Shards of darkness (watty awards 2012)

Horse and rider

Epdemies looked around him in despair. An expression of muted horror played upon his features. He shook his dusty mane and tale as if to dislodge the abomination before him. Across the arid plain, he heard a cry. He stiffened and snorted, then relaxed as it became clear that it was nothing more than the lamenting of the bereaved. Stretched out before him, was a seemingly endless sea of corpses. Carrion birds flew wheeling and crying though the stagnant air that was heavy with the bitter stench of decaying flesh.

His rider, Ejiavstae, clicked his tongue and whistled through broken teeth.

“Ep come, we must see if we can be of use to the poor grieving wretches.” He said with all the vigor he could muster under the dire circumstances. To Epdemise, this seemed almost vulgar and disrespectful to the spirits of the nearby dead.

“Quiet for fear that our petty complaint might be acknowledged.”

“Then let us tarry no longer.”

“Cretin! Oaf! Speak not of the dead as one so rash as your self. Deed with caution in their presence.”

Ejiavstae held his tongue and waited for Epdemies’s sentence to trail in to oblivion. Now was not the time for a blow to be passed at their friendship, fragile as it was. He could not find offence in the words of the horse, nor the empathy to apologise for his ‘disrespect’. Epdemies was of the imperium. Pure bread and highest rank, he had known nothing of suffering. Living on oats and growing fat with ignorance at the fall of the world around him, it had drained away the last of his pride to bear witness to the destruction of the lands outside the city walls, where the floors were paved with marble not cobbles soaked in grime. He had walked over the bones of the slaves that built the city they could never come to appreciate. Hidden inside every perfect diamond was a life of the child lost to mine it.  To Ejiavstae himself, suffering was not unknown. In the small farming village where he had lived out his childhood, they often bore the tolls of being a rebel village of both Imperium and the Horror. A tax of quite a substantial sum was required to stop Imperium flattening their tiny spark of rebellion. Half of all the money made by selling the grain of every family in the village was taken. This was no meagre amount for a village dependant on its agriculture but some how, everyone got passed it each year. It was the Horror’s payment that bared a more significant sacrifice. The blood of a child was to splatter the ground with the rise of every full moon. The gore could not be cleared as a reminder to never cross the path of the horror and expect to live unscathed. Driven to torment, the aggrieved villagers fought back. Kaa and his army were the only things that had spared them from a violent end. They crushed the Horror’s troops and forced Imperium to become part of a shallow truce. Kaa had told them to remember who the real enemy was… Ejiavstae owed his life to Kaa, it was a dept that he could only hope to repay by giving his service to the army. So he and his brother Farrez donned their armour and joined the fight for peace.

Ejiavstae sighed and glanced at his companion. Epdemise had not joined the army out of his own good will. Rather, he had been selected and press ganged into fighting by the Imperium. To give him his due, Epdemise never complained for his situation. He never boasted, he never showed any contempt for his rider being of a poor village. At first they had ignored each other as well as could be but soon Ejiavstae’s nature got the better of him and he began to share words and jests with his mount. Eventually Epdemise gave in. He stopped ignoring his rider and began to share pleasantries. His sulky demeanour faded somewhat though never left completely. Ejiavstae found his company amiable to some extent for he was well educated and a fine speaker though he sadly didn’t seem to know when to stop, and when told to ‘shut up’ he replied by becoming dour and morose. Their friendship was small, undoubtedly, but it was still there.