Chapter 15:

Chapter 15: Reminiscence

Echoes of Fallen Gods


At first glance, it appeared that the village had been abandoned.

As hamlets went, it was not very large. It had, like most small farming communities in the northern River Plains, a central square, an inn, a blacksmith, a stable, a couple of shops, and a few shrines to the gods. In addition to those, there were the usual living quarters, ranging from simple unpainted one-room sheds for the poorest peasants to large, sturdy log cabins for the more prosperous landowners living here. In the fields surrounding the village grew wheat and rapeseed, cabbage and carrots, and in the meadows, sheep grazed lazily across the rolling hills.

What was missing was the people.

Themur could hear the hens clucking as they walked freely among the buildings, looking for random morsels to eat. To their right, three pigs were loudly devouring leftovers from an old trough, and somewhere in the distance, a lone horse neighed.

Yet, there was no sound of laughter here. No pitter-patter of children’s feet racing across the square. No drunken snoring from the simple wooden bench in front of the tavern, and no peasants haggling over the price of their sheep.

Had he not been used to this kind of situation, he might have thought the village had been hit by a plague or that the gods had brought their wrath upon the good people of Cherrygrove.

As it was, all those things—the laughter, the children, and the drunk—had been here just a few minutes ago. But as soon as the villagers had spotted the Knights Eternal appearing like dark shadows out of the forest, lit by the orange beams of the setting sun, every one of them had locked themselves inside their homes or taken shelter in the tavern.

Themur raised his black fist to stop their advance.

“Halt!” he commanded. “Dismount. Dame Rackar, take the horses to the stable. Find the stablehand and get her to feed them and give them water. Once you’re done, meet us outside the Traveller’s Pillow.”

“Yes, Sir!” Dame Rackar responded smartly. She was still very eager to prove herself.

“You really think whatever slop they’re serving this time will be edible?” Sir Jowall muttered, disdain coloring his voice. “You know they always give us their worst, right? Sir.”

Themur didn’t appreciate the disrespect and told Sir Jowall as much. The other Knight muttered something, but didn’t protest. He knew his place, even though he sometimes skirted the line.

“We will eat whatever they serve,” Themur told the other Knights. “For Dame Karleen.”

There were some murmurs of approval among his men. Good, Themur thought. Most of them hadn’t forgotten her yet—or why they were here.

“For Dame Karleen!” Sir Donahu echoed.

“Thank you. Now, let’s have a conversation with the keeper. A civilized talk.”

When Dame Rackar returned, they entered the tavern two by two. Themur and Sir Donahu led the way, followed by four more pairs of Knights Eternal. Their black, spiky armor rustled as they walked through the old wooden door. The taproom wasn’t quite large enough to hold them all comfortably. Some of them would have to eat their meal outside. But it was always important to make a good first impression, Themur thought darkly, as his nose was assaulted by the usual blend of odors inside. Rank sweat, sweet mead, sooty smoke, and fatty food now mixed with the vile stench of their own rotten flesh.

Two of the guests who had already been inside the establishment scrambled to leave, hurrying to the door behind the Knights as quickly as they could, doing their best not to look like they were fleeing. The tavern keeper—his name was Otterman, if Themur remembered correctly from their previous visits—was a large man in his thirties, with a freckled face and short, curly red hair. He looked at Themur with a mix of fear and scorn.

“What do you want?” he asked, clearly not willing to spend more words on the Knights Eternal than he had to. But at least he had words to spare, and that was a start as good as any.

“Just food for me and my Knights,” Themur told him. “Mead and something warm. Whatever you usually serve to travelers here. We don’t need anything extravagant. And we’ll pay, of course.”

He was a little worried the “of course” part might have taken things too far, but fortunately, the tavern keeper didn’t seem to take it as sarcasm, though it might simply be that he liked the idea of earning a handful of talons too much to make a thing of it. The freckled man went into the back room to either fetch or cook their meals, and Themur and five of his Knights sat down at the two tables inside the taproom to wait. The remaining four went outside to sit on the bench or the grass.

Fifteen minutes later, Otterman and his serving girl came out with their plates, starting with Themur’s and ending with those of the Knights sitting outside. Neither the girl nor her employer said a word to their guests.

Although some might have found the silence awkward, it was fine with Themur. The less said, the less risk any of his men or women would take offense and say—or worse, do—anything in return that might dishonor Dame Karleen’s memory. This was the one time he didn’t want an altercation.

In the back of his mind, a warning bell rang. For all our sakes, let’s just hope Mardocar doesn’t feel his usual bloodlust today. But he suppressed the thought quickly, as it was borderline blasphemous, and more than that, he did not want to give the god any ideas.

The Knights ate their meals, a simple but perfectly edible porridge with plums and salted pork, and talked among themselves. Twice, Themur tried to steer the conversation toward anecdotes about Dame Karleen, but the other Knights seemed more interested in talking about their horses or the orders they might receive once they arrived in Terynia. Eventually, he gave up. It was enough that he remembered her.

He wished the people living here would too, but over the centuries, their memories of Dame Karleen had turned to tales, and the tales to myth. And in the end, the myths had turned to dust, dismantled by time itself. In Cherrygrove, none of her descendants even knew anymore that she had ever existed.

His quiet contemplation of his lost comrade was disturbed when five men from the village, ranging from their late twenties to their early forties, entered the tavern. They were large and muscular, strong from having toiled in the fields their whole lives, and carried spears and knives. One of them had even brought a pitchfork. It might have been a bit of a cliché, he thought, but it was still a lethal weapon in the right hands.

“You’re not welcome here, Knight,” the leader of the group barked angrily, his dark gaze boring holes into Themur’s faceplate. “You come here time and again, eat our food, and scare our children.”

“Let me tell you,” he continued, apparently oblivious to his numerical disadvantage, “some of us aren’t so scared. You should leave while you still can.”

The stench of alcohol on their breath made the Knight Eternal realize this would not end well. The tavern keeper wisely found a couple of dirty dishes to clean and brought them with him to the back room. His serving girl was nowhere to be seen.

“Leave now,” Themur ordered the five peasants, hoping he could de-escalate the situation before things got completely out of hand. But in the back of his mind, he could feel Mardocar stir.

“No one has to get hurt.”

Someone has to get hurt,” the drunk peasant retorted as he poked Themur’s black chest armor with the tip of his spear. It made a dull, metallic sound.

“I’m not going to tell you again. Leave. We don’t want your dark rites here, Knight.”

Themur knew he was walking a fine line. On one hand, he didn’t want this to turn violent. But on the other hand, the man’s disrespect toward the Knights Eternal was, for all intents and purposes, disrespect toward their patron god—and thus blasphemy. Just ordering his men and women to leave the village, as the troublemakers wanted, was simply not an option. He had to assert their divine right to be here.

He gripped his black sword. Its weight wasn’t more than what his right hand could lift, but he could not hold it aloft for long, not on his own. But only moments after he raised it, he could feel its weight almost disappear. The sword didn’t become flimsy, like a child’s wooden toy. It still felt to him like the massive weapon of steel it was, but now, held by Mardocar, its weight no longer strained his arm.

The peasant spat on him. It was the exact opposite reaction to what Themur had hoped for. Things were quickly getting out of hand, he thought. It was now or never.

Raising the sword high above his head, he gripped it with both hands in an attempt to look even more intimidating. What would happen to the man’s neck if he didn’t back down should by now be thoroughly clear.

To his relief, Themur could see fear finally break through the haze of mead clouding the man’s eyes. The peasant took a small step back.

“Go, now!” the Knight Eternal growled, as menacing as he could. “If you value your life, you will leave.”

The man’s shoulders seemed to slump as his courage left him. He nodded to his comrades, silently telling them it was over and it was time to retreat. They had made their point, and there was no need to get hurt by pushing it further. Slowly, the five men turned around to leave the tavern.

Kill them!

The voice in his head was as loud and clear as if Mardocar had been standing right next to him. No, it was stronger than that. His presence felt as if the god of the world had Themur’s head in a vise and was drilling into it to perform a divine trepanation.

It had always felt like that when his patron god spoke to him. Over time, he had gotten used to the pain. The strength of Mardocar’s voice as it overrode his very thoughts was proof enough of the god of genocide’s divine might and power.

And now that he knew Mardocar’s will, Themur no longer had any choice but to obey. For Dame Karleen’s sake, he was saddened to know that this day would end in a bloodbath.

But such was the way of the gods.

* * *

They were riding downhill, all ten of them in a line, one after the other. Black armor, black horses, black shields, and black weapons. The path they followed meandered between the white, spotted trunks of the birch trees that filled the forest. Their canopies stretched toward the sky like clouds of living green and yellow light, making it seem almost as if they were riding through a fairy tale. The air was filled with all the warm fragrances of summer, from the scents of flowers, green leaves, and hay drying in the fields.

Today, they rode in silence, the Knights Eternal. The only sound that could be heard above the cooing of pigeons fluttering around the forest was the slow, steady clop of their horses' hooves as they descended toward the second village they would be visiting on their way home to Terynia.

As they approached the edge of the sunlit birch forest, the trees gave way to open wheat fields overflowing with golden stalks, and to green meadows where white and black sheep mingled. Just beyond the tree line, the land dropped slightly, giving the black riders a raised view of the little hamlet ahead of them, situated on the bank of a drowsy river.

Themur held up his fist, silently commanding his Knights to stop. This time, he didn’t dismount his horse but stayed in the saddle to get a better look at the village stretching out below. For several minutes, he simply sat there, contemplating what he saw. No one broke the silence.

No one dared.

This place. This was where Themur had been born. This was where he had last felt peace.

This was where their home had been, Aila’s and his. And this was where his wife had died, on that fateful day so many, many years ago.

The little cottage they had shared in those blissful first years of marriage no longer stood. A century ago, his great-grandson had accidentally overturned a candle while scrambling to pick up his newborn daughter from her crib as she began to scream in the middle of the night. The wooden building had burned down, and the man himself had perished, but his three children had survived. Two of them had died in the plague not many years later, but one had lived on.

Unlike Cherrygrove, which had relegated Dame Karleen’s name to oblivion, the name of Mauran was not forgotten here.

Because down there, three little girls—Jaina, Tallia, and Orelia Mauran—were happily playing in the street, their laughter echoing among the houses as they threw rocks at a target made from branches stuck into a large spruce cone, blissfully unaware of the Knight Eternal watching them from the hills above.

Because down there were Sir Themur Mauran’s great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

And down there, one and a half centuries ago, he had sold his soul to Mardocar.



Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods!

This novel is 43 chapters long, with new installments posted twice each week. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading some of my other stories while you wait for the next update?

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