by Stu Jones
We’re both going to die, Vedmak. Here in the Vapid. Our time has come. Your plan will never come to pass.
“I will not be beaten.”
Death comes for us all, whether we want it or not.
“I am Death.”
Staring up at the large flakes of snow dancing their way slowly from the dark sky above, her face slides into view. A strange apparition. Her features are blended, a ghostly concoction combining my Ida with the revolting morphology of Anastasia. A pink scar carves its way through the perfect skin of my wife’s face.
“Demitri,” the woman says, her voice a whisper. She raises my own scythe high above her head to finish me. “Demitri, tell me you’re in there.”
Aeron steps in, shoving the woman back, shattering my hallucination. “Vardøger. We are lost. There are too many.”
“You have to seal my wound.” I point to the injury.
Aeron ignites his broad sword and presses it against the bloody gash. The flesh and hair sizzles and burns, the pain searing through into both my and Demitri’s consciousness.
We both scream in anguish.
The world becomes dark, my grip on this corporeal shell and this world melting away. “Take me ... back to the lillipad ... We need more soldiers.”
Aeron seizes hold of this heavy body and lifts with all his might and drags me back into the fray, away from my pet still chained to the cart. The smell of gunpowder, blood, and feces drifts on the cold air. Bullets whistle past, the sound of metal on metal clanging out in violent repetition.
Aeron’s temple explodes, fragments of brain spattering the ground. He slumps forward into the snow and I fall from his arm into a slush-filled ditch. The gentle snowflakes kiss the skin of my host’s face, as if Mother Russia herself had sympathy for him. Aeron’s feet twitch and spasm, the nerve endings of my dead standard firing without control. What a waste. My gaze falls on Merodach as he charges into the rifleman who felled Aeron. His glowing mace eviscerates the shooter in one strike. Merodach turns back to me.
“Go,” I hack. “Get back to the lillipad and activate one of the Creed’s strike ships. Use Demitri’s DNA to isolate this body and find me.”
He hesitates, perhaps not wanting to leave me out here.
“Go, you simple-minded kozel.”
Merodach gives one last look to his brother’s corpse before dashing off into the blizzard.
The battlefield now has few players, only bodies piled atop one another. My Ripper dogs have been put down, and those Einherjar who may still be alive must have fled.
My reign is cut short by mere animals.
Through the wall of sleet and snow, she appears, her long coat floating in the breeze. Her stare is devoid of emotion, as cold as the ditch in which I lay. She reaches out for me, beckoning me to follow. Ida, my love.
“No. I must stay in control.” I try to stand, but instead roll to the side with a groan.
Time for us both to die, Vedmak.
The stygian nothingness tears at my mind, rending my soul asunder.
Chapter Thirteen
FARUQ
The power-hungry slave-driver shoves me from behind again. I manage two stumbling steps to right myself, though my emaciated legs quake with the effort.
“Get a move on. We want to get there before nightfall,” he says. “Take too long and we might leave you out here for the Rippers.”
Being disemboweled by Rippers might be preferable. To feel something, anything. The thought is intriguing enough that I’ve stopped walking, soliciting another vicious shove from behind. This one sends me face-down into a pile of wet snow. Curses spit from my cracked lips.
“I said keep moving,” my handler shouts, dragging me halfway up by the arm. Crystals of ice cling to my face and beard.
The rear guard swivels back and forth, his Kalashnikov at the ready, searching for Rippers. “Stop shoving him, Sabri,” he says. “You’re only slowing us down. Kapka said—”
“I know what Kapka said. Do not try to lecture me, Tareq,” Sabri snaps.
“Oh?” Tareq says, motioning to me with the rifle. “So, screwing with him is more important than our lives? Because I can still hear the screams of Rippers fighting with that deranged Gracile’s crew back there. We’re already down one soldier from our encounter with that psycho.”
“Speaking of which,” Sabri says, jerking me to my feet. “Why didn’t you shoot him for what he did? Kapka will hear of your cowardice.”
“My cowardice?” Tareq replies. “You were right next to him when he lopped off Barad’s head. Why didn’t you do something?”
“You had the rifle, incompetent fool.”
“Did you see him? He looked crazy.”
Their argument melts into white noise. Sabri and Tareq always squabble. Day after day. Month after month. It’s all I ever hear—being dragged around by these brainwashed idiots—besides their constant threats. They enjoy keeping me on edge. The bags on my head, the taunts, and the broken fingers or toes. Being left in the cold just long enough I don’t starve or freeze. Never knowing if today is the day I will meet Ilah. But in the end, it becomes normal. Perpetual fear is exhausting. Eventually, it fades away and is replaced with ... nothing. Another torn ligament. One more shattered rib. It doesn’t matter. Physical pain means nothing, and that is all Kapka’s men know how to deal.
They could not break my spirit ... until today.
Mila’s face, the launchpad, Kapka’s leer—they all flash through my mind, over and over. The smells of that war fill my throat as if I were still there. Sprinting for the rocket. Her hands grasping the sleeve of my jacket as I turned to confront the tyrant of Baqir who was pointing an RPG at her. Struggling, clamoring for the giant weapon before it fired against the platform—and then, there was only darkness.
I should have been delivered to the Kingdom of Heaven for my great sacrifice. For saving my friends, and the rest of humanity. Through my actions, the Earth must have been protected, as four years later it still spins. This is only possible because I gave my life to help Mila and Demitri escape. Yet even Ilah rejected me and sent me back to this broken world—alone, in a haze of pain and confusion, lying trapped beneath the collapsed launch pad. No one came to my aid. Not Mila and Bilgi’s resistance, Opor. Not Husniya. Instead, Kapka and his men dragged me away with promises of a slow death.
For so long, I told myself perhaps Mila and Demitri had died stopping the Leader. That was why I had not seen them. Or perhaps they believed me dead from the explosion. Then I’d seen her, that day on the Vapid road, as Kapka’s men herded me along like a beast. I’d been so sure she would act, that she would recognize me, hear my voice and set me free. But she had not, instead choosing to protect the children with her. I’d believed it a noble choice. Believed her last words as I was dragged away: an oath she would find me. It was the only thought that kept my heart beating.
But she never did, and now I know the whole truth.
Demitri was here. Right in front of me. And he did nothing. My guards were paralyzed with fear, easy to dispatch. He handed me back as if I were some diseased animal. He cared not for my life. Maybe even took joy from my suffering. He’d pretended to be so gentle, so kind, but no one is kind in this world. It has its ways of destroying us all—tearing us down until we’re nothing, then building us back up in its terrible image. Demitri is no different.
Neither is Mila.
She is alive and well alongside Husniya, and neither has come for me. My life debt to her was given based on a lie. I’m sure she hadn’t intended to intervene and stop Kapka’s men from raping my sister or killing me. She’d stumbled upon us while on a job to make money. Those men had simply been in her way. Demitri, he’d said she had better things to do than search for me. Why would he bother to lie? Maybe she’d never cared about me to begin with.
I’m such an idiot. My childish hunger for family. For love.
I trudge on into the swirling blizzard, shoved now and again by my captors. My body moves with autonomous Creed-
like robotic precision, each leg performing its sole duty over and over in mindless repetition, driven by some primitive instinct to survive. Raise, reach, stomp, repeat.
After what feels like an eternity in this frozen hell, the outline of wooden stakes protruding from the ground comes into view. Snowflakes glue to my lashes, obscuring my vision. Yet it’s clear this place is different than the others. Sometimes they hood me when we move, sometimes they don’t bother. But I know with stinging clarity I’ve never been here before. It’s an outpost of some sort, far down a road that seems to go on forever. The Road of Death, I heard Sabri call it. I have no idea where it leads, but what I do know is we are out in the Vapid far beyond the walls of Etyom.
Why the effort to move me out here? Before, I was only carted back and forth between Baqir and Alya. Always moving, never anchored in one place for too long. Kapka was insistent upon it.
The pikes jut from the ground like a row of jagged teeth. A deterrent to the beasts of the wild or roving bands of savages, though I can’t say for certain Rippers even come this far out. No one knows what lies beyond the walls of the last city.
We pass through a simple gate manned by two of Kapka’s brainwashed fools, past the campfires and the men who stare with curiosity and hatred. We walk until finally stopping before a row of simplistic cages. They’re wooden with iron bands at the seams, covered with an awning. My home for who knows how long.
Kapka’s men do not give me a roof because they care about my wellbeing. They give it because in my current condition, further exposure would finish me. They can’t allow that. Kapka must have his whipping boy.
“Get in the cage.” The guard gives me a shove.
Unable to stand any longer, I crumple forward, crawling on my hands and knees into the small square enclosure. The men laugh and make barking sounds. The hatch slams shut, a bolt inserted to hold it in place. My daily meal, a piece of molding hard tack, is dropped outside the bars. The men continue to laugh as one steps on it and grinds it into the muddy slush.
“There’s your food, if you still care to have it, mutt,” Tareq says. They laugh and shuffle away toward the warmth of one of the fires. The flickering oranges and yellows a majestic tease, a comfort to my eyes my body cannot share. An involuntary moan escapes my lips as my hand scrapes beneath the wire of my prison, reaching for the old bread.
A boot crushes my hand into the slush, the pain excruciating. I scream, jerking back, hoping to free it, but it will not move from this vise. Another moan. I slump forward, mumbling for release. A shadow darkens my cage.
“Faruq, my favorite stepson,” Kapka says, his voice a strange blend of hate and false warmth.
“Please,” I manage.
“I’m sorry? Did you speak to me?” A single gold tooth glints in the light of the fire.
“My hand,” I whimper. “Please.”
“Oh? How careless of me.” He twists the toe of his boot, causing me to scream out again, then steps back.
The old bread is now ruined and inedible. I pull my hand through the rough wire of the cage and examine the scuffed and bruised flesh. My gaze flicks up only for an instant, taking in the leering bearded face and broad shoulders of my oppressor. He’s still dressed in his ridiculous old-world style with a layered, fur-collared, sand-colored suit complete with expedition boots. There is scarring across his neck that disappears into his collar, but it seems his square face was spared damage from the blast of the RPG.
“Oh Faruq, you look especially wretched today. Are you being treated well?” He squats to peer into my cage. “I will speak with someone about this, do not worry. Only the best for the son of one of my favorite wives ...” He rubs his beard with a gloved hand. “I’ll remember her name, give me a moment.”
It takes all the resolve I can muster to spit across his shoes. A flash of movement and he grabs a bucket from the icy ground. Before I can protest, a stream of frozen water drenches me from head to toe, soaking through the fibers of the burlap smock I wear, killing the last shred of warmth. An involuntary shivering takes me, my body quaking as I gasp and sputter.
“You are a worm. You are less than the sard beneath my boots and I will scrape you from the soles just the same.” He leans closer, the distant light of the campfires casting shadows on the side of his face. “You think you know pain? Loss? This is what is left of your miserable life, boy. This is what happens to those who rise against me. I’ll do it to you, to that Logosian whore, even your dear sister who betrayed me. I can make this vendetta last forever.”
My teeth chatter, chomping with rapid clicks as the awful cold deepens.
“I’ll see you soon.” Kapka grins. Then with a wink and a laugh, he turns away, pulling his jacket around him and heads off to his private tent.
These disgusting imposters of my faith—fanatics, deranged by promises of power and ecstasy. Why have they been unchecked? Why has no one stopped this? Even Ilah seems not to see, for I am suffering and they are free to push their terror on the world. It is madness.
I now know with absolute certainty there is nothing left for me in this world. No friends. No family. No hope. Once upon a time, there would have at least been vengeance to cling to. Now, only death remains. If Kapka won’t give me that release, I will have to take it with my own hand. Burning in the fires of Hell is still better than living another day in this place.
Chapter Fourteen
MILA
Back out in the frigid wind, I shudder and push the temple door closed behind Husniya. The storm has subsided for the moment and I can almost make out the blue sky beyond the wisps of threaded clouds. Down the uneven snow-draped rock steps, Husniya and I do our best to not slip on a patch of ice and tumble to our deaths. The journey is precarious and slow. I’ve only just reached the bottom of the stairs when a young boy runs toward us from across the way. Not older than ten years, he’s disheveled and scrawny. It’s all too familiar. Criminals use kids like this to distract—right before a guy with an iron bar lays you out and lightens you of your belongings.
Eyes up, Mila.
The market, the entrance to the mines, the men gathered around a nearby burn barrel. All clear. I scan the boy for an explosive belt, guilt in my chest rising over deeming him a possible terrorist threat.
Husniya, oblivious, talks without reservation.
“Hang on, Hus,” I say, holding up my hand. “Be ready.”
“For wha—”
“Just be ready.”
The boy pulls his hand from his jacket. In his grasp is a small folded piece of paper.
“You’re Mila?” he says, his breath huffing out in small clouds of steam.
“No, you’ve got the wrong person, kid.”
He stands there, bewildered, hand outstretched. “But she said Mila would be coming out from the Vestal sanctuary. She described you.”
“Who’s she?” I pluck the note from his little fingers.
“The beautiful lady. She gave me three copper coins to run the note to you. That’s all. Honest.”
I unroll the bit of parchment, brow knitted.
Outside the East entrance.
Turn left. Five minutes.
Tell no one.
The intrigue alone has me, but there’s no way I’m going. Not like this. I crumple the parchment and drop it to the ground. The sour look on the kid’s mug deepens.
“Go find this beautiful lady and tell her I don’t do clandestine.”
“Clay—what?”
“Just tell her I’m not coming, okay?”
The kid squirms. “No way lady. I’m not going back outside the wall.”
I pull a wad of old soggy dollars from my pocket and refold them. “No?”
The kid’s eyes widen and he rubs his hands nervously. “Um, yes, I mean. I can try to find her for you.”
“I don’t want to trouble you.”
“Oh no, you’re not troubling me, honest.” The kid licks his lips, no doubt thinking of all he could have to eat for a single Etyom dolla
r.
“Then make it happen.” I unfold two dollars and extend them.
He grabs for the cash. “Yes. I mean, yes, miss. I’ll take care of it. Thank you, miss.” He runs off, little shoes stabbing into the snow and slipping on the ice.
“Let’s go, Hus. We’re being watched. Keep your eyes forward. We’re just two people leaving town.”
We trudge through the ramshackle streets full of garbage and ruin, past the rows of fragile shanties, until nearing the main gate I veer left, pulling Husniya down a cramped alleyway.
“What?” she protests.
“Just be quiet and follow me.”
At the end of the alley is an abandoned two-story sloop bar. For a moment, I’m back at Clief’s place, bouncing drunken miners or helping the old man wipe down the tables. It wasn’t much but it felt like family, like I belonged somewhere—for a while.
This one has been closed for some time.
“What is this place?” Husniya says, following me to the door. “It looks terrible.”
“It’s a sloop dive—or was.”
“What’s sloop?”
I jiggle the doorknob. “Fermented mash of beetroot and midget potatoes. Dangerous stuff if you don’t make it just right.” The door jerks open with a sharp shove from my shoulder. The mustiness of the dank interior seeps out. I slip in and make a beeline for the stairs and traverse them one rickety step at a time. At the top and down a dust-laden corridor is a wooden window hatch looking over the East side of the outer wall. We prop it open. Below, where the note said to meet, a small armed contingent waits. They seem to be led by a woman. She has a familiar aura, standing tall and regal, her arms crossed.
“A trap. I knew it,” I say, searching for other threats.
But there’s something different about this little militia. The realization like a slap in the face. She’s a sarding Gracile. The others aren’t though. They’re so frozen in place it’s unnatural. I’ve seen that before as well. Creed.
“That’s a Gracile isn’t it?” Husniya’s voice is only a whisper.
