REND vol. #1: The City at the End of the World

Chapter #1: Come as you are

Basked in the orange morning light a column of carts was slowly making its way down a dirt road. The lone path was set on the east facing slope of a mountain range and closely hugged the edge of the lush forest growing at the foot of the mountain. The heights commanded a great view of the narrow stretch of farmland further below where beyond the fields of golden wheat and groves of blooming orchards a jagged shoreline hugged the white foam covered ocean shore.

There were four horse drawn carts, all filled to bursting with lumber and barrels of coal, save for the last one in the line which also carried two passengers seated in the back. The two guards keeping watch were armed with crossbows and positioned in a manner facing the line of prisoners following the caravan.

For their part the nine convicts looked malnourished and unkempt. Their hands were shackled and tied to a thick rope the end of which was fixed to the cart in front of them. They were closely followed by six guardsmen carrying halberds and dressed in a manner most uncomfortable to look at. Their helmets, ordinary in every other way, were adorned with the cast steel expressions of human skulls.

The guardsmen wore brown tabards over their steel mail shirts that proudly displayed the heraldry of their lord – a bright red handprint crudely stamped across their chest.

The caravan eventually made its way down the slope of the hill and headed towards what looked to be groves of gray, withered trees. The end of their journey was drawing ever closer, but for the tired prisoners it couldn’t come soon enough.

Among the nine prisoners one struck out as particularly odd. Jorgen was a larger than average man, well in his thirties, and built like a bull. Endowed with a head of hair as thick and black as pitch, he exuded a strong sense of masculinity bordering on the bestial. It was therefore fair to assume that he was much stronger than any full blooded human had any right to be.

Jorgen’s heavy chain restraints rang as he shuffled down the dirt road towards his execution. As the lead man in the column of nine he had the dubious honor of sharing the company of the crossbow armed sentries at the back of the cart – an honor he would have loved to forego given their grim aura.

The two people facing him looked nothing like the other guards in the caravan. Their fine clothes, the lack of fear in their expression when faced with supervising the execution of one such monstrous individual as himself; it made Jorgen wonder just how much death they had witnessed in this strange and oftentimes merciless land.

The man sitting on the left had a long, pale face and his thin build made him appear almost harmless. Oscar wore a dark blue coat of simple cloth over the black cotton clothing beneath. He maintained a stiff posture as he cast his dispassionate gaze over the prisoners under his guard.

The other sentry was a hazel haired woman. At a glance Jorgen though her pretty – certainly not suited for a life of hardship – but his instincts warned him otherwise. There was indeed something rather dangerous about her relaxed expression and the longer he studied her porcelain perfect features the more convince he became of it. She didn’t just seem at ease standing guard over condemned murderers and rapists, rather, she was bored by it.

He could have dismissed it as a show of callousness or naiveté if it wasn’t for the look she was giving him.

Vivian stared at the hulking, unkempt man with the eyes of a predator lying in wait. Her fingers caressed the loaded crossbow in her lap in a show of willingness to wield it with deadly purpose. Her gaze was almost challenging. Go on, it said, give me an excuse.

Jorgen did not, however. He stumbled after the cart in silent submission to his fate.

It had rained earlier in the morning and the dirt road beneath him was still covered in a thin layer of mud. Jorgen raised his bruised, black stubble covered chin from his chest and allowed the first rays of sunlight to graze his face. He had spent the previous night awake in his cell and it was showing.

Feeling dazed from the potent combination of exhaustion and malnourishment Jorgen had reached an almost trance like state. His senses were all at once heightened and free flowing. It was an inebriation of the mind through which he sought to savor the last moments of his life. He hadn’t forced himself into it to escape his reality. No, he thought of it as one last experience to enjoy. After all, death came only once.

For most people, anyway.

As he turned away from the blinding sun Jorgen glanced upon a fiendish looking tree growing at the side of the road. It was a twisted wraith of misery, reaching tall with its stringy appendage like branches on a field of freshly cut grass. Like withered fingers – leafless and seemingly lifeless – the little gray twigs of its canopy reached for the skies above. The roots beneath it ran shallow and in several places struck out above the ground like the veins of some warped limbs seeking to escape the pressure of the invisible forces hidden beneath the soil. Its bark was rough and flaking and upon its trunk was etched an expression that no human made lightly; one that no normal tree had, if nature could convey such emotion at all – a face twisted in dreadful sorrow.

As Jorgen marched further down the mud caked road he passed many more such abominable trees. Each and every one was smaller than the last.

I am almost at the end of the line, he realized as the bleached white bones begun to stick out from beneath the wrinkled veins of the wraith trees. They had not grown large enough yet to fully cover up the horror hidden within them. Born of death and nurtured to life by their sacrificial offerings, they might have frightened a lesser man, yet Jorgen looked on unfazed – admittedly still dizzy – but fully aware of the garden of death that he was about to become a part of.

The abominable grove ran in four rows on his left, stretching far down the side of the road. It ended at the foot of a hillock upon which the lumber mill stood.

Jorgen overheard a whispered exchange among two men in the line behind him. He turned his head and found a young Temple priest deep in prayer. The youth was matching the pace of the prisoner behind Jorgen as he went about performing the last rites of the condemned man.

Who will pray for him? Jorgen wondered as he gleaned at the young priest from the corner of his eye.

The priest’s hands were bound just like those of the others, but the guards had foregone the leg restraints so that the young man could move about his business of praying with the prisoners unhindered. Clutching a thick, leather bound tome in his bruised fingers the short haired youth feverishly flipped through its weathered pages in search of any words he could not recall; passages that his inexperience warranted to be red to the prisoner, not recited from experience, as he likely had none.

Will he do me the same honors? Jorgen wondered as he saw the priest laying his bruised hand upon the prisoner in a parting gesture – a blessing. Are we not guilty of the same crime, he and I?

As if to answer his unspoken question, the Temple priest glared up at Jorgen with an expression of pure disgust. With a swift motion he closed the book and slowed his pace to distance himself from Jorgen as much as the guards allowed. Beckoned by their halberds he fell in with the other prisoners at the very end of the line.

Jorgen smiled as he noted a trace of fear in the young man’s expression. I should have expected nothing from zealots.

As he turned back to facing the cart he winced when a breadcrumb struck his face. Flung by the woman sitting opposite of him it bounced off of his forehead, landed in the mud and disappeared beneath the feet of the marching criminals.

Vivian had set aside her crossbow and was now busy plucking at a half eaten loaf of bread. She carefully peeled off the crust bit by bit and threw the nail sized pieces at Jorgen in-between feasting on the soft and foamy middle.

The sight of food made Jorgen salivate. He swallowed a bitter mouthful of air and lowered his gaze as not to tease himself with the sight of the freshly baked bread. The alluring smell of it, however, he could not escape. Not with the nose he had.

“Come on,” Vivian said and flicked a piece of the crust at Jorgen’s head, “Be a good dog and catch it. I know you want to.”

Jorgen winced in response to the woman’s taunt. “I am not an animal,” he said in a low growl.

Vivian looked to the pale man at her side. “Did you catch that?” she asked. “I couldn’t hear a word over the noise of this damned cart.”

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Oscar secured the crossbow firmly in his lap before moving to answer. He made gestures at his companion with his long twig like fingers.

Vivian observed his gesturing and her annoyance turned to amusement when the pale man was done. “Not an animal, he says?”

She flicked another bread crumb at Jorgen. “We are both predators,” she said. “It’s just that you are more beast than man. And I happen to enjoy hunting difficult prey.”

Flick.

“Come on,” Vivian taunted him.

Jorgen kept silent.

Flick.

“Show me something interesting,” she said. “You could at least go a little wild on your way out. You do know that we are taking you to your execution, right?”

Flick.

“I haven’t killed one quite as large as you yet,” Vivian said and pulled her leather collar down revealing the supple skin of her neck. “You want a bite out of this, don’t you?”

Jorgen lowered his gaze.

Disappointed by the lack of response from her captive Vivian set aside the loaf of bread and reached out to Jorgen with her hand.

Oscar tensed up in response to Vivian’s sudden bout of recklessness and pointed his crossbow at Jorgen’s chest to dissuade the chained man from meeting her challenge. The tip of the bolt was too shiny for simple steel.

Vivian held up her hand right in front of Jorgen’s face. “You must be starving. Don’t you want to try a bite?” she asked.

Oscar’s grip around the crossbow tightened.

“You will soon rob me of my existence,” Jorgen said, “The least you could let me keep was a shred of dignity.”

The mute man lowered his weapon and tapped Vivian on the shoulder. With a nod of his head and a slight frown he expressed his desire for the overeager killer to stop harassing the prisoner.

As reluctant to obey as she was, Vivian did not try to press the issue and withdrew. This made Jorgen think that the mute man was the senior party in their relationship or that – at the very least – she respected him enough not to fight over it.

Either way, he was grateful to be left alone.

In a short while the caravan had arrived at the end of the line of wraith trees. Vivian and Oscar remained in the cart while the other guards set about organizing the prisoners. They overlooked the whole operation from their vantage point in case that any of the poor bastards would try to flee, but it was just as likely that the simply felt like handling the prisoners was beneath them.

Jorgen was the first one to be parted from the group and brought down the slight incline at the side of the road. Having descended the embankment he noted six other prisoners already awaiting their fate in the long line of sacrifices. Bound by rope and chain to thick wooden posts they looked like able bodied creatures, if a little withered by the weather.

Soldiers, Jorgen thought to himself, Pilgrims, perhaps?

The discovery warranted a conversation with someone more informed and the large man turned to his escorts for the answer. He hadn’t spoken to his guards before. He hadn’t felt like there had been a reason to do so, but now his curious mind began to wonder. He couldn’t let the questions go answered – that would be too painful and in his mind would sour a perfectly fine summer morning.

“What was their crime?” Jorgen asked in a deep baritone. The voice fit well with his hulking form. Muscled and by no means a lean man, he was clearly in the prime of his life – not old enough to feel his strength fading, yet neither had he the vestiges of youth still present in his tired face. As it was, wisdom had the tendency to age its seekers beyond their years. To that end Jorgen had had his share and looked the part.

The two guards closest to him exchanged long looks through their masks as they considered whether to answer the soon to be dead man’s question or to let it fade away with him.

This was exactly what Jorgen had sought to avoid. He did not want to make it any more awkward for the guardsmen than it already was. They have their own problems, he reasoned, No use in passing on mine.

Finally one of the guards decided to engage with the condemned man. “They broke the truce,” he said with some discomfort lingering in his words.

“Is that so,” Jorgen wondered out loud. Was that my crime as well?

He closely examined the delirious captives as he passed them by. He surmised that they had likely endured a day or two already in this state. Their skin had begun to blister under the effects of the weather, but nothing more of their fate was revealed to him. They hadn’t been tortured, not in any apparent manner anyway. The law in these strange lands was quick and harsh, but it wasn’t cruel, at least not by his standards.

“Breaking the Baron’s truce is the worst crime that an outsider can commit,” the other guard said, his voice muffled by the mask. He gestured for Jorgen to approach the nearest free post at the end of the line. “They will be made an example of, just like you.”

“Is it common to punish murder in this manner?” Jorgen asked out of curiosity.

The two guardsmen once more exchanged long glances in silence. Jorgen abused the fact that they found him interesting enough to speak to. He thought that it was warranted, given his predicament, to indulge in a little selfishness. The gods, if there really were any, likely wouldn’t hold it against him if he did.

“They didn’t kill anyone,” one of the guards finally said.

“But I did,” Jorgen replied.

“Aye,” the other guard replied. “But there are worse crimes than murder, just as there are worse fates than death…” He lingered on the last word as he looked both ways along the row of tree wraiths.

The first guard shrugged. “I suppose someone thought better of wasting a strong soul like yours,” he said and tapped on the wooden pole. “At least you will be turned into something useful.”

“Yes,” the first guard nodded, “We shouldn’t be wasteful.” He briefly raised the iron mask to grace Jorgen with a human expression. “Don’t worry,” he said in an almost compassionate voice, “It will be over quickly. There is no need for you to be alive for the corruption to take hold – only that you are present at the inception.”

Jorgen smiled in response to the guard’s sudden show of humanity. The grizzled Skand realized that there was a kindred soul hidden behind that iron mask. He would have relished an evening with him over keg of ale. The stories this man could tell him of the Blighted Lands, of the dead, the dying and the undead…

Alas, it was not to be. Jorgen took a deep breath and sighed deeply. It was all the defeat he would allow himself. After all, if death was all but inevitable, why did people lament it?

Jorgen thanked the guardsman for his frank answer with a respectful nod and eagerly assisted his captors with binding his chains to the post. Less could be said about the others in his party as some of them broke down in tears once it was their turn to be bound to the poles. Only the priest did not waver when his time came. The youth took up his position at the end of the row with dignity, marking the very last position of execution for the day.

When the guards had made sure to tighten Jorgen’s bindings they stepped back to observe the result. The large man was left to place his weight on the thick wooden pillar. Even with his considerable strength there was no way Jorgen could possibly break free of it. The silverite chains pressing into his thick arms made sure that the corruption inside of him could not emerge either, not that he would have allowed it to. They were one and the same, he and the darkness, but Jorgen made sure to be its master, not the other way around.

This was it, the end of his road. All that was left to do was to await the arrival of his executioner.

Once the guardsmen had reported the completion of their task to Vivian and Oscar the two of them left the caravan on the side of the road. They climbed the shallow incline leading up to the lumber mill and disappeared into its fenced premises.

“It’s been a good life,” Jorgen whispered to himself. “Could have been longer,” he contemplated with a tired, resigned grin dawning across his face, “Could have been sweeter.”

He thought of closing his tired eyes to rest a little. It would be a while before his restraints would become torturous and Jorgen had arrived the end of his reminiscing, so a little sleep felt permissible. It certainly felt enticing to the weary man.

But, just as he lowered his head to rest, a distant rumbling noise once more drew his attention. His bloodshot eyes scanned the road both ways until sighting a horse drawn cart. It was slowly rocking its way down the very same road that he had just walked, likely erasing his footsteps – his last and pitiful claim to existence in this cruel world – as it went.

As the cart drew closer Jorgen thought that he could make out two human shapes seated in the front – a driver and a passenger. Behind them, hidden beneath a thick brown tarp was a stack of what he surmised to be crates or chests or some other such bulky cargo. It was all fastened tightly to the wooden cart with thick hemp ropes.

The driver was a young white haired man dressed in ornate, if a little stained robes of the Temple. He paid no attention to the prisoners awaiting their fate, instead focusing on the road ahead of him.

A Temple priest, Jorgen thought, But he is far too young– No, must be an acolyte. But the white hair?

The visage of the young man bothered him. It was as though there was an aura of wrongness about him; a sort of deeply personal discomfort in his features that verged on the apathetic, yet it was somehow strong enough to be passed onto others near him at the merest sight.

Jorgen had seen broken men before, but nothing quite like the young man holding the reigns of the horse, he reckoned. Down south, when the harsh winters came, the families often had to decide on who got to live and die when supplies ran low. Likewise, when a Skand raiding party went north, little mercy could be expected from the brutal mountain folk as they plundered their way through the meager livelihoods of the blightmen. All of that cruelty was too much for some. Jorgen figured that the youth must have gone through some truly troubling experience to warrant such a striking presence of gloom about him.

No matter, he thought and looked to the Temple priest at the end of the execution row. At least my little angry priest will get his last rites done proper. Good for him.

Having taken the measure of the man steering the cart, he shifted his interrogating gaze to the passenger at his side and Jorgen immediately felt his mind hitting a stone wall. His head even recoiled a little in surprise, as much as the bindings allowed. He had previously sighted the glint of armor and the shape of a blade beneath the passenger’s crimson red cloak and had assumed him to be a soldier, but that notion had now been shattered completely.

A raven haired woman sat on the right of the young priest. Sculpted like a goddess, she somehow managed to defy the notions of time and beauty, as while from a glance she seemed much older and wiser than the man at her side, the woman exuded nothing but vigor and sported the complexion worthy of world renown. They way she sat, the way she slightly shifted to gaze upon the rows of the dead and dying men at the side of the road – it all looked simply perfect, regal and… deadly.

The woman’s eyes cut the scene apart like razor sharp blades as they jumped from one pillar bound offering to another until finally fixating themselves upon Jorgen.

He could do little but sigh in amazement. This chance encounter alone was worth dying for, he admitted to himself as he followed the cart with his weary eyes. To know that such a woman existed…

Questions flooded his mind in her passing and, for the first time since his incarceration, he was starting to feel regret for his fate. He felt like had just peered through a doorway leading into a bright new world.

He had so many questions to ask her, yet he didn’t even know her name. And, chances were, he was never going to.

The horse driven cart passed them by and slowly trundled its way into the walled courtyard of the lumber mill upon the hillock.