The Broken (The Lost Words: Volume 2)

by Igor Ljubuncic

  Copyright © 2013 Igor Ljubuncic

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1481913026

  ISBN 13: 9781481913027

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-63001-095-9

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  For me mom and me dad,

  who made me perfect so

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Having your second book published is just as important as the first one. This would not have happened without the help and advice of quite a few people. You, my readers; your pointers and suggestions helped me flesh out the plot and even out some of the bumps that you didn’t like in The Betrayed. The team at CreateSpace.com, especially Erin, who made a splendid job of editing my English into something reasonable. Last but not least, my wife for her killer role in being the sharpest critic, fan, and editor, all at the same time.

  PROLOGUE

  Pakin was an outpost built for soldiers with a troublesome streak. In the far reaches of northern Eracia, if you didn’t follow orders, you got punished. But you weren’t locked in a cell, beaten, fined, demoted, shouted at, or even berated. Nothing of the sort. Commanders in northern Eracia had a much simpler way of polishing morale and discipline. They shipped troublemakers to Pakin.

  Dejan and Bill had been labeled troublemakers, and now they served at the outpost.

  The big problem with Pakin was not the odd supply wagon that failed to arrive sometimes, the driver having decided he was better off peddling the food at some local market somewhere, leaving them hungry. It wasn’t the fact there were no brothels within a month from the outpost, or the fact that the cook was also their surgeon and basically a drunk with a cleaver. It wasn’t the meager pay they couldn’t spend, because there was nowhere to spend it. Neither the harsh weather nor the awful conditions did it for Dejan and Bill.

  It was the boredom of the Abyss itself.

  Dejan and Bill often stood watch together. It wasn’t as if anyone cared when you did the watch, or who you paired with, as long as you stood your half day watching nothingness for any signs of invasion against the monarch’s realm.

  Pakin was the northernmost outpost in the whole of Eracia, and there wasn’t anything to the north of it. Just an empty stretch of land, devoid of any towns, any people. The edge of civilization, the place where criminals in uniform went for rehabilitation.

  Dejan sometimes wondered if he should have stopped himself from raping that woman. He had never been much of a thinker, and a place like Pakin made him spend too much time pondering, rolling the same thoughts over and over, a feverish nightmare that never ended. He was amazed, and even slightly awed, how some men could spend hours thinking, savoring it like the best drinks or women. He wanted nothing of the sort. He wanted his mind to stop thinking. But Pakin was made for thinking, because there was nothing else to do.

  The outpost was a simple square of logs, sharpened at the top, as if someone would dream of clambering the wall and sneaking in. Inside, there was a handful of buildings, their barracks, their kitchen, the latrines, the smith’s forge, the shed that used to house the sergeant’s horse before it died, and sometimes housed the horses of the odd supply wagon, when it came.

  More imaginative people might have tried to grow their own vegetables or herd animals, but for the likes of Dejan and Bill and their friends, imagination and initiative were dangerous concepts best left alone. Soldiers with some semblance of humanity might choose to better their agonizingly monotonous stay at this open prison, but its current inhabitants could only wait to be relieved when their one or three or ten years of punishment trickled away.

  You could flee. Yes, you could. It would take you several weeks on foot to the nearest settlement, if you had it in you to last that long, with whatever your small backpack could carry. And then, if you didn’t die or get eaten, you would probably be killed for deserting.

  Or you could march north, into the endless ripple of low, grassy hills, and die when food or water ran out or wild animals found you. Because no matter how strong or tough you were, there was nothing north of Pakin. Everyone knew that. ’Twas the end of the world, Dejan knew.

  There were no rivers or streams around Pakin, no forest. Just grass, brown and gray green and weedy and tough, thorns more than stalks, rolling away into the horizon on all sides. The earth was hard, rocky. A stillborn attempt at a well reminded Dejan that work was a futile effort at Pakin. Some of his fellows had tried to dig a water source once, several years ago, probably when a supply wagon had failed to arrive too many times in a row. They had burrowed a few paces into the soil before giving up. You could probably grow turnips, but that would be too much work. Goats could live off that thorny grass, but that would be too much work, too.

  Pakin had no delights or sights to offer its tiny garrison. Animals kept away, because there was nothing tasty to be found at the outpost, just a few scrawny, leathery humans. Birds didn’t care for the wooden perches, not when humans tried to eat them every time they landed there. Even the birds had learned to stay away from Pakin.

  Dejan had considered leaving. First, he had mulled killing the sergeant and stealing the horse, but had never sweated the courage needed for the task. The sergeant may be one of them, a troublemaker, but he was a mean son of a bitch, and wouldn’t let any of them best him. Really mean.

  The sergeant was a kind of man who would repay a bad joke by slicing you up and serving you for dinner. He had been assigned to Pakin for life, and he did not intend to let any upstart little thug outsmart him. Oh no. You didn’t even blink the wrong way at the sergeant. You made sure you were very, very polite, and he forgot about you.

  The sergeant didn’t care what you did with your spare time or when you showed up for your watch. But he did check the post and marked down those who showed up and those who didn’t. And those who didn’t got their stay extended by one month every time. You could come to Pakin for one year and stay forever.

  Dejan had considered leaving even after the horse died. No need for killing, just walk away. Steal some bread and some water and walk. If he struck east and persisted, he knew he would reach the seashore somewhere. And if he walked into sunsets, days on end, he might get to some nomad tribe. It was possible, if he could handle the idea of traveling hundreds of miles alone.

  He could go south, back to sanity and life. Only a week as the food cart lumbered, in a straight line, quite longer on foot, over low, gnarled hills overgrown with brush and tough grass. If he were smart enough, he might steal some clothes from a wash line and toss his threadbare uniform away. He could slink into one of the villages or towns and look for work. It was doable. He just needed some initiative.

  But that was exactly what soldiers stationed at Pakin didn’t have. You also had to be extremely resourceful, an alien concept for the troublemakers. And then, there was the slight problem of things being very precise at the outpost.

  Bill had tried hoarding food once, tried gathering enough hard loaves for the journey. He’d reckoned maybe two weeks if he were lucky, one stingy meal a day. Only he’d forgotten that in a camp of twenty-odd people, bread was baked by the head, and anything stolen from the oven meant someone going hungry. The cook could easily bake some more, sure, but that would mean dwindling preciously thin and precise weekly rations further down, against the risk the wagon might not rumble by sometime in the coming days. So when food went missing, what the cook did was talk to the sergeant.

  That was how Bill got his extra year of stay at Pakin. No shouting, no berating, no talk, just an entry in the sergeant’s log.

  Dejan had considered long and hard taking his chances against the weather and wild b
easts, taking no more than his daily share of water and food so he did not evoke any suspicion. But he knew that he would be dead long before he saw any sign of civilization.

  Eventually, Dejan had decided against going anywhere. Pakin was boring, but you could count on the outpost to be there when you woke the next morning. Count the days away, and then you would be seated in the back of the supply wagon, going south, over thorny bushes, vast expanses of grass, hills as flat as his sister’s chest.

  Only now they weren’t dappled in gray or green or dusty brown. They were white, white as milk. It was winter, and snow came to Pakin just as merrily as any other place.

  You couldn’t really know where the world ended and where it started with that snow. The land and sky met in a hazy white line, too soft to discern, so you felt like you stood inside a giant white ball and waited for it to lurch and make you fall. Pakin dizziness, they called it, and always laughed when newcomers fell for it their first winter.

  Normally, Dejan and Bill would stand guard by the tiny gate leading into their prison, reciting the same stories and experiences, lying somewhat and making up things as they went, with what little flexibility their unimaginative minds allowed. No one really cared. It was that or thinking, and neither wanted too much time inside his own head.

  In winter, it was too cold to brace the half-day shift standing frozen in place. So they paced around the outpost, retracing steps with alarming accuracy. They counted away the piss stops, jaundice-yellow spots in the snow crust that surrounded them. They would sometimes pause north of the camp and stare as far as the land would allow them, guessing where the end of the world was.

  Why post a camp there, no one knew. Why guard when no one ever came, no one knew. It really didn’t matter. For all Dejan cared, the outpost had been built for him.

  He felt it strange there were only twenty-odd souls in Pakin. He could not believe there were so few troublemakers in the army. But then, he guessed only people like him got here. He had ten years, six more left. Bill had started with four for theft, but still had more than two left, despite having been at the outpost for as long as Dejan. Bill used to get in trouble until he realized he would die at Pakin if he kept at it.

  They stood like that today, staring at the brilliant pearly expanse surrounding them, the wooden square their only reference point, their anchor in a soft insanity. They weren’t talking much. It was the first hour of their watch, so they had to oil their souls for words.

  Dejan sensed a presence behind him and turned. The sergeant was standing on his watch platform, making sure they had begun their shift. Dejan lifted his spear in half salute. Ignoring him, the sergeant simply climbed down the ladder and vanished from sight. He would check on them a few more times, and then ring a bell to let them know their duty was done.

  Then Dejan saw another pair come around the outpost’s west corner and begin their endless circles. More would join soon. He squinted against the blinding glimmer of old snow and tried to identify the other two soldiers—the one they called Brick, for having stoved a friend’s head with a piece of baked clay, and Blu, an old man, walking with a stoop and a hobble from his bad back. He had been at Pakin the longest, even longer than the sergeant. No one knew what his crime might have been, but he had a frightening glint in his eye. No one messed with the frail man, and newcomers were quick to accept the facts from the veterans.

  Dejan turned back north, toward the nothingness. Bill was breathing slowly, deeply, one of his permanently blocked nostrils chirping, mist veiling from under his shawl, an old, filthy thing crusted with snot.

  Dejan wanted to say something, but whatever it was that rose to the top of his mind sank back into the tarry muddle. He blinked. He rubbed his eyes, let the purple dots dissipate, stared. No, he was not mistaken.

  “Bill?” he whispered, his throat dry from not talking since the previous evening.

  “What?” Bill said.

  “See there?” Dejan pointed with his spear, the most unused weapon in the history of Eracia.

  His friend squinted hard, even leaned forward. “What?”

  “Something’s there,” Dejan insisted. It looked just as white as the landscape, but there were other colors, too, gray and maybe some black, small dots that stood out like fire against the bleached surrounding. Yes, definitely. Something was there. And getting bigger.

  Coming toward them.

  Impossible.

  “Ain’t nothing north,” Bill stated, assured.

  Dejan wanted to agree, but his eyes were not lying to him. “Look!”

  It took several minutes before Bill saw it too, something tall, thin coming toward them. “What the fuck?” he sputtered into his shawl.

  Dejan hated Pakin for being what it was, the most boring pit in the whole world, but he had also come to appreciate its dead certainty, the unchanging routine that was, all in all, immensely reassuring. You knew, if you followed the rules, that you would see yourself outlive your penalty, unless you were buggered for life, and go back to civilization. You hated the place with every grain of your being, but you liked its sterile, austere boredom, because it had no disease and no dangers. You could count on Pakin to yield no nasty surprises, to keep you safe until your time came to go home.

  Which meant an apparition from the north was not good news.

  Fear started clenching its jaws, making his stomach rumble. Suddenly, he felt like shitting. But you couldn’t shit on your watch line, no. Piss was fine, but not shit. You’d have to wade deeper into the snow. Only, his legs would not obey.

  He saw Bill’s lip quiver with fear, too. Dejan cast a quick glance behind him and saw three more pairs of soldiers standing there, like statues, staring north, just like him, rolling the same thoughts. Some noticed him and looked back, their eyes filled with fear. Dejan knew what they were thinking.

  There was nothing north of Pakin. ’Twas the end of the world.

  So what the fuck was that thing coming from there?

  Time passed. The thing grew larger. It became a man on a horse. A man, dressed all in white, riding a white horse. There was silver and black, leather and pins on the reins and saddle. Dejan watched with fascination and icy terror as the man approached. All around, the entire meager contingent of Pakin had come out to witness the impossible.

  The snow rustled as the horse plodded on. Dejan could hear the jangle of metal. He could see steam pouring from the animal’s nostrils. He could see the rider, grinning. He allowed himself an icy breath of relief. This was just a man, riding a horse. Just a man.

  But coming from where?

  “My, my, what a lovely audience,” the rider said, breaking the endless silence.

  Dejan felt a drop of hot piss inch down his left leg before it got soaked up in his woolen breeches. The sound of that voice was terrifying. Clear, loud, beautiful, and impossible.

  More resourceful, more imaginative men would have organized some kind of defense. Smarter people would have realized the danger of a lone figure coming from the empty reaches north of the outpost and taken their chances fleeing south with what little water and bread they had. But Pakin had its special share of thinkers, and all they did was gawk like idiots as the man in white came into their midst.

  “Anyone got a tongue here?” the rider asked. “Anyone not a moron?”

  Dejan looked at Bill. His friend was shivering with terror. Dejan spared a quick glance at his colleagues. They all just stood, petrified, their half-exposed faces twisted with deep, primal fear. Blu, that evil glint gone. Brick, Shawn, even the sergeant, scared shitless.

  “You,” the rider said, pointing at him.

  “Me?” Dejan heard himself say.

  “Oh, you can speak. Yes, you, bird neck.”

  Dejan rubbed his hand down the shaft of his unused spear. Almost instinctively, he let it clatter away. “Me?”

  The rider groaned. “A whole army camp of cretins. What a remarkable sight. I truly hope things are a little better further south. What’s this ou
tstanding place called?”

  “Pakin,” Dejan answered dutifully.

  “Excellent. This would be…Eracia?”

  Dejan nodded. Bill’s breath was wheezing, sharp and quick, through his snotty nostrils.

  The rider removed an exquisite leather glove and stroked the thick neck of his white beast. The horse made a soft rumbling sound of appreciation. “Good. Well then, it’s been fun. Now I must be on my way.” And with that, the rider moved on, leaving hoofprints in the pristine snow flanking the outpost from its east side.

  “Sir!” Dejan realized he had shouted. Why had he done that? Why?

  The man in white stopped. Dejan could see his white cloak lined in white fur, the powerful neck, the silver hair. He could see the man square his shoulders. And then, he tugged on the reins and turned his powerful steed around. Dejan felt more warmth spread down his leg. “Yes?”

  “There isn’t nothing north of here,” the soldier turned rapist turned prisoner croaked.

  The man in white smiled. “Isn’t there? So where do you think I come from?”

  Dejan braved his fate. “Where do you come from, sir?”

  The rider opened his mouth as if to laugh, but then he let out only a soft sigh between his perfect pearly teeth. “I doubt you would have heard of Naum. You haven’t? Of course.”

  Dejan knew he would never face anything more interesting, more exhilarating, more frightening during his stay at Pakin, or for however long he lived. He had to ask. “Who are you, sir?”

  The rider grinned almost sympathetically. “I am the ruler of this land. And I’m back.”

  And then he was gone, riding south.

  CHAPTER 1

  Emperor Adam was dead.

  The most ferocious ruler in all of the realms was dead. Perversely, in sharp contrast to the birth of his violent, war-drenched tyranny, he had died peacefully, in his sleep. Eighteen years of a dangerous, unpredictable rule had ground to a halt.