Skeleton Company (The Hunter And Chekwe Adventures Book 2 - Aaron M. Fleming

Skeleton Company (The Hunter And Chekwe Adventures Book 2 by Aaron M. Fleming

Book excerpt

The man called Seer had no eyes.

His captors had taken them with a white-hot iron, to prevent bleeding and to keep him alive. If he had anything to thank Quam for, it was that they had taken his eyes while he was unconscious with pain from the loss of his legs. Those had been crushed off at the knees by an Orgooth war wagon, which he thought was fair enough since he was trying to set the wagon on fire to roast the Orgooth alive.

What was not fair was that while he was unconscious, either Quam, some devil, some dark Orgooth deity, or his unseen captors themselves, had cursed him with some grotesque oracular power. His captors called it ‘second sight’ as if it were some great boon from Quam, but they used his so-called gift as if he were no less a tool than a spade or an adze.

There was, however, no wizardry called ‘second mobility’ to compensate for the loss of his legs, so day by day and year by year, Seer sat in a chair and seethed with dreams of escape and revenge, and dread for the next time they would come to draw new visions of horror from his mind.

The guards came for Seer this time on a gentle autumn day. He was in his chair soaking up the sunlight, his head tilted back so he could feel the warmth on his face. There was a tree somewhere nearby; he could feel its shade begin to fall across his face as the sun dropped towards the horizon. He heard the guards coming, their boots rustling crunching on the first fallen leaves of the season.

There were four of them. They picked up his chair and carried him away.

“Where are you taking me?” Seer asked. “Who are you? What are you doing with me?”

There was no response. As usual.

“Quamdamn your devil-spawned souls,” Seer said. He said the words calmly, but clearly and sternly. He had always been a pious man, not given to vain blasphemy. He picked his curses carefully and meant them.

The guards remained silent. Seer counted their steps as best he could. They carried him sixty paces or so, up over a little rise, and downslope another eighty paces. The path dipped more sharply, the guards’ movements becoming more jolting as they went down a flight of steps, and then the air became cooler as the path leveled off. They were underground, Seer believed. The sound of boots on earth and stone and the smell of earth suggested a cave, or perhaps a dugout. Some sort of devils’ lair, no doubt.

They set Seer down and their feet scuffed away, aligning in a row a dozen feet behind him and then shuffling nervously for a few heartbeats before going still. The sound of lackeys in the presence of a cruel lord, he thought.

“I need your gift again, Seer,” came a voice. It was the same voice Seer heard each of the five previous times they brought him to this place. The voice of The Bloodless, as Seer had heard him called. It was an odd voice. Too high for a man, too low for a woman. There was a hint of an accent. From north of the Kistrill valley, but not Orgooth. Polished in tone, but not touched with a nobleman’s arrogance. A scholar then, or maybe a priest. Though if he was a priest, he was unholy as hell. Bloodless was as good a name as any for him, or her. In any case, Seer kept his own lips pressed tight.

“It will hurt you less if you give it willingly,” Bloodless said. Seer jerked his head up. Four years without eyes and he still hadn’t lost the impulse to stare in surprise.

“Go to hell,” he said evenly.

“Tut-tut,” said Bloodless. “So angry. Haven’t my people been treating you well?”

“I said, go to hell.”

“I mean you no harm. In fact, if you were willing, we could be partners. Well, I’d still be your lord, but your status would grow with your power.”

“The only power I want is to go home,” Seer snapped.

For a moment the underground space was still, quiet but for Bloodless’ soft breath and Seer’s own heartbeat pounding in his temples.

“I have uncovered new lore,” said Bloodless. “Well, old lore, but lost so long that it appears new to us. The knowledge increases the immediacy of my need for your gift. It also confirms my fear that there is a limit to your power. Now I know for certain that I can only summon you seven times…if you are unwilling. Without your cooperation, that seventh vision will kill you.”

Seer kept his mouth shut, but he felt a tremor of fear pass up his spine. Bloodless’ voice resumed.

“If you have been counting, you know this is your sixth viewing. One more, after today, and you will die, Seer. Surely you suspected as much. Your suffering has increased with each use of the gift.”

Seer drew a long breath.

“Use me again then, twice in one night, for all I care. I left my wife, my children, and my hearth to serve my Emperor, and I knew I probably would not see them again. What makes you think I would betray Quam to help a devil like you? Again, you can go to hell.”

Bloodless gave a soft laugh, but otherwise ignored Seer’s curses. Seer heard flint on steel, a few puffs of breath, and in twenty heartbeats the sound of a small flame racing through a pile of twigs.

“What’s at home?” Bloodless’ voice wafted toward him with the smell of smoke. There was a fierce crackling as something new, dried herbs or some such, was tossed on the flame. A new odor filled the space around Seer, a bouquet that started soft, became sweet, then sickly sweet, until finally the stench of death filled his nostrils. He’d been on enough battlefields to know the horrific reek for what it was. He began to gag.

“Quamdamn you!” Seer yelled. He felt his grip on his mind loosening. “Quam shrivel your…your…your…” he stopped, words failing him. There was something there, something obscene he’d heard soldiers say a thousand times. But he couldn’t remember now. Just when he really wanted to curse.

“What’s at home?” the voice came again. Whose voice? Seer couldn’t remember.

“A wife,” he groaned.

“Ah. Beautiful?”

“As the starlit sky.”

“Strong?”

“As the mountains…”

“More’s the pity,” Bloodless taunted. “Another will have her. She will taste his lips, rest in his arms, surrender to his caresses.”

“You bastard!” Seer screamed. He tried to lunge forward, to claw his way to Bloodless and rip his voice from his living throat. Instead, he found that the guards had belted him to his chair with leather straps. He writhed and bucked and nearly tipped over the chair before a steadying hand suddenly pressed down on his forehead. Seer was feverish, sweating, but the hand was hotter still, like a red-hot branding iron. Seer screamed again, wordless in torment.

“Where is Kingmaker?” Bloodless asked. Seer saw nothing. He jerked his head back and forth. “Hmm. What is the Corpsemaiden?” the voice came from just inches away from his ear.

Seer clenched his jaw so tight his teeth nearly cracked, but it was no use. Pain, searing and electric, shot through his mandible and his lips parted.

“She raises the dead who are not dead!” he shrieked. “Swordsmen with no eyes. Pikemen with no blood. Warriors with no flesh – company after company after company of them.”

“Ah,” came the voice, inches from his ear and yet a thousand miles distant in spirit. “Who is she?”

Vision burst in Seer’s mind. A maid, womanhood fresh on her like the first blanket of flowers on a spring meadow. She was the child of a brown skinned Kistrill and a pale northmarcher; her skin was like dark cream, her hair like fire, her eyes bright sapphire. She walked by a stream that wandered through a little vale, under the brow of a soft old hill where an ancient manor house sprawled its moss-and-ivy-covered bones. An old man was with her, his wrinkled brown skin spotted with age, his once-ochre hair now thin and pale blue. He smiled at her and doted on her, but her thoughts were far away.

Seer screamed all these details, then collapsed back against his chair. He was panting for air as if he had raced a mile over rugged ground.

Please, no more! he begged Quam. It hurts too much to see!

Quam did not answer, but Bloodless did.

“Where is the manor? Where is the vale?” he demanded.

Seer twitched again, resisting the seeing. He jerked and slammed against the straps, whipped his head upward and gnashed at the hand that pressed him down.

Bloodless seized Seer’s head with both hands, palms on his cheeks, fingers digging into his temples, and his thumbs pressed into Seer’s empty eye sockets.

“Where?” Bloodless’ voice was as shrill as the Seer’s.

The vision came again. There was a stone lintel over the manor’s gate. A word had been carved into the stone, generations long past. Wind, snow and salt mist from the sea had eaten away at the letters, and moss obscured much of what remained, but there was just enough etching left to read the name of the estate and its owners. The word tore itself out of Seer’s throat in an anguished howl:

“Grenvell!”

***

The man called Seer awoke to the feel of gentle hands swabbing his face with warm, wet rags. He was still sweating, and every muscle in his body ached. He couldn’t tell if the ache was from fever or from his struggle against the straps on his chair. Maybe both. Probably both. He was burning up from the inside and exhausted down to his bones.

“Water,” he croaked, and discovered his throat was as sore as his muscles, raw from his screaming.

“There is broth for you, Seer,” came an old voice. Veista was one of the servants who took care of him. Her accent marked her as a northmarcher. Probably a heretic, but more than kind.

“Yes, Seer,” said Dunner, Veista’s old husband. “Beef and onion broth for strength. For Quamsake, you must eat.”

Seer raised his head. Beef and onion was his favorite. Did the servants know that? Or was it some puny kindness from Quam? It didn’t matter. Veista fed him, and he slurped greedily until the spoon clattered on an empty bowl.

Other sounds came from further away, from outside whatever building he was in: the sound of a dozen horses or more, heavy beasts, jangling with the accouterments of armored cavalry.

There was always war after his visions. First the sounds of troops marching away, followed later by their return. Always victorious, Seer thought. He always heard the swaggering pace and arrogant banter of triumphant warriors, followed by the shuffling and moaning of captives. With each venture there was a longer interval between the departure and return. They were campaigning further afield each time.

Bloodless’ power was growing, his reach extending further from his underground devils’ lair. This time his troops – knights by the clank of their armor – were going to some place called Grenvell. Seer had not heard of it, but the age of the manor in his vision suggested an ancient house indeed. Probably deep in the heartland of the Kistrill valley.

Quam, he rasped.

“What is it, Seer?” the old man asked.

“Help,” Seer gasped. “Help, please, for Quamsake. I have betrayed an innocent maiden. They’re going for her. Help me get out of here. I have to get to her. I have to warn her before he uses her too.”

“Hsst! Quiet!” the old man urged. “You must not say such things! Quiet now, Seer.”

“He is evil,” Seer whispered. “I don’t know what he is doing, but it is wrong. You must know it too.”

“Yes, we know,” the woman breathed, barely audible. “But the guards are too close now. Maybe tomorrow we can join you when you sit on the hillside. If there is sunshine, we can talk then. But for now…silence.”

But there was no sunshine the next day, or the day after that, or for many days in a row after that. And each long day, the man called Seer sat in darkness, seeing again and again in his mind the fiery hair and sapphire eyes of an innocent maid who figured, somehow, into Bloodless’ devilish schemes.