‘We’re letting him talk to them himself, with the letters?’ Peter asked Anke. ‘We’ll never see him again.’
‘We’ll come with you, Stiff,’ she said. ‘Gerard, get things ready here if necessary.’
What precisely Gerard was going to get ready should a hundred soldiers descend on the church Lothar wasn’t sure. Their only chance was striking a deal with the new arrivals.
The three riders were looking their way. Lothar walked towards them, both hands in the air.
‘We’re not with Vechelde,’ he assured them as he approached. ‘Take us to your lord. We have news for them.’
The soldiers didn’t look impressed.
‘Who are you?’ one of them asked, his warhorse still skittish under him from the melee at the crossroads.
‘A mercenary crew,’ Lothar replied, as Anke and Peter joined him. ‘We have something your lord wants.’
The soldier pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Then follow on.’
He walked his horse back the way they had come, while his two companions moved to either side of Lothar and Anke. In this way they were led back to the crossroads.
Lothar looked around. A dozen corpses lay bleeding out on the road, already stripped of armour. A larger group of soldiers were sitting outside a row of houses, soldiers with swords and hammers keeping guard over them.
Lothar thought back to a couple of hours ago as he had walked down the west road with Mirko and stared about the deserted village. He looked at the dead soldiers, wishing he had turned around and left as soon as he got here. Don’t get into something you can’t get out of, that was his motto. What had prompted him to abandon it today?
He glanced at the picture the stein hanging from the missus' house and grinned to himself. He fancied that Karl was still in there, observing the chaos outside with a cup of ale in his hand.
‘These three asked to speak with you, my lord,’ said the lead soldier.
Lothar hadn’t noticed that they had stopped in front of a man on horseback. As he looked up he instantly knew whom he was addressing.
‘My Lord of Berkhopen,’ he greeted the man.
In front of him was an older version of Alexander. A long, bony face studied him. Devoid of the youthful foolishness of his son, this was the face of a man in control, used to getting what he wanted from people.
‘You know me, but I don’t know you. What are you doing on my lands?’ He waved a hand at the defeated soldiers, indicating the fate of those who invaded his territory.
‘We are the leaders of a mercenary band,’ said Lothar, immediately rejecting any thoughts he might have had of lying his way out of the situation. ‘We came here to take the correspondence between Lady Francoise and your son. The letters are very valuable to certain interested parties.’
‘So I understand. My son has been very stupid. And did you succeed in gaining said letters?’
‘Yes.’
‘And my son?’
‘We have him held captive here.’
Berkhopen didn’t react to this, but continued to study Lothar impassively.
‘And what is it you have come to speak to me about?’
Lothar wasn’t sure. He had the distinct impression that the Lord of Berkhopen would soon order the three of them to be killed on the spot. He turned to Anke, looking for some help.
‘We only wanted the letters,’ she said carefully.
‘Of course you did,’ Berkhopen agreed. ‘Why don’t we cut to the chase, here? I am a man of the world. I know full well that scum like you exist. As far as you’re concerned, it’s not personal.’
Lothar nodded.
‘You have my son. You’re trying to cut the best deal you can. Well, here it is. Return my son to me, and I will let you all ride out of my lands with no consequences. Anything less and you will all be made an example of, which will involve a slow and very painful death. Do we have a deal?’
Lothar swallowed, his mouth suddenly very dry. He shared a glance with Anke before turning back to Berkhopen. ‘Agreed. We will get him right away.’
Berkhopen inclined his head, before nodding to his soldiers.
Lothar, Anke and Peter turned around and began the walk back to the church.
‘So, that’s it, then?’ asked Peter as they walked, at pace, back to the church.
‘That’s the way it goes, sometimes,’ replied Anke. ‘Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. At least no-one got killed. We might have done it if it wasn’t for Stiff messing things up. Stiff?’ she said, turning to him. ‘What’s the matter?’
Lothar’s insides were churning. He looked across at her.
‘Just something Mirko said.’ He could hear how shaky his voice sounded. ‘When he asked me whether they wanted Alexander.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, sounding concerned. ‘He wouldn’t have done anything, would he?’
‘He would,’ said Peter flatly.
They half walked, half ran back to the church. Emil called out a greeting from the roof. Lothar ignored him. Gerard and Hild were standing outside.
‘Where’s Mirko?’ Peter demanded.
They shrugged.
Lothar flung open the doors. Two of Anke’s crew looked up. He walked past them. He had told Mirko to keep Alexander in the priest’s quarters at the back of the church. He strode down the aisle, Anke and Peter following close behind. He shoved aside the curtains. And there was Alexander.
The whole area was bathed in blood. It was up the walls, on the bed, even on the ceiling. Alexander’s body was slumped on a chair, his head sagging backwards and to one side. Multiple injuries covered his body: neck, torso, face. His hands were slashed and bleeding.
Mirko, perched on the bed, looked up at Lothar. His knife was still in his hands. He had made no effort to clean it and the front of his mail shirt was dripping in blood. He grinned knowingly, a gleam in his eye.
Anke and Peter entered. She gasped in shock.
‘You’ve killed us,’ said Peter, his voice sounding strange, devoid of emotion. ‘You’ve killed us all.’
I think you can leave now,’ said the missus.
Karl thought about it. She was right. He’d heard nothing outside for a good while now. He stood up, swaying a bit in that way you do when you’ve taken on a bit too much booze. He finished the dregs of his ale.
‘Thanking you,’ he mumbled and staggered to the door, letting himself out.
The fresh air hit him, and he had to wait awhile, swaying on his feet, before he felt steady enough to walk.
They’d left the bodies of the dead soldiers lying in the road, and the sight made him feel ill. Not to mention he needed a piss. His bowels gurgled. He needed more than a piss.
He wandered down the road for a bit. There was the church. Bodies lay strewn about, arrows sticking out of corpses. Only the devil knew what sights would assail him inside the building. His friends might be there, and he didn’t want to see that.
He walked in the opposite direction, on the other side of the road, away from the church and houses.
Something on the ground caught his eye. He grinned. The gods were looking out for him today. He reached down, taking the move nice and slow, and scooped up the pieces of parchment that had evidently been blown there by the wind.
He hugged them, admiring their soft texture. They were perfect.
He walked on a bit farther. To a good spot. Karl undid his string belt, letting his hose slide down his legs, and squatted down, the soft parchment with the spidery black text clutched in his hands.
DEMON DAYS: INTRODUCTION
Demon Days was written in 2019 for an anthology that never came to be. The theme was ‘rise above’ and was to be all about optimism in the face of depression, or similar hardship - quite different from Stiff’s Standoff, then.
This challenged me to write something a little different - no people hitting each other with swords here.
DEMON DAYS
SARI BLINKED as she struggled to open her eyes and then k
eep them open. She just wanted to drift back into oblivion. But she forced herself to move until she had managed to attain a sitting position on her bed.
‘Oh Lord Above, another day in your company. When will it end?’
There it was already, the voice that followed her everywhere, not giving her a chance to fully wake up before it began.
She turned to see her demon sitting on her desk, staring balefully at her.
Amorphous, it presented as a small, goblin-like creature, ridged skin a mix of black and green. Small dark eyes looked at her with hostility. Then it changed its appearance, transforming into Sari herself.
‘Here, want to take a look in the mirror?’
An ugly, bug-eyed, bucked-tooth girl stared at her now. When the demon had first shown her what she looked like, she hadn’t believed it. She remembered her mother always used to tell her how pretty she was. But she wasn’t sure anymore. Was her demon lying to her, or had her mother been?
Sari got washed and dressed, rushing to get ready for her first class. Her demon told her how much she smelt, how stupid she looked in her clothes. When she ate her breakfast, he told her how noisy and disgusting her chewing sounded. But he said the same things every morning, and she let his comments fade into the background.
She stopped at the door of her hut, steeling herself to leave.
‘Oh, are we scared to go outside, now?’ her demon asked. ‘We have become a pathetic waste of space, haven’t we?’
Sari opened the door and left.
* * *
Sari took the path that led from the accommodation block to the university. Others were making the same journey, and as she walked she began to hear the dry voices of adults in conversation, and the extravagant laughter of children messing about. The sound gave her a twinge in her gut. Since when did she fear the sound of laughter?
She tried to shrug the feeling off, but then a group of half a dozen children appeared from around the corner, walking towards her. She looked up at them and then straight back down to the path, worrying about having to walk past them. That twisting sensation in her gut returned, and a tightness in her throat. She could feel their eyes on her as she passed them, but they said nothing.
‘Did you actually flinch when you saw them?’ her demon asked.
He didn’t miss a thing, dwelling on every sign of weakness.
‘They were about three years younger than you!’ he marvelled.
Oh, shut up, she said to him, in her head. But he was right. What kind of miserable coward got intimidated by a group of children on their way to school?
* * *
‘I need facts!’ Sari’s schoolmaster demanded. ‘Your argument can’t stand without precise evidence.’
Sari racked her brain, trying to dredge up any information she could remember about the formation of the Maghdim Empire. She had not really understood the lessons, her mind wandering lost amidst a list of names and dates. Her brain didn’t work properly anymore—she couldn’t concentrate on anything, and now that she needed to recall what she had learned this term, it felt like walking through the sludgy mud of the riverbank where she had grown up. It would suck at her feet, not letting her raise her legs to move, stealing her shoes. It felt like that mud had somehow blanketed her mind, preventing it from thinking clearly, when once it had been sharp and agile.
Panangdaran the First had united traditional magical practices with the new national religion. But she thought that was some years after the formation of the Empire. Who had ruled before him?
She glanced briefly at the other three girls in the class. They were all looking at her with unreadable expressions.
‘They can’t believe how stupid you are, either,’ Sari’s demon told her.
The silence in the classroom stretched on and she had to fill it.
‘Panangdaran the First enacted policies—’
‘Panangdaran the First!’ roared her teacher, sounding incredulous. ‘Did he travel back in time some hundred years to give aid to his great-grandfather?’
Sari’s demon tittered at the joke.
He strode towards her. ‘What a waste, this education you receive for free, and have no respect for! What a waste of my time! We should send you back to whatever corner of the jungle you were plucked from!’
His stick came down, slapping her hard on the knuckles. It was the shame, more so than the pain, that made Sari turn red.
‘Kemala!’ the schoolmaster said.
The three girls turned around to face the front of the classroom.
‘Support Sari’s argument, please.’
‘King Seda passed a decree, On the Punishment of Users of Magic, in the year 391,’ said Kemala, reciting the history as if she were reading it from a text. ‘There were a range of punishments, with death only reserved for the more serious offences. Before the decree, death was the punishment for all use of magic.’
‘Fine,’ said the schoolmaster. ‘One precise fact that transforms an assertion into an argument. That’s all I ask for, Sari. A little effort on your part to learn the material.’
* * *
The lesson ended, the schoolmaster swirling out of the room without a backwards glance. The other three girls began talking together, deciding where they were going after school. They each had a little section of braided hair, with pale blue beads in, making them look similar. Sari thought it looked cute. She heard her demon laughing.
‘What are you going to do? Turn up in tomorrow’s lesson with those beads in your hair? That’ll be awkward. They’ll think you’re a bigger freak than they already do.’
Sari strode away, past the girls, out of the schoolroom. She didn’t know where she was going. The thought of returning to her hut by herself for the rest of the day filled her with dread, so she walked in the opposite direction, no destination in mind.
The jungle loomed ahead of her. The dense tangle of vegetation surrounded the campus. The university was a small oasis that had been carved out of the wilderness on the orders of the Emperor, perhaps to demonstrate his power over the land as much as any other reason. Sari didn’t know why it had been built at this location, far from any other settlement. She didn’t know why she had been plucked from her home and deposited here, when clearly, she was no good at anything.
On the outskirts of the university’s estate were the training yards, where the boys learned to become warriors. With nothing else to do, Sari wandered over to watch.
She saw Bakti exercising with a long spear. He would thrust it ahead, front leg stretching forwards as he did, then twirl the spear around and thrust in the opposite direction. He practised blocking up high and down low, and all the while his feet adjusted at dizzying speed, kicking up dust from the ground. He wore no top and Sari couldn’t help looking at his tanned skin, could see he was damp with sweat from the exercise. She thought it must be fine to be outside every day, working your muscles, instead of cooped up indoors with lessons, like the girls.
Bakti caught her looking at him and scowled.
Sari glanced away, as if she hadn’t seen it. She waited a few moments, so that it didn’t look obvious, then left the training yard.
Ahead of her now was only the jungle. Her legs took her there, leaving the university and its residents behind. She didn’t want to go. But equally, there was nowhere else she would rather be.
A path led through the trees. The jungle attacked it from both sides: creepers, branches, vines, all invading its boundaries to reclaim it, to eradicate the intrusion.
Sari knew that the path connected the university to other parts of the Empire, though she had little knowledge of the geography. A silly part of her thought that she might walk all the way back to her village and her family. But she had no idea how to get there. All she remembered was a long, meandering journey in the back of a cart, picking up other children on the way. It had taken four days to get to the university from her village. Even if she somehow found her way home, what then? Her parents would only have to send her back.<
br />
Sari left the path and walked in amongst the trees and thick vegetation. It was crowded with plant life, all struggling against one another for access to the sun and the rain. It was even more humid here. Sari felt the wetness on her skin. The sweet smell of flowering plants mixed with rotting leaves and damp earth. The birds in the trees filled the jungle with sound. She trudged along, her pace instantly so much slower than on the path, as she navigated fallen trees. Sari was at war with herself. A part of her was wary of going much farther, knowing that she would soon get completely lost, unable to return to the path. Another part of her wanted exactly that. All the while her demon floated along behind her. He was quiet; he almost seemed content.
Sari soon grew hot and tired. And after all, what was the point of walking farther? She wasn’t going anywhere. She sat down by a tree, resting her back against it. Her mouth was dry with thirst, but she hadn’t taken water with her. She cried for a while then, at the sadness that had led her to this tree in the middle of nowhere.
‘This is it, then?’ her demon asked her. ‘This is the end?’
Sari thought about it. ‘This is as good a place as any.’
‘You’re just going to sit there?’ he asked. ‘Sharpen a branch and do yourself in.’
The thought of stabbing herself didn’t appeal.
‘I will just sit here,’ she said. ‘The animals of the jungle will find me soon enough.’
‘That’s true,’ her demon replied, sounding satisfied with the plan. ‘There are only a few hours until night comes.’
He perched on a low branch, waiting for her to die.
* * *
Except the plan wasn’t so great. An army of ants were the first animals to find her. They began to climb up her legs and started to bite. Being eaten alive by ants was not what Sari had intended. Besides, sitting there just made her hot and bored. She got to her feet.
‘Where are you going?’ her demon demanded.
Mercs & Magi Page 5
