Deus Necros

Several days later, back at the outpost of the empire at the borders between them and the Kingdom of the Sands, a group of people were spotted marching toward the fortress. The mirage bands along the horizon bent and unbent around them, turning figures into wavering smudges that hardened only when the wind paused long enough to let sight catch up. From the watch line you could hear the layered murmur that always belongs to returning columns, the scrape of leather, the tired metal rattle that says a buckle has slipped and no one cares, the uneven footfall of men who learned again that sand steals more than it gives.

The fortress was mainly occupied with the powers of the Holy Order, its inner courtyards busy at every hour with pale robes and polished pauldrons, sanctified water casks stacked under canvas, incense smoke gathered and pushed by the heat like thin banners. Not far from them a fully erected camp stood, squared by ropes and marked by spear standards, full of soldiers and combatants that were all under the direct command of the imperial army.

The smell drifted back and forth between the two: oil and prayer on one side, boiled grain and horse on the other. The two forces camped right next to each other, close enough that voices carried at night when tempers grew thin and cards were thrown down too hard, though if one were to see that the empire’s soldiers were camping outside the fortress and the Holy Order had taken refuge in the far more livable place like the fortress they would question the decision of the empire. After all, the fortress belonged to the emperor, why should the Holy Order get the privilege of staying in it, while the soldiers who bleed for the empire on the drop of a hat get to only stay in tents and sand.

But no one questioned the order of the emperor, not even his own son. Orders lay like stones; men walked around them.

The people in the imperial camp were the first to spot the incoming group, the lookout’s shout passing down the line with the same clipped rhythm, an old chain practiced too many times. They were about a couple dozen soldiers and paladins mixed in. Even from far off you saw the posture of the saved and the half ruined, the way the body tries to stand tall and cannot help favoring the side that hurt more yesterday.

“Your highness,” one of the soldiers spoke to another soldier right next to him. He kept his voice low out of habit, as if the dunes themselves could deliver gossip up the chain of command.

Without hesitation, the second soldier immediately smacked him on the head, not hard, just enough to make the point. “I told you to not call me that. We’re both privates now. Still, what’s going on?” he said.

“Yes your maj… I mean Sir Alex.”

The prince gave him a disappointed look that had scolded better men and said, “You can’t say sir either, just speak up.” He had the patience of someone who had been repeating this lesson since dawn and would keep repeating it until sunset wore through his tongue.

“Yes, the incoming group, they’re all members of the Holy Order that went missing last week. Seems like they’re back already…” the soldier turned toward the camp as if measuring how far his next error would echo.

“I see, you think my double would be able to handle them?” the prince said. The half smile he wore was light, the eyes behind it were not.

“He lived in the palace for as long as you did, he should be able to fully understand the scope of the situation…”

“Well, I’ll just enjoy the show from this side then.” He said it like a man talking about a troupe that might juggle knives and might cut off fingers by accident. The kind of show that is worth watching because of the chance something goes wrong.

“ALEX, Tull!” one of the people from the inside of the camp shouted to the two guards, voice cracked by dust, authority clear anyway.

Alex turned. “Yes?”

“Head to the incoming group, get our soldiers to our camp first. Seems like a shit storm is brewing.”

“I don’t like the sound of that…” the soldier next to the prince said, eyes narrowing against the glare, a dip in the gut that good soldiers trust.

“That sounds like some fun, let’s head out, I wanted to be closer to the action, let’s see what the people who disappeared have to say to tell us. They should have some good stories to tell.” The prince’s tone was bright as a boy, the cadence had an old habit of command woven through it.

The two of them immediately rode on two war horses that disregarded the heat of the sun and the brutality of the desert and rushed toward the incoming group. The horses’ breath steamed in the heat like ghosts off hot springs, hooves biting into powder and finding purchase anyway because they had been taught to by hands that never wasted time on pretty tricks. Saddle leather creaked. The camp fell behind them in a square of color and canvas that soon became nothing but lines.

Once they arrived, they noticed that the group looked in dire straits. Cracked lips, bruises and sunburns, skin far too fried as if they crossed the whole desert on foot without taking shelter or shade for weeks. The robes of clerics had lost all pretense of white, the paladins carried their shields like extra ribs they no longer wanted to own. There were places where armor had rubbed deeper than skin. There were bandages that had been changed and changed again until the fabric itself looked tired of being asked.

Their water was clearly running dry, but their spirits seemed to be struggling rather than broken, the kind of grim line you find in mouths after a thing that should have killed them did not, and they have not yet figured out what that means. Even the so called hero seemed to be more than willing to remove his own skin from how much he sweated on his armor. He fidgeted with the gorget as if it were a moral failing of the metal to be that hot.

“Carlean!” Alex shouted as he noticed one of the soldiers among the group that marched with Titania, who by the way seemed to be completely unperturbed by the heat that had plagued the rest of the camp. The sun clung to her and slid off like water on a well-oiled blade. Her hair had dried blood at the ends where someone had tried to wipe it and given up. The aura around her was the same as always, that steady pressure on the air that tells you lightning knows your name.

“Oh Alex, what’s going on? Why are you guys here?” Carlean’s voice was both relieved and embarrassed, the way it always is when a man is seen returning worse than he left.

“Commander’s orders, you guys need to go back to our camp…” Alex said. He kept it simple. He knew better than to add comfort the other man could not carry.

“But, we need some healing…” You could hear the confession in his breath, a quiet flinch at asking for something that should be granted before he had to ask.

“No can do,” Tull said, with the crispness of a man who lives better with rules than without. “Gotta go and report to the commander first.”

Titania noticed the man named Alex, frowned, as she immediately recognized him, but seeing how everyone reacted to him as nothing but a normal soldier, she understood immediately what that meant. The prince was fooling around. But playing soldier is one of the worst things he could do. He might outright die if there was an invasion.

And she didn’t miss the man next to him, that one was a mighty warrior. Her gaze passed over the slight tells that only a trained eye catches, the way he sat a horse like a man who lived his entire life in battlefield, and how close his hand was to his sword was a clear tell of a man who brushed with death more times than most of the soldiers with her combined. She did not call either of them on it. She filed the thought away with all the other problems she did not have time to solve.

“Brat, got some water on you?” the hero was the first to speak. He pushed forward with the practiced entitlement of a man who thinks hierarchy is something that follows him around like a halo. Titania was about to stop him, but decided otherwise. Ludwig was right. Let the bastard dig his own grave. Some holes need no shovels, only tongues.

“Yes, great sir hero!” Alex said with all the happiness a fan could ever have. That should have been the reaction that any normal soldier should have to a hero, a divine being chosen by the gods to deliver the humans from suffering and the tyranny of demons. He handed over the skin like an offering and bowed his head just enough to satisfy pride without breaking his own neck.

So, for everyone in the group no one had any reaction whatsoever to Alex’s antics, none but one. Titania was completely stupefied, after all, though the second prince likes to give off a jubilant and carefree attitude, he is by far the most shrewd royal of the bunch, rivaling his father if not more. All his brothers know of it, but thanks to his relatively weaker disposition to magic and sword, he was deemed unworthy of being competition. A prince acting like a fan to one of his subjects? Quite the conundrum. She watched the water move from skin to mouth and thought about knives hidden under smiles.

“Ah, so you know of me,” Hiro said as he smiled wide, seemed like this was the first bit of good joy he had in the last few days. He took the waterskin from Alex and downed it in a couple of seconds, throat working, the kind of gulping that shows a man never learned to ration. “Good good, you’ll get to tell your friends and grandkids even that you met someone great as me and even served me water, take pride in that!” he said as he patted him on the shoulder.

Albeit a bit too heavily, almost disregarding, and in that moment, for but a fraction of a second, the wide smile on the prince twitched. It was nothing more than a shadow that passed through a window when the cloud moves, gone before anybody names it. Thankfully no one noticed it. For the prince was one of the best at keeping his poker face on, and for it to almost break due to this fool would have been a shame he will carry for life. He let the shoulder rock, let the skin of his cheek keep the same smooth joy.

“Yes! I’ll make sure to tell them all!” the prince said as he turned his head toward the camp. The cheer in his voice did not touch his eyes. “We should head out now,” he added, already counting how many steps it would take to peel the soldiers away from the clerics without starting an argument that would reach the fortress walls.

The man named Carlean turned to his soldier companions who agonized in the cave, and then turned to Titania. He waited the way men wait for orders that decide whether their mistakes grow teeth or are buried quietly. His cracked lips tried to hold a straight line.

“Don’t hide anything in your reports,” she said. “Tell everything that you saw and heard as you’ve seen it and heard it, even the parts regarding Ludwig…” she gave one final order to the people who struggled with her and brushed death far too many times in such a short time period. The words landed heavy, and the look she held them with hammered the nails in. There was more inside the instruction than the words allowed. The pause after Ludwig’s name carried its own warning. Write truth and then shut your mouths.

The prince once he heard that, smiled, seems like they do have some stories. Though Titania’s words had double meanings, that they should only report to the authority and keep the rest to themselves, for the prince however who was more than used to mingle with tightlipped nobles and always had them confess their deepest desires, for soldiers, it is far easier to achieve, a few rounds of drinks are more than enough to loosen some tight lips and let him hear a good story or two.

Especially since the person named Ludwig Heart seemed to be missing completely from this group. That gap in the formation drew the eye more than any banner. It hummed like a pulled tooth your tongue cannot help but probe.

He filed the absence where he kept sharpened curiosities and nudged his horse toward the road back, already planning who to seat where at the fire, already measuring which man would talk first when the heat and the memory of the cave began to slip.