In a ruined land, cursed by the gods and haunted by the dead, a young mercenary discovers a horror threatening to destroy what is left of civilization.
Welcome folks!
Whether you’ve come here from social media, or happened to meander across this page, I am thrilled to have you visit.
This post is the newest chapter of the offical preview of my new serial novel Hunted, book 1 of The Blood Rot Saga. You can The Beginning right here.
Unlike my last serial novel, Nameless (which you can read right here), Hunted will only be available to Erik’s Coffee Club, who support my writing through Buy Me a Coffee. Memberships start at only $3 a month, includes free ebooks or paperbacks (depending on your membership level), meet-ups with the author and, of course, a chapter a week of Hunted, right in your email inbox. And every membership makes it possible for me to spend more time writing, and to reach more people.
Hunted is set a thousand miles north of the City of Seven Walls and Nameless, in a the remains of a once great empire destroyed by natural disaster and now a land of small, squabbling fiefs, each vying with the other for power and wealth. In The Beginning we learned how our protagonist ended up where he is. Now, the adventure begins…
Chapter 1
13 years later . . .
“Malc, I got to talk to you,” Goff says, and his voice is serious enough that it distracts Malc from the uneasy feeling that had been filling his guts all morning. He looks up and has just enough time to see his friend’s expression go from sad and worried to wide-eyed with shock before Jillet’s boot smashes into Malc’s back and sends him sprawling.
Reflex brings Malc’s arms up and turns his head to keep his face from smashing into the rocks around the firepit. He gasps to force air back into his lungs and turns over as the heel of Jillet’s boot slams into his ribs.
“You little shit,” Jillet snarls. “You think you’re too good for me, now, huh? Is that it?”
Malc tries to rise, but Jillet’s fist flies toward his face. Malc ducks just enough to take it on the forehead instead of the nose, but the force of the hit sends him back to the ground. Malc rolls with it, trying to create distance between them, but Jillet stays on top of him. The part of his brain not trying to stay alive wonders how the man found out he’d asks for a transfer to a different platoon. Not that it mattered.
Jillet’s blood-shot eyes narrow. The years had been no kinder to the man than he’d been to Malc. He’d gained a paunch and a red nose from years of drinking. He moves slower, too, and groans and swears in pain when he wakes up until he sinks his first morning drink. But he’s still one of the company’s deadliest; a dirty, vicious fighter and a brutal leader who subordinates obey from fear. Most of Malc’s scars came from Jillet’s brutal “training.” And the same viciousness that he’d used to raise Malc had earned him a lieutenant’s rank the same year Malc turned fourteen and graduated from signaller to scout.
After that, the beatings turned to fist fights.
Whenever Jillet was drunk and annoyed—at the captain, at his men, at the world—he went after Malc, finding whatever excuse he could to deliver a “correction.” The first fight broke Malc’s nose. The second time, he broke Jillet’s nose and received a beating that left him useless for a week. After that, they fought every month until Malc started winning.
Malc hates the man more than any he’d ever killed.
Jillet drives a boot into Malc’s thigh. “Should have killed you years ago, whoreson.”
He spits on the ground and pulls his leg back for another kick.
“Company, lieutenant,” Goff says, his voice sharp. Jillet stops and steps away, his hand going to his sword.
It’s then Malc realizes the feeling of unease—a feeling that’s been growing in him all morning—is stronger than the pain in his ribs and leg. He sits up, hissing as his ribs protest, and sees six men on horseback, escorted by a small guard of Kingsland infantry. They wear Godlander colours, which is strange, because it was the Godlanders that the Night Scout company had been hired to fight.
“What the fuck are they doing here?” Jillet barked at the guards.
“Envoys,” a man wearing sergeant’s colours says, the distain regulars had for mercenaries filling his voice. “Commander says to give them a tour.”
“Well, isn’t that fucking clever,” Jillet says. “Showing the enemy our positions. Brilliant.”
“Don’t bitch at me, mercenary,” the sergeant snarls. “You got a problem, talk to the commander.”
The men keep snapping at one another as Malc gets to his feet, but it’s in the background. The feeling of unease is stronger than ever, and he doesn’t know why. Then one of the envoys raises his arm, and yanks the chain attached to his wrist. There’s a grunt of pain, and small, filthy person stumbles out from behind the man’s horse.
Malc can’t tell if it’s a boy or girl, but it’s certainly not an adult. They’re short and skinny under the dirty sack they wear. Its hair is in matted clumps, its skin dull and covered in dirt, its feet bare and dirtier than the rest of it, which is a feat unto itself. The result is that it looks completely brown, save for a pair of green eyes peering out of its mud-spattered face. It stares at Malc and the others, then turns and says something Malc can’t hear to the man with the chain.
“What the fuck is that?” demanded Jillit. “Your dog? If we toss it bread, will it do a trick?”
“Shut your mouth, mercenary,” the sergeant says.
“Fuck you.” Jillet raises a fist and makes an obscene gesture while the mercenaries snicker. “We’re done with you fuckers, today. Company is marching out at noon.”
The man with the chain taps his heels against his horse, and the envoys start moving, dragging the creature behind and leaving their escort scrambling to catch up. Malc watches, the feeling of unease fading as they ride away, though not vanishing entirely. The other mercenaries watch them leave with expressions from irritation to speculation on their face.
Jillet waits until the envoys are out of earshot before turning back to Malc. He glares at him, but Malc has his fists up and ready. Jillet’s lips twist into a smile before he hisses. “Have fun on point tonight, fucker.”
Malc wonders what he means, but doesn’t have time to ask as Jillet shouts. “Pack your gear, we’re leaving!”
One hour later, the company marches out from the city, heading east to where the great road will take them south to the coast and a ship back to the Tradelands. Normally, they would have taken a ship south from the city, but with the river under contention between the two nations the march, while much slower, will get them south alive. Half an hour later they are out of the city, out of view the Godlanders on the far bank of the kilometer-wide river, and at the turn that takes them down the wide road to the south.
Instead, the captain turns them north up a much narrower, poorly maintained road, moving them at travel-pace. For fifteen more kilometers they march through the grasslands to a small village. A pair of men meet them there and lead them further until the grasslands become woods. The men take them up a narrow path until they come to a wide, fresh cut clearing, where dozens of tree-stumps greet them. Beyond them, a line of rafts, each big enough to hold a squad of men, sit, waiting for them.
Captain Braccart steps up onto a tree stump, looks down on them all. His voice, now raspy from when a sword cut into his throat almost deep enough to kill him, rumbles over the clearing. “In case you hadn’t already figured it out. We aren’t going home. Tonight, we take the rafts and cross the river. The current will carry us 10 kilometers south. We march the rest, sneak through their camp and take the bridge gatehouse. As soon as we do, the Kingsmen cavalry is going the charge their camp and rout them.”
The soldiers mutter their disapproval.
“Anyone who doesn’t like the plan can kill themselves, now,” Capatain Braccard says. He waits a moment, and nods. “That’s what I thought. Get on the ground and get some rest. At sunset we go.”
There’s muttering and swearing as the men find places to lie down. Malc follows his squad mates, finds a spot where he can see the Great River through the trees and sits. He wonders, as he closes his eyes, if killing himself might not be the better option.
The Great River, a kilometer wide, lay between Kingsland and the Godsland. Five hundred years ago, when there was still an empire instead of dozens of squabbling fiefs, the Great Bridge had been built to span it. Wide enough for six wagons to cross at over it at once, it was the choke point for land trade between the north lands and the southern.
During the empire, there had been prosperous cities on either side of the bridge. Then came the cataclysm, and the same great power that levelled the empire’s capital left the two cities as burnt-out ruins. The folks on the Kingsland side of the river recovered first, and took control of both sides of the bridge. The newly formed Godsland pushed them back, and built a fortified gatehouse on their side of the bridge to keep it from ever happening again. The Kingsmen did the same, then blocked all trade going north until the Godlanders agreed to a treaty. All the Far North’s grain came from the southern fiefs, and most over the bridge, so the Godlanders reluctantly agreed.
But it didn’t stop them from trying to take the bridge and the town on the Kingsland every ten years or so. This summer, they’d come with boats and battering rams, siege ladders and infantry, crossing the river and bridge in force. The Kingsland cavalry, some of the best and the fastest in the fractured lands, stopped them, but barely. Then the Godslanders bribed the Plains of Grace, south of Kingsland, with offers of gold and easy trade to harass the Kingslands’ southern borders, forcing them to split their forces and bring in mercenaries to shore up their numbers. They’d been at a stalemate for a month.
It seemed the Kingslanders had grown tired of waiting, and Malc suspected it would be the death of them all.
Every step of the operation—the river crossing, the march, and the sneak through the enemy camp—had to be done in silence. One wrong step, one sound too loud, and the 10,000 Godlanders on the other side of the river would slaughter them.
But then, silence is what made them Night Scouts.
Jillet once told Malc that Captain Braccart created the Night Scouts after his previous company spent months being terrorized by a pack of wolves in the Wood Lands. They’d been part of the Trade Lands army, marching into the northern forests to drive out an enormous gang of bandits. They’d managed it, but lost more men to the wolves and the cold than to the bandits—Jillet took particular joy in horrifying Malc with lingering descriptions about the way the wolves killed. On the way back, Braccart decided that the wolves’ tactics could serve very well in the campaigns that kept the mercenaries employed every summer.
Everyone in the scouts had to have excellent night vision. They had to be able to move silently, kill silently, and escape silently. More than once, they’d been ordered to enter enemy camps and slit squads of men where they slept. One time, they’d killed every officer in an enemy company without being caught.
But those were small things in comparison to this.
As he contemplates his coming death, he hears Goff come up and take the spot beside him. He waits, and sure enough, Goff whispers, “Got to talk to you, Malc.”
Malc doesn’t want to talk. He’s tired from the march, sore from Jillet’s boots and in no mood for talking about anything. He doesn’t open his eyes. “Later, Goff.”
There’s silence a moment, then Goff whispers, “I got the rot.”