“Because they didn’t deserve it.” Del Alzon spat out the window as he spoke to himself. “They were just young brats looking to do the same thing you did not so long ago.”
He turned and walked to a solid stone washbasin sitting in a waist-high wooden stand. He brushed his fat fingers along the carved work that patterned the edges of the bowl. One of the few possessions he brought with him from the east. He looked through the window again. The east. So much hope in the east. Del Alzon shook his head.
“Hope,” he scoffed and dipped his hands in the water to splash the semi-cool liquid on his face, not caring how much of it hit the floor.
A towel hung from the side of the basin. He looked down to his tremendous gut that rolled like a sack of water at the slightest movement, noticed at least two stains dotting his dull-white, sleeveless shirt. He wiped the water from his face and threw the towel to the floor.
Some young whelp ran through town the day before last, blood covering his face, cradling a broken arm, limping and coughing, crying for help. Del Alzon had prayed it wasn’t the farmer lad. The boy ended up being too young, maybe only fifteen. Why did he care about Erik? He shrugged his shoulders. He just hoped that young man didn’t come back, hoped he wouldn’t have to look the boy in the face and lie to him again. When did he become a liar?
“Who are you fooling?” Del Alzon looked at the distorted reflection of himself in the mirror. It didn’t seem such a misrepresentation. “You’ve been lying your whole life. The minute you stepped foot on the soils of Antolika and convinced yourself you were fighting for righteousness, you were a liar.”
He rubbed the scars along his shoulder, and as he closed his eyes, he saw Erik’s face. Then, like a nightmare vision come back to haunt him again, the face morphed into that of the bloodied survivor. How he cried about slavers and the brutal attack and dead women and children. Del Alzon’s eyes shot open. He gripped the basin hard and threw it to the side. The wooden stand splintered, cracked, and shattered. The water spilled everywhere, but the stone basin held firm. Not a chip. Not a crack. Just like the vision, it could not be destroyed.
Del Alzon looked down at the water pooled around his feet and clenched his fists until the blood left his fingers.
“There are some things I can’t change, but no more lies,” he vowed to himself, and moving at a pace which belied his size, he got dressed and went out to the stable at the rear of his house.
It had been a good number of years since he had ridden his horse, and the animal grunted and snorted as Del Alzon settled himself into the saddle. He looked affectionately at the heavy draft horse with squinted eyes.
“You’re no skinny beauty queen either, now,” he murmured as he patted her thick neck. She tossed her head in response, and the fat merchant managed a brief smile as he looked over his shoulder.
He pulled the horse and kicked her on out of the wooden stable. The thunk of iron-shod hooves on the old timbers, the smell of dust kicked up, and the feel of worked muscles moving underneath him, it all brought back a blur of memories. It felt like . . . like yesterday . . .
Riding onto the sandy beach of the Eastern Shores of The Giant’s Vein, he saw the crows circling in the air, the smoke rising far away, creating false clouds. A woman knelt just to his right. One sleeve of her simple wool dress lay torn, revealing her breast. Her hair sat in clumps of sweat. Dirt stained an otherwise pretty face. She held the head of a dead man in her lap, her legs curled underneath her. She rubbed his face, his bloodied hair, but her distant stare said the movement was simply ritualistic. She looked . . . numb.
Two soldiers walked by, grabbed her arms, and dragged her away. She didn’t fight. She didn’t scream. She just stared. Del Alzon saw the blood running down her legs, saw the rest of her tattered dress.
“Poor bitch,” one man said.
“She should’ve fought harder,” another replied. Both men laughed.
Del Alzon looked down at them. His scowl shut them up. The footmen both looked away and continued their march from the boat through the ruined town. He spurred his horse on after the men, the column of twenty men he commanded. A recent promotion, a reward for excellent service in these lands. A reward for survival.
As he rode through the town, he remembered gardens, buildings, statues—all gone, burned and broken. He couldn’t put his finger on the name. It didn’t seem that important and, like that woman, he was just becoming numb to everything. The slightest hint of true happiness was simply so distant—it was a good day or kind word fondly recollected—but it was never important that he remember such things.
The next day pushed the thought of the destroyed town even farther away. Fighting consumed that day. And the next. And the next. More men off a boat replaced those lost, and in the next place he followed fifty men through stone foundations and scattered bones, all charred black. Didn’t he ride through this place before?
The next year seemed a blur of smoke and fire and blood. As did the next. Hundreds of soldiers dead and replaced as if life held no value. Never knowing names or remembering faces, Del Alzon the survivor led them down roads grown over by grass. Mounds of rubble sat where walls once did, but he never thought of them as family homes that might have once see joy and happiness.
Five years of war brought him again to the shores of The Giant’s Vein. Two hundred and fifty soldiers, fifty horsemen, five sergeants, and a lieutenant saluted Del Alzon as they made their way off boats and through a field the captain vaguely remembered being different the last time he was there. The familiar sights of crows and smoke couldn’t jog his memory, and he simply rubbed his eyes with index finger and thumb, slightly wishing he could go home with the boats now slowly pushing off and away from the beach. If only he could . . .
Chapter 53
HE GATHERED TWENTY MEN. SIX militia that the city could spare and who agreed to go, the rest much like him. Retired soldiers. Old merchants. It would have to do. He lifted his eyes to the east, toward the Blue River Bridge—toward retribution. Now he sat at their head, them awaiting his instructions, but his mind was back in the old days again.
“Fifteen years of service and for what?” he muttered and rubbed his shoulder again. Even through the heavy wool shirt and leather jerkin, he could feel the scars. “What was the name of that damned town?”
He shook his head.
“Del.” A man rode up to Del Alzon’s right. The fruit merchant looked at the old man, and a smile crossed his fat, stubbled face.
“That’s right.”
The gray-haired fellow, a worn jerkin too tight for his waist, looked like he was about to ask a question when Del smiled to himself again and nodded.
“Old Manor. That was the name. Old Manor. I haven’t thought of that name in thirty years.” He saw the man staring at him. “Sorry, my friend. Just remembered something. An old memory.”
“I hope it was a fond one.” The older man smiled. He had a good number of his teeth for a man of his age.
Del Alzon shrugged. “There is some fondness to it, I suppose.”
“Well, my wife tells me bad memories aren’t worth remembering.”
Del Alzon shook his head. “If we don’t remember them, then we are doomed to make the same mistakes. You’ve been making the same
mistakes, over and over again, haven’t you, you fool?”
The gray-haired man straightened quickly, his lips thin and bloodless. “Now what mistakes have I made there?”
“Oh, no, no, not you my friend.” Del Alzon laughed. “I do apologize. I was talking to myself. What was it you wanted, Quintus? It is Quintus isn’t it?”
Quintus was an easterner like Del Alzon. Then again, not so much like Del Alzon. Many said that everyone who comes west comes to escape something. Del Alzon knew what he came west to escape. He knew what many in Waterton kept hidden in their closets. Quintus, however, he came to build an enterprise. He, his wife, three sons, and two daughters thought they could build a trade in expensive silks and velvets and cottons in Waterton. Who would’ve guessed that a city filled with people trying to disappear, lay low, getting ready to adventure into the unknown wildernesses of the west or simply drink themselves into oblivion wouldn’t be interested in a blanket or vest that might cost a man’s whole monthly salary?
Now one boy was back in Golgolithul. Yet another was lost in the lands of Gongoreth somewhere. One of their daughters had married a womanizing lush of a tavern master twice her age. Quintus and his wife seemed happy just to be able to put food on their table. Yet, not so happy that it would be more likely that their remaining son would bear them a grandchild than their youngest daughter, whose penchant for chocolates had given her a girth that rivaled Del Alzon’s.
“Aye, it is. I wondered, what is our course of action?”
Del Alzon laughed. Not at Quintus. Not even at his question. He laughed more at the fact that he truly had no idea what his course of action might be.
“Well,” Del Alzon replied. “I know roughly where these bloody bastards camp in the Blue Forest. There’s enough of us that I don’t think simple forest bandits will give us any problems. I figure we just roam around the forest until we find them.”
“That’s your plan?” Quintus looked less than enthused.
“Aye,” Del Alzon said with a smile. “You’ve a better one?”
“No.” Quintus rubbed his clean-shaven chin.
Del Alzon thought it odd, surprising really, that Quintus volunteered to go along. Perhaps some adventure, some time away from the misfortunes of his enterprising escapades, was all he needed. Del Alzon couldn’t help but think time away from that bear of a woman he called a wife wouldn’t hurt either. With an eyebrow that spanned the breadth of her forehead, more hair on her lip than he, a brutish, callous way of speaking, the shoulders of a bull, and a thick mole just under her chin, the old soldier couldn’t figure how she produced such a beautiful daughter. He spoke of the married one, of course.
“I suppose I don’t have a better plan,” Quintus added.
“Well then.” Del Alzon smiled a familiar smile, a toothless quirk of the mouth that spoke of victory—intellectual superiority—however small and trivial. “When you do have a better idea, my dear Quintus, let me know. But for the time being, we’ll stick to my plan.”
“Sounds good then.” Quintus stiffened and stared straight forward, a dumb smirk on his face.
“Does it,” Del Alzon whispered. He shook his head with that smile still on his face. As if the old fool had any other choice.
Two days’ ride brought them to an old campsite littered with broken wagons, pots, pans, and . . . bodies. They saw one other obvious encampment where one of the fires hadn’t been so carefully covered. Gypsies seemed always the most careful about covering their tracks. Del Alzon would have thought it odd, but then he remembered those Ion Gypsies traveled with others—miners and simple travelers . . . and the young men.
Del Alzon tried not to laugh when Quintus threw up, the stench of rotting flesh hanging heavily in the warming spring air of a pre-noon day. Del Alzon could smell it from a mile away, but then again, he knew that smell well. A sickening sweetness, like soft, decaying apples. The others—some of them knew. At least, Del Alzon guessed they knew. They had the look of old soldiers and thought nothing of it until they reached the flies. Thick ones, fat on death, buzzing about aggressively.
“Slavers,” one old soldier muttered. His name was Danitus.
Of average height and build, his short hair spoke of either Gol-Durathna or Golgolithul, and he seemed fit for a man his age. His gray eyes spoke of no particular origin, but his speech gave him away. Heavy with the Westernese accent, Del Alzon could pick out elements of the Northern language, a rolling, liquid tongue not quite as ‘elegant’ as the Eastern language of Golgolithul. It didn’t possess the lisps and long vowels that Eastern nobles found so pleasing to the ear.
“What was that?” Del asked, and the aged soldier repeated his comment.
That still hard man, one eyelid seemingly drooping and a number of little white scars on his face sat stiff-backed in his saddle. With a firm hold of his reins, he looked straight ahead. All soldiers worth their salt had that same stare.
“Only slavers lay here rotting.”
Del Alzon nodded his agreement and then spat heavily on the ground. Gypsies were little better than slavers. Con artists, liars, and cheats. He shook his head. Were those old stories actually true?
“Aye. They buried their dead and left the slavers to rot.”
Danitus pointed to a small circle of rocks. They dismounted and walked their horses to the place. The rest of the men remained a good ten paces away. Bits of wood collected from shattered wagons marked headstones, names and prayers written upon them with charcoal in a myriad of different languages.
“No, they did bury the slavers,” Del Alzon said. A line of shallow graves, dirt piled around them, lay open to the air. Wild dogs, perhaps. Thieves. Grave robbers maybe. “Something dug them up.”
“Something or someone dug up just the bloody slavers and paid no concern for the gypsies?” Danitus questioned. “And why would they bury murderers who attacked them? It doesn’t make sense.”
Del Alzon shrugged. “But not just gypsies,” Del Alzon said, pointing to one piece of old timber, marked with black letters. “This is the grave of a miner. And this one.” He pointed to another wooden headstone. “His wife. It says, Together in Life, Together in Death.”
“It looks like the gypsies put up a good fight and did more harm than the slavers,” Danitus said. “Look at all the dead. Twenty bodies—at least. Maybe that many graves lay here.”
Danitus shrugged as he looked around.
“Aye,” Del Alzon added, “but what about the ones those bloody leeches took. The boy that made it back to Waterton said they took a good number of them.”
“And why should we care so much?” Danitus’ back was to Del Alzon, but the northerner looked over his shoulder to give the fruit merchant a sidelong glance. “You’ve done deeds just as bad. So have I in the name of justice. That’s why you’re in Waterton, isn’t it? So you wouldn’t have to get involved—ever again.”
Del Alzon looked away as if the stare Danitus gave him could weigh him down like a sack of rocks on his shoulders.
“Aye. But—as a soldier—can you just stand by?” Del asked. “At some point, didn’t we believe in something? And at what point did we lose our faith? It’s not just that it’s slavers. And it’s not that these people were innocent. A man trust
ed me.”
“Hundreds of men trusted me.” Danitus gave Del Alzon a hard look and tucked his thumbs into the front of his belt. “Most to their deaths.”
“Yes, but all those men knew the chance of death loomed just around the corner. This man—that wasn’t part of the deal.”
“So this is for a single person?”
“Aye.” Del Alzon laughed at his own foolishness. “But the children also. Would you leave innocent children to slavers? And all the other young men I sold into this caravan. And the gypsies—the damned gypsies.”
Danitus smiled, even laughed a little, and Del Alzon shot him a hard look. This man would laugh as a seasoned soldier, one who had killed and maimed, raped and murdered, burned and destroyed.
“That’s what I hoped to hear,” Danitus said. His laugh proved not a jest, but a relieved agreement.
Another man, this one only slightly younger, joined them. A tall fellow with a blond beard that looked well-kept but had a tendency to get a little long and scraggly if the man’s wife didn’t remind him to trim it. His hair sat under a short-brimmed cap, pulled tight into a tail. His clothing spoke of a hunter, a woodsman, with a loose coat of gray-greens, tight-fitting pants of the same color, and soft boots rolled down to just below the calf. That, certainly, was his profession. Yager made his money by hunting, and he was good at it. He made a comfortable living, and the meat he sold was always fresh, never old and turning.
Del Alzon figured him to be a man from Nordeth. He stood tall enough, a hand’s-width taller than his long bow, which—unstrung—was two paces long. Del Alzon thought he had heard the huntsman speak of a child but couldn’t remember if the boy was dead or simply living elsewhere. If the hunter started his family early, it could be believable that he had a boy old enough to live on his own. Look at young Erik. He proved barely a man and on his own. By the heavens, the fruit merchant counted a year less than Erik when he first donned a coat of mail and picked up a broadsword in service to Golgolithul.
A Chance Beginning Page 29