Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (16 page)

Catelyn found it impossible not to think about how many
of these unfortunate victims might have died from infection,
contracted from wandering the streets and gutters with open
wounds on their feet.

But Silena’s information was even worse than that. Silena
went on to detail how, when the gangs did find someone whose
foot was small enough, and the bloody print close enough to be
questionable, they would bring this victim to the Dane’s
themselves. Silena reported with sadness that these few were never
heard from again. Catelyn could only imagine what the sadistic
men of the Sado Sexual Elite had done to those poor souls, as
payback for her crime.

She felt sick to her stomach at the possibilities, having
witnessed firsthand what the Dane’s were capable of. Catelyn had
no doubts that the Danes would revel in such work.

Learning this changed everything for her, and pushed
Catelyn out of the routine she had found herself in. The Danes
were now hurting and killing innocent people in their search for
her.

Whatever Catelyn was herself willing to withstand, she
couldn’t simply sit waiting in her roost while others suffered
because of her actions. She needed to stop them. Somehow.

A day later, Catelyn was finalizing her plan to resolve her
standoff with Eyrris, Callum and Elger. She wished that she could
have taken more time to make her plans, but with the Danes now
hurting an unknown number of innocents, she couldn’t afford to
wait any more.

Catelyn had been uncomfortable enough when it was just
the Danes and their thugs refusing to give up their own witch hunt
for her, but they had grown so incensed and emboldened that they
were now practicing their own violent brand of vigilantism and
risking entire neighborhoods being Purged by the Imperial army.

Catelyn already couldn’t stand to live with the pain of the
victims harmed directly by the Danes, and the thought of hundreds
of innocents being slaughtered by the so-called righteous might of
the Empire...she couldn’t allow that to happen. And so Catelyn had
devised her plan, quickly and clearly.

She knew that she had to stop the Danes, and convince
them to put an end to this madness, but she wasn’t likely to win
them over with a charming letter or a dignified entreaty. Giving
Dane Eyrris his precious artifact back was out of the question. Not
only did Catelyn know that it wouldn’t make a difference in their
pursuit for her, but she had been convinced, in part by Silena but
also by her reason, that the weapon belonged to her now, a gift
that was her responsibility. But the price for that gift was turning
out to be higher than she wanted it to be, and that was also her
responsibility.

No, Catelyn could see now that the Danes would never
stop and there was no possibility of her returning the artifact to
them, so she would have to show them the futility of their
relentless pursuit. She had known men like the Danes before
throughout the sojourns, and she knew that such men only
understood and respected one language: violence.

Unfortunately for Catelyn, this was not one of her
strengths. She had no idea how to fight nor did she have any
confidence that she would last long in a physical altercation, and
despite a handful of scary run-ins over the sojourns, she had never
needed to kill.

Her options for intimidating heartless men like the Danes
were quite limited. Catelyn also had reason to suspect that perhaps
one of the reasons that the Danes were even carrying out this
campaign in the manner in which they were, was in order to
provoke a reaction from her. To get her to react carelessly; to make
just such a rash and unplanned mistake.

But this realization had, in the end, been the catalyst that
had helped Catelyn to settle on a plan of action. Catelyn had
learned many things through her studies that people in the Seat
had long since forgotten or could never have imagined. One thing
that Catelyn had read in the book on philosophy, one chapter of
which had been dedicated to the philosophy of war, was that when
you wanted to go on the offensive, and your enemy was lying in
wait for you to move, you moved.

Just not in the direction that your enemy would be
expecting.
Catelyn was going to have to risk everything if this was
going to succeed, but she had no choice. She had to get the Dane’s
to stop. And so she planned her next move. And hoped and prayed
that indeed, it would be in the direction that they wouldn’t be
expecting.

Uriel paced restlessly in his bedchamber. He was naked,
sweating and aroused, but he could not focus on even his own
desire. His mind raced.

In the bed, the child that had been brought by Ortis from
Belkyn after his successful campaign there trembled with fear and
watched the Emperor with huge red-rimmed saucer eyes. Based on
what Ortis knew of his tastes, the Emperor knew that this boy
would be the last surviving male of his bloodline, and Uriel usually
enjoyed such delightful moments. He never failed to feed on such
fear and anxiety, his body quivering in anticipation.

But not tonight. Tonight other appetites were calling him.
Earlier that day, Ortis had returned from Belkyn, a
handful of residents such as this boy brought back as captives, and

reported on his successful pacification of the uprising that had
reportedly been there. He had spent a full three cycles with his
men, rooting out any suspects who had even entertained the
notion of complaining about or rebelling against the Empire. Uriel
hadn’t given explicit orders to discover the source of the rumors,
he had simply instructed Ortis to make Belkyn an example of, and
that is exactly what he did. What he had always done.

The brutality Ortis was famous for was at the heart of the
reputation of the Empire’s unforgiving armada, and was only
matched by his loyalty to the Empire. Undoubtedly, this
combination of traits was enough to make every resident of Belkyn
wish that they had never even heard the word “uprising”. When
Ortis had galloped back into the Seat at the head of his column of
Imperial soldiers however, despite the clear victory he had just
earned, Uriel was seething.

It seemed that while Ortis had been off quelling one nest
of upstarts, another had taken root, this one right here in his own
capital. Such a thing had been unthinkable once. The Will he
employed to command his Empire was resolute. Unstoppable.

Two separate incidents, hundreds of paces apart and
within mere spans of each other. The mere thought of it made
Uriel want to erupt in fury.

Even the sight of the young boy riding upon Ortis’ war
mare brought no solace, as it would have in earlier times. He and
Ortis had often shared in such delights throughout the sojourns.
As Ortis had grown older, losing his youthful body, Uriel no longer
desired to see his friend and former lover naked and rutting beside
him. And so, as it had been for many sojourns, Ortis now simply
brought such prizes straight to the Emperor’s bedchambers before
retiring to his own quarters.

And so it was that Uriel found himself alone with the
sullen boy from Belkyn, yet another gift from his loyal general to
celebrate a successful campaign.

But this new defiance within his own capital had
completely spoiled any sort of victory celebration that Uriel could
have imagined. Just this morning, Uriel had been informed by
Enaz that the three men who comprised the heart of the SadoSexual Elite, long-time devotees of the Empire and close
compatriots of Uriel himself, were openly rampaging through the
Seat, exacting their own brand of justice and refusing to allow
anything or anyone to stop them from achieving some personal
vendetta they held.

Uriel had no philosophical argument with such activities,
usually. Vigilantism served to keep the people in line when his
men were otherwise engaged. But as the Danes began to extract
widespread vengeance upon the populace in the same manner that
his own men would have, they had already crossed a line. Uriel
indulged this behavior somewhat, anticipating the flame to die out
eventually, and then the unthinkable happened. They escalated
their actions.

When Uriel heard this during one of Enaz’ morning
reports, the first span Ortis was away, he ordered that one of his
other commanders Jerram, Ortis’ second in command, pay a
friendly visit to the Danes to convey the Emperor’s displeasure at
their continued actions. Only a handful of citizens in the Seat
would have been afforded such rare understanding, but Uriel had
determined that this situation would be better handled delicately
while Ortis was away in Belkyn. Jerram returned without incident,
and reported that the Danes had both heard, and understood, The
Emperor’s Will.

After a span, they escalated their search again.
As appreciative of the Sado-Sexual Elite as Uriel was, he
could not allow them to openly challenge the Will of their
Emperor. Uriel knew that he needed to set an example, and restore
the rightful order of things. No one had so brashly opposed his will
since those first early sojourns when Uriel was still a boy trying to
piece together his own Empire in the wake of his father’s murder.
And so Uriel had watched in anger as Ortis rode into the
city, knowing that he would be forced to give his long-time friend
no time to rest and bask in the glow of their victory. He would
need to send Ortis out immediately, to make an example of the
Danes and string their innards from his tower.
He stood now, unable to focus on his pleasures, feeling the
fear of something that he had never felt before in his long life: He
feared that he was losing control.
Rage filled him at the implication.
No one dares to defy my Will,
he thought.
Not those pathetic politicians of the Seat, who refused to
abandon their chambers all those sojourns ago when I dissolved
the last traces of the old government.
Not those city engineers who tried to convince me that
the walls I commanded to be built around my Empire would be
impossible to construct in the time that I demanded.
Not the city advisers who tried to convince me that my
vision, my dream of a perfect society would ultimately fail,
devouring itself from the inside out.
And certainly not those damn priests who had begged me
for mercy for their followers.
Uriel knew he could never let anyone show themselves to
be beyond his laws. He swore to himself that the Danes would
need to be shown the error of their ways. And not just the soft way
that he had been using for the past several sojourns.
This kind of
defiance,
Uriel told himself,
requires a very special response.
It had been a long time since Uriel had considered such an
option, and the thought of it filled both of his heads with a rush of
blood.
He moved away from the bed, the child still whimpering at
him with shimmering eyes, and pulled a sash near the wall. From
the hall outside, he heard the metallic clang which called his
servants. Within a whisper, Enaz was standing in his chambers,
perfectly dressed in his orange robes and oiled head gleaming.
“Yes, your Eminence?”
“Go and fetch Ortis. I have a...special assignment for him
to undertake,” Uriel said as he looked out the window of his tower,
towards the wealthy apartments where the Danes lived.
“Yes, my Emperor,” Enaz said as he bowed over nearly
double.
“And take this...plaything...away,” Uriel added, as an
afterthought, taking his eyes from the window to look at his
servant.
Enaz looked to the boy, naked and shivering.
“What would your excellency like done with...it?” Uriel felt
himself twitch, as Enaz had nearly called the child “him” and then
caught his error, an error which would have earned him a dozen
lashes at least.
Even with his correction Enaz’ question had sparked a
flash of contempt for the eunuch’s incompetence and insolence.
“I care not. Take it away! Chop its balls off and dump it in
your priory. Your order could always use more fodder, couldn’t
they?” Uriel sneered.
Enaz stared passively back at him and wisely chose not to
tempt fate, and remained silent. Uriel admired the shrewdness of
the eunuch as the robed man gathered the naked child to him and
quickly escorted him from the room.
Uriel turned his gaze back to the window, forgetting the
unsettling fears besetting his mind and imagining the glory of what
he was about to command once more.

Enaz strode quickly in front of the boy on their way to
Ortis’ quarters from the Emperor's bedchamber, when halfway
down a set of stairs the boy had begun crying hysterically.

Enaz stopped, turned and smacked the child hard on the
back of his head.
“Stop it, boy. You have no idea just how lucky you truly
are. You’ve just had your miserable and worthless life saved twice
in as many cycles. Few could lay such a claim, so stop that
sniveling this instant!” Enaz snapped.
The boy stopped his sobbing, and glared somberly at the
floor instead.
Enaz gazed longingly at the boy’s naked, skinny frame. Not
out of lust...those feelings had long since faded in Enaz. No, his
longing was borne of jealousy. Enaz couldn’t help but admire the
boy’s smooth, hairless body. The supple, pale skin free of
blemishes. The flat, supple belly. The boy was everything that Enaz
had once been, and wished he still could be.
Enaz had only been a few sojourns older than this boy
when he’d been taken from his old life and inducted into the
priory. He had been born in the early days of Uriel III’s reign as
Emperor of Exeter, before the Imperial prohibitions on
unrestricted procreation.
Enaz had been raised the son of a very influential family,
when such things still mattered, at least to some within the
Empire. It wasn’t until the last of the walls were constructed, when
Enaz had seen four sojourns, that all classes and social status were
completely obliterated.
That was when Enaz’ family had ended up on the streets.
It was the nightmare of his existence. For ten sojourns, Enaz and
his family had been forced to scrounge in the streets for every
meal, to beg and scrape for the dignity that was once theirs by
right.
At his fourteenth sojourn, the priory was formed, and
Uriel immediately set out to recruit young men from throughout
the Empire, whose mission it would be to bring the voice and the
light of the Emperor’s wisdom to the people.
They were called to sit at the feet of the Emperor, to learn
from him and then spread his teachings to all corners of his
Empire. At least that was what he and all the citizens of the Seat
were told. Enaz now knew that it was also a way to corrupt the
faith and belief in the Divines, and co-opt it toward worship of the
Emperor and his works.
Many hundreds of young boys volunteered for such an
opportunity, while many more were simply pressured or had no
other choice but to join. Some were simply taken from their homes
and families by the Emperor, conscripted for the “greater good”.
The youngest boys in that first group of recruits were five
and six sojourns, the oldest Enaz’ age or a sojourn older.
Enaz and the other hundreds of boys were taken into the
Great Hall of the Emperor’s newly built Citadel tower, a monstrous
black marble structure with gold inlay and filigree everywhere.
Enaz could still recall the look of amazement on all the boy’s faces
as they filed into the hall. None of them had ever seen such
grandeur. The excited way they imagined the importance of their
new lives just beginning. Enaz knew that most of them had never
even seen real gold before.
The boys were all led into that hall by the hundreds,
stripped naked, then the doors were barred and the Imperial
soldiers arrived, the Emperor himself at their head. These boys,
innocent as they were, did not, could not, have imagined the
perversions that were to be performed upon them on that day.
Enaz had few good memories of his life up to that point,
but after that day and night, he would always be able to tell which
was the worst. Enaz had blocked out as much of those first
moments as he could, but try as he might, the sights, the smells
and the sounds always remained with him, threatening to
overwhelm him at times.
The final indignity of that ordeal was when they lined the
boys up, naked, bleeding, and covered in fluids from the hundreds
of Imperial soldiers who had just abused them, and marched them
to the front of the hall. There they were held down while the
commanders of that horror brigade carved their testicles out of
their bodies with paring knives. The wailing that filled the great
hall that night still haunted Enaz’ dreams every night without fail.
The older boys, like Enaz, were not subjected to the same
degree of “initiation” as the youngest ones. Not all of the young
boys survived this procedure, and the ones who did were forever
broken. When it was Enaz’ turn, the rough, strong hands of the
Imperial soldier clamped down on his upper arms like a vise grip.
Enaz was shivering in fright, in shock, but he had grown
completely numb. As had most of the boys.
In Enaz’ case, an unusual thing had happened. The
Emperor himself appeared among the men, and approached a
number of the older boys, tapping them on the top of the head.
This was a signal to the Imperial soldiers apparently, and the boys
so selected were taken from the great hall and delivered into a side
chamber. Enaz could still recall the gratitude which he had felt in
that moment.
The Emperor approached Enaz and not only touched
Enaz’ dark shock of hair, but caressed his cheek. The guard
holding him pulled Enaz to his feet and roughly guided him, along
with the other four boys that the Emperor had chosen, to line up in
the chamber.
The chosen boys waited in the quiet chamber, watched by
a new group of oiled and muscled guards. They had been pushed
down onto their knees and ordered to remain that way. They
waited this way for several prayers, until Enaz was sure that his
knees couldn’t take any more. His back and legs were on fire, as
were the other boys, their whimpering cries the only sound in the
chamber. Enaz did not, as some of the other boys did, offer a
devotion to the Divines, as he and his family had long ago given up
such superstitions.
Finally when Enaz felt that he would fall over, which he
knew would almost certainly result in his death at the hands of the
guards, the Emperor entered, naked and covered with a sheen of
sweat, as well as other things.
Enaz averted his gaze downward, his pain, fear and shame
making him tremble.
The Emperor stood before them and spoke “You are all
special indeed to be shown such mercy. Above all the others this
night, you five are worthy of the gift I am to give you.”
Enaz, curiosity overwhelming him, tilted his head slightly,
enough so that he could see what was happening.
The Emperor stalked to the boy at the far end of the line,
wearing the smile of a predator about to dine on its prey.
Uriel placed his hand under the boy’s chin, a blondehaired boy with piercing blue eyes, despite their being bloodshot
and red-rimmed from crying, and bade the boy look into his eyes.
The Emperor put one slender finger upon the boy’s lower
lip, and pushed down, opening the boy’s mouth. Then the Emperor
straightened, and Enaz could see his manhood, glistening and
erect. Enaz turned his head and closed his eyes, but he could hear
the sounds of the boy as he sobbed and choked through his task,
and heard the pleasurable sighs of the Emperor, even though he
tried hard to remember some of the songs he and his family used
to sing, in an attempt to drown out the discomfiting sounds.
Enaz wished, with every fiber of his being, that he would
die right there and then.
But like all wishes, it went unfulfilled.
He considered trying to run, knowing that he would
simply be cut down by the Imperial guards, but he knew that it was
just as likely they would simply subdue him and throw him back in
the great hall to have his balls carved out. Enaz didn’t want that, so
he tried to will himself to be strong.
Finally, the Emperor grunted and the boy gagged. Enaz
heard the Emperor say “You have received my seed. The seed of
the Empire itself. May it grow within you and inspire you to plant
my seed in others.”
The solemn intonation and words seemed to Enaz to be a
gross parody of sanctity, given the base act to which such words
had just been attributed, and he felt as though he should laugh out
loud at the absurdity. But Enaz found he had no mirth within him,
only bitterness and despair. The Emperor then moved on to the
second boy and was already engaging him with the same ritual.
If the circumstances hadn’t been so dire, Enaz might have
been impressed by the Emperor’s ability to so swiftly achieve
arousal again. Enaz had little experience with sex play with others,
but he had many times found fulfillment in his own way, and he
had never before been able to enjoy a second arousal so soon after
climaxing from a first.
Enaz listened as the other three boys each received their
“gift” from the Emperor, the pain in his lower body forgotten as
the blood coursed through his body, urging him to get up, to run,
to fight, to do anything other than wait here for what he knew was
coming. And yet he could not. His body refused to act. Enaz felt
rooted to the ground, as though the Emperor’s presence were like a
weight around his soul.
When it was finally time for Enaz to undergo the same
“rite”, his heart felt frozen. He could no longer feel anything
inside; he floated in a sea of lethargy, disconnected from
everything. It felt as though he were watching it all from outside of
his body, distantly observing what was going on with a
dispassionate, detached view.
This seemed to please the Emperor. As he approached
Enaz he said, with genuine warmth, “Ah, look at you. So stoic. So
serious. I believe you will be the shepherd that leads my flock.
Would that not be glorious?”
Then Enaz could only stare emptily into the cold,
deadened eyes of the man-boy who stood before him, before being
forced to look down at the hard throbbing flesh that was now being
inserted into his mouth. He closed his eyes and did as the Emperor
bid.
Enaz had died that day, or at least the vital part of himself
that had made him who he was had died. After that day, Enaz
came to believe that he was naught but an empty shell, designed to
serve the Will of the Emperor.
He was a vessel to be filled, and he need never think of
anything beyond how to please his Emperor. And as such, nothing
would ever need to matter, ever again.