Chapter Forty-Nine

  Torald finished explaining what happened to him, and to her credit, Queen Draudillon was silent to the end. “And you have proof?” She asked.

  “I believe it will leave a scar, so there’s that, My Queen, but also I’m a witness, and my armor has yet to be repaired. It should match the sword Dominic used, their blades are unique, it should be easy to prove. Also, I heard the spearman yelling at him, there’s a division between the two that you can exploit. Just… when they reach you, delay as much as possible in meeting them until you can get proper protection.” Torald didn’t have to say what he meant.

  She knew. “Are they that dangerous?” She asked with a curious air.

  “Ma’am, the Cardinals all come from the Scriptures, and the spearman moved like no human I’ve ever seen.” Torald shivered, “He might very well be a Godkin.”

  “Then I will put them off with ceremony and feasting, Ulbert should be back soon, refugees from the ‘ranches’ have already started to appear on the borders and birds bearing coded notes have said to expect more. Send your armor and a sworn statement back to us, and then round up all the homeless you can and start granting them land in the east. We need to fill that land back up as soon as possible. Is there anything else?” The Queen prompted.

  She knew of course, there was.

  “My Queen, about the lands out there, with your permission, there are worthy soldiers whom I served with who deserve an elevation in station. I would like to raise them up in status. Titles, lands, estates… enough houses were destroyed by the beastmen that we have room, and even a need for a new noble class in the east.” Torald said, and the Queen’s laughter came back in turn.

  “Submit your list to me when you return, and have them gathered at the capital. I have a few supporters to reward, but you will get to choose as many as needed, Sir Torald Haroldson. No… Duke Torald Haroldson… Torald the Loyal. There is only one condition of my own that I will add. A priest who survived the slaughters has begun spreading the belief that my husband is a God. He will be elevated to the status of Cardinal over the whole of the recovered lands, all the way into the ‘old beastman lands’. Every person you select ‘must’ embrace this belief. My husband-to-be is now the seventh God. He will be the patron deity of the Draconic Empire. Now, Torald the Loyal, what does my Duke say in return?” She said it with the utmost sincerity conveyed across the miles, and for that, he could only bow his head, even if she could not see him do so.

  “My Queen. My Empress.” He answered with finality, doing nothing to hide his enthusiasm.

  And then the message link ended. A more detailed letter would go out by messenger bird soon enough to confirm the genuineness of the connected spell. But for now, he had his orders, and his dreams.

  The nature of both was complicated over the next few days by the bizarre circumstances, most especially with respect to the bodies.

  Not three days after speaking with his Queen did he find himself staring down at a hole in the top of a skull, and an uncomfortable official was wringing his hands from behind a desk. “My Lord… forgive me for not having them preserved… or ah, keeping track of where they were buried… it’s just, we didn’t expect anyone to actually show up…”

  “Except you did.” Torald said and, and placed the skull down on the desk, he spun it around so that it was staring empty eyed up at the functionary, who backed his chair away several inches.

  “I’m entirely sure that you knew the death of Cerebrate would draw the eye of the crown.” Torald kept one hand atop the head and the other on the desk as he leaned forward.

  “Ah… well… Sir Torald, it’s just…” The wild eyed little man kept darting his face from the empty eyes of the dead man to the glaring eyes of the knight.

  He didn’t continue, he ran out of things to say, he closed his mouth. And Torald cleared his throat to address him again.

  “Tell me something.” Torald prompted in a very casual voice, “What is the core requirement of guilt?”

  “Knowledge that a crime is a crime.” The functionary breathed out a sigh of relief with his answer.

  “Correct. So if a small child is walking through someone’s apple orchard and plucks one to eat, we don’t treat that child the same as the adult who creeps out in the night with a basket, harvests a tree’s produce, and sells it at market, do we?” Torald prompted again.

  “No.” The official said with more confidence, though he did not slide his chair any closer to the half rotted skull or the man who brought it in.

  “Because the child is ignorant,” Torald waved his empty hand away, “but the man is not.”

  “Ah, yes, Sir Torald?” The little legal functionary shifted in his seat and hastily bit his lip to bite back any further elaboration on his own part that might hurt him.

  “Good, I’m glad you understand, so as you are not ignorant, you are not innocent.” Torald pressed his hand down on the skull with the hole in the top of the head, and it shattered into pieces, bits of rotted brain, maggot flesh, and bone flew in all directions.

  The functionary screamed and tumbled back in his chair, landing on his back with his arms splayed out and stunned briefly, he only looked up at the ceiling for a moment before he found himself staring up at Torald.

  Torald’s foot was on his chest, pinning him down. “I am not a magistrate bound by civil law. I am a Knight bound by the task of restoring order and determining what took place here. In short, the crown told me to put my foot down, because enough is enough.” Torald then began to press his foot against the chest on which it sat.

  “I saw a man die inside his armor once,” Torald said while the functionary began to grasp his hands at the heavy military boot, “he took a blow from a rock thrown by a beastman, it hit his platemail hard enough that the dent pressed against his chest, just like this.” He pressed harder, the beady eyes down below began to bulge.

  “His lungs couldn’t expand, so he couldn’t breathe. He suffocated outside in the open air, it looked a lot like drowning. None of us could help him since the fight was still going on, but I saw the whole thing. I guess I’ll see it again, if you won’t use your air to form words of knowledge, you won’t have any air at all. Or… you could nod and tell me what I want to know.” Torald said, and the struggling peon nodded furtively.

  As soon as Torald’s pressing weight was relaxed, though the foot never moved away, the little manling gasped and sucked in a deep breath, followed by several short and rapid ones.

  “That’s unlawful! You can’t do that!” He eeped from down below.

  ‘Great, an idiot, far too used to having his way in his own little domain…’ Torald thought and pressed his weight down again.

  The peon quickly found himself struggling again, his fingernails popped off as he clawed at the leather boot. “I’m not here to hold trials. I’m here to solve problems. I had intended to have help with that, but since I don’t, I’ll have to use local military force, and my own bare hands. Or feet, in this case.”

  As the peon’s eyes began to roll back in his head, Torald relaxed the press of his boot, and again the little functionary’s lungs filled with the longed for air.

  “Now, given that your office is responsible for taxes and records, and you’re the first face people see, I know you know what is going on here, so this is what you will do, first, tell me everything. Then, write up a letter to every relevant office that they will be eligible for a general amnesty for all prior bad acts, if they arrive at the place these bodies were buried, at sunrise tomorrow. And if anything should happen to me, the next thing that will happen will be the royal army will show up next to erase this place entirely as a liability to national order and treat it as a place engaged in open rebellion against the crown.”

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  “All… crimes? All of them?” The functionary asked.

  “Yes. There will be a ‘tax’ to be paid, naturally. But otherwise a one time amnesty will be offered… of course those who are guilty of trafficking will have to release anyone they still have possession of in order to ‘end’ their crimes. But otherwise, all past crimes will be forgiven if they show up.” Torald looked down at the bureaucrat’s face and saw the battle being waged there, having suffocated almost to death twice, he was a hardier rat than Torald expected.

  But a rat will always strive to save itself in the end.

  The words tumbled out like water from beyond a bursting dam, the brothels, the labor camps where refugees got ‘contracts’ they could never hope to complete since quotas could never be fulfilled. The feast of lambs where stolen children could be sold to lecherous adults, the thievery and grift of relief supplies among distributors and how they were filtered through the functionary’s office. The way a small number of guards were used as hired murderers…

  And the state of the brothel where Cerebrate and the employees were found.

  ‘The spearman.’ Torald figured that much out fairly quickly. The guards sent to the Theocracy border were far from the best. No, if anything they were third or fourth line soldiers. More importantly, the wound Torald saw on what was left of the body of Cerebrate clearly belonged to a spear with a wide, hooked base and a ‘barbed’ head. ‘He was also certainly skilled enough to pull this off…’

  “What happened to the children Cerebrate was there to abuse?” Torald asked, and the functionary shook his head.

  “I don’t know.” He croaked, “Lots of people wondered… one man was never found, handled the money… and a wh-whore disappeared the same day.” The functionary rolled onto his side and held a hand on his chest where a bruise would no doubt mark him for months.

  “I’ve told you everything… so please…” The balding little man didn’t look up at Torald’s eyes, he knew he’d find nothing there he liked, instead he looked only on the wooden floor of his little domain, his office where his fraction of power was rendered meaningless.

  “Then show up with the others tomorrow. Make sure the relevant people know, because I will be waiting. Oh, and tell them… bring their weapons if they have any.” Torald said and darkly smiled down at the man who would not look up to see it.

  “I will… yes, I’ll make sure everybody knows, Sir Knight!” The squawked promise was good enough in Torald’s view of things, and so he left the way he’d come, walking brazenly through the streets, his smile was bright and he loudly proclaimed…

  “My, that was easy!”

  The loud declaration drew curious eyes, and if Torald had any doubt that word would spread to the right places, that erased them.

  The heavy footed knight’s armor clinked as he made his way outside of the outpost that served the crowded border region. The replacement set wasn’t as good as he would have liked, but there was no mistaking his station or status. Nor the official crest of the Queen emblazoned across the chest. Everything about him screamed ‘official envoy’, and that by itself drew notice from the moment of his arrival.

  Now with this, and with the compliance of the cowed functionary, his improvised plan was coming together nicely.

  The narrow border region was one that a good horse could traverse entirely within three days, and a man with replacement horses could cover in one day if he rode hard. But the population was largely concentrated in the narrowest places, where the roads joined together into the one that went over into the Slane Theocracy. Other areas were nothing more than villages and work camps. Camps that Torald now knew were little better than places of slave labor from refugees found guilty of frivolous crimes and sentenced to work for those who could profit from their labor, gaining little to no pay and never really able to get free.

  Some of those places wouldn’t receive the notice of amnesty, or wouldn’t arrive in time. ‘That’s fine though,’ he thought, amnesty in general rubbed him the wrong way anyhow, ‘I don’t need them, and I’d rather they not get away with what they’re doing… if there were more time maybe but…’ He shrugged. There just wasn’t.

  The burial sight was a wooded area, the clearing around it, he had a distinct feeling likely held more bodies than just the ones he’d been led to on the first day. ‘They probably thought I wanted to take Cerebrate for resurrection, they definitely didn’t expect this. How unpleasant a surprise it must have been when I wanted more time.’ Torald laughed for several minutes as he set his back against a tall tree and waited in the shadows for the hours to pass.

  It was a quiet vigil, the sort that let Torald take his time and think. He could have gone to the inn and arrived in the morning, he could have slept. But vigils were sacred to knights as meditation was to monks. Those were the hours in which his duty was to be reflected upon.

  ‘He was already a God in my mind… it shouldn’t be a difficult thing to find others who think the same. Who knew a God could be so relatable? He’s so ‘human’, demon or not.’ Torald thought, and it was hard not to be proud of thinking of Lord Ulbert as a proper lord, emperor and a figure worth serving…

  The memory of their journey together, short as it was, somehow proved the most enjoyable in Torald’s life.

  ‘For as long as my line endures, I will ward the house of our savior, and my very… very good friend.’ Torald vowed as the sun broke on the far horizon.

  Strangely, there’d been no attack on him that night, ‘Perhaps it was the offer to let them bring weapons? Perhaps it was the tax, people are always happy to believe money can get them out of things that blood cannot? Or perhaps it was the threat of the royal army crawling up their asses? We fought the beastmen for years and endured, what are a few border ruffians?’ Whatever the reason, on some level Torald felt sure they knew they were over a barrel thanks to getting the crown’s attention, and as the first of the masked figures entered the great, wide clearing, it was obvious they knew it too.

  “Please, stand over there.” Torald made it a polite request, gesturing to a spot on the far right about twenty paces away from himself.

  The figure was clearly a soldier, though he wore no armor. His casual clothing was a huntsman’s gear complete with boots finer than a soldier should have owned, and his armament of choice was a short blade that was easily concealed. It was the way he walked that told Torald he’d had some soldierly training, and the mask, a simple black fabric covered wooden mask used in religious rituals common in the outlands of the Draconic Kingdom, suggested he worried that Torald would recognize him.

  The figure stood in silence, watching Torald through the eye slits, and saying nothing. He was not the last to arrive. They came in threes, then fives, then tens, until the wide clearing was overflowing and some could no longer fit, being forced to stand in the brush and among the trees.

  Notably, all had similar masks. “Good, you’ve arrived, now, I think you all know that not all your people chose to join me today, they rejected my amnesty, chances are you know them personally and heard them refuse the offer, am I wrong?” Torald asked.

  Faces looked around, but heads shook, even if they didn’t speak, it was clear they knew he was in no way wrong.

  “For those of you who have arrived today, your crimes will be forgiven under the provided terms. You will not even have to compensate your victims.” Torald let that hang as that finally drew some murmured disbelief in response. The knight however, raised his hands to call for silence.

  “I will be compensating them myself. You will pay a tax, this will provide them with the food and transportation to the east. Some of you will be responsible for overseeing that. And everybody’s pardons hinges on them carrying that task out free of corruption. If a loaf of bread is missing, all your pardons will be revoked. If a person goes missing, all your pardons will be revoked. If a coin is mislaid into a pocket it doesn’t belong in, all your pardons will be revoked. That means murderers will be hanged and the rest put in border forts with the beastmen. Savvy?”

  He didn’t need their pants to be off and their backsides exposed to know that every sphincter tightened up.

  “Choose from among your own, twenty-five for that task, that will be their responsibility. Those who are chosen, raise your hands.” Torald gave the direction, and a brief flurry of noise went up among the gathered ranks, a little pushing and shoving went with it… but within a few minutes, twenty-five hands were in the air.

  “Remain here until the others are gone.” Torald said, and that was the first real hint of relaxation among the assembled body of thugs, thieves, murderers, and bodysnatchers.

  “As to the rest of you, each of you will carve your name into one of these great trees. Along with whatever crimes you have committed. One man per tree. Then…” He put his hand on the hilt of his sword, “Gather into groups of whatever size you need to… and kill every single man and woman who did not answer my offer of amnesty, and should have. You have three days to carry out this task and return to me to pay your ‘amnesty tax’ of twenty-silver. And if you should get that silver off of the corpse of someone who didn’t answer my call? I simply do not care.” Torald watched as the dawning realization came over them that they’d turned themselves into Torald’s private little army.

  One by one their masks came off. “You belong to me, now. And to the Demon Emperor Ulbert Alain Odle, the first Emperor of a Draconic Empire. Prove useful to me.”

  “Sir!” They shouted, and scrambled to find a tree to carry out his instructions.