An hour before dusk, he slackened his pace. Father Sun’s scarlet flames burned in the western grasslands, while in the east the Yrul crags arose, brittle and black, an endless line of teeth. He picked his way through a narrow copse, chewing on a fistful of figs, skulking like a wraith.
Close now. The next greensward. An hour more, and we will bleed.
The eve’s amber light floundered. He slithered between the trees, knowing full well the Master’s wolves likely had spies awaiting him. These were the hours he preferred to hunt. When the dusklight drains like watered ink from the sky. When the stars shiver. At sleep’s edge.
At the edge of a meadow beyond the trees, he saw flames rising.
The fire tongued the sky, coughing plumes of smoke into the eve, blotting out the stars.
Dwellings roiled crimson, the hot embers of burning thatch crackling in the night.
The village. Already burning. The Master’s men are here.
In his first breath he was distraught, but in the next his eyes glittered. I am too late. His fists pulsed open and shut. He remembered the Wolfwolde soldier he had captured, the lies the man had told. At midnight, he told me. Once the villagers are asleep. Even in death, a betrayer.
The sound of a woman wailing caught his ear. Her anguished cry reached across the dark grasses between him and the burning houses. He tore his bow from his shoulder, nocked an arrow, and slunk across the field. The village came completely into view. The field he crossed was its doorstep, the thickets behind him its walls. It was larger than he expected, some three hundred thatch and timber dwellings, half of them already aflame.
He crept to the village’s northernmost corner and came upon a fearsome scene. The night boiled with ribbons of smoke, the darkness torn to tatters with the sounds of burning, bleeding people. New fires sprang up even as he approached, all of them started by Wolfwolde riders, who galloped from dwelling to dwelling, flinging torches and flaming hunks of timber into windows and onto roofs.
The woman’s wailing ceased. He knew without knowing she was dead. He sucked in a breath and strode onto the outermost of the village’s streets, a circular lane of dirt upon which a dozen bodies lay hewn and crumpled. The corpses looked like macabre puppets, staring at him, chiding him for his lateness. He might have grieved for them, but no sooner did he think it than a pair of Wolfwolde riders steered their mounts onto the road and wheeled to face him with bloodied swords.
“You there!” one of the riders roared.
“Kill him!” shouted the other.
His eyes burning in the haze of smoke and fire, he raised his bow and shot the foremost rider through his neck. The second rider stripped his sword from his waist and spurred his mount, but the Hunter’s second arrow screamed through the dark like an ascending raptor, rooting itself in the rider’s cheek and jutting from the back of his skull. Both riders tumbled from their horses, dead before they hit the ground.
Two, he thought as he walked up the road and pulled the arrow from the first rider’s throat. And a hundred more waiting.
He left the road. Prowling, he roved the alleys betwixt the village streets, breathing shallow breaths in the smoke and wincing from the fires. The Wolfwolde remained oblivious to him. They rampaged less like men and more like beasts, slaughtering villagers with indiscriminate glee. Hither and to they drove their steeds, delivering death unto terrified men, women, and even children. He glimpsed one rider hew a man’s head from his neck, and another slip behind the man’s wailing wife and slide a dagger into the small of her back. He saw two men tear a woman’s clothing off before braining her senseless with their clubs, and another soldier laughing while a hanged man burned.
Methodical. Bloodthirsty. Taking no captives. Not here to punish only a few. They mean to kill everyone.
Master’s orders.
His next moments were neither graceful, nor honorable, nor clean. He emerged from the shadows and stepped onto a street. He counted seven Wolde nearby, none of whom saw him steal out from a bulbous cloud of smoke. Noiseless, he shot two dead while wounding a third. The three men pitched from their horses and cracked their heads against the street. Before the remaining Wolde noticed their slain brothers, he cast his bow aside and ripped the Greyblade free of its sheath. He streamed like the wind between two riders, hacking them down from their horses and spearing them through their hearts as they writhed in the dirt. By the time the last two of them turned to see their brothers dying, he was gone, vanished in the smoke and darkness.
Dusk became night. Cinders of burning wood and smoke from roasting flesh reached for the sky like red-fingered apparitions. Wherever he went, death followed. Terrified Wolfwolde riders bellowed his name, screaming, “Hunter! Hunter! The Hunter is here!” But their warnings came too late, and in the clamor of the burning city, few of their comrades heard. Again and again, he materialized from the shadows, ambushing the Wolde like a crack of thunder before a storm. He moved through dozens of alleys, catching them in the midst of slaughter, falling upon them as they laughed and bragged and coughed in the smoke. In the hot shadows of the hellish night he slew twelve, skewering them like hogs, saying nothing to their screams, and relishing none of what he did.
Nineteen. Not nearly enough. A hundred before the Master might notice.
And still the village burned. Smoke filled the night, and the Wolde wizened to his presence. Too terrified to realize they could conquer him if they attacked together, they fled to the meadows beyond the flames and assembled in the far grasses like lambs, cursing him from the safety of their murderous flock. Breathing shallow, smoke-tortured breaths, he stood at the village’s edge and leaned against the Greyblade. He saw the Wolde’s torches, their pale faces, and their terror. But he also heard their laughter.
They knew I would come.
Their devilish work done, the cowards of Wolfwolde fled the village ruin. They thundered into the trees, their shouts ringing in the darkness. He lingered in the smoke, silhouetted amid the dying fires. His beard and hair were grey with ash. His lungs were dry, ravaged from the heat, and his eyes rimmed with an angry shade of red.
Tormented, he allowed himself a moment’s convalescence before stirring to life. Find survivors, he commanded himself. Save at least one.
He staggered down a body-strewn street. Slain villagers lied in the open, gazing skyward. He peered into kicked-in doors and shattered windows, searching for life. He found none, at least not within the first twenty dwellings he passed. If any had escaped, he could not tell. Burned, he imagined them. Choked. Stabbed. Carved to pieces. A few might be cowering in the fields. This place is dead either way.
It was then he heard the groan of a person not yet perished. The largest dwelling in the village stood beside him, a mansion gutted by fire, its burning roof casting shadows upon a trampled courtyard lawn. He remembered. An enemy lay nearby, a raider he had cleaved from horseback, but had not taken the time to finish. Blinking back the ashes in his eyes, he strode into the courtyard. The wounded wretch was still lying sidelong in the grass, bleeding beside a crumbling fountain.
“You.” He loomed like a mountain above the Wolfwolde soldier. “Your brothers have deserted you. You will die alone.”
“No…” The soldier gasped. Blood frothed on his lips, and agony in his eyes. “Not alone...”
“Tell me, and I will spare you a slow death. Tell me why, of all the villages in Romaldar, you chose this one.”
“What’s there to tell?” the soldier sputtered. “The Master commands. We do as he says.”
He knelt at the soldier’s side and tapped the Greyblade against the man’s flank. The Wolde man’s armor was sheared, his gaping wound leaking his lifeblood onto the grass. “Tell me what Lykaios is planning.” He tilted the Greyblade toward the soldier’s throat. “Tell me why he chose tonight, why this village.”
The dying soldier shaped his bloodied lips into a hideous smile. Even now, so close to death, the fool found some sort of twisted humor in his deeds. “This place�
��” the man hissed. “Just like the others…supporters of the Master’s exile…whisperers into the dead king’s ear.”
“The Master’s exile.” The Hunter narrowed his eyes. “It happened decades ago. These people were children.”
“Aye. But the Master…he never forgives.”
He nearly killed the soldier then, if only to be rid of his smile. He brushed off the fool’s wolf-pelt skullcap and stared into the man’s beady eyes, his gaze cold enough to bring an early winter to the world. “Tell me where he will attack next.” He pressed the Greyblade’s point against the Wolde man’s chin. “Tell me everything. Names of cities. Names of those he plans to murder.”
“Shouldn’t matter, not to you...” The soldier spat.
“It matters. Tell me.”
“No,” the soldier tried to laugh. “You’re the prey now. The Master’s servant has the smell of you.”
“I am the hunter.”
“You were, but now…you’re the prey.”
There was something in the way the soldier said it. He smiles in his death throes. His brothers have abandoned him, and still he laughs.
He rose and gazed into the cinder-lit night. He heard footfalls in the darkness, and though at first he dismissed them as a trick of his imagination, the sound filled him with dread. A distant, rhythmic groan, he heard, snapping the silence like the grinding of rusted gears. He heard it draw nearer, three streets away, then two, and then one.
“The others fled too quickly.” He glanced at the fallen Wolde man.
“No…” the soldier coughed. “Didn’t flee...watching even now.”
Near to death, the soldier gasped for life. His inhalations were ragged, his shivers wracking him. Still he spoke, his words practiced, prepared for this very moment.
This was a trap.
“Hunter, can’t you…see?” the soldier coughed. “We burned this place…just for you. We knew. Master knew. There were others to be…scorched, but tonight you’re the…guest of honor. The Master…he’ll carve my name into the spires of Archaeus…”
Quietly, he turned his back to the soldier and speared him through the chin, afterward whisking the Greyblade back to his side. The soldier let out a death rattle, and then went silent.
Mercy undeserved.
He considered what he had done. To slaughter another of the Wolfwolde gave him no peace of mind. The wind blew hot across his face. The fires dwindled. The stars winked between draughts of smoke, and in the growing darkness after the soldier went still, he listened.
Something is here.
The hulking horror emerged from the shadows on the courtyard’s far end. It rounded a tree and marched across the blackened lawn, its footfalls as heavy as thunder. Its mask was an iron spade, eyeless and featureless, while its thousand-notched sword swayed in its grasp, a spike of metal longer and heavier than most men could ever hope to wield. The Hunter did not know its name. He gazed across the smoky night, not aware that this was Thresher, iron knight of a hundred wars, butcher of thousands.
A Sarcophage, was all he knew. And after all this time.
Thresher uttered no words. Moving with mechanical precision, he lashed out without warning, swinging his sword with such grave force as to send a bitter breeze across the courtyard. The Hunter gave no ground. He ducked the horror’s slash and countered, striking Thresher twice in his rib-plates and once upon his iron mask. The Greyblade scarred Thresher’s armor, but nothing more.
Across the dry, crackling courtyard grass, the iron knight stalked him, crunching the fallen Wolde man’s ribs beneath his boots, withering the night with cuts powerful enough to cleave a stone tower. The Hunter ducked, leapt, and parried some thirty strokes. He was faster, but not nearly as strong. He flowed like water, scarring Thresher’s iron armor in countless places, and earning only sparks.
Again and again, he stormed the iron horror with the Greyblade, hammering the dark sword upon Thresher’s armor, but slowing the monster none. Thresher drove him out of the courtyard and into the street. Retreating through a cloud of smoke and ash, he fought ever harder. Twice more he battled through the horror’s guard, denting Thresher’s mask and breastplate. Twice the horror repelled him. He fought with the fury of a man who expected to win, certain his next stroke would be the one to cleave his enemy’s head from his rusted shoulders, and yet the longer he fought the more he realized he could never win.
Gasping for breath, he backed into the open grounds lying in the shadow of the smoldering mansion. Thresher swarmed over him, carving great gashes in the darkness with his iron blade. He deflected seven strokes, whittling notches in Thresher’s sword, but each time the Greyblade met the iron greatsword, he felt his bones vibrate, his muscles scream. Still Thresher stalked him. After trading another ten flurries, he felt the Greyblade loosen in his grasp, dragging between blows like the tail of a crestfallen dog.
End it now, or die.
Relentless, Thresher herded him toward one of the smoking, crumbling houses opposite the mansion. He swatted away the horror’s blade more times than he could imagine, and as he retreated he felt the muscles in his leg seize and knot. His was an old injury, and of all the times for it to flare. Thresher recognized his weakness. The horror battered the Greyblade three times more, crash, crash, crash. His fingers numb, he staggered against a dwelling, searing the backs of his ribs on the still-hot windowsill. As he reeled, the horror struck again, glancing a blow off his shoulder and across his temple.
His senses stagnated.
Stars invaded his vision.
Strange, it felt, to be so vulnerable. When Thresher backhanded his jaw and lifted him by the throat, he felt death closing in around him. The Greyblade fell from his blistered fingers. He punched the iron knight’s mask, bloodying his knuckles, but doing no damage. With inhuman ease, Thresher hurled him against the street. He landed beside a slain Wolfwolde soldier, whose corpse smiled at him as he lay gasping. The night thickened in his ears. He saw bloody spots in his eyes and heard funeral bells in his ears.
He rolled onto his back. The horror loomed over him, hoisting its sword as though preparing to plunge it into his belly and straight through to the other side of the world. He tried to roll and delay death a moment more, but his muscles betrayed him. He lay inert, wide-eyed and breathless.
The mansion collapsed.
Smoke consumed the street. An avalanche of timbers tumbled to the earth, thundering like a fallen forest. A chunk of hot stone glanced off his brow, and ashes invaded his every pore. The fall of the burning house was so grand as to stagger even mighty Thresher, who raised his iron hand as though to deflect the roiling cloud of fumes and debris.
Still alive.
Not dead.
The dwellings behind him burst into fresh flames. The crackle of hot timber felt louder than the world breaking. Thresher raised his greatsword and drove it down toward his gut. He closed his eyes and rolled. He felt the blade rip a long, narrow wound between his ribs, and he heard the thunk as it sank into the soft earth just beside him. Houses all around him burned and fell. The courtyard erupted into flames, the trees writhing like red spirits. In his delirium, all the world seemed aflame.
Teetering on the edge of consciousness, he crawled away from Thresher and through the smoke. He dreamed of escape, of rising to fight again, but Thresher snared his ankle and dragged him back. It might have ended there, if not for his fury. Reaching into the smoke and clutching the fallen Greyblade, he slashed wildly back at Thresher’s hand. The horror’s arm came off at the wrist. Rings of mail showered the street, clinking like a thousand coins.
In a storm of ashes, he stood.
A Sarcophage, he knew he had guessed right. No blood. No screams. Having died ages ago, Thresher was no longer a living man, but a shadowed structure of evil, ripped from its tomb and cursed to walk the earth again. None of his kind should remain. The Master is no wizard. All the wizards are dead.
Something is wrong.
He remembered his wrath. He fo
und his strength. The weakness in his leg, the searing pain between his ribs, and the dark river of blood dribbling down his forehead faded to afterthoughts. He assailed Thresher as though he were the monster and Thresher the helpless human. Wheeling the Greyblade, his first blow severed Thresher’s right calf, sending the greave clattering away like an empty goblet. His second and third strokes cleaved Thresher’s ancient sword off at its handle. With the iron knight disabled, he flashed the Greyblade twice against Thresher’s armored neck, carving the cold metal into ribbons. After his final blow, Thresher’s helmeted head tumbled to the ground. As the smoke cleared, he saw the horror’s helmet resting upright on the street, staring at him as if to say, ‘How?’
The horror crashed in a heap to the earth. Its remaining limbs went as loose as noodles, and its sword hilt fell and became stiller than a tombstone. In death the iron knight neither groaned nor wailed, but released instead a frigid sigh from all the seams of its broken armor, a shudder like air escaping from a thousand year-old crypt.
And the world became silent.
The Yrul Princess
The Hunter dreamed.
In his mind, the faces of the dead villagers surrounded him. He saw them burning, their bones smoking, their ashes carried off by an otherworldly wind. He heard them cry out, “Save us! Save us! Our children are dying!” He reached for them, but their bodies fell apart, paper dolls crumbling to dust.
Nothing I did mattered.
Everyone is dead.
The iron knight was not like the others I have slain.
I am still dreaming.
Even during sleep, he knew his shame. His years of stalking civilization’s edge and hunting his enemies like a lion upon cattle had yielded nothing. The Wolfwolde was stronger now than ever. Archaeus, capital of Roma, lay in their thrall, and all attempts at rebellion had been destroyed.
They are the rulers of Romaldar.
The lords of everything.
He awoke much later. Dawn was near, and all the fires had long guttered. In a crumbling inn, one of few dwellings still standing, he felt his mind crawl back toward consciousness. He lay on the floor, covered in ash. Everything hurt. His ribs burned, his eyes felt full of smoke, and my forearms…I can hardly feel.
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