Belial - Episode 1 of the Elder Bornshire Chronicles Read online

  “He did,” Shanay commented. “I felt uncomfortable about his claim, but—.”

  Stuck for words, she shrugged.

  “I did not start the crusade against the Apostles to appease God. I did it for revenge. He used that motive to redeem me. In proper time, Gideon brought me his sword. Without it, we would all be burning in Hell. God does not intend to write me a proclamation. He is, after all—God. If He chooses Thanatos to be His messenger, I am not sure I should ignore what He says.”

  Wolf listened quietly to the exchange and let a pause hang in the air. “Do you think this involves the Governor?”

  “No,” Arthur replied. “Nerva is an honest man. Whatever Thanatos refers to cannot possibly be worse than anything else we have faced. Whatever it is, God will see us through this. He has all else.”

  “True enough,” Wolf replied. He and Arthur had fought together since before the fall of Rome. Arthur had saved Wolf from the life of a gladiator. In their first meeting, Arthur had nearly killed Wolf, but many years of camaraderie sat between that day and this one.

  For half an hour, they counseled, digesting what they knew and wondering what, if anything, they had missed.

  “I say,” Arthur began, “that we wait for a sign. God is not bashful, though He does not frequently manifest in ways that we understand.”

  “A burning bush, a pillar of fire, a pillar of cloud—subtlety is his strong suit,” Wolf joked. Arthur did not laugh, though Shanay smiled.

  “Angels,” she added with a slight dig.

  “The Horsemen themselves could be manifestations for all we know,” Arthur said, pushing back a bit from the table. The tavern had begun to fill up and the ale flowed freely. He changed the subject, “So, you and Scralz competing for business?”

  Wolf huffed. “Hardly. Her tavern is in a different town—besides, I am prettier.”

  “That is debatable,” Arthur replied.

  “I think I will tell her what you said the next time I see her,” Shanay chided.

  “Wait, wait!” Wolf laughed.

  “She will mess that pretty face of yours right up!” Shanay pressed.

  That was more than the three could handle and a round of comfortable laughter passed through them, and then calmed.

  “See if our colleagues have info, Wolf,” Arthur suggested. “Reach out to Scralz and Anthony. See if they have heard any whispers. If something untoward skulks, I would rather know now than later. Check your question about Nerva with Ptolomus. See if he suspects anything. If anyone does, it will be him. He had no problem separating the Templars from Nerva’s command. If he has a bad feeling, then perhaps we should keep a close eye on the new governor.”

  “I don’t think it is as much that as—well, after the Empire and then the Apostles—it is difficult for any honorable soldier to spread trust at the feet of a bureaucrat.”

  “I understand,” Arthur replied. “Still, soldiers who run cities seem to maintain order but rack up casualties. We want to be better than that.”

  “I will ride to Hellsgate three days from now,” Wolf replied. “What are you two going to do?”

  Arthur relaxed and leaned back in his chair. “I am going to get a new set of armor for Blade, a new saddle, and anything Shanay fancies we need for our home. The place was a bit run down when we arrived.”

  Shanay coughed into her hand and said, “I will go by the dry goods store for more nails. We have a lot of bent ones.” Arthur scowled at her and she added, “And maybe the feed store. That should get us started.”

  Wolf chuckled at the indelible frown that commanded Arthur’s face. Arthur turned to Wolf as if pleading for intervention.

  “No, no!” Wolf declared. “Don’t get me involved with arguing with that red hair. She would cut me up and use me for shark bait.”

  Shanay grinned enormously and let her intentions lace her irises.

  “Don’t forget that, either of you!” she pushed Arthur on his chest, threatening to knock him off the balance he precariously maintained on the chair’s two back legs.

  Two months tiptoed past while the Bornshires returned home with their supplies. No threat surfaced. They returned to their lives. Arthur thanked God every time that he put a foot in the stirrup of Blade’s saddle. Every evening, he thanked The Lord for His blessings and laid his questions at the Lord’s feet, but no answer came.

  And when it did, Arthur nearly missed the call.

  Chapter 3

  Mrandor crouched in agitated contemplation on a rotten stump in the middle of the Black Forest, waiting for Belial.

  Damned angels! He had wasted an entire morning because of her and after his lengthy time at sea, he found himself unaccustomed to waiting for anyone.

  Self-righteous, self-appointed, quasi-deities evidently had no sense of time. No amount of sarcasm or outright insult could cure them of that annoyance. They grasped much power, and though he had yet to ever best them in that game, he survived after Lucifer perished. He did not intend to allow Belial to outlive him. His mental cogs clicked steadily.

  Though she had sent him to sea with particular motive, the years had hardly taxed him. The voyage had allowed him to strengthen both his body and his resolve. He had secured three kingdoms and considered a press upon Britannia and further south toward the Endless Continent. To that end, he had recently received word from his scouts. They had brought no threats when they returned. Before the continent, there were islands to simply subjugate. He needed raw material in the form of slaves and gold. His future included a trip to those waters to determine the area’s utility.

  His hair had grown out. It was a darker shade than he remembered. His blue eyes had once been not so blue, and his blonde hair reached his shoulders. He did not allow it a comb. The wildness added to his fearsomeness. He had grown his beard to make his youthful face appear more aged.

  He had trekked to sea and sailed northwestward to a place where ice and snow held a footing through most of the year. Glaciers grumbled in that place, rumbled slowly and resolutely, chewing rocks as they went.

  He relished his first decision upon landing. The impact of a single violent and public murder had served him well. The people there were hard as the frozen ground and were not particularly obliged to spend their time finagling with strangers.

  He stepped off his ship that first day, one of five ships he had commanded at the time and a mere thirty scoundrels to count as his flagship’s crew. The inhabitants had gathered near the shore as he and two of his men rowed a small ship-to-shore rowboat in between two of the inhabitants’ ships and stepped up onto the rocky beach.

  Perhaps one hundred of the inhabitants gathered and in the town beyond, he saw many others, a nice pool of wealth that he could tap.

  “What do you want here?” grated a brutish man with scraggly mud-colored hair to his waist. Mrandor had seen bears that carried less bulk. “We don’t welcome strangers.”

  Mrandor staged his best counterfeit smirk and kept his thoughts from his eyes. Murdering all of them would be both a challenge and rewarding, but he needed to establish relations to build an army. The relationship need not be cordial, but respect might simplify matters, even if malicious.

  “Who is the leader here?” he asked. The crowd looked at the large man. Perhaps this was the mouth to silence.

  “I lead here. My name is Asger,” the man growled and from his back, he produced a sword quite unlike any that Mrandor had seen. Iron to be sure. The weapon had a heavy tang, a narrow base to the blade, a widening at the middle and then a narrow tip. “We don’t trade with those that we don’t know. Get back into your tiny boat and sail away, last warning.”

  “We have items to trade. At least hear me out.”

  “I will let your men carry your carcass back to your ship,” Asger said and strode forward lifting his sword.

  Mrandor placed his right hand on his sword, but with the left, he tossed a spell at Asger’s feet. The man slipped on the snow and fell at Mrandor’s feet. A second later, h
is head rolled a red, steaming path down the sloped shore and plopped into the water. The snow spread crimson. The crowd withdrew a few steps. Mrandor’s men froze their calm expressions.

  Mrandor wiped blood from his blade. “I have four vessels just over the horizon. I will bring them to you heaped with weapons and food in return for soldiers who are willing to fight. I will supply your settlement with meat. I offer you partnership. Together, we will command the coast. No small portion of the spoils will flow to you. Your village will prosper if you swear an oath to me.”

  “Partners need not swear oaths to one another. We swear no allegiance to any man,” another gruff looking man stated from the crowd. He stood as tall as the first man did, but more years hung on him. His right ear was much larger than his left ear and his beard covered a deep furrow, an evident disfigurement beneath.

  Mrandor readied his sword and locked his eyes on the newcomer’s eyes. “So, are you in charge now? If so, we can continue negotiation. The fish are hungry today.”

  The man’s face tightened. “I do not fear you.”

  Mrandor let surprise fake its way onto his face. “Of course not! I am here to offer you a pact. Your people will thrive. You will sit above all the rest. You can be their king!”

  The man squinted and then glared at Mrandor. “We have no king.”

  “Well, change that,” Mrandor replied. “Tell me. Do you have a name?”

  “Calder.”

  “So, King Calder, I have two hundred pounds of beef on my ship. Shall I bring it ashore and we can dine and finish this discussion? Or, will you persist with objections to my presence?”

  Glancing one last time toward Asger’s headless corpse, Calder turned away and headed toward his village. “Bring the staples that you offer. We will meet you in the Great Hall.”

  The feast had gone quite well. Asger remained unmentioned and Calder ingested the bait, willing to assist Mrandor with his fleet of ships, though Mrandor would need more than the mere half-dozen. He needed warriors and slaves. Calder had sworn to bring the tribes to meet with Mrandor in two months time and that oath leaned toward trustworthy.

  With that enterprise started, Mrandor left two of his men to continue bartering services for weapons, for Calder also had forges. Mrandor hoped the tide did not turn for the worse for his men while he continued with his plot. If it did turn, he would need to kill all of these people to press his point.

  He backtracked a month’s journey along his course to establish an ironworks complete with a bracket of miners and ironmongers in the mountains just below the world’s freeze-line. His thirst for more nagged him.

  More iron. More workers than Calder could provide, and Calder had referred him to the town since they had traded before. His new subjects, although they considered themselves free, were eager to trade. Word of Asger’s fate reached the town before Mrandor’s ships. Mrandor placed sufficient rumors to grow his dangerous reputation and he coerced trade for life when it suited.

  For the ironwork services, he tendered gold, and when they attempted a renegotiation after the first month, he bartered their blood. A few beheadings of wives and children forged the ironmongers into reasonableness.

  Down the coast, he persisted. At each stop, he added rough men to his crew and sturdier ships to his fleet. A few sank in the northern storms. Others he fortified into better and more resilient vessels.

  Summer came and then autumn. His fifth destination breached the open sea. He had found a large city known for their shipyards, Faroes. Mrandor dominated the local seas and his manipulation in that portion of the world had cast the shipwrights of Faroes upon hard times.

  He had not slain anyone in Faroes. Instead, he had bought every ship they had. They were congenial enough. They asked no questions, and as far as he could determine, no underground inquiries were attempted. His fleet stood at an even dozen and he had fortified them with rams that would crack all but the deepest winter. They could smash a normal ship’s bulkhead to pulp should the time come.

  Therefore, the cycle went until soon he had built an army of barbarians in the deep north, an unassailable city of forges and a fleet of ships that carried him easily around the stormy ocean.

  With two years passed, what he desired was to turn his resolution inland and his eyes to Overlord City. He did not intend to raze it as he had in the past, but to win the prize through artifice. Before he did that, however, he had another target to eliminate. Tearing down a dynasty required the removal of one brick at a time.

  Dawn crept up and lifted the sun overhead, casting some faint heat through the rising Britannia fog. Fresh dew rose to clear away to blue. Daemon Bornshire leaned on his carved oak staff and surveyed both land and horizon from his position high upon the hills across the great sea. He had dreamt for the last five nights of an approaching “something.” His consciousness could not quite remember even the emotions that the dream evoked, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate.

  Following his gut feeling, he had left his home in Drybridge two days before, promising Lieala that he would return within the week. Both belonged to the High Order of Druids and vocation often called one or the other away. He had not told her why he needed to go, and she had not asked. Since she had not, he let the subject lay untended between them.

  A ragged smile fluffed gently at his snow-white mustache. The two druids had been married for most of their lives. They had suffered challenges to their faith, their marriage, and their duties and stood as victor. Over the last two decades, years of harmony had brought a permanency to their lives that they thought they might never see back in the days when Romans occupied Britannia.

  In those long ago days, Daemon himself had ventured forth with just his wife and his sons, determined to destroy Rome for transgressions against his religion, but mostly against his wife. That quest for vengeance had dearly cost him.

  That trip had lasted most of his midlife and before he surrendered to circumstances, that trail had taken the life of his youngest son. Ironically, his eldest son had risen to become a general in the Roman army, to his father’s dismay.

  Daemon’s eyes transfixed on his staff while memories poured forth. He had learned much, but primarily, he had found that a singular man does not an empire make. Sometimes cutting the head from a serpent only allowed a more dangerous serpent to assume its place.

  His trip had not been wasted; he had gained wisdom despite his losses. His son, Arthur, had married his childhood sweetheart, and the story of how they had found one another again had been quite well told when he attended Arthur’s wedding in Rome. He still saw Arthur that way, young, brash, headstrong, but at the same time a leader of great men, a disciplined fighter.

  That memory led to a reminder—Arthur was not a young man anymore. The arrival of Daemon’s granddaughter and her husband, Octavus, had brought with it crushing news of Cleola’s courageous and untimely death and the crucifixion of Daemon’s grandson. Arthur had set matters to rest much quicker than his father, decimating his enemy. During that time, another woman had entered his life and assumed his name. Together, they had defeated a deep-seated evil and saved Joanie. Arthur, however, persisted in his duties to guard and defend.

  Daemon understood Arthur’s persistence. He had walked those tracks. Father and son followed two different pantheons, but that did not separate them. Life simply happened, and somehow had gotten in the way of their time together.

  Daemon and Lieala had grown too old to face the ravages of the sea. Lieala had never fared well in that part of the world, the healer in her felt deep wounds in the earth that even she could not deter.

  With the thought of grandchildren, he fully smiled with memories of his own children, their younger years, and their loyalty to him despite the circumstances he had brought upon them in his strong-willed youth.

  He knelt slowly to one knee, his deep azure robe wrapped around him and his ever-present sword making a slight slide upon the dew. He was one of the few druids who carried a sword. Most p
referred bows or staffs or spears, and truth be told, he had not used his sword in battle since a brief encounter, aiding a friend of Arthur’s named Sligo in a war against a sorcerer who sought to disrupt all of Britannia.

  Then, like now, Daemon had been an archdruid. He had a dozen or more understudies, and Lieala had achieved archdruid status, though she was a healer and a primary beacon for peace-over-war doctrine for their clan.

  From Joanie’s description, Arthur would not fit well within Lieala’s lessons. She could not coerce her impulsive offspring from Rome back to his pastoral beginnings. Daemon held ample doubt that such a time might ever come.

  A soft thump of rapid hoofbeats turned his gaze to his left. The stallion stood larger than most, but his countenance reeked of illness. The horse had open sores on his shoulders and upon his flanks. His saddle and bridle looked worn thin, but his rider wore full metal armor that reflected the sky in most places, but discolored blotches speckled the steel.

  Over his armor, the rider wore a black cloak that looked to be of wool, heavy and with a hood attached, but laid back. The hood most likely fit easily over his helmet to keep the elements away during Britannia’s frequent rains and snow in the winter months.

  Reining in his steed short of Daemon, the rider climbed from his saddle, planted his foot solidly on the ground, and then removed the other from the silver stirrup worth a king’s ransom.

  Daemon pinned cautious eyes on the rider, but as he drew nearer, Daemon acknowledged him, “Pestilence. It has been a long time since our last meeting.”

  Pestilence had come to the Lusty Wench when Arthur was a boy to warn Daemon that Arthur’s life lay in jeopardy. He had not treated the Horseman with much respect that day, but he had seen him since then and hoped that he had nothing to fear.

  Cockroaches jittered around the edges of Pestilence’s lips and ants crawled on his face, gathering pus from the wounds there. Though it moved quickly, Daemon thought that he saw a spider skitter into the Horseman’s nose and disappear inside. Daemon drew in a deep breath and looked away as Pestilence approached and sat down on a protruding piece of limestone beside the druid.