Lachlan the Wolf Returns in; The Ultimate Cosmic Horror Story: Escape From Death-Bay

Another Lachlan story

I

The waves crashed against the sides of the Phantom just as they did the village port, the sea did so gently not without a small hint of the storm all knew to be but a few hours away. Stricken with frustration and helplessness most of the village of Capernauma’s men were fishermen and so depended upon clear weather to fish and feed their families. Isolated from the rest of the Empire the villagers had grown comfortable paying few of their taxes and otherwise doing little to support it. To them the Empire was a distant thing that had as little to do with their lives, as the wind did with those of the local apple-farmer’s affairs.

Quite how old the village was, none could say exactly, they knew only that it had been there for centuries, being quite old by the time of Arridhaeus’s great-grandmother who spoke often of how in her own grandfather’s day he had met the Elf-maiden Mythyra. The Elf-maiden was said to have visited the village again in her own girlhood or so Allyra often said to any who cared to listen.

In more recent times it had happened that the village had lost a great many of their younger folk to the nearby city of Carthaeus which was three hundred miles to the east. This had embittered some who had stayed in the region, so that they often muttered about the fickleness of the young. What worried some of the elderly was how those youngsters who stayed, supported the local bandits who had begun to raid local caravans and merchants travelling about the area.

The reasoning of the young was that if trade between the larger cities was slowed and ultimately crippled the young might return, in particular the most fickle of the youth. The suspicion that the remaining young men those not involved in trade with the likes of Lachlan’s pirates had in secret joined the local brigands was a constant source of suspicion for the elderly. In turn though, many of the young had begun to bristle at this suspicion and were to remark among themselves, upon the hypocrisy of their elders trading with the outlaw Lachlan.

In all though, most agreed that something had to be done to save the village. None knew quite what, they only knew that since the arrival of Lachlan in the area, the flow of people pouring out of the village had begun to cease. Staying longer and longer in the area, he had begun to treat the village as his main port to refurbish or replenish his three ships.

This state of things had begun to convince more than one villager that their fortunes had begun to change.

Unfortunately for them though, in the earliest of hours of the night, fortune always a fickle mistress turned her wheel once more. This time against not only the villagers, but the likes of Lachlan and his sea-dogs who had been preying upon Imperial vessels for more than five years.

The first ones to take notice of what was happening were awoken in the earliest hours long before the suns’ had begun their ascent. It was the throwing of torches the screams of the dying and the sudden boom that resounded and echoed throughout the whole of the region that startled a great many from their beds.

The source of the explosion happened to be the flagship of Lachlan, who had lost his mast and had seen a third of his ship suddenly engulfed in flames.

It was not long thereafter that fright had overwhelmed the majority of the crew, as the vast majority believing their fearless captain lost, threw themselves overboard or surrendered themselves without any further fight.

Those that surrendered were pulled aboard the great war-ships of the Empire, or dragged to shore whereupon they were one and all summarily run through by swords or decapitated after many blows. The ruthlessness with which the Imperial forces pursued their execution of the Lachlan Pirates was unnerving to all who observed it.

Many were those who looked on as the pirates that had once hugged their coasts, sold treasures many had never seen before, and who had also fished their waters. None spoke up, fearful that they might soon join the pirates.

Stepping out onto the shore from aboard one of the larger galleys that had sailed suddenly into their waters, bearing the imperial emblem of the Phoenix on its sails, the tall figure who looked down on them, was the most wicked figure to have ever set foot in the village. Or so a great many were later that night to swear, as they looked on the black-cloaked man with more than a little caution and fear.

Tall,pale-skinned  and dark-robed in robes of the finest silk, he was white-bearded and haired with dark eyes and rotted teeth, and over-sharp nails. Gaunt he looked more akin to a skeleton than a proper man, and when he spoke it was with a bellowing voice that was unpleasant to all who heard it.

“Hear ye, hear ye people of Capernauma, I am Tevintrius, Legate of the Emperor and am in search of the pirate Lachlan, and his crew,” The large hooded figure bellowed only to fall silent expectantly. When none stepped forward to reveal the location of the pirate, he sighed exasperatedly, “I speak in the name of Emperor Oridias IV, and therefore demand the assistance of all, in the hunt of the pirates sworn to the ruffian Lachlan!” When none stepped forward, he sighed and turned to the captain by his side, “See to searching the village, I want them all rooted out.”

“Yes, milord,” The captain replied at once.

The process of searching the village, of searching through every house, every inch of the village was soon under way. Such was the fear and apprehension that this ferreting out of brigands and pirates inspired in the local people of Capernauma that when gathered within the town square, more than one soul was heard to complain bitterly.

Still Tevintrius remained unperturbed. Observing the assembling of hundreds of people before him, he was to address them in firm tones. “My people, you have been led astray or so I have been told; at the point of a sword the pirate Lachlan, has forced you to allow him to anchor his ships and to devour what wealth you have. We have thus come, with no other intention than to liberate thy village.”

The villagers looked on him with doubt etched into their every face, so that even those children barely five years of age did not look wholly convinced. They knew him to be a liar, knew him to be desirous of the wealth of the pirate many had begun to call the ‘Pirate-King of West Orissia’. He had likely already seized much of it, they mused to themselves if he had not inadvertently sunk it to the bottom of the seas.

Lachlan had been as free with his wealth some whispered, especially with those wenches who worked at the local tavern, so that some wondered whether he truly had much wealth left.

“You may well do as you please O Lord, but we have heard tell of there being other ships elsewhere, namely to the north.” One man stated stepping forward, to confront the Imperial Legate only to be looked upon with a stern gaze.

“Who are you?”

“I am Maxilios the Fisherman,” the man replied with no less stern a glare.

Considering him, the Imperial representative looked as though he might order the man’s death, when instead he turned to the captain at his side. “Captain, have the ships head north. We may well find what we seek there, and if we do not…” Now he turned to glower once more at the fisherman, “We will feed this man to the fish he has revered all his life.”

It was just as the Imperial ships save one, departed from Capernauma’s coast, that Vahn the baker moved from the rear of the crowd of onlookers in the midst of staring as the Imperial troops departed. Having listened to the formidable Tevyntrius’ address, and observed him and his men search the village with the same anxious expressions on their faces, the crowd was to fold back as the man’s guards surged forth.

They felt little compulsion to put themselves forward between the Imperial mercenaries and those pirates who had escaped. There was perhaps the vain hope that under the circumstances, Tevintrius might not learn of their own involvement with the pirates.

Little did any of them know that while the majority clung to their fear, and neither did anything to shield the fugitives nor stop the guards, one man from the rear of the throng of people peeled away. Only he had had the courage to turn back, to fly from the back of the crowd, back up the way he had come to the very edge of the village limits. Making his way to the bakery he had poured the whole of his life into, and he had thought at one time to pass down to his daughter, until she had fled to the larger city to the east. It was once thereupon the steps that led to the door to his bakery that he halted long enough to throw a quick series of glances all about him. Fearful that he might be caught, he slipped inside and from there made his way into the kitchen, only to come near to walking straight into the extended blade of his guest, who jumped some fifty feet into the air.

“Stop! Oh it is you baker,” the man hidden in the shadows grunted, a hint of relief in his deep, if quiet voice.

“Uh yes, it is I, sir,” the baker stuttered fearful of the guest he had taken into his house, but a few hours prior to then. “And I have done as you have asked, and have listened as the Imperial representatives proclaimed us liberated.”

“Damn them,” the man grumbled with nary any joy in his voice, as he turned away from the baker, sheathing his sword at once.

Seating himself with a grunt, with a curse while the baker studied him after his breath had calmed and his heartbeat slowed to a more proper pace. Never particularly at ease around the pirate, who had an unnerving habit of staring too deeply at him, of pulling his sword out at those who angered him and of drinking too much, he had however served him faithfully since he first pulled into port. The possibility of earning some much needed coin to help his sickly wife, and to care for his six children were too good to turn away from. What was more was that he had the long suspicion that in spite of his flaws, Lachlan had overpaid him for his services as a spy and baker more than once if out of pity. It was why if he was being honest with himself, he did like the pirate.

“What else?” Lachlan demanded, hungry for more knowledge of the situation that had developed outside the bakery.

“The Imperial Legate has introduced himself as Tevintrius and he is slaughtering the few remaining men you have left and will be searching every house in the village for you.” The baker explained to him helplessly.

“Really now?” Lachlan replied to him with barely any hint of interest.

“What will you do now?” the baker demanded anxiously, a hint of impatience in his voice as he glanced several times over his shoulder as though fearful that Tevintrius might just appear then and there within his house, with his guards by his sides.

Lachlan did not answer at once, preferring to slip over to the rear of the house, where he knew there to be a hidden door. It was one that he had arranged to have made by one of his crewmembers, Alfonso who had in another life, been a carpenter’s apprentice before he was captured by slavers and made to row for four years. Though, he had not known that there might be an Imperial ambush arranged near the village, he had discovered the baker’s hidden door quite by accident on a previous visit to the village. He had merely sought to sit in the shade provided by the house on a particularly humid and warm day, when the baker had not knowing he was there sought to slip out the rear of the door. The man had not taken a great many threats before he had revealed he was from time to time hired to deliver food to the bandits just outside the village.

Realizing the value of this knowledge, Lachlan had released him and never fully made use of this fact.

He had preferred to keep such knowledge to himself.

“I will seek out your friends, and you will guide me.” Lachlan commanded sharply, looking to the east where the mountains were to be found.

“What? But-”

“Now! That is if you wish to live,” Lachlan growled at him, furiously whereupon the baker though he quailed did as bidden.

Looking to his wife for assistance and support was hardly of any help as the middle-aged woman looked on him sternly, almost expectantly. She was of a similar mind as Lachlan; their only hope for survival should the hidden door be discovered, lay with the bandits he was friendly with.

It happened though that as they slipped out behind the shop, someone was watching them flit out from the village, with keen interest. The person in question turned away, certain that this information might prove of interest to Tevintrius.

II

It was three months since Tevintrius had first set foot in the village of Capernauma. It was hardly an accomplishment for his part, yet each day that he had stayed had marked the small town. Gone were the happy days of yesteryear, as dark ones now took over casting out what light there once was. The whole of their lives had been transformed into a shadowed existence as Tevintrius mounted what were late-night inquisitions and day to day break-ins into many a men’s homes. His men were to seize not only their possessions, but also at times their women and children in the hopes that he might extricate confessions as to the location of Lachlan and the few surviving pirates from those who dwelt within the village. Yet none would confess anything at all, it was these actions though that inspired one of his captains though to approach him, long after the men had been dismissed back to the ships and the local tavern where many of them were staying.

“Milord, far be it for me to criticize any decisions made by a superior,” he began hesitant to do just that yet aware that there was a need.

“Then it is good that you do not intend to do so.” Tevintrius snapped at once.

“Milord, it seems to me to be a needless gesture, why bother with thirty or so brigands? They can do little to influence the Empire, and pose no substantial threat to any of us.” The Captain complained adding a moment later, “What is more is that by alienating the locals, what I fear you may have done is give Lachlan and those with him, a great asset than any weapon of war or magic could ever equal.”

“What asset would that be, Captain?”

“The support of the locals, as they now hate you more than they fear you,” the warrior informed him, “You are frankly sir, a member of the clergy are you not? I am a military man, perhaps the particulars of this hunt ought be left in the hands of we soldiers and sell-swords.”

The man’s tone was respectful, even if his eyes flashed with irritation at the older man’s pretensions. It was his view and all who observed them could see that it was, Tevintrius had been given the command rather than having earned it. Something that no soldier worth his salt so to speak, could possibly stomach let alone pretend to approve of for very long. What made the matter all the worse was that Tevintrius had not take the command in the midst of the battle beyond having decided upon the night-raid.

“An excellent proposal, I shall consider it after I have selected your successor.” Tevintrius declared, just before his dark ring sparkled with a sinister onyx light that was more shadow than brightness and the man was cast from the side of the ship and sunk beneath the waves with a great and horrible cry of agony. Turning now to the villagers who had hardly seen a thing, due to the shadows that hung over them all, he was heard saying to them, “Lo! You see now the futility of resistance to me? Now will you at last kneel before me? Kneel as you were meant to, before the might of the Empire?”

Throughout his speech a great many of those country-folk, who had revered for so long the Empire into which they were born, even as they at times cursed it, turned steadily away. Their faith in the Emperor’s representative having been shaken by the forcefulness of his ways and the manner in which he had searched their homes and seized almost half of their children only to put them to the sword or fed them to the seas.

What none of them noticed at first, was the slipping out from the rear of the bakery of a large figure who clung to the shadows, one who departed in as stealthy a manner as might any thief. The trouble was that the village had little in the way of thievery within it, such was the honesty that ruled over the people and the need each one of them had for one another. Without the baker, the local farmers had nary any access to the delicate pastries and breads that they liked so much. Yet without access to the local milk, meat and other goods of the farmers, he could hardly survive, just as the cloth merchant depended upon each of them for food, he kept them clothed in turn. They were all bound together, and so had rarely if ever crossed swords either in the sense of the law or in the material sense of the phrase.

The guards for their part, believing that the villagers were the equivalent of gaping, foolish fish that could no more control themselves than they could resist the might of the Empire. It was thus with more than a little enthusiasm that they were to make certain mistakes in the search for Lachlan and those who had taken his side. Mistakes that was not simply limited to mere cursory searches and brief glances, but also to seeing the odd person here and there flitting about or past them, and most shrugging in response.

This hardly satisfied the Imperial commander who ordered out his ships in pursuit of the two that had made to escape further north. He was to in spite of the silent defiance of sorts of the local inhabitants insist that they had a duty towards the Empire.

Though he did not notice it, there was a secret door to the rear of the baker’s home that swung open so that a shadow might flit out without anyone noticing.

“I do not think they will assist us, milord,” one officer remarked to Tevintrius who thinned his lips.

A glint of amusement entered his eyes as he eyed the people of the village. Such was the darkness that was to be found therein his gaze, in his soul that many of those who stood before and even many who stood near him trembled.

He had already decided to put them to use, if in a different way than his men might well have suspected, or even expected. Drawing upon his amulet of Karenos, he was to look up to the heavens and sigh with longing, before he declared to all who might hear him. “Then let them refuse, I have no interest to force them at present. Not when it would be so much easier to put them to greater use than that of searching for a singular pirate.”

“And what use might that be milord?”

Tevintrius did not answer in the most direct manner imaginable, a serpentine grin crossing his lips as he studied the village with hungry, yellow-glowing eyes. “Gather thy men captain, I would put them to use, for there is much work to be done before the fourth day of this very week. Before the moon and stars are in their proper place.”

*****

Taking to the shadows beyond the village, Lachlan all but flew to the nearby mountains. Keen to put as much distance between him and the village where Tevintrius now ruled, he was understandably eager to find freedom from the oppressive darkness that had overtaken the village of Capernauma. His every movement carried him faster, and more stealthily than what any local man or thug of the Empire present there might have done, wild as a panther, and no less lethal there was none of civilized man’s softness in him.

Moving towards the mountain, with all haste he was to commit himself and his companions to the road up. Keen to ensure that they leave the enemy behind them, he was to in spite of how much heed he paid to the world around him soon have the sensation that someone was watching him.

It was a feeling that his companions were not to feel, with the baker’s wife remarking once the village had vanished in the distance behind them. “We have surely left that awful man and his legions behind us!”

“Be silent Dalia, lest you bring down the wroth of the gods upon us! It is bad luck to speak so before we are truly safe!” Vahn hissed at her, in a foul mood as he had hoped to be able to enjoy his night alone with her once the children were asleep. The notion he might soon be traipsing along the wilderness just outside the village, towards the eastern hills in the hopes of reaching the high mountains there, had not occurred to him previously, nor was it one that he much liked.

It was impossible to say how long they ran up thither the foothills for, then down them before they reached the distant mountains. All that the children knew was that it was late, they were tired and that the adults were angry with one another, so that they mewled and complained. This might well have softened the hearts of lesser men, yet it did not the baker and the pirate.

While Dalia complained that they must slow down, this after more than three hours of flight, Lachlan declared to his travelling companions, “Not yet. We must reach the bandits, to warn them of what has become of my men, then and only then may you rest woman.”

This answer did not greatly please her, as she grumbled, “Might you put me down even if only for a short time? I can certainly walk on my own.”

Lachlan at present threw her to the ground as one might a deer carcass, hardly caring about her complaints. Desperate to make his way up the mountain, he swept up the children who had descended by this time from their father’s arms, into his own this much to their discontent.

“What are you doing?” Vahn demanded of him surprised.

“We must hurry, we have tarried too long.” Lachlan told him.

There was a sense of urgency about the barbarian, one that had settled into his heart since he had left the village, as he had the sense that they were being followed. No, followed was not quite the correct term, he decided; hunted.

Making their way up the mountain, he was to have his companion inspect every cavern and ever hole in the mountain in an attempt to track the brigands that lived in the area. Every cave gave over every indication of someone having been there, with there being firewood used, and the bones of animals. It was as they neared the peak that Lachlan at last relaxed ever so slightly, and allowed the children to climb up on their own, though it was also so that he might use his arms as the path had become ever steeper and covered in rocks.

“There they are!” the shout resounded up towards them from nearer to the base of the mountains, just as Lachlan led the small family out from the former cavern-home of the brigands.

“Badb! They have found us!” Lachlan cursed whereupon he lifted up the baker’s wife into his arms, throwing her over his shoulder, “Follow Vahn Baker, and bring thy children along lest I abandon all of thee, here for the enemy to find and slaughter!”

The baker for his part simply swallowed several curses of his own, before he threw one leg before the other, struggling in spite of his plumpness to catch up to the considerably fitter youth. His wife was similar, lifting her legs high as they might go in spite of her skirts, her large blue eyes wide with fright.

“Hurry mama, hurry!” Her two children urged her, desperate to encourage the plump middle-aged woman forward.

It was not so easy for her to follow a boy of ten and a lass of eight, who scrambled far more skilfully up over the nearby rocks than she or her husband. Neither of them weighed down as it were by their own fat or the same exhaustion that had begun to take its toll on the adults. The two had been awake since just shy of night-fall, and the twin suns’ were now rising in the east.

“Up, over yonder hurry Vahn, we must hurry,” Dalia cried out to her husband, struggling to hurry along after them.

“There, ahead of us over thither is a cave, you can hide there while I ambush them,” Lachlan commanded pointing at a cave that lay a little higher up than where they currently found themselves. The cave lay near where the path dipped back downwards, back down the mountain if on its other side.

It was a testament to his companions’ fatigue and desperation that they did not argue with him. Panting and gasping, the red-faced man was to curse with every second breath the god that had brought Lachlan to Capernauma and brought him specifically to his doorstep. As he did so he was to glance every so often over his shoulder, towards his pursuers, whom were making swift headway up the mountain.

It was with alarm that Lachlan realizing this might be the last stand he could make, was to urge the children and Dalia into the nearby cave near the summit of the mountain. They could begin moving downwards on the other side of the mountain, but down that way would mean the enemy would reach them quickly as they would surely carry forth with the downward momentum just as Lachlan would.

No, he would not tire himself ever more due to this absurd pursuit. He preferred to make a fight of it if he could.

Forced to a halt once inside, the warrior stared at the brigands who had lain in waiting it seemed, weapons unsheathed and bared like a bear’s fangs and claws, as he stepped into the uppermost cavern within the mountain. The lot of them, having been awakened from their naps, by the great din and cries that echoed from far beneath them nearer to the base of the mountain.

Almost at once though, he was quick to find himself staring all around him, as the bandits whom he had sought glowered at him and those he had been forced to bring with him. Death drew near, with its terrible fangs menacing them one and all.

III

The person who stepped out from among the ranks of the brigands that had encircled him was unlike any other bandit-chieftain he had ever met. This chieftain was by no means a man, but rather a woman.

And a woman unlike any other he had ever seen before. She was beautiful in a way that left him staring for several minutes. Just as he could not resist staring at her, she could not keep from studying him in turn.

She was statuesque with long well-tanned legs, which she had encased up to just shy of her knees in custom-made soldiers’ boots of an Orissian design, while she left a portion of her legs bared. Dressed in mismatched armour that included a custom-made hauberk and iron gauntlets she was armed with a short-sword and a buckler. Even with her armour, Lachlan could hardly keep from staring as the woman was he could tell buxom and well-shaped.

“And who are you?” The blonde haired woman demanded of him, her manner heated and imperious as though he were somehow beneath her.

It had been some time since he had seen a woman of her remarkable beauty so that for a brief moment Lachlan did not speak.

“Speak or you shall all die,” She retorted coldly.

“We seek to escape the Imperial guards hunting us.”

“Why would they be hunting you?”

“Because the only one of my crew they have not seized is myself,” Lachlan revealed with a shrug of his shoulders before he studied the almost fifty men present in the cave, with a defiant stare. “If you wish to hew me down, do so but know that it will cost each one of you your pitiful lives, therefore challenge me if you will.”

They did not.

Several looked on him with unrelenting respect and appreciation, others consternation yet all looked inevitably to Tanya for guidance. The young woman for her part was to hesitate and that was all that was needed for them to at last hear what the warrior had known all along; the Imperial sell-swords were nigh upon them.

“Tanya what should we do?” One of the men asked of their long-haired chief, who looked from the impassive barbarian to just past him, chewing on her lower lip as she did so.

“Very well, do come along the lot of you.” She said at last with a sigh, “You however shall stay near to me, barbarian I know you to be a pirate of some renown and I have learnt never to trust pirates. Therefore, I would have you keep near, while I send the wounded, the young, the women away. Now let us be away, through the rear cavern where we have had occasion to slip out from, when these knaves do offer occasional pursuit. Likely they will retreat soon enough, after a day or two of pursuit…”

“They will not,” Lachlan retorted quietly, “They are led by a Legate, one of the Emperor’s personal favourites according to Vahn.”

“We shall see,” Tanya retorted doubtfully.

*****

They crossed the mountains with ease, with half of the bandits fleeing east and with orders to double south, with the bakers leaving with them. It was considered the safest choice for them, as the rest, the smaller group of some twenty-five men, along with Lachlan and Tanya were to tread east then north, with only the hopes to mislead the enemy and direct them away from the families of the bandits.

At first the children had not wished to be separated from the likes of Lachlan however he had with a great deal of sternness sent them away to their equally worried parents. “Amun-Re guard thee Lachlan, I pray we shall meet again,” Vahn had murmured to him.

“And you,” Lachlan retorted before he had been pulled aside by the head of the outlaws.

“Hurry up Caled, before we run you through for delaying us, we have not the time, the enemy is almost upon us.”

And that was all that was said ere they departed themselves, racing and almost tripping over themselves to the outstretched west. The families and guards of the families, left in the opposite direction at a greater pace, with a number of their escorts a short distance behind to erase what tracks they might have left, and maintaining an eye upon the cavern from whence they came.

*****

On the run from the guards that had been sent to chase after them, Tanya and her brigands were to flee ever further into the local mountains, and further to the east. Keen to escape the likes of Tevintrius, by any means necessary and never having planned for much more than temporary flight from him, they grew ever shorter with one another, and ever more desperate, the longer the chase went on for. None of them cared for much more, than the desperate need to keep away from Imperial capture, for all knew the fate that awaited them, in such an event.

It was Lachlan who during one of the few interludes, after an attack by one of the Imperial sell-swords was to call a halt to the company of warriors. “Wait, hold! Halt! Where are we going? Whither over yon mountains where the snow colours the peak?”

“Yes, what of it?” Tanya snapped at him, angry that he had called them to a halt, “I did not take you for a coward, Lachlan of Kull!”

“I am no coward,” Lachlan rumbled furiously, his eyes darkening with such fury that the men nearest him all backed away. “However I am no mad-man either, for one would have to be utterly and completely mad to go thither into the Elf-Mountains, and tempt their wrath! Always they decorate to a man, and to a woman those who trespass into their lands, Imperial, brigand and farmer alike. Therefore, I say that way lies certain death.”

“As does back the way we came.” Tanya snapped at him, furious at his questioning her authority.

“That may be, however we have one advantage that they do not,” Lachlan countered with a crooked grin and a glance in the direction of the faraway village near to the horizon.

“And what advantage is that?” one of the men asked a hint of scorn and hope both mingling together in his voice.

“Knowledge of the area,” Lachlan retorted as though it were the most apparent thing in the world, his eyes studying the landscape all about them. “And we are further up the mountain than they are, which presents us already with a strategic advantage.”

“And how might we employ this advantage?” Tanya demanded of him, irritated at how the men had begun to look to him rather than herself at that moment, for leadership even as she looked on him with ever greater interest.

Looking upon her with hooded eyes that did little to hide his own interest in her, he was to smirk, a crooked grin to match her own from before then. “Do you still have those shovels and pickaxes that you use to try to dig for Dwarvish gold?”

This question drew a small smirk from the young woman, as she guessed what he was thinking when she saw where he cast his eyes along the slopes.

IV

The soldiers of Orissia were not exactly what one would call soldiers. Most were but undisciplined sell-swords that the war-ships had brought along with them, as the Empire had in recent years begun to suffer from a great many troop shortages.

It was entirely because of these shortages that the likes of Mayrus found himself in command of fifty barbarians from the lands just to the south of the Southern Wall that demarcated the end of the Empire. They had been in pursuit of the brigands for nigh on two days by this time, and had not relented in their pursuit. The barbarians were far more difficult to command than any of the regular Imperial troops, lacked discipline and were prone to fighting among themselves. He did not much like them.

Later he mused as they entered one of the nearby caverns in order to search it, he would have to complain about their quality and the possibility of replacing them.

“We ought to stop for another meal soon,” One of his men, a large black warriors from the distant south.

“Do be quiet, I cannot hear myself think- wait what is that sound?”

No sooner had Mayrus spoken than there were hundreds of stones that tumbled down and the cave entrance was covered, to the horror of the warriors who went to throw themselves against the opening. Blind panic now overtook the entire unit of nigh on one hundred men who attempted to throw themselves against the opening in the hopes that they might push their way through, while others backed away and attempted to race blindly into the darkness of the cave.

*****

What none of them could have possibly known was that in the two days they had tracked the warriors, Lachlan had convinced Tanya to send one of her men south to have several of the escort double back north. They would then move to the highest of the mountains, gather what stones they could in a series of nets and break and dig into the nearby stone that they might cause a miniature avalanche when the time came.

In this way they had prepared a trap and though they had not slain the enemy they had removed them from the situation.

“Now what?” Tanya was heard to demand Lachlan, up above the now sealed off cave, a pickaxe in her own hands as Lachlan threw down the now dull tool he had himself wielded for a number of hours.

“Now, we return to the village.”

“What? You have gone daft!”

“Not quite,” Lachlan replied looking west, “We may have evaded them, but they will not remain barricaded in that cave for long, and Tevintrius will not simply wait.”

“Therefore what should we do, Lachlan?” Adonis asked of the former pirate captain worriedly.

Lachlan thought about it, while Tanya eyed him resentfully before she shifted her gaze to the brigand who shrunk back before it. “We will,” He said quietly, “go back and kill Tevintrius. This way, the Imperials will lose their heads and will need some time to determine what they should do while we slip away to the south or further east.”

While there were those who might have objected about going east, the south held some promise for them with its rich trade routes and merchant caravans. Even Tanya was inclined to agree with this plan, though she disliked that it was this stranger who had dreamt it up and uttered it before her men.

Lachlan, she decided as she followed after him, was greater and far more dangerous than any of her men could ever hope to be.

Many there were who were coming to appreciate the strength and the barbarism that clung to him, as a cloak might another man, or a chaste maiden might cling to her robes. Where her men looked on him with mixed feelings, Tanya for her part began to eye the youth contemplatively almost hungrily.

It was as he made his way down the slopes and the hills near the village, past a small clutch of trees, ones that pulled and tugged at him with their branches even as they loomed over him. If they had eyes, he imagined they might well have glared down at him, they might have menaced him in the only way they possibly could. Once, the trees had seemed warm, had appeared welcoming to him, or so it had seemed in his homeland. These trees though were not those of his homeland to the distant north, but rather cold things that seemed to shrink back where once they stood tall and proud.

What was worse was the realization after several hours of travel that slowly but surely, the trees had disappeared behind him. Where once there were a great many near the village of Capernauma, none now stood between the mountains and the small town.

*****

When at last they had arrived back hither in the village it was to find a great deal of it changed since last any of them had seen it. Alarmed and surprised, it happened that Lachlan who did not lack for experience in journeying by night, and who knew the village best was more stunned than any of his companions. It was always a small village, always one that had struggled to grow despite its peninsular and somewhat isolated location (being north-west to the mountains with nothing but the sea and vast plains around it), it was however now utterly still.

At one time it had seemed to in spite of its small size hum with life. Even in the dead of nights such as this one, it was brimming with life. Yet now it was utterly quiet. The silence unnerved the barbarian.

“I must ask, Lachlan was it like this when you left this place for yon mountains of mine?” Tanya demanded of the young warrior who was shaking his head, before she had finished speaking.

“Nay, it was still lively if with fear, rather than the usual excitement at the delivery of either your or one of my treasures newly plundered at sea,” Lachlan replied at once, his eyes clouded and dark with suspicion. “We must remain guarded, for the Imperial forces have not left this place.”

They ventured still further into the village and found no hint of a single soul still alive within this place. Even the ships seemed to rest ill at ease near the shore.

It was with a start that Lachlan realized it was perfectly, maddeningly silent. Such was the silence that no bird, no dog and not even the waves of the sea could be heard.

Unnerved, Tanya it was who first took notice that there was something or rather someone beyond the emptiness near the bay, where the ships were to be found just past the village.

It was Tevintrius.

“Ah you have arrived at last, Lachlan the Wolf, oh and you have brought the bandits from the mountains to the east of here, I must thank you, I really must.” Tevintrius remarked as he lifted up his arms from where he stood amidst the waves. “I am Tevintrius, right arm of Karenos and of the Emperor, you and the brigands including the delicious Tanya Sword-Arm shall kneel before me, before long!”

So saying, Tevintrius raised up his arms as though in prayer. At first nothing happened, so that a great many began to doubt his abilities, believing him wholly disarmed. It was their view that Lachlan and Tanya, along with their brigands had truly driven him mad. This was not to be, and in later days the survivors were to ask themselves; how could one drive a man already mad, insane? There was no other way of describing what Tevintrius did then, as he called forth from the land all about him came a number of stone-men.

These stone-men bore little resemblance to men yet those that remained upon their faces, and their dispositions were at once familiar to the likes of Lachlan who froze at the sight of them. Frozen in place as much from astonishment as from horror and disgust, at what he saw, he uttered, “These people… they-”

Cackling madly the Imperial Legate whom they now better understood to be a warlock of some sort, looked on them with a mixture of scorn and amusement, “Now, now do you see? Look on my works, on thy fisherman, on the first mate of my ship, and three others who dared to defy me! They are now mine to command, and have been made to serve me!”

The men in question who had all been laid thereupon the sward screamed a great wordless, voiceless scream their eyes wide with horror and pain and agony. Their lives and very minds seemed torn to shreds in a great blaze with each of them rising once more when the time came with hollowed, blank unblinking eyes.

“Bah, they can still be slain,” Tanya snapped as she ran one man through without hesitation, only for him to continue to stare at her.

Reaching out for her, he attempted to seize her but swift as a jungle-cat she leapt back. Everyone stared in abject horror as the cadaver that was once the first mate of Tevintrius’ ship simply ignored the wound and continued moving forward.

The next blow was struck by one of her followers, who attempted to take the head of one only for it to reach out immediately afterwards with its fingers so as to gouge his eyes out. The man’s screams echoed but briefly before another cadaver hurried over to bite into his throat with teeth sharp as nails.

They might have done more, but as another fell, his torch dropping that Lachlan picked it up defiantly proclaiming as he did so, “Have at thee, and see how you like this you damn curs.”

The blade might not have had much success, nor the decapitation of these beasts, but as he soon proved much to his satisfaction the flame was more than a small success.

The scream that burst forth from the first of the corpse-like walkers was a source of music to his ears, “Fire! Use fire!”

Tanya nodded her head, with a number of her mind who already bore torches now taking to the front lines. Each of them, eager to see the desecrated dead at last laid to rest.

In frustration Tevintrius glanced up then away over their shoulders to the village, “Bah, so you have burnt away one or two, I have the whole of the village to summon forth to do my bidding, and my master who empowers me!”

He was soon distracted from the ritual he was in the midst of, by the bellowing Lachlan who had decided to give over the torch to another, once more pick up the blade that he might charge the warlock.

The charge and rapidity with which he crossed the knee-high water might well have been enough to overwhelm another man. But not Tevintrius. Swift as lightning, he cast that very element down from the heavens above him, where his pink cloud stood high, crackling and shattering through the heavens a short distance above his head.

The electricity arced through the air, cutting apart the silence that had dominated the great battle. Madness and death raced through the air, as the lightning that the warlock called hither struck the shield and sword of Lachlan and threw him back more than a dozen meters, and into the nearby water.

His broken sword flew through the air arching up and about before falling pitifully some distance away in the water, while the barbarian lay still.

If she had time still, and was not in the midst of helping destroy the last of the beasts that Tevintrius had transformed his crew into, Tanya might well have wept for the barbarian she and her men had become so attached to.

“Weep not for him, but thy pitiful world as my master has at last revealed the full glory of his true shape to you all! Look on him and wonder!” Tevintrius cried out arms still raised, as he gave himself over to jubilation as the pink and black cloud broke apart and a great worm of sorts looked down upon them from within it.

The creature that looked down upon them, was one of such horror and bestial appearance that it dwarfed their comprehension. Never before had they seen such a thing. To look upon it was to know despair and grief itself.

It was not simply a great man-worm with the most abhorrent array of yellowed teeth, or the great pinkish slime that poured forth from its similarly coloured corpse-like body that horrified. But there within its gaze, the great knowledge the great hypnotic bestial rawness that consumed all who looked upon it.

A few more moments and it would soon break through, and beset itself and all the horrors it knew and carried with it upon them and all others within their world.

“Do you see now, Lachlan? This is the greatest of powers, the greatest of beings in the whole of the universe,” Tevintrius cried out in triumph as he held up his arms in jubilation at the arrival of his master. “Born from the darkness and into darkness, what could possibly hold greater wisdom, and greater understanding of the cosmos than he?”

Though each of them gaped at the great hole in the sky up above Tevintrius, it happened that it was Tanya who stepped forward to challenge the warlock.

She and she alone had courage enough to defy him, such was the power of her own faith as she growled at him, while the vast majority of the men around her shrunk back. “The Golden-Goddess is greater, for she came not from darkness but from light and rules over the stars where your ‘master’ shrinks from them!”

It was as she spoke that she thrust forward from about her neck the pendant of the goddess of whom she spoke; the goddess who held up a four-pointed star in one hand, and a lily in the other. In her next motion she attempted to hew the sorcerer apart with her sword, yet he was prepared for this sudden action on her part.

Leaping back several meters, he once more called up to his lord begging for his protection and knowledge.

Where he had observed Tanya, familiar with her and expecting her to strike at him, he had quite forgotten Lachlan whom he had struck a short time before with a bolt of lightning. The light had been brief, the blow briefer yet he had assumed that he had found his mark and slain him. What he had not seen though, was the manner in which the man’s wooden shield and sword had come up, and how Lachlan had released them once he had struck the water. In this way the lightning had clung to the blade that had flown some distance away, whilst the barbarian slipped beneath the waves.

He had however another blade. A smaller one, he always kept on his person.

It was this blade that he was to remove ever so slightly from his scabbard, as he silently made his way towards the distracted, cackling warlock. Swimming forward, he almost crawled when he reached further up on the sward before he drew near enough to dare what he had attempted openly a few moments before, but now sought to do in secret.

Knife held up high, he was to the shock of all spill the blood of Tevintrius all over the nearby waves, slitting the man’s throat in one smooth motion.

The strangled cry that was halted by the startled warlock, was as nothing compared to the great shriek that echoed and blasted apart the distant ships that was torn from the throat of the worm-like beast above. It might well have done them harm, for it sought to do so yet could not harm them as it was no longer quite so near to their world. The only one it could seize was Tevintrius himself as he lay dying, a great whimper and cry was torn from his slit throat.

He begged, he pleaded and he wept as the beast, the great worm he had sought to gift the world to turned its wroth upon him. He had hoped for its knowledge, for all the secrets of the universe, this it poured out into his very soul sundering it for all time before it disappeared with a shriek.

And so Tevintrius was soon nothing more, than a corpse.

Its shriek in turn soon became little more than a whimper as it steadily faded away, becoming less than nothing more than a breeze that whispered of rage and frustration, as the pink clouded faded away to nothingness along with its prisoner.

V

The village of Capernauma was no more. Of the several thousand people there had been before the arrival of Tevintrius and his men there was only Vahn and his family, along with the brigands. All others were gone, so that there was no reason to stay.

“This place is a barren wasteland now,” Tanya complained bitterly, “There will be no trade for some time regardless how ideal this location is for ships to stop for a few days. The end of the villagers means the end of all profits one might yield also from local merchants!”

“Mayhaps,” Lachlan agreed eyes faraway as he looked not at the horizon but to a distant future, “And yet for Vahn and his kindred who know to farm, and those men who stay with them there will be peace yet. The Empire and her Emperor will likely forget about them, and the village though forgotten may become a haven for fugitives, criminals and others weary of the Emperor’s wickedness.”

Tanya snorted, she did not much agree with him now though there was no force or passion behind her disagreement. “I still say this is a place where hope died.”

“Dark hopes, and new hopes shall arise, who can say? ‘Tis in the hands of the gods, rather than those of mortal men, and I say let them do what they will with this place and her inhabitants.” Lachlan retorted without much interest in the village, as he tore his gaze away from the sea so that he might study his companion.

She was of a great deal more interest to him, than the waves. Tanya with her golden locks, was of an unparalleled beauty. Such that the young man could not help but drink in the sight of her, his emerald eyes ablaze with a certain possessive desire, he had never felt the equal before.

It was a sentiment that was shared and returned, with the young woman remarking to him, “No matter, this is a discussion for another day, for the moment let us turn away from this place. We have caravans and whole tribes to plunder, to ravage if need be and wealth to seize.”

This was as nothing compared to the promises he saw in her eyes, as her men cheered swords up high in the air. Though he had lost his crew, he had gained a new one, so that in that hour Lachlan enjoyed the finest of all the victories he had ever come to know. He had nothing, but he had Tanya, her lips, her eyes, her body and most of all; her very being were all his.

Tevintrius could keep his demons, and others their gods. Lachlan mused at that moment, he needed only her.

Days of plunder, and battle awaited him just as those of passion did.

His own sword joined theirs in the air as he threw himself upon a nearby steed, “Away! Away you curs! We have not ships, nor need of them! From naught to glory and riches we ride! Ride you dogs, to glory and riches!”