by Scott Toney
Wrath
Thomas stood in Havilah’s market, a torch in one hand and his sword braced in the other. Smoke billowed up from a thatched building before him as a fire ravaged its insides. He was filled with rage. “Spare no-one!” he shouted over the sound of buildings ablaze and people screaming in pain. He stepped over the body of a dead woman and spread the flame of his own torch over the building before him. The flame leapt up the building’s side.
Thomas had instructed his mercenary army to burn Havilah’s entire main city to the ground.
He stalked through the ash-covered thoroughfare, his sword scratching on the stone path. A scream came from a building to his right and he looked and saw a mercenary with horns protruding from his back dragging a woman by the hair out of its doorway.
“Please!” the woman cried. She looked up at the man. “Why are you doing this to us?” A young boy ran after them from the burning structure as it collapsed in swirling flame.
Red heat burned in Thomas’s eyes and hate swelled in him. “Kill her!” he shouted. “Do not take sympathy on them! They know what they have done!”
The mercenary bludgeoned the woman with his sword and she dropped to the ground. Her body convulsed as blood curdled out of it. The man went for the boy next and the youth turned and fled down an alleyway.
“Leave him be,” Thomas spoke to his hired man. “I will follow him.” He began to run through the streets as fire leapt from building to building around him. He tracked the boy, watching him turn corners and then turning those same corners after him.
They won’t insult me again, he thought as he continued after the youth. After a while longer he began to gain ground on him. We’re reaching the edge of the city, the forests, he thought. I’ll be able to catch the boy there.
Thomas slowed his pace. He would find the boy and show him the uselessness in fleeing. Dirt and stone churned in Thomas’s footsteps as the young king made his way down an alleyway that became a path leading into the forest. An untouched hut stood next to him and Thomas brushed his torch against it as he passed, smiling as he watched fire roaring up to the roof.
He entered the woods at a slow walk, looking from side to side from the path. He was sure he would discover the boy hiding in the foliage about him. “Come out!” Thomas called to him. “It is useless to hide!”
He walked a while farther and stopped to listen again.
Suddenly there was a rustle down a slope to his left. There, he thought. I’ve found you. Thomas turned off the path and walked down the hill to his side. As he went he began to see a small pond at the bottom of the hill. “Come out, boy!” he called again.
There was more rustling and the boy ran out from behind a bush, almost tripping down the hill as he moved.
“Come back!” Thomas called. “There is no sense in running! It will only make this harder on you!” Thomas felt strength and anger surge through his body as he moved down the slope after the boy. He will pay, he thought as he neared level ground.
The boy looked back with fear in his eyes and tripped, crashing into a patch of weeds. “P…please…” the boy stuttered.
Thomas saw his chance, dropped his torch and grabbed the youth’s hair as he reached him. He pressed his foot into the boy’s back to hold him down. The fire from the torch extinguished in the earth where it had collided and smoke swirled in the air.
“Do you know why you will die, boy?” Thomas asked as he gave his hair a yank.
“P…please…” the youth stammered again.
“Do you?” A surge of rage swept through Thomas. He gripped tighter on the boy’s hair and yanked it high into the air, almost ripping it from his scalp. The boy shrieked in pain and Thomas lowered his head once more.
Moments passed.
“No…” the boy’s word could barely be heard through the dirt beneath his face. “They… they say you are possessed.”
“Do they?” A hint of laughter was in Thomas’s voice. “Possessed, because I demand respect from my people? Because I give them land to live in and they refuse to pay their taxes? I know what they say of me, how they mock me in the marketplace. No-one will disrespect me again.” He lifted his foot from the boy but still clenched his hair. “Rise,” he told him. “Look me in the eyes.”
Tears streamed down the boy’s face as he stood. Mud clung to his skin and clothes.
Good, Thomas thought. Now he will see.
“Mother…” the boy wept as Thomas lifted his sword to his neck.
“I took your parents’ lives because they dared to plot against me and speak behind my back. They and those like them are a sickness in my land.” Thomas slowly moved the boy backwards toward the pond. “I will not tolerate deception.”
“I’ve done nothing,” the boy pled as he wiped tears from his face and cried more.
“Nothing?” Thomas asked. “You would if you lived.” With a yank of the youth’s hair Thomas brought him to the pond’s edge. He held his blade to his tender neck. “Go in.”
“I… I can’t swim.”
“GO IN!” Thomas screamed. “Or else I will run you through with my sword.”
“No… please…”
“Then I will push you in,” Thomas said as he released the boy’s hair and shoved him into the pond.
The boy hit the water with a splash and thrashed in the consuming substance. He sank as bubbles fled from his mouth toward the surface. Then he grabbed on to a root and pulled himself upward. “Ack…” the boy spat water as his head pushed above the surface and then thrust beneath it once more.
“No,” Thomas said as he dropped his sword and waded into the pond himself. “You are mine.” He grabbed the boy’s throat, holding him underwater as he convulsed. Bubbles spewed out of his lips. Thomas could feel the boy gasping for breath as he drowned, his Adam’s apple jerking against Thomas’s palm. He looked into the boy’s bloodshot eyes and was filled with rage for what the youth’s family had forced him to do. “If they had only respected me…” the young king said as he watched the last bit of life drain from the boy. There was one more convulsion and the boy’s body went heavy and limp.
Thomas released his grip on his neck and watched him sink to the pond’s bottom. It couldn’t have been more than five feet deep. The hollow look in the boy’s eyes made him feel powerful. “It always feels good to take a life.” Thomas smiled. These people had brought it upon themselves. They were paying now. That gave him some feeling of redemption for what they had done to him.
He casually turned and walked out of the pond, picking up a stone as he went, and skipping it across the surface. Time to go back, he thought. There is much more to be done. He lifted his sword and left his smoking torch beside the pond, ascending the hill through the woods back toward the market.
As Thomas walked, his bitterness consumed him. He thought of how Lilya had made him believe she would be his, and how she had deceived him and left him alone. He thought of Alexander and how that dragon had torn Lilya from him. They will pay. They will all pay, he thought. With each passing moment anger built within him toward the people of Cush and Assyria. How dare they deny me their riches? How dare they plot to dethrone me?
As he reached the market, fire crackled and raged in its buildings. He heard screams and watched as ash and smoke twisted in a hot breeze around him. “Soon the whole world will be like this,” he said as he walked toward Castle Ah.
He didn’t feel remorse for the deaths he caused, didn’t feel anything except power and hatred coursing through his body.
He walked out of the marketplace’s flames and found a large group of his mercenaries assembled there as if waiting for him. Dead civilians littered the streets and the bitter stench of death permeated the air.
“They must all die!” Thomas shouted to them. “Destroy the people of Havilah! And when you are finished with them, attack Cush and Assyria! This time we won’t take their gems, we’ll take their souls!”
The mercenaries cheered and clanged their swords. Thoma
s felt rage and a thirst for revenge running hot through his veins.
“But Cush’s Princess Lilya is not to die! Bring her back to me alive! She is my queen! I will have her, one way or the other!”
His heart raced in his chest as Pan Dora approached him from the mercenary group. “You are a man now,” she spoke to him in a raspy voice. “And a man must be respected. A man’s desires must be fulfilled.”
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