“I know,” Tiberius replied. “They lost a lot of men here in our land; more than they have ever lost before, I imagine. I hope that I do not overestimate them, Captain. I hope that they do have something for us.”
“Sir?” Captain Laurent asked, confused.
“I want more than this slaughter, Captain. I want them to put up a fight in their own lands. I want them to fight like demons when we come for them, because men who fight like that are scared. I want them to fear us so badly that they throw everything they have at us. Then, when we break them, as they watch the Hammer of Rellizbix crash down on their miserable skulls, they will go to whatever afterlife awaits their kind knowing that their entire empire was completely outclassed.”
“Aye, sir,” Laurent replied. “I, too, think we have put up with their villainy for far too long.”
“Captain, get the men up and around,” Tiberius commanded. “Send someone to the supply camp and get the translator over here. I intend to get whatever information out of these trolls I can before the day is through.”
The line of Rathgar looked nervously about. The sight of so many heads lodged on pikes must have been unnerving them. They had not had an easy night. Their naked bodies were caked with blood and dirt and they smelled like urine, most likely from the free access every drunk had to them the night before. Only one had a different look on his large face and it was a concern of General Tiberius.
“That one there, the large one giving me the eye,” Tiberius said, pointing to the largest, most battered Rathgar of the group. “Pull him out of line and question him first.”
Several Saban soldiers pulled the Rathgar out of the lineup and brought him over to where Tiberius, Laurent and Vi-Sage Malthus stood. Malthus was one of the few Faeir who could interpret the Rathgar language and speak it fluently enough for questioning prisoners. As a Faeir of the Aerial Sect, Malthus wore white and light blue robes and his sparkling grey coif looked as if it had been frozen in time right as a strong wind caught it from the side.
Malthus’s melodious voice sounded strange grunting out the Rathgar tongue and it made Laurent cringe as if he smelled something foul. The Vi-Sage gave the Rathgar a prepared speech about his rights as a prisoner and a few other things that were standard practice. Only this time it was all a lie. Tiberius had no intention to uphold the rules for dealing with prisoners that had been established in the treaty with Greimere. As far as he was concerned, the Emperor had destroyed the agreement the moment he had the messengers killed. In doing so, the ignorant fool had spilled Caelum blood.
Tiberius’s thoughts drifted back to his king and the grief that had overtaken him once the knowledge of his son’s death had finally set in, after all the talk of war was over and his course set.
It was a few nights before he sent Tiberius and the entire 1st Regiment off to obliterate the encroaching horde. The boy’s Twileen mother had found out somehow and travelled all the way to Thromdale. She was a pretty thing, for a tree-walker and despite her age, which was nearly ten years over the king. She had dressed herself elegantly in Saban attire and make-up, though her dark-shaded eyes were a bit messy by the time she reached the palace.
She refused to leave the front gate until word was sent to the king that she was there. As no one knew who she was, it had taken quite some time before anyone bothered to inform the king. Once Helfrick found out, he sent for her immediately.
“Your Highness, are you sure about this?” Tiberius asked, watching his king smooth his hair back and pull a robe over the night clothes he had been in for several days. “People will wonder what business a Twileen whore could have that would get her in to see the king in such a time. Gossip will run wild! The nobles will not stop…”
“Stop, Tiberius. She is the boy’s mother. She deserves to know what has happened and why and she deserves to know what will be done about it.”
“I do not disagree, my lord. Can we not send a messenger, though? I will gladly tell her myself. I am the Commander of the entire Rellizbix Army and I can speak for you. I will gladly take the brunt of her despair.”
“No, Tiberius, you will not relay this message for me.” The king did not even look at his old friend. “I am Helfrick Caelum and Caelums do not hide from their failures.”
“My lord, you have failed no one,” Tiberius replied.
In an instant the king had Tiberius by the throat and up against the wall, his reddened eyes wild with anger.
“What do you know of it?” he screamed. “You’re too busy kissing my ass to concede the truth, Tiberius! Stop trying to convince me otherwise!”
“As you wish, my lord,” Tiberius choked.
A knock on the door came and Helfrick let go of his general and gathered his robe about him. “Let her in and do not speak or move from the door no matter what.”
Tiberius nodded, rubbing his neck and opened the door. He dismissed the escort, let the woman in and then stood firm at the door.
“Hello, Nuallan,” Helfrick said.
“My lord,” Nuallan whispered, bowing lightly. She wore dark red and black, her conservative Saban dress covering all but her face, which was shadowed by a large hood. When she pulled it back, Helfrick gazed down at her amber eyes, as big as arrowheads and as cold as stone. “I hear we are at war with the Greimere.”
“That is correct.”
“Where is my son?”
“We do not know, Nuallan.”
“You do not know.” She did not phrase it as a question. She already knew what he meant.
“None from his mission have returned,” Helfrick continued. “We received word a week and a half ago that our southern settlements had been attacked.”
“Raegith gets sent into the Wilderness on a secret mission no one knows of, just before war breaks out, and none from his group return.” She paused for a moment. “How convenient.”
Tiberius stiffened at the implication, but kept himself from acting.
“Nuallan, I will avenge him, I promise…” Helfrick began.
“I don’t care!” she screamed, closing the distance on the king.
Tiberius lunged forward, but Helfrick held up his hand to halt him. In the next instant Nuallan’s hand whipped out from beneath her cloak and struck Helfrick hard across the face. She was so small she had to hop in order to reach him, but her strike was hard enough to roll his head to the side.
Again she hit him, and then again. Tiberius stood by helplessly, realizing that his mighty king, the Golden-haired Prince that had felled Nogrim the Behemoth with nothing but a warhammer and brute strength, was powerless before the petite Twileen and his own guilt. He would let her hit him all night if her strength kept up, but he would tear Tiberius apart in his hands if the general tried to interfere.
Finally Nuallan stopped and collapsed crying at his feet. In a rare display of emotion, Helfrick wiped the moisture from his face and reached down, lifting the woman up to her feet. He embraced her, even as she fought him, until she was finished weeping.
“I will avenge him, Nuallan. This invasion has been going on for hundreds of years and I will now destroy it and the entire Greimere Empire in Raegith’s name. Every beast and brute south of the Hell Cliffs will suffer what our son did tenfold. I swear this to you.”
“What does it matter, Helfrick?”
Tiberius flinched at the informal way she addressed the king, but Helfrick said nothing. She pulled away and looked up at him, reaching up to his face again, only to caress it instead of accost it.
“You’ve aged so much since that night. Back then you were simply a prince and a Paladin. You were so strong and handsome and I was helpless to your charm. I could not believe that the future king of Rellizbix wanted me to entertain him for the night. I was infatuated with you. When I realized I was with child; that it was yours, I cried for how badly I was about to affect your reign. I knew that I could not become the queen and that Raegith would never be accepted. Even then, as a single mother-to-be, I only thought of you and your reputati
on.
“Now I can only think about how much that naivety has cost me. I should have fled my village and raised Raegith far, far away from you and your cruel kingdom. I should have kept my son so far away from this decadent world that forced such a brave king to hide his own blood for fear of his reputation. We would all have been better off, wouldn’t we?”
“No, Nuallan, I would not have been,” Helfrick replied. “It may not seem so, but I cared for Raegith too. I’m destroying the pillar of my rule for him, for Fate’s sake! I may not be king after this is done!”
“I’m sure you’ll lose quite a bit over this,” Nuallan said. “You’ll lose men to the war, the legitimacy of your rule will be threatened… the poor souls below the Pisces will lose their lives or the lives of their family. The Greimere will lose their lives and their very existence.
“Raegith was a spark of life, Helfrick. He was good and lively and would have brought light to every soul he touched, no matter what station life gave him. He did not need to be a prince or royalty of any kind to give his gifts to this world. Now he will give us all nothing but death and loss. Forgive me if I am not consoled by this.”
“Then what can I do, Nuallan? This is it; you have power over a king in this very moment, woman. What would you have of me in order to ease your soul? Name it and I will concede.”
“My lord…” Tiberius said, completely appalled at his behavior around this woman.
“Just leave me be, my lord,” Nuallan said, coldly. “I don’t need anything else from you… ever.”
“Nuallan…”
As the king looked after her, the Twileen bowed and turned, heading toward the door. Tiberius blocked her way, but the king waved him away and the woman left the room. The escort led her down the hall and that was the last he saw of her.
The king dismissed him in order to be alone after that and a few days later Tiberius was riding out of the gates of Thromdale. Even as he left his home, his thoughts were only on the king and his well-being. He had never seen anyone humble Helfrick so in the entire time he knew him. It pained Tiberius to see his king in such a state and he hesitated to leave Helfrick, but he knew his duty. Besides, he was no good at consoling kings. The best way he could help his king was by doing what he was best at: killing Rathgar.
Tiberius snapped back to the present as the nagging voice of Malthus came to him.
“Sir, he is not making any sense,” the Faeir sage informed him. “He’s actually being defiant and it is spreading to the others.”
Tiberius looked over to the line of Rathgar. They stood a little bit straighter now, despite their injuries. Their morale was higher, even as prisoners. Perhaps they were foolish enough to believe that the Rellizbix Army would not cause them any harm once they were captive. Such might have been the case before their despicable kind murdered the king’s son.
“The big one is doing this? What does he say?”
“That’s the thing, it doesn’t make sense. Maybe I’m not translating it correctly or it is some form of new slang…”
“Just tell me what the hell he is saying, Malthus!”
“He says… that the Grass will avenge him.” Malthus was clearly uncomfortable around the general and his apprehension was growing with his failure to gain anything from the prisoners. “He isn’t talking about the grass that we walk on. He’s giving it an honorific… as if ‘Grass’ were a person.”
“So he says some man named Grass is going to avenge him? This Grass, is he among the Greimere Army? Is he Rathgar?”
Malthus made his inquiry to the large Rathgar. The prisoner shook his head and responded.
“No, the person he refers to is not Rathgar, but… but a demon.”
“A demon, huh?” Tiberius asked, leveling his gaze at the defiant Rathgar. “Some foolish specter of a pagan mythology, most likely. These heathens… when they have nothing left, when they have no fight, they rely on curses and calls to imaginary deities. It’s pathetic.”
“Sir, I do not believe he is referring to a deity,” Malthus said. “It is not the correct usage for a god or an elemental. I believe it is a person; someone this Rathgar knows. We might even find this person once we enter the Greimere.”
“Well, I hope that I do. And when I find this Grass, I’ll spill his guts on the ground, just like I’ll do with this troublesome idiot. Pikes!”
Six men leveled pikes at the Rathgar warrior and the other prisoners tensed, but the Rathgar stood tall and looked each Saban soldier in the eye before settling back on Tiberius.
“Does he feel like talking sense now, Sage?” Tiberius asked.
Malthus asked the Rathgar a question, but the Rathgar did not respond with an answer. Instead, he snorted and smiled. Then, as the Sabans readied their weapons for an execution, the Rathgar lifted his massive arm and looked right at Tiberius as he waved the man off dismissively.
Instantly the other prisoners erupted in a roar and they threw their fists in the air as if they had just witnessed a triumph. Some of the Sabans retreated a step, looking around in confusion. Malthus scurried behind one of the shield-bearers. The large Rathgar laughed right at Tiberius.
“Kill him now!”
The men buried their pikes in the prisoner and felled him in a few seconds. The prisoners burst forward, their bound hands in front of them and actually attacked the pikemen. Tiberius gave the command for the rest of the detail to defend themselves. He kicked over a prisoner that had come right at him and quickly drove his sword into the Rathgar’s heart.
In seconds the rest of the prisoners were dead. Once the initial shock of the attack wore off, the Saban soldiers easily put down the brief insurrection against bound and unarmed opponents. Several officers were racing to the scene and everyone in earshot was looking at them.
“What the hell just happened?” Laurent asked. “We killed all of the prisoners? Did we gain any useful information at all?”
“We know that this Grass fellow could be a threat if he could bolster their morale without even being here,” Tiberius answered. “If he were a true warrior, though, then where the hell was he during the fighting? Why is he not here now, leading his men against us?”
“The Rathgar are not honorable, sir,” Laurent said. “I’m not surprised that their leadership will not join them on the battlefield.”
“Yes, now I am a bit more eager for the Witzer Cannon to get here. Maybe this demon or whatever he is will show me something more than these miserable beasts have.”
Chapter 26
“Raegith, get up.”
Raegith’s head popped up from the book it rested upon and he spun off the chair to face the one in the room. His hands were in front of him defensively and he was ready to attack. For a moment there was only the enemy in front of him and his thoughts were of death.
“Calm down, Raegith; it is just me,” Beretta said.
“Beretta?” Raegith relaxed and looked around. “I fell asleep in the library again?”
“You never leave this place… lately not even to train. Come on, let us go for a walk. You need some time away from the histories.”
Beretta had him bathed and clothed in fresh skins. After some food they both walked out into the courtyard. Various servants were busy doing chores and scurrying about. There were only Rathgar here, as was to be expected. From what he had learned in the histories, the Rathgar only tolerated the other races.
As if reading his mind, Beretta asked him about what he had read so far.
“You seem to enjoying yourself as much with reading as you do with beating men unconscious. Is there anything particular that has caught your attention in those dusty old books?”
“It’s all interesting,” Raegith replied. “That’s not what is keeping me up all night, though. The Greimere used to be much different before the treaty.”
“How so?”
“Everything I have read from the dawn of the Empire was all forward-thinking: expansion, domination… the Rathgar ruled over the other races and be
nt them to the will of the Empire. The Empire itself was one big war machine and it wanted nothing more than to devour the ‘world of sunshine’ to the north. Then the treaty happened and everything centered on survival and diplomacy.”
“If we stand for anything here in the Greimere, it is survival. You were forced to survive in the Pit. Surely you can understand the merit of such a life.”
“It is not the same. I fought for my survival, ripping my life away from those who would take it and making them pay for their attempts. I did not parlay with my enemy and accept terms for my survival. I did not accept a schematic for fighting so that I could throw my fights in a more believable fashion.”
“You are correct, Raegith, but in the Pit you had few to worry about. The Empress, as her father and grandfather, must worry about an entire nation. You have only seen the Citadel and a small outpost in your time here. We are not called an empire because we have two locations.
“Empress Kalystra rules over the Citadel, six military outposts and four civilian outposts, as well as the various Lokai villages to the west, the civilized Urufen tribes settled to the east and the Gimlets who seem to spring up from every hole in the ground. She also holds rule over the Lurches and the Barren Wastes to the north, all the way to the Hell Cliffs, though the denizens of both are hardly under her control. Only the far south, the Dread Marshes, are free territory. Things are not as easy when you must govern more than your own body.”
“The Empire of old fought for real,” Raegith said.
“And there is a reason why the old Empire is no more. There are those among the Empire that believe those in the north have divine protection. Even those who are ignorant of the real purpose of these wars know that we do not fight for domination. Our victory relies on a successful retreat after collecting enough loot from the southern-most villages and the slight catharsis of our warriors when they kill your kind.”
“So you abide by all of the rules of the Rellizbix Kingdom, but are allowed none of the benefits.”
Beyond the Hell Cliffs Page 28
