Take My Heart...: Dark Ages - Fantasy (Dark Gods & Tainted Souls Book 3)

by Schenk, Julius

Around him were the Pellosi gods. Shining marble statues, offerings piled high at their polished marble feet, glittering jewels in their eyes. He’d always hated them. Gods of trade, order, boring. Be a good boy and follow the rules, each one had a list of rules to follow. Don’t kill people, even your enemies, don’t eat this sort of meat, don’t have sex unless you’re married. Seth yawned and walked on past them.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine.

  Goldie had ridden hard for miles and miles, then he’d let himself fall asleep in the saddle. His new and wonderful horse, Raven, had simply slowed and began to walk on steadily towards Goldie’s destination. These courier horses were a breed apart it had run in the near dark of the moonlight for hours and never faltered. He woke to the feeling of a bright high sun warm on his face and to the sound of the rough loud laughter of men. Goldie was sagging in his saddle but righted himself before falling, grabbing the reins. Raven had stopped in front of a small roadblock. It was made of wooden stakes crossed against each other but stood open in the middle allowing people to pass single file only. Two armed men stood on either side laughing at him.

  “Oh damn, that cost me a gold, thought you’d fall for sure,” one of the men said.

  Goldie looked at them and knew he’d arrived. The two scruffy men leaned against the rough wooden spikes and looked like every piece of riffraff trouble makers he’d ever seen. Mismatched leather armor, nicked swords and one with a quiver and only three arrows, his bow hanging around his shoulder by the string, clearly they didn’t view him as a threat.

  “You were betting on if a sleeping man would fall from his saddle?” Goldie asked with a laugh, he liked them already.

  The other man smiled at him with broken teeth with one gold flashing back. He was a young desert man who looked like he’d been in more fights than he had had clean baths.

  “We sure were and you just made me a silver piece. I knew you’d have good reflexes, now friend what’s your name and what’s your business, this is an invitation-only road,” he said.

  He realized Raven had walked him all the way up to the gates. Behind the rough wooden structure was a town, a dirty shambling town with a lot of people drinking in the streets in the early morning but a town.

  “I’ve come to gamble, to win and to warn you all that the king has hired the Red Bastards to come and wipe you out,” he said.

  The two men started laughing.

  “The gambling I can believe but the king? He’s a nothing, we bribe our tax man and he leaves us alone, why would the king have a problem with us? He’s glad we keep out of his cities,” the first man said.

  “It’s about the lucky lady, he’s coming for her temple,” Goldie said.

  “He can fucking have it,” said the desert man.

  “Shut up you fucking heathen. I’m sick of your talk against her,” spat the first man to his friend. “Just ‘cause you always lose. You should know ugly people like you were born unlucky and just give up.”

  Goldie knew he spoke true, ugly people were considered very unlucky, dwarfs especially, though he’d always liked them, good drinkers mostly.

  “What’s all this? Tomorrow is the ladies day, is it about that?” the man said.

  Goldie had never even heard of her having a day. “What’s the ladies day?” he said.

  The man laughed. “Truly everyone has forgotten everything, still we remember, it’s the biggest day in this place, cards, dice, fights, games, drinking, at the end there is one man who wins and he wins big, all the entry fees of the others minus a percentage for the temple,” he said.

  It sounded fantastic to Goldie, he could warn these folks after they had had their fun, besides he had a feeling she wanted him to win. Right now he was a nobody, this township held at least a few hundred people and who knew how many would be coming for this, if he won he’d be in a position of respect as it were and have the clout to warn them right, plus a bit of gold in the pocket always helped, he could always bribe the Reds to do the right thing.

  “Fine, I’m here to enter,” Goldie said.

  “Which challenge?” the desert man said.

  “Fucking all of them,” said Goldie. He was sick of talking. He spurred Raven onwards and she walked slowly through the gap in the wooden fence. The two men just watched laughing as he went, probably trading bets as to if he would really enter them all. He doubted they would shoot him in the back, too lazy for that.

  Goldie walked his horse towards the township and took in a deep breath. It smelled familiar and good. Stale bodies, wine, and horse shit in the streets and it was not even midday. He trotted Raven past the small stone archway, a lone guard stood at the top didn’t even stand up to watch him pass. This place looked like a former army keep, it had decent walls but had clearly been running as a den of sin for too long. The walls were half crumbling and the gate looked too rusty too shut properly.

  Within the people all looked like him. Scum from all corners of the land. There wasn’t a consistent race or breed of people. He saw at least as many Pellosi as Northerners and many dark-skinned people as well. It was almost refreshing not to see any slaves. In Pelloss, there was almost one slave to every four people. You’d see them walking with either thick metal collars or fine silver ones depending on their station as slaves, yet they were all still someone else’s property. He was broken from his thought by a flash of color approaching him.

  “Good sir, take your horse?” a young boy with a dirty face came running up to him, reaching out and taking Raven’s reins.

  “You work for a tavern?” he said.

  “Nah dad runs the fish stall but we rent out our beds for the festival, two silvers, gives you a roof, bed and all the fish you can eat,” he said.

  “Great make it one and you’re on,” he said.

  Goldie jumped down off his horse, with a splash of mud, his boots sunk into the heels and it hadn’t rained in days, he didn’t want to think about it. He still had a large purse of coins and his note of trade, though he didn’t know what it would buy here, he’d have to play it safe and not show his gold too much if these people were anything like what he thought they would have no problems in easing his heavy burden.

  “Where’s your house?” he asked.

  “In the main market. I’ll lead on,” the boy said gently guiding Raven though the muck.

  Goldie looked at the lad. He’d not seen many Pellosi boys. He was lean and built like a lithe girl. Goldie at the same age had been a good head taller and probably weighed twice as much. Still he had deep brown eyes and thick brown hair that would serve him well with the ladies as he grew.

  “The festival, tell me about it,” Goldie said, as he followed the boy. They walked through the muddy streets passing food vendors and half-dressed women who waved and called out from the front yards of small shacks and houses. There were people thick in the street and the boys just pushed roughly through them yelling curses as he went.

  “Biggest day of the year, if you bet on the right man you’ll be set for the next year. I heard you say you’d go in all of them,” the boy said with a laugh.

  “Why’s that funny?” Goldie said back.

  “No doubt you’re good at something, most people who come here are but I doubt you’re the best at everything. Cards, dice, fist fighting, archery, drinking, arm wrestling and everything else, not only that it’s all on the same day. You going to win a drinking contest then a sword fight right after?” the boy said.

  Goldie hadn’t thought about it much but something told him he needed to enter in them all if he was going to show this rabble that the Lady was still worthy of worship they’d have to see here drunken champion in action.

  “What’s the prize,” he said.

  “Gold, lots of gold, it cost two coins to enter and more than a hundred men will, so you get that, minus a cut for the priests, they take ten percent, so possibly more than 180 gold coins,” the boy said his eyes sparkling.

  Goldie liked him too, he clearly had a gift for numbers and liked to
hear his own voice.

  “What else?” Goldie asked.

  He knew there was something else, something more important than gold. He shook his head, since when did he think something was more important than gold? We’ll women, that wasn’t that new, he thought it was normal women he could bed.

  “Oh you become the Lady’s consort for the year, you get a little ring and you’re the luckiest man in the realm for a year, but no one cares about that, you have to give the ring back at the end of the year. It’s just a tradition”

  “I’ll be married to her?”

  “No, consort, she just uses you like a mistress,” the boy laughed.

  “My dad won one year, spent the night in the temple, said it was cold and pointless, still the gold set him up in business.”

  They arrived at market. It was a collection of around ten badly built wooden stalls that baked in the sunshine. Almost all of them sold wine or cheap homemade booze of some kind in the familiar clay jugs he was so used to. The fish trader had the sense to cover his wares with a roof at least. They were all rows of very dried fish in heavy salt, he was wondering how the fuck they would keep it good.

  The man behind the counter smiled at him. Typical Pellosi merchant, fat and happy, sweating in the sun. He wore clothes in a poor man’s imitation of those proper traders he’d seen in the big cities but much more faded, dirty and old. Probably been wearing them for years since they were new and his pride and joy. The boy walked to his father and whispered quickly in his ear.

  “Taking the bed?” the man said with a smile.

  “Yep, where is it?” Goldie asked.

  “It’s just behind the stall we’ll pull a blanket out,” he said. “It would be better but by tomorrow this place will be bursting with a thousand people,” the man said back.

  Goldie just tossed him the coin and walked towards the temple.

  Chapter Twenty Seven.

  This boy was getting too far, too fast. He’d journeyed here with such easy and pushed his lumbering way through the first challenge so easily. He’d taken a few light injuries but then moved on. He could smell his blood on the sand of the arena but there was not nearly enough of it to matter. Worst of all he had help. They were breaking their own rules and guiding him. First that old meddler showed him the boat and the error of his ways, they let him prepare, then that black-haired bitch had actually changed the course of the battle so he’d win. He was meant to be lying dead in that sand now but instead he was alive and getting in the way of what had taken so much patience to prepare.

  He’d waited so long for this chance. Finally after years and years of silent work they were weak enough for him to try again. This time, they wouldn’t win and throw him away like a prisoner in his own castle. They thought people would forget him, who could forget fear, who could forget nightmares and the terror of the dark. He had his Order, his black dogs and the creeping stories and legends in the world of man, he was far from forgotten, unlike half of them. Time had been a much better friend to him than to them.

  That said the boy had unknowingly undone his best work. The many faced bringer, the face of the sun in this land and others. He’d weakened him in the human land. He’d converted his followers, destroyed his temples and finally, imprisoned the god on one plain. It had been all he wanted, an entire world of his own. Feeding him with the fear of millions of lost souls. Now that was in ruins. It was too late, though. He’d gained enough power to turn his whispers into commands and turned the Order from a few scared men to leading the kingdom of man. The boy would have a tough fight ahead of him.

  Now the boy was in the hall and even waking them up. He looked and saw the blonde girl looking at the statue. It was a wooden carving of a deer-like creature. Surely some stupid North spirit of something or other. There were so many, how could one remember them all?

  “I think he touched this one,” she said, she was still seeing little pieces of the recent past. They kept appearing to her and thus to him, her mind was open before him like a book in a library.

  He saw it in her mind, the North boy speaking its name tending to it. He saw it looked better than it had in his mind. He walked to the statue, listening hard he could hear it. The faint hum of life deep inside, that shouldn’t be there.

  “Hello, little friend,” he said to the Driaghhame statue. “Don’t you look well? Now, what are you going to do? Sing me to sleep?” He yelled in rage.

  Taking the wooden statues head in his bare hands he ripped if off with a burst of strength. Wooden splinters flew into the air, he felt the rage within him and let it go. The girl was scared by his outburst and it fueled him. He ripped the wooden Driaghhame statue apart, throwing the broken pieces of wood to the marble floor.

  “You should have stayed forgotten,” he said, panting with exertion. As he looked back and screamed in rage once again, the statue was back as it was before his attack. It stood peacefully and still, unmarked and uninjured.

  “Why is it back?” she said.

  “That’s how these things work, any attention is good attention, they are like plants, you just have to ignore them until they die, or dig out their roots” he said.

  Grabbing her hand he pulled her onwards, they marched through the pathway of statues. As he walked he started to feel better, the rage in his body was starting to leave and a smile came to his face. All along him were the broken and fallen statues of the work he’d done. Beings that thought they were so special now left to crumble into dust. Years before he’d be stopped, they would have had the power to halt him, fight him and throw him back in that cell, but now they were just crumbling memories, dead inside. Priests killed, stories ripped from the world and temples burned, soon he’d be the only one just as it should be, the first and the last, that honor was his.

  The girl pulled her hand from his and ran to a statue of a Pellosi god. It was the judge, her little friend.

  “Your patron, the Judge, you’ve been helping him without knowing it, every time you call on that power you give power to him.”

  The statue was strong and proud. A man with a book of laws in one hand and stern look on his face. He saw the crimes of the Pellosi and passed his judgment of them.

  She’d been giving him strength and so had all the Pellosi, he had temples all over and they called on him before they sentence someone in a court from criminal activities. He was strong, for a Pellosi god, but that was like saying someone was smart for a Northman or tall for a dwarf.

  He’d enjoy this, he could feel her emotions as she looked at the statue, she felt she’d let it down, she’d let herself down and deserved to be judged, he laughed to himself and putting his hand on the statue's forehead, concentrated hard. He opened his eyes and was in a different room, it was a vast empty space, at the very end he saw a man sitting in a large chair and he stood as he saw him.

  He heard a voice boom in his mind you shouldn’t be here it rocked the room with the power of its righteous anger. He grit his teeth and kept walking slowly onwards. He felt a force hitting his body, first it was like a heavyweight in his muscles, then pain, it was as if every fiber of him was on fire, he screamed in agony and collapsed to the ground. The judge walked up to him slowly as he lay on the ground writhing.

  I knew you’d come and I’m glad you finally can receive my judgment, he saw the man’s hand reach out for him and as it did his head was filled with visions of the many crimes performed for him. He saw all the people killed and destroyed in his name. He saw his red-shirted minions killing and felt the fear they created in their wake. He’d caused so much terror and death. The pain disappeared and he felt strong, the judgment only made him stronger. He stood and looked at the shocked face of the Judge, grabbing the man-god by his shoulder he smashed forehead hard into his face. The Judge staggered back bleeding, clothing his face in shock and growing fear.

  “I never felt any guilt, only pride” he yelled as he dived on to the man and started hitting him again and again.

  Chapter Twenty Eight.<
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  Josette was led at sword point by three women, she could feel the blade lightly touching her back. Angelina walked at their head, leading the way through the vast temple that was their home. She counted, at least, twenty guards they passed along the way, all women, they bowed deeply to Angelina as she passed.

  She led the way into a fine bedroom that was lit by a few candles and darkened. She saw Minsetta was sitting slumped in a chair with her hands bound in front of her, a small trickle of blood tainting the corner of her mouth. Angelina waved the guards away and gestured Josette to go to her friend. She went to Minsetta but she was fine, just a bit roughed up, she looked more angry than scared. She had a fire in her eyes Josette hadn’t seen before and she knew that all her courtesy and manners were just a front and that this woman was indeed a killer as well.

  “Sorry for the ropes sister, just a precaution, and feel free to try your dirt tongue chanting, it won’t work here, we are protected by the righteous fury,” she said, making no moves to untie her. The woman walked to a small polished wooden stand and poured herself only a small drink of wine and came back, glass in her hand.

  “Sister?” Josette asked.

  “Oh not blood, clearly.” Minsetta was a goddess next to this scarred fighter. “Sister of the order I mean”

  “I was never one of you sexless harpies,” Minsetta said darkly looking up and glaring at the woman.

  “True enough” she said, then turning to Josette, “we took her in, hid her, fed her, trained her and nursed her injuries and then when she was the strong proud creature you see now and we ask just a small favour of her, she runs,” the woman literally spat as she spoke the words. “Turned her back on us.”

  “I never believed as you do, so I left, would you rather I lie to your face and tell you I cared about any of this shit,” she yelled back.

  “Believed? Believed you saw the proof, we showed you it all,” Angelina yelled back, and she pulled out a small blade from behind her.

  “Enough of this, why are you here? And not from your liars lips, no your little redhead friends,” she said.