“Skadjans are the masters of torture,” said Venka, piercings covering his face, “and I’ll reckon I still haven’t seen the worst way to die.”

“Yeah? Well what do you say it is? Drowning? Burning?” asked Kullam. He had the face of a boy that disguised his brutality well.

Venka studied the star-studded sky above. The stars were bright this night, and the air was cool and crisp. The two Skadjans pull their cowls over their heads and tightened the brooches of their cloaks. An unforgiving wind swept through the badlands—biting straight through layers of cloth and robe and piercing right down to the bone. Kullam shivered mightily despite his cloak. Venka stood still as a statue.

“No,” said Venka, contemplatively. “There are slower deaths to be had. I’ve seen life leave a man’s face. The most unpleasant are the ones who know death is upon them, but they are still alive and so they must greet it face to face. Fully aware, and fully suffering.”

“Where have you seen such a death?” asked Kullam.

“Here. In Dras Kloot. By the great crags where rocks rise up like dark towers,” said Venka.

“Ah. It is said dark things happen there,” said Kullam cautiously. He spoke vaguely in order to preserve his ignorance of the happenings by those crags. Venka had caught on to his ignorance, but he pretended not to.

“Indeed. Shadows lurk there. Men who disgrace the Skadjans are sent there to wander. They wander on and on…until there is nowhere left to wander, and the landscape is all the same and so men lose their minds slowly.”

“No one has escaped?” asked Kullam. He thumped his leg busily against a rock across from the boulder he sat on.

“I’m, here aren’t I?” said Venka.

“Oh, right,” replied Kullam.

“Those men who wander become greatly disoriented. And then the shadows start to follow them.” Venka acted out what it looked like for a shadow to follow someone. His piercing clinked lightly in the tight air of the winter night. The ground was hard and frozen over.

“I’ve seen shadows before.”

“No, you haven’t. Not like these ones. These shadows come from far away. There is something foreign about them. Evasive, I would say. Some have said they ride a horse darker than pitch. The rider never departs from the horse—only following lost men of Dras Kloot until they are completely lost in mind and body,” said Venka. Kullam had his brows knit in a tight woven expression of some dismay.

“When does the dying part happen?” asked Kullam.

Before Venka could answer, the sound of hooves approaching from afar were crunching along the frozen dirt road underfoot. The sound of the horse was coming from around a steep bend on the other side of a cliff face. Venka and Kullam held their breath, hands at their sword hilts by their hip.

Wind blew sand up into their eyes. Kullam reeled away, shielding his face. Venka sat still.

The rider emerged from the steep bend in the faintly marked road. Weeds grew up from the cracks of the path and yellow flowers littered either side of the road. Wastelands stretched to every direction besides the west, where the large cliff loomed high above and stretched out for miles and miles towards the horizon line. The moon hung high and full, casting a dull glow upon the sands of the wasteland.

The rider was dressed like a warrior. His cape fluttered behind him in the wind as he reined his horse in towards the awaiting Skadjans. His leather sat bulkily over chain mail. A longsword and a short sword hung at other side of his hip. His face was covered in a helm that extended inwards to shield his cheeks. Dark, beady eyes poked out from the slit in his helm. Kullam felt his stomach lurch when the rider’s eyes locked onto him. He shifted restlessly, pretending to be occupied with adjusting his sword in its scabbard.

His chain mail clinked lightly and his boots clang softly as he dismounted and approached them.

“Welcome to Dras Kloot, capital of Drotia-Quth,” said Venka in a pleased tone.

The rider coughed vehemently. His lungs clawed for air and he bent over to force a dreadful wheezing from deep within his throat. He spit a thick pellet into the dirt before gathering himself.

“Who is Thorck,” came the rider’s voice, thick as chalk. He gave another hacking cough and spit again.

“Neither of us, erm, actually—”

“—I am Thorck,” said Venka, falsely. “Ignore this man, he has spent far too many days wandering these wastelands. He does not even know his own name.”

Kullam glared through two stormy gray eyes at Venka.

“Very well, Thorck Drenyork, leader of the Skadjan armies. Show me your offering, and it is yours.”

“It…is mine?” asked Venka, greed filling his eyes.

“Show me the offering,” demanded a cruel voice. Suddenly the night felt far chillier than it had before the rider had arrived. Kullam felt his hand rest upon the pommel of his sword, hidden deep within his cloak.

Venka gave a sharp whistle. A broken-down caravan, pulled by a mule, screeched noisily on one wheel. The mule had appeared from behind the cleft of rock on which Kullam was now seated. Venka approached the ripped curtains that concealed the offering inside. He stared side on at the rider with his fingers clutching the curtain.

“I do not wait,” said the rider.

Venka gripped the white curtains that concealed all that lay within the caravan. In one with motion, he yanked the covering away. Venka’s eyes opened wide with surprise and blood gushed noisily from his mouth. The tip of a sword protruded from his mouth like a second tongue. It was withdrawn and Venka’s dead body slammed into the side of the wooden caravan with a crash. The ox shuffled its feet nervously. Kullam whimpered.

The rider cleaned the blood off his sword with Venka’s cloak, letting another rattling cough disturb the night’s chill air. The winds had died. Kullam’s fingers gripped tightly around the hilt of his sword. He hoped the rider had not remembered him.

Sheathing his longsword, the rider gave a long, dutiful glance upon the offering inside the caravan. He snickered softly to himself. A scream of malice came from behind the rider, and a slashing katana cut down upon his helm. The steel hissed loudly off the metal of his helm. The rider turned coolly on his assailant. Kullam was wide-eyed and breathing heavy. His lips were puffed out and his eyebrows were higher than most would have thought possible.

“That was not Thorck. Where is Thorck,” the rider spoke those words as a demand, and not a question. A sudden stench washed over Kullam’s nose, and he knew it was the offering. Kullam gave a pitiful nod to the corpse in the caravan. The body was white as a sheet and the hands clasped an elegant, long blade which ran down the length of his legs.

The rider nodded. “I knew as much. You only had to say so.” The rider whipped around quicker than lightening, flinging a throwing-star into Kullam’s face. The star’s razor-sharp points sunk into his forehead. Kullam dropped his sword, still as death. His eyelids fell low over his eyes. And he was falling, dead.

Calmly withdrawing a flask from his belt, the rider poured a black liquid directing into the corpse’s mouth. He had pried open its lips to reveal a set of yellow, broken teeth. The black liquid seeped through the cracks in the corpse’s teeth, leaving a faint red taint. He then stepped back, staring over Kullam’s pierced head. He leaned down to retrieve his throwing star, washing the blood off with Kullam’s cloak and then placing it back in its place along his side where it was lodged into his leather.

Movement directed his beady, black eyes back to the caravan. The wood creaked eerily, and the ox whinnied anxiously. The rider cut its stirrups, and the ox was gone in a flash, desperate to be gone from the smell of death which now wreaked in the still, winter air. The corpse rose from the caravan, gathering itself back to its feet. The corpse groaned, cracking its neck and taking a finger to his face to see if his skin were truly there.

“You’ve come a long way to resurrect a dead man,” said the corpse. He sounded oddly healthy coming from a dead man given life.

“The master would have it this way,” said the rider.

“Who sent you,” asked Thorck Denyork, plucking bugs and spiders from his dried, crusted flesh.

“Do not overstep your bounds, Skadjan.” The rider tossed a flagon into Thorck’s hands.

“What is this?”

“Stuff that brought you back. Use it wisely. It is time the Osknians no longer ruled. Take back what is yours. I must return to my master.” The rider had sounded absent-minded as he spoke, reeling his horse away and cantering away into the darkness. His cloak blended him in with the night and when Thorck could no longer hear the clacking of hooves, he sprung himself upon what had been Venka’s horse.

He rode many miles south until the badlands became flat and there were fire-lit buildings and tall towers that stood on their own behind a tall palisade of sharpened stakes. A ditch surrounded the square palisade and inside the depths of the ditch were sharpened spears blades. The drawbridge was up and so Thorck reined his horse to the ditch’s edge. Men stood along ramparts that rose up from behind the palisade and doubled as a walkway and a bridge above the ground below.

“Who goes?” called a voice.

“Thorck. Thorck Drenyork.”

The two Skadjans atop the ramparts exchanged curious glances. The one who had not spoken yet called out, “Thorck is dead. Move along, you’re not fooling anyone.”

“I commanded this stronghold not long ago. It truly is I, Thorck Drenyork, returned from the dead.”

The two sentries posted had a laugh, before beckoning the others along the ramparts to come see the man who proclaimed to be Thorck. Laughter became quiet as men began to squint in the dark of night to see whose face it was down below.

“Prove yourself to be Thorck Drenyork,” demanded a sentry.

“Send your best warrior down and I’ll show you,” snarled Thorck. The winds blew at him and in the night, there was a crispness that bit down to the bone. The sentries glanced at each other hesitantly now. Crickets chirped loudly somewhere along the dark of a small groove of underbrush.

The gates were pushed open and Thorck was escorted inside.

The hooded rider eased his horse to a halt at the edge of the mud banks. His horse neighed gently but was soon calmed by the assuring hand of his rider. He looped a knot around a tree and left his horse by the bank, easing himself down towards a small skiff that sat in the black waters. A thick mist covered the surface of the water, but through the fog the rider could still make out the rower who brought the skiff right up to the bank, and the rider hopped in.

“You find him?” asked the rower.

The rider nodded, withdrawing a small flask from a hidden pocket inside his black robes. A black substance sloshed inside the flask, fizzing slightly as he held it in his hand.

The skiff pulled away from the bank, and soon they were on their way—disappearing into the haze of white fog. The oars made a soft splashing noise as they went, disturbing the otherwise still waters.

“What’re you going to do with that?” The rower nodded a head at the flask.

“This,” he said, emptying the flask into the waters. A stench filled the air briefly and then vanished almost as quickly. The rower studied the waters, but he could not tell if it had made a difference.

“What is that for?” he asked.

The robed man shrugged. “Let’s find out.” He lurched across the skiff, knocking the rower into the water and watching with a smile upon his face as the polluted waters burned away the skin of the flailing man. His screams were short lived, and soon he was taken under and the skiff was well on its way.

The man in the black robe smiled to himself.

“Enjoy living amongst the dead. You can tell them Nhed the Elf sent you.”