Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

Braylar continued staring straight ahead, fixated on a distant point or image that no one else could see. He breathed in and out slowly, and with his noose tattoo laid bare, I could see it ripple on his throat as he swallowed, and then watched him flinch, pained. As we all waited to see what he was about to say, he closed his eyes, nostrils flaring as he let out a deep breath, and I instantly recognized the expression, the same that he’d had when his haunting threatened to overwhelm him in the steppe.

Eyes still closed, he said, “His name was Dargus. It is a strange thing, to know someone’s name when you have never seen his face.”

Vendurro looked from Hewspear to me and back to the captain again. “His name, Cap? He stopped to make an introduction before you two got to scrapping?”

Braylar’s eyes remained closed, and the lids twitched, and the scars above his lip did the same. “I heard it. In his memories. I’ve seen and felt more of his than usual. Too many. So very many.” The chains rattled as he lifted Bloodsounder up and laid the weapon on the table. “Long before the captain of the guard set foot in a temple, he was part of a mercenary company. Young. He joined young. He was the last of four brothers, tanners, the lot of them. But that wasn’t the life he wanted. So he signed on with a company that came through. This was…” The eyelids flickered again. “Thirty years ago? More? Hard to say. The Syldoon and Anjurians were at war when he joined. That does little to date a thing-until this recent truce, we have been warring for longer than any man alive.

“The Anjurians, having no standing army, and unable to maintain forces for extended periods, have often resorted to mercenaries. That is their way. But two years in, there was a truce. The sellswords hoped it would be temporary, as these things often are. But it was not so in this case. It was an outbreak.”

Braylar tilted his head. “Was this the plague of your youth, Hew?” He asked this as if Hewspear weren’t even in the room to answer, as if he were speaking to only a memory or shade of his comrade.

Hewspear sat down slowly, grunting, and then laid his large hands flat on the table and leaned back in his chair. “I cannot say, Captain. I cannot say.” Though his eyes were intent on the younger man in front of him, he spoke quietly, as if he didn’t expect Braylar to truly hear him either. Vendurro looked at me questioningly but I had no answers of any kind and only shrugged.

“It does not matter, yes? All that matters, it was an extended truce. And what happened is what almost always happens in such a case. A large group of armed men who have no other vocation, and no legitimate means of using their talents without an opportunity for sanctioned bloodletting, resort to banditry. They terrorized the countryside, just as unemployed sellswords have done since the dawn of mercenaries.

“Our captain who was no captain yet, only a young solider, he went along with the crew. I… feel that he had reservations. But along he went. They raided and pillaged, striking high and lowborn with equal fervor, no less a plague than the ones that have sprung up to ravage the world from time to time, practically a violent force of nature. Local militias couldn’t hope to capture and punish all such crews. They were everywhere, more experienced at war, and remorseless. So the company continued thieving and eliminating any who opposed them. And Dargus robbed and raped with the rest of them, waiting for true war to break out again, to give them some real purpose.”

Vendurro said, “Cap… are you, that is…” but stopped himself when Hewspear raised a hand.

Braylar continued, oblivious, running his fingers across the chains of the flail, lifting the links off the table, letting them fall back. “They could not assault any large strongholds-that is, they could have, but laying siege was nowhere in their plan. Hit a place hard, take what they could, and move on. Occasionally, they offered their services as protectors to defenseless villages as well, pledging to fight off any other roving bandits, but at a steep price.

“At one such village, the elders were resisting them. Had they been foolish enough to expect clemency, or rescue from some quarter? I can’t say. But they told the company to leave. They needed no protection. The mercenary captain, he laughed, and ordered a sellsword to kill one of the captive villagers. Which he did. That was not a good death.

“The elder went ashen, but still did not relent. The captain grew impatient, and ordered Dargus to kill the captive he was holding. A girl. No older than a tenyear.” The twitching lip and eyelids. “Dargus looked at the elder, praying he would see reason, agree to terms, but the man’s lips might as well have been nailed together. The captain swore, told him to do it, and Dargus didn’t want to. Wished he had never left the filthy stink of the tanners for adventure in the wide world. But he had been given an order in front of the rest of the crew, and he knew if he failed, his would be the next throat opened by a dagger.”

I couldn’t imagine what it was like to experience these memories. And was exceptionally grateful I would never find out.

“The girl, she started struggling, squealing and crying, but Dargus tightened his grip, still hoping the foolish elder would speak. When he did not, Dargus closed his eyes and tried to draw his dagger across the girl’s exposed throat quickly, to just be done with it. But the girl had been growing wild in her efforts to escape, and was wriggling everywhere as she screamed, so the blade mostly sliced the bottom of her jaw, which only made her scream all the louder. The captain told Dargus to finish the job as he ordered another captive brought forward. Dargus did then, slashed twice to be sure it was done. The girl went limp in his arms, and fell to the floor of the hearth when released.”

Braylar lifted one of the flail heads up a few inches off the table, turning the spiked and tormented Deserter God visage over to inspect its eyeless face. It was still bizarre to see a weapon designed to spill human blood shaped in likeness of the gods who had abandoned humanity to whatever ills might befall it. Was Bloodsounder some instrument of punishment the Deserters had left behind to torment us? To remind us of our proclivity for murdering each other? Or perhaps that was what had convinced them to leave us in the first place a millennium ago: men killing children, innocents, even other armed men. Murder and still more of it. Maybe that was why they had abandoned us and erected the Godveil in their wake to prevent us from following. We were simply that damaged and hopeless.

Braylar continued, “The elder, sensing too late that his resistance would only end in more executions, finally did acquiesce then, tears streaming down his face. But too late for the girl. And too late for Dargus. He followed the orders after that, but hated himself for doing so, and looked for the right time to slip away in the night. And with every dawn he failed to do so, he hated himself all the more. But he swore to himself, even if he was too much of a coward to leave, he would never be such a cretin to do such an awful deed again.”

Braylar’s face tightened, as if he were struggling to either understand the flood of memories, or resist them. “The pillaging and extortion continued for many months, until the company was robbing a temple. A temple of Truth. They had the underpriest at sword point, asking where they had hidden the wealth. Braziers, candlesticks, urns, whatever might have been worth something, but especially gold or jewels. The underpriest swore they had none, but the captain was convinced he was lying. And so he resorted to his familiar tactics once more. He ordered some men to bring initiates in, Dargus one of them.