Promised Echoes
Fantasy short story
I sat down after the fight, and watched the sand around me start to bury the dead.
Matthias had fallen first. The urac spear had taken him high on the neck, where collarbone and jugular met, and the old gorget he had inherited from his father had failed. He had thrashed for a long time after that, as we fought the rest of the urac. His blood was everywhere.
Wulfor was next. He had taken many of the urac with him, cleaving skulls and shattering limbs with every blow of his terrible axes - but he was only one man, and regardless of his might, he had ultimately failed. He lay now on his back, eyes unseeing, with sand encrusted on the blood which had run from his nose and mouth in his final moments. His long blond hair was restless in the wind, fluttering back and forth across his blank eyes.
My hands hurt. I realised that I was still holding my sword and poniard, and made an effort to let both go. The weapons gave muted clunks as they dropped into the sand beside me, blades blackened and corroded from the vile urac ichor.
No urac had touched me, regardless of how hard I had pressed their numbers. Luck, skill, divine protection - whatever it was, it had shielded me from harm as it had done so many days before.
Hectorius had fallen right after Wulfor. His spells had flickered and popped out as the urac arrows rained down on his slight form, and when he fell, he took the urac shaman with him. The two bodies were entwined now, charred black, and still steaming. The arcanum magicks had run wild once his heart ceased beating - at least, that was how he had explained it to us before, when we asked him about his powers. What had really happened in his last moments, was between him and his gods now.
The Red twins lay together as well, hands clasped one last time, with a ring of bodies around them. I could never remember their names, and since they both responded to Red, that was usually just what we ended up calling them. One of them had taken a slash across the face, the other had his guts strewn out. The urac bodies around them looked even worse.
At least we would be able to tell them apart in the afterlife, now.
The sand was hot and dry around me, and the wind was a thin, persistent thing that evaporated the sweat from my face and hands even as I sat there. The dark foothills of Arathenium lay behind us, and the gold-capped pyramids of Fuscor still beckoned ahead. I watched the sun glitter on those golden caps, and wondered how many others had seen them at their end.
It was not my end, though.
It never was, no matter how hard I tried.
I looked down at the amulet that dangled on my battered breastplate. The green gemstone that formed the eye, the verdigrised copper around it, the brighter patches where it had rubbed against the plate - and where I had rubbed it around the campfire the night before, and the night before that, and every night since I had found it.
You will live to see death, as eternal as the rising of the sun, on every path you tread.
The crone had bubbles of blood on her lips when she died. I was young and dumb, back then, and thought little of it. We ransacked her cottage in the Corenham woods, took what little was of value, and burned the rest. The amulet was mine, since I had run her through. It had not left my neck since.
Time passed.
Ahead of me, the golden pyramids took on a red tint as the sun set, then flared brightly one last time as the sun finally slipped below the horizon. In the distance, something howled, long and drawn out - and hungry.
The day’s heat faded in an instant, and the chill of the desert set in even as the last of the dusk fought with the first darkness creeping up from the east. I struggled to my feet again, feeling my aches and strained muscles complaining anew, and slowly gathered up my weapons. There was nothing left here for me.
I walked north, into the coming night, and fell asleep beside a broken statue later that night. Things rustled in the darkness, and there were screams and growls from behind me where we had fought the urac, but nothing came to my little spot of flickering campfire. I held the amulet against my chest as I drifted off, and it was a warm ember in the cold of the night.
The sound of metal on metal, and carefree barbarian laughter, woke me the next morning. Wulfor and one of the Reds were sparring outside the cave, blurry shapes that took on definition as I slowly came back to my senses. Hectorius was tending the fire, with one of his alchemy cauldrons bubbling atop a little pile of scraped-aside coals. Matthias was chopping wood.
“Good morning. Our destination draws close, now,” Hectorius began when I reached the fire. I felt sand on my limbs, so real that I had to scrub my hands over my naked arms - but there was nothing there. There was grass around us, and chalky soil, but nothing like the sand that I swore I had felt moments before. The strange dream was fading fast, and the only part that I remembered was…
“And not a moment too soon - I tire of sparring against companions!” Wulfor roared from where he was sparring, feinting to one side before lashing out with his other axe and catching Red with the flat. The red-haired man yelped and dropped his sword, before backing away. “Give me beasts to fight, and terrors to slay - my blades hunger for blood!”
For a moment, and only a moment, Wulfor’s face was covered in blood and sand, and then he was normal again, grinning widely as he dropped both axes and tackled Red to the ground.
“Have your dreams persisted?” Hectorius squinted at my face, and when I looked at him, a blackened skull grinned at me with white teeth and curls of charred skin dripping from the chin.
“I think so. I dreamt of death and misfortune, and it was not pleasant at all.” I scrubbed my hands over my face again, feeling the skin shift, and when I looked up again, I could see the foothills stretching off into the distance. “I think we should change our direction. I sense trouble ahead.”
“Trouble ahead?” Matthias dropped a bundle of chopped wood besides the fire, and turned to look to the north as well. In the distance, where the foothills ended, a faint twinkle of gold above the horizon hinted at the fabled pyramids of Fuscor. “Are the pyramids not our destination?”
“Staying alive is our ultimate destination, my eager friend.” I clapped a hand on Matthias’ shoulder, and when he looked at me with a smile, I saw the blood on his neck and spattered down his shoulder and chest. “The route we take, is what matters.”
Wulfor and Red were laughing and rolling in the dirt, trading punches. The second Red appeared from the mouth of the cave, yawned expressively as he stretched, and then began to throw clods of earth at the two wrestling men.
Hectorius pulled out his scrying ball to look for an alternate route, and Matthias returned to his wood-chopping. I took a seat on a boulder beside the fire, and tried to remember the rest of my dream - but it was fading like the morning dew, and the details slipped from my mind with every passing moment.
I did remember the one thing I had to do though. I had a small awl in my belt pouch, and used it to make a tiny dot in the copper shell of the amulet that dangled around my neck. The otherwise smooth surface, flecked with green and inset with that single gem, had many of my dots on the one side already. I looked at the remaining open space, and wondered what would happen once there were no open spaces left.
We broke camp some time later, and walked due north-west, on a new path Hectorius had found in his scrying ball. Later, when night fell, I watched as Hectorius tended the chest wound on the surviving Red, and wondered how the night would go with the smell of blood so heavy upon us. Wulfor, Matthias and the second Red had all contributed to the sticky coat that covered us at that point, and their bodies were lost to the desert now.
The amulet around my neck was warm to the touch, even as the night’s chill surrounded us and Red’s breathing began to slow and rattle. I rubbed at the lines of tiny dots on the front, then flipped the amulet over and looked at the rows and rows of dots that covered the back.
How many nights had it been by now?
I saw the old crone’s face again as I drifted off to sleep, and the bubbles of blood on her lips became the dots on the amulet, except they were green, and popped and reformed in an endless cycle.
The sound of metal on metal, and carefree barbarian laughter, woke me the next morning.
"I sat down after the fight, and watched the sand around me start to bury the dead."
Such a good read, man!
The crone's revenge.