Seven Swords, Michael E. Shea [readict TXT] 📗

Ca’daan had never been so scared. Only one other time was even close and it was a memory he buried deep down in his heart. Ca’daan crouched in the tall grass on the hilltop ridge of Fena Set. His four brill stood behind him, shifting uneasily on the huge pads of their feet. They had caught scent of the fires below, and the blood. Even the smell of water below didn’t drive them to get closer. The smell of blood and fire was enough to put panic into any animal. Right now, Ca’daan was one such animal.

The sight of horror continued to unfold in front of Ca’daan. Red fires bloomed and black smoke billowed into columns that filled the clouds above. Small houses of stone and grass cracked open into orange flame. Seven riders of the warband circled and set another house ablaze. Two women ran out, one older and one younger. A year past, the older one had served Ca’daan a stew and the younger one had smiled at Ca’daan and made him blush. He had thought of his wife that day and had turned away.

An arrow, fired from galloping horseback, caught the older woman in the stomach. She stumbled and gripped the shaft of the arrow. She pulled at it but the head was barbed. All she did was grind herself up inside. She fell, vomiting blood into the dirt. The younger girl ran screaming to her. Another horse roared by and she fell under a flash of steel. Half of her head gone, her body tumbled under the roar of the horses, torn and beaten until only ripped cotton rags covered in blood remained.

She was a lucky one. Two men with spears poked at a dozen women, villagers of Fena Set. Two women, more defiant than the others, lay dead. Two or three at a time, the demon bandits dragged the women into one of the few huts spared of the red flame. The screams from within made Ca’daan’s skin crawl. The women never came back out.

Ca’daan watched as the village elders of Fena Set were dragged from their homes on the western hills of the village. They were stripped naked and splayed out on the ground. Men in dark red armor, faces hidden by wide necked leather helms drove long pikes through the screaming men. Impaling all the old men took a long time and when the armored men stood the pikes upright, the sharp tips gleaming from the elders’ gaping mouths.

Down in the village square, two young men, locals of the village, held off nearly twenty of the crimson-armored marauders. Three bandits lay dead sprawled on the ground near them. One of the villagers held a blacksmith hammer and a wooden shield. Ca’daan could see tufts of hair still caked on the head of the hammer. The other swung a sword taken from one of the dead marauders.

The bandits parted with laughter as the man with the sword swung. The swing was clumsy and threw him off balance. Archers stood ready to fill the two men with arrows but they held their shots.

The crowd quieted as a new rider approached. He dismounted and Ca’daan saw he was smaller than the rest. He wore no helm. His head was bald and he had painted a band of scarlet across his eyes. There was a silence as he dismounted and stepped into the circle.

The two men turned away from the rest of the crowd and faced this new arrival. The villager with the sword shouted something. He rushed the small bald man and swung. The small man shifted back and avoided the swing easily. The villager swung twice more and the small marauder dodged each blow just as the blade approached him. Laughter erupted and cries echoed each time the man swung and missed. The village sword swinger brought the sword down hard in a powerful vertical cut. The bald man sidestepped and kicked the man in the groin. Another roar of laughter echoed over the hills.

The bald man waited until the villager recovered. The villager cried out and lunged but the small man twisted out of the way. He grabbed the villager’s wrist and Ca’daan heard the crack of bone. The small man continued the momentum, caught the blade, and spun. Ca’daan saw a jet of red blood spray across the small man followed by another as the man’s heart pumped his lifeblood from his body. The villager fell into the dirt, blood streaming across the ground.

The villager with the hammer and shield shifted. The bald man dropped the sword and drew a shorter one from a leather sheath on his belt. Unlike the other villager, the bald man did not wait for an attack. He swung hard, cleaving a large gap in the villager’s wooden shield. Another blow and the shield began to splinter. Another and another and large chunks of wood fell spinning to the ground. In moments the small man’s onslaught left the shield hanging in pieces from the villager’s bloody left arm. The villager swung his hammer but missed as the bald man turned away. The small sword cut low and the hammer wielder cried out, falling to one knee. The blade cut again and blood spattered from a gaping wound in the man’s arm. The hammer fell. Again and again the blade cut until the man cried out no more.

The crowd began to chant as the small man stood back. It was hard to make out but as every man picked up the chant, it rang crystal clear in the night air.

“Stark! Stark! Stark!” they cried. Ca’daan grew cold.

Outside of the town’s banquet hall, a group of the marauders gathered the remaining villagers. Young women were pulled away from their families and dragged into huts. Those that remained were lined up and, one by one, they were led to a stout barrel and forced to kneel. A huge man, bare chested and covered head to toe in blood, raised a wide blade and beheaded each of the villagers in turn with two or three cuts. Other marauders gathered and placed tankards under the gushing bodies. As the tankards filled, they brought it to their lips and drank, letting it pour down their chins and chests.

Ca’daan’s eyes shifted to the elders on the pikes. They had lit fires under the dead men and their skin blackened and crisped. The marauders, drunk on victory, cut at them with sharp knives. They tore away pieces of the men with their bare hands.

And ate them.

Ca’daan turned and vomited. He couldn’t watch anymore. He still could hear the screams and smell the cooking flesh but he could not accept it.

He opened his eyes and looked skyward. He saw the smoke filling the air. He saw the fires burning deep red. He saw as close a vision to hell as any had ever seen.

Ca’daan’s eyes fell to the small man, Stark. He stood relaxed, watching the carnage around him and smiling. A flicker of firelight caught the small man’s eyes. Ca’daan saw hunger in them. All of the murder and rape and horror and this man was still hungry.

Ca’daan left the brill. He had hoped to spend the next three months in Fena Set avoiding the fall torrent. Had he attempted to take the brill back with him, he would be caught in the torrent for sure. Hail the size of rocks would flay him to the bone. The bones of escaped brill still littered the trails between Fena Set and Fena Dim as a grim reminder of the lethality of the torrent.

One of his brill snorted loudly as Ca’daan cut Whitebelly from the brill pack. The mare whinnied and Ca’daan froze. He listened for any sign of detection, a cry of alarm or a shout of new orders, but nothing came. He led Whitebelly down over the hill and only mounted when he could hear nothing from the village.

Ca’daan rode hard, too hard, along the trail north to Fena Dim. The familiar rock walls that seemed so benign to him in his twelve years of trade along the trail now seemed to grasp at him and crush him. For two days he watched the smoke columns rising into the clouds to the south. For two weeks he watched for riders over his shoulder. Halfway