by David Benem
THERE IS ONLY DEATH
Fencress gazed out across the wet plain, a soaked, sweaty place thick with nagging mosquitoes. The Silverflow rumbled near, though the river’s waters remained hidden beneath a mantle of fog. Somewhere—not far, she wagered—war seethed and a good number of poor, dumb souls were dying over some inane quarrel.
That’s the thing with war, she thought. Some bastard decides his greed, faith, or old grudge is so important it warrants a big fucking butchery.
She wondered for a moment over the reason for this one, this war. She thought of her brief encounter with Arranan’s Spider King, when that freakish, stitch-faced giant had inspected her like some whelp freshly plucked from the womb. She winced at the memory, of how he’d discarded her while mentioning she bore no mark of the gods.
Faith it is, then. The very worst reason of all, for that’s the argument there’s no solving no matter how many dead fill the graves.
She shook her head and pulled off her gloves. She flexed clammy hands in vain hope they’d dry in midday air that seemed barely more than stagnant. She then eased back her cowl and shook her ebony hair free. It was no use. Everything felt sticky and miserable.
“There,” grunted Karnag from nearby.
Fencress looked to where the highlander gestured and saw naught but a heavy mist smothering the plain near the river. “Fog? Lovely. We’re heading into even wetter, stickier air. Karnag, you really know how to entertain a lady.”
“Follow me,” the highlander said firmly. He whipped the reins of his horse, his flint-colored eyes fixed on some unseen point.
“Fencress!” hissed Paddyn from behind her. “Where’s he taking us?”
She looked to her left—east along the river—where stood Riverweave perhaps a dozen leagues away. “Seems we’re headed away from the front, boys,” she whispered, her tone betraying a hint of relief. She still had no idea how she was going to sway Karnag, how she was going to help free him from the demon haunting him. But staying clear of the front seemed to offer damned better odds than rushing headlong toward it.
“Where?” pleaded Paddyn.
She nodded to him and turned to Karnag. “So we’re not headed into the teeth of battle, eh? Perhaps a decent town with a few fat pockets and flea-riddled inns?”
Karnag stared blankly ahead. “I am the ruin not just of the flesh of men, but of their hearts most of all. Today I take something.”
“An excellent choice, Karnag!” she proclaimed with false cheer, shrugging aside her instinct to ask what this ‘something’ might be. She slapped a hand on her thigh and did her usual best to find some hope or humor—some promise of chance—in even the worst turn of the dice. “A good old-fashioned heist! A theft! A burglary!” She turned to the others. “Drenj? Any more poetic term for the task? You have the gift, as I recall.”
The Khaldisian looked to her sadly, the kohl about his eyes smeared in black streaks across his olive cheeks. “Death,” he sighed, hanging his head. “There is only death.”
Karnag glanced back to Drenj. “There is wisdom in your words, Khaldisian, though your tongue intends it not. Death follows ever in my wake.”
Drenj trembled beneath Karnag’s gaze. “I should be home,” he said with a quavering voice. “Home with my family…”
“I do not bind you,” Karnag said. “You may choose your path.”
Drenj shot up in his saddle. “I can leave? I’ll not die if I do?”
Karnag looked to him for a moment then closed his eyes. “No. You will die.”
“But I—”
“I tell you what is and what will be. Your sanctuary exists only at my side. Leave me and our pursuers will track you and exact punishment for your crimes.”
“My crimes!” Drenj laughed woefully.
The young man’s hopelessness troubled Fencress. She wished his heart weren’t so burdened, but then she knew he had good cause to despair.
They all did.
They followed Karnag into the mist. The river’s rush filled Fencress’s ears though the steamy veil did not betray the water’s location. Soon it seemed naught but oblivion surrounded them, a ghostly nothingness where anything just beyond her reach had vanished.
She slowed and at last halted her horse, lost in the cloud. “Karnag?” she called.
Several moments passed. A horse nickered somewhere. A cry, a grunt, then a splash.
“Come,” came Karnag’s voice from what seemed a great distance ahead. “This way.”
Fencress could see nothing. She drew in a breath and eased her horse forward, the beast’s hooves slurping and sucking the wet earth. After a dozen yards or so a silhouette darkened the haze. As she came closer the image resolved: Karnag standing beside his horse upon a platform propped against the riverbank.
“Come,” Karnag said again. “Here we cross the river.”
She studied the raft, a rectangular expanse of wood that no doubt served as a ferry for hire. The ferryman, though, was nowhere to be seen.
She slipped off her horse and tried leading it to the ferry. The beast stamped and then its legs stiffened, digging into the mud. Fencress cooed and clucked and snapped at the reins but the best the beast would do was crane its neck.
“Fencress,” said Paddyn from beside her, his quiet voice whistling through the space of his missing tooth. “My horse won’t move either. They’re scared, Fencress. Perhaps they sense—”
“Leave them,” Karnag growled.
“We need mounts, Karnag,” Fencress said. “This ground is a wet mess and—”
“Leave them. My horse can carry the supplies. You will all set loose your steeds. We will soon have others.”
Fencress found her hand had moved to the shape of the totem she kept strung about her neck, the rough carving of a sun symbolizing the goddess Illienne. Any notion she had of faith was a wavering thing at best and she didn’t fancy the idea of being bound by dead gods to a certain destiny. She’d always thought instead that life played out according to turns of chance, that those who made the smart bets could weather its troubles. Yet what she’d seen with Karnag—his talk of things yet to be and his inevitable march toward… something—left her unsettled.
“Karnag,” she said, “you know I have no quibbles with killing when a job calls for it or a fellow is deserving, but gutting folk for nothing more than a few horses seems… unnecessary. We have good coin. Can’t we just buy new horses?”
Karnag looked to her through a fraying curtain of black braids, his gaze empty. He closed his eyes and inhaled. He opened them—the eyes of the dead—and a sick smile twisted his mouth. “Those ahead have no need of their mounts.”
“Karnag,” Fencress pleaded. “We can’t—”
“Their fate has been cast.” The words rang like judgment.
Fencress swallowed back the bile rising in her throat and set about removing the satchels from her horse. “Very well,” she whispered, shoulders slumping. She scratched her horse’s withers then gave it a slap to send it away. “May good fortune find you,” she said softly.
Paddyn and Drenj boarded the raft, stepping tentatively upon its swaying planks and moving as far from Karnag as the vessel would allow. Fencress followed, tugging her cowl and gloves back into place as she did.
“Now,” Karnag grunted. He seized a long pole from the ferry’s edge, pressed it into the water and pushed the ferry forward with a great thrust. The platform shuddered as it left the bank.
Fencress noticed a wet rope slithering across the ferry’s center and realized the craft was guided by a line tethered to either side of the river. With the line the ferry held roughly to its intended course despite the river’s swift flow. It held to a certain destination. The ferry was fated to reach the opposite side and could move nowhere else. The line directed it and permitted no deviation.
Fencress tucked the stray strands of her hair back within her black cowl and thought on that. She didn’t like the notion, that certainty of fate.
But then a smirk found her lips.
>
The raft is fated to reach the other side, at least until chance snaps that line in two.
She studied Karnag through the fog, watching him work thick arms to dig the pole against the riverbed below. She wondered what sort of happenstance—what sort of chance—could shove him from his course.
She knew there had to be such a thing. There had to be a chance.
Karnag strode across ground that was barely more than a marsh, tugging along his sack-laden stallion. He paused and smelled the air. “We are not far now.”
Fencress strained keen eyes against the endless murk and could discern nothing. She gave the air a sniff of her own. There was perhaps the odor of smoke, but mostly the scent of wet, boggy rot.
“Far from what?” she asked.
“Answers from the dead,” Karnag said, then set off again through the muck.
She drew in a slow breath and followed him.
They moved along muddy earth that pulled at their boots. Ahead, a copse of trees emerged from the mist, trees with claw-like branches draped with vines. Fencress studied them and spied many birds fluttering about the boughs. The birds—crows—cawed and croaked, an incessant squabble of ill-tempered voices.
They slogged beneath the trees and the ground softened and grew more treacherous. The air thickened with steam that taxed the lungs. Karnag strode onward with powerful certainty though the others struggled to navigate the mire. Even Fencress’s nimble feet found little purchase.
She paused and leaned against a slick tree trunk, then looked back to see her young companions trudging many yards behind. They looked utterly ridiculous in this mess, Paddyn in his foppish, stolen clothes and Drenj with cheeks painted like some circus performer meant to frighten children. “Hurry along, you swine-headed scapegraces!” she called over the squawking crows.
The boys could only nod tiredly in reply.
Fencress turned to find Karnag and just then caught an odor upon the mist, a smell quite familiar to one who’d done as much dark work as she. Sickly-sweet and pungent, she and Karnag had used lime to conceal it when they’d needed to stash a corpse for a day or two.
Nothing smelled quite like the decay of death.
She looked again to the crows and realized why they were so raucous: a great feast had been set for them not far away and the bastards on the boughs above were likely just giving their bellies a rest.
She pressed away from the tree and toiled on toward the source of the stink. Soon the ground firmed and the trees thinned and flies nagged at her from everywhere.
“Fencress,” said Paddyn from nearby. “That smell…”
“It’s death,” Fencress said matter-of-factly, “and it strikes me you boys ought to be a little more used to it by now.”
She moved onward and the thicket gave way to an open field. About it swarmed more cackling crows and buzzing flies than she’d ever beheld in a single place. Beneath that whirlwind of black birds and bugs bent hundreds of bodies, most dead and others almost so. Riderless warhorses wandered about, wet and wide eyes seeming to mourn the dead. Everywhere crows lorded over the bloated and broken corpses of men and their mounts, pecking gleefully away, and flies crowded upon the leftovers.
In the midst of it all moved Karnag Mak Ragg.
The highlander stalked the battlefield—the graveyard—with apparent purpose. He’d pulled free his greatsword and swung it now in wide arcs before him. The crows flocked away from the sweeps of the blade, complaining and swirling about before returning to their meals once Karnag passed.
“Well, Drenj,” Fencress said, “I suppose the good news is these folk are already dead or damned close to it. Your virgin hands should remain unstained by the dark work.”
A retch and a splatter sounded behind her. She turned to see the Khaldisian swiping the back of his hand across a mouth dripping with spittle.
She sighed then straightened. “Well I suppose the stain of your puke is not quite as damning as that of blood.”
“What is Karnag doing?” asked Paddyn.
Fencress drew her cowl tight and watched. Karnag took no spoils from the fallen and paid no heed to the cries of those few who yet lived. He moved about Arranese carcasses in their leathers and hides and amidst the dead soldiers of Rune cased in their gray mail. He seemed to watch only the flight of the carrion-eaters, watching as they wheeled away and settled once more.
“He seeks something,” said Fencress. “Just as he said.” Curiosity grabbed her and she strode out onto the field of the dead.
But what?
Karnag whipped his sword about, sending crows screaming and scattering. He crouched low, eyes trained upon the birds as they fluttered about the steamy air.
Fencress stepped around the tangled corpses, drawing nearer. What do you seek, Karnag?
Karnag stood straight, studying a black cloud of a dozen or so crows. The birds croaked as they wound in a wide circle about the battlefield. Suddenly and as one they seemed to regroup, then sank as though to settle upon another carcass. But they fled their intended meal, squawking madly and breaking in all directions, then flapped their way clear of the field entirely.
Fencress looked to the spot the birds had abandoned though she could discern no details through the mass of dead bodies. She crept closer, steps careful upon ground still strewn with blood, gristle and entrails.
Karnag moved to the vacated place. His hard features sharpened to an intense glare, then he sank to a squat and set aside his sword. His mouth moved with words lost in the din of buzzing flies and complaining crows.
Fencress slowed, picking her way between severed limbs and crooked corpses. She came at last to Karnag’s side. Her old friend knelt in a blood-soaked circle upon the field of the dead. Before him slumped a black-robed man—all but gone judging from his pallid color and arrhythmic, rattling breaths—waiting out his last moments with his guts in his hands. Flies clouded about, though seemed unwilling to spawn their maggots anywhere near the soon-to-be-corpse.
Fencress studied the fellow. He was covered in black from head to toe, aside from the red mess of bloody entrails. His face was masked in the shadows of his hood, but as she kept her eyes upon it she discerned a stitch that crept up the middle of his chin, through his lips, and toward his nose.
She thought—for the second time that day—of Arranan’s Spider King. Of his stitched face. Of the monstrosity’s companion bearing a face sewn in the same way. Faces of patchwork flesh writhing against stitches.
“No!” the man wailed. He shook, his body twitching with an odd quickness before abruptly falling still. His hood slipped aside to reveal a hairless head of sickly skin covered with even more barbed, black thread.
The same sort of witch as the one at the Spider King’s side. The same sort we watched die in Shank’s Hollow.
“Karnag…” Fencress said. “What is this thing?”
The highlander appeared to hear her not, or held no regard for her words. He spoke in a low mumble, a string of strange sounds Fencress could not understand. He beheld the witch with a terrifying glower.
“N-no…” the witch said through a cough, a dribble of dark blood falling from its lips and soaking into the thick stitch upon its chin.
“You are broken!” Karnag screamed, the sound of it jarring. He reached for the hilt of his sword Gravemaker.
The witch quivered. “Our secrets are our own,” it hissed, spitting the words through bubbles of bloody spittle.
“Yield to me!” Karnag roared. His thick, muscled form seemed to grow, becoming all the more threatening. He held the blade against the witch’s neck. “Illienne abralide y alluma veras.”
The stitched, hairless thing vomited forth a mess of blood and trembled before falling still. Its eyes remained open and a dark stain spread within to color them a deep black.
“Now,” Karnag said, moving to stand, “you will surrender.” He held the sword before him, his flint-colored eyes regarding it in an almost wistful manner. “You will tell me your secrets. Your
secrets of death.”
The witch seemed a corpse, and said nothing.
“Yield!” Karnag bellowed. “Illienne abralide y alluma veras!” Crows cawed and rose from all around, fleeing his presence.
Fencress watched with disgust as the stitches upon the head of the witch unravelled, its skin seeming to drip from its body. Wisps of what seemed shadows leaked from its pale fingers and spread upon the trampled earth like a spill of oil.
Karnag descended then upon the thing, throwing aside his sword to set hands against the creature’s skull. “Yield!” he screamed, squeezing a skull set with two black orbs for eyeballs and covered only with gray sinews flecked with rot.
Fencress did her best not to sully the field with the remains of her meager lunch. She shied away, looking askance to Paddyn and Drenj still standing beneath the jagged trees at the field’s edge. Their faces seemed hardly different from those of the dead.
“Yield,” Karnag commanded, and a piercing shriek answered him. The highlander’s hands flexed as they twisted the witch’s skinless head. A crack sounded and Karnag pulled the skull and a fair bit of the spine free of the creature’s body.
Fencress moved back, stepping between the corpses and even upon them. She felt a terrible sense of dread and wagered it best to allow plenty of space between herself and whatever the hell Karnag was doing.
“Yield!” Karnag roared again, holding the grotesque skull level with his face. His hands worked against the rot-covered bone and he again spoke strange words. “Illienne abralide y alluma veras…”
The skull’s jaw fell open to reveal a tongue, dark and discolored. At once the tongue twitched and fell still, then began rolling about. It swayed, slowly at first. Then Karnag drew the skull to within inches of his face and the tongue curled and twisted within the maw.
Karnag laughed, the sound of it awful.
Fencress realized then the rest of the field had fallen quiet, the crows and flies alike silent upon their feasts. She looked about, seeing the crows with wings folded and beady eyes upon Karnag. The flies formed muted crowds in the wounds of the dead and dying.
