Empire of Blood

by Richard A. Knaak

  The rebels eagerly met them in well-ordered battle lines. Under Bastion’s command, the front line formed a deadly row of spears. Behind the spears stood more fighters with axes and swords who slipped between the protection of the longer-reaching weapons to cut down other tusked warriors. The rebels methodically advanced, forcing their opponents into a confused throng.

  The legion commander noted the initial chaos but did not immediately act. A struggle between rebels and ogres could only mean certain victory for the minotaurs, but no sooner did the commander have this thought than his own rear flank was suddenly overrun in the same manner, rebels literally rising up from nowhere.

  At the head of the second attack charged Faros, an axe in his right hand, a sword in his left. Unlike what was happening in the south, the legionaries quickly began organizing a coherent resistance to the abrupt assault. Dekarians kept their small units together, relaying the commands of their hekturions in swift fashion. Metal clattered and clanked as the empire regrouped. A line of lances quickly formed to meet the spears of the rebels, and as the legion turned to face the threat, Faros signaled one of his trumpeters. The human—one of many outsiders among his followers—blew a long, powerful note that resounded through the battlefield.

  With a collective roar, those within the ancient temple poured out to cut off the invaders’ only possible route of escape.

  “Keep them divided!” Faros roared, as he plunged his sword through the throat of a legion officer. The distrust between the empire and its ogre allies would prove their downfall.

  A legionary thrust a lance at him. Faros dodged the spear, then chopped it in half with his axe. The former slave lunged, catching his adversary between his breastplate and back. The heavy blade sank in; the soldier toppled. Faros grinned darkly as the fresh smell of death filled his nostrils. His eyes grew crimson …

  “Faros!” Grom shouted, appearing from behind. “You must stay back! If anything should happen to you—”

  With a venomous snarl, the rebel leader shook Grom off. Faces began to appear before Faros, visions of the dead who perpetually haunted him. He saw his family’s hacked and soaked corpses, all stricken down by assassins on the Night of Blood. He relived the callous slaying of his loyal servant—Bek—who had pretended to be Faros so that royal blood might be saved. He remembered the brutish slaughter of the former brigand, Ulthar, who had befriended him in the mines of Vyrox.

  Foremost among the images was piggish Paug, the overseer in the minotaur camps, who slew Ulthar. His leering visage mocked Faros. Behind Paug stood the helmeted assassin in his father’s house, a fiery shadow, with Gradic’s burning body lying at his feet. Behind them all was Sahd, sadistic lord of the ogre mine, who invited Faros to climb atop one of the huge, wooden structures shaped like skeletal flowers upon which he strung and tortured his workers.

  Looming above all the rest was the Grand Lord Golgren—Golgren, whose pretense at civilized ways hid a viciousness none of the others could match. The well-groomed ogre stared at Faros with utter indifference, reducing Faros to the worthiness of a gnat. His contempt was as terrible a weapon as any blade or axe, and it burned deep into the rebel’s soul.

  With each nightmarish image, each memory, Faros grew more fanatical in his movements. He swept away two soldiers who rushed at him, severing the arm of one while at the same time cleaving the head of the other. A rider attempted to run him down, but Faros gutted the hapless mount, then, dropping his sword, he seized the legionary as he tumbled off. Throwing his armored foe to the already-bloody ground, the scarred warrior swung hard, chopping through metal, flesh, and bone, taking horrendous satisfaction in the groans accompanying each shattering blow.

  Breathing rapidly, Faros rose and looked around. Ahead, a pocket of legionaries were busy establishing a defensive position. Behind them, their commander shouted to other soldiers nearby.

  Retrieving his sword, Faros waved it high. A horn blew and the way parted for a band of figures barely controlling their slavering charges. The meredrakes they struggled to command padded along, tongues darting in ferocious anxiety. Their eyes were narrowed. Taut muscles could be seen under rippling scales and their long, whipping tails nearly swept aside their handlers.

  These meredrakes under the command of rebels had been gathered over the months. Faros kept them ever at the edge of hunger, which made even the slightest scent of blood enough to provoke a salivating frenzy. So many of his fellow slaves had perished because of the reptiles that Faros thought it the perfect irony to wield them against his former tormentors, ogres or legionaries.

  Driven by bloodlust, the meredrakes moved quickly through the old tunnels once used for escape by the temple’s founders. Against a fully prepared legion, the reptiles would have been slaughtered—their thick hides, sharp teeth, and ripping talons no use against a skilled fighting force—but the enemy was already in disarray.

  Faros chopped the air, and the handlers released the meredrakes. The lizards thundered forward, leaving handlers behind. The thick scent of blood drove them wild.

  To their credit, the minotaur soldiers tried to hold their positions. They might have succeeded if the meredrakes had been the only threat, but the legionaries were also harried by archers, spreading panic in the ranks as their numbers depleted.

  Hissing hungrily, the reptiles tore into the minotaurs.

  The first few beasts perished with lances stuck deep in their red gullets, but then teeth a foot long and claws as sharp as razors came ripping through breastplates. Lances—and then bones—snapped. Soldiers screamed as they were hauled down by the monsters. Muscular, seven-foot-tall minotaurs became rag dolls in the maws of the behemoths.

  “Keep your positions!” shouted the minotaur general, a lean, fanatic-eyed figure, whose helm was not the silver one of the legion, but rather the ominous black of Emperor Ardnor’s Protectors. “Keep your positions, damn you!” He swung his crowned mace at a recalcitrant legionary, battering the soldier so hard the latter went stumbling into the jaws of a meredrake.

  Whatever their will, the legionaries could not obey. The line collapsed inward and the beasts swept over the soldiers. A force of rebels followed after. Grom tried to keep Faros from entering into the chaos, but Faros shook him off, as eager as the savage reptiles to claim another kill.

  He passed one beast in the midst of devouring the leg it had ripped off a fallen legionary. The meredrake was crushing bone and sinew, swallowing both in large gulps.

  A brawny dekarian tried to slice Faros in two with his axe. The pair battled for several seconds, weapons clanging again and again as they sought to reach under one another’s guard.

  Droplets of sweat blurred Faros’s eyes, and he swung wildly. The dekarian snorted triumphantly.

  Then Grom leapt from the side, barreling into the officer. The pair fell back into a mass of struggling bodies as Faros managed to wipe his vision clear. The rebel leader grunted but moved on, unconcerned about Grom. All Faros wanted was another opponent, another target upon which to focus his demons.

  The legion general caught his hungry gaze. The mounted officer was in the act of striking down a rebel who tried to pull him from the saddle. The mace crushed its victim’s skull, shattering one horn in the process.

  Faros pushed his way toward the commander, swiping at anything in his path. A meredrake noticed his passing and turned toward him, but Faros batted it hard on the snout with the flat of his axe. The meredrake hissed viciously. Faros met its gaze, and after a moment of dueling wills, the monster turned back in search of easier prey.

  The ground erupted.

  Faros faltered as an avalanche of dirt and rock assailed everyone. Somewhere, a desperate catapult crew had made a strike, trying to drive back the rebels, but the hasty shot had done as much harm to the trapped legionaries as its targets. Blinded, stunned soldiers stumbled about, and when Faros sought the general, he only saw the Protector’s wounded, riderless mount running off.

  Then a crushing force struck Faros
in the shoulder, nearly cracking the bone. Fetid breath filled his nostrils. Faros tumbled to the side, his weapons lost. Despite the pain, he rolled into a crouch and looked up at his attacker.

  The ogre’s expression was wild, harried. Blood dripped from a wound across his chest. The huge figure was covered in sweat. He stared around as if not quite certain what was happening. Another minotaur, a legionary, came within range of the gasping giant and the ogre instinctively swung at his ally. The heavy, well-worn club cracked the soldier’s neck.

  Faros looked past the ogre and saw other tusked warriors scurrying in chaotic fashion toward the north. Rebels closely pursued them.

  As the first ogre turned toward him again, Faros hurled himself at the huge figure, eagerly wrapping his hands around the beast’s thick throat. The ogre dropped his club and tried to pull the hands free, but Faros held on with a death grip. The former slave’s eyes filled with blood. Again he saw Golgren.

  The ogre’s eyes swelled as his breath left him. Faros crushed his adversary’s throat, the bones cracking. With a pathetic gurgle, the ogre toppled backward, taking his slayer down with him.

  Pushing free of the gigantic corpse, Faros located his sword and eagerly looked about for someone else to confront. Instead, the black-furred Bastion met his gaze. The usually composed son of Hotak wore a startled look as he studied Faros’s handiwork.

  Grom appeared a moment later, fur slick from blood, eyes oddly sorrowful.

  “The day is won,” declared Bastion in a muted tone.

  “Won … aye.” Grom made the sign of Sargonnas.

  A mournful horn blared. They looked to where the last vestiges of the battle raged. A desperate group of legionaries surrounded by a horde of vengeful ex-slaves waved the flag of truce.

  Faros simply watched, not even blinking until Bastion whispered to him, “They’re surrendering.”

  “Of course. What of it?”

  Grom came up on his other side. “Faros, our people are caught up in a bloodlust almost as great as that of the meredrakes! The legionaries will be slaughtered wholesale—”

  “As they intended for us,” Faros retorted. He leaned down, wiping his blade on the body of the dead ogre, then slowly started toward the last battle.

  “Faros—”

  The glance Grom and Bastion received from their leader silenced them both. They followed as he wended his way toward the few remaining enemy. Faros picked up his pace, eager to claim one last foe, but as the trio neared the rebels began a systematic execution of the wounded—a standing command by Faros.

  They passed the corpses of legionaries upon whom the meredrakes now fed in earnest. The beasts’ heads were smothered in blood and gore, and their jaws made horrific sounds as they crunched flesh, bone, and even metal without discrimination. The huge reptiles paid no mind to the three. Their tails dragged slowly back and forth, a sign of their grim pleasure.

  Bastion’s ears went taut. Grom again made the sign of Sargonnas. Axe held steady, the latter moved to ward off one of the reptiles from its feasting.

  Faros seized his arm. “No.”

  “Faros, this is monstrous! We should at least gather the bodies, build a proper pyre for the minotaurs—”

  “Such minotaurs do not deserve pyres.” Faros looked west to the heart of Kern, and beyond it, to Blöde. “They want to fight alongside ogres, they can rot with them. We will leave the dead for the carrion eaters … if they can stomach them.”

  Grom grew silent again, but now Bastion took up the argument.

  “Faros, my mother is no doubt behind this and observing all. Her eyes are everywhere. It is one thing to send Hotak’s loyal generals to oblivion, but the commander of the Scorpion Legion was one of her own. Do not provoke her. She will avenge her empire.”

  “Her empire?” Grom interjected.

  “If Ardnor sits upon the throne, it is my mother’s words he speaks.” To Faros, he added, “She will unleash the full force of Nethosak—more importantly, the temple—upon us! I say again, we should abandon Kern and return to the others in the Courrain Ocean! It is vital we strike at the empire itself and quickly!”

  Faros shook his head vehemently, his gaze fixed on the dark past. “No, I’ve not finished with Kern yet. That’s why we came back. And Blöde … Blöde still beckons …”

  “But the ogres are pawns—”

  The blade poised below Bastion’s jaw, touching enough to break the flesh but nothing more. “I have let you live, though by blood you should die … son of Hotak, my family’s murderer.”

  “You are in your right to take that life now.”

  After a long hesitation, Faros lowered the blade and continued on alone, striding among the meredrakes and the newly-arrived crows feeding on the carnage. The stench rose from the dead.

  Grom muttered under his breath as their leader dwindled from sight. Bastion’s brow arched.

  “Praying for the dead again?”

  “Praying for the living. For him. We need Faros. Our people need him. He must see that!” The brown minotaur looked up at the heavens. “There are those who say that the gods have returned. If so, then surely the Horned One undestands our plight!”

  Bastion grunted. “Rumors, nothing more. The only god is the evil thing my mother follows.”

  “I can’t believe that! If so, then we’re doomed!”

  The black warrior nodded. “Aye, and maybe we are.” He surveyed the horror surrounding them then added somberly, “We will follow Faros nonetheless, will we not?”

  Grom exhaled. “Aye … we will. Sargonnas help us all, we will.”

  As Faros wended his way through the ancient temple, he gave no thought to the dead bodies outside, not even those who had lost their lives serving him. All that mattered now was finding some new distraction from the thoughts and nightmares ever with him.

  The nightmares had only grown worse since he and his followers had sailed off with the freedom fighters commanded by his father’s former comrade, Jubal. Jubal, an ex-colonial governor, had sacrificed himself to save Gradic’s son in hopes that Faros would help unseat House Droka from the throne. Instead, all Faros had done for days after was sit in Jubal’s cabin, staring at nothing.

  In the end, Faros felt himself drawn back to Kern, seeking revenge. His loyal followers had accompanied him, of course, augmented by a steady stream of fresh rebels drawn by his deeds.

  The halls of the temple wound through much of the mountain, twisting and turning seemingly at whim. Only a handful of torches were needed to keep the temple illuminated, for the ingenious artisans had embedded in the walls pale yellow, diamond-shaped crystals that somehow magnified and reflected the flames. Those passing through would perfectly view the worn but still elegant images of the beautiful, robed figures that adorned the walls. The High Ogres were the ancestors, as legend put it, of not only the present-day ogres but the minotaurs, too. The carved figures were more than four times the height of even the tallest minotaur. They were depicted offering to their gods gifts of food and crafts, singing praises, and kneeling before altars. Such displays covered every wall in every passage. Surely hundreds of workers had toiled generations to complete such a massive mural … which, in Faros’s eyes, only proved the depths of folly. The gods had abandoned the High Ogres too without the slightest remorse.

  Pausing briefly at one of the reliefs, he eyed the horned figure that resembled one of his own kind. Seated upon a high-backed throne, this god looked almost like a benevolent father surrounded by his children.

  “The great Sargonnas!” Faros mocked. “Savior of no one, father of nothing …” The rebel leader ran his blade across the image. As the finely-honed weapon scarred the god, the metal scraping against stone let loose an almost mournful wail that echoed through the passage.

  Faros quickly pulled back the sword, glared at the desecrated image one last time, then the minotaur strode away.

  Early on, the rebels had mapped out the entire complex, seeking all hidden passages and abrupt twists
. Owing to that search they had uncovered the escape tunnels which had been used today to meet their foe with a surprise attack from behind. Faros had memorized each and every corridor, likely knew the temple as well as most of those who long ago had built it.

  Yet … the passage he next entered was not one he expected.

  The images were all wrong. Rather than supplicants honoring the Condor Lord with offerings of goat meat and wine, he came upon a long line of ragged-looking High Ogres, harried refugees fleeing toward the east. A huge, predatory bird with wings sweeping across the heavens led the way, the symbolism of the bird so transparent that the minotaur snorted.

  Certain he was still on the right path, Faros followed the corridor for some time. However, when at last he turned down a new hall, it was to encounter more wall scenes that he didn’t recall. Here, illustrated in stone, was the transformation—the “salvation,” as the minotaur race put it—of those High Ogres whom Sargonnas had deemed worthy of rescuing from the decadence and downfall of their civilization. Faros could see the perfect High Ogre faces elongating, the ears twisting. Nubs bursting from the tops of heads. Robes falling away and bodies broadening, growing furred. By the time Faros reached the end of the corridor, all trace of his High Ogre ancestry had vanished. The last figure was pure minotaur … looking unsettlingly like him.

  With a frustrated grunt, Faros headed back the way he had come. The dust of ages rising with each step, Faros marched past the mural of transformation, as if retreating back in time. He made a turn into the previous corridor just as the minotaur on the wall completed his reversion back to a stately High Ogre.

  Around the corner was a wide, open chamber. Faros halted at the entrance, puzzled, his mind rapidly retracing his steps and finding no fault with his memory, yet here was proof that he had clearly wandered.

  A mustiness permeated by myriad, ancient odors greeted him. There was no doubt as to the purpose of the vast room. There were rows of broad, crumbling stone benches, the wide, brown dais at the far end, and the huge, winged condor effigy—remnants of crimson paint still visible on the rust-brown stone. To each side of the square altar that stood under the stone avian was a towering figure of the god in his minotaur form, one hand holding high a sword, the other an axe.