Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael (3 page)

2.

Rael awakens coughing, which is not strange as it has happened many times in his twelve years of life.  But this time is different.  He is not coughing because his lungs have betrayed him in one of their fits, but instead because the air has a thick, acrid taste.  Every breath in is a challenge, and he tastes smoke on his tongue as the air passes through his mouth.  It is like the smoke of cooking fires, but far denser.  Rael tries to breathe through his nose, but finds the passages closed.  He continues to cough with every breath, but now it’s not just for the smoke.

It hurts when he opens his eyes, like something burns them, and he shuts them tightly as they began to tear.  The pain subsides a moment, and he opens them again to look up at the ceiling of his bedroom.  Normally he cannot see the ceiling for it is lost in darkness, but tonight it looks as if the ceiling moves.  Before he has to shut his eyes again, the movement takes shape into a thousand bats, some hanging upside down while others move about.  Or perhaps his ceiling is covered with rats, but doesn’t make sense because rats should be on the floor, not the ceiling.  Rael suddenly feels sick with motion as the realization sets in that he is suspended by some unknown means on the ceiling of his room, and an army of rats mills about below, just waiting to eat him when he falls.

Rael bolts upright, covering his mouth with his hand, and when he coughs, he feels a hot, wet spray into his palm.  Looking up, he sees that the motion that he thought to be bats, or rats, is actually a thick, billowing sheet of gray smoke.  He looks to the doorway that leads into the family room, and it outlines flickering orange light. 
The house is on fire!

“Mother!” he tries to call out, but his throat will not pass the sounds.  He continues to hack into his hand.

Rael rolls off the side of his bed and
thuds
heavily to the floor.  It jars his shoulder, and he bangs one knee on the oak planks.  He pays it little mind, though, for he finds that the air is cooler and easier to breathe.  He wants to move out of his room, but his aching chest forces him to lay there for a moment, clearing his lungs of the smoke.  Once the hacking begins to subside, he crawls on his hands and knees toward the doorway.  A commotion sounds from the next room, just barely audible over a growing roar that he had not noticed before.

A vision straight out of a nightmare greets Rael as he passes through the doorway leading from his room.  He almost has to squint with the brightness, even though it’s well into the night, and the room should be dark.  Orange flames lick their way up the walls all around, burning into the ceiling, and thick black smoke chokes out the cooler air as the home burns.  Four crumpled forms lay about the room, and one has its face turned his direction.  His mother’s eyes stare back at him without recognition, without the glimmer of life.  Rael is sure that one is his father as well, and he cannot immediately recognize the other two.  He dumbly keeps looking around the room until his gaze settles on a figure.

Standing in the middle of all this is a demon the likes of which Rael has never imagined.  The thing is huge, seeming to dwarf the room about him, as if he is somehow taller than the house itself and yet still fits below its ceiling.  The demon is armored in full plate mail regalia.  The armor covers his entire body except for his head, and it would be beautiful were it not for the hellish surroundings that accompanied it.  The demon’s head is exposed for all to see – a polished and fleshless skull that leers back at onlookers, instilling so much fear with both its grin and the lifeless sockets where eyes should be.  Between his feet which are encased in steel sabatons is the remains of what looks like a brown robe.  It burns.  Clutched in the demon’s hands is the largest sword Rael has ever seen.  At least six feet long, its wielder must be a demon, for surely no man could ever fight with such a thing effectively, and blood coats half of the blade up to the tip.

Then comes the worst of it – the demon’s voice.  Rael can barely hear it over the roar of the fires consuming his home, and it is as frightening as the demon’s visage.  The voice is choked, strangled as if a hand is clamped over the demon’s neck, and it almost gargles forth in a most sickening manner.  It speaks in Westerner, but it is accented in such a way as to make one think whatever mouth issued the voice is not meant to form such words.

“Boy,” the demon says, “come with me.”

Two men burst into the home through the door that is slightly ajar, and they stop dead in their tracks either for the fire or the armored form in their way.  Rael can see little of them, except that one is older with a nose that was once broken and never healed right.  The demon wheels and brings his sword around in a wide arc that hacks deeply into the broken nosed man’s midsection, very nearly cutting him in twain.  Before the other can react or even think, the sword has neatly skewered him on its point.  The demon pulls the sword free, and as the man slowly falls to his knees in shock, he brings the blade back around in a massive arc to behead him.

Rael has seen blood before of course, as has any child approaching adolescence, but never in his life has he seen so much human blood.  Once, one of the boats caught an incredible tuna - the stuff of legends.  It was bigger than his father, and that monstrosity had bled horrifically all over the dock.  But that was a fish.  This is the blood of men, and as it spreads across the floor, it sizzles when it meets patches of fire.  Rael closes his eyes when he lays his eyes on entrails that spilled from the broken nosed man’s belly.  The smell is far worse than that encountered when cleaning fish, and Rael thinks he may vomit.

“More will come to kill you, boy,” the demon says.  Rael opens his eyes to see that the demon holds a gauntleted hand out to him.  “Come with me or die.”

Rael just stares at the open hand.  No words come from his mouth, and his brain cannot even comprehend what action he should take.  The demon seems to growl, perhaps in annoyance or frustration, and the sound is barely audible over the creaking of the timbers holding up the roof.  The armored thing steps forward and pulls Rael up to his feet.  He then scoops Rael up with one arm, still clasping the sword in the other, and carries the boy from the burning home.

Outside the air is clean and cool, as the smoke and heat billow up into starry sky.  The moon provides little light, but the village is coming to life as homes begin to light up from the inside.  Three men run hurriedly toward Rael’s home, on a direct path with some specific intent.  As the demon drops Rael hard onto the sandy ground, the boy thinks he can make out the shape of buckets in their hands.  The men stop short as the demon charges them, swinging his greatsword with both hands.  The three assailants never have a chance as they are cut down in moments by the giant steel blade.

The demon steps quickly back to Rael’s side, retrieving a huge brown leather sheathe from the ground into which he slides his blade.  This armored thing is going to take him from his home, from his village and from his parents.  As the realization hits him, Rael begins to yell and scream, his voice cracking and reaching heights that a man’s voice could not.  He kicks, but his legs are far from the ground and strike nothing.  He pounds his palms and fists against the demon’s plate armor, but it has only the effect of making his hands hurt.  In this manner, the demon stole off with Rael into the night as more men and women came to fight the fire.

*              *              *

Orf narrowly manages to parry every strike of Rael’s stick sword, but the bigger boy cannot seem to return the attacks.  They have fought many, many times, and Rael has consistently improved every time, whereas Orf still fights with nothing but his brute strength.  The sword no longer shed splinters into Rael’s hand, as it has become well worn, worn smooth in fact where he grips it.  Orf recovers just enough to bring a diagonal blow down at Rael’s midsection.  Rael sees his chance, knocks the weapon to the side and rams his own straight into Orf’s chest.  The big boy howls with the pain of it and staggers backward.

Rael waits patiently for his opponent to recover a bit, and the two boys stand staring each other down.  Just as Orf looks ready to continue, both stop and listen at the oddest of sounds.  There’s a swishing sound in the air, not unlike that of oars moving through water.  It’s quiet at first, like a hint or a whisper, but as Rael focuses on it, the sound grows in volume.  He looks around, but they are standing in the middle of their village road.  There’s no sign of anything that could be causing the noise. 
I am dreaming
, Rael suddenly realizes, and the island with its village and Orf suddenly dissolve from view.

Rael opens his eyes to find himself overlooking water.  It’s vast.  All he can see is water, and the sun has just fully risen past the horizon.  His head rests on crossed arms on a wooden bench seat of a sloop.  He lifts his head, ignoring the trail of drool on his arms, and looks out over the sea. 
Where am I?
, he wonders. 

He sits up, blinking several times to clear his eyes, and the figure at the bow of the sloop brings it all back to him in frightening clarity.  A small, sail less mast is between him and the armored demon that sits and pulls two massive oars through the water, propelling the small boat forward.  He’s huge, and his bulk weighs down the bow, no doubt forcing him to expend more effort as the boat tries to go down into the sea rather than across it.

Rael stares at the demon for a long moment, the events of the previous night playing out in his head, and once complete, he can only think of one thing to do.  His movements are sluggish, as he still hasn’t shaken off sleep, and as he tries to clamber over the side, he realizes that his arms and legs will not quite respond to his demands.  He manages to half climb, half flop over the edge toward the sea.  Rael hears two small splashes.  The demon moves frighteningly fast, despite his immense size and steel armor, and just as Rael reaches the water, an armored hand grips him by the back of his tunic.  He hangs there for just an instant, the front of the tunic threatening to choke him, and he straightens his arms to try to slide out of his clothing.  He hears a word he doesn’t understand, and just as he’s about to escape, another mailed hand grabs him by the hair.  Rael screams in pain and horror, but he cannot escape now.  The grip on his tunic releases and takes one of his wrists instead.  The demon lifts him from the water and drops him unceremoniously into the bottom of the boat.

The demon puts a foot on Rael’s chest and says, “Stupid boy.  Do not do that again.  I saved you from fire and murder.  I shan’t lose you to the Narrow Sea.”  His voice is no less disturbing now than Rael remembers it from the previous night.

Rael watches intently as the armored figure moves to the bow of the boat, heedless of the dangerous rocking caused by the commotion.  Holding onto the side with one giant hand, he reaches down into the water to retrieve one wooden oar, which he then uses to corral the other that has started to float away on the calm water.  Last night he seemed as a giant, and he is still huge to be certain.  Rael now thinks he must be close to seven feet tall, and as he watches the demon sit back at the bow to row, he starts to realize that the skull is actually a stylized steel helm of some kind.

“You should sit towards the middle.  It would be easier,” Rael says, and near black eyes just stare back at him from within the skull helm.  As the demon returns to his rowing Rael adds, pointing to the mast, “And I could help you rig the sail.  I’m not… I am not very good at it, but it would be better than rowing.”

“I rowed all night.  I’ll keep rowing.”

“At least take off your armor.  You will bake when the air gets hot.”

“Shut up.  I’m fine,” the demon replies harshly.

“Would you at least tell me why you took me from home?  Where we are going?”

“You are stupid, aren’t you,” the demon replies, though he takes Rael’s advice and moves to a bench near the center of the fifteen foot long boat.  “Those men would’ve killed you in your home like your parents.  Would you rather have died there?  I can accommodate that now, if you’d like.”

Rael ignores the threat and repeats his question, “Where are we going?”

“To someplace safe.”

Realizing that his savior (captor?) isn’t prone to conversation, Rael decides to introduce himself.  “My name is Rael Jameson.”  The man continues rowing with no answer.  “What is your name?”

“My name doesn’t matter,” replies the strangled voice, and it is now accompanied by a huffing as the man rows.

“But you do have a name,” presses Rael.

“I have forgotten it.”

“I must call you something.  Would you be offended if I called you Demon?” Rael asks.

“Demon?”

Suddenly fearful that he has angered the armored giant, Rael’s tongue trips over itself as he explains, “I do not mean anything by it.  It is just that… that is what I thought you were when I first saw you.”

“Demon,” the voice behind the skull helm whispers thoughtfully, and he has stopped his rowing for just a moment.  “Yes, I like that.  If I am not a demon, then who is?”

“What land do you hail from, Demon?  Your accent is peculiar.”

“It is no accent, boy.  I speak the way the gods made me.  Damn Them, it is getting hot.  Look boy, look on the face of a demon!”

Demon raises the oars to rest them along each side of the sloop, and he reaches up to slide the skull helm from his head.  Steel scrapes on steel as it does so, and one of his hands flicks back a chain mail cowl meant to protect the soft tissue of the neck.  Rael inhales sharply at the horrible visage before him, as the man he now sees looks like no other man he has ever known.  His round scalp is nearly hairless – just a few strands of curly black hair protrude here and there, but it is Demon’s face that nearly freezes Rael in terror.  His left eye sits almost a full inch below its partner, and his triangular nose sits between them looking almost like the end of a pig’s snout.  One cheekbone is bulbous and over-formed, while the other seems almost to be a cavity.  His lower jaw protrudes at least a half inch beyond the upper, similar to what Rael has seen in some dogs, and his lips seem large and over formed.