Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1) (3 page)

“We should find some of that wine you spoke of,” Thushar suggested. “Even goatherds must appreciate revelry.”

After he snugged into a black-scaled tabard, the big Prythian strapped Rathe into a breastplate of boiled leather, its chest emblazoned with a golden image of Ahnok. As they made ready, the crack of the scourge and the subsequent howl of pain floated over the conquered village.

“If ever there was a time to get good and drunk,” Rathe said, struggling to sound enthusiastic, “it’s now.”

“We should also feast the men after sundown,” Thushar hinted. “As you said, it has been a long, wearying expedition.”

“Just so,” Rathe agreed, buckling his sword belt. Already, sweat coated his ribs and chest, but as with the weight of the breastplate, it felt right to him. Despite his discontent with the king’s standing orders—and, more, his part in carrying out those commands—arms and armor made him feel whole, his purpose true. He did not crave the death and bloodshed that came with war, but when those things found him, he prevailed.

The last thing he retrieved was his bronze helmet fashioned into the head of Ahnok. A layer of dust dulled its gleam, and a smear of blood festooned one side. The woman who had left that maroon print had tried to take off his head with a cleaver, bare heartbeats after he had cut down the man he supposed was her husband. Rathe left the blood as a reminder to himself and his men that this day he had taken lives, innocent or not, the same as them.

Turning back to his sergeants, he commanded with forced joviality, “When you are finished primping, gather men to help in the search. If the queen or her lords have hidden anything hereabouts of worth or threat to Cerrikoth, I want it found before nightfall. We leave on the morrow.”

Nods of agreement met his orders, but quizzical expressions seemed to ponder the necessity of haste. Ofttimes, the company would spend a day looting the choicest plunder, before venturing off on another mission.

To that unvoiced question, Rathe said, “This place reeks of the blood of cowards.” The village did not reek of cowards, only blood. A thought occurred to him then, an answer to his troubles. “To keep our skill and honor, we will seek out
worthy
foes—Qairennor patrols have been denied us too long.”
And in so doing, I will discover if the fight has fled from my heart, or if I have only grown weary of mindless, disgraceful slaughter.

The questioning looks vanished, and the sergeants cheered the coming challenge. They would follow the king’s orders to sack helpless villages, but a side mission to test their might and courage against a formidable enemy would serve as a welcome test.

If I have my way,
Rathe thought,
there will be no more villages.
Going against the king might mean his head on a spike, but he would sleep easier between now and the day the headsman’s axe fell.

Chapter 3

R
athe led Thushar toward the village green and the torturer performing his bloody work before an audience of threescore prisoners. Thushar held silent until they turned down a shadowed alley. One huge hand fell on Rathe’s shoulder. “As a friend,” Thushar began, “I offer you a word of advice.”

Rathe shot him a curious look. “As you will.”

“Each of us have our dislikes,” Thushar went on mildly, “things we loathe. Me, it’s razing a town, even if filled with enemies. There can be no greater waste.”

Rathe gazed deep into his friend’s eyes, silently demanding answers he would never receive.
What of the women who plead for the lives of their children, before the falling blade silences them? What of the boys who have yet to fill their hands with the hilt of a sword, or to draw an arrow and fire it in anger—do you dislike wasting
their
lives as much as burning a village?

Aloud, Rathe said, “I have no stomach for slaying lowborn armed with shepherds’ crooks and crofters’ hoes. I long to fight warriors that test my strength and wits. Such battles make men of boys, and heroes of men.”

“Just so,” Thushar said. “But we have sworn the oaths of allegiance to King Tazzim. To betray that loyalty is to betray the god we serve. As such, I keep my mouth shut about what I dislike—as should we all, until our time of soldiering has passed, or until we have been called home to sit at the feet of Ahnok.”

“Should we hold our tongues even when dishonored by orders to raid and pillage, like a band of godless plainsmen?”

“You command the Ghosts of Ahnok,” Thushar said. “You
know
the answer to that question, better than most. If you have forgotten, brother, then the answer you seek is
yes
. We do as the king commands. If we do not, who can blame the loyal warrior for turning on his treacherous commander?”

Rathe understood that warning well enough, and thought to mollify his friend. His war of conscience was his to bear, not Thushar’s, and he had already made his decision to fight warriors, not villagers. “As I said earlier, I am weary in my bones. It’s long past our time to be relieved.”

“I agree, brother, but promise you will be more careful.”

“Is there a reason I should, beyond your liking of my head’s current placement upon my neck,” Rathe asked, smiling.

Thushar did not rise to the jest. Instead, he pitched his voice low. “
Girod
. He is bastard-born, true, but carries in his veins the blood of nobility. If there is gain in it, he will not hesitate to report anyone he imagines is a traitor—even you, Scorpion.”

Rathe offered a sober nod. “I promise, Thushar, to be more careful. Like you, I mistrust him. He looks and acts the dullard, but his eyes are too knowing by far. Still, I cannot believe he is anything besides a nuisance foisted upon the Ghosts by his father, Lord Osaant.”

At another drawn-out scream, they resumed their approach to the green. Unpleasant as Rathe found his current mission, it must be finished, as all his former missions over the last twelve years had been.

Twelve years….
A finger of melancholy touched him as he envisaged the boy he had been when the wizened Captain Nariq had placed a spear into his hands … hands that had never held anything more dangerous than a hoe in the ten years after his birth. After a year of training to become a legionnaire, blood, strife and death had come to define him and his purpose. Without hesitation, with unmatched skill, he had performed countless deeds, both heroic and heinous. As reward, he had risen quickly through the ranks. To the minds of some, he had heard whispered, his rise had been too quick.

Twelve years, barely a third of the time he needed to serve in the king’s army before rising to commander, the highest rank a Cerrikothian commoner could hope to gain. Gain it he would, and far younger than most. Perhaps then he would have influence enough to gain King Tazzim’s ear, and turn him to battles worth fighting. It was a hope—thin, perhaps, but a hope all the same.

Before they reached the village green, Thushar covered his nose to block the cloying reek of blood and spilled innards. “By all the gods, it’s always worse when the sun is high.”

Flies swarmed as they stepped from shadow into stark daylight. Rathe steeled himself for what waited, but it was no use. His gorge rose at the sight of what he himself had ordered done. He had seen it all before, in one village or another, but this day the sight left him reeling.

At every sacked village, Rathe commanded the planting of a rough-hewn, ten-foot cedar pole within sight of the captured villagers. After a year, bloodstains gone to black streaked the pole’s length. By the pile off to one side, he judged that three men had died hanging by their wrists, their ruined flesh giving up every drop of life’s blood to the close-cropped grass under their dangling feet. The flyblown corpses looked like shredded bags of meat.

Kneeling shamed and naked, hands bound at the small of their backs, the villagers watched the tortures from one side of the green. A handful of laughing soldiers guarded them, untouched by the brutality.

“This is close enough,” Rathe said, barely keeping iron in his voice. He told himself again that this barbarity must be done for the Kingdom of Cerrikoth and King Tazzim. As a Ghost of Ahnok, it was his duty.

“After a proper bath, I would hate to get all bloody again,” Thushar muttered, misunderstanding Rathe’s order.

Legionnaire Pellos, another Prythian giant, had stripped to the waist to better swing his scourge. Unlike Thushar, Pellos kept to the grooming traditions of his homelands, choosing to wear his black beard fashioned into a pair of thick braids held taut by heavy brass rings. Fresh spatters of crimson covered him from toe to crown, overlaying drops of dried blood that had flown from the torn flesh his previous victims.

“Tell me, little man,” Pellos urged with sinister kindness, “where does your queen keep her gold. Tell me … and all this can end. I will even hold off my brothers from ravishing your womenfolk. Wouldn’t that be fine?”

The villager eyed his family and friends, then looked back to the massive Prythian. His lips peeled back in a terrible grin, and dried blood cracked and fell off in flakes. A disturbing chortle spilled from his throat. “Gods curse your snake’s heart!”

“Hmm,” Pellos rumbled, lifting the waterskin hanging from his studded leather sword belt. He poured a few swallows into his open mouth, swished it around, and spat it on the prisoner. The man laughed and wept in the same breath. Pellos silenced him with a blinding fist to the ribs. Rathe grimaced at the crack of breaking bones, a sound akin to green saplings snapped over a knee.
I should halt this farce,
he told himself, but his wavering sense of duty held him fast.

Pellos took another long drink, letting half the water spill over his broad, hairy chest. Rivulets of pink-stained water pattered around his boots. With a satisfied smacking of his lips, he thumbed the cork back into the waterskin and dropped it to dangle from its strap. The prisoner watched the waterskin swing, and missed the sidearm stroke that slashed the scourge across his face. Leather tongues embedded with sharp metal teeth tore the man’s cheek, nose, and one eye to ribbons. A thin whimper squeezed past his gritted teeth, but he did not cry out.

Calm as ever, Pellos asked again, “Where is your master’s gold? What foul rites does your witch-queen demand of you? Where are you hiding the Qairennor soldiers, those who dare not show themselves, even to defend their own smallfolk?”

“Leave him alone, demon!” a young woman wailed.

The prisoner’s remaining eye widened at the desperate plea, and he shook his head before he noticed Pellos’s unfriendly grin. “If your pain is not enough to loosen your tongue, little man, perhaps hers is. Is she your sister, a cousin …
your lover?
”

The prisoner squeezed shut his remaining eye, refusing to answer. Pellos motioned to Legionnaire Noor, a golden-haired Prythian with a comely face and icy blue eyes. “Give her a taste of your spear, Noor,” Pellos invited, chuckling wickedly.

Noor nodded and came forward. The woman cowered away from him, perhaps thinking he meant to run his spear through her heart. Instead, he stabbed it into the ground between them, for the spear Pellos spoke of was a different weapon altogether.

Rathe’s teeth ground together, knowing what was about to happen.
End this … before it is too late.
The thought was his own, but the sentiment seemed foreign in his mind.
Too late for what … the girl, or something else?

The prisoner opened his eye, saw what was afoot, and began thrashing. Pellos stunned him with a backhand. Snatching a handful of hair, he dragged the man’s head up. “Watch, little man, and maybe you will learn a trick or two.”

“Cut her bonds and hold her,” Noor said to a pair of his companions, yanking off his tabard and hanging it on the butt of his spear.

Two legionnaires freed the girl’s wrists and threw her to the ground. Before she could move, each man took an arm and a leg, holding her for Noor’s pleasure. She struggled in vain, sobbing.

Rathe closed his eyes. Noor would ravish her, as he had so many such girls. In the end, she would be put to the sword, so as not to breed future enemies. Her cries pierced his heart.
Stop this. For your soul, you must end it now.

The prisoner lashed to the pole began to beg for mercy. Other villagers added their voices. Noor had just hiked his breechclout to expose his manhood, when Rathe shouted, “Enough!” Thushar reached for his arm, but Rathe shook him off with a curse.

“What are you doing?” Thushar snarled. “I warned you about this. Brother, cease this madness!”

“I intend to,” Rathe said, stalking toward Noor. The soldier waited with a confused sneer twisting his lips.

Rathe had to crane his neck to lock his black eyes on Noor’s face. He raised his voice so all could hear. “From this day forth, the Ghosts of Ahnok will no longer sully themselves by raping the vanquished,” he said, with the presence of mind to offer up a reasonable excuse to deny the right of pillage. “Disobedience will earn death.”

Silence, full of brooding menace, met his words.

Noor glanced from Pellos to Thushar, then to the rest of the soldiers. Save for Rathe, all of those gathered were Prythians, a hard people more easily given to administering harsh questioning than Cerrikothians.

“Our wages are plunder, honor for our names, and all the women we want,” Noor said.

Rathe saw murder in the huge man’s implacable stare, but his voice was steady. “Plunder and honor you can have. If you wish to mount everything we conquer, then I will reassign you to the Night Walkers. Their soldiers are even granted the right to despoil boys, if they so choose.”

Noor’s face blanched. “You cannot offend me,
Scorpion
. Stand aside, and I will take what is mine.”

Rathe’s eyes went hard. “I will not tolerate—”

Noor’s blow struck like lightning, and points of light exploded before Rathe’s eyes. When he could see straight, he found himself sprawled in the grass some distance from Noor and his intended spoil, uncertain how he had come to be there.