First Tree: Chapter 1

MENACE

Eight Years After The Escape

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Her rage coiled as she knelt the ground, waiting for his acknowledgement. He spoke to others in his court, laughing and talking of unimportant things.
Ambush was attempting to teach her a lesson. He wanted her to know his regard for her, wanted to shame her before all these humans. She gritted her teeth and waited for him to throw her a word or a glance.

She began thinking of her sisters, of the fate that had befallen them. She thought of the death of her younger sister Catastrophe, the new master Revenge served, and the loss of her own legions and castle, and Menace knew she had no choice but to humiliate herself before the youngest of Drowned’s surviving sons.

Ambush sat his ice throne and Menace watched, transfixed as the limbs and heads of the dead hung suspended in the ice. It seemed they were watching her, as if the eyes of the decapitated stared with amusement as she shamed herself for the sport of this man. She decided if the chance to spring upon Ambush ever presented itself, she would seize it. The idea of crushing his scrawny human throat in her mighty, half garq one gave her satisfaction, and she smiled.

After she had been on her knees for hours, he looked at her and she moved to stand. He held his hand out, stopping her.

“You were not ordered to rise. You kneel before the King of Syphere, the Master of the Northern Tundra, the Son of the Mighty Drowned. Why do you think you could meet me on your feet?”

Menace knew she could not speak without snarling at him so she kept her mouth closed.

He looked her in the eye a long moment before smiling. “What unfortunate circumstances have you here, Menace, Daughter of Dregs? What has brought you to your knees before me?”

“I need a new master,” she said through gritted teeth. “My time in Drine has come to an end.”

“Your castle has been taken from you. Your men all died in your folly. Your enemies have rallied and even now scour the world for you, and you have nowhere else to go.” He chuckled to himself and reached a hand out beside his throne. A great white bear roused from the corner and lumbered to his side. It nuzzled his hand and he laughed. “Why would I want a failure to serve me? An enemy of the state, a vicious little snake like you?” he asked.

“You need a new general as badly as I need a new master. Trap has been killed. Your enemies within this country have amassed power and you fear they plot to move against you. Your armies cannot be led by officers raised within their ranks. They need a warlord to inspire them. And you have no allies back home, no one you can call on to fight for you. You have one weapon, you possess Chill, but to call him away from your tundra would be to surrender your power there.

“Chill is mighty beyond any of these enemies now opposing you, but that is a sword you must keep sheathed or you lose your life quest. You are beset, and have been outmaneuvered by a mummy.

“Your bride hides, as she has now for many years, and you can feel him out there, as all this nation can,” Menace said. She would not say the name of the villain she spoke of, because she did not know it, but she had traveled extensively in Syphere and heard rumors and tales of the great antagonist that threatened Ambush.

“He is out there even now, isn’t he? Is he biding his time or raising his army? Has he returned yet or does he still live outside the nation, training and honing, learning how to uplift a people and inspire his rebellion?”

“My soothsayers predict he is dead. They speak of a great war that devoured him and killed his guardians.”

“Your soothsayers are fools,” Menace said. “Rumor and rat guts will never serve as true insight into the future. Your witches cannot do for you what I can. They were not trained by the mighty Malice, as I was. They were not honed as a weapon, as I was. Your witches and fortune tellers have played you like a fine instrument. They know what I know, what every wizard and warrior you own knows.”

Menace stood, allowing herself to prostrate before Ambush no longer. She stepped closer and his guards surrounded her. She cared not. A single word and a swipe of her sword and every one of them would howl their way to hell. Menace stared him right in the eye. “They know you are defeated by your oldest foe,” she spat.

Ambush growled and gripped his sword. The great bear at his side snarled and the other rose across the room, but she did not care.

“They know if they tell you what you hate to hear, your temper will rise up and smite them. So Ambush sits his throne as enemies rally, and he relies on intelligence gathered by cowards and lies told to him by all.”

Ambush stared down at her from his ice block throne as he stood. He pointed his sword at her and she prepared the spell that would whisk her away. She would have to find another powerful master to keep her safe. She knew there was no such man or woman in the whole of the empire, so she waited for him to speak.

“You speak words that could get you killed,” he said.

“Yes, and your folly continues. Tell me, did Trap ever tell you the truth? Did you listen to him at least, or did you make him lie to you to save his skin?” Menace readied the spell and grinned. “Prove me right, Ambush. Strike if you think you can kill me. Bring your wrath and we will see how you fare against mine.”

He stood trembling in barely contained rage. He slid his sword back in the ice block he had pulled it from and dropped back into his throne. “Trap, I trusted. He never failed me.”

“Until he lost her for you. Until he let Xaxamire steal the jewel of the nation. Until he fought for fourteen years to bring about the demise of his great enemy and died a tortuous death at the hands of an even mightier one.” She laughed. “Yes, of course Trap was flawless. Did you ever undo the knot that python tied him in? Can you imagine the pain he suffered at the hands of your enemy? Can you fathom the agony of being twisted and crushed by that thing? My sources say they let days of mind-numbing agony rip through him before they finally let that beast kill that perfect soldier of yours.”

She stepped forward and the guard before her stepped out, extending his hand to shove her back. With a grab and a twist of her wrist, she snapped his arm. She jerked him to the ground and kicked in his skull. The mash covered her black boots and she stomped her foot, squelching brain matter. The other guards charged and she unleashed upon them.

Her father’s death played out before her.

Her sister’s fall at the hands of Treason.

All the terror and the loss of her life to this point poured out of her like fire from the mouth of a dragon, and within moments she stood alone in a blood-coated throne room with Ambush and no other living soul, save his bears and the slave bound to his wall. She stepped atop the dais where the throne sat and he stared at her, watching her come with no apparent emotion on his face. She leaned over his throne and sneered at him. The blood of his guards rolled down her face and dripped from the tip of her nose onto his royal coat.

He stared at her and nodded.

“You may serve me.”

She smiled, backed down the stairs, and stopped at the floor. She dropped to a knee and lowered her head.

“First, you will go to my soothsayers and butcher them all,” Ambush said. “My mages and fortune tellers must all suffer the same fate. You will find Trap’s men and claim them as your own. You will set up in the fortress of Sape in the far east. And then, when you are in place, you will come to me and I will send you after him.”

She grinned as she stared at the floor. She had found a master, a vile beast of a man who would depend on her. She looked up at him as blood ran down her lip and into her mouth. “Who will you send me after, Master?”

“You will chase Tack, the Hornet Rider. He has fled Scorch and is headed into the Forest of the First Tree. He defied me. He serves my enemy and I want to carve out his heart at the gates of Scorch. I want my sweet wife to watch him die. I want that image seared into her mind.”

“As you command, Master.”

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