As ever, they were clad in black. Their armored shoulders and featureless masks soaked up the sunlight and turned it to shadow. Their capes, emblazoned with the Pharaoh’s mark, swirled like spirits at their backs.
All who saw them cowered at their approach.
To the villagers, the Nemesis had been nothing more than a myth.
But now…
In the village square, he halted.
He’d killed no one yet, but the city already belonged to him.
“Come out,” he boomed. His mask amplified his voice, carrying it to every corner of the muddy, squalid village. “Every citizen will stand before me,” he continued. “I am Eadunn Varwarden, son of his Lordship, the Pharaoh. You know me even if you do not. The law of five-hundred years ago remains the law today. Stand and face your judgment.”
He didn’t need to tell the villagers what would happen if they didn’t emerge from hiding. His voice, his armor, and the sword on his back implied everything.
Slowly, they crept out of the shadows. In ones and twos, in small families, they slunk out onto the dirt paths between houses and made their way to the village square. They were a sad lot, dressed in sackcloth shirts and ragged cotton pants. Many were sick, and most were as thin as the weeds between their houses.
“Barely human,” scoffed one of the knights.
“Silence,” the Nemesis commanded.
Within minutes, some hundred and twenty men, women, and children stood in a loose circle around the village center. The Nemesis looked across their faces, counting them in silence, judging how many more were still in hiding.
“This is not everyone,” he thundered. “Some of you are still in the shadows.”
One of the villagers, a skinny man with ropes of brown hair trailing to his waist, dared to speak.
“It be Saudar and his two sons, Lord. They’re out huntin’ rabbids. Them and the girl, Lupa. She’s after a few buckets of water.”
He glared at the skinny man through his faceless mask, and the man shrank into the shadows of his family.
“Three more,” he boomed again. “Not Saudar. Not Lupa. Three unaccounted for. Two men, one woman. You know who they are. You will bring them to me. And you will do it now.”
His voice hung in the humid midday air. The clouds were heavy in the sky, but the only storm the people feared was him.
“Don’t,” he heard a woman whisper to the man beside her. “They didn’a do a thing. Don’t go betraying our own.”
Other whispers leaked through the crowd. The people believed they could keep their secrets, but within his mask the Nemesis heard every syllable they spoke.
“Betrayal?” he said to them, his voice like thunder. “By doing as I command, you are not betraying each other. The only crimes you can commit in this world are against the Pharaoh. You will bring the three to me. I will not ask again.”
The people fell into deathly silence. They said nothing, but their eyes told him everything.
He’ll kill us all if we don’t do as he says, he knew they were thinking.
See his ship? Over there in the fields? See his swords…and the strange weapon on his waist?
He’ll kill us all…
He didn’t have to speak. He let the silence reign, and he stood before them, an obsidian statue.
They soon came to their senses. An older woman, perhaps the oldest in the village, ambled away toward the mud-bricked houses, cursing as she walked.
“Three lives…” she spat. “…small price to pay. Not seein’ any children die today. Not for those three. Not for any three.”
Some villagers cursed her. Others followed in her footsteps. Together some twenty people surrounded a shack made of mud and rotten wood planks. The old woman stood at the door, facing the Nemesis from afar, jabbing her wrinkled finger at the shack.
“In there,” she squawked. “They be hiding.”
“Bring them to me,” he rumbled.
And so they did.
Two men and one woman, covered in cobwebs and dirt, landed in the mud before the Nemesis. The woman was brave, and glared up at his masked face with hatred in her eyes. The two men, both barely in their twenties, hunched on the ground and wept.
“Mercy,” cried one of the men. “We didn’a hurt anyone. We was just talking, is all.”
The other man blubbered, already begging for his life.
“How?” asked the woman kneeling before the Nemesis. Her mouth was a hard line. He supposed in different circumstances he might’ve respected her. “How did you know?” she asked.
Beneath his mask, he grimaced. He looked skyward into the cloud ceiling, and spoke loud enough for all to hear.
“Father’s eyes see all,” he said. “Nothing escapes him. Up there, in places you cannot see, he is watching. Everywhere. Always.”
A tear streaked down her dirty face. “It’s just a machine to help us talk,” she said. “It’s nothing. We just be wanting to talk to the next two villages. It helps us find food.”
That word.
Machine.
“There are no machines,” he said to her. “There never were.”
She opened her mouth for a final plea, but the words she meant to say never escaped. Soundless, quicker than the wind, the Nemesis loosed his sword from its sheath and trimmed her head clean off.
The villagers gasped. The two men groveling in the dirt tried to crawl away. Serpentine, he glided to them and killed them each with a single stroke. In the second man’s chest, he buried his sword and left it upright, a black flagpole standing in the sodden earth.
The villagers screamed and sank to the earth on their knees. The Nemesis regarded his sword, motionless in the dead man’s body, and looked across the broken people.
“Find the device,” he said to his men. “Destroy it. Anyone who hinders you, kill. Before you return to the ship, remind these people if they ever possess such a thing again, we will return to bury them all.”
He pulled the sword out of man and soil, and he stalked away toward his nameless warship. The villagers wailed at his passing, cursing his name while weeping for the three he’d murdered.
But no one stood in his way.
No one dared.
It wouldn’t have mattered. Not even had all of them risen up against him. He’d have killed them all, and it would’ve been like brushing aside mosquitoes.
Alone, he climbed aboard his ship. The stairs shuddered beneath his boots, and grey lights flickered to life with his passing. He stormed past several of his men, who stood fully-armored, and he let his words hang in the air behind him.
“Stand down,” he told them. “This village will not resist.”
He glided down the dark halls and arrived at his room. The windowless cell contained only a cabinet for his weapons, a rack for his armor, and a long, narrow bed.
…upon which Thessia lay naked.
She looked up to him, clutching a sheet to her shoulders.
This time, he went to her.
4
He couldn’t say just when he’d lost sight of her.
Perhaps she’d skirted around the village and gone on her way.
Or maybe she’d hunkered down between the hills, content to weather the coming rain alone.
Or maybe she’s out there waiting for me.
Maybe when I leave this ugly city, I’ll finally get to die.
Galen found the door he wanted. The mark they’d burnt into the wood was subtle, and yet obvious to someone who was looking for it. The little black triangle, not unlike a pyramid, had been placed just beneath the door’s middle hinge.
The doctor in Cedartown hadn’t been lying.
He knocked softly at first, then louder. A child stood on the dirt road behind him, staring. Two women hurried past, acutely aware he wasn’t a local.
Someone on the house’s inside cracked the door open by a hair’s breadth. Galen saw a beady eye glare out at him.
“Who be you?” said the eye’s owner.
“
Machines,” he answered. “I have one.”
The door creaked further open. Galen saw two eyes now, both belonging to a skinny old man. The stench from inside the house roiled out like a stinking green cloud.
Galen smirked.
“You…” said the old man. “You one of the Lords’ men? You’re not dressed fancy, but you got one of them swords.”
“No. I’m not a Lord’s man.” He pulled back his hood a little. “But this sword…it’s one of theirs. Found it back east on a dead soldier. A real shame. And before you ask—no, it’s not for sale.”
The old man considered him. Galen had long ago learned every language in this part of the world, but still his accent wasn’t perfect. The old man sensed it, and Galen knew it.
“We’d all be cooked if the Lords knew I was talking to you,” the old man creaked.
“If I were with the Lords, you’d already be dead,” said Galen. “I can see the shelf inside your house. What are those? Gears? A can of oil? Is that a bottle opener I spy?”
The old man tried to slam the door shut, but Galen’s boot was already wedged inside. The rotten planks smacked the too-soft leather, and Galen almost winced.
“All I need is a few days’ worth of food.” He shaped his pain into a smile. “For your trouble, I’ve got something you’ll like. It’s small. It doesn’t make noise. The Pharaoh won’t ever know you have it.”
The old man looked up at him, and without a grumble, let the door swing open. Galen took it to mean he was invited inside.
No matter the smell.
Inside the little house, he saw things that reminded him why he chose to live out on the open road. The old man had shelves stocked with jars of spoiled food, a chamber pot one piss from overflowing, and an ugly, straw-stuffed mattress. For all his effort to get in the door, he wanted nothing more than to get back outside.
Food, he reminded himself.
Just enough to get me closer to the sea.
The old man jabbed a stick into his burning hearth and swept it across several candles, lighting them up. In the fragile light, Galen took a moment to survey the room.
There.
And there.
A bag of not-rotten potatoes.
And what are those? Carrots?
“…not from these parts,” he heard the tail end of what the old man had said.
“No. No I’m not. But then, where I’m from doesn’t much matter. It’s where I’m going.”
“And where are you going?” The old man tossed the burning stick into the hearth.
“Up.”
Shaking his head, the old man stood in front of Galen. He wasn’t much to look at. The years had weathered his skin and whitened his eyebrows. It wasn’t often people lived long enough to see themselves bent and withered.
Too bad, thought Galen. He’s lived what—four-hundred fifty years short of me?
And look at him.
“Well?” said the old man. “Show us what you’ve got in that cloak of yours.”
Galen shot the old creature a sly smile and opened his cloak. The old man’s eyes widened when he saw the handles of two daggers, a silver canteen, and a belt with a shiny metal buckle. But the real prize, Galen pulled out from a hidden pocket.
Bound together with a thick red string, the three shiny tools made the old man shiver as though he’d just remembered something from his childhood. Of course, he was far too young to have ever used such things before, and yet some primal part of him stirred. Perhaps his grandfather’s grandfather had known a story of the days when such tools were common. Maybe someone had passed the memory down to the little old man.
Or maybe he just likes that they’re shiny.
“These…” The old man quivered. “What are they?”
“Tools.” Galen held the bundle just out of reach. “They have names, and many, many uses. A wrench, a screwdriver, a clamp. They were used for building things, for making…other machines.”
The word machines made the old man tremble again.
“How is it…? How do you know these things?”
Galen let out a tiny laugh.
“In the city where rusted towers stick out of the sand, on the streets made of black dust that used to be carefully molded stone, ghosts of days long dead still linger.” He let the old man touch the wrench, but then tugged it away. “Treasure abounds for those willing to travel and risk their lives, old man. I’ve seen houses made of steel, carriages made of colored plastic, and tiny devices that could fit in your wrinkled hands…and power the world at a touch.”
The old man reached again for the tool bundle, and again Galen held it out of reach.
“Now…the food.”
Snapped awake as if from a trance, the old man tottered over to the corner in which Galen had seen the potatoes and carrots. He grumbled as he went, obviously still hating to trade away good food.
“You’ll have to cook these.” the old man dumped six potatoes and six carrots into a sackcloth bag.
“Two more carrots,” said Galen.
The old man looked up at him with a flash of anger, but saw Galen’s sword and thought better of arguing.
“Which direction…these steel cities of yours?” The old man gave Galen the bag and greedily grabbed the tools.
“East. Beyond Cedartown,” said Galen. “If you have friends that way, I wouldn’t count on seeing them for a while.”
With his bag of food, Galen retreated to the door. He held the door half-open, pausing in the light.
“Why’s that?” the old man asked. He never looked up from his treasure bundle, just stood with his wrinkled fingers touching the silver tools.
“They say the Nemesis has been in these parts.” Galen began to shut the door. “That he’s in a rare mood. And that he’ll kill anyone who lets strangers into their house.”
The old man’s mouth fell open.
The door fell shut.
* * *
Dusk settled on the hillsides west of the village known as Keystone, and Galen hunkered in the shadows, chomping on a raw potato.
Down the gulley between two hills, the sun glowered behind an ugly wall of clouds. The rain was a constant thing in this part of the world. Galen couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone two days without being pelted by water from the sky.
At least the potato’s good. He chewed away at the hard, tasteless thing.
The first few raindrops pattered on his hood. He couldn’t help but wonder whether the water was still poisonous, whether the reason most people rarely lived past forty was the particles hiding in the rain, the tiny molecules corrupting every living cell they touched.
He supposed he should’ve felt guilty, being immune to radioactivity.
He chewed.
And he dwelled in thought.
The bomb which had burned away Cedartown had been nothing.
The weapons of yesteryear? Now those had been something.
Galen hadn’t seen the war in its beginnings. He knew it mostly through the tales his mother had told, and in the darkness that had claimed her eyes every time she’d spoken of it. Fire, horror, and death, she had told him.
Graveyards without end.
He chomped again into his potato. Most people would’ve broken their teeth against it, but not him.
He was his mother’s son.
And he was just fine.
It was with his mother’s voice floating in his mind he finally drifted to sleep. The mostly-eaten potato, hard as a river rock, tumbled out of his hand and into his lap. His thoughts fled from the world, wandering to places deeper and darker than any soul alive on the Kingdom of Earth could imagine.
His were the dreams of an old, old soul.
Of forests burning. Of endless screams. Of cold black sands reaching into forever.
His were dreams of death.
Later, much later, his eyes snapped open. The rain had come and gone, and the earth was soft beneath him. He’d heard something in the night. Reaching into his cloak, he d
rew out the longer of his two knives, whose black steel gleamed in the starlight.
A shadow amongst shadows, he rose. He covered up his food sack, draped his sword scabbard over his shoulder, and crept out into the dark space between the two stony hills.
Not the Nemesis. He sniffed the air. Clouds aren’t disrupted. No smell of fuel.
Not someone from Keystone. He pulled his hood tight to his cheeks. Scared the old man right.
He turned slowly in place, soaking up the night. The hills were tombstones, quiet in the dark, and the stream near his sleeping spot rolled along through the nothingness.
Someone was near, he knew.
Someone who’s good at this game.
He supposed whoever it was wanted more than his potatoes.
Here we go again.
He bounded up one hillside, leaping from stone to stone. If he made any sound, only the night animals heard. His mother had once told him only the ghosts were quieter, that he was the whisper who moved between the wind.
His father had never appreciated it.
Atop the hill, he gazed out upon the lowlands. To the north lay Keystone, dark but for a few cooking pits whose embers the rain hadn’t snuffed. South and west were shadowed fields and humpbacked hills, empty but for grey summer grass and rocks…endless rocks.
He looked east, and he knew.
He glimpsed her descending into the same gulley in which he’d slept. She was the same as a night-bird, slender and silent, gliding along the breeze. He supposed he was lucky to have sensed her.
And he regretted he’d have to kill her.
For all her quiet, all her obvious skill of movement, she didn’t know he watched her from above. He crouched in the rocks and observed, and he saw everything she did. Her cloak, not unlike his, fluttered behind her. Her hood was low, but not so low as to block the starlight from striking her aquiline nose, from glimmering against her unusually pale skin.
She was an athlete, Galen knew.
And quite a bit more beautiful than he was used to seeing.
He drew out his dagger and floated twenty steps down the hillside. When the clouds covered the stars for several breaths—he saw her all the same. Her gentle footfalls might as well have been thunder cracking, and her cloak catching in the breeze like a hurricane gale.
Lords of the Black Sands Page 3
