Take My Heart...: Dark Ages - Fantasy (Dark Gods & Tainted Souls Book 3) (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three.

Goldie woke with a different bucket of water in the face, he was getting sick of this. He opened his eyes slowly to see the face of the boy above him. He was grinning ear to ear. Goldie felt his jaw aching like sin, he was laying in mud, shit and had flown from his small wooden chair. He lay literally meters from the table. Looking up he saw the guards holding back the man from him, he had a drawn dagger and a look of murder in his eyes.

Goldie stood up quickly and looked around. The crowd was howling with laughter but the man wasn’t.

“A cruel jest friend to make you lose, her honor is intact,” he needed to cool this man down before he broke free of the two guards struggling to hold him and more blood was spilled.

“What? A trick, but the mark, you said.”

The girl came running up to her father. She whispered in his ear and Goldie watched the man’s rage fade as he beheld the pockets full of gold coins she held. The man hugged her hard.

“She always was the smart one. Sorry about the jaw,” he muttered and walked off with his daughter.

The boy brushed some mud off his back.

“That was so funny, you went flying through the air like a sack of flour. I should have made a bet on how far you’d go, at least five paces.”

“Shut up,” Goldie snapped.

His plan had worked but clearly he hadn’t thought it through, his head was swimming and his jaw felt like he’d been kicked by a horse. Still, feeling his jaw it wasn’t broken and no teeth missing. The priest of the temple walked up to Goldie and held his hand high.

“The winner by way of the other man getting barred from the match, Goldie,” he said.

The crowd cheered and cheered. He’d won against the champion, in a way, and provided them all with a lot of laughs.

“Ok kid what’s next. I can’t take much more of this,” he said.

“It’s ok there are only two to go, but even if you lose now, you’ve got a lot of fans out there, you’ll still be called the Ladies champion by many,” he said.

“I need to win and then we’ll have a party, she needs a proper flock of believers, they are coming around but they still need proof, now the challenges.”

“Next is drinking and then the sword fight, like I said this is the hard part, the sword fight draws proper warriors and unlike you, they won’t be drunk.

“First things first, let’s get drunk, any rules?”

“You can’t spill more than a sip or two from each mug, you can choose the drink so long as it’s strong, wine, ale, mead, spirits, you can’t throw up and if you pass out your done.”

The boy led Goldie shakily to back to the tables, they had pushed them all together and there were a lot of people in this. Clearly it was the highlight of the day. At least, fifty people sat at the tables. From workers to soldiers to real down and out gutter living wine drinkers. It was going to be tough.

He sat next to the tough mercenary who had done archery.

“You’ve done well lad, this part is just fun, we have a drink and talk shit for an hour or so, you skull your drink when he rings the bell and he rings it a lot, you going for mead?

“We’ll we are Northern right, let’s go with what we know.”

“They do say a Northman was weaned on mead and not milk, how old were you when you had your first drink.

“Eight or so.”

The man laughed. “Bloody late starter!” A serving girl poured a smallish clay cup of mead for him and a row of others.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” he said to the man, as the bell rang, Goldie drank it down and was thankful it was coldish.

The girls all poured again and within a long minute, he heard the bell ring again.

After the bell had been rung ten times, his jaw didn’t ache anymore. After twenty, more than half the people had left the table to piss or be sick. The main competition was the man next to him. He’d kept up a constant conversation the whole way. After twenty-five Goldie was starting to sway in his little seat, he was glad for the chatter so he could gauge just how drunk he was. He felt his head start to drop and he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

The serving girl who was a little brown hair scrap clapped loudly in front of his face.

“Wake up Mister Goldie. I’ve money on you” she said quietly.

He roused and looked at her, maybe it was the mead but she looked good. Skinny and with a cute little face covered in a brown fringe. The surge of lust woke him a little.

“Hello, what’s your name?”

She laughed as he drained another cup and she poured another.

“I’ll do a lot more than tell you my name if you win,” she said.

That helped as well, he shook his head from the booze and smiled at her.

“Helping me are you?” Goldie said.

“I like the lady and I like you, you’re big. I like big Northman and the money too,” she winked at him and he saw her slide a small bottle from her sleeve and pour it into his next drink. He was hesitant to just drink it but he had to trust her.

As it went down his throat it burned all the way down and tasted awful mixed with the mead. The felt the strange liquid in him thought. A surge of energy hit him and his head started to clear.

“What was that?” he whispered as she came close to pour another one.

“Oh, just something my mother uses on my father when he’s too tired to perform, now drink up you’re only half way.”

***

It was a dangerous game, pretending to be sweet. The problem was you talked in a soft voice acted caring to everyone and you started to make yourself a soft little girl. She’d stopped being nice many years ago and it was a lot easier to do what you needed to when you cared not for other people's opinion of you.

This lady, her former sister as she said, Angelina, was weak. She pretended to be hard but, in fact, she was scared. She seemed all full of anger and rage but Minsetta could tell it just covered hurt. They were making a very poor attempt at torturing her. She’d been tortured before. Sometimes she caught the Red shirts, sometimes they caught her and they knew how to do things properly. Women haters with a real self-righteous zeal about their work.

She was tied to a large wooden cross that was set in the basement. It was a cold dark room filled with candlelight. The wood was cold against her bare arms and an unknown person ripped her fine dress at the back to show her back, she heard them gasp when they saw the crisscross of scars, not my first time she thought.

She heard them take up the whip and felt it come down against her fine brown skin. She winced in pain but didn’t scream. If felt bad but good. She felt she’d been so locked up in this shell of being nice and good and they were just helping break it down. The whip fell again and again and she screamed, the pain of her ripped flesh being hit, again and again, she heard the wet sounds of leather in blood.

“Fucking do it properly,” she screamed, that should throw them.

These women were idiots. She’d come here a broken and lost thing. She’d had her first run in with the Red shirt when they had destroyed her circle. She’d tried to use her powers to allow people to say goodbye. It was a good use of a dark gift. She’d always had the skills to commune with the other side. As a child it was just feelings and emotions, she was always a strange child, yet she’d been shown a few things by her mother and then more when she’d met her first member of the Dark Guild. He was a nobody in the order but had sought to impress her with his books and trinkets, he had. She realized there was a lot more to this world than what she’d been told. Still they were too dark and she’d turned to the light and look how that had worked out.

She realized the person whipping her was in fact, Angelina, she felt the hits growing slower as she tired.

“Why did you do it? Why leave and why take it?” She asked.

Why did she take it, it, was a book, it was called the rites of fury and she took it to buy herself into the good graces of the Guild. She’d realized by then they were the only ones who could be trusted, they wanted power for themselves, they worshiped their own greed, understandable and predictable.

“You know why I left, you’re all liars here, you take the hurt and tormented and you turn them into killers,” she spat.

“You never minded when you profited from it,” she said back.

“You talk about vengeance for women against wicked men, but you we were taking orders from the red shirts. The very ones who tried to kill me, killed my friends and are fucking up the very order of things,” Minsetta spat.

“You never understood sister this is so much bigger than you,” the woman put her scarred face close to her shoulder and looked into her eyes. Minsetta saw madness there. “We have to do as the Furies command, soon the change will be here in the world and we will be the only ones left standing.”

She snapped her head back hard into the woman’s face, and using all her strength ripped the leather lashes at her hands. On her back the wounds had healed and the skin was fresh and pure. The woman laid on the ground holding her face as blood poured out.

“You always did talk too much,” Minsetta said.

As she approached the woman she let her face turn to that of the monster. Her teeth grew long and sharp her eyes black. Gods she was hungry she thought as she leapt at the screaming woman.

Chapter Thirty Four.

Renfra had gone and the Captain he sent after him never came back either. It was one of those situations which he hated. He had people that needed to do jobs and they never did them right. Thellas thought he was the only one in the circle, thought he was calling the shots but he was wrong. He wasn’t going to sit here and do nothing while this idiot ruined everything. They needed to make the attack on Twin Plains and take the nobles, but they needed to cause some trouble first. He had no idea why Renfra had picked those temples but they were as good as anything else.

He looked at the orders for them. Some desert savages a temple of females and the gambling den of the Lucky Lady. He’d always hated that place. They made so much in illegal revenue they never declared and he knew well they were bribing and corrupting his tax men.

He marched back towards the Keep and was starting to feel better. He marched into his rooms and slowly took off his boots. He looked around the room and it felt so empty. For some reason, his mind kept coming back to his father. Did his office feel like this before he was taken by those beasts? As he looked it seemed as if the shadows were growing and moving in on him.

He could feel some feeling of fear growing inside him. It wasn’t something he’d felt since he was a boy. He tried to shake it off but couldn’t. He thought he could hear something as well. It was like a whisper but it was growing. He strained to hear it, the feeling of fear growing and growing in him and then he heard it fully.

Thellas
it said clearly in his mind, he almost screamed aloud.

“Who is there?” he spoke to the voice in his mind.

You can just call me master, as Renfra does,
it said.

Renfra had never spoken of this. He’d spoken only of order and rules and making the world safe for normal people.

“What I don’t understand?” he said.

You need not, you only need to do what I say, Renfra has been useful but it was always you that I wanted and needed, not him,
it said.

“What do you need me for?” he asked.

Why be king when you can be an emperor, why worry about these nobles when you could crush them under your boot, you could be the greatest man that ever lived.

He felt the power in those words, this thing whatever it was seemed to be bursting with power and strength. He could feel it running through him with every word. As it spoke visions appeared in his mind of the king he could be. He saw the nobles bowing before him and saw what a weak dream it had been, he could bring the every land under his command.

“What do I need to do,” he said.

You’re on the right path and I’ve been guiding you. You need to kill the man Goldie, you need to destroy that den of hers and every other temple you come across,
it said with anger.

“I will, but why? They are a small threat,” he said. “The nobles are the real threat.”

They will fall soon enough, their cities will be in chaos and yours will stand strong, but you must do this for me, there will be only one god, me and there will only be one king, you.

Thellas smiled to himself, as he thought of it, but why would their cities be in chaos and his not. The voice spoke knowing his mind.

Your cities run on laws and reasons, they follow the teaching of the weak Pellosi gods and soon they will be nothing more than a faded memory and broken stones.

The voice faded away and Thellas stood shaken but filled with purpose. He could see the visions in his mind of the new world to come. No more games it was time for him to bring the fight to all his foes. His cries had brought a guard who stood in the doorway.

“Go get captain Jenson,” Thellas said to him.

Jenson was another young man who looked every bit the soldier yet he was loyal. He’d already done a few things for the king to prove it.

“We have a problem,” he said.

“Yes majesty, orders?” he said smartly.

“We're going to that gambling den with all the men here and we’ll send work to others out in the field I want our full force located one day's ride of it. Send word we march as soon as able,” he said.

“Of course, but I thought our mercenaries were taking care of it,” he said.

“I trust them as far as I can throw them. I’ve heard no news from anyone. Not a single letter or missive back to me about anything. One thing I hate is being left in the dark, am I the king or not?” he yelled.

“You are,” the man said back.

“That’s right. I am. so we’ll just do this ourselves. I’ve been told the word and the word is victory. We will finish Goldie, the Red’s and then Twin Plains ourselves. The time for games is over.”

***

Something had changed. The bastards were never good sorts of people but once Farirkar had taken over, the worst of them had left. Now they were more rough fighters than the horrible scum they had become known as.

She walked through the camp and was truly grateful from the looming bulk of Flint and Stone at her sides. A man who looked like Skinner’s uglier brother approached them with his hand behind his back. This was the third time tonight. He had dirty clothes and stank of cheap wine.

Pulling his hands from behind his back he pulled out a fat coin purse. Flint who had his hand on his sword visibly relaxed.

“How much for the girl?” he asked.

Stone leaned forward and hit the man hard in the face. No conversation needed. The skinny man left the ground and flew and a short distance to land, out cold in a heap. A small gathering of Reds sat around a fire laughed at him, but too many eyes followed her. She’d never felt this unsafe here.

She walked quickly into the tent Skinner was using, he sat whipping some blood off a dagger and quickly tucked it away as she came in.

“What you too? What the fuck is going on?” she asked.

“It’s hard to say, but I’d venture that these men have been idle for too long and they are going crazy, one little fool just tried to take my purse right out in the open. I asked him why and he said he wanted it.”

“It’s only Pellosi,” Stone said simply.

“What?” she asked him.

“The only ones acting stupid are Pellosi, we're fine and so are the desert men,” he said.

She loved them sometimes, they saw a simple truth that others, including her, often missed.

“You’re Pellosi Skinner, what’s up?”

He laughed. “I can’t say, if I was one to describe my feeling and I was asked to I’d say it was like your stern father just died and now I can do whatever I want, it feels a bit like no one is keeping watch anymore,” he said.

“Ok, we’ll just say this is something to do with whatever we're fighting, why aren’t you going nuts as well?”

He laughed again.

“I’ve stopped caring what the gods thought a long time ago. I have my own code and always have. It may feel like there are no rules, but for me, it’s been that way a long time.”

At that moment, Farirkar walked into the tent. Flint and stone drew their blades and he drew his. He glared at them and at her. Then putting is huge sword back in its scabbard.

“I just had to kill someone who said he wanted to come in here and take you. It was Rogresh, he’s been with me for years, good man, if a bit repressed and now he’s talking rape and murder what the fuck is going on?”

“We think it’s like the Pellosi don’t have any rules anymore,” she said.

“I think it’s the Judge, no one is going to his shrine anymore,” Skinner spoke up. They had a very smaller shrine to the Judge in the camp and indeed in the last day, not a soul had been to it. She would sometimes hear the men muttering their sins to it. They were dark men but at least, he had some hard and fast rules for them. Don’t steal, rape or kill for no reason. Fairly basic principles for an orderly world.

“And what now? You saying this has some shit to do with gods or something?” Farirkar asked.

“I guess so, why aren’t you acting crazy?” she asked.

Farirkar laughed and poking out his tongue showed them all that it had a symbol tattooed on it.

“I worship Famir, the god of battle,” he said with pride.

Flint and stone nodded their heads to him. She hadn’t heard of it but clearly it was a Northern thing.

“So what do we do, how can I lead an attack with this rabble?” he asked.

“It’s an attack against a compound of women it won’t be a problem getting them to do it, it’ll be a problem keeping them in line. It’s only the Pellosi, you can trust the Northmen and Desert Nomads,” she said.

“Ok, I’m not letting us slip into old habits. The Pellosi in the group are around half I’ll send them back to the Keep on some bullshit mission and we’ll do it with the rest.”

“That means it’ll be even numbered and they have a Keep,” she said.

“Better that than the alternative. Be ready, we leave in an hour,” he said and walked out of the room.

Turning to Flint and Stone she just nodded and they followed her out of the tent as well. She walked to the shrine of the Judge that was in a small tent on the edge of the camp. She was a Pellosi as well and felt nothing of this internal turmoil. Still she’d embraced the North gods and their ways, clearly they were fine. She opened the tent and saw what she hadn’t expected.

The room was destroyed. The short wooden statue of the Judge was destroyed with an axe. Roughly chopped bits of it lay on the floor, the ground was littered with trampled bit of paper with sins written on them. A lone man sat at the foot of it and cried, she looked at his face and saw it was covered in bruises and cuts.

She knelt at his side.

“What happened?” she asked.

The man looked at her. “Can’t you feel it? He’s gone! They did this for fun, they enjoyed it, they were never that strong in their beliefs but they did this, the men I was teaching and now he’s gone. I can barely feel anything, just sadness.”

Josette stood up and looked at Flint and Stone “What the fuck is going on?”

***

It was working. All the long years they had struggled fought and gained power it was finally working. Renfra read the small piece of parchment in his hand and clapped them together with glee. His master would be so pleased, the first one was gone and just a few more stood in his way now.

“Why are you so happy?” the young captain asked.

“Good news from the capital. A crime wave, people looting and killing in the streets, they are without the guiding hand to lead them and they run like lost sheep, surely the terror of people floats like a fog in the city. Locked in their homes as the city burns around them,” he said with passion.

The young man laughed.

“The job is far from over. The Judge is but one of at least twenty Pellosi gods and they all have rules and virtues, he was just the most well-known,” he said.

“True, true but if this is how they react to the loss of just one, what of the rest? Now enough tell me what you have seen?”

“I followed the Northman on horseback, he dismounted and built and little fire with the women, she was injured but alive, then a very surprising thing happened, he brought some dark skinned man from somewhere. Then they sat around talking by the camp fire. They are still talking.”

Renfra laughed, so he was right this Northman was the new threat. While the king was running after some uppity nobles he had the major threat right here. He’d never heard of this man before which was strange his network of spies normally told him of any person who was growing in power, yet this man seemed to have just arrived. Maybe he was from the far north where they paid no attention.

“Did you hear anything,” he asked.

“I was too far away to hear but I left him be as you commanded, do you think he’ll be traveling on or was simply running from us?” the captain said.

“When the sun is up we’ll head there in force, a hundred men should be enough and we can’t have them crossing the desert and rejoining with those people, we’ve worked too hard to get them where we want them.

Renfra walked away from the captain and entered his tent. Inside he allowed himself a small glass of spirit to celebrate. The liquid filled his mouth and felt fine running down it, washing the sandy taste from his mouth. He went to a small wooden chest in the corner and drew out the black leather mat. He laid it neatly on the ground and knelt.

Renfra closed his eyes and began. He needed to build the fear first. He thought of the times in his life when he was scared and let the feeling grow and build. It was a way to let his lord be aware of him. When it was more than he could stand he felt it. A solid presence in his mind, like a weight, he heard the voice and the intent.

“I have news?” he spoke aloud and heard a soft voice whisper back in his mind.

How goes the battle?
It said but with a note of hope he hadn’t heard before.

“The city is in turmoil, the first blow has been well stuck, does it aid you?”

He could feel the voice was stronger than ever. It had started as a whisper when he was just a child guiding him to the path. Now he heard it like a faithful friend, always there to show him the right path to take and the sure knowledge that he was the special one who would be chosen when the master made his return to glory.