Jarek the Vexed's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Jarek the Vexed wanted an army of bog-spirits, and he had no way to make them obey. He knelt in the black mud of Muckrake Fen, horned helmet dripping, and watched pale shapes drift between the reeds. They were dead men the fen had swallowed. They ignored him. His bat-wing banner hung limp on its pole, meaning nothing to the dead. To bind them, he needed the binding rite. Every scholar who once knew it had rotted here centuries ago. His skeletal mount stamped behind him. The Redeye Bonehorse tossed its ragged mane, red eyes burning through the gloom. Its ribs showed white through torn hide. Jarek stood and studied the one dry landmark in the swamp. On a low rise sat a gothic manor, its spires clawing the sky. Red light bled from every tall window. If any ritual had survived the fen, it waited behind those stained glass panes. He rode the bonehorse up the rise and shouldered through the great doors. Inside, dust and violet light. A ruined study stretched before him, shelves collapsed, books turned to pulp. He tore through them with spiked gauntlets. Nothing. No rite. No words. His visor glowed hotter as his patience burned away. The manor had kept its secret and let it rot with everything else. Then the floor shook. A shape unfolded from the dark at the room's far end. It stood taller than Jarek, gray muscle exposed, a fleshless horse skull for a head. White light poured from its hollow eyes. Two rusted cleavers dragged sparks across the stone. Malgrim Bonecleaver. The fen's old butcher, the thing that had killed the last scholars and eaten their knowledge. "You dig for the binding rite," Malgrim said. His voice was wet gravel. "I ate the men who wrote it. The words live in my skull now." He tapped the bone with one cleaver. "Kneel, little horned thing, and serve me. I will teach you." Jarek did not kneel. He drew his blade. "I came to Muckrake Fen to command it, not to bow in it." They met in the center of the study. Cleavers rang off plate. Malgrim was stronger, but slow. Jarek ducked a swing that split a marble column, then drove his sword up through the exposed muscle of Malgrim's chest. The butcher roared and dropped. White light guttered in the skull. Jarek pressed his gauntlet to the cracked bone. The rite spilled into him at once, a flood of stolen words in a dead tongue. He had the binding rite. But the knowledge came with its former owner's rage. Malgrim's spirit did not fade. It coiled inside Jarek's skull, whispering, clawing to take his body from within. Jarek staggered from the manor into the violet dusk. He knew the rite now. He also carried a hungry dead warlord behind his eyes, and it wanted out.