Five Hills was a peaceful place. Far away from the hostile border, they never had anything but a token militia. Now there was a twelve-foot wall that surrounded the village. Where once a small guard barracks stood, a large structure now housed several brigades of soldiers and cavalry.
It was all part of the new duke’s army. They were officially a regiment of the king’s personal guard, but anyone who had been around them knew different. These men weren’t the proud and polished soldiers that protected the king. These men were little more than bullies and ruffians. The only thing keeping them in check was the anger of the duke.
The economy of Five Hills had always thrived on agriculture and the money of wealthy merchants that lived there during the winter months. Now that the duke had taken over, most of the crops grown by the farmers were taken by the army to feed the soldiers. Most of the merchants had decided to winter elsewhere because of the huge taxes that the duke now levied on outsiders.
The majority of the people in the region were outraged at the changes in their lives, but they didn’t dare say anything. They had seen what happened to those who spoke out. The duke was not afraid to make examples.
Very few actually embraced the duke’s rule, or at least learned to profit from it, while a smaller minority just didn’t care. One member of this last group left the quarry that night filled with sullen anger. It just wasn’t directed at the new duke.
Kenn Dollie trudged toward his home in the fading twilight and scowled at the two silver pieces he had been paid for his week of hard work. He hated the fact that the only job he was able to hold down was labor at the quarry. He was far to valuable a talent to waste his life chiseling away at rocks every day.
After taxes and food, the money he made was barely enough to afford a cheap whore and a couple bottles of dirtberry wine. Still, he had no choice but to continue in this path. This is what happened to warriors that were kicked out of Training School.
The worst day of Kenn's life was the day that the Training School Council had banished him from the city of Reneul. Armed guards had escorted him to the outside edge of the city where he was left to wander in the wilderness without any weapons or a penny to his name.
At least the Training School had taught him some things about survival and he was able to find food along the road. He had narrowly avoided being ambushed by goblins twice and the chittering moan of the moonrats in the tall grasses near the forest had nearly driven him mad with fright.
Kenn had been able to make his way down the road through the Tinny woods by tagging along behind a well-guarded caravan. Once he made it to Sampo and started up the road towards Dremald, the way had been much easier. He cursed Justan and the Training School every moment of his grueling journey.
When Kenn finally arrived back home in Five Hills, he had expected to at least find a decent job as a merchant’s guard or something. Even if he had failed as a Training School student, he did attend for two years. That had to be worth something.
He was dismayed to learn that those jobs were gone. Where there was once a free village where the people barely felt the touch of the crown, now stood a town where everyone’s lives were controlled by one man, Duke Ewzad Vriil.
The Duke had started a rock quarry to the east of the village to provide stone for his new keep. Most of the villagers had to walk several miles to reach the place, but they had no choice. The only other businesses thriving in Five Hills now were the taverns and brothels that catered to the army garrisoned in the town.
Kenn had tried to join with the army when he first arrived, but they laughed him out of the recruitment center when they saw his scrawny body and learned that he had been banished from the Training School. Even his own father had shunned him.
Now, six months since his return, things were different. Kenn had the old family house to himself and no one bothered shunning him anymore. Though his existence was dreary, he had no new direction in mind. That was about to change.
The sun had set by the time Kenn arrived at his street. As he came up to the front of his home, he saw a figure lying crumpled on the steps. Kenn scowled. It wasn’t the first time that a drunk had come up to the house looking for a place to sleep.
His first instinct was to kick the man off the steps. But as he got closer, he decided that the man was too large to go kicking around. Perhaps it would be best to step around him instead, just in case it was a soldier. He did not need the wrath of the army upon him.
As he stepped past the sleeping figure, its hand shot out and grabbed his ankle. He yelped and yanked his foot back but the man on the steps was surprisingly strong. Kenn couldn’t break his grip.
“Kenn, is that you?” The figure asked. The voice sounded familiar. Kenn squinted at the figure in the fading light. Finally it dawned on him who the person was.
“H-Hamford?” Kenn stammered. He hadn’t seen his brother in years and he really didn’t feel like seeing him now. The last time Kenn had seen his brother was the week after Hamford had graduated from the DremaldrianBattleAcademy. It was a hard time for Kenn as it was also the week that their mother died. There had been harsh words between them over her deathbed and the two brothers had not parted on good terms. “Hamford, what are you doing here?”
“Yes, it is you.” The large man smiled and, with a groan, stood. “I have been here for hours, but no one was home.” Hamford’s body trembled. He hacked and coughed into his hand. “Where’s father?”
“Father’s gone,” Kenn said. He tried to decide what to tell his brother. “Um, uh, the guards took him away for not paying his taxes.”
Hamford scratched his head. “That’s not like him. Sure, father never reported the truth of how much money he made, but surely he wouldn’t get caught.”
“Sorry.” Kenn shrugged. “That’s what happened.”
The big man sighed. “Well don’t worry. When I get back to my master, he’ll make sure that father is set free.” Somehow Kenn didn’t feel very comforted. The brothers stood there looking at one another for a while until Hamford broke the silence.
“Aren’t you gonna let your big brother in?”
Kenn grunted and used his key to open the front door. He lit a candle and went inside, his brother following behind. Neither of them noticed the pair of slitted reptilian eyes watching from the shadows across the street.
Kenn immediately went into the front room and started a fire in the hearth while Hamford collapsed on the room’s only padded chair. The big man coughed into his hand. He set his bleary eyes on his brother.
“What has happened to this town, Kenn? When I arrived here, I couldn’t believe that this was really Five Hills. I thought I must have been traveling down the wrong road. The town looks like a fortress.”
“That, brother, is the handiwork of our new duke,” Kenn sneered. “After he moved his army here, everything changed.”
The fire was catching nicely and light filled the room. Kenn looked back to his brother and gasped at what he saw. Hamford had always been a large man. Even as a child, he had been powerful and muscular, the exact opposite of his younger brother. Now, in the light from the fire, Kenn could see that his brother, though still large, seemed worn and haggard. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were swollen and haunted.
“What . . . what happened to you, Hamford? You don’t look so good.”
Hamford laughed. It was a harsh laugh bordering on insanity that ended in a sputtering cough.
“Don’t I?” he gasped. Hamford leaned back in the chair and ran his hands through his dirty and greasy hair. “I suppose that I shouldn’t look good after barely surviving the worst year of my life.” Hamford could see the lack of interest in Kenn’s eyes. “I know what you are thinking, brother, but when I tell you the story, I think you’ll agree. Somehow, I’ve been cursed.”
Kenn turned back to the fire and smirked. “Worst year of your life, eh?” Hamford had no idea what a bad year was.
As Kenn saw it, his brother had never experienced a bad day much less a bad ye
ar. Hamford had always been the pampered one. Bigger, healthier and stronger than his younger brother, Hamford had also been dumber and more willing to do exactly as others asked him to. Therefore he was always praised more for his successes and because everyone liked him they overlooked more of his mistakes.
All of these thoughts flashed through Kenn’s mind in an instant. He had no room for pity where his brother was concerned. When Hamford began unraveling the tale of the last year of his life, Kenn was bored. When he finished, Kenn was astonished. Perhaps his brother really was cursed.
When Hamford’s master had left him alone on the flat rock in the desert facing numerous dragon spawn, he had been in dire straits. Hamford had made the best of his time at the academy and was a magnificent warrior, but it still took every ounce of skill he had to slay the little beasts without becoming wounded himself.
When the battle was over, Hamford had no idea how deep into the desert he was or even which direction to travel. All he knew was that he was going to need food and water. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to clean and prepare one of the spawn carcasses to take with him. That alone saved his life during the first few days.
He wandered the desert for what seemed like endless days and nights wishing that he had paid more attention to the survival classes in the academy. The things he did remember from those classes saved Hamford’s life many times in his days of desert exile. In the first two weeks, he had nearly been smashed, poisoned, skewered, and eaten. He almost died of thirst several times.
Then one day, he finally saw the edge of the desert. He dove into the first stream he found and drank until he threw up. He headed into the grasslands praising the gods that he had finally been saved. Little was he to know that was where his troubles would really begin.
Hamford traveled for two weeks through the tall grasslands. During that time, strange things began to happen to him. Some nights he would awaken with a sharp pain and find a wound like a scratch or a gash somewhere on his body. The cuts took forever to heal and left Hamford with burning fevers and infections, weakening him.
The landscape was foreign and it wasn’t until he came to the first human settlement that Hamford found out where he was. It was a small town called Caldane. The people looked at him like he was crazy when he asked, but he found out that he was on the far side of the Whitebridge desert, many months journey away from his home country of Dremaldria. He had only enough money on him for one night’s stay at the local inn or perhaps to purchase some provisions that wouldn’t take him very far considering the large journey ahead.
He decided to see if he could find a job to make enough money to buy a horse. He found a nice farmer who needed a man to work beside him in the field. Even though it was late fall at the time, the climate this close to the desert was still hot enough to accommodate year round planting. It was hard, sweaty labor, but the farmer paid well. Even though Hamford’s infected cuts made him tire more easily than usual, he was still a strong man and well suited to such work.
It wasn’t long before he started suspecting that a curse had been placed on him.
During his first week working for the farmer, a sheep was found slaughtered at a nearby ranch and Hamford continued to wake up with new cuts and scratches. Throughout the next week, several more animals were killed in the area and rumors of a savage beast spread throughout the town. Eventually, the farmer came to him and asked him to leave, telling Hamford that it was getting too dangerous for him to stay. People had begun to notice Hamford’s haggard look and strange wounds. Since he was the only stranger in town, people were talking.
Hamford left with some money in his pocket, but not nearly enough to buy a horse. He stopped at the next village down the road and found the shop of an herbman. He asked the old healer about his strange wounds. The crusty old man told him that they were made by the claws of some sort of animal. When Hamford told the man that he hadn’t fought any wild beasts in days and that these cuts happened in his sleep, the man grew fearful and demanded that he leave.
This pattern continued for months. Every time he stopped to make some money, the curse followed him. Animals died and the townsfolk would ask him to leave. Hamford spent the time afraid to sleep and constantly weak from many small infections.
Soon he found that word had traveled ahead of him. He would journey for many days, sometimes weeks, to get to a new village, just to find that all doors were locked to him. Some said that he was bad luck. Others whispered that he was a werewolf. Either way, Hamford was never able to make enough money to make his journey easier.
It took Hamford a full year to arrive at Five Hills. Now he was but a shadow of his former self.
“Did you ever find out what was causing you all this trouble?” Kenn asked, unnerved by his brother’s tale. He wasn’t much of a superstitious man, but what his brother described sounded a whole lot like the tales of werewolves his father had told them when they were kids.
“It’s a demon sent to torment me!” Hamford said, staring at him with bloodshot eyes. “Normally the thing is very careful, but sometimes I was quick enough to catch a glimpse of it with my own eyes. It is a hideous thing with long claws and fangs, covered in scales.” Hamford shivered. “And it hates me. It has hunted and tortured me all year long.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“The only thing I can think to do is contact my old master. He should know what to do to rid me of this thing.”
Ken was shaken by the pure fear in his brother’s voice. He had never seen Hamford in such a state. Even though he stood right by the fire, he felt chilled to his core. If his brother really had been harassed for an entire year, what had he brought home with him?
“Do you know where this thing came from?” he asked.
Hamford stared blankly into the fire. “I think it followed me from the desert.”
Outside of the Dollie’s home, Hamford’s “demon” watched the brothers through the window. He understood almost nothing of what was being said, but with his new heightened sense of sound, he could hear their muffled voices through the glass.
Deathclaw scaled the wall outside of the house and perched on the roof. Despite the cooling night breeze, the roof retained much of the heat of the day. Though he was not cold blooded, the warmth on the roof was a comfort to him. He curled up on the strong thatch and toyed with the idea of killing the men.
He had followed the lone human all year long and he still hadn’t been able to decide whether or not to eat him. Perhaps it was the smell of the human that was not appetizing or perhaps his expanded mind had thought up another agenda, but every day Deathclaw pondered killing the man and every day he ended up letting the man live. It was the longest hunt he had ever partaken in.
In the desert, everything a dragon hunted was dangerous. Sometimes a pack would find that their only chance for food was to hunt something that was far too powerful for them to handle. The tactic ingrained in the instincts of the raptoids for this situation was to sneak up and wound the creature, then dart away before it could kill them. Raptoids had many different forms of bacteria in their claws that made wounds slow to heal and weakened their prey. Eventually, the prey was not so formidable any more and they would feast.
Deathclaw so feared the human that this had been the only tactic he dared use. He would sneak up on the man while he slept, his heart beating so madly in his chest that he was afraid the man would hear it. He would slash the man and dart away, hoping he could get away before the human caught him.
He then watched the human throughout the day, his mind churning with strange and new kinds of thoughts. Since he had been changed, his poison was much weaker. Even so, he found himself respecting the human, for though the man was infected, he still was strong. Deathclaw had watched him plow fields and perform other labors in the hot sun without letting his weakness slow him down.
Over the year, Deathclaw learned not to fear the human anymore. In fact, he was confident that he could kill the man easily. Bu
t he was so puzzled by his indecision over the man’s fate, that he decided to keep the man weak until he made up his mind. Deathclaw did not lack patience. He waited.
Since the wizard with the strange fingers had transformed him, Deathclaw's mind had expanded. He learned much quicker now and in the new world he lived in, this was crucial to his survival. This night, he sensed a revelation right on the edge of his mind.
While waiting on the roof of the human's dwelling, Deathclaw once again thought back to his last days in the desert. The other raptoids had rejected him. He had no pack. He was unique, and for a social animal, that was torture. When he had walked into this green world with the human, he had once again assailed by this feeling of solitude. Everything in this place was so different from what he had known during his previous life. His only constant since leaving his desert was the human he hunted. It wasn’t enough.
Deathclaw focused his thoughts back further to the day that the humans had shown up and slaughtered his pack, leaving him changed forever. Then Deathclaw leapt up and hissed with glee. It was an eerie, screech of a sound. He finally understood the thoughts that had been churning in the dark recesses of his mind. He was not alone. There was another. He had seen the humans with his brood mate, his sister. She had not died like the rest. No, the puny man with the writhing fingers had changed her too, and when the man had stopped the transformation, she looked much like he did now. Perhaps this was why he let the human live for so long. Perhaps he would lead Deathclaw to his brood mate!
Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) Page 11
