William

No one knew Death like William. He danced with her most nights. Sometimes dared to defy her, though ultimately no power prevented Death from reaping her fill. She was Queen. Eternal. Limitless, especially so here where the stench of death hovered over agonized screams, smoking entrails, and broken souls.

William knelt among mud, blood, piss, and shit. They seeped into his trousers long since stained. The scent of burning leather seared his nostrils even through the heavy cloth wrapped tightly around his face. A soldier laid before him, insides painting his outsides. Gore and stench, vomit and copper, wafted from the open wound gushing a red river. Snow flurries clung to his frozen hair and frostbitten uniform.

Every corpse-to-be William stumbled upon reminded him of years ago, a child listening to war stories told by foolish gentlemen with nothing to do. The fantastical tales high society spoke of never painted reality. They gossiped of heroes and adventures, not shit stained trousers, maggot infested abdomens, and gouged eyes. Their nights passed easier without thinking of the many dead and dying protecting their borders.

“Did we win, Doctor?” the soldier croaked in a puff of white smoke. Blood caked his bruised and chapped lips. His left arm lay almost a foot away, revolver clutched between icy fingers.

“We did. The monsters of Lockehold are vanquished. The road to the Deadlands has been opened. The war will be over before we know it,” said William in a carefully crafted voice perfected over five years. The serene and collected tone of a physician meant to ease the pain, and passing, of patients. Some patients.

The soldier wheezed. Blood gurgled in the back of his throat. “And I will join them, won’t I?”

“After such a marvelous battle? Of course. King Ellis shall mark this day in history, our names laid among golden plaques within his castle walls. Children will sing songs of Lockehold’s fall and speak of our accomplishments in history books. You will return home a war hero.”

The soldier whimpered a delirious laugh. The dying didn’t want the truth. They sought hope for Death had her claws in them. Her brisk breath nipped at their necks. A temptress guiding them to the other side, wherever that may be, and so the dying sought comfort, a ledge to uselessly cling to.

William tightened the leather strap securing the rifle to his back. The worn gray leather bag he always carried wasn’t needed. None of the medical supplies would be of use.

Slipping off a glove, he flexed his fingers among the unforgiving cold, then set his hand atop the soldier’s chest. The man’s heart beat against William’s palm, weak as an injured mouse caught between a ravenous cat’s teeth. Whispering a soft incantation, he commanded that heartbeat to slow even more. The soldier offered him a curious stare.

“Comfort will greet you in a moment,” said William, continuing the spell.

With a few short painless breaths, the soldier’s eyes glazed over, and all went still. Tranquil. An end to suffering. Death swept another away, though William knew not where. He had long since discouraged the idea of Elysium, of a Holy Soul shepherding all to a divine light of eternal paradise. He couldn’t fathom joy after brutal deaths or supreme beings watching over their miserable existence. If the Holy Soul were real, if all the supreme beings ever uttered truly existed, then they were malevolent. The bastards of all bastards, and he wholly despised them.

William didn’t glance at the dead man’s tags. In his line of work, distance was necessary. He needn’t feel for these men, merely care for their wounds, end suffering to those who deserved it, and move to the next. As he did now, shifting through corpses of beasts and man alike in search of the next wounded or dying, though his gaze defied him by traveling north to Lockehold, a midnight black thorn scarring the horizon.

Towers sharpened to points pierced the gray sky, defiant to the heavens. Smoke rose from fires lighting long terraces and crumbled walls. The Dread Peaks, a range of monstrous mountains ran along either side of the fortress, tips coated in white, casting a looming shadow over the field of dead. A single path cut through the mountains and the fortress of Lockehold protected that path for decades. Until today.

Snow crunched beneath William’s boots. His medical bag swung from one hand and a revolver itching for a fight in the other. Falling snow painted most of the world in hazy white. A soldier knelt among the grim ahead. He clutched the hand of another, head bowed. William approached, realizing that the soldier’s friend had long since passed.

The corpse of a spion lay near them, belly ripped open and green guts spilling out that reeked of rotten meat baked in a summer sun. The grotesque creature was an amalgamation of a spider and a scorpion. Eight legged, two pinchers, a stinger, too many eyes, and a hard indigo tinted outer shell. The webs suffocated men or pinned them long enough for a spion to drain them of blood. The spion’s stinger had embedded itself in the soldier’s chest. That close to his heart, the poison worked swiftly. The soldier gazed skyward, eyes bloodshot and foaming at the mouth.

“Doctor,” the grieving man rose and wiped the snot from his nose. A new recruit based on his plump cheeks and bloody, though uncalloused, hands.

William tugged the cloth from his face and gazed at the soldier’s name tag. “Do you require medical attention, Oscar?”

“I feel alright, but this cut was bleedin’ horribly earlier, Sir,” he replied while revealing a long wound along his arm. Out here, among the rot, infections took more lives than fangs and claws. Luckily for Oscar, and many others, some of the combat medics had magic.

William removed his gloves to stash in his back pocket, then retrieved a mixture of herbs from the leather bag. Crushing them in his hands, he spoke the words hounded into his subconscious by relentless drill sergeants. Oscar’s curious eyes widened as the herbs released a faint blue light between the cracks of William’s fingers. Then the medic ran the green paste along the cut on Oscar’s arm. He winced, though froze when the cut lessened in size. William unrolled bandages to wrap Oscar’s arm.

“Keep this on until morning. The cut should be entirely healed by then, but let’s remain on the safe side,” William ordered. Oscar nodded. “Follow me. You do not wish to be here if there happen to be unfriendly scavengers. The medical tents are set up over there.”

He nodded towards fires flickering among the snow. He had done a thorough walk through. Nothing could be done for the bodies that remained.

Oscar shut his friend’s eyes and hurried after William’s steps. The young recruit crossed his arms to capture warmth. The cold stole the color from ones’ skin, making Oscar white as winter itself. Snow clung to the thin layer of dark hair atop his head and his full lips trembled from chattering teeth. With the sun setting and a storm creeping in, the icy bite of the north became ruthless.

Glancing over his shoulder, Oscar whispered, “The bodies of the dead will be returned to their loved ones, won’t they, Sir?”

“Perhaps. Did he fare from across the sea?”

Oscar sniffled and that gave the answer.

Many, like William, were not born among these lands. In the first year of his recruitment, he remained in the Heign kingdom for training. A long year of endless torment. Then came the days of battles that dragged him, and many others, across the sea to the Krenia Kingdom. Closer and closer to the Deadlands behind the Dread Peaks and the monsters summoned within.

“Priests will retrieve the dead to grant proper burials,” William explained, eyes shifting to the crunch of snow at their back. He feigned looking at Oscar to catch a glimpse of their follower; fae scum. He clutched his revolver tighter. His heart slowed, calmest among potential danger, and muttered, “Fear not. Your friend may not be home, but he will rest in peace.”

“May the Holy Soul see to his eternal light,” Oscar whispered with two fingers pressed to his heart.

William struggled not to roll his eyes. A friend told him it was uncouth, and he needn’t a lecture from her over his needlessly boorish and unlikable nature. Her words, not his.

“So many dead,” Oscar added, gazing over the field of ice and gore. His gaze landed on the decapitated head of a debrak. Titanous monsters, muscled and red as an open wound. They ate men like midday treats and snapped spines easier than flower stems.

“At least we ain’t like these poor suckers. Ran himself right into a trap.” Oscar laughed, a madness to his voice that William heard often. War made everyone lose themselves, eventually.

Oscar kicked the debrak. The head rolled and released a gurgled whine of breath. Oscar cursed and stumbled. William caught the oaf prior to falling into the fatal trick that killed the beast, a fairy ring. Traps created by fae, varying degrees of torment and death laid within, warned only by a ring of mushrooms that grew regardless of the conditions.

A dry chuckle echoed nearby; the pointy eared vermin William spotted following them. She continued forward, brushing by donning a grin of villainy. She wore beauty that stole hearts. Complexion perfect even beneath the gore of battle and eyes breathtakingly beautiful, a shade of eternal darkness against rich ochre skin and white braids woven by starlight. The allure of fae had been known to drive one mad, and their personalities were another thing entirely.

“Watch yourself. We are not immune to fae trickery,” William warned. “Fae are allies. Not friends. And it is easy to die at the hands of an ally out here.”

Oscar gave a sweaty nod. “Y-Yes, Sir.”

Then he shuffled behind William, who kept that hand tight around his revolver, eyes trained on the fae’s back. Waiting. Expecting the worst.

Though mortal monarchs and fae lords spent months toiling over agreements, they did little in the face of a fae’s murderous wrath. Agreeing to fight together didn’t prevent those like Oscar from stumbling into traps. Unfortunate deaths, not murder. The fae always found ways around deals struck, even those that benefitted them.

“A woman,” Oscar suddenly remarked with a soured expression, like a toddler sucking on a lemon. “I’ve always known fae to be a rotten bunch, but to send a wench to fight ain’t right. It’s an insult.”

“You did not witness their battles today?”

“They were not the ones I was paying attention to.”

“You should. Always.” William gave Oscar a stern look. “The stories spun about fae are tame at best. They torture and curse so as not to kill us by their own hands. Most humans take their lives once a fae is through with them. Do not believe for a second that their women aren’t equally vicious. They expect mortal men to underestimate them, and I’ve met many who did not live to even regret such decisions. Do you understand?”

Oscar nodded vigorously, then followed William closely to the medical tents without further incident.