A curious crested penguin made its way over to the Markov who sat aside from the others celebrating, his thoughts distant. It was a rather cute and inquisitive creature casting a side long glance every few steps to ensure Markov was no threat as it stepped forward. He tossed the creature the rest of his fermented meat. "Eat up, friend. I've had enough."
The creature then expanded its crest like the parrots Markov had seen in the Azure Gardens in Verdanta, and it produced the ugliest noise Markov had ever heard in delight and thanks as it gobbled up the meat.
"I see," said Markov, "You're a long way from home yourself, huh? I don't see many of your friends around here."
Markov's face hardened, but not from the bite of an icy wind. He thought about his mother and father and two sisters. His original family. Starring past the crested penguin, he journeyed back into his memories again.
——
At the age of 7, Markov's village was raided.
Markov's father and mother were both peasant farmers sent to a far flung corner of the newly conquered territories of Drador by order of their crown along with hundreds of other forced colonists. Encroaching this border was the land of Raga, an inhospitable sea of grass only nomadic raiders called home. The result of a simple clerical error within the royal house of Drador, the garrison sent to defend this new settlement was erroneously positioned in another town along the border with the country of Gaia.
To Markov, orphaned as a result, the whole event felt like another life in which he had died along with his parents or was sold off into slavery in foreign lands like his two younger sisters. He lived two lives and that was the end of his first.
Memories at the border between his two lives played in his mind during quiet moments.
---
Holding his chains shattered by a stone with the help of the encroaching cold of winter and covered in a veneer of soiled clothes and cuts, Markov ran as fast as his malnourished body would allow in the opposite direction of the oncoming howls. The cold midnight air bit at his bare ankles as he trudged through the snow towards a nearby copse. High above, a full moon cast a pallid light along the snow.
Dire hounds with snouts resembling fingers were set on the boy turned captive. It wouldn't be long before he was caught or made a scant meal for his trouble. Whilst looking back, he tripped over a small rotting log where field met forest. He looked down and was perplexed to find a gravely injured boy roughly his age in purple patterned linens caked with blood. The boy awoke in a stupor and looked back at him with glazed yellow-colored eyes.
He muttered something Markov couldn't understand in apparent exhaustion, but he recognized the sounds as something the traders who visited his village could speak. In the dim moonlight, Markov watched the boy procure tattered fabric out of his pocket. A man with the body of an eagle against a red shield. "Ver-dan-ta," the boy spoke in a hoarse whisper.
"Ver-danta…?" Markov stumbled back in response.
The howls grew in volume arcing in pitch to squealing wails.
Markov shot a glance over his shoulder. He grabbed the boy and moved him and himself under a nearby rotten log. It wouldn't be long before the dire hounds arrived with their beast tamer in stride behind.
Markov shuddered when he thought of the masked woman. Behind that ceramic bug-eyed dog mask burned two red eyes. Upon his initial capture, he had never witnessed the beast tamer utter a human word. The woman spoke searing whispers from her throat in the language of the dire hounds uttering commands and, Markov surmised, saw through their eyes as well.
Markov peeked over the rotten log. Approaching along the path he carved through the snow were three finger snouted hounds each the size of a horse. A cracking whip echoed in the distance along with a guttural howl from the beast tamer. Awe and horror flashed like lightning through Markov's body as he laid eyes on the four skull-crushing incisors within each hound's maw. Their red eyes and hot breath made a ghostly trail as they ran.
Fighting his way out of his stupor, the Verdanta boy started muttering something else. Markov nearly cuffed him to quiet the boy until he saw his finger point out in the opposite direction the beast tamers came from.
Markov's jaw dropped. An acrid, piercing odor of fear filled his nose trouncing his fear from the pursuing dire hounds and the masked beast tamer. Markov would never forget that smell for as long as he lived.
Four horse-mounted knights in lobstered armor with lances drawn rode through a clearing in the copse and up to the snarling dire hounds and masked tamer. Each bore the same man-eagle insignia that the boy just showed him.
Markov squinted and looked at the hazy-eyed boy and pointed to the calvary with delight. "Your friends?" he whispered and nearly began to shout before the boy grabbed him squeezing Markov's arm until Markov nearly winced. The boy shook his head. Markov could see now that the boy held a hand to a wound, caching his linens in dark red blood. The boy gestured to himself and said with a grimace, "Jackul." The young boy pointed to the calvary and then at his wound. Markov nodded slowly in understanding and began to rip a part of his tattered clothes to dress Jackul's wound. Just then, an ear-piercing scream pulled his attention away.
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The beast tamer shrieked at the sight of the torches carried by the crimson dressed calvary. One of the knights bearing a flag and torch moved closer to hail the tamer. He screamed at the tamer to call off her hounds. The tamer threw up a hand to her face to block the approaching torchlight, the tamer's hounds snarled and barked at the calvary in response.
Drawing their lances and matching them to each hound, the knights and monsters eyed one another in an uneasy truce. A vortex of condensed breath mixed from the circling warhorses and the heaving breaths of the hounds. More shouting ensued before one of the calvary soldiers nearest Markov and Jackul threw open his visor, snuffed his torch, and hailed the tamer in an attempt to settle the commotion. The beast tamer brought an arm down shielding her masked face and peered at the approaching soldier.
It was then that a rock whizzed by Markov’s head and implanted itself within the butthole of the warhorse nearest to them. The anxious beast gave a cry and reared. The beast tamer barked and a dire hound dove at the neck of the screaming warhorse crushing it immediately and sending the mounted knight tumbling to the snow.
Pandemonium ensued as the two groups fought.
Jackul gave a wry chuckle through a grimaced smile of satisfaction while holding his left hand to his wound. Markov gapped but didn't lose any time in grabbing Jackul's free arm helping him walk further out of the area away from the melee. Markov's perception of time waned as they walked and the last thing he remembered that night was how pretty the pattern of moonlight shining through the tree canopy looked at night.
When Markov woke up with the first light of dawn he found himself cast over the side of a trotting horse. He looked around and saw Jackul on another rider's horse fast asleep with bandages covering his wound. Markov's immediate alarm dampened when he realized the two horsemen were not the knights from before. Dressed in a motley pattern of quilted cloth over steel breastplates, Markov did not recognize these new riders.
The rider in front of him spoke to Markov in his language without turning his head, "Best get some rest now. You're a long way from home, boy."
Markov replied with a groan, "Jackul."
The rider cast a sidelong glance now at Markov and then at Jackul. Markov noted the rider's dark skin, tightly curled hair, and long column-like beard. "He's fine." He paused, "Good work, boy."
Markov passed out after the short exchange. Little did the young peasant know that this was his first introduction into the Lion's Throne of the Verdantan Sultanate.
——
The penguin finished the meal Markov provided, honked its thanks, and went about waddling back to the shoreline it came from. Akaik put a hand on Markov's shoulder bringing him out of his trance. Markov started but relaxed as soon as he realized who it was. Akaik cast a knowing stare at Markov, and Markov nodded drearily.
"Best get back to help the transport team," Markov replied to the stare with a weak smile.
Akaik gave a slow nod and then smiled back causing the wrinkles on his beardless face to multiply. "Troubled thoughts, aye?"
"Old thoughts is all," Markov responded gaining back his lighthearted air.
The two headed over to the larger group still celebrating. Akaik poured Markov a shot of liquor which Markov graciously accepted. Still smiling, Akiak began to talk to the larger group in his native tongue setting orders to ensure they would meet with the coastal ships to transport the dread bear safely to Drador. Just then, shouts were heard in the distance. The whole group turned in unison towards the dread bear.
Men in the distance were shouting around the bear. All the mammoths were trumpeting wildly trying to struggle loose from their harnesses that attached them to the dread bear. The shackles containing the dread bear were shaking more and more with each breath.
The sleep-drugged eyes of the dread bear began to crack open, pupils moving into place. A slow awareness of its surroundings began to take semblance in the creature's mind as if waking from a nightmare.
Markov's eyes shot to the one mask user of their group, a fox-masked man, saddled aboard a mammoth who took leaping strides atop the snow with a great bronze cylinder in his hands. The mask user and cylinder disappeared into the bear's coat. The pace of the dread bear's breathes continued to rise. The mask user realized the futility early enough, leaped away, and fired a flashing red phosphorus flare into the air.
Akaik shouted orders at the men immediately. Everyone scrambled to their stations to support the men maintaining the sled chains and mammoths, everyone except Markov who stood still staring at the beast rattling its chains in a rising crescendo.
Something seemed familiar to him at this very moment.
A deep acrid odor filled Markov's nose that permeated his senses. It was almost the same odor he felt when he and Jackul were ambushed by their pursuers all those years ago.
He didn't move until Akaik ran up, slapped him, and shook him back to awareness, "Markov! Markov! We need to go! C'mon!" he yelled.
Markov nodded still shaken by the smell and began to follow Akaik toward the rest of the group. Just then, the smell came back to his senses and he cast a glance back as he ran towards the row boats at the coast's edge. He slowed to a stop as his eyes began to focus on something moving in the distance along the same path they had come from. Its size was about the same as a full moon in the sky. Markov strained his eyes to make out the details of the form coming towards them in the distance well beyond the dread bear, but it was too far still to make out the details past the rising blizzard in the distance.
Akaik turned around and shouted back at Markov to hurry and join the rest as they headed away from the dread bear at a full sprint to the coast. Markov pointed to the object in the distance moving his gaze to the growing noise made by the dread bear, now fully awake and struggling against its iron restraints. The sled it was on was breaking apart and two of the screaming mammoths had already broken away.
The bear screamed in a low pitch howl.
A sudden realization came to Markov. "Fear. That's the smell," he thought.
Markov looked back at the object headed towards them at an inhuman pace on the horizon. He could see greater detail now that it had nearly closed half the distance to the broken sled beneath the dread bear already.
"A face. A human face," Markov mouthed to himself.