Wrath of the Greimere

by Case C. Capehart

  Movement behind them brought all three into fighting stances, as Chev’El emerged from seemingly nowhere. “The King kicked them out of Rellizbix, didn’t he? They crossed the bridge because they didn’t want to take on Rellizbix soldiers. You made them do it, anyway.”

  “They crossed because they feared what the Rellizbix soldiers would do to them if they didn’t,” Raegith replied as he sat back down and watched a trio of Denizens thrown off the bridge. “They should have been more afraid of me.”

  “You only sent men. I thought the Greimere saw men and women equally in combat.” Chev’El sat down beside him.

  “Rellizbix doesn’t and most of them are Sabans. Saban women take care of the children and I have no use for an army of orphans.”

  “So the rest that aren’t fighting? Will they be slaves?” Chev’El kept pressing him in the Rellizbix tongue, annoying Helkree.

  Raegith turned to her. “It is what it is, Chev’El. If they reside in the Wilderness, they work for me. They farm, they tend livestock, and they pay tribute so that our people can remain warriors.”

  Raegith motioned toward the battle on the bridge. “Unless you want more of our battles to be fought like this.”

  “Why are we fighting at all?” Chev’El asked. “We don’t need this bridge. We can’t even guard it. Are you so eager to wound your father?”

  “The King is dead.” Raegith sighed and pointed at the battle. “The soldiers down there are not from a Regiment. They call themselves Paladins. They’re the ones who attacked Augustus. They revealed the Treaty in a coup against the crown. The King died in combat against them and the rest of the family committed suicide… or so it’s said. The other Nobles have all forsaken their name and abdicated their land.”

  Raegith closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “We’re fighting a new enemy now and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Quit.”

  Raegith turned and scowled at her, but she continued. “Give this up. You hold the entire Wilderness. You’ve brought your people to a place they can flourish and you have united the Wild Tribes and the Bandit leagues and are building a fortress. You don’t need to conquer Rellizbix Proper. Let the Greimere know peace for the first time ever, and grow.”

  “If you two are done chatting, I think we lost the battle.” Helkree drew their attention to the bridge.

  The last few men had dropped their weapons and plead with the Paladins, but the bloodied soldiers cut them down regardless and kicked their bodies into the river. They dragged a few armored corpses across the bridge, but for the most part the Paladins destroyed the assault to the last man without significant losses.

  “I thought they’d at least get closer than that,” Helkree grumbled. “This was a complete waste of time. Can we at least have Beretta fly over and roast them?”

  “We don’t need the bridge, Helkree.” Raegith got to his feet and made for the group of Denizens. “I will take the labor, though.”

  The Denizens wept and wailed. Some cursed him from under the edge of blades. A few corpses signaled where a brief attempt at uprising had been put down. Children bawled at the loss of their fathers and Raegith envied them. They had lost fathers who loved them and they grieved.

  Raegith had forever lost the chance to look Helfrick in the eye and ask him why.

  The surviving Denizens mostly quieted when he spoke up, but the children continued. He yelled over them. “I told your men that if they brought me the heads of the Paladins on that bridge, I would spare you. I have no heads.”

  Raegith waited for the burst of emotions to calm. Some of the women begged him; others faced their deaths with cold resolve.

  “Please don’t let them suffer.” A middle-aged woman with auburn hair broke through the ranks and dropped to Raegith’s feet. “Take me into the woods. Don’t let them see.”

  Raegith waved off the warriors that grabbed her and knelt down, lifting the Saban woman’s chin. “You throw yourself at the feet of your enemy and beg mercy for your children. Few things rival the courage of a desperate mother. Do you have any skills, Saban?”

  “I can sew… cook. Household things. My son is too young and my daughter… can try, if she must.” The woman trembled before him, her eyes pleading.

  “She must,” Raegith replied. He looked over her shoulder and over the rest of the people eagerly waiting to see what he would do to her. “You will make sure they all understand this. Now go to your children.”

  The woman scrambled back to a blonde daughter who looked nearly twelve and a toddler in boy’s clothes. Raegith stood and held his hands out for quiet. “Your men failed, but they did so bravely. Grieve them as you march south. They paid for your lives.”

  He watched as relief passed over the women and children, even as they continued to weep for their lost ones. Raegith’s gaze lingered on the middle-aged woman and he imagined the woman reassuring her children even as his warriors dragged her to her execution. He thought of Goji desperately handing a weapon to Makata as the life left him. How many Greimere mothers and fathers tried to comfort their children during their violent, final moments? How many of them watched as the Paladins killed their frightened children?

  “I didn’t want this,” Raegith yelled, regaining their attention. “This war has not been easy on you, but if there is anyone who knows your pain, it is the Greimere. Perhaps that is why we grant you mercy and these Paladins cut you down without remorse.”

  Raegith cast his gaze over the pale faces of those he pardoned. “You will work my fields and my looms and my smithies and you will forfeit everything of value to the Greimere. And because the Greimere know honor, you will continue to kiss your children goodnight and watch them grow old. Think back on this day often, and of how it might have ended if we were truly the monsters Rellizbix convinced you of.”

  Chapter 38

  Helfria kept her grief locked away well. Not a tear fell from her face while she fled the castle she had called home for 26 years. She remained resolute as Gaius led her into the sewers and up into the barracks of the 1st Regiment. She held on as the few soldiers garrisoned there hid them away before the Paladins seized the building; after changing into men’s clothing and shearing off enough of her hair to fit it into a cap; after fleeing Thromdale under the cover of night and through the chaotic masses outside the city walls. When they stopped to rest miles away and out of sight from the lights of her home, the levy gave way.

  Gaius did not attempt to comfort her as she wept against the tree. They lit no fire that night. She deduced Gaius did not want to risk drawing patrols or travelers.

  Helfria held on to the sound of her sister’s scream and the abrupt way it ceased. She clutched at the memory of her mother’s face before the Paladin shoved her through the window; how her mother held onto a blade in order to talk the men into sparing her remaining daughter. She clung to the image of her timid, quiet little brother taking on a grown man in armor to save her. Yet the memory of her father holding his dead son and softly destroying her world with his divulged secrets overpowered them all.

  At some point sleep took her. Shadowy claws and warbled screams thrashed her about in her dreams, but when Gaius shook her awake in the brightening dawn, she could remember only the penetrating dread, nothing of the actual dream. A chill deeper than the morning cold splintered and wormed through her veins, infecting her entire body. For a moment as Gaius packed their few belongings and readied for the trip westward, she contemplated returning home. The Senator in her wanted to know how Andronicus justified his coup. She yearned to know how the Citizens and Commoners of Rellizbix, the people she swore to represent, accepted an unprecedented regicide. They might string her up in the courtyard, but she would look them in the eye and demand to know how her people could live with themselves.

  “We can’t go back, Helfria.” Gaius seemed to know exactly what plagued her mind. “The Treaty is real; you father confirmed it. The people won’t understand. They’ll curse you and the entire Caelum name as trai
tors.”

  Helfria turned to him as he finished. He met her eyes for a moment before shaking his head and looking down at his pack. “Andronicus won.”

  “What did I do wrong? What did my sisters and brother do wrong?” Helfria struggled to clamp the lid back on her emotions as she did yesterday. “I should have known. I should have been investigating. I should have pushed father...”

  “You’re not the Fates, Helfria. This was the darkest secret in the history of Rellizbix.” Gaius reached his hand to her. “We have to go.”

  Helfria took a deep breath and started forward, ignoring his hand. “Tell me your plan, Gaius. I need to focus on our future to keep my thoughts from my family.”

  “I have contacts in the west, along the Storm Line; marines from the 2nd Regiment.” Gaius strode beside her as he spoke. “Word of the coup won’t be as easily accepted there where the people did not witness things first-hand. They won’t have changed any leadership and we can get passage south aboard a ship.”

  “You plan on sailing to the mouth of the Pisces? Big Drop?” Helfria asked, keeping her eyes on the dark horizon. “I’ve not been there since I was a child. We vacationed there once. I’ve never seen such a majestic waterfall. And all the cave homes the Twileens have carved out of the Cliffside-“

  “We’re sailing past Big Drop.” Gaius cut her off. “The last reports from the Deep South show that the Greimere never took the coast. Ports in the Wilderness are still under Denizen control. However…”

  Helfria did not like that pause he took.

  Gaius took a full breath before continuing. “Carrion Tide has expanded its presence since the Invasion. With all of Rellizbix focused on the Greimere, the Sea Bitch emerged from the shadows and now operates in the light of day unchecked. I assume that she aims to carve out her own domain to rule over, but how she intends to defend against Greimere encroachment is anyone’s guess.”

  “And you want to sail right into her domain?” Helfria asked. “Do we not have enough enemies around us for your liking?”

  “It’s not yet her domain. We still have allies there,” Gaius replied. “Allies loyal to the King and his line, not to the Paladins. By the time we reach Big Drop, word will have spread that the Caelums no longer rule. Paladins might already hold the port. The Bay of Rust may be full of Carrion Tide, but they do not own it. Most importantly, though, is that Andronicus won’t touch the Wilderness. He won’t have eyes there.”

  “But if anyone from Carrion Tide recognizes me we’ll be at the mercy of the most infamous traitor of our time.”

  “You mean besides your older brother?” Gaius stiffened and looked forward when she glared at him. How could he say something like that?

  “He’s not my brother, Gaius. I don’t even know him.” Helfria stewed in her anger with Gaius. Not 24 hours earlier her heart soared with the words he had written to her. Had any of that been true? Her father had placed him in the Senate as a spy; his entire career was an elaborate falsehood a paranoid ruler designed. Gaius had lied to everyone for years. Helfria thought of all the times he had expressed hushed reservations about the King and contrasted those memories with the utter devotion he showed to her father’s every word in the castle. King Helfrick ordered him to take her away and into enemy territory and Gaius did not hesitate or contest those orders in the slightest.

  “What do you know about him, Gaius?” Helfria caught up to her escort and grabbed his shoulder to turn him toward her. “What do you know of the Treaty and the war and my father’s transgression against my mother?”

  “Little more than you, Helfria.”

  “How do I know that’s true? You are an implant by my father. You’ve lied to everyone for years about your motivations for office, your ideas on policy. You told me that you loved me. Did you lie about that, as well?”

  “No. That part was truthful.” Gaius stopped walking and looked her in the eye. “I have no reason to keep anything from you now, Helfria.”

  Helfria returned his gaze, but did not relent. “So what, then? You would have broken father’s orders in order to marry me? Would I deserve the truth then?”

  Gaius’s gaze drifted.

  “You have to be kidding me.” Helfria clenched her jaw and her fist followed suit. “Father arranged it, didn’t he? You weren’t writing me out of love; you were following orders, as always.”

  “You’re getting it wrong, Helfria.” Gaius held up his hands, the way he did when cooling tensions among the Senators. “Your father knew of the feelings I harbored for you. The convenience of it simply-“

  “You son of a bitch,” she yelled. “I am a woman, not a mission. If you really loved me… if I even believe that, then you conspired to obtain me. And if he ignored your feelings or dismissed them? Would you have ever courted me then?”

  Gaius stared to the side of her face, avoiding her eyes as he chewed on the words forming his response. His jaw appeared tight as he spoke. “I am a soldier, Helfria.”

  “I see.” Helfria spit the words out in a quick snap. She straightened her clothes and continued westward.

  “You’re very loyal, soldier. You have my trust that you will get me safely through the Greimere. But my love?” Helfria gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “It would serve you well to put that love behind you as I must do with my title and family.”

  Chapter 39

  The peaceful flight from Thromdale did not last long. Mercenaries and lynch mobs must have spread out from the capitol in search for her. Not two days into her journey west, Gaius pulled her off the road and into the trees as angry Sabans in clothes and simple leather armor rolled through. There were no Paladins among them, but their intent seemed clear: they searched for someone.

  “Had there been any decent Twileens among them, we might have been screwed by jumping off the road so quickly.” Gaius whispered to her as they waited for any stragglers to appear. “We’re going to have to find a more difficult path west. Perhaps a goat path or something.”

  “This is insane,” Helfria huffed. “Have they no loyalty at all? My family has kept this country safe for centuries.”

  Gaius turned and looked at her and she realized her mistake. “Fates… the Treaty. I suppose I still cannot get a firm grasp on it.”

  “Your father fled instead of denying it,” Gaius said. “It’s all the proof they need. I respected the King more than anyone in my life, but from his own mouth he claimed responsibility for this war. He claimed responsibility on behalf of all Caelum kings for century’s worth of Invasions.”

  “Do you think I can do this, Gaius?” Helfria clutched her knees to her chest. “This warlord, my half-brother… his hatred for us must be unfathomable. I cannot believe father could do such a thing to his own son; not the father that I knew growing up.”

  She looked to Gaius for some kind of affirmation. “I have lived the life of a first-born Caelum. Everything I wanted was given to me. For all my studying and sacrifice, my title is the only reason the Senate tolerated me at their table. This warlord was neglected and locked away; he was cast into the heart of the enemy and clawed his way back over ten years with an army at his command. Why in all of land would he listen to me?”

  “You are a skilled diplomat, Helfria. Your words have power even without your title.” Gaius stood and looked around before continuing. “Your father had faith in you enough faith to send you right to his greatest foe. He knew you could gain Raegith’s ear and so do I.”

  The two of them continued onward, choosing their way through forests and sprinting across open fields. They travelled in the dark hours and slept through the day, but even in their extreme care Thromdale caught up with them.

  “We can’t outrun them.” Helfria gasped for air; her lungs burning after what felt like hours of running. Behind her, torches bobbed and swayed, closing in on them as quickly as the voices of their bearers.

  “We can’t just stop, Helfria.” Gaius pulled her by the arm to keep her moving. “If we can reach a settlement… a Twi
leen camp; they might not try to take us with strangers about.”

  “Why would that stop them?” Helfria asked. She turned to see the torches even closer to them than before.

  Gaius grunted and pushed off from the tree in front of him. “I don’t know, Helfria. We just can’t...”

  Gaius cut himself short and drew his sword as something shot out of the trees at their side. A man wrapped in shadow and the quick slivers of moonlight from between the tree limbs slammed into him and they both rolled across the ground.

  Helfria screamed as the two scuffled. Gaius grunted and she heard metal grate against something. The man jumped away, spinning in circles and screaming, “my hand!”

  She ran to Gaius as he pulled something slippery and sharp from his side. “Shit,” he gasped, stumbling a step before righting himself.

  “Oh Fates, this is really happening.” Helfria spun on the line of torches. The men were close enough for her to see their gleaming smiles. “Gaius, come on. A settlement… we can reach one.”

  “There ain’t no sanctuary for you, whore.” A burly man with a torch and a woodcutter’s axe stepped forward. “We only brought one rope. We’re gonna hang yer man, and then use that rope to haul ya back to yer trial. If ya make a fuss, we’ll just haul yer corpse back.”

  “I am a Senator of Rellizbix and the last living heir of Throm Caelum,” Helfria cried, standing tall before them. “You will escort both of us back, unharmed, that I may face my accuser.”

  “You don’t give orders to men anymore, Princess,” the man said. “That shit is at an end. Boys, string this has-been up and make ’er watch.”

  “Helfria, run!” Gaius lunged at the first man to come near and forced him back.

  Another man stepped in and swiped at him with a spear. Gaius parried the blow and lashed out with a kick to the man’s hip. He connected, but the others rushed him. One took a slash across the arm as they went down and howled in rage.