Death Mark

by Robert J. Schwalb

  The gith fanned out and moved deeper into the room. Korvak found a lamp and worked to light it. When he coaxed the flame to life, the room filled with soft reddish glow. The gith lifted mattresses and kicked aside boxes. They found nothing and made an awful racket while doing so. Korvak felt no need to silence them. If there were people there, they were aware already thanks to the fight outside.

  Lamp in hand, he followed the gith. He saw a curtain hanging across a door frame. The gith followed his gaze and moved without having to be ordered. One ripped the cloth down, revealing a long corridor ending at a turn, several paces away. Arches pierced the walls on either side, more flimsy curtains concealing their contents.

  One gith crept down the passage. He glanced into the adjoining rooms.

  The operation’s scope impressed Korvak. Vordon had managed to do the impossible. He had brought an army inside Tyr, used warehouses to quarter them, and positioned them throughout the city. As the gith moved to the edge of the light, Korvak thought it might be a good idea to question the mul toughs. The right pressure might coax out something Korvak could use. He dismissed the thought. They were long gone anyway. If they told anyone, word would reach his masters, who would come to investigate. Korvak smiled at the thought of Astini’s shock at what Korvak could tell him.

  The gith turned the corner at the corridor’s end. A moment later, Korvak heard a sharp cry. Something wet splashed onto the floor in the passage.

  The other gith looked worried and moved to investigate. Korvak followed, his implement ready and raised.

  The lamp guttered and threw monstrous shadows on the walls. In the uncertain light, Korvak saw blood running down the wall where the passage turned to the right. The first gith must be dead.

  Korvak prodded his remaining gith with his implement’s tip. The mercenary obeyed, reluctant to join its fellow in death. He crept toward the turn. There, he peered around the corner and fell to the ground. A crossbow bolt stuck out from between his eyes.

  Korvak heard booted footsteps.

  A human guard rounded the corner. Thick carapace armor painted red and brown covered him from head to toe. He had reloaded the crossbow and brought it up to fire. Korvak was faster and let loose a beam of blue light into the man’s face. The head exploded, painting the wall and ceiling with bits of bone and brain. Ashes swirled in the air.

  Korvak withdrew. More guards would follow the first. The passage was too cramped for the enemy to rush him in any kind of numbers. But there were limits on how many spells he could cast.

  He heard movement behind him, a curtain stirring. The noise saved his life. He ducked. A heavy spiked club sailed over his head and smashed into the wall to his side.

  Korvak cursed, and shadows came to life around his attacker in a black, seething mass. The attacker was a monster of a tarek, stooped, naked, and armed with the club. The tarek screamed as the shadows clung to him, yet he pressed the attack. Korvak scuttled back to throw another spell. He stole power from the diminishing life left in the dying gith and called forth a cruel howling wind to whip the tarek. The tunnel’s close confines made the wind deafening. As they picked up speed, they lifted the tarek into the air and tore him to bloody pieces, spraying crimson up and down the passage.

  Korvak stepped through the mess and ran for the barracks and, he hoped, the street beyond. As he exited the tunnel toward the sliver of light promising escape, something punched him in the arm, spinning him around and sending him sprawling. Black spots hung in his vision. Pain coursed from his shoulder. He was surprised to see a bolt rising from the joint. A human guard reloaded his crossbow in the passage behind him. As he worked, more warriors came around him to close in on Korvak. Korvak raised his good arm to shield his face. The guard raised his foot and kicked him. Another leveled a sword at Korvak’s neck. Wild eyes, open mouth, fear. The soldier would kill at any provocation. Korvak lay still.

  “Well done, Micah,” someone said from the corridor’s end. Soft footfalls grew louder until the speaker joined the guards. Watari, Thaxos Vordon’s pet and henchman, looked down on Korvak.

  “Seems we’ve found the one behind all the questions. Good. Sorry about your gith. Can’t stand them myself. No flavor. Oh, well. My master is desperate to meet you. Micah, secure him. Our friend here has an appointment I know he’s dying to keep.”

  Loren chewed his lip in frustration. He sat on a rock and did his best to ignore the stench rising from the day’s corpses. The carrion birds screeched and flapped over the gruesome feast. Here and there, a cry for water, mercy, or a mother lifted above the noise.

  Kutok, a savage warrior who had thus far survived every raid, dropped to the ground a few feet away from Loren. The warrior kicked his legs out and leaned back on his arms. Sweat drenched his long blond hair and tangled his beard. Scabs covered his body, some marking cuts left by desperate guards fighting for their lives or claw marks from beasts he had slain. He bore other scars as well—a rumpled patch marking where some spell had singed him, a missing ear from a bit of shrapnel launched from an exploded wagon. He was never a beauty, but he was downright hideous after the fights.

  Loren ached and knew Kutok felt the same. The broken man next to him was his last surviving lieutenant, the last hired sword sent out from Nibenay entrusted with command.

  Loren shifted in vain to make the rock more comfortable. “How many today?” he asked.

  Kutok closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky. He then dropped his chin to his chest to watch the kestrekels, vile carrion birds, dropping like stones from the sky to rip and tear, to feast on the dead and dying. His voice cracked, “Six more.”

  Loren shook his head. The one hundred soldiers who had followed him into the raid against the first caravan had been winnowed down to a handful, a mere twenty men and women. Reinforcements trickled in. They were mercenaries, ex-gladiators, slaves, and desert scum. They would serve any master so long as there was water in the offering. Loren knew there wasn’t much water left, despite Temmnya’s assurances, and it wouldn’t be long before the new mercenaries left or turned on them.

  Ten days. That’s all it had been. Each day had blurred into the next, one long stretch of marching, fighting, and marching again. If Temmnya were distant to start with, she had become a stranger. She did not even call him to her bed. He was exhausted. His desire died on the battlefield, and all he wanted to do was sleep.

  Neither Loren nor Kutok bothered to mention what they should do with the dead. Temmnya had forbidden them from burning the corpses. She had explained there was no need. The kestrekels had to eat too. Loren did not like the command. He felt he owed something to the dead for their ultimate sacrifice, and to leave them lying in the sun seemed disrespectful. But he had learned not to question anymore. He did as he was told. It was how he slept at night.

  There was no reason for the attacks. At first, it seemed as though they were focused on Vordon caravans. The first three battles saw Vordon’s guards and merchants dead. The rest had been against anyone who happened across Temmnya’s path. Each time they left the dead behind, unburied, to rot. Loren managed to cope with his part in killing innocents. His victims had done nothing to earn their deaths. He retreated inside himself when he heard their cries, when he answered their pleading with the rise and fall of his blade. He was a butcher and nothing more.

  “Getting to you?” asked Kutok. Loren didn’t hear any compassion in the man’s voice. He asked in the same monotone way he had been using for quite a while.

  Loren shrugged.

  “It bothered me at first,” said Kutok. “You know, I’ve been fighting in arenas since I was a boy. I’ve killed a lot of people. Sometimes even people who had no business being in the pits. The templars called them criminals. It was my job to kill or be killed. This. This is different. These people. They’re just merchants and caravan guards. I saw their faces in my dreams, heard their cries when I slept. But I don’t now. Not anymore. I just feel … well … I just feel nothing.”

 
Loren looked at Kutok, who was still staring at the carrion birds. What could he say? He felt the same.

  Loren put his hands on his knees and levered himself up. He needed to find Aeris. They had not spoken in days. His old friend had become a stranger since the first attack. Loren suspected it might have something to do with the queer black stone. Or it could be Aeris and Temmnya had become close over the past few days. Loren wasn’t jealous. He was worried.

  She was a witch. Her nocturnal travels left no doubts in his mind. Aeris, having some talent at magic, feared her at first but seemed drawn to her more and more with each passing day. He had seen no signs of seduction, no efforts by Temmnya to befriend the half-elf, yet they seemed inseparable.

  Loren left Kutok sitting on the ground and wandered off across the battlefield. They had attacked another caravan, small, just two wagons drawn by kanks and protected by seven guards. They were bound for Altaruk, a trade village at a crossroads to the south. The caravan had been transporting textiles and grains—valuable, Loren guessed, but not enough for their force to risk soldiers on an attack. Temmnya sent them out anyway, and Loren positioned the soldiers on either side of the old trade road. Loren led one team, and Kutok, the other. When the wagons were within thirty yards, Loren and Kutok led their forces out from the sands. They were merciless. They killed man and beast alike. It was over in minutes.

  And it left Loren scrambling for justification. They headed toward Tyr, yet each time they attacked a caravan or outpost, they lost time. Rather than press on toward the city, they inched across the desert. They attacked without good reason, often at a tactical disadvantage, and each time, they left the dead where they lay and had even begun leaving valuables behind, taking food, water, and weapons to replace the ones they broke. After the fights, Temmnya pushed them at a grueling pace until sunset, at which point she’d vanish again. She always returned before dawn, always smelling of fire and covered in soot.

  Loren stepped over a headless guard and climbed up to the top of a dune. There, he looked out over the sands. Emptiness. Rolling dunes. A boiling sky. It was all meaningless. The life he was living, everything he had ever done, changed nothing, meant nothing. He was as insignificant as a grain of sand, and where the wind blew, so he went.

  The battlefield was hours old and miles away when Temmnya summoned Loren to her tent. He entered through the heavy flaps and saw the excessive trappings he had come to know so well. She lay on the bed, wearing a thin dress. Her pet lizard gnawed on what looked like a human arm. It held the limb with its foreclaws and ripped the meat from the bone. Aeris stood near the back of the tent. He wore pants and nothing else. Pink scars stood out from his pale skin, the marks left by the kirre almost two weeks gone. Aeris watched Loren and there was some unspoken challenge in his expression.

  No circle covered the floor. No candles burned. Temmnya, it seemed, would stay for the night.

  Temmnya lifted herself up on one arm and offered him a dazzling smile. “Loren.”

  He nodded. He matched Aeris’s stare. Something had happened to them, come between them. Loren knew the thing was the woman on the bed.

  “Can I get you something? Wine perhaps?”

  Loren grunted.

  “Aeris, be a dear and fetch Loren a cup of wine. The good bottle, please.”

  The half-elf darkened but complied. A moment later, the half-elf pressed a wooden cup in his hand and turned away.

  “There,” said Temmnya. “Please. Take a seat.”

  Loren put the cup on a table and looked for a chair. There wasn’t one. Temmnya patted the bed.

  “I have not yet washed from the fight. I’ll stand.”

  She chuckled. “Loren, I am impressed. You have done all I have asked and more. I never expected you to be so skilled in battle. I’ve never seen your equal. Father told me you were gifted in the arena. I never imagined you would be able to adapt to desert fighting. House Shom thanks you. I thank you.”

  Aeris did his best to ignore the conversation and feigned interest in a scroll he had found.

  “I am also glad you have learned to accept your fate. Your questions had been growing tiresome. The best servants are the quiet ones. Wouldn’t you say, Aeris?”

  The half-elf mumbled.

  “Ah. Well. I see there’s some pain between you both. A pity. In any event there are things we need to discuss, Loren. First, Aeris tells me you never told him about our arrangement. Why? Whatever were you protecting him from? I settled this for you, Loren. I told Aeris everything about the terms of our contract and how you both found service in House Shom. I hope my part in revealing this little detail will put to rest any tensions between you. I would hate to think I have had a part in testing your friendship. You have mentioned how important Aeris is to you.”

  Loren felt his face flush. He had nothing to say to either of them. Aeris would not look at him.

  Temmnya looked from Loren to Aeris and back again. She laughed, a trilling noise Loren found irritating. The lizard on the floor looked up at the outburst then went back to its meal. A loud crack and wet slobbering noises followed.

  “You men and your pride,” she said. She rose from the bed and moved to Loren. She traced his cuts and scrapes with a finger. She stopped when Loren refused to flinch. She frowned and returned to the bed.

  Loren said, “Was there something else?”

  Aeris grunted.

  She turned back to them both. “Yes. These raids tire me. It is time to hunt bigger game.”

  Loren blanched. Even Aeris looked up.

  “Tomorrow, we pick up the pace for Tyr. We will reach Dremp by nightfall. I want you to take the village for me,” she said.

  Loren blurted, “With what men?” She opened her mouth as if to answer, but Loren cut her off. “What few troops you have left are exhausted. I’m not sure I could find ten warriors still able to fight, let alone attack a village. The rest—and let me tell you we have less than half the number we started with—the rest are too damned injured to even march another day.” He realized he was shouting. He fought for control.

  She grinned and rubbed her hands together. “Such passion! Oh, Loren, you amuse me so. I have summoned reinforcements to replace your warriors. They will be here by dawn. Do not worry about the injured. Live or die, they’ll serve my purposes.”

  “They’re marching through the night? We will need at least a day for them to recover. They’ll be useless otherwise—”

  She raised a hand to silence Loren. “Aeris, show him.”

  Loren read the guilt in his friend’s face. Aeris moved deeper into the shadows, where a curtain hung from the roof. He pulled it aside. There stood a man. He was dressed in armor and was armed with a bone sword. Yet he wasn’t alive, couldn’t be alive. He offered no expression, his gray skin waxy, and his eyes flat and unmoving. Loren recognized him. It was Rab—one of the squad leaders who died in the first battle.

  Loren reached for his sword. He ripped it from the sheath. “What sorcery is this?” Loren shouted.

  He glared at Aeris and saw him in a new light. There was something wrong with him. He looked drained, sick, feverish.

  “What have you done, Aeris?” Loren said, stepping back, blade raised.

  “Don’t be such a fool, Loren,” said Temmnya, cutting off Aeris’s protestations. “Aeris did nothing but help. This soldier is my doing.” She seemed offended, as if Loren had somehow insulted her power. She stretched like a cat on her silk sheets. “The dead are meat. Why shouldn’t they serve? In fact, you will find them more obedient than the living soldiers you have been leading so far. They never tire, never need food nor water. They are yours to command. Provided, of course, you still serve me. Here, Loren, is your army. Give me a victory, Loren,” she purred, “and I’ll make sure to reward you in ways you can’t imagine.”

  Dawn came far too quickly. As Temmnya had said, reinforcements arrived just as the sun crested the horizon. The zombie soldiers shuffled into ranks. He recognized many. Carrion eaters had b
een at them, but Loren still saw faces of the men and women he had slain, the fellow soldiers he had once led. Some were more intact than others. A few were nothing more than skeletons.

  The stench was appalling, and a few of the living vomited.

  Loren understood everything. Temmnya wanted them to leave the dead so she wouldn’t have to dig them up. The zombies were where she had been going. She had been building an army.

  A few soldiers ran off in terror. Loren let them go. No one else moved to stop them. Could he blame them? Loren, too, wanted to run. He was looking at evil, and he was sickened.

  Aeris and Temmnya had come out from her tent to inspect the army. She was radiant in her beauty, her pleasure plain for all to see. Aeris looked wretched, stumbling, and weak. Loren saw confusion in his friend’s expression. She was using Aeris, draining his life to fuel her dark magic. She didn’t need Loren anymore. She could do what she wanted without him. Loren could go. But if he did, Aeris would die. If not immediately, then when she fulfilled all her plans.

  Loren shoved down his revulsion and turned to Kutok. “Get the men ready. We march for Dremp.”

  Melech knew every step he took brought him closer to death, yet he still put one foot in front of the other. He shook not just from fear, but also fatigue. He hadn’t had time to sleep. When he wasn’t making his rounds, he was sitting on rooftops, chasing merchants, and witnessing murders. He did as Korvak wanted. He had found out what the templar wanted to know. He earned his iron coins. Too bad he’d never get to spend them. Torston knew. He had to know. And it was time to pay the price for betraying the organization.

  Melech neared Shadow Square and the Rat’s Nest, where Torston would be waiting. Night was falling. He had wasted time fretting about the consequence he knew he would have to face. Betrayal. The templars were more or less in charge of the city, and Melech was doing what he was told to do. Yet Torston and the templars had been tangling for years, and working with the black-robed bastards was tantamount to slapping Torston in the face. If Kep had not shown up. If Kep had minded his own business, Melech could have been in and out with no one the wiser.