“Fine,” grumbled the creature. “You heard the man,” he growled at the prisoners. “At the first sign of insubordination you will suffer, and don’t expect to be offered the peace of death!” Glaide had uttered the words begrudgingly, and couldn’t bear hearing the words come from his lips, especially since he knew that the men thought they were true. But the second part of his plan disgusted him just as much. He distributed the weapons to the prisoners, looking each of them in the eye and adding, “Don’t do anything stupid!” He hoped that they’d understood the message and that they would do nothing until he acted. After a few more yards, and once the noruk had relaxed and decided that the slaves weren’t going to act up, Glaide moved on to the next part of his plan. He drew his sword, approached the monster, and decapitated him in one smooth movement. Immediately, he cried, “Attack!”
He had thought it would take his companions a few moments to react, and had simply hoped against hope that they would be faster than their enemies. The result surpassed his expectations, however. He had barely cried out his order, and already they were falling on their oppressors. Thanks to the natural stupidity of the orks, it took them much longer to understand what was happening, and by the time they took up their own weapons, half of them were already corpses on the ground. Taking out the last of the monsters was a mere formality, after that.
“We can’t hang around here,” ordered Glaide harshly. “We have to get away from the village. Reinforcements are certainly on their way.”
One of the men moved to protest, but the adolescent threw him a glacial glare which quickly shut him up. His companions followed the adolescent docilely as he hurried away.
A few minutes later, the group stopped moving. They’d found a small hill topped with a few trees that gave them an excellent view of their surroundings, while allowing them to quickly and efficiently hide themselves.
“Night will fall within an hour or two,” declared Glaide. “We should settle in here.” He gathered a few big rocks that would work as seats and moved them nearer to the edge of the woods, so they could all quickly disappear into the trees if necessary. After each of them had taken a seat, a deep silence reigned over the group. Glaide understood that the people around him were trying to make sense of their thoughts, and slowly their faces began to brighten. As one man, they let out a great sigh. Then, one of them burst into laughter, followed by his comrades; the tension they’d accumulated over the last several hours fled with the sound. The young man looked at them with a small smile. Even if he didn’t show it, he, too, was relieved that his plan had worked. After all, with all of the training he’d had for the last several months, he may not have had much concern for his own safety, but for these men, it was an entirely different story. This had been a true brush with death for them.
A sudden thought darkened his mood then: he still had to convince these men to give up their quest for vengeance. Not wanting to dampen their moods at the moment, though, he decided to wait until the evening meal to bring anything up. He saw his chance when one of the men suggested collecting wood to build a fire. The sun was starting to set and within half an hour or less, they’d no longer be able to see. Glaide held him back, though.
“Listen, now that you’re all in better spirits, we need to talk. That little adventure today could have ended very badly, for you guys most of all. Don’t you think it’s time to forget about this business?” The men made no reply. Glaide felt relieved, because he’d expected to see them up in arms straight away. However, it seemed that recent events had brought the men back to their senses. Finally, one of them responded.
“Whoever you are, we are thankful for what you did today. We all doubted you, and we must ask your pardon. Unfortunately, we cannot forget everything that has happened to us.”
“Then tell me about it,” urged the young man. “Tell me your story.” The other man hesitated, but his companions turned to him with their encouragement, and so he began his story.
Glaide let him speak without interrupting him, and discovered that the people in front of him were the last remaining survivors of a village destroyed by Baras’ minions. They had decided to avenge their fellow villagers no matter the cost, which was a sadly commonplace tale.
The man spoke for a long time about his home, his family, and his friends. He recounted stories and described their village with care. More than once, a smile appeared on his face as he remembered a particularly happy event. The memories flooded in, so that he couldn’t hold them back, and soon he and his friends were plunged deep into their pasts. The man was no longer speaking to Glaide; he was simply being transported by the memories that had, in a moment’s time, brought back everything he had lost. At long last, the five companions found that they could not hold back their tears, and the voice of the storyteller broke as he realized that of the ten survivors of the massacre, there remained now only five.
“What have we done?” he sobbed. “What have we done?” He held his head in his hands, unable to contain his sorrow. The sight—and the realization of how desperate the men in front of him had been—grieved the young man deeply. “This is what the worst of all human emotions looks like,” he thought to himself. “Despair... If humanity lets itself become dominated by that emotion, it will find itself condemned to death. This is what I have to fight; I have to bring them hope.” With that thought, he rested a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him, though he spoke to the whole group.
“Your village lives on through you, because it is by living, by accepting sadness, and by remembering those you’ve loved, that you really and truly avenge their deaths. It is by showing Baras that his obstinacy means nothing, and that he can never truly take away what you hold dear. When we first met, you told me you had nothing left to lose, but that isn’t true. You still have your memories, which you hold in your hearts. And thanks to that, your friends and family will never die.” With that, he walked away, leaving his chance companions to their pain, thinking that this was perhaps the first time they’d really looked head on at what had happened to them.
The next day, the adolescent woke after the sun had already risen. Knowing that today was the day he would enter Zakorth, he felt anxious. However, one thing still remained to be done: he went to speak to the five men, who had sat vigil until late into the night. On their faces, he saw no remaining traces of the emotions of the night before, but instead, an unshakeable determination.
“We’re going,” one declared. “Starting today, we will live new lives.”
Glaide smiled at that, and replied, “If you head towards the southwest, you’ll find a recently constructed village called Kalhem-Rackk. Tell the villagers that you’ve been sent by Glaide, and they’ll welcome you with open arms. Don’t hesitate to share your story with them. There are many in that place who hope their town can be a refuge for those who have lost everything.”
“We’ll do that. We’ll go to Kalhem-Rackk.”
An idea crossed the young man’s mind then. He knew that his principal mission was to share the true story of what had happened in the past, so that he could ally the peoples, but if he wanted his own story to endure, it was important that what was happening not be forgotten in the same way. This time, Baras wouldn’t have a chance to divide the races.
“My friends, guard your memories, even if they bring suffering. The inhabitants of your village have died, and you’ve lost wives, children, and friends, but if you can build new families for yourselves, share what has happened to you with them, so that they know who you are, and so that your descendants understand what it means to lose a brother or a sister. Don’t live in the past, but never forget it either.” Those listening to him nodded slowly, then began to turn away from the young man, towards their destination.
“Whatever may come,” declared one, “we will not forget you. We may not know what you are searching for, but coming to this place to find it is never a good sign. May your quest end the way you hope it does.”
Glaide took those
words as a benediction, and he watched the men head towards Kalhem-Rackk until they disappeared from sight. Then, he decided he’d better start moving. The day was beginning, and it promised to be a full one.
In a few minutes, Zakorth appeared before him. As he approached it, he asked himself if, in the end, his choice hadn’t been motivated, as for those men, by despair: despair at the thought of never finding his friends, or of discovering they’d died in battle. “Maybe so,” he thought, “but does it really matter? What difference does it make why I’ve come? The only thing that matters is what I do now that I’m here. I simply have to do what I came here to do.” He continued to walk towards the city. No one was around, and complete silence reigned there. It seemed that, like the eye of the hurricane, the calmest place in the lands controlled by Zakorth was Zakorth itself.
A few dozen yards from his destination, the young man put down his bag. He took the time to camouflage it with dirt and grass, then carefully memorized where it was, so he could find it again. Then, he covered the remaining distance between him and Zakorth.
The moment Glaide reached his goal, a fleeting thought crossed his mind. It had been exactly one week since Kezthrem had left.
Chapter 4
THE first thing that struck Glaide was how perfectly commonplace Zakorth appeared: its walls were built entirely of wood, as was the gate, which was framed by two guard towers. A portcullis, its metal grating raised for the moment, completed its defenses. The set-up looked much like that of Rackk, with the main difference being that nothing here appeared to have been kept up: the wood of the wall was clearly rotten, and the door seemed to be clinging to its hinges by no more than a thread. As for the towers: both were partially destroyed.
“This city has no defenses to speak of,” Glaide thought to himself. “Kezthrem was wrong when he said attacking this place would take an army: a handful of soldiers would be enough!” He edited that opinion a bit when he remembered that individuals from all the races lived here, though, and that even if the city’s reputation was exaggerated, that of its inhabitants certainly wasn’t.
As he stood before the entrance, he realized that the main difference between this village and the others had nothing to do with its architecture, but rather with the absence of activity, and the oppressive silence that loomed around him in this place. There was no guard, and the usual hustle and bustle that reigned in and around most settlements was non-existent here.
“Is this some kind of trap?” the young man wondered. “Is this peacefulness normal?” He couldn’t be sure of anything, because it looked like he was the first human to venture here. He took a moment to look around him, but he could detect nothing that appeared particularly out of place.
The entrance opened to the main road from which several crossroads meandered through the rest of the village. He moved forward cautiously, all of his senses on high alert. As he stepped into the city, all of his muscles tensed as he waited for an alarm to be called out, but the sound never came. Slightly reassured, he looked more carefully at his surroundings. From where he stood, he saw nothing menacing. The houses that bordered the road all looked quite similar, made out of wood with low roofs. There was no gallows or hanging rope. In fact, the place seemed quite peaceful.
After a few minutes, he started to wonder if anyone lived here at all. The village had no sign of the diabolical, and in the end, he told himself that Zakorth was protected by its reputation alone—a reputation that its inhabitants groomed carefully by killing and massacring those of the neighboring villages. “No one has ever come close enough to see what this place is like,” the boy concluded. “If anyone had, everyone would have realized that the danger lies only in the lands around this village, and not within it. In fact, what I see here doesn’t seem to match the supposed inhabitants at all...”
After walking for several minutes more, he revised his earlier judgement; this place wasn’t peaceful, it was dead. It was like the Forgotten Ocean, as he’d seen it from Ayrokkan’s back: there wasn’t the slightest sign of life, and everything appeared abandoned. Unlike the majestic ruins of Rackk, marked by its history, the buildings in this place remained standing, but were now nothing but empty shells, evidence of a dark past. “This place should be razed to the ground,” thought Glaide. “Destroyed, and with it all of the memories it contains.”
He began to doubt that he would find any information here, but he jumped suddenly at a sound to his right. At first, he thought he was mistaken, but after a few moments more, he made out some cries from that direction. From the number of voices, it seemed to represent quite a group. Carefully, he tried to decide exactly where the sounds were coming from. Pulling his cape up around him to conceal most of his face, he plastered on a stony—perhaps even aggressive—look, then headed down one of the lanes off to the side. He walked with long strides, looking in all directions for any signs of life. However, he passed only empty houses, many of which lay in ruins.
Suddenly, the voices seemed closer. Glaide paused, and carefully analyzed the way the road was configured: it was a very narrow alley, and there was no room to fight. Plus, if archers climbed onto the roofs around him, they’d be able to strike him down with no great difficulty. Thankfully, the deathtrap only lasted for a little while; a ways in front of him, he could see the main commons.
The young man stepped inconspicuously into the space. The houses here formed a circle around the commons, and in the center stood a wide platform. As he first stepped into the space, Glaide didn’t pay much attention to what was going on, focusing instead on who was there: some twenty-odd inhabitants of Zakorth were moving about, representing all of the races of the Known Lands. He saw barbarians—which he recognized instantly—humans, dwarves, and what must be elves. For the first time, he was seeing just what those legendary creatures looked like! As tall as the dwarves were short, and as thin as they were stocky, they moved with a grace that left the young man speechless. Their faces looked like those of men, but baby-smooth, with no hair or wrinkles, and no sign to show how old they were. By human standards, they all appeared to be between twenty and twenty-five years old.
Glaide realized suddenly that he’d let his warrior mask slip, and he quickly plastered it back on. He couldn’t draw his gaze from the mass of people moving about in front of him, however. He knew that what he was seeing would have been perfectly commonplace in the time of Novak and Dzen. Back then, all of the peoples had lived in harmony in the Known Lands. Distracted by those thoughts, he’d almost forgotten where he was, until his gaze crossed that of one of the elves. He understood then why they were called dark elves. In contrast to their physical beauty, their eyes were filled with a merciless coldness, marked with a flash of frightening insanity. He could see no trace of the benevolence that he’d felt in front of Gardock, the king of the dwarves. “Be careful, Glaide,” he thought to himself. “Your enemies are all around you, and they are not imbeciles like the orks.”
It was only then that he realized that the people here were assembled for a reason: on the platform in front of him, Glaide noticed several individuals, their hands bound with a chain that connected each one to the next. At first, the young man wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but after a while, he realized that these creatures—a barbarian, two dwarves, four humans, and three elves—were prisoners. They were bare-chested, and while their faces appeared impassive, their bodies told another story: their skin was covered with wounds and bruises.
“Have they been taken as slaves?” Glaide murmured to himself, short of breath. He couldn’t believe his eyes. However, it was enough to listen to the conversations around him to see that everyone was discussing how much they would have to pay to buy one of the prisoners. The dark elves were discussing sordid plans for them, and the dwarves spoke of massacring them all. The barbarians and humans were largely silent. Glaide wondered if they didn’t somehow still recognize the prisoners as their own kind. “So why abandon them to their fates, then?” the young man wondered to himself
. The response came to him almost immediately: they were afraid, of course. It was the same fear had led them to betray their friends, so that they now hated themselves for their weakness.
“If I start a war with Baras, those like them will truly have to choose sides,” he muttered to himself. Anger began to mount up in him, threatening to turn into a blinding rage. He tried to focus as best he could, pulling up an image of Kezthrem in his mind, and concentrating on his words of wisdom, and he managed to keep his cool in the end, at least for the time being. Taking on a cold and calculating mindset, he began to evaluate the defenses of his adversaries. Yes, there were many of them. After all, wasn’t he here in the middle of their stronghold? But that didn’t matter. He needed to put a plan together. In front of him, the prisoners didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger. The noruks surrounding them, who seemed to be the slave merchants, weren’t mistreating them. They were far too busy negotiating prices. As for the merchandise themselves: they seemed too beaten to react.
“I can only hope they’ll jump into action if I start something,” Glaide thought to himself. He looked around and spotted a few archers, mostly arranged near the roads leading into the square.
“I suppose they’re there to prevent anyone from stealing or killing the prisoners, since that wouldn’t exactly be good for business.” The young man thought he could count five or six of them. That wasn’t a huge number, but that would be enough to take him out. Plus, all of the potential buyers seemed to be armed. The residents of this place were not like those in most other towns: each one carried a knife, a dagger, and sometimes a sword or ax, too. Glaide was almost surprised that they weren’t also all wearing armor! Armor or no armor, however, the problem remained the same: there was no way he could prevail over all of them. At least not if he fought alone. And besides, no one was supposed to know who he was. As he thought about that, he told himself that maybe it would be better to leave, but he couldn’t quite convince himself. The idea of passing by anyone in distress was insupportable, and abandoning them was absolutely out of the question. He could not flee.
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