Note: There may be a lot typos here, I haven't had the chance to really read through it well. All the same, I think the point will come across. I was eliminated from the contest yesterday for not garnering enough interest. I'll probably regroup and repost using another part to start. I am going to wait and see how the other does first. It still sitting at 41 percent with like 114 votes, so I think it has a good chance of making it through.
Track 9: Satin in a Coffin by Modest Mouse
“God I sure hope you are dead”
The worst of the wind and lightning had subsided in the night, but the rain kept falling hard when the call came out of a rider ahead. Ewam had fallen into a sort of trance from the splatter of rain in the deep puddles and the plop of horse hooves sinking into soggy turf. They road on the side of the road in the grass ditches because the cobblestone was too slippery for the horses and the ooccasional sinkhole could break a valued steed’s leg. The rout was not much better as water stood openly above thick mud upturned by the passage of the huge army.
“He comes from Stra,” Banik leaned in. “Word from the city, at last.”
Ewam squinted through the raindrops and could barely make out a figure well ahead on the road. The fool! He risked his and his beast’s life on the stones. Ewam had sent two messengers ahead to Stra for word to meet them, and neither had returned. Could this rider be one of them? Ewam’s army was nearing Al-Zehar’s pass, a westbound trail that led directly to Noce. If Cortobrane and his men did not meet them at the pass then Ewam was left to decide whether or not to continue to Noce or take the army the two days ride north to Stra to find out what was going on. News from the city would be welcomed, but a sudden sense of dread filled Ewam’s heart watching the slow approach of the figure off in the distance.
“We shall ride out ahead and meet him,” Ewam said. He did not need to specify that he meant for he, Banik and Commander Lews. Lews ordered four more riders to stay close behind. It was only one man; they would not need any more protection. Kicking into his mare, he and Banik moved out ahead. Leaning in close to the man from the Sorna, Ewam whispered. “Keep the sword hidden.”
Finding out that Cortobrane had the Civil Guard Guild waiting for him at Zehar’s pass would be welcomed news. Aside from the guard’s of Omet, Stra’s guild was the most welltrained soldiers in the kingdom. Those from the other cities and the outlying farms and villages were no more than men armed with old swords and knotted shafts with little idea how to use them and even less of an idea of how to handle a battle both physically and mentally. Satar was a peaceful kingdom. It had well over a hundred years since battle had waged openly on its fields. Even Ewam, who was a natural at soldiering and generaling, was not battle-tested.
Along their journey, Ewam had prodded Banik for information and experience. Banik was a man from the wild desert. The Sorna Watch was reputed to have fought battles daily with Dinar and other vagrant tribes that hunted the desert for Salama’s lost tomb. Banik carried scars. A long curved one down his right arms and another on his back.
“Don’t believe all that nonsense,” Banik had said while they smoked leaf in the tent the night before the rider had shown up on their path. “Most days it’s nothing but hot air and sand. Skirmishes are rare, open battle never happens.”
“Still you are the only that has truly danced with blades,” Ewam said, throwing his hands out in a gesture of help.
Banik blew a puff of white smoke into the air. His dark eyes watched it float away.
“You should not worry about swordplay with men so much,” Banik started to roll another leaf. “These are not men we seek out.”
“The Dinar?” Ewam crushed his leaf out.
“The Dinar were men, but most of the young ones are so weakened by the poison they drink to convert, they are not much in a fight,” Banik struck a match. “I’ve heard the truly old Dinar are fierce and the dark magic maintains them. Those are able to do things an average man cannot. They do not die so easy either. Those sort are rare, I think. But it’s not the Dinar that we’ll battle, at least not at first. We’ll meet the others. Those that were never men. All they desire is too feed. They’ll break upon us like waves on a beach, not stopping until we’ve hacked away the heads from their bodies and the tongues from between their pointed teeth.”
“Gods of heavens.”
“I don’t believe they will aid us in this fight,” Banik finished and puffed long on the leaf.
As they neared the rider, Ewam thought of those words again and knew that there were no Gods or angels or grace alive in this world. The man wore the tattered remains of a Satarian uniform and he sat upon a battered gray and white steed. The man was fifty feet away now and stopped on the stone road. From here, Ewam made out that it was Dami Narro, one of the messengers and the son Eps Narro, who owned a large manor south of Omet and rode further back in the army.
The steed’s legs caught Ewam’s attention first. They were skinned to the bone from the knee joints down the hooves. A gaping sore the size of a human head was gouged out on its neck. No blood was spilling out, only some kind of thick black ooze. As they neared, Ewam noticed its ears were cruelly torn away from the skull and left dangling by a thread and its eyeballs were gone.
They came to a halt ten feet away, giving them the first good view of the man, or what was once a man. Like the horse, Dami Narro was skinned from his kneecaps down to his toes and from his elbows to fingers, rainwater dripped from his bare bones. His hair was scalped clean away from his skull, the cavity below looked empty. His lower jaw was sawed away, exposing his top row of yellow teeth and his eyes were also gone, his replaced with two green marbles.
“Gods, I pray he is dead.” Ewam gasped.
Dami’s head stayed slumped till the words reached his ears, then he jerked and twitched in the saddle. The two marbles took on an eerie glow. From his throat came a raspy, feminine voice along with a long black tongue.
“I deliver a message for the King of Satar,” the voice wheezed and ceased.
The moisture had left Ewam’s mouth, but he forced out his response.
“I am Ewam Perde, King of Satar, commander of this force. To whom do I speak?”
A man without a bottom jaw could not possibly smile, but if Ewam did not know better, he would swear that Dami Narro was smiling then.
“Hatala Del Aram, Queen of Stra.”
Ewam snarled at the title. The filth had seeped into Satar.
“Stra has no Queen. What is your message, lying ghoul?” Ewam’s fingers touched his sword.
The thing that was Dami Narro twitched and jerked and maintained that false look of glee.
“Stra is mine!” It hissed. “Come claim if if you dare, the time of man draws to an end.”
“I shall you witch!” Ewam shouted. “I shall send you and all your like to the darkest depths of the undeworld!”
The words had barely left his lips when the thing hissed, the tongue spraying out the black ooze. It flew from the saddle with black daggers in each hand. Ewam was able to get his hands up in time to block the daggers, but he could not stop from falling backward out of his saddle. He landed on the back of his neck and shoulders and in the fog of shock he feared that he was paralyzed. Dami Narro was there then, straddling him, daggers pointed down. Ewam heard a sickening whinny of the messenger’s horse as it tried its own attack on Ewam’s companions.
Once again, Ewam was able to catch Dami’s wrists before he could strike. The sharp exposed bone cut into Ewam’s palms. The possessed body of Dami Narro was still strong despite being gnarled.
“Die King of the Doomed,” the raspy voice sounded.
Ewam’s arms were quickly tiring as the blades neared his throat. Well behind him, he heard the army react, but they were to far back to be any help for him. He guessed it would take only a prick from those daggers to do him in. They, like the man now carrying them, were cursed. As hope was slipping from Ewam’s heart, he heard a blade cutting through the air and a few notes from a distant song. He knew that tune.
Duna sliced through Dami Narro like a knife through butter turning the corpse to dust and sand before it fell to the wet turf below. The curved blade’s song echoed in his ears and, for a moment, he felt jealousy touch his heart. He wanted to make the kill. Above him, Banik stood with a pair of eyes that peered deep into Ewam’s soul.
“I believe it’s time for you to carry this,” Banik sounded winded. “It is too much for me. It will consume me before we even reach Stra.”
Banik held the sword’s hilt to Ewam. The terrible shriek came out from the damned horse as the others ran it through.
Ewam reached up, bent his fingers around the cold hilt and his muscles tensed before completely relaxing. The steady hum of battle tuned its beat with his heart.
“Take saddle, Banik,” Ewam barked and handed him the sword from his own scabbard. “We ride hard to Stra. We ride to war!”
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3 comments:
Pretty good. I feel like we are getting somewhere now :) Looks like the battle for Stra might be the apex of this story. Still trying to think along with you though as to where Oan fits into this.
I looked at 5 or 6 stories that they said got elevated and they were all in the 50 to 70% range of 4s & 5s. I am in the mid 90s for votes sitting around 28% for both stories.
I knew that I could not get all the way back to Noce in this one, so Stra became battleground No. 1. I've got 8 parts left now to get everyone to a good point. We'll see how it all turns out.
I dipped to 39 percent with Mark of Cain, but that one always seems to rebound. Not sure I want that one to make it. I am kind of focused on this story right now.
It seems like a good settling point. The twin have kind of become the driving piece of this story. Although I have mixed feelings on where their arc should go. Might help to give Oan a better chance to build on us.
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