Annise knew all that, but these were not normal times. Half the city had been evacuated already. The rest of them were preparing to leave, one group at a time to prevent flooding the roads to the east.
The woman tried to pull away, but Annise refused to release her. “Go to the safe place. Tell everyone there that they must leave the city immediately.”
“But—”
“That is an order from your queen. Now go!” She shoved her away and the woman scampered off amongst the throng.
I have to find Tarin, she thought. Thankfully, he was twice the size and a head taller than anyone else in the city. She spotted him striding up a staircase toward her. His gait was strange—kind of herky-jerky—and blood ran freely down his leg, seeming to originate from his knee.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” he said. “What are the bells about?”
“I don’t know yet. The people are reacting like it’s an impending attack through Raider’s Pass.”
“But you don’t think that’s it?”
She shook her head. “I’m not certain. That doesn’t feel right. All news pointed to an eastern-western alliance against Phanes. Attacking us at the same time would be a major risk.”
They stared at each other, both thinking the same thing, because there was only one other option.
“We have to find whomever sounded the alarm,” Tarin said.
Annise nodded, spinning and leading the way down a corridor, spilling out the front of the castle. The grounds were also in chaos, with horses being saddled and all manner of people—soldiers, lords and ladies, and commoners—flowing into the exodus toward the so-called safe place. Annise felt the urge to head them off, but she needed information first.
“This way,” she said, grabbing Tarin’s hand and pulling him against the flow of traffic. It took far too long, but she wanted to get to a specific tower—the one that faced west, toward Blackstone.
They climbed the steps quickly, and by the time Annise reached the summit she was out of breath and Tarin seemed ready to collapse, clutching his knee. A man stood at the top, his arm moving back and forth wildly, gripping the rope that was clanging the bell.
“Stop!” Annise commanded, and he whirled around, so surprised by their appearance that the rope slipped from his hand and slapped against his face. The bell continued to ring above him, but then the peal gradually drifted away.
“Your Highness?” the man said.
She strode forward and grabbed him by the collar. She knew she was developing a bad habit—brutalizing her people into obedience—but these were far from ordinary times. “What did you see?”
The man’s eyes told the story. The fear was there, wide and white and impossible to hide.
“They’re coming,” he said, pointing west. The spyglass rested on its stand at a disjointed angle, like it had been thrust aside in a hurry.
Annise stepped up to it, closed one eye, repositioned it, and looked through the glass.
At first, she saw nothing, just spring-green hills and snowy mountains and—
She rocked it back to where something different—something other—had caught her eye.
They were only specks in the distance, small, dark, and of no concern to a queen. Frozen hell, they could be rocks revealed by the melting snow.
Except they weren’t, Annise knew.
And they were moving, the loping, menacing stride evident even from this distance.
The Horde had arrived with her uncle at their helm.
POSTLUDES
Mortis Fay
Helmuth
The following are three FREE short stories from the Four Kingdoms that form an integral part of The Fatemarked Epic, highlighting the origins of three of the most pivotal characters in the story, particularly Helmuth Gäric, the Lost Son and leader of the Horde. They will give you, the reader, a greater understanding of the history of the world, thus preparing you to read the fifth and FINAL book in the series, Lifemarked.
Postlude 1: Mortis Ironclad
The New World, Knight’s End- Circa 110
Mortis Ironclad was a simple, but proud, man. A Crimean by birthright, he hailed from the haunted hills of West Grieve, a country of forests and plains in equal measure, where farmers and woodsmen roamed without a care for the wars of kings and queens in faraway lands.
How am I here? he wondered, tears dripping from the woodcutter’s chin. He stared at his hands but didn’t recognize them. He couldn’t make out the rough patchwork of callouses, nor the long, ragged scar he’d earned when he’d almost chopped off his thumb when he was sixteen.
They are the hands of a stranger.
His fingers dripped blood in a greater quantity than the tears.
Her blood.
It was everywhere. On his skin, puddling on the floor, splashed on the walls and her bedcovers…
Who would do such a thing?
That question was but distant thunder next to his grief. The grief of a man from Grieve.
She might’ve been a doll, her turquoise eyes devoid of the luster they once held, locked in a sightless stare. Her sun-browned skin was a sharp contrast to her sun-streaked hair that told of long treks from the well to the castle and back again, filling the tubs of the lords and ladies for their daily baths. Already, her skin looked grayer, her lips white, her hair limp and dull.
Mortis bit his lip, drawing blood. Slowly, delicately, he offered his arms, wrapping them around her shoulders. He drew her to him, resting her head on his chest. It was why he was here, after all. A clandestine meeting in the dark, their first after a long courtship that had started at a slow simmer but had seemed ready to boil over on this very night.
Now, the pot was empty.
Now, covered in the blood of the only woman Mortis had ever loved, he held her broken, lifeless form and wept.
When the castle guards found him, he refused to release her body from his grasp, forcing them to pry his fingers from her one by one by one.
“What have you done?” one of the guards said. The burly man gripped his arm hard enough to bruise, but Mortis barely felt it.
“I—I—”
He had no words—would never have words. How did one speak of a loss so deep it cut him to the core of a place he’d never known existed until he met her?
How did one speak the name of the woman he’d loved for too short a time to quench his thirst, quell his hunger?
How did one go on living?
Who did this?
The question was but a distant star next to the grief, which shook his body with another tremor, his vision obliterated by the tears.
“Speak!” the guard demanded. The other guards stood back from the growing pool of blood, like touching it might kill them.
“I want to go home,” Mortis said, and he didn’t mean his small cabin on the outskirts of the castle. He meant the place he was born. He wanted his mother’s arms to wrap him up, to hold him. He wanted to hear his father’s boots stomping off the dust and pine nettles of a hard day’s labor in the woods.
His parents had died years earlier, which was part of the reason he was here, in this new world. It was supposed to be a fresh start, an opportunity to build something, to be something.
And then he’d met her and everything else had faded away.
Six months earlier
Scarlett Browning caught Mortis’s eye the moment he saw her. It wasn’t just her beauty, which was alluringly understated, her bright hair tied in a scarf, her mischievous eyes hidden under a canopy of long, dark lashes. No, it was the way she carried herself and her tubs of water, hefting them from the well to the cart, straight-backed and determined, her jaw jutting out like the cliffs toward the sea.
She doesn’t want to be offered help, he thought. She doesn’t need it.
Something about that only made Mortis want to help her more, but he fought off the urge, pretending to split logs but missing his mark badly and almost splitting his
knee wide open.
If a woman should be the death of me…I want it to be this woman, he thought.
Their introduction was beautifully awkward. “Do you need help, woodcutter?” she asked, having seen his blunder. His cheeks heated rapidly, though it was late fall and the weather was quite cool.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he countered.
Her hands found her hips in a way that caused his heart to beat as fast as if he’d run a great distance. She was a solid woman, unlike most of the dainty ladies that prowled the castle like cats marking their territory. “Do I look like I need help?”
Her arms looked strong. Her legs, stronger. He was certain the rest of her matched her limbs, though she was hidden under thick folds of gray cloth cinched only at the waist. No. “Perhaps.”
He was certain other men had withered under the glare she gave him, but he basked in it. This woman could shoot daggers at him all day long and he wouldn’t mind. “I have a proposition,” she said. “We trade for a time. I chop your wood and you fill my tubs.”
Before he could stop it, a snorted laugh escaped his lips, further stoking the flames licking his cheeks. He opened his mouth to respond, but she was already stalking over to him, reaching out to grab the axe from where he’d left it stuck in the chopping block. “Step back, lest you’re keen to lose a limb,” she said, propping the heavy axe on her shoulder with a casualness that suggested experience with such a tool.
He did, in awe of the magical creature standing before him.
Her eyes narrowed in concentration and she used a combination of her legs, arms, and torso to thrust the axe high over her head before bringing it down with a satisfying thunk.
Two halves of a split log fell to either side, cut evenly all the way through.
He gaped.
She didn’t gloat, simply set down the axe and placed a new log on the block. That one split as easily as the first, at which point she turned to him and inquired as to whether he needed instructions on filling her tubs.
“I—no,” Mortis said, turning toward her cart while fixing her on the edge of his vision, afraid that if he took his eyes off her she might disappear.
For the next hour, he toiled, filling tubs in the well and hefting them onto the cart. More times than he could count, the water sloshed over the sides, drenching him from head to feet, infiltrating even his boots, which caused his toes to squish into his thick knit socks.
Halfway along, she finished with the logs, filling his cart to the brim. Then, to his utter delight and dismay, she sat cross-legged on the edge of the wagon to watch him struggle with his task. It wasn’t the weight of the tubs that was the problem—though, filled to the brim with water, they were heavy—but the balance. One had to maintain a steady form to prevent them from spilling. By the end, Mortis had only managed the feat one time out of two-dozen attempts.
The woman clapped long and slow. Despite her mockery, Mortis beamed.
When he finished, she stood and offered her hand firmly. “Scarlett Browning,” she said.
He took her hand, self-conscious of the roughness of his own hand, which was slick with sweat and water, only to find hers equally calloused. “Mortis Ironclad,” he said.
She nodded once and then turned away, slapping her mule twice on the rump to rouse it from sleep. He watched her go until she was out of sight, before shaking his head in wonderment.
They met in the same spot every day after that.
When they were finished with their daily toils, they spent more time together.
One night, resting on a log outside of Mortis’s cabin under a sky full of stars, they kissed.
To Mortis, it felt like he was breathing air for the first time. His heart skipped a beat and he wondered whether it would ever have the same rhythm. He hoped not.
They didn’t kiss again for a week after that, and Mortis was afraid he hadn’t met her expectations. Even more than that, he was afraid the second attempt wouldn’t live up to the first.
Neither fears were valid, and under a sky of dark clouds pregnant with rain, when their lips touched again it felt as if the sun had broken through at long last.
A slow simmer. The steady, even pace of their romance made it all the sweeter, as their kisses grew longer and more passionate. Each time was like tasting an elixir sweeter than the last.
“Come to my hut,” she said one evening after they’d eaten together. “Later, when it is dark.”
The next two hours crawled more slowly than any before. Mortis passed the time by selecting his finest boots, trousers and shirt, the only set that weren’t worn and full of holes. He shaved his beard, which carried the roughness of a fortnight of growth. He even wet his hair, fighting the unruly spots he typically ignored into submission.
His heart was the thunder of an entire company of cavalry riding into battle. He was certain everyone he passed could see the excitement on his face, though the shadows were deep enough to hide such subtleties.
When he reached her door, he knocked twice, softly. When there was no answer, he knocked louder. Still, nothing.
The night was calm and silent, save for the sound of his own breaths leaving his lips.
Something felt…off. Wrong, like the moons had failed to rise and the stars had winked out.
“Scarlett?” he said through the door. “Are you home?”
No answer. The windows were dark and shrouded by curtains. Perhaps she fell asleep, he thought. Perhaps I waited too long to come.
The answers felt empty and cold.
Fear rose in him, and, somehow, he knew what he would find when he pushed open the door, which was unlocked, shoving in with the slightest of creaks.
Whyohwhyohwhy…, he thought as the memories faded.
Nothing made sense. Who would murder a ladies’ maid? Who would take a life so beautiful as Scarlett’s?
The guards hustled him along, cursing each time he stumbled. Try as he might, there was no strength left in his legs, nor his arms. Mortis was a stuffed life-size doll shoved hither and thither.
Suddenly, they stopped.
Mortis saw nothing. Felt everything.
“What do we have here?” a voice said. “This is the woodcutter, is it not? Why have you brought him to me? Is that…blood?”
The voice was familiar, but not enough to arouse his curiosity. Nothing would ever again.
The guard shoved him forward, into a halo of orange light. “Found him in one of the maid’s huts covered in her blood. He was making a strange sound.”
“Wrath. And the maid?” the voice said.
“Dead.”
The word fell from the man’s lips far too easily, which finally snapped Mortis out of his stupor. His head jerked up and he saw the man standing before him.
Lord Farley Loren was clothed in fine white trousers and a puffy white shirt tied at the front. Black leather boots matched his belt and scabbard, from which hung a longsword. Though he was young to be a lord, his father had died during the War of Independence, leaving responsibility for their house to him. It was generally known that his father had been fleeing the battle rather than running into it when he was struck down by an enemy arrow. The battle was later coined the War of Roses due to the way the patterns of bloodstains resembled fallen rose petals when viewed from afar.
The rumors about his father’s cowardliness had left a black stain on the reputation of the Lorens, and Lord Farley had been overcompensating ever since. It was known by many that what he desired most was to wrest control of the colonies from Verner Gäric, a war hero whose grandfather, Heinrich, was something of a legend, having discovered these very lands. Verner was now an old man and rarely seen, and though he had a son, his son was even more of a recluse.
Lord Farley, however, loved to be seen, and was currently serving as captain of the guard for Knight’s End.
“Did you kill her, woodcutter?” Lord Farley asked. A white bandage was tight against the skin above his left eye.
S
he has a name, Mortis wanted to say. And so do I, though the latter no longer felt true. As for the lord’s accusation, he could only say, “I loved her.”
“Should we call upon the Furies?” one of the guards asked the lord.
Lord Farley seemed to consider the question for a moment before shaking his head. “No. I shall investigate the matter myself. The truth should be discovered easily enough.”
The truth. What did the truth matter when she was already lost to him? What would it change? Mortis felt himself falling down a long narrow shaft—like the well that Scarlett visited so often. Eventually, he knew, he would reach the bottom with a splash, and then sink sink sink…
Once more, he was dragged along like a naughty child. All he wanted to do was lie down and fade away.
When his fingers moved at his sides, they were sticky with blood. He clamped his eyes shut and tried not to think about it, tried to pretend this was all a dream—a bad, bad dream.
A slamming sound jarred his eyes open. “What are you—”
Slam!
The sound reverberated around his skull.
Slam!
One of the guards was kicking in his door. Again, nothing made sense.
Slam!
Until it did. Did you kill her, woodcutter? the lord had asked.
They think I…
“I would never hurt her,” he ground out, surprised his voice still worked, that his lips had the strength to open. But they did have strength, and for the first time since he found…her…Mortis felt a new emotion rising to blot out the pain, the sadness.
And it was anger.
“Quiet, woodcutter,” Lord Farley said, nodding to the guard to continue. Slam! “We shall learn the truth, one way or another.”
Slam-crash! The door flew open, the lock splintering the wood, one of the hinges cracking from its mount. The guards went in first, their heads swiveling to and fro, before turning back and beckoning to the prince. “’Tis empty,” one said, the man with the bruising grip.