The Beginning
THE BEGINING
CAHIR
The fog was dense, making it hard to see anything among the thick trees. We proceeded slowly and cautiously through the dense lying fog. It was freezing. Our thick cloaks barely kept the cold out — so cold that you could see every exhale. The steam rising from our mounts’ hindquarters.
The silence was broken only by the jingle of the skulls tied to our horses and the sound of their hooves on the ground.
Just before we were to arrive at the village, I held up my hand to my brothers.
Something was wrong. Pushing the animal skull that we all wore to protect our identities to the top of my head, I tilted my head, trying to figure out what had me spooked.
The smell of smoke was heavy in the air, adding to the heavy fog.
“What’s got you troubled brother?” Cai murmurs.
I turned to look over my shoulder at the men that I call my brothers.
Checking on them. They were my responsibility.
We weren’t blood brothers, but we’d been brought up as brothers to serve our Queen.
We were her private army, one that answered only to her.
She used us to threaten and coerce those that didn’t want to follow her in any way we wanted.
She didn’t care how much blood was shed to ensure that she kept her position of power.
There was no way for us to be free of her.
We were indebted to her from the first moment she took us from the streets until the day we died.
When we did, she’d replace us just as quickly.
I knew for a fact that she had several groups like ours.
After us came her Wraiths. Where we were to encourage people to keep her in charge, they were there to clean up after us to ensure that nothing came back to touch our queen.
The Wraiths were known as the Queen’s Wraiths.
Whereas we wore skulls to protect our identities, they wore red masks. I knew that the team of four wraiths followed us just like I knew they’d wait in the trees until we were done with what we’d been tasked to do.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Silas echoed quietly, patting his steed as it stamped its feet, impatient to be moving.
He was right. I hadn’t liked the orders we’d been given last night — that a threat lived in the village, and we were to find out who by any means necessary.
It made little sense. Of all the villages, this was one that I knew was loyal to our queen. That a traitor lived here just didn’t seem to fit.
“What do you want to do?” queried Cai.
Cai was the youngest in our group and the most sensitive of us all. He hated what we had to do, and often we’d leave him on watch so that he didn’t have to kill or maim anyone. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t deadly. He was, we’d all been trained and tortured the same way.
Knowing that, we couldn’t stay here, not with the wraiths following us. If we didn’t do our job, they’d report back, and it wouldn’t be good for my brothers if that happened.
“We have no choice but to continue,” I stated. Tapping my heels to my horse’s sides, we inched forward only to come to a stop just within the tree line, staring in horror at the carnage laid out in front of us.
Houses still smouldered, dead bodies lay around, and it looked to be the entire village. But what filled me with fury was the sight of the children tied to poles fitted in the ground, their throats slit; some just babes.
From behind us, there’s the sound of gagging. Turning around, I find the Wraiths behind us. With their masks pushed up onto the tops of their heads. I was surprised at how young they were. They were barely in their teens.
But I shouldn’t have been surprised because my brothers and I were in our early teens the first time we’d been sent out. We were now in our early twenties, and it still surprised me that we were alive, living the life we did.
Catching the eye of the one that I knew to be the leader, I motioned him forward.
We didn’t usually speak to one another on missions as our jobs were very different and our queen kept us in separate quarters.
When he’d manoeuvred his mount next to mine, I spoke, “Something’s happened. This isn’t right. Wait here while we go look. Don’t follow until I know more. I’ll come back if there is something to clean up.”
Young as he was, he still made me wait for his answer, turning to look over the carnage before us. He nodded his agreement. “We’ll wait.” Turning his horse, he goes back to his brothers.
Motioning to mine, “Let’s go.”
Pulling our skull masks down over our faces, we moved as one out of the trees, past the children and into the village proper.
Nobody had been left alive. The brutality of the killing was laid bare for all to see.
Every hut had been torched, and all the livestock killed.
It seemed not a single soul made it out alive.
Knowing there wasn’t anything left for us to do, we turned our mounts to go back through the village. Cai offered a prayer to those who had lost their lives. It was going to be a long night for us. We’d build a pyre and ensure that they left this world the right way.
We heard it as we were walking back, and we halted. The sound of a newborn cry.
It came from behind one of the burnt our huts. Following the sound, we came upon an old crone, holding a screaming and squalling baby cut from its dead mother’s womb.
The crone looked up at our approach and held up a blood-soaked hand that still clutched the knife she’d used to remove the infant.
“Stop,” Her voice is filled with rage as she rants, “don’t you think you have done enough. Not only have you killed all my people but you’ve come back for more?”
I was confused. “Crone, we haven’t been here. This is the first we’ve seen of this. What happened?”
She cackled, wrapping the baby tighter in the bit of rag she’d torn off her skirt. Her laughter was so out of place amongst the wreckage of her people that it scraped along my spine. A shiver ran through me at the heartache in its echo and the anguish in her voice as she berated us.
“Now you lie as well. You did this, men in skulls. At the behest of your queen. You did this to a village that has caused no trouble, we’ve been loyal and you killed us for it.”
None of this was making any sense, the only thing was if the queen had sent out another team to do this but while she was vengeful, spoilt and didn’t always think, this was not something she would do if she wanted to keep her rule.
“Old woman, let us help you,” Cai offered, making as if to dismount from his horse.
Only to jerk to a stop when she stood up, threatening him with the knife she’s holding, her white hair red with blood from a head wound that was still bleeding, the infant in her arms screaming, but she ignored it all.
“I curse you,” she uttered. Grief and despair ravaged her face as she screamed at us.
“I curse you to lose those that you love so that you may feel the agony that I have felt a thousand times over. By the blood of my dead daughter and the life of my granddaughter I curse you to feel the pain of loss until you are bound to the one that makes you forget and eases your pain. Only then will you be allowed peace.”
A loud, ominous rumble of thunder echoed around us as lightning cracked, lighting up the darkness and splitting open a tree, starting another fire, startling us all.
Our attention taken by what was happening around us, when I next looked back to where the old woman and infant had been, shewas gone.
Her back to us as she stumbled, walking away from us and the devastation of her village.
Thunder rumbled ominously again; the horses shifted restlessly under us.
Cai starts another prayer and gets off his horse, going to the old woman’s daughter. He carefully gathers her up and walks with her to the centre of the village, where we’d build the pyre.
Stopping in surprise to find the Wraiths already there, collecting what wood they could to build the pyre.
Nodding at them, we left them to it. Tying the horses up, we started the grim task of gathering the dead.
Hours later, seven of us stood back as the eighth lit the pyre and set it alight.
None of us knew how much that night would affect us all.
If we had, we may have taken the time to track the crone and her granddaughter down, but it wouldn’t be until years later that we’d know what her curse meant for us.
It seemed senseless to split up, so it was that the eight of us rode back to the queen’s stronghold. We were a day away when we realised nothing was as it should be.
Intuition told me we needed to get rid of our disguises.
Nobody, including the Wraiths, balked when I ordered them removed and buried.
It was just as well, because when we entered the stronghold, it was in chaos.
Our dead queen and her guards on spikes in the centre of the stronghold for all to see and know that there was now a new reigning king.
Knowing that we wouldn’t live long if someone should realise who we were, we stocked up on as much as we could and rode out there as quickly as we’d arrived.
Making camp that night, we discussed what to do. The Wraiths were still young, and I worried about them, but their leader, Ivor, seemed to have it together.
“What are you going to do?” I questioned him.
“We’ll keep moving until we find somewhere that we like and we’ll settle for as long as we can, probably hire ourselves out to make coin. It’s all we know how to do.”
It was what I’d do, so we left it at that.
The next morning found us mounted and ready to move out. Walking my mount closer to Ivor, I held out my right arm for a warrior’s farewell. Clasping hands to elbows, left hand across our chests.
“Farewell little brother, god speed until we meet again.”
“Farewell to you, brother.”
Ivor took his Wraiths one way, and I took my Skulls the other, never realising how our lives would remain intertwined over centuries.