“Are you in charge here?” the corporal asked.
Ash opened his mouth to reply, but the corporal suddenly bent over, coughing horribly and spitting blood.
“You pig!” Racker spat, hitting his staff adorned with engravings of soaring ravens against the ground. “Don’t you dare talk to him in that tone! Do you know who you’re talking to, huh?! You have the honor of being in the presence of my lord, the general of the Seventh Legion!”
“I-I apologize.” The corporal kept coughing. None of his subordinates dared to move, afraid of angering the two mages.
Ash nodded to Racker, who, swearing profusely, freed the corporal of his spell. And although it wasn’t visible, Ash knew that his friend had lost a lot of Strength doing this. Heretics had no issues with casting these “Blood Words” but ordinary mages couldn’t perform these spells without ending up with a headache that’d leave them feeling weak for days.
“Corporal,” Ash said, voice cold as the snow surrounding them, “do what you’ve come here to do and leave. Unless you want to meet the rest of the legion? They just love wardens.”
Feeling a chill run down his spine, the corporal nodded and ordered his men to release the prisoners. The soldiers rushed to unlock the cages and get out of here as soon as possible.
Locks clicked and rusted iron creaked. Dressed in smelly rags and barefoot, the convicts huddled together, shivering with cold.
Ash shook his head and sighed. The last thing they needed was people losing limbs to frostbite and dying from hypothermia.
“You’re still here?” Racker sneered. “That eager to meet the rest of the squad, huh?”
The corporal turned both green and white at the same time and spurred his horse. His men hurried after him, not wishing to spend a moment longer in this cursed place, making the convicts and Racker burst out laughing. Ash didn’t get what was so funny in people running away. His teachers at the palace must’ve forgotten to teach him something.
Sighing, he turned to the new recruits and nodded. “Follow me. Whoever lags behind will feed the dogs.”
“Come on, get moving!” Racker barked.
Ash, leaning onto the staff that Garangan had given him, climbed onto the platform, oblivious to what was happening behind him. Racker was jabbing the convicts in the ribs and shouting curses as he directed them toward their new homes. At some point, he approached the platform and rang the bell, hurrying them like a shepherd shooing his herd into its pin.
Standing on the platform, Ash observed his new soldiers swarm beneath his feet like ants. They were a pitiful sight. Malnourished, sleep-deprived, and tattered, they tore the bundles of clothes from the hands of the other soldiers, eager to put on something warm and clean. Thick pants lined with cotton, a coat made of sheepskin, coupled with woolen socks and decent footwear was the most comfortable attire they had worn in years. Some even in decades. All this gear was obtained through bribes, but neither Ash nor Racker cared.
“Line up, you sons of bitches!” Racker snarled, hitting the convicts so hard that even the druids wouldn’t be able to help them. Such deeply black bruises could only be removed by a proper healer. “What? Spit a little blood, did you?! Good, it’ll keep you warm! Spit some more! Come on!” His blows were precise, painful, and insanely strong. One “smack” to the chest was enough to topple anyone over. One of the unfortunate victims of his abuse dropped to their knees, making Racker kick them in the ribs with the iron toe of his boot. Seeing this, the other convicts tried their best not to stumble or fall. They didn’t want to end up on a cart on a one-way trip to Gness. Here, they’d never see the bloom of spring again, but in Gness... In Gness they’d be thrown into a ring and forced to fight rabid dogs, naked and helpless as the day they were born.
It was of little consolation that the dogs almost always won.
In a matter of minutes, four thousand men were standing lined up on the parade grounds. Today was the last day that they’d stand like that. Tomorrow, the Legion would cross the border and go to Arabist. But they wouldn’t fight. No, they’d pillage, burn, and rape, but not fight. The Seventh Legion was to become Arabist’s worst nightmare; such was the king’s will. Anyone could kill, but not everyone could make someone’s blood run cold with terror.
As Ash observed the frenzied looks on the faces of his men, he wondered just how many of such people he had killed. “Three? Four dozen? Probably more.” But the convicts didn’t seem afraid of their leader even though he was looking at them with a cold, indifferent stare.
“They’re not even fazed...” Ash grimaced.
“Come on!” Racker barked. Another convict fell and stained the snow crimson. Ash saw apprehension in the man’s eyes as he stared at his lieutenant with a mixture of anger and dread.
“What am I doing wrong?!”
Ash observed the man with amusement. Blowing their heads off didn’t seem to be as effective anymore. The people were becoming restless. Lack of fear toward their leaders meant that the hour of mutiny was just around the corner. No collars would help them then. He couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t seem scared of him but did of Racker.
And then he realized.
Unlike him, Racker was easy to understand. If you insulted him or did anything to make him angry, he’d beat the living daylights out of you. Or kill you. Either way, one knew what to expect.
But with Ash… Ash they feared because he was as unpredictable as the fire he wielded. Him, they didn’t understand. Which is why they feared him
“Men!” Ash shouted at the top of his lungs. His voice, echoing like thunder, attracted everyone’s attention. Even Racker froze. “Get on your knees!”
The men stared at him in confusion, not moving.
Jumping off the platform, Ash marched toward them.
“I! Said! To! Get! On! Your! Knees!” With each shout, he’d tear out the heart of the convict closest to him, turning it into a pile of ash and soot. There were six silent thuds, followed by the sound of almost four thousand men falling to their knees.
“On all fours now!” he snarled. “On! All! Fours! Now!”
Four more fell, burying their faces into the white blanket. The snow creaked silently as four thousand more got down on all fours.
“Now listen to me!” Ash’s voice no longer sounded human. Even Racker, who had done and seen a lot of horrible things, did his best to stay out of Ash’s line of sight. Not a flicker of emotion could be seen on the young man’s face as his hand sank into the chest of another convict. “From now on, you’re no longer humans! Forget your family and your friends! Scum has no family! Scum doesn’t talk unless it’s spoken to! Scum doesn’t move unless allowed! Remember this pose you’re in because it’ll become more comfortable for you than laying down!”
Passing through the rows of prostrated convicts, he’d occasionally pierce one of them with his staff, sending their soul to join its relatives in Heaven.
Or, more likely, in Hell.
Not that he cared much about the difference between the two.
“You!” he barked. “Stand up!”
A boy of about sixteen jumped to his feet. There were many children like him in the legion. Ash didn’t know why, but they were oftentimes worse off than the rest. They’d have more bruises on them with each new day, their eyes were always empty, and their gait very odd. It was like all of them had hemorrhoids or something.
“Why did they put you in jail, scum?”
“I—“
“I told you not to talk unless spoken to!”
The young man joined others on the stained snow.
Turning the boy’s heart into a lump of soot, Ash continued his walk. No one dared move their eyes off the snow, as they struggled to keep their hearts from jumping out of their chests.
“You, get up!”
A man of about forty got to his feet. He was two heads taller than Ash and half as wide in the shoulders.
“Why did they put you in jail, scum?”
The man was
silent, staring at his feet. He was like a bear afraid of a fox.
“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”
The man remained silent. It was the first time Ash had hit someone. He put all his strength into the strike. Holding his stomach, the man doubled over and coughed, but remained silent. Racker stared at Ash in surprise. He had not expected such a scrawny young man to pack such a punch.
“Still silent, huh?” He sneered and rained blow upon blow on the man, making him curl up in a ball. Silence hung in the air; the man didn’t even dare groan in pain. When Ash got tired of waving his hands, he motioned to the man to get up.
“Stand up.”
Nodding, the man did as he was told. He staggered as he rose to his feet, face swollen and left arm broken. Several teeth were lying scattered in the snow. It was amazing that the man could still stand after the beating he had received. That is, it was amazing to everyone else, but not to Ash. He felt nothing still. He didn’t know if he was supposed to feel anything.
“You can speak, beast. What were you convicted for?”
“I killed a man who tried to steal money from me.”
“As far as I know, that’s not a crime.”
“The local judge didn’t like me, you see,” the man responded, flashing a bloody, wry smile. “As a child, I often broke his nose.”
Ash nodded and kept walking. The man was about to sigh with relief when he cried out in pain. Looking down, he saw Ash’s hand sticking out of his chest, squeezing his still-beating heart.
Shaking off ash and blood from his hand, the young man carried on. He began to feel the same feeling that the Archmage had felt on the day they met one another: fear.
“You! Get up!”
Another convict leaped to his feet. He was a bland-looking man of about twenty-six, with a pointy chin and sharp eyes.
“You’ve my permission to speak, beast. What were you convicted for?”
“Sir, I’m innocent—”
He, too, joined his friends on the snow. Innocent until proven guilty, he heard people say. He wasn’t buying it.
One by one, convicts got up and told their stories only to fall dead the moment they finished them. It made no difference to Ash whether his victims were young men defending their lady’s honor, hardened murderers, thieves, hunters trying to feed their families after years of famine by hunting on the king’s lands, rapists, or unlucky gamblers. He chose at random. They were all the same in his eyes.
No one understood the logic or meaning (if there were any at all) behind the general’s actions. Their ignorance turned into fear with each new corpse, and it wasn’t until twenty of them had lost their lives that the rest finally felt horror grip at their chests.
Ash motioned another convict to get up. Tears in his eyes, the man confessed to burning eight children alive and got ready to repent for his sins by being murdered... but the general left him alive.
What Ash cared about was making his men’s blood run cold with terror. Their crimes didn’t interest him at all.
“Listen to me, scum!” he roared while climbing onto the platform. “Tomorrow, we’re going to Arabist! We have no weapons, armor, food, or mounts! Nothing! Do you know what this means?!”
Silence.
“You’ve permission to speak, scum! Do you know what this means?!”
Murmurs and discordant grunts passed through the crowd.
“Wrong! It means that we must get these things on our own! We’ll burn, plunder and rape! It doesn’t matter who finds themselves on our path! Child, elder, peasant, or merchant, hell, even if God himself descends from the Heavens, we’ll kill him too! That’s your only mission, scum, to kill!”
Many of the future legionnaires grinned, feeling their hearts beat faster as fear intertwined with animalistic urges, madness, and lust for bloodshed.
“What are we going to do, scum?!”
“Kill!”
“Pillage!”
“Burn!”
“I don’t hear you, scum! What are we going to do?!”
“Kill!” they shouted.
“Kill!” he shouted back.
“Kill!” the legion echoed.
The battle chant continued until Ash gave a new command.
“And now, drop down and give me twenty!”
The Legion obeyed at once.
“Twenty push-ups, you motherfuckers!” he snarled, imitating Racker’s tone. “Those who stumble will be exiled. We have no need for weak members!”
Laughing joyfully, Racker went up to Ash and watched the convicts do pushups. There was something hilarious about four thousand grown men taking orders from a child with a big stick. Threats, whips, and shouts have become outdated — all they needed was a stare of Ash’s cold, empty eyes.
“You have my respect,” Racker said, sitting down.
“So, will you teach me the Word?” Ash asked calmly like he hadn’t just killed about two dozen people and made the most notorious scoundrels of the Middle Kingdom piss their pants in fear.
Racker shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
By nightfall, the legion was three hundred members short. Some say that their corpses still lie under the parade grounds, which had long been overgrown with weeds.
Chapter 20
8th of Zund, 322 A.D., Kingdom of Arabist
A sh, wandering around the castle, finally found the rest of his crew. They were discussing something rather noisily in a spacious room.
“Crazy,” Mary muttered. “It’s crazy.”
Judging by the fact that she was talking to the trio that they had met in the foyer; they were still under the effect of the curse.
“Greetings!” Ash smiled and waved to his companions as he walked into the room.
“Well, well, look at who the cat dragged in... You missed quite a lot.” Mary sneered.
Even the quiet Tul seemed gloomier than usual. Alice clung to Lari as if her life depended on it. Blackbeard was the only one who seemed relatively calm and unshaken. Perhaps it was all the sour wine that he had drunk. Rarely who liked its rancid taste.
“What’s wrong?” Ash asked and sat down next to them.
“You were right,” Mary whispered wearily, cracking her numb fingers. “The castle is cursed... To make things worse... There’s a werewolf roaming about and some sort of a spell... I mean temporary spells.”
“Temporary Spell?” the young mage asked in surprise.
“Check it out for yourself,” Blackbeard said and threw a scroll. “We’re... in deep sh— Manure.”
Ash, grabbing the scroll on the fly, immediately unfolded it and started reading. His expression remained the same as his eyes glided over the lines written on parchment with a shaky hand, but there were sparks of interest burning in the eye uncovered by a lens.
According to the writer of the scroll, the castle had been cursed by a powerful and skilled mage. What sort of a curse had been used was beyond the understanding of even the Fourth Master of the Order. And he, as everyone knew, was the strongest mage on the continent.
The invitation to the wedding, as it turned out, was a piece of cheese dangling above a very big mousetrap.
“There were twelve of us. Gods, I’ve never felt more joy in keeping a diary. If it wasn’t for it, we wouldn’t have a chance. Urvi was the first to disappear, dragged away by the beast. Where to? I got no idea...
We found two corpses. The baron and the lady in waiting... I saw their mauled corpses with my own eyes, so imagine my horror when I saw them at the feast! Sitting and chatting at their table! Nobody remembered what happened the night before, not even me. It seemed to us that all we had done was come to a wedding... Had I not lost Urvi... I never would have opened this diary...
There are seven of us now. The cycle is only one day long. The castle renews itself at the stroke of midnight. The participants of the feast are revived and their memory wiped clean. We still have no way out... The monster is still on the loose...
There’s five of us now... The monst
er is dragging away bodies somewhere. We still don’t know where its lair is. I think the duchess is the bearer of the curse. She doesn’t approve of her son’s choice, saying that his wife is of ‘pig’s blood.’
There’s four of us now... There are new corpses every morning. By the evening, they either disappear or are revived with the rest. Nobody saw the beast, but there’s no doubt that it’s something terrible. I’m more and more convicted that the duchess is to blame... There’s something in the way she looks at her son...
I forget many things when the clock strikes midnight... I can’t concentrate... Fear holds us in its grip. We’ve been to this castle for almost a month now, but it feels like we arrived only yesterday...
We’ve lost connection with the Guild... The signal doesn’t leave the walls... We’re doomed.”
“That’s all it says,” Ash drawled thoughtfully.
“Zach’s been missing for two days now,” the blonde sniffled. “They dragged him off, too.”
The young mage remained silent, reading the note once more.
“Werewolves, curses, resurrection...” Mary mumbled, face pale and hair a mess. “What kind of a place is this?”
“No ordinary mage could’ve done this,” Blackbeard muttered. “Only the Master.”
“Screw it!” Lari intervened. “Why are we still sitting here? We should go and kill the duchess! If she’s the bearer of the curse, it should all go back to normal once we kill her, right?”
“Calm down,” Tul scolded him. “We’ve been here for only one day and we’re already on the edge. These poor people have been sitting here for a month, and they still have no solid proof that the duchess is to blame. If we rush into this without thinking, the guards will kill us before the monster does.”
“Tul’s right.” Mary nodded. “We need evidence.”
Ash looked at the trembling trio. He used to deal with people in this state. They seemed to be on a verge of a breakdown so it was doubtful that they’d manage to get anything useful from them. All they had was the scroll and the knowledge that they’d forget all of this the moment the clock sounded midnight.
Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story Page 11
