Previously: A man
calling himself the Ultor (it means avenger) came over the impassible mountains, starving and half-dead. He fought
a man who wanted to turn him away from his last chance of survival, the tiny
mountain village of Govan, and killed him. He managed to sneak in by night and
get some food, but he was less successful sneaking back out. The Boss of Govan,
the man hoarding all the gold coming out of the mountain, ordered him put to
death, but a young girl, one of the few villagers who understood the language
the Ultor spoke, intervened. She demanded the right, as the dead man’s
step-daughter, to execute the stranger herself—but instead she helped him
escape. A sympathetic villager led both the girl, Reen, and the Ultor to a
hiding place deep in the mines.
There, while they wait
in the darkness, the Ultor tells Reen his story, starting with the caste
conflict in his own country, Freya, between the warriors and the priestesses.
Traditionally the two castes trade off ruling the land, but an ambitious
warrior, Komfo, not content to wait his turn, attempted a coup. He was defeated
when the old queen challenged him to a religious test, his foreign sun god
against her own. She survived the 30-day fast; he did not. Afterwards, the old
queen refused to name another warrior as her successor, and chose instead the
priestess who administered the Widow’s and Orphan’s Court of the Temple,
Danafreya. The Ultor, a warrior who had been her bodyguard for years, followed
her to the palace. Despite the warriors’ discontent, she reigned well—until the
Calamity …
“It started as rumor, from the hill tribes in the east.
Monsters—swarms of them. They overran villages in the dark, taking the cattle, then
the crops, and finally even the villagers themselves. They kept coming back until
nothing living was left. Nothing edible
was left.
“By the time they sent to us for help, half the tribes were gone,
completely blotted from the earth. I had a friend who went with that first battalion
dispatched into the interior to investigate. He told us about wood huts ripped
open like anthills, and stone idols untouched in their shrines.
“My warrior brethren advised our Queen to leave the hill
tribes to their own devices. The jungle there was too thick and close to
defend, they said, and the hill tribes too primitive and treacherous to trust.
Like as not they were killing each
other, and blaming monsters.
“Queen Danafreya would have none of it. The Mother of
Orphans insisted that all subjects of her realm should depend on her for
protection—and that her brave warriors, however they disliked her orders, would
obey them.
“The Eastern Army marched into hills, as ordered. They were
decimated, mowed down by strange, magical weapons of light and power.
“The survivors retreated to Preva, a trade city on the hill country
border. The monsters spilled out of the hills after them. The walls of Preva
are tall and strong, but the monsters climbed right over them. They overwhelmed
the city in a day, and ate everything and everyone inside. Once they only
raided villages in the night; now they overwhelmed walled cities by day. The
more they devoured, the more their numbers seemed to grow.
“Survivors from Preva brought a monster’s corpse to the
capital. I saw it, when they brought it to the queen. It was like an insect of
the gods, head and shoulders taller than a man, thick black armor all over its
body … We called them Scarabs, like the old insect god. But old Scarab only ate
the dead. These things ate … everything.”
“They spread like locusts, devouring cities in the south and
east. Nothing seemed to stop them. People called it a judgment on the country, punishment
from God upon the priestesses for usurping the throne. Half the country was
overwhelmed, and the other half rose up, rioting, demanding protection, answers,
warrior rule, Sun rule, a return to the old gods or no gods at all. It was … It
was the end.
“And then HE appeared.
“He was a warrior who was supposed to have been lost at
Preva. He showed up, wandering the countryside, preaching repentance,
asceticism, caste upheaval—anything to promote his own rise to power. Those who
blamed the queen, those who just wanted someone
to blame, they flocked to him. They were farmers and drudges, though, most of
them refugees. A mob. None of it was anything more than a nuisance, a
distraction from the all-out war we were facing—the all-out war we were losing—in the southeast.
“But he was cleverer, and more ambitious, than any of us
could have imagined. During the Feast of Offerings that year, he led his mob
into the old capital, Trevalar, and announced what he called his ‘true name’:
Komfo.
“He said the man whose body he was using had actually died
in Preva, and the Sun God had sent his beloved Komfo to take over his body and
deliver the kingdom from this scourge. Of course the bugs were a judgment on
the priests, and of course the Sun God had allowed Komfo to die until a time
when the kingdom was ready to turn to him. This was all part of a divine plan,
all the destruction, all the death. And people believed. They … the whole
Northern Army, those inbred Gajafarites, they turned. They turned and joined that liar. They left their posts—by this
time we only had two armies left, and both of them were stationed along the
border of the badlands, praying the desert would kill a few of the Scarabs
before their hordes crossed into the north. And the Northern Army, almost to a
man, turned and abandoned their posts, because HE, because this Pseudo-Komfo,
promised his god would deliver them from the bugs if they came to him. He said
he had a plan.
“His plan was to slaughter the entire priestly caste.
“Pseudo-Komfo’s brigands fanned out across the country,
cutting down priests at their altars, children in their cribs … It was
genocide. We didn’t need the bugs to kill us anymore; our own warriors did it
for them.
“And then something terrible happened, something … The bugs didn’t come. The Southern Army, the last army standing, waited at the badlands border, but the Scarabs just never came. At first we thought maybe they were done, maybe they were finally, finally sated. We knew what HE would say had happened, but we hoped … And then the spies from the infested lands returned and we learned the horrible truth: the bugs were gone. Komfo had struck down the priests, and the Scarabs had simply … They had completely disappeared.”
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