Jabari Setek adjusted his grip on the haft of his halberd.

  The dried blood of the fallen had long since turned from slick to sticky, gumming up the metal of his gauntlets. He had hoped that would be a valid enough excuse to step away, to clean his gear, to do anything but stand here. Still, when the lieutenant made his rounds between the perimeter watch groups, he hadn’t considered it a problem, and certainly not one to warrant being relieved.

  So, here he was—another night. Another town full of fools who thought they could escape the will of Horus.

  Well, it wasn’t quite night yet. The sun hung on the horizon. A handful of minutes remained until it dropped beneath the line of trees. With each squelching shift of his gauntlets on the halberd, the twisted forest beyond the ruined gate and palisades turned genuinely menacing.

  Frontier villages—this shithole wasn’t even a real town, after all—were all the same.

  They conspired with spirits, whispered to the trees, blasphemed against Great Horus, and provided shelter and respite to a cursed fairy. They then dared to act surprised when the Inquisition arrived to hold them accountable and mete out justice. It was the idiots own damned fault, the work of bringing the light of justice to the darkness should have been a clean, easy job—but the heresies of the fey made even their glorious job feel dirty and unclean some days.

  The few heretics who still lived, those not deemed irreparably guilty of consorting with the Fey, had been shackled and held at the center of Riverwatch. The guilty had been thrown in the river or hung from the palisades, as was just, a warning to the spirits, fey, and other thinking creatures on the dangers of violating the proclamations of Horus.

  Order had been restored.

  And yet, Jabari Setek remained stuck at the ruined gate, trapped in the company of the most detestable man he had ever met. Sadek Anhotep.

  Each time Jabari shifted the weight between his aching legs, and readjusted his grip on the halberd—and created the vile squelching sounds of dried blood sticking his gauntlets to the weapon—Sadek Anhotep giggled.

  “Heh heh heh…” the contemptible laughter sounded like a challenge to the darkness, to the great Bramblewood beyond Riverwatch. Sadek, a recruit, lacked the appropriate fear of those who knew the history of the Bramblewood. Inquisitors who entered never left. It was the whole reason they allowed these frontier settlements to exist—someone had to go collect the magical reagents the Inquisition needed from the woods, and they couldn’t do it themselves.

  Sadek spat on the ground and dragged the back of his boot through the blood-streaked dirt. The filth beneath their feet turned into a disgusting smear. Sadek leaned against the gatepost, arms crossed before his breastplate. He seemed entirely at ease, maybe even calmed by the viscera, hanging corpses, and suffering.

  Jabari mused that if there were more justice in the world, Sadek would have aching legs and squelching gauntlets before he recanted and mentally voiced a prayer to Horus, begging forgiveness for his heretical thoughts. Jabari Setek could not be demoted again—it would be expulsion from the Inquisition.

  “Pathetic, really,” Sadek drawled. When Jabari made no response, Sadek tilted his head—jutted his chin, really—towards the ruined village. “You’d think after all these years, they’d know better. Every time the Inquisition gets called, we give the heretics the same choice—repent or burn.”

  Sadek’s lips curled into a sneer that really seemed like it should have been a smile, based on the delight in his eyes.

  “And yet, they always scream.”

  Jabari ground his teeth. He did not consider himself a soft-hearted man—he had done his duty in the name of Horus with a prayer of redemption for the blasphemers in his heart. Sadek reveled in cutting down the defiers. The man had laughed when they put the fey-touched to the sword, had stood too long over the shrieking ones who died slowly, eyes gleaming with delight as they begged for mercy that would never come.

  Sadek called it justice.

  Jabari knew better. It was bloodlust.

  Sadek let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Do you think they ever realize how pointless it is? Their little whispers to the trees, the pretty little charms made by the children, the glitter of the fey devils? It all means nothing. Iron always wins.”

  Sadek gestured with his still bloodied blade toward the burned remnants of a home. The roof had collapsed inward, and the smell of scorched thatch, timber, and flesh clung to the air. Jabari had almost blocked out the smell until Sadek drew attention to it.

  Jabari exhaled noisily through his nose.

  “They die like any other heretic,” Jabari grumbled. Why couldn’t he have been relieved to clean his gear? Why did he have to suffer Sadek of all people?

  “Sure, sure, but it’s the way they die that I find fascinating,” Sadek said before he laughed. The man looked so much like a jackal that Anput herself might confuse Sadek for Anubis. “The fey-touched especially. They don’t just scream. They wail. Something inside them knows they were never meant to die this way. The way the iron burns them, it is like magic.”

  Jabari looked at the ground and could not find it in himself to answer Sadek.

  Sadek pounced on his display of weakness; a mocking whistle escaped the man’s lips.

  “Tell me, Setek, did you enjoy your last? Did they… cry for you?” Sadek smiled, showing large white teeth.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Jabari’s hands tightened in barely restrained anger. The dried blood squelched between the fingers of his gauntlets and the wooden haft of his halberd, even the wood groaned slightly under his full strength.

  Sadek laughed, not afraid, not cowed, and very much mocking.

  “Ah, don’t get all stiff on me, friend. You take this work too seriously. You overthink. You should enjoy it while you can.” Sadek smiled.

  The fact that Sadek called Jabari a friend made him want to vomit. Jabari didn’t overthink; he merely thought. That alone separated him from men like Sadek.

  A wind rolled through the ruined gates, the corpses hanging from the palisades thudded against the timbers while the wind continued past. It stirred loose ash from the burnt homes, and a half collapsed sign creaked horribly as it swung on its last nail.

  “I hate that sound,” Jabari muttered. His eyes darted around the oncoming night. Sadek had distracted him to the point where he realized that the usual sounds had stopped. The embers ceased crackling. How long had it been since he heard the heavy footfalls of the last patrol? How many minutes remained until the Lieutenant came by once again? Even the sound of vermin had ceased.

  Silence pricked at his fears and insecurities, twisting Jabari’s irritation into trepidation. He squeezed his halberd tightly, only to be reminded why he shouldn’t, when his gauntlets made that terrible sticky sucking noise again. Something was watching him.

  Sadek, oblivious, groaned and rolled his shoulders. “How much longer until our relief? I swear, if I have to stand here another hou—”

  THUD.

  A loud noise echoed around them; it seemed to originate from the not-distant-enough Bramblewood.

  “Did you hear that?” Jabari asked his companion, who had already relaxed.

  “The wind. Relax,” Sadek scoffed.

  Jabari ran his eyes out along the open land between the ruined gate and the Bramblewood. The forest was a black mass of tangled branches and gnarled boughs that twisted like outstretched fingers against the night sky. It didn’t welcome intruders and actively hunted inquisitors.

  Something was out there. The hair on the back of Jabari’s arms and the nape of his neck stood straight. Something watched them, and it wasn’t friendly. Jabari’s insides cramped painfully.

  “That’s not the wind,” the veteran inquisitor told the recruit.

  “Oh? Are the ghosts of these weak little villagers coming back to haunt us? Should I let the Lieutenant know you’re afraid of things going bump in the night?” Sadek challenged Jabari with an unconcealed derision. Recruit or not, Sadek was more in favor with their superiors.

  Jabari ignored him. He’d conducted enough ambushes as an Inquisitor to know when one was about to happen. Something was wrong. The silence wasn’t emptiness; it was waiting. Biding its time.

  A twig snapped. Jabari turned, eyes narrowed, muscles tensed. His grip shifted along the halberd, from at-ease to holding the weapon on guard, ready to block or parry whatever was to come. The darkness in the expanse between Bramblewood and the ruined gates shifted—no, it moved.

  Something massive had moved at the edge of his sight. It had been too large for a man and too fluid for a beast. The phlegm in the back of his throat caught, and his heartbeat hammered against his ribs, filling his ears with pounding.

  Whatever was out there was huge, fast, and probably hungry. He could feel the animosity saturate the air. Animals didn’t hate; they attacked to eat or to defend what was theirs.

  “Sadek,” Jabari whispered as evenly as he could.

  “By Horus’ Beaky Wrath, what is it, man?” Sadek growled back. The narrowing of Sadek’s eyes at Jabari made clear that the only threat Sadek was cognizant of was being annoyed to death by Jabari.

  “Shut up and listen,” Jabari hissed so low Sadek struggled to hear him. He rolled his eyes but fell silent and listened. Then he heard it, too—the sound of breath—low and deep and far too close.

  Jabari’s body locked up. Every instinct he had said he needed to either run and hide, or stay perfectly still and hope that if Horus were a merciful god, Sadek would die first to buy him time to escape. His fear cost him the chance to act first.

  The darkness pounced.

  A phantom shape of fangs and muscle hit Sadek with the force of a battering ram. The snap of bone echoed through the ruined gate as Sadek crashed to the ground. A scream, a dirge of hate and murder that summed up all of Sadek’s miserable life escaped from his throat in a death knell. It was short-lived. Jabari saw ivory fangs—long, saber-like blades of bone—plunged into Sadek’s flesh.

  A wet, gurgling choke erupted, and Sadek twitched several times. Then there was silence.

  Jabari stumbled back, his boots caught in the congealed blood of the fallen. He fell backwards, landing on his ass, his trembling gauntleted hands lost grip of the halberd, despite the sticky assistance his gauntlets provided in attempting to retain the haft of the weapon.

  A tiger. No, not just a tiger. This was more than that. The creature was too massive, too unnatural. Its coat was a blaze of burnt orange and midnight black, stripes so jagged they may as well have been clawed into existence. Muscles rolled beneath the sleek hide, and when it raised its head from Sadek’s torn throat, its golden eyes burned with a terrible knowing—and hatred.

  This was no beast. It was a hunter of men—of inquisitors. The brand of the Inquisition was burned above the front right shoulder, barely visible in the fur. Jabari had heard the legends, of course. This was the Ashroot, the Druid who had vowed to kill all Inquisitors. Jabari’s throat locked. The air in his lungs suddenly thin and cold. He tried to squirm backwards, tried to gather his voice to shout a warning—but the words died before they ever left his lips.

  Something else was in the darkness, and it whispered.

  It slid through the air like oil over water, a slick and invasive voice without sound, a presence that curled inside his skull like creeping vines.

  Run, little heretic.

  Jabari’s heart nearly stopped. The voice wasn’t his. It wasn’t real.

  You should run.

  A chill crawled down his spine. His body was sluggish, his movements clumsy. In desperate panic, his eyes flicked towards the ruined houses. They seemed farther away, and the alleys stretched into infinity. Safety was nowhere to be found.

  This had to be a trick, a curse. He forced himself to stumble to his feet and sprint towards the town square and the others. The Captain could handle the tiger—and maybe the whispers.

  You’ll never make it.

  Jabari felt his marrow freeze. The whispers coiled through his ears into his brain, into his thoughts. Warmth flooded his pants. He tried to speak, to scream, but nothing came out but bird song and meows.

  Something slashed his knee; he stumbled and buckled face-first into the debris created by the Inquisition’s visit to Riverwatch—blood and death.

  The tiger growled, a low, deep rumble of satisfaction. Fear, pain, and desperate panic had overwhelmed Jabari’s mind, and his breath came in labored gasps.

  The whispers grew. Thick, all-consuming. It was as if he stood in the market at noonday, but all the voices had turned chittering, whispers that didn’t make sense. What, even, was real?

  Why do you run?

  The blood on his gauntlets blurred into faces, the ruined houses stretched into the sky, like gaping maws ready to devour him. The shadow moved again.

  Massive jaws clamped over his skull. His last thoughts were not of Horus, his comrades, or repentance. All Jabari could think about was how pleasant the very wet, crunchy sound his skull made when the Tiger bit.

  And then, he wondered… why did Anubis send a lute player to usher him to his judgment?