Take the body and give me the rest (15 page)

The clang of
swords broke Seth’s thoughts. He turned with Goldie and ran to the
doorway. Outside of it stood the rest of the household guard.
Luckily, they also hadn’t given themselves much time to prepare,
too interested in protecting the contents of the room. No bows or
crossbows, only swords and armour put on too quickly or not at all.
The General’s eye looked at the eight men that stood in a rough mob
around the doorway. Each had a gaping hole in his armour or the
like which called out to his sword like a target to an arrow.

‘Okay, boys!’
Seth yelled. ‘Let’s show these Pellosi scum what Northerners are
made of!’

He then pointed
to the guards in order. ‘Him, no helmet; him, no vambraces; him, no
armour at all; him, scared shitless; him, short sword only; him,
coward; him, no boots on; and him’—Seth lunged forwards quick as a
snake and plunged his rapier through a hole in the guard’s chain
mail and into his heart—‘he’s already dead.’ He finished with a
shout as his boys leapt forward with him attacking the weaknesses
he’d outlined.

The guards were
all trained and seasoned soldiers, as Seth knew, but they were also
men and rattled by his performance all the same. Goldie stamped on
the man with no boot’s foot with a hard metal instep and then
knocked him down with a savage punch with his sword hilt. No Armour
and No Helmet were quickly dead on the floor, one with a savage
downward cut to the crown from Flint and the other a broadsword
plunged right through the chest. No Vambraces was trading cuts with
Grimm, sword to sword in the low light.

Seth engaged
the man with a short sword only and, as the rapier is a one-handed
weapon, soon he had the dagger in his backhand plunged in the man’s
underarm where there was no armour. The man died with a horrible
bloody shriek of pain. Soon the rest of the guards had fallen, with
the boys taking a few cuts and scrapes only. The worst was Grimm
taking a hard hit to the chest, but luckily he had been wearing
full mail under his shirt which hadn’t been pierced.

Seth knew
somewhere in the darkness were the stewards and slaves all
muttering and wondering what to do now, but he had to turn his
attention back to the strange woman prisoner.

‘Good work
boys. Now I’ll go chat to our friend in there. Guard the door,’ he
said and walked into the fire-lit bedroom.

‘Can we search
them, Boss?’ asked Goldie, slightly out of breath.

It felt like a
bit of a mercenary act to pillage the dead, but Yend told him not
to be a fool; the dead didn’t need money, and Seth could sell the
weapons as well.

‘Good idea,
Goldie, and take those weapons and the undented armour. We might
get some coin for them,’ he said back. If the boys were surprised,
they said not, but set to quick work pillaging the men they had
just killed.

The woman had
remained sitting in the same position and had simply watched the
carnage unfolding outside of her doorway. How she felt about the
outcome, her face gave no expression. She looked very old and Seth
knew that in the Guild that meant she was probably very, very old.
Her brown eyes engaged him as he came close. Seth stood in front of
her and slid his rapier and dagger back into their sheaths on his
belt. He wasn’t sure she would understand him. He knew the desert
language from Minsetta, who had travelled and lived there at one
time. Still, he had never spoken it to anyone before, and he didn’t
know if it would be correct. He focused on the memories of Minsetta
speaking the language and tried.

‘Hello, I’m
Seth. You’re not what I was expecting to find in this room,’ he
said.

She smiled at
him slowly, and Seth could see the deep, deep pain in her eyes. It
was like she was struggling to see and hear him through a
storm.

‘Hello, Seth. I
have what you are seeking. The darkest, deepest secret of the Guild
itself. I’ll be glad to be parted from it,’ she said in a soft
musical voice.

‘Tell me and
let me share your burden for you,’ he said.

‘I can’t tell
you, Seth; I need to show you. It’s not just the knowledge you need
but the memory of it. Words alone cannot tell the story,’ she
said.

He took a step
back and looked at her more fully. ‘You want me to kill you and
take it.’

‘The guards
were all here to stop me from killing myself. I don’t want these
memories and voices anymore.’

Seth was wary. Truly, if she was the holder of some awful
burden, did he really want to take this on? Also, it looked as if
she was plagued with voices. Right now, he had a handful of loud
voices
and the hundreds of whispering ghosts of Minsetta and the
General’s victims in his head and, while they mostly only surfaced
in dreams, he could only imagine what would happen to him if he
took too many more.

‘How many
people have you got in there?’ Seth asked.

‘It’s just me.
The things I saw I witnessed myself when I was a child. But you’re
right to ask. Please, Seth, end this for me, or I will end it for
myself now that you’ve freed me of the guards who have stopped me
from finding my final peace,’ she said.

‘I understand,
but I truly have no wish to kill you or see you ripped apart in
front of me. We’ve shed enough blood tonight, and you’re not my
enemy,’ he said.

‘I know, Seth.
You’re still holding onto the idea that you’re not a killer, and
that’s good. What I’ll give you will help you hold onto that. Leave
the room and call him from outside; you need not see it happen,’
she said.

‘Can I do that?
I’ve never tried before,’ he said.

‘Just imagine
this room as you call and the rift will open where you will picture
it to. Please, Seth.’

‘Okay, I will.
I’m sorry for whatever hellish life you’ve been forced to live by
these monsters,’ he said.

Seth held her
hand for a moment and then, mustering what coldness he could, left
the room and shut the damaged double wooden doors behind him as
best he could. In the next room, Goldie, Flint, Stone and Grimm
stood on an easy guard. In front of them was a ripped sheet filled
with eight swords and various pieces of armour.

‘Was she their
prisoner, Boss?’ asked Grimm.

‘She was,’ Seth
answered.

‘Should we take
her with us?’ asked Flint.

‘No, it’s time
for her to travel to the shadow lands.’ Seth imagined the room and
her sitting at the bed. He started the chant in his mind, easily
found the creature and called it in. He could feel the storm and
felt the rift open in the room. He bid the creature to be gentle,
though he knew that was not its nature.

The men
flinched but said nothing, taking cues from Seth as they heard her
screams echoing from the room along with the sounds of a wild beast
devouring someone through the gaps in the broken door. Seth felt
the heat washing over his body and collapsed to his knees as the
memories of her life came down on him with a weight like nothing
he’d ever known. One memory stood out like a fetid wound, one that
she’d thought of every single day since she’d had to witness it. It
opened up to Seth, not allowing him to step away from knowing it
and experiencing it all.

When she was
only a child of eight years a man came to the desert to be with her
people. She knew not his name or who he was, only that he was great
man from the north of the desert, a Pellosi duke or some such. He
came with a rich retinue of retainers and footmen. He knew the
language of the desert people and spoke with respect of their
learning and to their wise people.

He stayed with
them for more than a year. Living with them and learning at the
side of the wise men of the tribe, learning the ways of their
spiritual path. He knew already of the summoning, but the desert
livers only used this magic at the end of someone’s life. It was
used to pass knowledge from wise man to wise man, shaman to shaman
and father to son or mother to daughter. They had no written
history, but by this ritual they passed knowledge on to the next in
their family.

He saw the
magic being used. The creature being called wasn’t a white
graveyard beast but the dead of the family. The grandfather would
be called back to share the life of father and son. At first, the
man was all monster-like, black eyes, sharp teeth and no real
memory, but once he tasted the blood and was nourished, he became
the person again and the life was shared.

As the dying
person lay still, the receiver of the knowledge would take a knife
and cut into the heart. The person drifted into death as his or her
‘heart blood’ or ‘death blood’ was collected into a golden cup and
then, normally with shaking hands, offered to the summoned. Once
the summoned drank deeply, the knowledge would pass over. It was
almost a beautiful ceremony.

The man studied
more and more. At death rites when a summoning would need to occur,
he would often be called to perform the ceremony. He would sit
cross-legged before them and in moments of silence the rift would
appear and the family members of the dead would come through. He
was a prodigy. Even the wise men of the tribe needed to take herbs,
sing songs for hours to open the rift, but he could do it in mere
moments.

She was the
daughter of one of the lesser shamans in the group. Her father
feared and hated the man. She loved him. Truly, she was a child,
but he was young, charming and interesting. He sat around the fire
and engaged with them all in chat. One night he was speaking with
the head shaman and she heard his words.

‘When you call
the dead back, why don’t you let them stay here?’ He asked it
simply.

‘They can’t
stay; you’ve seen it. They come as monsters, struggling to control
themselves. They only maintain themselves only while the life of
another is in them. After a time, they start to turn back into
beasts again.’

‘Why is heart
blood different to blood, or the blood of the dead?’ he asked.

‘Blood can
contain life or just be blood. If I found someone who had died
weeks ago to the cold winter and tried to share their memories, it
wouldn’t work. Heart blood contains life. The heart itself is even
more powerful than just heart’s blood, but that’s too brutal for
our needs.’

‘So a man
killed in battle could be shared if you took his heart, even though
already dead?’ he asked eagerly.

‘If done before
the sun rises and falls, you could, but it would be heresy. This is
a gift to pass from family to family. Only in rare situations, if
the person died unexpectedly, would we take the heart itself. It’s
better that we have the ceremony of letting go.’

The man had
seen in the harsh environment of the desert that the sick or very
old people of the tribe would sometimes let go. They would consult
with the shaman and their family and give up their lives freely. It
was something he couldn’t understand, but he had a different view
of life than these people.

‘When that old
mother and father took part in the letting go and both gave their
heart blood, the summoned man stayed for a much longer time. He was
even talking with people and had a drink of wine,’ he said.

The shaman
laughed. ‘That’s true. I think the more life or lives in the blood,
the longer they can stay here.’

‘So if they
took enough, they could stay forever?’ he asked.

‘Why would they
want to stay? Their time has passed and on their journey must go.
We call them back only to share with their family and maintain the
memories.’

What seemed
inevitable to Seth as the memories exploded in his mind had been a
complete shock to the young girl and the rest of the southern
desert people. This man, who had lived with them for more than a
year, had shared their food and secrets, now had what he needed to
know. It had taken less time than he’d thought, they had been so
trusting.

She woke that
night to screams in the darkness and the bright orange lights of a
blazing fire. The man ran through the leather tents of the desert
people, leading a troop of hundreds of soldiers with spears and
swords. It was a relentless and merciless attack, with overwhelming
numbers. He screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘Kill them all and
cut out all their hearts!’ He made it clear to the men that they
needed to be sure of that. The massacre was short and swift. The
trained soldiers ripped open tents, stabbing and killing the
unarmed people as they slept. The tribe was small, only around a
hundred and fifty. Most died with a cold blade in their stomachs or
throats; few escaped. Chests roughly stabbed and torn open, bloody
or beating hearts ripped out with hard mailed fingers.

In the centre
of the small tent city, he stood in front of the fire with a large
silver bowl that they slowly filled with the red and awful
tributes. The man called out and from the rift walked a beautiful
woman with blond hair. She was savage, white skinned and with
deadly fangs. She lunged at him as he stood watching her. Two
footmen helped him grab her arms and, with one hand at the bottom
of her jaw he roughly poured some of the blood from the bowl into
her mouth. She reached out and took the bowl and began devouring
the contents as more men continued to fill it with more of their
victims’ still-warm organs.

The change was
almost instant. As the rich red blood poured into her mouth, her
pitch black eyes gained whites and pupils, revealing strong blue
eyes. Her fangs shifted to normal teeth and her white skin lost its
pallor and became a rich, living pink.

‘Take them all
and give us all the rest’ he said, as she continued to devour with
the hunger of a beast.

The memories of
all of those people hit him and his army of men in a wave. It was
something Seth was not expecting, this was the reason for him to
bring such a huge force of men. These weren’t just a hundred people
being taken either. He’d destroyed this entire tribe and shared
them with all of his army, three hundred years of living history.
Father to son, mother to daughter. Hundreds upon hundreds of lives
and memories now filling them up with strength, power and
knowledge.