Death After Death

Chapter 53: Someone to Blame

Simon awoke from his troubled dreams shivering from the cold in the pre-dawn light. For a brief moment, he wasn't sure where he was. He dreamed that he'd been off to a war, against the orcs and... well, it had been a true nightmare. When he woke in the field, though, he breathed a sigh of relief that everything'd he'd experienced was a dream. It wasn't though, and as soon as he noticed he was in a graveyard and not some forest clearing surrounded by the tents of his men he remembered that.

Then everything came rushing back. His grief hadn't gone anywhere. It had merely ebbed for a moment, and now it was back with a vengeance. Even as he tried to cope with that pain, though, it was overwhelmed by something else. His desire to wring the neck of his wife's murderer. That need had invaded his dreams, too. That was what confused him. He’d fought barehanded through an entire army of orcs led by the Baron to keep him from getting his due.

Simon regretted letting her murderer escape, but that was only in retrospect. If those precious seconds had let him save her, then he would have counted himself among the luckiest men ever to live. It hadn’t been enough, though, so he was a fool for not leaving his Lord a body of his own to bury.

He doubted that Baron Raithewait would make what had to happen to his heir next very easy, but Simon wasn’t worried. Not only was Varten likely to pass away from the gut wound he already possessed in this primitive world like this, but there wasn’t a force in this world that could keep him from ripping the man’s head off with his bare hands. More than anything, Simon wanted to watch the light leave his eyes.

So, he rose and stretched and started walking back toward the North gate. It was there he found his way barred.

“I’m sorry, Simon, but I have orders from the Baron,” the night watch commander said, “He said that your services are no longer necessary and that you are free to depart in peace. He also gave me the order that if you try to force the issue, I’m to have you arrested and hanged without delay on the charge of assaulting his son and heir, Varten Raithewait.”

Simon stood there momentarily, considering the words and deciding how best to proceed, so the commander continued. “That can’t be true though, can it? You just saved the city, so there has to be some kind of mistake, right? Heat of battle? Something like that?”

The night watch commander was a good man. Simon had learned that much over the past week while they’d worked hand in gauntlet to prepare the city’s defenses. He had no wish to strike him down, but fortunately, he lacked a sword just now, which greatly reduced the temptation.

“Actually, it isn’t true,” Simon said, letting the other man breathe a sigh of relief before he continued loudly enough that everyone on watch near the gate could hear. “My wife stabbed that lowlife son of a bitch while he was trying to rape her. I just happened to interrupt.”

“That’s terrible,” the older man said, shaking his head sadly. “Well then, surely she can go before the Baron and—”

“She’s dead,” Simon said flatly. “Head wound. Nothing I could do.”

All the men on duty tightened their grip on their swords when they heard that, but none dared draw on him, and they were surprised when Simon walked away.

“Where are you going?” The watch commander called out after Simon.

“Away,” Simon lied.

It was still dark enough that climbing the eastern part of the wall in one of the places most damaged by orcs would be child’s play, and that’s exactly what Simon aimed to do. There he found plenty of men staking up bodies of the fallen so they could be burned before they rotted, and he greeted several that he recognized as he walked past. Obviously, the news about him wasn’t widespread because he either got a smile and a congratulations or a few words of condolences, depending on whether they’d seen him carry Freya’s body out to the cemetery.

No one expected him to climb the wall, and Simon was over the top and down the other side in just a few seconds. Only then did he pull his cloak up over his head to hide his face. He’d been in Crowvar long enough for it to start feeling like home, but now it was enemy territory.

The first guard to confront him was a man named Mitchel, whom Simon had never cared for. He was one of Varten’s men and bore a long ragged scar along his jawline.

“You there, halt!” he ordered Simon as he drew his sword. Simon stepped inside the other man’s guard, tripped him, and then stomped on his throat. Then Simon left him in the darkness near the well before helping himself to the man’s long sword and leaving him to suffocate.

“I’m surprisingly okay with that,” Simon answered with a manic grin, pulling the trigger and releasing the bolt into the Baron’s chest.

He would probably have killed the old man anyway, but listening to him talk about how gold might be used to clean the slate after what his son had done just stoked the fires of Simon’s fury that much higher.

The Baron’s weapon clattered to the stone hallway, and his body would have joined it, but the quarrel had pinned the slender old man to the wooden door behind him. He weighed too little to break the shaft, so he hung there painfully, gasping for breath.

“You should have just let me kill him,” Simon said as he walked to the Baron and moved to open the door. “Son or not, you know he deserves this.”

Predictably, the door was barred from the inside, so Simon shouted. “Come out, Varten! You can’t save yourself, but you can still save your father. If you surrender, I’ll heal him up good as new.”

“Go on, old man,” Simon said as he moved further down the hall to fetch a battle axe mounted on the wall that he could use to cut through the door. “Convince him to save your life; maybe he’ll listen.”

All Baron Raithewait could do was cough up blood as he gasped. The man’s mouth moved, but no words came out. Simon didn’t care either way. He just started hacking into the door jamb with the unfamiliar weapon. Trying to cut through the door itself would take longer than he had, but cutting through just enough to create a gap he could shove his sword through to lift the bar was doable.

“Here’s Johnny!” Simon shouted as he finally damaged the door enough to force it open. No one but him would get the joke, but he didn’t care. He laughed grimly as he found Varten lying in bed. The man was still bleeding, but he held his sword in his hand.

“Your bitch of a wife cut too deep for me to be able to fight you properly, I’m afraid, but if you’d like to heal me, I’d gladly allow you to join her in death,” the spoiled young noble spat.

“If that were an option, I would, but I don’t want to fight you; I want to murder you in cold blood just like you killed Freya, you fucking prick,” Simon said as he raised his axe and moved purposefully toward the bed.

“She wanted it, you know,” Varten said, smiling like the snake he was. He didn’t even bother to lift his sword because he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “We were at it all the time while you were away. In fact, the baby probably wasn’t—”

The noble’s cruel words were cut off abruptly as Simon buried eight inches of steel axe blade in the other man’s skull while he yelled in rage. His scream continued even after he let go of the handle, and Simon was surprised to find that his act of righteous vengeance brought him no comfort. For a moment, he considered pulling the axe out and healing him just to kill him again. However, he realized that would be too far and stopped himself from seriously considering it.

Instead, satisfied or not, that’s when he turned around and found Varten’s younger brother standing there in his night clothes with a sword drawn. On instinct, Simon moved his hand to the hilt of his sword but stopped himself. In all the time he’d been here, Erik had seemed the least cruel of all the Raithewaits. He was also only sixteen, so there was absolutely no reason to kill him.

“Are you going to murder me next,” the boy asked him with a trembling voice as he looked like he was about to piss himself.

“Nah,” Simon sighed, “I feel like I’ve done enough killing today. How about this. You escort me to the gate, so none of your guards decide to be brave, and then after that, you can rule the city of Crowvar however you want. Sound fair?”

“My guards?” the boy asked in confusion. “So I’m to be a hostage?”

“If you like,” Simon said, moving toward the shell-shocked young man and carefully taking his sword. “But after that, you’ll be the Baron of the whole region. Maybe you can do a better job than your brother would have.”