Red God's Choice

Spring had been bad. Talair knew the red priest wouldn’t be pleased at what he was bringing him, but it wasn’t like there was an option. 

Loyalty: 2/2

 

Three days ago. The sky was still a furnace, but the wind was up, blowing yellow dust up and out of the desert to stain the sky a pale green. All else was the same, apart from the box. 

Our wounds healed fast. There was a fused mass of new bone over my cracked ribs that already felt strong. Traeld’s face was blotchy with bruising, but it had already faded to a yellowy-green that nearly matched the sky. 

“Your second day of Xenos,” Caidacus shouted down to us. “But first, an honour.” 

Loyalty: 1/2

 ”If there is treachery here, it must be cut out,” Caidacus said. 

Our teacher sat in front of the four of us with his sword across his lap. None of us spoke. None of us moved, in fact -  a weight lay in my stomach like a frozen shadow. To even speak of treachery here was to invite its presence. That our teacher did so, and so coldly, was outright terrifying.

There was a stillness in his face I hadn’t seen before, something guarded. An intense focus that he gave to the mirrored blade before him. He rarely betrayed any sign of emotion, so it was hard to read what he might be thinking, but whatever it was, it was something important. 

Short Story Shorter

Ah, nuts.

I didn't win the Secret Weapon competition I mentioned last month (hats off to the man who did, it was a great read). The store voucher I got instead will go a long way towards soothing my wounds, bringing various interesting terrain options my way as it does.

Now, I'm not being suckered into trying to keep the chain unbroken or anything - it was tough enough padding out December, in all honesty - but just in case anybody in the entire world is wondering, I thought I'd stick my semi-finalist piece out here. Definitely not for the chain.

No sir.

Remember what Fleetwood Mac said.
That's right. Don't stop thinking about tomorrow.

Butchers of Men VI

"Please," Pavel screamed. "Please, don't! No, please, let me live!"

And the Northman shrugged, turned him on to his back with his boot, and stamped in his groin hard enough that he could hardly breath for minutes.

The ambush almost worked.

Gavril stuck a couple of the mercenaries with arrows, but not enough to incapacitate any of them. Before any of them got too badly hurt, they split up and hid amongst the ruined machinery in the lower room. Vras and Gavril shot desperately through the hole in the floor, but they couldn't stop them getting to the foot of the stairs. And then the elf wizard started chanting from somewhere in the shadows below, and another, unseen mercenary starting hurling slingshot up, forcing them back from their sniper's positions.

Aurel and Tusk were cut down when the Northman stormed up. Aurel stabbed him, but he might have stabbed the mountain for all the effect it had. Majewa almost killed the Empire veteran with his well-worn halberd, but Pavel had already folded by then. He wasn't going to die, not like this. Not for lies and stories and threats. Not under the edge of a cold, Northern axe.

Butchers of Men V

Pavel opened his eyes.

It was almost as if he could see the pain, tenebrous purple clouds of it blotting out the edges of his vision. The room was a fuzzy mess. Early cold daylight was spilling in through the roof and windows and mixing with their untidy camp of the night before. The other Slaughtermen stood or sat around, apart from Aurel. Aurel was lying on the floor next to him, grey of face, looking thin and wretched. Gavril stood over them both, sharpening a knife.

Majewa and Tusk were sharing rashers of bacon that Vras was cooking on a well-used skillet over the embers of the fire.

"Naughty boys," Majewa said, looking them over.

Butchers of Men IV

Vras was half asleep. Full sleep was impossible, hunched against the side of a long-derelict rock crusher. It was freezingly cold in the room around him. His blankets were thin comfort against the hard stone. He'd tried to clear a little nest for himself amongst the dust and chips on the floor, but for every knobbly lump he threw away, another seemed to burrow its way underneath his back.

And all that was nothing compared to the fact that he was camping out on the Barlog.

He knew the stories. The Black Banner, the sleepers under the mountain. If they were just tales to scare children with, why did the old men in the town square mutter them under their breaths with pale faces, and never after dark? Why had the Prince, who wasn't even originally from Zenres, bricked up all the palace windows that faced the craggy mountain?

Why had nobody from the town been up here in living memory?

Butchers of Men III

They reached the quarry late that night and set up camp in the upper storey of an old bunkroom.

It was a desolate barn of a building made of huge grey stone blocks. The dwarves who'd built it made it to last, and the walls certainly had. But the roof was missing most of its tiles, was even open to the frigid night air in places, and there was a huge circular hole in the thick beams of the floor. Whatever mechanical device had rested there before had sunk through the mouldering wood and smashed into rusted cogs and bent metal plates on the grinding room floor below.

Perhaps it had once been a bustling centre of industry. Now it was a empty nest for finches, a sad reminder that the Dwarves were long gone and their kingdoms fallen.

Lonely though it was, it was a good place for an ambush. You could see the path where it finally made it into the step-cut bowl of the quarry. The sheer rocks all round made it unlikely that anyone would come up another way, and there were good lines of sight from the windows to the quarry yard outside.

The mercenaries would arrive, probably sometime the following morning unless they travelled through the night. And the Slaughtermen would be waiting for them.

Butchers of Men II

They were sat in the back of a cart as it crept out of town. The mule pulling it kept farting loudly as it plodded along. It was just about the only sound to break the silence that reigned over the six of them.

Ion and Alin were dead. They'd never come out of the Sow and Shoats. Cornel was in the town jail, with a Bretonnian leech looking after the gut wound he'd taken. Majewa said he probably wasn't going to recover. Markhu was locked up in the stocks by the West Gate, still unconscious after one of the Tilean soldiers had cracked a cobble off his temple. The Prince's guards hadn't bothered to revive him before locking him up.

And the rest of them were heading for the Barlog.

Butchers of Men I

Pavel's torch was starting to burn out.

The orange flames danced down the square-cut tunnel ahead of him, making the limestone walls glisten. Cold, damp air was seeping from somewhere deep below, sneaking up behind him and caressing his neck with wet fingers.

Damn it, Pavel, watch the entrance, he told himself.

But he couldn't. Every time he turned his back on the tunnel, that clammy breeze started stroking him. It was unnerving. It was like the dead breath of one of the sleepers, something flickering out of a corpse's mouth. It demanded attention.

Majewa laughed at the old superstitions, laughed at anyone who jabbed forked fingers at a mention of the Barlog or the Black Banner. Her rough humour had soothed their nerves on the trip up. No need to be afraid, she'd said. Not men like you. Not with me around.

Pavel wished she was still here.