by B R Crichton
“But we are a peaceful village. We pay our taxes.” Harman tried to reason. “I know that some villages have fought against the occupation, but we have accepted…”
“You know?” The soldier leaned forward in his saddle. “What do you know? Do you have information that may be of use? Will you freely divulge these things, or would a few hours on the rack draw them from you?”
Harman bowed his head and fell silent.
“I thought not,” sneered the soldier. He continued to stare at Elder Harman, daring him to make eye contact again.
“The law is clear,” he repeated. “Gatherings of more than five people are prohibited without the express permission of the local governor. Me. Any infringements of this law will be seen as collusion. We found no fewer than six such conspirators in the forest not an hour from here.”
Kellan’s chest tightened. He knew that his father had gone out in a group of six to cut wood, and was certainly not among the crowd.
“Once again, the law is clear. You may cut their bodies down in five days.”
They washed over Kellan like ice, those words, spoken so casually. So casually in fact that he was sure he had misheard.
Elder Harman raised his hand gingerly. “It is our custom to cremate the dead before a full day has passed.”
“Indeed,” the Governor said. “Then perhaps carrying the rotting remains of your co-conspirators back with you will focus your minds on where your loyalties lie. They have not been hanged so high that the wolves cannot reach for a nibble. They will be lighter, no doubt.”
The soldiers laughed.
A cry rang out from the crowd and someone burst through; Dillon Arraman, a big youth, who would be old enough to go out with the men next year. An axe had left his hand before the three arrows thudded into him, cutting off his roar. The heavy felling axe tumbled through the air regardless, and buried itself in the chest of one of the soldiers. Three swordsmen fell upon the young man and stabbed him repeatedly even as the soldier fell silently backwards. The axe stayed lodged in the chest of the stricken man, who pawed at it futilely, gasping his last breaths.
For a moment the crowd teetered on the edge of chaos. Those at the back jostled to get further forward, feeling both emboldened by the young man’s attack and cowed by his swift death. The bowmen drew beads on the crowd as it edged forward, the swordsmen ready, and through it all Elder Harman called for calm and the Governor barked his orders.
“Be still!” Harman called, his hands raised above his head and facing his people now. “Be still or we will all die. Please, people, be still.”
Slowly the crowd settled and the soldiers lowered their guard. The Governor was strutting back and forth behind the cordon of soldiers. “Who is that man?” he shouted, “Bring me his wife and children! I will have them disembowelled before you all.”
Fuming, the Governor continued to pace his horse. “Bring me that man’s family!” he bellowed again.
“He has no family, my lord,” Elder Harman said pleadingly. “He has not yet married and both his mother and his father succumbed to fever these past two winters.”
The Governor was thoughtful for a moment. “Then you, Elder Harman, pick one of your people to die in their stead.”
The stunned Elder gaped, lost for words, glancing around at the villagers with his hands out in a show of helplessness.
“One person, Elder. Choose or I will choose five myself,” spat the Governor.
“I am his mother,” a voice sounded.
Everyone looked to see who had spoken.
“I was his mother,” Kellan’s mother corrected herself quietly.
Kellan gasped. Why would she lie about being Dillon’s mother? He was an only child, the whole village knew that. Dillon’s father was out cutting wood with his pa, his mother somewhere in the crowd.
“You.” said the Governor, bringing his horse to a halt before the kneeling woman. “That’s your boy?”
She bit her lip, shutting her eyes tightly, and nodded.
“Then isn’t your home a veritable rat’s nest of subversion and deceit. I do not like being lied to, woman. When I asked earlier if you had children, you told me you had none.”
She was crying now, and great sobs racked her body. The women to either side put a hand on her shoulder as she spoke through the tears.
“What was that?” the governor asked.
She steadied herself and looked up at the man, her head held high. “I was trying to protect my boy. I would do anything to protect my boy.”
Kellan gasped. Why would she need to lie about him?
The Governor regarded her for a few moments. She refused to be stared down and held his gaze defiantly until he sighed and reined his horse away to the cart of children, still bound and crying. They tried to draw back from him as he leaned over.
“The law is clear,” the Governor said again, returning to his position in front of the women. “The conspirators have been executed, and the law goes further as you well know. To stamp out this insurrection before it can grow, the families of those executed must also die. So let it be known; should anyone harbour notions of rebellion, not only will your own life be forfeit, but that of your family too. Wives, husbands, and any offspring old enough to carry a weapon will also be executed. Two of those we found in the forest were kind enough to have a son with them. Those too young,” he gestured towards the cart of children, “will be taken elsewhere in the Empire to labour for the greater good. We are not monsters. Their efforts may go some way to repay the debt their parents accrued.”
Elder Harman stepped forward and began to speak, but the Governor cut him off, “One more word from your lips, old man, and I will have you all burned in your homes. Every last one of you.”
When he was happy that the Elder would not interrupt, he continued. “You will all witness this. Radim!” He shouted the last.
Kellan saw a man walk around from beyond the wagon. He had been hidden from view, but now he lumbered around to the women. His head and face were covered with a leather cowl, and his leather waistcoat left his massive arms and shoulders bare. He carried what looked to Kellan like a giant pair of shearing secateurs with handles the length of a grown man’s leg and two viciously sharp looking scythes that curved in towards each other, crossing fully.
Two soldiers stood at either side of each woman, then gripped an arm each and held them still. Tessar Bidean was dragged forward first, the soldiers pulling on her arms so that she was spread-eagled and unable to move at all, with her blouse now hanging about her waist. She tried to resist but the soldiers hauled harder on her arms until she cried out and stopped struggling. The big man, Radim, stood in front of her. He pushed the shears apart until the handles were wide and rested one curved blade on each of her shoulders, then gently brought the handles a little closer until the points met behind her neck.
Her breathing was fast and shallow, her neck circled with bright steel. She knelt there in the stony silence, naked from the waist up, eyes tightly shut until the Governor muttered a command.
Radim brought the handles together with a grunt. Steel sang on steel for a brief moment and the soldiers released the headless body to flop limply to the ground. Kellan fell back, numb. The only sound he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears like the roar of a huge torrent in the spring melt, or a winter gale howling through the peaks. His chest pounded with his racing heart as he scrabbled out from beneath the wooden boards of the porch, eyes burning with dust and tears.
He scrambled to his feet and looked up as the bloodied scythes slowly closed, forming a ring around his mother’s neck, her arms stretched out beside her by two soldiers. He tried to yell out but his throat constricted, and he realised he hadn’t drawn breath since seeing the fate of Tessar Bidean. He gulped down a lungful of air. At that moment, his mother turned her head to him and locked his gaze. She relaxed from her struggles and simply looked at him, a wave of emotions crossing her face. He saw fear and sadness, deep, deep sorrow,
but her eyes held only love: love that bridged the gap between them. She was only yards away, yet utterly out of his grasp.
As the scythes closed, Kellan screamed, an animal scream, primal in its power; and he felt something welling up within him, filling him to bursting point and building, building until all around him began to fade. He felt a buzzing in his core like a shaken hornets’ nest ready to burst open. His vision tunnelled on his fallen mother, but he did not see the severed head or bloody body. He only saw that look. Her gaze which spoke of a mother’s immeasurable love for her child. She was seared into his mind, and more unreachable than ever.
Something in his shout must have stirred the crowd into action, for the soldiers turned in his direction, and as one, the villagers pounced. Spurred by mutual fear and loathing, anger and shame, they ran at the soldiers, bearing down on them with fists clenched. While Kellan’s mind swam, the soldiers fought back. Fists and feet were no match for swords and arrows and the villagers began to fall as the massacre began. He was jolted back to reality as a fleeing woman fell on him, an arrow in her back. He never knew who it was, his mind was so fragmented, his thoughts so distant and muffled, but he heard the one word she uttered as he pulled himself from beneath her.
“Run!”
It was like waking from a lazy morning doze, thoughts suddenly becoming coherent, control returning to his body. He turned and ran.
Kellan sprinted down the narrow path between fields, the cries of the villagers like needles in his ears. Their dying screams chased him down the track. He did not look back, even when he heard the thunder of hooves gaining on him. Another fifty strides would take him into the trees where the mounted soldiers would struggle to follow. His lungs burned with the effort and his legs threatened to give way as he closed on the relative shelter of the trees. He heard a horse’s hooves scuffle and skid across the ground as the rider reined it in just as he barrelled into the woods. He headed downhill, not sure exactly where he was going, but down was easier, and that was where he was most likely to find refuge in another village, though he did not know the way to one.
The shouts grew distant and eventually died out altogether, and Kellan allowed himself a moment to rest. He collapsed on the mossy ground, breathing hard. He looked at his legs and saw how cut and scraped they were from his flight through the trees. His arms, too, had been scratched, and blood wept from his flesh in beads.
He had never felt so utterly lost. Once, last summer, he had wandered too far into the woods and lost his way. His pa, Jaim, had found him before nightfall, and carried him back in his strong arms. It seemed as though he was no distance at all from the village back then, yet he was lost without doubt. Now, he was not only further from the village than he had ever been, but there was no possibility of return or rescue. He could not cry any more, so he sat and hugged his thin legs to his chest.
Then he heard voices from up the slope. They were searching for him. He rose quickly and ran again, glancing over his shoulder from time to time, listening for his pursuers. Suddenly he crashed into a pile of branches, sending him sprawling on the damp, rocky ground.
He slowly looked up, and to his horror saw feet, dangling not a hand’s width from his face. Every fibre of his being urged him not to look up, to run blindly away, but before he could stop himself he had raised his head.
He screamed. Before him, hanging from a bough, was his father. Face swollen and purple, eyes glazed. And then, like hammer blows, one by one he saw the other five victims, scattered about the edges of the small clearing, tongues bulging from between purple lips. He scratched at his face, trying to erase the images, but his father’s lifeless eyes glared through his frantic hands.
Gagging on the bile that filled his throat, he tore himself away from that place and ran, stumbled, crawled across the stones and dust. Horrors clawed at his back no matter how quickly he went, always just a hair’s breadth from tearing him down and devouring his mind. The back of his neck burned as he plunged on down the mountainside, too terrified to look back. Then his terror was joined by something more powerful.
He felt something terrible rise within him; a horrifying, yet welcome release from the visions that filled his mind. Even as he stumbled on down the slope, he felt a furnace of rage start to burn in the pit of his belly, and a roaring in his ears cut out the sounds of snapping branches and stones sent tumbling down the steep slope. He felt no pain when he tumbled and skidded on the sharp rocks, was barely aware of his surroundings at all, only the volcano building in his core.
On he ran down the mountainside, not caring where he was going, only away. Away from the memory of his mother’s death, his father’s dangling corpse. Away from blood, and swollen faces; headless bodies; terror. Unaware of passing time or distance he plunged on, fuelled by anger, giving himself freely to it, offering his soul to the rage within so that it could scour those images from his mind. He did not care if his being was swept away with it, so long as it took those awful memories and gave him peace, or oblivion.
He fell; weightless in free-fall for blessed seconds before hitting the icy river. The shock smashed away the muzzy walls that had almost shut him from the world outside, forcing him back to reality. Rage shattered like glass, giving way once again to fear, and despair as the foaming waters whisked him down rapid after rapid, tossing him, plunging him, dragging him down before throwing him up for a brief staccato gasp of air, then on down the torrent.
Then into free-fall once more, the roar of the waterfall echoing round the steep sided valley, but in those moments in space, a calm fell upon him. A perfect stillness. Detached as he was from the world, those blessed seconds freed him from his pain, both from the overwhelming sense of loss he felt, and from the damage to his battered body. The world was an arm’s length away, and rushing beside him as he began the calm slide downwards. Here in this place, above the water with its icy needles, below the jagged peaks with stones that cut flesh, he was untouchable, and utterly, utterly safe. He was in the womb, wrapped in soft torpor, the only sound, that of his mother’s heart. It had time to beat twice.
Then into the depths once more.
This time with no more fight to give.
The Emissary watched from his place of safety, drawn to this boy with a strength he had never before felt. Fate drew all emissaries to the lives of heroes, and tragedies in the making. It was how stories were gathered to be written in the ‘Book of Lives’, since the Gods appointed them to their sacred duty. He did not care to guess at the number of tales he had told in those great halls, for the entertainment of his fellow Emissaries, whilst Athusilan transcribed the stories onto the pages of his Book.
He had been witness to the telling of many times more. Lovers, heroes, villains and kings, rulers, usurpers, the low and the mighty; if they had a story worth telling, the Emissaries were drawn to them. Observe and tell, watch and report. So it went on, saving the deeds of the worthy on the Many Worlds from the heedless persistence of time.
And this child drew the Emissary along his path, with an irresistible intensity. The Emissary was unable to stray from this tale, held transfixed in these the final moments of the young boy’s life. He watched the tiny body thrown from the precipice, plunging down towards the heaving waters below, and knew that this was the end of the thread. This little life that had pulled him in, as surely as a nail to a magnet, was coming to an end.
So why the attraction? He had been drawn to the child, not the dark swarm of the Daemon that had taken residence within. He knew too what that dark swarm meant. Knew the fate of this world as certainly as the others he had seen, or heard of, when the Daemon had arrived in those places. Yet as the child was sucked down into the cold depths the lure grew stronger. He followed as the life force guttered within the small body and watched from his seclusion; bewitched by events.
It could not end here, surely.
Then, without thought, he reached a hand into the boy’s world, across a chasm never meant to be bridged, and grasped the tiny
wrist.
Pain. He had never felt pain before. The icy waters stabbed at his skin, inflicting sensations never meant to be experienced by a being created for another plane. The bridge between the Emissary and boy became so much more than a physical one. The Emissary was at once invigorated, and appalled.
Was this really what being alive on the Many Worlds felt like? How did they endure it?
He dragged the boy from the water, placing the limp body on the bank, and withdrew his hand in horror. As sensation fled, realisation dawned. No Emissary had ever touched the Many Worlds. It was unthinkable for them.
Then, a tremor that had started at the moment he reached for the boy, but he had not acknowledged, reached a level he could not ignore. His plane had been rocked by the incursion, and shuddered in protest.
There would be a reckoning.
Chapter Two
Beginnings…
The Emissary felt the eyes of his peers on him as he walked the length of the Hall. They were standing in groups or alone, suddenly quiet, silently watching as his soft footsteps echoed in the vaulted ceiling. He came to a stop a few paces short of the long table, at the head of which sat the white haired Athusilan. The scribe wrote steadily in the ‘Book of Lives’, pausing only to dip his quill into the ink pot set on the table to his right. He did not look up, even as his pen stopped midway between pot and page. Then he spoke.
“It is a terrible thing,” he began. “What you have done has no precedent. I have filled these pages with the deeds of Men, as instructed since the creation. You, for your part, have brought the stories to me. To us.” He indicated the other Emissaries with a wave of his quill. “Always without bias or favour. I believe it was you who told the tale of the massacre of Bennazir, though the only part you played was that of an Emissary. It was you, too, who brought the tragedy of Mal’manath to our ears, and yet again you did not interfere. How many lives do you think have felt the hand, benign or otherwise, of an Emissary?” He gestured at the Book of Lives.
