alright those short story chapters are gonna be under the cut
Corpses lay hacked and broken across the camp. Some lay as if they were sleeping, as if there was no bloody gash in their heart, as if the back of their head was not oozing out the front of their head. Some had died better than others, but all had died violently. Tents lay trampled, chests of gear and loot lay askew, their contents scattered amongst the mud.
There was one relatively corpse-free section of the camp, by the one gap in the tall, jagged stakes that marked the border between rough civilization and verdant wilderness. In the cleared section of camp, a merry trench-fire had sprung up, with a deer turning slowly on a spit, fat crackling in the heat. This close to the fire, the stench of blood, mud and rotting meat was replaced with the heavy scent of charcoal and roasting deerflesh.
Someone crouched on the thickest branch of the stout tree lurking over the fire. Two more figures reclined against a fallen tent together, and another turned from the fire and knelt before the closest corpse. A fifth figure lurked by the break in the fence, staring out into the impenetrable woods. At the sound of quiet rustling and a grunt as a body was overturned, the figure watching the gate picked up and threw a small rock at the back of the looter’s head.
Scratch tumbled forwards, clutching his head; failed to right himself in time and plunged face first into the hacked up torso of the corpse he’d been looting. Dried blood and viscera spattered on his face. It wasn’t an attractive face to start with, and the coating of carrion did little for his looks or his mood. He sputtered and frantically wiped his face, partially out of shock and rage, but mostly because bits of rancid meat were stuck in his teeth and lodged in the deep crevasses of his scars.
“Why in the name of the Fanged Dweller’s asscrack did you do that?” Scratch cursed, splashing his canteen on his face. “I was just lootin’ him! Nothing you haven’t seen before. Certainly nothing to deserve a mouthful of bandit guts. ” He finished wiping the foulness off his face and threw the gore-soaked rag at his assailant, who absentmindedly caught it, balled it up and hurled it into the fire before speaking.
“It’s not me who takes issue with looting, Scratch. It’s the Deathspeakers who do. We don’t loot corpses when we operate in their domain. Especially not when we’ve summoned a group of them to clean up this mess.” The sentry waved a hand irritably at the fallen bandits, eyes never leaving the gap in the stakes. “Hell, I wouldn’t even look too hard at a corpse while we’re in Caeldon. Besides, we’re within the zone of influence of both a Vrolhk ruin and a Fount. If you take his wallet, he might come looking for it later.” The speaker was all but invisible in the darkness, and the fire only served to illuminate the sharp angles of his jaw, nose and brow.
Scratch spat into the fire and sneered, twisting the scars on his face into even more intricate patterns. “Still, a simple warning would suffice. And what’s so bad about these Deathspeakers, anyway? We’re the Ashen Hand! Most armies have to tread carefully around us.”
At this, the other members of the company looked up from their meal. Sebastian, the group’s archer, finished the last bite of his deer rib, hurled the bone into the fire and sighed.
“Scratch, I get that you’re from the south and all, but do you even pay attention when we get our jobs? Or pick up on local customs, anything like that? It’s not hard to figure out that these corpses are taboo. You stop to wonder why we didn’t even shift them out of the way? Rika isn’t taking her usual full accounting of their possessions, and I once saw her loot a Slipflesh victim.” Rika, sitting next to him, took a huge bite out of the roasted deer leg she was chewing on, brushed her blonde bangs out of her face and waggled her deer haunch in a dismissive manner.
“Eh, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that victims aren’t contagious after they’ve been dead for six hours or so,” she said, still chewing. She swallowed noisily and continued. “Besides, he was an Astevian. Poor boy’s piercings were worth half of what I make in a year. Couldn’t pass that up.”
Sebastian shook his bald head, but a grin crept onto his face as he spoke.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; one of these days you are going to go over the edge of a cliff because you thought you saw a dead man with a valuable trinket at the bottom, and I won’t be in the least bit surprised,” he said, throwing his arms around her heavy shoulderpads with a dull clank.
Rika laughed, the girlish sound at odds with her intimidating appearance. Taller than most men and broad across the shoulders, she was still clad in plate armor, having only removed her helmet to eat. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone, Bast.”
Scratch jabbed at the fire with his dagger, sending hot embers at the couple. They recoiled, cursing while Scratch lit a smokestick with the red-hot tip of his makeshift poker. “That got your attention, sweethearts? You’ve made your point that these Deathspeakers are not to be fucked with. Now tell me why.”
“They’re the authority when it comes to the dead in this region.” Jaco, their leader, spoke from the tree branch he was reclining on. “If something dies in the Cael region, it’s theirs. They believe that since life is so short and brutal for so many people, everyone deserves good treatment after their death. They take the corpses; perform rites that render them immune to the surges of a Fount and the effects of Vrolhk exposure. And that’s really all the uninitiated know about them. The rest of what they do is known only to their acolytes and priests, and they’re not a chatty bunch.”
The figure watching the entrance spoke up again, this time turning slightly to face the fire. His features were indistinct, but the others knew that the shadows concealed a face made up of sharp features. “No one knows exactly what happens if you defile a corpse that they consider under their protection. Everyone just knows not to. Their definition of ‘defile’ is pretty vague, too, so it’s best to just not touch the bodies until they show up to take them away.”
Scratch scrambled to his feet, glancing about the camp. “I take it that these Deathspeakers don’t care that we’re the ones that made of these bodies for them to haul off?”
“Relax, Scratch. The Speakers could care less about who killed whom. All they want is to get the bodies in their crypts before anyone else does.” The man watching the fence continued to do so, refusing to even glance at Scratch.
“Would you look away from the woods for half a damn second, West?” Scratch puffed irritably on his smokestick, blowing the cinnamon-scented smoke towards the man watching the fence. “I can’t tell if you’re on lookout or if there’s a particularly attractive bear you’ve been eyeballing all night.”
“Boss says I’m lookout, so I’m looking out. We’re dangerously close to a Fount and there’s a Vrolhk ruin less than a kilometer away. And one of ours is out there escorting a bunch of death-obsessed monks through the worst of it. Just because those bandits barely put up a fight doesn’t mean some shambling monstrosity won’t lurch out of the woods and devour us all,” West replied, still watching the woods.
Everyone paused for a moment to stare nervously into the woods. Rika was sure that they weren’t as twisted or misty earlier as they were now. Even now, as they joked and ate, some wretched tangle of flesh and bone could be prying off the rune-etched door of its former prison and hunting them with centuries of desperate, furious hunger driving it. They had all heard the stories of what hideous beings, twisted beyond all recognition, had emerged from Vrolhk ruins, driven only by bloodlust and a hatred of all symmetrical beings. Jaco, West and Sebastian had seen firsthand what such creatures were capable of, of the oceans of blood they could spill as they rampaged across the countryside. Finally, Sebastian broke the thoughtful, worried silence that had descended.
“You guys know he’s just fucking with us, right? I grew up around here. All of the ruins have been excavated and explored, and there hasn’t been a Shambler sighting in years.”
“Could still be some Fountborn out there, though,” countered Rika. “And I’d really like to go another three years or so before I run into a stiltwalker or any of its kin.” Sebastian threw up his hands, creating a frenzied shadow as the flames flickered.
“You all saw me throw up the traps and wards, right? Have you completely forgotten the basic procedure for setting up camp near Founts? You’re behaving like rank fucking amateurs.”
Jaco dropped from his perch on the bough, interrupting Sebastian’s tirade. Dark of skin and regal of bearing, the group found themselves pounding hand to heart in the salute of the Ashen Hand as his gaze swept over them.
“I understand that all of this chitchat is just nerves and a bit of post-combat jitters, but it had better not become anything more. We’ve still got one of our own out there, and if she needs our help, I want armor on and asses in saddles in less than thirty seconds. And West, quit fucking with the crew. This isn’t some bullshit initiation ceremony. Am I understood, Ashen Hand?”
“Yes, Marshal!” The Hand spoke in perfect unison, right down to the pitch of their voices. “Glory to the Hand!”
Jaco returned their salute. “Profit to the Hand.” Formality concluded, he sat down and began carving a slice of deer off the spit.
The atmosphere lightened as Jaco ate, and the group returned to their original positions. Scratch, as usual, took the opportunity to share his opinion of the situation. “See, this is why I hate Caeldon. You’ve got too many of Founts, enough Vrolhk ruins to prevent you from ever feeling comfortable, and there is not a decent fucking fishing spot in the whole country. It’s nothing but woods. And swamps. And, just for variety’s sake, woods filled with swamps.”
“Hang on,” Jaco interjected, grinning around a mouthful of deer. “Since when do you fish? I thought a fish is why you have a road map for a face.”
Scratch grinned. It did unpleasant things to his face as his scars stretched. “See, you’d think so, but that bladefish what did this was tasty. Gave me a real taste for the vicious little pricks. I figure I’ll go out after every campaign, find a good place to catch bladefish, and if any of the bastards take any more chunks out of me, I’ll wind up with another cathartic meal.”
The resulting bout of laughter stopped suddenly as a scream tore through the woods.
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“Now, this is an interesting twist.” West knelt over the body of the Deathspeaker, careful not to touch it. The robed figure lay sprawled in the roadside scrub, the intricate patterns and twists of his robe obscured by blood and dirt. A single crossbow bolt protruded from the Deathspeaker’s hand, pinning it to the corpse of the priest’s horse. Still-wet blood had spilled out around the bolt, and the Speaker’s hand was a mass of torn meat. West’s lip curled and his left hand absently traced a small, knotted mass of scar tissue on his throat as he assessed the corpse. The bolt had been barbed, and probably poisoned with hemotage, judging from the sheer amount of blood the horse had lost and the wrinkled traceries of empty veins visible under its skin.
Another puddle of blood pooled around the Speaker’s head, but West could not see the injury without turning the corpse over. Still, it wasn’t hard to determine what had killed the Deathspeaker, judging from the skull fragments and blood spatter on a nearby rock.
“Sorry, priest,” West muttered as he turned away from the carnage. “May you find the peace you brought others.” Jaco beckoned him over and West carefully stepped over three other blood-spattered bodies as he crossed the road. The Marshal finished lighting the last of the perimeter torches, ringing the scene in firelight as West approached.
“Does this whole thing reek of amateurs to you?” Jaco asked, surveying the scene again. His horse, an elegant light-footed breed whinnied nervously as West drew closer. “Because to me, this looks like a mess.” The Marshal had hurriedly assembled his gear as the Ashen Hand left camp, and he was just now finishing the process.
West nodded. Unlike the rest of the Hand, he wore no armor, just a simple leather tunic with a wolf-fur collar and unremarkable boarskin pants. He carried no visible weapons. “Ambush gone wrong, I’d say.” He gestured to the fallen priest and the three dead assailants. “These guys had the right idea, taking out the horses with bows and then rushing the riders as they fell. Execution was flawed, though. Whoever shot that Speaker was aiming for his horse, so they meant to take him with the others, but they hit his hand instead. Horse panicked, dragged along the ground. That sloppiness got his head bashed in on a rock. The archers were seriously over prepared, too. Bolts were barbed and coated in something, most likely hemotage. I’d use those on an ancient Shambler, not a bunch of horses.” West stepped back toward the three unknown dead men, getting within inches of the bodies. “Regardless, they clearly weren’t prepared to deal with a rikitash, judging from these wrecks.” Blood still sluggishly leaked from the three men. Kneeling, he traced over the jagged, gaping wounds that decorated their necks and the inside of their thighs. “She took them down fast and brutal. Ripped out their femoral arteries and slit the jugulars for good measure. I’d say these guys lasted all of six, maybe seven seconds.”
He stood back up, brushing some blood-soaked dirt off of his knees, brow furrowed. “Still, it begs the question of how they took her out of the fight. I seriously doubt any of these saps even managed to touch her, so maybe they had a Channeler?”
Jaco shook his head. “Have you ever heard of a Channeler who could incapacitate three people without any collateral damage?” As he spoke, he finished buckling his vambraces on. The Marshal was clad in sculpted leather with chainmail reinforcing his vital areas and overlapping plates of boiled leather on the joints. An ornate, inscribed belt with several small knives and a sheath for his hand axe was clasped around his waist. He stretched a few times, testing the fit and flexibility of his gear before resuming the conversation. “If they had one, why bother with a traditional ambush?” He paused to sniff the air, turning away from West as he did so. “Besides, this place doesn’t smell like vitol. In fact, there’s not a bare speck of vitol here. And with a Fount this close, this place should be pretty well saturated in in it. Whole area feels…hollow, somehow.” He sniffed again, frowning.
“You think they had a ghul with them?” West turned, rapidly surveying the surroundings woods for the umpteenth time, previously calm demeanor gone. A series of dull crunches and hollow pops emanated from his spine, neck and twitching fingers. Jaco shook his head again, interrupting West before he got too worked up.
“No, it wasn’t a ghul. We’re not capable of draining the basic presence of vitol out of the environment itself. Maybe if someone drank an entire Fount, this would happen, but we’d know for sure if some mad fool had tried that. This is something else entirely.”
“Well, hey, that’s reassuring.” West’s words dripped with sarcasm, but his fingers ceased their puppeteer’s dance and his comfortable slouch returned with a final snap of bone settling back into place. “So really, we know fuck all about what happened here.” He glared at the exsanguinated trio. “These useless bastards aren’t even wearing a uniform; no insignia, no interesting weaponry. I’d say bandits, but we wiped out the last camp a few hours ago.”
Jaco’s hand slowly crept toward the handle of his hatchet. Its elegant mahogany finish matched his hand perfectly: a blurring of weaponry and flesh. He slowly gripped it while gazing at the fallen kidnappers. After a long silence, marked only by flickering torchlight, he spoke evenly and calmly, though his teeth were clenched and the grip on his bridle was beginning to leave marks. “If it weren’t for the fact that whoever did this actually managed to subdue two Deathspeakers and our own rikitash, I’d say this was their first raid. And I’m left wondering why. I don’t know much about Deathspeakers, but I do know they don’t answer ransoms. The Caeldonian army is usually called in for such matters. And everyone knows what happens when you try and fuck with the Ashen Hand. No sane man would see this convoy as anything but something to be given a wide berth.”
West opened his mouth to reply when Scratch and Rika burst out of the underbrush and into the torchlight with the clattering cacophony that only armored riders on armored horses can create. The shadows flickered and danced across the ground as the horses stomped from foot to foot, eager to resume their chase. Both riders slammed fist to heart as Jaco turned his own horse to address them.
Scratch and Rika cut intimidating figures, as both were armored head to toe in solid steel, the best that the Hand’s blacksmiths could make. Rika’s armor was more ornate than Scratch’s and had a slivery sheen that highlighted the thorny filigree emblazoned on her breastplate and gauntlets. A massive, tusked helm, modelled after the giant boar of her homelands crowned the ensemble. Scratch’s armor was a stark contrast to Rika’s; like all of his possessions, bore obvious signs of wear and tear, and the steel was entirely devoid of shine. Countless nicks and scars dotted the surface of the armor, though it was still as durable as the day it was forged.
Rika spoke first, sliding her boar’s head visor off to address the Marshal. “Sir, Sebastian picked up the trail. He makes at least eight horses, with several wounded riders. One of them was losing too much blood, and they were in a rush, so he figures there’ll be a corpse between us and our destination. He sent us back to provide an escort while he searches for the corpse.”
Jaco returned the salute. “I take it you were making too much noise for his liking?”
Rika gave a small smile. “He did say something to that effect, sir.”
Scratch butted in, his voice muffled and indistinct behind his scarred and well-worn hem. “Marshall, Bast was worried. He didn’t outright say it, but I got the impression the trail we were following led to the nearby Vrolhk catacombs. Saw a couple of monoliths along the way.” He glanced past Jaco and West to look at the ambush site. “Anything here indicate it was a fleshcult?”
“Nothing in particular, but a fleshcult would make some sort of sense. They’re the only ones crazy enough to attack Deathspeakers,” West responded. “Still, this isn’t exactly their usual procedure. Too coordinated, no evidence of Shambler support, the fact that they took prisoners but not the corpses…still, who else would consider Vrolhk ruins a hideout?”
Jaco’s hatchet finally left its sheath and he twirled it over and through his fingers, blade reflecting the torchlight. “It doesn’t matter what they are. It doesn’t matter why they did it.” As he spoke, his moved his hatchet like a general’s baton, punctuating each point. “All that matters is these sods have our clients and one of our own. We find them. We bleed them. We get paid. Any questions, Ashen Hand?”
As always when discussing their creed, the Hand spoke as one, voices echoing through helmets and resonating off the trees. “No, Marshal!”
A slow smile crept over Jaco’s face. “Then let’s go remind the world why we are feared.”
