The Path of Sorrow

  THE PATH OF SORROW

  A World Apparent Tale

  by David Pilling and Martin Bolton

  “A song of hope and sorrow, born on the coming storm.”

  1.

  They came at night, the rumble of their hooves masked by the crack of thunder and the incessant hiss of torrential rain.

  He was a six-year old boy, huddled for warmth with his parents and his sister under a pile of wolfskins, when they were woken by the shriek of a woman.

  His mother sat up, confused and frightened. More shouts, more screams, rising to a storm. He could see nothing in the darkness, save for the deeper shadow of his father flinging back the pelts as he leaped out of bed.

  His father moved wordlessly toward the door. His sister stirred, rubbing her eyes and groaning. He felt his mother's arms sliding around him, encircling him and his sister as she tried to sooth them and hide her own fear.

  Pausing to snatch down the spear that hung over the low doorway, his father crouched to pass through the door.

  As the flap opened, the inside of the hut was briefly lit by a flash of orange flame, illuminating his mother's terrified expression and outlining his father's sinewy, tattooed neck and shoulders. Then the flap was closed again and in the instant dark he was left with an image, a ghost burned onto his retinas for all time, dancing in front of his eyes. The last time he saw his father alive.

  The chaos outside grew louder, screams and war-shouts echoing with the thunder of hoofs and ring of steel. The family lay huddled, not daring to move, praying it was a nightmare and they would wake soon to a bright dawn and a fresh breeze carrying the smell of grass across the steppe.

  His heart was beating hard now, giving him a sick feeling that seemed to seep through his entire body. He had never felt true fear before, but now it was creeping up on him and filling his world. His sister was whimpering, his mother trying to soothe and hush her.

  With his fear came incomprehension. His life, and that of his family and his entire tribe, had been peaceful and secure for as long as he could remember, which made the shock of violence all the more unacceptable, all the more terrifying and brutal.

  The flap opened again, but it was not his father. A stranger, bulky and muscular, unlike any man he had ever seen. The stranger’s body was covered in iron, face almost hidden behind an iron mask, and he carried a long curved sword in his right hand.

  The sound of slaughter grew deafening, filling the hut like smoke, but the iron man did not flinch or show any emotion.

  The boy hid his face, sobbing, for what seemed an eternity.

  His mother screamed, making him curl into a foetal position beneath the pelts, hiding his head in his arms as she was dragged out of the hut. His sister screamed too and clung to their mother. Refusing to let go, she too was pulled into the chaos outside.

  “Sorrow!” she cried her son's name, and was gone.

  Reality hit Sorrow like a fist to the chest. He reached out feebly and his weak cry for her died in his throat. His mother. His entire world. All he had known in his short life. She had dried his tears when he cried, washed his cuts and soothed him when he fell, fed him and loved him. Gone, wrenched away by a demon in the night.

  Sorrow was frozen with fear, waiting for the stranger to come back and take him too, but no one came. He was helpless, empty, his heart pounding, shaking convulsively, his breathing deep and fast. Lights spun and danced beneath his eyelids, his body trembled violently, making him feel as though he was boiling like the water in his mother's cooking pot.

  His mother was gone. The knowledge was inescapable, crushing, enraging.

  He did not think about what he did next, rather he watched his actions from inside himself, as though from within a bubble.

  Sorrow ran out of the hut and into the massacre of his people. The ring of thorn bush that surrounded the encampment, protecting it from wild animals, was now in flames, trapping the people inside.

  There was no sign of his family. To his right a small boy was running, screaming, chased by another iron man wielding an axe. The axe swung through his quarry’s skull, splitting it like an egg.

  Nearby an unarmed man tried to shield his wife from two raiders. He lifted his arm in a vain effort to defend himself. One attacker impaled the arm with a falchion and the other stabbed him in the throat. Blood spattered on Sorrow's face as the man dropped. The woman turned and fled and the two warriors gave chase, laughing.

  Consumed by rage, Sorrow arched his back as an irresistible force inside him threatened to explode, like an ocean tide surging inexorably into a narrow cave.

  Staring at the night sky, he screamed, tears streaming down his face, his eyes reflecting the fires that were consuming everything he knew and loved.

  His roar was cut off by a sharp blow to the back of his head. Sorrow glimpsed a flash of blinding light and then pitched forward into darkness.

  * * * *

  “Remember, blue-eyes, just stand there, nice and quiet, and don’t say anything. Don’t even nod your fucking head. I want you still as a statue, and about as vocal. Got it?”

  The man currently known as Bail, the sixth or seventh name he had assumed in his chequered life, nodded obediently.

  He was careful to maintain eye contact with his employer. Eye contact was important. General Harsu judged men on the firmness of their handshake and ability to meet his eye. A man with a limp handshake and a shifty expression was, in Harsu’s opinion, up to no good.

  Bail had been in Harsu’s employment for almost ten months. Ten months of spying, of forgery and blackmail, of narrow escapes and bloody battlefields, and now it had come to an end. The wars were over, and all the surviving commanders had agreed to get together around the negotiating table to hammer out a peace treaty.

  Bail was permitted to ride aboard the General’s own chariot, reckoned a great honour. The chariot’s only other occupants were the General himself and his driver, a pretty, smooth-skinned young man, naked from the waist up, who held the reins and gracefully plied his lash on the team of snow-white geldings pulling the vehicle.

  Behind them trotted the General’s escort, two hundred mounted lancers, splendid in dyed plumes and animal skins. Their faces were covered by iron masks forged and painted in the image of Harsu’s own snarling face, a tribute to their commander’s vanity and his desire to remind the enemy who they were fighting.

  Though they lacked saddles and spurs, and their mounts were mere ponies compared to the massive knightly chargers of Bail’s homeland, Harsu’s Harriers were an impressive and ferocious body of men. They were disciplined, well-led and equipped, and in the past ten months of fighting had thoroughly earned their reputation as the most feared cavalry corps west of the Girdle Sea.

  The landscape they were riding through was flat and featureless, with not a tree or a scrap of cover in sight. A range of yellow hills lay far to the north, while to the west and east the land broke up into a series of ravines, rocky steppe, and wind-haunted passes. To the south-west the land degenerated into a desolate horror known as the Burned Earth, which any person in their right mind took trouble to avoid. Directly south, where General Harsu and his retinue had come from, was barren plateau all the way to the Jabal Kish, the great mountain range that stretched from the coastal plain and bit deep into the southern part of the continent.

  “Look there,” grunted Harsu, pointing with his crop to the north-west. Bail strained his eyes in that direction and made out a column of dust.

  “That will be General Bashar, rot his eyes and lungs,” said Harsu. His vulpine face, which always put Bail in mind of one of the bearded devils painted on the frescos of Harsu’s palace, contorted into a sneer. “His mouth stinks with the lies
he has crammed into it. Be wary of their stench, blue-eyes.”

  Bail nodded again and forced a smile. During his crooked life he had assumed many names and disguises, but blue-eyes was not to his taste. It was a perfectly accurate one, since his were the only blue pair of eyes in a land of greens and browns, but it denoted a lack of respect. Despite, or perhaps because of, his dubious past and stained character, Bail craved respect.

  “What a parcel of vipers to deal with,” said the General, reaching out to caress his driver’s bare shoulder. “They will all be there. General Saqr, that hypocrite who mouths devotion to the Gods even while he plunders their temples. Bashar and Assur, and that hairy bitch Anma. What sins must Temeria have committed, blue-eyes, to be punished with such people as rulers?”

  Bail’s hands twitched. He longed to reach for the knife at his belt. It was a slender curved blade of native design, serrated on the inside, and he had often fantasised about using it on Harsu. The brute had a thick vein in his neck that throbbed during his frequent rages, and Bail liked to imagine the hot red blood that would spurt forth if he sliced through it.

  He shook himself out of this dangerous reverie. A large tent had come into view, about half a mile to the north, and pitched around it were the brightly decorated banners of Harsu’s rivals. Fire-breathing dragons snapped and twisted in the wind, serpents swallowed their own tails, falcons pecked out the innards of fallen soldiers: their imagery was lurid, vicious, and crude, hinting strongly at the characters of the generals themselves.

  Gathered round the tent were two hundred or so lancers, all drawn up in battle array and keeping a suspicious eye on Harsu and his entourage. They reluctantly parted ranks to let his chariot through and exchanged venomous glances with the Harriers. Only a week earlier they had been trying to kill each other on the battlefield.

  Harsu treated his former enemies to a mock salute. “Move aside for your Emperor,” he bellowed, “blood of the Gods, you were wise to surrender! Faithless dogs, who dared raise your swords against me! I had your comrades gutted on pikes, tied to stakes and burned alive, aye, and their innards fed to my hounds. Reflect on that, you scum, and be grateful.”

  Bail could almost feel the hatred as the chariot rattled to a halt outside the tent. He had seldom felt so nervous, and was shivering with more than the cold when he stepped down from the chariot and got onto his hands and knees for Harsu to use his back as a footstool.

  The General was a big man, and Bail winced as his weight threatened to crack his spine. Then Harsu stepped off him to confront the richly-dressed group waiting outside the tent.

  Like him, they wore ankle-length coats of scale armour and (with the exception of Anma, who could only manage a small moustache) sported long spade-shaped beards, sleekly combed and glistening with oil. Jewelled sabres hung from their belts, encrusted with enough precious stones to feed a small kingdom for a year.

  “General Harsu,” smirked General Saqr, a little viper of a man, his trim beard dripping with oil just as his voice dripped with insincerity. “It is an honour to meet you in a time of peace, rather than over crossed swords on the battlefield.”

  Harsu snorted. “You’ve never been near a battlefield in your life, Saqr. If you had, you might have sniffed the shit your men left behind them as they fled. Let us not waste time on pleasantries. I have won this war, and you are gathered here to offer me the Silver Crown.”

  “We are here, on mutually agreed neutral ground, to discuss a treaty,” interjected Anma. Bail supposed that she was a woman, though it was difficult to tell from the moustache and bull-like physique. She wore armour like any man, and her heavy face reminded him of a mastiff.

  The other Generals shifted and looked uncomfortable. Bail knew that they knew that Harsu spoke the truth. The war was effectively over. Their armies were broken or cowering behind the walls of besieged towns, and the treaty was only called that to make them feel better. In reality, it was a submission.

  Harsu grinned and fingered the ends of his forked beard, relishing their impotent hatred.

  “Come, then,” he said, nodding in the direction of the tent, “let the horse-trading begin.”

  * * * *

  The interior of the tent was dark and cool, and the flaps were closed to give the generals some privacy. Harsu and Anma had expressed a preference to conduct the treaty in the open, so the soldiers might see that the fate of their country was decided fairly and above board, but they were outvoted.

  “These matters are best resolved in private,” said Saqr in his smoothest tones, “and what do soldiers understand of politics? They are there to obey orders and kill other soldiers, not to think.”

  His voice of reason was enough to persuade Harsu and Anma, though the latter usually had no time for Saqr’s wheedling. Regardless, all five Generals were soon gathered around the long table, which was the tent’s only furnishing.

  Each attended the meeting with one bodyguard only. Bail acted for Harsu, but unlike the other bodyguards, who bristled with weapons and attitude, he wore no armour and didn’t even carry a sword. Instead he wore the garb of a common Temerian infantryman, a thick, belted jacket with long sleeves, tight-fitting trousers, and sandals.

  On the table was a campaign map of the western half of the continent, bordered by the waters of the Girdle Sea and the North-East Ocean. The map belonged to General Assur and was a beautiful piece of work, a sheet of white silk with the contours of the land, cities, mountains, and rivers picked out in gold and silver thread.

  It was also dotted by symbols painted in the shape of two crossed scimitars. These marked the battles fought during the last ten months, and it was a measure of Temeria’s suffering that few areas of the map were free of the blades.

  “There, not two weeks ago, beneath the shadows of the Mountains of the Sun,” crowed Harsu, pointing at one of the symbols, “my archers shattered your vanguard, General Assur, and sent the survivors fleeing for safety. The prisoners, you may recall, had their right ears cut off and sent to you as an early birthday present.”

  General Assur, a saturnine, fleshy, and softly-spoken man, considered a great epicure but no soldier, said nothing. Chuckling, Harsu stabbed his finger at another part of the map.

  “And there are the Plains of Ash-Kent, where I smashed General Anma and Saqr’s so-called elite Guard divisions. Many men bled the ground red that day. So many, in fact, I believe the local tribes have re-named it the Bleeding Heart Desert.”

  Anma made a growling noise, but General Saqr laid a calming hand on her shoulder.

  “Gently, gently,” he murmured, “General Harsu, may I beg you not to dredge up the past? We are here to forge a peace, not pick over the bones of old quarrels.”

  Annoyed, Harsu pulled out a roll of paper tucked inside his belt and tossed it onto the table. “You are here to accept my conditions,” he shouted. “Sign that document, before my patience runs out.”

  Saqr contrived to look even shiftier than usual. “Please, great one, can you read it to us? My eyes fail me.”

  “Along with your self-respect,” grunted Anma. “Read your damned bit of paper, Harsu, and get it over with.”

  Harsu shrugged his massive shoulders and picked up the treaty that his scribes had penned only the night before. Clearing his throat, he began to read.

  “Harken to the commandments of Harsu Puzur-Ashir, degenerate and defeated ones, on pain of your lives, limbs, and property. General Harsu, Lord of the Desert of Sighs, henceforth to be known as Harsu the Conqueror, Emperor and Overlord of Temeria, bids you all to recognise him as your suzerain lord and swear fealty to him and his progeny, for as long as they shall last. And to recognise that you shall be inferior to him in all things, and that you hold your palaces and chattels, your servants and lands and authority, directly as a gift from him, that he may take or bestow as he sees fit…”

  While his master droned on Bail quietly shuffled sideways until he was standing directly behind him. The stuffy interior of the tent rang with
Harsu’s pompous oratory, but all eyes were not on the self-proclaimed Emperor. Rather, they were fixed on his bodyguard.

  Bail flexed the fingers of his right hand and a stiletto slid into his grasp. He stepped forward and thrust at a certain point just below and to the right of Harsu’s left shoulder-blade. From careful study of the General’s armour, he knew that here was a weak spot, a gap between his ornate back-plate and the scale mail underneath.

  Bail was a skilled and practised killer, and the stiletto punched smoothly through skin, muscle, and flesh, neatly skewering Harsu’s right ventricle.

  A great deal of blood followed, but not much noise. The would-be Emperor uttered a grunt, like a surprised pig, and toppled face down onto the table.

  General Anma clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, really!” she exclaimed. “A barrack-room knifing, is that the most subtle idea you three could come up with? And why didn’t you tell me you were planning to kill him?”

  “My map!” yelped Assur, gazing in horror at the dark stain gradually spreading over the map from under Harsu’s body. “He’s bleeding all over my map! It’s irreplaceable!”

  “Oh, nonsense, Assur, you are rich enough to afford a dozen like it,” said Saqr, “but I fear our hired killer has been a little rash. Explaining Harsu’s death to his men outside is going to require some tricky diplomacy.”

  “Answer my question,” Anma persisted, “why wasn’t I informed of this?”

  Saqr made a vague gesture with his immaculately kept hands, while the near-hysterical Assur squeaked at his bodyguard to get Harsu’s corpse off his precious map. “You lack the necessary subtlety. To be blunt, we feared you might bray the details of the plot and thus doom us all.”

  “Assur’s right,” said General Bashar, who had wandered over to study the table with ghoulish interest. “There’s blood all over this side of the map. Who would have thought he had so much blood in him? The North-East Ocean is covered in the stuff!”