Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Arc 2: Crow | Chapter 1: The Owl of Strekke

The halberd slashed through the air, its barbed hook seeking my neck. I batted it aside, lunged forward, and then retreated again with half a curse bitten off as the polearm stabbed at my ankles.

“What’s the matter, Headsman?” Lord Emery Planter, the Earl of Strekke, mocked me with a contemptuous disdain only an aristo could conjure. “Not used to your victims fighting back?”

We stood in the great hall of Emery’s own castle, lit by the silver moonlight beaming through the high windows and the orange flames of chandeliers above. The Earl of Strekke had fully arrayed himself in his accoutrements of war — a suit of armor fashioned into the likeness of an owl. The “eyes” of his helm — two circular depressions of darker metal with narrow slits in the center for the eyes beneath — seemed fixed in an expression of perplexed suspicion. Steel points meant to resemble the raised ears of a horned owl crowned the intricate helm.

The armor was ridiculous — and the man wearing it was making a fool of me.

To be fair, my own armor consisted only of an archaic set of maille, spaulders and bracers the only additions to the long coat of shadowy links, and I’d barely slept in days. I’d been too busy evading the Earl’s minions.

They surrounded me even then, an array of pale, ghost-eyed faces. Many already displayed signs of rot, especially the soldiers, but some were more pristine in their reanimation. Undead guards jabbed at me with pikes and halberds when I strayed too far from the center of the hall. Men and women in the livery of servants stood beyond the uniformed guardsmen, their bloodless faces watching with the implacable stoicism of statues.

Even the Earl’s family watched, standing at the top of a short flight of steps before the throne. The Earl’s wife clutched the shoulders of her son with near skeletal hands. The boy, no older than twelve, was one of only a handful in that room still among the living. I could see him trembling beneath his dead mother’s grip even halfway across the chamber.

Just hold on. I directed the thought at him, unable to catch a breath to say the words aloud. I’ll get you out of this.

Only one other living soul dwelt in the room besides the earl, the boy, and myself. A middle aged man dressed in charcoal gray robes like a mendicant of old, a rope belt tied about his waist. He watched me tentatively, a strange light in his eyes the rest of the ghoulish congregation didn’t possess.

I didn’t have time to ponder that just then. The earl seemed to dance despite the weight of his armor with an acrobat’s grace as he and I circled one another, my opponent’s halberd tracing mocking figure eights as he goaded me to press him. I struggled just to keep myself from getting skewered, either by him or by one of the animated soldiers forming our duelist’s ring with their rotting bodies.

“Ho hoo!” The Earl laughed, shuffled forward, and then drove his weapon toward my midriff in a move that twisted his entire body. His armor, well-made, allowed a full range of unrestricted motion. My armor took the blow, metal grinding against metal with a dull shriek, but it didn’t stop me from losing my breath. I stumbled back, gasping for air.

“What’s this?” Lord Emery backed away, his eyes squinting within the slits of his helm to match the expression the visor seemed to be making. Honestly, it resembled the face of a toad more than an owl, but I didn’t have much time for artistic criticism just then. “What’s this?” The earl repeated, his brassy voice muffled by the helm. “Are you not the Headsman of Seydis, the one they call Blackbough? I thought you would provide me a challenge! I went to all this trouble for you — sent out my knights, dusted off my armor, even invited you into my home to settle this man to man! And this is all you can do? I guess the rumors about you Table knights were drivel, ho hoo!”

He had a bizarre laugh, like the hooting of an owl. It had to be an intentional affect, with that stupid armor. He even had his pauldrons shaped into an approximation of feathered wings.

I was losing to this man.

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My eyes slid past my opponent to the figures standing before the ornate chairs where the earl and his lady would sit while holding court. I locked eyes with the boy there, frozen in the undead grip of his reanimated mother. His pale face stared back, his limbs stiffened with fear as though he, too, were dead. But he still very much lived.

Did I see pleading in his eyes? Even hope?

I turned my full attention back on my opponent. Too much to ask that he fit the stereotype of a necromancer, I supposed — a dangerous but physically weak madman hiding away in a dungeon or tower, vulnerable once one broke through his ghoulish minions. No, Emery Planter was a member of the Peerage, a lord of an Urnic House and a warrior born and bred.

His halberd had found more than maille. He’d given me more scars on my arms, my legs. At this rate, he’d bleed me to death.

Perhaps sensing my growing weariness, the earl pressed me harder. He drove me back to the edge of the ring of wights. I had to plant my feet and fend off his sweeping slashes and jabs in order to prevent myself from being impaled by the spears bristling at my back. The nobleman had the reach on me with his weapon and the distinct advantage garnered by his armor. It had been foolish of me to fight him like this. Cocky. I’d believed I could win despite the handicaps.

The earl brought his polearm up high over his head, the steel mittens encasing his hands shifting with surprising dexterity, and then he cleaved down with his weapon’s small axe-blade, back-ended by a cruel steel spike. It descended like the bird of prey the knight meant to resemble, air whistling as it parted. Cursing, I brought my left hand up and shaped my aura into a shield, causing a gently curved, intricately shaped barrier of amber light to appear several inches before my closed fist. The halberd slammed into it, causing nearly golden plumes of flame to scatter like the sparks from an anvil.

“Ho hoo!” The earl chuckled and stepped back, prodding at the shield as I gasped for breath, sweating with the effort of maintaining it. “That’s a pretty thing. Is that your Art?”

It was, but not my own. The aureshield is one of several techniques inherited from the Alder Table, a phantom manifestation of knights from bygone days imprinted into my aura.

I didn’t see any reason to tell an enemy that, though. I shifted into a stance, holding the head of my axe back behind my waist in preparation for a swing. I kept the magical barrier up, the aureshield and my stance reminiscent of an ancient hoplite.

“I never managed to awaken a Soul Art of my own,” the earl said musingly, twirling his halberd in thoughtful circles before him, lazily goading me to attack. “I understand it is quite taxing to use them. Let us test it, shall we?”

He advanced with the speed and ferocity of a viper, nearly startling me into retreating. The halberd slashed at my shield again, causing more golden sparks to fly. Again the knight-necromancer attacked, stabbing with his versatile weapon’s spearhead. I didn’t step back or stumble — my own will formed the barrier, and it would remain fixed in place unless I chose to move it. Unlike a normal shield, the force of those attacks didn’t carry through to me.

That isn’t to say the aureshield is an infallible defense.

The earl struck again, and this time the amber barrier cracked. The webbing fractures began to eat across the subtly glowing construct like a cancer, bits flecking away to dissipate like the mirage it resembled. I’d already grown cold with the effort of maintaining it. I suppressed a shiver as the warmth of my spirit, my very life, poured out into the aegis. Against magic and magical creatures the aureshield is nearly impervious. Against more mundane attacks it is little better than glass.

So, when the earl noted this and lunged forward in a savage attack — not at me, but in an attempt to shatter my Art and let me suffer the backlash of a broken construct — I dismissed the shield and sidestepped the thrust. The earl stumbled forward, off balance, and I took my axe in two hands and chopped with a quick, economical movement that nonetheless carried tremendous force behind it. The earl’s right vambrace crumpled beneath the elf-forged iron of the Faen Orgis.

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Nobles can afford to have their armor made by the best smiths. For the very best, their craft often also manifests into Art. Such might have protected Lord Emery from the magicked weapon.

The armor, well made but ordinary, gave, and the bone beneath broke. The necromancer let out a sharp cry and fell to one knee, momentarily stunned by pain.

Before he could recover, I slammed a boot down on his weapon to pin it to the floor and swung again, catching him in the side of his ridiculous helm with an echoing clang!

The lord went to the ground hard, losing his hold on the halberd. I kicked it away and glared around at the onlookers, believing that to be the moment they would all attack at once.

They didn’t. The faces, the dead ones and the few still living, watched in grim silence. The Lady Planter watched through a nearly opaque veil, the ghostly white eyes beneath the only visible aspect of her face. Her son looked ready to weep, or perhaps vomit. Would they use him as a hostage now?

Would it stop me? My mind flashed back to the novice in Vinhithe. I’d frozen then.

I turned my attention back to the earl. Emery Planter dazedly got to his knees. The stylized visor of his helm had deformed, the sharp beak beneath the “eyes” bent to one side so it almost looked like a childish drawing of what it meant to resemble. Blood had begun to drip out of the holes meant for breathing. I’d broken his nose, I think.

“Emery Planter,” I said, catching my breath. My own wounds painted the floor already, and I knew I needed to wrap this up quickly. “You abused the souls of the dead for your own ends. You spat on the authority of the Lords of Draubard and blasphemed against the Onsolain. Your days of conspiring with Recusants and terrorizing innocents are over. It’s time to—”

My doom, which was not my best and not nearly as good as the one I’d use on Leonis Chancer, ended prematurely when the earl’s tinny voice emerged from the damaged mask of his helm. “What? That’s not at all true!”

I paused, more frustrated at being interrupted than taken aback. Lord Emery started getting to his feet, then collapsed again, letting out a muffled cry and cradled his broken wrist. Footsteps pattered across the mosaic floor of the castle hall. I tensed and turned, expecting one of the wights to rush me.

It was the earl’s wife. Clad in the same gown she’d probably worn at her funeral, concealed by dark veils and billowing skirts, she moved with quiet speed to the lord’s side and knelt there, clutching at one of his pauldrons. Her son remained with other attendants near the throne, frozen and pale.

“I…” the earl might have winced, and then used his one good hand to work at the catch at his helm. He managed to get the visor up, revealing a round, aged face with thick whiskers and bristling eyebrows all gone to gray. “I did all of this to protect my lands. Kill me on behalf of your masters if you will, Headsman, I have earned my tenure in Hell. But do not falsify my charges! I have called up spirits from the Underworld, yes, and bound them into flesh, bone, and stone as the great necromancers of old. But I have not allied myself with Recusants, nor have I oppressed my subjects!”

I glanced around at the pale-eyed guards, trying to make the gesture one of amazement. Emery Planter scowled. “I will not justify myself to you, assassin. Take my head. You have bested me, and I will honor the terms of our engagement. But I will not be slandered.”

Nobles. I wanted to spit. On the brink of death, after months of black magic and horror, he would spend his last moments worried about whether I insulted him.

I’d had enough of this job. I began to advance, taking my axe in both hands.

“No.” The word came as a dry whisper, the sound of a late autumn wind through dead branches. I paused and turned to the undead noblewoman. She had spoken. The dead face beneath the veil turned to me, eyes nearly shining through the barrier of cloth.

“It’s alright.” The earl patted his reanimated wife’s withered hand. “It’s alright, beloved. We knew this may be the price of our little rebellion, eh?”

I frowned at his words. I knew the undead, in any variety, were never mindless puppets even under the geas of a necromancer. They were spirits, the remnants of will and memory created when mortal flesh expired and aura faded into a self-aware entity made purely of od. Odsouls, they were properly called. The flame of aura burned out, but an impression of it scorched permanently into the fabric of reality.

A necromancer could bind these shadow-souls to something physical, then compel them through ritual or leverage, the manner of the manipulation varying wildly. More often than not a poor or incautious necromancer is killed or even enslaved by the very beings they sought to use. The Dead are dangerous. There is a reason the Church is strict in regulating it, besides the moral implications.

Still, the word rebellion sparked something in me. The earl made it seem as though this hadn’t all been his idea, and they reminded me of the ravings of another of his sort from many months before.

Putting such thoughts out of my mind I advanced, preparing myself for the killing blow. The veiled wight stood and stepped between me and her necromantic master, perhaps compelled by some lingering echo of her feelings from life or by his will.

I couldn’t say. I would have cut her down — she was already dead, and it would release her soul to return to her own kinds lands — but I felt something then. A tension in the air. The undead guards didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink, but I felt their attentions fix on me more sharply than they had before, almost as though they were all waking at once from a half-sleep.

Frustrated and a bit disturbed, I shoved the wight out of the way. She wasn’t any heavier than she had been alive, perhaps much less so, and she went to the ground in a sprawl of fine silks. I tensed, but no attack came. I stood above Emery Planter than, who glared at me defiantly.

“I have honored the terms of our duel,” the nobleman said, spitting blood. It was running down his broken nose in bubbling gushes, and his teeth were red as he bared them at me. “Now I ask you recall some modicum of honor. Spare my family. They have done you no wrong.”

I paused, curious. I hadn’t been tasked with destroying the undead here, only killing their master. I had no plans to purge this place, but he didn’t need to know that. “Once you’re dead,” I said, “they’ll return to their realm. The Law of Draubard—”

“Dictates that the dead must leave the lands of the living once the conditions of their errantry are fulfilled or face reprisal from their own, yes I know.” The earl spat bloody phlegm onto the beautifully carved stone of his great hall again. “But these had no conditions on their return. I only opened the door. They are…” he sighed. “They are escapees. They will be punished if you send them back. So please…” he took a ragged breath, the fight having done worse to him in his old age than he’d let on while masked. “Please let them be.”

I stared at the man, dumbfounded. Of all the stupid, irresponsible, dangerous things he might have done, calling up the dead with no stipulations had to be among the most severely foolish. I glanced nervously around at the desiccated faces watching me, sensing again that dire attention from them. The soldiers clutched their poleaxes in skeletal hands, waiting with eerie, perfect stillness.

Nothing stopped them from tearing me to pieces. Not the earl, not the enigmatic laws of the Underworld, not anything. I turned my gaze back to Emery. “You’re a goring idiot,” I said.

The earl laughed his weird laugh again, though it seemed half-hearted. “Yes. But I don’t owe you my story, butcher. Be done with it. I’ll face my punishment soon enough.”

I glanced again at the man’s reanimated wife. She still knelt on the floor where I’d shoved her, skirts spread around as though she were rising from an island of fine silks. Her eyes were on the earl, not on me.

Maybe I should have heard the man’s story. Maybe, in another life, we might have even been allies. I’ve thought many times on that night since, and I still don’t know if I made the right choice. I think I would have made a different one later, as the man I would eventually become. But I was the Headsman of Seydis then, who some called Blackbough and others Bloody Al. I’d been bound by my role and my prejudices.

Emery Planter, the necromancer, the Recusant, had endangered many lives regardless of the reasons. His ghoulish court was a mockery, I believed.

I made many excuses, then and later. But, in the end, I just didn’t want to believe I had a choice. So I killed him.

It happened without much drama. I took my stance above him and slightly to the side, just as I’d done at the cathedral in Vinhithe. Just as that far-away executioner in a rain-soaked square had executed the knight whose name I’d never learned.

The earl removed his helmet and bared his neck obligingly, proud as any lord I’d ever met. My axe came down. Cutting off someone’s head isn’t easy. Even a good blade can foul on bone. But I am no ordinary warrior, and Table-given prowess and elven bronze did their work. It was clean and quick as I could make it.

The head rolled to a stop next to the kneeling countess. She picked up her husband’s head, cradling it with near skeletal hands in her lap, even adjusting his gray hair. Then, without a word, the dead woman looked to her son. I followed her gaze and saw the boy staring at the decapitated corpse of his mad father. His pale, haggard face twisted with some emotion I couldn’t name. Mixed grief and relief, I thought. The nightmare had ended. I would have to drive the dead out, perhaps take him out of here if I couldn’t fight them all. No clue what I’d do after. I hadn’t realized I’d decided to save the boy until that moment.

The new earl of Strekke looked at the corpse of his predecessor for a long moment. He glanced at the monk standing near his side, who may have nodded. Then the young lord took a deep breath, a calm settling over his young shoulders. Then he looked at me with hard eyes said, “kill him.”