A Forgotten Soul: The Vegard Orlo Saga

by Daniel Sexton

  The guards eyeballed the dingy pair with open hostility, their hands resting heavily upon the pommels of their weapons.

  “I’d take yer hands far away from them weapons, boys!” Rorak hooted. “Otherwise, I might be takin’ em for myself.” He opened his leather jacket to reveal an arsenal hidden beneath.

  The troop scurried away, supposedly not paid well enough to scuffle with the ornery tracker and dark, hooded companion.

  “Ah, shits…” Rorak grunted. “Was hopin’ to get an early mornin’ brawl in. Ah, well.”

  “I need to make my way.” Vegard said, ignoring the exchange.

  “To that vineyard?”

  “Right. But how?” Vegard tapped his lip.

  “Oh, I’ve done dis business before. As long as you still prattlin’ that coin around.” Rorak grinned.

  The tracker explained his plan—rent or purchase a merchant caravan, travel to the estate, gain entrance as distributors or some such businessmen, met with Shaw, then have at it.

  It was a might bit better than Vegard’s plan of—run head first into the compound siphoning from anyone he saw till the eventual chaos of the situation brought the lord merchant to bear—then stab him in the neck.

  “To each his own, I suppose.” Vegard shrugged.

  The tracker and him went about early morning KaHari gathering the supplies they’d need. They rented two transports. One was a beautifully decorated horse-drawn carriage. Elegantly painted in greens and gold with large black wheels, a bell shaped body, and velvet curtains. A very opulent looking land vessel that would definitely create cause to assume the passengers were men and woman of importance.

  The other was a caravan that attached to the carriage. Rorak purchased, with the warlock’s money, some expensive sheets of cotton, silks, furs, and various spices. The two loaded those in the back cart giving them the illusion of genuine merchants or traders.

  “I’m thinkin’ I could spend your entire fortune here, warlock!” Rorak jested as they made their way through the darkened back alleys of the black market.

  Illegal items from all around Vlero were as easy to come by as a cup of wine. Mind-numbing powders, scrolls, magical gems, devilish books with radical ideas. All of it was here and within arms reach, if one had the coin to purchase it.

  Vegard wondered if there was an incantation here that could push his soul back inside his body. Or a powder that could warm his insides. Allow him to forget the constant bone aching cold that he could not be shaken. The vendors promised miracles and more. But their souls gave them away. They were selling temporary relief. An empty shell with a broad smile.

  “Let’s go.” Vegard said. There was only one way he knew to relieve himself of undeath. And he was but a carriage ride away from his intended cure. “Time to tell the others of this crazy plan.”

  Vegard had Rorak stay outside the nameless inn with the horses and caravan. He wanted to break the news as softly as possible to the volatile hver that they’d be traveling with the tracker that had attacked them in Dawns Fero.

  “Are you out of your mind!?” Wera screamed.

  “I don’t know if you want me to answer that.” Vegard had his hands up. The little chenway was barking in response to raised voices. It just added to the chaos of the scene. Noise for the sake of annoyance.

  “That’s not a one I can forgive, Vegard. He’s a tracker of slaves. I was a slave.”

  “Yes, but he wasn’t tracking you. He was tracking me. If anyone should have cause to be offended it is I. But we can use him. That’s all I care about.”

  “Maybe he be turnin’ over a new leaf, ya think, Wera?” Fulvia chimed in positively. “Fer the mistakes of his past.”

  Even Vegard didn’t believe that. “Look. He’s a bastard. I know it.” Vegard said. “But I don’t know any of us that isn’t. I have my own past, that’s for sure.”

  “I feel okay with myself.” The druid said. “Ain’t got nothin’ to atone fer, as far as I can say.”

  “You’re a wonderful help, Fulvia.” Vegard rolled his eyes.

  Wera was still bristling with indignation. The very thought of traveling in the same caravan with the slave tracker visibly repulsed the hver.

  “Why him? What good does he serve?” She finally said.

  “He’s a tracker.” Vegard said sternly. “And rather than wandering around Temuria…a land not a bloody one of us knows, with our heads up our asses, he can get us directly where we need to go.

  “You didn’t see what I saw today. The way he could pull information out of people. The confidence.”

  “Ya! Cause he’s a manipulating, lying piece of trash!”

  “Exactly my point.” Vegard huffed. “And I’d love to have that working for us instead of against us. We’re going to need em to get into Shaw’s estate.”

  Vegard knew she would have to see the logic in that. This was the man’s job. If anyone could get them through security checkpoints, talk their way into legitimacy, and get their group that much closer to Shaw without notice or question, it would be Rorak.

  Not that it made any of them more comfortable with the idea of working with the tracker. This wasn’t going to be a comfortable journey for any of them.

  Wera began to gather her things. Stuffing her bag violently and hoisting her spear over her shoulder.

  “Fine, then. If that’s how it has to be. But, one smart-ass comment outta his slaver mouth…” She shifted her spear in none too subtle a way.

  Vegard could only shrug in assent. If the possibility of murdering Rorak was the only way to get his party to the estate then he would take it.

  The group gathered their things from the nameless inn and checked out.

  The knarr was left, abandoned in the cavernous lagoon of the Dyn building. Fulvia promised the craft she would be back for it soon, as if the vessel had a spirit of its own.

  Not one that Vegard could sense, but then again, he only worked in souls. The wind was real too, yet no soul he could use, therefore its emotional worth was none of his concern—the same went for this boat.

  They loaded their possessions in the back of the new caravans and jumped aboard.

  Wera slammed the carriage door shut without so much as glancing in Rorak’s direction. Not that it looked to bother the tracker much, if the man even noticed.

  Rorak was too busy climbing aboard as the coachman of this ragtag group of would-be assassins. The boorish tracker looked odd at the head of such an extravagant carriage.

  His burly hands wrapped around the reins and ushered the expensive beasts forward.

  Vegard could only hope beyond hope that luck was on their side. Flaro Rei’Lind had been all but silent since before the attacks of the holy warriors in Dawns Fero.

  Why? Was there still a war being waged in Storrhale? Did circumstances change for the worse? Or was the goddess just a selfish higher being that didn’t feel it necessary to keep this ambling, fool, warlock up to date?

  Damn you, goddess. I’ll be killing your precious merchant. Then I’m on my own.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Morbid Reminder

  The horses clomped along on the hardened packed road leading out of KaHari. The rugged tracker, Rorak prodded the beasts forward.

  Wera was keeping her distance from the distasteful man. Half the time she spent in raven form, scoping the landscape and keeping a keen eye on the unscrupulous tracker, the rest was spent curled up in the caravan in the back.

  Vegard kept his mangy hood about him as he scanned the surroundings from the comfort of the merchant’s carriage.

  He wasn’t sure how accurate the accounts of their thievery had become. If bounty hunters were about looking for a northman warlock and a dark skinned hver, then Vegard meant to keep as low a profile as possible. If Fulvia meant to keep a low profile then she sure wasn’t helping as she lounged about upon the top of the carriage, taking in the surrounding lands and baking her ever pale skin in the hot
Temuria sun.

  Every time the group passed upon a landmark of some sort the tracker would begin shouting a tale of his. Some past job that had him heroically tackling some impossible task or disrupting a rebellion of one sort or another. None of them were really listening but his gravely voice was hard to block out. This would be the times Wera happened into the air—more like than not, to keep her distance from Rorak.

  Vegard found Rorak as repulsive as Wera surely did. But there was still that tinge of guilt within his undead heart.

  How much like that tracker he had once been, before his capture and servitude. A desperate mercenary of vile apathy. Rorak had just seemed to embrace that life of paid moral ambiguity. That’s where the two veered course. Perhaps Vegard was the better man for it. Or worse, because he had the ability to differentiate and took the work anyways.

  Or was it societies indifference to the warlock that made it so easy to take such dirty jobs?

  It is hard to feel an obligation towards a people that shun you. Even now, Vegard wasn’t doing it for the peoples of Vlero. He was doing it to castoff this curse.

  Maybe I am still the same as the tracker. I am only doing a seemingly good deed for my own gain.

  Chenway bounced into his face, breaking his thoughts. It twirled about at the nape of Vegard’s neck and dug his cold nose into the warlock’s ear.

  “Gods!” He smiled but pushed the little thing down, petting the top of its apple shaped head to appease the creature. Chenway reeled for a bit before settling and wrapping itself into a pile of fur in his lap. “Well, if you can approve of me, little one, mayhaps there’s some redemption for me as of yet…”

  A darkness enveloped Vegard’s senses. His eyes shot open and his pale form broke out in an instant cold sweat.

  What is this? A wave of distress washed over him. Piercing screams could be heard all around him. A phantasmal chorus of misery, of torture, of death. Cupping his head didn’t help. The voices resounded from within and all around. Vegard was defenseless to the onslaught of unfiltered agony.

  He didn’t realize he had pushed Chenway off his lap. He didn’t feel his hands groping for the interior bronze door handles of the carriage. He didn’t even feel as his body fell to the dusty pathway blow the cart, legs barely missing the overly large wooden wheels that would’ve surely crushed his bones like dried leaves.

  The cart skidded to a halt and the alarm of his company rose up to join the tortured screams that echoed through his head. Hands were about him, turning him over, touching his face. Vegard could barely open his eyes to the screeching that pulsed through his skull.

  “What is that noise?” He barely heard himself ask. Yet, as the words left his lips the screams began to die away. His surroundings were much as he had left them. The dying sun was casting its pink shadow across the clear sky. Chenway had worriedly crawled on his master’s belly and was pawing feverishly at his leather tunic. Vegard pushed the little dog down and pulled himself up to a lightheaded, seated position.

  Fulvia and Wera were close by. Rorak hadn’t left his position as the coachman.

  “Had yerself a fall now, didcha?” The tracker laughed.

  “Shut your mouth, servant!” Wera barked but the man just chuckled, turning away and lighting the stub of his cigar.

  “What the hell happened, Vegard?” Wera asked. A worry in her voice very uncustomary towards the warlock.

  “I don’t…” Vegard shook his head. The tumult of agony still leaving tracers in his thoughts. The anguish like the coals of a dying fire. “Never have I felt such pain…”

  “Pain?” Wera couldn’t understand. “From what? You’re fine.”

  A choking sound got their attention. The two turned to see Fulvia standing upright and still. Her limbs were shaking like trembling branches in a storm. Her eyes were filled with tears that flowed freely down her pale cheeks.

  “What abomination be this?” The druid whispered fiercely.

  The company’s gaze followed the druid’s down the path.

  “Mother o’ the gods…Not seen a thing like this, for sure.” The tracker mumbled.

  A few yards ahead descending down to the valley below opened up to a forest of perversion. Hundreds of bodies strung up on thick pikes buried freshly into ground lining the pathway. Each stripped naked and cooked in the sweltering heat of the hungry sun. All manner of race, sex, and age were represented amongst the dead.

  The pikes were burrowed through many whilst others were lucky enough to have just been tied to the simple devices. Every face shrouded in a rich red silk with the emblem of Abaniel painted shrewdly on each.

  Vegard stumbled his way to the first by the side of the dusty road. His charred fingers fondled their way timidly up the grotesque wooden pike to the cold feet of its victim. He clenched the toes in his hands. His eyes closed, the scene playing out before him like an almost forgotten play.

  When his eyes opened his companions had gathered near.

  “Watcha see, soul-drinker?” Rorak said from atop the carriage.

  “These were criminals.” Vegard started slowly. “From the slums of Prispin. Rounded up by the church. Bound together and marched out here to the borders of civilization.”

  “Criminals?” Fulvia asked.

  “Petty thieves. They are meant to be a warning sign. To any that steal from the great Darold Shaw.”

  “He means to undue what we’ve done to his reputation.” Wera gawked.

  Rorak grunted. This was an unnerving situation, even to the veteran tracker, one could tell. “Seems he’s marked his land, then. Won’t be avoiding this scene, that’s for sure. Let’s get goin’. Les’ you guys have lost yer stomach?”

  The scene would be burned into the mind of the warlock till the end of times, he knew. But he surely had not lost his stomach for continuance. If anything, he felt a burning pang to help the mighty lord on his way to the afterlife, but—not with the swiftness he had been planning.

  “Let’s get moving! Not much we can do for these poor souls.” Vegard snapped.

  The carriage clambered solemnly through the forest of the dead. Another decaying body dangling a few kilometers from the next. They were spaced specifically to never give a traveler any reprieve from the sensory overload. The vultures were about in droves as the sun set in the eastern lands. Their screams and yelps only adding to the horror of the fading scene. The birds took no pity on any of what the persons may have been. The little ones were the worst to see. The ravenous bickerings of a flock of beasts amongst the decimated form of some youth.

  Vegard had almost sent a prayer of thanks to the gods as the waining sun’s light finally disappeared. Only, as the sun fell, an additional injustice took fold. On the draped faces of the tortured dead the painted emblem of Abaniel began to glow. The conjuring effect lighted the torch emblems and each of the hundreds of men and women, little boys and misshapen girls, began to glow like freakish street lanterns.

  The crew watched as the forest of dead became a festival of illuminated horrors. The vultures danced around their feast without so much as a breath skipped. Their shadows skipping across the lighted valley. So many were the dead that it seemed an unnatural day to the travelers.

  “This be a scene from me worst nightmares.” The druid said.

  Vegard could hear Wera atop the traveling caravan. A deep growling resounded from her chest as she was set about on all fours like a wild woman. She dug her spear into the wooden roof and clawed viscerally with her long nails. He almost told her to escape to the caravan. To try as she might to push this horrific sight from her mind. But he knew she wouldn’t. In fact, the hver looked to be drinking it all in. A lesson in the cruelty they were about to face.

  And a validation for justice.

  As the sun crested the valley the following day the troop had finally left the wooded horrors behind them. The amount of wanton cruelty they had marched through worked as a numbing resolve to those in their company. Even
the callous Rorak had failed to make light of any of what he had just witnessed.

  Maybe your soul isn’t as hard as your skin, tracker, Vegard had thought to himself. The voices of the damned still pained the warlock like a night of heavy drinking. Their pangs lingered in his mind. His floating soul even appeared diminished and pale by his side. It was a cold worse than that of his empty self. It was a cold reminder of the evils of man. A realization that one of Vlero needn’t traverse the jarro realm of demons to truly understand the weight of such degradation. Mortals had it in spades.

  I swear, Flaro Rei’Lind…the place I send this merchant better be worse than the realm he is coming from. Vegard vowed. If not, I will track him down in the afterlife and forcibly drag him to a hell of my own making.

  The group eventually came to a stone outlook on the pathway to the vineyard. A guard tower built along the side of the road. Four soldiers were already awaiting at ground level as the caravan approached. One was perched in the tower. His bow hand was full and quiver an arrow lighter.

  “I’m one ta think I should be doing all the talkin’.” Rorak warned. “Ya’ll seem to be a mess of it, right now.”

  No one tended to agree or disagree but steeled themselves all the same. Wera wore a fine cloak purchased from KaHari. She tucked her spear in a secreted overhead compartment of the carriage. Vegard donned leather gloves to masked his scarred hands. The rest of his dress would be suitable to a man of higher station.

  The cart pulled to a stop next a guard with outstretched hands.

  “Mornin’ fellas!” The tracker greeted with a grinning mouthful of silver teeth.

  “Good day, travelers. What’s your business at the Shaw estates?” The guard was polite but blunt. Assuming the amount of caravans that must come and go from this estate would hopefully prove to work in the group’s favor. Rorak didn’t skip a beat. The experienced tracker was born for the work of subterfuge. He reached assuredly in his dark red coat, past his many jangling trinkets, and produced a piece of parchment.