The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One

by Rinaldi, Jared

  Solloway couldn’t contain himself. He bent over and began to laugh. “Serves you right, you pompous lard cake! There’s no way you’re getting your hands on that sword unless you can break the blood lock, and the only people who knew how to do that were killed by your pal Indio six years ago.”

  Sylvo ran to Dusty’s side, helping the large man up to his knees. Dusty was breathing heavily, his brow beaded with perspiration. “Get the guards. Lock them all up in the prison. Now!”

  Sylvo rushed out the tent, but there was no need to alert the guards: they had heard the commotion and were already running back in, spears and swords drawn. Before they could get to Solloway, however, the old sergeant had run up to Dusty and, with one well-placed kick from his steel-toed boots, cracked the warlord in the chin. A spray of blood peppered with black teeth followed the trajectory of Solloway’s kick. Dusty Yen crashed face-down to the ground, the wet thud of his large body a clock-tick before the crack of the guards’ gun-butts on the captives’ skulls resounded through the tent.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hope’s Soft Light

  MERCER CAME TO IN THE DARK, not sure of what had happened, only that his body ached and head felt full of cotton.

  “Ah, you’re awake. Good.” Solloway’s voice crawled to him from the far side of whatever room they were in. As Mercer’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that there was a small window up towards the ceiling, through which came a flickering orange light. It illuminated just enough of the room for Mercer to make out Solloway’s silhouette up against the far wall.

  “What happened?” Mercer asked.

  “They beat the living crap out of us, that’s what happened. We’re in a prison cell, most likely set to be executed at first light. I mean, that’s what I’d do if I were Dusty.”

  “Well that’s just great,” Mercer muttered. All that had happened before his getting knocked-out came flooding back to him. He’d killed a man, a living person, and had done so without hesitation. It was only the second person Mercer had ever killed, the first being a wild-eyed vagrant who tried to rob Mercer at knife-point in the ruins of an old market. He had done everything he could do to avoid killing the man back then, even going so far as to try and run from him. The man, however, was drunk on the power the knife gave him and on Mercer’s seeming weakness, and wouldn’t stop chasing him. Mercer had no choice but to run him through with Jai Lin. He’d got good and drunk for weeks after, the rivulets of tears ever-present on his cheeks, the guilt never lessening its weight.

  This time it had been different though. He felt no regret towards what he did. In fact, he felt justified. The slaver had grabbed Brook, had intended to do things to her which he didn’t even want to think about…

  “Brook! Where is she? Is she okay?”

  “I’m here, Mercer.” Her voice was low, hurt. “I’m okay.”

  Mercer crawled towards her voice in the dark. When he found her, he pulled her body to his and held her close.

  “Are you okay?””

  “Yeah, but… Ouch! that’s a little tender, where your hand is right there.”

  “Oh, sorry about that.” Mercer said, pulling away.

  Solloway grunted. “We’re all a little tender. At least you still have your sword. They took all of our weapons, the axe and pistol I’ve had for more years than either of you have been alive. I guess they couldn’t get Jai Lin off of you, though.”

  Mercer reached back and sure enough, the well-worn hilt greeted his hand where it always did. The only difference was that the blade was now broken, the hairline cracks that had run through its blade finally coming apart from the bullet of a slaver’s gun. It was a knowledge which made his heart hurt, especially because Mercer felt it all could have been prevented if Solloway had just been honest with them from the beginning.

  Mercer turned to Solloway’s shadow and finally let spill the torrent of questions that had been collecting inside of him. “Why have you been keeping us in the dark all this time? You told us you were acting on behalf of the Fort when you were really on the run from them, and why? Because you couldn’t kill my father? And now we’re all stuck in here with you, Brook is no closer to getting her brother back, Jai Lin is broken to pieces, and_”

  “Alright!” Solloway growled. Mercer ceased his torrent of questions, while Solloway pondered how he was going to answer. “Mercer… I’m sorry… you have to understand, I’ve only ever wanted to do the right thing, but sometimes that just means doing the lesser of two evils.”

  “It’s all well and good to speak vaguely, but I’m asking you why? What is going on? I just want to know that we’re not going to die in vain, that what we did here was for a good reason.”

  “It was, Mercer. I want you to understand... the love I had for your father and mother was boundless. They were always good to me. Willis and I fought back to back in the War for the Green Lands, and Tiara helped me pick up the pieces of my life after my first marriage fell apart. They were good, good people. The stresses of life and work drew them apart, though I know that they never stopped loving each other. Soon after the war, your mother was called to Ithaca to help govern, while your father wanted nothing to do with politics or what they were doing there, and stayed in the Preserve to raise you kids and do his own independent research.”

  “I was in Ithaca for two years, with my mother, though I never saw her. I was busy with school, she was busy with work. Then the poisoning happened. Everyone said it was an accident, that a chemical pipe sprung a leak and it got into the water supply...”

  “It was no accident. Lord Commander Indio was behind the whole thing, killed some of the brightest minds the Green Lands had ever known. The cosmologists were trying to bring back the golden era, to bring man out of this dark age. They… they were trying to bring back the old technologies, the things that killed the world. They were trying to split the smallest of all things again, to make energy far greater than any windmill or coal furnace. Your father was against it, as were all those in the Fort at Kingston. Indio took it upon himself to stop the cosmologists, and did so by poisoning Ithaca’s water supply.

  “Your father was called to Ithaca to fill the voids left by many of the deceased cosmologists and thinkers. He wouldn’t have gone if not for your mother being sick. By the time he got there, it was too late…”

  “She’d been dead for two days. I remember. I’d never seen him cry before.”

  “Willis was never the same, I tell you. After he sent you back to the Preserve, he became a man obsessed. All his research went towards finding a way to conquer death, to evolve beyond the limited lifespans that humans have and become ageless, immortal. He found old texts on the undead, became convinced that they were part of an unfinished progression towards immortality. He started to experiment with them. Indio became aware of what your father was up to, around three years ago, and sent me to kill him.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I brought him out to the Highlands with a group of soldiers, right under the nose of the Ithacan sprocket knights. I was convinced that killing Willis was the right thing to do. I could already see the madness that had appeared in his eyes, saw how stooped and gaunt he had become. Putting him out of his misery and allowing him to be with your mother again would have been an act of mercy.

  “But then, he got to talking about you, Mercer, and your sister. He pointed across the Highlands and told me how much he missed you kids, how much he missed watching you grow up. I knew I couldn’t do it. Instead, I turned on the five other soldiers who had come with us and cut them all down with my axe and pistol. Willis just watched, doing nothing to help or hinder me. When I was done, I looked at him, and truly saw how far he had slipped. He mouthed silent words and fidgeted with unseen instruments, his sunken eyes twinkling with a madness that made my skin crawl.

  “I tried to speak to him, but he wouldn’t respond. Then, the unthinkable happened. The men who I had cut down began to rise, when I was sure that the blows
from my axe and bullets from my pistol had been fatal. They began to lumber towards me, a hunger in their eyes which I hadn’t seen since I fought against Godwin. They had become the living dead, and Willis Crane had made them rise.

  “I got on Lothario and rode from there as quickly as I could, never looking back. I lived with the secret of what I had done for years, until word got out that there was a zombie-tongue living within the Blight who called himself Plaguewind, the Undead King. This zombie-tongue was working closely with the Church of the Bleeding Christ to bring his army of the undead to the Green Lands. Accounts from the Apostles of the church led many to believe that Plaguewind was in fact Willis Crane, and I knew that my failure at killing him was now out in the open. I fled the Fort, fully aware of Dusty Yen’s army gathering in the east and that he and Indio were conspiring together. I thought I could convince Dusty Yen to focus on the bigger threat coming from the south, I really did, but it would seem there is no talking to a mad man, especially one as power-hungry as he. I was ready to kill him, but knew the chance to do so would be a hard one to come by. And so here we are. Slated to be executed at first-light, the Green Lands about to be consumed by war. In all my years, I never thought it would end like this.”

  Mercer didn’t know whether he wanted to throttle the old sergeant or embrace him. There was so much of the world that he didn’t understand, that his father had deliberately isolated him from, or had at least tried to. Power struggles between the western cities, sources of energy that came from splitting apart the smallest of all things, dead men being an unfinished step towards immortality, they were all concepts that were new and strange to him. But strangest of all was the love and loyalty Solloway had for Willis Crane, which, if if any of what the old soldier told him was to be believed, was a rare thing in the world indeed.

  “What I don’t understand, Solloway, is why you didn’t tell us this before. Why wait until now? Why did you even bring us with you?”

  “There’s no good reason. Believe it or not, I thought you’d be safer with me. Looks like I was wrong on that one. You’re both young, and haven’t seen what I’ve seen. I wanted to protect you, felt I could, both from the violence of the world and the truth of how things are. I’ve told you all this already, Mercer, but that sword you have, a lot of people want it, your father included. In the wrong hands, it could be the deciding factor in what ultimately destroys the Green Lands. I had to make sure I kept you close.”

  “A lot of good it did us,” Brook whispered. “This will be our last night before joining Elon in the Dusk.”

  “Elon and the Dusk can wait, girl. There’s always hope, even in the darkest of night. In the war, we had never seen anything like Godwin or his army of undead. Many men gave up, but many more fought on, and that is how we won. We… wait, did you hear that?”

  They had. There was a clanging up by the window, as though someone were beating a syncopated rhythm on the bars. “That sounds like the melody to that children’s song The Old Train Car,” Brook said.

  “It does,” Solloway rasped. “Hey, who’s up there?”

  “Oh, good, good, good,” a familiar voice whispered down from above. “I’ve already tried two other cells and was beginning to think the worst. Are you all alright?”

  “Jed?!” Solloway laughed, slapping his knee. “You sneaky little cosmologist, you! I knew you’d come back, I just knew it!” Mercer looked at Brook and the two shared a smile; in all the commotion of the past few hours, it hadn’t occurred to them to think about what had happened to Jompers.

  “Of course. I could not just leave my friends in mortal peril. Isn’t that right, Leo?” There was a small yelp, just audible enough for the three in the cell to hear it.

  “Leo!” Brook gasped. “You’re okay!”

  “Yes, Miss Brook, he is okay. He found me as I was sneaking around the camp and led me to you. Now I need you all to cover your eyes and stand as far away from the window as possible. The guards have left on their rounds for the time being but they’ll be back soon. I don’t have much time.”

  The three did as Jompers asked, Solloway trying in vain to not show the limp he had been gifted by the Crenshaw rangers right after he had kicked Dusty in the face. The hate that the other soldiers had felt for Solloway had been palpable, like the taste of sour milk, lingering on the tongue in a slimy film and imbuing the world with a putrid flavor. Mercer was beginning to understand the savagery of the world in the ways that man treated each other, not just in the way dead men could kill and eat innocents.

  An extremely bright, orange light cast its glow upon the far wall as Jompers went to work on the bars. Mercer could see through the cracks in his fingers the rod Jompers had in his hand, a torch of some sort whose flame was cutting through the metal like a sharp knife through cheese. As he did this, Solloway began to explain to Mercer just what had happened prior to their being captured by Alyssa.

  “When I heard the commotion going on between you and those slavers, I ran as fast as I could, leaving Jed behind me in the dust. By the time Jed caught up, we must already have been put in handcuffs, so he hung back. Gods, I knew he was a gem from the first I met him.” Mercer remembered well when they had first met Jedediah Jompers and how Solloway wanted nothing more than to put his axe through the wandering cosmologist’s head, but he wasn’t about to spoil the old soldier’s mood. There was hope up there through the window, a chance they may all live to see another day, and he wanted to keep that hope burning as brightly as possible.

  One bar fell into the cell, its tips still white hot, then another, then another. Soon, the entire window was cleared save for some smoldering nubs that lined the small opening like baby teeth.

  “Hurry now!” Jompers yelled in as clear but quiet a voice he could. He dropped down a length of sheets tied together at the tips. “Climb up!”

  Solloway grunted as he shimmied himself up the taut sheets, getting up quickly despite his injuries. Though it was too dark to see, Mercer could feel the warm blood that had seeped into the fabric from Solloway’s hand when he went to climb. The wound must have been terrible, having not yet healed. When Mercer and Brook got to the top, they saw the old sergeant hunched over on the ground, panting heavily, his brow coated in sweat. Brook ran to Leo, the pit bull covering her faces in kisses, but Jompers and Mercer were concerned by the condition of the old sergeant.

  “Are you alright, Roderick?” Jompers asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. Just getting too old for all this, that’s all…”

  “That wound in your hand. I need to attend to it.”

  “Not now, Jed. We have to get out of here before they know we’ve jumped ship.”

  “Quite right. Fortunately, I came into possession of a set of keys that I believe can turn the ignition on the combustible engine of an old motor cart_”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Jed? Speak words I can understand!”

  “He’s saying that he found the keys for an old cart,” Mercer said, excited. “You know, the sort that runs on black blood.”

  “Yes, yes. A guard too drunk to stand straight left them hanging on a post by the latrines. There are a row of motor carts up a ways. One of these keys should probably get one of them to work.”

  “The engine will be loud once it starts up,” Brook said. “Old Wren said that the old motor carts rumbled like thunder and you could hear them coming several eye-spans away.”

  Solloway nodded. “It’s true, but that won’t matter at all once we’re moving. Those carts may rumble like thunder but they fly like lightning. We’ll be on our way out of camp before Dusty’s men even know what happened.”

  “Let’s do it then,” Mercer said. He had his doubts about the plan, feeling there were too many things that could go wrong, but knew that if they were to get out of camp, they should be as quick about it as possible. No place in the Green Lands was safe anymore, not with the discovery that Dusty Yen and the Fort at Kingston had banded together.

  The
reunited group stayed in the shadows off the trail as they made their way to the old carts. Solloway was now the one having a difficult time with the pace Jompers was setting. “Do you need us to rest, Roderick?” The cosmologist asked.

  “No time for that, damn it. Keep moving.” There were shouts from far behind them, followed by gunfire. “Looks like they found out we’re gone.”

  “Then we really have no time. Let’s go!” Mercer said, putting Solloway’s arm around his neck. The man’s arm alone was heavy for Mercer, but he shouldered Solloway’s huge girth as best he could, knowing that at any moment Dusty’s men could come upon them.

  “How much farther ahead?” Brook asked.

  “Oh dear, dear, we should be coming upon it now. Where is it? Oh!” Jompers stopped at the edge of the forest. Ahead was a clearing, the grass waist high, save for a series of dual-depressions that snaked to the open space from the road. The depressed grass was due to the heavy tires of the old carts being kept in the clearing. “Found them,” Jompers said.

  “And I found you!” A familiar, phlegmy voice said from the trees. A gun went off, the bullet grazing Brook’s cheek, a soft cry coming from her throat. Jompers acted quickly, loosing a dart from the belt across his chest. There was a thunk, which Mercer heard despite the gunshot ringing in his ears, followed by the flaccid shape of a short man with bright red hair falling from the trees.

  Brook was the closest to the fallen man. She leaned down to check his pulse, then looked up to Jompers, a thin stream of blood trickling down her cheek. “This was one of the sentries we saw earlier, before we got into camp. What did you do to him?”

  “A sedative. He’ll be out for a few hours, but he’ll be fine. Come on, there is no more time to waste.” They left the fallen mercenary and ran into the clearing.

  “Which one?” Brook asked, looking from one vehicle to the other. There were four of them in all, each painted an identical shade of deep forest green, their tires worn to the cords. None of the carts had a roof or door, their cracked, black leather seats exposed to the night air. The only real difference amongst them were the spots of rust, like birthmarks on their bodies.