Four days ago I reviewed Death’s Sting – Where Art Thou? and of this story I wrote: “Idol of the Valley” by Daniel Loring Keating is perhaps the grimmest but one of the most poignant pieces of Sword & Sorcery I have read in a while. Not for the faint of heart… Here’s your chance to read the opening of this quest for vengeance, through an immortal’s eyes:
IT WAS the beginning of the Month of Leaves when the peasant came upon Aemilius sitting under a tree, oiling his sword. The peasants of the valley thought the season beautiful. The leaves above turned from pale green to deep red and purple and fell, swollen and full of water, to the ground. To Aemilius, it was all just death. Trees dying, grass dying, animals that didn’t horde enough dying. People dying. Always people dying, except him.
Perhaps it was the peasant’s grim expression, a change from the jovial grinning permeating the valley’s peasantry, that endeared Aemilius to the man enough to hear him out. When the man called to him to ask if his was a sword for hire, Aemilius glanced down at the steel in his hands, thirty-eight inches of death. “Aye,” he said. “That I am.”
The man approached. He was tall and heavy, qualities one didn’t see often in a peasant. Otherwise, he was unremarkable, from his yellow dunlap shirt and trousers to brown leather slippers instead of shoes, to the fact he wore no sword. Instead he carried an old iron rake, its bristles sharp but brittle looking. “I have need of a man talented with both blade and mind. If you be both those things, sir, then do me the honor of avenging my daughter, whose cruel death was a heinous crime that has thus far gone unpunished.”
Aemilius pushed himself to his feet. He was a scant two inches taller than the peasant, who nonetheless shrank back from him. Aemilius slid his sword into the scabbard that leaned against the tree. The dirk concealed in the folds of his loose leather tunic would be enough should the peasant be stupid enough to attack him. “I do no man’s honor but my own, and precious little of that. As you observed to start, my sword is for hire. Honor buys little in return when given as payment.”
The peasant reached into his tunic. Aemilius tensed, preparing for the man to attack; instead, he withdrew a purse, which he tossed to Aemilius. Aemilius caught it in mid-air, heard the jangle of coins inside. With a curious glance at the dour peasant’s eyes, he pulled on the drawstring until it slid open. Inside was a small pile of gold, more money than ten peasants earned in a lifetime. “Clearly you are not a man accustomed to the possession of money. You would not have given me my payment up front. Who did you steal this coin from? He may yet have more that might be mine.”
The peasant shook his head. “I have stolen nothing. I mortgaged my farm to Lord Maldon, who rules a third of the valley.”
Aemilius laughed, a low, biting sound. “Lord Maldon already owned your farm. It is the labor of it you mortgaged, and that is provided by you and yours. You’ve sold your soul, old man.” Aemilius tightened the straps on the bag. “Are the lives of the rest of your family worth so little you’d trade their future for your vengeance?”
The peasant spat. “There is no ‘rest of my family.’ My dear Tatiana was all I had, since the winter drought three years past took her mother.” He clenched his fist, his eyes red and bloodshot. “If I die a slave, so be it, so long as the men who did this to my sweet girl die screaming first.”
Aemilius studied the man in front of him. In nine centuries he’d seen conviction written across the faces of thousands. All died eventually, their convictions with them. If death rarely had a point, Aemilius once mused, then life never did. Choosing a purpose, if for only a short time, helped alleviate the boredom of time. Aemilius tightened his fist around the peasant’s coin purse. “Very well. I’ll set out forthwith. The men responsible will be dead in a week, two at most. What do you know of them?”
The peasant spat again, as though the saliva he hurled from his mouth were a spear thrust into the hearts of those who’d wronged him. “Precious little. My farm is successful. With success comes complications. The lord’s steward requested my presence at Ducende Aire, at which I have just obtained that purse, to work out a problem of tax figures. I was gone three days. Upon my return, I found my larder half eaten, my ale gone entirely, my cottage turned inside out, and my precious girl, broken and bleeding.” He swallowed a lump in his throat, his eyes rapidly oscillating between abject sadness and fiery hate. “They dragged her into the field and had sport of her. Then they pierced her knees through with their swords and left her to crawl. She was halfway to the cottage when I found her. She never uttered another word and died that night from fever and blood loss.”
Aemilius took up his sword and buckled it to his belt, facing away from the peasant. “You wish for me to find men whose identities you do not know?” He sounded bemused.
The peasant noticed this. When he spoke, it was sharp as Aemilius’ sword. “If I could accomplish this task, I would. It is beyond me. There is no shortage of evil men in this valley, but men boast and brag about these things. You can find the men who did this as assuredly as you can kill them.”
Aemilius nodded. “Aye. I suppose I can.” He scanned the horizon. Nothing but yellow hills in all directions, and two paths, the one on which the peasant had approached and which would lead back to Ducende Aire, and the other, on which Aemilius himself had been travelling, which lead to the Semyon, the fortress guarding the mouth of the valley. “Where should I bring their heads when the deed is done?”
“My name is Artem.” The peasant turned and pointed in the direction from which he’d come. “My farm lies sixteen miles hence, beyond Ducende Aire. The cottage is framed by an enormous oak. My grandfather cut the image of a rabbit into it when I was a boy; it survives to this day. Bring their heads, their hands, their manhoods. Bring anything you believe they used to offend my daughter. Make them feel it.”
Read the rest in Death’s Sting – Where Art Thou?
Daniel Loring Keating grew up in post-Industrial New England, where he earned a BA in Creative Writing from Chester College of New England. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the California College of the Arts, where he was the Managing Editor of Eleven Eleven Journal. His speculative work has appeared in Strange Fictions ‘Zine, the Transmundane Press anthology Transcendent, and the Hawk & Cleaver horror podcast, The Other Stories. https://danielloringkeating.wordpress.com/
Contest Winners: Three names have been randomly drawn for the Kindle version of Death’s Sting – Where Art Thou? Congrats to the winners: Kevin Beckett, Kendall Varnell and IRA Henkin.
