Chapter 1
The maid did fine work, dabbing his wounds with a smelly poultice, humming a tune known only to mothers and wet-nurses and high-priced whores post-coitus.
He watched with interest the dirty green glint of her eyes, the dark curls draping her downcast face, and the sway of her small breasts beneath her thin linen dress.
She is a widow, and alone. He mused.
He heard their footsteps through the earth as they approached. The night air filled with the clanking of chainmail and the heavy footfalls of a pair of soldiers, his hearing still keen as a wolf’s. He chuckled to himself as he heard the soldiers scraping their feet along the stone walkway leading to the hovel as they slowly approached the cabin. They’re shuffling, sneaking… He thought. They are far too cautious for mercenaries. They know of me or my reputation, likely. That means there is still time enough to claim her.
Snatching her throat was easy. He was fast and she was kind.
Her slender neck filled his thick hands, her flesh filling the gaps between his fingers with sun-worked skin. He pondered as he squeezed how much time she must have spent working the fields for her skin to have leathered so about the neck, despite her obvious youth.
He observed as what was left of her began to convulse, her body battling for air... She is dependent on this world. She cannot let it go. He smiled warmly at the thought, despite his disappointment. Did her eyes plead for mercy, or did they flare with anticipation for the forever life he would give her? Free from the dark and deadened halls of Barabaas! Saved from the blackened maw of his greedy god!
He released her throat, allowing her this partial breath as she gasped, only to be broken as he engulfed her mouth with his, as his god had shown him; the macabre kiss of the Devourer. The killer slammed his fist into the top of her guts till her thin ribs cracked in protest and her last breath came spilling forth.
He slurped as he sucked, gulping greedily.
He pressed his fist against her lower chest a final time and pushed as he sucked, squeezing out any remnant of the final breath, the ever-sentient pneuma, like squeezing out the last bit of juice from an overripe fruit. Using all his strength now, he made a final push into her chest till he heard the crack of her neck bones as the joints gave, wetly twisting and crumpling inward.
He felt his manhood rise as her pulse fell, till he was certain she was a corpse, reaching down to reposition his erection beneath his tunic.
The hollow embrace of the limp weight reminded him it was over. The husk... He grimaced, cursing the word in his mind, and spat with disgust in her pale, dead face.
He took in every feature, setting as much of it to memory as he could. Adding a new spirit wife to his harem was a rare and splendid enough thing, and filled him with great joy at the thought of how she might help her fellow maiden-wives in the life beyond death to teach each other to weave and cook and please him in all ways.
They would be free from an eternity without corporeal form, but a lowly spirit in the afterlife of Barabaas. He and his wives would be given a new world, new bodies that could touch and feel and never age; an immortality truer to the word than any other. His god offered no compromises in his rewards to the penitent and seemed to have no lack of power to produce their works.
To leave no body behind is the purest of gifts his divinity could grant me. He pursed his lips, watching his spittle drip from the tip of her long, thin nose grown pale as milk. One day. He vowed, his face twisting to revulsion as he let the broken body of the maid slip limply to the floor.
The scent of wet shit and sick fouled the air as the husk began to loose its bowls. If I’d only had more time with this wife before she must be claimed... raping corpses is disgusting.
The shuffling of the men outside the dilapidated cottage grew in his ears till each step seemed to hammer the earth like thunder striking the surrounding red sands.
They’ll crash the door first. Take their prize by force. There’s only one way in and too few for a proper ambush. He grinned at the thought and bowed his head in reverence to receive his gods terrible blessings. “Raast’iitetor.” He prayed aloud in the guttural language gifted only by the greedy god to his Priests. “Ii’al’ghheno bulo’suum.”
At once, his god’s gifts filled his senses with blessings beyond sight and sound. A warmth and comfort and calm filled him, like a drunken babe in a most welcoming womb.
Tau’otiians... He recognized them from the familiar clinking of their armor. Thralls on a cruel wind. He spat. Two. arming swords; no shields. He grinned. Easy work.
The killer retrieved his sword from its rest by the nightstand and unsheathed it; a cruel piece of steel, single-edged and curving in a crescent towards the tip. A small stamp, just above the crossguard of the polished read: Granniitian Citizen. As’Quiss Al’halmaed Isielduun. 23 Kruus. Duc’aal Kielgaard.
He crept to the door, unnaturally silent, and pressed his back along the wall to perch next to the bolted door.
He held his blade above the doorway, stilled his breath, and waited.
The worn wooden door sprang open in a spray of dust and splintered debris, nearly wrenching it free from the wall, its unoiled hinges wailing like a drunken goose as it crashed into the cottage.
I loathe all this... mess. He thought, wincing at what was to come, a butcher weary of his work. Killing men is so tedious, no immortal lovers to claim, just… Dead weight.
A sword led through the doorway, followed by a glint of moonlight off a bronze helm. He plunged the pommel of his blade down like a hammer in time with the emerging Tau’otiian’s gleaming helm. It barely slowed as it struck, collapsing the helm as easily as if it were tin and spurting a wave of warm red blood from beneath its visored rim. He punched the Tau’otiian in his aquiline nose with his free hand, connecting with a soggy crunch as blood erupted from beneath his fist. The sound is a splendid hymn to Raast’iitetor’s mercy. He thought, as the Tau’otiian’s skull followed the force of the blow into the solid dirt floor below, his body trailing behind to crumple awkwardly beside it.
Dead weight. He thought once more and spat, hating nothing more than a corpse. It is of little wonder that we are but playthings to the gods... And that they are but playthings to me.
The second man close behind gasped and cursed in one sound, then quickly quieted as his will to live left him mute. The killer leapt from cover, impossibly quick and clothed in shadow, diving low and delivering a single, angled thrust to the back of the man’s knee, feeling the satisfying pluck and bloody spray of a nicked artery. The Tau’otiian’s chainmail fell just below the hip, leaving his lower half exposed, and bore no shield. May as well be nude. He sighed as the man’s mouth went wide and screamed as he slipped on his rapidly pooling blood.
Such a chore killing men… More work; less reward.
He slit their throats in turn.
His moves were precise and practiced. He held his off hand over a mouth and pinched the nose as his right went to work. He grunted with each deep slice, sure to sink the blade into the side of the neck, shoving through the gristle and thicker bits, then plunging through the other side with a fleshy pop. He then sawed furiously upward till it severed the windpipe fully, pulling the head and neck back to expose the last pathway of the final breath to the open air; to be collected by Raast’iitetor’s many unseen minions and returned to his ever-waiting, ever-gaping, ever-ravenous maw…
Or so the priests had told him. He preferred to fancy the Devourer came for the souls himself, and was watching him from close by even now as he consumed his offerings. But he was left now to use only the knowledge the god had granted him through Confession; to interpret signs and visions and read the forgotten tongue of the Greedy God’s will in the black pages.
Once finished, he repeated his work on the other sacrifice and presented the offering.
It was over quickly. He sighed, So Fleeting.
There came then a rattling in the stillness.
From the far corner came a thump from within a wall behind a makeshift table of black driftwood.
The killer knew the soft sound well. Flesh.
He knew the sound was too wet to be otherwise as he raised a brow, calling in a calm voice; stern yet fair, like a father’s. “I will not hurt you.” His voice cracked from years at the pipe tobacco. He crossed his arms and tapped the bloody tip of his sword in impatience, ambling to the lone table against the wall. “Unless you make me.”
He flung the table across the cottage and thrust his sword through the clay wall, sending it crumbling around the blade. A shrill scream poured from the hole it made and reverberated off the walls till he thought his head might crack.
He prayed aloud that it might fade, letting his senses dull and return to the weak reach of mortal flesh. He prayed, “Ii’al’ghheno bula’siin.”
The world began to grow silent again as his human senses returned.
He left his blade to retrieve the lamp from the bedside and returned to pull the blade free from the wall, sending the surrounding clay to crumbling.
He held the lamp to the hole and peered inside.
His eyes went wide, the lamplight playing off the reflection of his slick, sweaty brow, his gaze seeming to flicker with the fire as his obsession grew. He held his breath, his heart fluttering as if skipping beats.
A pair of small eyes flashed back through the dim illumination, then retreated into the darkness.
Would Raast’iitetor bless me with a second chance?
He reached into the hole and pulled the false wall the boy was hidden behind free with a yank. Even without the direct blessings of his god, his health had improved to its fittest state he’d known in a lengthened lifetime; the change worse than sobering from any drink, to be sure, but never enough to slow him.
The boy appeared common, spindly and small. His hand covered his face, brown hair falling over wells of darkness beneath muddy green eyes. He held the child by the shoulders and stared. The boy lost his words, allowing a silent moment to pass, merely staring back unblinking and mouth agape.
The killer patted his chest. “Kielgaard.” He spoke his name, pressing a finger to his lips and shushing. Without another word, he flung the boy over his shoulder and fled the cottage into darkness, the night a welcoming friend in a world ever alien and unfamiliar to his heart.
Legacy. Kielgard’s chest swelled at the thought as he prowled the comforting darkness, wary of the weakness of the soft little lump slung ’round his shoulder, as the thought repeated in his mind. Dirty green flecks of emerald in the most common brown.
