I Know Not: The Legend of Fox Crow (Book 1)

I awoke.

Actually, that’s really oversimplified. I would rather say that I came to be awake like a spark struck to tinder, sizzling and sliding along from inert to aware. On the other hand, sizzle is probably the wrong word; it denotes far too much speed. It would be better to say I awoke like the tide, a slow but steady progress. There wasn’t any black-fading-to-light part or opening-of-eyes as of yet. In fact, the first thing that struck a chord in any coherent part of my soul was the smell; it reeked of death. Then again, I haven’t even mentioned the pain.

There was a lot of pain.

If any other part of me was severed, I doubt I would have noticed it for the lancet of fire in my head. It was as if someone had ripped out an eye and filled my skull with molten lead.

That’s when the functioning parts of my mind got together and realized that there were pieces missing. In reality, whatever pieces of me there were supposed to be inside my head were gone. I searched for me and only found this white cottony cloud where I used to be. I once knew my name, I once had a family, friends–at least I hope I did, but it isn’t as if I could really know could I? I had in-conveniently lost myself as I lay in this perpetually dark place that stinks of rotting flesh and excrement.

My thoughts slipped through my fingers and went on a brief sojourn about the disgusting nature of defecation at death. The last thing any creature does is reveal its last meal through its rectum. To spoil the appetite of whatever is trying to eat it, I’m sure. Kind of a final insult: ‘Go ahead! Try to eat me with that smell following you around!’ It lacks a certain amount of dignity; but I suppose you have to take what victories you can get when you can. I started to giggle, a high pitched, eerie sound that created echoes of pain that ricocheted inside of my skull.

To say I was only ‘nearly’ insane is kind; to say I had totally lost my grip on reality is much more accurate.

Then, very quietly, the darkness pressed inward. I felt it in my brain, past the fuzzy Void that used to be me– two halves. One half was urging me on to madness, wishing to let go of every pain and pressure to the exultation of ennui. The other was dark, sharp and foreboding. It simply stalked forward and seized the reins of my mind. Without a word as to its identity, it wrapped thorny hands around the neck of my weaker self and strangled it determinedly until it shut its festering gob. This murderer in my mind brought me back to the here and now.

It was then I learned a lesson known by precious few men: sometimes you choose whether you go insane. It’s all a matter of giving up, really. I get the feeling I’m not the giving up type. Now I have confirmed my suspicions, but I am ahead of myself.

I tried to open my eyes, and failed. With monumental effort and not a little confusion, I raised my hands to my face and probed my eyes to see if they were still there. I got an image of my fingers exploring empty sockets that had been picked clean by crows and my skin was instantly sheathed in freezing ice. My fingers paused, trembling as they hovered a few fingerlengths away…

I don’t know how long I sat there, frozen in terror at the possibility of permanent blindness, but that dark thing in my head jabbed me sharply. My hands finally moved and found a thick, sticky crust covering both lids. It felt like old paint, mostly dried. I tasted it. It was sweet, metallic, bitter, and sour all at the same time. It was surely old blood, dried over at least a day. Relief eased the ache across my shoulders as I realized my eyes were just gummed shut.

Perhaps I should have been wondering how in hell do I know what old blood tastes like? But I was busy. I didn’t remember that I was carrying a canteen, but thankfully my hands did. They grabbed it and Left poured it in my eyes as Right scraped at the dry, scabby mess. I sat up shakily and pried my eyes open to finally look upon the cause of the great stench.

I was in a keep, well the courtyard actually. Forget the tales you may have heard of white walls, graceful towers, and airy passages. This building was a weapon of war: short, squat, dirty, and func-tional. Of course I noticed that much later than the carpet of bodies that littered every free stride of space. Men and pieces of them lay sprawled out across the parade ground like the vomit of a colossal monstrosity. Faces screamed at me, berating me for drawing breath even as they pleaded for me to remember their names. The Fog circled in to cut me off blocking all but the shallowest parts of me.

I shook my head to clear it and nearly passed out– white light, ghostly noises, and smells attacking in crashing riots as I went to my knees. Long moments passed before the world came back into focus. I heaved once, and spit out a mouthful of stomach acid.

Let’s…let’s not do that again.

I agreed with myself and gingerly levered to my feet. Right Hand was thinking on its own again; it had picked up a sword from the bloody soil. I stared at the thing, thick and heavy and crusted with the leavings of its last job. Right tested the balance and I sneered, thinking it was half a waterweight heavy on the blade side. It was less a weapon than a cleaver.

Am I a swordsman, then? Darker and more powerful voices argued between my ears, Not now, later. Get safe, and then vivisect your head.

Again, I agreed, heartened that I would give myself such good advice. My eyes again drank in the scene, looking for a clear path through the swamp of hewn human flesh. Amidst the broken bodies and shattered bones, I began to pick out vaguely familiar features. A nose here, a shock of red hair there, battle standards, heraldic heater shields lying cleft next to round. The picture clarified very quickly inside my mushy head: I was in a border keep and Westerners had raided the outpost, slaughtering all the Norian Kingsmen inside.

Well almost. Left tenderly touched the edges of my spongy wound. Not for a lack of trying. I glanced to the corpse of a fat man at my feet. Better off than you lot, though.

Something young and pink inside me squirmed, not at the carnage, but at the fact that I could look upon it without feeling ill, or sad, or anything at all. A hundred men had crashed against each other and exploded into a field of gore, yet I felt nothing. My gut was uneasy, but only when I moved too fast. Even now I was forced to stare at the human wreckage just to make sure of my footing and I looked directly at an empty head whose brains had been removed by hammer or mace —

And how did I know that? Had I killed him?

And I did not flinch at the gore. I didn't even bat an eye. Hundreds of men lay butchered as thoroughly as if they had been forced through a sieve and turned into sausages. I could not remember ever seeing such a horrific scene before, but here I was, every internal weathervane saying I was intimately familiar with the like.

Then, just for a second, I caught sight of a young boy. Nowhere near adulthood, he lay lifeless and still, his torso ending just below his ribcage. He was so small, so lost, his face so surprised in death. I could not see his legs and suddenly nothing was as important as finding them. Something stirred finally, a tightness in my heart, a shadowy reflex of loss. I smelled burning and there were no fires. I heard screaming but I was totally alone.

It was at that moment the dark, sharp thing at the back of my head snapped an arm out of the Fog and crumpled thoughts of the murdered child before my mind’s eye. The great emptiness swallowed the bile and sorrow and left a vaulted, hollow cavern inside my chest. The emotion disappeared into the Fog so fast, I wondered if it ever had been. I forced myself to look again.

To say I was aghast would have been a normal reaction. It would also be a lie. I was not happy, or sad, or disgusted. I was not even afraid of who I was to see such a scene of valiant defeat and be unmoved. I simply was. I existed, a perfect tool without emotion, obligation, or a hand in sight. It was a long time before I moved.

In the center of the courtyard was a man in his enameled plate armor. From the ornate battle gear he wore, he had obviously been a nobleman and probably the master of this castle. Now the only vassals he would feed would be the flies, the defense he would lend would be to the maggots crawling over his corpse. He sprawled across a man outfitted in metal plate armor that looked like the scales of a serpent. The nobleman on top had lost his head at the instant he had plunged a dagger in the eye of the bearded barbarian beneath. Something called me to them. The Fog, I think, murmuring to me in voices never fully heard. My feet squelched in the bloody soil as I moved him aside to finally reveal a familiar sight.

Its design ambushed me, fitting into a hole in the Fog where it once belonged. The elegant blade was a touch too long for inexpert use by one hand, and it flared three quarters up the length to provide extra heft for the strike. The weapon was more black than blue, as if corroded or stained by soot, but it terminated in a beautifully ornate handle. It was an angelic, silver-plated, ghostly figure, ominously hooded with gold-plated wings that were spread to make the crosspiece. The feet were lost in the robe that blended into the worn ebon-wood that sandwiched the ten inch hilt. Set into the Phantom Angel, over the chest and in pommel, were heart-cut cats eye gemstones. They were from the far west, deep in the barbarian lands. I could tell because they were blue, not amber. Within a second I had determined the exact price such a stone would fetch.

Who would know that? I shook my head again and nearly passed out…again.

I thought we agreed you’d stop doing that? I swallowed more bile.

So we did.

A grave silence settled inside me as I contemplated perhaps I had been an attacker here, not one of the defenders. I felt my face, which was just beginning to show growth; I normally eschewed a beard. That weighed the odds in the direction of me as an Easterner, a Kingsman. My head, however, was more inhuman than civilized or barbaric. The left side of my skull was hugely out of proportion. It felt spongy, springy, as if my scalp had been cut open and a half-full leather bag of water slipped between skull and skin. Of course, touching it made the world decide to swirl as if The Mad Painter of the Universe had just dipped his canvas in solvent, making the colors run into a kaleidoscope of insane visions.

I could say I sat down and waited for the visions to pass, but then you’d have to believe that I sit on my back, involuntarily, very fast, and completely unconscious, but that would also be a lie…or four.

I opened my eyes again to dusk. Wasn’t it just noon? My skin was crawling with sand. I moved to brush it off and the sky above me disappeared in a pestilent cloud full of thousands of tiny wings and sharp feet. The flies flew to join their comrades that had come to feast, carpeting the dead like a living funeral shroud, covering bodies like dead petals shed by a field of corrupted flowers.

It was painfully obvious, perhaps agonizingly obvious, that my deformation was due to a severe head injury. I had survived the onslaught, but my continued state of living was by no means certain. Clumsily, vaguely, I gathered the black-bladed bastard sword to my breast like a sleepy child with a favored toy and crawled across the rotting bodies to the keep. Flies erupted on all sides of me and horrible, smelling fluids covered my entire front as I made progress as I could, on my belly one hand length at a time. I struggled up each stair in turn, and almost passed out as I had to throw a bruised shoulder against the door.

I don’t remember much except a great table set for a banquet, with most of the food tossed on the floor. Someone had made off with the cutlery. I grasped a full clay flagon of warm, watered wine. I downed it, feeling drunken, and drowned flies slipped down my gullet. The world blurred again and I felt like I was looking at the table through a long tunnel, with swirling darkness and stars on all sides. Gravity shifted and I sprawled backward on the cold stones, sword clattering with an obscenely musical tune. My head grew, or maybe the skin compressed, pressure building in waves that punished me. Right Hand cast out, and found a thin bed of straw held together by a course, thin blanket.

The Fog whispered that I have slept in worse places, though I don’t remember. Then a mocking voice jeered, Not a few minutes ago you were sleeping in a field of corpses!

My last thought was that I must be a mighty hero to have survived so far. I had enough strength to crawl fully onto the pallet of straw before the pain became all encompassing. That’s when the Fog gave up a chuckle and a dark memory of a bent, toothless man. He was saying in a uniquely carcinogenic voice: “Fate cares not if you be a hero, or a fool. She is cruel, or kind, all the same.”

When I awoke, my head hurt less; the rest of me hurt more. It gave me the feeling that whatever my name was, it should end in “The Walking Bruise”. I was once again in the company of the dead, but at least here they were orderly dead. The empty space I had found was flanked by others like it, hastily constructed beds of blankets over straw beneath dead soldiers.

They had probably been wounded in the assault and brought into the keep for medical treatment. It had proved to be an optimistically futile gesture. The attackers had swept through here while I lay unconscious outside and dispatched the wounded with typical, barbaric zeal. A woman in the robes of a healer was pinned to a wooden ceiling beam by a rusty spear. She hung, a tortured doll, face contorted in a never-ending scream. Like a grisly fountain, her blood had coursed down the shaft to pool onto the floor. Whatever peace and mercy she had aspired to in life; she had been denied in death. I dissected the strike, saw where she was wounded, and knew in my heart that she had not died quickly. I wonder if she knew it could have been worse, much worse.

Maybe it had been.

With that cheerful thought, I picked myself up off the pallet when something struck me. What am I wearing? Pasted to my body with old sweat was a scarred, boiled leather breastplate with matching vambracers and shoulder cops. All of them were edged in iron and drenched in dried, stinking bodily fluids. Light, fast, enough to turn aside a glancing blow, it was armor made for speed.

Light or not, it was no wonder I felt like I had run naked in a hailstorm. Sleeping in armor was like fornicating with sheep. Right Hand was thinking independently again, grabbing the short fighting knife it knew I had strapped to one of my soft leather boots. To be honest it surprised the hell out of me as Left and Right cut free the rancid mass of hard leather. I was going to have to scold them if they kept doing things without orders. In seconds I felt free, light, like I could breathe for the first time since…

The Fog was silent.

Damn it! What I did get was the dead-eyed hungry thing that lurked just inside the Void. It glared at me impatiently.

Whoever I was, whatever had happened here, I needed to get moving before more barbarians or scavengers took hold of the courtyard and made escape impossible. I knew pestilence would soon take residence and kill me as sure as a dagger thrust, if slower. I needed food and equipment if I was going to survive. Unfortunately, everything of significant and obvious value had already been raided. However, something inside of me said that men raiding silver would often eschew apples, and apples were worth more to me at this moment than silver.

I levered myself to my feet. I limped through the keep, favoring bruised muscles and strained tendons, but I found it all the same– Death and the Dead. There must be a line a parish long to get into hell just from the number of bodies that littered this home turned to tomb. The noble lady, the stable boy, the servants, the cooks– no one had been spared. Men, women, and children had been crushed, hacked, throttled, or stabbed. One thing became clear; the attack had come without warning, and had probably swept through the gate before the defenders were roused.

Perhaps a guard had been asleep? Treachery from within? Something inside me began calculating odds.

There was no way to tell, but when I found a body-length mirror in the noble lady’s quarters I was sure this was just the spearhead of a deeper raid into the Kingdom. This one thing of vanity was easily the most valuable object in the castle, but they had left it behind, meaning speed was more important than gold. I paced around the lady’s room, ignoring the fact that her remains lay in all four corners at the same time. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and went in for a good long look at the stranger’s face inside.

I am a man, a human. When not filled with clotted blood, my hair is thick, wavy, and black, and it travels past my shoulders. That says nobleman.

Who else has time to care and clean long hair but a nobleman?

I nodded at my image. I fought the urge to cut it off and instead found a leather thong and tied it out of the way.

I’m Norian, I think. Way too much parentage had been passed back and forth between the countries during times of strife to be completely certain, but I was dressed as a Kingsman. My eyes are naturally blue, but at that moment, the whites were stained red with blood. The swelling of my skull was going down, at least it looked smaller than it felt yesterday, this morning, or whenever, and I know that is a good sign.

Some may call me handsome someday, though, with a head like an overstuffed sack, that’s not likely at the moment.

I’m perhaps late twenties, early thirties, and my jaw blurred by at least a week’s worth of flaxen beard growth. My build is muscular, but not an axe man’s girth; a swordsman’s. My form was pliant yet tough, fast and durable. My arms, chest, and back are like stone, likely from years swinging pieces of tempered steel.

So where is your tempered steel now, hero? A shiver danced up and down my spine like a shaving razor carved of ice. I glanced back at the mirror. A short haired man stared back. Dressed in gray rags, his hands dripped with blood as his eyes burned over an insane rictus grin.

I bolted backwards, over the corpse of the recumbent princess, and toppled over onto the floor. My heart thumped in my ears so fast it seemed only one continuous beat, but as I climbed to my feet, his image had fled from the silvery surface. I bounded down the stairs like a man possessed, my heart crashing in my chest like constant thunder. An inescapable dread filled me as I felt my clothes peeled away to expose me completely to whatever dangers still lurked in this house of flies. My feet hammered the stones like a hailstorm.

I sprang upon the pallet and the Phantom Angel sword was still there, clutching its glittering blue heart. I snatched it up and swung it around in an arc, looking, almost expecting, an attack. But as my hand felt the wire wrapped leather of the hilt, the panic faded and the pain returned. The headache felled me down like a club to the temple. My eyes trailed over the blackened blade in my crimson flecked hands, and it blurred into a moment perfect clarity. As the world strained to fit inside the confines of my broken skull, I saw clearly that the greatest reaction I had gotten from myself was a bottomless pit of dread over my own well being.

This does not speak well of my humanity. And there he was again, sharp and hateful, inside my head. He sneered at me.

Even if a man wishes to lift himself up a sheer cliff face, he can only do it so many times before tumbling back into the abyss. I had to leave this nightmare, and soon, or else the scenes of violence and death would slowly erode my mental walls and I would go mad. As soon as the agony abated, I set to work.

Like a mouse in a tomb, I took from the dead so that I might live. I gathered preserved foodstuffs and basic equipment: blankets, lamp and fuel, tinder, flint, and hatchet. I nearly balked at collecting the clothes of the dead, but the murderer inside me ordered me to be practical. I did manage to find a slight purse of silver coins in the guardhouse. The main vault had been sacked, though, and it would appear that the great evil that had been done here was due to greed and not some darker malice.

There were no horses in the stables, no living ones let me say, but there was a set of saddlebags in which I could store my valuables. I also found ten full barrels of siege-oil in the gatehouse. Apparently the attack had come so fast that it had never been used to pour through the murder-holes and onto the incoming horde. I stared at the abandoned, thigh-sized barrels for long moments.

I have a use for you.

I was generous with it in the main hall, where people getting ready to eat had been summoned to fight for their lives. I bathed the bodies and parts of men alike in the courtyard. Forgotten friend and unknown foe, I made no distinction. When I left, lit torch in hand, I turned once more on the scene of my recent birth. I was made new, without knowledge of myself or the world beyond. I had no choice but to venture forth and begin again until the Fog lifted and let me know what life was truly mine. Not many men get the chance to do what I was about to– start life over. Though, as wombs go, it had a lot of room for improvement. I tossed the torch into the courtyard.

The flames caught cleanly and burned hot, dancing over the bodies like demons devouring their get. But that was unfair; in truth this was a band of warriors getting their well deserved funeral pyre. Once again, the small voice in the back of my head spoke. It said that it really did not matter that they had lost. They had died fighting because they had to. In so doing, they had lessened the burden on the rest of mankind by removing some small part of the evil in it. Then, the sharp, dark stranger swept the voice away with a stroke of his arm. He sat behind my eyes, tapping his foot and waiting for me to get going.

Still not sure what part I had played in this lightning siege, I watched the flames leap into the nameless keep and greedily lick at the lumber of its supports and blacken its stone with greasy soot. I offered a clumsy prayer to both the Gods of War and Death, that the defenders be welcomed. I was frightened that I could not even fool myself into believing it was any more than just another empty gesture.

I knew then that I was a practical man, for I turned from the fires and began along the road. From where, to where, I knew not.

The comforting weight of my weapon pressed on my back where I had tied it with cord, lacking a proper sheath. I tried to remain positive and took stock in my situation. I had food, a little water, a spear to use as a staff, a fine weapon, and sturdy boots. As I cleared the gates I gazed on the mountain range that spread outward in all directions, all directions except ahead. Well, at least I’m walking downhill.

The Fog murmured a town should be to the north and west. I would soon need more food and, more urgently, well water not tainted by a soldier’s corpse. The Fog assured I could find it. I knew I needed the attentions of an herbalist for my wounds and a bath to stop smelling like a rotting kill. I also knew I would soon have need of a name; men do not trust a wanderer without a name.

Again the Fog lapsed into silence.

…The damned bastard.