I was hoping my 10,000th post would occur on the 10th anniversary of my joining Chrons, but it's already arrived, a couple of weeks ahead of the Chronniversary. Never mind. I'm happy for you to provide cake and pressies now and then again next month!
Anyhow, by way of celebrating both, in adherence to time-honoured tradition started long ago, far back in the foggiest of misty mists by members whose names shall be revered if we could only remember them, herewith a piece for critique. It's something that started as a piece of flash fiction for a contest elsewhere, which I then extended into a not-prologue and to which I added a first chapter. I've not done anything with it since the the spring, but I'm half-thinking of pushing on with the story again, so thought I'd resurrect it for this.
~~~~
The two men move into the alley just as midnight tolls – dark magic is greatest in the darkest hours, and night is ever the friend of terror. Thick cloud smothers the sky; not a glimmer of crescent moon or silver starlight escapes. But Executioners need no lamps to track their prey.
Sable cloaks billowing in the icy breeze, iron heels striking sparks off filth-strewn cobbles, the men continue until they reach the moneylender’s door. There in the shadows they ready themselves. Each holds his defensive ebony staff before his face, but his obsidian witch-blade – so imbued with power, magic spills from it like shards of crystal pitch – points directly forward. Standard precautions against any unbroken sorcerer illegally hiding among the non-lit, the ordinary magic-less common folk; essential against the renegade Executioner they are hunting.
Black lightning flares. The door is heavily warded with protective spells but holds for only moments against the Executioners’ combined power. The men enter. The silent screaming begins. None of the townsfolk will hear; no one ever hears such screams. No one but Executioners, and the victims themselves.
When the shrieks of pain finally end, the rapacious moneylender and her bully of a protector lie spread-eagled on the stained floor, eyes still open but no longer gleaming in lust for the trinkets they’d extorted and stolen and killed for.
The Executioners were unopposed – time is needed for sorcerous powers to be summoned and the moneylender was given none. Yet if they wonder at her failure even to attempt counter-spells against the torment they steadily and bloodily inflicted, they give no sign as they walk away.
Only when the Executioners’ dragonboat has lifted into the sky and they are half a league distant from Jansby, on their return to the island, do I emerge from the alley’s shadows, my sable cloak now held tight against the midnight chill, my ebon staff and obsidian blade once again secured within its folds.
As I recoup a few bleak remnants of the power I gave the hovel to create its wards, I study the broken, bleeding bodies of the moneylender and her man, two non-lit common folk, with no whit of sorcerous power between them, only a cruel malignancy of spirit. Their victims will find joy in this night’s darkling work, but for me there is only acceptance of two more lives that I’ve destroyed, though these at least were justified by the crimes they had committed.
Renegade I might be. An Executioner I remain.
Chapter One
The two men were back. She’d watched the dragonboat return, watched their swagger as they walked from the landing ground to the Executioners’ Hall, watched them studiously ignore their fellows while basking in the attention they received, watched them confer behind the closed door before they entered her office. Despite her rank, they refused to give her their report, not even the brief outline as was required by all returning Executioners, insisting they had first to present themselves to the Master. But the smug expression of the one and the smirk of the other had already told Ravna all she needed to know.
She sent one servant with the news to the Grand Master – though undoubtedly his spies had already informed him of the men’s return – and several more to the heads of the other Chapters advising them an impromptu Conclave would soon be convened. Then she made her slow way to the Hustinghall, with a short detour to her chambers, to dress in the formality of her sable cloak.
Valis she left in her rooms. The mist-crow’s absence from her shoulder, protecting her blind eye and crippled side, always left her feeling vulnerable, which was doubtless the reason she was forbidden to bring him into Conclave. So, in addition to her cloak, she collected one of her wrens. When she reached the empty Hall, she released the wren, flying him to a dragon-headed corbel supporting a roof beam, where his small brown body would be invisible against smoke-darkened timbers. From there, through his eyes, she’d be able to see everything and everyone, most particularly the double horseshoe of heavy wooden chairs and their occupants.
She paused by her seat in the outer ring of chairs. She ought to sit, to await the other aides and lieutenants, then their Chapter Masters, and finally the Grand Master himself. Sit, holding herself still, impassive, so no one would see anything but her usual stark implacable composure. But the windows drew her. The windows which looked east towards the mainland and the Tylfjord. Slowly she crossed to them.
Far beyond the fjord’s hinterland of cold green hills and isolated farmsteads, beyond even the glaciers pressing down upon the mountain spine of Nordeska, lay the valleys of the Vosfylke. There, in the middle of nowhere, squatted a small gods-forgotten town called Jansby, a place of no consequence whatsoever, save it was where Frey Hemevarg Alfinnsen, the only renegade Executioner in history, had been hunted down and killed.
Hemevarg. Renegade, rebel, a threat to the Order and all its power while he lived. The man who had maimed her and left her for dead. Her once-loved, now-lost, brother.
She stood motionless, staring across the icy waters of the strait, uncertain how she felt, uncertain how she should feel, whether to gloat or to grieve, though a single tear trickled beneath the ivory mask which covered the ruined half of her face. At length, hearing excited voices approaching the Hall, she turned and limped back to her seat, and waited to learn exactly how Hemevarg had died.
“And so, my lords, the renegade is dead.”
The Master of Executioners finally sat, as proud and self-satisfied as his two men who remained standing within the formal embrace of Conclave. Their report had been long and detailed, if not actually thorough; the Master’s peroration had been quite as long, but vague, pointless and tedious, just like the Master himself.
One or two minor aides softly applauded; others murmured approvingly. Ravna kept silent, the living half of her face cold and rigid, showing no more emotion than her mask, though contempt and bitter laughter bubbled underneath. Hemevarg still lived, that was clear. The question was, when – or indeed whether – she should tell anyone else.
Immediately denouncing the two Executioners as incompetents before the whole Conclave was tempting, greatly tempting, and especially delicious in the humiliation it would excrete over Aage Agnar Hagensen, the elder of the two and her perpetual rival. He’d been conspiring to overthrow her before he left. With this perceived success he would feel himself secure as the Master’s heir-apparent.
But she hadn’t achieved her position by giving in to temptation. To know, when others didn’t know, gave her power. She would use it.
.
Anyhow, by way of celebrating both, in adherence to time-honoured tradition started long ago, far back in the foggiest of misty mists by members whose names shall be revered if we could only remember them, herewith a piece for critique. It's something that started as a piece of flash fiction for a contest elsewhere, which I then extended into a not-prologue and to which I added a first chapter. I've not done anything with it since the the spring, but I'm half-thinking of pushing on with the story again, so thought I'd resurrect it for this.
~~~~
The two men move into the alley just as midnight tolls – dark magic is greatest in the darkest hours, and night is ever the friend of terror. Thick cloud smothers the sky; not a glimmer of crescent moon or silver starlight escapes. But Executioners need no lamps to track their prey.
Sable cloaks billowing in the icy breeze, iron heels striking sparks off filth-strewn cobbles, the men continue until they reach the moneylender’s door. There in the shadows they ready themselves. Each holds his defensive ebony staff before his face, but his obsidian witch-blade – so imbued with power, magic spills from it like shards of crystal pitch – points directly forward. Standard precautions against any unbroken sorcerer illegally hiding among the non-lit, the ordinary magic-less common folk; essential against the renegade Executioner they are hunting.
Black lightning flares. The door is heavily warded with protective spells but holds for only moments against the Executioners’ combined power. The men enter. The silent screaming begins. None of the townsfolk will hear; no one ever hears such screams. No one but Executioners, and the victims themselves.
When the shrieks of pain finally end, the rapacious moneylender and her bully of a protector lie spread-eagled on the stained floor, eyes still open but no longer gleaming in lust for the trinkets they’d extorted and stolen and killed for.
The Executioners were unopposed – time is needed for sorcerous powers to be summoned and the moneylender was given none. Yet if they wonder at her failure even to attempt counter-spells against the torment they steadily and bloodily inflicted, they give no sign as they walk away.
Only when the Executioners’ dragonboat has lifted into the sky and they are half a league distant from Jansby, on their return to the island, do I emerge from the alley’s shadows, my sable cloak now held tight against the midnight chill, my ebon staff and obsidian blade once again secured within its folds.
As I recoup a few bleak remnants of the power I gave the hovel to create its wards, I study the broken, bleeding bodies of the moneylender and her man, two non-lit common folk, with no whit of sorcerous power between them, only a cruel malignancy of spirit. Their victims will find joy in this night’s darkling work, but for me there is only acceptance of two more lives that I’ve destroyed, though these at least were justified by the crimes they had committed.
Renegade I might be. An Executioner I remain.
Chapter One
The two men were back. She’d watched the dragonboat return, watched their swagger as they walked from the landing ground to the Executioners’ Hall, watched them studiously ignore their fellows while basking in the attention they received, watched them confer behind the closed door before they entered her office. Despite her rank, they refused to give her their report, not even the brief outline as was required by all returning Executioners, insisting they had first to present themselves to the Master. But the smug expression of the one and the smirk of the other had already told Ravna all she needed to know.
She sent one servant with the news to the Grand Master – though undoubtedly his spies had already informed him of the men’s return – and several more to the heads of the other Chapters advising them an impromptu Conclave would soon be convened. Then she made her slow way to the Hustinghall, with a short detour to her chambers, to dress in the formality of her sable cloak.
Valis she left in her rooms. The mist-crow’s absence from her shoulder, protecting her blind eye and crippled side, always left her feeling vulnerable, which was doubtless the reason she was forbidden to bring him into Conclave. So, in addition to her cloak, she collected one of her wrens. When she reached the empty Hall, she released the wren, flying him to a dragon-headed corbel supporting a roof beam, where his small brown body would be invisible against smoke-darkened timbers. From there, through his eyes, she’d be able to see everything and everyone, most particularly the double horseshoe of heavy wooden chairs and their occupants.
She paused by her seat in the outer ring of chairs. She ought to sit, to await the other aides and lieutenants, then their Chapter Masters, and finally the Grand Master himself. Sit, holding herself still, impassive, so no one would see anything but her usual stark implacable composure. But the windows drew her. The windows which looked east towards the mainland and the Tylfjord. Slowly she crossed to them.
Far beyond the fjord’s hinterland of cold green hills and isolated farmsteads, beyond even the glaciers pressing down upon the mountain spine of Nordeska, lay the valleys of the Vosfylke. There, in the middle of nowhere, squatted a small gods-forgotten town called Jansby, a place of no consequence whatsoever, save it was where Frey Hemevarg Alfinnsen, the only renegade Executioner in history, had been hunted down and killed.
Hemevarg. Renegade, rebel, a threat to the Order and all its power while he lived. The man who had maimed her and left her for dead. Her once-loved, now-lost, brother.
She stood motionless, staring across the icy waters of the strait, uncertain how she felt, uncertain how she should feel, whether to gloat or to grieve, though a single tear trickled beneath the ivory mask which covered the ruined half of her face. At length, hearing excited voices approaching the Hall, she turned and limped back to her seat, and waited to learn exactly how Hemevarg had died.
*
“And so, my lords, the renegade is dead.”
The Master of Executioners finally sat, as proud and self-satisfied as his two men who remained standing within the formal embrace of Conclave. Their report had been long and detailed, if not actually thorough; the Master’s peroration had been quite as long, but vague, pointless and tedious, just like the Master himself.
One or two minor aides softly applauded; others murmured approvingly. Ravna kept silent, the living half of her face cold and rigid, showing no more emotion than her mask, though contempt and bitter laughter bubbled underneath. Hemevarg still lived, that was clear. The question was, when – or indeed whether – she should tell anyone else.
Immediately denouncing the two Executioners as incompetents before the whole Conclave was tempting, greatly tempting, and especially delicious in the humiliation it would excrete over Aage Agnar Hagensen, the elder of the two and her perpetual rival. He’d been conspiring to overthrow her before he left. With this perceived success he would feel himself secure as the Master’s heir-apparent.
But she hadn’t achieved her position by giving in to temptation. To know, when others didn’t know, gave her power. She would use it.
.
