A retinue of men dropped to one knee in front of him, dipping their chins to their chests and covering their hearts with a closed fist. He glanced at each man, and they waited as he counted. Eight.
“Where are the rest?”
When no one spoke, he looked to Ban Chu, his trousers soiled and caked with wet dirt, blood staining his leather breastplate. Two deep grooves traveled from the left shoulder to right hip. Those were new. Bu needed no answer to his question. He asked again.
“Corporal, where are my other two men?”
“Dead, sir.” Corporal Ban Chu never lifted his head or moved his position but spoke quickly and concisely.
“Even with trolls at your side?” Bu asked.
“Yes, sir.”
The Lieutenant heard a deep grunt and a snort—like a sneezing dog—from behind the small troop. The two trolls sauntered into the grove, slowly moving around the men. One stopped to sniff the hair of a young soldier. Bu didn’t know his name. He was new, young, but he was one of his. The snort blew the hair aside. The soldier never flinched.
The trolls came to stand, rather, lean forward on their hands like gorillas in front of Lieutenant Bu, looking around, picking their noses, pulling their stringy, black hair, paying little attention to the officer.
“Weak.” Bu’s whisper was inaudible. “For all your strength, you are weak.”
They both looked about, side to side, snorting and sniffing, even snarling at the eight kneeling men. But neither one of them would look Bu in the eyes. Weak.
Leaning on their fists, directly in front of Bu, he realized how much they reeked. Bu couldn’t place the smell, worse than cow shit. Something between chicken shit and the eviscerated intestines of a deer brought down by a lion and then left to rot. He saw the young soldier gag.
The largest of the two, the one that carried a club with it, sneezed. He was a brute with faded, whitish scars riddled over his body and a fresher, jagged, red one running from the middle of his forehead, through his bushy, disheveled, black eyebrows, along the corner of one beady, yellow-black eye, and down his cheek. Black and gray phlegm spewed from its nose and collected at Bu’s feet. A stench even worse than its body odor poured from its open mouth. The young soldier vomited.
He noticed the other troll lingered back, favoring its left arm as it leaned upon its fists. Bu pushed past the first one, moving it with his elbow and stood before the other one. It looked away, like a beaten dog, while Bu inspected it. A deep gash seeped puss and blood from its shoulder, just where the muscles of its neck met the joint. The wound flowed slowly, but the soldier could see that a copious amount of its old blood had already dried and dyed its gray skin a deep crimson, flaking off with its small movements.
“What happened here?” Bu asked.
“They were stronger than we anticipated, sir,” Ban Chu replied. “They were certainly trained soldiers at one point, as you had surmised, sir.”
“Clearly.” Disappointment and sarcasm riddled Bu’s voice. “So strong they killed two of my own men and severely wounded a mountain troll.”
The Lieutenant prodded the wound with the index finger of his right hand. He could see Ban Chu staring at him from the corner of his eye. Fear contorted the Corporal’s face, but Bu paid that emotion no mind. The wound on the troll’s shoulder wasn’t its only hurt. As Bu walked behind it, two stab wounds on its back were dried and cracked, along with a shallow slash across its broad chest.
“This is more than displeasing.” Bu felt a bit of his hair falling loose of the leather thong that held it back. He brushed it off his face with the back of his bloodied hand.
“And the bodies? Did the trolls feed?” Bu asked.
“They live, sir,” Ban Chu replied.
“What?” Bu hissed.
“They severely wounded one of our trolls,” Ban Chu replied, “and killed two of our men. I thought it prudent to retreat.”
“My men,” Bu corrected as he felt rage rise up in his chest.
“Two men severely wounded a troll and killed two of my men,” Bu said, “men I personally trained and you . . . you ran away.”
“They knew how to fight, sir,” Ban Chu replied. His voice sounded pleading almost.
Bu again inspected the troll’s wound while his Corporal spoke. He knew what the soldier was about to admit. He was ready for it, as much as it pained him to hear, as much as it disappointed him. Who was he fooling? It enraged him, made him want to take the Corporal’s head with a single swing of his long sword. Perhaps that was why he jabbed his finger deep into the cut on the troll’s shoulder. His finger went knuckle deep and still had farther to go. The creature screamed and snarled and snapped at Bu’s arm. The Lieutenant pulled his hand back quick enough to avoid the attack and in the same instant unsheathed his steel and slammed it into the same laceration, clear to its cross guard.
Through it all, Bu’s expression never changed. No emotion.
He stared at the gray lump of stinking flesh huddled before him, its foul blood dripping slowly from the blade of his sword. He wiped the filth off on the skin of the dead troll, cleaned what little stubborn bit clung to the steel with a rag he always kept in his belt pouch, and sheathed the long sword. That would have to appease his want for Ban Chu’s head. Ban Chu was a good soldier. It would take much more than this to make Bu actually kill him.
Bu looked at the other troll. He could feel it staring. It caught his gaze and looked away.
“The General will not be pleased by this. Go back to camp,” Bu commanded. “Take the men and troll with you.”
Corporal Ban Chu stood and bowed quickly. “Yes, sir. And that troll?”
Bu looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“The dead one, sir?” Ban Chu clarified.
“What of it?” Bu asked.
“What shall we do with it?” Ban Chu asked.
“What would you have me do with it?” Bu’s voice was hard and impatient, and he was immediately angry with himself. Emotion equaled weakness. The General’s voice would be more even, it would have remained steady and calm. Stern, but calm.
“Leave it,” he concluded. “Leave it to the wolves and squirrels and beetles and worms.”
“As you wish, sir,” Ban Chu replied.
The Corporal commanded the other seven men to stand, and he marched them back into the dense woods towards their camp, only two miles away. The troll followed at a distance, never looking at Bu, and sniffing at its dead companion as it passed it. The clouds and tall trees shadowed the soldiers and the surviving beast, despite the day being just past noon, and Bu lost sight of them within a few moments.
The soldier looked down at the dead troll.
“Despite all that muscle and your stench and your great girth and height, you were still weak.”
Chapter 8
KEHL WALKED TWENTY PACES AHEAD of his men, ignoring the low hanging branches that slapped him in the face as he went. A thick, white line of sweat stiffened the edge of his cloak’s hood, and new sweat darkened the black wool around his shoulders and neck. He scratched his nails along his cheeks and through his beard, now curling into tight kinks. He hadn’t cared to shave daily or straighten the hair with oil as he normally did.
Kehl held his curved sword tightly in his left hand, not caring to use it—there was nothing to kill, and he cared not for the foliage in his way. He just held it, his knuckles growing white and bloodless, hurting he held it so tight. He ignored the pain, refused to feel it. He felt numb, his own breathing sounding shallow and distant, his vision narrowed and tunneled. Everything happened at a distance. He heard things as if they were aloof shouts down some unending channel. Smells were bland, washed out. Tastes were plain, weak, mildly putrid, and touches merely a breath of soft wind, nothing.
He stopped when someone grabbed his arm. In one movement, he plunged his sword hilt-deep into the man’s belly, and when he looked up, he stared into Kaysin’s dying eyes. The man had come to Háthgolthane with him, they had grown up t
ogether and shared beds as young boys, japes and jokes as youths, and women as men.
Kaysin’s eyes asked the same question Kehl asked.
“Why did you think you could touch me?” Kehl asked. “I am Im’Ka’Da.”
Stupid fool thought Kehl as he spat. He looked into those eyes again and saw hurt, disappointment, and sadness. There was no fear, no anger . . . only death. He slid from Kehl’s sword to the ground, and the slaver said a quick prayer for the man.
“I commit you to Sha’Sûn,” Kehl said. “I give you to his Sun Army where you may bask in the desert oasis, away from this cursed land of sickly whores and blue-eyed cunts. There, you will live eternity in honor as you fight for Sha’Sûn.”
Whatever remorse or guilt Kehl felt for killing the man went away after he had finished praying. It was more than the man deserved, even if he was one of Kehl’s companions and friends. Kehl looked up, through the branches of elm and oak. Noon? No, past noon. Wisps of cloud intermittently darkened the already gloomy forest.
“Kellen better have supper ready,” Kehl muttered. He looked down at Kaysin, curled around his feet in death like a beaten dog. “When we get back to camp, I will kill a younger slave, one of the children. It will make me feel better, and perhaps it will appease Ner’Galgal.”
He looked to the sky again, then back to the body. He could already see flies buzzing around a pool of blood, beetles crawling on the man, ready to burrow into his flesh.
“Sha’Sûn works quickly. It has been a long time since I have sacrificed anything to you, my Lord of the Sun,” Kehl said. “Is that why you allowed my brother to die? Is that my punishment for my lack of piety?”
As the murmuring behind him grew, Kehl kept walking.
“I will rectify my wrong. Even if it takes the sacrifices of all the prisoners,” Kehl said.
His men would be unhappy. His prisoners—their prisoners—would fetch a high price in Saman.
“But Sha’Sûn and Ner’Galgal care not for money,” Kehl said to himself. “They care only for blood. The bodies of warriors are the currency of Sha’Sûn and blood is the currency of Ner’Galgal.”
Kehl thought he saw his camp through the low-hanging branches of several old and gnarled elm trees, one tilting so badly, he suspected it might uproot with a strong gust of wind. The thought of a hot supper and spiced wine, a woman—the young gypsy woman he captured, perhaps only a year past her flowering—and a blood sacrifice moved his feet faster and his men fell farther and farther behind him. He pushed past bushes and branches, again ignoring the scratches they brought to his face.
That little gypsy bitch might struggle at first—they always did, especially that young—but that was half the fun, the excitement, the arousal. Then she would relent, and that proved sweeter than any struggle. The look in her eyes as she understood her fate and accepted it, the same look a wild horse gave a man the moment he broke it. Her brown eyes, her olive skin, the tight, black ringlets of her hair, they reminded him of the women back home. His blood boiled, his face blushed, his palms sweated, his heart quickened. He wiped a bit of spittle from his smiling lips with the back of his left hand.
Kehl saw a fire, its faint glow poking through the darkness of the forest. He almost ran. He was close. It was there. He could taste roast meat, the wine, the gypsy’s skin. Just there. A few more steps. The fire was just there. The sound of men talking, joking, and laughing. The flute and harp. He was almost there. A few more steps. Past that tree and the next. Through this bush. He could hear his brother’s voice throwing japes at their prisoners. Kehl laughed. A few more steps. The warmth of the fire hit his face. His mouth watered. His muscles tensed. His eyes widened. He pushed aside a branch and . . .
An old fire glowed somberly, tiny flames holding on to their last bit of life. A broken spit and overturned kettle lay next to it. A dead man, face down, next to them. What? Flies buzzed over his head. Next to a log once used as a seat, he found a head. Jossem, the Fin. Foxes and squirrels and maggots had already been at him; one of his eyeballs was gone, the fleshy parts of his cheeks gnawed to the bone, his ears torn off, his skin blackening and oozing with puss. He slowly looked around through 360 degrees, and truth dawned. Only the dead remained, and there was not a single slave in sight.
“Ner’Galgal, Lord of Death, Slayer, Condemner,” Kehl prayed, “you have abandoned me, forsaken me for my insolence, my sin against you, my irreverence.”
Then Kehl found his brother—Kellen—his body and head separated. He shook as a shiver trembled through his body. He knelt beside the head and picked it up. Despite the maggots and rot, he kissed its face and held it to his chest as a mother might hold her newborn babe. He looked to the sky and wanted to cry out, ask why. But he knew why.
“I will burn your body, brother,” Kehl said. “You, I will give to Sha’Sûn as well. You were always good and loyal, and the god of the sun will welcome you into his shining halls.”
He looked about the rest of the camp, all who had once followed him were dead.
“The rest of you I will bury face down,” Kehl continued. “I will give you to The Slayer so that he might feast on your bodies every night. That will be your punishment for failing me and my brothers.”
He spat. But then he remembered it was his failure, his lack of piety. He would still bury his fallen men face down and give them to Ner’Galgal, but he would have to atone for his sins as well. Kehl knew his surviving men stood at the edge of the encampment, watching as he built a pyre out of the broken pieces of cages and wagons.
“What do we do, Kehl?” one of his men finally asked.
Kehl didn’t answer for a long time, not until he finished Kellen’s burial fire.
“Count the number of dead, excluding my brother,” Kehl commanded. “Once you have done that, dig that many graves, but do not put bodies in them. Then, I want you to dig five more graves.”
His men obeyed. He could taste their apprehension, but they did as he asked without a word. When they finished the graves, Kehl carried his brother’s body to the pyre and placed his head where it should have lain had it not been excised from his body.
“Sha’Sûn,” Kehl quietly prayed, “I pray you welcome my brother to your holy place. Nan’Sin, goddess of the night and the stars and the moon, I pray you show my brother the way to the sun god’s shining halls. And Ner’Galgal, I pray that you stay your hand from my brother’s body as he makes his journey.”
He put a torch to the pyre and it blazed, the wood crackling and the hair and skin smoking with putrid incense. For the other dead men, he commanded his slavers to drag their bodies to the edges of their graves. Before they threw their bodies in, he pissed in each grave, spat, and said a silent curse.
“May The Slayer and his minions feast on your body for all eternity,” Kehl cursed, “and may you know endless sorrow, pain, and suffering.”
“Wha’ ’bout these other graves, Kehl?” one man, Gilga, asked.
Kehl didn’t answer his question, but instead barked orders.
“Gilga, Zima, Hiskos, Pierce, and Mika, you stay with me.”
He looked to his men. He only had ten left. It would be a costly sacrifice, but that’s what The Slayer wanted, needed, required. His sacrifice would appease Ner’Galgal, and he would then bless him.
“The rest of you, spread out, through the forest. If the men who did this are still near, I want them,” Kehl commanded, “alive.”
“With only five men?” a man named Len asked, but before any more questions could come, Kehl backhanded the man.
“Just do it,” he hissed.
As the men he had sent away dispersed into the forest, he gathered his remaining five to him. Kehl retrieved a wineskin from his belt and passed it to the others.
“Take and drink,” Kehl said. “You are thirsty, and you have served me well.”
Each man took a hearty draught and passed the skin to the next.
“I pray to you, Slayer, that my sacrifice will be pleasing and wash awa
y my transgressions,” Kehl prayed in his native language.
His five men lay dead at his feet within only a matter of moments. The poison, venom from the black adder, worked quickly. It was painless, silent. Kehl moved quickly, disemboweling the men, setting their entrails to flame, and then burying the bodies in the five, empty graves. The others would be back soon, and empty-handed.
“Where are the others?” Len asked. Kehl knew Pierce was his friend. He had seen them conversing and sleeping next to one another just the night before.
A’Uthma, another Samanian, but not one who had originally traveled to Háthgolthane with Kehl as Kaysin had, looked at the pyre and smelled the burning bile. The Samanian looked at the five graves, empty when they had left, now filled.
“Ner’Galgal will be pleased,” he said. The others didn’t understand.
“Let us hope so,” Kehl replied. “That is my prayer.”
“They are facing skyward?” A’Uthma asked.
Kehl nodded.
“And you said the blessing?” A’Uthma added.
“Of course.” Kehl hoped his smile didn’t look childish. He cared little to learn about this man, A’Uthma, but it pleased him he worshipped the same god.
“They will serve The Slayer’s army well,” A’Uthma said. Then he spat in the direction of the other dead, the ones they buried facedown. “And they will suffer the cannibalism of The Slayer’s army every night. Ner’Galgal will bless us with treasure worth three times the worth of these men.”
Kehl nodded. “And men fivefold and slaves tenfold.”
“What the bloody four furnaces are you bloody talking about?” Len said, raising his voice. “Where, by all the gods, are Pierce and the others?”
Before Kehl could say anything, before his curse left his mouth, A’Uthma opened his.
“You will cease to speak to your master in that tone, you fatherless dog,” the Samanian cursed, “or you will find out what happened to your friend.”
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