(Draft 1)
Arik had heard many of the names for Ennika.
“Ennika the Merciless”
“Ennika the Whore”
“Ennika the Cruel”
“Ennika the Demon”
“Ennika the Cursed”
The most common was simply “Ennika of the Wastes.”
But the title that Arik had worried over, ever since he had decided to join her roving band, was “Ennika the Fair.”
Arik had always known he was homely. An unfinished clay statue of a man, with a nose half the size it should be, deep, recessed eyes, a hairy, unkempt brow, and pockmarks and scars scattered haphazardly over him from case of the pox he’d only barely survived. He counted any day out in the desert, away from the trappings of civilization and by extension away from the mirrors and looking glasses the rich adored, as a blessing.
But, mirror or no Arik was well aware of his own failings. It was because of this that the mere presence of a woman transformed Arik from unremarkable, but capable, into a perfect idiot. Nervous and unsure, Arik would stumble and stutter, staring slack-jawed and starry-eyed at the beautiful face, or sometimes at other assets, of guests, relatives, or even simply strangers on the street.
Arik’s flight from civilization had been prompted by such an occasion. He had failed in his duties as a guard for a wealthy merchant when he had not only let a beautiful thief escape, but accidentally covered her flight by stumbling stupidly into a pile of rugs and goods, sending debris sprawling into the path of her pursuers. One of those pursuers had been his guard captain, and the merchant’s nephew. After a day’s worth of beatings and beratements, Arik had slunk home to his family, only to face further abuse regarding his uselessness and continued failure.
It was that night that he disappeared under the cover of darkness, carrying with him only his guard’s armor and sword, several loaves of bread, and a waterskin. Slipping out from under his father’s wrathful snoring, past the evening watch, who’s schedule he knew so well, and into the blackness of a still, cloudless, moonlit desert night.
The stories of Ennika’s band of raiders had always reported that they “came from the West” and this seemed as good as any direction to him. So as the days went, he watched the sun and did his best to keep his bearings and drove himself ever West.
It wasn’t until the third day, and the last few drops of his waterskin, that he realized the folly of his plan. He knew that Ennika was difficult to find. He had heard captains and generals curse their luck in being unable to find the “Desert Hag.” This shadow of the wastes only revealed itself when it desired, never falling for a baited trap, or caravan too heavily guarded.
He cursed his luck, for always letting him down.
He cursed the sun, for drawing his life away the way a bandage wicks blood from a wound.
He cursed Ennika, for giving him hope and never delivering.
But he saved the most vile, creative, destructive curses for himself. For being such a fool to die in the sands, alone, unwanted, and only the desert carrion eaters to attend his vigil.
And in time, he fell to the uncaring sands. He gave himself up for dead. Barely enough water remained in him to spit his last curses, spewing hatred at the desert wind that swirled about him. Dry, poisoned whispers barely escaping a cracked broken throat.
He knew they couldn’t have heard him. He lost his voice long before he lost consciousness. He was too dry for them to have tracked his human waste, he’d not left those markers for days. Instead, it may have been the tracks his knees made while dragging them through the sand. Or, maybe they had followed the trail of discarded armor and clothing he’d shed trying to escape the heat of the wastes. No matter what it had been, he was neither awake, nor sane enough for recollection, by the time they found him to ask.
Ennika the Saviour, maybe?
Initially he was questioned intensely about his intentions and goals towards Ennika’s band of raiders, but his appearance was painful enough that his sheer misery lent credence to his mumbled pleas for mercy and his garbled story of running from home. Two days passed, during which he was allowed to recover. He was tended to gently by a woman who spoke no language he could discern. The only thing he was certain of was that she was surely old enough to have been his mother’s mother’s mother. Finally, when he could once again stand on his own two legs, he was wrapped in new, strange armor, and pushed roughly to stand in rank with a group of motley soldiers. Each man near him was wearing mismatched armor, and each seemingly sported a different skin colour, so that the row of them presented as a rough patchwork as varied as any marketplace bizarre he’d ever seen.
There they stood, unmoving, for what seemed like an eternity. Arik, baking under the hot sun he’d so recently been saved from, began to worry about his ability to continue standing. At least without venting the curative soup he’d been fed for that day’s breakfast. As so happens with mankind, it was this thought he was initially engaged in when Arik had the kind of slow epiphany that only waking up from a deep slumber can replicate. Creeping over his brain like hoarfrost on a water jug, was the realization that he and his new, nameless fellows were lined up for an inspection. And the one inspecting would likely be the leader of the ragtag army, Ennika herself.
Dumb and clumsy Arik had been all his life, but he knew this about himself, and accepted it. He did not aspire to great things, he knew his failings. He did not dream of riches and majesty like other men his age.
But Arik possessed one thing that not nearly enough of his compatriots could claim.
Arik had heard the stories of Ennika, and feared them, but still had decided to come to her. This was because Arik, in his heart, was a skeptic.
The stories of “Ennika the Fair” described her as the greatest beauty of the time. She was said to be so lovely as to cause her enemies to fall before her, disarmed, in fear of striking a single flaw into her radiant skin.
So beautiful was she rumored to be, that the reason she stayed in the great, unforgiving desert was that the Dryads had become jealous of her, and cast her out from any of the green places.
Ennika was supposed to be so absolutely perfect, that time itself had frozen her in her most perfect moment, never to age another day, until Mother Night folded the world to put it away forever.
So, Arik had heard these tales, and while he suspected he would certainly become an idiot in the presence of his new lord and master due to her female nature, he also suspected two other things.
First, he suspected that he would never rise high enough in her rankings to be of concern.
Second, he suspected that tales of her beauty were simply and understandably exaggerated. This would typically be so that certain merchants could convince their patrons to buy some of their less tasteful tapestry.
And, for once in his life, he was very glad to have his instinct proven correct.
Surprising himself, when reminiscing to himself about the day, Arik would remember Ennika’s mount before thinking of anything else, including the woman herself.
Black as night from tip to tail, the horse stepped cautiously but deliberately through the sands. Arik would later swear, in whispered tones not dissimilar from the Tapestry merchants, that he didn’t see the horse itself, so much as a gaping hole where a horse should have been. The space only defined by *lack* of light, for the onyx beast was so black as to greedily devour the rays from the desert sun itself. The horse itself was so striking that, in that moment, Ennika herself came almost as an afterthought. While her steed appeared to be a puddle of the night sky given form, Ennika’s appearance was so plain as to be almost comical in comparison. Sitting astride the horse, as a man would ride a horse, was a plain-faced woman covered in long, dark-colored, but common robes. These were draped over her in enough layers to make the form of her figure nearly impossible to discern, but her hair and face were as exposed to the world as his own. Even her hands were wrapped in some kind of dark cloth, looking almost like a burn victim might, but these bandages would have been dipped in the darkest wine. Her left hand, he noticed, held the reins of her steed, but she would casually drop those reins to gesture wildly about some flight of fancy or another while she loudly laughed or shouted, sometimes both at once. But if her left hand were as flighty as an insect, her right hand was as stone. Wrapped in the same bandage-like clothes as her left, these fingers wrapped around the hilt of a massive steel scimitar and did not move.
Arik breathed the smallest sigh of relief. This was no retiring waif, for certain. But nor was she a stony, untouchable general. This woman moved, and she smiled, and spoke with her generals as if they had been long friends. Her boisterous attitude gave Arik an excellent view of the “Demon of the Wastes”, and he was surprised to know that the exaggerations had been even more false than he’d initially expected.
She certainly wasn’t ugly to Arik’s eyes, but she showed all of the signs of living life that he had known women to hide. The sun had darkened her skin far more than the fair skinned women of his home would ever have tolerated. The unforgiving desert winds had roughened her skin, giving her an older woman’s leathery toughness. After a moment, he realized that this was plainly visible to him because unlike the women of his homeland, she chose to wear none of the colorful face-paints he’d become accustomed to women of high status sporting like their own armor.
Her jaw was round, not pointed as his people preferred, and her lips were too large for his tastes. Even her nose was not as shapely as had been the thief’s that triggered his exile. On closer inspection, he had seen a particular flaw of hers before on fellow guardsmen, and thusly he suspected that the nose on that face had been broken and re-set at least once.
As she rode slowly forth, astride her beast in the least lady-like way he’d ever seen a woman ride, she spoke loudly and clearly, and did not cover her mouth or hide her teeth when she did so.
He was put at ease. She was pretty, he thought, but not overly.
Snapping back to the moment, Arik nearly knocked himself over, standing to attention so quickly as to play with his sense of balance. Ennika sauntered past, speaking loudly with one of her captains about a caravan of slaves expected to be within striking distance sometime soon. She barely seemed to notice the troops arranged for her benefit, but it did not feel dismissive. Instead, he was given a strong feeling that she simply trusted that those who’d been gathered were as strong and capable as they could be, and she knew how to account for it all.
When finally she ducked inside her tent to plan with her generals, Arik realized that he was not sweating, his heart not thumping, and his nerves not frayed in any of the ways he’d feared. Ennika the Fair, indeed.
The strike against the caravan was indeed soon. The very next day, Arik found himself buried under heavy fur blankets, in turn buried under pounds of stifling sand. Adrenaline rushed through his system, every passing hour taxing his nerves, holding in energies he had nowhere to deliver.
The plan was for him to wait until the signal was given, the screech of a raven, at which point he would use his considerable muscle to throw the blanket aside, kicking up a man-made sandstorm in the middle of the caravan. This, combined with many others in similar hand dug pits, would frighten and confuse the horses and slave-tenders, while Ennika’s main band engaged the bulk of the guard from the front. Here too was Ennika’s signature touch of deception, as she had explained that she planned to harass and harry the guard, taking not a single man, until the group to which Arik was attached was able to re-join them. Thusly they would catch the guard in a pinching maneuver. Caught between the two forces, it was Ennika’s hope that the meager guard would see the hopeless battle for what it was, and they would give up before Ennika even had to wet her sword on a man’s blood.
At the time Arik thought this to be part of a lofty goal. A noble one. Arik thought for a short time that Ennika’s goal was a bloodless battle saving the lives of as many as possible. He’d heard such ideals before, typically spoken by men of the various churches, that spilling blood was an affront to the Gods, but there were no priests in Ennika’s group.
Ennika the Merciful, perhaps?
As Ennika had described, the plan was executed flawlessly. In a chaotic whirlwind, Ennika’s ambush troops first disoriented, then terrified, the slave masters and their few close bodyguards. The choice to surrender quietly would be made all the easier by these guards’ belief that the Empire soldiers at the head of the column would double back to deal with their threat.
However, much to the surprise of both Arik, and the slave traders, Arik’s vision of Ennika as a dove of peace was shattered instantly in that moment.One of her generals, breathing heavily and without uttering a word, grabbed the slaver nearest him roughly by the man’s tightly woven braid, stared balefully into his eyes, and then efficiently and coolly ran his blade *lengthwise* down the slaver’s throat. As that one gibbered and guttered out into the sand, the general nodded curtly to the rest of the band, indicating that they should follow suit.
Ennika the Merciless, it would seem..
The man next to Arik instantly began to blubber nearly incomprehensible promises of wealth and forgiveness if only he could go home to his wife and numerous children. Arik, momentarily frozen, hesitated only briefly before stabbing the slaver cleanly through the neck, killing him nearly instantly.
This moment of mercy earned a steely glare from the seasoned company member at Arik’s side, and after that, Arik made sure not to delay again. Rhythmically then, Arik and his troop moved through the fattened underbelly of the caravan, pausing to grab silken robes, slit throats, and then move ever Eastward towards the next group and silently and slowly towards the front of the column.
By the time he found himself at the back of the caravan’s vanguard of Empire trained soldiers, he’d lost count of the necks he’d twisted, and the blood he’d spilled. Cloaked in darkness still, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the many torches held up by the soldiers of the vanguard. When they did, he was able to take in the vaguely comical sight of the captain of the vanguard, sitting on a well armored warhorse, arms out to his sides in a pose indicating he had no fear in him. He was calling out into the night, shouting to be heard, blustering to Ennika.
Arik could not see her currently, but he knew she sat astride her nightmare steed, just out of arrow’s reach. He could hear her taunting the soldiers in response, cutting off the captain’s attempts to bluff or parley by mimicking a raven’s cry, and amplifying the sound with a horn she’d carried on her back.
It was not long before the man who’d been speaking with Ennika during the troop inspection seemed to take shape from the sand and shadows themselves right next to him. A breath later the man called out to the captain, silencing his bloviating with a single word, uttered in an accent Arik never found himself able to place. But the ice in his tone was unmistakable.
“Surrender.”
The Empire captain turned out to have some measure of brain in his head, at least enough to outweigh his desire for glory. He saw the odds for what they were, and ordered his troops to surrender immediately. Reluctantly and sullenly, dropped swords, shields and spears cratered the night sands as Ennika rode triumphantly into the circle of torchlight.
It was then that Arik saw something of what the legends had claimed of her. The torchlight lit her face from below, and a wicked, evil grin split her face from ear to ear. Her crooked nose caused the light to dance in weird, uncanny ways across her skin, and while she still wore no face paint, her brow, her cheeks, and even her teeth themselves were spattered with red in such a way that left no question as to its substance.
So stark was her face, it wasn’t until relating the story later, that Arik realized that Ennika had been sporting the shafts of several arrows, jutting like porcupine quills from her back and shoulders.
Ennika the Demon, at last, Arik thought to himself.