THE HOUNDS OF PABLE
Two Years After The Escape
Rextur moved through the reeds, listening to the harsh grasses scratching against his plate mail. The men around him hunkered down, keeping their heads below the tops of the reeds, approaching the City of Rivers undetected. But Rextur would not. He walked bold and unafraid of the wandering eye. What had he to fear? He was the very hoof of Dis. In moments the bloodshed would begin and the fate of the town of Brandt would be known. The walls were wooden and would easily cave in should he use his iron bulls, but the ground here was too wet, too close to the river Tends. The heavy bulls would be bogged down. He did not worry. Dis had sent him here. This city was doomed.
The first of the guards saw his head above the reeds from within arrow range and sent a call out to his brothers-in-arms. They gathered on the wall, looking out, talking quietly, trying to decide what to do about him. Had this been his fortress, the Sanitarium, so many miles away, the doom horn would be blowing already. But this was Tienne, not the nation of Drine, and here the warriors were soft and cocky. They thought their walls would protect them. They watched Rextur approaching and, when he was in easy calling distance, they yelled to him.
“Halt now or win an arrow in your eye, warrior! Declare your name and your intentions and I will announce you to my lord.” The man beside him pulled an arrow from his quiver and drew it slowly. Had this been Drine, ten arrows would already be in the air.
Rextur made no sign of slowing. He did not speak. He let his stride of confidence and hard face talk for him.
“My companion wants me to give permission to kill you, stranger,” the speaker said. “Give me a reason to hold him back.”
Rextur looked to his side, his men creeping up on the wall, and knew it was almost over. The first arrow hit the ground at Rextur’s feet and he sneered at the weakness of the warriors of this nation. They knew they were at war. They knew they were in grave danger. He should be dead by now. But they were at playing games with hard men walking up on their city. He took a few more steps before the next arrow slammed into his chest plate.
A weak hit, the arrow had little chance of breaking through the plate, and they knew it before they fired. They were giving him another warning shot. He walked forward, almost within the shadow of the wall now. The third shot they sent almost directly after. They were seeing his chest plate now, noticing Dis on his armor, and Rextur hoped in his eyes. The arrow took to the air and Rextur bowed his head in prayer. It struck his bowed head and, through the words of his prayer, he felt the arrow shatter. The steel head of the missile ricocheted to the right to fall into the reeds. Still the alarm horns did not sound. He looked up at them, naked panic in their eyes, and held up his hand.
“It is already over,” he said. The men before him froze. Their mouths hung open a breath longer before the Madmen tossed their hooks and gripped the walls. Madmen climbed silently. And the men who should have killed Rextur a quarter of a mile ago screamed.
Barges drifted out of the city flaming and popping. Still citizens swam out to attempt to float away. River boats bobbed unmanned down the throughway of the city, and Rextur watched it all with growing fear. The city had fallen too easily. The City of Rivers should have been more of a challenge than this. His men were on rafts they had confiscated, floating downstream amongst the flaming boats, firing into the water, wounding the swimmers and snatching them with long hooks used for navigating the river. They were being dragged out of the water and bound to the edge of the raft to be brought back to the city. Drine needed slaves.
Rextur saw the counting houses, the boats paid to dock being fleeced. He saw the buildings ransacked, heard women being sowed, and suddenly felt weary. One town after the next had fallen to him and his legions, and little had to be earned. He thought of the bulk of his army and the wall they had hit in their march, and gritted his teeth at the idea of Stonage.
He spent three months in siege there. Had tried the wall countless times, and every time been pushed back. His trebuchets fired countless stones into the city to no avail. They had focused on the gatehouse for an entire day, slamming it over and over with massive stones, and not a crack had formed. He never found a city like it and had no idea how he would take it.
His next most desperate of ideas was going to be tried when he returned. He wished he had hope of its success, but could not convince himself it would work.
Brandt’s ruler was brought out to him. The man was well-dressed and fat. He wore too rich of clothes and too many rings of wealth on his hands. They did not fit right and he knew this man was a profiteer. All of Rextur’s life he had been dealing with these people. He hated them more than any other form of enemy. This man spent the whole of the war using what little power he had to wring the masses of money. His every word was a lie, his every hope drenched in the wielding of the wealth he acquired. Rextur motioned for the ground and the man dropped to his knees. His white robe was then soaked through with the blood of his men and the muck of the river town he lived in. Rextur looked down at the man and nodded.
“I have your city. I have your people. What say you to this?”
“I will pay my own ransom,” the man said. “I have hidden my wealth and will tell you where when you have allowed me to flee the battlefield and be on my way. I will require one serving man and—”
Rextur silenced the man with a slash of his hand. “I will not ransom you.”
“My wealth is great and will fuel your conquest of the nation. I know you will not torture me for its location, for myth tells of your mercy in interrogation. I will gladly give you all that I have acquired if you will—”
Rextur could not stand the man’s voice any longer. He stepped forward and clenched his hand around the fat neck.
The cheeks quivered and the eyes watered to tears. The man gripped Rextur’s wrist with his hand and Rextur squeezed.
“Take your hands off of me, swine.”
The man obeyed.
“You are the worst kind of scum,” Rextur said. “A film that develops on a nation at war that is not tolerated by me. I want none of your ransom money. I want none of your bargaining. I will take what is yours and feed it to my country. But before I take everything you have, I want you to answer me one question. Who do you call master?”
The man gasped for air as Rextur released his throat. He dropped to his hands and knees and took deep terrified breaths. “I am William Cherlot’s man. I serve the noble king of Tienne.”
Rextur grabbed the back of the neck and pulled him up. The swine looked at his hands, the mud and blood caked there, and wiped them on his white robes. “This is the first of William’s cities I have taken. You are his first nobility I have met. You and your king have gathered power and sat the war out, but it has reached you now. What have you been doing while I have been ripping the life out of your country, while I have been sowing your women and enslaving your men and children?”
The man would not answer, but could not meet Rextur’s gaze either. “Lock him in a cell. I want to look through this city and see the plan of his leader.” Madmen ripped the man to his feet and Rextur stepped closer. “Who do you obey? William the Sot or Vaxalayrok the Reft?”
The man paled at the mention of Vax, and Rextur knew the answer to his question. “I am going to look through this entire city. I will ferret out Vax’s end game, and when I do, I will come to you first to make you answer for it. Vax is far too smart to have one play.”
The man was dragged away and Rextur turned to the city thrashing at his feet. He needed to get back to Stonage. He needed to get his men working. The way would be nearly impossible, but he had to try.
First, Displacer. He needed some good news.
Black Cowl’s pet wizard was a fool but capable. He had been a convict of some prison in Lorinth before Black Cowl busted him out and enslaved him. Now he thought that because Black Cowl owned him, he was somehow safe from Rextur’s wrath. But in Tienne, no man was safe from Rextur’s wrath. With a command the little man opened a portal to Displacer and Rextur walked out into her perfectly laid camp.
Row after row of tents straight and ordered. Latrines cut and dug in three rows. Men at recline around campfires. Rextur saw his men snap to attention when they laid eye to him and he smiled. He walked through the camp until he reached a tent with a strange, muffled sound at play inside. He stopped to look at the two men standing outside it where there should have been four. Both men looked terrified, and Rextur knew what had happened.
He gripped the tent with his left hand and, with one yank and a great roar, shredded the fabric and tore the stakes from the ground. Soldiers around him stared in wonder, save the two men beside him who dropped to their knees. Within the tent, a young girl was bound naked and filthy, cut in many places and sobbing. She lay gagged and staked to the ground as two men took turns raping her. Rextur pulled the Scythe from his back and dropped the blade on the back of the neck of the man still pumping into the girl. He froze.
“Out!” Rextur barked. The man eased out of his victim and rolled over to look up at Rextur in despair. “How old is she?” Rextur asked. He looked down at the girl, who looked no more than ten, and thought he would be sick.
“I, I don’t kn- know,” the man said. The soldier beside him tried to leave the ruined tent, but the Scythe stopped him. “I would guess she is about eighteen, maybe nineteen,” he whined.
“She is ten at most!” Rextur roared.
The girl sobbed, her eyes wide and begging. The most horrid face of war stared back at him and, through gagged mouth, begged for vengeance.
“You will be staked to the ground. You will take your rock and suffer with it. All three of your comrades will be bound as well at different places in the camp and—”
“This is my war camp, Rextur,” a perfect voice said behind him. “It is my duty to discipline the men who people it.”
Rextur turned to see Displacer standing behind him. He nearly screamed at her, but saw the firm look in her eyes and turned back to the men. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off again by Displacer.
“You will be whipped. All four of you. The rest of you who stood around this tent and did nothing will also suffer the lash. Four tents deep in every direction.”
Rextur stared at the men before him, wanting to slice the heads from their bodies. He stepped forward and cut the girl from her bonds. She curled up and he picked her up into his arms. She trembled against his breastplate and he turned to face Displacer. The Lunatics who followed her everywhere began rounding up the men and taking them to their fate. He looked at her with venom in his eyes and she bowed to him.
“Madness, I am honored you have come to my camp. Might we retire to my tent where we can discuss whatever has brought you here?”
He stormed to the grand tent in the center of the camp with her keeping pace beside him. He reached the tent and it blew open from a spell cast by his mageling coming up behind him.
“You will stay out here and wait for my command.” He sneered at the man, who nodded and looked at his feet. Rextur ducked into the tent and crossed the room to lay the girl down on Displacer’s bed.
“Strange company you’re keeping these days, my dear.”
Rextur spun on her, grabbing her up by the neck and staring her deep in the eye. “If you ever speak over me when I am addressing a Madman again, I will—”
She pulled her sword and set it against his neck. “I told you this would happen, and I told you I would not tolerate it,” she said.
“You told me that under your watch a young girl would be raped and beaten?”
She began cutting very slightly the skin of his neck, until he shoved her away, and she sheathed her sword. “I told you that you would get frustrated in your life campaign and would lash out at me for things I did not do. I told you then that I would not allow it.”
“Those men were—”
“Sowing.”
“No,” Rextur said. “She is far too young for sowing. They were raping her. Their intent was not to procreate with her. Their intent was to—”
“Have a little fun with her and slit her throat. Yes, I know,” Displacer said.
“Did you know they were on her?” he said. He felt the blade on his back heavy as a stone but did not care. If she knew about the girl, he would cut her down. No matter how much he loved her.
“Of course I had no knowledge of this. But I cannot know what every man in my camp is doing at every moment. Atrocities are committed at war. These men were bred to be monsters, and monsters they are. I know two decent men who were raised by this nation. The rest are fiends.”
Rextur looked at the girl. And he suddenly hated all of it. The war, the nation, the men, the motives. He felt himself slipping, all his rage pulling away.
“What will you do with her?” Displacer asked.
Rextur looked at the girl, who laid fetal sucking her thumb, and shook his head. “I do not know.”
“Send her to the slave lines and be done with it,” Displacer said. “Send her back to the children and let her be folded into the nation and its ways.”
Rextur shook his head. “Maybe.” He sat in the camp chair behind him and Displacer came up to his back. She unbuckled his chest plate and propped it by the chair. She pulled his chain from his torso and kneaded her fingers into his shoulder. He had not until that moment realized how painful it was. As her fingers eased his pain, he groaned.
“I need some good news,” he said. “Tell me of Pable. Did you run into the Hounds? Tell me of their demise.”
“When I arrived, they were all gone,” she said.
He froze.
“The whole of the city had been evacuated. The town was empty of everything.”
Rextur knew better. “What did you say?”
“We rolled on the gates, towers, and ram after softening the city with trebuchet fire, but we should have saved ourselves the trouble. When we won the wall, we found it unmanned. When the gate came down, we found it unguarded. Every soul in the city had fled. It was much like—”
“Tralin,” Rextur said. He sat up and grabbed his chain. She made to pull him back in the chair but he was standing already. He turned to Displacer’s camp girl and pointed his finger. “Strap that breast plate to me now.”
The waif obeyed.
“No, it was not like Tralin. Tralin was a trap. A trap set by Bruda. The result was the loss of thirty thousand lives. Tralin was a nightmare. This was nothing like it.”
“How was it different?” he snapped.
“I lost no men. I found no resistance. I was camped there for a month. The bureaucrats moved in and began the assessing. The place’s wealth was being carted off when I left. The Hounds had fled and taken all their citizens with them.”
“That woman does not flee,” Rextur said.
Displacer gripped his arm as he turned to the cot. “You are wrong,” she said. “You are worrying about nothing.”
He shook off her grip and stormed to the cot. He picked the girl from the bed and rushed outside.
Displacer followed him. “You are coming with me,” he stated.
She shook her head. “I cannot. I have to prepare for Tomond. The Azure City awaits and it belongs to Vax. I know not what to expect there.”
Rextur lowered his gaze to her eyes and stared into them deep. His barely contained fury threatened to overtake him. “You are coming.” He turned to his mageling and snapped. “You will take us to Pable.”
The portal opened and they rushed through.
The road outside the city was deserted. The sun setting behind them colored the city in blood, and Rextur felt the first kick of fear since his meeting with William outside of Stonage. Rextur remembered the sight of his father’s body at William’s feet and the confidence he never knew William could possess. Rextur turned to Displacer as he set the girl behind him in the mud.
“Where are the carts? Where is the wealth? The city should have a steady stream, night and day, of carts of wealth bleeding from it.” He pulled the Scythe and stomped forward.
Displacer pulled her sword. “The city was deserted. No one was here.” She was scared now. She knew she had made a huge mistake. “No one was here.”
Rextur turned to the mageling and pointed a thick finger at him. It was covered with the young girl’s blood and a chill raced through his body and set his spine to ice. “You will stay out of the city. You are my way back to Stonage. I cannot lose you. If I am not out of here in three hours, you go to Treason. Tell him where I am and tell him I need Rook. Black Cowl will not do. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Madness, three hours. Treason, Rook.”
“Watch the girl and let no harm come to her.” Rextur spun on Displacer, colored red in the dying sun, and sneered at her. “Let’s go see what you have done.”
She nodded but said nothing.
They reached the gate and the doors spread wide for them. Rextur’s fear was a galloping thing, pounding the ground and pushing him forward. He stepped into the streets and heard an eagle screech in the distant city to riot against the walls and rattle through the buildings. From the streets and roofs, he heard the howls of wolves. The gatehouse slammed closed behind him.
He looked to the sides of the streets, bloated men hanging from their ankles, bodies slit from crotch to sternum, their insides gone. Rextur walked to one of the naked bodies, seeing the soft pale flesh of a bureaucrat, and gritted his teeth. Down the streets as far as he could make out in the dark, bodies hung in similar fashion, gutted and stripped.
“Madness, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. How could I have known they were still here?” Displacer said.
Rextur saw a figure leap from one side of the street to the other. He heard a distant roar and shook his head. “Trophy hunters. I told you. I said they are not soldiers, they are trophy hunters. They will not rush out to meet you, I said. They will hunt you, I said.”
“I’m sorry, Rextur.”
“Well,” Rextur saw a figure step out into the street and grin. It stayed for a moment before darting off into the alley. “Now they are hunting us.”
Fate of Madness
by Jesse Teller
Available on Amazon – Continue Reading
Jesse Teller 
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