The HaRT Knight Decaverse

Horn of Woe

Chapter 01

Ice-Runner

The horn sounded to indicate that the settlement had answered the signal from the soul mine. Trajan’s muscles tensed, ready for what came next. The heavy stone door lifted into the room and he exploded into motion. The moment he passed through the door, a gale-force wind struck him from the side and threw him several feet to his left. He kept his balance, however, and without slowing, sprinted ahead across the snow-covered surface of the Frozen Ocean. The ocean where the Shepherd King had once—before he vanished from the afterworld—stored the souls of the cold-hearted. Souls that the people of Erebos now mined and refined into soul spheres, the afterworld’s primary currency. 
Trajan’s job as ice-runner was to transport the frozen souls in the blocks of ice extracted from the mine to the settlement of Erebos. The occupation was one of the most dangerous in all the afterworld because a person only had ten minutes to make the treacherous journey across the frozen landscape. Any longer and a person would freeze solid, even with the protective head wrappings, kettle helmet, and thick coat. It was a constant danger that befell at least two runners a month. But Trajan had run this same route for years now, and in a dysfunctional way, he found he enjoyed it.
As the wind blew the blinding snow all around him, the ice beneath his feet gave an ominous groan. The Frozen Ocean was temperamental at the best of times but grew especially violent whenever a runner attempted to carry a part of the ocean to the land. Trajan had often wondered whether the ocean was alive somehow.
As if in answer to the thought, the surface of the ice around Trajan exploded. The ice beneath him shifted, and the next moment, lifted him into the air. But Trajan continued to run. He used the rapidly forming cliff of ice beneath his feet as a ramp and leaped off the end. He flew straight for a second before the wind caught him and threw him to one side.
Trajan tucked and rolled. With a fluid movement, he leaped back to his feet and once more set off sprinting. There was no time to catch your breath when you were an ice-runner. Nor is there time to get lost, he thought. The turbulence that had just taken place meant he wasn’t sure he was still heading in the right direction. From a pocket on the outside of his thick coat, he took out a compass. He squinted down at the spinning needle and at that moment of split focus, his foot caught on something, and he fell. The snow at least cushioned the fall somewhat, and an even bigger relief, he had not hurt his ankle or foot. An injury like that would have been a guaranteed death.
His luck was not absolute however, he had dropped his compass when he had tripped. As he frantically felt around for the compass, he found the thing he had tripped over. What resembled an ornamental cross made of gold stuck out of the surface of the ice. That’s strange, he thought. There’s no logical way for this thing to have gotten here.
With his curiosity piqued, he looked down at the sandglass on his belt. Over half of the sand was in the bottom bulb. He judged he had about three minutes left.
Trajan sighed. His common sense was no match for his curiosity. He threw caution to the wind and set about trying to extricate the golden item. The thick gloves he wore caused him to fumble for a few minutes before he got a good grip on the item. He pulled and pulled, but the golden cross didn’t so much as budge. More sand filled the bottom bulb, and frost formed on the lenses of his goggles. He had to shake his head to get rid of the inch-thick layer of snow that had collected on the rim of his kettle helmet. The cold air had almost sapped all the heat from his limbs by the time the ice let go of its treasure. The sudden shift in weight caused Trajan to fall flat onto his backside, right next to his compass.
He didn’t even examine his prize. There wasn’t time for that. He stuffed it into the bag on his back, grabbed his compass, and glanced at it as he set off once more. His legs protested as his vision grew more and more distorted by the layer of frost on his goggle lenses. But he kept going.
After a minute, the yellow flame came into sight. The tiny yellow star hung above the northern walls that protected the settlement from the arctic winds of the Frozen Ocean. He reached into another of his pockets and pulled out a ball of chalky white material. He waited until the dull light of the protective barrier around the settlement became visible before he activated the ball with a sharp smack to his helm. It burst into fire and Trajan threw it into the sky, where the white flame came to rest near its yellow brother. The signal for the settlement to open the gates.
The gates flung open, and Trajan leaped through them and across the protective barrier. His eyes struggled to adjust to the artificial light produced by the settlement’s magic barrier. One moment, the world was cold, dark, and silent; and the next it was bright, warm, and filled with the mellifluous sounds of bird songs. There was no wind, no snow, and no ice, except for the snow and ice that covered Trajan. He flung his kettle helm to one side and pulled off his ice-crusted goggles as his frozen legs struggled to carry him to the nearby hot spring.
“By the shade, lad. You’re a whole two minutes late.” The man on gate duty said as he helped Trajan to break off the head wrappings and coat that had frozen solid. When he was free of the frozen clothing, he fell into the hot spring, and a sharp pain shot through him as heat returned to his muscles. The man asked, “What happened?”
“Found something,” Trajan said, his teeth clattering.
“You found something? Out there?” the man said, sounding skeptical. In answer, Trajan pointed at the bag containing the block of frozen souls.
The man opened the bag and his eyes grew wide as he pulled out the golden sword.
Still stuttering, Trajan asked, “Think I might get Ragnon to trade me a week’s free drinks for it?”

*

As it turned out, Ragnon, the owner of the Frozen Toe Inn, had no interest in Trajan’s golden sword. “Be useless, wouldn’t it? A golden sword. Good steel sword would cut it to pieces,” he said when Trajan had offered the mysterious weapon to him.
“You could melt it down,” Trajan offered.
Ragnon shook his head. “Gold was the currency of our previous lives. This time round its soul spheres. Ain’t no use for gold in the afterworld.”
Trajan knew a lost cause when he saw one and shrugged before he handed Ragnon a soul sphere for his first drink of the evening. At least I’ll have a good story to tell tonight, Trajan thought as he took his first sip of mulled wine.
Four hours later, Trajan had already told the story of the golden sword six times, showing it off to anyone who wanted to see. A good story in Erebos was enough to earn a person a few drinks bought on the house by anyone who liked it, and by the end of the seventh retelling, Trajan was already drunk; which he always saw as the perfect state of mind to be in when he gambled.
He played hildjar, a complicated game played with both cards and dice that combined the use of strategy and luck. As was usual, Trajan won more than he lost; a lot more. In fact, he had won every single game the entire night, a detail that the other players had noticed.
When Trajan beat Khear for the fifth time in a row, the other man leaped to his feet and said, “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but you’re cheating!”
Trajan leaped up as well. “You son of a maniae, who do you think you’re accusing of cheating here?”
Khear, who had arms like two trees, slammed his massive fist down on the table between them, and cards, dice, and soul spheres flew everywhere. “How else do you explain rolling seven sevens in a row? No one is that lucky!”
“Listen, you three toothed moron: we’re using the same dice, how in the name of the Shepherd King could my dice fall different from yours when they’re the same?” Trajan kicked the table out of the way.
The other men in the inn all whooped and exchanged bets on the two men about to fight.
Trajan and Khear stared daggers at each other, the muscles of their arms tightening. The next moment, the two of them flew at each other and everyone in the room cheered. Khear swung a mighty left hook at Trajan’s head, but the blow came too slow for someone whose job it was to be quick. Trajan ducked beneath the punch, and like quicksilver, moved around Khear, picked up a bottle from a nearby table, and smashed it over the bigger man’s bald head.
Khear swayed for a second. Before he recovered, Trajan was on him with four rapid punches to the jaw. Khear fell flat on his back, knocked out cold. The crowd cheered and jeered as they either won or lost their bets on the fight.
Ragnon walked over to the commotion, a bucket held in his arms. When he reached the unconscious Khear, he emptied the content over him. The ice water caused Khear to leap a foot into the air.
“You know the rules. Loser pays for damages,” Ragnon said to Khear.
The large man nodded, clutched at his jaw, and felt at his teeth with his tongue. He spat a tooth onto the floor and smiled at Trajan with a jigsaw smile.
“You got me good, lad,” he said, smacking Trajan on the shoulder. “Oh, that was a good one.”
“One?” Trajan said. “I got you good at least four times. You must have passed out after the first punch.”
Everyone, including Khear, laughed at the remark. “Come on, lad. I’ll buy you a drink as a sign that there aren’t any hard feelings.”
“Fine, but next one is on me,” Trajan said as he walked with the man to the bar.
Ragnon, who was used to these sorts of proceedings, had already poured them their drinks. Khear held up his glass and said, “Here’s to you, lad. You and that sword you found. I’m starting to think it’s a powerful luck talisman.” They slammed their goblets together and downed the contents in one go.
“Trajan, while I’ve got you,” Ragnon said as he cleaned a goblet with a rag. “You have a visitor waiting for you.”
The bartender pointed to a corner of the inn where a stranger was curled up like a cat sleeping on a table.
“Wait a minute,” Trajan said. “He’s been there since I arrived. Why are you only mentioning him now?”
Ragnon frowned and, with an irritated expression on his face, said, “Because I didn’t want you to wake him up. He’s been here since this morning and has been pulling childish pranks on my customers every single hour since, because, as he puts it, this place bores him out of his skull. He actually managed to lure Bernard into a box trap with an unattended goblet of ale.”
“I think that says more about Bernard than it does him,” Trajan said once he stopped laughing. “Why didn’t you kick him out?”
“I did. Nine times. He kept getting in somehow. After he snuck back in the last time, he curled up on that table and fell asleep. I left him like that because it seemed like the least amount of trouble,” Ragnon said.
“Well, if he’s here for me, then I guess I should hear him out and get him out of your hair. But first, give me another bottle of mulled wine, would you?”
Ragnon pushed the bottle across the counter and, with a drink in hand, Trajan made his way to the snoring man.
The man looked about a year or two younger than Trajan. He had an androgynous look about him, equal parts pretty and handsome. His hair was so long it fell like a waterfall of spun silver over the corner of the table all the way to the floor.
When Trajan neared the man, his cornflower-blue eyes snapped open. “Trajan. You’re here,” he said in a dreamy voice.
“You know who I am?” Trajan asked and took a seat at the table.
“I had a good sketch to work off of,” he said as he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his sleeve. He handed it to Trajan, who unfolded it and stared down at the picture of a man with a granite jaw covered in stubble, a mass of thick curls on his head, and broad and muscular shoulders covered in runic tattoos. Trajan might as well have been looking into a mirror.
The man on the table groaned in pleasure as he stretched. With an explosion of energy, the man launched himself off the table and onto his feet. He grabbed a nearby chair, spun it around, and straddled it while he balanced it on two of the legs. Cheerfully he said, “My name is Devic.”
Trajan filled a glass with the spiced wine and slid it across the table to the other man. He then held up the bottle in a salute and said, “Nice to meet you, Devic. As you already know, my name is Trajan.”
Devic took up the offered glass, clinked it against the bottle, and took a big gulp.
“Now maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me why you know my name and have a picture of me?” Trajan added when it became clear the other man would not speak.
“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Devic said, a brilliant smile on his face. “I’m here because I might have created you twenty-eight years ago with the purpose of fixing the afterworld.”