by Sam Ferguson
Paavo shrugged. “It seems that when I arrived here, I was too late. Aikur was in a blind rage, and he turned on us. We had to defend ourselves, of course,” Paavo said.
The hairs on the back of Aikur’s neck stood on end.
An owl hooted in the distance once more.
Paavo lunged toward Krip and plunged his sword into the man’s neck before Krip ever knew what was happening.
Aikur pulled his axe and started for Paavo, but a sharp pain struck his left leg. The large Konnon stumbled to the ground. Another biting pain stabbed at the left side of his back.
“Poor Aikur, driven mad by the loss of his family. He could have been a hero, but now he will be remembered only as a traitor,” Paavo said as he turned toward Aikur, his sword glistening with Krip’s blood.
Aikur looked to his friend. The crossbow bolts in his body must have been tipped with something, for his mind was beginning to blur and his senses were beginning to dull. The large warrior shook his head and put all the pieces together. “You staged the attack on my home,” Aikur said.
“If it helps,” Paavo said, “I’m sure your wife would have put up quite a fight had it been the goblins.” Several men came into view from the trees around them, each with weapons drawn and ready to finish Aikur off. Aikur looked up at the man next to Paavo. His silhouette was familiar somehow, then it hit him.
“You were the one watching me in the church,” Aikur said.
The man nodded.
“Pity you couldn’t just follow orders,” Paavo said. “A man of your talents would have done well under Lord Consuert. You could have had anything you wanted, and,” Paavo paused for a moment, grinning eerily in the night. “I wouldn’t have needed to kill your family.”
The rage boiled up inside the Konnon once more. Now it all made sense. The goblins would never have defeated his wife. Karyna could have beaten two dozen of the things blindfolded, but treachery was not something a Konnon was accustomed to dealing with. In New Konnland, everyone fights for the same cause, and betrayal is entirely unheard of. The thought of stabbing an ally in the back would never even enter a Konnon’s mind. Paavo had mentioned there were other scouts still in the area. It would have been easy to send them in for the attack. From there, with Paavo pretending to discover the murders at the same time, Aikur was too trusting, and it had been far too easy to direct him to this particular mountain. Aikur now knew the true motive as well. Gold.
“It all comes to greed,” Aikur growled.
“There are only two reasons for war,” Paavo replied. “You either need resources someone else has, or someone is trying to take yours without your permission. Everything else is just political propaganda.”
“You denied my family final rites,” Aikur said.
“Of course,” Paavo replied. “I couldn’t have you sulking about. I needed you angry. I needed your warrior spirit to soar higher than ever before, and it worked.”
Aikur felt every muscle in his body tighten. “And Captain Marsten?” Aikur asked.
“Will give me a commendation for a job well done. We get the mountain, and we only lost three Konnons to do it…” Paavo stopped and looked at the others. “Well, and Jeriston.”
Everyone laughed.
They laughed!
Aikur pushed up to his feet in an instant. His mind focused, honing in on his rage. He could hear his wife and son screaming again, but this time he knew who the enemy truly was. He jabbed out with the spike atop his battle axe, but Paavo leapt back just far enough to avoid being hit.
Twang!
Someone fired a crossbow bolt, but Aikur was not going to be stopped so easily now. He turned to the right and charged two of the scouts nearby. With one savage chop he cut through them both, sending their severed bodies to the ground in a heap. Heavy footsteps fell upon the ground behind him. He spun away just as a sword chopped downward through the air where he had been standing. Aikur hooked the back of the scout’s leg with his axe and pulled, slicing partway through the ankle and dropping him to the ground. Aikur stomped the man’s chest, cracking several ribs before stabbing the spike atop his axe through the scout’s right eye socket.
Another scout charged in with a spear. Aikur let go of his axe, turned and wrapped his hands around the spear shaft and planting his feet. The shaft bent up in the middle as Aikur forced his enemy to stop, but just before the wood broke, Aikur whipped him to the side, throwing him to the ground. Aikur then flipped the spear over in his hands and masterfully launched it at another scout who was reloading a crossbow. The spear drove through the scout and nailed his corpse to a tree some two feet behind. Aikur ripped his axe free and then moved to the disarmed spearman, who was just pushing up to his feet. Aikur took the man’s head in one swipe and then quick-stepped beyond the fallen scout to take down three more.
Paavo came in hard and fast from the right. Aikur turned to deflect, but not quickly enough. He caught a slice along the right shoulder after Paavo’s sword glanced off the shaft of Aikur’s axe. The pain ripped through Aikur, but rather than recoil, he lashed out with a front kick to Paavo’s chest. Paavo staggered backward a couple feet, putting him in the right position for Aikur’s next move. The large Konnon came down with a massive chop, catching Paavo in the chest and cutting down through the spine nearly to his pelvis before the blade got stuck in bone. Paavo fell to the ground without another sound, taking Aikur’s axe with him.
Aikur took two steps forward, but then the effects of whatever poison the crossbow bolts had been tipped with caught up to him. His rapidly beating heart slowed. His vision blurred, and he fell to the ground. There was no way to know for certain how many days had passed, but the next time he opened his eyes, he was in a wooden cage, being carted off through town.
“Where am I?” Aikur asked.
A soldier smacked the side of the cage. “Shut up in there!”
Horse hooves clip-clopped their way up to the cage and a man leaned down from a tall, black horse. Aikur looked up at the man and guessed it was Captain Marsten.
“You made quite a mess of this operation,” Captain Marsten said. “But don’t worry, we’ll finish breaking through that secret passageway and complete the remainder of the mission without you.”
“Khefir take you,” Aikur snarled.
Captain Marsten smiled. “Maybe he will and maybe he won’t, but I think we both know that he most certainly will take you. After all, you betrayed your own countrymen. You killed Paavo and Krip, not to mention the other scouts sent to help you defeat the goblins. Why, not even Wallace will speak up for you now, traitor.”
“So kill me and be done with it,” Aikur said.
Captain Marsten shook his head. “No, that won’t do. A traitor deserves a proper trial. You will, of course, be found guilty upon my own testimony. Then you will be executed for your crimes. Don’t worry, the trial will only last a day or two before your sentencing, that I promise you. You will also be denied your final rites.” Captain Marsten began laughing and trotting his horse away.
Chapter 9
As Captain Marsten had promised, the trial was efficiently short, and seemed little more than a formality designed as a show offered to the masses to distract them from Lord Consuert’s true crimes. The room was packed with spectators, none of them from Aikur’s town near the border, and the jury was made up of magistrates rather than peers, with an older judge presiding over them. Aikur had little doubt that each of them were bought and paid for from Lord Consuert’s personal treasury.
“Does the condemned have any last words they wish for this court to hear?” the judge asked.
Aikur stood, his wrists chained and secured to an iron loop in the floor. He looked to the quorum of magistrates and then back to the judge. He shook his head disgustedly. “What should I say?” he began. “How can I explain to you the injustice that has been dealt to me? The fiendish designs of the gods and the brutish men who collaborated against me cannot easily be described in such a way as for you to understand the hell that is my li
fe. I would wager that after my trial is complete, none of you will remember my name. You will not care that my wife and children were murdered by the same government officials I was duty-bound to fight for during their war against the cursed races that border our lands. To be used in such a manner is to make a mockery of a man’s entire life. My life. I cannot hope that many will believe my words, either in this testimony, or in my arguments in the courts of Gilbrait. Death has finally found me, as it finds all who walk on this mortal plane. My hope is that perhaps someone will learn from my story, and your eyes will be opened.”
“Take him away,” the judge said decisively.
“I am not finished,” Aikur said.
The judge leaned back in his chair and the guards exchanged glances with each other.
“You think that by sentencing me you have decided my fate. Tomorrow the crowds will gather in the main square outside of this courthouse. They will jeer at me, spit upon me, and chant for my death. The fat, filthy executioner will hide behind his hood of black as he raises the axe over my neck. Then the crowd will rise in a chorus of cheers when my head is severed from its place, and my life is extinguished.” Aikur turned to look at the magistrates again. He shook his head and spit upon the floor. “I am void of any offense to the king, or to my fellow countrymen; that is, any offense that was unprovoked. The murder of my wife and child was not a crime that my spirit could allow to go unanswered. Even if you don’t care about them, what of Jeriston? An entire town was destroyed for this false war! You should be clamoring for real justice, but you are too cowardly to take up the responsibility. I have slain those dastardly vermin responsible for their innocent blood, and for this you sentence me to die as a hated criminal.”
“I have heard enough, take him away!” the judge ordered.
The guards moved forward, but Aikur stopped them with an icy glare. “I will go only when I am finished speaking. It is my right to speak and offer my final testimony.”
“A final testimony is given for the condemned to confess and forsake their crimes!” the judge roared. “Not for some insane, delusional foreigner to spin a tall tale to cover his depravities.”
Aikur stood tall. “I slew the men who murdered my family, yet you call it depravities! I have one more slight that I will yet give you all in answer for the crimes committed against me. I will not let Lord Consuert, or the unmerciful, ignorant peasants have the pleasure of watching me die.”
“Take him away, now!” the judge hollered.
“I am done,” Aikur told the guards as they roughly unhooked him from the floor and dragged him down to the dungeons below the courthouse.
“You think you can escape?” one of the guards said as they tossed him into his cell.
Aikur shrugged. “My quill please,” he said.
The guards huffed and gave him an inkwell and sharpened quill. “You are going to use that to unlock the door, is that it?” the guard teased. “Go ahead and try it. I’d love to have any excuse to kill you myself, traitor.” The guard spit on Aikur’s left cheek.
Aikur sneered at him. The guards left promptly, laughing and joking about how fun it would be to slit a Konnon’s throat. Aikur turned and pulled a leather-bound book from under the blanket he used as a bed. He had spent the last couple of nights writing down his account of what had actually happened. He spoke of his wife and child, and also confessed that he had wrongfully assumed the goblins were to blame, and their blood was upon his head. Over the next several hours, he wrote down the remainder of his final testimony and then sighed. He took the quill and looked at the point.
“I may not be able to escape alive,” he said to himself. “But I can decide the manner of my death.” He slowly moved the point of the quill to his neck. Suicide was not the way of a Konnon, for they believed that such cowardice would condemn their soul to Hammenfein, but then, his family was already trapped there, having been denied their final rights. Even if Nagé would be willing to take him to Volganor to find rest in the Heaven City, he could not bear the idea of eternal separation from his family. “No crowds will get the pleasure of seeing my head roll. I will meet a death of my own making.”
Aikur sat in his cell, his back against the cold, stone wall. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes. His hands trembled as the rage still burned through his blood and quickened his pounding heart. The point of the quill pressed into the left side of his neck, jabbing ever so slightly into his vein. He took a breath to steady his nerves.
He stopped short when he heard the soft, padded steps of someone coming down the hall. He slipped the quill under his leg and closed his eyes so as not to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want to risk a guard catching him and either preventing him, or stopping the bleeding. The steps stopped in front of his cell and something tapped against the bars.
“Do you wish to see a priest?” a low voice called from the hallway.
“What need do I have of a priest?” Aikur replied without opening his eyes to regard the visitor.
“You are a Konnon, are you not?” the man asked. “Do you not follow the ways of Icadion?”
Who was this? Captain Marsten had been clear that final rites would be denied him.
Aikur slowly opened his eyes and turned an icy stare toward the intruder. He saw a man standing in taupe robes, hood drawn over the face, hands barely poking out from the oversized sleeves, and a large amulet dangling from the man’s neck. “I have no need of a priest,” Aikur said harshly.
The man raised a finger in the air. “But, a Konnon who does not receive the last rites is unable to traverse the rainbow bridge, or enter into paradise. As you are a descendant of those tribes cursed to wander the world, you need the last rites in order to gain favor in Icadion’s eyes.”
“As did my wife and child, but no one offered to help them,” Aikur growled. “I would rather wander the fiery halls of Hammenfein with my family than make the journey to Volganor alone with the knowledge that they can never follow.”
“I was not involved with your family,” the priest said. “If you tell me where they are, I can go and offer the rites for them as well.”
Aikur jumped up to his feet and marched to take hold of the bars on the door. The priest reflexively backed away several paces. “Would you go to the front lines then?” Aikur asked. “Would you risk life and limb among the goblins and the traitorous soldiers that infest the mountains? For that is where you will have to go. Even then, you won’t be able to find a grave. You will have to find every part of their dismembered bodies in order to do anything for them. It would be easier to retrieve their souls from hell, than to recover them from the battle field.”
“You may be right,” the priest said resolutely. Something in his tone quieted the fires in Aikur’s heart and piqued the large Konnon’s curiosity.
“Why do you torment me?” Aikur asked.
“Have you heard of King Mathias, the one they call Mathias the Just, and Mathias the Wise?” the priest asked. “He was an old king in Engleah.”
“All children have heard of his tales,” Aikur replied.
The priest folded his arms and stepped in closer. “I was intrigued by the tales as a boy, and I thought what an exemplar of wisdom he was. Imagine, a king who might disguise himself and go out among his people to better judge them and learn the truth of their complaints.”
“That kind of justice exists only in fables,” Aikur hissed.
“I was present in your trial,” the priest continued. “Did you mean what you said in your final testimony?”
Aikur’s knuckles whitened and his arm muscles tensed against the unyielding bars. “Every word I spoke is true. My family was murdered so Lord Consuert could gain another gold mine.” He pushed away from the door. “How does that sit with your sense of justice?”
The priest slowly reached up and pulled his hood back, revealing his face. Aikur stood bewildered at first, his eyes transfixed on the priest’s face. Then, he remembered his senses and he dropped his gaze to t
he floor. He had seen the man once before, when he and Karyna had first made landfall in Kelsendale. Except the last time Aikur had seen him, the man had not been wearing the robes of a priest, he had been wearing a crown, and was accompanied by an impressive entourage. “My king, why have you…” the question faded away unfinished as Aikur’s voice quavered.
“I have tried to emulate the king for whom many of my predecessors were named. When I heard of your trial, how could I not come and see it for myself?” The king reached up and produced a key from his left pocket. “I have the power to pardon, and release you.”
Aikur shook his head. “I am eternally grateful, but I cannot accept. A life without my family is already a hell. Better to perish in the morning, and join them.”
The king nodded. “I have many privileges as king,” he said. “Not the least of which is access to ancient records and texts, some of which have been collected from the most remarkable sources. As you are aware, I come from a long line of kings loyal to Icadion. As such, we have written texts directly from Icadion, his son Lysander, and many other incredible texts that are hundreds or even thousands of years old, and yet the wisdom in these writings has enabled me, and my ancestors before me, to help our people. Now, I can use one of these writing to help you, and right an incredible wrong perpetrated against you by a wicked man. I think this may be of interest to you.” He pulled a small, folded parchment from his other pocket. It crinkled and crackled as the king unfolded the document. “There is a parchment which was written a long time ago, and kept in the archives in my palace. It told of a possible way to reach a back door to Hammenfein.” He held it up to the light and his eyes scanned over the page.
“There is but one way to the planes of hell,” Aikur countered.
The king ignored him and looked over the parchment he held. “This is a transcription of the original. It is short, and not incredibly detailed, but it does talk about a way to sneak into Hammenfein, and release souls that have been imprisoned there.”
