Prologue
“Life begins, not at procreation nor during gestation, but only at birth.”
- A quote from LeeRan Sing, S&S
Through a thick soup of coagulated blood, innards and torn flesh, Cort, slogged ahead naked, drawn forth with the promise of more thirst quenching Bloodgeon. But first more, many more must die… A woman’s scream filled his head only to be drowned away by the viscera saturated fluid that flooded his ears, nose and mouth. He stumbled, twisted and fell. His bone ax weapon gone. A snake coiled around his neck as he went under and gasped for air. His head clogged, he wretched on liquids so vile and thick with death. Slippery fingers clutched him and tried to snatch his life away. But he was Cort, the greatest Human warrior, simply the greatest warrior of any species, the barbaric Horde had ever known. This could not be happening, he thought, even as the snake constricted once more. Then he remembered he was one among thousands upon thousands of bloodthirsty hordesmen mired in the assault on the Fisher beach. These Fisher people defended their homes valiantly. Yet every single Fisher would face slaughter on this day. Cort would feast on their flesh and bath in their blood. But no prize would be greater than the life quenching gift all hordesmen fought for…
Bloodgeon.
But he would be denied. Death tightened its scaly grasp on him as it held him under the briny sanguine fluid and taunted him. Cort would never taste of Bloodgeon again. He welcomed this as much as he reviled it, desired it, needed it. He yearned to imbibe in the thick pasty white Bloodgeon again and again. So as he gagged and his throat burned and heart pounded, Cort, not yet the Impaler, pushed up and onward into battle. Again he slogged towards the only life he had ever known, an evil despicable, life, he hated. But this time he trudged ahead towards victory and reward and with a mere drop of trepidation as something deep inside him stirred awake. Cort was surprised as his muscled stomach twisted with a knot of guilt.
Cort reentered the battle. And the bloodlust took him. Everything went red and black.
Alive, the behemoth Cort awoke. The battle was real. The battle was done. But something did feel different. Something inside him. He tossed away his damaged helm and somewhere it clanked, clunked and came to rest. Covered in blood and innards, he shook out his black shaggy mane wet with sweat and the slop of war. His body ached. But this was nothing new just another morning after a battle and her spoils. His chitinous armor, cracked and dented, imprisoned him. Cort forced blood into aching muscles and the battered carapace encasing cracked and fell from his chest and shoulders only to slop onto the remains of many enemies. No they were victims. His victims.
He felt that knot twist again. Stronger this time. With that splat, a sickly sour death rose up to his nose. Crackles of dying fires poked and stirred his mind to life. Vestiges of flesh remained in his parched mouth, thick and pasty with bile. Tingling and excruciating, pure warm blood flowed within him. Shafts of morning light pried open his blood-encrusted lids and jabbed at his eyes. Again this was normal and yet something still felt wrong. More than that twisting knot in his gut. Something felt…
Cort covered his eyes and rubbed them hard with wet gummy fists. He momentarily returned to the darkness. This blackness felt wrong but comforting. It was where he had come from though no longer belonged. He tried to return. He was … Cort the biggest Human any had seen with muscles layered on muscles over a frame equally as powerful. Yet even before his vision cleared his mammoth limbs throbbed with pain from the savage beating he had taken at the webbed hands of a formidable foe.
Yes, he remembered his foe, these Fishers, a solitary race of bipedal amphibians. Distant from their frog-like ancestors as Humans were from apes or Whipts from lizards. Smooth water resistant skin with spots that varied from gray to deep seaweed green covered their sleek well-toned bodies. A blend of hair and soft tiny blue-green scales surrounded strong cheekbones, moist round eyes and large thin lip smiles. Fishers were once considered to be a near perfect species. And now, by his hand, the Fishers were extinct.
Cort rubbed his eyes harder. They teared and he nearly crushed them in their sockets. Squashing grapes for wine came to mind and interrupted the temporary solace of the darkness. He stopped and held out blurred killer’s hands. He stared until his eyes cleared. Dried blood covered his palms, arms, body, legs and the cold stone floor he had slept upon. Innards lay strewn before him. Yet there was not a mother’s swollen breast to nourish and comfort this baby who sat in what seemed his very own afterbirth.
But his mind was clear. It had not been his for so long. His mind was clear… Suddenly, it revolved around and around in unconsciousness, pain and revulsion, unconsciousness, pain and revulsion, unconsciousness, pain and revulsion. He held his stomach down. Shoulders slumped and leaning heavily against the filthy heap he used as the night’s headrest, the giant tentatively examined the surroundings. First his pillow, the remains of a child of indiscernible sex or age. This caused his already knotted stomach to heave. Nausea erupted in his gut and its contents ejected itself as a violent liquid projectile. His dry cracked lips were overcome as his body convulsed in one fluid retch of disgust. Cort wiped the debris from his mouth and looked away. Coward. He slaughtered this child. Something did feel very different. He never cared before.
Before him, beams of sunlight streamed through this hovel’s only window. The simple one room structure was alive with tiny particles of soot. They drifted aimlessly through the yellow shafts of morning sun and floating dust particles. Broken furniture, smashed casks, blood and bodies were strewn everywhere. The fight for this wretched little hut had been fierce.
Then he saw him in the light beneath the window. A glistening glass spear, six King’s feet in length, impaled him through the chest. He was one of the frog-like Fishers. He was their king.
Fisher Reeg.
Dangling, the hair on this frogman was stiff as seaweed abandoned on a beach to whither and dry. Now a corpse and quite a bit smaller than Cort, the Fisher man’s last tragic act played out before him. Frozen in death. Reeg grasped the glass shaft as if he had thrust it into himself. Yet the open mouthed expression of horror and pain on his greenish gill framed face showed otherwise. Barbs on the glass weapon prevented it from sliding completely though the Fisher’s lean well-toned frame. Instead it remained inside him, propping him up like a tripod. And Cort had fought no greater opponent, except the battle every Hordesman fought - the battle for and against the addictive Bloodgeon.
Bloodgeon. That prize to die for invaded his every thought until this day. Now it was wholly absent from his mind until this very moment. And even now it felt only a memory. Was this what was different? Was the Bloodgeon gone from his body? How could it leave his body? It was part of him. How could he live without it? Why live without it? Without it the horde would feast on his flesh and make weapons from his bones. But why did its addiction choose this day to be completely assuaged? Why now when he needed it so much? He could get more…
Cort now remembered slaying the child who served as his pillow. A girl. Pretty and very brave. Human… He never gave a thought to a victim before. Then they came to him. Hundreds of faces washed across his mind. Waves of victims. They were all brave and all dead.
Was Cort dead too? Dead too were the only parents and masters Cort had ever known. Dead was his old life as a gleefully murdering soldier in the bloodgeon thirsty Horde. Dead was his addiction to the vile Bloodgeon.
As the years passed and Cort tried to drown away the horrors, the faces, and the lives in liquors and noxious poisons one memory always remained. It stayed with him. It was his moniker. It was this morning of his rebirth, after a night wrought with battle and guilt, as he awoke to the carnage of the Fisher man’s hovel. And it was simply this…
Cort the giant, the Impaler of Fisher Reeg, child slayer, cannibal, murderer, butcher of any friend or foe who blocked his path to the Bloodgeon pot, the legendary Horde champion, pissed himself and sat in a puddle of goo. Goo.
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“Run!” One of the silhouettes yelled as several figures lumbered past.
Penitent and dazed, Cort kneeled in the mud. Around him, the glow of the distant conflagration illuminated hid his companions. Once again Cort, Impaler and slave, was covered in the hacked and slashed remains of enemies and sick to his stomach. “I remember him… Them”. I remember the Fishers and … it, my prince.” Cort vomited.
“I said run!” A nobleman in unscathed white armor stood over him. “The city burns. As will we. And your weeping will not quell those flames! Or my father’s anger! Run or die!”
Cort watched as his savior and Prince ran on without him. The coup had failed. The City was not theirs. The young Prince and a few remaining coconspirators now fled to the hidden harbor. Cort glanced back to the Human city. It burned. The battle had been fierce though nothing compared to the attack on Fishers so many years ago… But the clatter and screams of the slaughter had awoken his past. A past buried deep within the giant man’s soul that should have stayed buried, maybe even dead. They promised it would remain dead. But it came back to him in vomit. The memories of the old Cort, the evil bloodgeon addicted hordesman, were bubbling up to the surface. Two choices remained. Wait here for the King’s men to finish off the last of Prince Gormand’s guard. Or to remember, relive all that was Cort the Impaler… Cort’s stomach tightened.
“Prince Gormand!” Cort called after him. “I remember where it began! Gormand! I can, I will take you to the Bloodgeon!”
Cort retched. Unstoppable vomit forced itself up in a multi-colored acidic sloppy mess. With eyes lowered he mumbled. “I must take you.”
Gormand’s pearly white teeth flashed. Pleased. Then he sprinted to the waiting ship.
Cort struggled to his feet. “I must. I must remember.”