by Tom Stacey
“Skin him! Skin him, milord!” came one voice that was taken up by the rest. Soon everybody in the square was crying the refrain. “Skin him! Skin him!”
Callistan reached out a hand, making it look as if he was steadying himself but all the while edging ever nearer to the blade.
A shadow bent over him and a gloved hand plucked the knife from the wood.
Damn.
“Skin him?” came the voice of the Doppelganger, Callistan’s own voice. Callistan looked up at his double who, dismissing the soldier, curled the fingers of his free hand in his captive’s filthy hair and placed the knife at his throat with the other. “Good people, I had not thought your bloodlust so strong.” He snatched the blade away, leaving a thin streak of blood. “Alas, I cannot skin him, for—”
“Skin him!” a wizened crone near the front screamed, throwing a rotten cabbage with remarkable strength to land at the feet of the Doppelganger.
The false Callistan held up a hand as he had so often before, yet now there were the beginnings of panic on his borrowed features. “Good people of Temple,” he beseeched, “have you no care for the thoughts of your victorious soldiers? Have they not seen enough blood—”
“Skin him!” cried another, younger voice. “Show us what he really looks like!” A roar of assent rumbled through the assembled masses. Like the first breakers that herald a storm-wave, the crowd began to sway and jostle. The thin line of soldiers between the stage and the mob edged backwards, locking their shields together. Callistan felt himself nodding. Torn apart by peasants. It is to be that after all.
The Doppelganger released Callistan’s hair and approached the front of the stage. “But listen, I have shown you enough. Too much, in fact. He must face the Empron. Illis alone will decide his fate.”
“We want to see!” cried the red-faced man, emboldened by the seething mass behind him. “Give him to us!”
“People of Temple, listen to your—” the Doppelganger did not get to finish, as the red-faced man struck a young soldier in front of him and turned everything to chaos.
Like a dam giving way before the flood, the crowd tore through the flimsy line of sentries, ripping down their shield wall and swirling around the high stage like water on rock.
“Fly, Lord!” came the harsh bark of the vetero behind the Doppelganger, and the false Callistan was dragged bodily from the stage, still screaming like a madman.
“No. The Face-Stealer! He must not be harmed! His purpose is greater!” He kicked and lashed out at the men trying to save him, but it was to no avail.
Callistan closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. Soon he would be gone from this world, dragged away from the torment.
Raiya. The name of his wife came unbidden to his mind. Sweet, gentle Raiya, with red hair and skin as pale as milk. Farilion, his son, bright-eyed and as strong as his father had been at his age. Mela, his beautiful daughter, as wholesome as summer fruit and as warm as spring rain. His mind was a swirl of colour. So much of his life had escaped him, twirling away from the grasping hands of his mind like spectral mist, yet now, just as his mind had stopped searching, the gods had sent him this final teasing vision, a barb from all he left behind.
His eyes snapped open, and behind that dark, penetrating gaze, the mind of a warrior awoke. By all the gods, it was time to fight.
A short, fat man was trying to climb to the stage. He held a dark and pitted blade between his teeth that pinned the jowly flesh of his cheeks back on either side in a strange rictus. Callistan stood and stalked over to the fat man, kneeling and clutching awkwardly at the worn leather handle of the knife with bound hands. With a savage jerk, he tore the knife from the fat man’s mouth, tearing a ragged smile across the man’s face and snapping off a golden tooth that landed with a click on the wood below. The fat man howled with agony and fell back into the surging sea of humanity below. The crowd screamed as they saw their would-be champion brought low.
Callistan cut his hands free and paused to gather up the tooth, which he wrapped in a fold of his soiled clothing. Taking a quick look around him, he could see that, other than the bodies on the gallows, he was alone on the platform. Towards the back, a tight knot of soldiers were beating their way to safety, the Doppelganger gleaming in their midst. A few soldiers were pressed against the sides of the stage, fighting to prevent being overwhelmed, if not for their lives. For the moment they were holding the stairs, breaking heads and mashing lips into teeth with mailed fists. However, one or two knives were flickering in the struggle, and soon bruises would become blood.
Eyes front, Callistan told himself. His battle was before him at the foot of the stage. They wanted his blood. Worse, they wanted to flay him, to take back flesh they thought stolen. Callistan wondered if they would be disappointed when they found nothing but meat and bone underneath. Don’t give them the chance to find out.
A lanky boy no older than fourteen summers clambered up on to the stage with startling speed, climbing on the shoulders of those beneath him. Callistan stood still and spread his arms. He breathed out in one quick puff and then became a statue. The boy came stumbling on, his face split in a crooked grin at the honour he was about to win. He came with a flat-tipped flensing knife held low — a useless weapon, but then this boy was no warrior, most likely a tanner’s apprentice, fuelled by dreams of glory.
But glory was a killer.
Callistan sidestepped the boy’s clumsy lunge and rammed the hilt of his borrowed blade into the base of his opponent’s skull. The tanner’s apprentice dropped like a boned fish and Callistan winced at the impact. Foolishness was no reason for death.
He strode to the front of the stage and flung his arms wide. “Come! Come, dance with me!” he screamed with a bestial rage. The people before him paused and then, as one, lurched forward, bellowing their hatred.
Callistan laughed, for the battle-fury was upon him, and his was a world in sharp focus, moving at a slower pace. A shout brought him back to reality. From the right, four robed and hooded figures made their way through the crowd. People were falling over themselves to clear a path for the men because they were clothed as thralls of the Temple Deep and were not to be stopped. A queer hush began to settle over the raging masses, as news of the black thralls spread. No man wanted Callistan to escape, but if the Black God wanted him then so be it. It was unwise to come between the Unnamed and his prey.
Callistan took a step backwards as the thralls reached the stairs and pushed the sentries aside with a gesture. He shouldn’t have known who they were, but he did. Whether it was the reaction of the crowd or a deeply ingrained survival instinct, he knew that these were men to be feared, men of dark power and darker purpose. He ran to the other side of the stage and looked down. Moments before, the people there would have welcomed him down to their level so that they might carve his flesh from him; now they fended him off as if he were a leper. Callistan had been marked by the Temple Deep and they would not stain themselves with his sin.
“You’re theirs now, beast,” said an elderly priest in the sea-blue robes of a Temple Main. “They will strip the skin from you and give you to Him.” A murmur of agreement whispered through the crowd.
“Don’t think you can escape. This is the gods’ justice,” a decrepit old man, thin as a stick, made a sign to ward off evil.
Callistan looked over his shoulder. The hooded men were a few paces away, approaching with an agonising slowness. Every eye in the crowd was wide open, every mouth closed, or parted slightly to allow a nervous breath. It seemed as if all of Temple was waiting for something to happen.
So Callistan made it happen.
He turned and leapt from the platform into the horde. They screamed and scattered as if he were on fire, but some were slow enough that they broke his fall on to the hard cobblestones underneath. He struggled to stand, batting away the pawing hands of those who would give him to the men that sought to take him. Then he froze.
Before him stood four more men, also hood
ed and cloaked, their faces hidden in shadow. He turned to escape but could not see past the four thralls behind him who, having climbed gracefully down from the stage, began to close the circle around him. Callistan cursed. His indecision had been for a moment, yet it had been enough. Now he was trapped in the slowly shrinking enclave of temple thralls, surrounded by a swarm of people who wanted his skin.
“Callistan,” said a voice, deep and hollow and as dark as the shadowy hood it came from.
And then, under the terrified gaze of a thousand people, they took him.
VIII
“A jug of ale, and hurry yourself about it. We dremani don’t like waiting.” The soldier turned back to his companions, who sniggered and shouted obscenities.
Hari nodded and fought to keep his expression neutral as he walked back behind the bar: a dark wooden beam propped on barrels. “Hana, get the biggest jug from the pantry and make sure it’s clean.”
“But it’s got milk in it, Papa,” said the girl.
“I don’t care,” he snapped. “Throw it away, wash it out and fill it full of ale.”
“None of the local piss, man,” said the soldier, with an arrogant wave of his hand. “We want real ale. Ale to put hair on your bollocks.” They all laughed.
Hana, Hari’s daughter, raised an eyebrow. “Now!” Hari thundered and she scurried away, hurt in her eyes. It pained him to speak to her so, but she was a wilful child and would never find a husband if she carried on trying to prove herself to the world.
Hari scowled, careful to make sure that he had his back to the three soldiers. These fools were not dremani. The men of His Imperial Majesty’s Dremon were serious men, all blooded against enemies of the Empron, and none much given to mirth and laughter. Besides, rumour had it that the Dremon were warring in the Southlands, helping King Asterfal of Carpathin make up his mind about joining the empire. Doubtless the three soldiers — none of them far out of their teenage years — thought him a country simpleton, too stupid to tell dremani apart from standard conscripts in their bright but poorly painted crimson plate. But Hari was not a simpleton; he was an old soldier. True, he had not been dremani, but he had fought alongside them often enough and knew the damage those dark men in darker red armour could do.
He spat. The only damage these three had done was to his winter stores. Still, they had flashed good solid silver so he could not complain. Not yet.
Hari busied himself with cleaning tankards. The soldiers were unwelcome and rude but he needed what little they would pay him. With winter approaching, it was all that mattered. Attracting customers this high up in the mountains was improbable at best and the few regular patrons that Wort could cough up were old men who, while charming, drank themselves to sleep after a few ales. He looked around the tavern. Apart from the soldiers, his catch this day was made up of two dozing drunks and a thin woman with a scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face.
Hari rubbed at a stubborn stain crusted on to a pewter mug. He had wanted to set up in Kressel, or at least nearer. Kressel was a port city and produced a never-ending stream of soldiers and sailors with thirst enough to drain a brewery. Alas, a soldier’s pension was a meagre thing and what little there was did not last long. Too many old soldiers, thought Hari, and not enough trouble to keep the young ones occupied. If the news from the Greenlands was true and the rebellion had been broken, Veria would soon have a glut of bored soldiers.
He had seen it coming, of course. What with forced conscription and constantly increasing levies on grain, trouble had been stirring for years, leading up to the ugly business in Iero. Had the rebellion gathered more strength or been better led, it could have caused real problems. Instead, it had flashed and died within half a year, even though its main opposition had been an army of conscripts.
The whole thing had been dismissed as the last action of the renegade Sons of Iss, a shady organisation of Respini assassins that had endured decades of Verian rule, living in the cracks between the past and the present. The rebellion had nothing to do with them, of course, that was just convenient propaganda, but Hari still hadn’t decided where his sympathies lay. He was a patriot and had fought for Illis, but he also knew that rebellions didn’t happen by accident. Perhaps it had just needed a slower fuse.
Too many old soldiers, and I’m just one more, he thought. At least he was surrounded by strong drink. The soldiers were right: it was piss, but it helped you forget.
Hari shuddered as the memory of another rebellion decades ago strode unbidden to the forefront of his mind. Illis’ rebellion. It had begun brilliantly. Illis had landed at Kressel with the Forgotten, a feared band of mercenaries led by the Helhammer. The council there, sick of Respini dominance, declared for him and gave him the support of the small standing army based in the mighty port city. They also raised a militia to swell the ranks. Hari could still remember how proud he had been to stand alongside thousands of other Verians, the stench of newly treated leather in his nostrils and the weight of an old, scarred sword at his hip. It felt like being at the top of a mountain, looking down.
Word of the unrest reached leaked Respini ears and they sent a huge force from the mountain fortress of Ruum to crush the uprising. Led by the Helhammer, Illis’ forces crushed the much larger enemy army and marched over their broken troops to take Ruum itself. That’s when Bellephon had joined, the man that people called the Hammerfist. Bellephon was a member of the Higard, Respin’s most elite soldiers, but he was also a Verian. Hari had been there when the lone figure clad in glowing bronze armour had walked from the doomed fortress, clasping hands with the Helhammer as if they were old friends. Gods, but his ears still rang at the thought of how the men had roared. They were invincible.
Encouraged, Illis marched on Fend, the border fortress on the eastern coast. Respin had led their oppression of Veria from Fend for generations, and it was as good a symbol as any to demonstrate Verian intentions. But Illis had overreached, and found himself and his small force surrounded and overwhelmed by an ambushing regiment of Higard. So had risen the Helhammer once more, seizing the moment and leading Illis' beleaguered forces out of the ambush and up into the high mountains of the Heartland Range. There they had struggled and suffered for weeks, but had emerged unbowed and unbroken in the foothills of Iss.
Iss. There was a name he wished to forget. It had all turned sour at Iss. Veria had broken its bonds and was now the undisputed power in Daegermund, but to take the crown they had to kill the King, and Respin had died hard. The Verian empire had been born at Iss, but it was not a glorious birth. Instead it was a hateful thing that had slithered out of its womb in the bloodstained streets of a gentle city. Hari was proud of his country and his part in what it had achieved, but not that. A nation’s shame.
He wiped a dented tankard dry and folded the rag into quarters. In the poor light that seeped in through the gaps in the timbers, the marks on the cloth looked too much like bloodstains.
Hari considered the boisterous soldiers — if they could be called that. There were three of them and the youngest was blind drunk. As Hari watched, the boy-soldier speared a chunk of beefsteak with his dagger and lanced it into his mouth. As he bit into the steak, so the blade bit into him, splitting his upper lip apart and sending a torrent of blood down to darken his tunic and run down his breastplate in rivulets. The other two thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.
Posturing fools. From the look of them, these three would struggle to put their boots on the right way, let alone defeat a battle-hardened warrior. Dremani indeed. Gods be thanked that the hard days were over. No more Threshian berserkers to cut down, no need to fear the Respini Higard, disbanded after its nation’s surrender. Any one of the Higard would have cut through this trio of boy-soldiers like a knife through butter. A hot knife, thought Hari, through melted butter. Are these the men that guard our borders? Maybe it was a good thing the rebels had been so poorly organised. If they had reached this far East, one of these idiots might have actually ha
d to wield a sword rather than just wear it.
Hana elbowed past him with the jug of ale, sloshing a good amount on to his sleeve. He grinned. Such a firebrand. He would have to look further afield than Wort to find a match for her. Perhaps if he sold the old carthorse, Gustav, he could provide her with a suitable dowry. Poor old Gustav, past his prime as a warhorse, reduced to lugging around fat merchants and those too weak or too lazy to walk. For the moment, he was contentedly munching overripe grain in his lean-to behind the tavern, but Hari couldn’t afford to keep him for much longer. He was losing too much value. Nobody would take him now for anything other than meat and glue. Past his prime, like me, thought Hari. Good thing they can’t make glue out of me.
“You call this ale?” spat the first soldier, standing and seizing Hana by the wrist.
“Let go of me!” she screamed, batting at his hand.
“This is old man’s piss!” continued the soldier. “Your old man has been pissing in the tankard and charging me for it!” The two soldiers with him laughed and blood bubbled from the youngest’s torn mouth.
“Let her go,” said Hari, stepping from behind his makeshift bar and wrapping his hand around a hard wooden billy club he had hidden in two leather loops underneath.
The soldier paused as if unsure how to continue, then a burst of laughter from his friend gave him courage and he went on. “Come, old man. She’s a pretty one, isn’t she? We dremani can be very forgiving. I’ll forget about your pissy ale if you go back behind your bar,” he pointed, “and leave this little slut to me and my friends here.” He turned and grinned at his companions and then turned back to Hari. “We’ll be gentle, but then from the look of her, I’m guessing she likes it rough.”
Hana screamed and tried to pull away but the soldier hugged her towards him and gripped her by the chin, kissing her roughly on the cheek. Hari started forward, club in hand, ready to crack the heads of these fools who would threaten his daughter. Yet before he could take more than a few steps, the lithe figure of the woman with the scarf over her face, until now sitting forgotten in the corner, tiptoed up behind the soldier and twisted her fingers into his greasy blonde hair. She slipped a small but evil-looking knife from her sleeve and placed it carefully at his jugular. The boy-soldier froze and his expression of cocky drunken lust melted into one of pure terror.
