Fire and Sword Read online

  In moments, all the candles melted and the many small fires crawled onto the shadow-cloaked desks of the monks who slept on in their pallets upstairs, and with a terrible craving the flames gorged themselves on the scriptures. Aldous looked around the room, horrified. As his horror grew, the fire grew with it.

  Riker pointed one twisted finger and squalled, “Demon, demon… Demon!” He fell to his knees and crawled toward the stairs, blinded by smoke and fear.

  Aldous, too, went down on his knees, and crawled toward Riker. “I am not a demon. This is not my doing. Please, you must believe me. I have done nothing wrong.”

  Riker fell back as Aldous drew near, and, like a crab, clawed and kicked his way backward. The fire closing in all around, he struggled to his feet, coughed on the smoke and stumbled, then regained his balance and clambered up the stairs. Riker looked over his shoulder once, the horror of a doom-stricken deer when it understands that there is no escaping the wolf etching his features.

  Aldous went after him. “Please, I’ve done nothing wrong.” It sounded more a threat than an appeal to innocence.

  They reached the main chapel, the smoke following Aldous from the basement like a gray cape. Somewhere, a bell rang. The other monks came running.

  “Flee, brothers. Flee!” Father Riker cried, in the same voice he used to preach sermons. “Aldous is a demon, a sorcerer, a fiddler of the dark arts. With nothing but his mind, he engulfed the basement and the scriptures in flame!” Despite his strong words, Riker clutched at one of the wooden pews and sagged against it as he turned toward the sound of the front doors being wrenched open. “Enter, men of the count! Enter, seekers! There is a demon within my chapel. Save me from this fiend!”

  “I am no fiend!” Aldous cried, looking from the count’s soldiers to the seekers to the priest, then back again.

  The brothers held their distance from him, and they, too, began to yell for the count’s men.

  “No, it is not true! Brothers, please.” Aldous begged for them to listen; he even began to weep. For all his feelings of wishing to leave this place, to never copy a page of scripture again, he was terrified at being cast out. This was the only home he had known since the death of his father. Yet they turned on him now without a second thought.

  “The count’s men and the seekers will have you, Aldous,” Father Riker spat. “You will burn like your father, devil. I regret the day you came to this church!”

  Aldous took a final step to Father Riker then. His terror faded and his rage escalated again into a terrible thing such as he had never known. He grabbed hold of the priest’s wrists.

  “I have done nothing wrong, and I am no devil,” he yelled in the old priest’s face, spittle flying from his mouth. “My father was no devil, and my mother was no devil!”

  Father Riker screamed in agony as Aldous’ spit burned his skin. Aldous looked down, and where he held Riker, the flesh was bubbling and boiling and bursting, the stink of burning skin and muscle heavy and thick. Flame engulfed the priest. Blood, plasma, and flesh dripped off the old man’s bones and streamed onto the floor. He screamed and he screamed as he melted in the smoldering fire that left Aldous untouched.

  Half the monks stayed and prayed for divine intervention from their absent god, and the other half ran screaming from the chapel.

  The count’s men swarmed through the door. Aldous stood, frozen in place. He felt as if he were outside himself, an observer to the nightmare of a play.

  Five men with broad blue hats and long capes marched toward him, words pouring from their lips, eyes locked on his. Aldous felt weak, terribly weak, and collapsed to his knees. He tried to stand, but he could not, and the strange words of the blue-hats turned to a chant, louder and louder. Their eyes began to glow with a deep blue fire. They stared into him; they cooled his boiling blood. He was standing on a frozen lake. He saw a flash of a woman, black hair, pale flesh, a dress of emerald green. The ice cracked beneath him and he fell through into the black, frigid abyss. He could not see as Aldous anymore. From high up and far away he watched his limp body taken. He watched as the raven.

  * * *

  “I… I… I got this for you,” said the boy.

  The girl beamed; he beamed back.

  “For me?”

  “I saw it, and… and I thought of you.”

  “Did you buy it from the market?” she asked, concerned for the cost.

  “No, I saw it in the field, outside the city. Far from here.”

  “Was it scary? Scary out there?”

  “It was at first, but then it was exciting. It was exciting and I found the flower. I found the flower that I brought back to you.” The boy blushed and looked at the floor.

  The girl puckered her lips and gave him a little kiss.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  The Foreboding Man

  The axe came down and split through helm and skull and brain like it split through dry wood. Clean, fast and with a crack.

  The axe came down and split through dry wood like it split through helm and skull and brain. Clean, fast and with a crack. Less spray and gore with the wood, but when one has split apart as many men as logs, the difference becomes marginal.

  No matter where he was, or the job he was working, Kendrick Solomon Kelmoor always saw the bodies and the blood of his past. In the mill he brought the axe down not on wood but on men, and the smell of cedar and wood dust always turned to the smell of corpses and death. The mine had been worse; the constant clinking of pick to stone was the sound of hammer to nail as it was driven into the flesh of screaming men and women, and at times, at horrible times, into screaming children as they got spiked to crosses. And no matter where he was or the job he was working, Ken never forgot who it was who had made him into a monster.

  Still worse than the mill and the mine alike had been the kitchens. The only place as frantic and wild and drunk as the battlefield was a royal kitchen. Ken was always at the fire, turning the roasted meats, and as they sizzled and popped, so did whole families burned alive in their homes, on the stake, or crawling with their guts out through the streets. They sizzled and they popped.

  Ken hadn’t lasted long in the kitchens. He hadn’t lasted long in the mines. And he doubted he would last much longer than his current two years at the mill, but he did what he could to reassure himself that the log he was about to split was just that. Just a log.

  What was it that he used to tell new recruits? The ones that were just past fifteen and had never killed and never wanted to. He used to tell them, “They’re nothing but rats. You and them alike are nothing but rats, but kill enough of them rats and maybe one day you can hope to become a filthy cur.” He used to say it cold and calm, right before a fight. He was cold when he fought, cold when he killed; he was cold when he walked through a village of burning corpses as the flames that charred the dead and dying to ashes licked at him and quickly retreated their tongues in fear of turning to ice. Aye, a cold bastard was he. Kendrick the Cold.

  “Oi! Ken, you been at the stump all bloody day. Have enough tinder there to warm the whole fuckin’ city, you do.” The voice of Overseer McTalish snapped Ken from his daze, his eight-hour daze. He looked over at the pile of firewood he had made and couldn’t help but be amazed at the size of it.

  “I ain’t letting you off until you’ve brought all that back to the mill. Two bloody cartloads is that, and both the mill’s horses are in town. You’ll be pulling the cart to and fro, you will.”

  “Aye, I reckon I will be,” said Ken.

  McTalish spat on the ground and walked away back toward the mill. Ten, maybe fifteen-minute walk. A fair bit longer pulling a cart of wood. McTalish was a small, pox-scarred weasel of a man, and six years ago Kendrick the Cold would not have given the man’s order a response of words, only a stone face and a quick death. He was that man no longer, though. He was a man of peace, and he told himself that over and over for the next two and a half hours as he carted the wood back to the mill. To and
fro. He told himself he was a man of peace. But the telling was easy. The believing was hard.

  * * *

  It was long past dark when Ken set out for home, but he knew Alma would still be awake, sitting by the warm hearth with a hot bowl of soup ready for him. A good lass, was Alma, a kind and sweet lass. She was more than a bit too thin and didn’t have the finest features, but Ken liked her all the same. She loved him, and that pained him, for he would not marry her. Could not. Yet she stuck by him still, despite the gossip in the town and the judging glances.

  Love made people endure, and Alma endured him, so he did the best he could to take good care of her, never to raise a hand, never to insult or belittle, and always to hold her in the night. He owed her that.

  Every night, though, as Ken made the long walk from the mill to the little town, he wondered what sweet Alma would say or do if she ever dug up the man he was from the grave of lies he’d buried himself in. What he really was. He doubted she would endure that; nor should she. There was only one woman that could ever endure that. That woman was gone. Ken closed his eyes tight and whistled a tune to take his mind from more dark thoughts. Dark thoughts had cursed his day, and he did all he could to clear his mind for the night.

  A thin stream ran all the way from the mill right down to the town. It shimmered obsidian beneath the night sky, the light of the stars and the moon making it gleam. The sound of the water running against the boulders and the stony shore soothed Ken’s mind and spirit as he walked.

  The lanterns were lit by the time Ken passed the town’s limit. In the faint orange glow he saw a black rat scurry its way across the stones. The tiny-clawed feet bustled to get away from the approaching man. He passed the tavern at the edge of town where McTalish sat drunk on the stoop. Ken gave him a wave. McTalish grunted and belched in affirmation, or perhaps he just grunted and belched.

  He reached his home near midnight. It was quiet but for the moon song of the owls and the crickets. Ken liked the little town. He liked the modest houses, the halfway-to-decent folk, and although he was not in any way a religious man, he did like the appearance of the small stone chapel with its stained glass windows and ash wood roof. It served as a centerpiece, and everyone in the town was proud of it.

  Living here was a good dream from which he did not wish to wake.

  A dog came up to Ken, wagging a fluffy tail, and Ken gave it a good scratch behind the ear before he took the final steps to his door. Every single time he got nice and close to his happy evening he got some nerves, his gut swayed, and his palms grew a tad moist. A man could bury his demons, bury them in the deepest pit of the soul, but they never stopped screaming and he could never go deaf enough to escape their sound.

  He took a deep breath and opened the door.

  There she was by the hearth, warm soup on the table, and she turned and smiled as he came in. The floor was dirt, the roof was straw, and the walls were wood. Decent wood, but definitely not stone, and the bedroom served as every room, because the house was just that, a single room. A picky man, a materialistic man, would not pay Ken’s home any compliment, but Ken didn’t give a damn about that.

  “Oh, sweet Alma, you’re a good lass. You needn’t have stayed up.” Ken had been saying that since they started living together, and that was about a year.

  “I like to fall asleep in your arms.” Alma had been responding with that for the same amount of time.

  So Ken sat down and he sipped his soup and Alma laid her head on his shoulder.

  “How was the mill? It was a long day. Much to do?” she asked.

  “Aye, much to do and much was done. So it was a good day,” he said.

  For hours, though, I thought of the sea of corpses I’ve left in my wake. I thought of the unarmed peasants I ran through with cold steel. I thought of weeping mothers as they watched husbands and sons die, then weeping as they were raped, all in the name of the Lord of Light. All that he did not say. He only sipped his soup and stroked sweet Alma’s hair, a dry ache in his eyes.

  He did not weep; he finished his soup and they crawled into bed, where he gave her his like and she gave him her love. When it was done she fell asleep in his strong arms, a little smile on her lips as she drifted off into slumber. Ken was glad he could still offer someone happiness. It was a wonderful thing to give another happiness, a wonderful thing that he felt he did not deserve to give.

  * * *

  Ken woke to the still night and heavy rain. He thought it strange, for he did not need to relieve his bladder, and he did not wake from a dream.

  There was a knocking at the door.

  He turned his head. Alma stirred at his side.

  There was a banging at the door.

  Alma rose, a little bit of fear in her eyes.

  There was a hammering at the door.

  Ken knew his happy dream was over.

  He looked for a moment at Alma. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  The door splintered open and Ken sprang from his bed. He reached a hand back to Alma, motioning for her to stay put.

  They came into his small, humble home with perfect efficiency, for kicking in the doors of villagers and committing unspeakable deeds upon them was the greatest skill of Count Salvenius’ men.

  Ten men squeezed inside, swords unsheathed, crossbows drawn back, and there was likely ten more waiting outside. Ten soldiers packed shoulder to shoulder in the single room of Ken’s home, a room that at times felt just barely big enough for he and Alma. One of the men winced as the sword of the man to his left nicked his ear, and another rearranged the aim of his crossbow so that if he were to need to loose a quarrel, it wouldn’t penetrate the back of his comrade’s skull.

  “By order of the Honorable Count Salvenius,” started the man in front, sword drawn and pointed inches from Ken’s face. Ken disagreed with that statement. The count was far from honorable. “Kendrick Solomon Kelmoor, better known as Kendrick the Cold—”

  Ken winced as Alma’s frightened sobs from behind him turned to a horrified gasp.

  “Ken?” Her voice cracked on the K, and the rest of his name was barely audible.

  “—for desertion, for treason, and the murder in cold blood of an officer, you are under arrest.” The man speaking looked a veteran, but his hand was shaking and his brow was sweating.

  Ken was naked and unarmed, yet he still knew he had a bloody good chance of killing every single one of them before he died of his wounds. He would have done so six years ago. Not now, though. If he fought them now, he would be rusty and he might lose. If that happened there would be a few survivors, and they would be enraged by the loss of brothers. In their anger they would rape sweet Alma. Ken thought about those types of things now, and so he would let them take him peacefully.

  He reached out a hand to hold on to Alma’s, to try and comfort her. She pulled her hand away and clung to herself.

  Alma’s terror wrenched hard at the empty space where his heart used to be, and that pain in his eyes ached with hell’s fury. For a moment he thought that if he spoke his knees would buckle and he would finally get to weep. He thought that the frightened men before him would have a laugh and go home saying that Kendrick the Cold was nothing but a sniveling coward.

  Kendrick stayed silent.

  “Take the woman, too,” said the man in front. “She must be put on trial for aiding a fugitive. It was the count’s orders to bring to justice anyone who appeared to aid the criminal.”

  Two men moved forward, or, rather, they inched forward as best they could in the confined space. With each little tiptoe their drawn blades shook all the more, and as the blades got closer to Ken, the men bent at the elbow and pulled the hilts toward their own bodies.

  “Stand still,” Kendrick commanded as he stood there naked, his manhood shrunken from the cold wind coming through the open door. “You will leave the woman be and I will come without a fight. Or you can try and take her and I will kill each and every one of you vermin that stands now in my house. I’ll
have a warm bath in your blood.” The threat was a low, calm statement. His eyes were tired and heavy, and he cracked his neck side to side, two deep pops when his head tilted left, a high-pitched snap when it tilted right. The men up front tried to take a step back, and the men behind pressed their flanks right up to the wall.

  “There are ten more men outside, criminal,” the man up front said, his words sure but his hand trembling.

  “They’ll be slipping on your guts as they walk through the door, you craven bastard.” Ken’s tone remained steady, completely even. Simple conversation with strangers.

  His hands hung loose at his sides. Completely relaxed. It always went like this when the violence went slithering down his spine; he just went cold. Nice to know some things never change.

  At that, the commander of the group stepped slowly back, as did his men.

  “Cover yourself, and don’t try anything foolish,” said the commander.

  Kendrick slid on his britches and a cloth sack shirt then followed the bastards outside. There were another ten waiting, swords drawn, pikes lowered, and crossbows pulled back, ready to loose. He put his hands together before him, waiting to be bound in chains.

  “Careful, lads, be real careful. We all know who this bastard is. Most of us have seen his art,” came a familiar voice from one of the men. Ken turned to look and he saw a brown-bearded, scarred face that he recognized, but he could not recall the man’s name. They surrounded him, pikes pressed against his skin, a crossbow right up against the back of his skull.

  They chained his hands, they chained his ankles, and then they spread apart to give him a path to waddle up to the jail cart. The men used to give him such a path those years ago when he was far away in the east. When he was drenched through with the blood of his victims, they would split like that, silently watching in horror and disgust as he walked through. It took a lot to disgust a man out there; Kendrick never failed in getting it done, though. Norburg’s monster, Count Salvenius’ fiend, joined the ranks an orphan boy, and left them a slayer of over a thousand. Could build a castle with all them bodies.