by David A. Riley
in Issue 118, November 2021
When Blexinian III was in the tenth year of his reign as ruler of the Bithanian Empire he outlawed the pagan gods his ancestors had worshipped for countless generations, condemning them as demons and declaring the Sun was the one and only true god, whose symbol was the Circle of Gold. To enforce this law, he sent out armed emissaries whose mission was to destroy all false idols and ensure the people and their lords worshipped the one and only god.
On pain of death.
For many years thousands of emissaries traveled far and wide, none further nor wider than Galbresh Kalfordese, who was so steadfast in his sacred mission that even when his men died one by one, either fighting those stubborn enough to defend their idolatrous ways or through disease, he carried on.
Galbresh was a stubborn man who was determined to complete his task along the length and breadth of the northern borders, no matter how wild those areas were.
Even so, when villagers told him there was the idol of a powerful god inside their lord’s keep on the far side of the forest Galbresh wondered whether they were lying. He did not need to see the hunger on their faces or the fear in their deeply sunken eyes to understand their motives. As a warrior of the Brotherhood of the Sun, with the sigil of the Golden Circle on his chest, he was known to have a duty to destroy false gods.
His first forebodings came while he was riding towards the village when he passed more than a dozen bodies hanging in chains from gibbets along the edge of the well-worn path. The bodies were so decayed he was unable to tell whether they were men or women. Even their clothes were no more than stained tatters, hanging in rags from their rotted flesh.
Even for this far-flung corner of the Bithanian Empire the village was poor, little more than a squalid cluster of wattle and daub huts in need of repair. Although at this season the villagers must have only just harvested what crops there were in the surrounding fields, there was little in evidence when they settled down before a communal fire for their evening meal. Studying them with practiced eyes, Galbresh suspected most of their harvest had been set aside for their lord and master and that they would have to survive off whatever scraps were left.
When he asked if he could shelter in their village for the night, he was impressed that they offered him a warm welcome despite their poverty. But when they offered him better food than any of them were eating, he told them he would have the same hard crusts of black bread and meatless broth that they were eating.
“Tomorrow I shall ask your lord about this god,” he told the villagers when they had eaten. Years of travel had hardened his mind against the kind of injustice he saw here. It grieved him that tyrants like their lord still existed.
After a night’s sleep in the headman’s hut, surrounded by the snoring bodies of the man’s family, huddled together on straw mats, he was given a meagre but warm breakfast. It was then he heard that soldiers from Lord Drolgo would be coming that day to collect the harvest.
“What will you have left for the winter?” Galbresh asked.
At the apathetic shrug of the headman’s shoulders, the warrior gave a grim smile. His fist rested on the hilt of his sword as he gazed towards the narrow track that led into the forest – and waited.
And waited.
By midday, his patience was rewarded by the squeals of cartwheels coming along a path through the trees. Before long the head of a ragged procession of mule carts trundled into view. Clad in hauberks and slovenly jerkins, covered in stains, already drunk on coarse wine, a band of soldiers sat laughing and joking amongst themselves, two to each cart. The warrior’s thin lips tightened as he watched them approach, sour with disgust. Outnumbered though he was, his fingers itched to grasp his sword; he recognised the kind of men-at-arms these were. Like their lord, he had seen their kind too often. Overfed and lazy, they had grown complacent dealing with foes no more dangerous than unarmed peasants or half-starved brigands. To Galbresh, even though they wore a lord’s badge on their shabby tunics, they were no better than outlaws themselves – and he despised them for what they were.
With a sudden, ear-splitting cry of anger as the last of the carts emerged from the forest Galbresh charged. The nearest soldiers died beneath his sword before they knew they were being attacked. By the time this had soaked through the drink-dazed minds of the rest of them, and they started to clamber off their carts to defend themselves, Galbresh, his face glowing with the iridescent fire of his fury, was deep amongst them. He gave no quarter, hacking his way through their ranks with contemptuous ease. Within a few heartbeats the last of the soldiers, terrified at what had already befallen their comrades, threw down whatever weapons they had and tried to flee, but Galbresh, shouting like the blood-crazed berserker he had become, was too quick. His sword flashed this way, then that. First one, then the rest of the scattered band was battered into the blood-soaked earth, no mercy given.
When the crimson madness faded from his eyes, Galbresh leaned against his sword, pinioned through the body of the last soldier to fall. Breathing hard, he stared at the carnage strewn about him.
Some of the villagers gathered nearby, bewildered at what they had seen him do – and terrified at what might happen next.
With vengeful eyes, Galbresh turned to them; he wiped his sword on his victim’s tunic before thrusting it into its scabbard.
“You need not fear your lord again. His tyranny ends today,” he said.
Whether there was a false god inside the keep or not, he did not care. Lord Drolgo would be given the only reward a tyrant deserved.
Returning to his horse, Galbresh rode into the forest. Behind him the villagers watched him go, then hastily started to gather up swords from the fallen soldiers and ran after the warrior on foot, though he soon left them far behind as he urged his horse into a quick canter, eager to complete his task.
The forest was deep. Several hours later, though, he was on its far side and was riding across a grassy plain towards a looming range of bare hills. On the brow of the nearest bulged the dark, ill-favoured hulk of one of the ugliest castles Galbresh had ever seen. Surrounded by an old-fashioned palisade, its wooden posts blackened by years of ill weather, rough-hewn stones had been used to build a central gatehouse from which flew a pennant, black and green, with the image of a goat emblazoned on it. Galbresh saw that guards watched him from atop the gatehouse as he approached.
Perhaps attacking the tyrant in his stronghold, protected by his men-at-arms, was a foolhardy act, even for a seasoned warrior, but Galbresh’s blood was up; he would be damned if he’d turn back now. Besides, the ease with which he had killed those sent to collect the harvest had made him overconfident. But, if the rest of Drolgo’s men were no better, he would relish putting them to the sword, even though he knew he would have to offer them the chance to surrender first, as was only right. He was not a butcher after all.
“I’ve come to see Lord Drolgo,” he called as soon as he was within earshot.
The soldiers’ consternation was obvious. Should they shut the gate against him or let him through? But how could they turn away a well-armed warrior with the sigil of the Golden Circle on his chest? That was, after all, an imperial crest.
Galbresh was not surprised when the burly figure of their master jostled his way through his soldiers to stare down at him, hands clasping the rough stones of the gatehouse wall.
“What brings you to this God-forsaken spot,” Lord Drolgo called with a thin attempt at courteousness, though that was something Galbresh was sure the large, square-built, bearded man was unaccustomed to doing.
“I heard you house the idol of a false god,” Galbresh called back. “Am I welcome here to see this god?”
“Any warrior is welcome to my keep though there are no false gods here,” Drolgo shouted back.
Galbresh urged his horse forward beneath the gate’s portcullis as it was raised. Only a handful of men-at-arms (most, he now realised, must have been sent to collect the harvest) and some of the castle’s servants stared at him as he dismounted in the courtyard, though he rebuffed the offer from a stable lad to unstrap his armour. “I shan’t be staying long,” he said, keeping his hand on the pommel of his sword as he watched Lord Drolgo clamber down the wooden staircase from the battlements. He wore an elaborate velvet coat that almost reached the ground, with a broad leather belt beneath the bulge of his stomach. A sword hung to one side of it, an ornately jeweled dagger to the other.
“It is many a long year since we last had a visitor of quality,” Lord Drolgo called. “Would you like some wine to slake your thirst?”
“Plain water will do,” Galbresh said.
A finely dressed woman appeared at an arched doorway into the keep. She was tall and slender, as old as Lord Drolgo but finely featured in a severely ascetic way, with arched eyebrows and a mouth whose lips looked cruel to Galbresh as he studied her.
“My wife, Lady Ordu,” Drolgo said, hastening to her. Though Lady Ordu curtsied, it was a token gesture at best. There was no welcome in her dark eyes as she stared at Galbresh. He felt a chill creep down his spine, though he would fearlessly face any man in battle and had fought wolves and even bears without hesitation. There was the whiff of sorcery about her.
The opulence of Drolgo’s quarters did not surprise Galbresh when they reached his inner sanctum. Tapestries hid the starkness of its walls, reflecting the candlelight that brightened the room off sumptuous threads of pure gold. Thick furs cushioned throne-like chairs to either side of a huge hearth in which a log fire roared welcomingly, making the room too stiflingly hot for Galbresh, who had grown used to the outdoors and rough lodgings.
“What brings you here?” Lady Ordu asked.
“He is an emissary of the Circle of Gold,” her husband replied before Galbresh could speak. “He’s here to see if we worship false gods and not the Sun. Why else would he have come?” He turned to Galbresh. “I am right, aren’t I? Someone has told you we have a local god?” He laughed loudly. It was a rolling, full-bellied laugh, though Galbresh heard no amusement in it.
“The rumours are wrong?” he asked.
Lord Drolgo laughed even more robustly. This time there was the merest hint of humour. “Wrong, Galbresh? Wrong? They’re not wrong, sir, they’re not wrong at all. Are they, my lady?
“You came to destroy it, of course,” Drolgo went on. “That’s what your order does, doesn’t it? Only your god can be worshipped in these fallen times. Though things have changed.”
“What do you mean ‘though things have changed’?” Galbresh’s fingers instinctively tightened around the hilt of his sword.
“Haven’t you heard? Even in these backwoods we received word of the battle months ago. Have you been in the wilderness so long, so far from news?”
“A battle?” Galbresh felt the strength leave his arms. Fearing the worst, he said: “What have you heard?”
Drolgo reached for a goblet. A servant hurried over with a carafe of wine and filled it for him. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some first?” he asked, but the warrior shook his head.
Lord Drolgo shrugged.
“You tell him, my dear,” he said to his wife. “You know the details better than me. My memory worsens by the year.”
Lady Ordu reached for a goblet, took a sip, then said: “It was at a place called Koss. The Emperor fought against invaders from Kothsar. He was killed along with most of his men. Or so we have heard.”
“So, you see,” Lord Drolgo added, “your task is over. Your Order is dead. Along with its sacrilegious emperor. His son, the new emperor, rejected his father’s heresy and has reinstalled the gods of our ancestors.”
Galbresh felt his head begin to spin. He could scarcely believe the dream of the Sun God had ended in disaster.
At that moment one of Drolgo’s men-at-arms hurried into the room, gabbling to his master that a band of armed men had stormed the gate.
“Armed men?” Drolgo’s voice was an outraged growl.
“Villagers from the far side of the forest. They have swords.”
“Where in Thosadon’s Claws would those mangy scum get swords?”
Lady Ordu rasped, turning her gaze on Galbresh. “Unless from the guardsmen we sent to collect the harvest,” she added with a malicious scowl.
Galbresh realised there were tell-tale splashes of fresh blood on the front of his jerkin and across the chainmail links that covered his arms. He had not had time to clean them off.
Lord Drolgo made a signal to his man-at-arms, who drew his sword. Drolgo did likewise, aiming his blade at Galbresh’s chest.
“It was the villagers who told you about our god, wasn’t it? Did they plead for your help?”
Galbresh was still struggling with the emotions that swirled through his head at the news of his emperor’s death. They made it difficult for him to think. He looked at Lord Drolgo. “They pleaded for nothing,” he said. “What I did, I chose to do.” As he reached for the hilt of his sword Lady Ordu, standing close behind him, struck him across the back of the head with a concealed bludgeon. Gasping for breath, Galbresh felt his legs buckle beneath him and he slumped to his knees.
Lord Drolgo laughed as his guardsman took hold of Galbresh’s hands and twisted them behind his back.
At his bidding, Galbresh was dragged to his feet and pushed out of the room and down a corridor towards what he realised was a temple, where he was outraged to see a large idol carved from basalt as black as night. It had a goat-like head with the body of a jackal and scythe-like claws. Grotesque wings spread dragonlike behind it.
“This is Thosadon, Lord of the Night. And of Enlightenment.”
Galbresh was shocked to see the body of a man laid on the marble flagstones before the idol, so badly cut it was a wonder he still breathed, though breathe he did, torturously. “He was one of your brother warriors of the Golden Circle. I had his eyes removed first,” Lord Drolgo said, “so if, by some miracle, he did escape he would be unable to fight. At the peasants’ bidding he attacked my men, though not as successfully as you. I punished the villagers too of course. Every fifth man and woman was tortured to death than hung in a gibbet as a lesson to the rest of them. Though it looks as if they haven’t learned after all and will have to be taught yet again.”
At that moment, though, a sudden clamour of shouts and cries of pain from the courtyard drowned out the rest of Drolgo’s words. Voices were raised. There were screams, the unmistakable clash of steel striking hard against steel. Drolgo glanced at the entrance to the temple. Some of his men-at-arms rushed out but were cut down and killed as a storm of villagers crashed into them. They may not have been trained to fight, but they were desperate men and knew what would happen to them and their families if they failed – and because Lord Drolgo had few men left. Galbresh gritted his teeth, still feeling sick from the blow to his head. As he slumped on his knees shadowy figures moved around him, too vague to make out. He was aware of Lord Drolgo’s voice, threatening damnation – before it rose into a frightened cry, then a babbling, strangled, high-pitched scream.
There was a woman’s scream as well.
Struggling to recover, Galbresh looked around the temple in a daze. He saw a pair of feet dancing above his head. A slipper fell from one of them and bounced on the floor. It was a woman’s, finely made, with silver buckles.
Only then did he realise that Drogo and his wife had been hanged from the rafter beams. Already their dance of death was growing weak, their feet twitching as life was choked from their bodies by the ropes tied tight around their necks.
Which was when he heard stone move.
The eyes of the huge, black idol opened, to stare from deep beneath its goat-like brows. It no longer seemed to have been carved from stone but had transmuted somehow into living flesh, rough and dark like cooling lava. Laboriously it began to move onto its hind legs and started to stand, raising its paws into the air, their claws glinting in the torchlight.
With a sudden growl the demon lurched forward and snapped its goatlike jaws around the nearest villager. His bones crunched between its teeth, as with a toss of its head its jaws opened wide and swallowed. In an instant the man slid down inside it, only his blood dribbling from the demon’s teeth.
Its appetite partially satisfied the demon stared at the bodies of Drogo and Lady Ordu hanging above it, its eyes darkening as it gazed at the purple faces of its acolytes.
Though still dizzy Galbresh had wit enough to retreat from the temple. Behind him, panicking at the unexpected awakening of the demon, the villagers screamed in terror and fled past him into the courtyard outside.
Knowing it was too late to escape so easily, Galbresh reached for the hilt of his sword and held it tight, though he knew he was still too groggy to fight a man, much less a demon.
“Lord of the Golden Circle,” he called as he climbed to his feet to stand his ground “aid me now!”
The demon cackled. Its voice boomed.
“Like your emperor your god is dead, mortal.” The demon moved closer, the claws on its feet clacking on the marble flagstones.
Galbresh braced himself. Already he could imagine being lifted to its monstrous jaws and swallowed. But he would not go easily, of that he was determined as he pointed his sword towards the demon’s face.
“We’ll see who is mortal,” he growled defiantly. As his head began to clear he felt more determined. His sword rose then came down again with all the force he could muster, chopping deep into the demon’s hand as it reached out for him. The blade, like all handed to the Emperor’s emissaries, had been blessed in the temple of the Sun God and had special properties. It seemed to glow as it sliced through the demon’s flesh. Blood as black as molten tar poured from the wound, hissing as it hit the floor.
Galbresh struck with his sword again, severing a claw from its nearest hand; the demon howled in rage.
Luck was with the warrior when Thosadon retaliated, its hand barely missing Galbresh’s head as he leapt through the exit from the temple. Warier now, the demon crouched and crept under the archway, filling it with its immense body. Which was when Galbresh attacked again, knowing the creature would be hampered in its movements. Twice his sword struck hard, trailing whips of Stygian blood in oily crescents through the air.
Again, Galbresh retreated, gauging the demon’s next attack. In the cramped confines of the keep he knew he had an advantage so long as he kept beyond the creature’s reach, but it would only need to strike him once for it to mangle his body. Then an arrow sped past his head and struck the demon in its face. A second followed. Galbresh turned. Nearly a dozen villagers had returned with bows.
“Keep at it,” he told them, as an idea came to him. Drolgo’s private chambers were filled with furnishings and thickly woven tapestries. Seeing more of the villagers in the courtyard unwilling to flee despite their terror of the demon, he told them to gather whatever was combustible and bring it into the keep.
Quickly, bales of straw from the stables and lengths of wood broken from the keep’s outbuildings, were dragged inside. As the archers retreated to the courtyard Galbresh hurled a torch onto the straw. Flames instantly took hold, guttering plumes of acrid smoke. Beyond the flames the demon strode forward but, like all its kind, was unable to advance into daylight. More wood and straw were hurled into the keep, and the fire grew quickly, while the archers renewed their assault with arrow after arrow striking the demon, which roared at them with futile anger. This turned to fear as the fire climbed into the rafters and the inside of the keep became an inferno.
Standing with the villagers in the courtyard Galbresh rested on his sword. Twice the demon tried to break free and twice the sunlight, streaming down from between the clouds, forced it back even as the flames surrounding it consumed its flesh.
For hours the fire roared within the keep like a furnace till eventually even its stones collapsed.
Before nightfall only a mound of rubble and a lingering cloud of foul-smelling smoke like the stench of rotting flesh remained.
That night the village celebrated with a feast the like of which none of them had ever seen before, during which the headman approached Galbresh and thanked him for what he had done.
Still mourning the death of his emperor, the warrior had little taste for celebration, knowing there was nowhere for him to go now, so when the villager asked if he would be their lord he gazed at their soot-stained ranks, all skin and bones and dressed in rags, most with makeshift bandages tied around wounds from their battle at the keep, and felt a sudden feeling of kinship for them. And of pride.
Galbresh clasped the headman’s hands in his, as he looked across the villagers again, gazing at faces flushed from beakers of wine none of them was used to drinking. For the first time in far too long he forced a smile.
“I can’t think of a better place to stay.”
©November 2021, David A. Riley
David A Riley writes horror, fantasy, and science fiction stories. He has had many stories published in anthologies and magazines. He is the author of three novels and several collections of short stories. His work has been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, and Russian. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.