Scattered Bones: Marauder's Blood Saga, #3

By Jon Kiln

In the shadowy depths of an underground cavern, Vorgan forges ahead, flanked by the formidable Chriselda, whose beauty is as striking as her bravery. They are pursued by unnerving creatures that, against the laws of nature, refuse to remain dead.

 

Above ground, the situation is dire. The Ghiis, a relentless force of destruction, lay waste to the land, leaving behind a trail of blood and chaos. The orchestrator of this devastation is the ancient and malevolent goat-demon, Uthros. With Chriselda's life perilously close to the jaws of danger and Vorgan's soul facing the threat of corruption, their journey becomes a critical fight for survival and a desperate battle against a seemingly invincible evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Kiln
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223639862

Book preview

Scattered Bones

Marauder’s Blood Saga: Book Three

––––––––

by Jon Kiln

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews.

Table of Contents

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 

28 

29 

30 

31 

32 

33 

1

Spawn of a motherless goat! Vorgan slammed his foot into the metal bowl that recently held his meager breakfast of stale bread porridge.

It sailed up, empty water cup flying in a completely different direction, and impacted the dank, stone-brick wall of the oubliette with a clatter. Thin, gray drops of tasteless gruel spattered the stones.

Vorgan glared at them then spun on his heel and paced his allotted five steps. The tip of his boot brushed the stone wall of his cell and he spun, stalking back the other way.

Days ago, he’d still retained some optimism.

At least they let me keep my clothes, if nothing else, he’d told himself. I’d freeze otherwise. He’d still wrapped his arms about himself, trying to feel warmer. He could just imagine how the slimy stones would feel under his bare feet, not to mention bumping against his toes as he’d paced, which was the best way he’d found to stave off the cold.

The second best was to scream his frustration to the uncaring stones.

He’d ranted about Uthros, screeched about the Ghiis army he no doubt guided toward Modriin even now, and the danger to the entire Empire they represented. If anyone had listened, anyone at all...

All he’d gotten was a sore throat.

Three days, he muttered, practically raving. At least, nine meals. That could be three days...

Hard to tell time in a barely lit hole in the ground.

Hey! He’d called to the guard that brought them, screaming up at the shadow moving against the torchlight. I have information for the Emperor! he’d started. Concerning the safety of the realm!

No response.

A mighty army is on the march! he tried again. An army of monstrous beings the like the Emperor has never seen! It comes from the Hollowlands, the Unclean Wastes!

A creaking noise preceded shadowed movement at the lip of the hole.

Vorgan’s heart soared. Perhaps he would be brought before the Emperor.

Yes! Bring me to your leaders and I will tell them all I know! I have vital information about the commander of this vast force and the danger he presents!

Something small bumped along the side of the wall, descending to him.

Any delay will cost lives! We may sort out our disagreement about stolen concubines once the city is safe! Even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, Vorgan frowned at the shadow.

A small item, flat on the bottom, bumped gently against the wall, a thin rope attached to it.

You needn’t take me out of prison, simply send scouts. Withdraw the armies to the city’s protection.

Eventually it reached the level of Vorgan’s eyes.

A tray bearing a small, lidded bowl and cup.

He stared up along the twine holding it.

Far too thin to bear the weight of even a child, it attached to the tray in a complicated mechanism Vorgan didn’t have the light to examine properly.

Caaatch, a voice at the top croaked.

Wha—? Vorgan’s brow creased.

The tray abruptly dumped the bowl and cup to the floor as one side detached, dangling flat as the wall.

Thus the lids, Vorgan muttered. Ignoring the dishes, he stared up at the man now retracting the tray. Will you take a message? I am... Vorgan gritted his teeth, then ground out, I am Warmaster Vorgan. I know that of which I speak. An enemy army comes. Will you tell your superiors?

No answer. The shadow retreated.

Vorgan tried again the next time the servant showed up with a meal. And the next.

He’d been forced to conclude the man was deaf.

Vorgan stamped out the dimensions of the hole he’d been forced into, his movements a rote pattern now engraved into his muscles. Every once in a while, he glared up at the lip of his prison hole. The single torch up there was barely visible from a certain spot, so every time Vorgan reached it, he glanced up, grateful it still shone. It served as a rough clock, for every few hours the servant guard would come and replace it with a fresh one.

Vorgan supposed he should be grateful they were still feeding him too. It meant they wanted him alive. His captors were keeping him in the Penance Wells only until they needed him elsewhere. Perhaps they wanted him weakened, demoralized, but they wanted him alive.

Yet, he found himself far more grateful for the torchlight than the food. Perhaps he’d simply spent too much time underground in the dark lately.

Vorgan sighed at the reminder of how this had all begun. He’d thought he’d hidden himself well enough, and used his connections well enough, that no one would find him in the tiny jungle village of Ildryn. He’d thought no one would come looking.

He’d been wrong.

His former commander, Warmaster Enlirsus, had sent an emissary, one determined to drag Vorgan back into the violent world he’d fought so hard to escape. Sinaidu took great joy in taunting Vorgan, trapping him into a duty he’d rather avoid, knowing that it was either obey or have his new life ripped from him.

Vorgan had been sent into the Wastes to search for an escaped concubine. Return the slave—or her body for the necromancers of the Spires to use—and return to the life he’d abandoned, thus saving his tiny village.

Given no choice, he’d accepted the mission.

He’d gone into the Unclean Lands and found the abandoned temple the concubine had run to for safety.

Vorgan snorted. Chriselda had been far safer with the caravan of soldiers than in the so-called abandoned temple.

That temple had been riddled with a maze of underground passages so deep it delved into the relics of another age. Creatures of the deeps, deadly and mysterious, populated even the upper levels, but as they’d descended, had only become more numerous.

The two of them, chained together by a mechanism of Vorgan’s own invention, had run and fought for their lives.

He never quite had the time afterward to figure out how long they’d spent in those dark and dusty caverns, but it had felt like days.

Eventually they’d made their way to the real danger.

Uthros.

Filthy mongrel born... Vorgan snarled just thinking about the man-like goat creature.

Uthros claimed to be... well, Vorgan wasn’t quite certain what he claimed to be. An incarnation of supreme power, he’d said, though what precisely that meant remained unclear. He’d also implied himself to be an embodiment of Y’ith Kariith, a forgotten brother to the Risen Lords. One rejected and punished. Uthros himself, relegated to banishment within the abandoned temple Chriselda had discovered.

Uthros had spent years upon years in the dark confines, and eventually mastered the horrid Ghiis that overran the place.

How he had managed to hold onto his sanity eluded Vorgan. He wondered if it had to do with the incredible library he’d first found the creature within.

Uthros had set Vorgan and Chriselda upon a harrowing journey into further depths of ruined underground city-temples. Once more set upon by the horrific Ghiis, the pair had nearly made it to their goal when Uthros sprang his trap and revealed his true intention of using the intrepid explorers to escape his erstwhile prison with an army of Ghiis at his control.

While keeping Vorgan and Chriselda as his unwilling prisoners, Uthros had ranted about his desire to slaughter the Emperor and the Empire as revenge upon the Risen Lords.

Their subsequent escape through the deserted Wastes had made a refreshing change from the oppressive dark of the underground, but it hadn’t lasted long.

Vorgan had thought he’d cleverly slipped the leash of becoming a Warmaster after a disastrous visit to the nearest fort. After killing Enlirsus, cowing Sinaidu, and sending most of the troops stationed there to deal with the Ghiis in the Hollowlands, Vorgan had slipped out of camp nearly unnoticed.

He’d intended to dodge the responsibilities he’d been unwillingly handed, having sent Chriselda off to safety with a string of other concubines. He’d wanted her to have a safe, happy life far from Modriin and himself.

She’d had other ideas.

So, instead of slipping off into the shadows, Vorgan had somehow ended up escorting not only Chriselda, but eight other concubines directly into the one place he’d wanted them not to be. Along their way to Modriin, they had been forced to take an underground route to avoid more Ghiis which had unexpectedly attacked them.

Once more in dark and forbidding caverns, the party had been pounced upon by enterprising slavers.

Should have known something would happen, Vorgan groused. Underground is never a safe place.

Indeed, the next time he and Chriselda had been underground, Vorgan had not been remotely safe.

"Perhaps it’s simply being underground with Chriselda..." Vorgan mused. But no. He knew better. Chriselda was not to blame.

No, that time, Sinaidu had been at fault. He’d baited Vorgan with a mysterious note promising more information.

Even entering the City of Crypts had been a fool’s errand.

And he’d known it at the time.

He’d known the note was bait for a trap. He’d said so, more than once.

But knowing one was falling for a trap meant nothing when the teeth of it closed over one’s head.

He and Chriselda had met Arteshki the Bloodmaiden, sent to lead them down into the Mausoleum of Days Lost, deep within the Cryptyards, there to meet with her master. None other than a power-mad Sinaidu, sent to torment Vorgan to death, if he could manage it.

He could not.

He’d set all manner of hideous, dead things on them, sowing confusion and horror alike.

Vorgan had experienced more than one nightmare featuring the things from the Mausoleum.

If only killing Sinaidu had put an end to it, he muttered.

But no. Sinaidu had not been the end at all.

After a terrible battle, when he’d at last struck down his enemy, Sinaidu had revealed the true danger.

Uthros was coming. And he was bringing an army.

While having known this already, what Vorgan had not known was the extent of Uthros’s cunning and depravity. Uthros had taken the troops Vorgan sent against him and turned them to his own needs. He’d used them as a depraved power source for his foul sorcery before feeding the rest to the Ghiis. And then he revealed that he had sent Vorgan into the city of Modriin as part of his evil plan to destroy the Empire.

Vorgan had just barely avoided becoming tainted by Uthros’s blasphemous power, thanks to a quick-acting Chriselda.

He really was lucky to have her.

Vorgan smiled tenderly at the thought and wished she were in here with him instead of wherever the City Watch had taken the stolen slaves. The very thought of her in a cell made him grind his teeth.

Of course, the worst part was his realization that while Uthros had denied giving Sinaidu the lofty title of Herald the man had claimed, Vorgan had to consider the notion that Uthros wanted the Empire to know he was coming.

He wanted Vorgan to tell the Empire.

For two heartbeats, all he could hear was the sound of his own frustration. On the third, the shrieking started up.

Vorgan sighed.

He didn’t know who was being held nearby, but whoever it was had lungs the size of a horse’s, and a voice to match.

Pitiful wailing rose, ululating over and around the prison-pit, echoing enough to become sourceless even as the volume increased.

Every night, the same thing. Pitiful wails, heartbroken enough to make a strong man weep, swept over the Penance Wells. Broken only long enough that the owner could sob for breath, they soon morphed into shrill, wordless screams of terror and rage.

Vorgan sympathized, but—

He froze, mid-thought, and cocked his head. Was that... two voices he heard?

Vorgan held his breath, closing his eyes to shut out everything but the sound.

Yes. Two voices warred in the dead of night, one much further off than—

Three.

Four. Four voices and... the clash of weapons.

Vorgan’s eyes flew open.

The sounds of battle were coming closer.

He scrambled to grab up the metal bowl, flinging the lid to one side. It was, by far, the most pathetic weapon he’d ever attempted to wield, but it was all he had. He could only hope the edge would hold if he dashed it against someone’s temple.

Blood pumping faster, his head cleared as it always did just before combat. He bounced on his toes a bit to loosen his muscles.

The sounds were close now, but so much had been added to the din that he couldn’t make out any details. He had no idea who fought or why.

Sounds died away, trailing off as the battle ended. Only the wailing persisted, but that, too, faded after a moment.

Vorgan swallowed and tore his gaze from the torch. He’d need any semblance of night-vision he could manage should anyone come his way.

Scraping at a metal door signaled someone entering the outer portion of his cell.

Vorgan took three silent steps backward, craning his head for the best angle to peer at whoever emerged as soon as possible.

The torch flickered in the shifting wind as the door swung open, creaking.

For a moment, silence reigned.

Vorgan toyed with the idea of speaking first, demanding to know who entered. He discarded it as tactically unsound. Whoever entered would reveal themselves or not as they chose. It was clear they came for him specifically, though. He’d not heard any other doors open, and he’d heard many in his time in the hole.

He waited an eternity that fit into one shallow breath.

Vorgan?

He’d know that voice anywhere.

Chriselda?

2

It’s us, Vorgan! Chriselda cried as her head popped over the lip of the hole.

Chriselda! Vorgan’s face nearly split with his beaming smile. You’re alright! He frowned at his sudden assumption. You are alright, aren’t you?

Of course. Her thick, cupid’s bow lips quirking up charmingly at his concern. Though I’d be better if you joined us up here.

Us? he asked as a thick rope slithered down the wall to him.

Hi, Vorgan! chirped two identical voices just out of sync with each other. Myli and Myla stuck their heads over the edge to beam at him for an instant.

H— Vorgan raised his hand to wave just as they retreated.

A blonde blur of motion above his head announced the twins’ arrival in his pit. They grinned impishly at his gaping astonishment.

But now you’re stuck— He stopped himself from saying anything more as the pair threatened to break into giggles.

We’re here to help you out, Myli reported, seizing the rope that followed them down.

Just raise your arms, spread your legs, and don’t move, Myla giggled. Her sister started threading the rope around his waist, pulling seemingly endless lengths of it down for their use.

Oh this I’ve got to see, purred another voice from the top of the pit.

Vorgan glanced up to see Sabi leering down at him.

Hey, she greeted, waggling beringed fingertips.

How many of you are up there? he wondered.

Well, she drawled, glancing over her shoulder, Ystarii and Erishki are guarding the door, and we picked up Inkydiir a little bit ago. Say hi, Inky!

The merchant-cum-abolitionist poked his head over the edge, glaring.

Vorgan raised his chin in greeting.

Inkydiir did the same and retreated without saying a word.

So not Astal, Eretu, or Ittal? Vorgan asked as the twins wound the rope about him in increasingly uncomfortable configurations.

No one’s seen Ittal since we were taken, Chriselda told him.

Astal and Eretu are safe, Sabi assured. But declined our little rescue operation as not quite their... style.

As it is yours? One corner of Vorgan’s mouth twitched even as his heart slowed its anxious beat.