City of the Automatons

City of the Automatons

  Part 1

  by Francesco Bertolino

  Copyright 2012 Francesco Bertolino

  [email protected]

  https://www.libri-fantasy.com

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Compagnia-del-Viandante/245140115583272

  https://plus.google.com/113639020903806625721/posts

  English text revision by Juliet Attwater

  https://www.orbitalingua.com

  Cover illustration by Maurício Paiva

  https://mauriciopaiva.carbonmade.com/

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  I - A Sorrowful Ritual

  II - The Eyes of a Friend

  III - Clouds on the Horizon

  IV - Separation

  V - Sea Stories

  VI - The Present and the Past

  VII - Unexpected News

  VIII - The Snakes Trainer

  IX - Zontar the Sage

  X - On the Streets of Dekka

  XI - Leon

  XII - The Guardian

  XIII - Tiny Experiments

  And now for some chit chat...

  To Felicita

  and Celene:

  what would I do

  without your strength

  and your love?

  Prologue

  The stunned man raised his eyelids: reality swam before him as a gray unfathomable canvas.

  Pain and confusion gripped his temples tightly...

  He swallowed, his mouth full of a bitter taste. A sudden wave of nausea bent him in two; he tried to move, only to find that his hands and feet were bound. A lashing wind blew over his naked body making him shiver.

  In vain he tried to mend the torn shreds of his memory.

  “Where am I? What happened to me?”

  He still knew who he was, but all the rest...

  “Don’t try too hard” said a voice, harsh as metal scraping against metal.

  “That would be a pointless waste of energy” declared a second voice, muffled and distant.

  “You are our guest now” added a languid, feminine voice.

  “Forever...” said a fourth voice, low and sullen as the sky on a stormy night.

  Those voices...

  That sour smell...

  Memories rushed through his mind like an avalanche, pushing him to the edge of the abyss.

  “I failed!” he screamed inside his head “Everything is lost!”

  The thought was too terrible to bear. Better give up once and for all.

  But something, even in his worst hour, kept him from sinking into despair: images of men and women dressed in white, friendly faces, hands stretched towards him, hopeful voices...

  “We are with you!” those voices said, like a beam of bright light cutting through the darkness.

  A half smile flickered across the man’s face as he understood that for them he would face the future with his head held high, no matter how hard it would be.

  The wind grew in strength, whipping him mercilessly.

  “Forever...” the fourth voice repeated.

  I - A Sorrowful Ritual

  From the top of the ramparts the men stared with terrified eyes as the Demons piled up outside the walls: the dreadful creatures snarled, howled, and scraped the naked stone with their claws, maddened by their lust to gain entry.

  It was just a matter of time before they succeeded. Then the carnage would begin.

  Men and women huddled together, trembling before the ungodly garments death had worn to meet them. The light of their torches flickered under the wind’s assault, an anticipation of the darkness that would surely swallow them all.

  Then a war cry tore through the canvas of the night sky and everybody turned their eyes to the East. A ray of moonlight pierced the cloak of clouds across the firmament and struck the top of the hill where the cry had come from. The beam of silvery light illuminated the earth revealing what no one had dared to hope for: an army, a whole army of men running down the slope, a whirlwind of white-cloaked warriors wrapped in bright steel!

  They fell upon the rearguard of the enemy horde like a spear guided by the hand of a warrior God, and they swept it away.

  To the eyes of the besieged, that army seemed to come from another world.

  None of them had ever set gaze upon such a skilled and ruthless group of warriors: the creatures tried to defend themselves with all the absurd weapons they were endowed with, fangs, claws, tentacles and hooks; but their opponents’ supremacy was clear.

  The warriors shifted between positions smoothly, without ever losing their calm, immune to the horrors surrounding them. Every creature was encircled and punished with a sudden death, by sword, axe, or spear. The air was ridden with the sounds of battle, and blood flowed until the earth was soaked in it.

  In the end, the only ones still standing were the warriors who had materialized from the darkness. The Demon horde had been annihilated, their corpses covered the ground.

  Joyful cries rose from the ramparts, but the warriors neither rejoiced, nor withdrew their weapons. Following their commander, they stepped back, spreading in fan formation. They halted not far from the walls, waiting.

  A blood curling wail, at first almost inaudible, but then growing louder and louder, rose from the heap of lifeless bodies stacked outside the fortress. A woman pointed her finger, cried out, and fainted. One by one, the monstrous beings came back to life, new sap flowing through their veins. They got to their feet, ignoring the pain: their devastated bodies held together by an evil force. They turned their backs to the fortress and dragged themselves towards the warriors.

  They limped and fell, stood up and fell, and rose again. They were dead, but they craved revenge.

  None of the warriors showed surprise. None fell back; none looked for a way out. They planted their boots firmly in the wet earth, raising their shields before them. Behind each helmet, a pair of eyes fearlessly watched the creatures’ advance. Lips parted, teeth clenched in smiles that defied death.

  The night was still young...

  ------

  “We shall all leave this world, some day. And I with them...”

  The warrior’s tone was somber, he was addressing himself more than his own comrades. They sat in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, around the torn banner of the Wayfarer’s Company. The flaming brightness of sunrise projected long shadows onto the battlefield. A surreal silence muffled everything; it was broken only by the croak of a raven.

  “If I had the power to control my fate” the warrior continued “I would never ever choose to die at dawn. A new day would begin, but not for me... That’s what scares me most about death...”

  He stopped, rubbing his rough beard with the back of his hand, and bowed his head.

  “...or, maybe, it just fills me with sadness.”

  Some of his comrades continued to stare at him in silence. Others gazed into the shadows, lost in their thoughts. The battle had come to an end, carrying away the fury and the excitement and leaving a void in each man’s soul. Their faces, chiseled by weariness, tracked by toil and marked by metal, were reminiscent of those of ghosts gathered for a sorrowful ritual.

  A man, taller than most, stood up inside the circle and made a few steps towards the center: under his white cloak a mail shirt rattled against his bracers and huge shoulder plates. His ash-blond mane reflected the glare of the dawn like a thousand gold scales.

  He turned his gaze towards the base of the hill, lingering on what was left after the massacre.

  “Each of us can understand your feelings, Raduan” he said, choosing his words “How many times have we already lived this nightmare?”

  He raised his aquiline profile to the sky.

&nbs
p; “This war is already part of us, want it or not. Let us hope there is real meaning in it.”

  The man called Raduan did not reply. He shook his head twice, whipping the air with his tail of black hair, and gave the other warrior an uncertain smile.

  “Yours are strange words, Dorian” he said “I did not know I could affect even you with my lack of spirit. But it comforts me to know I am not alone. I can sense these hateful feelings crawling inside my bones!”

  The commander approached, putting a gloved hand on his shoulder.

  “My friend” he said “look around you.”

  And he pointed at the rest of the Company, haggard men and women, exhausted in body and soul.

  “You are not the only one in pain, as you can see. Be strong: this battle hasn’t been worse than the others. It is us. We are changing, I fear.” He paused, thoughtful. “It seems we may be losing our strength...”

  “Or our faith, maybe” intervened a woman’s voice, coming from the shadows outside the circle of men.

  A lean figure made her entrance into the group, revealing a striking woman with tanned skin. A thin scar marked her face all the way down from her left eyebrow to the chin, crossing the orbit of a lifeless eye. She walked with a firm stride, smoothing her brown mane with one hand. In the other she held a sack of raw cloth. Without so much as a glance at anybody, she sat on a log and threw the sack at her feet. The metallic thud provoked murmurs of indignation.

  The girl glanced at Raduan, who stared at her with open contempt, then smiled impudently at the commander, who was still standing at the banner’s side.

  “Father” she greeted, with a slight bow of her head.

  “Kyra. How fared your hunt today?” answered Dorian, as if addressing her was a tiresome exercise.

  “Not too bad.”

  She seemed to be playing a strange kind of game, one which nobody around her cared for. She opened the sack, rummaged inside it, and took out a pouch. She dangled it between her fingers with a rattle of coins.

  “These people were doing well for themselves – but just look at them now – poor things.”

  “Shut up!” burst Raduan “Is there no trace of compassion in your heart?”

  “Compassion?” replied Kyra, frowning “We have come to collect a debt of death, remember? It’s what we always do.”

  The warriors’ looks grew sullen around her, but nobody replied to her words. Dorian, his shoulders bent by an invisible weight, sat down again.

  “You have always been good at blaming others” he whispered to his daughter.

  She wrinkled her nose, without reply.

  Silence fell upon the hill. The warriors closed in on themselves, waiting. Nobody looked down to the battlefield. That victory was no cause for celebration. When the orb of the sun had risen completely over the horizon line, the commander broke the silence:

  “The time has come: let us bring an end to our mission!”

  It sounded more solemn than he had wished for. But he owed that to the fallen, as a sign of respect.

  He stood up and walked towards the Company’s battle banner. Worn and bloodstained, it perfectly mirrored the mood of the men it represented. The golden trims were ragged in many a place, and the emblem sewn in the middle of the cloth, embroidered in the shape of a gnarled wayfarer’s staff, was almost unrecognizable. The ebony black pole was marked by deep cuts.

  Without any hesitation, Dorian tore the banner from the ground and held it before him with both hands.

  A faint whisper filled the air, and the atmosphere was charged with electricity. Far away, bluish lightning plowed across the sky. The warriors watched in silence, closing the circle around their commander.

  Dorian closed his eyes and focused. The wind, still until then, grew in intensity. He could feel its crescendo in his ears. Black clouds gathered over his head. Despite not seeing them, he sensed their overwhelming weight, but he was not intimidated.

  He outstretched his arms, raised the banner to the sky and threw his cloak behind him: his majestic figure, wrapped in steel, was fully revealed, catalyzing the light of the rising star.

  “Abel kvar!” he thundered, turning his gaze to the corpses piled high around the foothills. “Kalarti ka zvendàri! Be gone from this land!”

  The ancient words spoken, he hit the ground with the banner pole, and the earth trembled in response. Deep vibrations spread in a wave from the hill to the plain below, shaking the earth and drawing in it a net of fissures. Already knowing what was going to happen, the Company tightened their eyelids.

  “Give me strength, once more!” Dorian begged.

  Then, in response to the ancestral evocation, ghosts of every shape and size rose from the corpses scattered like marionettes on the battlefield, live essences ripped from the flesh of the dead. In a cacophony of moans, the translucent entities hovered over the ground, floating in midair like a layer of evil fog. Fast and vicious, they hurled themselves towards the man who had summoned them, breaking their sweet bond with death: they tried to wrap round him, they screamed and threatened, they hissed curses of damnation, but they could not harm him, held off by an invisible barrier.

  The banner, clutched in Dorian’s hand, shone with the intensity of a small star.

  Enraged, the specters started circling over the soldiers’ heads, in a mad crescendo of speed, until the entire hill was enveloped in a swirl of energy. The light and din assailed the warriors’ senses like a storm, until the deafening roar ceased with a final, high-pitched note.

  The ghosts halted in midair.

  Those with the courage to watch saw their angry human-like faces melt into the deepest sadness. In absolute silence, they gathered. Then they hurtled upwards into the sky in a single swirling column, vanishing into the firmament as if they had never existed.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the men and women glanced around, shaken. Thunder still rumbled in the distance, but the clouds were already dissolving as quickly as they had formed.

  Dorian stood motionless in the middle of the circle, his arms raised and his eyes clenched in a grimace of pain. Then, he slowly lowered his arms and reopened his eyes.

  In his right hand, he still clasped the symbol of his battalion; the banner was no longer torn and bloodstained, but bright and blazing in the light of the pact that tied the Wayfarer’s Company to its mission.

  “Thus it has always been, and thus it shall always be...”

  ------

  The ritual had come to an end.

  Dorian left the banner. He looked around in confusion, as if only then recognizing his surroundings. The hill rose from the middle of vast wheat fields, dotted with the multitude of lifeless bodies. To the West, the outbuildings of Bezer fortress were only just visible in the dawn haze: hoisted on a high pennon the scarlet flag of Feledan’s Princedom fluttered unperturbed. Close to the walls was a cluster of brightly colored tents and wagons, the ambulant village of a wanderers’ community - but the vivacity of the colors was stifled by an unnatural silence.

  “Let’s move out” said Dorian, as he started walking along the path that led to the fortress.

  The others, no more than fifty of them - men and women -, followed him in silence. The column of white-dressed warriors, armor and mail shirts shining in the glare of the sunrise, twisted wearily down the slopes of the hill. Once they reached the plain below, they then picked their way around the corpses.

  As he walked through the blood-soaked wheat, Raduan tried to hide his anxiety. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but he underwent a total metamorphosis in the midst of every fight. He could still see himself, just a few hours earlier, rejoicing in the act of mowing down, trampling and crushing bodies without the slightest hesitation.

  But he felt empty now, as he did at the end of every battle. At each step, he was shaken by tremors of pity and revulsion for what he saw. What was left of the defeated enemy shed a disturbing light on the nature of the fight: not an honorable clash of man against man, but the slaughter
of brutish creatures, senseless mutations of human beings.

  Demons, they called them, but they were not.

  The wanderers’ camp was now closer, a grouping of colorful tents and wagons of inlaid wood. Not a living soul among the tents. All the inhabitants, one after another, had ceased to exist because of the mutation.

  And at the hand of the Wayfarer’s Company.

  They passed near a deformity which had once been a child.

  “Mighty Abidan, let his eyes be closed!” Raduan prayed.

  They were not.

  He saw, in spite of himself, and his eyes filled with tears. He bowed his head and carried on quickly, hoping nobody would notice his weakness.

  None of the party seemed at ease. They walked in silence, keeping formation. Only Kyra, purposely staying at the end of the column, often strayed from the path, attracted by something of interest - a ring, a necklace, a gold-handled comb. Her sack was visibly fattening.

  Dorian watched her sideways and was not for the first time tempted to slap her. He eventually chose to let it go, as he always did. To confront his daughter was as productive as beating his head against a brick wall. But the situation was likely to get much worse: the flashes of anger in his soldiers’ eyes were not to be underestimated. He would have to resolve the situation peacefully, before their swords began to speak.

  He sighed. One thing at a time.

  When the Company reached the stretch of bare land in front of Bezer fortress, a twenty horsemen contingent was waiting for them. It was led by a small man, short even in the saddle of his huge steed.

  “Commander Dorian” the knight said, with a tinge of annoyance “Well done! I am glad to see you alive. You must be tired and hungry. With your permission, we shall escort you inside the walls. Food and drink won’t lack for anyone.”

  “Captain Seras” replied Dorian quietly “I know you are not really pleased to see us back. However, we gratefully accept your offer.”

  Seras moved uncomfortably on his saddle, and opened his mouth to deny it. Then, thinking better, he turned his mount and proceeded towards the drawbridge without another word. The Company’s warriors, tired but fierce in their bearing and led by their commander, followed him at a short distance. The garrison knights took position at their flanks, escorting them inside. Dorian asked himself if they were guided by a genuine protective instinct, or if they just feared for their people.

  Once more, despite their victory and their irreproachable behavior, the Wayfarer’s Company was feeling the cold mark of superstition. And how could he not understand that behavior? Violence and death touched every man in these difficult times, but to have to stomach the apparition of monstrous creatures, ghosts and such, was an entirely different thing. It was impossible to avoid suspicion when elements of that nature presaged their arrival. Elements like the Demons, and the ritual they had just accomplished. Like anything that concerned the Company.

  They entered the fortress, which was large enough to host hundreds of men. They did not find a happy crowd waiting for them inside: the people kept their distance and stared at them with unconcealed fear. Doors and windows were shut, a few eyes nervously peeking through the slits. They were escorted to a broad flat building behind the main tower, where they could wash themselves and rub off the death scent that soaked their bodies. They dressed in clean clothes, all strictly white, like the spent tunics they had worn over their armor.

  Kyra was among the last to conclude that pleasant task. As she left refreshed, her long hair down, she did not miss the admiring glances of many of the soldiers. At best, all they got in return was a smirk of derision. She sat on a bench in the sunlight, enjoying its warmth.

  She knew her potential all too well, and she was not keen to waste it. Since her first bloom of youth, she had become used to arousing the unwanted attention of men around her, and to having to reject it forcibly: there were many who still bore the indelible marks of her refusal on their bodies. She ran a finger along the scar that marked her face from the forehead down to the lips. Not even with that had the situation changed: rather, the scar had enriched her wild beauty, one that had seduced and wounded so many

  It was Raduan’s turn to leave the baths, breathing in deeply. He turned this way and the other, distracted. When his gaze met Kyra’s, he stiffened instantly.

  “Now this one is another kettle of fish...” she thought, breaking into one of her most malicious smiles.

  She had known Raduan for years, and she had to admit that she had felt some kind of attraction towards him since their first encounter. Even more so now that he hated her. It was always amusing for her to tease Raduan the pure, the blameless, her cherished father’s right hand man! Sooner or later, she was sure, he would fall to his knees and overcome his stupid righteousness.

  “Is that what you really think?” an annoying voice whispered from within her.

  She silenced it without taking her eyes from the warrior, until he turned around and went elsewhere, muttering. Kyra considered going after him and harassing him a little, but she decided to delay that game. She would have plenty of time before the next battle. Or maybe not, but who cared? She stayed right where she was, dangling her legs under the warm sunbeams.

  A little later, Dorian, his face always severe, gathered the Company members and led them to the dining hall, where they ate under the watchful eye of the garrison soldiers. Captain Seras made just one brief appearance amid the tables, renewing his hospitality with hasty words, inviting them to rest as long as they needed to within the fortress walls. After that, he seemed glad to retire, citing a number of urgent matters to attend to. None of the guests tried to dissuade him.

  Few words were exchanged during the meal, then the group returned to their quarters, where they each found a less than comfortable cot waiting for them. They lay down without complaints. Dorian chose the first free bed he saw, as did Raduan. Kyra preferred to isolate herself in a corner of the dormitory, away from everyone. The battle had been hard, and sleep descended like a blessing on every man and woman of the Company.

  Everyone but Kyra.

  She had many things to think about. Decisions to be taken, and quickly.

  She stayed awake for a long time, staring into space.

  II - The Eyes of a Friend