Nether Kingdom

by J. Edward Neill

  “Indeed.” The fiend shined his lamplight across the soldiers’ faces. “Men of the Wolde. Oh, and what good service they do, scouting, spying, and hunting in the Master’s name.”

  “Well met.” He nodded to the two. Fools.

  “Aye. The same,” said one of the soldiers.

  Fearsome though the soldiers looked, as he drew nearer, he recognized their nervousness. They looked stiff, sweaty, and ill at ease in his company. My reputation precedes me. Finally, a little respect.

  The first of them, his head shaven and his beard braided, stammered when he spoke. “We…we’ve been waiting for you. We thought you might not be real, that the Graefolk invented you just to have someone to blame for the war. But here you are, just as promised.”

  “Yes. Here I am.”

  “We’re here to escort you to the Wolde, to Archaeus,” the soldier continued. “It’s only a three day march. We’d have brought horses, but…”

  “Let me guess,” he interrupted with a smile. “You got hungry.”

  Confused, the soldier shook his head. “Eat them? Why would we…what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “No,” said Unctulu. “It was the Hunter. He stole your steeds, yes?”

  The soldier flushed. “Aye. The Hunter indeed. He attacked two nights ago. There were six of us, but now only two. We had eight horses, and now none.”

  Archmyr smiled at the soldiers’ woes. With men so feeble, it’s no wonder they woke me.

  “You think it funny, snake?” spat the second soldier, a younger, taller fellow. “They were brothers of the Wolde, cut from finer cloth than you. Keep smiling. Maybe you’ll be the next one the Hunter takes.”

  He rolled his eyes. He wished the wolf-soldiers would try him, that I might break their arms and relieve them of their swords.

  “I jest.” He smirked. “I’m sure they were good men. Perhaps they’ll send me after this Hunter, this throat-slitter. I’d be happy to kill him for you.”

  “Sending you might be what Master had planned all along,” said the braided-beard one.

  “Charming, your daydreams.” Unctulu’s vials clinked as he plodded between Archmyr and the soldiers. “But foolish, your vengeance. Pale One, you’ll not hunt the Hunter, nor will anyone here. See Thresh there? So long as he exists, no one, not even the Hunter, can harm us. We’ve larger deeds at hand than chasing ghosts. We’ve wars to win. We’ve graves to dig.”

  “Well enough,” replied the soldier. “Might we camp with you tonight?”

  Archmyr gestured toward the pair of sagging tents, the hobbled pack horse, and the sad little campfire flickering in the center of the camp. “Of course.” He mustered his most disconcerting smile.

  “We’d love to have you.”

  The journey to Archaeus continued in the morning.

  Cursing and drooling, Unctulu roused the company at dawn. “To the Master we go,” he gurgled. “Merry, we should be, as dogs on their way to dinner.” After a breakfast of cooked apples and cold sausage, the fiend snared his pack horse’s reins and led the way out of the muddy camp and onto a proper road.

  “This way, Pale Knight. The Master’s road.”

  At long last, thought Archmyr. We’re getting somewhere.

  If his journey through Grandwood and northern Romaldar had been dreary and dull, the final leg of the voyage promised to be less miserable. At last free from skulking along the lowest paths and picking his way through each night, he walked in the open, as it should be. The wolf-soldiers had brought food, proper food, and skins flush with wine.

  If this continues, he thought. I’ll not have to kill everyone.

  Romaldar was a country unlike any he had traveled in or conquered. Summer was at its warmest, and the sun’s nourishing light shining down upon what seemed the most verdant landscape in the world. The road he walked, paved with smooth stones, curled over hundreds of slopes, none too steep, none greened by the same color grass as the next. Trees were in abundance: olive, apple, and plum, bunched in thickets of twenty and fifty, peppering the land like florets. Webs of shallow waterways crisscrossed the entire landscape, providing water to each grove, every field of golden wheat and lanky maize, and every one of a hundred villas.

  Such a fair country might have been beautiful to any other man, but Archmyr distrusted it. Too pretty to be real. Too perfect. Too quiet. And who could ever think anything beautiful when traveling in such company?

  That afternoon, his wary view of the world was given credence.

  As he slogged along the road, he spied from afar a sight he had always expected to see: A village of Roma was burning. He spotted the first whorl of ash rising in the clouded sky. The forests surrounding the village were thick and flourishing, but no amount of greenery disguised the truth. He slowed behind Unctulu, Thresher, and the two soldiers, and he halted at the crown of a hill.

  A hundred houses burning. Not an accident.

  Even from afar he saw the black, smoking bodies of dead villagers lying where they had been hewn. Their dwellings looked like skeletons, the trees dry and ashen, while the screams from a lone survivor cut a ragged wound in the day. Most men would have been sick at the sight, but not him.

  How many villages did I burn likewise? he wondered. How many screams for the things I did?

  He watched until Unctulu bid him move along, He marched on, saying nothing, and before dusk he spotted three more burning villages, same as the first.

  ‘Tulu and the wolf men seem not to mind.

  This is their master’s work.

  Night shrouded the world. He and the others made camp. On the side of a green-grassed hill, he dined alone, shunning Unctulu’s overtures to sit beside the fire. He lurked halfway inside his tent, and though his mind wandered over the memory of the burning cities, he fixed his gaze firmly on Thresher. Of all that he had seen since his resurrection, the faceless warrior was the one thing that unnerved him. He caught himself staring at Thresher’s mask. An iron spade, he reckoned it looked like. No emotion, no hate, nothing there.

  Human, but not.

  Dead, but alive.

  Exhausted, he tumbled into shadow. He dreamed, and in his dream it was as though Thresher was one of Them, as though he was Their representative in the real world. It felt all too real. He saw Thresher roam from city to city, touching his iron fingers to villagers’ doors and setting them ablaze, leaving only charred earth and smoking bones in his wake.

  When the images of Thresher and his fires fled from his mind, he fretted no less. He glimpsed much darker things, creatures and places he could put no name to. Shadows lay at the edge of his nightmare, creeping darkness in every pool of water, slips of black clouds crawling across the moon. Such sleeping terrors made him fear he might reawaken in the realm of the dead, back in the groping hands of the abyss. He felt Them watch him, question him, and prod him in his sleep, and while often They were shapeless, sometimes They wore the faces of those many he had killed.

  He awoke in a panic. His hands were clammy, his skin slick and cold. A crow’s cawing tunneled into his ears, and he remembered Mooreye, the oceans of dead bodies, and the black birds waiting atop the towers for their feast.

  Wake up, weakling, he cursed himself. It’s all just a dream.

  It was dawn now, and by the time he composed his countenance into its familiar haunted frown, Unctulu and the soldiers were breakfasting by the fire. He pushed his tent-flap open and emerged beneath a sunless grey sky. Striding past Thresher, he sat cross-legged beside the fire and snatched the last sausage from the soldiers’ sizzling pan, glowering like a storm cloud at everyone.

  “How long until Archaeus?”

  Unctulu grinned. “At last, the Pale Knight asks a reasonable question. We never thought we’d see the day.”

  “How long?” he repeated. “Today? Tomorrow? When?”

  The braid-bearded soldier interjected, “Three days. By tomorrow we’ll have new horses. We’ll cross these last hills, dip into the plains, and march along the lake. Th
e Wolde will be waiting.”

  He drained the nearest jug of water into his gullet and glowered across the fire. “Three days. I suppose I can endure it. Next question; what are your names?”

  “Hanonn,” answered the braid-bearded one.

  “Luc,” said the younger. “Why?”

  “Why is the road empty?” He ignored Luc. “We’ve passed fewer than twenty travelers since entering this damnable country, and stopped to talk to none of them. It’s the middle of summer, and you expect me to believe there’re no tradesmen, no riders from town to town? Is everyone dead? Is this what passes for normal in Romaldar?”

  “There are… restrictions.” Hanonn scratched his shaven head. “There’ve been uprisings. The Wolde is allowed full use of the roads, but no one else, not unless permitted.”

  “I suppose that has something to do with the fires we saw yesterday? Is this country at war? With the Grae? With the Yrul? With itself?”

  Hanonn was about to answer, but Unctulu interceded. The fiend snared a smoking length of kindling from the fire and raised the shriveled, blackened end up before Archmyr’s eyes. “See this?” Unctulu gazed at the smoke curling from the twig’s end. “This is Roma: half-burned, ready to become ash. When I left this world almost five centuries ago, our country was far greater than now. We were powerful, oh so powerful, and our rivals were but weeds clamoring beneath our boots. But now…now we’re nothing. We pale in Graehelm’s shadow. We quaver at Yrul’s threats. But not for long, I think. The fires you saw were the anthills burning, and the curled specks the dying vermin. To do what we intend, we must smoke our lessers out. Order must be restored, and power provided to the ones who mean to make Roma great again.”

  Hanonn and Luc nodded in agreement. Unctulu dropped the stick back into the fire.

  Lies, Archmyr knew. The wolf-boys might believe it, but not I. No one would’ve raised my bones for Roma. No one.

  “I’ve no more questions today.” He stood. “I’m ready to march.”

  And march he did.

  For that day and half of the next, he fell into silent rank, speaking so seldom to his companions he seemed little more than a ghost gliding in their wake. The landscape changed. The hills flattened and the forests thinned, giving way to a spacious, golden-grassed plain. The road straightened, hugging a wide, slow river. From his new, unobstructed vantage, he witnessed plenty to brood on. Here and there he saw more villages, some full to the brim and busy at work, others empty and scorched, marked with flags depicting the same grinning wolf as upon Luc and Hanonn’s Luc’s tabards.

  At midday he spied a city. Its crumbling walls and ruined mansions were but heaped timber and piled stone. The road led him near enough that he saw through the city’s shattered gate. He saw dozens of fresh graves stretched out in a line, the soil still wet and malodorous. He knew whose work the carnage was. He read it in Luc’s leering and in Hanonn’s thin-lipped smirk.

  Murderers, he thought. Destroyers. I see now what I was and will be again.

  He marched on, his jaw tight and his gaze hooded. The dead city dwindled at his back, its towers looming like tilted tombstones.

  It was then, even as he brooded, the riders approached.

  Ten men, armed to the teeth and swathed in shaggy wolfskins, rode like thunder from across the southern fields. Their approach sounded like an army, shaking the earth as though to rouse it from slumber, darkening the grass far more than so few seemed capable of. The horses were clad much the same as the riders, frothing white beneath their mailed muzzles, their flanks billowing with grey and black pelts.

  More men who think they’re wolves.

  The riders closed in. Their horses trampled the earth to mud and halted just shy of Unctulu, who held up his hand as though he were a wall before which all things were compelled to stop. “Welcome, welcome.” Unctulu waved one fat-fingered hand. “You’ve come at a good time. We’ve us a gift in tow.”

  The lead rider dropped down from his horse. He was a brutish, black-bearded fellow with a trio of daggers strapped to his chest and a war mace dangling from his waist by a chain. He was a colossus as Romaldarians went, standing nearly as tall as Thresher, his broad shoulders and ivory skin hinting that at least one of his ancestors may have lain with the Yrul. He gave no greeting to Unctulu, but stomped directly for Archmyr.

  “So, another hopeful,” the big man boomed. “How many’s this? The tenth? The hundredth?”

  Archmyr leaned close, sniffing the beastly warrior like a haunch of meat. The brute stank of sweat and horse, his beard as tangled as a thousand black yarns. “You must be the grand wolf.” He grinned.

  “Atra.” The brute rapped his chest with a meaty fist. “Lord Atra Moulos, commander of the field, second only to Master Lykaios. You speak our tongue, Pale One?”

  “An easy language to master,” he quipped.

  “Yes, yes.” Unctulu wormed his way into the conversation. “The Pale One’s not been gone long enough to forget everything.”

  Gone? He means dead. Archmyr saw the look of utter disgust on Atra’s face. “Something the matter?” he goaded.

  “Yes.” Atra scowled. “Plenty. Maybe you can tell me why our lords sent for you. I don’t understand it. We’ve waited and waited, and now we get you, you who’re not even of Roma. You’re half the man of any of my Wolde. You’re a flea, a parasite, and we need you none.”

  “Careful, Lord Atra,” advised Unctulu, the wisest thing he’s ever said. “He’s what Master wanted.”

  “No, not careful me.” Atra wagged his finger. “Careful him. When he goes before the Master and fails to live up to his legend, I want to be the one to string him from the rafters. I want to know why we snared a Thillrian to do a Romaldarian’s work. We could’ve claimed the Master’s prize and been back by now. We could’ve killed the Hunter and torched the last of the rebels by now. This is no man you’ve brought before us. We know what he is: a killer of women, a rapist, and a coward who spent all his days hiding behind the Furies.”

  Archmyr shrugged off Atra’s insults. Here’s an opportunity. The gears in his mind spun. This’ll be fun.

  “You know me?” he asked Atra with a smirk.

  “Aye. Don’t we all?” Atra nodded, and all his men grunted their approval. “The Thillrian, the Pale Knight, the betrayer.”

  “I’m humbled.”

  “You’ll be humbler still,” Atra snorted. “We promise.”

  “Lord Atra,” he toyed with the brute’s name, “your bravery must truly inspire your men, your glory made grand by the slaughter of Roma’s people. If your Master saw us standing side-by-side, no doubt he’d have you run me through. You are all that I am not, all I never will be.”

  Atra pressed two fingers against Archmyr’s chest, mimicking a dagger’s thrust. “You mock, but you shouldn’t. We’re the wolves of Roma, little flea. If the Master chooses you above us, it’s us you’ll sleep amongst. Remember that, and maybe you’ll live until tomorrow.”

  He examined the faces of Atra’s riders. The same, all of them. He glimpsed their dry disdain, their worship of Atra’s every word. They don’t know me. They’re not afraid of me.

  This will never do.

  “Why not, then?” He set his stare on Atra.

  “Why not what?” The beast raised his brow.

  “Why not earn your respect right here, right now?”

  “Ha!” chuffed Atra.

  He looked to Unctulu, who for once remained silent. The fiend understands this much, at least. He knows what’s about to happen.

  “You laugh, Lord Atra?” He rolled his shoulders. “It’s the laugh of a confident man, of a man who believes he’ll still be alive tomorrow. But do you trust to sleep in my camp tonight? Do you? Do you trust I’ll not pluck your eyes from your head and your teeth from your jaw while you dream? Do you believe, if I should murder you in your sleep, that I’ll not drag your corpse to whatever miserable patch of mud you call home and prop your head upon your supper table?”

 
; Atra cocked his head. He doesn’t believe what he’s hearing. No one’s ever challenged him before.

  A shame, that.

  “At one sight of me, Lord Atra, your children will quail. Your woman will kneel before me and beg me to prick her. ‘Sweet Archmyr,’ she’ll swoon. ‘Ravage me like that stinking, swamp-breathed dog never could.’ And I would, Atra. I would, and I’d very much enjoy it.”

  His insults touched exactly the nerves he wanted. The leers fell from the riders’ faces. Unctulu giggled, then went silent.

  And Atra, sweet Atra…

  “You…” the big man growled. “‘Tulu, is this the pestilence you’ve brought us? I think I should do us a favor. I think the Master’ll be grateful.”

  “He might,” quipped Unctulu.

  “He will.” Archmyr smirked.

  Enraged, Atra tore his six-tined mace from the chain on his belt and hoisted it over Archmyr’s head. What took you so long? he wanted to say. I’d have killed me before all this talking.

  In his eyes, Atra and his mace looked like a thunderhead, powerful but ponderous. I might walk to my grave and back before he kills me. I might kill all his men and have ‘Tulu make us supper with the horses.

  Fast as a striking serpent, he snatched two of Atra’s daggers from their sheaths upon the big man’s chest. He made no sound as he moved. In his hands the daggers were like the wind, moving faster than any eye could follow. Atra brought his mace down, but too slowly. Archmyr whirled aside, avoiding death by half the width of his hand.

  Goodbye.

  He planted one dagger in Atra’s throat, the other pommel-deep in the soft, unarmored space between Atra’s ribs. Atra gurgled and gasped, and then stiffened. His riders watched as the big man plummeted to the wet earth with a crash like a falling Grandwood tree.

  Dead before he hit the ground.

  He backed away from Atra’s body and gauged the reaction of every rider. The Roma men sat stunned in their saddles, looking to each other for answers. They could kill me, he knew. They could trample me with their warhorses or unload their crossbows into me. But they won’t.

  Fearful, the riders watched him as he dried his bloody palms against his shirt. “If you’re going to do anything, do it now,” he said. “But if not…”