The Birth of Vengeance by Slawomir Rapala	Table of Contents Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4, part 1 Chapter 5 appear in this issue.
Chapter 4: Breath of Fire part 2 of 2

N’Cton glanced over his shoulder and looked into his friend’s eyes. Though they could not see the buildings because of the distance, they both realized that the smoke could only have one origin. There was no other homestead within several leagues.

With his lips tightly sealed and his stare gloomy, Aezubah whipped his horse and broke into a gallop, quickly followed by N’Cton, who needed no incentive. Expecting the worst, the black man shifted his belt so as to have a quick and sure grip at the hilt of the great-sword. Though exhausted after a long trip, the horses seemed to have sensed their masters’ grim spirits and picked up the pace with a will.

They covered the remaining distance with great speed, their bellies nearly brushing against the short grass that covered the steppes. As they approached, the men’s worst fears became realized. Great flames roared over the buildings, devouring everything in their path. Clouds of black smoke rose steadily to the sky. The heat was so intense that the wind blowing against their faces might have had its origin in a great furnace.

N’Cton raised his head and noted small groups of crazed cattle running wildly into the open steppes. Aezubah pulled hard on the reins and shielded his eyes.

It was the black man, though, who first noticed movement. “There!” he pointed.

The two men whipped the horses once more and headed towards the several figures moving at some distance away from the burning inferno. Above the shapes, a solitary tree swayed its heavy branches. Aezubah held his breath, hoping he would soon see his wife and sons safe and out of harm’s way.

As the two men distanced themselves from the savagely burning homestead, they were greeted by several gusts of fresh wind blowing from the open steppes. They breathed with relief and were finally able to open their eyes, which the intense heat had forced them to keep half shut in a squint. They were now also able to distinguish the figures moving beneath the lone tree.

Aezubah took one look and his face grew ashen. He bit his lips hard, drawing a drop of blood. N’Cton oathed and grit his teeth.

Five men had gathered beneath the tree and waited for the two riders. Another figure lay at their feet, unmoving.

“Kaylie!” Aezubah gasped as he halted his mount, taking note of his wife’s torn garments and painfully twisted face.

His eyes skimmed over the faces of the five murderers and then lifted up to the lone tree stretching its boughs over their heads. It was a fig tree which he had planted when his first son was born ten years ago. Its lowest branches were now burdened with a terrible weight. Three young boys were hanging on them by their necks, their feet almost touching the ground. The wind swayed their small bodies.

Aezubah’s mouth went dry and he had to swallow hard. Unable to take his eyes off his sons, he slid off his horse and stumbled toward the tree. His sons’ childlike faces were almost purple, their eyes gaping forward in a grotesque expression and their swollen tongues hanging to their chins. The young man lifted his arms to the sky in a futile and silently painful gesture. He gasped again, unable to believe the sight and stumbled another step forward.

He was halted by N’Cton’s cry. “Aezubah!” he turned and saw his friend clutching a bare sword. His eyes finally turned away from his lifeless sons and took note of the murderers. Five cutthroats stood over his wife’s disgraced corpse, their teeth exposed in lewd and amused grins that stretched their bearded lips.

“Kaylie!” Aezubah mumbled, shaking his head like a drunk. Dark spots danced before his eyes as he blindly searched for his weapon.

“This your lady here?” one of the cutthroats asked matter-of-factly. The roar of the fire was left far behind. “She gave us a bit of a hard time, so we had to go rough on her!”

They looked over each other and broke into laughter.

“We gave her a good time in the end, though!”

N’Cton bit his lips and slowly dismounted his horse. His eyes gathered in everything with one quick look and he sighed, taking quiet pity at the atrocity. Then he gazed at his friend expectantly. He knew Aezubah well enough to realize what was about to happen.

“Nothing personal, soldier,” one of the murderers waved his hand. “This,” his arm made a circle that included the three small bodies hanging on the tree, the maimed woman under his feet and the burning homestead behind them, “this is all just business.”

Aeuzbah’s mind cleared suddenly when he heard these empty words. He tore his bloodshot eyes away from the corpses of his wife and children.

“Business?” his voice almost cracked under the growing rage.

“We’ll be on our way now, soldier, we have nothing to do with you,” the cutthroat patted his nearest companion on the shoulder, urging him to turn around. All the time, though, he kept his gaze on the pale face of the man before him. No one comes home to find his family murdered and simply walks away.

Another figure suddenly appeared, rising from the dunes surrounding them and shaking the sand off its massive frame. N’Cton startled and blinked hard, but the strange creature remained.

“Sand demon!” he warned Aezubah.

The fire-breathing beast limped slowly forward and halted behind the five cutthroats, fixing its burning eyes on the two newcomers who threatened to interrupt its feast. At least two heads taller than any of the men present, the monster’s grotesquely oversized and muscle-bound body assumed a menacing poise and froze.

The leader of the murderers glanced at the demon behind him. “What do you say we just part ways, soldier?” he sneered back at Aezubah.

The response was short and swift. Aezubah’s arm shot forth with viper-like speed and in the same moment, the thug’s face twisted in pain. His hand slowly ventured to his throat and clutched the long handle of a knife that bit into his flesh and severed the thread of life. Before he had even sunk to his knees, Aezubah was already amidst his companions, his sword ringing with death.

The second man had no chance to parry the hot steel that ripped into his skull and quickly silenced his screams. Wheeling cat-like, Aezubah caught a falling blade into his bare hand and pulled his attacker closer, delivering a hard blow to the back of his head with the onyx-bound hilt of his weapon. Blood flowed down his forearm as he turned to face the remaining two foes.

N’Cton charged into battle as soon as Aezubah had hurled his knife. He snatched one the men from behind and slit his throat as the murderer’s legs kicked vainly in the air.

Aezubah parried the strike of the fifth and whirled about. With one motion he thrust his blade forward with such strength that its point shattered the cutthroat’s breast. The wretch fell to the ground foaming at the mouth, clutching his own heart, still beating, in his hands. He struggled for a moment more, biting the sand in agony, but his feet kicked only a few last times and then ceased moving altogether.

All the while the sand demon did not move, watching the murderous frenzy with unblinking eyes. The two mercenaries turned to face it as soon as the last of their enemies had hit the ground.

“Aezubah?” N’Cton asked, his voice betraying panic.

“If it breathes, we die,” the young soldier whispered without losing the sight of the beast. “Its breath is its strength.”

“How do we kill it?”

“Give me your knife,” Aezubah reached for it with his free hand, all the time carefully watching each of the monster’s small movements.

To the eyes of an untrained observer, the demon did nothing save stand there, but Aezubah had seen such beasts before, and knew enough of their ways to realize that it was now gathering energy. Its scorched lungs worked hard and slowly to build up the flames within its chest, where they gained strength before finally being released in the form of a great fireball. He could see the beast’s rib cage expand slightly beneath its rough, hair-free skin, and the great muscles of its abdomen slowly contracting, preparing for the release.

“Aezubah!” N’Cton warned again when he saw the beast opening its teeth-filled snout.

No sooner did his voice sound when the long hunting knife wedged itself deep inside the demon’s open throat, forcing it to gasp for air as it stumbled back with a painful grunt. Its burly arms tried to gather in the air around him as it sunk slowly to its knees.

Then it lay face down, its claw-fitted hands feebly digging at the sand as if trying to tunnel its way into the earth. The two men watched in silence as small flames began to escape the demon’s terribly disfigured face, seeping out of its mouth, eyes and nostrils. The flames danced on its grotesque body, more and more of them arose until its whole frame became consumed by fire. The beast suffered in silence and burned quietly.

N’Cton glanced at Kaylie’s corpse laying only a few paces away. He dug his sword into the ground and rested beside it, unable to come to terms with what was before his eyes. Though as a soldier and a mercenary he had witnessed many atrocities, none had yet had such a personal effect on him.

Aezubah, in the meantime, paid no attention to his friend, to the fallen cutthroats or the defeated sand demon that was slowly becoming a small pile of ash. He cut the nooses binding his sons’ necks and lay them carefully on the ground, one by one, in a small and pitiful row.

He stood over them for a long time, his gaze empty. Their small faces showed evidence of pain and fear. No child deserves to die like this, he thought. Not my children.

He then knelt beside his wife and closed his eyes. Her features were pained, her young body maimed, her gaze just as empty as his. No woman deserved a death like this. Not his wife.

A quiet groan broke the silence. Aezubah and N’Cton watched as the last of the murderers who remained alive, slowly came to and sat up. He rubbed the back of his head and looked around, his gaze cloudy. Aezubah approached him quickly and lifted him to his feet by the hair. The wretch cried in pain, such was the strength of the man who held him.

“Who did this?” his voice was hoarse and betrayed an uncontrollable rage surging beneath his seemingly calm exterior. “Who?”

The man gasped in pain and waved his arms in the air. N’Cton unsheathed his blood-stained sword and rested its tip against the wretch’s throat.

“Who?” the black man’s voice was low.

“I don’t know him,” the cutthroat whispered feverishly, eyeing the sharp blade just beneath his chin. “A mage of sorts, a priest, he gave us no name!”

N’Cton and Aezubah glanced at one another and the latter’s features darkened even more, if it was at all possible.

“A priest?” he asked.

“Yes, yes! He gave us a purse of gold for the job!”

“You lie!”

“No, no, I swear, a whole purse, two hundred pieces! The sand demon was his, too, I swear! He called it up from the sands!”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Outside the city gates, just this morning, I swear, I swear!” the man wailed, feeling the sword’s point digging deeper and drawing a few drops of blood.

Aezubah motioned for N’Cton to lower the weapon and then released the man. The cutthroat gasped and stumbled back. He tripped over the corpses of his companions and fell to the ground.

“What the devil...?” he gasped as he glanced frantically from one corpse to the next. Then his feverish eyes rested on the men standing above him and he cowered back in fear.

“Oh, please, don’t kill me, don’t!” he wailed, but the two soldiers paid no heed to him.

“It was Drohen, then,” N’Cton said grimly.

“Yes, the wretched priest,” Aezubah nodded. Blood still freely flowed down his arm, but he made no move to stop the flow.

“He did this.” The young mercenary’s eyes ventured from the neatly aligned corpses of his sons, to the mutilated body of his wife, cast aside like a ragged doll. His gaze finally came to rest on the burning buildings. The fire had subsided, and its roar could no longer be heard. Scarce groups of cattle scattered around the inferno, mooing dismally and searching for a spot of green in an otherwise bleak and scorched landscape.

N’Cton followed Aezubah gaze and sighed. Then he put his arm on his friend’s shoulder and shook him soundly.

“He will pay for this, Aezubah,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” the young man’s eyes stared out into the horizon. “He will pay like these wretches here. Like this one,” he pointed at the cutthroat cowering beneath their feet.

“We have to take him in,” N’Cton shook his head. “The magistrate can question him, we may learn where the priest went.”

“He knows nothing but how to rape and plunder,” Aezubah replied, his voice sinister. “No magistrate will help.”

“Leave him to the executioner then,” N’Cton shrugged. “Don’t stain your weapons with such filth, it’s bad luck.”

“I will be his executioner!” the young man’s gaze was hard.

The murderer tried to stumble back, but he had nowhere to go. Aezubah calmly watched him scramble away, almost pitying the man’s futile attempt to escape.

“Look at him,” he said. “A pathetic wretch.”

The black man looked on, but said nothing in return.

“Go on, N’Cton,” Aezubah added. “You’ve been a good friend to me.”

“I’m staying,” the ebony warrior shook his head.

“Go,” Aezubah’s voice was firm. “In honor of our friendship, go. You don’t want to see this. It’s sights like these that change a man.”

N’Cton felt a shudder run down his spine. The fires burning deep in his friend’s gaze spoke volumes of the rage that boiled inside him. Though a savage and a barbarian from the Black Steppes of Argaron, N’Cton intuitively knew that what was to take place here was worse than anything that he had ever seen.

“Are you sure?” he hesitated.

“Yes,” Aezubah replied. “Don’t come back until tomorrow.”

Slowly the black man climbed his steed reluctantly and turned around. He raised his arm in a farewell gesture, but Aezubah took no notice. His eyes were locked with his prey’s and he loomed over the wretch like a demon of vengeance.

As N’Cton raced away from the scene of destruction, from this place of atrocity and from the still burning inferno, the first of the poor wretch’s screams reached his ears. They tore through the open countryside and rose to the heavens over the black smoke. The black warrior did not look back and instead, he whipped his horse into a gallop, wishing to be as far away as possible from this nightmare.

Proceed to chapter 5...

Copyright © 2007 by Slawomir Rapala