Chương 2

"Be careful with this one," the priest told the sergeant who came to collect my brothers and I.

"He's killed eight priests." The sergeant blinked his one eye in surprise.

"How did he do that?"

"Drowned them as sacrifices," the priest admitted.

"It was a mistake on our part." The priest proceeded to explain the entire misunderstanding. The sergeant listened to the end of it, then laughed uproariously.

"That's the damn funniest thing I've heard all month," he said as he recovered. He rubbed his finger, where he wore a small ring. I'd been staring at that ring since before he'd come into the room. It held power. Power over me. I must obey this man.

"Hey, Tal. If I ordered you to drown me, would you?" I did not answer. Instead I stepped forward and reached out to grab him and drag him down to the sacrifice chamber.

"Stop," he said, and he kept laughing. He slapped the priest on the back.

"Thanks for the warning, lad. We get ones like this now and then. He has a bit more memory than most of them, you see. A part of him is probably still stuck on those first orders."

"What do you mean?" the young priest asked.

"You think that Inalten are like slaves in that they'll do a task until they're told to stop. And they are. But most of them only remember the last task they're given. Like a message in the sand. When you tell them to stop, most of them piss in the sand and forget what they were doing after two minutes. It takes eight times longer to train one of these than it does a living slave. Except now and then you get one like this that's clever."

"He killed two of my friends."

"The mistake you made there is having friends when you serve the god of the underworld, fool," the sergeant said.

"Tal, strangle this idiot." I began to obey. The priest ran. I was faster. That was the first order I failed to carry out, but only because I snapped his neck instead of strangling him. I continued to squeeze his throat long after he'd gone still, feeling the bones crunch beneath my iron grip. I did not ask why I killed that priest. I had not spoken since I'd been born in the ritual two weeks ago. The sergeant looked me up and down, and what he saw in me as I continued throttling a dead man, I do not know.

But he turned to the cages, where one hundred and twenty young men and one hundred and twenty young women sat, stinking of fear and other things.

"If you're lucky," he said to the unfortunate souls, "Enough of you will remain after the priests finish with your corpses that you'll be like this. Good for something other than turning food into shit. Come with me, Tal. And you, Sul, Kul, and Yos." I carried the corpse of the priest with me for six miles before his head fell off, and I wasn't certain which part to carry after that. The Sergeant laughed the entire time. * The sergeant got a horse at the edge of town. My brothers and I did not.

The sergeant ordered us to "Keep up with me," and he set out at a trot. We kept up with him, even as our flimsy sandals fell apart. Running on bare feet over the rough terrain, we did not slow. Even as the bones in our feet began to break. We arrived at the garrison thirty miles away. I was still holding the priests head. The sergeant passed the reins of the horse to another soldier, who asked why I was holding a head that looked like it had been ripped off someone's body.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. The sergeant told the entire story, getting a crowd. Half of the soldiers burst into laughter at various points, the other half—the younger half—did not. They had volunteered for the army because there were only two occupations that were safe from the tithe. Soldier and priest. And noble, I suppose. These young men had chosen to be soldiers. I sometimes wonder why my body's previous host did not do the same.

It matters very little. I was told to throw the head into the latrine, then brought to a tent where the simple linens I'd been given by the priests was exchanged for leather armor. My feet were examined and I was not given boots. Instead I was ordered to 'fix myself.' I did not understand what that meant. Sighing in frustration, the quartermaster told the lot of us to hold still. He returned five hours later with another Inalten like us. An older one, one who had been unalive for longer.

"Now watch this closely. I'll repeat it as many times as it takes for you idiots to learn, but if I have to do it every day for the next six weeks for you I swear to the gods I'm going to break you in a way that you'll actually care about." He took out a knife and casually cut the older Inalten across the face.

"Heal yourself," the quartermaster ordered. The older undead did not change expression, but as soon as it was ordered to, it cycled the energy animating it into the wound. The wound sealed, the flesh healed, and it was like it never happened.

"And now again," the quartermaster said, repeating the process. In my case, it was unnecessary. Once was enough. I channeled the energy within me into my feet, feeling as the bones cracked back into place, my toes realigned, and the blisters, cuts, and bruises all healed. Then, for no particular reason, I healed the rest of my body from the cuts, scratches, and bruises that the sacrifices and priests had left on me while fighting for their lives.

The quartermaster continued to cut the older undead and order him to heal himself. Ten times. Twenty times. Thirty. Then he told the older undead to get back to practice. The older Inalten—his name was Zer, for that was the rune branded into his forehead—turned and walked away. The quartermaster took the time to examine our feet again after that. Satisfied that we were healed, he gave us boots and told us to return to him once a day so that we could be inspected for injuries.

But if we forgot, it wasn't much of an issue. We weren't expected to know when to heal ourselves, despite our ability to do so. Not until we were trained. To punctuate his lesson, he cut each of us on the face like he'd done to Zer. The black ichor dribbled down my chin as I watched him cut the others with detached curiosity. The quartermaster looked at us, then said "When you're wounded, you should heal yourself." I immediately did so. Kul, Yos, and Sul needed to be told to do so by name.

I wondered briefly if I was different from my brothers. Time would prove that yes, I was. But the empire wouldn't realize their error until it was too late. * The weeks settled into routine. I did not know rest. When I close my eyes, I can still pull my mind back to those days of perfect routine. In the morning, the sergeant would come and yell at us. He would take away our sharp blades and give us wooden ones, then send us against the living soldiers. Ten against one, they would beat us and we would beat them.

The sergeant's joke? The Inalten always won the game, because our wounds didn't count. Sure the soldiers were using real weapons and could cut us apart. But at the end of the day, they would just put our body parts back in position and command us to heal ourselves, and we would. Then we would stand and reach for our wooden sword and continue to beat the trainees until they were too exhausted to stand. The fear that came off the living recruits every time the sergeant called out "Heal Yourself!" was palpable.

So thick it stank like the cloying scent of rotten meat. We trained from dawn until noon, when the living were sent to eat and then condition their bodies by running ten miles. We Inalten did not need to condition ourselves. Our muscles became like corded rope, our endurance was endless. Only when we ran out of instructions did we stop moving, each new order overriding the last. The garrison was a very different place than the temple. Full of sound and the laughter of unwashed men. And fear. Everywhere fear.

All of the livings stank of it. Or perhaps it only stank like that when I was near the living. I killed eight soldiers while I was training. One by accident. Seven because I was commanded to. I felt as much guilt for them as I felt for anything I've ever felt in my life. I wonder what guilt is supposed to feel like. I wouldn't know. I won't pretend to know the politics of the man who used me for the murders. I know exactly who it was, of course.

He commanded me to my face, his ring thrust in my hand as though I could possibly not be aware of it. It availed him little good. When the sixth murder happened, all of the rings were collected and placed in a chest. The captain of the garrison took out a command staff, and before all of his officers I was commanded to murder everyone who had commanded me to commit murder in the garrison. Too late the Captain realized that I would go for him after the conspirator.

Too late did someone else grab the command staff and order me to stop. My knife was already in his heart. They did not change my leather armor after that. I walked around for weeks smelling of noble blood. One does not blame the tool. One blames the hand that wields it. If that hand is careless, then the carelessness is not the tool's fault. But one thing is certain. Nobody used me for murder after that. But there was a reason why I had been chosen to be the tool of the corrupt officer.

I was simply the best of the Inalten.