Chapter 1 - The Prisoner

“No! No! No!” He tried to shout, but all that came out was a muffled cough through the dirty cloth gagging his mouth. Neither the horse nor its rider paid him any mind, though. The rope tying him to the back of the saddle pulled taut as the horse jumped up the rocks. Before he could protest any further, he and the ground bid themselves a disappointing farewell. He was offered a few flailing seconds aloft to consider the situation, and the impending mud puddle didn’t offer him many suggestions. As he raced to meet the puddle, he prayed for a hidden rock. One sharp rock is all it would take, could end all of his misery now if it was hidden in the mud at just the right angle. He turned his head sideways, just in case. Right to the temple. End it all. Kill me now if I must take but one more step with this sanctimonious bastard.

There was a sopping wet splat as his face met the mud. A burning fire erupted on his right side, letting him know that he did indeed manage to find a rock, but it wasn’t anywhere near his temple. His lungs wracked and seized, simultaneously demanding air but refusing to breathe. And the best he could manage anyway were a few gurgling wheezes through his mud-covered gag. Before he could sort out his breathing problem, the rope pulled taut, dragging him through the mud. He feebly managed to put his knees to his chest and clamber back up on his aching feet, groaning all the while.

The black-clothed rider turned in his saddle, his long-brimmed hat doing little to hide the perpetual sneer of contempt plastered on his face. “Come necromancer, we still have much ground to cover today.” He lilted in his Castillean accent, then gathered the reins and urged his steed forward on the narrow road. “I’ve no need to be slowed any further today by your… theatrics.”

Theatrics! I’ll give you theatrics, you worm, you boot-licking toad of the church! Malfus glowered up at him defiantly, but once the rope dug into the raw skin around his wrists, he hurriedly followed him up the shallow incline. With his bound hands, he scrambled up the rocks after the horse with all the grace and dignity of a three-legged lizard. The horse nickered and pawed at the ground with a hoof as it waited, seeming to enjoy watching Malfus slithering on his belly below it. Malfus could certainly imagine why. After all these years of being goaded with spurs and whipped with reins by some ungrateful human, now the horseshoe was on the other foot.

Malfus wheezed as he crested the top of the incline, barely able to breathe through the sopping, muddy cloth tied over his mouth. He tried to wipe away some of the muck that covered his front side with his bound hands, but it only spread it around, soaking deeper into his already filthy clothes.

“Come. No time for that now.” The man on the horse tipped the brim of his hat up and leaned westward in the saddle, peering at the horizon. The jagged-spined mountains rose up to devour the setting sun like the sharp, hungry teeth of some giant dragon. Low as it was in the sky, the sun’s rays seemed to stretch over the entire land to reach out and touch them with one last dying grasp. It painted the rocky, rolling hills and plateaus an intense candle-licked orange. It was pleasant to look at, but the land itself was far too dry to do anyone much good. Land that was more fitting for bandits and ambushes than farmers and farming. It was called the Farlands for a reason. This barren strip of land on the very edge of the Ossory Empire.

The man clicked his tongue, urging his steed forward. Malfus grated his teeth and followed before the rope started digging into his wrists again. Now, every step sent jarring jolts of fresh pain down his side in a dull and steady rhythm, like a blacksmith’s hammer pounding away at an anvil on top of his cracked rib. Just another addition to add to his growing collection of various hurts, aches, and bruises.

He couldn’t even reach down to check if his rib was cracked with his hands bound as they were and tied to a perpetually taut rope. Malfus tried to spread and stretch his aching fingers, but even they were manacled together. One of the Inquisitor’s toys, an intricate pair of rings that went around every joint of each finger and were linked together with chains. That alone made casting most spells, usually requiring hand movements of some kind, impossible.

However, it was also made from a metal called arcanull, a rare metal that gave arcane spellcasters a constant, dull, throbbing headache. The techniques to forge it were known only to the Vesenian Inquisition. It made most basic thinking a painful affair, but if the spellcaster’s mind wandered to thoughts about magic… it was absolute torture. The complex mental concentration needed for even the most basic magic spells was completely out of the question. Even thinking about thinking about magic made him blink his eyes as the throbbing pain in his head intensified.

Malfus felt the rope bite into his wrists as it was jerked taut again. Had he stopped walking? He hadn’t even noticed. He was so tired he could fall asleep standing. Oh, what I’d give for just five minutes against one of those trees in the shade.

“Come! Don’t make me tell you again.” The rider grabbed the rope and jerked on it savagely.

Malfus howled in pain through the gag as he was pulled to his knees. Then he glowered up at the Inquisitor and growled. Imagining all the things he would do to him had these arcanull chains not been blocking his ability to use magic.

“Now, now. Hold your temper. There will be time for a water break soon.” A faint smile crossed his paper-thin lips as he took a greedy wasteful drink from the flask, spilling a rivulet of water that trickled from the corner of his mouth, down his waxed goatee, and onto his black leather tunic. Malfus instinctively licked his lips but was just rewarded with a mouthful of mud for his efforts. His mouth was drier than a tomb.

“Don’t worry, we will stop for your turn soon.” The Inquisitor smirked as he strapped the waterskin back to the saddle.

Bones take your damn water. Just let me go, you demented zealot. Let me go and give me back that which is mine. Do that, and I might not kill you and parade around your bloated corpse like as a warning to ward off other curious Inquisitors. Malfus just groaned and plodded forward, trying his best to stave off his urge to collapse for a while longer. He wasn’t sure how much further his spite and anger would carry his aching feet. Only a week on these boots and they were already flapping apart in ragged pieces. What was the damn Inquisitor going to do? March him by rope all the way back to Castillea? That would take weeks, months. Malfus looked down at his miserable excuse for footwear and wondered how many days they had left together. He sighed. Now he would need a pair of new boots in addition to restarting months of research. He glared at the man atop the horse. What a sop. Bootlicking goon of the Vesenian Church in his black cloak, black hat, black horse, black mustache even. Not even I wear that much black, and I’m the damn necromancer… allegedly. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

At least the Inquisitor wasn’t a particularly sanctimonious, preachy, do-gooder. A self-righteous prick, certainly, but he kept his sermons to himself, and Malfus was thankful for that. He’d been captured by the former before for several weeks and was lectured with enough of the sermons of Vesenia that he could still recite some word for word. It took him two weeks before he could catch the paladin with his guard down long enough to cast a spell to temporarily blind him. Then Malfus threw his sword and precious holy relic into a nearby lake and fled off into the night. Malfus chuckled to himself as he remembered the look on the paladin’s face and his pitiful voice when he thought he was blind forever. Why can’t I see? What did you do? Will this be forever? His nasally, whining voice wasn’t so self-righteous then. The stupid oaf never bothered to continue the chase anymore after that.

This time wouldn’t be so easy. His current captor was cut from a different cloth. The arcanull finger-cuffs made it ten times more difficult without a chance to use any of his magic this time. Not that there ever seemed to be a lapse in his vigilance even if he could. Bastard never even seemed to sleep, or least if he did it was lighter than a hen in a fox den. He would have to come up with something else this time.

Malfus plodded on, his feet counting each painful step as they added up, like grains of sand in an hourglass. The steps added up to minutes, and then the minutes added up to hours. The narrow road, uneven terrain, and rock-strewn path made each step in his deteriorating footwear that much more taxing. He didn’t even want to imagine the blisters he would have to try to tend to tonight. There was no really fixing blisters, just trying your best to introduce the new ones to the old while preparing them both to make room for tomorrow’s. Bones take these damn blisters.

Malfus was so absorbed in erecting his self-pity into greater and greater heights that he nearly walked into the back of the horse, not realizing they had stopped. Probably would have earned a kick from it too if he took another step further, he was already close enough for it to shit on him now. Malfus didn’t doubt it would, given the opportunity, so he took a few measured steps backwards.

“We’ll stop for water here.” The Inquisitor said, looking around warily one more time before slipping down from his horse.

They were in a copse of knobby cypress trees, gnarled and bent like a group of old men leaning on their canes. It was perhaps the most vegetation Malfus had seen in one place in this dusty canyon. An oasis of shade from the beating sun. There was a raised hill to their left and a decline to their right. The Inquisitor grabbed a leather flask from the horse’s saddlebags and walked over to him.

Water, finally. Yes, sweet ambrosia. Give me a drink and end one of my sorrows or drown me in it and end them all. Either suits me. Malfus’s parched tongue flopped around in anticipation in a mouth that felt like it was filled with sawdust. His throat tried making a few practice swallows just to make sure it still could when the time counted. The Inquisitor pulled the piece of muddy cloth down to Malfus’s neck. Malfus gasped a few ragged breaths of air down his dry throat, relieved to be able to finally breathe uninhibited.

“There, that’s much bet-,” Malfus sputtered as a deluge of water poured over his mouth and nose. He gurgled and struggled at first, but then welcomed the quenching stream of water as it brought life back to the arid desert that his mouth and throat had become. Malfus coughed and wheezed as the Inquisitor lowered the flask.

“More?”

Malfus let out a sound between breaths that was closer to a wet gurgle than the answer “yes,” but the Inquisitor got the gist of it and raised the waterskin again, the warm water poured into Malfus’s mouth and ran down his dry, cracked lips, allowing him a few more precious gulps.

“That will be enough.” The Inquisitor snapped in his rhythmic accent, then stoppered the water.

The water seemed to rekindle some energy and life in Malfus’s dull mind. He turned to the Inquisitor and smiled, ignoring the pain as one of the cuts in his bottom lip opened. “Come, come Inquisitor, why must there be such animosity and hostility between us, hmmm? We both have such matching sunny dispositions and a penchant for dark clothing.” Malfus had fully expected to be backhanded by this point but finding none coming he kept talking. “Why is it the black for you? I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s the slimming it does for my figure. Quite complimenting, wouldn’t you agree? Why, with so much in common, we should practically be friends. Our only real difference of opinion seems to lie on which side of the ground corpses should occupy.” He tried to flavor his words with honey, but his voice came out as a reedy rasp from his hoarse throat.

The Inquisitor snorted. “Honestly, I must admire your constant sarcasm and vain attempts at humor, even in the face of your looming trial and inevitable execution. It is… what is the word for it you Akkadians use…”

“Brave?”

“…puerile.” The Inquisitor finished, turning his back to Malfus.

As the Inquisitor started walking back to the horse, there was a high-pitched whine somewhere between a whistle and a mosquito, followed by a wet thwop. The waterskin in the Inquisitor’s hand ruptured, spraying water droplets in an explosion that hung in the air like tiny opal beads, sparkling like drops of liquid-fire as they held the light of the setting sun. Then, time seemed to slow down like a dream. Malfus heard the Inquisitor yelling something and saw the horse rear up on its haunches, kicking its hooves in the air as it brayed and spit. There was a second whistling sound and something plucked a strand of Malfus’s greasy black hair as air brushed against his cheek. Dirt and cypress needles sprayed Malfus and something next to him stuck out from the ground, still quivering. The Inquisitor yelled something again and then realization dawned in Malfus’s tired, arcanull-addled mind. They were being ambushed.

“Get down!” The Inquisitor yelled a third time, his words finally registering. Get down? But where? I’m tied to your bloody horse, you idiot. What do you want me to do, get behind it? Until it decides to kick me in the face. Malfus ducked anyway, just in time as another arrow sailed overhead, sticking into a nearby cypress tree and leaving a bald spot in the bark. A strange sound started to echo from the surrounding hills. A shrill, high-pitched cacophony that was one part howl, one part mocking laughter. An unnerving, maddening, baleful, drunken cackle. The type of sound Malfus imagined one might hear in the background of some demonic inn on the edge of hell.

Malfus knew what this noise was: gnolls. Half-human, half-hyena monsters… He’d never seen any before, but he had read about them back at the magic academy in Akkadia at some point. Back when he was as an aspiring apprentice. Before my life went to shit. His mind fumbled about impotently as he tried to remember more. Arcanull-weary synapses fired but failed to return anything else useful. Malfus shook his throbbing head, trying to clear the fog from creeping back into his mind.

Another arrow landed point down in the dirt just a few strides away. Somehow sticking straight up and down, looking like a tiny, strange plant growing feathers instead of leaves. Malfus started laughing then. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was how silly the arrow looked, perhaps it was the look on the Inquisitor’s face, perhaps it was the realization of his impending doom sinking in. He knew laughing wasn’t the appropriate response at a time like this, but he couldn’t help himself. Another arrow snapped as it ricocheted off a rock even closer than the last. The horse whinnied, rearing up on its hind legs. Malfus could see the fear in its eyes and swallowed, feeling about the same way himself.

“Arms out!”

Malfus looked over at the Inquisitor with a puzzled look. The Inquisitor loomed over him, his razor sharp Castillean rapier glinting threateningly.

“Arms out! Now dammit!”

Malfus tightened his jaw and did what he was told. The Inquisitor’s sword came down in a silver flash, making a ripping sound as it severed the length of rope tied to Malfus’s hands. Almost on cue, the horse bolted as another arrow whizzed by, hooves sending up puffs of dust as they pounded into the earth. The length of rope that had once been tied to him trailed on the ground behind the horse like a comically long tail flopping around madly as it bounced against the rocks lining the path. Malfus imagined his body still attached to the rope, his skull being dashed to pieces against those stones as the horse dragged him. The Inquisitor’s sharp voice stabbed Malfus back painfully into the present.

“Stay here! And stay low.” He snapped, pushing Malfus to the ground. “If you try to run, I’ll chop off your foot. I’m sure you can still stand trial for your crimes with just one.” The Inquisitor smirked.

Malfus sardonically clapped his hands together, no small task with them chained together as they were. “Most clever Inquisitor, most clever. Don’t you have some fighting to do?” Malfus motioned to the first of several figures running down the hill toward them. He could see the face of the first one, its canine features curled into a fearsome snarl as it brandished a cleaver-like sword in the air, howling as it ran. The sword looked big enough to chop a man right in two. It seemed a bit silly, waving a big ungainly sword like that in the air while you were running down a hill. Silly and dangerous. I guess dangerous was the whole point of the thing, after all.

Malfus squirmed backward, suddenly realizing he was already ducked down, cowering behind a tree. He tried his best to mask his cowardice with a healthy coat of sarcasm. “Best of luck, Inquisitor, kill one for me, would you? I’d hate to have to make my way back to Castillea for my trial all alone, so do try to stay alive.”

“You can count on it.” The Inquisitor darted away, long cloak bunched up in his left hand, Castillean steel in his right. He ducked close to the ground as he ran, like a prowling fox sprinting across a farmer’s field in the middle of the night, with a hunger in his eyes to match.

Malfus did not have a hunger for armed combat. He had never developed a taste for it. Especially against some monstrous gnoll a good two feet taller than him, and even less so with his hands bound and unable to use magic. It always amazed Malfus how many others there were in the world that would so eagerly throw themselves into the fray of armed combat without a second of hesitation or thought about the consequences. With as little care as a drunken bet in a tavern card game. Guess it is an effective form of population control in the end. Two enter but only one leaves. Even the winner seldom comes out unscathed and death is so… permanent. That is, unless I’m involved.

No, Malfus decided, leave combat for those people of a baser nature. His lot had a more noble calling: to study, to observe, and to learn in order to further the sciences of the arcane, necromantic arts. Comforted by this realization, Malfus crouched even lower behind the tree in front of him, trying his best to contort his narrow body to the spindly tree. Malfus looked on from his new vantage point, watching the Inquisitor fight while keeping a sharp eye out for anymore arrows. He doubted he would be spotted here. At least he hoped he wouldn’t be. His blistered feet were far too sore for him to run.

The Inquisitor ran, darting from tree to tree until he reached the bottom of the hill, right as the first gnoll did. It swung its giant, rusty blade in a downward arc. The piercing, metallic shriek of sharpened steel clashing together made Malfus wince. Then he balked in surprise along with the gnoll. The much smaller Inquisitor with his much slenderer blade effortlessly parried the gnoll’s hefty cleaver. Malfus was shocked further at the size disparity between them up close. The gnoll was at least another two feet taller and his sword was as wide as a man’s thigh. The gnoll lashed out again, but the Inquisitor parried, then retaliated with a riposte, stabbing the gnoll deep in its thigh. It yelped and leapt backward, slicing wildly through the air as it lost balance. The Inquisitor ducked the attack and launched two more of his own. The first sent the gnoll reeling backwards on its injured leg and the second the gnoll barely managed to bat away with its heavy sword.

As good as the Inquisitor may have been doing against one, Malfus doubted his chances improved much by the other two gnolls that just crested the top of the hill. Then a glint of light up in the air caught Malfus’s attention. An arrow’s steel tip danced in the sunlight as it reached the apex of its flight. It wobbled, briefly ignoring gravity, then dropped downward in a lazy arc. It looked angled to fall right where the Inquisitor was standing, too busy dodging a furious, decapitating slash from the gnoll’s cleaver-like sword to notice.

Time seemed to slow down as Malfus studied the arrow, concentrated on it. He was close enough he probably could have called out and warned the Inquisitor if he wanted, instead he focused his will on the arrow, begged with it, pleaded with it to find its mark. Hit him. Hit him. Please hit him, right between the eyes, right between the shoulders, right between something, dammit. Malfus wasn’t overly excited about being a captive of the gnolls, but even as a potential meal for his captors, there was a better chance he might escape or be able to reason with these stupid gnolls than the Inquisitor. You can reason with an idiot, but not with a zealot.

Malfus licked his dry, cracked lips in anticipation as the arrow got closer. Please, by all that is unholy, let that arrow hit him. The gnoll seemed to hear Malfus’s pleas, barking as he unleashed a flurry of savage blows at the Inquisitor, demanding his full attention on parrying each devastating strike. But right before the arrow could reach its intended target, the Inquisitor dropped low, spinning in a tight circle. His cloak flicked and snapped out behind him like a banner in the wind, catching the arrow harmlessly in the folds of its black fabric. Malfus cursed and spit at the ground in frustration. Nice trick, but you better not mess up, can only afford to get it wrong once. In one fluid movement, the Inquisitor snapped his cloak upwards covering the gnoll’s face, then jabbed his sword forward just once in a measured strike before stepping back, like a serpent assured of the potency of its own venom. The gnoll tottered backward as blood gushed from its throat, then fell onto the ground in an awkward jumble of limbs.

The Inquisitor didn’t spare a second for celebration as the other two gnolls made it down the hill and closed in. One with a chained flail that had a metal head the size of a skull and the other with two wicked looking battle axes it wielded as easily as hatchets. The gnolls chittered and barked at each other in their strange language, then the one with axes circled to flank the Inquisitor.

The first gnoll growled and closed in, flail swinging wildly. The Inquisitor dodged left and then right as he timed the overhead rotations of the gnoll’s flail; swinging in tight circles so fast it made a hollow whistling sound that was almost comical, the music of some deadly flute. The song stopped on a tuneless, flat note as the gnoll lashed out in a sideways arc at the Inquisitor’s ribs. At the last second, the Inquisitor ducked into a roll as gracefully as a cat, bringing him under the flail’s chain and close enough to the gnoll to brush against it. He continued his spin around, then behind the gnoll as it tried to regain its balance while turning with the unwieldy weapon. Before it could, the Inquisitor’s blade stabbed into the gnoll’s side, making it yelp and lurch sideways.

The one with the axes sprung in, slashing and hacking at the Inquisitor, forcing him a few steps backward and taking the Inquisitor’s attention away from its injured companion. The Inquisitor thrust at the gnoll with the axes, pressing him back, turning his back to the gnoll with the flail as it stood back up.

The other gnoll saw its opening and swung its flail in a wind-up overhead, then brought it down in a diagonal arc, trying to stop the nimble Inquisitor from being able to duck it this time. The Inquisitor whipped his cloak out as he spun backwards to dodge, but it tangled around the head of the flail and got caught, jerking him into the air. Air wheezed from the Inquisitor’s lungs as he landed hard on his shoulder, losing his hat and cloak as he rolled. The Inquisitor struggled to push himself up, but the gnoll with the axes was already on him, barking and kicking wildly at his ribs. The Inquisitor rolled away, flicking his wrist. The gnoll’s head snapped back, then it dropped one of the axes on the ground next to it. It stumbled around for a few seconds like a confused drunk before collapsing, a dagger sticking from its ruined eye socket.

As much as Malfus may have hoped the Inquisitor would fail, he was truly a spectacular sight to behold in combat. Two dead gnolls lay piled around the Inquisitor’s feet and he was close on having a third to add, his sword crimson to the hilt and moving in a blur of staccato feints, parries, and thrusts. Malfus found laughter bubbling up again, giggling uncontrollably, unable to help himself. The Inquisitor could so easily play judge, jury, and executioner for a handful of gnolls with a flick of his wrists, but I have to be carted across the entire Ossory Empire to go to a trial where I will just be sentenced to death anyway. Why go through all this effort just for me? Why not save us both the trouble and just kill me out here and be done with it? He could even blame it on the gnolls.

Malfus saw another gnoll coming through the woods towards the Inquisitor with a spear while the one with the flail was keeping him busy. Malfus crouched lower and looked around from his vantage point. Where had the one with the bow gone? Malfus decided he wasn’t going to stick around and find out. He was going to find a better hiding spot. If the Inquisitor did manage to win, he would face those consequences later. He turned away from the violence and waddled away, keeping as low to the ground as he could manage. The ground sloped downward on the other side of the road and there were some thicker, shrubbier trees on the bottom of the hill offering the perfect hiding spot, and with more than adequate protection from falling arrows.

A twig snapped behind him. He froze, stiller than a corpse, every muscle in his body as tense as the recently deceased. Or soon to be. He dared not move at all, waiting to see if heard another noise. Fear wormed into Malfus’s mind and his heart pounded in his throat. There were plenty of things Malfus could do, he could run, he could yell for the Inquisitor, or just simply turn around and see if there was anything actually there, but he was too paralyzed with fear to do any of them.

He heard another twig snap behind him, this time with the certainty of a grave. The hair on the back of his neck stood up on end like needles. Then there was a crunch and eruption of pain from a kick to his back. The force threw him forward into the air a short distance. He landed hard in a puddle of mud for the second time today. He bit his tongue, tasting the salty wetness in his mouth and the throbbing pain that followed. Malfus spit blood and turned to look with tear-streaked eyes, but was kicked again, this time right in his cracked rib. He rolled over on his back trying to curse, but instead just howling out in the universal language of pain. A menacing, bestial silhouette towered over him, blocking out the sun. Malfus tried to plea for mercy, wondering what language it spoke, but all that he was able to manage was a painful gurgle as the gnoll grabbed him by the throat and hoisted him up into the air.