“What a thurken waste,” he said aloud, and one mercenary turned to him.
“What’s that, young hero?”
“Nothing, I said nothing,” Derian said, and he felt the coldness of fear and melancholy wrap him up tightly. He willed himself to steely bitterness, for this was the way of a mercenary’s life. The nameless mercenary clapped him fiercely on the back, and Derian also wanted to kick his head in.
“Let’s drink,” Mowg declared, and the uneasiness in the air dissipated immediately. They uncorked the barrel, filled tankards, and raised them high.
Lorgan addressed them with a tankard in hand. “Shall we test our wills? To the traditions of the march.” He downed his beverage in one massive assault and their new comrades cheered him on and followed. Games were afoot, and challenge offered between friends—who would be the last man standing? Or woman, for even Kesta cheered and eyed her challengers with a rare smile. She attacked her lightly bubbled ale with relish and was impressive. Natteo, who had grown up on the finer sines of the entitled and believed peasant ale beneath him, still joined the drinking, though he did so cautiously. A gentle shove and a quiet word of insistence from the young Army of the Dead mercenary sitting beside him, convinced him to drink heartily.
Within no time, Derian’s tankard was refilled, and he joined the gathering with jests and wit. He sat farthest from Lorgan, in a futile attempt at protesting their leader’s actions. Truthfully though, Lorgan had done the right thing, cruel as it appeared. Lorgan attempted to catch his eye and share a few words with him as he did the rest of the Crimson, but Derian pretended he didn’t notice. Let Lorgan know his disappointment with no words. When Lorgan finally gave up, Derian took the victory.
They threw the rest of their names around but Derian caught none. He thought one was called ‘Bob,’ but he wasn’t certain. He had blond hair, shiny armour, and Derian wondered whether he was the unwilling recipient of the Natteo charm for this evening.
After a time, knowing their names didn’t matter. He referred to each as ‘friend’, and they were happy enough with that. Moreover, he earned the same title for the rest of the night, and if truth be told, he came to enjoy their company. They were fierce on the outside but unusually open and warm. He realised they might not commit immoral acts with the girl as he’d believed. He held that thought and locked it away, allowing himself to relax a little more.
They spoke of nasty incidents throughout Dellerin. Another uprising failed and fractured. Weavers whispering in the island of Fayenar. They told of warring clans wiping each other out over trivial matters, and they spoke of many more things beyond. Even Blood Red lost his intimidating glaring to easy grinning, and around him, the cheer was so healthy that inevitably, the ugly truth reared its enticing head.
“I’m glad we could strike up a deal,” Mowg slurred, and drank from his unusually frothy tankard. The task was beyond him and he spilled half its contents down his vest. He seemed very puzzled and spat the gathering of froth from his upper lip. Ever the gentleman, Lorgan who had taken leadership at the edge of the barrel from the first pouring spotted Mowg’s catastrophe and swiftly poured the frothiest of drinks Derian had ever seen. Within an instant, the drink was returned, clinked, and downed before Lorgan even offered a retort.
“I feel it might have ended badly for me and my comrades had we not struck a deal,” suggested Lorgan and eyed his new best friend.
“Don’t take it personally, Lorgan. Money is money, slaves are slaves, and… well…”
Lorgan cut him off and took his shoulder in his powerful grip. “Blood is blood, Mowg. Have no fears, my friend, for I know the tale. You must look after your flock, and I look after mine,” he said, and both warriors exchanged a nod of respect.
The world is tough; we do what we must.
“Tell me, Lorgan. Did you suspect her true value, or do you think I paid well over the odds for her?” Mowg asked, and Derian listened with interest.
“Is it the tattoo of gold upon her belly,” Lorgan said. “I know its significance. I know its danger.”
Danger?
“She’s worth tenfold what I offered. Is that something you can accept come dawn?” Mowg asked.
“I know you will get fifty times what you paid. I’d know a demon’s mark when it spits me in the face.” Lorgan tapped the gold pouch at his belt absently, as though the small bag was worthy compensation. Derian was distraught. Terrible to lose a goddess, worse to lose her for a paltry fee. And what was a demon’s mark?
“We might well have killed you for her value. I’m sorry, friend,” Mowg said, and a few of the mercenaries listening shrugged guiltily and shuffled their feet.
Only Natteo appeared to take offence and immediately slipped away from the mercenary named Bob. He glared at the tall warrior the way a husband would upon discovering his wife down in a tavern with a new ‘friend.’ A glare like that could have sliced tin armour with one strike. The blond mercenary dropped his head in shame and offered his brimming tankard of ale as an apology. Natteo shook his head swiftly, but after a moment, he slid back beside the good-looking young man and drank deeply from his less impressive tankard. This heartened the good-looking mercenary, but Natteo’s eyes were colder than usual, and Derian wondered if Bob hadn’t blown his chances at going for one of Natteo’s midnight walks. At least none of them would have to listen to the salacious details of his adventures come the morning, Derian thought.
Perhaps Lorgan tried to save face in the delicate threat. Perhaps it was the truth. Perhaps it was something to say after worrying revelations.
“I’m glad we’ll rid ourselves of her. There is no guarantee that Treystone will pay for us killing the monster without proof. We can’t afford to get her all the way to Dellerin. We don’t even have horses, and at some point, swiftness might be the key to her survival. She would be safer from the hunt in your hands,” he said.
The moment held in the air, and Mowg nodded his agreement. Derian was furious. Lorgan had known more than he’d let on. More than that, he’d known her value and kept it from them. He knew she brought a great risk to them and said nothing of this either. Who hunted her? Yet again, Lorgan had fled from risk. It was typical of things in this outfit.
One mercenary stumbled a little, and much to the merriment of his comrades, he fell against a tree away from the fire’s glow and threw up his last beverage all over the grass.
“This evens the odds in our contest. Come, Mowg, your cup is already dry,” Lorgan bellowed, and he took Mowg’s tankard again and began to refill. The last grievances raised and aired successfully.
“The barrel isn’t even halfway drained, and already the Army of the Dead have one man fallen!” Kesta roared with such unusual mockery that Derian couldn’t help raise his drink in victory. Her eyes were wild, her face taught. Perhaps competition brought out another emotion in her.
“I’m fine. I’m not out,” muttered the sick man who caught his breath and then began retching loudly. “Get me another drink.” More retching. “After someone finds me a bucket…”
The group laughed at the man’s misfortune as he slipped away into the darkness, and Derian spotted a wonderfully amused prisoner, and he felt compelled to seek forgiveness. He ventured towards the girl through the boisterous group, and with a boldness in his heart and nerves of tin armour, he sat down in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, doing his best not to envision her nakedness again.
She shrunk beneath the cloak around her and his heart dropped. She had the age and beauty of a young woman, but her eyes sparkled with the naïve beauty of a god. She blinked those eyes and offered no reply. Instead, she clutched her feet and held them tightly against her chest as though seeking comfort.
Derian cursed himself for not studying more and wished dearly to understand the mark tattooed upon her glorious stomach. “I’m sorry for shooting you. I’m sorry….” How could he apologise for Lorgan selling her? “I’m sorry Lorgan wants to sell you,” he said, an
d she eyed him with a disdainful wonder, as though she did not understand him but still despised him for it.
He wanted to try the apology again, but Lorgan distracted him. It was a strange choice of words he used, for they referred to a terrible time a season before when food poisoning had struck himself and Natteo down. Both had spent a miserable weekend losing half their body weight.
“Hey, Derian, remember that time we went fishing in Malell?” he said, and he smacked his leg as though it was the funniest wit ever spoken aloud. Derian’s stomach churned at the nightmare and suddenly he realised. He looked out into the darkness for the sick man and spun around to the girl, and her soulful eyes were alive with delight once more. They were looking away from him.
“Don’t worry, girl, everything is all right,” he whispered, and the air became laden with sounds and stenches of violent heaving.
12
After Party
Seren hated Derian.
Hate, hate, hate.
Is that the word?
Yes, it is a wonderful word. It’s an emotion.
Yes, hate.
She liked hate.
She enjoyed remembering what words were, and where they went, and how some of them had over one meaning, and how others could be different words altogether, yet still have the same meaning. She also liked… Wait… no, there is a better word for like… adore. Yes, adore. She really adored that word. What was her point, she thought? She couldn’t remember, or else, she had forgotten.
Hmmm… forget is a fine word. It’s nothing spectacular but perfectly fine… anyway….
She thought further on words and decided the word ‘like’ was the correct word. What a waste of thoughts she thought and started over.
Seren liked her captors, but she reviled Derian.
Reviled. Ooh yes, reviled. Reviled, reviled, reviled the spitting thurk.
“Spitting thurk,” she whispered, and she enjoyed how curses rolled off her tongue. She said the words again just as silently and enjoyed how they made her feel, but she couldn’t put words to it.
Is this what irony is?
No, she decided, it was just a girl’s mind rebuilding itself after a birth, and an arrow’s catastrophic consequence after that.
She watched them argue over her, as though any of it really mattered. She knew her path, and it was not with the forest men. But then again, how could she be sure? That thurken arrow had ruined her mind, hadn’t it? She knew little, but she knew that she should have grasped more comprehension by now. The idiot’s arrow had split her in half at the worst moment, and now sanity was a feather floating above her. Tantalizingly close but effort took it further.
Idiot Derian.
She wondered if she should turn around and stab him a few times and be done with it. It would make her feel better. It might even make her feel wonderful.
Wonderful.
She wasn’t afraid of him, but whenever she met his eyes, she felt the arrow plunge into her forehead. Was that trauma?
Trauma.
Perhaps when she found all the words and recovered all her thoughts, she could summon the strength to kill him. Maybe not kill him in its finality, maybe just gouge his eyes out, or set him on fire a little bit, or just throw him into a frozen river. Good things would return eventually, but for now, she was limp. She was gelded.
I want to tear myself free of this broken form and burn everything.
Her broken mind gifted blurred visions of the old man who had released her from the demon’s hold.
Not old.
As her knowledge of pain, cold and hunger, and a filling bladder returned, she seemed to remember less and less of the man. Who may have been old, but then again…
Father.
“Father,” she whispered aloud and understood her inaccuracy. He was not her father, though he’d behaved as so. She wondered if she would ever grasp these thoughts, remember his teachings, do his bidding and be waiting for when he returned.
When he returns.
Those three words had not faded. Burned into her mind like a swine’s branding. He would return, and with it, there would be a terrible vengeance to last an age.
She slumped in her seat by the tree and massaged the bruising around her neck. Kesta had whispered to her that the holding was fleeting. Ooh, fleeting. Nice word. It also meant temporary. Like her gelding.
“Perhaps I am not a good person?” she whispered. No one was listening to her, though.
Perhaps it would be better if the Army of the Dead took hold of her, she decided. They were fierce, and she would need fierceness. Being good men or bad was irrelevant. She didn’t know how she knew this, and she fought a pang of frustration and fought it off swiftly.
The idiot’s arrow happened for a reason. Trust in reason.
“I must walk to Dellerin in the last days,” she whispered to herself and sighed thinking of the vast distance from here to there. She needed to fly, though she had no means. She felt other things impossible to name, to understand, to fear. But mostly, across the world, she felt the girl’s energy and she felt the stones. A spark spat out of the fire and caught her gaze, and her thoughts left her again.
Girl and stones? What?
“Stupid thurken cur,” she hissed, searching for sanity and losing it again.
Stupid Derian.
She heard the two fine warriors strike the deal and questioned her certainty that the Crimson were her keepers. No, that’s not right. They are my companions.
She wondered if predestined things could not be altered. Perhaps the Army of the Dead would walk with her. What if they fought The Dark One, she wondered? What if they were in league with The Dark One?
“The Dark One,” she whispered and found words spoken aloud to be less tasteful. She was drawn to The Dark One, whoever he was.
Love maybe?
Hatred?
She tugged at her stomach and waited for the pain. In the moments before it struck, she usually felt it coming like a morning wave leading the high tide. It would surge. She was a breaker, and the pain was excruciating. When the pain reached its crescendo, the world would become a darker place. This she knew for certain.
Like a prospective mother, she massaged the tattoo more and more. Sometimes it made her feel better, and sometimes it drew her attention away from the demonic scraping. She rubbed her stomach a little more, watching them shake hands and bond as friends, and she was quite pleased with her value. She found it strange that she understood the finer economics of the world and the art of bartering, yet the importance of eating for sustenance eluded her until watching actions in practice sparked her mind.
Stupid thurken Derian with the pretty smile.
“Bite and chew,” she whispered to herself, and she thought her favourite words were those with plenty of watery sounding letters in them. “Thurrrrrken currrrrrr,” she whispered, but no one was listening.
She watched Lorgan slip the strange juice into each of the tankards he poured. He was boisterous, and no one saw the little bottle concealed beneath the shadow of his palm. A fine trick. She saw the clear fluid made the beverages a little more frothy, and she licked her lips and remembered her parents never allowing her to drain tankards. She felt the emotion of sorrow and a need for comforting sweet nothings whispered in her ear. Perhaps these emotions were not her own, for she felt Lorgan’s terrible desolation even from across the campsite. She didn’t blame his desire to rid himself of her. He had lived a life not destined to him, and she wondered how she knew this. How she knew that he fled from greatness like a young weaver from the source world and its inhabitants.
Kesta’s sadness was unfathomable, a life of ruin. A wise mind wasted by hollowness. She was a shell, left in the wake of horror. She only cared for those who needed her care. It was all that kept her afloat. It wouldn’t keep her afloat forever. Eventually, she would stop fighting the current.
Natteo said something outlandish, and it drew Seren from the agony. She liked the good-looking young man b
ecause he never stopped talking; his sharp tongue was a gift to the world, and she relearned most from his mutterings. He hid his horrors better than most, and she liked that too. He chose love over pity. She wondered if it would be the right choice.
Derian sat down beside her, and she felt an arrow break through her head, and she almost screamed. She nearly reached for the phantom projectile to stab him in his manhood but caught her sharply taken breath. He didn’t notice her discomfort as he kept talking and apologising, and she wanted to reach out and take his stupid sword and put it through his eye. Would that kill him?
She believed it might. However, it was no arrow through the mind, was it?
There’s no healing enchantment bonded to you anymore is there?
Is there?
She rubbed her stomach and looked around at the collection of warriors, and she could sense their goodness behind the growls. It made her smile, and she doubted all at this gathering would survive the coming war. War and death made her smile, and she didn’t understand why.
A cold feeling ran down her spine, and stupid Derian looked into her eyes as she reached for his sword to cut him. Just a little. Before she could attack him, many of the group began throwing up the contents of their stomachs and distracted her. She thought this was an unusual occurrence, and she also thought it delightful. Derian mentioned something annoying and reassuring, and she hated him.
“Spit on you,” she countered, but he was already away, out of earshot and out of reach. She watched him and his rear and remembered her first thoughts of attraction for him and despised herself for it.
The Army of the Dead fell about the camp retching violently, and her keepers took advantage. Lorgan led the assault and he was inspiring. With fists like chunks of raw ore, he waded into the melee of nastiness, hammering two hobbled mercenaries senseless as he went. Each concussive blow more deadly than the last, he worked himself into a frenzy and roared mightily as though he was fierce in battle and despite herself; she formed a fist. He was broken, never to be restored, but he was a leader.
The Crimson Hunters Page 7