by A J Burns
Desoru circled around his enemy, slashing with his sword. He dodged and rolled out the way, scarcely countering the attack. They continued to bout with each other. As if feeling he was without an alternative, he shoved his sword into the throat of Desoru’s horse, which roared and jumped into the air, flinging Desoru to the ground.
Desoru had lost his sword. He searched around on his hands and knees.
The horse galloped away, crying in pain.
Desoru still couldn’t find his sword. The other man was close behind him. There, Desoru saw his sword, a yard in front of him. He lunged at it and darted to the side. Having barely been afforded enough time, he parried the other man’s swing and used his left leg to trip him.
He jumped forward and fell on top of him. All confidence was gone from the man’s face as Desoru brought his sword down upon him. His assailant was dead, gigantic forehead and all.
Desoru staggered to his feet, alone among the living. The other riders had disappeared into the woodlands. After travelling for a while, he managed to calm a stray horse that he fetched from the borderlands. He considered turning around towards friendly territory when a high-pitched noise shifted his focus.
“Help.” The voice was that of a boy. “Don’t leave me.”
He saw the boy beside a bush lying with his mouth in an oval shape, his arm reaching for Desoru, who rode closer to him. A bullet had carved out a small chunk of his skull.
“Help me.” The boy wanted to cry, but it appeared that he was somehow unable to cry.
“What the fucked happened here?” Desoru asked, mainly to himself. As he peered over at the boy, he was able to answer his own question. This poor son-of-a-bitch is one of Tekotaur’s men. For all the cockiness of his chief, the boy was pathetic and hapless.
The boy repeated his request for Desoru to help him.
Desoru didn’t care much about the boy’s death, nor did he consider himself the type that ever would care, but he considered suffering to be a different plight altogether. He didn’t know if he could put his thoughts into words, but he considered death to be a release from pain and that no sane man could scoff at another’s suffering. Desoru knew the despair that this boy was feeling, the combination of pain, humiliation, anger, and confusion. No man ever mourned his own death.
He knelt beside the boy and pulled out his blue canteen. He put it to the boy’s lips, but the boy wasn’t thirsty. “You need to drink.”
“Am I going to make it?”
Desoru hadn’t initially noticed it, but the boy’s midsection had been trampled by something. His spine was most likely snapped in half. “You’ll be fine,” he said, doubting the purpose of telling him the truth. If this boy could’ve survived the nearly inevitable infection, he would still have already lost his ability to walk. Based on this boy’s speech, he had guessed that there had been some brain damage as well.
All Desoru could think about was himself in that situation, thinking that when the boy died, his wife would wait a couple of years, maybe more, before marrying another man. He thought that his kids will someday call their stepfather “daddy,” that his wife won’t be burried next to him but next to her final lover. Humans must move on; that’s what life demands of them.
“Will you stay with me?” the boy asked.
Desoru felt a pity that he reserved for few men. There wasn’t even a sense of meaningless glory for which this boy could smile. “I’ll stay,” he told him.
“Thank you….” The boy reached out and touched his hand.
Desoru sat beside him for hours. When the boy fell asleep, Desoru picked up a musket, loaded it, and finished the killing.
He was readying to leave for Grofven when a hand yanked on his shirt and pulled him backwards. “Where do you think you’re going?” a man asked.
“Well, I was about to fuck your mother,” Desoru said. “But she doesn’t want me now that your sister gave me crabs.”
“I’m sure we can find some use for you back at camp.” He pushed Desoru onto the ground. “Get to marching.”
Desoru had been taken hostage by a rebel battalion of Elynaurian soldiers. They had a jolly time roughing him up. He stayed with them for five nights before being escorted into the gates of Parven. Kron came to visit him in his holding cell, not nearly as fat as he had been when the two of them had first met each other.
“Is Mauro alive?” Kron asked.
“Mauro?” asked Desoru. “Yeah, that little prick’s alive.”
Kron asked what Desoru meant to his superiors in this passive sort of condescending tone. Then, he said: “What would we need to get him back?”
“A little sprinkle of magic dust,” Desoru told him. “What halfwit would surrender a chief for a nector?”
“What need have you of him?” asked Kron. “Surely you’ve had enough time with him.”
“‘What the fuck does that matter? You want him. And if you want him badly enough, you better have something to offer.’
Kron continued to blather.
Desoru sat in his holding cell for another eight days, and its colors were now making him sick, its walls having been painted the ugliest shade of blue. One day, Gregh came in and beat him to the point of fragility, Desoru’s hands tied behind his back the entire time.
He slammed Desoru against the bars. “Where is she?” he shouted. “Where’s my son?”
“I don’t know,” Desoru said. “He knocked me from my horse and chased after you.”
“You’re lying.” Gregh slapped him across the face and drove his head onto the floor before flinging him back against the bars.
Desoru felt like he was trying to squeeze him through the bars.
“You killed them, didn’t you?” Gregh asked.
“I didn’t fucking kill him! He ran away like a coward. Why does this surprise you so?”
Brenton interrupted them. “That’s enough,” he said.
“He butchered Absalon,” Gregh said.
“And if that’s so, you will avenge him by the war’s end.” Brenton clapped his hands together. “Antin’s sent back his messenger. He’s agreed to the trade.”
“What trade?” Desoru asked.
“We’re trading you and Enk back for the Orynaurian chief,” Brenton said.
Desoru chuckled. “I told that moron we should’ve brought a company out to meet with you—but no, now he went and got himself caught.”
“Actually,” said Gregh emotionlessly, “he surrendered himself a couple of days ago to save your sorry ass.”
“And why would he do that?”
Brenton responded. “He said his brother would leave you here to rot otherwise.”
Suffice it to say, that statement perplexed Desoru. Why the hell does he care about me? He asked Enk that question as soon as he had gotten the chance, however many days later.
“I don’t particularly care,” said Enk. “I don’t like leaving one of my own behind.”
“Bullshit.” Desoru felt himself grinning. “That’s not the way people work.”
“Listen…. I don’t mean nothing to nobody anymore. But there’s one man who still cares about me—and that’s my brother. They want the Orynaurian chief, they can have him.”
“What are you hiding? What’s your ulterior motive?”
“I don’t have a motive.”
“A man doesn’t do anything unless he has something to gain.”
“How about a clear conscience?” Enk asked.
“Well, there you go!” Desoru said, half-mockingly, half-believing. “But why does your conscience need clarification? Why’d you feel guilty about leaving me?”
Enk yawned. “I was responsible for your capture.”
“You only strung me along because I’m the captain of Ritek’s guard. Why’d you risk your life to rescue me?”
Enk paused. “Because I didn’t realize how annoying you were.”
“Self-righteous prick.”
16
Wynore Kolsetta
Orynaurian Nob
lewoman
The Orynaurians celebrated their chief’s return in the second level of the Kolsetta family’s Parven estate.
The patriarchs had gathered in the parlor, and together they sat beneath a chandelier of red pendalogues. They toasted to Mauro and to his fortune in having arrived safely, and they toasted to the prosperity of their province.
Wynore hated her father’s acquaintances and how their expressions always hinted at a strong desire to strip her naked. Varro Beltore was particularly inept at hiding his thoughts, and his mere presence made her want to barf.
“Gods of greatest mercy,” said her father, lowering his glass of wine.
“What was it like,” Varro asked, “having been one of their prisoners?”
“Enk isn’t like most Mesals,” Mauro said. “He’s … almost … human.”
All these old men had a penchant for pandering, and they showcased that behavior now, laughing hysterically, Kruso Minore among them; having slapped his thigh twice, he said: “We were devastated when we had learned of your capture.”
“Devastated,” said her father.
Scarcely any of these noblemen respected their chief; but all of them respected the position, its customs, and the honor that surrounded it.
Wynore drank the wine from her glass, which she had refilled twice already. She was trying to remain focused on at least one of the conversations around her, but each of the conversations was as dull as those speaking. Her attention kept drifting to the candle across from her and to its red, spiraling flame.
Her friend Soraya pulled up a chair and sat beside her. “Lucky you,” said Soraya. “A nector—and a handsome one at that.” She gestured her head towards Bivek, who was standing in a corner conversing with Lanisto Minore; the two of them were lauded as the most talented warriors of Orynen.
“I regret having ever met him,” Wynore said.
“That horrible?”
“I went back to his pavilion to fuck him.” Wynore glanced over at her father. Whispering, she said: “And he spent half the night reminiscing on all the men he’s killed in battle.”
“I can’t understand you. Why the nector and not the chief?”
“I’m not that type of girl. I just wanted his cock. I don’t want his money.” Wynore made eye-contact with Mauro, and she quickly diverted her sight.
“What about his power?” Soraya winked. “A little blowjob goes a long way.” Soraya was known to sleep with some disgraced professor every fifth day of the week.
“Blowjobs are for prostitutes,” Wynore said, offended. “Do you take me for a whore?”
“Oh, settle down.” She laughed and slapped Wynore gently on the arm. “I was only making conversation.”
“It’s alright. This soiree has turned out wonderfully.”
Soraya winked. “You’re welcome. Wanna escalate it a little? Follow me.”
Wynore followed her into the kitchen and shooed away her father’s parmosi servants. “This better be good.”
“Extracted from the forests of Rofynen,” Soraya said, emptying a pouch of reddish-brown powder onto the granite countertop. “Even the Elynaurian officers cannot get their hands on this.”
Wynore bent over and snorted a line of the powder. She was surprised that it didn’t irritate her nostrils like the other powders she was used to snorting; and she soon discovered that it didn’t have a nasty, dripping taste like that to which she had become accustomed. The drug provided a state of tranquility, quieting the sounds of the kitchen and of the world around her.
She was startled by the sound of the kitchen door opening. Mauro had followed them. He had always followed Wynore around when they were younger, and she often joked to others about him being her “puppy dog.”
“Hey, Wynore,” he said bashfully.
“You’re alive,” she said, trying to sound excited. “Everybody had assumed you were dead.”
“Heaven isn’t ready for me yet.” Even his arrogant words left with timidity. “I still have a war to win.”
“I do not doubt that you and the other chiefs will lead us to victory.”
Mauro smirked. “One day, I shall be the Marshal of the Royal Armies.”
“And I wish you the best in your endeavors.”
Having smiled at Soraya, he turned his head to Wynore and said: “Azelon Meza’s throwing a soiree tomorrow, and I wanted to know if you’d attend it with me. You are, after all, the most beauteous woman in Orynen.”
“Oh.” She put her glass of wine down and tried to smile. “That’s so sweet of you. Last I had heard, we and the Elynaurians were at each other’s throats.”
“Things have been … strained,” Mauro said. “That’s why we must continue to foster a relationship between us.” He stared at her, smiling.
“I hear Elynen had demanded that we supply their soldiers,” Soraya said in a blatant digression. “After their chief betrayed us.”
“Yes…, it is truly a statement…. More like a temporary request, though.” He tried turning his gaze back to Wynore.
“Audacious,” Soraya said. “Will we? Supply the ally who betrayed us?”
“We will not do anything,” he told her. “I am still deciding.”
“Well, how—”
He interrupted her with a newfound assertiveness. “Listen, woman-whose-name-I-do-not-know, I am trying to speak to your friend over here. Will you let me do that?”
“Sorry, Your Grace.” Soraya lowered her head and walked out from the kitchen.
Leering at Wynore, he said: “Would you be gracious enough to accept my invitation?”
Wynore cleared her throat, disturbed by his creepy manner and by the authority behind it. “Sorry…, but I’m busy tomorrow night.”
“What could be more important than the soiree?”
Anything. “If only I had been granted more time to prepare.”
“I’m your chief.” His tone was both pleading and forceful. “What could be more important?”
“It’s nothing—it’s just—”
“Is it my cousin?” He extended his arms in an inquisitive gesture. “I do know about you two—or at least … the rumors of you two.”
“Please, Your Grace; please have it in you to understand.” This felt weird, imploring Mauro, the passive boy-chief, to be less forceful.
Suddenly, he said, “Of course, I respect your wishes!” He smiled and awkwardly laughed. “I’ll ask somebody else. My apologies if you felt in any way pressured.” He flitted away.
Wynore breathed deeply and then bent over the countertop and snorted whatever remnants she could find. She amused her father’s guests for a couple of hours, occasionally chatting with Soraya about something one of them had overhead. When men became too eager in their approaches, which they often did when inebriated, she would find a reason to leave the room.
As the party neared its final hour, Bivek strode to the main entrance and gestured for Wynore to follow him. Having ensured that her father was otherwise occupied, she took a cardigan from the coatrack and reluctantly joined the nector outside.
“Where are we going?” she asked, closing the door.
“Come on.” He spat on the ground.
The two of them had been intimate once in Orynen, years before the revolution had begun, having met via an introduction by Mauro. Although always abhorrent, Bivek had taped into a new source of agitation, and he inflicted his anger upon her whenever he so desired.
The clocktower rang as they walked along the brick-laden path that led to the city’s gate. She looked up to see the day’s hour; the clock’s gears had stopped moving, and the small pointer stayed still at the second notch.
Bevrosi servants nodded to them as they passed through the gates.
The wind was blowing in from the north, and the air was chilly around them.
They ambled past the palmettos that surrounded the outer wall of Parven, following a trail to the barracks. Here, the men stared at her more lustfully than Varro ever had, their eyes hinting at mor
e than desire: envy or hatred perhaps.
Performers danced with flames, some twirling poi around themselves and letting the wicks roll down their bodies while others spat out flames from their mouths.
The soldiers gathered around their bonfires, their dirt-ridden, sweaty bodies glistening in the firelight. Some of them were strong and muscular, but most were thin and underwhelming, pale and blotchy with mouths that stunk of decay.
Bivek strutted past them. He elicited respect from those around him but also fear, and she believed it to be fear that sustained their loyalty.
“We have an issue,” Bivek said. “Word might have gotten back to the Vyktaurs.” He would always talk with the plural when discussing this topic with her.
“How?” asked Wynore.
“We don’t know. One of my cousin’s guardsmen, Korio Pavore, had once been engaged to Emowyn Vyktaur. He might have a place in his heart for them.”
“Yes—I know him very well.”
“Get close to him—fuck him—let us know what he reveals.”
“I’m not your personal slut whom you can point and command whenever you so choose.” She scoffed at him. “Find somebody else.”
“You fucked Eryek for us,” he said in a tone that suggested victory.
“Eryek was different. I was attracted to Eryek. I wanted to fuck Eryek.” She shook her head. “I’m not going to go fuck somebody every time you snap your fingers.”
Bivek had tasked Wynore with becoming intimate with the Elynaurian chief for reasons that had since become obvious to her. He, and whatever cabal to which he belonged, had wanted to debrief Eryek on their plan and then gauge his reaction. When he had refused to participate in their plan and made it known that he wanted to reveal the conspiracy, she lulled him into a temporary sense of security and alerted Bivek who, with two other men, barged into Eryek’s room and poured a tar-sugar extract down his throat, causing him to lose consciousness.
“I don’t care what you want.” Bivek snapped his fingers. “Have you made your way through these barracks already?”
