The water grew deeper than I would have liked, rising as high as my waist. The horse began to get skittish and was neighing and I had to pull hard on her reins to keep her in line. Suddenly there was a steep drop-off in the river and the water grew much deeper; it came up to my chest and continued to rise. It was to my chin with the horse panicking when I realized I’d made a mistake and turned around.
That was when I felt it.
Just a bump. Something swimming up to me and hitting my leg. I froze and at first thought it was the horse, but she was too far from me. I reached back for my axe as the horse was pulling me to shallower waters.
An eruption of foam and blood tore through the air and deafened me as something catapulted out of the water and around the horse. The horse shrieked like a child as I saw green tentacles wrapping around her body. I leapt for one and swung down with the axe and hit the tentacle, chopping through half of it. A roar came that I had never heard before and the tentacle retreated back into the murky depths. I pulled the horse as quickly as I could into the shallow water and we were nearly to the waist-high depths again when I felt something wrap itself around my ankles and I was pulled off my feet.
I dug the axe into the riverbed and tried to hold tight but the thing pulled at me with such force that it ripped me away and into the deeper waters.
It was pure black down there. Not even the light of the full moon penetrated so deep. I was swimming in shadows and my body was so cold it felt hot. If I closed my eyes I wouldn’t have been able to tell if I was being burned or frozen.
Something came into view out of the murky depths, a glimmering orb of yellow. It pulled me close and I could see the outline of the massive eyes. They turned to slits and a roar escaped the creature as it opened its mouth and I saw the teeth only by the light of its eyes.
It pulled me close and I thrust my axe out in front of me. It tried to bite down and several of its teeth broke on the metal and it screeched. I couldn’t swing hard enough with the axe to do any damage so instead I pushed it down its throat, where it stuck in its mouth between the roof and its tongue. The more it struggled, the more the blade dug into its tender flesh. It screeched again and I felt the tentacles around my ankles loosening. I shot to the surface like an eruption and burst out of the water and sucked in air. I swam to the shallows and pulled myself up onto the sand and collapsed to my back, sucking in breath like a newborn.
The moon was glittering like steel in sunlight and that was the last thing I saw before it all went black.
2
Something stroked my face. It felt like the scrape of dirt and rocks and I rolled my head over. I opened my eyes and saw a beetle the size of a building crawling to me. It took a moment to realize it was just large because it was in front of my face. I felt the scraping again on my face and looked over to see the horse licking me. I reached up, my arms feeling weighed down with stones, and patted its muzzle.
Despite the pain that screamed in my legs, I sat up, forced myself to stand, and then examined the horse for wounds. It was cut in several places from the tentacles of whatever that creature had been, but I didn’t feel any broken ribs. She could ride. I looked up to the sun and saw that it was directly overhead; it was mid-day already.
If the prince sailed for the Savage Sea before I got there, I would never find him. Ships were lost like children in forests there.
I mounted the horse and began trotting her down the road. She was jittery and we were at an uneasy gallop for a long time before she let go and allowed me to push her. If we rode all day, we might make it there by nightfall.
We passed all manner of men and beasts and processions of this and that governor or lord. At one point a spear was thrown at me when I did not slow down or move to the side for some disgusting bureaucrat who demanded everyone on the road bend to his whim. Normally I would have broken open his skull and showed his brains to him before he died, but I didn’t do that. I just kept riding.
I’m coming Emma.
Night fell quickly and the forests around us became active. The horse was starved and so was I. As much as I didn’t want to stop, I had to or my horse would drop dead and I’d have to run the rest of the way.
We found a town not far off the main road and stopped there. It was dark and everywhere appeared closed off except for one home that had a chimney with smoke coming out. There was no tavern or inn that I could see, just a cluster of buildings huddled together for protection.
We went to the home with the smoke billowing out and I lashed the horse to a fence and walked to the door and knocked. When no one answered, I knocked again. Then I pounded with the back of my fist and finally the door opened.
It was dark inside, no candles lit—the moon was covered by clouds and the stars were dim. I pushed the door open all the way and walked inside. The house smelled warm and musty, like a butcher’s shop.
“Is anyone home? I need food and am willing to pay.”
No reply. I stumbled around in the dark a bit until I found the edge of a table and walked across the room into another area where a fire was burning in the pit. Chairs were broken up into piles and thrown in for fuel. I saw another chair in front of the fire and the head of a woman who was seated in front of it.
“I need food and I can pay. Do you have anything?”
No reply still. I walked to her. Perhaps she was so old she could not hear me. I turned her around.
Her face was ashen gray and wrinkled, black fluid oozing from her nostrils and mouth. Her eyes were rotting out of her head, and over her body were thick black marks rising on the skin. Plague.
I covered my mouth and ran out of the house, coughing to try and expel anything that I had inhaled. Someone lit that fire and I was scared they were still here.
I shut the door behind me and snorted out of my nostrils. I waited a few minutes, and then took the horse by the reins and walked through the town. It was empty and there was no movement. A few chickens here and there, nothing more. I didn’t care how hungry I was, I wouldn’t eat anything here. However, I did see some stables nearby. We went there and I glanced around quickly and saw no one. I got a sack of feed and let the horse eat as I sat on the ground and rubbed my ankles.
The skin had flaked off since the beast had wrapped its tentacles around them. They must have been poisoned somehow and my skin was reacting to it. I had heard of great beasts in the rivers that sucked in incautious villagers when they bathed and washed their clothes—I had even seen one, something that resembled a lizard. But that beast was quite something else and I wondered how it was that such things were tolerated in the Empire. How were they not hunted down to extinction? Perhaps men just grow accustomed to things.
I let the horse eat only a little and emptied out most of the sack and took the remaining feed and strapped it to its back. A trough was nearby but I couldn’t let it drink. Instead we left the town, my stomach roaring like an orc in the night.
LUCIUS KANDARIAN
I was absolutely drunk on wine and sex. The two whores we had picked up were passed out. I shut the curtains of the carriage and turned to one, a golden-haired beauty who was sleeping nude across my seat. I took out my blade, one with a pearl handle, and slit her throat.
The blood began to slowly drip out of her and I watched as it grew and grew into a little waterfall spilling over the seat. She woke only a moment and I touched her lightly on the lips and said, “Shh,” and she closed her eyes again as all color left her. The other one was so dead drunk she didn’t even wake up. And I drank my fill.
I had soaked the carriage in blood and gotten it on my clothes. It covered my feet and my legs and I tried to crawl away from it but it was on my hands and I slipped and fell and it was on my face and in my mouth. I gagged.
“Elfred!”
The carriage stopped and I heard the patter of hooves before the carriage door opened. Elfred saw me and was surprised for only a moment before it passed from his face. He looked around and shouted, “Take your rest.”
The guards began to tie up their horses and dismount and Elfred brought over only Gorb, my most trusted guard. The two of them quickly removed the bodies from the carriage. They pulled me out and took me into the forest behind some trees and Elfred poured water over me. It was cold and made me shiver and I rubbed my body.
“What in the gods is wrong with you, boy?” he said.
“I don’t … I don’t know. I don’t know. They just looked so pretty and I had to it. I had to, Elfred. They will be pretty forever now. They will not age one day. They’ll always be pretty.”
He shook his head. “Damn fool boy.”
Elfred fetched some new robes as two of the younger hands came and began to clean the carriage. Another carriage was provided for me, one that Elfred was riding in, and Gorb went back to the head of the caravan. Within moments, we were moving again toward the castle.
Elfred wasn’t looking at me but out a window when he said, “When you were a boy, no more than three years old, you had a little friend named Felyx. He was a guard’s boy that would come around because you enjoyed playing with him…. We found Felyx at the bottom of the palace walls. His head had been crushed from the fall, as had his arms and legs. You had pushed him out a window. Your father thought it was an accident and I let him think it. But when we were alone I asked you why you did it and you said that you had wanted to watch him die. What three-year-old boy knows of death and wishes to see it?”
I shook my head. I was trembling and cold and didn’t want to think so I didn’t. Instead I looked out the window at the dark forests and the sunlight that was fading as it broke through it.
We spent a restless night at an inn at some town I had never heard of. Elfred stayed with me and would not let me get any whores or even drink wine or ale. Instead we ate chicken and vegetables and played games of Teb and Four of Queens until I grew tired. I wanted to walk through the town at night but he wouldn’t let me and damn it if the guards didn’t listen to him more than me. I had a feeling my father had given them instructions that if Elfred’s and my orders were at odds they were to follow Elfred’s.
But day came quickly after a night of decent sleep. I suffered from nightmares and tonight was no different.
When we were on the road, Elfred refused to leave my side. I had to suffer through his long stories of what the Empire was like when it had been a kingdom, and the great deeds my grandfather had done.
“Do you remember him much?” he asked.
“He was a drunken fool who liked to beat me,” I said. “That is the only thing I remember of him.”
“We all have our weaknesses and your grandfather was no different, Young Prince. But that does not negate the good he did for the Empire and for his people. What about your mother?”
“What about her?”
“Do you think of her much?”
“The only thing I think about is the day she betrayed us and asked me to join her army to wage war on my own father. She was dead to me then.”
I kept quiet the rest of the way, hoping he would too, but he kept speaking and for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to shut up. He was, in most respects, more my father than my father had ever been. It had been Elfred I ran to when I was beaten by other boys as a child, or when I was sick, or if I wanted to learn something. Father was only to be seen at formal affairs where he would introduce me to his governors and dignitaries as “My Heir.”
By midday we arrived at Ridgecrest Castle and I could see why they called it a city and a castle on the sand. The damn thing had been built over a giant sandpit.
“Why would the fools do this?” I asked Elfred.
“There are machines under the sands. When an army advances on the castle, the machines are hauled up and they can swallow groups of men whole before retreating into the sands once more. No one, ever, has breached its defenses.”
“How did my grandfather get them to join the Empire then?”
“He waited. Your grandfather, above all, had patience. More than any other man I knew. He simply waited, and one day the daughter of the king of Ridgecrest, now known as the governor, left the city to explore the nearby towns and forests, as young girls are prone to exploration. The bargain was simple: the girl’s life in exchange for Ridgecrest falling under the Empire’s rule. The king agreed and here we are.”
“He gave up his kingdom for one girl?”
“You cannot understand the bond between a girl and her father until you yourself have one, My Prince. Besides, your grandfather would have conquered the castle eventually. He simply would have blockaded the sea and waited until they starved to death.”
We approached the sands and stopped right in front as a bridge unfurled before us. It seemingly came on its own right out of the city and laid down in front of us. I stepped out of the carriage and the guards went first and I followed Elfred. The bridge was solid and carried us over the sands which seemed to writhe and twirl like the sea.
It was a long walk, but at the city gates we were greeted by the governor’s personal assistants and led to the castle through the city surrounding it. Crowds had gathered though it was nearly dark and torches had to be lit. They watched as we passed by and spoke in hushed tones.
“Why do I get the feeling we’re not welcome here, Elfred?”
“Just because they submitted to your father’s rule doesn’t mean they have to like it, My Prince.”
We walked right through the city as it grew pitch black and torches were lit on every house and building. The castle itself was massive, with giant pillars in the form of women holding up the roof, and white trim along all its walls. It was surrounded by guards armed with crossbows and spears; they refused to look me in the eyes as we passed.
Inside was decorated splendidly with the finest rugs and urns and tapestries available anywhere in the Empire. I felt right at home here, with the exception of the large mosaics of two women, one older and one younger.
The governor, a portly bearded man named Fischer Hebestrous, sat on his chair which had once been a throne. I approached him and noticed that he was elevated on a platform higher than all else in the room.
“Welcome to Ridgecrest … My Prince,” he said.
“A delight to be here, Governor.”
“I hope your journey was not a difficult one.”
“Nothing that a little food and bath won’t cure, I’m happy to say.”
“And women, I suppose.”
We eyed each other quietly a moment. “Yes,” I said, “there is that.”
He finished a cup of wine he was drinking and a servant boy took the cup away. I noticed there were no women present, not in the guards or the servants.
“Your father’s a good man, My Prince. I have not seen him in a while.”
I ignored the implied insult that my father was a good man, but no mention of me. “He is quite busy these days, Governor.”
“Yes, I heard about the trouble with the Rezwa. Interesting that. The Rezwa were not a warrior people. They were peaceful farmers for centuries.”
“You wouldn’t know it by the way they attack villages.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I heard they wear the skins of their victims over their own, wear their faces, to frighten their enemies. Amazing, is it not My Prince? Push a man too far and there’s no limit to what he will do.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true enough.”
“Yes,” he said, dragging the word out.
I paused a moment. “I notice your wife is not here. You must give her my regards.”
“You bastard!” He stood up in a rage and the royal guards drew their swords. Elfred stepped between us.
“My lords,” he said, “please! You are men of honor with royalty in your blood. This is not the proper way to act.”
“The bastard beds my wife while she’s in a drunken sleep and I’m supposed to act civil?”
“He is your emperor’s son,” Elfred said, looking him in the eyes. “Fischer, you and I have known each oth
er a long time. This is the way of things, and sometimes the way of things is not pleasant. He is your emperor’s son.”
Fischer breathed deeply and grumbled as he sat back on his little throne.
“Why have you come here?” he said.
“We needed a meeting,” Elfred said, “to discuss the emperor’s request for more troops.”
“I don’t have any more troops. I’ve barely enough to defend my own city.”
“I understand you’re spread thin; everyone is at this time. The Empire is growing and as any empire grows the borders become more difficult to defend. Add to that the internal … instances, we’ve been having, and you can see why our emperor needs our utmost support.”
“How many more do you need?”
“Five thousand,” I said.
“Five thousand! By the gods, your father has gone mad! I have ten thousand left to guard the city and keep order. You’ve seen how far the borders of Ridgecrest go. I’m supposed to give half over without a word of protest?”
“You can protest all you want,” I said, “but you will hand them over just the same.”
He glared at me and a low growl came out of him. “Maybe your father should have asked me himself.”
“You seem hesitant, Fischer my boy. Perhaps your honor has not recovered from the previous time I was here. How about this then: we fight. You beat me, we’ll leave, you keep your troops, and your honor is satisfied. I win, you give me your troops … and your wife for another night.”
His face turned red and it nearly made me laugh.
“Young Prince,” Elfred said, “this is not a good idea.”
“What do you say, Fischer? Do you have the courage to face me?”
“The courage?” he chuckled. “The courage he says. Boy, I was killing men when you were shatting yourself and sucking on your mother’s tits. I could split you in two in a blink, and then your father would burn my city to the ground.”
Empire of War - An Epic Fantasy (The Empire of War Trilogy Book 1) Page 10
