And—
T.S.Austen
3 min read
—‡—
The demon prince sights down the length of Unfror’s blade to remind me that no living thing at which he pointed that sword ever walked away from him.
Some have crawled away, yes—but never more than a few paces before the yellowing steel, its interwoven fibers showing the necrosis of innocent slaughter, pierced down to the soil beneath their ribs and fixed them there.
I cannot tell if he is smiling behind his mask. I cannot tell anymore if the silver face he wears is smiling, either, beneath the dried blood of countless others Unfror has indicated for death. He makes a point never to clean the thing, apparently.
I have always been a believing woman.
I believed my wife when she first professed her love. I still believe my priest when he says that the gods will remember our befuddled, languishing country someday. And I believe the dark prince Tristænos now. For cruelty is, if nothing else, truthful in its intent.
Better to get on with it, then.
We both dismount, he his roan destrier and I my dappled gray mare.
She will need a new rider, someone as kind as I have tried to be. But even she, whose quickness has so amazed and delighted me, cannot outrun the death that has come for me today.
Not long after we come to face one another, standing in a meridian of sand between our two armies, I swing my axe crosswise at him, not to hit him yet, but to see in what manner he will block. The sound of steel biting Unfror’s blade is odd, not plainly metallic, but—I can hardly describe it—dull and sickly, like the moaning of some nonexistent animal with iron lungs. My shield is already braced against my stomach, for I knew he would aim a thrust at my vitals next.
The shield, crafted from an old hickory my great grandfather planted by the garden I had hoped to see once more, suddenly feels wet against me, as if rotten. The kinds of eyeless insects one finds beneath old stones begin to crawl out of it, and up my arm. The face of the shield crumbles, as if into mulch, and the leather of the strap snaps in two in my hand.
Now Tristænos strikes to see how I will block. After Unfror’s effect on my shield, I know better than to try to catch the flat of its blade against my axe handle. I make sure steel meets steel, and I take his blade with my own. But for all my practiced finesse, Unfror only rots the head of my own nameless, charmless weapon. The axe head bursts into an umber cloud of corroded metal dust, as if a century of decay has been, in the space of an instant, injected into its steel.
This is why he loves to offer an opposing army the chance to send forth a challenger under the pretense of resolving the matter one-on-one: to remind all defenders against him that patience, skill, wisdom, and virtue are useless.
He craves no resolution; harbors neither ambition nor objective. He has erected himself over the nations in mundane subservience to some roiling urge within his belly, like that of a boy with his fingers coiled around his shaft.
On the site he is about to paint with my lifeblood, he makes me kneel. He sets the blade against my throat and looks at my men. I look at them too; meet their desperate eyes with a nod of thanks for following me to death. It is said that a battle has twists and turns; but it is not always so. Some are straightforward, unambiguous, futile from the outset.
I look up at him, and he down at me. Now, despite his silver mask, I know for certain he is smiling as he draws back his sword arm, swings, and—
Written June, 2021