David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Thomas could not answer. His Guide did not permit him to speak. Karthenor’s questions were not meant to elicit a response, only to torment.

“Perhaps you are curious where we’re going? We’ve located Maggie. She’s jumped off the gated worlds, and we’ve run her aground in the Carina Galazy. She believes she is safe, beyond the range of dronon ships. But we have a surprise for her.”

Karthenor smiled. “Here, have a seat on the airbike, in back. You can ride with me.”

Thomas could think about running, could dream of knocking his captors in the head and darting into the jungle, but the Guide would not let him. He could not move a muscle without Karthenor’s command.

So he mounted the bike behind Karthenor and sat like a bag of parsnips on the airbike as it skipped along the ground to a distant world gate.

So, Thomas’s betrayal would bear fruit. Thomas abhorred the thought. He wished he could kill Karthenor. Running from the man would do no good. He had to fight.

Yet the Guide held Thomas prisoner in his own body. Perhaps that was the greatest torture of all, to sit behind Karthenor, smelling the scent of the man’s dark robes, while Thomas imagined how he could unclasp his hands, reach up, and throttle Karthenor.

Thomas struggled to control one hand; he needed but squeeze with two fingers. He concentrated till sweat poured from his brow, and his whole body trembled. All during the two-hour trip to the world gate, he fought, then wrestled even harder as the airbikes carried them through the portal between worlds.

Thomas did not understand the gates. He knew that for a moment he became incorporeal. The tiniest fragments of his body were somehow tossed through a hole in time and space, so they landed on a far world.

Thomas hoped that in that moment of travel, he would be free, he would be able to lift his hands and strangle Karthenor. Or perhaps he would stick his hand in Karthenor’s robe and draw the weapon this evil lord had secreted there. Thomas knew little about guns but he had no doubt that the bulge he felt in Karthenor’ s chest holster carried something deadly.

Still, when they passed between worlds, Thomas could not move.

On Tremonthin they zipped over hills green with a stubby growth of grass, a dismal land of rain and clouds. Oak trees sat in groves in the distance, until at last Karthenor found some muddy roads, rutted from carriage tracks.

Karthenor and his cohorts seemed pleased by this discovery, and they followed the course of the road, whipping past carriages and oxcarts. The locals were much like people from Thomas’s home-plain folks in simple cloth of their own making, many wearing swords. They passed stone houses with thatched roofs, screamed through the narrow streets of towns.

For hours their journey dragged, as daylight waned.

The locals were shocked at the sight of the airbikes, and many shouted and pointed.

It was not the ignorant wailing of those who believed they saw demons-as would have accompanied their appearance on Thomas’s own home world. Instead, the airbikes caused outrage. By riding them, Thomas’s captors proved then were criminals, and many shouted, “Out, get out of here with those things!”

Some locals tossed rocks as Karthenor passed, and late in the evening, when a rock finally connected lightly with Karthenor’s shoulder, the Lord spun his airbike around and confronted the man, a simple farmer with long yellow hair who’d been herding a flock of sheep down a narrow mountain road. Up above them, a tiny stone home sat, smoke coming up from its chimney.

The man stood his ground, holding a shepherd’s crook up as if it were a quarterstaff. “Off with you, man!” the shepherd yelled, but fear showed in his eyes. “Look what you’ve done! Your damned machines have scattered my sheep!” Indeed, a dozen muddy ewes leapt up the hillside, running even now.

Karthenor offered no word of apology. Instead, he simply breathed angrily, “You hit me!”

The shepherd looked away guiltily. “Sorry,” came a lame apology.

“Indeed, you shall be,” Karthenor raged, his voice suddenly loud. He reached into his robe, pulled his gun. Thomas could not stop him. As Karthenor drew his weapon and aimed, Thomas struggled to move his hand, to unclasp his fingers and spoil the man’s aim. But Karthenor had ordered Thomas to hold on earlier in the day. The Guide allowed nothing more.

As Karthenor took aim, the shepherd’s mouth opened in an O of surprise, and his eyes grew wide. Perhaps he was too frightened to run, for he merely stood.

Thomas trembled with the effort to unlock his fingers. His chest heaved, and his breath came ragged.

Almost, Thomas imagined he was able to unlock his fingers: almost he thought he’d managed to open them.

Then the weapon discharged. It made an odd plunking noise, like a stone dropping cleanly into water, and the shepherd’s right leg collapsed. Thomas saw no blood, heard no cracking of bones. Yet it seemed obvious the bones of the shepherd’s legs had shattered in a dozen places, for when the shepherd fell, the leg twisted grotesquely.

The shepherd cried out in pain and dropped face up in the muddy road. Karthenor whispered to Thomas, “Let go of me. I have a matter to attend.”

Thomas released his grip, sat astride the airbike. By now, Karthenor’s cronies, who had fallen behind, suddenly rounded a bend a quarter mile back.

Up a couple hundred yards ahead, at the little farmhouse, a young woman opened the door, stood looking down the hill, a wailing child in her arms. She bounced the toddler on one hip, gazing down at Karthenor curiously.

Thomas realized that front her vantage, she could not see the farmer lying in the road. A small slope obscured her view.

Karthenor stood, stretched his muscles, looked about. This was a lonely stretch of road, miles from the nearest town. The sun was nearly down, and shadows crept along the hillside.

“Madam, could we trouble you for some hospitality, tonight?” Karthenor called up the hill. “We need a place to sleep.”

The woman was obviously frightened. Her face paled, and she looked about. “I–I suppose I could get you some food. There’s room in the shed outback. Have you seen my husband? I thought I heard him yell.”

Karthenor pointed over the ridge. “Your husband is chasing sheep. Seems they got away.”

She nodded uncertainly. She had full breasts, a narrow waist. Her thin yellow cotton dress was worn from too much use. The child screamed and twisted in her arms, leaning his head back to nurse.

Karthenor studied her approvingly, licked his lips, then he and his men advanced.

Thomas was not shocked at what happened next. Dismayed, yes, but not shocked. It was to be expected from men like Karthenor.

Thomas had heard of such evils in his lifetime.

Karthenor showed him nothing new.

Yet afterward, Thomas was horrified to the core of his soul. He was not horrified by what Karthenor did, but by the way that Karthenor used him-Thomas-used his hands to do his dirty work.

When Karthenor and his men raped the young mother, Karthenor ordered Thomas first to hold her down. She submitted to the indignities Karthenor heaped upon her, biding her time, hoping her husband would save her.

But just as the first of Karthenor’s men nearly finished, the woman’s wounded husband began to scratch at the door and call for help. He must have regained consciousness, dragged himself up hill on his elbows.

Karthenor opened the door, pulled the shepherd in, and propped him in a corner. The fellow’s face was a mask of pain and horror, scratched by briars, smeared with grime. He lay, breathing shallowly, unable to move or fight, and his mind retreated from the scene before him, till sometime in the night, he died.