Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1) (2 page)

Sanouk threw himself on Aleena, terror closing his throat. Should he ever fail to appease the god’s hunger, the cost was his own soul—not locked away, but taken, imprisoned as Gathul’s eternal plaything. Desperate to avoid that, he struck Aleena, once and again. The third blow dazed her, and she went limp. The gag had loosened enough for her tongue to push it away.

“Please, do not do this thing,” she begged.

“I must, and I will,” he said, and jabbed the torch into the resin smeared over her belly and breasts.

Sputtering flames quickly engulfed her. Her shrieks gave him pause only a moment, then he caught her up and spun from the altar, grinding his teeth against the red pain of his own sizzling skin. As he raced toward an open tomb, fire and smoke roiled before his eyes, blinding him. The reek of scorched hair and meat filled his nose. Flames poured down his throat, searing his lungs. He took one more step and threw the girl. Swirls of black smoke and leaping tongues of red-orange fire blocked his sight. Aleena was still screaming, screaming—

Silence fell, and only the fast-fading echoes of her cries gave evidence that she had ever made a sound. With that abrupt quiet, the fiery pain that had swarmed over Sanouk, an agony that had begun to sink into his flesh with deadly hunger, vanished. Even knowing what to expect, he fell to his knees, a sooty arm held before his awed eyes. His flesh was nearly whole, the last blisters fading as he watched. Like steel before it, fire would never again threaten his life.

His black eyes darted. Aleena screamed at him in terrible silence, not beautiful any longer, but a charred, undying ruin. Where Undai beat against an immovable wall of running blood, Aleena pounded her blackened fists against a barrier of flame. The agony of immolation was in her, marrow-deep, but she would not perish by fire … and neither would he, as long as she remained trapped within her fiery tomb.

“You have done well, human,” Gathul mocked. The god paused before adding, “Your offerings have stirred my hungers. It would serve you well to bring the next sacrifice sooner.”

Sanouk jerked his head around. “But, master, you allotted a moon’s turn between each offering.”

“I have changed my mind, human, as is my privilege. Do my will, and all will be well with you. Fail, and your suffering will be limitless.”

Before the last syllable was complete, the god’s hideous form blackened and shrunk to the size of a rat’s eye, then vanished with a blast of lightless energy that threw Sanouk against a rough stone wall.

For a long time after Gathul departed, Sanouk sat in a stupor, looking on Undai and Aleena, but not really seeing them. Their sacrifices ensured he was invulnerable to steel and flame. With but two sacrifices, he could achieve much uncontended. With a few more, he would become impervious to all manner of deaths, save that wrought by time. All that pleased him, but what if Gathul once more changed their pact?
“Do my will, and all will be well with you.”

For the first time, Sanouk saw clearly the trap in dealing with the god of grief and avarice. Once the sacrifices began, they could not be halted, save by the death of the conjurer. And yet, if he became invulnerable to death by all means except long years, then he would need to make timely offerings the rest of his days. That obligation had never troubled Sanouk, for hapless fools were as numerous as grains of sand. But what if Gathul’s hungers became such that the god required a daily sacrifice …
or more?
Even fools would notice such a harvesting of their flock.

Sanouk swallowed back the bile on his tongue, told himself Gathul would never make such impossible demands, for to do so would end the feedings altogether. Why would the god want that?

Feeling better about the whole affair, confident that he had not erred in treating with Gathul, Sanouk departed the chamber to attend to the other intricacies of building his future kingdom.

Chapter 2

“A
nother fine victory for the Scorpion!” Lieutenant Thushar shouted to Rathe. Grinning as if the smell of ashes and death did not touch him, the strong-jawed Prythian tied back his long brown hair with a leather thong, then poured water from a leaky wooden bucket over his broad chest to rinse away blood and dust. Hours had passed since the village’s last defender had fallen, but the lieutenant’s green eyes still glinted with the heat of battle.

The Scorpion, Captain Rathe Lahkurin, commander of the Ghosts of Ahnok, nodded in acceptance of Thushar’s praise, even as he held back what he thought of the so-called victory. It had been a slaughter of innocents, nothing less, and one of a dozen such massacres in the last year. Such mindless bloodletting had never sat well with him, and less so now.

“Do not forget the Ghosts of Ahnok!” Sergeant Girod cried, slapping his scarred chest as if he alone had won the village. The other three sergeants chuckled uneasily. Girod, a brutish beast with a face to match his demeanor, the bastard of the head of the king’s council, was a man shunned. He had not risen through the ranks, as had all the other Ghosts, but rather had been placed amongst them. Such was unprecedented, and sparked suspicion that Girod was a spy.

Shaded by spreading willows, Rathe ignored Girod and wetted his mane of black hair with a dented cook pot. The water was cold and clear and sweet, but did little to lift his mood. Around the broad wellspring’s ancient stone-and-mortar wall, the rest of his subordinates went back to scouring away the residue of battle, leaving it to mingle with the mud squishing between their toes.

Rathe knew he should bury his dissatisfaction, but could not. He was a soldier, a skilled man of war, yet in the hands of the king to whom he swore fealty, he had become a murderer’s savaging sword. Of late, nothing he had done brought him honor, nor could those atrocities please Ahnok, the god he served.

In the last year, King Tazzim of Cerrikoth had ordered Rathe and the Ghosts to avoid battling Qairennor patrols, and instead to lead the company against undefended villages throughout the enemy’s realm. The king intended to break the faith the Qairennor lowborn had in Queen Shukura, rumored to be a witch with eyes set upon Cerrikoth.

Thus far, Rathe’s bold assaults had caught every settlement unawares, but he had yet to discover any evidence that Queen Shukura was a practitioner of dark arts, or had any designs for invading Cerrikoth. As for breaking anyone’s will, this morning had proven once more that Queen Shukura’s people stood firm in their fealty, and were willing to fight and die under the Rose of Qairennor banner.

From far off, the whistling crack of a scourge evoked a man’s scream. The note of pain echoed down streets empty of all but blowing dust and corpses fresh enough to leak blood. Where the sounds of agony made Rathe’s insides roil, they disturbed his men no more than the sprawled dead.
Why should it bother them, or me, to conquer sworn enemies?

His thin resolve failed when he glanced around at a scene that had become as common to him as his reflection. Smoke rose from the village’s charred shops and homes. A gentle wind tugged apart the sooty plumes, dragging the remnants east across a rolling grassland toward the Mountains of Arakas. That boundary between the kingdoms of Qairennor and Cerrikoth rose to peaks high, jagged, and crowned in snow through every season.

Farther down the village’s main street, a pack of wild dogs converged on a small, half-burned corpse, snapping and growling to see which would have the first bite. Rathe’s teeth ground together as the dead boy’s thin limbs thrashed lifelessly. Other boys, girls, men, and women awaited the curs’ jaws and ripping teeth. As well, vultures circled above, black scribbles on a cerulean canvas, patient for their turn at the butchers’ leavings.

Yes, it was all too familiar, and he’d had his fill of it…. But he was a soldier of Cerrikoth, the king’s champion, the most esteemed Cerrikothian warrior in five generations. How could he balk at his liege’s will?
And how can I not?
he considered, as the scourge’s unseen leather tongues snapped again.

Rathe lifted his face to the breeze. It favored him by bringing on its foul breath a pleading chorus from the other captives. The questioning had begun three hours past dawn. It would continue until some wretch disclosed the information Rathe sought at the behest of King Tazzim.
What offerings does the witch-queen demand? Is there gold within the village?
Have you seen Qairennor patrols riding east … supply caravans?

The prisoners would speak eventually, they always did, but what they revealed was common knowledge, and nothing of value. A few trinkets would be found, a healer’s cupboard of potions, foodstuffs meant to hold the villagers through lean seasons, maybe even a few odd swords and spears held over from campaigns of old—heirlooms and necessities, nothing more. Yet that bric-a-brac would serve as evidence of Queen Shukura’s treachery … at least in the eyes of King Tazzim. Afterward, Rathe would command the villager’s executions, as he had so often in the last year.

How many dead at my order?
Hundreds, without question, and that blood stained his soul more than that of the soldiers he had slain in honest combat during the border wars between Cerrikoth and the kingdoms of Unylle and Trem.

When another scream soared over the village, Thushar said, “The banner of our glorious god stiffens their tongues.” He used wet sand to scrub away stubborn bloodstains from his hands.

As if livened by praise, the company’s crimson banner bearing the golden face of Ahnok, the Cerrikothian god of war, lifted and flapped. Rathe looked askance at the head of that snarling lion, with its mane of fanged serpents. At one time, he would have killed the one who let even a corner of that banner touch the soil men tread upon. Now … well, now, things had changed. His greatest regret was that his actions had sullied his god’s likeness and name.

“It’s wise that they fear our device,” Rathe agreed in a somber tone. He hesitated, the proud words he must speak as the leader of the Ghosts bitter on his tongue. “A hundred years of victory are bound up with the standard of the Ghosts of Ahnok. When seen, the hearts of our strongest enemies quail.” In a smaller voice, he added, “More’s the pity that fear now breeds hatred, giving rabble the strength to resist at the price of their lives.”

Thushar gave a mystified snort. “Why should you care? Your people have been fighting these scum a generation.”

“Before that,” Rathe answered, “these enemies were our allies, and we fought against
your
forefathers.”

Indifferent about a point that still brought anger to many of those of the eastern kingdom of Pryth, Thushar shrugged his thick shoulders. “In Pryth we fight family against family—ofttimes brother against brother. If honor needs restoring, or vengeance taken, then blood wets steel and soil. To do less is the way of the craven. Were I you, I’d be happy to be rid of all Qairennorans, along with the witch who rules them.”

Fury boiled up inside Rathe. He stabbed a finger at the torn remains of the child the wild dogs had left behind. “Should I be happy for his death? He was but a
boy!
What did he do to me, or any of us, that we should cleave his spirit from his flesh? As to witches, have you seen sign of sorceries anywhere in Qairennor? Has lightning struck our ranks, have fireballs burned our brothers, have abominable words come on the wings of the night to still our hearts? I have not seen any of these things, have you?”

Sergeants Girod and Saros paused in cleaning themselves, and listened with heads cocked. The faces of Algios and Zalvid stiffened.

Thushar, Rathe’s dearest friend, shook his head, baffled. “In ten years, that boy would have fathered sons to raise swords against the sons you and I will one day sire. It matters naught if Queen Shukura is a witch. King Tazzim has declared Qairennor and its queen the enemies of Cerrikoth, and he pays good coin to destroy his foes, and grants the right of pillage against the vanquished.”

Rathe stared back, wondering if his doubts were treacherous weakness, or if simple exhaustion had sapped the fire and lust for battle from his spirit? It seemed possible, for fatigue was the destroyer of courage. Possible, but doubtful. Making war against farmers was abhorrent … yet, he had waged that war, and could not condemn the men under his command any easier than he could accuse King Tazzim, not without judging himself. Trapped between conscience and duty, he surrendered to the latter.

“Forgive me, brothers, I am simply weary in my bones,” he said. “It’s been a long expedition. More than anything, I yearn for shade, a flagon of sweet summer wine, and a woman with which to share both.” That last, at least, was true. The affections of women, he had found, erased the stains of furious, bloody battle from his soul.

Silence held as the words expected from the Scorpion, the Champion of Cerrikoth, the Captain of the Ghosts of Ahnok, sunk into the minds of his men.

“As you say!” Thushar boomed, his abrupt laughter loosening the tension as if it had never been. Looking more than a little relieved, the sergeants guffawed and whooped, then began a lively debate about the qualities of various slatterns they had encountered in Cerrikoth’s most sordid districts.

Rathe breathed easier. There were men he trusted and men he did not, but the Ghosts of Ahnok were brothers bound by blood and steel, and all the more dangerous for it. While the king’s law held sway, often a harder law governed the Ghosts. He held his position by strength and skill, cunning and victory—a custom as old as the first warrior-gods themselves. If the leader of the company showed weakness, he faced not banishment but death.

Sensing that his standing was still firm, even if his heart remained uncertain, Rathe poured a last pot of water over his chest and back, a lithe collection of corded muscle and sinew under smooth dark skin, then stepped away from the shaded wellspring to let the warm summer sunlight dry him. Afterward, he donned his undergarments, supple leather trousers, and a linen tunic under a shirt of black chainmail. He knelt to tug on his riding boots.