are on top of the building, you fool!” Ikrit snarled, sending tendrils of energy through the priest’s bones, causing him to leap up and fling the home spun blanket that he had been wrapped in around the child Kariss instead. Smoke was pouring in from above them, between the rafters and seeping like fog down from the thick layers of rushes and thatch.
“Protect Kariss! Don’t let her get harmed,” Meghan was saying near hysterically, reaching for a bucket of water.
“Enough of this nonsense,” the devil inside said. “I didn’t spend half an eternity having my hide roasted just to be burnt alive up here.” Vekal felt rather than heard the devil’s convulsion of annoyance, and then he felt something film over his eyes, and something gag in the back of his throat and nose.
“What are you doing to me?” Vekal clawed at his own throat in pain, much to Meghan’s astonished terror, before the priest realized that he was breathing perfectly clear air, and he could see without blinking.
“A few tricks I learnt in hell. Now. What are you waiting for? You heard what the witch said. Get the child to safety!” The devil was snarling, feeding ever more strength to the priest as he picked Kariss up boldly and kicked open the door, which splintered off of its hinges from his devil-infused strength.
Vekal bounded outside, firelight washing the small clearing into lurid orange and red colors, followed by Meghan an instant later. If it hadn’t have been for Ikrit throwing his legs into a standstill, he would have run straight into the out thrust spear of the first attacker.
“We are attacked!” Ikrit growled. “Drop the girl and give me your arms.”
But Vekal resisted the impulse, as much as he wanted to, stepping back instead from the first man, who paused. A line of about six men of varying sizes, but each dressed in a simple peasant’s garb and bearing weapons, blocked their escape. Vekal recognized one of them as the old fisherman from the day previous, who had ‘saved’ him only it seemed, to come back and finish the job.
“There he is, that’s the one alright,” the fisherman said, waving a fishhook as large as Vekal’s entire head at him. “That foul sorcerer we dragged outta the deep. He put a spell on my boy, he did. Or something did.”
“And that’s the witch and her changeling,” sneered the next bravest man, the one with the spear. “I told you we shoulda drowned them as well as the last one.”
“Meghan?” Vekal said a little nervously. Even with the devil raging inside of him, he wasn’t sure that he could take six armed men without a single weapon of his own. As he set Kariss down on the ground and pushed her behind him, he hissed at the older woman. “Care to explain what the good gentleman means?”
“I used to live in Fisheye. For all of a winter, before the good citizens decided I and my girl were witches,” Meghan said, standing in front of Kariss and hefting her stout staff across her body.
“I knew it! I knew it!” Ikrit was saying delightedly.
“Uh, any chance you know a good spell?” Vekal said.
“Any chance you do, sorcerer?” she hissed back at him.
“Spells are for saps,” Ikrit said. “We don’t need parlor tricks for this.”
Vekal was about to disagree, when the spearman lunged straight ahead in a blow that would have skewered him straight through had it not been for the devil inside of him, giving him speed. The priest dodged to one side, empty left hand sliding along the shaft of the spear and yanking it away from the man, overbalancing him as his right shot forward into a blow that landed straight on the man’s Adam’s apple.
The man choked and staggered back as his windpipe collapsed, and now Vekal had the man’s spear, whirling it around to meet the next attacker, a portly fisherman with raised cudgel who gurgled as he ran belly-first onto the spear tip.
Vekal had to drop the spear as it was now embedded into the falling body of the fisherman, and was turning again as a blow from a broken oar handle hit him squarely across the back of the head. He felt no pain thanks to the devil, but suddenly everything blacked out for a moment, and he re-awoke an instant later to find himself tumbling across the clearing’s grass, feeling oddly numb and muted.
“That’s it!” the first fisherman who had ‘saved’ him was shouting, as a boy with a broken oar hit him again, this time across his back where his old wound had healed awry. This time even the devil’s own magics couldn’t save him from the lance of pain that made his legs jerk like a beached fish.
“Get up, hell’s take you!” Ikrit was snarling.
Vekal cried out, but there was no one to save him as he heard the grunts and thocks of Meghan trading blows with her own attackers. Unless she really was a witch, then it wouldn’t be long until they found their opening.
“Again,” the boy was encouraged to give the priest another sound thwack, this time sending shivers of pain up and down his spine, the pain strong enough to break through all of the devil’s powers, as Vekal blacked out for a moment once more, before his eyes opened to find himself lying on the floor, with the world awash with the flames of the burning hut.
A woman screamed.
“What are you waiting for? Smash his brain’s in,” the oldest fisherman of the group was exhorting Vekal’s attacker, who stood in front of him and was panting with the effort of killing him.
“Steady now, gaffer. Let a guy get his breath back. This one ain’t going anywhere,” Oar-handle said. “It’s the child next, right?”
“Get off her! Don’t you lay your hands on her,” Meghan was screaming, and Vekal could see, through blurry vision, that one of the thugs had her in a headlock, whilst the last free man was just a few feet away from silent, watchful Kariss.
“Get up, priest. Call yourself the good guy? Sacred to the gods?” Ikrit’s voice was snarling and sneering at him, enraged at how easily he had fallen. “Move your body. Now.”
I can’t. Vekal would have sobbed, if he could spare the energy.
“Then give me your useless body. Give it all over to me, and I’ll stop them.” Vekal knew what the devil was suggesting. To give the creature full control over his body, to become just a passenger as the devil currently was to him. But he also knew that he couldn’t. If he did that then he would have no will, no choice, he would be a puppet for the evil spirit inside of him.
Outside of him, a thug reached closer for Kariss, and was joined on one side by Oar-handle.
“Enough of your whining, priest. I tol
d you before that it doesn’t work like that. If I could turn you into a Gibbet, a zombie, a puppet of my will, then I would have a long time ago. I am asking you to meld with me. Become one. Do it now or the child dies.”
It was surprisingly easy for Vekal to give in, as he let go of what little control he had over his own body, and felt the dark force within flood in.
***
Blood. Fire. Screams.
That is what Vekal would remember of what happened, and what he did later. He remembered there suddenly being the blissful absence of pain. He watched himself get up as from afar, like he was somewhere above his own body. It was different now; it moved quickly and strangely like an animal might do. There was no hesitation of movement, no space for thought between desire and action as the devil threw his body onto the nearest: Oar-handle.
“What—” the boy had a chance to say, before Vekal, without weapons, sunk teeth into the back of his neck and ripped out his veins as his fingers blinded him. Oar-handle went down screaming, as the other one turned in horror to see what had happened.
Vekal scratched his cheek, kicked through his knee, fell upon him like a crazed wolf might do, before crushing his chest. That left only two more, the one behind Meghan and the older fisherman from the previous day. By the time that Vekal had stood up, Meghan was sobbing and holding her head where the thug had hit her, who had now decided to swap hostages.
“C’mere!” He reached for Kariss’s terrified form, only to find his outstretched hand bending curiously back the wrong way. Vekal had caught it, bent it until it popped, before picking the much larger man up and throwing him bodily into the house fire. His screams followed Vekal as he ran after the last one—the old fisherman with the hook who had saved him from drowning, and who had brought his brutish friends to kill him.
The fisherman wasn’t the stupidest of his troupe it seemed, as he had decided to flee as soon as he saw Vekal reborn from the ground. The old man ran faster than he had in the last twenty years back through the trees to the path and to the cliffs, but he was still thirty or forty years older than Vekal’s body, even without the devil using it like a hunting wolf.
With a sudden gasp, the fisherman’s aching knees stiffened and he tripped on a root, sprawling onto the forest floor in agony. He started to seize anything, moss, mud, and roots to pull himself up to a crouch, before Vekal-Ikrit was upon him, leaping a clear six foot to bring him down with a crack and a thump.
The man screamed, turning over with hands held high as Vekal-Ikrit raised fingers curled like claws. “Mercy! Please!”
“Mercy? Don’t make me laugh, old man,” Vekal-Ikrit snarled. “What mercy were you about to show me and the others back there?”
“Please,” he begged. “I’ll do anything! You want money? Gold? I got them. You want a boat back to Fisheye? I’ll take you. I swear, I’ll take you back.”
Vekal-Ikrit narrowed his eyes at the man’s pledge. “You would introduce one such as I to your fish-scrape of a town? To do with as I will, in return for saving your miserable life?”
“Yes! Anything! There’s only a few there that’d raise a sword, and we have food, and wine…” the man pleaded.
“You’re worse than a coward, you’re a traitor. You’d hand over your soul to save your body,” Vekal-Ikrit announced. “And I really don’t want a soul like yours.”
The man’s screams were thankfully short, and Vekal did not remember walking back to the burnt out clearing, just as he did not remember picking up each of the six bodies that he had made and throwing them into the house fire. All that the priest did really remember was the hand of a young girl slipping into his bloodied own as Kariss walked him away from the inferno back to her mother, and together they walked out of the forest, and kept on walking until morning found them.
11
“Volley!” Ruyiman roared once more, his face glaring and fierce in the dance of torch light the defenders had mounted on the wall. In answer to his cry, every archer that still had arrows fired down at the mass of people and siege engines below, whilst simultaneously attempting to dodge the whine of the arrows that were coming their way.
“Ladder to the north. Pikes!” the scout yelled, and Suriyen looked over to where another two of the seemingly endless supply of wall ladders were planted in the muddy banks of the near side of the river and pushed up against the wall. It was a quagmire down there, and Suriyen could dimly see people sloshing through the mud and water, Menaali soldiers seeking to be the first up the ladder and to the summit of the impossibly high walls.
How many defenders were over there? Suriyen tried to count the number of pikes and lances that were being used to push away the spears, but it was too dark. Already the scrawny, near-frenzied Menaali were scrambling up, rung after rung and halfway to the top.
A loud sound like a giant kicking at the gates below, and Suriyen could have sworn that she felt the wall beneath tremble just a little. This was immediately followed by the sound of a thousand ringing blows as whatever masons and carpenters they had underneath the metal shields there tried to chip away at the wall.
“Will she hold?” Suriyen was already striding along the battlements, unsheathing her long sword as she did so, calling down to the gate team below.
Another blow, and clatter-clatter-clatter of the demolition teams. It was at some point in the night—Suriyen would have guessed that it was around midnight, or maybe past it by now. Time slowed inside the fog of war. It felt like she was living moment by moment, and breath by breath. The daytime seemed so long ago as to be a different era of her life entirely. Had she really once breathed fresh air that wasn’t tainted with blood and gore? Had she really once had the time to talk to her comrades, or stop and eat?
Now it was just blood and mayhem, and always that maddening, terrifying, constant batter of the Menaali war drums and war horns, screeching and screaming through the day and night.
But despite all of the odds, the defenders had still lost few defenders. They had thick and high walls that they could hide behind, after all. Not that we can spare any lives, she thought, as straight in front of her another defender fell backwards, with an arrow lodged into his eye socket. No time to stop, no time to mourn. Suriyen was unfeeling and unthinking—a machine as she bellowed down to the gate team below.
“Will she hold?”
Those of the team that could spare the time looked up and nodded, as still more brought forth timbers the width of their own bodies, and started bracing them against the cobbled streets and hammering them into place against the gate. The double gate, made of thick double-panes of wood had already technically fractured, with its wood splitting in several spaces and even coming off one side of its hinges. Were it not for the braces and supports holding the wood in place, then it would have collapsed to the floor long ago.
As she watched, she saw two of the posts fall from their position, and the broken doors shudder and shake in their place.
“One!” A guard held up a finger to the wall-captain, which Suriyen thought could have meant one night or one hour, or just one more post left. Whatever the message was, it wasn’t good.
Another defender fell in front of her, as the black arrows of the attackers rained down at the top of the walls. The Menaali had brought two of their siege towers right to the near edge of the river, demolishing houses and walls in their way so that they could fill them with archers and pummel the forward gate.
Was this it? the captain thought. Was this the last night that Fuldoon stood?
“Captain. You have to do it.” Ruyiman was pointing at the baskets of fire-pots that still sat, discretely and quietly every few feet or so along the wall. Suriyen shook her head, she had promised Maaritz until dawn, and Maaritz had so far never let her down.
She bit her lip. Maybe her second in command was right.
She had arrived at the nearest ladder, to find the ladder standing wedged against one of the blocks, and one lone spearman jabbing at the climbing, bare-chested Menaali. Ther
e were only a few below.
“Wedge,” Suriyen called, and the spearman looked at her in confusion. “Drive your spear between ladder and wall, make a wedge,” she instructed him. He looked dubious at the prospect of withdrawing the only weapon keeping the enemy at bay. “Do it,” Suriyen snarled, and the spearman obeyed.
As soon as he stepped back from defending the wall, the first Menaali warrior surged up the ladder, to be decapitated by one sweep of Suriyen’s sword. The next two climbed almost in tandem, but the captain’s long sword bit deep into one’s arm, and a kick from her boot dislodged the other. Beside her the spearman thrust his weapon between stone and wood, and started to lever.
“Pull!” she shouted, dispatching the fourth warrior that tried to climb, as arrows started to splinter on the tops of the walls around her as the Menaali siege towers concentrated their fire on this, the weakest point. Not wishing to become a human porcupine, the captain jumped down from the battlements to add her weight to the levering spear, which started to creak and push the siege ladder free from the wall. Suriyen pulled down with all of her might, feeling the spear start to bend as the laden ladder got a foot out from the wall, two feet—
We don’t have to go far, just enough to… Suriyen grunted as her and the spearman reached three foot out.
“Twist!” Suriyen called, suddenly forcing the spear across in one direction. The sudden change in movement caused two things to happen: the spear snapped, but the ladder wobbled and shook, and slowly started to turn in grandiose gentility, before the weight of the bodies already climbing it overbalanced it and it crashed down across the boat-bridge and the river below.
“Hurrah!” the cry from the other defenders went up, but it was just one wall ladder out of many, and there was more work to be done.
Suddenly, there was a sound like the sky ripping asunder, and a shape sailed across the night sky.