As he reached the body, he kept his dagger ready lest some residual sorcery still animated the flesh. March had already stiffened with rigor. His eyes bulged from the shock of the impact, and blood had pooled in his mouth. The tyrant was dead.
Under a shattered scrap of beam, the Sword lay nearby, still sheathed in its scabbard. March had stretched out his left hand and clutched the hilt, but he’d died before he managed to bare the enchanted blade.
The priests at the Temple of Dawn had prayed to Aurora for divine intervention against Lord March. The goddess had obliged, striking a blow before March could react. Her immense fist had shattered the small lodge, piercing roof and floor, and pinning March where he now lay. Templar Jarmon glanced up through the jagged hole, half-expecting to see her radiant face. The first stars of twilight glinted back at him.
He turned his attention to the Sword. The scabbard was splintered and torn, and what showed of the long blade glimmered with intricate scrollwork. It retained its fine twin edges despite the mayhem recently at work around it. Jarmon brushed a shred of wood aside and studied the hilt. Half concealed by March’s fingers, the only adornment was a simple banner. Mindsword. The Sword of Fealty.
An urge seized him to take it up, and his hand reached out. He stopped short of touching it. “Gods devour me,” he cursed, low and angry. “The temple has sworn me against you.” He glared at the Sword as if it could reply. “The world cannot stand another empire from your hand.”
The urge diminished, and Jarmon gritted his teeth as he set to work. He used his dagger to cut through March’s arm at the elbow, a slow, grisly process without saw or hatchet. March’s death-grip on the Sword held, and Jarmon slid arm and blade aside. The unearthly quiet lifted abruptly, and sounds of evening drifted down to him, cold wind in the pine trees and the flutter of bats’ wings. Up the canyon behind the ruined lodge, an owl hooted twice.
Other creatures would be prowling soon, and Jarmon hurried. Starting under the arm, he sliced March’s side open with his blade. The dead man’s innards were still soft, and they bubbled out as Jarmon cut through belly and intestines. When he reached March’s groin, he paused, sweating from the effort, and took a measure. March had been a tall man, a hand short of two meters. With the Mindsword’s point shoved through his neck and into his skull, the weapon would just fit inside his body.
Jarmon used March’s hand and his own dagger to set the tip of the Sword at the body’s neck. A hard shove drove it upward into the head, and a final kick of his boot buried it in the cold flesh. As March’s body swallowed the weapon, Jarmon lost any remaining urge to take up the Sword. Jarmon fell back, panting. His stomach churned, and the smell clawed at his throat, but he’d completed the worst of the job. Satisfied, he felt himself relax.
In the next hour he levered the beam aside and dressed March in fresh servant’s clothes from the quarters above. As cold seeped into the dead body, the smell of death ebbed. He borrowed from March’s finer wardrobe to replace his own splattered garments, and cleaned his mail and leather with icy water from the kitchen cistern.
March’s followers had fled with his riding-beasts, but Jarmon found a small wagon and hitched his own mount to the yoke. With a blanket and a few bales of straw to cover the body, he pointed beast and wagon northward and departed from Lord March’s once-grand abode. A half moon hung overhead, and the clear sky promised a very cold night.
Keaf crouched among the scrub oak and watched as the young men from the village of Palmora played a rough game of football. He wanted badly to join in the competition, but Keaf lived in the graveyard hut, and at seventeen he’d just inherited his stepfather’s profession. Gravediggers were the shunned people, in a class with sin-eaters and demon dancers.
Among the players, Lane was the biggest, and he used his size cruelly against the others. He charged into Kaye, the village barber’s youngest son, and knocked the boy over into half-thawed mud. Kaye sprang up, fists clenched and charged after the wool-stuffed ball.
The young men didn’t like Keaf hanging around, but most of the time they ignored him in favor of the game. Chancing that they would leave him alone today, he toed his own ball around in a small circle, practicing a few moves as the game continued. It felt good to stretch his muscles in the cold.
He’d fashioned his ball out of leather taken from a corpse’s tunic, and he’d watched Lane and the others until he knew every play by heart. He still had aspirations that extended beyond the cemetery fence, and in those dreams he was one of the team, a good player, admired by his friends. Friends. Keaf had only had one in his life, his father, and he’d buried him six months past. Time had dulled the hurt, but it hadn’t reduced his need for friendship.
Kaye deflected a pass intended for Lane and sprinted down the field before the bigger lad could catch him. Two teammates helped finish the play, scoring easily against Evar. The moneylender’s son was too slow and too lazy to really play, but the other boys knew, even in their teens, that he was destined to inherit power in Palmora.
Lane stormed up to Kaye after the goal was made and cuffed him alongside the head. “Cheater!”
Keaf watched from a dozen paces away, excited at the prospect of a fight as Kaye curled a fist. “It was a fair goal,” Kaye shouted.
Lane raised himself up to tower above Kaye. “I say you cheated.” He swung at Kaye again. Kaye ducked, and Lane sprawled forward into an ice-scaled puddle. It was too much for Keaf, and he burst out laughing.
Lane scooped a handful of mud and flung it. Kaye dodged and laughed, and Lane came raging up from the puddle. He lunged at Kaye, missed, and landed in the mud again. When he lifted his head, he was only a few paces away, facing Keaf. His anger shifted immediately. “Damn ghoul-lover!” He flung a stone at Keaf’s head and charged.
“Leave him alone,” Kaye shouted. “Let’s play ball.” Alone among the villager boys, he never picked on Keaf, but the others ignored him and followed Lane.
They chased Keaf into the woods with hurled stones and clots of mud. One stone hit his back, but he was quick, and he was used to the forest, and he outdistanced the rest. He wound deliberately through thick brush and over fallen logs, and the shouts dwindled behind him. Well after he’d lost the others, he kept running, caught up in being a part of the group, even if it was as the prey. His father would have laughed as his foolishness and warned him not to make a habit of enjoying it. We’re shunned, his father had often said, but gravediggers have dignity.
Keaf choked back other memories and kept going. Before he knew it, he cleared the far side of the woods and burst onto the cart path where he nearly collided with a small wagon.
“Whoa, boy,” the driver said as his beast skittered. “Where are you rushing to?”
“Home,” Keaf stammered, puffing steam in the cold air. He backed away, wondering why a riding-beast was hitched to a cart, and bowed his head. “To the graveyard,” he added. A faint but familiar smell emanated from the wagon, and he glanced sidelong at the straw in the back.
The man looked at Keaf with open surprise. “A gravedigger?” He turned to the east and made a quick sign with his right hand. “Goddess, you have guided me true.”
Keaf retreated another step, but the man slid to one side of the buckboard seat and motioned for Keaf to join him. “Would you like a ride, then… your name, boy?”
“Keaf,” he said, startled. He kept his eyes pointed down at the dirt, mindful of his proper station.