Haxfuri by N J M Hemfrey

Author:N J M Hemfrey [Hemfrey, N J M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-14T22:00:00+00:00

PS. You shan’t think that this, specifically, is your fault. EVERYTHING IS.

NIGHT:

SK-TANQU CALLS

Evil lives amongst us. Evil does not like to live in isolation or purely with other evil. It lives in our streets, our homes, and in our beds. Why? Because evil needs to feel joy. And joy can only be acquired by seeing good people suffer.

—King Barunfal Brizon the Deathless

TWENTY-TWO

Lokkelvang Hears Those

Wailing in Pain First . . .

For Dagbar’s sake, don’t show you care.

Upon the carapace-clad battlements of Skrimgool Stronghold, every flag symbolising Sheriff Skarphed Hattori burnt brighter and greater. Shadowy figures hoisted bodies over the parapets and shoved them into free fall. Two, sometimes three, at a time. These mute ragdolls, slashed and pierced through, slapped and slopped into mounds of corpses below. Their ruined steel and crustacean armour clattered together and did little to contain that particular stench from splattering up the front walls. Okamwal knights, their cream cloaks and pearly white armour coated anew in shades of putrid colour, shared the deathly piles with the cadavers of the common Gool-guards and scions. All souls hollowed out in their fruitless efforts to retake the stronghold, the heart of law and order.

Swards of strange arrows and crossbow bolts swathed the scores of lifeless husks who had been cheated of their chance to climb ten-metre ladders and fight with metal in hand. An impressive amount of the arrows shared distinctive red fletchings. What remained of a siege engine and its crew sat smouldering as one charred and irregular form. Flames spoke in sharp crackles.

Yet the gatehouse doors and the artwork embossed on them remained untouched. Whalebone figures of multiple six-winged, part-bear Cyclostial, the species of Pyrania that fortified the Cyclo-Citadel, knelt to taller and more muscular beings cast from iron. The obelisk-helmeted Tytaskol, the iron beings, extended open palms to the Cyclostial and presented triangles carved from fire opal gems; tears in the veil. Haxfuri remembered Lukaku sculpting these doors and their artwork. The warlord had told him, before one brawl, that the Kai-Jorian scene was supposed to emphasise that the real Kai-Jorfell, the real god, was whoever let one live.

You let him live.

I’m no god.

Neither was he. Neither are they. Gods don’t do needless things.

Haxfuri walked past the godforsaken survivors of Lord Sigmund and Captain Jodis Saito’s assault force in their makeshift siege camp. Sigmund and Jodis, of course, hadn’t left the safety of the bamboo-walled encampment during the failed siege and had avoided becoming fodder themselves. Despite the dozens of Okamwal knights surrounding Sigmund, the clearly disgruntled and displeased man allowed Haxfuri entry into his siege camp without fuss. Most of his remaining soldiers were either lying dead on the ground, lying bandaged next to the dead, or lying inside white tents with hacksaw wielding surgeons, though a few were on their knees with trembling hands fixed in prayer.

Frantic, full-throated jabbering echoed from the kneeling soldiers. ‘Hear souls plunge into the sea. Hear souls drown, reaching for thee. Taste the Tar slapping thine mouth. Taste the void fading thou out.

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