by E M White
Sarina’s Barbarians 1
E. M. White
Indie Rabbit, Publisher
Copyright © 2019 by E. M. White
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
At the author’s request, this edition has been produced without digital rights management (DRM). This allows you to share it among your own devices. Sharing it for profit, however, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Because that’s lame.
Contents
Map of Auzurix
Map of Tias Commission
1. Magnus Sinn & The Chosen One
2. Not Every Battle Is Glorious
3. Onäs Slays The Crowd
Illustration: Onäs Grimblade
4. Politicians Are Bastards
5. Akimi’s Favorite Time Of Night
6. Gracus Extends An Offer
Illustration: Markus
7. Going All In
8. Sarina Gets Some Royal Relief
9. Arrival At Tias
Illustration: Zacharius
10. Zacharius Encounters Magnus Sinn
11. Sarina Gets A Bath
12. The Men Become Worried
Illustration: Akimi
13. Sarina Addresses The Town
14. The Kiss
15. Sarina Begins The Battle For Tias
16. Big Markus Begins His Ride
Illustration: Vadric
17. Vadric Springs The Trap
18. Magnus Sinn Begins His Approach
19. Akimi & Zacharius Fall
20. Onäs Does His Job
Illustration: Sarina
21. Sarina Confesses To Big Markus
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About E. M. White
Map of Auzurix
Map of Tias Commission
1
Magnus Sinn & The Chosen One
The farm boy pointed to Magnus Sinn with a half-gnawed poultry leg. He said through a mouth full of meat, “You’ve got four arms, right? And you’re what, five, six hundred pounds? You’re a karnog, aren’t you?”
“That I am,” Magnus Sinn replied. His voice filled the night air around the campfire with an unstoppable rumble. Like anyone would expect from such a immense and monstrous creature. Like a boulder smashing down a mountain—into a village below.
Then the farm boy said, “They say your species was Vile-spawn, like two thousand years ago. Something like that?”
Magnus’ broad brow furled. He responded slowly to the small boy’s accusation. “That’s…not…true.”
The wars were growing more repulsive every year. Even when they were for a righteous cause. Even when they were waged to save the lives of family and tribe. Victim or aggressor? In these times, the lines blurred villainously.
Invading armies marched and clanged across the land. The cries of victims cut the skies. The thumping of drums and boots provided the rhythm for the dirges of dying nations.
Tonight, however, the peal of swords and axes from the day’s battle had already faded. The split plate armor and countless broken blades lay strewn about where the farm boy’s defenders, the thousands who’d fought with cries of deliverance upon their lips, had fallen. And silence blanketed the red-stained plains.
The farm boy responded too quickly, too carelessly to Magnus’ defense. “Yeah, it’s true. You’re totally Vile-spawn. That’s what the old-timer says.” He thumbed over his shoulder to the gray-bearded man in the brown robes who cringed at this, though he didn’t even understanding the language the boy and huge karnog were speaking. “Old man knows his stuff.”
Magnus Sinn, commander of a cruel, marauding army, had tonight done something unthinkably gracious in these dark times. He’d offered the loser of the day’s battle a chance to speak. He’d brought this boy, along with the highest-ranking survivors of the boy’s decimated army, to his nightly council feast, within the circle of flickering torches and snapping pennants, among his own closest advisors and elite guards, to offer this not-so-ordinary prisoner something as simple as dinner.
Perhaps his last.
“It’s not true, boy. We are not Vile-spawn.” Magnus looked at the entire cooked bird in his grip, but his stomach began to sour—something about the way the boy had said your species. Magnus gave him another chance. “How is it you speak our language?”
“Meh. I speak all kinds of languages. Don’t even know why. No big deal.”
Magnus looked about his elite guards, standing tall and menacing in their bronze, armed and still bloody from the day’s gore. They boy looked so puny compared even to his lowest ranked warrior. Magnus was having trouble making sense of it. He said, truly wanting to believe, “And you’re the Chosen One then?”
The boy smacked his lips and bobbed his head. “Destined to preserve the races of Auzurix from the Vile Armies of the north. Yep. That’s me.” He stuffed a greasy lump of meat in his mouth. He chewed with his lips peeled back. Smears of food coated his teeth. “Farm boy one minute, rallying armies the next. I didn’t even know how to handle a sword a month ago. Or…has it been two?”
“Now you do? Know how to wield a sword?” Magnus’ yellow eyes widened. He stroked his long, gray goatee, the only hair on his head. He smiled, hopefully. “You learned through…magic!”
The boy guffawed. “Naw, come on. These arms can barely lift a shovel.” He licked his thumb. “If you want to know the truth.”
Magnus replied slowly, “I…do.” Disappointment drooped his features.
This conversation was going nowhere. He already knew it, already regretted having granted this distinguished prisoner an audience at his nightly fire council. To Magnus, the boy’s title of distinction was becoming increasingly questionable.
The Chosen One leaned in, his astonishing lack of concern illuminated in the orange firelight. “I don’t know how to rally three goats much less three companies of surly soldiers. But,” he sat back with no small hint of smugness, “the prophecy says…He shall cast his armies upon the darkness…”
The boy chose not to finish. He resumed chewing instead.
“…and the darkness shall recede from his light.” Magnus completed the prophecy. His bold baritone was a startling contrast to the boy’s lilting whine. “You seem very careless for your safety…for someone of your—”
“Destiny?” The boy pointed a finger at Magnus and clicked his cheek.
“Yeess.” Magnus drew out the word, not so sure about it now. “You’re my prisoner, Chosen One. You and your army lost the battle today.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you not feel fear for yourself? For those who carry your burden with you?” Magnus waved sixteen thick fingers toward those gathered behind the Chosen One, toward the row of acolytes and army captains and their lackeys and even the old man in robes, the boy’s bearded mentor.
“Yeah that’s just it, get it? Not that I want to be the Chosen One. But there you have it.” The boy sighed. “You probably don’t get it.”
Magnus shifted in his seat. He made eyes with Fleck The Goblin, who was weaving around the knees of Magnus’ well-armored elite guard, peering into the circle of firelight, listening to everything. Magnus said to the boy, “And you’re going to save the world from the Vile Armies? From the northern Influx?”
“So says the old man and the prophecy.”
The old man blurted out something from behind the boy that Magnus couldn’t understand. He seemed instantly to regret it.
The boy translated, “He says
there have been miracles.” He chewed some more. “He likes to point that out. A lot.” He laughed and then choked a little.
“I’m sure there has been.” Then Magnus added, “You have the birthmark?”
“Everyone always asks.” The Chosen One pulled back his sleeve between bites. He revealed a white, tender forearm that, sure enough, bore the imperfect though recognizable shape of Uthril’s Warhammer. “It’s okay. I get it.”
“It’s not a tattoo?”
“What? Come on. Real deal, big guy.”
“I don’t understand,” Magnus growled. “You worship Uthril?”
The boy hesitated. He didn’t seem religious to Magnus.
“How can you overcome the Vile Armies, the entire Influx? You can’t be more than, what, seventeen.”
“Eighteen. Please.”
Magnus sat upright upon his reinforced trestle seat, towering above everyone seated about the fire ring. He raised his considerable chin. His voice was strong and deep. He put one of his four thumbs to his chest proudly. “I’ve warred across the Savage Reaches for thirty-seven years, won a hundred battles and more. I don’t see how it can be done. Even with half the legions of the Sacred Empire at your back. Even with all of them.”
“Yeah, well.”
After a moment, one of Magnus’ right fists punched one of his left palms. His face brightened in all earnestness as he exclaimed, “Pincer attack! Ally yourself with the orcs of The Highlands? They come in from the top, you from underneath!”
The idea was rejected in an instant. “Orcs? Blech! I don’t think so.” The Chosen One eyed his poultry leg as it dripped grease to the dirt between his boots. “Orcs are gross. They’re fucking green.”
All the excitement fled from Magnus. He grew glummer than before. He glanced at his own green skin. “Then it can’t be done.”
“Yeah well, you’re not the Chosen One, are you? You gonna eat those?”
Magnus lowered his brow. He tossed his bowl of poultry down. The bones and greasy flesh splattered and clattered next to the fire ring. He said, “Show me the birthmark.”
Behind the Chosen One, the bearded old man shifted. The others from the boy’s camp wrestled with their own fingers nervously in the shadows.
The boy said, “Already did.”
The bearded old man took a half a step back, bumping into the bronze breastplate upon one of Magnus’ elite guards. He emitted a startled squeak.
“Show me…” Magnus’ voice dropped an entire octave, “…again.”
“Sheesh. Fine.”
The look of blatant fear began spreading across the faces of those accompanying the Chosen One. They continued to glance nervously at Magnus, who now bore a seriousness that, in the flickering orange firelight and the impenetrable darkness beyond, was an ominous contrast to the boy’s contemptuous levity. The boy peeled back his sleeve once again.
Magnus didn’t look. He was already set upon his course. And there wasn’t anything left to see.
Instead, his stare remained fixed upon the boy’s careless, oily lips. His disgust at the boy became a lump in the back of his throat.
Fleck The Goblin, who knew the mind of Magnus Sinn more than anyone, opened his bulbous eyes wide in the bloodlust of anticipation. He hummed fanatically.
Magnus moved thoughtfully. He took the Chosen One’s birthmark in one of his four hands. And began to twist it. Slowly.
The boy seemed surprised when his shoulder began to crank and the pain came. “H-hey!” He scrambled to his feet. His bowl clattered to the ground. He tried leaning into the contortion, tried crawling into the air. His jaw stretched in a grotesque, silent gape.
In the same unhurried manner, Magnus took ahold of the Chosen One’s head. He waited.
No angel descended from the heavens.
No godly hand erupted from the ground.
No magical miracle burst from behind the boy’s eyes.
Instead, the boy yelped and squealed. But he got no words out. Probably from all the pain.
Magnus’ third hand slid dispassionately around the boy’s neck—which stifled the gurgled screams that the boy had finally begun producing when his shoulder cracked and snapped under his flimsy tunic.
Magnus’ fourth hand did nothing. It didn’t need to waste the effort on a negligible pup such as this.
For the hand holding the Chosen One’s head began squeezing, as did the one around his neck. Skull and vertebrate popped and buckled, and blood, black in the firelight, burst forth and landed among the shadowed soil at their feet. Consequently, the Chosen One finally stopped all that self-centered squabbling.
Magnus blinked, cocked his head, and let the limp body drop to the ground.
He grunted but put no more effort into this disappointing meeting. After all, he’d come with an open mind. He’d hoped to learn from this boy, who was—there was no denying the birthmark—the Chosen One, the one whom thousands upon thousands of souls had yearned and prayed for during the last forty years, since the Vile Armies made their gruesome, ruinous landfall far to the north. What a waste.
To the whimpering, grunting, pleading sounds of struggle behind him, the sounds of the acolytes and army captains and their lackeys and even the old man in robes being put to the axe, Magnus Sinn sauntered outside the firelight’s reach, outside the ring of pennants whipping in the dark night’s escalating gale.
Magnus, a towering beast at the edge of illumination, looked out into the blackness. The weathered plains had grown featureless under the starless sky. Neither moon was out this night. A storm was definitely coming.
He looked southward, toward the distant lands of his own new destiny, and those of his tribe and his family, and those of his ten wives and all his children.
He brushed the gore from his four hands and, as the last human squealed for his life behind him, slipped once more into the deep recurring melancholy that always plagued him, wondering, Who will save us from the northern evil after all?
Magnus looked back to the crumpled mess of the Chosen One, alone in the orange light save Fleck The Goblin who was now picking at the boy’s frayed, soggy scalp.
Naive boys who think they can save the world with annoying humor have no business fighting these righteous wars.
Magnus grunted again to the starless night sky.
If not this charmed boy, he thought, then who? Who will rise to save Auzurix? What terrible, blood-soaked battles must this hero be waging…this very moment?
2
Not Every Battle Is Glorious
Sarina eyed the burgomaster. She made no effort to disguise her contempt.
Nor her hot temper.
So far neither harsh looks nor harsh words had converted the hunchbacked, pointy-faced burgomaster’s mind.
I’d torture this little rodent if I could, she thought.
Except she was the one being tortured. And she knew it.
She glanced to the scorching sun for some idea how to advance her cause. But Sarina and the blazing sun were out of ideas.
Stay at it, Sarina, she told herself. Again.
This battle of wills had already been raging for two days. And Sarina, barbarian princess and commander of the Allied Tribes’ Fourth Army, was unaccustomed to losing battles—of wills or otherwise.
Her army, desperately low on grain and provisions, was camped half a league from the town’s wooden palisade. Though Sarina was still comparatively new to her command, six months almost to the day, she’d already learned that food was kind of a big deal to soldiers—once it started running out.
The town was a wholly human one, despite the burgomaster’s ratty appearance, no mix here of the myriad races that covered Auzurix. It probably boasted of being a pure-human town. It didn’t have much else going for it.
The town stood along the wide southern plains just outside the Imperial borders. And it had plenty of supplies. Sarina also possessed the right amount of coin. But the ratface in charge here wasn’t budging.
This shit sausage
wants to wage his own private trade war, wants to see a foreign princess grovel.
Maybe that’s what I get, offering fair market prices in the first place.
The core of the matter was, as the burgomaster had twice explained to her in as many days, the town was hosting a festival in one week. Couldn’t she appreciate everyone stringing decorations, cleaning the facades of buildings, repairing all the carts and wagons about the town?
Even the burgomaster, whom Sarina was forced to hunt down through his flagstone maze, was now in the smithy’s courtyard directing the construction of a large wagon, the kind meant to carry all the elderly burghers through the streets for all the lowly subjects to wave and gawk at.
Sarina couldn’t think of anything worse.
She was a princess, and still she spent every day brawling—literally brawling—to establish her worth. And this appointed official—let’s call him Mayor Ratface, shall we?—could topple her by ordering the town’s merchants imprisoned simply for selling festival grain without his approval.
“You don’t get cheerful crowds without cheerful bread,” he said most pragmatically.
Nor can you govern three thousand barbarian warriors without it. Who weren’t that cheerful to begin with.
Army commanders wage all sorts of battles you don’t hear about.
Behind her, under the scorching sun, stood her closest advisors and companions: five of them, each of their own mind and opinions, some sweating in the heat, some not even fazed by it.
