Leda

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Dogs

These people, Castor thought with grim contempt. Like dogs. No ˗ worse than dogs.

Dogs at least might be trained to run at heel or to attack. But with their vacant eyes and listless bodies, these villagers seemed more dead than alive ˗ a waste of flesh, of teeth and bones and blood. Too weak or lazy to move, to perform a decent day's work, to prove useful. His Uncle's legacy ˗ an empire of traitors and human scum, of parasites.

Too long had these people been allowed to live their backward, worthless lives. Diodiné had turned a blind eye to the degenerate North, fighting his pointless little war in the Yegdanian provinces when the real rot was here in his very own lands. But all of that would be set right.

Castor peered down at an old woman who sat before her hovel of a croft, her eyes milky and matted with crust, a few soiled rags of clothes flapping from the sticks of her limbs. When Castor prodded her with the pommel of his sword, she didn't move. He assumed she was dead, just a corpse propped against a wall. But when he lowered his face to hers, her breath rasped against his cheek, reeking of hunger and the grave. He recoiled in disgust.

"She gave me some bread." The woman's voice was a mere echo, dredged from ruined lungs.

"What? Who?"

She shook her head with effort. "I don't know. The girl. She came with bread. On her way, she said, to see the new Emperor crowned."

Castor waved a hand before the crone's eyes. Her pupils never moved, lost to the clouds of her irises.

"I said, a new Emperor, is there?" she carried on, blind to Castor's presence. "I expect he'll be crowned by now. So grand and fine." Her voice rose and fell like the whispering of wind across the lake. "Will he bring us bread, do you think? Will he help me? I felt her tears on my face. She wept for me. For all of us."

Castor's anger hissed and broiled. Some whore of a courtier had handed out a few chunks of bread and was loved for it. That's what these people were ˗ helpless, pathetic, clinging to anyone who'd show them sympathy, unable to fend for themselves. Even wild beasts managed that. A sudden reflex caused him to lash out ˗ to bring the hilt of his sword down into her face. For a brief moment, her eyes gained clarity in pain and she looked straight at him. Then she slumped, shrivelled and twisted, lifeless on the ground outside her croft.

Castor rose, drew out a handkerchief, polished her blood from the jewelled hilt of his blade and dropped the weapon back into its scabbard. The sky had darkened ˗ fat drops of rain spattered the mud of the streets, coursing through holes in the thatch of crofts. He turned around taking in the dismal scene, observed by crofters; their eyes reproachful. Castor snorted, a high wail of laughter escaping his lips. This was all his ˗ the mud, the rain, the miserable hovels they called their homes. Their duty to him ˗ all of it he was owed. All of it he would take.

"Your Majesty."

He turned to observe his new captain of guards ˗ this one no failure as Denec Morva had been. Inec Vebæc had been selected for his ruthlessness, for the hard flint of his eyes and his skill with sword and mace. He commanded fear amongst his men; his loyalty was unquestioned. Tall, broad of shoulder and square of scull with steel blue eyes, Vebæc transformed every word of every order into action.

"We found them, your Majesty. Those raiders of whom the villagers spoke."

Castor gazed at a sorry stream of prisoners shackled together behind Vebæc's horse ˗ some men, a few women, their bodies lean and hard, their eyes maddened with violence and hunger. He'd heard of these "marauders," hunting up and down the eastern shore of Brennac, robbing from rich and poor alike, murdering, maiming, raping. One or two wore imperial livery, he noticed with irritation, which meant even his own guards had fallen prey to their brutality. He approached the first: rangy, wild-eyed, more dog than man, his beard and hair matted with blood and mud. The North grew more savage with every step.

"Show him the likenesses."

Vebæc nodded, first holding up the image of Castor's own brother. Josen stared out of the illustration ˗ arrogant, cool, aloof. "You've seen this man?"

Beard stared, squinted and then shook his head.

"These then?" Vebæc produced images of Halanya Hannac, Magda Brighthair and Meracad Nérac. Again the man stared, raised manacled wrists and scratched at his chin, eyeing them with what might have been thoughtfulness. And then he shook his head. What did that mean? That the traitors had not passed this way, headed for home? Or that they had merely evaded these dogs? It was wise to have sent search parties West and East, Castor realised.

Vebæc raised the final likeness. There she was, her beauty inked out for all to see ˗ Master Valdec had performed his task well. It was almost as if Leda herself stared from the parchment with those inquisitive eyes, her dark curls framing the perfect contours of her face. "Well?"

The dog man stared, his eyes widened and then he smiled, his lips bared to reveal black gums and rotten teeth. "Aye," he said.

"Aye what?" Castor took a step towards him but the man didn't flinch, his smile widening to split his face.

"You'll not want seeking that bitch no more," Dog-face leered.

"What?"

"Hunt her, we did. Into the lake she did run." He jerked and spasmed in grotesque imitation of someone drowning. "One less traitor for you, Majesty." Dog-man bowed theatrically, the others nodding, enthused at his performance. "Maybe...some reward?"

Something chill and dark smothered Castor, closing in above him as the waters of Brennac must have folded in over Leda. He too felt as if he were drowning, drifting, sinking. So she was gone, then. He'd not said a word to her. His future bride was now a corpse, pecked at by fish. Leda ˗ that marriage might have saved the North. If she'd only done her duty, stayed that night and accepted him, then all that was now to come ˗ it wouldn't have been necessary. But there was nothing left. Nothing but traitors and savages. Nothing but the forts he would burn, the rebels he'd round up and execute starting with his own brother.

"A reward?" He stared at Dogbeard, thinking of Leda plummeting, gasping, clawing vainly at the water as it sucked her down. "Drown them. Let that be their reward." The smile shrank on Dog-beard's face. He paled, slinking down like the cur he was.

Castor turned to Vebæc who nodded, already dragging the prisoners to the shore. "Drown them as they drowned her."

"Nay! Wasn't my idea!"

"Was him, not us. He made us do it!"

"We tried to save the girl, Majesty. Drown him, not us!"

How they howled, these animals. How they begged and yowled and screamed. Castor mounted his horse.

"Andburn the village," he called out to Vebæc. He stared at the old woman'scorpse. "Let's send Hannac a message. Let her know I'm coming."