Death After Death

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.”

“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.

Then he walked to the Baron’s keep, where Vartel would certainly be hiding until they were sure Simon was gone. Because the alarm had not been raised, the heavy wooden portcullis was still raised, but he noted that the watch had been doubled to six men. Raithewait keep was an ancient structure built when the centaur Khans still ruled this area, so it was fairly small. It had a four-story tower covered in arrow slits to fire on those that might attack. Still, its fifteen-foot walls protected only a small courtyard and a few sturdy stone structures.

It wouldn’t be enough to save them from what came next.

Chatting with each other, none of the guards noticed Simon until he was almost upon them. “Halt,” one of them yelled, and Simon obeyed, drawing his sword as he stood near the wench and pawl for the portcullis.

Everyone else immediately drew their swords as well. However, some looked less happy or certain about it than others.

“He’s here!” Keldin shouted. “Sound the alarm. He’s in the keep!”

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“If I’ve ever saved your life or fought beside you against the goblins or the centaurs, leave now and you can live.” Simon growled. "If you stand between me and my wife's murderer you' wont live long enough to regret it." There was plenty of killing to be done, and he didn’t want to add more to that list than he had to.

A few shifted nervously at his offer, but when he added, “Lest you forget, I do have my miracles, and they aren’t just used to save lives.”

“He’s bluffing,” Marill said, though Simon noticed that he was too afraid of the idea to actually take a swing. Bluff or not, Tim took off out of the gate at that point, sheathing his sword as he ran.

“What about you, Garrek?” Simon asked, “You’ve got a family. You don’t need to die here.”

“I’m standing here because I have a family,” Garrek answered with sadness in his voice. “You know the last thing I want to do is fight you.”

As they spoke, the other five men were starting to spread out, and Simon knew if he waited any longer, he’d lose his shot. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said genuinely before shouting. “G̴̝̈́͒͠ḛ̷͕̮̕͘r̵̛̫̮̔͠ͅv̴̿̀͠ͅu̷̝͚̜̎u̴͚͈̎ḻ̸̣̈́ ̸̦̟̜̈́̍M̷̪̹̪̓̓͒e̴̪̎i̴͓̗̔̔͆ͅr̸̹͓͚͐̅è̵̛͇̱̾n̴̩̜̍”

For a minute, Simon had seemed totally unprepared and outnumbered, but he quickly reversed those odds by turning all five of the men that were arrayed against him into bonfires as fire rippled out from his free hand to engulf them. Then, with a swift chop, he mercifully beheaded Garrek, leaving the other four men to burn to death before he lifted the pawl on the portcullis ratchet sending the thing crashing down to the ground.

The fortress was a hive of activity now, but no one was quite sure what was happening. Simon used that to charge through the side door into the Raithewait home as they started to bar the main door and send crossbowmen up on the walls looking for who was attacking them.

That left Simon entirely free to approach the bedrooms of the Baron and his boys. On his way, he only encountered a single guard who was smart enough to shoot Simon as soon as he saw him coming but not smart enough to draw his sword as Simon staggered forward with an arrow in his shoulder and ran him through.

“You never get enough time to shoot twice with one of those things,” Simon grunted as he yanked the quarrel out and healed himself.

Once he’d regained the use of both of his arms, Simon reloaded the weapon and continued down the hall. Shortly before reaching Varten’s room, he found the Baron standing in his sleeping gown, holding a dagger.

“I understand that you’re angry, Simon, and I’m willing to pay to smooth over this misunderstanding,” the old Baron said calmly like he was negotiating a business deal. “But if you want to kill my son, you’re going to have to go through me, and—Uhhnnnn.”

“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.”