The Slowing of His Heart
This content was originally included in an issue of The Duelist magazine. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.
Main Magazine Page: The Duelist #7
By Michael G. Ryan
As one, they stopped work.
There was a great deal of blood coming from the wounds—no amount of pressure seemed to stop it from coming—and Neth’arna, assessing the others, shook her head wearily. She shielded her eyes from the last vestiges of the sun’s glare as she looked up into their faces.
“He won’t live,” she said simply, rising from where she knelt beside Thexar. “I’m stunned he’s still alive.”
Together, the band of workers began a dull moaning, their muscular bodies swaying like weeds in the coming mountain winds. The sun had fled for less emotional parts, and the clouds had moved in expectantly. All about the mountain site, shovels and picks lay abandoned for the day; no one had even suggested digging anymore this morning, not with the sudden and surprising agony of Thexar upon them. From the rocky ground at Neth’arna’s feet, Thexar bellowed miserably, one hand wiping aimlessly at the steady streapn of blood clouding his eyes.
The workers had expected to labor hard today, to both break through the last walls of soil separating them from their buried ancestral caverns and to celebrate the transition of Thexar from youth to adulthood. They had put down their digging tools, shaking the sweat from their ears and their backs, to hail Neth’arna and to admire her first handiwork—scarring was not only traditional and honorable, it was also thought to be rather safe. It was a common enough practice, though Neth’arna was new to its applications, and Thexar had earned his scars in a trial by fire—would they have found the right place to dig at all were it not for Thexar’s exceptional direction sense? His youthful energy for deciphering forgotten maps was infectious and drove the digging team before it like oxen before the wagon.
“Kill me,” Thexar howled pathetically. He clutched Neth’arna’s booted ankle as if it were the only torch in a dark tunnel. “Finish what you started.”
Neth’ama scowled gently and gestured to Arras, who rose from his haunches and approached. Some of the others cleared a path amidst them for him. “I bleed while you bleed. But I only started what you begged for.”
Thexar turned his head, the left side of his face lying in the ever-spreading pool of blood on the hot mountain rock. “I beg now.”
Arras neared, his eyes weary and sad, and he knelt next to the dying Thexar. Carefully dabbing the blood at the corner of Thexar’s mouth, he glanced witheringly at Neth’arna the shaman.
“It benefits no one to make excuses,” he said sharply.
Neth’arna considered, then nodded once. She didn’t look at the rest of the digging clan.
“The scars,” Arras said then to Thexar, stroking the dying young one’s hand, “will serve you as well in death as they might have in life.”
Slowly, as if the necessity of freeing Neth’arna’s ankle was an agonizing gesture, Thexar moved his hand to Arras’s lap. His blood smeared Arras’s ceremonial gown in an indecipherable pattern that hinted at his short future. “Don’t let me die of this. I don’t deserve to die like this. Let Neth’arna die.”
Some of the others looked at Neth’arna, who stiffened at the suggestion. No one spoke; the insult came from a doomed soul, and though it no doubt pained Neth’arna, it was not to be taken seriously
“Neth’arna did as she felt was right,” Arras said, looking to the darkening sky. “Even the clouds believe it’s so, and even the clouds know the fear of passing. Your failed scarring is a tragic accident.”
Thexar groaned, little more than a gurgled cough, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The others, many of them bearing the whirling, painted scars which now took Thexar’s life, settled down around him, their weapons of war set aside, the call of their ancestral caverns unheard. Warriors leaned their heads toward one another and silently touched foreheads. Two unscarred youths dipped their fingertips in Thexar’s spreading blood and covered their faces in temporary honor of their dying companion.
“I cannot express my grief,” Neth’ama began, but Arras gently silenced the shaman with a shake of his head. Thexar’s breathing was snorted and draining; it was the sound of a boulder thundering down the mountainside, rough and irregular banging, scratchy and echoing away. Arras used his gown to smear away the blood which threatened to cover Thexar’s left eye.
“I hear the ghosts,” Arras the spiritcrafter whispered, “and I have heard their tales. They are sometimes joyous tales; they are sometimes tales of despair. I know them all; you should know of one. It will ease your fears.”
Thexar began to weep, his hand now locked up in both of Arras’s. His other hand seemed to have no will of its own left; it flopped lifelessly on the stone, its fingertips jagged and shadowed like a miniature mountain range. A spot of blood ran down from his third finger to his palm, where it pooled and grew cold.
“Take comfort in this,” Arras said to the barren mountain pass around him, to Thexar, and began to tell his story.
Jekelth was a fierce warrior; he had failed in only one battle during all of his mercenary pursuits, and even that had, in his mind, become a victory. He strode the battlefields with a savage gleam in his one eye, a battleaxe clenched in both of his massive hands, and an insatiable desire to deal death and see blood.
The goblins called him Blackeye, for the patch over his eye; the humans refused to name him at all, choosing instead to call him their “Dream”—every human’s dream that he or she might slay Jekelth and bear his head home. Jekelth himself was often oblivious to all this; he fancied himself unconquerable, but such arrogance as this could never be sustained. The time inevitably came when Jekelth was challenged.
It was after the Battle for Strongrock, which you may have heard tell of, and the conquered survivors—human and goblin alike—had scattered. Jekelth had originally marched with others into the mountains to flush out those stragglers who merited crushing defeat, but in just a few hours he found himself alone. With his bloodied battleaxe held ready before him, he worked his way higher onto Strongrock than even his commander would have asked of him—but that was Jekelth, never mindful of his own safety. All bravado and unflagging self-assuredness was he. He climbed over rocks, scaled steep slopes, and poked into nearly buried caves in search of the enemy.
And it was just as he was about to turn back for camp that he was surprised by the eldest soldier in the enemy forces. This old man, whose name has been lost or perhaps never known, was a savage wardog himself, gnarled with age and twisted like a great tree after a brushfire, and he leapt from a narrow path above, bowling over Jekelth onto the rocky path and sending his battleaxe skittering behind him—and off the cliff’s edge. It clanked once down the cliffside and smashed itself in two in the gorge far below.
The old man was back on his feet in a flash, an ugly dagger in his hand.
“Old Dream,” he hissed at Jekelth, whose knee was broken in the attack. “It looks like you belong to me, one-eye.”
Jekelth was silent as he lay amidst the stones, wounded and vulnerable.
“How good for me to square off against such a legendary enemy,” the old man noted. “You’ll be the crowning kill in my career.”
“Not today,” Jekelth said boldly. “I may die, but it will never be by your hand.”
The old man scowled suspiciously as Jekelth continued. “I will throw myself from this cliff and will, quite likely, die smashed on the rocks in the gorge. You will go home to tell your kin that you witnessed Jekelth’s suicide, but never will you say you defeated him.”
The old man seemed taken aback by this, as Jekelth had hoped, and now Jekelth was prepared to negotiate.
“I will offer you a trade,” Jekelth said. “For my freedom and my life, I will give you my eyepatch and the story of how I came by it. You can return with it to your people and tell them what glory you had in taking it from mighty Jekelth, and you will be hailed a hero. Otherwise, you may seek my body in the gorge below—and best of luck to you in convincing your kin that you bruised me to death!”
Wisely, after only a few moments of consideration, the old man agreed, visions of his trophy already dancing in his head, and he warily listened to Jekelth’s tale—the tale of Jekelth’s first and only defeat.
I was deep in battle and in blood. There were dead all about me, so many that I didn’t know friend from foe. Nor did it matter to me. And there on the field, under the red-hot sun, was Pikepierce, the renegade goblin who had fled from his platoon to seek war without leadership. But I already knew the tale of Pikepierce; I knew his weaknesses, his queasy stomach and his gullibility. I did not think to use it in battle, but it came to me soon thereafter
We closed on one another, and Pikepierce was much quicker than I would have given him or any other goblin credit for. He was quick with his spear, and he had perfected the parry. With bodies under our feet we fought, blood and spit flying from us both, and in mere minutes it had ended. Though there were none about to witness my fall, I felt shame as Pikepierce did just as you have done, my human rival—he drove me to my knees, kicking my battleaxe away from me. I sagged, my shoulder slumped, and I knew defeat.
Pikepierce was arrogant and stupid. He was cautious, by certain, and was careful not to let me escape his guard, but he danced a fair jig and taunted me as none have since.
“Down, down to his knees!” he chortled. “I have brought the great Jekelth down to his knees!”
“Just be quick about it, goblin,” I growled, pretending not to know him or his vulnerabilities. “I would rather be swiftly slain by the vilest of your kind than to be tortured by the limited best of your stinking brethren.”
He stopped his incredibly foolish dance and glared at me. “What do you mean? Who is stinking?”
“Just kill me,” I insisted. “Spare me your victory insults, spare me the torture of gouging out my eyes, spare me the sight of your silly jigglings. I can stand no torture, either visual or physical. Now get it over with.”
Pikepierce was stunned into silence, and then his rage rose swiftly to the surface.
I will torture you if I want to torture!” he screamed angrily. “And I will gouge your eyes out if I want to gouge!” And with that, closed in on me, his spear raised toward my face.
The stories suddenly stopped as Thexar, his eyes wide, drew a ragged breath… and died. His snout shifted to one side, the blood from his scars thinning, one horn clicking as it touched the stone.
“He’s gone,” Arras said, rising from the dead minotaur. The other minotaurs, some listening to the tale, some watching either their shaman or their spiritcrafter, wailed in collective agony. The scarring along Thexar’s snout washed clean as Arras ran his ceremonial gown over it once more.
Neth’arna the shaman edged closer, her eyes soft now and her ears flat and sad on her head. She reached down and touched Thexar’s dead face, her fingers sliding across the stiff bristle of hair on his forehead until they reached his eyes. His eyelids closed beneath her touch.
Arras grasped the dead young one by the horns and turned his face toward the sky, gesturing to Neth’arna to cast her blessings for Thexar. The others stayed near, and together they mourned. The clouds collided, and a sprinkle of rain misted across the clan gathering.
As the prayers ended and three of the young males moved off to prepare a litter for the late Thexar that they might carry him to the caves of the dead, Neth’arna turned to her spiritcrafter.
“How do they end, Arras?” she asked simply. She could feel the uncompromising stares of her kin behind her, judging her by her failure. “Tell me what happens next.”
Arras shrugged. “Pikepierce took Jekelth’s eye. A vicious stab with his spear to the face. But Jekelth knew from the tales told that the sight would I sicken the goblin, and while the goblin wretched over the pulpy mess that came forth from the great minotaur warrior’s missing eyesocket, Jekelth reached for his axe and split Pikepierce in two. A loss, but a victory.”
Neth’arna walked with Arras as they approached the shovels; a few minotaurs glared accusingly at Neth’arna, but she did not acknowledge their anger—she knew what she had done, and she could only vow not to make the same mistakes when scarring her next charge. “And what about Jekelth and the human old man?”
“Ah.” Arras picked up a shovel. “The old man accepted the story and the eyepatch from Jekelth. Thinking that Jekelth was an honorable enemy, he turned away to depart the pass, and when he did so, Jekelth scooped up a rock and brained him, killing him. He took back his eyepatch and went on his way.”
Neth’ama looked stricken. “Why did you tell this tale to Thexar? And why doesn’t your tale tell of Jekelth’s death and its deeper meaning? You told Thexar, ‘Take comfort in this.’”
“Yes. And he listened.”
“I don’t understand. If—”
“It was a long story—two long stories,” Arras said gently. He handed a shovel to Neth’arna, who slowly accepted it. “It didn’t matter what it was about. It was only important that he listened to the tale and not to the slowing of his heart.”
The minotaur spiritcrafter glanced at Thexar’s body as it was lain on the makeshift litter, then looked to the darkening sky. He seemed to see something there, and he smiled, stretching his own tattoos and scars into a prismatic pattern.
“Our ancestors call,” he said to the sky, then to Neth’arna. “Yet another story lies unfinished in the soil.”
Reluctantly, Neth’ama put her shovel to the ground and the spirits in Arras’s sky to her back. She shrugged onto her shoulders the anger of her clan.
As one, the minotaurs began to work.
Michael G. Ryan is an editor for Wizards of the Coast. His fiction has appeared in Dragon® magazine and will be featured in the next Magic anthology, Distant Planes.