This post is gigantic! I pushed out the end of the story on 3/9, plus added the things I didn’t publish from Wednesday. The total is about 4500 words, a longish short story in its own right. The next step is revision: ironing out all the details, reflowing chapters, making sure the ending and beginning match stylistically and tonally, and filling in holes. Then we get to publish the thing, and I’ll do all that live, too.
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I looked at Ruland and knew then that, whatever poise and maturity he had shown earlier, he was still a boy. He had a dagger drawn from his belt that looked like a gladius in his small, white hands.
“Stay close to me, but not too close. Let us hope you shall not need that, because even my blade does little to them.”
“How does he command them?”
“How did he command me?”
“That is different.”
“I imagine it is less different than you think. Don’t look at them. Do you remember the castle?”
“I have no memory of it.”
“There is a passage that leads out to the cliff. It’s a sewer, really. It is near the larder and kitchens, if you can ever find those.”
“I will hope for you instead.”
We entered the first ward. A lone horse stood in the dirt, its hazy eyes regarding us, and I wondered whether it was alive. I saw that Ruland was covering his mouth with his shirt and intuited that there must be a great stench about the place. As we worked around the courtyard, staying in the shadows, it became more obvious that we were in the rotten heart of a rotten city.
Piles of detritus were heaped against the dark walls of the massive, towering keep. Bones protruded here and there, but because of the black filth covering them I could not tell if they were man or the remains of beasts slaughtered and thrown away. One of these piles stood near us as we approached the inner gatehouse, and the bones were white and yet not bleached—picked clean of meat.
The outer gatehouse was bereft of life save for two man-shaped sentries. I pushed Ruland behind me and led behind a broken wagon, near a set of stables holding grey, ugly horses.
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