“That was loud,” Aaron said.
Peter nodded.
They hoisted the girls first. Peter followed, and as his king reached the top of the chute, Aaron still stared at the hole they had come through, searching for any movement.
With a snarl, he leapt up, grabbed the rung, and pulled himself up. He climbed quickly, and when he reached the top of the chute, he dropped the grate closed.
“We may have to flee quickly. We should keep the grate open,” Fora said.
“No,” Aaron said. “It stays closed.”
Peter nodded, and they turned to gaze at the castle surrounding them. The entire structure seemed to be crumbling to rot and dust. Aaron looked at the splintered door to the main body of the building, and he felt an uneasy feeling rise up around him.
“Spell casters,” Aaron said.
Jordai turned to him, quizzical.
“They were outlander spell casters. Our people do not know their wiles. There are no wizards or witches on our mountain,” Aaron said.
“What are you thinking, Aaron?” Peter said.
“We have no idea what we were facing back there. If there are more of them or if they accomplished something we cannot understand.”
“We need to get inside,” Peter said. “We will find a place to sleep and eat, and then in the morning, we will be upon our way. We can’t stay here.”
“What if they did something to us?” Aaron said. “What if they won and we only think we are safe here?”
“As I see it, we have no options,” Peter said. “Jordai?”
“No matter if Aaron is right or not, we have nothing but what is in front of us. We need to make it to the building.”
Peter nodded, and they walked in.
Moonlight slipped in every chance it had to light the rooms in random and startling ways. The roofs, the walls, the floors, and the windows all seemed to be decaying around them and through the chinks of the wounds of age and rot, the light was slowly giving up the building’s secrets.
They walked into a grand dining hall, and Jordai pulled back. Aaron looked in, seeing twenty people at least sitting at the table, some holding goblets to their mouths. Others sitting with bread in their hands. They all seemed to be eating, but none of them moved.
Peter motioned to either side of the door, and Aaron went right, and Jordai left. They clung to the shadows of the room, getting into place silently before Peter stepped out bold and unapologetic. He stepped right out to the table.
“I am Peter Redfist. I would hear your name and title.” He walked to the table and waved them in after a moment’s pause.
Aaron neared. Each body here was emaciated and covered in rich clothing, dry, rotted, and crumbling to dust around them. Everybody was wrapped tightly in linens that had soured to a yellow color of snot, and the skin visible below these bandages was black and tough.
Peter pulled his sword, and they moved on.
The girls were leading them now. Bold and unafraid, they moved through the halls and the doors.
Aaron heard mumbling up ahead, and he touched Peter’s shoulder. The king turned his way as Fora disappeared through a door in the direction of the sound.
“She is going,” Aaron said.
Peter turned “Fora,” he hissed, but she was gone. Jordai fought to hold Cruckala back, but she slipped him and entered the room.
Peter and Jordai went after them, and Aaron followed. They walked into a room, large and dark, and in the middle of the room, huddled in shadows crouched down close to the floor, Aaron saw both girls. Peter neared them both before the room was set ablaze by light along the walls, and Aaron could see they were not alone.
All around the edges of the room stood vile looking women of all sorts. Twisted and curled with age and rot, they all hissed and cackled as they spoke. Peter grabbed at Fora’s shoulder, and the girl stood, taller now than any girl her age should be, wearing a long lace dress of black and failing lace. Her hair was black now and covered in soot. Cruckala pulled her blade, and with a swipe, sliced Jordai across the forearm.
She smacked the wound, leaving behind a thick green paste. Jordai dropped to the ground immediately. He screamed, and Aaron went to Peter’s side. The woman now looming over Peter held the king’s gaze fast with eyes that seemed too immense for the face they sat. Eyes that dripped a viscous fluid as the woman cried out in laughter and hilarity.
Peter fought to grab his sword, but his hands seemed to trail a sticky material. Soon tendrils of muck gripped his hands leading to his waist. Strands of some sort of muck pulled tight to him, and soon his arms pulled towards his waist. Within a breath, Peter’s arms were stuck to his sides.
Aaron screamed in his rage and charged the tall figure closest to his king, but she threw dust in the air, and as he inhaled the powder, he felt his chest go tight. Soon his arms dripped like hot wax off his body and he fell to the ground. His hands slowly melted as he watched, unable to move, unable to fight or get to Peter.
The Nation of Three was caught.
He woke frantic, flexing his fingers, finding them still on him and strong. Aaron began to panic when he felt their hands on his flesh. He was naked and bound to a pole. The wind of the night was cold, and it stung his skin as they smeared his body with oils and muds. He looked at the gnarled and twisted faces of the women around him, and he fought for bravery. He fought for a measured calm. But this was all a thing he did not understand. This was outlander magic. This was a sort of power he had never witnessed, and he had no inkling of what to expect from these women.
As they smeared his body, they chanted words, but nothing that made any sense. The chants were a pile of oozing words that slipped and slapped in the air. They were accented every now and then by a curdling cry or zeal. By a rattle being shaken in his face, or by yellowed eyes glaring at him from under ratted hair.
When Aaron was so scared he felt as if he would weep in his weakness, he saw an obese woman step forward with a fist filled with green powder. She opened her claw-like hand and blew the dust straight into his face.
The effect was instantaneous. Aaron’s vision shuddered. The world blurred in his eyes and his hearing slammed down like a fist, hard and violent, to leave only a ringing. He felt as if his body was being pulled and stretched. He leaned as far away as he could from the pole he was bound to, and he looked into the face of the obese witch. He roared.
He could not hear it. It hit his ears like a muffled bray, but the witches heard it. They turned from their work and the fire they were dancing around, and they stared at him. Aaron looked past the fires to see two more poles rammed into the roof of this building. To one they had bound Jordai, to the other Peter. Both men were naked, and greases and fats were being applied to their bodies. Around the great bonfire, horrid images of women danced and shook. They spasmed, and their bodies jerked wildly. They were also naked, their long filthy hair flashing in greasy cords around their heads.
From within the fire, Aaron saw something rising. It had a horned head, black gleaming skin, and it wore the face of a feral man, but Aaron knew better. No this had to be a demon. As it rose, the witches screamed and turned as one. They dropped to their knees before the fire, pounded their fists on the rooftop, and clawed at their faces and hair.
“Choose one to speak for you,” the demon said. Its voice was the sound of children’s fear. It was the sound of the innocent dying. Its voice was an insane thing within the asylum of the mad.
A tall, thin woman still clothed, with no hair and tattoos on her scalp, stood. She cut her hand and lashed the blood in the direction of the fire. Aaron heard it hiss and boil and the demon grinned in ecstasy.
“I will speak for the coven of Snake and Bile.”
“Why summon me to this land I do not reign in? What have you to ask of me?”
“Did you receive our sacrifices?” the woman said. Her voice was pure honey being licked off a bloated corpse.
“I received the fingers of Asct, the breast of Teha and the
face of Kepot. Then just as fast, I received the soul of the three hags and a fourth. Brlis daughter of the coil. I received these gifts and was glad of them. The Snake and the Bile has cut itself deep tonight. Your sacrifices I approve of. They gave me much pleasure.”
“We have these boys. All virgin and all young,” the witch said. “With these sacrifices added to the burden we have felt tonight, we ask for your might to call up our god.”
“Young boys?” The demon looked around at the three poles, and he shook his head. “These are no boys. Nothing of boy lives housed in any of these men. How old are you, boy?” the demon said to Aaron.
“You will talk to me,” Peter said. The demon spun to hiss, and from its wrist, it flicked a flaming whip with nine wickedly barbed lashes. The demon stared at Peter before its eyes grew wide and it shook its head. Its head spun to Aaron, then to Jordai, and it seemed to pull back and diminish.
“Redfist, Bane of Hac-Jahoo, I see you. I know what you are.”
“Who am I talking to?” Peter asked. In the distance, Aaron heard a rumbling of thunder, though he saw no flash of lightning before it.
“Why would I tell you my name?” the demon said.
“Well then, what lord do you work for?”
“My lord of Hell is Palp of Mischief and Hate.”
“I want no war with your lord. But I will bring war to his doorstep if my men are harmed,” Peter said. “There are no obstacles of Hell that will save him from my wrath and my blade.”
A witch stood and spun, slapping Peter across the face and clawing it with her ragged fingernails.
“How did you ensnare them?” the demon asked.
“Our coven wears a charm that entrances any that behold us, showing them the one figure they love the most,” the tall woman said. “They fell prey to our charm.”
“But they interrupted the spell, did they not?”
“They did. They killed our four sisters.”
“Killed four?” The demon turned to face Peter, “Who did you see?”
“I saw my intended. I saw Fora Flurryfist.”
“You,” the demon said, stabbing a finger at Jordai.
“I saw the girl with the wooden sword. Though when I heard the name I was given, it did not ring true to my heart.”
“You there, the foul one.” The demon pointed at Aaron. “Whose face did you gaze upon when you saw the witch of this coven?”
“I saw no face I knew. Just a twisted whore of a demon master,” Aaron said. The witched hissed and snarled, and Aaron snarled at them back.
“Then you have no love in your heart, is this true?”
Aaron suddenly couldn’t breathe. He looked at Peter, whose face was calm and accepting. He looked at Jordai, whose face was filled with pity. And Aaron sneered at both of them.
“It does not require love to serve. And I know only service to this one man,” Aaron said. He looked at Peter.
“I do not want a war with these boys,” the demon said. “I will not accept them as gifts. But you have earned my favor, so what is it that you ask?”
“We serve the might of Ranct-dep-tamet. We want his soul returned to us.”
“You want life for your master with these paltry gifts?” The demon spat. “Bah, these sacrifices will not bring his soul back for you.”
“But also we have an army. We will send them to you, and they will serve in your war.”
“What army?”
“We woke the deceased tonight. Droves of them followed us here and now walk the tunnels below this castle. You will have undead blades three thousand thick of thinking, killing beasts fit for war and mayhem. Take them, but give us back what remains of our master.”
The demon waved a hand. “At sun’s rise you will have your master back, but not his body. Ranct-dep-tamet’s body is not with us.”
“We possess him still,” the tall woman said. She waved her hand left, and Aaron turned to gaze upon the thing they loved so greatly.
Bound to the wall of the castle stood a mammoth man easily fifteen feet tall with sickly arms and body. He, as well, was wrapped in yellowing bandages, and his head lobbed to the side as if lifeless. He looked not but an emaciated shell of a thing once great, and the demon spun once, looked at Peter then dropped back into the coals of the flame.
The coven of Snake and Bile raised their withered arms, flashing above their heads as they danced and howled in victory.
Aaron saw the flash that time, and the sky lit up bold and horrible. With the thunderous splitting of the sky, the rain dropped onto them.
Every witch pulled on torn and blackened gowns and shawls as the gray rain pounded on them. They were made naught but ragged hags and they shuffled to the emaciated beast and stroked it as they walked for the door back into the castle.
When they were gone, Peter looked at both Aaron and Jordai, and he shouted over the cacophonous peel of another roaring thunder.
“That thing will eat us or worse when it wakes,” Peter said. “We need to get out of here before sunrise.”
Aaron nodded, but he held no hope in his heart for anything that might save them.
Aaron had given up on hope a long time ago.
“Wake, boy!” Aaron heard as an ice-cold blade passed through his skin and seared him out of his sleep. The sky was lightening, and Aaron’s eyes took a bit of time to focus on the face before him. Through the light rain, he saw his father floating a bit off the roof to hover at Aaron’s eye level.
“You have to get me out of this nation,” the specter said. “I can’t be here.”
Aaron hissed and turned away.
“I heard the coven talking. They have sensed me and will bind me into service to the devilish fiend that showed itself last night. They will lock me in Hell’s army.” The face of his father was contorted in terrible fear. “I can’t be a slave to the demons of Hell.”
“You come to me begging for your freedom now? After I have slaughtered you and brought you to ruin. Do you think I will help you? Do you think I care what happens to your soul?” Aaron snapped.
“When I was alive, I saw you as foul, but I never wanted you dead. You are my seed, no matter what that means, and I want you to live.”
Aaron looked at the ghost of his father only noticing then that the man had taken on a different image. Where he had once been ethereal, he now seemed more corporeal. Aaron had a hard time seeing through his father as he always had before. Aaron could see color and detail in his father’s hair that he hadn’t seen since his father died. The air of the nation of Eloo seemed to be giving his father’s ghost strength he never before possessed. This thought passed through Aaron spurring fear and rage. He looked at his father and snarled.
“You are more than you once were. You grow in strength.”
His father stroked Aaron’s face, and Aaron felt a shot of ice cold air hit him at the spot. “I can feel your hot skin under my touch. Never have I been able to do that before.” The specter shook its head. “I can—” the thing shuddered.
“Just how strong are you?” Aaron asked.
“I have no way of knowing.”
“If you can touch me, you can touch other things. Try to lift one of those dead coals.”
His father drifted back. His legs slipped through the roof as the ghostly hands gripped a charred piece of wood. His father groaned and strained and slowly lifted the coal from the dead fire. It seemed to come at great effort from the pile of wet ash, but it did come, rising slowly but steady.
“My king!” Aaron yelled. “Wake, we have hope.”
Peter’s and Jordai’s eyes popped open, and they stared in horror at the central fire.
“Is that him?” Jordai said.
“You can see him?” Aaron asked.
“A naked man slit at the throat and destroyed at the crotch,” Peter said. “I can see him perfectly. How is that possible?”
“This land is giving him power he has not had.”
Peter’s eyes went to the coal in his father’s h
and, and he nodded grimly. “You will go to the weapons and retrieve my sword,” he said to Aaron’s father.
The ghost dropped the coal and turned to face Peter.
“Why would I aid a sworn enemy?” he said. “My goal is to get my son out of here. My goal is to leave you and your foul Stonefist behind. You have spoken an oath to eradicate me at first chance. Why would I free you?”
“Then free your son. Let him leave us here to our fate,” Peter said. “Aaron, you will go to the Mountain and aid your people, you will—”
“Leave you here to die or worse?” Aaron asked. “That is not a thing I am capable of. My fate is bound to yours. I am not leaving you here. I would rather die.”
Jordai looked at the sky around them and shook his head. “We have no time to argue about this. The sky lightens, soon this beast will wake and then we have no hope. Find a compromise or seal our fate.”
“There will be no compromise. Find a blade and cut me loose,” Aaron said to his father. He looked to Peter and Jordai. “I will free us all.”
Aaron’s father snarled, but he drifted off.
The Nation of Three could do nothing but stare at the sky and watch as the sun slowly turned the world a deep shade of purple. Aaron knew that with the pall that covered the land of Rott and Cur, the sun was indeed much higher on the horizon than could be estimated. He watched with a raging heart as the light grew and he shook his head and cursed.
“He will not reach us in time,” Aaron said. He looked at Jordai seeing the man as if for the first time. “You served with me. You fought beside me. The things we have done to this point lay on my heart now, and I see that I have been a fool.”
“Aaron, don’t,” Jordai said.
“No, I must say this. You are the only one that understands me. You are the only man that sees what my life is about, for you have fixed yours to the same goal. We serve the Redfist as one. We fight and die as brothers.” Aaron felt tears coming, and he did not try to fight them back. His voice cracked as his throat threatened to close and he managed, “I mark you as brother. Please forgive my maltreatment of you. When we meet in the Great Hall of our afterlife, please sit and drink with me.”
Blackest Knights Page 24
