Ragged Heroes: An Epic Fantasy Collection

by Andy Peloquin

  “What do you want from me?” Tarin said without preamble. “An apology? There are always winners and losers in this life.”

  The knight said nothing for a moment. But then he replied, “I…don’t…know,” his words coming slowly.

  Tarin stared at him, feeling suddenly…like…

  My whole life is about to change. The thought surprised him, for he was no believer in fate, or destiny, or any of that foolishness. There were only men and women and their actions. Still…

  The knight started to turn away. “Sorry to bother—”

  “Come in,” Tarin said, though he hadn’t thought about the words before they spilled from his mouth. “I don’t know what the frozen hell I want either. Maybe we can help each other figure it out.”

  In Tarin’s room, the two knights stared at each other.

  There was nothing for it. “You’re skinmarked,” Tarin said.

  Sir Dietrich flinched. “I—”

  “Do you deny it? No man has ever challenged my strength before.”

  “No, I—I’ve just never told anyone. I can’t believe I am now.” There was a certain innocence to the knight’s tone. A wonderment. “You can’t tell anyone. I won’t work for the Dread King, not ever again.”

  Tarin nodded. He understood secrets. And he was no friend to King Gäric. He still remembered how his daughter, Annise, had feared her father. He clamped off the memories, for his past was as unreachable as the stars. All that was left was the future.

  But what is my future?

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Tarin said.

  “Are you…” The question fell unfinished from the knight’s lips.

  “Skinmarked?” Tarin laughed. If only. “No. I’m just a monster from the Hinterlands.”

  Sir Dietrich shook his head, but he was smiling now. “Yes. You are. I almost shat my pants when you threw that—what do you call it?”

  “The Morningstar.”

  “Yes. That. I’d rather face a pack of rabid wolves than you in the melee.”

  Tarin chuckled. If you only knew… “I’ve heard similar before.”

  Silence hung for a moment, before Sir Dietrich said, “Which tourney will you attend next?”

  The annual event at Castle Hill was still several months away, but there were half a dozen smaller events in between, which would give him time to decide. “Walburg. You?”

  “The same. Would you be willing to travel with a friendless knight?”

  “Only if you are,” Tarin said, surprised that he responded so quickly. Then again, it made sense. This man had a secret, just like him.

  “Deal,” Dietrich said, extending his hand.

  Tarin looked at it for a moment, but then took it, squeezing hard.

  If you plan to continue with The Fatemarked Epic, there’s a brief two-page epilogue…but I suggest you stop here if you don’t like cliffhangers and don’t plan to continue.

  Thanks for reading!

  Epilogue

  The next three months passed quickly, with each knight winning two of the four melees they entered together. Their rivalry had become something Tarin enjoyed. As had their growing friendship.

  Castle Hill seemed to grow closer with each passing day, a fact Tarin preferred not to think about.

  “You didn’t let me win, did you?” Sir Dietrich asked now, before taking a long pull from a waterskin.

  Tarin scoffed. “I am a knight of the north,” he said. “My honor would not allow it.”

  “Honor?” Sir Dietrich said, spitting some of the water into his empty soup bowl. “The honor faded from this world a long time ago.”

  Beneath his mask, Tarin frowned. It wasn’t an unusual comment from the knight, but it still bothered him. It almost felt like the knight was compensating for something.

  Dietrich continued: “Take the Dread King, for example. He overtaxes his own people. He punishes all who would speak against him. He threatens those on our borders, relying on the blood of his soldiers to back up his big mouth. If we do not have honor at our head, why should we act with it ourselves?”

  Tarin suddenly felt uncomfortable. Not because the words were full of treason, but because they were almost a mirror into his own thoughts.

  “I’m sorry,” Dietrich said when Tarin didn’t respond. “I shouldn’t speak so openly.”

  “You should,” Tarin said. “To me, you should. We are friends. You can trust me.”

  Dietrich seemed to chew on that, and then said, “I know. It’s just, I do not know your mind. Not really.”

  That was true. Tarin preferred to listen than to speak. But it wasn’t fair. If he wanted Dietrich to trust him, he needed to offer the same trust in return. “I don’t…disagree,” he said slowly.

  “Ha!” Dietrich slapped his knee. “That’s a good way of putting it. Safer than being as brazen as I. In any case, I suspected as much. The way you fight…it’s not just for yourself. You fight for something greater.”

  Tarin was surprised the knight could read him so easily. Not even a mask can hide everything, he thought. “I do. But don’t you.”

  “Yes.” The single word answer seemed to carry a great weight.

  “What do you fight for?”

  Sir Dietrich’s smile faded. “There is something I have to do.”

  “What thing?” Again, that feeling of destiny seemed to hang in the air, drawing gooseflesh to Tarin’s skin.

  “I—I have to—I must—”

  “Just say it, man, I am not one to judge.”

  “I am going to kill the Dread King,” Sir Dietrich said. “Will you help me?”

  Tarin wouldn’t have been more shocked if the knight had stripped off all his clothes and begun squawking like a chicken. Even more surprising was his answer: “Yes. I will. And it just so happens I know his wife, the queen.”

  The End

  Want to learn more about Tarin, Sir Dietrich, and their quest to assassinate the Dread King of the North? Check out The Fatemarked Epic by David Estes, now a #1 Amazon bestseller in three categories, Military Fantasy, Medieval Fiction, and Arthurian Fantasy. Check it out HERE.

  “[The Fatemarked Epic is] the best new fantasy series I’ve read in the last decade.”

  —Book-Absorbed Reviews.

  About the Author

  David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was very young. He grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State for college. Eventually he moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife and soul mate, Adele, who he’s now happily married to.

  A reader all his life, David began writing science fiction and fantasy novels in 2010, and has published more than 30 books. In June of 2012, David became a fulltime writer and is now living in Hawaii with Adele, their energetic son, Beau, and their naughty, asthmatic cat, Bailey.

  Read More from David Estes

  Http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com

  Death Bane

  J.T. Williams

  Part 1

  Nurias had the man nearly within his grasp. Some would call it trivial, even foolish, to be so close to a man such as this, but this was personal.

  The fleeing man tore through the barren streets of the township, his face wide-eyed and dripping with sweat, but not from the heat in the air. This man was not well. Aside from Nurias, a large group of people chased after the man, but it just so happened that in his hurried frantic flight, he had fallen into an entire barrel of water that Nurias had just paid for. The water was now beyond tainted. This man was infected, and this was not something Nurias could simply leave unaddressed.

  Once Nurias was nearly within an arm’s reach of the man, he drew his dagger and lunged forward, gripping the man’s tattered leather armor with his left hand and driving the blade of his dagger into the back of the man's neck. The chase ended.

  They both collapsed on the dusty ground. Nurias rolled away from the man as a rhythmic eruption of blood formed a puddle on the ground. A second later, one of the lord’s
men seized Nurias from behind.

  "Nurias! What did you do?"

  "I killed him. I figured that would be obvious."

  The man questioning what he had done was the Lord of the Township, Lord Kras. His title held little meaning, being from a bygone era that had destroyed those of royalty. Nothing had been the same ever since the arrival of the Plague Reapers from the Sunken Lands.

  The lord’s soldiers dragged Nurias up to his feet just as Lorlank, Nurias’ faithful friend, came up directly behind them. "You've killed this man, Nurias. I have given shelter to many of the Remnant before, but never has one took the law into their hands in such a vile way. You killed this man in cold blood."

  "I do not know what hope you had," Nurias said. "You knew he was already injured. He was wounded bringing in those shiny boys from the North. I just sped up the process. Besides you know how rare water is, and this man tainted an entire barrel. You know how long it took Lorlank and me to save up for that barrel?"

  "You still killed a man. We must remain civil or we become as lawless as the scourge. What do we fight for in this town if not to retain normalcy?"

  "Clean water."

  Lorlank fought between him and the lord and grabbed Nurias, pulling him away from the lord’s men.

  "We're sorry," he said to the lord. "We did not mean to cause trouble."

  "Don't take up for me on this, Lorlank," Nurias said. “These people are too soft. They need to know the way this world is.”

  The men holding Nurias move to push Lorlank off him when the lord raised his hand in the air for them to halt. "We know of this world. We do not need a reminder. Listen, you haven't been here this long. I do appreciate what you have been able to acquire for the town. We have not had fresh vegetables in some time, and the fact that you were able to find fertile soil in a cave and somehow rig up a way to grow something makes for a lot of encouragement around here. But seeing you chase to his death an already injured soldier standing under my banner is distressing.”

  "I also know what you’re about and what I have seen here in the past few weeks. You can keep trying to pretend they don't exist, but I’ll keep reminding you they do. What of this soldier's fate? Were you going to wait until he died, choking on his own blood, before the blade of mercy pierced him? Your Lord, I saw our armies decimated on the Great Plains. I watched as over ten thousand men fell to the enemy while people like you hid in your castles."

  "But those men killed two thirds of the undead," one of the soldiers pointed out.

  "And that is what you people living in these townships do not understand," Nurias said, pointing at each of them. " None of you fought in the war. Those who did are all dead, for the most part. You must kill the necromancers. Killing the soldiers, the skeletons, the death walkers is pointless. What are we to do? Continue to strike down those who would strike us down and in so simply give them more soldiers in the end? We scrape a life from this rancid world without true hope, for there is no way to kill a necromancer. Your lord is a fool to think he can do better than the countless who have fallen before us."

  Kras lunged out, grabbing Nurias before throwing him across the ground. Lorlank unstrung his warhammer on his back and went between the lord and Nurias.

  "Step one step further," he said, angling the hammer toward Lord Kras.

  Kras’s soldiers were triple that of Nurias and Lorlank, but in truth, Lorlank could take two times the amount that now threatened them. That was something Nurias, Lorlank, and Kras knew.

  "No, just stay back," he said to his men. "Listen, I will not have my men fighting you and your friend here over one life. Just please, these people have been through so much. I am trying to give them some form of peace."

  Kras returned to pull Nurias to his feet. The Remnant brushed off his clothing and straightened his tunic.

  "I get that. It is why as a Remnant, I have fought still, but that ideology is why humanity has fallen, why my friend Lorlank left the Holy Guard. The Remnant were always considered nothing but a bunch of lawless criminals, but when your pretty castle boys couldn’t put up the fight, they began paying insane amounts for our protection."

  The lord looked back to his men and then back to Lorlank and Nurias. "Leave me. Return to your duty, soldiers."

  As the lord's men departed, they took the dead soldier and covered him in a nearby cloth.

  "We have to burn him. But I’d rather do it outside the city, away from the people." He looked to Nurias. "The ‘shiny boys’ you speak of have all but died out. Of the many who came here, one remains, but he nears the end of his life. I need to talk to you, both of you," he said, looking at Nurias and Lorlank. "I was hoping it would not be after such events as this morning, but now the time has come I should just tell you. I have a task for you. One that lines up with exactly what you said. We have a way to kill a necromancer."

  "We've tried to assassinate them,” Nurias told him, “and that has never worked. They cannot be killed by blades of men. The elves did it, but there are no elven blades still within our world."

  "It wasn't the steel the elves used or the crafters who pounded out the metal to form their blades that killed the necromancers,” Kras said. “One of those Knights of the Holy Order who came here was incognito. He is no mere knight; he is the last High Executor of the order itself! The sanctum was next in the path of the necromancers, and when they attempted to escape, they were attacked."

  “Okay so what do we do to kill them? And what do you expect, just me and my friend here to hunt down the nearest necromancer and bring you its head?"

  "No, but let us speak of it at the keep."

  Lorlank and Nurias followed Kras back through the township streets. As they did, Nurias looked around, seeing the same sights he had seen for the few weeks they had been there.

  The township was built in the frames of an old castle. A structure from the days long ago, but with none of the grandeur. It was a city of tents.

  It had been over ten years since the arrival of the Plague Reapers. At first, they thought it just some random evil creature, a strange demon, but nothing else. They appeared on the shores of the many lakes of the lands and upon the great seas. When the first towers of accursed rock were erected along the coast of the oceans, it should have been some sign, but it was not until the lakes themselves, the rivers, and the wells at every major town across the land were suddenly tainted with poison that the kings of the lands suddenly sprang into action.

  They struck down many of these beasts, some requiring more than three hundred to four hundred men at once to kill them. They razed the towers, and the kings had thought this was enough. The water supply began to clear, but then a haze came across the ocean and a long night fell upon the lands that did not lift until civilization was destroyed.

  The undead were relentless, and their necromancer masters, though few at the beginning, grew in vastness and power as they squandered and plundered every major city, killing the kings of old and turning them into beasts of themselves.

  The culmination of the battles was upon the northern plains. It was here that a last alliance of men, elves, and dwarves came together. Dragons had sided with the forces of light against the undead, and in a brilliance eruption of flames, they were part of many who felt the tide of battle was shifting.

  The resulting battle was of purification. The Holy Order of the Two, the patron gods of all, used their magic to cut a swath all the way to the necromancers themselves. But that was where the battle failed. Those of the living who had fallen were resurrected, and while many elves managed to kill some of the necromancers, there were too few elves and too many of the dead. Civilization failed.

  In that time, Nurias and Lorlank were called with others of what would be called the Remnants. They had many other names back then. Some were thieves, a band called the Night’s Grasp, others were sell swords, and some of the ones who aligned themselves more with protecting the innocent were called Rangers, but in the end, they all became the Remnants.

 
Life had went from trying to win a battle to trying to simply obtain food and fresh water. Through some research of dwarven magic, some water had been pulled from rocks, but it was a strange process and frankly not one that Nurias understood. It made whatever reward this Lord had extremely strange. There was very little of value, for even gold had fallen out of favor because there was nothing else in the world one could buy.

  As they progressed up a large earthen slope to the semi-fortified walls of the lord’s keep, Lorlank admired the work they had done to secure a curtain wall.

  "How nice it must be to sleep at night with a firm wall around your bed.”

  "I hope that if you two are willing and able to do what I need, none will need to worry if they’re within walls or not. I dream of a day where children can run within green fields, where the rivers will once again flow, and the curse upon the land, the blight of the Plague Reapers, is lifted."

  “Well, Lord," Nurias said a sarcastic scowl, "most babies die shortly after birth because their mothers cannot find a way to feed them. I haven't seen the fields in any shade but brown for longer than I care to admit. If you have some nice mushrooms you’ve been eating to give you such thoughts, you should share."

  Kras said nothing, but Lorlank smirked and sighed,"I will say the knights of my once order believed there was a center source of the creatures’ power, that the source can be destroyed and we would be able to restore the land itself. But we never found it."

  "Small steps, my Remnant friends. Trust in what you're about to learn."

  As two soldiers opened the gates before them, they entered a long hall adorned haphazardly with the echoes of the lost time. Paintings, long-lost royal weapons, and even manuscripts salvaged from anywhere the lord's men could find them. They walked past all this, eventually reaching the far end of the hall. On the far end of the room near a large fireplace lay the man they were to speak to.