by Rosie Scott
But at least I was alive, and I'd managed to keep my manhood.
I laid back in the snow, too exhausted to move for the moment. The corpses I'd left animated still stood around me like ardent stalkers. I didn't want to dispel them yet; as I laid there exhausted, achy with battle fatigue, and overwhelmed by the prospect of already having to find a new place to camp, the last thing I wanted to feel was alone. My rough exasperated laughter echoed into the air and off the surrounding tree trunks as I let out a rush of emotion in the only way that felt relevant at the moment.
And to think I'd almost pitied these mercenaries for having a smaller group. One thing was for damn sure: I would never pity a foe again.
Eighteen
The Seran Forest evolved from a tranquil environment into a hot spot over the course of only two seasons, for after I bested the first mercenary party, many more followed in their place. They came in all sizes; the smallest party I defeated had only three members while the largest had twenty-five. From overhearing their conversations and looting their bodies, I learned as much as I could from them and the contracts they accepted from Sirius. For example, now I knew Sera reserved so much of its budget for mercenary advances. While the current reward for my head was 5,000 gold, Sirius also gave the mercenaries a smaller advance if they agreed to take on the contract. The gold was for travel and supply expenses, but it also ensured that mercenaries did not speak of their targets. The word necromancer was not to be uttered outside of parties sworn to secrecy and the pretentious walls of the Seran University. Instead, I was to be referred to as a simple ruffian.
I couldn't pretend this all didn't greatly amuse me. The government's handling of the situation was rudimentary and crossed the line from ineffective to counter-productive. Sirius didn't wish to risk his soldiers, so he threw some of his endless gold at mercenaries looking to make an honest living and called it a day. And as I bested each group of them and added their corpses to my own army, my strength only grew. It seemed we fed each other. Sirius supplied me with new minions and battles to look forward to, and I delivered a nice gift of endless frustration back to the bastard's doorstep by being a problem he couldn't easily fix. Even though Kai was far removed from my life, being a thorn in her father's side felt like getting a tiny bit of justice for the emotional abuse he put her through.
I searched for a place to relocate in the forest for the better part of half a year, taking my growing horde of corpses with me. I hid them every night under plant debris and in the thickest brush to keep my secret safe from anyone other than my pursuers. Only once did I have a close call when a group of dwarven friends from Hammerton wandered through the forest on their way to Sera after crossing over the eastern Chairel border. The dwarves camped near to the burial site of a dozen corpses beneath a broad pine, their existence only covered up by a thin layer of red needles. I overheard one dwarf comment about a stench, but they otherwise thought nothing of it. They also took a break from traveling for a day, so I couldn't move on since I couldn't raise the corpses in their presence. I spent that day fishing, but as soon as the dwarves moved on, so did I.
If I learned anything at all during the first half of the year 412, it was that the human body is a disgusting and fascinating invention of nature. I grew a special understanding and appreciation for anatomy since I was constantly surrounded by decomposition and brutal battle. Even reading the whimsical fables and historical accounts of warfare at the Seran University hadn't prepared me for the harsh realities of true bloodshed. One such reality is how bodily waste is such a common product of conflict. Men urinate unintentionally from fear even in mid-parry, and many defecate at the exact moment the soul leaves the body through the eyes. Another reality is how one simple injury can send the entire body into a death spiral. Once, I killed a man by attempting and failing to sever his arm at the arm pit. All it took was a single cut to the axillary artery, and he'd bled out in mere minutes while calling desperately for a healer. Such things were always glossed over and fancied up for retellings, and details given sparingly. I found this did a grave injustice to the bleak beauty of viscera and the tragedies interwoven in the savagery of conflict. When two people are at the point where they're ripping each other's bodies apart, there's a story there that deserves telling, and the details aren't always pretty. Because they can't be if the story is to remain honest.
It was one thing to take a life. But as the days went on and I faced more and more foes, I grew physically stronger, and with the strength came the savagery. Gore had once turned my stomach and blanked out my mind, but as I became accustomed to it, it no longer fazed me. I saved my most savage acts for the foes who were troublemakers: those who mocked me, injured me during battle, or were the hardest to kill. Gods only knew what Sirius or Kenady would look like when I was done with them if I ever had the chance to see them again. Pain isn't hard to inflict if one feels the target deserves it, after all. Internally I wondered what this change in me meant for my humanity, but part of me didn't care. The grimy side of human nature already wronged me in every way it knew how, so I returned the gesture with equal disrespect. Still, I tried to hang on to a shred of common decency. Every time I fought mercenaries, I gave them a chance to withdraw before I showed deadly force. Each time I sensed a foe's intense fear or felt someone had talked them into this mission against me, I'd kill them painlessly through leeching if possible. Once, I even let a man go after he begged for his life. I told him to drop his weapon, and he did. Then I told him to run, and he did that, too; I kept his weapon for my corpses and didn't bother chasing him. Even if he was a blabbermouth and gave away my location to all of Sera, it made no difference.
By late-High Star of 412, my search for a new camping site had long ago turned half-hearted, so when I stumbled upon the perfect solution I was more surprised than relieved. A mere hour after fishing at a well-stocked stream, a solid splotch of brown filled in the gaps of needled foliage like a structure sat just across a line of pines waiting to be discovered. I hadn't come across any buildings in the forest yet save for a shoddy lean-to some campers had put together haphazardly and then left without a care. My tent was already scorched and frayed from that first mercenary fight half a year ago, so the idea of living in a solid structure enticed me.
I willed my small army of corpses to gather together before dispelling them in a clearing at the center of four trees. They collapsed together, the resulting scented breeze a juxtaposition of decomposition and pine. I didn't bother burying or hiding them for now. I wandered through the forest toward the structure as nonchalantly as possible in case someone still occupied it. I found it ironic that despite my lengthy and severe criminal record, I worried about being perceived as a simple thief. Perhaps because I wasn't one. Contrarily, people could call me a murderer or necromancer all they wanted, and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest because I couldn't argue.
Sometimes the mind makes the dumbest arguments when it has all the time in the world to think.
As I closed in on the structure, its form became clearer through the fuzzy green branches of conifers. It was a small log cabin that appeared barely half the size of the one I'd grown up in. It couldn't have been larger than ten by ten feet. Its simple walls were layered unshaved pine trunks that laced together at each corner. It had a peaked roof with tiny windows at the tops of the western and eastern walls that seemed built for ventilation, for they were far too high to see through and the cabin only had one floor. On either side of a centered front door were single-pane windows, but they were closed, and hunter green drapes blocked my view of the inside. Along the cabin's left wall was a small herb garden that bowed to the authority of wild forest overgrowth as it stretched its greedy green fingers over and under the tiny enclosed fence. Clusters of brown mushrooms sprouted along the inside edge of the garden barrier. Given the knowledge passed along to me from the drug dealing Celd last year, I knew the fungi was edible. What wasn't clear was whether it grew here naturally or by intelligent encouragement.
I circled the cottage a few times, eyeing it and considering claiming it for my own. I heard nothing inside the home, so I walked up to the front and tried the door. It was locked, so I backed away. If this home belonged to someone, they were innocent to my situation. I had no qualms with killing those who hunted me down, but I still took issue with committing atrocities against people who were no threat to me. I was a criminal out of unfortunate circumstance, not because I'd started out my life hurting people. I didn't want that to change today. Maybe I'd become more of a monster over the years of surviving in such a state of loneliness; perhaps one day I would devolve to resemble the myth of the insane necromancer that everyone believed was inevitable.
But not today.
I walked back to where my corpses waited for me in a pile of mismatched limbs and wrinkled, parched skin. I raised them just to direct them to various hiding places and dispelled them again. As I covered them up with forest debris and conveniently placed branches and logs, I formed a plan.
A week.
That was how long I'd give the owner of this cabin to come home. If I saw no activity for that long, I'd break in and make it my own. The owner possibly went out fishing or hunting and would be home as soon as tonight. After all, the cabin was in a convenient location for both, which was why it was so attractive to me. If I broke in after a week and the owner still ended up coming home to the cabin just to find me in it, I would apologize and offer trade or work as recompense.
This justification seemed reasonable. I camped out near the cabin for seven days, watching and listening for any signs of life. None came. Finally, I approached the home, testing each of its windows for an easy entry. None of them budged. I returned to the front door, kicking at it relentlessly until it finally burst inward on its hinges, trailing a cloud of wood splinters.
I immediately recognized the stench of advanced decomposition that billowed out in the door's wake, and I was so used to it that I didn't hesitate walking in. I left the door open behind me to allow the home to air out. As I'd surmised, the entire cabin was one room. A tiny wooden cabinet and counter sat in the immediate left corner. Someone left a ceramic mug on it beside a tea kettle. Dried herbs hung from a rack above another shaded window. A table for two but with only one chair sat against the wall next to the counter. In the right corner were a pair of shoes below a small coat rack that held a collection of clothes. I brushed through them as I passed; they were men's clothes, but for a much shorter man than me.
A small fireplace took up the center back wall with a place to hang a pot to cook food or boil water. A pot hung there now, clean but with the slight residue of good use. The stone surrounding the tinder led up the center wall and to a chimney. Just to the right of the fireplace and along the far right wall was a single bed with a thin mattress and wool blanket. Both were crusted with a thick film of fluids from a single corpse that was so decayed that it looked just like a skeleton wearing skin to be fashionable.
A bed. It was a simple thought, but it was my main focus for the moment. I never imagined I'd be lucky enough to come across a bed with a mattress again. I'd struck gold.
I pulled the blanket down. Maggots had long ago infested the body. The luckiest among them evolved into flies and moved on, but a few dead insects rolled out from the creases in wool after failing to escape its maze. I could safely assume no one would come back to claim the cabin. They'd had long enough to do so.
Immediately, I set to work cleaning up the cabin and making it my own. I relocated all my corpses to the area and moved the previous owner out to a shallow grave to join them. I buried a sword with him that another corpse had as a side weapon, ensuring he could protect his home even in death. After covering the corpses with debris as usual, I broke brittle twigs off the nearby trees and scattered them in a circle barrier around the cabin. It was an additional layer of defense I'd started using last season; the twigs didn't look out of place in a forest, but they offered an alarm to alert me of near pursuers. When hunkered down in one location that had only one door—a door I'd just broken to get into the house—I needed every defense I could get.
I dragged the thin mattress and wool blanket to the stream and washed them as best as I could, though I double and triple-washed them using boiling water back at the cabin and a pathetic soap I made myself following the directions of the alchemical anatomy book. The soap did little to clean the stains, but at least the smell was gone. As well as I could stand the stench of death, I didn't prefer it.
If I'd thought that staying in one place would attract a sudden onslaught of mercenaries, I was sorely disappointed. The first few weeks living in the cabin were relatively peaceful. I spent the days fishing and the nights reading. I'd bought only a few books in Brognel, and by this point I'd read them all. But I had nothing else to do save for laundry and gear upkeep, and I certainly didn't want to spend all my time reading Kai's letter in one hand while holding onto the sentimental ring at my neck with the other. I was lonelier than I'd ever been, but if I didn't acknowledge the people I lost I could pretend otherwise.
This inescapable black hole of loneliness was perhaps why I was so vulnerable to the companionship offered to me by happenstance in early Red Moon. I awoke to the snap of a twig and late morning sunlight prodding through the cabin's windows and underneath the green drapes. As I reacted to a possible threat and pulled on my armor, I cursed inwardly at myself for sleeping so late. I'd always been a heavy sleeper and a natural night owl; such things often worked against me considering most mercenaries did their traveling during daylight.
I grabbed the scythe from where I kept it beneath the bed and hung it from my belt. The sheath lie nearby; I didn't bother slipping it on the blade. I tugged the chair out from under the broken door handle and exited the cabin, prepared for a fight.
A surprised masculine yelp sounded out, followed by a scurry of frantic footsteps. Standing against the rusted backdrop of the cooling forest was a single man clad in brown leather. He wore light armor, though it was mismatched and missing pieces like he'd created his own suit out of nothing but spares. He reached up, tugging a dark hood back to reveal his face. Human ears popped out between strands of greasy brown hair. He would have been handsome if it weren't for his gaunt features and the bags under his eyes. I assumed he was a rempka user, for it appeared the drug already took a toll on his otherwise youthful body. Despite his physical wear and tear, he appeared to be only a few years older than me. I estimated his age to be twenty-one, twenty-two at most.
I said nothing to him, but my right hand found the handle of my scythe like a warning.
The man ducked low in a crouch and held out both hands to me in surrender. “I don't want no trouble, man,” he protested, his dialect indicating he'd likely lived in squalor during a rough childhood. It was a common dialect that developed in humans who either grew up in a family of agriculture in Chairel's rural areas or the roughest slums of its major cities. It made sense, for it appeared this man never escaped poverty; a knapsack was slung over one shoulder, but he otherwise carried nothing but himself.
“What do you want?” I asked. I had the inkling he wasn't a mercenary.
The man exhaled shakily, still holding his hands up like a weak defense. “I wanted food, sir. I saw this garden here. The place look abandoned. I swear to the gods, I didn't know someone lived here. I took nothing.” As if willing to prove it, he pulled the knapsack from his shoulder and tossed it toward me. It landed in a spray of pine needles between us.
Sir, he'd called me. It was a step up from kid, at least. I had no way of looking at myself save for my reflection in the water while fishing. Perhaps my growth over the last year and a half was more substantial than I thought and I looked older. Either that, or he feared me for reasons he wasn't telling.
“Why are you here?” I inquired, scanning the surrounding forest for signs of others. I found nothing suspicious, so my eyes returned to the man.
“I...just told you,” he protested, confuse
d.
“You told me you wanted food from my garden. You haven't said why you're traveling through the forest.”
He hesitated, searching for the right words behind his eyes. “I'm on my way to Sera.”
My grip tightened on my scythe. The other man noticed and winced. “Why?”
“To...trade,” he replied nervously.
“Bullshit,” I spat, fed up with his clear dishonesty. I tugged the scythe from my belt and stalked forward. The stranger scrambled backward so fast he fell back into a bed of pine needles. He grabbed no weapons, only holding his hands before his face defensively as I lifted my scythe.
“I'm a criminal! Okay? I'm a criminal,” he blurted.
I lowered my weapon and glared. Between two spread fingers, his fearful eyes found mine, but he said nothing.
“Then why are you going to Sera, of all places?” I demanded. “Sirius does not grant leniency to criminals.”
“No, but Sirius can't be everywhere at once, and many Serans are rich,” the stranger breathed in another ramble. “The rich pay good money for drugs. I gyp them and they barely notice. As soon as they raise an eyebrow, I can leave and go elsewhere.”
“You use rempka,” I stated.
“Yes,” he admitted easily. Pulling his hands away from his face to return my gaze openly, he added, “I have some in that knapsack. I'll share it with you if you let me live.”
I glared at him silently until he cowered back, and then I grabbed his knapsack. Opening its flap, I looked over its contents without digging through. Sure enough, there were small bottles of rempka, needles, and tourniquets. I found no evidence of a warrant, but I wasn't about to risk sticking myself with used needles to be certain. I tossed the knapsack back to the ground.
“I have no need of rempka.” I secured the scythe on my belt again.
