Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 23:15:12 -0400
From: M Patroclus <thephallocrat@gmail.com>
Subject: Marked By the Gods, Part 5

"Marked By the Gods"
A Myth in Eight Parts

By ThePhallocrat (email: thephallocrat@gmail.com)

PART FIVE

It wasn't the darkness that frightened him. After all, for Calder it was
always dark and he'd begun to grow used to it. Nor was it the utter silence
of the forest that greeted him when he suddenly awoke, for silence, he
knew, was the same thing as darkness really. What frightened him was the
smells, or rather the lack of one particular odor which had come to
represent safety and companionship. The smell of salty sweat, the musky
odor of leather, and the faint hint of smoke that accompanied Joren was not
present, and Calder knew immediately that he was alone.

For the first moment, he took deep breaths and tried not to panic. He tried
to convince himself that he was wrong and that some sudden breeze had
simply carried away his friend's scent.

"Joren?" he called out softly, but there was no reply. Then the terror came
in full force, and he found himself curling up in a small ball, weeping,
not knowing how he could face the world alone.

It was the curse, he was sure. He feared the God who had already taken so
much from him had now taken more. Trembling, unable to resist, he summoned
up the image in his mind of the strange lake in the cave, the terrible
place that had haunted his dreams both waking and asleep.

"Please," Calder begged, "Whisperer. Lord of the Night. Why do you hate me?
What did I do to offend a God, I'm nobody! Do whatever you want to me, but
don't leave me alone. Anything but that."

When the footsteps came, he was so startled that he lashed out defensively
with one hand. Another, much larger hand caught him by the wrist and held
him firm. "Easy!" came Joren's familiar voice, and with it the sudden
return of his comforting smells. Calder leaned against the larger man's
chest in relief, sobbing.

"I didn't know where you were!"

Joren rubbed his friends back in a soothing motion. "I was taking a piss,"
he said, with a hint of a smile in his voice. Calder just clung on all the
tighter. "Hey, it's okay! I'm here."

"I have nobody but you," the boy said in a desperate whisper.

He felt a hand rest protectively on the crown of his head. "I won't let
anything bad happen to you," Joren said, "You are all I have now too."

"Don't you have a family? A mother and father?"

"I never knew my father, my mother never spoke of him. She barely ever
spoke to me. I had something like brothers in the army but... that's all
over now. There's nobody."

"I'll be your family," Calder said earnestly, and heard his friend's breath
alter to a ragged pant.

"Calder... I'm not a good man."

Calder wanted to argue against that, but Joren's tone scared him and made
it difficult to think of anything to say. They sat in silence instead,
Calder still pressed up to his friend and clinging until his heart finally
seemed to go back to its normal pace and the fear had completely gone.

"Don't leave me," Calder said at last, finally pulling away from the
embrace.

His friend did not reply for a long moment, and then at last reached over
to one of his traveling bags to begin rummaging through it. After a few
minutes, he pressed a small object to Calder's hands. It had a small
handle, just right for the boy's fist, that was made of cool metal wound
with a rough leather strap. The other end was a blade - a dagger, honed and
sharp.

"I can't use this, I can't even see!" Calder protested.

"It's better than nothing. I can show you how to hold it and how to
strike. Maybe just knowing you have it will make you feel better, a little
less afraid. In case I'm not there."

"Why wouldn't you be there?"

Joren nudged the boy playfully. "I have to piss sometime!"

Calder smiled and then nodded, accepting the gift. "When will we reach
Kadnaris?"

"Tomorrow, or the next day. Soon. It will all be over soon. Now, lets get
some rest."

Snuggled up tightly against his protector, surrounded by the comforting
aromas of his presence, it was easy to sleep. Calder was dreaming again
within moments. They were uncomfortable dreams of violence and madness, as
they often were, but somehow he knew even in the dream that Joren was
nearby, and he was not afraid.
________________________________________________________________________

Gasping, sweat running down his face, Rannell Kent allowed himself for the
first time in perhaps his whole life to truly be lost in a moment as he
made love to Prince Tytus in the most sacred way he knew. Beneath him, the
prince groaned and twisted with pleasure, now laughing, now wincing in
pain, now weeping with joy. They kissed again and again, as though they had
never kissed before. They hadn't, Kent thought to himself, not truly. Not
like this. Having reached the enemy's capital with their advance force well
ahead of the Emperor, the danger of their union seemed remote and
unimportant. The siege of Kadnaris had technically begun, and in the
morning there would be skirmishes with the enemy, deployment of forces,
building of siege equipment, meeting after meeting to discuss
strategy... But for once Kent's anxieties for the future could not compete
with the bliss of the moment and so he discarded them. He knew he was
giving in utterly to his basest impulses, the lust that belonged to the
King of Beasts, and that the selfless restraint of his own God had been
left far behind. And yet all the same he felt no remorse, for he knew he
loved the young man whose body was intertwined with his, and knew love was
holy.

It was a strange thing, this love that had snuck up on him. He was still
full of wonder at it. Tytus was a handsome young man, but he had always
been spoiled and selfish, quick to anger and slow to learn wisdom. He
disdained books and frequently fell asleep during religious devotion. He
was entirely like the boys who had earned in Rannell Kent nothing but
disdain in his own youth. The Guardian had never pictured himself in love,
had in fact devoted himself to another calling and another life entirely,
and in his wildest imaginings he could not have predicted an object of his
affection looking and acting like Tytus. And yet the love was there,
burning bright whenever he looked at the Prince's face, as he did now,
stroking the young man's brow tenderly as they both gasped with the
pleasure of their union.

Tytus grinned at his guardian, as if reading his thoughts, and raised his
head for another kiss. Had Rannell Kent not been staring so devotedly into
his young lover's eyes at that moment, he might have missed the sudden
tension in them, might not have seen the image of horror that was suddenly
reflected there indicating a threat that Kent himself could not see. A
lifetime of training took over, banishing all thoughts of desire. Rannell
Kent faded away, and the Guardian of the Flame leapt into action.

A swift roll brought him and the Prince tumbling to the side and onto the
floor of the tent, saving both their lives. Kent could now see the threat
that he had before only sensed through the clues on Tytus' face. A soldier
stood in the tent, his sword plunging into the bed where just moments
before they had been making love. Kent felt a growl of anger bubble up his
throat as he thought of the stunning desecration of their privacy. As he
watched, the soldier recovered, bringing his weapon up to strike again,
just as another soldier entered the tent with weapon drawn. Kent's anger
grew, burning with a fire he could only describe as holy, and he unleashed
it in all its fury as he placed himself between the assassin and the
Prince.

He did not bother to call for the Prince's other guards. The presence of
these assassins meant they were either dead or involved in the plot, and
either way of no use in the fight. Kent was naked, his sword and armor
cluttered in a pile on the far side of the tent and, at the moment, as
useless to him as the guards. And yet his entire existence was to serve as
Tytus' last line of defense, and there was no thought of fear or retreat in
him. This was his purpose, this was his sacred duty to the Lightbringer and
to his own heart. He rushed the first assassin directly, neatly ducking the
swipe of the man's blade, to jam the butt of his hand directly against his
enemy's nose. He felt and heard a satisfying snap as the soldier staggered
back in a rush of blood. Two successive strikes to his chest and his
forearm and Kent had pulled the sword free of the assassin's grasp and into
his far more capable hands. The soldier was dead by his own weapon before
his compatriot had fully entered the tent.

The second man was more prepared for battle and a far better
swordsman. Kent knew that his nakedness was his greatest weakness, for the
other man fought defensively, needing only to counterattack occasionally
and with little effort to score a wound. Already he could sense the burning
sensation of cuts where the man had got past his defenses, though he dared
not allow himself to consider the wounds any more than as a distant
concern. Some corner of his mind that still clung to logic and reason told
him he needed to change his tactics. Kent's greatest worry during the fight
had been to keep the assassin from reaching Tytus, and all his efforts had
been directed toward that end. And yet, strangely, the man had made no move
towards the Prince at all. The trained fighter in him directed Kent that it
was time to start defending himself.

He took a step back out of the range of his foe's next swipe and forcing
the man to advance in order to engage him. But Kent kept moving,
side-stepping, retreating, pacing the length of the tent while the assassin
shadowed him warily, frustration building on the man's face the more time
passed without an exchange. Kent took the opportunity to size up his enemy,
noting with some alarm that he wore the uniform of a common soldier, a man
by all appearances loyal to the same Emperor as Kent himself. The
implications were alarming, but there was no time to focus on that. The
Guardian took a deep breath and forced himself to go to that place of calm
and patience that had characterized his martial training since he was a
child. He waited. But the enemy had not the same training, and an eagerness
to finish his task was written clearly across his face. At last the man's
anger and frustration seemed to reach its peak, and he charged forward. At
that moment Tytus, ignored during the duel, stepped forward to attack,
having recovered Kent's own blade from the floor.

The Prince's blow as well executed, Kent noted with some pride, but the
enemy was good. He saw the new threat at once and twisted to parry the
blow, but his momentum still carried him forward leaving him open to
attack. The Guardian of the Flame saw his moment and struck without mercy,
then whispered a prayer for the man's soul as the foe collapsed to the
ground, dying. Only extreme defense of his own life and that of his Prince
could force Rannell Kent to take a life so casually, and his anger was
still fresh enough that he could sense no hint of remorse as the man's eyes
glassed over and he moaned for the final time.

Panting and pale, Rannell Kent and Tytus regarded each other in silence. At
last Kent turned to collect his clothes and tend to his wounds, his mind
racing furiously. In that moment, Tytus gasped and Kent felt the boy slam
against him, knocking him to the ground.  From the floor, Kent looked up to
see another soldier at the entrance to the tent holding a leveled
crossbow. The soldier cursed and then turned and fled. Out of instinct
alone Kent found himself on his feet and pursuing, and it was only until he
took his first step outside of the tent that he remembered that he was
still naked and in no state to begin a chase that could lead him right into
an ambush. Outside, the man with the crossbow was nowhere to be seen
anyway, having disappeared into the night.

Kent took quick, ragged breaths. It had only been seconds since the attack
began, but there wasn't time to process what had happened or even to think
at all. He had to get the Prince to safety, which mean that, for now, they
had to get away from the army that carried assassins in its midst. He
re-entered the tent to tell Tytus to get his things, only to find him
motionless on the ground with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his shoulder,
near the neck, blood already running down, down, down...

The Guardian froze in shock. "You damn fool!" Kent shouted, tears somehow
already running down his face, "I am supposed to protect you! What were you
thinking? You brainless fool!"

But the young man did not respond. He still lived, though his breathing was
very shallow and he was already pale. Seeing this, Kent found in his heart
the tiniest spark of hope. And even a tiny spark, to the Guardian of the
Flame, was sacred.

"Oh Father of Light," the Guardian gasped, the most devout prayer of his
life, "Let not this man suffer for my mistakes."

Another attack could come at any time. Rannell Kent covered the wound as
best he could, lifted his love tenderly from the ground, and carried him
off into the night.
_________________________________________________________________________

From the moment they had entered the city walls, Mouse felt
uncomfortable. It seemed wrong to suddenly walk on streets of stone instead
of on the soft earth and to sleep on a mattress in the barracks instead of
on a pile of leaves. The other Woodsmen shared his feelings, of course,
though they bore their discomfort with a patience and humor that Mouse
could not understand. The city was huge and crowded and dirty, and he did
not like it.

"Why can't we stay in the forest?" he had asked them over and over, "Why
did we come to this awful place?

"We go where the God wills," Salor always replied. It seemed he had no
other answer.

Knowing that to ask once more would only bring the same response made Mouse
hold his tongue. Instead he adjusted his sword belt, which still felt heavy
and out of place at his hip, and looked out at the flickering campfires of
the enemy army below. Salor and some of the others had been put to work
manning the city walls at night and scouting for enemy movements, and Mouse
usually joined them for their company though he was not officially one of
their number. The others had insisted that, if he was going to join them in
their duties, he carry a weapon to defend himself. Mouse was too
uncomfortable to point out the obvious fact that he did not know how to use
a blade and was more likely to hurt himself and his allies should there be
a cause for fighting.The others surely knew this, but they tolerated his
presence both for the good luck they claimed he brought them and the
instrument, Salor's gift, that hung from his back and which he would
sometimes play quietly to help pass the time.

Despite himself, Mouse tried to count the number of campfires he could
see. He had tried this several times before and always lost count
eventually. There were too many, and when he thought too hard about that
Mouse always got a little afraid and had to remind himself how tall and
thick the city's walls were.

"We will win, won't we?" he asked suddenly, needing reassurance, "This
isn't enough men for them to take the city?"

"There'll be more than this," Salor replied, "This is just the advance
force under the command of the Prince. The rest are on their way."

Mouse's hands curled into fists at the mention of Tytus, but Salor and the
others did not seem to notice.

"If more are coming we should engage the enemy now," one of the Woodsmen
said, "Break them before they can be reinforced."

Salor shook his head, "The Emperor does not have enough men, even with us,
and our enemy knows that. Their Prince is here to ensure we are not further
reinforced before the rest arrive. We won't have any luck attacking
directly and would lose the only advantage we have right now. Far safer to
trust the city's defenses, wait, and hope their assaults prove futile."

"Could be a long siege," somebody said, "It won't be comfortable, but the
city could hold out for years in here."

Salor smiled his usual mysterious smile and looked at Mouse. "Something
tells me it won't be that long. Call it a hunch, my friends."

"This Emperor, Salor," said the man who had spoken first, "They say his
defeats have driven him mad. They say he has fits and rages and does not
speak sense much of the time. Is this the man you are content to serve?"

"We do not serve any man, but only the God of the Wind. Do not forget
that."

The others nodded and fell quiet, satisfied by their leader's words.

Mouse looked at each of their faces and realized how much he liked these
men. They were the first people ever to show him kindness. Their ways were
strange. Even their God was strange. Mouse couldn't remember much of their
religious devotions in the forest, but what he could remember made him want
to blush and run away. But even that odd experience made him feel closer to
the Woodsmen, his brothers. He was not one of them, not yet, but they made
him feel as if he were. They made him feel special. Wanted. It was a gift
so simple and yet, for Mouse, so rare that he found himself moist around
the eyes at the thought of it. The wind blew across his face and dried his
tears quickly.

"Wanderer of the Wood, or whatever your name is," he whispered to himself,
facing out over the enemy camp with his back towards his friends, "Protect
these men who have been kind to me. I don't know what I can offer you in
exchange. If there's anything you want me to do, or any way I can help the
others, I'll do it. For whatever that's worth."

They all sat for awhile in silence. Finally, the quiet became oppressive so
Mouse pulled out the wonderful musical instrument and began to play, to the
murmurs of appreciation from the others. He became lost in the music, and
so did not notice when another man joined their group, a tall, balding,
skinny man with a pale face and dark bags under his eyes. The newcomer was
flanked by other soldiers wearing very shiny armor who stood straight and
tall. The Woodsmen, seeing the man arrive, stood up one by one and placed a
fist over their heart, a great sign of respect. But the man did not see
them. He saw and heard only Mouse.

When the song was finished, Mouse finally looked up, blinking in confusion
at what he saw.

"That music..." the tall man said, "Where did you learn to play?"

Mouse could only shrug, too nervous to speak. He looked to Salor for
guidance but he and the others had their focus entirely on the newcomer.

"I feel... I came out here to walk the walls and see the enemy," he said,
"I thought it would... clear my head. I don't know why I am telling you
this. I don't really know anything... They say I am not myself, you
see.... It didn't work, the walk I mean, I still felt... and seeing the
enemy army made me... Damn my brother! But that music, it... Thank
you. What is your name, young man?"

"Mouse," he managed to squeak out.

"That can't be right. A nickname? Not what the other soldiers call you. I
would thank you by your true name."

He didn't like to say it out loud, but he knew instinctively he could not
refuse this man. "My name is... my name is Ammon."

The man nodded and repeated the name, and then, startlingly, turned and
wandered off. As he left, Mouse felt the tension release from his body,
found he could suddenly move and breathe normally again. He shook his head
as if to shake off the strange feeling the man had given him.

"Come with me," a voice said. Mouse looked up to see one of the soldiers in
the shiny armor standing above him. Salor stood next to him, smiling
knowingly the way he always did.

"Where?"

"To the palace. In case we need you again," the man replied impatiently, as
if this explanation was obvious. When it became clear it wasn't, he added,
"You just saved the Emperor from madness."

Throwing back his head, Salor laughed.
_______________________________________________________________________

Face red with anger and shame, Damek stormed out of his tent and into the
night, leaving the sputtering, terrified soldier behind. The man probably
thought the Commander was angry at his failure and feared for his
fate. Damek did not know how to explain that his anger was only at himself
and at the strange feelings the man's report had summoned up inside of
him. He had to get away. Only he knew that no matter how far he ran he
could not escape his failure -- and what that failure had cost him.

Rannell Kent lived. The Prince, the Heir, wounded in the confrontation and
now missing too. A nightmare.

Politically, it was a disaster far beyond the messy conquest of
Nathar. Such bungling would prove to have serious consequence for his
career. But strangely, bizarrely, Damek realized he cared nothing for
that. He had lost thousands of men at Nathar and had thought nothing of
it. This mission had cost him two, and it was tearing the Commander up
inside.

He realized he had left the camp behind, had passed beyond the outer ring
of guards without even noticing. He had come to the main road that led to
Kadnaris, little more than a wide dusty track at this spot though it would
grow in grandeur the nearer it came to that ancient city. Letting his feet
guide him where they willed, Damek began walking down the great road. He
tried over and over to recall the faces of the two dead men, two of his
best, that he had sent on the terrible task of assassinating the Prince's
bodyguard. He found, to his horror, that he could not even remember what
they looked like.

Do it quietly, the Emperor had said. Do it quickly. Do it when Kent is most
vulnerable and least suspecting. Send my son a message. And Damek, the
dutiful soldier, had obeyed, leaving two men dead, men whose names and
faces Damek could not remember. Well, why should he? They were soldiers,
tools of the Empire, they had no purpose but to fight and die for the
cause.  Why then, this pain and torture? Why this doubt? Damek could not
hide from what had been troubling him any longer. Could one of them have
looked slightly like his Commander? Never known his father? Been left
without family as Damek himself had? Had Damek sent his only son to die and
never known it? The thought assaulted him, besieged him with all the
tactics that Damek himself had used at Nathar. He himself was the
beleaguered city, and he knew he could not hold out much longer. Commander
Damek, the pride of the Empire, was falling apart.

A small, mound-like shape appeared ahead of him on the side of the road,
blurry in the darkness until he grew close enough to make out the details.
It was a road-side shrine to the gods, one of many that could be found
along the great roads for weary travelers to pay their respects and pray
for a safe journey. Damek stood outside the small alcove brooding for a
long time. Finally he pulled off his boots and entered the shrine on his
knees. There were four nooks in the tiny building, each depicting one of
the gods of the land. Damek let his eyes brush across them all, bewildered.
He had not payed much attention to religion since leaving the orphanage as
a boy, true, but the depictions of the deities were not at all like what he
remembered. Either the traditions had changed or the artist of this shrine
had take significant liberties.

The God of Light, depicted above the small shrine to Damek's left, was
recognizable only by the grand sun which blazoned behind him, but gone was
the kindly old man that Damek remembered. Here the God was rendered as a
proud and noble warrior, his armor glinting in the sunlight. Even more
strange was the Whisperer, the God of Night, whose alcove was directly
opposite the Lightbringer's. The Man in the Moon was shown as a boy a few
years shy of manhood, a piece of cloth tied across his eyes like the blind
beggars that could be found in many of the larger cities. Damek thought
that a particularly morbid depiction of the Dark God, and shuddered. The
man who had drawn these pictures could not have been quite right in the
head. The rendering of the Wanderer of the Wood confirmed his theory of
madness. That the God had been drawn as a young man playing a lute, flanked
by wolves before a background of trees, was not surprising. But the young
man's complete and graphic nudity was, not to mention the small creature,
some kind of rodent, that perched on his shoulder.

Damek shuddered, unsettled and confused. The icons were strange, but then
again all three were dedicated to gods Damek found strange anyway. He knew
of them, was acquainted with their cults and their rites in a distant,
academic way, but they were nothing to do with him. There had been only one
God in the orphanage, the God that Damek had been raised to love and fear,
and the God he had walked away from and forgotten about in his military
life. It was to this God Damek now turned, looking for answers and comfort
like an acquaintance from another life. He faced the God's image, trying to
recall the words to the prayers he had been taught so many decades before.

The Lord of Earth and Stone's depiction in that little road-side shrine
took Damek's breath away. A man well past his prime had been drawn, and in
that man's weary face had been etched the wrinkles of time suggesting woes
and cares beyond description. The man carried a sword in one hand, and,
strangely, an infant child in the other. His face and clothing was all
caked with dust and dirt, yet he was noble and proud. He was the God that
Damek remembered, for all his strange appearance in this image.

"What am I to do?" Damek said aloud, "Well? You're a God, aren't you? Your
priests say you want us to pray, and here I am. I'm praying. So tell me
what I am supposed to do! I am loyal. I obey the law. I obey the Empire.
That is what the Lawgiver stands for, isn't it? But what about loyalty to
family? What the the bonds of blood? That's your realm too! So what do I do
when one loyalty contradicts the other, eh? They never said anything about
that in that bloody orphanage. This mission is suicide, now, how can I ask
any of my men to take it upon them?"

And just like that Damek knew the answer. He couldn't send any more men
after Rannell Kent. He couldn't command his troops in the siege. The
Emperor was right, his ability to lead had been compromised. He would need
to resign.

And yet, with Damek gone, the Emperor would not give up his purpose to see
the Guardian of the Flame dead. The reports the soldier who escaped had
brought gave plenty of suggestion why. The Prince and the Guardian had
become intimately involved, to the Emperor's obvious objection. Yes, if
Damek retired another man would be put in his place and that man would
order Damek's soldiers to kill Rannell Kent and nothing would have changed.

"I will do it," Damek growled, "Alone. Is that what you want, Urbanus, you
old bastard? I will go alone, obeying my liege and sparing my son. If he
yet lives.... If he lives, bless him. Protect him. Let him become a better
man than his father ever was. That's all I ask."

They weren't the words he had learned as a boy, but they would do. Damek
left the shrine behind him and returned to the camp to prepare for his
journey, feeling refreshed with a sense of new purpose and free from a
burden he had not known he carried. As he packed his belongings and wrote
out the note explaining his sudden absence, he even felt a grim smile
spreading across his old, grizzled face.