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by Bosley Gravel
Dark Fantasy, 7 pages.
Originally Published in The Deepening, 2006
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The sky was blue silk crumpled into a fist; more grey silk flowered up from every direction. Kladius, the Last Warrior made steady time. Straw stubble punctured his bare feet. The ground still smoldered where a purging fire had suffocated itself. Kladius the Last Warrior fled, but knew no fear; behind him a troop of fifty raised black powdered silk with cloven footed beasts.
He kept the Begotten Seraph next to his flesh; four times the triple wings brushed his skin; four times he felt it flutter next to his belly. Yet, he was unaware of the pain of the straw piercing the soles of his feet.
It spoke.
He heard.
It said: “Deliver me from this world, friend, and I shall sing your name as brother among my brothers, they that dwell between the stars and the earth.”
He replied, not in words, for the language of the Begotten Seraph was not one of words, or even music, but sensations of the flesh and spirit. In this way they communicated, for he was not an ignorant warrior. He did not battle for Glory; nor had he been trained to battle for Politics or Blood. He was a warrior of sight and vision.
The steady earth pounding grew closer and Kladius said onto the Begotten Seraph, “My song for a lake, I will trade my song in heaven for a lake on earth so I may deliver you.”
To this the Begotten Seraph did not reply. So Kladius took the silence as a reprimand, for Seraphs are not of man’s logic or reasoning.
The troops came closer, and closer yet. Kladius stumbled, once, and then twice. The discipline of his teachers, all his teachers, both Human and Created, left him and he sprinted forward, seeing nothing but wastelands of silk. It was in this way fear worked itself into his mind. He stumbled a third time, and a fourth and finally lay still with stinging embers pressed against his cheek.
They were upon him.
The Saddle Witches riding their centaurs surrounded him on all sides, and sat waiting. Silence, total, all encompassing, huge eyes blinked and tails whisked nervously. They were strange, lethal creatures. The Witches kept their hair oiled and tied into straight twisted ropes. They kept their breasts bare in defiance of an old law even they had forgotten. Their scent was of well-cured herbs and secret powdered minerals.
The Begotten Seraph wiggled against Kladius’s flesh, and pulled part of his soul from the darkness of supposed defeat. The Begotten Seraph whispered. Kladius found it in himself to rise.
A Saddle Witch came forth, guiding a centaur by its mane of braided man’s hair. She spoke in the badly accented hisses of the Saddle Witches.
“Where is the angel?”
Kladius raised his head, and spit to his left (a term of disrespect in his land), and blasphemed the Saddle Witch’s gods. Seemingly without forethought she sent a whip streaming out like a serpent striking. His mouth became fiery and torturous as blood rolled down his chin, and he choked on splinters of his teeth.
“Where is the angel?” she repeated.
The Begotten Seraph fluttered. A centaur squealed laughter.
“Crush his head! Break his bones! Uproot his teeth! Break him Struga! Break him! Then he will speak!”
“Silence abomination!” she shrieked.
“There is no Seraph,” Kladius said.
“Liar! Thief!”
The whip cracked again. His vision turned to a harvest lighting storm. His right eye disappeared like a ripe cherry fruit flung from a sling shot into the trunk of a tree, but curiously there was no pain. This was the Begotten Seraph’s work, no doubt.
Yet, the Begotten Seraph was gone. It did not flutter. It did not lie dormant against his body. It was not within his garments.
“If it was in your power,” he whispered in his mind, “to come and go, then what did you need me for? Now that I am useless, you leave me alone with the barbarians I freed you from?”
Of course, there was no reply, only Struga’s shrieks as she lapsed into her native tongue.
“Shave his beard! Sever his toes! Notch his ears!” Struga silenced the unruly centaur with her whip. She dismounted, her breasts sagging, her mouth in a grimace.
“You will give us the angel!”
Kladius kneeled before her, his head hung low, his eye began to throb in a kind of pain that frightened him.
“Kill me, for only in death will I surrender to savages!”
“Fool,” she said, “tiresome idiot warrior.”
Kladius begged for intervention from the now departed Seraph. His hand went longingly to the place where it had once nested. Still, it was gone, nor had he expected it be there. He could not lament, but only rejoice in the fact it had found freedom. He lowered his head and spoke his death words to Struga once again.
She came closer; her hands calloused, her fingernails like crystal sheaths. She tore his shirt scor -- [End of Preview.]