Hello everybody :)
Stop by Amazon
tomorrow (Dec 11, 2012) and download the second book in the VARANGIAN TRILOGY for free!
Recently, the book got its first 5 Star Rating on GoodReads saying that
"This is the more than worthy second book in the Varangian series."
Tomorrow is your last opportunity in 2012 to download this book for free.
To help you pass the time, sample an entire chapter of "
Varangian: The Assassins of Teneo Mundus" here:
Chapter
6: An unsettled hell
Baldwin awoke with the sensation of a thousand tiny
tongues licking him.
First, he thought he was having one last feverish dream,
but when he slowly opened his eyes, he saw (and smelled) a monstrous
beast sliding by him.
Its thick body was covered with small mouths filled with
revolving rows of pointy teeth. The mouths spread putrid slime all
over him, obviously marking (and preparing) him for consumption at a
later point in time.
Somehow he managed to lie perfectly still until the
beast had slithered out of the cave and into a row of bushes growing
between boulders on the foot of the mountains.
He saw light smoke wafting from tiny bubbles forming on
his breastplate, which lay next to him.
"Oh, dear God!" He jumped up and quickly
undressed himself.
He even took off his cross and the compass. He quickly
glanced over to the others: everyone was still sleeping. He grabbed
his breastplate and ran down to a small waterfall nearby and
collected water in a large leaf. Then he started to scrub the piece
of armor with a mixture of fine gravel and grass.
Arannamea woke up. "I shall help you."
He wasted not a single thought on hiding his nakedness.
"No. Please go back to sleep."
She scoffed and got up. "How can I? You are sitting
there, cleaning your armor!" She kneeled down next to him. "What
has happened?"
She reached into the bag on her belt and pulled out
another one of her tins. She opened it and tore a leaf from a bush
heavy with drops from a thunderstorm that had come through the area
during the night. She scooped a large amount of its scented contents
onto the leaf.
Baldwin wiped sweat from his forehead. "A beast,
with mouths where skin should be, spat on my armor."
Arannamea began to clean the pieces of the armor that
Baldwin had already scrubbed off. "This will help prevent
further damage."
Baldwin noticed that Nora, Tymon, Egor and the younger
children were waking up.
He saw that the legs of his underpants were being
dissolved by the slime. His undershirt was already completely gone.
Ligia and Nora quickly unsheathed the small knives on
their belts, grabbed his underpants and cut their legs off.
Nora scraped out a little bit of the substance from the
scented tin, transferred it onto the shorter underpants and gave them
to Baldwin. "They need a good cleaning anyway." She
drizzled more of the scented substance into his hand. "And Your
Grace needs it as well."
The boys snickered as they took away his armor,
gesturing to him that they would continue removing the slime from it.
Baldwin stepped underneath the waterfall.
He wondered why it had been just him who the beast
singled out for consumption, but he was glad that it was. He assumed
it was because he was the tallest in the group.
The waterfall was too cold for him to remain underneath
it too long.
He quickly scrubbed himself down and washed his
underpants. He saw Arannamea approaching with a blanket over her arm
and holding something in her hand.
"Give your undergarment to me. It needs to dry."
She looked straight at him, extending her arm and opening her hand.
She carried his cross in her palm.
He saw that she wore the compass around her neck again.
"Mea ..." He was the one who was naked, but, as he took his
cross and the blanket, he glanced at her as if she was the one who
was exposed and vulnerable.
Aware of her weakness, she covered the compass with her
fingers. "I need to have it, Baldwin. I need to feel close to
him." She turned around and started to walk back to the others.
He wrapped the blanket around himself. "I will not
beg you, Mea! When he arrives, you will see that he is different from
the man you once knew!"
He took a deep breath to remind himself that he was the
emperor. He was also different from the man who left Flanders, but
being of noble birth, he was used to it. He was used to putting the
interests of his subjects before his own - and he was used to
happiness passing him by like the short, warm summer breezes on the
North Sea, where he had lived a long time ago. He regained his regal
poise, and when he returned to the camp everyone knew that from now
on, he was no longer just a man with a sword, and a suitor with a
wish for love: he was their emperor and their protector.
*
Furiously, Delion rushed into the lab.
A large group of Aspeliths still worked on the warehouse
size room, while the scientists who Delion had brought with him from
earth examined plants, soil, insects and small animals they had
found.
"Did you make another one yet?" Delion's
booming voice echoed in the half-empty room.
A starry-eyed scientist turned to Delion.
It was obvious that he and his colleagues were more
interested in finding out more about Teneo Mundus than in creating
another assassin. "We don't have time for your personal
vendetta, Henry!"
An Aspelith stepped up to Delion.
He searched for the right words in English. "He
killed one of us. We not ... enemy of you. We enemy of him."
Half annoyed, half interested, Delion furrowed his
eyebrows. "How is this possible?"
Another scientist managed to briefly divert his
attention away from a frog-like creature to address the question.
"Henry, we told you that we're still having trouble calibrating
the dimensions and behavior of our Stone of Babylon device. Other
stuff came through with the assassin."
The Aspelith stared at the scientist. "We not ...
stuff!"
The scientist took a candy bar out of his lab coat
pocket. "No, you are not. I apologize." He gave the candy
bar to the Aspelith, who chewed it up immediately and spat out its
wrapper.
Delion looked at the second scientist. "Why does he
know that Edric killed one of them?"
The Aspelith scratched his neck. "He sends back."
The second scientist nodded. "Edric's got the
original Stone of Babylon, right?"
Delion rolled his eyes. "Yes, of course. But why
doesn't the bastard just beam himself over here with the ancient
thing?"
The second scientist picked up his tablet, showing an
image of a copy of Naheed's manuscripts. "The first gate has
something Edric needs before he can arrive here, but Naheed didn't
mention it anywhere."
Delion turned around and walked back out of the lab.
"Which brings us back to task number one: make another assassin!
Now!"
The scientists looked at each other, completely unnerved
and exhausted.
*
After several days of hiking, Baldwin and the group
under his protection arrived at the other end of the forest.
They approached the beginning of a long bridge, but the
other end was shrouded in thick fog.
Tymon stepped up to a big sign with crudely drawn images
on it. "This was made by the creatures we killed in the forest
..."
Baldwin was beside him. "It seems to be a warning
not to cross this bridge." He glanced at Tymon. "If
creatures like them would not cross, what does this fog conceal?"
He looked around, and he saw only a high and steep mountainous wall
ending near the forest.
"If we do not cross," Tymon pondered, "we
can only turn back or go where the creatures came from."
Arannamea appeared next to them. "This is the path
to the tower. We must cross." She had already started walking up
the small set of withered stairs leading up to the bridge.
Baldwin took a deep breath and moved aside to let the
others step onto the bridge between him and Arannamea. He could sense
the smell of fire and brimstone, and he whispered a short prayer.
After that, he couldn't remember what happened.
Later, as he awoke on a large bed covered with a beige
fabric that felt like soft silk, he only remembered entering the fog.
He wore a different kind of armor now (it looked like
large, black scales masterfully arranged and attached to each other),
and several tubes came in and out of his body; one was even stuck in
his nose. He coughed. There was a sharp pain in his chest. He looked
beside him, and he saw Arannamea sleeping next to him.
She was completely naked, but similar tubes also came in
and out of her body. The compass shimmered between her breasts.
A short arousal hit him like a slap in the face: he
quickly looked away, and searched for something to cover her up. He
saw Egor, Tymon, Nora and the children lying on other beds
distributed throughout the room. Egor and Tymon wore the same scales
armor; Nora was naked as well, but the younger girls and boys were
wrapped into something that resembled the cocoons of butterflies. He
saw tubes sticking inside all of their bodies.
Suddenly, he felt Arannamea's hand touching his.
"They think we are two families who belong
together," she whispered. She turned on her back, grimacing in
pain. "They are very different from us." She tugged on the
tubes protruding from her chest. "They have given us these so
that we can stay alive down here."
"God almighty!" Baldwin groaned. Hesitatingly,
he glanced at her. "Aren't you feeling cold?" Her beauty
and her obvious lack of bashfulness took his breath away, and he had
to force himself to think pragmatically.
She shook her head. "No. Do not get upset when you
see them."
He held his hand over his eyes. "I already am
upset, for I am seeing you."
She squeezed his hand. "You must let go of certain
conventions, Baldwin." She glanced across the room to Egor and
Tymon, who had both woken up as well. Now they were gently waking up
Nora.
This was not a good moment for Baldwin to find out that
the three of them were in a relationship already. "Please tell
me that Nora is at least married to one of them!"
Arannamea looked at him seriously. "Except for
Chara and Stefan, we all didn't know each other when we came here.
Nora is married to neither Egor nor to Tymon, but we had to think
about how we could go on in this strange place."
Baldwin licked his dry lips. "I understand."
He looked around again. "Where is my armor and my sword?"
She pointed to a corner. All their belongings were
stored in a trunk made out of a large crystal. "They are
friendly, but they seem to be in a war with another country or a very
powerful person that must have been attacking them severely for
hundreds of years. Unfortunately, unless this war ends, we cannot
continue our journey."
Baldwin sat up. "Why do you know all this?"
She chuckled. "I tend to hold my breath when I am
walking through smoke. I wasn't unconscious like you and the others."
He carefully put his feet on the ground. "Alright.
Then let us see whether we can help our hosts to settle their dispute
with their attacker."
He stood up. The scales armor was tied too closely to
certain parts of his body, and two of the scales pinched his crotch.
He grimaced. "Confound it." He shook his limbs
to loosen up the armor.
The high double-doors of the room opened, and hundreds
of insect-like creatures fluttered into the room and attached
themselves to Arannamea and Nora. Each time the women moved, the
small beings got excited and adjusted their positions with swift bats
of their iridescent wings.
Another creature appeared at the doors: it was naked,
but its skin was strategically stretched and folded with wires and
hooks, concealing its gender. It snapped its long fingers and pointed
at the compass around Arannamea's neck.
Amidst several seconds of the irritating fluttering of
insect wings, Arannamea changed a setting on the compass and gave it
to Baldwin.
The creature at the doors burped sulfuric smoke. "He
awaits you."
Instinctively, Baldwin clutched the cross dangling from
the chain around his neck.
*
For what seemed like hours to Baldwin, he and the
creature wandered through an underworld that came uncomfortably close
to his imagination of true hell: rivers of red-hot, molten rock
flowed through organically shaped habitats filled with creatures of
all shapes, sizes and colors.
At first, Baldwin thought he was witnessing public
executions and tortures.
The creatures seemed to openly operate on their exposed
bodies, and to nail flaps of their skins to metal lattices. He was
used to seeing blood and mutilations, but this was too much evenfor
him. He gagged and closed his eyes.
"Today, we celebrate," burped the creature
walking in front of him.
Baldwin swallowed hard. "What ... is the occasion?"
I knew it! he thought. They will throw us into these pits
of boiling rock, and they will roast us on their pitchforks!
The creature stopped and gently stroked Baldwin's hair.
"Your arrival, of course." It looked deeply into his eyes.
"A long time ago madness befell one of our most honored
citizens."
Baldwin made a broad gesture. "And what I am seeing
here is normal?"
The creature laughed. "I wondered the same, when I
saw that you and the other two have not properly protected your women
and children. We are at war."
They reached a heavily guarded habitat and walked
through an arched doorway, then along a hallway with a row of crystal
windows. Another creature stood there on the other side. He wore a
long robe and his forehead was covered with several small horn-like
protrusions. Baldwin saw that it was a male person, because instead
of folded and stretched skin, his hips were enveloped in an
elaborately knotted loincloth.
The person seemed stressed out and impatient. "Finally!"
Suddenly, tremors similar to those from an earthquake
ripped through the whole habitat. Baldwin was thrown against one of
the crystal windows. It cracked from the impact of his scales.
"Are we being attacked again?" he asked.
The horned person was immediately beside him. "Not
today. This is the dilation. It always happens this time of
year. Are you the one who carries the anchors?"
Baldwin rolled his eyes. "No! I am not Edric!"
He angrily glanced at the horned man. "And why do you know about
the anchors?"
The person with the stretched skin put its head very
close to Baldwin's face. "If you are not Edric, why do you
know about the anchors?"
Baldwin felt smothered and pushed both of the people
away from him. "Please keep your distance!"
The horned man pulled Baldwin away from the window and
the other person. "A man in a cloud appeared one day, and he
said he could stop whatever it is that is breaking everything apart.
His name was Naheed. He said a man he called Edric would arrive and
place anchors in the four corners of our world. One of these corners
is right across the hills. And so we waited and waited -"
"And one of our most honored citizens went mad,
because of all the waiting!" the other creature interrupted.
The horned man waved his hand. "He was already mad
before that. But ... yes ... maybe all the waiting contributed to the
progress of his condition. You see, he wanted to be the sole
protector of the area where the anchor needs to be placed."
Baldwin moved a few steps away from the horned man.
"This is not my problem. My ... our ... families need safe
passage to -"
"Yes, I know!" The horned man walked towards a
set of doors and opened them with one touch of his hand. He gestured
to Baldwin to enter. "Welcome to our council!"
Baldwin wanted to take a deep breath, but his lungs
froze.
He swallowed and breathed through the bunch of thin
tubes running into his mouth and down his throat. He straightened his
shoulders and entered a magnificent hall with crystal columns and
walls constantly transforming themselves through streams of bubbling
liquid rock cooling off and reappearing again through new cracks.
The members of the council all looked similar to the
horned man, only each one of their robes was of a different color.
The beings all sat at a large, glittering black table that formed a
half circle.
"Before all of you get excited," began the
horned man who had first talked to Baldwin."This is not him."
A long unified sigh filled the room.
Baldwin held up Arannamea's compass. "But he is on
his way!" He smiled reassuringly, although he still wasn't
looking forward to seeing Edric again.
Instantaneously, the big sigh changed into a delighted
murmur.
Baldwin again felt jealous of Edric, but this time not
because of Arannamea, but because of the happiness and hope the mere
mentioning of his impending arrival precipitated. A housecarl
being regarded as more important than an emperor, this irked him
tremendously. Actually, if it had been any other Varangian, it would
not have been so bad. But this particular one, who had confronted him
with this special brand of patronizing mercy, instead of swinging his
battle-axe at him and just getting it over with. Instead, he let him
live to witness the glory this impertinent housecarl would
bestow upon Teneo Mundus, and the love he would give to Arannamea.
Baldwin felt the hairs on his neck stand up in fear and
fascination: Edric was several steps ahead of everyone else. It
didn't matter to Baldwin whether Edric was born with this talent, or
whether Naheed's alchemy had something to do with it. He saw Edric
for who he really was, someone who was more than a human, and he knew
that in order to later show the Varangian his place, he himself would
have to become more than an emperor.
After the council had determined that they wanted to
look at the compass every other day to see how close Edric was, they
sent Baldwin back to the others.
He returned late, and Arannamea, Nora, Tymon and Egor
were already sleeping. Exhausted, he lay down next to Arannamea and
fell asleep immediately.
Baldwin was awoken many hours later by soft laughter,
whispering voices and the fluttering of many tiny wings.
He opened his eyes, and he saw Nora making love with
Tymon and Egor. He sat up immediately, but remained at the edge of
his and Arannamea's bed.
He looked beside him, but she wasn't there. "Mea,
why is Nora not with child yet?" He walked over to the lovers
and closed the curtain around their bed. "It seems to me that
neither Tymon nor Egor are missing any opportunity to -"
"There are certain herbs and spices, Baldwin."
Arannamea stood by the only oval, crystal-framed window that offered
a panoramic view of a mountainous area covered in black soot and
burnt rock. She turned around to him a little bit too fast, and the
winged insects needed a moment to re-arrange themselves. "But I
doubt that we can delay it much longer."
Baldwin stared at a shimmering, nearly transparent wing
which was coming to rest at the center of one of Arannamea's breasts.
He felt the ground shake slightly, and he was happy that
it was a real earthquake - and not his desire for her playing a trick
on him.
He slowly approached her.
"This place is falling apart," Arannamea said,
looking straight into Baldwin's eyes.
In the next moment, his hands gently stroked back her
hair, and his lips were pressed on hers.
One long, desperate kiss was all he wanted, and he was
delighted and shocked at the same time when she clutched her fingers
around the edges of the scales on his back to pull him closer.
She made this one kiss even stronger and more desperate
than he had intended it to be.
For a fraction of a second, he wondered how he could
remove the scales tied to his hips, but he quickly discarded this
thought.
"I would be a fool to cling to the thought that
Edric hasn't been with someone else during all those hundreds of
years," she whispered. "He might still love me, but he
might also think that I am dead."
Baldwin took a step back.
He noticed that their embrace had killed a few of the
insects: wings twirled lifelessly down to the ground, and his
protective scales had spots of colorful dust on them. "I do not
want to be merely someone else. I want to be the one who carries your
heart for all eternity."
Without a pope telling him what to do, and without being
sure whether God's voice would even be able to reach him in this
world so far away, he had to rely on his own senses telling him what
the right thing to do was.
She closed her fingers around his hand. "I truly
feel blessed to be loved by two wonderful men. The odds seem to be in
your favor, but I can only be sure when I see Edric again."
Baldwin gently moved away from her.
He turned towards the window, glowering at the scorched
bleakness outside. "Well, we cannot cross the area beyond the
hills. Madness struck a man who built a fortress there, and he
commanded his descendants to continue to attack this realm here.
Naheed has told the rulers of this realm that Edric would come and
keep this world from falling apart. Unfortunately, Naheed did not
take into account that his champion could be delayed, and some people
are apparently better at waiting than others."
Arannamea let go of his hand. "We need to wait
here? Until Edric comes by?" She vehemently shook her head. "We
cannot wait. Edric needs the compass."
Baldwin furrowed his eyebrows. "The Stone of
Babylon will guide him, will it not?"
She became more and more distraught. "According to
Naheed, the compass is part of the Stone of Babylon. It shows him
where to install the anchors."
Baldwin scoffed. "I see." He started to think
about a way to safely cross the other kingdom, but the result of one
of their attacks was right in front of his eyes in the shape of a
burned stretch of land reaching all the way up to the horizon.
And then he remembered the voice of the beautiful woman
he saw right after he had killed the beast in New Constantinople. Are
you Edric?
"Whoever sits in the fortress beyond the hills does
not know who I am ..." He glanced at Arannamea. "I could
pretend to be Edric."
She had trouble following him. "To do what? They
will notice that you do not possess the anchors."
He stiffened his lips. "I can kill the ones in the
fortress. After all these years, I doubt there are many of them left.
It might be just one person, but he or she is the only one who stands
in the way of making peace. The council here is already secretly
negotiating with a few inhabitants of the fortress."
Reluctantly, he concluded that in order to properly impersonate
Edric, he would have to learn as much about him as possible: "Mea,
I need you to tell me everything you can remember about him."
She uttered a short, bitter laugh. "You look
emaciated. Edric always looked like he was enjoying life. And food."
Baldwin ran over to a table with several bowls filled
with simple baked goods sprinkled in sugary crystals.
He grabbed a large piece and tore a big bite out of it.
"I can enjoy life!" he mumbled.
He grimaced: the high sugar content of the food made his
teeth hurt. An insect that resembled a butterfly landed on his cheek
and began to clean off the sugar crystals around his mouth. Unnerved,
he waved with his free hand, swishing the animal away.
Walking toward him with measured steps, Arannamea
smiled.
She took the food away from him. "Do not try to
look like Edric. Learn how to be a Varangian."
*
Several days later, Baldwin was dropped off at a wooded
hill with a large flag on top of it that marked the beginning of the
fortress perimeter.
He had been brought here inside a wagon equipped with
life-support machines; he wasn't wearing his protective suit anymore.
Instead, he wore tight black pants, brown boots and an intricately
embroidered leather vest. His naked, muscular arms showed Anglo-Saxon
tattoos (the council had assured him that they would fade and go away
over time).
After Baldwin stepped out of the wagon, and took a deep
breath.
Clear air was streaming down from beyond the hill.
He felt exhilarated and tense at the same time, and when
a battle-axe was tied to his back, he felt weighed down as well.
The first steps up the hill were the worst: he thought
he would fall over backwards any minute and roll back down.
He reached the flag, and his gaze wandered across the
landscape beyond the hill.
It was picturesque, but its shape was also oddly
familiar. The rolling hills had small craters on them, overgrown with
moss.
Suddenly, the landscape expanded, and very far away it
lifted itself up in a high plume of fire and smoke.
And then he knew what it was: a gigantic version of the
beast he had killed right after waking up in Teneo Mundus.
For a moment, he regretted his decision to impersonate
Edric, and thought about turning around, but then he just continued,
hiking down the hill.
The path ended at one of the craters.
He expected a bunch of snake heads speeding towards him
(surreptitiously, his hand moved near the hilt of his battle-axe),
but it was long ropes whipping out and wrapping themselves around his
ankles and wrists.
"Who are you?" a deep voice asked.
Baldwin straightened his shoulders. "I am Edric!"
"Who are you?" the voice repeated in a more
menacing tone.
He licked his lips, trying to remember the formal
version of Edric's name. "I am ... Aethelric!"
Without warning, the ropes pulled him into the crater.
To his surprise, he found himself surrounded by armored
females. They all had long hair that was held together by rings made
out of snake scales. The women were humanoid, very small and robust,
but he noticed right away that they were seasoned in combat. Their
armor was covered in mud and soot.
Baldwin assumed it was from living inside the land-size
dragon. He knew it wasn't a dragon like the ones from the legends he
heard about as a boy; the smaller one he had killed didn't spit fire.
He was sure the people occupying the creature generated the scorching
fire.
He also sensed that they were acting under great duress.
He had to follow the women and then several equally
armored, equally small and robust men, mostly crawling through the
stinking innards of the beast, until they reached another crater. One
of the men stepped forward, and he gestured to Baldwin to kneel so
that he could whisper something in his ear.
"Kill him, Edric," the man breathed into
Baldwin's ear.
Without moving a muscle in his face, Baldwin gazed at
the man for a moment, then climbed back out of the crater.
He stood on what seemed to be another hill (but he knew
better now), and saw that the enormous end of the beast's tail was
wrapped around a magnificent white fortress with magnificent towers
whose roofs shimmered in the sun.
The gate of the main entrance to the fortress flew open,
and a beautiful family of four, tall and slender and exquisitely
dressed, walked out.
The husband ran towards Baldwin, and when he reached
him, he threw himself to his feet. "Finally, you have arrived.
We have been waiting for you for so long."
The husband was obviously the descendant of the citizen
who had gone mad.
He kissed Baldwin's hands before shaking them vehemently
in dog-like obedience. "My name is Beziret."
Baldwin secretly smirked: Of course! The mad citizen
told his descendants to name their sons after Edric's son Berhtred!
He further assumed that, over time, the name had gotten
corrupted - just like the information Naheed had given to the citizen
of the burned lands beyond the monster-hills.
With much concern, he stared ahead of him, at the rest
of the family.
Beziret smiled at Baldwin. "I thought you were
younger ..."
"It took me longer to arrive than I expected,"
Baldwin said weakly, but the other man seemed satisfied.
The wax-like features of the two children and the wife
didn't change, and their bodies were slightly twisted as if they were
being held upright by something other than their own strength.
Everything in his mind told him to leave this dangerous
place as quickly as possible, but he had a task to fulfill. He wanted
to do the swift one-handed untying of the battle-axe Arannamea had
shown him. However, unlike Edric, he hadn't practiced this move since
his early childhood, and killing Beziret right then and there wasn't
an option.
Beziret dragged Baldwin down the hill, and as they
passed by the wife and children, Baldwin saw that three creatures
like the ones he had killed in the forest were wearing the skins of
Beziret's dead family like whole-body suits. Their feet were bigger,
so their bloodied heels stuck out of the torn skins. The creatures
were all chained to one of the walls of the entryway, and they,
almost inaudibly, moaned in pain.
The terrible sights and sounds brought Baldwin close to
fainting, and he had to remind himself to take measured breaths.
He followed Beziret into the Great Hall of the fortress.
The entire room was equipped with all kinds of automatic
weapons and traps; some looked very old and rusty, while others
seemed to have been installed just a few days ago.
Bodies in various stages of decay clung to several of
the deadly machines.
He couldn't help but notice the morbid aesthetics with
which the weapons had connected themselves with the corpses: a heart
that had been crushed and thrust out of a rib cage sat like a wilted
flower on the chest of a woman who had just recently perished. There
was a scroll in her hand, and Baldwin assumed that she had been one
of the court members negotiating with the other realm.
It didn't matter much.
By now, Baldwin was already sure that he wouldn't leave
this place alive - but he was also sure that he would take Beziret
with him.
They continued to a more private area deep within the
fortress, and this room was even more shocking: it was decorated with
centuries-old depictions of what Beziret and his predecessors thought
Edric would look like. Battle-axes in all shapes and sizes hung from
the walls or leaned in corners as if they were religious
paraphernalia.
Beziret flung his arms around Baldwin. "Are you
proud of us?"
Baldwin just wanted to wring the other man's neck, but
he was held back by the prospect of one of the machines killing him
before he could finish his task. "Yes. I am very proud."
Beziret took a step back, opened a secret door and
pointed down a staircase. "We shouldn't waste any more time. I
will show you where you have to place the first anchor."
The space Beziret led him into was extremely small, and
there was a hole in the ground, painted with a golden rim.
Baldwin leaned against a wall to check whether any of
the machines were hidden in it.
He couldn't feel anything, so he didn't hesitate: with
full force, he bashed Beziret's head against the opposite wall. He
heard the other man's nose crack, and he saw bright blood gushing
down the other man's luxurious overcoat.
Beziret started to squeal loudly.
This sound, which Baldwin was only used hearing from
animals about to be slaughtered, startled him considerably.
He saw Beziret scrambling back up the narrow staircase,
and focusing back on the task, he quickly untied his battle-axe. He
chopped at Beziret's leg, and one of the blades sliced into the other
man's calf, splitting the leg open up to the knee.
Screaming even louder, Beziret made it to a lever near
his bed and pulled it. He crawled onto the bed.
Baldwin saw that the room transformed into one of the
deadly machines, and he expected the bed was the only safe place. He
jumped onto the bed as the other man pulled a battle-axe from
underneath the mattress.
However, it wasn't a real weapon, just a relic, and its
blade shattered on Baldwin's chest.
Baldwin had enough trouble, just keeping his balance on
the soft bed, and he thrust one of the blades of his axe into
Beziret's shoulder.
The other man was stunned for a moment, and Baldwin
quickly kicked the lever back with his foot.
The room stopped transforming.
Beziret slid off of the bed and crawled, with Baldwin's
axe stuck in his shoulder, into the hallway connecting his bedroom
with the Great Hall.
Baldwin stumbled after him and pulled the weapon out.
Sweat ran into his eyes, and he couldn't see well for a
moment.
It became clear to him that killing a man in battle and
assassinating one were two completely different things.
Beziret mustered all that remained of his strength, got
up and limped into the Great Hall.
Baldwin was right behind him.
He heard the machines being activated, and he hurled
himself in front of the other man.
Flat cages with spikes on the inside fell from the
ceiling, and Beziret tumbled to the ground. He fell in such a way
that his hip landed directly onto one of the blades of the
battle-axe, before the cage trapped him.
Baldwin heard the other man wail, but he had to protect
his neck and chest from the spikes rushing towards him.
He let go of the axe, and threw his right arm over his
chest and his left arm over his neck.
The spikes pinned his arms down; it was painful, but not
as much as he had expected: the spikes were rusty and crumbled quite
a bit.
Beziret glanced at Baldwin. "Why are you doing this
to me, Edric? I have been your faithful servant!" he sobbed.
Baldwin didn't answer.
He saw the creatures wearing the skins of Beziret's dead
wife and children.
They were talking to several other creatures who looked
like them.
Apparently, they had set each other free in the
meantime. The first three creatures got out of the skins and hugged
each other in great relief.
Baldwin hoped that they would also help him make a quick
end to Beziret, but the whole group just sat down and watched.
Baldwin tore his right arm away from the spikes, which
mainly broke off; parts of them crumbled down to the floor, other
parts were still in his arm.
He stuck his hand through the bars of his cage into the
cage that held Beziret in place. He moved his hand underneath Beziret
and grabbed the hilt of the battle-axe as strongly as he could. He
knew that there was a specific place on the upper thigh that if cut
into a man would bleed out just as quickly as if he was cut in the
neck.
Baldwin removed the blade from the Beziret's lower
abdomen and started to make small cuts into the other man's upper
thigh.
The other man fell slightly to his side, trying to see
what Baldwin was doing. "Edric!"
"Tell me, good man," Baldwin hissed angrily.
"When did your ancestors decide to move from waiting for someone
to worshiping him? Was it right after Naheed told them?"
Beziret moaned in pain. "No. It was when my
ancestor found out that you had to be more than human. The other
citizens always maintained that you are merely a man, but my ancestor
knew that for all your great achievements to be true, you must be a
god -" He got interrupted by the blade slicing deeper into his
thigh.
Baldwin stuck his fingers into Beziret's wound, and
after searching for a while he found the artery he needed to sever.
As he tried to cut it with the battle-axe, the artery
slipped away from him.
His arm was getting tired, but he didn't dare to use his
other arm. He decided to rest a bit. He saw other, human-like figures
carefully enter the room, along with several of the armored people
from inside the gigantic beast.
Together with the taller, nightmarish-looking creatures,
they started to disassemble the deadly machines, and they brought in
tables, candles, dinnerware and all kinds of other nice things for a
festive banquet.
It became clear to Baldwin that the members of Beziret's
court wanted to celebrate his imminent death, but for whatever reason
they didn't want to take an active part in it.
Beziret drifted in and out of consciousness. "Edric
... you are a god, are you not?" he muttered deliriously.
"You shall not worship false gods," Baldwin
recited.
"Who are the true gods then?" the dying man
asked.
Baldwin burrowed his hand again into Beziret's wound.
"There is only one true God." He glanced around. "But
I believe He has discarded this world here."
He got a hold of the artery again, and this time he
decided to simply rip it apart. He began to yank on it.
Beziret moaned more loudly again. "Edric ... Kill
me, if you must, but promise me that you will place the anchor -"
"I do not possess the anchors!" Baldwin
growled. "And I am not Edric." He ripped the artery out of
Beziret's wound.
Almost instantaneously, both men were engulfed in blood.
The other man slowly blinked at Baldwin. "Who are
you?"
Everyone else in the room stopped with what they were
doing, and they listened closely.
Exhausted, Baldwin pulled his hand away from the
hemorrhaging wound. "I am Baldwin, emperor of Constantinople."
Beziret died, and the newly freed people celebrated
exuberantly.
They offered Baldwin to become their king, but he
quickly refused.
Stepping outside the fortress, Baldwin saw that the
gigantic beast was about to perish as its involuntary inhabitants
were cutting it apart from the inside out.
Soon, its body parts blended itself into the landscape
as a row of softly rolling hills. And he knew that he and the group
under his protection would be safe to continue their journey.
*
Arannamea and the others had waited in another wagon
equipped with life-support machines, near a small forested area.
After they had all walked for a while, Baldwin changed
back into his underpants and armor, and the blood-drenched vest,
pants and boots were burned.
As they continued their way to the Old Tower, Tymon and
Egor asked Baldwin what had taken so long, but Arannamea sensed that
he was deeply disturbed by whatever had happened. She gestured to
them to not insist on finding out what the knight had seen.
Their hike through the monster-hills was therefore
unusually quiet.
Even Chara walked next to Baldwin, often holding his
hand, without saying a word.
