The Shadow of All Worlds, Page 5

  Chapter 6

  He had come to be known as Kalen, though that was not the name his birth mother had given to him. The truth was that he remembered little of his youth. Occasionally the fragments of a memory flashed behind his eyes. Maybe it was a woman’s face, or a child’s, but these images were fleeting and with the passage of time they grew more meaningless and infrequent.

  There had been a time when he focused on these memories and tried to make sense of them, but the effort seemed to call a mind shattering headache down like a bolt of lightning, so he had quickly learned to let the images pass.

  He had a new mother now and she was everything to him. Mother, lover, queen, goddess—she was the Red Lady, and he need do no more than consider her name to be filled with an all-encompassing sense of purpose.

  Kalen paused in his contemplations to sniff the air.

  Smoke filled his nostrils, rich and dark: hot with the fires of conquest.

  He smiled, and his teeth shone like stars deep within the dark field of his bushy black beard.

  There was no sweeter fragrance than the smell of smoke. Kalen inhaled deeply and the elements of the scent separated themselves into their fundamental components: conqueror’s sweat, raging heat, and human flesh.

  The smoke from a burning body had a different aroma than that of any other substance. It was brutal and barbaric, but there was also a sweet delicacy to it. The picture that came to his mind was that of a rose turned to ash. Utterly destroyed, but yet the essence absolutely preserved; hanging on for one pitiful moment in all its complex glory until a wind stirred up to scatter the pitiful shadow into oblivion.

  Kalen reached out to brace himself against a tree. The armor that he wore was a mismatch of plates scavenged from a dozen different corpses. He had splashed red paint on the articles where he could, but the scrape of swords had largely ripped the color away.

  No matter, he thought grimly, the hue will soon be replenished with the stain of blood.

  All around him, Kalen could sense rather than see his bretheren of the Red Army. The clouds of billowing smoke obscured his vision and the screams arising from the encampment ahead confused his senses, but he could feel their presence. Their elation buoyed him, reflective, as it was, of the pleasure his actions were bringing to the Red Lady.

  But as he pushed his perceptions outwards, he noticed another presence.

  There were humans on the fringes, waiting and watching with barely concealed contempt.

  As eager as Kalen was to rush forward and join the carnage ahead, he paused and gave full attention to these other players.

  They were a group of knights. Kalen assumed they must be the guardians of this strange land where the Red Lady had taken them. He squinted his eyes as his mental focus strained to get a better picture.

  They were old, small in number, and overall possessed of the human weakness Kalen had long since dispensed in his own character.

  The only thing he respected about them was their rage.

  As he attuned on them the image grew more and more clear.

  They were watching from a distant hill. They could see the smoke and the flames. They could hear the screams, yet they did nothing.

  Too few, too few, too few...

  The words echoed in Kalen’s mind, and suddenly he was brought with a snap back to his current surroundings. He tipped back his head and roared into the crackling chaos of agony and popping flames.

  “Watch from the hill cowards,” Kalen shouted as he resumed his progress towards the small gathering of refuges he could sense lay just ahead. “Watch from the hills and see your own fate play out before you!”

  With that, Kalen called upon his muscles to propell his great bulk forward with bestial power. Branches slapped against his haphazard armor and snapped off as he accelerated to the fray.

  With every step, the sensory stimulations grew to an almost sensual frenzy.

  His brothers had already pierced the outer ring of the refugee settlement. Kalen passed the remnants of makeshift weapons that had been discarded amongst the ash as the ineffective resistance had been annihilated.

  As he charged forward, he came across crude canvas tents, some ripped to pieces, others still standing. Kalen drew his sword and lashed out at the undefiled structures, tearing holes in the outer skin and peering inside in the hope of catching a glimpse of something soft.

  His search came up empty, but the cries ahead directed him, and soon he came upon the last living mass of the refugee settlement.

  A score of men and women huddled in a crude circle. They brandished farming utensils with pointy ends and terrified faces that made Kalen cough with laughter.

  All around them stood the soldiers of the Red Army. They had their quarry contained, and were merely waiting for their numbers to swell before crashing down like a tidal wave.

  As Kalen arrived at the fringes of the circle, he felt the mental order to delay and began to slow his momentum. But no sooner had he arrived at the perimeter than the order was reversed.

  “Attack!”

  The sound echoed in his mind and Kalen picked up speed to charge headfirst into the fray. The last ten yards between the ever flowing forest and his opponents evaporated in a dreamlike eternity. Kalen reveled in the anticipation, and it was almost as if the Red Lady herself had decreed he should have the first bite of this tasty morsel.

  She had bid his brothers stay to wait for his arrival!

  His heart surged with passion, love, and insane rage.

  Then he was upon the refugees. The first was a weak-armed farmer who had the temerity to brandish a pitchfork at Kalen. Kalen didn’t even bother to dodge the thrust. He took a prong in his arm just to feel the sweet bite of reality. The farmer’s eyes widened as Kalen brought his sword down in an overhead arc that split the man’s head all the way down to his nose.

  Kalen’s assault was soon followed as the other members of the Red Army closed ranks. Soon the spray of blood perfumed the air in an orgy of sensual perception.

  Kalen went to work, laying about with bestial chops that separated limbs and life from a score of pitiful bodies.

  A small corner of Kalen’s mind took note that there would be no recruits from this encampment. The blades, claws and teeth of his brothers would leave nothing but tufts of hair and cubes of meat to mark this meek resistance.

  No matter, he thought as his blade took another farmer in the cheek and separated the top half of his head from his body, there will be more encampments—there will be other recruits.

  Once again he felt a wave of fury from the watchers on the hill.

  Once again he tilted back his head and roared with laughter.

  He enjoyed provoking weak things.

  He enjoyed watching their pride turn to sniveling terror as they were made to understand that they lacked the power to oppose him.

  They did not know the truth yet.

  But they would learn.

  He smiled in anticipation of watching the awareness be reflected in their slowly dimming eyes.