The Deserter

This is Book 2 of the series. To understand the characters’ motives and follow the story properly, you should start from the very beginning.

Read Book 1 here: www.inkitt.com/stories/1768428

In the darkness, I saw every rut and snag as clearly as if I were riding in the bright of day. The stallion maintained a smooth, confident gallop, not even slowing down in the thick undergrowth. Beneath the heavy cloak, my body no longer shivered from the night chill; my muscles were flooded with an unfamiliar, heavy strength, and the icy wind of Westerland could not even pierce my skin.

About two hours later, the hills gave way to a dense, ancient forest. The damp air smelled of rotting leaves, pine needles, and wet moss—the clean coolness beneath the canopy of giant oaks instantly cleared the stench of sewage from the castle moat from my memory. Suddenly, at the next turn of the forest track, the horse fearfully pinned its ears back and reined in. Ahead, through the black branches near the ground, the orange light of a dying bonfire flickered.

In the clearing, pressed against the knotted roots, sat three locals. An old man in a worn smock desperately clutched a short axe, while two young men beside him frantically drew the strings of their hunting bows. They were shaking so violently that the arrows rattled against the wooden bowstaves. My expensive velvet cloak and sleek warhorse in the middle of the night woods frightened the villagers to death. I checked the reins and, without dismounting, spat through my teeth:

“Drop your weapons. Now, before I bury you here.”

The old man instantly dropped the axe into the dry grass and bent nearly to the ground, stammering apologies:

“Forgive us, milord... we meant no harm. Caer-Tewin Castle was shaking from the roar all day, hell was blazing there, so we fled into the thicket.”

I figured it in my mind: right, so it was Caer-Tewin Castle.

“Lost my way,” I said coldly, remaining in the saddle. “What lands are these around us? Where do the roads lead?”

The peasant exchanged a terrified glance with his companions, then bent in a bow once more:

“Where exactly do you need to go, master? The highway is broken, it’s easy to get lost at night...”

The hoof of my stallion crushed a smoldering ember with a snap, kicking up a shower of sparks.

“Your business is to answer when asked! Shut your mouth and tell me what’s around, or are you one of those fiends that tore the castle apart?”

The man nearly tumbled into the fire from terror, waving his hands and babbling, stammering:

“The road goes east, sir! The inhabited lands of Duke Bivol are there, that’s where all our wagons usually draw. To the south is Caer-Tewin Castle, which the demons surrounded.”

“What about the isolated blind spots?” I cut him off. “Where are there no troops?”

“Why, to the southwest, there’s only Gray Pass, master!” The old man hurriedly pointed a finger toward the rocky crags. “It’s on the very edge, squeezed between the ridges. A quiet, isolated hole; the Duke’s troops don’t show their noses there, they disdain it. Rare supply trains go there, maybe some smugglers or hunters. No war has ever been out there, a complete backcountry, master. A godforsaken place...”

The sword cleared the scabbard with a dry hiss, and the old man’s gray head rolled into the grass before he could even finish his sentence. The other two didn’t even have time to flinch. With a single lunge, I tore open the chests of both youths—the steel easily sheared through the bones, throwing their bodies back into the roots of the oak. They died without a single shriek, only the embers of the fire hissed from the rushing blood. Only then did I calmly turn the horse and dissolve into the forest thicket.

I drove the stallion for the rest of the night, twisting along game trails until the predawn fog began to crawl through the hollows. Toward morning, when my stomach twisted from hunger and my eyes began to close, the gray silhouette of a quiet little village appeared ahead. Not a single light in the windows, the shutters tightly closed. On the very edge, I noticed a half-ruined, abandoned barn overgrown with nettles. I managed to guide the horse inside, tightly locked the decaying door with a wooden bolt, and after quickly devouring a stale crust of bread with cheese, collapsed onto a pile of half-rotted straw.

Sleep descended like a suffocating, heavy avalanche. I was dreaming of Yoru again—the basalt cliff, the acrid ammonia fog, and the hollow thudding of our siege park’s engines. Everything was too real: the rough timber of our first onager’s frame, weeping with tar, and the stinging smoke from the hellfire. Ol, alive, colossal, with his black horns, was driving a heavy wedge under the guide trough with a violent swing. He turned around, baring his fangs in a familiar smirk, and roared, drowning out the roar of the battery:

“Hold the tension, Mel! The weight of this engine will drag us forward on its own! The main thing is not to flinch before the Master!”

Beside him, Urg calmly gripped the hilt of his heavy cleaver with both hands—as if he had never lost one many years ago. The veteran grunted, watching a cloud of spiders crawling from the Iron Forest, while his surviving eye looked at me clean and straight:

“Less glory saves your skin, kid. The Legion is no more. We were erased. Don’t dare die in this ditch, cannoneer. Your pursuit is only beginning. Follow your compass and bend to no one. We settled our account.”

And instantly the image burst, shattering into pieces. Instead of Yoru, the blindingly white, eye-searing radiance of the Bastion of Light slammed over us. An avalanche of holy fire struck from above. Before my eyes, Ol turned into a smoking, charred pillar, his basalt horns shattering to dust, while Urg fell backward—a heavy arbalest bolt pierced his helm precisely in the center of his eye socket with a fleshy crunch. They died again and again, their flesh melting and flowing into the slick mud of the moat, while the colossal hand of Lord Gaap descended upon me from above, pressing me to the earth.

The dream ripped like an over-tightened string, and I awoke instantly from the icy touch of steel against my neck. The bright daylight striking through the cracks in the roof cut into my eyes, but my body had already reacted on instinct—I froze, feeling the sharp blade of a sword slightly pressing into the skin right at my throat. Any extra movement, and the sword would simply sever my neck.

Three guards stood over me. Their eyes were malicious, sober. A brute with a scar spoke cynically:

“Caught you, horse thief. Well, done running? Thought you hid the stallion in this backcountry and nobody would find it?”

I forced myself to shake weakly and widened my eyes, feigning a raw, feral panic. The main thing was to make them believe that a terrified, broken slave stood before them.

“Master, for the sake of everything holy, don’t kill me!” I whimpered, rasping and clawing at the air. “That horse is ours, from the castle! I’m a groom there, a servant from the stables! When the gates of Caer-Tewin groaned and those beasts from the underworld poured over the walls, a total hell started there... I thought that was it, death had come or eternal thralldom in the Abyss! I was terrified, it’s a miracle I’m alive! In a panic, I leaped onto the first stallion I saw and drove wherever my eyes looked, just to get away from that nightmare! I thought the demons would come for me again, I rode all night, so I hid in the barn to wait it out! Don’t ruin me, masters, I was saving the master’s property from the monsters!”

I didn’t even get to finish. The heavy forged pommel of a sword struck me squarely in the jaw at full speed. Crimson flashed in my eyes, my head snapped back, and my mouth instantly filled with thick, salty blood. I spat the blood onto the trampled straw along with a shard of a molar.

“What are you lying for, you piece of trash?!” The leader with the scar angrily shifted his grip on the sword hilt and stepped his boot onto my chest, pressing me into the manure. “A groom, he says! You stole the lord’s horse when the demons in the castle were already long gone!”

I rasped in silence, wiping my bloodied chin with my sleeve. The brute with the scar surveyed me with disgust and turned to his accomplices:

“Fine, the lord himself will hang you for horse theft on the first aspen in the citadel. Let’s head to the castle.”

The second man-at-arms roughly grabbed me by my hair, yanked me up, and threw my hands behind my back with all his might. The coarse rope bit painfully into my wrists, binding my fingers until they went numb. I was dragged out of the gloom into the blinding afternoon sun and unceremoniously thrown face down across the horse’s rump like a sack of oats.

The patrol moved out, returning through the village. From behind the slightly open wooden shutters and low wattle fences, the locals stared in terror. A small crowd of peasants had gathered by the well in the middle of the trampled, slick mud—women, a handful of ragged children, and men clutching pitchforks and scythes. Right in the center stood a gray-bearded elder, wailing frantically and stretching his hands toward the passing men-at-arms:

“Soldiers, our own! Help us! In the night, the hellish spawns tore up the graveyard, raised the dead from their graves! Now they’re in their army! Those are our grandfathers, our dead kin! Do something!”

The crowd behind him groaned in terror, the women began to wail, crossing themselves and pressing their children close. Someone stared with fear at me, hanging over the horse’s rump. The leader with the scar lazily held the reins, looking down at the elder with a full, military arrogance:

“Shut up, old man! All that filth was rolled to ash at the fortress wall yesterday. Be glad your village is even standing intact. Move it, boys, the lord is waiting for the horse.”

But the elder would not quit, holding the horse’s stirrup with filthy hands:

“But, masters! A terrifying howling is coming from the graveyard! We’re afraid to even go in there to clean up! Something evil is happening out there!”

The guards only laughed, spurring their horses forward.

“Wolves, old man! Regular wolves!” one of them shouted, the younger one. “We won, there’s nothing left to fear!”

But then he checked his horse, leaned down to the old man, and added more seriously:

“Though a detachment led by Inquisitor Binsfeld and the paladins has already begun patrolling the surrounding villages. They’re looking for solitary fiends that managed to escape from the castle. They’ll ride into your village soon, so sit tight and wait.”

Hearing the inquisitor’s name, the elder instantly shut his mouth, shrank back, and retreated into the crowd as if he had been scalded. The women by the well fell silent all at once. The guards spurred their horses, and we galloped away from the village.

Soon we broke onto the road. The sun rose to its zenith and burned mercilessly from above. The road dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves clogged my mouth and nostrils, blinding my eyes. My head hung down, the rope cut my wrists to blood, and the horse beneath me breathed heavily, straining, lathered from the midday heat.

The village was left far behind, its muffled hum replaced by the steady thud of iron-shod hooves on the dry, stony earth. That same young guard, wiping the sweat from his face with the back of his hand, muttered to the leader:

“What if corruption really stayed at the churchyard and it’s not wolves howling? It’s good that Binsfeld is coming here.”

The leader with the scar glared at him gloomily, gripping the reins tighter:

“Think I didn’t think of that myself? Binsfeld doesn’t like to joke. We’ll deliver the horse to the lord, hand over this thief, and report the torn-up graveyard to the holy fathers right away. Let the paladins handle whatever is howling out there themselves; our business is to guard the gates. Increase the pace, we need to reach the castle before dinner.”

The guards spurred their horses, and the road stretched further through endless hills scorched by the sun. The dust settled in a thick crust on my face and neck.

We pushed without a stop for several hours. The sun began to slowly decline toward the horizon, painting the hills in dirty yellow tones. The horses walked heavily, stumbling on the ruts of the highway, and my own muscles, unaccustomed to the new weight and such a pace, ached with a dull thud. Finally, the young man-at-arms rasped, wiping the sticky sweat from his forehead:

“Commander, pull over. The heat is wild, the belly is empty, the horses are going to drop now.”

The leader glanced at the roadside bushes and nodded toward the half-ruined stone shell of some old building by the shoulder:

“Fine. We’ll halt by those ruins. Ten minutes to eat, then we move.”

They dismounted. I was roughly yanked from the rump like a bundle of old rags and thrown with my back against the collapsed wall.

“Flinch, and I’ll slit your throat on the spot,” the leader muttered, untying a canvas sack and hungrily biting off a piece of stinking dried meat.

I froze, clamping a smirk until my gums ached. I simply smelled the familiar scent of the slug drawing from their leather flasks, and began to wait. They settled right on the sparse, scorched grass, chomping loudly, laughing, and discussing exactly how Inquisitor Binsfeld would hang the surviving devils in the village squares. The leader took a large, greedy gulp and passed it to the young one. He pressed his mouth to the neck, took a gulp, but instantly grimaced, coughed, and spat the water into the dust:

“What kind of slop is this?! The water stinks like some rot, it burns even.”

The leader with the scar angrily snatched the flask from him and drank himself, taking three huge gulps, wiping his mustache with his hand:

“Eat what you’re given and don’t whine, you clean-freak. The water is fine, the flask just heated up in the sun. Drink up before I finish it all myself.”

The young one broke first. His laughter was suddenly cut off by a dry, suffocating cough. He dropped the meat into the dust, frantically grabbed his throat with both hands, and fell to his hands and knees. The youth’s face flooded with a deathly blue, his eyes bulged from their sockets, and a thick stream of green foam ran down his chin from under his tightly closed lips.

“The throat... burning... what kind of sorcery...” he rasped, tumbling onto his side into the roadside dust.

“What’s wrong with him?!” The third guard leaped up, drawing his sword from the scabbard, but instantly doubled over himself.

His heavy breastplate crashed into the stone fragments of the ancient walls with a roar. The leader rasped, rolling in the dirt and breaking his nails against his own breastplate—he was trying to tear his burning, melting lungs out of his chest. The third man-at-arms was silently turned inside out with green slime, and he went still, his face buried in the road dust.

It was time to act. I crawled on my knees toward their makeshift table set on one of the stone fragments; my fingers were numb and barely obeyed, but I managed to hook the short dagger they had used to cut the meat. I clamped the hilt in my palm, pressed the blade against the tight cord, and yanked furiously. The fibers gave way with a quiet rip, the bonds snapped, and I quickly severed the rope on my legs.

I rose heavily, rubbing my numb, stiff wrists to restore circulation. The ropes fell into the road dust. The three guards on the grass no longer showed signs of life. A dead, unnatural silence hung around the ruins, broken only by the heavy breathing of the frightened horses. The sun by this time had already declined to the horizon, painting the tops of the trees in crimson tones.

I walked to the bodies and searched them. I found a few coppers, a couple of silver coins, a flint, and steel. Not much, but enough for a start. The lord’s expensive velvet cloak I threw into the thick bushes by the shoulder without hesitation. Instead, I stripped a sturdy, road-worn wool cloak of a dirty gray color from the lead guard—easier to blend in on the roads in something like that.

The lord’s horse, because of which I had been tracked down, I struck hard on the rump with the flat side of the sword. The frightened stallion broke into a gallop from the spot and tore back down the highway, kicking up clouds of dust.

Then I stripped the gear from the dead men. The mail shirt sat tight on my reformed shoulders, pleasantly pressing me to the earth with its weight, and a simple iron helm securely hid my head. Two swords in simple scabbards I strapped to the pommel of the saddle. I chose two of the three horses: one I saddled myself, the second I took by the reins as a spare for the long trek.

I spurred the horse, sharply turning back. The guards’ words would not leave my head: if Binsfeld’s patrols stumbled upon a dead scouting party, this entire district would be locked down. I needed to move fast, but not draw attention from oncoming supply trains and rare travelers.

I rode without a stop until the pre-sunset haze finally melted away. The path lay through that very same quiet village from which I had been driven bound. In the dark, the village seemed dead—the windows were tightly closed, the shutters bolted, but through the cracks, dim lights flickered here and there. The inhabitants were awake, locked in their houses, waiting for the church paladins.

I rode through the quiet, tense street, trying to keep the horses’ hooves as quiet as possible. Right past the outskirts, on a low, bald hill in the gathering evening darkness, the contours of the old churchyard loomed black. An ancient chapel stood there—a small stone building with a crooked cross. The graveyard around it looked torn up: the earth lay in deep ditches, the graves gaped with dark chasms, as if someone had been conducting excavations here.

And at that exact moment, a long, hoarse howling struck from the deepening darkness of the hill. The sound came from the stone box of the vault itself, vibrating with a dull, exhausting pain. The elder by the well had not lied—those were not wolves howling. Real wolves don’t howl like that.

A pulsating emerald glow broke through the narrow window slits of the chapel. The walls and doorway on the outside were entangled in an old protective net—runic chains and spikes of pure earth energy, very similar to the traps of the Ancient Guardian from the tunnels beneath the castle. The necromancer, when breaking the soil here for fresh corpses, had accidentally disturbed this protective circuit.

A gasp, turning into a mournful whistle, echoed from the depths of the building again. There could be no mistake—only hellhounds, solitary scouts from Gaap’s vanguard legions, howled like that. It seemed one of them had leaped into the breach, executing an order, and landed straight into the ancient trap.

The horses fearfully pinned their ears back, rasped, and flatly refused to go toward the churchyard. I dismounted, tied the reins of both horses to a fallen pine trunk, gripped the sword, and went up the slope.

In the gathering darkness, the runic threads of the trap snaked straight through the grass, but with my new sight, I clearly saw the safe zones between them. I channeled my focus and maneuvered between the glowing green lines. The howling behind the stone walls grew duller. The beast sensed my approach.

Bypassing the chapel from the side, I stumbled upon a wide breach in the masonry. The stones around the hole were scorched and covered in black soot. This was where the hound had breached the wall, bypassing the sealed main entrance.

Near this breach, the traps glowed weaker. I squeezed inside. The scent of ozone, scorched fur, and the metallic burn of spilled blood hit my nostrils. Right beneath the half-ruined vaults, amidst the shards of slabs, lay the hellhound. A large male, completely covered in burns and a crust of dried slime. The left side and hind leg were charred to the bone. A massive crystalline spike grew from its chest, right between its front paws. This earth anchor pulsed with an emerald light, sucking out life and prolonging the agony.

The hound turned its heavy head to me. Its eyes were dull, filmed over with a shroud of pain. The dog did not growl or bare its teeth—it only whined quietly, its muzzle buried in the stone floor plates.

At the far end of the chapel, behind the beast’s back, a deep niche loomed dark, buried under rubble.

“Who drove you in here?” I asked in the tongue of the Abyss, crouching a couple of paces from the mangled muzzle.

The hound only let out a raspy exhale. It could not answer, but in its fading gaze, I read the bitter sting of failure and the heavy phantom of an unfulfilled duty.

“Step into the ash, brother,” I said quietly.

I braced my boots against the cold plates and gripped the sword hilt with both hands. The blade hovered exactly over the dog’s nape, where the scorched hide transitioned into a bony carapace. The hound took a final noisy breath, pinning its ears to its skull. The blade sliced through the air with a short whistle and drove deep between the neck vertebrae, instantly severing the spinal cord.

The beast didn’t even flinch—its massive body gave one large shudder, its paws extended helplessly, and its eyes went dark forever. The mournful rasp broke off. A deafening silence reigned over the churchyard.

In that exact second, a particle of the hound’s released energy surged straight into me. I was thrown back. I choked, feeling a new, tiny, restless ember ignite deep in my chest. It gnawed at me from within, reminding me of the taken life and settling with the weight of someone else’s unexecuted debt.

I caught my breath, rubbing my sternum, rose, and stepped over the body, which was quickly turning gray and crumbling to ash. I cleared the stones. Inside, on a pedestal, an object flickered dimly, enveloped in a dense green fog. From it emanated the same feeling as from the spike in the hound’s chest—the cold, soulless magic of the trap. My gaze tracked a web of energies ready to discharge at any wrong movement. Touch it—it triggers, and then I remain on this hill forever.

I recoiled from the niche. A cold soldier’s clarity quickly returned my mind to its place. Let it lie. Let others seek it. I have no time.

Squeezing out of the chapel through the same breach, I inhaled the cool evening air, leaped into the saddle, took the spare beast by the lead, and spurred my mount forward, not looking back.