Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1)

by James A. West

  Wheezing, Caisel staggered back, hands cupping his groin. Rathe stalked after him, mind afire with a hundred ways to destroy his enemy. Caisel made a whimpery noise and fled. Rathe followed a handful of paces before convincing himself that slaughtering idiots was not his purpose this night.

  Turning back to the wagons, he sheathed his dagger, and wiped Caisel’s blood off his brow and cheeks.

  “Have you come to free us?” the dark-haired woman asked. The others, all pressed against the bars of their rolling prison, gazed at Rathe in varying states of bewildered madness.

  “What’s your name?”

  The woman gazed at him in confusion. “Erryn.”

  “Well, Erryn, why would I free a traitor?”

  “I am no traitor,” she snarled. “None of us are.”

  “Then how did you end up here?”

  “Mitros decided that if I would not bed him or his pet wolves, then I was not worth keeping in Valdar. These others are here because they are witless, and so a burden. If Sanouk had not ordered us brought to Hilan, we were to be hanged.”

  “Tell me about Valdar and Mitros,” Rathe invited.

  “Are you mad? Caisel, that goat’s festering bunghole, will already be back at the barracks, telling how you attacked him. There’s no time. Free us!”

  Rathe tapped his toe, waiting. She might be right about Caisel, but he hoped the man was proud and shrewd enough to decide that it was better to keep quiet about how one man had bested him and Gadein.

  Erryn shoved her face as far as it would go between the iron bars, trying to see up the road. Nothing stirred. She sat back with a disgusted oath, lines of dirty rust running up her cheeks. “What do you want to know?”

  “I have been in many villages,” Rathe said, “but I have never been to one quite like Valdar—”

  “I was a child when Lord Sanouk came north,” Erryn interrupted. “Until then, Valdar was like any other village, save that we serve Onareth by mining gold, rather than growing turnips. After Lord Sanouk came he named that pig, Mitros, Reeve of Valdar. Since then, we have been slaves to the brigands we once helped defend the north against.”

  “You are saying that Mitros conspires with brigands?” Rathe asked, considering what Aeden had told him and Loro outside Valdar.

  “No, you fool, I am saying Mitros is a brigand. Him and all his men once skulked in the forests, preying on shipments of ore when they could, and raiding caravans when they could not.”

  “And the people of Valdar?”

  “Mitros made whores of the women and girls. The men and boys, he forces to work the mines, day and night. All this he does on the authority of Lord Sanouk.”

  Rathe inclined his head, indicating the others. “What afflicts them?”

  “Joshil went mad after Mitros forced him to watch the rape of his wife and daughter—her crime was refusing to sell herself. Karmath, there, is the lucky one. He was born simple, and used to help the blacksmith. The rest of the women, Mitros broke in the same way he broke Joshil’s wife. Seems neither Mitros nor his men enjoy bedding insane women.”

  “And how did you manage to avoid such a fate?” Rathe said. He could not understand what was afoot, but without question it had nothing to do with traitors receiving justice.

  Erryn’s eyes fell. “I didn’t avoid anything … until this last time,” she said, face reddening in the wan moonlight. She looked up, hatred burning through the tears in her eyes. “Are you going to let us out, or not?”

  “No,” came a hissing rasp. “He’s about to join his fellow traitors.”

  Rathe faced Treon. Before he could challenge the captain, Erryn shrieked a warning. Rathe turned at a flicker of movement off to one side. Caisel, lips and chin still coated in blood, swept toward him, while another shadow closed from the other direction. Rathe’s sword whispered out of its scabbard as he stepped toward Caisel, preparing to relieve the fool of his burdensome head.

  “Behind you!” Erryn cried.

  A cudgel slammed into Rathe’s back, driving him to his knees. He tried to bring his sword to bear, but Caisel and some other brute fell on him, using fists and boots. The cudgel fell again, smashing his sword from his grasp, then again. Erryn screamed, and Treon laughed.

  Rathe blocked a boot swinging toward his face, but another stomped his head, and yet another slammed into his ribs. When the cudgel fell again, it brought a throbbing darkness filled with a woman’s screams.

  Chapter 22

  Flat gray light streamed into Rathe’s eyes. His head felt cracked, swollen, muddled. The rest of him fared no better. He had come awake before, but this was the first time he felt lucid. It took a moment to realize the squealing racket stabbing into his ears was not the voice of a demonic harridan, but wagon axles wanting for a coat of grease.

  Wagon …? The thought drifted, unanswered.

  Eventually things started coming back. Arriving in Valdar, drinking ale with Loro in a raucous tavern, beating two guards, speaking with a woman … Erryn. For a long time, that was all he remembered. Then he recalled someone’s hissing laughter, and a trio of men battering him senseless.

  A cool hand touched his brow. “Not much of a champion, are you?” Erryn said with a smirk.

  Rathe squinted at her, realizing that she cradled his head in her lap. “How long since we left Valdar?”

  “Three days and nights, and now most of another day.”

  “Help me up.”

  “Rest easy,” Loro said. “Those bastards beat you near to death.”

  Rathe craned his neck, wincing at the stiffness. Loro rode beside the wagon, his bulk hidden under a heavy woolen cloak. Disregarding the man’s suggestion, Rathe sat up with a groan, ignoring a wave of queasiness. He had less success pushing aside the pounding in his head.

  Gingerly, he probed his ribs, back, arms, and anywhere else that had suffered from the beating. Of pain, there was plenty, but he found no broken bones. The worst was his swollen sword hand. He flexed it, gritting his teeth against the silvery bolts of agony that ran from his fingertips up through his forearm. If trouble came, he would have need of that hand. He kept opening and closing his fingers, warming and loosening them.

  “What’s the mood of the men?” Rathe asked.

  Loro shrugged. “First off, they griped, as men will after a night of heavy drinking. Now, I expect they just want to get back to Hilan and a proper bed.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Rathe said.

  Loro faced him, stubbled jowls waxen and eyes tight in the muted light. “As to you, most doubt you are a traitor, and name it folly that Treon has locked away the Scorpion. Their favor won’t help you any once we reach Hilan. If I do not miss my guess, your days as a soldier are over. If you are lucky, you might squash turnips for his lordship’s supper until the years are through with you. If not, an executioner will be sharpening his axe for a bite at your neck.”

  Rathe could not argue those points, which meant the last decision he wanted to make, must be made. Envisioning his head falling free of his neck and plopping into a bloody basket was almost as terrible as imagining a life spent in Sanouk’s kitchens. In the end, he decided that he had no real choice … and maybe he never had one, if what Nesaea foretold about the Khenasith, the Black Breath, held any truth.

  “Can you break us free?” he asked.

  Loro’s eyes went wide in mock surprise. “You no longer want to shame Treon by becoming the captain of Hilan? You’d rather shrug off the chains of honor and duty, and ride free as a brigand?”

  “We can laugh at my foolishness later,” Rathe growled. “For now, I need to know if you can get me out of this cage?”

  “Us,” Erryn growled.

  Loro patted an axe’s wooden haft protruding from under his blanket roll. “Aye. I also have your sword and dagger. Treon was so excited to catch you up to no good, he missed me collecting your weapons. I suppose I must ask if you are sure you want to take the road of a lawbreaker? As you once told me, to do so is to be a man h
unted all his remaining days.”

  “Seems I have no choice,” Rathe said. “Besides, a deeper treachery is stirring in the north than we have been told.” At Loro’s questioning look, Rathe explained all that Erryn had told him about the former brigand Mitros, and his odd pact with Lord Sanouk.

  “I can understand Sanouk’s idea to use brigands to keep the peace,” Loro said slowly, “but not his need for taking prisoners. There are no mines in Hilan, and he has servants enough from the village. And, far as I can see, most of the prisoners he’s getting are mad. What use are they?”

  Rathe shook his head, brow furrowed.

  “He needs food and rest,” Erryn said to Loro. “Once we are freed, we can sort out these matters.”

  Loro warned, “Be ready, for tonight you will become a lawbreaker in truth. For now, get some sleep, brother.”

  Loro kicked his mount into a quicker pace, and Rathe let Erryn guide his head back to her lap. She pulled a loaf of bread and a wineskin from under a pile of straw in one corner.

  “You can thank your friend for this,” she said, careful not to let any of the other soldiers see her feeding him. The wine tasted sour on his tongue, but he gulped it down, along with the bread. Erryn took some for herself, but not much.

  After the meal, he began to drowse. Just before he dropped off, he murmured, “Where are the others who were with you?”

  “Your captain put them in the other wagon. Seems he thought it amusing to leave the ‘lovers’ together.”

  “Perish the thought,” Rathe grumbled.

  Erryn smacked his head a stinging blow. “I may not be as tempting as one of those perfumed slatterns you are used to in Onareth,” she growled, “but neither are you as fetching as the stories say.”

  Wincing, Rathe rubbed his head where she had hit him. “Don’t let my present untidiness deceive you. I clean up nicely.”

  “As do I,” Erryn assured him.

  Rathe cracked an eyelid, imagined her without a grimy face and matted hair, and decided she just might be telling the truth.

  “Wake me if there’s trouble,” he said without disclosing his opinion, earning another smack and the shocking suggestion that his lineage ran to various beasts of the field. Despite castigating him, Erryn did not move his head from her lap.

  The day passed with Rathe sleeping and waking by turns. The leaden skies darkened further, and began spitting a cold drizzle. When the company halted to make camp, Rathe woke feeling refreshed, if still bruised and battered. Most importantly, his sword hand felt better—stiff, but better.

  Beyond the rusted bars of the wagon, Rathe observed Treon posting guards, while the other men hauled dead wood out of the forest to build fires. Someone had taken a stag during the day, and now a group of soldiers skinned the animal, cut it into large pieces, and began roasting the meat over a cookfire.

  Treon saw Rathe watching the goings-on, and sauntered over to the wagon. Before he came close enough to speak, a blood-curdling cry washed over the camp. Treon jerked his head around, palm slapping his sword hilt. Before the weapon was half-drawn, a blurring shape slammed him into a spinning tumble, and vanished back into the dark forest. Shapes covered in hairless, wrinkly yellow hides raced through camp, knocking men aside.

  Rathe gripped the bars, looking beyond the shouting soldiers. The forest, indifferent to the plight of men, gazed back. The strange creatures that had rushed through camp had vanished.

  Treon bounded to his feet, ordered the bewildered soldiers to take up their spears and form a defensive circle around camp. It was not lost on Rathe that the captain stood in the middle of the that circle, braced on two sides by a pair of men, and on a third by a roaring fire. Neither did he miss that the prisoner wagons sat outside that border, undefended.

  “Death stalks us,” Erryn said in a flat tone.

  Rathe moved to the other side of the wagon, putting the camp and its firelight to his back. As moments stretched, his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Picketed horses snorted and stamped their hooves. Men murmured, indifferent to Treon’s demand for quiet. From the other prisoner wagon, a woman’s reedy voice cackled, “How the shadows dance … how they hunger!”

  “Be still!” Treon hissed.

  “Soon we will all be still!” the woman screamed in demented mirth, then began whispering a cradle song, rocking simple Karmath in her arms, as if a nursing babe.

  “You see it, just there?” Erryn breathed.

  “Yes,” Rathe answered. The hair on his neck prickled and gooseflesh wandered over his skin at the sight of a milky figure ghosting through the forest, just at the edge of the firelight. It vanished around a tree, then reappeared, closer than before. Rathe struggled to track its approach as it flickered from one place to the next.

  “Captain Treon,” he called. “Let me help defend the camp.”

  “Bugger yourself bloody,” Treon shouted.

  “So be it,” Rathe answered. “But the best I can tell, I am completely safe in here.”

  Within two heartbeats of that assertion, someone cried, “We need all the swords we can get!”

  “Shut your poxy mouth, and hold the line!”

  The argument washed over Rathe, as he searched for the creature in the forest. He found it climbing in the trees, its snaky limbs bending with revolting suppleness. Reddish hair streamed down its naked back. The creature paused again, small hanging breasts heaving as it breathed. Its head turned slowly, revealing a long, feminine face. Rathe’s heart shuddered.

  “ ‘Tis a Shadenmok,” Erryn gasped. Her breath wheezed into her chest, then she screamed, “A Shadenmok hunts!”

  Turmoil erupted in the camp, but Rathe could not turn from the creature. From a face white as cream, protuberant black eyes rimmed in crimson regarded the panicking men. The nostrils of its blade-thin nose flared, as if catching a pleasing scent. Its lipless mouth split impossibly wide, a hole ringed by tiny, spiked teeth. The Shadenmok flung back its head, producing a keening wail that drove a spike of terror through Rathe’s heart. He threw himself backward, clawing for his absent sword.

  “She summons the Hilyoth!” a soldier warned, an instant before his words proved true.

  Chapter 23

  The Shadenmok’s devil-hounds, the Hilyoth, swarmed out of the forest, dogs in form save for rounded, apelike heads with massive, underslung jaws bristling with slanting teeth. Some few impaled themselves on thrusting spears. Most broke through, mouths snapping shut over arms and legs, grinding muscle and bone.

  The line of soldiers disintegrated under the onslaught, becoming a confusion of screams and howls, stabbing spears and slashing swords. More soldiers fled into the forest. The Hilyoth gave chase, sundering hamstrings with taloned paws, then falling on their prey like starved wolves.

  “Fight, you stoneless whoresons!” Loro raged amid the teeming throng of men and beasts. The company continued to scatter in all directions, abandoning weapons to the mud. The Hilyoth flooded over the soldiers, a writhing tide of destruction.

  “FIGHT!” Loro roared, charging through the fray, one hand wielding a sword, the other a woodsman’s axe, both weapons drenched in gore.

  “Free me!” Rathe called to Aeden, who turned this way and that, mouth hanging, eyes glassy. Aeden found Rathe, blinked stupidly, then dropped his spear and shambled toward the wagons, heedless of the surrounding carnage. He managed two steps before a Hilyoth abandoned the savaged leg of a screaming soldier and bounded toward Aeden.

  Rathe’s blood froze. “Behind you!”

  Aeden kept on, a bemused grin touching his lips. The streaking Hilyoth leaped on his back, its jaws closing over his arm. The creature’s weight flung Aeden to the ground and, as if he had tripped from his own clumsiness, Aeden gazed at Rathe with the same confused expression, while the devil-hound worried its prize. Twisting and shaking its head, the Hilyoth tore off Aeden’s arm with a grinding, ripping sound and bounded away, the sundered appendage waving from its dripping maw.

  “Get up!” Rathe urg
ed. The man had little time to bind such a wound.

  Teeth bared in a sickly grimace that was at once a baffling grin and a sneer of agony, Aeden made to push himself up, unknowing that one of his arms had been stolen. Off-balance, Aeden heeled over and fell on his face. His breathless sobs carried over the tumult of battle, but he drew his knees under him and, by inches, staggered to his feet.

  “Hurry, Aeden!” Rathe called.

  The soldier turned like a child coming awake and finding himself in a strange place. The Hilyoth continued their murderous assault against the few soldiers still fighting. The dead lay sprawled, dismembered, eviscerated. The terrible screams of the Shadenmok drove her beasts to greater frenzy.

  Rathe fixed his eyes on Aeden, trying to will strength and awareness into the soldier’s mind. In the wavering firelight, crimson welled deep within his gaping shoulder socket. Then it gushed. Aeden’s head turned toward that flow, jerking in fits and starts.

  “Look at me! At me!”

  Aeden did not heed Rathe’s command. His gaze fell on the wound. Crimson freshets pulsed over the shredded edge of his cloak. He raised his remaining hand, allowing blood to wash over his fingers. His eyes went wide and wider, his mouth yawned in a silent howl. His chest hitched, drawing breath, and loosed a piercing shriek.

  Then Loro was at the end of the wagon, battering the lock with his axe. Iron broke in a shower of sparks. Rathe booted open the barred door and jumped out. Before his feet had settled, he whirled and slammed the door back. “Erryn, keep this closed, and stay inside!”

  Face pale but set, she nodded.

  Loro, covered in blood and bits of yellowish hide, thrust Rathe’s sword and dagger into his hands. “If we survive this—”