Blood Mercenaries Origins

by Ben Wolf

  Calarook pinned Kent on his back, mounted him, and bared his bloody teeth. He raised his right arm to throw a punch.

  Kent shifted hard to his right and pumped his knees into Calarook’s back. The force sent Calarook’s punch careening wide, and Kent wrapped his arm around Calarook’s head, anchoring it close to his shoulder.

  It gave him a moment to breathe, but it didn’t last long. Calarook twisted and reared back up.

  Kent’s red cape lay half under his own body and half to his right side. He could use it if he could get enough of it in his hands.

  Calarook readied himself for another punch, Kent performed the same evasion as before, only this time he didn’t try to hold Calarook’s head down with his arm.

  Instead, he wrapped a length of the cape around Calarook’s head and fed it to his other hand. Then he wrapped it around again.

  When Calarook straightened up, the cape slipped down from around his face to under his chin—around his neck.

  Kent pulled it and adjusted his grip until it tightened around Calarook’s thick neck.

  Purple-faced, Calarook pulled on the cape at first, then he changed tactics and dropped his elbow on Kent’s nose.

  The blow hurt, but it failed to loosen Kent’s grip. Instead, Kent pulled tighter, adjusted his grip again, and kept his elbows and forearms near his head to better protect himself.

  Calarook dropped a few more elbows, all of which Kent deflected, and then he resorted back to pulling at the cape. He should’ve just done that all along.

  Kent had no room to his right, so he planted his left foot just on the outside of Calarook’s right foot, braced his forearms against Calarook’s bronze chest, and shoved hard, up and to the left, with his torso and his hips.

  Calarook’s stocky body toppled over, and Kent tightened the cape further, now from on top. Kent pressed his advantage.

  He cleared Calarook’s legs, got on his side, and used his shoulder and one temporarily free hand to roll Calarook onto his side. Then Kent got behind him, hooked his legs around Calarook’s ample waist, and yanked with all his might.

  Calarook’s hands fought the cape, and he snorted and gurgled, but before long, his hands slipped down to his sides. By now, his whole head had turned purple, like one massive bruise.

  If Kent wanted to kill him, all he had to do was keep the pressure consistent for about another minute. Not much effort at all.

  But doing so would leave the fortress in far worse shape and less prepared to defend itself against incursions from Inoth.

  Then again, Inoth was about to become Kent’s new home. Perhaps Muroth, the country that had both borne him and branded him for execution, deserved whatever it got.

  But General Calarook didn’t deserve to die.

  Kent sighed, and he released his grip on Calarook’s neck. He unwrapped his cape, and a labored breath sucked into Calarook’s mouth and nostrils.

  Kent pushed him to the side and stood. The choke had put Calarook to sleep, but he would eventually wake up disoriented, and he’d miss the time that had passed since he went out.

  Kent needed to leave before that happened. He fished the room key out of Calarook’s left gauntlet and headed toward the door.

  He caught sight of a mirror on his way out, and he used his red cape to wipe some of the blood from his face. It didn’t help much, but it would have to do.

  Kent left the room and locked Calarook inside. If anyone in the fortress had the strength to break out by sheer will, it was Calarook, but it would take even him some time to manage the feat, especially while weakened and confused once he woke up.

  With the key in hand, Kent headed down the corridor toward the exit. He made his way into the fortress’s courtyard, reoriented himself to his surroundings, and headed for the south gate. Once he passed through it, he’d be in Inoth, and he’d be safe.

  Relatively.

  What do I tell the soldiers?

  Cold air chilled his face and hands, and once again his breath exhaled as vapor. As he approached the gate, he realized he didn’t have the horse he’d stolen from his own estate.

  There’s no time. You’re already in too much danger.

  It was true. He would have to make his way on foot.

  He reached the portcullis, and the ranking soldier on duty gawked at him.

  “Lord Etheridge? What happened?”

  Kent opted for honesty. “General Calarook attacked me. I overcame him and locked him in my chambers.”

  “By the gods… I’m glad you’re unharmed!” The soldier looked him over. “Mostly.”

  “Send men to tend to General Calarook, then raise the portcullis.” The soldier’s back straightened. “My lord?”

  “Raise the portcullis now, soldier.”

  “My lord, it’s clear you’re unwell. You’re poorly dressed for the elements, and we never open the portcullis after dark, for safety reasons. Why—if I may ask—do you want us to do such a thing?”

  “Because I am going out. I am on a secret mission from my father, and I am not to be hindered in any way.” Kent said slowly, menacingly, “Open. The. Gate.”

  The soldier gulped, then he relayed the order.

  Kent checked behind him as the portcullis rose, but no one came for him, including General Calarook. When the portcullis reached halfway up, Kent handed the soldier the key.

  “If your men cannot otherwise get inside those chambers, here is the key.”

  The soldier took it and stared at Kent with confusion etched on his face.

  “Wish me good fortune, soldier?” Kent asked.

  “I wish you all the good fortune this world has to offer, my lord.” He gave a slight bow.

  Kent ducked under the portcullis and headed into the darkness beyond the fortress. All the while he wondered if that soldier’s wishes were the last kind words he would ever hear from one of his countrymen.

  When Kent awoke the next morning, the blood from his head had dried and crusted on the side of his face, and the blood from his nose had crusted over the left half of his chapped lips.

  He worked his finger along his top row of teeth and separated his lips carefully, and then he smacked his lips together a few times to get them working again.

  He’d fallen asleep under a tree some three miles from Ranhold Fortress, now hidden from his view thanks to a series of hills and the small forest that surrounded him. His cape had done just enough to keep him warm the night before, but now, in the morning light, he could see how stained and soiled it and the rest of his clothes were.

  He took his time getting to his feet, in part because he wasn’t in any rush to begin his new life, but mostly because his body ached all over from the last day’s travails.

  At his age, his body took far longer to recover than it used to. Kent intended to give it as much time as it needed to accomplish that feat.

  Sometime later, he pushed himself up to his feet, and his body ached anew. His head swam and pounded for a moment, then it equalized and gave him a respite from its harassment.

  He leaned against the tree for a few minutes while he collected himself, cursing Fane all the while. But with each new strife Kent endured, his resolve to kill Fane further ingrained itself in his will, in his very being.

  His brooding done, Kent stretched his sore limbs and started walking south.

  Father had many times mused aloud at the possibility of invading northern Inoth with a large, organized force, but he’d never acted on the impulse. Neither had Emperor Bouwen, Muroth’s ruler.

  As such, Kent had only been to Inoth a handful of times, and always with a small army accompanying him. So he didn’t really have any sense of where he was going.

  He decided to just head south until he happened upon something manmade—a farm, a road, a town—and figure it out from there. As long as he avoided Inoth’s northern fortresses, he would be fine.

  Half a day later, he saw a farmhouse in the distance. He headed toward it.

  Rather than stopping in and
petitioning for aid, he visited the water trough set out for the livestock and used the frigid water to clean off his face and hands. The animals likely wouldn’t be pleased, but he didn’t revel in having to use their water to clean himself either.

  He left the farm shortly after and found a road—more like a path with a couple of ruts—and he followed it for another two hours. The midday sun went from warming him to baking him and then back to warming him again as he walked.

  Another hour later, he happened upon a good-sized town, and he ventured into it.

  He got no shortage of strange looks from the townspeople. Probably his two-day-old clothes and their bedraggled condition. Or perhaps their initial quality and decadence, especially compared to what everyone else was wearing, set him apart.

  A little boy, perhaps six years old, with short brown hair wandered up to him. “What happened to your face?”

  Or… that. Kent crouched down and looked the lad in his dark green eyes. “I got into a fight.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “Did you win?”

  Kent grinned. “Just barely.”

  The boy smiled, then he turned and ran off.

  Kent hadn’t eaten since the night before, and now it was early afternoon. A few shops, street vendors, and a local inn seemed to offer food, but Kent had no coin. He hadn’t had time to grab anything from his personal coffers at the manse, and he’d brought nothing from the fortress aside from the clothes on his back.

  Ultimately, Kent managed to trade his cape, ruined as it was, for a good meal and a sack of fruit that he could carry as he walked. As the vendor stuffed the sack with apples and oranges, Kent wondered whether or not she was cursed as well.

  After all, he was in Inoth. Yet, strangely, he hadn’t seen anyone using magic in any capacity since he’d arrived.

  Hundreds of years earlier, Muroth and Inoth had been one nation that became embroiled in a civil war. The southerners had aligned to form a nation of magic-users, and the northerners, who relied on traditional weapons of war, tried to prevent their secession.

  In the end, the southerners prevailed. Inoth formed in spite of its parent country, Muroth, and all Murothian magic-users fled to the south under penalty of death. Little had changed since then, except that Muroth had developed a much stronger military as a result.

  The small town had little to offer him, and it was still far too close to the

  Murothian border for his liking. Perhaps if he headed farther south to Goldmoor, Inoth’s capital city, he’d find some sense of purpose.

  What’s more, a bigger city meant he’d disappear more easily. Now, above all else, anonymity was his friend.

  So Kent asked the vendor for directions to the capital, and he got the information he needed. Then he set out toward Goldmoor, hoping his meager sack of fruit would last the full three-day walk.

  In three days time, Kent arrived at the western gates of Goldmoor with no more fruit and no more sack. He’d washed himself and his clothes in an icy stream along the way, but he still felt… poor. There was no other way to describe it.

  Then again, he was poor now, in every sense of the word. Yet as much as he longed for the comforts of his home in Muroth, he would’ve given it all away to have found a way to save his father—and to kill his brother.

  From what Kent had observed, the soldiers at the city’s western gate allowed people to walk in and out generally without bothering them, but on occasion, they would stop travelers and ask them questions. Kent expected he’d be stopped, and he had prepared a story in advance, should it happen.

  He’d opted to walk the extra half-day to reach the city’s western gate precisely to help avoid suspicion. Entering the city’s northern gates would cast his story into doubt due to the gate’s relative proximity to Muroth, so the extra travel time made sense, tactically, to mitigate the risk.

  Sure enough, as Kent approached, a pair of low-ranking soldiers clad in brown leather breastplates and matching greaves stopped him.

  “You look tired, traveler,” the first soldier said.

  Kent studied them both from top to bottom. He could see no weapons on either of them. But then again, he was in Inoth now.

  The Inothian Army relied on the use of magic to fight, so Kent assumed these soldiers could handle themselves without the aid of weapons.

  He did, however, notice little pouches hanging along their belts.

  Kent had seen comparable pouches up close only a handful of times before, on captured Inothian soldiers near Muroth’s southern border, but he still didn’t know what purpose they served.

  Whenever his men had captured an Inothian and searched him, they only found nature’s castoffs in those pouches—grass, leaves, sticks, pebbles, and the like.

  “I’m talking to you, guy,” the first soldier said.

  Kent smiled. “Forgive me, sir. I have had a long journey, and I am indeed tired.”

  “You’ve got a strange accent.” The second soldier stepped closer, his hands on his hips. “Where are you from?”

  “Northern Urthia.” Kent had chosen the country based on its distance from Inoth.

  He figured few common folk would ever have had occasion to travel so far from home, so it seemed like a safe bet. And since Inoth and Urthia had maintained peaceful terms for decades, these soldiers likely wouldn’t have been sent there for any reason either.

  “Certainly explains your ridiculous clothing,” the first soldier said.

  “Long way from home, aren’t you?” the second soldier asked. “Alone and without so much as a pack?”

  “I ran into bandits on my way here,” Kent lied. “They were magnanimous enough to let me keep my clothes, but nothing else.”

  “What did they look like?” The second soldier’s eyes narrowed.

  “Like bandits.” Kent sensed that wouldn’t be enough, so he added, “It was dark. I couldn’t see them well. My vision isn’t what it used to be.”

  The soldiers had to be at least fifteen years younger than Kent, so playing up his “old man” status seemed wise.

  The first soldier nodded. “Not much to be done about it, but you could report the incident to the constable, if you like.”

  “I just reported it to you.”

  “We just work the gate, sir,” the first soldier said. “We don’t deal with anything beyond these walls, as per our assigned posting.”

  “The constable won’t do anything either, to be honest.” The second soldier had loosened up a bit, and now his hands hung at his sides instead of resting on his hips, near those pouches. “No sense getting your hopes up. Your property’s long gone by now. Best to accept it and move on.”

  “You got any friends in the city who can help you out?” the first soldier asked.

  Kent shook his head. He could tell the truth for this one. “Not a soul.”

  “And I assume they took your coin as well?”

  Kent nodded.

  “Here.” The first soldier dug into one of his pouches and produced a few small copper coins. He extended them toward Kent. “It’s not much, but it should buy you a warm meal, at least. Maybe even a room for the night.”

  Kent accepted the coins and marveled at them. This soldier, this man who’d been the embodiment of his sworn enemy less than a week earlier, had just given his own coin to help ensure Kent’s wellbeing.

  Yet Kent’s own father had disowned him, his brother had tried to have him arrested and executed, and General Calarook had tried to kill him. The vast difference between the two sets of experiences left him stunned.

  “Thank you,” Kent managed to say.

  “And be sure to stop by the Temple of Laeri. They can help you more.”

  “Laeri? The Goddess of the Light?”

  “The same.” The first soldier grinned. “You worship her up in Northern Urthia as well?”

  Not a question Kent had wholly prepared for, but… “I worship her wherever I am.”

  “You’ll be right at home, then.” The first soldier gave
him a nod. “Now, sir, if you don’t mind, we ought to inquire of some other travelers. Go on into the city, if you still wish.”

  Kent nodded to them both, and he repeated, “Thank you.” Then he went inside.

  He’d heard that Inoth’s capital city got its name from the vivid sunrises seen from its harbors. Given that it was afternoon now, Kent resigned himself that he would view it eventually. He’d be living here indefinitely, so he had plenty of time to explore later.

  The city rose before him to the north, gradually elevating on a steady slope, but it lowered to sea level in the east and south. High above, a series of white-stoned spires loomed over the rest of the city.

  He guessed it was Hunera Palace, where Inoth’s queen resided. Goldmoor bustled with people of all shapes and sizes, not unlike Muroth’s capital city, Drion. But in many ways, Kent liked it better than Drion. He especially liked being near the sea. The warm, salty air filled him with hope.

  As instructed, he asked around and made his way to the Temple of Laeri, a massive, pillared structure made of sleek black stone. Kent marveled at it as he approached, and he wondered why a temple of light would be made of black stones.

  But inside the temple, an all-white sanctuary greeted him. White walls, white floors, a white altar. White tapestries hung from the walls, and white light streamed through the crystalline ceiling.

  A white statue of Laeri towered over the altar with her hands extended out to her sides, palms up, majestic and beautiful. But a dark circle hollowed out the center of her chest, just under her covered breasts.

  The statue vaguely resembled the icons of Laeri he’d seen in comparable temples in Muroth. Behind her, a massive marble triangle framed the altar, with its lower point down, and the upper points spread wide beyond Laeri’s head.

  He wondered at the possible symbolism of the design aesthetic. Was it a metaphor for the outside world as compared to that of a life of dedication to the goddess Laeri? Or had black stones simply been more economical to purchase, given that Hunera Palace was made of white stones?

  Whatever the case, Kent gathered with a group of others inside the temple and repeated the liturgy and incantations spoken by the priestess in pure white robes embroidered with star and triangle shapes. It almost matched the ceremonies in Murothian temples to Laeri, except for a few minor deviations.