-From Canticles: 2:15-16
THIRTEEN MONTHS AGO...
“This payday better be good,” Scarlett said for the umpteenth time.
She had one of her many knives out, trying to seem cool and collected by trimming her nails.
Rufus knew better though.
She looked out from under the bangs of her short cropped black hair, keeping an eye on both banks of the winding river they were sailing up, and her tail lashed like a startled cat’s.
She was a Belmaian, a fiendkin, her short horns slightly curved upwards just above her full eyebrows. Her dark red skin had only gotten darker the farther north they had gone, eventually going purple. Like all Belmaians, the whites of her eyes were black, her pupils an unnatural dandelion yellow.
She had spent the first part of the journey gambling with the excavation team, but they had quickly chosen to exclude her from the practice as she won too often and none could figure out just how she was cheating them. The game didn't matter, she could even be brand new to it, she almost always won far more than she lost.
Rufus Bass sighed, rubbing his temples, knowing it would be another day of persistent headaches.
If they could just pick some other topic for once on this damn trip. He didn’t enjoy talking much, especially with his chronic headaches. It always seemed to make it worse.
That was the main reason he had taken this job. He had been cursed a few months back, and the symptoms had gotten progressively worse as time had gone on. It had happened when he had killed a python that had been eating up all the game around his cabin.
Of course I had to fry the damn thing up and eat it too. It hadn't been half bad at the time, but the next day his head had started pounding like he had spent too much time at Millies dockside tavern.
Just his luck to piss off some heathen god or some such. Rufus was pulled out of his throbbing thoughts by the dwarf who had hired the lot of them.
“My dear Miss Fischer, you have nothing to worry about,” Chuckled Rowan O’Bradán, running a beringed hand over his thick brown beard, puffing on his stubby pipe like a smokestack, the reek of it strong.
Too strong.
“No smoking!” Rufus admonished, head pounding harder as he fought down the frustration and took the pipe from the bloated scholar, throwing it into the river, his temper and the pain of his head getting the better of him.
The scholar started , blowing up like a balloon. “What! How dare-”
There it was again, that feeling. A creeping crawling being-stalked feeling. Rufus scanned the bank, tried to look through the murk of the swamp beneath the rafts. Just cause you can’t see nothing doesn’t mean it ain’t there. It was the fifth day he had been getting such feelings, and he didn't like them in the slightest.
Rufus silenced the flabby scholar with a glare and a significant look out into the swamp. He had told them that the leatherbacks could smell better than most dogs. What was worse, that feeling always was accompanied by a fresh assault on the inside of his skull by the curse. Sure enough he winced at its intensity, like burning nails getting driven into his ears.
Tok hissed contentedly.
Cicadas buzzed, competing for mates with their song. A mawfrog splashed as it jumped into the river, a fox dead in its jaws. A swampcat pounced into the water after it. Fin and fur making barely a ripple as it did. A birdcull spider silently wrapped up its latest catch with its silk cords thick as fishing line.
The swamp trembled with temperature. Bundled tight with humidity. Dripping with it on the first day of spring.
The Blackscale predator basked patiently, radiating back the same languid energy of the swamp. Almost completely at peace with his role.
Almost.
His meter-long sky blue tongue slid out, forks waving lazily. His nostrils flared slightly as he drew in the scent more completely.
Tovrik. He could smell the smoke of it.
The fat third genera and his fodder hirelings were approaching once more.
His eyes shifted, narrowing as the Smoothskin rafts came around the bend. Watching them through the cover of the shrubs and ferns. He hissed softly, making sure to keep his bright blue tongue mostly in his mouth. He didn’t need the color giving away his position.
He had been tracking the Smoothskins for days now.
It was easy.
Even the best of them, the guide, hadn’t yet realized they were being tracked. He did occasionally seem to get the feeling they were being watched, but that had yet to cause any noticeable change in their behavior.
Their rafts slowly slid by in the main flow of the river. Tok was off in a side channel. Watching. Waiting. Reserving his judgement for the time being.
The gleam of the pagan knight’s earthbone armor made his hackles rise. He recognized the device emblazoned across the chest plate. A sun with a Smoothskin face.
Butcher.
Joniusian.
He growled deep in his throat, sliding into the water. He dove under a large patch of duckweed and lily pads, slowly rising up through them to keep watch while hiding his charcoal black scales.
He lazily paddled himself after their raft. His big tail and hind legs doing most of the work. Barely making a ripple as he moved. There was no need to chase.
The Smoothskin generas and the fiendkin were allowed to travel the bayous and waterways of the Truescales. But only if they respected the law. Only if they didn’t delve into the sacred spaces. The eighth genera were always forgetting the dangers of encroaching on Truescale territory.
Forgetfulness is no excuse. It is a sign of either a weak or a treacherous mind.
The knight had a neonate with him. A squire. He turned to discuss something with the squire.
Tok looked closer. A deep rumbling growl that he had to suppress bubbled through his chest. He recognized the knight. Not just any Joniusian. One of the armor-clad murderers from his youth.
Tok had been so much smaller then. Barely more than a hatchling. Not like now.
The unending cycles of the planet and the turning of the seasons had been kinder to the Blackscale than they had to this knight.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The human had been crisper, more regimented, more… impressive. The fur under his snout had been what the Greenscales would call a dominant-black. Long and brushed. Precise as he once had been.
Now look at him. Weak as punky wood.
Scraggly whiskers, cowardly white. Ungroomed. Wrinkled. Bent. Age had syphoned some of the muscle mass away as well. Even the earthbone shell he wore into battle was rusted and battered.
It was like seeing one of the Truescales walking around with tattered skin left unshed.
Tok would have killed him back then. Wanted to kill him right now. Back then he had tracked the knight down. Killed his horse. Ate it. Then his mule. Ate that too. The knight had escaped, using the rapids of Szen-ish’ru’um with the rest of his pack of parasites.
And then the council had negotiated peace with the butchers of the unnamed. With the Smoothskins as a whole. Now, so long as they did not break the terms of that agreement, he could, and would, do nothing.
So he was required to be patient.
Soon. His Instinct had been counting the cycles, focusing on the changing of the season. The next duty he would have to fulfill.
Tok scowled.
Pondering.
He couldn’t be late for his other duties. The ones that would call to him and his honor. To protect and Provide. They were far more important than his own personal vengeance. So long as the Smoothskins did not break treaty. And he hungered for the taste of manflesh seeing that icon again. The rage inside hungered too.
His eyes shifted to the neonate, the squire, who was brushing the knight’s horse.
Kill!
Poetic justice. Without provocation.
Kill! His Instinct grew more insistent.
It was so tempting.
The river meandered through the cypress trees. A dragonfly hummed overhead. The fast-approaching change in his duty shifting his thoughts.
No. I will wait. It has already been this long now. A few days more changes nothing.
He sank back beneath the water as the guide searched, finding a thick grove of waterlilies to swim under. Each pad large enough to support a Greenscale’s weight. He surfaced among them, sanguine eyes and stygian scales blending amongst the shadows and red flowers of the massive plants.
Rowan blinked as he remembered that discussion from the outset of their journey, whispering, “Mr. Bass, forgive me.”
There was a strange birdlike cry, almost like a wailing woman or child, and they all looked out into the cypress trees wearily.
“It's gone…”
“What, Mr. Bass?”
Rufus shook his head, marveling at the immediate loss of headache. Did that thing get rid of it somehow? He wasn't sure how magic worked, but he didn't think that just a cry of an animal would do anything. Could it?
“Not sure… nothing good.” Rufus grumbled. He wanted to bite the dwarf he was so mad.
Bite? He rubbed his forehead, surprised to not find any sweat there. I have to get this curse fixed soon…
Rowan shrugged and brushed the front of his ridiculously over embroidered vest, clearly still a bit flustered.
“Don’t matter none, I’ll keep them nasty beasts away from you.” Radcliff interrupted, then he added, leering at the burglar, “especially you, love.”
He set down his ax, which he had been sharpening and placed a massive arm coated in ugly scars around Scarlett's waist. Her thin tail lashed as her yellow in black eyes narrowed.
Pike had been a privateer or a smuggler at some point, he spoke often about the wild things he saw, and the wild things he was yet to do.
“I'll bump off that old geezer and claim the whole empire for my own,” the ale had slopped down his rippling chest as he guzzled, before he burped “and then the real fun will start.”
Back in the present, the mercenary’s grin widened when she didn’t pull away, “Wouldn’t mind sharing a bedroll either, they are nocturnal after all, might be safer,” he whispered. “I could give you somethin sturdy to hold…” He brushed a stray hair from Scarlett’s face with his other hand.
“Now, Mr. Pike-”
“Go take a leap, Pike.” Scarlett said, and the big man pulled away with a curse, hand bleeding. Scarlet wiped a different knife clean on his leather jerkin before sliding it back into its sheath up her sleeve.
Rufus looked over his shoulder, getting that feeling that he was being watched again. It was worst at night, with the shadows and the strange magics of the swamp made you see things. He had gotten used to that though. None of the visions had turned out to be real yet.
His headache slammed back into place like a sledgehammer and he fought down a groan.
The others looked to be common smoothskin treasure hunters. Trespassers and poachers. Mostly eighth genera. Human. There was a female fiendkin, with her pointed tail and stubby horns. And a third genera. A Dwarf. A blubbery scholar. His fatty flesh would be greasy and delectable.
The female was approached by a hulking warrior. Quite large for a human. Scarred. Bronzed hide. The purple skinned female flashed a knife and he pulled away, holding a cut hand.
Idiots. If they weren’t unified, any potential conflict would be unsatisfying.
Slaughter.
True. Most things were hunts, not fights.
If they did go to the ruin he suspected, it would be easier to slaughter them all if they were pinned there anyway. He continued to trail them, looking out from under the lily pads that covered his skull.
He heard something then, on the wind.
The dwarf.
“Anyway my dear, as I was saying, you would do better to not trouble yourself. Our destination is quite a ways away from their cities, and the leatherbacks are quite backward in regards to the value of gold. Too simple minded to realize its worth. They just aren’t quite people you s-”
Tok sank beneath the surface. The guide had started turning to look. That, and he didn’t need to hear more.
Kill…
I will. In time.
He continued after them, but he kept his distance. In part to not spook his prey into fleeing. But also so that he wasn’t tempted to strike prematurely by the fat dwarfs words.
Move ahead. Send a message. He would follow custom to the letter. A penance for his temptation. It would also give him a chance to distract himself with other prey.
“Please refrain from injuring the mercenary, murderous trollop.”
Oh great… Rufus pressed his fingers harder against his pounding temples.
This time it was sir Jasper Pesce that spoke. He was a knight of Jonius the Hero, and apparently was on a quest for lost treasures that the leatherbacks had stolen some long time ago.
His salt and pepper beard and hair was bedraggled now after such a long journey, but the hate in his gaze was just as fierce.
It wasn’t surprising, he had fought in the crusade against the lizards twenty years ago, back when Rufus was still a lad. The knight grabbed Pike’s hand, muttering a prayer. Light flashed, and the wound was healed. He then turned to face all of them, helmet under one arm, mouth opening.
Wonderful, now this bastard is joining in. Rufus rolled his eyes, trying to put up a mental bulwark before the impending tirade.
“Sir! He was being uncouth!”
And of course, the runt too.
Like any Joniusian Knight, sir Jasper had a squire, Adam. The kid was something like sixteen, and would probably stand a good foot taller than his mentor once he was done growing, with a name like Finley or some crap like that. Rufus didn’t bother learning the boy’s name.
“Stow it!” He said, letting his own frustration show, letting it cut through the conversation instead of raising his voice, “Your workers and the horse show more sense than the lot of you.”
“You upstart peasant-”
“Shut the fuck up, sir, or did you not experience the crossing twenty years ago?” Rufus fought down a shiver, not wanting to think about the way the leatherbacks could traverse the waterways like crocs. Not wanting to think about how everyone he knew talked about how they skinned people alive, or roasted even women and children on spits, or… Stop it!
Rufus’s skull felt like it had been shattered, the pain still building as he frantically tried to stop thinking about the damn lizards.
The knight, to give him credit, did stare off into the distance. It was a look Rufus had seen before in veterans of that cursed campaign.
It was convincing enough that he wondered if the old blowhard actually did fight in the crusade. Most didn’t want to associate with that order after they had failed to drive out the savages.
“True.” The older man said finally. His fist clenched, gauntlet creaking, and the hate returned to his eyes, “Though I pray that we find just one to eradicate from this world. May Jonious grant this plea.”
Cicadas bussed loudly, the heat already oppressive even this early in the day. One of the kingbills rattled in the distance to be answered by its kin.
“As I was saying, Ms Scarlett,” The dwarf said, adjusting his glasses and breaking the awkward silence, “you should worry more about how we are going to cart all of the artifacts home after I finish writing up my discoveries!”
His beady dwarven eyes twinkled with a light that only the greed for gold could ever produce. His clan, clan Silversmelt, had financed the expedition, and clearly expected quite the windfall. The excitement also showed in how loudly he talked.
The guide rubbed his temples again. If I didn’t need the gold I’d have ditched these idiots long ago. Rufus didn’t like relying on the mercy of the cold blooded monsters that claimed the Great Swamp as theirs. And the burglar seemed to share his opinions.
“Would you keep it down! I swear someone is tracking us.” She hissed, glaring into the underbrush, “And nothing to worry about? The damn leatherbacks own this side of the swamp.” She put away her knife, sitting on one of the crates of supplies, crossing her arms.
“The heathens own nothing!” Pesce snarled.
“Be quiet.” Pike hissed, getting to his feet and lifting the ax. “What’s that mean then, Bass?” He pointed at a great pile of skulls. Hundreds of them. Just the skulls. They sat atop a great stone altar, an offering to the muggy mud filled swamp.
Rufus swallowed. “It’s a grave, and a marker.” I should leave. This isn’t right.
He lifted the pole he was using to move the raft, and pushed aside the wizardmoss. Big blocky letters had been carved into the stone. One word.
LEAVE.
That feeling of being watched was even stronger now.
But he needed the money.
His head throbbed painfully.
The amount the dwarf was promising would make him a noble overnight, and get him far away from this dank shithole. The money could get me to a mage that could get rid of this curse. He rubbed his head again.
Movement.
His eyes darted, hand going to his machete. Scales! He knew it was…
He blinked, and saw nothing.
“Well? What way do we go then?” Pike said with a grin. He was also one that wanted the money, and didn’t seem that bemused by the chiseled message.
“West” Rufus said, and he waved to the excavation team behind them, indicating that they should take the fork to the west.
PATREON! It is currently at 20 chapters ahead, and will always be at least 15 ahead! All money there goes right back into making the series as good as I can, and every cent of it is appreciated more than I can say.