Of Ash & Linen

They were from every nation and no nation. Ava had spent hours studying the kingdoms and cultures that inhabited the known lands, and these people did not fulfill the description of any one nation, tribe, or clan in existence. Yet, she saw representations of several nations spread out among the individuals.

There was brightly colored clothing from the Kunguru Desert and pale furs from the Elpeci Tundra in the north. Some of the men wore Minoran style bows and quivers on their backs and others carried the traditional curved blade of the Erdenic.

She recognized the symbols on the lightweight sword and shield wielded by a particularly tall, fair-haired woman in the camp and knew she was one of the legendary warrior women of the Halvor Islands to the east. Several horses’ saddles were equipped with the large leather sheaths of the Armach sword. The heavy, two-handed blades were traditionally wielded by the men of Stearn, one of Minore’s closest allies.

Though the nations were represented in the peoples’ appearance, there was no familiarity to their behavior. Ava had never seen such ruthlessness so freely expressed among any organized group of people. They took what they wanted and used physical force to settle disagreements.

During one such dispute, two men stood in a large clearing in the center of a crowd and downed cups of hot liquid in large gulps. Tossing the cups to the ground, they threw themselves at each other. All semblance of their humanity was instantly gone and their red eyes glowed with heightened blood lust. They were but rabid beast slashing and tearing at each other. It was the most terrifying thing Ava had ever seen.

The crowd roared as one of the men bit into the flesh of the other, tearing at his neck. The roaring intensified when the defeated man fell to the ground, his opponent standing above him roaring with triumph as his victim’s blood poured out of his open mouth. The victor claimed the dying man’s sword as his own left him to lie where he fell.

Ava stared at the discarded cups long after the crowd had gone. Soggy red leaves clung to the insides.

Nothing she saw made sense, but Ava gathered as much information as she could by observation. Still, she couldn’t discern why the red-eyed men were here at all and why they had attacked her traveling party. She knew it was intentional. The events of the attack had unfolded with the kind of precision marked by careful planning.

The dozen or so men and women who had overtaken her carriage had taken her to a camp where even more red-eyed men waited for them. Ava couldn’t tell how many there were at first, but eventually counted a total of sixteen warriors, fifteen after the bloody duel she’d witnessed.

Several tents, sewn from animal hide, were dispersed throughout the trees and more than a dozen horses were tethered in the camp. There had been a celebration full of shouts and bellows when the warriors dragged Ava and her men, along with most of her possessions, into the camp.

The trunks were immediately tossed in a haphazard pile, the contents spilling out unceremoniously. Ava’s face heated indignantly when she saw several of her books tumble to the ground. Her irritation was quickly replaced with a gut-wrenching sorrow as she caught site of a pair of knitting needles in the dirt. Moretta.

Before Ava could see more, she was jerked away and dragged behind one of the tents. Martis was there, sitting with his back against a wooden beam protruding from the ground. His hands had been pulled behind his back, around the beam, and were bound.

Ava was tied to another post in the same fashion. The red-eyed men had apparently assumed Otis to be an unlikely escapee in his wounded condition and had unceremoniously thrown him to the ground before they left.

That had been hours ago. Night had since fallen, and Ava, Martis, and Otis sat in the same positions in which they had been left. Martis had sat in silence for a long time, and Ava, seeing the despair on his face, had left him alone.

Otis had only stirred once or twice, and his face grew paler by the hour. Ava was afraid he was losing too much blood but she didn’t know what to do. She had made the mistake of calling out to one of the men, pleading with him to tend to Otis’s wound. He had merely laughed, as if her concern was humorously ridiculous. After the man left, Martis spat in his direction but still said nothing.

Otis suddenly rolled to his side and began coughing. Blood spurted from his mouth, staining his lips red. Then he slumped back to the ground and mumbled something that Ava couldn’t make out. Ava could see the sweat dripping down the side of his brow.

“Otis,” Ava whispered. Nothing. “Otis,” she tried again. For the hundredth time, Ava pulled at her ropes wishing in vain that she could slip her wrists free. She released a sigh of frustration and kicked her feet against the ground to stop the tingling. She flexed her fingers and rolled her shoulders as best she could to encourage blood flow. The adrenaline and fear that had coursed through her body during the attack had long since drained from her, leaving her hollow and exhausted.

“These men have no honor,” Martis’s low voice nearly caused Ava to jump out of her skin. She looked at him.

“They won’t help him,” he nodded at Otis. “They left their humanity behind a long time ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t ye tell who they are? The animal ferocity, the blood lust, the way they kill without hesitation, without regard fer even their own comrades? They’re cold, dead inside.” When she didn’t respond he turned away but continued. “Ye can see it clearly in the color of their eyes. Ye grew up listenin’ to the legends, same as I. That’s one thing every Minoran shares, no matter what rank they were born into.”

“You can’t mean—” she paused, reading his grim expression. “You mean to say that the Deimos are real? That we have been attacked and taken prisoner by the Deimos?”

“Aye,” he turned to look at her again. “Have ye any other explanation for the color of blood in their eyes?”

“They can’t be the Deimos,” she shook her head to illustrate her certainty, “because they aren’t real. Those are just stories children make up to scare their friends or to get a laugh.”

“The stories have been around fer generations, and it was soldiers who first told ’em. Every man in yer father’s army has heard of ‘em. Every man carries around a fear of facing the Deimos, no matter how much we pretend they aren’t real. The Deimos have been attackin’ Minoran soldiers for decades. Get too far north of the capitol with too small a squad, and they’ll come for ye.”

“What attacks?” Ava hissed. “I’ve never heard even a whisper of any such incidents where Minoran soldiers have been attacked by ‘red-eyed men with the strength of a bear and the vigor of a frenzied pack of wolves’.” Ava let her incredulity leak into her voice as she quoted every fantastical story she had ever heard about the Deimos.

“Of course, ye haven’t!” The anger that spiked in Maris’s voice flowed from a place of resentment that had buried itself within him over the course of years of service to an apathetic king. “None of ye in the palace would have. The survivors of the attacks are long dead by the time they make it back to Cincia, and the attacks are too few and far between for the general to be bothered with ’em. If he saw the attacks as a real threat, ye could bet yer bonnet he’d listen.”

Martis paused. When he spoke again his voice was more subdued.

“I wouldn’t have believed the stories myself, if I hadn’t heard ‘em first hand. My squad escorted one of the survivors home from the last Deimos attack three years ago. The stories he told were enough to set the bravest man to quakin’. And there’s one thing I’ve learned while servin’ in the king’s army: dyin’ men don’t lie.”

Ava sighed, irritated at herself for the doubt she felt creeping in. She couldn’t allow herself to be swayed by his stories, no matter how convincing.

But how else could she explain the color of their eyes? And the men and women who had attacked her had seemed less human, less empathetic. It was almost as if they’d lacked an understanding of basic human emotions; fear, love, remorse. Ava hadn’t seen evidence of any such sentiments in their behavior.

A new fear crept through her, this reality more terrifying that any scenario she could have imagined.

“It still doesn’t make any sense,” she said, grasping for any holes in his logic, any flaw in his explanations. “Where do they come from? And where do they get their unexplainable strength and vitality?”

“I don’t know,” Martis shook his head. “No one does. They only strike every several years. Sometimes a full decade will pass without a sightin’ of ’em. In those sparse attacks, no soldier has been able to follow ’em to see where they come from. We know they’re based somewhere in the Elpeci Mountains to the north. The attacks are always made near that region.”

“But we’re at least a day south of the Elpeci Mountains,” Ava said, now completely caught up in his theory.

“They’re expandin’, pushin’ further south,” Martis explained as his eyes scanned the size of the camp, “and they’ve been growin’ in numbers too. I’ve never heard of a group of Deimos as large as this in one place.”

Ava tried to recall everything she had ever heard about the legendary Deimos. They had always been the red-eyed monsters that lived at the edge of every child’s nightmares, nothing more. If she removed the novelty and theatrical slant from the tales, she could craft a simple explanation to their origin.

The Deimos were founded decades ago, according to the stories, and by a single group of Minoran prisoners. The prisoners, having been sentenced to death for the brutal nature of their crimes, banned together to launch an escape attempt. Finding themselves successful, they fled Minore, heading to the untamed mountains in the north.

The prisoners disappeared from civilization for many years. When they resurfaced, they resembled monsters more than men, and their eyes were as red as fresh blood. They killed anyone who ventured too close to their territory and took everything they needed to create their own settlement high in the mountains, away from the oppressive laws of man.

As their legend grew, prisoners and outcast from all edges of civilization looked to the Deimos as a safe haven from the governments that they had wronged, a community out of reach and government by no one. The Deimos were known as a heartless group of men who held no alliances. Legends told of the red-eyed men killing with such unsettling combinations of fury and glee that no man could stand against them. Some even said they were soulless.

Otis convulsed again with more coughing. Ava set her contemplations aside.

“We can’t just let him suffer,” her voice broke. “He’s dying.”

“He’ll die no matter what. It’s too late. Ye can see as well as I. He’s lost too much blood, poor lad.”

Ava turned to Martis again, surprised by the compassion in his voice. She saw sympathy in his eyes as he watched Otis.

“He deserves a better way to die than this,” he paused and swallowed hard. “They all did.”

Ava knew he meant the other soldiers, Anthus, Antony, Darius, and Vergil. Guilt grew heavy in her heart as she pictured each of their faces and then Moretta’s. The guilt spiked when Otis suddenly began another coughing fit. She yanked at her restraints again and let out a grunt. It was no use. She began to cry, staying as silent as she could, hoping Martis wouldn’t notice.

She had wished for a way out, a different option than marrying the Shar, any option. But not this, this wasn’t worth it. She would marry the Shar a thousand lifetimes over just to bring her guards and her maid back.

Remorse burrowed deeper in her chest causing such pain that she was sure she would shatter from the force of it. Leaning her head back against the pole, she closed her eyes. It was her fault, after all. It was her that they had died protecting.