THE KING OF NOTHING

  Chapter II: The Path of Shadow and Oil

  The afternoon was a wet shroud of leaden grey. A thin, icy drizzle had fallen for hours, and the world had turned into a treacherous swamp that drowned sounds and hopes alike. Every step was a battle, a revolting schluck that sucked boots toward the cold bowels of the earth.

  The supply column of the 4th Battalion moved with the slowness of a funeral procession down the main road. The draft horses, resigned beasts with mud caked up to their bellies, snorted clouds of white vapor that dissipated in the still air. On either side of the road, posts of rotten wood held oil lanterns whose lazy orange flames struggled behind grimy glass, casting circles of trembling light that made the long shadows dance. The smell of tallow smoke and rancid oil mixed with that of the soaked earth.

  Vael marched on foot, near the rear where the mud was deepest and the stench of manure and dampness thickest. His boots splashed with an irregular, noisy rhythm.

  —Damned mud… —he muttered, slipping and waving his arms like a scarecrow in a storm to avoid landing face-first.

  Around him, the Empire's hierarchy displayed itself in metal and worn wool. Farther ahead, officers on horseback with officer's cloaks; then, mercenaries with patched armor and cynical gazes; and finally, them, the disposable infantry, with felt gambesons that, when soaked, weighed like freshly opened tomb slabs.

  —Keep in line, don't stray —ordered Irina in a low voice, walking beside him. Her face, already dirtied with dried mud, was carved in an alert tension. Her blue eyes never rested, scanning the line of dead, twisted trees on either side of the road with a paranoia born only of having seen what lurked in those shadows.

  A little farther ahead marched the new girl. Elara.

  Her armor of dark blue leather, dyed with the colors of House Vane, had polished steel rivets that gleamed with an obscene cleanliness in this environment. She walked stiffly, her right hand gripping the hilt of her straight sword so tightly that her knuckles, visible even under her gloves, were white islands in a sea of leather. She looked like a statue of fear with legs.

  Vael, after a particularly spectacular stumble that almost sent him to embrace the mud, ended up landing beside her, wobbling to regain his balance.

  —It's pretty —Vael blurted out, breaking the silence heavy with omen.

  The girl jumped as if pricked, turning sharply with her hand already on her hilt. Seeing it was just Vael, the clumsy recruit, she relaxed her shoulders a millimeter, but the fear didn't leave her eyes.

  —What? —she asked, curtly, her voice a little cracked.

  —The sword —insisted Vael, nodding toward the weapon—. The pommel. It's shaped like a sun. It's a nice detail.

  Elara looked down at the weapon, as if seeing it for the first time. A flash of something other than fear crossed her face.

  —It was my father's —she said, more softly—. From House Vane. A symbol of the dawn… or what's left of it.

  —Oh. I’m Vael. And she’s Irina —Vael said, pointing to the lieutenant who watched them with an evaluative gaze.

  Irina looked the girl up and down, her cold eyes analyzing the impeccable equipment, the rigid posture, the palpable fear.

  —Focus, Vane —Irina said, sharp—. If anything happens, shield up and don’t break the line. Here, mistakes aren’t corrected with reprimands. They’re paid in blood. And yours smells of nobility, which makes it sweeter to what lurks.

  —I know —Elara replied, gritting her teeth, shame mixing with panic.

  Vael looked at her and gave her a relaxed smile, an oasis of absurd calm in the desert of tension.

  —Don't worry so much —he said—. Look at all this mud. If monsters come, they'll surely slip. I've already fallen three times. If they don't have boots, they have it worse. Imagine, an Undead skating. Must be funny.

  Elara blinked. The absurd image, forced by Vael's carefree tone, crossed her mind. She let out a small exhalation, something between a stifled sob and a nervous laugh, and the tension in her neck visibly lessened, if only a little.

  —I suppose… I suppose you're right —she murmured.

  Then, a gust of icy wind swept down from the north.

  It was more than wind. It was a frigid sigh that swept down the column, making the flames of the oil lanterns dance violently. Several snuffed out at once, plunging long stretches of road into sudden, profound darkness.

  The silence that followed was more terrifying than any noise. It lasted a second, a suspended heartbeat.

  Then, the sound of flesh being torn.

  It was close, to the right. A choked scream, turned into a wet gurgle.

  —AMBUSH! RIGHT FLANK! —a voice roared from the front.

  The Captain, mounted on his charger at the head of the column, tried to turn the beast, unsheathing his sword. His silhouette was outlined against the gloom.

  A black flash whistled from the darkness. A spear, made of a material that seemed to drink the little light from the remaining lanterns. The tip hit the officer's throat directly. There was a wet, crunching sound, a choked gurgle cut short. The steel pierced his Adam's apple and burst out the back of his neck in a spray of arterial blood, bright even in the dark. The Captain fell from his mount like a sack of bones, writhing in the mud as he drowned in his own blood, his hands clawing the air.

  From the treeline, a silent tide surged toward the caravan.

  The Undead.

  They weren't shambling creatures. They were solid, imposing figures. Their skin had a greyish hue, tough as leather cured in ice, and their veins stood out black beneath the surface, like corrupt ink. Their eyes, where whites should be, were pits of darkness with a reddish glint deep within, a cruel and hungry intelligence.

  Irina didn't wait. She unsheathed her bastard sword instantly, the steel singing as it left the scabbard.

  —Shields, damn it! —she bellowed, her voice a whip in the chaos—. Don't break the line! To me!

  A huge Undead, nearly two meters tall, with bulging grey muscles that seemed carved from stone, charged at her brandishing a rusted war axe.

  Irina raised her shield. The impact was brutal, a shock that resonated in her bones. The reinforced wood groaned under the pressure but held. Irina grunted, digging her boots into the mud, leaving deep furrows. She used the recoil of the blow to launch a low, brutal, practical thrust, aiming for the knee joint. The steel cut tendon and muscle with a dry sound. The creature fell to one knee, roaring not in pain but in a bestial fury, and tried to grab her with its free hand. Irina gave it no chance; she stomped hard on its chest, sinking it deeper into the mud, and drove her sword into its throat, twisting the blade with an expert motion to sever the spine. The roar died in a gurgle.

  Nearby, Kaelen laughed, a tense, forced laugh.

  A fast and wiry Undead, armed with two notched knives, leaped at him like a spider. Kaelen swung his warhammer with all his strength. The blow hit the creature's side with a dry, multiple crunch of ribs breaking. The body was flung away, bent at an unnatural angle, but it still tried to drag itself toward him, a mechanical, terrifying determination. Kaelen, eyes wide, brought the hammer down on its skull, finishing the job in an explosion of dark, viscous matter.

  Elara was paralyzed. The world had shrunk to a tunnel of nightmare visions.

  An Undead of skeletal build, with skin stretched like parchment over bone, ran straight for her. It carried a long dagger and a crooked, fixed smile that revealed sharp, yellowish teeth.

  Elara reacted by the training burned into her memory. She unsheathed. Her straight blade shone, a flash of order and cleanliness in the chaos.

  She launched a technical, perfect, flawless thrust. Straight to the heart. The familiar steel pierced the grey chest with eerie ease.

  But the Undead didn't fall.

  The creature looked her in the eye, widening its macabre grin. It completely ignored the sword skewering its chest and took a step forward, forcing Elara to step back, the steel sliding deeper into it.

  —Let go! —Elara shrieked, panicking as she saw her enemy advancing along her own blade to reach her, the tip already poking out its back.

  A second Undead appeared at her blind side, emerging from between the wheels of an overturned cart. It raised a heavy club, studded with rusted nails and tufts of dark hair.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Vael was there, gripping his short spear with hands that now trembled for real. He saw the club descending in a mortal arc toward Elara's unprotected head.

  —Watch out! —he cried, his voice strangled by terror.

  He lunged to push her aside, but his feet, true to their nature, slipped on the oily mud. The momentum turned him into a clumsy, uncontrolled projectile. His shoulder slammed into Elara with brute force, shoving her violently to the ground, out of the weapon's path.

  The Undead's club came down with all the lethal force of its swing, striking the empty air where the girl's skull had been a second before. The weapon hit the mud with a heavy thud that splattered muck.

  Vael fell to his knees right in front of the monster.

  The creature roared, a blast of fetid breath hitting his face. It raised the club again, its white eyes fixed on Vael with a pure, simple hatred.

  —Back! —Vael squealed, closing his eyes and thrusting a desperate upward jab with his spear, without technique, only survival instinct.

  The spear's point entered the Undead's lower abdomen, piercing muscle as hard as old wood and black, fibrous organs, driving deep. The creature dropped the club, a grunt of surprise escaping its throat, and collapsed on top of him from its own weight, still trying to claw his face with its last strength.

  —Ahhh! Get it off me! —Vael shrieked, pushing the heavy, still-convulsing body away in disgust, feeling the black, warm blood soak his hands and forearms—. It weighs so much! It smells worse!

  Elara, from the ground, pulled a dagger from her boot and drove it into the temple of the first Undead, who was trying to get up with the sword still through its chest. The creature finally stopped moving, a final spasm running through it.

  —Up! —shouted Irina, appearing beside her like a silver whirlwind. Her face and armor were spattered with others' blood, black and red. With a clean, lateral slash, she decapitated another enemy approaching from the left.

  The battle, fierce and chaotic, continued for a few eternal minutes. It was a struggle of brute force, steel against mutated flesh, screams against snarls. Finally, the archers in the center of the column managed to regroup and clear the area with a rain of arrows.

  When the soldiers lit emergency torches and lanterns, the orange, smoky light revealed the shattered bodies and churned earth. Vael sat on a rock at the side of the road. He was desperately wiping his tunic and arms with a dirty rag, making faces of disgust.

  Irina approached, breathing hard, her chest heaving. She had a shallow cut on her cheek that bled freely.

  —That fall… —she said, looking at Vael with a mix of exasperation and something that might have been… respect—. It was clumsy, dangerous, and almost got you killed. But it also saved the girl. You were lucky, Vael. A fool's luck.

  Vael shrugged, making a grimace as he tried to pick a piece of something blackish from his sleeve.

  —My mother said fools have a guardian angel —he replied, his voice still shaky—. Though mine must be drunk and likes to laugh at me.

  Elara approached. Her beautiful dark blue armor was stained with mud and blood, and a shallow cut on her cheek was already beginning to scab. She sheathed her sword with a metallic click. Her hands no longer trembled as much; the acute fear had given way to residual adrenaline and a deep, confused gratitude.

  She stood before Vael and looked him in the eye. The mask of nobility had cracked, revealing a frightened and immensely relieved young woman.

  —It wasn't just luck —Elara said, her voice firm, though a bit hoarse from shouting—. You pushed me. That club… was going right for my head. I was frozen. I saw it coming and couldn't move.

  Vael looked up, his dirty face wearing a timid, embarrassed smile.

  —I was going to help you more heroically, I swear —he said, scratching the back of his neck—. Something with a leap, a war cry… the usual. But the mud had other plans. Sorry for the shove. And for… this. —He pointed at the black bloodstains on his clothes.

  Elara shook her head and, not caring about the filth or protocol, sat on the rock next to Vael.

  —Don't apologize —she said, letting out a long sigh that seemed to expel all the stale air from her lungs—. At the academy, they taught me to use the sword, to make perfect thrusts, to maintain form… but no one told me they'd smile while you skewered them. No one told me they wouldn't care about dying. I froze. If it weren't for your… trip, I'd be dead. Thank you, Vael. Truly. I owe you one.

  Vael just nodded, uncomfortable under the intensity of her gratitude, and silently continued cleaning the haft of his short spear.

  —Collect the wounded! —shouted a sergeant in a gravelly voice—. The horses for those who can! The rest on foot! Let's move before they return!

  The column began to move again, a wounded and slow organism, advancing amid the cloying stench of blood, torch smoke, and fear. Vael stood and walked, without a word, beside Elara and Irina. He no longer walked alone at the back, the straggler. Now they were three silent shadows, bound by mud and blood, walking under the flickering, smoky light of the torches that illuminated the path toward the fortress awaiting them, black and terrible, in the distance.

  ---

  The coppery sun, that perpetual lie, had already faded behind the jagged silhouettes of the mountains when, at last, their destination emerged from the mist.

  The Grey Cleft Fortress.

  It was no storybook castle. It was a brutalist mass of black stone and iron, embedded in the mountainside like a scarred scab over a deep wound. Its walls were smooth, merciless, without decorative crenellations or banners. Only the cold geometry of absolute defense. Pitch torches and oil lamps hung from its walls, their orange flames fighting a losing battle against the absolute night falling from the peaks, cold and ravenous.

  —Welcome to the end of the world —Irina murmured, adjusting the strap of her broken shield with an automatic gesture.

  The enormous steel gates, taller than five men, opened with a shriek that was a lament of rusted metal and resignation. The interior of the training yard was a chaos of silent, feverish activity, lit only by the faltering glow of scattered bonfires. Wounded soldiers groaned in rows, supplies were piled in disorder, and under it all, the mud. Always the mud.

  While the officers, with stained but still upright cloaks, dismounted and were led by mute servants toward the Central Keep —whose silhouette held the warm, distant glow of hearths— the sergeants, with voices ragged from cold and fatigue, began barking orders at the infantry.

  —Recruits and stragglers! South sector of the yard! No beds inside for your filth, so find dry ground and don't cry! —one roared, spitting on the frozen ground.

  Vael watched, with that gaze of distant curiosity, as a captain with a fur-lined cloak disappeared behind the heavy doors of the Keep.

  —They have fire, wine, and maybe even a rug —Vael commented softly, almost to himself—. We have mud and the wind that promises to freeze our bones. A fair distribution, I suppose.

  Two hours later. South Sector of the Yard.

  Night had fallen with all its icy weight. The wind coming down from the mountain didn't whistle; it cut, sharp as an ice-knife, seeking any chink in their clothing.

  Vael, Irina, and Elara had huddled together beside a small bonfire they'd managed to light with half-rotten wood and some stolen oil. The flames, weak and smoky, sputtered more than they warmed, but it was a point of light in the darkness.

  Around them, other groups of soldiers, faces dirty and eyes vacant, tried to sleep huddled together or bandaged wounds with dirty rags. The atmosphere was one of anticipated defeat.

  Elara was cleaning her sword. She did it with an obsessive meticulousness, passing the same scrap of cloth over and over the blade that already gleamed immaculate, as if she could rub away not only the blood but the memory of what had happened.

  —You're going to wear down the steel if you keep that up —Irina said, breaking the silence. She sat cross-legged, slowly chewing a ration of dried meat so hard it seemed like leather.

  Elara stopped but didn't put the weapon away. She lifted her gaze to the illuminated windows of the Keep, where the shadows of those safe inside danced.

  —My father said a dirty sword is a dead sword —Elara said, her voice a cold thread—. He… he'd probably be in there right now. Discussing grain prices with the Commander, drinking spiced wine.

  —And why aren't you? —Vael asked. His tone wasn't inquisitive but calm, an open space in the conversation.

  Elara lowered her gaze to the fire, where the flames drew ghosts in her dark eyes.

  —Because I'm the third daughter —she admitted, with a weariness that went beyond the physical—. A reserve asset. And because I refused to become the wax seal on a marriage contract with a southern merchant. My father gave me this sword —she gripped the hilt— and told me: 'If you truly believe your blood is worth more than your utility, prove it. Otherwise, come back and obey.' So here I am. Proving it.

  Irina stopped chewing. She studied the noble girl not as an inexperienced burden, but in a new light, that of an equal who had chosen a harder path.

  —You've got guts, Vane —Irina conceded, nodding slightly—. To give up the warmth of silk for this cold… it's not a choice just anyone makes. Or survives.

  —And you, Irina? —Elara asked, deflecting the attention with an almost nervous gesture—. You fight… not like a soldier. You fight like someone who's already lost something. But you're always watching. Over others. Over us.

  Irina fixed her gaze on the flames. Her face, normally a mask of pragmatism, hardened further, the shadows deepening the bags under her blue eyes.

  —Because I've seen what happens when no one watches out for the new ones —she said, her voice turned into a rough scrape—. My younger brother, Tom. Enlisted two years ago. He was fast, agile, with more heart than sense. On his first reconnaissance patrol, he tripped. Sprained his ankle fleeing an ambush. His sergeant… —Irina clenched her fists until her knuckles shone white as snow under her skin—. He simply weighed the risk. Said they couldn't carry dead weight. That the group came first. They kept running.

  She paused, swallowing. The air around the bonfire seemed to grow colder.

  —The Shades found him before we could go back for him. What we brought back… weren't remains. It was a confirmation.

  A thick, heavy silence fell over the group. Vael, who usually had an absurd comment to relieve any tension, this time remained quiet. He looked at Irina, and for once, the foolish smile vanished completely. His face showed something like respect, a solemn acknowledgment of another's pain. He nodded, slowly.

  —I'm sorry, Irina —Vael said, his voice strangely sober—. I didn't know.

  Irina passed a hand over her face, as if she could wipe away the expression and the memory.

  —I'm not letting that happen on my watch. To those at my side. No one gets left behind. —Her blue eyes fixed on Vael, then on Elara—. Not even you, Vael.

  —Thank you —he replied, and the words sounded sincere, simple.

  —And you? —Elara pressed, turning to Vael, searching his green eyes for a glimpse of truth—. What's your story? A farmer at the end of the world. Why?

  Vael looked at the fire. For a fleeting instant, his eyes lost themselves in the heart of the flames, and something indefinable crossed his face, a tension in his jaw. It seemed he was about to say something completely different, a truth of another nature.

  But he blinked. And the expression faded.

  He shrugged, becoming the clumsy, simple recruit again.

  —In my village, the days were a circle —he said—. Milking, sowing, harvesting, sleeping. I'd look at the mountains on the horizon, always the same, and wonder what lay beyond them. If the world would be different. —He paused and looked around, at the frozen mud, the exhausted faces, the black fortress surrounding them—. And well… here I am. Turns out it's just as dirty. Only here, besides the manure, people try to kill you. I guess that adds variety.

  Elara let out a laugh. It wasn't cheerful; it was a brief, sad, and liberating sound.

  —I guess we're all here running from something —she concluded, hugging her knees—. Or searching for something that probably doesn't exist.

  The fire crackled, consuming the last splinter of halfway-dry wood, and sank into a bed of orange embers that gave more smoke than heat.

  —Rest —Irina ordered, her voice regaining its usual firmness as she wrapped herself in her frayed cloak and settled against her pack, seeking a position that didn't remind her of her ribs—. Tomorrow they'll present us to the fortress Commander. And with our luck, they'll send us right into the wolf's maw.

  Vael lay back on the hard ground, without blankets, feeling the cold of the stone through the thin fabric of his clothes. He closed his eyes.

  There were no visions of light. No magic. Only the weight of exhaustion, the smell of smoke and old blood, and the distant crackle of wood turning to ash.

  Vael listened. Irina's breathing, tense at first, grew slow and rhythmic, a controlled pattern even in sleep. Elara mumbled something unintelligible, caught in her own dreams or nightmares.

  They slept, seeking refuge in unconsciousness.

  He simply waited. Motionless, eyes closed, letting the night, cold and infinite, pass over him like a river over an ancient stone.